I am writing this review as a brand new, "fresh out of the bag" teacher in their first post. If there was ever a single book that enables you to survive through teacher training and during your first teaching post THIS HAS GOT TO BE IT!
The techniques may appear to some slightly "off the wall" but they work! The book is a source of insiration and comfort, and one that I will treasure upon my bookshelf.
To the author, words cannot express just how much help this one book has given me. Thank you - on behalf of my students and myself.
This book is not 5 STAR its 55 STARS ...

Two Parts Textbook, One Part Love is a wonderful book! I rarely the same book twice, but I fully intend to re-read this one in the future. It is very difficult for me to put it down, and I know I will be sad when it ends. I am a student who is preparing to become a teacher, and I have found that the advice in this book is very helpful. I will definitely share it with all of my friends who are already teachers as well as my friends who will become teachers. I began reading this book before I saw the movie Dangerous Minds. I also love the movie, as well. This is the first book by LouAnne Johnson that I have read, and I will definitely read all of her other books.

My favorite thing about this book is the way that Johnson uses her sense of humor to illustrate her points. I have often found myself bursting out in laughter in the middle of the night because I have thought about some of her stories. Whether you are a teacher or even if you are just thinking about becoming a teacher, I urge you to purchase this book.

I'm a first year teacher who was assigned this book for an Ed. course in college, and ended up buying her own copy! I love it, and have just started re-reading it in preparation for next school year. Why do I love it? Johnson is honest, her approach is no-frills and realistic, and yet she inspires and shows true commitment to her students. This book points out things you would never think of considering before stepping into the classroom, yet should. Johnson practically covers everything you need to know, and instead of telling you exactly how to be a cookie-cutter version of herself, she offers ways to take the way she does things and make them your own. This book is a real eye-opener, and should be taught to every new teacher before stepping into the classroom. Thank you for this book, Mrs. J! :) Laura (lilpace@aol.com)

Ibn Fattouna flees around the world, living in all sorts of political systems, but all systems fail because of war.
Magnificent political parable, exemplified by the tragic destiny of one man and his household.
A masterpiece.

It is a wonderful masterpiece as 1984. Great comparison of cultures! You get more than what you pay for it.

A counter epic, the story centers around the "there" but not the "back again". As I read it, when Ibn Fattouma goes from place to place in search of Gebel, he learns all sorts of things - mostly tolerance. Sure all the places seem like a what would could be modern day places, it boils down to Ibn Fattouma trying to find that all illusive "Heaven" or "Nirvana" or "Shangri-La" - What is the true illusion? That it does not exist? maybe. Anyway, his experiences with Arousa is a wonderful metaphor as the everyman. Places like Mashriq, Haira, Halba, Aman and Ghuroub we get a chance to see outrselves and the ridiculous ways that we organize ourselves. In short, it is a story of discovery. It makes me think of the futility of a search for that perfect place. Where does he center his perfect place? Guess you will just have to reaqd the book. it is the only piece of Mahfouz that I have read and I am not surprised to learn that he was awarded a Nobel Prize.

Miguel Llora

I enjoyed reading this book because anyone can relate to it. There are always "real" stories in each chapter which is an excellent way to describe what the writers are trying to emphasis. "Absolute Honesty" is also a wonderful book for women. Many times women find themselves in situations where they want to be honest, but are extremely uncomfortable or fear they won't be listened to. "Absolute Honesty" has great ideas on how to approach people allowing them to be sincere without the fear.

Recent corporate scandals have shaken confidence in leadership and the ethical underpinnings of the business world. Without significant change, we risk increasing problems in the years ahead. It's time for leaders to step forth, declare a commitment to ethical performance, and set the example.

"Absolute Honesty" tells it like it is, and like it must be. Johnson and Phillips, management consultants who have been inside and seen how things work, have produced a powerful tool. This easy-to-read book emphasizes that no one argues against corporate integrity, but some executives need support on HOW to apply the principles. Readers of "Absolute Honesty" will learn how to build the right kind of cultural infrastructure.

The authors argue that too many companies adhere to what they call "the Kumbaya Syndrome---embrace all decisions, no matter how stupid or unethical; smile and sing the company campfire song." It's too easy to just go along, and confronting or fighting superiors or The System is frowned upon.

The alternative is to apply their Six Laws of Absolute Honesty: Tell the Truth, Tackle the Problems, Disagree and Commit, Welcome the Truth, Reward the Messenger, and Build a Platform of Integrity. A chapter on each of the laws explains what needs to be done, with effective supporting material including advice, anecdotes, and a style that makes the whole process comfortable and acceptable.

The book is organized into three parts. The first part, The Challenge, includes chapters on The Naked Truth and A Culture of Absolute Honesty. These 52 pages set the stage nicely for the rest of the book. Part 2 presents the Six Laws, with engaging detail. Part 3 is aptly entitled "Where Do We Go from Here?" The final two chapters discuss building an ethical infrastructure and Key Points to Help Your Implementation Efforts. Lots of good, practical advice here. The book concludes with Notes and a good index.

You'll find this book to be a disarmingly fast read. There's a personal sort of feeling that draws the reader into the subject and keeps the flow moving. This book is one you'll keep in your office-for reference and to send a message to all who enter.

Absolute Honesty is not a book for the faint of heart. It takes courage to bring integrity to work. It takes commitment to long term, sustainable success to build a corporate culture founded on honesty. If you value this kind of courage and commitment, this is the book for you. It is practical, with loads of examples of what it takes to be honest at work, the obstacles that prevent us from being honest, and tips for overcoming these obstacles. These stories and examples come from genuine organization experience - no irrelevant academic theories here. The Six Laws of Absolute Honesty are a clear and compelling distillation of a complex bundle of information, and the last chapter on implementation is solid and helpful (and too often missing from corporate culture books).

And - especially rare in books of this genre - it is very well written. Practically a page turner!

Following a year in which Time magazine's "persons" of the year were whistle blowers who risked their careers and reputations to tell the truth, this is a timely and important book. Strongly recommended for everyone who cares about ethics in the workplace.

Yes, it's a classic. Yes, every computer scientist MUST own it. But enormous significant progress has been made in the field of NP-completeness (and computational complexity more generally) in the two decades since this book was published. An up-to-date edition -- which would probably be well over a thousand pages long -- has been badly needed for years.

I first read this book while researching heuristic techniques for reaching "good enough" solutions to the Travelling Salesman problem. "Computers and Intractability" was a breath of fresh air. It was as rigorous as any mathematical treatise, but written in a way that even a non-math major could understand. If you ever want to know why computers are so buggy, you'll know the mathematical reason for this within the first few pages of this book. By the time you reach the end, you'll never trust cryptography to absolutely, without a doubt, keep data secure for long, if at all.

I think every computer science student should read some of this book to learn about complexity theory and the notions reducibilty and completeness. Moreover, you may come across a problem that you have to show is NP or P complete, and the examples in the book provide a good model for doing so. Papadimitriou's book on complexity is also a great place to learn more about the subject.

Chester B. Himes wrote a series of "Hard Boiled" detective novels set in Harlem during the the 1950's and 60's. His two main protagonists were "Coffin Ed" Johnson and "Grave Digger" Jones, a couple of black police detectives operating in the seedy underworld of Harlem and New York City. Himes himself had served time for armed robbery in Ohio. While in prison he first read the works of Dashiell Hammet("The Maltese Falcon","The Thin Man",etc.)and decided that he could write similar fiction set in Harlem's vibrant African-American culture. He moved to France after his prison release and then began to write (in French!) his own brand of mysteries set in the New York City section that had become world famous for it's culture, nightlife and intellectual renaissance. The first of these mysteries was "A Rage in Harlem"(first published in French as "For Love of Imabelle" in 1959). Coffin Ed and Grave Digger were only minor characters in this first novel, but by the time of the 5th novel "Cotton Comes to Harlem" they were the stars of the series.

In "Cotton..." a ex con named Deke O'Hara scams $87,000 from a group of families who want to go to Africa to start a new life free from segregation and prejudice. Before O'Hara can abscond with the money a group of white gunmen steal it in the middle of the "Back to Africa" rally O'Hara is hosting and then escape. All this takes place in the first few pages, and the action only steps up the pace from that point on. Cotton Ed and Grave Digger are assigned to the case, and their brand of brutal, violent police work may not be always legal, but they have their own code of honor, which demands that they do all in their power to see to it that the families get their money back, as in most of the cases it amounts to their life savings. Through a maze of deceit and treachery filled with white supremacists, voluptuous women, scam artists, underworld informants, and real to life street people the two cops thread their way with both violence and guile. I won't spoil the ending, but suffice it to say that Himes delivers.

The book was made into a movie in 1970 which played up the humorous aspects of the book. While there is much mordant and cynical humor in Himes' writing, the book is much more than that, and deserves a place in the "Hard Boiled Detective" Hall of Fame. If you like this one I would recommend Himes' other works, especially "The Real Cool Killers".

A definite 5 stars.

... The book doesn't concern Bible Flowers. It's about the efforts of two black detectives, "Grave Digger" Jones and "Coffin Ed" Johnson, to recover $87,000 in money stolen from a con-man/storefront preacher in 1960s Harlem. Along the way, Grave Digger and Coffin Ed encounter a few murders, a southern colonel, and a 50-pound bale of cotton.

Raymond Chandler wrote that detectives must walk the mean streets, but they must not themselves be mean. Well, Grave Digger and Coffin Ed walk the mean streets just fine, but the "not being mean" part gives them trouble; they doubt the feasibility of solving a case without, say, slapping around a few witnesses or firing a few shots into a crowd. Despite the detectives' unhesitating brutality, this novel compares well to the best of Raymond Chandler and Robert B. Parker. This is due not only to the spot-on dialogue and the stark, vivid character depictions, but also the detectives' uncompromising determination to bring justice to Harlem. The plot is better, i.e., less predictable, than any of Parker's, and Himes's depiction of 1960s Harlem is so bizarre, yet compelling, that it invites comparison to Carl Hiassen's Florida rather than Chandler's LA. Add to this Himes's unique, excruciatingly honest depiction of race relations in the 1960s, and you have one of the best detective novels I have read in years.

...

The dialogue, the action, the characters, it's Harlem world and it's all here! What else do you want?

'Culinaria - The Caribbean' is a big, wonderful book on the cultural and culinary sides of the Caribbean. Readers will be treated to a visual tour from Bermuda to the Netherland Antilles and many places in between: The Bahamas, Haiti, Dominica, and more.

This is a great coffee table book with enough recipes to tempt you to keep it in the kitchen. The photography throughout is absolutely beautiful. But be warned: After purchasing the book, you'll probably want to see your local travel agent. VERY tempting! Enjoy.

Both my parents are from the West Indies (Barbados & St. Vincent) and I have seen a lot of cookbooks about the Caribbean. This was the first book that provided SO much detail and the pictures where so life-like. It transports you to the island with pictures rich in colour and recipes from every island. I loved this book so much that I got one for my mother!

I brought the book in my home island Barbados, I am very impress. It taught me all about the Caribbean, culture and taste of my fellow West Indians. It also encourages me to visit the other Caribbean islands. It is must for every-one to have.

This program only does certain things... it's mostly made for electronicly-based music. It IS possible to import organic sounds and mix it together but that is NOT its long suit.

This book gave me some in-depth info that I couldn't get from the help menu, basics on synths and effect... had little tutorials on how to make crazy sounds.

I recommend.

Reason is a software program for making music, typically (but not necessarily) with an electronic or techno style. The program features synthesizers, samplers, a drum machine, a loop player, a mixer, and a wide range of effects, and is the REAL THING -- lots of professionals use this software on a daily basis, and the quality of the sounds are excellent. This book is currently the only intermediate level book available on the program; Craig Anderton's "Getting Started" text is really more of a basic beginner's introduction.

Johnson and Poyser's book is excellent. The chapters are well-written, cover all the features of the program, and contain lots of insightful comments. I've been using Reason now for almost two years, and working through the book really helped me to take my understanding of the subtleties of the program to a new level. You'd have to be one awesome power user to not get anything out of this work! Especially nice are the applications: after a discussion of how some component works, the authors then describe a little project in great detail so that you can actually use the technique to make some interesting sounds. These tips are a great addition to anyone's bag of tricks, and (in my opinion) are alone worth the price of the book.

If you're just getting started with synths and computer music, you should bear two things in mind. First, there's a lot of technical information about how synths & samplers etc. work, and if you're not familiar with these concepts then you might find the whole subject of working in Reason a bit daunting. In other words, if you learn how to modulate your filter cutoff with an LFO, but you don't know what a filter cutoff is or what an LFO does, the information does you little good. The authors do try to discuss this, and since I already know this stuff it's hard for me to really determine how it works for a complete beginner, but it's just something to be aware of. The other caveat is that the book is very thorough, and while that makes it great as a reference you might find it difficult to see the forest for the trees, especially if you're just starting out.

In summary: if you're completely new to making music on your computer and/or the technical world of synths and samplers, you might want to invest in the "Getting Started" guide by Craig Anderton just to get rolling. But if you're at all serious about developing your Reason chops, Johnson and Poyser are a must-have.

You simply can't record vocals with Reason. Its a virtual effects and synths rack. If you want to add vocals or record audio such as your guitar you need a DAW such as Logic or Digital Performer...

Not a bad story, not a great one either! My six year old son liked it, the illustrations are very bright and colourful.

What! Cried the Granny is a charming tale about a boy and his first sleepover at his granny's house. Granny tells him to go to bed and he tells her that he doesn't have a bed over at her house. So she makes him one. Then he doesn't have a pillow, a blanket, a teddy bear, etc. The resourceful and loving granny takes the time to make each of these things for her grandson so that he can have a pleasant night's sleep.

We were first introduced to this book at story time at the library and just loved it so I had to buy it for my 3-year old nephew, who adores it, as do his older brothers (5 & 7 years old). They laugh every time that we read it to them and never seem to tire of granny's astonishment that she isn't ready for her grandson to sleep over. The illustrations are charming and the writing is easy enough for younger children to understand, but funny enough that older children will enjoy the grandchild's clever ploys to stay up longer. This is a great read aloud book and gives the parent/grandparent/teacher lots of chances to use inflection and different voices. A great addition to your own book collection that your children will treasure for years to come!

It is the best book I have ever seen, kind of. It is my second favourite. I like when she makes the big giant teddy. I like the name. It's easy to read. And at the end it's day time because it took her all night to get everything ready.

A great title and great unofficial advertising on Emeril Live. But it could have been much more diverse. I relize that was not the point of the book. But there had to be some recipes that people comonly made but were not creole. I guess I would have liked one or two exotic recipes.

My mamma's a Crochet, I am Catholic and my husband and I can each make a roux. I, also, am Cajun, know Marcelle and can attest to the authenticity of the recipes and accompanying stories. Many try to capitalize on the Cajun food craze, but few are the real deal. The only thing better than the recipes in Marcelle's book is enjoying them with she and her husband over dinner from their kitchen.

Although I wasn't raised in Lousiana, I love the food, and I love this book. The home recipes and the family memoirs are too good to put down, in the kitchen or the easy chair. If you only buy one cajun cookbook, buy this one.

First let me say I am a New England Patriot fan.

Overall, this book was a disappointment. Nevertheless, any Patriot fan will find reading the book interesting and essential to get the inside story of the 2001 New England Patriots.

Starting with the book's shortcomings:

1. Very little attention is paid to most intriguing element of the 2001 team - the ultimate replacement of Drew Bledsoe with Tom Brady. Johnson gives very, very short shrift to this key story of the team. Maybe, being a coach on the team he was afraid of going into the kind of detail that appears in journalists' account of the relationship between Bledsoe, Brady, Belichik and the team.

2. There's too much I I I in the book. I didn't want to hear about Johnson's coaching philosophy or incidents that occurred specifically to him. I wanted to hear about the team.

3. It does a poor job of building drama and excitement. It has a very bland and unadorned writing style.

4. Not necessarily a shortcoming, but there are very few X's and O's talking about plays and play calling, as well as in-depth coaching philosophies.

Now why you should read it:

1. The book does a good job of walking the reader through the entire season in segments and has even greater detail on the playoffs and Super Bowl and preparations leading up to them.

2. It clearly demonstrates the importance of teamwork and less high profile players on the team for this particular squad to make the playoffs and win the Super Bowl.

3. It gives the reader a glimpse into the day-to-day life of NFL coaches.

4. It allows fans to re-live the 2001 season.

I loved this book. I hate to read but found that this book was just what I was looking for. I have never been more excited to read a book in my life. I am a big New England fan and so wanted a book to bring the whole champion experience out for me. If you are a hige Patriots fan this bookk is for you!!!!

WON FOR ALL:
The Inside Story of the New England
Patriots' Improbable Run to the Super Bowl
Pepper Johnson with Bill Gutman.
...(256p) ISBN 0-07-
140877-0
After losing three of the first four games in
the 2001-2002 season, the New England Patriots
roared back to finish the year with an 11-5 record
and completed the surprising turn-around by
beating the St. Louis Rams in one of the most
exciting Super Bowls in NFL history.
Johnson, who played linebacker for 13

years, joined New England as an unpaid liason
in 2000 and was the inside linebackers'
coach during the championship season. Although
Johnson does reminisce about his
playing days (particularly his years with the
New York Giants), he gives a first-rate account
of the Patriots' transformation from a 5-11 team
in 2000 to Super Bowl champs the
following season. Johnson, writing with Gutman
(Parcells: A Biography), picks up the story
at the end the 2001-2002 season, then backtracks

readers from training camp through
the Super Bowl. Along the way, he describes
how head coach Bill Belichick created a winning
team by weeding out players who did
not fit his playing style. Johnson does a terrific
job of bringing readers into the Patriots'
locker room as he discusses strategy about
each game while also providing an insider's
perspective on various members of the team;
an especially compelling chapter deals with
a week in the life of an NFL coach, illustrating
the pressures coaches face each week in
the season. Patriot fans will no doubt enjoy
this recap of the Super Bowl run, as will fans
who want a glimpse of what goes on behind
the scenes in professional football. (Nov.)