General Books - Page 2

Redefining Health Care: Creating Value-Based Competition on Results

Michael E. Porter, Elizabeth Olmsted Teisberg

Amazon Price: $23.10 List Price: $35.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Harvard Business School Press Amazon Marketplace: 68 new & used starting at $13.25

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Total reviews: 27 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

The U.S. health care system is in crisis. At stake are the quality of care for millions of Americans and the financial well-being of individuals and employers squeezed by skyrocketing costs - not to mention the stability of state and federal government budgets. In "Redefining Health Care", internationally renowned strategy expert Michael E. Porter and innovation expert Elizabeth Olmsted Teisberg reveal the underlying and largely overlooked causes of the problem and provide a powerful prescription for change. The authors argue that participants in the health care system have competed to shift costs, accumulate bargaining power, and restrict services rather than create value for patients. This zero-sum competition takes place at the wrong level - among health plans, networks, and hospitals - rather than where it matters most: in the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of specific health conditions. In spite of competition among these systems, the patient care cycle is poorly coordinated. The fractured system undermines both efficiency and quality of outcomes. "Redefining Health Care" lays out a breakthrough framework for redefining health care competition based on patient value over the full cycle of care - from prevention and diagnosis through recovery or long-term disease management. With specific recommendations for hospitals, doctors, health plans, employers, and policy makers, this book shows how to move to value-based competition on results that will unleash stunning improvements in quality and efficiency.

The Culture Code: An Ingenious Way to Understand Why People Around the World Live and Buy As They Do (Your Coach in a Box)

Clotaire Rapaille

Amazon Price: $23.38 List Price: $29.98 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Your Coach Digital Amazon Marketplace: 21 new & used starting at $17.69

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Total reviews: 56 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Internationally revered cultural anthropologist and marketing expert Clotaire Rapaille reveals for the first time the techniques he has used to improve profitability and practices for dozens of Fortune 100 companies. His groundbreaking revelations shed light not just on business but on the way every human being acts and lives around the world.

Rapaille's breakthrough notion is that we acquire a silent system of codes as we grow up within our culture. These culture codes invisibly shape how we behave in our personal lives, even when we are completely unaware of our motives. We can learn to crack these Codes and achieve new understanding of why we do the things we do.

Rapaille has used the Culture Code to help Chrysler build the PT Cruiser, the most successful American car launch in recent memory, helped Procter & Gamble design its campaign for Folger's coffee, one of the longest-lasting and most successful advertising campaigns. He has helped GE, AT&T, Boeing, Honda, Kellogg, and L'Oreal improve their bottom line at home and abroad. Now, in this audiobook he uses it to reveal why Americans act distinctly like Americans and what makes us different from the world around us.

Understanding the "codes "gives us unprecedented freedom over our lives. It lets us do business in dramatically new ways. And it finally explains why people around the world really are different and reveals the hidden clues to understanding us all.

Not Just a Pretty Face: The Ugly Side of the Beauty Industry

Stacy Malkan

Amazon Price: $10.85 List Price: $15.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: New Society Publishers Amazon Marketplace: 50 new & used starting at $9.35

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Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Beauty & Fashion -> Cosmetics

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 17 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Lead in lipstick? 1,4 dioxane in baby soap? Coal tar in shampoo? How is this possible? Simple. The $35 billion cosmetics industry is so powerful they’ve kept themselves unregulated for decades. Not Just a Pretty Face chronicles the quest that led a group of health and environmental activists to the world’s largest cosmetics companies to ask some tough questions:

• Why do companies market themselves as pink ribbon leaders in the fight against breast cancer, yet use hormone-disrupting and carcinogenic chemicals that may contribute to that very disease?
• Why do products used by men and women of childbearing age contain chemicals linked to birth defects and infertility?

As doors slammed in their faces and the beauty myth peeled away, the industry’s toxic secrets began to emerge. This scathing investigation peels away less-than-lovely layers to expose an industry in dire need of an extreme makeover. The good news is that while the major multinational companies fight for their right to use hazardous chemicals, entrepreneurs are developing safer non-toxic technologies and building businesses on the values of health, justice and personal empowerment.

The Reckoning

David Halberstam

List Price: $10.00 By: Avon Books (P) Amazon Marketplace: 34 new & used starting at $8.34

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 21 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Relevant even today 4 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

If "The Reckoning" is not a classic then certainly it is an authoritative account of Nissan's assault on the U.S. market (and Ford's subsequent demise). The account of the Big Three's arrogance has been told many times since Halberstam published this book, but Halberstam deserves a lot of credit for so much of his book being so relevant to what American automakers are facing today. Insert big SUVs and big trucks any time Halberstam talks about Big Cars = Big Profits and you've got a pretty good idea of what's going on today with Ford and GM and their reluctance to come out with small, fuel-efficient vehicles in favor of high-margin SUVs. It is necessary to point out, though, that even though American auto executives were truly arrogant and complacent with their market share, Japanese manufacturing (lean production) was a paradigm shift. In order to compete on quality with the Japanese American auto would have had to spend billions of dollars on new plants and capital equipment (in essence, almost "betting the farm" that Demings' TQM was the wave of the future). The Japanese had the distinct advantage of having to start from scratch.

Editorial Review:

Award-winning author David Halberstam's The Reckoning gives a riveting account of the most decisive economic confrontation of this century--between Detroit's Ford Motor Company and Japan's Nissan. Here are young Ford, renegade Iacocca, visionary Katayama--everyone needed to reveal the crucial nuances behind two nations competing for commercial supremacy. HC: Morrow.

The Wellness Revolution: How to Make a Fortune in the Next Trillion Dollar Industry

Paul Zane Pilzer

List Price: $16.95 By: Wiley Amazon Marketplace: 44 new & used starting at $0.83

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Total reviews: 25 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

How to make a fortune in the next big boom industry
The paperback edition of this revolutionary business book, by bestselling author Paul Pilzer, shows wellness professionals and entrepreneurs how to get in on the ground floor of the booming wellness industry. A legendary entrepreneur and speaker, Pilzer predicts that within the next decade money spent on disease prevention will surpass that spent on disease treatment-and he shows readers how to stake their claim while there's still time. The Wellness Revolution is a step-by-step plan for getting rich that will help entrepreneurs figure out where they fit in the industry, learn how to control demand, and how to get started. This insightful and well-reasoned book shows how to take advantage of the wellness boom, but its lessons can be applied to any new market.
Paul Zane Pilzer (Park City, UT) is a world-renowned economist, a multimillionaire software entrepreneur, a part-time rabbi, a college professor, and a bestselling author. As an entrepreneur, Pilzer earned his first $10 million before the age of thirty. A former commentator on National Public Radio and CNN, Pilzer has been a guest on Larry King Live! three times, and he has been on the cover of several national magazines. He speaks to nearly 500,000 people a year, and more than 10,000,000 video and audio copies of his speeches have been sold.

Wine Politics: How Governments, Environmentalists, Mobsters, and Critics Influence the Wines We Drink

Tyler Colman

Amazon Price: $18.15 List Price: $27.50 Usually ships in 24 hours By: University of California Press Amazon Marketplace: 38 new & used starting at $16.89

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 12 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Appreciating wine more by understanding its politics 5 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

It is said that to really appreciate wine, one must understand its context. When some talk of "context", they often focus on what is in the bottle, such as a wine's varietal makeup, the vineyard from which its fruit was sourced, and/or the vintage which serves to describe the growing season. Even still, there are some who extend context further to include the historical and cultural influences shaping a wine, specifically those factors that have served to guide viticulturists and enologists in a singular fashion within a particular region.

Tyler Colman has now broadened this notion of context with Wine Politics: How Governments, Environmentalists, Mobsters and Critics Influence the Wines We Drink, a book that should appeal to anyone seeking a deeper understanding of wine.

If you have ever wondered why certain wines show up on some store shelves but not others, or why specific wines appear on certain restaurant menus while others do not, then you should read Wine Politics. The book not only explains how politics influence the distribution of wine here in the U.S., but also reveals how these same forces direct each bottle's production and eventual consumption. The best description of this book is offered by the author in Chapter 1::

"In this book I follow the travels that a bottle of wine takes from the vineyard to the dining-room table. Along the way it may encounter flying winemakers, humble vignerons, dull regulators, passionate activists, and powerful critics. I tell the neglected backstory of wine, which, as with Hollywood movies, can often be more interesting than the finished product."

Tyler Colman, a.k.a. Dr. Vino, approaches this topic by following the wine histories of France and the U.S., with a focus on winemaking in each country's respective, and most venerable, region, Bordeaux and Napa. This comparative treatment offers the reader a variety of useful insights and revelations throughout the book. Tyler extends his geographic coverage to include other regions of the world, including mentions of specific politics, policies, and practices in the Pacific Northwest.

I enjoyed the second half of the book the most, which includes chapters such as, "Who Controls Your Palate?", and, "Greens, Gripes, and Grapes". What Michael Pollan did in such great detail for food in "The Omnivore's Dilemma", Tyler Colman has now provided for wine, albeit at a cursory level, in these two chapters. For it is in chapters five and six that Tyler exposes the downside of the industrialization of wine, while contrasting this approach with the upside of "natural" winemaking practices.

After reading Tyler's book, I now have a deeper understanding of the public policies that influence the wines I am able to buy and ultimately enjoy at my table. As a result, I am a much more informed consumer, citizen, and most importantly, voter. I highly recommend Wine Politics as required reading for anyone seeking to enlarge their understanding of wine.

If Wine Politics is any indication of the path Tyler Colman is on with future books, then I am confident he will continue to increase my appreciation for wine in the years ahead.

Editorial Review:

After reading this intriguing book, a glass of wine will be more than hints of blackberries or truffles on the palate. Written by the author of the popular, award-winning website DrVino.com, Wine Politics exposes a little-known but extremely influential aspect of the wine business--the politics behind it. Tyler Colman systematically explains how politics affects what we can buy, how much it costs, how it tastes, what appears on labels, and more. He offers an insightful comparative view of wine-making in Napa and Bordeaux, tracing the different paths American and French wines take as they travel from vineyard to dining room table. Colman also explores globalization in the wine business and illuminates the role of behind-the-scenes players such as governments, distributors, and prominent critics who wield enormous clout. Throughout, Wine Politics reveals just how deeply politics matters-- right down to the taste of the wine in your glass tonight.

The Perfect Scent: A Year Inside the Perfume Industry in Paris and New York

Chandler Burr

Amazon Price: $10.20 List Price: $15.00 Not yet published By: Picador

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 11 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

A Fascinating Journey Into The World of Luxury Fragrance 4 out of 5 stars.
4 of 4 people found this review helpful.

I enjoyed this book tremendously. It was definitely not a page-turner for me. Rather, I savored it steadily over several weeks. Still, rest assured that this will remain one of my favorite books. By the time I was done with it, I had a huge admiration for both the author and his subjects - both American and French. I attribute this to the skillful writing and crystal-clear honesty of the author. I thought it was wonderful to see discussions end with complete candor when things went "off-record", as well as full disclosure when sensitive topics and "hot" documents were discussed. I admire Burr's journalistic integrity, which is unfortunately an increasingly rare thing these days.

Before reading this book, I was, I will admit, a bit of a Francophobe, with no particular desire to ever set foot there again. Not even finished with the book, my wife and I began planning a family trip there. This is purely a product of the author's sensitive but unforced treatment of his French subjects. As noted in other reviews, he takes pains to provide complete yet flowing translations of French dialogue, which actually makes for a wonderful, engaging read. Many authors would toss out the French with an air of linguistic superiority and force the reader to sink or swim. Instead, Burr clearly wants everybody to get on board the train before it leaves, and it works. Whether it was the author or the editor or both, my hat is off to them.

The book teaches - almost unbeknownst to the reader - an enormous amount about fragrances. As a scientist, I can assure you that he does a marvelous job with the scientific aspects, and that he made even the "old hat" science interesting to me. The history, economics, marketing, and politics of fragrances - about which I know far less - was even more fascinating, and - I have no doubt - just as accurate. And the really neat thing is that he made it so damn interesting. I could almost feel the starched lab coats and smell the test strips, and I wanted to be there.

To my fellow fragranauts (or "fragra-nuts"), I offer this. Before reading this book, I knew next to nothing about the Hermès line of fragrances ("Hermès? The scarf people? You mean, they do fragrances?"). By the time I was done, I was *positive* that I would take a liking to "Terre d'Hermès". Sure enough, when I tested about a dozen newer fragrances in Sephora, I walked out with Terre d'Hermès. If you're a fragrance fetishist like me, this book will talk to you.

Editorial Review:

The Perfect Scent is the thrilling inside story of the global perfume industry, told through two creators working on two very different scents. The first is commissioned by the French luxury brand Hermés, and developed by a perfumer named Jean-Claude Ellena, who begins his search for the scent on the banks of the Nile. The second is a celebrity fragrance, developed in New York by movie star Sarah Jessica Parker and a team of perfumers from a global conglomerate. Chalder Burr, the New York Times's perfume critic, spent a year behind the scenes watching both creators at work. His thrilling narrative follows each scent from the initial concept to the worldwide launch. The Perfect Scent is the story of two daring creators, two very different scents, and a billion-dollar industry that runs on the invisible magic of perfume.

Watch It Made in the U.S.A: A Visitor's Guide to the Companies That Make Your Favorite Products

Karen Axelrod, Bruce Brumberg

List Price: $17.95 By: John Muir Publications Amazon Marketplace: 43 new & used starting at $0.01

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 21 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Watch It Made In The USA 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

Great book, I did not know that a book like this existed. Will definitly come in handy when planning trips. Checked information on places we have already been and information was accurate.

Behinds the Scenes! 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

This is my first review in Amazon.

I am always curious about how things are made,
and after watching many episodes of "How do they do it",
and "How it's made" on discovery Channel.
I started to look for extra resources for a better understanding on these "behind the scenes" mysteries.
Then, I found this book.
And this book is a real treasure!
The book is well organized,
It provides many detail information about the factory tours,
and the brief background of the companies.

Thanks to this book,
now I have some itineraries in mind.
I plan to visit KitchenAid's factory in the near future for my mom.
(My family is in Taiwan)
She is a big fan of KitchenAid mixer. ha.
I will also visit Airstream company as well,
Owning a travel trailer is my dream, and I want to know how it is made,
And I will be more determined to realize this dream!
Maybe one day I will write a similar book "Watch it made in Taiwan" in a mobile trailer office. Who knows?!

Editorial Review:

Watch it Made in the U.S.A. guides travelers to more than 290 factories throughout the United States offering all the practical information needed to select and locate tours close to vacation destinations or near home. 40+ photos in color and b&w.

Ambitious Brew : The Story of American Beer

Maureen Ogle

Amazon Price: $18.25 List Price: $25.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Harcourt Amazon Marketplace: 88 new & used starting at $0.01

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Total reviews: 14 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

In the first-ever history of American beer, Maureen Ogle tells its epic story, from the immigrants who invented it to the upstart microbrewers who revived it.

 

Beer might seem as American as baseball, but that has not always been true: Rum and whiskey were the drinks of choice in the 1840s, with only a few breweries making heavy, yeasty English ale. When a wave of German immigrants arrived in the middle of the nineteenth century, they promptly set about re-creating the pleasures of the biergartens they had left behind.

 Just fifty years later, the American-style lager beer they invented was the nation’s most popular beverage—and brewing was the nation’s fifth-largest industry, ruled over by fabulously wealthy titans Frederick Pabst and Adolphus Busch. But when anti-German sentiments aroused by World War I fed the flames of the temperance movement (one activist even declared that “the worst of all our German enemies are Pabst, Schlitz, Blatz, and Miller”), Prohibition was the result. In the wake of its repeal, brewers replaced flavor with innovations like marketing and lite beer, setting the stage for a generation of microbrewers whose ambitions reshaped the drink.

 Grab a glass and settle in for the surprising story behind your favorite pint.

(20080803)

Uncommon Grounds : The History of Coffee and How It Transformed Our World

Mark Pendergrast

List Price: $30.00 By: Basic Books Amazon Marketplace: 41 new & used starting at $1.50

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Total reviews: 39 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Uncommon Grounds tells the story of coffee from its discovery on a hill in Abyssinia to its role in intrigue in the American colonies to its rise as a national consumer product in the twentieth century and its rediscovery with the advent of Starbucks at the end of the century. A panoramic epic, Uncommon Grounds uses coffee production, trade, and consumption as a window through which to view broad historical themes: the clash and blending of cultures, the rise of marketing and the “national brand,” assembly line mass production, and urbanization. Coffeehouses have provided places to plan revolutions, write poetry, do business, and meet friends. The coffee industry has dominated and molded the economy, politics, and social structure of entire countries.Mark Pendergrast introduces the reader to an eccentric cast of characters, all of them with a passion for the golden bean. Uncommon Grounds is nothing less than a coffee-flavored history of the world.