Bryan Books

At the request of the Public Library Association, Cheryl Bryan (Assistant Administrator for Consulting and continuing Education at the Southeastern Massachusetts Library System) has written "Managing Facilities For Results: Optimizing Space for Services". As a library experiences increases in their patronage and collections, space is a perennial problem. In order to avoid the expenses of building additions to an existing library, or the costs of building a newer and larger library, library boards and library staff members try to carve out new service areas within the space of their existing library structure. "Managing Facilities For Results" is designed to help the library staff to prioritize new services that need space, make plans and identify appropriate locations, present their case to their funding authorities, conduct a 'gap analysis', find resources to reallocate and determine what new items are needed, and to identify building professionals to assist with alterations. Enhanced with twenty-three workforms to support the information and collection process, three toolkits (one providing technical assistance on calculating square footage, one for assessing the message, and one for complying with the Americans with Disabilities Act requirements), and with real-life examples of small to large-sized libraries, "Managing Facilities For Results" is a very highly recommended and invaluable instructional reference and resource for any librarian, library staff, or library board facing the need to provide more and different services within their existing library structure.

The Greatest Information......at all times.

Awesome detail descriptions of cultivation of viertually any bulb one might think of... By far the best bulb book I have, by leaps and bounds. Much more than pretty pictures! For the serious bulb gardener.

A synthesis of Max Weber's work. This book exhibits a clear understanding of Weber's intellectual roots and philosophical contexts. As well as a comparison of significant likenesses and contrasts with others such as Marx, Durkheim, and Simmel. It also explores the explicit relation of Weber's ideas to contemporary social science.

I want to give a shout out to Henri Edward Dongieux who authored the Amazon.com guide to "get to know Weber and Habermas". I want to give my stand disclaimer: I am not a sociologist or a student of sociology, just a general reader with an interest in the history of ideas.

Funny story about this book: I bought Weber's theory of social and economic organization (with the foreword by Talcott Parsons). I don't know what I was thinking there. I read about thirty pages of Parsons introduction to Theory and was like, "forget this."

So then the next day I'm surfing around Amazon trying to figure out how I'm going to figure out Weber and I see the above mentioned list. Well, Henri was right: this book is THE place to start if you're looking to access the ideas of Weber.

One further digression before I actually review the book itself: Weber is hard to access for a couple of reasons: First, all his stuff has been translated from the German. This is compounded by the fact that Weber, despite his highly rigorous thought, was kind of making up terminology as he went and also by the fact that German has tons of words that don't translate well into English.
Second, Weber kind of died before he finished pulling together the various strands of his grand theory together, leaving his work uncomplete.

So, preliminary matters aside, I will move on to a description of the book. Since this is the first review of this work on Amazon (and how can that be?). I will provide a non-judgmental description of content and then a few observations.

The book is divided into three Parts. Part One is called "German Society and The Protestant Ethic". Part Two is "Society, Religion, and Secular Ethic: A Comparitive Study of Civilisations" and Part Three is "Domination, Organization, and Legitimacy: Max Weber's Political Sociology". Before Part One, Bendix includes an introduction and a chapter on Weber's "Career and Personal Orientation". That first chapter is most illuminating and serves to ground Weber in place and time.

The first part of the book is divided into two chapters. The first chapter talks about his very interesting early studies of eastern german agarian society and the various german stock exchanges. Bendix refers to these two early studies over and over through out the book. The second chapter of the first part of the book discusses Weber's most popular and well known ideas about the protestant work ethic and the spirit of capitalism. Having laid out the touchstones of Weber's work, Bendix moves into part two, which concern Weber's studies of world religion.

Part two deals exclusively with Weber's interest in world religion. Bendix devotes a chapter each to his studies of China, India and Palestine. Bendix notes that it is obvious that Weber's main interest was in the roots of the west that he found in Palestine and so the chapters on China and India are of limited use (except as a guide to what Weber THOUGHT about China and Indian religion. Bendix concludes part two with a chapter summarizing Weber's "sociology of religion".

Part three has a similar structure to part two. Bendix runs off a couple of chapters on charsmatic domination and traditional domination as a means to explicate Weber's theories of "Legal Domination" which represent, perhaps, Weber's main achievment. Again, Bendix points out that Weber's interest in chasmatic domination and traditional domination are really only "foils" for his overriding interest in "legal domination", in the same way that his studies of India and China are foils for his interest in the society of ancient Palestine.

In part three, Bendix also includes a couple of chapters that tie the book together and link the three parts, as well as a further attempt to ground Weber in the thought of his day.

OK, so that is the descriptive part. Now, some observations:

First off, as someone who really didn't know anything about Weber's thought (outside of a cursory understanding of his thesis in the "Spirit of Capitalism"), I found this book to be immensely compelling.

One can dismiss all of Weber's substantive conclusions about the nature of society and government and still be Wowed by the tremendous influence he has had on all social thinkers in the past century. I now see Weber's influence everywhere I look!

I also feel like any further attempts to read Weber will be made about a thousand times easier becaue I have read this book.

Although I read all but about twenty pages of this five hundred page book, I believe one could derive the same meaning from reading chapters 1, 2, 3, 4, 8, 9, 12,13, and 15, while skipping the rest.

This book also has a handy index!

My daddy wrote this book and everyone should buy it. Not only is it an amazing read, but your money will be going to a great cause. My father is a retired police man and is raising my two baby brothers all by himself. Buy it! Buy it! Hey, buy two or three of them :)

This is a wonderful little book that no Brazilian should miss. The first part (about 120 pages) is a novelette, Memorial da Ilha, which presents a simple, sweet story that tells us so much about Brazilian history and culture. The writing is beautiful and poetic. The literary language draws the reader in to life on the island and keeps us there with the characters as they spend the summer in the sun. Each chapter or episode of the novel is almost like a little story in itself, each one working like a snapshot or window into life in the 1950's or 60's on an island off the coast of Brazil. The novel has a very visual side: as you read you can almost see the island and its inhabitants.
The story focuses mostly on a 13-year-old boy named Bromeu. Through Bromeu's experiences the reader is brought back to the confusion and conflict, simple pleasures and intense frustrations that go along with that difficult age. We can laugh and suffer with Bromeu as he simultaneously adores and despises members of his family, their attitudes and actions; goes after the girl of his dreams who doesn't seem to notice him; pretends he knows how to swim and almost drowns; lives the contradiction of being a city boy who is also a family member of the island natives; and follows the saga of the prohibited relationship between his uncle, Alirio, and Dicinha, an island girl from a good family.
I was lucky enough to receive a copy of this book as a gift from someone who was present at the first book signings in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil in January. And now, I can't wait to get back to the island!
(By the way, my Portuguese is far from perfect, partially filtered through Spanish, but the simple language employed by the author made this a delight to read.)

This book is based on conversations - interviews that Magee conducted for a BBC series . In it he tries to introduce philosophical problems and ideas to a wider audience. The written text of the book was based on the transcripts of the talks. But these were worked on considerably both by Magee and those he interviewed. The effort was to make as readable a text as possible and to eliminate the repetitions, the paraphanelia of speech. He opens the dialogues with a talk with Sir Isaiah Berlin on the question of why anyone should take an interest in Philosophy. Berlin talks about the way we all live with assumptions which when questioned philosophically undermine our security. And he indicates that as one possible reason why so many avoid philosophy. On the other hand he says when there is no questioning when all is taken as it is , the mind and imagination dry up. In these lectures Magee does not allow the mind and imagination to dry up. He engages in dialogue with many of the most prominent philosophers of our time beginning with Berlin, and then Charles Taylor, Herbert Marcuse, William Barrett, Anthony Quinton, A.J. Ayer, Bernard Williams, R.M. Hare, W.V. Quine, John Searle, Noam Chomsky, Hilary Putnam, Ronald Dworkin, Iris Murdoch, Ernest Gellner. He tries to be inclusive in these talks and have representatives of all the major schools of philosophy, and representatives of all the major areas. To my mind there is an over- representation of the analystic and positivistic type of thinker, but this is perhaps indicative of the character of philosophy today.
This is a very good introduction to basic problems of philosophy.
Parenthetically, the fact that this review is the first of the book posted on 'Amazon' would seem to me a small piece of evidence in support of Berlin's thesis that the mass of mankind would rather not have their own assumptions question and their own beliefs tested.

In addition to biographies of some of the important Algonquin Roundtable participants (Dorothy Parker was the parenthetical 'lady' of the title), this book was a fascinating, easily readable overview of life among the wealthy aristocrats of the time. The anecdotes were very funny and when it was available, I gave copies to several friends.

Buy this book immediately and get ready to laugh. Bryan's memories of the funniest people of the 1920s, 30s and 40s simply has to be read. Robert Benchley, Dorothy Parker, Frank Sullivan, the incredible Hugh Troy and others are remembered here in great detail. Brilliant wit perfectly captured by an equally witty observer. What more could you want?