Book Description
Discover magazine recently called Richard Dawkins "Darwin's Rottweiler" for his fierce and effective defense of evolution. Prospect magazine voted him among the top three public intellectuals in the world (along with Umberto Eco and Noam Chomsky). Now Dawkins turns his considerable intellect on religion, denouncing its faulty logic and the suffering it causes. He critiques God in all his forms, from the sex-obsessed tyrant of the Old Testament to the more benign (but still illogical) Celestial Watchmaker favored by some Enlightenment thinkers. He eviscerates the major arguments for religion and demonstrates the supreme improbability of a supreme being. He shows how religion fuels war, foments bigotry, and abuses children, buttressing his points with historical and contemporary evidence. In so doing, he makes a compelling case that belief in God is not just irrational, but potentially deadly. Dawkins has fashioned an impassioned, rigorous rebuttal to religion, to be embraced by anyone who sputters at the inconsistencies and cruelties that riddle the Bible, bristles at the inanity of "intelligent design," or agonizes over fundamentalism in the Middle East—or Middle America.
Customer Reviews:
The best of its breed.......2007-10-10
I've read a few books of this ilk (God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, Letter to a Christian Nation, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason, The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 (Vintage)) and if you have time to read just one of them, make it The God Delusion. It covers more arguments for the existence and non-existence of God than I've seen in a range of philosophy books on theism over the years. And his sense of humor makes it a pleasure to read.
Then read the other books! The Looming Tower documents much that you will not have been aware of.
Brilliant, frightening and a compelling read!.......2007-10-09
At times hilarious, at others downright frightening - Dawkins argues quite effectively that religion is in fact counter productive to human development. While seemingly dark in parts (and occassionaly very scientific), I think his last words in the final chapter (encompassed beautifuly in his documentary based on this book, "The Root Of All Evil?"), really do speak volumes on how it is in fact religion itself that takes us away from true inner harmony and understanding, and not the other way around as argued by those with 'faith'!
Dawkins should stick to biology........2007-10-07
In an endnote to the 1989 second edition of "The Selfish Gene,"
Richard Dawkins commented on astronomers Fred Hoyle and Chandra
Wickramasinghe's characterizations of Darwinism in their publications
arguing for an extraterrestrial origin of terrestrial life:
"Publishers should correct the misapprehension that a scholar's
distinction in one field implies authority in another. And as long as
that misapprehension exists, distinguished scholars should resist the
temptation to abuse it." (p. 276 in my 2006 anniversary edition
printing)
Dawkins, a brilliant popularizer of biology and an original thinker in
evolutionary theory, would have done well to heed his own words.
Instead, he has used the reputation he built with his excellent and
massively successful popular science books to secure a publisher, a
wide audience, and an extensive speaking tour for this poorly
thought-out diatribe against religion. I have been a devout atheist
for as long as I can remember and have no fond feelings whatsoever
for religion (organized or not), and because of that I find this book
very disappointing. Even more disappointing is the fact that Dawkins,
using his great fame to promote this book, has become perhaps the most
prominent voice for atheism in the English-speaking world,
overshadowing the far more nuanced, logically sound, and
empirically-grounded work of actual experts on the subject- I would
recommend in particular "In Gods We
Trust" by Scott Atran, a subtle and multifaceted exploration of the
possible evolutionary origins of religion. It's a phenomenon all too
familiar to scholars in many fields: nuanced, unpolemical, serious
scholarship is overshouted by bombast which appeals to one "camp" or
another. Unfortunately, many people seem to prefer simplistic answers
to difficult questions.
It is particularly disappointing that "The God Delusion" lacks almost
all of the rigor, creativity, and cogency of Dawkins's previous books.
It also lacks the graceful writing of Dawkins's other output,
indulging in frequent irrelevant asides and unjustifiably long
sections given over to
Dawkins's own pet peeves. But more importantly, much of the book's
claims are simply lacking in evidence; Dawkins is content with
supporting some very bold claims with nothing more than anecdote or appeals
to his own intuition. There are too many such instances to go into
here, but I will take as example one which Dawkins chooses to harp on:
Dawkins blames religion for much of the conflict in the world, and
claims that
without it the world would be a more peaceful place. Oh, really? As an
atheist, I would indeed prefer that this were true; as a rational
person, though, I must admit that it is impossible to prove with the
evidence available. And some of the most aggressively secular regimes
in history (Lenin, Stalin...) have been among the most destructive,
often in the name of secularism.
I hope Dawkins abandons this second career as an atheist
fundamentalist and returns to writing the popular science we love him
for. For those interested in the debate on atheism, an interesting
exchange can be found here:
http://www.edge.org/discourse/bb.html
God is consciousness .......2007-10-06
Richard Dawkins justfully criticizes all negatives of fundamentalist religious orthodoxy and fanaticism based on ignorance. I fully support him in reacting against conception of God which results in intolerance, oppression, bigotry, arrogance, child abuse, homophobia, abortion-clinic bombings, cruelties to women, war, suicide bombers, and educational systems that teach ignorance when it comes to math and science. "Psychotic" God of the Old Testament is portrayed as "arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully". I fully agree on all above accounts.
As deeply I agree with Richard on the above points, as deeply I am convinced that however smart he is, he does not know the Truth. His primary mistake is focus on wrong argument. The argument itself is about how the universe came to be. Humanity proposed three answers to this question:
1) everything has been created by someone or something
2) everything spontaneously came out to be out of nothing
3) everything has always existed
However, the above three answers are nothing more than logical possibilities and at current level of development of science, humanity does not have means to see which one is just a possibility and which one is necessity. It's very interesting to know the answer to the above, but the real argument that all focus of attention must be paid to is really not the above. The real argument must be about a phenomena that we call consciousness: what it is and where it comes from? Richard Dawkins is a biologist and despite his vast knowledge about cells, genetics, and all that physical stuff, he does not seem to bother to understand what that phenomena of consciousness is - consciousness that every human and animal possess, where it comes from, and how come modern science is so much in the dark about it. Phenomena of consciousness is an observable phenomena in the current universe in the current time and if humanity ever wants to have The Theory Of Everything, consciousness must be a part of the theory and be completely integrated into overall context. However, like I mentioned before, modern science is in truly hopeless darkness about being able to explain what consciousness is and where it comes from. The qualia of subjective experience is simply unaccessible to modern physics.
What follows below is a description of Ultimate Truth and Ultimate Reality which is based on acceptance of undeniable truth that consciousness is irreducible fundamental phenomena which does not depend on any physical stuff for its existence. Just from this alone, everything else follows naturally and necessarily.
Since the very origin, driven my awe, wonder, curiosity, and practical necessity, humanity has been trying to understand reality - what exists and how it behaves. The current state of knowledge is exemplified by modern science which discovered such fundamental entities as fields, packets of energy, and multitude of higher level systems made up of the fundamental entities (quarks, protons, neutrons, electrons, atomic nuclears, atoms, molecules, unicellular systems, multicellular systems). Have you noticed which phenomena are missing from the above list? It is the phenomena of consciousness. Modern science is a complete failure to explain where consciousness of living beings is coming from. Do physical entities mentioned above create consciousness? Is consciousness merely a behavior of physical cells? Which part of quantum mechanics or quantum field theory or string theory explains configuration of atoms or packets of energy which result in love of a child for his mother, conceptual thought, or religious experience? Are `dump' physical entities capable of creating any conscious experience and understanding of meaning or do they merely interact with consciousness and consciousness itself is a fundamental entity of reality which cannot be created by packets of energy? Does specification of a quantum state entail any parameter that is related to consciousness? That's the current state of scientific paradigm which is helplessly trying to find answers to the above questions: on the one hand we have its amazing progress in understanding mathematical structure of physical reality and on the other hand we have complete failure of science in understanding the phenomena of consciousness.
Attempt to explain consciousness in terms of neural networks is fruitless because neural network of cells is just physical stuff which raises all questions raised above, while attempt to explain consciousness in terms of neural correlates does not explain consciousness itself and where it comes from, but merely finds certain correlations (patterns in how they interact) between events in consciousness and events in external reality: for example, if there is a packet of energy striking certain type of cell, electrical signal will be generated which will be perceived as color (the presence of color and the presence of packet of energy are correlated, but as we'll see later are interrelated not through physical mechanism, but through a different one).
Let's now consider a certain part of humanity which approached the search for wisdom from a completely opposite direction. Let's consider those seekers who traditionally have been labeled spiritual mystics. They often live their lives visibly doing nothing most of the time, internally focusing their minds on mind itself, constantly mindful, concerned with observing their minds and not external world, dwelling in state of non thinkiness when mind is centrally focused on thoughts of nothingness and all other thoughts and sensations fall off without touching the central core. Over time, they reach the levels of consciousness of complete psychological freedom, profound joyful deep inner stillness, egoless way of being when the conceit `I' and all associated emotions are got rid of and all there is is simply joyful awareness of unbound infinite consciousness and knowingness that it's all that ultimately exists and they are one with the consciousness of God and there is nothing to gain or subtract and it's already total and complete. Everything else is just some images, lucid and conceptual thoughts, intentions, emotions, sensations and feelings - everything that is typically housed inside consciousness.
How can the above two views be reconciled? Are they really self contradictory and mutually exclusive? Or maybe quite the opposite - can they be complementary? The first approach is conceptually focused on mathematical structure of external (physical) reality, while the second one is experientially focused on phenomena of consciousness (internal reality).
What follows below is the picture of how `things' ultimately are - the picture in which scientific paradigm is subsumed and completely integrated into much wider context. The central tenet of this picture is the knowledge that consciousness is a fundamental phenomena or entity which cannot be created or produced by `dumb' and lifeless physical stuff. It's not reducible to anything more fundamental. Such terms as consciousness, awareness, mind, soul, and life are of the same type and are juxtaposed against such physical terms as packets of energy, matter, cells, etc, which are completely of different type.
Humans know that body is made up of cells and humans also know they (humans) are conscious. How can those cells, which themselves are made up of molecules and ultimately of packets of energy, be able to behave in such a way that consciousness arises? My first glimpse into the truth made me realize that consciousness cannot be explained in physical terms because stuff of consciousness and physical stuff are fundamentally of different kind and that physical stuff cannot create consciousness (awareness) - at best it can only interact with what already exists. That was the very first step. Later, I was badly bothered how can two entities of fundamentally different kind be able even to interact with one another. In physical reality, all physical entities have no trouble to interact with one another because ultimately they all are made of packets of energy - all made of same kind of stuff. But how can all that physical stuff, all that quantum energy foam existing somewhere in void be able to interact with the stuff of consciousness? It's obvious that packets of energy cannot feel or think or understand abstract meaning. If they themselves don't feel, think, and understand, (but we know that feeling, thoughts, and understanding exist), they must cause another entity to feel, think, and understand. They must somehow interact with something else that is capable of feeling, thinking, and understanding. But, again, how can entities of fundamentally different types be able to interact with one another? It took another year to realize that maybe physical stuff is not really physical at all. For external reality to be able to interact with consciousness, it must be of the same type. External reality is really external consciousness and entire dynamics of physical reality that we observe is really nothing more than information processing done by external consciousness. The output results of that processing are fed as sensory inputs into individual consciousness of each conscious being.
To elaborate a little bit on the above, it's worth remembering that all knowledge about `physical reality' humans have is ultimately nothing more that a certain conceptual structure (structure of concepts) people created in their minds to explain observable phenomena - and this observable phenomena is nothing more than a mere image (or sequence of images) in people's minds. Most people think they see external objects directly, while in reality all they see are just images (colors and shapes) in the own minds. On top of those images, people produced conceptual schemas to explain the internal logic of sequence of images. To summarize, all knowledge humans have about external reality is really knowledge about images inside their minds plus some conceptions and inferences about what is not visible images. More enlightened people who understand the above still think that it's physical reality that produces these images (or conscious experience and abstract meaning in general) inside people's mind, but how can physical stuff interact with consciousness?
To answer the question above, all we have to do is to abandon assumption that `physical' is actually physical -all we have to do is to redefine what we mean by physical. As long as images are self consistent, present themselves objectively to different minds, and obey strict laws (which we know they are), we can propose another mechanism of how they are produced by something that feeds them into our consciousness according to strict mathematical rules. Like physicist John Wheeler said: "bit from qubit' when he was trying to articulate his view that physical reality is not really physical but is nothing more that information. Astrophysicist Sir James Jeans wrote that "the universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a great machine". Similarly, we can propose that maybe external reality is not physical but instead informational reality which includes a number of abstract concepts and specifies the mathematical laws of their behavior. Images inside our minds are produced according to those laws and are fed into our consciousness. However, if we take the above step of removing assumption that external reality is physical and if we take the step of redefining external reality as informational, we still have a difficulty accepting that the above informational or conceptual reality exists somewhere there in the void (like Plato thought). Maybe it does not after all. All that information and information processing must exist and happen in external consciousness. As long as we accept this, we are not troubled any longer by the question of how two entities of fundamentally different type can interact with one another.
Human consciousness does not really know where all that sensory input is coming from - all that it knows is that it's conscious of some sensory input. However, it's only the intellectual (abstract) aspect of consciousness that can see beyond the above ignorance and discover that in order to be able to explain both consciousness and external reality in one self-consistent framework; one must postulate that what we call physical reality is actually informational or conceptual reality. If we stop here and just say that there is consciousness on one side and there is informational reality on another side, we are still troubled by question where consciousness itself comes from and by question where informational reality exists (it cannot exist in void, can it?). To solve the latter problem, we have to postulate (or just to admit the obvious) that abstract concepts (information) can exist in mind/consciousness only and thus the informational reality exists in the mind of super consciousness as conceptual structure which specifies certain abstract entities, behavior of which is executed according to strict mathematical rules and certain outcomes of that execution are fed into our human consciousness and perceived as images, bodily feelings, and other sensory inputs, while capacity to feel and think is inert build-in quality of human consciousness itself. The answer to the first question becomes obvious: our human consciousness exists only because the underlying reality itself is made of consciousness (the consciousness of super consciousness).
So there are really no `physical' waves or packets of `physical' energy or `physical' strings vibrating in void, but merely mathematical description of behavior of abstract `platonic' entities conceived and existing in super consciousness. That's the only way to explain how both seemingly irreconcilable phenomena can interact and it's the only way to explain where human consciousness is coming from.
So to summarize the entire picture: traditionally it's believed that there is consciousness of non physical immaterial type and there is external reality of physical type. In this view no one knows how external physical reality can create consciousness or even how it can interact with consciousness because they are of two fundamentally different types. In the new picture, there is our human consciousness and there is consciousness of a super consciousness - both are of the same type. Human consciousness perceives what super consciousness feeds into it and there is no interaction problem because both are of the same type and both exchange information and not some `physical' stuff. The practical result is the same - we still have objective and self consistent sensory input, but the underlying mechanism and reality are different.
Amazingly, it's what all those spiritual mystics have been saying all the while and they discovered this through conscious meditative experience and not through intellect. Equally amazing is that it becomes very clear that modern science is not negated, but accepted as very substantial part of entire world view both in its achievements and method.
So basically all there exists is CONSIOUSNESS. This super consciousness created conceptual structure of what we call physical reality (now it becomes named informational or conceptual reality). The super consciousness executes certain algorithm that specifies rules of evolution - how `physical' reality transitions from one state to another - from one quantum state to another. This super consciousness also created numerous individual consciousnesses (souls). Certain outcomes of the above execution are fed into those individual consciousnesses as sensory inputs and bodily feelings. In reality, it's super consciousness that interacts with numerous individual consciousnesses (something akin to biblical idea of Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit - father is super consciousness (God), sons are individual consciousnesses of human beings, and holy spirit is enlightened state of consciousness of some of them - the state of union of Father and Son, of super consciousness and individual consciousness).
Super consciousness is omnipotent because it feeds information into human consciousness to create perception of external reality and it can feed anything it wishes. It's omniscient because human consciousness is a `locally' bound part of super consciousness itself where every thought, every attitude, and every intention we think and have is open to direct examination by super consciousness - not only it knows the exact conceptual structure and laws of `physical' reality it itself created and the exact values of all quantum parameters of every quantum state, but also every single thought we think and every feeling we experience. Super consciousness is omnipresent because it's all there is - everything else is inside it existing either as structures of conceptual entities or `locally' bound parts of consciousness (individual souls).
The Truth is One, while currently humanity produced several systems of thought which are not mutually integrated and often mutually exclusive. The world view proposed above unites the views of Modern Physical Science, Evolution, Intelligent Design, Materialism, Idealism, Hinduism, Buddhism, core of Christianity, Plato, Balsekar, Peter Russell, David Hawkins, and others into one View in which modern science is responsible for understanding conceptual structure of `physical' reality as conceived and housed by super consciousness, while spirituality is responsible for giving practical directions on what and how to do with your own consciousness for the goal is clear: the perceivable union of your own consciousness with the super consciousness (God) through following certain practical steps. All ethical, moral, and religious tenets are mere consequences of the above goal.
The proposed view explains the nature of God as consciousness; it explains where human consciousness comes from and how they both interact by exchanging information. The above is nothing more than a necessary consequence of a fact that consciousness cannot be created by `dumb and lifeless' packets of energy. Everything follows naturally out of that undeniable fact. On top of that, the proposed view makes the purpose of living clear as a path to union between our human consciousness and super consciousness (God) and the goal is not some arbitrary postulated choice, but has the character of necessity. Human consciousness, when perceivably separated from the source, feels lost in doubt and unsatisfied. All kinds of wicked states follow which result in wicked choices and behavior. When in union with the source, profound gentle piece follows and there is a realization that it's all total and complete and there is nothing to gain or lose. There are many shades in between - many levels of proximity to the source - with each level a person becomes wiser, more enlightened, more secure, more egoless, and happier.
The Goldilocksfish Question.......2007-10-05
Two goldilocksfish swimming around in a bowl.. One says to the other:
`If there is no God, how come: 1) The temperature in here is just right; 2) Food arrives regularly; 3) The water gets cleaned?
The second goldilocksfish (who happens to be a Professor for the Goldilocksfish Understanding Of Science) replies:
` It is probable that we live in a multiverse that contains an astronomically large number of fish-bowls. Most of those bowls will be completely lifeless. The fact that we are here able to discuss the matter means that we are fortunate to live in one of the tiny number of bowls capable of sustaining evolved life. In the words of the old song: We' re here because we' re here, because we're here! `
Amazon.com
Updated Edition: Thomas L. Friedman is not so much a futurist, which he is sometimes called, as a presentist. His aim in The World Is Flat, as in his earlier, influential Lexus and the Olive Tree, is not to give you a speculative preview of the wonders that are sure to come in your lifetime, but rather to get you caught up on the wonders that are already here. The world isn't going to be flat, it is flat, which gives Friedman's breathless narrative much of its urgency, and which also saves it from the Epcot-style polyester sheen that futurists--the optimistic ones at least--are inevitably prey to.
What Friedman means by "flat" is "connected": the lowering of trade and political barriers and the exponential technical advances of the digital revolution that have made it possible to do business, or almost anything else, instantaneously with billions of other people across the planet. This in itself should not be news to anyone. But the news that Friedman has to deliver is that just when we stopped paying attention to these developments--when the dot-com bust turned interest away from the business and technology pages and when 9/11 and the Iraq War turned all eyes toward the Middle East--is when they actually began to accelerate. Globalization 3.0, as he calls it, is driven not by major corporations or giant trade organizations like the World Bank, but by individuals: desktop freelancers and innovative startups all over the world (but especially in India and China) who can compete--and win--not just for low-wage manufacturing and information labor but, increasingly, for the highest-end research and design work as well. (He doesn't forget the "mutant supply chains" like Al-Qaeda that let the small act big in more destructive ways.)
Friedman has embraced this flat world in his own work, continuing to report on his story after his book's release and releasing an unprecedented hardcover update of the book a year later with 100 pages of revised and expanded material. What's changed in a year? Some of the sections that opened eyes in the first edition--on China and India, for example, and the global supply chain--are largely unaltered. Instead, Friedman has more to say about what he now calls "uploading," the direct-from-the-bottom creation of culture, knowledge, and innovation through blogging, podcasts, and open-source software. And in response to the pleas of many of his readers about how to survive the new flat world, he makes specific recommendations about the technical and creative training he thinks will be required to compete in the "New Middle" class. As before, Friedman tells his story with the catchy slogans and globe-hopping anecdotes that readers of his earlier books and his New York Times columns know well, and he holds to a stern sort of optimism. He wants to tell you how exciting this new world is, but he also wants you to know you're going to be trampled if you don't keep up with it. A year later, one can sense his rising impatience that our popular culture, and our political leaders, are not helping us keep pace. --Tom Nissley
Where Were You When the World Went Flat?
Thomas L. Friedman's reporter's curiosity and his ability to recognize the patterns behind the most complex global developments have made him one of the most entertaining and authoritative sources for information about the wider world we live in, both as the foreign affairs columnist for the New York Times and as the author of landmark books like From Beirut to Jerusalem and The Lexus and the Olive Tree. They also make him an endlessly fascinating conversation partner, and we've now had the chance to talk to him about The World Is Flat twice. Read our original interview with him following the publication of the first edition of The World Is Flat to learn why there's almost no one from Washington, D.C., listed in the index of a book about the global economy, and what his one-plank platform for president would be. (Hint: his bumper stickers would say, "Can You Hear Me Now?")
And now you can listen to our second interview, in which he talks about the updates he's made in "The World Is Flat 2.0," including his response to parents who said to him, "Great, Mr. Friedman, I'm glad you told us the world is flat. Now what do I tell my kids?"
The Essential Tom Friedman
From Beirut to Jerusalem |
The Lexus and the Olive Tree |
Longitudes and Attitudes |
More on Globalization and Development
China, Inc. by Ted Fishman |
Three Billion New Capitalists by Clyde Prestowitz |
The End of Poverty by Jeffrey Sachs |
Globalization and Its Discontents by Joseph Stiglitz |
The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy by Pietra Rivoli |
The Mystery of Capital by Hernando de Soto |
Book Description
The World Is Flat is Thomas L. Friedman’s account of the great changes taking place in our time, as lightning-swift advances in technology and communications put people all over the globe in touch as never before—creating an explosion of wealth in India and China, and challenging the rest of us to run even faster just to stay in place. This updated and expanded edition features more than a hundred pages of fresh reporting and commentary, drawn from Friedman’s travels around the world and across the American heartland—from anyplace where the flattening of the world is being felt.
In The World Is Flat, Friedman at once shows “how and why globalization has now shifted into warp drive” (Robert Wright, Slate) and brilliantly demystifies the new flat world for readers, allowing them to make sense of the often bewildering scene unfolding before their eyes. With his inimitable ability to translate complex foreign policy and economic issues, he explains how the flattening of the world happened at the dawn of the twenty-first century; what it means to countries, companies, communities, and individuals; how governments and societies can, and must, adapt; and why terrorists want to stand in the way. More than ever, The World Is Flat is an essential update on globalization, its successes and discontents, powerfully illuminated by one of our most respected journalists.
Download Description
The Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times columnist gives a bold, timely, and surprising picture of the state of globalization in the twenty-first century
Customer Reviews:
...and so is this book.......2007-10-10
Though it has become an immensely popular book, Friedman's work is fairly shallow and simplistic. It is important to remember that this is a world analysis written by a journalist, not by a political economist or any type of economist or political scientist. His views are oversimplified and his support relies heavily on anecdote, making his 600-pager about 400 pages too long. We read it for a poli sci class and proceeded to tear it apart intellectually.
Ranks up there with Common Sense, Uncle Toms Cabin, The Femine Mystique.......2007-10-10
One of the greatest books ever written. Everyone in America should read this book. Every teacher in America should read and teach Frieman's lessons. Every parent should read and help prepare their children for the world that is coming. Every student should read and begin to prepare for the world they are going to face. This is the most important book of our times, bar none.
Embracing Business Globalization's Irreversibility.......2007-10-10
This is easily the most relevant book written on the new realities of business globalization, its irreversibility, and the practical consequences to our future. Friedman does an excellent job describing the numerous factors that led up to our current global economy including the ongoing fall of communism, the advent of the personal computer, and the ubiquity of the Internet. His historical review and assessment is fascinating and it sets up the reader to understand the context for his theories and practical applications. Friedman delves into numerous industries, businesses, personalities, case studies, technologies, psychological factors, and sociological factors. Although he covers numerous business, technological, and economic concepts, his writing style is very engaging and entertaining, using many personal examples and narratives, thereby holding the reader's interest. Rather than bemoaning some of the common perceived negative consequences of a global economy (such as US auto workers losing jobs to overseas cheaper labor) Friedman helps the reader to understand business globalization's irreversibility. In so doing, he describes many personal, practical, and business strategies for thriving in this new environment. Friedman is realistic and compassionate concerning the changes and the challenges. He states, "the great challenge for our time will be to absorb these changes in ways that do not overwhelm people but also do not leave them behind. None of this will be easy. But this is our task. It is inevitable and unavoidable" (pp. 46-47). As Friedman unfolds his strategies, he gives the reader a broader, global perspective that is filled with hope and excitement. Whether as a CEO, a business student, or a brand new professional embarking upon a career, this book is insightful, practical, and essential reading.
What a good boy am I.......2007-10-06
Reading this book is like watching someone else's kids open their Christmas presents from relatives they don't really know. I'm not sure how the author can possibly be so fascinated by technology and yet know absolutely nothing about it at the same time, but his endless diatribes about the miracles of PayPal and Microsoft Word are beyond laughable, and I was pretty much in shock when he started citing howstuffworks-dot-com as a technical reference on fiber optics and SOAP. What editor told him that this was OK?
So enamored with his own cleverness is he that Mr. Friedman dedicates several pages to explaining the book's title, even though a single sentence would have sufficed. Unfortunately, this doesn't stop after the first chapter; rather than make a point and move on, he has to point out the fact that he just made a point and tell you what a wonderful point it was just in case you missed the point. It's like hanging out with that one friend who sits around smiling and pointing to his hindquarters after he rips one off at the dinner table.
If you want to learn about globalization and are not old enough to remember the first light bulb, go read "No Logo" instead. This is horrible, irrelevant geriatric babbling.
My opinion is flat.......2007-10-03
When a book has had over a thousand reviews, what can I possibly say that hasn't already been said? So I will keep it short and not so sweet.
No one will read this book, or any of the updates, for "fun." Do you NEED to read it? Yes, it contains some important economic concepts and realities, but it's a bit overlong. I'd say it could be cut in half, so skim through some of the numerous "interviews," repetition of central points, and endless advice and encouragement. The global pie is getting bigger and better, but the competition for piecies of that pie is heating up. Smart, ambitious, creative people will thrive; slow, lazy, dull people will languish, and everything inbetween. For too long many Americans have been sitting on their laurels and the day of reckoning is near. Heed this warning: Put down your TV remotes, game controllers, and iPods, and start working like your life (or lifestyle) depended on it. Get your rear into some serious gear, and don't balk at the notion that you should be an "expert" in at least three different, unrelated fields. Does this scare or excite you?
In so many interviews with foreign entrepreneurs, we are told (or reassured) that no matter how much of the "mundane" work is performed by countries other than the U.S., America's creative and innovative spark is still unsurpassed: All the world looks to America to lead the way into the future. I'm not sure. A lot of that "mundane" work was high level and highly paid, and why should we expect that America will continue to dominate in creativity and innovation? The truth is, we're in for a flattening of living standards, and from the perspective of the relatively high American standard of living, it will seem like a drop in standards until we reach another equilibrium (who knows how long that will take?). In any case, the reassurances about the talents and abilities of Americans seem at odds with other parts of the book, such as Bill Gates feeling "terrified at the American work force of tomorrow."
If you're already working hard at becoming an expert in three fields, then you probably don't need to read this book. Indeed, you probably don't have time to read it, or to read and write Amazon reviews, for that matter.
Book Description
In this, his first major book, Mark Steyn--probably the most widely read, and wittiest, columnist in the English-speaking world--takes on the great poison of the twenty-first century: the anti-Americanism that fuels both Old Europe and radical Islam. America, Steyn argues, will have to stand alone. The world will be divided between America and the rest; and for our sake America had better win.
Customer Reviews:
America Alone.......2007-10-11
Every person in the USA should read this book. Today in the Dallas Morning news(10/10/07)there is an editorial by Anne Applebaum verifing one of the facts stated it this book. Ms. Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who is under death threat because of her comments about the mistreatment of women in the Dutch Muslin community had to move to the US because the Dutch say it is too expensive to protect her and she will not shut up. No free speech for her. Mohammed Bouyeri murdered the Dutch writer, Theo Van Gohg, because he made a film about the oppression of Muslim women.
Funny, but also an important message........2007-10-11
While I cannot say that anybody reading this should have more kids just out of the guilt this book might give you, it is an important message about the sad effects of low birthrates. Mark Steyn has a quick wit and funny tone that is clearly not politically correct (good for him). Anybody who enjoys a good laugh or is concerned about terrorism should read this.
A Must-Read!.......2007-10-10
This book was every bit as good as I had heard. I've always enjoyed Mark Steyn, but hadn't gotten a chance to read this yet because I had a stack of books in front of it. That's my loss, because this was one of the most profound and eye-opening books I've ever read. To be honest, I pay pretty close attention to this conflict we find ourselves in, so most of the individual facts in this book weren't exactly foreign to me. But Steyn pulls all this together and presents it in such a concise, clear and entertaining way that I was able to put the pieces together in a way I hadn't even imagined. His demographic data alone is shocking, and should make every person in Europe and Canada sit up and take serious note - I'll be paying very close attention to what happens over the next few years "across the pond", as they say, for how goes Europe, so will eventually go America. I plan to buy several more copies of this book and hand them out to friends and family. I highly suggest it.
Excelent book. Really crunches the numbers like no other book........2007-10-05
This book really lays out the problems with hard numbers and facts in a way I have never seen and is easy to understand. I recomend this book to anyone who is worried about the muslim issue. People in Europe better read it asap!
America Alone is Excellent.......2007-10-04
This book gives a lot of attention to fertility rates in Europe, Scandanavia and the United States. Many other good observations and opinions are included as well. It will give you some insights into what may occur in various countries in the future vis-a-vis the Muslims and non Muslims.
Amazon.com
Usability design is one of the most important--yet often least attractive--tasks for a Web developer. In Don't Make Me Think, author Steve Krug lightens up the subject with good humor and excellent, to-the-point examples.
The title of the book is its chief personal design premise. All of the tips, techniques, and examples presented revolve around users being able to surf merrily through a well-designed site with minimal cognitive strain. Readers will quickly come to agree with many of the book's assumptions, such as "We don't read pages--we scan them" and "We don't figure out how things work--we muddle through." Coming to grips with such hard facts sets the stage for Web design that then produces topnotch sites.
Using an attractive mix of full-color screen shots, cute cartoons and diagrams, and informative sidebars, the book keeps your attention and drives home some crucial points. Much of the content is devoted to proper use of conventions and content layout, and the "before and after" examples are superb. Topics such as the wise use of rollovers and usability testing are covered using a consistently practical approach.
This is the type of book you can blow through in a couple of evenings. But despite its conciseness, it will give you an expert's ability to judge Web design. You'll never form a first impression of a site in the same way again. --Stephen W. Plain
Topics covered:
- User patterns
- Designing for scanning
- Wise use of copy
- Navigation design
- Home page layout
- Usability testing
Book Description
Five years and more than 100,000 copies after it was first published, it's hard to imagine anyone working in Web design who hasn't read Steve Krug's "instant classic" on Web usability, but people are still discovering it every day. In this second edition, Steve adds three new chapters in the same style as the original: wry and entertaining, yet loaded with insights and practical advice for novice and veteran alike. Don't be surprised if it completely changes the way you think about Web design.
Three New Chapters!
- Usability as common courtesy -- Why people really leave Web sites
- Web Accessibility, CSS, and you -- Making sites usable and accessible
- Help! My boss wants me to ______. -- Surviving executive design whims
"I thought usability was the enemy of design until I read the first edition of this book. Don't Make Me Think! showed me how to put myself in the position of the person who uses my site. After reading it over a couple of hours and putting its ideas to work for the past five years, I can say it has done more to improve my abilities as a Web designer than any other book.
In this second edition, Steve Krug adds essential ammunition for those whose bosses, clients, stakeholders, and marketing managers insist on doing the wrong thing. If you design, write, program, own, or manage Web sites, you must read this book." -- Jeffrey Zeldman, author of Designing with Web Standards
Customer Reviews:
eye-opening analysis.......2007-10-07
I'm not a designer and I would by nature make many of the mistakes Krug points out in this great book. Krug's reasoning and reasoned approach that he presents in this book is invaluable.
Fantastic - Easy to Understand and Use.......2007-10-06
This book on internet usability has not only changed the way I design websites, it has changed my thinking on many areas of life. The other day I was asked to review a print media item and I kept saying to the designer - "Don't Make Me Think!" The idea of designing easy to use, simple to understand websites is so simple that it is often overlooked. This is a fantastic read. I'm halfway through my second reading of it.
Mandatory reading for developing on the Web.......2007-09-28
As it promises, Steve Krug's Don't Make Me Think: 2nd Edition, is a quick, but extremely usable, guide to Web usability and design. The book took me less than a day to read (less than 3 hours), but has become, in my mind, a requirement for even beginners (like myself) of Web design. Since everyone who develops for the Web should have some idea of design and usability, this book should really be a mandatory requirement for said work.
In short, there's no reason not to read this book if you're developing for the Web (writing content, programming, etcetera), or working with a team that does so.
Good content, poor binding.......2007-09-27
Others have said that Krug's book (2nd edition) is for those with little experience. That is exactly why I found it so useful. There are lots of concepts that are common sense, sure. But until they were pointed out I had not even considered them. His point about the usefulness of tabs was particularly useful to me. I am creating a site now and will incorporate them into my design.
My only complaint is with the binding. The book was so poorly produced that pages began to loosen and fall out before I was finished with the first reading. I am now looking for a big rubber band to hold everything together. I just hate it when that happens.
Simple--Concise--Easy to Read.......2007-09-27
As an owner of two online businesses I found this book to clarify and outline what most owners and developers fail to understand...which is usability / navigation of their sites..this book nails it. A must read for anyone involved in managing of paying for a web site. JLW.
Book Description
Meet BLACKWATER USA, the world's most secretive and powerful mercenary firm. Based in the wilderness of North Carolina, it is the fastest-growing private army on the planet with forces capable of carrying out regime change throughout the world. Blackwater protects the top US officials in Iraq and yet we know almost nothing about the firm's quasi-military operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and inside the US. Blackwater was founded by an extreme right-wing fundamentalist Christian mega-millionaire ex- Navy Seal named Erik Prince, the scion of a wealthy conservative family that bankrolls far-right-wing causes.
Blackwater is the dark story of the rise of a powerful mercenary army, ranging from the blood-soaked streets of Fallujah to rooftop firefights in Najaf to the hurricane-ravaged US gulf to Washington DC, where Blackwater executives are hailed as new heroes in the war on terror. This is an extraordinary exposé by one of America's most exciting young radical journalists.
Customer Reviews:
Lazy hippie critizes American hero!!!! .......2007-10-08
How to describe Erik Prince? A man who grew up with tons of money and still decided to serve this country, in the Navy SEALs no less, risking his life in serveral engagements. Continuing his father's legacy of putting Americans to work and building this country by providing security and support to our military which Clinton gracefully gutted for us. A true American to the core!!!!
How dare Jeremy Scahill bash this man????!!!!! What has Jeremy Scahill done for this country lately??? Must be that liberal sense of "if you don't do anything, nobody can critize you since nothing is almost impossible to screw up". Blackwater employees have held out against terrorist with our conventional military, has a spotless record in regards to never loosing a person they had to protect under contract, and only lost less than 30 employees during the entirely of the Iraq War. Liberals like Jeremy Scahill want nothing more than Blackwater employees to be subjected to lynch mobs and ridicuolous RoEs (Rules of Engagement). Liberals love nothing more than court martialing our troops for performing their duties while watching from afar.
Jeremy Scahill seems to think New Orleans after the Hurricane was just daisies until Blackwater showed up. Does he critize the looting, rapes, murders, or any other of the horrid behavior that occurred in the aftermath of Katrina? No he is more concerned that Blackwater is not "accountable".
News flash!!! Blackwater is a private company meaning it is always accountable to their customers. They arn't the government who can take you money away through force. Long live Erik Price!!! This country needs more men like him.
Personal agenda wastes a potentially fantastic scoop.......2007-10-08
I just finished reading Blackwater:The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army, and I am still reeling from how disappointing it was. Maybe I'm an action junkie, the stem cells of my attention span tinkered with by the cocktails of impulse that video games provide. I went in expecting to read about Blackwater and how it operated, its tactics, training, its harrowing hidden stories of what evils unregulated private armies commit.
What I got instead was a few pages of the good stuff, and four hundred remaining pages of anti-neo-con, anti-right-wing, anti-religious-right, anti-any-religious-con diatribe. What could have been a sharp tale about a frightening, unregulated cult of ex-special forces types selling their warfaring skills fizzled and drowned itself out. Instead, we got a tale about something bad that every person ever connected to anyone remotely related to Blackwater has ever done. The amount of implicit condemnation isn't just infuriating or unfair, it's just plain boring to read. Skeletons can be dug up in anyone's closet. Scahill had plenty of material for Blackwater alone, but each page just got more and more personal, attacking every politician or figure he's hated, until I closed the book, read the back cover, and discovered, to no surprise, praise form Michael Moore, who pioneered these very techniques.
What techniques? Why, the one where first you imply someone is a bad boy because someone else he knows has done something bad at some point in his life. Then, you simultaneously praise and criticize the same people, using them as you see fit. The favorite Moorian target is the soldier, who is described as a dumb lunk of American arrogance sometimes, and as a sensitive family man at others. It just depends on which heartstring they wanna pull. Scahill is a journalist, and should be above this kind of liberal manipulation. Read it yourself, and see how many scandalous things mentioned have anything to do with Blackwater itself.
Even with his personal agenda splattered on top, which would only bother conservatives like me, the book still lacks a good narrative. There are constant detours that leave me wondering what any of it has to do with Blackwater. There's way too much repetitious foreshadowing, and much of the "facts" could have been left in endnotes. I say "facts" because they are facts, but that doesn't make this an impartial book. If he wanted to say privatization of the army was a disaster, I'd wholeheartedly agree, free-market capitalist that I am. But if he was trying to tell a riveting tale of conspiracy, a soapbox was not the best place to spin an engaging yarn.
5 stars for Erik Prince - 0 for the novelist.......2007-10-08
The author Scahill definitely has an agenda as many of the 1 star reviewers rate. He wastes no time pointing out that Erik Prince donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Republicans and $0 to democrats. The author also repeatedly 'accuses' Erik Prince of being a fanatic religious right winger who was brought up in Calvinism and later converted to Roman Catholicism - as if that is a bad thing. However, to his credit, the author did point out many of the wonderful gifts, million$ in sponsorships and contributions to colleges and businesses that Erik Prince's father, a self-made millionaire, gave to the lakeside community they grew up in. Mr. Prince was a capitalist with a heart of gold who not only took great care of his family but also took care of the people who worked for his company as well as his community. After attacking the Prince family, the author 'relives' the major fights in Fallujah and Najaf purporting as if he were there to know what our troops were actually thinking but he writes nothing about the Iran insurgency where the vast majority of the IEDs killing our troops and car bombs killing Iraqis come from. An entire chapter is devoted to the sources in the book but hundreds of the sources contain one word - 'ibid', or 'interview' but not with or by whom the interview was conducted. Fat slob michaelmoore drooled a blurb for the jacket- go figure! As for buying this book, wait for leftover stock and get it for $1, it will be there in very short order.
Not worth it even if you despise the War.......2007-09-30
This book was such a letdown. I had no idea it was written with such an agenda. Even though I probably agree quite a bit with the author, I did not buy this book to read someone's column. I expected a history of Blackwater to better understand it. Instead this book ruins any interesting tidbits by always throwing in a biased opinion. It made reading the book very difficult even for someone who is anti-war. Really a shame since this could have been an important book. The only ones who will like it are those so close minded that they can only read books that share their viewpoint. Hence the 5 star reviews. Not for anyone with an open mind.
Thrilling!.......2007-09-25
Highly enjoyable book if you can overlook the preachy and somewhat hysterical tone. I can't decide if it's inadvertent, since this is ostensibly some sort of exposé, but the author gives Blackwater this highly appealing aura of danger and excitement and glamour.
Have you ever seen one of those lurid B-movies from the 50s, narrator lectures on the dangers of marijuana, fast women, go-go dancing and other sensational trash? Yet, at the same time, promoting it because it's hot? It's a bit in that tradition I think.
Book Description
By the early l940s, when Ukrainian-born Irène Némirovsky began working on what would become Suite Française—the first two parts of a planned five-part novel—she was already a highly successful writer living in Paris. But she was also a Jew, and in 1942 she was arrested and deported to Auschwitz: a month later she was dead at the age of thirty-nine. Two years earlier, living in a small village in central France—where she, her husband, and their two small daughters had fled in a vain attempt to elude the Nazis
—she’d begun her novel, a luminous portrayal of a human drama in which she herself would become a victim. When she was arrested, she had completed two parts of the epic, the handwritten manuscripts of which were hidden in a suitcase that her daughters would take with them into hiding and eventually into freedom. Sixty-four years later, at long last, we can read Némirovsky’s literary masterpiece
The first part, “A Storm in June,” opens in the chaos of the massive 1940 exodus from Paris on the eve of the Nazi invasion during which several families and individuals are thrown together under circumstances beyond their control. They share nothing but the harsh demands of survival—some trying to maintain lives of privilege, others struggling simply to preserve their lives—but soon, all together, they will be forced to face the awful exigencies of physical and emotional displacement, and the annihilation of the world they know. In the second part, “Dolce,” we enter the increasingly complex life of a German-occupied provincial village. Coexisting uneasily with the soldiers billeted among them, the villagers—from aristocrats to shopkeepers to peasants—cope as best they can. Some choose resistance, others collaboration, and as their community is transformed by these acts, the lives of these these men and women reveal nothing less than the very essence of humanity.
Suite Française is a singularly piercing evocation—at once subtle and severe, deeply compassionate and fiercely ironic—of life and death in occupied France, and a brilliant, profoundly moving work of art.
Download Description
Irène Némirovsky was born in Kiev in 1903 into a wealthy banking family and emigrated to France during the Russian Revolution. After attending the Sorbonne, she began to write and swiftly achieved success with her first novel, David Golder, which was followed by The Ball, The Flies of Autumn, Dogs and Wolves and The Courilof Affair. She died in 1942.
From the Hardcover edition.
Customer Reviews:
France and the French during the German Occupation-a portrait, not a snapshot.......2007-10-10
Irene Nemirovsky-a superb author. Her historical novel is well written, well conceived, and ceretainly presents a true and real picture of France and the French people during the German Occupation. The world lost a wonderful woman of letters when she was murdered at Auschwitz.
Not Up to the Hype.......2007-10-06
I really wanted to like this book. I read it after reading Vasily Grossman's LIFE AND FATE, a masterpiece of WW2 literature if there ever was one. And maybe it was the juxtaposition of that book with this that caused my disappointment. Where Grossman's book at 800 pages is taut and serious throughout, Nemirovsky's seems trivial by comparision. Had it been published soon after it was written, it would have been considered an interesting popular novel containing interesting observations of occupied France but ultimately lightweight in its' often pedestrian storyline and execution. It often reads like a mass paperback romance set within the larger context of the war, and too often devolves into hackneyed popular novel tropes - the cowardess and duplicities of the moneyed classes set against the native nobility of the poor, love amidst the ruins of war etc.
Interesting light reading, but a "classic?" Sorry.
Enjoyable and Interesting.......2007-10-05
A really enjoyable read and extremely interesting. It was such a good book! Highly recommend. The ending leaves you trailing though...
A magnificent, tragic fragment........2007-09-29
Irene Nemirovsky's "Suite Francaise" will stand with "The Diary of Anne Frank" as one of the most poignant literary monuments of World War II and the insanity of the Holocaust. But whereas Anne Frank was a young girl whose hopes and dreams ended forever at Belsen, Irene Nemirovsky was a novelist of enormous talent who would have been recognized as one of the greatest European writers of the 20th century had her life not been extinguished at Auschwitz. Considering all she suffered during the war, and how she was murdered in the very middle of it, it is amazing that Nemrovsky completed as much of it as she did, and that what she completed is of such a high order. "Suite Francaise" consists of the first two parts of a projected five-part novel depicting the fall of France to the Nazis, the panicked flight of Parisians and the return to something vaguely resembling normalcy under German military rule. The first section, "Storm in June," gives readers a panoramic view of several groups of fleeing Parisians, representing every class of society and every conceivable moral and mental attitude; the second, "Dolce," depicts life in a French village under the Germans, bringing back some of the characters from the first book and making it plain that Nemirovsky planned to reintroduce more of them in the following three books. Superbly translated by Sandra Smith, "Suite Francaise" is a swift and graceful read, depicting the characters and action with breathtaking clarity and excitement. Many of the characters are presented only in a few sentences, yet all live and breathe with total realism. What is really astonishing about "Suite Francaise," however, is Nemirovsky's authorial impartiality and clear-eyed sympathy for all her characters. There are no saints and no monsters in Nemirovsky's universe, just people--some more likable than others, but even the most despicable among them are given sharp moments of deep and moving humanity. Even the Germans are human--they have their faults, but also their virtues. To be able to write such panoramic fiction in the midst of war, with such a detached and pragmatic yet sympathetic eye, is truly amazing, even more so from an author who rightly feared she would be arrested and deported to the death camps at any moment. A Russian-Jewish emigree to France who moved in the highest literary and societal circles, Nemirovsky was an exceptionally keen observer of the French class system and how it warps individuals, in that sense (and in others) the equal of Balzac, Flaubert and Proust. The argument in Chapter 16 of "Dolce" between the snobbish, sickly-sentimental Vicomtesse de Montmort and the brutish peasant Benoit Sabarie stands out: both are sympathetic, as people and as representatives of their social classes, and both are utterly despicable. Nemirovsky sums up their fight neatly: "What separates or unites people is not their language, their laws, their customs, their principles, but the way they hold a salad fork." This argument has repercussions that promise to ripple across the rest of the story, except that Nemirovsky, alas, never had a chance to show us how. Appendices to the book include Nemirovsky's copious notes on how she planned to continue the story; correspondence to, from, and about her; and the preface to the French addition, included as an afterword here, which tells the poignant story of Nemirovsky's life and death, and of how Nemirovsky's daughter discovered the manuscript of "Suite Francaise" more than sixty years after her mother's death. "Suite Francaise" is a magnificent fragment and an eternal testimonial to the genius of its author. We can only mourn that the book, like her life, will remain unfinished.
A taste of things to come.......2007-09-26
It's a known fact that this work has gotten much attention due to the circumstances that surrounded Irene Nemirovsky's life. Left in a suitcase as she attempted flight, the author found her demise at the hands of the Nazis before this manuscript could be published.
Who knows what she might have added or excluded or expanded? And I could not help but think this as I read along.
There are two novellas under one umbrella here--depicting day in the life scenes of how things were in these troublesome times. I certainly found this to be gratifying reading, but it did not take me out of myself in that complete way I enjoy when I read truly remarkable fiction.
Will recommend, but for a story that brought me to that special place of compelling fiction, I recommend the lesser-known, SIM0N LAZARUS, a book more should know about.
Book Description
How do we find hot stocks without getting burned? How do we fatten our portfolios and stay financially healthy? Former hedge-fund manager and longtime Wall Street commentator Jim Cramer explains how to invest wisely in chaotic times, and he does so in plain English in a style that is as much fun as investing is -- or should be, when it's done right.
For starters, Cramer recommends devoting a portion of your assets to speculation. Everyone wants to find the big winners that can bring outsized gains, and Cramer explains how to allocate your portfolio so that you can afford to take this kind of risk wisely. He explains why "buy and hold" is a losing philosophy: For Cramer, it's "buy and homework." If you can't spend an hour a week researching each of your stocks, then you should hand off your portfolio to a mutual fund -- and Cramer identifies the very few mutual funds that he'd recommend.
Cramer reveals his Ten Commandments of Trading (Commandment #5: Tips are for waiters). He explains why he's not afraid to compare investing to gambling (and tells you which book on gambling you should read to become a better investor). He discloses his Twenty-Five Rules of Investing (Rule #4: Look for broken stocks, not broken companies).
Cramer shows how to compare stock prices in a way that you can understand, how to spot market tops and bottoms, how to know when to sell, how to rotate among cyclical stocks to catch the big moves, and much more. Jim Cramer's Real Money is filled with insider advice that really works, information that Cramer himself used to make millions during his fourteen-year career on Wall Street.
Written in Cramer's distinctive turbocharged style, this is every investor's guide to what you really must know to make big money in the stock market.
Download Description
"How do we find hot stocks without getting burned? How do we fatten our portfolios and stay financially healthy? Former hedge-fund manager and longtime Wall Street commentator Jim Cramer explains how to invest wisely in chaotic times, and he does so in plain English in a style that is as much fun as investing is -- or should be, when it's done right. For starters, Cramer recommends devoting a portion of your assets to speculation. Everyone wants to find the big winners that can bring outsized gains, and Cramer explains how to allocate your portfolio so that you can afford to take this kind of risk wisely. He explains why ""buy and hold"" is a losing philosophy: For Cramer, it's ""buy and homework."" If you can't spend an hour a week researching each of your stocks, then you should hand off your portfolio to a mutual fund -- and Cramer identifies the very few mutual funds that he'd recommend. Cramer reveals his Ten Commandments of Trading (Commandment #5: Tips are for waiters). He explains why he's not afraid to compare investing to gambling (and tells you which book on gambling you should read to become a better investor). He discloses his Twenty-Five Rules of Investing (Rule #4: Look for broken stocks, not broken companies). Cramer shows how to compare stock prices in a way that you can understand, how to spot market tops and bottoms, how to know when to sell, how to rotate among cyclical stocks to catch the big moves, and much more. Jim Cramer's Real Money is filled with insider advice that really works, information that Cramer himself used to make millions during his fourteen-year career on Wall Street. Written in Cramer's distinctive turbocharged style, this is every investor's guide to what you really must know to make big money in the stock market. "
Customer Reviews:
Great book for learning about trading stocks.......2007-10-02
Jim Cramer's book is full of usefull and sound advice about investing in stocks. All his rules make common sense and should be easy for anyone to apply in thier own investing. Discipline is the key, and he stresses that. He didn't become a multi-millionaire and get his own show on CNBC by being a dummy. No one can be right all the time, and Cramer is no exception, but he is right much more than he is wrong. And that is all you need to make alot of money on Wall Street. Dont listen to the Cramer haters out there, THEY KNOW NOTHING!!! and will never come close to duplicating Cramer's investing success.
Great Book for any Investor........2007-10-01
I am just starting to dabble in the stock market so I'm trying to learn as much as I can right now.
This book is very easy to understand and a very fast read. Being a really big fan of Cramer already this was a 'no-brainer', and although he is very educated he really translates his thoughts and advice in an easy to understand way.
I strongly recommend this book for anyone who is interested in the stock market.
Mad Man? Not really, more a Market Genius.......2007-09-29
Not much value on my side reviewing this book for the hundreds time. What's the take away?
I've been investing in stocks for nearly 20 years, with at least so much success that I keep with it, more or less. The difference is now I get why stocks move or don't (at least much more than I did before). And this book (and his show) is key to that. Awesome guiding priciples, rules of thumb, and market insights.
It's a fun book to read, if you have a certain level of interest in the business world, which is kind if key, of course. Many good laughs! I love his style (which I'm sure many might find offensive or so). But heck, it works for me. I bought both his other books as well. It's so good. The return on this "investment" can't be calculated. Hope this helps! :-)
Fundamental investing in a layman's language.......2007-09-23
Booya Jim!! This is a great book about investing using a fundamental approach. What is great is that the basics of investing are explained in a layman's language. You have to read chapter 5 to get a basic 101 on business cycles and how to exploit the cycle in buying and selling stocks.
I can list all the chapters and what they tell you about or list all the rules Jim explains - but that is rote repetition. Read chapter 4 about basics of evaluation. Jim does a wonderful job about comparing apples to apples e.g., Walgreen to RiteAid and goes into depth why he thinks what should be bought. This lesson alone is worth the price of the book for an investor starting out. Another good lesson is to evaluate the current value of a stock.
Of course, you can attend some expensive classes and get uncompreshensible instructions in an university, but for the price of the book, the value of the lessons here cannot be beaten.
In addition to business cycles, Jim gives some great insights e.g., he states that it is stupid to consider investing and trading as a dichotomy. How true! His famous buy-and-homework approach is like hearing a great 101 lesson from a Professor who also knows the real world. I haven't made any money in buying and holding. My emotions eventually have gotten hold of me. Instead, you need to know when to buy and when to sell. There are separate chapters on predicting tops and bottoms of both the market and individual stocks - again, wonderful reads.
In addition there are 40 rules about investing. Some gems are "I don't care what you paid for the stock, would you buy it now?" question to paraphrase. He gives a lot of credit to the Goddess, now his wife!
All in all, a great book and a must-have book in your investing library. I read the book almost two times so that I could reinforce the lessons, especially about valuation and business cycles. My style of investing, which has been pretty successful, is both a combination of fundamental and technical factors, while Jim's is more fundamental. But the fundamental 101s in the book is useful and should be a must background for anyone wanting to put their hard-earned money on the fire in the stock market.
Super Read.......2007-08-26
Awesome Read! I've read a few investment books, but this one is the best! I've been out of the market for a bit, my old way to investing had not produced what I thought it could. Jim has turned me around and retaught what all the professors in college could not. Super fast read, and I could not thank Jim enought for sharing is expertise. I feel like a new and better invester....Homework, Homework, Homework...the Key to succuess.
Five Stars******
Book Description
In just the last few years, traditional collaboration—in a meeting room, a conference call, even a convention center—has been superseded by collaborations on an astronomical scale.
Today, encyclopedias, jetliners, operating systems, mutual funds, and many other items are being created by teams numbering in the thousands or even millions. While some leaders fear the heaving growth of these massive online communities, Wikinomics proves this fear is folly. Smart firms can harness collective capability and genius to spur innovation, growth, and success.
A brilliant guide to one of the most profound changes of our time, Wikinomics challenges our most deeply-rooted assumptions about business and will prove indispensable to anyone who wants to understand competitiveness in the twenty-first century.
Based on a $9 million research project led by bestselling author Don Tapscott, Wikinomics shows how masses of people can participate in the economy like never before. They are creating TV news stories, sequencing the human genome, remixing their favorite music, designing software, finding a cure for disease, editing school texts, inventing new cosmetics, or even building motorcycles. You'll read about:
• Rob McEwen, the Goldcorp, Inc. CEO who used open source tactics and an online competition to save his company and breathe new life into an old-fashioned industry.
• Flickr, Second Life, YouTube, and other thriving online communities that transcend social networking to pioneer a new form of collaborative production.
• Mature companies like Procter & Gamble that cultivate nimble, trust-based relationships with external collaborators to form vibrant business ecosystems.
An important look into the future, Wikinomics will be your road map for doing business in the twenty-first century.
Customer Reviews:
Great Book to Read.......2007-10-02
Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything
As I refresh my professional career for the second decade of the 21st Century, I decided ro read this book, and I was not wrong. This is a most read book for everyone that's looking to stay relevant in the digital economy and the disrupting collaboration paradign. I highly recommeded.
Good, but not critical enough and scores high on the buzzword-meter.......2007-09-12
The book gives a quick tour of the new collaborative ways in which people aggregate and process information. It points out that collaboration can also be applied to produce new 'stuff', outside of software and even applying to manufacturing. It makes for interesting reading for people who a) know something about open source and want to know about its business implications and b) managers who don't know about open source/collaboration but would like to.
It is, imho, less interesting for those who want in-depth answers to the real thorny _business_ problems around open-source. I.e. How to make money at it, if you want to. It hints at important questions such as rewarding the community at large, not losing the family jewels as you open up, etc. Unfortunately, it never quite gets down to specific recommendations beyond "you have to find the right mix of proprietary vs. open source IP".
Not to criticize it overmuch. Wikinomics often jars your thinking with insightful nuggets. For example, it cites Goldcorp as the example of a mining company which opened up its secret prospection data to outsiders. Wikinomics, probably rightly, uses that as a counter-intuitive example of enlisting external help for a type of company that never shares that kind of data. Hmmm, why not share? If the prospection data applies to land on which only your company can operate, isn't that a pretty safe gamble? I don't know, really, but the point is that the anecdote makes you think of things differently. Same with IBM's success at getting a new OS (Linux)almost for free, while gathering goodwill from the community and genuinely collaborating. How far Big Blue's embarrassing anti-trust proceedings seem now...
Less helpful is Wikinomics' recurring use of cherry-picked anecdotes by sector, rather than a broad analysis of various businesses. First of all, it rarely compares its chosen 'smart companies' to their competitors. Yes, BMW is opening up. Does that make their cars any better? How is their stock doing? vs. Toyota? How is their reliability? How innovative are their cars?
Red Hat is a huge success story in Linux, but its dominance also highlights the relative failure of other Linux vendors. No explanation is given for that - network effects? first mover?
I would have welcomed some case studies of failures for big corporations in opening up. What caused those failures? What can be learned from them?
Google is also cited as a big example of openness. That is only partially true and could have served to highlight the necessary(?) split between proprietary information and public openness. Google opens up its APIs and the search is certainly free. I am a big fan myself. However, they have not chosen to release much code back to the community (cf. MapReduce) , mostly by sidestepping the GPL because they don't distribute their software. Their choice, and probably motivated by good business logic. Apple also walks a fine line between leveraging open source and keeping its business very much a secret.
This is just the kind of case studies Wikinomics could sink its teeth into, but it spends way too much time gushing over all the boundless possibilities of collaboration.
Conclusion: a good eye-opener but take it with a grain of salt. Note that my perspective is that of a developer interested in open source _and_ business profits.
An interesting read........2007-09-04
I liked this book, and it opened my eyes to many other "community-driven" technologies/companies. While I thought a lot of the ideas were very "common sense", it was well written, and had some great anecdotes. I recommend this book for anyone interested in social networking, building communities, etc.
The community is the company.......2007-09-02
Wikinomics is about opening your company to the world where communities come together, individuals share ideas, intelligence, peer produce, innovate; the communities are driven primarily by self-motivation or respect from peers. The idea is awesome; the authors are right that this is a new era; some of the most successful companies in the world use wikinomics; the most successful Internet companies are based upon it. The companies cost is dramatically cut, they become trustworthy, and individuals create what they want.
But the book is almost irritating to read. They paint a world where wikinomics is practically perfect, where the communities created by the company are utopian, and the companies who refuse the wikinomic ideology as evil. According to the authors, the companies that don't jump on the bandwagon will ultimately fail because they can't compete with speed and innovation that wikinomic companies can produce (compare wikipedia with any encyclopedia).
The reality is the communities created are often not egalitarian. Digg is a good example -- the community is driven by a faction of a top 100 users who control the front page content, any article or comment outside the digg mindset is quickly buried, and websites have been created where you can pay to get dugg.
In addition, the book ignores wikinomic companies who have failed completely or to a large extent (amapedia, a million penguins, la times wiki editorial, the thousands of 2.0 clones) and they give the reader no idea how to start a successful web 2.0 company. The book is also too long and each chapter adds little to the last. The entire book is read in the first chapter.
While I feel companies opening up to the world is an awesome concept and many of the ideas in the book are right, I would have preferred a more balanced book which makes this book unsatisfying. In the end, I still question whether wikinomics is just a bubble going to burst.
Required reading for Strategic Thinkers.......2007-08-29
In this interesting and example filled book, Authors Tapscott & Williams explore how convergence of the New Web (technology) and the Net Generation (demographics) have reduced transaction costs within the knowledge economy (or the knowledge element of the industrial economy) to create or allow for mass collaboration. Citing four (4) principles underlying this mass collaboration - openness, peering, sharing, and acting globally - they identify seven (7) trends that are transforming existing business models and challenging leaders to create entirely new business models.
1. Peer Production - building intellectual property bit by bit thru open source
2. Ideagoras - buying and selling solutions to problems / research
3. Prosumers - new product design by consumers/users (think hackers)
4. New Alexandrians - sharing science / thinking on a massive scale
5. Platforms for participation - global stage for partnering to create value and build new businesses
6. Global plant floors - transport technology across borders/organizations for local fab labs
7. Wiki workplaces - really workspaces, where playgrounds replace more traditional business processes
While one may argue with the distinctions between these seven, somewhat overlapping trends, the authors provide ample examples to stimulate thinking and help the reader see how this new world might be integrated into current business models or force us to create new ones. This book is recommended as required reading for anyone responsible for strategic thinking - for themselves or for their business.
Book Description
Written by the authors of the immensely popular Microsoft Windows XP Inside Out, this book packs hundreds of timesaving solutions, troubleshooting tips, and workarounds for using the latest version of the Microsoft Windows operating systemall in concise, fast-answer format.
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