Controls Books

The IPQMS book should be required in all education and training programs dealing with the design and construction industry. It is also a must reference for owners and designers, consultants, and contractors. The IPQMS methodology will result in all parties working as a team toward a common goal delivering quality projects on schedule and at or below budget. Our experience with this team approach shows that it will minimize litigation.

As Professor Goodman's personal physician from 1973 to 1985 and friend to the present time, I have been familiar with his professional work beginning at the East-West Center in Hawaii.

Being a physician, I was impressed particularly with his pioneering work with colleagues in Asia and The Pacific conducting autopsies of post-mortem examinations on past projects in nine countries to discover why these projects were plagued by costly mistakes, disasters, and fraud. Lessons learned from this eight year study resulted in the integrated Planning and Quality Management Systems (IPQMS). The IPQMS resulted in coordinated teamwork and accountability of delivering projects, projects being on schedule, and projects being at or below budget.

I have read his CRC Press book and recommend it for key people in industry and government.

Laurie Burrows Grad does a wonderful job of showing the reader/chef how entertaining doesn't have to be fattening or unhealthy - a perfect tool during the holidays - or any time of year!

Until recently, I owned over 200 cookbooks, until I discovered this latest treasure. Now I only have two on my shelf - Entertaining Light and Easy - and a coveted antique cook book "The White House CookBook". I love Laurie's new book!!

good introduction to heating lighting and cooling systems in buildings. Covers basic physical principles, human response, design response to site and ong emphasis on passive systems with lighter coverage of mechanical and electrical systems. Lots of wroked examples, case studies, design guidelines, and illustrations by the author. Useful both as a text for architecture students as well as a refresher for practitioners.

This course textbook is an excellent tool for both the beginner and the experienced architect with regard to expanding one's knowledge base on energy designing. The text starts with basic information relating to the environment and site analysis, then provides detailed design concepts for practical use. The materials include current examples for review and study, as well as a wealth of tables and calculation aids for application of the theories studied. Even the individual who just wants a single source for receiving a working knowledge of how to evaluate a site's characteristics with regard to the environment would benefit from this text.

Presented in a textbook style this book explains and teaches the technical methodologies and techniques practiced in the professional theatre by the stage management team, lighting and sound designer or technician. It's well written and presented, the information is readily accessible and there are plenty of illustrations and b+w photographs to accompany the text. Scott Palmer has included tips and tasks on design ideas throughout the book that are thought provoking and inspiring, making it an essential source for both theatre students and professionals alike.
This is my favourite technical book and I now take it everywhere with me, I thoroughly recommend it. ~ It's handy to have all the facts and figures that you need to refer back to on a regular basis as a designer/technician complete in one book!

Presented in a textbook style this book explains and teaches the technical methodologies and techniques practiced in the professional theatre by the stage management team, lighting and sound designer or technician. It's well written and presented, the information is readily accessible and there are plenty of illustrations and b+w photographs to accompany the text. Scott Palmer has included tips and tasks on design ideas throughout the book that are thought provoking and inspiring, making it an essential source for both theatre students and professionals alike.
This is my favourite technical book and I now take it everywhere with me, I thoroughly recommend it. ~ It's handy to have all the facts and figures that you need to refer back to on a regular basis as a designer/technician complete in one book!

This is a practical book that teaches the "how-to" on device reliability. Before reading this book, I thought "Applied Reliability" by Tobias and Trindade was the best introductory book in this field. Similar to Tobias and Trindade, this book is short and straight-forward. There are absolutely no fillers and it provides a lot of original concepts (e.g. AT&T Tech J vol64), industrial practice (e.g. chap 8 device qualification), and intuitive thinking that are hard to find in other similar books. Books like "statistical methods for reliability data" by Meeker and Escobar or "Accelerated Testing: Statistical Models, Test Plans, and Data Analyses" by Nelson tend to be dry and contain too much information that may confuse readers. Reading Nash first may help clarify the confusion and reinforce the fundamentals before exploring other alternatives.

I also find this book supplements well with "Reliability and degradation of semiconductor lasers and LEDs" by Fukuda and "Reliability and Degradation of III-V Optical Devices" by Ueda. The only shortcomings of this book is its expensive price.

Most reliability books end up being very dry, and filled with equations with little explanation of WHY each of the distributions are used, or how you can go wrong. This book is very different. The author brings up concrete examples of mistakes which are routinely made by inexperienced engineers. He explains clearly which distribution is reasonable for various types of applications. The book is interesting to read, for the most part. (Okay, it still has a few boring chapters at the start, which I recommend skipping.) He even uses the example of human mortality to clearly illustrate concepts of "failure rate" in a way which gets rid of confusion. Finally, the book concludes with a case study for qualifying a high-reliability laser for use in undersea fiber optic communication links. While Franklin Nash's short course is the best I've ever taken, short of seeing him in person, reading this book is the next best thing. (In fact, I'd recommend the book even if you were going to attend the short course.) I've read it several different times in my job as a reliability engineer, and have obtained an understanding of the field that I haven't seen explained as well anywhere else. I give this book my strongest recommendation.

I think any person who major in target tracking system related to the Kalman filter must see this book. This book present the fundamentals of state estimation theory and the tools for the design of state-of-the-art algorithms for target tracking.

The book covers the basic concepts and estimation techniques for static and dynamic systems, linear and nonlinear, as well as adaptive estiomation. This constitutes a one semester graduate course in estimation theory in an electrical/systems engineering program.

The discussion deals mainly with discrete time estimation algorithms, which are natural for digital computer implementation. The basic state estimation algorithm-the Kalman filter-is presented in discrete as well as in continuous time. The use of the estimation algorithms is illustrated on kinematic motion models because they reveal all the major issues and in particular the subtleties encountered in estimation, and this serves as an introdution to tracking.

Guidelines for tracking filter design-selection of the filter design parameters-are given and illustrated in several examples.

At the end of each chapter, a number of problems that enhance the understanding of the theory and the connection of the theoretical material to the real world are given.

And I have this book as text for my paper.

I don't usually write online reviews but this book is so clear and useful that I really want to recommend it to others. It is well written with a good outline and summary for every chapter. It also has a pretty diverse range of topics on estimation, including an introductory chapter on basic estimation approaches (e.g., ML, MAP, least squares), and very practical extensions (e.g., state augmentation, square-root filters). Even though I am not in EE and some of the examples are thus not particularly helpful to me, I still find this book one of the best of all the estimation/Kalman filter books out there.

Now listen to me, Mr Hugh O'Donnell. I'm a very busy man. I'm not important, I'm just busy. I only read novels during my summer holidays beside a swimming pool somewhere very warm. Somebody told me I had to read '11 Emerald Street' so I gave in to temptation and reluctantly abandoned marking mounds of exercise books and writing politically correct, positively motivating, reports on two hundred teenagers' academic progress.

Eight hours later I was fecken knackered. For the uninitiated, this is an Irish technical term describing a level of exhaustion reached when you're still reading at three in the morning even though you know you have to go tearing down the motorway at 6.55am to beat the worst excesses of the traffic at the M60/M61 Interchange.

I couldn't put the book down. I was pulled into the pages of the story and transported back to the Dublin of my childhood forty years ago. You're hooked from the very first page. Our hero, Robbie is sat in class and his teacher, Brother Finch, is a terrifying bully about to pounce on any poor eejet who looks crooked at him. If you haven't sat in a class like that, you haven't lived. Robbie survives to take us on a journey through the streets of Dublin and lets us peep into the world of his family, friends and enemies. The Demon Drink is ever present but somehow manages to avoid brutalising the story or stereotyping half the nation.

Hugh O'Donnell's skill in story-telling is that he remembers the little things we've long since forgotten and he brings them back to life in minute detail, almost in a stream of consciousness technique. At times he is weaving little anecdotes together to make sure we see Robbie and his family as real three-dimensional characters, the next minute he's painting detailed word-pictures of the whole neighbourhood.

Robbie's most endearing quality is the fact that he accurately recounts events for us so that we fully understand golliwogs and other facts of life, but he hasn't the foggiest idea of the deeper significance of the observations he makes. He is an innocent abroad and consequently causes havoc wherever he goes.
Humour leaps out at you. In fact, most of the time it's controlled, steady, but now and again, it catches you unawares and leaves you in hysterics. Wait 'til you read about the live goose in the parcel from Wexford...

And that's another startling thing that Hugh O'Donnell has done. He's captured the special relationship between the Dublin city dwellers and their families down the country. Those of us who emigrate to foreign shores leave behind our country and our loved ones. The move to Dublin from a farm in Kerry or Wexford is an equally traumatic and lonely experience. The writer gently touches on this theme and reminds us that the lines of communication between city and farm are still wide open.

Robbie's life is turned up side down when he suffers a head injury. His near-death experience has transformed him - he believes with a religious fervour that he has healing hands and he enthusiastically sets out to lay hands on those who need curing.

I got a bit of a fright at this point in the story. Was the author indulging in a little 'magic realism', was he asking us to suspend disbelief whilst he took the Irish novel to new areas? Had he created what a fella called Barth referred to as 'a text of bliss', a piece so difficult it almost defies comprehension? Rest easy, Hugh O'Donnell's feet are firmly on the ground. Robbie has total belief in his powers but to some extent, you're allowed to interpret the events in the rest of the story anyway you want. The humour remains but alongside the hilarity comes reality in the shape of suffering, often too close to Robbie for our comfort. If you want to know any more, buy the blooming book...

I loved the story because Hugh O'Donnell accurately re-creates the Dublin of the period, with its poverty, humour and its strength. It made me laugh, it made me think, it upset me. It allows fun to live alongside tragedy and permits our hero to grow up despite his best attempts to remain innocent. Buy the book now, especially if you have children at school. In a few short years, it will be on the secondary school Literature Syllabus in the English-speaking world and you can tell your hooligans you read it with weeks of it hitting the shops.

Well done, Hugh O'Donnell. don't publish anything for a few months. Let me get on with this marking...

Now listen to me, Mr Hugh O'Donnell. I'm a very busy man. I'm not important, I'm just busy. I only read novels during my summer holidays beside a swimming pool somewhere very warm. Somebody told me I had to read '11 Emerald Street' so I gave in to temptation and reluctantly abandoned marking mounds of exercise books and writing politically correct, positively motivating, reports on two hundred teenagers' academic progress.

Eight hours later I was fecken knackered. For the uninitiated, this is an Irish technical term describing a level of exhaustion reached when you're still reading at three in the morning even though you know you have to go tearing down the motorway at 6.55am to beat the worst excesses of the traffic at the M60/M61 Interchange.

I couldn't put the book down. I was pulled into the pages of the story and transported back to the Dublin of my childhood forty years ago. You're hooked from the very first page. Our hero, Robbie is sat in class and his teacher, Brother Finch, is a terrifying bully about to pounce on any poor eejet who looks crooked at him. If you haven't sat in a class like that, you haven't lived. Robbie survives to take us on a journey through the streets of Dublin and lets us peep into the world of his family, friends and enemies. The Demon Drink is ever present but somehow manages to avoid brutalising the story or stereotyping half the nation.

Hugh O'Donnell's skill in story-telling is that he remembers the little things we've long since forgotten and he brings them back to life in minute detail, almost in a stream of consciousness technique. At times he is weaving little anecdotes together to make sure we see Robbie and his family as real three-dimensional characters, the next minute he's painting detailed word-pictures of the whole neighbourhood.

Robbie's most endearing quality is the fact that he accurately recounts events for us so that we fully understand golliwogs and other facts of life, but he hasn't the foggiest idea of the deeper significance of the observations he makes. He is an innocent abroad and consequently causes havoc wherever he goes.
Humour leaps out at you. In fact, most of the time it's controlled, steady, but now and again, it catches you unawares and leaves you in hysterics. Wait 'til you read about the live goose in the parcel from Wexford...

And that's another startling thing that Hugh O'Donnell has done. He's captured the special relationship between the Dublin city dwellers and their families down the country. Those of us who emigrate to foreign shores leave behind our country and our loved ones. The move to Dublin from a farm in Kerry or Wexford is an equally traumatic and lonely experience. The writer gently touches on this theme and reminds us that the lines of communication between city and farm are still wide open.

Robbie's life is turned up side down when he suffers a head injury. His near-death experience has transformed him - he believes with a religious fervour that he has healing hands and he enthusiastically sets out to lay hands on those who need curing.

I got a bit of a fright at this point in the story. Was the author indulging in a little 'magic realism', was he asking us to suspend disbelief whilst he took the Irish novel to new areas? Had he created what a fella called Barth referred to as 'a text of bliss', a piece so difficult it almost defies comprehension? Rest easy, Hugh O'Donnell's feet are firmly on the ground. Robbie has total belief in his powers but to some extent, you're allowed to interpret the events in the rest of the story anyway you want. The humour remains but alongside the hilarity comes reality in the shape of suffering, often too close to Robbie for our comfort. If you want to know any more, buy the blooming book...

I loved the story because Hugh O'Donnell accurately re-creates the Dublin of the period, with its poverty, humour and its strength. It made me laugh, it made me think, it upset me. It allows fun to live alongside tragedy and permits our hero to grow up despite his best attempts to remain innocent. Buy the book now, especially if you have children at school. In a few short years, it will be on the secondary school Literature Syllabus in Ireland, England and the States and you can tell your hooligans you read it with weeks of it hitting the shops.

Well done, Hugh O'Donnell. don't publish anything for a few months. Let me get on with this marking...

Evolutionary operation is a strategy for experimentation during production. It is a terrific method for continuous process improvement which is now popular in the new quality movement. Surprisingly, though very practical the approach never caught on when the book originally came out! Box and Draper are famous professors of statistics in the Statistics Department at the University of Wisconsin. Both are excellent writers and each has coauthored other very highly regarded texts.
These techniques are worth considering by anyone involved in producing high quality manufacturing processes. This is the only text that covers the topic.

Evolutionary operation is a strategy for experimentation during production. It is a terrific method for continuous process improvement which is now popular in the new quality movement. Surprisingly, though very practical the approach never caught on when the book originally came out! Box and Draper are famous professors of statistics in the Statistics Department at the University of Wisconsin. Both are excellent writers and each has coauthored other very highly regarded texts.

These techniques are worth considering by anyone involved in producing high quality manufacturing processes. This is the only text that covers the topic.

This book provides a focused overview of the Baldrige process. It is concisely written for those wanting a high level understanding of the Baldrige criteria from the critera itself to what to expect from undertaking an implementation effort. Of added benefit is the "other impacts of the Baldrige Criteria" provided in chapter 3. This book provides a look from many views that most organizations should find valuable.

A great Baldrige primer for executives and manager. Focused and to the point with chapters on the financial impact and other benefits.

Ruth Gruber's EXODUS 1947: THE SHIP THAT LAUNCHED A NATION
In 1945, President Harry Truman, learning of the horrible DP(Displaced Persons) camps in Germany asked Ernest Bevin, England's foreign minister to open the doors of Palestine to 100,000 DP's. A committee was formed that voted to open the doors, but Bevin refused. The ship named Exodus 1947, carrying 4,554 refugees, met resistance for this destination of Palestine. As noted in Gruber's book, Exodus, 1947: The Ship That Launched A Nation, a predominantly Jewish city, Tel Aviv, was on strike to protest this as it shut down for an entire day.
Following this, the ship, landed in Haifa as a battered vessel and Ruth Gruber documented the surge of heartbreak and hope, emotion and enormous anxiety to desperately reach the homeland. Exodus, 1947 came out in America recently and just came out in England after being banned for sixty years. It is now receiving rave reviews. One headline in London's Sunday Express read, "I SAW JEWS FORCED INTO SHIPS FROM DANTE'S HELL", and the article described the shameless way the Jews were treated.
Some reporters wrote the Jews of the Exodus were sent to Cypress. It is not true. Bevin considered Cypress a prison hell hole of sand and wind-too good for the Jews of the Exodus. They were sent to Germany in three prison ships. Gruber was selected to represent the entire American Press aboard the prison ship Runnymede Park. When she climbed the top deck the Holocaust survivors raised a flag. They had printed the Swastichka on the British Union Jack. Gruber's photo of the flag became Life Magazine's photo of the week. These Jews were defying not only the British Empire. They were defying the whole world. The refugees managed to escape from the prison camps in Germany and were in Palestine when it became Israel on May 14, 1948.
Gruber's words paint a picture of what the refugees endured between surviving the Holocaust and being settled afterwards. Her insight into the resourcefulness and creativity of people in the camps revealed a people with a fierce determination to rise above a sad past and still difficult present environment. Exodus 1947: The Ship That Launched A Nation chronicles the journey of hope and desperation for Holocaust survivors.

Review by Phyllis Johnson, author of Being Frank with Anne- the poetic interpretation of Anne Frank's diary- Community Press

This very moving book covers the story of the "Exodus", the unarmed ship carrying more than 4,500 Holocaust survivors seeking refuge in "British occupied" Palestine during 1947.

The ship, a former tourist vessel designed to carry only 400 passengers, is described as having been rammed and boarded by the British Royal Navy which was determined to prevent the Jewish Holocaust survivors from finding refuge in Palestine. The entry of the "Exodus" into Haifa harbour is further described amidst a British military blockade. But the story in this book is not so much about the ship, but about the individuals on board, their history & personal suffering, together with what faced them following their arrival in "Palestine" and the process outlined with such clarity in this work, which saw them being used as "political pawns" by the British Government.

The book begins with a description of the "Displaced Persons" camps of Europe, where those fortunate to survive the "Concentration Camps" were housed. The book recounts how some 70,000 Holocaust survivors "found their way out" of the "Displaced Persons" camps and made the tortuous journey across land borders, forests, mountain ranges, the Alps until they eventually located "secret" ports in France and Southern Italy where they climbed aboard a motley fleet of virtually obsolete vessels, including cutters, leaky fishing boats, cargo vessels, icebreakers, banana carriers, yachts & steamers (one called Exodus 1947) upon which they embarked upon their desperate journey to reach their ancient homeland of Eretz Israel, the "Promised Land".

The journey on the "Exodus" itself is described as being endured under extremely insanitary and unbelievably cramped conditions, whilst always under the threat of being arrested as "illegal immigrants" during the British blockade.

The book is replete with many photographs documenting the above and the story reaches the night of 17th July 1947 when "Haganah boys" pasted handbills on the shop windows of Netanya, Haifa and Jerusalem depicting the plight of the "Exodus" and describing it's cargo of 4,554 refugees consisting of 1,600 men, 1,282 women, 1,017 young people and 655 children. The posters also advising readers that the ship had been spotted by the British Navy and that five destroyers and a cruiser were closing in on the vessel.

The book documents the subsequent broadcast from the "Exodus" itself, which related how the Royal Navy had attacked the vessel at a distance of "17 miles from the shores of Palestine" in "international waters". The "Exodus" described as having been rammed from three directions and subjected to gas bombs and gunfire which left one Jewish civilian dead, five dying and some twenty wounded. The boarding of the "Exodus" by British troops is also detailed. Photographs of the damage to the vessel and the wounded Jewish civilians are also included. The book then describes the plight of the Jewish refugees as they are then forcibly ejected from the "Exodus". The ensuing public reaction is also described.

As the story proceeds, the book cites the British authorities as describing the prison camps of Cyprus as being "too good" for the Jewish refugees and outlines how the British "decided to make an example of them" by returning the Holocaust survivors upon three ships to Port-de-Bouc in Southern France. A measure portrayed in the book as a deterrent to others who would "dare run the British blockade".

Amidst further British threats to then transfer the Holocaust survivors to Germany the book shows the reaction on board ship as a British flag is painted with a "swastika" below the Union Jack. The described plight of the refugees is heartbreaking as they are disembarked in Germany where the book recounts so many having been murdered by the Nazi regime. (Being British, having served in our military & studied the Holocaust for many years, I feel very uncomfortable at the described behaviour of my "compatriots".)

The book also details how, having been forcibly returned to Europe and incarcerated in these "camps" in Germany, many of these self same Jewish refugees/Holocaust survivors began repeating their individual, tortuous process of escaping. The book depicting how they once more embarked upon their journeys back to their ancestral homeland, with many having reached Israel when their nation was re-born on 15th May 1948. Many described as forming part of the fledgling Jewish forces which met the combined invasion from the surrounding Arab nations immediately after the Jewish nation's declaration of independence.

This is an extremely moving, often disturbing book, about an often overlooked period of history. Highly recommended for anyone with an interest in Jewish history and events surrounding the re-birth of the Jewish state of Israel. The excellent photographs themselves are worthy of a special mention. Thank you.