A great book that gives rare insight into Swazi culture and life in rural South Africa. Having lived in the area as a school teacher and a researcher, I enjoyed the innocence with which Jason re-created and shared his impressions and experiences.

Jason's immersion in the language and culture of poor rural South Africans is admirable. He clearly "goes native:" identifying with "the Blacks" and uncomfortably, judgmentally, dealing with Westerners and South African Whites. The brilliant twist in the story comes when Jason struggles to come to terms with South Africa's Black elite. He's the rugged, White bushboy reaching out to victims of apartheid who are now more like American yuppies than real "Africans."

I also appreciated his attempts to reveal the differences in experiences that Black (like me) and White Americans often have in South Africa. Interestingly, Jason's feelings about race in America affected how he perceived South Africa, and his South African experienced revised his sense of US race relations.

Definitely worth reading, along with James Hall's Sangoma!

Jason Carter's account of his two years in the Peace Corps was an easy, comfortable read. I was captivated. Thanks to Jason Carter and National Geographic for sharing this important experience about a nation in transition. Few have commented on the poignant introduction of Jason Carter's grandfather which concentrates on President Carter's own mother, Lillian Carter, and her own experience in an Indian village in the Peace Corp when she was in her 70's and at a very different time in the late 1960s.

Read this book to learn about Ubuntu which is a philosophy of life that Jason Carter found to be thriving in the Swazi. This approach to people and thus community is held out as a core strong hope for the South African native culture. This book is well worth reading. I have not stopped thinking whether Ubuntu is possible in our country or not. Let's hope it is not too late...we need it!

Being a huge U2 fan, I read everything about them that I can get my hands on, but I gotta say I was kind of disappointed with this particular U2 book. It's mainly a collection of interview sound-bytes taken from other sources. If you want an awesome U2 book, go read U2 At the End of the World by Bill Flanagan. The Road to Pop is more of a general U2 history book, and lacks any kind of "insider" feel. If you follow the band at all, none of the stuff in this book will be news to you.

Carter Alan's Road to Pop takes an extensive look at U2's career from their infancy in Dublin to the recording of their first album, Boy, to their first tour of America through their last album at the time of the book's re-release, Pop. It is a fascinating look at a band who is never at a loss for words.

It is not often that a reader gets an in-depth look at one of the greatest bands in the world through the man responsible for introducing them in the United States. Carter Alan's book takes the reader through 17 years of relationships with the band. The book is based off various interviews and general views of the media towards U2 through out the years. This is a MUST-HAVE for all Carter Alan fans.

while the poems are not horrible, there really isn't much that is spectacular about carter's poems. they are regional poems told in a simple voice, you can almost hear carter's voice. still, i think he needs more time to work on his poetic skill. the illustrations were nice, i think that carter's granddaughter has a future in illustrating children's books.

Our world has more bad poetry than it has cigarettes. Poetry is either so recondite that it is no fun, or else it is so personal to the author that it is irrelevant to the reader. Carter's poems, though, attain profundity through simple exposition that is not overly personal.

Carter, of course, is not a professional poet or anything like that. But I enjoyed his poems more than most of the mainstream poets I have read. This all confirms my theory that great artists are simply great people who do art.

I read Jimmy Carter's book of poetry, ALWAYS A RECKONING, with the simple expectation that the poems would be heartfelt and tell stories from his life in plain, down-to-Earth prose. I was stunned to find myself moved to tears with the very first poem, "Rachel," which was dedicated to the memory of the neighbor woman who cared for Jimmy after his folks were gone. In a few short pages, Jimmy had succeeded in describing what was so special about those days with Rachel, and how important she truly was in his young life.

Other poems in ALWAYS A RECKONING are laugh-out-loud funny, such as, "Progress Does Not Always Come Easy," which describes the trials and tribulations Jimmy Carter underwent when he successfully passed his first legislation (ensuring that deceased citizens lose their voting rights), which turned out to be quite unpopular in every precinct with a cemetery!

ALWAYS A RECKONING is a rare gem of a book that gives readers a sense of the inner beauty of Jimmy Carter's heart and soul.

I find Body Reflexology to be very useful in my massage practice. The language and concepts are plain and easily understood. The case histories are extremely interesting. An excellent reference for anyone curious about how reflexology works all over the body, not just hands or feet.

This is a great book if you have a desire to help yourself feel better. I have ordered about 15 copies in the last 6 months for family members and friends. When someone tells me they have pains I tell them how to relieve it. At first they think I'm nuts. Then they do what I tell them and when the pain goes away they want a copy. I have enjoyed the practice of making myself feel better and you will too with this book. Enjoy the book and the good health that goes with it. To your health. Judy

Of course, I used to laugh at all those new age jerks who were studying horoscopes, chakras and reflex charts. However, being pretty desperate about my health, I decided to give Mrs. Carter's book a try - what could I lose, anyway?

Though I found out that reflexology will not work wonders, ie. bring immediate complete healing, I was suprised to see that it had indeed some beneficial effects on my health. I had really bad digestion problems. Massaging the stomach and colon reflexes provided some very quick relief and my digestion is actually improving slowly. I also had slight potency problems, so I started to massage several sex reflexes. I have noticed an obvious improvement in my sexual performance. I have also noticed that massaging the heart reflexes provides some very quick help. I haven't yet noticed any results with my eye problems. I still have lots of work to do with my health, but Mrs. Carter's book gave me a pretty good start.

It was an excellent idea of Mrs. Carter to include other kinds of advice than just reflexology in her book . For instance, she introduces a yoga exercise for instantly curing a sore throat. It doesn't heal your throat completely in an instant as Mrs. Carter claims, but sometimes it's still a great help.

Of course, this book is no substitute for your brains. If you'd take Mrs. Carter's advice dead-seriously, you'd have to spend 24 hours a day massaging your reflexes. Her book seems to be directed on retired persons who have nothing to do all day long anyway. She also prates very much about God, love etc. Please don't let this keep you from reading this wonderful book. Forgive the old lady her little weaknesses. This book is so good that a few flaws that are in it aren't really disturbing at all.

Soon after I started reading this novel and read the descriptions of the clothing being worn by the characters I started to wonder whether all of them were Liberace impersonators. I mean what with all the frilly shirts and outrageous jewelry, and then I had to remind myself that this was published in 1966, the prelude to the Summer of Love. It was Angela Carter's first novel, originally published with the title Honeybuzzard. She was only 26 years old at the time and that can explain many of the failings of the book.

As Shadow Dance opens, we are introduced to Morris, a part owner of a antique/junk store who spends most of his days looking through deserted houses. He encounters Ghislaine, a young and beautiful girl. Well, she's not beautiful anymore. She has a long scar on her face that looks like it has never healed where someone mutilated her with a knife. The official story was that a gang raped her and then marked her like that. In reality, the whole town believes that Morris' business partner and friend, who goes by the name of Honeybuzzard, actually did it and has gotten off scotfree because Ghilsaine still loves him. Coencidentally, Honeybuzzard arrives back in town with a new girlfriend in tow. Morris will have to face up to what his friend has done (if he really is his friend), deal with his worn down marriage, and decide if he can be his own man in the process.

I liked Carter's style in the book. She is a master of description and metaphor and is very sensual. You can visualize her writing very easily. The problem in this novel comes down to characterization, namely, that of Honeybuzzard. All of her characters are strongly written except him. Honeybuzzard comes off at one point as slightly gayish man lacking all morality to a preening and giggly girl to a brutal psycho. We're never able to quite believe the over the top nature of the character. At times I expect him to do a fat Elvis routine. Carter made the character androgynous to a fault. Whether this was intentional or not, I don't know. I could go on and on about the failure of this very important character which renders the book silly, goofy, and self-destructive but I won't. Carter was just starting here and very few first novels hit on all cylinders. It's worth reading for a fan of her work but a general audience would probably be wasting their time.

This novel is a peripheral view of monsters. One monster being Honeybuzzard, the nasty showy boy who routs through abandoned buildings and takes girls for granted. And the other is the once beautiful girl who has been horribly disfigured and looms in the background of much of this novel as a threatening figure. We see this through Morris, the good-natured but morally corrupt man who tends to mix himself up in trouble. This book introduces a lot of the central themes Angela Carter works with in her later novels. What is truly poignant about it is its setting in the counties of England in a place Carter will depart from and never return in her worldly travels of fiction. Although all of her fiction is concerned with the ways in which women are perceived and treated by society, this novel is the most concerned with an awareness of the violence which accompanies the feminine. The monsters are, as always, really storybook characters, the big bad wolf chasing little red riding hood. But, again like always, under Carter's hand they are not so plastic as that. Each character is innocent and guilty, virtuous and corrupt, powerful and weak. It is because we hold within us these binaries that we are human and so sympathetically related to all the characters of the fairy tales because we have the capacity within us for extreme emotions. Honeybuzzard says: "I like - you know - to slip in and out of me. I would like to be somebody different every morning. Me and not me. I would like to have a cupboard bulging with all different bodies and faces and choose a fresh one every morning." The identities that people wear shift constantly and if we aren't attentive to the way in which they change we will be damaged. The mystery of this novel is not the morality of the terrible deformation of the woman, but whether she is truly beautiful or ugly. And, of course, she and we are both.

"Shadow Dance" is purportedly an atypical Angela Carter novel. It isn't about a make-believe world of magic and fantasy that's ruled by freaks and half humans but starkly rooted in the crumbling order of lower class society in an unnamed English town where bloody minded beatniks, thieves and loafers are the dominant human specimen. Carter's first novel is boldly contemporary, dealing with issues confronting a society that's undergoing a radical change of values and throwing its inhabitants into a perpetual state of anomie, where the old sits uncomfortably alongside the new. Hence, you have poor old Edna driving Morris bonkers with her resident martyr act which only serves to unleash the lurking cruelty beneath the subterranean of his mind. Contrast this with Emily's ruthless and singleminded focus on the here and now. Honeybuzzard's criminal instincts and his lack of moral centre is both frightening and damning in its implications for a society still finding its new equilibrium. Even Morris, Honeybuzzard's alter ego and quite the only character with any conscience at all capitulates and abandons his quest for justice. "Shadow Dance" is an impressive first novel by the celebrated Carter. Her heady and razor sharp facility with words lends that extra zing to this coming-of-age tale of cruelty. It won't be long before I tackle one of her later works which promises to be different but equally entertaining.

Every designer I knew often thumbs through the big "annuals" such as Graphic, the New Art Directors Annual, One Show, AIGA, etc. These books all show great new work that is often the inspiration for just the idea that one is trying to generate.

Creativity 29 ranks with the best annuals available. Yet, it is different from the others. How? Look through all of the other annuals (I buy ALL of them, every year), and you see a lot of the same work. The same agencies and design firms seem to have their work in all of the annuals. And - many of them are in Creativity as well. But Creativity has one big difference: each year, the Creativity Annual gets entries from 40 or so countries around the world. So, there is a global influence that doesn't appear in most of the other annuals. Another big difference for Creativity is that you can find work inside from places in the United States where the "New York" annuals don't seem to now exist. Who would think that one of the best design firms in the nation is in Seattle? Who would expect to find great creative work coming out of Phoenix? Creativity regularly has great work from more than 30 states. This is work - world class work - that simply isn't seen in the annuals with what some see as a "New York bias." If you want inspiration on creative ideas literally from all over the world -- Creativity 29 is where to find it. In addition, the printing and production quality are first class. Better still, Creativity's price is far better than the other major annuals.

There are perhaps 7-8 really good "annuals" that show great creative work. The Creativity Annual stands out from the rest in that it doesn't just show work from New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles. This 29th Creativity Annual includes work from 40 countries around the world, and from many places in the United States.

The result is that you will see work in the Creativity Annual that you won't see anywhere else. The good annuals all serve a similar purpose, and that is to show what's new and fresh in the advertising and design world, and to give creative people a "springboard" for their own ideas. This Creative Annual is full of fantastic, cutting-edge ideas. If you get only one idea from this book, it's a steal.... Not only is this a great book, it's also a bargain.

Another outstanding and informative piece from the team at Creativity. An array of clever advertising and tasteful design solutions brought together into one exhilarating publication. A perfect reference guide of ideas and inspiration for the student or practicing professional.

The story appears interesting but is plagued by overemblellishment of the language and infatuation with the dictionary.
Having come from the background the author uses for his story (High Energy Physics, research labs, grants and academia) and sharing some of his thoughts and fears, I found the notion compelling. Alas, the lassitude caused by the lack of measure in how far a sentence can be carried before stupor ensues, tired me out at page 75. Long sentences - a page-and-a-half long sentences! - without proper punctuation, meant to match the carelessness of badly constructed speech turn irritating after a while. Long, multi-person dialogs without proper indication of who says what are confusing. And speech snippets overheard during the beeline departure of the protagonist from a party (two-page-long fragments of non-sensical sentences!) are infuriating: you read them hoping for a ray of purpose to only find the meaninglessness of the whole thing.
Bottom line, opt for the Cliff notes of this book as the story may be good but the story telling is awkward and irritating.

Radiance, if you didn't know better, could sound a lot like a Tom Clancy novel (man works at nuclear lab, man finds invalid data, man blows whistle, etc.) but nothing could be further from the truth. This book is all about the prose.

Reading previous reviews of this novel, you may be lead astray. The story here is quite well developed, and Scholz's obvious knowledge of the Nuclear/Defense community seems quite valid. But the story is told more as a pseudo-perspective of a data-stream mind. Characters come and go, relationships come and go--some quite rapidly. But even though this is a tale of manipulation and dominance, it is its lyrical content that makes it worth reading.

However - while the story keeps its grip through the unique story-telling, it seems labored and, at times, taken too far. I had to read some pages a few times because the stream-of-consciouness riffs actually made me drone out.

It's worth reading, and worth noting Scholz as a writer who not only shows great promise, but may define a new style in the upcoming years.

The novel takes place in a Department of Energy laboratory somewhere in California. The laboratory had been working in nuclear weapons research but with the end of the cold war it must find new missions to justify itself and keep the funding coming. The physicists who work there find themselves getting away from science and into politics and becoming more and more disillusioned. Every day they have to fight their way through protestors to get to work. And the protestors also find themselves disillusioned, getting nowhere. That is the plot in a nutshell. But the author executes it with intensity, energy, and a painful probing of the human spirit.
Scholtz has a remarkable style--a kind of acoustic reality, I would call it--in which conversations are reported exactly as they sound, without quotation marks, words broken off, sentences broken off, hard to tell who is talking. The effect is like wandering into a large crowd of people and being inundated with fragments of speech. It is like actually being in the story as opposed to being told the story.
I must say this was not an easy book to read, and I would not like to read a book of this intensity very often. Nor is there a happy ending to lighten things up. The characters are complex but dark, idealists who have lost hope in their ideals, searching frantically for something (or someone)to believe in, but never finding. A dark, painful, difficult book, but well worth reading!

When I saw this book, I liked that there was a number in the title and the @ thing too. But when I was reading it, most of the words weren't numbers. Some of the pages were pictures and I liked those ones the best. I think that if you wanted this book, you should get it. As someone who had a hard time in high school, making friends etc., I found this was a good way to think back on it all. I'm not sad anymore because of them.

I recently read Help for ADD at High School by Kathleen Nadeau. There were many pieces of advice that were new to me and other things that my parents and tutors had taught me before. The advice that I had heard before, I have used during my years in high school. These simple tips are how I survived and passed every single one of my classes. I could tell that when Dr. Nadeau wrote this book, she understood the people who would be reading it. Usually when I read information books, I get bored and distracted easily. This probably has alot to do with my ADD. Dr. Nadeau remembered that the reader of this book, like myself, probably has ADD. In writing the book, she made a special effort to make sure I didn't loose interest. The content of the book helps students to understand their obstacles and teaches them how to overcome them. I would recomend this book to any high schooler who has ADD, it will truly help you through your difficulties.

This book was very helpful to both me and my teen. The information is presented in a very clear, teen-friendly and organized manner that's easy to read. It made me aware of what issues I should be discussing with my teen with ADD and gave me suggestions I can make that are helpful. This book also gave my teen insight into typical struggles and solutions that he's dealing with as a result of living with ADD. From basic information about how to know if you have ADD to social and school issues, this book covers all areas of concern in a user-friendly, straightforward and practical manner.

I spent months trying to gather information from the web about integrating services (MTA's, Samba, Radius, etc) with an LDAP server. This book gathers all that information into one well written book. It also covers basics which are surprisingly hard to get straight answers for on the web.

It pretty much exclusively talks about implementations using OpenLDAP. This was fine for me since it's what I'm using, but keep it in mind that not all information will be correct for your LDAP server (ACL's for instance)

I really wish I had this book when I started implementing LDAP. All the other books I bought wasted hundreds of pages talking about theory and developing applications for LDAP. This is the first book I've found that actually talks about USING LDAP.

Some sections feel a little unfinished. It could be a bit more detailed in areas and more discussion of the bumps you'll hit in an actual implemenation.

Even with the books minor problems, this book will pay for itself in the time it saves you from having to scour the web and mailing lists for answers. You'll still occasionally have to resort to the web and man pages to fill in the gaps. Hopefully the second edition will be more detailed.

Anyone that has attempted to integrate LDAP with services such as Email, NIS, Samba, Printing, etc. knows how sparce the documentation on the Internet is, if you are lucky enough to find it. This book does a great job of describing how to implement LDAP and make the most of it! The author has a concise and easy to read style that makes for a quick read. If you are using or plan to use OpenLDAP, this book is a must. If you want to integrate the previously mentioned services with LDAP, even if not with OpenLDAP, this book is still very valuable.

This book is great! It covers using LDAP for user authentication and other configuration information as well as for data like phone directories. If you've not tried LDAP before, the book includes detailed information on installing OpenLDAP and configuring it. I'm already using LDAP, and I was happy to find some of the more obscure topics demystified by the author (for example, replication and SASL interaction). This book is for system administrators, not for programmers, and will turn you into the local LDAP guru in no time.

Are there really still mothers who insist their daughters wear pink and force them to do ballet? I bought this thinking it might celebrate girls who enjoy doing both team sports AND dance (like so many girls I know DO), but this presents it as an either/or choice. It's great to encourage girls to do the team sports, but is it really necessary to tear down the other pursuit? My 6 year-old daughter was very disappointed. Baseball Ballerina Strikes Out is a better choice, though it doesn't really deal with dance, but the conflict is about handling teasing. We won't be re-reading it.

My daughter loves her dance classes, but she also likes to play rough and tough with her four brothers! Baseball Ballerina is a fun story that shows a girl it's okay to enjoy it all! An easy read for bedtime or anytime. We are looking forward to Baseball Ballerina Strikes Out!

I loved this book because that girl loves baseball but her mom doesn't like the baseball. The girl goes to the dance and she picks the crown and everybody applauded.