This book did have good points, but they drown in a stagnant, dreary pool of monotonous prose that could put the heartiest of readers to sleep. Just imagine wading through page after page of sentences like this: "Closer attention to learners' cognitive processes during declarative knowledge learning has led us to realize that elaboration is a basic process by which links are made with information being received as well as for connecting new information to existing knowledge and structures" (161). Someone please rush the authors a copy of Richard Lanham's "Revising Prose".

In designing a course and a tutorial for to be taught online for the first time I used this text. I especially found the chapter on the affective component of course design helpful as students are very anxious initally with distance learning. I have subsequently used the book to retool my face-to-face classes. The examples and end-of-chapter sections are useful for new ideas and approaches.

Beyond the fundamental Systematic Approach to Training process, Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation, and Evaluation, the authors present proven strategies for teaching students how to learn. Problem-solving, delcarative knowledge, concepts, and principle scenarios are presented. This book is a valuable shelf reference for the K-12 teacher as well as the Instructional Technologist.

If my one line review wasn't enough I suggest you read it and find out the truth for yourself

There is no real ending -- why would you want it to end? Tillman is still introducing new characters in the last few pages of the book! Reading a great book doesn't necessarily mean reading a great ending. Great books, Literature, can be read again and again, you "inhabit" the book and with every reading the book changes as you change.

Tillman has a mesmerizing style, totally unique, that keeps you turning the pages although you never feel like you are being herded toward an "end". Not to mention the book is absolutely packed with (feminist) insight. She has constructed a provocative and intensely interesting literary space:

Live this book!

If you want a nice pat ending, read a disposable potboiler and stop writing worthless on-line reviews.

One of my favorite books of all-time, it saddens me to see someone disregard it simply because it doesn't have some false, contrived plot.

I can't believe this idiot gave it one star because it didn't have an "ending." Too used to reading Stephen King and other such pop garbage, I guess.

Anyway, I first read this book in an avant-garde fiction class (don't let that throw you off--it's easy reading!), and have since used it as a gift for several friends. Among other things, one said it was an all too realistic potrayal of growing up female in America.

Basically, the book is divided into three sections, each giving a snapshot of a girl's life in the 70's. Lynne Tillman is up there with Kathy Acker--must reading.

This book is about nothing. But not the funny kind of nothing as in Seinfeld. If you read the back of this book, you get the impression that this woman takes revenge on the people in the streets making all the noise. Let me save you the suspense, she does NOTHING! All she does is complain complain complain, and in the end she finally loses it and, oh my, throws a few eggs out the window that don't even hit the perpetrators. They land on the street. Nothing is resolved at all, there's no plot, there's random jokes all through the book that start out corny and then become unneccessarily offensive and very inappropriate (since when are incest jokes funny?) not to mention annoying when you're trying to figure out why this book was even written. It's important to note that half of everything in this book never happens. It's all about what this woman "would do if..." and "then she would say..." Well,if I "would" have known that I'd gain nothing from reading this book, I "would" never have bought it in the first place.

Ms. Tillman has once again created another memorable narrator and voice. NO LEASE ON LIFE is a remarkably quick read, rife with interesting characters and observations. I enjoyed the joke motif throughout the book. Clearly, the BIG JOKE is on anyone willing to live in NYC.

Lynne Tillman's No Lease on Life is a brilliant and magical novel. Impossible to put down, it's utterly, wildly hilarious. It's a darkly comic tale of mayhem in pre-millennial New York City, shot through with such lawless, wicked humor that one may find oneself laughing uncontrollably, out loud. It traces 24 hours inside the troubled mind of Elizabeth Hall -- a woman on the verge of committing a violent crime. Written in an urgent, percussive prose, it's irresistable, hurtling forward with the momentum of a rock thrown through a window. Opening with a barbed joke about drive-by shootings, No Lease on Life takes place in a dangerous, hilariously funny realm beyond the margins of good manners and good taste. Jokes appear throughout the novel, like rude remarks blurted out, unexpectedly, at a cocktail party. Hugely entertaining in themselves, the jokes accentuate the kinetic, jaunty rhythm of Tillman's writing. They poke serial killers, Jews, WASPS, African Americans, Puerto Ricans and everyone in between. Nothing is sacred. Brimming with in-your-face sass, the narrator is impossibly entertaining. Her "inner voice" is foul-mouthed and ill-tempered, as well as captivating and completely charming. Elizabeth's burning, unrealized ambition is to be a killer. The people she'd enjoy murdering are the loud-mouthed morons who noisily invade her East Village block every night. They amuse themselves by throwing garbage cans and throwing vomiting contests. They make it impossible for Elizabeth, and everyone else, to get any sleep. Pissed-off, irritable and murderous, Elizabeth isn't a nice character. Yet she elicits the reader's sympathy immediately. She's Every Chick who's ever tried to keep her block clean, or her hallway free of garbage and needles. She's a one-woman urban avenger in a world where barbaric, dehumanizing forces have mysteriously taken over. Tillman's novel is suffused with violence, humor, and the percussive energy of urban life. It's an acid-etched valentine to New York

Here's another installment in Phaidon's almost flawless Contemporary Artists series. Aside from a gorgeous and colorful presentation, each book includes a lengthy artist interview, a survey of the artist's career and catalog, a focused critical look at a single work or series, a collection of the artist's own writings, an artist-selected collection of writings which they find relevant to their work, and finally a detailed chronology of the artist's showings and publications and an extensive bibliography. This is a great way to be introduced to an artist's work or to better understand already familiar material. And it makes a perfectly packaged single volume to add to a collection.

I'd seen photos of Stockholder's installations and was excited for more. When I found she had a volume in this series I was thrilled. As I'd hoped, there were more photos of even more fantastic installations - massive, colorful, and complicated constructions of as many different materials and textures as you can imagine. It all looked great.

But my enthusiasm quickly faded. Reading the artist interview I found her to be not just a devout disciple of the art-for-art's-sake formalist school, but downright giddy about the idea. That's not a BAD thing, though its really not MY thing, but to get a perspective on where this formalism is coming from, check out some of these quotes. "I've always felt uncomfortable in museums and galleries. There's a kind of deadening in those places that I work in response to." Huh. "Even so, I love what the art institution makes possible . . . it's a place where you can express anything, and explore any thing without hurting your neighbor" (13). On her creative process she says, "I begin in a very physical place, without a lot of words. . . . There's a quiet - there are no words for what I'm going to do" (14). So if this kind of serious thinking appeals to you, go buy the book I guess, but this stuff just kept coming and systematically grated on each of my nerves. To me she came off like a beret-clad sophomore art student from a "Doug" cartoon.

Next, viewers interested in considering her work in terms of content are left grasping at straws. The titles attached to her installations allude to a possible allegorical content (which on some occasions makes superficial connections with the materials used in the installations), begging for a psychoanalytic reading. Based on what I read in this book, there isn't too much of interest through that door, and she doesn't really tell us much to base such an analysis on. Another direction to take is to take the temporary nature of her work as a reaction against notions of art as a commodity. The book put that on the table, and it made sense. And though, yes, you can say that, the same can be said for the whole of installation art dating back decades before Stockholder got her hands in it. By not offering any real direction (certainly I didn't find any such thing in this book) on the issue of meaning or subject matter she's made a number of critics wary. Myself, after the admittedly powerful initial reaction to the brightness and color in her installations, I'm left empty and bored.

This is not to say that I find Stockholder's work completely without value. Her work does have a strong impact on a lot of people. And she has a great eye. Also, there is a fantastic article by Jack Bankowsky (from the Oct. 1990 issue of "Artforum") I highly recommend. He has a pretty interesting take on why her work is interesting. But based on this book alone, I was ready to write Stockholder off entirely. And even now I'd have to say Stockholder's work is not my cup of tea at all.

While working on an installation of my own at my school, my teacher brought out this book he wanted me to look at. I was instantly amazed at the first page I opened up to. Her work is so incredibly colorful and emotive - I was/am in love. The bit of text I happened to read seemed to be very well written and I know Phaidon to be publishers of VERY good textual and graphic books. There are many beautiful illustrations and it's overall just a nice piece to own.. I HIGHLY recommend this book to anyone more interested in color or installation work. PICK IT UP!

I agree with another reviewer that this book is somewhat of an anachronism; I too, perceived a similarity between these stories and pulp war stories from the late forties through the sixties.It is a veritable grab bag of stories that vary from quite good "The Sea Witch" to the yawner "Hanger Rat". To me, the two best stories by far deal with combat missions in a PBY flying boat in the south pacific in early WW2, they are fast paced, have good character development, show the authors spent some time with historical detail,and ,finally,seem plausible. It goes down hill from there to me, but everybody has their favorites on the smogasbord! In short, if you are old enough to remember war pulp stories and enjoyed them, then you will probably enjoy this compendium; if not, you may find many of the stories too tedious or far fetched to maintain your interest. I give it 3 stars solely on the strength of the 2 PBY stories.

This is a wildly uneven anthology of stories about WWII. The best of the stories are Stephen Coonts'"Sea Witch" and James Cobb's "Eyes of the Cat" oddly, both are about PBY planes, a definitely unique topic. Both deliver excitement and unpredictability and a unique perspective. Stories by Barrett Tillman and Harold Coyle are standard, well told combat tales. Stories by Harold Robbins and David Hagberg belong in a different espionage anthology and there is a truly boring and glaringly out of place story by Dean Ing, who is a much better writer than this. Ralph Peters does well with his tale of a German soldier's problems returning home.
Not up to the caliber of Combat, the earlier modern war anthology, this still offers enough diversion for those interested in WWII fiction if you're willing to accept the uneven nature of the stories.

This book is in the same classification as the Combat book.In
this book you have ten authors write stories about World War II.
Stephen Coonts writes about a Catalina flying boatwho are doing battle with the Japanese in the Pacific.Harold Coyle does a story about the battle on Guadalcanal with the Japanese that earned this area the name of Bloody Ridge.Jim Defelice tells about an American pilot who parachutes into Germany to gather
intelligence and gets decieved.Harold Robbins tells a story about someone whi is sent to kill Hitler.Dean Ing tells a story about an effort to build an interceptor to stop a Nazi super weapon.Barrett Tillman tells of the role of a flamethrower operator in a battle at Tawara against the Japanese.James Cobb
tells of a Catalina searching for Japanese radar in the Pacific.
David Hagberg tells of allied agents trying to stop a Nazi superweapon that can cause havoc in the United States.R.J. Pineiro tells of an American pilot who trains Russian pilots in new Aircobras.Ralph Peters tells of a German soldier going home on foot after the war has ended.All in all this was an interesting book.It ranked as an equal to Combat.

I was hoping from the thickness of this book that it would have all sorts of useful information. It doesn't. It looks as though the author has simply gone through the Gimp's menus item by item and given a synopsis of each. There's very little material that is not already obvious.

Grokking the Gimp is a better choice; it goes through several projects to illustrate useful real-world techniques.

As a professional geek, I've ingested countless books covering computer hardware, administration, programming, and software packages. After getting my hands on the GIMP, and a copy of the "GIMP for Linux Bible", I thought I had everything I needed to start exploring the wonders of the GIMP.

Unfortunately, this book was not up to the task. While the first few chapters were adequate for explaining the basics of the GIMP's interface, the discussion of the more complex (and more useful) aspects of the GIMP (such as layers, channels, blending modes, etc.) was thoroughly obscure. After reading and rereading these sections, I became progressively more confused.

The many illustrations, presumably offered to clarify the muddy explanations in the text, are rendered nearly useless by being printed in black and white. Images intended to show differences in various layer operations and blending modes turn out virtually identical without color. After hours of frustration, I gave up and went shopping for another book.

A much better choice for those interested in becoming GIMP gurus is the excellent "Grokking the GIMP" (ISBN: 0735709246, also available here). After merely skimming the sections covering the topics which were incomprehensible in the "GIMP for Linux Bible", all of these concepts became immediately obvious. "Grokking the GIMP" is packed with clear, full-color graphics, which reinforce the straightforward yet thorough coverage of the text. Start your GIMP education here instead, and you'll be glad you did.

I wrote part of this book and though I can't vouch for the part I didn't write, I can say that the chapters I did write, the ones on scripting gimp in both it's native scheme and in perl, you'll find very educational. I wrote them with a total beginning programmer in mind as well as a seasoned coder. As developer of CoolText.com I am very familure with gimp scripting and I included a complete printed listing of the procedural database, the only one in print that I know of. I did this because I knew it would be handy to anyone codeing for the gimp and I am able to say that I've referred to my own book often.

In the internet world, does it make sense to print companies' name contacts ? I don't think so...This book with 117 pages, waste 68 of them with contatcs names. Additionally, the author does not present deep insights of how get sponsorships.

what is the best way to fined a sponsership?, what is the plan i shuold put to do that?

A good examination of failure in the USA health market This is a good opportunity to examine market failure in the US health care system. Private insurance schemes are making only very small inroads into universal, free at the point of use state financed welfare systems in Europe. However, I think that most European academics in this field will be alive to the possibility of fraud existing in the health insurance markets - if only because of the awareness raised by John Grisham's best-selling book The Rainmaker, which was published 3 years earlier. A contrast with `The Rainmaker' is not entirely flippant. Broken Promises is introduced with a case study that in some ways mirrors the dealings of Grishams fictitious `Great Benefits' health insurance company. Tillman also writes well and this book may well be considered `an interesting read' by the layperson. Broken Promises is an interesting study of insider health insurance fraud. This book is about white-collar criminals but fundamentally it is also about the conditions which promote their crimes. The author explores the ways in which weak regulatory structures and prevailing market conditions have contributed to the occurrence of insurance frauds. The book analyzes the political and economic environment and demonstrates convincingly how these have `enabled' such fraudulent practices to flourish. He also examines how recent legal and institutional changes have created new demand for insurance but also greater scope for fraud.. Broken Promises is written in six chapters (plus a short conclusion), each around 30 pages in length with reference to numerous case studies. Chapter One describes the structural underpinnings of what Tillman refers to as `the social and political construction' of health insurance fraud. Tillman draws upon documentary evidence to provide numerous examples of the three most prevalent manifestations of fraud: swindles which involve multiple employer welfare relationships, employee leasing schemes, and fictitious labour unions as well as more recent innovations, such as`24-hour plans' and cover offered by some religious organizations. The next 4 chapters discuss numerous case studies involving these different forms of fraud. Chapter 2 discusses fraud resulting from multiple employer welfare arrangements. These arrangements were meant to provide alternative mechanisms for health insurance, but case studies detail what can go wrong, in particular when the trusts funding fails. Chapter 3 examines employee-leasing schemes, which do not, to my knowledge, apply in Europe. This is where small businesses, can take advantages of economies of scale by banding together as a notional `leasing agency' and then `sacking' their staff - on paper - but then hiring them (again on paper) though the leasing firm who then provides health and other employee benefits at reduced rates. The number of US workers involved was around 2.5 million by 1995. It is clear from Tillman's work that a significant number of these leasing agencies had very little, or no, assets with which to fund health care and that `cowboy' operators had moved into the marketplace with disastrous consequences for those insured. Chapter 4 examines frauds involving labour unions and involves description and analysis of what he terms `recombinant fraud' that continually changes in the face of prevailing conditions. This chapter's utilizes a set of related cases in order to track and analyze the processes involved. The fifth chapter examines fraud by companies who claim not to be selling insurance, by claiming to be a religious or a mutual organization rather than an insurance company. Fraud by these forms of organization raise questions for regulators on issues surrounding the definition of insurers and the role of the state in protecting consumers. The final chapter discusses the social and political barriers that are in place, which are hindering a change in legislation to better protect consumers from fraud. Amongst his conclusions Tillman examines the role of the state in regulating the markets providing this core welfare service. The message of the book is clear. The regulation of health insurance, at the time the book was written, was (and may still be) chaotic and the state is failing in its fundamental duty to protect its citizens. There are sections of this book, which cry out for a deeper sociological analysis of risk and the state. For example, in a Focaultian analysis of policy trends in the liberal state the rational individual will wish to become responsible for the self as this will produce the most effective mode of provision for security against risk. Equally the responsible individual will take rational steps to insure against risk in order to be independent rather than dependent upon others. This is backed up by a moral responsibility or duty to the self (Greco, 1993). Here prevention and risk management becomes the responsibility of the individual. Reliance upon the state, even for protection against crime, is not to be encouraged (O'Malley, 1991). However, how can individuals protect themselves against insurance fraud? Individuals are insuring against risk but that insurance is itself becoming a risk. Reliance upon the state is not encouraged but it is now clear that the community can not cope alone with fraudulent insurers. This raises issues regarding an enhanced role for the state, which may then have wider implications for this and other welfare fields. However, this book makes no claims to be a sociological text and the work is well suited for the target audience. In short it is a good exposé and worth a read for anyone interested in this field. ... (

This is a collection of photos from the Photographic Arts Academy in Vienna. While containing some good work, it is NOT a collection of photos by Wolfgang Tillmans. It is primarily a small sampler of what was going on in Vienna at some point in the late 90's.

This book is alright and tells a good story, but if you want a book full of detail with photos for modelling I would try something else