While it may be slightly dated (published in 1984), Larson offers some great insights into the nature of the life insurance business and how to be successful in life insurance sales. I purchased the book because I am considering a career into the business and was looking for some frank information. I got it with this book and would recommend it to anyone considering selling life insurance.

Fun, intriguing, great characters, you can actually like and feel you know. Bill Kent is funny, insightful, and creative! Where can I find his other work?

This is a good book. As usual for Wrox titles, there are numerous misspellings and the editing is a bit sloppy. Also, the nature of Wrox books with their multiple authors lends to a somewhat inconsistent flow from chapter to chapter. However, these traits of Wrox books can be forgiven for the solid content "Understanding the .NET Framework" provides.

The book provides a breakdown of the major .NET topics including Web forms, Windows Forms, Data access, COM integration and Web services. Each of these topics is covered in its own chapter with helpful examples to illustrate the points covered. I found myself coding each of the examples in Visual Studio.NET and learning from each of them.

The examples are mostly complete, though the biggest challenge I had was getting the "Remoting" example in Chapter 6 to work. This was because of the need to associate a strong name with the assembly as well as register the assemnbly with the "sn" and "regsvcs" utilities. These required steps weren't obvious to me at first and weren't documented. Also, the authors state the examples could be built without VS.NET. In theory this is true, but impractical because of the associated files VS.NET creates on your behalf in projects.

Some of the highlights include the COM/.NET integration example, the Web Services example, the data type information from Chapter 2 and the excellent breakdown of the WDSL XML format in Chapter 7.

This book is not as high-level as some people might expect from the title. While "Understanding the .NET Framework" is an overview, it is still quite technical. Overall I found the book to be a great value for the purchase price.

I like this book because it gives me more information about the Western Empire plus it helps me with the quests my friends and I make. I think that this would be a great book for any fan of Palladium.

This book is a series of profiles of over 100 historic sites in Oklahoma, written by Kent Ruth, whose newspaper column by the same name appeared weekly in the Sunday Oklahoman for many years.

I particularly enjoyed the story of the ghost county seat of a ghost county -- Grand, Oklahoma. This ghost town is unique in that its former residents meet annually to recall memories of the once-lively town.

The last two pages of the book contain directions on how to find each of the places described.

Sunnye Tiedemann (aka Ruth F. Tiedemann)

In 1896 South Bass Island, Ohio, tomboy Tess Barrett has tworeasons to be excited. Today is her twenty-first birthday and herfiancé, Peter Maxwell, Captain of the Lady of Lake Erie steamboat, is returning home after a few months sailing. Tess is elated, but is concerned that she and Peter have quarreled over her outrageous behavior and his disenchantment with the island that she loves.

However, their reunion goes poorly as Peter is attracted to another woman, who quotes and enjoys Shakespeare like he does. Tess finds her world further out of control when her father hires Adam Nichols as the new vinedresser for the family wine business. She regards him as a malicious beast, while Adam thinks that Tess is a pampered brat. However, the feuding pair somehow falls in love with each other. Still, with the lack of mutual respect and her prior engagement, even the matchmaking skills of her father (and clandestinely his father) seems doom to failure.

When it comes to homespun fun, no one writes better novels than Debra Marshall, whose latest "Our Town tale is a fabulous addition to one of the better American romance series. WINE COUNTRY brings to life the gay nineties with a beautiful story line and terrific characters. The secondary players add a genuine feel to the plot and Adam is a phenomenal lead protagonist because of his flaws. However, it is the unconventional Tess, who turns this book into one of the better historical romances of the year. This reviewer recommends this novel and Ms. Marshall's,previous book in this series, GRAND RIVER because fans of the sub-genre will have a grand old time.

Harriet Klausner

This is a great tutoral for a variety of skill levels. The chapters are well organized with lots of hands-on projects. Often the lessons build upon the previous chapters, this allows the infromation to sink in. I intend to use this book in the furture to teach vector works.

This book was purchased for a childrens literature class that I was currently student teaching in. It really held the interest of the third graders class as we ventured to explore Malta and other islands of the Meditterean. It is an excellent book to incorporate history to young minds and held the interest of all the young students I was teaching. I followed up with actual pictures of the temple and also had the children comment on how they thought Xrina's life was different and the same as theirs. I hope to continue with the series of the book and further the childrens interest in history as well!!!