Manufacturing Books

Geez, the management folks at VW are a bunch of arrogant bastards - much like the folks at Ford, GM and Daimler Chrysler. This book is a great history and a really interesting and enjoyable read.

I'm an avid VW driver, and when I saw this book I had to read it. It's great! The VW story is incredible, I never would have guessed that there was so much interesting history there.

The references to the advertising brought back some good memories. I remember each ad and how great they were.

A dfinite must read!

J.

I'm a die hard VW loyalist now. So when I saw this book I had to see what it was all about. Incredible story! Very well written!

It was incredible to read about all the things that went on within and without the company, it helps to understand the car a lot better :) If you're at all interested in VW's or car company history in general, this is a must read.

This is a top of the line book. It takes the reader through the history of Volkswagon in America. It speaks of the successes and failures and takes the reader behind the scenes to see how the company was/is run. Due to the history of Volkswagon, the book is entertaining and hard to put down. Kiley does a wonderful job of telling the facts in an interesting way. At times though, it does focus a lot on advertising which is both interesting and tedious. Although it can be hard to keep all the dates and people straight throughout the book, the experience of reading the book is fantastic. This is a great book for those who know a lot about cars and for those who are just merely curious.

This is a top of the line book. It takes the reader through the history of Volkswagon in America. It speaks of the successes and failures and takes the reader behind the scenes to see how the company was/is run. Due to the history of Volkswagon, the book is entertaining and hard to put down. Kiley does a wonderful job of telling the facts in an interesting way. At times though, it does focus a lot on advertising which is both interesting and tedious. Although it can be hard to keep all the dates and people straight throughout the book, the experience of reading the book is fantastic. This is a great book for those who know a lot about cars and for those who are just merely curious.

I highy recommend this book. This book is a must have for the Hartland and model horse collector. It is very thorough. Easy to read for younger collectors, too. A lot of work went into this book. The pictures and information are just wonderful. It has helped me with identifying and catloging my own collection.. I take it with me when I going antiquing. I would highly also recommend her other book: Hartland Horses and Dogs.

Thanks to author Gail Fitch to one of the most comprehensive guides to Hartland collectibles I have every seen..WOW... > Her expertise and careful research is abundant in this guide... models, dates, pictures and company history of Hartland Plastics.. A MUST HAVE for all model horse collectors!

I have always enjoyed collecting western characters and their horses, dogs, etc. This book finally puts it all together. The book also allows me to look at pictures of pieces I can only dream about. The information is terrific and the photos are superb. If you are an "old cowboy" like me, you need at least one copy of this book!

I love this book! I don't know what else the author could have included -- it is so complete. I especially like the fact that the book is broken into sections, i.e. the horses and riders, the standing gunfighters, the riders and the horses shown separately in other sections. I also enjoy the history section in the back, and the detailed written descriptions about the models and their variations. The quality of the color photos is superb and I would highly recommend this book to any Hartland collector. I can't wait till her book on the breed horses comes out!

Gail Fitch has done a superb job of putting together extrememly detailed and accurate information about all of Hartland's horse and rider figures, with lots of very nice pictures showing details that complement the text. This book has gotten rave reviews from non-Hartland collectors as well as all kinds of horse collectors, and they are well deserved! This is a book that can keep you happily absorbed for long periods of time and it's an essential reference for collectors. Hartland Horsemen is an excellent book, very professionally done, and I love it! Like someone else said, I can't wait until the Hartland horse book is done so I can buy it!

I found this book fascinating, easy to read, and fun. The reader will not only learn about Goodyear and about the rubber industry, but will also meet interesting historical characters, learn about how they reacted under difficult circumstances (some honorably, some not so honorably), and will also learn interesting facts about life in antebellum America. I highly recommend this book!

Rubber...something we take for granted in todays world really has an interesting history. The race to make this into a functional material is traced in this book. I must say that I learned so many things about Charles Goodyear and his quest to bring rubber into our lives as a product that has so many applications. His early struggles with financial loss as a result of his quest underlines his obsession that would land him in the poor house on different occasions. This book is a great source of learning not only of him but the other players at the time who could see the potential of this product. Its a great history lesson for anyone interested in how rubber came to be a part of all our lives.

Some pieces of history just do not seem to be the stuff of entertaining books - such as the history of rubber. Mr. Slack turns this bit of history into a thoroughly entertaining and informative book. Of course, he had the whacky Charles Goodyear to help along the way. To say Goodyear was obsessive would be to understate the case.

Mr. Slack weaves the efforts of Goodyear and his rivals to make rubber a useful commodity into a compelling read. Goodyear's successful efforts - after years of amusing failures - are purloined along the way by a rogue's gallery of figures. The title would imply a greater role for Hancock than he appeears in the book, but Mr. Slack shows his scientific methodology and buusiness sense in contrast to Goodyear's lack thereof to great effect.

As we watch Goodyear trip and fall repeatedly on his way to stumbling onto the answer, Mr. Slack explains the science behind the experiments well. Adding to the book is Mr. Slack's ability to give the historical perspective. He relates well the times and the burgeoning industrial age, so that when the answer to production of rubber is found, its impact on the age is comprehended by the reader.

A terrific and well-written history. Strongly recommended.

I do not often write a review of something I have read, even when it is either good or bad, but when a volume as exceptional and enjoyable to read as this one comes along, it deserves praise. I particularly enjoyed the way Mr. Slack put the era in context and he was not hesitant to go off and explore and explain the background behind the players. He gives little stories that truly flesh out those individuals or companies whom touched Goodyear's life. My only complaint is that the book was so short! This is one that could have been expanded and I dare say it would not have been dull in the least! I also wish Mr. Slack would write more! Great work!

You would never know it by today's amazon.com sales rank where currently it is ranked 1,102,030!!!! Like most of the others who have reviewed this book, I found it to be superb. Charles Slack takes us back to nineteenth century America and one mans obsession with an idea. Many folks bought into his idea for a time and some of them lost a lot of money in the process. Most people considered him a fool. But Charles Goodyear devoted most of his working life to perfecting the art of vulcanization. His efforts resulted in a product with literally thousands of commercial uses. It is a truly remarkable story told in a most engaging manner. Never mind the best sellers.....give this one a try. I guarantee you that you won't be disappointed.

A tour de force in Industrial and Engineering History that remains a model for charting the evolution of a complete technology between two book covers. Though 'Copper Wire -' makes no direct appeal to the lay reader, this was never the intention. Nevertheless, it has an informative and fluent style and for those outside this discipline it provides a highly educational text, sufficiently well composed to make it a work of reference as well as a comprehensive and contiguous history. This is a technological history, and the author is at pains to concern himself with the progressive development of wire technology and the changes needed to meet the demands of electrical conductors. This, for me, is the fascinating aspect, though those with a mechanical background and interest will not be disappointed. Similarly, the history is well managed and constitutes a highly credible and admirable excercise in historical research. All told an excellent example of engineering history at its best.
N.R. Ramsden, Lecturer - Economic History, May 25, 2006,

Reviewer, Economic historian, April 29, 2005,

A deeply insightful and well argued monograph in economic history which at once provides a superb perspective on the exigencies in 19th Century industrial development and at the same time structures the research and history so well that there are times when the subsequant analysis - impecable though it is - seems superfluous. As said by other reviewers, Blake-Coleman's Copper Wire stands as a model in this sector of economic and industrial history.

There is little that can be added to the earlier reviews - all the superlatives are in place and as a latecomer to reading this title I can only contribute my agreement. As an engineer working in the wire industry I found the material not only fascinating but a reflection on the authors real command of the technology and the historical exigencies involved. It was a revelation in exposing just how advanced the production methods had become at the end of the 19th century, and just how difficult the path to making high quality electrical conductors was from the advent of submarine telegraphy. I congatulate all involved in the production of this book - wonderful.

Copper Wire and Electrical Conductors : The Shaping of a Technology

Author: B. C. Blake-Coleman
Format: Hardcover Textbook
Published: December 1991
ISBN: 3718652005

This is a definitive work which critically examines the principal events and circumstances which influenced the evolution of copper wire as a crucial component in modern electrical technology.

Now established as a milestone in the publishing of technological histories, Blake-Coleman's 'Copper Wire-' provides the template for all subsequent authors in the field. Highly readable, yet completely authoratative in the depth and breadth of its research, this book went even further in showing how careful editing can enhance the way information is conveyed to the reader. (All footnotes and citations for example are given on the page where they appear. This is of enormous value; given that typically citations are confined to the end of a book, requiring the reader to constantly flick through pages).

The structure and content of 'Copper Wire-' is of itself a lesson. To avoid the problem of intermingling the use and application of Copper wire with the technology of wire making itself, the opening chapters cover the history of wire making technology and then proceed to focus on copper wire per se. This arms the reader at the outset with an understanding of the slow development of wire making technology from ancient times up to the end of the 19th/early 20th century when automated techniques were virtually mature.

The traditional applications, trades and supply chains for copper wire are given a full treatment in the middle sections. Not only in terms of markets and uses but the organizations and companies that developed on the specific businesses of the day. This extends to the single tradesman supplying copper articles for the local market and drawing his own copper wire, to the dockyard industries providing the massive levels of copper and copper wire for both naval and private vessels. We see how slowly (but inevitably) the provision of materials for the traditional markets slowly make available a commodity that could be used in early electrical work.

Electrical science is then shown to be an overwhelming force for change in the copper wire industry - not least because (as we are suprised to find) the traditionally made copper wire does not have the qualities and attributes appropriate for electrical applications. Indeed, iron and brass wire are at first the primary choice as conductors in telegraphy and experimental applications.

How electrical science and the acceleration in telegraphic and telephonic communications came to change the manufacture and properties of conventional copper wire is a fascinating story, and is not only well told in this book but told with an emphasis that conveys vividly the trials and tribulations of those individuals who made our modern electrical systems what they are. Having read the later sections of 'Copper Wire-' one is left in no doubt that dismissing the current monopoly of copper wire in electrical technology as purely an evolutionary step ignores the fact - as this book clearly recounts - that there was nothing natural or evolutionary about it!

Not only is this book a prime example of good scholarship and pragmatism in approaching the problem of presentation, but the wealth and quality of research leaves one admiring the persistance of the author. Few would see the subject as compelling. There is after all no central character or single historical perspective and technological histories are hardly the best platform for getting to grips with the economic and social conditions which prevail. Yet the author does turn a potentially turgid subject into something truly engaging.

There are many criticisms to be made about this book (mainly editorial and typographical) but this remains the definitive technological history. Copper Wire- is recommended to anyone who is embarking on a similar task. Not only as a model for writing this kind of material but as an example of understanding what makes a complex and highly technical subject easy to understand and assimilate.

I believe many will agree that this book deserves its longevity. Having obtained a copy on the strength of the Amazon reviews (below) I have (for the first time) no argument with the reviewers. Those who have praised the scholarship, structure and insight of Blake-Coleman's work were right to do so. Verso, the criticisms where they occur are justified. Particularly in the light of the fact that much of the research dates back some 20 years! Yet there is little extant that supersedes any of the book's contents, and that speaks volumes!

As a study in how economic and industrial history should be written 'Copper Wire - ' has few equals, as a research excercise and a marvellous story of industrial and technological change it is peerless.

If you decide to buy this book take a good deep breath. You should be good enough in algebra, and you should be quite comfortable with some six sigma basics. This book gives a good explanation in TRIZ and in the DFSS algoritm.
The axiomatic design could be better (lack of examples). It is well written.

This is a book with a lot of information. Each chapter can be used as a starting point for a specific six sigma technique. However, this is the worst edited book I have ever read. You can hardly find one page without errors/typos.

While the concept of six-sigma is a very popular one, it is not often that one can find such a comprehensive yet clearly-written volume devoted to the most important topics of six-sigma. A book that contains so much information and not just hot air is especially hard to find. Yang and El-Haik have successfully written one of the most impressive and useful reads I have ever encountered within this field. Especially intriguing and novel concept of TRIZ. A very worthwhile book, in any case.

I have not found such a comprehensive book for design of six sigma. I started using this book for advanced experimental design and taguchi methods, but ended understanding the complete roadmap for design of six sigma. The systems approach allows an enthusiast reader to start anywhere, without having to spend time refering back to earlier chapters. The relatively newer trends as TRIZ and axiomatic design have also been nicely dealt with.
Overall, this is a very nice and easy read book, with excellent and well defined examples. A must for everyone who wants a quick refresher on the design principles of six sigma.

This is an outstanding DFSS book for production development. It contains integrated information and some of which you could hardly find anywhere else, thus with one book in hand, you have all the tools to get to your destination. This is also a easy to read book providing the reader with a solid understanding- Concepts are clearly defined, real world examples/ case studies are fully described and the chapters are well organized. It can serve as a textbook for students/beginners and also can serve as a handbook for experienced engineers.
The title says it all- this is a roadmap for you to find the way correctly and easily. I am reading the book right now, and the book is really beneficial to me.

The author, a passionate practitioner of the teaching arts in an inner-city classroom, has, amidst the ruins of print-based culture, rediscovered how to connect with the the fullest possible range of a would-be reader's senses. This is all the more timely, given what the rising generation internalizes as the normal way of information-processing. A. Bartlett Giamatti spotted the trend in the 1980s, and noted in "Take Time for Paradise," his ode to baseball, that the young were even them mentally imaging things as if on a screen - that their experiences with computers and video games dramatically altered their basic preception of knowledge transmission. (My son made the same observation - he learns more from the Discovery and History Channels than from text.)
Beyond that, the written word is not even what it once was: the plague of Newspeak-style bland language has all but extinguished the supple verve of good English prose in everyday usage. Business, newspapers, and textbooks, among other venues, are in the thrall of dumbed-down, disposable writing of a most forgettable kind. (Example: Compare a King James Bible with the New International Version, and try to find one memorable phrase in the latter that is not a leftover from the former.)
Ms. Kirschenbaum passionately wants to rescue our culture from irrelevance in the eyes of her students. Despite what she reports as indifference from academics more interested in pedigree than in the power of ideas, she gathered the panoramic sweep of how non-Gutenbergian cultures transmitted information - in vivid color, shaped in every way imaginable, as opposed to block text, with assistance from everything that two-dimensional art can offer to stimulate the brain (she discusses the science of that, too) to be receptive to the meaning conveyed by the author.
Ms. Kirchenbaum re-discovered the importance of color. In doing so, she stands in the center of a long tradition, sidetracked by the limitations of Gutenberg's printing press, but not entirely forgotten. The author is probably correct in thinking that black-on-white block text held sway for as long as it did because of the near-monopoly that it had in conveying printed information. The advent of multi-media and desktop publishing means that A.) Old-style text is not the only game in town, and B.) One must ask how anyone used to high levels of stimulation via television, the Internet, etc., can otherwise be induced to use unexercised imagination to make reading attractive.
The book is sprinkled with quotes from classic writers - Horace, Mencius, Hugh of St. Victor, etc., and experts in the field of graphic design, to bolster the author's case. That case rests on foundations as old as Plato: the preception of reality gained through reading may be as imperfect as the shadows on the wall in his famous anology of the cave; using art and color to enliven words can only help bring that image into sharper focus, and thus the phantasms of memory when the reader recalls it at a later date. In a post-literate world, such writing serves such as Gothic architecture once did for Christianity - a sermon in stone. To use a secular example, Shakespeare meant for his plays to be seen, not read; adding something to black-on-white block text brings the reader nearer to what the playwright wanted to convey, in terms of total, felt meaning.
The power of Ms. Kirchenbaum's message stayed with me as I read deeper into her book: While watching, "My Big, Fat, Greek Wedding," I connected the Orthodox use of icons ("Written," not painted - every stroke had specific meaning to the believer), incense, chanting, and candles - all elements absent from American Prtoestant Christianity, to the Eastern way of engaging all the senses in a religous experience.
In closing, while Ms. Kirschenbaum does not cite Thomas More, he wrote in support of her ideas, when he said, as quoted by Sister Miriam Joseph in her classic, "The Trivium" - "Images are necessary books for the uneducated and good books for the learned, too. For all words be but images representing the things that the writer or speaker conceives in his mind,... and so conceived in the mind, is but an image representing the very thing itself that a man thinks of."
What Ms. Kirchenbaum is attempting is not a revelolution, but a restoration, reconnecting us with the timeless knowledge of the ages. For that she deserves our approbation and active support.
-Lloyd A. Conway

Valerie Kirschenbaum is a woman with one modest goal: she wants to start a revolution. "The Designer Revolution: The Marriage of Art, Literature, Education, Technology" is the opening shot in her quest, drawn in good part from her experiences as a New York City high school teacher. Why, she asks, in this era of marvelous computer graphics should we continue to read the printed page in the same manner we have done so since the days of Gutenberg? Just as Henry Ford is reputed to have said that you could get a Model T in any color you wanted as long as it was black, so publishers have traditionally told us we can get a book in any color as long as it is black (and white).

Kirschenbaum believes that color is one element that should be explored and exploited to make reading come alive, not only for students but for all of us. Color is a tool for emphasis and engagement. Centuries ago in the era of hand-written manuscripts (that is, after all, what a "manuscript" is), color was an integral part of their creation - color not only for illustrations, but color of text to literally illuminate its meaning. With the dominance of mass printing of books on huge, inflexible presses, it made sense that color evaporated for entirely practical reasons. But we are now in another time when such limitations need no longer limit us. If one particular word or a special phrase or sentence or paragraph would benefit from color to emphasize it, then why not apply color?

Of course, the color of ink to print the text upon paper is only one aspect of Kirschenbaum's revolution. Integrated illustrations - and not just for children's books - are equally within reach of the computer-equipped author, illustrations that are intimately partnered to the text and not isolated to separate insert pages, corralled together away from words.

The third leg of Valerie Kirschenbaum's revolution is the shape of letters themselves, the font with which the words are printed. With computers we have become familiar with the notion that, if we choose to, we can select whatever style of "print" suits our purposes - Arial, Times New Roman, Century Gothic - whatever we want from that pull-down menu from the toolbar on our computer screen. Perhaps without thinking much about it, we are all aware on some level that the design, the "look", of font is important in how we relate and react to what is on the printed page. The shape of the letters speaks to us in an unconscious voice, aiding - or hindering - our reading. Pick up a dozen books and magazines and look at the font. They are not all the same. They speak in different tones, some more friendly, others more formal. But Kirschenbaum goes beyond merely advocating an informed selection of pre-made fonts to suit your purposes. With modern computer graphics, personalized, unique fonts tailored to individual preferences are within practical reach of each computer-savvy author.

At the heart of Kirschenbaum's revolution is the realization that computers can erase the line between author and publisher, allowing a unified creative process so that the final product is wholly within the control of a single creator.

The physical book "The Designer Revolution" is an embodiment of Valerie Kirschenbaum's writing/publishing ideas, a marriage of color, illustration, and font. Open it and let yourself swim in its visual variety. Open yourself to the idea that computers do not spell the end of the printed page, but its blossoming.

I finished this fascinating book later the same day I had read in my local daily newspaper that in 2001 a former assistant basketball coach at the University of Georgia had given a final exam for the only grade in a "Coaching Principles and Strategies of Basketball" course that consisted of 20 multiple choice questions. Two of the 18 questions included how many goals are on a basketball court and how many points does a 3-point field goal account for in a basketball game. So learning about teachers like Ms. Kirschenbaum provides a much needed antidote for the latest news item about education in Georgia. She begins this beautiful book with the following statement: "I will never forget the day that changed my life forever. [With the exception of the wondrous first letter "I" which I cannot describe, I believe those words are in burnt sienna] I was teaching The Canterbury Tales when one of my students raised her hand and asked, 'Ms. Kirschenbaum, how come our books are not in color, like they used to be?'" The author, for ten years a teacher of English at the Bayard Rustin High School for the Humanities, located just a mile or so from Ground Zero, set about to find an answer to that question. The result is this beautiful book of many colors, designed, written and printed in a "feminine" very reader-friendly font that Ms. Kirschenbaum herself designed.

Ms. Kirschenbaum has certainly done her homework. There are 363 pages of text and another 50 or so footnotes. The book is filled with quotations from artists, writers and scientists about the significance of color and all its ramifications. The writer discusses the books before Gutenberg, though not accessible to common people, that were always in color. She also refers to the ancient Greeks, Chinese and Eqyptians who invariably wrote in color. She gives anecdotal evidence from her own teaching experience that an overwhelming number of her students would prefer reading, for instance, Homer, Poe et al in "living color." I think the writer's two stongest points are (1) we are fast losing a whole generation of nonreading students to television, video games, and movies, all in color and (2) because of digital printing, books in color can now be produced economically.

Ms. Kirschenbaum discusses many writers, some who used color effectively in their prose, and others whose works cry out for it: the artist and writer William Morris, and William Blake, whom she describes as the "only instance after Gutenberg of a great poet and a great painter married into one magnificent soul." On Emily Dickinson: "Her manuscripts are bubbling with body language [in red letters] -- long dashes, short dashes, angled dashes, crosses, pluses, minuses, waves, curves, line breaks. . . " Finally the writer makes a good case-- Faulkner himself wanted it-- for THE SOUND AND THE FURY to be printed in color.

Ms. Kirschenbaum's theory of designer writing has been well received except by some "academics." (The quotations are mine.) "Some people in the academy have refused to take me seriously because I teach high school and not college; because I have only a master's degree and not a doctorate; because I am not an Ivy Leaguer; and God knows what else." One professor even called her "Madame Nobody." She's in good company since Miss Dickinson would say, "I'm nobody/who are you?" And Robert Frost didn't have a Ph.D as I recall.

In addition to the brilliant illustrations and colored images here, the text, almost all of it in color, is clear and well written. And Ms. Kirschenbaum is a great punster, both verbal and visual. She sold me on this book when, in first thumbing through it, I found a delightful visual pun at the beginning of the footnotes.

What comes through in every page of this book, which I cannot adequately describe, is that Ms. Kirschenbaum is the most dedicated of teachers and decent of people. "Whenever I visit a museum, I seem, unavoidably, to be reminded of my mortality and of the precious chance [red letters] I have been given, as a young American woman, to make a difference in the lives of others." Chaucer would have said of her, "gladly did she learn and gladly did she teach."

You must see this book for yourself. I am at a loss as to how to best describe it.

This is quite simply one of the most fascinating books I have read this past year. It touches on History, Design, Literature, Creativity and so many other areas with a zeal and passion that is rarely seen these days. It also is one of the most beautiful books just to page through as well. I have had several people pick my copy up and browse it briefly, only to get enthralled in the text and illustrations.

Ms. Kirschenbaum has written and designed a masterpiece that I hope will soon become a standard on the shelf of every design school, and it should be in the library of every graphic designer as well. Editors and publishers could also benefit to see that today's technologies need not only yield the standard black and white of yesterday's printing techniques-and all could benefit from books that engage the readers as actively as television and computers do at the present.

Beautiful, thoughtfully written, and quite engaging. Highly Recommended reading.

From her unique perspective as a high school teacher, Valerie Kirschenbaum has made some stunning discoveries about learning - that children learn much better when teachers use body language, that body language can be brought into writing with color and image which excite different groups of cells in the brain, that emotional arousal amplifies memory, that there is such a thing as visual thinking, and that word and image used simultaneously integrates brain operations and allows the student to come to a higher level of understanding more quickly. "Especially today," says the author, "if we don't immediately grab them, we too often lose them. Colorful visuals are a way of grabbing their attention, arousing their emotions and of sustaining their interest."

In researching the subject, Ms. Kirschenbaum discovered, for example, that "...the image of a Buddha can trigger the release of hormones such as epinephrine and norepinephrine, causing them to interact with nerves in the body and travel to the brain. Literally, the image opens the mind and heart of the reader." And in Tibet, the sight of an image that the viewer perceives as sacred can trigger electrochemical responses in the brain, i.e. readers could SEE concepts. "With the designer word," Valerie maintains, "we can transform traditionally verbal techniques into visual techniques. Rhyme, repetition, metaphor, figures of speech, characterization, tone, simile and symbolism can all be visual. We can foreshadow, change moods, express irony or sarcasm and allude and alliterate visually. The possibilities are endless..."If we cannot always make this exquisite avalanche of consciousness sayable, then we can at least make it showable." Amen to that.

It's not exactly rocket science to realize that this could be an incredible aid to reading and therefore to learning in our technological society, but as far as I am aware, nobody has connected these particular dots before this particular young woman came on the scene and pointed them out.

Before the advent of Gutenberg, Medieval illuminators used ornament and decoration to create "multiple simultaneous meanings." After Gutenberg, when block black-and-white printing became the norm, "...writers couldn't synthesize their verbal and visual innovations. They couldn't write outside the box and think outside the box simultaneously. They were stuck between word and image, seeing and thinking, left brain and right brain." And while Medieval denial may have been rooted in religion, our modern denial is rooted in an antiquated technology that insists that black and white blocks of texts are the only proper form for serious scholarship and that images, different fonts and color should be relegated to children's books.

As Leonard Shlain observed in his groundbreaking work, *The Alphabet Versus the Goddess: The Conflict Between Word and Image*, our era is evolving toward a new integration of left and right brain functions with keyboards, computers, TV, movies, etc. Why cannot that integration be extended to the printed word?

This book realizes left and right-brain integration in a most delightful way. I especially enjoyed the color graphics where Medieval, Greek and Renaissance characters are shown to be writing and on closer inspection, you see that they're using computers. I would have liked a snappier title for the book but have to admit that upon this writing, I haven't thought of any.

"First a new theory is attacked as absurd," says William James in *Pragmatism's conception of Truth.* "Then it is admitted to be true but insignificant. Finally it is seen to be so important that its adversaries claim that they themselves discovered it." One can only hope that Valerie Kirschenbaum's name will still be remembered long after her thesis has become a new canon. But as she herself admits, in the long run it doesn't matter as long as the new canon is adopted, because "...no matter how much I may have blossomed, I could never stand up before other teachers and writers and designers and not invite every one of them to surpass me."

"We will not join the ranks of the Old Canon. We will create a new Canon...."We will seek the rose in the prose. We will find the light in delight." And finally "incipit liberi besti" -"begin beautiful books." I believe this is an idea whose time has come. Bravo!

Marshall McLuhan's _The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man_ (University of Toronto Press, 1962) is 45 years ahead of its time because not very many persons have understood it very well. With bold strokes, McLuhan has delineated how Western culture is different from other cultures in the world today. For Western culture is still a residual form of print culture, whereas other cultures in the world today are to one degree or another residual forms of oral cultures.

Drawing on Walter J. Ong's account of visualist tendencies in Western philosophic thought in _Ramus, Method, and the Decay of Dialogue: From the Art of Discourse to the Art of Reason_ (Harvard University Press, 1958; 3rd ed. University of Chicago Press, 2004), McLuhan also calls attention to visualist tendencies in Western thought.

In the late 1950s, McLuhan, a Canadian convert to Roman Catholicism, read _Insight: A Study of Human Understanding_ by the Canadian Jesuit philosopher and theologian Bernard Lonergan. Lonergan calls attention to the tendency in Western philosophic thought to equate knowing with "taking a good look." Thus McLuhan was drawing not only on Ong's account of visualist tendencies in Western philosophic thought, but also on Lonergan's.

In the 1994 "Introduction to the Transaction Edition" of his book _Belief and Unbelief_, Michael Novak, who studied under Lonergan as a young seminarian in Rome, nicely paraphrases Lonergan's critique of visualist tendencies in his own words:

"Rorty thinks that in showing that the mind is not "the mirror of nature" he has disproved the correspondence theory of truth. What he has really shown is that activities of the human mind cannot be fully expressed by metaphors based upon the operations of the human eye. We do not know simply through "looking at" reality as though our minds were simply mirrors of reality. One needs to be very careful not to confuse the activities of the mind with the operations of any (or all) of the bodily senses. In describing how our minds work, one needs to beware of being bewitched by the metaphors that spring from the operations of our senses. Our minds are not like our eyes; or, rather, their activities are far richer, more complex, and more subtle than those of our eyes. It is true that we often say, on getting the point, "Oh, I see!" But putting things together and getting the point normally involve a lot more than "seeing," and all that we need to do to get to that point can scarcely be met simply by following the imperative, "Look!" Even when the point, once grasped, may seem to have been (as it were) right in front of us all along, the reasons why it did not dawn upon us immediately may be many, including the fact that our imaginations were ill-arranged, so that we were expecting and "looking for" the wrong thing. To get to the point at which the evidence finally hits us, we may have to undergo quite a lot of dialectical argument and self-correction." (p. xv)

In summary, Western philosophical thought from antiquity down to the invention of the Gutenberg printing press around 1450 carried a strong visualist orientation, as Ong has detailed. Then with the advent of the Gutenberg printing press visualist tendencies were much more strongly culturally conditioned than ever before. As is well known, print culture in the West with its strong orientation toward visualism saw not only the spread of the Protestant Reformation, but also the emergence of modern science, modern capitalism, modern democracy, the Industrial Revolution, and the Romantic Movement. Thus the strong orientation toward visualism in the West has helped set Western culture off from other cultures of the world.

However, today modern capitalism as developed in print culture with its strong orientation toward visualism is being globalized through economic globalization. Thus capitalism today is making inroads into parts of the world where print culture did not have the historical impact that it had in Western culture. To varying degrees, the other cultures are residual forms of oral culture, as McLuhan describes oral culture in this book.

Thus McLuhan's pioneering study of print culture can enable us to better understand the world situation as we live through the upheavals of economic globalization.

--Thomas J. Farrell, author of Walter Ong's Contributions to Cultural Studies: The Phenomenology of the Word and I-Thou Communication (Media Ecology)

Definitely more of an academically written book than McLuhan's more famous "Understanding Media." For new McLuhan readers, I recommend reading "Understanding Me" or "Understanding Media" first.

This book expands on the views of McLuhan's teacher Harold Innis, who distingusihed oral and written cultures. The book argues that oral cultures are synaesthetic and work with synthetic logic, while cultures of writing push the mind toward singulation of senses, logic and 'perspective'.

McLuhan 'glosses' through a wide range of scattered historical pieces of information to show how oral, written and print cultures have different patterns. He ably shows how printing also transformed art, architecture, society and industry.

The book is thoroughly historical, dense and rich in informative detail. It forms the foundation for McLuhan's clearer theoretical articulation of his ideas in 'Understanding Media', but is more accessible to the layman.

This book belongs to a pantheon of books that revolve around similar ideas like Harold Innis's 'Empire and Communications' & 'The Bias of Communication'; Walter J. Ong's 'Orality and Literacy' and William J. Ivins's 'Print and Visual Culture' and 'Art and Geometry'. But this is the most sweeping, convincing, dramatic statement of the common theory proposed by these various writers.

And for those who love theory with a dose of history, this makes for really delightful reading.

The Gutenberg Galaxy, McLuhan's second book, is one of his best, but the reader should be forewarned that it is also one of his most difficult to read and does not make a good introduction for the beginner. One of the reasons for this difficulty is that it is written in mosaic style, in which McLuhan -- like Walter Benjamin's Arcades Project -- creates a text that is largely composed of quotations from mostly obscure authors stitched together with his own commentaries in between. These quotations are from works written in classical academic style, and none of them are easy reading. They require concentration and the book itself takes time to read carefully.

The book is a cultural archaeology of the effects of the rise of print upon Western society in the period between 1450 - 1850. It is concerned with analyzing the new kinds of social and cultural structures which typography brought into being, such as nationalism, the concept of individuality, the idea of authorship and intellectual private property, new genres such as the literary essay and the novel. The rise of the printing press, McLuhan points out, was coincident with the rise of the mastery of depth perspective in Renaissance painting, and this is not an accident, for both the new Euclidean space conception and typography had in common an emphasis upon the organization of the world around the eye favored as a sense organ at the detriment and exlusion of all the other senses. During the manuscript culture of the Middle Ages, the senses were still synesthetically woven together like a tapestry, and no single one of them was favored to quite the degree of exclusion which the favoring of vision brought about in the Renaissance. Illuminated manuscripts, according to McLuhan, have a textural feel to them that still relies heavily on the sense of touch, and Medieval art, with its disproportionate sense of space in which one character -- such as Christ -- will be represented as larger than everyone else primarily due to the emphasis upon his spiritual importance rather than his inclusion as one individual among many occupying the same field of homogeneous space, is similarly haptic. Gothic lettering, he points out, is hard on the eye and difficult to read because it is tactile and still appeals to the sense of touch. Roman lettering, together with Arabic numerals, was favored by print, and this had the effect of streamlining the ability to read such that silent reading became common. Printers began to do new things like number the pages, create indices and Tables of Contents, and this had the effect of emphasizing authorship since it now became possible to track citations properly. Typography, McLuhan never tires of pointing out, favors the eye at the expense of all the other senses, and it tends to favor an abstract view of space as a container within which objects are placed in an arrangement that takes all spatial relations into account.

All of this began to change in the nineteenth century with the rise of electric technology and the favoring of discontinuities brought about by the telegraph and the newspaper. This kind of syncopated feeling for space, in which each object begins to occupy its own space no longer held in relation to other objects, began to erode and change the old typographic world of the Gutenberg Galaxy. Electric culture, which McLuhan does not discuss much in this book, favors tribalism, spatial discontinuity, erosion of individuality and the rise of corporatism, decentralization and so on.

This book should be read together with Understanding Media, for the latter volume picks up where The Gutenberg Galaxy leaves off, at the threshold of the Electric Society.

It is a masterpiece of scholarship by one of the greatest intellects America has ever produced, an intellect that easily puts the French po-mo philosophers in the shade. You will get more useful ideas out of any one of McLuhan's books than you would out of a whole crate of books by postmodern French philosophers.

--John David Ebert, author of Celluloid Heroes & Mechanical Dragons: Film as the Mythology of Electronic Society

This is the first McLuhan book I read, back in the late 1960s. It took me about a month to get through, because each short chapter contained so many new ideas and insights I had to think about them before going on. I didn't always understand them, but what I did comprehend was intoxicatingly exciting.

Many readers of McLuhan treat his probes as absolute statements of truth. Then, if they disagree with him, they reject his whole approach. One important fact to keep in mind while reading this or any of McLuhan's books is that he himself refers to the clever slogans which sum up many of his insights ("The medium is the message" being the best known, of course) as "probes", not facts. Their purpose is to explore an idea in order to stimulate thought. Even if you ultimately disagree with the concept set forth, if it makes you think about it, the probe has accomplished its principal purpose.

Although the boook was a bit dated, all of the information was informative, and was structured in a manner that made it simple to find exactly what you were looking for, (I read the whole thing in two days), before I gave it an engineer @ my company so he could get up to speed on multi-stage ultrasonic chemical cleaning.

The best section delt with proper rinse methods, (without such), everything else would be rendered inoperable. A good addition to any personel library.

I requested this book through my company's resources. As an engineer with limited experience in the critical cleaning field, I used this book as a quick reference for available cleaning technologies. In addition, I found the reference well organized, with adequate detail provided in individual sections. I have also circulated this book throughout my organization to bring junior employees "up to speed" with cleaning technologies and associated chemistry.

I would recommend this book to anyone interested in understanding current cleaning technologies and processes.

Only thing that disappointed me is the information about plasma cleaning which is too short, not clear and said nothing about the varieties of this new and exciting technology.

Very good book about Solvents and their substitutes.

As a new manufacturer's representative for a 20 year old Precision Cleaning Equipment and Solutions provider, I was thrilled to find that the Kanegsberg's had already researched and published a detailed 'road map' prior to my life in the trade. "Critical Cleaning" is a objective, comprehensive applications handbook based on proven industry practices and precedents, and should be included in all libraries for those directly or indirectly involved in the practice, or support, of Precision Cleaning.

In my opinion, it's not just the BEST book on critical cleaning, it's the ONLY objective, scientific book on critical cleaning, emphasizing studies, testing and data. Also includes anecdotal information with proper discussion and evaluation, putting one of its feet in the "Handbook" category. In the spacecraft technologies area, Tribble's book "Fundamental's of Contamination Control," is receiving increased attention because it, too, is the ONLY book out there in the field. But while Tribble discusses terminologies, definitions and contamination effects, it really says little about contamination CONTROL...meaning the cleaning, protection and maintenance of critical products. You spacecraft contamination control engineers know what I'm talking about. "Clean with isopropyl alcohol and bag with approved film." That's all we have in this "Green" era. The Kanegsberg's book will take you well beyond that. If Tribble is on your desk, Kanegsberg should be right there next to it.

A wide coverage of quality in the Juran's perspective. I recommend it to all who are interested this Guru theories, tools and techniques.

"Juran's Quality Handbook" is an excellent book on Quality by one of the most well known quality gurus. The book gives a comprehensive coverage of the subject of quality management. It includes the latest techniques on quality as well as quality theories.

This is a very useful book for those who are interested in producing quality goods and services in a customer focused organization. This huge tome is of immense value to all those involved with the quality profession and is an excellent reference book that covers the wide range of topics and subjects pertaining to quality.

This is a well written book that is very useful for all businesses where quality matters (that is, all businesses). This should be essential reading for quality specialists such as control and quality assurance personnel.

The most complete quality reference available.
The fifth edition includes new material on ISO 9000, benchmarking, the Baldrige and other awards, adoption of Strategic Quality Planning and TQM, management leadership for quality, self-directing teams, quality function deployment, and Tuguchi Methods.

Excellent reference..........Oh man the language and the content rocks. You need to read other books to appreciate this book more.
Quality pro's..........you need to have one of this for sure.

Warning: Not a best choice for "just preparing for a certification exam". It is too much of content for a "small goal of exam". Primer seems to do a good job

For decades Joseph Juran has been a famous name in the quality movement. He formed his own institute for quality and has for many years edited an extensive volume on methods for improving quality in manufacturing processes. This Quality Handbook, now in its fifth edition has long been the basic reference for quality engineers and statistician alike. To honor Juran, the fifth edition is titled Juran's Quality Handbook. The volume is now over 900 pages and consists of 48 chapters and 5 appendices. There are 53 authors including Juran himself and his colleague and co-editor Blanton Godfrey. Many other well-known persons have contributed. It includes a chapter on government services by Vice President Al Gore. Prominent statisticians who have contributed include Don Marquardt, Stu Hunter, Bill Meeker, Luis Escobar, Gerry Hahn, Ed Schilling, Ed Dudewicz and Necip Doganaksoy.
As a statistician, I particularly like having a wealth of practical statistical information and tables in one source. Dudewicz provides the introductory statistical material necessary to understand the four other statistical chapters that follow it (SPC by Wadsworth, Acceptance Sampling by Schilling, Design and Analysis of Experiments by Hunter and Reliability Concepts and Data Analysis by Meeker, Escobar, Doganaksoy and Hahn). These are all distinguished authors who are excellent writers and several have written whole text books on these subjects. This edition is up-to-date with the latest advances in quality techniques. Statistical advances in robust design (Taguchi methods), bootstrap methods, process control and capability are all included. Juran and Deming had major practical impact on the quality movement because they both emphasized the need for proper process management. This can be seen in many of the non-statistical chapters that deal with successful management techniques such as six sigma.

This edition is even better than the previous editions and is indeed worthy of the title of bible. Despite the high cost this book is prominent on my bookshelf. I recommend it to anyone heavily involved in product reliability, even if they own copies of previous editions!

As the founder and CEO of a successful market research-based consulting firm, I'm privy to the inner workings of a number of Fortune 500 companies. One of my perennial frustrations with books on business strategy is that the theories they present don't often correspond to the practical realities involved in running a large organization. The beauty of this book is that Vince Barabba's strategic guidance is informed by his first-hand experiences at General Motors. In drawing on his time at GM, Barabba makes compelling and insightful links between theory and practice.

As a business consultant, what I valued most was his 'systems thinking' approach to solving business problems--an approach that better ensures decision-makers identify and address core issues rather than merely tinker at the margins. This holistic approach to problem-solving goes beyond rote McKinsey-esque formulas and is what makes this book so broadly appealing. Using clear and forceful language (no annoying b-school patois here), Barabba gets right to the heart of things with a combination of robust theory and practical examples. Business decision-makers at every level would benefit from a close reading of this book.

I would like to begin by taking exception to the first line in forward by C.K. Prahalad..."The focus of this book is "how to think": not just to survive a large-scale transformation, but to start, sustain, and thrive in a world of continuous change." The exception I wish to take is that Vince Barabba has taken a large organizations problem and translated it in a way that all organizations (large or small) can benefit equally. Organizations are all about having the right strategy,dealing with complexity and risk, making the right decisions, and making the right decisions right.

Vince Barabba has written a book that will find an audience from the executive decision maker, decision support groups, portfolio managers and the myriad of projects that make the right decisions actionable.

Open your mind to new ways of thinking and then right size it to your own organization.

Most books that follow a specific case of corporate strategy tell a "just so" story where the true messiness of the decisions gets masked. I applaud Mr. Barabba for breaking that mold. He lets us see the context of uncertainty that surrounded decisions taken in GM's transformation. He gives us the added benefit of laying-out the theories behind the decision making approach. I found his concrete recommendations on dealing with organizational complexity and identifying key market development assumptions to be very useful. His discussion of deploying a "Sense & Respond" business model in spite of GM's financial stress gives great examples identifying the opportunity costs from alternative strategies. Lastly, his discussion of using the destination-focused, "Anticipate & Lead" business model is an eye-opener of everyone dealing with rapidly changing, turbulent markets. A great read.

The strength of Vince Barabba's "Surviving Transformation" comes in how one personalizes transformations so that she or he not only survives the transformation, but develops into a learning and adapting individual striving to achieve the "Idealized Design." The stories Vince uses throughout the book help the reader to understand the principles and practices that worked and did not work throughout the GM transformation.

Do not be tempted to pass this thoroughly well written and engaging book just because it is about the automobile industry. Regardless of the industry or the bureaucracy you are in, this book will provide you with deep insights into undertaking a transformation journey and not only surviving, but thriving on the other side. Once the journey begins it never ends.

Most case studies on organization transformation simply tell what was planned and what happened, sprinkling in a little theory here and there, but generally as an afterthought. Vince Barabba's book on "Surviving Transformation" offers something different, a well-composed blend of theory and practice. The author enjoys two advantages. First, he was instrumental as a senior executive in designing and orchestrating the changes that occurred at GM. Second, he has a sound background in the "systems approach to change." Combining the two,the author has been able to offer the inside story of the redesign of one of the world's largest corporations while, at the same time, framing it in a conceptual context that helps us to understand exactly why it succeeded. Finally, Vince Barabba offers a model for change that is not unique to his company' situation, but can be used by a wide range of other organizations. I recommend the book highly to those who understand the need for on-going organization learning and adaptability.