Practitioners Books

I thought of this book as a tome of helpful advice for any project manage that has to work on a project that veers far into the unknown. The author was the Chief Architect for the P6 (Pentium Pro) microprocessor. This was a radically new type of processor that broke from previous chip architectures. The team was required to explore untested ideas but at the same time bring them to an operable design. This required considerable balancing and deft handling of various stumbling blocks. The author presents a lot of observations on how to accomplish this. It was also very interesting, for a person who is interested in microprocessors, to see where exactly time is spent in these massive projects. The author gives lots of technical details, but I would have like a bit more. Of course, the intention of this book was as a project management guide, so that isn't necessarily bad.

This is an excellent case study about Intel's P6 project -- that became the Pentium Pro and part of the lineage for a number of other processors. The author provides the story of compromises made while the project proceded and the corporate politics endured at Intel. He also discusses the Pentium flaw episode and provides a technical rationale that thay may have led to that unrelated debacle. It is fun to read about some of the technical aspects of this project. One flaw to the story is the lack of additional information on why Intel settled out of court and paid millions of dollars for alleged patent infringement accusations relating to the P6 project. The book is surprisingly upbeat considering the author no longer works at Intel. If you like this book, Brian Bagnall's "On the Edge" about the rise and fall of Commodore computer is an excellent follow-up.

I was looking forward to a history of the depth of, say "Into the Black" about JPL by Peter Westwick, a professional historian. The Pentium Chronicles is thin. I think it's trying mostly to be a project management book. The context is poorly drawn, the technical issues are nearly completely unexplained, and the stories are told without zest. The sidebars make the book feel like it is meant to be bought at an airport and discarded to the next passenger. Colwell is undoubtedly a fine computer architect but his writing leaves a lot to be desired, at least in this book.

On the first page of this book Dr. Colwell gets his marching orders from his boss: 'Your job is to beat the P5 chip by a factor of two on the same process technology. Any Questions.'

'Three,' he replied. 'What's a P5?' What's the process technology plans? Where's the bathroom.'

The P5 became the Pentium chip. The process technology doesn't matter in this book as it was the same. And he found the bathroom.

Dr. Colwell's new chip, the P6 came to the market first as the Pentium Pro, the same basic design was subsequently modified as the basic core for the Pentium II, Pentium III, Celeron, Xeon, and the current Centrino products.

But the details of the chip aren't the strong point of the book. It's the organization and structure of a how a big development team works. From the little details like finding an unused storage room to use as a conference room where the blackboards wouldn't get erased, to hiring, firing and getting the product out.

I can't help but compare this with Tracy Kidders book 'The Soul of a New Machine' written twenty or so years ago. Kidder was a better writer, but Colwell was the one in charge, making the whole thing happen. I would have liked to see a little more technical detail, but I've been in this business a long time and have more interests along these lines than the average reader. As it is, it is an excellent book on project management and I enjoyed it very much.

As may be likely with many readers, I first heard of Mr. Colwell from his IEEE Computer columns, of which I was big fan. Several times I was tempted to send him comments about the insights and occasional humor, but I never did. The same kind of writing and attitude is clearly on display in "Chronicles".

Because other reviewers mentioned "Soul of a New Machine," I agree that it is hard to escape, even though the two books are much different. When I was a young engineer in the early 80s, "Soul" was (and is) a great book. I did not have the experience to grasp some lessons to be learned from the story, and a 1980s version of "Chronicles" would not have hit home, either.

However, Mr. Colwell is completely believable in his anecdotes and in the presentation of the big picture, the project, and countless details both technical and personal. Experienced engineers will no doubt see themselves, their colleagues, and their projects in one form or another. I don't mean just the "Dilbert" moments and inevitable personal clashes, but also the serious business and technical challenges that any complex project must face. I found myself nodding in agreement again and again with his conclusions and advice.

Two reasons I liked Mr. Colwell's columns are that he is not just a techno-geek and that an interesting feisty personality showed through. You see that feistiness at times in the book with stories of taking on the powers that be, for better or worse, without feeling like you are listening to someone covering his tracks to make himself look good. The true engineer comes through, with enough polish to be around executives and to be allowed with customers.

I read this books about a year aand a half go, and thought at the time it introduced some really good techniques for manaaging a portfolio. One would need a linear algebra and statictical background to fully unserstand it, and access to some expensive software and data bases to implement it.

However, I now think the techniques depend on reasonably stable fincial markets, and after the emerginging crises starting in the summer of 2007, I have decided not to prusue this farther.

There is important information in this book but most of us need to see numerical examples to reinforce theoretical concepts. This book really comes up short in this area. It provides some discussion with the formulas/equations it presents but is very incomplete in terms of worked out examples. Yes, including worked out examples might might mean a book three times as long, but the book would then be many, many times more useful to practitioners.

As it currently stands the book can only benefit the super-genius-theoretical types who do not need to see examples to understand OR someone who ALREADY really understands the concepts.

The book rather frequently presents variables or constants without explicitly defining them for the reader (it assumes we know what they mean from the accompanying discussion).

The book gives exercises, but without answers what good are these?

The one thing the book does is make you realize there is a lot you do not know. You can find ideas in portfolio management that exist by reading this book but if you are at all like me you are going to have to look elsewhere for the answers. I have had better luck with Google searches for stuff like Style Analysis.

The book shows how smart the authors are: they know stuff that must of us do not. Unfortunately this is the feeling I get as I read sections of their book. They intend to keep it this way. Bottom line: the book fails to bridge the gap between theory and practice.

If you work for one of the top alpha quant shops (Barclays, Goldman, etc.), this text is a the proverbial must read. These are the guys that essentially invented quantitative finance in its modern form, building upon the [only somewhat applicable] concepts of Sharpe and Rosenberg and demonstrating how they can be harnassed to drive alpha. Anybody who has given this text a poor review obviously doesn't work in quantitative finance (chances are they're merely stock-pickers). If you want to understand how to drive alpha and beat the market, this text goes a lot further than explaining the simple concepts of information ratio and tracking error; instead, this book touches on the beauty of multi-factor models and covariance risk management.

I know many have this book and have never read it. Others read this book but never really understand it. However, if you can read it and understand it, it can offer a powerful tool for how to allocate capital. It actually is the basis for most indexing and quantitative methodologies. When applied to fundemental approaches to investment it can be quite powerful.

Sadly, though not enough money managers embrace what this book is trying to say with regards to risk and return.

Excellent book for whom is looking for a practical approach that at the same time is presented through a rigorous mathematical methodology. The book is absolutely superior over the academic textbooks that usually limit themselves to CAPM and efficient market theory. Grinold and Kahn go much forward and at the same time had managed to clearly and meticulously show the CAPM model, its limitations and the more sophisticated tools developed from it. Beside of showing the active way of managing a portfolio, the serious mathematical presentations through which the different theories such as CAPM are described are very convincing of how difficult it could be to beat the market.

I am a Holistic Health Practitioner that wanted to incorporate hypnotherapy into my practice and purchased this book for an overview of the process. I was amazed at the thoroughness of the information. By just studying this book, I was able to hypnotize my husband with ease and he insisted he could not be hypnotized. He was astounded at how easily he succumbed to the process.

I must practice more before I actually put it into my therapy regime, but I feel this book affords adequate information to allow the limited use of hypnosis in my practice. I plan to delve deeper into the mysteries of hypnosis to enable me to have more expertise to offer my clients in the future.

The reason for only 4 stars is I felt it was rather redundant in many cases and he jumped around quite a bit in his explanations and would refer in one chapter to the use of a procedure that is not explained until several chapters later. It was not cohesive in content. However, that said, it did provide valuable information.

As a hypnotherapist, it was nice to read more of the medical approch to hypnosis. Lots of information about why and how we get sick. It made me feel a little more knowlegable so that not only can I help, but I could also explain why and how we get sick in laymans terms, very advantagious in the pretalk. In reading the book, some outdated technics were used,(probably filler for the book). I'm not saying that they don't work, but these techniecs are no longer used.

Overall the book has lots of good scripts, hypnotic inductions, deepening technics & tests. Another book to add to my collection!

This book is a complete waste of money, unless you are a compelte novice to Hypnosis in which case you may find that it as a fair introductory work to Hypnosis, showing examples of what Hypnosis Scripts are like.

I am relatively new to hypnosis. I have read a few books and have managed to advance my understanding of the practice with each. In my opinion, this book took me from beginner to intermediate. Some of the claims seem outrageous, but, I think that is part of his point anyway. I feel like I have taken a giant step forward after reading this one.

This book has to be approached, that is, read, from the standpoint of a hypnotherapist learning to improve his skill set. It is, in a way, a difficult book to read because reading scripts tends to put you into trance. You must consistently read it with an eye toward picking out the phrasing used and the intent of the wording in the scripts. If this is done, the text is quite instructive and complete. The casual reader
looking for party tricks won't find them here. This is a book
for those with serious interest willing to let its wisdom
permeate their subconscious slowly, slowly, deeper and deeper.

I purchased this book as a requirement for my PNP course. Needless to say, this book is not very helpful. It seems many very important topics extremely relevant to pediatric primary care are either not in the book or are very briefly mentioned. It is also not very detailed at all. I always have to read from other books to get a better comprehensive understanding of topics. Treatment options are also very vague if they are even listed. I can only hope the newer edition is much, much better.

many of the test questions will undoubtedly be in this book so it was worth it.

This book was in perfect condition and arrived very quickly.

This is a required textbook for my Family Practice course and its very informative and useful in its arrangement.

I received the textbook exactly as ordered with prompt service. It is required for a course I am taking but will serve as a valuable resource in the future.

This book is very well written, content-rich and provides a plethora of examples that I can use on the job immediately. What more can a software developer ask for? I would give it 10 stars if the option was available.

As a senior usability architect holding a master's in human factors in information design and having 10 years experience in the software industry, I did not find this book helpful at all. I felt that the before-chapter flowcharts did exactly what Edward Tufte tells you not to do when displaying info and charts - don't use a lot of non-data ink - they were nigh impossible to follow (the unnecessary shadowing and overall gray/black page made it even more difficult. i found her examples basically worthless and the book very disorganized, in my opinion. after reading it, I thought, well that was a big waste of my time. I was very disappointed in the book, which had been highly recommended to me by a designer (which is why I bought it). If you're new to the field, this might be helpful, perhaps, but if you've been in the software industry (and especially in the usability industry for any length of time), you should already know much of this.

This book is great ! Really ! I pratice OO development especially following RUP. This book describe a full Usability process, with activities, guidelines, workload estimation and artifacts. You can directly put it at work, because you naturally see why an activity leads to another. All the book is good, even if it seems heavy (500+ pp), there is no waste of space. As a RUP practitioner, it's very easy to integrate this approach into the RUP and it naturally fits with Use Cases. Believe me: get it !

Or do other people think there is a need for creativity in user interface design? This book, while very helpful in providing a set of procedures to follow when evaluating users and their particular needs, leaves out the very important concept of the ART of user interface design. I see plenty of recommends for Tufte's trilogy of user oriented design books and for the book "Don't Make Me Think". These books are much more readable, and none of them are nearly so formulaic in their approach to user interface design.

Another problem I have with this book, and with many other computer books, is the size. Why does it take so much to say so little? Is there an editor in the house? There is definitely some good content in this book. I happens to be buried in a mountain of text.

I have never written a review before, but I am so impressed with this book - it is indispensable. I particularly like the way the information is presented - very readable. Also valuable are the sections that address shortcuts and alternatives for applying techniques in the real world. I often am called to get involved during and after development and have to adapt "perfect world" techniques into very short cycles. This is a must have for people in our profession.

This is a collection of the author's newsletters to institutional clients. I'm sure they are quite interesting to read if you get them in real-time, but here you have the best of them collected in a thick volume.

This format is not ideal. The notes contain useful information and ideas but are very disconnected. The author actually states that one can just open the book anywhere and read one note. This is true, but then I would argue for reading good blogs instead. They are in real-time and all the links are fresh.

Having said this the notes contain some useful ideas so I've still given the book three stars.

I have written several short reviews on trading books. The best way is to compare the score on the books I've read. Many reviews on amazon.com are just glorious 5 star reviews. I use all five categories; sorry but everything isn't "great". Books rated 5 are very good. Books rated 4 are good solid books well worth reading. Books rated 3 can be bought by some people who read a lot or have very specific needs. Books rated 1 or 2 I would not recommend buying or reading. Naturally all in my humble opinion.

And I have read well over a hundred. This is not an inexpensive book, but it is worth every penny. Montier writes with wit, enthusiasm, and clarity in describing his views on the investing climate and research he has conducted on finding alpha. He has strongly held opinions which are often at odds with the industry, and he is not afraid to put forth viewpoints that render the great majority of equity analysts as useless tools of the companies they cover. As an alternative he offers a variety of relatively simple quant-based strategies which he shows have historically trounced both index-based benchmarks and stock-picking analysts. He even throws in a little philosophy at the end of the book which are truly words to live by. This is a terrific book that you will keep going back to in the years to come.

James Montier's book is in fact a collection of articles and therefore has some redundancies by repeating the same things again and again. But...he really takes away many illusions about analysts, company meetings, portfolio management and every one's capabilities in beating the market. In short, he says that predicting the future is not possible and that we are very bad in forecasting, even more when we are "professionals", because of how our brain works. He shows how to at least try to avoid common biases and focusing on the facts (on the past).
It is easy to read and very entertaining, nevertheless with a factual approach. But be warned: as a PM you will feel the urge to stop taking calls from sales people ;-)

Sent this book back as soon as i got it! It is to long, not very informative and there are so many better books of behavioral finance an economics.

Mostly a compilation of the writer's research papers, written for an investment bank. Well, that's ok, but most of them are not edited for the book, just inserted into the book as they are. This brings a lot of repetitions and some references to papers, that you don't have access to. At least those papers could have been inserted as well. But we have to give the full credit to the writer even as this book as it is, it is a book of comprehensive research and full of insight regarding the psychology of the investing public. It also gives the reader a glimpse of all previous investment research. One of the good solid investment books.

I know others have found this a good resource but I found it very dry and tedious to read. I returned the book.

Thorough, concise, easy to read and understand.
I like the real world examples.

A serviceable text for students and acolyte practitioners of conflict resolution. This was required reading for a Master's course, and I found it to be engaging, immensely readable, and applicable. Since it is an entry-level text, it covers broad approaches and does not offer much specificity to a particular field of conflict resolution (international diplomacy, social work, and business negotiations are all painted with the same brush). Still, it is a testament to the universality of Mayer's core concepts that his conflict resolution methodology loosely applies to all of these venues.

This book provides a practical, easy-to-follow explanation of conflict resolution. The author uses his practice experience and research knowledge to provide practitioners with a solid understanding of the dynamics of conflict resolution.

To understand conflict, attention needs to be paid to the differences in ways individuals approach it. The way people handle conflict is definition of who they are and how they relate to others. People approach to conflict derives not only from their upbringing and how they have been taught to deal with conflict, but their culture plays a key role. Conflict often is generated when people feel disempowered. Power is the currency for conflict whether its exercise is intentional or not; when people are in conflict their power is in play. The choice in conflict is not whether to use power but how to use it. When people try to meet their needs in face of resistance, they are exercising power. The success of conflict depends on part on how much power they are able to muster and how wise they are in using it. The use of power can escalate or deescalate a conflict. It can create resistance or overcome it. People can employ their power to create momentum for constructive dialogue and collaborative negotiations; or they can use it to beat others down and to prevent co-operation. Everyone has a choice of how to use power or how to respond to power; the one choice participants don't have is not having any power at all.

This is a very theoretical study on conflict and its resolution. Unlike other texts this delves into the core of conflict and explains it to the detail.

The book satisfies someone who is interested in alternative concepts on how whether widely accepted view of calculating the estimate of future project or ROA gives more precise estimation.

Good graphs, easy to read but good to know simple concepts like SML and CAPM model before reading the book

This book is a little confusing but if you have a background in finance, it is very helpful. It is also a valuable book for anyone, especially with the way the market is.

I regret not requiring this text for my students this semester. While there are a few typo's, that is not the point, as the problems are all easy to work out and solve.

A very, very good book. If you are teaching a senior level course that uses even just a few weeks of real options (like my engineering economy course) use this book! You can cover the whole book in 10 or 12 lectures. The end of chapter problems (while a trifle scant) are well done!

I use this book as a required book in a course on my graduate study. It is hard to understand and writen like a novel. However, it is very up-to-date. Readers should have a bit strong background on options, finance and investment.

I'm feeling very frustrated with this book, and here's why. The text contains sample questions, and directs to a website for the solutions. The website requires registration in order to access the material. After filling out the necessary details, I received an email from the publisher stating that I did not qualify as I am not a lecturer. I pointed out that the text claims to be a practitioners guide, not a lecturers guide. After numerour emails back and forth I've given up - I'll return it instead.

Most curiously I was never offered to purchase the material, so I can't even feel conned - just pissed-off.

I risk angering Baron Samedi, but really not a great book. More of a folk history than an informative book. I'd channel Marie Laveau before paying out for this one.

I like this book, it was easy to understand and I think Jim Haskins did a good job with the formatting. I have to agree with the reviewer that says that it's a good book, but not very helpful (as concerning the 'recipes'). It seems that Mr. Haskins was trying to give a history of voodoo and also a bit of a 'modern' (late 70's) look at voodoo and how it has evolved over time. To me, I try to read all I can on Voodoo, and I have found some good, bad, and really bad books on it. So far I have to say all in all this is a good book, I found it informative on a historical level and also on a 'folk-lore-ish' level as well. Now the recipes are great to read about but don't go into detail. I would've liked for the recipes to have been explained in more detail, but like the reviewer before me said, this book wasn't meant to be a 'How-to guide'. I wish Mr. Haskins would write a book going into details about the recipes. Individual practioners would benefit from having a book like that. Unfortunately, even the author suspected that the folks he interviewed for the recipes weren't giving him all the information, and rightly so, this is how they made money, so why would they give away all their secrets, people wouldn't need their services anymore. So all in all it's a good book, I really enjoyed it and I learned a lot.

Here's some of the chapters:

The roots in Africa

Culture Clash and Accomdation in the New World

Voodoo and Hoodoo Today

To do ill

To do Good

In matters of Law

In matters of Love

Voodoo and Hoodoo in perspective.

Happy reading!

Jim Haskins' book is a great introduction to the study and potential practice of voodoo/hoodoo, which should be the essential building block of any library on the subject.

The book is divided into two parts: the first section deals with the original West African belief systems as practiced at the time of the slave trade (and more or less until today in some areas), the transition to the Americas, and how interaction with whites and other immigrant peoples affected these religions. The roles of the priests of the old religions, the magic workers/conjurers and herbalists are all examined. Haskins has a good grasp of the various contexts in which the white and black religions interacted, between Catholic and Protestant, French vs English or Portuguese, large vs small plantation environments, etc. This is the stronger of the two sections.

The second part is likely the reason most people buy this book, i.e. the actual spells with ingredients and instructions to follow to bring money, justice, luck, or love into (or out of) your life. A chapter each is devoted to bringing ill to others, good to yourself and others, the courts & law, and finally love. Some of these can be done by the reader/individual, others would require an intermediary to 'successfully' complete. Reading the spells, taking up over half the book, is interesting and amusing, and brought to mind nothing to much as Phil Hine's books on (Western and G.D.-based) Chaos Magic, the point being that if you believe it, put enough energy and intensity into it, ANYTHING can be a tool for magic and caused change. My guess is that if you need this kind of instruction manual in the first place, you have no business attempting this kind of work. But no doubt every reader will make up his/her own mind.

The book reads well, and is an excellent primer. Highly recommended to anyone with an interest in the origins and practice of voodoo.

this book not only contains a history of voodoo but it also contains rituals you can perform yourself to work on friend or foe

This book is well written and surveys the religious practices of Hoodoo and Voodoo in the United States.

Haskins utilizes personal accounts and historical data to make this one of the few factual books on the topic.

This book is a staple for any ATR practicioner's library, especially those living in the south.

Recommended without reservation.

It explains how why and how to integrate security policies and procedures across all tiers of software engineering organization. I had limited understanding f and this book helped me to get deep in to details and understand at an organization level.
I recommend this for all engineers and managers in sofware organization.

If you are doing infosec policy dev., this book is aweseome!

It saved me 10 hours this week alone.

I must agree with the previous reviewer, this book is lacking.
I bought a copy new and had the same problem where the
holes punched in the paper does not match the binder spacing.
What terrible quality. I had to force myself to even read
through the book after that.

And I found it lacking. The first part has some good info
about how to write a policy. Good but not great.

The second part was a sample policy/standard/procedure rolled
into one. I found it too thin and missing too much to be
really useful.

I haven't looked at the text the previous reviewer recommends,
but I have to say, given another book with similar content,
definitely stay away from this one.

My personal recommendation is Information Security Policies
Made Easy, by Charles Cresson Wood. It's pricey but oh so
worth it.

This is one of the best books available for information systems security polices. The book covers tier 1 and tier 2 policies. This book looks at policies as a business enabler where policies support management's organizational goals. Great samples!

This is a useful book for me to reference, especially when I deal with challenges in security policy framework review. The most impressive pages include the tier 1-2-3 framework, proper wordings in policy, policy sample studies and analysis, complete checklist and questionnaire.

After reading this book or on-and-off reference, I always remember four major elements in a policy:
1. Topic
2. Scope
3. Responsibility
4. Compliance

In addition, I have shared this book with an IT supervisor, he always go for this book for the team reference. I do feel happy to recommend it. Moreover, it readily happens to me I could apply the hints and tips from this book to the revised policy. Meanwhile, compared with the company's policy, it is undoubted organized and logical.

Be honest, in reality, many people still always mix up policy, standard and procedures as well as guidelines and produce a "Spaghetti-like" document to deal with auditor and compliance once a year only, you could say, many companies treat it as a last-minute homework.