Perry's book was the first to attempt to analyze Gurdjieff and his mission from the point of view of opposition, without quite the same degree of ridiculous gossip and fabrication found in Pauwell's "Gurdjieff" or as a blatant a personal or commercial agenda found in the later attack by Idries Shah entitled "Teachers of Gurdjieff" (supposedly by Lefort). Perry does fall back on some of the discredited falsehoods about Gurdjieff's early life, but these are not the main thrust of the book.

Perry is highly biased from a particular premise derived from his place in the "traditionalists" movement, that includes other critics of Gurdjieff such as Rene Guenon. Based upon those methodological premises, this seems to be a fair critique. But anyone deeply familiar with Gurdjieff's own methodology will realize that the points Perry makes are not relevant outside Perry's own restricted paradigm-- or at least not within the paradigm Gurdjieff sets forth.

Ultimately, Perry's arguments center on points of belief. He claims that Gurdjieff puts forth that God is not omnipotent, therefore -- ipso facto -- Gurdjieff must be disqualified.

The only reason I put forth that this book is not totally worthless is that it is one of very few that almost skirts the line between the dozen or so ridiculous National Enquirer- level anti-Gurdjieff books, and the hundreds that basically treat Gurdjieff's teachings as sacred scripture. Gurdjieff admonished his students to believe nothing unless personally confirmed. So this book may help raise some questions toward that confirmation.

The Men-at-arms Series covers ancient and classical China in five books, all by Chris Peers who is very familiar with the subject. This is the third book in this series. The chapters: Chronology -- The Sui dynasty -- The T'ang -- Sui and T'ang armies -- The Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms -- The Sung dynasty -- Sung armies -- The Liao -- The Hsi Hsia -- The Kin dynasty -- Military science and technology -- Nine important battles. The text focuses on telling Chinas military history; it is very weak on topics like weapons or battle tactics. The drawings by Michael Perry are ok. The maps are primitive and not very useful. This book is the sequel to "Imperial Chinese Armies 200BC - 589AD" (MAA284). The next book in the series is "Medieval Chinese Armies 1260 - 1520" (MAA 251).

Wow, how disappointing. I am a grower/lover of bearded irises and automatically purchase any newly published book on the subject. This book is just set up poorly to read, the varieties depicted are from the author's garden(I assume) are bland, boring, and non representative of some of the finest varieties of bearded irises out there. I really didn't appreciate most of the photography either...a lot of that artsy "looking into the center of the flower" stuff. The only reason it got even two stars is that I appreciate the author's text in some areas and that she's endeavored to create a book to showcase and promote the iris. Unfortunately, the overall effort seems to fall short.

I don't think that the book One Sister Too Many by Carol Perry was very good. It had a really good meaning though. It was about two stepsisters that meet each other for the first time and all they do is fight. They eventually forget about everything they were fighting about. The things they fought about were pointless so I didn't like it very much. If you like books like that though, then this would be a good book for you.

Although this book provided some excellent information on the restoration of antique dolls, I was disappointed that all of the "Materials and Suppliers" were located in England. Referenced materials are not generally available in the USA. The photos were plentiful and the line drawings very useful. The more practical book for a beginning American is "The Handbook of Doll Repair and Restoration by Marty Westfall

While it is true that there is a shortage of introductory Sanskrit textbooks, one could possibly do better than Perry's book. The language is archaic and the explanations often unclear. Frequently, his attempts to help the student become instead a handicap. The exercises are useful, though, and sometimes amusing (as when, in one lesson, you learn words such as kill, poison, beat, hit, maim....). My suggestion would be to use the first few chapters of the Teach Yourself Sanskrit book and then to go straight into Nala (the Lanman Sanskrit Reader is useful) with Whitney's Sanskrit Grammar as aid.

Ok... I bought this book thinking it would help me build a better accounting system for the manufacturing company I work for. BIG MISTAKE. FIFO and LIFO are mentioned as extremely important but no additional details are given.
I was very disappointed and think that the idea for this book is great but the execution is really poor. I contacted the authors to ask them for some additional help. They had their secretary respond with no help.

I am inclined to think favorably of any book that comes out from Chronicle Books. They publish very good quality books. Their craft books are often first rate.

I bought this book through the mail, but was very dismayed to find that it has very few pictures of the crafts and activities. Consequently, it is not very enticing. I put it in a box and didn't think about it for months until I just unpacked it today.

Some of the activities seem awfully bland and unoriginal. Make and play with a paddle and ball? Make wet footprints on the sidewalk? Ideas like this for almost 20 bucks? This is not up to Chronicle's usual standards. There are some very fine books out there that suggest great activities for kids, but this isn't one of them.

This is a decent book on testing assessment, strategy,and planning, but I was looking for testing techniques specific to the Year 2000 problem and this book disappointed me in that area: for example, there is no mention in the index of "data aging", "baseline", "future date testing", or the "28-year rule". I was looking for insights on how these techniques and others can be applied, based on the "successful Y2K software testing program" referenced in the publisher's notes (which I think are misleading).

I am glad I bought this book, for the checklists and document examples, but I am still anxiously awaiting the first true Year 2000 testing book.

Due to the arrival of FAS 133, this book is obsolete. The few examples the book had were difficult to follow. I bought this book before FAS 133 was issued and now,I regret I bought this book. Whatever you do don't buy it.

No examples, no illustrations. Just a repetition of some FASB guidelines. Useless to a practitioner. And I can't see why a non-practitioner would ever want this. Give this one a pass. If you really need guidelines, just pay up and get a written opinion.