Organizations Books

I first bought this book about 15 years ago. It made a huge impression on me then when I didn't know much about uniforms, and it is still a great resource today now that I am a uniform collector. The painted images of soldiers of all the major armies of World War II are vivid and interesting. The text is informative and thorough. Of particular use are charts that detail rank insignia for all the various armies.

This is the DEFINITIVE reference book on the uniforms of WWII. Mollo carefully explains his terms and illustrates them in this handy, well-organized work. Individual illustrations of patches, epaulets and weapons are complemented by contemporary, hand-colored photographs of a wide variety of uniforms. Excellent!

International arms sales is one of the issues that I got into as a student of IR in the early 80s. I read Andrew Pierre's Global Politics of Arms Sales, which was so good that I almost pursued the issue as a career concern. I read Sampson's book at that time, and it was the perfect complement to the academic side of it: Sampson went to the places where catastrophe was brewing from arms sales run amok, evoking it in the vivid language of a real writer and with the eye of a first-rate reporter.

Sampson explains the economics, investigates the characters, and describes the environments they operate in. It is a true tour de force, as only the best journalists can accomplish.

However, the book is dated, as it was written in the latter part of the Cold War. With the US-Soviet rivalry, the dynamic was altogether different from today, when it was far more political to sell to your allies and potential clients. Now, it is pure economics on the selling side, while the buyers are more or less mercenary capitalist brutes.

Warmly recommended. But the interest is largely historical.

Hello!
I lve in New delhi , INDIA, I am an avid reader of books on defence , military history, great discoveries, technological innovations, construction, urban planning, architecture and geography. I work as a consultant.

I went through the amazon site and looked at the entire listing of books that iwanted to buy, i got the titles and authors. But could not decide which book is the latest one

there are name of the same book with slightly different titles, hence i am not able to decide whether it is the same book or they are differnt books altogteher, i mean do the contents vary from book to book with the same title

I am refeering to the books like

1 A The arms bazar from lebanon to Lockhhed
1 B The arms bazar - the companies, the dealers,the bribes, from vickers to Lockheed ( are the two books same)?? the price varies)

similarly

The Seven Sisters the world they made ??
The seven sisters the world they shaped ??

i would be thankful to any one who can help me clarify the above points

I would like to Buy the following three books ( Old ones)

The Arms Bazar

The Seven Sisters

The Money Lenders
all written by Anthony Sampsosn
I
I have read the first two books about ten years ago from the US Library in New delhi India, they donot have the copies any more.

I would like to buy them for my persosnal collection.

Is it safe to buy from amazon using a international master card, credit card. Please advise.

I donot want any one accross the internet (and the world) to have access to my card no. and misuse to make fake and fradulent charges to my card which in actual I have not undertaken/ purchased/ bought.

I shall only honour the legitimate purchase of books purchased by me only.

Thanks in anticipation of your help
Best regards,

Ananda Kishore Das

Telphone no 091 - 011 - 26973950 (Available bewteen: 10 AM - 5 PM IST)
( IST = GMT + 05.30 Hours)

This is a timeless book -- his course was excellent as well. It is just plain common sense and a great foundation.

The Art of Fund Raising tells you nothing about "turn key" operations in development, nothing about "mass mailings." Warner tells you, in his wonderfully simple and very eloquent writing that fund raising is about giving of yourself to help people find what is best for them. He explains that fund raising is the very essence of humanity, and its only money that gets in the way. Your job is to take Warner's work and interpret fund raising and use your own contacts and skills
for your clients. I refer a lot to the Do's and Don'ts section and especially enjoy his
often humorous, and very insightful "It happened to me, don't let it happen to you" section. 35+ years of experience and hundreds of satisfied students, readers and clients can't be wrong. Enjoy

This book reads quickly and is quite absorbing. It is amazing that the author could be so honest especially when it is written so close to the death of her parents. There are parts of this book that you will remember for a long time.

This book was so interesting I could not put it down. It was sometimes funny, sometimes sad, and so much of what the author went through reminded me of myself. Art of the Restless is beautifully written. Anyone would love this book.

This is an excellent study on board leadership and should be read by any person serving on a non-profit board.

If you are like me, you arrived with no idea of what to do the first time you sat on a nonprofit board. If that board was not well organized, you sat down on your second nonprofit board with about the same level of understanding.

Nonprofit organizations, especially smaller and newer ones, tend to be "amateur hour" operations. They usually have neither good governance nor good management. Unfortunately, they need both much more than most for profit and nonprofit organizations that do have them.

The nonprofit organizations that focus relentlessly on improving governance and management do far more good than those who do not. So these are important subjects. I doubt if you can have very good management without good governance first. Governance creates the organizational direction and the discipline that encourages good management. Unless someone is reviewing how you are doing, even the most talented manager will soon become lazy about learning from experience.

I recommend that anyone who is on a nonprofit board or is considering joining one should read this book. You will have a much more rewarding board experience if you do. You can also share this book with others on the board, and challenge them to work with you to make the needed changes. I certainly plan to do this with the board I sit on now.

By the way, chances are that your board will never quite get to this "gold standard" described here. But at least you will know what you are and are not doing, and can focus on the more important steps.

The book breaks the board's responsibility down into mission, responsibility for money, and for management.

Top priority is "establishing the mission and monitoring the organization's progress in achieving that mission." This may involve modifying the mission from time to time. This is very critical, because you either have a mission that gets volunteers and donors excited or you are dead in the water. Habitat for Humanity and the Girl Scouts have done this well.

The board next needs to create a "vision for the future of the organization and [develop] a plan for achieving that vision."

After that, the board needs to ensure "progress in serving the mission of the organization . . . [in meeting] the needs of clients" and in the effectiveness of programs.

The board also needs to be sure that the mission and programs are communicated "effectively with its various publics."

The money side all fits under being a "steward for organizational resources." The tasks include having a formal development plan, making an annual contribution to the organization, and participating in fund-raising activities. In addition, risks should be identified and ensured and insured against as best as one can.

In the area of management, the board has to select, support, evaluate, (and terminate, when necessary) the CEO. The board has to evaluate its own effectiveness at each meeting, as well.

If your board isn't willing to start working on this items, I suggest you consider looking for another board that is. Certainly, you may be in for a lot of heartache if you a join a board that is going to ignore these areas.

Create more good by having a more effective board!

Although several projects included in this text seem outdated in the 21st century, overall the organization of projects suggest a visionary way of thinking about art delivery in an age of online learning!

This book is particularly helpful when a student is impaired by a lack of creativity. Even with the assignments the prompts are vague enough to ensure that students create original artwork.

I recommend this book for any artist that feels out of ideas and any educator that needs to have lessons on demand for fast learners or uncreative students.

Instead of offering self-help nostrums, this book starts a process of helping managers develop useful answers by learning to ask incisive questions.

When I first embarked in the late 80's on a quest to start my own small strategy consulting business, after spending twenty-four years in the corporate world, I actually acquired this wonderful book, after a deliberate search, to help me to think through all the potential problems & opportunities.

What attracted me to this book was the anatomy of asking questions in the prologue of the book. According to the two authors, both business consultants, every successful ideas passes through three phases. Each phase involves a different perspective. To implement an idea, all three need to be integrated. They label them as follows:

- Visualising What to Do: Seeing & painting a clear picture of my company: identity, resources;
- Charting the Position: Aiming & drawing up a blueprint for action: strategic objectives, trends;
- Activating the Plan: Doing & implementing my objectives: tactics, role expectations;

As you can see from the above, the first one refers to the process of conceptualisation.
The second one refers to the process of strategising i.e. formulating the strategic blueprint.
The final one refers to operationalising i.e. putting the strategic blueprint to work.

The full value of seeing, aiming, & doing comes when they are integrated. Questions like (adapted for my own personal application):

- what business am I really in?
- what are my strategic objectives?
- what are my tactics?

are part of a larger mosaic. The answer to any question affects the others.

The next part of the book comprises the integration model. It starts off with the development of a Questioning Mindset. The authors emphasise that the same question can be asked in many different ways, depending on the intended results. Answers alone may not be the only objective. Just right questions can affect attitudes & perceptions. They can be asked to get the process started. Here the authors outlined the three basic question-asking techniques:

1. Startling: The Surprise Question:

The intent is to be creatively upsetting. The authors illustrate with a classic business question: What business am I in? To make it startling or confrontational, the question could be re-stated: What makes me think I am still in the business I say I am?

Questions asked this way are confrontational. The intent is to open my eyes & undermine outdated assumptions.

2. Supporting: The Helping Question:

I call this the Discovery Question. The authors draw an analogy of a trial lawyer. An experienced trial lawyer avoids asking questions whose answers he/she is not certain of. In a trial, lawyers use questions to promote their own understanding of the case to the judge & jury. Any discovery of information should happen before the trial starts. In my case, the purpose of such questions e.g. 'what business am I in?' is to discover what I already know.

3. Searching The Inquisitive Question:

Example: what business am I really in? The purpose is to find out what I don't know but need to know. The emphasis is the spirit of inquiry.

The authors stress that the best answers are open-ended, thereby resulting in useful answers that keep evolving.

The rest of the book comprises a series of well-thought question units covering every aspect of business management. , There are a total of forty four units, & each is supported by a brief rationale. They are logically allocated to the three foregoing distinct phases. Each unit is designed to develop a broad "just right question" such as:

- what business am I really in?

& expands its implications through a series of "follow-up questions" such as:

- what business will I be in a few years from now?
- what business could I be in?

As you can see from the foregoing examples, the whole exercise of the questioning processes is intended to facilitate understanding of the implications of the question & pondering of the answers. In other words, to facilitate a question-asking approach for an answer-producing payoff.

By the time I have gone through all the question units under each distinct phase, I have finally painted a constructive & enlightening picture of my dreams-come-true.

This book really stands up to its title. Until today, I have yet to come across another business book under this particular genre.

Even today, despite the torn yellowing pages & stained dog-ears, I still dip into the question list of the book to refresh my strategic thinking on emerging issues.

To sum up my review, I am proud to say that I am still running my own small strategy consulting business today. Today is my 17th year in business.

I am very happy to share this wonderful gem with readers. This book will definitely help you to develop useful answers by learning to ask incisive questions.

[READERS! PLEASE NOTE: Content-wise, this book is exactly the same book as 'Question of Business' by Curtis Page & C J Selden.]

I've been a line positions most of my life and thought about risk in my area, but generally thought it was someone else's problem. Lynch's book smashed through my denial. With an easy to read style with great examples, Lynch demonstrates that "Risk Awareness" needs to be part of a company's culture. I am handing this book out and asking associates to begin asking a lot more "What if..." questions.

Lynch gets it right in this book. He takes a broad set of perspectives, experiences and best practices and pieces them together to create a one-of-a-kind mosaic that finally illuminates the real issues we are facing in the business world. He seems to have done his homework, but this is far from an academic-only exercise...it is reality based, practical and useful. Translates an enormous and challenging issue into digestible and actionable guidance. While no one can completely tackle this issue in 300 pages, this book will certainly help you understand where to start.

Thank you very much on great delivery and on the time. Loved the condition of the book, better than expected.Highly recomended!

For those outside the loop of racing, NASCAR garners a great deal of attention. Lost in all the attention paid to that series is a great style of racing collectively known as "open wheel" or "Champ Car." The series has evolved over the years but one thing has always remained. The races are fast, exciting and very competitive. How exciting? Put 800+ horsepower in a 1,600lb car that stands at knee level and enjoy the fun! If you are a fan - new or old - this series from Autocourse is a must-have. Autocourse started doing yearbooks 40+ years ago for the Formula One Grand Prix series and they have grown to include Champ Cars. They offer a tremendous amount of detail about the teams, drivers, cars, technical advances, etc. They also showcase the support series and the up-and-coming drivers in them. Each race is covered in detail with all qualifying times and finishing spots as well as highlights of the event itself. Photography is 100% incredible. That's another point. I enjoy doing my own photography and sometimes it's easy to lose track of things, especially if you don't get the film developed for a while. This book offers tremendous resource materials for someone maintaining photo albums of the events themselves. Basically, if you have a question about this style of racing, you'll find it in this book.

Dr Wicks lives up to his reputation as an excellent writer of books that nourish the soul. This is a must for those in ministry to others.

If you want to truly know how to make your availability to others real, then this is the book for you. Robert Wicks writes in a easy to read style. As you read this book, you say, "I can do this. There are many very good ideas presented in this book and you can't help but see yourself as a better person for it.