Judge for youself. Refer to page 10 of "Book one: How to Cast a Horoscope" in book one of the Astrology Kit. Your horoscope will be judged on the position of the sun and the moon at the time of your birth. From there, you fill in all the conjuctions and aspects of the other planets for additional readings. But the author states that you can not know the position of the moon unless you know the exact time of your birth! Such as 9:43 a.m. If you don't, you will have to guess among three sun-moon horoscopes as to which is yours! Good luck. Now if you do know the exact time of your birth, you won't have to guess ONLY if the time of birth was not early in the day (let's say between midnight and 3:00 a.m.) or late on that date (let's say between 9:00 p.m. and midnight). Then you are to choose between two horoscopes based on which one you are most alike. Since I know that I'm a highly intelligent and loving saint, this wasn't hard for me (JOKE!). But that still leaves the odds at 25% of missing. And many of the aspects and conjunctions will be based on a very possibly erroneous moon sign. So you will be just be having fun and be giving a bad name for astrology in the process. Simply put, if you can't obtain the exact time of birth, your chances of being right are 1 in 3. And if you do know the exact time, it's 75% in your favor. You can do better. Buy Suzanne's White "The New Astology". And if you want to go deeper, get one of those exact time charts. I did a woman's astrological chart whom I met on the internet. She turned out wonderful according to "The Astrology Kit" (we are to date soon). Using this kit, I now wonder if she will slice me up into little bity pieces and stuff me in her mailbox (joke, lol, hiccup). Good luck future astologers of America.

While you do need to know your time of birth to get the most out of this kit, if you plan to get the most out of any astrological reading you need your time and place of birth to determine the exact location of the planets. That said, this kit is wonderfully detailed, but also very simple to use. My friends and I had hours of fun casting our horoscope and then reading our personality traits out loud to see if they fit us. A great introduction to the complexities of astrology.

I am looking for this book or author, but since I had buy it in New-York city several years ago I couldn't find it again even the author. could someone help me to find DEBBI KEMPTON SMITH who wrote SECRETS FROM A STARGAZERS NOTEBOOK-MAKING ASTROLOGY WORK FOR YOU- PUBLISH BY BANTAM BOOKS-1982-

I was pleasantly surprised when I received this book. The pictures are nice and clear and seems organized well. Even though it has information about hundreds of roses, it seemed to missing a few of what I thought were fairly popular roses. All in all it's a good reference book for the beginner.

For a book to have as much color photography as this book does for under $... is truly amazing. I have done much of my rose garden by year of introduction and have found this book extremely useful. I do searches on internet sites or rose lists, and then locate the roses in this book to see what they look like, as well as other tidbits of information such as disease-resistance, repeat-bloom, hardiness etc. The book does include year of introduction in its summary, but lists the roses alphabetically so one can easily find them. I also noticed the index in the back of the book lists many roses by their synonym names which is helpful when another source you are working with calls the rose by a different name.

Very little information in terms of how to care for a rose exists in this book. You will have to purchase other books for that. There is only so much information one can pack into a book and still keep it portable!!

A beautifully illustrated and fact-filled book on the myriad of extraordinary rose cultivars. The book is a feast for the eyes and truthfully a bargain for it's price considering that most books cost more and do not even approach the detailed information and unbelievably beautiful photos of hundreds of cultivars. This book is replete with cultivars from landscape roses, hybrid teas, floribundas, miniatures, species roses, and even vines.
They are all covered and fully illustrated!!!! A true encyclopedia for the rose afficianado that one will enjoy looking at over and over again!!! It will help you find that perfect rose for your landscaping needs. I hope you enjoy this book as much as I do. :-)

Reading this book made me want to go out and buy new bikes for the whole family!

There's nothing quite like the pleasure of riding out of a beautiful bike showroom on a great bicycle! Yet within months, I always noticed that the feel was gone. Pretty soon, I wasn't riding as much.

Now from reading this book, I know that all bikes need regular maintenance to keep that top-performance feeling. And I know what to do. It's a wonder that my bikes and my children's bikes ran at all before reading this book!

My idea of bike repair was to patch a puncture, adjust the seat and handle bars, and get a new chain if it broke. That's about 3 percent of what you really need to know.

The book is also useful as a guide to what type of bike to buy in the first place. The pros and cons of various types of materials and structures are well developed.

For those who enjoy mastering physical tasks, this book also offers much potential pleasure. "Keeping your bike in tip-top shape is very satisfying -- and makes riding more enjoyable."

Although I am far from being a mechanical person, I could clearly do everything in the book. But I do need different tools. No problem! The book shows you just what to buy, with many choices (more kinds of bike stands than you ever knew existed, as an example). Not only that, it tells you which ones to take with you on a long touring ride. If you don't have the right tool, it shows you how to improvise with materials usually found along the side of any road. This was fascinating! In fact, the paperback is just the right size to take along on a ride, so you can figure out what to do if you bend a rim.

One of the real insights for me was to realize that all of the bearings are meant to be rebuilt once a year. And there are a lot of bearings on any bike.

Where a bike might have different types of equipment (such as for brakes and transmissions), you get descriptions of what to do with all the major types.

Many pictures show you what each part looks like, and the steps to go through for maintenance. This is the main drawback of such a compact book. Some of the images can be a little small. But I see no way around that if you are to have a truly portable guide to repair and maintenance.

Most people will decide to still get some maintenance and repair at the local bike shop. But this book can show you what's involved so you can figure out what it might cost in time and money to do the work yourself.

One of my favorite parts of the book was the Troubleshooting Chart to give you an idea from the symptom you have observed what is a likely cause, the solution, and where the information is found to implement that solution.

I suggest that you both get this book and try doing some of the maintenance. If you enjoy this, it could become a very satisfying hobby. You could also do maintenance for other people to help cover the cost of the tools. I suspect that less than 1 bike in 50 is properly maintained.

If you have children who like to learn to fix and maintain things, this could be a fun family activity. My dad was very good at such things when I was a wee lad, so good that I never learned how to fix anything. Be sure to pass along what you know and learn instead.

But whatever you do, be sure you get out and enjoy biking with loved ones! That's the ultimate payoff.

I have been able to take apart and repair all of the children's bikes. I has saved us a bundle as we have eight. At $40 a bike plus parts I have repaired and rebuild for the time and cost of parts and my children have learned to do for them selves as well. It's a great book to have.

Short and sweet! I'm a rookie to off road riding, and this book gave me a great understanding of whats happening between my legs! I can now fix a flat w/out help! YEA!!! Hey for $...bucks this book is the one to get.

It's the splashiest period of all ancient history... a near Jerry Springer opera of lust, betrayal, and tawdry affairs. And yet, Michael Grant makes it about as dull as he possibly can.

He presents a very factual and well-researched account, though I take exception to several of his assertions and theories, including the one where he asserts that Octavian wanted Cleopatra to commit suicide because he was afraid the Romans would want to free her as they did her sister Arsinoe. Arsinoe was just one random Egyptian princess who defied Julius Caesar. Cleopatra was the occidental temptress who had ensnared and ruined two of Rome's best men. She was probably the most vilified and hated of all Rome's enemies in history, for with Cleopatra, it was intensely personal. The very idea that the bloodthirsty Romans would have a sudden sentimental streak towards her is pretty laughable.

But on the whole, his theories are soundly researched and well justified, even when I disagree with them. The book has some lovely portraits and a more in depth examination of Cleopatra's forebearers than is usually presented in her biographies. Moreover, he has an excellent perspective on the supposed 'inevitability' of Cleopatra's loss, and how the world may well have been different had things gone another way.

It's a reasonable and scholarly work that makes a fine addition to my collection. If you're looking for something to move you, you may prefer Margaret George's "The Memoirs of Cleopatra".

Cleopatra is a fascinating figure... renowned as a patron of arts and learning, a gifted linguist, and a canny politicians, she is too often remembered as a sex kitten. Grant cuts thru the myths, pro- and anti propaganda to deliver what is probably the best biography on Cleopatra. Writen by one of the marquee lights of classical history, the book is written in academic style, although for the most part it is highly readable. To be honest, I found the first preliminary chapters to be somewhat slow going, but once the story begins it takes off like a grand soap opera. Not as splashy as some other works on the great queen, this is *the* place to go for a detailed, comprehensive look at Cleopatra.

When it comes to ancient history, Michael Grant is the greatest! I've read several of his other books and he never fails to amuse and inform. His book on Cleopatra is informative as well as entertaining. Cleopatra was a Greek Macedonian ruler of Egypt with a deep love for culture and powerful men. Her liaisons with Caesar and Antony are very well described, as are her achievements as queen. Mr. Grant is truly the greatest!

The Companion essentially functions as a long annotation for references in the Crying of Lot 49. It does most allusions justice, although we may never know the extent to which Pynchon envisioned his worlds. As an explanation of references, the Companion is quite succesful but it does not entirely meet its expectations as a companion because it lacks any sort of thematic or liteary analysis. It is essentially a reference for reading Pynchon and not a companion per se. Utterly useless as an overarching thematic reading of Pynchon, A Companion to the Crying of Lot 49 should not go underappreciated in its the ability to explain Pynchon's allusions. This book may turn out to be extremely useful or utterly useless, and perhaps both.

Grant's companion was very helpful in explaining contexts and allusions. It seemed to, however, miss a lot about the novel, especially Pynchon's dealing with the drug culture of the 60's. Its a solid companion that explains most modern critical interpretations of Pynchon, but such a great novel deserves better

This little book written to provide insight into the myriad of Pynchon's obscure references and symbolic appellations in The Crying of Lot 49 is a worthwhile source of help if used with discretion and common sense. Although many of Grant's entries are useful to untangle some of Pynchon's more obscure references, others will simply lead you further down the path of confusion. The problem lies in the fact that while many of Grant's suggestions are useful, others simply bring about the same type of confusion that he is trying to address, since he often gives more than one possible explanation for each passage discussed. That is not to say that the book is not useful, it is, only that The Crying of Lot 49 by its very nature resists such means of explanation. But as reader of Pynchon already know, any help is welcome. As long as the reader keeps in mind that this book is meant only to introduce "possible meanings" and "complimentary facts", which may or may not correspond to what Pynchon actually has hidden in his words. Nonetheless a good source of info and a help to anyone exasperated by the twisting and turning of Pynchon's view of the postmodern world.

Book 6: Kissing Mr. Quimper is a page turner, that's for sure. Grant Morrison has a real talent for ending his major story arcs, and this book, ending Volume two of the series, is no exception.

There are a lot of twists and turns and the story benefits greatly from it. A number of loose ends are tied up and really shows another talent of Morrison as a storyteller. The Invisibles, through most of the previous series, seemed to be messy and out of control, but he reigns it all in and begins to form the whole picture for us.

The last issue is a real testament to the creativity of Morrison. I admit, the added violence in Volume two was surprising, but in the end it all seems to be part of a much bigger plan.

This book has it all and the increased clarity makes the previous stories more enjoyable. There is a real sense of closure in the end.

Isn't it exciting to know there are 12 more issues to read?

What can I say? The man delivers. He mixes everything and does it with talent most of the time. Morrisson is good and getting better. He is still far from Moore... but then... everybody is. The Invisibles is one of the best series ever, up there with the Sandman, Cerebus and all the other good stuff!!!

This is the near-final and second-best segment of what is possibly the most brilliant, innovative and headache inducing comic book series ever. Grant Morrison's mind is a dark and sticky wonderland, and we should all buy this book and read it and thank him for splitting his head open to give it to us.

_The Invisibles_ rivals _From Hell_ as a work which capture magic in words and pictures. While the series finale, _Countdown to the Millennium_ (as yet unreleased) is the best --it's a drug in comic book form--the entire series should be read with reckless joy, and the continuing hope that Grant Morrison will soon abandon Marvel and start writing things that matter again.

That being anarchist agitprop, of course.

I'm sitting here in August of 2002, looking at Jim Grant's 1996 prognosis for the stock market. At the time he presumably was writing his book, the NASDAQ (the major over-the-counter, technology-laden index)was in the 1,200 to 1,400 range.

At that time, Grant apparently was suggesting that stocks were "too expensive", and that a bubble existed, which would soon burst.

Well, after his book was written, the market continued to rally strongly for another 4 years, and now that the bubble has burst, we find it's a different bubble entirely than Mr. Grant assumed it was.

Because after the bursting, the NASDAQ index is down from the 5,000 level reached 4 years AFTER Jim Grant said prices were too expensive, and is now rallying up from a double bottom at the 1,200 level.

In other words, Mr. Grant back in 1996 was claiming we were near a top in the market, but he was totally in error! After all that has happened since his book was written, we are still at or above the stock price level that he claimed was "too expensive". Apparently the author's ceiling has become the FLOOR of the stock market, which means he was about as wrong as he could have been.....

According to James Grant, this is what goes wrong during good times: "Of all the consequences of sustained prosperity, none is so powerful as the delusion that markets always go up." Not many people wanted to hear that when it was first published in 1996. Which is probably why he added this redundancy: "They do not always go up."

Grant chronicles periods of boom and bust. He is effective at this. For example, he quotes The Journal of Commerce during a bear market in 1952: "Many bankers visualize a return to the conditions of 150 years ago, when many sections of Wall Street and environs were residential and retailing districts." It's difficult to imagine that Wall Streeters would be that bleak. It's also difficult to imagine that investors would be as unrealistic as they were in the 1990s: "In response to warnings that dividend yields were too low, or that price-earnings yields were too high, the public only invested more, thereby sending yields even lower and price-earnings multiples higher." Four years after Grant wrote that the S&P 500 began to decline.

The Trouble with Prosperity is not a "how to get rich book" for "dummies" or "idiots." This is a serious discussion of financial history which gets heady at times. For instance, the author applies theory from the Austrian school of economics. "In the Austrians' judgment," he explains, "there is one principal source of collective error: interest rates. Set them too low and people will overreach." The central bank is the culprit. "The quarrel I have with the Federal Reserve", proclaims Grant, "is not so much that it creates credit as that it pretends to know the interest rate at which that credit (in the form of bank reserves) should be lent and borrowed." Alan Greenspan, in other words, is not omniscient.

James Grant is not a cheerleader for the stock market. He is a genuine contrarian, a skillful writer, and he was right.

History has a way of repeating things. Our economy is NO exception. James Grant writes a great book on the history of money,interest rates and the stock market in this country. Starting with a building at 40 Wall completed in 1930 the year after the market crash and taking you through the history of many of its tenets. Grant is able to show the many Boom and Bust cycles in our economy and why they happen. A MUST READ to understand the cyclicality of our markets....And the foolishness of our politicians and Central Bank heads into believing that they can manage the economy into a virtual up economy all of the time. The lesson learned in this book is that artificially inflating assests will cause major reccesions to happen.

Despite the title (which I think is unduly sensationalist), The Angry Gut is a well-written, clear reference for colitis and Crohn's sufferers. Grant is a straightforward, clinical writer and some readers might be put off by his use of widespread, medical terminology. Like any IBD books, the drug sections become quickly dated, but Grant supplies good information on existing drugs and surgeries. He falls into the common pitfall of many M.D.-authored books of completely ignoring the emotional aspects of inflammatory bowel disease and does not seek to refer readers to resources that might provide support. This is a solid, useful reference for IBD patients.

This book is technical, but a good resource for individuals who know nothing about Chron's Disease. The author explains in exacting detail how Chron's disease affects people. Most Doctors do not get technical with their patients, and I feel that this book helped me to understand how and why this disease affects me. I now feel very comfortable talking with my Doctor regarding treatment

If you or a loved one has the disease-this is a must read. It "decodes" a lot of what the gastroenterology and colo-rectal surgery community gives to patients. This is a nice technical(but not too technical) discussion of IBD in all variations and your choices in terms of drug therapy or surgery. It also is very honest about research and likelihood of medical innovations or breakthroughs. It allows IBD patients to ask great questions and challenge medical practitioners. It's a great handbook for all IBD victims.

I found Mr. Jeffrey's insights into the Book of Daniel to be quite well thought out- Causing me to reconsider things that I have read previously. Very Illuminating.

However, when he begins to make pronouncements regarding The New World Order, The PLO, The United Nations, Secret Societies, etc, some of his statements appear vague. Also, this was written in 1994-95 so I have to think back on what was happening back then.

He makes a broad statement, that The Jews have inducted a new batch of Levites and have recreated at least 75 (at the time of the writing) of the implements that are used in The Temple Worship... And that they are (were, at the time of the writing) involved in finding a site for the New Temple. I find this VERY interesting, and Grant needs to use more solid documentation- Something we can REFER back to, to validate his claims.

And that is the problem with a lot of his claims in this book: Patchy validations, and no clue where we can go if we REALLY want to investigate something that he brings up in this book.

I haven't gotten to the financial spoutings section of the book, so I cannot comment on it.

All in all, a very intriguing book, I wish he would put more documentaton into his pronouncements- Some references would be great.

In no other Christian book that I've ever seen available are printed the actual Presidential Executive Orders that can be activated in America in cases of economic (or other) disasters. Until this one. But Grant Jeffrey wasn't afraid of telling the American public that there are such regulations that can be activated with a single stoke of the President's pen - as we saw vividly demonstrated during the Twin Towers Tragedy. Why the world will eventually need to switch to electronic currency and what it means to Christians is also discussed, as well as the coming successful attempt to create a national ID card. Plus this book includes info about the recent discovery of the possible sites of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus' tombs. The warnings that Jeffrey gives in this book should serve as a "two minute warning" to all born-again Christians. One of my most highly recommended Jeffrey books.

Jeffrey paints a truly dark future for the United States and the rest of the world. He backs up his claims with research into Bible prophecy and other areas that allow him to present his points clearly, while offering valuable insights for each chapter. The sections on Daniel's prophecy and the future Great Depression are excellent and allows readers to open their eyes to a number of possibilities. While some readers may find his suggestions on financial strategies for the future a bit complicated, I found these arguments insightful and worth looking into. As always, Grant R. Jeffrey doesn't disappoint his fans.

Grant R. Jeffrey whips out a calculator and the Bible and gives the reader a dizzying amount of verse quotation and fuzzy math to show how biblical prophecy follows Jewish Holy days. His theories are certainly interesting, but the style of writing in the edition I read was stiff and headache inducing (Mr. Jeffrey seems to have matured somewhat as a writer, if the few excerpts I have read from his other books can be taken as good examples). Fans of this style of Bible prophecy investigation will no doubt find something of interest, but others might feel that a square peg is getting brutally hammered into a round hole.

Grant Jeffrey's appendix documents the reasons he believes Christ's birth was in 1 BC rather than 3-4 BC as most scholars believe. I also beleive 1BC BETTER FITS WITH SCRIPTURE, especially the verse in Luke which says Jesus' ministry started when he "was about 30 years of age". As pointed out, this was the first passover of his ministry in 29AD. The phrase "about 30" cannot scripturally or logically be stretched as everyone seems to do. As Luke was an excellent historian as well as inspired by God his account should take precedence over any other historian's comment (such as Josephus).

Jeffery has updated his 1990 book and re-released it. There isn't a whole lot of new information, but it's still good stuff. He talks about prophecies and ideas that no one even touches (i.e., the Magog/Israli war and the Second Exodus), but parts of it sound like a conspiracy theory novel (the location and return of the Ark of the Covenant). Still, on the whole, not a bad read and really informative.