The Ball boys on the bay

Book Description

Based on a 1912 publication about Texans who fought for the South in the Civil War, Texas Boys in Gray presents a collection of fascinating remembrances of those who were there. Sometimes humorous and sometimes heartbreaking, the experiences of these men are documented as a tribute to Texas war veterans.

Customer Reviews:

Selected Passages From A Classic In A Poor Package.......2001-04-21

If you are looking for some selected passages pasted together by theme you might enjoy this book, otherwise avoid it.

Among the faults of this book, and there are plenty, the most glaring are:

1) LACK OF A REAL INDEX. The cities are indexed in alphabetical order, but not the men!!!! The units are not indexed, nor is anything else. Are you really going to find men who served in a battle or specific regiment by finding a small town in Texas? A Detailed Map Would Have Been NICE, but wouldn't an index of the names, places, events, etc. have been better?

2) The quotes from the men have been shortened and/or deleted. The original work by Miss Yeary had sometimes long, but interesting stories. This booklet has a few stories, but mostly selected one or two sentence quotes. The men who served with the veteran and the battles and specific units are for the most part no place to be found.

3) The Civil War was a large and costly conflict, but ONLY THREE BOOKS WERE USED AS REFERENCES. In other words, there isn't much depth.

FAMILY HISTORIANS SHOULD AVOID THIS BOOK because it will make those researching their family, ancestor, unit, battle, etc. very angry.

CHILDREN OR THOSE WHO WANT AN EXTREMELY LIGHT UNDERSTANDING OF A COMPLEX & DETAILED STRUGGLE MIGHT LIKE THIS POORLY CONSTRUCTED BOOK.

THIS IS NOT FOR SCHOLARS!

Sometime humorous, sometimes heartbreaking.......2001-01-12

Evault Boswell's Texas Boys In Gray is based on a 1912 publication about Texans who fought for the South in the American Civil War. This compendium of anecdotal remembrances by those who were there is nothing short of fascinating for the Civil War buff. Sometime humorous, sometimes heartbreaking, these stories and reminiscences capture the patriotism, fear, confusion, bravery, desperate hunger, camaraderie, and hazards of those days. From the horrible prison conditions to the joyful reunions, Texas Boys In Gray reveals both the humanity and inhumanity of the times. Very highly recommended for students of Texas history as well as Civil War enthusiasts, Texas Boys In Gray is enhanced with an index of 158 hometowns and the men who contributed from each of them.

A real tribute to the men who fought for the Confederacy.......2000-06-03

This book tells the real story of the brave men who fought and died for a cause they believed in. The author has done a great job of telling their story, a story that needs to be preserved. I enjoyed this book very much.

The boys in gray: Our grandparents from Kickapoo, Texas : First Texas Volunteer Infantry Regiment, Company H, Confederate States Army, 1861-1865

Average customer rating:

The boys in gray: Our grandparents from Kickapoo, Texas : First Texas Volunteer Infantry Regiment, Company H, Confederate States Army, 1861-1865
Helen Henderson
Manufacturer: s.n.]
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding
ASIN: B0006XO0PC

Book Description

Recorded history is a finely-woven magic fabric of intricate lies about events predating the sixteenth century. There is not a single piece of evidence that can be reliably and independently traced back earlier than the eleventh century. This book details events that are substantiated by hard facts and logic, and validated by new astronomical research and statistical analysis of ancient sources.

Customer Reviews:

Calculations are only as good as your numbers.......2007-08-03

Yes, we can all agree that mainstream history is nearly 100% BS due to politics, economics, ego, problems with dating techniques, and various conspiracies. Agreed. But, I've been researching the distinct possibility that human history (in terms of civilizations) are much more ancient than we've been told, so coming across this book was very interesting to me. I wondered how Fomenko could be wrong (if at all) because he is very persuasive in his presentations. Then it dawned on me. If at previous times in prehistory, due to the various catastrophies that are well documented (comets, asteroids, planetary disruptions, plasma discharge, pole reversals, etc) the Earth was in a different position in relation to the sun, different tilt on its axis, different orbit, different rotation (in terms of velocity and DIRECTION), and the continents were in different positions, then would this not cause the ancients to see the sky (constellations) differently? In other words, is Fomenko making erronious assumptions about the physics of the Earth in pre-history, which then corrupt his data with regards to dating the relevant astrology? The last event to seriously disrupt our planet occured roughly 3500 years ago, according to other good researchers, so is it possible Fomenko has been confused by this? The vastly different physics of our planet in the not so distant past may explain this confusion, which is not to say the "mainstream" version of history is correct; on the contrary. I am not an expert in these fields, but wanted to see if this idea could spark discussion.

Pants on fire?.......2007-07-19

Will people ever read before spamming? Yes, Jesuits could not rewrite world history alone, they had help. Anyway, Dr Prof Acad A.Fomenko does not point to jesuits as the driving force of world wide history manipulation in published volumes 1,2,3;, actually he barely mentions the poor devils. Check it with 'Search inside' feature, please. China is rarely mentioned either, in fact, Dr Fomenko is completely eurocentric. Right, his theory contradicts all mainstream schools of history, because in their actual state they are all built on blatantly erroneus chronology. You don't need a mysterious cabal (conspiracy) to falsify history, the falsification is its modus operandi. It is inherent to history(ians) to falsify (distort) events, as it is inherent to humans to boast as it is inherent to power (authority) to legimize itself by referrring to glorious past made to its own order. Dr Prof Fomenko and team have identified scores of instances of such manipulation in Russian, European, etc.. history, and delivered valid statistical proof thereof. His own 'reconstruction' is completely another story. Forget c14 as a valid method of dating. W.Libby has initially discovered a brilliant method of INDEPENDENT dating. Too bad, c14 method has become a joke after a forced marrige with dendrochronology with consensual chronological scale inbuilt. Radiocarbon method can't stand blind tests, but is so very productive as a rubberstamp.

Accepted History & Chronology Must Be Changed. .......2007-04-09

There is no doubt that history as most know it is a sham, & institution's version of History both University & Church is fradulent & inaccurate. Everything was established with an agenda, The real "Dark Ages" are now when we have access to incredible amounts of information past authorities & more important 'common folk' didn't have but our institutions & educators are slow to evolve because of what has ignorantly & arrogantly been taught for too long. This is on many subjects not just Chronology.

For anyone to question "Why would a Mathematician have anything credible to say of History?" The answer is from Dr. Fomenko's preface in the book: "It would be worthwhile to remind the reader that in the XVI-XVII century Chronology was considered to be a subdivision of Mathematics." These volumes could possibly be some of the most important works to date & should be read by everyone with an interest in History, especially professors & educators who have a duty to the public. I have read both books & must say that 'Chronology 1' has some very eye opening & revolutionary information. Even if these volumes are part true the implications are profound & opens the doors to further investigations & questions which must be done. I speak several different lanquages & must say the logic Dr. Fomenko uses with "inflection" of words & words being read from left to right in one region & right to left in another then written backwards, the removal of vowels & get down to basics of words, or different cities & locations having the same name etc. is correct. Vowel usage has always been optional & varied, actually complicating linquistics & study. The first thing one has to understand is that words never had a fixed spelling in history like we do now, the spelling of words was mutable & regional, as well as names & titles of people were vast, varied & changed, NOTHING WAS FIXED or understood linear. Matters of Life & Death as well as financial profiteering yesterday & today were & are made with ignorant, illogical & conspiratorial views of history & reality, it's time people get closer to the Truth & society collectively grow up.

Very Interesting.......2007-03-07

It is a good proposal and I believe it will mature into something even better in the future. I think it deserves to be read.

History as Science Fiction.......2007-01-10

Anatoly Fomenko has written a very intriguing book, full of pictures, charts, and computer 'proof' of his thesis: backwards of AD900 we don't really know what happened or when. Between AD900 and AD1600 there is more certainty, but there is still a lot of fuzzy ground, and things don't get reliable until we get past the 1600's where the printing press made it very difficult for the perpetrators of this timeline manipulation to change anything that had been committed to print. The Dark Ages did not happen. Books were burned for a reason. One organization has doubled the actual length of its existence by expanding the real chronology. Read why.

I had always wondered why Christ died about AD33 and yet men waited until the 11th century to form the Knights Templar, the Cathars, etc and go after the Holy Land by force. Why the 1000 year gap? Turns out there wasn't more than a 10-12 year gap and he proves it using astronomy. This also implies that the planet is not as old as we have been told, and current Christian and other creationist scientists are already championing that idea without being aware of Fomenko's book. The two groups, creationist scientists and the Russian mathematical analysts corroborate each other. Fascinating.

Of course, all this flies in the face of what we have been told traditionally is the 'proper' chronology of western civilization, and most readers will experience 'cognitive dissonance' in reading this book. It means that our history going backwards from AD1600 becomes progressively more incorrect and unreliable until it cannot be trusted at all... in the space of 700-800 years.

Naturally, the curious, open-minded reader will want to know WHO did this, WHY, and did any of the events we think of as really ancient ever happen?
Dr. Fomenko is a respected scientist/mathematician at Moscow State University who has already answered these questions to the satisfaction of his initially skeptical colleagues. Most of them are now believers, a few still refuse to believe (the usual diehards), and of course the western press has ignored Fomenko's work -- for obvious reasons when you read the book. The ones who perpetrated this chronology ruse have a lot to answer for. They are still with us. That's why this book is a well-kept secret.

I gave the book a 4-star rating because I was unable to check out some of his claims; those I checked were as he said. But if even 1/3 of his claims are true, this punches a big hole in what we think is our history, the meaning of western civilization, our educational process (for repeating the ruse as gospel), and the trustworthiness of the organization that perpetrated this ruse, well-intentioned or not.

This book relates to current research into a Young Earth paradigm, to John Keel's discoveries about our planet, and Fr Malachi Martin's insights (in his now out-of-print books). We are indeed sheep who are manipulated and kept ignorant -- for a reason. While knowing what these men have to say may be the "booby prize" (as in: 'what can you do with this knowledge?'), it will provide interesting reading. Didn't someone say: "...and the Truth will set you free."?? For you to judge if this book contains the truth.

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Medieval Muslim Thinkers and Scientists
Hakim Mohammed Said
Manufacturer: South Asia Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Book Description

The sixteenth-century builder Andrea Palladio of Vicenza was to become one of the most influential architects of all time. His famous and beautiful villas, built in the mainland territories of the Venetian Republic, provided his contemporaries and successors with a model for interpreting antique architecture through complex yet graceful proportion and simple, sometimes stark, ornament. He illustrated his buildings and explained his working methods in his Four Books on Architecture, which went through many editions and translation is; it had enormous influence, particularly in the English-speaking world.

The Palladian Ideal presents several of Palladio's most important country villas, as well as well-known later works by others that continue the Palladian tradition, including Colen Campell's Mereworth Castle and Lord Burlington's Chiswick House in England, Claude-Nicolas Ledoux's Salt Works in France, Karl von Fischer's Prinz-Karl-Palais in Germany, and Thomas Jefferson's Rotunda at the University of Virginia. Also featured are two of Palladio's antique sources, the Roman Forum and Pantheon. For twenty-two buildings shown, renowned architectural historian Joseph Rykwert provides an introduction and commentary to Roberto Schezen's splendid photography.

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the (almost) perfect book
Read, Not Seen
Rybczynski phoned this one in...
Utterly engaging
Ever Thoughtful and Lucid

The Perfect House
Witold Rybczynski
Manufacturer: Scribner
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0743221397

Book Description

"Palladio is the Bible," Thomas Jefferson once said. "You should get it and stick to it." With his simple, gracious, perfectly proportioned villas, Andrea Palladio elevated the architecture of the private house into an art form during the late sixteenth century -- and his influence is still evident in the ample porches, columned porticoes, grand ceilings, and front-door pediments of America today.

In The Perfect House, bestselling author Witold Rybczynski, whose previous books have transformed our understanding of domestic architecture, reveals how a handful of Palladio's houses in an obscure corner of the Venetian Republic should have made their presence felt hundreds of years later and halfway across the globe. More than just a study of one of history's seminal architectural figures, The Perfect House reflects Rybczynski's enormous admiration for his subject and provides a new way of looking at the special landscapes we call "home" in the modern world.

Customer Reviews:

the (almost) perfect book .......2007-08-08

Prof. Rybczynski does it again - elegant prose makes a stylish match with its subject, excellent drawings by the author illustrate and clarify architectural concepts, biographical details enliven the text with elements of human interest. This book presents residential architecture of Palladio, but also it presents Palladio the man, a person with family life, career, accomplishments and setbacks. It does great credit to the author that he does not try to develop this personal area beyond known facts, even if those facts are few; we are spared fanciful conjectures and "educated guesses", and as a result Palladio seems truly human, someone we can understand and relate to in spite of the distance in time and geography.
There are ten chapters, dedicated to ten villas. There are a lot of illustrations.
Drawings are extremely important, because it is impossible to evaluate a work of visual art without visual aids. We get several plans, always a front view of the villa, sometimes a view in perspective. This device allows even casual reader to trace development of Palladio's ideas and understand various phases of design.
Rybczynski is an obvious fan of Palladio and does not try to hide his admiration for the famous colleague. He does stress the fact that many of the villas were just better farmhouses, where such considerations as location of the threshing floor constituted major project guidelines. And it is amazing that anybody would want to endow the center of a working farm, with granaries, barns, dovecotes and farmyards built into the arrangement, with imperial grandeur borrowed from antique Rome. The villas are no doubt remarkable, since it takes tremendous talent to create a building which is at the same time a utilitarian homestead and a grand residence but does not look outright ludicrous. We must remember all the constraints under which Palladio had to work - his clients' unwillingness to spend, their quite mundane needs, aspirations well above the budget - and his own desire to create unusual buildings, resuscitating architecture of imperial Rome. Master Andrea did succeed in infusing ordinary buildings with elegance and dignity. That could be the original appeal of his art - grand architecture taken out of the realm reserved for the popes and kings, and offered to the merchants and lesser members of the ruling class. The villas were a material proof that one needn't be the ruler of a powerful state to afford a stately residence.
And perhaps because Palladio was forced to build with basic domestic utility in view, the villas remain habitable till now. Perhaps the classicist style enjoys lasting popularity due to this graceful union of convenience and beauty, made available to practically every prospective house buyer. Would this be the "Palladio's secret" - genuinely royal splendor for everyone? (I don't really buy the argument that the attraction lays in the excessive height of the ceilings. If it did, it would be widely imitated, just like the idea of attaching a Grecian portico to a dwelling. Very high rooms feel cold, inhospitable and out of proportions with human scale. They are suitable for formal spaces, even in a private home - entry hall, library, dining room - but in the bedroom feel outright spooky).
I have one complaint: the book could do with more photos than the solitary picture of Villa Chiericati on the back jacket. While the drawings show us the process of creation and ideas entertained by the designer, photography better captures the effect. Anyhow, Rybczynski himself at one point makes the same observation - drawings and photos show different aspects of the subject. But this is the only flaw, otherwise it is an excellent book for anybody with interest in architecture.

Read, Not Seen.......2006-05-30

I'm sure anything I say about the scholarship of Witold Rybczynski's `The Perfect House' would be superfluous. Mr. Rybczynski has written several books (most of which I've also had the privilege to read) on the history, techniques, and important personages of the architectural trade; he holds a professorship at Penn; he clearly loves his subject matter. I therefore really can't quibble with the fundamental material here; the book is literally stuffed with facts. I did, however, have difficulties with the author's style and structure--which ultimately affected some, though gratefully not all, of his story.

To say that Mr. Rybczynski has an eye for detail would be the grossest of understatements. The book's very format--a visit to nearly every Palladio-designed villa still standing in Italy--seems to encourage the author to discourse on every entablature, frieze, and architrave in sight. If you don't immediately recognize these terms--and would be annoyed by constantly referring to the endnotes--Rybczynski nearly compensates by conveying his clear love for these centuries-old designs. Without sounding defensive, he lets the purpose of his journey (see below) unfold.

As with his other books on architectural history, the author clearly shows in `The Perfect House' how historical, even ancient work remains relevant to 21st century architecture. Palladio's work fits this pattern well: his residential villas - as opposed to, say, royal palaces or working factories -- ooze domesticity and we can attempt to identify with their inhabitant's daily lives. Keeping with this theme, Rybczynski strains to discover by the last chapter what he hints throughout the book as Palladio's "secret"--why his buildings are so *good* (i.e., livable). I'll leave the review-reader in suspense but can assure you the reason is neither overly technical nor actually much of a secret, architecturally-speaking.

If that sounds like a demerit, it's not. This conclusion is actually a great relief from far too many minute spatial descriptions that repeat themselves, villa after portico'd villa. Rybczynski makes every attempt to help the reader *see* what he's seeing in these historic sites, but I ultimately found it a failed exercise. Without the jargon--and the painfully banal personal travel notes ("I munch contentedly, stared outside at the villa ...")--one is left with a well-padded visual journal, full of dimensions and data but far too few images or even straight-ahead descriptive prose.

In a self-defeating note - at least relative to his overarching purpose--Rybczynski even quotes Goethe saying "you have to see these buildings with your own eyes to realize how good they are." In a similar vein, a front jacket perp from The New York Times extols it as "... the perfect traveling companion". Ultimately I have to agree with Goethe and The Times: Palladio's villas should be seen, and this book would be a fine traveling resource. Reading it at home was an informative, inspiring, yet visually frustrating experience.

Rybczynski phoned this one in..........2005-12-09

This is a surprisingly lazy effort for Rybczynski, whose other writing on architecture I've found to be quite good, even exceptional. "The Perfect House" is a travelogue and collection of notes on the work of the 16th century Veneto architect Andrea Palladio, with a handful of sketches and photos sprinkled in to illustrate the works discussed. While Rybczynski does get an important point right -- that Palladio's work ought to be experienced first hand to be properly appreciated -- his pedestrian observations and low-key, easygoing style seem drastically mismatched to the drama of Palladio's architecture. And if Palladio must be directly experienced to be understood, why not provide proper photographs and drawings of the buildings to support the argument?

It's unclear who the audience is for this book since its discussions (while well written and earnest) are introductory, yet the few postage stamp black and white images don't give much of a sense of the material to a newcomer. I imagine only in architecture could one get away with such laziness, where chatting about the friendliness of an historic house's current owner has some place, perhaps. I can't imagine there would be any use for a book on Rembrandt, for instance, that would describe a visit to a painting, maybe the coffee one had afterward with its owner, and then include a quick little sketch instead of reproducing the painting itself.

This book conveys the author's enthusiasm for Palladio's work, but the repeated assertions that Palladio made houses that are well-built and comfortable to live in can hardly be counted as a great insight. If you want a decent introduction to Palladio's work, "Palladio" by James Ackerman is a classic, and Taverner's "Palladio and Palladianism" is good too.

Utterly engaging.......2003-12-03

Rybczynski has written a book that is part social history, part art history, and part travelogue, as he describes his journey through Northern Italy visiting and discovering the remaining country villas created by the great architect Andrea Palladio.

Rybczynski manages to write about the "art" side of the architecture in a way that is both scholarly and accessible; however, the best feature of this book, from my perspective, is the insight he brings to architecture and the role of the architect in creating spaces for living. How did the Pisani family live in its villa? How did Palladio integrate the main house of the Villa Badoer with its farm buildings? How did Palladio himself interact with his clients? Above all, what did it feel like to live in buildings that were both magnificent designs and truly "home" to their owners?

The book is so vibrant and Rybczynski's passion for his subject so profound you will want to jump on a plane tomorrow to see what he has seen!

Ever Thoughtful and Lucid.......2003-08-28

Witold Rybczynski is the best contemporary writer on architecture as a mundane philosophy, and the genius of this quiet book is to merge travelogue and andecdotal memoir with the more monumental history of art and place in which studies of Palladio usually traffic. Rybczynski's dilatory and patient, witty and earthy prose is, in my view, the writerly equivalent of the best buildings architecture has to offer. Like the best buildings, his writing creates a "comfort zone" we as readers would gladly inhabit. I encourage anyone to read this book who has an interest in--but vague suspicion or fear of--architecture as a discipline. Through a subtle yet finally forceful style, Rybczynski demonstrates how the demotic and practical dimension of the architectural "science" always trumps the obscurantist and elitist postures of those who make--as well as those who can actually afford to buy--a designer building.

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Beautifully illustrated, beautifully written

Palladian Style
Steven Parissien
Manufacturer: Phaidon Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0714840262

Customer Reviews:

Beautifully illustrated, beautifully written.......2000-12-24

If nothing else this would make one of those fabulous coffee-table books - gorgeous to just to look at and stacked to the gunnels with a huge variety of photographs of interiors, stunning old masters reproduced, and pretty architectural line drawings. However I hope people will get this and read it for more than that for Parissen has done a thorough job on a detailed and thoughtful text .

This is the history of the Palladian style, its growth in England in the early eighteenth century and mostly looking at the typical Palladian style homes and how they developed over a 40 year period from 1715-1755. The book takes us inside the home, as well as outside looking at all the elements from the structural, and architectural to the decorative such as fittings and wallpapers. I have just finished reading Spencer-Churchills "Georgian Style" which takes a much broader time span of the whole Georgian period and looks far more at the style rather than the substance. With a more focused subject and a shorter period Parissien takes us far deeper into the development of style and the people who influenced it. He also shows how it filtered through from the grand mansions to the villas and homes of the less well-off both in England and America. There is a reasonable glossary in the back, along with some good potted biographies of the main people mentioned in his text. He has also provided a page of additional reading on the style if this book sparks your interest further.

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Building by the Book (Palladian Studies in America)

Manufacturer: Univ of Virginia Pr
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0813912334

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Palladian style in Canadian architecture (Studies in archaeology, architecture, and history)
Nathalie Clerk
Manufacturer: Canadian Govt. Pub. Centre, Supply and Services Canada [distributor]
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0660115301

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Marketers Beware

Easy reading, useful concepts

Just another above average book of marketing

Very useful framework to stir creativity in marketers

Develop New Products through de Bono and Hamel Concepts

Lateral Marketing: New Techniques for Finding Breakthrough Ideas
Philip Kotler , and Fernando Trias de Bes
Manufacturer: Wiley
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Marketing Insights from A to Z: 80 Concepts Every Manager Needs to Know

Creating Breakthrough Products: Innovation from Product Planning to Program Approval

Ten Deadly Marketing Sins: Signs and Solutions

Kotler on Marketing : How to Create, Win, and Dominate Markets

According to Kotler

ASIN: 0471455164

Book Description

A revolutionary new system for generating the next big marketing ideas and opportunities
According to Philip Kotler, the widely acknowledged "father" of modern marketing, and Fernando Trias de Bes the marketing techniques pioneered in the 1960s and '70s have worked too well. Fierce competition among products with little or nothing to distinguish one from another, along with modern product positioning and targeted marketing techniques, have led to increasing market segmentation. If the trend continues, individual market segments soon will be too small to be profitable. In Lateral Marketing, Kotler and Trias de Bes unveil a revolutionary new model to help readers expand beyond vertical segmentation and generate fresh marketing ideas and opportunities.
Philip Kotler (Chicago, IL) is the S. C. Johnson & Son Distinguished Professor of International Marketing at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management. Fernando Trias de Bes (Barcelona, Spain) is the founder of Salvetti & Llombart whose clients include Pepsico, Sony, Hewlett-Packard, Nestlé, Credit Suisse, and other top corporations.

Customer Reviews:

Marketers Beware.......2007-07-21

If you work in Marketing and haven't read this book, you could be in trouble.

Kishore Dharmarajan
Author of Eightstorm: 8-Step Brainstorming for Innovative Managers

Easy reading, useful concepts.......2007-01-09

Easy reading. The book delivers exactly what it promises: good techniques to develop creative ideas. I was expecting a little bit more of a case study, but the examples helped me understand the concepts and see how they worked. Some information on how the new ideas made it through the company, from the marketing department to the final product, would be a fine addition.

Just another above average book of marketing .......2005-10-03

Although I do appreciate the effort of the authors to offer a structured and systematic means "for finding breakthrough ideas" by incorporating de Bono's lateral thinking concept into the marketing management arena, I can hardly agree that they are "new techniques" at all. This can be a good textbook for undergrads, but far from satisfying veteran marketers who fought hard daily on the front line for new means to satisfy the ever increasingly demanding customers, or readers who had finished more than five marketing books, probably with over half of them by Kotler himself.

Instead of buying this book, I strongly suggest you to read the review by Donald Mitchell who had written a very good summary of it. Perhaps you can simply read de Bono's Lateral Thinking, a move that will give you higher returns on both time and book cost.

Very useful framework to stir creativity in marketers.......2004-09-17

Marketing guru Philip Kotler borrowed Edward De Bono's Lateral Thinking framework for this book, and focused it with laser accuracy on the problem presented by the need to extend a market, a product or some other component of the marketing mix. By applying a very simple set of steps, Kotler accomplishes the goal, opening outstanding avenues consisting of fantastic ideas that normally don't pop up, unless they are induced, as is the case thanks to the Lateral Marketing framework.

The only downside I found to the book was that it could have accomplished the same goal in much less space. A lot gets repeated, so by the time you're 2/3 into the book, you start to rehash some previous concepts. Otherwise, it's a pearl for anyone new or foreign to marketing, to help develop the ability of "thinking outside the box" to come up with some fantastic ideas for new brands and products.

Develop New Products through de Bono and Hamel Concepts.......2004-02-04

If you are a marketing executive and want to make your new products efforts more successful, Lateral Marketing can be a five-star book for you. If you are a CEO, entrepreneur, or a general manager, you will see the book as falling short of providing a method for creating major strategic advantages and innovative business models.

Lateral Marketing looks at the tendency of traditional marketing to segment markets into ever smaller units as a way to create differentiation and help repel new entrants and existing competitors. The authors provide lots of statistics to point out that it's getting harder and harder to launch successful new products, and the prospects are getting worse.

That kind of a finding could leave any serious marketer feeling depressed, but Professors Kotler and Trias de Bes go on the propose a solution: Focus on expanding the scope of what you consider as having new product potential by using Edward de Bono's
concept of lateral thinking (as developed in his book by the same name first published in 1970). Although lateral thinking was designed to expand all types of creativity, the authors show how it can be specifically applied marketing. They provide a convincing case that many of the more innovative new products and services (cereal bars, Kinder Surprise toy-filled chocolate eggs, 7-Eleven in Japan becoming a depot for ordering and packing up e-commerce products, Actimel, food stores in gas stations, cyber cafes, reality TV contests, and Huggies Pull-Ups) in recent years could have been developed using lateral thinking. Traditional marketing thinking and lateral thinking are compared in a helpful table on pages 92 and 93.

On page 97, they define "lateral marketing" as "a work process which when applied to existing products or services, produces innovative new products and services that cover needs, uses, situations, or targets not currently covered and, and therefore, is a process that offers a high chance of creating new categories or markets."

Many people can do lateral thinking intuitively by thinking about what could be different about products or services that customers would like. The book makes this intuition more analytically based by breaking it down into routine steps that anyone can use individually or in a group to come up with innovative perspectives.

You begin by selecting a focus (say, a flower). You make a lateral displacement (an interruption in the middle of a logical thought sequence) for generating a stimulus. You might think about flowers that "never die" instead of flowers that "always die." Then, you make a connection. In this case, artificial flowers are one such connection. The authors then go on to explain how your initial focus can be a market, a product or the rest of the mix of serving customers. To make lateral displacements (let's look at sending roses on Valentine's Day), you should use substitutions (send lemons on Valentine's Day), inversions (send roses on all days except Valentine's Day), combinations (send roses and a pencil on Valentine's Day), exaggerations (send dozens of roses), eliminations (don't send roses) and reorderings (the beloved sends the roses to the admirer). Substitution turns out to be the easiest method to use at the market level. They provide many examples of how to do each one, and how to create products and services from these perspectives. You also get lots of tips on how to make connections. You are encouraged to "solve the gap" by applying a valuation technique by imagining the purchase process, extracting the positive elements, and finding the right setting for the new offering. All of these points are nicely summarized on pages 201-202. They go on to show how to create new business concepts beginning on page 149.

How do you implement lateral marketing in your company? They draw on three suggestions made by Gary Hamel from his article "Bringing Silicon Valley Inside" (Harvard Business Review, September 1999). The three suggestions involve creating internal markets for ideas, capital and innovative talent.

If this summary makes Lateral Marketing seem like a thought experiment derived from the work of others, you have understood my summary well. In putting these new combinations together, the authors have been innovative . . . but they have also missed important lessons that could have been gained by doing field work in the subject.

I began to see how the authors were going wrong when I read their description of appropriate situations for vertical versus lateral marketing. Rather than seeing lateral marketing as potentially the lead process in all situations, they chose to keep vertical marketing as important in newly developing markets. If you look instead at where new business models come, you find they are much more likely to be present in newly developing markets.

The second element that is missed is that lateral marketing is seen as something that marketing people do, separate from the rest of the organization for the most part. Category innovations and new business models, by contrast, often come from combined efforts of those with many functional perspectives. They are often focusing as hard on creating competitive advantages as they are on customer advantages. You won't hear much about strategy, competitive advantage or outperforming competitors in this book.

Those observations made me realize that the majority of the examples were for low-price point consumer products. If the authors had considered more services and nonconsumer products, they would have seen the need to draw on more disciplines collectively in developing new products, categories and business models. Although they see a glint of the possibility of new business models, they miss the point that a valuable new business model is worth a great many successful new products and actually makes the new product development success rate easier to improve.

I recommend the book as a way to help marketing executives who find themselves in a canoe without a paddle when it comes to considering new markets. The process here will help them extend their vision in new directions . . . and that's a good thing.

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