Building & Renovating Schools: Design, Construction Management, Cost Control

Customer Reviews:

David Muench's Arizona.......2001-05-07

This a delightful book. David Muench's ability to use light and contrast to capture the varied landscapes of Arizona is unsurpassed. He truly has a gift.

Beautiful photos, wide variey of landscapes.......2000-07-17

This is a wonderful coffee table book packed with a wide variety of spectacular photos of Arizona. It is a stunning display of the tremendous variety found in Arizona's natural habitat. Muench focuses on different aspects of the landscape including light, form, life and ecology. Captions tell where the photograph was taken with some brief commentary. A short essay by the photographer leads off each section with some of his personal thoughts and insights.

You will find an awesome view looking up through the trees to the sky, and the beautiful azure color of the Colorado River contrasting against white and rust colored rocks. Views of waterfalls, snow-capped mountains, autumn leaves and desert sands will take your breath away. Natural rock formations and cactus plants are seen in a new light as they become elegant sculptures. Endless, brilliant blue skies are captured against fields, mountains and red rock formations. Close-up of photos vibrant pink cactus flowers and sunny yellow poppies will brighten your day. You also get an occasional glimpse of lush green trees and plants.

As with all of Muench's books this one is printed on quality glossy paper with the highest of production values doing justice to the photography. As a Muench fan this is a treasured addition to my library.

BEAUTIFUL Photographs of Arizona.......2000-02-23

David Muench's photographs show the incredible beauty and variety of Arizona's scenery. The book is a wonderful gift for anyone who loves Arizona or color photography. We received it as a gift and have purchased two more copies since then to give to others.

Book Description

"We fail to mandate economic sanity," writes Garrett Hardin, "because our brains are addled by...compassion." With such startling assertions, Hardin has cut a swathe through the field of ecology for decades, winning a reputation as a fearless and original thinker. A prominent biologist, ecological philosopher, and keen student of human population control, Hardin now offers the finest summation of his work to date, with an eloquent argument for accepting the limits of the earth's resources--and the hard choices we must make to live within them. In Living Within Limits, Hardin focuses on the neglected problem of overpopulation, making a forceful case for dramatically changing the way we live in and manage our world. Our world itself, he writes, is in the dilemma of the lifeboat: it can only hold a certain number of people before it sinks--not everyone can be saved. The old idea of progress and limitless growth misses the point that the earth (and each part of it) has a limited carrying capacity; sentimentality should not cloud our ability to take necessary steps to limit population. But Hardin refutes the notion that goodwill and voluntary restraints will be enough. Instead, nations where population is growing must suffer the consequences alone. Too often, he writes, we operate on the faulty principle of shared costs matched with private profits. In Hardin's famous essay, "The Tragedy of the Commons," he showed how a village common pasture suffers from overgrazing because each villager puts as many cattle on it as possible--since the costs of grazing are shared by everyone, but the profits go to the individual. The metaphor applies to global ecology, he argues, making a powerful case for closed borders and an end to immigration from poor nations to rich ones. "The production of human beings is the result of very localized human actions; corrective action must be local....Globalizing the 'population problem' would only ensure that it would never be solved." Hardin does not shrink from the startling implications of his argument, as he criticizes the shipment of food to overpopulated regions and asserts that coercion in population control is inevitable. But he also proposes a free flow of information across boundaries, to allow each state to help itself. "The time-honored practice of pollute and move on is no longer acceptable," Hardin tells us. We now fill the globe, and we have no where else to go. In this powerful book, one of our leading ecological philosophers points out the hard choices we must make--and the solutions we have been afraid to consider.

Customer Reviews:

Spaceship economics and other interesting concepts........2007-07-02

The problem of population is one of regulating human behavior. He explains several concepts:

1- Cowboy vs spaceship economics.
2- The Malthus demostat.
3- Exponential growth at a small rate and the carrying capacity of Planet Earth
4- Our world is finite
5- There will never be a perpetual motion machine

A great thinker on ecology and human population.

A marvellous book distinguished by Hardin's superb clarity of thought.......2007-06-20

1st edition, reissued (1995), 311 pages

This is another of the twenty books that Charlie Munger recommends in the 2nd edition of Poor Charlie's Almanack (which I cannot recommend more highly). When a very widely read and highly effective thinker like Munger gets to eighty years old and recommends a list of just twenty books, I think one would be justified in expecting all of them to be pretty good.

Even so, as I make my way through his list I find myself pleasantly surprised at just how good some of them are. The clarity of thought Hardin demonstrates in this book is simply superb.

There is an important difference comparing this book to most others. Because so much of his subject matter (the subtitle is: `Ecology, Economics and Population Taboos') is smeared over by taboo and emotion, Hardin appears to have decided that in order to deal with this problem he also needs to demonstrate how to think properly.

Thus it is really two books in one: a manual on how to think effectively and a treatise on his chosen subject. For example, he hammers home the importance of default positions to provide the foundation for critical judgement (in economics: there's no such thing as a free lunch; in psychology: reward determines behaviour; in ecology: and then what?).

I am left with a feeling of gratitude towards both Munger and Hardin - without either of whom I would not have read this marvellous book.

With this book you can have a whole education career .......2006-10-29

I must first say I have not finished reading the book. Part of the reason its that I always start again while Im half way through.

This books educates you, in the highest sense of the word, and I am not talking about having to make your mind up about any stand in population control that may be in direct confrontation with your religious beliefs. This book is not about that.

It educates because it teaches you logical thinking, fallacies, numerative, narrative and ecological thinking, history of economic thought, of philosophy of progress. All in chunk-bit sizes, so I would say that even with a university degree, this book has made re-think, re-explore and adequate my thought to a multiple of tools I have not used in a long time.

Its most profound method, which I have not seen in de Bono and the like, is how to address critical issues by:

- Chosing the right words (Rhethoric has been the most overused tool)
- Chosing the right numbers (Please read What the Numbers Tell)
- Chosing the right system of growth (if you decide to do something, see the consequences please!!!)

By reading history, you can see all type of blunders that have resulted form not using in balance the following tools. History? take a look around you, we are not better of than our forefathers eventhough now we can have this tools to guide us.

Since this is a book that teaches how to think, I can clearly see now how it can be so underrated and not be required reading at all levels. Maybe, because the theme of population is brought on, and due to the taboos we have about it, as well as our hopes, etc. this can overcloud the relevance as an educational tool.

Demostat vs. Thermostat and Other Numerate, and Ecology Insights.......2006-07-20

Though the main emphasis is on the population sustaining aspects of our environment and planet, one would miss other economical, numerate, and ecological insights that the sharp mind of Garrett Hardin provides with all of his writing. As a follow-up (in my mind) to Filters of Folly, Hardin again demonstrates his sharp insights on a multitude of endeavors that just don't relate to population. Some anecdotes include economic discussions on scale factors, human nature of foxes and hedgehogs, compound interests as the eighth wonder, Islamic thoughts on usury, law of diminishing returns, one can never merly do one thing, and etc..

Whether you consider yourself an Economist, Ecologist, Environmentalist, or just your average Autodidact, one can can surely benefit from Hardin's thoughts.

Garrett Hardin and the Freedom of Limits.......2005-08-22

This book is essential reading. As someone lucky enough to have called Garrett Hardin my friend, I was once with him at one of his book signings in Santa Barbara, California. As two rather prosperous looking young women rushed by his display table, one said to the other: "`Limits'--I don't like it!" After which Hardin turned to me with a twinkle in his eye and said, "You see, she just summarized my whole problem." But one of the things that Professor Hardin is still teaching us, through his books and his students, is that once we accept the fact that the world has real ecological limits--for example, we stop assuming that we can cram a quarter-billion people into America, or that affordable substitutes for finite resources like oil and topsoil will be generated magically by the marketplace--the quality of our lives will actually improve. It is something like the little boy who has many scattered ambitions, from cowboy to Superman, upon reaching maturity being able to focus in on the adventure of passionately pursuing life's real possibilities. In his own life Hardin was anything but grim. Garrett Hardin just wanted to help our society grow up and, as said in Corinthians, put away childish things.

Living Within Limits: Ecology, Economics, and Population Taboos. (book reviews): An article from: Issues in Science and Technology

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Living Within Limits: Ecology, Economics, and Population Taboos. (book reviews): An article from: Issues in Science and Technology
Lincoln C. Chen
Manufacturer: National Academy of Sciences
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital

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Book Description

This digital document is an article from Issues in Science and Technology, published by National Academy of Sciences on December 22, 1993. The length of the article is 1823 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Living Within Limits: Ecology, Economics, and Population Taboos. (book reviews)
Author: Lincoln C. Chen
Publication: Issues in Science and Technology (Refereed)
Date: December 22, 1993
Publisher: National Academy of Sciences
Volume: v10 Issue: n2 Page: p88(3)

Article Type: Book Review

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Living Within Limits: Ecology, Economics, and Population Taboos. (book reviews): An article from: Journal of Economic Issues

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Living Within Limits: Ecology, Economics, and Population Taboos. (book reviews): An article from: Journal of Economic Issues
David Berry
Manufacturer: Association for Evolutionary Economics
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital
ASIN: B000921FQC
Release Date: 2005-07-28

Book Description

This digital document is an article from Journal of Economic Issues, published by Association for Evolutionary Economics on March 1, 1994. The length of the article is 609 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Living Within Limits: Ecology, Economics, and Population Taboos. (book reviews)
Author: David Berry
Publication: Journal of Economic Issues (Refereed)
Date: March 1, 1994
Publisher: Association for Evolutionary Economics
Volume: v28 Issue: n1 Page: p274(3)

Article Type: Book Review

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Shipped on Rime

An excellent contribution to several historical fields.

An excellent contribution to several historical fields.

Counter Cultures: Saleswomen, Managers, and Customers in American Department Stores, 1890-1940 (Working Class in American History)
Susan Benson
Manufacturer: University of Illinois Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Gendering Labor History (Working Class in American History)

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ASIN: 025206013X

Customer Reviews:

Shipped on Rime.......2005-10-19

book was as good as described, like new. Shipped on time. recommend seller. I will use in the future with doubt.

An excellent contribution to several historical fields........1996-12-23

Benson writes about department stores' development as the new purveyors of mass culture and as the setting for a dynamic intersection of class and gender. She describes the encounters of saleswomen, managers, and customers in this retail environment between 1890 and 1940. Benson accomplishes this by combing through various journals and newspapers, and the results of this research are placed into perspective through comparison with other labor historians' work. Although the juxtaposition of Benson's work with others' reveals some flaws, _Counter Cultures_ nevertheless presents an important and vivid picture of a service industry, a neglected area of labor history

An excellent contribution to several historical fields........1996-12-23

Counter Cultures : Saleswomen, Managers, and Customers in American Department Stores, 1890-1940

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Counter Cultures : Saleswomen, Managers, and Customers in American Department Stores, 1890-1940
Susan Porter Benson
Manufacturer: Univ of Illinois Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000OM6Y9K

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Counter Cultures : Saleswomen, Managers, and Customers in American Department Stores, 1890-1940
Susan Porter Benson
Manufacturer: University of Illinois Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OPXEL8

Book Description

The award-winning Black Wealth / White Wealth offers a powerful portrait of racial inequality based on an analysis of private wealth. Melvin Oliver and Thomas Shapiros' groundbreaking research analyzes wealth -total assets and debts rather than income alone -to uncover deep and persistent racial inequality in America, and they show how public policies have failed to redress the problem.
First published in 1995, Black Wealth / White Wealth is considered a classic exploration of race and inequality. It provided, for the first time, systematic empirical evidence that explained the racial inequality gap between blacks and whites. The Tenth Anniversary edition contains two entirely new and substantive chapters. These chapters look at the continuing issues of wealth and inequality in America and the new policies that have been launched in the past ten years. Some have been progressive while others only recreate inequality -for example the proposal to eliminate the estate tax.
Compelling and also informative, Black Wealth / White Wealth is not just pioneering research. It is also a powerful counterpoint to arguments against affirmative action and a direct challenge to current social welfare policies that are tilted towards the wealthy.

Customer Reviews:

Great Myth Buster.......2007-07-20

This was very well written and had an abundant series of examples to support the authors' main point--with references to government documents, tables, graphs. Oliver and Shapiro can be extremely repetitive in restating their thesis, but, overall, the book was very eye-opening and perhaps a little depressing.

You'd make it a point not invest the majority of your wealth in the home and car after reading this book.

A Sound Attack on the Middle-Class Myth.......2000-05-29

The arguement that the past thirty years have resulted in a closing of the gap between whites and blacks seems untenable after reading this book. Using wealth instead of income as a measure of success and progress, Oliver and Shapiro argue that glaring inequalities still exist and may actually be growing. Moreover, since creating wealth is far more difficult when one has none to begin, the authors argue that such inequalities are sure to continue unless significant changes are made to the social safety net. These premises certainly call into question the notion of a vibrant black middle class.

Book Description

Black Wealth/White Wealth offers a powerful portrait of racial inequality based on an analysis of private wealth. Taking issue with those who point to an expanding black middle class as evidence of greater racial equality, Black Wealth/White Wealth demonstrates how an analysis of wealth--total assets and debts rather than income alone--uncovers a qualitatively different story about race in America. Providing a comprehensive examination of how material assets are created, expanded and preserved, authors Oliver and Shapiro reveal the persistent and deep economic divide between blacks and whites.

Black Wealth/White Wealth charts the ways inequality has been structured over many generations through the same systematic barriers that have affected blacks throughout their history in America--the legacy of slavery, history of low wages, poor education, restriction of blacks as economic free agents. Oliver and Shapiro examine how and why low blackentrepreneurship, limited access to capital, red-lining practices, local and state policy, the rise of the modern suburb and the making of the urban ghetto have discouraged and impaired the ability of many blacks to accumulate wealth and opportunities for a better life.

Combining quantitative data from over 12,000 households and in-depth interviews with a range of black and white families, the authors measure and conceptualize the racial face of wealth in America. The findings uncover vast differences between blacks and whites: 63% of black households have no financial assets, more than twice the rate of whites; nearly three-quarters of black children grow up in households without any financial resources; the white middle class could support its present standard of living for more than four months without a steady stream of income while the typical black middle class household does not have enough wealth to survive a month. The recent movement of blacks into middle class occupations and gains in educational attainment have not led to commensurate increases in wealth. The racial legacy of the past is etched in present day deprivation of wealth. The authors argue that black achievement at any given level not only requires a greater effort and provides fewer opportunities along the way, but also bestows substantially diminished rewards.

The final section of Black Wealth/White Wealth identifies and explores the factors, processes and structures behind the vast inequality between the two races and analyzes why wealth portfolios for blacks and whites of equal stature and accomplishment vary so differently. Pointing up the failure of current public policies to redress the problem--because they are based on a restrictive concept of income--the authors' analysis provides insight into some of the real reasons behind racial inequality and articulates ways to link opportunity structures to policies that promote asset formation and narrow the racial wealth gap.

Customer Reviews:

Miles to Go Before We Rest.......2001-12-22

This book is a fascinating study of the differences between the wealth held by Blacks and Whites in the United States. A historical perspective is provided, yet the book makes clear how the momentum of past actions continue though the present. It was this facet of the book that provided the greatest emotional impact. The authors did an excellent job of stressing the differential effects of income and wealth, and how wealth is by far the better measure for examining economic well-being. The data was broken down and explained according to education, income, housing, and many other variables. Case studies helped to put poignant "faces" on the facts to show how Blacks have been impacted by the differing conditions that they experience.

While it is not hard to find examples to the contrary, as I was reading this book, I noticed a growing sense of discomfort with the frequency with which the two races were discussed and compared monolithically. It is not difficult to view one race as victim and the other as oppressor within a historical perspective, but I found myself wanting to believe that it is individuals and groups in the present who decide whether to overcome adversities and utilize opportunities. Unfortunately, this book shows how much further the United States must go to achieve equal opportunities of economic mobility.

Book Description

This digital document is an article from Independent Review, published by Independent Institute on January 1, 1997. The length of the article is 1469 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Black Wealth/White Wealth: A New Perspective on Racial Inequality. (book reviews)
Author: Robert A. Margo
Publication: Independent Review (Refereed)
Date: January 1, 1997
Publisher: Independent Institute
Volume: v1 Issue: n3 Page: p445(4)

Article Type: Book Review

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Black Wealth/White Wealth: A New Perspective on Racial Inequality. (book reviews): An article from: Southern Economic Journal

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Black Wealth/White Wealth: A New Perspective on Racial Inequality. (book reviews): An article from: Southern Economic Journal
Paul W. Grimes
Manufacturer: Southern Economic Association
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital

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Book Description

This digital document is an article from Southern Economic Journal, published by Southern Economic Association on January 1, 1997. The length of the article is 697 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Black Wealth/White Wealth: A New Perspective on Racial Inequality. (book reviews)
Author: Paul W. Grimes
Publication: Southern Economic Journal (Refereed)
Date: January 1, 1997
Publisher: Southern Economic Association
Volume: v63 Issue: n3 Page: p824(2)

Article Type: Book Review

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