1983 another era? Probably. 1983 New York another era? Definately. Hence, if you weren't likely to find this title in the cheap bins before 9/11, then you are now. It and every other book written about New York before that date, in fact. Not that I think the author in this instance would mind too much. NEW YORK DAYS, NEW YORK NIGHTS isn't a book that takes itself too seriously. There aren't tracts of socio-economic theory to get bogged down in ' in fact, only if granted a generous concession would NEW YORK DAYS, NEW YORK NIGHTS even licitly assume the guise of travel literature (at least, it's not congruous with my perhaps stubborn understanding of what constitutes literature). The prose is light and casual, which reflects the manner in which Brook engages New York the subject, i.e., drink in hand, ever alert for the free ride. He touches on subjects as disparate as lawyers, the Chelsea hotel, Greenwich Village, sushi, the Met, Bellevue Hospital, newsanchors, zoning bylaws, gay bath houses, educational institutions, Rikers Island, the judicial system, the Left, the Right, immigrants and the green card, Harlem, City Hall, the NYPD, the South Bronx, the festive season, and as well those usual suspects; cabbies and the subway. Observations run from the obvious ('It struck me how in New York the population unwittingly leans toward a jewishness as a kind of cultural norm') to the not so ('It really seemed to be true that in New York you raise your hat to a lady and she responds with the story of her life.')

Probably not worth sniffing out a signed first edition, but likely worth whatever it's going for in the cheap bins.

***stars

(An interesting footnote: Brook speaking with New York Mayor of the time, Ed Koch ' 'There'd been a group of bombings on New Year's Eve, and I asked the Mayor whether he felt that New York, as the financial centre of the world, was particularly vulnerable to urban terrorism. He looked astonished. 'Vulnerable? In england you had 27 people killed by a bomb, blowing up the horses in the park the other day! And in Belfast? More people are killed in Britain than in New York!'')

This book is a pretty straight forward and easy to carry in lab coats during calls on pediatric floor.The author tried to incorporate most of the common problems faced by the house officer on the call. The organization of priorities and therapy is excellent.The only negative aspect is that it does not replace any textbooks or manuals in pediatrics; one has to read other books for individual diseases and their management. Overall it is absolutely worth it's price and useful for junior pediatricians

a useful book for evaluation and assessment in physiotherapy treatment . good for students

A good starter for Bradford's Of Plymouth Plantation. This is an adaptation of the aforementioned, done well without losing the old style language. BW etchings make appropriate illustrations for this read. Has a glossary of archaic words, maps, and explanations of historic persons as well. A good move from traditional Thanksgiving books.

Johnston makes some excellent points about how mass media disenfranchises the poor, handicapped and minorities. However, the book reads more like a rambling rant. I'd give the book two stars if I didn't agree with much of what Johnston says.

For all her credentials - Johnston has had several reseach fellowships at prestigious universities and has written 7 books on mass media - I was suprised at how poorly written this book is. Criticizing mass media is something that, I feel, requires a more balanced calm tone in order to have any affect on people. Mass media is such a built-in factor in our lives that any attempt to make us analyze it needs to appeal to our common sense, not attack us with a polemical attitude. Surely there are better books out there.

Here are some of the problems I found:

About the sources cited in Johnston's book: Are Ed Asner & Michael Dukakis really bona fide commentators on this topic? How about Johnston's liberal use of "unpublished research papers" - my quotes - by media studies students? I counted 25 different student papers cited in the first 2 chapters. It's not clear whether these are undergraduates or graduate students. Many of the quotes taken from those papers are little more than the student's opinion. And then, in her "acknowledgement" section, Johnston merely thanks the student researchers for their "insights." How about thanking all of them by NAME since they contributed so much to writing of this book? I find it really peculiar that she used student papers in this way.

For a quote about how 73 percent of violent acts go un-punished, Johnston quotes an article in Harper's. Wouldn't data from the Bureau for Criminal Justice Statistics or some other official source be more appropriate? I doubt Harper's did their own data gathering to get that factoid.

How about proofreading? I don't know much about M.E. Sharp (the publisher) but obviously they didn't proofread this book very well. The CBS cop show "Martial Law" was referred to as "Marshall Law." A search engine named "Havista" was mentioned in the notes. I think they meant AltaVista, but I can't be sure.

The book is worth reading through, if only to get an idea on how to begin thinking about criticizing mass media. Take it with a grain of salt, though. I can't suggest another book on this topic since it's pretty new to me.

This is a very good manual to accompany the Health Unit Coordinating textbook. However, the TOPO software needs updating. Most computers with the latest operating systems (i.e., Windows XP, etc.) do not work well or at all with MS-DOS applications. Most newer printers with USB capability are unusable with this software also. They should also consider updating the software to CD-ROM instead of floppy disk.

In Helen Brooks latest release, Essie Russell, a vet meets Xavier Grey, a Canadian millionaire, while at her friends wedding where she is the chief bridesmaid. In a case of mistaken identity, Essie is insulted when Xavier presumes that she is Janice, the other bridesmaid who is an actress as well as a party animal simply because she is blond and beautiful. She plays him along for awhile just to get back at him and he is understandable angry when he finds out. Like many of the other European written romances I've read before, Brooks falls back on old plot points such as a heroine who is afraid of commitment because of a jerk of an old boyfriend and a rags-to-riches millionaire who came up from the gutter. (How many men can be self-made millionaires by the time their 33?) In this respect, there is no surprise in the plot and the characters seem interchangeable from characters from other similar novels. However, Brooks does make things a little more interesting by including the random paragraph that is seem from another point of view. Like a tom cat at Essie's vet practice for example, as well as a peek into Xavier's mind. This is refreshing because almost all romance novels are seen from the heroine's point of view. Overall, not a bad read even if it did fall onto old topics and was a pleasant way to pass a long summer's day.

This is my first Helen Brooks novel - for some reason I just couldn't get into the storyline - the heroine (Tamar) seems to have a chip on her shoulder throughout most of the book trying to revenge a wrong done by the hero (Jed) to her cousin - made all the worse since she herself was a survivor of physical assault - and catagorized most men (with certain characteristics)into that mould. She was attracted to him but frightened if he came too close.

I did not finish the book because it simply didn't hold my interest. I'm rating it a so-so read because I really hate giving negative reviews. This authors other books could be perfectly wonderful =)

This book was horrible. I was forced to use it in a mandatory brainwash...er, history course for school. The book essentially goes like this:

We settled Massachusetts, and the indians, blacks, gays and women were persecuted.

Then, we started a westward expansion which led to persecution for indians, blacks, gays, and women.

During the revolutionary war some white guys fought or something, but it is important to note that the indians, blacks, gays...

This book is a proselyting tool, a transparent piece of propaganda. I didn't convert.

This book tries to teach history without actually including any concrete information. It outlines general trends without emphasizing the historical facts on which the trends are based. While it's certainly important to recognize progressions in history, it's extremely difficult to learn about them based only on the text's vague, 50-page summaries, all of which fail to mention any form of historical evidence.

As a student, I found this book's approach to teaching history disastrous and mildly insulting. First of all, it fails to convey even the most cursory knowledge of history by shunning, at all costs, cruel Old Regime teaching methods that might require DATE memorization or familiarity with historical FACTS. With nothing to "Lock On" to, it's very hard to retain anything. Even worse, however, are the implications of the book's approach. I like History because I enjoy being able to look at a set of evidence and trying to figure out, based on otherwise stale information, what *actually* happened, what life was like. Somehow, I got the sense that by describing outright "what life was like," the book implies that to force students to learn INFORMATION is useless, that students are unable to think for themselves and interpret historical information with any accuracy.

I think I should comment, also, on one reviewer's dismissal of this book as "Nouveau History." I come close to BEING one of the "Tenured Radicals" this reviewer had so much disdain for, and I still hated this book. I would hate it if I were communist. There's so much wrong with it that to criticize it for its left-wing perspective is plain silly.

I would recommend "The American Promise," by James L. Rourke, Micheal P. Johnson, and a few others instead.

This book provides a balanced overview of U.S. History up to 1877. The treatment of social and cultural history is particularly stong. The prose is, for the most part, quite lively.

I have taken many math courses and as a result have read many math texts-from Abelian group theory to nonlinear functional analysis. I am convinced that this book is absolutely the worst math book ever written. The author is simply incapable of expressing the material. He believes that "theoretical and abstract" are synonymous with "making things it difficult to understand." For instance, in chapter 11 when he is trying to teach nonparametric estimation methods, he rambles on for whole page on how the data should be ranked. It's elementary stuff that could be expressed in 4 sentences. Also, he provides the tables (not very good ones) for the t distribution; yet, there is not ONE comment on how the tables are to be used. Most students use outside sources to learn the material. Furthermore, the author doesn't provide the intuition behind most of the concepts. Statistics in inherently an applied subject and without grasping the intuition behind why you do what do you, the student merely memorizes formulas.

As a graduate student in statistics, I learned to hate this textbook. The text is filled with plenty of formulas, but lacks plain English explanations and illustrations. Many of the subjects, such as the treatment of functions of jointly distributed random variables (Z = X + Y, Z = X/Y, etc.) in Chapter 3, are completely inadequate. I needed more diagrams so that I could wrap my mind around these concepts and understand them at an intuitive, geometric level. I also failed to understand the importance of Sufficiency and the Cramer-Rao Lower Bound in Chapter 8. These subjects seemed to lack any real-world applications and are just math games as far as I'm concerned.

Avoid this book like the plague if you're a beginner in statistics. It'll turn you off to the subject!

This book is so far the best mathematical statistics and data analysis textbook I've ever read for an undergraduate intermediate level statistics course. The topics are well chosen and the book is well written. The previous bad reviews of the book at Amazon.com are from people with absolutely no knowledge of statistics and trying to find some short-cut to "prepare for a exam" or whatever. So if you are a serious reader and with intermediate level statistics understanding, go for the book. It is not only good to be used a textbook, but also excellent for reference purpose.