This is a brilliantly written book. Holden's narrative style is at once direct - almost conversational - and effortlessly lyrical; his characters beautifully drawn; their stories thoroughly compelling. The collection - which includes a novella, short stories, poetry, film stills, and text versions of films - showcases Holden's versatility and multiple talents.

Clive Holden owns cold fire with his words; each word so carefully selected that it elicits a precise emotion, whether it be fear, fury, or fatalism. In this novella you won't find heroes, but rather, anti-heroes whose actions tell us something about the society in which we so destructively inhabit. Mr. Holden should be lauded for this fine achievement.

An excellent read, Holden's style is reminiscent of Kerouac, an honest look at life on the other side of the tracks!

Almost all sales books have two major flaws: 1) They give you high level advise, such as "have a strategy" without giving you the "rubber-meets-the-road" actions to take. 2) They expect you to operate within a vaccuum where their selling system or methodology will work every time.

Power Base selling does not contain the first flaw and does an admirable job of trying to avoid the second. It is the first and best book I have read attacking the problem of organizational politics and the human dynamics in a corporate or complex selling environment. It gives very practical ideas on what to do in most political/selling situations to tilt the decision in your favor.

What this book does not do, nor attempt to do, is discuss the importance of a value proposition and the solution you are trying to sell. This is a great book to complement other famous sales books such as "Solution Selling."

I recommend this book highly to anyone that sells in a complex sales world.

The first time I read Power Base Selling, I thought it was great. Now that I have just re-read it, I am blown away by points that I missed the first time around. I recommend that everyone read it, apply it and then read it again -- it not only sharpins your political skills in selling, but in life.

Great read. Maybe too many stories...yet they explain his point in a clear sense. If you read between the lines and get the big picture of his strategic principles you can no doubt improve you sales performance.

This is worse than a complete waste of time -- it is nothing more than an infomercial for the sales training program run by the same group. It is filled with Capitalized Letters and Italicized Jargon that are part of the cute terminology. The book is written around some styalized characters who walk through a script -- it is impossible to read, and even less possible to gain any valuable insight, it is so annoying. I wish that I could get my money back. The worst part is that it seems like there might be some good ideas underneath, if you could just get to them.

World Class Selling does a masterful job of not only focusing on what salespeople need to do to be successful, but on what a salesperson's company needs to do. For example, if my company's marketing is not aligned with sales, it makes my job twice as difficult.

I also very much enjoyed the real life scenario that runs through the book, espically the ending.

"Not adequate! Superb selling skills are not adequate to ensure success in today's topsy-turvy global marketplace. Winning companies will intimately understand their customers' goals, their strengths, and their weaknesses. They will distill this information into a detailed understanding of solutions that provide the highest value leverage. Solutions are more than products and supporting services. They are the tangible intangibles that derive from the total company-to-company relationship. Having a company internalize the new paradigm that the entire organization - not just the sales department - is responsible for securing and retaining key customers will usually require a radical culture change. Jim Holden, in World Class Selling, almost brutally represents the horror story that can result from not making the paradigm shift. This book will be of limited value to a sales force if sales leadership does not 'sell' every member of the executive leadership team on reading this book, discussing the implications, and then using its concepts as the basic framework to transform the organization into a well-oiled value selling machine."

I bought this book, and I found that Apache did not have the Version decribed in this book available for me to download.

This book was good for me only with the basic command just to make a web site up and running, but was not good for me in configuring CGI, access control, and other complicated usages.

Apache has updated its version frequently. So, you will have difficulties using instructions from this book with Apache of today versions.

Get newer Apache books if you can.

I also wish the author writes a new and updated version though.

Well , it helps me start from nothing-i-know-about-apache and now my site is running as i expected.So cool and smooth. No error found in the book. But anyway curious web admin will get benefit from more-detail and real world-based implementation ,for example, all modules usage in dept, custom source compliation on win32 etc. (I know that this info could be found in online docs ,right? but i'd love to read from text book) I love this book but still wondering why the authors include (p.270) pics of how to enter proxy server setting in NS/IE ? Is it that important?

I'd recommend this excellent book! This book presented the steps (with great explanations) that I needed to easily set up the Apache Server. It has breath enough for more expert users, too. Its content was equal or greater than the O'Reilly press's "Apache Definitive Guide" (which I purchased first and could not understand).

Every person ever nominated for an academy award is listed in the appendix, but the book has even better things to offer.

Anthony Holden begins the book back in the 1920s and chronicles every year of the oscars up until 1991. He explains how the Academy began as a company union and evolved into the present day awards. There are many great stories. Most of them concerning the politics behind the awards.

He explains how the lifetime achievment awards were created to fill in the gaps of the hollywood greats who were denied the award for one reason or another. Many of these awards were shamefully given out when a person was on his/her deathbed.

Other interesting tid bits include the story of how France's Gérard Depardieu cost himself an oscar by giving a politically incorrect interview, George C. Scott's inconsistent reasons for turning down acting awards, and Woody Allen's indifference for the event as a whole.

Ah, yes... every single March, when that one evening rolls around when a red carpet's rolled out and somebody makes a name for himself or a fool of himself, or somewhere in between, we can only say one word unanimously: "WHY?" And now you will know why... you will know the whole truth, all the hearts and flowers and arsenic. In this juicy tale of the Academy and its unique, oddball system of selecting who gets the Oscar, who should get an Oscar, and it-was-just-too-darn-bad-so-and-so-didn't-get-one, Anthony Holden takes us back to the late 1920's, when a small group of individuals banded together to form the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. From then on, we're taken on a tirade of how simple campaigns, malicious manipulations, and simple mistakes or happenings influence the decisions for Oscar's many surprising receipients. Stars and directors share memories and reminisces throughout the book, which is also illustrated with several darn good photos. The book remembers Oscar's infamous moments such as "Scott, Brando, and The Art Of Rejection" to Greer Garson's "hour-long" speech and dear, sweet Sally Field's "You really like me!" speech. The book also details times when the Academy has been put on the spot: i.e., 1952. In a year of big, bustling dramas, the Academy was able to sigh with relief and vote the year's best picture to the big, bawdy "The Greatest Show On Earth". Another example, this time exploiting the Academy's sentiment: 1981's Best Actor: ailing Henry Fonda won over the "sure-fire" Burt Lancaster. That same sentiment also dealt many, many very deserving Oscar receipients the less glorified "Lifetime Achievement" Awards. And sometimes the Academy has been downright prejudiced: 1954's Best Actress: Grace Kelly over scandal-ridden Judy Garland (the book reveals that Kelly won by a mere seven votes to Garland). Most film critics today will cite Garland's as the better performance, but in 1954... And there have been bitter disappointments. Rosalind Russell's publicity agent had a house riding on a failed 1947 Best Actress win, and Bette Davis was stunned beyond belief when Anne Bancroft won 1962's Best Actress for "The Miracle Worker" over her "What Ever Happened To Baby Jane?". The bottom line: the book is bursting with facts, dirt, and fun and all the way through it keeps up the things the Academy Awards are famous for: drama, suspense, and pure, unadulterated entertainment.

i have a reseach paper due on this book and i need to make direct quotes on it. please help! thanks.

Charlotte Mason was an educator in England in the last century, and one of her main educational methods was to have every student keep a Nature Notebook or Nature Diary---a record of the natural world as the children observed it first-hand. The student's Nature Notebooks were filled with poetry, prose, line drawings and watercolors.

"The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady" is the perfect example of a fully developed Nature Diary. The author went out amid the English countryside and recorded what she observed---the flowers, trees, birds, insects.

The artistry of the drawings and watercolors in this is absolutely breathtaking. If you're looking for an introduction to the idea of Nature Diaries, or you simply enjoy a book of true grace and beauty, then this is the book for you.

I've had this book for well over 20 years, and every couple of years I get it back out, re-read it and try a few new experiments. This book would be good for a child (with supervision) who is interested in cause-and-effects relations of science. Some simple crystal experiments may be carried out in hours, some take longer.

Even an old engineer still enjoys this book!

I first used this book in 1963 as a tutorial on crystal growing
methods. Not only did it provide step-by-step instructions that
actually worked, but it explained the physics of crystals and the process of crystallization in language that a high school student could easily understand. I used various salts to grow exquisite
crystals of different colors, obtaining most of my materials from local sources and my chemistry teacher. My experiments were performed in a depression under our house ... with a dirt floor. this was my "chemistry laboratory." The evaporation method produced cloudy crystals, so I reverted to the supersaturated technique to produce perfect specimens. My heating mantle consisted of a coffee can with a hole cut in it to insert a light bulb. This worked very well. Over the years I have frequently referred to this book and recommended it to others. I still do so. It is worth its weight in gold.

An interesting collection of stories about a little black cat named Jenny and her adventures. Children will love this story especially if they enjoy cats. Even as an adult you can appreciate this classic with your kids for many years and repeated readings because of the clever personalities of the personified cats.

I was a full-time teacher for 25 years. I have been substituting in the elementary schools in two states. The book, Jenny and the Cat Club followed me in my semi-retirement from IL to MI. Children in both states, in first and second grade classrooms enjoy my reading this book, which I have in falling apart paperback.

What makes this book interesting is that it that is based on real people and real events. The author did a nice job of recognizing a good story and researching the facts (which were few and far between) and creating the story of Mary Patten and crew from there.

I found this book while waiting to board a transport vessel to camp at Santa Cruz Island. Being an avid reader, I was immediately attracted to reading the story about a woman who literally camped her entire life on this island and developed a primitive resort that caught the attention of early Santa Barbara travelers and the early movie industry moguls. Ms Eaton wrote amusing stories of her life with her beloved sea captain husband. She never realized that when she married her husband, that she would leave so much history behind her. Her husband abandoned his safe lumber mill job after he built his first boat in the back yard of the tiny house. Before long, she abandoned life in Santa Barbara for a bed under the trees at Santa Cruz Island. At times it was just her and her daughter for days on end while her husband started a fishing and transport buisness bringing people out to the island where they fed and bunked them under the open sky. Never did she complain about her primitive conditions, actually she rejoiced in it's simplicity. I can not say I have ever met any one like her, she was an incredible woman, and the relationship she had with her husband and daughter is enviable. What a lovely book to read while hiking around Santa Cruz and knowing that not much has changed in the land now as it was then, thanks to park preservation. This is a story any one can enjoy whether you go to the island or not. I heartily recommend it.

This is a heartwarming book about a woman who did it all! Especially interesting if you live in the area.

As the back cover of the book says, Nana by Emile Zola is the story of a woman of very low birth who uses her beauty to conquer the high society men of Paris on her way to becoming a courtesan of immense power and attraction. Nana takes place during the final days of the Second Empire of Napoleon III and actually ends with the event that would herald the downfall of the empire: the declaration of war against Prussia.

Zola is considered the leading member of the naturalist group of writers. Naturalists are concerned with real worldliness. They wish to portray a sense of what life is really like for their characters. They tend more to concentrate on the type of character that they are writing about instead of the character's uniqueness. As such, Nana becomes a story more about courtesans from lowly births than it is about Nana.

Naturalist writing also tends to lend itself to subjects of societal ills and debauchery. Naturalists seek to show the world in all its filth and depravity. To do this they must go where one finds this stuff: in the gutters.

Unfortunately, in his attempt to portray the character types one finds in the company of someone like Nana, Zola has created more caricatures than characters. Few of the characters in Nana where credible participants. Nana herself is unlike anyone you would find in sane society and seems more like an amalgam of various real world influences than a person of one mind.

The male characters of Nana were particularly egregious examples of overzealousness by Zola. The Comte Muffat is Nana's primary benefactor throughout the story. He withstands great hardships and torments from Nana with nary a protest. This may have been believeable if only Muffat had been the victim of Nana's capriciousness; but, she strings along many more men in this manner, robbing them of their dignity and fortunes without so much as a whimper from them.

Nana is compared to a golden fly who rises from the dung heap to taint the high society Parisian world that she invades with her low birth debauchery and sin. Nana may be a metaphor for the overall breakdown of French society which preceded the collapse of the Second Empire; but, Zola would have done better to lay it on less thick. Nana could have been an excellent statement on the necessity of retaining a moral backbone to maintain the fabric of society. Instead, it reads like a cheap nineteenth century soap opera played out with exaggerated, unreal characters.

Emile Zola is credited to have written the first "modern" French novels, that is to say, novels about contemporary subject matter and society, written in a natural style, which is why he is called a Naturalist writer. He was a very observant man, with an eye for detail and realistic dialogue and scenarios. He was a friend of the Impressionist artist Edgar Degas, who himself was considered to be a modern artist for his photographic style of paintings. Emile Zola's greatest novel has got to be Nana.

Far from the sugary and innocent Gigi story by Gabrielle Colette which would come later, Nana takes place as the French Second Empire comes to a close. From 1852 to 1870, France became a capitalistic Gilded Age, a time in which men and women would stop at nothing to make it into high society. The decadence of the period is captured, as well as the poverty and decaying morals. It would not be long before Emperor Louis Napoleon III lost the Franco Prussian War (1870-1871) and the empire collapsed. Nana is the daughter of a poor laundress- a washer woman from the country. She becomes a courtesan, a high class prostitute with many wealthy and powerful clients. These include financiers and even a count. Nana has an influence over all the men she becomes involved with, and they are smitten by her, offering her homes and material benefits from her ... favors. In the end, Nana becomes a symbol for the ... society of Emile Zola's time. This novel is a good read for fans of Zola's Naturalistic style and should be read prior to his "The Debacle" which deals with the Franco Prussian War.

Nana became the subject for a Manet painting. The book and the painting shocked the stuffy Salon society of Paris, especially because Nana is so blatant in her ...feminine powers over men. But the novel is excellent, a masterpiece of French literature, a critique on the ridiculous level of poverty at the time. Mothers were willing to sell their daughters into prostitution. Nana, however much a hold she has over the men, cannot get the one thing she truly wants- a place in decent French society. She was always seen as a courtesan with no real ladylike qualities. They were wrong. Nana is a great character, and Emile Zola takes us to that time with such precison and power that we are as if in a time machine transported to those French streets and to those brothel bedrooms. He writes without any hold bars. His novels should be made into films. I suggest this reading material for any fan of French writers. If you like Honore De Balzac, Gustav Flaubert and the time period of the Second French Empire, this is your book.

No drugs, no rock 'n' roll but plenty of sex. Great entertainment in itself, this book is best read as a sequel to "L'Assommoir" whose tragic downtrodden heroine can be said, in a way, to have got her revenge on society through her daughter, Nana. You might say it's a case of the underclass striking back and one wonders how today's acting and modelling scene compares with Second Empire Paris. Someone once said that every woman is sitting on a gold mine and Nana certainly proves it. Trouble is, she also proves the old saying "easy come, easy go". What would have happened if she'd been inoculated against smallpox?