My son got this as a favor at a birthday party when he was one. He loves this book and wants us to read it to him over and over. Now, when we say "Elmo says touch your nose!" He will do it! The best one is when "Elmo says do a shimmy shake"! You have to see it. I just wish it was a board book instead of pages, since he has ripped out several pages and now I need a new copy.

This is a wonderful book for an extremely low price. I bought eight of them as birthday party favors. It is perfect for small children.

This book is wonderful for toddlers. It teaches them to follow instructions while having fun with their Sesame Street fans. My daughter is 16 months old and knows the book by heart. I would recommend every family have this book in their childs library.

After 6 years of college and 19 years as an engineer/project manager, I have read many books on leadership. Net: This is the best book on people & leadership I have ever read, and Hal Shook is a true American icon. I have worked with many leaders, some excellent and some right out of Dilbert. This book reminds me of the excellent leader, one who can create a win-win scenario for both employees AND customers. The leaders and companies who implement the Flying Spirit formula will have employees delighted to come to work. This is a MUST READ.

Flying Spirit is a very good book to add to one's portfolio of resources relating business performance to organizational dynamics. What leaders and managers often fail to recognize is the relationship between product and people. And that to achieve outstanding performance requires that business understand that goals and objectives are only achieved through people.

Another vital concept that Flying Spirit speaks to is the alignment of organizational and individual mission-values-players. In great organizations, there is an alignment of shared purpose. The real differentiation among companies is alignment, look at Southwest Airlines as a model for this.

Hal Shook takes these principles and shows how they worked for him in the military. Good story telling with a key component of execution, making it all happen.

This is a working book. For me highlighted, tabbed and underlined. Very readable. Flying Spirit is an excellent addition to ones "tool kit" for moving organizational leadership and management into the 21st century.

It takes a special outlook to draw lessons from life experience, and a rarer genius still to share the benefits of these lessons with other people. Hal Shook has done both by translating lessons learned in the air to those which can be applied on the ground. It shows you how to walk the talk of leadership where it matters most, in organizational life. Flying Spirit is a flight manual for the workplace, addressing critical issues from values and mission to alignment, problem solving, and team effort, demonstrating that organizations are made of, by, and for people. While the book claims to be a leader's guide to creating great organizations, the underlying message is empowerment of the individuals and teams that make up the organization.

A common complaint of job seekers and leaders alike is that you can't get a job without experience, and you can't get experience without a job. Experience is the said to be a poor teacher, because it gives the test before the lesson. Flying Spirit gives you both at the same time, through vivid anecdotes from the author's experience, concise questions to focus your thinking, useful reference charts, and interactive exercises that translate ideas into action.

After reading this book it will never be so easy to blame the boss or the system, because it shows how adversarial thinking works against everyone. The challenge will be how to apply it where you work, even if it means having to change the place that you work. Wherever you work, this book will show you how to get more out of your work than just a paycheck.

I first met Hal & Marilyn Shook over 20 years ago, attending their course in Career and Life Planning, which they still offer through their company, Life Management Services. The emphasis of the course at that time was individual job search and career development, and I remember thinking at the time that this course empowered individuals to use the same tools of creative strategic planning that organizations used. In Flying Spirit it is as if the tools of career and life planning have been boldly reapplied at the organizational level, so that everyone wins.

An organization imbued with Flying Spirit will have no problem attracting good people. I would like to see individuals encouraged to expect this kind of approach from the organizations they work for. Some things are worth driving a hard bargain for, and this book shows why.

Every person born is a highly probabilistic creature, having been randomly put together by a chance selection from twenty-three chromosomes from each parent. The combinatorial variation is remarkable even in extremely homogeneous populations, and even more so in multicultural populations where there are great disparities in the average abilities of different groups. Blacks excel in sports of speed leading to their total dominance in professional sports. Jews excel in verbal intelligence leading to their remarkable dominance in law, academics, politics, and the media. And other groups fall in between these group-based genetic differences. However, it is evident throughout this book that these issues will not be dealt with honestly and directly. They will be tip-toed around, especially intelligence.

This book ignores the more communitarian morality of Asian countries and/or western particularistic moral theories. They do take it up in Appendix II, "Methodology." There they state simply that a communitarian moral theory only exists as a condemnation of liberalism -- it does not attempt to put forth its own communitarian moral theory as rigorously as has been put forth by liberalism or a Rawlsian theory. Notice the irony here, that the same charge can be made against those (Gould, Lewontin, Rose, Kamin, et al.) who claim that there is no difference in the average intelligence of races or that genes do not matter. They also, like the communitarian moralists, have only attacked empiricists who have developed sociobiology and intelligence as genetically based. So now we have the kettle calling the stove black.

These authors are concerned that society will become more stratified with regards to genetic capital by various groups. That is, the well-to-do will be able to use genetic engineering to eliminate unwanted genes as well as enhance their children's potential by inserting new "improved" genes into their genetic code -- including altering the germ line genes that will be carried on to successive generations. Is this a fair criticism? Not really, because this is how evolution progresses and it has already occurred as I stated above. Groups, because of breeding are not the same. Again, using the example of Ashkenazi Jews or east Asians who dominate the economies of south Asian countries, multiculturalist societies are already made up of groups who are not equal. Ashkenazi Jews have and average IQ of 117 and live among populations with an average IQ of 100. Malaysians have an average IQ of 90 with a troublesome east Asian minority, that will not assimilate, and has an average IQ of about 106 that dominates the economy. Australians have a troublesome minority of aborigines with a low IQ. These and many other examples show that there is nothing new about some groups eugenically rising above other groups, in terms of intelligence at least. But now that we have new tools at our disposal, those of us who would like to acquire the high intelligence of Ashkenazi Jews for example are told that it is somehow unjust!

This book addresses all of the neccessary details of the social ramafications involved with our knowledge of the human genome. In this book, the heart wrenching accounts of America's eugenic movement are powerful enough to move anyone to become actively involved in the issues at hand. A real eye opener, one which makes it painstakingly clear that we are not prepared to deal with the information that we have aquired about ourselves and eachother.

I would like to suggest that this book is a landmark in the intellectual history of the human race on a par with Rousseau's Social Contract and Darwin's Origin of the Species. This book is a great achievement for the authors (a "dream team" of practicing bioethicists). I had just enough training in ethics (B.A. Michigan 1982) to understand the book and I enjoyed it immensely.

I wonder, however, whether this book would probably be inaccessible to many readers who should read it. I expect we will need a really thorough set of "Cliff Notes" (or "Genomic Ethics for Dummies"), since this book seems designed to be read by the modern ethical philosopher, moreso than the educated members of the public. Perhaps the reviewers on Amazon.com could provide such a service for the world. I was fortunate to have an advance peek at the book through a conference held in San Diego in January, so I have had some time to reflect on the book's implications.

This book made me intrigued about the prospect for some people using the genome to have better babies (see the book on Designer Babies by Dr. Gosden for the "how to" on in vitro fertilization). Under secular ethical principles, as outlined in this book, do parents have an ethical obligation to use genomic information to have a "healthier" child? If so, what are the ethical boundaries of that obligation? NPR had a report some time ago about some achondroplastic dwarf parents who wanted to choose a child with their genetic "defect" --- is that sometime ethically prohibited by the principles in this book? The parental choice issues raised by this book strike me as the issue ripe for controversy. These are the fundamental questions that this book raises for every member of the human race who plans to procreate (or already has procreated).

My kids will be entering the first generation where prospects for improving admission to the aristocracy (e.g. to an Ivy League school) arguably could begin at the moment of conception (if in vitro, aided by genomic data to screen embryoes). I find that interesting and a little bit alarming.

Chance to Choice also addresses myriad ethical issues (those relating to "distributive justice" in the mode of John Rawls' Theory of Justice) that will spin off from the genome project. They suggest that genetic discrimination (the "genetic ghetto") may arise if we are not careful about how this information is used.

For anyone planning to make a living from the genome, some understanding of this book is essential to their success in business (I am an attorney involved in biotech issues and I think that this book point to (but does not map out) the boundaries of what companies can do with the genome).

My EMail is tredick@chapinlaw.com if anyone interested in discussing this book's implications further. I think that people will be talking about this one until the talking, bipedal genetically enhanced, vegetarian activist cows come home sometime in the next hundred years (just kidding... ;).

I plan to buy some extra copies on Amazon.com to give away or mark up with highlighters (those parts I need to read many times to really understand). It really is a great and timely book.

Tom

This is a great ghost book. It tells true stories about ghosts at Carlisle Barracks, a military post in south central Pennsylvania. I reccomend this book for everyone. It's a quick read and I am sure you will love it. This book has many pictures by photographer Yolanda Robert.
If you believe in ghosts or not it is a good read. I loved the book.

"Excellent book". "May scare you". "I couldn't put it down". These are some of the statements my family and friends have said about this book. It starts with a brief history of Carlisle Barracks and then tells ghost stories heard on the post. I suggest everyone buy this book. This is a good book for all ages. Great for Jr. Teens and Teens, But appeals to all audiences.

This is a great book. There are very few books about ghosts on military installations this is one of them. Its a very good read. Written for the young and the young at heart. If your child is reading chapter books he/she will love this one.
The this short book has good pictures and great stories. I suggest you buy the book it is very interesting. Intense and may scare you.

Of course, y'all know how the chili cookoff got started?

Ol' H. had a passion for (what he called) chili, and being a United Presss Syndicate feature columnist he worked the topic into his articles whenever it became convenient.

A feller named Wick Fowler was also a chili fancier, and being a jounalist himself in Texas, decided that H. Allen "didn't know chili from beans". The gauntlet was flung, and the challenge made. They chose Terlingua TX as the site of the cookoff "because a disaster could happen there and no one would know it."

The rest is history, and any number of versions exists as to how it transpired.

I like Harry's the best.

A memoir of the famous cook-off, and its antecedents, between under-rated wry humorist H Allen Smith & nemesis Wick Fowler.
I believe the Terlinqua, Texas festival continues to this day.
Smith was a rare wit and a truly American humorist who does not deserve obscurity. If you see one of his books - buy it.

Reading this book, over 25 years ago, I began drinking milk with chili: according to the author this is the only suitable drink with chili, and he was exactly correct, in my opinion.

I had a hard time putting this book down to go to work! Quinn McGuire is such a strong, emotionally-challenged, knight in tarnished armor that he jumps right off the page. The twists and turns of the plot kept me guessing. I'm looking forward to the next story in Ms. Allen's Avengers series.

Harper Allen is full of surprises, as always. Another book I could not put down to go to sleep. The technical information is amazing, I wonder how that author can keep up. And the love scenes are always a bonus to spice up one's life and suggest to one's husband or mate. Definitely a Winner.

Harper Allen kicks off a new miniseries with another amazing read in "Guarding Jane Doe." Soldier-of-fortune Quinn McGuire lived each moment as if it were his last, until he received a letter from a woman who'd once saved his life and Jane Smith walked into his life. Bound by a promise he'd made years ago, he became Jane's protector. Someone was after her, leaving threatening notes and endangering her life--and Jane couldn't remember why. She knew nothing about her past

Allen's best book since "Twice Tempted," "Guarding Jane Doe" is an amazingly emotional and action-packed read that combines all the best elements of Intrigue. In spite of my trepidation to see yet another amnesia plot (the second one this month), this is an author known for thoroughly inventive plotlines, and I wasn't disappointed in this book, another original tale unlike any other.

This is the rare book that manages to combine a good mystery with strong sensuality and the kind of deeply romantic scenes that leave readers sighing. Although Jane initially seems like a disappointingly wimpy heroine, Allen soon reminds us that no one is who they first seem to be in one of her books. Identities are uncovered, secrets are revealed, and everything we think we know is turned on its head several times over. Although I had the misfortune to figure out the ending long before it came (more dumb luck than anything on the writer's part), it didn't ruin my enjoyment of the book, because Allen delivered enough action and intensity before the ending came to keep me wondering if I could be so sure what I thought I knew. Ultimately, I could, but getting there was still a blast.

As with all of her Intrigues, Allen shows a remarkable talent for creating memorable scenes, the kind that will stick with you long after the book is over. There are so many choice moments that make this book unforgettable, both emotional and suspenseful, including a climax that is both. There especially, the hero and heroine show what incredible people they are.

I think it's safe to say this is the best Intrigue I've read this year, and the way this year's been going, I don't expect it to be beat. Whether your first book by this author or your fifth, "Guarding Jane Doe" will keep readers anxiously awaiting the arrival of Book Two, "Sullivan's Last Stand," next month.

Want to read a mixture of politics, secrets, romance, and a search for one's true self, then this book is a "must read."

If ever the old adage, "don't judge a book by it's cover" were true... it's here. Don't let the cover mislead you - this is no sappy romance. Robin Allen knows her craft and knows it well. She takes all the elements of a good book and manipulates them into a masterful novel. Characters you love. Characters you hate. Subplots so well interwoven into the main storyline you will be thinking about them long after you finish this book. This book is a must for ANYONE'S reading list.

When I first began this novel, I concluded early on that in the end it would turn out to be just another romantic novel with the typical "break-up to make-up" story-line. Boy, was I WRONG! Robin Allen has weaved together an interesting cast of characters driven by love, anger, fear, and power. Wonderfully written, the plot thickens with every turn of the page. Move over Danielle Steele and John Grisham and make way for Robin Allen.

This book is an absolute must for the food enthusiast or the information junkie. More than just a food book, /In the Devil's Garden/ deals with how food /is/ culture- it argues that much of who we are and how we interact with one another has to do with what we do, and do not, eat. Allen is an excellent information gatherer, having delved into several hundred sources for his material; but more importantly, he is adept at the witty repackaging of that information, deftly filing everything under the aegises of the seven deadly sins. Allen's style is just conversational enough, neither dry nor condescending and very humorous-- perfect for the small-article format that comprises most of the sections of the book.
The content is almost overwhelmingly eclectic, drawing on scores (perhaps hundreds) of cultures. Allen reconciles many seemingly disparate facts and draws parallels between such subjects as the crunch volume of potato chips and the animal need to kill (!), all with consummate skill and grace. Be forewarned, the book is not necessarily a good lunchtime read; many of the sections deal with food-related illness or delicacies the Western palate finds unacceptable, and one or two of the little tidbits are downright nasty (vide the eating habits of St. Veronica). Buy this as a gift and you won't be able to part with it; get two.

This is a unique look at the history of food: both funny and shocking, it shows the unbleievable ways what we eat has influenced history. It also gives a number of recipes that are quite unique. Its the kind of book you can stop and start on, a group of pieces, maybe 50, divided into "chapters" based on the seven Deadly Sins of Lust, Greed, Envy, Sloth. Mr. Allen is a very, very good writer and has found some amazing stories here and has a knack for boiling down extremely complicated historical events into enjoyable stories. He also appears to have done ann enormous amount of research into the subject.

Not your usual food book, I'd highly recommend it. For me, it really made me think twice about the meaning of what I eat. If you know a foodie friend that needs a gift, this is it.

What I have found so interesting about this book is the way people's feeling about eating have been used in political and religous ways. I had no idea of the role eating has played in so many conflicts - even the division of Europe between East and West was caused by an argument over how to bake the communion wafer. AIDS came from violating a food taboo, and even Jesus Last supper was all about the rules of eating. It's an amazing book and very, very well written - you would think with all this information it would be dry but Alan is a very funny man. While I thought the idea of organizing it around the Seven Sins was a good one, its not always completely clear why a particualr food is in a particular sin.
Not that it matters that much - by the way, my favorite was the sin of sloth "a victimless crime if ever there was one" as Allen says -a man after my own heart!
I thought the "menus" were cute and the recipes (there are about 12) looked interesting but I haven't tried any.
THis is the best book on food in history I have ever read

I read this book because Hervey Allen is one of my all-time favorite authors. This book was immensely fascinating, not only due to Allen's writing style (very readable and down-to-earth), but also due to the subject of Poe. I greatly enjoyed this entire book, and would very highly recommend it to anyone interested in either Allen or Poe. The book is difficult to find...I got it from Ebay for a very reasonable price, with dust jacket.

Yes, it's true! Hervey Allen's "Israfel" is a must-read for any Poe-Lover. He paints a wonderful portrait of the tormented & brilliant Edgar. It's also a fantastic history of the era. Even if you've already read a dozen biographies on Poe, this is the one you won't want to miss! Trust me as a life-long and loyal fan of the Fabulous Edgar.

Much has been written about Edgar Allen Poe, but this classic biography offers a uniquely literary perspective on Poe. Written by the in the 1920s by Hervey Allen who later became well known for his epic novel, Anthony Adverse, Israfel was the first definitve biography of Poe and has been a foundational reference for all biographies written since. It has the added dimension of a biography written in the same general era that Poe lived thus, perhaps, telling us as much about that era as it does about Poe.