Over the course of a career spanning more than fifty years, Seattle-based architect Jim Olson, of Olson Kundig, has made his name designing a broad range of buildings that sensitively respond to their environment. Initially drawing from his close connection to the nature and culture of the Pacific Northwest, he has attracted an international reputation for designing houses for art collectors around the world. Considered together, his buildings reveal an exceptional interplay between art, light, nature, craft and architecture, which can be experienced in a range of projects that span the globe, from Mexico to South-East Asia. This complete overview of many decades of carefully considered buildings begins with an extended essay by Aaron Betsky, who considers the intimate relationship between Olson's natural surroundings and love of art and his design process over the course of his career. This is followed by a selection of twenty-eight of Olson's recent projects, interspersed with private sketches and his reflections on architecture and the creative process. The final reference section includes an extensive illustrated chronology of the architect's entire corpus.

A detailed and candid "how-to" examination of Toyota's management methods by two retired executives with nearly 50 years of combined experience at the top of the Japanese juggernaut's North American operations, Sustainable Competitive Advantage and The American Dream also calls on the U.S. business community to lead a campaign to curtail the out-of-control government growth, cost and intervention that is destroying America's free-enterprise economy.

Did you know John Wayne owned a ranch in Arizona? Have you heard the story of the first ever World Champion All Around Cowboy, Earl Thode? Have you heard the story about "Cundo," who is in a wheelchair during the week then competes in roping competitions a-horseback on weekends? Read about these, and the stories of over thirty other Southwesterners, who have each accomplished great things in their own special way.

Polycrystalline materials, both dense and porous, are traditionally fabricated from ceramic, metal or composite powders via powder technology routes that include shaping and sintering steps. During shaping a compact body is formed from the granular raw material, while sintering leads to strengthening of this compact and coarsening. In this collection, the authors summarize the basic concepts and classical models used for describing solid state sintering processes. Following a brief introduction, in the second section a historical overview of early sintering theory is given, followed in the third section by an explanation of the driving force of solid state sintering. Following this, grain boundary is analyzed to discern how the spatial orientation of grains themselves may be defined generally and exactly. Additionally, one can easily understand that there is a correlation between the change in the grain orientation and grain deformation and this correlation was mathematically demonstrated. Finally, the authors interpret the quantity of grain orientation corresponding with the experimental measured value, the analysis of local deformation could be performed experimentally on the basis of their results. In closing, following an outline describing the historical development of ECAS and related techniques, the principle of ECAS is briefly described, current opinions concerning sintering mechanisms are summarized, and the problem of carbon contamination is discussed in some detail.