Out of the Desert: A Personal History

Book Description

Merlin Oscar Tryon was born in Bryce, Arizona on August 21, 1910, the oldest of 12 children in a Mormon family of Arizona pioneers. He graduated from Thatcher Union High School, served a two-year mission in Mississippi, and attended Arizona State University where he received a degree in business administration. While at Arizona State he joined the Arizona National Guard. He taught business subjects at the high school level for two years, when his National Guard unit was activated at the start of World WarII. His saw action under General Patton in North Africa, Sicily and finally in Italy at Anzio Beachhead, where he was severely wounded. During his rehabilitation he decided to pursue a career in the Army. In 1965 he retired at the rank of full Colonel after a distinguished career of 32 years, during which he attended many of the most prestigious Army schools, and served overseas in China, Japan, Germany and Korea. In retirement he owned a hardware store, played golf and enjoyed his grandchildren and great grandchildren. His death on July 29, 1999 was mourned by his many family and friends.

Book Description

" Failure Is Not an Option is a deeply passionate call to arms, combined with the wherewithal to take systematic, continuous, and effective action. A must read for all those interested in reform because it is simultaneously inspiring and practical."
From the Foreword by Michael Fullan, Dean
Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto

"This is a practical, well formatted book that is intellectually solid, emotionally inspiring, and practically accessible."
Andy Hargreaves, Thomas More Brennan Chair in Education
Lynch School of Education, Boston College

"Both inspirational and eminently practical, Failure Is Not an Option can serve as a handbook for both strategic planning and classroom-by-classroom reworking. Any administrator who truly wishes to change his or her school can use this book as a manual from which to design every aspect of the change process."
Robert W. Cole, Educational writer and consultant
Louisville, KY

"This book speaks to the spark of caring, generosity, and greatness in every child and provides caring adults with ideas and tools to unleash this potential. It leaves no part of the child behind, and leaves no adult on the sidelines."
Maurice J. Elias, Professor of Psychology
Rutgers University, New Jersey

The powerful new guide to creating successful and sustainable professional learning communities!

Building on a foundation that identifies courageous school leadership and the professional learning community as the center of effective school reform, this powerful new book by Alan M. Blankstein offers six guiding principles for creating and sustaining high-performing schools:

1. Common mission, vision, values, and goals

2. Systems for prevention and intervention

3. Collaborative teaming for teaching and learning

4. Data driven decision making and continuous improvement

5. Active engagement from family and community

6. Building sustainable leadership capacity

Covering theory into practice, applications that include case studies and vignettes, and techniques for addressing difficult issues, the book also provides valuable dual perspectives on the critical issues: how implementation looks when it’s done right as well as when things go wrong. Failure Is Not an Option is sure to be the state-of-the-art resource that school leaders reach for when, in Michael Fullan’s words, they need "practical applications to perplexing problems."

See Facilitator's Guide to Failure Is Not an Option(TM)

Customer Reviews:

Success is not optional - Buy this book.......2007-09-17

Speaks to you as if the author were sitting down for a chat. Excellent text for a Leadership Class. Quick Read!!!

Failure is not a option.......2007-02-16

same ideals I have read time and time again,. nothing new and it cost to much.

Develops six guiding principles for creating and sustaining high-performing schools.......2004-10-10

Failure Is Not An Option: Six Principles That Guide Student Achievement In High-performing Schools is an impressive introduction to enhancing student performance which directly addresses transforming theory into practice and illustrating diverse applications with case studies and vignettes. Failure Is Not An Option develops six guiding principles for creating and sustaining high-performing schools. Also available in a hardcover edition, Failure Is Not An Option is especially commended to the attention of administrators and faculty responsible for providing primary leadership in developing curriculum and policies for meeting enhanced federal and state standards for individual school and school district criteria under the "no child left behind" education standards for student academic performance levels.

Failure Is Not an Option: Mission Control from Mercury to Apollo 13 and Beyond

Average customer rating:

Inspiring reading for technical leaders of all kinds
a fist hand report of the early NASA years
The best way to learn about spaceflight is through this book
Failure Is Not An Option...
Not a bad book - not a great one either.

Failure Is Not an Option: Mission Control from Mercury to Apollo 13 and Beyond
Gene Kranz
Manufacturer: Simon & Schuster
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0743200799

Amazon.com

In 1957, the Russians launched Sputnik and the ensuing space race. Three years later, Gene Kranz left his aircraft testing job to join NASA and champion the American cause. What he found was an embryonic department run by whiz kids (such as himself), sharp engineers and technicians who had to create the Mercury mission rules and procedure from the ground up. As he says, "Since there were no books written on the actual methodology of space flight, we had to write them as we went along."

Kranz was part of the mission control team that, in January 1961, launched a chimpanzee into space and successfully retrieved him, and made Alan Shepard the first American in space in May 1961. Just two months later they launched Gus Grissom for a space orbit, John Glenn orbited Earth three times in February 1962, and in May of 1963 Gordon Cooper completed the final Project Mercury launch with 22 Earth orbits. And through them all, and the many Apollo missions that followed, Gene Kranz was one of the integral inside men--one of those who bore the responsibility for the Apollo 1 tragedy, and the leader of the "tiger team" that saved the Apollo 13 astronauts.

Moviegoers know Gene Kranz through Ed Harris's Oscar-nominated portrayal of him in Apollo 13, but Kranz provides a more detailed insider's perspective in his book Failure Is Not an Option. You see NASA through his eyes, from its primitive days when he first joined up, through the 1993 shuttle mission to repair the Hubble Space Telescope, his last mission control project. His memoir, however, is not high literature. Kranz has many accomplishments and honors to his credit, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, but this is his first book, and he's not a polished author. There are, perhaps, more behind-the-scenes details and more paragraphs devoted to what Cape Canaveral looked like than the general public demands. If, however, you have a long-standing fascination with aeronautics, if you watched Apollo 13 and wanted more, Failure Is Not an Option will fill the bill. --Stephanie Gold

Book Description

Gene Kranz was present at the creation of America's manned space program and was a key player in it for three decades. As a flight director in NASA's Mission Control, Kranz witnessed firsthand the making of history. He participated in the space program from the early days of the Mercury program to the last Apollo mission, and beyond. He endured the disastrous first years when rockets blew up and the United States seemed to fall further behind the Soviet Union in the space race. He helped to launch Alan Shepard and John Glenn, then assumed the flight director's role in the Gemini program, which he guided to fruition. With his teammates, he accepted the challenge to carry out President John F. Kennedy's commitment to land a man on the Moon before the end of the 1960s.

Kranz was flight director for both Apollo 11, the mission in which Neil Armstrong fulfilled President Kennedy's pledge, and Apollo 13. He headed the Tiger Team that had to figure out how to bring the three Apollo 13 astronauts safely back to Earth. (In the film Apollo 13, Kranz was played by the actor Ed Harris, who earned an Academy Award nomination for his performance.)

In Failure Is Not an Option, Gene Kranz recounts these thrilling historic events and offers new information about the famous flights. What appeared as nearly flawless missions to the Moon were, in fact, a series of hair-raising near misses. When the space technology failed, as it sometimes did, the controllers' only recourse was to rely on their skills and those of their teammates. Kranz takes us inside Mission Control and introduces us to some of the whiz kids -- still in their twenties, only a few years out of college -- who had to figure it all out as they went along, creating a great and daring enterprise. He reveals behind-the-scenes details to demonstrate the leadership, discipline, trust, and teamwork that made the space program a success.

Finally, Kranz reflects on what has happened to the space program and offers his own bold suggestions about what we ought to be doing in space now.

This is a fascinating firsthand account written by a veteran mission controller of one of America's greatest achievements.

Download Description

Perhaps best known through Ed Harris's Oscar-nominated portrayal in the film Apollo 13, Gene Kranz was a NASA flight controller throughout the entire manned space program. Kranz witnessed everything from Alan Shepard's and John Glenn's early flights in the Mercury program through the triumph of Neil Armstrong's giant leap for mankind in Apollo 11 and the near-disaster of Apollo 13. Kranz headed the "tiger team" that saved the Apollo 13 astronauts, and he provides new details about the urgent and successful improvising that brought the crew safely back to Earth.

Failure Is Not an Option is a thrilling insider's account of Mission Control from the early years of trying to catch the Russians to the end of the manned space program. It is filled with behind-the-scenes stories, including the painful self-examination that took place following the Apollo 1 disaster and the daring decision to schedule an Apollo flight to the moon before NASA had ever launched a manned rocket beyond earth orbit. Kranz's stories about the dedication and resourcefulness of the astronaut corps and Mission Control teams show how an organization dominated by young people only in their twenties could succeed in one of the boldest missions in human history, placing a man on the moon in less than a decade.

Customer Reviews:

Inspiring reading for technical leaders of all kinds.......2007-08-15

While I confess to being a lifelong space buff, this book is the first of many memoirs I have had the pleasure of reading from the actual men and women who participated in one of the greatest adventures in human history. I read it nonstop from the moment I brought it home, and have reread many sections of it numerous times. I believe it is a useful historical record of the golden era of the space program, but also holds many lessons for those who find themselves in formal or de facto positions of technical leadership in all types of organizations - churches, consulting firms, technical contractors, manufacturers, and probably many others with which I am not personally familiar. Thank you Mr. Kranz for all you have shared!

a fist hand report of the early NASA years.......2007-06-30

I highly recommend this book to all the poor men who already believe today that APOLLO is a whole fake
KRANZ tell the truth it is obvious when you read him

The best way to learn about spaceflight is through this book.......2007-05-17

Failure is not an Option

The first time I heard this sentence is when I saw the movie Apollo 13 (Tom Hanks), when I was only 7 years old. I then read the book only when I was 11 years old. Gene Kranz is a great writer as well as a great Flight Director.

The book explains about everything from Mercury, through Gemini, to Apollo in great detail. The book taught me a lot of stuff that I did not know such as that Gemini 7 was before Gemini 6A. The book explains why did it happen and how. It will also explains what they were going to do about it.

The book has 21 pictures and 397 pages of knowledge. I recommend it for everybody

Failure Is Not An Option..........2007-03-15

The book arrived within the scheduled delivery time in excellent condition.

Thank you,

Mark & Francine Keehnel

Not a bad book - not a great one either........2007-01-16

"Failure is Not An Option" is not a bad book, but it is not a great one either. Kranz provides certain insight into the role of NASA Flight Directors and the book is interesting to the extent it serves that function. However, Kranz occasionally gives major events fairly short shrift, while writing at length on an array of banal topics which are of limited interest. The reader is often left wanting greater details about events that shaped the space program and less information on subjects such as Kranz's management style or his trademark vests.

Moreover, Kranz's writing style is a little too compact and terse to make this book a consistently engaging read. Kranz uses the word "crisp" in seemingly every other paragraph. His writing style might be described in the same way. Unfortunately, it can make sections of "Failure Is Not An Option" a bit tedious at times.

Lastly, although a small point, Kranz makes no attempt to hide his political bent. The book is replete with praise for Kennedy and obvious (though unarticulated) disdain for Nixon. Kranz speaks with almost boy-like ardor of Kennedy's far-sightedness and vision for the space program despite the fact that many regard Kennedy's interest in space to have arisen solely out of a political desire to beat the Soviets - not for scientific or human advancement as Kranz would have the reader believe. At times, the political commentary proves irritating and distracting and Kranz's idolatry of Kennedy excessive and simplistic.

That said, this book is worth the read for the information it does impart and to supplement other texts on the space program, but it is not as gripping or engaging as "Lost Moon" or a host of others.

Facilitator's Guide to Failure Is Not an Option(TM): Six Principles That Guide Student Achievement in High-Performing Schools

Average customer rating:

Facilitator's guide is nothing more than an expanded table of contents
It's a Certainty

Facilitator's Guide to Failure Is Not an Option(TM): Six Principles That Guide Student Achievement in High-Performing Schools
Alan M. Blankstein
Manufacturer: Corwin Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1412937809

Book Description

This Facilitator's Guide helps educators, trainers, and workshop leaders plan book study events, seminars, and professional development events using the award-winning book Failure Is Not an Option.

The Guide includes workshop activities, discussion questions, resources for further reading, tips to facilitate workshops, and evaluation forms. It is an ideal resource for school principals, school district administrators, teachers, teacher leaders, and educational policy makers.

Customer Reviews:

Facilitator's guide is nothing more than an expanded table of contents.......2007-06-09

A disappointing brochure, sold under false pretenses

It's a Certainty.......2007-01-03

Just what teachers everywhere should be doing more of: writing vision statements and mission statements.

The Professional Learning Communities movement is the latest educratic fad to be dumped on the already overburdened shoulders of American teachers, and as with every fad before it, the gurus touting PLC rely on the old advertiser's trick of distancing their product from all its previous incarnations: "Sure, you've seen this all before, but now it's NEW and IMPROVED!" Or, as Blankstein puts it in pseudo-academic fashion: "Parker Palmer (1998) indicates that most professional development (and books like this) answer the "what" or "how" questions....This book answers those questions in detail. In addition, we address the two questions often ignored, yet crucial to success: Why am I doing this, and who do I need to be to succeed?" Putting aside the thinly disguised arrogance of attempting to tell American teachers whom they should be and what they should believe, this statement presumes that a dozen other progressive education reformers such as John Dewey, B.F. Skinner, and William Glasser never wrote "books like this" making similar appeals "in detail," and that every proponent of every education gimmick before now did not also claim to have the solution--multiple intelligences, outcome-based education, cooperative learning, problem-based learning, brain-based learning, connective math, whole language, and dozens of other hotly promoted "research-based" contrivances. Could it be that our well-intentioned friends at the HOPE Foundation are on to something none of us ever thought of before? Golly, what are the odds?

Consider the book's title, which is taken from a false analogy involving the infamous Apollo 13 lunar mission. Blankstein likens teachers to Mission Control and our students to James Lovell and his crew, off-course and facing utter disaster. He conveniently ignores the fact that it was the very reality of failure and its consequences (certain death) that motivated both Lovell and his team; nothing Gene Kranz and Mission Control did or said would have made any difference without the cooperation of Apollo's crew. Today's students have been so protected from themselves by coddling parents, shallow curriculum, and reduced standards that they are blissfully unaware of the danger they face as incompetent and illiterate adults. They've never been made to experience the consequences of failure and thus have nothing but contempt for our warnings and our repeated attempts to motivate them. Imagine if after Kranz and his ground team radioed Apollo 13 with their instructions to save the dying spacecraft and its men--instructions which they had worked feverishly and round the clock to produce at great cost to their own health, safety, and comfort--the Apollo had radioed back with answers like "But why do we have to work so hard?" or "This is boring. We don't feel like doing it," or "Our parents are going to sue you!" If Blankstein and others who share his FINO(tm) philosophy get their way, this is exactly what future generations of American astronauts will be like.

Consider, too, the trademark symbol ((tm)) that follows the title, indicating that it is a commercial property. One can only wonder why a nonprofit group would feel the need to trademark its ideas, unless, of course, it intends to maintain an exclusive franchise. The list price for the paperback edition of Failure Is Not an Option(tm), according to the HOPE Foundation web site, is $32.95--more than double the average list price of $15.77 for an adult trade paperback in 2002 (The Write News, June 6, 2003). How many school districts, itching to appear progressive and cutting-edge, have bought into this latest ruse from the Olympian pinnacles of the educrat aristocracy? At $32.95 apiece, assuming every teacher and administrator at an average-sized urban district were given a copy, and not taking into account any bulk-purchase discounts, then said district will have spent approximately $100,000 on FINO(tm), enough to purchase a state-of-the-art computer lab or buy a personal copy of Moby Dick for every high-school junior in the district (not that they'd read it in today's culture of text-message literacy). Assuming a 50% bulk discount, which is unlikely and would still leave the purchase amount above the normal market price for books of its kind, then the district will have wasted about $50,000--at least one teacher's salary.

Here's a new paradigm, everyone: return to substantive teaching and learning, value teachers for their expertise in the subjects or grade-levels they teach; leave psychology to the psychologists, motivation to the counselors, and social problems to the social workers. Take curricular and monetary power away from principals and superintendents and give it to campus department heads. Send every midlevel "facilitator," "leader," and "coordinator" back to the classroom and force them to teach again. Slash the salaries of these puffed-up politicos and distribute the remainder to the teachers. Define "failure" as any student who reaches the 12th grade without mastering the things they should've mastered as competent and literate adults; distinguish between those who can't learn and those who won't learn (you'll find the vast majority of unsuccessful students belong in the latter category), and subject them to the pressure of failing grades and lost privileges until they earn their way up. Let them experience failure in school before they experience it in the real world, where the consequences will be far more disastrous for us all.

None of this will ever happen, of course. For one thing, it's too harsh and politically incorrect, and for another, it'd put the gurus-and-gimmicks crowd which Blankstein and his organization represent out of business. The vast and swelling industry of education consultants, with their junk books and videos and their insulting, overpriced "professional development seminars," are the real winners every time a new silver-bullet scheme like Professional Learning Communities gets minted and shipped out. They're parasites on the nation's schools; they don't exist to support us, as they so smugly claim...we exist to support them. No matter that many of these groups and individuals operate under the imprimatur of 501(c)3 nonprofit organization status; while most nonprofits pay relatively low salaries to their employees, executive-level salaries are often in the six-figure range (The median salary for chief executive officers at nonprofit organizations with annual budgets of $25 million or more was about $176,800 in 2002, according to the Congressional Budget Office). Furthermore, it's unclear what, if any, restrictions apply to people like Blankstein regarding book royalties, consulting fees, etc.

So go on, you superintendents and principals. Go on, you intellectually shallow educrats. Buy up copies of FINO in bulk at the public's expense and force it down the throats of your school faculties. Take away the precious time your teachers could've spent planning lessons, grading, calling parents, and improving their own competence (in subject matter, not pedagogy), and force them to use it having meetings about meetings, discussing insipid acronyms like CLI (Courageous Leadership Imperative) and HRO's (Highly Reliable Organizations), constructing pie-charts and pyramids, and generally acting like the kind of mindless "interdependent" cooperative learning groups to which you'd like us to reduce our students. Some of us SRT's (Self-Respecting Teachers) aren't falling for it, and we never will.

In the words of PT Barnum: This Way to the Egress...

[Post Script: This review was deliberately removed from the actual FINO page by Amazon after only three weeks. Could it be that someone out there doesn't want this book to be publicly criticized? Surely not...]

MCI:Failure Is Not an Option, How MCI Invented Competition in Telecommunications

Average customer rating:

One of the most memorable case studies I've ever found...
Fluffy PR

MCI:Failure Is Not an Option, How MCI Invented Competition in Telecommunications
Lorraine Spurge
Manufacturer: Knowledge Exchange
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1888232412

Book Description

MCI takes the reader into the boardroom for a look at the financial management and marketing issues the company faced.

Customer Reviews:

One of the most memorable case studies I've ever found..........2002-01-21

Over the past year I have been involved in the startup of a competitive telecommunications provider owned by AT&T. I frequently cited this book and the experiences of MCI in discussions with others in my company when dealing with difficult issues.

This book is one of the more memorable case studies I've ever found. The pages flew by, though the sayings within remained indelibly marked in my mind.

Yes, the book is written by MCI insiders proud of what they accomplished. They should be. I only wish more companies would share their experiences with the world in this manner and with the simple but memorable words used here. I could use a few more of these case studies.

Fluffy PR.......1999-12-28