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Using data from both human and animal experiments and citing both classic and contemporary studies, this exciting book illustrates how various topics in learning and memory are related and how the theoretical perspectives in these areas have evolved. The author team has created a comprehensive text on learning and memory that combines current with classic research. This extensively revised Second Edition is organized by the following unifying themes: 1) learning and memory are basic processes that result in diverse phenomena; 2) learning and memory are interrelated but separable domains; 3) learning and memory are adaptive processes, and; 4) learning and memory occur in a biological context. These themes provide a more understandable approach for students. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Looks boring but is fascinating
While this book looks like it would be a boring read, it is really quite intriguing for those who are interested in the material.It describes multitudes of studies and explains concepts in a straight forward manner.This book surprised me at its readability and it is now one of my favorite books.It has a lot to offer.

Dull, Dull, Dull
Textbooks don't have to be this dull even when they are about a dull subject.There is not an ounce of personality to be found in this textbook.There must be a better textbook for this subject.On a good note, you'll get plenty of sleep while reading this textbook.ZZZZZzzzzzzzzz! ... Read more

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Carl Fischer Music makes available a collection of aria excerpts from Ricky Ian Gordon s critically acclaimed hit opera, The Grapes of Wrath. This collection includes The Last Time There Was Rain, Simple Child, Us, and more.Premiered at the Minnesota Opera in 2007, The Grapes of Wrath is a full-scale opera with libretto by Michael Korie, now available in its entirety from Carl Fischer Music. Based on the Pulitzer prize-winning 1939 novel by John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath was named "the great American opera" by Musical America, and Los Angeles Times critic Mark Swed wrote that:...the greatest glory of the opera is Gordon's ability to musically flesh out the entire 11-member Joad clan...Gordon's other great achievement is to merge Broadway and opera... greatly enhanced by his firm control over ensembles and his sheer love for the operatic voice. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

What The Critics Said...
Gordon, who first made his name in the theatre and as a composer of Broadway-style songs, fills his score with beautifully turned genre pieces, often harking back to American popular music of the twenties and thirties: Gershwinesque song-and-dance numbers, a few sweetly soaring love songs in the manner of Jerome Kern, banjo-twanging ballads, saxed-up jazz choruses, even a barbershop quartet. You couldn't ask for a more comfortably appointed evening of vintage musical Americana. Yet, with a slyness worthy of Weill, Gordon wields his hummable tunes to critical effect
Alex Ross, The New Yorker

The music Gordon has written brings these events and characters to life. At once simple and complex, the score captures the scope and breadth of the story persuasively. Gordon's musical language is a fascinating mix of different styles that incorporate the best of American 20th century
music. The score for "The Grapes of Wrath" is a wonderful merger of Aaron Copland, Samuel Barber, George Gershwin and Leonard Bernstein, all of which is mixed together and blended into a sophisticated concoction that is uniquely and unmistakably Gordon's.

...one of the most important and vital works for the stage to come from a contemporary American composer in many years.

...a sprawling grand opera that captures the depth, vastness and
poetic beauty of the novel
Edward Reichel, Deseret Morning News

As far as I was concerned -- and this is a minority opinion -- the nearly four-hour opera was too short. Had Gordon and Korie been allowed to follow their original bliss and create a two-night or more American "Ring" cycle, I would have gladly returned for more.
The greatest glory of the opera is Gordon's ability to musically flesh out the entire 11-member Joad clan... Each has a distinct musical style. Each is sympathetic.
Gordon and Korie, through sheer conviction, and Minnesota Opera, through a brilliant production and cast, have found the timeless and timely essence of Steinbeck's epic
Mark Swed, Los Angeles Times

The great American opera? Ricky Ian Gordon's "Grapes of Wrath" might be it.
The score - without recitative - is song based and many scenes flow easily into the next. Gordon points to models in "Porgy and Bess," "Street Scene," "Showboat" and Sondheim, but he has gone beyond them in a score that is original and completely his.
Wes Blomster, Musical America/Opera Today

A grand, sprawling, politically astute and musically compelling affair that amply and accessibly answers the rhetorical question: "An opera about Okies?"
...a production of might and sweeping scale, one that in vision and craft, honors Steinbeck's source material
DOMINIC P. PAPATOLA, Pioneer Press

The new opera by Ricky Ian Gordon and Michael Korie masterfully captures
the scope
and spirit of Steinbeck's Nobel-winning epic. "The Grapes of Wrath" works as grand opera, with its large
cast and sweeping score, and as a pointed reminder that the social problems that vexed Steinbeck never really go away. "I swear, what's this country comin' to?" a chorus of Pump Guys sneers at the desperate"Okies." What, indeed.
Gordon's score is, as conductor Grant Gershon described it, "a patchwork - a quilt of American sound." The composer's antecedents - Samuel Barber, Aaron Copland, George Gershwin, among others - are clear, yet Gordon stitches them together in a way all his own. Folk music, swing, Andrews Sisters-style harmonies, jazz, even some Handelian word painting all pop through the contemporary opera fabric. Recurring motifs, such as "Handbills" and "It's Not My Fault," help tie it all up. And don't be surprised
if you walk out humming one of the tunes.
By Catherine Reese Newton
The Salt Lake Tribune

What Minnesota Opera has come up with is a splendid, almost perfect production of an opera that is smart, funny, touching and harrowing, in all the right places
Michael Anthony, Star Tribune

Waves of beauty and transcendence...
Gordon's compositions are startlingly accomplished in range, and refreshingly uninhibited in scope. He frequently moves the score into meditative ballads, but also infuses elements of period jazz and pop in a manner that evokes emotion rather than seeming gratuitously referential. His emotional range is vast, from a number in which Ma Joad (Deanne Meek) lets go of her family's past, to a jaunty tribute to truck drivers that opens the second act like a glass of iced lemonade on a hot afternoon.
Korie's lyrics are almost perfectly matched to Gordon's score. As the music ranges from high to low, Korie writes passages of piercing beauty, then follows with rhyming couplets that both ably tell the story and evoke the poetry of the characters' tortured lives. He uses blunt, forceful words that elevate the work's emotionalism by mixing fatalism with optimism until the opera begins to sing in the range of the universal.
Gordon and Korie have produced a bit of a conundrum: a very long show about suffering and endurance that leaves the viewer enlivened. The intelligence and compassion of their work, combined with the evident vitality and belief of the cast in this opera's merit, supply high emotion with depth and compassion.
This is not a happy story, but its telling is nothing short of incandescent.
Quinton Skinner, Variety

10 Best Lists at the years end...(2007)
Vintage opera: The pinnacle of the opera season was Ricky Ian Gordon and Michael Korie's "The Grapes
of Wrath," co-commissioned by Utah Opera and presented in Salt Lake City in May. Gordon and Korie's
"Grapes" masterfully captured the scope and spirit of John Steinbeck's epic novel.
Catherine Reese Newton, The Salt Lake Tribune

The world premiere adaptation of John Steinbeck's iconic novel was also the most ambitious, galvanizing and audacious piece of performance I saw this year what emerged was a three-act, four-hour journey that had both the might of an epic and a naked, intimate honesty that slugged you right in the gut. Composer Ricky Ian Gordon's rangy, cagey, nuanced score had one foot in the opera world and the other tapping more populist ground, referencing Gershwin and Broadway musicals. Michael Korie killed off more Joads than did Steinbeck himself in an unabashedly lefty libretto
Dominic Papatola, Pinoeer Press

Ricky Ian Gordon and Michael Korie took one of the great American novels
and set out to write the great American opera. And they just may have succeeded, thanks to a deeply involving and imaginatively staged world-premiere production by the Minnesota Opera.
ROB HUBBARD
Pioneer Press

One of Ewers' major operatic accomplishments during her time here was her involvement (together with the Minnesota Opera) in the production of Ricky Ian Gordon's "The Grapes of Wrath," which received its local premiere last May. An unqualified success and important contribution to contemporary opera, Gordon's work without question has helped solidify Utah Opera's position among regional companies.
Edward Reichel, Deseret Morning News

Korie's libretto is smartly organized and written... Korie loves rhymes, bless him, partly for the feeling of punctuation they provide. Thankfully, he usually avoids the predictability of couplets inserted in a non-rhyming line. He also rhymes nicely within lines.
Gordon's music has a strong lyrical impulse that incorporates many American idioms, from Broadway shows to jazz and country fiddling, with complete ease and naturalness. Gordon's vocal lines are beautifully set, with strong and natural rhythms and freshness in melodic contour.
Mark Kanny, Pittsburgh Tribune Review

Clearly the celebrated novel holds moments of staggering emotion, but Steinbeck left much more on the tree, sentiments waiting to be plucked like the fruit for which the Joad Family wretchedly toils. No better art exists than music to do that.
This is essentially Ricky Ian Gordon's achievement in his work, "The Grapes of Wrath," which opened its run at the Benedum Center Saturday in a top-rate production by Pittsburgh Opera. It is not a retelling of the novel, but an unpacking of its emotional core and even the greater tragedy of the Great Depression itself. Set with unaffected melody and underpinned by an orchestra both evocative and foreboding, transgressions hit the listener harder and tender scenes made the eyes moister, at least than I remember when reading the book years ago. The criterion for whether a novel should be translated into another art form must begin and end with the question: Can it offer something new? Gordon's most definitely does.
Andrew Druckenbrod, Pittsburgh Post Gazette
The Grapes of WrathThe Grapes of Wrath - An Opera in 3 Acts ... Read more

Product Description
Since the end of the Cold War, the United States Army has been reengineered and downsized more thoroughly than any other business. Hope Is Not a Method explains how this process took place and shows how the Army's experiences are extremely relevant to today's businesses.Amazon.com Review
In recent years, the U.S. Army has been modified andmodernized more extensively than almost any private business. Leadingthe charge on this front were General Gordon R.Sullivan, chief ofstaff from 1991-95, and one of his key strategic planners, ColonelMichael V.Harper. In Hope Is Not a Method, these two explainjust how an organization with 1.5 million employees and a $63-billionannual budget was successfully reengineered--and how those in thecorporate world can learn from the experience. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (9)

Great title; great book
As a manager and an officer, I liked this book.In my career I am constantly finding synergy between the leadership skills taught in the army and leadership in the business world.I found it to be a very enjoyable read and ended up going through it with a highlighter, picking out several key points for future reference.

Hope is Not A Method-Great Book
This is a great book. I think it should be mandatory reading for all public officials particularly those in police and fire services. As a Fire Chief of a large municipal SoCal fire department, I found the principles wonderfully helpful. I shall tout the book to others and, of course, the service from Amazon.com is great. I just wish I could retain all the principles; I desire a photographic and instant recall brain but... it doesn't exist. Thank you.

John Hawkins

A must read for anyone in business and interested in change and leadership
This book is very well written and will tell the reader what must be accomplished in any sized organization to lead any change.

I am on my 3rd read and use it all the time for research.

A great read for serious business students
I am an XGI who has spent his business career in a constant quest for change. I have been the change agent and now, in senior management, look back on our most recent exercise in Strategic Planning and have to admit we fall into several of the planning traps described by General Sullivan. I think this is so relevent for our company that I am going to buy at least 10 copies for my direct reports. We all spend so much time "tweaking the margins" instead of trying to develop truly breakthrough thinking. This is the best I have read in years.

Military terrrible model for running a business
I have been an active duty army officer for twelve years, and all I can say is don't follow the advice in this book. Do you really want your organization run like the military? Sychophants placed in good postions, everyone scared to think outside the box, the inability to fire a screw-up, doctrinaire thinking? Sullivan didn't "re-engineer" the army. Nobody has. The only thing transformed in the military is it's PR machine. There has been a lot of the military tooting its own horn about its "post-Vietnam transformation." Don't believe it. This book will teach you nothing about leadership, and nothing about management. The army has an public image of being the forge for leadership. What people don't seem to realize is that in the army, people follow not because of leadership, but because they go to jail if they don't. This book demonstrates how clueless some of the people in the top slots are. ... Read more

Product Description
This Document Supplement reflects the latest changes in international agreements and statutory law. Among those included: are the contents and United States implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the World Trade Organization (WTO) agreements, the Trade Act of 1974, and the Tariff Act of 1930. The materials are edited to provide those portions of each document necessary to understand the nature of the organization or law, or which are applicable to resolving problems in the texts. Glossaries define trade acronyms, trade organizations, and terms. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

good~ new and low price
this book is in good condition, new and low price. the delivery is also fast. ... Read more

Product Description
Much has been said about the re-emergence of China to its historical position of eminence in the world economy, yet little is understood about the kind of economic system China is evolving.What are the rules of the game of business in today's China, and how are they likely to change over the next decades?The answers to these questions are crucial to business persons formulating strategy toward China, but also for policy-makers concerned with retaining the competitiveness of their nations in the face of Chinese competition and for researchers seeking to gain deeper insights into the workings of economic systems and institutional change.

Written by two leading experts in the field, this book sheds much-needed light on these questions.Building on recent conceptual and empirical advances, and rich in concrete examples, it offers a comprehensive and systematic exploration of present-day Chinese capitalism, its component parts, and their interdependencies.It suggests that Chinese capitalism, as practiced today, in many respects represents a development from traditional business practices, whose revival has been greatly aided by the influx of investments and managerial talent from the Regional Ethnic Chinese.On the basis of present trends in the Chinese economy as well as through comparison with five major types of capitalism-those of France, Germany, Japan, Korea, and the United States-the book derives a prediction of the probable development paths of Chinese capitalism and its likely competitive strengths and weaknesses. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Holistic study of the present shape and potential evolutionary path of Chinese business system
This book starts with the premise that the elements of a business system consists of three key layers: culture, institutions, and business structures. The business system of a society is deeply embedded in the fabric of institutions and institutions are in turn shaped by culture.

Redding and Witt suggest that readers cannot comprehend the evolutionary path of today's business system in China without knowledge of the influence of Confucianism. Confucianism is a code of conduct that places family as the core unit and the state a superfamily of the society within which the rights of an individual are subordinated to family interests. The state could invade in personal private space and its supporting apparatus consisists a group of Confucian scholars in pre-1949 period and members of the Communist party after 1949. In coordinating economic behaviour and exchange, business persons tend to restricts themselves to extended families, friends, and clans due to poverty of institutional trust. Within companies, paternalistic culture is prevalent and decision-making are top down so that there is low level of upward communication in the managerial process.

Redding and Witt believe that overseas Chinese firms have played a significant role in China economy in terms of massive investments and also being intermediaries between China and the developed countries (P.61). After Asian financial crisis of 1997/1998, they have adjusted into a new hybrid form in management but ownership control remains in the hands of founding entrepreneurs and their family members. In discussing on business system of China, they divide it into three organisational forms including the state-owned sector, the local corporates, and the private sector. State-owned firms are large, bureaucratic, and capital intensive but very inefficient in productivity and asset management. With the arrival of MNEs in the China market, they have looked less competitive due to poor technical innovation, inability to manage the value chain across an organisation's components, and unattractive reward system. Therefore, China's future economic growth is likely to depend on firms in the local corporates and the private sector (P.101). Although most of them are small in size, they are very successful in mass production of mid- or low-technology products and are very adaptable in conditions of low level of institutional trust in China. In order to transcend the limitations of small size, technical know-how, and financial resources, they undertake businesses within a web of connected firms and with high flexibility of market response (P.143).

Redding and Witt make a detailed comparison of business system of China with other four economic powerhouses including US, Germany, Japan, and Korea and see what kind of capitalism is likely to evolve in China's future economic growth. To them, the shareholder-value-oriented management, separation of ownership and control, and strong R&D capability that are prevalent in the US seems unlikely to occur in China. Japan's employee-centric stakeholder value, delegation and interdependence within the firm, and societal coordination can also hardly apply to the Chinese context. Nor the form of collaborative capitalism in Germany will evolve in China's future economic growth. However, the `Chaebol' form in Korea (P.207) is seemed to jibe well with the Chinese context.

According to them, the future success of Chinese capitalism will be severely handicapped by three issues. First, US government might take measure to contain China's rise. Second, the one-child policy since 1979 will have an adverse impact on its economic development. Third, the absence of institutional trust and the emergence of middle class require policy-makers to need to change. If the business system of China can continue to be competitive in the 21st century, Gordon and Witt conclude that the Shanghai model that favours the idea of reforming state-owned firms should be shifted to Hong Kong/Guangzhou model in which policy-makers can formulate long-term industrial policies for the growth of private firms to become mammoth ones at world standards of efficiency. (P.220).

In conclusion, this book offers a systematic exploration of the business system of China and is relevant to scholars, policy-makers, and business persons who intend to 'think hard' about it from a more holistic or macro-level perspective. ... Read more

Product Description
A biography of Cardinal Gordon Joseph Gray, Scotland's first post-Reformation Cardinal. He was conscious of inhabiting a unique position and used it to put the Scottish nation onto the universal map of the Roman Catholic Church. In helping to engineer the visit of Pope John Paul II to Scotland in 1982, he not only brought Catholic emancipation to a joyful conclusion, but established the climate for renewed ecumenical momentum. ... Read more

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Tells the story of the correspondence between George Gordon and T.H. Huxley. George Gordon was a notable figure in the fields of geology, palaeontology, archeology and local history and in his time as a Minister in the Church of Scotland he corresponded with many of the scientists of the mid-Victorian period. This book concerns itself, however, with the letters from Huxley to Gordon and from Gordon to Huxley. The letters themselves were exclusively scientific, concerning the unexpected discovery of reptilian fossils and footprints found on the shore of the Moray Firth and the interpretation of the results during the period 1858 to 1878. The book title is intended to emphasise the fact that the book's purpose is to throw light on how Huxley conducted his work as a palaeontologist. ... Read more

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One prominent politician referred to Slater & Gordon as 'that disreputable firm'; others have been less polite.

Historian Michael Cannon describes hundreds of cases where this controversial Australian law firm has exposed social evils and tried to remedy them. From the 1920s on, Slater & Gordon battled for workers' rights and workers' compensation.Much-publicised recent cases have focused on Wittenoom asbestos mining, breast implants, the Christian Brothers and BHP's Ok Tedi mine.

That Disreputable Firm shows how one legal firm achieved its lifelong reputation as a representative of the Aussie battler against the might of large and powerful organisations. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

The BEST!!
Wonderful read...absolute best for the learning spirit. Who wants to know mutual funds? I DO!!!

An excellent legal and economic study...
This book provides an excellent and concise history of the mutual fund industry beginning with the first mutual funds created following the civil war up to the late 1980s.It discusses abuses by mutual funds during the market boom of the 1920s and the resultant legislation/regulation that was adopted in the ICA of 1940 and the 1970 amendments.Relevant litigation and summaries of court decisions are provided though 1987.The second half of the book provides a detailed econometric analysis of competition in the mutual fund industry.Policy implications resulting from the research are provided.This book is an excellent addition to any academic library and is a good read for anyone interested in conducting mutual fund research. ... Read more