Professional Associations Books

I have read this book while pursuing my PhD and it was of great use to me. The topics are very well researched and explained in a lucid manner. More case studies could have been provided to make it even more useful. Overall a very good book and I recommend this book to those thinking about research.

This book is good for any student who is willing to learn the rudiments of critiquing an article. Meltzoff summarizes the important features in a clear way with numerous examples. The only problem is the articles are too short - I wish they were longer in order to give a much more comprehensive critique (but this is not a major problem)!

This book reviews everything that Ph.D. students need to know, in order to pass the APA research comprehensive exam! I reviewed it before my comp exam and passed with flying colors!!!

I was scared about taking a statistics class. After reading this book, It wasn't scary at all. This book was a good asset for my research project paper.

If you want to learn to think critically about doing research and evaluating the research of others, this is a very useful book to read. It has many "research articles" (made up by the author) that have errors discussed in the book. Unlike many books that just talk about issues, this actually has extended examples that seem like real life scenarios.

It is probably most useful for students who already have an elementary understanding of research, but it could still be useful for *motivated* students who are new to the field. Overall, it is a very useful resource.

If you are a mental health provider in an agency or private practice you must read this book. As a Marriage and Family Therapy student this book was assigned for class. My time is short and classes are long. This book, however, I couldn't put down. Every chaper is helpful and makes a lasting impression on how I see clients and how I do therapy. Buy the book and read it. It will forever change your practice and how you see clients as agents of change, joining as critical, and theories as less important.

I found this text to be of great help. The contributing chapters and the topics covered are fantastic. The authors take therapy constructs that have always been detailed in writing styles far too thick and complex and now describes them in descriptions much easier to understand, all the better for the transfer from theory to practice. While certainly pointed at the field of therapy, this book speaks to many of the "helping" disciplines---more can be "therapeutic" by aligning with these "common factors." The authors give great review to the ingredients to effective interventions and behavior change. When I finished this book, I was left with the impression that although everyone may not be in the "therapy business" this book shows how many who "help" can now be far more involved in the positive behavior change business.

I read this with relish. A genuine "Thanks" to all those who contributed to this book. I can't say enough about it.

This book challenged what I was taught to do when doing therapy. The book inspired me--made me think about new ways to view "stuck" cases. The case examples were powerful and the writing was excellent. A bit of interspersed humor made the reading interesting. I highly reccommend this book to anyone in the field of therapy. In fact, I suggest reading this book before going in to the field so that one can avoid becoming pigeon-holed into any certain formal, traditional model of therapy.

It is wonderful that the authors are taking on a topic of real importance in the psychotherapy field. What is much less impressive is their approach, which basically harkens back to 30 years ago in the field of therapy research. The authors search for common factors in therapy (which is fine), but at the expense of recognizing the enormous value that evidence-based therapy models play. There is a reason that evidence-based models have taken the field by storm-- that is because they consistently outperform "treatment as usual" which is what most clinicians practice (i.e., making it up on the spot, depending on their whims and biases). The authors take a highly one-sided approach-- not valuing the enormous strides that have been made in the field by evidence-based treatments, and the advent of the empirical testing of them.

Based on the strong literature review, professionals in the human services field may well see an improvement in their clinical outcomes if they follow the suggestions in this book.

This book explores our recent experience of terrorism through the lens of psychological research into the impact of "death anxiety" on human attitudes and behaviors. By the end, we readers have been carried far beyond The Obvious - that death anxiety is aroused by threats to our lives --- and smack into Surprise and Dismay: Surprise, to realize that "death anxiety" is a constant in human nature that is also aroused by perceived threats to anything with which we identify or through which we give meaning to our lives. And Dismay, to realize that death anxiety itself, is a root-cause of human violence. No, that doesn't mean that all of us are physically violent, nor does it mean that psychology alone explains human violence or terrorism. (The authors, true to their multidisciplinary commitments, push the analysis well beyond psychology.) It does mean, however, that we cannot understand or hope to diminish violence without insight into the human factors that contribute to it. The authors paint an accessible but realistically complex picture of the causes and the impact of the events of 9/11, and although they offer no easy answers... their research and analysis give rise to new insights into our human and historical predicament. This is powerful, provocative reading, and while it is often disturbing, it is also peculiarly satisfying because it has the ring of truth. Whether or not you agree with everything the authors say, you will finish this book with new and revealing ways to think about human nature, individual and collective violence, the struggle for meaning, and the demands of and obstacles to freedom and tolerance.

Here's some more detail on how the book unfolds:
The "psychological lens" here is Terror Management Theory (TMT), developed by these authors in the effort to test Ernest Becker's claim that the human fear of death is a source of "human evil." (See especially his Pulitzer Prize winning Denial of Death.) Pyszczynski, Solomon and Greenberg explain how that research was conducted (over about a 15 year period) and present the findings. These chapters can be challenging for those unfamiliar with psychological research methods, but their frequent summaries and conclusions keep the reader on track as the evidence accumulates in support of Becker's claims and TMT. Next, the authors use TMT to analyze the American confrontation with terrorism on September 11, and our responses to it, both individually and collectively. Then they explore the causes of terrorism, adding to their psychological analysis, historical, religious, political and economic factors that must be considered. Here too, the application of TMT leads to some unexpected insights. In the end, their concluding suggestions point towards comfortably familiar "American values" but with uncomfortably honest reminders of the challenge they present us.

Pyszczynski et al have done a fine job of presenting a theory of the human emotion of terror. However, most people browsing in Amazon.com would be more interested in books explaining terrorism. Terrorism is an extreme form of violent, political activity; terror is a profoundly distressing human emotion. The two concepts are distinctly different, and readers interested in the former will be disappointed to purchase a book on the latter.
Having said that, Pyszczynski et al have done a good job explicating what they deem their -- existential-evolutionary theory -- of how humans manage the fundamental, existential terror inherently associated with the contemplation of one's own mortality, and by extension, the meaninglessness and finitude of existence. Basically, unable to tolerate the thought that we are all transient, meaningless specks of dust in a vast, indifferent universe, we busy ourselves investing in goal-directed activities to win cultural approval, gain self-esteem, and derive existential solace in the thought that we are important parts of a larger, meaningful, enduring cultural enterprise that, collectively, achieves a kind of super-organismic immortality.
After explaining the theory itself in an interesting manner in the first three chapters, the authors present two long, research-based chapters, in which they review dozens of controlled studies done, predictably, on undergraduate college students, in a reasonable attempt to demonstrate empirical support for aspects of their theory. Good enough for a solid, thoughtful, interesting psychology textbook. What follows, however, is somewhat of a change of topic, and, perhaps, an unreasonable attempt to capitalize on the sensationalism of the 9/11 attacks (the book was published only shortly following the terrorist attacks of 9/11/01).
The authors shift from their very attractive theory of terror, and specifically -- terror management -- how humans handle our moments of existential terror - to a theory of terrorism - and that portends a rapid deterioration in quality and insight. The chapters that follow find the authors presenting an embarrassingly shallow theory of terrorist motivations and behavior, and a sophomoric, platitudinous, solution to the problem of world terrorism: yes, indeed, it is so bad that they actually have a chapter on how to solve the problem of world terrorism called, quote -- Give Peace a Chance -- unquote. Ouch! The second half of the book is actually a good example of how quickly good scholars can plummet into an abyss of ill-informed gibberish once they stray outside of their area of considerable expertise.
The first part of the book is good enough to merit a stand-alone text, but the second half of the book, in which the authors behave as if nothing of significance has ever been written about the psychology of terrorism, is so fatuous that it is embarrassing and painful to read. Many people, I fear, will buy the book due to the current intense interest in understanding terrorism, when in fact, the better reason to buy the book is to better understand the complex set of human emotions related to how we struggle to deal with the fact of our inevitable mortality.
Larry H. Pastor, M.D., Oakton, Virginia

Written with a rare combination of wise hesitation and committed passion, this book has so much to commend it is difficult to know where to start. In short summary, this book presents a well-argued 'take' on current political terrorism, as well as public reaction to that terrorism, from the perspective of Terror Management Theory (TMT). TMT is an increasingly important area of social psychology that was originated explicitly as an attempt to subject Ernest Becker's main ideas to empirical testing. The robustness of the theory is now causing many heads to turn that 20 years ago quickly passed over Becker's ideas as 'speculative philosophizing,' unworthy of serious attention from social scientists. One of the great values of this book is that they have taken all of this two decades' worth of research and boiled it down to two concise chapters, in which they both lay out the research results itself in coherent format and discuss its significance in the context of Becker's wider theories and relating it to other current material in the social sciences. In subsequent chapters, as they lay out the psychology of terror, focusing both on the terrorist mentality itself, but even more so on the public reaction to the events of 9/11, the theory genuinely springs to life with cogent illustrations of each point from the very newspaper headlines we have all been recently reading ourselves. The feeling is that of reading 'lived history' in which the reader is also an intimate actor as well as an interpretive observer. This is easily the most riveting interpretive account of these events I have seen in the growing mass of 9/11 literature.

In the Wake of 9/11: The Psychology of Terror (Washington: American Psychological Association, 2002), Tom Pyszcynski, Sheldon Solomon and Jeff Greenberg.

Many have observed that America will never be the same in the wake of the terrorist attacks on US soil on the morning of September 11, 2001. The sudden impact of the explosions, captured in vivid detail and replayed over and over again on television, fundamentally altered the illusion of invulnerability that Americans had enjoyed since World War II. Beginning almost immediately a host of Middle Eastern analysts and academics of all stripes supplied an endless stream of hypotheses concerning "why they hate us" and the general nature of terrorism, all in a well-meaning effort to come to terms with a national tragedy.

But to plumb the depths of terrorism one must look beyond the sound bites, beyond the narrow focus on Middle Eastern politics, beyond popular opinion concerning the supposed differences between Islamic and Judaeo-Christian cultures. This is one of the chief accomplishments of In the Wake of 9/11: The Psychology of Terror. Its authors have succeeded in recasting the psychology of terror against a general theory of human nature. Working in the tradition of cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker, they trace the roots of terrorism to the troubling yet inescapable reality of human mortality. Becker long ago proposed that there exists at all times a latent fear of death that threatens to upend societal equilibrium. To shield ourselves from the ever-present threat of death anxiety, we seek to bolster our self-esteem through group loyalty. Hence competing worldviews threaten us at a very deep level.

Becker's prolific publications were hailed by many as brilliant and garnered him a Pulitzer Prize (for his 1973 classic, The Denial of Death). But he was unable to gain widespread acceptance within the academy. His interdisciplinary methodology ran contrary to the emerging trend toward specialization. And there was the recurring criticism that his bold and far-reaching ideas, while intriguing, were ultimately untestable. Like many pioneering visionaries, Becker's death was followed by a period of neglect and dormancy.

That changed with the appearance of three social psychologists (Pyszczynski, Solomon and Greenberg) who possessed the ingenuity to do what others said could not be done: put Becker's ideas to the test. Their results demonstrate conclusively that Becker's ideas are not only theoretically compelling, they are empirically verifiable. Years prior to the devastating events of 9/11, they were testing and developing what came to be called "terror management theory." Fine tuning Becker's ideas, they discovered, among other things, a clear and testable relationship between the awareness of mortality and hostility toward those who appear to subscribe to a different worldview. More specifically, they found people who were asked to consider their mortality would be more favorably predisposed to people who shared their basic world view, and conversely, more negatively predisposed toward outsiders of one kind or another. These findings fit both the surge in patriotic hoopla and the hostility toward foreigners in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.

While acknowledging that "terrorism results from the interaction of a wide range of social, political, ideological, and psychological forces," the authors set out to "illuminate the psychological aspects of the problem" (p. 187). The result is a veritable calculus of depth psychology that identifies the factors inclining groups toward violence. Drawing from their cumulative research efforts (spanning over 150 empirical studies) the authors provide a concise overview of their research (Chapters 1-3), then proceed to apply their findings to the social and cultural milieu of post 9/11 America (Chapter 5). Chapter 6 is devoted to the application of terror management theory to Islamic extremists, while Chapters 8 & 9 point to the way out of the cycle of violence. Acknowledging the enormity of the issues and the gravity of the current socio-political state of affairs, the authors suggest that hope resides in new, more inclusive worldviews that are neither too rigid nor too diffuse.

Much has been written concerning Becker's allegedly bleak view of human nature and his seemingly macabre fascinations with humanity's destructiveness. But those familiar with his writings can attest to his great compassion for the human condition and the reverence for the "life force" that sustained his long descent into the night. "In ways that are yet unknown to us, this spirit will continue giving birth to its own possibilities" (Becker, Angel in Armor, p. 118). In the Wake of 9/11 adds another important chapter to the story Becker so urgently wanted to tell.

As a "self-styled" student of Ernest Becker myself, I take a special interest in this brave book. I am writing a book myself on racism in America, and Becker's paradigm on the Science of Man and the social and existential psychology that it rests on (mostly death denial, mortality salience and death defiance), as well as the "American worldview," also will serve as the basis of my own theoretical platform. So, one cannot imagine how excited I was to see these brave men launch a first foray into the use of Becker's paradigm as part of a set of testable hypotheses.

As a trained scientist (Mathematician and Operations Research Analyst) and quantitative behavioral scientist (advance degrees in International Relations Theory and Political Science), I read this book with great enthusiasm. In many ways, it looks very much like my own Phd thesis: It develops (or appropriates) a suitable theoretical framework (TMT), forms various hypotheses (about death defiance, mortality salience, the American worldview and how 911 disturbed the American reality and conscience), collects appropriate data (reactions of victims to the 911 experience), and then proceeds to try to test those hypotheses using the most suitable tools available (subjects of psychometric and social psychological experimental test designs, etc.). This is all to the good.

If the reader allows the authors to get away with this smoothly developed tableau, there is very little to complain about here. However, since I too am going through the same exercise, I have a few questions to raise: of the same sort that have plagued my own research.

For instance, how can the authors so causally speak of the "American worldview," (which, in the background, does most of the heavy lifting), and is the most pivotal of all concepts in their research design), as if it is a "given" without first properly delineating its content and tracing out its outlines? It certainly is not enough to assert that: "national identity is a large component of most people's worldview." This is the beginning, not the end of an analysis of worldview.

In these authors design, the "American worldview," remains essentially a black box, indeed an unopened (possibly cocked and loaded) black (pandora's) box! I believe that if they unlock this box, rather than presume to know and thus able to intuit its contents, they will discover the all kinds of things will come tumbling out:

The "American Worldview" as a psychological construct is a house of horrors that cannot be intuited or taken casually for granted. Once opened, they will discover, as I did, that it is a fantastically complex, not just multidimensional, but more importantly, a multilayered psychological construct, that never quite stops unraveling. At the very bottom (not at the top) of this multilayer psychological chain is of course death denial. And as one ascends the chain of sublimated complexity, one discovers, not just death defiance and mortality salience, but also many other things that are equally as "weighty" as death defiance and mortality salience: things such as an almost existential dependence on and a preference for a "barely transparent racist ideology," a very localized and parochial set of contradictory moral rules, a specter of sex and violence at every turn; dependence on strange and contradictory religious concepts and beliefs, and on an avowedly white male "hero system" all couched in a social hierarchy that often contradicts the much revered notions of freedom, independence, and democracy, just to name a few. These go well beyond just national identity.

And while it is true that these all inevitably do connect in one way or another back to death defiance, mortality salience, and thus ultimately back to death denial, the connections are never straightforward or linear ones. They are invariably very circuitous and tenuous connections, and there exists, equally plausible alternative explanations for each of them. And most of all, there is very little that can be assumed about the construct of "an American worldview" itself, or about the connections to it as the variables upon which it depends, proceed up the psychological chain. Nor indeed is there very much that can be assumed about the way these disparate elements and their respective connections are to be properly "weighted" in the larger overarching concept called "the American worldview."

Because so much of the authors design depends on how the "American Worldview" is conceptualized, this is not a casual matter at all. It is not a matter that can be easily ignored or simply glossed over as simply, a matter of "national identity." If the assumption is that it does not matter how the "American Worldview" is conceptualized, since all roads inevitably lead directly back to a deeply sublimated death denial anyway. Then that is no longer just an assumption, but amounts to a grand global meta-hypothesis that is larger than, and indeed engulfs the whole research design itself. Such a large meta-hypothesis cannot be allowed to enter the research through the backdoor, but must be wrestled with, up front. And at the very least somehow be acknowledged and defended, if not proven out right.

I of course have not finished the book, but hope that this is the only major concern. For bravery alone the book merits five stars.

It's a great and fantastic textbook hhelping me start my profssional research in International Education.
I love it very very much.

This is an invaluable resource for anyone who needs to present their research results in APA style. This is not a statistics text but rather a manual for generating tables. Each chapter focuses on a different statistic and includes a "play it safe" comprehensive table as well as several variations. Well-organized, practical, and concise.

This book has been needed for twenty years. Students and professional researchers who write dissertations and manuscripts using APA style have desperately needed this very helpful resource. The book illustrates standard presentation tables for more than twenty types of standard statistical tests. The concept of "Play It Safe" tables will save researchers hundreds of hours of time. The table illustrations are clear and precise depending on the focus of the data to be presented. The few words that are written prior to presenting a table are helpful in clarifying the data contained in the tables. One small problem is noted. It would have been helpful to include how APA style recommends reporting statistical data in paragraph form in this book also. Despite this omission, I still give this book 5 stars.

I was deeply disappointed with the book. The tables look as done with a typewriter, good for those missing that 70's thesis. Apparently nobody told the authors that p-values are no longer to be reported as p<0.05, but with their full value. And finally, there is no "clever" solution to more complex tables, but just tons of tables with pretty standard results. What is reported in the tables is not widely applicable too. In my area - epidemiology - we do not report standard errors, we report confidence intervals. We also do not report mean squares, f-values, or t-values, or chi-squared-values and so on - we report only the full p-values. If you're not into APA, look elsewhere.

No matter how complex your table will be, if you use this book as your guideline, you will be able to create it. The reviewer who claimed this is not true probably wanted them to give him the exact table. Their book would have been 1,000+ pages long to give an example of every combination of every table.

What this book gives you is the foundation upon which to build tables. Whenever you aren't sure how to build your table, just take a quick gander through the appropriate section(s) of this book, and follow their guidelines -- do NOT try to copy. Your result will be an excellent, easy-to-follow table.

Think of this as the handbook for Global Account Management (GAM). It is a terrific one, chock full of processes and steps for managers trying to catch up with the needs of their global accounts. Also included at no extra charge is some sage advice for the many firms that have stumbled in the process.

Noel Capon, Dave Potter and Fred Schindler claim that how corporations manage their global accounts will determine nothing less than their "success and organizational survival in the 21st century." The authors present in reasonably clear (though not always grammatical) language the essentials of global account management. Stories at the beginnings of the chapters demonstrate the importance of the issues, and helpful summaries at the ends recapitulate the authors' main points. This is a practitioner's guide, straightforward and detailed. getAbstract recommends it to global account managers as well as to managers of sales and marketing units who are considering instituting a global account management program.

This book reads as though it were written by someone who spent their business career in sales operations. You know the ones - overly preoccupied with process with little understanding of how things really work.

The first nine chapters are written in a workmanlike fashion. They describe the rationale and pitfalls of those struggling with global account management, but the prescriptions for actually doing something are too superficial to be of any real use.

The most important topic (and the authors acknowledge it) is quantifying the business value from global account management. The authors save this until the first part of chapter 10. Their most important insight is that the value from global account management depends on the company. Wow - I paid to find that out? A framework or taxonomy for measuring business value would have been much more useful.

Their treatment of the problems associated with global account management was one of the better sections - I give them credit for including it.

Finally, there are half a dozen tables included throughout. I found them to be the most useful part of the book.

This book can easily be skimmed in one cross-country plane trip. If you are looking for a few good ideas, check it out. If you are looking for a definitive treatise on global account management, look elsewhere.

Rosemary H Campbell, Director, International Sales & Ops, 12/02/2005
Capon, Potter and Schindler lay out a comprehensive roadmap for developing a global account program
"Implementing global account management is not easy. At IBM it took us several years and many iterations to build the current program that today puts the right senior level focus on our top global accounts -- and we're not finished yet. Fred Schindler was part of that struggle and Managing Global Accounts in part recounts its history. However, IBM is only a small part of this book. In a unique partnership of the business world with academe, Capon, Potter and Schindler lay out a comprehensive roadmap for developing a global account program. If you are trying to support your global customers, I recommend you read and use this book. You will save yourselves time and many missteps as you learn from the myriad of insights the authors provide." Rosemary H Campbell, Director, International Sales & Operations, Worldwide, IBM

Lisa Napolitano, CEO, SAMA, 12/02/2005
This book offers companies what they've been clamoring for
"Nearly every company today is forced to confront the challenge of supporting requirements in a global business environment. The reality is, as companies have become larger and more complex, the task of trying to leverage your position and information around the world as one unit is enormous, even for a sophisticated multi-national company. What the Strategic Account Management Association has learned is that organizational commitment, in the form of management support as well as resources, is mandatory to success. What we've seen, however, is that too many firms fail to make a strong business case for change, or worse yet, get buy-in to the wrong set of expectations. If only Managing Global Accounts had come along sooner! This book offers companies what they've been clamoring for - a framework for asking the right questions, performing the right analytics, and translating that into an action plan that fits their unique circumstances. Companies that have already implemented global account management can effectively reassess and recalibrate based on the authors' practical, real-world experience. And for those whose firms have yet to fully embrace the concepts, this book will become your guide and your ally in convincing your most important stakeholders that Global Account Management - and what that requires - is not an option for firms that intend to be competitive."

David Macaulay, Sr. Vice President, Siemens AG, 12/02/2005
Finally a book which can help
"Finally a book which can help corporations transform the art of selling into the science of growth. Companies now have the chance to impact their customer assets in the same way they have optimized their supply chains. It is all here and the winners will know how to use it."

Chris Morrison, Divisional Vice President, Nalco, 12/02/2005
This is the real McCoy
"As a VP managing global account managers in a global Fortune 300 company, I learned more from reading this book's first few chapters then I have in my last five business books. The authors have done a great job pulling together all the logistics from starting, hiring, training, supporting, and sustaining a successful program. If anyone every wanted a book on how to CORRECTLY build a global account program, using best practices, this is IT!!!! I liked this book's easy going interface played out by the `almost believable' reality interactions between four main characters set up in the first chapters. You have a CEO, a consultant, a global account director and a global account manager, all struggling with their time commitments on one hand and their desire to make this work in their heads. They all learn a lot from each other on a flight delay (very real to any global account manager) and subsequent travel/trip. This helps the reader by following the questions and answers of both parties. Three cheers to Capon, Schindler and Potter for a great narrative of technical training and business savvy all in one tight package. I am confident that the careful reading, comprehension and implementation of this books tenet's will save many firms tens of thousands of dollars in consultant fees. This is the real McCoy!" Chris Morrison, Divisional Vice President, Nalco Global Accounts

A reviewer, A reviewer, 12/01/2005
Successful global account management
"Successful global account management can be the most difficult sales and marketing initiative undertaken by any firm. The authors of this book truly understand the complexities involved and they provide a thorough overview of the required critical success factors." Tom VanHootegem, Vice President Strategic Segment Sales, OfficeMax Contract

The book is a thoroughly written book about baseball and soccer. It provides a lot of background and details to the extent that I sometimes thought that this is too much. You can't possibly memorize all those names and details.
However, the book is a very interesting reading, and if you are not interested in every single detail, some sections can be skipped.
In essence, the book is very interesting and many things can be learned. It is certainly not a light reading just for entertainment but more on the serious side.

This book was absolutely amazing. I loved it, an easy read through and through. Szymanski and Zimbalist as economists explain wonderfully why soccer is so much more popular than baseball, and you can understand everything, there was not a weak point. I would strongly reccommend this book to anyone, an amazing read

Where to begin? First of all, this book is a century out of date. Americans do not play baseball in great numbers anymore hence the low TV ratings for the World Series (actually lowest ever in 2006). Also, look at the "international" aspect of MLB now--Japanese, Koreans, Chinese (via Taiwan) as well as the usual Latin Americans who are now greater in number.

A more relevant comparison would be football (as in the NFL and college) and soccer. Anyway, more Americans play soccer than, say, the nation of Britain, if we are talking sheer numbers. It's just it's a recreational sport and always will be because soccer is flat-out too slow, low scoring and has too much diving in it.

Personally, although the writing is there, the research isn't with this book. A far superior book that understands soccer and North American sports is: Offside by Markovitz and Hellerman. Buy that off amazon here not this misguided piece of junk.

Soccer and baseball enjoy fervent followings and generate wads of cash, so this study of the two games' economics and culture is as welcome as a towering home run (or a nifty goal). Economists Stefan Szymanski and Andrew Zimbalist compare and contrast the two sports' business models in a way that will fascinate anyone who is interested in athletics or international business. The authors offer a fascinating history of these sports, complete with plenty of telling anecdotes that are sure to enlighten even devoted fans. The only gripe is that the writers sometimes bog down in scholarly phrasing when the reader might prefer more active prose. Still, we recommend this intriguing study to anyone who specializes in sports business - or even just buys a ticket to a game now and then.

Excellent study of the Boy Scouts at the turn of the century seen through the experiences of one troop at summer camp. Mechling's compression of twenty years into one narrative can be slightly confusing in places, but works well overall. Though he makes no effort to hide his personal views (supported by sociological reasearch and his own experiences as a Scout), he carefully illustrates the complexity of the issues confronting the organization as it heads into its second century. I could have done without the Freudian analysis of teenage boys' relationship to their bodies, but otherwise it's a very thoughtful and thought-provoking book.

This is a very thoughtful, very provocative look at Scouting -- not only the Boy Scouts of America as an organization, but the experience of being a Scout for one troop of boys and their adult Scout leaders. The book keeps details of this experience in the foreground -- you really get to see what the Scouts do at their summer encampment, hear what they have to say, the kinds of jokes and stories they tell, and so on - but it also examines these details for what they reveal about young boys becoming older boys and older boys becoming men. All this works because the book is a good read, not only as a story (of one troop's summer camping adventure) but also as a meditation on adults and kids, American life in these modern times, and so on.

Some readers and reviewers may try to pigeon-hole the book as a critique of Scouting, or focus only on the policy issues (i.e., how the BSA has handled issues of God, Gays, and Girls), but that's way off base. The author certainly gives some attention to these issues and he is critical of some official BSA positions. But he's also clearly sympathetic towards the Scouting experience, and he's smart about what's going on for kids of Scouting age. A fan of scouting who's taking a close look and asking important questions that go well beyond Scouting in their implications. Highly recommended.

This was the best book I ever read.It was very exiting for me to read.I loved that book,and I would prefor to read. It would be a good book report.

Mechling approaches his subject in an extremely scholarly fashion, which makes the book a bit schizophrenic between a journal article or thesis and a popular non-fiction-type of read. As it was published by the Univ. of Chicago Press, this isn't surprising. Some excellent nuggets on leadership and its various meanings; interesting sidelights on current controversies. However, nothing that would give a reader a sense of what scouting would be like or the type of boys scouting attracts/serves. A very fly-on-the-wall approach that allows the reader to draw his or her own conclusions.

I got my book sooner than I thought and it was in great shape! I would buy from this person again!

I was unable to get past Chapter 1 of this book. Chapter 1 is nothing but statistics that makes you feel horrible as a career changer. Statistic after statistic say that our kids/education will suffer because of our lack of schooling in education. That is ludicrous. I think that what we bring to the classroom is "the real world" and we go to all the same trainings and have to fulfill a certain number of credit hours and have specialized programs, just as teachers who majored in education. I think we are just as good and I know our kids will prove it. As for the rest of the book, I don't care to read.

it's kind of a boring book and repeats itself with all the bullet points

Teaching is an art and a science. The best teachers are those who combine both. This book, which one reviewer gave a "1" despite only reading the 1st chapter, combines the two. As a career teacher, I found it enlightening to read the research about the characteristics of an effective teacher and compare it against what I do as a librarian. If you're going to teach, you owe it to yourself to read this book and use it to make yourself better.

This book is great for research and marketing work related to China business. I would keep it!

I found Lau's book to be less-than-complete in offering a comprehensive list of Chinese Associations. If you are looking for specific Light Industry and Consumer Product Associations in China, better keep looking as they are not referenced in this publication.

Furthermore and most disappointing, after submitting the necessary paperwork to obtain access to the "Online Database" -which is advertised as being included with the purchase - I never received my username and password from the publisher...and my emails went unanswered.

This Directory is the most resourceful book one could find in the market on its subject. It's great for conducting market research and locating relevant business associations to develop business relationship with counterparts in China. I would recommend this Directory to all business people doing or planning to do business with or in China.

As a therapist I try to find ways of fine-tuning my craft. I feel this book will be helpful in aiding my clients in the healing process.

This is one of the better textbooks I have read in a while. The authors provide many relevant examples to illustrate techniques and theory. In addition, there is a fair amount of research presented, lending support to their theories. The book is set up as an illustration of one type of therapeutic approach to couples and marital therapy. It is also fairly easy reading. However, there are topics not explicitely discussed in the textbook, so supplementary materials are helpful for a better understanding and use of the therapy approach.

Well, I had to buy this book for a class taught by one of the authors...the book looks pretty intimidating when you first get it, but it's really been helpful for me as a therapist dealing with couples and their issues. Plus, Dr. Epstein is one of the best in the field at couple's work, so I think it's helpful to learn from him!