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Masters of Enterprise examines the lives of 25 American entrepreneurs, from John D. Rockefeller and Henry Ford to Bill Gates and Oprah Winfrey, to find the common ingredients of their success. "First, all had good health and abundant energy," writes H.W. Brands, a professor of history at Texas A&M University, "enough for half-a-dozen careers each." The other elements that Brands identifies: all were hungry for success; they were persuasive at getting others on their side; they intensely identified with their work; and each had a burning creative vision. Brands dedicates a chapter to each of the 25, starting chronologically with real estate magnate John Jacob Astor in the late 1700s, and ending with software giant Bill Gates in the late 1990s. He describes the entrepreneurs' background, vision, and major deals, and draws lessons for today's business mavens.
Modern-day speculators might find enlightening the story of Jay Gould's cornering of the gold market in the 1800s, for instance. Brands dramatically describes the maneuvers Gould took to hide his buying and selling--and his underhanded but failed attempts at keeping the U.S. government from flooding the market with gold and driving the price down. And women entrepreneurs of today might find inspiring the lives of cosmetics titan Mary Kay Ash, designer Liz Claiborne, and television and movie star Oprah Winfrey--all overcame obstacles, personal and professional, to become giants in their fields.
Others profiled: industrialist Andrew Carnegie, Ray Kroc of McDonald's, Sam Walton of Wal-Mart, Motown founder Berry Gordy, Walt Disney, cable-television pioneer Ted Turner, and Intel's Andrew Grove. Well written and filled with anecdotes, Masters of Enterprise should be an entertaining read for entrepreneurs and fans of business biography and history. --Dan Ring
Book Description
From the early years of fur trading to today's Silicon Valley empires, America has proved to be an extraordinarily fertile land for the creation of enormous fortunes. Each generation has produced one or two phenomenally successful leaders, often in new industries that caught contemporaries by surprise, and each of these new fortunes reconfirmed the power of fanatically single-minded visionaries. John Jacob Astor and Cornelius Vanderbilt were the first American moguls; John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, and J. P. Morgan were kingpins of the Gilded Age; David Sarnoff, Walt Disney, Ray Kroc, and Sam Walton were masters of mass culture. Today Oprah Winfrey, Andy Grove, and Bill Gates are giants of the Information Age. America has again and again been the land of dizzying mountains of wealth.
Here, in a wittily told and deeply insightful history, is a complete set of portraits of America's greatest generators of wealth. Only such a collective study allows us to appreciate what makes the great entrepreneurs really tick. As H. W. Brands shows, these men and women are driven, they are focused, they deeply identify with the businesses they create, and they possess the charisma necessary to persuade other talented people to join them. They do it partly for the money, but mostly for the thrill of creation.
The stories told here -- including how Nike got its start as a business-school project for Phil Knight; how Robert Woodruff almost refused to take control of Coca-Cola to spite his father; how Thomas Watson saved himself from prison by rescuing Dayton, Ohio, from a flood; how Jay Gould nearly cornered the gold market; how H. L. Hunt went from gambling at cards to gambling with oil leases -- make for a narrative that is always lively and revealing and often astonishing. An observer in 1850, studying John Jacob Astor, would not have predicted the rise of Henry Ford and the auto industry. Nor would a student of Ford in 1950 have anticipated the takeoff of direct marketing that made Mary Kay Ash a trusted guide for millions of American women. Full of surprising insights, written with H. W. Brands's trademark flair, the stories in Masters of Enterprise are must reading for all students of American business history.
Customer Reviews:
Hagiography more than history.......2007-09-12
Business is a ruthless business. Dog eat dog and all that. Extraordinarily successful businessmen may have the same basic character traits as their fellow men (and women) but often in more extreme forms. Some of these traits are admirable: ambitious, industrious, driven, resilient, clever. Some, not so much: greedy, cruel, ruthless, opportunistic, dishonest.
Don't count on Brands to notice the latter in his subjects. H.W. Brands has written a history of American businessmen as they would like themselves to be seen. If you enjoy this book, you may also enjoy browsing the National Association of Manufacturer's press releases.
Sketches of Great American Entrepreneurs.......2004-01-13
These brief portraits of great American businessmen and women are well written. Brands does a creditable job laying out the basics of each of their lives and presenting it in a highly readable fashion. His purpose is to show the historical development of how Americans have made money in a country where the making of wealth has became almost a divine calling.
Brands' selection of business giants could have been better. He seems to have picked his membership more for their diversity as people than for their masterful entrepreneurial skills. Why include Berry Gordy, but not Warren Buffett? Brands' choices obviously skew his presentation of U.S. business history, making it seem more diverse than it really has been.
Pure inspiration.......2001-08-03
If you are chasing the, "American Dream," of becoming a successful entrepeneur, this book is definitely a must read! H. W. Brands has compiled a collection of highly enterprising and inspirational people in his book. I not only was encouraged by reading about such great American men, such as Cornelius Vanderbilt and Andrew Carnegie, I was even more impressed with the profiles of such determined business women as Oprah Winfrey and Mary Kay. Their lives and positive, business tactics shed a shining light, leading the way to establishing a successful enterprise.
Rome was not built in a dayý.......2001-04-10
Common beliefs shattered by uncommon men- Henry Kaiser would have taken on the challenge to build Rome in a day!
"Rags to riches" is another common adage; but the route to getting there is what distinguishes the daring from the rest. But the most important factor that has made these great achievers who changed and paved the course of business history is the strong desire to excel against all odds. What else can explain the rise of Andrew Carnegie from the drudgery of working in a dirty shop floor to being the master of one of America's greatest steel company.
Do not read this book in a hurry. Brands has an excellent command on the English language and his style of narration matches the true values that one can derive from the 25 great persons described in this book.
I have recommended this book as the first assignment to my daughter during her summer vacation.
Your search for human excellence ends here.
Masters of Enterprise.......2000-10-10
I found this book very informative and well written. The best quality of the book is that each individual is described well enough to give you insight and from there you can decide whether you would like to read his or her biography, or just be pleased with what you have learned.
I learned quite a bit of intresting facts about many of the leaders of industry and that, I belive, is the purpose of the book.
Book Description
On The Deal Maker: How William C. Durant Made General Motors:
"A well-written biography."-New York Times
On Stanwyck: The Life and Times of Barbara Stanwyck:
"Madsen's admirably researched, insightful portrait of her aloof nature . . . reveals she was always torn between her wish to give of herself and her need to be in control."-Christian Science Monitor
On Chanel: A Woman of Her Own:
"Fascinating . . . . Takes the reader behind the coromandel veneers of Chanel's life."-New York Times Book Review
"Carefully knits together the complex pattern of Chanel's complicated existence. It's not an easy task."-Toronto Globe and Mail
On Gloria and Joe:
"Axel Madsen finally gives the public a fascinating chronicle of the romance that could have ruined more than two careers."-Dallas Morning News
On Cousteau:
"Both critical and understanding. And it is exceptionally readable. Readers are well advised to take the plunge."-Chicago Tribune
On Malraux:
"Will stand as the best of more than a dozen books about Malraux in print."-Kansas City Star
Download Description
A riveting biography of John Jacob Astor, the first American multinational entrepreneur
Customer Reviews:
JOHN ASTOR.......2007-05-30
AN INTERESTING BOOK, BUT VERY LITTLE INFORMATION ABOUT THE HUGE AMOUNT OF WORTH GENERATED BY THE REAL ESTATE OWNED BY THE ASTOR FAMILY AND THE CRATION OF THE WALDORF ASTORIA ONE OF THE FAMILY MOST FAMOUS LANDMARKS. IT DID GIVE A LOT OF INSIGHT TO AMERICAN POLITICAL LIFE IN THE EARLY 1800'S WHEN JAMES MADISON AND JAMES MONROE WERE PRESIDENTS.
Very Interesting........2004-02-14
John Jacob Astor led the life most people do not even dare to dream about. He was a serial entrepreneur at a time when most of the world was composed of farmers. He was so successful at his businesses that when he died he controlled one-fifteenth of all personal wealth in the United States! Among many other things it is safe to say he was a very driven man.
Born in relative poverty in Germany, he immigrated to the United States via England, arriving just after the Revolutionary War ended. Marrying the daughter of the woman who ran his boarding house in New York, his business career moves from the importing of musical instruments to the exporting of furs. So successful is he in the fur business that he is able to finance the establishment of the first American fort in Oregon and supports this effort with his own ships via Cape Horn. Returning east overland, his employees discover the route that subsequently becomes the Oregon Trail!
This is a swashbuckler of a story which spans not just the North American Continent but the global economy as it existed in his day as well. Besides furs, he traded tea, seal skins, opium and assorted other commodities through global wars and economic recession on a scale to match the great trading houses of England, the British East India Company and the Hudson Bay Company. He was a man who took huge business risks. A key focus of the book is naturally the fur trade, the dominant wealth generator of its time. This was his first truly big score, one that he engaged in for over 20 years and the primary venture through which he amasses the fortune that provided the investment capital for all the endeavors which would follow.
Alex Madsen does an excellent job of fitting Astor within the economic and political time period in which he lived. I have found information here on the fur trade I have found nowhere else. This is a very well researched book; one that not only reports on the biography of the life lived but the history of the time as well. There is a lot to appreciate here. It is a book well worth the time.
This book was good, at best.......2002-04-24
I bought this book to learn about Astor and how he made his fortunes. The book goes into almost too much depth in regards to the fortune made in fur trading and shipping. Out of the 25 chapters, 23 were discussing nearly every detail of Astor, his men, indians, and his competition in regards to trading and shipping. In chapter 23, the author finally gets to where he claims Astor made his largest fortune, real estate. Since that is where he made the bulk of his fortune, then why did the author only devote one chapter to this topic? Most people who buy this book will do so to learn how Astor made his fortune, that is not explained well enough. I have to give the author credit, though, he did uncover many details that the other Astor biographers failed to see.
Excellent history of fur trade, little of Real Estate........2001-12-21
Madsen takes the reader through an interesting account of the early fur trade and the opening of the American West. There are interesting anecdotes from Astor's deaings with historical and political figures of the time. However, if you are looking for information on his later business dealings and the development of Astor into New York's largest property owner and landlord then you will be disappointed. Nine tenths of his book is devoted to the development of the American Fur Company and the travials of those who forged through the wild countryside on Astors behalf. There is nothing in this book about how he dealt with tenants, advertised properties, developed systems of management for properties, financing, leverage, nothing.
So buy it for an interesting histort of the time but don't buy it if your looking for information on how one of the great Real Estate investors of his time developed and managed his system of success.
Nobody is Home in Madsen's new Biography.......2001-11-24
Perhaps I should not write a review of this book as I did not finish it. I found the subject--Astor, who he was, what he did, and how and why he did it--very interesting, but Madsen's treatment an example of biography at its worst. Why? Because we are presented with the data of Astor's life, but where is Astor? There is virtually nothing communicated as to what type of person he was, WHY he was so ambitious, what he felt and thought about the various activities he undertook, his successes, relative failures, etc. In many instances of course the available data of his life do not necessarily communicate the subjective life of the psyche, only the objective actions. But it is the very task of a biographer--in my view the most vital task--to artfully connect the various "dots" of data so as to reveal the subjective life within, the drama of the mind and heart reacting to events as the events unfold. You don't get that here.
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Pilots of the Purple Twilight: A Play
Steve Kluger
Manufacturer: Samuel French Inc Plays
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ASIN: 0573626812 |
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- Adventures on land and sea
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Astoria: Adventure in the Pacific Northwest (Pacific Basin Books)
Washington Irving
Manufacturer: Kegan Paul International Ltd.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 071030255X |
Customer Reviews:
Adventures on land and sea.......2006-04-22
No sooner had Lewis and Clark completed their exploration of the American interior in 1804, than John Jacob Astor sponsored a fur-trading expedition across the continent. He sent two teams. One would follow the Louis and Clark route on land. The other would go by sea around Cape Horn. The two teams would meet up at the mouth of the Columbia River.
The land expedition included experienced Canadian fur trappers who would be dropped off here and there along the way to trap beavers. A new trading post would be built at mouth of the Columbia, where the trappers would deliver their pelts. The fur would then be shipped to China or wherever in the world they were desired.
It's hard for a reader who enjoys historical adventure to decide which party he would rather have accompanied. The seafarers contended with an aptly named Captain Thorn, whose temper and paranoid disposition caused trouble the whole way. There were also jealousies and conflicts among the partners employed by Astor. They stopped in Hawaii and met King Kamehameha, John Young, and other figures in Hawaiian history. They proceeded to the coast of North America, where Captain Thorn's temper got the whole expedition into disastrous trouble with the natives.
The over-land party mostly followed the route of Lewis and Clark. At that time it was necessary for a continental crossing to be large and well-armed, essentially an army. A small expedition would be wiped out by one or another native tribe along the way. After multiple dangers and privations, the survivors made it to their destination, where they built a miserable, wet fort and quarreled with the natives and among themselves. They called the fort Astoria, in honor of their sponsor. (The town is still there.)
Astor recognized from the correspondence and survivors' tales what a ripping yarn the expeditions would make, and he engaged one of the most prominent authors of the time, Washington Irving, to organize the story and compose it into a book. The result is an immensely enjoyable adventure story. It is also very informative about early Hawaii before the arrival of missionaries or whalers. The readers also learn about North American Indians, a trapper's way of life, the economics of the fur trade, and the political significance of getting there before the British. The book was written before a writer would have been obligated to spin the story in a particular political direction. There is no Indian-hating. Nor is there any tiresome political correctness.
Irving gives the book a novelistic feel by describing the personal idiosyncrasies and personality conflicts of the adventurers and the people they met along the way. He describes, for example, King Kamehameha in his "old suit of regimentals, with a sword by his side, and seemed somewhat embarrassed by his magnificent attire." The king's pig-trading skills are excellent. He makes good use of a royal monopoly and insists on payment in gold.
This book seems overlooked, perhaps because it is out of the mainstream of political history. Amazon will charge you a whopping $50 for it, suggesting that there is specialist interest in it. But I found my copy for less than $10 on a bargain table at a local bookstore, among all the other unshiftable books the store just wanted to get rid of.
Book Description
What did our ancestors dream of when they gazed up at the stars and looked beyond the present? Wildly imaginative but grounded in reasoned scientific speculation, A Journey in Other Worlds races far ahead of the nineteenth century to imagine what life would be like in the year 2000. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, Earth is effectively a corporate technocracy, with big businesses using incredible advances in science to improve life on the planet as a whole. Seeking other planets habitable for the growing human population, the spaceship Callisto, powered by an antigravitational force known as apergy, embarks on a momentous tour of the solar system. Jupiter proves to be a wilderness paradise, full of threatening beasts and landscapes of inspired beauty, where the explorers must fight for their lives. Dangers less tangible but equally deadly await the Callisto crew on Saturn, which yields profound secrets about their fate and the ultimate destiny of mankind.
Thoughtful, adventurous, and replete with a dazzling array of futuristic devices, A Journey in Other Worlds is a classic, unforgettable story of utopias and humankind’s restless exploration of the stars.
Download Description
The way to accomplish this is to increase the weight of the pole leaving the sun, by increasing the amount of material there for the sun to attract, and to lighten the pole approaching or turning towards the sun, by removing some heavy substance from it, and putting it preferably at the opposite pole.
Customer Reviews:
Compare to Bellamy's "Looking Backward".......2003-12-01
You may want to compare this to Edward Bellamy's "Looking Backward", which was published in the 1890s. Both books looked forward a hundred years to 2000. Each author gave his vision of the future. Astor imbues this book with a somewhat polemical slant. [As indeed did Bellamy in his.] The result is a book that may not be the most gripping of reading by current standards, but which still gives insight into a mindset of that era.
The contrast between the two books is reflected in Astor being a successful inventor. No doubt this gave him a very rosy tinged worldview, unlike Bellamy's socialist leanings. And that is the value of these two books considered as a pair. One uses the dominant value system of its time, the agressive capitalism, and the other speaks forth from the resultant opposite.
Interesting to see Steve Stirling edit this book. He has done good research for his science fiction novels, and perhaps that led him to this, long obscure text.
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Astor Family
John D. Gates
Manufacturer: Doubleday
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 0385149093 |
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Furs by Astor
John Upton Terrell
Manufacturer: Morrow
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Binding: Unknown Binding
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ASIN: B0007DPLU4 |
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Yo Fui El Pera: De Amo De LA Calle a Rey De Los Circuitos
Juan Carlos Delgado , and
Antonio Olano
Manufacturer: Temas De Hoy
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ASIN: 8484602362 |
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Ingmar Bergman: Film and Stage
Robert Emmet Long
Manufacturer: HNA Books
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Binding: Hardcover
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Between Stage and Screen: Ingmar Bergman Directs (Amsterdam University Press - Film Culture in Transition)
Egil Tornqvist
Manufacturer: Amsterdam University Press
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ASIN: 9053561714 |
Book Description
Ingmar Bergman is worldwide known as a film and stage director. Yet no-one has attempted to compare his stage and screen activities. In Between Stage and Screen Egil Törnqvist examines formal and thematical correspondences and differences between a number of Bergman's stage, screen, and radio productions. In the prologue Bergman's spiritual and aesthetic heritage and his position in the twentieth century media landscape is outlined. In the epilogue the question is answered to what extent one can speak of Bergman's directorial 'method' irrespective of the chosen medium.
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Native Informant: Essays on Film, Fiction, and Popular Culture
Leo Braudy
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
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Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 0195052749 |
Book Description
Native Informant is Leo Braudy's first book after his widely acclaimed and award-winning history of fame, The Frenzy of Renown. With a verve that breaks down the boundaries between film, literature, and popular culture, Braudy discusses writers and filmmakers such as Alfred Hitchcock, Daniel
Defoe, Ernst Lubitsch, Emile Zola, Susan Sontag, and Richard Condon. His subjects include madness in the eighteenth century, the Hollywood blacklist, westerns, and pornography. Throughout this lively and insightful collection, his perspective is not that of the critic as a detached voice of
professional authority but as a member of a particular culture--a native informant--whose gaze looks simultaneously inward and outward, subjective but self-aware. Like the wide-ranging Frenzy of Renown, Native Informant will appeal to specialist and interested reader alike.
Customer Reviews:
Six more lessons on dimension hopping.......2002-10-29
GURPS Alternate Earths 2 may be made to order for a dimension hopping campaign such as GURPS Time Travel, but I believe it also gives gamers another opportunity to see how our own world "might have been" if just one event in history was changed. And it provides more opportunities to set whole adventures, and even whole campaigns in those worlds.
The six different "Earths" in this book are more examples of the now popular "What If" line of SF stories. The first world, "Cornwallis", give us a good idea as to what might have happened if the British had won the American War for Independence. The second world, "Ming 3" gives us a look at a world under the Chinese Dynasty. The third world, "Midgard", assumes the Viking fury caught fire and captured most of the known world. The fourth world, "Caliph", assumes the Muslim faith converted the world. The fifth world, "Aeolus", has details for a strange Earth where the might of the English and French monarchs is unsurpassed.
The final world is the "opposite" of the one in GURPS Time Travel. Fans of that game have wanted to see "Centrum" for a long time, and this supplement does not disappoint. The overwhelming thought on Centrum is "The Ends Justify The Means" and all the possible terror that this political theory causes. Although the book also gives an opportunity to make Centrum a nicer place, GM's for GURPS Time Travel will welcome the chance to design NPC's that will be a thorn in the players sides for adventure after adventure.
There are even more ideas for adventures, characters, and even whole campaigns for each of the worlds, including several paragraphs about more strange worlds that diverged from these six again. These "reality seeds" give creative GM's even more alternate worlds to explore.
People wishing to use books like Mike Resnick's wonderful alternate series need look no further for ideas of how to recreate those books for a parallel worlds campaign. Highly recommended for GURPS GM's and recommended even to SF fans wanting to explore the ramifications of what might happen if...
More fun with alternate history.......2000-10-19
After the fun GURPS Alternate Earths 1, Steve Jackson Games publishes another volume with six different alternate histories: Worlds that resemble Earth, but whose history diverge from our own after a certain point in time. This time, it includes the following:
- Midgard, a world where the Vikings successfully plundered Byzantium, and went on to build successful colonies in North America and elsewhere.
- Caliph, an Islam-dominated world where the early invention of the moveable type printing press allowed an early scientific revolution, and in which several other solar systems are being colonized - but Earth itselfs is on the brink of a global war after centuries of peace.
- Cornwallis, a world where the American revolution never happened. Now the corrupt monarchies of Europe and revolutionary Russia face each other and wait for the first shot to start a world war.
Each alternate history gets about twenty pages. This is sufficient to get a good general impression of the world, but I often wished that this world had been made into w sourcebook of its own...
The alternate histories are all fairly logical, and suspending one's sense of disbelief isn't difficult. In my opinion, they are even better than the ones in GURPS Alternate Earth 1 - some of the worlds in there (especially Reich-5 and Dixie) were too stereotyped for my taste (though still well executed).
There is something in this book for most gamers. Do you want a fantasy world? Use Midgard and change it slightly to make it more magical? Do you want an innovative SF background? Use Caliph. Do you want to play a fighter for freedom and democracy? Play in Europe of Aeolus and fight the evil Hapsburg empire...
Book Description
If you're like most designers and publishers who work with QuarkXPress, you've been waiting a long time for this release. In fact, you're probably one of the last people on your block to start using Mac OS X or Windows XP because you've been waiting for your most important application--QuarkXPress--to offer native support for either. Well, the wait is finally over, and here to get you up to speed on it quickly and easily is
QuarkXPress 6 for Windows and Macintosh: Visual QuickStart Guide. In these pages, best-selling authors and veteran educators
Elaine Weinmann and
Peter Lourekas use task-based, step-by-step instruction and loads of visual aids to provide a soup-to-nuts grounding in QuarkXPress 6, including all that's new in this ground-breaking release: project files containing multiple layouts, Synchronized Text, improved table creation, and more. Progressing from the basics of planning and designing layouts, working with text, and creating and importing graphics to more advanced topics like exporting documents as Web pages and adding hyperlinks, this indispensable reference covers it all.
Customer Reviews:
Concise, clear, and effective.......2005-10-14
EXCELLENT reference book. Material is presentedly lucidly, without the superfluous details. The extra visual guides facilitate the learning process extremely well. If you are looking for a book that covers the fundamentals (including flowing text and styling sheets), I HIGHLY recommend this visual quick guide book.
After all, who wants to read a verbose material that never seems to address your questions?
From a novice Quarker.......2005-08-06
Those of us who communicate in spoken English sometimes despair of technical manuals written by those who don't. This is true even for those of us who are quite literate in computer-speak. This Vistual Quickstart Guide to QuarkXPress 6 is a wonderful exception. Quark is a highly intuitive program that makes sense once one grasps the basics, and I found this an excellent reference guide to learning this powerful program. However, I found it worked best if I was at my computer exploring the areas being discussed in the text. What was most helpful to me were the screen illustrations.
Have you ever read the dictionary cover to cover?.......2004-09-11
Reading this book in order to learn QuarkXpress is akin to reading the dictionary cover to cover in order to learn the English language. Can it be done? Maybe. But it is not recommended.
This book may be useful as a detailed reference guide on a given subject but it should not be used to learn Quark. After attempting to read this book cover to cover for 70+ pages I had to put it down and find another quick start book to learn Quark.
Excellent and concise.......2004-01-27
I have read a couple of the Visual Quick Start books by these authors and find them to be readable and concise.
The way the material is portrayed is precise, and conveys the general idea of the task to be accomplished with a minimum of extraneous information.
Highly recommended.
The only downside is that there is not example material included with the books.
A
Nothing Less Than Awesome.......2003-08-07
I'll stay away from long reviews. If you have used Elaine Weinman's books before, you know to expect a first-class guide. If you haven't, put down the ... bible and go for this one. I taught myself Quark 4 from one of her books and these are invaluable references.
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