In a nutshell, this book is great for anyone seeking an alternative to the dreary "counting" method traditionally offered to teach the sight-reading of rhythms. You'll learn the sounds of different rhythms and be able to "feel" them rather than count them. This unique approach is much more intuitive and a heck of a lot more musical. Highly recommended!

"Sight-Read Any Rhythm Instantly" will help you do exactly that! This is one of the first books I've read on music rhythm that completely turns the tradition of thinking in terms of music notes (their duration) on its ear. The author, Mark Phillips, explains in 55 short pages the correct way to think about reading music rhythm - think in terms of beats!

The beauty of Mark's system is that as a musician (any instrument) the only thing you need to think about (consciously) is whether or not you hit a note as you read it. Half-consciously, in the back of your mind, you'll be counting "one-two-three" (3-beat measure) as might always have done but you WILL NOT be trying to keep track of how long individual notes last. The author makes a compelling case for how difficult it is to correctly play a series of notes whose time values involve complex fractions (a third of a beat, a quarter of a beat, etc.).

Instead, the author shows you how to memorize the sound of each of the various combinations of notes that commonly occur within "one beat" (e.g., eighth notes, sixteenth notes, triplets, etc.) Essentially, the author provides you with a set of note combination patterns that you commit to memory. Once in memory, the rhythm sound of each one-beat combination can be played automatically. The author provides copious examples of most all of the patterns you would typically encounter in today's music (guitar tablature, piano, violin, etc.) and learning them is really not difficult at all - far easier than trying to count "one-ee-and-uh" every time you encounter a series of sixteenth notes.

I guess the best thing I can say about this ... gem is that you'll get one of the best bangs for the buck on learning to play in time - correctly - than any other contemporary book on rhythm reading available today. Believe me, I own just about all of 'em!

This is an excellent resource for the beginner or trained musician who is not as rhythmically adept as s/he would like to be. It teaches how to comprehend and be able to play rhythms at a glance. Highly recommended.

Mark Phillips uses good-humored commentary to provide a very natural and easy way to sight-sing. Using his approach, the process becomes second-nature, allowing you to sight-sing any melody regardless of whether you have perfect pitch or not. This method is more effective than anything I ever learned in high school or college music classes and is a lot more fun! And the best part about this book is that there isn't a lot of boring stuff to get through before you actually start singing. It's great!

The amazing thing about this book is that it actually works. Other sight-singing books teach intervals, which don't work. This book shows you a trick to hear individual scale degrees. Once you learn the trick, and once the key is established, sight-singing is as effortless as if you had perfect pitch.

This book puts a different--and much more effective--twist on the task of sight-singing than, say, the average high school or college ear-training class. This method gets you up and running very quickly. Highly recommended!

I couldn't have done it without this book and its discussion of a "higher power" other than the traditional god. It really helps for those of us who think too much.

This book is the one essential book I recommend to anyone starting a twelve step program. It helps anyone with doubts walk through the steps in an intelligent yet very personal way. By telling his story, the author illustrates the frustrations many of us have when confronted with the steps and then shows us, through research and much difficult soul-searching, how he was able to understand and apply the steps to his life.

This book is for those who are interested in learning about the 12-step programs for addictions of any kind--alcohol, food, relationships, etc. but if you can't figure out or tolerate the Christian/God approach. The author takes his own journey, as a licensed therapist and as a "food addict," and interprets and explains the 12-step from a more cognitive, behavioral point of view. I loved the book. I have read it several times, each time gaining more understanding of how the 12 -steps can help me in my own food addicition. I highly recommend this book to any one who has addiction issues, but is not traditionally religous.

I am fascinated by the Russian and former Soviet crewed space program; I love the Soyuz spacecraft and can remember being in France in the summer of 1975 when Apollo 18 and Soyuz 19 docked in space.
This book is the best of its kind that I have seen in English, and it is my sincere hope that Phillip Clark will write a revised and updated edition.
I hope to someday learn how to read Russian but in the meantime I think Mr. Clark's book is the best reference on this subject that I will be able to find.
It is also my sincere hope that the United States of America and the Russian Republic will go hand in hand to Mars; I am also glad for the International Space Station where Americans and Russians are learning to work together in preparation for the long and arduous journey to Mars.
I would even recommend this book to any layperson.

Gery Bedard

Hardcover book with almost 200 pages, great photos and drawingcomparable with those seen in Russian language books on this subject!The book covers all soyuz missions up to the first launches to the MIR space station! A must for each serious space flight enthusiast. An updated version would be welcome by the turn of the Millennium 2001 !

Although now out of print and seriously in need of a revised edition, this is the best history in English of the Soviet manned space program up to the late 1980's. It was published in 1988, just as the first of the glasnost revelations about the Soviet space program was coming out, but since then much new material has been released. Phillip Clark is a well-known analyst of the Soviet space program who is a consultant for the European aerospace industry, and his studies are highly regarded in the field. Overall, the histories of the Vostok, Voskhod, and Soyuz programs in this book are the best available in English (and I've read most of the ones that are available), and the history of the Salyut and early phases of the Mir programs are excellent. The coverage of the Soviet manned lunar N-1/L3 and L-1 (Zond) programs was good based on the very limited information available at the time (The Soviets did not formally admit to having a manned lunar landing program until after the book was published), but are now very outdated and are in error in some places, now that the Russians have released many formerly classified details about these programs. Overall, the book is fairly scholarly, but is also written for the general reader, which is in itself quite an accomplishment. It is profusely illustrated with photographs, many in color, diagrams, and details of the spacecraft and launch systems. Despite this book being seriously out of date, it still should be considered an essential book for any serious enthusiast of Soviet space history. One can only hope that the author revises this superb book to incorporate all the new information released by the Russians. Mr Clark, are you listening???

Richard Feynman said:"What I cannot create, I do not understand!". I am really amazed by his unique style of doing physics: he always create anything from scratch, always has his unique point of view, even on an old problem. All I can say about Feynman is Genius!!!
This book is about Feynman's extraordinary viewpoint on statistical mechanics. I can bet that this is an unique S.M book.
but i don't think it's for beginner, I suggest you should finish a standard statistical mechanics course before you read this one.
I can not find suitable words to admire this great book, so I quit here, but in the end, I strongly recommend this book to all physicists, physics-major students!

A classic by one of the best. I wish I could say I understand
it all, but it rings true in many ways. His famous quote
"I can definitely say that Nobody understands Quantum Mechanics"
is perhaps this biggest "Moo Clue".

This is a wonderful book written by one of the greatest teachers of physics on a subject matter often shrouded in mystery. I found it tremendously helpful in understanding many topics in condensed matter physics on a deeper, more conceptual level. The chapters on second quantization, superconductivity and superfluidity are especially illuminating, and the latter is far surperior in clarity than anything I have come across (which is perhaps not surprising considering Feymnman developed much of the theory himself). I highly recommend this book as a supplimentary text for any graduate-level Statistical Mechanics, Quantum Mechanics or Solid State course you may be taking.

Where I'm coming from: a part-time musician for around twenty years; did work for a record company for about 1 1/2 years and met my wife of 23 years there. Always fascinated with music careers. Well, I read Stu Who? because I actually did recognize the name from some old records. Rather than hash through his career points here, I'd just like to report that Stu Phillips has a gift for recounting his music career. He really humanizes what it is like to brush with fame, what it is like to get tremendously lucky, what it's like when the opposite of luck happens. He seems to be thinking and writing this book at the same time, which gives it an energy I could not resist. For some reason I carried it around with me everywhere until I was done, and I left the copy somewhere, wherever it was when I finished it. I guess that's the best recommendation you can give to a book, that it lives in your brain so strongly, you mislay the darn book itself. Good going Stu, and thanks for sharing your story.

"Stu Who?": Forty years Of Navigating The Minefields Of The Music Business by record producer, television and film composer Stu Phillips is the fascinating, informative, personal history of a life-long career in the music industry. Phillips shares heretofore unknown anecdotes about entertainment and music world personalities ranging from Sammy Davis, Jr.; Donna Reed; Librace; and Russ Meyer; to Shelley Fabares; James Darren; The Monkees; and Don Kirshner. From Phillips first professional job as a copyist for The Milton Berle Texaco Hour, to his work with Russ Meyer soft-porn movies, to his participation with cult classics such as Battlestar Galactica (where he was privileged to conduct the Los Angeles Philharmonic), to his years in the recording business at Command, Colpix, Capitol, and Epic, to his work composing music from The Donna Reed Show, Gidget, as well as films like Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls, to his unsuccessful "dabbling" in film-making and screenwriting, "Stu Who" is an impressive autobiographical compendium that is enthusiastically recommended reading for anyone with an interest in the history and personalities of the music, television, and film industries.

A fascinating trip down memory lane which brings our childhood and adolescent heroes and icons to life and humanizes them. Stu is a gifter racounteur and his story is full of humor, pathos and interesting insights.

This book is a reference every manager should keep in his desk or by his bed to read from time to time. It is uplifting, encouraging and simple to read. I rate this little book very highly. There are plenty of topics and with 365 quotes more than enough material to bring you back again and again.

I am a 31 year old wife and mother with a B.S. and Masters degree and a state license in clinical social work. I am always on the look-out for motivating and introspective literature to help inspire my clients, and to teach my 2 year old daughter. What I found in reading this book were several quotes that were so profound I had to sit with my thoughts for a while. I had expected to find only chapters dealing with happiness and well being, but discovered from the first chapter that overcoming adversity is key to both. The words in this book have already inspired me to create change in my life, to value all of my strengths, and to think hard about what my definition of a successful life really is.

Lisa Wright, LPC

This is a wonderful compilation of thought provoking and inspiring quotes on many different and important topics! This book is applicable to many different ages of people with diverse occupations, gender and religions. I will love to have this book for all of my adolescent and adult clients so as to inspire them to reach higher and further than they already are reaching. I think it is important for all of us to try not to re-create the wheel, but to pull from the experience and words of those who have already "said it so well". I was impressed by the wide range of topics and the quotes to cover them. I challenge anyone to read this book and become inspired to grow. There isn't a person around who could read this book and NOT be inspired to change something in their lives!

Elissa Gifford, LPC NBCC

I first encountered Susan Lenox as she was personified by Garbo in an enjoyable but rather unbelievable film that is a hash of melodrama and Hollywood "meet cute" conventions. As another reviewer has noted, there's virtually no correlation between the film and the book. Nontheless, when I saw an old copy of the novel in a used book store something told me I had to have it. My nudge was correct; Susan Lenox is a bang-up, amazingly gritty early 20th century novel (1908 or so) about an illegitimate child raised as a total innocent in the "lady class" but destined to become an astonishingly self-aware and highly intelligent New York City street prostitute after she is driven from her small town. She learns by hard experience that working women of her times could not make a living on their own without a supporting family. I could not believe at times that I was not reading a fast-moving historical novel written by a modern feminist author. I repeatedly closed the book to look at the back-cover photograph of the stern young Victorian era author in wonder. He is very hard on sexist men and has an uncanny bead on women's inner lives, outer lives, and--how odd!--their relations with clothing (yes, throughout the ages we females have suffered from fabric dependencies and have drawn inordinate satisfaction from satisfying them--but as the author DGP is aware, PEOPLE ONLY KNOW WHAT THEY SEE, so one's clothing can be tragically important, out of all proportion, as far as how one is treated). Follow Susan from her first arousing crush, to her horrid marital rape the day and evening of her family-forced wedding, to her sweatshop and tenement days,and through her graft-paying, opium-smoking, hard-drinking street prostitue years--and on to, surprise!, success. But the muck-raking author makes it clear 100 that times Susan's "rise" is a fluke and unfairly impossible without a sponsoring male. It is a gripping read--much more so than the books of the "canonical" realistic authors of the era. From other books of DGP I found on-line after reading Susan Lenox, I found he was starry-eyed about Karl Marx--but, hey, cut him a break since DGP was murdered in 1911 by someone who took offense at one of his books and therefore was spared seeing what a horror the Russian revolution and communism unleashed upon the globe. In his day, the grinding of the faces of the poor under mega-capitalists' feet (robber barons--remember them from US History 101?) and colluding politicians (Boss Tweed ring a bell?) made socialism (then just a theory) seem a kinder, gentler alternative to the status quo. Under DGP's proper Victorian waistcoat beat the heart of a dis-illusioned idealist who obviously cared about the plight of the poor and about the crippling social conditioning of women. And the gent could really turn out page-turners! Enjoy an unjustly lost classic.

This lost classic is one of the great books of the turn of the century. Anything that could possibly happen to a woman at the turn of the century happens to Susan Lenox, so it's a panorama of the social conditions and mores of the period. I think it's a better book than Dreiser's SISTER CARRIE, but similar. It's a thousand-word page turner, written by a muckraking journalist-turned novelist with lots of axes to gring, and it's all fascinating. Twenty years after the book came out, MGM made a movie version of it with Greta Garbo, but the movie has virtually nothing to do with the book, and it's terrible (aside from Garbo, who is always interesting.) That's a particular shame, since the story of Susan had many parallels with Garbo's life, and a genuine adaptation might have been wonderful.

I read this book at least five years ago, if not longer, and the impression is still with me. We meet Susan as a young lady in a small, closed minded town in the "Western" state of Ohio, just past the turn of the century. (the last century.) She believes a young man that he has fallen in love with her and will run away with her to marry. This was viewed as a terrible scandal by the petty members of the community, "forcing" her guardians to find a farmer for her to marry; a dreadful creature. This is the beginning of her fall, and she falls and falls for some number of years following. She ecapes to a city- was in New York? and makes her way as a well brought up young woman forced to do so in a man's world. Men were essential to women for their livlihood, and a woman without reputation and introduction were cast adrift with dreadful housing, horrible food, terrible job prospects, if they can even be called a job. The gap between rich and poor was tremendous even then, and literally pennies were all that were needed to improve the lot of the "working poor", just as is the case now. The lot of the workers was easily improved, and it was tragic to see how callous the manufacturers were to the needs of their laborors.

Susan, luckily, "rises" but has a talent and ability to develop it that so few have. That she had the opportunity at all was mere chance.

Mr. Phillips demystifys the acting process in this book. He clearly outlines tools that help the actor, if properly used, to master the craft. A must-read!

This is an interesting and useful book. What attracted my attention when I first saw the book was the cover photo of Mr. Phillips. His energy, humor and directness leap off the cover, inviting the reader into a very informative "conversation" about the acting tools he has developed and used over a long career. I don't know why, but Mr. Phillips' bio does not appear in the book, though it became apparent as I read that he taught a number of fine actors including Bruce Dern, Sandy Dennis and Judd Hirsch, acted in a wide array of plays, films and television, and taught at both the Actor's Studio with Lee Strasberg and the H. B. Studio with Uta Hagen and Herbert Berghof. These are impressive credentials.

The tone of the book is practical and personal, like Mr. Phillips' collection of tools, which he calls The Process. He describes the 17 tools of The Process and gives exercises for each that can be done alone, with a partner or in a group. He also describes how to use these tools in a role. He illustrates how The Process works using examples from productions and humorous and touching anecdotes based on his own experiences with fellow teachers and actors and his own students. One thing I particularly like is that, after describing a tool in a narrative form, he also gives step-by-step instructions for easy reference. There are also two wonderful little chapters, one on 9 types of actors and what you can learn from them about what to avoid, and the other is on what to look for--and what to avoid--in an acting teacher. Very useful. At the heart of Mr. Phillips' Process is a kind of Zen approach to acting, which stresses neutralizing first yourself, aiming for what in Zen is called Beginner1s Mind, and then the script, the other actors and the acting space. These particular tools are invaluable for cancelling out ingrained and inhibiting bad habits in acting.

I have made good use of the tools that make up Mr. Phillips' Process, both in my own personal work and in the interactive interpersonal dynamics workshops I lead.

All in all, I can call this a good read and an invaluable collection of tools. All we have to do is put them to use.

Incidentally, the caption on one chapter in the book is "A good actor is a bad actor who never gave up." I really love the optimism and encouragement. It fits perfectly with what I see in Mr. Phillips in the cover photo.

Have you ever looked for a book that would demystify the personal approach to acting, often called "The Method" (Philip's calls it "The Process")and used by actors all over the world from Marlon Brando to Meryl Streep to Robert DeNiro to Anthony Hopkins to Danny Glover? Gordon Phillips's book, "Take it Personally" is THE book.

Phillips's book takes up where Stanislavsky, Strasberg, Hagen and others leave off: he lays out in very simple, workman like terms, the steps to becoming the kind of personal actor that is so admired and even worshipped in television, film and theatre today. He starts off by listing the qualities of successful actors and letting you know what chapters in his book can help you to develop those same qualities, and takes you step by step through those chapters with a view to making you an exciting,charismatic,moving, and, most important, believable professional actor.

Phillips has worked with some of the finest actors of the 20th century (Bruce Dern, Sandy Dennis, Judd Hirsch, to name but a few), and has spent years refining a process of acting that will give every actor the opportunity to create real, living, breathing, three dimensional characters that will move and delight audiences, critics, and even the director! The key is being personal. Hence the title, "Take it Personally."

This book is for beginners and professionals alike. It follows workbook step by step processes, and chapters can be read and reread as the actor practices acquiring the tools necessary for working as an actor in all media. The book is also an entertaining read for the person interested in how the actor works. It is full of anecdotes from Phillips's long career in theatre, television and film. I highly recommend this book!

If you like southern cooking, this is the cookbook for you. We've tried many of the recipes and have yet to be disappointed. If I could use one phrase to entice you it would be: "Just like my mother used to make". The recipes are simple, easy to prepare and delicious. 'Nuff said.

This is one of the best cookbooks I own, and I own a lot of them. I can read cookbooks like some people read novels. The recipes I have tried in this book have all been extremely good. I am buying several to send to friends who live in the North - (they don't know a lot about good Southern cooking!)

This is a great source for excellent recipes! It is primarily "comfort food" and family tradition type dishes - items which are not usually found in routine cookbooks. I've never made anything from it that was not outstanding. That says alot, since I'm from Texas myself, and a good chicken fried steak or chicken and dumplings recipe is hard to find! I highly recommend this to anyone who wants to make all those "traditional" down home meals but doesn't know how to do it from scratch.