Book Description
The weathered remains found on a Scottish mountainside may be those of Eleanor Gray, but the imperious Lady Maude Gray, Eleanor's mother, will have to be handled delicately. This is not the only ground that Inspector Ian Rutledge of Scotland Yard must tread carefully, for the case will soon lead him to Scotland, where many of Rutledge's ghosts rest uneasily. But it is an unexpected encounter that will hold the most peril.
For in Scotland Rutledge will find that the young mother accused of killing Eleanor Gray is a woman to whom he owes a terrible debt. And his harrowing journey to find the truth will lead him back through the fires of his past, into secrets that still have the power to kill.
Customer Reviews:
Tale of Two Woman.......2006-08-20
Charles Todd has sent his war ravaged Inspector Ian Rutledge to Scotland to find out what happened to Eleanor Gray, the daughter of one of England's richest woman. While he looks for Eleanor he comes upon Fiona MacDonald, the fiance of the man (Hamish MacLeod) who is his internal demon. Fiona has been accused of killing a woman and stealing her child. The bones that are found are thought to be those of Eleanor Gray. Can Rutledge find the real killer and save Fiona? To do so, he must find out who the child's real parents are, but Fiona would rather hang than give up the secret.
With an amazingly deft touch, and an eye for the details of the times (and morals), Inspector Rutledge is the proverbial dog with a bone, and he won't let it loose. Little by little he is able to piece the story of Eleanor Gray, the little boy (Ian Hamish MacDonald), and Fiona MacDonald, and make the real killer show his/her hand. But will Rutledge survive long enough to bring the killer to light. Read on....
time well spent.......2006-08-18
This story was interestingly presented and did not follow a forumulatic plot, which was a relief. This is my first experience with the Rutledge mysteries and I enjoyed Todd's writing style. This is a great weekend or beach read.
Tightly written, well conceived.......2006-07-29
Further investigations in the Inspector Ian Rutledge Mysteries. This time Inspector Rutledge finds himself in the last place he would want to be given his background and particular situation. Just after the Great War (1919) of which Rutledge and his, uh err co-inhabiter Hamish, find himself in a murder case that will take him to the heart of the Scotland (Duncarrick) where he meets up with his old friends and those of Hamish. Seems like everyone knows or is related to someone else in this mystery.
Fiona MacDonald, who would have been Hamish's wife, had he survived the war is no on trial for the murder of Eleanor Gray who disappeared several years earlier. Naturally the local police have it all wrapped up as they always do in this series but Rutledge who is sent to cross all the T's and dot all the I's sees more than the locals can fathom. And of course he must contend with his boss that is always looking for a way to get rid of him.
Will he succeed and at what cost?
A Satisfying Mystery - Thoroughly!.......2006-01-26
This is a thoroughly satisfying mystery. We, who have come to think of Inspector Ian Rutledge as our friend and his shadow-companion Hamish as a benign but ubiquitous presence in Charles Todd's mysteries, are glad for this book.
Herein, the author takes us North, first to meet a grande dame, Lady Maude, and then on to investigate a mystery that may or may not involve her missing daughter, Eleanor Gray. One gets a sense of the societal changes of the post W W I era, as one follows the investigation. Miss Gray lived a life that took full advantage of the strides that women were making as the 1920s began, and this was both a cause of concern for her incredibly wealthy, titled family, but also part of the reason why she went so long unsought.
While in the North, Rutledge ventures into the borders of Scotland as he visits the father of his best friend - who died in the War - and this leads to complications that cause him to cross into the Highlands and Hamish's old stomping grounds.
Whether he is ready or not to face those ghosts becomes part of the tale.
Then, too, as the plot thickens, living reminders of Hamish become entwined in the mystery. Chief among them, Hamish's beloved and betrothed, Fiona MacDonald. Did Fiona have anything to do with Eleanor's disappearance? Even - perish the thought - Eleanor's murder?
And if so, where pray tell is the body?
As in the other Rutledge mysteries, the recent memory of W W I is like a mist that creeps into the investigation from time to time. There are some harrowing scenes out in nature that remind Rutledge that peacetime is as dangerous as wartime.
All the while, the powers that be at Scotland Yard have thrown him into a nearly impossible case, where to succeed might spell his own disaster, if Lady Maude is not pleased with the outcome.
Charles Todd's Ian Rutledge is bound to become one of the dozen or so classic mystery detectives. May Todd's faithful readership grow--and may many more books featuring Ian and Hamish come into being!
One further thought. For those readers who are eager to find fault with the occasional non-British turn of phrase in these novels, perhaps you might choose, instead, to think if them as little "Ninas" inserted in the text as hidden clues to the authors' American background. After all, Nancy Astor and Jennie Jerome made their way in the UK. Why can't Todd!
If you find this review helpful you might want to read some of my other reviews, including those on subjects ranging from biography to architecture, as well as religion and fiction
Good strong and well-written mystery.......2003-02-12
Todd has written another provocative and well-written mystery-one which will keep you interested until the end.
Ian Rutledge, a shell-shocked veteran from World War I, is called upon to investigate the mysterious events in a Scottish village. A young woman has been accused of murder and kidnaping a child. The accusations begin with a series of anonymous letters and quickly escalate as bodies are discovered and it becomes clear that the child the woman claims is her son cannot possibly be her own.
This story is given an extra twist-Rutledge is haunted by the ever-constant presence of his former, corporal Hamish Macleod, who died under his orders during the war. The young woman accused of murder and kidnaping is Hamish's fiancee. Solving the mystery may, or so the reader hopes, help Rutledge deal with his own guilt over Hamish's death and his-Rutledge's-survival.
My only complaint with this series is a minor one-Hamish is sometimes too stereotypically Scottish. He constantly speaks in dialect (interestingly enough, Todd's other Scottish characters do not speak in dialect) and he seems at times to veer on a stage version of a Scotsman. This may be intentional on Todd's part (after all, Hamish is a part of Rutledge's memory-and as such he isn't real) but it can get annoying after a while.
That said, I still recommend the book strongly. You won't be sorry you read it.
Book Description
When Nuremberg was scouted in 1945 as a possible site for the Nazi war crime trials, an American damage survey of Germany described it as being “among the dead cities” of that country, for it was 90% destroyed, its population decimated, its facilities lost. As a place to put Nazis on trial, it symbolized the devastation Nazism brought upon Germany, while providing evidence of the destruction the Allies wrought on the country in the course of the war.
In Among the Dead Cities, the acclaimed philosopher A. C. Grayling asks the provocative question, how would the Allies have fared if judged by the standards of the Nuremberg Trials? Arguing persuasively that the victor nations have never had to consider the morality of their policies during World War II, he offers a powerful, moral re-examination of the Allied bombing campaigns against civilians in Germany and Japan, in the light of principles enshrined in the post-war conventions on human rights and the laws of war.
Intended to weaken those countries’ ability and will to make war, the bombings nonetheless destroyed centuries of culture and killed some 800,000 non-combatants, injuring and traumatizing hundreds of thousands more in Hamburg, Dresden, and scores of other German cities, in Tokyo, and finally in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. “Was this bombing offensive justified by the necessities of war,” Grayling writes, “or was it a crime against humanity? These questions mark one of the great remaining controversies of the Second World War.” Their resolution is especially relevant in this time of terrorist threat, as governments debate how far to go in the name of security.
Grayling begins by narrating the Royal Air Force’s and U. S. Army Air Force’s dramatic and dangerous missions over Germany and Japan between 1942 and 1945. Through the eyes of survivors, he describes the terrifying experience on the ground as bombs created inferno and devastation among often-unprepared men, women, and children. He examines the mindset and thought-process of those who planned the campaigns in the heat and pressure of war, and faced with a ruthless enemy. Grayling chronicles the voices that, though in the minority, loudly opposed attacks on civilians, exploring in detail whether the bombings ever achieved their goal of denting the will to wage war. Based on the facts and evidence, he makes a meticulous case for, and one against, civilian bombing, and only then offers his own judgment. Acknowledging that they in no way equated to the death and destruction for which Nazi and Japanese aggression was responsible, he nonetheless concludes that the bombing campaigns were morally indefensible, and more, that accepting responsibility, even six decades later, is both a historical necessity and a moral imperative.
Rarely is the victor’s history re-examined, and A. C. Grayling does so with deep respect and with a sense of urgency “to get a proper understanding for how peoples and states can and should behave in times of conflict.” Addressing one of today’s key moral issues, Among the Dead Cities is both a dramatic retelling of the World War II saga, and vitally important reading for our time.
Customer Reviews:
A good summary, but just one part of a larger crime.......2007-09-20
For years, I have been reading about bombing and air power in the Second World War, an interest that stems from my parents meeting each other as they came to factories to create these bombers, and my own shock and horror at the devastation they created. This book is a useful place to start, even if the concentration is not on telling the story, which he does accurately, with lots of clear examples, and extremely clearly, not always a virtue of writers on this subject.
The bombing of civilians in Germany and later in Japan was one of the many criminal acts that US and British big business government carried out in the Second World War. Its aims were to demoralize the working people in the "enemy" population who would then force their government to cease the war. While at times Britain's Bomber Chief Arthur Harris and even more so American bombing commanders sugar coated the pill by claiming they were aiming at military targets, Harris was always clear talking to colleagues: he was trying to murder Germans and he considered not only other bombing efforts, but everything else in the war other than flying over Germany trying to burn down its cities to be a waste of time.
About one million people were killed in the European campaign, including nearly 100 thousand allied Bomber crew. Studies of the impact of the bombing by the US government and the testimony of Nazi leaders was that the raids had minimal impact on the German war effort. Other books on the subject show that such bombings encouraged people to believe they had a stake in the war and that it even angered dedicated enemies of Hitler.
An even more exaggerated justification has been given for the terror bombing of Japan. As many Japanese were killed in five or six months as Germans were killed in five years! The first great raid on Tokyo killed more people than either of the atomic bomb attacks. Contrary to the picture painted in Washington, this too had little impact on the war. In fact, the US Navy had to launch its own carrier-based bombing and battle ship shelling of Japanese military facilities, especially aircraft plants and air bases, because so little of the Japanese war machine was touched or limited by these bombings.
This book points out something that Japanese historians and others outside the usual US propoganda machine never tell us: that by time the Atom Bombs were dropped, Japan was trying to surrender especially through the USSR and that Stalin was slowing it down, so the USSR could invade Manchuria and Northern China. Moreover, the Soviet invasion of Manchuria which smashed the last remaining Japanese effective military force was what caused the Japanese to surrender. The fifteen years of war for Japan, after all, was an extension of the invasion of Manchuria in 1931.
It should be noted that neither Germany nor the USSR ever built a massive bomber fleet because they believed it was useless for their war efforts, although Hitler's missile attacks were of the same ilk.
For the point of view of winning the war, the terror bombing was of little use compared to the massive resources devoted to it, the murder of nearly two million people, and the massive destruction of the cultural and historic heritage of Japan, Germany, and other countries.
The author's moral judgment--against bombing as a war crime--may be justified given the abstract morality he preaches. Yet, this single condemnation masks the entire immorality of imperialist governments in imperialist wars.
Washington and London did not fight Hitler to stop the genocide of the Jews. An abundant literature exists on how these two governments were antiSemetic and indifferent to both attempts of Jews and others to escape Hitler and refused to take any military measures that would have stopped or impeded the murders.
Washington and London fought to preserve Britain's colonies, and to expand American control and dominance over great areas of Asia and Europe too. In the course of this millions of people in Britain's colonies in Africa and India died of starvation due to the monetary and food restrictions the UK imposed to finance its war with Germany.
American, Canadian, and British troops generally killed Japanese soldiers who fell into their hands, and a trade in Japanese skulls and gold teeth sent back from the Pacific grew in the US during the war. This was only limited somewhat at the end of the war when some US generals complained that the practice stiffened Japanese resistance and was the real cause of Japanese troops fighting to the death.
The whole policy of warfare in wars like World War I and World War II, Korea, and Vietnam (a small country on which more bombs were dropped than all of the sides dropped in the second world war!!) have nothing to do with morality and everything to do with crime. They reflect the utter distain that the big business rulers have for anything except their own profits, their own control over the world.
Rather than an individual crime, terror bombing is just one facet of the crime and immorality of a system humanity needs to get rid of.
Problems with Books about War.......2007-03-18
First of all, I agree with the sentiments expressed by the reviewers who found this book frustrating. The author stated that he was only going to study area bombing of Germany by the RAF and the area bombing of Japan by the US. That he wasn't doing all civilian bombing of the war. But he never even got to the Japanese portion of the discussion he'd promised to discuss, which is what I wanted to read about. And it occurs to me now that he would have made a much stronger case if he had just told the story of the killing of civilians during WWII generally, regardless of who the agent was, though that would have made a much bigger project. In a certain way, once your head's blow off, it doesn't really matter what the ideological predisposition of the nation who blew it off was.
Not the work hoped for..........2006-12-31
If you travel to London, a `must' for any tourist is Westminster Cathedral. In the apse of that famous edifice you will find a window devoted to the saviors of Britain in WW2, the men of the RAF. Most unfortunately, you find among those named one that surely needs to be effaced, Sir Arthur "Bomber" Harris.
Long appalled by the muted - nay, virtually non-existent - criticism of the murderous policy of our air warfare in WW2, the `area', or `saturation', or `strategic' bombings, whatever one wishes to call that atrocious, indiscriminate attempt to annihilate whole sections of cities, I approached this work with great hope that this would, at last, be definitively addressed. Indeed, in the hands of a clearly informed and prolific philosopher (see his other works), it seemed an almost ideal combination. And, his work, in the opening chapters, in elucidating the origins of this policy is exemplary, namely: the accidents triggering retaliations that ultimately spiraled out of control; the inability to hit a target with any accuracy*; the unacceptable loss rate from daylight raids (the only ones with any chance to reliably find a tactical target); the psychological need to take the fight to the enemy when all other avenues with any public impact were inaccessible; and finally, the peculiar psyche of Arthur Harris (and, possibly, Curtis LeMay, although this is somewhat less certain), who sincerely believed, due largely to his experience in WW1 and his consequent desire to avoid its repetition at any cost, that air power alone would bring surrender without the necessity of a ground assault.
Grayling continues with an exhaustive summary of the legal framework of the rules of war. His outline of the various Geneva conventions and protocols is quite helpful, if sometimes anachronistic and tedious. Still, for a work of this sort, it cannot be avoided, and Grayling accepts this wearisome duty, offering it to us digested and distilled in one place, for which we must be grateful. In addition, he offers, as a substantial bonus, a unique 45 page appendix of "RAF bombing attacks on Germany, with civilian casualties... and RAF losses...". Unfortunately, he fails to note his source, or sources, for this monumental, and crucial, enumeration.
It is in the actual history, though, that the book fails (proving perhaps, if proof were still needed, that this profession does indeed require training, and that it is not, despite appearances, open and vouchsafed for all). The author, in particular, apparently does not understand the distinction between a war that is lost, and surrender. While it is doubtless true that, by the beginning of 1945, at the very latest, there was no possibility of either Germany or Japan prevailing, or even emerging from the war without defeat, there still remained the question of surrender and how the countries were to be governed after the war. Due to the horrific nature of both regimes in power during the war, there was absolutely no question by the Allies of retaining any elements whatever of those structures and personnel after the war - to do so would have rendered the enormous sacrifices of the war years as essentially meaningless. And, neither of those regimes, as they were constituted during the war, was ready at any point, however hopeless, to surrender - both were, in fact, geared to fight to the last man. That happened, in essence, in Germany. In Japan, it was avoided, but only by the - very belated - intervention of the Emperor (and then, only after an attempted coup against his holy personage was repulsed!). In fact, a good argument can be made, despite the very good, recent book by Professor Hasegawa, "Racing the Enemy", that the Bomb was critical in his intervention. (Professor Hasegawa's book, by the way, was subjected to serious criticism by Michael Kort, and D.M. Giangreco, among others.) You have to know what the Japanese were willing to accept for surrender, namely, the military left essentially untouched, the retention of a number of colonies, the home islands unoccupied, to understand how `unconditional' in `unconditional surrender' was not really excessive. You have to have intimate knowledge of the war, by living through it or reading extensively in it, to know from Iwo Jima and Okinawa just what would be expected from invading the homeland, and why, therefore, use of the Atomic Bomb was not necessarily contemptible (tho one can, certainly, argue with how it was initially used). Most egregious is his statement (undocumented), on page 154 (repeated, if abbreviated, on p. 260) that Byrnes was urging, on June 1, 1945, use of the bomb as primarily a tool against Russia, which does not fit with the man or the times. (I am assured by Professor Hasegawa, who has examined the minutes of the Interim Committee in the archives, that no such statement of that date from Byrnes exists - nor could it, as it was certainly far too early for such talk, and, I would add, impossible, even from belligerent Byrnes.) I can only assume that Grayling has consulted too much of the notoriously unreliable Gar Alperovitz - and, of that author, even one book is too much - and not enough, not nearly enough, of the best sources on the war.
Lastly, I cannot refrain from commenting on the author's equivalence of 9/11 and Aug 6, 1945 (p. 279). Can it really be that a man of this profound philosophical training does not see the difference between a pointless act of terror with no defined objective on 9/11, with Aug 6, which had a very specific and achievable - I would even say achieved - one?
In sum: A work of importance, but seriously flawed - the definitive treatment awaits.
* I have learned, from other sources, that the accuracy of bombing in WW2 was pathetic, despite the storied Norden bombsite, with over 50% of all bombs falling outside of a radius of 1000 feet from the putative aiming point! (Still looking for one reason we did not bomb the rails leading to the concentration camps?)
A moral conviction against strategic bombing of civilians........2006-11-15
If you are looking for a book that glorifies the civilian bombing campaigns over Europe ,dont waste your money. If you are looking for another book that is essentially "History written by the victors" dont waste your time. If are expecting a book that will say "Hell yah...we bombed the hell out of them and they deserved it.",you will be sorely disappointed.
And that is apparently what the negative reviwers of this book were looking for. After viewing some of their other reviews it seems they were essentially seeking another book that agreed with their point of view or opinion that we never, ever did anything wrong.
Admittedly, there are some chronological,and technical errors,minor in context, but this was not meant to be a reference book.
As the proud son of a American WW2 veteran ,whos job it was to difuse mines ,shells,and bombs ,i certainly am no bleeding heart anti-american liberal looking to condemn our courageous veterans.
But as in all wars, i find that atrociites start at the top, in the command structure,and there was no difference here. "Bomber Harris" gets the credit/blame for getting this ball rolling.And he is unaploigetic about it.
If you are looking for a book that presents a "relatively" unbiased view ,in courtroom case manner, then you will find it a very interesting read.
The view from both sides of the arguement is looked at, and analyzed, and judged ,aginst the statistical outcome that was achieved.
If instead we had surrounded civilian poulation centers and told the commanders to send in their troops ,and go to every 6th building and drag the inhabitants out into the streets and kill them, then blow up or burn the structure to the ground,the results would have been the same statistically. But that would have been considered a war crime. Yet somehow ,the impersonal act of strategic bombing non combatant population centers gets a pass in the eyes of many history books.
And that is the wrong that this book strives to right. Will this book change the past..no...But it can change the way this event is viewed in historical reference ,and hopfully prevent it from happening again.
Omits the Deadest City of All--Warsaw.......2006-08-26
Grayling combines factual information with dubious assertions and a very incomplete picture of the killings of civilians during the WWII air war. The only strength of his book is the existence of detailed maps, as well as a table of all bombing raids. One of the maps shows the bombed German cities as pie charts, with the diameter of the pie representing the size of the city and the blackened portion of the pie depicting the fraction of the housing destroyed by Allied bombing. Another map shows concentric circles depicting the distances to bomber bases in the British Isles. However, this ignores the fact that many bombing raids were also carried out from Allied-captured Italy in the latter stages of the war.
Among the many dubious assertions of Grayling is the one regarding German bombers. Grayling rejects the contention that massive Allied bombing at least forced the Germans to build a large fleet of fighter planes at the expense of their own bombers. He argues that the Germans' use of V-1 and V-2 rockets eliminated the need for a large bomber fleet. This seems ridiculous. The total damage done by the German rocket weapons is dwarfed by the damage that would have been caused by a large and long-range would-be German bomber force. Besides, these never-built German bombers could have been used alongside, and not instead of, the V-1 and V-2 rockets.
The current Judeocentric approach to WWII depicts Jews as the only victims of the Nazis worthy of repeated discussion. Not surprisingly, Grayling follows this trend. He exclusively compares what he considers the lesser immorality of Allied carpet bombing with the greater immorality of the Germans' murder of the Jews. He not only ignores the millions of non-Jews murdered by the Germans, but pointedly ignores the MAIN civilian victims of German bombing. In fact, another reviewer has already commented on the fact that Grayling completely ignores the Luftwaffe activities on the eastern front. What an understatement! Grayling's criticisms, on both tactical and moral grounds, of Allied bombing raids that killed considerable numbers of civilians should start with the very beginning of World War II. Already in the predawn hours of September 1, 1939, the Luftwaffe was slaughtering tens of thousands of Polish civilians in indiscriminate attacks on non-military targets. Grayling mentions Warsaw only twice, and then in a very cursory fashion. He justifies the ignoring of Warsaw compared with Rotterdam on the basis of the fact that Warsaw was far away from the west, and thus its experiences were not well known. That may have been true during the early stages of the war but it is certainly not true now--least of all for Grayling.
In Warsaw alone tens of thousands of Polish civilians perished in three weeks of furious German bombardment. Not until some 3 years into the war did a single Allied air raid cost the lives of 10,000 or more German or Japanese civilians! Grayling ignores the fact that German attacks on such places as Guernica, Rotterdam, and London were primarily tactical in nature. In contrast, German attacks against the Poles, and later other Slavs, were motivated by genocide. Hitler himself stated at the start of the war that Germans should "Kill without mercy every man, woman, and child of Polish extraction." Three million Polish gentiles were murdered by the Germans during the German occupation. In time, Warsaw became the deadest city of all, nearly 100% destroyed as a deliberate act of cultural genocide directed against the Poles. No other European capital came close to this level of devastation. The Germans did not blow up the militarily-innocent cultural cities of Krakow and Czestochowa only because they failed to complete the laying of the explosive charges before the unexpectedly-early arrival of the Red Army.
Personally, and again after having read Grayling's book, I find it difficult to feel sorry for the Germans for at least two reasons. The first is their long history of aggression against the Slavic peoples. The second is the fact that 89% of the Germans voted for the Nazis in free elections, all the while fully knowing who Hitler was and what he stood for (after all, Hitler had written his infamous Mein Kampf a decade earlier).
Book Description
The 40-year story of the rise and fall of one of the pioneering companies of the computer age
Customer Reviews:
A name dies, but the spirit thrives.......2007-08-09
When I started reading this book (the first two chapters) I was a little hesitant at reading further as it was a very ambiguous prep for the story. However, after I started chapter 3 I was excited to discover how inline Ken Olsen's views are with my own and my own experiences.
I initially got this book in order to learn why a company fails and try and avoid the pitfalls that DEC encountered. As I read further into the book I found that the strengths of the culture were symbollic of humanity in general, and to discount the culture was to discount some of humanities most fundametal and essential attributes.
Corporations as entities are setup to run in perpetuity; however, the most difficult obstacle to longevity is vitality. Many companies today that have been around for more than 40 years really don't offer much in the way humanitarian benefits. In other words, you're not going to work at a GE and expect to revolutionize anything. The immediate problem is that as corporations get more and more hardened their vitality is lost and the very culture that inspired them to be innovative disappears in favor of purely existing. How do you combat this?
DEC's legacy is not the products that it produced, but the vitality that sprang-forth from people who sought something more and were empowered to reach their dreams. A company's true worth cannot be known until you see how many companies/ideas came out of it, not as spin-off's, but as inspired, elegant, and useful innovations/products that in-turn inspire others to reach their dreams.
Overall the book does a good job of relating the facts of the ultimate rise and fall of DEC from a monetary perspective, but it does an even better job or relating how inspiration, motivation, and empowerment can truly create "magic" in both the past and in the present. The spirit of DEC lives on, indeed the spirit of America lives on...
a sad tale of what might have beens.......2006-07-11
One of the first computers I worked on was a Dec-10. I also used one of the PDPs. Then I later was sysadmin and wrote Fortran code for a Vax 785. So I was rather nostalgaic over DEC's demise. This would have seemed inconceivable in the mid 80s, when DEC was at its height, and second only to IBM. But Schein's analysis points out that the seeds of DEC's fall were already flourishing at its apex.
One merit of the book is how it points out that it was not just Ken Olsen who made all the bad decisions. Notably that the "PC was just a toy". It was also the rest of the top management. Worsened by a complex matrix management structure. This had the effect of drastically slowing decision making.
The book is a sad tale of what might have beens. For instance, it is well known how DEC missed the PC revolution. But it also dropped the ball on networking. DEC came up with DECNET by 1984. It had many very capable network engineers. But DEC's routers and switches were only for DECNET. DEC could have been DEC+Cisco, if it had migrated aggressively to the Arpanet/Internet. Sure, it had some presence in the latter. But not enough. It kept pushing its DECNET and in the end the Internet just drove DECNET into irrelevance.
iconic business story -- useful to all.......2006-06-29
this is one of the best business books i have read. it is super-relevant for anyone in high tech but is also recommended for any business person.
schein combines narration with theory & analysis in telling the story of DEC's meteoric rise and eventual sale to Compaq. the book is a rare mix of story-telling and more "academic" theory about management, strategy and culture. what makes the book so exceptional, beyond schein's insights and storytelling, is the unprecedented access he had to DEC executives.
Needed to be written, needs to be read.......2005-01-31
I recommend this book to anyone who is familiar with DEC or wishes to understand its enduring legacies. It is also a useful case study on who a company that was doing so well could ultimately fail; are Microsoft and IBM really immune from this fate?
I used DEC equipment during its heyday from the late 1970's throughout the 1980s. What I value most is how the technical experiences I recall from that time were given depth. The author's narrative binds together a collection of internal memos and personal recollections of many of those who were working at DEC when many of its fateful decisions were made. In general, responsibility for the ultimate failure of DEC to survive as a company is laid with the senior management, in particular with CEO Ken Olsen. The same attributes that made DEC great and innovative were the ones that lead to its downfall. Alas, DEC is not dead but lives on in all the innovations it introduced.
I would like liked to have seen some more details on the technical innovations and more exposure to the myths and legends that many of us were weaned on. But that was not the main thesis of the book so it's not a deficiency per se.
Though written in a straightforward and matter of fact way with little flourish, I was engrossed and quickly polished it off. This book needed to be written.
A provacative read.......2004-03-29
Many discussions and articles that chronicle the rise and fall of Digital simplify the failure to either "The president [Ken Olsen] blew it," or "They missed the PC revolution," or some combination of both. This book shows how the culture that so successfully nourished creativity and genius in the company's nascent days brought chaos, confusion, and internecine warfare in later days when the larger company faced a host of competitors and needed to efficiently produce commodity items. I think that the authors go a little too lightly on the role of (mis)management in Digital's failure, but they do a good job of bringing to light many other aspects of Digital's problematic history. The authors seem a bit full of themselves at times, but they have a compelling and sobering story to tell.
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Dead Man's Legacy (Dales Western)
Philip Harbottle
Manufacturer: Ulverscroft Large Print
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Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 1842622595 |
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Legacy of the Dead (Inspector Ian Rutledge Mystery)
Charles Todd
Manufacturer: Clipper Audio
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Audio Cassette
Mystery
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General
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General
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ASIN: 1841973769 |
Book Description
This digital document is an article from The Register-Guard (Eugene, OR), published by The Register Guard on August 16, 2005. The length of the article is 792 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: Lumber magnate Giustina dead at 87.(Vitals)(The timber baron's legacy includes OSU, charity work and three local golf courses)
Publication:
The Register-Guard (Eugene, OR) (Newspaper)
Date: August 16, 2005
Publisher: The Register Guard
Page: a1
Distributed by Thomson Gale
Book Description
This digital document is an article from Catholic Insight, published by Catholic Insight on May 1, 2002. The length of the article is 981 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: Mengele's legacy.(Josef Mengele, worild war II figure)(Brief Article)
Author: Paula Adamick
Publication:
Catholic Insight (Magazine/Journal)
Date: May 1, 2002
Publisher: Catholic Insight
Volume: 10
Issue: 4
Page: 8(2)
Article Type: Brief Article
Distributed by Thomson Gale
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