Where are the flags? And sound effects?
	I remember hearing about this book by the great patriot Sean Hannity sometime in 2001, then it was a mere idea. From that time on, until August 20th 2002, I waited for what I thought would be the greatest book of all time. I remember seeing the cover art and hearing about the title: "Let Freedom Ring" with not just a picture of Sean Hannity on the cover, patriot that he is, but also a flag. I loved it, couldn't be more happy.

Well, the day of the book's release, I took a day off work (i've never missed a day of work before in my life), and rushed to get this book. It looked better than I ever imagined.

With the flag on the cover and the title of "Let Freedom Ring," I thought, finally, technology has caught up to our patriotism. I expected a book filled with flags, flags with sound effects. Maybe some firework sound effects.

Boy was I wrong. I opened the book only to the colors black and white. No red. No blue. No stars and stripes. I quickly turned the pages, looking, searching for flags. I found none, no sound effects either, no fireworks.

At that point, I went into a 4 year long depression. I nearly committed suicide at several points. It's only now that I can bring myself to review this man's book, patriot that he is.

I say this so you know what you're getting yourself into. There are no flags, no stars and stripes, no fireworks, no sound effects.

I have since recovered, but only because of old stars and stripes. I went back to teaching last year, not fully recovered, and my colleagues, knowing how much I love America and the STARS AND STRIPES, suggested I have my class do a research project: find the most patriotic book ever made.

The methodoloy was simple: A book made out of flags with flag pictures would score high, a book that was not made out of a flag or flags and had no pictures of flags would score the lowest.

We found some very good books and they did cheer me up. The one that was the most patriotic by far was a book called "President Jesus: How Jesus Wrote the Constitution, Freed the Slaves, and Won World War II." Its published by a small church in Texas. I was very proud of my students for finding it. It has brought countless joy to my life. Along with the book, made entirely out of a flag, with flag pictures, and written in blue and red ink, you get a giant flag. I'm not sure of the dimensions, but they had to haul it to my house in a moving truck. I've draped it over my house and it covers it completely. People even have to crawl under the flag to enter the house.

Now I often go outside and just gaze at old stars and stripes for hours at a time, smiling.


Betty's Not What She Used to Be
	Time was when the words Betty Crocker actually stood for something good in cookbooks, although the books' recipes, for better or for worse, were always a product of their times.  The very first "Betty Crocker Picture Cook Book" was published in 1950 (still available), revolutionized how cookbooks were produced, and was an enormous best-seller.  The recipes were the result of much thorough testing in the company's kitchens and in homes across America.  This was cooking from scratch with very little reliance on convenience foods in its pages.  This gradually changed as Betty and her books became more and more of a shill for General Mills' products and her name got plastered on one mix after another to the benefit of the company's bottom line, but to the detriment of good cooking.

The two all-purpose cookbooks that came out in 1961 and 1969 were both loaded with recipes and wonderful tips/helps, although you could see the beginnings of sacrificing quality for convenience--especially in the 1969 edition--but this was still relatively minor in proportion to the majority of the recipes.  If you have one of these books, treasure and keep it; you'll never see their likes again.

The current 10th edition looks good but, like the past several editions, the number of recipes has been drastically reduced.  Gone are the many variations, which are especially missed in baked goods.  It was wonderful having recipes of many cakes that were sized for two people or small families and having different mixing methods to choose from.  Now way too many recipes are of the "dump and stir" method instead of choosing methods that would insure the best results.  Also gone is the very friendly, assuring, conversationial voice of yesteryear.  Yes, there are recipes covering a wider range of ingredients and styles, but they are mostly stripped-down versions.

It's obvious that the folks at Betty Crocker now seem to think that no one really cooks anymore and can't be bothered with proper preparation of dishes, which begs the question of why General Mills even bothers to publish these cookbooks anymore.  The "Better Homes and Gardens New Cookbook" is a better bet for those looking for an all-purpose, everyday guide.  It has a better layout, the recipes and ingredients are generally of a higher quality, and there are more recipes and variations than Betty Crocker's had in some time.  Even better, if you care at all about the quality of the food you eat and serve your family, I highly recommend the cookbooks of Cooks' Illustrated/America's Test Kitchen.  Their comparable, general-purpose cookbook is called "The America's Test Kitchen Family Cookbook."  The recipes are tested and reworked--dozens of times, if necessary--to be the best their staff can make them and you get precise directions in preparing them.  It's a shame that Betty Crocker has abdicated her throne and good name, but there's even better stuff out there now.  Go for it!


Not much beyond the cute title
	The cover of this book declares that you'll learn "Ten Simple Truths That Lead To an Amazing Life."  If your idea of an amazing life can be distilled to "eat, drink, and be merry," then perhaps you'll see value in the sophomoric platitudes that abound in this book.  Alfred E. Neuman, of Mad Magazine, with his declaration of "What, me? Worry?" provides a pithier statement of the philosophy proposed by Ms. LaRoche.  If you're looking for some deeper meaning to life, to success, to accomplishment, you'd be much better served by reading Napoleon Hill, Anthony Robbins, Dr. Covey, Denis Waitley, or Brian Tracey.


Very Disappointing ... There're better books out there for Co-dependency
	Most of the information is very "theoritical" and "limited" -- author focus mainly on her own analysis of her mother and her relationship with her.  ...  In a nutshell, the message is that a dysfunctional mother'll pass her emotioanal issues to her daughter(s), and in turn, the daughter(s) may pass that onto her offspring(s).  ...


E for effort
	I am agreeing to the comment of "E for effort" on this book.

This book describes the author's attemps to improve his condition and how he suceeded. But he admits in his book that he is not sure which ones actually worked. Plus, the author also takes diabetes medications, along with other medicines and supplements. My main concern is what worked for him probably won't work for someone reading this book.

This book does not really provide a clear picture on what to do. He made so many changes on the medications and supplements, it is hard to say what worked.

One can find the general imformation presented in this book on "Diet", "Exercise" and "Stress management" (relating to clog arteries   heart diseases) through the internet. I didn't gain any new information by reading this book.

The printing of this book is also done in a very strange way.
The text is printed at the center, occupying only the center area with a lot of spaces around, so about half of the page is blank.


YOU NEED MORE THAN 8 but good choices
	I Look for books all the time on this topic to see if there any new moves I can pick up to help shape and tone the stomach area which is a problem for most of us. I think if you are just starting out this book will help you understand the positions you need to get into but it's going to take alot more than 8 minutes to get results and I have been training for years


Profiting from the Christian Man Shortage
	There is no doubt in my mind that Josh Harris is a good person, who sincerely wants to help people, particularly young Christian women, who are especially affected by the vicissitudes of the modern dating scene. However, he doesn't seem to offer much honesty about why this book has been so popular.  Either he's guilelessly uninformed or deliberately avoidant: inexcusable in either case, considering how influential this book has become.

Is it because it offers the best possible advice on how to navigate the most clear and direct path from singleness to marriage?  No.  For the vast majority of singles, the approach described in this book will be too rigid and contrived to be workable.  Few couples have actually gotten together this way.

The real reason why this book, with its overwhelmingly female readership, has sold so well comes down to one main reason: there is a SEVERE SHORTAGE OF SINGLE CHRISTIAN MEN, as documented in CampuslifeCollegeGuide.com male/female ratios, and the Barna Research group website which estimates the shortfall to be in the MILLIONS.  Christianity Today recently identified the gender imbalance as being the issue that "rises to the top" for Christian singles.

Because Christians are encouraged to look at circumstances as springing from "God's plan" for their lives, many of the surplus women faithfully avoid doing the math, but certainly feel the lack of male attention.  Unfortunately, this often gets boiled down to some kind of "passive Christian guy thing", but it probably has more to do with the complacency that accompanies the abundance of women: which is the defining masculine climate wherever there is a man shortage, whether it's New York City, Post-war Russia or your local mega-church.  It's not so much a lack of male leadership, but a lack of males.

And so the idea of courtship appeals to the romantic longings of single Christian women frustrated by what they perceive to be a lack of initiative taken by single Christian men, who they greatly outnumber.  Since reading Christian books about relationships can be as titilating as any romance novel, many of these women will pour over every detail looking for the one piece of advice, the one thing they can change about themselves that will make a difference.  Which means they stay on the spiritual self-improvement treadmill, fuelling a Christian singleness industry with its own slogan "The Gift of Singleness" that refuses to tell them the truth about the Christian man shortage that is the greatest cause of their prolonged singleness!  Of course, their lack of contentment (an innate response that tells you that things don't add up) is something they are told to repent, ironically by pundits who themselves will not repent of how they profit from this symbiotic relationship.  But as long as these women can be convinced that their discontent is caused not by unnaturally protracted singleness that's the result of the Christian man shortage but their by own spiritual failings, there'll always be a market for Christian self-help books like this one.  Pure genius!

What's more, there are "unintended consequences" that can go along with Harris' model for "courtship" that he doesn't really address:

1) Because all masculine initiative taking must be based on a guy's intention to marry the woman, it makes asking a woman to do anything a BIG DEAL to him. This can have several sub-consequences:
(a) It creates a lot of anxiety for guys in terms of their decision-making and rejection-risk (getting turned down for a date is bad enough, but imagine having your "potential marriage proposal" crash and burn!) (b) It fosters prolonged crushes, as stakes get so high with the guy investing all kinds of time and energy in figuring out that this is "the one", he might not ever do it (c) Ironically, it can boost up the guy's expectations in terms of a woman's looks. Because the guy has to have everything worked out in their heads (that yes, this is the kind of woman I want to marry) lot of guys end up not bothering to spend time with girls who don't LOOK like whatever their "wife prototype" might be. Guys who date and don't make a big deal of "a date" are more likely to ask out women they never thought of marrying and possibly end up getting married anyways (In "How to Get a Date Worth Keeping", Henry Cloud explains how couples will admit that their spouses weren't really "their type" when they first met).
2) It keeps people from the humbling reality check that dating provides. Serial dating (as practiced in Latin American countries, where a guy will ask out tons of women, get turned down by most of them until he has a "short-list") teaches you where you stand with the opposite sex. You ask your way down your "ladder of options" until you find your equal (likewise for women, in terms of dealing with the facts about who's asking and who's not). With courtship, a man or woman can nurse an untested prototype of what they want in their heads for years. The idea that it's better not to have any previous flames to compare them to is FALSE. You're better off being compared to their last girlfriend/boyfriend (a real human being with chunky thighs and all) than with the evangelical Angelica Jolie/Brad Pitt that has filled their imaginations since adolescence!
3) It reduces interactive opportunities that promote the acquisition of social skills needed in a romantic context with the opposite sex. It reinforces the pattern of psycho-social-sexual immaturity you commonly see in Christian singles circles.
4) It's unfair to the woman to have some guy spring a potential marriage proposal (which is essentially what courtship is) on her without any prior notice that the guy (who's had a head start on working out his feelings) is romantically interested. Most Christian women seem to need some time to progressively get used to the idea of having a date with most of the guys who would realistically ask them, let alone entertain the thought of marriage.
5) It also heightens the significance of anything the men do when interacting with the women in their circle, who inevitably end up reading too much into their behavior and expecting too much whenever any nuance of interest gets expressed by a someone they like. Kind of like, "he's a nice, sincere, Christian guy and he wouldn't be spending this kind of time with me if he didn't think of me as marriage material, right?"...not always so.

If we are to stand back and take a look at it, the whole courtship redux really hasn't gotten off the ground: it works for too few people at this time. Maybe the world has changed too much, or perhaps there are other issues today's Christian singles face in the mating game that need to be dealt with first: such as the confusion about "the gift of singleness" and the shortage of men. I would recommend Debbie Maken's Getting Serious about Getting Married: Rethinking the Gift of Singleness for an alternative view of courtship that embraces the ordinariness and universality of marriage, instead of this moldy oldy.


More errors
	In addition to the errors listed by others, I see missing letters in the middle of words, quote marks that are the wrong style (backticks instead of curly quotes, done inconsistently), inconsistent indentations ... it's a typesetting nightmare.  Big disappointment


Useless unless
	This bool from the evil russian is useless if you already own
" naked warrior " .Good techniques  and informations nevertheless


Terrible
	Lets say you were reading a book on the mafia, written by John Gotti, or perhaps some lesser-known mobster.  And there was nothing but glowing accolades for the mob and it's activities.  Furthermore, anyone who opposed the mafia and it's activities was labeled an "extremist" and in the text, their names were never more than about 4 or 5 words away from words like "Ku Klux Klan," "racist," "bigoted," or "paranoid," you'd begin to suspect that the book was a bit biased, wouldn't you?

"Americas Uncivil Wars" is a book written by Mark Lytle, a professor at Bard College.  He documents events in American History, in this book, from the 1950's to about 1975.  Practically every time a genuine conservative individual, or organization is mentioned in this book, it is associated to a racist organization, whenever Mr. Lytle doesn't add his own commentary.  For example, on page 22, he says Joseph McCarthy revealed himself as a "mean-spirited slob."  This is a far cry from the McCarthy I know, the McCarthy who wrote the brilliant "Americas Retreat from Victory" for example.  And forget about anything good mentioned about the John Birch Society.  Page 138: "Most Americans ignored the hooded Klansmen, the John Birchers, and other extremists..."  never mind the fact that JBS is not and never was a racist or an extremist organization.  But here is their name, sandwiched between the KKK and "extremist."

It is a typical tactic of the left to associate the opposition with the "stench of racism" as Stalin may have put it (I don't remember his exact quote).  But you might ask, what about on page 89 where he refers glowingly to William F. Buckley as "the cornerstone of the anti-communist wing of conservatism...?"  Keep in mind that this is the same Buckley who years later, in Lingua Franca magazine, confessed that he would be a "Mike Harrington Socialist" or a "Communist" if he were college brat today.

Now on the other hand, try to find anywhere in this book, the words "murderer," or even "extremist" in front of names like Mao Tse Tung, or Che Guevara or Tom Hayden, to name a few.  There is a good reason for that, but I will leave it to your imagination, the reason why.

In summary, should you decide to read this book, take it with a grain of salt, or better yet some motion-sickness pills because unless you are prone to the same convictions as our professor Lytle is, you're going to need a barf-bag


Poisonous Misinformation
	The most depressing thing about a book like this is not the outrageously inaccurate content, but, based on the high ratings and adulatory comments by other reviewers, that most people actually believe this drivel. How can we possibly form an effective energy policy when the citizenry are not only uninformed but ill-informed? The answer is that we cannot. I will not bother to go through a detailed criticism, not only because it would take an almost book length document to do it, but because, in the highly politicized atmosphere we live in, no one would believe it. Today, the "truth" depends much more on one's political views than on an objective evaluation of the evidence.


A Classic Text, Superficially Updated
	The cover claims that the book has been "revised and updated for the digital age," but Winston's information on technological tools is both superficial and already dated. The term, "PDA," does not even appear in the index


A Real Chore to Make it Through
	I approached this title with all the expectations fostered by many friends endless promotions. I did my best to like it, to find some secret meaning, some redeeming quality within, to no avail. Actually finishing the book was an accomplishment, in my opinion. Ultimately I found the book aimless, soulless, and the promoter of everything negative about the human species. I know this sounds harsh, but time after time I felt let down by On the Road.

No, I don't "dig" it, Dean


Be careful downloading e-books!!
	I was disapointed when I downloaded it and got 8 pages.
As a customer, I expected to have the digital version of the full book and not a summary.
I thought that the price difference was due to the absence of paper, printing, handling, shipping, etc.
The hardcover version is more than 300 pages; if you take the price per page of the digital version, the hardcover version should cost then ten times more!!!
All the examples are referred to that version and nowhere I was said that I was paying 5 dollars for a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT PRODUCT.
I honestly believed that I was buying the full book.
I will think better before ebuying again...


Squeezing Spiritual Growth into a Business Box
	This guide to church growth has gained popularity during the recent trend of mega-church models and numerical prowess in evaluating the current health and future viability of individual churches.  Many of the theories and models are based on business studies and business growth theories.

While the guide may be helpful in identifying strengths and weaknesses in your local congregation, its theories for projecting future growth or your church's demise are analyzed using European and Urban models, and have limited insight into the unique dynamics of the Christian church in the varied regions of North America as a whole.

Most limiting in this perspective is the distinctly spiritual aspect of church growth which results in a gigantic disparity in trying to compare churches and businesses.  This is a manual for analyzing and strategizing, for plotting and planning to stock more "seats in the pews," and makes no significant mention of the actual spiritual journey or genuine troubles and struggles of the very real person searching for belief.  The philosophies of this book graphically illustrates why some other Christian writers such as Eugene Peterson, contend that too many pastors view the members of their churches as assets to be managed rather than human souls with questions, concerns, needs and priorities of their own.  Issues that cannot be forgotten in the numbers game of current church growth modalities


Am I Still Awake?
	I devoured all of this writer's books when I first discovered them and it had been quite some time since then when I bought this book. I'm a real sucker for a book with dogs so I dove right in only to become disappointed all too quickly. I didn't remember all the rambling. It is rampant! At times it was almost like reading a text book for all the 'skimming' that I did. I can't say it was a waste of time but some more editing would be appreciated


one star is one too many
	I am both astounded and confounded by the reviews here.  Simply put, this is the single worst novel I have ever read.  Everything about it--the writing, the characters, the story--is godawful.  Here follows an absolutely true story.  While I was forcing myself to read this drivel, I went out on date.  She and I were discussing how much of a book one should read before giving up on it.  I was advocating the 25 page litmus, and she insisted on at least fifty.  She did several long train commutes a week to and from work, and so read a lot of novels.  Anyway, I started describing this book.  She recognized it immediately, and interrupted me saying,  quot;The Bear Went Over The Mountain!  Don't read another word!  If you think it's bad now, it only gets worse, if you can believe it! quot;  She was right.  If you feel the need to find out for yourself, save your money and borrow it from a friend or the library


Unrealistic premise...
	Joseph Nye keeps repeating himself: multilateralism by global American charm attack. That is simply a stupid assumption. And it is untrue of American history in foreign relations. Nye still owes some answers to European scholars of International Relations who criticized his idea. In fact that is no personal multilateral approach..


Interesting, but not an ethics.
	I found the book thought-provoking, but there is more to philosophy than provocation. The common underlying argument of this book, and its only valid statement as ethics, is that since the only purpose of ethics is to regulate human behavior, the ethics society adopts should reflect the kind of society we want to live in. This results-oriented approach is all very well, but Singer doesn't really build upon it through any legitimate philosophical argument. Virtually all of Singer's arguments about particular issues rest upon emotional premises that the reader either does or does not accept. If you accept the premise you are likely to find at least some merit in the argument; if you don't accept the premise, its impossible to follow along to any useful conclusion. In short, these are not ethical writings but the political writings of someone who is too smart for standard political discourse and not interested in limiting his thoughts to philsophy as a discipline. How useful you find this is up to you. I personally don't know Singer from Adam and had not received any prior indoctrination about how groundbreaking he was before I picked up the book; as a result, I have trouble seeing what people are so excited about


Old predictions that have not come true
	This book is old news and is filled with predictions for 2005   2006 - most of which are inacurate.  His boom and subsequent bust theories are not materializing - and at this point even if they do will be of much smaller scale than his grand predictions (DOW over 40,000) presented in this book


The South Rises Again in all its Historically Inaccurate Glory
	I originally wrote a review of this book in 1999, titled "This is a racist book disguised as a work of art."  It seems that I didn't explain well enough my objection to Styron's co-opting of the story of a real human being, Nat Turner, whose story was more accurately depicted in the 1831 book, "The Confessions of Nat Turner," by T.R. Gray.  Not only did Styron steal the title of Gray's book, in which Gray recounts his interview with the real Nat Turner, but the incidents Styron invents for the sake of drama reveal his southern-bred racism.

Unlike his depiction in Styron's book, Nat Turner was married.  Styron's invention of Turner's pivotal and conflicted relationship with a white woman, Margaret Whitehead, is entirely fictional.  So is any self-doubt that Turner did the right thing by leading the revolt.  In Gray's account, Turner did not express regret. There is so much more depth to Turner's life that is either fictionalized beyond recognition or left unexplored in this book.

Do those facts make a difference in a work of fiction?  Yes. The parts Styron has unnecessarily fictionalized are key to the story he invented.  Turner's fictional relationship with Margaret is saturated in the southern myth that black men are obsessed with white women -- lusting for the forbidden fruit, for which they must die.  That Styron crawls into Nat Turner's skin in order to infect him with self-doubt about his mission emasculates Turner and diminishes his cause.  What offends me most is that Nat Turner's life deserves to be explored by a modern author who does not condescend or patronize this African-American hero.  Instead, we have William Styron's version of Turner's life, taken by many readers as fact.

If one prefers racist fiction posing as a legitimate account of a life, then one might enjoy wallowing in this version of "Confessions."  But if one prefers reality, I recommend Gray's book as well as other accounts available about the slave revolt at Southampton, Virginia.  Styron's book does not provide significant insights into Nat Turner, slave revolt or slavery itself.  His book clouds the truth with the same kind of Reconstruction era distortions that spawned the hideous phenomenon of lynching


This one's a stinker
	I really love Amanda Quick, but this one just didn't work. We don't even get to see the hero and heroine meet and spend time together; the action starts after they've already spent a week getting to know each other. Very disappointing from a romance novel.

And I don't really expect tightly woven mysteries in my romance novels, but the plot in this one defies belief. It's never explained why the first murder even occurs. The hero's fear that the murderer will focus on Venetia because she's using the last name "Jones" is beyond ludicrous. If that was going to be a major plot point, at least make it an unusual name that would link the hero and heroine together. But JONES?!

All would be forgiven if the romance were compelling, but it wasn't in the slightest. I will probably choose to wait for the next one in paperback or at the library


two stars for evocative writing
	The notion of "interpretive communities" is at best derivative of Kuhn's classical work, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, and at worst a framework of obstruction employed against those who wish to revivify literary theory and criticism in the wake of postmodern hegemony


sorry I spent the time
	Like others, I picked this book up after reading several in the No. 1 Ladies...series.  No comparison.

The story is in the first line on page one and the last three pages of the book.  I just don't understand the rest of this book.  Isabel never even asked the key question to the whole "mystery" until it slapped her in her silly face.  The mystery for me is - what is the Sunday Philosophy Club, and what in the world does it have to do with this book?

I'm sorry I spent the time on this - there are important books to be read


Pot Noodle Bushido
	This novel of a 17th century samurai's odyssey to Europe starts as a very straightforward story and rather continues that way, but towards the end, Endo does get in a few good points. The style is somewhat pedantic and staid, but easy to read. It's certainly not a zen classic and the story never really gets off the ground or totally convinces. The historical backdrops are paper thin and obvious cut-and-pastes from history textbooks. I must admit I am somewhat baffled by all the rave reviews here. I can only conclude that a lot of people who don't really have much experience of Japan, think they've stumbled upon some sort of motherlode of bushido spirit in this conveniantly Westernized piece of writing by a Japanesese Christian. Remember, not every Japanese woman is a geisha, and not every Japanese writer can wield his pen like a samurai's sword


Just Awful..................No Stars Whatsoever!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
	It took me a year to finally complete this book.  And honestly, the only reason I completed it was because I had nothing else on my bookshelf to read.  This book dragged on and on to the tiny climax about 5 pages from the end.  What a waste of such a beautiful book cover.  Do not waste a year of your life or a dime of your money


Wonderfully creative but overcomplicated and not easily indexed
	The book had so much promise, but I find it to be disappointing in several ways, alas.  The recipes I've tried have been delicious, and the instructions accompanying those recipes are fairly clear and authoritative, although the discussions and instructions don't rise to the level of a cooking teaching tool, as would, for example, anything by Julia Child, Marcella Hazan, Jacques Pepin, or any of the King Arthur Flour baking cookbooks, all of which really teach one new skills while providing wonderful recipes.  In this case, I was already pretty experienced at making ice cream before I bought the book.  Were I a tyro, I don't think this book would be the best introduction, although of course there is nothing like plunging in and trying.

My biggest disappointment, though, is the organization of the book:  ice cream recipes are "bundled" with their accompanying cookies, garnishes, and the like; instead of a group of recipes for chocolate ice cream, for example, we have a group of recipes for ice cream sandwiches, with ice cream of any of several different flavor families.  One has to dig around in the index at the back of the book to find, say, recipes for chocolate ice cream.  I would much prefer to have an index or table of ice cream recipes, by flavor and page number, right up front -- I don't want to spend so much time looking for the flavor I want.

My next disappointment is that the text is printed in a graphically attractive and most stylish but virtually illegible size and color.  My middle-aged eyes struggle desperately to read the book, even with my reading glasses on, and I surely can't prop the book 18-20" back from my utensils, to read as I work without changing position, as I like to do with my cookbooks.  This is a case in which the author and editorial team seemed to have chosen (admittedly very attractive) style over function.  The book IS very attractive, and the photographs are lovely -- but I would gladly sacrifice some beauty in favor of being able to read the recipes and discussions more easily.

My final disappointment is in the complexity and elaborateness of most of the "dessert packages," for lack of a better word.  Making the ice cream or sorbet and its accoutrements is, in most cases, a tremendously labor-intensive exercise.  I have opted for using some of the creative and delicious ice cream recipes and figuring out my own much simpler and easier garnishes and accompaniments.  I work a demanding job and have a house to run.  I love to cook, but can't devote as much time to making an ice cream sandwich, for example, as these recipes require.  So I use less of the book than I'd wish.

Over all, Ms. Luchetti's sense of style and taste are impressive, and she seems superbly knowledgeable about frozen desserts.  And many of the ice cream recipes are lovely.  But I had hoped that this would be a book I would pull from the shelf much more often than I will, in fact, because the book is so difficult to use


Yuck, Yuck, and double Yuck
	This is like teen-love-fiction, and by that I mean it's like a teenager wrote it, one who uses bad detail, cliche phrases, overused idioms, bad dialogue and poorly crafted plot.

Meet mr. millionaire who teaches polo to a woman -- and they of course fall in love, slowly, boringly, painfully.   Then the kids come in and the remainder of the book is like a couple dealing with kids, with no plot development. Yuck.

She says on the back she's responding to a call for something like energy and thrills and sexy writing.  Uh, not in this one.  The only sexy scene is on page 138, and that's not very good either.

The best part of the book is that it proves she really does need to go back and learn the craft of writing because either she never learned it or she forgot what she learned


Great--if you are a rich capitalist
	Don't buy this book if you do not have to for a class. I did. As with most textbooks, it is a ripoff. Mankiw got a 1.4 million - MILLION - dollar advance for it. Who do you think pays that.
What kinds of things does this text teach? Well, it contends that unemployment insurance and labor unions cause unemployment, because people do not want to look for work when they can fall back on the governmnet. This is the biggest load of hooey in the world. I guess when you are a rich, tenured professor it is quaint to see those people lining up who just lost their jobs because business major read your book. And minimum wage? Kills off jobs.
Mr Makniw is now the chairman of the presidents council of economic advisors. What a job he has done. Worst jobs record since Hoover. Of course, if the capitalists honchos had their way, everyone else would be working for $2.75 an hour.
Read this book, but go to the grocery store first. On top of the $100-plus you pay for this book, punk down 75 cents for a box of salt. You're gonna need every grain


A bit misleading in the title..
	You think you are getting something to help assist you in linking yourself with the beyond, but you are in all actuality getting something that reads more like something being explained that the author doesnt really believe instead.  I love Konstatinos' other books, but this one left a bad taste in my mouth


An absolute abortion
	Dr. Freeman's justly esteemed "Lee's Lieutenants" -- a THREE VOLUME work -- still stands (despite the discovery of materials unavailable to Dr. Freeman when he first wrote in the 1930s and 40s) as the baseline for any study of the Army of Northern Virginia.  The cheap attempt by a modern publisher to squeeze a few cents out of the franchise, offered here, throws out TWO of every THREE words Dr. Freeman wrote to allow for a one-volume "abridgement" for those presumably too intimidated by the thought of reading three entire books.

The three-volume work, as Dr. Freeman wrote it, was reprinted fairly recently.  If that is no longer available on Amazon, any decent sized used book store will have it in stock.

WHATEVER you do, avoid this butchered, one volume version like the plague


Too full of jargon for me
	This is probably one of the hardest books I have ever read--with no background in either philosophy or cybernetics, much of what Hayles discusses is just plain incomprehensible.  I also found it difficult to accept the idea of humans already being  quot;post-human. quot;  If you are interested in deep philosophical writings on technology and the human condition, with links to literature, read this.  If you don't really care about the post-human, skip it


This book is just not accurate
	I have to agree with Stephen Haines. This guy drags in everything but the kitchen sink. He makes Boehme a Gnostic, the troubadors, the Knights Templar, William Blake, the Masons, Jung, and finally, any physicist worth his salt.

I mean, some of these folks might not have been orthodox in their Christian practice, but being heterodox does not make one a Gnostic.

How did he forget Meister Eckhart, and Sabbatai Tzvi? If he has Boehme as a Gnostic, then these also are Gnostic.

He never distinguishes between Gnosticism as a group of sects, and gnostic practice, which pervades Kabbalah, Sufism,etc.

This is just not a good book


Pretty poor effort
	I'm a long time fan of the Anna Pigeon mysteries, and have read all the others. Unfortunately, "Hard Truth" does not live up to the quality of Ms. Barr's earlier works. It feels very contrived. It also appears to take advantage of stereotypes against religious groups. This book just does not meet the expectations I've come to expect from the series.


Mixed feelings
	I've used the lonely planet guides on other trips before, and have always been very pleased, but this one left me with a different taste in my mouth.  LP was the only guide we purchased, based on our previous experiences with them, but we had the chance to peruse others in the B B's we stayed in throughout our trip.  Of all of them, I'd rate the LP as the 2nd best for our interests - as they say, individual experiences may vary!  Ireland has become a very expen$ive tourist destination, so upon reflection, we would have been happier with the Rough Guide.  LP has just tried to hard to cover all levels of expense in one guide, and has ended up short-changing all of them in the process.  I hate to say it, but I'd rather see them do one thing well than 3 things mediocre at best.  I'd still put it above most of the other guidebooks though.

Our first and foremost gripe is how out of date the price estimates on everything are.  I realize it was published two years ago, but we gradually learned to depend on everything costing about 20% more than LP listed.  That's quite a jump for 2 years, indicating to me either poor fact-checking for the 2003 edition, or some pretty crazy inflation and a need for another update.

Our second gripe was the local maps.  They failed to provide maps for a lot of the smaller cities, and only provided maps of the city-center areas in the larger ones.  Given the rarity of Irish street signage, those maps would have been a God-send for navigation in towns.  Also, and this may be a function of the 2003 printing, a lot of the towns in Ireland are instituting one-way patterns in their city-centers, and LP's maps rarely identified this.

A third, again related gripe is with the existance, or lack thereof, of the various restaurants, b b's, shops, etc. listed in the guide.  Probably 30% of the restaurants in the guide just aren't there any more.  I realize they must have been when it went to print, but that didn't help us any.

Our last gripe is the rather uneven coverage of large areas of the country.  Granted, it reflected perfectly the tourist patterns - heavy coverage of larger cities and popular tourist areas along the coasts, pretty awful coverage of less touristed interior areas.  Unfortunately, we didn't just want to go where all the other tourists go, so this left our noses still further out of joint.

Overall, I'd say if you want a guide that covers the sightes well, both LP and Rough Guide do that.  If you want to keep the expenditures down, Rough Guide does it much better.  If you want to go all out, um, there's probably a third option, but neither of these two will do it well.  If you want to be thrifty in some areas and splurge in others, then this guide is the closest you'll get to filling your schizophrenic needs in one place - although, in that case, I'd really recommend getting two guides, one for each end of the spectrum.

One last piece of advice - buy a heritage card when you get to your first castle/tomb/historic place!  If you plan on visiting more than one or two historic places, its 20e cost will be recouped within days with all the free admissions it will get you for the rest of the trip


blach
	This is a childrens book and it is supposed to teach a positive message. It should have been tiltled the "jewish Mother " tree or something. So the message was Use me and use me and use me some more and after I'm all used up, use me some more and I will be happy. Thats something we want to convey to children


One sided and out dated
	Much of this book is very one sided.  In particular the sections on the environment are distorted and now known to be incorrect.  The book would be much better if they had not shown their bias


Stick to what you know
	Ayelet Waldman is a graduate of Harvard Law School, so I assume she's an intelligent woman and a good lawyer. She should stick to what she knows. The fact that she's married to a famous author doesn't make her a writer. Her novel is poorly written, overly sentimental and, to put it bluntly, very dumb.
What's next? Padma Lakshmi writing a novel because she's married to Salman Rushdie?


What Forged a Nation
	I had read a book about the French and Indian war, one about the revolution and also the recent best seller,1776.  I found The War That Forged a Nation an excellant addition to my understanding of this important period in American history.  I would highly recommend it.  Very readable


Good book, bad reading
	Unfortunately some audio books are read in monotone-very dull indeed-but in this audio book the reader goes too far in the opposite direction by reading an adult book as if it's story time and she's a preschool teacher.

My daughters and I loved the main characters in audio books such as Bridget Jones Diary, The Nanny Diaries, and Sammy's Hill because the reader made us sympathize with them. We knew that whatever the characters did they did with sincerity and whatever happened to them could happen to anyone. Emily Gray, the reader of Can You Keep a Secret, made the main character sound witless and very, very phony. All of the other characters sounded one dimensional.

We listen to audio books on our frequent long car trips. Although we had nothing else to listen to at the time, we could only stand of this book before we had to turn it off. A few weeks later I randomly read a few chapters of Can You Keep a Secret in a bookstore and thought that it was amusing. Perhaps Emily Gray didn't find the book amusing, so she thought that she needed to go "over the top" to add humor. If so, it didn't work. She took a lighthearted, enjoyable book and turned it into the equivalent of listening to nails on a blackboard.


Don't buy this book. Check with the experts instead.
	If you look at the March 2004 issue of the International Association of Bloodstain Pattern Analysts, you'll find a very negative review of this book. Given that the reviewer (Herbert Leon MacDonell, the Director of Laboratory of Forensic Science  Bloodstain Institute of Corning, New York) and all members of IABPA actively work in the field of forensics, I'd take their word for it. Here's an excerpt from the review, which can be found on the web at http://www.iabpa.org/March2004News.pdf

"Many fine books have been written on the general subject of forensic science but this is not one of them. It only takes reading the first page for the reader to discover that this book is not going to be a source of accurate forensic information."

The reviewer goes on to say:

"...the frightening aspect is that lay persons who purchase such garbage are unaware of how inaccurate the things they are reading really are. It is unfortunate that there are publishers out there who will print a manuscript without having some form of peer review to determine whether there are a few minor errors or is it so bad like this book, that they should trash it.


Puh-lease . . .  felt like was I reading an erotic novel
	First, I am a very open-minded person, raised by a hippy/Biker family.  I really expected to identify with this book.  While I appreciate the what Ina May's movement accomplished during its time, I felt like the book was almost a joke--verging more on detailing accounts of an occult community--A community of people living on old school buses in the woods, delivering each other's babies.

The language is terrible---everything is described as "psychedelic," etc--one woman even referred to her female parts using the big "p" word.  While they try to add a personal touch by including individual narrations, it sounds more like a compilation of uneducated people describing their birth stories the way they were pressured to believe---NOBODY mentions feeling pain during labor. Honestly, I feel that the pressure of the community was so intense they wouldn't have admitted to pain if they could.

Also, many of the accounts were extremely erotic---couple are encouraged to fondle one another during labor to keep connected and relaxed.  In some accounts, a couple would be making out, while a midwife would massage the birthing mother in her "laboring parts"--turning the woman on and keeping her relaxed.  Not my cup of tea.

I had so little respect for the lifestyle and the language of the people that I didn't get much out of the book


What happened to the good stuff??
	I am soooo tired of Danielle Steel's books. They have lost all of the originality with which she used to write. Every book now has the same story line just different names for the characters. BORING!  What happened to the good stuff - Thurston House, Ghost, Kaliedescope ........

I had stopped reading her books because I have been sick of the same old thing - I borrowed Miracle from a friend hoping it would indeed be a miracle and would be original Danielle Steel -I was completely wrong. I would guess her writing is suffering because she pumps out 2 to 3 books a year. Danielle if you are reading this (and I hope she is) PLEASE give us back something great to read - Quality instead of Quantity!  Until then I won't be buying or borrowing any more of her books.


One of the most deceptive books ever written
	There is no measure how harmful and disastrous this "sermon" has been to all who have read or heard it.  The teaching of hell or everlasting damnation (eternal torment) is a pagan teaching that has been graphed into the teachings of Christianity over 1800 years ago.  The first century church never believed in a "hell".  The theory of hell was brought in by converts to Christianity from  pagan religions of the world.  "Hell" was embraced by the political/religious leaders of the church because they saw the controlling and "converting" effect of the pagan doctrine and thus it was adopted as "orthodox" centuries after the resurrection of Christ.  Our English translations have all been used to continue this pagan teaching as fact, when it is actually fiction.  Mostly all English versions except the Concordant Literal New Testament and Young's Literal propagate this fallacy.

Do your homework.  Go to www dot what-the-hell-is-hell dot com and www dot bible-truths dot com and read up.  If you scoff then here is your challenge.  Do the research from a non-traditional, non-pagan perspective and you might find incredible things to praise God about.

Other HIGHLY recommended books are "The Inescapable Love of God" by Thomas Talbott (ISBN: 1581128312, not on Amazon, you must google it), "The Origin and History of the Doctrine of Endless Punishment" by Thomas Thayer, "The Bible Hell" by Dr. John Wesley Hanson.  Go to the sites given above and finally get a better view of what "hell" is and where it came from.  You will find answers to the many questions that arise from searching this out.

All those who scoff and stop up your ears and move on, to you I say that the real hell is the one that your doctrine creates in the minds and hearts of all who have been indoctrinated by it and your view of God that it creates.  THAT is hell indeed, and THAT is the ONLY hell that exists


Disappointing mystery thriller
	Sometimes I've enjoyed books by David Baldacci (WISH YOU WELL
and THE WINNER come to mind); others, such as THE LAST MAN
STANDING did little for me . . . add SPLIT SECOND, which I just
heard, to that latter list . . . it was a disappointing mystery thriller
about two disgraced Secret Service agents who come together to
solve two campaign-trail crimes . . . I cared little about any of the
characters, and there were far too many subplots floating around
for my taste . . . the ending also didn't do much for me, as it brought
too many separate threads together in too quick a fashion . . . lastly,
I did not particularly "buy" the man behind the crimes; he just wasn't
all that believable.


Unbelievable, and for a very good reason, namely it's not true
	This book belongs in the Fantasy section of the library.

Let's start with the question of Israel's borders.  Do some folks say that these borders ought to be the Nile and Euphrates rivers?  After all, Israel is kind of small.  Doesn't it need, um, a tiny bit more land?

Well, Israel may need a little more land.  But almost nobody is proposing anything like this.  I see very few Israeli politicians demanding even all of the West Bank, let alone all of Jordan.  And as for the Nile to the Euphrates, this is pretty much exclusively anti-Zionist propaganda.  There's a nice article by Daniel Pipes in the March, 1994 issue of Middle East Quarterly that goes into this in some detail, in case anyone cares.

Yes, we've seen propaganda before.  In the 1930s, some Germans claimed that the Jews were planning to take over the whole world.  Now, what do we see in this book?

What we see in this book is Chris Hedges quoting someone as saying that Israel allows state-funded religious schools to preach that Jewish rule should extend from the Nile to the Euphrates.  Is there any connection between this and truth?

Yes, there's a connection.  You see, in the Bible (in Deuteronomy), Moses says at one point that Israel's borders shall run from the river Euphrates to the "western sea" (presumably, the Mediterranean, but definitely not the Nile).  Of course, someone might want to ask a Jewish authority about what the Bible says.  It turns out that there's much more detailed material in the Book of Numbers, and that is what Pipes says religious Jews are taught is Biblical.  And that specifies a much smaller Israel.  In addition, it is quite a leap to go from Biblical borders, no matter how large or small, to preaching that Jews ought to rule such an area today.  Hedges is doing us a big disservice here.  You may want to check all this for yourselves.

In addition, Hedges has an exciting description of the Battle of Khafji (which took place during Desert Storm).  Some people who were really there dispute it, however.  You may want to check that as well.

We also see Hedges describe the behavior of Israeli soldiers in Gaza on June 17, 2001.  Now, remember that these soldiers are trained to obey orders.  Their superiors know that Israel can't afford unnecessary violence.  The soldiers are there to protect lives, not to hurt or kill others.  And in fact, it turns out to be true that in the fighting between Jews and Arabs, the Jews (as expected) have rarely been guilty of gratuitous violence.  On the other hand, the Arabs, who have rather different goals and constraints, have displayed quite a bit of bad behavior.

Nevertheless, in spite of logic and facts to the contrary, in this book, Hedges comes up with the following (as usual, I encourage you to verify for yourselves what the truth is, and you might want to start by finding out how many people died that day and who they were):

"I had seen children shot in other conflicts that I had covered - death squads gunned them down in El Salvador and Guatemala, mothers with infants were lined up and massacred in Algeria, and Serb snipers put children in their sights and watched them crumple onto the pavement in Sarajevo - but I had never watched soldiers entice children like mice into a trap and murder them for sport."

Well!  What is it about Israelis that could lead them to behave in such a surprising manner?  Hedges speculates that exposure to all sorts of nasty reading material about the Holocaust has perverted these unfortunate young men.  Well, I'm perfectly prepared to believe that men and women from all nations have been exposed to all sorts of reading material.  But I don't buy Hedges' absurd conclusion at all.  Nor do I buy any of what he says about the behavior of the soldiers.  And no, I'm not in denial.  If you believe Hedges, I think you may be in denial, though!

I'll stop here.  Anyone capable of saying what I've quoted from Hedges so far is capable of saying anything.  We readers do not need this.


Book never arrived - very disappointed!
	Never received the book, so very disappointed at the delivery process and cost I have incurred


A so so novel
	The most disappointing thing about The News from Paraguay is the beginning, and not precisely because is a bad one, but because in the first chapters of Lily Tuck National Prize awarded novel,  there's a hint that  could have been better than it turn out to be.
So I confess that  for a few pages (those that engage a reader with a book) I found  charming the decimononic  story of Ella Lynch, a beautiful widow living in Paris well beyond her means. That even when  Ella decided to follow hairy Franco -a paraguayan stud- not because his looks, not even for this foolish thing called love, but because  he smelled like luxury and power in a faraway land; I still found it a joyable read,  but right when she arrived to her privileged life of  "querida"  of the most powerful man in Paraguay and began to have one baby after another in tumultuous times,  The News from Paraguay became boring and I began to skip entire paragraphes until I got to a previsible end.
Based on true facts, the life of a Paraguayan dictator and his irish  mistress; Tuck, who confessed that she never went and wasn't interested in ever going to Paraguay (i think she finally did) can't even get the spanish names right: Manuel, instead of Manuel, Rosaria, instead of Rosario; Inez, instead o Ines. What's the deal with the?
Maybe I lost something in my not so good english, but I still can't get why,  a so so novel like The news from Paraguay, can win a National Prize


Should get ZERO stars
	This is one of the few books so bad that I couldn't finish it.  There is no explanation of how things work,or in many cases what they really are.  I feel like the only motivation for any of the characters was greed, sex, or guilt about greed and sex.  Do not bother with this book


Read because it considered a classic
	The book is written about an empire in the future.  I'm not really sure why Asimov thought that the future galaxy would be ruled by an emporer, which is a dying system of government, instead of a democratic republic.  I know this is nit-picking, but I didn't like this book.

Apparently, the future can be predicted with a high degree of accuracy using math and statistics.  Anyone who works as a mathematician or statistician, as I do, knows that it's difficult to predict what's going to happen in anyone's life tomorrow, much less the entire world 500 to 1000 years into the future using statistics.

This book is intellectual worship, which is something I can't stand.  Intellectual worship is when people think they are intellecually superior to everyone else, so feel they should rule over everyone else, if only you would listen to them.  This idea drips off the page as event after event is predicted by some really smart dude.  This smart dude predicted a collapse of civilization and treated it as inevitable.  Another idea that's patently absurd- that any event that occurs is inevitable.

If this guy was so smart as to predict, with a high degree of accuracy, the downfall of civilization, and the rising of a new one, along with the traumatic events this new civilization would go through, why wasn't he smart enough to avert the downfall of the original civilization.  Surely, with his predictive ability people would listen to him, but he decides to let it crumble for whatever reason.

And Asimov is a mediocre writer.  The story is only moderately interesting because no character really gets developed.  I read this book because as a sci-fi fan, I felt obligated


BIG SAMAD SEFIANES HONEST OPNION THEFT OF OTHER PEOPLES WORK
	My name is Big Samad Sefiane, I have been writing screenplays and making music since the age of 13. The only problem with that
book which came out in feb. 2004 is very much a like my screenplay I have written and copyrighted before he released his book. I wouldn't rate a book, singer or songwriter who takes other peoples ideas and mixes it with his work. The book is too much similar to my screenplay Entitled HACKERS. After sept. 11, 2000 mail slowed down and it took me a year to copyright my screenplay. The screenplay as visible on the internet and also sent to strattford career institute for editing. The similar scripts will be reviewed by an entertainment attorney


Help please
	Can anyone tell me if the book words on the vine has an answer key with it? Thanks. sgra


Hilariously Melodramatic
	The only thing this book is good for is getting high with your friends then reading the dialogue aloud.  The thought that anyone actually believes or takes the "situations" in this crap serious is so befuddling it's scary.  This is nothing more than propaganda for some strange religious cult.  I don't know about you but if I'm going to buy a book to help me with my kids it's going to be by an expert, not some failed fiction writer


This one misses the mark, for me...
	I've read five of the nine "Temperance Brennan" mysteries that Kathy Reichs has published, but this is my least favorite. I lost interest about two-thirds through. I felt the villains were not fleshed-out, the murder mystery too complicated and unlikely, the ending too neatly contrived, and the personal/romantic side story too awkward. This one was also too long, by about 50 pages. Reading it felt like eating a stew in which there were a multitude of ingredients, yet they did not blend into a successful flavor. The other four of her novels were fine. I love the TV series as well, although "Bones" allegedly shows Dr. Brennan much earlier in her career, with the supporting cast and the job duties and locations totally different than what is found in the books. In the TV series, "Dr. Brennan" has a steady cast of supporting characters who grabbed my mind and heart very quickly. In the books, her lesser characters all seem...lesser, indeed. Better luck next time out, Dr. Reichs


Not so good
	First off, so much of the copy is devoted to his horrible sense of humor, imagine a junior high school student "acting big" to impress his friends with jokes, that type of annoying bravura humor is simply unrelenting throughout the book.  It is filler.  The illustrations are sized so big the actual technical content of the book is quite low.  Just more filler.  Finally, all the techniques in the book can be found during normal operation of PS, or at worst a few internet searches.  I think this book is over-priced and I wish I could return it.  Caveat emptor


Harlequin Romance !
	If Tess is going to continue to write books like this, she should switch her publisher to Harlequin Romance, it will give the unsuspecting buyer a "heads up."

It is not possible to describe the many short falls of this rather long boring novel without giving the romantic subplots away, let just say that the ME does no pathology as she is way too busy whining about an unatainable romance and the detective does no detecting as she is totally wrapped up in her parent's pathetic lives.

There is a bit of a mystery bouncing around in the book, but it is hardly worth wading through all those pages.

Come on Tess, you can do better than this


Mary Mary
	Totally disappointing.  From the beginning the novel read well, but like a Sherlock Holmes mystery at the end the person who committed the crimes came out of the blue .  I, personally, do not like reading this type of mystery....I want clues.  Alas, there were none.  Also, the characters did not make sense.....most were too undeveloped.....Mr. Patterson needs to go back to the drawing board   try to forget the $$$ he is being paid up front by the publisher


You must be kidding.
	I wish I could have back the numerous tedious hours slogging through White Noise to the bitter, bitter end.  Not since Jane Smiley's Moo has such a dull tome been written aobut, among other things, Ameican academia.  Little happens of note.  No one cares about the cardboard characters.  Someone gets shot in the belly, for no good reason.  And yet this is fawnedover as a comic masterpiece by, among others, The New York Times.  I ahve been told to read White Noise before I picked up Underworld.  Have no fear.  I'll undergo root canal without Novocain before I try that one on for size.  I've been reading nothing but plumber's trade journals and German magazines just to try to get the taste of this novel out of my mouth for the past few days.  I'm thinking of getting the definitive Curious George collection just so I don't have to read any words.  At least that guy in the big yellow hat knew enough to keep his mouth shut, unlike that noncompoop Jack Gladney and his boring friends.  If people prersist in thinking this is great literature, I suggest giving up reading altogether.


Is there a sequel?
	I didn't find the book too bad but it has no ending.  Did he leave out the last chapter?  I have always liked his books so hopefully he's got this out of his system


The worst book supposedly about philosophy that I have EVER read
	Pirsig mistakes mental illness for deep philosophical thought; he mistakes child abuse for some form of "real" child rearing.  I just read his interview in the Guardian UK.   Although it has been years since I have read this book, it still leaves an awful taste in my mouth when I think about it.  I have read philosophy from classic to contemporary; I have lived in Japan and practiced Zen archery and Zen meditation - this book has only incorrect views of Western AND Eastern philosophy yet Pirgsig, to this day thinks he has contributed to the philosophical canon. This is proof that Pirsig remains deranged.  Moreover, in the Guardian UK interview he still found the time to criticize his son who was brutally murdered; Pirsig then tries to elicit sympathy by mentioning his son's murder. Pirsig is a perfect example of someone with Narcisstic Personality Disorder.  Pirsig's son should have sought court protection from his monstrous father and largely absent and/or capitulating mother.
If you are one of the poor souls who finds something "deep" in this very large pile of verbal manure then I think therapy would be money well spent


Unfulfilled promise
	The premise of the store is interesting.  How did left tackle become one of the most important positions in football?  The first half of the book does a fair job of walking through the reasons.  (West Coast offense, LT, etc.)

Unfortunately, at that point Lewis runs out of things to write about, so he starts talking about Michael Oher, an O Lineman at Ole Miss.  Oher's story is intersting, but it is too early to tell.  He is a "superstar" but only a sophomore.  I also think that Lewis overdoes how great Oher already is.

I also don't really understand what Oher's story really had to do with the original premise of the book.  Is Lewis saying that because left tackles now make millions, Oher wants to be one?  I would think that if Oher had come around in the 70s people would still have thought of him as a football player.  Last time I checked lineman were big and strong (and quick) in that era too.


Disappointing and lacking something
	I love Linda Howard books.  I always look forward to her releases and this book was a gross disappointment to say the least.  I think the characters are not developed well, and the relationship between Cal and Cate occurred too fast.  The story was rushed and I'm sure Linda could have done much better writing on this book.


Liberal's Study Bible
	This is a liberal's study bible.  The study notes show the best 'modern' scholarship, which doubts Moses wrote the first 5 books of the bible.  Doubts the authorship of most of Paul's Epistles.  Even doubts that the beloved disciple John wrote the Gospel of John.

Believes Redactionary Interpretive Theory is valid.  Falls right in line with most modern and so called 'higher' critisim of the Bible.  Avoid this study bible, if you believe the Bible is really God's word from cover to cover


Only read half of it
	I picked this book up at my public library because I had put it on my reading list a while back when I saw that the President(!) of the United States George Bush read it while he was on vacation too.

I went to my local cofee place and got a MEDIUM regular cofee flavored cofee but in a LARGE cup (so theres room for plenty of milk which I like and also you only get charged for a medium even though its in a large).  Anyway I am reading this book and it seems okay but then this guy with a laptop bumps into my chair where I have rested my cofee which is not at all my fault because thats why the chair has a little ledge there.  So then this guy says he is sorry but that doesnt exactly unspil my cofee if you catch my meaning.  And he offers to pay for a new cofee but it doesnt really matter its the principle of the thing.

Anyway then he leaves and I notice my copy of the book has cofee spilled on it not just my pants as I thought previously.  So I'm not about to read a book with cofee stains all over it so I take it back to the library.

Now here I have to point out that I had a little incident a couple weeks back with the librarian and long story short they lost a book about a fireman that I returned and made me pay for it but not without a fight.  Well you better believe that same librarian who yelled at me is watching me now whenever I go in there and she sees that cofee stain right off when I turn the book in.  I explain that its still perfectly good and you can still read it and it wasnt even my fault and maybe they should get the $8.50 from the cofee house they made the cofee not me.

But you can guess how this ended up.  I am down another $8 dollars and change (I paid the .50 cents in pennies I got from the place I keep pennies in the car which got me a cross look since I counted them out one by one but it was worth it).  And I never finished the book since it was ruined.

But! I liked the parts I read "okay" and if the President likes it I guess it gets FOUR STARS only I made it TWO STARS because I only read half.  Maybe I will read the second half later if that librarian retires and then I will come back and give this book it's missing TWO STARS if it ends well.

Lesson learned is life is not always fair but you "keep on keepin on" like they say


Is the writer a real believer ?
	To say Christianity will die is to say that one can see the end of the world. Purely craziness. Christianity will live as long as the world exists. What is died is the faith for many Christians, what has been changed is our faith (by money, pride, and selfishness) and consequently, our church and our societies.

What dominants many US and European Christian churches is a worldly Christianity, a Christianity affected by the materialism, and world-view. The exact thing that Jesus repeatedly condamned.

I feel extremely sad when I can see pasters and evangelists earn 6-figure salaries, live in luxury houses, air-travel in business class, or socialize with social elite. I feel extremely sad when I see young theology students without born-again experience and spiritual life become pasters and preasts.

Jesus have given us great mission: to preach gospel to every corner in the world. But money, pride, and selfishness have consumed the hearts and sole of many Christians and today they love the world more than they love Jesus. Are they still Christians? Of course not.

To say Christianity needs change is purely nonesense. Only person see himself greater than Jesus would say something like that. What needs to be changed is ourselves, not Christianity.
Because we have embaked a wrong way, following the world and not following Jesus.


not good for learning, OK as a reference book
	i am currently subjecting myself to finance curriculum at a quant-heavy, top-5 bschool.  this text was recommended for my Intro Cap Markets class (although the prof didnt exactly use it in the class).

i often used it to gain understanding of what was taught in class.  unfortunately, i found this book to be EXTREMELY painful.  it was verbose, overly complicated, hard to read, poorly organized   full of jargon.  while it is thorough in its coverage of Capital Markets   instruments, i found it to be nearly impossible to read.

esoteric theories   mathematical proofs were introduced with little background, and often without insufficient detail to understand grasp.  but the jargon   vocabulary are what made the book so unreadable ... trying to read a chapter in this book would literally consume 4-5 hours of my time.

AND forget about trying to use this book to do problemsets OR assignments. i could go on, but trust me, this book is bad ... UNLESS you already have a good intro   just want to use this as a reference


How about a zero star rating!
	Very disappointing and BORing! NO likeable characters, VERY uninteresting story.  Could/Would not finish--too many "better" books waiting


formulaic and unsatisfying
	I have enjoyed the Miss Julia books tremendously but this is my least favorite.
Miss Julia is married to Sam Murdoch. Poor guy is sent to find the missing Hazel Marie in one part and is gone for a good deal of the story. Miss Julia does not even make a case of those missing hours! It is as if the author could really care less.
There are so many little plots that you feel as if the author had several ideas and just took one and expanded it but left the others to show all the complications in this woman's life. There are times when Miss Julia seems to self-centered and the tongue in cheek mood of the other books in this series is really not present here. I found her less likable and also less believable. She has taken in her husband's mistress ad illegitimate child. Now, there is a question about the child's paternity and she is tolerating the whole thing!!!!!
Perhaps other books in the series would be a better intro for the uninitiated


Readable, but very disappointing
	Don't make the mistake of judging the entire Hard Case Crime series by this lackluster entry.

I can imagine the publishers being overjoyed when Stephen King agreed to write a novel for them and then cringing when they received this manuscript.  The writing is fine, as you'd expect from King, but there's nothing remotely hard-boiled or sexy in this novel.  (Don't let the cover fool you!)  It's simply the meandering story of an apparent murder that happened years before.  There are a couple of interesting hooks, but they certainly don't lead anywhere.  This one's for Stephen King completists only.


Where has the magic gone?
	PROS: 1. John Corey is still a funny, memorable character.

CONS: 1. Very little suspense. The author's use of a doomed character's point of view--switching to third person--to tell the reader all of the hows and whys of the main villain's Dr. Evil-esque plan ("FIRE THE NUKE!"). Then, after we know everything, we get plopped back into the first-person, investigative head of Corey, who doesn't yet have the story solved. The result is predicatable and tedious.

2. The don't-look-behind-the-curtain (gratuitous?) use of the Ted Nash character, who makes a brief appearance at the end...despite having died in NIGHTFALL...and, uh, THE LION'S GAME. Why is Ted's appearance so brief here? Well, he admits to screwing Ms. Mayfield. Naturally, Ms. Mayfield opens fire and fills Ted with bullets. Presumably, Ted's dead for good now.

3. The politics of DeMille's novels has been present in other books, but it's never been this catty. Why is the nuke kook a right-winger? (Hey, why not?) I should have known when the jacket cover said the book "will challenge you to question everything you thought you knew about your leaders and your country." The only thing this book has made me question is how anyone can seriously be more worried about conservatives nuking L.A. and San Francisco than the real terrorists out there...the ones who want to slit throats and post the footage on the web.

4. Continuity problems from how the last book, NIGHTFALL ended...Corey and his wife seem way too disaffected by it all. Yep, they are bothered by 9/11, but they are both working their same jobs, apparently having gotten over the whole sickening coverup (witnessed via videotape) that the "accident" of the TWA flight 800 was really caused by a missile. There is passing reference to this, but not much. Apparently, a guy like Corey doesn't do much soul searching. He just keeps going to work. In realilty, it's hard not to notice that DeMille still doesn't know how to deal with the storytelling hole he got himself in with the last book.

Corey is really all this book has going for it. And, while in his capable hands the world will be saved from kooky nuclear schemes from kooky Republicans, he can't save this book.

I think I'm done with DeMille, for better or for worse


Insufficient Research
	Clarke's glaring research error: Author of The Prophet, Kahlil Gibran (1883-1931), in an article titled "The New Frontier" wrote "Are you a politician asking what your country can do for you or a zealous one asking what can you do for your country?". Clarke sure missed this one, as have so many before him. Did Kennedy just paraphrase, or did he plagarize? I would have liked to have seen Clarke deal with this sticky issue.


Lukewarm reception
	I was so excited when I initially bought this book and honestly, when I read it I was disappointed.  I thought it was a bit dry and boring to read through, despite the useful tips.  Although the authors try hard, they really don't convey the spirit and fun that college life has to offer


Scholarly but unpersuasive -- and heavy with details
	While I found this book interesting and informative when it dwelled upon the personalities and contributions of the physicists who discovered and explored the field of quantum mechanics prior to WW2, I found two problems with the book as it entered the war.  First, it spent too much time, at least for me, on the details of minor episodes and players.  In this sense, I might have appreciated the treatment had I been a scholar researching the field - but I wasn't.  Hence, I often found the reading dull.  Second, I found Powers' ultimate thesis - that Heisenberg purposefully delayed the German atomic bomb program - unpersuasive.  It appeared to me that Powers often strained his interpretation of the facts to make them conform to his thesis.  For example, when reviewing Heisenberg's "Farm Hall" statement in August 1945 that two tons of U235 was required to make an atomic bomb, Powers suggests that because Heisenberg articulated the appropriate lesser amount a week later,  and because he purportedly suggested at an earlier date that a bomb could be the size of a football, his "two ton" statement was a purposeful "error." Equally persuasive, if not more, is the simple thought that Heisenberg did indeed grossly overestimate what was required, thereby prompting him to tell Speer in 1942 that a bomb was impractical. This is not to say that Powers is necessarily wrong.  I simply believe that based on the facts he presents, the issue remains debatable


How to Say It:  Choice Words, Phrases, Sentences, and Paragraphs for Every Situation, Revised Edition
	This is not what I expected or wanted.  The book is written for business senarios with very few suggestions of a personal nature.  The description of the book does not indicate that it is mainly for business use


A real slog
	I know H. James is considered one of the "Greats" of American literature and I question my taste for hating most of his writing.  With few exceptions I think he is  a pretentious purveyor of obscurantism.  I read Wings of the Dove many years ago in the days when I would not allow myself to set aside books I did not enjoy.  I recently picked up a collection of his short stories and remembered why I disliked him so much.  Now in my old age I had no pangs of conscience when I happily closed the book before finishing it.  If more of the stories had been like Daisy Miller I would have proceeded further but unfortunately much of the writing reminded me of Wings.  I am currently seeking  relief from Henry's turgid prose by reading Hemingway.  I'd trade in a Henry  for an Ernie any day.  It's also difficult to like Mr. James' snobbish, shallow and unsympathetic characters.  The more sympathetic ones were obscured by his heavy hand and my impatience with his style.


not-so-fast ...
	Earlier this year I reviewed what many will see as the companion volume to this book ("Photoshop Blending Modes Cookbook for Digital Photographers"), written by the same author. Unfortunately, the newer publication is less useful. It seems to have been written on a pretext that it's clever to be able to duplicate what traditional artists can do. This seems - from my own personal viewpoint - to be greatly undervaluing the power of Photoshop (and similar software). Practitioners of digital fine art should (really, constructively) be looking to explore what the principles of prior and traditional art can mean within a new domain.

Plus, the book gets off to a definitely poor start. The second and longer of two introductory sections is titled "The Tricks of the Trade". Well it would be better if just some of the "tricks" had been explained in full and more accurately.  Say, how to make a selection in Photoshop from the best available precursor (a black-and-white alpha channel). Or say again, how to make tonal corrections to the original photograph using a luminance mask. Then again, the first (and shorter) of the introductory chapters, titled "The Artist's Eye", is just a teaser. This topic - pre-visualizing what can be achieved as an output image when composing the original photographic input - could have benefited from a much more detailed explanation/argument. Indeed, it could even merit an expansive concluding chapter (but the book doesn't have one of those at all ....). This is, after all, at the very core of what the user could harness to any given artistic objective.

Additionally, I think that it's strange that a book such as this simply makes no reference at all to what could be printed from the recipes it contains. Some of the finished (output) images might look quite intriguing as 3 by 5 inch reproductions in the book - but does the methodology hold up if you're targeting a 20 by 36 inch output (say) on a large format printer? And what to do if that's not the case? Finally, and in common with the earlier companion volume, this book suffers from strange and inconsistent layouts of screenshots and text, plus all sorts of technical and editing omissions/errors (which include, for example, having the wrong screenshot in the wrong recipe - see p.108)


Not a good martial arts book!
	This book is not worth wasting your money on.  The techniques that are represented look OK to the untrained eye, but if you examine them closely, you will notice many mistakes.  The techniques are sparse, one per angle.  They are also demonstrated with poor posture and attack.  To the novice,  this book may appear to represent the art of Cabales Serrada Escrima, but  it does not.  More than half of the book is unrelated to the system of  Serrada. This book does nothing to show the effectiveness of Cabales  Serrada Escrima


WHERE ARE THE REFERENCES?
	The monographs lack any sort of scientific references.  A true reference manual should list references so the reader can verify the conclusions made


Enjoyable but not recommended
	Ultimately the ending was so outrageous that it took away from the rest of the story. I would not recommend it to anyone for that reason. I've already given my copy away.


better red than you
	i was more than willing to give None Dare Call It Treason a chance, as i found the scale of Stormer's research impressive. However, the fact that none of his predictions concerning a massive Communist takeover in America came to pass, coupled with his outspoken admiration for McCarthy and truly insane predictions like this:

"Once the takeover comes, you, like millions of others, who believe in God and man's responsibility for his own actions, can be slaughtered like diseased animals or worked to death in slave labor camps or brothels for the Red Army." p. 20

have forced me to conclude that Stormer's thesis was overwhelmingly incorrect. Perhaps the most irritating part of the book was his suggestion that the American educative system was hopelessly pro-Communist. The fact that None Dare Call It Treason was distributed in American high school classes rather undermines his argument.
the sad thing is, because None Dare Call It Treason is so exhaustively researched, it is far too dry to be amusing, even when read ironically. and ironic amusement is the only positive product of propaganda.
in closing, i would take Communism over John A. Stormer's America any day


quot;Contract's quot;??
	If the author's misuse of the apostrophe in the title is any indication of how they wrote the rest of the book, I would stay away


No creativity and not very lasting!
	I recently picked up a copy of Mage: The Awakening not knowing quite what to expect. Since Ars Magica I've loved Mage. From GURPs I quickly switched over to White Wolf's editions of Mage: The Ascension, finally setting on the revised copy most commonly used on game sites today.

Mage: The Ascension Revised was truly a delight, featuring a complexity never seen before in role playing games. A complexity that made working magic truly fun, sure there were flaws, without a good Storyteller you could easily abuse the open ended magic system to do absolutely anything you wanted... but it was a good price to pay for flexibility, interesting possibilities and an all around great RP system.

Is it fair to compare Mage: The Awakening with Mage: The Ascension Revised? Of course not, the game has to be based on its own merits and flaws. The problem is that this game seems to suffer from a lack of creativity which pervades the RP modern RP market. It also seems to be marketed toward a very specific audience.

With the exception of some really interesting RP books (White Wolf's translation of "Engel" from the German, a role playing experience distinct onto itself and wholly creative, and "Demon: The Fallen" - which was unfortunately a flop and still managed to be creative), RP books are typically very bland and all the same.

Mage: The Awakening is no different. Unfortunately it tries to blend easy mechanics with simple spells as though past Mage books have been too complicated (which they haven't, unless the new World of Darkness market is much younger than they previously were... which is a possibility, or perhaps they aren't interested in realistic depth so much as they are just having quick fun).

There is absolutely nothing culturally significant about the Mage: The Awakening game system. If you enjoyed the Buddhist, Hindu, the various forms of Christian, Judaic and other religious outlooks being present in your game system, Mage: The Awakening takes a step back from the pluralism/intellectually stimulating material found in its predecessors and offers a quick, fun system with no lasting appeal.

The background story of Mage: The Awakening is simply terrible. Sure reviews constantly pick on Atlantis, but for a good reason: there's simply nothing else to pick on! The Awakening is simply devoid of any depth whatsoever, but what it does do is provide some interesting magic rotes (spells) instead.

Another problem is that there are no antagonists. In previous Mage games there were antagonists you could use or not use depending on your game. In Awakening they don't even offer any choices. This game is obviously less popular online and more popular in tabletop settings (online, where depth is usually called for, Mage: The Ascension is still used quite frequently).

Some positive qualities about the book are that it has an excellent production value and it provides a concrete game system to play with. Provided you had an excellent Storyteller present with lots of storyline ideas, you might have a fun tabletop session. But quite frankly aside from the production value I can't recommend this book. The largest problem of all is that it simply has nothing distinctive about it... nothing to make it stand out and be worth playing over previous game systems.

In an age of simplicity please do yourself a favor and have a little patience and find yourself a good Storyteller. Go back and read the books that made this one sell like hotcakes - buy the "real" Mage books - if you still want to, pick up a copy of The Awakening and somehow incorporate it in your game


Awakening is Inferior to Ascension
	White Wolf wanted to revitalize a mature product line by rewriting it and they had problems with the old system that deserved fixing. They did an excellent job on the core rules and the game mechanics are overall the best they've ever been.
One of the flaws of MAGE:Ascension was that it is dominated by the struggle between the Technocracy and the Traditions, in a manner that reflected Vampire:Masquerade's clan structure and Sabbat vs Camarilla. One of the flaws of Vampire:Masquerade was that it had this whole history of "Caine as the first vampire and the Anti-Diluvians as the founders of the clans", that overshadowed the game.
In Mage:Ascension, Mages saw themselves as having evolved over time and that history had been re-written by the technocracy, so who really knew about the past?
In Awakening they took exactly what they were trying to jettison from Vampire and put it into Mage with the creation of Atlantis and the Exarchs. The Societies that replace the traditions are not as interesting. The replacement of Avatars with Towers doesn't make sense to me. The eternal struggle theme remains with the Exarchs but seems a lot less important than the struggle over the consensus in Ascension.
Awakening is chock full or rotes. For, Mage in a LARP, rotes are essential, shifting emphasis to rotes improves the compatibility of table top and live action systems, but detracts from the table top experience where Mages can do almost anything. They split the Entropy Sphere into Death and Fate, which kind of makes sense, except that Death has too much overlap with Spirit.
I'm going to use the new Mechanics with the old world in my new campaign.
The new Mage setting doesn't inspire me like the old one did. While the new Vampire and Werewolf settings may catch on, I think the new Mage is going to be a flop -- after the core book I don't expect to purchase any more of the supplements.


Get rid of the glasses
	I bought this book but should have listened to my gut feeling...look at the picture of the "Forever Cool" Ms Mathieson
on the cover.  She keeps saying GET RID OF THE GLASSES in the "before" pictures but she should take her own advice.
The before pictures of women are so bad that "duh" the after pictures do look better.  However the over-all impression is that the book "teaches" you how to dress so you blend in in suberbia, not how to be individually stylish or dress to look like anything except someone with a credit card who went to the local shopping mall and bought whatever was socially acceptable.


Not a worthy successor to Holy Blood Holy Grail
	This is another offshoot of the commercially successful predecessor. The book traces the history of the knights templar and their supposed transformation into free masons. Much of the discussion focuses on free masonry, including its role in the American Revolution. I found the factual support lacking and the prose quite uninspired


Review
	Krakauer is highly confused and I can tell that so are some of these reviewers. He cannot give insight into or shed light on something he knows little truth about himself. The church he is talking about is completley separate from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Jon Krakauer is nothing more than an sadly misinformed and idiotic person trying to enlighten his readers with things he has misinterpreted. Books like these are written on every religion with hopes of discouraging the believers and proving to those that don't believe -that their assumptions were correct


A Heartbreaking Disappointment
	Elizabeth George, please come back.  This book examines in sickening detail the events preceding the murder of our lovely Helen.  I, for one, don't care.  I get it.  We all got it the last time.  It's been a long time since I have abandoned any book after a few chapters, and this book truly deserves to be put down in every sense.  Don't buy it


Disappointing
	I had read such glowing reviews of this book, and had enjoyed other Creamer works so thoroughly that I was suprised how uninspired I was while reading this. Perhaps I failed to be dazzled by Stengel the man. Perhaps I grew tired of the predictable retelling of Stengel's life, season by  season, many of which held no remarkable events. Baseball in '41 is a much  more rewarding book, full of wonderful anecdotes well recounted


Funny book but too many grammar mistakes
	I enjoyed the plot and the characters -- it was very funny.  But there were too many grammar mistakes in the book, which I found too irritating and distracted from the book.  Some conversations did not flow logically --  one person would answer herself, which didn't make sense.  Also, the author  switches from 1st person to 3rd person with the character of Nickel.  And  she used 'to' instead of 'too.' As a former copy editor and English major,  this was very distracting!  But overall, a great book.  I plan on getting  the next 2


Didn't like book at all
	I didn't care for this book at all. I think it is a very well written book, for TEACHERS, but not for a parent who is transracially adopting a child.  I was looking for a book on how I would parent an African American child and this book was more of a textbook.  I think it is very misleading to have it labeled as a "must read for parents and teachers" and it should be advertised as a book for teachers.  I thought "Inside Their Voices" was much more informative about the experiences of a transracially adopted child


I can't really rate this item...
	Why? because I was expectin something else, but first of all, I didn't expect that you have to open/make a hole in your Robosapiens to modify it, so forget it! i will not damage my Robot


Way too long and repetitive
	I was interested in the plot and characters for about half the book.  After that it seemed that little new information was added, or the little that was new came in the midst of much repetition.  There were so many different characters, and we had to hear the separate reactions of each of them to bits of news.  The structure of the tale reminded me of the way a police procedural might be played out on TV


The Egotistical Master
	Mailer tells us a lot we don't want to know about. It's the gloomy long tale of an egocentric writer's acceptance of the ups and downs of his metier. He gives his biased opinions on things he knows and things he doesn't know about. All the negative aspects of his persona are laid out. Still, it must have taken some bravery to lay out some of them. Or else he needed the money. Truth sells, even if it is a very mediocre unfocused book, and quite un-useful. It should have been titled  quot;Me and My Books, Some thoughts on me and my writing quot;


Hardly Engaging
	I've read some of the other reviews, and I couldn't disagree more.  This book is not a page-turner.  I found myself skipping over whole sections of prose because they were boring and sometimes needless.  The story is straighforward.  Hardly any surprises.  Hardly any twists or turns.  Bad guys are always bad guys.  Good guys are always good guys.  There's no hidden agenda lurking through the story.  The blue rose is a natural anomaly.  The people who really want it -- the people willing to steal and kill for it -- are conveniently identified as people willing to steal and kill for the blue rose.  There's no "mystery" here really.  It's just a matter of getting to the end of the book


YUCK!!!! Just a BAD book!
	After trying 2 recipes, I thought that I was a pretty bad cook. So, I asked my friend, a very good cook, to try a couple more recipes. She had the same results. Disgusting!! These recipes must not have been kitchen tested. Mine as well just boil some chicken and dump a can of cream of mushroom soup on top. The results would be better.  Stay away


A Great Effort Sadly Lacking
	I held great hopes for this book--Duveen has long been of interest to me because of the pivotal role he played in the creation of some of the greatest art collections in this country.  However, Secrest in her drive to capture the "essence" of the man has so mangled the story of his life and career that reading her work is more chore than delight.  To say the book is disorganized is to deal in serious understatement.  But worse than that are the inaccuracies, especially when she writes about Duveen's customers.  Just for starters, apparently she didn't recognize the need to differentiate between John D. Rockefeller, Jr. and his father (or maybe she didn't know there has been more than one JDR!).  You won't learn much from this tome that you don't know to begin, and getting through it will be a struggle.


UNBELIEVABLE
	The original Julie and Romeo was delightful. This book was utter nonsense.  A great disapointment. Finished reading it only to find out if it might get better as you went along. It Didn't


Weak and disorganized
	After some years in the IC design business (mostly analog) I needed to teach a course on ASICSs. This book was the text specified by my predecessor. I did not like the book, and eventually read the Weste and Harris book in its 3rd edition. Wolf is not nearly as clear, complete and logically organized as Weste and Harris - no comparison


Ironic -- an unproductive book on productivity
	The book is divided into 52 chapters that repeat basically the same points over and over again. So you have to read through the chapters and try to spot the occasional new idea. It seems strange that a book on productivity makes you waste time gleaning a few good ideas. (Come on, man, if you have 10 pages of good ideas, give them to me in 10.) But then again I guess most books in this genre make you do that. Sheesh


An opinion on Hendrix - far from anything new
	If your into Hendrix enough to want to find out more about Electric Ladyland, your probably already going to know everything in this book. If you've read such great Hendrix books such as 'Electric Gypsy' then you won't get much from this book other than information obtained that you've read before from 'Electric Gypsy' coloured in this authors opinion on Jimi's music.
The author lays down his opinion that reads like someone either not overly impressed by Jimi Hendrix, or someone that has trouble laying praise where it's due. The author makes big calls in this book which fall flat, for example expressing his view on how Jimi could of edited and recorded certain songs better in his opinion (not unlike like Alan Douglas made true) or ego trips like footnotes after mentioning 'Like A Rolling Stone' at Monterey can only be outdone by the rare hard to find Flamingo Club version in 1968 - where does he get that from? The Flamingo club version is near inaudiable for most of the recording with its vocals and the guitar very distorted at the very least and is no way a superior rendition than Monterey but the book has many little comments by the author like that which only makes you think, is this guy trying to brag about his Hendrix collection? Or does he just have to have a different opinion on everything to try and make his book, which really has nothing new, stand out from the pack? His opinions would be valid if he didn't try to go against the grain to just go against the grain! If you've ever heard or seen Jimi at Monterey you don't need to be told how so many people thought he played crap that night - the evidence that this is one of his greatest performances is right there on CD or on the screen as you watch it which just makes bringing up that negative side without balancing it with the many rave reviews he also got seem targeted. Why point out the bad things and not mention the good?

If you want to learn the technical side of the recording or the technical side of Hendrix, you won't learn it from this book. You'll get the classic Hendrix bio for most of it with this Authors strange comments, some bad reviews for Electric Ladyland to show Hendrix was human after all i guess and an author bringing up all his 'friends' and 'visits' to people that are well documented in knowing Jimi.

All in all, if you have no opinion on Hendrix and read this you probably won't think he's that great and get a distorted opinion on him, if you love Hendrix and read this you'll wonder why this Author bothered to write a book about Jimi in the first place other than to let us know he has so many friends that knew Jimi, was lucky enough to see him play a few times and the funniest of all, could of done some things better in his opinion.

Two stars because there's many books out there with much more information about Electric Ladyland, let alone Hendrix, that aren't trying to re-write Jimi's history from one person's perspective and critique thou it's cheap and quite funny if you have a big Hendrix library anyway.


General and shallow overview
	This book is bad for beginner and practically useless for a master. There is no comprehensive description of training complexes, footwork drills and other important details, which were completely omitted. It gives just an  overview of the system in general, so the reader can have some vague  feeling of what Giron escrima is


Horrible
	It is now more than a month after I was supposed to receive this book and I have not gotten it yet, what the hell is going on