Departments Books

This is a great book and I definitely recommend it, but you really should get the premium program instead of the comprehensive program. The premium is the same book but also has a cd included which has four computer practice tests as well as lots of extra practice problems. It is well worth the extra cost for the premium book. I bought the comprehensive and after reading reviews about the premium, I realized I bought the wrong version and went ahead and bought the premium book in addition. I'm really glad I did.

Most mathematics instructors who are appointed chair of their department are "promoted" from within. Therefore, they are immediately transformed from one of the group into the most visible and directly accessible boss of the math faculty. Before they took over the responsibility, they were insulated from dealing with the administrative upper echelons and could form opinions, cultivate select friends in the department and take sides on departmental issues. After they assume the leadership role, they now have to deal directly with organizational administrators and they run the risk of hearing a cry of "favoritism" if they carry out their previous social intercourse. Most members of a department want the chair to act as the first among equals, except when it is a cause that is near to their heart. In that case, they have no problem with the chair showing a bit of a dictatorial streak.
Such a transition to the chair is a hard one, made all the more difficult because you are essentially on your own. Support among your former peers is fleeting, depending on how they view your decisions. In many cases, you are expected to continue to do almost everything you did before, along with your new duties. Up until now, there been no guidebook regarding what to expect and how to juggle the many responsibilities. This book is a manual for what to expect in the new role as chair as well as some advice in how to deal with the problems. All institutions have their differences, so the contributors try to be as general as possible in their scenarios.
Situations such as managing difficult faculty protected under the tenure umbrella, handling decisions to grant or refuse tenure, dealing with irate students, budget restrictions, student recruitment, a myriad of legal issues and generally just keeping your sanity are all covered. There is no sugar coating here, the contributors are up front and honest about how difficult and unrewarding the job can be. There are also short articles written by administrators such as the president, dean and provost, giving their perspective on the role of the department chair.
I strongly recommend that anyone who is potentially in line to become department chair read this book. It may be your only hope.

Published in Journal of Recreational Mathematics, reprinted with permission.

Those familiar only with Trevor's brilliant and haunting examinations of everyday worlds and lives may be as surprised as I was to uncover this early work. At first, you may be unsure that this is, indeed, Trevor; the droll humor, the bizarre story of equally offbeat characters, will perhaps make you think it is Evelyn Waugh in your hands. You will follow the adventures of a young man through the world of romance journalism, and marvel at the lack of Trevorian dimension in the people. But take heart. It is raw for the master, but it is fascinating to see the first threads of his later skill appear. And it's very, very funny.

The book provides both a framework and a set of the case studies of IT Outsourcing: subcontracting to a third party the implementation and maintenance of networks, software, support, backup etc.

According to the framework presented in this book, IT Outsourcing allows a company to get rid of its non-key activities and allocate the resources to its main business. This allows the company to cut costs and be at the top of progress in the IT.

The book covers the basic aspects of planning, negotiating, implementation, cooperation and termination of IT outsourcing. It covers all the issues: technical, economical, legal and so on.

I recommend this book as a starting point to any manager who deals with IT, to broaden the views.

Although the framework is good from the academic point of view, the examples are laid out in a manner that lacks variety, liveliness and brightness.

This small, hardback volume is a biography of the Irish, Martin Murphy, Jr. who emigrated first to Canada, then to Missouri, and finally to California in 1844. The volume contains the main article of 28 pages, lengthy footnotes of 22 pages, 18 pages of appendices, a bibliography and an index. It is as thorough as is possible given what is available on its subject.

The author lucked into previously unknown materials about its subject while investigating Murphy and his family and also collects information obtained from Murphy's descendants.

Murphy did not play a prominent role in any of the early events of California's history, but still was significant to those times. His biography adds another puzzle piece on the landscape of California's history over the forty years from 1844 to 1884.

The biography is easy to read and left me comfortable in its accuracy through its attention to detail and sources. Murphy played a minor role in the Bear Flag Revolt, in that the first event of the Revolt, the taking of Mexican government horses from Lt. Arce in early June 1846 took place at the Murphy Rancho on the Consumnes River, 18 miles from Sutter's Fort. He and his family were witnesses to the events.

William J. Trinkle
Director
THE BEAR FLAG MUSEUM

This CD puts several publications together for a highly portable MOUT library. Although there are no ?quick searches? that bring the reader directly to the MOUT information, each FM is there in its entirety to make searching simple. A good source for train-up or reference. It runs in an Adobe layout, making it user friendly but sometimes slow. Well worth the money.

Firehouse Dog won't go down as one of the greatest family stories in history (like A Dog Of Flanders or A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (P.S.)), but is a good solid story for adolescents, about 12-year-old Shane, who's father is the Captain of the firehouse housing Fire Engine 55. The Captain is a widower who succeeded his own late brother to the job, leaving Shane with very little parental supervision. While ditching school Shane runs into Rexxx, a lost Hollywood movie dog. Shane is caught due to the dog jumping on him, and resents the dog for a while. Rexxx was lost wearing a prop collar so they think his name is Dewey, and can't find the owner; but while trying Shane learns how good Dewey is at tricks and gradually decides he wants to adopt him. So you have a typical dog story situation, the dogs presence helping build the boys character while you wonder if the boy will have to lose the dog if the Hollywood owner ever turns up. But wait there's more: meanwhile Shane learns his father is investigating a series of fires that might be arson -- including the one in which his uncle died. So the plot builds up to a more serious situation with suspense, firefighting action, and a dramatic conclusion. Fortunately this is developed gradually from the more humorous first half of the book, so it works on both levels, and never gets too scary for kids, but never gets dull, with some firefighting action, humor, and a moderately poignant story to hold it all together. Based on the movie starring Josh Hutcherson, who proved his diverse acting skills starring in films ranging from Little Manhattan to Bridge to Terabithia.

Legendary WWII cartoonist Bill Mauldin was approached by the National Park Service to put a book together for the 1976 Bicentennial celebration. The book would depict the life of the Continental soldier during the American Revolution and include cartoons in the style Mauldin made popular in his "Willie and Joe" work from the war years. Bill missed his due date by 2 years, but the results are interesting, if not spectacular. Based on Mauldin's research, "Mud and Glory" attempts to provide a soldier's-eye view of the Revolution. He does this by using his own WWII experiences and projecting them back 200 years. Often, this works well. Mauldin describes the soldier's fatigue and his need to obtain supplies (what the WWII GI called "moonlight requisitioning") from sometimes-unwilling locals. He describes the horror of trenchfoot, evidently so run-of-the-mill in the 18th century that it hardly merited a mention,. He describes tick races in which soldiers matched their best pests against one another. He knows that a soldier sleeps best in the snow with his coat underneath him to slow the snow's melting. He describes the primitive and temperamental nature of the flintlock and the extremes to which a soldier went to keep it dry.

Mauldin's cartoons, ironically, are the least interesting part of the book. While he claimed to want to avoid sending Willie and Joe back to the 18th century, that's pretty much what he did -- even to the point of cribbing from his WWII work: the soldier warming his with his feet in a cooking pot mirrors the GI doing the same in his "pot," or helmet. Mauldin's humor is pedestrian at best, and some of his ideas need work. Did Tories really line the back of Old Glory with the Union Jack -- or is this a allegory? And his punch lines are weak. In one, a snowed-over sleeper who wakes to the start of bugle and drummer remarks lamely, "Rabble rousers!" And when "Baron" von Steuben, when drilling a recruit, tells his charge that he "want(s) to hear those rags click!" it's hard to know whether Mauldin is making jokes about the 18th-century Prussian or his 20th-century German counterpart.

But Mauldin's writing is humane, witty and interesting. In a few short pages he brought to life the obstinacy of the soldiery, the effeteness of aristocrats like George Washington, and the rugged conditions that combatants faced routinely. And while it's sometimes hard to know where Mauldin's conjectures end and where history begins, it sure helps to hear the perspective of a man who personally endured the life he sets out to depict.

From the beginning of the series, Gill has experimented with his characters and plots in an effort to find his métier, gradually increasing his character development, narrowing down his settings by making them more "Irish," and developing increasingly complex plots. This novel, his fourth, unlike its two immediate predecessors (McGarr on the Cliffs of Moher, set largely in New York, and McGarr and the Sienese Conspiracy, set in Italy), is located entirely in Ireland, with all the action connected with the Dublin Horse Show. While the plot is complex, the characters are not, and the charming humor of later novels, such as Death of a Joyce Scholar, the eighth in the series, is absent.

Many threads develop simultaneously and go in different directions. An enormously talented young girl, Mairead Caughey, wants to become a concert pianist. Her mother, the murder victim, is the sister of an IRA member on the run, and both of them have lost their land to a greedy neighbor. Mairead's boy friend, the son of a newly rich member of the Irish Dial, is a drug addict who may be involved in local burglaries. A major horse dealer, paralyzed in an accident, is has staked much of his reputation on the success of his horses in the Dublin show, and his wife is slated to ride the horse which paralyzed him. A priest seems to have more than a passing interest in Mairead, and Mairead herself may not be who she appears to be.

To develop all these threads, Gill introduces innumerable characters, some of whom are connected to just one thread, and some of whom overlap. Because they are not developed, except superficially, their motivations are always not clear, nor are the reasons the action moves in the direction that it does. McGarr, McKeon, O'Shaughnessy, McGarr's wife Noreen, Ruthie Bresnahan, Hugh Ward, and the rest of the detective division of the Garda Soichana all make their appearances, but their characters remain static, since they appear only as police officers and not as developing characters.

A pure police procedural, the novel lacks the quirky characters of later novels, and the very funny scenes that evolve from their interactions. The plot here, though complex and broad, is not very tight, the suspense diffused among too many plot lines. A fascinating novel for those who are interested in observing the development of the series, this novel (also known as Death of an Irish Tradition) is less interesting for its plot and characters than the novels which come later in the series. Mary Whipple

Far superior to old DOT. This ONE book gives info concisely yet on far more Job Titles and has cross references to legacy Dept. of Labor publications. I eagerly jumped on the internet to follow up some leads. When JIST gets all the info up on their website it will be a fantastic resource. I hope they make full book available to bonifide buyers online - cut & paste beats typing! The 4 star rating was based by overly broad Job Titles seeming to inflate the SVP [Specific Vocational Preparation] and GED [General Educational Developement] requirements. This could skew the perception that the goal is less achievable and cost(s) exorbitant. We specifically researched 31514 Vocational & Education Counselor DOT 187.167-198 Veterans Contact Representative. This gave SVP 7 [>2 years and