EXCELLENT BOOK, RECIPES ARE WELL WRITTEN AND EASY TO FOLLOW. RESULTS SO FAR HAVE BEEN GREAT.

LACKS ONLY PICTURES OF THE END RESULTS. YOU WILL HAVE TO USE YOU IMAGINATION UNTIL YOU HAVE MADE IT.

I have really struggled to get the authentic flavor until I found this book. What a treat to be able to finally make delicious Indian foods correctly. What she teaches is Northern Indian cooking which of course immediately will appeal to the American cook. Don't try to cut corners or ingredients until you get the concepts down. Cooking times are especially important to get the flavor right. The only downfall to this book is that once you get the recipies down you may never want to eat out again in an Indian restaurant as you'll have one at home! If you want to do this right, you need this book!

This book is life changing. If you believe in the saying, "when the student is ready, the teacher will appear" this is the book for you. After reading the book and applying some of the processes, it has been a life changing experience. Not only for myself, by my children as well. There is a lot to be said about looking within, verses looking outside for a solution. Especially as it relates to your health and emotions. This book will start you on the right track and take you on a journey that will be forever life changing. Thank you Kathy Curry.

I had the opportunity to attend a Tabula Rasa workshop with Kathy Curry in February. The technique is amazing and easy to use. I had been working for some time on getting to the bottom of various emotional issues, and had tried a multitude of techniques, both through traditional medicine and more holistic approaches. After the workshop, I had a breakthrough when I recovered memories that previously I only had bits and pieces of to puzzle over. I used the technique on myself by first grounding myself, and then visualizing my "inner child" and grounding her...by using the communication balance, I was able to finally get her to tell me what was going on. The effect on my emotional state, AS WELL AS my physical health, was astounding. I have since used the technique both on myself and on others with positive results. I am now a certified Tabula Rasa practioner and look forward to sharing this technique with others!

Here's another book where I enjoyed it so much, I do admit I liked the TV movie as well. Bad, I know. However, this really is one of my favorite DS. Definately on the top 5. This story takes you to a time & place, you meet so many people...you feel you've lived it, been there...
Get a copy today!!

This is the best book by Ms. Steel! I have just finished reading it and it was wonderful. What I liked best was the romance between the Duke and Duchess of Whitfield. The romance is so strong and loving! It shows you what true love really is. I want to see the movie now! This is the best book, so read it!

This is my favorite book by far by Danielle Steel. She is wonderful! This book was long, but that's what I loved about it. I never wanted it to end. I cried at parts and I laughed at parts. I loved every bit of it. The one thing about her books is that as soon as you finish one of her books, you want to run out and get another by her right away! I always have a Danielle Steel book right next to me it seems! The bottom line is, if you read ANY Danielle Steel book, then read Jewels. It's absolutely wonderful.

Like most people, I own a stack of Stephen King books, and for some reason I've never gotten around to review the ones I liked best, which makes me sort of ashamed of myself, since I keep saying that the quality of King's writing is often underrated. This is not the usual Stephen King book, this one is actually pretty mellow, compared to Carrie, for example, (that was the first of his books I read, and I hadn't read anything that gory before), but it still has its share of scary stuff, like The Ten O' Clock people, and The Moving Finger (after I read that one I really felt kind of nervous about the bathroom sink for a few days). I only could't get through the essay at the end, Head Down, because I don't understand absolutely anything about baseball. My favorites were Dedication, The End of the Whole Mess, The Ten O'Clock people, The House on Maple Street, and Popsy (oddly funny if you think about it). I suppose hardcore fans of King's horror will be sort of confused by this book, but I think any lover of short stories, like me, is bound to enjoy it.

i like SK particularly as a short story writer. if he has a good story he never fails then. considering his other collections, this was not as inventive as the two previous. not as matheson-like as the first. this was a great collection. a bit mixed. the end of the whole mess and umney's last case seemed to be the most inventive ones. but his other horror stories were good too. there are even some crime stories here, they are actually pretty good. although SK delivers, his collection is all in all very readworthy, his writing style good, this collection marks the sad decline of SK. some of the stories are great, true. some of the stories, however, are only good in the hands of a master. and some of the stories are completely uninteresting. it's very enjoyable, but don't expect too much.

As an enormous fan of King, this book was warmly welcolmed in my arms. I wasn't dissapointed. As always, when it comes to King, I was sold. There's also a particular reason why I welcomed this book so much: In various books about King, I learned about many of those early and hard to find King stories, all the uncollected ones, and the rare ones. I was a bit sad about realizing that maybe I would never ever own these oddities. Then, finally, a new collection of King-stories showed up, mostly containing some of those old and hard to find stories. I was happy! And the book also featured a few new ones. Again, with Night Shift and Skeleton Crew, I liked all the stories, even the teleplay Sorry, Right Number (I haven't seen the adaptation yet), the Brooklyn August-poem and the Head Down-essay. I loved The Night Flier, The Moving Finger, Chattery Teeth, You Know They Got a Hell of a Band, Home Delivery, Crouch End, Rainy Season. My Pretty Pony really touched me. I don't know a hang about baseball (I am Danish, sorry!), but King makes it interesting. All I can say is that any true King fans must read this book. There's also a Sherlock Holmes-mystery involved. I only wished that King had included stories like The Cat from Hell, Man With a Belly, Pinfall, and some others of those hard to find. What about this story "The King Family and the Farting Cookie" that he wrote for his children some years ago? That could have been major fun to own that gem!

I enjoyed "The Name of the Rose" so much that I thought I would try Foucault's Pendulum. After all, it sounded like a fascinating read. I slugged my way through page after page of the book thinking that surely soon I would get hooked. Finally, when about 2/3 of the way through the book, I came to the brilliant conclusion that it just wasn't going to happen and that there was no need to bore myself to tears any more. I took the book back to the library. The librarian saw me turning it in and asked if I had read it, and did I enjoy it? I reluctantly admitted that I had given up more than halfway through it. She laughed and said that she was foolish and stubborn enough to have read the whole #$(*&@ thing and still had no idea what was going on! For several years now, Foucault's Pendulum has been our family joke--a book for people who like to trumpet their intelligence by claiming to understand something completely unintelligible.

Umberto Eco's 'Foucault's Pendulum' is a book that inspires strong emotions. Readers either love it or loathe it. Count me in the latter category. Nothing against the author. I'm sure he achieved his objectives with flying colors. And the subject matter is, at times, pretty darn interesting. But Eco's style -- fraught with arcane references and interminable diatribes -- is not my cup of tea. To boot, the explanation of the causes of the holocaust, albeit fictionalized, is disturbing, to put it mildly. Here's a snippet of what I'm talking about: 'Hitler was searching the Jews for the clue that would allow him to determine, with the Pendulum, the exact point under the earth's concave vault where the telluric currents converged.' (See pp. 422-3, et al.)

I regret that I plowed through the whole book, but I have an irrational habit of always finishing the books that I begin reading. To the more rational reader, I suggest the following: read the first six pages. If it tickles your shorts, keep reading. There's plenty more where that came from. If not, cut bait and find something else to read. Granted, there are many people for whom 'Foucault's Pendulum' is a brilliant piece of literature. But for others, the book will only disappoint for many, many hours.

Overall, I enjoyed the experience of reading this book, particularly getting sucked in to the unfolding connections between secret societies, history, and religion. I wish, however, that I would have read about the book's esoteric content without having to put up with the boring, one-dimensional characters' personal relationships and political interests. A nonfiction version of this (for the portions that actually are nonfiction -- by the end you don't know what's based on fact and what's a creation of the author's imagnation) would be a more worthwhile read. The message or "moral" of the ending, at least the way I interpretted it, was a kind of an interesting and unexpected one from a refreshing outsider perspective. But in the end, unless you're a particularly avid reader, or don't mind skimming some really dull parts, I would recommend the point of this novel, but not the novel itself.

Ken Follett can write better than this, and he has on several occasions. That said, this is still a better thriller than 95% of the novels in the genre - the rating is based solely on that comparison.

As other reviewers have pointed out, Follett gives the reader an excellent course in the design, interior, and the "feel" of the Pan Am Clipper; I didn't know anything about this aircraft before I read the book, and Follett's lessons are designed so that any layman can understand them.

But while the plot of this story is well-designed and totally logical, the people come off as cartoon characters. None of them are fully developed human beings in any sense of the word. And the conclusion is curiously incomplete - something unusual in a Ken Follett novel.

As an introduction to Follett's work this would turn anyone off of his other, much better, works - "The Key to Rebecca" and "Eye of the Needle", to name two. I would recommend this book only if you've read some of his other novels, so you can judge for yourself what he's really capable of writing.

Follett does his usual excellent job of researching his subject matter--in this case old passenger seaplanes--and the history of the era (a world spinning toward war in the late 1930s). And the writing style is fine, but the story just never got off the ground. I never quite got the point. It was as if he worked hard to invent characters and plot around a subject he wanted to write about: seaplanes. The whole thing seemed like a stretch. Think of it as "Airport 1938."

To Follett's credit he wrote in Night Over Water perhaps the steamiest sex scene I've ever read. I almost tried waking up the wife (dangerous). Plus I read this book after being completely blown away by his Pillars Of The Earth, so a let-down was inevitable. The book is better than most and probably deserves four stars. --Christopher Bonn Jonnes, author of Wake Up Dead

I thought this story was interesting enough to keep you reading and I found the concept of a flying overnight boat to be interesting. I love books that take place during world war 2 so I liked the setting as well. The characters, to me, acted fine, they were much better drawn than people in some of the other books I read and they acted understandably. Diana got jealous, and sulky, Margeret had surprising dimensions as you read through the book ( at the beginning she seems like a good little crusader), I liked Harry's character, I thought he was really amusing. I didn't think Nancy was that interesting but she gave the book flavor, and I liked Mervyn more than I liked Diana's other lover. The political situations and beliefs added spice to the story, as well as the conflicts.

There is something very organic about John Lanchester's Mr. Phillips. The descriptions of his daily life are filled with sights, sounds, and even smells, so meticulously detailed the reader can easily put himself (whether or not you want to is another story) in Phillips' place. An accountant let go from his position due to redundancy this book is a day in Mr. Phillips' new life. Filled with sexual commentary, calculations, and the occasional adventure, it's hard to say that this is a truly original work in plot, but Lanchester creates such a clear picture you can't help but be fascinated by the inner workings of a man whose life is thrown in such disarray.

Mr Phillips is a simple yet well-crafted story of a 50-ish London man who, upon losing his job, spends the day wandering around town. That's the story in a nutshell. For many this would be a complete turn-off, not wanting to bother about some bland man walking around London. But the story works. Firstly, the book is rather funny with its ironic views of day-to-day life. Secondly, one gains a sense of sympathy/empathy with this daydreaming (..with heavy sexual references) fellow who is completely lost when, due to losing his job, he is forced to re-evaluate his life.

Mr Phillips doesn't break new ground. While having a more serious undertone, the story reminds me of 'Wilt' (by Tom Sharpe) and 'The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin', two well-known British novels (with the latter being a successful 1970s TV series). And the funny/sad male mid-life crisis element is handled better, in my opinion, in 'Garp' and 'The Water-Method Man' by John Irving.

Bottom line: a fine, fast read which should appeal to most guys, especially Brits. Since the sometimes crude sexual fantasy elements are a bit excessive I expect most women might find Mr Philipps to be a bit vulgar.

MR. PHILLIPS is a recent inductee into my personal Pantheon of great modern literature. This is a terrific - indeed, incandescent - little book about a single day in the life of a very ordinary middle-class Englishman who has just lost his job and hasn't yet broken the news to his family. There's nothing, and yet everything to this seemingly inconsequential work. It reminds us, again, that even at its bleakest, life is more comedy than tragedy. As a writer, Lanchester is, in the English way, a precisionist. Most of his conceits are so economic, sharp, original and outrageous that you read the entire book (it can be done in a few hours) shivering with pleasure and wishing that you yourself were half as talented.

The first Colleen McCullough book I read was "The First Man in Rome" and I absolutely fell in love with it. I read each subsequent "Masters of Rome" book trying to recapture that love but none of them quite hit the spot. Finally, my perseverance has been rewarded. The only reason I gave "Morgan's Run" four stars is that I'm reluctant to give any book five. I love a book that's packed with detail and Ms. McCullough obviously does an exhaustive amount of research. Richard Morgan was just a good person that you couldn't help but cheer on. Perhaps he is a little too enlightened and kind-hearted to be true but it's a novel, why not. I once more eagerly await Ms. McCullough's next book.

Colleen McCullough is Australian, and established herself as a writer with The Thorn Birds, a novel of Australia. In the last few years she has been writing stories of ancient Rome, but in Morgan's Run returns to her native Australia. This novel is about the initial colonization of Australia with the Botany Bay penal colony and its offshoot on Norfolk Island, a thousand miles away. The story begins in Bristol, England, as the American Revolution is starting. Richard Morgan is middle class, unassuming, and devoted to his wife and son-unusually so for the time. Prospering until after the American war is lost, Morgan Job-like loses his fortune and family, and runs afoul of aristocratic shenanigans, ending up a convicted felon sentenced to be transported. But with the American colonies gone, England has no place to send her gaol-filling convicts. Barely discovered, much less explored, Australia is picked as the ideal dumping ground. After all, it is two oceans away, and the problem will definitely be out of sight. And by sending only convicts and their keepers, there is not likely to be another of those pesky revolutions. McCullogh captures the soul of long-suffering, long-enduring Richard Morgan as he copes with horrific prison conditions, convict labor, a transport ship little better than a slaver (which it was before being contracted as a convict transport), and a totally disorganized and corrupt expedition. A reader cannot but help to understand why the newly independent Americans insisted on the Bill of Rights as part of its written Constitution. Inept bureaucrats and corruption have been harder to overcome. This is not an action-adventure. It is a well-told tale of a man with deep inner strength, a man who perseveres through adversity. A Job. In her afterword, McCullough promises more about Richard Morgan and his family. Perhaps we will not have to wait too long.

Having read all but two of her books, I am still an avid Colleen McCullough fan, after having just completed her latest, "Morgan's Run." I have never been disappointed in anything she has written, for this author has a rare gift for both seeing into the depths of the human soul, understanding all the sociological, anthropological, medical and legal aspects of the history she so fastidiously studies to present us with these flawless books. The Masters of Rome series is the most insightful and thorough work I have read on that era in human history, and I was a bit resentful when the final volume was set aside to write this book first. However, now that she promises it will be two volumes to complete that series, I am happier again. With this book I had the same feeling that I always experience with her writing: "It can't stop here...I want more of the ongoing story as only she can tell it!" So her closing promise that we would learn more of Richard Morgan and Norfolk Island really gladdened my heart. Perhaps the majority of us knew little of the terrible experiment that created the penal colony of Australia, and nothing of this tiny island, and we can now appreciate more fully the strength of those castaways who created such flourishing new colonies. Thank you, Colleen McCullough, for some of the best reading I have ever enjoyed. Keep them coming!

I have never given a one-star review, I am not unsympathetic to the emotions behind the pro-affirmative action side, but the title of this book infuriates me.

It is, in no stretch of the definition, a "debate" -- and it is intellectually offensive for the editors to attempt to pass it off as one. It is, instead, an almost entirely one-sided, exceedingly-pro-affirmative action screed.

Many of the essays in the book have merit; some are even persuasive. Yet the philosophical blinders evidenced in the gross partisanship of this book are THE most telling part of the story.

Don't you get it? This is why the pro-affirmative action side is doomed to eventual failure, after much (unnecessary) flailing...there is an *assumption* that this program is (now) an absolute minimum for social justice, and anyone who disagrees is, almost as a definitional precept: A Racist. The dangers are foreboding, and I'm not sure how our leaders are going to learn how to back down.

I am, in a way, African Americans' worst nightmare: I am white, male, socially very liberal, fiscally very conservative, and I'm growing tired of the constant attacks based solely on one-dimensional characteristics. I hope -- I truly do -- that African Americans will wake up and stop blaming everyone else for their ills. Yes, slavery was awful. Yet it was a fact of life, everywhere in the world (and still is, to this day, a fact of life in parts of the Middle East and Africa). Yes, the deprivations of modern day urban life are debilitating. But so they were for tens of millions of immigrants who moved on.

Get over it.

This is, I know, harsh. Yet it is also Tough Love. Both parts are crucial, as elder African Americans know. Move on, and move up. Stop asking for anything and everything -- and start demanding of yourself. Work twice as hard, and I will fight along side you to protect what you EARN. Keep whining about what is owed to you, and many, MANY will begin to grow tired of the endless complaining. Legitimate or not, it (the whining) is cancerous.

The better path for African Americans is education (academic and vocational) and ENTREPRENEURSHIP. This latter path, sadly lost to history, should be THE central focus of all leaders, today.

This is a warning. I hope I am wrong, but I fear I am not. I too have a dream: I hope the pseudo-philosophical screeching on either side subsides, and cooler (and more earnest) heads and hearts prevail.

Please, all, let's change our ways.

This book is arguably the most balanced treatment of one of the most poorly understood issues in contemporary American public policy. I read it when it first came out in 1996, and I feel that I a much better informed citizen on affirmative action as a result. This books is a collection of essays that present all sides of the debate on affirmative action from well-known scholars, businessmen, political and civic leaders. It dispels many of the misconceptions of the policy while highlighting its inherent flaws, explains the goals of the policy in its intended form, and includes two all but forgotten perspectives - that of women and Asian-Americans.

A very good and easy read, anyone with a desire to have as broad an understanding as possible on affirmative should buy and read this book.

This publication does an excellent job of addressing this most sensitive and complex issue from all sides (liberal, conservative, ignorant), clarifying its legal, political and social significance. It should be manadatory reading, especially for all journalists in this country, whose botched -- essentially useless -- coverage shows how unfamiliar many really are with affirmative-action realities. "Debate" addresses court decisions, executive orders and legislation involving employment, education and government contracting. And thankfully it's well-organized enough so that readers truly open to understanding the issue are easily able to discern the incendiary rhetoric and willfully blind misinformation of the William Bradford Reynolds and Linda Chavezes from the thoughtful and rational analyses of Civil Rights Commission Chairperson Mary Frances Berry and pollster Lou Harris. It sheds light on nonrace-based forms of affirmative action that opponents don't like to talk about -- like so-called "legacies" in education (relatives of alumni). It discusses who actually benefits most from affirmative action -- white women. Whether you support or oppose these programs, if you honestly want to understand the issue, read this book.