Eliza Osborne is a gifted writer as she describes the thoughts of Mattie, a young mother and wife. These thoughts do resonate with me to a certain extent, but I found many of these thoughts to be self-absorbed. I just can't imagine a daughter driving all over at the news of her mother's death. It was extremely sad to think that Mattie only realized that her mother did love her when it was too late to say anything. I loved the writing but didn't really like the main character.

I could really identify with some of the things in this book, and other things made me stop and evaluate myself in light of my mother's possible perspective on my actions and attitudes. I highly recommend this book! The meandering nature of the prose is a very interesting exploration of how a person thinks while driving alone on a highway for hours. :) I can't say that I'm a huge fan of social realism (a.k.a. constant criticism and complaints/observations on everything), but it's good to live an examined life, and Mattie certainly does. Definitely a thought-provoking journey that is worth taking!

I'm still reading this book and it is right on the money! Have you ever felt things that you could never quite put into words? Well, Ms. Osborne, has articulated beautifully some unspoken feelings for me. So much so, that I've actually written down some quotes and read passages to friends. As a librarian, I read all kinds of literature on a regular basis, but there are few that touch you in ways that will stay with you long after the last page is read. This is one that I will definitely recommend to friends and patrons. I've always felt that everyone has at least one really good story to tell and I think that Ms. Osborne outdid herself right off the bat. I found myself smiling and nodding in agreement throughout every chapter. For a writer, I don't think that it could get any better than that when you put your work out there for all to see.

This book is great. Jimmy Porter is a very complex character. By the end of the first act you will still be asking why his wife would want to be with him. Sensational!

You'll never meet a more unique character than Jimmy Porter, a 20-something British Archie Bunker. He's filled with rage at the absence of ... something ... and spews forth venom, sarcasm and utter misery relentlessly. Sounds horrible, right? Well, it's fascinating. I couldn't put it down, and I'd like to see the current revival of the play in NYC. I've seen a few people like Jimmy Porter, people who have so much potential, energy and creativity, yet for one reason or another it's all squandered. They fail to surround themselves with people of equal passion, and the result is that they hurt the ones around them, who are more at peace with themselves. The question is, how does someone so young get this way?

This play is one of the greatest of the 1900's. I've worked with the play for about three years (both as an actor and director) and I never get tired of it. Although Jimmy is a very difficult role, it is very rewarding to work with him and the other characters. It has actually changed my life! For the better!

This book does a wonderful job of presenting a wide variety of debates that have surrounded evolutionary theory from the time of Darwin to the present. Ruse makes his own positions known, but tries to present all sides fairly, and for the most part does it well. He is especially interesting in his dissection of the underlying philosophical concerns that have driven the discussion of evolution.

In spots the writing rambles somewhat and can become unclear. After going to great lengths to define what is meant by "evolution," Ruse makes no such effort to define his term, "secular religion," which recurs frequently throughout his discussions. In other places, the author veers off in a new direction before finishing his point. For example, while addressing Philip Johnson's criticism of the "methodological naturalism" of science, Ruse slides off into the question whether one can be a methodological naturalist and still believe in God. It's a fascinating and worthwhile discussion, but it leaves out what seems to me to be the more important question in response to Johnson: can one do science at all without assuming that physical events have predictable physical causes?

For serious students of the subject, this book will not be the last word. For general readers it opens up a window on the rich field of evolutionary science and the debates that have surrounded it. The suggested additional reading at the end of each chapter should help anyone who is interested in pursuing a topic further.

It helps to have some basic background in biology to understand this book, but no extensive knowledge is necessary.

Talk about darwinian wars sounds to me as old and outmoded as talk about World War II and even the cold war. Darwinian weapons of random mutations and natural selection or even stasis and punctuated equilibrium have led us not to a meaningless, pointless and purposeless universe, as darwinians enjoy saying (as if they had discovered the wheel) but to a meaningless, pointless and purposeless scientifc paradigm, unable to deal with the "complex specified information" in nature (William Dembski), the "irreducible complexity" of biological systems (Michael Behe) and the "computational structure" of the universe (Stephen Wolfram). What's more, darwinism never really got to refute biblical creationism (contrary to what the vast majority of uniformed people think) as it has been proposed and defended by Douhane Gish and John and Henry Morris or R. Humphreys. You may be surprised if I am saying this. But is is just plain fact. Darwinism never refuted creationism. It just assumed that creation never took place, which is something very different than a true and convincing refutation. All the darwinian arguments about evolution assume it existed, rather than demonstrate it existed. They are circular arguments that only convince the already convinced. This means that, as Donald Rumsfeld is reforming the Pentagon and getting it ready to fight new wars, so there should be a profound reform in the realm of scientific paradigms. I am convinced that the future "scientific wars" will be about information, intelligence and even creation. Intelligent design theorists and even biblical creationists seem to me more prepared in the long run to fight the new scientific wars ahead of us than darwinism. This outdated paradigm looks more and more like a kind of "cold war relic".

A well written and interesting bit of science fiction.

But I think we all know, as Prof. Wizzleteet's so eloquently illustrated, evolution is a compelling story but scientifically laughable.

Wizzleteetian proofs of creationism:

Great ape hygiene is a sham.
Great ape anatomy vs. Human anatomy is problematic in that they look different.
Great ape's have a natural aversion to proper clothing.
Great ape's cannot be taught capitalism/materialism with the exception of an appreciation for Happy Meals.

That said this is an enjoyable read just don't take it serious.

It is just okay.

Being a big fan of the film version of The Paper Chase I was kind of expecting a 1940's book that would flesh out the character of Ford and add some depth to the story but what arrived from Amazon was copyright 1978 and had references to mini skirts, getting high, and a quote about Vietnam War protests.

I enjoyed reading it but it was not nearly as good as the movie. It didn't much new plot developments; maybe 15% of the book consists of new things that are not in the film version of The Paper Chase. For example Hart and Ford are at a diner when a guy runs in, snatches a hamburger from the plate of the people next to them at the counter, runs outside and stands there banging on the window and giving them "the finger". Hart, curious, goes out to talk to the fellow and ends up in a fistfight. One benefit was you could be inside Hart's head and know what he was thinking. Susan is much colder to Hart in the book too.

The movie was a masterpiece. The book (at least the 1978 edition that arrived at my house) will only satisfy true fans of the film, desperate, perhaps, to wring a few more drops out of this great story in the manner that a fan of Star Wars might read "A Splinter In the Mind's Eye" (featuring Luke Skywalker as a character).

I know my hometown library lists, in their online catalog, a 1940 edition of the Paper Chase so surely there's an older version floating around. The one I got from Amazon, with it's references to the 1960's, seems like a modern rewrite of the novel, made expressly for fans of the movie.

It's a good book. "...law is rational, people are not." Without getting into the experience of the tradition, one would never know how much fun is to become part of it. One would only know "...how difficult is to extent the tradition." Enjoy!

The TV series based on this book was well done and I would very much like to read the book itself. Being a retired legal secretary, the series depicted many events in the life of a law student, as told to me by attorneys for whom I worked.

I think the complete title of this book sums up the purpose of this book "...Science Experiments that show God's power in Creation!" I admit I had difficulty making some of the relationships between the days of the creation and the experiments. But this book is for younger children, not for our children that we are trying to teach the actual principles of science. This book introduces our children to science, the process of doing an experiment and gives you some commentary that isn't evolutionary based. It is fun, not complicated science.

This book is full of short & hands on experiments! I wouldeven suggest it for younger kids 5-8 as well. Almost all materials canbe found in the home already, and if not, they are inexpensive to buy. This is great for any family on a tight budget! People who believe in Creation vs. Evolution have every right hold to our beliefs. Contrary to what you may believe, most of us teach evolution (AS A THEORY) in addition to our own belief in Creation. We do not ignore the fact that everyone has a right to their own beliefs. We do not brainwash our children, but rather present ALL worldviews. Please refer to the age group suggested... This book is not designed to teach Einstein's theories!

My family really enjoyed reading through this entertaining book and trying the experiments which reinforced the lesson being taught.

I would highly recommend this book to parents and teachers who want to show their children that God is the Supreme Creator and how wonderfully He made everything around us. I know that "evolutionists" and "big bang theory" types will probably not care for this book - but maybe they should still read it. I find that it takes a lot more faith to believe some of science's theories of creation than it does to believe in a Supreme Creator! :-)

Wendy Willard is the author of another Osborne book entitled HTML: A Beginner's Guide. It's a great book. Unfortunately, a lot of the material in that book has been grafted into Willard's second book, Web Design: A Beginner's Guide.

I bought Web Design because I enjoyed Willard's HTML book. I thought she would concentrate on what the title promises: Web design. Instead, I found a few chapters on very basic Web design, and many more chapters on writing HTML (which has no place in a *design* book!), along with the obligatory padding about 'what is the Web' and other page stretchers.

If Willard had actually written a book about Web Design, she might have created a top-notch *set* of books. Instead, she relied on a rehash of her HTML book to flesh out a minimal, mediocre coverage of Web design. I'm disappointed.

I taught a Web design course in which I used both of Wendy Willard's books (Web Design: A Beginner's Guide and HTML: A Beginner's Guide). There is overlap, of course, but the pair worked quite well as a tandem. In fact, the students gave me a lot of positive feedback on the books. We focused on the Web Design book and used the HTML book primarily as a reference.

Web Design is a very straightforward presentation of design fundamentals. It was refreshing to find in the book so many bits of design advice that I have pedaled. Moreover, the writing is lively and concise.

The publisher makes available a CD-ROM that contains PowerPoint lectures, a test bank, and an instructor's manual. I can't comment on the test bank -- I seldom use them -- but I found the lectures to be useful as starting points for my own in-class presentations.

The book would be improved by more depth in topics such as navigation, information architecture, and usability. Navigation is mentioned but probably warrants its own chapter in a Web design book.

In sum, this is a very good book for a first course in Web design.

I am a graphic designer with firm roots in print design--getting into design for the Web has been a daunting prospect. This book is incredibly easy to understand and perfect for an absolute beginner like myself. It provides an excellent jumping-off point into more advanced design and production strategies, even if you are using a WYSIWYG Web page editor. I have been told time and again that even while using a graphical editor like Adobe's GoLive, it is still important to know basic HTML coding--this book even makes HTML approachable! I would recommend it to anyone who is brand new to Web design.

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great one of the best to have if you own a gameboy couldn't put it down

This is a GREAT book. It includes information, cheat codes, hints and tips for games like Animaniacs,(My personal favorite) Kirby's Dream Land, and a whole lot more. It's a great for Christmas presents.

Osborne's thoroughness in cataloging Dame Agatha's eighty-plus re-titled, repackaged, and republished books and 147 stories in their myriad and varied collections is admirable. That alone makes this book worth buying, but his literary criticism detracts from a complete enjoyment of what is otherwise a pretty good read.

Throughout, Osborne reveals a tri-fold misunderstanding of the essence of fiction. Despite his own comment, "It is fortunate that fictional chronology can be flexible," he tediously cites examples in which it is not. Also, he assumes that each story should be consistent with the others, and that full explanations should be given for what he considers to be improbable occurrences. Let us consider each of these problems in turn.

Real Time

Rarely is fiction intended to occur in real time. Plays, novels or short stories often cover periods from a few hours to a lifetime, or longer. Regardless of the time taken to write or publish a work, it must always stand up on its own. The particular time period that elapses between the appearance of two works does not of itself imply the actual amount of time that the author intended should pass. For example, that Albert should be fifteen years old in Partners in Crime (1929) does not imply that he was only nine in The Secret Adversary (1922) as Osborne suggests (pp. 68-69). That real time is not intended is exemplified further when Miss Marple says in Nemesis (1971) that she met Jason Rafiel (A Caribbean Mystery, 1964), "just over a year ago. In the West Indies." The only chronology upon which we can rely is that provided by the author. We must take each story as a group of events in the characters' lives and avoid forcing our own sense of time on them.

Consistency and continuity

That Dame Agatha has given us clues to the actual whereabouts of her stories should be seen as remarkable, if not extraordinary. Fiction, after all, is constructed from the imaginings of the author. Unless we have been given clear evidence to the contrary, we must always assume that the people and places are made up. Because some authors appear to be more consistent from one story to another does not mean that all novelists must be. Fiction is fiction. It only has to be believable; it does not have to be true. Science fiction depends on this premise.

Of the apparent inconsistencies, Randall Toye (1980), author of The Agatha Christie Who's Who, graciously concedes that these caprices are "one more mystery for the readers of Agatha Christie to solve, a mystery for which you will have to rely on your own 'little grey cells.'"

Improbables

Osborne levies a number of criticisms at the plots themselves. In his entry for Sparkling Cyanide (p. 211), for example, he scoffs at the idea that a group of guests could leave a table, forget where they sat, and then re-seat themselves on the basis of the location of a purse. Perhaps in his own sterile study, this scenario seems implausible. However, it would be easy to become confused when everyone had left a large round table simultaneously and then tried, without such a landmark, to return to his or her own chair. Although it might feel a little awkward, in a low-lit room, after some drinks and dancing, a purse could be the only thing to indicate where people had sat earlier. Doubtless, Dame Agatha actually observed this confusion on some occasion.

In Dead Man's Folly, Osborne (p. 281) doubts that someone could change his appearance so as to become unrecognizable just by growing a beard, but, the narrative is quite clear - most of those who would have recognized him had moved away. Not only that, but war changes people - sometimes quite dramatically - literally aging their appearance by more years than the duration of the conflict. Noncombatants will never understand how war can change someone. More than that, we often see what we expect to see. If having been told that someone was killed during the war, why shouldn't we believe it? Indeed, a full beard would cover the most recognizable features of a man's face.

Improbables do not demand explanations. Just because a situation seems improbable to us, doesn't mean that it is. The available facts may not be all of the facts. Even when Dame Agatha does give us clues, most of us can't identify the murderer; and her alleged peccadilloes have done nothing to dissuade readers from buying hundreds of millions of her books.

Osborne's writing style

This review would be incomplete if it failed to mention Osborne's own struggle with words: split infinitives, the odd incomplete sentence, and excessively long constructions. Here is one example of the latter: "After some months, Agatha decided to join her husband in London where, after living briefly in service flats, first in Half Moon Street and then in Park Place, 'with noisy sessions of bombs going off all around,' they were about to move into their house in Sheffield Terrace, the people to whom they had rented it having asked if they could be allowed to relinquish the lease, as they wished to leave London" (p. 180).

Conclusion

A more complete table of contents would have been helpful so that entries about specific works could have been found easily. As it is, one has to look up the publication date at the back, and then search for it in the relevant section. Overall, the reader should use this book for reference only and ignore the rest of it.

THE LIFE AND CRIMES OF AGATHA CHRISTIE is a delightful look at the great author through her vast novels, plays, and short stories. The well-written reference book is structured around major events in Ms. Christie's life, but seen through the works that are published at that time. Charles Osborne keeps the tome fresh with intriguing explanations on various topics such as titles. For instance the "final" title of THEN THERE WERE NONE reflects social trends and political correctness over the decades in England and America, and to a lesser degree France. Fans of Ms. Christie will find this work quite fascinating, but so will most mystery buffs as well as historiographers.

Harriet Klausner

I've had this book for a few months now and am continuously referring back to it. This is a perfect book to have on hand while reading her collection of books. Charles Osbourne presents an overview of Agatha Christie's life and works his way chronologically through each book she wrote with new insights into the storylines and other happening in her life at the time of her writing the book. Mr. Osbourne does not reveal too much, so it is safe to read his accounts before reading her books.

This is a perfect companion book to her works.

This volume (as well as the series in general), is somewhat helpful for application of the text, but it certainly should not be used in isolation. I found this one to be rather shallow in that it gives little time to the historical situation in the text. A better commentary that includes extra focus on application, but without diminishing original meaning and history, is the NIV Application Commentary on Luke by Darrell Bock.

This commentary is the third one written on Luke by the same author. It focuses on contemperary application of Luke's message. One might need another (more detailed) commentary to determine the original meaning of the text. Those with necessary training in the Biblical Greek should consult his two-volume commentary published by Baker.

This is a great resource for preparing sermons on Luke, or even for just reading along while you read Luke in your own home. It's easy to read, and gives valuable insights. I'm glad I bought it.

I got this guide after I had beaten Ogre Battle already w/ max reputation and high ailignment/charisma (which isn't hard to do and there is certainly no secret to achieving) expecting to find information on all the secret treasures that the documentation that came with the game hinted at. Instead, this guide basically regurgitates all the information on the huge item sheet (which isn't at all helpful) and doesn't reveal anything really secret. The only useful information it provides is the stats/recruitments of the various classes/species and the locations of treasures/hidden towns on the maps (though most of which can be found easily w/o the guide). All in all this is a mediocre strategy guide as far as prima guides go and I wouldn't recommend buying it since you can find all the info on classes and treasures at webpages. You might as well save your money for a more worthwhile guide. The lack of color and the "Ogre Battle Gallery" that seemed like a pathetic attempt to make up for this lack of color bumped this from 3 to 2 stars.

If your one of the 2 people left in the world who somehow managed to get the Super Nintendo version of the game, keep in mind this book is for the playstation version. I'll also say the book is fairly unhelpfull. I dont suggest you buy it.

Prima has done its usual excellent job of creating a strategy guide for this game, the only thing I found lacking was that the entire guide was black and white, even though it is the same price as all the other guides.