On Our Backs Guide to Lesbian Sex
Average customer rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
  • More political and cultural than anything, but worth a look
  • A little bit of everything
On Our Backs Guide to Lesbian Sex

Manufacturer: Alyson Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

GeneralGeneral | Sex Instruction | Sex | Health, Mind & Body | Subjects | Books
LesbiansLesbians | Sex Instruction | Sex | Health, Mind & Body | Subjects | Books
HumanHuman | Sexuality | Psychology & Counseling | Health, Mind & Body | Subjects | Books
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GeneralGeneral | Sociology | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
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ASIN: 1555838057

Book Description

World-renowned authorities on lesbian sexuality explain it all for you.This remarkable volume showcases the best writing on lesbian sex and desire in the 20-year history of On Our Backs magazine. Illustrated with stunning photographs by Phyllis Christopher, Michele Serchuk, Christine Kessler, and Rebecca McBride, The On Our Backs Guide to Lesbian Sex provides expert advice on virtually all topics related to women's sexuality, including gender, BDSM, body-image issues, polyamory, fisting, strap-on use, topping and bottoming, and anal sex. Even basics such as kissing, cruising, and flirting are covered.

Contributors include: Tristan Taormino, Patrick Califia, Michelle and Joan Nestle

Diana Cage served as the assistant editor and the associate editor of On Our Backs magazine before taking on the position of managing editor. She lives in San Francisco.

Customer Reviews:

3 out of 5 stars More political and cultural than anything, but worth a look.......2006-07-16

I got little that could help me in my situation as a latebloomer, but did find this book informative in a political/cultural way in addition to gaining greater insight into what some of my transgendered friends have gone through. It has some good articles on the power behind strapping it on, kink, the butch/femme issue, etc. I found this to be a good primer to the history of the community, with some interesting detours along the way.

4 out of 5 stars A little bit of everything.......2005-02-17

This book covers just about everything you could ever want to know about lesbian sex. More then a few friends have borrowed this book out of curiosity. They all found this book to be very interesting.

Japanese Army Air Force Aces 1937-1945 (Osprey Aircraft of the Aces No 13)
Average customer rating: 4 out of 5 stars
  • First-ever study of the JAAF in English
Japanese Army Air Force Aces 1937-1945 (Osprey Aircraft of the Aces No 13)
Henry Sakaida
Manufacturer: Osprey Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1855325292
Release Date: 1997-04-15

Book Description

Little has been published in English on the Japanese Army Air Force (JAAF), let alone its most successful fighter pilots - no less than 150 of them achieved ace status during eight years of near-constant war, and they are all listed in this volume. From the arid plains of the Mongolian border region to the lush jungles of New Guinea, the JAAF was more than a match for the many opponents it fought against for control of the skies. Indeed, even when the mighty Allied war machine proved almost overwhelming from early 1944 onwards, the elite fighter pilots of the various sentais within the JAAF fought on with near-fanatical loyalty in defence of the Home Islands.

Customer Reviews:

4 out of 5 stars First-ever study of the JAAF in English.......1999-12-28

Many historians still operate under the assumption that there was a single Japanese Air Force instead of two separate services, each with its own planes, mission, and tactics. Sakaida is an American of Japanese heritage who learned the language in order to research and write about WWII air battles, using material from both sides. Here he applies his language and research skills to tell the story of the Japanese Army Air Force that fought in China and Southeast Asia, and that for much of the war had the prime responsibility for home defense. An excellent book in the tradition of the Osprey Aircraft of the Aces series.

Intermediate Microeconomics and Its Application, 10th Edition
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    Intermediate Microeconomics and Its Application, 10th Edition
    Walter Nicholson , and Christopher M. Snyder
    Manufacturer: South-Western College Pub
    ProductGroup: Book
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    Accessories:
    1. Study Guide for Nicholson/Snyder's Intermediate Microeconomics, 10th Study Guide for Nicholson/Snyder's Intermediate Microeconomics, 10th

    ASIN: 0324319681

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    INTERMEDIATE MICROECONOMICS offers an exceptionally clear and concise introduction to the economic study of markets, focuses on managerial and algebraic approaches, includes relevant applications and strong examples, and gives you activities that allow you to learn by doing. Your purchase includes two time-saving resources: access to InfoTrac College Edition's online university library and online study tools through Economic Applications! With Economic Applications, you'll have online access to study guides and review materials that will help you succeed in the course. And with InfoTrac College Edition, you'll save time, save money--and eliminate the trek to the library. Log in and access a library of more than 5,000 academic and popular magazines, newspapers, and journals.
    Intermediate Microeconomics and Its Application with Economic Applications Card
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      Intermediate Microeconomics and Its Application with Economic Applications Card
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      ASIN: 0324171633

      Book Description

      Intermediate Microeconomics and Its Applications provides a clear and concise introduction to the ways in which economists study the operations of markets. This well-known author's signature is to provide a text that is accessible to the students, but still enables them to learn "the real thing." This text is appropriate for students who are taking a second level microeconomics course with an algebra focus.
      Intermediate Microeconomics and its Application (Cram101 Textbook Outlines - Textbook NOT Included)
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        Intermediate Microeconomics and its Application (Cram101 Textbook Outlines - Textbook NOT Included)
        Nicholson
        Manufacturer: AIPI
        ProductGroup: Book
        Binding: Paperback

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        ASIN: 1428809791

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        Computer Problems and Excercises for Intermediate Microeconomics and Its Application: To a Company Walter Nicholson's Fourth Edition.
        Average customer rating: Not rated
          Computer Problems and Excercises for Intermediate Microeconomics and Its Application: To a Company Walter Nicholson's Fourth Edition.
          FRANK G., & WALTER NICHOLSON WESTHOFF
          Manufacturer: The Dryden Press, Chicago
          ProductGroup: Book
          Binding: Hardcover
          ASIN: 0030078032
          Intermediate Microeconomics & Its Applications
          Average customer rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
          • Very good detailed textbook
          • Intermediate Microeconmics
          Intermediate Microeconomics & Its Applications
          Walter Nicholson
          Manufacturer: Harcourt Brace College Publishers
          ProductGroup: Book
          Binding: Hardcover

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          ASIN: 0030179181

          Book Description

          After a rigorous update of Problem Sets and Applications, Intermediate Microeconomics and Its Application is now available in its Eighth Edition. As with previous editions, this text still offers the most clear and concise introduction to economic analysis of how markets operate. The authorÆs streamlined approach to the material, and lively new discussions offer students a textbook that is easy to learn from and interesting to read. Instructors will like the additions to the "Further Topics" section, which offer an up-to-date presentation of new topics in microeconomics.

          Customer Reviews:

          5 out of 5 stars Very good detailed textbook.......2001-12-16

          For a textbook, this one was very well organized and had an easy flow in reading. Best economics related book I have read. It did, though, have some minor spelling and grammar mistakes though.

          4 out of 5 stars Intermediate Microeconmics.......2000-04-04

          A very educational book that will be needed even after graduating from college. A book that contains the very basic concepts of Microeconomics.
          Intermediate Microeconomics And Its Application
          Average customer rating: Not rated
            Intermediate Microeconomics And Its Application
            Walter Nicholson
            Manufacturer: Saunders College Pub
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              Walter Nicholson
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              Intermediate Microeconomics and Its Application
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                Intermediate Microeconomics and Its Application
                Walter Nicholson
                Manufacturer: Dryden Press, Chicago
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                Intermediate microeconomics and Its Application
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                  Intermediate Microeconomics and Its Application 8th Edition
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                    Cowpokes Rarin to Go
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                      Ace Reid
                      Manufacturer: Cowpoke Cartoon Books
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                      Cowpokes rarin' to go: Cow country cartoons
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                        Ace Reid
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                        The Brad Mehldau Collection
                        Average customer rating: Not rated
                          The Brad Mehldau Collection
                          Brad Mehldau
                          Manufacturer: Hal Leonard Corporation
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                          Fools' Names, Fools' Faces
                          Average customer rating: 4 out of 5 stars
                          • Lands a few bullseyes amidst a barrage of cheap shots
                          • A Very Good Book from a Very Good Writer.
                          • a Fun look a society
                          • buy an extra copy for your spouse
                          • Not in P.J.'s league.
                          Fools' Names, Fools' Faces
                          Andrew Ferguson
                          Manufacturer: Atlantic Monthly Pr
                          ProductGroup: Book
                          Binding: Hardcover

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                          Customer Reviews:

                          4 out of 5 stars Lands a few bullseyes amidst a barrage of cheap shots.......2007-07-29

                          Political humor is fleeting and the essays in this collection span the decade between 1986 and 1996. Who now remembers Gennifer Flowers, William J. Bennett and "The Book of Virtues," or Donald J. Trump?

                          Actually Andrew Ferguson remembers Gennifer Flowers quite well as he devotes two essays to her, and he seems to be fixated on other blonde bimbos as well, devoting print to Madonna, Mamie Van Doren, Marilyn Monroe, Morgan Fairchild and others whose names I don't recall. Here's a political satirist with an obsession, and for a change it's not the current president or the senator from New York.

                          There are several cheap shots in "Fools' Names, Fools' Faces." Walter Cronkite is savaged in passing, but we are never told why he is lumped into the category of "utterly vacant men." David Gergen is castigated as a "Goggle-eyed melon head" for switching from the saintly Ronald Reagan's administration to the man who did because he could, Bill Clinton. Isn't descending to nasty physical description about the same level of civilized discourse as, "Nah, nah, Johnny wets his bed at night?"

                          Those two quibbles aside, there's some good stuff in here. Don Imus, the radio host shows up in the essay "Don Imus's Sacrilege," not over his derogatory comments about the Rutgers women's basketball team (2007), but over his derogatory comments about the President at a Radio and TV Correspondents Dinner (1996). Admittedly these affairs are set up so that the President can be lampooned, but there are limits, and Imus gleefully trampled all over them. Good for him. I wish the author had given more detail about what Imus had said, but maybe he wasn't invited to the dinner.

                          The shortest essays tend to be the funniest, and another good one is "Puff the Magic Dragon Goes to Jail" (March 1986) although the author is rather hard on Mary for getting fat.

                          "Trust Us: The Mystery of the Supreme Court" (November 1993) explains why the Supreme Court should be moved to Billings, Montana.

                          Ferguson is at his shameless best in "The Donald Writes a Book" (September 1990), where he flaunts a dead-on imitation of the Great One's tell-nothing style. (If the Donald's book were a strip-tease, he would leave the stage fully clothed).

                          To tell you the truth, I read "Fools' Names, Fools' Faces" in order to cleanse my palate for Michael Moore's "Dude, Where's My Country," but I ended up enjoying Ferguson, cheap shots and all, quite a bit more than Moore's whining exposé.

                          Maybe I'm getting old.

                          5 out of 5 stars A Very Good Book from a Very Good Writer........2007-05-05

                          Andrew Ferguson is one of the veteran writers at the Weekly Standard and a good friend and peer in satire with P.J. O'Rourke. While O'Rourke, however, is more taken with the sharp biting and often gonzo style of a writing idol, Hunter Thompson, Ferguson is more subtle -- more understated -- but equally effective in his own right.

                          All in all Ferguson is a very very good writer and the collection of pieces in this book provide a good starting point -- reading his more recent WS work and his columns for Bloomberg is also recommended.

                          Ferguson is not an ideologue and his book pokes fun at all stripes (that is Newt Gingrich in clown makeup on the front).

                          4 out of 5 stars a Fun look a society.......2001-11-03

                          I highly recommend this wity and sometimes brillant look at our world.

                          5 out of 5 stars buy an extra copy for your spouse.......2001-03-19

                          Mr. BROOKS: Yeah, Andy's not someone who comes out as much as some of the rest of us and just baldly declares something. His--his writing--he's a much better writer than I am, a more supple writer, and his writing leads you in different feints and the power of the writing is sometimes not clear until you read it carefully. -C-SPAN Booknotes with David Brooks, July 2000

                          Ever since I heard David Brooks praise his colleague so effusively on Booknotes last Summer, I've made a particular effort to search out Andrew Ferguson's stuff in The Weekly Standard. Brooks is absolutely right : Ferguson's essays for the magazine are extremely sly and they conclude with a distinctive kick, as he forcefully drives home a point you may only have been mildly aware he was making. An excellent example is Christianity, Clinton Style (Weekly Standard, September 11, 2000), in which he discusses the then President's pre-Convention public confessional at Willow Creek Community Church. This was the event at which Clinton was supposed to apologize for the Lewinsky mess with sufficient clarity that it would remove the subject as an issue for Mr. Gore in the fall campaign. In his column, Ferguson does not spare Clinton for the transparency and insincerity of the event, but it is only as you read the last sentence that you truly realize that Clinton is only an incidental target : Ferguson's real ire is directed at the brand of New Age Christianity which allows itself to be used in such a manner by a clearly unrepentant serial sinner. But when the realization finally dawns it is all the more devastating precisely because the equation of the obviously repulsive Clinton and the theoretically sacred Church is so surprising.

                          Fools' Names, Fools' Places is a collection of earlier pieces and it seems as if Ferguson had not quite perfected this technique when some of them were written. They are however very funny and they do reflect several of the concerns which he returns to again and again in his writing : the intellectual poverty of those New Age beliefs and the increasing divergence between celebrity and substantive achievement in American culture. At times these concerns fuse brilliantly as in the devastating portrayals of Bill Moyers and Mikhail Gorbachev, both of whom have made the long strange trip from Left Wing hatchetmen to sort of self-help gurus. But in most of them, it is merely the callowness and vapidity of the rich and famous that is on display. A couple of the funniest ones are on Barbra Streisand and Frank Sinatra (Sinatra at 80 : Ring-a-ding-don't). In fact, I started laughing so hard at a line in the Streisand profile :

                          With her cavernous sinuses, her inexhaustible lungs, she doesn't so much sell a song as wrestle it to the ground and kneel on its throat. She should try this with her songwriters.

                          that my wife made me let her read the essay, right away. After that, we kept stealing the book back and forth from each other, the one grabbing it from the other while they were convulsed with laughter. (This is what passes for entertainment in your average conservative household--sharing a collection of vituperative columns like dissidents used to pass around samiszdat in the old Soviet Union.) In fact, my wife got so carried away, in the midst of the essay about Peter, Paul and Mary being arrested (Puff the Magic Dragon Goes to Jail) at an anti-apartheid demonstration, that our four year old son ran upstairs to tell me that, "Mommy isn't breathing." I think it was this line that did it, about how the years haven't been kind to Mary, particularly poundagewise :

                          As she belted out the songs, she wagged her head and threw her body from side to side, while the other celebrities struggled to anchor themselves against the assault of her weight.

                          We both enjoyed the paired essays about Ferguson appearing on a talk show as the designated Gennifer Flowers defender and the trouble this got him into with his wife. What wife after all wants her husband defending a harlot on national television ?

                          And lest you assume that all the book consists of is scurrilous right wing screeds, there are plenty of equally acerbic glances cast at Republicans and conservatives--Newt Gingrich, Bill Bennett and David Gergen among them. More importantly, Ferguson is toughest on himself and his profession. This is the other major theme of the collection, and of much of his other writing : the pomposity of the press. Whether belittling himself for appearing as a talking head on cable television, or hilariously dissecting the modern GQ/Esquire/Vanity Fair-style personality piece--the ones that all seem to start : "I met (insert name of star) for lunch at (insert name of trendy restaurant)..."--the authors of which all seem to labor under the delusion that they are themselves integral to the story, Ferguson holds up a rather harsh light to journalism as it is practiced today.

                          In a culture which is increasingly dominated by celebrities, politicians and the press, he happily skewers all three. He does so in a series of essays which are as funny as any you'll ever read. You should definitely read the book, but in the meantime keep an eye out for his current writing. By himself he makes it worth checking out the Weekly Standard every week.

                          GRADE : A

                          2 out of 5 stars Not in P.J.'s league........2000-01-04

                          This guy has been hyped by O'Rourke and the very talented Jonah Goldberg, but the laughs are few and far between. He just can't find the humor in every situation like P.J. can. In the Booknotes interview, Ferguson talks about how he really doesn't like writing all that much, and the lack of joy certainly shows.

                          His 1993 (i.e. pre-WWW) essay on the Internet, which takes the general tone of "this contraption will never amount to anything" was way off base, maybe because he wandered into alt.sex (desperately searching for some grist I guess but coming away with his usual pedestrian non-insights) instead of looking at the comp.* newsgroups.
                          FOOLS' NAMES, FOOLS' FACES. Introduction by P. J. O'Rourke.
                          Average customer rating: Not rated
                            FOOLS' NAMES, FOOLS' FACES. Introduction by P. J. O'Rourke.
                            Andrew. Ferguson
                            Manufacturer: Atlantic Monthly Press,
                            ProductGroup: Book
                            Binding: Hardcover
                            ASIN: B000MYU9DW

                            Broadcasting in the European Union - The Role of Public Interest in Competition Analysis
                            Average customer rating: Not rated
                              Broadcasting in the European Union - The Role of Public Interest in Competition Analysis
                              Ingrid Nitsche
                              Manufacturer: Springer
                              ProductGroup: Book
                              Binding: Paperback

                              General BroadcastingGeneral Broadcasting | Radio | Entertainment | Subjects | Books
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                              ASIN: 9067041319

                              Book Description

                              This book explores whether and to what extent EC Competition law promotes media pluralism and how broadcasting's public service and commercial interests can be reconciled in Europe, where public and economic competition have traditionally been defined as distinct concepts. It offers the first comprehensive application of competition analysis to European broadcasting and is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the challenges facing European broadcasters as they seek to redefine their role in an open market while at the same time retaining their public interest function.

                              Net Gain: Expanding Markets Through Virtual Communities
                              Average customer rating: 4 out of 5 stars
                              • Prospering in the Virtual Community - Where Are We Going?
                              • Amazon.com
                              • A forerunner on how to create profitable on-line communities
                              • Virtual Communities = Real Prosperity
                              • Good Ideas that can hold in 10 pages
                              Net Gain: Expanding Markets Through Virtual Communities
                              John Hagel III , and Arthur G. Armstrong
                              Manufacturer: Harvard Business School Press
                              ProductGroup: Book
                              Binding: Hardcover

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                              ASIN: 0875847595

                              Amazon.com

                              Building relationships with customers has been a buzz phrase in many business circles for years. Now John Hagel and Arthur Armstrong declare that's not enough. They make a strong case that business success in the very near future will depend on using the Internet to build not just relationships, but communities. The payoff, they maintain, will be phenomenal customer loyalty and high profits. But, they warn, this race will definitely go to the swift. Here's a cyberspace book that could make your business future. Not everyone agrees with Hagel and Armstrong, but with stakes so high they deserves a serious reading.

                              Book Description

                              Net Gain identifies where the next level of value lies on the Internet and lays out the first economic model to quantify the revenue potential and the investment required to build a successful virtual community. From the offerings of commercial online services such as the Motley Fool Investment group to Internet communities of book lovers, Net Gain offers a multitude of real-world scenarios and lessons for building value and creating competitive edge. The authors clearly show that in order to compete in the online economy, you must establish an entirely new approach to product development, marketing, customer service, and distribution, and rethink your company's relationships to customers, suppliers, and competitors. And they show you how to do it.

                              Download Description

                              Hagel and Armstrong argue that a new business model is emerging in cyberspace, constructed around the notion of "electronic communities" whose value lies in their aggregation potential--the ability to recognize, configure, and collect seemingly disparate groups into communities with particular commercial and collaborative interests. Not only do these electronic communities constitute a new way to structure the profusion of information that characterizes the Internet, but they force organizations to rethink their approaches to a whole host of business processes--product development, brand identity, customer service, advertising and marketing, merchandising, and channel management--and the organizations' relationships to their customers, suppliers, and competitors.

                              Customer Reviews:

                              5 out of 5 stars Prospering in the Virtual Community - Where Are We Going?.......2006-06-20

                              Both authors are from the esteemed McKinsey & Company. Even though released in 1997, this book has pretty much mapped out where we are now, and possibly to where the web will evolve regarding Virtual Communities. A community is started with an initial investment - a learning curve investment - then receives the positve network effects. The web is used for three basic purposes, to find content, to interact and to complete transactions. They discuss the 'critical mass' of memebers that a community must acheive before it becomes self-sustaining. They project a curve of this new web envirinoment of villages, constellations, coalitions, to finally infomediaries (a state yet to be achieved).

                              There are four factors of initial growth: the size of the potential community, the value of being online, the intensity of commerce, and the fractal depth of the community. The fractal depth is the number of possible sub-communities that can be developed through time.

                              Consumer-based communites are either geographical, demographic or topical. Business-focused communites are either vertical (same industry), functional, geographical, or in a particular business category that meets the needs of other businesses. The authors discuss the virtues of each of these.

                              A fast start-up would be aided by a strong brand name, established customer relationships, or content to keep browsers interested. Skills to get and retain members are key.

                              The first emphasis is on generating traffic, then concentrating traffic - convincing the browsers to spend time there - you must always be expanding the offerings and creating excitement through participation. One must then lock-in traffic. This can be done by fostering a relationship between members, improving community functions, and tayloring resources to individual members. Keep the sub-communities small. Give them resources to start additional sub-communites.

                              Sounds like they are right on track.

                              Five Stars

                              4 out of 5 stars Amazon.com.......2006-05-10

                              New cultures have been emerging in the world computer network. Among these cultures are Amazon.com, eBay, Yahoo, and google. Amazon provided a computer communication network allowing members to read other members reviews. Amazon track individual preferences and buying patterns and offerred products appealing to those interests. There are pitfalls in mixing technology with human relationship. Amazon avoids some of the pitfalls by customizing a portal for their members allowing them to create lists, private and public reviews, and a network of friendship. The member has the option to communicate with the outside world or remain semi secluded. Amazon and eBay virtual community services bring enormous leverage to the ordinary citizen at extremely low costs. The latent technology must be used intelligently and deliberately by an informed public. The power of the virtual community is the ability to communicate through a public medium in some sort of dispersed decision making process. Net Gain is about the conceptual framework of this communication medium.

                              4 out of 5 stars A forerunner on how to create profitable on-line communities.......2003-08-01

                              Notwithstanding the many new books on on-line communities, I still keep this book on my bookshelf as a useful reminder of the conceptual framework around which many new businesses - failed or otherwise - were subseqently developed.

                              It has been nearly six years since I attended a seminar organized by the consulting company McKinsey at which the two authors (both McKinsey consultants)presented their book and what seemed, at that time, to be its somewhat radical proposition about profitably developing self-organizing on-line communities around the passionate interests of their memberships.

                              As I become more familiar with Amazon and how it is organizing the community through which you are reading this and other reviews, I am reminded about the fundamental concepts that Hagel and Armstrong laid out in their book regarding the economics of virtual communities. Amazon attracts member-generated content which is a key part of its business model which uses the passionate interests of its own customer base to increase its business value. Many doubted the vailidity of this proposition when this book came out, but the evidence does appear to increasingly support it.

                              Arguably, many might now say that this book is dated, on-line businesses having mushroomed and failed since this book appeared, yielding new lessons that this book could not have foreseen. Many of its claims now seem overhyped.

                              While this and other criticims may all be well and true, I suspect that this book will come to be regarded in future business histories of the on-line business as one of the seminal pieces of strategic business thinking in the late 1990s. I shall keep it for posterity, if not profitability. In any case, there must now be enough second-hand copies for you not to have to make the investment at the full original cost!

                              5 out of 5 stars Virtual Communities = Real Prosperity.......2002-03-05

                              Hagel has co-authored two especially important books (with Arthur G. Armstrong III and Marc Singer, respectively), the other being Net Worth "which builds on a number of the themes originally developed" in this volume. As Hagel and Armstrong point out, Net.Gain "systematically [analyzes] the economic drivers for value creation that exist on networks. It [uses] one particular business model -- the virtual community -- to illustrate the unique capabilities of digital networks and how these might be harnessed to create a substantial business with very attractive economics." The material is carefully organized within three Parts: The Real Value of Virtual Communities, Building a Virtual Community, and Positioning to Win the Broader Game. Hagel and Armstrong also provide a "Management Agenda", followed by excellent suggestions for further reading.

                              In the Preface, Hagel and Armstrong acknowledge three inevitable limitations in writing Net.Gain: "The first arises from the profound uncertainties associated with evolving electronic networks and the myriad business models emerging in the primordial brew known as cycberspace....Second, the need to be concise has led us to make some generalizations about the likely evolution of virtual communities and the key principles for success....Third, we do not expect virtual communities to be the only 'form of life' on public networks. Indeed, many other commercial and non-commercial formats (including dictionaries, market spaces, 'web'zines,' corporate sites and game areas) will thrive on these networks as well." Working within these limitations, Hagel and Armstrong succeed admirably when describing the power and potential of the virtual community concept. Also, when explaining (a) how to target the kind of community to start-up; (b) the principles of a successful entry strategy, emphasizing the need to generate, engage, and lock in traffic over time; (c) characteristics of community organizations; and (d) criteria by which to select the right technology. Then in Part Three, Hagel and Armstrong shift their attention to explaining the fundamental ways in which the emergence and spread of virtual communities will alter traditional business.

                              My strong recommendation is that this book be read first, then Net Worth. My further recommendation is that both books be used to formulate the agenda for a workshop or what is generally referred to as an "executive retreat" (preferably for two days and located offsite) with all participants required to read both books in advance. In their Epilogue, Hagel and Armstrong suggest that "the most radical potential impact of the virtual community may well be its impact on the way individuals manage their lives and companies manage themselves. Communities will serve to connect, much like the postage system and telephone before them. But they will go several steps further than the telephone or fax, as they help the individual to seek out and find. Souls in search of relationship, colleagues in search of teamwork,, customers in search of products, suppliers in search of markets: the virtual community might have a place for them after all." Those who share my high regard for Hagel's two books (co-authored with Armstrong and Singer, respectively) are urged to check out Peter Senge's The Fifth Discipline as well as O'Dell and Grayson's If Only We Knew What We Know. Both can also help with the planning and implementing of the off-site workshop recommended earlier.

                              4 out of 5 stars Good Ideas that can hold in 10 pages.......2000-10-16

                              Excellent ideas on Internet marketing and business strategies but did not need to write a book, ten pages would have been enough. Read a well condensed summary is less time consuming for the same amount of great information provided by the author.
                              NET GAIN: EXPANDING MARKETS THROUGH VIRTUAL COMMUNITIES
                              Average customer rating: Not rated
                                NET GAIN: EXPANDING MARKETS THROUGH VIRTUAL COMMUNITIES
                                John III and Armstrong, Arthur G Hagel
                                Manufacturer: Harvard Business School Pr
                                ProductGroup: Book
                                Binding: Paperback
                                ASIN: B000OFKG5A
                                Net Gain: Expanding Markets through Virtual Communities
                                Average customer rating: Not rated
                                  Net Gain: Expanding Markets through Virtual Communities
                                  John & Arthur Hagel III & Armstrong
                                  Manufacturer: HBS Press
                                  ProductGroup: Book
                                  Binding: Hardcover
                                  ASIN: B000LBW5BK
                                  Net Gain: Expanding Markets Through Virtual Communities
                                  Average customer rating: Not rated
                                    Net Gain: Expanding Markets Through Virtual Communities
                                    John Hagel The Third
                                    Manufacturer: Harvard Buisness School Press
                                    ProductGroup: Book
                                    Binding: Hardcover
                                    ASIN: B000JR9KK0
                                    Net Gain, Expanding Markets Through Virtual Communities
                                    Average customer rating: Not rated
                                      Net Gain, Expanding Markets Through Virtual Communities
                                      John III Hagel
                                      Manufacturer: Harvard Business School Press
                                      ProductGroup: Book
                                      Binding: Hardcover
                                      ASIN: B000S5XRAM

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