Public Interest Books

Destination Art was purchased as a gift. It is exactly what I was looking for and was amazed that this topic/idea was available,

just browsed and bought this book. amazed it wasn't written long ago. too late, alas, for my friend, berta gardner, who always chose her trips this way. perhaps on the ultimate journey she's already found a copy. highly recommended.

Florence: The City And Its Architecture by architect and architectural historian Richard Goy is an astounding, profusely illustrated coffee table book showcasing the architectural majesty of this proud Italian city. Filled from cover to cover with superb color photographs of some of Florence's most eye-catching, stately, and historical treasures of architectural excellence, the extensive and informative text takes the reader on a memorable tour through the city as well as its architectural history. Florence: The City And Its Architecture is an enthusiastically recommended addition to any academic Architectural History collection, and would make a superb choice as a Memorial Acquisition title for public library systems as well.

While spending a week in Florence in April, visiting many museums that do not allow interior photographs, I noticed this book in a museum gift shop. I copied the ISBN and purchased from Amazon once I arrived home so I could avoid carting books home and getting a very good price from Amazon. The book is beautiful and provided insight into a city that has evolved over many centuries.

Have found this resource (this the seventh edition) to be very useful especially in finding course when traveling. My wife and I have used this to great benefit when traveling out of state, and through it have found some delightful courses, resorts, etc.

What is unique about it is a state-by-state ranking of golf courses (public and resort) by players who have supposedly played them in last year. Rating them from 1 to 5 stars, comments are also included. Those with less than 3 star rating have only basic contact info. What is new with this edition is grouping courses within a 30 mile radius of major town, while those that don't meet this requirement are placed into an "Elsewhere" category. This aids greatly in desiring courses in a certain area. Whereas in older editions, one had to tediously search through all the state's listing to find desired area. Here that grouping has been nicely accomplished.

Found that most of the ratings help, knowing however that it typically is being rated by golfers who enjoy that course's challenges, e.g. high handicapper will rate 5300 yd. course from back tips high while mid to low handicapper would differ typically. So, assuming this when viewing the ratings will aid the particular golfer and his skill and course tastes immensely.

I travel alot on business and try to golf while on the road whenever I can (and have now golfed in all 50 states and over 300 courses). This guide (previous editions) has been my constant companion over the years. It offers the most comprehensive and useful advice on finding a good course in any area. The reviews are on-target, and I have never been steered wrong when picking a course based on this book. In addition, I am a "cheap" golfer, who hates to play courses over $50 a round - this book helps pick the best course for the buck. The information provided (address, phone#, distance from major city center, when opened, architect, #holes, #yards, course rating, slope, Green Fee, Cart Fee, Credit Cards taken, Discounts, How far in Advance Tee Time can be booked, Walkability, Season, Notes and Golfer comments) is everything you need. It also has a city and alphabetical index of courses. The only information sometimes out of date, are the fees. But it offers website addresses for the courses, so you can get more up-to-date green fee info, or more details on the course. The 7th Edition beats the 6th, by organizing courses by metropolitan areas within each state, with an "Elsewhere" section for the more rural areas. For instance, for Nebraska, it is separate by Kearney/Grand Island, Lincoln, Omaha and Elsewhere, beside adding new courses. My only gripe is that I wish it were updated more often, as new courses are springing up everywhere. Finally, the quality and durability of the book are excellent, as it has held up to much travel abuse and wear. If you travel alot and want to know the best courses to play in the area, there is no better book or website. Note: The picture of the cover of the book in the Amazon ad is not correct (it is the 6th edition). The 7th edition has a golfer in a red shirt without a hat in a similar pose . Also, I got 12 free months of Golf Digest with the book, which made its value even more worthwhile.

Robert Willaims captures the essence of our hometown diners in a beautiful and touching way. The photographs are beautiful and a perfect example of excellent photography. I would highly recommend this book to all readers, especially those who remember the nostaglia of going to your hometown diner. Don't miss this one!

Williams' book plunges you head-first into an era when people truly did make money "the old-fashioned way" ( they earned it with their sweat and tears). We sit as interlopers as we watch the toil of daily lives unfurl across the beautifully photographed pages. We sit at the counter while the waitress who has been at this particular diner way past her prime, exchanges small talk with the patrons. We can almost feel the cold rain against our faces as we view the water-drenched images of The Cheyenne (NYC) and The Highland Park(NY). We sense the simultaneous joy and frustration on the faces of diner owners who can't be sure what the future holds for their life's work. William's has taken us into a doorway that we rarely have a chance to enter; he has given us a license to the past. Through this book we have the opportunity to rekindle the memories of our childhood, teenage years and young adulthood...all at the same time. We remember what it felt like to sit at the counter with our Dads. We remember the hard formica tables against our ribs as we shared a ketchup-drenched kiss across the table. We remember introducing our "little ones" to the wall boxes of music that sit on the tables and watch in wonderment as they try to figure out "where the music comes from".

John F. Schumaker is one of the best explainers of psychology and the human condition on the planet. His book "Wings of Illusion" is one of my all time favorites and it deserves to be on the bestseller list as do all of his books. "The Corruption of Reality" is a book way ahead of its time and how prescient that "The Age of Insanity" was published in September 2001? "In Search of Happiness" puts the very thing that most people are searching for in the kind of perspective that would enable one to know when they have found it, and if not, why not. Schumaker warns us that "Happiness has become the dominant illusion of the modern age." And that "the concept of happiness has become so hallowed that it is beginning to resemble a cult or religious surrogate." Indeed, this is, the book about the thing that everybody wants. Highly recommended!

This book is outstanding. I really, really loved it. Not only is it relentlessly stimulating on a cognitive level, but it arouses deeper-level themes as well, leading the reader to take a long, honest look at his or her own life and the true meaning contained therein. I read it while camping in the Canadian wilderness, which made Schumaker's brilliant assessment of modern culture even more profound. In Search of Happiness offers a clear view of our social reality at a crucial time in human history. It rationally and lucidly calls into question many of society's most fundamental underpinnings. Never before have I had such a desire to live like a human being was meant to.

Market-driven politics - part two of review
There is a great wood and trees problem in understanding the politics of this process. Unlike the textbook models of markets, every single real market has its own unique features. Individual cases then enable us to see some of the common features of this process. Leys does not make the case that each of the four conditions have a distinctive politics. Instead he shows the roles of lobbies, of personal networks of influence, of political funding, of the infiltration of political parties, the state and institutions of global regulation, of the resourcing of partisan research and think tanks, of the interested peopling of advisory councils and public boards. Their purposes, in a spectacular denial of conflicts of interest, are to weaken public regulation in relentless cycles of pressures for incremental change, to weaken enforcement and/or quality standards (but to apply them selectively to disadvantage public services), to weaken sources of resistance and stoke support, to restrict public capital and current expenditure, to re-structure the sources of public revenue, to claim risk-minimising contracts with residual state providers, to present the transformations of service into commodities, supply and demand as a `technology' transfer and abolish the concepts of public service. In both broadcasting and health conglomerates diversified, concentrated and differentiated; pay became spectacularly more unequal, product quality was shaped by commercial interests and residual services deteriorated and were rationed. New labour politicians, whose party is increasingly funded by corporate interests, operate in centralised and `depoliticised' ways which take them away from the electorate, unions and activists and enable them to naturalise markets and audit and to de-democratise the state..

At a time when Tony Blair has called public service unions `wreckers', Colin Leys shows just who the real wreckers are. He argues that public services are a key aspect of a democratic society; they express such a society's collective interests and they help shape it at the same time. There is never no alternative. Public services can be provided in many ways, from voluntary work, through non-profit trusts to state provision. These can be more efficient - not simply in costs but also in the quality of outcomes - than are firms dominated by short-term shareholder interests. Leys indicates what is to be done: public services need a clear philosophy that is publicised, celebrated and funded through taxation. They need practical policy, encouraging innovation and dynamism where it can be justified on public service grounds. They need active political protection and defence from the constant attempts to invade which `markets', aka capital, are bound to make.

This is a richly researched, well structured, beautifully written and compellingly argued book, and one which offers an original analysis of the hegemonic politics of markets. It could not be more relevant to our times. Buy this book, but do not add it to the gently groaning shelf. Keep it much closer to hand; read, reflect and act on it.

Market-driven politics

Followers of the debates on globalisation will be well aware of a surge of recent books associated with the anti-globalisation movement which explore corporate brands have reshaped consumption and culture (Naomi Klein's No Logo) have infiltrated the state (Noreena Hertz Silent Takeover: Global Capitalism and the Death of Democracy)and have also consumed political parties and refashioned them in their own image (George Monbiot's Captive State).

Colin Leys, the reputed scholar of third world development and of British politics, has entered the fray on behalf of a socialist alternative with an investigation of the response of national politics to global economic forces. He uses the experience of Britain for this project, but his story spans the world and is of world-wide relevance. The book moves its lens systematically from the global system towards the detail of rapidly proliferating real markets. Leys peers through two key holes to see the politics involved in the penetration by markets of areas of society formerly ring-fenced for non-market forms of provision and values. The two cases are public service broadcasting and health care; both regulated in distinctively British ways but now being privatised and commercialised in ways only too familiar worldwide.

Leys starts where most critics of globalisation leave off. The economy is replacing society as the subject of politics. In low intensity democracies (the phrase is Samir Amin's) ruling parties find it increasingly difficult to direct the terms on which governments regulate the economy, though there are conditions under which some do it better than others. Their politics is driven by corporates which operate not nationally but globally. Leys has a wealth of evidence with which he fleshes out this profoundly political process (globally in chapter 2 and in Britain in chapter 3).He asks: how do states get voters to endorse policies which meet the demands of capital? How do states pull off the theft of sovereignty from their citizens? How are markets to be naturalised and democratic politics to be insulated from demos? This book answers such questions.

There is a general logic to the process: capital must expand. `Accumulate, accumulate, accumulate! That is Moses and the prophets'! proclaimed Karl Marx. Capital expands in many ways, some primitive (resources are seized by force, peasants shoved off the land) others are sophisticated and carefully planned (the seething life cycles of products and their substitutes). Markets appear to slither into households (domestic service) and out again (`DIY', but read the book, for DIY is not what it seems..). Markets proliferate (markets for derivatives, markets for advertising, for management consultancy, legal advice, repairs..).

Leys follows markets expanding into the non-market public sphere. This is the arena for public goods, for national culture and for democratic expressions of citizenship. The novel insight powering Leys' analysis of market-driven politics is as follows. For markets to take over, four political conditions have to be achieved. First, public services have to be broken down into sets of private commodities (hip replacements, laundering, current affairs programmes popular with advertisers....) each of which can be supplied at (more or less) known prices. Second, needs and delights have to be reworked into effective demand expressed through purchasing power alone. Third, workers with collective values and a public service vocation have to be transformed into profit-makers and on less secure terms. Lastly, business requires and usually gets the risks of this transformation to be underwritten by the state. Those remnants of public services that cannot be completely abolished will be left as services of the last resort.

After this first phase looks like being successful, the general dynamic starts to grind; the costs of labour can be reduced; less specialised labour may be shed, components may be subcontracted to cheap sites. Products will be standardised for scale economies and a mass market. `Flexible production' usually masks a standardised technological core. All other labour, all other costs, will be transferred to consumers. (And the buck stops with women.)

Private contractors do not have to be efficient to notch up rates of profit attractive to shareholders. Public resources will be transferred to retain poorly functioning private firms up to the point where the costs of maintaining an inefficient status quo exceed those of exposing deficiency or delinquence, together with the transactions costs of replacing the contract.
- to be continued - in part two of review

This book is excellent. It covers a wide variety of topics and areas of interest, including the theory about finance and development, econometric evidence, and institutional issues. It is a great service to the economic profession and to any one interested in what a growing financial system means to the developing world. Unfortunately, it does not cover the important topic of financial crisis, which is clearly relevant to the developing world today; but it offers a solid and broad look at the arguments and issues of financial development in tranquil circumstances.

99

New Departures is a fantastic look at what other cultures are doing right with passenger rail, and what America (and Canada, for that matter) is doing wrong. It's really a one of a kind volume, because so many books on Amtrak take highly polarized views of what should occur with that agency. Instead, Anthony Pearl illustrates rail policy that actually works in several countries around the world, and explains America's failed attempts at high speed rail. He does not make political judgments (such as Joseph Vranich's "End of the Line" and "Derailed" do), but rather succinctly provides a wealth of information about what actually works. I walked away from New Departures with an immense wealth of knowledge about passenger rail policy and its history in the US and the world. This book is an absolute must-read for anyone interested in passenger rail policy and Amtrak.

I found the book to be the most insightful analysis of passenger rail at the global level I've ever seen. It is a great resource for anyone involved in policy, or for someone who just wants to know 'why we don't have trains like Japan or Europe'. To his credit, Dr.Perl does not come up with a crystal-clear solution for the future of Amtrak. This is reflective of the reality of the mix of economics and politics that is US transport policy, namely that: funding for passenger rail is a subsidy, but funding for road and air is infrastructure.

I would agree with everything the previous reviewer said about the book with the exception of the last sentences regarding architects and engineers. This type of comment is ridiculous and does not belong on Amazon. The reviewer should take up his grudge on some other forum. Besides, why would anyone trust the words of someone who cannot even spell amateurs!

This book is, without a doubt, the most comprehensive and authoritative guide to all the important issues involved in parking today. There is no other publication for parking structures in the markert place today that comes in a close secom If you think the design of parking structures is simple and straightforward -- think again! Only those who have never designed a parking structure (or did a mediocre, botched job of one) would think that it's easy. Don't kid yourself. The issues are numerous and difficult in all areas: architectural, structural, maintenance, restoration and functional. The book delves in depth in many of these areas. The true value of the book lies in its ability to prepare you to ask intellegent questions. You will be in position to participate in the planning process of a new parking structure and you will understand criteria that go into design decision making. Reading this book will NOT make you an expert. Only years of practical experience will do that for you. Architects, engineers and various other kinds of consultants who "dabble" in parking structures are RANK AMATURES and should be avoided by anyone considering professional services for parking structures.

Peter Semmen's book gives accounts of nearly every train wreck of the Twentieth Century up to 1990. He also includes sections on wartime disasters and boiler explosions. How much of this one reads will depend on one's interest, but it is valuable enough as a reference tool alone. I agree with the author that too much time is spent looking for people to punish following a disaster. It is the systems that need reform, usually not the engineers.

This book is perhaps the only one of its kind; it gives details of all major railroad disasters over the world from 1900 to the early 1990s.The author has attempted to cover all accidents with 20 or more deaths in the specified period. Well documented and has many interesting photographs. Recommended to all with an interest in railroad history.