Here's a customer service success and sometimes hilarious failure story book, packed with practical, real world ideas that really work that you'll really enjoy reading. Gross says great selling is a by-product of great service. He shares his hard-serve, soft-sell secrets and shows you how to make serving customers more fun and less frustrating once you decide to raise your customer service bar to Positively Outrageous Service.

This is the first book I read which has helped take the stress right out of sales. If anyone is in retail knows how stressfull it may be at times. I highly recommend everyone in retail business today to read this book and enjoy your every day to day sales.

book contains lots of ideas and great examples . . . very inspirational . . . makes success simple . . . all we have to do is apply some of gross' POS thinking!!!

The Brilliant Pat Hobby Stories are just as the title says, brillliant. I have never red a collection of stories as this. The wit of Mr. Fitzgerald is astonishing as he captures ones attention and then ends the story with a dramatic twist that will leave one rolling on the floor.

I have read nothing like these stories and I know that I will never read anything like them again. When my brother convinced me to read these stories I was, at first, a little skeptical about F. Scott Fitzgerald. I had heard my brother rant and rave about him before but now I understand why he was ranting and raving about him so.

I have thoroughly enjoyed reading this collection of Pat Hobby Short stories. I am now excited to pick up the next F. Scott Fitzgerald Book that my brother will let me borrow.

Pat Hobby, once a successful Hollywood screenwriter, is nothing more than a pathetic has been. Broke, tired, and scrambling to find work, Pat takes on some unconventional methods to fill his pockets and put his name back on the big screen. But things don't turn out as smooth as Pat hopes. After all, as Pat himself repeatedly states, "I'm just a writer," and, "it's a dog's life." Pat's antics backfire and in almost every story he is left with nothing but humiliation.

The Pat Hobby stories were written between 1939 and 1940, when Fitzgerald himself was struggling to keep afloat in Hollywood. Fitzgerald paints the Hollywood scene as cold, calculating, and manipulative. A place where kissing up is more important than the quality of your talents, a place where the writer gets no respect, and a place that most likely today harbors the same attitude that Fitzgerald so deftly described in his final days.

In reading the Pat Hobby Stories, one can feel Fitzgerald's own sense of poor self-worth, despair, and hopelessness. Yet ironically, a twist of dark humor is thrown into the stories, evoking in the reader an ambiguous response of laughing at Pat Hobby while pitying him at the same time. This collection is not only entertaining and easy to read, but is one that will give you broader insight into the late great F. Scott Fitzgerald.

I got a chance to read this book before I read his work in school. It was referred to me by someone I know who said it was funny. I read it and liked it very much. I'm a student and I'm glad I got a chance to read this book before reading the Great Gatsby in school. The Great Gatsby is a good book too but they force it upon us and it's more like punishment than enjoyment. He's also got a great way of writing. It's easier to understand and not as tiresome as some older books like A Tale of Two Cities. In closing, I would like to say one thing, If you don't read this book then you're a stupid loser.

really good poetry should be felt and not just read...
_places_ left me with an undeniably bittersweet heartache.
it is first and foremost the voice of someone else living out the human experience...
i only wish i had found it sooner.

I haven't read this book, but Scott submitted one of his poems to my humble e-zine and I thought it was great that a Pulitzer nominated poet would still be so in touch with his roots -- which are the independent zines that don't make no money ;). I will definately have to buy his book later, since I am deeply influenced by the beat poets as well as Bukowski.

- jimmy.

Scott Holstad is a hard working young poet, whose first "real" book (read "perfect bound") has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in poetry. Which is not to say that Holstad is a newcomer to the American poetry scene--between 1991 and 1994 he published seven chapbooks, as well as poems in hundreds of magazines all over the world, and gave numerous performances of his work.

Places reinforces the main line of Holstad's work, including many poems which announce his influences--the beat poets (especially Ferlinghetti) and the grand, dirty old man of no-nonsense poetics, Charles Bukowski. In fact, Holstad devotes two poems to the memory of Bukowski, "Buk" and "The World Ran Dry." In the latter, the wry, detached voice of the poet juxtaposes the futility of his own academic ambitions with the authenticity of his reaction to the news of his hero's death. After a night spent trying to erase the pain of this fact with alcoholic excess, the poet is left lying in bed, "thinking of futile / grant application / attempts and the / beautiful mexican girl / dancing with swaying / pendulous breasts while / wedding sized bells / frolic in [his] increasingly / shrinking dehydrated head."

Holstad's poems are predominately voice driven--and that voice is often filled with the anger of moral outrage. Poems such as "let's give ourselves a round," "this is what we are" and "just for kicks" express the poet's disgust with his fellow American's penchant for mindless violence and excess. But sometimes Holstad's poems are just plain angry. In the poem "smoking" the poet, having recently quit after ten years on the weed, expresses a desire to "file [his] teeth / on your forehead."

Places also announces some new directions for Holstad's work--some poems that reveal a quieter, more contemplative aspect of his voice. In "You Are," the poet compares his lover to "the steam / of the teapot" in the morning, "the hiss of / water kissing the / shower curtain, / . . . the soft curve / of fresh clothing / falling onto tired limbs." Similarly, the poem "In Defense" speaks of the poet's fears as a gift which he exchanges for "cotton candy at / the circus, John Cage / exhibits at the museum, / lying in each other's / arms under the light of / the full moon . . ."

But this is not to say that Holstad has gone soft--not by any stretch of the imagination. These poems provide relief from a vision of the world which might otherwise prove too bleak for most readers, the world of "Stripper," which culminates with "another / hot hand job in the old / man's perspiring Caddie." Ultimately, for Holstad, as for Bukowski, "The poem is the / crutch, the gun, the / good drink. Need I say more?

G.P. Lainsbury, Vox, University of Calgary

I started reading this book 2wks before the Chicago Marathon. The relaxation techniques and the different exercises for distraction during the race really worked. I have read dozens of books on training the body. This was the first I have read on training the mind. I plan to use these techniques with the children I coach. It really explains in basic and interesting format how important mental preparation is for competition. I highly recomend this book for anyone competing on any level.

Many people start to run because they want to get in a better shape. This book teaches your mind to get in a better shape too. You learn to focus in a new way and you are able to concentrate much better. Your mind learns not to wander so much and stay within the race. I have used the exercises in the book for my preparation of the Boston Marathon which I finished, despite running with an injury, with a new personal best by more than two minutes. I recalled the learned exercises during my preparation in the race and was even able to float up heartbreak hill without considerably more effort. I wonder how I would have raced hadn't I been hindered by a nagging hamstring injury.

There are literally hundreds (if not thousands) of books on the market about how to train smarter, better, harder, or what have you. Some of them are quite good, and some of them quite bad. However, these books often neglect one of the key aspects of running and that is its mental component. And that's where Running Within: A Guide to Mastering the Body-Mind-Spirit Connection to the Ultimate Training and Racing comes in.

This book is designed for all runners from the novice runner to the elite athlete, and I think everyone who reads it will benefit tremendously. The book is designed to enable the reader to take his or her running to the next level, not only by giving concrete tips to mentally help one race faster, but also by helping one enjoy his or her running more, by exploring running's spiritual side and understanding the reasons we do run. As the authors state in the introduction, "Running Within uniquely presents the reciprocal relationship among the physiological, mental, and spiritual aspects of running performance, and how you can use specific mental exercises and attitudinal shifts in your daily training and racing to great advantage".

Spiritual Running Although many of us run for physical reasons (i.e. to say fit, to lose wait, to get faster, to win races), those of us who truly enjoy running recognize what it does for us mentally. Not only the ability to clear our minds at the end of a tough day, but the ability to explore and learn about ourselves, as we transform preconceived notions about ourselves.

One intent of the book is to connect runners with the spiritual side of running. It wants to help them explore fully the reasons they run. The book explains that often the concrete goals we have in running (i.e. I want to run a certain time in a certain race, be All-State, finish a marathon) are not what give us joy from running. Rather, it's the steps we take along the way to reach these goals that make running so enjoyable. By better understanding our motivations for running, we can not only get more enjoyment out of running, but can learn how to run faster.

Running faster. And the book definitely can helps us run faster. Those who like to say that running is 99% physical are missing the point. Sure we can not run beyond our bodies' limits, or use mental tricks to make up for not training. But often the limits we set upon ourselves are self-imposed limits. One of the greatest things about running is the self discovery and self-confidence that comes from getting our body to do what once seemed impossible.

Running Within has excellent advice on goal setting and the type of goals we should set. It helps us set goals that push beyond our self-imposed barriers, but at the same time makes sure these goals do not end up discouraging us because they are too unreasonable.

But as all runners know, goal setting is not enough because the toughest part of running is the battle of mind versus body during a race or tough workout. No matter what kind of shape we are in physically, there comes a point in a race when our bodies start to feel that they've had enough. As the race or workout progresses, the urges to back off a bit, slow down, or quit altogether grow. If one is able to recognize these urges and overcome them one can come closer to reaching his or her physical potential.

To overcome these urges to quit, Running Within helps its readers come up with the self-confidence necessary to achieve their goals and not give in to the urges to quit. It provides a mental framework on how to approach races and workouts and has many practical strategies for dealing with fatigue, racing, race strategies, and the like.

But all of these things combined would still leave a lot of our potential untapped. For one of the keys to racing fast is a bit paradoxical, and that is to learn to relax. It seems impossible to do, to relax while the body is using all of its resources to struggle. But Running Within teaches us ways to relax while straining, and shows us the tremendous physiological benefits that come from relaxing.

Summary I recommend this book whole heartedly. Most sports psychology books are full of many tips and tricks to help us perform better, but there is often little foundation to tie the things together. Ultimately, these books fail because they are not much more than a list of things to try. This book is different for while it does list many tips that are useful, it only does so after providing a larger framework to tie them together. The overall theme is the "body-mind-spirit" connection of running. With this framework, the book helps us explore the reasons why we run and what we get from our running. Once we have a better understanding of these things or are at least are aware of them, the books builds upon them and very effectively makes us get more from our running (and become better racers if that's our goal).

On a personal note, I credit this book with as being instrumental to my improvement as a runner (my 10k time went from 29:49 to 28:27 in one year). I am intrigued by the mental side of running and knew there was a lot more I could learn. However, at the same time, I've always been very skeptical of a lot of the "pop-psychology" and sports psychology books on the market. This book pleasantly surprised me and should be on the book shelves of all runners.

I am such a huge fan of this gifted writer! Beverly Scott is such a wonderful, sweet, and kind person, and a fabulous writer to boot! If you have not had a chance to read any of her great books then "RUTH FEVER" is a perfect book to start with. If you enjoy page-turning excitment with the perfect touch of romance then you are going to love this story. The characters are entertaining, and the dialogue lively, and the plot a real crowd pleaser! After you read this great book you might want to read her first novel, "Righteous Revenge." (I highly recommend both novels!) Take a bow my friend you've earned it to be sure!!!

Beverly J Scott gave us another winner with her book, "Ruth Fever." I really liked this story about the classic car hobby it was an accurate narrative about a glorious summer event I have experienced often. Congratulations Ms. Scott on another fine book.

A caring teacher, a troubled student, and a confused father are drawn together in a series of interesting events centering around the sale of a classic Edsel car. The story could be one that occurs in our neighborhood for the characters are so alive and real we identify with them immediately. At unexpected times, we are charmed by the clarity and flow of the lyrical narrative of the novel. Ruth Fever is a heartwarming story sure to hold attention to the last satisfying page!

Beverly J. Scott, is a wonderful new talent! Her books are sure winners with an appeal to a wide readership.

Evelyn Horan - author
Jeannie, A Texas Frontier Girl, Books One-Three

I'll be honest. The book compelled me for the most part. I couldn't put it down for the most part. I truly felt pain for poor Adam, and can't imagine going through anything like this story and still bouncing back. The only complaint I have is the book is too drawn out towards the end. Pehaps it was written to soon, perhaps the author felt the need to repeat himself 3 or 4 times. Still, once you get past this, the book is a good read and an amazing story. I would recommend it to anyone that wants to be inspired.

After finding out that Adam Taliaferro couldnt walk again ever. His father and mother urged him to push on. His spirits were high always no matter what. This is a triumphant story about courage and self-determination and a little help from some up above

This book is good for anyone whether you are a football fan or not. I personally am a football fan, and I would especially recommend this book for those football fans out there. This book is inspirational and well documented. It is also at a good price now, and it is a quick read.

This collection of beautifully-crafted essays should be required reading in all Appalachian Studies classes. When readers tell me that they enjoy the natural history references in my Ballad novels, I urge them to read Scott Weidensaul. This wonderful book traces the natural history of the Appalachian Mountains all the way from Alabama to New Brunswick, Canada. In clear and lyrical prose, Weidensaul describes the formation of the mountain chain, touching on plate tectonics and the configuration of the prehistoric continents. Several chapters describe the plants and animals past and present which make for the unique ecosystem that is Appalachia: the use of the mountains as a migration path for birds and monarch butterflies; the 20th century chestnut blight which destroyed a species of tree, and the extermination of the passenger pigeon. With a keen understanding of nature and an obvious love of the land, Scott Weidensaul writes a guide to the mountains that is both informative and enchanting.

Scott Weidensaul has produced with "Mountains of the Heart" one of the finest examples of popular natural history writing I have ever seen. Thorough and authoritative, yet an easy read and quite engaging, he tackles an immensense subject with enthusiasm and obvious experience. Discussing the geology, ecology, fauna, flora, and conservation of the entire Appalachian mountain chain from central Alabama to Belle Isle, Newfoundland, you will never find a better book on the subject.

In reading the book I have learned so much about the natural history of this great eastern wilderness. Unlike many other natural history books which discuss faraway, exotic lands like Antarctica, Thailand, the Amazon jungle, or the Australian Outback, Weidensaul makes an area where I live in fascinating, bringing to my attention a variety of things I never even suspected, making this book a unique treasure. An area I took for granted, had lost my sense of wonder about now seems new and interesting to me. I am sure those reading this review would be similarly enlightened.

No you say? Do you know why leaves change color in fall, and how? Or why some trees turn one colors while others don't? Do you know what effect this leaf change has on the animal community in forests (ever hear of foliar fruit flagging?)? Did you know that many Appalachian tree species can survive winter temperatures as low as 80 degrees below zero, far colder than the mountains ever get today? Do you know what tannin is, and why trees produce it, and what effects this has on the forest community? Weidensaul makes what to me was a fairly mundane subject, perhaps suitable for a grade school science book, fascinating and weird. Trees are rightly one of the stars in this book, as Weidensaul recounts the sad tale of the American chestnut, the plight of the Fraser fir, the role of oaks in modern forests (and the potential problems their predominance could cause), and the magnifence of the white pine among many other plants.

However, animals receive a great deal of attention in this book as well, as by no means it is only about botany. Almost an entire chapter is devoted to the awe-inspiring annual hawk migrations down the length of the Appalachians. The many unique and highly local species of the mountains salamander fauna, one of the richest in the world, are recounted in great detail. Another unique fauna, the mussel fauna, again one of the world's richest, is also discussed, a subject not much to the lay naturalist. Weidensaul discusses some of the chain's fauna winners - such as black bears, successfully co-exisiting with people in crowded Pennsylvania, moose, which are rebounding in the northern Appalachians, and the raven, formerly a bird of deep wilderness but that one that is increasingly adapting to disturbed habitat - and its losers as well - such as brook trout, a species in decline in all but the most pristine streams, the red wolf, long gone from most of the range and yet to be successfully reintroduced, and the passenger pigeon, once a the most common land bird in the world, thriving on the vast crop of acorns in the Appalachians, now extinct.

A truly excellent book with nice illustrations in it, this will please any lover of natural history.

If someone assigned you the task of writing a history of the Appalachian Mountains, how would you organize it? Keep the information in its separate realms of geology, botany, zoology, and anthropology? Start in Alabama and work northward? Go state by state, province by province, and look at the smaller specific mountain ranges? Well, Scott Weidensaul has taken none of those approaches, thank goodness. His is an education by general themes: basic geology (for it must start there), bird migrations, habitat specialization, forestry, mammalian zoology, archaeology, pollination, extinction, survival. Each chapter has a pure focus; and yet all of the chapters somehow touch on all of these topics. Weidensaul's conversational style has the reader walking through the woods with him, chatting seemingly aimlessly, all the time seeing and learning about the life that abounds. Gems of detail sneak up on us while we read. If you travel 1000 feet up, the habitat and ecosystems change as if you had traveled 100 miles north. Wow. And then there are the interspecies connections, some well-known and some new to us: squirrels and oaks, oaks and gypsy moths, migratory birds and fatty fruits, white pines and ship masts, bears and wetlands, fishers and porcupines, crossbills and spruces. The natural world makes sense after reading this book. Highly recommended for naturalists everywhere and mandatory reading for residents of the Appalachian states and provinces.

NIGHTWING: ROUGH JUSTICE kicks off the second collection of DC Comics' NIGHTWING series with a bang, a wild, hallucinatory ride through Nightwing's mind as the Scarecrow tries to use his fear toxins to unhinge the super hero. It continues with the same, high-energy, Hong Kong action flick style that makes this comic so great.

But that's not all! What really makes the Nightwing series tick, and ROUGH JUSTICE is as good at it as any of the Nightwing collections, is the characterization. The relationship Nightwing has with Batman, Barbara Gordon and the others in his life is the glue that keeps the series together.

There are so many wonderful story elements in this volume that the best recommendation I can give you is to buy it and find out for yourself! If you love super hero comics and wild, over-the-top action, illustrated by the best in the comics biz, you'll love NIGHTWING: ROUGH JUSTICE. It's a great sequel to the first book in the series, NIGHTWING: A KNIGHT IN BLUDHAVEN, and reads like a complete collection of short stories. Don't miss it!

After the extended storyline in "A Knight in Bludhaven", "Rough Justice" gives us more guest stars and expands the cast of characters as well as giving the reader a breather with some self-contained stories. Chuck Dixon's greatest strength is to tell one-two issue stories, so that new readers can jump in, as well as use these stories to expand on subplots and the ongoing trials and tribulations of Nightwing. I loved the additions to the supporting cast and the new car is pretty fun to watch in action. A worthy sequel to the "Knight of Bludhaven" but enjoyable for a new reader as well.

If you read my previous review of Nightwing: A Night in Bludhaven, you know how I stand. I've read every issue so far and haven't been disappointed yet. You won't be either. I say, buy any Nightwing trade paperback that comes out.

If you have children this book may save your family. This book may change the way you deal with your family doctor, your child's school, and who you allow into your home. No, I am not paranoid, but there are too many cases documented here of individual rights being trampled, due process ignored, and families destroyed by bureaucracies that are not concerned with what is just. You may also be left with a cynical view of our adversarial legal system -family services workers assert that 'a declaration of innocence is a sign of guilt'. Let's just bind their hands and throw them in the river -you know the rest.

Left unanswered is the secondary question of how family services organizations became dominated by so many wrong-headed people, and how our tax money came to fund them. Are they really so deluded that they think they are doing good, or is there a New World political agenda driving them? Why do prosecutors go along with them? Why do police departments make arrests based on little or no evidence? There are a few good people in these organizations but I am afraid they have been intimidated into silence. Fixing this problem will take politicians willing to fight the tide of it-takes-a-village political correctness. How did it ever get this bad?

After a horrendous child custody case where my wife and I were both accused of abusing my step-children, this book was a God send! We both learned so much that is helping us finally win this war. Brenda Scott's book should be read by every single parent in this country, especially by those who homeschool.

This author fills this book with stories of horror and corruption that will scare the living daylights out of ANY parent! If you've ever believed that our system is only looking out for the best interest of our children, then please think again, and read this book! Your pre-conceived notions WILL be blown right out of the water when you read these chilling true reports of the abuses, tortures and indignities our child protective agencies have imposed on some of the families in our country. As a parent who really does want what is best for my children....this is truly terrifying.

This book proves why a person needs to check out local bookstores when traveling - small presses often do not have the distribution network that good writers deserves. I live near Ft. Worth but found this book at the Pike Street Market in Seattle. I started reading it on the airplane going home and found it hard to put down. The paperback version is so attractively packaged that I did not realize when I purchased it that it was written and published locally in Seattle. Everything the other reviewers have said about the book is true. It is a very worthwhile and entertaining read. There is fuel for plenty of great arguments about "what it all means." Buy it!

Scott Davis' wonderful The Road from Damascus is a treat.
I have found it difficult to put a face on this area of the world, to actually get a sense of how citizens of the Middle East live, work and think. Davis gives the reader a ground-floor vantage. Introducing the reader to the Syrians, young and old, male and female, who sat next to him on rickety busses. Met with him at monastaries. And introduced him to their families, their art, their culture. The Syrian secret police are never very far from the author and rarely out of his thoughts. Which adds to tension that drives this journey through Syria and kept me turning pages.

Not a big fan of "travel" books, I found this one to be seasoned with the author's integrity, humor and affection for the Syrian people. Which made it most enjoyable.

Why would a Stanford graduate turned mountain climber/carpenter drop everything and, on a shoestring-budget, wander through the deserts of Syria? An attraction to adventure -- a quest. Davis takes the reader along as he visits the homes of Syrians,converses about spirituality, and visits sacred locations, all under the insidious scrutiny of the local police. Davis's narrative captures the ambiguities, fear, and exhilaration instilled by unfamiliar situations in remote places, while keeping a lighthearted perspective now that the trial is behind him.