Performance Books

What an important book for the contemporary marktplace! The author gives the reader incredibly canny insights into the confusing world of interactive marketing--both the "30,000-foot," strategic view and the hands-on, everyday tactics that get the job done. And all of this is presented in a friendly, easy-to-read style with a minimum of jargon and buzzwords. This book is worth many times the cover price. It's about time someone wrote this book.

A must for all new and veteran marketing professionals.

First, read the last four paragraphs. Then read the book. Use a marker liberally. This is a person with strong opinions and he is usually right. He is a marketer's marketer who never strays far from the fact that we all have to sell something to survive. He complies a lot of current internet thinking and best practices with a substantial heaping of his own background. He adds a sprinkling of the future with an eye on what's working now. Worth the price of admisssion, but start with the end.

A must read for anyone who either makes or influences marketing decisions. Being a part of an organization that serves both small and medium sized businesses that need integrated marketing solutions, this book is the outline for success. As an avid reader, all too often I see either "Joe Bob's theory on marketing success" or somebody plagiarizing one of the Porter bibles; either way, they're not usable by the average guy. Ryan's book has concise, easy to implement solutions that can be scaled. In today's marketplace where most businesses have between 2 and 10 employee's and make well under a million a year in revenue, business owners need roadmaps that are easy to follow and implementable with the staff that is on hand. Ryan does this well.

Not only would I consider this a must read, I'd say it's one to pick up again and again.

Christopher Ryan has hit a homerun with his book High Performance Interactive Marketing. His book provides the reader with a host of real-time, practical advice on how to improve the performance of your business.

I love the fact that Ryan provides the reader with a plethora of real-world examples that a company (such as mine or my client's) can utilize immediately.

In a book world that is so focused on nice-to-know theories, Ryan delivers on what all companies covet--practical advice that can be used the next day. I especially like his demonstrations of metrics, such as return on marketing investments, as this continues to be the holy grail that most companies seek, but very few find the right formula tied to their specific situation.

I will use this book regularly for my company and highly recommend it to my clients.

Keep it simple book is what I mean. Not going over and over ideas. They are just simple and worthy ideas that will put your brain and business to work efficiently and directed toward the goal of anyone that wants to have positive results on any sales arena.

Forget everything you ever read or heard about the overly complex sales process. Beck distills the complex sale and what you should be doing to execute on every facet of the process to a very Nike'ese "just do it". He includes real world examples and aligns them into practical approaches for selling. If your a soaring eagle sales person the advice given by Beck may seem like a dose of common sense but the book is a refreshing dose of reality for either the seasoned road warrior, the newbe or anyone inbetween.

I don't normally like sales books but this one was actually pretty good. There are quite a few suggestions he makes which are actually good. He covers everything from writing proposals to handling objections. This book is written in simple terms, so simple that a lot of sales people overlook them. You may not read the entire thing from cover to cover but I'm sure you take away a few hints to help you with your sales.

Terry Beck's selling wisdom is practical and based in common sense. Many of the suggestions here pertain to the most basic of all sales traits: persistence. It's refreshing to hear a sales guru say simply that it's a salesman's basic job to make the call, and he has no one but himself to blame if he doesn't. The advice here is grounded in hard work: show initiative, do your homework, know your product, cater to your customer, be yourself and don't make phony pitches. More distinctively, Beck corrects a lot of myths that actually harm your ability to make a sale. Of course, if you're a weathered sales veteran this information is not exactly breaking news. But if you're always looking to sharpen up your skills - and in this day and age you should be - we [...] recommend this well organized and conversational manual.

A practical guide to mastering complex sales situations - ideal for people selling big-ticket items such as enterprise software, equipment, or other "purchased by companies, not people" goods or services.

This book is, plain and simple, the best book on what drag racing is all about. The history and facts are first rate. I learned more about the sport from this one book than all others I have read combined. This would be a fantastic documentary for TV.

as a lover of drag racing and a drag racer myself,i have to say this is THE MOST COMPLETE BOOK on the subject of drag racing i have ever read.it covers all aspects of the sport from the beginning to 1990 and in every detail.if you are a lover of the sport,a drag racer or even if you know nothing about the sport this book will give you new insight,new feelings and you WILL learn a new appreciation of the sport..

Robert Post has given us an invaluable book. This is a strong claim, for Post's book is a narrative history of drag racing. And, while it is a very well done history, how can it possibly be "invaluable" when its subject matter is essentially useless? Now there's a strong claim. Let me hasten to establish my appreciation for what drag racers do. At the end of the 1997 racing season, the very best racers were getting to the end of their quarter mile race track -- from a standing start -- in less than a blink over 4.5 seconds. Perhaps even more astounding, the very fastest were going more than 320 miles an hour -- once more, from a standing start -- when they got there. This is truly amazing, but I am regularly struck dumb when asked a very simple question -- what's the point? Name almost any other major form of auto sport and I'll give you an answer. In NASCAR it's obvious. Even though those aren't at all stock cars anymore, a lot can still be learned by running flat out for 500 miles on production-based components, and that can be used to improve even the family car. Furthermore, that kind of abuse is perfect for testing tire technology. Even failing this, there's the old fallback, "win on Sunday, sell on Monday". But what do we learn from -- or sell from -- the top-notch dragsters? These are all completely purpose built vehicles, using all custom designed parts, performing a completely atypical activity and resembling nothing that is at all available on the showroom floor. In short, drag racing is the mountain climbing of motorsports. There is no point to it except to do it, and once you've decided to do it, you might as well do it as well as the technology -- and your money -- will allow. Recognizing the uselessness of the activity, however, is not to denigrate this very fine book. Anyone with an interest in the evolution of technology, automotive history, or motorsports will be fascinated, as should just about anyone who grew up during the time Post covers. Post writes that the first officially organized drag race happened on the streets in Goleta -- near Santa Barbara, California -- in 1949, although he recognizes that that same strip of road had been used for "unofficial" races for years before that. He uses that race as his starting point, and, in a clear, engaging writing style, supported my quite pertinent quotes from racers and many, many wonderful pictures, tells the story of the next 40 plus years in the development of this pursuit. Post is not a rah-rah boy, at least not for modern drag racing. This book is clearly a labor of love, but of love for a bygone era. While he appreciates and applauds the remarkable performance gains since the beginning -- those early cars took nearly 11 seconds to cover the quarter mile, hitting about 150 miles an hour -- he believes that the technical strides that account for those gains have changed the sport forever. It simply costs too much to go this fast. Further, going this fast fosters too much me-tooism. There is usually only one sure way to build a car to go this fast, so everybody essentially builds the same car. For these reasons, Post sees both the little guy, shade-tree mechanic and the spirit of innovation frozen out of bigtime drag racing. And since these are the backbone of what we think of as the hot-rod, drag racing culture, this is apprehensible. Post, then, seems to yearn for a time of more innocence. A time, say, 25 or 30 years ago. It is this that makes this book so invaluable. It will be invaluable to anyone who -- like me -- grew up not only during the time Post relishes, but also at the places, and cheering for, sometimes, if you were lucky, helping the people that he writes about. I started going to the drags before I had either a car or the money to get into the track. I must of been about twelve when I first rode my bike up the long hill to the Pomona fairgrounds and clung to the fence along the road, peering through the holes at what was going on. I was in love. My folks didn't have a lot of money, but I was lucky. My birthday almost perfectly coincided with Winternationals weekend! I had a standing request for a birthday present, and my parents never failed me. I always had my Winternationals ticket. Then I got a car, and enough money to hit all the local strips. Fontana. Lions. Irwindale. Orange County. Man-o-man. I took tons of pictures, but through the carelessness of youth and the normal attrition of many moves, all have been lost. Post's many pictures at least partially makes up for that. More important than the pictures, however, are the memories. The many intervening years have taken quite a toll on mine, at least. Post tells his story so clearly, and with such detail, that it can cause the fog to lift. You will be reading about a match race with Stone, Woods and Cook against Big John Mazmanian and suddenly remember that you were at that race, and remember it as if it had been run last weekend. Unfortunately, Post pulls no punches, and you will also remember that you were there when Lefty Mudersbach died, after his parachute failed. This is a very good book, but I have one minor quibble. Post keeps his focus firmly on the top rank of racers. This is understandable, since what he wants to teach us is what it took to get from going 150 mph in 11 seconds to going over 300 mph in far less than 5 seconds. But if he would let his gaze drift down a level or two, he may find that the little guy is still there and still innovating. Most often, this happens outside the formal, second-tier, "sportsman", categories of the larger sanctioning bodies, where costs are still quite prohibitive. But at places like the increasingly popular muscle car or nostalgia meets, a racer with tools and time can still run a unique and competitive car for a few thousand dollars and a lot of work. He'll only be going about 150 mph in about 11 seconds. He'll be, in other words, just about where we were in the beginning. Perhaps if Post would give us a history of this static drag racing he wouldn't yearn for the old days, for in many ways the old days of drag racing are still here.

This is by far the best book on drag racing I have ever come across. My first season was 1961 at the track of Maryland and Pennsylvania, and to varying degrees I have followed the sport ever since.

This book has an incredible amount of detail on who did what, and includes many important historical events, and other oddities that have happened in the forty years covered. He even includes one of the weirdest accidents I ever saw, which was the time Paula Murphy's rocket car had a stuck throttle, and sent her off the end of the track at Sears Point Raceway, and literally over the rolling hills of Sonoma County at well over 200 mph, like a real-life Whiley Cayote.

But even more to his credit the author attempts to get at the heart of drag racing, what drives the participants. And he writes with a fine balance of scholarly objectivity and insider's appreciation. A very nice piece of work and a "must-read" for anyone seriously interested in how drag racing got to be what it is today.

Richard Fay

The book HIGH PERFORMANCE allowed us a view into the formative and early years of our sport, complete with the games, politics and personality clashes that were in existence. There were a lot of politics by the sanctioning groups who have come and gone over the years(UDRA,AHRA,PRO), as well as those who continue with us (NHRA, IHRA). The fuel ban years are covered, the promoters clashes with the sanctioning groups were covered, and the evolution of the sport is pretty well documented with accuracy. Several people I have spoken to who were running in these early days have confirmed a lot of this books content. This book removes the lustre from the logo of the sanctioning bodies, instead exposing ulterior motives within their organization for all to see.

I think the book is incredibly accurate and deserves high marks for bringing the facts out, in a non-judgemental way, for the fans to absorb.

I thought this book was great it has a ton of info.

I purchased several of these books to use as gifts for my horsey friends. Each one loved it. It's loaded with useful information and is well written. I highly recommend it.

This is probably the best conformation book I have ever owned. It is detailed and has more information than I will ever need. The pictures are very informative and really help with understanding what is written.

This book covers ALOT of stuff-Conformation(good & bad), bone stucture, muscle structure, Most conformational faults and even has a section on breeds, types and colors(the color section is lacking simply because it is all black and white). It also lacks in the description department. It leaves many pictures without enough explanation about why this conformational 'fault' is a bad thing or what a horse can still do well enough in spite of his less admired physical traits.(lets face it, there are plenty of horses out there that are less than perfect but they are sure keeping someon happy) Some of the pictures barely get descriptions. But there is plenty there to keep a person reading quite a while and this IS the first book I've read with so much on the subject. I would reccomend it as something to have on hand as a reference but keep on the lookout for another book that could help fill in the gaps. Maybe they will come out with a revised and updated edition. Overall this book is pretty handy.

This is a great book for the beginner or the expert horseman! Explains in detail not only a horse's conformation but also the skeletal, muscle and nerve structure. Even better there are TONS of awesome photos and drawings.
I am very happy with this book and would reccomend it to anyone interested in learning more about horses!

We purchased copies of this book for all of our board members after a consultant recommended it and I reviewed it. This is a very quick read (less than an hour), but the book is filled with great passages about the way a good board should function. Thought-provoking questions end each chapter. If you have a non-profit with a board, or you are on such as board, BUY THIS BOOK!

Gayle Gifford must have been an inquisitive child, because she asks a lot of questions. Really good questions -- the kind that ought to have obvious answers, but then you think about them and realize the answers are more complex, and more important, than you first imagined. Her new book, How Are We Doing?, includes 34 questions that all nonprofit boards should be asking themselves. Questions like, "Do we appreciate our directors for what they do?" and "Are we prepared to respond to a changing world?"

Each of these topics could fill an entire book -- and several have -- but none is this concise: you can read the entire book in an hour. If you serve on a nonprofit board and you're unclear about your role or your impact, read this one -- it might be the most productive hour you spend on board governance issues.

I loved this book. It's more than a book about evaluating performance... it's a great how-to for creating a board of any organization's dreams. Broken down into short chapters, it's well written and easy to read. The ideas contained in this small book are BIG and important - definitely on the cutting-edge as related to where the field is going.

This is a lot of wisdom in a small space, an easy to read-and-understand approach to determining if a non-profit board is doing what it should be doing. Each brief chapter focuses on one idea, and leaves no doubt in a reader's mind about how to determine what would work best for their organization. I am already using that one sentence, "It's negligent to keep investing money in programs without proof they make a difference," as part of my discussions with clients. This is a book I can, and will, recommend to clients and colleagues, secure in the knowledge that they will thank me for the recommendation.

This book will be an invaluable resource for busy Board members who want to focus their efforts on both the practicalities of their job as well as the greater vision which inspired them to volunteer in the first place. The key to this book is in the sub-title - A 1-Hour Guide to Evaluating your Performance as a Nonprofit Board. It is a rare find - simple, straightforward and designed for busy people. Each chapter is just a few pages long and ends with questions for the reader and/or Board collectively to answer. These questions are then summarized at the end in an Evaluation Survey. Sections include Making Our Community Better, Becoming Good Stewards and Building a Great Board. In an easy format to carry with you, it will surely become a staple for many Board meetings.

for any manager or employer who has to manage, motivate and compensate staff. Most employees complain that they do not get enough feedback from their boss, good OR bad, so they just muddle on.

Use the phrases in "How to Say It" to give constructive suggestions and reinforce good behaviors. This takes you WAY beyond tired formulas like "catch them doing something right," and instead gives them positive guidence. Start getting the best out of YOUR people and order this book TODAY.

This book is not just about how to say but also how to get prepared in a professional way to get your employees evaluated. This book is helping step by step to do a better job in telling people how we feel about their job performance.

Need to write an employee review? Then this is the book for you! >From the template employee performance reviews to the ready to use phrases for employee performance reviews, this book will show you how to compile a review that is both constructive and likely to fall on receptive ears.

I enjoyed the examples of employee reviews from the chapter "Performance Review Tales of Triumph and Terror." I also enjoyed the "Bonus Superlative Phrases" at the end of each phrase category. These are amusing phrases for the employee whose performance is fabulous.

I recommend the first half of this book for anyone who needs to learn how to give a performance review of an employee (it's full of how-to's) and I recommend the second half of this book for anyone who is looking for sample phrases for performance feedback. And if you're looking for additional inspiration/guidance, the author has a free list of employee review phrases on her website at [...]

This book could not have come at a better time. I was dreading the thought of writing my performance reviews until I read this book. It gave me insight into the importance of the process as well as some key phrases to use to make the writing of the review simple. I could not believe how smooth the review process was this year as a result. I wrote my reviews with confidence and it took me half the time it normally takes! I passed it along to my managers and colleagues I was so impressed. Great job ladies on making a potentially tired subject alive and refreshing again!

Having recently redeveloped and launched our Performance Management Program, the title of this book really caught my interest. It has been my experience that the best designed Perforance Management Program falls short of its intended goal unless it is well communicated to the recipients. Meryl's book offers an extensive selection of phrases and terms for every level of interaction. This book is be a MUST READ for every new supervisor and an excellent CONVERSATION ENHANCER for the seasoned ones. I would highly recommend this be kept in the top drawer of anyone who has the occassion to discuss performance with an employee!

This is a very good book for every programmer to grow to next level. Book is written to address almost all issues related to software development. Need to have book for every programmer.

All .Net developers have to keep Patterns & Practices publications under thier radar screen because one of the best works come out of that group.

A great book that covers in detail any areas you need: CLR, strings management, collections, asp.net, ado.net, xml, SQL Server and much more. A practical handbook that should be on your desktop as a reference for you everyday programming.
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To be honest, I hate two kilos books. Usually such a book contains not much information. But not this book.
It starts from design guidelines and 40-pages(!) length questionnaire, and covers in detail a lot of subjects, including CLR, interop, remoting, ASP, XML, Web Services, etc. performance. How to measure, how to test, how to tune.
If you have to know a lot of things about a lot of things concerned with .NET performance, this book is for you.

In a word...WOW! There is such a wealth of info in this book. Direct for the source, one of the performance architects of the CLR (among other authors). This book is a must have for any developer who writes high use web apps or web services. The book goes into so much detail, and explains why one coding method is more efficient than another. Probably not a good beginner book, you should have a good grasp on .Net development first.

In the last decade, the performance of J2EE applications has become of monumental importance in enterprise industries that use these applications. With the complexity of J2EE applications increasing every year, it is crucial that users of these applications be presented with a level of performance that is acceptable to them, this performance usually codified in the ubiquitous "response time." The authors of this book have given a good introduction of how to deal with performance issues in WebLogic applications and have discussed a freely available tool, called Grinder, which allows load-generating and data collection. The book though can be read with respect to any load-generating tool, such as Mercury LoadRunner, etc. Even though Grinder is free, it may take time for enterprise users to trust it in testing and modeling.

After a brief introduction to what the book is all about, the authors begin in chapter 1 with discussion on a testing methodology for doing performance studies of J2EE applications, which they hope will be generic enough for all readers. Their methodology boils down to first defining the performance metrics for the application, and then setting a target for the metrics. Test scripts that accurately simulate the application usage must then be obtained, and the statistical sampling method and metrics must then be defined. The authors emphasize the need for a realistic `usage profile' for the application, and they recommend strongly a fixed number of users per test run, with subsequent runs changing the number of users. They do not give quantitative reasons for not varying the number of users, but merely say that such an approach is "statistically incorrect."

They also point out the need for including "think times" between the executions of each request in a script, asserting that the think times will have a very dramatic effect on the observed response times and throughput for a given user load. They are correct in this claim, as testing and modeling studies will show, and they give examples of this in chapter 4 of the book. In addition, they remark that the attempt to simulate more users by decreasing the think time, with the assumption that the resulting data can be then extrapolated to obtain the performance at real think times. They point out, correctly, that applications do not scale linearly over different time scales, and that the application and Web servers, the database server, and the operating system do not interact the same way with different user loads. Performance testers and modelers have verified them time and time again, and so it is beneficial for a reader who might be new to the field to see the case studies illustrating this included in the book.

The authors discuss two sampling methods in the book, namely the `cycle' method, and the `snapshot' method. Defining a cycle as a complete execution of a test script by a simulated user, each user will thus execute every request in the script once. Increasing the number of cycles will result in more meaningful statistics, but the time to run a large number of cycles might be too prohibitive. The snapshot method involves capturing the data for a specified period of time.

It is rare to see in books at this level a statement that acknowledges the difficulty in the mathematical or simulation modeling of Internet traffic. The authors though are cognizant of this difficulty, and give some brief suggestions on how to simulate the Internet in a test environment.

The authors also devote a fair amount of time discussing how to assess the accuracy of the test results. The authors report that variability of up to 50% on the performance testing of applications has been observed, and so they propose a measurement of "quality" for the sample data. This is defined as the standard deviation divided by the arithmetic mean, and when close to zero indicates high quality in the sample data. A value above 0.25 for the quality they take as a sign that the tests are not reproducible, and they therefore encourage the running of more cycles of the test in order to pin down the origins of this non-reproducibility. They define a "load factor" to better quantify this, which they define in terms of an "aggregate" average response time. Plotting this quantity versus the number of cycles gives some information on a bad quality indicator.

Frequently, application development using J2EE requires that the impact of design changes or proposals on application performance must be understood. The authors address how performance can be impacted in the context of building servlet applications. The dynamic nature of servlet applications entails that special measures be taken to maximize the performance of the application. The authors discuss how to choose a session mechanism that will preserve the session in user requests, and how to manage the servlet thread pool. Other helpful hints are given on how to increase performance, such as making sure that the auto-reload feature of servlets is disabled in a production environment. In testing the servlet API, the authors choose the snapshot method of data collection, and used zero think times as a baseline, since the real think times are unknown. They use WebLogic Server 6.1 in this discussion however, which makes their presentation somewhat dated, since WebLogic is now in version 8.1. The authors also test the performance when the WebLogic performance pack is activated, for both the average response time and the transactional rate. Also studied is the cost of maintaining HTTP logs, an issue that is very important for those businesses who must keep these logs, either for advertising purposes or other reasons. By running tests, the authors conclude, as expected for those readers who have managed Web servers, that the keeping of log files can have a considerable impact on performance, for a high number of users. The effects of the size of the response generated by the test servlet is also studied, along with the effects of using HTTP 1.0 versus HTTP 1.1.

This is the best book yet about J2EE performance tuning. I hope 'Expert Press' (which looks like a Wrox imprint) continues as they have started.

The authors lay out a practical method for performance tuning of Web Applications and EJB's on BEA Weblogic, but there is no reason why the approach (and the 'Grinder' tool) cannot be used to evaluate different approaches on any other Web and Application server.

Note that this is a specialized book. It will not teach you how to do Java or EJBs. What it will do is help you evaluate how to deploy them in the real world to get the performance you need, and also to help you evaluate different approaches.

I was looking for a book to help me understand how regular performance testing is performed so that I could construct a plan to do Denial of Service security testing. I knew nothing about performance testing at all. The books really well laid out, structured, has great examples and is really methodical. It was perfect !

It was a great book! Had lots of information about Performance Testing. When coupled with the power of Panorama(TM) by Altaworks.com, it is incredible.

Thanks for making such a good book avaliable. I think the chapter on testing EJB design patterns is very well written. I would recommend this book as it is one of the best I've gotten my hands on.

This is a short book on Management By Objectives (MBO). It covers goal setting, incentives, and follow up in a lot of detail but is still an easy read. If you need help coming up with well defined goals, this book provides a great set of questions that you can use to refine employee and department goals so that they are practical. The questions will speed your creation of goals.
The book doesn't cover any other management topics.

If you're about to become a manager for the first time and don't have a clue about how to get your direct reports to do what you want them to do, use this book as a step-by-step primer. It explains what to say, when to say it and how to follow up. It teaches you why meeting and connecting with employees individually is so important if you want to keep them accountable and get results. Author Brian Cole Miller's advice will help you develop your coaching skills. It will also save you a lot of headaches if you're struggling with problem employees. Miller shows you how to work with difficult employees in a way that is supportive, yet puts the ownership of results squarely on the employee's shoulders - where it belongs. If you've just promoted someone to manager, or if you are a new manager, we suggest that you make this book a part of your on-the-job training and development curriculum.

This is fantastic. Miller (great name!!) uses the same style from his first book (also good-Quick Team-building Activities for Busy Manager) and applies it to something much more important: holding your employees accountable. The book is organized so well for the busy manager, that it's almost more like an outline than a traditional book...it's easy to breeze through it, gleaming the points you need, glossing over stuff you already know (and not fear that you're missing anything). BUT, you can also dive deep into detail whenever you want it, or learn from the many examples provided. The steps here are concrete and logical. The flow makes sense...you learn quickly that this is not rocket science...or is it just that Miller knows how to make things seem simple, so the average manager "gets" it and can do it?

Like he warns in the intro, there's not a whole lot of theory here-just the how-to steps with examples and checklists of how to apply them, and then just enough theory to support them without ever bogging you down. So if you accept that up front, you wont miss the theory (which weighs down most other books on this subject, anyway). You'll just appreciate the simple process (which is cool, since he was able to make his 6 step process fit an acronym SIMPLE). If you need some help on holding your employees accountable, and you just need the quick and dirty "just tell me how to do it!" version, this is the book for you! A quick read, to the point, well organized. Miller packs a lot of punch into very few pages. A great resource for the harried manager who wants some help, but quick.

As managers, we work at top speed all the time and often we simply assume (and hope!) our employees are getting the job done. This book offers an easy to implement way to ENSURE employees are getting the job done. What a relief to have found this book. THANKS!

Accountability is essential to individual and organizational success, but few leaders know how to make it happen. Consequently, accountability remains at too high a level-far away from the people who really should be accountable for their work. Managers spend far too much of their valuable time chasing after details, progress reports, and hope-it-got-done worries. If there were a way to calculate the value of managerial time wasted because of our accountability deficiency, the cost would be astronomical. If you could calculate the cost to you, personally, it would far exceed the price of this book.

Miller presents his advice in a design that's easy to grasp-complete with anagram. He offers a SIMPLE system: Set expectations, Invite commitment, Measure results, Provide feedback, Link to consequences, and Evaluate effectiveness. Each of these components is explained in its own chapter, following the same format. The principle is presented, followed by an explanation of why it is important, then the how-to. Examples and checklists (good ones at the end of each chapter) strengthen the book's value.

You will gain a considerable amount of worthwhile knowledge, technique, and advice reading this book from cover to cover. However, the strongest benefit will come over time as you use this volume as a reference book, a handbook to return to for refreshers and reinforcement.

Idea: copy relevant items from the end-of-chapter checklists and use them as daily reminders that you're doing what must be done to build and maintain accountability. This is a book you'll want to keep close to your desk as an important companion.

PS-the principles will work in non-business situations, as well.

since mid 80s i have been a big admirer of Bowery..he was always the most brilliant thing in FACE or ID magazine. This book is everything one needs to know and have about him. Must for disco historians !

Leigh is a genious on several arts. Clothes Designer, make-up artist, hostes, actor, performer, a MIND on the London Scene. This book is a perfect image memorablia, but not enough. Sorry my ridiculous english If someone loves Leigh Bowery too, please drop me a line. Danilo

Special man. Special book. i will forever be inspired by the delicious pages in this picture book that could change your life.

it did mine.

Beautiful job from start to finish. Highlights include the collages of stills from the films of Charles Atlas, the interview with Nicola Bateman, and Leigh's tres sexy postcards. Comprehensive, revealing the many layers of his greatness, and ever-reminding us of our miserable loss.

After the disappointing bio by Sue Tilley, Leigh Bowery can finally wink at us down here at earth. This book gives a great view on his work, throughout the eighties and nineties. Leigh was a chameleon in ideas and appearances. Allthough some of his looks were almost frightening, looking trhough the pages of this book one cannot escape from his originality and creativity. Leigh lived too short to get acknowledged for his ideas. Instead designers like Westwood, Gaultier and van Beirendonck use his ideas. But as Leigh claimed during his life: "Even my ideas filter through. The publics idea of beauty is fed to them." He fed them with something else. Thanx for that.

Bamber Delver, Amsterdam - the Netherlands journalist/writer (1984; Bowery at Farell House) website under construction with Bowery-department a.o. interview, articles, unknown pics