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A series of excellent prize-winning articles, ranging from the deeply touching "The Other Side of Hate" by Andrew Corsello to Ian Parker's inspired and funny analysis of fellow writer Christopher Hitchens. Not a clinker in the lot!

If you are looking for hilarious dental jokes, short stories, poems, cartoons, and experiences in the dental chair, then this book is perfect for you. I tried searching specifically for dental jokes online but none existed. Fortunately, Dr. Sonis complied this anthology of the best of dental humor from professional and mainstream publications like the Journal of American Dental Association and Gary Larson's "The Far Side". I strongly recommend this book for all audiences including dental students, dentists, and of course, us patients. This book makes an excellent coffee table book, or in this case, dentist waiting room table book for a leisurely read and laughter. Overall, the hours of content in this book provides an excellent source of laughing gas at a great value.

Daniel Goleman is co-chairman of the Consortium for Research on Emotional Intelligence in Organizations, based at Rutgers University; Richard Boyatzis is Chair of the Department of Organizational Behavior at the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University; and Annie McKee is on the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania, Graduate School of Education. This publication is a collection of three Harvard Business Review articles, published between 1998 and 2001. Each article builds on the previous one.

In the first article, 'What Makes a Leader?' (November-December 1998), Goleman discusses the softer side of leadership. "... most effective leaders are alike in one crucial way: they all have a high degree of what has come to be known as emotional intelligence." Thankfully, according to the author, people can develop their emotional intelligence. Goleman discusses the five components of emotional intelligence: (1) self-awareness, (2) self-regulation, (3) motivation, (4) empathy, and (5) social skill. Each of these components are discussed in detail and complemented with examples. In addition, there is a discussion on whether you can learn emotional intelligence: "It's important to emphasize that building one's emotional intelligence cannot - will not - happen without sincere desire and concerted effort."

The second article, 'Leadership that Gets Results' (March-April 2000), is based on research by the author with consulting firm Hay/McBer (previously the late Harvard Business School professor David McClelland) into the leadership styles of 3,871 executives. This research found six different distinct leadership styles: (1) coercive; (2) authoritative; (3) affiliative; (4) democratic; (5) pacesetting; and (6) coaching. The author discusses each style in detail, including the direct and unique impact the different styles have on organization climate, including financial performance. According to previous research by David McClelland "climate" refers to six key factors ((flexibility, responsibility, standards, rewards, clarity, and commitment) that influence an organization's working environment. The article introduces a table with the effect of each of the six leadership styles on the six key factors of organizational climate. The author advises readers to mix the different leadership styles: "Many studies, including this one, have shown that the more styles a leader exhibits, the better. Leaders who have mastered four or more - especially the authoritative, democratic, affiliative, and coaching styles - have the very best climate and business performance." It is not that these leaders mechanically match their style to fit a checklist of situations, they are sensitive to the impact they are having on others and seamlessly adjust their style to get the best results.

In the final article, 'Primal Leadership' (December 2001), Goleman gets assistance from Richard Boyatzis and Annie McKee. Their research shows how emotional intelligence drives performance - "in particular, as how it travels from the leader through the organization to bottom-line results." It shows that emotional intelligence is carried through an organization like electricity through wires. The leader's mood spreads quickly and inexorably throughout the business. And if a leader's mood and behavior is "such a potent driver of business success, then a leader's premier task - primal task - is emotional leadership." So the leader's mood had better be a good one, right? Yes, but the mood has to be in tune with those around him. The authors refer to this as dynamic resonance. And that's why emotional intelligence matters so much for a leader. "An emotionally intelligent leader can monitor his or her moods through self-awareness, change them for the better through self-management, understand their impact through empathy, and act in ways that boost others' moods through relationship management." The authors recommend a five-step process, for self-discovery and personal reinvention, "... designed to rewire the brain toward more emotionally intelligent behaviors." The authors conclude that emotional leadership is the spark that ignites a company's performance, creating a bonfire of success or a landscape of ashes.

Three great articles on leadership. The articles show insights into the different leadership characteristics, leadership styles and their impact on organizational climate, which, in turn, has a great impact on financial performance. It shows that leadership is not built just IQ and technical ability, but also needs a healthy proportion of emotional skills. For readers that worry about their own leadership skills do not need to despair, according to the author it is possible to grow your emotional intelligence which "takes practice and commitment". I recommend this article to managers, people moving into management, and MBA-students. Also recommended are Daniel Goleman's books 'Working with Emotional Intelligence' (2000) and 'Primal Leadership' (2002). The articles are written in understandable US-English.

As a student nurse I found this book hysterical!!! The student nursing short stories were so easy to relate to. Finally I realize I am not alone, there are more psycho instructors out there marking papers as if they were Zorro using a red pen, and it is not just our facility that "treats report as if it were classified information, and we don't have proper clearance." A must get for the nurse in your life, or for yourself for humor you can relate to.

I bought this book six months ago and have been selling like crazy to many of the listed magazines. Even though I am an author of books, I love to hit those magazines as well. I write. Its what I do and this book makes it easier. Love it and well worth the price.The Candidate: A NovelThe ReplacementThe Chase

Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991. + 449 pp. Cloth, $50.00; paper, $19.95 - Swartz attempts the commendable task of motivating nonprofessional philosophers to engage in the activity of identifying and criticizing their own metaphysical theories. He does this first by explaining what a metaphysical theory is and how to evaluate it, and second by examining the plausibility of various theories concerning space, time, properties, synchronic identity, diachronic identity, and personal identity. A professional philosopher will find it easy to read. An upper-level undergraduate or beginning graduate student would, I imagine, find it challenging at times but readable. There is a glossary of technical terms, further readings suggested, bibliographical references, a name index, and a subject index at the end of the book.

Swartz lays out the currently-popular approach to metaphysics used by analytically-trained philosophers, that is, the testing of our intuitions in counterfactual situations. He claims that if we are to learn which metaphysical theories are better than others, we must go beyond what scientific theories are limited by, namely, experience. He shows convincingly that scientific theories are imbedded with metaphysical theories which cannot themselves be adjudicated using experience (or observation) alone. Moreover, there is no mechanical way to decide between metaphysical theories. One simply has to test these theories using conceptual analysis on a case by case basis. Swartz's understanding of conceptual analysis, then, involves analyzing a concept in counterfactual situations. That is, one has to ask whether a logically consistent story could be told such that the story would make sense of a particularly odd use of a term. If so, then one has found out that a commonly-accepted use for a term is not necessarily, that is, metaphysically, the correct use for that term, but is only contingently the correct use.

Swartz then examines briefly (which is surprising in a 449-page book) various metaphysical theories concerning what space is, what time is, what a property is, what synchronic identity is, what diachronic identity is, and what being a person is. He suggests, but does not argue, that a negative theory of space, for example, is more plausible than a positive theory. That is, he suggests that a metaphysical theory which reduces talk of "space" to talk of physical objects without remainder is more plausible than a theory which posits the existence of space in addition to physical objects. He suggests, but again does not argue, that realism as opposed to conceptualism, nominalism, and a theory of tropes, is most plausible, although reluctantly so. This reluctance stems from, I think, his preference for negative theories in general. He then suggests that positive theories concerning synchronic identity just push the problem back one step, and do not solve the problem. On the other hand, negative theories do solve the problem. The same suggestion is made with respect to positive theories concerning diachronic identity and personal identity. In other words, the problems of individuation, identity through time, and personal identity are not solved by positing the existence of some additional kind of thing, called "substance." These problems are just postponed.

I found this book interesting to read. Swartz introduces and motivates nicely some metaphysical problems and some of the main metaphysical theories which have been proposed to solve them. However, his philosophical methodology will look more like a "language game" than a hard-nosed search after truth. This, I believe, makes his goal of motivating the nonprofessional philosopher difficult to achieve. Such a reader, in turn, may be left with the feeling that metaphysics is all "ivory tower" stuff, which, as Swartz agrees, it is not.

What a fantastic time capsule and yet relevent today in light of war in Irag. The author provides a road map for military leader to address the incredibly important issue of troop morale. Wonderful to be able to gaze back in time when thoughtful and intelligent authors like Benjamin Chubak treated war as a challenge to manage
psychologically as well as militarily. Our present leaders would be wise to consult this timely volume. I rate it a 10!!!

$5.95 for a one-page review of "Big Jabe" in a magazine? Look, I'll GIVE you my review for free, and it has more words (760) than the one you pay for! Here it is:

"Now when I look upon BIG JABE, he certainly was born out of a great need. But, he also symbolizes a wish fulfillment and the desire a nine-year-old girl expressed long ago. My formal introduction to the subject of slavery in the United States came in elementary school. I was horrified. I still am. I wanted to 'do something' for those 'people who were treated as slaves.' May Big Jabe bring us all to the pear tree." Jerdine Nolen thus explains (on her website) how she first felt when confronted with the fact of slavery. "Big Jabe" is her adult attempt to deal with that horror, to honor the slaves, and to give something hopeful to her readers.

She succeeds through a mythic tale that combines themes from Moses and the American John Henry. It's like a fairy tale: There are bad guys and victims, an improbable hero, and a magical resolution. Yet, looming throughout is one's knowledge that the brutality she describes actually happened. By explaining the slaves' escape though Big Jabe's superhero qualities, she personifies the means of their deliverance, yet maintains enough distance that children won't be overwhelmed.

Because the plot is so thoroughly described in the other Amazon.com Big Jabe reviews, I'll just touch on the major points, especially those that parallel motifs found in the Bible. Like Moses, Jabe is discovered in a river. Here, it's a young woman--the brave Addy. In the opening scene, the young boy displays the power of a Biblical hero, as he simply commands scores of fish to jump out of the river: 'Fish, fish, where is you, fish? Jump to the wagon like Miss Addy wish!'" Later nicknamed fish-boy, the man-child Jabe "opened his little-boy mouth and laughed a big man-sized laugh." He also plants a pear tree (Addy takes a bit of pear, and calls it "the fruit of heaven"); that tree figures prominently later in the story.

Although Jabe's strength (single-handedly clearing acres of cotton, building houses, and making "Plenty Plantation as good as its name") equals the work of several slaves, Nolen shows that the owner and overseer aren't content with prosperity--there's a power relationship to preserve. "But as the slaves looked forward to the first soft sleep of their lives [because of the extra cotton that Jabe secretly gave them for their beds], Mr. Sorenson was boiling over. With Jabe doing all the work, just who was he supposed to oversee anyway?"

Kadir Nelson ("ellington Wasn't Always a Street") is a magnificent illustrator, and his large dramatic scenes capture the opposing forces of Jabe and the slave-owners. In another Bible-inspired segment, Jabe creates a tremendous storm, so strong it lifts livestock hundreds of feet into the air, and under its cover a man (who was whipped the night before) and his family escape. That particularly violent storm recalls the plagues besetting the Egyptian slaves owners of the Old Testament; another rainy storm references Noah and the flood. The fury of the storms, along with the life-giving powers of the peach tree, soon enable every slave on the plantation to escape, including Addy, shackled in chains by the suspicious owners.

The book has scenes of violent force and torturous mistreatment, such as the cows flung up in the air and Addy chained inside a smokehouse, but Nelson doesn't show us the aftermath. Very young children may be either thrilled or a little frightened by these spectacles, but the magical elements of Big Jabe and the pear tree keep the more horrible realities at a distance. (It's not exactly clear what the pear tree does, although it makes an old horse younger, and Nolen implies that it's the departure place for the escaping slaves.)

Nolen and Nelson manage to neither minimize slavery nor explicitly picture its bloody truth. Similarly, while every slave on this plantation escapes, Nolen doesn't facilely plant a happy conclusion. Jabe leaves the plantation, "though he turned up at different times in different places throughout the South. And everywhere he did, burdens were lifted." Nolen brings the reader closer to the story as well, by framing her historic myth with a contemporary girl who stands with her grandmother on the very same riverbank where Addy found Jabe, under the same pear tree that they planted. Nolan's exciting story and heavy use of dialogue, along with Nelson's masterful larger-than-life pictures, completely engage the reader. The mythic aspect shows the power of fantasy and hope; adults may want to pair this book with age-appropriate historical or biographical material for balance and contrast. Nolen and, especially, Nelson have informative websites for those interested in their other work.

Yehuda Amichai was a great poet. His work speaks on many levels to a wide audience of readers, and for Israelis he is something like a national poet. He writes of the experiences of War and Love in an ironic colloquial language which often has Biblical reference and echo. Raised as a religious Jew the literature of the Tradition is part of his heritage and often plays and comments on it. Amichai learned much from American colloquial language poets, and moved away from the formal language of his predecessors. He is very much a poet of Jerusalem and its special landcape, heritage and world. Above all he speaks to the universal in the heart of Man, to all that we dream to be in love, and death, life and poetry. .

Appelfeld 's story is an incredible and moving one. Orphaned from his mother at the age of eight, and imprisoned by the Nazis he escaped and survived in hiding for three years. He tells the story of these years in his short but powerful autobiographical volume , "Story of a Life".
After the war he made a new life in Israel where he became a celebrated author. His path to this was not slow or easy. He is an Israeli writer who writes in Hebrew but his works are not about Israeli society. They are most often about the European world he came from, with special focus on the periods before the Holocaust.