This was a very helpful book on how fluids and electrolytes work in the body

I have purchased this series for peds, med surg and fluids & electrolytes and critical care nursing. Without fail other students want these books. Class lecture follows these books nearly verbatim. Thus I can follow along in the book while listening. I don't even need to take seperate notes. Although sometimes I do write notations in the columns when my teacher stresses a particular point. The diskette that comes with the series is the best review that I have found. I am on the Dean's List in part to this series.

Carol and Ron Cash have done a wonderful job of presenting the updated history of the Keeshonden around the world. The great instructions and photographs on how to take care of your Keeshond are a joy to read. It is no wonder that Ron has won several Dog Writer Awards. The sections on Showing and Obedience training give a good view into these worlds with clear explanations of terms and process. This book is a wonderful addition to any Keeshond fancier's library.

Ron and Carol Cash have put together an outstanding book on Keeshonds where the last book (The Complete Keeshond) left off. The book is put together in a logical format, and is easy to follow and retain the information as it is presented. I enjoyed reading about the origins, and then how the Keeshond breed spread worldwide. The book then details information about breeders in various parts of the US and Canada as well as Europe, Africa and Australia. This book is not a basic puppy book, its for those who already know what they want and where they are going to get it. The Cash's have done an outstanding job of presenting the Keeshond to the world through this work.

Dr. Arnold is a professor of mine at Loyola University Chicago, and he gave me this book to read in order to give me a quick and up to date overview of Gulf Lowland Archaeology. I found it easy to read and very enojoyable. So enjoyable in fact that I'm now working on a project with him. If you think you have any interest in the field, READ THIS BOOK!

I have the honor to be a student of Dr. Stark at Arizona State University. I highly recommend this book because she is an expert in her field and her passion for Mesoamerican civilizations is obvious in her teachings.

Unlike the linear "Slayground," the previous volume in the Parker series, Plunder Squad's all over the map. The first half of the book almost reads like a few short stories, linked by Parker's on-going search for someone who tried to kill him. We follow along as Parker goes from one botched job to the next, all the while waiting for any information that will bring him closer to his target.

Once that thread's taken care of, the second half of the book kicks in, and here Parker almost becomes a secondary character. We meet and follow his associates in an art heist, one which starts off fairly well but goes downhill fast. The mob gets involved, and Parker has to figure out a way to get out with both some money and his life.

A quick, enjoyable read, but more of a dark comedy than a crime caper. Doesn't have nearly as much action as "Slayground," but then again it has a more dynamic narrative.

One of Stark / Westlake's best. This hard to find Parker novel is worth the trouble of tracking down. A great book. One of the best of the Parker novels.

Parker ends up working with amateurs and a shaky ex-con as he plans the robbery of a coin convention. Parker does pick up a new love interest in Claire. The heist goes sour with a double-cross and it is up to Parker to improvise the escape. Same Parker series format and a quick read. If new to the Parker series start with the Hunter/Payback/Point Blank book.

... It even has an excellent Robert E. McGinnis cover painting. The story inside the book, of course, is just as excellent. Just what I've come to expect from Donald E. Westlake, regardless of whatever pen name he chooses to write under. Parker is a lean, mean, hardboiled machine as always, taking no prisoners and no 'crud'. Readers of the newer "Stark" novels might also be interested to know that this is the book where Parker meets his lady friend Clair, who in this 1967 version, is more of a femm fatale than she is in the present day. Bottom line: If you can find THE RARE COIN SCORE, grab it and read it!

This book describes in great detail the lives of German POW's living in a New Hampshire POW camp in the 1940's. It is well-documented, with interviews with former guards and work-crew formen. The former prisoners, guards and foremen have met for reunions at the site of the camp.

I lived in the area and remember the POW camp.

Koop's chronicle gives us a picture of an oasis of amity in a world torn by war, in the unlikely location of a prisoner-of-war camp in the tiny town of Stark, New Hampshire, several miles north of Lancaster and Berlin. We see German captives being pleasantly surprised by the humane treatment of the American guards, who observed the letter and the spirit of the Geneva Convention, and we see the Americans learning that not all Germans were enthusiasts of Hitler's fanatical National Socialism -- far from it! There are disputes about the 'pulpwood quota' (German prisoners in Stark assisted the locals in their efforts at paper production) which led to a five-day strike, but also led to deeper understanding about the dignity of the captive workers. There are amusing tales of attempted escapes -- the most successful being that of a colourful character named Franz Bacher, a youthful Austrian artist who made it to New York City. There is an illuminating glimpse into the generosity of the townspeople of Stark toward the prisoners of war, from an enemy nation but sharing a common humanity. There are tales of collaboration at arduous tasks, and there is a record of the small acts of charity and levity which transfigured a potentially painful experience into the basis of camaderie and a future peace.

One need not be a historian, or an ardent reader of history to appreciate Allen Koop's handsomely written book; one need only be a human being, possessed of sufficient imagination to place oneself in the shoes of a stranger in a strange land.

While there's no doubt that Shy Girl is well-written and, at times, compelling, ultimately I was disappointed. I found the character of Alta an annoying caricature of an SF butch, and the gratuitous sex scenes and references to the dyke S/M scene distracting and contrived. I do think the portrait sketched of Shy is a profound one, though, and I also liked the way Stark conveyed the horrors of the Holocaust, relaying emotion without being either cliched or overly Spielberg-esque; I wish she'd started with the exploration of this theme earlier in the novel, along with gradually disclosing more information about Alta's mother. This book has a lot of potential, but I felt that its zenith was never reached, as is the case with too much contemporary lesbian fiction.

I'm constantly on the lookout for queer novels that are very well written -- novels that are powerful and real and don't rely on carricature of LGBT folks, and that are also showcases for finely crafted, elegant and powerful text. I had high hopes for this novel, especially since I had seen quite a few glowing reviews of it before I read it -- shortly after it was published.

But, unlike the other reviewers here, I was very disappointed. The plot of this novel has a great deal of potential, and much of the book is fairly well written. The message is an important one. But I found much of the writing to be contrived, the dialogue especially so -- to the point, even, that the dialogue itself became quite a distraction to me. I wanted so much to let these characters come to life, and yet they moved so stiffly that I could hardly get them to flicker on the page. And the message seemed to be forced -- as another reveiwer said, the author just seemed to be trying too hard to be profound.

This is a successful novel in so many ways, but perhaps not the literary phenom that it has been billed as. I'd like to see more women-written queer novels that are as powerful in their delivery as those by Michael Cunningham and Dale Peck (for instance). For me, Shy Girl just came up short by quite a few ways.

Elizabeth Stark's novel is a fast read that is compelling and beautifully written. Hang onto the mystery -- and see how much we are alike -- and how our differences still are more accentuated and divisive than honored! The context of this novel is a MUST for the message. The author pulls the reader in -- and holds on! If you can't read this -- ask yourself why not and then finish it for the answer! Most of all, don't read the reviews (like the ones printed above!) that give the mystery away. You'll love it anyway, but will miss the ironic twist that Stark so eloquently delivers.

the book Stark is a great book and one of my Ben Elton faviortes it has all the elements of a great script and it focases on a certain element it has two charctors who couldn't be more a like and two nutters who make it a almost impossible to put the book down however it takles an imporant aspet and the guiltless people who take advanted ofg are need for cosmic goods it is a great book and it should be a film my favorote charctor in the movie is CD who has no desire about what happens expect to get in with Rachel and maybe not get blown to pieces by a rocket on the way.

As a long-time fan of Ben Elton, I'd never realised he'd written any books until my mother presented me with a ragged old copy of "Stark" which she'd bought at a jumble sale in Hong Kong of all places. Anyway, I set about reading it and I truly could not put it down! A fabulously well thought out plot combined with Ben Elton's dry humour, it incorporates every kind of character imaginable, from arrogant billionares to castrated war heroes, to stoned hippies! A brilliant attempt at making the end of the world seem less imminent.

Ben Elton is probably England's most talented comedian. Not only does he do stand up comedy he has written scripts for Black Adder and the Young ones. This was his first novel.

The finding out the plot is part of the enjoyment and point of the novel so that it would be unfair to reveal it. However there are two tiers of characters. At one end is a financially succussesful businessman who seems to be slightly based on Rupert Murdock. He is gradually drawn into a conspiracy which is the basis of the book. At the other end are a number of classic comedy figures who discover the conspiracy and try to prevent it.

The book is a passionate defence of the enviroment movement and raises a number of issues which have since been more widely accepted. However it is more than a political tract. It is simply laugh out loud funny. Elton writes the book as a series of gags which are totally effective. It was a comedy classic in its time.

I enjoyed the story, have been reading Westlake since I was a kid and read The Spy in the Ointment. The Parker books by Stark were (are) more edgy and well written, good solid stories. Other reviewers here have done a much better job than I can discussing the merits of the story and the characters, etc.

I found Comeback to be a bit disappointing, however - it was too easy a read. Amazon so helpfully shows the books dimensions (slightly larger than your typical paperback) and it's page count (304), but when it arrived and I opened it, I was dismayed to see that the book had huge margins and very generous line spacing - I had to doubletake and be sure I had not ordered the "large print" version!

Overall, a good story, there just wasn't quite as much of it as I had expected.

Although I adore the crime/detective genre I must confess that I'd never even heard of Richard Stark (and hadn't read Westlake either). But now I'm hooked. To my mind the writing - sharp, clear, direct prose that I would die for - in "Comeback" is superb and I coundn't put the book down. The characters were equally as fascinating as some of the best in Elmore Leonard, who is one of my all time favorites favorites. I'll wait until "Backflash" comes out in paperback, but in the meantime I'm ordering some of the older books. Can't wait till they arrive!

Parker is a heister, a man who plans and carries out major thefts with the help of other heisters, chosen for the job at hand. He is unabashedly a crook. The stakes are real -- if you are hurt on a job, you will likely be killed by your partners who want to ensure their safety.

In this book, Parker is ripping off a televangelist, at a stadium prayer revival. Things start going wrong after his team gets the money. The story is gripping, and a fast read. The author stays true to the characters and situation.

There is an entire genre of fiction -- Block's hitman series, Max Allan Collins' Quarry novels, and these fine novels about Parker -- that involve criminal men acting within their criminal impulses in adventurous situations. For some reason I am drawn to these stories -- they offer no moral redemption, but have a hard boiled honesty about the human condition. And they are fun to read. probably because your average white bread suburbanite loves to imagine a transgressive life of adventurous crime.

The subtitle of "Last Breath" calls it "Cautionary Tales from the Limits of Human Endurance." This would lead one to believe that it is a series of factual stories about people who either died or had near death experiences. Alas, it is nothing of the sort. It is instead a series of "essays" in which the author merely imagines what it would be like to drown, fall from a great height, suffer heat stroke or hypothermia, etc. He liberally sprinkles each essay with medical data and historical anecdotes, but these hardly obscure the fact that there is no actual reporting going on here. The chapter on scurvey, for example, is particularly ludicrous. The author imagines a pleasure sailor who fears coming down with the disease because he forgot to pack any fruits or vegtables for a long distance voyage. Say what???

There are dozens of excellent books out there that feature real life survival (and failure to survive) tales. "Eiger Dreams" by John Krakauer is one of the best that immediately comes to mind. Any of them would be preferable to this peculiar effort.

"Last Breath" makes for a very good educational read on many different ways of dying. The information in the book ties together the psychological and physiologcal factors of people in extreme conditions, and also provides some helpful information on how to increase your chances of survival.

Other reviewers have commented negatively on the characters being fictional. I felt that had you not been told by Peter Stark to begin with, it would have been difficult to know that they weren't real stories. Furthermore, the use of fictional characters allowed the author to include all of the important details and circumstances that can occur during a given struggle, in just one story.

I loved this book and could not put it down. Although I read it several weeks ago, I still think of it often. A series of short stories, each with a different perspective and outcome, depict human struggle in the face of potentially fatal situations. Each story is a wonderful journey into the powerful will-to-live we are all born with. Excellent.