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Indispensible read for leadership development professionals
Tom Cummings' and Jim Keen's latest book is a must-read for any personal coach and organisational learning practitioner.It provides helpful analytical frameworks that assist in the design of learning interventions.In addition it helps leaders to reflect on their own abilities to be in balance (equinimity, as the authors call it) and offers sensible practices to achieve this.Cummings's and Keen's thinking goes beyond the typical 'create a checklist of helpful things that managers should do' that so many books on leadership offer.Rather, they do justice to the interrelationships of factors that create effectiveness in leaders.In short, it is a very helpful book and a very pleasant and interesting read!

Useful management manual in The Age of Complexity
Management's holy grail in the early 21st century is how to balance all the issues and demands - some old, some new -that battle for time and attention on the leadership agenda. Tom Cummings might just have the solution, With a simple, but not simplistic approach, Leadership Landscapes helps 21st century leaders to build a map of the terrain, be it competitive, macroeconomic, internal, even personal. Mapmaking and the ability to navigate from the new, often strange, always demanding landscape it portrays are the key management talents of the coming century. Tom Cummings and Leadership Landscapes helps you to develop and sharpen your skills as a trendspotter, communicator and strategist. In short, a leader.

The Need for Integrated Leadership: Theory + Practice
Tom Cummings and Jim Keen have spent years working with and researching leaders and it shows in their book, Leadership Landscapes.

Leadership Landscapes combines theory and practice for a compelling and useful guide to integrated leadership. Given the ever-increasing speed of business, the need to adapt quickly, and the overflow of information, leaders need to find ways of working through the complexity so that they can lead with impact and authenticity.

Using the analogy of leadership landscapes, Cummings and Keen believe that successful leaders are able to lead in and across different, contextually relevant landscapes (i.e. macro business, industry, organisation, team, personal) all the while keeping the big picture in mind.In addition, successful leaders manage complexity by developing their ability to move fluidly between and mediate among the different landscapes.

From the more analytical side, the book then shifts focus to the behaviours that are needed to deal with the challenges a leader faces. Cummings and Keen call this set of interconnected behaviours the equanimity shift. Equanimity, also termed dynamic balance, requires the cultivation of five skills - an eye for possibility, reframing, recovery, presence, and enduring commitment.

Unlike other leadership books that finish after presenting a theory, this book goes on and details how the theory can be practiced using various examples and describing techniques drawn from the authors' years of experience.

Overall, the book is critical reading for anyone seeking a more integrated perspective to leadership and life. Besides new and experienced leaders, coaches and other practitioners working in the field of leadership would also find it a very useful read. ... Read more

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Chapters: Jim Creighton, Asa Brainard, Candy Cummings, Charlie Hodes, Dickey Pearce, Fred Crane. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 26. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: James Creighton, Jr. (April 15, 1841 October 18, 1862) was a pitcher in baseball's earliest era. Among his many accomplishments, he was in all likelihood the first professional ballplayer, threw the first fastball, completed the first recorded triple play, and is considered by baseball historians to be the game's first superstar. Before the formation of organized baseball leagues, a career in the sport was a far different proposition than it is today. Amateur ballclubs would form and spend much of the time playing intrasquad matches, holding exhibitions with other clubs. Much of baseball prior to the Civil War was centered in New York. In 1857, at the age of sixteen, Creighton helped to form his first club, the Young America Base Ball Club. It lasted only through the year, at which point Creighton and a friend, George Flanley, founded the Niagara Club. Jim Creighton as an ExcelsiorIn 1859, Creighton and the Niagaras were losing a match to the well-established Star Club when Creighton, who had to this point been used primarily in the infield, came into the game as a relief pitcher and proceeded to throw the ball unthinkably hard for the time; the Star batsmen claimed that he used a snap of the wrist to deliver the "speedball", as he called it. (At the time, the rules of baseball stated that a pitcher must deliver the ball underhanded, locked straight at the elbow and the wrist.) Regardless of the legality of his pitch, the Stars immediately snapped Creighton and Flanley up, and the two finished the season with them. The Stars were unable to keep Creighton, either, and before 1860 he joined one of the highest-profile c...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=1174903 ... Read more

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Purchase includes free access to book updates online and a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Chapters: Tony Gwynn, Manute Bol, Byron Scott, Craig Hodges, Terry Cummings, Tom Chambers, Bob Bender, Jim Boylan, Richard Anderson, Stan Pietkiewicz, Jerome Whitehead, Eddie Hughes. Excerpt:Robert Michael "Bob" Bender (born April 28, 1957 in Quantico, Virginia ) is a basketball coach, an assistant with the NBA's Atlanta Hawks . Bender has been with Atlanta for three seasons as an assistant coach, following two seasons with the Philadelphia 76ers . Previously a college head coach for 13 seasons, Bender served as the Sixers' assistant coach/player development for the 2002-03 season. He was promoted to assistant bench coach prior to 2003-04. Bender was then hired as an assistant bench coach by former fellow 76ers, and Detroit Pistons assistant coach Mike Woodson, when Woodson was named head coach of the Atlanta Hawks in late 2004. He remains to this day with the Atlanta Hawks who on February 10, 2009 have seen their first 30 wins since their 1986 season. The 1996 Pac-10 Coach of the Year, Bob Bender guided the University of Washington to a 116-142 record during his nine seasons (1993-2002), a mark that ranks fourth all-time among Washington coaches for career victories. Bender took over in the fall of 1993 and revived the program which had been struggling since the mid 1980s. He directed the Huskies to back-to-back trips to the NCAA Tournament in 1998 and 99. His 1998 squad, which featured former Sixers center Todd MacCulloch , recorded a 20-10 (.667) record, posting the school's finest winning percentage since 1985. Among their highlights that year was Washington's first 20-win season since 1987, their first NCAA tourney berth since 1986 and their first Sweet 16 appearance since 1984, falling in the final second to UConn . Bender began his head coaching career in the fall of 1989 at Illi... ... Read more

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Softbound, clean. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Sumptuous Fare!!
Such delicious dishes--and so unusual and interesting. Mostly quite elegant recipes--a far cry from Betty Crocker! Illustrated with artifacts from the legendary collection of the Toledo Museum, as well as mouth-watering pictures of the finished dishes, all in full color. A gorgeous book-- a real keeper! ... Read more

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* Every U.S. Postage Stamp Design Reproduced in Full Color * 1980 Stamp Values * Latest Prices for Plate Blocks, Sheets & First Day Covers * Over 100 Stories / The History Behind the Stamp * How to Begin A Stamp Collection +*^*+NEW FEATURES+*^*+ * Price Trends of Selected Stamp Issues * Catalogue Numbers and Current Prices for Souvenir Pages & Commemorative Panels ... Read more

Customer Reviews (18)

Strange read
What a strange little book.I don't know how I came to buy it, but I guess we all make mistakes.It's not a horrible book, just pretty plain and borderline boring.Bland characters.Bland story.Bland premise.

Over - My - Head
Within my span of listening (now cut short - thanks, big Al), Don Imus has interviewed more non-fiction authors than authors of fiction. Preferring the output of the latter, I followed Imus's recommendation.

I started out with a sense of fear, given that Lehrer works for the government's PBS. Regardless, it obviously took some talent to write a successful novel about a totally boring subject and the totally boring lives associated with it.

Amazingly the book held my interest. These characters aren't human beings; they are more like machine parts. They lead nightmarishly repetitious and simplistic lives, perform mundane activities, and, carry with them a sense of defeatism throughout. The protagonist's wife didn't even accompany her husband to his award ceremony. "That's progress, you see," repeats revered veteran bus driver Paul Madison. Does this refrain attempt to echo Vonnegut's "so it goes"? (would anybody please tell me what "so it goes" is supposed to mean?)

Events in this novel were unrealistic. Son of an eye doctor wants to be a bus driver? Top-of-the-line bus driver sabotages his own bus and practically leaves a note (but he did not) saying, "yeah, it was me the driver, I did it." The protagonist's moderately happy marriage is destroyed over the mere observation of an attractive woman? People are killed and a career is lost for the same reason? The biggest thing in life is to decorate the house for Christmas?

This is terrifying. I felt the same anxiety when learning (in late 1960's high school) of life in the Soviet Union.

Regarding this novel, given its hyperbole and ultra-simplistic nature, I am left with a sense of the hidden metaphor. I don't know what that metaphor is though.

Perhaps one with literary skills can tell me what the hidden metaphor of Jim Lehrer's"White Widow" is all about. I hope it amounts to something more than Jackie Gleason's "The Honeymooners" on naturalism.

A Great Bus Ride
I heard about Jim Lehrer's book while watching Imus in the Morning, who gave it a good recommendation.I thought I'd give it a whirl and did not regret it.It's a great story about a kind, wholesome, honest,hardworking man who goes through one of those life altering experiences that is completely unexpected."On Time Jack" was just at a restless point in his life, I believe, and needed a bit of a change.He got it when a beautiful woman he compares to Ava Gardner appears on his bus every Friday.He becomes obsessed with her, to the point it begins to effect his entire life...his job, his marriage, his integrity.I really enjoyed the book; it's the perfect size and a very entertaining read.I plan to read more of his books and highly recommend you order this one !It's a keeper.

simple plot, with endless imagination
I will start by saying that this book may not be for everyone. Some readers with short patience will loose interest before the book climaxes. But if you are a true fan of reading, I cannot see you loosing interest in this book. The descriptions of buses and Jack's day to day occupation are occasionally over the top and what some would say excessive... but it all serves a distinct purpose to bring you as the reader, into Jack's life. If you don't let yourself become Jack in this book, don't bother reading it, because it will mean nothing to you. But if you give it a chance, you will see a beautiful tragedy unfold right before you. This book truly is a proving ground for the saying that, "you don't know what you have till it's gone." You may also find it difficult to remove yourself from Jack's life once you've put yourselves in it.
I would recommend this book to anyone who truly enjoys reading, but especially men, who in my opinion can truly relate to what a white widow is, and how we can really loose our minds after getting one in our head.

awsome book!

Portrait of person, time and place

This portrait is so full, it really doesn't need the "white widow" of its title. In my opinion, a number of more realistic scenarios could have prompted what became the final action.This didn't, however, interfere with my enjoyment of the book.

Having been a bus rider and a resident of TX, the ride rang true. You really get to know Jack Oliver and the world of post war TX bus driving.As with any well developed character, you miss Jack when the book is over.

I recommend this book to those who like character studies or regional literature. ... Read more

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For close to a century, a majestic chapter of American history has been buried in an obscure grave in Shelbyville, Tennessee. BEAUTIFUL JIM KEY, the onetime ugly duckling of a scrub colt that became one of the most heralded and beloved heroes of his day, was famous neither for his beauty nor his speed but instead for his exceptional intelligence. Said to have an I.Q. equivalent to that of a human sixth-grader, Jim exploded on to the national scene in 1897 by demonstrating inexplicable abilities to read, write, spell, do mathematics, tell time, sort mail, cite biblical passages, and debate politics.

For the next nine years, Jim performed in nationwide expositions and world's fairs to wildly receptive crowds, smashing box-office records, overcoming hurdles of prejudice and skepticism, all the while winning rapturous praise from the press and leaders such as President McKinley, Booker T. Washington, and Alice Roosevelt Longworth.

In this breathtaking saga, Jim's astonishing journey is coupled with that of his trainer and best friend, Dr. William Key, a self-taught veterinarian, former slave, Civil War veteran, prominent African-American entrepreneur, and one of the most renowned horse whisperers of his time -- a man who shunned all force in the training of horses, instead relying on kindness and patience.

Masterful storyteller and bestselling author Mim Eichler Rivas at long last gives two cultural icons their due, not only unraveling the mystery of their disappearance but examining how, thanks to the rare and intimate relationship between horse and man that was championed by promoter and humane activist Albert R. Rogers, a dramatic shift took place in the public mind that made kindness to animals a cornerstone of modern civilization and helped launch the animal rights movement. Unveiled against the backdrop of American history, BEAUTIFUL JIM KEY is their incredible tale.Amazon.com Review
An inspirational tale that was nearly buried beneath the detritus of time (namely floods and fires), Beautiful Jim Key recalls the remarkable life of a remarkable horse at the turn of the previous century. Revered not for his speed on the track, Beautiful Jim Key was instead a cerebral celebrity who electrified fairgoers from St. Louis to Boston with apparent feats of mathematics, reading, and writing, even making change for a dollar. But as might be expected, author Mim Eichler Rivas's story is about much more than a horse from Tennessee imbued with a staggering intellect. It's also about Jim Key's equally remarkable trainer, Dr. William Key, a black man and onetime slave who narrowly survived the American Civil War, prospered against all odds, and emerged as a wealthy inventor, self-trained veterinarian, and community pillar. Dr. Key's use of kindness and patience to train Jim, rather than the de rigueur tactics of beatings and intimidation, gave way to fresh thinking about animal husbandry at a time when animals were considered virtually inanimate. And then some: "The horse and the man from Tennessee had not only helped pioneer the humane movement but had, over the past seven years, in direct and indirect ways, changed the face of popular entertainment. [Suddenly], the big-budgeted theatrical productions began adding nonhuman cast members to their shows." The author provides ample scene-setting color, especially when describing the various exhibitions Jim Key headlined, and does a reasonably good job of footnoting her various claims about Jim's mental prowess, though occasionally the reader wonders how, exactly, she decoded the horse's thought process. Her writing style is also somewhat tepid, but still, there is no doubt that Jim Key was an exceptional horse in an exceptional era guided by an exceptional man. Thanks to Rivas, Seabiscuit must now share a posthumous marquee along with Beautiful Jim Key. --Kim Hughes ... Read more

Customer Reviews (25)

Beautiful Jim Key ....Beautiful story
I borrowed this book from a friend and wanted to own it for my collection.Though a little sluggish in sections, the story is fascinating.In addition to being a good (true)story about a pretty incredible horse, it's also a fascinating historical account of a man, born a slave, who gained stature and dignity through his knowledge of horse training and self taught veterinary talents. It covers pre-civil war life in Tennesee through the reconstruction era and the birth of the ASPCA in the late 19th century.Doc Key is the real story here, and the mystical bond that can exist between a human being and a very special horse.

Beautiful Jim Key
Great story !! An amazing story of a Great horse and a really great horse "teacher" !! Very informative I had never heard of Jim Key and I'm very glad the story finally got told, I just wish I could have seen him do his "thing"

One of the most amazing true stories you will ever read.
This is not your ordinary horse story.You will be asked to believe some pretty surprising things, and my guess is that you will believe them - even if you're as hard-boiled as my Aunt Idena's Easter eggs.
This is a horse story, in the same way that the film "Seabiscuit" is a horse story. But it is also a fascinating snapshotof the life of a man of color. It describes the situations, attitudes and dangers that he had to contend with from his beginnings as a slave in the pre-Civil War South, to his rise to celebrityhood alongside his famous horse in post-Civil War America.
It is a look at an astonishing bond between a man and a horse, and the far-reaching changes they brought about in thousands who experienced in person the wonder of their special relationship.How Dr. Key and the titular horse brought about, in large measure, the rise of the animal-rights movement, and helped thousands of African Americans to achieve fair and equal treatment in education and other areas make for fascinating reading.
This book is an eye-opening delight.It is a must-read for anyone interested in horses, animal intelligence, the struggle for equality by African Americans in this country, and anyone interested in the history of America.

Study of times, people, animals and goodness
This story of a good man who made a good life for himself, his family and his animals, built from circumstances that were to say the least, less than the best, is a case study in human nature.

I cannot help but contrast Dr. Key with Michael Vic. Key was a man born into slavery and from that experience, chose to treat all life with respect. He and his horse became a catalyst for the change in public sentiment that came as a result of his goodness toward animals and activity the American Humane Movement. Michael Vic who, when also given a life of plenty, choose the opposite path. It seems to be a sad commentary.

I must heartily endorse the book. It is a good story and a good read.

Altruism or Commercialism
I found this story an interesting story about race relations and progress in teaching society about kindness to animals at the turn of the 19-20th century -- after I got through the heavy emphasis on commercialsim.However, the heavy thread of commercialism that ran throughout was very off-putting to me -- probably it was a big thread in the author's source materials.She tried to present the story with the exploitation of Jim Key's talents as a key to acceptance of kindness of animals in our society as a main theme -- but I saw that as more of a side benefit of the humans' desire to become wealthy --a "gimmick" used to further the commercialization of Jim Key.To me altruism truly exists only where the primaries are not attempting to gain anything for themselves, whether that be money, reputation, or praise.Hence this story is about commercialization, not altruism.Now it is true that Bill Key highly valued kindness to animals and that he was uncompromising about the right of Jim Key to enjoy the wealth too -- and that was a great and unusual characteristic at that time (and probably still is today) -- but it does not change the fact that commercialization seems to me to be the main theme of the story.In fact the author seems to make more points about the promoter's innovative commercializations than she does about the progress of teaching kindness to animals. ... Read more