This book provides great overview of the ad business. The varied perspectives give the beginner lots to think about when preparing for a career.

Full of interviews, photos and clear profiles of the most influential creatives and their ad campaigns. Recognizes the quality work in advertising and the "guts" of what it takes to make it in this business. Avoids cliches and soundbyte advice, but goes into the complex personalities of the people who are behind some of the classic campaigns. Well written and well organized. As an award-winning copywriter myself, I have often turned to this book for inspiration or for a "reality check." It belongs on the bookshelf of anyone starting out or well into the advertising business.

I've read alot of books on this subject but this gives you the dirt. What it takes in the words of advertising's "living legends". This book and Maxine Paetro's "How to put your book together and get a job in advertising" are all highly recommended for young creatives hoping to break into advertising

Even without reading the descriptions that accompany each painting, you can see a story within the picture. The paintings in this book are captivating, serene, and paint a world that I would like to live in. My favorite is of the cat looking out the moonlit window - you can almost touch his silky fur and know how what he is thinking.

While reading this book, one becomes a companion to the artist/author, sharing with her the wonder and mystery of her moon experiences. Her paintings and words speak to the heart, mind and eyes and create an uplifting experience. This book is truly a treasure.

I have received this darling book for Christmas from a good friend and was I ever so charmed over the exquisite art and the heartfelt peeks into the life of an artist. As I turned each poetic page, full of moonlight and luscious scenes of life, I was there with this artist, bitten by mosquitos and smitten by nature, all the while understanding the joys and insights into her world vision, which she captures so artfully to share with us, the viewing public. A first-class publication and the perfect gift for even the hardest to please.

Because of my mother, I grew up on Victorian books. The Mrs. Jeffries series, in spite of details and expressions sprinkled in, has never reminded me of the Real Thing. I don't care. I like this series anyway. The tone reminds me of Miss Seeton. You aren't getting Anne Perry here, although Ms. Brightwell does have some good comments about social ills.

These books are dainty tea cakes that make for a nice afternoon or evening's read. Sometimes that's all you want; and if that IS all you want, this would be a good series to buy. The main characters are sympathetic (although Lutie is a little too much) and the murders aren't ridiculously easy to solve. This particular entry has a few decent red herrings (all right, I'll admit it -- the author had me fooled too long for my comfort).

The covers fit the series well except for one thing: why is Mrs. Jeffries always portrayed with completely grey hair when the books state that her hair has some grey in it? (I think her hair is auburn, but this isn't my computer, so I can't check.) I know it's a minor thing, but the artist is otherwise so close that it's a shame to have that mistake. I've suffered the aggravation of buying books with covers that have nothing to do with the interior so I do appreciate the fact that this artist has put some effort into the assignment.

In short, if you like cozies, you should try Mrs. Jeffries out. You'll probably want to get them all. Ann E. Nichols

In Victorian England, many individuals are cruel and abusive towards the servants they employ. Inspector Gerald Weatherspoon treats his employees as his best friends. In return, they adore him. The staff has many London contacts so when the inspector is involved in a murder investigation, they help him. Led by his housekeeper Mrs. Jeffries, his staff gathers information and clues, and expeditiously presents them to Gerald in such a way so that he believes the ideas are his. Thanks to his servants, Weatherspoon is one of the leading inspectors.

Mrs. Jeffries and her sprightly crew spring into action once again when Roland Ashbury is murdered while apparently sharing tea with his killer. Weatherspoon and his invisible assistants discreetly learn that the victim was disagreeable person with many enemies including his business partner, daughter, and son-in-law (an MP). When Roland's wife is also shot, the investigative team knows that time is of the essence before someone else is killed.

Thirteen (as in the thirteenth book) is not an unlucky number for fans of this long running and delightful historical cozy series. Emily Brightwell makes sure that her characters remain fresh and interesting while the story line remains as absorbing as previous novels in the series. The historical detail gives a gothic feel to MRS. JEFFRIES TAKES THE CAKE. Even after all these years, this collection remains one of the best English cozy series on the market today.

Harriet Klausner

In Victorian England, many individuals are cruel and abusive towards the servants they employ. Inspector Gerald Weatherspoon treats his employees as his best friends. In return, they adore him. The staff has many London contacts so when the inspector is involved in a murder investigation, they help him. Led by his housekeeper Mrs. Jeffries, his staff gathers information and clues, and expeditiously presents them to Gerald in such a way so that he believes the ideas are his. Thanks to his servants, Weatherspoon is one of the leading inspectors.

Mrs. Jeffries and her sprightly crew spring into action once again when Roland Ashbury is murdered while apparently sharing tea with his killer. Weatherspoon and his invisible assistants discreetly learn that the victim was disagreeable person with many enemies including his business partner, daughter, and son-in-law (an MP). When Roland's wife is also shot, the investigative team knows that time is of the essence before someone else is killed.

Thirteen (as in the thirteenth book) is not an unlucky number for fans of this long running and delightful historical cozy series. Emily Brightwell makes sure that her characters remain fresh and interesting while the story line remains as absorbing as previous novels in the series. The historical detail gives a gothic feel to MRS. JEFFRIES TAKES THE CAKE. Even after all these years, this collection remains one of the best English cozy series on the market today.

Harriet Klausner

Though I did not walk away from this book feeling that this book is the best so far or that it had all the answers, it was a great source for building knowledge and insight into how to handle the stressors of blending families. One can never believe just how stressful times can be with your wonderful children and with the new spouse that you love and have married...it is so hard to understand how these good people just can not get along. The plus to this book is that is goes into what it is like to begin dating after divorce, planning the marriage and a great insight into situations that will SURELY happen. It's kinda like childbirth....one thinks they can handle it...I am strong...I won't need special technqiues to get through it...well...look out...you are not that special..grin. In addition to a great therapist....this book will be a welcomed addition to your support system.

This author has lived the experience and speaks from a very deep well of collected wisdom. The Vishers have been involved in helping step families for over twenty years. Any family who has transited divorce and is now being reorganized through remarriage can benefit enormously from this work.

A must-read for anyone struggling with step family issues.I first bought and read this book over ten years ago when I married a man with 2 teen-aged children. I am certain that the advice saved our marriage - and I gave the book to one of my friends to successfully assist her with her step-family issues.The Vishers successfully identify the core issues, problems, and trouble spots inherent in step-families. They offer sound advice and solutions that work. They also explain typical scenarios and situations that arise in these trying step family environments - and again they suggest sound and viable solutions that get postitive results.

This is a good book but can't say it "blows the stagnant 1950s" away (there were exposes before PP and after so it would be a stretch to say that it affected the 1950s in any way!) That being said, there's another book that PP fans should read (if you can find it: Girl from Peyton Place) and is a bio of Grace written in 1964 before the tv series premierred and after her death. Very good! One thing to say about PP it was the first popular nighttime soap (One Man's Family from the 50s aside) that had all of us talking the next day on our way to work about what those:"depraved people were doing in that dirty little town!" Anyhow, good to see someone taking an interest in this subject as the book and its movies and tv series' were cultural icons of the mid 20th century.

Grace Metalious said that she highly doubted if anyone would remember the title "Peyton Place" after her death. Sadly, she died in 1964, from alcoholism, less than ten years after Peyton Place was published. Emily Toth's biography is a fascinating and compelling story of how two women (Metalious and publisher Kitty Messner)rocked the publishing world with a book that many publishers scoffed at, and dismissed as trash. Toth reveals how timing and crafty publicity tactics started a sensational buzz about a book that was ripe for America's stagnant and sterile 1950's. It broke all records for book sales up to that time, and held that spot for over 10 years. The financial success was liberating yet highly troubling for Grace. It led to a broken marriage, several unhappy afairs, tensions with her family and a fatal addiction to alcohol. Once Peyton Place took off, it had a life of it's own. Although it was continually associated with Grace, she had no control over the popular movie or sensational television series. Grace Metalious was independent, outspoken, and certainly not a conformist. She broke all the rules, succeeded, yet paid a hefty price.

I picked up this book and thought it would be some old fashioned boring novel, I was verry surprised the book was sensational, I could not put it down. I am now reading Return to Peyton Place and am equally impressed. It is as current as any book written today. All things don't change.

I was very impressed by this book. A book has to have characters that hold you, and make you feel right along with them... this book certainly does the job. An excellent read for the book lover that doesn't want to put the book down.

I am 15 years old. I wanted to read this book because the story sounded like a good book. And I was right. It was a real page turner. I gave it 4 stars because it was a school project and I didn't get the chance to finish the book.

This book grabbed my attention within the first 5 pages. I never once lost interest and actually held my breath the last chapter. I recommend this one to all readers!

How I would have loved knowing Mrs. Whaley beyond the pages of her books. She has the most deliciously charming perspective on a world gone by and presents her recollections with a spirit right at home in today. She's observes with pithy candor and humor and reading her nuggets of advice is a real treat. Besides, the recipes look marvellous--and very Southern.

I enjoyed "visiting with" Mrs. Whaley again, although perhaps not as much as in her gardening book. When reading, you feel as if you are sitting in front of her, engaged in listening to stories about Charleston, her past, and her family, and about making guests feel at home. I don't think the recipes will take the world by storm--most are variations on old favorites. But you pick up tidbits about entertaining and the relaxed southern style. This book and/or her gardening book would make wonderful gifts, and would be perfect to tuck into a gift basket along with some other items. It is the kind of book you want to pick up when you've had a hard day or have a rainy afternoon to enjoy!

This book made me want to revisit Charleston again. I loved the stories (I have not read this author's gardening book) and the recipes sound not only delicious but easy to make as well.

Oh to grow up in a time where there are servants everywhere and the family stays close together. It made me yearn for a time that is no more.

Actually I'd give this book two and a half stars if I could, as while the romance between the principal characters is engaging, the subplots involving the minor characters left me with the feeling that that I had somehow missed several key pages somewhere along the way. This book needed some careful editing, and I really wished that Emily Hendrickson's editor had done his/her work a little more carefully!

Regina Hawthorne is a rather beautiful young woman, with a respectable dowry and the right kind of family connections. With all this going for her, she should be one of the Season's success stories. Instead of which she is currently the object of a lot of unkind gossip. For a couple of weeks, Lord Torrington has been paying some serious attention to Regina, and everyone in 'society,' Regina included, expected Lord Torrington to propose fairly soon. Instead, Torrington suddenly drops Regina, and rushes off to propose to his first love, Katherine Talbot. Where did Regina go wrong -- that is the question on everyone's mind. All this speculation leads to Regina being labeled "Rejected Regina" and to a well known rake, Lord Wrexham, propositioning Regina. Rather than retreating to the country in defeat though, Regina decides to stay in London and face her detractors. Her stance earns her the admiration of another rake, Lord St. Aubyn. His sister had faced a similar jilting, but she had ran away from London, and now leads a life of seclusion in the country. The beginnings of a scheme comes to St. Aubyn's mind: he will help Regina face her detractors, and hopefully restore her to her proper position in society, if she will in turn help him with his sister.

Will St. Aubyn's scheme work? Lord Wrexham for example does not take too kindly to St. Aubyn's interfering with his plans for Regina. And as for Regina, she knows not what to make St. Aubyn or her responses to him: why is she quite frequently ripping at him when he has been so kind? She only knows that St. Aubyn's smile causes a havoc of emotions in her and that she could quite easily succumb to it, and that she should guard herself against any further heartache like falling in love with a man who sees her only as a friend.

"The Rake's Revenge" is primarily a good read. The chemistry between Regina and St. Aubyn is palpable and believable. However there are also several subplots/romances involving other characters, and this is where this novel becomes a little unsatisfactory. One romance subplot involves Regina's younger sister, Pamela, and St. Aubyn's younger brother, Thomas. We are told that they've fallen for each other, and in the following chapter they have a falling out, which leaves Pamela ripe to fall for Wrexham. It looked as if the Pamela-Thomas relationship was just a conduit to give Pamela a bruised heart, and so make her vulnerable to Wrexham's machinations. However, I think that the plot would have been stronger without Thomas. Pamela is just young and naive enough to fall for Wrexham without giving her bruised heart as a reason. And then there is the constant harping on why Torrington dropped Regina. Halfway through the book, it looked as Emily Hendrickson had resolved the matter, and in a way I found realistic and refreshing. So I was really surprised when this question resurrected itself again towards the end of the book, and for no good reason!

I enjoyed reading about Regina and St. Aubyn, but found all the other subplots very distracting, they just seemed to get in the way. And this is a shame because "The Rake's Revenge" has the potential to be a really good read if only the subplots had lived up to the promise of the main story line.

Jules, Lord St. Aubyn, knew of the scandal surrounding Regina Hawthorne. Lord Torrington had led Regina and all the Ton believe he would offer for her. Instead, he jilted her and claimed another. Through no fault of her own, Regina's class status had been lowered. One "gentleman", Lord Wrexham, even made her an offer that any lady would take offense to. Jules admired Regina because she did not run off to hide in the country, as his own sister, Lady Amelia, had done two years before when confronted with the same scandal.

Jules approached Regina and offered to help her wade through the rough time. Lord Wrexham was not finished with Regina though. He vowed to claim her even if he had to threaten to seduce her younger sister, Pamela, to do so!

***** A lively romp through the madness of yesteryear's London Society! Author, Emily Hendrickson, pens some of the finest of today's Regency Romances! Recommended reading!

Jules, Lord St. Aubyn, knew of the scandal surrounding Regina Hawthorne. Lord Torrington had led Regina and all the Ton believe he would offer for her. Instead, he jilted her and claimed another. Through no fault of her own, Regina's class status had been lowered. One "gentleman", Lord Wrexham, even made her an offer that any lady would take offense to. Jules admired Regina because she did not run off to hide in the country, as his own sister, Lady Amelia, had done two years before when confronted with the same scandal.

Jules approached Regina and offered to help her wade through the rough time. Lord Wrexham was not finished with Regina though. He vowed to claim her even if he had to threaten to seduce her younger sister, Pamela, to do so!

***** A lively romp through the madness of yesteryear's London Society! Author, Emily Hendrickson, pens some of the finest of today's Regency Romances! Recommended reading!

I don't doubt that it's possible to enjoy Emily Dickinson's poems in editions like this. But you should be aware that you are not really reading what she wrote. You are reading what earlier editors _wish_ she had written - a sort of 'tidied-up' and regularized version, the badly tampered-with-text of a genius by those who weren't.

In a way, the situation is a bit like the one that prevails with regard to food. Would you rather eat natural food or genetically modified food? Maybe the modified food doesn't taste any different, but it might be doing harmful things to you that the author of real food never intended. So why take a risk when we can have the real thing ?

There are two major editors who can be relied on for accurate texts of ED's poems. These are Dickinson scholars R. W. Franklin and Thomas H. Johnson. Both produced large Variorum editions for scholars, along with reader's editions of the Complete Poems for the ordinary reader. Details of their respective reader's editions are as follows.

THE POEMS OF EMILY DICKINSON : Reading Edition. Edited by R. W. Franklin. 692 pp. Cambridge, Massachusetts : The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1999. ISBN 0-674-67624-6 (hbk.)

THE COMPLETE POEMS OF EMILY DICKINSON. Edited by Thomas H. Johnson. 784 pp. Boston : Little, Brown, 1960 and Reissued. ISBN: 0316184136 (pbk.)

For those who don't feel up to tackling the Complete Poems, there is Johnson's abridgement of his Reader's edition, an excellent selection of what he feels were her best poems:

FINAL HARVEST : Emily Dickinson's Poems. Edited by Thomas H. Johnson. 352 pages. New York : Little Brown & Co, 1997. ISBN: 0316184152 (paperbound).

Friends, do yourself a favor and get Johnson's edition. Why accept a watered-down version when you can have the real thing?

This book is awesome! Everyone should buy it.

This is a superb edition of Dickinson's poems. It is "reader friendly" with updated punctuation (which purists may not like) with an excellent selection. The Billy Collins introduction is outstanding, being highly informative and entertaining without any pretensions whatsoever. He adds great insight into Dickinson's use of common meter, language, metaphor, and other techniques. Grab a bottle of water and an apple and spend a great afternoon or two with this exceptional volume.

"The Soundscape of Modernity," is the title of Emily Thompson's book. However, it has little to do with soundscapes or modernity and everything to do with the less-sexy sub-title (in very small print), "Architectural Acoustics and the Culture of Listening in America, 1900-1033."

Despite the author's attempts to re-define R. M. Schafer's meaning of "soundscapes," she fails to connect the thrust of her exposition to the more resonant and common significance of the term and thus obscures and distorts the meaning of both the term and concept. The author confines her discussion to changes of the performance, creation, and perception of sound in our culture during the first third of the last century due largely to the engineering and construction of interior architectural spaces and related supporting technologies. Unless one can successfully bestow on the interior of Boston's Symphony Hall or the Radio City Music Hall the rational equivalent of soundscape (aural) as landscape (visual), one cannot expect to make the transition and apply the term "soundscape" to the acoustic result of those designs with any authority. It simply doesn't fit. The book, in the end, speaks nothing of soundscapes as they have come to be understood in the arts and sciences, but addresses, instead, architectural acoustics and the technologies that drive and/or enhance them. While the text is readable and historically loaded with informative discussion on the transformation of architectural acoustics, it is not consistent with the expectations contained in the title of this book.

I bought the book because the title suggested an illumination on the manner in which soundscapes - human and natural - changed during the first three decades of the 20th century. It delivered, instead, a very different, misleading, but nonetheless instructive narrative. As my interest in the work was more along the lines of that anticipation, I was somewhat disappointed especially because the book is so expensive.

Thompson focuses on the role of modernist tendencies in the construction and commodification of the auditory culture of America in the early twentieth century. She looks not only at the science of architectural acoustics but their linkage to the new recording technologies and general changes in the aural landscape of New York and elsewhere. We discover the completeness of the modernist retreat from the world into skyscrapers which had among their attributes the ability to silence all the outside noise of life. Thompson displays how the perception and creation of sound is absolutely coupled to a culture and its historicity. By doing so she links herself to the great French historian of the senses, Alain Corbin, who wrote Village Bells and allowed us to rediscover the sounds of the eighteenth French countryside and the culture that created it. To read a work written in such a provocative and entertaining way is a wonderful experience and to have such an experience with a book that centers around a topic as possibly dull as architectural acoustics is doubly impressive. As more talented historians are "coming out of the woodwork" and lending their abilities to the study of aurality our picture of the world past is quickly becoming a more vivid and less silent one.
Secondly, I fell the need to criticize one reviewer's critique. One, though F Murray Schafer may have helped create a new field of study and generated concern for a the loss of a particular kind of soundscape I think criticizing an entire book because you have a semantic disagreement about the title with the author is slightly ridiculous. Thompson states her differences with Schafer in the first couple hundred words. If it was that upsetting, just take the book back. I personally find Schafer's writing quite lacking in theoretical vigor and drawing on questionable statistical evidence. Secondly, Thompson does in fact go well beyond just discussing the technical "progress" made in the field of acoustics by looking at the reasons that a culture would look to alter its sound in the first place.
A fantastic book. I hope she writes more.

Those invited to read an academic book on acoustics might well decline because of a headache, or an urgent need to wash the cat, or the constant press of quality daytime television. It would be hard to convince them that such a book could be exciting, or even interesting, especially if it weighs in with the heft of a textbook. But a remarkable work by historian Emily Thompson, _The Soundscape of Modernity: Architectural Acoustics and the Culture of Listening in America, 1900 - 1933_, ought to be enjoyed by non-specialists and those who know nothing about the science of acoustics. Thompson has written a comprehensive, well-referenced, but witty and entertaining book about an important subject whose influence is surprisingly pervasive.

Thompson briskly reviews acoustic history; before this century, listeners knew there were better auditoriums and worse, but no one really knew why. To create a new venue for the important Boston Symphony Orchestra, the architect consulted a young Harvard assistant professor of physics, Wallace Sabine, who may be dubbed the Father of American Acoustics. In 1895, Sabine had been asked by the president of Harvard to improve the terrible acoustics of the lecture hall in the new Fogg Art Museum. In studying the problem, Sabine learned that the important thing to measure within a hall was the time of reverberation, the dying out of sound echoing through the room. This seems obvious now, but was the founding insight for all subsequent acoustical thought. He developed an equation relating the absorbing power of the room and its furnishings to the reverberation time. When Boston's Symphony Hall opened in 1900, the acoustics were an overwhelming success with critics. There were carpers who gradually dissented from the praise, but the musicians and the audiences became familiar with the sound, and its reputation remains high. Making beautiful sounds is but one aspect of acoustics treated in Thompson's book. Chapters are also devoted to the shielding from ugly sounds which the machine age was producing. Legal remedies for noise were largely unsuccessful, but there were brilliant successes in architectural use of sound-absorbing material to keep out the din. Movies changed the way auditoriums sounded, and making them presented its own peculiar problems. They had to have their camera sounds deadened and their studio lots coated to damp echoes, and the air conditioning (necessitated because the noisy carbon arc lighting had been replaced by quieter but hotter incandescent) had to be acoustically insulated from the production.

Thompson ends her fascinating study with the Radio City Music Hall, a progeny of the new electroacoustic science. The hall was designed for the capture of sound by stage microphones and the projection of amplified sound into the highly absorbent and cavernous hall. The system worked very well, but ironically, although the audience could hear every speaker as if they were close to the stage, only those physically close could see with equal clarity. Live spectaculars failed, and the hall became a white elephant, playing mostly movies that people could see cheaper elsewhere. But the theatrical amplification of sound became a standard; as the century wore on, theaters were designed to be "tunable" to sound gothic, baroque, or modern, without one "best" setting. The soundscape we have become used to will continue to change, but Thompson's volume, full of clear, small essays and biographies, and cheerfully laced with humor and unobtrusive puns, is an insightful description of the origins of the sounds of the future.