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Firstly, let me say the research Nicholas Lardy has conducted is commendable and a welcome addition to the existing literature. His data sources are vast and highly informative. The major limitation of this publication is that the central argument is biased. Lardy selects those data and pieces of existing literature which support his own view. As a result, major sections of the literature concerning financial reform in transitional economies are simply ignored or brushed over. Lardy's view is the typical Western, dare I say "American" argument. Primarily he uses financial criteria to evaluate the economic performance of China's state banks. This methodoloy is extremely poor - particularly in the context of China's trannsitional economy. Financial criteria are a horrible guide to both internal and allocative economic efficiency. If anyone would like elaboration on this point feel free to email me. In summary, Lardy's book is informative and makes for interesting reading. However as a piece of economic analysis, its usefulness is limited. The major reason for this is a total lack of economic theory(as indicated by the previous reviewer) which has resulted in a poor methodology
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I was intrigued by the title, which supposedly links Jedi wisdom to Christianity. Well, after 60 pages or so, I have got the feeling that the Staub is trying to wrap Jedi in Christian cloth and failing at that. The author speaks of the difficulty in leading a Christian life. But, I say that any religious life (be it Christian, Islam or otherwise) is hard because it turns the back on the norm or the conventional.
I am convinced that Yoda is a Zen master; the Force is derived from Tao, not God as interpreted by the orthodox religion(I am purposefully leaving out Christian Mysticism, which is another beast altogether.). A better book on the subject of theology in Star wars is "The Dharma of Star Wars."
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Why use 1 word when 12 will bewilder the reader and make the book that much thicker. I can not believe that a qualified editor reviewed this book.
The wheat to chaff ratio is horrendous. You can go whole paragraphs without coming upon anything worth knowing.
I can only hope that the actual CISA exam questions are not written as poorly as the sample questions within this book.
If you value your time, do not buy this book
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This was a hot mess, it was so boring I couldn't even finish the book, I passed it on to my cusion, and she said the same thing, I just gave the book away. My hopes were all high from Flyy Gryl, but thats the only good book that Omar written. I was so upset by this that I actually wanted to write Omar Tyree myself and ask him what the hell was going on. I mean when you write a bad book chances are that no one is going to want to read the next book. I hate reading a bad book because I feel it is just a waist of my time, and I could've done somthing better. Omar, you owe my 4 hours of a good book
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F this self-help industry crap. Quasi-astrological poppycock at its worst. I can tell this book clamps on to the mind and squeezes it to death merely by reading the cliched title. Humans are far more complex than the hack Man-Warrior/Female-Maiden title what's-his-name gives them. And remember, this "doctor," is quietly making mucho mucho bucks off your poor purchase. Your goddamned ancestors never needed a book to run their lives, so why do you? Let's push all the life coaches off cliffs and put the self-help industry to the torch. That's a great start to a sane life
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I bought this book this weekend as we're doing the pre-five in a Row w/our preschooler and I don't much like it. I've got a mother w/borderline personality disorder and who doesn't observe personal boundaries of other's what-so-ever (if I need a break away, she hunts down my poor husband, all my relatives and friends- ugh) and so this book just kind of made my stomach turn as I could see her reading this to me and justifying her 'stalker mom' mentality.
In the end, I think if a person is from a semi-normal household w/proper respect for a child's boundaries and need for space away from their parents, then this book is okay. I just find some moms are too smoothering- even ones w/o personality disorders- and this book doesn't send a message about love as much as 'I own you'. I like 'Mama Do You Love Me?' better for explaining to a child a parent's unconditional love.
'Good-Night Moon' by Margaret Wise Brown, however, is by far my children's all time favorite book. I was reading that one to them ineutero and still every night before they go to bed. They love it and so do we as parents. But this one even creeped my hubby out and he's from a fairly 'normal' family.
Take it w/a grain of salt
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I have no personal experience with 12-step programs nor do I have dominant addictions (other than book and DVD buying!) but I am a psychologist who has seen a lot of people and their stories and regularly deals with smoking, over-eating and love addictions in particular. I was hoping for some new ideas to assist clients.
This book takes a rational-emotive type approach to conquering addiction and on that level is fine for those wanting to look at that approach. I also found some of his reference to research of how people recover also quite useful BUT he seems to have quite a personal, and often over-generalised, attacking crusade against 12-step programs.
Some of his concerns about possible problems and misunderstandings many people can have with 12-step programs were valid and useful. Similarly I welcomed his questioning of the disease model that has people always defining themselves as an addict and powerless.
However he has to keep coming back in every chapter to go over and over the evils he sees in 12-step programs - and in very derogatory judgmental language. He often even implies they are all deliberately manipulating and exploiting people. I got very uncomfortable with his imputing these motives to everyone.
There appear to be many genuine people of good intention in these movements (and many who clearly seems to get a lot out of them and have recovered).
I would have rather he had used his own rational methods rather than resort to such abusive language. He could have suggested modified views and tools, and alternatives to consider. I can't imagine that he would lure anyone away from the 12-step programs he criticises by attacking everything they have been standing for. However a gentler exploration of limitations and evidence and suggestions for alternatives may have opened up a welcomed middle ground
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As a student of urban development and politics, I can confidently say that this book is a forgettable work of a parochial mind. Davis offers a hardline Marxist view of Los Angeles that, by employing simply economic analysis, does not allow for the intricacies of the city's problems. Class warfare plays a much smaller role in the sprawl of Los Angeles -- anyone outside of the ISO should be discouraged from reading this baseless drivel
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This is one of those books where you actually feel embarrassment for the author. The book is poorly researched, poorly written and, well, words just fail me. While I am not a great Herriot fan, I do have to give him his due - the man could write well and could tell a good story (isn't that what authors are suppose to do?) but this guy Graham Lord, I suspect, has problems feeding paper into his typewriter! The intire book is such an obvious ploy to make some money on the shirttail of a "dead" and popular author, it is rather nauseating. Shame on the publisher for accepting such shoddy work! I did finish the book though (thank God I did not purchase the thing) because each page became worse and worse and I could not stop, thinking with each turn of the page "well it just cannot be any worse than that last page/chapter." How wrong I was! If you must read the thing, borrow it or check it out of a library. I would hate to see a person waste their money, and I certainly would not want the author and his publisher to be rewarded for a work such as this. Herriot's life, warts and all, could be such a fastinating subject. I do hope someone will turn out a good study of him eventually. We certainly did not get it here
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This has to be one of the worst written books I ever read. I can't believe there are so many ways to say the same thing. So far, Danielle Steel has found a way in the first third of this book. I just can't read the rest of it. Generally, if a book isn't very good I can suffer through. This one has gotten on my last nerve. I had stopped reading her books because they had become so predictable. But, I don't think I will be reading anymore of her books. It's an insult to Nora Roberts and Sandra Brown for her to be ranked with them
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I was optimistic when I saw the title, but you know that old saying, "Don't judge a book by its cover."
The author has a FEW legitimate ideas, but any google search could come up with the same information in greater depth and better accuracy. She condemns saving animals from shelters and actually encourages people to breed animals to increase the pet population. She is no more a pet lover than I am a supermodel. Her ideas are based solely on MONEY. Even if it encourages starting a puppy mill (euphemistically referred to as a dog breeder).
Early in her book she mentions the titles of a few other books she recommends (I have chosen not to seek them out), but she says don't spend your money on them, just go to the library and check them out. If you insist on reading this book I give you the same advice. DO NOT BUY THIS BOOK--CHECK IT OUT FROM YOUR LOCAL LIBRARY! Then do google searches to get more in-depth, accurate information about any of the four decent ideas she did have, or come back to amazon.com and find a more specific book that can actually be of use.
Oh, and by the way, the world is already overpopulated with unwanted pets. Encouraging people to add to the problem is morally reprehensible
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I thought this book would be great and was really looking forward to making some of the recipes, but I have to admit I'm disappointed with the recipes and with what I've baked from it so far. I was surprised that so many of the recipes called for vegetable shortening instead of or in addition to butter. I know the book itself explains that shortening is used to achieve a certain texture, but I have read in other baking books that shortening is a crutch and doesn't deliver the flavor punch of pure butter.
So I was a little skeptical, and then reading through the recipes, although they are very clearly written, there aren't a lot of extra tips on technique or anything for individual recipes. The book already assumes a level of competence.
I made three recipes from the book: the essential chewy sugar cookie, the essential chewy chocolate chip cookie, and the Fudgy Brownies. All three recipes tasted delicious, so I can't complain there, but the brownies came out a little tough for my tastes, and both the cookies spread too much -- way too much, and I even refrigerated the dough for the sugar cookies. I consider myself to be an intermediate baker and have made these cookies from other recipes in the past with better results, so right now I'm wondering if I should even try any more of the recipes in this book or just give up. I think it's okay for a "base" cookie recipe book, but you would need to look elsewhere for better techniques or to tweak the ingredients
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This is the latest in a never-ending series of books trying to generalize non-business world (eg. sports, armed forces, girl scouts, religion, NASA, etc.) management techniques to the business world.
Most, possibly all, are of little value because of major differences.
1)Members constituting the varying organizations are motivated differently, and face greatly significantly different situations. What does eg. a fighter pilot or football coach have in common with a pharmicist, nurse, professor, financial analyst, etc.? I have no idea.
2)Key success factors vary from one business to another. For Merck, it may be speed of developing new drugs, getting through FDA approval, and motivating physicians to use them. For Nucor Steel, it undoubtedly rests much more on low-cost production. Again, what does either have to do with fighter pilots - little, if anything.
One is better off reading books from similar situations - eg. about Wal-Mart (if you are in retailing), about Allied-Signal or G.E. (if you are managing a conglomerate), and about New York Community School District #4, as managed by Sy Fliegel, if you are in public school
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I hate this book. It is extremely boring and it is way too long. There are too many characters to keep track of and many of them are extremely similar. Do not read this unless forced to. I like to read, but this nearly put me to sleep. avoid at all cost
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This book reads like a horror novel.
By allowing her dogs (as well as another one in her care) to roam freely throughout an urban area crisscrossed by busy roads, the author demonstrates her utter disregard for the animals' welfare. Not to mention the antisocial attitude she displays with her total inconsideration for her neighbors, and for the countless strangers kind enough to phone when her lost dogs seek refuge on their doorsteps.
Oh, and let's not forget the dozens of shelter dogs killed because their potential adoptive homes were filled by the plethora of puppies spawned by the author's choice not to spay and neuter her animals.
This book moves at a peppy pace, and might have been interesting (albeit morally reprehensible) if the author's "observations" actually provided any insight. But those eighteen-wheelers on the Alewife Parkway veered closer to poor Misha than the author's whimsical interpretations stray within range of scientific evidence. Case in point: She is so clueless about the reality of canine behavior that she inadvertently allows one of her dogs to kill another one's litter of puppies. Oops!
Any genuine dog lover (or any human with an ounce of compassion and common sense) will despise this book. A previous reviewer hit the nail on the head: If "feelings" are your road map to life, you might enjoy this book. If you regularly take your brain out for walk, forget it. Calling this a meaningful book about dogs is like calling "Jonathan Livingston Seagull" the definitive text on marine fowl
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I purchased this took and then found that it was just a reprint from several decades ag
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just to make the plot work. Not very realistic. If you want a realist cop character, try Michael Connelly's Harry Bosch.
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In seeking to develop my own grant writing course, I reviewed 20 books on Amazon. I was sold on this one by its extremely high Amazon.com Sales Rank...probably the highest of this category.
Nevertheless, I was shocked and taken aback by a comment on the introduction page, that harkened back to my eighth-grader days: "You'll learn that in grant writing you especially need to cultivate two abilities: meeting deadlines and following directions."
Despite the obvious comprehensiveness of the materials presented in the book from Ms Burke-Smith's experience, I don't know who's responsible for the talking-down attitude presented here.
This is my first EVERYTHING title, and I don't know if all EVERYTHING titles are like this, or if it's from award-winning business writer Ms Tremore.
All I know is after getting such an Introduction, what reader would wish to proceed into the book's depths with that kind of attitude by one's hoped-for mentors?
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This is one of Kellerman's poorest books. When you FINALLY get to what is going on, it is ridiculous. Don't waste your time on this
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I am a big fan of the Missing Manual series. Previous books have given me lots of insights into my installed software and have made my computing time much more efficient. I therefore approached this book with much enthusiasm. Office is such a gargantuan program, with tons of bells and whistles, that Microsoft itself estimates that most users take advantage of less than a third of its capabilities.
However, the book is a major disappointment, because of its many mistakes and poor organization. Most of the mistakes are ones you can work around--for example, on page 8 the topics covered by appendixes A and B are reversed--but the sheer number of such mistakes makes reading the book a major distraction. Every few pages I find myself going to the Missing Manuals web site to report yet more errata, such as incomplete or wrong instructions, figures that do not agree with the text or figure captions, incomprehensible writing, seeming confusion between the Mac and PC versions of the program, etc. And I agree wholeheartedly with a previous reviewer who complained about the inadequate index.
It looks as though O'Reilly Publishers did not do an adequate proofing of the book, but instead rushed it out as soon as possible. That is too bad, because I will now be much more hesitant to purchase another Missing Manuals title
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The writing was not what I expect of Andre Norton. Too many gaps and information that is disjointed. Whether this is a consequence of collaboration I don't know. I felt this should have had a strong editor to point out where things should be tightened. For example - at the start we know Kirion has sent people to capture his sister. The book covers over 2 years, but you hardly hear of this again. I cannot imagine the sorcerer would just have let it drop.
I am a long-time fan and retired children's librarian. Sic Fi & fantasy is my favorite genre, but this one I had to push to finish. Unsatisfying.
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How can a best-selling author like Simon Winchester take an event as exciting as the San Francisco Earthquake of 1906 and turn it into a tedious snooze-fest? One answer: write as if you had just discovered an adjective mine and were free to throw in extra descripitive terms on every line until listeners scream for an end to florid phrases. Another: strive to break the record for most clich?s in a single paragraph. Finally: write about events in 1906 as if no one but Simon Winchester had ever before thought about their consequences -- thus, everything in this tedious narrative becomes about Simon. Simon and the raccoons; Simon on the failing American economy; Simon attempting to reproduce American accents. This is a CD set for avoiding
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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
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While the author does go into detail about numerous topics and informs the reader about what is necessary to survive. What I think the books lacks is the detail necessary on all of the major topics. An example would be that he describes how to build a leanto for shelter, but doesn't go into detail on how to tie the structural members together. He just tells you that you need to tie them together. What if you don't have a shoelace to use? What other alternates are there? This book would be great for a teenager who goes camping and may need to build a fire, but it's not enough for the serious camper
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Please be aware that this book contains very explicit information about every topic of sexual nature. Read this book yourself before giving it to your child. It discusses oral sex, anal sex, how to use and purchase condoms, masturbation (for girls and boys), etc. When the author discusses Exploring Your Own Sexuality, she says that if she had known about masturbating sooner she would have straighter teeth, as she would have stopped sucking her thumb. The cover of this book gives no clue to the depth of information covered within. It is in no way appropriate for a girl under the age of twelve. For many parents even the age of twelve would be inappropriate
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This book sucked because its like an autobiography of some idiot who knew nothing about what he was doing...his book is mostly life-stories...and stupid ones at that...some teeter the line of racism, he emphasizes attempting to hex some evil "fat black woman" and he demonizes some other young brothers later on in the book, i see most of the reviewers overlooked the fact that this guy was kind of out of line with his emphasis on "race".
And besides that, his 2 or 3 spells and such are old and tired...and there is no "self-initiation" for the type of Voodoo he's talking about...
i am sorry but this book was a waste of time and money, i came away from this little book knowing not one single solitary grain of anything worth knowing. If you looking to learn about Voodoo or Vodun this book will not help.
His title is also misleading because "Voodoo" ussually refers to Hoodoo and "Vodun" ussually refers to the religion but this author isnt talking about either one....he's just running his mouth on and on and on as if his life-experiences are even worth tellin.
This book is a great example to why people of a foriegn back-ground to African based religions should not write books about it as if they could really know but so much.....this was a terrible book that this sorry author made about a system he obviously knows nothing about
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If you want to believe an illusion, go for it. Some readers say he is well informed. Whoa. This guy talks about science without any credentials to do so.
If it makes you feel good to believe that the US is bad, the environment is collapsing, and we need socialism to survive, then this is the book for you.
If you are open minded but want truthful facts to make your own opinion, find another source.
Waste of money
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As a dad, I was really looking forward to a book on potty training to help me with my 2-year old. This book is lousy though. Why?
1. Stupid Writing. I got pretty sick of constantly reading all the sappy, "witty" remarks. "Dancing the Potty Mambo"? Give me a break!
2. Stupid Advice. This book keeps telling you to talk to your kid like he/she is an adult. I'm sorry, but a 2-year-old just cannot comprehend a long drawn-out explanation of why you want them or don't want them to do something. How about just saying, "Don't do that!" or "Hey, you want to try this?" That seems to work just fine for me. Why give your kid a doctoral dissertation every time you want them to do something? What's wrong with just telling your kid what to do (nicely), and expecting them to be obedient?
3. Repeating Content. This book kept repeating itself OVER and OVER. Okay, I got it already! I strongly feel that the author wanted to push this book over the 200-page mark when all that needed to be said could probably have been accomplished in about 50 pages (or less).
4. Too Many References. This book constantly refers to other chapters. I once counted 6 different references to other chapters on one page. I am not kidding! Huh? Is potty training really that freakin' complicated? All I want is some general ideas on how to go about it, how to get started, and a few good tips. I don't need all these detailed references. (Nor do I need the phrase "Potty Mambo" repeated to me ad infinitum.)
Here is all I wanted to know:
-How do I get started?
-What do I do?
-How often do I need to try it?
-Should I go for pullups or just keep him in diapers for the moment?
Maybe this book got to all of that, but I quit after page 60. I just couldn't take it anymore. After hearing the phrases "Stay Positive" and "Potty Mambo" repeated to me for the umpteenth time, I had to quit. I returned this book and got my money back.
If I were to say anything good about this book, I would say that it has a few good tips, surrounded by about 180 pages of filler.
Potty training still looms ahead. Will I be successful? Probably. But to this book I say, No Thanks
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While "Talk to the Hand" is inescapably mediocre in comparison to "Eats, Shoots & Leaves", a book I found amusing, though not up-to-par to its New York Times Bestseller status, this book does have its moments.
However, I was uterrly bloody appalled at the rudeness of Lynne Truss in presuming to make a comment that, despite whatever way she meant it, ended up sounding like she thought gluten intolerance was a choice. I find it interesting that she, or at least her editors, did not further investigate the disease (which, indeed, gluten tolerance is) before publishing such a degrading remark.
Oh, yes, bloody well sorry, Ms. Truss, for invading your rude, stay-home-and-bolt-the-door causitive world with yet another irritation which, I'm sure, someone created just so you would have to sit in a restaurant and listen to someone else get special treatment for a fad diet. Let's just go and, well, obliterate a genetic disorder! While we're at it, we might as well just make the lactose intolerant drink milk. If it pleases and thanks you, Ms. Truss, we celiacs will eat cake. (Oh, bloody hell, did I just say "please"?)
Despite the fact that Lynne Truss makes this world out to be such a horribly rude place, I have to wonder if she's experiencing the effects of projection. In explaining how rude we humans are, it was necessary for her to be quite rude, as well. It is not simply the celiac remark to which I refer: I also found her supermarket incident, in which a kid shouts at his mother, "I want that one, YOU EFFING BITCH!", among others, a bit offensive.
As a member of both the gluten intolerant community and the younger generation so responsible for this rudeness, I was often thoroughly appalled by this book. No, my friends and I don't usually hold doors for each other, but, in general, I thank and get thanked in return for a money lend or a coffee downtown. Frankly, I find myself more often in the perpetual motion of manners with my friends, as well as strangers, than in a cycle of rudeness which includes swearing for the sake of swearing and no regard for others. I can safely say that all of my friends ignore their cell phones if we are having a conversation, or, if they must answer, they apologize profusely before going outside to talk so they do not offend the people around them.
I have to argue that we are not a select group. In today's world, one sees what one expects to see; one is treated as one expects to be treated. Ms. Truss, I believe, would find that perahps if she simply lowered her expectations slightly and gave out all the respect she possibly could, she would be surprised to find that, when people are rude, she cares less because she knows that she, at least, is doing her best not to be. If she did this, maybe she would be less likely to jump all over people who are rude because she would not be so worried about her own behavior.
My last complaint is this: "gluten crap"? You would think that such a sophisticated, eloquent (as she is dedicated to proving) person as Lynne Truss would have been able to find a better word to describe gluten than the third-year, am-I-not-so-cool-and-bitchin' (?) style word "crap.
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I had to take a look at this book just like I did Rachel Shteir's previous book "Striptease" to see if the online reviews were true. Sadly, they were. Like "Striptease", this book was full of typo's and appeared poorly organized and written. One would think that Ms. Shteir would have learned from her previous book--which also had similarly poor reviews. I wonder why Gypsy Rose Lee paired up with her. I can only guess at Ms. Shteir's fascination with this topic: my guess is that she wishes she could be a stripper herself (or maybe she is). I base this in part on a meeting with Ms. Shteir a year ago when I invited her to write about a professional conference I organized and presented at: she wore a very low-cut blouse as she interviewed people. I'm no prude but this was highly inappropriate and distracting people told me. On top of that, her article was chock full of misquotes, errors in fact, and adopted a perspective that nobody who attended the conference could relate to. Oh well, I can only hope that Ms. Shteir's next project will be more accurate and also that she will make clear her real interest in her subject matter. Gypsy Rose, I guess we both made the same mistake: trusting someone like Ms. Shteit to help us tell a story who didn't have the heart or the skills to pull it off
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I got really disapointed when I received and read this book. It provides advanced techniques that a regular woodworker would never use. The parts that woodworkers use the most are vague. I'm not intereset in making violins or boats. I need techniques to bend wood, to use joints for curved surfaces, to build equipment and fixtures to bend wood and so on. This book lacks of the practical guidelines to do so
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The amount of violence in this book is excessive over relatively insignificant motives. I had a hard time believing all this was happening in 1948. I am not questioning Mosley's portrayal of racism. However, I did a little research into just how violent place Los Angeles was in 1948, and the answer is not very. There may have been poverty, racism, alcholism, but L.A. county seemed pretty safe; the late 1940s had some of the lowest homicide rates since as far back as one researcher was able to find, 1827! Mosley may have been more familiar with L.A. of the 1970s and 1980s and just assumed that it had always been that way. Throw in speakeasies, gangsters hijacking liquor trucks, and one gets the impression that Mosley is confusing the 1948 with 1928.
I am not so pedantic as to insist that fiction be historically accurate. But many, many people hail Mosley for depicting a dark side of life/era/place that had not been shown before. From what I can tell, he has simply combined stereotypes from the 1920s and 1970s (I guess those years average to be about 1948). Mosley is depicting a fantasy world of his own creation. However, I doubt he ever tried to pass it off as authentic, and I hope readers realize that it is not.
Easy Rawlins in this novel falls into the rather weak, but unfortunately large, group of fictional detectives that actually accomplish little detecting. A detective actually solves a mystery using his own intellect; that is interesting to read. Detectives in less skilled hands solve mysteries via confession. Easy does solve one of the murders on his own, but just about everything he "solves" is simply confessed to him. I find that extremely dissatisfying.
Mosley has packed the book with violence, but seems to know very little about violence himself. None of the fights are well described. Easy, for being a self-professed "killing machine" can't actually fight worth a damn and is surrounded by guns but does not apparently know anything about them. They are either big or they are small. He does not come of as being hard-boiled, but rather a pathetic braggart
Mosley does show signs of being a very good writer. But I think he is too far over his head in this genre to come up with something exceptional. I imagine that his work must have improved, but this effort is nothing to get exceited over. And again, I don't obsess over accuracy, but a little bit of research would have gone a long way in firming the foundation of this novel.
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I was very disappointed to discover that this book had a homosexual character. This is absolutely inappropriate for a young adult book, and unless a parent has read the reviews that mention it, said parent would have no clue as it sure isn't mentioned anywhere on the blurb in the book.
I usually am more aware of what my daughter is reading, but this time this particular book slipped under my radar. She told me that it had a reference to a gay character, which I took to mean just a passing reference, but when I read the book, it was treated more seriously than I thought, even going so far as to have the two girls kiss.
It is inexcusable, both on Ms Pierce's part and on Scholastic's. No matter what the author's personal beliefs, it is irresponsible to have this type of content without a warning to parents. I believe that as a parent, I'm the one responsible for what my children see and do, but it sure helps to have some type of information so I can make an informed decision.
Anise Hollingshea
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I had high hopes for this book. There are too many parts that feel self-serving and pointless. I felt like I was reading the author's autobiography rather than reading a book on innovation. The material on IDEO could have so much better from a content perspective but it stopped short of providing practical information to the reader. I found the preface by one of the author's former professors to be the best part of the book. I would not recommend buying this book
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I have read several of Hiaasen's books and loved them. They were very funny. This one is not. It is an endless description of naked strippers. I found the main character, Erin, to be very unappealing. She is just so stupid. Her problems are all of her own creation. And she is not funny. I think you have to be a man to like this book. I, as a woman, just found it exceedingly boring. I kept waiting for it to get funny. It never did
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I ordered the book from them on Nov1. On Nov 15 I called and they told me they didn't have it. The money was returned by Amazon
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While I think the basics of the book are good, I don't like how fat-free items are treated as always being the best option. I did much better on the South Beach Diet, where good fats in moderation is emphasized as well as natural foods. Fat is what makes us feel satisfied. After years of trying to diet by limiting fat, it was a revelation to me I could lose weight without feeling hungry and deprived. An omelette made of egg whites and fat-free cheese is not at all satisfying and not necessary. Secondly, many foods are altered in a negative way to make them low-fat. I just noticed this week that Cool Whip lite has high fructose corn syrup and hydrogenated vegetable oil as two of it's top ingredients. This can't be better for you than actual cream. I also prefer the book "French Woman Don't Get Fat", which emphasizes enjoying food by eating smaller portions of good, natural food when it's in season. The pleasure of good food makes you stop thinking diet and start thinking about lifestyle. I feel that the G.I Diet is oversimplified and written to appeal to an audience that has never thought about eating right before. I think this book is about the mechanics of healthy eating when the cause of overeating is a lot more complicated. It certainly can help get people on the right track, but I think there are better books available.
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Clearly the tens of millions of fouls who read this racist crap fail to see it for exactly what is; an endorsement of Ethnic cleansing. If the tables were turned and a Jew, or a Muslim wrote a series in which anyone who disagreed with Judaism, or Islam was BRUTALLY MURDERED than the same fundamentalists idiots who take such disgusting pleasure out of this garbage would go simply ape s**t. I do not know what is more pathetic the fact that there are actually fundamentalist Lunatics out there who write this truly unforgivable racist garbage, or the large number of dimwits out who eagerly wait to throw their money away on each installment of HATEFUL FILTH!!
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This is a tough review to write because I felt the authors made a good effort in the writing of the book and explanations of the Spring Framework. Writing a book is no small feat, and technical books are a special beast.
With that last statement in mind, this is were the book sadly falls short. For one, the source code available online is a significant rewrite of the books' code. The authors explain ( on the publisher site ) that this is because they learned better ways and techniques to implement the samlpe application after the book went to print.
While improvement is always good, this presents two problems. 1. The sample application is now out of sync with the material. Not a good thing for those trying to learn, as you require more effort to study in tandem with the book. Also, and this is not to disparage the authors skill, but I buy books because I am expecting experienced, if not expert advice. If a small, sample application needs rewriting, perhaps they should write about something else?
Further down this road, the sample application has errors that prevent it from compiling. I suspect that the final build file was not tested, or it was a case of "well, it compiles on my machine". There were several dependencies that required changes to the build file so it could be compiled. Thankfully, I use Eclipse and imported the project. Eclipse immediately informed me of missing dependencies, which I resolved by getting those jars on the build path and in the build file so they would be deployed in the war archive. Examples are:
jakarta-commons/collections, and several core Spring jars relating to DAO and database access.
For an experienced developer, familiar with ant and a good IDE, it was not a lot of trouble to get it running, it just did not give me a good impression.
Bonus info for anyone switching the database out to postgresql: First, no matter what DB you swap in, you'll need to change a few hard coded references in the build file. I made property variables which I placed in build.properties. Then you will need to change the class User to something else ( and of course anything in the app that references it. ). Another great reason to use Eclipse.
Why you must change it, is User is a reserved keyword in postgresql and you will get databases errors because you can't name a table User
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I am sorry to say that I thoroughly disliked "Of Human Bondage." I know it is on every must read list for fiction (which is why I decided to read it) however, I just wonder how such a boring story can continually be relegated to such a hallowed position in literature? Not only did I find it dull but I was becoming increasingly uncomfortable with the main character's perception of women! I'm not a feminist in the least but most of the female characters were described in such pathetic ways. "Yellow teethed" "Sallow skin" "Dirty Hands" "Tear stained over powdered face", it goes on and on. I wondered if the author was uncomfortable women? I looked online for some information about Maugham. To my surprise I found out that Maugham was bisexual. He did marry and have a child but for most of his life it sounded like he was involved with men. In no way can I say this substantiates or confirms the tone of the book -- but in some way it answered my question or concern.
Instead of this book I'd recommend the following classics: Beautiful and Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Madame Bovary by Flaubert. At least in these books, maybe the female characters are not the most virtuous but the characters are written with such sensuality that even though they might not be described as gorgeous they are brought to life in the pages by the author with a kaleidoscope of words that makes them multidimensional -- good or bad.
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The novel, A Northern Light, by Jennifer Donnelly, is a very realistic portrayal of the life of a teenage farm girl, bound for a great future. Jennifer Donnelly relates to Mattie Gokey, the lead character, in a way that they bother grew up in rural side of New York. Donnelly attended the University of Rochester before she wrote her three novels and one children's book. Her novels include, The Tea Rose, The Winter Rose, A Northern Light, and a children's book, Humble Pie. All of her novels include a very popular romantic theme and her book, A Northern Light, has also been introduced in Europe under the title A Gathering Light.
A Northern Light reflects a lot on the issues of wealth, education, love, and murder. The combination of those themes makes for a novel that anyone is able to read and relate to. As you read this book, you feel like the main message is the traditional clich? of following your dreams no matter how hard they are to achieve. But as you read further, you realize that it's a lot about hardships, strength and love. On the first page of the book, Mattie is imagining a perfect day at the Glenmore hotel before she so disappointingly tells herself, "I believe these things. With all my heart. For I am good at telling myself lies". From this quote, you can see the type of person Mattie is, and it gives a foreshadowing to the events that would take place throughout the novel. The events typically consist of let down after let down for Mattie and her hopes for her future.
This book is written from Mattie's point of view which really helps the reader to get to know her better. It adds a different element to the book that wouldn't be there if it wasn't written from Mattie's point of view. It lets you get inside Mattie's head and feel the emotions that she's dealing with along with her true thoughts and feeling towards situations. Mattie is truly troubled girl who works so hard toward what she wants and yet there is always something holding her back. She's stuck in a farming town where education isn't as important as having a prosperous farm and a family. As you read this book, you just want to tell Mattie that she needs to take her own future into consideration and stop worrying long enough to have some faith. She is a selfless giver who is willing to do anything and everything to keep her family and her farm doing well. She deals with extreme guilt for wanting to leave her father after her mother died. She has to learn that the promise that she made to her mother to always take care of her family includes taking care of herself as well. Royal Loomis enters Mattie's life at a very unconventional time when Mattie's unsure of what she wants to become and she has to chose between his love and the life she's always wanted. Mattie deals with her teacher, Miss Wilcox, leaving town. Miss Wilcox was Mattie's role model who was living the life of an independent poet with a car and a royal lifestyle. The life Mattie wants.
This book is intended for a female audience because it deals with issues that sometime only a girl could understand. It's a fairly easy read so it is more for adolescents than adults but not for young children. The issues that it deals with are issues that children may not be able to appreciate as much as teenagers who are about to go to college and leave their families. A Northern Light is full of valuable lessons, but most of all it's just a good book to get lost in.
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I really want to like Thich Nhat Hanh's books. I want to because people I respect like them, because I believe in the value of mindful living... but the truth is that I didn't find this book very helpful.
I have real and continuing struggles with Anger and this book while interesting in a round about way is, as others have mentioned, not directed toward the problem of anger. It is a mindful living remix.
I'm going to keep searching for a great TNH book and when I do I'll recommend it. Good hunting
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I have introduced many of my ELL, high school students to Lois Lowery and the depth of her characters. She is a brilliant writer and capable of inspiring fierce passion in her readers as they encounter shocking details of her utopian worlds. I was anxious to read this companion novel and had planned to share it with my class this January. Although the series is written for 6th graders and older, this book's simplicity, in its message, language and writing style will inspire no one. I am sadly disappointed
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I have reviewed all 31 chapters of psycho-babble in the book (and the epilogue too).
A very "nice" read. Indeed entertaining and yes, funny in many ways. They also use doubtfull suggestions - like bringing "doughnuts" because people like them !?
They also "demystify" some "myths" about teamwork. (I do not know where they got those Myths from) - another fragment of their imagination, I suppose.
This "business" book is more of a "romantic novel" about something relating to "teams", full of anecdotal references (very life-like) - but totally unsubstantiated, wanting us to "believe" that indeed, "teams things" are like they describe it.
From an entertaining point of view - very. From an academic point of view - null. For a business person - if you have time to waist, have fun.
It is interesting to note that they got a UK award for their book. (for entertaining I suppose). I guess this is a way of promoting the book. Good marketing technique.
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I'm not a cosmologist, but Stephen Hawking's Universe was so simply written it is essentially condescending. The language is akin to the level one would read in a newspaper. Moreover, the pictures are second rate pre-contact lense Hubble knock-offs (despite being published in 1997), and the book has very little to do with Stephen Hawking. Sure, he wrote the foreward and did some editing, but it lacks the wit and wonder of a Hawking work. Naming the book after him and putting his picture on the front is misleading. I AM a chemist, and despite this, Filkin's descriptions of Chemical discoveries left even me guessing because he was attempting to dumb-down ideas that aren't dumb-downable, and didn't include diagrams which would be helpful for anyone trying to understand the concepts (like neutrino capturing or particle acceleration). If you want to learn some cosmology, read "A Brief History of Time" or "A Short History of the Universe". These are simply written but informative works that won't leave you waiting for substance
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A gold sticker on this book's cover reads "WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE FOR LITERATURE." Don't be mislead. The sticker must refer to the author not the book. While he no doubt received the prize, after wading through the work I can't believe it was for this piece of work. I found the book exceedingly boring, a chore to read every step of the way. As the Iberian peninsula physically separates from Europe, several unengaging and underdeveloped characters (the most interesting of which was a dog) wander from one destination to another with meager purposes, certainly none I cared about. While the book may have been intended as an allegory for Portugal's relationship with the rest of Europe and the European Union, it failed to strike a chord. I'll chalk this book up as something only a Pulitzer Prize judge would love
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I purchased this book based on the mostly glowing reviews from other reviewers and I am very disappointed. The Arabic fonts used are SO small that, at times, it is actually quite difficult to make out the letters. Definitely, NOT a book for people who are new to the language
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This is a nearly verbatim rendition of the Grimms' story, and it's hard to understand why Zelinsky would use his talent to illustrate it for children. Even harder to figure out is how the American Library Association could award its Caldecott Medal for distinguished American picture book for children to any rendition of this dreadful tale: The king threatens to kill the miller's daughter if she can't spin gold from straw. Rumpelstiltskin saves her life by spinning gold for her, but extracts a necklace, a ring and, on the third night of spinning, a promise of her firstborn. She then marries the king, whom Zelinsky depicts as young and handsome. When it comes time for the queen to hand over her newborn, Rumpel agrees to relent if the queen can discover his name. She sends a servant to follow him into the woods and discover the name. So the king, though he looks good, is greedy and brutal. The queen is a victim who agrees to give over a future infant to save her own life, and then depends on an anonymous, unrecognized "servant girl" to save the child. And Rumpelstiltskin, shown as physically unattractive and (the message seems to be) therefore bad, is the one who saved the future queen from execution and then relents on the payment he bargained for. A weird, twisted story that offers nothing for kids, illustrated with Renaissance-style pictures that accentuate the perversity by making the bad guy look good and the guy who saved the damsel in distress look bad
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I was at the airport, getting ready to fly out to Cali and I found this book in the airport gift shop- I thought what a stroke of luck I had getting a Stephen King title at such a juncture... I'm a huge fan.
Despite the fact that I started and finished the book exactly as the plane took off and landed, I was sorely disappointed. Much ado about nothing would be an overstatement
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Myths are important, but they should not be labeled history. 1. George Washington was not a great guerilla leader; he commanded conventional forces who fought in lines--just like the redcoats. Washington thought militia and irregulars were undisciplined and unable to face regular troops.
2. Ronald Reagan did not begin the nuclear "disarming" of the Soviet Union. Eisenhower and Kennedy tried, but (LBJ?) Nixon and Carter were able to bring the ABM treaty, the SALT treaties and he START treaties to a point where both sides began cutting back their nuclear arsenals. Reagan did have success with theater wrapons in Europe, but the "big nukes" that could end civilization were already being cut back.
This is an interesting book about Reagan and Peggy Noonan, but some of the history cited is WRONG
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I had never read a Danielle Steel book before, and decided to give her a try, given that she is so popular and has so many books published. I was pretty disappointed. I agree with the other reviewers that the plot is unrealistic; however, if a book is unrealistic but well-written and engaging, I would still like it. I think the biggest problem with this book is the author's excessive repetitiveness. Yes, I get that this character is really cold and unloving---that was already covered 50 pages ago! In addition, character traits could have been better conveyed through situations, rather than simply stating, "so and so was a devoted mother" and repeating this fact again and again and again. These flaws in the author's writing kept me skipping through whole sections of the book. This book did not leave me wanting to read more of Ms. Steel's books. It is an ok book if you like romance and very easy, repetitive reading.
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this book sucked. all the other people in my book group and I hated this book. there is only a stupid plot about a pig running awa
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I bought the book after a practitioner used this technique on me. However, the information provided is too extensive and confusing, listing far too many "points" in the body with corresponding healing touches to keep track of them. The body map listing them is in the first part of the book, so you have to flip back and forth to see what the author is referring to. I also thought some of the miraculous healing claims a little outrageous. The way this system originated is also a little murky. This is a better book for people training to learn this practice than for the lay public
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This series may be good for a laugh. Some of the writing is engaging.
But the premise is absurd.
WHY, in this day and age, should anyone accept the world-view of the Bible? A book that tells us to buy and sell slaves, stone our wives to death if they accept some other tribe's beliefs, and subordinate our minds to an absolute despot up in the clouds of Mt. Sinai?
In a sense, Bible believers have been "left behind" since the 1700s Enlightenment. Tom Paine's "The Age of Reason" showed the God of the Bible to be a cruel, vindictive monster. And what did Thomas Jefferson call the book of Revelations? "The ravings of a madman."
Read this series, if you like. Enjoy parts of it. But make no mistake: to take any of this seriously, you have to regress to a prehistoric world-view, before men learned to think, to ask questions; before logic or science -- a time when dazed, superstitious primitives believed stars could fall to the earth, if they didn't grovel humbly enough to their supposed god.
Do the absurdities and contradictions bother no one? When the "sheep" are raptured up to heaven, their clothes are left behind. So heaven is a nudist colony?
The basic contradiction, of course, lies in using worldly action (some of it exciting) to proselytize for the unworldly, the supernatural.
But why should we care whether any of the "good" guys gets killed? And why should THEY mind -- won't they go straight up to heaven? That's what they WANT, isn't it? Why even lift a finger against the "bad" guys -- didn't Christ say, "Resist not evil"?
Worried about who will win? "God" is infinitely powerful. So Jesus (who is 1/3 of God -- or something like that) is sure to win when Armageddon rolls around, in book 12 of the series. And the "sheep" -- the believers -- will happily worship him, looking just like the pictures of dim-witted, bovine people you see in the tracts Jehovah's Witnesses leave at your door.
The going price for a used copy of "Tribulation Force" is one cent. Does that tell you something?
Actually, the story-telling is worth more. The basic premise is worth less. Perhaps it averages out
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All throughtout this book Alex Delaware and his police friend Milo never stop ruminating over every new fact they uncover. They have endless discussions on how a new tidbit might fit into the overall picture. The reader longs for the pair to actually do something. In the end the author walks away without even tying up all the main strings. That is really dirty pool after making the reader wade through all the yakking. I read and enjoyed several of the early Alex Delaware books and then quit looking for new ones, now I know why
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The book appears to give comprehensive coverage in terms of the number and type of entries included. However, on the Atkins diet, the important measure to monitor is the "active" carbohydrate mass which may metabolised and which excludes roughage or fiber. The inclusion of such a measure in the book would greatly enhance its value and utility
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This book is more of an advertisement for Scoblete's other books, his writing buddies other books, and his golden touch craps siminar. This book gives no mention of how the reader can acomplish dice control, which is the reason I bought this book. The book is rather a collection of stories. Scoblete tells of people he met playing craps but he forgets to tell how to play craps. It would not surprise me at all if the characters in the book are made up, especially the Captain, the authors ultimate craps hero. I couldn't even finish this book. It was boring and repeated the same type of uninteresting stories all the way through, and left the reader with no knowledge gained. If you are interested in a good casino book I recomend something by Avery Cardoza or a book published by his company
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What a chore this book was to read. If it weren't for my OCD about finishing books that I start, I would've read the first couple of chapters and then given up.
It seems like a wannabe-suspense, but it's not. It seems like there might be a love story in it, but there's not. It feels like there might be a creepy angle in it, but there is not. What I can gather about this book is that the author thinks she's going to connect all these people with different circumstances and perspectives together by one tragedy. She tries to make a connection, but falls WAY short. Read Vinegar Hill - that one was worth it. Pass Midnight Champagne by
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The sub-title of this book is very misleading. It does not contain "an action-oriented approach" to raising your self-esteem - unless you count sitting down with pen and paper as an action. The book is centered on sentence completion exercises where you write the beginning of a sentence at the top of a page ("One of the things I dislike about myself is...", "One of my emotions I have trouble accepting is...") and then complete the sentence with whatever comes to mind. For some unexplained reason each sentence requires its own sheet of paper; and there are a lot of them, so be prepared to go through a lot of paper.
Sure, completing sentences technically counts as an "action". But if you're like me, "action-oriented" implies some sort of cognitive-behavioral therapy that gives you exercises to go out and do in the world, not sitting alone and writing out your thoughts. For someone with social anxiety the last thing I needed was more solitary introspection.
Branden gives examples of breakthroughs that his patients had doing sentence completion with him in therapy; but alas, the practice helped me in no way. Your mileage may vary, but I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone
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Surely I'm not the only one who found this book totally [bad]. The only thing it made me wonder about is how it's possible to write such a thorougly BORING book about such fascinating women. The writing is just dull and full of the author's biases and prejudices, which just aren't nearly as interesting as the subjects themselves. It's written in that old-school feminism (negative, no fun) tone that thank God feminism has since moved beyond. My advice: find another book about women mystics not filtered through Flinder's lens
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I must say I enjoyed the book, but the ending was so sudden, with so many things left hanging, that I was disappointed. I wish one more chapter had been written to clear up- how did Manderly catch fire, what did they do when they got to the burning house, and how did they pick up their lives. All we had at the ending was ashes. Also, the narrator, who never gives her name, was sometimes very odd- hiding behind doors in her own home, sneaking food, hiding behind chairs. The book is worth reading, but I wish that, instead of spending so much time describing the trees and the sea, Du Maurier had written a better ending.
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I do not recomend this book because the author gives poor explanations. In chapter 5, he explains steady state error for unity feed back HORRIBLY. He says the value of c(t) must be infinite or nonzero, but doesnt bother to show why. This book needs more work making concepts clearer and making less assumptions.
Its not all bad, but its not 5 stars everyone else has given it. I have read good textbooks, this isnt one of them.
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This book was written so long ago, but has been re-released with a new cover. It contains racist terms and old fashioned dialog. I wished I had been more aware and had bought a more updated history of New Orleans.
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People have been trying for years to prove that the founding cause of the Universe is natural occuring harmonies. These theories are usually the occult disguising itself as science. If these theories are correct there needs to be a 'fundamental' frequency (a demiurge style 'god of harmony') to begin the resonance. No such thing exists - see Scientific American, August 2005 'Is the Universe Out of a Tune?
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Don't get me wrong, I really enjoy Neal Stephenson's books. The historical content he winds into his plots is engaging. However, I have been working with the micro computer since before the command line. Neal, you have the title wrong. In the beginning was the Monitor. No doubts in my mind. My right hand is still trained to enter octal codes on a keypad at lightening speed! The Command line came much later, more like the coalescence of matter in the Universe when clumps of useful things needed some impactful gravity. The Monitor was there before the clumps and after the octal toggle switches, address load and register load momentary switches. The Monitor got the human fingers attached to the computer once and for all. So, 2 stars because the title is just wrong
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"The Island of Lost Maps" is the story of a petty crook named Gilbert Bland who stole rare and irreplaceable maps in the '90s. Posing as a researcher, Bland would enter rare-book collections and slice old maps out of antique atlases with a single-edged razor. Then he would sell the maps to unsuspecting -- or at least unquestioning -- dealers. Before being busted at the Peabody Library at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, he had stolen more than a half million dollars' worth of maps.
"Island" is the first book for author Miles Harvey. In the book, he tries to pull together enough material on the crime and map collecting to create an appealing 350-page book. He is only partly successful. I found the material on Bland's crime fascinating. However, Bland as a subject does not fill the entire 350 pages because his life is dull. Unfortunately the author inflates incidents and descriptions to pad the text. I found myself skipping pages to get back to the crime. There is some interesting stuff about map engraving in the age of discovery and modern mapmaking. But as a true crime book, it over extends itself. It would be a more interesting book to read if it were shorter and more focused
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I'm the sort of guy who has a bit of trouble adapting to normal life. I'm still bemused and puzzled the mechanics of toilet-flushing. My wife (may she rest in peace) bought me this book as an anniversary present last month before she was tragically torn apart by a rabid pack of alligators at a Wyoming nature preserve. Anyway, life moves on.
Much to my disappointment this book did not teach me everything I should know how to do. "But Fred," you might be saying (and I'll be saying "Fred isn't my name, idiot!"), "how do you know what you should know if you don't know what it is to begin with?"
Ah, well, let me explain. See, if Tchikavoslky taught me one thought, it was this: I know nothing.
So it is with this deep insight into my own mind that I came up with the following Things I Should Know, based on what I currently do NOT know:
1. How to start a hurricane. This is very important.
2. How to kill a man with a toothpick. What if you met a hitman at a fancy restaurant and found out your were his next victim? Scary.
3. How to run a nuclear powerplant with a one-man army. I don't want to be the next Homer Simpson!
4. How to raise children. I've raised ten and still haven't figured out what a diaper is.
5. What a diaper is. I don't know, my wife used to talk about them a lot.
6. How to drive. Sure, technically we're supposed to learn how BEFORE we get our driver's licenses, but like many people, I just got a fake one when I was 12 and have been driving since then. I've been in over three hundred vehicular accidents and been charged with five counts of manslaughter, so I figured it might be good to learn how to drive.
7. How to stalk a celebrity. You just never know.
8. How to put on underwear without leaving stain marks. You fellas know what I'm saying!
9. How to make coffee. People ask me to all the time, and because I don't know how, I just take some warm water and pour mud in. Thankfully no one's noticed my inadequacies yet, but I'm sure soon enough they will, after another person dies of food poisoning and internal infection.
10. How to kill yourself. I don't want the aliens to get anything out of me when I'm taken hostage. I saw it in that Tom Cruise movie, and it was sure scary!
So with these things in mind, I'm severely disappointed by this book, and feel it is mis-marketed and stupid.
Please, Barbet Schroeder (or whoever the author was), write a better book next time
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This book was great. I especialy liked the chapter where Bill sticks a falafel in his co-worker's hoo-hah. Priceless
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Ms Milton admits to her anger at humanistic psychology, so she attacks without understanding. She does not seem to grasp even some of the basic concepts of the people's work she denigrates. Maslow's hierarchy of needs is one example. I have spent a great deal pf time studding humanistic psychology and writings. I have had the pleasure of being trained in group therapy with Carl Rogers, and William Coulson as instructors. Any one who really studies these writers will see how bad a job Ms Milton did presenting them. She should have let her anger subside before she wrote the book. Her bias is extreme and obvious. So consider this when reading the book. No doubt Ms Milton will have a new career appearing on the conservative religious programs. I am sure Pat Robinson and Jerry Falwell have or will book her to speak out against the evils of humanistic psychology
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The book is well-written. Most parts of it I can agree with. But there is a crucial mistake in Parson's message --- oneness likes to play separation. I can say clearly that oneness does not play separation. Duality/ego is simply a mistake/illusion caused by mind-evolution. Saying that oneness plays separation is giving reality to this illusion. Also, his message that we can not do anything still gives one a feeling that one is under the "mercy" of something, and this is clearly very dualistic. Without ego, both doing and not doing are actions of oneness, to intentionally emphasizing not doing is a mistake. There are many illuminating sentenses in this book, but be aware of the neo-advaitan trap. In my life, it was understanding, especially of the process of ego-illusion-image helped me to come to oneness. The one who is doing the understanding is still oneness. There is no duality in doing and not doing. At right this moment, you can chose to continue to read this review or to stop. Of courses, you make choices in daily life. If you really understand what is meant by "nond-duality", you will not make such statements such as "there is no choice".
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A good friend of mine insisted I'd read this book, because she knows I love exploring the spiritual aspects of life.
In the end I was very disappointed. Not in the writing or the exploration aspects of the book, but Michael Crichton's whole attitude. He would spend a chapter sharing his learnings and his eye opening experiences, only to revert back to his arrogant, narrow-minded attitude once again for the next chapter. How can anyone claim they've learned anything in life when nothing they learn from it seems to sink in?
Sadly, this book left me with a very bad taste in my mouth. I have no desire to read any more of his books
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Frankly, this book brings nothing new. We already know everything there is to know about Jackie and Diana don't we? I sincerely regret having paid such a high price to read what I already knew! I found the book "Mrs. Kennedy" much much more interesting
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The author of this book, Warren Wagar, is apparently a professor of "Future Studies." I certainly hope he has long been fired from that post. "A Short History of the Future" was written in 1989, but the writer is so ignorant of politics, and so WRONG, to be blunt, it reads as if it was written in the 1940's. Orwell's 1984 is more on the mark than this.
He shows barely any creativity in his "predictions" and clearly was barely even aware of much of the contemporary political developments of his time. The fact that he assumes the Soviet Union will continue plodding along well into the 21st Century is incredibly naive. The fact that he assumes the nation's socialist economy system would survive equally long is similarly bizarre. Did he read the newspapers? Did he pay ANY attention to that Gorbachev fellow and the path he was bringing Russia down?
And honestly, did anyone really expect that Germany would remain divided into two states until time immortal? Or that Latin America and Africa would remain dictatorships forever? Or that black rule in South Africa would not occur until 2014?
If this book had been written 30 or 40 ago, it would be excusable. This book is just sloppy. He doesn't even do a good job describing how his corporations take over the world. Everything is just described in these overly flowery sweeping generalizations. Like "and then the capital lords seized control of the governments and made the state wither like an autumn rose." That sort of thing.
The author is clearly an "ivory tower" academic who believes history can be predicted sorely through dry Marxist theory and analyzing dubious vague "trends." The fact that this book became horribly dated something like three years after it was published is quite a strong indictment of a man whose entire job was devoted to predicting the future.
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I am proud of the fact that I hold two degrees like many women. Do I work? No. I have chosen a different path. I have no children, married later in life, and gave up a wonderful job of two decades to care for my ill husband. Do I feel that I have no confidence nor respect? No.
And from whom or what is this respect supposed to come from?
Caring for your family has nothing to do with any of this. I admire women who stay home to care for their families. When you have love, who gives a hoot what anyone else thinks. Personally, I find this book a little depressing, and I won't read it
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Investment Banker with a conscience, Ben Hartman, and special agent Anna Navaro's plot lines and bodies soon become intertwined in their quest for the secrets of Sigma, an elite cabal with roots in Nazi Germany that is bent on world domination. What starts out as reasonable and entrancing enough genre pulp becomes sheer Bond by the end, but there's no denying Ludlum has a gift for keeping the heat turned up from page to page.
If you are new to espionage fiction and have even slightly literary sensibilities, run don't walk to writers like Alan Furst, Graham Greene, or even John Le Carr?. But if strong characters aren't a necessity, you are able to suspend your disbelief, and you are lusting for pure literary sugar, you probably won't be disappointed.
Ludlum is a great author for those who typically spend hours in front of the television and tremble in anticipation at the release of the next Hollywood blockbuster, because he provides essentially the same experience in written form. He is a master of the wildly oscillating plot line, but barely approaches apprentice status in any other literary area. I found myself cringing in embarrassment for the author at many points, but to his credit I was compelled to continue turning the pages until I had reached the end. It's like candy, you can't stop eating it but feel ill once it's gone.
If you are a die hard Ludlumite I admit this is my first foray. Please point me to a better example of his work if one exists, otherwise I'll invest my time elsewhere and catch up on Mr. Ludlum by proxy when the next "Bourne" film comes out
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I really thought I would be able to learn about the Philadelphia Project from this book, considering the title. However, the actual project doesn't make an appearence until the last chapter. The entire book focuses on ideas that may or may not have contributed to a project that may or may not have taken place.
This book was disappoiting to an extreme.
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This book is outdated for the 21st century. The basics are there and in great detail but most of the information is useless for today
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This is a tough read. He gets so bogged down in the details that I forgot what I was reading about
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god forbid i be so bold as to trash a classic. and yes, maybe because of all the raving reviews from my friends and from the book's great reputation, i entered it with high expectations. - which the book however did not satisfy. yes, it is a good comedic parody of the upper class of the time, a lampoon of the courtship ritual, and of course oh so witty, blah blah blah, but it just wasn't my cup of tea. the main character was likeable, but that aside, i found it completely insufferable to read through, and absolutely painfully boring. every subsequent event from the very beginning could be predicted, let alone the ending. not that anything really ever happens - the entire book could be summed up with, "then they walked and talked and had tea and walked and talked and had tea, walked and talked and had more tea, then got married and lived happily ever after." the entire novel was a headache of girly gossip and mental drama. it would save more time just to watch a chick flick. so if you're interested in the relationship fiascos of fictious characters, witnessing the agony over who's going to marry who (even though the reader could already predict the happily-ever-after match-making light-years in advance), then this is the book for you!! if not, then i suggest picking up some dan brown.
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Other reviewers have taken pains to outline the "plot" of this baby boomer bodice ripper. Suffice it to say author Kathryn Harrison, scrupulously adhering to some private conviction that "more is better" , offers estrangement between identical twins, loss of a child, incest, paternity confusion, mid-life crisis and spiteful erotomania as it crops up in the life of one understandably confused New York shrink. This reader was aching for the hero, Will, to book himself onto Jerry Springer while feeling immensely shortchanged by lines from Ms Harrison like "It's just...it's...What is it? Will doesn't have a word for what he feels." (Perhaps the character lacks the emotional vocabulary to communicate with the reader: the author, however, should not. In any case, those are lousy, lazy sentences among so many examples.)
In addition to being insufferably, cartoonishly silly, the book is wounded by a dreary internal structure. Bad things happen to Will-the-shrink, Will then regurgitates them at length to HIS shrink, then buttonholes his wife to regurgitate what happened, what he thinks happened, and what he thinks about what his shrink thinks.
As for Ms Harrsion's "famous" sex scenes. They practically lie on their backs, fondling their adverbs and panting for Penthouse approval: "She's unbelievably wet and tight and impossibly, almost unnaturally, slippery."
"Envy", by the way, is Ms Harrison's 11th book and she should, by now, be getting things more right than wrong
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This is, without question, the WORST book ever written on one's financial life. To begin with, it's useless: ZERO information, ZERO new analysis of old information, ZERO advice, ZERO interesting anecdotes. Additionally, it's rambling--meandering from summaries of old data, to poorly written schmaltzy 'new age' feel-good blathering. What exactly is this guy's point? No way to tell.
Seriously, this book is SO BAD that all the people who allowed their names to be associated with blurbs on the cover have, in my opinion, lost all remaining credibility.
What a waste of my $16 and 4 hours.
I want my money and time back.
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This book was so badly written that I just couldn't help writing my first review on Amazon. I NEVER bothered writting reviews.
While I fully respect the authors' decision in providing the book online under the Creative Commons license, and while I do not doubt the sincerity of their intentions, the book is a total f*ck up. And f*ck up is an understatement.
The book:
1) Is unorganized :-
I felt I was being bombarded by information from all directions. One moment I was getting ready to test a simple "hello world" module, and the other I'm suddenly faced with a some strange esoteric block diagram showing "how function calls and function pointers are used in a module to add new functionality to a running kernel." with strange function names that were not mentioned and do not get mentioned for the rest of the chapter. How the hell did I get here? It just pisses you off and breaks your thought process and leaves you clueless and frustrated.
2) Is upside-down:-
I read chapter 3 (Char drivers) and I compare it to real device drivers and some things just don't match. The book seems very theoretical because the "real" device drivers call some other functions that are not mentioned at all. After digging in the kernel source files and googling the internet I realize that in the "real world" there is a whole driver-model and generic objects and what not. Reading the source code documentation and some online material I actually understand how the "real" drivers work. I still don't understand the stuff in the book. I start wondering whether there is any mention of the driver-model and I find it in chapter 14 !!!!!!! The driver model seems, in my opinion, the first step to understanding how "real" drivers work and I find it after 14 chapters of utter nonsensce!! Not only that, the authors decide that "many driver authors can ignore the device model entirely" and "The complexity of the device model makes it hard to understand by starting with a high-level view"... surpisingly it was easier to understand from online sources and the source code documentation than trying to read chapter 2 in the book!
3) Is sadistic:-
One thing I really hated was the carrot-and-stick approach the authors chose. First they give you a small tiny taste of a topic which finally seems relevant and just when you feel you're about to reach somewhere, they do a complete u-turn and throw all kinds of irrelevant off-the-topic rubish that leaves you sorry you were so shamefull as to expect any better. You end up confused, annoyed, and duped. Like in chapter 2 when they presented the code for the "hello world" module. OK fine. Seems easy enough. You naturally assume that this is an invitation to write the same code yourself. HAHA WROONG! The book suddenly does a "make hello.c" without showing you the content of the makefile. It leaves you out to dry with your uncompilable-"hello.c" and goes on describing IN DETAIL seemingly random stuff. You are left wondering whether the makefile must have been something too obvious to bother noting down and you start wondering whether to try to create a simple makefile or continue reading the chapter "as-is". I chose the former. HAHAHA WROONG AGAAIIN! I ended up compiling my whole kernel source tree because of something they decide to mention only 7 sections later.(At least they mentioned it?!)
In summary.. I'd suggest you buy the book.. and (as "./Documentation/ManagementStyle" for another book says): "NOT read it. Burn it, it's a great symbolic gesture".
I don't think anyone could have done a better job at making a worse technical book. If you come across any online material that "recommends" this book, *QUICKLY* discard that material too .. without thinking.
This is a -5 stars book. It has affected me personally
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I love other Preston/Childs books so I thought I would love this one. I didn't. It is completely predictable. I was sure that the author would give it some interesting plot twists, but there were none. And parts of it were ridiculous: the length of the entombment, the amount of the treasure, the manner of transport, etc. The only character I really liked was the monkey
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Great book, of course, but for this edition Oxford used a computer to justify the type. On every other line you encounter three or four spaces where there should be only one. It may not bother most readers, but I'm looking for another publisher's edition
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No intellectual can afford to be unacquainted with the immortal John Dewey and his "experimental school." Who would dare criticize the education legend inseparably linked with the irreproachable rhetoric of "progressivism?" I would.
Dewey's conception of the child as learner assumes that the uneducated mind is essentially capable of directing its own knowledge by a spontaneous inquisitiveness stemming from nature study. This he then expects to blossom into a more expanded consideration of the various academic subjects with the teacher merely facilitating transitions and answering the child's self-posed questions. The problems in Dewey's model begin with his science fair-meets-museum-meets-playground-meets-lecture hall school design: the model is untested on any large scale and the cost plus upkeep is prohibitively expensive. Classes are small and require several specialists and non-reusable materials. As if kids didn't have enough problems with the basic skills set already, Dewey would have them heavily involved in shop and home economics. Even more outrageous in Dewey's model is the premise that we ought never force students to study what they do not like. Their own intellectual prejudices reign supreme and by implication, teachers are discouraged from evaluating against solid standards. Experienced teachers know that kids can easily hide their shortcomings even when required to study their weak subjects, and that remediation is hard to implement before they slip further behind. How could Dewey's recommendation to cater almost exclusively to the child's intrinsic likes NOT further disguise and exacerbate low performance?
Deweyism of course, like many other off-the-wall theories of education, denies Behaviorism when it refuses to acknowledge psychological patterns in man. It depicts formulaic teaching and learning as fundamentally faulty and generalized curricula as harmful to student individuality. Nothing could less representative of the quality research conducted, particularly Project Follow Through: the great skeleton in the student-centered advocates' closet. I'd personally like to see Dewey's updated plan for seamlessly moving kids, who come into class with their "natural inquisitiveness" programmed by TV, rap music, and other pop media, into colonial American history, calculations of hyperbolic asymptotes, Tennessee Williams, and the "plus-que-parfait" tense. But of course, such leaps of interest are unnecessary if we utterly throw out the old-fashioned academic corpus along with the old-fashioned school system.
90% of students in high schools today report that they do NOT feel adequately challenged. Maybe the answer doesn't lie in yielding to children's lack of intellectual discipline but in tapping their potential to control that uninformed caprice. Dewey's "progressivism" relies upon the contradiction of allowing uneducated mind educate the teacher on its own education. From the absurdity of it, I can only conclude that sane people latch onto this school gedankenexperiment to maintain an escapist fantasy in light of dismally high drop-out rates, lowered standards, and social discord. But a radical solution is not necessarily synonymous with a good one
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The stationery is cute and colorful, but the pages are very cluttered. While the envelopes have spaces to write addresses and put return labels, the pages are too colorful and bold. A ballpoint or ink pen doesn't look good on the paper.
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I saw the TV show made, so I wanted to check out the full story.
It was a disappointment, but my wife loved it. So there you are one against, one for it
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I loved the first Carole Matthews novel I read, "For Better or Worse", and picked this up in an airport hoping to be entertained once again. It kept me entertained while on a three and a half hour flight, but only because I didnt' have anything else to do. I am the type of person who has to finish a book once they start but it was really hard for me to even pick this one up again after getting off the plane.
I totally disagree with the premise behind the whole thing and found it completely pointless. There were no redeeming qualities and few parts in the book even worth mentioning. To me, Matthews expects you to feel sorry for a woman whose married lover decided he needed to be with his wife and kids instead of leaving them for her. I think this is a horrible/unrealistic messgage.
If you want to read something good, pick up a Jane Green novel instead.
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I have the first edition of this book and had problems with recipes, some I knew were wrong and could figure them out. I heard from the publisher and there were more than 20 mistakes which were fixed in subsequent printings. So if you are buying this do not get the first edition!!
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I purchased this book several months ago. During that time I've tried several of the recipes - the French Lentil soup is very good. The chili and corn biscuit casserole was unappetizing. The chili was so-so and the corn biscuits were too heavy to my taste. The recipe for Mushroom, French Lentil and Chestnut Ragu says to "see Glossary" for the chestnuts but there's nothing in the glossary regarding chestnuts. It wasn't until I read another recipe (Smoky Chestnut and Sweet Potato soup) that chestnuts were discussed. The Mediterranean Salad sounds good on paper but was lackluster. Far too much red onion (which my guests mostly picked out). Although a number of the recipes are relatively simple there are several with very long lists of ingredients that take too much time and too many utensils to prepare. As someone who works full time, a 20-ingredient recipe holds very little allure, no matter how good it sounds. I had trouble finding some of the ingredients. For example, the author specifies several different types of squash which I haven't been able to locate at any of my local grocery stores or farmer's markets. The book is organized in menus which are not listed in the table of contents. If you're looking for a specific recipe you'll have to spend some time with the index trying to locate it which is not convenient. The author definitely has some good ideas but this book probably will sit on my bookshelf more than on my countertop
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At first glance this is a great book. However, once you've read it a few times you begin to notice the bottles of coke that feature in almost every illustration. The author, illustrator, and publisher should be ashamed of themselves. We all know that kids are exposed to lots of advertising on TV and at the movies, but do we really need to start worrying about product placements in children's books as well? This is a clever book and I was looking forward to sharing it with friends and exploring the other books in the series. The greed of those involved with this book have changed my mind, however
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I did not like the book Adam of the road because it tells you a whole bunch of stuff about the characters before it gets to the story and by the time you get to the story you forget about the characters. I also did not like the fact that the book talks weird and it says like thou father I shall bla bla bla
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Ann Coulter is unbelievable in her unrelenting hatred of anyone not in aggreement with her warped sense of reality. To her there is no middle ground. I am an educated, well travelled adult who while born in the United States, spent a good portion of my childhood living overseas and consider myself to be fairly open minded. To be called a communist, a traitor, and an enemy of America just because I don't buy into the ultra conservative mind think is an insult to the freedom that this country was founded on.
I have never in my life considered buring or destroying a book because of it's evil, until I read this one.
Be afraid, be very afraid of these people
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I'm trying to figure out what the appropriate subtitle for this book should be and I can't decide among the following:
* Travels Through Guilt with the World's 33rd Richest Hippie
* The Mind of an Empty Suit
* A Self-Important Revisionist History
* How I Learned to Hate Myself and Love the Third World
* Memoirs of a Cold War Paperpusher
Confessions of an Economic Hitman by John Perkins is an exclamation point riddled history of a few financial manipulations of the Cold War by a man who had no stake in his own ambition.
The first thing you notice about this account is that it is written by a man who thinks he was sitting on top of the world, when in fact he was just a cog in the energy industry. If you are credulous enough to believe that the debts and revenues associated with the energy business is indeed the core principle of the global economy, then the moral outrage of this book makes sense. But there's a whole lot to swallow.
On the plus side, it's a fast and somewhat entertaining read. Otherwise it is a exercise in the slow revelations of a kind of self-loathing that takes about 20 years to surface.
One of the things that I've had in mind as I was reading this screed was the sense of geography as destiny. As I look at the 20th Century, I think of most of it focused on the economics of . Perkins was one of the people who made the truth a narrative of economic exploitation. He falls in love with Socialist charismatics in Latin America, rues the lives of poor peasants, and bemoans the basic nature of corporate capitalism without ever acknowledging or even understanding the basic nature of socialism.
Perkins is a perfect example of a cultural relativist. a perceptive reader can see how much he hates his hometown and parents and idolizes romantic ideals associated with revolutionary rhetoric. But you can't imagine that he even had the temerity to read Marx, Weber, Engles, Friere or anyone. Back when I was a bit more blackified, I referred to such people as culture vultures. If it's indigenous, it's good. But you'll never see him once talk about infant mortality statistics, literacy rates, crime rates or even inflation.
I discovered a bit too late that this book would teach me nothing about the business of foreign direct investment or the workings of the World Bank except that he saw it as evil. Technically, you'll get a great deal more insight reading Wikipedia. Basically, Perkins assumes that his game was the only game on the planet, his company was smack dab in the middle of it and that it was all being subtley directed by the CIA and NSA and that this is, was and always will be the American way. You really get a foggy view of the Evil Empire of America from Perkins, who resembles nobody quite so much as a cynical wanker who is too soulless to quit the game. It's a confession all right.
By the time I got 2/3rds of the way through, reading the book began to become annoying. The incredible vacuity of this man was staggering. There are no personal relationships in the book worth speaking of. He found loyalty only to his bosses worth mentioning. It is a stunning revelation about his character that he never once had a kind word to say or any personal quality worth mentioning about his staff that stands out in memory. We learn that he took one of his charges (female) on a yacht cruise to some isle in the Caribbean, but that when he got there, he was so sickened by his guilty conscience that he banged his head against the coconut trees.
If you want to understand something about the life of an economist and high finance, the best book I've read is My Life as a Quant. If you want to understand something about the life of a reluctant spy, the best book to read is Larry Kolb's Overworld. If you want to get well-written account of a man who was too spoiled to find himself while being a toady in the economic hardball of the Cold War era, then this is your book. But it's nowhere near as good as, say The Quiet American.
You can imagine that Perkins, who is a great admirer of Graham Greene, might have had aspirations to be such a character as Greene might pen. He is earnest to tell such a story that would portray himself thus, but he is to honest to consider himself heroic, and I suspect that he'll be working off his guilt for the rest of his life. In that regard, 'Confessions of an Economic Hitman' is (now prefaced and extended in the paperback edition) a blueprint for American liberal guilt. If there was ever someone who truly believed that global warming and a host of other blowbacks are destined to doom America to a well-deserved kharmic smackdown, it is John Perkins. He has always been a citizen of the world pretending to be a patriotic American, down to the repetitions of his undying faith in the words of Thomas Paine. You'd think, being a pseudo-economist, that he'd have some room in his heart for Alexander Hamilton. Ahh but that would mean that he'd have to admire courage.
I didn't want to be a harsh judge of Perkins. I thought I might learn of an extraordinary life, one of conviction and then epiphany. Instead I learned of a small yapping dog who was always on a leash he lacked the spirit to gnaw through. Someone who would tell us in the end that we should use less oil and that 'corporatocray' is evil. This book has been a disappointment in many ways. I may well be very happy to read Thomas Friedman after this.
Good parts?
Yeah there are a few. He speaks about a few South American presidents who might have been contenders. He gives a few details about Saudi Aramco. But compared to Larry Kolb's fascinating and detailed portraits of Daniel Ortega and Adnan Khashoggi, this is Romper Room. If Perkins thought he was an agent... don't make me laugh
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If you like physics, this is just an interesting book. It mostly discusses, at length, two ideas: emergence and reductionism. Doesn't sound like much, and it isn't, but at least it gives you a different point of view on the world. Unfortunately, from this point of view to the horizon is not that far. Mr. McLaughlin almost calls the present theories (like string theory) science fiction, easy on science (because of the scales and energies involved, he seems to think they are not provable; I don't have the knowledge to discuss if he is right or not), but he doesn't offer much of an alternative. He even comes close to saying that deeper levels of understanding are not possible, or not practical.
Well, even if he is right, which I hope he isn't, between can't and science fiction, I prefer science fiction. Tomorrow I'll read a bit of string theory, and shake off the depressive mood left by this book
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I'm a Zone diet believer - but this book is a serious letdown. Two major problems with this worthless book:
1. Almost all of the recipes involve *far* too much preparation - the title is *very* misleading.
2. I find it hard to believe that anyone actually prepared these recipes, and thought they were *good*! Most of the meals are horrible due to the *huge* proportion of vegetables. I mean, an omelet with over 3 cups of asparagus??
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Main Pro: an additional unbiased source of information in an area where there is not nearly enough
Main Con: too few products reviewed
As a first time mom (and a compulsive researcher) I found this book most helpful as a cross reference with other sources (Baby Bargains, Girlfriend's Guide to Baby Gear, and reviews in babycenter and at amazon). I will say though that I found myself trusting the advice of Alan and Denise Fields and of Vicki Lovine more than that of the authors of this book. When reading through BB Bargains and Girlfriends Guide I felt more keenly that the products were being judged by real parents who thought about parents' needs; Consumer Reports seemed a little less thoughtful and definately less comprehensive.
Getting ready for a baby is a behemoth task. The sheer amount of stuff you need-- clothing, bedding, furniture, strollers, car seats, feeding devices, toys-- and the myriad of choices that exist for each item can be very overwhelming. And because there are so many crib manufacturers, stroller makers, etc, no single superstore like BBRUS or Target can carry all of the "major" brands. It would be impossible to register at any one of these stores using only the recommendations of Consumer Reports' book.
Now perhaps not everyone enters parenthood quite as clueless as I was about baby gear. And if you have friends and family who can share enough information with you (and better yet stuff!) about these products, then you probably don't need any of these books. But if you are the kind of person who wants to know all of your options and who works to get the most for her or his money, you'll need more than this book.
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I'm a Wiccan who formally practices within a traditional Gardnerian coven, but practices eclectically within my private practice. I read this book because I had heard that it was recommended to my local library by a Christian; purportedly, Wicca's Charm was written by an impartial writer. Immediately, you realize that this isn't true. Catherine Sanders has a clearly stated agenda: that Wiccans are simply misguided and misunderstand that what they long for is offered by Christianity.
I could write a long review debating the merits of Sanders' arguments. Instead, I suggest that you consider this if deciding whether to read this book which Sanders claims to have thoroughly researched. She relies on the writings of Margot Adler, Carol Christ, Starhawk and Phyllis Curott (with barely a nod to Scott Cunningham and Ronald Hutton) to draw many of her conclusions. Yet, missing from her notes are such writers as the Farrars, Merlin Stone, Raymond Buckland, Isaac Bonewits, Patricia Crowley, and the Matthews, to name just a few outstanding contributors to Neopaganism's base of knowledge.
Too often, Sanders relies on the statements of young Wiccans she interviewed who come across as silly and naive. In another case, she bases her thesis that women's spirituality (e.g., Goddess worship)is misguided and that Christianity fits the same spiritual needs that women are seeking via ONE speech that she heard Margot Adler give shortly after 9/11.
Sanders requests both Christians and Neopagans to read her book with an open mind. A fair request. But as you're reading, closely check out her endnotes and analyze for yourself if this book was truly researched with objectivity in mind, or whether Sanders limited herself to sources that would support her belief that Christianity has everything that a Wiccan desires. One needs to go no further than to consider that as Sanders attempts to persuade the reader that Christianity has always embraced the value of women that not once does she analyze the epistles of Paul.
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I love how many people like to say that Lawrence Walsh was a Republican. Funny. He was an Eisenhower Republican WORLDS REMOVED from the conservative movement. And let's face it: he stink bombed George H.W. Bush at the end of the 1992 campaign when Bush was gaining ground on Clinton. I'm not saying Bush would have won if Walsh hadn't indicted Caspar Weinberger on the Friday before the election, but Walsh made a next-to-impossible task unattainable for Bush. Bush got him back, of course, by pardoning Weinberger on Christmas Eve, 1992.
The beginning of the book was interesting to say the least. As it wore on, however, it became a prosecutor hoping to go down in history whining about Republicans. Let's face it: people in power tend to be corrupt. They have protection the rest of us don't have. This wasn't just true about Reagan and Bush; it's true about Clinton and whoever you wish to name. About halfway through the book, Walsh concentrates his fire on the guy who was VP at the time, GHW Bush.
I also find the fact it was endorsed by a number of liberals interesting to say the least. I guess when you can't beat a guy at the ballot box, you impeach him or at least try to.
Right?
Not worth the investment of time or money - but does have some good historical information inside.
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This collection of poems, tho representing a fine breadth of Dickenson's works, is in final assessment a crime against the poet's great talent. As is freely admitted in the introduction, the editor, Mr. Higginson, "worked on the mechanics of the poems by smoothing out the rhymes and meter, changing the line arrangements, and rewriting the dialect of the local area." This is a free admission of the book's guilt, having adulterated Dickenson's original poems in both content and form. Gone are the nuances and passions that make Dickenson one of the best American writers. Gone are the premeditated dashed and capitalizations that add depth and intensity to the poems' meanings. And, worst of all, gone or altered are many lines that contribute to the unique vision of the artist. As Thomas H. Johnson says in the Introduction to "The Complete Poems of Emily Dickenson," A representative mid-nineteenth century traditionalist was being asked to judge the work of a wholly new order of craftsman . . . which he was not equipped to estimate." Do yourself a favor and avoid this text. Instead, find one that is true to the original poems, one which preserves the intent and stylistic genius of the author, and one which will give you the full and lasting effect of Emily Dickenson
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Subsets and Splits