I came by this cookbook by way of a patient giving it away because she no longer cooked. Since I am an avid cook I gladly accepted it. The recipes have an old East Coast flavor. My 2 favorite recipes are: Shaker Chicken and Noodle Soup and Fresh Apple cake with Caramel Frosting which I just finished icing today.

Visited this little restaurant in Middlebury, Vermont many times, many years ago. This cookbook captures the quality and creativity of the Soup Bowl's menu and has been a perennial in my kitchen for close to 25 years. Don't be disappointed by what seems like a small number of recipes, they are all terrific.

I bought this book about 20 years ago, and it has a 1970's appeal to it. The foods remind me of little restaurant you might stumble across and be delighted to find that they serve decent, wholesome food. I especially like the Cheddar Cheese Soup, and they offer some basic salad recipes that one can follow verbatim or use as a springboard for your own creations. This would make a good gift for a novice cook because it offers many familiar recipes that are easy to make.

As an actor, this book did not help me a bit. I still have great stage fright.

As an opera singer, this book has helped me deal with my performance anxiety, not just on stage, but in life as well. I recommend this book without reservation.

Robin's saucy book is a beauty! And, throughout, he never uses the big, big "D" (well, hardly ever!) In fact, readers learn how to resist dictitorial words.

I recommend this book to everyone, and their sisters, cousins and aunts!

The Spanish have a colorful saying, 'Antes de te cases, mira lo que haces', which literally means- before getting married, look at what you are doing. Figuratively speaking, this expression is a Latin version of our own cautionary admonition- look before you leap.

Ms. Mitchell's The Ultimate Graduate School Survival Guide offers thoughtful advice to those motivated students interested in critically evaluating the decision to pursue and attain an advanced degree. The book is excellent and extremely valuable because it forces the prospective grad student to focus on the most important things before, during and after taking the grad school plunge. The book elaborates on the right way and the wrong way to approach prospective schools, choose which school to attend, play the graduate school game, and navigate the treacherous, shark-infested waters of academe. It also offers useful, practical advice on grant and proposal writing, publications, and time management. Additionally, the author has included a bibliography full of useful books to help grad students achieve their degree goals.

Many students do not realize that by deciding to attend graduate school, they often lose control over their own fate, as your advisers dictate both your course of study and the possible career choices in academe and the professional workplace- long after you have left the ivory tower. Although I balk at the book's wholehearted endorsement of conformity to the prevailing regime and using sycophancy at every opportunity in the face of tyrannical faculty, this book provides the real deal, the inside story on the realities of graduate training. The book covers everything important, and tries to provide helpful hints and suggestions geared to successful navigation of the capricious politics in the ivory tower. Additionally, the author manages to cover even the more objectionable topics, such as romantic liaisons between students and faculty, the theft of student ideas and research by faculty, the fickle favoritism for some students over others by faculty, and the thorny politics of inclusion.

However, there are a couple of noticeable caveats in the book. First, the author neglected to add that a student, in deciding which school to attend, should consider the cost of living in and around the school environment, and the difficulty of attaining minimum lifestyle requirements. Even when a student receives generous financial aid, it may not be enough to cover the cost of living. If the aid given is not in line with the cost of living in the particular environment, the student will be forced to depend on loans for some or most of his or her living expenses. Moreover, many campus environments face housing shortages, and as can be expected, rents are bid upward when housing is scarce. Not only is the cost of living exorbitant in many environments, housing for students tends to be scarce and costly. If working professionals living in these areas are paying five hundred to one thousand dollars for the privilege of sleeping in someone's attic (or in more than a few cases, a closet), one can imagine the difficulty students would face.

Moreover, in recent years, given the generally dismal economic outlook, many students increasingly look upon graduate school as a safe harbor from both social and economic turmoil. One should bear in mind that one may give up much more than one gains in attending graduate school, as the cost of graduate study, whether paid for by loans or by fellowships, and the income foregone by not working, quickly mount. Also, these costs worsen the longer it takes to complete the degree. Therefore, given the hidden, though very real costs of a graduate education, I suggest one consider working part or full-time (for pay), preferably in a field related to one's studies while pursuing the graduate degree, or having one's place of work foot the bill for graduate study. Otherwise, one just might be better off substituting practical, on the job experience for advanced education, as many graduate programs are not geared to providing students with marketable skills.

Second, one should make certain that whatever body of knowledge one acquires, this knowledge should be transferable to other endeavors, or at least something that one can build upon. Too many students have pursued graduate degrees, in the process learning obscure concepts, methodologies and techniques, only to learn after completing their studies that their knowledge is either impractical or obsolete (or in many cases both)- a situation which not only makes them ill-prepared for the realities of the workforce, but also forces them to play catch-up and spend valuable time and money picking up other skills. Being in such a situation is never pretty- especially when one has a family to support. Therefore, it behooves the prospective student to consider the expected payoff from an investment in advanced education very critically.

This book, along with RL Peters' Getting What You Came For and PJ Feibelman's A PhD Is Not Enough, should be required reading for all graduate students.

I got this book when I was a senior in college and thinking about grad school. I didn't know what to expect and the book offered a great overview. I really liked the quotes from other grad students, too. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who's trying to make a decision about grad school and wants the inside track.

To my knowledge, there is no other book of its kind. It is easy reading and practical! If you are even considering going to grad school, this book is a must. Find out if you have what it takes to get in and complete grad school by reading this book.

If you needed more proof that Richard Nixon was a crook and a crumb, this books lays it out. Mitchell spins a great tale of campaign anecdotes and informative history about California politics that tells it like it is, and keeps you turning pages. Also some great background on how the anti-communist paranoids destroyed lives in Hollywood and elsewhere. If this had been published before 1968, Nixon would have never been elected.

Two weeks before election day in 1950, the Republican Senatorial candidate in California--Richard M. Nixon--accused the Democratic Senatorial candidate in California--Helen Gahagan Douglas--of being the conduit through which the decisions made by Josef Stalin in the Kremlin flowed to the United States Congress:

"This action by Mrs. Douglas," Nixon explained, "... came just two weeks after [U.S. Communist Party leader] William Z. Foster transmitted his instructions from the Kremlin to the Communist national committee.... [Thus] this [Communist] demand found its way into the Congress" (Mitchell (1998), p. 209).

Later on Nixon campaign manager Murray Chotiner would try to erase--or perhaps forget his role in?--history, claiming that the Nixon campaign of 1950 "had never accused Douglas of 'sympathizing' or 'being in league with' the Communists." Nixon himself claimed that he "never questioned her patriotism" and that he had been smeared by her. Nixon biographers like Jonathan Aitken would refer to Nixon's relatively clean hands in the 1950 Senate campaign.

But the most important thing was that Nixon won the 1950 California Senate race. Because he won the 1950 California Senate race he went on to become Vice President in 1953, and President in 1969. But perhaps more important, the way he won the 1950 Senate race--the fact that his tactics then worked--warped American politics for nearly half a century.

How was it warped? Into a pattern of "lie whenever you can" and "demonize your political opponents." Thus later on Nixon speechwriter William Safire would paint a picture of a President Nixon threatened by:

...a lynch mob, no cause or ideology involved, only an orgy of generalized hate.... The hall [where Nixon was speaking] was actually, not figuratively, besieged.... The Secret Servicemen, who always had seemed too numerous and too officious before, now seemed to us like a too-small band of too-mortal men... (William Safire, Before the Fall).

But Nixon's chief of staff would have a different view of the same situation. As H.R. Haldeman expressed it in his diary:

...we wanted some confrontation and there were no hecklers in the hall, so we stalled departure a little so they could zero in.... Before getting in car, P[resident Nixon] stood up and gave the V signs, which made them mad. They threw rocks, flags, candles, etc. as we drove out.... Bus windows smashed, etc. Made a huge incident and we worked hard to crank it up, should make really major story and might be effective. (H.R. Haldeman)

And Nixon would demand that his top aides--H.R. Haldeman, Henry Kissinger--"use any means" to defeat the "enemy... conspiracy" of his domestic political adversaries. What did Nixon think of as "any means"? We know from his immediate subsequent demand:

Was the Brookings Institute raided last night? No? Get it done. I want the Brookings Institute's safe cleaned out and have it cleaned out in a way that makes somebody else responsible... (Stanley Kutler)

that in 1971 the "any means" included burglary, theft, the planting of false evidence, conspiracy to frame innocent parties. We don't know how much further "any means" went, or would have gone.

Thus there is a sense in which the Nixon-Douglas campaign of 1950 was key to shaping America not just because of the character of the politician (Nixon) whom it elevated to prominence, but because, as Greg Mitchell writes in his preface:

[The race] set a divisive and rigid agenda for forty years of election campaigns. Until 1950, candidates [who]... campaigned primarily on an anti-Communist platform... usually lost.... [Republican presidential candidate] in 1948 Thomas E. Dewey... criticized fellow Republicans who called for repressive new measures to control subversives.... Republican and Democratic leaders alike interpreted the outcome [of the 1950 election] as a victory for McCarthyisam and a call for a dramatic surge in military spending.... Red-baiting would haunt America for years, the so-called national security state would evolve and endure, and candidates would run and win on anti-Sovietism for decades..." (p. xix).

Now Greg Mitchell has done an excellent job of taking us back to the campaign of 1950--legitimate fears, the backdrop of American apparent defeat in the Korean War, blacklists, loyalty oaths, and the general belief that a woman's place was in the kitchen, not in the Senate. It is a very, very readable book, and very much worth reading--for what happened in the 1950 Senate race played a remarkably large part in determining what America was to be in the second half of the twentieth century.

I enjoyed this book enormously, extremely well-researched, clear and well-written, entertaining, scrupulous in detail and true to the mark. There's a lot of new "dirt" on Nixon but what is perhaps most valuable is the portrait of Helen Douglas as one of the most remarkable (though flawed) women of the century. Also a powerful depiction of the Red Scare in Hollywood....Really, a must read!

Stories are well crafted, but the subject matter didn't interest me. Not bad, but I wouldn't buy it again.

A Joseph Mitchell anything is worth my time, but after having read UP IN THE OLD HOTEL, other writings will suffer by comparison. The works in this particular volume are a compilation of Mitchell's newspaper stories from the 1930s. While Mitchell's prose is sharp and illuminating, the subject matter comes off as slight compared to Mitchell's other labors. Mitchell had such a reputation for wanting his magazine stories to be perfect that these newspaper stories have the sense of being rushed to the presses.

Having said that, there are some great moments in the book. The book has a nice profile section of 1930s cartoonists, which is just the kind of subject matter that Mitchell handles well in that it gets past the part that everyone sees to the part Mitchell wants to know about. The section on Voodoo is hysterical and very much like his later New Yorker work. The book ends with a funny profile of playwright George Bernard Shaw.

If you have never read Mitchell, start with UP IN THE OLD HOTEL, but if you are already a fan, there are enough gems in this collection to make it worth your while.

The good news is that all of the Mitchell virtues displayed in "Up In the Old Hotel" are emphatically present in this welcome collection of his earlier work for divers New York newspapers of the Depression era. Whether interviewing boxing promoters, or anyone in else George Bernard Shaw or the purveyors of Harlem "voodoo" products, Mitchell never lost his sense of courtly curiousity or his unerring ability to choose just the right word to express the outre character and often heartbreaking earnestness of his human subjects. Here's a worthy companion to sit on the shelf between A. J. Liebling's "Back Where I Come From" and "Up In The Old Hotel." It it also, by the way, a far better buy than the newly-republished "McSorley's Wonderful Saloon," the lion's share of which was reprinted in "Up In The Old Hotel."

Actually.....nil stars.

Only buy it if you are the sort of person who buys timeshare, the Eiffel Tower, etc...

For those who are unaware, the "MacCathy Mor" discussed in the book was really an imposter.

The reality of an indigenous Irish nobility is not much understood or accepted inside Ireland itself, much less in the rest of the world. As the victors write the history, too much Irish history has omitted any reference to the fact that Ireland had its own kings and nobles well before the Norman-English intruded on the scene. To this day the claims of persons such as the MacCarthy Mor to royal status are met with skepticism; relevant to this book, one individual expressed this skepticism so openly as to warrent a suit before the Italian courts. This lawsuit offered the MacCarthy Mor to present to a court of experts his credentials as Head of the Royal House of Munster, as Chief of his Name, and as rightful bearer of the coat of arms of the MacCarthy Mor. The Court carefully reviews and expounds on the evidence presented, and the ruling presents in detail the Court's rationale for fully supporting the MacCarthy Mor's claims. This book is a must read for any student of Irish history, modern aristocracy, chivalry, or heraldry. A word of warning, though: this is a legal document, and it reads like one -- don't expect light reading, but do expect to be educated!

If you thought that the Gaelic Nobility died out in 1601, or even 1691, this book is for you. This book documents the present situation of one of the Royal lines of Ireland. It documents the present views of two European powers towards the rights and prerogatives of the current representative of the Royal Eoghanacht Dynasty. This Royal line ruled over the southwest quarter of Ireland for more than a thousand years. The last regnant King was Donal IX, King of Desmond, who died in 1596.

Yet the dynasty, with it's rights and priveleges, survives! Contained in the book are the transcripts of two Italian Court rulings, a translation of a Certification from the Kingdom of Spain, and copies of various supporting documents that were made available for the Italian and Spanish authorities. This book will be of special interest to those who study the Gaelic history of Ireland, and those who claim descent from the MacCarthy family.

Oh, western man! When will you learn your lesson? People vehemntly guard their private property. One would think that after looking at my continent, and looking and the failed socialist experiments of the twentieth century, Americans would learn the lesson of the importance of private ownership. If elimination of private property is what you Americans want, then you too will be condemned to poverty and death.

This book passed a basic test of polemical writing: it inspired me to go out and do what the author strongly suggested the reader do. It was the middle of the night, but I put the book down and went out for a walk in the woods on someone else's property (don't worry they have plenty) so that I could look at the moon and stars and sparkling landscape from a high place.

I learned an awful lot about the history of private property from this book. Because the concept of private property is so central to American identity I was left wondering why someone had not presented an environmental history from this perspective before. It is has given me a lens through which to read other books of environmental history.

Mitchell is honest about where he stands in the debate about who should be in charge about what should be done with private land. He is an ecocentrist, pure and simple, and doesn't trust individual landowners to "do the right thing" by their land. He allows that one of the chief antagonists in this book, a man named Morrison, actually does take good care of his land, but he makes it clear that he does not want to leave such a precious thing as the land to the chance that the owner may or may not take care of it. In fact, much of the book is an attempt to show us how absurd and artificial the idea of "land ownership" really is.

One of the threads in the story is Mitchell's recounting of an attempt at group ownership ("co-ownership") of land. The community that is finally realized falls short of its ideal, but he insists that it is far better than the default condition in modern America. Decide for yourself whether it is a pyrrhic victory.

The main thread of the book is the tribal history of his favorite plot of land in Littleton, Mass. As usual, it is a pretty sad story.

John Hanson Mitchell is a graceful stylist who has been hammering away at a host of environmental subjects from the perspective of a single square mile. Trespassing may be his best book yet, and only slightly less ambitious than his monumental tour de force, Ceremonial Time. He takes the theme of ownership of land, one of the most potentially boring subjects around, and turns it into a great nonstop read by focussing on a single five hundred acre tract of land through some three hundred years of history. Some of the characters in this book are right out of Dickens, some of the descriptions of the landscape are out of Conrad, and, as far as I can tell, he's got a great understanding of the whole process of the creation of the American laws that govern the use of land. But you don't have to be interested in environment or legal history to enjoy this. Just read it for the characters. I wept for Sarah Dublet at the end of this book.

I bought this book hoping to improve my Arabic handwriting. I guess it has helped a little, but before you plunk down thirty dollars for it, there are a few things you should know:

(1) although it has a nice cover, the inside is a photo-reproduced typescript from 1951 that is ugly and quite difficult to read;

(2) although the information provided in the book is somewhat useful, it is quite difficult to follow.

In the introduction to the book, the author laments the lack of awareness that students and scholars have of how to write Arabic properly. This may have been true back then, but now with less "orientalist" introductions to Arabic such as Brustad, al-Batal, and al-Tonsi's "al-Kitaab," which has an excellent introduction to the written and spoken alphabet, I'm not sure how useful this book still is.

If you are obsessed with Arabic handwriting and want to get into the technicalities of writing with a reed stylus, then this book might prove a useful -- if somewhat idiosyncratic -- reference. The table in the appendix, which exhaustively demonstrates the different word forms, is a nice resource. But if you, like me, just want to be able to reproduce a decent script, I recommend looking at Brustad, al-Batal, & al-Tonsi's "Alif Baa" first.

First published in 1953, this text is showing its age. Its chief attribute is that it focuses on the cursive ruqah script as opposed to the printed naskh that is found in many instructional texts. If you want to achieve competence in understanding handwritten Arabic the material here is great for helping you reach that goal. Most of the examples are given with printed and handwritten forms side-by-side which is quite helpful. The pedagogy, however, is archaic and there are a number of more recently published books that provide better instruction on developing good Arabic penmanship. The book also has annoying transliterations which detracts from the emphasis on writing. Despite being an introductory text purchase this book only if you can already read some Arabic. Otherwise try Alif-Baa (Brustad, al-Batal, & al-Tonsi) as suggested by a previous reviewer or Mastering Arabic (Wightwick & Gaafar). Both show how to form cursive strokes in a user-friendly way and have accompanying audio material. If you intend to use this book as a stand-alone introduction to Arabic writing you will likely be disappointed.

With the greatest of respect for Alif Baa and Mastering Arabic mentioned in the reviews below, neither teach you good Arabic handwriting, and both also concern themselves with pronunciation. Writing Arabic, by contrast, concerns itself wholly with the calligraphic (but everyday) Ruq'a script. The reviewers are right, therefore, in saying that some knowledge of the Arabic script would be helpful before approaching this book - the simple ability to read ordinary Arabic print (i.e. the calligraphic Naskh script) - but the reader will be using a book on the Arabic (or just conceivably Ottoman Turkish) language anyway! But for the serious student, I can't recommend strongly enough the use of this book as soon as he knows the alphabet.

Oh, don't be put off by the 1950's typewritten English script - unlike the other books on offer, no printed Arabic appears in this book, just good handwriting. The others show a little scrappy naskh script (an extraordinarily difficult script to write properly) and print the rest. The aim of Writing Arabic is to learn Writing Arabic.

Drs Maki, Kiano, and Berthold have done a tremendous service to U.S. historians and future generations of Americans with their well-documented account of the redress movement for Americans of Japanese ancestry who were incarcerated in concentration camps during World War II. Besides offering a theoretical policy model to explain the successful passage of the redress initiative, the authors provide a dramatic retelling of how thousands of American citizens, groups, and ultimately, U.S. congressmen from different racial and political backgrounds joined together in their attempt to acknowledge one of the most terrible miscarriages of justice in U.S. history. Especially, the passages describing the former internee testimonies and final fight for the bill in the Congress is the stuff of high drama and speaks to the nobility and courage of our country's citizens and leaders. An exceptional book, which I hope, will finally refute any real objections to the redress bill and make clear in some increasingly isolated critics' minds, the distinction between the the WWII Japanese Military -- and loyal Americans of Japanese ancestry who fought hard for the survival and principals of this country.

This is a great book detailing how the case for redress was formed. It contains great info for those studying the great tragedy that hit the Japanese American community during WWII --their internment in American Concentration Camps. And it serves as a reminder for us all that we need to live in harmony in order for our great country the United States to continue to succeed both socially and economically in the future.

This is "the" book on the behind the scenes action of how redress was finally achieved for all Japanese Americans, who were illegally incarcerated in concentration camps for crimes they did not commit. The fact that these camps were unconstitional has been proven countless times (refer: President Reagan's apology in 1988). The credibility of the book is proven by the academic careers of the university professors who wrote this tell-tale book (as opposed to the national enquirer level writing of the person who wrote the book mentioned in the below review) and its use as a textbook in the finest universities in America (Harvard, UCLA, UCBerkeley, to name a few). A must reading for those with an interest in ethnic studies and American history/policy.

Readers should be aware that this edition of "The World As I See It" is, in fact, an abridged version of the original publication. Without bothering to mention this on the title page, it has dropped the entire fifth section on "Scientific Questions," including such classic popular expositions of Einstein's basic philosophy as "Geometry and Experience" and "Principles of Research." Editing a book of Einstein's writings which deliberately excludes all mention of science is like publishing a biography of Mozart - without any reference to music.

It is, I think, significant of the dumbing down of American publishing that the German edition of the same book ("Mein Weltbild," published by Ullman) has continuously added new material on politics, fascism, Judaism, peace and science over the years! Readers who want to know what Einstein was really like should obtain a used copy of the original full version.

To know Einstein's thoughts is to understand the nature of one of histories finest minds. Beyond all else, Albert Einstein was a man, a man of deep social & moral conscience. As I read this book, I was struck by the thought of George Santayana, "Those who do not study the past are condemned to repeat it." To be able to travel back nearly 100 years and view the world throught the mind and spirit of Einstein is a pleasure indeed. I found myself at odds with some of what Einstein thought. However, what a great experience it was to explore those thoughts and how many still appear true today. Albert Einstein once said "Imagination is more important than knowledge". The man knew what he was talking about.

The book reveals, the thoughts of the great mind known as Albert Einstein. His social life was as enlightening, as his intellectual mind. He had god given gift of opening god's secrets, and he did it beautifully, and humbly. I have read this book many times, and feel divine about thinking about Albert Eintein.