Intelligence Book Reviews Samples For Students

In his description of himself, Baer acknowledges that he wasn’t born a patriot whose intention was to work for the CIA. He describes himself as a struggling student who had personal agendas (Baer, 2002). The book gives several accounts of what Baer describes as frustrations and mistakes he made while posted in Lebanon and India. The book also discusses the failings of the CIA. Baer gives the reasons for a failing CIA as: replacement of human intelligence with computer and satellite technology; a risk aversion approach by the agency that promoted bureaucratic practices and undermined intelligence gathering; and the prioritization of interests ...

According to Orr, technicians love their job because of the nature of their profession. In many cases, technicians work under little or no supervision where they can implement their ideas in repairing the machines rather than rely on a manual. They work independently and apply their personal management ideas. Furthermore, they schedule their work and manage their time and records for accounting purposes. Their work is unpredictable in nature. For this reason, people cannot schedule a technician. Their job experience advances each time they handle a new job because each case differs from the previous jobs. Technicians perceive unhappy customers as opportunities ...

Critical review of the book Outliers: The Story of Success

Malcolm was born in 1963. He is a Canadian Journalist, bestselling author, as well as speaker. He was the writer of the New Yorker magazine since 1996, in Fareham Hemisphere, in England by Joyce Gladwell, and his father Graham Gladwell. In his life, he was a young single-minded and ambitious boy, whose interest was writing and reading books.

His writings

He has also managed to write and publish five books at the tipping point; ‘How Little Things Can Make a Big difference’ (2002), ‘There is Blink: The power of Thinking without Thinking’ (2005), and ‘What the Dog Saw and the Other Adventures’ (2009), which ...

Hernstein & Murray’s The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life, offers a controversial statistical argument about social stratification and race being concretely linked to intelligence. However, the book more effectively investigates the consequences of American social stratification. The rich and educated members of society are increasingly isolating themselves in zip code enclaves instead of contributing to the American ideal of diversity. As a result, society has become increasingly divided by education, class and race. Overall, the book attempts to deconstruct complex socioeconomic issues of race, class and intelligence using statistical analysis. Intelligence is an important part of social ...

Compiled by Silberman together with his colleague Freda Hansburg, “PeopleSmart” is undoubtedly a useful tool for learning that should be adopted for operational managers as well as corporate executives. It is an easy book to understand that is well organized and user friendly. PeopleSmart is a book with the potential of transforming the work environment particularly due to its practicality. For people interested in sharpening their interpersonal skills and individual growth, the inspirational book is a sure guide for success.
The main aim of the book is to encourage its readers to be socially astute through attempting to mould them into ...

Kim follows the story of a young Irish boy who is left in India as a child, learning the culture and becoming one of them. He makes friends with a Tibetan Lama who is elderly, and who wishes to look for the River of the Arrow in order to reach Enlightenment. The Lama takes Kim under his wing as he continues this search. They go along the Grand Trunk Road, where Kim is identified by a chaplain and taken from the Lama, being sent instead to a school. Kim and the Lama keep in touch, as he also learns about the British secret service, ...

Chapter reviews

Chapter reviews

Chapter 7 Summary: Cognition

Readers can also learn the weaknesses of Piaget’s theory through its critics who look at it as a theory that under-estimates the development of children which can be beyond the factors examined by him. The chapter reading also shows that other modern constructivist theories look at the causes to different cognitive skills. The sociocultural perspective by Vygotsky's looks at the social and cultural influences as the main causes of cognitive development in children. On the other hand, Fischer's dynamic skills framework looks at skill levels as the main course for development (Sigelman, & Rider, 2014).

Important topic: Aging and cognitive skills

I tend ...

At the Center of the Storm: My Years at the CIA is a memoir written by George Tenet and Bill Harlow. The chronicle focuses on the CIA happenings before and after the September 11 2001 Islamic terrorist attacks. In this memoir, George Tenet gives a real life account of his works as the director of the CIA and a chronological order of how things happened during his term as the chief of the Criminal Intelligence Agency. Tenet was the Director of the Criminal Intelligence Agency of the year 1997 to 2004. He writes a book where he recounts the ...

Introduction Culture and Leadership in New Zealand

Introduction
Culture has a great influence on leadership according to various researches that have been conducted. According to Hewison (2006), leadership characteristics are deep rooted in the unique context of each culture. There has been no generally accepted definition of leadership, but majority definitions focus on values, beliefs, attitudes, behavior across cultures and influence that people hold in leadership position hold. Cross cultural research have identified what constitute leadership and the behaviors across cultures. It has also been also identified the various theories used in description of leadership. Leadership in most of the cultures across the globe is dependent ...

Just to begin with, it is prudent to note that twelve years later from the time Bin laden attacked the United States of America; most people still wonder how such attack could have happened in the most powerful soil of America. Some individuals also still ask themselves whether the terrorist attack could have been preventable. However, as per now, many people have full information about the errors that the Americans did which made the attack possible. The book Provides new light to the historical decisions which has profound effects on the current events. This paper therefore shall provide a critical ...

Human Resource Development (HRD) is a function that helps employees develop their abilities and skill sets to suit the job requisite and to enhance the growth within the organization. It includes training, mentoring, coaching, succession planning among others. HRD focuses on the development of the superior workforce for the organizations to achieve their goals in service to their customers. While planning to attain these requirements at its best, in the past, the leaders of the organizations have looked at the employees as a channel to attain the established targets. Their focus was on giving strength to these channels in all the ...

Chapter 1

The main idea of “The Matthew Effect” is that people frequently attribute success to individual characteristics that they consider to be rare, such as genius or talent. However, oftentimes the real explanation for that success has to do with advantages that are not accessible to the public. The analogy that he provides has to do with the factors that create the tallest tree in a particular forest. It is true that the tree came from a quality seed, but that seed (and sapling) did not have any other trees blocking its sunlight, and the seed was planted in fertile ...

What Is Your Attitude Being a Manager?

A manager in any field is deemed to have all the required attributes of being a manager. The manager is responsible for planning and then directing the duties allocated to individuals. They are expected to act in an effective manner through coordinated monitoring the work done and carrying out the necessary and sufficient correction of the failed actions. This is done when it is deemed necessary. Ideally, the management posts fit the individuals who have supervisory abilities. In most areas, the managers are expected to have the proceedings in the organization or firm that they are allocated the responsibilities. That ...

The book "The Last Days of Hitler" by Hugh Trevor-Roper was first published in 1947. The historical book was written within a year following the mysterious disappearance of Hitler in 1945. After four months without any news of his whereabouts, Trevor-Roper was hired to investigate the matter. Having spent many years investigating the Nazi Regime, he had come to be known as the expert of the Nazi Regime . The book describes leadership during the Nazi Regime and continues to demonstrate the downfall of this regime, which ended in mass suicide for Hitler and most of his confidants. Trevor-Roper manages ...

Question 2: World War II- A Race War

Dower’s assertion was calculative and well informed. It is a true that World War II was pertinently motivated by racial pride and arrogance posed by the main participants particularly the America and Japan. Dower’s work provides a clear description of the effect of ethnicity and racial pride on the war. The scholar explores various situations with the intention of explaining motivate behind the decisions and practices assumed by each side. He presents sentiments that the two countries were equally wrong because they were all motivated by stereotypic assumption of viewing the other as polarized. Dower, feels that ...

An Assignment Submitted by

Synopsis
The book Succeed: How We Can Reach Our Goals written by Heidi Grant Halvorson creates the step by step instructions of how to reach the aims. The work is not the container of simple clichés and well-known instructions, but a specific set of advices of how to reach personal goals. The entire work is following a logical structure of indentifying the goals, preparing to achieve them through the evaluation and investigation, and accrual attainment of the goals. According to the author, it is essential to distinguish between true goals and those imposed by the environment, as the ...

Chapter 1 What Is Evolution?

In Coyne’s Why Evolution Is True (2009), the debate between the theories of creationism and evolution is introduced. The two theories take vastly different approaches to explain how and why the world is full of the many variations of plants, animals, insects, reptiles, and human beings. The theory of creationism explains these things by intelligent design. This is where divine intervention takes place and an almighty, omnipotent god creates all beings, all of a sudden, with all of the variations needed to survive in the environment that they currently live. There is no macroevolution, only slight adaptations of ...

Introduction

“The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11” is a Pulitzer Prize-winning book for general nonfiction by American author Lawrence Wright. The book was published in the year 2006, five years after the disastrous 9/11 attacks of 2001. Amongst all of Wright’s publications, this book has been the most captivating and the quick seller of its time. It provides a historical and a detailed insight into the back ground of the terrorist organization Al-Qaeda, founded by Osama Bin Laden and his companions. What was the background of these people, how they have spent their childhood and more importantly how ...

Nature of Development in China

The mysterious growth of the Chinese economy today have had diverse effects on the social well-being of the country. The economic growth in the country failed to portray equal social development among the citizens. This fantastic but colossal growth of the economy have hence impacted negatively on the social lives of the people in the country. Through globalization, today, cultural crashes and the need to embrace the changes continuously affect the national development in a country (Williams, 2008). In the case of China, a communist country is trying to adapt to the capitalist world to sustain its development. With ...

Introduction

This essay is offers a summary of the book, ‘Seven Keys to Create Leadership and a Sustainable Business Model’ by Howard Rasheed. This book is a resource for managers who wish to improve the performance in order to meet the competitive demands of the market and remain in business. In the current business context, businesses are evolving rapidly and there are new insights coming up every day. It is therefore not a matter of convenience that business managers should be innovative, but rather a matter of urgency and centrality for any business to remain afloat in the current dispensation. The seven keys are summarized, ...

“This is a book about the positive evidence that evolution is a fact. It is not intended as an anti-religious book. I’ve done that, it’s another T-shirt, this is not the place to wear it again,” says Dr. Richard Dawkins in the introduction to his book The Greatest Show on Earth (17). This book is an organized presentation of copious numbers of the examples that support the evolutionary change over time via the process of natural selection. It raises many issues to a reader’s mind, and it helps provide a fuller understanding of the theory of evolution for the reader. ...

Introduction

This report scrutinizes international terrorist threats, events, responses and policies, as well as analyzing the worldwide use of apparatus available to fight terrorism, from international cooperation, international relations, covert action, constructive dedication, economic sanctions, military force, to objective security improvement. A contemporary style in terrorism emerges to be toward self- financed insecurely organized, international association of terrorists. Ever more, fundamental Islamist groups who use religion, or as a excuse, pose a grave threat to United States of America interests and to its friendly establishments. But of great unease as well is the growing political involvement of extremist Islamist gathering in foreign ...

Introduction

In his book “Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq”, Stephen Kinzer examines the various overthrows the government of the United States has undertaken since 1893. According to Kinzer, the invasion of Iraq was not an isolated case. It was just a continuation of the list of very countries America has invaded and aided its overthrow. Kinzer examined 14 overthrows that the U.S government has been involved in the last 110 years (Kinzer 8). According to him, the intension of most of the overthrows are not what the government tells the public, both the American citizens ...

1. Why does Quail want to go to Mars?
The unknown world of another planet attracted him very much. Douglass was obsessed with the idea of trudging among its valleys again because he had already visited the planet as a secret Interplan agent.
2. Why does Quali’s wife always try to discourage his interest in Mars?
Douglas himself stated that it was a wife’s job to bring him down to Earth. In fact, Kirsten knew about his previous trip to Mars.
3. How does REKAL, INC. provide trips to Mars?
They incorporate extra-factual memory implant and provide ...

“Thinking, fast and slow” by Daniel Kahneman was among the best-selling books of the year 2011. Kahneman is Nobel Memorial Prize winner in Economics for his work in prospect theory in 2002. He and his collaborator, Amos Tversky, one of the cognitive as well as mathematical psychologist from Israel, have revolutionized the way we think about economy in the book. This book has achieved numerous honors and awards such as New York Times’ one of the best books of 2011 and Best Book Award from National Academy of Sciences in 2012.

Kahneman has humbly yet brilliantly and non-technically ...

Introduction

This is a comprehensive analysis that compares insurgencies and terrorists movements of post Second World War II and in our times. O’Neill begins this book by looking at post world war II insurgencies that have emerged which are related to terrorism and guerilla wars. He analyzes the nature of insurgency, tactics used in these guerilla wars both military and political “these so called small wars, which can be found on all continents, are often very costly and frequently involve major interest of regional and global powers,”¹, and makes us understand both physical and human environment of ...

An investigation that later was written as a book, Hugh Trevor-Roper’s, “The Last Days of Hitler”, is an account of the last days of the Third Reich, the ever increasing dissolution of the Nazi’s during the last stages of WWII, the chaos in the administration, the animosities, rivalries and suspicions among the Nazi officials and of course about Hitler's last days and suicide. In effect, Trevor-Roper paints a vivid, riveting and honest portrait of Hitler in his final days and gives a genuine analysis of the Nazi regime. Many of Trevor-Roper’s findings in the book has ...

Claude Steele’s book, “Whistling Vivaldi: How Stereotypes Affect Us and What We Can Do,” tackles many hardhitting issues that face educators and students today . One issue Steele focuses on prominently is the question of why black students are not graduating college at a different rate, or rather, more slowly, than their white peers, as well as other ways race impacts education. With every issue Steel addresses, he makes sure to assess how educators can examine and fix the problem before it becomes bigger, or jeapordizes any more futures.
As a social psychologist, Steel is in a unique position ...

Based on the nature of countryside people, the story is set to clearly distinguish them from the urban people who are modernized and composed. Connor inputs various characters, Hulga serving as the main character to emphasize on the four sections that the author divides the story into and to show the role of the four central characters. He focuses his main theme on intellectual of country people who end up suffering the same fate no matter the degree of intellect. Basically, the story implies that people are not what they really think they are nor are they what they ...

In all his work Steven Pressfield has depicted his mastery in storytelling and his mysterious ability to bring out his story in a technique that is guides one into the theme of that story. Based on his writing, he is at his best when dealing with classical warfare and his historical research is completely built on all his works. Among his work is “The Virtues of War”. (Pressfield, Steven, 9) In this book he brings out a fascinating olden background, opens Alexander and all the Greeks. His major aim is to show out man’s greatest successes in the conquest.
...

Book review

Abstract
The rise of the use of information systems has been an issue of concern and has attracted much attention by many business entities. The development of competitive advantage has been enhanced and developed with the use of information systems. Many organizations have adopted the use of information systems and enhanced the undertaking of business processes. In this paper, a review of information systems in the business context will be looked and assessed. The paper will focus on the content that the authors have focused and done research about. It will help to bring the issues that are of ...

What special insights did I gain from the readings?

Workplace stress is inevitable but can be managed. From Reuter and Schwarzer’s article, I learned that a manager who succeeds in dealing with stress becomes an inspiration to his subordinates. Baltes and Clark taught me that the domestic scene is a fecund source of workplace stress. Both the individual and the organization must devise strategies to attain a healthy work-life balance. Understanding and applying emotional intelligence is imperative to create a workplace that can mitigate the negative impacts of stress. In essence, effective managers and employees should understand how workplace stress and burnout can be overcome.

Personal reflections

I have often wondered why even ...

Narrative Review

Since I joined school, I have never liked reading books. First, I was slow at reading and books did not interest me. There Are No Children Here is an awesome book to read. The book is easy to read, and its ideas are presented in an easy to understand the matter. Reading about these two boys in a novel and their family was an awesome experience for me. The hardships the family went through are unbelievable. It is inspiring reflecting on how they faced being in poverty /being on welfare, dealing with all their family issues and being black in ...

- Book introduction
The book by Irwin (2009) Derailed: Five Lessons Learned from Catastrophic Failures of Leadership is wonderful leadership and management guidebook. It answers the paradox question that every leader in the 21st century is seeking an answer to, how to avoid a downfall after ushering a company into unimaginable heights of success. Though this question is hard and tricky to answer, Irwin used history of outstanding CEOs that have over the years fallen prey into the sucking abyss of derailment. As a result, their actions cost them a position in a company that in most cases were the founders. Not only ...

Political risks is the possibility of change in a country’s political environment or government policy that would adversely affect a firm’s ability to operate profitability and effectively. Political risks can prevent a firm from investing abroad. This means that uncertainty drawn from political instability will not attract foreign investment. Political instability can be in various forms as discussed below. These are reports recorded by Business Environment Risk Intelligence (BERI), The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) and PRS Group.
War in a nation causes tension that makes investors fearful to invest in such a country due to the risk of losing or destruction ...

In his compelling book “31 Days: The Crisis That Gave Us the Government We Have Today,” Barry Werth sheds new light on the four weeks after President Richard M. Nixon resigned and departed from the White House in 1974, and the ongoing effects of that period. After Nixon’s departure when Gerald Ford reluctantly assumed presidency, the country was reeling from Watergate scandal. President Ford desperately needed to prove himself by stabilizing the nation, deciding whether his disgraced predecessor would be pardoned, and establishing his own administration. All in all, Werth’s book highlights the burden of the demanding ...

The book follows Dr. Victor Frankenstein, a reclusive mad scientist, who seeks to create new life by sewing together the limbs and remains of several other dead bodies and reanimate them. Victor's childhood was geared very closely toward the pursuit of science, while he befriended his adopted sister Elizabeth and studied science with his father. After attending university, he decides to finally reanimate a dead body with life, assembling a rough body consisting of mismatched parts of ugly organs and limbs, bringing it to life. However, Victor thinks his work ugly, and escapes the room where he reanimated him, leaving the monster ...

Book Review: The Leadership Challenge by Barry Z. Posner and James M. Kouzes

First written in 1987 by two authors considered to be experts in the field of leadership, The Leadership Challenge has gone to become one the most trusted voices on the subject of leadership as well as an all time best seller leadership book. One of the reasons for this is that the authors, Barry Z. Posner and James M. Kouzes, in the true spirit of leadership, have churned out regular revisions to their original work, continuously adding to and improving upon content based on the ongoing changes in the corporate environment. The classic’s fourth edition has been released ...

Patrick Murphy’s leadership style focused greatly on accountability; he wanted to make sure people were held responsible for their actions and those under them. (p. 33). When Murphy took over the police force, he “considered himself a reform agent,” deciding he needed to clean house to get rid of the ghosts that were rampant in Leary’s tenure as commissioner. Believing that there was too much splintering and division within the department, he sought to bring everyone back together and eliminate this sort of waste.

Murphy also took special effort to curb corruption any way he could; he opted ...