Jackson Books

This is similar to my original review... During a Year's worth of Gang Banging in Colorado Springs, Colorado in our Westree Apartments ( 1997 ),I found myself remembering eye exercises taught to me during grade school. These eye exercises Permitted me to keep controll over my own eyesight while under "unusuall" straign. These eye exercises Allowed me to see anything I wanted to in our Public Libraries where I learned to read when I was Two Years Old. I still have every Library card from the entire front range - including Universities and Colleges...After about two years, my eyesight is better, with my left eye going from 20-200 ( from 1975 ) to now 20-180. I will not sya that this Is The One Book Meant For You...but the rest of the topic under Vision Exercises will show you even others! I intend to dump my eyeglasses in two to three years. Of course, even the FBI likes Gargoyels...or Ray Bans...I hate UV rays as I'm out standing and walking around for my health.

These were the same techniques taught me in elementary school to relieve straign and fatigue brought on by reading texts and using a CRT. The bibliography is provacative, especially "The Bates Method For Better Eyesight Without Glasses" by William Bates, M.D.

Hattenhauer's reading of Jackson's work is illuminating and persuasive. As a high school English teacher, I have used Hattenhauer's analysis of The Haunting of Hill House to help students identify and understand Jackson's use of unreliable narration. This survey is highly recommended for anyone interested in Jackson's body of work, which never ceases to surprise and challenge.

The author of this somewhat academic book feels as if Shirley Jackson's body of work have been underrated. He explains how she wrote, and that her work was more electic than most people think. Shirley Jackson is my favorite author, and WE HAVE ALWAYS LIVED IN THE CASTLE is my favorite book. Read this book and you will learn more about her humor, her characters, and her place in the future.

This is a pretty darned hysterical novelty, as well as a great overview of the Geek Life. This is not really a book, but a satirical deck of Tarot cards, with Silicon Valley-style updates. Like, instead of The Fool and the Wheel of Fortune, you get The Hacker and The IPO. The suits of cups, wands, swords, and pentacles have been replace by cubicles, networks, disks, and computer hosts. There is a companion guide of card interpretations, but mostly it's just an excuse for wacky commentaries on Silicon Valley and dot.com excess. There's also instructions for a game you can play called "ram" as well as how to do a straight Tarot reading -- but I wouldn't use this deck to see the future of anything other than a high-teck startup. Most of the people I know who have bought this deck have simply enjoyed turning over the cards and laughing along with the joke.

This is a great novelty/game for geeks, though managers and high-tech biz people will get a kick out of it, too -- and as the SV Tarot's web site says, "Cheaper than a consultant. Same Results." That pretty much sums it up.

This "tarot deck" actually started out as a kind of "in-joke" on the net, but it became a reality four years ago. And since then, who knows how many have used this deck as inspiration, or to answer their questions, or just use it as a cool card game at some "Silicon Valley party." Designed as a spoof of both Tarot and the Valley, anyone in the computer field will quickly recognize the "in-jokes" about "Silicon Valley life" you can find in the accompanying booklet.

The cards which are cleverly drawn do correspond to a traditional Tarot deck. There is a Major and Minor Arcana. The Major Arcana has 20 cards, like The Server, Stock Options, and the dreaded Spam! As for the Minor Arcana, instead of Cups, Swords, Wands, and Pentacles, it instead consists of Disks, Hosts, Networks, and Cubicles. Archetypes include the Nerd, Marketer, Salesman, and CEO!

Will you find the answers here to whether or not your start-up will make it? Will you find the love of your dreams in marketing? Will people one day look to you with reverance as being "the guru?" Or will you be part of the (GASP!) layoff when your company downsizes? Who knows! Who cares!

A fun set of cards to have, whether you enjoy Tarot or not or if you want a glimpse into what "Silicon Valley life" is like. And like the package says, it's cheaper than a consultant!

Jackson does an excellent job of uncovering the critical role that social scientific research played in the Supreme Court's classic Brown vs. Board of Education decision in 1954. While many people equate the Brown decision with Clark's classic doll studies, Jackson provides an extremely even-handed look at role that Clark played in the decision, as well as pointing out the numerous studies carried out by other scholars that influenced the Supreme Court. An excellent read for anyone who is interested in this classic decision.

Jackson does an excellent job of uncovering the critical role that social scientific research played in the Supreme Court's classic Brown vs. Board of Education decision in 1954. While many people equate the Brown decision with Clark's classic doll studies, Jackson provides an extremely even-handed look at role that Clark played in the decision, as well as pointing out the numerous studies carried out by other scholars that influenced the Supreme Court. An excellent read for anyone who is interested in this classic decision.

The Solutions Focus: Making Coaching and Change SIMPLE (Second Edition) by Paul Z Jackson and Mark McKergow (Nicholas Brealey International, 2007) ISBN 1-904838-06-5

When the first edition of The Solutions Focus came out in 2002 it marked a genuine step forward in thinking about organisational change. It brought the insights of Solution Focused Therapy (developed in the late seventies by Steve de Shazer and Insoo Kim Berg) into the workplace. The second edition, published in 2007, broadens its usefulness to coaches with the addition of new chapters outlining Jackson and McKergow's OSKAR coaching model, manager as coach, team coaching and solution-focused approaches to management consulting.

The beauty of the solution-focused approach is twofold; firstly, like the compatible Appreciative Inquiry (AI) approach, it focuses on what is working and what is desired rather than on problems and trying to solve them, so it tends to have a heartening and morale-raising effect on individuals, teams and organisations that experience it.

Secondly, and rather unlike AI (or my own background discipline of NLP for that matter), it emphasises the need for simplicity and is refreshingly free from academic or humanistic psychology jargon and what many people in organisations, desparate for practical ways of dealing with ever-increasing demands, may view as "tree-hugging hippy crap" (as one participant at a recent AI event I helped facilitate put it recently).

The book's writing style does justice to its subject. I knew from taking an accelerated learning course with them about 10 years ago that Jackson and McKergow would present the material in an intelligent and brain-friendly way (the "reformed physicist" McKergow in particular is possessed of the proverbial "brain the size of a planet", while Jackson's background in improvisational comedy adds immediacy and lightness of touch) - and so it proves, with each chapter divided into short, easily digestible sub-headings, and plenty of illustrations and practical examples.

The book gives us six principles of what they refer to as `The Solutions Focus', organised under the acronym SIMPLE:

Solutions not problems
Inbetween - the action is in the interaction (between people)
Make use of what's there (the parts of the solution that are already happening in the current situation)
Possibilities - the resources and possibilities that will take us towards the solution
Every case is different

Something like the "Inbetween" principle (the idea that some aspects of the solution exist in the interaction between people or as emergent qualities of the system, rather than being owned by any one individual) must have been present in solution-focused therapy as it applied to families. It was a new one on this reader though, as I had previously only used solution-focus in therapy and coaching with individuals. By emphasising the principle here, Jackson and McKergow build a very useful bridge between using solution focus with individuals and applying it to teams and organisations.

We are also given a clear description of the various tools of the Solutions Focus approach. The present situation, the starting point for change, is described as the `Platform' (with its connotations of somewhere to depart or lift off from). The desired outcome - what it would be like if the problem disappeared completely - is the `Future Perfect'. Resources, things that are already working, and times when parts of the solution are happening already are called `Counters'. This metaphor didn't work quite as well for me. I suppose in some kind of board game analogy. The other tools are Affirming whatever is helping, taking Small Actions (which can make a big difference, and in any case add up), and the extremely useful Scaling (of progress towards a solution, confidence in a chosen option working, or commitment to a course of action) on a scale of 0 to 10.

The part of the book from which I got the most value is the new material added for the second edition. The authors give many practical examples of how to use the Solutions Focus approach in coaching individuals, team coaching, and organisational consultancy. There is also a useful chapter on coaching as a manager.

One of the most helpful insights (no news to experienced managment consultants, I'm sure, but very helpful to someone like me with a background in individual coaching who is increasingly moving into organisational changework) is about the need to find a `customer for change'. This is someone in an organisation who is aware that it is time for a change, and prepared to do something about it. If the consultant can't find one, their change interventions are unlikely to get very far.

Also new to the second edition is the OSKAR coaching model. The acronym stands for Outcome, Scaling, Know-How, Affirm and action, and Review. In some ways this seems to have been bolted on to the rest of the book; looked at from one angle, it seems merely a relabelling of some of the tools described earlier. `Know-How', for example, seems to be much the same as the resources and abilities described as `Counters' earlier in the book.

My other quibble with the model is that it is more a description of tools than a process model; although the authors say it can be used as a process ,the Scaling, Know-How, and the `Affirm' part of `Affirm and action' might be used both when eliciting what is working in the current situation (the `Platform'), and when deciding what to do to get closer to the `Future Perfect'. Also, the authors say that the `Outcome' stage would include both establishing the Platform and envisioning the `Future Perfect', while the sample questions they give are exclusively about the future, which might lead the careless reader to skimp on exploring the current situation. These are however minor caveats, which I hope a third edition will eventually resolve.

The book finishes up with a short history tracing the evolution and intellectual roots of the Solutions Focus model, placing it in a lineage which includes Bateson's work on paradox and levels of abstraction, Erickson's concept of utilisation, and complexity theory.

All in all, The Solutions Focus is an eye-opening book for anyone looking for greater simplicity and effectiveness in coaching, team-building, or organisational change.

When I read the first edition of The Solutions Focus, I compared it to Getting To Yes, a classic that changes the way you see the world and act in it. Well, I can now say that SF has more than survived the test of time. It has become part of "the way I do things" both as a consultant and in my personal life.

So I was curious to see what a second edition would bring.

And the answer: It brought some fantastic "Aha" moments, such as the story of James, a manager who feels his second-in-command is out to get him. Using the OSKAR coaching model, James successfully resolves their differences. WOW, of course, what a brilliant and fresh approach to conflict management! The O in OSKAR stands for Outcome, starting with the desired result and moving toward it...

As a corporate negotiation consultant and trainer with more than a penchant for creativity, let me say bravo and thanks..

Sophia the dog belongs to the king's alchemist. The alchemist has the task of changing lead into gold. He gets so focused on the task that he begins to neglect Sophia. She is so worried about him that she takes things into her own paws. Fortunately for the alchemist, the king turns out to be a very reasonable man. The book is informative and not at all scary. The story is rather long, however, with about 1300 words, so it may be more interesting for older kids.

This delightful book is required reading for all training analysts at The C.G. Jung Institute at Zürich and Küsnacht. Don't be deceived into thinking this is a simple "children's book" -- it subtly encodes the Gnostic Gospel of Magdalene, cleverly interwoven with the 13 dreams reported by Wolfgang Pauli that led Jung to his theory of synchronicity. Highly recommended, especially for intuitive ectomorphs in advanced postdoctoral programs.

I have the first edition of this book, which I have used for many years. It has some of my all-time favorite recipes (Country Captain, Apple Torte, Helen Mary's Chicken, Shrimp Dip just to name a few). These recipes were well-tested prior to the publication, and I have never found an error in the ingredient list or instructions. There are recipes for every occasion, and every one I have tried has been great. I recently bought one for my thirty-year-old son who has become interested in cooking. When I gave it to him, he laughed and said, "Oh, yes, I recognize this!" due to the many times I used it when he was growing up. This is a great addition to your collection or a great gift for anyone on your list!

I have been using this book since my Missippi Magnolia mother gave me a copy when it first came out. There's not a bad recipe in it. Even the Crispy Chicken Cassarole, which my children called "glop" is good. In fact, I'm making the Strawberries Romanoff for a get-together tomorrow night. My copy has just worn out, therefore I'm ordering a new one, make it two, one for my new daughter-in-law in NJ.

Mr. Gervasi has taken a copy of the Pentagon's annual assessment of the Soviet threat from 1986 and filled the book's margins with interesting commentary.

Basically he has ripped it to pieces, demonstrating it to be propaganda designed to mislead the public and the congress into approving the huge Reagan military buildup. It makes sense. We required a formidable adversary for the Pentagon to request & receive its huge budget for the toys in its arsenal. Looking back, the Pentagon's ploy was completely successful.

Mr. Gervasi does not hide his bias towards the left, so the reader must be very careful and keep his or her eyes open. This kind of book cannot be written without motive, so this is understandable, but the facts must stand on their own, and I believe they do.

There are two kinds of criticism that he presents.

One: The details in the book are just wrong. Missile ranges are false. Listed quantities of equipment, tanks, etc. are false, and so on. He corrects the hundreds of pieces of data and makes a very convincing case. Unfortunately non-experts have no way of verifying his claims, so nobody outside the Pentagon can tell the value of this analysis, and those who could verify had a vested interest in keeping such knowledge very vague.

Two: The more valuable and interesting part of this book: He describes in depth how and why the data presented cannot LOGICALLY be true. The core of this book is about the Pentagon's information-delivery-design and how the authors have carefully and subtly slanted their data. This can be demonstrated without any outside knowledge-base. All that is required are good reasoning skills and an open mind.

For example, the Pentagon describes the Soviets as 'leaders in liquid-based missile propulsion systems', a technology long abandoned by the West in favor of vastly superior solid-fueled systems.

The book emphasizes useless and distracting details between Soviet & American equipment, such as the size of submarines. The Soviet's models are larger. But that says nothing - size has no intrinsic value in comparing submarines.

Similarly, they show that the Soviets have more types of subs than does the U.S. But theirs are much older. We have far more of the newer models.

Similarly, in most of the comparisons of this book our ally's militaries are completely left out of the equation, so the US-Soviet comparison looks far worse than any real-world battle scenario.

The book is full of these types of explanations. There are at least a half dozen distinct types of misleading presentations in the Pentagon's work:

The art of Creative Omission.
Misleading focus on irrelevant data.
Apples-to-oranges comparisons.
Incomplete comparisons.
Description of outdated, inferior technologies as 'new and threatening'.
Unverifiable future threat-projections & worst-case scenarios.
And fantasies about SDI-Star Wars, which was never deployed and in historical hindsight turned out to be a complete boondoggle.

All of these are clear and accessible to the lay-reader. Seventeen years have passed since this book was printed but it remains a fascinating historical document and a must-read for open-minded military history afficionados.

Now that the Communist Threat has been superseded by the Terrorist Threat we can once again expect some part of the Pentagon to employ similar methods of persuasion. This time there will probably be no way for even an arms-expert to debunk their claims. Still, as a sterling example of how & why to keep one's eyes open, this book is perhaps more valuable than ever.

Having read the first 6 editions of Soviet Military Power (SMP) (published by the DoD) while in the Army, I was interested enough to purchase this annotated and corrected version of the '87 SMP when it first came out. I learned very quickly not to bring it to work. Everyone wanted to borrow or look at it. At I can say is that it was quite an eye opener. It made me wonder what other figures were being fudged.

This is an excellent, accessible collection of well-written essays on the intersection of sport, celebrity, and culture. In particular, the essays on "Gretzky Nation," "Global Hingis," and Michael Jordan were thought-provoking and did more than just glamourise the world of celebrity athletes. Highly recommended to anyone interested in seeing the cultural relavance of sporting figures in everyday global culture.

Great book. Complete, and thought provoking. I especially enjoyed the chapter on "Global Hingis"!

Some friends of mine and I get together infrequently to play strategy games. Chez Geek is a favorite as either a warmup for a longer, more complex games. It's very funny, easy to learn, and has a pretty broad appeal--I recently played with my wife, her sister, and my mother-in-law. You play housemates with different jobs and different slack goals. You can get slack points for having friends over, drinking, watching tv, getting "nookie," and playing RPG's.

My one complaint is that there's no way to buy Chez Geek with both expansion packs (Slack Attack and Block Party) in one bundle. Individually, they're kind of pricey, so it would be nice to have a single discount bundle. This is a pretty minor complaint, though.

When I first laid eyes upon Chez Geek (Pronounced Shay Geek) what I first noted was the wacky and humorous card design with high quality art and funny quotes. However when I opened it up the rules seemed...simplistic. When I played a few games I started to realize how awesome a game this was. It's a completely casual oriented game, with minor tactics, but for the most part it's aimed at being easy to play and funny. Since the deck is shared and boosters aren't part of the game at all (Its not collectable) people can easily join in. Also the collectible aspect is refreshing since every card has a use and there are no "crap" cards. Certain cards are better than others, but not the outrageous degree of most card games. While in theory two people can play, it will be fairly mundane. Games are only worth it with at least 3 people. While the box says 5 people may play the number is closer to 7, and at an absolute max 9. However the two expansion boxes raise that number. Its great for parties since you can learn to play within 5 minutes. Now of course I have emphasized how easy to play it is, the game itself is incredibly fun. As 2-5 (or more) college students living in one apartment you each get one job and try to get as many "Slack Points" as possible. Slack may come from RPGs, hanging out at a Café, nookie, books, friends to invite over, even sleep. What other game gives you points for sleep? As well as many way of gaining slack methods of hindering your opponents are key. For example take "Car Alarm", which makes an opponent's sleep card be discarded. Also "Hungry Girl", a person card, is played on an opponent and `eats' one food card every turn. Even some of the cards that help you can be a double-edged sword. For example buying a user low rider, "Harold the Hoopty Car", lowers your income by 1 point a turn. Income and free time are balancing factors specific to each job. For example as a Slacker you have a high free time value, but very low income. As a corporate drone you have the highest income of any job, but suffer from only one free time per turn.