For the price you get a beginner level bare bones pattern, a beginner level explanation of bear making terms and full sized patterns for a bear, shirt, pants, and skirt to make a boy or girl bear. Also included is an optional bib top to put on either the pants or skirt for an added variation. The patterns lack any imaginative qualities that an experienced bear maker would like, but for a beginner making their first bear, it is basic, simple, and has easy to follow directions.

There were 24 sheets in this package, however I believe that the quality of the paper, the color variety, and quantity you receive could be better. For the beginner, who is just trying things out it may be perfect, however, seasoned Origami workers might look to something more sophisticated.

This graphic production was a bit of a disappointment. The plates are nice but not authentic Scandinavian designs. The floral motifs are similar in nature to those used in painting, however there are none of the historical classic details seen in Scandinavian folkart.

The first chapter, 'Gifts from the Garden' left me with no desire to try any of the techniques given. The photos of the finished products were large and beautiful, but there were no step-by-step photos - only the finished product. The section on fragrant plants and spices was helpful however, as it also told what each scent symbolized and what effects it has on an individual. The second chapter, 'Gifts that Pamper' I enjoyed much better. It gave recipes for bottled oils, soaps, body powders, rosewater, foot balm and lip balm. 'Gifts from the Kitchen' was also informative with recipes for breads and jellys as well as cooking oils and teas. The chapter 'Sewn Gifts' was fun to look at but I don't sew, so... The final chapter, 'More Great Gifts' was also fun to look at and it gave good ideas for odds-n-end gifts like sachets and scented frames. All in all, it would be a great book to borrow, I think. You can easily look at the photos of the finished products and go create your own, individualized gifts.

Full page color plates of some of the most common tartans, but the book is not as complete as I was looking for. The plates are not as crisp as they could be, and the color quality is off. Altogether, a good introduction to the common tartans, but not the definitive guide the title suggests.

If you haven't read Montaigne, you have to read him. Hell, he invented the essay. That's not at issue here. Which edition you choose, though, is. In general, I'm a big fan of the Dover Thrift Editions. They cover many classics of the canon, with competent if mildly antiquated translations, and--best of all--they're dirt cheap.

This short edition, a tiny selection of the essays of Michel de Montaigne, has many virtues, not the least of which is editor Philip Smith's excellent contribution in footnotes at the bottom of each page. Smith points to problems in the translation, updating it where necessary and remedying Montaigne's penchant for sprinkling Latin quotes here and there; all the Latin passages are translated and traced to their origins.

In addition, this volume does contain a couple of Montaigne's most durable essays, especially "Of Friendship" and "Of Repentance." Some choice ones are noticeably absent, though, and in particular Montaigne's hard look at the practice of colonizing the then-New World. Essays like "Of Cannibals" and "Of Coaches," which use an examination of native American cultures in order to critique the culture of Montaigne's own France, are far more popular (if not indispensible) today than they were in 1877, when the essays in this selection were originally chosen and translated. Those omissions, more than anything else, leave this Dover Edition feeling substantially dated and disappointingly incomplete.

Dover Editions are usually the best buy around, but for Montaigne's Essays, it's worth your while to spring for a more complete selection.

This book can be a very helpful one if you're looking for simple designs.It is a sample of flower motifs mostly english and french from the 19th century and some oriental motifs as well.It is all black and white patterns and it looks a lot like a coloring book.It is an OK book if you're starting with the idea but very simple if you want to go indepth.I would recommend it if you're interested in crafts in general and also if you work with kids.

This book is a mystery classic. I think men would rate it more highly than I have. It wasn't too easy, the narrator is a manly young man, and the eccentric amateur sleuth both amusing and shrewd. There is only one reason I do not recommend it for women. It's obvious to a modern female reader that the amateur sleuth completely misread the female suspect's feelings toward the morally and physically repugnant murder victim. I didn't see it coming and my outrage spoiled the book for me. A woman forwarned might be able to just grit her teeth and consider the period in which the book was written. Ann E. Nichols

I wasn't quite able to get the full meaning of what the painter Frenhofer was trying to paint, but I can guess it was beautiful, and yet it turned out wrong. I guess I read too fast. Balzac was accurate in his names, though, with Pourbus, Mabuse, and Nicolas Poussin..................

I've taken a first semester Discrete Math course, and am currently taking the second semester of it. I bought this book on a whim, hoping it might supplement my text, or at least clarify a few points. It fails at both of those things. Here's why:

1) Abundant errors: I read the first 15 pages and found at least one *serious* typo per page (i.e. a typo that could impede learning). Plus, the grammar ranges from illegal to ambiguous. Thankfully, I was familiar with all of the material that I was reading -- were I not, severe confusion and discouragement would have been the result.

2) Poor examples: They're too abstract or too simple -- and there aren't even very many of them. Oftentimes, he contradicts what he's trying to illustrate due to a small oversight or typo. It's truly bad.

3) Gratuitous brevity (yes I know that may sound paradoxical): The author uses compound sentences in his definitions; sometimes going as far as to define two or three concepts IN THE SAME SENTENCE! It's infuriating.

4) Chapter Zero: This deserves its own rant section. Chapter zero contains nearly all of the material from the first four chapters of my current textbook: Logic, Set theory, Induction, Relations, etc. Somehow the author crams all of it into about 24 pages (plus 4 or 5 pages of exercises). He fails at clarity or lucidity. It's an ambomination -- it reads like lecture notes (you know, the ones only the professor looks at).

OK -- I WANTED to like this book. It's kind of cute, I'll admit it. And the price is sweet. But friends, you get what you pay for. Even after I came across the first 5 or so serious typos I was willing to forgive. Eventually, the sheer amount of contradictory examples and ambiguous sentences riled me up so much that I considered tearing the book in half. Really. I doubt I'll ever open the thing again.

I learned much more from the Schaum's Outline (ISBN: 0070380457 -Schaum's Outline of Theory and Problems of Discrete Mathematics (Schaum's Outline Series) by Seymour Lipschutz, Marc Lipson (Contributor), Seymour Lipschultz ).

That book overcomes the two shortcomings of this one: for a self-proclaimed introductory work on discrete mathematics, this text contains too few worked out in-chapter examples, and too many omitted steps in the reasoning. On this latter point, there were many times my reading brought me to the phrase "It follows from the definition that..." or "obviously..." when, for me, it didn't follow, or it wasn't obvious. Contrary to another reviewer's assessment, I found quite a lot of typos, but none too serious. To its credit, the book does contain a lot of end-of-chapter problems with solutions, and it is inexpensive.

The author of the text I review here wrote another in this field, the Schaum's outline series offering with ISBN 007003575X, which is not the Schaum's text I recommend above. I express no opinion on this other work of his.

As with any Dover text, it is important to remember that this text is designed to teach the material, not to coddle the reader. This text provides broad and deep coverage of the various topics that fall under discrete mathematics (set theory, boolean logic, graph theory, etc.) with clarity and simplicity. This book is not designed to help you pass a test, but is instead designed to help you grasp and understand the topic, which it does very well. Easily the best book I own on this topic (I often joke that the author covered my first semester course on discrete math in the first chapter!).