Castel Del Monte: Geometric Marvel of the Middle Ages

Amazon.com

You don't have to be an architectural historian to reap the multifarious rewards of this gorgeous volume. There may be one square root too many for the math-challenged multitudes, but otherwise this book's brilliant, clearly written text should appeal to classicists, abstract art admirers, and lovers of historical mysteries--hark, fans of The Name of the Rose--to suggest just a few of many possible audiences.

Already in its third printing in Germany, the lushly illustrated book offers Heinz Götze's reasoned arguments tying the design of the Castel Del Monte, the mysterious, singular, southern Italian fortress built under the revered leader Frederick II, to the Mediterranean culture of the Middle Ages and to the intricacies of Arab geometry circulating in North Africa at the time. Götze is steeped in his subject: he has led architectural digs at other sites to search for European antecedents for this extraordinary eight-sided star of an edifice (there are none), and he draws on a seemingly vast knowledge of the delicate geometries of celestial and terrestrial designs of the period that stretch from France to Syria. His impeccable scholarship seems to liberate him from the pedestrian prose of many such books (there are cheerily triumphal exclamation points scattered throughout this one).

While the book is extremely learned and contains much material that is over the head of the ordinary reader, Götze manages to urge readers to stretch their intellects. The hardest part, ultimately, is sitting in an armchair to read this book, rather than standing at the Castel Del Monte in person and gazing at it with newfound understanding. --Peggy Moorman

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Troubled images: Posters and images of the Northern Ireland conflict from the Linen Hall Library, Belfast
Yvonne Murphy , Allan Leonard , Gordon Gillespie , and Kris Brown
Manufacturer: Linen Hall Library
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Instructional & How-To | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books
General | Europe | History | Subjects | Books
Activism | Politics | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 1900921200

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Troubled Images: Posters and Images of the Northern Ireland Conflict from the Linen Hall Library, Belfast
Linen Hall Library
Manufacturer: Linen Hall Library
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: CD-ROM
ASIN: B000J15TTC

Product Description

The Troubled Images CD-ROM contains over 3,000 posters and images on the Northern Ireland conflict, drawn from the Linen Hall Library's world-renowned Northern Ireland Political Collection. Features include descriptive notes for each of the entries, essays on the main events and issues of the past three decades, and voice recordings of the key players who have created posters and used them in major campaigns. [This CD-ROM can be run on PCs or Apple computers. Minimum specifications: Windows 95 or better, or Windows NT, Pentium processor 120 MHz, 32 MB RAM; for Apple Macintosh: OS 7.5 or better, PowerPC processor, 120 MHz, 32 MB RAM. Recommended specifications: Windows 95 or better, or Windows NT, Pentium processor, 200 MHz, 64MB RAM; Apple Macintosh: OS 7.5 or better, PowerPC processor, 200 MHz, 64 MB RAM.]

Book Description

Essays by Enzo Carli, Jean Claude Lemagny.

Book Description

The forest products industry ranks as one of the world's most important industries ;for the global economy and the environment. It represents close to 3% of the world's gross economic output. The forests upon which it depends are among the most critical ecosystems for the health of the planet and for human well-being. The size of the industry, its links to the rest of the world economy, and the importance of its resource base for environmental services make it the target of intense public scrutiny and government regulation. Understanding sustainable forestry requires understanding the evolving dynamics of the forest products industry an evolution that is increasingly making the cost of wood a smaller fraction of the final value of a forest product.

Two frameworks are used here as prisms through which to view the industry. The first section describes how the major business and environmental trends sweeping the industry are transforming Sustainable Forest Management (SFM) into a major industry force. It then outlines the most critical nonenvironmental drivers that make or break all businesses within the industry, and explains how they will influence sustainability issues. The second section describes how all these forces play out within each of the three major industry segments: paper, solid wood, and engineered wood products, and maps out in which parts of the industry sustainable forestry is already a major issue, where it is not, and why.

This approach makes sense given the history of SFM. Most sustainable forestry businesses have started from the forest, then tried to move forward to the market. An analysis that assesses the industry and links market conditions back to sustainable forestry supply capabilities reveals where sustainable forestry is well integrated, where it may not have much current opportunity, and where opportunity for closer end-market integration remains untapped.

The forces transforming the industry include: tightening supplies, a shift in production regions, globalization, increased raw material efficiency, intensified product consistency, and heightened government regulation. Just as these forces are affected by environmental pressures, they also have environmental impacts of their own.

As population growth and burgeoning economies spur the consumption of forest products, wood supplies are tightening worldwide. While no crisis is imminent, the industry is turning to new regions, especially South America and South Asia, as a source for wood. It is also gradually shifting from a supply based largely on natural forests to one that depends on plantations, many located in the southern hemisphere. Just when environmental restrictions are curtailing wood production in many northern countries, heightened demand elsewhere is causing the industry to expand into delicate ecosystems in the Southern Hemisphere. Meanwhile, the industry is becoming increasingly globalized, with raw materials sourced throughout the world to create products for equally diverse markets.

Shifts in producing regions and globalization are creating new opportunities for value-added industries in the southern hemisphere. Primary and secondary processing industries will follow wood supplies for financial reasons, as timber producing nations try to capture a larger share of the production from forest products. These changes will draw significant investment to the Southern Hemisphere.

Globalization brings improvements in communications, shipping, and distribution that facilitate the transfer of knowledge about state-of-the-art forest management techniques. These same developments make the emergence of an international trade in certified forest products possible. As capital travels to formerly untapped forest reserves, for example those in eastern Russia, the forces unleashed by globalization will exert even greater pressures on forests worldwide in the next twenty years.

Evermore efficient raw material use and increasing product standardization are also contributing to the industry's transformation. Over the past several decades, the industry has created many technological silver bullets that enable it to create more product from less wood.

The industry-wide drive for standardization and consistency is moving down the value chain from final consumer products through to the forest. Instead of emphasizing efforts to use individual species such as oak and cherry, resources are now allocated to figure out how to make a vanilla feedstock such as rubber wood look and perform like oak or cherry. Eventually, this trend will lead to more investment in processing assets that can guarantee consistency, and a movement toward either tree plantations or homogenization during primary and secondary processing.

Environmental forces have flexed their political and market muscles, placing the forest products industry under intensifying public scrutiny and government regulation of its environmental performance. New regulations and market initiatives are curtailing access to government controlled forest resources, and influencing the management of private forests. While a number of international agreements designed to improve forest practices might eventually affect the industry, few now have the teeth to do so.

In the past five years "certification" has emerged as a nongovernmental initiative that may further transform the way the industry manages its forests. Certified forest products are defining the market for wood products grown in an environmentally sound fashion. While the full impact of certification is still unknown, if it focuses the concerns of consumers and purchasers on the quality of the forest from which a product is harvested, and if certification is widely adopted, it could dramatically improve forest management and change markets.

How the business and environmental forces affect the paper, panels, and sawnwood segments of the industry will determine, in large measure, the future of sustainable forest products. The paper industry, with its massive capital investments, huge pollution abatement costs, extreme business cycles, and susceptibility to buyer power, has long been beleaguered. The paper industry's recent shift to greater use of recycled paper demonstrates both its vulnerability to outside pressures and its ability to adapt rapidly to a new business environment.

Panels and engineered wood products may be a model for the future. Products in this segment, capitalizing on rapid-fire technological advances, are among the fastest growing in the industry. From an environmental perspective, these products' ability to use a variety of woods now makes them more attractive than plywood, the once dominant panel product. On the other hand, certified panel products will be much tougher to bring to market because it is so difficult to ensure that all the woods used in them come from sustainably managed forests.

Sawnwood products draw most of the attention from the certification community. The sawnwood segment is more fragmented, less capital intensive and adds relatively less value to its products than paper or panels. Sawnwood companies in temperate regions that produce hardwood will have opportunities to sell to markets opened up by a new resistance to tropical hardwoods. The forest management practices of softwood producers, however, are under heavy scrutiny, and they will find fewer opportunities to leverage superior forest management. Although tropical countries are under enormous international pressure to improve their forest management practices, most of the internal and Pacific Rim markets they serve, so far, remain relatively uninterested in the environmental qualities of forest products. Niche opportunities, though, are available in Europe to tropical producers that can produce certified forest products.

In the future, the successful forest products company will understand and embrace the forces that are transforming the industry. Environmental trends are at the leading edge of these changes, and will be instrumental in determining the industry's winners and losers. Companies that understand the role of the environment will profit by doing so: Those that underestimate the force of environmental issues will do so at their peril.

Book Description

Deposity velocity is the best measure of how fast money is being spent in the economy. In addition to presenting a statistical analysis of methods for measuring deposit velocity and its function in the economy, this book considers such topics as cash balances, liquidity needs, and the flow of check payments.

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Deposit Velocity and its Significance
George Garvy
Manufacturer: Greenwood Press Reprint
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OTLYHA

Customer Reviews:

Great resource book for a small law office.......2001-07-19

I use the book every day to help remind myself of word processing, legal document production and regular correspondence rules. I occassionally use the dictionary for new ideas in my correspondence and in stylizing documents. I highly recommend this book for the small office regardless to type of practice--it is resourceful. The appendixes, charts and chapters are designed with the secretary, legal assistant and/or professional in mind. One should also buy the companion series of Ms. DeVries' collection of resource materials for office management.

Professional Secretary's Encyclopedic Dictionary

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Professional Secretary's Encyclopedic Dictionary
Mary A. DeVries
Manufacturer: Prentice Hall
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000V8WCMK

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Professional Secretary's Encyclopedic Dictionary
Mary A. Prentice-Hall Staff; De Vries
Manufacturer: Prentice Hall PTR
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000KPW3A0

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Professional Secretary's Encyclopedic Dictionary
Prentice-Hall Mary A. de Vries
Manufacturer: Prentice Hall
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OIVAW0

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Professional Secretary's Encyclopedic Dictionary
Mary A. De Vries
Manufacturer: Prentice Hall
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OHYH4O

Professional Secretary's Encyclopedic Dictionary. Fifth Edition.

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Professional Secretary's Encyclopedic Dictionary. Fifth Edition.
Mary A. DeVries
Manufacturer: see notes for publisher info
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000M45NPQ

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Professional Secretary's Encyclopedic Dictionary. Fifth Edition.

Manufacturer: 0
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000ICDOR6

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A wonderful primer on starting a business with contact information for locating startup funds if necessary.

How to Start a Business in Virginia
Entrepreneur Press
Manufacturer: Entrepreneur Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
Entrepreneurship | Small Business & Entrepreneurship | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
General | Small Business & Entrepreneurship | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
New Business Enterprises | Small Business & Entrepreneurship | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
Similar Items:

Entrepreneur's Notebook: Practical Advice for Starting a New Business Venture

What No One Ever Tells You about Starting Your Own Business: Real-Life Start-Up Advice from 101 Successful Entrepreneurs (What No One Ever Tells You About Starting Your Own Business)

The McGraw-Hill Guide to Starting Your Own Business : A Step-By-Step Blueprint for the First-Time Entrepreneur

Start Your Own Business (4th Ed.) (Start Your Own)

ASIN: 1932156437

Book Description

This series covers the federal, state, and local regulations imposed on small businesses, with concise, friendly and up-to-the-minute advice on each critical step of starting your own business.

Customer Reviews:

A wonderful primer on starting a business with contact information for locating startup funds if necessary........2006-12-18

This is a valuable book (resource) for budding entrepreneurs. It seems to try to cover all the bases for starting a small business, but it can't do them all well in the space available between its covers. The book is only 288 pages long. If you are in the planning stages of starting a small business, then I highly recommend you get a copy of this book. Read it, study it, and outline it. There are helpful checklists to help you grasp the subjects. You will come up with a plethora of keywords and terms that you will want to google to find Web pages giving more detailed (and maybe more current) information.

I am a SCORE counselor (Senior Corps of Retired Executives) who typically does face-to-face counseling sessions three nights a month. It would really be neat if my clients would read this book BEFORE they came to their session with me because they would pretty much be "educated customers" ready to ask educated questions. Our sessions would be so much more beneficial.

My favorite chapters were:

1. Initial business concerns
2. Your business' structure
3. Business start-up details
5. Sources of business assistance (SCORE is mentioned here)
7. Your smart business plan (and a good sample plan is included)
8. Obtaining the financing you need

The book is weak when it comes to how the Internet can be used in corresponding, hiring, and marketing. But this is just one example of how googling keywords and concepts found in the book will make the book more complete. Don't treat the book as authoritative on the law. It isn't. Nor was it ever intended to be. It is light on tax information as it relates to small business.

I was particularly impressed with the material presented in Chapter 2: Choice of Legal Entity. That subject is sorely ignored in most small business books, and it is critically important. It is a subject I regularly must spend a great deal of time discussing at my SCORE sessions. This book does a pretty good job on the topic.

Chapters 4 and 9 through 12 are easy to find fault with. The topic of each could fill a book. But having these topics covered definitely will help a budding entrepreneur know some of the issues they raise.

I would have liked the book more if Chapter 6 (marketing) had been less superficial. When I read it I got the impression that the author was more a public relations expert than a marketing expert. I generally categorize public relations as a subset of marketing. Marketing includes advertising, public relations, and a whole host of other promotion techniques. I did not get this message when I read the book. I also would have liked the book better if the Internet, email, and Web sites had been discussed more. But there are many books on those subjects. Therefore, I can't complain too much about the limited discussion of computers.

When you read this book it may feel a little like it was produced on an assembly line. Maybe it was? There are 51 versions of this book sold; one for each state and the District of Columbia. Content is king, and this book has it. 5 stars!

How To Incorporate and Start a Business in Virginia

Average customer rating:

Excellent Book

How To Incorporate and Start a Business in Virginia
J. W. Dicks
Manufacturer: Adams Media Corporation
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Company Profiles | Biography & History | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

General | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Business Law | Reference | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

General | Small Business & Entrepreneurship | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

General | Law | Subjects | Books

Private Law | Law | Subjects | Books

Book Description

Over 30 books covering individual states!

How to Incorporate and Start a Business in... covers every essential topic you need to understand to start a business right. Protect yourself and your business with expert knowledge provided in this book. The easy-to-follow steps and worksheets guide you through every aspect of incorporation and starting your own business. This book discusses in detail:

Selecting an operating entity-which one is best for you? Learn the pros and cons of each type:
Sole proprietorships
Partnership-general and limited
"S" corporations
Limited Liability Companies (LLCs)
Limited Liability Partnerships (LLPs)

The five necessary steps to incorporation-five essential moves you must know and follow:
Choose a name: learn the legal ramifications of this simple step
Prepare the Articles of Incorporation
Write the bylaws
Hold the organizational meeting
Issue the stock

Raising Capital-Avoid costly mistakes and financing pitfalls that leave other business owners behind:
Identify potential investors
Sell stocks, notes, bonds, or convertibles
Borrow money from banks, credit unions, and venture capital firms

Dealing with the law-Legal issues always come up, so be prepared:
Learn how to arm yourself with knowledge
Handle disputes
Tips to keep you out of court

Preparing Contracts and Leases-Learn the tricks of the trade to save you time and money:
Identify the essential elements
Master unique aspects of your business
Negotiate a lease for maximum benefit, minimum risk

Understanding copyrights, trademarks, and patents-How does this apply to you?
Learn how to copyright material
Identify the key elements of a trademark
Navigate the patent process

Mastering your taxes-Save money by following advice outlined in this chapter:
Choose an accounting method
Keep accurate records
Learn what you can deduct, and what you can't

How to Incorporate and Start a Business in... will also each you how to hire the best employees, extend credit to your customer, acquire the proper insurance for your business, and maximize corporate and executive benefits.

Don't be left out in the cold! How to Incorporate and Start a Business in... How to Incorporate and Start a Business in... will guide you past common snares and pitfalls that hamper the efforts of many new business owners. This book contains dozens of profit strategies engineered to maximize your profit and prevent common mistakes. Plus, this book outlines specific laws and procedures you need to be aware of to do business in your state. It's specifically designed for you. How to Incorporate and Start a Business in... is easy to read, informative, and will save your business both time and money. Use its expert advice to get you started and keep you business on the path to success!

Customer Reviews:

Excellent Book.......2003-12-12

I recently opened a business in Virginia and was happy to find this book. It was the only book that talks specificially how to incorporate in Virginia.

J.W. Dicks is an excellent writer, a real entrepneneur and a attorney so he offers a broad and unique background on business, corporations. What works and what doesn't work.

Customer Reviews:

An Excellent Starting Point.......2004-03-29

The book provides practical advice and suggestions. I found the comprehensive check list of all the things that must be considered prior to startup quite useful. Also helpful are the phone numbers and addresses for various MD, VA, and DC government and economic development offices.

The book is a great resource relative to making sure that you don't overlook things that could be critical to your business. For example, I found the section of hiring and firing enlightening relative to potential impact on a new company's unemployment compensation rate. Who would know that the IRS would make your company chargeable for the unemployment claims of an ex-employee who voluntarily leaves for another job and gets fired after a few weeks.

I would highly recommend the book to anyone starting a small business. It is well organized and a quick read. It helps you know what questions to ask and who to ask. It is not intended as an in-depth resource book.

Not worth the money.......2004-03-16

This has good basic business startup information, but about 1% of it is specific to va,dc and md.

How to Start a Business in West Virginia (Smartstart Series (Entrepreneur Press).)

Average customer rating:

A wonderful primer on starting a business with contact information for locating startup funds if necessary.

How to Start a Business in West Virginia (Smartstart Series (Entrepreneur Press).)
Entrepreneur Press
Manufacturer: Entrepreneur Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Entrepreneurship | Small Business & Entrepreneurship | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

New Business Enterprises | Small Business & Entrepreneurship | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 1932156380

Book Description

This series covers the federal, state, and local regulations imposed on small businesses, with concise, friendly and up-to-the-minute advice on each critical step of starting your own business.

Customer Reviews:

A wonderful primer on starting a business with contact information for locating startup funds if necessary........2007-01-02

Starting and Operating a Business in Virginia: A Step-By-Step Guide (How to Start a Business in Virginia)

Average customer rating:

Got wrong item
ABSOLUTELY A "MUST HAVE" BOOK!

Starting and Operating a Business in Virginia: A Step-By-Step Guide (How to Start a Business in Virginia)
Michael D. Jenkins
Manufacturer: Oasis Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

General | Administrative Law | Law | Subjects | Books

Customer Reviews:

Got wrong item.......2005-09-14

I ordered 'Starting and Operating a Business in Virginia' by Jenkins [Hardcover]and got 'Incorporating in Virginia' by W. Dean Brown(Softcover). Bummer...

ABSOLUTELY A "MUST HAVE" BOOK!.......1999-02-12

Great book! If your looking for clear and consice information on starting a business in VA, this is the book to get!!

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