Myths?  More like Facts to me
	Myth #1: American women live under patriarchy

Myth # 2: America's the World's leading threat to the environment

Myth # 3: America is a racist nation

Myth # 4: The Untied States is an imperial power.

Myth # 5: The rich get richer, the poor get poorer

ALL FACTS.

Plus, The higher the IQ the more liberal someone is. Ben Franklin, Einstein, our founding forefathers like Thomas Jefferson...all liberals. The lower the IQ the more conservative because it is easier to not think for yourself.
I love America, but changes need to be made.
Rome fell too eventually from bad politics


OH PLEASE
	I just finished listening to as much of the book on CD as I could stomach.  The minutia and lack of knowledge of police terminology and tactics was nauseating.  The words forhead, perp, peruse, crim, and finger were repeated over and over and over.  What might have been a good story in half the words was ruined by descriptions of everyone's clothing, spouses, children, and thinking


Buyer beware
	This book is so outdated. All the techniques listed in this book are from the 1980's and earlier, which means that most of the things you can learn from this book are already learned by you from the past. There are much more recent interesting researches and discoveries of human nature you can find in other books


Series writing can be a terrible trap for a writer ...
	and I suspect this is what has happened to James Lee Burke.  The Dave Robicheaux series has been floundering sadly for several books now - and that is tragic, considering the promise of the early books, which peaked in the hauntingly beautiful In The Electric Mist With Confederate Dead.

I grew up in southern Louisiana, and Burke captures a culture that many people have no experience of.  But the series is becoming repetitive and stale, culminating in this book, which is just awful.  Burke's characters, with the exception of the always funny and touching Cletus Purcell, are wearing thin and becoming less and less sympathetic.  Dave Robicheaux becomes more priceless and preachy in each novel.  His anti-alcohol tirades would make any Prohibition era preacher proud.

Burke has fallen into a trap of using the same imagery and phrasing again and again, and it makes the reader wonder if he isn't cutting and pasting entire paragraphs repeatedly.  If I read one more time in a Burke book that Leadbelly strung his twelve stringed guitar in octaves, I will be sick (hey, Mr. Burke?  Twelve stringed guitars have always been strung that way, Leadbelly didn't invent that tuning, okay?)  If I read the word "phallus" in a sex scene in one of Burke's books one more time, I think I will just give up.  The phrases are getting old - really old.  The preaching about political corruption and alcohol got old many books ago.

One thing to be thankful about in this abysmal wreckage of what was once a great series - Bootsie, Dave Robicheaux's wife, is dead, though that doesn't keep her out of the story.  But at least the reader is spared another element that has been repeated to death - the moment in every book with Bootsie in it where she gets up in the night, angry with Dave, and goes to sleep on the couch.  I've had bets with other readers as to what page Bootsie will do this inevitable stunt (which then opens up the opportunity for another sex scene with the "phallus" when they kiss and make up) in each Burke novel where she is a character.  Thankfully, also, Alafair, Dave's adopted daughter, is far away at college, and we are spared her teenaged brattiness which became tedious in the earlier books and yet another repetition of the story of how Dave came to adopt her, which is included in every book since the introduction of the Alafair character.

It's time for Mr. Burke to let the series go.  It's a travesty of its former self.  Reading this book is like visiting a relative who has lost their mind to dementia - you see a hollow, nearly unrecognizable shell of a formerly vital and beloved person.  It's painful


HA HA HA!! I'M NOT NAUSIOUS!
	I am newly preg too. I went out and got this book without reading any reviews. I sum it up this way: a pompous composition of contradiction and condescension. I can't stand the tone and the constant jabs seemingly mocking you and having a GREAT OLD TIME enjoying those pains you will be feeling! IE ..And all those trips to the bathroom to hug the toilet. Ha ha ha...

Last night, I'm reading her stupid book and I get some good advice on what to do with your friends who are smokers. I would just not be near them while they smoke. Period. She says to threaten them with the law that protects non-smokers. Good idea...If that doesn't work, Ask them ALL TO QUIT because YOU are pregnant. And if that doesn't work try being nice. I don't know many smokers but I don't know even one who would smoke in a house or one who would smoke outside and blow the smoke in my face. Another comment that really got me..Take a good look at your slim waistline because won't see it for a LONG TIME! (Implied: OR Ever!) I take pride in keeping myself fit. I am a little freaked about the weight issue. I find that comment insensitive to a point of being twisted. What about the first-timers who are also former eating disorders --like me.
Even the woman on the cover of this book looks like a Stepford Wife.


Painful
	Not very scary, too long, and poor character development.  There are a lot of good reviews about the book.  Maybe I missed something


Women are from vaginas and men are too
	F this self-help industry crap. Quasi-astrological poppycock at its worst. I can tell this book clamps on to the mind and squeezes it to death merely by reading the cliched title. Humans are far more complex than the hack Man-Warrior/Female-Maiden title what's-his-name gives them. And remember, this "doctor," is quietly making mucho mucho bucks off your poor purchase. Your goddamned ancestors never needed a book to run their lives, so why do you? Let's push all the life coaches off cliffs and put the self-help industry to the torch. That's a great start to a sane life


Rich Dad is fake!
	This book shows how Robert has been lying all along. He talks about how he bought his dream car while being homeless. Ok then, how did Robert make the monthly payment? Why would he be stupid enough to sleep in a Porsch as a bum? This guy is such a liar and is trying to con the masses. He is a conman and a good one. Thats why hes a motivational speaker. It takes a good speaker to con you out of your hard earned money. Don't fall for this conman! This book contradicts what Robert has been preaching in previous books. Robert says pay off your debt while he says he bought his dream car while being homeless. That would be odd but it isn't odd because Robert is a professional liar


Not worth the read.
	This was the first book by Danielle Steele that I have read and it will be the last I read by her. I was truly disappointed and believe she is a highly over-rated author. The story was VERY drawn out and I caught myself dozing off a few times because the book was so boring. If you want to fall asleep quick then this is the book for yo


Sappho and sex.... and magic??
	I have very mixed feelings about this book and can't say I enjoyed it all that much. I love the story of Sappho, what little is known of it, and so I picked up this book expecting to see a historical fiction novel cut with realism, research, and certainly the unavoidable necessary lewdness of the celebrity of Lesbos. But monsters? Centaurs? I mean, the story of Sappho's life is not the story of The Odyssey and for the life of me I don't understand why  author Erica Jong decided to give her readers a combination of Greek heroine and Clash of the Titans.

Once I was able to get past the fantasy elements, I realized that I was not being pulled into the story on its own merits. There wasn't enough emotional dimension -- for all her travels, we're shown pretty landscapes and scary oceans but we don't see enough of a real character. I read Sappho's poems in college and the talented mind behind those words is NOT present in this book.

I'm not saying the book is without its good points. Jong has certainly done a lot of research and her enthusiasm is many times contagious. But I found the whole bit a little odd... like picking up a book about Cleopatra and seeing her encounter dragons, unicorns, and the goddess Isis. If Jong had written about Ariadne, this all might have worked. The blend of fantasy just didn't add up to a palatable meal for me


Muddled
	I usually enjoy Ms. Maron's Deborah Knott books very much. The characters are well drawn and give deep insight into Southern life. This one, however, is very flat and the characters are poorly drawn and one dimensional. The first murder doesn't seem to contribut anything to the storyline and is just "there". The second one involving Dwight's son (who is a very poorly developed child character) and his ex wife is not very interesting.

I devoutly hope this was the nadir of the series and it will improve after this. Probably not, though-I foresee several storylines involving husband/stepmother/stepchild conflicts. Glad I checked it out from the library and didn't purchase it outright..do the same and don't waste your money


Red Lily
	The story was slow, predictable and boring. I am still amazed I hung in there and finished reading it.  It's a dud in my opinion


Scrooged!
	The sub-header to this book could very well be: "All Work   no Play makes Jack a Dull Boy".

Basically, Tom Stanley's scholarly treatise on American wealth comes down to this mind-ripping, continent-blasting conclusion:

Millionaires, you see:

1) Save more than they spend;

2) Don't spend anything.

That's it. Page after page, chart after chart, graph after graph, anecdote piling up on anecdote, all of it boiling down to the same conclusion: don't spend more than you save. Clip coupons. Hang on to your wife `til Death you do Part. Buy a rambler for 80 grand, and cling to it like a rat clutching a Big Mac in a hurricane.

To wit: if you're a good little Bob Cratchit, and burrow down in your suburban Dacha, drive the Civic, eat Top Ramen, and take your vacations at the State Museum of Knitting   the Fine Arts, you'll die loaded!Sound like fun?

Didn't think so. Look: you've got one life, and after death all bets are off. Sure, you could be hauled up by the angels to Paradise, or it could just be one plate of linguini too many, a nasty flatline and one vast inky void of non-consciousness. Either way, you're looking at one single trip on this not-so-flat Earth, so you might as well live large.

It's true, now: you can haul in major bank in whatever profession you choose: eremetic horror-writer, Wall Street tycoon, Railroad baron, small-town librarian, legal eagle defender of the Criminally Insane, whatever. And you can always outspend it. That is the source of endless tragedy and Dickensian woe throughout the ages, without a doubt.

But there pitfalls at the other extreme. Listen: I live next door to one of these McMillionaires. The guy is this enfeebled little wizened gnome of a critter, used to be a bank Vice President and got bought out because he was a dingus. Total skinflint. Miser. Goes on his own hunting trips and brings back venison, deer meat, which he forces his family of---jesus, I think 12---to eat for months. Lives in a shacky little rambler, buys used Crown Vics from the local police department and bargain basement prices.

The guy, no doubt, is high net worth. But he's also a loser.

This is a guy who didn't want to cough up a few hundred bucks to help build a joint fence between our properties---so there's a fence, even a fence that abuts his property---but beyond my house and demesne, he elected not to build a fence. Instead, he got a plastic Jersey Barricade (orange and white) and went with that. Is that any way to live? Is that really what it means to be a `millionaire'?

I think not. Half the glory of the Age of Great American Consumption is buying stuff you don't need, but want. Desire. Demand. What else is work for?  Find a way to creative bliss, work at something you're good at, that you have a real passion for, and the money will follow.

But for the Love of God, it's only Money: spend it! What is money for, if not to indulge yourself?

Sure, get a pace---plan to the end---set a budget. But how many of you want to be that newspaper column on page A3, the 95 year old dowager pauper who begged for alms on the streetcorner, ate catfood out of a tin, and scrounged for quarters by the bus stop, then was found rigid and cold in the urine-stiff sheets of her dirty bed, sprawled atop a fortune estimated at 20 million bucks? Sound like a plan? I think not. Money may not buy happiness, but it sure as hell can get you a Rolls-Royce Phantom.

"Millionaire Next Door" might have it right in its sociology---and for what it is, Stanley's thesis is meticulously researched, mustered like a well-trained army, and capable of marshalling its teeming forest of facts like a well-drilled martinet---but it's off the map when it comes down to the point of the whole thing: if you've got it, flaunt it.

"Millionaire Next Door" isn't a bad book: it's scholarly, and plods along its own hand-me-down lodestar towards its prophesied conclusion (be cheap! Die loaded!), and perhaps some folks will be astounded to discover there are some real richies down the block who in another day would have been called skinflints.

But as a map to your stars, this one is a little cramped, cribbed, dank, and stinks of mothballs. I think I'll take first class---scratch that, how much did you say that Learjet was going for, again?

JS


Serious Flaw
	I was expecting a substitute for the classic "Photoshop Channel Chops" by Monroy and friends.  It trivializes the subject with "How to unlock the hidden power of channels ... blah blah.
If you want a better understanding of channels be prepared to wade through a lot of fluff with this one.  Infomercial.


This is the thinnest book on Enron that I read; it covers the whole affair very superficially.
	I don't get the impression from reading the book that the authors have even tried to analyzed the financial holdings that was set up. It is the thinnest book on Enron that I read, for very good reason.


Poor
	The storyline is way over-the-top, the plot is very poor, the red-neck-America-knows-best attitude of the writer is funny and sometimes annoying. Still, I've red worse books. But not many.


If you like books about unicorns, read this
	I'll put my opinion first, so there won't be any doubt in your mind.  I don't believe that you can write useful books about national character.  Is there really such a thing as  quot;national character quot;? People are  just too different, too unpredictable. How well can you predict the  behavior of the people closest to you ?  How well can you predict what  people in your own country will do ?  Would every Italian, if they could  write well, have written the same book as Mr. Barzini ?  I seriously doubt  it.  So what we have in THE ITALIANS is one man's views on the conglomerate  nature of 50 million Italians.  After reading it, I felt even more strongly  that such books, though possibly entertaining, are a waste of time.  An  informative book about unicorns--but do they exist ?   Anthropologists have  been concerned, for many years, in getting the  quot;inside view quot;--the  view of a culture as seen by the person within it.  While Barzini is  indisputable Italian, he tries to visualize Italians as seen by foreign  visitors, then explain to those of us not lucky enough to travel there, why  they are as visitors see them, or why they are not as foreigners may think.   This is not a successful gambit.  Cultures are based on many general  factors--like history, socio-economic patterns, religion, family,  etc.---but the specific results are just that, specific.  Barzini covers  many topics--the importance of spectacle and giving an illusion of  something rather than actually having that quality; the family vs. the  state; Italian modes of achieving success; the north-south split; Sicily  and the Mafia; and last, the tragedy of Italy's long domination by  foreigners.  But nothing really connects.  There are only superficial,  scattered impressions, nothing very concrete to grasp.  The reader is left  with a handful of stereotypes.  Barzini is at his best when describing the  lives and modus operandi of particular characters in Italian history.   These sections were well-written and interesting.  But his portrayal of  Italian  quot;character quot; is fuzzy, contradictory, and ultimately,  unconvincing.  Finally, if you are a lover of lists, you will thrill to  this book, because there is a list on nearly every single page.  Myself, I  got pretty tired of those lists.  If you want to know something useful  about Italy, read another book.  If you just want entertainment, which  might support any stereotypes you have about Italians, then this book could  be for you


Thin characterization
	I agree with one the comments posted below. The main problem with this book is Mitch is a totally one-dimensional character and it's impossible to find any depth in him. Over the course of the book he doesn't change, he's unsympathetic, and by the time we've reached page 500, we don't know anything more about him than we did on page 10. I found myself dying to get to the end of this book, just so I could start another book with some substance and some well-drawn characters.

Another major problem is that most of the characters in this book use the same wise-cracking speaking style so there is no sense of the characters being different from each other in any way.

Overall, I thought this was mediocre and a bit of a waste of time


The guide sucks
	You'd be better off using the internet to figure the game out. The guide feels super cluttered, it's almost hard to read and it doesn't tell you everything at the right time. I think it feels cluttered because there's too many pictures in it. Every page has at least 7 or 8 images on it. The best thing about the guide is the production value but I didn't buy for that


Not for a modern economist
	Book is out of date with modern economic thought.  Essentially restates classical economics and provides little in the way of acceptance of the need for balance between government and the markets.


Not many new ideas or examples
	Really not sure why this book received such good reviews, because it had nothing new.  Expected from the cover some reviews of outfits worn by different individuals pictured.
Very disappointed ... and any (and all) of the "what not to wear" books are so much better.  Oh, Sam, did mention it's better to hand wash cashmere, oh yeah, I already know that.


Unrealistic And Unoriginal
	If you haven't read anything on e-commerce at all, or if you're a total newbie, the latter half of this book may offer some useful advice on how to start an online business. For someone who is already in the business or has already done some research, this book merely repeats a lot of well-known tips. Even then, some of the tips, like in section on affiliate programs, are just theoretical assumptions and projections with very little practical information on how to actually attract sales and traffic.

As for the first part of the book where Allen demonstrates how he could earn $24k in one day, I find it totally unrealistic and it certainly won't happen to anyone reading the book unless he has Robert Allen's background to begin with. Even then, this sort of strategy won't cut it with today's wise and cynical netizens anymore.


Buy a book on probability instead
	This book is built around the idea "I wish it were true = it is true".  While this book has innate appeal to those looking for meaning in their lives, if you're looking for a firm foundation for understanding coincidences in your life (i.e. intellectual integrity), you'd be better off buying an introduction to probability


Disapointing
	Compared to his other superb books, this is one is tedious and boring.  The overall thesis is a stretch - trying to find equivalences between pre-industrial (and pre-printing press) 13th century price paterns and those of the industrialized and post-industrial 20th century requires ignoring far to many factors.  At a minimum comparing a world in which 90% of the population are attached to agricultural production and illiterate to world where almost precicly the reverse holds is just too big a leap to swallow.

Sadly, one suspects more than a little political axe-grinding is involved.

Enjoy Fischer's other books where he excells, but you won't miss much if you neglect to read The Great Wave.  Besides, the subject has been better treated elsewhere by authors not so obviously out of their depth


Bill, a sad ending to a good show
	Bill is very boring typically talks about business tips you already know.  The show was much better, you should buy that.  Kwame is much smater and deserved the job.  I can tell that this book is another promotional tool.  Don't waste even a cent on this book


The translation is a problem - the stories are not
	My introduction to Borges was through the collection Labyrinths. I immediately fell in love with the stories, the prose, the poetry, and so went on to buy this complete volume. While it is nice to have all Borges's stories in one place, and at a reasonable price, the language doesn't really hold up for me. The translation is... well, not sloppy, but too simple, like those childrens' versions of classic novels they pressed on you in 5th grade. I have nothing against Andrew Hurley, but his translation of Borges leaves me cold. I'd give Borges 5 stars out of 5, but Hurley? No more than 2.


Has been
	Found recipes dated, layout makes it difficult to use and although some of the how-to is useful, its generally from another era. Bought Gourmet cook book instead


A little too disjointed
	When I bought this book, I didn't realize it was mostly just a consolidated writing of Friedman's collumns in the Times.  I think Friedman is a great author with lots of great insights, but he isn't able to go into his ideas in depth as much as I would have liked in a bunch of detached 750-1000 word segments.  Since the sections are arranged chronologically, there also isn't the opportunity to tie the themes together.

If you really like Friedman, then it's worth a read, but if you are in it for just one, I'd read The Lexus and the Olive Tree first.  It is by far his best


The ugliest chronicle of a true legend of our time.
	The very title for the book - "I Con" - despite its cleverness, should reveal the lack of any objectivity, or class for that matter, from the authors, Jeffrey S. Young   William L. Simon.
I could best describe this book as a shoddy pastiche of ambiguous-sounding facts, poor research, colored by a palpable disdain for [arguably the most interesting legend of our time] Steve Jobs.
What is really distasteful is that this antipathy of the authors towards Steve Jobs, seems 'personal'; which, in a democratic sense, may be alright i guess, [but only] UNTIL facts begin to wear thin, and the research seems doctored, leaving the rants sounding hollow, unsavory and shrill.
And the facts aren't well-strung together either!

From the very opening description in the book, which overdramatizes and harps on about the return of a "reformed" Steve Jobs, to Apple in 1997 (as though the most unfathomably impossible phenomenon in the history of humankind had occurred), to the careful selection of maliciously undertoned quotations, and quite often blatant slanders about Jobs, the book appears to be a collation of 'hate diaries' maintained by two wannabe authors, whose sole purpose in writing this book seems to be to fuel an anti-Steve sentiment among its readers!

If you happen to be one of those people, who finds some twisted pleasure in those idle conversations that involve scandalmongering [especially Steve Jobs], then this book should provide ample fuel for your negative energy


Some intereting facts, but often twisted to suit author's aims
	Like most great diplomatic moments, successes and failures alike, decades will pass before anything approaching a full history of the Camp David debacle can appear.  Even then, disagreements on the apportionment of blame will likely continue on for decades after.  Given the wide interest in the Israeli-Arab conflict and the complex nature of the negotiations, new works exploring the crucial climax at Camp David remain welcome.  Some dismiss Mr. Swisher's work because he was not in fact part of the negotiating team, but instead was responsible at Camp David only for negotiations.  That seems to me unfair.  Clayton Swisher clearly did considerable "leg work" to prepare this text; sadly both his rather obvious bias and almost juvenile desire to settle scores renders what could have been an important work at best suspect.

Mr. Swisher's book follows on the heels of Dennis Ross's interesting "The Missing Peace" and, given Mr. Ross's direct involvement in the negotiations; no one could be blamed for looking at other works as well.  However, Mr. Swisher spends much of his time looking to lay the blame at Mr. Ross's feet, even when he makes claims that others at Camp David, many more central then Mr. Swisher directly contradict his statements.  Much for example is made in this work of Mr. Ross's change of "municipal Jerusalem" to "greater Jerusalem" in a draft as if this caused the breakdown of the agreement.  Unfortunately, Ross's change in fact was a return to an earlier draft after being changed by Robert Malley, a member of the US team and now often a talking head representing the Palestinian point of view, who made the alteration without consulting any of the parties.  Malley has never denied this.  Moreover, days would pass before the negotiations actually broke down.

Swisher's target, perhaps seeking to sell books by putting forward a contradictory point of view, shifts the blame wherever he can to Israel and the US negotiating team.  While such an effort might well be reasonable, Mr. Swisher often twists facts, making excuses for Palestinian gaffs while blowing minor facts out of all proportion.  For example, Mr. Swisher brushes aside the days lost when Mr. Arafat and the Palestinian team insisted that Jews had no historic link to Jerusalem or the Temple Mound -- a position farcical on its face -- as mere posturing.  However, he never mentions that such ideas, undermining the Jewish people very claim to the Land, serve only to inflame the parties and make agreement almost impossible.  Nor does Swisher ever consider the Palestinians failure to negotiate in good faith, treating every Israeli offer simply as a new base line, rather than offering any proposals of their own.  Again, even Robert Malley concedes that this disingenuous strategy by the Palestinians likely doomed Camp David from the start.

Swisher's dismissal of all Israeli concerns reaches a crescendo when he simply casts aside as silly Israel's interest and the Palestinian's refusal of any compromise for the so-called "right of return," or the claim that all Palestinian who left the area of modern Israel and all their descendants must have a right immigrate to Israel, a right held by no other people.  As to the simple fact that this would lead to the destruction of the Jewish State and that the Palestinians are thus expecting Israel to commit national suicide, on this problem Mr. Swisher remains silent.

Lastly, one cannot help but marvel at Mr. Swisher's odd coverage of the events after Camp David.  That Yasser Arafat led a bloody war against Israel rather than offering an alternative proposal for peace is dismissed.  Mr. Swisher combs through events searching for, magnifying, and twisting any event that will make Israel look bad, while at the same time minimizing or even ignoring the waves of suicide terrorists who have murdered hundreds of Israeli civilians in cold blood.  Mr. Swisher even parrots points of Palestinian propaganda so thoroughly disproved that even Palestinian leaders no longer mention them, such as the claim of massacres during Israeli operations in Jenin, which exhaustive study long ago proved to be nothing more than a fabrication.

Curiosity will cause readers to ask why Mr. Swisher takes this extremely biased view.  Fortunately, he lays out his rather simplistic point of view at the very beginning of the book by writing the following, "The primary reason for Arab and Muslim anger against America has been and remains unbridled support for Israel's oppression of the Palestinians."  Again, one can only muse as to why Mr. Swisher does not take Osama bin Laden at his word when he spoke shortly after 9/11 that his hatred manifests from the presence of American Christian soldiers in the heart of Islamic holy lands like Saudi Arabia and later Iraq.  Surely neither the bombings in Madrid or more recently in London had anything to do with Israel, but it seems for Mr. Swisher's simplistic world view, it is at the door step of the Jewish state where all blame is to be laid.


Oh boy, more "lets understand the terrorist" garbage
	The religion of peace is at it again!  In response to the popes words, muslims all over the world respond with violence, destruction, rage, hatred, burning down buildings, burning papal effigies, issuing fatwas against the pope, and even shooting a 70 year old nun in the back.  Wow, such peace from a religion of "peace".  If Islam is a religion of peace, then all the guns in the world are pink flowers, and every nuclear bomb, a soft feathery pillow.  Violence for words.  Destruction for speech.  PLEASE!  This is a religion of war, and bereft mindless 70 year old bags like Noam have begun to lose a lot of mental function with age.  This old bag of a man gives Muslims free passes and blames America.

Question:  When will the world start holding to account the actions of Muslims, and stop blaming others, such as Bush, America, the Pope, or God knows who else? How many more innocent people will die at the hand of Muslims before the western world finally, and for the first time, holds the Muslims accountable for their own actions, rather than someone else?

  Well Im sick of the left defending this vile cesspool of Islamofacism.  Im tired of the leftist media beating up on Israel and coming to the side of middle-eastern tyrants who shoot 70 year old nuns in the back in response to spoken words.  And then these radical leftists have the audacity blame the pope!  Can you believe it?!!  Yes, idiots all over the western world actually blame the pope for the mindless violence and destruction that followed from a spoken word.  Its unreal!  A grown man got a gun, deliberately aimed it at a 70 year old woman's backside, and deliberately pulled the trigger, purposefully killing her in cold blood....and yet according to socialist America-hating leftists, he couldn't help it.  Its not his fault...its the Pope's fault guys!    Respond to words with violence, and then blame the speaker, absolving the person who actually commits the violence of responsibility.  As absurd as that sounds, I'm sad to say there are actually people all over the world who think that.  And they are idiots (like Noam)


What's the point?
	Very little plot, which is boring.
The reader should be paid by the page, if not by the word, to read this book!


This book isn't for everyone
	I bought this book this weekend as we're doing the pre-five in a Row w/our preschooler and I don't much like it. I've got a mother w/borderline personality disorder and who doesn't observe personal boundaries of other's what-so-ever (if I need a break away, she hunts down my poor husband, all my relatives and friends- ugh) and so this book just kind of made my stomach turn as I could see her reading this to me and justifying her 'stalker mom' mentality.

In the end, I think if a person is from a semi-normal household w/proper respect for a child's boundaries and need for space away from their parents, then this book is okay. I just find some moms are too smoothering- even ones w/o personality disorders- and this book doesn't send a message about love as much as 'I own you'. I like 'Mama Do You Love Me?' better for explaining to a child a parent's unconditional love.

'Good-Night Moon' by Margaret Wise Brown, however, is by far my children's all time favorite book. I was reading that one to them ineutero and still every night before they go to bed. They love it and so do we as parents. But this one even creeped my hubby out and he's from a fairly 'normal' family.
Take it w/a grain of salt


A book full of gaps
	Aside from the 1958 Championship Game and the 1968 Super Bowl, the actual football games got very short shrift. The 1964 Championship Game didn't even get a MENTION! Whole years are virtually ignored. Very, very little discussion of Unitas' career and his impact on the game: mostly just anecdotes about family, friends, and teammates, and way too much space devoted to post-mortem comments from same. I think I learned way more about Johnny Sample and Gino Marchetti and Jim Parker from this book than I learned about Unitas. And that's not saying much. There's a lot of padding in this book but precious little information. And a lot of the anecdotes will be familiar if you're a football fan. Wait for the paperback if you're a Unitas devotee; otherwise don't bother.


Boring and Poorly Written
	This is the first book by Shaara I have read. And, if his other works are like this, it is also the last.

On the cover, J. Persico is quoted as saying Shaara makes "literature read like history and history read like literature."  He goes on to claim that Shaara brings the war to "pulsating life."  I have even read a review that claimed this book was better than Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front.

I must have been reading a different book.  The first chapter, The Replacement, is a great short story.  After reading it, I had hight expectations for the book.  Unfortunately, it falls apart after that great beginning and it is a dull affair that completely lacks any sense of a coherent narrative from a literary point of view.  And, the history reads like an 8th grade textbook.

His narrative style is unable to give life to people that actually lived.  They are flatly presented and there is no sense of really caring about what happens to them.

After the dislocated short story of the first chapter, the book delves into a long-winded story of the flying aces, interspersed with summaries of historic events that do little more than ruin the flow of the story.  It frequently feels like the book is written for people who are unwilling to read a real history book.

Shaara doesn't even begin dealing with the trench warfare of the war until the 1918's, when the Americans arrive, focusing, as I noted before, primarily on the air war that occurred in the first years of the war. I should point out that the air war would be interesting reading in a book of its own.  Here, however, it seems more to reflect that the author did not deem the ground warfare fought by non-Americans worthy of a story. Or was too lazy to research the events enough to write about the ground war from the British or French perspective.

And, I have no particularly problem with him focusing on the American perspective on the war, but then why bother with writing anything prior to our entry?  I suppose a smaller book doesn't sell as well.

For those interested in historical fiction, I would recommend Bernard Cornwall's work.  And, perhaps, Shaara can learn a bit from him


Great for philosophy, but doesn't inspire!
	This book is an nice collection of differing points of views about latinos/hispanics. However it's primarily philisophical. It's more confusing than inspiring. It's great for those studying for a phD, but will not inspire average latinos to action. This book tilts slightly more towards the assimilationist point of view, although a few writers do express some pan-latino thoughts.


Too popular to bother trying anymore.
	J.K. Rowling successfully put me off this book series within the first two chapters of this book.  The characters personalities were wavering in book 5, in this they completely vanished or mutated.  I'll only be getting the 7th one because it's the last one and I've read this far so I might as well go the whole way.

In books one through four the trio of Harry, Ron, and Hermione were loveable characters tenaciously and cleverly seeking out the answers to the mysteries that came up each year and saving the day.  Book 5 had them doing more angsting and screaming than mystery solving, and more whining than day saving. Book 6 made them stand in paper doll doing a bad job miming the motions the real characters would have done.

This book Harry seemed to care more about romance.  A very poorly done romance littered with cheezy phrases and romantic moments on par with the worst of bad fanfiction; which had no background or build up from previous books.  A female character from the background, whom Harry barely even notices all through the past five books, is suddenly the most perfect and beautiful girl in the school in mary-sue fashion.  Several other characters in both the foreground and background were also unfortunately treated to Rowlings amature attempts at romance, none of which bore any revelance to plot or story.

Harry also had a significant decline in morality and intelligence.  The clever boy who put clues together with his friends now cheats in one of his classes and makes one stupid mistake after another.  The image of Harry that stuck with me and seemed to glare off the pages every time he spoke or did anything was of him lying, frozen in a curled position on the floor of the train with blood coming out of his broken nose, under his invisibility cloak and rolling around with the trains motion after a particularly stupid episode with Malfoy.

As to the general plot of the book.  Poorly done.  Continually backstaged by sickeningly done romance and angst it barely made an impression on me.  Most of the 'revealations' in the book revealed nothing not already known or obvious from old information, and the culmination of what Harry was not-quite-solving didn't amount to anything.

My final opinion: Don't bother to read past book 4 if you're just starting the series and care anything at all about characterization.  A very disappointing book


Worthless and Disproven
	Keynes was no doubt an influential economist.  His theories and 'expertise' on economics influenced the post-New Deal economic policies of the United States and the internationalist wealth redistribution schemes like IMF.  However, his ideas on economics failed miserably and it was application of Keynesian ideas that wrecked so much havoc on the U.S. particularly in the 1970s with the stagflation (an inflationary recession with unemployment which was theoretically impossible accordingly to Keynesism.)  We have Keynes to thank for budget deficits and the nebulous idea that we can spend ourselves into prosperity through the largesse of the federal government.  Read Planning for Freedom or Socialism by Ludwig von Mises instead


Nothing special here
	I read this short novel because I greatly admired Shaara's Pulitzer Prize winning "Killer Angels," and because I'm a baseball fan.  The novel feels more like an outline or first draft than a completed work about an aging pitcher.  It's a bit shallow and predictable in its plot.  The characters are what one expects in all too many sports novels and short stories.  The feel or atmosphere just isn't quite there.

Any baseball fan will see flaws in the book right away, flaws that distract and damage the work.  Shaara sets most of the novel in Yankee Stadium with the Hawks playing the Yankees.  Why the author chose to have one real team against a fictional team is unclear.  The Hawks apparently are from Atlanta, but an Atlanta team, Braves or Hawks, whichever, would not be playing the Yankees interleague on the next to last day of the season.  Finally, when a visiting pitcher goes out to warm up before the game, he does so in the semi-hidden bull pen down the left field line in Yankee Stadium--not on the mound on the field.

This book was published posthumously and Mr. Shaara perhaps never had a chance to polish his prose--prose that was excellent in "Killer Angels."  It's unfortunate.

There are glimmers of interest in the book, but not enough to recommend it to baseball fans or fans of the author's other book


Why is waiting for Godot like waiting for a bus?
	Because you wait and wait, and then three don't turn up at once


Over rated
	This book is not as good as i thought it would be.  I hope i have better readings with Bryan Tracy's Advance selling


Nothing New
	Wright presents no new information about Al-Qaeda, leaves out plenty of information about Al-Qaeda and neglects the USA side of "the road to 9/11."  Understanding Qutb's radicalization of Islam is important to understanding why Ayman al-Zawahiri and Usama exist and also why they failed at creating theocracies and were lame ducks until the USA found a use for them as an enemy.  What cannot be neglected is the myths spread about the United States by the Neoconservatives and followers of Leo Strauss.  The United States is not a unique and beautiful snowflake.  The liberal idea of individual freedom was decried by Strauss as destructive of the society of the USA and he told his followers to keep the public in line with grand myths about US exceptionalism.  After the the Soviet Union was kicked out of Afghanistan, both Qutb and Strauss' followers believed they were the cause of it.  Since the Cold War the US has been working off of the "friend and enemy" model of policy formulated by Carl Schmitt and 9/11 presented the US with what Schmitt called a "state of exemption."  If you think jihad was the cause of 9/11, ask yourself why Richard Clarke found Bush and his advisors saying find a way to tie this to Iraq hours after 9/11.  See the BBC documentary, "The Power of Nightmares" or "From Secularism to Jihad: Sayyid Qutb and the Foundations of Radical Islamism" by Adnan A. Musallam or the Political Ideas of Leo Strauss by Shadia Drury for a better analysis of Qutb and Strauss than Wright has in his book.  If you prefer to stick with fiction about "the road to 9/11," check out Patrick S. Johnston's novel "Mission Accomplished.


Recycling Personified
	If you've read one Gary Null book, you've read them all.  He is no doubt highly knowledgeable and dedicated to his subject, but when I buy two books with different titles by Gary Null and find they are the same, I'm pretty annoyed.  His early books were taken directly from Herbert Sheldon's Natural Hygience material, which I assume must not have been copyrighted, and I felt ripped off then, in the 70's as I did recently when Amazon was good enough to give me a refund for one of the books.


Partisan Politics Provide Poor Analysis
	Unfortunately, instead of an thorough analysis of the genesis, justifications, and problems with overarching property rights, DeLong acts as a mouthpiece for other property rights activists.  DeLong covers some of the same ground as Congressman Richard Pombo in his 1996 This Land Is Our Land, simply emphasizing anomalous examples instead of practicable solutions.  DeLong's denial of the externalities resulting from uninhibited development leave his analysis unbalanced and ill-founded.  DeLong's politics overcome his analysis.  This book is similar to his condemnation of industry for their recognition to the denial of carbon dioxide emissions.  (...)  His political agenda overwhelm his rational


it is ok
	this was certainly not one of Cornwell's best works.  IT was almost like a couple of possible novels rolled into one.  It read like a draft for a novel rather tahn a complete novel


Reluctantly dragged along with Frances Mayes
	This book really irritated me. I loved Mayes's previous books and was really looking forward to reading this one. The concept, a year of traveling to different locations, seemed like it would be really interesting combined with Mayes' fresh perspectives, enthusiasm for discovery, feisty opinions and poetic descriptions. But somehow it didn't work.

I get the sense that her heart wasn't really in this book. Maybe because the trips were taken over a span of five years, and cobbled together? Or because there's so much `padding' - endless quotes from her own or other people's writing. When she liked the place, her descriptions feel artificially enthusiastic, almost as if the book was paid for by the chamber of commerce. I got tired of reading that she could live there, or could imagine taking her grandson there, or wishes she was born there, or that it's SO much better than San Francisco. Where she doesn't live anymore, and hasn't for years. There are also too many stories about refreshing local characters who think Frances Mayes is the nicest, most tasteful, most interesting person they've ever met. Especially since these people tend to be waiters, cab drivers, rug salesmen or others whose business depends on charming the tourists.

Most of the book consists of sneering at her fellow Americans, or talking about people's personal appearance. This is boring and clich�d - and if you like that kind of thing, Bill Bryson does it better. There's also way too much name dropping (she's always mentioning "my friend so-and-so, the famous ____"). What happened to the ordinary, financially stretched, middle-aged college professor? She seems to be taking on the persona of a celebrity. She doesn't want to be crowded in with a group, doesn't want to associate with ordinary tourist types - now she deserves the VIP treatment. This is definitely a change from her previous books.

I think when it comes right down to it, there's too much Frances Mayes in this book. I thought I liked her, but what I really like is her writing style. It can still be magical - when she gets her ego out of the way. But when she puts herself front and center, she becomes more tedious and pretentious than interesting. Now I'm sorry I read this book, because I'm afraid it will spoil my enjoyment of the earlier ones.


Could win any poor writing award
	The work of a 12 year-old without talent. Phrases are tediously cobbled with clumsy, inappropriate similies. Story line is absurd. If this were Koontz's first novel, no publisher would touch it


Hate parade mixed with racism.
	Hateful liberals once again undermine their so-called ideology by promoting the hatred of over half the US population. They claim to be tolerant and open-minded toward all lifestyles,religions, races etc... but that open-mindedness obviously shouldn't apply to people who disagree with them. Throughout the "book," Moore also demonstrates his racism towards caucasians and thin people. If you like this book, I also recommend Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler. Both "books" are jam-packed full of hate.


bad, bad, bad
	Who published these weak translations?  Yup, they are on newsprint and get smudged immediately.  How about using real paper?  B N needs to stop thinking opportunistically and start thinking about quality


PLEASE...don't waste your time
	I bought this book because of the 4 star rating by readers.  Let me be candid....what the hell were they reading?  This book is simply insipid, implausible and a waste of time.  Get this for a premise....rich, geeky guy buys a major league baseball team called the "Connecticut Nutmegs"!  Nutmegs for a major league team??!!  Yeah, right.  It gets better....he has an incredibly sexy girl friend who stars in the C-list movies he produces....ok hold on to your seats, here comes the good part....she is going to be his star player on this MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL team!!  Why, because in college she was an excellent athlete.  So some buxom starlet who ran track in college is going to play major league baseball!!  Am I the only one who thinks this is plain stupid.  Oh, yeah there's a murder along the way.  Parker (author) must have pictures of the publisher having sex with a goat otherwise I can't think of a reason why it got published.


I Couldn't  Wake Up
	Having read "The Millionaire Next Door," as well as most if not all of the classics in this category, I expected life-altering experiences with this book.

There were too many statistics, and statistics that contradicted one another, not to mention generalizations about various subgroups that, try as I did, I had to put my copy down and use it at first for a door stop, then because the cover art is great, I decided leaving it on the coffee table makes a great conversation piece.


A doctrinaire view of biology
	Most books that set out to explain why organisms behave as they do describe observations of behaviour on almost every page. The books of Richard Dawkins, whom Rose selects as his special target, illustrate this well: readers can reject all of his interpretations while remaining fascinated by the purely factual information that they contain. How one can hope to convince anyone of the truth of a theory without supporting it with abundant facts? Yet hard biological information is extremely sparse in Rose's book. There is a great deal about what he thinks of other biologists' opinions, but almost no observations from behavioural biology. Nonetheless, in his preface he aligns himself with the practising biologists "who spend a significant part of every working day thinking about and designing experiments", dismissing Dawkins and Daniel Dennett as "people who either no longer do science or never did it." What a pity, therefore, that he chose to include so little of the experimental basis of his ideas in his book. There are a few vague remarks about how chicks behave, and that's about it.


Not quite what I expected...
	The first twenty pages of the book quickly sparks your interest but soon after that, the story drags until it picks back up again toward the last third of the book.  I think the story would have been more credible if Barr would have thoroughly explored the inner workings of her fictional religious sect and offered more details about it.  Without those details, the book seemed "unfinished".  It was like watching a movie and only viewing the actions of the good guy without being exposed to villain.  Boring in my opinion.


If you like books about unicorns, read this
	I'll put my opinion first, so there won't be any doubt in your mind.  I don't believe that you can write useful books about national character.  Is there really such a thing as  quot;national character quot;? People are  just too different, too unpredictable. How well can you predict the  behavior of the people closest to you ?  How well can you predict what  people in your own country will do ?  Would every Italian, if they could  write well, have written the same book as Mr. Barzini ?  I seriously doubt  it.  So what we have in THE ITALIANS is one man's views on the conglomerate  nature of 50 million Italians.  After reading it, I felt even more strongly  that such books, though possibly entertaining, are a waste of time.  An  informative book about unicorns--but do they exist ?   Anthropologists have  been concerned, for many years, in getting the  quot;inside view quot;--the  view of a culture as seen by the person within it.  While Barzini is  indisputable Italian, he tries to visualize Italians as seen by foreign  visitors, then explain to those of us not lucky enough to travel there, why  they are as visitors see them, or why they are not as foreigners may think.   This is not a successful gambit.  Cultures are based on many general  factors--like history, socio-economic patterns, religion, family,  etc.---but the specific results are just that, specific.  Barzini covers  many topics--the importance of spectacle and giving an illusion of  something rather than actually having that quality; the family vs. the  state; Italian modes of achieving success; the north-south split; Sicily  and the Mafia; and last, the tragedy of Italy's long domination by  foreigners.  But nothing really connects.  There are only superficial,  scattered impressions, nothing very concrete to grasp.  The reader is left  with a handful of stereotypes.  Barzini is at his best when describing the  lives and modus operandi of particular characters in Italian history.   These sections were well-written and interesting.  But his portrayal of  Italian  quot;character quot; is fuzzy, contradictory, and ultimately,  unconvincing.  Finally, if you are a lover of lists, you will thrill to  this book, because there is a list on nearly every single page.  Myself, I  got pretty tired of those lists.  If you want to know something useful  about Italy, read another book.  If you just want entertainment, which  might support any stereotypes you have about Italians, then this book could  be for you


Good, but has a few errors
	It has the potential to be a great book if the author had taken some time to actually look into each breed. The "Canadian Eskimo Dog" is now referred to as the Canadian Inuit Dog out of respect for the Inuit people. He has the dog's height wrong, and the weight range is much too high. This leads me to conclude that if there were that many errors on one dog breed, who's to say that it's not wrong on other breeds too?
I was quite disgusted and mad to see the "designer dogs" put as purebred dogs. Labradoodles, Bichon/Yorkies, Cockerpoos, and Bull Boxers are NOT purebred dogs. They are mixes given a fancy name and sold for staggering amounts of money.
The first few chapters on the history of the dog is quite fascinating though, and the pictures are nice. If you need an all-in-one book and don't mind many errors, this is a great book for you. If you're like me, go down the road of buying a better dog encyclopedia and different books on different subjects rather than this faulty all-in-one


Expert Obedience Training for Dogs
	Two main comments.  Firstly, the book is mistitled or I misread the meaning of the title and I would be delighted to return it.  This is a book devoted primarily on how to make your dog perform "tricks" with much on showmanship.  I have no interest in that but I do have an acute interest in dog obedience relative to the master's care of their puppy and mature dog.  Problems handlers encounter in "greeting" of your dog with other dogs and people.

Secondly, the book, as written, talks down to the reader and unless you have had some professional experience with dogs, you feel very unqualified to read on.  I felt intimidated by it.


A bone to pick with 'Skeleton Man'!
	I've read only a few of Hillerman's previous Leaphorn/Chee novels. I've enjoyed what I've rtead, though they are an acquired taste, and I don't indulge in them very often. I tend to enjoy the earlier, more active years of Joe Leaphorn more interesting than his ' semi-retired unofficial advisor to Jim Chee' phase.

From what I gather, 'Skeleton Man' continues a recent trend of disappointment with Hillerman's last few novels. Even without having read the books immediately prior to this one, I can understand that sentiment.
'Skeleton Man' starts off with a rather risky premise, tying the story in with the real life collision over the Grand Canyon in 1956. While an author can occasionally pull off a good story with a strong connection to 'real life'(See Nelson De Mille's 'Night Fall'), Hillerman fails here.
The story is bogged down with bland and unlikable supporting characters, flimsy motivation, and very little that could really be called 'action'.
Chee ends up joining Leaphorn in the background for much of the story.
The spiritual and ritualistic aspects of Hillerman's earlier books are, for the most part, glossed over here. Even what should have been a major plot development (Chee's wedding) is overshadowed by Chee have to rescue Manuelito, in the manner of far too many contrived 'Superman rescues Lois' situations.
Better to stick with Hillerman's earlier novels. The 'aging athlete past his prime' analogy suits Hillerman, I'm afraid


For the plain and simple
	This book is 'oragnized' into sections - Getting Started, Organizing Room by Room, Organizing Finances, Organizing Time, Organizing Home Life, and Organizing Transitions.

Who needs an entire section telling you the benefits of being organized - isn't that why I bought the book?  The author takes 'plain and simple' to new heights...for example - "To organize your refrigerator, start by uncluttering it."

I was hoping for something with more substance.  There was nothing in this book that I didn't already know.  If you're looking for something very basic as far as what to do in your home...you will like this book


Not what I expected
	I like looking at old pictures and old letters, but I thought when I bought the book that I would actually be looking in the history of someone's life with pictures to go with it but that was not the case.  It is just a random bunch of pictures and a random bunch of letters put together in a book.  The pictures aren't necessarily the pictures of the people who wrote the letters, so you know nothing of the authors, no explanation of the times they lived in or the place they lived in or anything.  In other words, no story behind it whatsoever.  Just a disappointing collection


'It is obvious that heavier-than-air flight is impossible.'
	I will be brief: Penroses writing is mediocre, his drawings obfuscate more than clarify.
The vast majority of the book is devoted to completely and utterly extraneous topics, and seems to largely be a platform for Penroses new quantum theories.
His arguments are unclear, weak and largely dependent on philosphers like Lucas and Searle, while his idea of quantum effects is improbable and surely in the end irrelevant (cannot computers tap into quantum effects?) and his knowledge of computer science deeply, deeply suspect.
For example, I quote here from the final sections which actually have something to do with his ostensible reason for writing the book:
"Neverthless, one still might imagine some kind of natural selection process being effective for producing approximately valid algorithms. Personally, I find this very hard to believe, however."
The entire flourishing, commercially succesful field of evolutionary computing begs to differ here, Mr. Penrose. SUch bonehead errors compells me to point out that this mathematician has no clothes


dreadful
	Perhaps this book appeared to be a futuristic medical thriller when it first came out, but now it seems like a bad 1950s horror movie.  The story involves brain surgery gone bad, with a mix of artificial intelligence and mind control.  The end of the story was very predictable and played out exactly as I suspected from the very beginning of the book.


P L E A S E . . . buy something else
	Many reviewers on this site read TLGPE in the 70's, when we were young and impressionable. (I happened to be 13 when I read it.) If one could be sued for intellectual forgery, Lindsey would certainly be found at fault.

Most of us, thankfully, have gotten past our fears that plagued our teenage years. After all, when we read TLGPE, we were young. We were searching and seeking. We didn't have all of the facts. There were wolves who knew this, and they preyed upon us. Many people who were older, yet still intellectually undeveloped, read this book and were moved to 'believing'.

For most of us, our minds matured. We began to see the vast chinks in Lindsey's pompous Christian armor. We began to realize that fear is a weapon brandished by madmen, by people who use a subtle, gentle cloth of manipulation to control others.

This is beyond dangerous. It is beyond extreme, as most of us have now found out.

I love a good horror novel. I love a good 'true crime' thriller. But the fact that people read Lindsey's books and take them at face value is, perhaps, one of the scariest notions I have ever imagined.

That, dear reader, is beyond horrific . . . and far more terrifying than anything you'll find in the bible or any of Lindeys 'books'. The only thing scarier is that Mr. Lindsey is still receiving royalties from an outdated, silly, contradictory and completely barbaric book penned over thirty years ago. Please don't be the next sucker. Please don't add this one to your cart.


The Language of Threads: A Novel
	This was a less than stellar sequal to The Women of the Silk but it did finish the story of Pei to some extent.  I found the historical aspect of the novel the most interesting and the story of the women the least believabl


Red Lily
	The story was slow, predictable and boring. I am still amazed I hung in there and finished reading it.  It's a dud in my opinion


Same Old Same Old
	The title grabbed me because I have been noticing for, oh about 14 years now, the decline of the truth in this country.  Unfortunately, this book is written precisely by the kind of person who has lost touch with reality and what truth is (definition of irony I believe).

The reason it is #1 on the bestseller list is because there is a ready audience out there, of similarly detached people, who want anything (and I mean anything - a website with a good conspiracy story and a glass of warm milk before bed everynight is their ideal) that backs up their point of view.

It is precisely why the truth is so out of fashion.  New media streams like the internet, blogs, etc. offer up "news" without accountability.  They allow this segment of society to avoid confronting the truth and instead construct their own alternative realities.  It makes people like Frank Rich, rich, with very little effort.  Why bother checking facts, his core readership doesn't care whether it is true or not, just tell them Bush is evil


A new "Worst" book in my libray
	Who better to write a book about morons than Flynn?  An abyssmally miserable book with so little substance I was surprised it didn't float out of my hands.  It's a great resource for those looking for a plethora of examples of pitifully poor logic; Two wrongs don't make a right, non-sequiturs galore, red herrings - they're all there.

It seems apparent the goal was to scoop up the easy money from the thin thinkers in our world.  It certainly wasn't to write a scholarly treatise where the reader came away enlightened in the slightest way.

I guess I have fallen into the category of "moron" by spending money on it and worse yet, reading it to completion.  I'm embarrassed.  Flynn should be too


Not all great quotes...
	I wanted to like this book.  It's a great size for carrying around to dip into.  However, I'd say about a third, or maybe more, I haven't counted, are anonymous. Here's an example: "Life is filled with possibilities" p31.  Now I don't know about you, but I'd hardly class that as great stuff from great minds. Then I read "Decide what is worthwhile and follow through with it" and I'm beginning to yawn. When I came to "Above all, life should be fun" and "Always keep a window open in your mind for new ideas" and I'm just about ready to throw the book into the garbage.  Also, the format of the book is terrible.  Someone decided to put every quote into a little frame, so you get four quotes on a page.

Still, for the price, it's not that bad.  No, on second thoughts it's pretty dire.  There's just too many pathetic jingles in here for me, which only motivate me to demand a refund!  If I were you, I'd save my money and put it towards something else - "The Book of Positive Quotations" has 7000 quotes and I wouldn't be without my copy


The first hundred pages really work, but then...
	The Kite Runner gets off to such a good start, with its blend of history, observations about daily life in Kaboul, and a compelling story of two boys growing up together. The second half goes badly astray, as the novel becomes more and more manipulative and sentimental. By the end of the book, the author is willing to put his characters through all sorts of hell just so he can follow up with a teary reconciliation. I wish an editor had convinced him to tighten it up, stay focused, and resist the urge to tug at the heartstrings with such a heavy hand


Doesnt look like Grisham at his best
	I remember reading "The Chamber" distinctly. Somehow, this book doesnt even near that standard. The story line is vague with unnecessary twists and turns. The characters have been strongly depicted but none of them turns out to be standing out


Skip it...content of zero value...
	...Uldrich makes big bucks on the public speaking circuit discussing nanotechnology...I suspect this book was published for no other reason than to provide some "credentials" to support the speaking engagements...his most recent books published since this one have been one about George Marshall and another about Lewis and Clark -- real cutting edge technology there!...nope, don't buy it


A poor imitation.
	The ghost writer was probably afraid to put his own name on the book.  It was totally predictable without any of the depth found in real Ludlum books


Silly,Silly,Silly
	I have been a devoted Hiaasen fan from the beginning and awaited all his novels which are few and far between with much excited anticipation.  Although his writing remains flawless and some of his lines are hysterical, the story is just so silly I found it hard to keep my attention focused.  I compare reading this book with watching a sponge bob cartoon which I do with my children on occasion.  Sorry, I just couldn't finish it


Great company and leader - Outdated and dubious book
	I wavered awhile between three stars and two stars, because a company and entrepreneur as brilliant as Sony and Akio Morita seem to deserve at least three. However, in the end, the book's errors just piled too high. It opens well, with the story of Sony's founding and rise from leaking offices in a half-wrecked department store just after World War II, to becoming one of the world's great companies. This is a fascinating and inspiring story, and Morita tells it with flair.

Then, unfortunately, the downward spiral begins. Morita consistently takes his experience at Sony and assumes that every other Japanese company operates the same way, which is a fantastically wrong assertion (as the last thirteen years of Japan's seemingly endless recession have shown). He also frequently takes good basic management techniques, like trusting employees and giving them creative leeway, and tries to brand them as somehow uniquely "Japanese".

Then there are all the claims which are simply out-and-out false, such as Japan supposedly having the world's best construction technology. (It actually has perhaps the worst in the industrial world, as the Kobe earthquake unfortunately demonstrated.)  Or how Japan is supposedly a nation fanatically devoted to not wasting anything. (Yet it only recently discovered the concept of "second-hand goods", instead of throwing nearly-new furniture and clothing away. Plus, Japanese garbage trucks groan under the weight of the world's worst overpackaging.)

Reading between the lines, a person can see the roots of so many of the problems that Japan faces today. For example, Morita spends a good deal of words attacking the excess of lawyers in the United States. While this can, of course, sometimes be a serious problem, it also gives U.S. consumers a way to protect themselves. Japan's consumers, on the other hand, without an accessible court system, are almost completely at the mercy of bureaucrats and executives. Complaints about dangerous products or chemicals in drinking water are simply ignored, because they lack any threat of legal action. In another example, Morita praises the "trust" and agreements without contracts that exist among Japanese corporations. In reality, this "trust" is a death pact, as bankrupt inefficient companies are propped up by their buddies, instead of letting them fall and create openings for fresh and innovative entrepreneurs.

Other than the glimpses into Sony's history and corporate culture, this book is only interesting as a museum piece - yet another in the flood of "Japan is going to take over" books that came out in the Eighties. Although, of course, considering all the "Internet companies are going to take over" books that came out in the Nineties, not even this is a uniquely "Japanese" phenomenon.

PS: Anyone wanting a healthy reality check about the current state of Japan should read "Dogs and Demons" by Alex Kerr.


Bible Comparison
	[Joshua 6:23,21]Joshua said to the people of Israel, "The Lord has given you the city of the all silver, and gold, and vessels of brass and iron, are consecrated unto the Lord: They shall come into the treasury of the Lord.
The people utterly DESTROYED ALL THAT WAS IN THE CITY, BOTH MAN AND WOMAN,YOUNG AND OLD, AND OX AND SHEEP, AND ASS, WITH THE EDGE OF THE SWORD.

Deuteronomy 17:3-5 "And he should go and worship other gods and bow down to them or to the sun or the moon or all the army of the heavens, .....and you must stone such one with stones and such one must die."

Romans 1:20-32 ....32. "Although they know God's righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them."

Numbers 31: And the Lord said unto Moses, "Avenge the children of the Mid'-an'ites.. They warred against the Mid'-i-an'ites, as the Lord commanded Moses, and they slay all the males. And they took all women as captives, and their little ones, and took the spoil of all their cattle, and all their flocks, and all their goods. And they burnt all their cities wherein they dwelt, and all their goodly castles, with fire. Moses said, "HAVE YOU SAVED ALL THE WOMEN ALIVE? NOW KILL EVERY MALE AMONG THE LITTLE ONES, AND KILL EVERY WOMAN that has known a man by lying with him, but all the young girls who have not known a man by lying with him keep alive for yourselves."

[Quran-60:8-9] GOD does not enjoin you from befriending those who do not fight you because of religion, and do not evict you from your homes. You may befriend them and be equitable towards them. GOD loves the equitable. GOD enjoins you only from befriending those who fight you because of religion, evict you from your homes, and band together with others to banish you. You shall not befriend them. Those who befriend them are the transgressors.


One point story. . .
	I was more upset with this book than anyother. I've loved every book in the series , but this one was more dissapointing.
 I pictured EVERYTHING the sasme as in the movie though... thatrs just telling you how welll it's written and described. But, it was more about the Triwizard tournament the whole entire time. Still, i am addicted to the series . Either way you should read the story just to understand whats going on. I just wish it would have been more exciting and less predictable


Interesting ideas poorly communicated
	Galbraith's insight on society unfortunately gets lost in a maze of double negatives and confusing sentence structure.  His ideas are sound, though he has a very off-putting pompous delivery.  In fact, his verbosity and poor structure is so bad, that it turns what should be a slim read into a fairly mind-numbing experience.  The book really needs to go back to an editor


A book that will make you laugh and frighten you
	Mr. Galbraith is smart, accomplished, and learned man who knows what is best for all us.  His view of a good society differs from past visions of societal utopia.  Rather than a completely coercive state directing the  actions of its citizens to some hirer calling, Mr. Galbraith aims to be  `practical' and just further defines the third way.  Nonetheless, his  proposal of what makes a good society is not the classical liberal view and  it is more attuned to the European model of society.  Many of his proposals  are so silly you won't take them seriously.  But sadly, he is quite  serious.  For example, Mr. Galbraith states that in a good society everyone  should have a rewarding life.  Of course, he never defines the standard by  which society should judge whether or not a life is rewarding.  Neither  does he address what one should do if their life is un-rewarding and what  the obligation is of society to fulfill that vision of a rewarding life.   And, of course, who is the `rewarding life judge' and does this judge have  the authority of the state to take something from someone (who has a life  that is deemed too rewarding) for someone who has life that is too  un-rewarding.  Mr. Galbraith fails to convince the reader of the  practicality of his proposals and ends up straddling a line between  socialism and capitalism, and saying nothing new


Christian fundamentalism dramatized
	Even the avid "trekie" reader of the Star Trek science fiction novels, movies and television series must suspend disbelief, when he finds Captain Kirk saying "Beam me up, Scotty."  But the biblical literalist reading this book need make no such effort, when he reads in this book that Jesus will effectively beam millions of true Christians up to heaven in the world-wide "Rapture."  Though the characters and their roles are fictitious, the book specifically references the relevant biblical passages for the believer.

The story line opens with the chaotic moment of discovery after the historic mass Rapture event, and the remainder is a moral melodrama concluding with emotional born-again conversions.

In the September/October 2006 issue of Foreign Affairs Walt Mead writes that fundamentalists are not hospitable to the idea of gradual progress toward a secular utopia driven by technological advances and the cooperation of intelligent people of all religious traditions.

Instead fundamentalists separate themselves from the world and have a premillennial pessimism about prospects for social reform.  Billy Graham's biography by Strober notes that they criticized Graham's "new evangelism" for its inclusiveness and for its involvement in addressing social problems. Yet their separatism does not preclude proselytizing as portrayed in these novels by the "Tribulation Force" or as exemplified by Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority.

They are also committed to an apocalyptic vision of the end of the world and are hostile to international institutions such as the United Nations. Mead notes that it is no coincidence that the Left Behind novels show the Antichrist rising to power as the secretary-general of the United Nations.

The U.S. Statistical Abstract reports that the per capita numbers of fundamentalists are growing exponentially, while evangelicals and liberals - e.g. Southern Baptists, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Methodists - and Catholics are continuing their per capita declines.  Such data and the reported popularity of these Left Behind novels indicate fundamentalism's growing appeal in reaction to contemporary American society.

I see the readers who seriously respond to this book as the "left behind" in the backwash of the tidal flows of cultural change in modern American society, and as conservative Christians who believe it is better to stay behind.  And in not just a few respects, they may be wise to do so.

Thomas J. Hickey


Hard to read, misses the mark
	While the author rehashes some basic business writing theory, she consistently fails to follow her own rules:
- The text is full of fluff
- The style is flippant instead of useful
- The lecture style puts you to sleep

There are much better books on the subject. A textbook approach is necessary for this subject. Not this dopey-run-on-crap.


Don't waste your money...
	If you walk into B N and flip through (not even buy!) the other "well known/recommended" pregnancy books you'll get much more information than what Douglas offers.

If you're lazy/want a quick read, this book is for you.
If you're looking for a comprehensive tell-all (which the title and reviews lead you to believe), this is *not* the book for you.

This was a total waste of money! If I had know it was this bad I would have just used my money to buy diapers instead.


This Angel Fell Flat
	Hmm, quite a disappointment, especially after splurging on the hardcover edition.  Set as a kind of "Rockies Rear Window," this is one slow story.  Endless pages of crazy-making when I'd already guessed the outcome about halfway through.  Finally skipped ahead to finish the book.  I had really looked forward to Angels Fall, too :(  If you are a Roberts fan, don't spend the money on the hardcover, wait for the paperback, go to the library, or borrow from a friend.  Not worth the price.


Abolutely boring
	There were several good scenes, but they didn't make up for the rest of the book.  Not worth reading.


Not one of Quindlen's best
	This book was easy enough to read, it just wasn't what I expected from Quindlen.  I usually find her writing style and her way of thinking about things so captivating, in this book I really did not find either of those traits to stand out.  The back-and-forth from current day to the past was somewhat confusing, and sometimes I was in the middle of a paragraph before I realized this paragraph was a jump to the past, whereas the previous paragraph was present time.  Although I got used to that writing style, I always found it annoying.  The storyline itself never sold me either: a typical, young "sew-your-wild-oats" boy finds a baby and decides to keep it and is the "perfect" father. I just did not find such an occurrence likely.  And, as a mother myself, all the times he either left the newborn alone or took it with him while he labored on the land just made me squirm. Anyway the whole story seemed far-fetched and disjointed to me, and a disappointment especially since I have been a Quindlen fan for many, many years


just awful
	just awful

save your money, this book is not worth it. The pictures are dull and lifeless, boring composition. Mann hasn't captured anything here but a bunch of worthless photos. Any 10th rate amateur photographer could have done better.


And yet more elitist filth in print
	I was recommended Borges' works by one of his innumerable over-educated sycophants and I will never forget the tremendous time I wasted attempting to grasp the supposed value of his life's work (when I should have been writing my dissertation). Each time I read one of his pedantic, mediocre peices of short fiction, I was convinced by these elite book review troglodytes that I would like other examples of his work if I continued reading since  quot;all of his stories are so unique. quot; I found the exact opposite to be true. One story after another about mazes, mirrors, mystical mathematical formulas and books, books, books. The ideas were transperant, the language boring in the extreme. His poetry is trite. Who needs this? Borges reads like a petulant graduate student at University of Chicago who failed repeatedly to get his/her short fiction published in _The Atlantic Monthly_. Particularly among academics, literary elites and like people, many seem to cite Borges and worship his genius more than read him--and certaintly _no one_ reads him critically. I read most of his work, and I can tell you, outside of a few interesting turns of phrase, you'd be better off reading a Yale dissertation on the semiotics of self-superiority. People incessantly talk about how imaginative Borges is. The vast majority of popular SF and fantasy writers are more imaginative. Even many of the despicable magical realist  quot;geniuses quot; make Borges look rather plain. Borges merely litters his works with elite literary references and a kind of faculty cocktail party wit to make it more palatable to the kind of people who never step foot out of Manhattan or Cambridge. If you're this kind of pompous fellow, you'll want to sleep every night with a portrait of Luis by your side and a series of mirrors, as it were, slowly attempting to seek some kind of trans-substantiation with this benighted old librarian. If you're the kind of person who prefers reading about interesting characters, enjoying nuanced use of language, and grasping subtle, daring ideas that transcend purile academic banter, run far, far away from Jorge Luis Borges. Even top authors from all over the world and every historical period get bad reviews. The adulation of Borges merely underlines the fact that this is more about a cult of personality among (those who think themselves) intellectual elites than a serious attempt to evaluate his fiction. I think his fiction is better considered a kind of academic experiment, relegated to quirky local fiction publications and coffee house poetry slams, and not an example of literary genius. In that sense, 30min spent on one of his short stories gets you the drift of his entire body of work, and that's about as much attention as he deserves


Nothing New Here
	I have read a bunch of poker books and play regularly.  There are a lot of good books out there, Dan Harrington's the very best, but this isnt one of them.  Too much ego here and not enough helpful information


Not Bad
	I use "The Notebook" and "A Walk to Remember" as optional films in my upper division sociology courses. After hearing many positive student responses, I was curious about Sparks as an author--one of the few males writing commercially successful romance novels.  After a slow start with "True Believer," I was more satisfied with "The Rescue."  Taylor's friendship with Mitch and his emotional growth add dimension to an otherwise standard tale of boy meets girl, etc., etc.,


Neocon babble
	Ann Coulter is unbelievable in her unrelenting hatred of anyone not in aggreement with her warped sense of reality.  To her there is no middle ground.    I am an educated, well travelled adult who while born in the United States, spent a good portion of my childhood living overseas and consider myself to be fairly open minded.  To be called a communist, a traitor, and an enemy of America just because I don't buy into the ultra conservative mind think is an insult to the freedom that this country was founded on.

I have never in my life considered buring or destroying a book because of it's evil, until I read this one.

Be afraid, be very afraid of these people


200 Pages of Total Immersion Italian
	The is by far the weakest Grisham novel I've ever read.  The first two hundred pages creep along at a glacial pace as the protagonist (Joel Backman; more about him later) wanders Italy for nearly 200 pages, learning to speak the language and spending way too much time sipping espresso in quaint trattorias with Italian carictatures that would make Chico Marx cringe.  When Grisham finally rachets up the action and suspense, it's all for naught, as the story eventually limps and staggers to a completely listless and anticlimactic ending.

As for Joel Backman, I can't think of a more unlikeable and unsympathetic protagonist in recent memory.  A disgraced lawyer, lobbyist and traitor that plowed through life in a meaningless quest for wealth and power, all the while causing numerous deaths, and alienating numerous wives and children is supposed to be someone we care about?  Does this character redeem himself in any meaningful fashion?  You read the book and decide..


Too Predictable
	Not a bad beach read but nothing in this story is unexpected. I didn't really connect with the main characters. I was interested by the description in the supernatural aspects (the lights) it seemed like a mystery/love story that may have been unique but instead was a way too predictable love story.


Not funny.  Waste of time.  Distasteful.  Boring.  Awful.
	If the Kranks really did what they set out to do and skip Christmas, that would have been a good story.  The end.
Instead, they end up having to scramble to try   make Christmas "happen" for their daughter unexpectedly coming home.  In other words - a typical stressful material holiday, instead of a celebration of friends, family, or even, gasp! Christ's birth.  I agree - if you don't want to celebrate Christ's birth, if you don't want presents and holiday decorations and family time - skip it.  Why torture yourself?

It would have been a good story if they did this.  Instead, the plot deteriorated into a very stupid, ridiculous and unrealistic dash to the finish line of "making Christmas happen."

A completely unsatisfying and unfunny read.  Threw it away so others wouldn't have the displeasure of reading it


Don't waste your money...
	...you can waste your time and save your money by checking this out of your local library.

If you want to get an "inside view" of the inner workings of Wall Street during the excessive gyrations of the '80s, then read Den of Theives - that book is well written and well worth the money!

What turned me off about this book was the structure and the writing style.  The first half of the book was essentially the author relating fortuitous circumstances that were the product of Serendipity.  He was simply in the right place at the right time, had virutally no idea how he got there, felt out of place the whole time (even when he was raking in the Big Bucks in NY and London), and so now he thought he'd wwrite a book about it.  I also got the sense that he was trying to assuage some guilt from his association at Salomon Brothers.  He was there, he made a lot of money, good for him - get over it!

I was also pretty disappointed because the subject matter has A LOT more potential.  I might have actually enjoyed it - had I not read Den of Theives 7 years earlier, and already had some idea of how things took place.  But, if you can get it for $5 or less (including shipping), and you have little to no knowledge of what an investment banker's life is like (and you haven't also seen the movie Wall Street (which covers the same highlights in this book)), then it's probably worth it.

I did like the wrap up he did towards the end of the book, relating where he had heard everyone from the firm ended up...althought that seemed a little rushed..


the world is flat
	it is juust a copy of the frist book. if you read the frist the world is flat, then don't waste your time.
jo


Fluff and poor philosophy
	What a disappointment!  Based on reviews, I couldn't wait to get this book.  Don't let the 48 pages fool you...half of the pages are pictures, and the half with writing on them are double-spaced with wide margins.  Took me all of 20 minutes to read (and only that long because of all the page turning).  Nothing wrong with being concise....except that the philosophy here is overly simplified.  Quindlen goes to great lengths to equate "Pefection" with "Conformity" and condemning it as inauthentic.  I do believe that women tend to set unrealistic expectations for themselves (i.e., wanting to be the perfect mother, perfect daughter, perfect wife, perfect businesswoman); therefore, it creates warm, fuzzy feelings to hear someone criticize perfection as being "boring".  Unfortunately, to claim that "[well-behaved women] don't make good lawyers....or businesswomen" just doesn't follow.  This is not deep reading.  20 minutes?  Don't waste your time.


really bad sociology
	My understanding is that this book is an accessible summary of the ideas Catsells presents in his three volume magnum opus, the Information Age (which starts with the Network Society). If this is so, I am definitely not missing much by not having read the trilogy. This is a really bad piece of sociology, characterized by a technologically deterministic analysis. Why did I give it two stars instead of one then? Well, it does have some OK parts. Catsell's analysis of the origins of the internet is an interesting bit of the sociology of technology and what saves the book from pure technological determinism. He also presents some convincing data (gathered by other people) that use of the internet for socializing does not suck people into an on-line world, alienating them from the world of face-to-face interaction; this happens in the case of a few troubled people, but most people use the internet to enhance their already existing off-line relationships. The rest of the book basically argues that the network format of the internet is reshaping the rest of society in its image, with everything from big business to governments to social movements adopting a network form in response to the rise of this new technology. This is, frankly, ludicrous reductionism. It doesn't even stand up to a simple test of chronology--a lot of the developments that Castells argues are driven by the internet predate the explosion of ist usage in the mid-1990s. As Castells himself admits, businesses were already taking on more of a network form before the internet appeared big time on the scene, and social movement scholars have shown the same is true of transnational social movements. On top of this, Castells shows an effusive enthusiasm for all things networked, whether they be transnational corporations or the transnational social movements that oppose these same corporations. I'm really at a loss to understand how one can enthuse about both of these opposed phenomena. Castells does see some of the problems with the new network society--loss of job security and the digital divide, for instance--but he tends to downplay these. And his solution to these problems tends to come down to more of the same--more internet access, more network social organization. Talk about a narrow vision


Drama, Constant Climax   Hysteria Do Not Make a Novel
	This "novel" would be better suited for the stage.  It reads like a play, often.

It's not realistic as the author goes overboard in depicting "high drama" within a family.  They suffer a tragedy that would certainly affect a family but to the extent the author has them changing is not realistic at all.

There are far too many scenes of shouting, histrionics.  The father goes from being Ward Cleaver to a verbally abusive monster.  If I had to see the mother one more time with her calling "Robin!" I was going to scream.

The author needs to understand that high drama and a climax will be inferred by the reader after seeing the conflict.  This author forces the climax onto us in every scene.  He's desperate for this end result of angst, high drama and shock.

It's overkill.  I don't believe that a 14 year old would become this promiscuous.  Sure it happens but this was the Leave it to Beaver family at first.  It just doesn't make sense that because of ONE incident, all members of the family devolve into sordid disasters.

In short, the author needs to be focused more on telling a story, allowing the reader to infer.  Instead, he thrusts high drama and climax onto us at every turn.  It's ironic, actually, as he's trying to make us feel drama but he did it so much that I just felt tedium.

Very, very contrived and forced novel.  Not believable.  I do not recommend


Make sure you read some of the reviews before you read
	Please take the time to consider what kind of reader you are.  I hated this book.  It took me at least 6 months to read this because I could not force myself to read it.  But that being said I also hate stream of consciousness and now wished that I had looked at some reviews and realized that was what I was getting myself into.  I read 'As I Lay Dying' in High School and hated it too.  There is no plot, and no point.  I hated it.


Fabulously Biased "Research"
	It still amazes me that anyone takes Gould seriously. He is an admitted Marxist, and he allows his social beliefs to influence science. That is not science. Science is a dispasionate search for the truth. I get the feeling reading this book that Gould doesn't like what the truth is, so he wants to shape the way we see the truth. They used to do that in the middle ages when it started to look like the earth revolved around the sun.

Gould tries to claim that Samuel George Morton fudged his data on measuring skull sizes. This is not true. Morton conducted his tests with integrity, and only one error was found which actually benefited the measurements of a non-Caucasian group (Kevin McDonald, "Culture of Critique", 36). General intelligence is not a "statistical artifact" as Gould wants to promote.

Gould or any other scientist who wants to take Darwin out of biological sciences should be viewed with extreme skepticism


Too popular to bother trying anymore.
	J.K. Rowling successfully put me off this book series within the first two chapters of this book.  The characters personalities were wavering in book 5, in this they completely vanished or mutated.  I'll only be getting the 7th one because it's the last one and I've read this far so I might as well go the whole way.

In books one through four the trio of Harry, Ron, and Hermione were loveable characters tenaciously and cleverly seeking out the answers to the mysteries that came up each year and saving the day.  Book 5 had them doing more angsting and screaming than mystery solving, and more whining than day saving. Book 6 made them stand in paper doll doing a bad job miming the motions the real characters would have done.

This book Harry seemed to care more about romance.  A very poorly done romance littered with cheezy phrases and romantic moments on par with the worst of bad fanfiction; which had no background or build up from previous books.  A female character from the background, whom Harry barely even notices all through the past five books, is suddenly the most perfect and beautiful girl in the school in mary-sue fashion.  Several other characters in both the foreground and background were also unfortunately treated to Rowlings amature attempts at romance, none of which bore any revelance to plot or story.

Harry also had a significant decline in morality and intelligence.  The clever boy who put clues together with his friends now cheats in one of his classes and makes one stupid mistake after another.  The image of Harry that stuck with me and seemed to glare off the pages every time he spoke or did anything was of him lying, frozen in a curled position on the floor of the train with blood coming out of his broken nose, under his invisibility cloak and rolling around with the trains motion after a particularly stupid episode with Malfoy.

As to the general plot of the book.  Poorly done.  Continually backstaged by sickeningly done romance and angst it barely made an impression on me.  Most of the 'revealations' in the book revealed nothing not already known or obvious from old information, and the culmination of what Harry was not-quite-solving didn't amount to anything.

My final opinion: Don't bother to read past book 4 if you're just starting the series and care anything at all about characterization.  A very disappointing book


Not worth it
	This was the first book by Daniel Steel that I laid my hands on....Really could not make out how she strikes the chord with the readers. There are so many open ends in the story...chartacters are not distinctly outlined...Tremendous scope of improvement on the story is there


Confusing on audio
	Woolf's style of writing (changing between several characters' thoughts) causes difficulty for one to follow this novel on audio. The paperback proved to be easier for me.


Sad Sorry Snoozer
	This book is not what I thought I bought.  I was expecting information useful to left handers.  Instead I found out why society belives left-handers are evil and research on how left handers are formed.  I  enjoyed reading the encylopedia more than this book.  By the way, it was  written by a right-handed person


Borrrrrrrrrring
	When I picked up True Believer, I was anticipating a good mystery as well as the chance to empathize with sensitively drawn characters.  Neither panned out.  This book is boring.  The characters are one-dimensional and there is no mystery.  Too much detail and not enough substance.  Not sure what the point of the story was as I didn't get it


Ouch!  Worse than Most Paperback Romances
	This book proves once again, that you don't necessarily have to be a good writer to make lots of cash and sell huge quantities of books to the mass market.  "True Believer" is an all-star team of cheap, shallow cliches.  There is no plot.  No one really believes anything, and everything is a contrived, superficial mish-mash.  The dialoge has no depth, and when you've had too much dialoge, there's paragraph after paragraph of the main characters, "thinking" to themselves.  Wow, is this bad.  "Message in a Bottle" was a great plot idea, but its been a slow, steady descent since then.  You might have a good laugh at it like I did, but otherwise I was very disappointed.


where's the spark?
	I have 50 pages to go and I can't wait to finish this boring waste of time. Very predictable, sappy, sweet and quite meaningless.  I give it a minus 1


There is no number, only a lot of assumptions and risks
	"The number" poses an interesting question but provides no helpful answers. A four percent draw on invested assets is as much an old wives' tale as a piece of scientific wisdom, even if it is a number. Eisenberg's number is the inverse of that draw down, or twenty-five times.... well, there's the rub, twenty-five times what? income? expenses? income less savings? projected discretionary spending? Post-mortgage payoff and college tuition expenses? The proverbial bottom line is clouded by conversations with an eclectic collection of consultants, experts, philosophers, and casual acquaintances. Eisenberg, a former Esquire editor and short-timer with Lands End, ruminates about a simple question: How much money do you need to feel secure? The problem is that security comes in multiple forms: happiness, comfort, excess consumption, ego. And the accuracy and stability of those measures and outcomes is compounded by key assumptions about how long you will live and how healthy those years will be. Constructing a one-year budget is hard enough. Constructing a thirty-year budget is nearly impossible.

Eisenberg doesn't help his case by the offbeat and idiosyncratic examples and profiles he chooses. Doctors, divorcees, `downshifters', and very little real data shed little light on the real issues. Maybe I knew too much going in. Maybe I expected too much from a few positive references from other sources. In the middle I was confused. By the end I was simply disappointed. And I have my own number, and it changes every day


Worst Advice Book in History
	This is, without question, the WORST book ever written on one's financial life.  To begin with, it's useless: ZERO information, ZERO new analysis of old information, ZERO advice, ZERO interesting anecdotes.  Additionally, it's rambling--meandering from summaries of old data, to poorly written schmaltzy 'new age' feel-good blathering.  What exactly is this guy's point?   No way to tell.
Seriously, this book is SO BAD that all the people who allowed their names to be associated with blurbs on the cover have, in my opinion, lost all remaining credibility.
What a waste of my $16 and 4 hours.
I want my money and time back.