I was amazed by the amount of knowledge and advice the author conveys in this book.

This book is for the owner of any camera, be it pocket or SLR. The author truly drives home the point that getting a good photograph is not just about twiddling buttons or dials.

If you thought you knew all about point and shoot photography, boy will you be in for a surprise.

I also liked the tone of the author's writing. He is never condescending and uses tremendous amounts of example photographs to illustrate what he is talking about.

Highly recommended for anyone that owns a camera, regardless of whether it costs $10 or $1000.

Regardless of the type of camera used - and I use SLRs to point-and-shoots (for the most part now, including the Advantix system)Photography for Dummies is remarkable, whether you're a complete novice or one who has spent a lifetime taking photos. Yes, indeed, it's instructive even to the point of showing how to load film, to the real "meat" of personal photography, and that is instructing us as to how to "compose" - the most challenging aspect of photography, and for those of us who choose to document our life experiences through a camera, usually the most frustrating. Mr. Hart's book brilliantly illustrates, in language we can all understand, how to evolve from the "snapshot" stage of photography to shooting images that are truly memorable and capture the essence of the moment. Beyond that, having purchased several "Dummies" titles, all of which have proved to be useful, instructive, and occasionally amusing, Photography for Du! mmies is far and away the most ambitious - and beautiful - of the Dummies books I own or have perused. It is an outstanding reference book, one that I will refer to for years to come.

In every role of film developed there would always be one or two shots that were well-composed, exciting and which I would almost be willing to display. It took this book, Photography for Dummies, for me to figure out why and how. After purchasing three different cameras (they had to be at fault), I finally purchased this book and learned about using all those mode buttons on my camera. I learned how to eliminate the dark corners and unwanted shadows. For that alone, this book is priceless. If you're buying someone a camera for the holidays or for any ocassion, this book is a must to go along with it.

"Drawing Cutting Edge Comics" has been the best drawing book I have seen on the market by Chris Hart in a long time. Totally blows his other books away! How ever, it's more for ppl who already know how to draw human anatomy...a.k.a they don't show you how to draw the human body in motion like "How To Draw Comics The Marvel Way." This book is def. like a book for ppl who are serious about going into the Comic Book Industry. It's a must buy.

Well, what can I say but Chris Hart has totally outdone his previous books! This book is an excellent source of information with art and tips from pros from company's such as Top Cow and Chaos comics. There is even a small section on coloring with a 2 page comic preview of Bad Kitty (Chaos) at the end. The best book on the market I have ever seen. I myself am a freelance comic book artist and I give this book a 5/5!

Two thumbs up! This book blows Hart's previous how to books based on comic art out of the water. It shows examples of correct anatomy, facial expressions, different camera angles, foreshortening, perspective, page design, and genre types. And for those who want to draw beautiful women and massive men this book shows you how. Those basics are a must have for those of you who want to be aspiring artists, because the comic industry is very compeitive. Some of the samples of art are outstanding! This book is for more of advanced artists. It also gives you tips from top people in the industry from TopCow and Chaos comics. The styles shown is this book are how many top artists draw now so if you wanna be a perfessional comic artists I implore you this book is absolutly a must have! I use this book as an everyday reference so it's easily worth it's money and can help you develop that cutting edge you need. DO U ENJOY DRAWING COMIC ART AND READING COMICS AND LIKE TO TALK ABOUT IT, E-MAIL ME.

SANCTUARY is, by all standards, an odd book. A minor work by a major talent, it blends elements of Greek tragedy and tawdry potboiler to create an unusual amalgam. Faulkner himself was quite up front about it being his great attempt to write a bestseller, lathing the book with a bevy of cheap effects, yet still to imbuing page after page with one striking phrase after another.

Although not major Faulkner, it is still Faulkner, and is definitely worth reading. It is set in Yoknapatawpha county, and features many characters who either appear in other books or whose relatives appear in other books. Furthermore, the key female character in the book, Temple Drake, reappears as the major character in REQUIEM FOR A NUN, written twenty years after this one. While I do not rate this anywhere nearly as highly as many of his other books, being something of an oddity, it is nonetheless absolutely not a waste of time. While there are many sensationalist elements, there are still many magnificent sentences that read more like poetry than prose, and many of the characters are memorable.

If one is wanting to read only one or two books by Faulkner, I would not recommend this one. I would recommend instead AS I LAY DYING or, if one is feeling more ambitious, ABSALOM, ABSALOM. But if one is planning on reading all of the major works of Faulkner, then this is a book one should not skip. Minor Faulkner is better than the major works of many other writers.

Imagine it's 1929 and you're reading a book about bootlegging, couples living in sin, rape, whorehouses, with near-explicit sex scenes. Faulkner's SANCTUARY must have been mind-blowing to the genteel masses. They were reading material that they still don't show on network television today, in an age where such things are so commonly discussed in the media that we hardly look sideways at it. This book must have arrived like an explosion, shaking the sensibilities of readers everywhere, daring booksellers to put it on their shelves.

SANCTUARY is not an easy book. You'll find yourself, if you're like me, rereading passages to understand exactly what's going on. The characters, though precisely described, can be difficult to picture in your mind, especially as we move further away from the Jazz Age, with its unusual expressions, costume, and mores. Imagine Tennessee and Mississippi when cars were relatively new to the roads, when the various social strata -- some wearing suits, some overalls -- began mixing together more easily. Imagine being a teenage girl acting as a woman trapped in a moonshiner's shack, far away from the protection of her home, encountering men like creatures in a horrific play who drink liquor and watch her lie under the covers, her only protector passed out beside her.

Faulkner's reintroduced introduction is a godsend that will help you decipher the book somewhat. The editor's notes at the end of the book will help you understand much of the jargon and the motivation of the characters.

A good read in any age.

William Faulkner stands in my mind with only a few authors whose writing does not seem like writing. His novels seem more moments of real life. While I was reading "Sanctuary" you forget you are reading a book and the characters take on a virtual reality in your mind. Like all of Faulkner's books, this one is disorienting at first, simply by the author's strength of vision. The main plot revolves around Temple Drake, a coquettish college girl who likes to secretly sneak out of her college dorm to attend dances. One of her rides back from one of these dances is a boy named Gowan Stevens. He decides to stop off at an illegal moonshine operation and promptly sets about getting drunk. Temple is trapped at the house surrounded by all sorts of shady characters you would associate with such an operation. One of these is named Popeye, and trust me he is not a hero, he rapes Temple. One of the things I found slightly disturbing was the sense that Temple is a flirt and you get the sense that Faulkner felt that eventually some sex crime was going to be committed against her. She could get away with things around college boys but she fails to realize that with criminals, its a very bad move. It's the beginning of her great moral slide that was always just waiting to happen. There are other subplots going on around it. The owner of the moonshine operation is a convict and his wife supported herself through prostitution while he was in the joint, which is a source of tension between them. Horace Benbow is a lawyer who has left his wife simply because he recognizes the hollowness of his marriage. These characters are connected by the crime against Temple. The depressing thing about this novel is that noone really gets a sanctuary. The ending is not pretty. That's what makes it so powerful and so real. This book is right up there with Shakespeare and Dostoyevsky in sheer power of vision.

I highly recommend this book...you will not be able to put it down. Seriously in order to read this book properly you will need a box of Klinex tissue and a quite place with no interuptions. Summer Storm is one of the best romance novels EVER written...Catherine Hart really outdid herself with the sequil to Silken Savage

Oh my God! I read Summer Storm years ago and I loved it. I read the book so many times it started to fall apart. Eventually I lost it but now I just ordered another copy. Read this book! If you love Native American romances this is for you. As a child Summer embraces her Cheyenne heritage but when she is forced to live as white she eventually comes to feel shamed about her past. Still she is promised to a Cheyenne brave and when the time comes for her to wed him she is not happy! But Windrider refuses to accept anything but a completely willing bride. With love and passion he eventually makes her love and want him like no other. The surprise ending is one you don't want to miss. Catherine Hart is a wonderful author. I love the way she makes Summer Storm strong yet still willing to give her man her all. READ THIS BOOK!

Absolutely wonderful! I fell in love with Windrider. He showed a man can be feared by many, but so gentle with the one he loves. I wish more men loved their wives that way. The best read yet for Ms. Hart

No happy ending for this first novel by Stephen M. Hart. In fact, nothing much happy happens anywhere in this story about a gay man of 32 who thinks he has never met another gay person in his entire life (and this story is set in Massachusetts!). The only likeable character is the dog, Jake. The others are shallow and/or mean and/or self-centered.But what is really irritating is that the publisher, iUniverse, evidently does not employ any proofreaders. There are -- literally -- hundreds of typos, spelling mistakes and grammatical errors in this 220 page book. Some are comical: "Do you have any bothers or sisters?" The same boo-boos can be found in other books from this house.Mr.Hart is said to be working on his next novel. Good luck.

The ruins to which author Stephen M. Hart refers are the real and imagined pains of deception, lies, loss and self-loathing that are all too real when a closeted married man is outed against his will, by his own wife. Though fiction, the distinction of this novel is that it could very easily be the bio of countless men trapped in real-life by the scenario on which Hart's made-up story is based. In it, the unsuspecting wife finds a newspaper of gay personals and, to her excrutiating pain and anger, gets the feared confirmation that her husband is seeking sex out of the usual extramarital sense. Her discovery sets in motion the emotional ruins that follow in the wake, and they come to include the wife's sense of betrayal by the man she thought she loved and who loved her, the husband's guilt and self-loathing and self-imposed physical and emotional isolation. The latter isn't helped much when the wife dies, and the main character is left basically in a landfill of ruin from which he must somehow emerge renewed and go forward for, by then, there is no going back. Even in that rising from the ruins, however, the wife's death does nothing to clear the emotional wreckage. The kind of love that Hart's main character seeks does come his way but, we are not allowed to forget, it comes with a price. Promoted as essentially a gay novel, "Though the Ruins" is less that and more mainstream that some might expected. For that reason, the book is a lesson to both men and women in the need and wisdom of honesty and, in the end, might be telling us that love is too precious a commodity to abuse as a reason to stay in the darkness of the closet because, finally, that existence that almost always eventually is forced into the daylight promises nothing but ruin. Hart's novel is a moving account of one man's desperate journey to self-acceptance, and it's not as fictional as we might think.

Wow!!! What can I say about this book. I always wondered what it would have been like if I had not come to terms with being Gay when I did and went ahead and married my girlfriend of the time. I now know my answer...

I read this book in less than a day it was so good. The Author, Stephen Hart did an incrediable job keeping me gripped in the details and feelings of what the lead character, 'Michael' was going through. After the confrontation with his wife, and her subsequent death, all the issues that Michael went through, the PFLAG meeting, dating Peter, subsequent questioning himself, and the confrontations with his family, friends and neighbors were HIGHLY believable!!!

You spend most of the book rooting for Michael, and hoping he gets himself sorted out and moves on with a life with Peter (the Cop he meets as a result of the PFLAG meeting). You will have to read the book to see the outcome of all of this...

Run and get this book! You will be VERY HAPPY YOU DID!!!

This book, while helpful in some ways, is not ideal for today's more active and athletic Varsity or All-Star cheerleader. I would definitely reccommend this book for less competitive squads, like Pop Warner or J.V. Beginning cheerleaders and new coaches may find this book useful. But personally, with five years experience, I didn't learn too much from it. Instructional videos or competitions on ESPN will benefit competitive cheerleaders more. The tumbling section has detailed pictures of performing a back handspring, and some of the spirit/fundraising ideas are good. The stunting pictures are very outdated, and could use some updating. There are very few free-standing stunts, basically everything is old-fashioned pyramids. The basic stunts they show are pretty innovative, and would be good for Pop Warner cheerleaders. If they revamped this portion of the book, I would give it a higher rating. GOOD LUCK AND HAPPY CHEERLEADING!

This cheerleading book was extremely helpful for me to learn new cheers, chants, moves, and routines. I enjoyed it and would recommend it to any present or future cheerleader. It includes so much helpful information about cheerleading, and I am a 100% better cheerleader now for having read and studied this book. I went from living in a car with my two sisters and three brothers, to becoming a really popular cheerleader at my high school here in Alabama. I would like to say to all customers that this is a tight book!

This book is very helpful for any present or future cheerleader. It illustrates how-to's for moves, cheers, chants, routines, squad lines, jumps, etc. I recommend this book for learning about cheerleading.

Like Harold Bloom's HOW TO READ AND WHY, this book is mistitled. It does not take on the "cultural catastrophe" or deal with the "revival of higher education." Hart has his favorite works of Western thought and literature and discusses them intelligently and entertainingly but does not relate them to what is now going on in college classrooms, as his title suggests. What he does is relate religious thought and texts to secular thought and texts throughout the centuries. He compares and contrasts the religious ideas of the Judeo-Christian tradition to the secular ideas of the Enlightenment and modern works as embodied in Homer, Moses, Socrates, Jesus, St. Paul, Augustine, Dante, Hamlet, Moliere, Voltaire, Dostoevsky, and F. Scott Fitzgerald. If you're interested in the ideas of these people and their works, you should enjoy the book.

Of course, the title Hart chose (or maybe his publisher chose it) is more likely to sell books than a more accurate title would.

Hart's only reference to cultural catastrophe is this line in his afterword: "multiculturalism is an ideological academic fantasy maintained in obvious bad faith."

Well known for his eccentric behavior at Dartmouth (such as sporting raccoon coats, using walking canes, sipping alcohol from a flask at football games, driving gas-guzzling cars, as well as for a wooden grabbing contraption used to great effect at faculty meetings), Jeffrey Hart here offers an eloquent defense of what others have called the permanent things. And the greatest defender of those things is education, which provides citizens the tools to recreate civilization if necessary.

Hart argues, quite convincingly, that the motive force of Western civilization is the tension between Athens and Jerusalem, between secularism and faith. He devotes the first part of his book to the background of this idea and exploring it in early literary works. He compares Homer's epics, particularly The Iliad, to the early books of the Bible, which could properly be called The Mosead; Homer depicts the pursuit of warrior heroism and arete (excellence), while Moses represents the triumph of monotheism. In Socrates and Jesus (the latter of whom is given a literary reading), Hart locates shifts within the respective spheres. Socrates takes the Homeric pursuit of excellence and turns it into the pursuit of philosophy and truth. On the Jerusalem side, Jesus marks a movement from the outwardly oriented Mosaic Law toward a more internal sense of holiness. This first section--the explication of the Great Narrative--concludes with Paul, who represents a sort of synthesis between Athens and Jerusalem, bringing together Greek philosphy and Judeo-Christian religion.

In the second section ("Explorations"), Hart traces these tensions throughout various works of literature, beginning with Augustine's Confessions, a work of interior exploration. Hart also treats Dante and Shakespeare, as well as the Enlightenment authors Moliere and Voltaire, who attempted to bring about a Jerusalem-to-Athens shift. Voltaire fairs exceedingly well in the analysis of this conservative writer. Hart admires in the Frenchman his wit and his energy and, indeed, acknowledges that the Englightment, whatever its flaws and ill consequences, is "indispensable." He concludes with a juxtaposed analysis of Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment and F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. He offers a not entirely original argument of Raskolnikov as Hamlet ("Hamlet in St. Petersburg"), but his reading of Gatsby ("Faust in Great Neck") is both interesting and fascinating--Gatsby is a sort of magician and the work as a whole embodies magical transformation as the essence of modernity.

In the Afterword, Hart presents a delightful and delicious skewering of multiculturalism and finishes on a note of optimism: that we are slowly returning to cognition rather than ideology in our institutions of learning. For that reason, and for Hart's book, we can smile through the cultural catastrophe.

As an autodidact who is often beguiled, misled, and exasperated by where my search for knowledge takes me, as well as by the poorly thought out and more poorly written books I often begin to read; I was quickly pleased upon starting Hart's fine treatise to realize that I was holding a treasure. Hart can write, and his detailed overview of the salient works in the Western Tradition sparkles with insight and knowledge, and manifests a fine mind and much careful research and deliberation on his subject. Buy it and read it; you'll be thrilled by what you learn!

This book is excellent for the youngest ones, kids that are getting started with their gay lives, and when they don't know what to say, what to think, or what to do... For most of us, it is just a "fine" book, nothing we haven't already read on the internet, or discussed with our friends or boyfriend. If you think you are gonna find hot pics (as the one on the cover), tips, or something new you didn't know, you better think twice before you get this book.

Except for "The Joy of Gay Sex," how-to-books about homosexual lovemaking were still in short supply when this title reached print...Although I have a sentimental attachment to "The Joy of Gay Sex" for being the first of its kind, and the one that came along when I really needed it, Jack Hart's book is every bit its equal. I might even give it a slight edge. For other gay men, I recommend it highly.

I found this book interesting and a source of some ideas. The drawings were good and the discussion frank, noncritical and useful. The advice was helpful too, in meeting other guys and figuring out how to try some things for fun. I don't know what one of the reviewers was "shocked" about - the book is about gay sex, so naturally that's what it describes - and well depicted too. Enjoy, especially if you're new to the scene.

I really enjoyed this book - couldn't put it down. The heroine is always getting in trouble. Jessica is a realistic person with realistic looks - not one of your beautacious and buxom characters. Ty is a great leading character. At first he seems your average good looking, football jock. But there is a lot more to him. He is a sweet, romantic soul. I love the play on words that the author incorporates into the story. Her use of creative acronyms keeps you guessing throughout the whole book.

I love this book. It was funny and the characters were wonderful. I had first read this book years ago and loved it. I wanted to purchase it but a couldn't remember the author's name. A week ago while purchasing an other book one of the reviews recommended a book by Catherine Hart called Impulsive and I knew I had found my book. Impulsive makes you laugh and is full of fun incidents with the chararcters. Ending long before you are ready. I only have one complaint, she leaves out two scenes I would have wanted to read. This book is for everyone whether you enjoy football or not. The story is full of quick clever banter and word play.

This book had me laughing all the way through the book and even to the very last page. It was very surprising considering most book that have football or any other major sport in them, at least in my opinion, turn out to be boring and don't keep my interest at all. But this one was great and I couldn't put it down! For those of you who love to laugh or just enjor good nature bickering between the main characters this is the book for you!

Though unfamiliar with the author's work, I must admit this is a very enjoyable novel. When a friend suggested it, I thought "Oh, why not?" and am very glad I did. The plot follows Annie Darling, who owns a mystery novel shop (Death on Demand) and her husband Max. When Annie's father finally shows after deserting Annie and her mother so many years ago.. the plot thickens. Annie is thrown in the middle of a (somewhat corny, and only slightly suspenseful) mystery with bland clues and very few plot twists. I was a bit surprised by the ending, but looking back, I really wasn't paying much attention. I was trying to be a "filter" and not a "sponge" and in this case, it was a bad decision.

Well worth reading, but more a work of fiction than a murder mystery novel.

Just when you thought mysteries were becoming dark novels filled with anti-heros comes a book like SUGARPLUM DEAD. Annie Darling discovers a long-lost father and step-sister just as her mother-in-law has wigged out on trying to contact the dead. Annie, along with her husband Max, has got to find a way to bring things together. Max faces the added challenge of getting Annie to even talk to her father (after all, he did abandon her years before).

Annie's new family includes a famous ex-movie star who is also talking to the dead and threatening to give away the family fortune to a spiritual medium. If looks could kill, Marguueritte Dumaney would lie dead and before long, murder strikes. Both Annie's father and sister are suspects and Annie has to spring into action to solve the crime and protect her new family.

Although the mystery itself is not especially complex or difficult to guess, Carolyn Hart has created a finely crafted story. Max, Annie, and Laurel (Max's mother) are fully developed characters that you'll end up rooting for. Definitely an enjoyable read...

Sugarplum Dead is one of the best books in the Death on Demand Series. In this edition, Annie Laurence is reunited with her long-lost father, and discovers her step-sister Rachel. Rachel is living with her mother at the home of her aunt, Marguerite Dumaney, a former movie star. Annie's father, Pudge, is visiting for the holidays. When Pudge's ex-wife is found dead, he and Rachel are the chief suspects. A complicating factor is that Marguerite is in the clutches of an unscrupulous man who is stealing her fortune under the guise of enabling her to communicate with her dead husband. Her immediate heirs are all present for the Christmas season, and all of them want to inherit her money. This is a well-crafted and ingenious mystery which has the added charm of acquainting readers with Annie's long-lost family.