Organizations Books

Bountiful Harvest: Technology, Food, Safety, And The Environment by Thomas R. DeGregori (Professor of Economics, University of Houston) is a thoroughly "reader friendly" introduction and analysis of how modern technology has drastically affected our environmentally based, technology enhanced food supply. Exposing myths and presenting extensive, meticulous research on the history of pesticides, pollution, organic agriculture, and much more, Bountiful Harvest is a very highly recommended, fact-filled primer, which will provide the non-specialist general reader an invaluable instructional background with respect to what really is served up on the dinner plate.

Thomas R. DeGregori knows his food technology. A professor of economics at the University of Houston, DeGregori has written an excellent defence of modern agriculture and biotechnology.

I would recommend this book as an antidote to the frightening biotechnology-gone-mad scenarios painted by organisations such as Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth.

This book is a welcome addition to the biotechnology debate.

Radical environmentalists and nature-first types beware! Dr. Tom DeGregori dares to controvert your bluster, and has the courage not to "think small." DeGregori, a Professor of Economics at the University of Houston Central Campus, has long played the "Devil's Advocate" to Barry Commoner's "Runaway Technology Thesis." For a minimum of thirty years, he has steadily proffered logical counterpropositions to the knee-jerk anti-science of modern ecological Luddites.

In his wonderful new book, aptly entitled BOUNTIFUL HARVEST: TECHNOLOGY, FOOD SAFETY, AND THE ENVIRONMENT, DeGregori carefully integrates human evolution, reason, art, writing, and manufacture as the prerequisites and components of technology. As he has done elsewhere, DeGregori once again promotes the humanity of technology, which is both a phenomenon and process, in defiance of those who would spurn it as a materialistic vice. Early on, he declares that without technology, we pitiful humans would have had to adapt to our environments "by the much slower adaptive process known as speciation [the evolution of different species]." Technology, which is unique to the human species, saved us eons of evolution and gave us to ability to maneuver and develop throughout the world.

DeGregori reminds us that anti-technology evolved "with, and probably before, Plato," who argued that with the creation of the alphabet (and writing), the young would be urged not to rely on their own memory. This in turn founded a viewpoint that we, as humans, somehow "lose something" with every technological advance. He unmasks the insanity (and inanity) of such sophistry in his chapters on food safety, where he cleverly refutes the would-be superiority of "organic foods." Indeed, we created artificial substances to fend off the very toxicities and incapacities, which organic farming reintroduces. The author boldly asserts that a return to purely organic farming might feed one-fifth of the current world population, involving farm output losses of 53 to 100 percent. Moreover, organic fertilizers often are accompanied by graveolent diseases that have been long since stymied, or eliminated, by technological countermeasures. DeGregori is best when he scoffs at the "whole foods" fad, which encourages well-to-do (and well-fed) customers to buy potentially fecally contaminated foods at a 57 percent mark-up!

The fact is that human beings never have, and never will, live in "harmony" with nature because "by nature" humans must transform or, at the very least, disturb environments to make the regions habitable. Without technology, our physically inferior species could only survive in tropical or, at best, subtropical environments. Even the simplest of farmsteads, say, a swidden plot, at least temporarily clears natural vegetation to make way for crop cultivation. The fact is that it is only through the implementation of suitable technologies that humans can minimize the disturbance and the dangers to themselves and their environments.

As Dr. DeGregori has reminded us for decades: never before have so many of us lived such long and such relatively healthy lives. The shortest lived and least healthy among us, as in Africa South of the Sahara, are comparatively miserable precisely because they do not have the technology to meet their needs. It is the ultimate irony that the anti-technologists, who oppose irradiated, genetically altered, and biotechnological foods, are harming the very people--whom they blatantly otherwise claim to defend--who most need the potential bounty of that advanced nutrition. Already bypassed by the Green Revolution, Africans can ill afford to miss the coming revolution in food technology.

Always stimulating and controversial, Dr. DeGregori once again takes up the cross of sensibility against those who make the headlines and only occasionally make sense. BOUNTIFUL HARVEST should be read by economists, geographers, anthropologists, ecologists, and any and all who value their fellow human beings and their environment. Highest rating*****!

I'm still laughing at this book. I swear I've been in these office's and worked for the managers he described before. A must read for anyone hitting the workforce.

Dianna Wells Shire, author "The Ordinary Life of a Military Woman".

This book is a real hoot for those in the corporate world! It says all the things you'd want to, but can't because you would get fired. The boring, the ridiculous, the impossible -- the demands and expectations of the shirts and ties on the little folks who do all the work. It is so Dilbert. You gotta love it. A great gift, (but you may have to use an AKA. )

The author has a great sense of humor and must have had a blast writing this. You will have fun reading it. I have no doubt that every reader will recognize a work-place situation or someone they know. There's something between these pages for anyone who has ever held a job.

I highly recommend this 100 page book to busy administrators looking for practical ideas to foster and enhance the work of professional learning communities in their schools. The Walk Through Protocol, along with the structures and processes for teacher collaboration, effectively engages teachers in meaningful examination of student learning in a non-threatening, empowering manner.

Breaking Through to Effective Teaching is aptly titled--the ideas and strategies presented here are simple and yet ground-breaking in effecting systemic change! This elegant little book offers a model that takes the anxiety and sting out of the classroom walk-through and turns it into a source of powerful tools to enrich student learning. Teachers are empowered with new strategies to visit each other's classrooms, searching for those practices that are getting the desired results. Rather than concentrating on "fixing" what's wrong, classroom visitors are urged to focus like a laser on what's working. This releases the potential that exists in every school and builds an enthusiastic community of learners and inquirers. The many examples and case studies will be helpful to administrators, teachers and community members who crave a culture of positive energy, mutual support and impressive results! I highly recommend it.

This practical guide to institutionalizing walk-throughs into a school's culture is a MUST read for every administrator.

Sandra Barry
Superintendent
Anaheim City School District

This book really does fill a void in the market. Most books on the history of Christian worship are excessively simple or excessively complex. Occasionally an educated lay person will ask me for a book that they can understand (without a divinity degree) but that goes beyond the simple "altar guild" books one might use as an absolute introduction. I am very pleased that Professor White is able to maintain the middle ground.

White does an excellent job tracking several spiritual themes through the various Christian epochs. He compares things as what was the process of becomming a Christian and other themes that most consider timeless, but instead shows the changing in what was considered normative from the early church, patristic period, medieval ages, enlightenment period and modern Christianity. I have read many many books on worship, and this one is definately worth reading and White's analysis is honest, reasonable and very informative.

This history book breaks the molds of stereotype. The format is simple: 1) worship of the New Testament Era 2) worship of the early Christian centuries 3) worship of the middle ages 4) worship of the reformation period 5) worship of modern times, and 6) worship of the future.

What causes me to give this book a 5-star rating is its honesty. Most books of this nature try to plug a certain perspective at the risk of almost becoming dishonest. This book simply lays it out. If you become uncomfortable learning that your style of worship is not as universal as you would like, or that your theology hasn't always been central to Christian practice, so be it.

I found myself challenged by the questions I began asking. This is the kind of book I like.

The inspired word of God known as the Holy Scriptures is a blueprint for our Christian lives. It doesn't end there, God continues to inspire Christian writers like Francis Schaffer to help us along our wonderful walk with Christ Jesus.

Recently I had the privaledge to read Broken Cisterns.It's truely an interesting book to read, if you've been there, done that and never could understand why, reading this book can help you mend the broken cistern. You see God will hear and forgive, but we have to forgive ourselves also and the heavenly fathertake hold of us. There's so much to learn from your writing this is only one. I would advise everyone who has the oppertunity to read and dwell on broken cisterns. Looking forward to reading anotherinspirational book given to you from our heavenly father.
A SISTER IN CHRIST

Is the Church today a fountain of living waters full of power or a broken cistern in need of a radical change? Francis Schaffer brings a prophetic call to the Church taken from Jeremiah 2:13. The Church has made the same mistake as ancient Israel by building religious cisterns that have no power. A return to God, the "fountain of living waters"is desperately needed in the Church today! This book will open the blind eyes to see God is calling the Church to a radical change that will bring God's unlimited power forth. This book is a must read!

Don't be fooled by the first part of the title; for this book is really about Blacks, Jews, and the Changing Face of the Ghetto. Pritchett studies Brownsville in details, but never forgets to see the bigger picture, which should be of interest for any historian or social scientist. Pritchett is very good at giving you the facts, the analysis and the feelings as well. This book is not just about a ghetto in Brooklyn, it is indeed about urban change and inequality.

As someone who lived not far from Brownsville in the 1950s and early '60s, I can say this is an exceptionally accurate book. It is well-written and is the best attempt I've seen yet at explaining the phenomenon of the changing urban neighborhood. Not only does Pritchett provide many well-reserached, well-thought-out answers but, just as important, he raises insightful, penetrating questions. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in American urban history, particularly as it relates to New York City.

New Yorkers see constant small changes in their city, and the cumulative effect of those changes can remake the character and composition of a neighborhood almost overnight. That is what happened in Brownsville during the late 1950s and early 1960s. What had been an entirely Jewish neighborhood of sidewalk synagogues and old-world customs became an entirely black and Latino neighborhood. Pritchett captures that period of change and the various players -- community activists, business interests, government agencies and politicians -- masterfully. He tells a poignant story of idealistic neighborhood leaders who fought for integrated public housing to meet the needs of their community and were instead given massive projects built to house the city's poor who had been displaced by urban renewal. This is a great book for anyone interested in New York or urban history generally.

Richard Barrett again does an outstanding job of clearly stating his main points, then building on them with facts and good examples. He is able to expertly blend some of the key principles of other authors -- Ken Wilbur and Don Beck -- with some of his material. The text provides some excellent evaluation tools, both for individuals and organizations. He references a number of websites for additional clarity of some of his points. He has an excellent reference list at the end of the book. Anyone who is looking at leadership and organizational values/vision/mission will do well to read this timely book.

Harry Owens, Jr., MD, MIM

Richard does another excellent job describing the seven levels of consciousness model and how this framework can be used to effectively measure an organization's culture. This process provides a values-based approach within a whole system perspective. Regardless of the status of an organziation's cultural health, this whole system approach provides the opportunity to integrate where an organization is (its current strengths, opportunities, systems and resources) and provides a map to get to where the organization wants to be. A great book that helps make sense of the complexity of organizational culture and how to improve it. Nice work!

Many of us read Richard Barrett's best-selling book, Liberating the Corporate Soul, and admired his visionary and soul nurturing approaches to building sustainable and enduring organisations. Now he has given birth to another major leap forward in how to develop and sustain values-based organisations. In this new book, Richard demonstrates again his genius at delivering clear conceptual and experience-based thinking on organisation culture as a new frontier of competitive advantage. Building on his experience in carrying out over 600 cultural values assessments in 35 countries, he shows how to build full-spectrum consciousness in leaders and organizations and how to carry out whole-system change to meet the challenges of accelerating change, deepening complexity and growing systemic risks.
George Starcher, President, European Baha'i Business Forum

Purington & Butler do an outstanding job of providing a systematic approach to managing positive change in training & development. The book is full of very specific & useful recommendations to upgrade an organization's culture cost effectively and gain competitive advantage in its ability to learn quickly. It shares many examples of what worked well along with a few examples of flexibility with plans that needed to be changed. The only negative to the book ... and it is only a minor negative is that it sometimes repeated some of the examples. If you are in a training department, are in a position to influence or approve a training department's strategies or are selling & marketing to the training & development market ... this is a must read!!

Purington and Butler have succeeded by detailing how to implement the strategy they so clearly recommend in the book. The book sets forth in an orderly and easily understood manner the steps that will greatly improve any training department. If there is any one book that will pull it all together for the training professional, this is the one. A must read book.

This book provides a step by step process to make any training department successful. The book is written in easy to understand language with detailed success strategy for creating the ideal learning organization. Most training books fail to inform the reader how to execute the strategy they are recommending. Purington and Butler have done a masterful job putting the detail in the puzzle. Outstanding and a must read book for all training professionals!

As a student, I used this book for a class and continue to use it every day as a reference tool as a professional. The authors provide thorough insight backed by years of professional experience. I would stongly suggest this book to any individual looking to enhance their professional skills/appearance prior to or upon entering the workforce, and professors in business management and/or communication arts.

Book is divided into four easy-to-read sections: relational life, work life, public life, and techno-life. Addresses such topics as listening, communication styles, workplace diversity, leadership, business etiquette, public speaking, stress and conflict, and computer technology. Handy reference for every day use. Toolboxes in each chapter provide self-analysis check list on various business communication topics. I highly recommend it for classroom, business, and for personal use.

Here is one of the best of the hundreds of books which cover most (if not all) of the same subjects in a single volume. The authors of this one combine a textbook (without pedantry) with a manual (without condescension). Their material is organized in a series of "Units":

1. Overture [eg "The Communication Process"]

2. Managing Relationship Life in the Workplace [eg "The Art of Listening"]

3. Managing Work Life in the Workplace [eg "Managing Stress and Conflict"]

4. Managing Public Life in the Workplace [eg "Establishing Your Presentation Goals"]

5. Managing Techno-Life in the Workplace [eg "Three Tips for Managing Techno-Life Competencies"]

As these "Unit" titles correctly suggest, the authors provide both a system and a process to increase business and professional communication skills. They include a wealth of specific suggestions as well as real-world examples which suggest HOW to derive the greatest benefit, both from the system and the process. For whom will this book be most valuable? For experienced executives, it offers basic but useful reminders of what they probably know already (at least untuitively) or what they have learned empirically; for less-experienced executives, it offers what may well be new ideas, strategies, and tactics which can help to accelerate their career development.

This book review is written from a different perspective. I am not a professional business coach, but I have benefited from Bill Zipp's coaching and mentoring for several years. If he writes like he coaches this book should be 10 stars.

As I have surveyed 'The Business Coaching Toolkit' I recognized several themes that Bill encouraged me to consider, the one percent solution, the sixth suitcase, SMART goals and the new twist on SWOT. But, more importantly, is that he walked me through each of the exercises and assignment with a combination of competence and care. The process enriched my life and enhance my effectiveness as a leader. He wasn't able to change my weaknesses into strength, but he was able to help me identify areas that need attention and then gave me some tools to do my best.

I recommend this book because I recommend the author.

Charles David Kelley
President
Bridge Builders International

As an experienced business coach (eighteen years), I resonated with many of the observations and descriptions. I also picked up some excellent tips (the closure letter for one) and have done a fair amount of reflection on my own coaching practice while reading. That's a lot of value to receive from one book!

This was a very good book. It was written well and an easy read. It is written for business coaches who will benefit from having different problem solving techniques presented to them. Some of what is covered has to do with how to effectively use people skills to help the people being coached. While other things covered had to do with what solutions to recommend when coaching. The book had 11 chapters as follows:

0. Introduction: The evolution of personal coaching
1. Developing a leadership vision (It's not what you think!)
2. The 1% solution
3. Getting things done through others
4. Making goals smart
5. The power of positive praise
6. Making feedback effective
7. A new twist on SWOT
8. The life leadership dashboard
9. The 6th suitcase
10. What color is your team?
11. Using the 10 tools
Appendix: the 10 tools summarized

I'm a SCORE (Senior Corps of Retired Executives) volunteer business coach. Just about everything covered in this book directly relates to what I do in my capacity as a SCORE volunteer. I was a very interested reader while turning the pages. And I must say I was not disappointed with what was presented. I won't say I learned anything new. And I don't think there is any rocket science included. But for a seasoned business coach and entrepreneur this book was a fun read for me. 5 stars!