Este es un libro impregnado de un aplastante «sentido común» que ofrece al lector la posibilidad de comprender de una forma clara la esencia de la dirección de personas, así como las habilidades directivas precisas, en un entorno cambiante como el actual. Tenemos que ser conscientes que la «calidad» del personal, y en especial la de sus cuadros directivos, es hoy más que nunca un factor esencial en una política de renovación tecnológica, de mejora de la competitividad, así como para resolver la compleja problemática existente en nuestras empresas en la actualidad. Una de las áreas en la que todo responsable directivo debe ejercer un dominio cada vez más preciso es en la dirección de personas, que incluye competencias tales como liderazgo, trabajo en equipo, motivación y comunicación, materias de reconocido interés especialmente si se tiene en cuenta que una de las principales funciones de todo mando es la de dirigir con la mayor eficacia el equipo humano puesto a su cargo. Por ello, este es un libro de dirección de hoy para directivos de hoy o para los futuros directivos que están preparándose para dirigir el mañana. Su finalidad principal estriba en servir de guía a los hombres y mujeres que desempeñan puestos directivos en la actualidad, permitiéndoles analizar su trabajo como tales y, lo que es más importante, su forma de realizarlo, diagnosticando sus debilidades y aumentando su eficiencia; en una palabra, señalándoles la ruta hacia una dirección más eficaz de sus colaboradores. ÍNDICE Prólogo.- Introducción.- La dirección de personas.- La función de dirigir.- La identificación y logro de objetivos.- El análisis de problemas y la toma de decisiones.- la supervisión y el control.- La gestión del tiempo.- Dirección e inteligencia emocional.- El liderazgo.- El trabajo en equipo.- La dirección de reuniones.- La delegación.- La motivación.- La comunicación.- La resolución de conflictos y la negociación.- La evaluación y el desarrollo de persona.- La gestión del cambio.- El aspecto humano de la empresa.- Vemos el bosque además de los árboles. Bibliografía.

The turn of the twentieth century was a time of explosive growth for American cities, a time of nascent hopes and apparently limitless possibilities. In Children of the City, David Nasaw re-creates this period in our social history from the vantage point of the children who grew up then. Drawing on hundreds of memoirs, autobiographies, oral histories and unpublished—and until now unexamined—primary source materials from cities across the country, he provides us with a warm and eloquent portrait of these children, their families, their daily lives, their fears, and their dreams. Illustrated with 68 photographs from the period, many never before published, Children of the City offers a vibrant portrait of a time when our cities and our grandparents were young.

Amongst the novel objects that attracted my attention during my stay in the United States, nothing struck me more forcibly than the general equality of conditions. I readily discovered the prodigious influence which this primary fact exercises on the whole course of society, by giving a certain direction to public opinion, and a certain tenor to the laws; by imparting new maxims to the governing powers, and peculiar habits to the governed. I speedily perceived that the influence of this fact extends far beyond the political character and the laws of the country, and that it has no less empire over civil society than over the Government; it creates opinions, engenders sentiments, suggests the ordinary practices of life, and modifies whatever it does not produce. The more I advanced in the study of American society, the more I perceived that the equality of conditions is the fundamental fact from which all others seem to be derived, and the central point at which all my observations constantly terminated. I then turned my thoughts to our own hemisphere, where I imagined that I discerned something analogous to the spectacle which the New World presented to me. I observed that the equality of conditions is daily progressing towards those extreme limits which it seems to have reached in the United States, and that the democracy which governs the American communities appears to be rapidly rising into power in Europe. I hence conceived the idea of the book which is now before the reader. It is evident to all alike that a great democratic revolution is going on amongst us; but there are two opinions as to its nature and consequences. To some it appears to be a novel accident, which as such may still be checked; to others it seems irresistible, because it is the most uniform, the most ancient, and the most permanent tendency which is to be found in history. Let us recollect the situation of France seven hundred years ago, when the territory was divided amongst a small number of families, who were the owners of the soil and the rulers of the inhabitants; the right of governing descended with the family inheritance from generation to generation; force was the only means by which man could act on man, and landed property was the sole source of power. Soon, however, the political power of the clergy was founded, and began to exert itself: the clergy opened its ranks to all classes, to the poor and the rich, the villein and the lord; equality penetrated into the Government through the Church, and the being who as a serf must have vegetated in perpetual bondage took his place as a priest in the midst of nobles, and not infrequently above the heads of kings. The different relations of men became more complicated and more numerous as society gradually became more stable and more civilized. Thence the want of civil laws was felt; and the order of legal functionaries soon rose from the obscurity of the tribunals and their dusty chambers, to appear at the court of the monarch, by the side of the feudal barons in their ermine and their mail. Whilst the kings were ruining themselves by their great enterprises, and the nobles exhausting their resources by private wars, the lower orders were enriching themselves by commerce. The influence of money began to be perceptible in State affairs. The transactions of business opened a new road to power, and the financier rose to a station of political influence in which he was at once flattered and despised. Gradually the spread of mental acquirements, and the increasing taste for literature and art, opened chances of success to talent; science became a means of government, intelligence led to social power, and the man of letters took a part in the affairs of the State. The value attached to the privileges of birth decreased in the exact proportion in which new paths were struck out to advancement. In the eleventh century nobility was beyond all price; in the thirteenth it might be purchased; it was conferred for the first time in 1270; and equality was thus introduced into the Government by the aristocracy itself.

In the 12th century, Moses Maimonides wrote a long letter to one of his rabbinical students discussing a variety of philosophical matters concerning theology. The text tries to clarify some of the contradictions between the literal meaning of the Torah and its philosophical explications. This work is still of interest to contemporary philosophers and theologians.

"Substantially the book that devotees of the director have been waiting for: a full-length critical work about Ozu's life, career and working methods, buttressed with reproductions of pages from his notebooks and shooting scripts, numerous quotes from co-workers and Japanese critics, a great many stills and an unusually detailed filmography."—Sight and Sound Yasujiro Ozu, the man whom his kinsmen consider the most Japanese for all film directors, had but one major subject, the Japanese family, and but one major theme, its dissolution. The Japanese family in dissolution figures in every one of his fifty-three films. In his later pictures, the whole world exists in one family, the characters are family members rather than members of a society, and the ends of the earth seem no more distant than the outside of the house.