Departments Books

"Law School 101" is the bible for anyone that wants to enter the field of law. R. Stephanie Good is a New York Times best selling author,
and also co-authored "Aruba. After reading Karl Hungus's review, I realized that he is most likely the guy
that did the same thing on the "Aruba" book. Karl gave it away when he supposedly
analyzed the "Aruba" book in the "Law School 101" comment. Karl stay in Aruba and we will keep boycotting your country. Never knew there was an Ohio, Aruba. LOL

Anyone wanting a book to inform and motivate your career should read "Law School 101"

I love the way this book guided me through law school this year. My first year was hell and I found this book and made a huge turn around. It was easy reading and enjoyable, but it was also so informative that my second year was much easier to deal with. I have so many tools now to get me through the toughest things, like communicating in class, taking exams, and even just getting through the day to day stress that all of my friends and I have had to live with. I am focusing on criminal law courses and I really love being there now. Law school is nothing like college and we didn't know that until we got there. If I had it to do over again, I would have found this book and read it before I started. It really is the best one out there. Thanks so much to the author for finally telling it like it is!

I would be very suspicious of this book and its author. There are some things you should consider before you buy this book. All of the people who gave this book 5 stars (I think at least, look for yourself), have reviewed exactly two books--this book and a stupid looking book about Natalie Holloway. Each reviewer gave both books 5 stars, and both were written by the author of this book. That should make you suspect that they're either fake accounts made by the author (really slimy) or real accounts made by her friends (still really slimy). I'll never give this tool another dime. Read Planet Law School or Law School Confidential instead. Caveat emptor.

This book was being carried around by just about everyone I knew this year. Word got around that it was the first real survival guide to law school. I had read some of the other books and they didn't have the same real life struggles and stories that this one does. I felt like it was written about me and because of that, I was able to follow it and learn how to make law school an incredible experience. Thanks to the author for throwing a lifesaver into the sea of muck and mire!

I bought the book for my brother who was not too happy with his decision to go to law school. He had started his first year and was really struggling. He hasn't stopped thanking me. He just finished the year out and he did very well. He said the book saved him and now he loves law school, because the book made him look at the situation realistically and helped him stay focused instead of letting the pressure get the best of him.

This book is a detailed guide on what to consider when you are thinking of outsourcing to India, but it might leave you with unanswered questions. Overall, I found the book to be a good start in my research. However, I noted that the author omits any anecdotes of project failures in India, and instead he takes the rosy view that all India projects result in lower cost and higher quality. There is little discussion on turn-over rates, which are very high in some fields and negatively impacting projects. (The fact that the author is or was the president of an Indian software association called NASSCOM may explain his positive views). The book also lacks much discussion on in-house outsourcing (using your own employees, but located in India). Finally, the book may leave you with many specific questions, such as infrastructure costs, and requirements for visiting India for business.

This book has several notable strengths. Author Mark Kobayashi-Hillary, an outsourcing consultant, combines detailed information about India with in-depth knowledge of outsourcing markets, processes and methods. He provides an overview of India and a profile of India's outsourcing industry, including the major players in a rapidly changing marketplace, important aspects of cultural awareness and thoughts on how to organize your outsourcing endeavor, including vendor selection and contract provisions. At times, the organizational structure of the book is somewhat disorienting, shifting focus from travel guide to outsourcing primer to nuts-and-bolts analysis of India's outsourcing market and how best to capitalize on it. Occasionally the narrative flow is a bit mechanical, but who really cares? If your company is considering or already has a major investment in offshore outsourcing in India, this book is an outright must read. Despite its structural flaws, we strongly recommend its authoritative blend of practical business, legal and cultural advice.

Sad but true. I read this book when we were first considering outsourcing. It sounded like a dream come true - cheap, compliant labor at bargain rates. So we jumped in, outsourcing our IT dept. and even some of our legal services.

Now we're facing half a dozen lawsuits. It seems that Indian paralegals don't understand the concept of client confidentiality. They misused some of our client's information and now we're paying the price.

If we can stay in business till '05 I plan to move everything back to Florida. Maybe I can sue the author for the lousy advice his book gives.

Not many books have been written on this subject yet, although it is becoming ever more important to companies in the West seeking to outsource work to cut costs and improve flexibility.

This book helped me enormously to understand the challenges and problems I was likely to encounter. I would recommend it to anyone who is starting to look at India.

I have read other books on this subject which are boring and content-free. This book is very readable and gives an excellent insight into where and how to take your BPO project, the issues you are likely to encounter, and into building the relationships to make an outsource project work.

There is something for everyone involved in outsourcing in this book.

For anyone going into the Military , or making the Military A Career
this is A great companion.

A good book that clearly delivers what its supposed to... The book although covering many things that one should know just by being in the military also expands on numerous other finer points. The book is especially useful once you advance to become an NCO or go to OCS somewhere in your career. I would also recommend this book to anybody currently in ROTC or thinking about a career as an officer.

I'm highly dissappointed about this book. It makes good reference to all leadership issues and is of course a good recopilation of theories and practical recommendations about leader's behavior and the expectations he must fulfill, but sends the reader with high frequency to "Appendix C", which is not included in the book.
I feel like I got a fragment of the publication at the complete price.
The worst of my purchases.

Reads just like the Army manuel we received in the military but in laymans terms.

This manual has evolved over the years, and while it extrapolates from the theories of Transformational/Transactional Leadership, it gets down to where the "rubber meets the road." This is leadership 101 in practical application with many real world examples inserted in key places to demonstrate that this is not just "hot air" to pump up some author's ego blimp. While this may be a military focused book, with a clear sense of situations (while not life threatening) one can interpolate the stressful leadership issues in a civilian context that can have dire personal economic consequences. This book will "Git 'er done!"

This book is perfect to give you a first glance of what is grad school like, how the admission process works and which are or are not good reasons to seek a higher degree. There is information, specifically about the admission process, which does not exist anywhere else. The only problem with this book (and others of this kind) is that it intends to cover too much and does not go deep into any topic. For example, it goes through Med school admissions, for which there is better information on many other specialized books. On the other hand, if what you're looking for is a true overview, this might be perfect for you.

If you're looking for the real thing in Ph.D.'s and M.S.'s the book you need is Robert L. Peter's "Getting what you came for". It is even recommended by the authors of the Grad School Handbook.

I just happened to find this very book written by such a very experienced educator and professor. I have not yet got a chance to read this book, but I know the authors so well that I believe this book must be great! The authors had extensive experience in grad school education and had recruited and taught many bright, outstanding students, some of whom are among the best of our days now. I was lucky to be the one he picked up among hundreds of candidates and he had unfailing confidence on me so that I could perform exceptionally well, partly due to his far-sightedness in recruiting and continual support and partly due to my advisor's strong support. I am so glad to know the author could share his experience with us and I believe his book should be a must read! I will definitely read it and provide more comments later. Please feel free to write to me if you have any questions about the authors.

I just happened to find this very book written by such a very experienced educator and professor. I have not yet got a chance to read this book, but I know the authors so well that I believe this book must be great! The authors had extensive experience in grad school education and had recruited and taught many bright, outstanding students, some of whom are among the best of our days now. I was lucky to be the one he picked up among hundreds of candidates and he had unfailing confidence on me so that I could perform exceptionally well, partly due to his far-sightedness in recruiting and continual support and partly due to my advisor's strong support. I am so glad to know the author could share his experience with us and I believe his book should be a must read! I will definitely read it and provide more comments later. Please feel free to write to me if you have any questions about the authors.

It goes without saying that deciding to take graduate course is one of the most serious decisions in your life. It means you decide the path the rest o life will follow. For such a critical matter, any amount of information shouldn¡¯t be enough. You should do your best in collecting information to decide whether to enter the graduate program, which school you would enroll, how you could get into that school. It¡¯s not easy task at all and demands your time and money. This book is written to help you in that process. This book opens with recommending reconsidering whether the graduate program is the right one you should choose Once you are determined, you should think what will lie in your way such as how to fund your course, how to choose the right school. And then you should prepare to documents such as application form, the statement of purpose (SOP) or essay, transcript, recommendation and GRE or GMAT score. These papers are decisive in whether you could get into wanted school and there are some rules you should keep.
This book offers you how to start the process. Yep other similar material would help you get through it. But the beauty of this book is this: this book show you how those papers would be considered in the department. In other word, this book illustrates the process from the insider¡¯s view: who read the papers and how they evaluate them. Knowing the criteria of your reader is definitely helpful to win the admission notice. And that, authors took interviews of professors and students to depict the real process.
This is a small book and you need other books to win the process. For example, you¡¯d better read some other book on writing SOP. But this is ultimately the right place to begin with.

I was disappointed to find this book geared more towards students who were returning to school rather than to the undergraduate seeking a higher degree. There were certain areas that were extremely helpful, while other sections were almost discouraging to the prospective student. There were sections that provided some insight into writing the statement of purpose and financial aid sources, but still seemed to be geared towards either students seeking Ph.D's or students returning to school after a period of time. I have to say I was a disappointed.

I found Leach's book very insightful and interesting. He thoroughly dissects and explains the history and creation of consumer culture in the U. S. during the 1880s-1920s. Every avenue involved in consumer culture is discussed in this easy to read text.

In William Leach's Land of Desire: Merchants, Power, and the Rise of a New American Culture the author ignores the topic of leisure by making it self-evident through consumerism. Leisure, and in turn consumerism, became actual businesses to the likes of the Straus Brothers and Marshall Field, as well as to by-products of consumer industries such as banks, hotels, and museums. Leach's book brings the nature of leisure full circle, from Veblen's Leisure Class to leisure of the working class, whose consumption boosted businesses that used working-class techniques based in the theatre and vaudeville as "showmanship" in the shop window.

W.R. Leach writes about the beginning of consumerism in the U.S. around 1910/20. He writes with much verve about his theme, which makes the book an ageeable read.
But for my taste the book is somewhat short on analysis. For example: there is much talk of the connection between selling and religion, but if this connection was by random or if there were some deeper links is left open.
If you are new to the subject of this book and you want an interesting read: get it. But be aware, the answers for a lot of questions this book poses are not to be found here.

This has got to be the most boring book in the world!!!! I have to read it for one of my college courses and it is very nauseating. 30 pages on the history of window decorations!! Give me a break! If you're into analyzing the advertising industry, try Social Communications in Advertising by Leiss. Its a much better book and its much more interesting!

Leach has written a wonderful book on the true roots of modern American society. Ever wonder why the only public meeting place extant is the shopping mall? Because "they" want it that way. Find out who they were - and are. But beware. You're probably one of them!

This book is a collection of articles Prof. Knuth
wrote about programming. He promoted a particular
programming methodology called "literate
programming", which weaves comments into codes and
make them more readable and easier to maintain. This
book was published in 1992, but Chapter 4, "Literate
Programming", was originally published in 1984,
which was an idea way ahead of his time (JavaDoc was
first released in 1998, 12 years after the Knuth's
article). Chapter one is Knuth's Turing Award
lecture and still worth reading for his view on why
programming is an art. I was wrongly impressed that
Knuth is a very theoretical people and doesn't do
much programming. As you would discover from these
lecture and other articles in the book, he indeed
did a lot of programming and arguably in a very
clever and beautiful way, "the program of which I
personally am most pleases and proud is a compiler
I once wrote for a primitive minicomputer that had
only 4096 words of memory, 16 bites per word
(pg. 10)." The discussion about the "goto" statement
in Chapter 3 is not relevant in today's programming
and computer environment. The last few chapters are
more like manuals of the WEB and CWEB programs (C
version of WEB), which are the programs generating
documents and source codes. These manuals may not
interest readers unless they are well motivated to
write program "literally." One gem should not be
missed is is Chapter 10, "The Errors of TeX" (and
the accompanying Chapter 11, "The Error Log of
TeX). Seeing how Prof. Knuth meticulously documented
all of his bugs in TeX is just amazing. Overall this
book is more of historical value and for people who
love Knuth and his work on literate programming.

This book is the only one that I can say has truly changed my view of software development.

The premise of this book matches my experience: technical communication with people is critical, and harder than communicating with the machines. Knuth carries that idea forward by one bold, logical step: in Literate Programming (LP), the main goal is to get technical ideas across to people. Programs are a co-product of the description process. This inverts the premise of JavaDoc and the like, in which human communication is incidental to the code.

A literate program, by the way, reads like a standard human document, whether an essay or an IEEE standard specification. JavaDoc output reads like an HTML dump of a cross-linked tree data structure - which it is. JavaDoc serves a valuable purpose, but does not permit system description in the order required by human reasoning.

My own experience with LP (a custom system) was very happy - I actually reached the "impossible" goal of true requirements traceability. I unified the system requirements, design, multi-language implementation, configuration control, and even tests under one document set. With HTML output, traceability was made real using interactive links. Anywhere else, traceability is mostly wishful thinking shared by the many owners of physically disconnected documents. (Process gurus - I hope you're paying attention.)

LP practice, however, has not caught on. LP, in today's form, does not support programming in the large. What LP does to the compilable form of a program brings C++ name-mangling to mind. I don't know of any WYSIWYG LP systems, so today's window-icon-mouse-pointer (WIMP) programmers will have nothing to do with it. And, ironically, the people who need the most support in communicating with their peers are the ones most resistant to tools for effective communication.

It's a grand vision and an exciting experiment. LP deserves more attention.

Writing computer programs is easy, writing programs that are useful is hard and writing programs that are very useful as well as correct sometimes seems impossible. Knuth takes this truism even further and offers up the radical notion that the very best programs are so profound that people will one day read them as one would a piece of classic literature. If the idea of curling up by the fire with a copy of The World's Greatest Programs and spending the night in a state of rapture seems absurd, you think as I did. However, after reading this book, my mind now concedes the possibility does exist. After all, most of the great works of literature describe actions, conditions and solutions (algorithms) to problems of human-human and sometimes human-god interactions. Science fiction writers and readers have known for a long time that computers are very interesting objects. Buildings, paintings or other works of art are often admired not only for their subjective beauty, but also for the talent that it took to create them. Programming ability can be admired just as easily.
However, an extremely large technical barrier exists, in that programming languages are literal, terse and lack flair. Knuth works to eliminate this problem by combining the programming and documentation languages into a structure called a WEB. He also adopts the reverse paradigm that a program should be an explanation to humans of what the computer is doing. The result does wonders for readability and introduces a bit of flair. Certainly, this is a good first step towards Knuth's ideal.
The development of TEX is chronicled in great detail. It is personally comforting to read about some of the errors made in its development. Learning that the great ones make errors provides emotional security to all who hack for fun and/or profit. Some classic programming problems are used to demonstrate exactly what literate programming is meant to be. Jon Bentley, author of the `Programming Pearls' section of "Communications of the ACM", contributes two chapters that were co-authored with Donald Knuth. These pearls demonstrate the applications of literate programming to common coding problems. All are presented in a clear, easy-to-understand style.
A bit of clever humor is also used. A WEB program is constructed from two distinct components. The Weave part explains what the program is doing, and the Tangle component produces the program. Of course, this suggests the line from Sir Walter Scott's poem Marmion, "O what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive."
I do not know whether to consider this book the product of a dreamer or a visionary. The truth, like most of the work of pioneers, is no doubt somewhere in between. My opinion is that it is more vision than dream. And is that not a common theme among the greatest works of art and literature?

Published in Mathematics and Computer Education, reprinted with permission.

There's a common misconception that Webs are analagous to technologies like Javadoc. The latter is effectively a fancy prettyprinter. The former is that, and more. A well-written web actually presents a program in a way that makes sense to the reader while providing a means to make that program also make sense to the computer. The idea being that you would be able to write code that looks like: for(i=0; i@; } so that you can defer exactly what processing an array element entails until a point where it makes sense. Since these redirections are handled by a preprocessor, there's no cost at run-time for doing that like there would be if the code were written with a function call.

Excellent analysis of control structures in the classic article "Structured Programming with goto Statements." Invents the literate programming style of program documentation. Convincingly demonstrates the literate programming style with six example programs. Includes an independent program criticism and an error log. Highly recommended.

This book has some great advice for those considering grad school. But, if you're already in a program, you won't find it very useful.

To my knowledge, there is no other book of its kind. It is easy reading and practical! If you are even considering going to grad school, this book is a must. Find out if you have what it takes to get in and complete grad school by reading this book.

I got this book when I was a senior in college and thinking about grad school. I didn't know what to expect and the book offered a great overview. I really liked the quotes from other grad students, too. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who's trying to make a decision about grad school and wants the inside track.

Despite its pleasant tone and occasional bits of helpful information, this book is far too basic to be of much use to anyone. It tries to cover an incredible amount of territory -- Finding the Right University (Ch. 1) all the way to Your Thesis/Dissertation (Ch. 8) and Getting a Job (Ch. 10) -- in barely 200 pages. Simple is not better in this case. Anyone above a college sophomore should read Robert Peters' "Getting What You Came For" instead.

The Spanish have a colorful saying, `Antes de te cases, mira lo que haces', which literally means- before getting married, look at what you are doing. Figuratively speaking, this expression is a Latin version of our own cautionary admonition- look before you leap.

Ms. Mitchell's The Ultimate Graduate School Survival Guide offers thoughtful advice to those motivated students interested in critically evaluating the decision to pursue and attain an advanced degree. The book is excellent and extremely valuable because it forces the prospective grad student to focus on the most important things before, during and after taking the grad school plunge. The book elaborates on the right way and the wrong way to approach prospective schools, choose which school to attend, play the graduate school game, and navigate the treacherous, shark-infested waters of academe. It also offers useful, practical advice on grant and proposal writing, publications, and time management. Additionally, the author has included a bibliography full of useful books to help grad students achieve their degree goals.

Many students do not realize that by deciding to attend graduate school, they often lose control over their own fate, as your advisers dictate both your course of study and the possible career choices in academe and the professional workplace- long after you have left the ivory tower. Although I balk at the book's wholehearted endorsement of conformity to the prevailing regime and using sycophancy at every opportunity in the face of tyrannical faculty, this book provides the real deal, the inside story on the realities of graduate training. The book covers everything important, and tries to provide helpful hints and suggestions geared to successful navigation of the capricious politics in the ivory tower. Additionally, the author manages to cover even the more objectionable topics, such as romantic liaisons between students and faculty, the theft of student ideas and research by faculty, the fickle favoritism for some students over others by faculty, and the thorny politics of inclusion.

However, there are a couple of noticeable caveats in the book. First, the author neglected to add that a student, in deciding which school to attend, should consider the cost of living in and around the school environment, and the difficulty of attaining minimum lifestyle requirements. Even when a student receives generous financial aid, it may not be enough to cover the cost of living. If the aid given is not in line with the cost of living in the particular environment, the student will be forced to depend on loans for some or most of his or her living expenses. Moreover, many campus environments face housing shortages, and as can be expected, rents are bid upward when housing is scarce. Not only is the cost of living exorbitant in many environments, housing for students tends to be scarce and costly. If working professionals living in these areas are paying five hundred to one thousand dollars for the privilege of sleeping in someone's attic (or in more than a few cases, a closet), one can imagine the difficulty students would face.

Moreover, in recent years, given the generally dismal economic outlook, many students increasingly look upon graduate school as a safe harbor from both social and economic turmoil. One should bear in mind that one may give up much more than one gains in attending graduate school, as the cost of graduate study, whether paid for by loans or by fellowships, and the income foregone by not working, quickly mount. Also, these costs worsen the longer it takes to complete the degree. Therefore, given the hidden, though very real costs of a graduate education, I suggest one consider working part or full-time (for pay), preferably in a field related to one's studies while pursuing the graduate degree, or having one's place of work foot the bill for graduate study. Otherwise, one just might be better off substituting practical, on the job experience for advanced education, as many graduate programs are not geared to providing students with marketable skills.

Second, one should make certain that whatever body of knowledge one acquires, this knowledge should be transferable to other endeavors, or at least something that one can build upon. Too many students have pursued graduate degrees, in the process learning obscure concepts, methodologies and techniques, only to learn after completing their studies that their knowledge is either impractical or obsolete (or in many cases both)- a situation which not only makes them ill-prepared for the realities of the workforce, but also forces them to play catch-up and spend valuable time and money picking up other skills. Being in such a situation is never pretty- especially when one has a family to support. Therefore, it behooves the prospective student to consider the expected payoff from an investment in advanced education very critically.

This book, along with RL Peters' Getting What You Came For and PJ Feibelman's A PhD Is Not Enough, should be required reading for all graduate students.

I refer to the 8th edition, available since 1996. A really useful guide. I strongly recommend it to each and every potential taker for the expensive MBA studies.

The best book I have seen in one year searching and investigating about MBAs,GMAT, European vs American programs,etc. If you are planning to buy this book, wait for the 2001 edition which should have recent data.

Don't waste your time looking up for another book, this is THE MBA BOOK.

Do not expect some key information about Harvard, Wharton or NYU. This book just lists about 200 MBA with a quick overview (2 pages) on each. If you want to apply to an MBA in Australia or in China, this book can give you all the basic information you need to know.

"WHICH MBA?" is a valuable source of information for understanding the student composition and curriculums of MBA programmes all over the world. I appreciated Bickerstaffe's focus on European programmes. Often it is very difficult to find information on programmes outside the U.S. "WHICH MBA?" does not attempt to rank MBA programmes or assess thier reputation. It merely provides facts.

This book is a godsend to anyone contemplating one of the many top-notch MBA programs outside of the US. Bickerstaffe doesn't attempt to "rank" the schools, which seems to be the only way anymore that the US programs are described in the guidebooks. Instead, he provides factual information often difficult to locate anywhere else. I was surprised to find a book like this existed. Great find.

This is a fantastic guide to MBA programs for non-geographically challenged Americans. The first part of the book discusses admission requirements, the objectives of an MBA and the results of a global survey with academics, students and alumni. The second part provides listings of over 100 schools, including the biggest and best in North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific.

In addition, they have just launched a website alongside the print guide...

This book gives a lot of usefull information about a lot of MBA programs, but I found a lack of top ten U.S. schools. Some of them are missing, there is a huge gap between the best schools and those ranked below. (Some of them are ranked below #100).

I prefer this book than browsing the net because at a glance you can have interesting information of many, many MBA's and the information is well organized. GMAT means, ratio applications/accepted, strong subjects, deadlines, number or students, main features, % of student body, all the basic information to get to know what an MBA may you offer and wheter it's appealing depending on your targets.

The europen chapter is better than anyone. The U.S. chapter is not wide enough, but not bad.

If you are deciding to which MBA you should apply, this book will help you to shorten your starting list and focus on 10 to 12 MBA programs. Then which one to choose it's up to you

This series used to contain "raw comments" from students which I found very interesting. Now, Business Week is the only one that publishes them.

Interesting statistics, good summaries. But pretty duplicative of any other book, web site, WSJ, BW, etc.

Except for international. Very highly recommended if you're looking at international schools off the beaten path.

Getting long in the tooth.

While this book covers North American b-schools, it is particularly valuable if you are interested in a European business school. We particularly like the primary source research from the surveys. While we would have liked to have seen even more quotes from the purported 4,500 survey respondents, this is certainly the most authoritative source we have found for European, particularly British, MBA programs. Additionally, we have received nothing but positive feedback Which MBA? (both the current and previous editions) from our clients.

Where American business schools are concerned, this book says really nothing new: it gives basic stats for admission, salaries, ; it describes the nuts-and-bolts of the curriculum, etc. There is really nothing in the way of editorial comments from students, faculty, recruiters, or for that matter from the authors. It's just the facts, mam.

The approach for European schools is the same, but I know of no other book that mentions more than even, say, half a dozen European schools. This book has about 100 pages of info on British schools (which is almost as much as they have for the U.S.) and almost as much again for "continental" Europe. So if you are interested in schools in Europe beyond the top six or so, you will actually need this book. It will be handy (but incomplete, since it lacks much qualitative information).

If you are a U.S. student (or intend to be), the basic Business Week guide gives the same basic information and adds a lot of qualitative info to. Buy it instead for this country.

This is a superb analysis of a once great government agency. Mr. Nelson makes a compelling case for abolishing the Forest Service -- his book merits the thoughtful attention of anyone concerned with the preservation and responsible management of our nation's national forests....this includes the Forest Service itself!

Robert Nelson argues that it's time to abolish the U.S. Forest Service. Nelson spent 18 years in the Department of Interior's policy shop, and he knows the issues. His book covers the history of the Forest Service and its policies that lead - to some extent - to this year's devastating Western wildfires. The service has made too many resource management mistakes. It doesn't have the same interest in forestry and grazing management as the people who reside in the areas the service manages. Nelson makes a convincing case that the people with strong local interests in resource management could certainly do no worse than the Forest Service when it comes to preventing devastating fires, so let's give them a chance. As Nelson explains, ecosystem management from on high is used to justify anything the service might want to do, but top the top-down approach doesn't work any longer for resource management. And, as Nelson writes, it's not just the executive branch that needs a new approach. Congress might not know what it's doing, either: "Federal politics is today dominated by national television networks and other media that distort as often as clarify the real forest issues. If decisions for the forests of the West are made in Washington, most democratically elected representatives will be far removed from the places where their decisions take effect. Many members of Congress will have never visited the national forests where their votes will be determining future policy." This book should be assigned to all forestry majors, in colleges everywhere. (Note-I wrote about this book for Timberlinemag.com.)

The recent wildfires in New Mexico and Colorado are a painful illustration of the costs of federal land management. America's National Parks and National Forests are in disarray; millions of acres are just one spark away from complete conflaguration. Thus, the latest political economy forum book, Robert Nelson's A Burning Issue: A Case for Abolishing the U.s. Forest Service could not be more timely. Nelson, a professor at the University of Maryland (and a former colleague of mine at the Competitive Enterprise Institute) lays out why Smokey the Bear must shoulder much of the blame for turning the national forests into a tinderbox. Political management of the U.S. Forest Service lies at the heart of its current difficulties, Nelson explains. It is not simply a matter of the wrong leadership or wrong institutional mission. Building on his earlier work on federal land management, Nelson shows why neither the progressive era doctrine of "scientific management," nor newer notions of "ecosystem management" or "natural regulation" can solve the current mess. Only a wholesale reconstitution of the forest service's structure and responsibilities will suffice. Indeed, Nelson explains why America's forests, and neighboring communities, would be safer were the forest service eliminated altogether in favor of decentralized forest units directly responsible for their management and care. For the forests' sake, hope that such an approach becomes politically viable before the next fiery maelstrom ignites.

[Note, this review originally appeared as part of my column in the Washington Times.]

With nearly 5 billion acres ablaze out West this summer, Nelson's book is well-timed if poorly thought out. His thesis is that the Forest Service should be abolished entirely and he's being funded by the Competitive Enterprise Institute -- a "shill tank" for less government and more big business profiteering -- to say as much. The problem is that the REAL problem (as Nelson admits) is too much fire suppression for too long out west. Nelson argues that a "fuel buildup" out west requires more "mechanical thinning," (i.e. logging for private profit on public lands). In reality, however, mechanical thinning is simply too expensive to do the job, while proscribed fires require a LARGER Forest Service budget to be effectively managed. It's hard to read Nelson's book without seeing it as being little more than a clever stalking horse: an industry-funded case statement for more rape and ruin of the forest. A visit to the Competitive Enterprise Institute's web site (one of Nelson's employers) makes it clear they have never seen an environmental or public health law they liked. Nelson's book is less a case statement for forest protection than it is for continued massive subsidies for industry exploitation of public land. When Nelson says "mechancial thinning" will not pay for itself, he is really calling for massive public subsidies of the timber industry. When Nelson advocates "recovering" lost revenue from "thinning" the forest, he is really advocating chopping down healthy forests for commercial purposes. Bottom line: this book blows a lot more smoke than any of the fires out west. We need more science and less "forest liar" propaganda.

Excerpted from a book review by Ronald N. Johnson in the Independent Review (Fall 2001)

In A Burning Issue, Robert Nelson argues that the U.S. Forest Service is demoralized within and besieged from without by a wide array of interest groups. He attributes this sorry state of affairs to the Forest Service's inability to define its mission in a time of rapidly changing values in American society. His solution to this predicament is to abolish the agency.

"The leading policy issue today on the national forest system--issues that demonstrate the inability of the current Forest Service to deal with the basic problems of the national forests--revolve around forest fire and its ecological consequences." Federal fire policy has sought to eliminate fire, but has instead merely changed its time and place. Wildfires have gone from being high-frequency, low-intensity events, which sustained certain ecosystems, to low-frequency, high-intensity fires prompting costly suppression attempts that have often proved futile.

According to Nelson, a variety of interest groups have converged to sustain the fire-suppression policy. There is litle question that interest groups shape policies and political behavior, but Nelson's book would not win high praise from academics for its application of public-choice concepts. Although Nelson may have correctly identified the underlying interest groups, he does not offer evidence to support his claims about their politicking. However, such an analysis is not his objective. Rather, he seeks to make the case not only that Forest Service fire policy, along with reductions in timber harvests, has been a costly mistake, but that the alternative approach advocated by many so-called environmentalists is also fraught with contradictions and costs.

Although I concur with Nelson's recommendation to abolish the Forest Service, I think it is an unlikely outcome, and his intermediate or short-run proposal offers only limited benefits. Nevertheless, his book should be required reading for all students of government, not only those concerned with Forest Service policy, because it provides an excellent source in any attempt to understand the consequences of allowing a governmental agency to become so buffeted by competing pressure groups that it loses direction and becomes an even more costly entity.