This is a great book, but it is just stretched way too long. It starts out great and keeps the reader glued to the pages. Then the book starts to end the same things happen over and over again and you just think when id this book going to end. Personaly i think this book could have ended about 50 pages befor it did. I think the book would have had a shot at the Newbery if it didn't go on as long as it di. That just goes to show that you cant hve a super-de-duper start but then your ending just really stinks your book wont be that good. You need to have a good ending and a good begining in order to have a good book.

Hey, what can I say? ``The Curious Adventures of Jimmy McGee'' is just about the best darned book for BedTime Stories, 2nd only to Pooh. It's fantastical & wonderous, w/plenty of character & originality. With catch-phrases & situational romps, Estes creates a wonderful world, easy for children of all ages to escape to. & I'm sure to catch heck for saying this, but in a time of the over-saturation of a certain `boy wizard', it is more than refreshing to have another little boy come along in ``6-60 time'' with his ``bombazine bag & stove-pipe hat'' & get us all caught-up w/``zoomy-zoomies''. =D Here's to you, Jimmy McGee! ``Hero.''

This book I think would mainly be helpful for your first visit to one of the parks. I've worked for this company for 4 years and read it one rainy day when attendance was low. The only poor quality of a book of this sort is if your buying it any other year than was published it will be somewhat out of date. Our park changes every year. Attractions names, prices and locations change with the season. So use it for a general guideline for not so much what to see but when to see it. Use the crowd avoidance tips and of course read the articles about the big coasters those never change.

The book itself is great but it only covers 12 parks. I think they should make an updated version to this fantastic book.

If love, as the cover claims, is the common thread in these nineteen stories, then love must be a strange fiction in the Irish sensibility. Most of the stories reek of disappointed, disaffected females: no harm in that either, now that I think of it. But hang on a minute. Why are some of the stories so badly written? Is there a suggestion that many of these pieces, because they were commissioned (as the introduction suggests), have suffered from being 'forced' out onto the page? That's how it strikes me. It was difficult to see any logical connection between the stories and the introduction of divorce in Ireland. A couple of the works really succeed, among them Ita Daly's genuinely-sustained, atmospheric 'Do the Decent Thing'. In this story, Rosa observes her stifling, oppressive family, and attempts to forge a sense of reconcilation within herself in relation to the father who has disappointed her. The thing about this story is that this family is a universally oppressed one, not peculiar to the Irish, nor proclaiming its Irishness as if this was a special 'condition' or 'disease'. Mary Morrissey's 'Clods' hits the mark with its splendid laying bare of death, a rural funeral, and the narrator's turmoil. Moreover, her dialogue and character-interaction is superb. And Mary O'Donnell's multi-layered story 'Passover' certainly taps into the global voice: Rosanna, freshly delivered from childbirth in Dublin, reflects on the experience both before and after. But this is no softly-contoured look at maternity. It is a work which drives hard in its use of language to lay bare the essential epiphany which has been the narrator's experience. The story is about pain and violence, not just in childbirth, but in war too, which the author deftly links to wars everywhere, including Vietnam. Connections are made constantly - some of them amusing - between America and Ireland, between pain and beauty, between birth and death. Otherwise, some of the stories are lighter and perhaps more predictable. The title could be re-thought if this book were to be reprinted. As it stands, it's corny, sort of softly-softly womany-sounding!

All of the stories in this book were easy to latch on to, some were more enjoyable than others and I wished they didn't end so fast. The Orphan, by Mary Dorcey, is without a doubt the most disturbing thing that I have ever read, and I wept while reading it. Is it possible that such evil could exist? Is it possible that this story is based on fact? This book made me definitely want to read more by these authors, most of whome were unfamiliar to me (with the exception of Maeve Binchy and Mary Gordon). However, I don't think their books are too available in the US. As I am planning a trip to Ireland this summer, I will surely look for them. I would definitely recommend this book.

This book twists the old midevil legend of the Pied Piper. It is very interesting. I even enjoyed it and I'm almost 12 years old. Though it is much better when you have the author of the book there to read it to you (he came to my school today). I think sinse I enjoyed it it wiil be even more enjoyable for younger children.

Author Jim Latimer not only has heard of the story of the Pied Piper of Hamelin, like most of us, he knows that the story can be traced back to Heinrich von Herford, a Dominican and a historian, who wrote the tale down around 1450. Herford told of a event that supposedly happened on June 16, 1284 of a mysterious flute player who appeared in the town of Hameln (apparently Robert Browning added the "i" 400 years later; you know how poets are, especially ENGLISH poets) and led away all the children of the town because he played such strong alluring music. Latimer knows that the rats were added to the story in the 16th century but what he does not know is much about the music of the 13th century that would have been so alluring to children. However, Latimer has discovered that the music found near Ennis in Ireland, in the region north of Limerick, near the Slieve Aughty Mountains, in the Lakelands of County Clare, especially as played in the villages of Tulla and Feakle, is music that may well have charmed children and rates. Consequently, Latimer puts together these pieces and comes up with the story of an Irish piper from County Clare who arrives in Hamelin just as the town is despairing of disposing of its rat population. However, rest assured, the ethnicity of the piper is not the last of Latimer's twists upon this popular tale.

"The Irish Piper" is NOT intended as a first exposure to the fabled story. To fully appreciate this one you have to know the tale, or at least think you know the tale. Jim Latimer's version gives the tale a new vitality aided and abetted by John O'Brien's stylish pictures. If you recognize O'Brien's distinctive style, it is probably because he has frequently contributed cartoons and covers to "The New York" magazine. As for Latimer, he usually writes books about Mooses, which is a reasonable topic when you live in Minnesota.

I used this book as a textbook for a graduate level class. The content on this book is a disappointment. When I asked my fellow classmate how he felt about the book, he said that it was a joke and I agree. Most of the content on this book are facile compilation of topics. I pity the grad student that has to use this book to make or break him or her. You can get much more knowledge about the subject of management information systems by subscribing to a magazine. There is a lapse in style when it comes to the layout of the book. The backround of the page where the case studies is written is distracting to the eye. The pictures of the book are really old. This book is certainly not for anyone that is teaching him or herself management information system. There is very little use for that purpose. If you have to use this book then dig into some bad writing.

O'Brien's "Management Information Systems" is a solid introduction to the world of MIS. It uses the world e-business as a model for the role of information systems in the modern world.

The great thing about this book is its currency. Each chapter abounds with numerous case study and spotlight features on how modern businesses in all industries use IS in their everyday functions. Among the business and industries profiled include: Walmart, Southwest Airlines, Dell, Pepsi, McDonald's, Oracle, GE, Hitachi, Merrill Lynch, eBay, Ford, etc. This case study method really brings the course concepts home and makes them relevant and accessible. O'Brien's writing style is very straight and to the point and is very accessible. He is able to relate the content and make it relevant to the modern world.

Here is the rundown of the topics covered in this text:

1.IS in Business

2.Competing with IT

3.The Inter-networked E-Business Enterprise

4.E-Business Systems

5.E-Commerce Systems

6.E-Business Decision Support

7.E-Business Strategies

8.E-Business Solutions

9.E-business Security and Ethics

10.Enterprise Management and Global Management

11.Computer Hardware

12.Computer Software

13.Data Management

14.Telecommunications and Networks

Overall, if you are interested in learning about e-business or information systems or if you are an instructor looking for a text for a course in IS or e-business, this book is a solid overview of the field and its issues.

This book was used as the text for a graduate level IS course I took in 2002 and it was easily one of the most interesting and relevant texts I've ever read.

Highly Recommended

The audiofile reviewer has got it wrong. Mary's MOTHER, Alice Lennox, was the young bride in India, not Mary.

If you grew up being read the secret garden, or read it yourself, then wondered, whatever happened to colin? mary? dickon? What became of them? One could go on and on. But after reading the sequal, I felt as if the ends had been tied. Wonderful novel.

"A Pagan Place" is one of the earlier novels by Edna O'Brien, written in 1970. Set in an unknown place in the Irish countryside, the story has no beginning, and no end, and it's quite difficult to establish what in fact constitutes the content of this novel. All dialogues are gone, for they are embedded in the narrative, so that you not always know who is saying what, with all those pronouns; for how else would you cponstruct a dialogue when you wanted to hide the attribution of what is being said and by whom? He said, she said, he noted, she noted, he said, she said, ad nauseam. If only it were clear how to attribute the reported speech, but it is not, unfortunately. Characters appear from nowhere, without any explanation as to who they are, and truth be told, it is not all clear at the end of this novel. All these effects were intended, and one might suppose that by doing this, the author wanted to force our concentration, to have our senses sharpened to the maximum. I have put quite much effort in reading this volume, which by the way took me four months to complete, and I did concentrate, but then the end result was miserable, I must say. "A Pagan Place" is clearly inspired by James Joyce and his stream of consciousness experimental fiction. Dialogues, thoughts, narration, descriptions are all fused together and words flow in meandering streams the directional gradient of which appears to be random. The invisible narrator refers to you personally, although the persona being spoken to is actually one of the characters. It's mightly confusing, but would be acceptable if it were the only literary experiment devoured in this book. As it is, all the aforementioned elements combined make the book hardly readable. The message, if there was any, was lost. Having arrived at the last page, I thought that if the book was half shorter, or half longer, it wouldn't make any difference whatsoever, and that is unforgivable. With a background of the story as rich as this one, O'Brien might have done much better. I guess she sacrificed everything on the altar of postmodern experimentation. All her books carry this stigma, but "A Pagan Place" features imbalance between traditional structure and experimentation. Therefore, reading this novel is a one-of-a-kind experience, a literary intellectual exercise, but not much more than that.

This book examines the female experience of being an artist, being Irish, and coming of age. Sound familiar? Edna O'Brien updates James Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. She is sensitive, connecting paganism, sexuality and death, quickly (within the first 15 pages of the book). The protagonist struggles with her Irish upbringing, which connects Christianity with purity and chastity. Unlike Stephen Dedalus, she cannot use religion as an ordering device which he can eventually and ultimately reject. Instead, this protagonist becomes immobalized by the struggle between the two and unable to transcend the very society that entraps her. Like Joyce, O'Brien uses stream of consciousness techinques, but without the utter sense of chaos and disillusionment. She is subtle and she allows other voices to speak in her novel. For example, "You tried to whistle. Only men should whistle (parent voice). The Blessed Virgin blushed when women whistled and likewise when women crossed their legs (voice from church). It intrigues you thinking of the Bledded Virgin having to blush so frequently (protagonist's voice). The bird that had the most lifelike whistle was the curlew (teacher's voice)." Edna O'Brien's voice is a multifarious voice which captures many of the voices that surround a child coming of age. This is a book about identity that will dazzle you with its writing and with its final outcomes. I not only read this book when I was studying in Ireland, but I now teach this book in an Irish Literature class in the United States. This is a must read.

I purchased "Tonight, by Sea" hoping for the same experience I got from reading "Taste of Salt", Temple's other novel about Haiti, but this one just didn't have the power to transport me to beloved Haiti as the other did. However, it's not a bad read and does tell quite honestly of the horror that caused the exodus from Haiti by "boat people" in the 90's and that still lingers today, albeit in a more "underground" form.

Tonight by Sea may have grammatical and orthographical errors such as "Belle Fleuve" for either "Beau Fleuve" (in French) or "Bèl Flèv" (in Creole) or stylistic inconsistencies and incongruities as in the speech pattern of the character Sadrak who is a teacher but sometimes speaks like an uneducated person. But Frances Temple's novel for young adults succeeds in capturing the atmosphere that lead hundreds of Haitian people to risk their lives in rickety boats to "Chache lavi," Seek Life in the U.S. As the story evolves, the reader is treated to an overview of Haitian History and culture and, at the same time, comes to realize that, put in the same situation, he or she might have done the same.

A story about the will to survive. A story that rehabilitates the image of the Haitian Boat People. Tonight by Sea is a story that needed to be told.

With the other material out there, by default this must be one of the better books. In any event, the basic content of the book is "all over the place" and has no cohesion for the reader to get a complete handle on. The reader must be presumed to have significant prior knowledge of programming and programming structure to get a grasp on the book's content and what the author is trying to communicate. Examples are incomplete. You might as well buy it if you are going to learn the subject.

By far the best Turbo Pascal book you can buy. It is a totally complete reference and how to book for advanced and beginning programmers. It also includes algorithms and techniques and is very easy to read and well written. With it I was able to optimize my techniques and code... fast! If you program in turbo pascal 7, you MUST buy this book.

This book was the required text for my business information systems class. I liked the fact that the chapters were done in an outline format. All of the important words were in bold in order to make them stand out. The vocabulary words were either defined well in the chapter or there was a definition in the glossary. The real world cases did not seem to help me in understanding the material discussed in the chapter. It seems that there is a picture or graphic on every page whether it goes with the material or not. I found that many of the pictures describe text several pages back. When discussing the graphics in class I found that the numbering system was hard for me to follow. Every chapter is divided into two parts. I am not sure of the purpose of this. There is a chapter summary at the end of each chapter. I found this helpful to read in order to review for an exam. There is also a list of key terms. I found these to be somewhat excessive. Some chapters have around 60 key terms. Sometimes there are paragraphs that use an actual company to explain something. I did not find this helpful. I found that many of the terms are defined different ways in different chapters. Some of the information seemed to be common sense. I did learn quite a bit about a computer network and different types of computers and software. For a textbook it is easy to follow but not exciting.

I use this book for a college course;Introduction to Information Systems. I think that the book is written in a clear and understandable style. Every chapter has a clear goal that it wants to acheive and then acheives it with in the chapter. The most helpful parts of the textbook was the summary, key terms and concepts at the end of every chapter as well as the Real world cases. For example the Real World Case on page 8 helped me to understand the information in the chapter. The illustrations and graphics are helpful to further understand the context. On page 331, the Transaction Processing System is laid out in a way that is easily understood by anyone. Unfortunatly I will not keep the textbook after my class is done because it was required for my major, not something that I would do on a regular basis with out the class. This book has not influenced my carrer choice although it has helped me to realize the technology that I will have to face in my profession.

There are many useful features in the Introduction to Information Systems book. To begin with, real world cases are provided to explain how the information systems are used. This gives the student a deeper insight on how to use the information given in the text. Next, the Contents page breaks down the chapters to making searching for a topic simple. Information is provided in the chapters in an organized fashion. Graphs and tables are used effectively, and key facts are set apart from plain text. Summaries at the end of the chapters highlight the main ideas from the main sections of the chapter. The key terms, review quiz, discussion questions, and application exercises allow the reader to use what they have learned. Selected references provide additional resources for research. A thorough glossary in the back is helpful. Also, three separate indexes for names, companies, and subjects are convenient. However, I thought that the book was difficult to read. Some of the terminology was not thoroughly explained. Also, I had a hard time organizing all the information in my head because numerous terms and examples were given but not in a clearly related manner. Some graphs were difficult to understand because such a large amount of information was given. This book has provided me with the background information that I need to understand the information systems that I may use in my job, but it has not, in any way, influenced my career choice. At the end of the semester, I do not plan to keep this book.