Research Books

This planner should be required for all new nursing students. It has valuable information that can be used and reviewed as well as a calendar to keep you on track.

I wasn't sure if I should purchase this at first or not. I was not in need of a planner since I use a palm pilot to keep track of my appointments and school work. I was just going to purchase RN-notes instead since it has a lot of information. I ended up buying both. I highly recommend this book/planner. The first half is a book with 177 pages of information about nursing school and things that will be SO helpful and enlightening to new students, and it will also be useful after graduation as well. I feel much more prepared to start school in a few weeks after reading this. RN-notes is great for clinicals or practing nurses, but it won't help you much with being introduced to the field. Buy both, and you're set!

I know for a fact that I'd benefit from this planner 100%, not just at the time being but for as long I will be practicing nursing. I'm a student nurse and this is just a total must-have! Makes a great gift, too. What a thoughtful idea! It really helps to eliminate some if not most of the fears a student nurse is most likely to encounter. This is definitely not just another planner. You'd feel armed with just the right stuffs necessary to thrive while in nursing school, doing clinicals, and yes, I'd like to add, what a good item for the NCLEX review!

I just purchased this planner yesterday and after reading through it, I too agree with the rest of the reviews....it's excellent for fisrt year nursing students!!!! This book should be recommended in all first year nursing programs. ALthough i would like for the calendar section to be less time consuming for the student, I find this planner to be helpful.

This isn't just a planner. There is a lot of help in here on how to do well in clinical, give therapeutic communication, perform assessments, and even tells you what to look for in lab tests as they pertain to some common medications.

If we all work to put an end to this silent killer of our children's self-esteem...the educational experience will be what it should be: an empowering, learning experience where all children feel connected. As an educator I have used (and written about in my book) simple strategies that parents, teachers and schools can use to prevent any child from becoming a bully or victim.Let's work together!

I have been working with children for a long time and this book really opened my eyes. I need good reason to change my way of thinking and Stan Davis has given me that. In addition to making some very good points, he has seen this method be successful at numerous schools. I would recommend the book to anyone that works with groups of children.

Great tips and strategies for deveoping an anti-bully environment along with invaluable information on the issue of bullying...its causes and effects. Another outstanding book that details what schools,teachers, principals and parents need to do to design a bully-free environment is: Bully-Proofing Children: A Practical, Hands-On Guide to Stop BullyingIt actually also contains a whole curriculum on the topic that needs to be taught to our kids. Highly recommended.Buy them both.

Written by family and child therapist and school counselor Stan Davis, Where Everyone Belongs: Practical Strategies for Reducing Bullying is a highly practical guide written especially for schoolteachers and other educational professionals, yet invaluable for anyone who oversees groups of children. Now in an updated second edition, Schools Where Everyone Belongs demystifies what bullying it is and common myths about its effects, what doesn't work to combat it, and most importantly of all, classroom-tested methods that do work to stop bullying and reverse its harmful effects. "When there are inconsistent consequences for bullying, young people are likely to continue. When we have to customize a consequence for each incident, the process of discipline becomes impossibly time-consuming. Planned, rubric-based consequences take much less time to administer and thus can be used more consistently. When consequences are predictable and based on a clear rubric, young people can learn from each other's misdeeds." An absolute "must-have" for grade school teachers and principals everywhere.

This is an excellent book with many practical strategies and tips to reduce bullying. However I found Bully-Proofing Children: A Practical, Hands-On Guide to Stop Bullyingto be even more helpful as a teacher. What I liked most here, is that it gives a whole chapter of lesson plans and activities as well as designs on how to create and build an environment in the school, class and at home that is bully-free. This too is an invaluable for a teacher and parent.

What a pleasure to finally read this classic book. I grew up loving Cousteau's television programs. Ultimately, I became a diver because of Cousteau.

This is adventure writing at its best. Cousteau was always a master storyteller. That was probably more instrumental to his success than his bravery, innovativeness, or his ability as a diver. This book is a collection of Cousteau's experiences with early scuba. He masterfully captures the awe, the fear, the struggles, and the sense of adventure of the first years of scuba.

I love adventure writing, but sometimes great adventurers are not great writers. Cousteau was both. If you have an interest in Cousteau or in scuba diving, this book is a must read.

As promised in the title, in this book Jacques Cousteau reveals a new world of unanticipated beauty, fittingly described in his charming, French-influenced English phraseology. C. Blickenstorfer has done a fine job explaining the contents of this book, particularly as it relates to divers or those interested in diving history. However, The Silent World, read as a frontier narrative, also has relevance for anyone interested in our current and historical treatment of the ocean.

Humans have interacted with the ocean for ages, but before divers like Cousteau it was a blind interaction, a grasp at resources based on guesses and historical results. Cousteau's underwater observations of trawl-net fishing make clear the change of ideology his "aqualung" opened to humans. Watching the net destroy grasses on the ocean floor, Cousteau reports "Man's method of undersea farming seemed to consist of blighting the acre while reaping a small part of the crop" (48). As opposed to a history of blind grabs at ocean creatures, Cousteau's aqualung gives him the capacity to see without touching, and his narrative provides a chance for our knowledge to begin catching up to our know-how.

Another epiphany facilitated by the aqualung is a completely new set of fears and a new evaluation of old "monsters." The killers of which Cousteau writes are nitrogen in his blood and clams with shells sharp enough to sever air pipes. On the contrary, the octopus, demonized by Victor Hugo as a monster who will suck out a man's innards, shows itself as harmless and shy. Cousteau concludes his chapter "Monsters We Have Met" with a jocularity that is persistent in the work: "If none have eaten us, it is perhaps because they have never read the instructions so generously provided in marine demonology" (222).

Cousteau's reinterpretation of the ocean brings readers to the fundamental questions of humans and their environment. How are we going to think of this new space? Should we sell it as new realty? Militarize it? Farm it? Should we simply Keep Out in a quest to guard some portion of the earth against ourselves? Those from my generation who have mythologized Cousteau as a heroic conservationist might struggle with Cousteau's narrative. This is not the work of a dolphin-hugger. Cousteau writes of his exploits kidnapping an endangered monk seal pup in his desire for an aquatic hunting dog (the seal almost dies and is given to a zoo) and bludgeoning most large sea creatures who get close enough. This includes wounding a captured porpoise to watch sharks eat it alive, an act which he justifies with "It was cruelty to an animal but we were involved in a serious study [. . .] and had to carry it out" (234).
In his conclusion, Cousteau asserts "Obviously man has to enter the sea. There is no choice in the matter. The human population is increasing so rapidly and land resources are being depleted at such a rate, that we must take sustenance from the great cornucopia" (266). Both those who would agree with this 1950s assumption and those who believe this "cornucopia" has been already overexploited can gain insight from this book as a well-written record of human reactions to the new world under the waves.

As a diver for long years, I remember the old b&w tv days, when we find happiness with Cousteau's documentary films. Now it's a mirracle to be able to purchase the whole collection in DVD format.

As great a read today as it must have been over 50 years ago. Being a modern day technical and recreational dive instructor I still find this book a fascinating read and would recommend it to all ages to divers and non divers alike.

What can be said about Jacques Cousteau and his groundbreaking book that hasn't been said a thousand times? He is undoubtedly the defining figure of modern scuba diving, his books, films, and documentaries known to millions or billions. Even the name of his ship, the Calypso, is known the world over. It's a small volume, this book, just 160 pages, yet it's absolutely mandatory reading for anyone interested in what Cousteau termed "the silent world" under the surface of the water that covers 71% of our planet. The Silent World is the bible of modern scuba diving.

Jacques Cousteau himself died in 1997 at the age of 87, but the legacy of his pioneering work with diving and diving physiology lives on. It is all well documented and disseminated worldwide, thanks to this French explorer's unique combination of instinctive understanding of the world under the surface and his equally unique knack of spellbinding the world with his words and images. A total master of public relations and getting the word out, Cousteau managed to grab attention and media coverage wherever he went. Critics went so far as suggesting his media talents exceeded his actual contributions to understanding the seas.

At first it's hard to figure out why this slim volume became such a success. It's not a textbook, it doesn't cover the history of diving or even much of Cousteau's own research, and it's not an adventure book. Though Cousteau was French, he wrote The Silent World in English as he had attended American schools in his youth, widely traveled the US, and, of course, extensively lectured in his enchanting French-accented English. Yet, The Silent World clearly reveals its author's non-English origin and decidedly "non-English" thinking. The writing, while precise, often suggests that Cousteau frequently described a word or concept that existed in his native French, but did not directly translate into English. As a result, the writing at times seems a bit flowery and, well, foreign, and you need to read a sentence or paragraph two or three times to figure out what it actually means. Cousteau's liberal use of metaphors, artistic nuances, poetic concepts and words that have since fallen out of currrent language only serve to make The Silent World even more unusual of a literary treat.

Anyone looking for technical explanations, precise history, a logical flow of events, or anything one might expect from a world-famous documentary maker and researcher will not find it in this book. The Silent World is a totally unique, very compressed tale flowing from Cousteau's mind. Read half a chapter and you know the man; he's a unique combination of inspired philosophical observer and gifted researcher with uncanny intuition. While others conducted their research methodically and ploddingly, Cousteau always just seemed to know what to expect, how to behave, and what to seek and avoid to make it all seem easy. He and his close associates and friends Phillipe Tailliez and Frederic Dumas used their "aqualung" to experient liberally in sort of a "Hmmm.... this is probably what will happen, let's go check it out!" approach.

Using this, Cousteau describes the difference between "helmet divers" and the newly liberated users of their "aqualung" -- what we now know as air tanks and regulators. The book casually touches on all the principles of diving physics and physiology, the stuff we learn in our PADI and NAUI classes. He describes sea life, how it reacts, where it lives, how it behaves, and what is dangerous and what is not. They see just how deep they can go. They check how colors change. What nitrogen does and why we need recompression chambers. He offers his views on treasure hunting (not worth it; if you find real treasure authorities and hordes of lawyers will soon apprehend it). He reports on atrocities he witnessed underwater, like the needless destruction of corals and cruel killing of fish. He debunks myths of sea monsters, seeks answers to geological phenomena such as the Fountain of Vaucluse near Avignon, one that almost cost him and Dumas their lives in a pioneering effort at extreme cave diving. He describes what fish do and how they react. And sea mammals and other sea critters. Sharks remain an enigma to Cousteau as his conclusion is that you simply cannot understand or predict them.

So The Silent World relates, in 14 fascinating self-contained chapters, pretty much everything we know about diving today, 60 years after Cousteau began researching as a "manfish," all the principles we know, and it's all neatly and attractively presented in tales that always mix research with adventure. Cousteau never preaches or lectures. He just explores, pushes, interprets, and reports. Maybe Captain Jacques-Yves Cousteau was a showman as much as a researcher. If so, good for him as otherwise we may never have had the opportunity to learn from him and enjoy his remarkable insights. -- C. H. Blickenstorfer, scubadiverinfo.com

It is filled with lots of good stories. We use it for my nine year old son and he likes it and we like the stories very much!

This book is very helpful for getting the child's imagination to come out. My daughter loves writing a lot more by doing these stories. She is also able to teach my younger son by reading to him and having him come up with the rest of the story. I highly recommend this book.

I am a homeschooling mom of a 6 year old girl and a 9 year old boy. We just received this wonderful book by Karen Andreola and have only tried it out once so far, but I have flipped through the book and read some of the stories. There are many different kinds of wonderful stories to chose from. I did one with my 6 year old daughter and I actually walked her through the writing process instead of just letting her write, as she is so young, but I think she learned a lot from it. She asked me the very next day if we could "do another one"...and the next day. Karen has a whole section in the front on how to use the book and writing tips that are very helpful. I think this is a wonderful book and look forward to using this with my children.

We're just getting started, but our children ages 9 & 11 love this! And this concept could lead them to other activities, too.

This book was carefully thought out and well written. So far, we are all very impressed and glad we made this purchase.

We've been a homeschooling family from the beginning and my kids are 10 and 12 now. Teaching writing has always been a struggle for me, and the kids did not like writing at all. This book has the beginnings of very interesting stories, and the students' job is to write the ending. Each story starter also has guidelines (have the characters speak, describe the scene) suggestions for "vivid verbs", "artful adjectives" and more. My kids, who have NEVER liked writing, got so into it, I had to give them extra time to finish. The book has a section for educators that has a lot of useful information. Before I bought this book, I checked it out from the library to make sure I liked it. I ended up ordering it on Amazon before we started the second story!

Dick Lee has done it again - distilled years of consulting experience into a practical guidebook that will assure the success of virtually any CRM project. Don't expect the usual consultant's mindless assortment of silver-bullet checklists though. These projects still take work. I will say that if you diligently follow the steps clearly outlined in Strategic CRM, Dick Lee's complete CRM implementation manual, your customers will be better off for it!

...

Dick Lee's "Strategic CRM" is a cut above other CRM books for a simple reason: instead of grand theories, it offers practical, field-tested advice for making CRM really work. Dick does a great job boiling down years of experience into a useable planning guide. If you're serious about CRM, this book is a great investment that will help you avoid the obstacles that have derailed many CRM projects.

Dick Lee's latest editorial undertaking - Strategic CRM - is rich in personal experience and implementation strategies and rewarding in potential CRM results. A four-step process manual to be read with pen in hand, Lee makes you think - and think again. Exhaustingly exhilarating, Strategic CRM is a win-win opportunity for both you and your customers. You Betcha!

Carol Parenzan Smalley, CRMGuru.com

Leave it to Dick Lee to observe that the only result of down'n'dirty Customer Relationship Management implementations is to get down and dirty. His trademark common-sense approach which made the first version so indispensable is sharper than ever in 2.0.

Lee's distilled his earlier work here. The book completely updates his four-step method -- Developing Customer-Centric Strategies, Redesigning Workflow, Re-engineering Work Processes and Supporting With Technology -- and presents it between two covers for ease of use.

Lee's the ideal guide for companies already convinced of the need for CRM, but who need highly practical step-by-step guidance. He dispenses with high-flying jargon and theoretical musings in favor of showing what CRM looks like on the ground. How should you structure team leadership, identify the market cycle for each customer group or map current data flows? What size conference room should you book for a certain team meeting, how much time should it take and how many flip charts and markers will you need? Lee gives you the benefit of his vast experience in answering such questions which you probably didn't even think to ask. His painstaking visual representations of old vs. new sales proposal cycles, proposal resolutions, customer service flows, etc. are definitive, to make them any simpler he'd have had to do them in crayon.

Battle scars are all over the book. On "Change Management" he says "There are two aspects of change management critical to the success of CRM implementations: Leadership and firefighting. The more you have of #1, the less you'll need of #2." Here's a man who's seen more unnecessary firefighting than he cares to remember. He's learned that the best way to impart the information that needs to be imparted is to use the old threefold approach: Tell 'em what you're gonna tell 'em, tell 'em, then tell 'em what you just told 'em. From setting a baseline to beta and launch he walks you step-by-step through what needs to happen when; a seeing-eye dog doesn't provide better guidance than this.

This is an implementation manual in the most literal sense of the term, a book to have open on the desk while you implement CRM.

David Sims, owner of business freelance and copywriting house David Sims Writing writes regularly for CRMGuru.com and CRM magazine among other publications.

Dick Lee rightfully points out that technology is a valuable tool, but it's only as good as the strategies, workflow and work processes it supports. This concise manual is a must read for anyone considering or already involved in CRM implementation. The advice he gives is immediately applicable.

John Lewis Gaddis is probably the foremost historian of the Cold War.

Strategies of Containment provides a complete basic overview of the subject of U.S. foreign policy during the Cold War. It is specifically a history of the U.S.'s containment policy toward the Soviet Union and the Communist-bloc and its evolution over time.

It begins with U.S. diplomat George Kennan's famous memomorandum or "long telegram" from the Soviet Union which provided the guide for interpreting the intentions of the Soviet that was used by the State Department and the Executive Branch in formulating U.S. foreign policy towards the Soviet Union and the Communist-bloc nations - especially during the early stages of the Cold War. If a U.S. foreign service officer or other U.S. official wanted to understand the Soviet Union's foreign policy or history and the considerations which would impact the Soviet leadership's behavior - he or she was directed to read it.

The initial assessment by Kennan and his subsequent use of the term "containment" in a Foreign Affairs magazine for the first time, was controversial and volumes have been written on what he meant.

His approach basically was to advise against a wholesale reordering of the world order based on U.S. values which would cause consternation in the Soviet leadership and trigger Soviet defensive diplomatic (and potentially more drastic measures) in opposing the new international framework.

Kennan wanted diversity in the international system, to allow the Soviet Union to participate within it, and not undermine or be alienated from it, and thus transformed by it over time. The history of the Soviet Union's participation in the UN and its institutions confirms his analysis.

Kennan initially argued for a particularist approach as opposed to a universalist approach. He also argued for strong point as opposed to wide-scale perimeter opposition to expanding Soviet spheres of influence.

Kennan's writings set the stage for an interpretation of Soviet behavior and intentions. He studied Soviet and Russian history and knew that the Soviet Union would seek to build buffer zones between it and any potential adversary. The Napolean invasion, Germany's invasion, etc. as well as the Crimean War, and the Russo-Japanes War of 1905, and the U.S. and European intervention in the Russian civil war, all shaped the Soviet leadership's thinking.

Kennan wanted to restore a balance of power at the interface between the East and West in the European theater as well as in Asia, but without contesting every Soviet move for influence along its borders and without alienating the Soviet Union from the new international order.

Truman subsequently instituted a policy review process that led to NSC-68 which expressly stated that the U.S. policy was to promote U.S. values of freedom and human dignity. Containment then moved into the shape of a perimeter-type defensive strategy in which Soviet moves on its periphery for political and military influence was to be contested.

The book then describes U.S. national security policy and how U.S. containment evolved over time into Eisenhower's "New Look" policy in which no further Soviet expansion of its power into other nations was to be uncontested and then later into "flexible response" under Kennedy and Johnson and then detente under Kissinger.

The book is an excellent introduction to the Cold War, the U.S. policy of containment and its evolution.

This book show us the strategies of Containment in the Cold War Era; an important beginning had been made with the Truman Doctrine and the Containment thesis, which established a defensive position holding back Soviet expansionism.
In 1947 the US had an exclusive monopoly on the ultimate weapon, the atomic weapon, and this monopoly should be used -the bomb "makes politically possible....the domination of the world by a single sufficiently large state". The architect of containment was George Frost Kennan, best known as "the father of containment" and as a key figure in the emergence of the Cold War.
He later wrote standard histories of the relations between Russia and the Western powers. The NSC-68, the most important of all Cold War documents, was "a plan of military rearment and development is at present going forward". It's the central document of the Cold War that transformed containment into a global crusade. Approved by Harry Truman in April 1950, it still lacked Congressional funding and support, and Truman was too weak a president to push it throught in the absence of a major crisis.
It would have been interesting if the author of the book had also used an approach from the Soviet point of view, as well as one in the West and the United States. In addition, Henry Kissinger has been widely studied and detailed, but it seems that is not mentioned in the book the figure of the first Secretary of State of the Nixon presidency, William Rodgers.

Now in a revised edition, Strategies Of Containment: A Critical Appraisal Of American National Security Policy During The Cold War is a revised and expanded edition of Bancroft Prize winner and Cold War expert John Lewis Gaddis' classic on understanding the history of containment as a policy, its role in bringing the Cold War to an end, and its possible value or pitfalls in the future. Originally published during the Regan presidency when the Soviet Union was still a superpower, Strategies Of Containment includes a greatly expanded chapter on Reagan, Gorbachev, and the completion of containment, as well as a new epilogue. A welcome scrutiny of history with the advantage of post-Cold War hindsight.

This book is still useful even 20 years after publication. Gaddis view US policy toward the USSR as a pendulum that swings between"symmetrical" and "asymmetrical" approaches. The periods are split into: Kennan's original containment, NSC-68, Eisenhower's "New Look", JFK and Nixon's détente. There is a coda covering Carter, but it is less helpful.

The symmetrical approach confronts the USSR wherever the USSR chooses to probe. In this approach, wherever the Soviets seek to advance is, by their very actions, a US interest. In contrast, the asymmetrical view seeks to identify those areas that are inherently vital US interests and protect those.

The first seeks to build a fence (containment) around the Soviets. The second approach builds its fences around US interests and lets the USSR do what it wants - within reason - elsewhere. Heck, why let them do that? The answer is "means." Gaddis stresses the point that US means are not unlimited. The US must balance means and ends and this leads to the pendulum swings.

The reasons I do not give the book the last star are: It does not cover the Carter-Reagan-Bush era and Smith over draws the magnitude of the swings. The book makes it sound like there were tremendous differences between the various administrations and does not pay enough attention to the essential consistency of US Cold War strategy. Smith acknowledges this in a retrospective on his own book available at the Hoover Institute web site.

Strategies of Containment, by John Lewis Gaddis, is a description of the evolving strategy of containment that was the basis of US policy toward the Soviet Union from 1946 through 1989. Gaddis traces the concept of containment from its inception by George F. Kennan through the modifications applied by five administrations and assesses the strengths, weaknesses, and effectiveness of each version. This book is more than another chronology of the cold war; it provides deep insights into strategic thinking and is essential reading for any serious student of the cold war. Here's a brief summary:

Kennan's Original Doctrine of Containment

* Identify and defend vital interests based on the centers of industrial strength - Britain, Western Europe, Japan -don't try to defend the entire world.
* Use all instruments of power: economic, diplomatic, political, and cultural power as well as military power. Rebuilding the economic vitality of the above areas is a high priority.
* Seek to divide the communist world. Our primary adversary is the Soviet Union. Other communist countries, if not actively supporting Soviet policy, may be led to serve as quasi-allies by depriving the Soviets of their support.
* General war with the Soviets is unlikely, so we can afford to take risks. We can limit our defense spending and not try to defend the world. A point defense of our vital interests is probably adequate.
* Define threats in light of US vital interests, not in terms of Soviet capabilities

Truman and NSC-68

* The policies articulated in NSC-68 moved toward a perimeter defense covering the entire world rather than a point defense of vital interests.
* Primary emphasis was switched to military power and to the entire spectrum of war
* US interests were redefined in response to perceived threats (anything that is threatened must be an interest).
* US strategy became based on a symmetric response to threats - responding in the same time, place, and with the same means as the adversary (e.g., the Korean War).

Eisenhower, Dulles, and the New Look

* Eisenhower's guiding philosophy was that defense is not just defeating the enemy - it is the preservation of our economic and political systems.
* Spending too much on defense could destroy these systems by leading to either inflation or the imposition of autocratic controls. He reduced the defense budget by 33% from Truman's last year and held it at about that level for eight years.
* Alliances relied on allies for ground forces with the US providing Air and Naval support.
* The nuclear threat became the cornerstone of deterrence across the spectrum of conflict - with goal of avoiding war - in belief that any war was all too likely to escalate to nuclear.
* Asymmetric response to threats - response need not be in same place or using same methods as Soviet threat
* Anti-colonial Conundrum: The communists are fomenting wars of national liberation while the US is trying to rebuild Europe (the colonial powers). If the US backs decolonization, it undermines the European allies it is trying to rebuild. If the US backs the colonial powers, it loses any chance of support from the colonies. The Soviets really put us in a no-win position on this issue.

Kennedy, Johnson, and Flexible Response

* Kennedy and Johnson return to NSC-68 reasoning by lowering threat of nuclear response and replaced it with flexible response, requiring a direct, symmetric response to threats - a respond in same time and place using the same means.
* These administrations applied a circular logic: Threats create interests which demand responses which require capabilities even where no interest previously had been identified. This was articulated in the "bear any burden, pay any price" rhetoric.
* This strategy necessitated greater reliance on military response versus economic, political, etc which increased demands on the defense budget.
* Kennedy abandoned Eisenhower's commitment to a balanced budget and relied on Keynesian fiscal policy to stimulate the economy. Spending was predicated on the potential of the economy rather than its actual performance. Lack of budgetary constraints led to inability to prioritize, to distinguish the essential from the peripheral, the feasible from the infeasible which encouraged more "bear any burden, pay and price' reasoning because it wasn't real money.
* Flexible response led to graduated escalation in Viet Nam which became "never enough to defeat the enemy, just enough to prolong the war". Stakes were repeatedly raised to prevent the humiliation of a defeat but this only made the eventual defeat more humiliating.
* Calibrated escalation yielded the initiative to the enemy - allowed him to define the terms of conflict. Deterrence can be made effective only if the adversary can be made to doubt that he can retain control of the situation. Taking the nuclear option away encouraged adversaries to call our bluff.

Nixon, Kissinger and Détente

* Nixon and Kissinger moved the US government from a bi-polar to a multi-polar world view by positing the existence of five significant power centers: US, USSR, Western Europe, China, and Japan. They recognized that these five power centers were far from equal. Only the US and USSR were superpowers able to exert substantial influence via military, economic, political, or diplomatic means. This strategy was a return to the balance of power envisioned by Kennan.
* In the military arena, they focused on sufficiency rather than superiority over the Soviet Union and sought to persuade Brezhnev that a similar policy would be in his country's best interest as well. Sufficiency won the logical argument over superiority because the latter invariably provoked the other side into matching every military advance, producing and endless and unwinnable arms race.
* Conceptually, Kissinger and Nixon changed the country's strategic definition of US interests and threats to those interests. For most of the interval between Kennan and Nixon-Kissinger, the US strategic view had started with the USSR, its capabilities and intentions, then identified the impact these capabilities could have. These impacts became viewed as threats and US interests were defined as anything thus threatened. Nixon and Kissinger reversed the logical flow, much as Kennan did, starting with the identification of US interests, independent of any adversary. They then identified as an adversary an entity with capability and intent to harm these interests.
* Again returning to Kennan's approach, Nixon-Kissinger sought to use negotiations to influence Soviet behavior. They took a long-term approach to negotiations, discarding the tendency of previous administrations from Roosevelt on to use negotiations and agreements with the Soviets for domestic political purposes. They discarded the approach of seeking agreements on specific areas where they could be reached and adopted a strategy of linkage - maintaining that Soviet unwillingness to negotiate in good faith on military and strategic issues of importance to the US would result in US refusal to accommodate Soviet desires for economic and trade relations and recognition of the post war division of Europe.
* The next step in the Nixon-Kissinger strategy was to seek an accommodation with China to reduce US-Chinese tensions and, thereby, free China to take a more assertive stance in its own dealings with the USSR. This was a return to Kennan's goal of dividing communism and redefined our prime enemy as the Soviet Union

Reagan

Reagan continued the return to Kennan's original concept of containment:
* Adopt an asymmetric strategy - don't let the enemy determine the time, place, and terms of conflict
* Apply economic, political, diplomatic, and moral power more than military power. A prime example was his Berlin speech: "Mr. Gorbachev! Tear down this wall!" He put the Soviets in the same kind of no-win position that they had inflicted on Eisenhower over colonialism in the 1950s by setting the Eastern Europeans at odds with the Kremlin.
* He recognized that Soviet system was bankrupt financially, intellectually, morally and turned up the pressure until it collapsed.
* Reagan was also lucky. Kennan had hoped to transform the Soviet Union with the help of a new generation of Russian leaders. Gorbachev turned out to be the leader Kennan had hoped for. He and Reagan together ended the cold war and transformed the Soviet Union from a totalitarian system to one that might have evolved into a more liberal one had the 1991 coup d'état not destroyed it first.

This book was required reading in my high school biology class, and I loved it. It is very readable, so you don't even realize you are learning about science and the scientific method. And the cartoons are priceless!

Title: To Know A Fly
Author: Vincent G. Dethier
Publisher: Holden Day; New Ed (June 1963)
Paperback: 119 pages
ISBN: 0070165742
Language: English

The complexity and simplicity of the "fly" has been ingeniously revealed to readers of all ages and breadth of scientific knowledge in Vincent G. Dethier's To Know A Fly. While the general reader may not be attracted to a book about flies due to the associated cultural stigma that brands flies as disgusting, ugly, useless pests this book brings attention to their value in regards to the advancement of scientific research.
To Know a Fly is a painless approach to the nature and value of the scientific method with the capability of exciting even the non-scientist. The employment of creative yet simple experiments are conveyed with both humor and wit. While trying to explain the importance of experimental controls Dethier tells a story of a man who believed he had trained a flea to jump. The man prepares an experiment where he progressively removes different appendages. First the feelers are removed and when the man requests "jump" the flea jumps. He continues to remove different parts and the flea continues to jump on command. Eventually only the flea's hind legs remain at which point he removes them and the flea fails to respond to the command. The man concludes that fleas hear with their hind legs. This statement is of course silly yet a great illustration that if experimental controls had been in place a more accurate conclusion could have been generated.
As the author artfully leads the reader on a journey of wonder exploring the many idiosyncrasies of fly, the reader is presented with many simple experiments that can be preformed at home. For example, in one experiment the reader is guided to answer the question: Do flies taste with their feet? First the fly is frozen in the freezer to immobilize him and then swiftly attached at the wings to a pencil that has been coated with hot candle wax. The fly is then lowered so that his feet touch the top of a bowl of water - if the fly is thirsty he will lower his proboscis. When he is done he will retract the proboscis. If the fly's feet are then lowered into a bowl of sugar-water he will quickly extend his proboscis and when quickly dipped into the water again he will retract the proboscis. I'm looking forward to trying some of these experiments myself once the snow melts and I can actually find some flies.
In addition to wondering if flies taste with their feet Dethier asks and answers some other silly yet curious questions, throughout the text, concerning fly behavior and physiology such as: Does the fly land on the ceiling by executing a half roll or an inside loop? To which Dethier reveals the answer is quite interesting. Flies actually hover below the ceiling, reach up above their bodies and attach their front legs to the ceiling and then flip their body over and attach the other legs. A more complicated question presented in the text is: What mechanism causes a fly to select different proteins at particular stages in life? Dethier not only provides several possibilities to explain this phenomenon but also suggests possible experiments to test these hypotheses.
Dethier asserts that the acquisition of fancy equipment and a college degree may help foster a great scientist but that there are two essentials: an insatiable curiosity about life and an experimental organism. He asserts that flies are the ideal experimental organism made up of over 50,000 species. However, today, 44 years after the publishing of this book, there are over 100,000 known species of flies. The validity of some facts in this book can be questioned due to the major advancements in technology that have taken place in the last 50 years. It is recommended that the information in this book be used as a guide rather than as a reference book for it is much too old and out of date.
However due to his credibility it is likely that information in this book was presented accurately based on the current information at the time it was written because Dr. Vincent G. Dethier was a prominent insect physiologist, research entomologist and an expert in his field. He wrote over 170 scientific papers and 15 scientific books of which To Know A Fly and several other books that were written for individuals that did not have a scientific background one of which, Crickets & Katydids: Concerts and Solos, won the John Burroughs Medal for distinguished Nature Writing
Dethier's common sense approach to science makes it enjoyable for anyone with a curiosity for the way the world works. This would be a great book for students starting out in science or students with an aversion to science because it is presented in a humorous tone with interesting antidotes to keep the readers attention. Because this book was written for a non-science audience there is not a lot of technical language among the 14 short chapters making this book easily read within two sittings.
From start to finish there are intertwined stories, experiments, facts, observations, cartoons, questions, and even excerpts from plays. This compilation of different types of writing within one book allows the reader to not only walk away with some noteworthy facts about the fly but also insight into the mind of a scientist. In addition, the simplicistic manner in which the information is presented is capable of provoking thought in even the most advanced scientists.

I assigned this little gem of a book to my psychology students when I was teaching at Antioch College in the late 1960's. I am now asking the teachers who are offering a Science and Math Summer Camp for Alaska Native middle school students to read it, to re-ignite their sense of the fun and excitement of scientific inquiry. Truly a timeless book, it is similar to "The Little Prince" in its capacity to stay in one's thoughts for decades.

An absolute classic little book that uses humor and cartoons to illustrate the joys of science and the scientific method. Perfect for students from junior high through university. I only wish it was still in print so I could assign it for the students in my animal behavior lab course.

"To Know a Fly" is very well known among researchers in the life sciences, but almost completely unknown to the general reading public. That's a great pity, as this is one of the clearest and wittiest books ever written about how science is actually done. Dethier does a superb job in conveying the excitement of discovery, even in as mundane a subject as the common housefly.

Amidst entertaining passages describing how to anethesize a fly (pop it in in the freezer) or make fly scapels (break up razor blades) or surgical probes (drop dressmaker's pins on the floor) you'll learn, in passing, a lot about the neurophysiology of the fly.

If you're student in the life sciences, you owe it to yourself to hunt down a copy of this book. If you're a reader with even a casual interest in science, grab this one if you come across a copy.

I purchased this book on the advice of a friend who has diabetes. It is great for making careful eating and food shopping choices. I highly recommend it. I can use it when making a shopping list or choosing meals out in a restaurant.

Very informative, has helped alot with my eating out. Didn't realize how many calories foods have.

I have to watch my starch and sodium intake-This book was a great reference. Especially because it listed alot of the brand names. It has saved me alot of time reading labels. I just wish it were bigger -large print with a binder binding. The paperback is handy for my purse, but I loose my place alot, and have alot of post-it note markers.

This book is endorsed by The American Diabetes Assn. & The American Dietetic Assn. It should also be endorsed by The American Heart Assn. Not only does it help give the reader information needed for a diabetic, it also gives information needed for a person with heart disease.
My husband has diabetes, high cholesterol, quadruple bypass, heart disease, stroke, 100% occluded carotid artery on one side and 60-70% occluded on the other side, just to mention a FEW of his problems.
This Guide not only addresses the diabetes & carbohydrate issue, but also addresses the cholesterol issue. I use it in conjunction with several Diabetes/Cholesterol Cookbooks. For every item, 11 columns of information as follows are listed: Serving Size, Calories, grams of Carbs, grams of Fat, % Calories of Fat, grams of Saturated Fat, mg. of Cholesterol, mg. of Sodium, grams of fiber, grams of Protein, and # of Servings/Exchanges.
The foods are grouped according to category. There are 28 categories. The categories are presented in a logical, systematic way, making this book an easy reference guide for a clueless novice like me.
I highly recommend this book not only for diabetics but for people with heart disease, for people on Weight Watchers diet and especially for the rest of us making up the majority of America who are overweight.
According to John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health's Center for Human Nutrition, by the year 2015 ---- that's only 7 YEARS FROM NOW ---- 75% of American adults will be overweight, 41% will be obese and nearly 24% of U.S. children or adolescents will be overweight or obese.
In 2004, 32% of Americans were obese. Forty years ago, in 1964, only 13% of Americans were obese.
At risk are women ages 20 - 34 years old, regardless of race or ethnicity; 80% of black women age 40 and above are overweight while 50% are obese.
Wake up, America and do it now, not 7 years from now. The Diabetes Carbohydrate & Fat Gram Guide, 3rd Edition, used as a starting point gives you basic information needed BEFORE you go to the grocery store. Buy a few good cookbooks in addition to this book you're good to go.
This book gives you 4 meal-planning approaches: carb counting, fat gram counting, food exchange system and calorie counting. So if one approach confuses you, you have other options. What a deal!
Buy the book. Use it. Don't end up like my husband.

Having lost over 130 pounds and keeping that weight off for almost 4 years, I thought I had all the useful resources I needed to maintain that weight loss. That was until I opened this book!

I follow the exchange program as a means to monitor my food intake. Not only does this book include the exchanges, it also lists the nutrition information for the following: calories, carbohydrates, fat, % of fat, saturated fat, cholesterol, sodium, fiber and protein. It lists the serving size so there is no confusion on the amount you should be eating.

The list of foods featured is extensive. This book has featured EVERY item that I've researched from beverages to frozen foods, canned soups to fast food and even ethnic foods.

Anyone following a weight loss program that uses portion control or the exchange program (such as TOPS - Take Off Pounds Sensibly) should not be without this book!

If you are debating purchasing this book as a means to lose weight, you might the following item useful as well:

The choice is yours: A practical guide to take off and keep off pounds sensibly

Healthy eating!

Angela

[A review of the SECOND EDITION, 2005.]

In the last 15 years, GPS has moved from an expensive and specialised application to a mass consumer market. There are numerous books on GPS; mostly directly at that mass readership. These typically concern how to use a device with a GPS receiver.

By contrast, this book is meant for the engineer who has to design such a device. It is a compendium of technical papers covering many aspects you are likely to need. And undoubtedly some you won't, which should be reassuring. Because it means that you do not have to read all of this book for it to be useful.

The sensitivity of the GPS satellites and the resultant GPS ground resolution is amazing, as can be appreciated from some of the papers in the book. Due mostly to the stability of the satellites' orbits and their onboard atomic clocks. Chapter 7 describes how GPS requires corrections due to Einstein's Theory of General Relativity! Not just Special Relativity. As a physicist, I found this fascinating. GPS is perhaps the first field where General Relativity is used, not to be tested, but as providing a necessary quantitative model for getting correct results. Akin to how Newton's Equations have been used for 300 years in ballistics. Granted, most readers will be engineers, who might find GR a trifle exotic.

The book also has good coverage of the Russian GLONASS system. Perhaps for those who also want to use this for redundancy. Or to combine the signals from this with GPS for enhanced resolution.

I've been an engineer and PM working with GPS and GPS systems since the inception of GPS in the mid-80s. While employed by a major DOD research lab I was fortunate enough not only to have access to practically every GPS book and article available, but I also had the opportunity to meet many of the key people responsible for the design and development of the system (many of whom contributed to this text). From system design to receiver architecture, this is by far the best general reference I have found on GPS.

If you are looking at the first edition, please note that the publisher plans to issue a second edition in December 2005.

This is a great book to read if you plan on developing any type of GPS tracking system. While the book covers the the basics, you'll need some further resources on interfacing GPS receivers and such hardware to real-world devices.

An interesting article entitled "Tracking a Vehicle With GPS" can be read at www.closerworlds.com

A lot of mobile solutions are soon to hit the market such as mobile phones using GSM or GPRS to track a person. This book will help to understand how it all fits together. It would have been nice if the book could have touched on how older communication systems like VHF radios can transmit GPS data. For that you'll have to visit www.closerworlds.com or some other website with such resources.

I'm an aerospace professional that is very close to the GPS system. This book is one of the best in depth references that I could recomend. I am not a novice and this text may intimidate some.

'Advanced Excel for Scientific Data Analysis' is one of those niche books that is absolutely the standard in the field. Warning/fact #1 is that this books is NOT NOT NOT for the every day regular Excel user. Repeat, this book is NOT for you. Jam-packed full of mathematical equations without a high amount of screen shots, this book is for mathematicians, physicists, econometrics people, statisticians or anyone that needs to go way way past the normal 'AVG' and 'SUM' functions found in Microsoft Excel. This is not light reading and its about as pinpointed to a specific audience as can be.

If you are a power Excel user go buy this book immediately and you will learn how to release its power better than ever before!!

***** HIGHEST POSSIBLE RECOMMENDATION

Do you need a spreadsheet tool to analyze experimental data? If you do, then this book is for you! Author Robert De Levie, has written an outstanding book on advanced Excel that shows you how to conduct the numerical analysis of experimental data, such as are usually encountered in the physical sciences.

De Levie, begins by describing some of the standard mathematical methods, such as numerical integration and differentiation, and how to perform these most accurately on the spreadsheet. Then, the author examines precision--with random fluctuations and their reduction or removal. Next, he shows you how to apply the least squares methods to polynomials in the independent variable x, and to multivariable functions. The author continues by describing the nonlinear least squares method, where one compares a given data set with a model expression that depends on one or more numerical parameters.
In addition, he also deals with the application of Fourier transformation in numerical data analysis, rather than instrumentation, where it is often built in. Then, the author discusses the use of time-dependent signals. He also describes particular types of errors: The algorithmic deviations caused by replacing a differential equation by an approximation thereof. Next, the author will show you how to copy spreadsheet data into a macro, manipulate them, and return the result to the spreadsheet. He continues by looking at some common mathematical operations, often encountered in scientific data analysis, and their numerical implementations on the spreadsheet. In addition, the author shows you how to extend the set of tools available for matrix operations in Excel. Finally, he focuses on three types of spreadsheet-related errors: those that are rather easy to make on a spreadsheet, those that result from Excel's adherence to the IEEE-754 protocol, and those that are in hidden in Excel.

The author of this most excellent book has made a great effort to make it as broadly useful as possible to the reader, and to incorporate examples from different areas. More importantly, the author believes that this book offers instead, an attempt at the synthesis of different areas, thus illustrating how many numerical problems can be fitted comfortably in the convenient, user-friendly format of the spreasheet.

Every modern scientist and engineer relies upon some type of software for the analysis of data. Many software programs are available in the market today and each seems to have its own unique code and learning curve. In the PC world, perhaps no other software for data analysis is more common and easier to learn than Microsoft Excel. Many high school students are already using Excel for their homework assignments. All of these features make Excel an attractive analytical tool for scientists and engineers at university and afterwards. All such tools need reliable tutorials in order to train users to harness their full capabilities. Most available literature on Excel is introductory in nature, and therefore not appropriate for advanced applications. Robert de Levie's "Advanced Excel for scientific data analysis" helps fill in this void.

Prospective readers should be aware that this text is not appropriate for beginners. The author clearly alerts readers to this point in the preface. This is also readily apparent from browsing the Table of Contents. I was skeptical at first with some of the more advanced applications such as solving differential equations in Excel. Many scientists use higher-level programming languages such as Mathematica and Matlab to solve differential equations. While such software packages are quite powerful, they also have steep learning curves. I previously thought that Excel is not capable of solving differential equations, but Chapter 7 turned me into a believer.

The major emphasis of the examples is on least-squares and Fourier transformation. Chapter 2 does a nice job of contrasting Excel's three available routines for linear regression. The author does a very thorough job showing how Excel can be effectively used for Fourier transformation, and gives many examples. However, some other useful mathematical topics are either covered minimally or omitted entirely. For example, I was disappointed by the lack of a routine to calculate eigenvalues and eigenvectors. Excel's array structure makes it well-suited to linear algebra and the author should consider adding more on this topic in a future edition.

One of the greatest strengths of the book is its detailed coverage of Visual Basic for Applications (VBA). Advanced data analysis require the use of special user-defined functions, and VBA allows one to extend Excel capabilities to satisfy this need. Unfortunately, VBA code sometimes conflicts with Excel code. For example, the square root operation in Excel is SQRT, but in VBA is SQR. While the author certainly has no control over this, he does an excellent job alerting the reader to these pitfalls.

Chemists definitely need a reliable tool for the analysis of experimental data. de Levie's book covers most of the techniques we use in our lab. The book clearly demonstrates how Excel is not just a convenient tool for plotting data from the stock market or keeping track of students' grades, but a powerful tool for scientific data analysis. This book is highly rercommended for all students and research workers in the areas of analytical and physical chemistry.

If I had written this book I think I would have called it Scientific Excel rather than Advanced Excel. To be sure, the book is certainly for advanced Excel users, but it won't help you do an advanced business application.

You'd best have some knowledge about Excel before starting this one. There's a brief survey of Excel at the beginning that starts off comparing a spreadsheet to an accountant's ledger. That's pretty basic. Anyone with any Excel experience at all can follow the first three pages. On page four he is talking about making a thousand point plot with random numbers, normal distribution -- no longer something from Excel for Dummies. By page 5 he's calculating averages and standard deviations. By the end of this Survey chapter he's talking about the accuracy of the calculations performed by Excel.

Subsequent chapters discuss various types of mathematical manipulation that are often needed in the analysis of scientific data.

There are three chapters on Least Squares. This is the fitting of a curve to collected data so that the trends might be more easily visualized.

There is a chapter on Fourier Transformations, which is the probably the most frequently used analysis tool when working in signal processing. Geophysical seismic data, radar receivers, cell phone systems are all processed primarily using Fourier Transforms. This kind of data is of course too voluminous for Excel, but the techniques used here would be ideal for quite a number of laboratory applications.

A couple of chapters cover convolution, deconvolution, and time-frequency analysis as well as Numerical integration of ordinary differential equations.

All of these processing tasks are done using macros. These are described in the book, or can be downloaded from the author's website -- www.bowdoin.edu/~rdelevie/excellaneous/. This web site also includes some additional macros that enhance Excel's computationability when handling numbers of higher precision.

The final four chapters of the book are on writing your own or modifying existing macros, with an orientation to scientific analysis.

I consider this to be almost a mandatory book for anyone interested in using Excel to analysis scientific data.

This book does not give much info on Excel itself. I think the book is outstanding in that it opens one's eyes to using Excel for tasks like non-linear least squares fitting of data to models, signal deconvolution, etc. In retrospect, that one could use Excel for this should not be too surprising, but I have found myself resorting to MathCAD for many of these things when a solution implemented in Excel would have been easier to share with colleagues since Excel is more available. There is a bias towards biological/chemical examples, but nothing too egregious.