Very easy to use in a multitude of settings. a great cue for all those physical findings that appear infrequently. Hope a 3rd edition comes out soon!!

Very quick reference, has its place in any medical bag. Also a crammable study guide prior to Physical Diagnosis course examinations.

I knew there would be a sequel to The Dragons Tapestry!! I also loved this book. It is up there with the other great books. When it ended I was upset. I wanted this book to go on forever.

Why of course...This book is a truly great sequel. I can't wait til the last in this trilogy is out. To think of a place so grand, characters so developed and a language so descriptive, what an imagination. Reading it inspires thought. Her "Songs of the One Mother" should be a book in itself.

This historical biography is terrific! It paints a beautiful picture, both in illustration and in words, of the life of Katharine Lee Bates. Her story is captured brilliantly in the pages of this book and I recommend it to children and adults of all ages. The illustrations are simply gorgeous and the story coincides perfectly. Be sure to look for the "hidden flag" on the first and last pages! A definite must-have for any story collection.

Purple Mountain Majesties is one of the only books I have read that delightfully combine history, information, story telling, and beautiful pictures together. And this has been done in such a way as to make this book enjoyable to read by any one of any age. Barbara Younger brings Katherine Lee Bates and here poem America the Beautiful to life for us. And sometimes we need reminders of just how beautiful America really is! Hats off to Barbara and Stacey for quite an excellent book!

I use Puzzle School with my younger students to help them sharpen their visual perceptual and problem-solving skills. Puzzle School provides a colorful and fun way to learn needed skills.

Our 8 year old son finds the Puzzle Books Series fascinating. They keep his attention for hours. He loves trying to figure out the solutions to the puzzles. The illustrations are very well done with vibrant colors. We found our 8 year old son reading them to his 4 year old sister last night. She loves them too! Maybe next year our four year old will be reading them to our two year old. Thanks for a terrific series.

Where was this book when my kids were smaller?! This is the resource I wish I'd had then. Every parent, or anyone who spends time with kids, should have one. It's complete, fun, and indispensable.

Ever wondered where to go, with or without kids, for fun in the greater South SF BAy area (San Jose / Santa Clara region, 5 counties)? This handy little book has all the answers: attractions, sports & rec, parks etc., music, b'day party ideas, beaches, free & rainy day activities...you name it! The perfect resource for teachers, GS leaders (field trips), parents, grandparents (got the kids for the weekend?), etc...anyone who likes to explore and have fun. It even tells you if you need special clothing, or reservations, or water bottles...they've thought of everything

Three of my favorate personal development books are The Power of Positive Thinking, Think and Grow Rich, and The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. Now I have four. Self-Wealth restates some time proven self-development principles combined with alot of very inciteful new material. This is a book you can't put down, and I know I got more information from my second read. Great stuff!

When I was in my early twenties I bought my first "personal development" book, written by Anthony Robbins. Little did I know this would start a long journey of studying self-help litterature, listening to motivational audiotapes, and even attending a few inspirational lectures and seminars. Now, with all that I've read and all that I've studied, I must say that Self Wealth has probably had the most profound impact on me to date. And I say this even though it's been less than a week since I finished the book! Maybe it's because the timing and the message was right for me just now. Maybe it's the result of the book's powerful simplicity.. In any case, I really feel like "I got it!" Honestly, this book really tied it all together for me and I am sure it will be a tremendous asset for anyone. No matter what your background, occupation, age, sex or location may be, this book can really help you change, reach your goals and live more abundant and balanced lives. I know this without a doubt... Still, YOU need to USE the principles and ideas that are presented. In Self Wealth you will also find tips and excercises to help you do just this. Again, it's simple, it's easy and it's practical. It is all this and more... It's one GREAT, GREAT book!

If you are looking to catch big fish and get inspired about fishing streamers, this is the book for you. As the author states, when big fish stop eating little fish, a steamer might not work. An excellent history of streamer patterns, methods of tying and methods of fishing. A must for both the present fisherman and the angling historian. A classic!!!! Far better than any streamer book currently on the market.

Bates has an enjoyable teaching style. He teaches how streamers work, how to select them, and the techniques for fishing them through fictionalized accounts of anglers interacting over a several day period.

This is the most comprehensive reference on classic streamer patterns you will find, with great tying instructions. His history and research are outstanding too. If you're interested in streamers and bucktails, for any kind of fish, you can't go wrong with this book.

If the book has any fault, perhaps it talks about Maine a little too much, but hey, that's where streamers and bucktails really come on. (At least according to Bates!)

I didnt want it to end. I had this book done in three days and when I was done I burst in to tears. It was such a dramatic ending.I sortof wish she'd right another.

This book does not let the reader down in any way. After reading the other two of these books one can only be sad that it's over. Way to go Martine.

The day I learned of Richard Lowe's publication of the diary and letters of James C. Bates I ordered the book. I read Bates' diary and letters first then re-read the entire book. I was fascinated! In his letters, Bates reveals his feelings much more often than most Civil War soldiers. I have often wondered how he survived such a dreadful wound. His description of forcing a tube down his horridly damaged throat would make anyone cringe. I knew a descendant of James C. Bates had the major's Civil War papers, but I had no idea where to find that person. This book is a valuable contribution to the history of a band of brave and dedicated young men who deserve recognition. Their brigade, made up of the First Texas Legion, the Third, the Sixth, and the Ninth Texas Cavalry, is the only Texas cavalry brigade to serve east of the Mississippi. They were transferred from the TransMississippi to Corinth in April 1862 and remained in the Confederate West to the end of the war. In the Official Records they were known as the Texas Cavalry Brigade and later in the war as Ross's Cavalry Brigade. I have a special interest in the Ninth Texas Cavalry and would have paid a large ransom for Lowe's book a couple of years ago. I am elated to add it to my library. My mother remembered two uncles, Reuben and Jesse Rogers, who served with the Ninth. Her stories and a few old family records started my research on the regiment ten years ago. In January of this year Avon Books published my book about the Ninth and Ross's Brigade - All Afire to Fight - The Untold Tale of the Civil War's Ninth Texas Cavalry. See Amazon.com for description and reviews of All Afire to Fight.

In our family my great aunt was the keeper of this rare piece of glass pressed into a frame, not even as big as a deck of cards. It was the likeness of my great-great grandfather, a supposed captain in some Confederate unit, captured in an ambrotype, a primitive form of photograph. I peered at him as a child as he proudly gazed back at me from more than a century ago, his hat flamboyantly cocked, beard prominent, and pistols visible at his waist.

We never knew what the war was like for him, the details of his life blurred by a sketchy oral tradition: Didn't know what he thought about the cause in which he was engaged; what he thought about his fellow soldiers; about the Union; about his family. We didn't know why he came back home to Arkansas, so we were told, in the middle of the war, only to die. Had he been wounded or taken ill? Had he deserted, or just walked away on a long odyssey home, as Charles Frazier's Cold Mountain soldier had?

These past few days, though, have offered a vivid and authentic picture of how life must have been for my forebear. Richard Lowe, Regents Professor of History at the University of North Texas, pulled all the strands of that world together in this book.

Captain, then Major, then Lieutenant Colonel Bates' letters and diary entries, along with Lowe's invaluable geographical markers and chronological waystations, give us a true picture of the trials -- physical, mental and emotional -- that must have weighed heavily on those young men in the maelstrom of war.

Bates' own psyche tilts at the eternal and epic questions of Everyman's life and death throughout the book. In some letters, the young Bates playfully teases his future wife Mootie. In others, the darker hand of war and combat color his mind. His lightheartedness with Mootie stands out against the grisly accounts of terrible battles and revenge. In one he reports that his men "set a good many" former slaves who had gone over to the Union side "to stretching hemp," a euphemism for hanging.

As Bates' letters and diaries continue throughout the war, his own accounts of rumors brought into his camp and his joy at optimistic accounts of victories reported leave us pitying his soul, for he knows not yet of the war's inexorable grinding on the Confederacy. Lowe's ample and informative historical notes and charts force us to twist privately in our seats as we read, unable from this vantage point to even vicariously enlighten or encourage Bates in his travels and battles through the Indian Territory, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Tennessee.

Bates would hear of nothing to dampen the spirits of the Confederate cause, evidenced by a letter to his sister, a scalding scolding, after she had written to him a particularly depressing letter. "Why all this gloom," he asks. "You permit your imagination to conjure up a thousand dangers & difficulties & causes for trouble that have no existence in reality." Then, after a tub-thumping sermon on reasons for bearing up under the strain: "Make an effort to appear cheerful at all times - and making the effort to appear so will soon really make you feel so."

Bates' optimism bears up even when he contemplates continuation of the war after the fall of Vicksburg and Atlanta.

Analyses of the deeper reasons for the conflict pepper Bates' writings, based many times on his reading of letters and papers captured from Union soldiers. Then, as if it is all a joke, he relates a story of how the belligerents, negotiating in 1861, came to terrible disagreement over which side would take Mississippi. Abraham Lincoln, who in this tale really didn't want anything to do with Mississippi, reluctantly offers to take half, then precipitating the war, since the South could not bear to have only half. Bates despised Mississippi. On his second trip there, he was obliged to admit that his Confederate troops were treated better than before, the locals having got a dose of the Yankee medicine since his last visit, a medicine which he felt had taught them to respect the presence of their own Confederate troops.

Bates' use of American slang still rings true in the ear today, with his talk of having the "blues" from time to time, but his prose is undeniably pristine and proper. His take on the ineptitude of Confederate leaders is poignant and his analysis of politics is deadly sharp.

Possibly while on a visit back home, he, like so many soldiers in other conflicts, left a code with his friend Mootie, which allowed him to pass along information to her which could have compromised the troops' mission have it been general knowledge. Lowe includes the two instances of the code in use, along with a facsimile of the actual key used in deciphering. How exciting and intimate it must have been to think of passing along privileged information along to his future partner.

Bates also follows the lead of many other soldiers, finding God, or "taking religion," after his brush with death and subsequent injury. He assures his mother that if he were to die, he would be reunited with her one day in the heavens.

The war for Bates ended with his inability to return home for a while. He spent time wandering Mississippi, in all likelihood working through events that changed him from a young innocent to a vengeful, physically shattered man.

Bates was lucky enough to have survived a minié ball wound to the mouth, and lived a productive life for some time after the war, unlike my "Captain," who died before the war was over. Even so, I, and many others who may have wondered about their forebear in their own carefully passed-along photo, now have something to go on, something that reveals the real world of a Confederate soldier, the hopes, the joys, the wrenching twists of morals and psyche.

What do Aristotle, Charles Darwin, opposable thumbs, and sacred cows have in common? They each appear as important elements in Professor Graber's delightful and engaging essay on why liberal education solidly retains its mystique and value into the present era. By keeping the prose lively and brief, Graber has produced what may be the most approachable book on the topic. In fewer than eighty pages, this book provides a thorough introduction to the basic shape of the centuries-long debate regarding the relative value of humanistic education and places the question in the larger context of evolutionary anthropology.

The argument that ultimately emerges is appealingly simple, and goes well beyond the oft-repeated cliché that the value of a liberal arts education is that it teaches students to think clearly and independently. In fact, the book begins with a general admission that "it is difficult to see any way in which the study of logic or mathematics would be superior to that of electrical wiring or television repair." What parent does not inwardly groan (at some level, admit it) when their son or daughter declares a major in Art History or some such "humanity"? Graber finds the ultimate value in "useless knowledge" precisely in its definition as useless, and hence set apart for protection from our ancient evolutionary impulses to select and reproduce only that knowledge which has obvious, immediate, and practical application.

Whether or not Graber's readers come away agreeing with the thesis, Valuing Useless Knowledge is a gem of practicality. It should be required reading for students, faculty, and parents involved in any way with institutions of liberal learning. The argument is never heavy-handed and always stimulating. As Freshman Week begins to introduce students to the array of expectations and complexities in college life, a reading and discussion of this book might provide the best orientation of all: a common starting point on which to begin a rigorous reflection on all human endeavors, sacred and profane.

On a personal note, I first encountered this book while studying the liberal arts as an undergraduate. I recently reapproached it as I have been considering a return to the university for graduate study in law and social work. Each reading triggered a different but significant response, and revealed for me a lasting relevance in this compact book.

This book begins with a provacative thought:

"The liberal arts may be defined -- impishly, but accurately nonetheless -- as essentially those areas of knowledge in which practical-minded parents hope their children will not major. 'But what are you going to do," they cry, "with a major in ______?'"

In this well reasoned, eighty page treatise, Graber sets forth an argument for valuing a Liberal Arts and Sciences education in a material world of "get it all, get it now." For those who have read the Carnegie Foundation's Boyer Report you'll nod your head as Graber takes you to the importance of an education based on a broad appreciation of many disciplines and the ability to create, reason and communicate. He concludes that it is acqusition of the "tools" and their use more than the ever changing facts and knowledge that builds a strong foundation for life and work.

This book made a significant impression on my son as he opted for a smaller, lessor known college focused on quality undergraduate education in the arts and sciences (Truman State University) rather than a half-dozen larger, comprehensive universities with huge reputations, impressive athletic teams, but invisible faculty and undergraduate indifference.