In my opinion, this book is misnamed. Its proper main audience does not consist of managers but those in public relations; likewise, its main topic is not crisis management but communicating in a crisis. It admonishes the readers to plan for emergency situations, but it does very little to coach readers exactly how to do so. To be fair, it suggests that each company perform a “vulnerability analysis” to detect weaknesses that might be exploited…
Americans, like me, prefer to think of their country as valuing where you end up rather than where you were born. They like to think that they judge people based on the content of their character rather than the peculiarities of their parentage. If these suppositions suggest how American someone is, then Harriet Tubman is about as American as they get. This biography helps us understand why. At 141 pages, Ramos’ work is not a…
This work is the result of a cohort business study. The control group consisted of publicly owned companies that had good performance for 15 years and then great performance (defined as outperforming the market by over three times) for 15 years. There were only 11 good-to-great companies. Eleven other companies in similar lines of work were chosen into the comparison group. Then the research group dissected those companies to figure out what the great companies…
The Great Influenza by John BerryBest account of the Spanish Flu of 1918 – the last major pandemic. A History of Public Health by George RosenPublic Health measures over time. The classic history of Public Health. A History of Global Health by Randall PackardDoes for the field of Global Health what Rosen did for Public Health.
As a society, we have quickly moved into and out of the computer age and into the age of the world wide web. We are soon moving into the age of the Internet of Things (IoT). These comprise a myriad of devices which “talk” together via computer networks. They collect mountains of data on us and are poised to revolutionize virtually every sphere of human life. Although driven by technological advance, these changes are ultimately…
The Oxford don J.R.R. Tolkien is mostly known for composing the Lord of the Rings trilogy. However, before this trilogy, he built his academic career as an acclaimed expert on Anglo-Saxon culture, language, and literature. In his work, he translates three works from the Middle English into modern idiom. The quality of the translation demonstrates the vastness of Tolkien’s literary brilliance. Beowulf and The Canterbury Tales are the two most-read works from the Old English…
Author David McCullough stands securely as one of our nation’s great historians. His prior well-received works have focused upon American military and political history. This exposition tells how the American ideal settled into what was then known as the Northwest Territory. McCullough does so by sharing the work of five sizable figures in early Ohio history. The five played varied roles in life: A pastor/educator, a military man, the farmer-son of the pastor/educator, an architect,…
Old English, Computer Software, History of Science and Technology, and Writings about Writing Out with Winter, in with Spring! Old English Poetry: An Anthology by R.M. Liuzza I’ve been getting into Old English recently – that is, how English was spoken until around 1150. Think Beowulf. I’m kind of hopeful that the book will include the original language so that I can work on my translation skills. Sir Gawain and the Old Knight; Pearl; and…
In software development, technical debt is understood as something in software design that slowly reduces the speed of development. To mix metaphors, technical debt causes friction in the development process. Over time, work arounds cause “interest” to accrue on the principal of bad design. The business and software development are negatively impacted, and eventually a “tipping point” is reached. Then a plan is made to pay down some (but usually not all) of the technical…
T.S. Eliot surely resides in history as one of the greatest twentieth-century poets in the English language. He spanned the American-English landscape in life as well as in literature. His poetry is replete with imagery yet relatively devoid of obvious meaning. Even a poem entitled “Ash Wednesday” (a seemingly religious topic) skirts on just conjuring a sense of beauty in the reader and avoiding a tone traditionally reminiscent of a church. Of course, one poem…