Projects Books

We have all three of Dr. Heidi's book's and can't wait for the next one. My 5 year-old loves doing the simple experiments that Dr. Heidi outlines. Not only do these books truly illustrate in a simple way the way the world works, but they are a great way to spend time with your children while they are learning valuable things about the world. Dr. Heidi clearly understands how to communicate with 4-8 year-old kids. And I learned a lot to. Highly recommended for learning (by both child and parent) and fun. 5 plus stars!

Dr. Heidi Gold-Dworkin's books are a thrilling addition to children's literature and an important introduction to concepts that most kids usually have to wait to learn until they're in junior and senior high school. With the world of science exploding around us, these books are the best way for kids to learn early what makes our universe tick. I have no doubt that future Nobel Prize winners will cite the influence of Dr.Heidi's books when they mount the podium in Oslo someday!

This is a remarkable children's science book. I am an elementary school teacher and I am using the book for my K-3rd grade students. My students love the experiments and this book is helping them to enjoy science. The pictures are great and the questions that Olivia asks about light and color are just what my students want to know. I can't wait to read the others.

This book is great. Sculpting is a great hobby and for some a great profession, but it can be very time consuming. This book takes the techniques that we all use and shows how to get the same result with a faster, more efficient way of doing it.
A must have for any clay artist.

Sue Heaser has done it again. This is a great book for anyone that works with polymer clay. The whole book is full of step-by-step instructions (with tons of color photos) for many small fast projects. The projects are whimsical in nature, but the information is very helpful. I've been working with and selling clay items for over 20 years and I found this book a wonderful addition to my collection of polymer clay books. I can't wait to see what Sue Heaser comes up with next.

"Fast Polymer Clay" is a book that I would recommend to all beginners. The first third of the book shows basic techniques for working with polymer clay. The instructions are simple and there plenty of pictures for each technique. The rest of the book is devoted to small, quick projects - projects that a beginner can do in an afternoon. They include some pieces of simple jewelry, little figures of people and animals, cards, fridge magnets, etc. Be aware that the projects are mostly cute and whimsical. Those with a taste for "sophisticated" crafts should look elsewhere for projects. I could only see one thing that would have made this book better - a discussion of the merits of various brands of clay. However, that omission doesn't really detract from the techniques presented. Overall, I would say that the book is very well done and I wouldn't hesitate to give it to a complete beginner!

As a 20-something trying to get my career on the right track and make sure that I acheive the goals I've always set for myself, I loved this book. It provided me with great tips that I have been able to apply to every goal that I've set for myself. It's easy to read, easy to understand, and completely applicable to every task, big or small. I think that this well written, easy to follow quick-read is totally worth the $14.95!
(I was lucky enough to get my hands on a pre-released copy, but if I were you I would order now for immediate delivery once it is out on Amazon.com!)

This was an easy read. Helpful in the workplace, and for all projects and I think applicable to all ages. This book is full of solid advice and information that was easy to follow.

Michael Cunningham has done a terrific job breaking down project management into a simplified, usable manner--unlike many others who overcomplicate the process. I am a beginner project manager for a corporate executive, and he reccommended this book as a helpful tool. Finish What You Start will show you step by step how to turn a mess of deadlines, people running loose, and a draining budget into a perfectly controlled masterpiece--you can do it!

We never thought a science fair project could be so silly and fun. And, my kids learned about cooking too!

Reading the Science Spiders books is like going to the dentist. So why did I rate the books so highly? I have a very good dentist. He's friendly, interesting, and before we're finished with the small talk, he's finished with the injection. The worst part of going to the dentist is over before I know it's happening. The Science Spider books are simple, playful stories about a patient, scientifically inclined mom and her young children. The readers don't realize they're learning science until after it happens. My jaw gets numb just thinking about it. There's no math, but readers of all ages become familiar with chemical reactions, color theory, acids, bases, forces, energy, molecules, scientific method, air pressure, and center of gravity. The lucky children who are introduced to science by the Science Spiders will have a positive feeling for the subject that can only help them in future studies. Dr. Kain has a Ph.D in materials science and engineering. She barely conceals her identity in the books as "Mom." Mom is an excellent role model for all children, but especially girls. She and her kitchen experiments prove that science is very much woman's work. And apparently, so is dentistry.

Rick Kamen, author of HEIRLOOM STORIES FROM THE HARNESSMAKER'S SON

The "Science Spiders" series by Dr. Kain is a unique collection of books for kids who are ready to reach for their first experiences in science. One of the books, 'First Science Fair' is a delightful recipe for fun that provides a simple framework for developing the way kids think about doing scientific experiments. From the first observations of the Spider Family on the quality of their Mom's cupcakes (pretty bad!), to the final triumph of brother Pro's entry into a science fair, the story builds on tasty cupcake chemistry and common sense. "First Science Fair's" menu of kitchen science and math will clearly wet the appetites of kids who are just waiting for the chance to combine the right ingredients for their own first experiments.

We have a group of ladies who get together to sew each month. One friend got this book at our local quilting store. We loved so many of the patterns that 4 of us decided to go ahead and get it also. The price was better online. So now we are off and ready to make one of the runners in the book. This was a book that all of us loved most of all the patterns. There are clear and easy instructions, and a great selection.

Absolutely WONDERFUL quilting book using applique! Beautiful use of color and unique applique designs! If you have never done applique before, you will definitely want to after reading this book. Instructions are very clear. Designs can be appliqued using machine applique, needle turn applique, or applique method of your choice! Enjoy!!!

Flowering Quilts: 16 Charming Folk Art Projects To Decorate Your Home by quilting expert Kim Schaefer is a beautifully presented and "user-friendly" needlecraft guide to making sixteen artistic quilting projects. Introducing readers to an easy-to-follow mapping of the construct and design of quilts ranging from Potted Flowers Table Runner, Big Happy Flowers Table Runner, and Checkerboard Tulip Table Runner, to Sunflower Table Runner, Sun Flowers Wall Quilt, Log Cabin Pot Wall Quilt, Raggy Flowers Wall Quilt, A Bloomin' Dozen Wall Quilt, Flowering Quilts provides an extensive and impressive collection of unique and intricate flower-quilts as well as the pattern layout designs for ease in their creation. Flowering Quilts is very highly recommended to all readers searching for a comprehensive and easily read contribution to the flower-design of do-it-yourself quilting projects.

Food has always been a major preoccupation of humankind. The "agricultural revolution" (14,000 - 10,000 BC)changed the world and since then, the majority of the people in the world have been farmers. At least until the 1990s. In that decade, for the first time in the history of the planet, urban dwellers outnumbered rural/ agrarian dwellers. The trend continues, and at the moment, the number of people in prison in the US outnumbers the people who list "farming" as their primary occupation.
This decreasing percentage of farmers producing increasing amounts of food, is thanks to changes in technology. Simply stated, technology, especially petroleum related technology, has increased agriculture's per-capita output many-fold. Pre-20th century agriculture was solar-powered, whereas 20th and 21st century agribusiness is increasingly petroleum powered.
Never before has so much food been available for so little to so many people who are unaware that a carrot grows in dirt! Because so few people are farmers now, especially in the West (USA and Europe), few people are aware of the true costs of food production.
These facts make this book of great value. REading it will help you understand the basics of agriculture and will inspire you to teach others. The illustration of using an apple to demonstrate the limited nature of top-soil is alone worth the price of the book.

Food has always been a major preoccupation of humankind. The "agricultural revolution" (14,000 - 10,000 BC)changed the world and since then, the majority of the people in the world have been farmers. At least until the 1990s. In that decade, for the first time in the history of the planet, urban dwellers outnumbered rural/ agrarian dwellers. The trend continues, and at the moment, the number of people in prison in the US outnumbers the people who list "farming" as their primary occupation.
This decreasing percentage of farmers producing increasing amounts of food, is thanks to changes in technology. Simply stated, technology, especially petroleum related technology, has increased agriculture's per-capita output many-fold. Pre-20th century agriculture was solar-powered, whereas 20th and 21st century agribusiness is increasingly petroleum powered.
Never before has so much food been available for so little to so many people who are unaware that a carrot grows in dirt! Because so few people are farmers now, especially in the West (USA and Europe), few people are aware of the true costs of food production.
These facts make this book of great value. REading it will help you understand the basics of agriculture and will inspire you to teach others. The illustration of using an apple to demonstrate the limited nature of top-soil is alone worth the price of the book.

Sara Coblyn has written an excellent manual for teaching kids (and all of us) the importance of knowing where our food comes from, what's in it, and why that matters. Recommend highly!

Professors Bower and Gilbert have done a fine job of crystalizing the stream of work begun by Professor Bower's 1970 Managing the Resource Allocation Process (RAP). The initial RAP work descriptively presented a more practically satisfying view of how firms arrive at major resource decisions than the prevailing (to this day) mathematical optimization models in economic textbooks. What Professor Bower, and those who followed in this line of research described is far closer to the reality experienced by executives.

In the intervening 35 years quite a few of business academe's leading thinkers have used this three-layer framework to describe and understand the inner workings of complex organizations. In the process, while the basic framework has remained solid, many nuances and implications have emerged. Furthermore, the RAP model has moved from more descriptive toward becoming more prescriptive. Thus RAP has become increasingly relevant to business practice.

Much of this work, however, has appeared in piecemeal fashion -- insightful, but somewhat disconnected from the underlying theory. This book brings together the varied threads of work in a nicely structured, focused volume. The reader receives direct exposure to the leading thinkers in this school of work. The book provides a concise reference point highlighted by specific cases to bring out the subtleties of the theory and usefulness of the RAP. And happily, the quality of the writing is extremely high and approachable, even for the non-academic reader.

While the more practical business executive may find some of this a bit too academic, that academic-ness is necessary to frame such a broad theory of business. Those who undertake reading this book will be rewarded with useful insights and a clearer understanding of what really makes large organizations tick.

The chapters of this book cover a wide range of industries, stratgic challenges, and managerial perspectives, and each combines a solid footing in the realities of organizational life with careful and rigorous scholarship. With contributions from such luminaries as Clayton Christensen, and including experts on decision-making, strategy, and industrial economics, this collection of essays shines a light on just about every aspect of strategy-making and implementation.

At the same time, and all the more powerfully, there is a consistent and readily evident thread that runs through it all, a thread made evident in thoughtful summary essays for each section: strategy is what you do, and how you decide what to do is the essence of the strategy process. To guide strategy-making, then, is to shape how decisions are made and direct the allocation of resources -- organizational, financial, and human -- toward specific ends.

Getting stuff done in complex organizations is a messy process, and fraught with difficulty, but the insights available in this book make it clear that if this complexity is to be channelled and controlled, it must be embraced, not ignored. Time spent reading this book and reflecting on the insights its many authors offer will pay large dividends.

Full Disclosure: I contributed a chapter to this publication, and am proud of having my work included in this collection. I offer no opinion on my chapter, and instead comment here only on the other chapters.

My initial reaction to the title was to question which should come first: resource allocation or strategy? Then as I began to read this brilliant book, I understood what Joseph L. Bower and Clark G. Gilbert's objectives were as co-editors and contributors. As they reveal in the book's Preface, "Our intention in writing this book is threefold: First, we hope to communicate the unique character of the resource allocation process and its link to strategy through the development of a formal model. Second, we hope to show how this model has evolved over 30 years of research development. Finally, we hope to better connect the research on resource allocation to the field of strategy as a whole." Bower and Gilbert brilliantly achieve all three objectives.

The material is carefully organized within six Parts:

I Introduction to the Resource Allocation Process

Overview: how to link resource allocation to strategy; how to model the resource allocation process; what the proper role of strategy making is during organization evolution; and "anomaly-seeking research" which examines 30 years of theory development in resource allocation theory

II When the Bottom-up Process Fails

Overview: when and why the bottom-up resource allocation process fails; the causes and effects of customer power, strategic investment, and the failures of leading firms; the failure of bottom-up strategic processes and the role of top-down disinvestment; and comparing established firms and entrepreneurial start-ups in terms of the process of international expansion

III Restoring the Bottom-up Process

Overview: how to restore the bottom-up process of re4source allocation; strategy making as viewed an iterative process of resource allocation; and beyond resource allocation, how definition and impetus interact to shape strategic outcomes

IV The Need for Top-down Intervention

Overview: when and why corporate intervention in resource allocation is necessary; which corporate-level options to consider when responding to uncertainty in the pursuit of strategic integration; and what the core issues to considering adoption of complex structures and entering into "webs of alliances"

V Outside Commentaries on the RAP Perspective

Overview: John Roberts' thoughts about resource allocation, strategy, and organization; Daniel A. Levinthal's comments on the resource allocation process; Margaret A. Peteraf's views on "research complementarities; and Joel A. Podolny's response to "CEO as Change Agent?"

VI Conclusion

Overview: Bower and Gilbert offer a "revised model of the resource allocation process.

Hopefully the brief comments I presume to provide will enable those who read this review to gain a sense of the scope of coverage by co-editors Bower and Gilbert and other contributors. I agree with them that there has been a need for more and better business research that explains the interaction between organizational and economic forces. The results of recent studies offered in this volume make a significant contribution to filling that need. They give us a much clearer "picture" of how large organizations manage their resources.

As Bower and Gilbert note, "Without exception, these activities are distributed more widely across the organization than is usually imagined. More challenging for both descriptive and normative theories of decision making, activities whose consequences are interdependent will typically proceed independently and simultaneously, posing huge problems where coherence is a central requisite for efficiency and effectiveness."

Those who share my high regard for this brilliant book are urged to check out Jeanne Ross's Enterprise Architecture as Strategy, Henry Chesbrough's Open Business Models, Dean Spitzer's Transforming Performance Measurement, and Wayne Eckerson's Performance Dashboards.

I was really anticipating the arrival of this book. I was not disappointed when it finally arrived. The boxes in this book are beautiful. There are many pictures to help you achieve stunning results. As you go through the book, the boxes do get harder, but with some patience you can succeed in making these wonderful little treasures. I would highly recommend this book!

My daughter an I where doing this technique with a regular square box that we knew how to fold and when we first saw this book we ordered it. We love the ideas and directions are easy enough to follow. Now we have many more styles to make. We love it!

Wow!! This is a great book. Lots of diagrams and easy to follow instructions. I used this book with my adult education class and everyone was bursting with ideas from it. Try the boxes in paper also. Carol

*Fundamentalisms Observed* (the 1st volume of 5) is perhaps the most prestigious contribution yet to the ever expanding literature on the subject. Covering this global phenomenon in several traditions, and with a tight typology, this volume brings together a high-powered team of academics from a dozen disciplines and countries to cover such fundamentalisms as North American Protestantism (Chp. 1), Roman Catholicism (Chp. 2), Protestant fundamentalism in Latin America (Chp. 3), Haredim Jewish fundamentalism (Chp. 4), Zionist Jewish fundamentalism (Chp. 5), Sunni Arab fundamentalism (Chp. 6), Shi'ite fundamentalism (Chp. 7), Islamic fundamentalism in South Asia, (Chp. 8), Hindu fundamentalism (Chp. 9), Fundamentalism in the Sikh tradition (Chp. 10), Buddhist fundamentalism in the Theravadin tradition (Chp. 11), Islamic resurgence in Malaysia and Indonesia (Chp. 12), Confucian revivalism in East Asia (Chp. 13) and Fundamamentalism in Japan (Chp. 14). What is particularly illuminating is the analytical conclusion (Chp. 15) where 9 points are layed out baring on the similarities in the fundamentalisms observed. Thus far, the definitive study on the subject (surpassing Lawrence's *Defenders of God*) and an important reference on the subject for scholar and layman alike

*Fundamentalisms Observed* (the 1st volume of 5) is perhaps the most prestigious contribution yet to the ever expanding literature on the subject. Covering this global phenomenon in several traditions, and with a tight typology, this volume brings together a high-powered team of academics from a dozen disciplines and countries to cover such fundamentalisms as North American Protestantism (Chp. 1), Roman Catholicism (Chp. 2), Protestant fundamentalism in Latin America (Chp. 3), Haredim Jewish fundamentalism (Chp. 4), Zionist Jewish fundamentalism (Chp. 5), Sunni Arab fundamentalism (Chp. 6), Shi'ite fundamentalism (Chp. 7), Islamic fundamentalism in South Asia, (Chp. 8), Hindu fundamentalism (Chp. 9), Fundamentalism in the Sikh tradition (Chp. 10), Buddhist fundamentalism in the Theravadin tradition (Chp. 11), Islamic resurgence in Malaysia and Indonesia (Chp. 12), Confucian revivalism in East Asia (Chp. 13) and Fundamamentalism in Japan (Chp. 14). What is particularly illuminating is the analytical conclusion (Chp. 15) where 9 points are layed out baring on the similarities in the fundamentalisms observed. Thus far, the definitive study on the subject (surpassing Lawrence's *Defenders of God*) and an important reference on the subject for scholar and layman alike

This is the first of five volumes by The Fundamentalism Project. It is the only volume I have read to date. This volume begins with North American Protestant Fundamentalism, for which the term "fundamentalism" was coined and then studies in 15 more sections, each with a different author, (across 13 chapters) other religious movements around the world that have reacted to modernity in a way that might be described as "fundamentalistic" ... even if in quite a different form than North American Protestant Fundamentalism. The book may (almost) be worthwhile for its chapter on North American Protestantism alone but there is a huge amount more. The concluding chapter then tries to determine what might be "fundamentalistic" about all the religions presented thus far. This is just a beginning and it appears that study of the remaining four volumes might be needed to integrate all the material covered in this introductory volume alone.

What impressed me most was how many people worldwide are far from the kind of "intellectual" religion expressed, say, by Unitarian Universalism or the Society of Friends, let alone from secular humanism and atheism. I suppose I should have known this but until I read through here I had not been mindful of it. Try explaining the appeal of Gnostic Christian mythology to any of the believers of these fundamentalisms and I think you will find a gap too wide to cross.

I had not even paid attention to the issues found in Roman Catholic Traditionalism in the U.S., Roman Catholic Activist Conversation in the U.S., or Protestant Fundamentalism in Latin America. As section after section moved away from the Protestant Fundamentalism I was familar with, I began to feel overwhelmed by the varieties of what seem to be emotionally dominated belief systems. Moving through Jewish, Islamic, Hindu, Buddhist, and Japanese forms, in a survey, text book form but nonetheless considerable detail told me I was "not in Kansas anymore".

The five volumes may be too much for me and best suited for scholars or students of religion. I plan to go on next to Volume 5 (Fundamentalisms Comprehended) and see if it provides an appropriate summary for a lay reader such as myself. The conclusion of this book ("Fundamentalisms Observed"), "An Interim Report on a Hypothetical Family" does provide some summary information but it is brief and much of the details from the early sections seem not digested yet here into summary form. It seems what may emerge is an understanding of fundamentalisms that is not rooted in North American Protestant Fundamentalism, but has abstracted key elements of what seem like quite different ways of reacting to modernity with some aims of preservation.

The major value of this volume, for me, as a lay reader, is to realize that there is an enormous amount and variety of religious activity in the world which is resisting modernity and which seems irrational. Given my liberal U.S. Protestant background, I'd never seen in such detail what much of the rest of the world apparently believes and it is quite disconcerting to find out. What makes it more disconcerting is seeing how readily many of these movements seem organized so as to mobilize their followers politically.