From the moment I read the opening sentances of this book I was hooked in. Maime pulled me into her reality in a way that very few characters ever have. I had been looking for a piece to do for Dramatic Interpretation in speech/debate when I came across it.

Marisa Kantor Stark did a wonderful job on this novel. And with this performance peice I won the position of 1st Alternate to the National Tournament from my state.

Truly, I have come to love Maime. I especially like the parts where she would flashback to a time in her past. There were so many themes in this book it was hard to cut some of them to make the 10 minute time limit.

Now, as a person who has memorized pieces of this novel by heart, I reccomend to the book not just as an award winning performance piece, but as a wonderful read.

Pick it up! Stark will not disappoint you.

An excellent novel that represents the reality of moral questions that faced so many during the Holocaust. Maimie's actions seem so easy to condemn at times and yet so disturbing to the reader who is forced to asked themselves about their own actions during such circumstances. Stark's use of flashbacks to tell the story is first rate. A thought provoking read.

As the grandson of Jewish, Polish Holocaust survivors who has spent countless hours listening to tales of fear and sorrow relating to both war-time and post-war life, I related very well to the themes and main character in Stark's book. I found the book to be very well-written and enjoyed it immensely. I look forward to Stark's next work - regardless of the subject matter. Congratulations on an excellent debut novel!

Begins with hot-headed academic axe-grinding. Tone gets more reasonable as book progresses. The authors repeatedly assert that persons of faith are more "truly scientific" in their study of religion than non-believers, that irreligious scholars cannot truly grasp religion and are thus inherently less qualified to study it than scholars of faith -- all of which is pithy, preening nonsense. If only people of faith are capable of studying religion, does that mean that only farmers can study farming, cops study policing, unions members study unions, racists study racism? If so, let's just give up on this whole social science thing and stare at our belly buttons! The bottom line is that religious people have a unique perspective on religion that the outsider cannot ever grasp, and conversely, the outsider sees things in a way the believer cannot; neither has a monopoly on truth, and both veiwpoints are essential. To earnestly suggest that only scholars of faith are to be trusted is not only self-serving and ad-homonym in nature, but it is downright frightening. One supposes that if Stark and Finke had their way, we'd all have to display our recently validated "faith certificates" before being allowed to get through the doors of the next SSSR! And be forewarned, they have an overt penchant for Protestant Christians, so if you happen to be a witch from Sweden, look out! The authors constantly declare that religion is RATIONAL. But what is "rational," exactly? Rational is one of those words like "beautiful" -- meaning so many different things to so so many different people. Is falling in love rational? Sitting in traffic everyday? Wearing a rabbit's foot? Denying penicillin to your dying child because your religion forbids it? Arguing that religion is "rational" is banal and ultimately teaches us nothing. All this insistence on RATIONAL and yet one wonders -- would the authors contend that ANY belief without evidence/data is rational, or just "religious" belief? Would someone who blindly accepts Freud's theories be considered "rational" in their eyes? Why then is someone considerd "rational" who blindly accepts the theories of Joseph Smith? Indeed, if one person belives something for which there is no evidence and that no one else belives, we call that person self-delusional, insane, or irrational. And yet if 200 or 20,000 people suddeny share the very same belief, we call them "religious" and rational. Go figure. On this whole rational matter, the authors clearly protest too much. The authors do a great and convincing job of digging deep and revealing the "real"/social causes of various religious phenomenon, such as Moonie conversion, Mormon growth, high US religion rates, etc. -- but in doing so, they flatly contradict themselves; they earlier chide scholars for dismissing religious explanations in favor of searching for the "real" causes of religious pheonomenon. Stark and Finke thus do (very successfully!) exaclty what they had earlier criticized in others. I really liked chapters 5 and 7. Chapter 8 was most interesting, and Chapter 9 was solid and intelligent. I learned a lot by the end -- but was distracted by all the initial arrogance and persistent internal contradictions. The book would have been much more powerful and convincing as sound social science had the first chapters with all their silliness and condescension been edited out.

My thinking on the subject of church dynamics has been strongly influenced by other works of Stark (The Rise of Christianity) and of Stark and Finke (The Churching of America).

This latest in their combined efforts is also quite good. HOWEVER, I have found that a conservative bias is beginning to show. In my opinion, they have let biases against Liberal Theology taint an excellent exposition of research. I will support this statement with an example.

They have some excellent numbers which compare the success of Evangelical ministers with in the United Methodist Church to Ministers within the UMC which were co-officiants at a particular homosexual union ceremony. The data clearly indicates that there is stronger growth among the Evangelical ministers. This is used as evidence that "Liberal" (whatever that abused word means) theology is damaging to church growth. I would believe that a better interpretation of this is: Those who go to pick apples get more apples than those who simply seek to polish apples.

As long as Stark and Finke stick to their last, they are wonderful, but when they wander over trying to do theology they faulter.

I would encourage anyone who is interested in Church Growth and Dynamics to buy this book, but please be sure to be on the alert for the conservative bias.

This authors of this book do not, as one reviewer rather superficially whined, claim that the religious perspective is the only valid perspective from which religion can be observed. Their argument is more simply for the validity or "rationality" of the religious perspective. They rightly dismiss the secularization thesis, and contend that religion is here to stay. Furthermore, as an enduring component of human life, religion (and the religious person) deserves to be treated with an appropriate seriousness. The scientific study of religion has for too long been plagued by the presupposition that all religion and religious sentiment is based on illusion or foolishness/irrationality. Stark and Finke, however, give religion and the religious person the respect they deserve by taking their claims at face value. There is no argument for the existence of God (or the validity of any particular truth-claims); instead, the authors put forth an argument for the validity and genuineness of religion as an enduring human construct. The question of transcendence they do not even approach. Finally, it should be noted that Stark and Finke do us a great service by specifying what they mean when they use terms like "religion," "miracle," "prayer," and, yes, "rational." Let there be no mistake: this book is written from the perspective of rational choice theory, and that can be distasteful to many--especially when the subject is religion. But Stark and Finke go a long way toward making their thoughtful, honest and cogent perspective more palatable to the rest of us.

I bought this to try to find something to help us send my son to Georgia Tech for Architecture. Out of all the sections I looked at, (which included Retired Navy, Resident of Georgia, Boy Scouts of America, Religious Affiliation and Architecture) I found ONE listing that even came close to what we're looking for. I would have been better to have been a gay, blind, black woman, from New York, looking for a career in journalism. I'd have found THOUSANDS of listings for this. I'm afraid I feel ripped off here, guys.

I bought this book for myself and was disapointed-reason being- I know which field I'm going into and which school I am going to. I didn't find anything for my field so I looked in the general section and didn't find anything for the school I am attending. I don't recommend it for individual use. However, as a reference guide in the workplace or a financial aid office, even a high school counselor's office I think it is great. There are many things to help many students. As for individual use though, I recommend you check for it at the library instead of spending the money.

Personal and professional growth is cited as one of the primary drivers for today's workers. As we move into an era where workers are assuming control of their own career destiny, education and training are increasingly important.

People are looking at their careers differently today than they have in the past. No longer do they place their faith in the employer to provide all their learning opportunities. Now they must create and implement their own learning designs-taking advantage of corporate training, special assignments, and outside education programs.

In the future, the movement will be even more pronounced. During the years ahead, workers will be choosing their employers based, in part, on opportunities to learn and grow. They'll be looking for companies that demonstrably support education and training. Workers will be significantly more intent on continuing their education-to build their skills, their credentials, and their capacity to perform at increasingly higher levels of competence and effectiveness.

A major objective of their ongoing learning will be to enhance opportunities for advancement-with the current employer or a future employer. People expect to move from job to job every 2-4 years, though not necessarily to a different employer. They will tend to be more loyal to employers who encourage them to grow. Mentoring and experience will be important, as will various kinds of formal learning.

Some of this learning will be gleaned from corporate training and development programs. Commercial seminars and conferences sponsored by trade and professional associations will provide further learning opportunities. An increasing number of workers will take courses at community colleges and universities.

With the magnetic draw of the labor shortage, young people will be pulled from the traditional post-high school process into the world of work. High demands will drive recruiters to recruit students right off the college campus. They're already recruiting more aggressively for students at community colleges and four-year institutions. Some companies will fund work-study programs, enabling students to continue their education while working.

Education takes money. Employers will contribute, at various levels governed by a wide range of factors. In many cases, more funds will be needed. Employed students will face challenges of finding money to fund their college and university work. Employers who help their workers find solutions to their educational problems-including financing-will earn their loyalty and devotion. Companies don't have to finance educational endeavors to win that appreciation; just helping the workers find funds on their own will be a benefit.

Solution: buy one or more copies of a directory of scholarships and place them strategically around the workplace. One good example of such a valuable resource is The Scholarship Book 2000. The annual, produced by the National Scholarship Research Service, contains pertinent information on 4,000 scholarship sources offering awards up to $40,000 per year. Included are scholarships limited to people over 25, 35, and even 60 years of age.

Each entry gives the name, address, phone, e-mail, and internet sites, followed by an explanation of the amount of the award and application procedures. The variety of opportunities for funding is mind-boggling! This volume has a wealth of information, and even makes for good reading.

The 8" X 10.5 inch format is easy to use. The cover is attractive, making it a nice book to have around in break rooms, human resource development offices, corporate libraries, and other appropriate locations around the company. At a $25 price, this three-pound book makes a smart purchase to send a message: "we support the ongoing education of our employees."

All i have to say about this book is it was very boring.

It is a very short "quote" book, mostly consisting of statements from Bill Ward (The Drummer). Although interesting to read, the book lacked any other real veiwpoints from others that have been in the band. It would have been great to have a more balanced account from all the members of the band. Especially Ozzy osbourne & Tony Iommi. There are only a few quotes from these two, & lets face it, these guys are the ones who could have given us deeper insight into the wild ways of Black Sabbath in their Heyday! Overall, not bad.

Most band biographies are inaccurate and poorly done. This is usually because an author will quote somebody, then insert some of his own thoughts, and continue with another quote, giving the illusion that the band shares all the author's ideas. But "Black Sabbath : An Oral History (For the Record)" consists of all direct quotes, ordered by subject chonologically. Maybe not everybody is going to like this style, but after hearing SO many crazy Black Sabbath rumors over the years (like why was Ozzy fired, why did Glenn Hughes drop out of the 7th Star tour, what's this song about, why didn't the such-and-such reunion work out) I'm glad to finally hear the real deal, right from the horse's mouth. Also, Mike Stark (who conducted the interviews) writes an excellent introduction about the music of Black Sabbath. His praisingly creative descriptions of Ozzy Osbourne ("the banshee") and Ronnie James Dio ("The Sorcerer") were so dead-on!

There are many quotes from Bill Ward, which I was very pleased to see. With all the personal conflicts or collaborations that have gone on between Tony, Ozzy, Geezer, and Ronnie, I always wanted to hear what Bill's point of view was in all of this. It was also very refreshing to hear Ozzy and Ronnie complement each other.

The book covers the entire Black Sabbath history, from their beginnings on the streets of Birmingham, through all their 25 years worth of albums and line-ups, and finally to the Ozzfest reunions in 1997. I own the first edition, and the only glaring typo I noticed was "Ray Gillen" being replaced by "Ian Gillan" everywhere. I mentioned it to Mike, and he knew about it, was frustrated about it, but told me that he was hoping to get it fixed in the next edition.

Anyway, if you're a Black Sabbath fan, here's where to get the truth of those crazy stories once and for all. And some excellent anecdotes that I've never heard in any other interviews too.

The variety of light-weight learning here is truly depressing. I don't know of another book that contains so much childish, smirky (and rather confused) displays of erudition. Plautus deserves better.
This is what rich kids do after buying expensive educations?

Avoid.

What I enjoyed about this book is, that it brings the interested reader, who probably is not aquainted with Plautus or Roman comedy at all, the laughs of ancient rome near, which seem still quite modern and worth a laugh. At times one could criticize it is not close enough to Plautus original play, but even if it would be only a translation, there would be differences-and not the majority can still read a Latin text in its original. So why not complete the process to make it understandable and transfer the essence of the comedy into modern times in order to make it aproachable for a broader audience? In this respect the authors have done a fine job. Definitely this is a book worth reading, entertaining as well as educating, and highly recomandable!

I bought this book to learn MRI, but the work is more of an encylopedia than a readable textbook. It contains too much useless information, while the important material is not particularly well written, presented, or organized; for example, the first 300 pages of physics is too often impenetrable and consistently overly theoretical, esp. the parts written by PhD's as opposed to MD's. The chapters are inconsistent in quality, varying from poor to very good. Although the book was supposedly printed in 1999, most of the references are 7-8 years old, the most recent being around 1995; this book is hardly state-of-the-art in its field. It is hard to believe that a book this expensive and in its 3rd edition could have so many typographical errors; did anyone proofread this book? The print is very small, the smallest I've ever seen in a top-of-the-line radiology reference work. On the plus side, it is well illustrated and an outline precedes each chapter.

I ONLY WANT TO BUY VOL NO.3. I WANT TO GIVE IT TO SOMEONE FOR A PRESENT. IF IT'S POSSIBLE HOW MUCH DOES IT COST?

Good luck on finding mineral sites using this guide. While the minerals may be in the areas indicated, the maps are so crude that the likelihood of your finding the sites is very poor. I have tried using the guide for several years with almost no success.

Well worth what I paid for it. This book has lots of information and would make a good reference for the Geology of California.

The maps though, don't say what the major highways/roads are, so you'll need another map. I have the book Roadside Geology of North/Central California, and this book goes really well with it.

In some ways, Rocks and Minerals of California I think is more useful, despite the missing road ID. The book has sections of counties (not all but most) and minerals found in those areas. Also, quadrangle information, township/range locations of minerals is listed.

Stark's account of monotheism reads as if it could've been written in the 18th century, when the newly born Enlightenment mind was energetic and crowingly confident in its ability to demystify religion. It has an air of no-nonsense social science analysis about it. Unfortunately, it also has an air of extreme naivete.

Stark takes as his subject matter the social consequences of monotheistic religion, claiming that the issue of whether God actually exists is unimportant and undiscoverable. His basic conclusions are two: (1) people gravitate toward religion because it promises them something they want--one might call this a "consumer mentality," although Stark himself doesn't use such a label; and (2) monotheistic religions, insofar as each of them claims to be the exclusive sellers of what people want, necessarily breed intolerance.

The problem is that neither of these claims really stand up as straight as Stark wants them to. Surely, for example, there are many reasons why people accept religious beliefs. Some of them may be as crassly consumerist as Stark maintains, but others aren't. Many people gravitate toward religious belief out of a sheer sense of wonderment, or love, or joy. these motives don't fit nicely into Stark's gameplan, and had he even a passing acquaintance with spiritual autobiographies or the tradition of mystical literature in the three Abrahamic religions, he'd have known this. Moreover, if one questions his claim that the draw of monotheistic religions is primarily giving people what they want, then his claim that the traditions are necessarily intolerant because competing against one another likewise becomes problematic.

Stark, a self-styled agnostic, argues that his agnosticism allows him to look upon the phenomenon of religion objectively. One wonders, however. It's clear that the underlying text throughout *One True God* is the old Enlightenment assumption that religious monotheists are either incredibly irrational or selfish or frightened. And in an enlightened world in which everything is perfectly explicable in terms of social analysis, how can one take such religious worldviews seriously?

A sociologist who offers much more reflective accounts of religion is Peter Berger. Read Stark if you wish, but then turn to Berger.

Like most of Stark's contributions, this book is down-right fun to read: engaging, polemical, clear, provocative, etc..
But the flaws are there, as always. First off, the whole reduction of religious belief and involvement to some sort of abstract "economic man" theory is not only annoying, but more importantly, void of empirical data. Costs, benefits, exchange relations, limited supplies, compensators....please. Give it a rest. Sure, some people may choose gods in the same manner they choose laundry detergent -- but most people are religious because of good old fashion processes of socialization. They believe in God because grandma and grandpa do. They worship Buddha because everyone in their village does. They pray to Jesus because that's what mom said to do. For Stark to cling to this rational choice silliness is bizarre -- and strange, coming from someone supposedly affiliated with the discipline sociology. Oh well. I at least appreciate the alternative way of looking at and theorizing about people, flawed though it is.
Finally -- and this is nit-picky I know, but check out this quote in the introduction (p.5):
"It is entirely impossible for science to discover the existence or nonexistence of Gods."
Hm. Really? What if for "Gods" we substituted other possibilities:
"It is entirely impossible for science to discover the existence or nonexistence of Fairies....
of Thor...
of leprechauns....
of floating purple dragons in outer space..."

Those who assert there is a God out there shoulder the burden of proof. Baring convincing evidence, we must remain skeptical. I don't understand why Stark -- who hates "postmodernism and other opponents of reason" (p.14) -- becomes quite post-modern himself by allowing for the existence of Gods without empirical evidence.

The problem is that Stark seems to have begun with an assumption,'Religion thrives in a free-market, pluralistic society,' and then spent the rest of the book trying to support it, rather than letting the research take him to the its conclusion. Actually, I quite agree with him, and I say we should all thank God - literally - for two great oceans and forefathers of rather dicey faith. But there are no revelations here, like there were in "The Churching of America," and "The Early Christian Church." If there is anything you can take away with from this book, it is this: we as Americans really ARE different. I know that human nature is universally the same, but for whatever reason, we just don't see the world the way other poeples do. Whatever our warts are, and we sure do have them, they pale in comparison to Rhine residents roasting Jews alive, Crusaders reveling in infants impaled on their spears, Muslim warriors slaughtering whole towns of "infidels." There are a lot of pious people in Hell, wondering how they got there.

I really enjoyed reading a book that seriously examined the effects TV had and has on our lives, and reading in depth analysis of why certain shows hit it big, and why some shows are still loved today while other shows that were extremely popular in their time are now forgotten. However, I couldn't help but feeling now and then that the author sometimes just took the opposite viewpoint from everyone else in order to seem like he was not in any way a follower, or to prove how different and more insightful his viewpoints were than other TV reviewers! For example, he seems like have a much higher opinion of Home Improvement than of Seinfeld, he discounts Saturday Night Live as having had little influence on popular culture and so forth. This didn't really distract from my enjoyment of this book, however! I like to read opinions other than the mainstream ones! I also really enjoyed reading about how he picked which 60 TV events or shows to profile.

The reviews here seem to conflict, but (aside from the Lucy corrections), they all say about the same thing and pretty accurately describe this book. It is not for people who don't want to hear about the relationship between what was on TV and what was happening in American politics and culture. And it will be an uphill read for anyone who wants to always agree with the author or who doesn't want the author to spin out some interesting speculations.

Personally, I loved this book. I started browsing it in the bookstore. Had to sit down. Read for an hour. Put it back on the shelf. Picked it up again at the bookstore the next day. Got absorbed again. Had to buy it. I found it really readable and absorbing. I love the theories: maybe SNL isn't what it's cracked up to be. Stark seems like the sort of person I'd love to have around to have long conversations with... to argue with. I like the provocation!

Don't go by how the star ratings averaged out. You can tell by these reviews whether you're the sort of person who likes this sort of thing. If you are, you'll probably love the book.

This book is not meant to be about the 60 greatest shows ever to appear on television. It is not, in reality, a book about television at all, but rather about sociology. It analyzes the impact of television on American life, and, conversely, the impact of American life on television.

Bravo to Mr. Stark for writing a book which gives us much more than so many other books do in discussing television. Mr. Stark actually makes us think about its impact.

This is a useful book - unfortunately, it has the wrong title. This book is a "JBoss Internals" training course presented as a book. Full of interesting information, but very little on how you go about developing, deploying and administrating a J2EE application with JBoss. Still, a useful buy for any JBoss user - if nothing else, because there's no alternative!

Good book if you already know JBoss. If you're thinking of re-writing JBoss or just wondering how it works internally then this is good. Absolutely needs step-by-step guide on how to install a bean. Even the JBoss doc.s on the CD are very weak. Having used WebLogic and WebSphere extensively I have still spent 4 hours and not gotten a bean to deploy AFAICT. Oh yeah, no clients/usage are given for the examples; e.g. they show on p70 code and talk about the J2eeDeployer service as being a web service but give no example code or mention of how to use it! Oh yeah, p14 says to drop jar's in the deploy directory and they will be deployed automatically. Well, where are they? Where are the usage examples for the examples provided?

To ensure that nobody is disappointed by this important piece of an amazing product, I should first state what this book is not.

This is not a friendly tutorial that shows you how to build your first J2EE application. This is not a step-by-step guide with lots of pictures showing you how to deploy an Enterprise Javabean onto the JBoss Application Server. This is not a book about JBoss 3.0, also known as Rabbit Hole. Despite some poorly named "beta" releases, the JBoss 3.0 feature set is still in flux.

JBoss Administration and Development provides a ground-up architectural view of the JBoss 2.4.x product line. JBoss is an open-source J2EE-like application server, and this book teaches you how to wield that open source code as power.

You won't learn much about how to use JBoss from this book (the JBoss website forums are good for that sort of info), but if you are a capable developer you will learn to navigate every line of source code of this complex product, and be able to make whatever changes are necessary to make JBoss your own. You will learn about why the developers made some of the design decisions they did, and you will learn how the team turned a mundane API for monitoring software into the backbone of an astonishingly configurable software infrastructure.

And in the end, this book will make you a far better J2EE developer, even if you decide to go on and use Weblogic, Websphere, Orion, or one of those other products that did not win JavaWorld's Editors Choice Application Server of the Year Award.