Datasets:

katossky

/

multi-domain-sentiment-books

like 0

I enjoy reading sports fiction with my 10 year old son. The descriptions of this book suggested it addressed important themes which transcended basketball. However, as I read the book, I found the treatment of those themes quite superficial. In addition the book was bawdy. While it may accurately reflect locker room mentality, many readers may not find that mentality entertaining. It is not an appropriate book for children

The characters are uninteresting and 2-dimensional, the dialog hackneyed. I have no idea why it's on the New York Times Bestseller list. It was more of an obligation for me to finish this book than anything else. Don't waste your money

A 600+ pages tour of Flash MX buttons and menus... with just a couple ridiculously elementary "tutorials" thrown in. Makes me think of somone who had to write a flash book and has never done anything with it but figure out how the user interface works. You won't find anything useful in here, that is about CREATING something with Flash. As for me I am never gonna buy a book from this author again, and I am probably also ditching the whole "savvy" line as well.

The photo presented here is a bit too bright and the faces are not that orange in this paperback edition's cover. However you can get a feel for the checked floor and how after opening the pages of The Doorbell Rang you get an eye sore with the blue checkered tablecloth in the kitchen with the blue stove and red appliances. The mother and daughter are both redheads and there is a black cat that hangs around during the story that takes place in the kitchen. With just twenty pages my seven-year old breezed through the book in six minutes. The favorite character in the book according to my son is the cat and watching where he was throughout the story. The Doorbell Rang begins with a Mother placing a plate of cookies on the kitchen table for her son Sam and daughter Victoria. " I've made some cookies for tea, said Ma". The children each took six cookies comparing the look and smell of these cookies to Grandma's. By flipping through the pages of the Doorbell Rang it looks like the kitchen table got bigger, but upon further inspection the same number of chairs are there, but more kids around the table and fighting over the seats. The cat is making his way around the kids to receive pats on the head and attention. More kids arrived bringing a bicycle and a doll carriage and the table shows each kid with one cookie. It is hard to tell if the cookies are on white plates or that is just part of the checkered tablecloth. The serving plate is clearly empty at this point and all the kids turn to see the latest bell ringer. Meanwhile over at the stove the steam is continuing but at a larger pace and it looks like fresh water now in the orange pail. The final arrival for this story is Grandma, with a large cookie sheet type tray carrying freshly baked chocolate chip cookies. All the kids leave the table to greet her and the cat ends up alone on the kitchen table. Not very sanitary as far as I am concerned and my son noticed no napkins or drinks at the table. The dirty floor was bothering him as well and he wondered why the kids never took their shoes off for that is something we all do upon entering our home. The portrayal of the Mother and how the stove was not being attended and having the cat on the table bothered me. The kids not stopping to wipe their feet or hanging up their own belongings and no one washing their hands before having a cookie and who knows how many times the kids each touched one of them. At least the kids were dressed nice and the bucket of water never spilled and the Mother finally sat down. For a new reader this might be a fun read but for more than one read I highly doubt there would be interest. There is a lot of repetition with the arrival of new kids and then the sharing of the cookies while comparing them to each child's Grandma's cookies. There are roughly two to four sentences on each page. The good news is that my son did not ask for any cookies after reading this

I was expecting new and interesting ideas from this book, but was disappointed. If you truly have no idea how to find a sales baseline for your business or don't know how to track trends, this book is for you. If you are like me (you know the basics but were trying to find a more thorough approach), I wouldn't buy the book

Less a view from afar or broad exposure of solitude from the human condition, this book more aptly excerpts the author's personal conflicts with human relationships.....a one-on-one wrestling match with the Self with no spectators and no judges. The book is a good read for academic analysis, but not so fun for venturist philosophy

In his recently published history, The Whiskey Rebellion, William Hogeland attempts create a revisionist history of the late eighteenth century Whiskey Rebellion in Western Pennsylvania. What Hogeland accomplishes is less history and more diatribe in the vein of Howard Zinn. He has an axe to grind, and by the end Alexander Hamilton is the devil incarnate, and those who openly contemplated secession and committed acts of violence against property and people were just trying to bring the American Revolution to its necessary conclusion. The accusation that Hogeland comes back to again and again is that Hamilton incited the rebellion. The argument is that because Hamilton's patently unfair whiskey tax was the impetus behind the frontiersmen's resistance, and his unreasonableness in enforcing the tax and issuing writs for the arrest of those who refused to pay the tax caused the rebellion. The problem with Hogeland's argument is his scholarship, or lack there of. He almost never offers a direct quote, especially when accusing Hamilton of malfeasance. Instead, Hogeland offers his summary of primary documents with nary a footnote. The reader is expected to accept on faith the author's interpretation at face value with no way to check the facts except a ridiculously useless bibliographic essay at the end. Not all of this is Hogeland's fault. The new trend in historical works intended for the popular market eschews scholarly footnoting, opting instead for endnotes that provide little more than an opportunity to name drop. Even Doris Kearns Goodwin, a legitimate scholar, is guilty of the succumbing to this new endnote craze. Ultimately, this is the main problem with William Hogeland: he is not a scholar. He is a magazine writer with an agenda, and no scholarly background to legitimize his preposterous conclusions. To read some radical agenda into the actions of the Pennsylvania farmers is the very worst revisionist history, because there is no basis in reality.

Grisham's worst book by far. 90% of the story is preaching to the reader that homeless people just have bad luck and are good guys. It would be ok if that was woven into a good story, but it is not. For great Grisham read The Firm and The Partner. For very good, read Runaway Jury and Pelican Brief. All of these are page turners. Street Lawyer is a stomache turner. Really bad. What happened

I was intrigued by his "The End of History." I thought his "Trust" was a brilliant book and used it extensively in my masters thesis and doctoral dissertation. I only hope this latest book is a disruption in an ongoing chain of good books. In the end, "The Great Disruption" is a down right silly book. It has a lot of usefull data but Fukuyama's humanistic ideology clouds it all. All his empirical data and any real understanding of history undermine his polly-anna conclusion: that things just have to get better because people are ultimately good. Fukuyama proves that the moral consensus -- the social capital -- of the earlier era has been wiped away. That crime has sky-rocketed and that the apparent drops in recent crime rates are only the result of high incarceration rates and lower percentages of younger men. Then he turns around and wants us to believe that disfunctional behaviour has dropped because people are naturally gregarious and have a natural inclination to rebuild social capital. He doesn't bother to deal with societies -- like Ethiopia -- that have never been able to build up enough social capital. He doesn't really look any further back in history past about 1950. His generalizations about the 19th century merely show how little he has taken into account the big picture of history. He thinks (based on his ideology of human goodness) that things just have to get better. If he had studied Pitirim Sorokin for a really big picture of history, he would know better. People can come to a similar optimistic conclusion as does Fukuyama but they will need to be much better grounded in history if they are going to make generalizations about long-term historical cycles. For that, I would recommend Robert W. Fogel's "The Fourth Great Awakening and the Future of Egalitarianism." Fogel, a Nobel prize winner, has all the optimism of Fukuyama but with the history to back it up

I'm an electrical engineer and in the Telecomm buisness. I've read a lot of books on communications and this has to be one of the worst, luckily I didn't pay for it. The writing is poor and it doesn't commuicate ideas clearly. There is better books out there on the exact same subject

I am a fan of Tanya Huff and the series of books with HEnry and Victoria. But this one is not it. While Henry is there he is such a minor character. The main character is Tony Foster a homosexual street kid who tanya should have left on the street. I was totally bored and read the book through because I was hoping it would get better, then i was happy when it was over. The plot idea was great, but it was not developed well and left me wanting for something more. I was expecting Henry to be a major player like he was with Victoria, but no, he is relegated to Tony's homosexual vampire lover who helps Tony out. Disappointing. Dull. I won't read the rest of this series, The Tony Foster series. Hey, Tanya, how about a series of Henry Fitzroy, I would read that

Seems amidst the turbulence and brouhaha of that James Frey fiasco, anybody who now pens their auto-bios have to first be as famous and beloved as Billy Crystal. But then they can only put out the cotton-candy Coney Island fluff as '700 Sundays' is. Granted, the book is based on Crystal's highly-praised Tony Award winning theatrical performance about time with his father and relatives when growing up during the 50s et al. But it's nothing more than an appetizer to fill in and/or tide one over during the day and night Kaddish. Yet in ripping a page out of Billy's book, it's not hard to imagine how that rapid-fire exchange between him and his agent went. It probably went something like: "Hey, bubby, how about writing a book talking about your 700 Sundays with your pop?" "Well, I'm not a writer per se. I just jot down a few notes here and there, and then go out and perform the material on stage." "So here's a few blank pages of paper; write down what you have." "It'll only be 45 maybe 50 pages at most; and it sounds and looks much better than it reads." "Don't worry, bubby, I know people who know people who...you get the idea...at the publishers. Here's their recipe: They'll take your 50 wholesale pages and spread `em out across 180 retail pages. 'How?' may you ask! Well, they'll cut `em in half, then cut `em in half again. And using big ink letters so even grandmas can read it without their glasses; surround it by a whole lot of white space; toss in some pictures at different angles from your family album -- Slap it all together between two hardcovers...It'll be just fine." "Yes, but..." "Don't worry. Consider it like a vintage bottle of Mogen David 20/20 wine, aged a few months before it makes it to the shelves of your favorite corner liquor store hangout. In this case, the local bookstores. Oh, and make sure you give `em just enough to whet their taste buds; leave `em wanting more and thirsty for more. People'll drink it up." "Yes, but..." "Don't worry, Face. Everybody loves ya. Just toss in a few tidbits from your routines about Satchmo and Mantle, you'll be all right. Don't forget now, we've got the sequels all lined up for ya too. Y'know `700 Mondays;' then `700 Tuesdays' and so on. Yes'sir, I can see it all now: We've got the lock on all those 700 days of the week shtick. Oh, and we'll do some holiday editions too, starting with `700 Hanukkahs!' "You're still friends with that kid, Adam Sandler, back from your SNL days, aren't ya?! Yes, so we'll get you and him together to come up with new lyrics to that Hanukkah song of his. It'll be a great collaboration. It's good to pass down the ladder to them other kids climbing up once you've made it. Y'know God blesses and doesn't forget those things by them who do. Yes, ok, so we'll go ahead from there and do `700 Passovers!' "And it'll be an annual event too, dont'cha know. Just think, when people see Chuck Heston...may God keep a special place in heaven for him...when people see Chuck Heston and The Ten Commandments, they'll be thinking about you too, Billy. Yes'sir, we'll have em crying and laughing every year on Passover, you'll see. "Oh, and holy of holies, out of the deal we'll get `700 Yom Kippurs!' You'll see. But this will be only for our people, Billy, you understand. So you might have to dig deep to get material for it. But that's what authors do, they dig deep. But you already knew that, right? Can you dig it, man? I knew that you could. "Yes, but..." "Don't worry, Face, everybody loves ya! Your books don't have to be earth-shattering or thought-provoking or anything like that. But hey listen, with a book deal, a books-on-tape deal, and who knows even a movie deal, we'll turn your little leaden bits into golden nuggets. Mark my words we will. "And say, since you haven't had a hit movie in awhile...no offense...we're going to get Martin Scorsese to produce and direct your life story. Yes, it'll be something like 'Pinch Me I'm Still Jewish: The Billy Crystal Story' in widescreen and all that jazz. It's what everybody in Hollywood's doing right now. Yeah, no use waiting until your dying or dead already, Billy - God forbid. No, siree, bubby!! "So Scorsese will do the movie on the cheap, because God knows the man deserves an Oscar already. You know it, I know it, we all know it, Billy. And not just an honorary or lifetime achievement either, but the really big one, see! And just imagine, wouldn't it be something if you were hosting the awards ceremony and handed Marty his own Oscar?! Yes, well, we can schmooze on about all this stuff later. "But for now, with the books and everything, you'll be a one-man franchise, yes you will! You'll be on the New York Times Best Seller List from now until forever! It'll be great!!" "Yes, but..." "Oh and well, I didn't want to say anything just yet, but, okay, here goes: There might be plans to expand everything too! Listen, bubby, I know somebody who knows somebody who...you get the idea...over at the networks. "We can do a little Chris Rock in the neighborhood sort of thing. We'll put a kid who looks and acts like you - about as tall as you - into the neighborhood that you and your family lived in, see. "And it's going to be a period piece too! We'll introduce all the new kids to the stars of yesteryear -- y'know, Cantor, Jolson, Jessel, Durante! Throw in some goniffs and shiksas that the cast can work off of every week -- It'll be fun! "Chris Rock is great. But you can be greater too. Listen, Face, we'll make it a celebration. Something like 'Growing up Mazel Tov!' Maybe we get 700 shows out of it. Maybe less, maybe more, but people will still love it anyway. You'll see!" "Yes, but, well, I'm not really a writer/author. I'm an entertainer, so why would I want to do any of this?" "We could make a couple of dollars!" "Okay. I'm in!" And so it went and so it goes. Final analysis: A So Not Looking Mahvelous, Better Luck Next Time, With All Due Respect, Sadly Not Recommended Book.

Am I the only one who didn't get a complete book? At first I noticed there was some poor editing - lots of typos. But then after page 180, where page 181 should be (Sleep chapter), it goes back to page 117 (Discipline chapter that I already read). It continues to repeat pages 117 to 180 (a whole 63 pages duplicated!), then picks up again on page 245 in the middle of the School Days chapter that I don't have the beginning of. I'm completely missing pages 181-245 (67 pages). Other than that, good for a few laughs and a handful of ideas

I didn't know why I chose to read this book. Anyway, it was disappointing, really. The book was slow, and it was too long for a story of its type. I mean, I think the book could go on without some of the parts. When I was reading it, I only thought of putting it down because it's making me go crazy. I thought the plot was shallow, but Taylor's self-conflict was even shallower. He kept on blaming himself about his father's death well then it's really his fault! He was a coward. If you don't believe me, go on and read about it... although you might get bored getting to that part because it's towards the end. And I hated it when this stupid conflict got in the way with his relationship with Denise. He was acting really immature! He should have at least thought about Denise but he was too selfish. It really sucked. And yes, I know that this is supposed to be a romance novel... but I kept on looking for that love factor althroughout the book. And what did I find? NOTHING. Oh, what a waste. It's like Sparks tried very hard to make the situations in the story seem romantic but as a reader, it didn't really capture the whole essence of what romantic situations should be like. If it hadn't been for my HRR (Home Reading Report) I wouldn't have finished reading this at all. I guess I'm saying this because I'm not into this genre. Love stories are fine but this one... nah

I enjoy reading books of trivia and fun facts, but I didn't even make it through the first chapter before I put this book down in disgust. Almost every entry had to do with sex or male endowments. As I was flipping through the book, I found x-rated pictures and drawings that I would hate to have to explain to my children if they were to pick up this book. I never would have bought this book if I had seen it in a bookstore, and I regret throwing it in the trash before I could see if I could get my money back

I loved the earlier Nevada Barr mysteries, with their depiction of national parks and natural dangers. I wasn't as happy with some of her latest efforts, but still hadn't given up on her. Now I'm not so sure. This latest novel started off well enough although the idea of two severely traumatized girls should have been a clue as to what would follow. The idea that they were from a polygamous Mormon sect was a red herring. Perhaps it was Barr's attempt to show us how these girls were abused even before they met evil incarnate. The scenes where Anna realizes who the real villian is and her interaction with him and the poor tortured third traumatized girl went on for over 60 pages. Each scene was more disturbing the one before it. I found myself skimming the pages and still am not sure how she resolved all the loose ends. But I have absolutely no desire to re-read the end of the book and find out. I wish I could say that I would read another Nevada Barr novel because I so thoroughly enjoyed the first ones. But after reading this disturbing, somewhat convoluted story, I would think twice. If I did pick up another Anna Pigeon novel, I'd make sure I had something else to read if the story took another dark turn. I would certainly not stick with it to the end.

The paper version is a real touchstone for the practice of all manner of applied mathematics. The CD-ROM version belongs in the discount bin. Here is why: 1) The CD-ROM is edition 5; but edition 6 has been out for 4 years. 2) The DynaText software, which is needed to read/browse/search the book, is showing signs of age. It works fine on the computers of a decade ago but not necessarily on the machines of today. See the review of J.F.Groote. The product is advertised as working on Macs but will not work on most Macs. Specifically, it does not seem to work on either G4 or G5 hardware with OS X, even under the so-called "Classic" mode. I believe that the problem is that the browser is shipped as an executable that requires a specific architecture. It is usable under Windows, but you might need to use one of the backwards-compatibility options to run the installer. It will not apparently run under any form of Linux, the most recent (and rapidly becoming the most popular) transmogrification of Unix. Again, DynaText is put on the CD-ROM as a binary executable; if you are not using SunOS 4 or 5, Solaris or SGI IRIX 5.2 then you can not use this product

The joke here is that Krugman is convinced he can write. He ends his little intro with the smug assertion that "maybe economists can write after all," offering himself as proof. (Krugman cannot write well, but he has mastered the clumsy, undistinguished style of a bad lit professor---the kind of tenured mediocrity that dominates academic publishing---an accomplishment he's very proud of. To use his own favorite "emphasizing" gimmick: Krugman stinks---full stop.) The punchline is that shortly afterward, The New York Times hired him. It was a match made in middlebrow heaven. (I should add that I do like the substance of Krugman's newspaper articles, if not the style. An enemy of the current White House is a friend of mine.) As far as the economics go, he's pro-NAFTA and pro-"free trade" just like all establishment economists, and completely unwilling to critique the real forces at work in international markets. Don't waste your time

I seem to be in the minority, but I did not enjoy this book at all. The main character is, of course, the "only female to ever survive becoming a werewolf" but this was only the start of her amazing speshulness. I felt the plot got swallowed up by the author's need to self-insert and 'play' in her world, and the only reason I finished this book was that I was on a plane and had nothing else to do. The plot fishtails several times, and isn't all that interesting to start with. In short, I was left with a bad taste in my mouth concerning the author in general, and will likely skip her books in the future

This is a decent book on photographing artwork -- but not the the most comprehensive. The strengths of this book are that Mr. Saddington (1) discusses the use digital media, and (2) makes the process of photographing artwork very user-friendly by providing great visual references throughout. The user-friendly aspect is the book's strongest selling point, especially for artists who are new or novices at photography, or visually oriented (i.e., no patience for reading instructions that come with few or no pictures). Mr. Saddington's book provides pictures of what makes a bad negative exposure/photograph, and provides a concise explanation for these results, and does the same for an example of a good negative exposure/photograph. He also provides illustrations of setting up equipment and artwork for photographing. The weakness of this book lies in the general details provided ... unfortunately, Mr. Saddington provides a limited amount of helpful hints and leaves out specific details for for problem shooting ... I base this opinion on my comparison of this book with a book called "Photographing Your Artwork" by Russell Hart. If you buy Mr. Saddington's book, I'd recommend supplementing it with the purchase of Mr. Hart's book. The two books complement each other. Where Mr. Saddington's book lacks in details, Mr. Hart's book fills in the information gaps. On the other hand, Mr. Hart's book is very text heavy and has very few illustrations ... so if you're a visually-oriented person, Mr. Saddington's book would easily compensate in the area of illustrating this very important process. Again, Mr. Saddington's book is decent, but it should be used as a supplemental reference, especially for the visually-oriented person

I agree with the above comments...all one sees is a black cover. The book looks/sounds interesting, but there is no table of contents or example of what is inside the book. This book needs to present more information if you expect one to buy

I have been a fan of Sue Henry since her first Jessie Arnold mystery. I was looking forward to reading her lastest adventure, but was very disappointed in this outing. The characters were one-dimensional. After discovering who the "bad guys" were I needed to reread part of the book for clarification. Sue Henry has a very annoying habit of foreshadowing at the end of many of her chapters. "...they hadn't a notion just how decidedly things could - and would - change in the next few hours." Even the relationship between Alex and Jessie seemed stilted. I realize it is difficult to create plausible mysteries for a civilian like musher Jessie Arnold, but this book tried too hard and accomplished too little

I read this book on a suggestion from a friend, before I read "Reviving Ophelia", because she wanted to see if I would be as dissapointed with it as she was. I was more so. While there are some outstanding essays in this collection, the bias of the editor clearly stands out. There is no one for the outcasts to relate to. There was no musician, nor was there anyone that dealt with an alternative religion. There were no essays from people who had a different relationship with their parents than she had. The sections are poorly named and divided. All in all, it is an unworthy book to be associated with the original. Some girls it may "make feel less alone", but for me it only accentuated the differences. Definately take out from the library before you buy it

I thought it was me until I read several other reviews of Predator. Ms. Cornwell can do so much better than this disjointed mess. If she's going to continue the Scarpetta series, she needs to get back on track, creating characters that we care about. I finished this book as quickly as possible just to get it behind me. What a disappointment

This breviary is disappointing to Traditional Catholics! Novus Ordo Catholics will be right at home with this but if you are a Traditional Orthodox Catholic who favors the Roman Rite and who has been traumatized by the profanations inflicted by iconaclastic innovations, this is the same ole same ole Vatican II "stuff."

Mark Twain once said that (and I paraphrase)the definition of a classic is something that everyone wants to have read and no one wants to read. That is my experience with this book. For some reason, A Tale of Two Cities never made it onto any of my high school reading lists, and I figured it was one of those books I should have under my belt. So I picked it up. What a slog! A book that might have been fascinating due to its French Revolution subject matter was a mass of rambling descriptions and melodrama. We were supposed to shed tears for Sidney Carton, a character who you barely get to know, and root for Lucie Manette...the highly unrealistic paragon of unspoiled goodness. The only thing I liked about this book was how Madame Defarge knitted a list of people on which she planned to take revenge. An admittedly cool concept. Maybe this book speaks to another era, maybe it's past its prime, maybe I don't have the required literary sensibilities, or maybe I couldn't relate, but A Tale of Two Cities bored me to tears.

I am a GIGANTIC James Brown fan, I have 100 albums, 130 singles, I've met him 5 times, seen him live over 100 times since 1971, had lunch with him in NYC, and I am the 'Paul' in the JB section of Gerri Hirshey's nice history of soul music NOWHERE TO RUN, but if this book was written by James Brown or if he even had much to tell the writer, I'll eat my refrigerator. It is so full of errors that it is laughable. One of the most glaring errors was when Mr. Brown 'supposedly' said, "SAY IT LOUD was where funk started" or something to that effect. That is so ridiculous. James Brown would NEVER say such a thing! Any student of funk knows that COLD SWEAT was the quintessentional funk piece and it is not even mentioned in the book!!! The style of Mr. Brown's sentences that are attributed to him sound NOTHING like him. I have no idea why this was put out. The other 'autobiography' written over a decade ago was more relevent and much better written, THE GODFATHER OF SOUL by JB and Bruce Tucker. Someone, (Alan Leeds?) needs to write a 600 page comprehensive biography of Mr. Brown with much more detail.

I lived in France. I know plenty of fat French women. And French women who drink hard liquor every day. And French women who drink coffee more than just in the morning. French women don't have the market on thinness by any means. People all over the world have guilt about eating and learn bad habits. The author starts out trying to be objective but her arrogance comes out loud and clear as the book goes on. And her dropping of French phrases here and there throughout the book are downright annoying. Nothing new in this book. Eat less, exercise more.

Dr. Hawkins first book, Power vs Force was interesting and presented a useful way to dowse using kinesiology. However, he began to venture into misapplication of this method, and has now gone off on a tangent where he seems to wish to delude himself into thinking he has developed a fool-proof way to judge the level of consciousness of any entity, concept, or construct and the truth or falsehood of any statement. There are serious logical, philosophical, and practical flaws in his work, and his attempt to quantify matters that aren't quantifiable leads to meaningless data that probably matches the bias & beliefs of those carrying out the muscle tests. This book is a good example to present to show how people can deceive themselves and misuse muscle testing and dowsing techniques. The actual technique is worthwhile, but much of what Hawkins presents in the book is utterly meaningless and invalid. The levels of awareness that can be tapped into with dowsing are wise enough to NOT let us ask just anything we wish to and be able to receive accurate, valid answers. Hawkins explores issues about media, politics, religion, spirituality, history, philosophies, healing arts, entertainment, and more, and reveals his own gross ignorance on many matters. He seems unaware that many of the people he trusts in politics and media are professional gangsters, liars, and two-faced sociopaths. He has a negative view of conspiracy theorists, many of whom are genuinely determined to find the truth and don't resort to Hawkins' misguided shortcut attempt to identify truth. Hawkins also fosters confusion with his description of his muscle test method, as it really has little to do with applied kinesiology, but is a form of dowsing where the muscle is directed to remain weak or strong in lieu of muscle response moving a pendulum or rod. I hope Hawkins gets to reconsider his current efforts...consciousness and spiritual research are vital endeavors and there are others doing useful, responsible work in those areas. For now I'd encourage Hawkins to recognize that 911 was in part an inside job, many conservative politicians and pundits are corrupt frauds, and the overall maturity of consciousness in America is not greater than the rest of the world

This book is poorly written and even more poorly edited. The back cover states ... "every subject is given background and basic exercises to allow beginners to figure it out." It is a great statement, but it is unfortunately not true. Page 6: "So what formats can a script be saved as? There are three main kinds of script files: regular compiled script, which is the native AppleScript file format, and scripts saved as plain text or as applications. On top of that, OS X added a new option for saving compiled scripts and script applications called "bundle." Bundles are folders that appear and behave as files. You can read about them in Chapter 23." - I guess bundle is not a "main" format? Why is there a distinction between main formats and, for lack of a better term, minor formats? I have no idea. Page 35: "Every class has a super class." Page 40: "We saw that objects belong to classes, and classes may have subclasses and super classes." - Which sentence is correct? Page 43: "When you work with an application that doesn't support the whose clause, you have to settle for slower, clumsier repeat loops." - Repeat loops are not explained earlier in the book. There is no reference on this page to the repeat loops that are explained extensively in Chapter 11, pages 321-343. I wanted to like this book, but I do not. I look forward to a revised first edition or new second edition of this book, because it does have potential to be great. However the next edition needs more polished writing and meticulous editing

I was interested in Dante's thoughts on hell, religion, and the afterlife as taught by the Catholic church at the time of its writing. What I got was a detailed political history of Medieval Italy. This book is great for the first few chapters, but then it becomes a repetitive saga. Synopsis of the each chapter of the Inferno: Go to next layer of hell; describe in 20 words or less the torture found there; make fun of some political opponents, Catholic church officials, and so forth; prepare for further descent. In my opinion, this book resides somewhere between the 21st and 22nd layers of hell. Canto three pretty much has it right.... 'Leave all hope, ye that enter

I forced myself to finish this book, though it was touch and go in several places, just so I could feel able to review it fairly. It seems I liked it even less than reviewer Ms. Trieste "CF", below, but I am in general agreement with her points. There are just so many things wrong with this book that even the grating "famous names" don't really stand out for me. Let's see, where to begin: the naive political ranting, the unspeakable dialogue, the corny love interest, the wholly implausible technology, the absurd coincidences, the distractingly disjointed structure, the proliferation of minor characters, the talky explanations of the detective's thought processes, the total incompetence and corruption of the police - I can't go on; it's hackneyed and poorly written, and that's all there is to it.

The author gives vague advice, the "calm down", "be objective" cliche advice. If you don't believe me, I'm literally quoting him. Although the author tries to make his book seem original, as you can read, it's not merely about imagining yourself in positive circumstances, but mixed with the generic advice I mentioned. This is not something revolutionary, this is rehash. Save your money and go imagine yourself in a positive situation, you don't need to read hundreds of pages to do it, or spend $ on what to imagine

Isn't it frustrating when a book spends a lot of time building up the problem-to which you say, "Yeah! yeah! That's me!" and then gives you no answer, or a weak one to which you say, "No duh!" I'm afraid this book is one of them. The title is misleading because you assume he will help you find the life you've only dreamed of, or at least point you in the right direction to get started! But I was left depressed after reading it because it basically says that God gives us desires that we can't have on earth so that we will long for Him and Heaven. I don't believe that's the abundant life Jesus promised. So I went to the Bible. (I should have gone there first!) I looked up every time it talks about desires and got my answer. "Delight yourself IN THE LORD and He WILL give you the desires of your heart!" Ps. 37:4 So I set out to seek Him. I started reading "Knowing God" by J.I. Packer and began to get answers to all my questions about desire! I hope you'll find them too-in Him

This book does cover alot of information not needed for CLEP, but it does give you a great guideline on who and what to study for clep and good examples on what questions will look like for the actual clep. I wanted to ensure I was prepared for the clep, so I purchased this book and disregarded the other 2 comments. Although, they were right about the obscurity, this book still taught me alot. You don't necessarily need it, but if you want to be prepared, this book will not hurt your bank account that much. I also recommend The Complete Itiots Guide to American Literature (5 stars, check out the reviews), and the Internet. That is all you need

I started reading this immediately after the last REH compilation and there could not be a greater difference in story telling. While REH was first and foremost a story teller, Pressfield uses one of the absolute worst devices in his recount of a grandson of his grandfather's remembering his conversations with a client who knew the famous Alcibiades. This, as previous reviewers have mentioned, creates a large gap between reader and story. But why do this? Why use such a crappy method of story telling? I guess it pads the book with unnecessary dialogue. All in all, it's a slow, uninspired, day dream story. So crappy that I felt it necessary to write this review echoing previous harsh reviews. I want my money back

I have read all twelve of these books and hoping there will be more. The language is pretty graphic but they are so funny you can usually ignore those words. These books can cause you embaesment, since I read where ever I have to sit and wait and you burst out laughing people do stare and wonder if you are losing it. Please we would all like to see more of these

How can a best-selling author like Simon Winchester take an event as exciting as the San Francisco Earthquake of 1906 and turn it into a tedious snooze-fest? One answer: write as if you had just discovered an adjective mine and were free to throw in extra descripitive terms on every line until listeners scream for an end to florid phrases. Another: strive to break the record for most clich?s in a single paragraph. Finally: write about events in 1906 as if no one but Simon Winchester had ever before thought about their consequences -- thus, everything in this tedious narrative becomes about Simon. Simon and the raccoons; Simon on the failing American economy; Simon attempting to reproduce American accents. This is a CD set for avoiding

As my brother said when flipping through this book, "If girls start acting like guys then what do we need them for?" Why should you pretend to be someone or something you're not to get a guy? If someone dumps you because you like mushy love songs, cry at sad movies, like babies and puppies, or because you have embarrassing girl products in your medicine cabinet, he isn't worth it anyway! And why on earth would you sleep with someone who didn't love you enough to want you around the next morning? "Think Like a Guy" doesn't guarantee you a perfect relationship anymore than The Rules or Stop Getting Dumped or Mars and Venus or any of the other ridiculous relationship books that have been popular over the last few years. Be yourself. If a man can't deal with that, then he isn't the right one for you

Two huge problems with this book. One, this self righteous club is leaving clues to a killer and "traveling and learning" when they already know his identity, so I guess he can keep on dismembering women until the psychiatrist figures it all out and then gets teary eyed over his new special wine glass. Two, the city of Los Angeles functions as a character in Kellerman's other novels and adds alot of realism to the novels. This thing drags on in some unnamed, nondescript city

The professionals in the law field in this book aren't the type of lawyer or law professional most people want to become. I understand not everyone becomes a six-figure-paid lawyer right out of law school, but this book is ridiculous. It shadows a guy who wants to only be a law clerk? Give me a break

This is one of the silliest books I have read for a long time. It could be categorised as belonging to the same genre of "action fantasy" as a number of Hollywood films. Examples of the rules of reality being abandoned: The action takes place in the middle of Antarctic winter, and the author even notes at one point how it's pitch dark outside, yet there are scenes on the ice that play out as if the characters could see each other. People spend minutes in freezing water, yet pop out none the worse for the wear. Two close allies of the United States attack a US installation on no better motivation than a claim that a "spaceship" has been found there, shouted once through the radio. A 12-year-old girl goes through hours of commando troops shooting at each other in a closed facility without getting hurt physically, nor, apparently, mentally. A prototype airplane that has been buried in ice for over ten years, but that works perfectly on the first attempt to fly it. The stupidity goes on and on, but that's perhaps enough to give a taste. There are perhaps people who do not care about any of this, but I don't enjoy books whose author doesn't have one bit of interest in any sort of realism

Is the main goal of EVERY male evo-psy writer to attack feminism? Here's an experiment for you: Juxtapose the ideas in this book and, say, Pinker's Blank Slate with those of,I don't know, ANY two female evo-psi writers and watch the incongruities jump off the pages. It's f%ing comical. But guess what? The females' books are way better thought out and accurate while the males' are a lot of wishful thinking. Hmmm....aging, successful man writes that lovely young lasses and aging, successful males are made for each other. That men are wired to treat sexually liberated women like s@&%, and to fawn over repressed,chastity obsessed airheads. Whatever

The product I ordered was not actually for sale! Don't post an product if you don't have it in stock

The only misstep so far in a wonderful series. I was so eager for the book, I got a copy of the British edition, before it got to the US. But I was disappointed. Somehow this just just doesn't get off the ground. Could Davis be tiring of Falco? It seems to me that she is. Maybe it's time to DO something, Lindsey! Make some real changes in tbe characters' situations or kill them off. Real dullness in the supporting cast and plot, and the main characters (besides Falso, who always has a life of his own) pall

I cannot believe this book had such a high number of positive reviews. I have read some bad books in my life but this one is one of the absolute worst!I am amazed that all the references to CHILD murder and rape can be overlooked by the rest of the reviewers

I ordered this book after reading the rave reviews and the who's who of public school using this format. Nowhere is it advertised or even mentioned that this is a Christian book, espousing Christian dogma and assumptions. I'm surprised this is acceptable for use by Government funded public schools. Furthermore, there is a lot of non-scientific rhetoric in the book that eschews logical debate and exposition. I'm very disappointed and consider this to be false advertising. Some of the parenting tips are common sense that I didn't think needed to be reiterated. A person already interested enough in buying a book would already have the basics down. I was looking for more than that. The advertising led me to believe that the book would be about language manipulation, how to speak more effectively with children to ease the learning process. There is false logic in some of the parental mistakes. An example is always attributing "hovering parents" to ego issues, that a parent "needs to be needed". Some hovering parents are survivors of abuse and can't see the lines between normal risks and when a child is in real danger. False assumptions leads to false conclusions. I gave this 2 stars with the thought that someone who is so out of the loop and a danger to their child may read this book-at least could adopt some common sense. But it isn't helping my family.

This book was so simplistic. I was quite disappointed. You get the impression his main goal was simply to reassure people that they are normal after all. A worthy goal, but when discussing something as complex as sexual fantasies I really think one should try to pursue things to their limit. He really held back from delving into any dark territory. His explanations for why someone enjoys certain things left out quite a bit. He always managed to put a happy, positive spin on everything, which is nice, but life isn't that simple

Book is totally disorganized. Beautiful pictures, but no way of researching values. The price list is in the back organized by lot no & auction no. NO reference to the illustration of the marbles in the front of the book, no way to look it up. Starts out promising, then becomes a total jumble. Totally impossible to locate anything. Too time consuming, and then still no resolve

If you have Kids or Grandkids, who think about politics & like "SF"; give them this book! It was One of the many Heinlein Works that helped ME grow up. It is the BEST & MOST IMPORTANT of his "for KIDS novels". I ment to give it 5 Stars!!!!

I have always been a prolific reader and rarely do I come across a book for which I can find no value, no redeeming qualities. But I must extend a hearty congratulations to Julia Barrett for writing the most astounding piece of horse excrement I have ever had the misfourtune to purchace. Teachiing my cat to walk repeatedly over my keyboard would produce a work of more sense. If you are like me and just have to read it - just because you're obsessed with Austen - Buy it used for 45 cents and then burn it

Though I am not a Vogue reader, I picked up this book out of curiosity to see what Anna W's splashes in the tabloids were all about. While the subject is only mildly interesting to me, the author's prose reads like a 300+ page deposition against Anna Wintour from everybody who had/has a major or minor gripe with her. It's a heavy and boring read. Gossip, if one can get over oneself and admit that it is entertaining, should remain light and diverting. In this book, it is difficult to garner much sympathy for the subject or its author, much less derive the slightest enjoyment from it. I was very happy to put it down. Perhaps this lackluster effort will compel someone else to attempt a better job. But then again, when that time comes, Anna Wintour may be have disappeared completely from public interest

I looked for an introduction to the basics of Office automation and bought this book. Every example code I tried was incorrect and the examples are just all trivial. Samples from the MSDN was just as good as this book. If you only need a rough overview what technologies are out there, this book is OK. But for any real programming it is not very useful.

I was very disapointed with this book. It's a large volume of just opinions. The profile is somewhat useful, about 20 pages of good stuff, but the rest could be trashed

As a follower of the Celebration story for many years, I was greatly disappointed by what I thought would be a new and interesting perspective on the model town. It was nothing of the sort. The book had the feel of so many pages of anti-Disney propaganda, and the repetitiveness of a bad serial. The authors of Celebration U.S.A. clearly made up their minds about Celebration long before signing off on a mortgage. Lacking in the detail needed to illustrate Celebration's experiment with the tenets of neotraditional style, the book offered splashes of cliched generalities such as "a return to the past" and "recapturing tradition." It soon became some sort of mantra exhorting Disney's ownership of the town, the rules imposed on property improvements and maintenance, and, interestingly, the attention the town received. Most tactless of all was the shadow of mockery cast on every description of residents, conversation with neighbors, and interaction with people doing what the authors SHOULD have been doing: giving the town a chance

Filled with bizarre generalizations, and the most pretentious phraseology I've seen in years, this book has the dubious honor of spotlighting all that has gone wrong in academic research in this country in the last 20 years. Jodi Dean shows an appalling lack of understanding of the workings of culture, history, politics, or even writing style. It seems she should have spent more time with Turabian's Manual for Writers, than surfing the web or watching Sienfeld

This book is the same as "Teach Yourself Origami" and "Origami, the Art of Paper-Folding", just with another cover to make you think it is new, also in the webside they describe it as a book of David Brill, it does not contain nothing of him, not even his name mention!?!? If you have no origami book, it could be good for you, other wise beware!!

I was raised in Virginia and never understood the details of the Battle of Yorktown. Now I see the big picture and how all the regional events in the glorious cause fit together. Immediately after finishing this book I returned to Yorktown with an entirely different understanding. I could relive the battle as if I had been there during the war. It was fascinating! I never learned this from history books. Male Age 60

How many times can you wear out the same story line. Kahlan lost, Kahlan found, Kahlan lost again, Kahlan found again. Or Richard lost, Richard found, ohp...Richard lost again, Richard found again. Goodkind has run out of ideas. He should put the Sword of Truth series down and move on to something fresh.

Definitely not one of his best! SLOW SLOW SLOW... But at least this character had some realistic difficulty learning a foreign language, unlike the hero of "The Partner" who learned a little known Spanish dialect perfectly by sitting in a hotel room listening to cassette tapes for 2 weeks

If you've read anything already about these techniques - writing it down, visualizing it, tithing - this book offers no additional insights. And despite his "Official Religious Disclaimer" at the beginning of the book, it is packed to the rafters with the author's own religious dogma. If you share the author's religious outlook you may like this book, but otherwise it makes for very tedious reading

The first novel of Laurell K. Hamilton's Merry Gentry series is not, actually, that terrible a book. It's by far the best in a not particularly great series, actually. What made it almost impossible for me to read is that the basic premise, the set-up, is one of the most grotesquely, ridiculously stupid things I've ever read. Princess Meredith NicEssus has fled Faerie, in fear of death at the hands of her aunt, Andais, the Queen of Air and Darkness and ruler of the Unseelie Court. High profile fae in this world are major public figures, like rock stars or the royal family of England. The sudden disappearance of one of the Unseelie royals is a very big deal indeed. Every news media in the world reports the story....and it never goes away. We are told solemnly that reports of Princess Meredith being spotted are right up there with Elvis sightings. Meredith's image, the story of her mysterious disappearance, is everywhere. I mean, neolithic pygmies living in deepest Africa know who Meredith is, and what she looks like. Meanwhile, Princess Meredith has disguised herself as a mortal private eye. Thing is, she hasn't disguised herself very much at all. Her supernaturally pale skin is now humanly pale skin. Her fae red hair is now human red hair. Her facial features remain the same. And with everyone on the planet wondering where is Princess Meredith, for years on end, no one recognizes her. Let me hasten to add, there is no magic involved in this, they honestly simply don't recognize her. And the crowning touch to this masterful disguise, the name chosen for her pseudonym to hide the fact she's actually Princess Meredith is....wait for it....Merry Gentry. Jesus wept. And for years, none of her co-workers, no one who knows her, says to themself, "Hey, wait a minute, that women who looks almost exactly like Princess Meredith....Merry Gentry....Princess Meredith....oh my God, Merry Gentry is Princess Meredith!" Nope, she's just incognito, baby. At which point I almost threw down the book and said, "You have GOT to be kidding me." It's absolutely amazing to me this made it through the editing process. Do Laurell Hamilton's editors do anything other than rubber stamp her writing? Given her past six or eight novels, including this one, I'm tempted to say: no, actually

This book is terribly organized. I'm not sure what happened in writing this book, but it seems clear that Professor Jones did not compile this in the chronological order that it is printed in. My main complaint is that rather obscure concepts/people/events are repeatedly referred to, and then only later does Jones bother to define them. (I would almost prefer that he not define something at all, rather than offering a definition 100 pages after his first reference to it!) The fact that the book has an index only further infuriated me - clearly the author/publisher knew where all these terms were located throughout the book, yet did not bother to offer a definition in the appropriate/first reference to the concept. Examples are numerous, but here are a few: **robe nobility: referenced on pages 139, 152, 183. Defined? (pg. 183) **sans culottes: first referenced on page 189, defined on page 231. **Louis-Sebastien Mercier: referenced on pages 11, 138, 178, 189, 200, 204, 212, 213. When did Jones provide information (that he was a "journalist, dramatist and observer of Parisian mores") on just WHO Mercier is? Page 215. Aside from that, there are some plain old errors. One such is in the text box on Saint Genevieve. Jones mentions that she negotiated with Frankish military chieftains in the 570s and 580s. She died in 512AD, so the negotiations seem improbable. (470s & 480s would be correct, but I should not have to figure that out.) The redeeming quality of the book is that if DOES offer information on Paris if you are willing to sift through the above mentioned annoyances. And Paris is not such a bad subject

Oh dear. This is another book like the horrible "Who Moved My Cheese?" that attempts to manipulate grown adults by treating them like children. Like the aforementioned "Who thinks my cheese stinks?" (or whatever it is called), I saw some people in the organisation where I work trying to sneakily weave it into the corporate culture and it lasted about five days. It's all about making work "FUN". Yep, work can be "FUN". Tell that to the folks who work in hospital waste disposal. Or maybe those who deal with animal cruelty cases. Of course, it's just great "FUN" to deal with children who have just had their parents killed, or folks who just lost their kids. Because that's what work is - "FUN" - or so this book would have you believe you can convince your workers. Of course in the examples I have listed above, it doesn't really work too well, because this is really about getting people in perceived lower-end occupations like factories or call-centres to believe their mind-numbing daily tasks can be "FUN". Myself, I do have some "FUN" at work, but probably like many people with more than one brain cell, it is based on having a laugh with my co-workers about the sheer absurdity of where our work life often takes us. You can call this cynicism, which is probably how it would be viewed by people who buy into this dumb "Fish"-style "WORK MUST BE FUN" philosophy. I'd call it black humour, but it keeps people sane and makes difficult work more bearable. As to the title of my review - this method of making the workplace "FUN" in a forced way is very useful if you have employees that you wish to isolate and marginalise. First immerse people in the cult-like atmosphere and tell them that they are now to regard work as "FUN". Second, let them know that they now "CHOOSE" their attitude - if they are unhappy in any way (regardless of them doing their work well or not), they are "LETTING THE TEAM DOWN" and not complying with the obligation to "MAKE WORK FUN". Third, while the majority of victims or workers, however you choose to view your prey, swallow the "WORK IS FUN" message and display the behaviour of sea lions clapping to get a mouthful of FISH, you can point to those who have shown a small streak of individual identity and are not HAVING FUN AT WORK and use the Enron-style message that they "just don't get it". In this way, the resistant individual can be said to be "incompatible with our mission and values", "bad for morale" or just "out of step". In this way, the "FUN-LOVING" workers, who have now taken on the costume of "FORCED FALSE FUN" can be set against them. Of course this will compound their unhappiness and isolate them further until they are totally marginalised and can be tossed on the scrapheap or forced to resign. This book is useful then, if you wish to convince idiots that their "WORK IS FUN". Just don't try it on a group of people with a brain between them who might take their work seriously. They might tell you to stick your "FISH" where the sun doesn't shine

Each story has a different author...however they all use the same verbage. Their either all friends or the same person. I do not like this book nor does my husband

I bought this book, the paperback version. The text is good, it describes all his letters and tries to do a lot of explanations too. However the prints of his paintings are not that impressive. They are very dark prints. Go for some other book if you want to see the corect colors of his paintings

Maybe I am not smart enough for this book, it certainly isn't for the novice!! I ended up more confused than educated

ANOTHER HYPROCRITICAL NUT. THESE CHRISTIAN FUNDAMENTALISTS LIKE ARE LITERALLY SCREAMING JESUS,WHILE CUTTING YOUR THROATS, NOT UNLIKE THE JIHADI FUNDAMENTALISTS. THE ONLY THING IS THEY CANT DO THAT NOW AS THEY USED TO COUPLE OF HUNDRED YEARS BACK BY ENSLAVING AND LYNCHING BLACKS,KILLING NATIVE AMERICANS,AND SHOWING THEIR CHRISTIAN LOVE FOR THE JEWS- BY EXTERMINATING THEM. HOPE OUR FUTURE GENERATIONS DONT HAVE TO LIVE IN A CHRISTIAN SAUDI ARABIA. THIS IS WHAT THESE WHACKOS ENVISION

It is fiction of course. It can not be otherwise for what it contends may happen is IMPOSSIBLE! Many reviewers are upset. Upset perhaps but they should not be worried. The Church is protected by Christ's promise that it will not err. Any person of faith sees this book as FICTION. It is a poor attempt to disguise Greely's left wing theology as fiction. The message to those liberals who find "hope" for their cause in this book: IT AIN'T GOING TO HAPPEN. Recommended reading: "Women Priests And Other Fantasies" Greely and his followers are delusional

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

If you like Redon for his vibrant color, look for another book. Dream symbolism and spirituality that inspired Redon's imagery are the main topics of this book. Most of the many examples are black and white drawings. However, the real magic of Redon is his use of color in his mature works. This was not adequately represented.

Flynn offers up a fast-paced, if unbelievable story. Unfortunately, character development is paper thin and clearly portrays Flynn's political preferences. Characters, like Rapp, with a military background are guided by clearly defined ethical principles, have all the answers and are always showing those good-for-nothing politicians how the "real world" works. Meanwhile, Flynn's politicians (the majority of whom are Democrats) seem only concerned with public opinion and the next election. While there are grains of truth in his characters, Flynn consistently goes for the cheap, partisan stereotype. I was looking for a well-developed political/military thriller. I'm still looking.

It was difficult to stay "tuned-in" to this book. A few good ideas, but nothing new or different. It is not a book that I would recommend, however, I might try to listen again -- just to see if I missed the point. I certainly would NOT give this book as a gift

Honestly, I thought the book was just plain boring and repetitive. The author's main point, although interesting, seems to me like it would fit into an essay. Also, the particular print of the book that I purchased, has a dog on the cover, I was very much expecting the book to center around dog behavior. Instead, I felt I little duped. Most insight into dog behavior came from previous third person experiments/theories or anedoctal accounts of "My Friend's dog Fido, one day did this..." I hardly think that what one dog did can be generalized to the whole dog population. I mean, the author doesn't even have a dog!! I suspect that I, who have had a lifelong history with dogs, have more first hand experience with dog behavior than the author. I don't recommend this book to all the dog lovers out there. Now, if your "thing" is cows.... Get this book!

This book gave me insight into German culture. It is no wonder there was a Holocaust with children's books like these. Max and Moritz are adventurous children and they are caught. Being caught isn't enough. They are ground in a flour mill for punishment. Not even that suits the miller. he feeds their remains to the ducks. It instantly reminded me of concentration camp victims being cremated and then turned into soap. This story will forever give nightmares

The unbelievable awfulness of the prose makes Dan Brown look like Borges in comparison. Naming characters "Guard One" just shows you don't even try to care. The plot is so hair-brained that just thinking about it gives me a headache -- I just learned, to my horror, that there are two sequels to this that turn the entire thing into a treatise on the end times. I'd have loved to see what a capable author could have done with the premise, but it's been ruined forever by... this. Somewhere, Baby Jesus is crying

While this book is a good reminder to high school students and their parents of the kinds of illiberal attitudes extant on many college campuses, I cannot recommend it to other readers. The author unfortunately perpetuates the right-wing-Republican-only stereotype believed by many outside evangelical Christianity. She battles as much for her political leanings away from gun control and in favor of all Bush administration policies as she does for the truth claims of the gospel. Indeed, in reading some of the chapters, it is difficult to see that she has any concept of a Christian worldview that might veer in any part from Republican platform positions. This is really too bad, because she makes many good points and appears to be courageous in her positions. I would not have begrudged her political point of view at all, had she made a clearer distinction between that and her theological position

If you are looking for a "feel good" book about baby boomer retirement, this book may have some value for you. But if you are looking for specific in-depth how-to, this book isn't the answer. Each segment-work, dreams, travel-is short and doesn't address many relevant issues. For example, regarding the work chapter, the author postulates that there will be a work shortage and companies will hire baby boomers to fill the gap. Well, that is speculative with globalism. Those jobs may be outsourced. Most are low paying. Many of my highly qualified friends are unable to find jobs despite retraining. Yes, there may be Wal-Mart jobs but is this your retirement dream? The work chapter sounds a lot like most "Do what you love" books. But doing what you love is often best as a hobby not to furnish needed income. These and other issues facing boomers who want meaningful work into their 70s are not addressed. I could pick apart other chapters in the same manner

In the name of science, you will try to prove with propagande; if you really want to decode how junk scientifics manipulate the world: go http://nomorefakenews.com and do not buy this junk BOOK

I have studied the tarot for nearly 5 years and keep an open mind whenever a new book appears on the market. Edain McCoy, who has written some wonderful New Age material, strikes an off-putting note in this one. The spreads are certainly imaginative and are perhaps insightful to her own method of tarot interpretation, but convey confusing and ambiguous directions to the reader who is trying to understand her card placements. In several of her spreads she conveys that a card's placement at a certain point in the spread "may or may not" mean some karmic element at play. The whole exercise of creating a spread is to pinpoint with a degree of accuracy the situation you wish to define. Therefore, when a card "may or may not" mean something, that interpretation could significantly change on whether you "may or may not" interpret it that way, leaving the interpreter open to rationalizing a card's meaning. Tarot cards are intuitive, not rational, and their meanings can best be intuited when their placement is clearly defined without ambiguity It is difficult to have it both ways and I found working with these spreads difficult. Imagine doing a Celtic Cross reading and the first position "may or may not" be the root of the issue. These spreads speak very clearly to the author, but not so to the reader. I rate it 2 stars for depth and insight into Karma and past lives, but the explanations are too ambiguous.

Normally I like the entire "female power" thing but frankly the "this is wrong" or "evil" part of that storyline is really old. In an era where girls do try out for and get placed on "boys" teams, these issues seem outdated. Likewise rules were recently changed in Indiana (not even slightly a liberal state) that says any pageant receiving state funds cannot discriminate on the basis of sex or gender. I know, this book is from 1999, but we are living in a conservative backlash politically and this is still happening, changes are happening. Overall I felt the book had a very negative view of the gender roles and did not do anything to suggest they should be different. Even the disempowered girl who creates the initial problems with her "magic" is empowered through a pageant and her cooking. How much more gender role enforcement can we have? Really, with a strong female lead, shouldn't a Buffy universe story do better than this? In general the feel of the relationships and lingo between the main characters was fine but not particularly outstanding

...if you're in the bathroom with time on your hands! I must admit that I did finish this book and was glad that the ordeal was over. Puzo (like Leon Uris) definitely lost the touch near the end of his career and this book is no exception. In just a few hundred pages, President Kennedy II is shown as a tyrant, a socialist, a reactionary, a humanitarian, a political bumbler, a visionary of USA utopia, a man who would kill a few thousand citizens to save himself from impeachment, a liar who can beat the ultimate lie detector, a dear and loving husband/father, etc....how many characters must one man be? And what's this odd sub-plot of a former-Mormon/Hollywood oddball who on a whim (in less than 10 seconds of consideration when the opportunity presents itself) decides to kill the president of the United States. Once again another character with fourteen different personalities!. Puzo even got his basic facts wrong about the Mormons (he should have stuck with the Catholic Church). I would hate to be washed up on a deserted island and find this book washed up on the shore next to me! I would go crazy reading it again

This book has too many errors. There is nothing more frustrating than to follow the steps outlined and find out it does not work because they did not Q&A the examples. ie. They ask you to select a field from the table, but the field does not exist. The stored procedure does not include it. You would have to know how to write SQL to correct this

This is one of the dullest chick lit derivatives of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood and their adventures, or misadventures. It is full of misery, poorly developed characters, and is so formulaic that I predicted the outcome after about 50 pages, at which point I could no longer stomach these ego-driven, falsely sweet dolts. Don't waste your money

Same ole same ole, just another way for her to make a buck. Shame

I was really looking forward to reading this book since I am both a brain researcher and a professional musician. First it was highly disorganized and rambled from subject to subject without any real framework. Much of what the author spoke of was not related to how the brain processes music but speaks to the way research is conducted. Even this was sparse at best. He attempted to explain the elements of music so that the majority of people could understand it. However it became too watered down and even lost me. Lastly the author was entirely too self congradulatory as to his own accomplishments. Pushing the envelope of science should be award enough. For these reasons I can not recommend this book

The text gets 5 stars for the orientation, organization, and the on-line resources for the text. It describes exactly what you would want in an Applied Corporate Finance course. Unfortunately, I have to deduct 3 stars because the text contains too many typos and smple calculations which I specifically want my students not to make. This has been frustrating for my students, as well as myself. However, I am confident that when this problem is cleaned up, the book will be among the best Applied Corporate Finance text in the market. I strongly recommend a new, corrected edition

Old fan as I am, this one (and quite a few of the later ones) was a huge disappointment. Badly written, obvious plot, even more cartoonish characters than usual. Time for Cussler to retire methinks....

A useful book that provides a good summary comparing differing Accounting Standards and approaches between countries. However, it is not worth the price. It is supposedly written for later year undergraduate and masters accounting students. It is more suitable for general second year accounting students. Plus, as I am working with a multinational European bank in Japan, the book is, rapidly becoming, out of date. There is none of the simply but incisive commentary which can be found in other books about the differences and outcomes of general accounting principals drawn from different countries

I have read Baldacci's first four novels and have immensely enjoyed all of them. This one, however, is just awful. Not only the character's dialogue but even the story itself is written like a really bad detective movie. The only thing I can think of to compare it to is this : There was a series of Calvin and Hobbes cartoons where Calvin imagines himself as a private detective and they are written like the old detective shows, with lame lines like "The gun was loaded, and so was I". That is exactly what this book is like, except it goes on for 400 pages. There isn't a single interesting character in this book, in my opinion. You just have to slog your way through the book to get to the end. It's the Bataan Death March of novels. I hope this is an aberration - I'll certainly give him another try since the first four novels that I read were so good. But one more stinker like this one and I'll drop his name from my reading list

This is for beginners, it's filled with useless forms, and it provides very little information beyond a common-sense and reasoned approach to real estate. Surely there must be better resources than this

I did not find this book very helpful when it came to identification. It did help with classification and mapping

If you think you'd find a lot of unrelated platitudes interesting, then you'll enjoy this book.

This book is for the diehard Dave Navarro fans only. The only reason I gave it 2 stars was that the use of instamatic photos in the book is creative. The text is nothing more than diary entries by the guitarist. Neil Straus approached writing The Dirt with Motley Crue is a much more creative way which kept me interested. This book falls short unless I would have been inclined to want to see things Dave's way. I grew restless of this pretty quickly

A very broad list of questions with high level answers. I wouldn't buy this book if I were looking for a deep framework to handle this topic

I do agree that books containing racist positions should not be given to children without a strong and fully aware comment. But I simply cannot stand to buy a sanitised version of a book without being aware of it. This is called censorship, and it gives me the creeps. As a parent, I have had enough real life opportunities to prove racism wrong to my children. So to realise that somebody has been cheating on me, trying to do my job so that I did not have to explain how society has evolved, how difficult it has been for minorities to be recognised and respected is just a fraud. this review is about the Harper collins Edition , edited by Patricia C. and Frederick L. McKissak, illustrated by Michael Hague

Never in my life have I been so outraged by what I have read as by the drivel spouted by Dr. West in this book (in his Translator's Note), and by the use of `unponderingly' and "the Thinkery" (among other things) in his translation of The Clouds. I also read his translation of Plato's Apology of Socrates, and found it grossly inferior to Jowett. Four Texts on Socrates is not a book to be tossed aside lightly: it should be hurled with great force. (Apologies to Dorothy Parker.) Not only are the translations themselves inexcusably inept, almost everything that he writes in his Translator's Note is wrong. The Clouds is a play, not a scientific or mathematical treatise. As such, it has characters and dialogue. A `modern' translation of a play must be something that could be presented on a stage and make sense to a `modern' audience. If a character is supposed to be bizarre or out of the ordinary, one does not make him spout drivel such as 'unponderingly'; one gives him a `shtick', which is a theatrical term. It's more or less a running gag associated with a particular character. You create, through clever ways of speaking or odd ways of stringing his words together, a characterization. He could be made to speak like a parody of William F. Buckley or the Star Wars character Yoda. As it stands, West's text cannot be presented as a play. It is neither necessary nor useful to coin such nonsense as 'unponderingly'; indeed, it is inexcusable. It conveys neither humor nor cleverness. It comes off simply as stupid. The translator of a play must know something about theatre and drawing characters, which Dr. West obviously does not. To state it bluntly: The translation of plays should be left to people who understand theatre and characterization, and who are creative. Dr. West doesn't have a creative bone in his body. In regard to his translation of Plato's The Apology of Socrates, the translation by Dr. West is both original and good, but the parts that are good are not original, and the parts that are original are not good. After all, when one has the work of such a brilliant predecessor as Benjamin Jowett to follow, the temptation to do something entirely different is strong. But it must be resisted. If Dr. West had merely lightly revised Jowett's great work, he would have made a contribution to learning. Alas, he did neither. The version by Jowett is clearly superior. Here is a short excerpt: "And I must beg of you to grant me a favor: If I defend myself in my accustomed manner, and you hear me using the words which I have been in the habit of using in the agora, at the tables of the money-changers, or anywhere else, I would ask you not to be surprised, and not to interrupt me on this account. For I am more than seventy years of age, and appearing now for the first time in a court of law, I am quite a stranger to the language of the place; and therefore I would have you regard me as if I were really a stranger, whom you would accuse if he spoke in his native tongue, and after the fashion of his country: Am I making an unfair request of you? Never mind the manner, which may or may not be good; but think only of the truth of my words, and give heed to that: let the speaker speak truly and the judge decide justly." Compare West's inept version: "...I do very much beg and beseech this of you: if you hear me speaking in my defense with the same speeches I am accustomed to speak both in the marketplace at the money-tables, where many of you have heard me, and elsewhere, do not wonder or make a disturbance because of this. For this is how it is: now is the first time I have come before a law court, at the age of seventy; hence I am simply foreign to the manner of speech here. So just as, if I really did happen to be a foreigner, you would surely sympathize with me if I spoke in the dialect and way in which I was raised, so also I do beg of you now (and it is just, at least, as it seems to me): leave aside the manner of my speech--for perhaps it may be worse, but perhaps better--and instead consider this very thing and apply your mind to this: whether the things I say are just or not. For this is the virtue of a judge, while that of an orator is to speak the truth." "Speaking...with the same speeches I am accustomed to speak"? How utterly inept and repetitive! Didn't he even proof-read? One doesn't speak with 'speeches', one speaks with words! It is obvious that Dr. West never read his version aloud as a test of its appropriateness, which is surprising, because this work is supposed to be a speech. Dr. West's version is clearly not suited to speaking aloud, whereas Jowett's is. In West's translation, Socrates is a clumsy, repetitive, and inept speaker. Needlessly so. If you want to read a good translation, see Jowett's 3rd edition (1892). Why does Dr. West believe himself qualified to make translations? Nothing in his work suggests that he is competent in any way to do so. This is not the work of a scholar, but that of a bungling hack. These translations are travesties. How does work this nauseatingly bad get published? NOT RECOMMENDE

Clearly the tens of millions of fouls who read this racist crap fail to see it for exactly what is; an endorsement of Ethnic cleansing. If the tables were turned and a Jew, or a Muslim wrote a series in which anyone who disagreed with Judaism, or Islam was BRUTALLY MURDERED than the same fundamentalists idiots who take such disgusting pleasure out of this garbage would go simply ape s**t. I do not know what is more pathetic the fact that there are actually fundamentalist Lunatics out there who write this truly unforgivable racist garbage, or the large number of dimwits out who eagerly wait to throw their money away on each installment of HATEFUL FILTH!!

This is where ordering a book through the internet is a little disappointing, as you can't browse the book before purchasing it. "Camping Activities for Kids" is very light on the "activities." It does a good job of laying out items that should be brought along on ones first camping trip, but falls short on suggesting outdoor activities for kids. The activities that are suggested are a little simplistic. For example, "laying sticks apart from one another and pretending it's a river, and then have the kids jump over it and playing golf with sticks and using pine cones as balls." I was hoping for more endepth activities. If it's your first time camping this books okay, but if you've camped for awhile and your kids are a little older the book falls short so look for something else

There's nothing unique about this text - all the topics & discussions have been well covered in other basic textbooks on Corporate Finance, Mergers etc.... The discussions lack depth. The whole concept of Corporate Strategy has been miscontrued by the authors.... The link between this and Financial Markets is very ambiguous & blur! FYI I'm a businessman & hold an MBA in Finance from an international university