Chambers Books

This is a book about Japanese Americans living in Hawaii. It is a useful book for people studying American Studies. Lots of teachers recomend this to their students or require them to read this, especially here. I read this book and I thought this was pretty throughal....

I picked up this book because, first, I'm a jazz nut, and second, I'd read a tasty quote from it. I don't know what I was expecting, exactly, but the book uses Max Weber's and Ernst Troeltsch's theories of religion and religious movements to analyze the jazz movement. I didn't expect THAT at all!!! However, in my opinion, learning from parables and metaphors is sometimes more effective than learning "facts". And I think jazz is a metaphor for life, (nicely illustrated in the video where Hedrick Smith interviews Dave Brubeck for PBS), so I learned more about myself and life as I learned how the jazz movement has grown, matured, stagnated and been challenged to grow again over the years. A lot of information about the jazz greats, their relationships, how one gets admitted to the community, how change occurs in musical styles. It's interesting how every new musical movement that comes along, like ragtime coming into the milieu of classical music, for example, is first deplored by the old guard. The proponents of the new style eventually become the old guard who then deplores the next new style. This book is about how all that happens over and over again in a constantly emerging musical world. If you have an interest in music history, religious movements, jazz personalities, or your own life, you might find some gems in this book to tweak your thinking.

This book is a gripping biography of a paratrooper medic during WWII. These true stories offer proof of God's miraculous power that is manifested through a surrendered life.
Lots of pictures are included. The writing style is somewhat juvenile, but still very interesting.

You get 5 late Beethoven quartets plus the Grosse Fuge (some of the best chamber music ever written) in one inexpensive volume. Covenient size, although sometimes the 5-systems-per-page layout is a bit crowded.

In 1988, Dr. Peter Drucker wrote an influential article, "The Coming of the New Organization," in which he argued that companies would in the future become flatter organizationally to capture the potential of knowledge workers. One model, he opined, was the symphony orchestra where the conductor adds vision, but must evoke the best performance from her or his independent players.

Leadership Ensemble looks beyond Dr. Drucker's vision, to the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra's practices in operating without a conductor! The result is a "dynamic equilibrium" where everyone takes turns playing leadership roles and is encouraged to provide the kinds of ideas that only conductors normally propose. Interestingly, the Orpheus group is inspired to make great music . . . along the lines of what the collaboration of chamber groups has always done. If they thought that having a conductor would help, they would get a conductor. Instead, they seem to have harnessed many dimensions of the talents of all 27 musicians in the group. Their intent is to evolve further in this direction, so the book represents the group at a point in time, rather than at a destination.

The usual orchestra is run like a dukedom, with the conductor in charge. Few opinions are asked for and even fewer are brooked. In fact, independent surveys show that musicians in orchestras generally have very poor job satisfaction. The authors joke that "every dictator aspires to be a conductor" because a conductor's power is so absolute.

The best part of this book involves describing the way the orchestra operates to select a repertoire, decide how to perform a piece, determine who will play what parts, and handle differences of opinion. There are many other interesting sections about how the musicians have expanded their roles to get into more areas of management and recently (1998) were added to the board of trustees. The processes involved reminded me a lot of what jazz musicians do more informally, and improvisational actors do on the spur of the moment. The remarkable thing is that great planning is captured by the orchestra, without getting bogged down in spending too much time preparing. Their processes are very complex and effective, and depend on thoughtful and timely action by everyone involved. I would love to see a DVD version of this book that involved showing them at work in preparing pieces and handling other important tasks.

The key principles of their success are boiled down into 8 principles. These concepts are elaborated with a few examples from other organizations (mostly profit-making companies), five steps for implementation, and problems to look out for in implementation. Although this material is good, I would have preferred to have read more about Orpheus itself instead.

A key caution that I have about the advice here is that the organizations using these principles were either founded upon them, or have been using them extensively for a long time. I'm not sure that the transition from a more hierarchical organization will go rapidly and smoothly. If the purpose was to advise companies and nonprofits on how to make these changes, the authors would have done better to focus on organizations that were recently hierarchical and rapidly changed to something close to what Orpheus does.

If you are like me, you will be tempted to dismiss the example because it involves highly talented and motivated musicians who earn a good living. But the authors have brought into the book enough examples of nonprofessionals responding just as well that I was persuaded that this model probably can be taken much further than most companies are trying to do. Will CEOs be comfortable in this new role of encouraging the culture, and staying out of the way? I hope so!

Where can you let go and do less as a leader and allow others to lead more? Where do you need to do more as a leader for your organization to accomplish more?

La société française critiquée par Montesquieu par l'intermédiaire de deux persans en voyage à Paris, qui s'étonnent de ce qu'ils y voient dans des lettres qu'ils envoient à leurs amis et femmes... Habile manière pour critiquer son siècle sans être ennuyé par la politique du Roi... Montesquieu brosse un tableau amusant et satirique du XVIIIe siècle, entrecoupé de lettres des femmes des persans ou des eunuques chargés de les garder pour le moins désopilentes.

the 'gas chamber' fraud in the Poland
site of the former National Socialist
detention camp. Convincing power is un-
deniable. Welcome to the hoax of the
twentieth century!

True to is title, this book is entirely devoted to life on the red planet, but does not restrict itself to the modern scientific data. Instead, the text chronologically explores the evolution of the idea of Martian life in the last few centuries.

Mostly based on the scientific results of each period (except the last part), the author starts his expose with the knowledge acquired before the space age. The 'canali' of Schiaparelli turned into canals with Percival Lowell, which lead to the conclusion that a Martian civilization did exist. The debate raged for decades, until technological improvements finally killed the civilized Martians. Mars was a dead planet after all.

Then came the space age, the Soviet and American probes were sent to Mars, confirming Mars as a dead planet... but revealing a once warmer world, with rivers. And if Viking failed to detect life (did it?), what about extinct life?

The third part follows with the possibilities of fossil life and the famed Martian meteorite ALH84001. With a comparison of the origins of life on Earth, the chapter tries to deduce where life could be hiding now.

The final part leaves the area of science and enters the realm of conspiracies and telepathy, Cydonians, UFOs, movies and books. After all, they are all manifestations of Martian life, at least in our culture.

Quite easy to read, this book effectively covers the 'life' subject, and, as a bonus, provides an interesting look at the evolution or scientific knowledge. However, you won't learn much about the red planet, since the astronomical and geological data are quite rare, and, unfortunately, badly documented, contradictory or even false.

For a complete coverage of ALH84001, you may be interested in Donald Goldsmith's "The Hunt For Life On Mars" (1998, ISBN 0452278554).

This book was written during the post-assasination hype following Jesse James' death. The author claims to have gotten much of his material from Jesse's wife and mother. They deny they contributed yet apparently did receive royalties. The author writes a good story and quotes many good first-hand sources, though make allowances for hype-driven inaccuracies. It's good reading.

As an arts educator and writer, I am always looking for material to share with the general public on what are often deem "high" forms of art, including orchestral music. So much material is either written strictly for the intelligentsia or comes off like an especially dry obituary for the composer. This book provides a nice, accessible, but not patronizing balance of engaging writing and historical information.