When I heard about Andrea Yates drowning her 5 kids,
I could not believe it. I went on the journey to find
out why. I was hoping the jury would find her insane
Which I think she was. After reading Spencers book
I could at least look into her life, although the book
was written very rapid, she got her point across.
Andrea was living the life her husband wanted HIM to
live. She was a meek person, who was overwhelmed by
5 children, homeschooling, chores around the house.
While her husband went to work, she was stuck at home.
He would give her night off, BUT that night off was
to go shopping for food. I find Rusty 50% at fault
He should do some jail for not being there for his
wife. He clearly was at fault for not doing more.
I found myself disliking Rusty more and more as I read
the book. He overpowered Andrea, whatever he said was
the word. I feel so sorry for these children who were
so innocent. We can only wonder what went inside this
house. But I do expect more books to be written and we
can only read and try to understand....We all know
that Andrea's life is done. Rusty, well who cares, he
will find someone to have more children with...
Rest in peace Children.

The shocking tragedy of the Yates children is hard to cope with. When this book was released I didn't want to go near it. But something about understanding how a mother could do such a thing drew me near.

Yes this is a book that seemed rushed, yes it's about a case no one wants to ADMIT to reading about. But none the less it is a GOOD true crime book. Suzy Spencer puts together a excellent story filled with details, and information on some of the explanations.

Although I will never fully understand, I feel I am somewhat more enlightened.

It's a tragic book, but then again aren't most true crime books?

I don't review alot of books or read alot of books published before the trial,But the shock and horror of Andrea Yates killing those 5 children just stayed with me. I seen the book and bought it. It was a good book about a horrible crime. When I first saw this awful Tradgedy on the news I wanted Andrea Yates Hung from the nearest tree. After reading the book , I see now how very troubled she was.She should be punished , but so should her husband and the mental health community. I am glad Ms. Spencer spared us some of the gory details.The book was very informative and gave me a much better understanding on what was/wasnt going on in Andrea Yates head! ...

This is a great tool for those who don't want to be a classical pianist but just want to have fun! The author gets to the point quickly with no "fluff" and tells you exactly what you need to do to sound good immediately. Although I had taken a few piano lessons as a child many years ago, I couldn't play a thing. Now I am able to play songs that I want to play, not songs my teacher wanted me to play... Will it take some effort? Yes, but now I am looking forward to playing what is fun instead of "Chopsticks"! It is also a lot cheaper than lessons...

"Play the Piano in a Flash!" teaches how to play the piano using chords and melody lines instead of the "classical" technique. Why would you want to learn this method? Actually that is easy to answer, other than classical piano pieces, most piano players use this method and it is the easiest method to learn.
Scott Houston teaches you to play in this style and has you playing your favorite pieces in just hours of practice instead of weeks and weeks of learning to read notes and painstaking lessons. You will not learn classical concert piano techniques, but you will learn to play your favorite pieces with confidence.
If you just want to learn to play piano for the purpose of having fun or entertaining at a party or playing for a pop, rock, or similar group then this is a wonderful guide. If you want to learn classical piano then it is not what you need. Absolutely the easiest method and a lot of fun, I enjoyed the book greatly.... and can actually play a few tunes after about four hours of practice.

I got this book the other day, read through it, and then reread it. Then I sat down with a song I had always wanted to play, practiced the chords, and played it. Good grief! I took lessons, bought theory books, practiced, practiced, practiced. And yet I never played "Bewitched" in entirety. I did last night. I must say to my ear, I sounded pretty darn good. If you want to play for your own enjoyment and don't plan on a gig at Carnegie Hall, buy this wonderful book.

This book was one that made me think.It made me think about what Hitler did to the Jews,and how smart he was.He changed the world for worse instead of better.Hitler was capable to do anything,but he ruined it.The thing these events have in common was somebody judged a person of some race because of what someone else did that was also in that race.People put the Jews and the Japanese into a stereotype that was evil.
This book is sad to me because the main character's family is torn apart.They no longer ate dinner together either,that was a big part of the main character's life.In the book she discribed a big round table where they sat.She also said she missed it.Their father was also taken away from them and they didn't know where he was for many years. That is why I think this book is sad.Sad or not it teaches you a lesson when you think you are so badly treated,well some little boy or girl may not even have a father or mother,be proud of your freedoms and privleges.

7.2 KDP Mrs.JeanBaptiste

I did not like the book because there were too killing and softing. Families were torn apart and people were arreste and mother had to go to work the next day. Some wemen had to sell their most valueibly item just to fed their family. Families was geting bet and if some try to get a way they will get kill.

My opinion of this book was it was sad. It was sad because of papa leaving, the family losing their home, the family losing their freedom, and the family lost their table which was used to spend time together which was a tradition to them.
One piece of evidence form the book theat supports my opinion is "In December of 1941 papa's disappearance didn't bother me." Some more evidence is "The mess halls at Manzanar" and "The goverment ordering them to go to Manzanar.7.2 R.A.

How many times have you considered the VFW a local eatery?
We tried using the book and found it to be a serious let down. A day trip to Sealy? What is the purpose? Hinze's Bar-B-Que is very good but you can find better without leaving Houston.
To be fair, we did not try all the trips, but the ones we did try left a lot to be desired. Not for people interested in getting out of the car.

This is a useful book with information on a great many places within an easy drive of Houston. More detailed maps would be a plus.

I purchased this book last year and LOVED IT!!!!!!!!!It covers almost every festival and other happening there is within driving distance of Houston. You will still probably want to call and check to make sure of the date of the festival (or other event) that you are interested in. The book provides the phone numbers to the chambers of commerce, etc. which makes it easier to find out all of that good stuff. So if you like taking short trips, THIS BOOK IS A MUST HAVE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

As a beginner in the telecommunications field I was expecting something more simple and understandable.It is full of boring and unnecessary paragraphs, especially the ones in the blue windows.The book is very chatty and verbose.It is wasting my time. I was assigned this book at DeVry for a freshman telecommunications management course.The professor agrees that the book is written in a very complicated language. Every time he quotes the book, he stops to say: "Now, Let's translate this to English". If it was my decision, I would not choose this book for my class.

Having taken the course that this book is for, I quickly learned the basics of Telecommunications. The author's designed the layout of the text to be an easy entry to this vast technical field. Each chapter is introduced with a general "story", sometimes several stories, that explains in layman's terms the overall concept. Then the text explains the information on a more technical level. Some of the information presented IS outdated but all of it is relevant. The authors included this "outdated" information to show just what has been accomplished in the arena of Telecom. But they also introduce some of what is to come. A "Thumbs Up" to both of the authors for publishing a great text.

This book has some fantastic material in it. I am now teaching college. Whenever I get a chance to recommend a book, I always recommend my students use this book. It has a phenomenal section about telecommunication laws that is outstanding for using in lectures. It reads well, and is very helpful!

This very slender book is based on the premise "what if an American battleship had escaped from Pearl Harbor during the attack and given chase to the Japanese fleet?" The writing is actually very good, and the naval dialogue is well-done. There are a number of typos, and a small line drawing of a scantily-clad woman appears a couple of times for some inexplicable reason. There are the obligatory sex scenes which are not explicit and which are well-written, but not very well staged, if that makes any sense. It's as if a sixteen year old, hormones raging, decided what would happen, and a novelist were commissioned to draft the text. The naval action is well-designed to camouflage some factual problems in the story, i.e. how does a 15-20 knots battleship succeed in catching a 30 knot carrier task force, or engaging it, but the books ends far too abruptly. In my opinion, what the book really needed was a far broader plot that (1) paid far more attention to the loss at Pearl as a motivating factor for revenge, and (2) ended the book with the battleship's return. The carnage at Pearl - even what the ship's crew could have seen as they exited the harbor before the second wave - should have been gone into a little more, and served as a white-hot motivating factor for getting revenge on the carriers. As written, the chase is a pretty cool, bloodless affair, and I really missed a good ending wrapping it up.

Looking for a good book to read this summer while you're lounging around the pool? Look no further if you're a fan of naval sagas. (This was my first.) At just over 200 small pages of large print, "On a Blood-Stained Sea" is an enjoyable read for a lazy afternoon, especially if you're tight with Evelyn Wood.

Mr. Houston has crafted his novella around an intriguing premise: What might happen if an American battleship had escaped the Japanese onslaught at Pearl harbor and then chased the Japanese fleet as they sailed home? Like the dog that chases a car down the street, the logical next question is what do the Americans do if they catch the Japanese fleet? For the answer you'll have to read the exciting, action-packed climax.

By the way, did I mention the gratuitous sex? Although the four female castaways presented an interesting dilemma to the crew, Mr. Houston could have played it more PG-13 than R. Speaking of which, all the ingredients are there for a better-than-average made-for-TV movie. But, don't wait for the movie - read the novel now.

There seems to be some confusion on how a twenty-knot U.S. Battleship could catch a thirty-knot Japanese Fleet after the attack on Pearl Harbor. I became interested in this scenario after reading "The Pearl Harbor Papers: Inside the Japanese Plans," by Donald M. Goldstein & Katherine V. Dillon where I found evidence of the Japanese withdrawal to Kure Naval Base after the attack.

The Imperial Japanese Navy steamed north at twenty-six knots, to avoid the (remote) possibility of air attack, up to approximately forty degrees North latitude. Once in the clear they turned east and slowed to fourteen knots their ordinary cruising speed (to conserve fuel), sometimes slowing to nine knots due to heavy weather. Six oil-tankers accompanied the Japanese fleet and refueling, especially for their escorting destroyers, was an on-going concern. The fleet typically slowed to twelve knots for this maneuver which took most of the day, the Japanese didn't have alongside refueling as the U.S. fleet did, but the tanker dragged the oil-hose astern for the destroyers to pick up. So, the Japanese didn't steam home at thirty knots, it was more likely fourteen knots.

Their route home must also be considered, they did not steam straight for Japan, but went up and around Midway Island, again to avoid the possibility of air attack. So, while the Japanese took a circuitous route home at fourteen knots a U.S. battleship could, upon exiting Pearl Harbor after the attack, steam directly for a point some seven hundred miles north of Midway Island at twenty knots (this class of battleship had a cruising radius of 6,800 miles at that speed) and indeed make an interception, especially as it carried four scout planes.

Was this scenario likely? No, but it was possible. So, too, was the dawn attack that caught the Japanese completely by surprise, which was not at all improbable given that a confident victor was halfway home unmolested. It is entirely possible that they would drop their guard at that point.

The final question, once the battle commenced why wouldn't a thirty-knot Japanese fleet simply come up to speed and disappear over the horizon out running their twenty-knot opponent? Well, it takes time to work an aircraft carrier up to flank speed and if a battleship was within range it would only take a few minutes and a few sixteen-inch salvos to set it alight (this happened during the battle of Midway when Japanese carriers were dive bombed). Also, the Japanese night formation used in this attack was their actual steaming formation described in "The Pearl Harbor Papers." So, if you're interested, read the book.

Daniel L. Houston

This book was average.Houston leaves out an important detail in that he says nothing about young Daniel Boone's part as a teamster in the Braddock Expedition to take Ft.Duquesne during the French and Indian War in 1755.While Boone did not play a significant role during the battle(by his own admission he cut loose the horses and took off shortly after coming under fire from the French and Indians)he was one of many famous personalities who were present that day.More importantly,he met one John Finley during this expedition who told Boone about the wild and unsettled lands that he had traveled to on the frontier in what is now Kentuckey.

Houston's Boone is a diminutive book but one brimming with contemporary insights plus editor's annotations into frontier life featuring new stuff on Boone, hide tanning, buffalo, Indians, and early hunter anecdotes. An elegent little book with a gorgeous jacket, a highly collectable bit of old-time Kentuckiana.

Murray State University (Kentucky) history professor Ted Franklin Belue discovered the only known copy of Peter Houston's manuscript about his personal recollections of the famous frontiersman, Daniel Boone, in the Lyman C. Draper papers at the State Historical Society of Wisconsin in 1990. Written in the 1840s by a friend and neighbor of Boone's, the original manuscript was stolen from the author's grandson in 1887, but luckily for future historians, the grandson had, mere weeks before the theft, mailed a copy of the lengthy work to the prolific historian, Lyman Draper. Belue has done a masterful job in presenting this rare piece of Americana to the reading public. Replete with extensive annotations and notes, a pictorial section, and an impressive bibliography, the book goes a long way in shedding light on everyday times on America's first western frontier during the 1770s and 1780s. For those of WWA's membership who believe, as I do, that "western" writing is defined as that which encompasses the entire American frontier experience, from the Atlantic seaboard to the Pacific shores, this book will provide several hours of interesting reading, indeed.--Jim Crutchfield, Managing Editor, Roundup Magazine April 1998, Western Writers of America

I am amazed at the other reviews of this book. The reviewers must be close personal friends of the author. My conscience won't even let me give this book away.

This book is a bio of emotions on growing up gay. It is not a book about decorating dollhouses. The photography is blurred as it is only a back drop to accent the feelings that the writter is expressing.Buy it if you are a book collector, but not as an instruction manual. Ha

The photography is beautiful. But understand that this book is a
sort of bio of emotions about growing up gay, not about building and decorating dollhouses.

Former school board member McAdams has delivered a revealing account (if you read copiously between the lines) of the exercise of power in a billion-dollar school district. Characterizing himself and the Anglophile majority on the school board as education reformers, he paints an over-flattering self-portrait of an enlightened education savior. All who disagree with incessant standardized testing, wholesale privatization of school system functions, dilution of employee rights, and rolling back affirmative action assume the role, in his little universe, of narrowly focused obstructionists opposed to his vision of "progress." Minority board members are either marginalized either as benign, quaint, almost comic figures or as irrationally strident defenders of his imagined status quo. He views unions and other employee organizations as hysterical pyramid schemes whose sole aim is to increase membership by scaring teachers and support personnel. This education expert must have been absent during several American history classes dealing with the labor movement. The deification of Rod Paige as public-school messiah is a mystery to many Houstonians who are still trying to distill substance from the "Rod Paige miracle." Co-opting Black criticism by selecting a conservative Republican from their midst did seem to inoculate the school board against some African-American groups, but the tactic alienated Mexican-Americans and other Hispanics. The Petruzielo-Paige legacy is the PR spin machine created in the Houston school district. Schools celebrated testing achievement with pep rallies, trinkets and candy, even if the results were improvements within a random statistical variation. McAdams shows himself to be a cheerleader for so-called reform which lines the pockets of consultants, corporations, and senior adminstrators while slowly bankrupting the public-school infrastructure and treating students merely as a target market. This is a must-read, since it unintentionally shows the hand of the vampires at the top of the heap who are sucking the lifeblood from our urban school systems and insuring a permanent underclass.

This in-depth look at eight years in the life of the Houston Independent School District is remarkable for its balance and honesty. One of my favorite parts is about an audit of the district undertaken by Texas Comptroller John Sharp. We come to see how this audit excercise is both overtly political and unfair and, at the same time, a useful tool for improving the district. MacAdams appears to be one of those rare public servants who has the ability to see and even appreciate multiple apparently contradictory truths.

We also learne about how the media impedes progress by always reporting scandals (even the dubious ones) while almmost never reporting about progress. This fuels the public's sense that the district is "broken," no matter what is happening.

His parting recommendation to find ways to take the politics out of schools is thought-provoking. Yet, one wonders, perhaps, whether it isn't preferable that a certain amount of "direct democracy" prevails in our schools. After all, it's not just the parents who have a stake in the system. Taxpayers and citizens of every stripe have hopes and expectations of schools and as long as they are footing the bill, they probably need to be heard in some fashion.

If I have one complaint, it's that the book is a little bit too long and I'm not sure that all of the detail is necessary. I could have done without some of the details of meetings and campaigns.

I highly recommend this book for any serious student of school reform and anyone interested in how school boards can drive school improvement. We need more thoughtful, committed leaders like Don McAdams on our school boards.

McAdams, Donald R., Fighting to Save Our Urban Schools... and Winning! Lessons From Houston. New York, NY: Teachers College Press (2000).

This is such a pathbreaking book that it is essential reading for school board members and others who are concerned about the sad condition of our system of education. It is notable for at least three reasons. First, it is a detailed descriptive account written by an active school board member and one of a team of leaders in the very significant education reform effort that started in Houston in 1990 and is ongoing. Second, one of McAdams' close associates in reforming the Houston school system, Dr. Rod Paige, has now been sworn in as Secretary of Education in President George W. Bush's cabinet. Third, after Dr. Paige had served as a member of the school board for over four years, his fellow board members decided, in a very controversial and unorthodox action, to appoint him to be superintendent of schools, even though he was not "qualified" by the existing rules of the system, and was opposed by the education bureaucracy.

That decision made in "Houston in 1994 helped start a pattern of nontraditional urban school district leadership that would include army generals (Seattle and Washington, D.C.), a county human services director (Milwaukee), a city budget director (Chicago), and a local prosecutor (San Diego). In all of these cities, and others such as New York City, reform has implied thinking outside the normal educator's box." [comment by G. Alfred Hess, Jr]

Fighting to Save Our Urban Schools is pathbreaking because it is the first detailed first-person description of the workings of a very successful reform school board by a member of that board. It reads like a spellbinding novel and describes in detail, but with tact and wisdom, the actions of a large number of players who are cited by name. The players include one superinten- dent that was fired by the board, another superintendent who accomplished some very good things but then began to ignore the policies decided on by the board and avoided a confrontation by leaving to take a position with another school district, an extremely difficult-to-work-with union leader, community and regional business leaders, various ethnic and other interest groups, legislators, state and city bureaucrats, and Governors Ann Richards and George W. Bush.

This book is probably also the best source so far available on the unusual career of Dr. Paige, who has won the respect and admiration of educational reform leaders across the country. Both Dr. Paige and Don McAdams are moderate Republicans who worked closely with Democrats and others in a non-partisan way to do what was needed for their students and for their community. Before his election to the Houston Independent School District Board of Education, Dr. Paige had been a well-known coach, professor of education, and college dean of education. Soon after being elected to the HISD board, Dr. Paige served on a board committee assigned to prepare a statement of its vision and beliefs. The board adopted the Declaration of Visions and Beliefs prepared by the committee in 1990 and has been guided by it since then even though most of the board members have been replaced by others. The never-ending process has required a great deal of effort involving working to resolve several serious conflicts, but Paige, McAdams, and their reform associates have managed to persuade newly elected members of the board who have often arrived with narrow and limited agendas to take a broader perspective and to work for the greater benefit of students and for the good of the community as a whole.

Many restuarant reviews are way out of date. e.g. lists a restuarant in the Galleria that closed 5 years ago (still listed in 1999 edition).

Map is far too small to be of use.

Have shown it to some Houston residents and they agree the reviews are not accurate.

One bookshop said that they would give a refund because restuarant guide is so poor (wish I'd kept the receipt).

Our son has just moved to Houston, and I bought this book in an effort to learn about his new home. I'm glad I did. Maybe the restaurants reviews ARE out of date, but Joanne Harrison writes in a breezy, conversational tone, throws in enough history to give a sense of place, gets in the traditional and off-beat sights to see, and organizes it all well. There are even sections on nearby places to visit such as Galveston. I felt I learned a lot about the CHARACTER of the city. I'll let the son take us to the latest hot restaurants (although I bet House of Pies is still there)!

Unlike many other guides of this sort, Ms. Harrison's book gives you much more than just the facts, ma'am. Indeed, while reading it, you get a strong sense of a quirky and perceptive intelligence behind the words. The facts are there, in abundance. But there's more: amusing anecdotes, clever turns of phrase and fascinating historical detail.