John Feinstein reports the stories of the 1998 major golf championships through the lives of several players who were contending for one or more of them that year. The Majors are, of course, The Masters, The US Open, The Open Championship (British Open), and the PGA Championship. Saying that Mark O'Meara won The Masters and the British Open, Lee Janzen the US Open, and Vijay Singh the PGA Championship says almost nothing about the character, history, and the dynamic nature of life and competition on the PGA tour.

Mr. Feinstein helps us get to know some of these players as people. We learn some things about their health, how the got to the PGA tour, how qualifying for the various majors is done (and other tournaments, for that matter). Of course, the author reports actual competitions and how the leaders changed position and finally emerged victorious.

All of this is told in a rather meandering and leisurely style. If you want crisp, concise, and beginning to end reporting this book really isn't for you. However, if love golfing anecdotes and enjoy reading about golfing events, I think you will enjoy this book as much as I did. I learned about players I didn't know and learned more about some that I did know. Certainly, I learned more about these events we call the Majors and my enjoyment of them has been enhanced because I have read this book. Thanks to Mr. Feinstein for that favor.

Watching this DVD with my family last night I was reminded how heartfelt and even tender this movie is compared to the other Rocky movies. It seems like each one becomes a paler imitation of the first. This movie spends a great deal of time setting up the relationship between Rocky and Adrian. They learn to help each other learn to believe in themselves.

Unlike the other Rocky movies, which are all inferior to the original, the fight sequences are only at the beginning and end of the movie. Most of the movie is spent establishing Rocky's character and developing his attachment to Adrian and their joint relationship with Adrian's brother, Paulie. I still love the names for Rocky's two turtles, Cuff & Link.

The acting in the movie is actually quite tender. For example, when Paulie, Adrian, and Rocky are watching the press conference with Apollo Creed announcing the fight, the promoters treat Rocky as more of a joke than a contender. Paulie points this out to Rocky, and Rocky says that "it don't bother me none". Rocky wants to focus on his saying hi to Adrian on the TV. However, as Rocky is leaving he and Adrian briefly discuss how she felt about hearing her name on TV. He then asks her if she remembers him saying that what the promoters said didn't bother him. She says she does. He looks down the street and while barely moving his mouth says, "It did" and walks away.

Not Shakespeare, but quite human.

And the movie is filled with great lines from Burgess Meredith's creation of Mickey while he his training Rocky for this impossible fight in five weeks. Mickey is another loser looking for his break - his one shot. Everyone remembers Mickey from this movie.

This movie also launched Carl Weathers who does a fine job as Apollo Creed.

That it won the Oscar for best picture is a testament to the mood of the times, but even after all these years, it is a movie with impact. It hardly meets our current expectations for an action flick, but I think that is a good thing.

I liked this movie more than I thought I would. My expectations were for something both violent and saccharine. Certainly, a beautiful story about the transformation of the Japanese culture without the Tom Cruise character, but the story of Nathan Algren is a nice mirror to that of the real hero of the story, Katsumoto who is portrayed in magnificent fashion by Ken Wantanabe.

At the beginning of the story, Algren is a lost and drunken soul performing as a shill in a traveling sideshow. He is drawn into a minor program of the American trade delegation to train Japanese soldiers to use Western military weapons and to perform as Western soldiers in the suppression of a band of renegade Samurai.

They are rushed to battle against Algren's recommendations and are brutally defeated. Algren fights bravely. In fact, he wouldn't mind dying. Instead, his bravery interest Katsumoto and he is spared, nursed back to health, and learns some of the ways of the Samurai. Of course, he is won over to their cause and helps them in their final battle against the massed armies of the Emperor.

That is all I want to say about the story. It really does work and is filmed very beautifully (and a strong reason for the widescreen version). Those who want an action film might not like the time devoted to Algren's finding himself and becoming sympathetic to the Samurai. I am glad to have that part of the story. It also helps us get to know some of the other Samurai and their values and why they are willing to die rather than simply adopt Western Modernity. It helps us realize what was being lost and corrupted.

I think it is a very good movie and the violence isn't too extreme and is not there for its own sake.

If you are interested in finding out what the Cuban Missile Crisis was actually about and how it was conducted and resolved, this is a fantastic book. Not only do we get the context of what went on during the Eisenhower administration when Castro came to power, but we get the context of what was going on in the Soviet Union as well.

I did not know that Raul Castro was the committed communist who advocated closer ties with the USSR. That Fidel was anti-US was always clear, but it was most interesting to read about how the connection between Cuba and the USSR developed and its limitations because of Fidel's undisciplined and independent nature.

The back-channel diplomacy was also very interesting to read about and why we didn't learn about the Jupiter missile removal from Turkey until much later was another story I wanted to understand. For me, the most useful things I learned were the lurching and stumbling nature of the way the USSR and the US played off of and against each other. Not only were both sides trying to balance the other side, each side was also trying to be provocative as well.

The book also notes that the Soviets saw the Kennedy assassination as the work of a far right wing conspiracy led by H.L. Hunt, although they had no real evidence but the word of journalist Paul Ward. They refused to believe that the President's security services could have allowed a lone madman to shoot the President (as was actually the case).

The book ends with a brief discussion of coup that removed Khrushchev and put Brezhnev in power.

The book is written very well and has a rich supply of notes and documentation backing up the story the authors report. I think it is a fascination and important book from the most dangerous period in the Cold War.

This book has many virtues. First, it knows its audience. While generalities are subject to all kinds of exceptions, entrepreneurs tend to be active people. This book is written concisely, but covers a comprehensive list of subject. However, it is essential to understand that it doesn't cover any of the subjects exhaustively. It is more like a tour of finance for entrepreneurs. Few people who have what it takes to start businesses will handle all of the financial subjects covered in this book without help and advice from professionals (nor should they), but every businessperson should have an understanding of every subject in this book at least to the level discussed in this very fine book.

The treatment of forecasting, sources of funding, and valuation (including cash flow analysis) are vital topics that too many entrepreneurs treat too cursorily. The discussion in this book is certainly not sufficient to make you an expert on any of these subjects, but sill certainly assist you in becoming sufficiently conversant to speak knowledgably with professionals or prepare you for deeper study. The discussion of accounting is a very quick introduction to the subject and will definitely require deeper study unless you are going to completely outsource your accounting.

I think this is a terrific textbook that could be used as part of a one term course on the subject and hope that it gets adopted at many universities, colleges, and I could even see it used in specialized high school settings for the right kind of bright and driven students.

The material in the book isn't particularly hard, but it is broad. While it can be read alone (especially if you have some familiarity with the subject), it will definitely benefit most students to have the guiding hand of a skilled instructor, class discussions, and applied projects.

I think this is a fine and successful book that will benefit many.

It was wonderful watching a movie with well-drawn characters that have personalities and humanity with foibles, strengths, fears, and a sense of time and place in history. I enjoyed the "quiet" scenes where we are able to get to know the men of the Surprise. The friendship between Aubrey (Crowe) and Dr. Mautrin (Bettany) is a glue for the whole movie. The state of their friendship is a barometer for the state of affairs for the mission of the ship. Being a musician, I loved the scenes of them passing time making music (and the raucous music of the crew as well).

Max Pirkus plays the 13-year-old Lord Blakeney with amazing skill. His maturity reminds us of the time when children were not condescended to as creatures of little capacity and less responsibility as they are today. Some may find such adult expectations of such a young person abhorrent, but given the life expectancy of the times to 13 was to be about a third of your lifespan. They had to mature early and Lord Blakeney is a wonderful character with emotional strength, courage, and intellect beyond most adults.

There are two major battle scenes and a storm scene off the southern tip of South America that provide the action scenes of the movie. They are wonderfully done and are quite rousing. The scenes of surgery on the ship are filmed in a way that is not visually grisly, but so emotionally intense that you will want to look away because of what you might see, but don't.

I think it is always wonderful to capture a past time and place accurately. While I am not a historian and I am sure that those historians who pay close attention to this period will find things to complain about, I did like the details they captured about the living conditions of a crew aboard such a confined space. I don't know if all the details are right, but it was fun to watch a movie with details that added to the understanding of the plot rather than making one roll one's eyes at the implausibility of it all.

A great adventure bordering on an epic that is populated with people you would like to get to know and few you would treasure as friends.

When I was growing up the names of Palmer, Nicklaus, Trevino, Player, and their generation were the top competitors. Ben Hogan was a revered name, but one of past glory. His great year of 1953 was in the past. I had heard about his auto accident and his amazing comeback, but this book helped me see the man who "dug it out of the dirt" through hard work, discipline, and ferocious tenacity.

Mr. Hogan started out with less than most. His father's suicide and the family's subsequent poverty didn't leave him with many open paths to success. He found golf and found that it not only matched his physical skills, but was an even better match for his nearly obsessive temperament.

The swing he developed has become the pattern millions of us try to emulate, although he would find our haphazard approach to the game less than useless. Why we love being duffers would be beyond him. He knew how to work and to practice. I still cannot fathom the kind of internal strength it would take to come back from that terrible leg shattering accident when his Cadillac was struck by a bus. He played in great pain for the rest of his life and had four surgeries on his left shoulder. When I realize that his greatest achievements and most of his wins at major tournaments were after the accident I am simply dumbstruck.

Mr. Hogan was a very private and enigmatic figure. Mr. Sampson does a good job in teasing what facts we know into a good story. We get interesting stories from the golf side of his life (mostly stories told about Hogan by others) and those are very enjoyable. However, I like the way Mr. Sampson puts all that in the context of a real person - a real man. Ben Hogan wasn't a fictional character even though the media version of him was a distortion of the actual hard working man who practiced, practiced, and then practiced some more, who loved his wife, Valerie, and built a successful golf equipment business.

Ben Hogan made a long journey through life and I think this book tells the story well.

When I was in b-school I really learned to like well-written cases. Of course they aren't real life, but they do serve to illustrate certain points in a way that requires creative interpretation and solution rather than simple problem solving. Prof. Glen Urban does a fine job of pairing up really interesting chapters on the issues of marketing in the digital age with cases that focus in on the points he is trying to make.

This is NOT a book on building a web business or developing a web strategy for your business. Rather, it is a book for Marketing Managers to help them think through the implications for their efforts in the age of the Internet. Prof. Urban focuses on something he calls a Trust relationship, which involves giving the customer loads of information, innovation, and choice. He compares that to the standard low-price relationship he calls Push marketing. All of this culminates in the chapter and case on Citibank's online efforts.

It isn't required that you agree with every point the author makes to derive a lot of benefit from the book. I think it would make a very nice text for a marketing course that focuses on the implications of the web, Internet, and computers for segmenting the market, product positioning, product introduction, communicating with customers, pricing and distribution channel, and the idea of a Trust Relationship with customers. All good stuff that needs to be thought about.

This book starts at a very basic level and shows you step-by-step how to use Excel. It teaches you about Excel within an accounting framework. It is important to understand that this book has the purpose of teaching you about Excel and assumes you understand the accounting terms. If you want to learn about Excel or build on some basic skills you already have this is quite a helpful book.

After the authors take you through the use of the various tools (and there are lots of examples and do-along projects), there are problems and a Case Study to help you actively use what you have learned. There are answers to selected problems in the back of the book.

The city we call Tikal was called something like Mutul by its Mayan inhabitants and was inhabited continuously for about 1,700 years. While there has been magnificent archaeological and translating work done in recent years, the foundation of what we know of Tikal was laid in a great excavating and mapping project done by the University of Pennsylvania from 1955 until 1969. The author of this book, Peter D. Harrison, Ph.D. had participated in these (and other) excavations and brings that first hand authority to this very interesting book.

Dr. Harrison starts with the pre-history of Tikal and ends with the little we know of its inhabitants after the collapse in the 9th century. However, most of the book centers on the succession of 30 rulers (Kings, Lords, or whatever you want to call them). We know who most of these people were because of the Mayan predilection for documenting great events by erecting great monuments that had writing on them that we can now read (mostly).

The author also shares important understanding of the building of the great palaces and temples and shows us their important orientations and relationships with each other. Since what we see today is the decayed form of the final state of Tikal, I found it fascinating to work backward and realize all that wasn't there when the city was at its height of power and influence. The great pyramids we associate with the city today were late additions by an important set of rulers, but by no means the most powerful the city had known.

The book is full of pictures, great drawings, maps, and even some beautiful color plates. There is also a page on when and how to visit Tikal that would be very helpful for those intending to visit the site. There are also many helpful notes and an index.

I have two tiny nits to pick with the book, however. The first is that for several of the maps I had to use a magnifying glass to read the labels for the buildings. The second is even less important and I am not convinced that the author didn't make the better choice. However, when I am reading about Mayan culture I like to see the dates given in the Long Count format when applicable with our western dates in parenthesis. The reason for wanting the Long Count is to easily see when events are associated with important dates. Dr. Harrison does give these Long Count dates in the notes, but uses our calendar for the dates in the text (most of the time).

Anyway, these do not detract from the immense value of the book or the fun I had reading it. Thanks, Dr. Harrison!