Revival of the Fittest: Why Good Companies Go Bad and How Great Managers Remake Them

Book Description

Will Your Organization Still Be Here in Ten Years?

It's a familiar story: A company rises to become an industry leader. Competitors try to emulate it. Analysts rave about it. The CEO's picture is splashed across magazine covers. Then the company stumbles, profits erode, and the stock plummets. How does this happen? Why do good companies so often go bad? More important, what can you do to prevent it from happening to your company?

In Revival of the Fittest, Donald N. Sull takes a provocative look at corporate failure and proposes a practical new model for effecting change that can vastly increase your organization's lifespan. Ironically, argues Sull, leaders sow the seeds of failure during a company's most successful times, when they make a set of commitments-whether to a core strategy, a key customer, or an innovative manufacturing method-that constitute the company's success formula. Managers become so married to the formula that they can't divorce themselves from it when the competitive situation changes. They respond to the future by doing more of what worked in the past-a phenomenon Sull calls "active inertia."

Based on extensive global research into successful and failed transformations across many industries, Revival of the Fittest introduces a three-step model for making transforming commitments-actions that prevent managers from reinforcing old behaviors in the face of change. Sull identifies five areas in which transforming commitments can be anchored-strategic frames, processes, relationships, resources, and values-and provides diagnostic tests, hands-on tools, and real company examples to show how managers can:

Gauge their company's susceptibility to active inertia

Determine which commitment is right for a specific situation

Appoint the best person to lead the charge

Ensure that the new commitment sticks

Avoid common mistakes that can sabotage the transformation effort

Weigh the personal risks associated with leading corporate change

In an unpredictable marketplace, commitments can make and break a company. But Sull shows that corporate demise is not inevitable. Through transforming commitments, revival of the fittest is possible-and managers can make the difference.

Donald N. Sull is Assistant Professor of Business Administration in the Entrepreneurial Management area at Harvard Business School.

Customer Reviews:

the leadership commitment dilemma.......2005-07-03

Donald Sull is Associate Professor of Management at London Business School.

Leadership is about making commitments and seeing them through.

There are two dangers with commitment making. The first danger is that the commitments fail. Sull argues that the second danger is that the commitment succeeds. A series of successful commitments can be bundled up in what Sull calls a company's success formula. In an every changing world, leaders must guard against being prisoners of their own success formulas.

The most interesting part of this book is his creative pairing of similar companies in similar industries who took different paths of either honoring or destroying their success formulas. The stories of Firestone versus Goodyear in the tire industry have extraordinary value for us today and are well worth reading.

What does this mean for those who serve on Boards of Directors?

BOARDS WANT TO HIRE CHAMPIONS

Boards want to hire champions. Champions are bred to be decisive and self-confident. They love making commitments and seeing them through.

As Donald Sull argues, when champions make commitments you have a double edge problem. It is predictable that champions will have difficulty admitting that their commitments no longer fit the times. Indeed this trait is so predictable I called it the LBJ Effect in honor of the American President who escalated commitment to a failing war once it became clear that the war could not be won.

LESSONS FOR REVIVAL OF THE FITTEST FOR BOARDS OF DIRECTORS.

1. Good CEOs are champions. Champions believe in themselves and their commitments.

2. In the absence of a strong countervailing force, some CEO Champions will rigidly hold on to what Sull calls the success formula when it ought to be thrown away. We even take the more extreme position that in the absence of a strong countervailing force, champions will pour more resources into an inappropriate success formula.

3. This strong countervailing force is called the Board of Directors.

SETTING THE RIGHT CULTURAL TONE

At a cultural level, the LBJ Effect can be fought by the board insisting on a culture where it is acceptable to fail, to learn from mistakes, and to try again. It is a culture where "mid course correction" is not necessarily a sin and "stick-to-itness" is not necessarily a virtue.

Perhaps the most famous example of a corporate culture that supports this notion is Johnson & Johnson. On the desks of most executives within the J&J organization is a framed one-page document called, "Our Credo."

The J&J Credo is a series of principles that govern management decisions:

When there was a concern that a batch of Tylenol had been poisoned, a division manager unilaterally ordered all bottles of Tylenol off the U.S. market. That action was taken without consulting corporate headquarters. It was justified to management on the basis of the credo. Senior management at J&J backed the local manager and the employees were enormously proud of it.

This use of a corporate values statement is not unique at J&J. We have consulted at other companies with credos. And some of these companies had problems as severe as the Tylenol crisis. But in no other company would a middle level manager make a major decision based on an esoteric company principle. With respect to failure, the J&J Credo states:

"Employees must feel free to make suggestions and complaints....We must experiment with new ideas. Research must be carried on, innovative programs developed, and mistakes paid for."

In other words, failure is not "bad." It is part of the necessary price for being innovative.

Board Influencing Tactics

Boards seeking to influence CEOs to make mid-course corrections have a semantic problem. Leaders must be convinced that mid-course corrections will not be labeled as "indecisive" or "waffling." Such negative words are inconsistent with a positive sense of self. On the other hand, adaptability in the face of changing circumstances is consistent with a positive self-concept.

Some CEOs deride Sarbanes Oxley as an example of legislative overkill. They say that it will move the board/CEO relationship into an adversarial stance. Such a stance will only harm shareholders and waste resources. Sull's perspective is powerful people are only too human. And they are all too human in predictable ways.

A valid checks and balances system should keeps the LBJ Effect from getting out of hand and help companies decide when it is time to destroy their own success formula before competition does it for them. Maryanne Peabody and Laurence J. Stybel,Ed.D. are co-founders of Board Options, Inc. Its mission is to increase Board effectiveness through the application of practical behavioral Science.

Successful Second Acts.......2004-01-26

F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote in 1940 that there are no second acts in American Lives. Professor Sull's witty, crystalline prose in Revival of the Fittest offers a rebuttal. Sull's case-studies of corporate rebounds and managerial reinventions provides a global array of second acts.

Contrary to the following review, Sull's wise reflections, his acute hindsight, on what separates mid-course corporate successes from failures is full of insights, though not quick-fixes or one-size-fits-all makeovers.

Rather, Sull provides an array of diagnostic tools for managers, helping them isolate the "active inertia"--a term he has coined and that is gaining currency among business theorists--and sift through the vast horizon of possibilities and risks managers in crisis must face.

A multi-disciplinary work with a global perspective, Revival of the Fittest is both informative and potentially transforming.

Disappointing - lots of hindsight with no insight.......2004-01-22

Not very impressed.

This book is based upon many interviews and observations with over 2 dozen companies around the world. However its all observation based upon hindsight of 'what' happened, with no real revelations into 'why'.

The selections are not convincing.

There's plenty of reference to Asahi Breweries in Japan who literally bet the whole Company on one idea about creating a market for Dry Beer. It paid off, but such a venture was very dangerous. Other Companies are studied that also bet everything yet didn't pay off; but there's no real insight into why the outcomes were different.

The index is poor; many Companies mentioned in the text don't appear in the Index. Compaq appears indexed under both 'failed transformations' and 'successful transformations' - so I re-read the relevant pages. It's the same anecdote, simply saying that what they did was a success 1991-98, but then caused their failing post-98? So what should they have done? If following the same action is deemed a 'fail' over 10 years, is it appropriate to still call it a 'success' over 8 years?

It's a history lesson, but with no real tools & techniques to take away for the future.

The strong shall become weak, and the weak strong again.......2003-11-27

At some point in a great battle between good and evil, at least as portrayed in pop culture, we can expect the villain to gloatingly assert: "It is your very goodness that will make you weak and fail." Professor Donald Sull is no super-villain but makes a similar, though rather more developed, claim about the best businesses. Rather than blaming the failure of a previously excellent company on incompetence, corruption, laziness, or lack of imagination, Sull locates the problem of stumbling giants in active inertia: the tendency of management to respond to disruptive changes by accelerating activities that succeeded in the past. In Revival of the Fittest, Sull analyzes this barrier and helps managers tackle the demanding task of overcoming it.

To overcome active inertia, Sull recommends neither evolutionary nor revolutionary change typically prescribed for faltering champions. Instead he explains the power of transforming commitments. Commitments matters, he explains, in that they both enable effective management and can disable it when they no longer fit what is needed. Managers select, make, honor, and less often remake commitments or binding actions by investing capital, making personnel decisions, exiting a business, making public promises, making public promises, forging relationships with resource providers, writing contracts, or by manipulating information. Commitments are a powerful tool for creating the desired future but they also become cognitive, cultural, and structural shackles that prevent a company from changing - even when the need to change is clear to all.

Companies take shape at the beginning of the "life cycle of commitments" through defining commitments consisting of strategic frames, resources, processes, relationships, and values. The character of the organization hardens over time as managers make reinforcing commitments large and small. The best companies develop a "success formula" that becomes the envy of competitors and the source of best practices for writers and consultants. This story takes a tragic turn when, eventually and inevitably, a gap opens and widens between the nature of the company and the business environment. The only way out - if one exists at all - is through transforming commitments that require boldness, prudence, and tenacity.

Sull uses pairs of companies to show how some have spiraled down while others successfully made and kept their transforming commitments. IBM's justly famous transformation under Gerstner exemplifies the latter, though this is only one of a wide range of illuminating examples in the book. Sull casts light on the active inertia trap which can arise from the basis of any of the original defining commitments. He follows this with eight risk factors to check for and some diagnostic tests to administer. If transforming commitments fit your situation, you must then choose the right anchor. This may be a new strategic frame but may also be new resources, processes, relationships, or values. The right anchor needs to be worked on by the right person who gives the transforming commitments traction by making commitments credible, clear, and courageous.

Since commitments are powerful tools, Sull's cautious advice includes an unflinching look at seven common mistakes that can lead transformation efforts off-track. Neither does Sull allow managers to anticipate the benefits without also appreciating the personal costs. The book does not try to delve deeply into every relevant aspect of each stage, allow the book to convey vital points while remaining slim enough for busy executives to actually read.

Refreshing look at the rise, fall, rebound of companies.......2003-11-20

This is an excellent, pragmatic, and thoroughly engaging book on how successful companies can find themselves at risk for failure due to what Sull coins as "active inertia". This concept is illustrated with a great set of corporate examples which are different from the ones used in many other business texts -- and this is a key feature which sets the book apart from its competitors. Sull walks the reader through some very useable steps for how companies can transform themselves and avert obsolescence. A great book, greatly written.

Why Good Companies Go Bad And How Great Managers Remake Them

Average customer rating:

great and valuable perspective

Why Good Companies Go Bad And How Great Managers Remake Them
Donald N. Sull
Manufacturer: Harvard Business School Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Popular Economics | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

General | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Management | Management & Leadership | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Systems & Planning | Management & Leadership | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Organizational Change | Organizational Behavior | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
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ASIN: 1591397162

Book Description

How to keep your company from being blinded by its own success—and how to put a firm on the path to sustained greatness. Organisations must change to survive. But a blind commitment to success “formulas” that worked in the past often render companies unable to adapt when new competitive situations arise. This book spells out the common pitfalls managers fall into, and outlines specific processes managers can use to help their organizations overcome their inertia before it’s too late.

Customer Reviews:

great and valuable perspective .......2005-07-04

Donald Sull is Associate Professor of Management at London Business School.

Leadership is about making commitments and seeing them through.

There are two dangers with commitment making. The first danger is that the commitments fail. Sull argues that the second danger is that the commitment succeeds. A series of successful commitments can be bundled up in what Sull calls a company's success formula. In an every changing world, leaders must guard against being prisoners of their own success formulas.

The most interesting part of this book is his creative pairing of similar companies in similar industries who took different paths of either honoring or destroying their success formulas. The stories of Firestone versus Goodyear in the tire industry have extraordinary value for us today and are well worth reading.

What does this mean for those who serve on Boards of Directors?

BOARDS WANT TO HIRE CHAMPIONS

Boards want to hire champions. Champions are bred to be decisive and self-confident. They love making commitments and seeing them through.

As Donald Sull argues, when champions make commitments you have a double edge problem. It is predictable that champions will have difficulty admitting that their commitments no longer fit the times. Indeed this trait is so predictable I called it the LBJ Effect in honor of the American President who escalated commitment to a failing war once it became clear that the war could not be won.

LESSONS FOR REVIVAL OF THE FITTEST FOR BOARDS OF DIRECTORS.

1. Good CEOs are champions. Champions believe in themselves and their commitments.

2. In the absence of a strong countervailing force, some CEO Champions will rigidly hold on to what Sull calls the success formula when it ought to be thrown away. We even take the more extreme position that in the absence of a strong countervailing force, champions will pour more resources into an inappropriate success formula.

3. This strong countervailing force is called the Board of Directors.

SETTING THE RIGHT CULTURAL TONE

At a cultural level, the LBJ Effect can be fought by the board insisting on a culture where it is acceptable to fail, to learn from mistakes, and to try again. It is a culture where "mid course correction" is not necessarily a sin and "stick-to-itness" is not necessarily a virtue.

Perhaps the most famous example of a corporate culture that supports this notion is Johnson & Johnson. On the desks of most executives within the J&J organization is a framed one-page document called, "Our Credo."

The J&J Credo is a series of principles that govern management decisions:

When there was a concern that a batch of Tylenol had been poisoned, a division manager unilaterally ordered all bottles of Tylenol off the U.S. market. That action was taken without consulting corporate headquarters. It was justified to management on the basis of the credo. Senior management at J&J backed the local manager and the employees were enormously proud of it.

This use of a corporate values statement is not unique at J&J. We have consulted at other companies with credos. And some of these companies had problems as severe as the Tylenol crisis. But in no other company would a middle level manager make a major decision based on an esoteric company principle. With respect to failure, the J&J Credo states:

"Employees must feel free to make suggestions and complaints....We must experiment with new ideas. Research must be carried on, innovative programs developed, and mistakes paid for."

In other words, failure is not "bad." It is part of the necessary price for being innovative.

Board Influencing Tactics

Boards seeking to influence CEOs to make mid-course corrections have a semantic problem. Leaders must be convinced that mid-course corrections will not be labeled as "indecisive" or "waffling." Such negative words are inconsistent with a positive sense of self. On the other hand, adaptability in the face of changing circumstances is consistent with a positive self-concept.

Some CEOs deride Sarbanes Oxley as an example of legislative overkill. They say that it will move the board/CEO relationship into an adversarial stance. Such a stance will only harm shareholders and waste resources. Sull's perspective is powerful people are only too human. And they are all too human in predictable ways.

A valid checks and balances system should keeps the LBJ Effect from getting out of hand and help companies decide when it is time to destroy their own success formula before competition does it for them.

###

Maryanne Peabody and Laurence J. Stybel,Ed.D. are co-founders of Board Options, Inc. Its mission is to increase Board effectiveness through the application of practical behavioral Science. (www.boardoptions.com).

[Re]focus. (Marginal).(Revival of the Fittest: Why Good Companies Go Bad and How Great Managers Remake Them)(Book Review): An article from: Automotive Design & Production

Average customer rating:

[Re]focus. (Marginal).(Revival of the Fittest: Why Good Companies Go Bad and How Great Managers Remake Them)(Book Review): An article from: Automotive Design & Production
Gary S. Vasilash
Manufacturer: Gardner Publications, Inc.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital

Industry | Automotive | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
ASIN: B0008DTXZW
Release Date: 2005-07-31

Book Description

This digital document is an article from Automotive Design & Production, published by Gardner Publications, Inc. on July 1, 2003. The length of the article is 603 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: [Re]focus. (Marginal).(Revival of the Fittest: Why Good Companies Go Bad and How Great Managers Remake Them)(Book Review)
Author: Gary S. Vasilash
Publication: Automotive Design & Production (Magazine/Journal)
Date: July 1, 2003
Publisher: Gardner Publications, Inc.
Volume: 115 Issue: 7 Page: 6(1)

Article Type: Book Review

Distributed by Thomson Gale

Book Description

Save your workers' hearing and save your company money by making your hearing conservation programs (HCPs) more effective. This unique, easy-to-read book provides the essentials for creating an effective hearing conservation program, details how to best organize your people to get the job done, and identifies the specific aspects within each phase of your program that spell the difference between success and failure. New procedures are described that allow management to identify problems and solve them to achieve a more cost-effective HCP. The book also discusses audiometric database analysis, presents valuable information for dealing with workers' compensation issues - both preventing claims and defending against them, and includes checklists and checklist summaries to assist you with a practical implementation of a hearing conservation program in your company. The ideas and information presented in this book are based on the authors' 35 years of combined experience in assisting industries implement effective HCPs, in addition to field studies at hundreds of industrial sites. This book will be especially valuable for management professionals, industrial hygienists, safety professionals, audiologists, plant engineers, company lawyers, personnel directors, occupational health nurses, occupational physicians, noise control engineers, workers, and others who are interested in hearing conservation in the workplace.

Customer Reviews:

Beginning a Hearing Conservation Program.......2000-05-13

This book is easy to read and leads the reader through a step-by-step process to developing an effective hearing conservation program. This book is recommended for anybody beginning a hearing conservation program or looking for ways to improve an existing program.

Book Description

Since its launch in 1991, the Yohkoh satellite has been returning unprecedented observations of solar flares and the dynamic solar corona. This book is a collection of papers presented at a meeting held in: Yoyogi, Tokyo, on the occasion of Yohkoh's fifth anniversary of operation. The papers constitute a summary of observations and results over the five years, including contributions based on data from Yohkoh's hard and soft X-ray telescopes and its spectrometer experiments. The five years of data, covering approximately one-half of a solar cycle, reveal a fresh perspective on solar science, with a new picture of solar flares and the active Sun emerging. Also, for the first time there are extensive results from Yohkoh observations of the Sun during the solar minimum period.
This wide-ranging volume will be of interest to workers in solar physics and X-ray astronomy. It also contains material appropriate for supplemental reading for graduate students in solar physics.

Book Description

This book presents a new perspective on the link between economic growth and environmental change. All the key issues in environmental economics are covered, including: industry, creation and environmental change; air, water and toxic pollution; economic growth and the limits of environmental regulation; and the ethics and the limits of environmental economics. The central thesis is that while new industries are necessary for economic growth, their development creates new environmental problems which become difficult to reverse. An alternative approach, "steady-state economics", based on the concept of ethical commitment, is put forward as a possible alternative to a high-growth, environmentally destructive economy. Providing a welcome alternative to conventional, neoclassical microeconomic thought on environmental issues, this will be vital reading for students of environmental economics and related subjects.

Customer Reviews:

A good book for undergraduates........2001-03-18

I recently read this book for an Economics class in technology and growth. This book can be challenging at time, yet is still a very rewarding book to read. It expands on many ideas that i'm sure we all have creeping in the back of our minds, but never really put into words. The only problem i had with this book is all of the historical data is about the USA and UK, which is a little upsetting to a Canadian. This book isn't revolutionary, but it is very informative.

The Old Man and the Tee : How I Took Ten Strokes off My Game and Learned to Love Golf All Over Again
Average customer rating:

A hoot to read

Great book for anyone that has or lost a father.

Hilarious and Witty

Wonderful book on many levels!

Too much product hype, too much instruction - buy it anyway!

The Old Man and the Tee : How I Took Ten Strokes off My Game and Learned to Love Golf All Over Again
David Leadbetter , and Turk Pipkin
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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Book Description

As a kid caddying for his father on the sunburned links of West Texas, Turk Pipkin had dreamed of great achievements in golf. Unfortunately, life got in the way. A lack of talent didn't help much either. It was not until his father passed away that Turk realized he'd forgotten his childhood dream and had lost the simple joy he'd once found in the game.Deciding that the time for all his pitiful golf excuses was past, Turk embarked upon the golf quest of a lifetime. For twelve months, he'd ignore work and other distractions, and dedicate himself to the game. He'd seek instruction from golf's greatest teachers, put the best equipment in his bag, and play the world's finest courses. His seemingly impossible goal was to take ten strokes off his 16-handicap.With lessons from David Leadbetter, Dave Pelz, and Ben Crenshaw, and with spiritual guidance from great old men like Willie Nelson, George Plimpton, and Byron Nelson, Turk's epic journey carries him from Pebble Beach to Scotland and back again, where he risks everything on one final round for his father.Follow Turk on the journey of a lifetime, and learn to love golf-and life- all over again.

Customer Reviews:

A hoot to read.......2007-03-15

I really enjoyed reading this book. It is not a "how to book" about improving your game, though the author does delve into the mechanics of how he improves. To give away a bit of the book, you need to take a year off and really practice a whole lot, and make sure you get top notch instruction while you do it. Read the book to learn about the highs and lows of the author on his journey to his final destination, not as another golf mechanics manual.

Great book for anyone that has or lost a father........2006-03-08

This book should make you laugh and cry. A great read that moves along fast. In my case I had to slow myself down. I wanted to jump ahead to the final chapter to see what happened. Being a golfer I would have liked more details on the final round at Pebble Beach.
All in all a very enjoyable book.

Hilarious and Witty.......2005-03-12

I'm a huge golfer, but not a big golf book reader. When I picked this book up I thought it would be boring, like most of the golf books. I was pleasantly surprised at how quick I was enthralled with the book and the humor in it. Not only funny, but I could really relate to this book and feel like I'm standing right next to him while he is telling the story. It is a great read and I recommend to give to the golfer in your life. It is truly a joy to read.

Wonderful book on many levels!.......2004-11-28

First of all, I enjoyed this book as a golfer. To be honest, I expected that when I bought it. But maybe even more, I enjoyed this book as a son and as a father. Mr. Pipkin has made my Christmas shopping easy this year; I'm giving his book to every guy I know who loves his golf and his father. Or his son, for that matter. And right now, I'm reading it all over again...

Too much product hype, too much instruction - buy it anyway!.......2004-09-28

When it comes to instruction books and equipment, golfers will buy anything that lays claim to being able to improve their game. (See: Roy McAvoy, "Tin Cup".) Pipkin doesn't claim to improve his readers' games except by extension, since he tells us how he took 10 strokes off his own handicap in one year of concentrated lessons, practice, and travel to the great golf locations of three continents. Trouble is, who among us mere sloggers could cobble together such a year's schedule without the leverage of a decent reputation as a golf writer and the promise of a mention (or, in some cases, a paean) in a soon-to-be-published golf best seller?
Pipkin is up front about the custom Calloways and the Ledbetter lessons he gets in return for singing the praises of these golfing ultimates, and somewhat less so for the 30-odd other product placements (not including all the courses)that jump off the pages in what pretty quickly becomes an off-putting kind of way. He generously shares the lesson tips he gets (why not - they cost him nothing) but the golfer who trys to digest, much less apply, all the instruction points will find himself or herself hopelessly muddled.
Never mind all that. The book has some good golf stories and is, in large part, an instruction book with a lot of advice on what equipment can do, and if you're a golfer, you know what that means. Buy it.

The Old Man and the Tee: How I Took Ten Strokes Off My Game and Learned to Love Golf All Over Again

Average customer rating:

The Old Man and the Tee: How I Took Ten Strokes Off My Game and Learned to Love Golf All Over Again
Turk Pipkin
Manufacturer: St. Martin's Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OT9YZ4

Word origins: An exploration and history of words and language
Average customer rating:

Fun, trivial and a great book to have if your being interrupted frequently.

Great find!

read yourself sober

A great basic word etymology for the non-linguist.

History and Words

Word origins: An exploration and history of words and language
Wilfred John Funk
Manufacturer: Wings Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

Etymology | Words & Language | Reference | Subjects | Books
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From a highly respected name in reference literature, an easy-to-access, dependable sourcebook on the origin and development of thousands of words, each word has been thoroughly checked by ranking linguists and the information is presented in a manner as entertaining as fiction, An Outlet bestseller in previous editions. 432 pages. 6 X 9.

Customer Reviews:

Fun, trivial and a great book to have if your being interrupted frequently........2007-09-08

Some edition of Word Origins has been around for nearly 60 continuous years. Wilfred Funk, who in every way perhaps best represents the archetypal American wordsmith, complied and interesting but not exhaustive (how could it be?) volume of words and their anecdotal genesis.
Word Origins is a fun book, and if you're the trivial type, or aspire to be, you would be well served by reading a few pages a night.
I wouldn't call it "gripping," but if you need something to read that can be set aside and easily returned to, this is the book to have.
Great fun and much appreciated.
REVIEW EVERY BOOK YOU READ.

Great find!.......2007-01-10

This book is a great addition to any home looking for fun enlightenment. Purchased as a learning tool it doubles in our home as "fun reading". Two birds with one stone (so to speak) We really enjoy it!

read yourself sober.......2005-12-05

We know that Tom and Jerry is the name of this cat-chase-mouse classic cartoon. How about it being the name of an alcohol drink? And prior to this what is it? This informative and even more interesting etymological "beechstaff" will freshen you up with the histories of the most common and familiar words you can imagine. Pick up, flip open, be surprised and seduced, for there is an aphrodisiac love apple in it--more commonly known to us as the tomato.

A great basic word etymology for the non-linguist........2005-09-02

I stumbled upon this jewel at the local Rancho Bernardo library. My high school english teacher in India, Mr. F. X. Paul, owned a tattered copy and used to read to us aloud a page or two in his grammar class. It helped relieve our boredom brought upon by trying to memorize grammar rules and sentence parsing.

Funk gives you a non-technical discourse on word etymologies. Grouped by categories, and sorted alphabetically, common english words and their history is explained. The write-up on individual words is very interesting and makes for a superb read. I was intrigued by the history and usage of words like barrister and pettition.

For a non-linguist like myself this book is a treasure trove of delight. Excellent resource.

History and Words .......2005-01-03

I love books like this. If you are like me and your reading habits range from the past to the present, then this book would be of interest to you.

This book is arranged according to themes, such as politics, religion, history, cooking, scientific names, proper names, and sports. Although the book is by theme, I do prefer a book on this subject to be alphabetical.

Some examples:

Alimony originates as a term that literally means to Eat Money
Tart was a term of endearment
Wench was a name for a child

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