Managing Construction Equipment
Author: SW Nunnally
This book guides readers in planning, estimating, and directing construction equipment operations toward achieving the best possible result.
Every effort is made to present such advanced management techniques as quantitative management methods, queuing theory, and system simulation in a way that can be easily understood and used by those with little background in higher mathematics or operations research. Coverage features new chapters on compressed air and water systems, lifting equipment, and the production of aggregate, concrete, and asphalt mixes as well as expanded discussions of more traditional topics, including compaction equipment and techniques, construction safety and environmental health, loaders, pavement repair and rehabilitation, quantitative management methods, the rent-lease-buy decision, rock excavation production and cost, roller compacted concrete, the simulation of construction equipment operations, soil stabilization, and trenchers and trenchless technology.
For construction and construction equipment managers and engineers.
Booknews
Guides construction and construction equipment managers in planning, estimating, and directing equipment operations in a manner that will attain the best possible result. Based on Nunnally's many years of experience in construction, engineering, and education, the book presents such advanced techniques as quantitative management methods, queueing theory, and system simulation in a form that can be understood by those without a background in higher mathematics or operations research. In addition, it incorporates material that reflects current developments in the industry such as compressed air and water systems, lifting equipment, and the production of aggregate, concrete, and asphalt mixes. Includes many b&w photographs and illustrations. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
New interesting textbook: International Business Law and Its Environment or The OLeary Series
Sold to the Highest Bidder: The Presidency from Dwight D. Eisenhower to George W. Bush
Author: Daniel M M Friedenberg
The growing disparity between rich and poor, the corrupting influence of money on politics, and the rise of mass media run by monied corporate interests virtually guarantee that elections - and the policies of the representatives selected by them - will favor the wealthy few over the poor and middle-class majority. Friedenberg offers real solutions to the problems facing the American election system, including a new focus on improved education for all to narrow the widening gap between rich and poor. He also explains how the vast technological resources unleashed by the computer revolution can be used to create a more equitable American future.
Publishers Weekly
In a no-holds-barred style, Friedenberg (Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Land) decries recent U.S. presidents as manipulators of "legislative capitalism": elected by those special-interest groups that give them the most money and, in turn, appointing to key administrative positions these same friends, often leaders of major industries, like defense contractors or scions of wealthy families, with many of the same names continually circulating in positions of high power. Devoting a chapter to each presidency, Friedenberg keeps a journalistic balance while making his opinions spotlessly clear. For example, while praising LBJ for enacting the 20th century's most progressive civil rights legislation, he also calls him "a discord of vulgar traits, a bawdy loud-mouth, liar, conniver, show-off, as sex obsessed as Jack Kennedy but with less style, and a peddler of federal benefits to others and even more to himself." And while Carter, to Friedenberg, "was no different than other recent presidents and would-be presidents in scratching to the top and paying off friends and patrons," he was also "one of the few twentieth century presidents who did not use the CIA and other government agencies to undermine foreign countries or involve us in foreign adventures." Unfortunately, his writing is uneven and sometimes digressively gossipy (e.g., on a particularly tacky component of Catherine Zeta-Jones's and Michael Douglas's wedding). Friedenberg postpones until near the end his best arguments against plutocracy and for democracy involving campaign finance reform, one six-year presidential term, disbanding the electoral college and providing for all children a better education, which he sees as the key tocontinued economic strength. Illus. (Nov.) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
Formulaic chest-beating, mixed with a bit of useful data, on the injustices attendant in a political machine wedded to wealth. America has no true liberal and conservative parties, former journalist Friedenberg argues, but "rather a froth of candidates put up by private interests," candidates who "circle close to that center set by those defending their economic power." Among them, in his estimation, were the likes of Dwight Eisenhower, whose cabinet comprised millionaires almost exclusively; the "war monger" Lyndon Johnson, who earned a considerable fortune through a string of questionable deals while serving on the Senate Commerce Committee; Jimmy Carter, beholden to Wall Street and, according to AFL-CIO head George Meany, "the most conservative president he'd seen in his lifetime"; and the sitting president, whose personal fortune amounts to more than $20 million and whose administration "will probably be a banal period little remembered in future years, unless of course there is a severe depression." (Strangely, Gerald Ford comes in for kinder treatment than most of his fellow presidents, if only, perhaps, because he earned his millions after leaving the White House.) Such men and their ilk have crafted a political system that is not really democratic, Friedenberg insists, but instead resembles the Venetian Republic, a superpower ruled by a hereditary aristocracy. He scores a few points here and there, in particular when he contrasts the number of congressmen's sons who died in the American Revolution (9) with those who died in Vietnam (0) and when he dissects Ronald Reagan's antifederal tirades in light of the millions he received from the government. Still, Friedenberg's argumentsare too broad to sway readers with any knowledge of US political history, and it hardly helps that he too often falls back on by-the-numbers rhetoric: he insists, for example, that Americans "are puzzled when crooks in high places can go free through payoffs while a young student who smokes a marijuana cigarette may sit in jail for years." Old arguments loudly expressed.
Table of Contents:
| List of Illustrations | 7 | |
| Foreword | 11 | |
| Introduction | 15 | |
| Ch. 1 | Dwight David Eisenhower | 21 |
| Ch. 2 | John Fitzgerald Kennedy | 34 |
| Ch. 3 | Lyndon Baines Johnson | 50 |
| Ch. 4 | Richard Milhous Nixon | 66 |
| Ch. 5 | Gerald Rudolph Ford | 86 |
| Ch. 6 | James Earl Carter, Jr. | 96 |
| Ch. 7 | Ronald Wilson Reagan | 110 |
| Ch. 8 | George Herbert Walker Bush | 138 |
| Ch. 9 | William Jefferson Clinton | 166 |
| Ch. 10 | George Walker Bush | 204 |
| Ch. 11 | Democracy/Plutocracy | 230 |
| Ch. 12 | Campaign Finance and Privilege | 242 |
| Ch. 13 | Political Reforms | 260 |
| The Electoral College | 260 | |
| Term Limits | 268 | |
| Primaries | 271 | |
| U.S. Senate and House Apportionment | 273 | |
| Conclusion | 277 | |
| Appendix | 295 | |
| Notes | 299 | |
| Index | 333 |
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