Practice Management Books

The collaborative effort of Michael J. Chiarappa (Associate Professor of History and Environmental Studies, Western Michigan University) and Kristin M. Szylvian (Associate Professor of History, Western Michigan University), Fish For All is a seminal and scholarly study of the environmental history of the Great Lakes freshwater fisheries. Fish For All reveals how tradition, cultural heritage, economic livelihood, scientific background, and more, have affected the carefully dispensed allocations of these resources in the Great Lakes region. Stressing the importance of building coalition over common concerns such as water pollution, habitat degradation, invasion of exotic species and more, Fish For All is an extensive, varied, and an intrinsically interesting collection of testimonials that combine for a sweeping, comprehensive, and very highly recommended regional environmental history of Great Lakes fish and fisheries.

This is a great little book to keep in your desk drawer at work. Both as a performance coach and an employer, I highly recommend putting a copy in your break room. In a fast-paced office, how better to use 5 minutes of an employee's time to help them get re-focused, re-energized and re-engaged? Give new meaning to taking a coffee break - using the time to refuel your whole self so you have more to give to the work in front of you.

Not all of the situations may apply to everyone (I hope not!) - such as difficult coworkers and tyrannical bosses - but within the 100 mediations and exercises there is definitely something for everyone. A great little tool to decrease chaos and stress and increase fulfillment and productivity at work.

Mollie Marti, Ph.D., J.D.
Author, Selling: Powerful New Strategies for Sales Success

This book argues for a better, more sustainable, and ultimately more sane way to farm: forest permaculture (forest farming). Forest permaculture is a technique of planting long-lived trees typically together with shrubs and herbs or grasses in a multi-tier ecosystem that achieves a steady state and produces food year after year without plowing or tilling, without the need for any farming machinery, and without any herbicides or fertilizers. This technique usually produces much higher yields than conventional farming, and it can be adapted to most climates, from temperate to equatorial. Writted by two well-known experts who have devoted their lives to advancing these techniques, this book is packed with excellent arguments, examples, and references, including a very comprehensive bibliography and list of organizations working in the area. It is a great introduction to the subject, although probably not a complete how-to guide. Nonetheless I think anyone who wants to know more permaculture or is considering adopting the same techniques needs to have this book handy. Also, this book would certainly be of great interest to anyone interested in the ideas and philosophy of E.F. Schumacher (author of "Small is Beautiful").

A basic book for anyone that requires to make decisions and quantitative modelling in Forest Production.

First published in 1960, The Forest Ranger is an impressive study of the United States Forest Service. In the book, Kaufman (1960/1967) case studies the behavior of district rangers in the Forest Service and endeavors for an answer to the question of how policies formulated by policy executives are realized into integrated action by a service whose field personnel operate under varied conditions. "Even in agencies with simple, routine responsibilities, welding the behavior of field personnel into integral patterns is often a trying experience" (p. 25). In an agency which is as much dispersed and heterogeneous as the Forest Service, is it possible to secure an integrated and coherent policy implementation across a great number of the districts? If you believe it is impossible, I strongly recommend you to have a look at The Forest Ranger by Herbert Kaufman.

The readers who are familiar with Herbert Simon should remember his masterpiece "Administrative Behavior" in which the author at "theoretical level" demonstrated what takes for the leaders of administrative agencies to direct, manage, and run largely staffed and complex organizations. Simon (1947/1997) spent his intellectual energy for an inquiry into the decision-making process, and knitted his theory around it by developing an impressive understanding that helped the readers to sense that "integrated policy action" depends on the degree that the leaders can control the "environment" of decision-making so that every individual employee in the organization adjusts his/her decisions to common objectives fashioned by policy makers. Organization design, implicitly, stood out as prerequisite for integrated policy action, with "organization design" serving to bring decision premises and necessary data to the attention and use of decision-makers. Herbert Kaufman (1960/1967), in The Forest Ranger, demonstrates vividly how once a "theory" becomes a reality in the case of the United States Forest Service.

I would not want to summarize the case study with the fear that I am likely to discolor a vivid masterpiece. Suffice to say that at present times in which orthodox public administration theory is being transformed by a new body of knowledge and skills, this case study should present (sometimes poignantly) the assumptions, ideals, weaknesses and strengths of orthodox public administration in its "golden age" that has reached a final stage in our contemporary times.

This classic book is organized into seven major chapters. The first chapter gives a summary of research design, data collection and analysis procedures, and the plan of the book. The second chapter makes the reader familiar with the size and complexity of the Forest Service with accompanying challenges to integrated policy action. The third chapter elucidates the challenges to unity that emanate from internal communication problems, the potential for field officers to be captured by local populations, personal preferences of field officers, and the like. In the fourth chapter, Kaufman (1960/1967) gives detail to the procedural devices used by the service leaders in order to "preform" decisions of individual employees (controlling the environment of decision). The fifth chapter shows how the Forest Service executives detect and discourage deviation from official policies. The sixth chapter explains the means by which the Forest Service leaders develop will and capacity in their employees to conform with the policy expectations. The seventh chapter is a conclusion with final remarks on the success level of policies in the Forest Service and ethical-moral implications.

If you are not comfortable with abstract theoretical constructs and need more concrete examples, skip The Functions of the Executive by Chester Barnard (1938/1968), Administrative Behavior by Herbert Simon (1947/1997), Organizations in Action by James Thompson (1967) or Leadership in Administration by Philip Selznick (1957/1984), and read Herbert Kaufman. Once you read The Forest Ranger can you return to these masterpieces and I believe you are more likely then to digest their theories and understandings.

If you are not very interested in public administration theory, The Forest Ranger is worth reading even due to its excellence as a case study that would help the readers in designing their own case studies for research purposes.

Overall, I highly recommend this classic to the readers.

My Dad grew up in Northern Idaho and the Pacific NW and was in the CCC's and worked for the Forest Service as a young man and then went on to become a Marine and served in the Pacific during WW-2. My childhood was filled with stories of these years and the life my Dad and my Grandparents lived in the years before WW-2. When I watched and then read The Greatest Good with my now 89-year-old father it was just tremendous for us both. I would recommend this to anyone interested in our Nation's History.

There are few books that offer so much information in such a readable a format. I picked it up thinking that it was mostly a reference book but as I read, I found I was wrong. It is a wonderfully readable blend of history, science and folklore, perfect for preparing to discuss or explain forest issues to others. The authors are not shy about exposing scams and consequences. It is a great book that adds depth for both the recreational reader and the forestry expert. Well researched and thoughtfully assembled.

As a nonprofit fundraiser/trainer, I often advise clients and students to include an evaluation component in their grant proposals. Sometimes it is hard to see the value of this expenditure, and nonprofit clients especially tend to see as a diversion of funds from their "real" work. This book goes a long way to answering these questions, for funders and grantees alike. The four short essays by prominent foundation presidents who have embraced evaluation in various ways provide a fascinating peek into foundation executive thinking and action. In particular, the perspective by Hodding Carter III provides a dose of reality and fortitude, in a vibrant writing style that's sure to entertain as well as inform. The first of two sections of chapters addresses foundations as a unique context for evaluation, with several forays into critical issues, including a history of foundations' use of evaluation, challenges in foundations' use of evaluation, foundation-grantee relationships, etc. The second set of chapters is more applied, including practical and non-technical coverage of making judgments about what to evaluate, adapting evaluation to foundations, evaluation for small foundations, evaluative thinking for grantees, appraising program effectiveness evidence, and communicating results to different audiences. All of these chapters should appeal to evaluators and evaluation users alike. Overall, the book is well edited, the writing is non-technical and quite accessible, and the range of topics is exciting. A book like this has been long overdue.

The ISBN 0132110873 refers to the Annoted Instructor's Edition

David Siegal quotes Fountainheadache several times in Secrets of Successful Websites