I wish this book had been put together a long time ago. It's a very useful service to researchers. When doing research for my own book "Mr Jefferson's Academy, The Real Story Behind West Point" (now, "West Point"), I went through the books available on John Adams/Thomas Jefferson, but found I had to resort to the original documents. It took a massive amount of time. That's one of the reasons my book took several years to complete. This book could have saved a lot of time, and can do the same for any reader or researcher. It's not only comprehensive, but also, well written. If you're interested in an in-depth read on Thomas Jefferson, I recommend this book. (To get a closely packed distillation of Thomas Jefferson, my own book has a biographical chapter that has been distilled from what could easily have been hundreds of pages of opinion, interpretation, and speculation to 40 pages of facts. The rest of the book is gleaned from what he, himself, read!)

I agree with the reviewer who wrote the book about West Point who said this book is a service to researchers. Why it's a magnificent research tool. I'm using it copiously at this time for a scholarly work I'm on sabbatical to work on.

What a joy it is to read the correspondence between two of America's greatest founding fathers. Through this collection of letters we begin to get into the minds of men who created and shaped this nation. We read of their dreams, expectations and fears for this new nation as well as typical correspondence between friends. That is when they were talking to each other. When the two men weren't, Abigail continued to write Jefferson to try and heal the breach. My favorite letter is from John Adams to Jefferson to tell him to stop writing his wife. This is a book for anyone who loves the human side of history and enjoys getting to know the real people behind the legends. I first read it in college, and then spent ten years trying to find it again. Now that I have, it will never leave my bookshelf.

This book is the best. Covers A to Z for water resources engineers and even lets you get familiar with some powerful software too.

This book covers everything from A to Z for water resource engineers and lets you also take some state-of-the-art software for a nice test drive too.

This book should be on every engineer's shelf.

The content is amazing the included software is extremely useful, Haestad Press has hit the mark with this text/software combination.

Written with great clarity, "The Strategy and Tactics of Pricing" is a phenomenal book. It begins with an explanation of strategic pricing, and proceeds to cover competition in the market place, segmentation of buyers, pricing and the marketing mix for industrial and consumer goods, as well as the psychology of pricing. Also covered are models for determining price sensitivity, implications of sales staff price setting and negotiation, and finally, legal aspects of pricing.

After reading this book, you will understand the pitfalls of pursuing market share at all costs and common mistakes businesses and sales people make when setting or negotiating price. You will view your current pricing structure and strategy in a new light, and be able to spot the weak spots. You'll have a better picture of how to attract the right buyers, those that can be served profitably.

The book indirectly touches on topics covered in Co-opetition, and Thinking Strategically, as well as elements of the Theory of Constraints (see Eli Goldratt's "The Goal" and "It's Not Luck" or "Management Dilemmas" by Eli Schragenheim)

I can't recommend this book highly enough. As for the other reader who states:

"After reading this book, I was able to talk circles around the $20,000 "marketing consultant" we were considering."

believe it, it's that valuable!

For anyone involved in business this book gives very practical advice on not only the methodology for pricing new products but also changing the strategy of one's existing pricing policy.

Look for a sustainable competitive advantage, maximise contribution margin, concentrate on value and profitability and then market share will follow are some of the key philosophies contained in the text. Concerning the value of this book, it is worth the price alone just for the chapter on costings and formula for calculating what level of sales a company can afford to lose/must gain after a price increase/decrease in order to break even.

A common complaint about business books is that they are all OK in theeory but contain little in the way of explanations of how to implement - this book however offers not only theory and case study examples but also practical instructions on what needs to be done to improve pricing strategy. Overall very, very impressive and a must read for anyone involved in finance, sales or marketing functions. As someone has already said these guys really know their stuff and it works!!

If you sell ANY product or ANY service and your competition reads this book before you do, watch out! You absolutely MUST get and read this book. It's LOADED with solid, meaty real world techniques that can really help you. You will probably find this book a real eye opener. It will help you make wise pricing decisions and show you unexpected ways to save your business from what could otherwise be failure. Don't let the price tag keep you from getting this book. It's worth many times its modest price. Get it, read it, and profit from it.

Christmas so often disappoints us. And why not? How could it ever live up to the sappy and maudlin presentations it suffers so often on TV, in the movies, even in commercials! Along comes Dylan Thomas (well he came along a while ago) and captures elements of the holiday that we can still live today. There is a town shut up against the cold with the occasional hardy soul braving the elements. There are families, rich in generations, sharing a day punctuated more by the telling of tales than the exchange of gifts. There are children overcoming their own fears of the unknown to give "Good King Wenceslaus" to a spectral figure behind a closed door. And there lies, on the final page and in the final line, an ending that captures all of what is best in the holiday and, maybe, what is best in all of us. Granted, until you hear the poet himself read this work, you will never capture the full effect, but you will come close. And you may be more ready for Christmas than you have ever been before.

Dylan Thomas' 'A Child's Christmas in Wales' in it's second print for generations has become an enchanting, simple poetic tale captured in the eyes of a child. The language is delightfully entrancing and the poetry shines with a heavenly radiance. Thomas' style captures an adult's warm memory of a holiday-season that reflects presents, good things to eat, and when it was just right, white blanket of new snow with all it's wonder and the mischief of snowball battles and any exaggeration that moves that will spark the imagination of a child.

This second edition of Thomas' magical tale is lavishly illustration with old-fashioned, scratchboard-like engravings by Fritz Eichenberg. Dylan Thomas was born in Swansea, Wales in 1914. He began writing poetry at a very young age and published his first book, '18 Poems' at twenty. From 1943 until his death he broadcasted his own radio talk program on BBC. He read poetry selections, participated in table discussions, and read dramas and essays. His voice became familiar with Americans in the 1950s during his lecture tours at American universities. He had achieved an admirable audience for his poetry. Besides this book and his poetry his other most widely read works are 'Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog,' 'Quite Early One Morning' and his play, 'Under Milk Wood.'

'A Child's Christmas in Wales' is Thomas' most fine work of art-with it's human quality, touching sentiment, easily understood presentation and child-like wisdom that gives Dickens' 'A Christmas Carol' a second glance at holiday tradition. After all we can all find a child in Christmas in all of us.

Dylan Thomas' imagery and prose invoke the secular feelings of Christmas like no other book. His floating word-pictures are both vague and precise, inviting the reader's imagination to fill in the blanks. Thomas creates the sensations of memory--blurred, idiosyncratic, and suffused with impression:

"There were church bells, too"
"Inside them?"
"No, no, no, in the bat-black, snow-white belfries, tugged by bishops and storks. And they rang their tidings over the bandaged town, over the frozen foam of the powder and ice-cream hills, over the crackling sea."

Fortunately, the dreamlike imagery never weighs down the book. Instead, Thomas wishes only to convey the warmth, humor, and imagination of his childhood Christmases in Wales. Although this is great modernist literature, it is completely unpretentious and can be enjoyed by all ages. The book seems longer than it is, perhaps because Thomas' depictions linger warmly after one reads about the Christmas fire, the smoking Uncles and drinking aunts, the presents ("...and a celluloid duck that made, when you pressed it, a most unducklike sound, a mewing moo that an ambitious cat might make who wished to be a cow"), the dinner, the caroling at the large strange house where "the wind through the trees made noises as of old and unpleasant and maybe webfooted men in caves," the music, and the soft bedtime.

These episodes are generally no longer than a page each, but they graft onto our own memories--or would-be memories--of what Christmas could or should be like. In sum, it's a pleasure for the both the intellect and the senses, an unsentimental yet warm treat for both young and older audiences. It's one of the truest--and therefore most satisfying--Christmas books you'll ever read.

I agree with previous reviewers that Watson's story is amazing, but I do not believe that Maney execution of this book is that good.

I think that this book would have been a much better read if it was 250 pages. One of the reasons for the extra length is that the author decided to deviate from simple chronological order. Instead, Maney attempted analytical/descriptive biography, but, in my view, did not fully succeed.

I came away from this 400 page book with mixed understanding of what sort of person Watson was and what, besides the IBM culture, were his business methods and innovations.

Overall, the book did not flow, the organization of some of the chapters was not intuitive and the chapters on Watson's sons were short. I can not quite call the book disapointing, but I can not say that it was a great experience.

If IBM and computers are synonymous, so are Watson and IBM. Whatever the criticisms and the controversies surrounding the 3 magical alphabets in blue, IBM is IBM. To build such a company from ground up, offering solutions to business and scientific computing and thereby acting as the catalyst for the process of economic progress during the most part of the twentieth century is by no means an ordinary feat. That was exactly the material Thomas Watson Sr was made of. Watson has done his job and done it well and now Kevin Maney completes the rest by bringing this story in a truly remarkable manner to our bookshelves.

It is difficult not to fall in love with Watson Sr and his beloved company even half way through the book. From his humble beginnings to the misfortune at NCR, for nearly forty years Watson Sr is just another story of struggles, ups and downs. But to him, life just begins at forty with his job at CTR and of course the birth of Tom Watson Jr. The birth of IBM and its growth under the paternalistic care of Watson Sr through depressions, wars, booms and uncertainties gets a lion's share of coverage in this book. Watson Sr took big business risks bordering on a propensity to gamble, pushing IBM into higher orbits. Luck is the word the author takes recourse to while describing these successes.

The next logical part of the book deals with the succession plan at IBM that is a story by itself. Father, Son and Co by Tom Jr is widely quoted in these pages. The father's affection for his sons Tom Jr and Dick, his struggle to reconcile their differences and the frequent fights with Tom Jr are very close to what Tom Jr himself has described in his book.

The chapters on transformation of IBM into the era of electronics under Tom Jr and the trust suit that had a severe personal impact on Watson Sr deserve commendation.

While reading the pages where the old man bids goodbye to IBM and to this world, I stood up in salute to this great man.

I've generally not been a huge fan of business biographies...they can get very much bogged down in transactional specifics and company arcana, not to mention shoot-from-the-hip hindsight. This Watson biography, though, is very different and exceptionally engrossing, for two reasons: One, because Maney, whose USA Today columns are pretty much always highly entertaining, is a terrific storyteller, and two, because it seems Watson was nuts enough to have stenographers in his boardroom and all kinds of other meetings so as to preserve his words and wisdom for the ages (not something today's Sarbanes-Oxley-bound CEO's are hurrying to do!). Maney took that source material and turned it into what I found to be a very interesting page turner that's a great read for anyone interested in the history of business -- any business, not just IBM.

Maney spends a fair amount of time explaining how Watson had large early-career successes at NCR, got into very deep yogurt with the feds for anti-trust activities, and then bounced back from that taint to create the world's first great technology company. It's also fascinating, given our three year old economic malaise, to see how Watson steered IBM through the Great Depression and powered it forward into the modern era.

A very vivid and worthwhile book.

SCTV is perhaps the best comedy television ever produced or written. If you are at all a fan of the show, you will love this book. Who can forget Johnny Larue, 5 Neat Guys, The Days of the Week, The Great White North, the Sammy Maudlin Show, Bobby and Skip Bittman, and the VJ (before there were VJ's) Gerry Todd. The satire is dead on. The show just nails TV; the horrible vision that was the variety hour shows of the 70's, the newsroom, the "sweeps week", and especially the commercials.

The book itself is a running commentary on the show, it's stars, the writers, and the various ways the show aired. The photos are perhaps the best feature (who can forget Carl's Cuts with the pig-men) or the fact that Rick Moranis does Woody Allen better than Woody. Dave and Rick really do Bob Hope and Woody Allen so well it is scary. The book runs in mostly chronological order, with input from the starts all along the way. However, some of the commentary is WAY behind the scenes, perhaps a bit too far back for the average fan.

Dave Thomas, the author, does an excellent job of capturing the egos, the infighting, and the creative styles of the shows writers and performers. People often forget just how much talent came out of this ensemble: John Candy, Martin Short, Eugene Levy, Dave Thomas, Rick Moranis, Catherine O'Hara; all have had major roles in TV and movie comedy since their stint on SCTV.

The best features of this book: The photos and the quizzes at the end of each chapter. The worst feature: too much information on the writers and producers behind the scenes and not enough info on what went in front of the cameras.

Overall, I recommend highly as a great look at the best comedy shows ever made.

This is a very good book with lots of stories and with archives from private collections of the cast members from second city 1976-1984. And a glorious reconstruction of one of the funniest TV shows ever to hit it's airwaves. Like the actors & actresses characters improv sketches they profile to the late John Candy's Mayor Tommy Shanks, Johnny LaRue and Stan Schmenge. Joe Flaherty's Guy Caballero, Sammy Maudlin and Floyd Robertson. Eugene Levy's Bobby Bittman and Earl Camembert. Andrea Martin's Edith Prickley. Catherine O'Hara's Lola Heatherton. Rick Moranis as Skip Bittman Bobby's brother and Bob McKenzie. Martin Short's Ed Grimsley. Dave Thomas's Bob Hope and Doug Bob McKenzie's brother. Harold Ramis now a movie director played as Moe Green. Tony Rosato's cooking with Marcello. Robin Duke I can't remember what characters she did on their? Anyway go behind the scenes and take a trip from the past and learn everything you want to know about it all. And hear it from the author who has written, acted and produced for films and television Dave Thomas himself!

SCTV is one of the funniest shows of all time. The show was a sketch comedy show based around a fictional television station. Dave Thomas was one of the stars and writers on the show and most famously known as one half of the McKenzie Brothers which was created on the show. The book takes you from the early pre-TV days of the comedy troupe through to it's end. You get the insider's perspective from Mr. Thomas and it is a very intriguing read. The book is also chock full of great pictures. If you are a big fan of the show, this book is a must read.

Stedmans is recognized as a leading dictionary in the medical community. Stedmans is great for looking up definitions for terms you don't know. However, some of the definitions are as confusing as the original terms for a non-medical person (attorney).

I teach Parasitology and I have found that my students learn the terms more easily if they know what they mean. So I needed a medical dictionary to help me with the etimology. Being a sort of a bibliophile, I had older editions of the 2 major medical dictionaries in the English language: the Dorland's and the Stedman's. I checked the old texts thoroughly and read carefully the descriptions of the new ones. I can't remember why I chose the Stedman's but I do remember that it was a very tight decision. So I have had the Stedman's for a few weeks and I can't think of anything else that I may need in a dictionary: it has excellent typography, clear definitions, beautiful color text and illustrations, comprehensive etimology (the Greek roots are NOT written in Greek, which is a blessing for me). I might only wish the inclusion of some specific veterinary terms (which are also missing in the competition) and sturdier covers (the corners of the hardback edition covers arrived bent; it was a 5,000 miles trip though)

I work for a medical society. Not having any medical training myself, I rely on Stedman's Medical Dictionary to help me edit and proofread text with medical terminology. Without it, I would not be able to do my job.

Syngress has hit a homerun with this 70-214 study guide and DVD combination. This book covers every aspect of this exam in very good detail and then offers you even more useful information that will go a long way towards keeping your network secure. The 2 hour DVD is an awesome addition that hammers home some of the most important subjects. As well, the depth of the practice questions is superb...this is a rare thing anymore with study guides. This book is a sure fire winner that will help you to pass this exam!

Syngress has hit a homerun with this 70-214 study guide and DVD combination. This book covers every aspect of this exam in very good detail and then offers you even more useful information that will go a long way towards keeping your network secure. The 2 hour DVD is an nice addition that hammers home some of the most important subjects. As well, the depth of the practice questions is superb...this is a rare thing anymore with study guides. This book is a sure fire winner that will help you to pass this exam...it sure did for me!!

Over the past 5 years usually I have already taken the certification test before reviewing the material, this way I can determine if the material would in fact help you pass the exam. For this book I decided to try it from the other way, use the book to see if I could pass the exam and this book did just that.

Having little experience with security in a Windows 2000 network environment I used this book as the primary source of material to study for the exam. I spent 2 solid weeks reading and practicing the labs, as well as watching the DVD videos. I passed the exam first on the first try on February 28th.

The book covers all objectives and I found the material to be right on the money with the exam questions I got. I also found that some of the material went beyond the actual exam which is certainly a bonus.

There were exercises with utilities like MBSA, URLScan, HFNetChk and QChain, which explain how to use the utility and when to use the utility. One thing I did find is the new version of MBSA has HFNetChk built in, so you may have to be flexible with the exercises. This can be fixed in the next edition.

Overall the material was very complete; there is also a web connection to Syngress where you can get a free web based exam. So if you are looking for a book that can help this one should work.

Mr. Malone's description of Mr. Jefferson is detailed and encompassing. It is well organized and brings the reader in touch with this American Icon and his times. The only failing of this work and its subsequent volumes is that we really only see the best of Mr. Jefferson. His failures, faults and weakeness are dealt with as if they were unimportant or at least only a minor footnote in development of this man. Only in his last volume does Mr. Malone start to deal with the more complex parts of Mr. Jefferson's life. Regardless of this shortcoming this work should be required reading by all students of American History.

Jefferson: The Virginian by Dumas Malone is a masterful work on Thomas Jefferson's early years, from birth to being appointed as an ambassador to France.

This work is one of the first comprehensive biographies of Jefferson's life. This is the first of six in the complete set. Malone is a distinguished historian so you will read about Jefferson's ancestry, along with Jefferson's youth, education, legal career, his marriage, the construction of Monticello. Not that was enough for one man's life, but we see the writing of the Declaration of Independence and Jefferson's work on the "Notes on Virginia."

We get an insight as to how Jefferson conducted his highly successful legislative career and his governorship. But what we do NOT see is the soul of Jefferson... the man, the human being. We get facts and more facts about a very complex individual and a monumental man. But the richness of the breath of life is left out.

Nonetheless, the book is a very scholarly work, one of the first to complete a comphensive work on a mulitfarious man. I enjoyed reading this volume for its historical importance and significance. This volume lays the ground work on which all of the other volumes set.

This work being well documented is a good start into reading about the life and times of Thomas Jefferson. One fact the comes through loud and clear... Jefferson is a Virginian foremost and always... there is no mistaking that fact.

Malone, once called "the greatest Jeffersonian of them all", originally conceived this biography in four volumes. By the time he published the last book in 1982, at age 89, it had grown to six volumes. It remains the standard life of Jefferson, an indelible and important portrait of a great man, flaws and all, by a great scholar.

JEFFERSON THE VIRGINIAN begins things with Jefferson's birth into a family of much distinction. His father Peter was a noted surveyor and a man of inordinate physical strength who nevertheless died fairly young (in his fifties). The book covers Jefferon's education at William and Mary (at a time when formal education was not a widespread thing, even among the gentry), his law practice, his beginning the construction of Monticello (which would preoccupy him right up until the time of his death), his terms in the Virginia House of Burgesses (one of which was served after his governorship), his writing of the Declaration of Independence (his initial version, a scathing indictment of King George, had to be toned down by his compatriots), and his controversial governorship (in which he sustained much of the blame for the British army's inroads into the Old Dominion state). It ends with his appointment as an American ambassador to France.

Obviously this is no primer on Jefferson. Malone spares no detail. His prose is fastidious, elegant, and easy to read, although you may find yourself putting the book down from time to time to absorb what you have just read. Overall, Jefferson emerges here as a man naturally scholarly and reclusive, content to build his home, pursue his studies, and tend to his family, who is pushed into action by the obligations of his caste and by his own fervent patriotism.

Malone has been criticised for writing a virtual hagiography of Jefferson, ignoring the "darker" aspects of the man's personality. In other words, unlike Fawn Brodie, Malone did not reduce his subject to some psychological cripple and sex deviate. The charges are balderdash. Malone DOES recognize Jefferson's flaws (e.g., his lack of a sense of humor and his sometimes indecision in taking action). He simply refuses to turn Jefferson into a whipping boy for his own ideological preoccupations.

This is as complete a contemporary biography as we will probably ever get of this great man.

I recommend The Journey Home to anyone interested in New-Age thought. It is easy to read, being told as the story of a young man's spiritual search. In only 245 pages it presents the philosophy of Kryon and Lee Carrol, one of the most important New-Age sources. I think most people would gain something valuable for their personal lives from reading this book. I certainly did.

Sometimes you feel like you've been there done that and you probably have. Then again there are some parts of the story that you feel you need to go there do that. A beautiful book.

I have never read a book so filled with truth to help one one the journey home, the journey to wholeness. I couldn't put it down! I found myself talking to Michael Thomas, understanding how he was feeling every step of his journey. We all have to make this journey at one time or another. You'll laugh and cry as it hits home with you and answers your questions about awakening to enlightenment. He took the high road and I took the low road, but we both ended up in the same place with the same revelations about ourselves in our relationship to God and all that is.

If you haven't read this book, you're missing the journey of your lifetime. Get to it & enjoy!