Jane Campion's The Piano (Cambridge Film Handbooks)

Book Description

Jane Campion's The Piano is one of the most unusual love stories in the history of cinema. This volume examines the film from a variety of critical perspectives. In six essays, specially commissioned for this project, an international team of scholars examine topics such as the controversial representation of the Maori, the use of music in the film, the portrayal of the mother-daughter relationship, and the significance of the film in terms of international cinema, the culture of New Zealand, and the work of Jane Campion.

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simple and succinct...but watch the movie
A lot for a little
Ada`s way to talk
Love is beautiful and can be cruel
Powerfull and Emotional

The Piano: Screenplay
Jane Campion
Manufacturer: Miramax
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1562827030

Customer Reviews:

simple and succinct...but watch the movie.......2005-11-12

i'm still undecided on whether or not i enjoyed the novel, doubtless the film is better than the book (something i don't say very often!) Many are familiar with the plot of the silent Ada and her daughter who arrive in New Zealand taking with them the enigmatic and magnetic piano. Her husband ends up swapping the piano for a plot of land and Ada is forced into giving its new owner (George) piano lessons. However he is content to just let her play...if he can do whatever he wants to her and perhaps she just might get back her piano.
It is an astounding, heart wrenching concept that Campion devours, bringing in a deeper emotional intensity as we finally delve into George's past, why Ada is strangely silent and her husband's incurable loneliness. It is a profound glimpse into the awakening of one Victorian woman's sexual awakening.
BUT...I have a few problems with it, firstly it is too succinct, sometimes a few descriptions and dalliances along the way are a welcome distraction to the sometimes oppressing thoughts that Campion evokes. Secondly it is frustrating that the all encompassing piano is mute throughout the novel, well in the sense that one only hears it through the mind's ear...which is why i woul recommend the movie, as you also get a chance to listen to Nyman's haunting melodies.
but the book, a good foundation if you plan to watch the movie.

A lot for a little.......2005-02-01

The book is terrific-beautifully written-great plot and thoroughly enjoyable. Condition of book was excellent and delivery was quick and easy.

Ada`s way to talk.......2003-01-07

After I saw the video "The Piano" I wanted read the book. I was very fascinated by the story about Ada's life, or rather her way she started her new life. And the whole life without a word. In the video the features of the people are very important and I wondered how it would be in the book. The language is very poetic! The description of the characters and the surrounding is very exact. You think you can feel her feelings and see what she sees.

Love is beautiful and can be cruel.......2000-05-06

The piano is such a beautiful, artistic story of the woman whose will is so strong. Love is warm and kind, but at the same time, it is so destructive. Love is like the ocean that we draw from and jump into. This is a perfect novel for women who know the warmth of love; its hope, its faith, and how cruel it can be. I strongly recommed it!

Powerfull and Emotional.......1999-02-21

The Film and Novel are both very good. For those people who loved and lost someone, this story will most definitely be experienced as powerful and very emotional. The story of a bittered woman who has more or less given up on life. In time she finds a new meaning to her life. Finally letting go of the past, temp faith and start a new future. This is definitely one of the best stories I have read and seen !

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Jane Campion:
Dana Polan
Manufacturer: British Film Institute
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0851708560

Book Description

With the phenomenal success of The Piano (1993), Jane Campion became revered by many as the leading female film director of the 90s. Along with her earlier films, including Sweetie (1989 ) and An Angel at My Table (1990), The Piano inspired intense responses from audiences (often split along gender lines). As a film-maker, Campion suggests new possibilities for a cinema of fervent emotionalism and the representation of feminine fantasy and desire on screen.
In this first full-length study of Jane Campion, Dana Polan examines the phenomenon of The Piano and how it developed from the early shorts and first features that evoke an often surreal and critically-distanced style of looking at everyday issues. Considering all of Campion's work up toHoly Smoke (1999), which returned again to the battleground of gender politics, Polan concludes his survey of the Director's work by offering some hypotheses about her upcoming erotic thriller In the Cut (2001) while asking what variety of approaches to the study of directors might be fruitful at the present time.
This is one of the first of a new BFI series, World Directors, which will explore the diversity and complexity of international cinema through studies of important and challenging filmmakers from across the globe.

Jane Campion: Interviews (Interviews With Filmmakers Series)

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Jane Campion: Interviews (Interviews With Filmmakers Series)
Jane Campion
Manufacturer: University Press of Mississippi
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1578060834

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Das Piano. Roman.
Jane Campion , and Kate Pullinger
Manufacturer: Piper
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 349222606X

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El Piano
Jane Campion , and Kate Pullinger
Manufacturer: Extra Alfaguara
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Product Description

"Tras una larga travesía hasta el fin del mundo, Ada McGrath, que lleva sin hablar desde un extrano episodio de su infancia, desembarca con su hija y su piano en una play agreste de Nueva Zelanda. Viene de Escocia, rigurosa y victoriana. Va a instalarse en un país salvaje y duro, donde todas las pasiones y todos los excesos son posibles. Lo primero que hace el hombre con quien se ha casado po poderes, a miles de kilometros de distance, as arrebatarle su piano, su música, su fuente más intensa de comunicación, y cambiarlo por un trozo de tierra que otro colono le entrega. Parte del acuerdo consiste en que Ada esene a tocar el piano a su nuevo dueno..." [excerpt from back cover's abstract.]

EXITO. Spanische Handelskorrespondenz. (Lernmaterialien)

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EXITO. Spanische Handelskorrespondenz. (Lernmaterialien)
Jane Campion , and Kate Pullinger
Manufacturer: Kieser
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 3824213311

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I only hope the movie was better
Really dreadful. Just avoid it.
"You're never going to break me"
Confusing as to where it's going
Strong Female Characterization

Holy Smoke
Anna Campion , and Jane Campion
Manufacturer: Miramax Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0786863498

Customer Reviews:

I only hope the movie was better.......2003-07-31

I haven't seen the movie of this book, and to be honest, i am not very inspired to now.

The story is about a girl tricked into returning to her family in Australia, as she was in an Ashram in India where she was to marry her guru. She is taken into the bush to be 'deprogrammed' by an expert brought in from America to do the deed.

Meant to be an exploration about feelings, relationships and power, this story comes out as mainly tosh, swapping from the first person perspective of PJ (the deprogrammer) to Ruth (the deprogrammee). It isn't helped by being full of caricatures insted of characters. This book was a big let down, and i would suggest trying something else instead.

Really dreadful. Just avoid it........2003-04-02

This book is really quite dreadful in that it's quite confusing, seems to have little plot. It reads like the person who wrote it was a little off in the head, more like reading broken personal thoughts than a cohesive novel. Dissapointing because it seems like much could have been done with it if it didn't just seem to lose contact with reality.

"You're never going to break me".......2002-07-15

I actually read the book before I saw the film. I love this story.What I love most is that P.J. and Ruth really did fall in love under some very strange ,unusual,one in a million circumstances.Its not the marriage kind of love but love none the less.

Confusing as to where it's going.......2001-09-20

Holy Smoke is a confusing effort by the Campion sisters. The novel starts out as an interesting exploration of the relationship between a cult deprogrammer and is unwilling to be swayed client and ends as a wierd obsessive love story.

The client is 20ish Ruth Baron an Australian girl who has fallen under the influence of an Indian guru. The deprogrammer is a slick older American named PJ Waters. The method of therapy is a three day talk session at a remote Outback farmhouse when all beliefs are questioned.

The first 150 pages or so lay out a solid framework exploring the mind sets of both participants fairly well. The last 80 pages or so allow this framework to crumble. What started out so strongly turns into a sexual power game between the two characters which leaves both fragile and damaged.

On the whole this is not great literature but a fairly straight forward story that almost reads like a screenplay for the movie that was released at roughly the same time as its publication. The supporting characters are an interesting lot with the Baron extended family more in need of therapy than the daughter.

This one may be worth a read on a weekend with no big plans but I wouldn't go out of my way to read it.

Strong Female Characterization.......2001-07-23

While Ruth is young and lacking in a formal education, she is not unintelligent, and I like the way she figures things out with and without the help of the male expert. Ruth is a strong female character, especially in the erotic scenes in which she initiates sex and sees to her own pleasure (on page 173, for example). HOLY SMOKE is worth reading for the erotic scenes alone.

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Holy Smoke
Jane; Campion, Anna Campion
Manufacturer: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0747547629

Jane Campion (Contemporary Film Directors)

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Jane Campion (Contemporary Film Directors)
Kathleen McHugh
Manufacturer: University of Illinois Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0252074475

Book Description

The subversive style of the woman who has become one of the world's greatest film directors

From Jane Campion's early award-winning short films on through international sensation The Piano and beyond, Kathleen McHugh traces the director's distinctive visual style as well as her commitment to consistently renovating the conventions of "women's films." By refusing to position her female protagonists as victims, McHugh argues, Campion scrupulously avoids the moral structures of melodrama, and though she often works with the narratives, mise-en-scène, and visual tropes typical of that genre, her films instead invite a distanced or even amused engagement.

A volume in the series Contemporary Film Directors, edited by James R. Naremore

Book Description

In Extended Play, one of the country's most innovative music writers conducts a wide-ranging tour through the outer limits of contemporary music. Over the course of more than twenty-five portraits, interviews, and essays, John Corbett engages artists from lands as distant as Sweden, Siberia, and Saturn. With a special emphasis on African American and European improvisers, the book explores the famous and the little known, from John Cage and George Clinton to Anthony Braxton and Sun Ra. Employing approaches as diverse as the music he celebrates, Corbett illuminates the sound and theory of funk and rap, blues and jazz, contemporary classical, free improvisation, rock, and reggae.
Using cultural critique and textual theory, Corbett addresses a broad spectrum of issues, such as the status of recorded music in postmodern culture, the politics of self-censorship, experimentation, and alternativism in the music industry, and the use of metaphors of space and madness in the work of African American musicians. He follows these more theoretically oriented essays with a series of extensive profiles and in-depth interviews that offer contrasting and complementary perspectives on some of the world’s most creative musicians and their work. Included here are more than twenty original photographs as well as a meticulously annotated discography. The result is one of the most thoughtful, and most entertaining, investigations of contemporary music available today.

Customer Reviews:

imaginative scintillations.......2001-07-12

"The sententious critic puts me to sleep. I would prefer a critic of imaginative scintillations. He would not be sovereign, nor dressed in red. He would bear the lightning flashes of possible storms." --Michel Foucault

Corbett seems to operate according to Foucault's injunction, and bears quite a few lightning flashes, due to his playful imagination and the imagination of the cutting edge artists he covers. "Extended Play" puts Cage and Clinton in the title, but actually focuses on free jazz/improvisation, not composition or funk. Corbett presents marvelous interviews with European free improvisers, including saxophonists Evan Parker and Peter Brotzmann, guitarist Derek Bailey, and drummer Han Bennink, as well as Americans Sun Ra (composer and bandleader),and Anthony Braxton (composer and reed player). He profiles fellow Chicagoans Hal Russell, Fred Anderson, Von Freeman, and Edward Wilkerson Jr. (the latter three all tenor players), English bassist and bandleader Barry Guy, and Sainkho Namtchylak, the only female Siberian Tuva singer in the ranks of European free improv. He does interview John Cage, which I found uninteresting, and George Clinton, which is tremendous.

Whether despite or because of his poststructuralist leanings (I'm with Evan Parker, who, according to Corbett, "...knows I'm a Continental-philosophy kinda guy, which is something he's certain that he isn't."), Corbett takes a stance clearly on the side of "optimism concerning the possibility of resistance," resistance in the realm of popular music against the capitalist status quo.

Presently overseeing the Unheard Music series for Atavistic Records in Chicago -- free jazz/improv tapes buried in the vaults until now -- John Corbett is doing his part to keep ALL the signifiers free!

Ushering in a new era of popular culture criticism?.......1998-01-10

Like Greil Marcus and Robert Palmer, Corbett looks at (popular?) culture as both a product of and a determinant of culture at large. As a postmodernist, he delves into genres that are largely devoid of quality criticism as few are up to the task. Actually he's probably more of a Nat Hantoff or Frank Kofsky of our time in that he's quick to support what may commonly be refered to as music that tries its listeners patience and willingness to explore. I used this book as a reference for my thesis and have recommended it to several people.

Book Description

Everything needed to plan Christmas party games, crafts and favors, and edible goodies and drinks to guarantee a memorable holiday is included in this idea-packed book. Choose activities from six different party themes and learn to build an edible snowman, shave Santa's beard, make a human Christmas tree, and drink from a snowball. Also included are fun party ideas for New Year's Eve and creative ideas for learning about Christmas traditions around the world.

Customer Reviews:

Great book.......2006-01-18

I bought this book hoping that it would have some fresh ideas for my kids' class parties instead of the same old games and crafts we've been doing it seems year after year. I was worried that even if it had new ideas they might be too invovled/time-consuming for the hour and a half we typically have for the whole party. I was pleasantly surprised that this book had so many ideas to choose from that were original and fit into our limited time frame. I highly recommend this book.

Wonderful Book for Anyone Planning A Christmas Party.......2004-09-16

So you're planning a Christmas party, one where there will be fun and games, and lots and lots of kids. But where do you start? Well, first of all, purchase CHRISTMAS PARTIES...WHAT DO I DO? Wilhelminia Ripple has created the perfect book for anyone planning a Christmas party. Filled with over 125 wonderful ideas for crafts, games, and holiday snacks. Wilhelminia teaches you everything you need to know to throw the most fantastic Christmas party of the season, complete with instructions on how to create Elf Handprints, how to build an Edible Snowman, make a Human Christmas Tree, and much, much more. Whether you've thrown Christmas parties before or not, CHRISTMAS PARTIES...WHAT DO I DO? is the one thing you'll need to make your Christmas party better than anyone else's. A wonderful book that absolutely must be a part of your book collection.

Erika Sorocco
Book Review Columnist for The Community Bugle Newspaper

Christmas Parties What Do I Do? Buy This Book!!.......2003-10-21

This book has Christmas Spirit on every page, with holiday games,crafts, and goodies from all around the world. It really brings out the child inside us all. With an added bonus of 13 pages for New Years Eve. I am a Parent and Day Care Provider, to me this book is as much a part of Christmas as the Tree.

Christmas Parties...What Do I Do?.......2003-04-29

A sparklingl book and many ideas to use for Chritams affairs. The games and crafts are tremendous. This book is great for anyone hosting a Christams Event for any ages. The chapter of The What, Why and How of Christmas Parties is a great beginning for any type of party and gives you a starting point. Suggestion: Purchase a complete set.

A user-friendly instructional reference.......2001-01-12

For anyone wanting to recapture the nostalgia and "family friendliness" of the Christmas season, Wilhelminia Ripple's Christmas Parties: What Do I Do? is a terrific place to start! This attractively presented compendium offers more than 125 creative ideas for games, crafts, and holiday snacks that will make every Christmas gathering fun and memorable. The themes offered for consideration including Christmas Trees, Stockings, and Candy Canes; Snow, Snowmen, and Snowflakes; Santa Claus and His Elves; Rudolph and His Reindeer; I Believe in Angels; and Christmas Here, There, and Everywhere. 36 easy craft projects are clearly laid out with step-by-step illustrations. Christmas Parties is enhanced with 40 simple and delicious recipes for Holiday treats and drinks; 36 "Santa-Approved" games; and more. There's even suggestions for celebrating the end of the Christmas season with "New Year's Tips and Fun Party Ideas" from here at home and around the world. Christmas Parties is a thoroughly "user friendly" instructional reference that will be appreciated by one and all, year after year, Christmas after Christmas.

Book Description

The U.S. health care system is in crisis. At stake are the quality of care for millions of Americans and the financial well-being of individuals and employers squeezed by skyrocketing costs--not to mention the stability of state and federal government budgets.

In Redefining Health Care, internationally renowned strategy expert Michael E. Porter and innovation expert Elizabeth Olmsted Teisberg reveal the underlying and largely overlooked causes of the problem and provide a powerful prescription for change. The authors argue that participants in the health care system have competed to shift costs, accumulate bargaining power, and restrict services rather than create value for patients. This zero-sum competition takes place at the wrong level--among health plans, networks, and hospitals--rather than where it matters most: in the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of specific health conditions.

In spite of competition among these systems, the patient care cycle is poorly coordinated. The fractured system undermines both efficiency and quality of outcomes.

Redefining Health Care lays out a breakthrough framework for redefining health care competition based on patient value over the full cycle of care—from prevention and diagnosis through recovery or long-term disease management. With specific recommendations for hospitals, doctors, health plans, employers, and policy makers, this book shows how to move to value-based competition on results that will unleash stunning improvements in quality and efficiency.

Customer Reviews:

Excellent analysis with some weak points.......2007-09-01

This book has received probably disproportionate attention due to Prof. Porter's notoriety as a strategic thinking theorist. There are better overall books on healthcare policy available. In particular I recommend the Bodenheimer/Grumbach books, one on healthcare policy and one on primary care, Dr. Arnold Relman's book, A Second Opinion, Strained Mercy, an outstanding and thorough analysis of healthcare economics with particular regard to Canada's healthcare system, among others.

I find the analysis of the USA healthcare system by Profs. Porter and Teisberg to generally be excellent, although I find it wanting in regard to their disparagement of a single-payer/single-insurer system and to their description and analysis of healthcare systems outside the USA. From my perspective private health plans play only a net negative role in the system. The authors' analysis of how the health insurance market works is quite good. However their recommendation that a system of private insurers should persist is refuted by their own analysis! A single payer/insurer system will not cure the problems of the US system, as they clearly point out, but it does remove the inherently dysfunctional characteristics of private insurance, not least of which is its failure to meet the needs of the uninsured - a very large number - and its inherent propensity to exclude the very people who need coverage and care. The authors rightly point out that mandatory health insurance along with risk-pooling among insurers to spread the costs of those insured individuals who generate the highest costs is a "solution" to the current non-functioning system, but the same result, at lower cost and with much greater simplicity, can be achieved through a single payer/insurer.

The other key aspect of healthcare - how it is delivered - is ultimately more important than the financing/insurance side. The authors provide excellent analysis and recommendations in this regard. They correctly address the aspects of the healthcare market that prevent its functioning as a "competitive" market, specifically the abysmal lack of patient information on prices for services, on outcomes of actions by providers, comparative statistics on provider performance and similar. They also provide an interesting report by the Cleveland Clinic on outcomes, i.e. results, of the Clinic's heart surgery activity. They appropriately use this as an example of the kind of reporting that is needed.

The authors' analysis of healthcare systems outside the USA is skimpy and inaccurate in my opinion. The authors underplay the demonstrated efficacy of government-funded systems that outperform the USA system almost across the board in gross measures of outcomes (infant mortality and longevity) and vastly outperform the US system in regard to cost. They gloss over the fact that per capita costs in the USA are 2.5 times! the average of other OECD countries. It is not as though the costs are say 10% above the average with comparable outcomes. They are 150% higher with worse outcomes. Instead of noting this and analyzing it thoroughly, the authors assert that waiting times and rationing of care are significant problems in those countries, assertions which are simply not borne out by a closer examination of the facts. Also the fact that (mostly) single-payer/insurer systems function well universally does not fit the authors' main thesis, so rather than revise the thesis based on this evidence they choose to ignore the evidence.

As a consequence of these limitations I rate the book with 4 stars rather than 5. Too bad, because most of the book is excellent.

Redefining Health Care.......2007-05-23

Book Review
Redefining Health Care by Michael Porter

I am writing this review to help share some excellent ideas on the availability and quality of medical treatment in the United States and on the U.S. economy which is being dragged down by ever-increasing medical costs. The economic impact is not just on corporate profits and stock prices but also on U.S. employment because everything that raises costs makes it harder for U.S. manufacturers to compete with foreign suppliers and makes it harder for U.S. manufacturers to sell in foreign markets.
Unfortunately, the book is long, turgid, and full of details, which help to substantiate his conclusions and also provide guidance on implementing improved policies. I am afraid the book does not appeal to executives, politicians, or doctors. It also proposes radical changes in all aspects of the medical system and its financing and operation. Dr. Porter proposes major changes on the part of all parties involved in delivering and paying for health care.
The book begins with a review of health indexes and health care throughout the world and shows, while the U.S. has the greatest expenditures by any set of measurements, it does not have the best results.
Then, Dr. Porter introduces his most important concept: that any medical treatment should be measured by its results; how much lost time and discomfort did the patient have, is he or she completely cured, or how much disability measured over the entire span of the illness or even the life of the patient. We tend to think of an operation as being successful if the patient left the hospital in good condition. But how much additional recovery time, disability, or reoccurrence was there? If the patient doesn't come back to see him, a doctor doesn't know whether he was cured by the treatment or if the patient was so dissatisfied he went to another doctor or simply gave up on a series of treatments. The goal is to develop a scoring system for each group of illnesses that can be compared with the cost of each individual's treatment and their results to determine what is the best set of procedures and the best doctor or group of doctors to do the work can be used to guide providers and treatments. Porter has some reason to believe that the best treatments are generally less costly even though the individual item costs may be more, the greater effectiveness and the less chance of complications reduces overall cost. Included in the overall cost should be lost wages, which is a reasonable proxy for the patient's time.
The goal is to develop a health plan that pays for results not for treatments. In many cases, that would be a single payment to the provider for a whole series of treatments from diagnosis on through operations, post-operative care, and follow ups which could extend over a long period of time. This is a radical change from the present system which pays for treatments and tends to produce more treatments and does not have any effective means for either the insurers, or the employers, or the patients even to compare one treatment option with another. This is an extreme, radical change and would take a long time to implement, but there are pieces of the program in operation. A number of these are explained at length. Health insurance companies could hire these firms for their specialized expertise and would not have to do the work on their own. An example of what is done is how the firm studies the history of heart transplant patients and will give an insurance company a single payment for the entire course of treatment providing it is done in the manner and by people they specify. They would particularly focus on caregivers who have an outstanding record of success. It appears that for most illnesses, there are organizations that are substantially better than others and this program could be extended broadly.
Another area of development would be to have counselors which would be part of the function of the insurer to advise a company's employees with a list of particularly well qualified doctors and suggest treatment elements.
Government would seem to be poorly adapted to facilitating these changes because they are radically different from Medicare. Medicare seems to promote cheap, but not necessarily effective treatments and set arbitrary pay scales which do not allow the better providers to charge more for their services and thus encourage more providers to be in the high performance category. Companies that pay for the insurance are the ones that have to put pressure on the insurers to implement the above changes. This could not be done over a short period of time but would eliminate a lot of the wasted time that is now involved in the payments for each little step of the process and for each treatment step.
Chapter 8 is a detailed discussion of how to implement the aforementioned concepts using modifications of Medicare and other laws. This is too complex to summarize here but it appears doable if Congress and the Executive are sufficiently motivated. It is likely that few people would understand what is happening, but the benefits to cost ratio is sufficiently great that the changes would probably be supported and accepted. On the other hand, the situation is so complex, it is questionable whether lawmakers and administrators would be willing to undertake the many complex tasks required. On the other hand, the downside risk appears quite small.
Porter approaches the whole subject from the points of view of business strategy and the problems of decisions with very imperfect information. While the government frequently acts with very imperfect information, its strategy for doing so is not well developed and poorly applied.

Redefining Health Care: Creating Value-Based Competition on Results

A new look.......2007-05-20

Though a little dry, and at times repetitive, this book offers practical information. In a mess of books describing the massive problems in healthcare today, this book was at once motivating and up-lifting. I bought it for a class, but it is one of the books I'll be keeping instead of passing along at the end of the quarter.

Disappointed but Some Might Find Value.......2007-04-05

I'm a big fan of Porter, but I was somewhat disappointed by this book. Let me be frank. The first problem I have with the book is that the authors try to capture as large of an audience as possible, being careful not to place blame on certain providers within the health care system. That approach might get better reviews and sell more copies, but it is not delivering real value. One cannot escape mention of the realities of corruption and fraud by every player in health care and expect to address the problems.

The second problem I have is that Porter fails to recognize that health care is distinct from any other industry in America because it is highly politically influenced. Much of the health care system is public (government funded). This is a main reason why competition in this industry is highly ineffective. How can you have a pure competitive environment when poor performing providers continue to receive government-funded contracts? How can you have full competition when Washington merely fines providers for fraud with no jail time? How can you have competition that creates value when Washington places the burden of increasing costs upon taxpayers, letting the industry charge what it needs to deliver earnings that Wall Street expects?

Overall, by failing to address the harsh realities of politics and big money within America's health care industry, Porter's book is too idealistic and therefore falls short of offering a real solution. Regardless, it is a quality book and at least does what no other has in trying to approach the problems from a reasonable standpoint. I expected more from him, but clearly this book is a view from academia and is far detached from many realities of big industry in America. There are many good points in the book, but without addressing the main problems of a system whereby lobbyist groups who control health care policy, very little will change.

Redefining Health Care.......2007-01-09

Overall the book is a very good essay on how our healthcare system needs to evolve. From my vantage point, many of the points are relevant. It is a relatively lenghty book, being 400 pages, but the book does have a good, logical flow. It is worth reading to better understand our current healthcare system and ways to improve it.

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