Consultants Books

I am a big fan of Boston based detective fiction and have read all of Healy's books. I found Turnabout not up to his usual standard, but still worth reading.

Think about this: if you had the chance to be young again would you take it; even if you lost all your memories eventually? That's what the 50 people in the book The Turnabout had to ask themselves only they didn't have a choice. What is it that attracts us to the young years so much? Would it be worth your memories to go back to your youth?
I personally would not want to lose my memories. I'm only 15 and I know that I wouldn't give them up to re-attempt my life as bad as it may seem sometimes. I feel memories are one if not the most important thing to keep in this world. One of my leading fears is the dreadful fear of developing Alzheimer's and losing everything I've worked to have. In the end really all we have left are memories; this thought always seems to kill me too.
But you might be thinking if all we have left in the end is memories and that's depressing why not just go back to where you're living all those memories? I don't exactly know why I feel I'd rather not but I still wouldn't. It's still a matter of knowing I had something in my life. Would you want to just forget the love that you and your wife shared, or lose the memories of raising your children, or all the lives you might have touched in your life somehow? I wouldn't give these memories for anything. These things are the reason I live. And if I had them I wouldn't want to risk losing them (or the memories of them) and risk not being able to do it again.
The Turnabout was a very thought provoking book as you can see. Many questions were brought to my head. You'll have to read and decide for yourself what you believe because what you believe is one of the most important things to decide in the world or else your not really living I feel.

Just as in the book 101 ways to be Romantic, I found some of the sugestions to be absurd and silly. This atleast, is true for me. There are some things I would not do in 101 years. For the most part, I found many good ideas and I have tried a few and found them to be successful. The ideas that I won't try might be the ones that work great for you. Get this book and if you only find a few good ideas or 101, you will be better off than if you had left this book on the shelf.

Anne Marie Winston turns tragedy into a budding romance that withstands the trials and tribulations of parenthood. Most couples need to prepare for the big descision to have a baby, but Jack Ferris must become an instant father. His orphaned niece brings him more joy than he could ever have imagined once he gets over his fear of the awesome responsibility of raising a child. Romance is his ultimate reward.

We are big Balto fans, and were excited to see a book about the rest of his life. This book, while filled with facts, did not tell them in an interesting way. Much of the language and writing style would only be interesting to adults or older kids 14-16.

This book offers practicle, easy to follow information for women who are concerned about their personal safety.

Professor Larry Reid, Director - Never A Victim

Sophy is an operating room Sister. She is very good at what she does. Max Oosterwelde is a visiting consultant. They both have the same godfather (another surgeon). That's the way they get thrown together all the time. Not much of a story, no desperate money troubles on the part of the heroine, no beautiful girlfriend, just misunderstandings. If you like an easy Betty Neels story, this is it.

My time is very valuable and too much of it would have been required to read the whole book. I have to believe that this author knows what he's talking about, because he has been published many times, but I was not impressed with his writing style. It was very difficult to get into because he spent a lot of time focusing on what he was going to tell us later. By skipping pages and doing spot reading I did learn some, but there were too many typos and he was too wordy. I prefer the writing style of William Bond in Going Solo.

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

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

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

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

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

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