My five-year-old is having a bit of difficulty with two children at his daycare. I have purchased several adult books on how to help a child deal with bullies/teasing, but hadn't been successful in finding a good children's book. Then I found "Simon's Hook". Through funny pictures and dialogue, the book has given my son five sensible practical approaches on how to deal with difficult peers. I highly recommend this book.

I have no children of my own, but I love children and am very close to my small nieces and nephews. How I wish this book had been available for me as a small, intimidated and shy child! I have purchased several copies for my relatives and constantly recommend it to my friends with small children and grandchildren. I keep a hardcopy for review from friends and they love it! Will there be more adventures for Simon!

Simon's Hook - A Story About Teases and Put-Downs is a great book for any child. BUT it is also a teaching tool with a highly original story and wonderful images. Children learn several ways to deal with teasing - from ignoring the teaser to changing the subject to avoiding situations, etc. (We don't want to give away the whole story). And the story is so good that children will pick it up again-and-again just to read - yet we know they are learning how to cope with teasing at the same time! Simon's Hook is a great addition to any family, school or library. From The Science Spiders Newsletter.

Probably, the discovery that more than a few African Americans served on the Confederate side in the Civil War -- and not just as servants, either -- will strike some readers as contradictory, or even unnatural. Certainly, most historians have ignored the subject. But history is history: One must deal with past reality, not subordinate the facts to modern political positions. In researching the subject, Barrow called on the readership of _Confederate Veteran,_ the official publication of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, to submit information on black Southern loyalists. The results were large and diverse, based on official reports, pension applications, family correspondence, newspaper articles, and published memoirs, and from that came this anthology of historical documents and accounts, originally published under the title _Forgotten Confederates._ In fact, the most conservative estimate is that some 50,000 African Americans served on the Confederate side, compared to 600,000 to 1,000,000 white Confederates (depending on who did the counting). Few of them were "properly enlisted," of course (the Confederate Congress did not authorize such enlistments until the War was in its last days), but those who worked as servants, bodyguards, nurses, cooks, scouts, barbers, teamsters, musicians, and construction workers frequently joined the fight, whether sanctioned or not. The irony, of course, is that black Confederates served within white units, while black Union troops were carefully segregated from white troops. At least twenty-five percent of the Confederate Ordnance Department was black, and several black militia units were raised in Louisiana and Alabama. There were black Confederate sharpshooters in the Seven Days campaign in 1862, and more than 1,000 black sailors served in the Confederate Navy. And a surprising number of black faces appear in photographs of post-War Confederate reunions, many of which are reproduced in this volume. This is an engrossing collection of material and the twenty-one-page bibliography of sources for further study will be most useful to local historians.

This book is a wonderful claberation of doucments overlooked by history.The author is a great mind and I recomend this book highly for its agnolagement of our forgoten heroes.This book brings halt to all "myths".

Collaboratively compiled and edited by Charles Kelly Barrow, J. H. Segars, and R. B. Rosenburg, Black Confederates is a scholarly analysis of historical evidence of those black Americans who served the Confederacy during the Civil War. Correspondence, military records, preserved narratives and newspaper accounts present as clear a picture as possible of some seemingly self-contradictory people. Why did they fight, and in some cases, lose their lives for the South in a conflict fought to perpetuate the institution of slavery? This question is carefully scrutinized in a historical work that challenges commonly held precepts and brings to light an oft-overlooked side of America's deadliest war. Black Confederates is a welcome and fascinating addition to Black Studies and Civil War Studies reading lists and reference collections.

Perhaps this book is the only one about Alma tadema-the greatest master of Victorian age- which deals with his life and works the way it should be. It contains a great collection of his works as high quality pictures as well as a great biography. Just buy it and see what you have missed all this time.

This is an excellent book - well-printed, with beautiful reproductions of Alma-Tadema's work, and well-written. Too often, art books lump Alma-Tadema generically with the pre-Raphaelites or shun him entirely (because his paintings catered to Victorian tastes). This book is almost, but not quite, too much of a good thing, with an in-depth view of Alma-Tadema's career, especially the mentors and travel experiences that shaped his style. Very early paintings and watercolor studies which I had never before seen are included, and I paticularly like the side-by-side presentation of watercolor studies with finished oils of the same scene. Alma-Tadema was a skilled artist whose lush, decorative style and atmospheric historical scenes prefigured the art of Maxfield Parrish. It's about time that a collection of this quality has become available.

This is the best book I've ever seen about alma-tadema. Includes high quality pictures of his masterpieces. If you love Almatadema's works you should have this special book.

Perfect title...my poetry-loving teenage daughter brought this home from her school library and all of us have loved something in it. One included story "He knew Lincoln" made me cry.
Great for word-lovers...a treasure trove masterfully compiled.

This is a fine collection of sayings and writings from many places I buy this book periodically as it comes back in print. The most interesting surprise was when I purchased the CD,"the book of secrets" Loreena Mckennitt ASIN: B000002NHN it had "The Highwayman" in it as a song. This is a poem by Alfred Noyes ISBN: 0192723707

This is a very exciting and pleasurable book. In the honest and open way the author shows "How to Survive the E-Business Downturn". The author shows that there is no downturn per se but there are companies who managed to attract investments but fail to creating wealth and value to the customers. Such companies inevitably collaps (with boo.com as an example). The author gives a lot of remarkable case studies throughout the book to illustrate his view.

The author shows that in order to survive, the company should have the right strategy and keep careful eyes on it, the concrete mission, the clear vision of the perspectives, the definitive goals and the business plan. The author shows five stages of growth of a company (with IBM as an example) and tells how to survive the transitions. Most of the companies fail to survive the first transition.

With various examples, the author shows that nothing kills the business as fast as the attempts to do many distinct things simultaneously, and emphasizes the importance of aligning the vision of the key players of the business. Those members of your organisation should be in charge of writing the business plan who take accountability of the outcomes of the plan that they have written.

The author also empasizes on the teamwork and the employee motivation as the imperatives of a success of any business.

I would also recommend "What Management Is" by Joan Magretta and "Leading the Revolution" by Gary Hamel in addition to this book.

How to Survive the E-Business Downturn is a must for all those internet entrepreneurs, myself included, who are running, or planning to start-up an e-business at a time when online ventures are facing violent changes and where failure is more common than success. The book showedd me how to use proven management tools and concepts, adapted in ways that suit my e-businesses in order to keep it thriving in such a fluctuating marketplace. The intro to the book explains in depth just what is currently happening in the world of e-business and gives enough background for readers to understand the essence of the subject. Set out in parts, with each part having five or six separate chapters, making it easier to follow without having to tackle large chunks of text! There is also an excellent list of references to enable readers to take on further readings on anything discussed. The author draws on a host of real-life, uptodate cases and supports his advice with numerous action plans and checklists. This book advises in a stepbystep format, the potential (or existing) e-businessperson what to do to develop a successful e-business, but also warns of what not to do! It is interesting to read about what companies, or even individual people, have done that has made them either successful or unsuccessful in the Internet World of business.

"Barrow's Boys" is a fun and fascinating read. It has everything: edge-of-your-seat adventure, history, and, most important, a host of fascinating characters. Don't miss it!

That line from a Kipling poem kept coming to mind as I read this book. The 30 major explorations that are chronicled here beginning in 1816 and ending with Leopold McClintock's expedetion of 1857, all however pre-date Kipling. Nevertheless the sentiment remains and it is very clear that BARROW'S BOYS - mostly Royal Navy officers who were "mothballed on half-pay" and "yearned for something" [to do] - were both some of the best in 19th century England and were indeed the right people to send forth. As the book's subtitle says they were sufficiently daring and had ample fortitude and there was the odd element of outright lunacy. The latter is best illustrated by Gordon Laing (the madman of Timbuctoo) and the hero John Franklin - better known as the man who ate his boots! Both men are subjects of appropriately titled chapters in this book.

The man behind these adventures, "the father of exloration" as Fleming calls him, was John Barrow, 2nd Secretary to the Admiralty from 1804 to 1845. He was the guiding force for the expeditions; organizing, equiping, and generally administering their every detail. Where the voyages went, who led them, what crew and supplies were needed, these were all Barrow's decisions. Fleming is quite plain in stating that although "Barrow inevitably plays second fiddle to his explorers" both in history and in his book, he nevertheless "remains the driving force behind his minions' more thrilling exploits."

Barrow's character is summed up as one of "ambition, intellect and remorseless application." Fleming highlights the many explorations Barrow sent out as part of his personal quests which he vicariously satisfied through his men. In pursuit of the source of the Niger River in West Africa and the Northwest Passage through the Arctic, Barrow spent money and material and sent men with not-quite reckless abandon but with a definite unwillingness to accept defeat. The remorselessness is shown in that failure and loss were simply reasons to sweep aside the unsuccessful leaders (if they returned alive) and equip another expedition to try again.

As the book goes on we see the seemier side of Barrow's ambition. The man was "determined to make his name somehow." After the multiple unsuccessful attempts for the Northwest Passage between 1818 and 1827, by John Ross, William Edward Parry, and John Franklin (who died trying), Fleming is at his most critical when he says the following about Barrow: "Perhaps no man in the history of exploration has expended so much money and so many lives in pursuit of so desperately pointless a dream."

Britain's long tradition of celebrating it's failures and making heroes out of victims dates from before these events right up to Dunkirk in WWII. This is strengthened by the idea of noble sacrifice for God, King, and country. The first man to go down with his ship was undoubtedly an Englishman. This goes a long way to explain why, even after so many failures and stories of pitiless deaths in the deserts of West Africa and the icy North of the Arctic, Barrow was allowed to continue sending men forth. Even more significantly there were always volunteers ready to test their mettle as the best of England's breed.

I happened to pick this book up perusing in the history section of the local bookstore. I have always been interested in the stories of famous explorers and figured I would give this one a shot.

I was already fairly familiar with most of the explorers of the Northwest passage. (Having myself been to the territories and seeing some of the places they explored) However I can safely say that I still learned some new things about these famed individuals.

Not only that but this book was a fun read and I mean fun. There is nothing like reading a history book and having it feel more like an adventure then a history lesson.

No complaints from me, what are you waiting for pick up a copy of this baby!!

I bought this book to read about Barrow's role in John Franklin's career and several Arctic expeditions, but was pleasantly surprised to find information on aspects of Barrow's enthusiasm for exploration that I don't believe I'd ever really heard about before.

The same (really remarkably influential) gentleman who sent the Royal Navy into the Arctic in search of the Northwest Passage also sponsored several expeditions into Africa to discover, among other things, the course of the Niger river.

This book forms a very nice summary of the history of the Royal Navy's attempts to discover that all-important Northwest Passage, giving form and coherence to series of expeditions that otherwise rather boggle my brain. The most pleasant surprise for me, however, was reading about the African expeditions; new information for me, and engagingly presented as well.

You will find it well written and striking a nice balance between presenting sufficient information to communicate the gravity of the issues faced by "Barrow's boys," and overwhelming the casual reader with too much information.

The history of the interactions between Barrow and those Rosses is particularly engaging, and tempts me to revisit M.J. Ross' very thorough joint biography of Captain John Ross and Sir James Clark Ross (Polar Pioneers : John Ross and James Clark Ross).

An interesting book, beautifully written, and full of unexpected wry humor, light but not light-weight; I enthusiastically recommend this book to persons interested in British polar exploration, the Franklin expeditions, and the decades-long animosity between Barrow and Captain John Ross.

This was a well written book on the many Polar and African interior explorations that were sponsored by the British in the first half of the 19th centry. From trying to find the North-West Passage above North America to searching for the legendary "city of gold" called Timbucto in Africa this book kept me interested throughout. Never before or for that matter since has such a group of explorers been assembled. The man responsible for these quests was John Barrow, a man who had a dream of mapping uncharted areas of the world. He set into motion the largest and most expensive series of explorations in the history of mankind. This is a story of courage and determination like no other that I have read before. This book recounts the stories of men who spent years stuck in the freezing cold in their dreams of being the first to find a passage across North America. The book also details the adventures that other men had in their quest to map the interior of Africa. Other stories of different areas in the world that were explored are also included. John Barrow might not have been as successful as he would have liked but his dream inspired later explorers and set a benchmark that carried on into the 20th century.

For 41 years John Barrow manipulated the Royal Navy and the British Government to pursue his own fixed ideas on geography.
His mistaken belief that there was an open, ice-free sea at the North Pole, a permanently clear North-West Passage and that the Niger emptied into either the Nile or the Congo, caused the deaths of unknown numbers of men, the loss of ships, the expenditure of a king's ransom and the physical and mental breakdown of many of Britain's elite officers.

This is the story of that prolonged tragedy; the irony of it is that it fathered the most amazing feats of endurance and privation, that they are regarded today as the pinnacle of human endeavour - only the similarly ill-equipped expeditions of Scott come close.

Barrow's 'Boys' are his hand-picked officers (strangely, they were usually totally ill-suited to the tasks he set them) who are either ambitious, incompetent, zealots or plain insane (or any combination!) and Barrow goes out of his way to ignore all the best advice from those with the real experience, to either under- or over-equip the expeditions, seemingly never hitting the right balance.
The internecine rivalry of the officers, the badly-picked crews, the obstructions of companies and kings, all combine to produce farce after explorational farce. On top of this, each failed expedition only fires his zeal, perversely convincing him that he is right, so off goes another doomed expedition.

If anything tells us that inhabitants of ivory towers have no idea of the real world, it is this book ... Get it and enjoy!

This author took me back to a time gone by. I especially loved the humor, drama and the old west realism that, "The Hanging at Stinking Creek", presented. The characters were real. They seemd to jump from the pages and come to life in front of me. The character of Kat and her challenge to Gant left me wanting for more. I laughed at Doc and McKay throughout the book. I can't wait for another walk in time from this author.

The Hanging at Stinking Creek is a smooth flowing novel with a taste of the Old West that I have not felt in years. I grew up watching John Wayne, Roy Rogers, and the Lone Ranger with my father. This book brings back these fond memories by creating an atmosphere reminiscent of a time gone by. The characters come to life and draw you into their lives and problems. Gant is a fantastic and believable "common man's" hero. A simple man, just trying to do what is right. The action is intermixed with a touch of humor that adds both realism and depth to the story line. At the end of the book, I was left wanting for more.

The Hanging at Stinking Creek is a smooth flowing novel with a taste of the Old West that I have not felt in years. I grew up watching John Wayne, Roy Rogers, and the Lone Ranger with my father. This book brings back these fond memories by creating an atmosphere reminiscent of a time gone by. The characters come to life and draw you into their lives and problems. Gant is a fantastic and believable "common man's" hero. A simple man, just trying to do what is right. The action is intermixed with a touch of humor that adds both realism and depth to the story line. At the end of the book, I was left wanting for more.

I had no idea so many black soldiers fought for the South.Some were really body servants, others were quartermasters and cooks and others were flat out real soldiers. This is a piece of history that has been totally left out of the history books. This is the only book of it's kind that I know of so if you are a black or Civil War history buff you must add this one to your collection.

Mr. Barrow has written a most extraordinary book on some of the most noble, yet sadly forgotten, defenders of the Confederacy - the Black Confederates. He offers a quite insightful look of their service throughout the War For Southern Independence. Some of the personal accounts of these brave men of colour are wonderful, leaving us to question the bigotry of those who use revisionist tactics in portraying the War For Southern Independence. I believe the unfortunate & temporarily successful block of the racist organisation NAACP against a proposed monument in the Commonwealth of Virginia, that was to have been erected to the memory of the thousands upon thousand of blacks who wore the grey & butternut & bore the Saint Andrew's Cross of the Southern Confederacy, is such an example.

The common conception of black Southerners in the Civil War has described a people unified by their opposition to the Confederacy and resisting the Southern war effort, either passively and actively.
This view can only be maintained by ignoring a mass of research material that strongly suggests that black opinion, like other opinion, was represented across the spectrum, and was strongly influenced by sectional, local, and family loyalties which have largely disappeared in the modern world, but which were of paramount importance in the nineteenth century. Many blacks, free and slave, in fact, considered themselves Southerners first and blacks second, and served the Southern cause enthusiastically.
This unconventional view is supported here by a wealth of clippings, rosters, memoirs, photos, archival records, and other data to convincingly demonstrate that the matter is more complex than the simplifiers of history would have it, and to show that the actual record of the black Southerner leaves no firm ground for those who would cite his experiences for modern political purposes.
(The "score" rating is an unfortunately ineradicable feature of the page. This reviewer does not "score" books.)

Siamese twins occur only once in 100,000 births. Those joined at the head, like the Guatemalan twins recently separated at UCLA are the rarest of all, occurring in less than one in a million births. UCLA, which has one of the world's leading neurosurgery centers is not the first operating theatre where a successful attempt was made to separate "craniopagus" twins who shared some of their neurological "wetware." That honor belongs to Vienna's university hospital and a team headed by pediatric neurosurgeon, Dr. Wolfgang Koos and American neurosurgeon, Dr. Robert Spetzler.

Step by step, "The Healing Blade" describes the operation performed on the conjoined twins. The surgeons had been rehearsing each step, "together and apart, through three months" to acquire the necessary precision of movement. The operation itself took place over a period of days. Sylvester describes the scene before it began:

"At the juncture of the twin operating tables lies what appears to be a log of ironwood, dried pale and clean. It is the long, common skull of the twins, shaved of that fringe of curly brown hair. Nearly a foot apart two small [three-year-old] faces appear carved into the wood, one facing straight out, one cast slightly downward, both in slumber, perfect cherubim carved into the column of their skull."

Read this fascinating account if you are at all interested in the fate of the Guatemalan twins at UCLA. Unfortunately, the twins who were separated in Vienna later died of infection, so this is a cautionary tale. We must not become too optimistic, even though the surgery was successful:

"In 30 attempts worldwide to separate twins joined at the head, from 1928 to 2000, only seven of the 60 children came through the surgery without brain damage; 30 died, 17 were neurologically impaired and the remainder of the cases were reported before the ultimate outcome could be determined, according to the medical journals [NY Times 08/07/2002]."

Other operations performed by Dr. Spetzler had more successful, long term outcomes as described in "The Healing Blade." This book focuses on three main subjects: Dr. Spetzler and his contributions to neurosurgery; the history of the Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix, where Dr. Spetzler performs the majority of his operations; and a new state of the art procedure called the "Standstill," which is a nickname for hypothermic arrest. In a sense, the patient dies for an hour--no blood and therefore no oxygen can reach his brain while he is chilled down to the point where his heart stops.

This book is much more unputdownable than the latest techno-thriller by, say Clancy or Ludlum, because it is true. The author's attention to detail places us right into the operating room with the surgical team, and deep into the magical cavern of the human skull. The only dry stretches of text concern the founding and history of the Barrow Neurological Institute, and they don't take up too much room. The author also works in a brief history of neurosurgery, but none of it is quite as fascinating as the scenes where Dr. Spetzler is poised over his intraoperative microscope, carefully dissecting an aneurysm that threatens to explode through the micro-currents of a human intelligence.

This book gives a compelling and realistic look into Barrow Neurological Institute and its leader, Dr. Robert Spetzler. And I should know.

I was on Dr. Spetzler's operating room table less than two years ago and am yet another of his miracles.

Anyone considering any kind of neurological surgery should read this book before doing anything.

Very few books actually make my all time favorite list (I'm not big on James Joyce, by the way) but this book did, and how! It reads so smoothly because it introduces you to the director of the Barrow's Neurological Institute by literally bringing you into a very complex surgery of clamping a middle cerebral artery aneurysm by using a makeshift heart lung bypass machine to cool the person's body and brain to 61F to literally shut down the metabolism of the brain to prevent anoxic damage when the blood is pumped out of the body to deflate the aneurysm so that the surgeon can dissect out crucial small blood vessels away from the aneurysm before clamping the aneurysm. And that's just the first chapter! There's great historical reference to Harvey Cushing and Walter Dandy. There's a "who's who" of neurosurgery (including Charles Wilson from UCSF). There's an insider look at the political side of academic neurosurgery as well as an impromptu history lesson of both the Barrows Neurological Institute and the Phoenix, AZ region. You will learn a lot about the techniques and personalities in the world of neurosurgery. It's an amazingly quick read...I can't put it down. After reading this book, go and buy Frank Vertosick's When the Air Hits Your Brain as well as Mark Shelton's Working in a Very Small Place.