Professional Resources Books

This book is fine. However, the process in getting the book was horrible. I was done with my thesis defense by the time I got the book then you want me pay again. It took forever to get the book.....bad business. This was totally unacceptable.

This powerful little volume, now in its 20th year, is a classic of its genre. From page one Woodall coaches the reader in developing skillful, confident responses to sticky questions. She says, "Thinking on your Feet means saying exactly what you want to say at exactly the right moment . . . ." Her method and examples provide common-sense means for gaining the high ground in any conversational situation. It's guidance one can use without the distraction of theoretical or statistical overkill. Thinking on Your Feet follows its own advice, recognizing that brevity is not only the soul of wit, but of wisdom. I agree with Kare Anderson (www.sayitbettercenter.com) that "This is the best single book for learning to maintain composure when responding to a hot situation or volatile person." Highly recommended.

I found this book to be very limited in regard to content. I was looking for more advanced techniques, or at least a more detailed study of actual methods for accomplishing what the title advertises. The author could have presented the main points of this book on a few pages and saved us all the time required to read the filler material. Just about any book you pick up about public speaking or personal communication contains the advice found here. "Repeat the question - It gives you a few more seconds to think about your answer" is about as advanced as the info in this book gets.

This book contains all tip and tactics you need to keep conversations and presentations from getting out of hand. If someone is heckling you during an important presentation or asks you a question that you do not know the answer to, this book gives you advice on responding tactfully so you do not look irresponsible, weak, etc.

In essence, this book helps convey the art of BSing. Everyone has known someone in their life who can talk their way out of any situation. This book can help you become someone like that. Very highly recommended!

This book was recommended by Cargill of Dog World, who said if you only get one book on dog nutrition, make it this one. I find Cargill to research things well and therefore come up with good recommendations.

This book was profoundly disappointing. I expected information on feeding my animals food "fit for human consumption" and from my kitchen (versus store bought). I realized shortly into the book that it was written by experts at Iams Company, a maker of pet food. Their recommendations are based on meeting the Association of American Feed Control Officials (AAFCO) guidelines - a committee developed by the pet food industry when they decided they did not care for the requirements recommended by the Committee of Animal Nutrition of the National Research Council (NRC) of the National Academy of Science.
I did get one good tip from the book on how to clean my kitchen after working with raw meat. Otherwise, there are much better books out there for people looking for healthier pets through the food system.

I found this book to be filled with information on the nutritional needs of both cats and dogs. As A pet owner I always read the pet food lables. Till I read this book I was unaware of how misleading those lables can be. I have come away from this book with a much better understanding of the nutritional needs of my pets and how to feed them to promote health and longevity. I also have gained some insight into how to spot signs of nutritional deficiencies in my pets. Surpisingly two of the writers of this book appear to work for Iams, a rather large and well known pet food company. This book was far from biased for the pet food industry nor did it appear to promote any pet food. This book has changed my view of the pet food industry and I will be be much more cautious in the future. I am revamping my pets' diets today! I feel this book is a must for anyone who owns a cat or a dog.

Schon focuses his book on "reflection in action" and "reflection on reflection in action". While reading this book, he did make me self-aware of many teaching techniques that I currently use, but very little new ground was broken here. Not really worth reading, but may be of some value to new "professionals"

Intense reading, appropriate for anyone involved in educating professionals for the new millenium. Schon puts forth challenges for teachers as well as students and uses some excellent examples to demonstrate his thoughts. He also presents difficulties encountered in the educational process, along with proposed solutions. Allow several days to absorb the information in this text, but definately give it a try if you are teaching at the college level!

The problems that face professionals (physicians, lawyers, architects) are rarely straightforward and clear. They are complex and lack "right answers." Skillful professional practice often depends less on factual knowledge than on the ability to reflect before taking action. Yet most professional schools only teach theory and how to apply it to straightforward problems. Frankly, future professionals are being poorly equipped for the real world.

In this book, Schon argues that professional education should be centered on enhancing the practitioner's ability for "reflection-in-action." Building on the concepts introduced in his first book, "The Reflective Practitioner," Schon offers a new approach to professional education in several areas.

Michael Beitler, Ph.D.
Author of "Strategic Organizational Learning"

A good addition to other fan design books but incomplete by itself as it lacks any real guidelines on the mechanical design.
It should include more on impeller stressing (blade bending & hoop stress), shaft critical speed and impeller resonance.
There are a few anomalies but also some good flow information.
The axial and centrifugal flow design data is good except for centrifugal fan casings which really only covers wide, high volume designs. If you are looking for detailed centrifugal casing design for high pressure blowers then look elsewhere (I am still looking).
The chapter on system resistance is very informative. The other sections on fan applications and the different fan types is also very good.
Reviewed by:
Richard Knighton - FanMechanics

The "Fan Handbook" is the finest book yet written on fan design, implementation, use, and trouble shooting. The book a delight to read and use. Mr. Bleier, unlike many techno-types, is fine writer (and I suspect re-writer) and a careful idea organizer. The work has many, many professionally shot photographs and is fully illustrated. There are no crude computer generated drawings anywhere! It's well indexed and heavily cross-referenced.

The book's slant is to the practical and explicitly avoids calculus, but it is by no means elementary. Any person with high school algebra and trig can understand the well-presented equations and solve all the case study problems with a little effort. Math phobes needn't be put off; the book is not "too" mathematical.

The only thing that prevented me from awarding five stars to this terrific book was an important omission. No mention is made of specialized fans for cooling towers. I had especially hoped to learn mo! re about design requirements for static presure regain/velocity recovery fan stacks for very large fans. But this shortcoming should not disuade any cooling tower engineers from purchasing this book, since all of the principles discussed do fully apply to cooling towers. END

As a basic primer on fan concepts, this is a good book. It also serves as a sort of non-engineer's guide to fan design and allows someone with very little knowledge or experience create a fan design of some reasonable worth.

Unfortunately, I was looking for a bit more of an in depth aerodynamic study and have yet to find a piece of literature that I like. I understand that many of the older books on cascade aerodynamics are quite good, but they are no longer in publication, and this didn't really satisfy my interests.

Particularly annoying to me is the lack of derivation of the methodology in the fan design section. Some basic magic formulas are given and then tied together with some basic velocity diagrams to yield a fan blade design methodology.

This book is a great idea, but is very skimpy with the details. The interviews consist of two questions (the same for each person) that cover general advice, but nothing specific about what the careers involve. Some fields don't need this detail (high school education is something most of us are familiar with), but if I want to learn what a policy advisor actually does every day, I'll need to look beyond the "policy" career section of this book. It was full of advice for success (improve your communication skills, do what you love), but rather short on what tasks you'd actually need to succeed at to make it in a particular career.

This book discusses a variety of options for people with advanced science degrees (MS or PhD mostly) who wish to pursue a career outside of academia. It provides interviews with scientists who have successfully made the leap out of academia, either immediately after they finished their degree, or after spending some time in an academic job.

Overall, I found the book very helpful. It provided advice about how to enter specific fields and also gave general advice about how to get a nonacademic job, how to sell yourself to a potential employer, how to determine if a career is right for you, etc. The book is divided into sections based on career paths, and I read every section (even those for careers I wouldn't consider) because I found the general job-seeking advice extremely helpful. However, I encountered two main problems while reading this. First, it is almost 10 years old, so many of the trends discussed, web addresses, contact info, and program suggestions are out of date. Second, it contained no information on jobs in conservation, ecology, or the environment. These are huge areas with many possible nonacademic jobs, and the fact that they were not included is a significant oversight.

This book was originally loaned to me by an administrator at my graduate school. I borrowed it twice, for several months each! I finally bought the book because it is such a great reference. It gives overveiws of broad areas, such as law, business, writing and publishing, scientific journalism and education, both formal and informal. For each section, there are bios and interviews with people holding various positions within the field. And there are great tips for how to prepare yourself for the change, as well as things to expect after the leap (for example, many of these careers are a one-way change, meaning the door to research closes). However, the most valuable part of the book (and the reason I purchased it) is the contacts with trade organizations. For each area, there is a list of several organizations, listing who they are, what the mission is, what they offer and how to contact them. Bottom line, if a lifetime of benchwork and grantwriting doesn't seem like you, but this book. You might find yourself identifying with a career you never would have thought about otherwise.

This book provides a very broad overview of all energy topics. Much of the information could probably be found in a more up-to-date form from the internet. The first section seems straight from the EIA's annual energy report. Do not purchase this book as an day-to-day guide for operations, calculations and benchmarks. Do buy this book if you're looking for a general description of energy topics.

I say this as a mechanical engineer as the electrical sections do seem to go into more depth.

I teach power plant technology in an applied sciences college of a large urban university. One of the ongoing challenges of teaching is finding a comprehensive textbook. Although not perfect as a textbook this is a great reference for developing student's foundation in power plant technology

i am a mechanical engineer working for the power generation industry. as one grows up in professional line, the responsibility also grows. as a mechanocal engineer i have been always reluctant to see the electrical aspect of the power generation until one day i have to take important decision concerning the electrical aspect of the power plant. this hand book came to my great help & stisfaction and took me through most of the electrical engg aspects related to power generation in a very very simple way. Topics like the harmonics, selection and imporatntace of many basic electrical components have been very well covered.i am glad to go through such a book. i would imagine such hand book is a must for practicing power engineers.

The authors' venture into the heavily-mined areas of helping difficult clients I have found to be insightful, very practical, challenging to the therapist to do his or her "work." It is not for the the armchair therapist.

This is not a one-way-street book and does not pretend to be exhaustive in its treatment of the subject. I found especially helpful the authors' discussion of the therapist's and client's family-typic background and the importance of this in the work of therapy. There is much else to recommend this book. I am happy to have made this purchase; it is a welcome addition to my 'arsenal.'

Finally, a system that works, that treats the clients with respect and optimism! And, a client myself, let me tell you, it makes all the difference in the world.

I was very disappointed with this book after purchasing it. It over-simplified serious issues, and tended to state the obvious. I found many parts of it demeaning to both professionals and clients. The authors also wrote a profile for Howard Stern's book, Private Parts. One wonders if he would be considered a difficult client. In my opinion, much of the content of this book is pop-psychology dressed up as real research.

This book is definately a good read. I have learned alot from reading this book. It will definately be of use to me when I become a teacher in about a year or two. I recommend this book for whoever is thinking of going into teaching or is a teacher.

This is an excellent book that I would highly recommended. (Perhaps those of you "in the trenches" should learn to spell before you give reviews.)

Mr. Belmonte is really full of himself. He spent his career teaching in affluent suburban schools and now he thinks he can tell those of us in the trenches how to teach. Baloney!! He must think there are a lot of fools out there to expect others to pay $55 for such of load of tired, old (or should I say well composted?) manure. Teaching is hard enough without pompous old fools spouting the same useless drivel.

This book was okay. It was needed for class. I skipped a lot of pages because it gets drawn out at some points.

This is an easy to read book. Has a lot of practical and useable information for Human Resources people. It is not overly technical so the average person can get a lot of great information but it also has good information for people in the IT world needing to implement an HRIS. Overall its a good book for all HR people to have as a resource. Technology is changing HR so this book will help HR people focus on the relevant issues for their specific organization.

It may be a good idea, and it may provide some useful sign language, but the author of the book should know better than to use the term "hearing impaired" on a sign language book. The term is considered offensive to Deaf people, who do not feel impaired in any way.

This book provides a reasonable introduction to sign language. There are lots of pictures demonstrating the different signs used in case a situation occurs where you may have to help a hearing imparied person. The book also includes pictures of the actual alphabet in sign language. This is a good introduction, however if you are somebody interested in learning sign language itself, I would recommend taking a class at a community college rather than reading any books on it. Learning things hands on is usually the best way to not only learn something, but also in retaining information.