Book Description
In the early 1970's, the Federal Government undertook to investigate corruption penetrating the entire criminal justice system in New York, particularly the Special Investigating Unit (SIU) of the narcotics division of the New York Police Department. Young and enthusiastic detective Robert Leuci was chosen by federal prosecutors Rudolph Guliani, Maurice Nadjari, and Tom Puccio to probe this world of corruption as an undercover agent. Leuci had enjoyed a swift rise from patrolman to the rank of detective. He knew Frank Serpico and while he was sympathetic with Serpico he felt the corruption filtered down. The police were at the bottom of this food chain.
This is the true story. Leuci helped put together corruption cases against lawyers, bail bondsmen, mob figures and some of his own. Leuci seemed perfectly suited to his special job. His cover was deep with only the Police Commissioner aware of his dual role. As team leader within the SIU, Leuci had access to all of the players in criminal justice from judges down. He walked a tightrope that made his life a nightmare. His life was in jeopardy from both sides.
"If Prince of the City is any good, and I hope it is, this is because during the weeks and months of our interviews, I had the wit to keep silent and let Detective Robert Leuci talk. Having witnessed so much bizarre, comic, tragic, complicated human conduct on the streets of New Yoark, having observed and remembered every detail, his stories were more vivid and emotional than I had expected," said Robert Daley. Daley has captured Leuci's story and laid bare the contradictions in the criminal justice system.
In a world where conflicting pressures are excruciating, who should indeed bear the burden of being right when so much of the system is wrong.
Customer Reviews:
The dramatic true story of Detective Robert Leuci.......2006-01-07
Prince Of The City: The True Story Of A Cop Who Knew Too Much is the dramatic true story of Detective Robert Leuci, a deep cover sleuth who assembled corruption cases against lawyers, bail bondsmen, mob figures, and even some of his own, putting his own life in peril for the sake of law and justice. Written in the style of a novel, Prince Of The City offers an unflinchingly honest portrait of the rigors of policework, the toll it can take, and the horrors it encounters all too often. An introduction by Rudolph Giuliani rounds out this mesmerizing chronicle of courage and duty.
Average customer rating:
- It Was a Wonderful Life
- Schaap's warm stories will interest and Sports fanatic
- To be frank, it's a little....sad.
- a Man on top of the Game!
- A Fitting Finale for a Good Man...
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Flashing Before My Eyes: 50 Years of Headlines, Deadlines & Punchlines
Dick Schaap
Manufacturer: William Morrow
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For One More Day
ASIN: 0380975122
Release Date: 2001-01-09 |
Amazon.com
Dick Schaap, it seems, knows everyone. He would easily win at Six Degrees of Separation. Heck, he would win at Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. As a matter of fact, he probably golfs with Kevin Bacon. I wouldn't be surprised, since Schaap has golfed with Bill Clinton and played doubles tennis against Johnny Carson, and he regularly dines with Billy Crystal. Oh, and Muhammad Ali is one of his oldest friends. But Schaap is also a guy who remembers his teammates on the Freeport Barons (winners of the New York State Kiwanis League Championship '49 and '50) in fond and humorous detail. It is his true love for and fascination with people that make Flashing Before My Eyes such a delight to read.
Born in Brooklyn, Schaap was a smart kid with an outsized love for the Dodgers. By the age of 15 he was a sports reporter for the Nassau Daily Review-Star, where he worked under 20-year-old Jimmy Breslin, who became a lifelong friend. From there Schaap moved on to Cornell University and then to Newsweek, where he learned to write "short and tight. The end of the world? Give me eight hundred words. The end of the World Series. Maybe five hundred." With more than 50 years in journalism, over 30 books to his name, and five Emmys, there's no debating that Schaap is a storyteller extraordinaire. Page after page of Flashing Before My Eyes rolls by as you snort and chortle at Schaap's stories (and sometimes Schaap himself; he doesn't spare the pen), but then he slides in a moment that makes you tear up. Mitch Albom, who wrote the introduction, says of Schaap, "His cross-referencing would put Microsoft Access to shame. You can say to Dick, 'Pass the ketchup,' and he will reply, 'Did I ever tell you about Bobby 'Catch-Up' Johnson, the one-legged soccer player I met in Belgium?'" Schaap on sports, Schaap on comedy, Schaap on politics--these we've enjoyed for years. Now relish Schaap on Schaap. --Dana Van Nest
Book Description
Muhammad Ali stretched out on a brown couch, a towel across his waist, while an air conditioner fired cool air across his body. It was a scorching Manila morning, and in thirty minutes Ali would go to war with Joe Frazier for the third and final time. Ali yawned and stared at the ceiling of his dressing room. "Just another day's work," he said. "Just gotta go beat on another man." The reporter did what a reporter is supposed to do. He listened and wrote down Ali's words.
And so began just another day's work for Dick Schaap, who in the past half-century has carved out his own legend, not with his fists but with his reportorial verve, his indefatigable curiosity, and his irrepressible wit. Now, in Flashing Before My Eyes, the longtime ABC correspondent and host of ESPN"s The Sports Reporters recounts a charmed career in which he has met almost everyone and seen almost everything. He has played golf with Bill Clinton, tennis with Bobby Fischer, cards with Wilt Chamberlain. He has written books with Joe Namath and Joe Montana. He has taken Brigitte Bardot to dinner and Lenny Bruce to a World Series. He saw the Baltimore Colts beat the New York Giants in sudden-death overtime, and the Green Bay Packers beat the Dallas Cowboys in the Ice Bowl. He saw Bill Mazeroski end a World Series with a home run, and Willis Reed lift the New York Knicks to an NBA title. He has covered murders and riots, presidential campaigns and Broadway openings. He introduced Muhammad Ali to Billy Crystal, and Billy Crystal to Joe DiMaggio. He walks with sluggers and senators, cops and comedians, authors and actresses, and he shares the sights he sees and the words he hears in stories that make you laugh and cry.
With an introduction by Tuesdays with Morrie author Mitch Albom, Schaap's memoir gives the reader the ultimate highlight reel of the last fifty years and makes a compelling case that if Dick Schaap wasn't there to see it, it didn't happen.
Customer Reviews:
It Was a Wonderful Life.......2005-03-24
Few sportswriters led a more interesting life than Dick Schaap. His was a Forrest Gump type of existence -- they guy witnessed every notable moment in sports over the past four decades. It's just too bad Schaap died before his time. At any rate, he does a compelling job of chronicling his life in this book. I couldn't put it down.
Schaap's warm stories will interest and Sports fanatic.......2003-12-02
After a half century of listening and telling, Dick Schaap finally tells his own story in this long overdue memoir of a legendary journalist. He has wined and dined with some of America's most revered icons, both on and off the record, and the amount of stories he has to tell rivals a bible-preaching minister minister.
This 300 page auto-biography is a vast collection of stories told by Schaap, who thanks to his unbelievable amount of friends probably drops more names then the Hollywood walk of fame and the basketball, football and baseball hall of fames combined.
His status as one of the most distinguished and respected journalists of the 20th century represent his true versatility in print and television journalism and after all his stories of running the town with Muhammad Ali, drinking with Billy Crystal, smoking a joint with Joe Namath, playing tennis with Johnny Carson and talking women with Wilt Chamberlain, Schaap finally tells his own story in this warm and intimate memoir
In 50 years of journalism, Schaap has worked for ESPN covering sports, ABC where he was a sports correspondent, a theater critic for "World Wide News Now" and reported human interest and political stories for "20/20," was the author of more than 30 books, including 2 New York Times Bestsellers and has won six Emmys for his work in television. Schaap is the only man to vote for both the Tony Awards, which recognizes achievement in performing theatres, and the Heisman Trophy, which recognizes the best player in college football.
Schaap takes the reader through his childhood first at his birthplace in the flat bush section of Brooklyn in 1934 and where he spent the majority of his adolescence in Freeport, Long Island, which Schaap described as a "blue collar clam digger's town." He described his early affinity for sports and how he bleed Brooklyn Dodger blue. At the age of 15 Schaap was hired at the local paper to cover local sports, adding that he was very overpaid and often opened the paper in excitement and closed it in embarrassment.
A child prodigy in the field of sports journalism, Schaap also excelled in his academics and attended Cornell University at the age of 17. While Schaap admits the early start in the job market accelerated his career, it also left him socially inept and extremely shy, which contributed to "many failed relationships and 2 bitter divorces." Schaap went on to study at Colombia University eventually became the editor of Sport upon receiving his master's degree. His knowledge of how to use the English language to depict a story or scene continued to serve him well as he worked for several prominent New York newspapers including the New York Herald Tribune and Newsweek magazine.
Schaap was also one of the pioneers in ushering a new era of journalism style, which Schaap described as new journalism, using emotion and vocabulary to tell a story rather then concentrating on its news value.
This book would appeal to anyone with a faint interest in sports and entertainment. Reading "Flashing Before My Eyes: 50 Years of headlines, Deadlines & Punchlines" is like sitting by a fireplace or having a drink at a local tavern and hearing old stories about American heroes from the 50's to the present. A true behind the scenes account of American pop culture, this book will enlighten those with an interest in 20th century America and will serve as the basis of how to tell a good story.
The memoir is not told in chronological order, which at times is confusing to keep track of but at the same time holds true to Schaap's fireside chat style of writing. While Schaap briefly talks of his marriage problems, he certainly does not give them the attention that he does to his tales of shooting the breeze with many of America's most famous athletes, political figures and celebrities. This book can seem very loosely put together, but the reader must take into context Schaap's health problems while writing this book. It is clear he wanted to tell his story before his time ran out. Sadly, Schaap finished just in time, as he died 6 months after the publication date from complications of hip replacement surgery.
Dick Schaap was one of the best writers sports journalism has ever had and more importantly its best listener. The exact opposite of Howard Cosell, (Schaap discusses his feelings on the broadcaster in one chapter, in both a positive and negative light) Dick Schaap always felt that the story was important then him, something nearly lost in today's world of self-promotion where sports journalists are now known as sports personalities and make their living on their opinions instead of utilizing prose to explain a story.
Through the profession of journalism, Schaap has made more acquaintances and friends then most people can dream of. Most of his patrons were famous, some where not, but what makes everyone want to talk to Schaap is his ability to listen and interpret one's story.
To be frank, it's a little....sad........2002-12-07
Schapp indulged in a journalist's dream for much of his life: He worked primarily in the 1950-1980 era, when celebrities of all types still mixed and mingled. He wrote words on Namath, Ali, Pynchon and Lenny Bruce. He fell into one fabulous situation after another, was enormously successful everywhere he journied, probably had more good dinners than anyone we'll ever know, talked more, laughed more, smoked more and dranked more. He consumed news and life in amazing proportions. It leaves you a little jealous.
And yet, his memoir is a mess. Calling upon himself to make sense of his long career, Schapp struggles to do much more than serve up anecdote after anecdote. Some of them follow logical order; some do not. The title is appropriate; the book is a flash. You glimpse into auras of many impressive names. A shame that these glimpses rarely go much deeper.
The format of ESPN's The Sports Reporters television program transformed Schapp into a quipmaker. He's objective enough and not particularly redundant or cliched -- often the largest weakness of most sportswriters. But too many scenes are wrapped in too pretty of bows. In that sense, the book is repetitive: Schapp pens a scene, wraps it up, pens a scene, wraps it up, as if to say, "Item!...ah...so! Item!...ah...so!" It makes you consider the speed of the man's life, the flash, if you will, which blinds one from reflection. That Schapp died so suddenly is in step with the bulk of his life, but it's sad that he never got the time to appreciate what he'd experienced, and maybe write a wiser memoir.
Schapp left us with stories, but no real message.
a Man on top of the Game!.......2002-05-07
Dick Schaap was a Guy who knew His Sports&also knew how to bring Sports&the Real World together as one.He had such a classy way of presenting Athletes&things going on around them&the World.this is a Book that highlights a true Winner.RIP.
A Fitting Finale for a Good Man..........2002-03-03
Want to eavesdrop on some of the most fascinating figures of sports, politics, journalism, and theatre? Well bunky, you probably can't. But go ahead and read Schaap's final book (sadly, he passed away recently), and you can experience the next best thing to being there.
A gifted writer, and by all accounts an even better human being, Schaap will be missed. Sorely missed. Thank you sir for making the world a bit nicer.
Average customer rating:
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British Film Studios: An Illustrated History
Patricia Warren
Manufacturer: Batsford
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 0713486449 |
Book Description
Ninety studios, 200 film stills, and countless fascinating facts are all in this A-to-Z compendium of movies made at British studios, from the silent days to the present. Featuring an in-depth cross-reference, the guide also covers the role of the directors, producers and stars.
Average customer rating:
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Musical Articles From The Encyclopaedia Britannica. (Music Book Index)
Sir Donald Francis Tovey
Manufacturer: Reprint Services Corp
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Library Binding
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ASIN: 0781292328 |
Customer Reviews:
generally a good set of not so easy problems.......2007-05-16
I liked the style of the book, an "over the shoulder" explanation of the authors reasoning while defending 60 hands, some of which are advanced.
The reader is asked to visualize the unseen hands, and must frequently reject the obvious play upon closer examination. At the end of the problem the author discusses the theme and may show anotehr example.
My main gripe is it was difficult to follow the card play. I would have gotten a lot more out of the book had the card play been easy to follow.
Also, a few of the hands I did not care for, but most were good.
The book is worth reading, but first I'd read all the Eddie Kantar books on Play and defense (Kantar for the Defense 1,2, A new appraoch to Play and Defense 1,2, Test your Bridge Play 1,2)
I like the style.......2006-12-09
Good thought provoking problems.
Not just the simple stuff (2nd hand low, 3rd hand high).
Pottage gets you thinking about taking partner off endplays, and what declarer might hold.
This might be hard for average players who are not used to thinking in this depth. The problems aren't super hard either. They are just right.
Amazon.com
Recall the old saying about all work and no play making Jack a dull boy? World-class companies today need play--serious play--if they want to make truly innovative products, argues Michael Schrage, an MIT Media Lab fellow and Fortune magazine columnist. In Serious Play he writes, "When talented innovators innovate, you don't listen to the specs they quote. You look at the models they've created." Whether it's a spreadsheet that tests a new financial model or a foam prototype of a calculator, what interests Schrage is not the model itself, but the behavior that play--be it modeling, prototyping, or simulation--inspires.
Schrage examines the approaches to successful prototyping at companies such as AT&T, Boeing, Microsoft, and DaimlerChrysler and describes the kind of culture that's needed for encouraging innovation. In the last chapter, he lays out the 10 rules of serious play, including: Be willing to fail early and often; know when the costs outweigh the benefits; know who wins and who loses from an innovation; build a prototype that engages customers, vendors, and colleagues; create markets around prototypes; and simulate the customer experience. Well-written and inspiring, Serious Play, is a first-rate user's guide for managers, project leaders, and other innovators. --Dan Ring
Book Description
Serious Play is about serious work: how the world's leading companies model, prototype, and simulate to innovate. Increasingly, prototypes are the key platforms and models are the core media for managing risk and creating value. They allow for cost-effective creativity, encourage profitable improvisation, and inspire organizations to collaborate in unexpected ways.
Serious Play is a crisply written handbook for product, process and project leaders who are determined to manage their innovation initiatives successfully.
As digital technologies for modeling and simulation offer more value for less money, they provoke fundamental challenges to organizational culture and design. MIT research associate Michael Schrage asserts that conventional wisdom surrounding innovation gets turned inside out: What innovative companies choose not to model often proves more important than what they do. Contrary to the popular assumption that innovative teams generate innovative prototypes, in fact innovative prototypes generate innovative teams. How innovators play with their models and simulations invariably matters far more than what they actually plan. In fact, Schrage shows why innovative firms cannot seriously plan unless they seriously play.
Drawing upon a range of companies as diverse as Walt Disney, Boeing, Merrill Lynch, General Electric, IBM, IDEO, Microsoft, Royal Dutch Shell, DaimlerChrysler and American Airlines, Schrage identifies the common patterns and practices that distinguish productive prototyping cultures from pathological ones. He explores the intimate connection between how leading innovators model reality and how they actually manage it. He examines prototyping failures as rigorously as he explains prototyping successes.
The essential message of
Serious Play is that tomorrow's innovations will increasingly be the byproduct of how companies and their customers behave-and misbehave-around this new generation of models, prototypes, and simulations. The distinction between serious play and serious work dissolves as technology gives innovators ever-increasing opportunities to simulate and prototype their ideas. As the media for modeling radically change, so will the organizations that use them.
With real-world examples and engaging anecdotes, Schrage argues that the future of prototyping is the future of innovation. A User's Guide included in the book helps readers quickly take away the innovation practices profiled throughout. A landmark book by one of the most perceptive voices in the field of innovation,
Serious Play will lay serious claim to the hearts and minds of forward-looking business managers.
Download Description
Successful innovation demands more than a good strategic plan; it requires creative improvisation. Much of the "serious play" that leads to breakthrough innovations is increasingly linked to experiments with models, prototypes, and simulations. As digital technology makes prototyping more cost-effective, serious play will soon lie at the heart of all innovation strategies, influencing how businesses define themselves and their markets. Author Michael Schrage is one of today's most widely recognized experts on the relationship between technology and work. In Serious Play, Schrage argues that the real value in building models comes less from the help they offer with troubleshooting and problem solving than from the insights they reveal about the organization itself. Technological models can actually change us--improving the way we communicate, collaborate, learn, and innovate. With real-world examples and engaging anecdotes, Schrage shows how companies such as Disney, Microsoft, Boeing, IDEO, and DaimlerChrysler use serious play with modeling technologies to facilitate the collaborative interactions that lead to innovation. A user's guide included with the book helps readers apply many of the innovation practices profiled throughout. A landmark book by one of the most perceptive voices in the field of innovation.
Customer Reviews:
Readable User-Friendly Book on Innovation.......2005-04-30
I am enjoying this book. I like the title "Serious Play", but I dislike the sub-title "How the World's Best Companies Simulate to Innovate". Companies don't innovate people do is my thought. I think the author could have taken this concept one step further. That is tie in the concepts of how innovation relates to chaos theory and fractals and larger concepts. The author's ideas are not that new to me because I am a project manager in a software engineering environment where prototyping and iterations is the name of the game. We have at most 3 months to make a difference, to deliver and then we are swept into the ocean of change. You have a small window of opportunity before both the game and the players change.
I think that the world may be on the verge of moving so fast that we begin to see things like the wiki, open source culture in that it takes all of us innovating collectively in serious play. Long term I wonder if you are not free, workable and now, you are not in the game.
Some concepts for me are:
1) Importance of being able to improvise in the moment
2) Prototyping both reveals the underlying power cutural structures and changes them.
3) Human beings are relationship morphing entities.
4) the importance of shared collaboration space that invite clever interactions between people.
5) Treating prototypes as conversation pieces
6) Watch for the underlying feeling of geniune fun
7) The importance of the challenge or obstacles to the game
8) We shape our models, our models shape us
9) "In order to have actionable meaning, the fuzzy mental models ... must be externalized in representations in ways... that can be grasped"
10) Prototypes force individuals to confront the tyranny of tradeoffs (i.e. difficult decisions)
11) "All models are attempt to manage the complexity by making it simpler and more accessible"
While the text is very readable I had trouble pulling out the underlying structure of the book. But I felt redeemed when I read the User's Guide at the end of the book. Interesting you would think a User's Guide would go at the beginning. Fortunately I do not read sequentially so I found that chapter fairly quickly.
Three years on, still a great book.......2002-09-16
Here's the best review I can give Michael Schrage's "Serious Play": Three years on, it's consistently the first book I pull out of my bookshelf when I'm looking for ideas for presentations, thoughts on introducing new products or services, etc. His commentary on "mean-time-to-payback" is something that will stick with you for years. It's brilliant stuff, written in clear, concise terms. And, surprisingly, very little of it is dated. Unlike many books from that era, there's no .com or Enron fixation for the author to be embarrassed about. Schrage's examples are pulled from health care technology, animation, theater...in short, an eye-opening spectrum of ideas. I consider "Serious Play" one of my best purchases ever.
Preaching to the choir.......2002-08-22
This is a good book for someone to read if they are skeptical of the benefits of prototypes. However, since I already know the value of interactive prototypes I became quickly tired with the book.
Other critiques: it felt like the author had a bunch of cool little examples lying around and finally got the idea to put it together, surrounded by some fluffy text to make it thick enough to sell as a book, and put it on the market. Lots of space is taken up by these excerpts, as well as big text in the margins summing up "important points," which I would usually find useful but instead gave the impression of just taking up space.
Also, the author makes repeated use of similes to the point that it got annoying; "Just like a is to b, c is to d."
At one point, the author brings up the difference between a "simulation" and a "prototype," and just when you think the core of the matter is going to be distinguished the author backs out, leaving you wondering why they brought it up in the first place if they weren't going to take a stab at defining and differentiating them.
Sorry, but given the hype I was sorely disappointed. Read the first chapter or so in a bookstore before actually buying this.
Enlightening.......2002-07-11
This book gave me a very good and new insight of how to manage prototyping. It is enlightening for not only it explains and lists the topics that are important. It also gives us lots of practical examples of implementations.
I kept refering it, and i DON't usually do that.........2001-03-14
The most significant aspect of this book is that it provides a vocabulary and a language to discuss the nature of creative prototyping and modeling behaviors. The first thing you do is take off the cover, otherwise people think you're reading a really cheesy book. It's everything but that. It's been 4 weeks, and i'm on my 3rd time through it. I reference it and re-use it over and over. I've since recommended it to a genetic scientist friend of mine that works for a major drug company, a software engineer, and a broadcast designer. The thinking in this book has an epidemic effect with those that read it, and the excitement that it carries into their work and mine is the most influential and direct I have ever experienced. Some books are relevant once, but this will be accessed for years to come. This is my first book recommendation i have ever made. that is all...
Book Description
This digital document is a journal article from Technovation, published by Elsevier in 2004. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Media Library immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
Description:
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