Performance Books

Acts of Passion is inspiring in its diversity,
intelligence and depth. The acts of passion it
describes are often acts of courage for the artists
involved, given the uniqueness of their voices.
I'd highly recommend it to anyone interested in
performance and sexuality.

This fascinating book is about the various ways lesbians and bisexual women express themselves through the arts. It contains many personal essays about how lesbians have used poetry, performance art, and dance to liberate themselves. If you're a creative person, or have wanted to be creative but were afraid of what people might think of your efforts, this book should inspire you. I loved it!

Over the past decade, the concept of coaching in the business world has become so ingrained that it's part of the landscape. A wide range of conversations, methods of feedback delivery, and relationships have been accepted as coaching in a rather loose collection of techniques...and results. As we move into an increasingly challenging period for employers, leaders must become substantially more effective at this process we describe as coaching. A whole new generation of leaders must be taught, coached, and brought to a higher level of performance.

Bacon and Spears, experienced in coaching more than 2,000 individual clients in Fortune 500 companies, share their knowledge and experience. Their researched-based approach emphasizes the skills needed by coaches and that coaching styles must be adapted to what the client needs. The eight styles they identify are directive (teacher, parent, manager, philosopher) and non-directive (facilitator, counselor, colleague, mentor). This model alone will expand, deepen, and enrich the work done by the vast majority of coaches in the corporate world.

The book offers even more, delivering checklists, assessment tools, tips and tools, and a wealth of sample coach-client dialogues. Recognizing the special opportunities the future will hold, the authors include insights into coaching across cultures, across generations, as well as coaching women, minorities, and C-level executives.

An epilogue with even more perspectives adds value to this volume, as do the reference section and comprehensive index. This is not a book for readers who simply want to gain a few insights into improving their coaching effectiveness. You'll learn, but you'll be overwhelmed. Adaptive Coaching is like a college textbook on the topic. It's a heavy, deep, and thorough treatment with relatively small type. The $39.95 price suggests that this is more than the average airplane reading management book...and it is. If you're serious about the critical and fine art of coaching in the complicated corporate environment, you'll gain considerable knowledge, insight, and growth from this book.

Side note: I am the author of Impending Crisis: Too Many Jobs, Too Few People. As a workforce futurist, I see what's coming... including a dangerous dearth of leadership. Application of the principles in this book will help today's leaders strengthen each other and the next generation of leaders.

What I like about this book are the concrete examples they give of "almost" coaching and best coaching. The best coaching book I've read. Recommended it to all laypeople looking to be better coaches.

American theatres are marvels of design and content and here to celebrate their history is AMERICAN THEATRES, a top pick for any serious college-level holding strong in film and stage history. The book profiles some forty of the finest theatres in operation around the country, covering a range of structures and styles and blending original photos by David Naylor - many published here for the first time - to contrast histories of different venues, from playhouses and opera houses to concert halls. The state-by-state listing of over 200 surviving 19th century theatres assures any serious buff will easily locate venues.

Well-written. Over 300 photos of historic American theaters located in all but six US states (with 18 pages in color). Buildings featured include town hall theaters, Western boom-town opera houses, library theaters, Chautauqua halls, and Grand Opera Houses. Readers will be surprised by the variety and beauty of many theaters in remote areas.

Very insightful in helping understand the elements that must be considered in investing into a portfolio and in managing a portfolio. Very well written and complete.

The book is very well written and strikes the right balance between portfolio math and a discussion of the various ideas in investment performance. I specialize in automating financial reports and this book explained what many of these reports were trying to do (but which, I now see, could do better). I spent ($$$) for this book (...) and it was well worth it. This book isn't about beating the market, it's about understanding the components of one's investment return. How much is related to the balance of the portfolio, the stock selection, the market's broad movement. Was the manager taking unnecessary risks? If he did well was it due more to the portfolio's balance or the market's movement. I also keep going back to this book, it's a great reference.

"The Anatomy of Musicality" is a captivating title that aptly defines what Dr. Levant successfully attempts to describe in her book. Much like a physician who studies the structure of an organism, Dr. Levant examines the framework of musicality from a physical, mental, and emotional point of view. According to Dr. Levant, the three ingredients that compose musicality are an understanding of the score, a desire to express the music, and a good sense of taste. These three must all be present to result in musical playing.

Throughout the book, Dr. Levant gives practical ways to achieve these components of musicality. She looks at the dynamics within dynamics ("micro-dynamics" as she calls them), and examines the various ways of executing a crescendo. She also describes various motions that aid the pianist to perform musically and achieve the desired sound. These instructions also help the pianist to relieve physical tension, reduce the risk of injury, and facilitate the performance of difficult passages. Dr. Levant realizes that performing musically requires more than just good technique and a range of dynamics - musical playing must be charged with energy. Energy is the sign of an object's life; without it, a performance will be dead. Dr. Levant advices the reader on how to harness this inner energy and inject into the performance.

Dr. Levant's eloquent language and her charming pictures make it easy for the reader to grasp and remember these concepts. The little illustrations do a wonderful job at representing what would otherwise be difficult to understand. A piano teacher could effectively use them to instill the ideas of musicality even in the youngest student. And yet they are fresh enough to remind even the professional pianist. A word of congratulations to Dr. Levant for such a high-rate piece of literature; it will indelibly leave its mark in the world of piano pedagogy.

Many of us presume that playing the piano well is only for individuals who are "naturally gifted." Dr. Levant debunks that myth in this book. Her premise is that anyone who is willing to learn her well-honed approach to playing the piano can and will play well. I have had the good fortune of hearing her student recitals. They are brilliant. Not just because the students play exceptionally well, but because they play with a level of maturity and understanding of their music that supercedes many pianists in graduate schools of music.

I have been able to study with Dr. Levant for a number of years and she is "the real deal." Everything captured in this book (and more) is what she teaches to her students. And her students consistently win local, state, and national awards, despite not possessing any special or unique abilities.

This book is well worth the investment. I promise. If you follow its guidelines and recommendations, you will play better, more musically, and you will dramatically reduce, if not eliminate, the possibility of piano-related injuries.

Can't say enough good things. Funny, insightful, loaded with expertise, a how-to for the rest of us. Thanks!

This book is a fantastic resource and is truly a must for every business, organization or club. If you ever wanted to know how to motivate and excite your employees, co-workers, members, or anyone else in a positive way without laying on the cash...this book has the answer!

This was intended to be Keillor's last show in 1991. It was not, to a lot of people's great relief. First there is the music - if ever there was a recording to match the guitar work of Chet Atkins and Leo Kotke in 'Sleepwalk' I've yet to hear it. The songs Keillor sings, sad songs, beautiful songs of endings and parting will break you heart. The last episode of the 'News from Lake Wobegon' is just astounding. You cannot miss the tone of a man saying goodby to a lifetime. The humor is what it always was, just plain wonderful. If you've got to leave, didn't want to, hoped you would come back you will hear it all here. Parhaps the finest show he's ever done.

Keillor outdoes himself with this extra-long show. An artifact, a historical document, and a labor of love.

Jean William's edited text is a favorite of mine. I use it in our graduate program at Georgia Southern University. The authors have done an excellent job of presenting both the "whys" and "how tos" of the intervention techniques in sport psychology. Several leading sport psychologists have made significant, easy to understand, contributions to this text. This book has accomplished the rare feat of being able to be used as an academic text AND a "performance enhancement" book for the interested athlete, coach, exerciser, or other performers.

As a performance enhancement specialist, I am constantly looking for activities and exercies to do with my clients. This book helps to develop PST programs, including various activites to do with your athletes. This book was used as a text in a Sport Psychology class that I took. I have found it to be extremely helpful and fully recommend it.

modulation transfer function and iamge enhancement or image reconstruction

modulation transfer function and iamge enhancement or image reconstruction

For anyone who wants to understand the war on terror and its Irish formulation, this is essential and fascinating reading. Ranelagh is remarkably balanced and fair-minded, while at the same time providing the necessary information and facts without burdening the reader with excessive and obfuscatory detail. He deals with Irish prehistory quickly and interestingly, giving more space to the modern age and its complex of idealism, heroism, nationalism, murder and terror, explaining the motivations and historical prisons so many people in Ireland have endured, coming right up to the present North and South. It is a Short History. More detail would make it something else. But as a short history that is satisfying, well-written and authorative, it cannot be bettered. A remarkable achievement.

Ranelagh does a fantastic job of condensing a couple thousand years of history into a readable couple hundred pages. This book is a first-rate shortened version of Irish history.

At times, one thinks more and deeper connections could have been drawn (such as the resurrection, by twentieth century hunger-strikers, of Brehon Law-era practices like fasting for the redress of grievances) and more discussion fostered on particularly hard-hitting aspects of Ireland's past and present. But this is, after all, a SHORT history, and a remarkable one at that.

There is good coverage of Ireland before the arrival of the English, in a way that touches on both historical developments and cultural ones. Likewise, the era of Cromwell and the disastrous run-up to and aftermath of Black 1847 are given good detail. One comes away feeling a bit as though more recent history (say, 1916 and on) has been slighted, but this feeling is probably just the product of years of weighted emphasis on the twentieth century; Ranelagh does well to bring a historical balance to the overall sweep of Ireland's development into what it is today.

And what it is today is, for Ranelagh, closely invested as well in the question of what England is and no longer is. "A Short History of Ireland" may disturb those who view England as a still-unwelcome visitor into Irish history and culture, but Ranelagh concludes convincingly that the story of Ireland from the 13th century on is intimately related to its evolving relationship with its slightly larger neighbor and one-time persecutor/antagonist. Ranelagh quite usefully and realistically departs from other histories of the Emerald Isle in asserting that the England/Ireland relationship can, for a slew of reasons that he points to, only ever be one of co-dependence.