Having come from a family completely unable and unwilling to cook, I was at an extreme disadvantage wanting to learn to eat healthy. This cook book is a real world how-to. It tells you what to look for when buying veggies, how to cut them, prepare them multiple ways, gives you instructions and then real recipes. It's more than definitions of chop vs dice and boil vs simmer, the author explains how she does and how the terms may vary from one recipe to another. She gives substitutions, suggests which things can be done ahead of time, and gives realistic estimates of how long the dishes take to prepare. My family and I are much healthier than this time last year, thanks almost entirely to this book. It helped me get comppletely over being intimidated by cooking and especially cooking healthy meals. My family is amazed and healthy, and I feel I've really accomplished something positive.

I wish I would have had this cook book when I first started cooking. It has "absolutely" everything you need to know to start out; pantry items, spices, utensils. I love it. Perfect for a new cook, or someone who wants flavor without all the fat.
Pretty soon the only cookbooks I have will be by the Martha that really knows her stuff.

I have several of Martha Rose Shulman's cookbooks, and this is by far the best! The recipes are very time efficient and, more importantly, they are delicious! She relies on using flavorful herbs and fresh ingredients, and her recipe instructions are clearly written. A must have for the busy cook!

For their third compendium release, the planescape team (directed by Monte Cook) decided to concentrate on monsters from the inner planes. The idea is a good one and the new monsters presented in this book are among the strangest players will ever come across. As for the older monsters, most of them taken from the original Monster Manuals they fit very well in the book and the new informations & drawings of them are excellent. The result make for a refreshing book that I definitly recomend to experienced players & Dm who are tired of the same old monsters and think they have seen it all. However if you are just starting a campaign or do not intend to adventure on the planes this book will only hold a marginal interest for your campaign.

WOW! The best monstrous compendium(other than ravenloft) ever created! It has all the elementals one could ever want, including Ice, Ash, radiance, magma, ooze, and even Vacuum! An almost-Must-have for any party with a high level wizard with access to the conjuration/summoning school! The other animals in this book are also incredibly cool. also includedin the front and back of the book are guides to the way creatures react with each other, and harmless residents of the inner planes!

Wow!

All I can say is........WOW! This is the treasure trove of the unique, original, and inspiring creatures I have always longed for... The art is amazing, the text is well-written, the book is sturdy and very attractive, and the content is....... simply put, oustanding. This is a sort of book that you lift up and say " why haven't I heard of this earlier! " or " why haven't they released this a couple years ago! ". Every single creature is so original and unique, they fully deserve to have legends written about them. BUY THIS BOOK!

This book is pretty useful, it contains lots of info and the such on things such as poisons and reincarnation and even a chart of character flaws.

This stunning edition was the best of TSR's work unsurpassed by the latter revision and though I have not had the chance to actually have the third I'm sure it is unequal to the 2nd edition. If wizards of coast now owners of TSR were intelligent they would bring the 2nd edition back to printwith the original artwork but stronger more durable covers. Overall besides the shoddy bindings and how easily the books wear out I found the 2nd edition to be supreme in it's easy to generate characters and easy explanitions. The history the book also imparts was most intresting as well.

an easy to use referance of everyhting you need to run a gam

This text has a twofold project. One, Couliano wishes to elucidate what he sees as the defining charachteristic of Renaissance Magic, that of "Eros," and also to account for the shift in thinking that reportedly heralded the "decline" of magic in the sixteenth and seventeenth century.

The "eros" of Renaissance magic started out with optical theory and other medical concerns with Aristotle (and perhaps Plato), who held that there was a substance called the "pneuma." In Aristotle's thinking, the pneuma was a substance that was located as a thin shield around the body. In Stoic medical theory, this became a substance commesurate with the "soul" or "spirit." This substance was a "prima materia," a fundamental substance that contained the physiological ability to transmit information to the senses, especially the ocular sense. The heart was the center for a generational organ that in turn centered the pneuma, This pneumatic organ was called in Greek --- the "hegimonikon." Forming images in the pneuma for sensory transmission was necessary before a person could percieve something or someone. Through the works of late antiquity, such as the Corpus Hermeticum and medieval physicians such as Albert the Great, the doctrine of the pneuma became common discourse and was incorporated into popular culture such as the courtly love tradition. Taken by the bishop Synesius's (d. ca. 415) synthesis of previous pneumatic doctrine and courtly love practices, Ficino develops a universal doctrine of the relation of man to the universe through Eros mediated by the Universal and Particular pneuma. While mentioning Pico della Mirandola as a sparring partner of Ficino, the main emphasis in this narrative turns to Giordano Bruno, whom Couliano believes modified and perfected this doctrine in terms of personal manipulation and excitation through the powers of Eros.

Couliano, in the last part of the book, strives to develop an alternate account of the "fall" of magic by highlighting the role of the Reformation. Having defended the notion that the Renaissance was about a revival of pagan culture, he in turn emphasizes the role of imagery and "phantasy" in the doctrine of the pneuma. The Reformation and the Counter Reformation were primarily about the eradication of pagan culture from Christiandom. As such they were about the eradication of imagery, manifested in terms of Luther's accusations of Catholic "magic" in the Eucharist, iconoclasm, the witch hunts. For Couliano the witch hunts are a social counterpart to the eradication of religious-magical imagery--- both are manifestations of "human phantasy." When "qualitative" statements become suspect (as they involve imagery) then strictly "quantitative" science becomes the only legitimate route for knowledge. When these scientists wax inductive, they are threatened by the Church(es).

Better than Keith Thomas's 'Religion and the Decline of Magic" but if you're looking for the real explanations of how Renaissance Magic worked, then you should read D. P. Walker's "Spiritual and Demonic Magic" instead.

The late Iaon Couliano was an associate professor at the University of Groningen when he wrote this book, originally published in French and translated by Margaret Cook. It is an examination of how Neoplatonic ideas about cognition were applied to magical speculation during the Renaissance, and how these ideas were condemned during the Reformation.

The book begins by discussing theories of cognition which developed in classical antiquity. Followers of Plato believed that the only way humans came to know anything was the result of the soul (pneuma) receiving projections, or phantasms, of objects in the physical world. These ideas were rediscovered in Western Europe in the late middle ages. Two Renaissance philosophers of magic, Marsilio Ficino and his successor, Giordano Bruno, theorized that people could be bent to a magician's will if the magician could project such phantasms: in order to do so the magician manipulated the desires of his victims.

During the Reformation, however, such thinking was condemned and Couliano uses Calderon de Barca's play, "El Magico Prodigioso", as an example of the new attitude toward magic. The book concludes with Couliano's assertion that the modern era is still blinkered by Reformation thinking.

The book is dense but readable and often entertaining. It is exclusively concerned with Christian Neoplatonism and interprets magic as a psychological medium. Although other Renaissance philosophers of magic are mentioned Ficino and Bruno are the principal sources of Couliano's thesis.

It is unfortunate that Professor Culianu was so violently removed from the world of academia. We are fortunate however, that some few books he was responsible for remain.

Eros and Magic in the Renaissance is an outstanding book. The work is essentially about phantasms (not to be confused with "fantasy") and how, in the past, these phantasms were believed to operate within the soul. Of course, if one accepts for the sake of discussion that phantasms exist and operate within the soul, then discussion of the mechanics of phantasmic operation (e.g. the art of memory, erotic magic, manipulation of desire) naturally follow.

Culianu brilliantly reviews the history of thought regarding the movement of images within the soul and goes yet further to discuss the history of how men believed manipulation of individuals and "the masses" through this process might be effected. Naturally enough he touches on advertising, misinformation, spin and censorship. These very subjects got the conspiratorial Giordano Bruno (who occupies a significant position in the book) burned alive in 1600 by the Catholic Church (an organization understandably averse to anyone tinkering about in the very realm of imaginal manipulation they had such a stake in).

It seems that these issues are still very sensitive to a number of groups with a vested interest in imaginal manipulation. There were a number of people in Rumania after the coup who began to worry about Culianu (a Rumanian expatriate) and his penetrating understanding of the rigid "Police State" with its enforcement of laws and the more flexible "Magician State" with it's enforcement of *desires* (all discussed in this book). That is most likely why Professor Culianu had his head blown off in The University of Chicago Divinity School.

Anyone with an interest in how mankind has enslaved itself with the empty images of manufactured need and sterile consumerism will find Eros and Magic in the Renaissance to be the center of a web of ideas shedding light on this subject. Outstanding Book!

Excellent book providing great detail. We used the book when we sailed around the islands and it provided a great guide to most, if not all islands. Very up to date.

Probably most value to those using the ferry service, but excellent none the less for others getting around more than one island.

You don't need it if you're going on a cruise (it's rather snooty about cruises, with that backpacker reverse snobbery)or if you're going to fly to one island and stay there. In fact the details about the boats and timetables may be too much. If you're moving from island to island independently you have to have it. It's the only one that tells you about the boats themselves. Reading this book could even save your life My favorite comment in the 1999 edition was about the boat then called the Golden Vergina. "a large grime bucket-she has inthe past shuddered along, not thanks to an excess of engine vibration but rather with the collective disgust of her passengers. thanks to the conditions on board ... better than no boat all but only just." She was renamed the Express Santina and if you read about the Paros shipwreck you know the rest. 80 were drowned.

Indispensable if you are moving from island to island on your own. Package tourist or cruisers can manage without it. I have always enjoyed the accurate details on the boats themselves. This addition has great WEB sites to explore. Maybe it needs more about Athens airport and the mystifying Olympic Airlines terminal. Flights from New York or London to the islands are not listed on Flifo. You have to go to the Olympic Airlines WEB site and get the domestic timetable of flights from Athens. Even flying Olympic from London you have to check in again as a domestic passenger and then go through security and then you find a row of gates with numbers and names of islands. It's simple if you're not half asleep. The first class lounge (ok - not real island hopping but I'm 65) is hidden at the end of the row AFTER security. On the flights that stop at Thessalonika you have to go through passport control twice.

Even considering its more than 1,000 pages, this book packs an astounding amount of information between its covers. In attempting to provide a comprehensive history, the book's strength sometimes becomes its weakness--on many topics, Cook offers sketchy coverage, occasionally reduced to simple lists of films and filmmakers. A natural hazard, perhaps, of such an undertaking. Despite that, there are many excellent sections, including those on the early development of the film industry and some of the discussions of particular films, directors, and genres, such as Potememkin, Orson Welles, and film noir. Ultimately, it's a worthwhile volume for the reference shelf of anyone interested in film.

It's between this text or Gerald Mast's. Personally I find the Mast book a bit more balanced and readable. Cook gives such lengthy, descriptive accounts of films such as Birth, Potemkin, and Kane that students can practically skip viewing the films.

Imagine having the gall to write a history of "Narrative Film" -- not just Hollywood production, but ALL film, from ALL OVER...

Well Cook does, and does it better than anyone else.

The most amazing thing about this book is that is reads so well: you can literally open it up anywhere, start reading, and start learning -- and be entertained at the same time. I just love reading this book.

The second amazing thing is that Cook seems to have seen a lot of movies and taken the time to think carefully about them. As a result his comments, his sense of historical perspective, and his assertions are usually accurate, frequently insightful, and always enlightenling.

If you're studying film in ANY context, this is the book to buy. If you prefer a video store with a foreign language section instead of your local Blockbuster, this is the catalog for you. Within days of reading this book I was making lists of films that I had to see (The Red And The White, and the Wadja trilogy among them), and running out to find them.

For those in need of a text-book, this is the best value-for-money you can get. For thos FEARING a text-book, relax: it's actually a real page turner.

Any short-commings? There are some minor factual errors (the photographs demonstrating zoom, telephoto and wide lenses use inaccurate frames from Barry Lyndon, for example), but nothing to worry about -- there so much about this book that's good it really doesn't make a difference. The only real problem is that it will never be big enough.

This is the book against which the others are judged.

Angie Amalfi's new Comical Cake business is very time consuming, yet successful. It however is putting a definite strain on her friendships and social life. Paavo wants to propose, but she is too busy. And to top it off, a really creepy Baron, who runs a Goth club wants her to bake him a cake. Paavo is engrossed in a series of grisly ritualistic murders.

This is a pretty entertaining mystery. Amazon recommended it and I gave it a try. The characters are a bit bizarre and fit in excellently with the story line. There are many twists and turns in the plot and I enjoyed it a great deal.

Angie Amalfi has finally found her nitch, baking comical (and sometimes tasteless) cakes for the bay area community. For once Angie has found one of her business endeavors to be fruitful and puts all of her time and energy into seeing that this enterprise is more successful than all of her others. Unfortunately that means turning her back on her boyfriend Paavo (who has incidently decided to propose......that is if he can get Angie to pay attention to him long enough) and her closest girlfriend Connie. Since Connie feels unappreciated Angie is forced to turn to hired hands to help her meet the demand for her cakes. After hiring a couple of kids who like to hang out in the local "Goth" scene Angie finds herself over her head in toads, blood, desecrated cakes, and bodies. Will she also find herself as some sicko's dessert?????

An entertaining read as always by Pence. At times I found the story to be difficult to follow which is why I don't rate it as high as her last, but it keeps the blood flowing and the pages turning in typical pence style.

After the last book in this series, I was ready for Angie and Paavo to start talking marriage. Well, so was Paavo! But Joanne Pence skillfully keeps us in suspense about that as well as about the identity of the ritualistic killer who seems to be targeting Angie for his ultimate victim until the exciting climax. I look forward to the next mystery in this series because with Joanne's talent, she's bound to keep readers in suspense about pulling off a wedding while scaring the daylights out of us with a clever mystery. She has another winner on her hands!

page 26
"There is no excuse for spelling errors in your essay!"

Okay, authors, so please take your own advice - it's "Seuss" not "Suess" (page 19), "Dave Barry" not "Dave Berry" (page 9). These are the authors' mistakes, not from the students' essays. Good ideas - Sloppy editing = Lost credibility.

This book helped me come up with essays that ultimately led to my acceptance at all 12 schools to which I applied (two of which are IVY league schools and all of which are ranked by US News at within the top 50 Doctoral Universities in the Nation)! I honestly don't think I would have had a chance had it not been for this book!

This book helped me come up with essays that ultimately led to my acceptance at all 12 schools to which I applied (two of which are IVY league schools and all of which are ranked by US News at within the top 50 Doctoral Universities in the Nation)! I honestly don't think I would have had a chance had it not been for this book!

This book is a real page turner. I live about 80 miles south of where her farm was and I had never heard of her. Its hard to think that someone like this could do the things she did and buy everyones silence. This book makes you glad you were not left homeless in that time. I have talked to some people that lived in and around Hershey and North Platte and they remember the rumors of the goings on on the farm. A great read and hard to put down. Add Annie cook to your list of nightmares.

i read this book years ago, i was still a teenager, I couldn't fully comprehend all that was written, I was just excited to see my great-grandfather's name mentioned in the book, thinking back this reality that was still scares me. Even with everything that has happend since the book was relesed and everything that will happen in the future. I still can't believe that woman was from my hometown.

I have heard many rumors about Annie Cook and her muderouse ways. No one understood the extent of Annie's power that I have heard said about her. I am a victem of domestic violence. I understand how a person can be raped of their will and their soul. This story was so well written it made me embark on a year long investigation of my own. I uesd the directions in the book for the yard sale after Annie died. I found the Cook Farm. Thanks for adding that. The farm has changed. But the barn in the picture of Annie you added in the book is still there. And it looks the same.So is the chicken coops with the bungalo. I found Lizzy, Mary and her husband in the North Platte Cemetery. I was so moved to see that these are real people. I work on genelogy,it is my passion. So I looked the Cook family up in the 1920's census. And Mary is listed as a hired hand! Is this the way Annie got back at her family? Or was Mary a Tax wright off? Lord ,Annie can discust me from her grave. I take my hat off to you Nellie.I could not have listened to the story. I had a hard time reading it. That should let you know It is a very good book1

A while ago my company decided to expand into Portugal and I didn't speak a word of Portuguese. This course has helped me. The grammar explanations are excellent and there is a lot of guidance throughout the book on pronunciation. The vocabulary is practical and is supported by a two-way (i.e. Portuguese-English and English-Portuguese) mini-dictionary at the back of the book. The speakers on the tape have different accents, which has helped me 'fine tune my ear'. I believe that a sign of the quality of the book is the comments that I receive on my business trips saying how well I can speak Portuguese.

I also like the fact that the book educates you as to the cultural aspects of the country eg Fado singing as well as historic landmarks to visit eg the tower of Belim. I have also found this useful in helping me build up business relationships in that I can show I know something about the country and I always have a place in mind for when I am offered as a trip somewhere as part of my visit! Yet another strong point is that the book also covers Brazilian Portuguese. I shall be needing that too.

This course is for both European and Brazilian Portuguese. It systematically shows the differences and tells the learner how to switch over between the two. Grammar explanations are more detailed than usual in most language courses. Vocabulary is very practical, what you need to communicate. The course is user-friendly and actually teaches you the language. Better still if you buy the latest edition, 2002. It has lots of extra real life material, exercises (all with key), and has both CDs and Cassettes.

Teach Yourself Portuguese by Manuela Cook is both for European and Brazilian Portuguese. It systematically shows the differences and helps the learner to switch over between the two. Grammar explanations are more detailed than usual in most language courses. Vocabulary is very practical, what you need to communicate. The course is user-friendly and actually teaches you the language. Better still if you buy the new edition, of 2002. It has lots of extra real life material and exercises (all with key) and has both CDs and Cassettes. Highly recommended!