Tools Books

Patrika Vaughn's "The Writer's Tool Box" is an excellent source of information for every writer who has learned the basics, and serves as a follow-up to her highly-recommended book, "Everything You Need to Know to Write, Publish and Market Your Book." Ms. Vaughn is an "author's advocate" and, as such, attempts to help the author from concept to polished product ready for submission. Each audio CD is approximately 43 minutes and has a brief, repeated introduction. The first CD is a diagnostic tool to help the writer polish his/her writing. The following CDs cover more in-depth details on openings that hook readers, author's voice, giving life to characters and developing intriguing plots. Each topic is geared to help authors make the right decisions, and the works of well-known authors are included to substantiate Ms. Vaughn's instructional examples. These CDs are great to listen to while driving in a car or doing work around the home, though I suggest listening to them at home. Even though I'm a published author, I took down notes and obtained some wonderful ideas from these CDs. I highly recommend "The Writer's Tool Box" for every writer and author.

I read McFarland's review and disagree. I'm one of those writers who can't quit my day job yet, so I only get to study and write intermittently. I always carry one of these five CDs in my car so I can listen as I drive. The repeated intro on each tape helps me get back in the grove...reminds me of who I'm listening to, and what she's all about. By the time the new material begins, I'm ready to absorb it. What follows is great, worth listening to many times. I think everything about this CD set is terrific. Wouldn't change a thing.

I struggled with books, classes and other audio instructions for years and my writing didn't get better. Then I heard about The Writer's Tool Box and tried it. Zowie! I'm now a published writer, and I owe it all to this CD.

While Patrika Vaughn's earlier book "Everything You Need to Know to Write, Publish & Market Your Book" was a solid winner of a book for the beginning writer, this work has both good and bad points. On the good side this work follows up on the prior book with much more detailed information on how to write better. The different CDs cover "Why Your Writing Isn't Working", "Openings That Hook Readers", "Choosing Your Voice", "Bringing Characters to Life", and "Plots that Intrigue". As usual she does an excellent job on these subjects and the information is sure to improve the writing of anyone trying to break into the writing market. She does a really good job with the ones on "Openings that Hook Readers" and "Plots that Intrigue". These are perhaps the most important parts of good writing and so many people do them badly.

There were two things about the CDs that I found annoying. First is that every CD had the same opening information repeated on it. It was appropriate on the first one in order to introduce herself and make sure the listener knows exactly what a writer's advocate does. But repeating it at the beginning of each CD was marketing overkill and annoying. The only other problem was the actual speech pattern used on the CDs. The conversation was choppy and hesitant like one of the old documentary school movies from the 1950's. At times I felt like shouting, "Just say it and move on".

The bottom line here is that the CDs are valuable and contain very good lessons on how to improve your writing. If you can patiently work through the presentation you will be rewarded. "The Writer's Toolbox" is a recommended purchase for anyone wanting to improve his or her writing.

These tapes were enjoyable to listen to on my daily walks. It was like having the author (Patrika) walking beside me, discussing the "how to's". When I finished my walks, I'd set about putting the ideas into practice.

addressed particular areas of writing that I needed assistance with and gave me a solid foundation in them. Ray

I loved the book (Write Publish & Market Your Book), but these audio tapes gave me hands-on practice with plotting, characterization, viewpoint,openings, etc. -- it was like having a workshop in a box. An absolutely great help to my writing career.

I had a few writing problems I couldn't shake, no matter how many classes I took. Hearing these practical instructions and examples made the solutions sink in. For any writer having problems with plot, or characterization, or viewpoint, or arresting openers - you need this.

This delightful and captivating book on gardening reads like a best-selling novel. The writing is creative and often uproariously funny. I often found myself laughing out loud, even on airplanes, as I turned the pages of this wonderful book.

Although highly entertaining -- and worth reading on that basis alone -- the book is also jam packed with good, practical information. I've learned an enormous amount about gardening in high and arid West -- and I've been gardening here for well over 15 years. This book will also inspire those who have become frustrated with gardening in this sometimes capricious region!
I can't wait to put many of Dave's ideas into practice.

This book is the single best resource for gardners in Colorado, especially those who lean organic, as I do. It is a book with passion, integrity, and common sense. I had the pleasure of meeting David at a small speaking engagement last year, and he is everything one would expect. I am shocked that there aren't more reviews here for this masterpiece. Gardening here can be hard, especially if one doesn't want to enrich corporate giants who use synthetic chemicals to force things. This book got me through some very discouraging gardening frustrations -- it kept my passion alive and my fingernails dirty. Get this book!!!! If your heart is in the soil, this book will become a very good friend.

Although the title of the book includes "in the High and Arid West," this delightful book would amuse and impress any gardener. Although I live in the geographic region covered, many of the gardening tips and techniques simply don't apply to me since I live over 2,000 feet higher than does David Wann, plus his down home methods simply wouldn't fly with my homeowner's association. Nonetheless, I thouroughly enjoyed this book for its infectious attitude. I picked it up expecting to thumb through it and then read straight through. Quite a unique offering in the world of garden literature and highly recommended.

In a world so filled with stress, poor health, and daily activities that lack meaning, it's great to have places of refuge, and David Wann's The Zen of Gardening is such a place. Filled with passion, "dry" humor, and hard-won gardening wisdom, the book makes even black thumbs like myself want to dig up a space in my backyard.

Not only does he draw on his own 25 years of gardening, but also taps the experience of some of "the fastest trowels in the west," which he estimates to be a collective 500 years of growing. The reader learns about the life teeming in a shovel full of organic soil, about the chemical signals transmitted between various species in a garden, and about the best varieties of vegetables, flowers, trees and shrubs to plant in a "meteorologically challenged" region.

I had a hard time putting the book down, because the writing is so lively, and I found myself absorbing information effortlessly, the way a plant soaks up water!

WOW! This book is a must read for every couple!! The "rules" he applies are truely so simple yet most often forgotten. The book is very small and easy to read. He gives great examples and if applied to any relationship I don't believe a divorce could happen. If both parties read and apply these rules I am sure you will find things you both could improve with and simply move toward a great marriage as the book title states. I have shared this book with friends that aren't married and they too find things that can help any serious commited relationships. I have bought several copies to give with wedding gifts as I believe every marriage will need these reminders at some point! I was so impressed with this book I actually bought his other books in hopes they will also be nice little pointers for life. I haven't read those yet but I can tell you on this one .... you can't go wrong with 20 rules and tools for a great marriage!

As a professional therapist, I'm always looking for good resources to share with my patients. When I read this book I was especially impressed with the simple, straight-forward approach the author took to communicate the fundamentals of healthy relationship skills. The nice short sections and example behaviors spelled out are custom-made for men who may have difficulty staying up to speed in this area. BTW The other books in this series are pretty good also.

Beside the bible,this book is the most wonderful tool in order to have a solid marriage. I recommend it to every married couple.

This book is written by professionals for professionals. Period.

Unless you are serious about risk management, you will not care about some of the little details covered by this book. When you do, you will really appreciate this book.

Formulas are well places, examples are real life relevent, well written. I fell in love with this book when I first read this book.

I think this book is a must have for everyone involved in managing or supervising interest rate risk. The authors are clear in their explanations and light to read, but they also get in-depth in several technical aspects.

I am a banking supervisor and I had been lookin for a book on this subject for a while, specially one with an emphasis on managing interest rate risk since the Basel committee has very few pointers on this.

The book tackles the most common problems, including the managerial aspects, as well as the techniques frequently used for modelling things like deposits (DDAs), revolving credit and a product by product guide to financial instruments, and much, much more. Definitely a must have, if you can browse through a few sections or the index and you will quickly see what I mean.

Risk management, as the authors define it, delineates for the management of a firm the risks and returns of every strategic decision at the institutional and transactional levels. It indicates how the management must change a particular strategy with the goal of aligning the trade-off between risk and return with the optimal long and short-term goals of the firm. If one desires an in-depth quantitative understanding of risk management as it is practiced at the present time, this book offers a comprehensive and useful overview. Although the authors are clearly showing bias towards a particular tool used for risk management, namely the Kamakura Risk Manager @ product which they helped to develop and market, the reader still gains insight into the relevant factors that go into successful risk management and will understand just how challenging this field is. The book is geared towards the student, for there are usually exercises at the end of each chapter. The goal of the book is very ambitious, in that the authors attempt to integrate credit, market, and operational risk, along with asset and liability management, performance measurement, and transfer pricing into a single framework. The justification for this integration is given as the book unfolds, and because of this the reader may frequently feel impatient, and thus tempted to skip ahead. However, readers who do this will miss out on the interesting argumentation and historical analysis the authors give, with each chapter setting up next. There is therefore a heavy dependence between chapters, and this makes a "skim read" more difficult, at least from the standpoint of in-depth comprehension of the subject matter. Those readers who are not experts in risk management, such as this reviewer, but who have a sound background in probability theory, stochastic processes, and financial engineering (at the level of the Black-Scholes model) will find this book ideal. Options theory plays a central role in the book, as the authors propose that the Jarrow-Merton put option is the best comprehensive measure of integrated credit, interest rate, and foreign exchange risk. The authors believe that risk management should make no distinction between credit risk, market risk, operational risk, asset and liability management, performance measurement, and transfer pricing.

The authors begin the book by discussing the difference between risk management from the standpoint of net income and from the standpoint of mark-to-market, and how a failure by some financial institutions to adopt the latter caused them great pain. Their historical commentary on this topic is enlightening for it gives insight into some of the biases concerning risk that exist even at the present time. For this reviewer, one of the most interesting discussions in the book concerned the transaction cost approach to prepayment modeling in asset-backed securities. In this approach, the authors divide the borrowers into three classes, with the first being those who make prepayments even when they should not. The second class are borrowers who prepay at a time when the advantages of prepayment exceeds the transaction costs of doing so. The third class are those borrowers who make prepayments when advantageous to do so, even though in the past they have refrained from doing so. Following the book's paradigm, the authors formulate the prepayment model in terms of options, with the value of the option to prepay being calculated from observable market data. The authors claim that this approach fits the movements in loan prices better than the approaches based on prepayment speeds and prepayment tables, but they do not offer explicit evidence for this claim. In fact throughout the book there are many instances where the authors do not offer any real case studies that would illustrate the superiority of their approach and the use of the Kamakura Risk Manager@. Risk analysts and managers will insist on the availability of these studies before committing themselves and institutional resources to this product or any others that make such claims.

The book should not be viewed therefore as purely a "theoretical" overview of risk management techniques. The authors give examples illustrating the main principles. For example, in their discussion of one-period models they assert that a collection of homogeneous risks are not sufficient, since the likelihood, magnitude, and timing of risks are closely linked. As examples, they quote the debacles in the U.S. Savings and Loan and Long Term Capital Management, and the takeover of Security Pacific Corporation by Bank of America. They also give examples of 'selection bias' in measuring risk.

Many interesting questions are addressed in the book, such as: 1. Why are 'fat-tailed' events important in risk analysis? 2. What is 'transfer pricing' and why is it useful? 3. Should risk be measured in terms of the volatility of the mark-to-market value of the relevant portfolio or in terms of the volatility of the net income? 4. How large should risk limits be for each part of a financial institution? 5. How is the mark-to-market value of a portfolio measured? 6. How is tracking error measured? 7. How is a hedging strategy to be priced? 8. What advantages, if any, are there in using Monte Carlo simulations of returns over a chosen time horizon? 9. What are the implications to credit risk of the new Basel II accords? 10.Why are stress tests important in a hedging strategy? 11.What area of the financial organization should be responsible for credit risk?

The authors also give a thorough discussion of yield curve smoothing, and how to derive the zero-coupon bond prices from observable data. The method of splines seems to be their preferred method of choice as a smoothing technique, which they advertise as being one that allows the calculation of zero-coupon bond prices for a large number of payment dates. They show, interestingly, that a cubic spline of zero-coupon bond yields is the smoothest yield curve.

This is exactly the book my family needed. Reading "Arnie and his School Tools" to my children made them feel "normal". Giving it to the teachers to read to the class was the perfect start to improved classroom behavior. The teachers suddenly "got it", and the students who saw behaviors in themselves wanted Arnie's tools, too. The children who didn't understand why the Arnies in class needed to move suddenly became more empathetic.

A very powerful experience. A book I intend to give to each of my children's teachers at the beginning of every school year.

Jennifer Veenendall has done an amazing job at creating a wonderful hard covered cleverly illustrated book. I would highly recommend this for teachers who have students with autism integrated into their classroom. The book would educate typical peers on autism and the tools kids with autism find useful. The wonderful illustration would catch the eye of any young reader while teaching them valuable lessons about their peers with autism. Also, parents can share this with their childdren who have autism or sensory processing disorders to provide them a character whom they will understand and enjoy.

This would be a terrific gift for any lower elementary school teacher.

Joanna Keating-Velasco, Author and Instructional Aide, A Is for Autism F Is for Friend: A Kid's Book for Making Friends with a Child Who Has Autism

Written and illustrated by school-based occupational therapist Jennifer Veenendall, Arnie and His School Tools: Simple Sensory Solutions That Build Success is a children's picturebook about Arnie, a young boy with sensory modulation difficulties - that is, he's a "mover". His body needs to move, and his hands need to be busy, which makes it hard to sit still in school and pay attention to his teachers! What is a naturally restless boy to do? Fortunately, his parents and teachers instruct him in simple helpful strategies, including fidgets, chewy pencil toppers, earplugs, headphones, ball cushions, weighted vests, and more, as well as the use of natural physical movement to help keep his body calm and enable his mind to focus. Arnie and His School Tools is no ordinary picturebook; it's also a useful teaching aid for occupational therapists, teachers, and parents helping elementary children understand helpful basic sensory tools. "Sometimes I jump on our mini-trampoline, and at other times I jump and crash into our couch pillows. All these things help calm my body and my mind so I can get my homework done." Suggested discussion questions, a list of resources for children and parents, and helpful websites round out this enthusiastically recommended picturebook, especially for public and elementary school libraries.

First is the collection of information. In order to proceed with any kind of training some information needs to be determined before you can even decide that training is needed. And if it is, what kind of training. Perhaps this is product training for the sales people. Perhaps it is time management. Perhaps the problem being addressed doesn't call for more training but some kind of change in the work flow, the people, or the computer system.

Second is the analysis of the collected information. This may be summaries, complete with charts and tables; this may find something so obvious that you will wonder how it was missed. The end of this phase is to present to the management requesting the study to determine what, if any training is needed.

Finally is the development of a training plan. The author presents a ten part plan that begins with Issue Definition, and ends with an evaluation of the results of the training. These steps have been defined over many years and are a proven approach.

A CD is supplied with the book that includes forms, checklists and other tools that are referenced in the book itself.

The methods introduced in this book are simply put, easy to follow and a complete guide to perform a Training Needs Assessment.

The book begins with breaking down who, what, when, why and how of an assessment. It introduces the issue that training is not always the solution to a deficiency and how to identify if there is a need for training or a need for another solution.

There are seven different analyses broken down into separate chapters to guide you in conducting successful analyses.

Feasibility Analysis- The cost of doing something verses the cost of doing nothing to correct a deficiency.

Performance Analysis- Also known as a gap analysis, a look at where your employees are and where you would like them to be.

Goal Analysis - Includes how to write a goal statement. Breaking down vague statements into specific behaviors desired by a company for succes

Task Analysis - The book will guide you in breaking down tasks within a job.

Needs versus Wants Analysis - Why should training be done? Is the deficiency tied to a need or a want? Again looking at finding the proper solution.

Target Population - How to develop an effective training program for the audience. How to identify the audience.

Contextual Analysis - How and when to deliver training successfully.

One very interesting point covered is to always deal with the decision maker during every processes. This will save time and money (yours).

Overall, a complete guide to successful analyses.

Other books I considered purchasing on this topic require interpretation of the content or demand a Masters degree in Organizational Development to understand the author's point. Barbazette avoids those traps and instead offers useful methods and tools in a format I found easy to read and easy to implement. Given the multiple ways I have applied what I learned from the book, I consider this book one of my best purchases in the last twelve months.

Ed has been doing our production for 20 years. He is truly the master. Now he has put all of his trade secrets in a book. It is truly phenomenal.

For years, Ed has added his wisdom about audio and video production to the premier events for the National Speakers Association. His advice has helped hundreds make a better living through better marketing material. The man knows what he's doing. And now his wisdom is available for the masses.

I have known and worked with Ed Primeau, the author of this book, since I started my speaking businesses in 1993. This guy is an experienced professional and knows what he is talking about. In fact, he is the first person to ever professionally audio tape my speeches, and has filmed and produced several videos for me. Together we have created both demos and products and I can say that it has been one of the most enduring friendships and business relationships I have ever had. Not only is he a great audio and video producer, he is also a great friend, an honest business person, a creative force and the ultimate cheerleader for those he works with. I could not recommend him or his new book more, and I look forward to many more years of his expertise and friendship.

"This book offers something different from the typical job search book--hope. Reading it is like having an ally in your corner-a source of support, comfort, fresh perspectives, and practical wisdom. I recommend it to anyone who is struggling with the frustrations of a career transition."

In life we are often presented with challenges. We can take control of those challenges or we can let those challenges control our minds and emotions. In this era of rapidly changing job and work environments, many people find themselves faced with job losses or underemployment. In an excellent treatment of the issue of emotional responses to career change, Diane Wilson guides individuals through the process of taking control of their careers and of career transitions. Diane's book, Back in Control, deals with the emotional side of job hunting, and, therefore, fills a real hole in the existing literature. Diane's book will aid self-awareness by showing people that they are not alone in experience a wide range of confusing emotions when faced with career moves. But she goes beyond just illustrating the problems; she also offers a variety of potential solutions to the problems encountered in career transitions.

"This book is a rare treasure in that it goes beneath the surface to grapple with the real psychological and social effects of unemployment. Diane Wilson provides a "roadmap"of the emotional terrain one is likely to encounter in successfully navigating a career transition. Awareness, acceptance and action ... her three pronged approach helps us to transcend counter-productive knee-jerk reactions and find our way safely to the other shore."

This book is well organized with specific suggestions to initiate and maintain positive change in the workplace. It is hopeful; it speaks of respect. It holds many, many ideas for improvement of relationships and work productivity . I very highly recommend its reading.

Chambers shows ways that managers can identify underlying employee behavior problems and the steps to take and skills needed to make positive changes. The book includes a self-assessment for rating management style and organizational environment, twelve key questions for analyzing causes of problems, and many more very applied guidelines. This is a highly useful-recommended. A great book for people who manage people.

I found this book to be extremely helpful for diagnosing problematic behavior and sound advice as to methods of correcting it. I have shared this book with many of my managers and they are converts!