Practitioners Books

This book provides an excellent, coherant and up-to-date summary of the research in autism. There are chapters relating to diagnosis, etiology, treatment and working with families that truly synthesis the plethora of information available. These researchers have managed to use language that is useful to parents and practitioners to help them sift through recent information. If you work with children who have autism spectrum disorders this book is a "must read".

This is an interesting book - the main thing to know about is the variability of the chapters. Some are really excellent, others, at best, so-so. Although the book jacket says the authors are world leaders or some such this is only really true for a few of the authors - others you've never heard of. The chapters which are excellent are really good. The inconsistent chapters probably have to do with the fact that all authors are pulled from the same place - Am. Psychiatric Publishing is also not known for high quality!

This book is not meaty enough to be the only text for a graduate class, but it works well as the main course along with recent journal articles. It includes an excellent discussion of ethical issues.

I bought this book thinking it would have more general information. I am glad I purchased it, but I think I will be of use to me later on in my career. I think it is more beneficial for health psychology professionals rather than students. If you have a passing interest in clinical health psychology or are only taking a course to fulfill a requirement, it may not interest you. However, if you are serious about the field or you work in this kind of setting, it could be a very valuable resource.

As an Associate Professor of Psychology and clinician in private practice, I found this book to be superb. Dr. Riso is an accomplished scholar who has compiled a group of highly respected and well-known experts in this very timely volume on cognitive therapy. Both seasoned and novice cognitive-behavioral therapists, as well as clients engaged in such treatment, will find this book to be a wonderful resource. Cognitive schema work is particularly useful for more chronic conditions, such as eating disorders, chronic depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, and substance use disorders, all of which are addressed in this volume. Upon reading this work, the cognitive therapist will have a clear idea about how to move beyond traditional, present-focused CBT work and incorporate work on modifying long-standing, underlying core beliefs. In addition, this book will give clients insight into how the "lens" through which they view the world can impact their struggles with mood, anxiety and/or body image. There is no other published work that I am aware of with this kind of coverage of schema theory and application. As an experienced cognitive-behavioral therapist, I highly recommend this book for both clinicians and clients. As a clinical researcher, I also highly recommend this volume book to those doing research on cognitive schemas and cognitive therapy.

This book was a reasonable read based in scientific evidence but didn't really add much to my knowledge of Core Beliefs. Perhaps because it was an edited text it meant that there was a lot of overlap between each chapter. A little bit basic.

This book should be required reading for all those interested in quality development processes. The authors depart from tedium to provide a clear and well thought presentation of ideas (often coupled with intuitive anecdotes) that paint a vivid understanding of the big picture. Outstanding!!

This is a great book that starts out with the premise that to improve all facets of software development and total quality management, you need to look inside. The human being is seen as an indissoluble entity; we cannot work with the mind without also taking account of the body. The two are closely related with, for example, particular emotions being associated with certain postures and the authors take this into account. This all maps wonderfully to The Elaboration, Construction and Transition phases that are divided into a series of timeboxed iterations, and the authors help you step through each part of the phases and relate them to concrete examples of management and project techniques. It is a superb book, I bought a copy but I understand there will be a new edition online with extra chapters that will definitely get me to buy it all over again. This is the kind of book I've been looking for and have now, seemingly have finally found.

This book is a useful and clearly written practical guide for a technique that is becoming more important for more people as the years go by. If I do have to get critical, I could say that its price is rather high for its size. Although it contains a few references to modulated DSC I would gladly see a second edition that incorporates that side of the story in detail precisely because this new development is revolutionizing the DSC field as we speak. It will make it even broader than it already is and the new users need a book that allows them a good and easy path in. Another thing that is missing is the subfield of microcalorimetry (on protein solutions etc).
The explanation of deconvolution techniques is rather meager because the authors find fourier transforms (too?!) daunting. Otherwise: a fine book

This book gave me in depth understanding of each standard test method. It explains the test procedures, the sources of error and how to correct for them. Better written than most ASTM standards but still have room for improvement. It's not a "DSC for Dummies". I still have problem understanding certain parts of this book. Background knowledge of DSC is a needed. If your only source of test procedure is ASTM standards (and you are like me - have problem understanding them), this book will definately help.

As another reviewer notes, this book is a collection of articles about Economic Capital. It provides a good selection of articles, enabling the reader to get a sense of what other financial institutions are doing about selected elements of economic capital calculation (e.g., AVC calculations or diversification benefit calculation.) However, since it is not a text book on economic capital there is no over-arching framework for how to manage or calculate economic capital. Instead, it will give the reader ideas about how to think about different elements without providing a higher level thesis or framework.

There are very few books around that deal with Economic Capital. This is an expensive item, however worth it. My notions on EC were limited before reading this book, but once you start reading you have the sensation that you are learning.

The first part "Concepts and applications" is well written and the sequence of articles is presented in a logical fashion.
The second part "EC for specific risks" gives you a good flavor of what people are doing (and how they are doing it) on the different risk types. The articles are good and not too technical, although I wish there were more examples.
The third part "EC Methodologies" is very technical, and recommended to experts on the matter.

Khaled's book provided some good information when it was published but is now outdated as ISO 15504 (called SPICE in the book) has been extensively updated. Two new books on the topic area have recently been published through Springer: Process Assessment and ISO/IEC 15504 - A Reference Book, and Process Assessment and Improvement - A practical guide for managers, quality professionals and assessors. I would recommend readers to look to these books as providing the latest information and real practical implementation guidance.

This 4-part collection of essays is just what the title proclaims: elements of software process assessment and/or improvement. While the book is organized by subject area (1-common models in use, 2-the business case for SPI, 3-guidance and 4-new developments), the book does purport to be a guide for performing/passing assessments or effecting process improvement. However, the real value of the essays is the wide range of topics that are addressed. While you will probably not find all of them useful for a specific model or approach, you will almost certainly find many to be applicable to a strategy for process assessments or improvement.

Part 1, Models, covers the CMM, software product procurement risk management, SPICE, Bootstrap, ISO 9001 and the P-CMM. This part ends with a chapter that provide an approach and generic steps and guidelines for software process improvement.

Because I have a strong interest in business case development, Part 2 is my favorite section of the book, and one from which all readers will benefit regardless of the model they are currently using or considering. Chapter titles are: The Economics of Software Process Improvements, The Payoff for Software Process Improvement and Empirical Studies of Software Process Assessment Methods. This is excellent foundation material for making the business case and/or determining the ROI of a particular model or improvement strategy.

Part 3 offers excellent insights into the trials and tribulations of assessments. Chapters here are Essence and Accidents in SEI-Style Assessments (this is by a favorite author, Ken Dymond who has written probably the best book on CMM I've read), Tailoring the CMM for Small Businesses, Small Organizations, and Small Projects (proving that CMM is within the reach of small organizations as well as large ones), Starting the Climb Towards the CMM Level 2 Plateau (that first step is the hardest), The Role of Design Analysis in Process Improvement, Action Planning. Part 4, New Developments, contains two excellent papers titled Modeling Software Processes Quantitatively and Evaluating the Performance of Process Alternatives, and Metrics and Laws of Software Evolution.

Overall, this is an invaluable resource to organizations pursuing software process improvement within the framework of one of the common models, as well as SPI and SQA professionals who want to broaden their knowledge.

I bought this book for a family theory class along with another theory book. I found this one to be much better organized, easier to understand and more in depth than the other book required for the class. Most in our class felt the same way too.

Exploring Family Theories presents a variety of sociological theories that explain "family".

A different sociological theory is presented in each chapter, along with examples that show how each theoretical perspective is applied to explain the dynamics of life in a "family".

This approach is an "applied" approach to the sociological study of family. Each theory is shown as set of ideas that one can use to interpret the situation, and thus, make sense of the situation. The Theories are the tools that one uses to help solve problems within families.

The theoretical perspectives in the book include Structural Functionalism, Family Developmental Theory, Symbolic Interactionism, Family Stress Theory, Conflict Theory, Family Systems Theory, Feminist Family Theory, and Biosocial Family Theory.

This book is very readable, clearly stated, and reasonably priced.

The C++ source code that ships with this book, makes it already worth the buy. Combined with this, the book has some good practical examples of real world fuzzy systems

After Bart Kosko's "Fuzzy Thinking," this was the first fuzzy logic book that I bought. The writer's prose is readable and understandable and the explanations of fuzzy logic, especially as applied to modelling, are quite good. My criticism is that the source code provided is not truly in C++; very few (and no important) C++ features are utilized. With very little change, the examples could be compiled with a C compiler. This is most unfortunate, since fuzzy logic in general, and the modelling system described are excellent for object-oriented software. I hope that the 1998 edition of the book does better.

This book is especially good to advanced users with some basic pharmacologic background. It contains clinically useful drugs and their effects, abandoning those which you will never meet in hospital. I recommand it to senior medi students for their clinical rotation.

This new and significantly updated edition of Melmon and Morrelli's classic textbook of clinical pharmacology is a must- read for anybody interested in improving their therapeutic practices. The editors need to be commended for getting leading authorities to contribute chapters in their respective fields. This book should be equally relevant to medical students and physicians in practice. Overall, an excellent buy !