Despite the impression given by the title, this book does not describe a general "holistic" approach, but rather one based on the bizarre and mystical "anthroposophical" theories of Steiner. Although the authors' care for the children they work with is evident, their quasi-religious approach means that the book is only likely to appeal to those already prepared to believe that autism is due to problems in the child's karma and the failure of their soul to "incarnate" properly.

This is a tremendous work which any caregiver or family member of a person with autism should read. A credit to the obvious commitment and wisdom of the author.

I know: A history book is not meant to be a page turner. But this book is written in such a dry and unemotional way that the reader wonders why he was originally interested in that region at all. It mainly consist of a compressed recounting of historical events the author has read about somewhere else. The book may be helpful for the fist year history student, but for the 'layman' who has a general interest in the region and its history, this book isn't worth buying. Sorry!

Ralph Woodward's Central America: A Nation Divided, has been the best introductory book to the region. This third edition is a clear improvement over the previous editions. Both the chronology and the bibliography have been updated and expanded. (The Bibliography is now 77 pages long!) The book is strong on the era of independence and the early national period (1780's to 1840's). It is excellent for the 1970's to the present. All of the countries are evenly covered, including Belize. However, it is not as comprehensive for the rest of the 19th century when coffee and bananas permanently shaped the economies and societies of the region. It is also weak on the Indian cultures prior to the Spanish conquest.

Although it is an excellent book in many respects, it doesn't really tackle the whole issue of creativity. Non-chemists be warned! This book is intended for professional chemists and any non-chemists (or even lapsed chemists) will find much of this book is totally unreadable. A great pity.

J. Berson touches on the most important and influential chemists of the history. Although a well written book, it did lack some detail and more recent discoveries using these influences. However, the book did contain enough information to keep the reader interested without getting too technical, ie. no Ph.D necessary to understand his work. I recomend this book as a creativity booster for those graduate students in chemistry who are still trying to find their way.

"Shadow" is Bob Woodward's latest book on the American presidency from Nixon to Clinton. I approached the book hoping to gain a better understanding of how Watergate had changed the political culture of Washington, the function of the presidency and the role of the press in American society.

Woodward's writing style is very meticulous. His training as a reporter flows through every page of the book. The detail of information in this book is facinating. Woodward's focus is on reporting the details behind various scandals from the Ford and Carter years up until Clinton.

Woodward offers alot of background on the now defunct Independent Council Law and the circumstances that prompted it after Watergate. He also provides insight into the streingths and weaknesses of the law and how each IC interpreted and approached his duties.

The weakness of the book is in it's interpretation of the events. Woodward offers some insights into the reason behind the various scandals but they are somewhat shallow. Woodward's solution to presidential scandal is to simply be "forthcoming with the facts." This seems somewhat naive. Not to say that politicians should not be honest and truthful, but are presidents supposed to be upfront about every misstep of their administrations given that the media and politcal adversaries are ready to pounce on the slightest sign of weakness? Woodward is quick to show how Clinton could have avoided his troubles at any number of junctures.

The book spends little time discussing how honesty and openness can occur given the nature of the Washington press culture or the culture of skepticism in general. Woodward interestingly enough has virtually no criticism of the press.

Because of its weakness in offering solutions, you come away feeling like you just read a supermarket tabloid cover to cover. The details are interesting but they are not really put together in a meaningful way.

Overall the book is well written and a good read. Just don't expect too much from it and you'll be quite pleased.

In this book, Woodward attempts to take one of the pivotal events of American politics-the resignation of Richard Nixon--and analyze how it has affected the Presidencies of those following Nixon. An ambitious assignment, to say the least, but one that Woodward does not necessarily fulfill. Woodward's biggest problem is that he does not start out with a clear thesis, which makes it difficult to follow how the phenomenal amount of information presented fits together. The only clear point that Woodward makes throughout the book is a rather obvious one: that Watergate has significantly impacted the Presidencies of Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, and Clinton. After reading the book, I would draw the conclusion that the enduring reason for this affect, beyond the increased skepticism of the President by members of the media, is the Independent Council provision, which Woodward suggests has caused endless scrutiny of peccadilloes by investigators who feel they have to bring charges to justify their investigation. If this was indeed Woodward's point, I think he would have been better served to make it clear in the beginning of the book and show throughout the book how his evidence supported this thesis.
However, the storytelling in the book makes it worth reading. You may forget why you're reading it, but Woodward uses his numerous high-level sources to give a fascinating retelling of many of the scandals that have lurked in the media through the last thirty years. He pays close attention to detail, trying to help readers who are unfamiliar with the events surrounding various investigations understand what was happening and who was involved. Because of this, I would still highly recommend this book, despite its occasional lack of a cohesive argument.

Woodward's "Shadow," was, indubitably, the best book I have read in several years. It examined, with incredible detail and authority, the sundry effects of Watergate on the American presidency. Since Nixon's resignation, Woodward shows, the American public has viewed every leader as thoroughly corrupt and intent only on serving their own self interests. With painstakingly accurate and unbiased facts, Woodward convinced me that most of the post-Watergate presidents were victims rather than villians. President Reagan, for example, likely had little if any awareness of the Iran-Contra operation at the time it was executed; President Clinton has been plagued incessantly by unvalidated insinuations and malicious investigators hoping to serendipitously stumble upon some wrongdoing, e.g. Whitewater, where none existed. Overall, Woodward seems to suggest that the expiration of the independent counsel statute was overwhelmingly positive and that, in the future, the public should cease its endless cynicism and regain its erstwhile sentiments of respect for our leaders. Regardless of your views of my interpretation, I believe "Shadow" is one the most informative, and simultaneously engrossing, reads you are likely to find.

Before commenting on the book, let me state that Dr. Alan Greenspan has been the best chairman of the Federal Reserve that we have had. He has risen well to every challenge and the current record-setting economic expansion is partly a testament to his skill both as an economist and as a government leader. I give Dr. Greenspan far more than five stars for his handling of the market meltdown in October 1987, persuading the Clinton administration to lead on cutting the budget deficit, nursing sick banks back to health, in keeping a sharp focus on inflation fighting, for being vigilant about the frothy levels of stock prices, getting us through the Mexican, Asian, and Russian financial crises, and for vastly improving the methods used to track the economy.

To the potential reader of this book, let me give you two cautions. If you like exciting reading, go elsewhere. Economics and monetary policy are pretty boring stuff, and the way they are treated here makes them more boring than they have to be. Second, if you want to learn about the significance of Dr. Greenspan's role at the Federal Reserve, skip this book. It misses the target in that area.

Mr. Woodward, by comparison, is lucky I gave him 3 stars. The man treats biography as though he is uncovering the Watergate scandal, and the end justifies the means. For example, he does not cite sources. This means that the reader cannot judge for her- or himself what bias may be present in the material being quoted. For example, the first pages of the book slam James Baker in every possible way short of accusing him of being a pedophile. Who is this source (or sources) who is (are) providing the dirt? What do they have to gain by blackening Mr. Baker's reputation? I would like to know before I take the information seriously. Any other biographer or historian would tell you.

The second problem is that Mr. Woodward does not seem to know very much about economics or the Federal Reserve System. For there is little about either subject in a book that primarily focuses on Dr. Greenspan's role at the Fed. For example, the book does not even describe all of the legislative objectives that have been set for the Federal Reserve by Congress. The Humphrey-Hawkins legislation about encouraging full employment is first mentioned more than half-way through the book. Those who are not familiar with the subject wouldn't have guessed that Dr. Greenspan was supposed to be addressing this subject and was reporting to Congress regularly on it as Mr. Woodward reports on what Dr. Greenspan was doing to fight inflation.

Now, most will agree with me that economics is a pretty difficult subject to write about. But Mr. Woodward could have written about someone else rather than Dr. Greenspan. In this book, economic events, thoughts, and analyses are usually treated as either minor background events or as gossip items to reflect on personal qualities. As such, the economic events and implications are greatly oversimplified. For example, I doubt if many readers can understand the obscure references in the book to Dr. Greenspan's successful search for the missing service productivity measurements. At a minimum, Mr. Woodward needed a coauthor who is an economist to add some depth related to the book's treatment of Dr. Greenspan's work.

A third major problem with the book is that Mr. Woodward makes a great deal out of unused contingency planning in crises. These are dropped on the reader to suggest we were a hairs-breadth away from financial Armaggedon. That is like reporting the fact that we always had bombers in the air with nuclear weapons during the Cold War as suggesting that we were always about to bomb the USSR. All government agencies are always preparing for contingencies that will never occur. That doesn't mean that the contingencies are imminent. Mr. Woodward, for example, tries to make a case for having us think that President Reagan might have closed down the New York Stock Exchange in 1987 and that it could have taken a week to reopen. This is pure sensationalism in my view. It probably helps sell books.

The strength of the book is based on the fact that the Federal Reserve releases the transcripts of its deliberations. Mr. Woodward has liberally used these transcripts to give you a flavor of the consensus-building process he uses to lead in creating policy and interest rate decisions by the Fed. This raw material in interesting, even if Mr. Woodward's characterizations of these transcripts frequently are not. He makes a great deal about differences between Alan Blinder and Dr. Greenspan. That is much ado about nothing, and simply makes the book longer. Achieving consensus in Dr. Greenspan's Fed is a lot like the EDS television commercial about cowboys herding cats, especially after President Clinton began making appointments to the Fed.

One of Dr. Greenspan's great strengths is his approach to preparing for decisions. He is unusually open-minded, willing to listen, and eager to get better information. This makes others more willing to listen to him, and to pay attention to this views. It also allows him to improve his own views in useful ways. The book does a reasonably good job of exposing the benefits of this approach.

In two other minor areas, the book is clearly deficient. Mr. Woodward fails to discern the usefulness of Dr. Greenspan's complicated communications. You can read whatever you want into them. The Federal Reserve chairman is required to make more speeches, deliver more testimony, and to answer more questions than just about any other public official. Usually, the best result is to have to no impact on the financial markets. Dr. Greenspan is brilliant in performing these tasks in a neutral way. To listen to Mr. Woodward, you get a sense that Dr. Greenspan's convoluted communications are solely some sort of genetic defect acquired from his father.

Mr. Woodward does notice that stock price levels are high, but fails to fully appreciate how much the surging markets reflect a failure of Fed policy. Clearly, the interest rate raises we have going on now have been aimed more at the stock market (in a preemptive strike against future inflation) than against anything else. How will it all turn out? Much of Dr. Greenspan's final reputation will be determined by this open chapter in the story. I wish him well.

After you have finished reading this book, I suggest you consider the next biography you plan to read. Ask yourself these questions: What does the biographer have to know about to be competent in this area? Who would be an ideal biographer? How much time needs to pass before a reasonably objective and complete biography can be done? As a result, you may find your choice of subjects more limited than you like. Certainly, this book would fail these tests.

As for Mr. Woodward, please go back and write about crooked politics. You do that well, and your methods and skills are more appropriate there.

Maestro is a nice, short book that is already out of date. It is as much about the Clinton-era economic boom as it is about Alan Greenspan. It ends by asking how long the boom can go.

Bob Woodward has written three books, which prominently highlight aspects of the Clinton era ' The Agenda, Shadow and Maestro. Maestro is the only one in which Clinton and his team look good ' really good. The approach to the economy, especially their cutting of the deficit, balancing of the budget and internationalist approach, both contributed to the boom and gave the Fed room to further sustain the boom. The Reagan and Bush administrations are portrayed as too political in their decision making, while the Clinton-Greenspan partnership is portrayed as the model.

Sadly, this model and the technical aspects of managing the government did not and don't get the attention that things like sex scandals do. Maestro helped me better appreciate Greenspan, but also better appreciate what we had with the Clinton administration. By comparison, the present Bush administration with its excessive tax cuts and deficit spending seems very scary.

My one major criticism of Maestro goes back to it being already out of date. Little space is devoted to explaining the structure of the Fed, what exactly it does, or even what Greenspan does on a day to day basis. In a way, it is like a very long newspaper or magazine article more than it is a book. But it is enjoyable and useful, at least for the moment.

I really enjoyed this book because I generally love reading about politics, public affairs, and biography. If you want to get a pretty good series of snapshots of the U.S. economy and of U.S. economic policy, then this is definitely a good start.

Woodward explains how the U.S. government, especially the Clinton Administration, has made a big transition toward monetary policy rather than fiscal policy to influence the economy. Hence, the Fed has taken center stage in U.S. economic policy, and the Fed's front-man, Alan Greenspan has been referred to by many people as the most powerful man in the world.

I think that this book would be an outstanding accompanyment to an introductory macroeconomics class as an example of how monetary policy works. Woodward's writing is a pleasure to read and the biography format keeps things moving very nicely. Readers with PhD's in Economics will probably not learn much, or take issue with many of the gaps in the text, but by and large, this is a very informative, readable book.

This study guide didn't match up well with my Precalculus texts, or lectures, and I found it to be useless. Very little information is presented on each topic, and worse, topics seem to be haphazardly picked for inclusion.

I use this text in my college-level math review course and find it to be an excellent reference. As an earlier reviewer noted, it does not go into great detail on any of the subjects, but that was not the intent of the text. It is intended as a listing of "just the essentials" and should be used only as a reference, not as primary instruction. For its intended purpose, I find it invaluable.

The most basic of tutorials. Big pictures of everyday use of a window's type operating system. Might as well apply to '95 or '98. If you've used either of these before you do not need this book.

I train beginning level users, and this book has been perfect for them. There are lots of pictures and very little technical text to read. It wouldn't be suitable for someone who was already experienced with Windows, but for the novice level, I highly recommend it.

A friend loaned me The Checkered Years, and after reading it, I purchased two copies, one to give away and another to lend and ultimately to keep in my library. From the day-to-day writings of Mary Dodge Woodward, the reader begins to understand the central role of weather in the life of the early Dakota settlers - the awesome cold, wind, and heat; the blizzards, drought, and flood - all matter-of-factly but beautifully described in an unpretentious diary. The diary entries give a hint of the tremendous effort it took on Mary's part and that of her family to build up a large wheat farm, and along with that, the uncertainties she faced as a widow growing old. I wish the book had more background information in its introduction and more diary entries that, even though they probably would have seemed repetitive, may have given more focus to the people mentioned in the selections.

Mountain biking technology has changed significantly since the time this book was published. The techniques section; how to go uphill, how to go downhill, how to negotiate the different types of terrain is still valid. The photographs help illustate the technique.

I purchased this book because it was one of only 3 references in the store on Frontpage 2000. I thought to myself that at least the CD that comes with it should be worth the price.

After working through the book during the process of doing a medium sized website, I found that many of my questions were unanswered. This a good book if you have never done anything with the web at all, and are not interested in more advanced manipulation of your site.

A HUGE omission from this book is the topic of Cascading Style Sheets. For those who are considering this book and don't know, having knowledge of how to work with these is crucial, and this topic is completely left out.

Other than that, it was an OK introduction to the most basic of topics. If all you want to do is know what the basics are to put up a home page, this book will do the job. If you want to really dig into intermediate to advanced level features using Frontpage, this book is not for you. I will now buy The Complete REference book hoping for more complete coverage of advanced topics.

As for the CD, there isn't much on it that couldn't be had by surfing around the free sites on the web yourself, finding material that is actually relevent to your project.

Are you building your first web page? Or are you perhaps not the most experienced web designer? There are some huge FrontPage books out there that get into highly technical topics, but if all you want to do is learn FrontPage 2000 and build a web page you can be proud of, then I can't recommend this book highly enough.

This book walks you through how to use all the tools to build web pages, hook up those pages into a web site, and send the site to your internet service provider. When you get done, you'll know how to build and maintain your site, and you won't have had to wade through 1000+ pages to get there. This book even shows you how to use the included graphics editors to dress up your pages, and how to use styles and templates to create a really snazzy look.

The writing is clear and concise, and the wealth of screenshots makes it easy to follow the step-by-step. It might be a bit much to get through this book "in a weekend", but it won't take much longer than that, even if you're a beginner.

When I bought the software for Frontpage 2000 I knew NOTHING about web site design, and certainly nothing about Frontpage. When I bought the program, I also bought one of those 1100 page exhaustive (so I thought) tombs about how to use the program. I got about three chapters into the big book and decided that I didn't know what the heck they were talking about. Now, I'm no dummy. I'm pretty good at following directions, but I just didn't get it. So I went back to the bookstore and bought "Frontpage 2000 in a Weekend". I knew I was in safe waters after the first chapter. Wagner and Callihan do an excellent job of making the whole process of site design simple and painless. By simply following their tutorials I learned everything I needed to know to get amazing results ouf of the program. And just in a weekend (just as promised). As I continue to work in Frontpage, I occasionally come across a question I can't answer. I usually turn to the 1100 page giant first (I guess because it just LOOKS like it ought to have all the answers). But many times the solution they present is covered just as well or better in the Weekend book. My reccomendation: If you're just getting started wiht Frontpage, save the $45.00 on the big books and pluk down a quarter on "Weekend". It's money worth spent.