Art Curriculum Activities Kits: Primary Level

Book Description

Entertaining selection of pages from specialty shop’s catalogs includes over 1,000 illustrations of suits, coats, dresses, hats, shoes, neckwear, patterns and fabrics for women’s and children’s apparel, and more. Delightful "windows to the past" for nostalgia buffs; indispensable sourcebook for dating and identifying vintage clothing.

Customer Reviews:

Fantastic.......2007-07-27

Not only does it give you fantastic pictures, it does things like show you all the possible hem lines for a single dress, or describe the undergarments you can't quite see.

It's wonderful!

A great resource!.......2001-02-09

This is one of the books I reach for time and time again. The fashions are stylish but not out of the realm of possibility for the average woman of the time. I also love the narrow, four year time frame--the book really gives you a great overview of the move away from the fussier victorian styles to the more streamlined precusors of the 1920s tunics. I've gotten a lot of ideas for sewing out of this book and the illustrations are charming. Five stars overall!

Book Description

Eisner award-winning writer Kurt Busiek (JLA/Avengers, Astro City), Eisner award-nominated artist Cary Nord (Daredevil), and Eisner award-winning color artist Dave Stewart (Ultimate Fantastic Four, DC: The New Frontier) continue their groundbreaking run on Dark Horse's best-selling Conan series with an adaptation of one of Robert E. Howard's greatest Conan tales, "The Tower of the Elephant"! Fed up with both civilization and mysticism, Conan travels to the infamous City of Thieves to take out his frustrations. When a bar fight uncovers the legend of the impregnable Tower of the Elephant, he becomes determined to rob it, setting out on a quest unlike any he's undertaken - one that will involve new comrades, sudden death, horrifying creatures, and gruesome unsettling fates for both gods and men.

Customer Reviews:

Classic Conan done right!.......2007-09-01

The classic Conan story was only enhanced by the great artists working on this! Well done! CROM SMILES!

Superior to "The Chronicles..." Buy it!.......2007-06-14

I have the first 3 in this series:
The Frost Giant's Daughter And Other Stories, The God In The Bowl And Other Stories and The Tower Of The Elephant And Other Stories.

I find the artwork to be superior to the "Chronicals of Conan", and there is always at least one original Howard tale included in these books. The "Other Stories" stand up very well to the Howard adventures. They are very much in the same spirit and style, and are fitting tributes.
So far all have been extremely enjoyable, and I plan to purchase the rest of them.
I only buy what I like (as opposed to collecting for its own sake), and I like this!!

Great for new readers and old Conan fans alike!

More than great!!.......2007-05-14

This could not be better! The drawings are fantastic! Storyline is very good, great characters. Brutally fantastic! You should have this in your comic collection, it will be worth to have it.

Not the best of the three but still very good.......2007-03-12

I don't think this third volume lives up to the other two. The story is still pretty solid, and for the most part the art is up to par. There's a few pages where the art takes a noticeable decrease in quality though. There's a few really good moments in this book so I still recommend picking it up.

Better than Marvel!.......2006-08-14

I grew up reading the Marvel Comics Conan series, and I loved it, but I think these Dark Horse Comics capture the spirit of Conan even better, and the art work is great!

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Another Great Collection of Stupidity

The 776 Even Stupider Things Ever Said
Ross Petras
Manufacturer: Harper Paperbacks
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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776 Stupidest Things Ever Said

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ASIN: 0060950595

Book Description

For the many readers still laughing from The 776 Stupidest Things Ever Said, here are 776 even stupider quotes overheard around the world.

Customer Reviews:

Another Great Collection of Stupidity.......1999-04-20

Read their first book a few days ago(I've gotten their calendars for a few years) and wanted more. And this was as funny as I hoped. A great collection of mind-boggingly stupid quotes from the famous -- sports stars, politicians, movie stars etc.

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THE 776 EVEN STUPIDER THINGS EVER SAID
Ross and Kathryn Petras
Manufacturer: Harper Paperbacks
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OEX6DK

Product Description

THE LONG RIDE HOME is the intriguing story of a Minneapolis soul singer doing his best to thrive in clubland. This eye opening book is penned by one of the most recognizable voices in the Twin Cities music scene, Mick Sterling, and is filled with moments of insight, surprising tenderness, dry humor and confessions from a singer who's played thousands of gigs in everything from smoky bars to huge outdoor festivals. THE LONG RIDE HOME is an introspective for everyone who enjoys live music featuring interviews from the most recognizable Twin Cities music icons. You'll never watch a band on stage in quite the same way again.

Customer Reviews:

The true-life story of a Minneapolis soul singer making his living in gigs.......2006-01-11

The Long Ride Home is the true-life story of a Minneapolis soul singer making his living in gigs from smoke-filled bars to Twin Cities clubs to gigantic outdoors festivals. Author Mick Sterling tells in his own words of the balancing act to keep a working band together while raising a family, and describes how he created the Heart & Soul fundraising effort to send hundreds of thousands of dollars to help children living with HIV/AIDS. Interviews with Twin Cities who's who of music such as Lori Barbero of Babes in Toyland, Pat Hayes of Lamont Cranston Band, songwriter Kevin Bowe, drum legend Bobby Vandell, and more round out this "must-have" straight-talk tale of a life steeped in music.

Down from the pedastal - in a good way . . ........2005-09-04

Mick Sterling wrote his first book to demystify the life of the professional musician. Mick - a grown up who has a family and a lot of personal character -- brings us a collection of stories and observations about family, the music industry, and making a living making music in a mid-sized town. He purposefully takes himself down from the pedestal of sexy singer (which he is) to show us how he is a man with a real job (which he is): he is a band manager, a business man, a guy who gets on stage with a smile and energy even when he doesn't feel like it -- because he loves his job! Mick is a man who self-admittedly sees the glass as half full (of water, not Jack Daniels), and his character clearly shows through in his authentic, conversational-style writing. This is a straight-forward, unpretentious glimpse into the life of someone making a living at music. Read it and you will never see your favorite bands in the same way; they will undoubtedly become as three-dimensional as Mick has become to all his readers. And btw - Mick, can you autograph my spleen?

Customer Reviews:

Good For Beginners.......2003-03-26

This book starts with the basics of gambling on Thoroughbreds and goes to mostly money management issues and strictly mechanical systems based upon final betting odds. Very outdated.

Good beggining material.......2003-01-26

This book written by expeirienced handicapper Robert Rowe is good starting material for the begginer. It explains all the basics the wagers the odds and so on. But when I happened upon this book a year or so ago I already had been handicapping sussesfully for 4 or so years. So I'll assign 2 ratings for the begginer this is 5 stars for the intermediate level 3 stars. And if your advanced don't bother.

Very useful statistical data relative to betting horses.......1998-11-27

I'm familiar with Bob Rowe's work from American Turf, Racing Star Weekly and other publications. He's a good writer and knows racing as evinced by his latest and best book How To Win At THOROUGHBRED Racing. The current tome, How to Win At Horse Racing, contains much useful information but seems to me as if an editor was over zealous, and should have left Rowe's original words as submitted. Nonetheless, this doesn't distract from the essence of the information provided. Rowe has been writing about racing since I was 17. I'm 67 now. He obviously knows which end kicks and which end bites.

How To Win At Claiming Races (Professional Handicapping)

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How To Win At Claiming Races (Professional Handicapping)
Dick Mitchell
Manufacturer: Cynthia Pub.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000N661GS

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The definitive book on performance measurement

Organizational Measurement is Hard

Best single book on managing engineers

Does Management Work?

A simplified bare-bones model of how a managed organization works

Measuring and Managing Performance in Organizations
Robert D. Austin
Manufacturer: Dorset House Publishing Company, Incorporated
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams

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ASIN: 0932633366

Book Description

Here's an essential reference for all managers facing the multitude of issues involved in any measurement program. Developed from an award-winning doctoral thesis at Carnegie Mellon University, this is a lucid, captivating analysis of organizational performance measurement.

Author Robert D. Austin emphasizes the behavioral aspects of measurement situations. The focus is on people and how they react when they are part of organizational systems that are being measured.

Interviews enrich the text, conducted with eight recognized experts in the use of measurement to manage computer software development: David N. Card, of Software Productivity Solutions; Tom DeMarco, of the Atlantic Systems Guild; Capers Jones, of Software Productivity Research; John Musa, of AT&T Bell Laboratories; Daniel J. Paulish, of Siemens Corporate Research; Lawrence H. Putnam, of Quantitative Software Management; E. O. Tilford, Sr., of Fissure; plus the anonymous Expert X.

A practical model for analyzing measurement projects solidifies the text -- don't start without it!

From the Foreword
". . . admirable . . . We believe this is a book that needs to be on the desk of just about anyone who manages anything." -- Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister

From the Preface
"Some books on measurement so strongly advocate its use that they look almost exclusively at success stories. They profess to tell you how to get it right but they supply little or no detail about the consequences or likelihood of getting it wrong. Partly this is because stories of management failures are harder to find than accounts of successes, for obvious reasons: People like to claim credit for successes and forget failures. But you can learn a lot from failure. So I've worked to find examples of failure and devoted a significant portion of this book to examining the examples in search of a common pattern. . . . Understanding the pattern of failure can help us avoid it." -- RDA

Customer Reviews:

The definitive book on performance measurement.......2007-08-28

This is an excellent book on performance measurement. Very short, simple and easy to follow. The concept of critical dimensions and its effect on disfunctional measurement it's well worth the read. By the way, one may also want to check the famous paper "On the folly of rewarding A, while hoping for B" by Steven Kerr.

Organizational Measurement is Hard.......2007-07-25

This book is filled with both humorous and chilling examples of measurement dysfunction that make the sometimes academic approach quite palatable. Dr. Austin identifies three different types of performance measurement based on the intent of the measurement - measurement for motivation, process improvement, or process coordination. It is measurement for motivation that causes the dysfunction that this book so convincingly describes.

For example, if we record the fact that 10 widgets are produced on machine A and we are comparing this against the 10 widget benchmark for bonuses, it is very likely that other perspectives like quality will suffer in the drive to make the 10 widget goal. Austin makes the point that the discovery that every time our overall performance is excellent we have produced 10 widgets does not imply that producing 10 widgets will guarantee excellent overall performance.

If we record the fact that 10 widgets are produced on machine A while only eight widgets are produced in the same time using competing technology on machine B, this is measurement for process improvement and can be very useful - provided it is limited in scope and used purely for the stated purpose.

If we record the fact that 10 widgets are produced on machine A and convey this information to the widget packaging department to ensure that enough widget cases are ready, this is measurement for process coordination, and is also potentially useful on its own.

The idea that the intent or goal of the measurement is of paramount importance is one important lesson from this book.

Austin does make some recommendations about developing effective performance measurement systems.

Understanding the costs involved with "perfect" measurements is part of the solution. Substituting a cheaper approximation for a key measurement is bound to cause problems - witness the measurement of nitrogen instead of protein in wheat gluten used in pet food. The incorrect justification for cheaper approaches is a thread surfaces in other areas - reusing financial figures as a proxy for management accounting leads to flawed descision-making emphasizing short term financial gain - reuse of software components leads to products that are hard to use.

One effective technique is using the end customer as the ultimate judge of quality and performance - the kind of approach described 10 years later in Fred Reichheld's The Ultimate Question: Driving Good Profits and True Growth

Best single book on managing engineers.......2007-04-09

Managing engineers is very challenging; measuring their performance is even harder. This book offers a fantastic review of leading research on the subject and establishes a strong case for delegatory techniques. It's a quick read but much more academically rigorous than similar management guides.

Does Management Work?.......2007-01-28

A principal of a company once told me that the primary job of a manager is to get the employee to do what the manager wants him to do. From there to effective management in real life comes a lot of confusion.

Robert Austin sorts it all out with a suprisingly simple model, and a strong does of honesty. Managers and workers -- participants in the serious game of work in organzations -- put aside illusions and read this book. And anyone who thought they were helping by designing a measurement program, pay attention too.

Measurement and management can work, but only if you know what you're doing.

A simplified bare-bones model of how a managed organization works.......2006-12-22

Robert Austin presents an idealized model of a managed organization. Instead of looking at an organization made up of thousands of employees and a few hundred managers arranged in a hierarchy, Austin's model consists of three participants: a principal, i.e. a manager, and an agent, i.e. an employee, and finally a customer who buys the goods or services provided by the agent under the supervision of the principal.

He also assumes that an agent's job consists of two activities and the customer is happy if the agent performs well in both. Austin looks at the cases where the principal can monitor neither of the two activities, where she can monitor only one of the two activities, or where she can monitor both activities. According to the model the agent will behave differently in all three cases.

If the principal cannot (or will not) measure either activity, then we have delegated management, if she can measure both activities, then we have a fully supervised model, and if she can measure only one of two activities, we have a dysfunctional model.

When delegating management, the assumption is that agents want to work well, that they are not deriving maximum satisfaction by exerting the least amount of effort.

When supervising, the principal evaluates overall performance by measuring certain aspects of the agent's activity. Austin's conclusion is that measuring performance won't work unless you can measure everything employees should be doing (i.e. full supervision). Incomplete measurement is not only useless, it is dangerous since it motivates agents to make efforts only for what is measured.

For example, if a help desk line measures performance by the number of calls an employee takes, then employees are motivated to spend very little time per call. The customer is left dissatisfied, but the measurements show that the agent is providing first class results. Austin calls this situation dysfunctional.

Throughout the book, Austin emphasizes dysfunction to the point where it seems he dismisses any and all attempts at measurement, but to quote Austin, the central message of the book is that "organizational measurement is hard". It's not impossible.

He suggests one method, probabilistic measurement, to mitigate dysfunction. For instance, if dysfunction comes from being unable to measure everything an agent does, e.g. you just can't have your supervisors listen to all help desk calls, the principal can carry out random samplings of performance, e.g. you can record all the calls and listen to a random selection of them each day. The agent will then expend effort along those dimensions that cannot be completely measured simply because he knows they might be.

All in all, an effectively simplified model of organizations sure to spark healthy and constructive debate.

Vincent Poirier, Dublin

Managing by Measuring: How to Improve Your Organizations's Performance Through Effective Benchmarking

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Managing by Measuring: How to Improve Your Organizations's Performance Through Effective Benchmarking
Mark T. Czarnecki
Manufacturer: AMACOM
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0814403905

Book Description

MANAGING BY MEASURING How to Improve Your Organization's Performance Through Effective Benchmarking As information systems managers search for ways to improve their operations, they're discovering that traditional "shot-gun" approaches to benchmarking are too broad and too vague. Now, Managing by Measuring breaks out of the generalist mold to supply targeted information on how to identify best practices specifically in information systems organizations. The book includes: ** an overview of benchmarking and how it can help the information systems specialist ** step-by-step guidelines on conducting a benchmarking study, including how to perform research, analyze raw data, and isolate best practices ** tips for managing the process, including how to develop a mission statement, select a team, and prioritize activities ** a practical benchmarking demonstration, including detailed instructions and ready-to-go forms. In addition, the book supplies real-life case studies of information systems organizations that have successfully used benchmarking techniques, and key results of an original study conducted by The Benchmarking Network. MARK T. CZARNECKI (Houston, TX) is president of The Benchmarking Network, Inc. and has conducted major industry studies in the areas of accounting, finance, health care, purchasing, warehousing, and more.

BOOK REVIEW.(Review): An article from: Journal of Supply Chain Management

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BOOK REVIEW.(Review): An article from: Journal of Supply Chain Management
Linda L. Stanley
Manufacturer: National Association of Purchasing Management, Inc.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital

General | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Book Description

This digital document is an article from Journal of Supply Chain Management, published by National Association of Purchasing Management, Inc. on March 22, 2000. The length of the article is 685 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: BOOK REVIEW.(Review)
Author: Linda L. Stanley
Publication: Journal of Supply Chain Management (Refereed)
Date: March 22, 2000
Publisher: National Association of Purchasing Management, Inc.
Volume: 36 Issue: 2 Page: 70

Article Type: Book Review

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Managing by Measuring, How to Improve Your Organization's Performance Through Effective Benchmarking.(Review) (book review): An article from: Information Management Journal

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Managing by Measuring, How to Improve Your Organization's Performance Through Effective Benchmarking.(Review) (book review): An article from: Information Management Journal
Kurt Thies
Manufacturer: Association of Records Managers & Administrators (ARMA)
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital

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Book Description

This digital document is an article from Information Management Journal, published by Association of Records Managers & Administrators (ARMA) on October 1, 2000. The length of the article is 477 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: Managing by Measuring, How to Improve Your Organization's Performance Through Effective Benchmarking.(Review) (book review)
Author: Kurt Thies
Publication: Information Management Journal (Refereed)
Date: October 1, 2000
Publisher: Association of Records Managers & Administrators (ARMA)
Volume: 34 Issue: 4 Page: 56

Article Type: Book Review

Distributed by Thomson Gale

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