Mining Group Gold: How to Cash in on the Collaborative Brain Power of a Group

By Mary E. John

Book Overview

Dorothy West is best known as one of the youngest writers involved in the Harlem Renaissance. Subsequently, her work is read as a product of the urban aesthetics of this artistic movement. But West was also intimately rooted in a very different milieu--Oak Bluffs, an exclusive retreat for African Americans on Martha's Vineyard. She played an integral role in the development and preservation of that community. In the years between publishing her two novels, 1948's The Living is Easy and the 1995 bestseller The Wedding , she worked as a columnist for the Vineyard Gazette . Dorothy West's Paradise captures the scope of the author's long life and career, reading it alongside the unique cultural geography of Oak Bluffs and its history as an elite African American enclave--a place that West envisioned both as a separatist refuge and as a space for interracial contact. An essential book for both fans of West's fiction and students of race, class, and American women's lives, Dorothy West's Paradise offers an intimate biography of an important author and a privileged glimpse into the society that shaped her work. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0520201361
• ISBN13: 9780520201361
• Release Date: July 1996
• Publisher: University of California Press
• Length: 204 Pages
• Weight: 0.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.3" x 0.5" x 6.3"

Customer Reviews

Mining Group Gold

I read Tom Kayser's book in the early 1990's when it was originally written for Xerox. The new edition is a fine adaptation. The book has been immensely helpful to me as a facilitator. It gives great instructions to a new and experienced group leader.Mr. Kayser understands group dynamics. By reading and more importantly, following his "recipes", you will find that meetings are both more efficient and effective.

Treasure Trove of Productivity

One of the most valuable lessons I learned in my brief time as a researcher at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center was that meetings need not be unending wastes of times. When I first noticed this and asked how it was possible that so much always seemed to get done, no mater who was involved, I was given a copy of the Tom Kayser book "Mining Group Gold".What a wonderful and unexpected surprise reading it was! Although...

Tap the Mother Lode of Collaborative Cranial Creativity

Thomas A. Kayser has set forth a systematic means for gaining the maximum benefit from meetings.Starting with John Kenneth Gailbraith's infamous attribilious amphigory: "Meetings are vital to those who want to make sure nothing happens" Kayser leads the reader through the labyrinth of traditional meeting quagmires and enables everyone to profit from combining their brain power optimally.In practical, no-nonsense terms,...

most important book about making teams effective available

I have used what I learned by reading Mining Group Gold in a wide variety of consulting and operational settings over the past three years: with multi-functional teams in a medium sized data communications high technology company and a start-up software development company, with the board of directors of a subsidized housing agency, with teachers and administrators at a primary school, with groups of principals responsible...

Outstanding reference for making meetings more productive.

The entire book is an outstanding reference for improving meetings. Just the agenda portion has helped our company improve the quality of meetings 100%. From planning through execution, Mining Group Gold gives you all of the steps necessary to hold productive, meaningful meetings. A must read for any organization that is implementing Continuous Process Improvement!