Performance Books

Like his Merz collages, Schwitters' poems take dissociated elements and glue them to together to make an aesthetically pleasing whole. As an artist and a writer Schwitters has the supreme ability to create beauty from cast-off fragments, using them to his own designs of witty word-play and absurd juxtaposition. Fantasy abounds and is mixed with advertisements, fragments of conversation, and themes of desire. In both his writings and his collages he sought to "erase the boundaries between the arts." Usually only known for "Anna Blume", Schwitters was an avid writer and this book collects his absurdist plays, nonsensical proses (sic), essays about his life and work (and Dada, poetry, and language), and over 100 of his unique poems. Of all the Dada literature (perhaps excluding Arp), his is the most pleasing and re-readable. Unfortuately some of his German punning and word-play is lost in translation, but can be seen in works that were originally written in English. Never before has nonsense been so emotionally charged or touching (and lets not leave out humorous and outrageous). This is the best collection of Schwitters' work in English that I have come across. Highly recommended.

Like his Merz collages, Schwitters' poems take dissociated elements and glue them to together to make an aesthetically pleasing whole. As an artist and a writer Schwitters has the supreme ability to create beauty from cast-off fragments, using them to his own designs of witty word-play and absurd juxtaposition. Fantasy abounds and is mixed with advertisements, fragments of conversation, and themes of desire. In both his writings and his collages he sought to "erase the boundaries between the arts." Usually only known for "Anna Blume", Schwitters was an avid writer and this book collects his absurdist plays, nonsensical proses (sic), essays about his life and work (and Dada, poetry, and language), and over 100 of his unique poems. Of all the Dada literature (perhaps excluding Arp), his is the most pleasing and re-readable. Unfortuately some of his German punning and word-play is lost in translation, but can be seen in works that were originally written in English. Never before has nonsense been so emotionally charged or touching (and lets not leave out humorous and outrageous). This is the best collection of Schwitters' work in English that I have come across. Highly recommended.

The Power to Win Book helped change my way of thinking and focusing better in life and riding. The book was full of great information for myself a horseback rider or for anyone in general involved in sports. I would reccomend this book to anyone who would like to understand sports in general especially horse back riding more easily. It was a great book.

I received this book as a gift. I don't own a horse, never have, so I was puzzled by the gift. Ms. King's book was an informative, yet easily understandable read. I gained insights into what holds us back from winning and the importance letting go of unwanted "noise." I would recommend this book to ANY ATHLETE or ANY person wanting to acheive their best, not just those in the equestrian world.

You can kick seat-of-the-pants selling out the door once you've read Joe Laipple's book Precision Selling. This book is packed with easy-to-follow methods for coaching, managing, and improving sales behavior. Valuable for the sales rep and sales manager/coach, Laipple's guide tells sales professionals how to determine the precise and minimum steps necessary for achieving more, improved, and consistent results. If you make your living through sales, you can rely on luck, a good territory, or gut feeling. However, the Precision Selling strategy offers a successful map to ongoing sales and long-term customer relationships. Favorite features:
· Real-life field examples
· Symptom (sales obstacle) and remedy (solution) summaries
· Key actions briefs for every chapter
Laipple states that salespeople can improve their results with only one change, then he relates how to build on that change. Precision Selling: a small book with a great return on investment!

Precision Selling emphasizes the two most important qualities a sales coach must have - the ability to see the potential in each of his or her sales people, no matter where they start, and the ability to coach each person to extraordinary levels of professional success. Joe Laipple does so through everyday language and providing us the science of learning tools that help to create long-term habits of success. He offers something unique as well--how to really understand and respect what your employees say and do, their histories of learning and how that shows up on sales calls, and how to interpret and use those clues to design effective coaching plans for that individual's continued or future success. Joe teaches you to look at the unique person who is your seller and adapt your processes and strategies to help that person succeed. As a behavior analyst, with a Ph.D. in psychology, Joe writes in down to earth language about the way to coach and lead your sales team to success.

This is also not only about the sellers, but about our behavior as leaders and coaches of sales. This is not another motivational sales tips book--although it works for that as well. It is designed to help us figure out how to lead our sellers to success and then to help them along the way with new behaviors they need, to reinforce what they do well, and to keep in mind at all times that our job is, first and foremost, to make them successful. He never lets us forget that.

I hope you will read this well written and easy-to-read book, compact, with lots of good advice that will make a difference in your sales force success. Precision Sellling has already made a difference with my sales force. This past month my office posted best-ever sales numbers!

Perhaps you have already read one or both of Daniel Goleman's previous books, Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ for Character, Health, and Lifelong Achievement (1995) and Working with Emotional Intelligence (1998). If not, I presume to suggest that you do so before reading this volume in which Goleman, Richard Boyatzis, and Annie McKee develop in much greater depth and with much wider application many of the same core concepts introduced in those earlier works. In fact, as the authors explain in the Preface, this book goes far beyond two articles which appeared even earlier in the Harvard Business Review ("What Makes a Leader" and "Leadership That Gets Results") "to advance a new concept: primal leadership. The fundamental task, we argue, is to prime good feelings in those they lead. That occurs when a leader creates [italics] resonance -- a reservoir of positivity that frees the best in people. At its root, then, the primal job of leadership is emotional."

Goleman, Boyatzis, and McKee carefully organize their material within Three Parts: The Power of Emotional Intelligence, Making Leaders, and Building Emotional Intelligent Organizations. The insights, strategies, and tactics provided are all based on the authors' several decades of real-world experience with all manner of organizations as well as on insights gained through direct and extensive contact with various leaders. In the final chapter, the authors observe: "In sum, the best leadership programs [ones which focus on the process of talent development] are designed for culture, competencies, and even spirit. They adhere to the principles of self-directed change and use a multifaceted approach to the learning and development process itself that focuses on the individual, team, and organization." I am reminded of what the Mahatma Gandhi once asserted: "You must be the change you wish to see in the world." What should be the defining values throughout the inevitably difficult change process?

Goleman, Boyatzis, and McKee are absolutely certain that the most effective leaders "are more values-driven, more flexible and informal, and more open and frank than leaders of old. They are more connected to people and to networks. More especially, they exude resonance: They have genuine passion for their mission, and that passion is contagious. Their enthusiasm and excitement spread spontaneously, invigorating those they lead. And resonance is the key to primal leadership." Does all this describe the kind of person you wish to follow? If so, then become the same kind of leader for others to follow.

Those who share my high regard for this book are urged to check out James O'Toole's The Executive Compass, David Maister's Practice What You Preach, David Whyte's The Heart Aroused, and Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan's Execution: The Discipline of Getting Results.

Daniel Goleman is co-chairman of the Consortium for Research on Emotional Intelligence in Organizations, based at Rutgers University; Richard Boyatzis is Chair of the Department of Organizational Behavior at the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University; and Annie McKee is on the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania, Graduate School of Education. This Harvard Business Review article, published in the December 2001 issue, builds on Goleman's research into emotional intelligence ('Emotional Intelligence', 1995 and 'Working with Emotional Intelligence', 1998).

The authors research how emotional intelligence drives performance - "in particular, as how it travels from the leader through the organization to bottom-line results." Their research showed that emotional intelligence is carried through an organization like electricity through wires. The leader's mood spreads quickly and inexorably throughout the business. And if a leader's mood and behavior is "such a potent driver of business success, then a leader's premier task - primal task - is emotional leadership." So the leader's mood had better be a good one, right? Yes, but the mood has to be in tune with those around him. The authors refer to this as dynamic resonance. And that's why emotional intelligence matters so much for a leader. "An emotionally intelligent leader can monitor his or her moods through self-awareness, change them for the better through self-management, understand their impact through empathy, and act in ways that boost others' moods through relationship management." The authors recommend a five-step process, for self-discovery and personal reinvention, "... designed to rewire the brain toward more emotionally intelligent behaviors." The authors conclude that emotional leadership is the spark that ignites a company's performance, creating a bonfire of success or a landscape of ashes.

Daniel Goleman produces another great article on leadership. This article builds on the HBR-articles 'What Makes a Leader?' (1998) and 'Leadership that Gets Results' (2000). In those articles he discusses respectively the impact of emotional intelligence on leadership, and the impact of six different leadership styles on organizational climate. In this article he shows the impact of emotional leadership on business performance. Leaders, managers and MBA-students better get his new book 'Primal Leadership' (2002) into their shopping cart! Highly recommended. The author uses simple US-English.

This book (as well as The Advanced Pro Book, by B. Henning) is well worth every penney! I'm sure you have heard that about many instructional books and tapes in the past, but as a competitive pool player for over 20 years I am always looking for new knowledge to improve my game...I can definately say that this book delivers!!
My personal collection of instructional books and tapes is quite large, but none of them has addressed the "core information" that every advanced pool player needs to know to be able to compete competitively on an advanced level "with consistency"...this book gives you that like no other!
It offers "specific and detailed" insight on every aspect of the game. The Pro Book contains information that will open up new doors you never knew existed, and can take you to new heights in your game. Bob Henning supplied much information I needed to take my game to new levels, and stay there! No matter what level you currently play at, if you are serious about improving your game The Pro Book is a MUST!
Just like B. Henning states on the cover of the book... "After 30 days with the Pro Book you will see noticeable improvement in your game!".

Wow, this book totally changed the way I approach playing pool. The reference training described in this book is good, but what really makes it stand out is the coverage of the mental aspects of the game. Things like the pre-shot routine and post game analysis can have a dramatic effect on how you progress as a billiards player. I was also impressed with the clear and concise writing style, which made this book extremely easy to read & understand. I would recommend this book to anyone looking to improve their pool & billiards playing ability.

One thing to note, this book assumes you have a basic understanding of pool & billiards, and doesn't really cover the "just learning" type of topics. If that is what you are looking for, I would recommend 'The Science of Pocket Billiards' or 'The Illustrated Principles of Pool & Billiards' instead.

This book is an invaluable resource for any Java EE architect, or sysadmin working in this environment. It exposes in great detail all aspects of performance tuning and management, providing excellent advice on how to plan, develop and monitor your applications ensuring that they perform as expected.
My favorite parts are the authors approach to application server configuration and JVM heap tuning. A lot of examples with great expert advice, definitely worth it!

This is a one of a kind book. It is the only one that discusses performance maintenance and optimization for all your Java EE applications, from code to servers.

The first section covers processes that you need to have in the full lifecycle of your application. Starting monitoring and performance tuning early on in the process to make it easier to keep your app performing at its best.

The second part covers performance tuning, where to best tune your application for the biggest bang for your buck, from the JVM, first place to tune, to your pooling and other configurations.

The third part covers tuning your production environment, which should be easy, as long as you have statistics already from your development to test server load balancing.

And finally the last part has tips and tricks.

For just the 10 pages on JVM Heap/Garbage Collection and tuning alone is worth the price of the book.

This book should be your single source of performance tuning and monitoring for all Java EE Applications. It is your bible on performance.

It's a shame that apparently Wrox has scaled back their book line since nearly going out of business, as this is one of the most practical, useful books I've read on ASP .Net. The book covers a lot of areas that generally are overlooked in the generalized books. For example, a great tip is to do your data binding in Page_PreRender instead of Page_Load because it happens after postback events are handled, thus saving you from having to perhaps do it twice.

The book also goes into more detail about the usefulness and dangers of viewstate, session and application objects, lots on caching, etc. This book will make you a better code monkey. Try and get it!

This book is exceptional. It provides several programming scenarios for different operations, then lists the good and bad points of each. It also explains in which situation they are best used. For example: .NET Remoting vs. Web Services vs. COM

There are several performance tips given that I never thought about and they really work . . . I, of course, had to test them for myself.

If you are like me, you don't have time to test every scenario to find out which technique is best for every situation, this book helped to guide me in the right direction.

Mr. Latta has written an excellent book that is a must-read for anybody entering the professional working world. The messages related in this book are not limited to the field of public accounting, but this review is due to my own experience.

One of my biggest frustrations as a college accounting and economics student was how poorly my required curriculum prepared me for the work world. Sure, we'd learn about the percentage of completion method for long-term contracts, but how applicable would that knowledge be when I'm in an office with unfamiliar audit software in front of me? What Latta does in this book is to prepare up-and-coming professionals with many of the realities of the non-academic world that are left out of Business 101.

Some overarching themes that stick out: 1) the partnership structure of professional firms - how it motivates the partner-client relationship and how it affects career development for new professional staff; 2) personal finance techniques for those living on their own dime; and 3) the importance of a professional's place in the community.

As a recent university alum going into public accounting, this book read as if it was written for me. Latta appropriately relates his own work experiences to illustrate the points he is driving home. I was lucky to have discovered and read this book just a week before my first day on the job. Of course, nobody will know how to adapt perfectly to the work force until they enter it, but getting a head-start is certainly not a bad idea.

This book bridges the gap from your college life to your professional career. Of particular interest will be the discussion on your personal and professional development. All too often people who first enter a profession do not understand how important taking control of your career is until it is too late. Latta makes it clear that when you take an active interest in your own development not only will your work experience be more enjoyable, it also will be more rewarding in terms of assignments and financial success.

The tales from Latta's career scattered throughout the text impart a real world feel to the book and I found them to add a sense of wisdom that many "how to" books lack. I have been in a professional career for 15 years and I wish I had information like this when I first started out. Anyone who is just starting a career should make this a "must read." I can't wait to share this with our firm's new hires.

SOME COMMENTS ABOUT THIS BOOK

From my view as a theorist and practicing evaluator of university quality and excellence, The psychology of abilities, competencies, and expertise, edited by Robert J. Sternberg and Elena L. Grigorenko, constitutes a first-rate, excellent book. Here are some reasons for this assertion:

1. The main goal of the book, "to characterize the nature of abilities, competencies, and expertice and to understand the relations among them", is fully achieved through out the ten chapters that comprises the book.

2. Each of the chapters provides an innovative contribution to the state of the art in the specific topic approached. Following are just a few examples.

Philip Ackerman and Margaret E. Beir, in chapter one, on trait complexes, cognitive investment, and damain knowledge, concludes with an extremely important implication for assessment and evaluation: "our view of intelligence is that the trait can more usefully be considered as representing "what an individual can do" in a way that encompasses both the solution of novel problems and the solution of problems with which the individual may have an extensive body of knowledge or developed expertise." (p. 25) [Consequently], to serve society and by implication school in a more relevant way, measures "need to be developed that provide a more comprehensive assessment of what an indidivudual can do". (p. 26).

K. Anders Ericsson, in chapter four, concerning theoretical implications from the modifiability and complexity of mechanisms mediating expert performance, concludes that "the analyses of expert performers in domains such as chess, music, and tennis show a qualitative difference in structure and complexity of the mediating mechanisms that such individuals use to progress to higher levels of performance."

Dean Keith Simonton, in chapter eight, about expertise, competence, and creative ability, analyses the nature, definition, and implications of creativity as a psychological capacity. According to him, "creativity entails the capacity to generate ideas that are simultaneusly original and adaptive." (p. 214), [However] "it is not a unique, psychological, phenomenon to be subsumed under a simple conceptual scheme [but] rather ... a complicated and dynamic mixture of various components, some innate and others experimental." (p. 232).

Robert J. Sternberg, in chapter nine, concerning biological intelligence, analyses the most relevant biological approaches to intelligence, as well as the nature of adaptation to the environment. According to Sternberg,

Biological intelligence refers to an organism's ability to adapt to the biological/physiical environment as measured by transmission of genes.... [However], biological approaches to intelligence have largely ignored this basic and singular fact, and have instead "attempted to account for (a) how humans among other species have reached the top of the existing evolutionary scale in intelligence or (b) biological mechanisms that account for individual differences in human intelligence (p. 253). [But], a central conclusion by Sternberg is that "humans may well be at the top of some evolutionary scale in terms of cultural intelligence. In terms of biological intelligence, they are, at best, middling. They have been responsible, directly or indirectly, for the extinction of a number of species. At the rate there are going, they may soon be responsible for the extinction of their own (p. 257).

Finally, Richard E. Mayer, in chapter ten, about what causes individual differences in cognitive performance, "provides a model of the determinants of individual differences in cognitive performance and show how it relates to some of the proposed answers provided by the contributors to this book." (p. 263). He concludes with the assertion that "additional research is needed to articulate more clearly the mechanism by which ability and experience interact to produce knowledge and the mechanism by which knowledge anables cognitive performance." (p. 273).

On the basis of this review, I do recommend reading this book without omitting any of the chapters, as they all contribute in substantive and theoretical terms to give us an excellent overview of the state of the art concerning the topics approached.

Hernando Salcedo-Galvis

***

This collection of authored chapters is an excellent exploration of the concepts of ability, competence and expertise. Authors of the ten chapters differ in their conclusions about the role of heredity, experience and the interaction between the two in producing skilled cognitive performance. Their well-articulated arguments introduce the reader to important research findings and deep theoretical differences in this domain.

In the final chapter, Richard Mayer synthesizes these competing views into an interactionist model of the development of competencies and expertise from innate abilities and experience. His "eight key facts" are a concise summary of the territory explored by his coauthors:

* Fact 1: There are clearly documented developmental trends, with specialized knowledge increasing with chronological age and general mental abilities declining.
* Fact 2: The "Flynn Effect"--the steady increase in overall IQ scores in recent decades--implies a significant effect of culture, education or some combination of environmental effects on cognitive performance.
* Fact 3: Studies of identical twins reared apart reveal a clear genetic influence on cognitive performance.
* Fact 4: Studies of diverse skills such as digit span and musical ability document the effects of extended, specialized practice on cognitive performance.
* Fact 5: Case studies of "savants" with high abilities in an isolated skill and diminished functioning in other abilities demonstrate that highly specialized cognitive performance can be "modular"--and can exist in relative isolation.
* Fact 6: Studies of the development of musical abilities show relatively greater importance of practice and environmental support than of innate or initial ability.
* Fact 7: Expertise and creativity have different learning curves. Expertise increases monotonically, benefits from overtraining, and is interfered with by cross training on other domains, while creative performance peaks toward the middle of training, benefits from cross training and declines with overtraining.
* Fact 8: Higher and lower ability individuals show different patterns of neurological function. Lower ability people show higher levels of brain activity during cognitive testing while higher ability people have greater activity when resting.

This book is a useful entrance point into the nature vs. nurture controversy as it is played out among researchers in human intelligence and expertise. It serves the competency modeling community by presenting a framework within which to decide which competencies are more influenced by innate ability and which may be more highly trainable.

Found this on Amazon after pricing at my college bookstore. Book arrived still in original shrink wrap, and even with shipping I saved over $30. Very nice to do business with. Promptly answered my emails.

This book is very good. The sender send to me very quickly and I have no problem within. Thanks Amazon!