Consultants Books

Code of Silence: The ethics of disasters promises much, but fails to deliver in my opinion. The first two chapters set the scene but seem to circumnavigate the true purpose of the book (the author refers considerably to the fall of the World Trade Center, which seems marginal to the argument that it was a disaster waiting to happen, a faulty design that engineers "hid" from authorities). Finally, on page 63, we reach two chapters devoted to the Hyatt Regency elevated walkways collapse in Kansas City, and the shuttle Challenger disaster. These are discussed in reasonable detail, although much is omitted in understanding the true sequence of events as far as negligence, culpability, and state of minds of the engineer players.

Part 2 of the book is devoted to comprehending the "code of silence" in various settings, and chapters 7 and 8, are particularly illuminating, and well worth reading. Part 3 deals with more of the code of ethics, and unfortunately, in my opinion, Cook resorts to fictional scenarios to show how engineers should deal with hypothetical problem situations instead of using real-life examples to show what the players could have done to avoid disastrous consequences. This, by any standard, involves much more research, but would have brought a larger payoff.

Although Cook draws on much useful psychological and sociological research that has been conducted, to dissect and buttress his positions, in the main the approach is a bit too cerebral. I expected a detailed analysis of many prominent disasters from engineering and human factors viewpoints, but the author chose not to go this route. This is a pity. I suspect most engineering students (and perhaps practicing engineers) become easily bored when confronted with pure research in this area (even if they are cognizant of the ethics involved), but might suddenly wake up if they saw themselves in real-life situations. Innumerable examples exist of all kinds of disasters that have been sufficiently documented that a writer can walk a reader through all the critical events, vividly portray the mistakes the engineers and managers made, and why they made them-financial and time constraints; wrong assumptions; incompetence, and so forth. A prospective or practicing engineer might be better able to see his or herself in such a situation, and say, "There but for the Grace of God, go I."

I have no doubt that Cook knows stuff, and is one the few engineering professors who teaches the ethics of his profession with candor and competency, however, I cannot but feel that this book was an opportunity missed: an ounce of detailed examples is worth more than a pound of philosophy.

Holtz does a pretty good job with touching on all the areas of Computer Consulting from the home or as an independent. My only complaint is that the author does not spend enough time with things like: creating proposals (an example or two would have been nice), fee structures (how to set your fee competatively), overhead calculation (only touches on this). A good starting place, but more in-depth books are needed to make a successful go of it. Do not depend on just this book.

I am the author/publisher. This reference work was useful 12 years ago, but today it is out-of-date and out of print. -- Instead, if you want a current reference for computer terms and abbreviations, I recommend the NEW book by Harry Newton. His book is called "Newton's Telecom Dictionary: Covering Telecommunications, Networking, Information Technology, Computing and the Internet (20th Edition)." It is available here on Amazon.com Newton's book is excellent!

This was a good book discussing the various newsgroups, e-mail signature files and gave practical information on how to access this data.

Example contracts are limited in scope. They are for accountants doing audits and engineers doing design and as a result are difficult to generalize on. Does not cover international contract and fee problems. Sections on generating exposure and finding a niche are well written but off of the topic.

While this text offers a comprehensive treatment of the subject, I found it to be somewhat too verbose. There should be more diagrams and other comprehension aids. At times it felt as though I was reading a doctoral thesis.

A nice and concise overview on the independent consulting business, with questionnaires, checklists, multiple-choice and fill-in-the-blanks exercises. Those who want more depth and details may like to refer to "Consulting for Dummies".

It is useful for the investment analysts.

No graphics/images throughout 99% of the book, but some decent meals. A bit outdated, but not bad.

This book is good enough that it should be updated to include the major enterprise initiatives; e.g., ecommerce, the role of eforms in document management, etc.. In the rapid evolution of document automation technologies, 1995 was a very long time ago.