Susan Keane Baker has so much knowledge in this important area of health care and she shares with us her many insights and suggestions in an interesting, easy-to-read manner. This is definitely a book for all health care professionals and executives to keep on a nearby shelf as a ready reference over the years. Susan covers so many topics that are essential for patient retention, such as anticipating patient needs and preferences and making sure that patient complaints are dealt with in a timely and caring manner. As a longtime consultant in patient communication myself, I can testify that my colleague Susan has done a superb job with this book. Its all there - which makes this 5 stars for sure. It's easy to see why this book is a top seller!

There is so much valuable, pragmatic and helpful information in this book! The woefully underestimated value of listening, the best way to handle a patient complaint, creating a "patient -friendly" environment. It's all here...presented in an engaging, well organized and insightful manner. Satisfying patients goes far beyond taking surveys. I recommend this book to all my clients!

I bought this book after Press Ganey recommended it in their October 1999 client advisory newsletter. It's full of practical ideas that anyone working in a health care setting can use. Excellent!

I owned 'Juicing for Life' long before buying this book. I liked that one, so I bought the smoothie book when it came out. As a believer in the power of juice consumption, I found this book to be an excellent reader also. This is more than another 'fun' smoothie book for those looking for entertainment. It's broken down by chapters into "Energizers", "Power Makers", "Calorie Burners", "Immunizers", etc., in its 11 chapters of recipes. Specific ingredients for specific goals. The explanations of ingredients needs are excellent, as they were in her juicing book.

One caveat: don't expect all the recipes in this book to be low-cal, as they aren't. Tahini and peanut butter are two common ingredients. That may or may not be important to the reader.

Another caveat: depending on where the reader lives, some of the ingredients may be difficult or impossible to buy in smaller areas. E.G. flaxseed and other uncommon oils, algae, and a number of vitamin powders.

For those who want health information as well as smoothie recipes this makes an excellent book for reading, and deciding applicability to one's own health goals.

The smoothies are delicious, nutritious, and easy to make. I love the way the book is organized by desired benefits (there are smoothies for stress reduction, weight loss, energy, athlete's needs, healthy skin, and more.) The authors, Daniella and Maureen ROCK!

I was so impressed with the recipes in this book! They taste wonderful, they're easy to make, and it's the perfect way to make a quick tasty snack that is healthy and good. I also appreciated the fact that you could adjust the recipes to fit your needs and tastes. Five Stars!

This book has been very useful as I go through chemo. Although I have had some nausea, with the help of this book, I have energy, and am able to keep exercising, and keep teaching even in the midst of chemo.

This is not a fluffy book. The first sections are the best guide in micro and macro-nutruients for the layperson that I have read. (I should explain that I have a teaching license for biology, physics, and chemistry.) The recommended diets made my doctors perk up and smile, and nod and strongly agree.

The one caveat is that the supplementation information has not been updated to include some of the most recent research - other than that this book is the first resource I recommend.

I purchased this book for my sister in January of 2000, two days after she was diagnosed with Stage 4 small-cell lung cancer. She began chemotherapy treatments the next week, and simultaneously begin eating exclusively through the plan in this book. Throughout the course of her treatments which have just ended this past month (May 2000) she never once got even the least bit nauseated and her energy level allowed her to remain active, missing only three days of work the entire course of treatment. Her blood levels remained consistently "at the high end of normal", she was never hospitalized nor required blood transfusions. She never lost her appetite,in fact, she eats what seems to be continually, and she lost approximately 20-lbs, which was due to better eating habits following the plan in this book. She ever once wavered from the plan in this book, everything was done to precision. Her last oncology visit, a week ago today, showed the cancer in two places had disappeared. The tumor in her lung had shrunk from 8 centimeters to 3. She begins radiation next week, which her oncologist says "we are going to shrink the remnants of the tumor into nothing but scar tissue". Her doctors and staff are amazed at the way she has accepted the chemo & how she has totally turned this around, which she attributes to her strong faith in God, strong family support and this book that provided the tool of nutrition. She has never looked more radiant and healthy in all her "50-something" years. What began as a very dismal prognosis, now has her doctors constantly quizzing her about how she has stayed in such marvelous condition. Full remission is on the horizon, and we owe alot of it to this book. It was a God-send, and I highly recommend it.

If you're lost and trying to learn about which foods a cancer patient needs to eat....This is the book for you. I had to figure out what I was going to feed someone with cancer who did not want to eat. I knew that whatever he was going to eat would be a part of his treatment plan. So each morsel should be the best one that I could choose. This book explains everything you'll need to know on the subject. It will give you insight as to what's going on from the prospective of the cancer patient as well. A wonderful reference...Thank you!

this book had one problem... to many animal shots. other than that this book really gave me a new out look on life. i've learned that some parts don't have to be hiden. my new found freedom has made me more popular than ever! im making new friends... i spend alot of time with my uncle i never knew! this is GREAT! i recomend this book to anyone who is struggling to find them selves... (my hockey coach recommended this book.. hi mr.Sroman)

This book is quite groundbreaking, and is excellent in the way it portrays our differences as not-so-different to children. Very thoughtful, well-written - a must have in any child's collection! ABC A Family Alphabet Book, and many more like it, are the focus of our website, www.[...].com, which caters to gay parents and their children.

We are a two mom family with a 5 year old son and a 16 month old daughter, and we have been waiting a LONG time for books that reflect our family constellation. I have been reading to my son since he was born, and "ABC A Family Alphabet Book" by Bobbie Combs is the first book to accurately, tastefully, creatively and humorously reflect the world of lesbian and gay families. Combs' books (see "123 A Family Counting Book" as well) are well written and beautifully illustrated and depict the every day lives of children who live in non-traditional families. What is wonderful about Combs' work is that the books are about learning to count and learning the alphabet foremost, and the illustrations of lesbian, gay, and multicultural families provide a natural backdrop for this learning. There is no heavy-handed political "message," only quality children's books that are a VERY welcome addition to our family library. I look forward to more works by Combs and by Two Lives Publishing, a company dedicated to producing children's books for alternative families.

Bruce Blitz Big Book of Cartooning is terrific! The methods used are simple, easy to follow and entertaining. His ideas and experience are a must for people in the cartooning business. I am using his book as a number one reference for my cartoons.
It is a must buy book if you want to succeed in cartooning.

Simple to understand, but heavy with content. Suited for tweens to teens who have a desire to learn cartooning.

Along with many of his other books Bruce Blitz makes it easy to understand the ideas behind cartooning. I plan on buying any of his other books I can find.

This is a delightful little book that contains many great recipes and descriptions of the Irish countryside. Also contains beautiful watercolors that would be fit to be framed if I was willing to cut the book apart (which I am not!). The recipes are from many of Irelands famous chefs and restaurants and include everything from soups, breads, main courses and desserts. Well I'm off to the kitchen to try some of them!!!

Ireland Memories is brilliant! I read the book at one sitting. Both the writing and the artwork are outstanding. The recipes all sound so good and we are going to use the Chicken with Goat Cheese at our next catering luncheon. Anyone who has been to Ireland or anticipates going should have this book in their library.

This is a great book for anyone who's been to Ireland. Beautiful water color sketches interspersed with some great recipes are bound to generate fond memories of great places in a beautiful country. Makes a great gift as well.

We have added a copy of this to our science museum library. If you had to pick just one book to figure things out with and you cuold take only one book to a mythical desert island.... this would have to be it for general medicine!

I wish I would have had this book when I was going to school. This book not only defines virtually every medical term but elaborates on essential areas. The beginning of the book is a color atlas of all body systems. eg. Skeletal,GI, Cranial Nerves, Muscles ect. It is then organized as a Dictionary from A-Z. There are clear pictures to help elaborate on definitions and explanations. An example is in the area of Intercranial Pressure. Not only is it defined, it is also explained in detail including ICP monitoring devices and pictures for easy understanding. I have been a nurse for a long time and found this book to be a wonderful reference.... in all areas of nursing.... Everyone on the unit wants to borrow this book and many have already purchased it themselves.

Having used many nursing dictionaries, this one is by far the best. It is very clear and amazingly comprehensive. At the front there is a short anatomy guide followed by a colour atlas. The bulk of the text is fantastic; good diagrams and flow charts throughout reinforce learning and an invaluble pronunciation guide for those of us that haven't studied Latin. To complete, a large Appendix section is included which provides a wealth of useful information for the reader. Although US and Canada focused, this book is a must for any nurse, doctor or allied health worker. At this price, buy it.

Keane's approach to screenwriting emphasizes building on the foundations of concept and character, not just plugging variables into a screenplay formula. The chapters are organized in order of importance _for the success of the script,_ always posing tough questions upfront that can save the writer days of rewrite. Every time I start a new project or get stuck on one aspect, I go back to this book relying on it to point out story weaknesses as well as bring up practical business considerations. This guide is the next best thing to a personalized analysis, making the most of your abilities. Keane's anecdotes, advice, and tips carry weight because he writes from inside the entertainment industry, selling scripts that get produced today. From inkling of an idea to finding an agent, Keane's book is the most thorough and definitive screenwriting guide I've ever read.

If you have an idea for a movie but no idea on how to get started writing a screenplay, this is the book for you. Chris takes you through the fundamental steps necessary to get your thoughts and images on paper with exercises that will have you actually filling up the blank pages before you. His no-nonsense approach will make you look at your idea from 360 degrees making sure you are paying attention to plot, character development, conflict and building a strong story that an agent can 'see'. He manages to take the mystery out of this process and give concrete help and solutions to help you actually get your screenplay written and, most importantly, read.

Keane's book is a essential for any screenwriter's bookshelf. Not only does it break down the A-Z essential elements of popular screenwriting, but it tackles the difficult subject of how to break into the business. You'd have to buy two or three books by most of the other popular screenwriting gurus to get the gamut of information that Keane packs into this medium size volume. His choice of films to reference as examples of different screenwriting techiniques is excellent and his humour keeps the fledgling writer from being discouraged. Keans writes in optimistic prose that makes you feel your goal is attainable. I read this book before starting my last screenplay and have since moved to Hollywood and had my work open quite a few doors. This is a coherant, reader-friendly how-to book that covers all the bases and is head and shoulders above the rest of its ilk.

With the liveliness of a stepdance and the simplicity of a Dingle Peninsula landscape, Keane introduces us to the harsh life of the close-knit community of Dirrabeg, a community facing extinction in the mid-1950's. Many of the young have left for England or America, where there are opportunities and chances for secure lives. Those remaining behind love their land and their independence but fear for the future as the bogs get thin, the yields are poor, and the children have little hope of success.

For Donal Hallapy, devoted father of a large family, times are very tough. But Donal is a bodhran player, an expert in the ancient drums of his Celtic forebears, a musician in great demand whenever the once-a-year wrendances take place, all-night singing and dancing hooleys which can be traced back to pagan times. This paganism, the secret nature of the celebrations, the drinking that takes place, and the fact that the church has no control over them has made them anathema to "the clan of the round collar," in the person of Canon Tett, an ultraconservative and downright sadistic priest determined to bring the free spirits of Dirrabeg to bay by ending the fun of the wrendances.

The prose is straightforward and earthy, the dialogue salty and realistic, and the interactions of the characters so natural that one can share the joys and sorrows, the humor and anger, and the frustrations and all-too-brief personal satisfactions. The natural world, which is exquisitely described, even in its harshness, takes on almost human dimensions, influencing the action directly, while providing a vivid canvas upon which the contest between church and village is played out. The humor is broad, almost slapstick, but tempered by an overarching feeling of melancholy and impending doom. Though some may find the clergy to be caricatures and the message a bit too didactic, Keane provides us a rare glimpse of the last days of a now-vanished world.

This is a poignant account of the activities of a vibrant rural Irish community in the lead up to the annual wrendance. The local manoevering, the after hours drinking, the religion, the sex, it's all there in the best tradition of JB Keane. What differs is the way we see the community gutted by emigration and all the rich lore and traditions lost as the inhabitants are transplanted to sterile urban environments in Britain. Sad, funny, exciting, witty, thoughtful and warm, Keane at his very best.

I happened to pick up one of Keane's essay collections while travelling in Ireland and they were laugh-out loud funny. The Bodhran Makers was even better - this book had everything. A great cast of characters, a fast moving story, love, humor, and the sense of sadness that comes when one finishes a really great book and wishes it could go on forever. I highly recommend this book -- it would be great to read anywhere but if you happen to be heading on vacation to Ireland, ORDER IT TODAY!

I will admit that I was not immediately enamored with this book. The luciferous introduction on Keane's predecessors in Paineite biography was engaging enough, but I found his systematic, nit-picky demolition of each work to be just plain egotistical. In Keane's eyes, each previous biography "failed" or "floundered" for various reasons, thereby opening a window for his own, earth-shattering tome on the subject. Granted, it has become common practice for authors to "justify" their reasons for writing "yet another biography on _______" in the preface of their books, but this sort of self-serving, hypercritical overview left me with a seriously bad taste in my mouth. I seriously worried that the 540 pages that followed would be tinctured with the same sort of pomposity - thankfully that was not the case.

The book is a solid biography, and I can very well see Paine enthusiasts flocking to this as one of the best biographies ever written about him. As this is the only biography of him I've read, I'll reserve my judgment on that question, but I will admit that it is an exceptional study of a peculiar man. What the general public knows of Paine is often just his authorship of Common Sense, but of course there was so much more. He penned not one but three of the best-selling books of the 18th century, and, arguably, he initiated modern political thought on the subject of democratic republicanism. Paine was born an Englishman but for most of his life considered himself a "citizen of the world," which prompted a major change in how we view national citizenship - no so much as a gift from the state, as was the 18th century perception, but rather a promise from it to preserve certain rights indigenous to its people. Yet despite his cosmopolitan leanings, Paine managed to ostracize himself from all three countries in which he declared citizenship - England, France and America - thanks to his revolutionary ideals and his fervent insistence on airing his views publicly regardless of their popularity. He would eventually face public execution in both England and France - the story of his brush with death in La Luxembourg prison during the French Reign of Terror is decidedly spine-tingling - but would survive both to end up back in America, ostracized by the generation that remembered him, and nearly forgotten by the generation that followed.

Keane doesn't devolve into hero-worship, despite several initially-worrisome hyperbolic descriptions of him as "the greatest American revolutionary." Instead, the author deals with each of Paine's failings in a forthright manner. Paine was certainly a man driven by ego, though certainly an ego unaffected by cares for money, power, or public approbation. To put it simply, he just knew he was right, and he would never back down from any of his arguments, regardless of their popularity. Even his most unpopular anti-Christian sentiments displayed in the Age of Reason could not be moved, despite the efforts of many to make him recant on his deathbed. As for Paine's legendary alcoholism, Keane suggests it was just that - a legend. According to Keane, Paine never drank to excess when in social situations. He only drank himself into stupors later on in life when the pain of gout and bedsores became unbearable. This may or may not have been the case - I lean towards may not - but in the end it is of comparatively little importance when calculating the worth of a man whose ideas have arguably shaped many of our own modern ideas on government and civil rights.

All told, the biography earns four stars from me on a scale of five. The rating falls short of the final star more because of style than substance. Keane's prose is certainly readable, and in most cases enjoyable, but it was a bit dry and academic for my tastes in several places. On top of that there was some strange editorial snafus, including several instances of sloppy repetition and an imprecise policy of when and when not to translate from the original French. In one chapter Keane includes an entire paragraph of French extracted from a letter (p. 405), with no accompanying translation, and yet in the next he feels it necessary to include a parenthetical translation of the decidedly uncomplicated Dissertations sur les Premiers Principes de Gouvernement as, surprisingly, or not, "Dissertations on the First Principles of Government" (p. 423).

Regardless of my editorial trifles, the book is strong and well recommended to anyone interested in picking up a book on the life and works of Tom Paine. You'll find his life, in many respects, reads like an adventure novel, and his ideas on government and society are surprisingly, shockingly, modern.

As I read this book, I couldn't help but think, where is the Tom Paine of our time? The insights that Tom Paine had are needed today more than ever.

Crackerjack biography of Old Tom (Paine) in the four stages of his life, from his early years in England til Ben Franklin advises him to reach America, the period of _Common Sense_ and the American Revolt, then the _Rights of Man_ and the French Revolution, and finally his return to America, where the reputation of the _Age of Reason_ caught up with him, and his great early popularity was replaced with the jibes of those in a suddenly religious republic, whose liberties were won by more secular sorts (cf. Gordon Wood's book on the Revolution, such as Paine. It is a sad ending to a magnificent tale for a true champion of freedom, one who brought the democratic idea to a republican experiment in constitutions. The phenomenal nature of the sales of his books, whose profits he renounced in the name of his cause, is an episode almost world-historical in its seminal influence. Paine's trek is also a classic snapshot of the 'classic' liberal in his revolutionary phase, and the subtleties of great tomes politcal philosophy seem prefigured in the sheer horse-sense of this man who saw the gist of it all, and somehow at a glance. Witness his instinctive in the spectral course of the French Revolution from the Girondins to the Terror to the dungeons, which he survived. It may finally be that his reputation has recovered at last its nineteenth century shadows where the truest of patriots was consigned.