I have read all of Jill Churchill's books with "Jane Jeffry" and she does not disappoint me- ever.This mystery has the hectic christmas events we all are familiar with, some progress in her romance with Mel, her wonderful friend Shelly (aka Watson to her Holmes), and a mystery to keep you guessing. What more can you ask? If you enjoyed her earlier work you will definitely enjoy this latest caper of Jane Jeffry. Definitely worth five stars.

Jane and Shelley always work better for me when they're at home, with the kids, and the neighbors, and the daily disasters. This time, Jane is frantically trying to pull together not one, but two holiday parties, keep the kids on an even keel, and deal with an unexpected house guest in the form of Mel's mother, dumped on her without warning. Add to that a muck-raking, or muck-inventing local TV reporter, who falls, or is pushed? to his death from the roof next door, a pair of "hillbillies" with the worst taste in the world, and you have another great Jane Jeffry adventure. Particularly touching was Jane's evening making ornaments with her teenage daughter, a sweet lull in the usual mom-daughter running battle. Don't miss this one!

Jill Churchill wins again, with another suburban mystery. In Merchant of Menace, the mystery arises out of, and fits seamlessly into, Jane Jeffry's suburban milieu. Who did kill the sleazy tv expose reporter? And why? And what's up with the hillbillies who moved in next door and their wonderfully tacky Christmas decorations? The neighborhood events, the recurring characters, including some neighbors we've seen before, like the inimitable Susie, even Jane's potential mother-in-law, all ring hilariously true. I'd love to have seen more of Mel's mother, though. Seems like there should have been a denouement to the simmering conflict between them. Maybe we'll see her again some day? (Some book?)

The point of Garner's book is to write for the reader. This book would be helpful to any lawyer, if only because it forces us to think about how and why we are writing.

Too often, writers treat style manuals as if they were infallible--written on stone tablets by a divine author. Garner's book is not perfect and cannot be applied with a thoughtless rigor. As an appellate lawyer, I generally try to follow Garner's style, but sometimes it doesn't fit.

The corporate lawyer who complained about the book did not read it closely enough. Garner opposes thoughtless attachment to legalese, but he acknowledges that sometimes legal writers have to use terms of art. He also urges writers to be concise. I don't know where the corporate lawyer got the idea that Garner advocates "two pages of easily accessible prose over two sentences of conventional drafting," but it is not from this book.

Accept or reject Garner's advice as you wish, but thinking about clear writing will make you a better lawyer. Most of what Garner writes is common sense, but it's common sense legal writers often lack.

Quit searching -- this is the best book on legal writing that you will find. It is outstanding.

I am an attorney in Texas, and I have attended two of Mr. Garner's legal-writing seminars. He is currently the leading authority on legal writing; he is also an engaging speaker. His approach is to eliminate legalese and to present a powerful and succinct message. This approach has a very practical foundation -- over the years, Mr. Garner has polled judges across the country to see which writing elements they prefer.

This volume distills Mr. Garner's findings into a compact, 227-page format. The book also contains model documents -- a research memorandum, a legal motion, an appellate brief, and a business contract -- which serve as excellent reference tools for the legal practitioner.

Put simply, if you don't subscribe to Mr. Garner's advice, you don't know how to write well. And this book is the best way yet to access to Mr. Garner's valuable insight. This book is an ESSENTIAL reference tool.

I strongly agree with five of the six amazon.com reviews, which are highly favorable and award five stars. This book is beautifully written, well organized, and eminently sound. Garner tackles the difficult job of convincing staid, inflexible lawyers to abandon the age-old practice of using incomprehensible legalese and thus ensuring that their contracts will have to be translated for those whose lives are affected by them and later interpreted in costly litigation.

Most prestigious lawyers, law firms, and judges strongly favor Garner's plain-language approach to drafting. For example, the late Charles Alan Wright, a brilliant Supreme Court lawyer and noted author, called Garner "the world's leading authority on the language of the law." And the Texas Supreme Court enlisted Garner's aid in redrafting the Texas Rules of Appellate Procedure. So it's hard to believe that judges would generally prefer "conventional drafting" over the clear, accessible language that Garner advocates.

The five five-star reviews of the book on this website came from a law professor, a practicing lawyer, a book reviewer, and two others who appear to be nonlawyers. I wondered if the anonymous New York corporate lawyer who gave the book a meager one star knew something that everyone else didn't. So I checked for reviews from highly respected sources. And I found that Harvard Law Review, the Law Library Journal, and Trial have all published very favorable reviews of this book.

The plain-language drafting recommended in this book is widely viewed as beneficial, not only by nonlawyers, but also by highly skilled lawyers who seek to avoid ambiguity and litigation and who strive to improve the tarnished image of lawyers generally. I believe that Garner's approach would be condemned only by a few rich corporate lawyers who thrive by making themselves indispensable in drafting, translating, and later litigating the long, dense form contracts that they produce.

Just bought the book in Boston at a Booksigning wish it was longer. I read it in 2 hours. I know I will be reading it again and again. Love the Characters, the Richie Rags, Richie Cats etc. I knew the same guys growing up on my corner in Philadelphia in the 1960's. The nice thing also is that there is no violence in the book. How refreshing.....

The Author Michael Maione-book called Tootys Corner, was absolute the most exciting books I've read, the book talks about life on the South side of Chicago-I want to applaud Michael Maione on a job well done.

Also as a reader of Michael's work, I should ask the question, is there another book coming out in the future? Readers love your work!

I loved it. It is real, and so are the characters. My kind of book to read over and over again.

Any sports fan (especially from the Chicago area) will definitely enjoy this story of growing up as a fan in Chicago. The only thing that keeps me from giving this book 4 stars is the inaccuracies. In several instances, Simon gives incorrect scores, dates and places. You would think it would be easy for someone in his position to have the correct info, so this unfortunately distracted me from an otherwise fine read.

I admit, as a transplanted Chicagoan and die-hard sports fan, its hard to be objective about this book. Scott Simon cleverly weaves his own personal remembrances of growing up in Chicago, into an historic timeline of sports and politics, which amounts to must read for anyone who wants a true glimpse into the soul of 'the city with big shoulders'.
I laughed hard and often at the family anecdotes, its easy to see where Simon gets his sense of humor, thrilled at reliving the Cub season of '69 and saddened, once again, at Brian Piccolo's courageous battle with cancer.
After finishing 'Home and Away', I was compelled to send copies to a few of my sports buddies...less fortunate souls having grown up in cities of less character.
I am a fan of the city, its teams (except the Sox...go Cubbies), and this writer ,who embodies it all so well in this book.
Bravo.

I'm not a sports fan and I absolutely LOVED this book. I've been an avid listener of Scott Simon's Weekend Edition for many years and have always enjoyed his view of the world. When I heard he had a book coming out, I trotted out to buy it (locally, not on Amazon where I could have saved some money - groan!) and read it on a beach vacation. I couldn't put it down. I so thoroughly enjoyed this book! It was a delight to read. (Hey - when I was in Chicago last week for business, I called up an old college friend and convinced him to go with me to a Chicago Cubs game - and had a blast!) Thanks, Scott, for the book, and hurry up and write more!

This book was one of the best ones I've read this year, and I read a lot of books! I don't know why one reviewer didn't think it was very romantic. It really was, and I couldn't wait to keep reading to see what would happen between Russell and Katina especially with Adam there. I also couldn't wait to see what would happen with John Brandermill! (You'll have to read it to see what I mean!) If you want to know what it was like in Chicago during the fire in 1971, read this because it was very real. This is an exciting and romantic book that should get five stars for sure.

I really liked this book. Katina is a young girl orphaned by the Civil War. She flees a Southern orphanage disguised as a boy, and lives as one in Chicago until she falls in love with a handsome young reformed. They begin to dream of a life together until the raging 1871 fire seperates them. Will they be reuinited? Read to find out?

This is a love story set in Chicago in 1871, when the great fire burned most of the city. The two main characters, Katina and Russell, are wonderful. I couldn't put the book down because I wanted to keep on reading to see what would happen to them as they fixed up the building for the poor people and then got separated in the fire. Some of it was really sad, some was funny, and all of it was exciting. It was a wonderful book that I hope everyone reads!

NPR columns, particularly the ones when he was looking at
being a person-of-size in America, but since no new ones have
come out, I picked this up as one of his most recent young adult novels. I expect much of this is autobiographical but it is very funny and wise and has a two-page reading list that I believe may
actually BE a list of the books Pinkwater read in High School. Chances are if you are even reading this review, you have already decided to buy this book. So, go ahead.

I finished reading this book not but half an hour ago, and it's one of the most amazing things i've ever read. Pinkwater at his very best, but a great deal more than that -- invites favorable comparison the the works of Saki and the early Vonnegut. A witty, astute, hedonistic critique of American culture and education. Buy it right now.

This is a must read for everyone even if they have never been to high school yet...ESPECIALLY if they have never been to high school yet. Daniel is a Mad Genius and I seriously reccomend this book.

No matter what else may be said about him...this man does know his craft.

If you read Pinkwater before then this is for you. if not then start with Lizard Music and read every book he has written until your eyes bug out and your head spins. Then pick this up and read it.

New visual metaphors for different kinds of vectors in 3-space: arrows, stacks, thumbtacks, and sheaves (corresponding to contravariant, covariant, and two forms of tensor). Visual and helpful proofs of Gauss's theorem, and Stoke's theorem, and div, grad and curl. I suspect the book would have been better had he included tensors explicitly. Very valuable for anyone doing vector analysis.

I hardly need to add another Highly Recommended to the list of reviews. However, Professor Weinreich has assembled from his lectures an exceptionally interesting and intriguing geometrical approach to vectors. Not the conventional directed line segment approach, but one which questions which geometrical relationships are topologically invariant and which are not. This is not a difficult book, but I suspect that the more familiar the reader is with vector concepts, the more surprised and appreciative he will be.

This book is deep! While lacking the formal rigor of vector analysis or exterior calculus this book attempts to remedy the lack of intuition that often accompanies such treatments (read the preface of the book).

In this book the author sneaks in clifford algebra, forms and applications to physics, he gives us a method of calculation that opens up the vector calculus you already knew and gives a great way to 'draw' many phenomenon in physics.

The author has an important agenda in this volume and that is to distinguish between objects that naturally behave differently. It has been the legacy of Gibbs and Heaviside for us to flounder in the 3-d application/misapplication of Hamiliton's quaternions. The reader is led to realize that identifying everything with contravariant vectors (arrows) is wrong and damaging to our intuition of phenomenon.

I highly recommend this book. It may seem hokey at first with odd names like thumbtack and swarm but it portrays deep mathematics in a beautiful manner. Work hard on it, apply it to physics and mathematics and be surprised at what you find! This sort of geometrical analysis is hard to find (try Gravitation by MTW or Applied Differential Geometry by Burke) at this level.

Remember it is meant to be an affordable companion to courses on vector and tensor analysis, and what a companion it is!

I thought this book was great. Basically it reinforces your views on the cast members and gives you more information both about them and what went on. One thing that surprised me was the stuff about Cara-- I liked her much more in the book than on the show! Anyway, it's a great book for people like me, who, if the Real World is on, can't NOT watch it.

Dying for more details about what went down in the Chicago house? This book gives you everything you want and more! Along with many great pictures, the cast members talk about everything from adjusting to life in front of the cameras to fighting over the phone. If you've read previous Real World books and liked them, you'll find more of the same great inside dirt in this one.

Not a bad book at all. Personally, I don't care for the eleventh season of "The Real World". This season seemed to focus around three storylines. The book was a refreshing source of what REALLY happened in Chicago. It gives the reader an idea of what the cast was really like. What they REALLY thought. The book includes cast views about themselves and each other. There are casting excerpts, as well as house facts as written by the director and cast commentary on the drama that went down. There is also an application for "Real World XIII". Overall, I would suggest this book to anyone that has followed the season thus far.

I have probably 2/3rds of the Greeley novels, including Irish Lace and Gold. After the first few pages I thought this was going to be a quickly slapped together journal of the events leading up to the nuptials of our heroes, Dermot and Nuala. In fact, I put it down, and only picked it up again after some unexpected down time.

For those of you who presevere, you will find the usual complicated mystery threads, that always tie together quite nicely by the end.

I love Greeley's lack of pretension. I live on the "fringes" of the Chicago Irish community. By that I mean I belong, by heritage, and I am enjoying the recent resurgance of anything Gaelic and Irish, but some take it too far. Many in the community tend to wrap their nationality, newfound respectability and religion about themselves, and use it as a cover to excuse immoral or otherwise bad behavior. Greeley always manages to blow these people away!

What I have always enjoyed about Greeley is his social stance. The protagonists are flawed, yet quietly pious and moral. That would describe Nuala and Dermot. Her brother Lawrence represents the other side of the coin, hiding behind his heritage as he imposes his hatred on everyone else. To me, how the lovers handled his intrusion was the far more interesting mystery of the book.

Having been a huge fan of Father Greeley for many years now, I was pleased to see how well he can still spin a yarn. "Irish Whiskey", third in a series surrounding a firery Irish lass named Nuala McGrail, continued to be entertaining as well as insightful. Greeley creates characters that are so alive and real that I find myself hearing them speak in Irish in my head! "Go long wid you now!" Having been raised in the Catholic Church, I find Greeley truly refreshing and insightful with his thoughts about how all of us truly feel regarding the matters of love and sex, and yet we have been programmed to feel guilty about those thoughts! While many think it is shocking that a Catholic priest should write such racy material, I find it refreshing that Father Greeley writes about the things that are beautiful and wholesome, such as the love between a man and a woman. The love story that is the basis of these series of novels, reveals a much more imp! ortant message. It attempts to explains how relationships and marriage can become deeper and more meaningful all within the eyes of God. Greeley and his Nuala McGrail series is a well thought out homily of how he sees men and womem fulfilling their committments to God through their committment to loving one another. Whether you are Catholic or not, you'll love the mystery and if you read carefully enough you will find the wonderful hidden message of how love can conquer all.

Hasn't it been a brilliant ride through the "Irish" series? Won't it be better for you to begin with "Irish Gold" then follow it with "Irish Lace" before arriving here at "Irish Whiskey"? In Gold you will become enamored with Dermot and Nuala Anne. In Lace you will hope for their relationship to develop and succeed. In Whiskey . . . well, wouldn't that be telling now? I eagerly await "Irish Mists" arriving in stores next year. Write quickly Father Greeley.

I have bought and read all of Jane Churchill's Jane Jeffry novels in paperback. They're an enjoyable, quick read. Her style is competent but basic. There's a dash of humor, a lot of comfortable, neighborly dialogue generally unrelated to the plot, and characters that are interesting but not captivating.

My major emphasis in professionally published books is on style. The printed word is the last bastion of our rich language, and therefore correctness should be a strong consideration. Heaven knows I'm far from being a grammarian (but I'm struggling to learn after a less-than-perfect education), and there are a couple things that bother me about her books. Yeah, a "couple things." You'd think after umpteen books, someone might have mentioned to her that it's a "couple *of* things." I find this consistent, persistent error distracting and annoying. In dialogue, a "couple'a things" is acceptable to indicate a character's manner of speech, but in narrative, it's a no-no. Unless the rules of grammar have changed since I was a child, you can have a "few things" or a "couple of things," but not a "couple things."

Finally, the books should be read in order, and I think the earlier ones are better. The first books in the series have more of a mystery plot, with clues presented for readers, and a generally clever solution. Later books don't provide all the clues, so when Jane figures out whodunnit, the reader hasn't been privvy to the information prior to the solution.

I have always enjoyed the Jane Jeffry books by Jill Churchill, they are well-plotted overall and very entertaining -- but "A Groom with a View" definitely ranks as one of her best. When poor Jane gets roped into putting together a wedding with nearly zero assistance from the bride or her family, then stumbles on a dead body in the dark to further complicate what already leans toward disaster -- well, it seems almost too much for the frazzled housewife/mother/sometimes novelist, even with the help of gal-pal Shelley. But what makes this book amazing is Jill Churchill's incredible sense of place; through minimal description of setting and even character, you feel like you are right there with these people, in this gloomy old wreck of a club where the wedding is being held. Add to that a nicely-plotted mystery ingenious in its simplicity, almost to the point where you are sympathetic for the killer, and you have one of the best of the series. I always look forward to the next Jane Jeffry mystery (come on, "Mulch Ado About Nothing"!!), but this one was one of the most entertaining whodunnits this mystery lover has ever read.

This installment of Jill Churchill's Jane Jeffry series is a bit of a disappointment. I did enjoy reading it, but missed the snap that Jane and Shelly have together. Oddly, a lot of the messes that they get into in other books are missing too. Ms. Churchill had a great idea for this book but I feel that she failed to follow through as well in this book as she usually does. I'm not saying that this book is not worth reading. In fact, read them all. This series is a lot of fun and a lot of laugh out loud funny jokes. I would just say that this installment is a bit weaker than the other Jane Jeffry Mystery books. But still well worth your time, she is still one of my favorite author.