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The Power of Believing in Your Child: Unleash Your Power As a Parent to Help Your Kids Be All They Can Be
Miles McPherson
Manufacturer: Bethany House Publishers
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ASIN: 0764220780 |
Book Description
Bold hope for your family and for an endangered generation.
Practical solutions for any parent worried about his or her child or tempted to give up.
"Miles McPherson is the up-and-coming voice to youth and their parents. He knows our kids and knows well what parents can do to impact their children. "
Josh McDowel
Speaker and Bestselling Author
"The Power of Believing in Your Child is positive, practical, passionate and thoroughly Biblical. Miles writes with unusual credibility because he himself stands as a living testimony to the effectiveness of his approach. I highly recommend this book to parents who are willing to truly get involved in helping their kids become all that God created them to be."
Wayne Rice
Director, Understanding Your Teenager
"This is such an inspiring and uplifting book! Every parent can find encouragement and hope in these pages. Thanks, Miles, for helping us celebrate our children!"
Cynthia Tobias
Founder & CEO, Apple St. & Learning Styles Unlimited
"Miles McPherson is a prophetic voice who understands today's youth. The Power of Believing in Your Child will encourage, equip and enlist you as a parent for one of God's most important assignments."
Dennis Rainey
Executive Director, FamilyLife
"With passion and boldness, Miles helps parents see their children through Jesus' eyes. He reminds us that `our children were designed and chosen by God for something special'. With godly insights and practical suggestions Miles ignites hope. The message of never, never, never give up on your children rings throughout its pages."
Fern Nichols
President/Founder, Moms in Touch International
"Miles is a rare youth advocate whose work spans from children and teens to parents. The Power of Believing in Your Child is invaluable help for anyone who wants to strengthen families and build up this endangered generation of youth."
David Jeremiah
President, Turning Point
Customer Reviews:
didn't keep.......2007-02-27
There were some good examples and points in this book but it wasn't good enough that I kept it after I was done reading it.
Customer Reviews:
More about politics than about the war itself.......2007-02-02
World War I is a difficult war to understand, and it's almost as if it gets even more and more difficult the more one reads about it. It's without a doubt my favorite war (because yes, of course one can have such a thing as a favorite war), but it's also the one war that I just cannot seem to come to terms with, really. Perhaps especially because of the way the war was fought; the freakishly large number of men who were sacrificed when they advanced over open terrain against vicious machinegun nests, got exposed to menacing gas attacks in their trenches, or were blown to bloody pieces during enormous artillery attacks often lasting several days in a row.
It was the first modern war, but it was often fought using old tactics, and thus the human losses became greater than in any other war fought up until then. And the bizarre slaughter of an entire generation lasted for four years! Small wonder it's so difficult to comprehend what was really going on. These days, the death of a mere twenty or so American soldiers in a single day in Baghdad make headlines all over the world, but during World War I it wasn't a rare occasion with tens of thousands of casualties in a single day. What does this mean? Were human lives simply not as valuable than as they are today? Because, and not to in any way promote the Iraqi cause or scorn U.S. casualties (since all fatalities caused by the madness of war are equally stupid), what is a mere twenty deaths compared to what war used to be like?
Anyhow, The War To End All Wars was originally published back in 1968, and in this edition some corrections have been made here and there. But, one thing that hasn't been changed or corrected is the language in which it was written, and in the today's politically correct society it's thus strange to see how Edward M. Coffman writes "Negroes" and "Indians" instead of "African Americans" and "Native Americans". As a white European I'm not particularly upset (not upset at all, actually), but I'm sure many others are.
And not only because of the way the book was written. As with any other well-researched book about war, The War To End All Wars contains a great deal of outrageous facts. For instance, the following about the recruiting of all the new soldiers needed for the enormous army that were hastily put together, when the government:
"... declared that 47,3 per cent of the whites and 89 per cent of the Negroes were below the mental age of thirteen and, according to the standards of the day, morons. Either this pioneering testing venture was invalid or most American men in their twenties were very stupid." (pg.61)
Or how about the following order that was issued after a great deal of men had either deserted or simply refused to continue on with the senseless butchering:
"When men run away in front of the enemy, officers should take summary action to stop it, even to the point of shooting men down who are caught in such disgraceful conduct. No orders need be published on the subject, but it should be made known to many young officers that they must do whatever is required to prevent it." (pg.333)
The book deals exclusively, as the title says, with the American involvement in World War I, but beware, if you're looking for eye-witness accounts or descriptions of what actually happened at the front, then you must first be prepared to read about 200 pages filled with politics and endless descriptions of all the preparatory work taking place before the first U.S. soldiers were shipped across the Atlantic. And the accounts that do feature in the text after 200 pages are not very graphic or thorough. Obviously the politics behind it all is worth knowing, but if you're looking for gory battle scenes you're in for a disappointment.
Just like the war in itself was a disappointment. In the end, it never was the war to end all wars, just another display of human madness and our inability to live peacefully side by side with our fellow man.
In the last few days of the war a letter from a woman to an unknown German soldier was found on his body. Her words are bound to be repeated again and again, until this world of ours is destroyed by our very own hands and human civilization as we know it ceases to exist:
"It seems apparent that the dawn of peace is drawing nearer, and we dare entertain more hopes that this the most hideous of all wars, this vile murdering, which scorns and derides all humanity; which places us, no matter how highly cultured we pretended to be, lower than the savages, will end sometime and we can feel that we are human beings again." (pg.336)
Great History of US Role in WW 1.......2005-04-26
I learned a great deal of the US involvement in World War 1 from this book. I have been trying to research my grandfather's service in WW 1 and found this book very useful. While it is somewhat drawn out in certain sections, it is very informative in other sections. From the information I had, I was able to piece together where my grandfather served and the battles he was involved in while there. I would reccomend this book only to those seriously looking at the US role in WW 1.
A book only a historian of organization could love.......2003-04-10
On the back of this book, Stephen Ambrose praises this work as a definitive work on the US involvement in World War I, I should have been suspicious of its content from that point on.
Coffman's book beyond the first couple chapters is immensely not readable, and at times absolutely confusing. The early part of the book rushes through how the US ultimately came to be involved in the war, and only mentions the Lusitania, the resumption of German unrestricted submarine warfare, the Zimmerman telegram and social factors inside the US among groups that thought war wouldn't be such a bad idea in order to gain premacy for their viewpoint, fleetingly. It also doesn't really discuss Wilson's rejected attempts at mediation of the conflict and his realization that in order to reshape Europe in the way he advocated, the US needed to be involved in the conflict and have "troops on the ground." Coffman also doesn't discuss how demonizing portrayals of Germany and German soldiers influenced American perception as well as the fact that due to the blockade of Germany and the cutting of the trans-atlantic cable by the British, Germany could not dispell any of these demonizing tales spread in the US of the German army killing civilians and bombarding religious and other historical places with reckless disreguard.
What Coffman does give us in this work is a monotonous tome about the organization of the AEF and American air corps. The majority of this book is focused on nothing more than logistics and how the Allied powers needed American force very badly and therefore wanted to hasten our entrance into the war and allow troops to be commanded by French or English commanders, and not seperately. He also drones on about the internal conflict between Pershing and the British and French generals over this and other aspects.
To compound this boring tome on logistics, Coffman jumps around in his story. He finally gets to combat done by American pilots, and then in his next chapter begins with an extensive biographical sketch of American armed forces leaders, completely confusing the reader. By the time Coffman gets to actual combat participated in to any large extent by American forces, he stuffs all of this information into one chapter, completely losing the reader.
Coffman's maps included in the text are also few and far between as well as horribly designed. The maps don't clearly show the advance of US forces on each day of the battle being discussed, and do not include where the German trenches are relative to the Americans.
In short, this may have been a good book thirty years ago, but now it's hopelessly outdated and confusing. There needs to be another scholar in the mode of Martin Gilbert write the story of the AEF and American air corps.
A Scholarly and Brilliantly Written Tour de Force!.......2003-02-09
In recent decades, social historians have strayed from the study of key historical figures and prominent events and instead focused their efforts on the common folk. Incorporating the methodologies of sociology and other disciplines within the social sciences, historians have made tremendous strides in promoting a better understanding of the masses. A few military historians have followed suit. Instead of writing solely about battles, campaigns, and the generals who plotted the strategies and won or lost, they turned their attention on who made up the rank and file. Edward M. Coffman dominates this breed of new military historian. His book _The War to End All Wars: The American Military Experience in World War I_ is a scholarly and brilliantly written tour de force; his collective group study: the American citizen soldier.First published in 1968 at the height of America's involvement in Vietnam, Coffman set the president for this new style of military history. His work is now a classic. As the subtitle suggests, Coffman tells the story of the whole American experience beginning in the spring of 1917 up to the signing of the Armistice. Throughout the book, Coffman remains focused on the American soldier and the planning, administration, and organization of his primary fighting force; the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF).As a result, the political machinations of coalition warfare and high level strategic decisions receives only enough attention to place his subject in proper perspective.The creation of the AEF, the largest American armed force ever sent to fight on foreign soil up to that time, is a marvel in and of itself. Coffman covers all aspects of this tremendous achievement. General John J. Pershing sailed for France with what amounted to a understrengthed division: the 1st Division. The AEF grew to a corps sized force, and evntually the First and Second Armies. In April 1917, the AEF consisted of 200,000 soldiers. By November 1918, it contained nearly 4,000,000. In addition to discussions on the War Department in 1917, and the stateside expansion of the United States Army, the author also covers with clever succunctness other important topics. These subjects include: the meteoric sculpting of the massive AEF command and supply structure in France; the disagreements between the General Staff in Washington and Pershing's Headquarters in Chaumont, France. Coffman also includes separate chapters on the American Navy and the air war. Coffman ties these themes together with a flowing battle narrative of the major campaigns the AEF fought in France as well as, some of the lessor known battles. It is the topics relating to the social history of the American soldier, however, that Coffman excels. The author covers such topics as the draft, procurment of officers, the controversial amalgamation of Negro troops into French units early in the war (Pershing venomously fought attempts by the British and French to amalgamate American soldiers as canon fodder into Allied units. He said Americans will fight as Americans led by American officers. Not so, unfortunately, for Negro troops), and consciences objectors. From a social standpoint, Coffman also examines: the establishment of recreation facilities for the soldiers to discourage vice, liquor and prostitutes; venereal disease, and the culture clashes between the French and the newly arrived Americans. Coffman outlines the pros and cons of the American participation but, unlike some critics, is sympathetic to Pershing and the AEF. He is most sensitive to the role the fledgling American debut played in turning the tide and eventual victory for the Allies. Coffman makes every attempt to reveal the gratitude the French had for the American presence. Among the plethora of sources consulted, the author refers to numerous diaries and memoirs from the ordinary rank and file. An extensive "Essay on Sources" in which Coffman not only lists the archival material utilized, but also divulges how the information was applied to individual chapters, is a consolation for the lack of footnotes.The creation and deployment of the AEF in World War I is a watershed in American military history. If you want to learn not only how it was done, but also who made up its main body, this is the book to read. No one does the social history of the American army like Coffman.
An excellent account of the US in World War I.......1998-12-05
Coffman provides an interesting perspective on the First World War. His reader will find no discussion on the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand or information of the Schlieffen Plan. He will instead find details on the Selective Service Act and the famous American air ace Eddie Rickenbacker. Throughout this work, Coffman shows the United States as an important player in the Great War, and refreshingly he does not rehash the European aspects of the war about which so many others have written. Furthermore he is effective in his task, and his reader will have a better understanding of the American World War I military experience. Primarily Coffman examines the US Army, but he also devotes time to the Navy, Air Force, and the Marines. The book gives glimpses at the performance of each branch, and gives brief amounts of information about technological innovations during the war - especially in the realms of naval and air power. As one would expect, Coffman also writes about the major American military leaders such as John J. Pershing and William J. Donovan, but more interesting than his accounts of these men are his vignettes of common soldiers. Coffman obviously devoted a great deal of time conducting interviews with and reading the journals and letters of veterans. These portraits allow the reader to gain a real sense of the military experience of the Americans who fought in the war. Coffman's monograph is an excellent account of the United States during World War I. It is well written and researched, and it even includes enough maps that descriptions of battles can be understood. Its only drawback, and a minor one at that, is that the reader must already have a general understanding of the events in the Great War. Of course Coffman did not set out to write a general history of the war, but a general reader would need more background in order to truly gain the sense of America's wartime experience about which he writes.
Book Description
From space, from Egypt, from the Americas?
From other ancient civilizations?
These are but some of today's more fanciful claims about the first settlers of the islands of the Pacific. But none of them correctly answer the question: Where did the Polynesians come from?
This book is a thoughtful and devastating critique of such 'new' learning, and a careful and accessible survey of modern archeological, anthropological, genetic and linguistic findings about the origins of Pacific Islanders.
Why have there been such extreme and diverse opinions on this subject? Professor Kerry Howe also examines the 200-year-old history of Western ideas about Polynesian origins in the context of ever-changing fads and intellectual fashions.
Customer Reviews:
Mythic oral traditions legitimise the present status of both Maori and Colonist.......2006-04-30
Ever since the time of Captain Cook, Europeans have been fascinated with Polynesian origins. Where did they come from? How did they get here? Were others here before them? By studying Polynesian society, Europeans could get an insight into their own neolithic origins, and thus come to a better understanding of their own psyche.
Professor Howe reviews the latest findings of archaeologists, linguists, ethno-botanists, and physical biologists. These confirm that Captain Cook got it about right: the ancestors of the peoples of Polynesia came down from China, honing their skills as they went, in horticulture, boat-building, inter-island trading and ocean navigation. And a drastic selection process developed them into big, strong, hardy populations who could cope with long ocean voyages.
But Polynesian oral tradition adds little light on this pre-history; Howe says those traditional stories have more to do with legitimising the present situation of the speaker than with objectively retelling the past.
And this is where Howe's book becomes really interesting: he is not an anthropologist but a professor of history (at Auckland's MUA), and his book is a history of all the theories that have been put forward by Europeans in the past 200 years, both those backed by hard evidence, and also the theories based on psychological need, cultural conditioning and prejudice.
Early missionaries saw the peoples of Polynesia as Semitic, remnants of a Lost Tribe of Israel, degenerate but redeemable. Later in the 19th century, mythologists connected South Sea nature myths with Germanic ones and proclaimed an Aryan origin for Polynesians. And in the early 20th century came diffusionists. They postulated that civilization had only ever emerged once, in Egypt, and diffused to South-east Asia and then Polynesia, deteriorating as it went.
Then showman-adventurer Thor Heyedahl "proved" that the Pacific had been populated from Egypt via South America. (It could have been too, if the South Americans had been able to hire diesel tugboats to tow their rafts like Heyerdahl did!). And "New Age" dreamers have resurrected old ideas that the Pacific Islands are the remnants of the sunken continent of Mu, and that Polynesians the remnants of the great civilization that flourished on it.
Howe shows the irrationality of these anti-intellectual fantasies, and analyses them to reveal a pattern of colonialist ideology in most of them. Just like the old Polynesian story-tellers, the colonists are more concerned with legitimising their present situation than with objectively retelling the past.
The book's cover illustration is a perfect example of this colonialist propaganda: with Goldie and Steele's "Arrival of the Maori," a highly offensive parody of Gericault's "Raft of the Medusa," portraying incompetent Polynesian voyagers being washed up on New Zealand's shores by chance, unlike the superior Europeans.
Comprehensive and up-to-date, but concise and readable, and with a huge bibliography, "The Quest for Origins" is an essential guide not only to New Zealand's distant past, but also to its anti-intellectual present.
Book Description
This digital document is an article from Oceania, published by University of Sydney on September 1, 2003. The length of the article is 587 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
Citation Details
Title: The Quest for Origins. Who first discovered and settled New Zealand and the Pacific Islands?(Book Review)
Author: J. Peter White
Publication:
Oceania (Refereed)
Date: September 1, 2003
Publisher: University of Sydney
Volume: 74
Issue: 1-2
Page: 150(1)
Article Type: Book Review
Distributed by Thomson Gale
Book Description
This digital document is an article from Pacific Affairs, published by University of British Columbia on December 22, 2004. The length of the article is 868 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
Citation Details
Title: The Quest for Origins: Who First Discovered and Settled New Zealand and the Pacific Islands?(Book Review)
Author: Toon Van Meijl
Publication:
Pacific Affairs (Refereed)
Date: December 22, 2004
Publisher: University of British Columbia
Volume: 77
Issue: 4
Page: 789(3)
Article Type: Book Review
Distributed by Thomson Gale
Average customer rating:
- extraordinary and revolutionizing
- So What?
- the new guard
- A Universal Template
- I was Tyler Volk's student!
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Metapatterns
Tyler Volk
Manufacturer: Columbia University Press
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Binding: Hardcover
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Gaia's Body: Toward a Physiology of Earth
ASIN: 023106750X |
Book Description
In the interdisciplinary tradition of Buckminster Fuller's work, Gregory Bateson's Mind and Nature, and Fritjof Capra's Tao of Physics, Metapatterns embraces both nature and culture, seeking out the grand-scale patterns that help explain the functioning of our universe.
Customer Reviews:
extraordinary and revolutionizing.......2006-07-04
Tyler Volk's book, Metapatterns..., is an extraordinary book. In the spirit of Gregory Bateson from whom the term "metapatterns" originates, he does not give the reader the whole story or "the answer," but rather provides a rich source for readers to develop their own stories and their own answers (or to make metapatterns their own). As an educator and researcher, I have found the metapatterns described by Volk to be infinitely useful as (a) tools for analyzing data from studies of cognition, discourse, classrooms, interpersonal relationships, the politics of schooling, etc.; (b) tools for designing social and physical contexts of classrooms, curriculum, and representations of material; and (c) the specific content to study in courses. Since metapatterns appear almost everywhere in every discipline and in every aspect of everyday life, they address our basic understandings of the world in ways that can allow us to make connections in new and exciting ways. It is truly a revolutionizing book. When I have taught courses based on metapatterns, the better students have cursed me for introducing metapatterns: "damn you! All I see is metapatterns!" Such comments are a testament to the power of metapatterns in transforming the way we see the world. This book is a must read for those who are willing to take fresh view of their worlds, to think critically and creatively, and to take control of their own learning rather than be spoon fed answers.
So What?.......2006-02-22
I initially found this book intriguing, but after a while I became quite bored with it. So there are many things in the world that are round, flat, tubular, bordered, etc., and these can be metaphors for other things. Ok, so what? I kept waiting for the author to make his point, but the descriptions just went on and on.
This book may have some value as a source of pretext for meditation or creativity exercises, or those seeking material for artistic collages. There are some short passages that were evocative. But overall I didn't get much from this to justify the time I spent reading it.
the new guard .......2004-08-28
Man and woman, the double helix, positive and negative, acid and base, action and reaction, predator and prey. These are pairs of twos found in the world around us. Tyler Volk names them binaries, which are one of his `metapatterns' or `pattern of patterns' or universal motifs described in great detail in his book.
Some might find the metapatterns proposed as crazy manifestations. Some might find them real and useful, especially as analytical tools, which can be applied to any field to better understand the larger picture or the behind the scene activities of that field. For example, as an athlete and athletic trainer, I have used the metapattern of `boarders' to better understand why different sports share very common characteristics and lack others. Whatever one's opinions are about the existence and relevance of metapatterns, "Metapatterns" has much to offer beyond its main theory.
The observations and analytical methods of "Metapatterns" are truly a feat in the name of interdisciplinary work. Dr. Volk brings you along on his life journey of exploration. Observations are vividly represented and written in a way in which non-science people can understand. Dr. Volk's ability of transcending disciplines to find connections, which become Volk's metapatterns, will urge you to do the same.
"Metapatterns" will dive into ideas and explore them from many angles, sometimes more than the reader may have bargained for. The reader must be ready for a true mental exercise. "Metapatterns" will surely take you to uncharted waters.
I feel that if you are up for it, "Metapatterns" will be a mind-expanding and illuminating read. As the great interdisciplinarian Gregory Bateson suggested to others, Dr Volk truly discards magnitudes in favor of shapes, patterns, and relations. The explorative, interdisciplinary, and connective methods of thinking are awesome tools in understanding the world around us, and "Metapatterns" will expose you to them in action.
A Universal Template.......2004-06-09
Metapatterns is a valuable text for the broadminded and curious. Dr. Volk seeks to bridge gaps that too often separate intellectual disciplines, most successfully connecting patterns within the physical and social sciences. It is one of several books from college that I continually find myself returning to, often unexpectedly. As a student of both History and Architecture Metapatterns has provided me with a sort of conceptual template in both fields. Whether investigating social currents or analyzing the effect of physical form, Metapatterns has something to contribute. As a tool Metapatterns allows the user to more quickly recognize trends or conceptualize a set of data while simultaneously challenging him/her to question the nature and implication of such mental models.
I was Tyler Volk's student!.......2004-04-19
As a freshman at NYU, I had a seminar with Tyler Volk based around Metapatterns. It is difficult to characterize the book without going on for pages, but I will do my best. Metapatterns is epistemology, meditation, mythology, systems theory, ecology, and a thousand other fields of thought. As Volk defines it, a metapattern is a "pattern of patterns... so wide-flung that it appears throughout the spectrum of reality: in clouds, rivers and planets; in cells, organisms, and ecosystems; in art, architecture, and politics." Volk is essentially a tour guide with only a rough outline of an itinerary, but this is a good thing: rigid formalism would preclude many of the connections he is making. Since each chapter is an account of one of the patterns' appearances and significance throughout the "spectrum of reality," there is a lot of ground to cover. This results in an unconventional structure but it's still easy to follow Volk from one point to the next. The collages interspersed through the book help with this a lot, especially since the whole idea of metapatterns is largely visual. Most of the time Volk is both comprehensive and coherent, but this is not always true. Occasionally (I'm sticking with the expedition metaphor here) some bushwhacking is required to get back to the original path. But the further you get into the book, the more you can follow its logic. "Spheres," the first chapter, is the strongest, and best makes the case. This may be because the sphere is, in a sense, the primary metapattern. Later chapters spring off in different directions. Some seem not to fit well (calendars, for example), but the whole time you are getting a better sense of what is actually going through Volk's mind. And eventually, as you move through the book, the ideas become self-evident. The metapatterns come to seem archetypal.
Some of the students in the seminar complained that Metapatterns was too long, too rambling, and didn't really have a point. They had a few good points, but it seemed that those students were expecting the book to provide The Answer. Metapatterns, as I understand it, is only laying out an idea. It provides a new way of looking at things, a way that could lead to some new answers, but it is not claiming to be The Answer. Part of the idea is that fields of thought are so compartmentalized and narrowly focused that a broader development is stunted. But the really revolutionary work happens in the spaces between! Bridging two or more fields allows for totally new angles on old questions. There's no inherent problem with specialization; it is only a problem when it happens to the exclusion of other avenues of thought. Volk is interdisciplinary to a point that is nearly all-encompassing.
Amazon.com states that scientists, New Age types, interdisciplinary thinkers and the intellectually adventurous will best like the book. This is true, but the book is jargon-free and easily understandable (i.e., NOT a standard science book). Do not allow yourself to peg the book; it will most likely shake off any label you apply. Instead, just pick it up without any agenda and you will probably take away something worthwhile.
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- Don't let the scary title fool you: it's a tactically useful book
- Ontological mappings to different contexts
- Metapattern explained with metaexamples
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Metapattern: Context and Time in Information Models
Pieter Wisse
Manufacturer: Addison-Wesley Professional
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
Object-Oriented Design
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ASIN: 0201704579 |
Customer Reviews:
Don't let the scary title fool you: it's a tactically useful book.......2005-12-23
A lot of Microsoft-tool obsessed programmers I know toss of the phrase "it's academic" like rice at a wedding to deride technical books/solutions they cannot buy for $XXX.99 from their favorite software vendor.
Consequently, they do not get to benefit from books like this. Books that take some things that are not instinctively simple to solve elegantly, and give you pat solutions to these problems that fit well with today's object-oriented information systems.
This book is not for people who buy solutions from other people. This is for people who create solutions - but don't mind learning from others who have gone before them.
You will learn how to model real world objects in practical object-oriented terms.
The book aims to make you a better object-oriented analyst/achitect/programmer. In my opinion, it will do that if you are already a good one. If you know nothing of programming or OOP then I would not bother starting with this book. Learn the basics first, then grab this one.
It's not that this book is hard to read - it is not.
It is just that you will not have anything to apply this knowledge with if you don't have some concrete programming skills and knowledge of how to take an object-oriented design and transform it into object-oriented code.
If you do have those skills, this book is a superior tool for problem solvers. It can sharpen those skills. Whether you are designing an enterprise IT system or a sophisticated web site that models some complex objects, you will be glad you have this book to reach for on your bookshelf or in your memory.
The book teaches you how to put not just some abstract representations of physical or abstract objects into a model - but how to do it in context.
The context could be geographical, temporal (having to do with absolute date/time), or chronological (ordered by time). It could have to do with authorization or authority. It might have to do with hierarchical categorizations of topics, subtopics, and subjects - and inherited characteristics.
The context things occur in are often what make them significant. And often, it is the context itself which has significance. Grab this book and you can do significant work.
Subjects include: contexts, types, documents, publishing, accounting, etc. Pat, standard ways to model these things. Diagrams are included with each model so you have a visual picture to stick in your head, along with the descriptions and advice.
It is not strictly limited to time and chronology, though the subtitle tends to imply that. It covers that subject aptly but it covers all manor of relationships of objects and types of objects to each other.
There is more to this world than arrays, vectors, trees, lists, sets, records, tables, rows, and vanilla business objects. There is what you do with them and the target you aim to hit with groups of them.
This work gives you the tools to do implementations of business objects and domain objects that suit the real world. That, my friend, is your job.
This book is a tool that will sharpen your ability to address complex information system design problems with considerably more powerful idioms at your disposal.
It will help you see your target and hit it.
Ontological mappings to different contexts.......2003-05-08
I purchased this book about 4 years ago and did
not understand it on the first read.
After studying functional languages such as O'Caml,
SML/NJ, Haskell, and Common Lisp specifically
CLOS along with ontological editors such as Protege
the lights started coming on. This book is years
ahead of its time and will one day be recognized
for the master piece that it is. That day will
come as XML B2B integration efforts turn towards
ontological mappings as the means of engineering
the flow and configuration of content in time and
context. Much of the theoretical foundations presented
here will one day be applied to data warehousing
also. When that day comes this book being resold
now for pocket change will likely become a
collector's item. I hope Pieter goes ahead and
publishes his next title Semiosis & Sign Exchange,
Conceptual Grounds of Information Modeling. Pieter
is a true visionary.
Metapattern explained with metaexamples.......2001-02-17
5+ stars for the author's depth of thinking
1- star for requiring the same depth of thinking from the reader
4 stars
A quote from an appendix: "Multicontextualism offers a powerful synthesis, a blend of analytical philosophy and structuralism. Or, as a friend remarked, it unites Wittgenstein I and II". If the name Wittgenstein means anything to you, let this be your warning about how abstract this book is. The author had provided an abundance of examples. In the spirit of the title, I would have to label them as metaexamples. They are too abstract. While reading this book I felt a state of weightlessness, struggling to locate any firm ground to support my understanding.
To get the full value out of this book may require more than one reading. After the first reading I am left with a valuable inspiration. What attracted me to this book in the first place? Simple and consistent treatment of time as a fundamental attribute of information objects. Treatment of the classification of information into multiple subjects.
See the publisher's web page for the detailed table of contents. A large part of the book consists of the reviews of several other books. This makes this text a review of a review, or a metareview. It may be helpful to read those books first. I did not. Here is the list of those books....
Chapter 6-9, 13:
[Advanced Object-Oriented Analysis and Design Using Uml] [by James J. Odell]
Chapter 10, 11:
[Business Process Engineering : Reference Models for Industrial Enterprises] [by August Wilhelm Scheer]
Chapter 12, 13:
[Data Model Patterns : Conventions of Thought] [by David C. Hay]
Chapter 14, 15:
[Analysis Patterns : Reusable Object Models] [by Martin Fowler]
Chapter 9:
[Framing Software Reuse: Lessons From the Real World] [by Paul G. Bassett]
[Business Specifications: The Key to Successful Software Engineering] [by Haim Kilov]
Books:
- The Teapot Book
- The Ultimate Classic Car Book
- The Ultimate Collector's Encyclopedia of Cookie Jars: Identification & Values
- The Vernor's Story: From Gnomes to Now
- Tiffany Lamps and Metalware: An Illustrated Reference to Over 2000 Models
- Treasure Chests: The Legacy of Extraordinary Boxes
- Treasure Hunting for Fun and Profit (Treasure Hunting Text)
- U.S. Flea Market Directory, 3rd Edition: A Guide to the Best Flea Markets in all 50 States (U S Flea Market Directory)
- United States Air Force Scrapbook (Military Scrapbook Series)
- United States Paper Money Errors: A Comprehensive Catalog & Price Guide (U.S. Paper Money Errors)
Books Index
Books Home
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- NorCalMod: Icons of Northern California Modernism
- History: Fiction or Science
- Energetic Materials, Volume 13: Part 2. Detonation, Combustion
- Just As I Am: A Novel
- Image Transfer on Clay: Screen, Relief, Decal & Monoprint Techniques
- Interior Design Reference Manual: A Guide to the NCIDQ Exam
- Labor of Love: Mothers Share the Joy of Childbirth
- Vision and Painting: The Logic of the Gaze
- Extreme Beauty: The Body Transformed
- Structure and Function of Invertebrate Oxygen Carriers
