Although this book contains most of the information that prospective parents need, the writing style was too simplistic for my taste. The author went so far as to define adoption, warning the reader that adoption is not temporary. My husband and I much preferred the Adoptoin Resource Book by Gilman.

When beginning our adoption process this book was a life saver! It helped us figure out which adoption journey was best for us and explained each part of the process. It is an easy read and a perfect place to start when researching adoption. I have referred it to all my friends that are considering adoption and they have all raved about it as well. I referred to this book all throughout our process. It was definitely the best book I bought on adoptions. We are now the proud parents of a little angel from Russia and are currently waiting for another angel from Russia. If you're in the process of adopting, either domestically or internationally, buy this book, you'll be glad you did!

This book is chock full of information on every aspect of adoption, including domestic, international, older child, special needs, transracial, state regulations, single parents, etc. I love it! My adoption counselor even bought a few copies for her office library!

This is the most peculiar and thouroughly disturbing book I have ever read. The perfect choice for anyone who would like to break away from the same old novel. Uniquely written and oddley arranged this book is the type of book you want to read over and over. I highley recommend this one to anyone with a different take on life.

Bolivia 41 is an excellent book. I would highly recommend it and plan to read it again to make sure I didn't miss anything. It's author, Brad Pierce, is a super-talented writer and will undoubtedly hit the big time soon. I can't wait for his next book. Five stars.

Simple words most certainly would fail to adequately express my revolt, disgust, and genuine anguish as I poured through the pages. But, yet, somewhere between lunacy and nausea, the author's humorously twisted adventure hits you right between the eyes. Creeping out when you least expect it, throwing you to the floor and stomping all over your funny bone. I wouldn't recommend anyone buy a single copy . . . buy several and give them to all your fiends, family and other people you wish to upset. Be sure to include a disclaimer!

This original fairy tale reads like a classic. The story is funny, and the illustrations support this humourous tone. There is plenty of detail in the pictures for older children to pore over. I would recommend this for 1st graders and up.

Brock Cole's, Buttons, begins...Once upon a time and after a very silly, funny, satisfying story, has a happily ever after, ending. Buttons will delight children of every age, as three daughters are sent out into the world, by their mother, to find new buttons for their father's trousers. Mr. Cole's beautiful water color illustrations add just the right old fashioned touch to this story. The perfect bedtime story for your little ones. Read and enjoy!

Brock Cole began his career as author and illustrator of a number of lovely, marginally goofy picture books, illuminated with his own careful, exuberant watercolors. Mr. Cole took a break from picture book publishing to concentrate on chapter books for older kids (not that we mind - all 3 of his novels are themselves extraordinary achievements) but has returned with _Buttons_, his first picture book for more than a decade. This _Buttons_ is a particularly fetching send up of the fairy tale genre, replete with nobles, simpletons, paupers and princes, and blessedly full of Mr. Cole's sweet, ironic sensibilities. Let us hope that with his paintbrush freshly wetted Brock Cole will again decorate our bookshelves with a succession of similar charmers.

I found this book to contain space for everything I wanted to record about our son's adoption. I was able to add blank contrasting papers to glue photos to, and remove pages that didn't apply to us. I also liked the personalization about my son's birth country. There was plenty of space of baby firsts, and it will be a continuing record of his life up through college.

My wife and I recently adopted a child from another country. We choose the This Is Me Book because it contained information about our childs native country including maps and a picture of the flag. When we received the book we were pleasently surprised. We like the fact that you can add or remove pages to suit your needs. I would recommend this baby book to all adopted parents especially those who are adopting children from out of the United States.

Finally a baby book that isn't so cutsie. This book has everything I wanted to document when adopting. A lot of people in my adoption group have also purchased this book and they all love it!

Thank you so much for making such a thoughtful book. It will be cherished forever.

Os Lusiadas is often said to be the Bible of the Portuguese. Besides being of historic importance, it is also one of the most important works in Portugal's literary heritage. Os Lusiadas is a historic journey into the Age of Discoveries and, simultaneously, an encounter with one of the world's most beautiful epic poems and the genius behind the magic - Luis de Camoes.

"Os Lusiadas" is an epic account of Vasco Da Gama's first sea voyage to India. It is written in the same style as the classic poems of antiquity and it elevates the Portuguese spirit of discovery and bravery to pinnacles of achievement. The Portuguese version is hard to read, but the English translation is in prose and is a delightful story with great historical significance. The title means "The Portuguese" sons of Lusos, brother of Romulus, and mythical founder of Lusitania.

This is simply the best book ever to be written by any poet in any time in history, in any language. It is essential to any person who is willing to study poetry or literature. This is truly the masterpiece of world literature and a book that is a pillar of mastery, brilliance, and genius. It is just the best book ever written.

This book's format would be perfect as bedtime reading, that is, if you wanted to tell your children stories about the shady characters that helped shape San Francisco. I was disappointed that the stories (each of which only takes about 5-10 minutes to read) seem to only graze the surface of each person/event, but overall the book is a good introduction to the city and its colorful past.

Unbelievable as it might seem; "San Francisco... You're History" has within it's pages a few interesting grains of truth, bean-stalk-seeds, or Pollyana inspirations. The curious juxtaposition of character, event, or institution always created in San Francisco a variety unseen elsewhere. One terrific addition to culture, Woodwards Gardens had the effect on public imagination as a circus museum or park, all rolled into one. If you dare to glance at the pages-you have to ask yourself

this question...Woodward's Gardens did inspire the Wizard of Oz and Zardoz? Look and see!

I wish Mr. Pierce had been around when my school history text books were being purchased. He demonstrates, in his wonderful history of a unique city, that history is not about dates and place names. It's about people. And, as evidenced by this book, San Francisco has always attracted the most colorful kind. Now most people know that San Francisco is a great place. But this book will tell even long-time residents things they never knew about their fair city. For instance, I didn't know that part of the city was built on boats, or that the Emperor of the United States lived there. This book is a great read but it's also dangerous to those of us who live a significant distance from the City By The Bay. I'm already planning my next trip. Until then, I'll continue to enjoy this book.

Why is this in with the veggie books? Veggies don't eat turkey or Cornish hens!

I love Barbara & Kim's book and continually use it. I'm eating lots of the Phytoia top 10- except for kale, which I haven't been able to find, but my greengrocer is going to get some in for me. Margie, from Australia

This book is well written and easy to follow. The wealth of good things in here is enough to keep you busy reading the pages over and over. The recipes are so easy and taste delicious. If you are interested in the research about our health issues and good food,this book is at the top of my list. I have told people at the natural food markets to stock this book. Wonderfully written and covers all topics related to good eating. More than a healthy cookbook. A great coffee table book and reference book.

I hesitated buying this because I'm skeptical of "end time" books. Boy am I glad I changed my mind. Kelly describes a series of dreams he had and gives an interpretation. Timely yet timeless. I read it in a day yet will be thinking about it for the rest of my life. I hope more people read this and that God ignites more people to think with a generational perspective.

Heat after heat, the enemy is looking out for a crack on the wall. But what emerges will be the finest texture in the House of the Lord call warriors. This is a book of hope !

"End time warrior" presents to readers like a revelation kiosk, highlighting common objectives, direction, integrity and perseverance which the church must seriously take heed. Overall, the message contains gripping revelation with exclamation truth.

Living in a time of distress where the shadow of great uncertainty is casting on planet earth, there must arise an answer powerful enough to bring hope and life. The apostolic army, John Kelly saw in his vision, is unquestionably the visible topsoil prepared to fit that dire need. Coming to the fore shall be these people with flaming answers. Where they are placed, light will abound and darkness will diminishes into a blip.

From the account of Kelly's vision, there will come some of the most engaging periods the church would need to go through. The church has don some many titles in the past. Each title leaves a trail of revelation of the Lord. We have the Body, House of the Lord, Bride, and now Warrior.

After reading this book, some of us will probably be musing over the portal of opportunities awaiting for us. In his book, the author beckons us to prepare for encouraging results. Great harvest will unfold before our eyes. Resources will be returning. New grounds will be won. Old grounds will be claimed. What is even more glaring will be the fact that the prophesied church will be at the height of her maturity and beauty. Yes! It will take maturity to wrestle against the unseen forces. Anything less or compromising will cause us to fall under the duplicity of today's increasing false signs and wonders.

It will take unity to change today's spiritual climate. The greatest unity will spin out from the spread of diversity. Denominations lines are thinning, as the Spirit is drawing all of us for a common purpose. Even the very marginal differences among us will be offset by the love of the Spirit upon all of us.

This book also emphasizes the importance of spiritual fathers. Every warrior sent into the spiritual battlefield has a signature of his spiritual father on his heart. The quality of a warrior is formed on the anvils of a fatherhood ministry. In tandem with this emphases, the author also promotes the power of mentoring. Substantial quality in a spiritual life is developed out from a mentoring relationship, which should be today's primary focus in any ministry.

I believe Kelly's ministry is a personal offering to see the growth of God's Church. God has set him apart to be a pacesetter. In his anointing, he knows the speed of the Spirit and determines to train others to catch up. Read this book, it unfurls the motive of his heart.

End Time Warriors is a clear trumpet call to the contemporary church. Using prophetic imagery, biblical insight and many real life examples, Kelly & Costa pull the blinders off of the modern masquerade of ministry. They propose that much anointing is currently wasted and point us to some hopeful solutions. Although the message is essentially hard hitting there is also a refreshing sense of hope that shines through. Like a cool drink of water, this book is just the medicine that Dr. Jesus ordered.

I turned to Roy Nichols' work because truthfully there isn't much of a Franklin Pierce bibliography. Nichols' work dates back to 1931, an era of different writing styles and certainly different interpretations of American political life.

When I refer to this work as a "Plodder," I intend no disrespect. Nichols work is, for the most part, a straightforward biography of a New Hampshire politician who became an unlikely compromise candidate for the presidency in 1852. To borrow a sports analogy, one has to be in a position to win in order to win, and the author painstakingly traces the steps of this methodical politician that put him in lightning's way.

Nichols leaves the reader with ample evidence to believe that Franklin Pierce owed at least something of his steady rise through local offices to the reputation of his father, General Benjamin Pierce, a Revolutionary war hero and governor of New Hampshire in his own right. Franklin graduated from Bowdoin and began his lawn practice precisely at the heydey of his father's own success. A late twentieth century biographer most certainly would have delved into the psychodynamics between father and son.

In the style of the day, Nichols hints at, but does not detail, several critical factors in Pierce's life. His marriage to Jane Appleton smacks of Lincoln's trials with Mary Todd. His drinking was problematic. His absence of commitment to one of the proper religious denominations of the day was noted then by those who charted such things. He seemed to have been unduly shaken early in his congressional career when John Calhoun denounced him on the floor over a ludicruously insignificant matter. Later The reader is left to surmise the impact of a horrific family tragedy upon Pierce's state of mind as he prepared to take the presidential oath in 1853.

Nichols' Pierce was himself a plodder who for the most part achieved political offices the old fashioned way: he earned it, and particularly by his services within the Democratic Party. Pierce enforced party discipline with a ruthlessness that served him well early in his career, but his intractibility was a serious handicap in the 1850's as America saw multiple realignments of political families. Nichols recounts the presidential years in straightforward fashion, but he deftly questions the wisdom of trying to build national unity through a "representative" cabinet of such diverse characters as Jefferson Davis and William Marcy. The upshot of such a strategy was a not unexpected rearguard action from within the executive branch that stymied the few genuine executive initiatives from the presidential desk.

Much to his credit, Nichols reminds his readers that the Pierce Presidency was more than Bleeding Kansas. In fact, one is left with the impression that Pierce never had the full picture of the Kansas situation. The years 1853-1857 were times of Indian wars in the northwest, railroad dealings and wheelings north and south, filibustering in central America, the emergence of the Know-Nothings, and a variety of midrange diplomatic problems with England and Spain in particular. Some of Pierce's diplomats--Pierre Soule and Dan Sickles, for example--did not represent him well. There is surprisingly little information about reaction to the Fugitive Slave Law; Pierce never waivered in his belief that the growing vocal reaction against slavery was nothing more than the annoyance of a few malcontents, an impression formed in New Hampshire in the 1830's when Pierce was laboring to build party unity.

The absence of a psychological vocabulary hinders Nichols when he attempts to describe the dissolution of Pierce after his presidency. As the Civil War unfolds, Pierce's inability to either understand its forces or accept the new national order becomes eery. In the structured world of Franklin Pierce, the abolitionists are the villains, true anarchists, and their sin is disruption of the Democratic Party. The moral component of both "causes," north and south, totally escaped him...

I had always been somewhat intrigued by Franklin Pierce, perhaps our most obscure president. I would wonder why he was almost neglected by history while other presidents got much more press. As I eventually learned - and as this book reaffirms - there is a reason he is almost completely ignored. Pierce represented the nadir of the Presidency, a period that by historical circumstances and Pierce's own lack of ability made presidential power as weak as it ever would be.

Nichols's book describes the early life of Pierce. The son of a Revolutionary War veteran, Pierce used his family connections and his own gifts of intelligence and oratory to rise in the local political community, first on a state level and then eventually into both houses of Congress. While adept enough to get these positions, he never really sparkled at any of them; his period as a general in the Mexican War is similarly unimpressive.

The Democratic Party, desperate to find a nominee in 1852, eventually settled on Pierce, not because he was a great candidate, but - as a Northerner with distinctly pro-Southern views - he was the only candidate with wide geographical appeal. Attaining the Presidency, he did little to calm the growing North-South rift and, in fact, left things in a sadder state than when he left.

Nichols portrays Pierce sympathetically enough as a man beset by poor health, a hard-to-live-with wife and a series of family tragedies, culminating with seeing the death of his last child in an accident just prior to his inauguration. Pierce, however, was also a politician with little political awareness, oblivious to the growing conflict over slavery and with sympathies in complete contrast to that of his New Hampshire neighbors. Compared with most of his fellow Presidents, Pierce wound up dying in ignonimy.

This is a good book, very detailed and with a high level of objectivity, and can be considered probably the best book on Pierce. Originally written in the 1930s, Nichols occasionally uses language that may seem quaint to modern eyes, but this is still quite readable. If you want to learn about Franklin Pierce (and the era leading up to the Civil War), this is a good place to start.

625 pages, 76 chapters, 10 illustrations. Comprehensive, scholarly, thoroughly researched biography of an underrated President who was a victim of his times and of the tragedies of his own life. Many important American historical events, which the author puts in context, occurred during the Pierce administration. Events leading to, and immediately following, the Civil War were paramount. Preface to first edition was written in 1931. Second editon was published 27 years later and was "completely revised." Difficult but fascinating reading.

A collection of any type of writing is always a risking purchase. It is unlikely that all the essays will be of the same quality or hold the same interest for the reader. However, a scholarly collection should have a high standard to begin with and thus I was disappointed by "Rape in Antiquity". Out of 12 articles, I can only strongly recommend three by Rosanna Omitowoju, Daniel Ogdenm, and Karen F. Pierce. All the others lack sufficient evidence to prove their theses, do not write well-enough to explain their opinions, or seem to be reading sources that are quite different from what I've read. Note that two of the twelve essays are really about the medieval world, not antiquity, and that two of the articles are about Roman ideas leaving the bulk, eight, concerning Greece, especially Athens in the classical period.

A very interesting and though-provoking collection of essays. It covers myth, art, drama, philosophy as well as legal discourse. Although no collection of this type could ever hope to be the definitive guide to such a wide-ranging topic this book provides an excellent starting point with, on the whole well-researched and insightful articles. I found the notes and bibliographies most useful.

This is a valuable collection, from scholars from a wide range of specialisms, of literary, historical, philosophical and legal interpretations of the concept of rape in antiquity - whether there was one and how it influenced medieval and later thought. It will be a even more useful introduction, to a topic of growing relevance to today, if, as I hear, it is soon to be re-issued in paperback.