Campbell Books

Some senior executives are so eager for growth that they gamble their company's riches on new business initiatives that will probably fail. Researchers estimate that the failure rate for company-spawned business initiatives is as high as 99%. Authors Andrew Campbell and Robert Park tell companies to be selective about which growth opportunities they pursue - even if that means standing pat and accepting low growth. Growth, they say, is simply not possible at all times for all companies. They provide valuable tools, including a "traffic light" evaluation filter and a "confidence check" mechanism, to help you choose and execute new business endeavors. Wall Street has almost no greater profanity than "low growth," but if you take seriously your fiduciary duty to spend shareholders' dollars wisely, we think you should read this book. In the aftermath of the dot-com crash and the subsequent corporate-governance scandals, the time has come for a sober, systematic approach to growth.

I really enjoyed this book because it provided a thorough background of the formation of United States government. The saying "history repeats itself" is completely true because the problems that the Bush administration is experiencing are similar to those of the Cleveland and the Roosevelt administrations. This book really helps to put it all into perspective. It's an easy read and I would recommend it for college level political science, public administration and government intro classes.

This is the second book by this author that we've gotten. (The other is "The Snail and the Whale"--also fabulous!) My 5-year old daughter loves the language, repetition and intelligence of these books and I enjoy reading them to her just as much. Again, the fable of the small animal outwitting the larger one, plays out beautifully. I'd recommend this to anyone with young children.

Guide To Political Campaigns In America by Paul S. Herrnson (CQ Press) is the first complete resource for scholarly and practical insight into every important aspect of political campaigns and campaign activities. Campaigns are a critical part of the political process in the United States, and this unique volume provides students, researchers, scholars, and others interested in campaigns and politics with a broad foundation of knowledge about the history of campaigns and the issues, people, processes, and types and levels of races involved.
Editor in chief Paul S. Herrnson, associate editors Colton Campbell, Marni Ezra, and Stephen K. Medvic, and the chapter authors are recognized specialists in their fields and bring a dynamic combination of high-level scholarship and hands-on experience that set this guide apart from other campaign resources.
The twenty-seven chapters in the Guide to Political Campaigns in America cover the following themes:
The evolution of political campaigns
The political and regulatory environment of campaigning, including suffrage and ballot access
The importance of the voters and what influences the vote
The key players in the campaign organization, such as the candidate and consultants, as well as others who interact with the campaign, including the media and political parties
Key strategies and tactics, such as polling and fund-raising
Specific types of campaigns, such as those for the presidency, House, Senate, governorship, and key state and local races, as well as campaigns for the judiciary and for initiatives and referenda
Campaign and election reform
Tables, figures, case studies, boxed features, photographs, and cartoons enrich the chapters and enliven the topical coverage. A comprehensive index and resources for further study of political campaigns round out this authoritative work.
Paul S. Herrnson is director of the Center for American Politics and Citizenship and professor of government and politics at the University of Maryland. He is the author and editor of dozens of works, including Congressional Elections: Campaigning at Home and in Washington, 4th ed. (CQ Press, 2004), and has participated in many aspects of active campaigns for office. He has served as an American Political Science Association congressional fellow and has received several teaching honors, including an Excellence in Teaching Award and a Distinguished Scholar Teacher Award. He has advised the U.S. Congress, the Maryland General Assembly, the Federal Election Commission, and other government agencies and groups on matters pertaining to campaign finance, political parties, and voting systems.
Excerpt: Back in 1816, when John Quincy Adams first used the term campaign to describe one of his political efforts, it was considered unseemly for potential officeholders to solicit votes directly from the people. Although political campaigns, by their simplest definition, remain endeav¬ors to collect enough votes to win an election, their shape and conduct have changed significantly over the political life of the nation.
The candidates and others who participate in modern-day campaigning must accomplish a wide variety of tasks to attract voter support. The products of some of these tasks, such as the television ads that saturate the air-waves during presidential elections, are readily visible even to the most apolitical and disinterested individuals, whereas other tasks, including events to raise large fi¬nancial contributions, often take place in private and among the few political elites who have the funds to host or attend them. Other activities, such as the design of a particular ballot, may be visible and yet unnoticed by voters-until the ballot ends up scrutinized by election officials, as was the so-called butterfly ballot used in Palm Beach County, Florida, in the 2000 presidential election. And still other activities may take place quietly within a campaign organization, such as crafting a theme or conducting opposition research.
Working on this project led me to reflect on the na¬ture of political campaigns and on my own fascination and experiences with them. My curiosity about cam¬paigns first emerged when I cast my earliest votes-in a mock presidential election held in elementary school and in the 1976 presidential election. The campaigns in the latter contest, featuring incumbent president Gerald R. Ford and his successful challenger, jimmy Carter, were certainly more edifying, but I can still remember the ex¬citement with which I cast my "first vote for president" in Mrs. Kelly's kindergarten class at Oaks School #3 in Oceanside, New York. During and after my college years, I was active in campaign politics, helping to con-duct a telephone poll for a House incumbent, going door-to-door to turn out voters for a political party, as¬sisting a successful state legislative challenger to devise a strategy and distill a message, performing the same tasks for a not-so-successful congressional challenger, and or¬ganizing a Capitol Hill fund-raising event to help a member of Congress who had been defeated in 1994 re-claim his House seat two years later. Today, the role of money in politics, campaign ethics, and the impacts of campaign spending, strategy, and national tides on con¬gressional elections are prominent parts of my scholarly research agenda. As director of the Center for American Politics and Citizenship at the University of Maryland, I have had opportunities to advise members of Congress, state legislators, and election officials on these topics and on how to improve voting systems and ballots.
Political campaigns have evolved since my elementary school years, since 1976, and even since 1996 to become more complex endeavors. For people like me who were bitten by the politics bug at an early age, studying cam¬paigns seems an intrinsically worthy and interesting pursuit. But there are perhaps even more compelling reasons to learn about campaigns. From the perspectives of vot¬ers, campaigns give substance and meaning to elections. They provide the information voters can use to choose among different candidates, political parties, and issue platforms. They also can supply citizens who are generally uninterested in politics with the motivation to show up to vote. From the perspectives of candidates, cam¬paigns are necessary to unify individual voters into the coalitions of supporters needed to get elected. Cam¬paigns also provide elected officials with justifications for their decision making in office-that is, officeholders routinely link their policy initiatives to their political campaigns, pointing to the substance of their campaign promises and the size of their electoral majorities when claiming a mandate to introduce, expand, cut, or elimi¬nate specific government programs or regulations. Simi¬larly, political parties and interest groups often use their successful campaign efforts to justify pressuring government officials to advance specific policies. On the other side, the candidates, parties, and advocacy groups shut out of power routinely use campaigns to encourage vot¬ers to hold those in power accountable for their per¬formance in office. Functioning somewhat outside the normal channels of representative government, initia¬tives, referenda, and recall campaigns have been used with increasing frequency to challenge the direction of public policy or replace elected officials before their terms in office are completed. And then for the thou-sands who work or volunteer in elections, campaigns can provide a means of earning a livelihood, increasing political influence or contacts, or having fun while work¬ing with like-minded people toward a common goal.
Plan of the Book
Whereas most reference works about campaigns cover small slices of the topic, are written by and for political insiders, or focus on election outcomes, the goal in the Guide to Political Campaigns in America is to provide a single source of scholarly and practical insight into a vari¬ety of political campaigns and campaign activities. In de¬veloping this work, the associate editors, chapter authors, CQ Press, and I aimed to provide a wide audience of stu¬dents, researchers, scholars, and those interested in elec¬tion campaigns and politics more generally with a broad foundation of information about all aspects of political campaigns. Among the major subjects covered in the Guide are the evolution of campaigns; the strategic con-text, comprising the institutional, legal, and political arrangements in which campaigns take place; and the vot¬ers and financial contributors campaigns are designed to influence. The key participants in political campaigns are examined as well. These include the candidates, the cam¬paign organizations they assemble, political parties, interest groups, and the mass media. In addition, the Guide in-forms readers about the major tasks associated with waging a political campaign: strategic planning, polling and other research, communications, debates, voter mobi¬lization, and fund-raising. Detailed analyses are also un¬dertaken of a variety of bids for specific offices, including the presidential nomination and general election cam¬paigns and campaigns for Congress, governorships, state legislatures, and local offices. Initiative and referenda campaigns, although not campaigns for an office, are de-scribed as well. The hook concludes with a review of the often hotly debated subject of campaign reform.
Each of the twenty-seven chapters in the Guide in¬cludes a discussion of one aspect of the campaign process with relevant facts and figures and historic and contem¬porary examples. The authors, all recognized specialists in their field, have drawn from both the classics and the most recent scholarly literature as well as from hands-on experience. Tables, figures, case studies, boxed features, photographs, and cartoons enrich the chapters and enliven the coverage. The result is an authoritative work that presents the major subjects and themes emerging from the rich literature on political campaigns.

This is the definitive reference for all things Irish in the New England States. Whether you're looking for events, education, artists, organizations or just a pub, here's the place to begin. It's very handily divided up by state and by category. The alphabetized index is extremely helpful too.

This book provides the most comprehensive and in-depth treatment of the univariate and bivariate Normal distributions (for multivariate Normal see a book by Y. L. Tong). Both probability and statistics applications are considered. If you need an even deeper treatment, virtually every formula cites a source. This is a great reference book.

I ordered this book expecting a lot of computer jargon that I would not understand. I am new to programming and this book really helped me learn a few things about VB5 and web development. The instructions were very informative and really explained how everything works. There were lessons to follow that made everything easier for me. The CD that comes with the book was very helpful and made the location of the code in the book easily accessible for reference. I would recommend this book to anyone learning VB5 and web development.

This carefuly transcribed book should be among the collection of any serios jazz musician!

This book is wonderful! It's ideal for children of all ages that dream of being cowboys or cowgirls. My 7, 5 and 4 yo love this book. A delight to read aloud. It is packed full with humorous pages.

There's nothing like this book on the market. The prayers and poems are truly child-centered, and the highly unusual pairing of each poem with a scriptural quotation invites adult readers to meditate both on Easter and on children's experience of it.

Simplicity and innocence--and surprising depth.