I bought this for our science homeschool since it had a children's award and we just got a telescope. I was disappointed that the first page covers the Big Bang theory - an explosion formed the sun and earth - as well as on page 25. Then on pages 46-47 it covers extraterrestrials. It says "most people believe we are not alone", and "most of us would like to believe that we are not alone in this vast universe". Although he states there is no scientific evidence of alien life, he goes on to fantasize about what aliens could be like, ending with the statement that they would be so far ahead of us technologically, that they may have seen us and since we look primitive they decided not to contact us! I'm going to return the book. Although the other information is well written and the pictures are helpful, I find his big bang and alien assumptions improper food for the minds of my young. I feel sorry for the author, for he would not feel so alone in the universe if he realized there is a God.

This is a good introduction, and the pictures are great. However, it's dated now. "Jupiter will be below Pegasus in 1987". The stargazing sections give a useful, though basic, guide to the night sky for each season, taking the reader logically from one constellation to another. References to the locations of the planets span 1987 to 1999. Don't look to this book if you want to know where to see the planets tonight. Despite that, the book was worth buying as a first introduction to astronomy.

This wonderful book is the one that got me hooked onto astronomy when I was just an 8-year old boy. Now as I am in college and studying astronomy, this book even though old (written c. 1986), has not lost its charm and magic to me. The best part of this book is the beautifully rendered paintings of the night skies and other sights around the universe, which will leave you breathless and in awe of the majestic canvas of the skies. I give it a 2 thumbs up and many stars!

I was extremely disappointed in this "kit". It contains one 5-minute tape with very superficial information (repeated on side 2) and 8 color cards. I would guess the kit costs about 2 bucks to manufacture. The quality was misrepresented and I feel ripped off.

This was a great kit to learn about Feng Shui. It was simple and direct and got me more interested in the whole Feng Shui philosophy. My husband travels to the Orient and he could not believe how this little kit condensed the ideas into a simple but very correct and simple tool. It was great and I refer back to the tape and use the cards all the time to enhance the different areas of our life. Keep up the good work and let me know if you decide to do anything more. I will be your first customer.

I have purchased one of the kits and I found it to be exactly what I wanted. It was a very short and easy to follow introduction to Feng Shui with both a short, descriptive tape and written instructions to follow. The cards were very clever and an easy way to put the proper symbols and characters around my home without having to buy expensive items or even make obvious and visible changes when I did not have the proper symbols or characters.

I always refer back to the tape and instruction sheet and have found that some amazing, positive things have happened to me and my family. I love the simplicity and recommend others all the time to this site and the kit. I could not believe the one person that did not like it. I wonder what they were looking for, it must have not been a $100/hour expert to show up at their house. This kit got me started and since the impact was almost immediately positive, I have looked into other books for more detailed information. And after all, that is what this little kit told me to do anyway. This was a great starter kit and I would have paid a lot more just to find out if this was something of interest. I hope they follow up with more because I will certainly be one of the first buyers!

The recipes are only 20 minutes worth of prep if you happen to have all of her odd and exotic ingredients on hand, particularly spices. I would have to wait for the mail order spices to arrive or visit a gourmet store a few hours away.
The recipes also include a lot of pizza and omelettes, things that are probably in every other vegetarian cookbook, or even Betty Crocker. I bought this along with the Italian Vegetarian cookbook two months ago. I use the Italian one regularly and haven't used Rose Elliot's book once.

I have not been this excited about a vegetarian book since "While the Pasta Cooks" (well, it's MOSTLY vegetarian) and "Vegetarian Sandwiches". Just reading it made me want to order a bunch of groceries and try a handful of these recipes! I'm always looking for fast and tasty new recipes and this is perfect. I don't think this book has very many "exotic" ingredients, but you could usually come up with a suitable substitute. Personally, I dislike lima or butter beans, so I always substitute soybeans for them - and there are a few recipes in there I would change. Or just skip those few "exotic" recipes. There are 200 to choose from!

I've tried several of the recipes in this book (so far Mixed Vegetable Curry is my favorite), and they are wonderful. This is a good book to have if you're just learning to cook. Exotic ingredients aside, the instructions are fairly simple, and the most complicated part of many recipes is chopping vegetables. Also, most of the recipes in here will satisfy a meat-eaters palate.

This biography of Bill Gates had a lot of interesting facts about his entire life. It explained how he got started and how his company evolved. It also told about his family and his college years at Harvard. Many of his friends and associates are mentioned too. The book gave a little bit too much information at times but for the most part it was well-written. The author made Gates' work easy to understand even for someone who doesn't know much about computers. I believe this book would be great for a younger crowd to read but not for someone over 14 or 15. It is just on too low of a reading level. Since the book was written in 1997, it is somewhat outdated also. Other than that I liked the book a lot.

I enjoyed this book, but would most likely not reccomend it to anyone over the age of ten or eleven. It was interesting but was published in 1997, therefore it is not 100% up to date.

[...] but the book was great. It had a lot of interesting info.

As a previous reviewer noted, thes is very much a business text book focusing on the cruise industry, probably aimed at people working in (or preparing for working in) travel agencies. There is some interesting general information in the early chapters, but then gets dry quickly.

This book provides a facinating behind the scenes look at the cruise industry, from the ship to the home office to the travel agent. I was expecially surprised on how broad based it was, although Carnival (Bob Dickinson is president of that company) does play a prominent role. For example, a section on advertising features old Carnival ads. However, the book does include quotes from presidents of all major cruise lines, and the book freely uses examples from other major cruise lines. That said, it is a great book if you want a behind the scenes look at the industry, or work in the travel industry.

I have to admit I was a bit concerned about an "impartial" book about the cruise industry written by the president of the world's largest participant. I was dead wrong. Bob Dickinson and Andy Vladimir have written a no-holds-barred, painfully honest account of the state of today's cruise industry. They don't mince words when it comes to the actual decline of cruisers! They finish up with a case study of an ideal cruise only agency that makes sense.

This work should be read by anyone interested in biography, but not for reasons the author might suspect. Here is a perfect example of biography as personal agenda. Here is biography as a skillfully written---but convoluted---interpretation of the life, letters and poems of Emily Dickinson.

Wolff should have written an editorial and clearly marked it as such.

However, one good service was provided. My friends and I would read a poem being discussed by Wolff, and then read her "forced" interpretation of it. We had many hearty laughs. But we also felt genuine pity for Wolff. Is this what she has to do to defend her agenda? Does she have no other means?

I do not worry about scholars reading this book. In fact they should read it. They will easily discover those parts that are useful---and there are many---and discard the rest. But what about young students? What of those who do not know Emily and pick this book as their first meeting with her?

Instead, may I suggest they read "The Capsule of the Mind" by Theodora Ward. It is also a psychological look at Emily Dickinson. Ward is the granddaughter of Doctor and Mrs. Josiah Gilbert Holland, two of Emily's closest friends. Ward was also an assistant to Thomas H. Johnson, Harvard University, the person most responsible for bringing us Emily's letters and poems. In fact, Ward herself was inspired to become a Dickinson scholar when she discovered sixty-five of Emily's letters in her family's attic.

Cynthia Wolff, please spare us your politically correct---but factually incorrect---views on Emily Dickinson.

Joe Psarto 27843 Detroit Road # 412 Westlake, Ohio 44145 (440-835-5179)>jpsarto@juno.com<

The greatest strength of this biography is found in its interpretations of ED's poems. Wolff is a careful and insightful reader, capable of teasing out many layers of meaning in even the most elliptical pieces. Her analyses sometimes left me breathless; there's a special pleasure in discovering new meanings in familiar poems.

As noted by another reviewer, Wolff does approach this biography with a kind of agenda. She is most interested in demonstrating how Dickinson rebelled (both in work and life) against the Trinitarian Christianity of her upbringing. Wolff really excels here, and her insight is delicious. Wolff also imbues her readings with a feminist tilt; she never descends into theoretical jargon, but her readings are often skewed by her concern with gender. I wasn't bothered by this, since her interpretations still proved fruitful and provocative. Wolff is weakest in describing ED's relationship with her mother; the psychological bent she brings to this rings a bit hollow for me, and she rides her insight about the infant poet's emotional deprivation through the entire work. Her speculation, in my opinion, isn't helpful or needed.

As a life story, this volume isn't quite so complete as it might've been. It's more a work of criticism than biographical scholarship (although Wolff brings much learning to bear in her critiques on ED's work). If you're interested in the specifics of Dickinson's life, I'd recommend starting with Sewall's monumental biography.

It's also worth noting that some critics have disagreed with Wolff's commentary on Dickinson's life, particular the poet's childhood (Wolff's take on it is rather bleak, a conclusion not necessarily supported by the historical records). I'm not a Dickinson scholar, so I can't answer to these arguments. I do love ED's poetry deeply, however, and found this book a compassionate and fascinating read.

Having read (more or less) every biography of Dickinson -- perhaps the greatest poet in English and one of the great literary sensibilities on record -- Cynthia Wolff's is the one which stands out as placing her in the appropriate context. Other biographies (for example, Sewell's) may contain a greater degree of sheer information, but none is so intelligently selective as this. Wolff's scholarship is something one can only marvel at. She attempts to, and succeeds brilliantly at, surrounding Dickinson by her literary and cultural milieu, the revivalist fervor sweeping New England at the time, her familial dynamics, the role of someone of her gender and class at that place and time. Rather than see just the face of Dickinson, a full portrait of her world emerges.

Wolff's readings are unconventional because, quite frankly, she's one of the few who's gone to the trouble of realizing that Dickinson had an ICONOGRAPHY, that certain terms appear with regularity of time and meaning. "Ample", "wrestle", "elect", "father", "bird", "bee" -- one can go on and on, if one really looks -- all derive meaning *cumulatively* from Dickinson's poetic work and voluminous, lapidarian correspondence. Many terms are consistently ironic, or mean their opposites; 'reading' the poems without realizing this will produce the kinds of interpretations produced with disappointing regularity by less careful critics. Wolff has drunk it all in, and synthesized it, in a monumental work of decipherment.

This probably shouldn't be the only Dickinson biography one reads. But it should be at the top of any such list.

Long needed, a well written and well organised field guide to the birds of the Philippines is finally available. The 72 color plates illustrate all the species of the islands. A nice color distribution map and a short summary of status and occurance, along with identification information is opposite each image.

Unfortunatly the book follows the current trend in bird guides of using more than one illustrator. The result, though well done in some other books, often results in a clash of styles, and worse, inconsistancy. This book is illustrated by twelve artists and suffers a little from the latter. The work here is uneven, some of the illustrators being better at capturing the look of the birds than others. The proportions, build, and "facial expression" are not correctly drawn for many species. Experienced birders will have fewer problems translating what they are seeing in their binoculars to what is on the color plate. But beginners and more casual observers may encounter some frustration. For example, the figure of the Citrine Flycatcher on plate 62 resembles the bird only in general color pattern. This species usually appears brighter, and you would not be far wrong if your impression on seeing it, is of an all yellow bird. Also, given the head size, the body should be shown slightly larger and more filled out. The folded wing is incorrectly drawn, as are those of every other bird on the plate. Though not unique to this guide, many of the species that have olive or yellow-green upperparts are shown too dull and gray. The White-eyes on plate 70 for instance are bright, trim little characters, that may remind North American birders of Wood Warblers, not the dull, misshapen things depicted.

My guess is that so many illustrators are being used to save time, and perhaps the money needed to pay a really good one to produce 70 or 80 plates. Whatever the reasons, the result here are some illustrations that betray a lack of knowledge of the form of birds that really shouldn't be in a modern field guide. Not with the high standards achieved in other works, which this book otherwise seems to meet.

Despite these problems, all of the plates are adequate for identifying the birds, indeed, many are quite well done, and the authors and artists have produced a work of lasting value. It certainly will be a useful book in the field or reference on the shelf.

This book is definitely the best field guide yet that came out of press. The plates are good and rendered better. Although, what is lacking is the description of the different races of each bird. Only the nominate race is described and I still have to refer to the book "Philippine Birds" by DuPont for the info lacking in this book. Still waiting for a better one.

Although I agree with Mike Ramos on the quality of the text of this book, I disagree with him concerning plate quality. Often multiple artists can lead to varying quality and lack of uniformity, however in this Philippine guide, which has 12 artists, the plates are surprisingly uniform in layout and generally of very high quality. This book has a winning combination of excellent plates accompanied by clear, concise distributional maps and useful, abbreviated texts all at the users fingertips when the book is opened to a particular plate. There are a few problems with the order and names of authors on the Amazon listing. Robert S. Kennedy is the first author, followed by Pedro C. Gonzales, Edward C. Dickenson Hector C. Miranda, Jr. (his name is incorrect in the Amazon book listing) and Timothy H. Fisher.

You'll never read a book the same way again after "The Birth-mark"--you'll wonder about all the spaces, dashes, deletions and marginalia that didn't make it from manuscript to print. For Howe that's where the wild voices hide, dangerous figures like Anne Hutchinson, Mary Rowlandson and Emily Dickinson who threatened "civilized" male control. Howe samples texts like a hip-hop DJ, switching between voices to prove her point that editing was a typically male response to the wilderness that women (and the New World) represented.

Howe's passion for her subject is obvious, especially in the interview at the end. But the essays sometimes felt to me at least more like a display of cleverness than an effort to understand the figures she writes about. Like Charles Olson's "Call Me Ishmael," Howe's model, "The Birth-mark" squats a little uneasily between scholarship and poetry. The poet's own voice and sense of style tend to muffle the more distant Puritan voices, male and female, she's out to recover. Maybe this is the danger of not editing one's voice as a historian. Still, I'm glad I read this book--yet another reminder of what doesn't get into history and why.

For those who have read Susan Howe's poetry and marvelled at, but did not fully understand it, this book is compelling in its explanatory power. The quotations in the preface alone are worth the price of admission, for it is here than one can see how impressive is her understanding of Emily Dickinson's writing. By exposing the manuscript story behind Dickinson's works, Susan Howe has made a lasting contribution to American literature. Her essay on Cotton Mather is a charmer, certain to drive readers to find a copy of his Magnalia. The essay Incloser is a stylistic dynamo. There is also an interview with the author that sheds new light on her works.

But what will make this book immortal is Susan Howe's essay These Flames and Generosities of the Heart: Emily Dickinson and the Illogic of Sumptuary Values. To anyone who has read Emily Dickinson's poems in a "standard" or "variorum" edition of any sort, this book is a must, because you will soon learn that you have not, in fact, been reading Dickinson's words, but instead an editor's (inaccurate) version of them (whether Johnson or Franklin). Susan Howe demonstrates with a clarity and perception unmatched by any editor how the only way to understand and fully appreciate Emily Dickinson is by reading her manuscripts, some of which are reproduced in this book. And the manuscripts only make one appreciate more intensely the achievement of Emily Dickinson. If you've read Susan Howe's My Emily Dickinson, you must buy this book, as it completes the true story. It is a staggering achievement that will long be remembered as a landmark event in the understanding of America's greatest poet. American academia owes Susan Howe a debt of incalculable magnitude for this essay alone.

(Note on the other review of this book: how anyone can give this book fewer than 5 stars is a mystery. Susan Howe is a marvelous storyteller with a breadth of interests that cannot fail to intrigue even the most casual reader.)

'Small House for the Next Century' is well designed and well written. Its photographs are excellent, and drawings well done, but I can't give this more than a 'so-so' rating.

It's probably just my own knuckleheaded thinking, but 'Small House for the Next Century' should have been called 'Small Vacation Homes for the Next Century'. Clearly the concepts applied here can be applied to other small houses, but the majority of the houses in this book are for wealthy people who can afford second or part-time homes. The designs (and costs) all play to this notion.

I would encourage anyone to look at this book, but if you're interested in small, low-impact, livable and economical homes, this is not the right book.

This is no high-gloss, high-fluff content, coffee table book. It is, however, a great resource for anyone who is interested in architecture that keeps aesthetics, budget considerations, efficiency, and the personalities of the inhabitants in mind. I bought Duo Dickinson's book because my fiancee and I want to build our own home eventuallly. Reading this book has been inspiring and informative--it contains detailed descriptions, floor plans, hundreds of black and white photos and architectural drawings, as well as, a middle section of beautiful full page color plates. The main focus is the concept of "fit"--building the house to fit the occupants' needs. Many of the homes shown were built by the architects for themselves and/or family members. I really liked this book because it gave me a concrete set of ideas that my fiancee and I can use to build our own perfect home.

No one should mistake this volume for a biography of one of jazz's most influential, enigmatic figures. It's a 200-page appreciation of Monk's music, but it's a mediocre one at best.

It's obvious the author has done a lot of listening to and dissecting of Monk's music, and he writes of it knowledgeably. But his over-the-top prose and Monk-can-do-no-wrong attitude becomes burdensome after the first 100 pages, and by the end of the book, I questioned whether the author had put any of the distance between him and his subject that would allow a thoughtful, valid critique of Monk's music and his place in jazz.

Adding to the flatness of the portrait of Monk is the fact that there is virtually no biographical information of note in the book. We learn nothing of his life, his bouts with mental illness, his drug use, his devotion to his family, his modest lifestyle or his wit and intelligence. The author alludes to these occurrences and qualities throughout the book, but never provides any detail. I came away frustrated and in search of a better book on this most interesting giant of jazz.

DeWilde is French, so the translation may have failed him, but the writing is rather scattershot and too dependent on "hipster" conversational asides. Biographical information is presented out of sequence and often without context. Where this book shines is in DeWilde's explications of Monk as a composer and technician. Those interested in a full-blown biography of Monk will probably have to wait until Peter Keepnews forthcoming book appears.

For an academic dissection look elsewhere but stop here for sheer enthusiasm and insight into Monk from an obvious admirer. I coulnd't put the book down and learned much from the numerous insights into the music business and cultural/social environment in which Monk lived. I recommend the book to anyone who wants to better understand appreciate Monk's music.