Category «Book Reviews»

Book Review – Watchdogs: Inspectors General and the Battle for Honest and Accountable Government

The 2024 election results have prompted discussion about the effectiveness of “guardrails” that might restrain Presidential activities that could harm the nation. Jerry Lawson’s review notes that Glenn Fine’s new book, Watchdogs: Inspectors General and the Battle of Honest and Accountable Government is a timely and welcome contribution to the national debate. Fine has had considerable experience with Offices of Inspectors General (OIGs), one of the key institutions that serve as limits to corrupt or overreaching Executive Branch actions.

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Subjects: Book Reviews, Government Resources, Legal Research, United States Law

Publishing for Profit: Selecting the Best Publisher

Jerry Lawson offers his expert advise on how lawyers (and other ambitious people) can profit by publishing. One method is to begin by focusing on your desired result. What are the best publishers for you and your work product? Lawson offers a couple of ways to identify the potential publishers likely to provide the most benefit.

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Subjects: AI, Book Reviews, Communication Skills, KM, Search Engines, Social Media

After the Ivory Tower Falls: A Book Review

Among the main strengths of this important, highly readable book, says David H. Rothman, is its history of how we got into the mess in the first place. We blew our chance by not making higher education more of a tax-supported public good with academic values prevailing over commercial ones. The GI Bill and other measures helped, but what if the aid had been even more extensive with far less reliance on the marketplace? Even elite Ivy schools got caught up in the mania—wildly overpaying administrators and indulging in ever-more-expensive dorms and gyms and other luxuries to compete for the students from well-off families most likely to donate. So much for the poor and middle class, even with scholarships. The result was that America squandered brainpower.

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Subjects: Book Reviews, Economy, Education, Financial System, KM

Book Review: A Short And Happy Guide To Advanced Legal Research

Nicole L. Black’s review highlights this book’s breadth of coverage and its format, information about a variety of free online tools, including public records databases, newsletters, and encyclopedias, and case law and statutes, fee-based legal research tools, as well as traditional case law and statutory research tools, and cutting edge AI-based legal research and data analytics software.

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Subjects: AI, Book Reviews, Legal Research, LEXIS, Online Legal Research Services, Reference Resources, Westlaw

Book Review of “Frenemies: The Epic Disruption of the Ad Business (and Everything Else)”

Advertising is now part of a complex ecosystem that engages a wide range of components, including but not limited to: social media, Big Data, AI, data mining, competitive intelligence, and marketing. Alan Rothman reveals and explains for readers just how utterly different and hyper-competitive advertising now is, with work product largely splayed across countless mobile and stationary screens on Planet Earth. Rothman describes how expertly chronicling and precisely assaying the transformative changes happening to this sector is an informative and engaging new book, Frenemies: The Epic Disruption of the Ad Business (and Everything Else), by the renowned business author Ken Auletta. Just as a leading ad agency in its day cleverly and convincingly took TV viewers on an endearing cultural tour of the U.S .as we followed the many ad-ventures of Bartles & Jaymes, so too, this book takes its readers on a far-ranging and immersive tour of the current participants, trends, challenges and technologies affecting the ad industry. Auletta’s book is not only timely and insightful, but demonstrably valuable for the professionals in the legal sector who are striving to effectively engage, employ and measure the value of marketing to clients and potential clients in a rapidly changing environment increasingly dependent upon using big data and analytical platforms.

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Subjects: AI, Big Data, Blockchain, Book Reviews, Communication Skills, Communications, Competitive Intelligence, Law Firm Marketing, Privacy, Social Media

Book Review of Inventology: How We Dream Up Things That Change the World

Alan Rothman’s article presents an engaging and enlightening perspective on the elements of serendipity and prodigious talent engaged in the world of inventors and their inventions, as well providing readers with an excellent book review. This new book about inventology spans many decades and is interwoven with historical events that provided impetus to some of the inventors.

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Subjects: Book Reviews

Book Review of The Song Machine: Inside the Hit Factory

Alan Rothman writes that for interested readers who either did or did not come of age at some point during the past two decades, this highly engaging account of the extraordinary changes throughout the music industry will provide them with a compelling narrative, cultural history, and business case study. This book further excels as an insightful guide through the music industry’s production processes of writing, recording, marketing, distributing and performing today’s chart-topping tunes.

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Subjects: Book Reviews

Book review: Bexar BiblioTech: The Evolution of the Countrys First All-digital Public Library

David Rothman describes why the BiblioTech library in Bexar County, Texas is a landmark achievement worthy of implementation and iteration in towns and cities throughout the US. His article describes the success of this variation on a library system detailed in a new book authored by Nelson Wolff, the visionary behind the country’s first all-digital public library system. Wolff is the judge of Bexar County, which includes the city of San Antonio. The title is roughly equivalent to the head of a county board. Judge Wolff and his wife, Tracy, are donors and fund-raisers for BiblioTech and other civic causes, and his book is a how-to pathfinder to “bridge the literacy and technology gaps.”

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Subjects: Book Reviews, Digital Archives, E-Books, Libraries & Librarians, Library Marketing, Library Software & Technology
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