Practitioners Books

This is a must read for business people interested the competitive moves opened up by business components. It is irreverent, witty, fun. It deals with how to spot the components that will win, not this or that technology. It reclaims the streets from the corporate hype about who owns the market.

By no means dry, the book has a colorful way of exploring topics and then moving on before they have a chance to settle. I suppose this is the author's style and as a consultant one should be good at asking questions and most importantly asking the right ones. In many ways this is the books greatest strength as the author draws on real life examples and then poses questions for further thought. However, the open-ended approach to this all is IMHO the books biggest weakness as the author ends up asking more questions then he seems able to answer. He explains in the afterward that the book is a result of many disjointed notes and their eventual refinement which makes sense because I found no closure upon completing the last chapter. I asked myself what was the point of the book and realized it is what it is: a survey of business and IT, ala Stewart Brand, Gregory Bateson (two highly respected cyberneticists) and others with the resultant hodgepodge of systems theory.

In short I would not recommend this book for people looking for a practical hands-on approach to their business and IT. However, I would recommend it for anyone who likes "philosophising" about business and IT systems as the author has a very good knack at making the mundane exciting and vivid. Bringing software maintenance to the same calibre as development (he argues effectively rarely does pure development exist) was the most important thing I took away, though "great minds think alike" may be just another cliche.

Very thorough, balanced viewpoints, useful chapter sections (especially the exercises at the end of each chapter), and empirically supported throughout. Also really like that each chapter is written by a different author, so you get a lot of different viewpoints and writing styles. Definitely recommend to anyone needing to teach a multicultural counseling course or strengthen their own multicultural counseling competencies.

This book is an excellent , current resource for counseling multicultural groups/individuals, in the truest sense of "multicultural". Every chapter is written by a member of the group being studied, so the perspective of the insider is real, not bookish or purely academic/research based. It is also a very quick and easy read, and as interesting as it is informative.

Dr. Stadolnik has done us a favor by summarizing previous research and treatment options. He suggests a solid framework for treatment, but points out that the dearth of research in this area has left us with few treatment plans that will work in every case, which is of course what we would all hope for. This is a solid well written book for clinicians, firemen, insurance agents, foster parents and parents who want clear, well written and easily understood information in this often difficult to understand area. Kyle Lassiter, MA, Licensed Professional Counselor

I found this captivating narration of firesetting evaluation a roller coaster ride for the mind. It was a phantasmal display of writing prowess on behalf of the author. It kept me on the edge of my seat and i was compelled to read on and on...

Book contains an excellent variety of strategies that can be used with regular and special education students in the regular classroom as a means for them to be successful in edcation. Great for ideas for FTI strategies at various levels.

Helpful information. Written specifically for those of us who work in schools. More directed toward teachers than school psychs.

The book "Experiencing AI: A Practitioner's Guide to Integrating Appreciative Inquiry With Experiential Learning" provides a glimpse into the world of experiential/adventure-based training and development. If you work as a "helping professional"--trainer, consultant, educator, therapist--this book introduces you to the practice of Appreciate Inquiry and experiential/adventure training in a short, concise, and easy-to-understand format.

As a seasoned organization development consultant and experiential educator, I found the book fascinating in its description of the kinds of activities and interventions the authors use with their clients, and came away energized thinking about how to incorporate some of these strategies into my own practice. I was also amazed, and to be honest somewhat skeptical, to think that you could get a group of corporate executives to fully engage and buy-in to some of the activities described in the book given the level of commitment and intellectual/creative demands they required. And yet, if what one hopes to accomplish as, say, an organizational consultant working with a senior-level management team, is a breakthrough in trust, communication and problem-solving skills, and performance, then the integration of Appreciative Inquiry with hands-on, real-world experiential activities strategically designed to mirror the kinds of workplace demands that the client faces daily seems to be a powerful and effective strategy.

My wife, who has a private counseling practice, has increasingly begun to explore and integrate both the Appreciative and experiential aspects of what this book has introduced her to into her practice, and is discovering a whole new way of engaging her clients. What is interesting, is that for both my wife and I, we have always struggled with ways to reduce our client's dependency on us as "experts," and to increase the degree to which they take ownership of not only their problems and issues (or, opportunities and dreams), but also to own and control the process of learning, growth, and discovery. Curiously, in their book, Ricketts and Willis describe a part of their organizing philosophy about just such a phenomena when talking about "transfer of learning" and the underlying dynamic tensions that exist between client and consultant.

Both of us are also exploring how to bring this into our work as university professors in relation to the training we provide students in human services, education, and business. I especially am excited about how to integrate aspects of Appreciative Inquiry into the graduate-level courses I teach on research methods, program evaluation, and organizational needs assessment.

This book has opened our eyes to new ways of seeing our work as helping professionals and educators, and we highly recommend it to beginning and seasoned practitioners.

The basic proposition of this book is very attractive. It is that the AI (Appreciative Inquiry) approach to organisation development can be accelerated, deepened, intensified and enhanced if experiential learning is embedded into the process. In the optimistic language of AI it could be said that this book sets out to combine the best of Appreciative Inquiry (AI) with the best of Experiential Learning (EL).

AI (even without any help from EL) is seen as a fast track approach to organisation development. Does EL makes AI even faster, and is there a downside to the greater speed, depth and intensity that seems to occur when AI and EL are mixed together?

Having combined AI and EL in my own work, I was particularly interested to see exactly how the authors merge these two processes and what successes they have had. Just how much they appear to achieve in events of just one or two days is impressive and is enough to make any training provider wonder how their own events match up to these achievements.

In a nutshell, the integrated process of AI and EL involves
(1) people imagining how they want things to be (the AI part) and
(2) people instantly making these imaginings come true within the 'micro-world' of the EL event. Examples of the 'micro-world' include:
* a real world community service challenge (feeding and clothing homeless people)
* a series of solution-finding tasks linked by a space fantasy theme
* building a giant physical structure that resembles the new organisational structure they wish to create.

For a book of only 80 pages the four case studies are surprisingly detailed, even if they do create an appetite for wanting to know more. The authors list 10 benefits arising from the integration of AI and EL. The benefits that EL brings include:
* impelling people into actually experiencing the best of what exists
* bringing collective dreams and aspirations to life
* transcending cultural inhibitions against "prideful speech" and "fanciful thinking"
* building critical mass as change is cascaded throughout the community
* helping the AI process to come alive kinaesthetically (creating "muscle memories" of affirmative communal futures)

It feels a bit unsporting to write about problems when a book is so deliberately upbeat and positive in its approach. But I cannot provide a balanced review without drawing your attention to some difficulties ...
I have never seen a book with so many phrases marked with the TM sign. There are nearly 20 phrases marked with TM. These include: Strategic Linking TM, Project Success TM, Process Control Review TM, Continuous Learning Cycle TM, Self-facilitated Learning TM, Self-facilitated Team Learning TM, and Team Learning Journal TM. The frequency of the TM symbol gives out a very mixed message, as if it should be entitled: "Guidebook: Do Not Use". As a reader I felt untrusted - a particular irony in a book about developing trust. I would have appreciated some reassurance or explanation about this TM epidemic.

The authors redefine the role of the facilitator - by replacing facilitators with work books! They explain that in Self-facilitated Learning TM it is the Learning Journal TM that guides the process. The Learning Journal (they say) contains everything that participants need to facilitate their own learning processes - activity frontloading, rules and debrief questions. The trouble with facilitators (they say) is that each facilitator may provide a wide variety of interpretations and may even stall progress by providing distractions. Whereas workbooks speed up the process, reduce variation, increase accuracy and produce a more comprehensive result. This substitution of facilitators with work books might be an economy but surely it is not more effective? One issue arising is the desirability of using a factory-like process for organisation development. Another issue is whether 'self-facilitated' is an accurate description of a process that is driven, steered and shaped by a work book. From the way it is described it would be more accurate to call it 'book-facilitated' or 'following instructions' rather than 'self-facilitated'.

In fairness, the authors do confront and discuss these issues. In a section on 'Standardized Experiences' they claim to be following AI on the issue of standardisation:

"Standardization of the experience is another important reason for adopting a self-facilitated learning approach. While this approach is effective with any size group, it is especially effective in large group situations wherein it is important that individuals and groups have similar experiences, as in AI." (p. 64)

So it is clear where the authors stand on this issue. Or is it? Because they later attempt to clarify where they stand on the issue of open-endedness:

"One final clarifying point about self-facilitated learning experiences: Self-facilitated learning experiences are open-ended and they are not." (p. 65)

Following this deliberate contradiction is an elaborate metaphor about a highway that I have read many times in an attempt to work out what they mean and where they stand. I think the answer is that the trainers draw the map within which participants make choices. Or it is like a multiple choice test where every choice leads to the same destination.

Perhaps I expect too much from a small book, but I would have appreciated more attention being paid to the issues associated with the kinds of practices being recommended. The tendency of providers to be upbeat about their own work is probably intensified when the process they are describing is itself particularly upbeat. Inclusion of some other voices or stakeholders would have added greater credibility and depth and would have saved it from reading, in places, like an Executive Edge brochure. I still like the basic proposition that AI and EL can be successfully combined. I particularly enjoyed the detail of the four case studies - and felt inspired by them. But the arguments for 'standardized experiences' were a bridge too far. I would like to see a message about "diversity is strength" woven into the formula.

The content of the two books is very thorough and includes key points of assessment, diagnosis, treatment, and follow-up evaluation. It would be an asset for current students and as a reference in practice settings. It would be an excellent resource for study groups or as an adjunct to a review course. Several "tips" are listed at the end of each chapter for test-taking, however there are no specific questions or practice exams in this book. Practice certification exams are sold separately and can be obtained through the publisher.

Family Nurse Practitioner Certification Review Book, Hollier, A., Levy, D., & Preis, C., (1998), covers, in an easy to read, bulleted format, the information I needed to successfuly take the family nurse practitioner certification exam. The book covers all body systems, and also includes chapters on health promotion and human development and on professional issues. The chapters on pregnancy and lactation include the kind and amount of information a family nurse practitioner student needs in contrast with a women's health book, which provides too much information for the student specializing in family practice.

This book is different from the others in its specific focus. There is not a lot of wasted information offered that the student has to wade through in order to get the information he needs. The book provides the student with exactly what it is promoted as providing, a concise, comprehensive study guide.

The collection of texts organized by Dawson is a good introduction to the topic. It brings some of the texts of the people that came up with the whole concept of the flow of funds accounts as well as some didactic ones and others that use the accounts for theoretical and empirical modelling. The book has some problems, though. Many of the original texts (like the ones by Bakus et alli and Earley, Parsons and Thompson, for example) were substantially edited, in a way that fails to capture their essence. Also, the selection of papers is, overall, more diverse than coherent and some important modern work in the area has been left out (I am thinking about the texts by Wynne Godley that have carried on the tradition of keynesian stock-flow consistent macroeconomic models during the nineties). Despite these problems, anyone interested in the topic should buy the book. Its virtues clearly dominate its problems.

This is a useful handbook for those who work with applied monetary economics. The collection of papers cover not only the development of flow-of-fund analysis, but also its fundamentals and applications (with examples).

It did not take me long to finish reading this book. The book is very easy to understand, and very organized in content. It has lots of good points as the "basic rules" for therapeutic staff working in correctional facilities. I have highlighted the valuable information for my own use. I also showed this book to my boss, who thinks it a wonderful book, also.

Great book for those interested in penitentiary psychology. Many psychology graduates have no idea what a psychologist in a prison does. The author gives his first had account of his experience as a prison psychologist, discusses many myths and misconceptions about this type of work.
Interesting and informative, especially in the context of scarcity of books on the subject.

Very useful guide for review prior to taking the CISSP examination.

I began to utilize this manual about 10-12 months prior to taking the CISSP examination. A co-worker informed me of this valuable reference guide. He, too, attained the CISSP accreditation. The guide provides in-depth information in all of the security disciplines (physical security, encryption, etc) covered by the exam. I continue to use the reference daily in my job.

This book has been a lifesaver for writing admission orders. Could not imagine working without it!

This text is useful for 3rd and 4th more medical students who are beginning to write admission H&Ps, as well as admission orders. I also could see this being useful for interns. The book starts with a section called "Guide Tables," which lists, in table format, commonly used information such as DVT prop. initial vent settings, abx spectrum, and more. The tables are made to be read quickly and are ordered well. The main text of the book is divided into specialty areas. For example, cards, endo, infxn disease and so on. Within each section, there are common admission orders. They follow the standard format. The orders also include a section called "management" which details initial treatment, as well as a section called "diagnosis," which provides more information on rule outs and pearls regarding the diagnosis. Overall, I found the orders to be accurate and succinct. Again, this text is for quick reference, so do not expect explanations, as they are not given. There is a bonus section on toxicology which I think is useful and usually left out of reference texts. In addition to the standard sections, there are sections based on "symptoms" (i.e., chest pain, cough); and a section on symptom management. I think the symptom management section is perfect for the intern who is beginning to memorize the commonly used symptomatic drugs. Overall, I think this is a perfect reference for the medical student who is beginning to write orders and even for a new intern. In comparison to "Medicine," another commonly used order book, this Instant Access book is more thorough, the orders are more reasonable (I have found many problems with the orders in the "Medicine" book. I would recommend this book without reservation.