The Democratic party William Jennings Bryan took control of in 1896 is a far cry from that same party today. The person most responsible for this change is Bryan. As the book points out Bryan was no intellectual giant; but how many of America's leaders have been? To quote Mr. Cherny, to Bryan "Expertise counted for less than a good heart and a principled outlook." The "Great Commoner" saw things in black and white, good vs. evil and when he had decided what was right he took up cause after cause with a zeal not often found among politicans.

It is often said that the proof is in the pudding, and the proof of Bryan's sweeping influence can be found during the New Deal as one after another his ideas were passed into law. He could of course be wrong as one of his pet projects prohibition and his unfortunate trip to Dayton show. On the other hand one has to wonder how much less the depression would have hurt the common people if more of Bryan's ideas had been made into law before 1929. Like him or not William Jennings Bryan has had more influence on American public policy than at least half of the men who won presidential elections.

As for this particular book. It is very well written and keeps the reader's interest. It is on the short side but provides a very good overview of Bryan's life and carear. The only reason I took away one star was because it is not well documented. No footnotes are to be found and in places they are badly needed. Otherwise this is a very good work dealing with one of America's greats.

William Jennings Bryan (1860-1925) has the dubious distinction of being one of only two men in American history to run for President three times and lose each time. Yet Bryan almost certainly qualifies as one of the most influential "losers" in American history, for despite his defeats he retained a large and loyal following that allowed him to remake the Democratic Party in the early twentieth century. The son of a country judge in Salem, Illinois, Bryan was raised in a solidly middle-class family by devoutly religious parents. Bryan attended law school in Chicago and then moved to Lincoln, Nebraska and opened his own law office. From the beginning his good looks, marvelous voice, and gifts as an orator made him into a celebrity in Nebraska. Bryan used these skills to side with the "underdogs" of the Midwestern prairies - the farmers who were being driven into bankruptcy and foreclosure by a worsening economy and a lack of support from the federal government in Washington. In 1890 he was elected to Congress - a rare victory for the Democrats in a Republican state. He soon earned a reputation as a superb speaker with a magnetic voice - and as a controversial foe of the big businesses which controlled both political parties. In the 1890's a nationwide economic depression gave Bryan the chance to seize control of the Democratic Party from its' conservative leaders. At the 1896 Democratic National Convention he gave what is still regarded as one of the greatest political speeches in American history - a ringing defense of farmers and an assault on the "robber barons" of New York's Wall Street. The "Cross of Gold" speech electrified the delegates and earned Bryan, at the age of 36, the presidential nomination. Over the next four months Bryan traveled by train to all parts of the nation, spoke to huge crowds, and basically ran the first modern "liberal" presidential campaign. He pushed for unemployment insurance, social security, government credit for farmers and small businessmen, an end to child labor in factories and coal mines, women's suffrage, and better working conditions for factory workers. Although we take many of these things for granted today, the Republicans and Big Business regarded them as dangerous and a threat to the national economy. They raised record sums of money to defeat Bryan, threatened factory workers with layoffs if they voted for Bryan, and in the end defeated the "Great Commoner" (so-called because of his affinity for the "common people" of America) by a narrow margin. Yet Bryan's heroic campaign allowed him to make the Democrats into the "liberal" party that they are today. In 1900 and 1908 he was again nominated for President by the Democrats - in 1900 he spoke out against American "imperialism" overseas and even uttered warnings that America could not be the world's policeman - a warning that we still argue about today. In 1912 Bryan played THE key role in securing the Democratic nomination for Woodrow Wilson - thus making Wilson President. Bryan served as Wilson's Secretary of State from 1913-1915, during that time he worked tirelessly to keep the USA out of World War One. When Wilson threatened to go to war with Germany in 1915 following the sinking of the British passenger ship Lusitania - a sinking which cost 128 American lives, Bryan resigned as Secretary rather than support a move towards war - a war which Bryan honestly felt would "waste" thousands of American lives. Over the last decade of his life Bryan became a leading spokesman for religious fundamentalism, and a strong opponent of the theory of evolution. In 1925 he made his last dramatic stand as the prosecutor in one of the most famous trials of the twentieth century. John T. Scopes, a biology teacher in the high school of Dayton, Tennessee, was arrested and put on trial for teaching the theory of evolution in violation of a state law forbidding it. The defense hired Clarence Darrow, the nation's most famous trial lawyer (the Johnnie Cochran of his day) and a militant critic of traditional Christian beliefs, to defend Scopes. When Bryan agreed to "battle for the Lord" and lead the prosection, the trial became a national sensation. The trial's climax came when Darrow put Bryan on the witness stand as an "expert" on the Bible and proceeded to ridicule his beliefs, such as that Jonah was swallowed by a great fish, or that Adam and Eve were really the first two humans on the Earth. Although Scopes was found guilty (he never paid the $100 fine), Bryan was so humiliated by Darrow's questioning and so exhausted by the trial that he suddenly died a few days later. Many big-city reporters and editors continued to ridicule Bryan even after his death - they regarded him as an ignorant rural hick with no redeeming qualities. Yet large numbers of people still turned out for his funeral - ordinary, "common" folk who realized how hard Bryan had fought on their behalf, and how much he had sacrificed in their cause. As this book points out, nearly all of the things Bryan fought for have since been enacted into laws, and most of the Democratic Party's great leaders of the past century - from Wilson to FDR to Huey Long to Harry Truman to Adlai Stevenson and Lyndon Johnson - owe Bryan a debt of gratitude for transforming the Democrats into a liberal party. As Truman noted "If it wasn't for Old Bill Bryan, there wouldn't be any liberalism at all in the country now". This biography, while short, is nonetheless an excellent introduction into one of the most influential - and controversial - politicians in American history.

When I got SADX, I also got this guide book. I flipped through it a few times, just to see what it had. For the most part it looked like it wouldn't provide that much help, but I bought it anyway because it knew how to get the twelve gamegear titles. When I got home to play the game, I had the book right there with me. This is what I found out about the book: It isn't a walk-through guide book, which means that it doesn't progress with you as you play. Instead, it has everything jumbled up onto one page. There are things that it says you can get to once you get about half way through the game, and also on the same page there will be things that you can do in the very begining. It gets pretty confusing. I'd say that the only things that it has which are really helpful are these: how to beat the bosses, the maps (it's nice to have the maps, but you can get along fine without them), and how to get the gamegear titles. All this book really says is where all the little items (rings and such) are in the levels, and how to beat the bosses. It also is hard to read the action stage maps, so I would recomend just exploring them yourself. Overall, this book is good to have for reference and pointers, but it's not really an essential.

This book is awesome because it gave me everything I needed to get past certain points in Sonic Adventure DX:Director's Cut. If I got stuck all I had to do is rely on my strategy guide to help me. It also told me how to unlock everything I wanted to in the game. This product is awesome!

Super Mario Sunshine is a VERY hard game, luckily, I found this guide, and it told me EVERYTHING I needed to know

To say this guide was bad would be like throwing the game out of your bedroom window! It is so cool you would not believe it!
The text is well laid out and they have used screen shots in all the right places! The only problem is that it dosen't run in order.The hub world comes before everything else(apart from training). And for shine number 10,11,12 and 13 you need a nozzel you can't reach.

The good:
+Well laid out.
+Lots of shots
+Detailed.

The Bad:
-Not in order

I found this title rather diappointing. If you are the take it at home type and don't actually attend a Tae Kwon Do class you may find this helpful. Although I must say that the information is acurate. But anyone who attends classes and get this title will be disappointed as well. Mr. Yates is ususally a VERY good author, this book does not do him justice.

Filled with good information, illustrated with tons of good photos. This book is encouraging, as it shows girls and boys of all ages, sizes, and ethnicities (and all ranks) performing stretching, self-defense, and basic tae kwon do skills. It's written at a level kids can understand -- without insulting their intelligence. A great buy.

This book is close to that fine line that helps bring seekers closer to God and the bible thumping scripture warns us against.
I found the book entertaining and well written, but spoke more to general how to conduct business and how to lead a simple life than it was about lessons learned at Enron. I shared it with some Enron employees hoping to move them closer to God before actually reading it which was a mistake. The book comes on strong. This is an excellent book when shock therapy is required to snap people out of bad business behavior.

The Enron fallout exposes major problems in our economy that go much deeper than business philosophy. These authors tell the story of Enron in a way that is insightful and spellbinding. If you want to know more about Enron and learn ways we all can become better people, this is the book for you!

The chapter on pride was worth the price of admission.

This book gives the reader a surface view of SGI in the UK but the leaves out any in-depth analysis. For this reason I found this book quite disappointing. It seems the authors did not want to take sides and just produced something that is quite flat and bland. Some comparisons of SGI UK and other movements such as Scientology were useful but too short. Moreover, for people not familiar with the terminology of the SGI UK movement this book may be hard to follow.

As the family member of an SGI-UK member, I found this book very interesting. I would recommend it to anyone who wants to know more about the Soka Gakkai International movement in UK (or the SGI in general) and about Nichiren Daishonin's Buddhism.

This is an excellent, well-written book. The strategies it details for finding information on the Internet should be very helpful to the starting searcher. Unfortunately, this book written too many internet-years ago, back in 1996. There is no mention of AltaVista or HotBot, and Inktomi, the search engine behind HotBot, is described as "one of the newer search engines on the Web." The discussion on "Preparing Your Browser" also makes good points, but it refers to Netscape Navigator 1.2. Of course, there was no Internet Explorer back then. In summary, kudos to the author as well as encouragement to bring out the next edition.

Bryan Pfaffenberger's Web Search Strategies is by far the best Web search book I've seen yet. I teach an introductory World Wide Web class, and am also a librarian. This book concisely presents strategies for various types of searches (quick, subject tree, searching trailblazer pages, "deep searches" using AND, OR and NOT operators, and specific tips for the search engines including Lycos and Infoseek. Also included are tips on searching subjects such as Reference, Government Information, and searching for software to download. A great book that helps whittle information overload

Hector Perez knew that Felipe and Tito Gomez would come to kill him for the silver mine title and map. He made a deal with the renegade, Sean Flanagan. For fifty percent of the Perez Brother's General Store, Sean would protect his family, especially his daughter Marisa.

Hector was killed, shot while he slept. Sean managed to kill Felipe and Tito before they escaped. Carmen, Marisa's aunt, began making arrangements to have Marisa married off. Marisa rebelled because she wanted to provide for Chico, the insane man-child Hector had taken care of and she had become close friends with. Carmen wanted Chico gone. So Marisa conned Sean into marriage.

Baldomar Gomez also knew of the silver mine. He wanted Marisa and the mine as his own. If that meant killing Sean, that was no problem.

**** The only thing I did not understand in the book was that when Sean took Marisa out of the river, she cursed him in Spanish and he knew exactly what words she said. Yet for the rest of the book, he did not understand Spanish. Other than that, the book was very excellent. Marisa's lies kept digging her in deeper and deeper trouble. Of course, Sean was not likeable to me at first, but as he changed I began to change my mind. I stayed up well past my bedtime to finish this one. Great story! ****

What is the purpose of this book? -The purpose of this book is to give the reader personal accounts of the application process to a Top MBA Program. This book is designed to supplement, not compete with the existing "how to" books. What is the format? -The book includes 20 interviews of successful applicants to the MBA programs of Northwestern, Harvard, Stanford, and Penn. These schools were selected because they represent the top schools in the nation and each attracts a slightly different type of student. In this book you will read first hand accounts from students of various backgrounds- including investment banker, consultant, small business owner, military officer, theater manager,physician, attorney, and more. The interviewees discuss personal accounts of their decision to apply to an MBA program, previous work experience, extracurricular activities, school selection, GMAT issues, application experiences, and what school they decided to attend and why. Hopefully the reader will be able to identify with one or more of the students and compare his or her background with an accepted student to a top MBA program. Who is the target audience? -The target audience includes all people who are considering application or are currently applying to a competitive MBA program.

The co-author Lara Letteau graduated from Kellogg in 1999. We hope this book helps you in your application to business school! Bryan Goss and Lara Letteau, MBA

I read this book when it first came out in 1993, and it impressed me as I hadn't read a book like it before. Since, however there has been a flood of books on this subject, some a lot better, some only worth pulping.

Although not very technically indepth, and at points rather vague about times and places, the general flow is good, with coverage from the early days of phreaking (including discussion about Cap'n Crunch, Jobs and Wozniak amongst others), through to the flavour of the day - Virii. It even discusses the Internet Worm and other "early" Internet hacks.

All in all a decent read, if not 100% technically adept.