Skip has given us a very nice little guide to types of foam and their uses as tying material. The book is limited to pure-foam or foam and rubber flies. The intention of the author is to provide a starting point for tyers. I wish that the book included a few tips for adding foam to standard patterns. I use foam under all of my hopper patterns -- they always stay afloat.

I hadn't really taken foam flies seriously until I saw what could be done with a Chernobyl Ant on the Green River. After that experience, I grabbed a copy of Skip's book and headed for my local craft store for a load of foam. Skip can explain tying as well as anyone out there and his patterns are effective. He makes it very clear and easy to tie the patterns in this book, and his descriptions of the various types of foams cleared a clouded subject for me. Buy the companion video for even more clarity.

This very vivid presentation of ancient live of venetians all through Levant gives you a picture of live, not just historical facts of those distant times. It also presents you a present day situation on this islands. It's very easy reading and book's only defectiveness is hers shortness.

This is an excellent little book for anyone interested in travelling and the history of the Venetian Empire. Jan Morris mixes vivid descriptions of present-day places with lively accounts of the lives and ambitions of the Venetian emperialists and their various subjects. She writes with sparkling wit and a cracking pace. History in her hands is so far from dull. The Venetians spring to life in all their glorious and colourful verve and cunning. She ranges across the centuries with sensitivity, humour and insight. There is no better introduction to the subject.

Gilbert Morris is a splendid author, and this book was another one of his fine works. He came up with the most delightful metaphor, and I cannot wait for an opportunity to use it. One of the characters said: "I'm as nervous as a long-tailed cat in a roomful of rocking chairs." I thought that was so cute!

Gilbert Morris is a remarkable author. He is talented and detailed oriented. I own all of the Appomatox Saga. Each one I devoured and was hard put to lay down. Being a Civil War Reenactor, I found his details quite accurate and thoughtful. I enjoyed this book very much and would recommend the whole series if you enjoy historical fiction, especially from the Civil War era.

This book was the first to reveal some experimental work in the field of "Enhancing Human Performance" carried out by the US military & intelligence community. A significant core of the book, for me, was the previously classified material on "The Jedi Project", which utilised NLP and similar advanced learning technologies to train soldiers in pistol shooting, with dramatic results. Other chapters deal with topics which have since become more widely, and controversially known , such as Remote Viewing. All in all The Warrior's Edge displays a fascinating junction of military practicality and new age beliefs.

The book while explaining cutting edge reserarch in the military, really is an excellent book about developing the skills and technqiues on how to expertly master new skills, influence others skillfully and ethically, goal-setting, and many other topics. Very unique information, using a lot of neuro-linguistic programming. Really enjoyed the chapter on reality mapping, in helping me to understand that other people interpret the world according to their own assumptions and values. Great book. Highly recommend, because it's not about killing, but living your life and achieving your full potential.

I read the book from start to end as soon as I got it in the mail and then again a couple of days later. It was so informative and has some excellent examples of what the author is describing verbally. The exercises are easy to follow and you learn so much from doing the exercises. I am enjoying the book very much and am looking for more from this author. Easy to read and understand but each time that I read it, I discovered more tidbits of knowledge. I probably would not recommend this book to advanced watercolorists but it was just PERFECT for my needs since I only just started the conversion from oil to watercolor.

As a new watercolorist, I have a very serious problem about seeing light and shadow. No matter how my instructor tried to point them out. I hardly see and paint. After reading this book, my eyes are just opened and bring me to a new way of seeing light and shadow. I now understand what to look for and how to improve my rather 'flat' painting.

The explanation, samples, and instruction in this book are very useful, easy to follow, and practical. I would definitely, highly recommend this book to whom has problem of seeing or understanding nature of LIGHT.

I am very much the history buff and interested in the minutaie in the study of history. I still had to read this thoroughly researched work in stages due to the large amount of information, especially statistics, presented in such a small amount of space. Going to the original rolls from Edward's accounts, and others, Morris pieces together army size, type, function, and heirarchy of the army, barons, and king. It is a fascinating work, but expect to spend the time digesting it. Not for the beginner on the topic.

This is a brilliant example of good scholarship. The book is impeccably researched. Of course there are conclusions that are open to debate, but it is difficult to find an area where you could fault the writer's logic. This is the standard work on a very complex subject, and will likely remain so. If only every historian was so objective and paid so much attention to detail, think of how much we would discover. Maybe I'm being too naive.

While I highly reccomend this book, please note that it is a reprint of Titania Hardie's "Hocus Pocus" which I already own and love. For anyone who does not already own "Hocus Pocus," "White Magic" would be a great book to get. It is purely a spell book and doesn't get all preachy like so many books on Wicca and witchcraft do. As someone who has studied Wicca for five years now I sometimes find it difficult to find new books that are more than the basic 'this is what Wicca is' stuff which I already own a number of books about. Titania Hardie's books always please me and I continue to refer to them time and time again. This books contains many beautiful and, for the most part, easy to do spells along with beautiful and inspiring pictures.

This book is wonderful! Full of usefull spells, and colorful pictures! It's a must!

Fiona MacCarthy's background is in design, which brings a lovely perspective to her biography of Morris. MacCarthy also writes well, which is a plus in a book this size. She writes with affection for her subject, but without any of the bizarre idolatry with which some people approach Morris. He was a crashing bore as a poet, a mere amateur painter, a gifted fabric designer (but there are many gifted fabric designers), and a Socialist who knew only marginally more about what people actually do for a living than did Ruskin. Nevertheless, Morris was a volcano of artistic activity and heart-felt social ideas, and therein lay his genius. MacCarthy does an excellent job bringing Morris's genius to life in this first rate biography.

Most books about William Morris are like rainbows, filled with colorful images. Simply because he made so many wonderful and colorful embroideries, tapestries and patterns, and because color itself is something people like, and therefore buy.

This book doesn't have many colors inside, but it contains many black and white photographs, that are of great interest for those who like to read about William Morris and his time. And the combination of text and photographs create so many images in your mind, that you forget about color.

For the same people, this is the the final book about William Morris and his life. It's not the book to buy, if you want to know all about his printing of books in Kelmscott Press (there you have to go for Peterson's books), but it's the book about all the other stuff you want to know about Morris - and everything, you didn't know, you would want to know.

Having spent more than 5 years on this matter, Fiona MacCarthy has succeeded in making an extraordinary and therefore the final biography on William Morris.

More than 700 pages with more than 100 pages of source and reference notes.

It's a book to read and to read again and to use, when you're working with text about the period, the arts & crafts movement - or simply with Morris. Buy it, even if you don't have the money - wear the old jacket another year. You won't regret.

As long as it's out of print, you have to go to the library, where you should tell them to order some more books, so they print more.

There is not a book out there that is more frustrating than James Joyce's Ulysses...unless, of course, it is Joyce's Finnegan's Wake. The problem lies in the fact that this novel is such an amazing piece of art that the reader can feel like Joyce forgot all about him. It is almost impossible to read by oneself with it's seemingly garbled maze of words and phrases and madness. However, this is what makes it such a joy to read. Imagine that an author decided to do away with any and all rules concerning fiction and to write a book that was it's own entity, showing you what it wanted to show you, telling you what it wanted to tell you and acting like its own character. This is what Joyce has accomplished with Ulysses. I was fortunate enough to read this book in a class, four months of nothing but Ulysses, and I have to warn would be readers that I don't think I would have made it through without expert guidance. I would advise anyone wishing to tackle this literary giant to gather some book loving friends, and a guidebook or two for Ulysses, and to take it very slowly. Read a chapter a week and then meet up with you group to discuss and puzzle out what you have just read. I am willing to bet that your weekly conversations will be a greater work of art than any book out there, and I think that Joyce would have liked that, would have enjoyed sparking debates and conversation, its probably the main reason why anyone creates anything; for it to be enjoyed and shared. The story line is simple, you have two main characters, Stephen Dedalus, the brilliant but alienated loner. You have Leopold Bloom, a simple man who is as alienated as Stephen, but not for his mind, for his cultural background and meek manner. The entire book takes place over the course of one day in Dublin, and after the first three chapters the entire book simply follows Bloom around during a day when he knows that his wife is having a romantic meeting with her lover. It is hard to sum up such a giant book in a few sentences like this, but basically Bloom is trying to set his life back on track, trying to reconcile himself with his wife's betrayal, and trying to reach out to Stephen who he feels could use a loving family. Of course, you could read this book and not find any of what I am saying in there, but the beauty of Ulysses is that I would love to hear what it is that you found in this novel as much as I would love sharing what I found.

Ulysses is great fun. It takes a bit more work to read than most books, just as it takes a bit more work to play tennis than it does to play catch. You shouldn't feel compelled to put the work in, any more than you should feel compelled to learn an unusually difficult sport. But people who do put the work in and who have a good time doing it shouldn't be made to feel guilty about it either. It's a pleasure to follow the interweaving lines of the Sirens chapter, for instance, and anyone who does it will see that the chapter is alive in a way that almost nothing else is in literature. Joyce is a terrific comic writer and a terrific creator of vivid, complicated characters. But he requires the reader to put in some extra effort to enjoy how good he is, and I can't blame anyone who gives up after a few pages and refuses to go any further. On the other hand, I've noticed that people who don't like Joyce's approach seem to want to attack people who do. This is silly. Again, it's like hating people for playing basketball just because you prefer skateboarding. Both the Joyce lovers and the Joyce haters should lighten up a bit.

Why do people who don't like Ulysses always lambaste those who do? You have every right to like and dislike what you please, and so do I. Why the name calling? I wouldn't call myself an intellectual and I'm certainly no "literary luminary," but I love the book. For me, it's not about mythic parallels or stylistic experimentation or esoteric theories of art-it's about the richness, the absolute miracle, of human experience. Whatever else you can say about Joyce's intent, he wanted to show us life. And every time, for example, Bloom wonders whether black reflects or refracts light, I see life-the sort of life (banal, uncertain, driven by the demands of the flesh, often a joy, sometimes thankfully relieved by humor) that I live. Joyce (I think) succeeded in giving us a very simple but profound truth: every moment of life is sacred. Eternity, heaven and hell, God, the whole shebang, are right here around and within us all the time. And we spend 99% of our time distracting ourselves in one way or other.

Bring your sense of humor! (it's supposed to be a comedy), and a little patience. The more you read it, the more you get out of it.

The Jungle is a very well written book, particularly for an author who was only 28 years old when he wrote it. The story features an early twentieth century family who has just immigrated to Chicago from Lithuania, and their struggles to survive in America. This is not an inspirational story about the American Dream. Quite the contrary, it is a story about how the American Dream was a nightmare for many poor and uneducated immigrants. The Jungle chronicles the travails of Jurvis and his family, as they struggle to learn how to survive. It is depressing to read about the disasters which befell this family, and how their ignorance was taken advantage of on so many levels. One would hope that this no longer happens to immigrants, but of course, it does, just in different ways. Jurvis and his family work in the meat processing district of Chicago, and the book details the working conditions of the meatpacking plants. Those details led to investigation and greater regulation of the meatpacking industry, as well as modern child labor laws. In the last several chapters, we witness a transformation of Jurvis, as he learns his entire family has either died or is selling themselves into prostitution. Jurvis stumbles upon socialism, and quickly becomes a supporter of the movement to bring power to the working class people, and end the wage-slavery taking place in the meatpacking plants. Jurvis' transformation into a socialist is a classic pro-socialism story, and it was particularly interesting to read that part. This pre-communist account reminds us that socialism is really simply a political theory, which was never really properly introduced in supposedly socialist countries. I did find the last few chapters dealing with socialism to be hastily written, and not nearly as engaging as the first part of the book. The Jungle is a classic, and for so many reasons, it should be required reading in college, if not high school (but sadly, it is not).

Upton Sinclair's the Jungle is a distressing and touching story of the immigrant life in America during the early years of this century. Jurgis, Ona, and their families came to America from Lithuania to live a better life. After some time, reality set it. Their faith in America remained though. America was not what they had expected, especially once Ona and Jurgis were married. There was a constant pressure to work, but no matter where they turned they were poverty-stricken. Jurgis insisted Ona not work, but their financial situation demanded her to. This historically accurate book displays and reveals the horrific factory work and the workers suffering. Jurgis job descriptions were unbelievable. He was asked to stay after one day from work to butcher pregnant cows and cows that had gone down or ones that were sick and had boils all over them. Their meat was then mixed with all the uncontaminated meat. Jurgis then realized how the packers operated. They sold this spoiled, contaminated, or adulterated meat without thinking twice. The workers were exposed to horrible diseases, had to work harsh working condition, were not paid for days off. The employers did not care because if they quit or would not do the work, there were plenty of people who would do the work and needed a job. Throughout the novel, it seems no matter where the family turns they cannot get ahead. After Antanas, wife Ona, and his two sons die, and Jurgis is forced to give up the house, he enters crime with a friend he met in jail. Jurgis found out quickly just how corrupt Chicago and city government was.

I decided to finally read this classic after reading Schlosser's work this year, Fast Food Nation. He mentioned the terrible conditions of the meat-packing plants today and I wanted to get an idea of what they began with back in Sinclair's time. I found this book to move very quickly as the story of Jurgis Rudkus and his demise is extensively fascinating.

We begin with Jurgis and his family leaving Lithuania to come to the 'free' land of America for more opportunities. What they find is a situation where they pay their life savings for a home which they don't really own, a situation in which jobs are scarce and the available ones are very dangerous, and a plethora of new diseases and ailments which take away members of the family bit by bit.

I enjoy the intense irony of this story because they came for freedom and found they themselves locked in poverty because of the capitalist society. The usurping heads of the meat industry end up controlling much more than their wages and their work hours. ...