I first came across Robert Service about third or fourth grade and the book was confiscated first by my teacher and then by my parents as "unsuitable". To me RS is the most suitable poet who ever put pen to paper - with no apology to Yeats or others.

All human life is to be found between these covers with very few duds. If ever you were stuck for a party piece, try "The Shooting of Dan McGrew" or "The Cremation of Sam McGee", either will generate a terrific response and with appropriate drama, a standing ovation.

Most of all, there are poems here which capture an era long gone and soon to be forgotten.

Robert Service will justifiably survive the majority of 20th century poets

My copy is nearing 25 yrs old and shows the wear and tear of living in backpacks, suitcases, briefcases and brown paper bags. This compendium of 6 different books of Service's work will take you from his Gold Rush Days of the Yukon, to his escape to the Bohemian Quarter in Paris to become a 'Serious Poet', and to his volunteering to become an ambulance driver for the Red Cross in the First World War. His ballads are remarkable in how they take you deeply into the the person's life for that brief time as you read. There is the lighthearted comedy he is known for with "The Cremation of Sam McGee", as well as the first person accounts of the unimaginable horrors and uplifting glories of battle in the trenches. Service wrote for the everyday working man, in everything he is utterly approachable and unpretentious. I will confess, as does he, this is "lowbrow stuff", but it is mighty satisfying.

Very few poets have captured the grandeur and beauty of the spirt of adventure like Robert Service.

In a day and age where refreshing verse and lyrics are hard to come by, a simple look into these pages reveals one of the most monumental works in modern poetry. Nothing quite excites the heart and stirs the soul like the works from Robert Service.

You will find your heart fluttering, your eyes moist and your mind wandering aimless in far away places as Service takes you there on a magic carpet ride of grandeur and adventure.

Inside you'll find a personal favorite, Service's Call of the Wild. If this doesn't move you, I'm not sure that anything will.

Service's poems could very well have been labeled chicken soup for the soul, well before those series of books under the same title.

Nothing short of magical.

I read this book when it was originally published in 2 volumes--however whether it is one or two books is immaterial. If you've read the Seth books you'll love this book!

Seth might appear to some readers to be a bit too intellectual for a formal setting, as I once thought. However, Seth can quite hold his own with some very diverse people, and opinions. This book is basically transcripts from Jane Roberts' ESP class, and the discussion held there.

I have read Sue's original volumes and had been hoping ever since that they may be reprinted. My wish has come true.
Sue's contributions to understanding the Seth material and how it came about is invaluable because she puts matters in to a relevant, down-to-earth context. This facilitates the reader's approach to Seth's insights immensly.
Mental fogs lift, intellectual mists disperse, and all of a sudden you can see the landscape; and the trees in the wood stand out clearer than before.
I am thoroughly recommending this book along with Jane's material to everyone of my own readers.

One of the better books on project management, the focus is not so much on specific best practices for project managers to implement on their own within their teams, but how upper management can create an environment that is conducive to project success. This book is exceptionally good at helping to understand how management causes organizational perversity - mucking things up by applying departmental best practices that are totally inappropriate and bad practices for project teams. Great insights into how this happens without upper managers being aware they are doing the opposite of what they intend. Could be used by a Project Office to convince upper management that they might be the main problem that keeps other best practices from being effective. It also highlights those areas where you can get the most leverage, most out of your efforts to get an organization to improve its overall project management effectiveness.

Amazing how a book written in 1997 seems like it was written for current times.

As a project management consultant, I get asked alot 'how do I implement PM into my company'. There is no one cookie-cutter approach to this since every company is different. There is also no one book out there that adequately covers this subject. This book is the closest thing that there is. If you are looking for a good coverage of the things that you need to be aware of in implementing PM into your company, this book is a good start. It is also well suited for executives looking to implement PM into a company who are curious what PM involves - since a major problem in implementing PM into a company quite often involves executives who are unaware or unconcerned what their responsibilites are for PM. All in all, a useful book that I have used extensively for clients.

If you want to understand the underpinnings of what makes projects work or not ... this book is a "must read".

It is full of the kind of plain yet profound logic that my grandmother used to pass on to me when I was child. It just made so much practical sense ... .

Something very strange is going on in Crooked Tree State Forest in the state of Michigan. Several people are savagely attacked and killed by black bears. The Ottawa Indians suspect that an ancient legend has come to pass where the spirit of Shawonabe, an evil man has taken over the mind and body of a living person and is inciting the bears to murder. Shawonabe called "the evil one from the south," is buried somewhere in Crooked Tree State Forest, and the legend is referred to as "the bearwalk."...

This is a story that kept me reading late into the night. I also learned that pound for pound, the black bear is the strongest animal alive.

I ...would love to see this story made into a movie!

A MUST READ for any horror story, outdoor or Native American aficionado. "Crooked Tree" evokes an old Ottawa Indian legend as it explores the strange and increasingly violent behavior of some large furry woodland denizens. An evil spirit is threatening the balance of nature and the lives of local residents, and it's growing in power. Soon, it's affecting more than just the bears...

For a book set in the woods of Northern Michigan, "Crooked Tree" keeps a remarkably fast pace. And despite the pace, the character development doesn't suffer.

The book is superbly timed and is as scary as any Steven King novel I've ever read (and that includes Carrie, The Shining, Cujo and Christine). I join the ranks of Amazon.com reviewers calling for a movie adaptation. This would put any recent "horror" film to shame, and they wouldn't have to go hog-wild on the special effects budget. In fact, to any movie execs reading this and considering a screenplay (fat chance): I beg of you, please don't! If I have to watch another movie like "The Haunting" I may just poke my eyes out.

And speaking of eyes, you'll be doing double takes with people and pets for quite some time after you read this... just to be sure...

The book should also appeal to any Michiganders with ties to the North Woods or hunters in general. Readers interested in more background on the legend of the Crooked Tree should check out the book of the same name by John Couchois Wright that describes the history and legends of Michigan's Little Traverse Bay region and the Ottawa Indians.

- Reviewed by Todd V.

I read this probably 25 years ago and could not put it down. One of our sons read it and gave it to another son who could not finish it as it was just too scary for him at the age of 19 or 20. He lost it and we have been trying to find another copy for years. It was so vivid you could live it as you read. The bear breathing down your neck and the indian references were all too, too real! Not a book for someone who scares easily.

I bought this book after reading several articles written by Corbett. As a GTA, I hoped it might be useful in teaching freshman composition. Although I found it helpful, it is certainly not written for most of today's college freshmen. Although Corbett uses fairly simple language, the text fails to use principles of document design to present the information effectively. Although this text was originally intended to be used in teaching freshman composition, I do not believe that it will be as useful to me in the classroom as I had hoped. I would not, for example, be able to assign readings from directly from this text and expect my students to grasp the material. Today's college students appear to be far less willing to work to get the information they need from a text, and this text definitely requires work.

This book should be required reading for all college graduates.

Rhetoric has come to be seen as a discipline for frauds and charlatans. It has the connotation of artful trickery and deception. No matter what you may think of rhetoric, you engage in it each and every time you try to prevail upon someone to see things your way. Rhetoric is the art of persuasion. Any artform practiced by mortals can be (and is) misused by unscrupulous villains. Those who decry rhetoric for its susceptibility to misuse overlook this point: Rhetoric, properly understood and applied, is the best defense against misused rhetoric.

For a good grounding in the basics of rhetoric, the student need look no farther than this textbook. It is not easy reading, but diligent study will equip the reader well for the tasks of analyzing, defending, and making arguments. The book aims at the written word, but the principles apply as well to the spoken.

The book divides itself into six chapters:
1. Introduction
2. Discovery of Arguments (Deciding what to say).
3. Arrangement of Material (Marshalling your arguments for greatest effect).
4. Style (How best to speak/write your arguments).
5. The Progymnasmata (Exercises in rhetoric).
6. A Survey of Rhetoric (History of rhetoric from Ancient Greece to modern times).

Draeger is the quintessential chronicler of martial treatises. He lays it all out for you with detail and high vocabulary, yet rarely never reveals any of the emotion that obviously keeps him on the path. Long before Jane Hallander or Leung Ting, detailing the branches and often the techniques of other people's arts. He's good for learning the history and principles of an art. IN FACT, IN THAT REGARD HE'S BETTER THAN MOST INSTRUCTORS OF THEIR OWN ARTS. He's very meticulous about the reporting of each art's specific nature and characteristics, as well as the general tactic of the applications.

The late Donn Draeger and Robert Smith produced a classic text on the Asian martial arts and the many cultural influences that have spawned a following all over the world. The book was written in 1969 and therefore, most of the history on the arts is pre-mid 20th century.

The different arts are catagorized by the countries from which they sprang. This approach is effective and enjoyed. Because of this approach, the reader enjoys the culture of the country and can betetr understand how the "arts" developed the way they did.

Further, this book is unquie in that smaller countries which have contributed greatly to these fighting systems have chapters devoted to them. Countries like Burma and India are not overlooked as what so often happens in martial arts books.

Passion and history are intertwined as we see the different forms of combat come alive on the written page and discover the unquie cultures in which they developed. A martial arts must.

"~... everything about Martial Arts ! the local arts, their history, the local weapons (with drawings...). A must in your library.

great cookbook with an informatve introduction on sodium in general...as well as tips on starting to use less. The recipes have alot of flavor. A favorite is *chicken with 40 garlic cloves*... Sounds like much too much until you taste it. The garlic mellows and sweetens. Its very good.

Using spices besides salt, adds alot of flavor. The recipes tend to have alot of ingredients to make up the flavor lost by the salt. When switching over to this kind of cooking there might be an initial outlay of money spent on spices but its worth it. At first, there is an adjustment for most people as we arent very salt sensitive... due to the amount we consume in processed and fast foods. As you get used to using less... you start to taste the *real* flavors in food.

Lowering sodium in your diet is helpful for your general health, blood pressure problems and it helps dieting as well. Excess salt causes you to retain water. Even if you find the recipes *too* low salt...you could add some. It would stillbe less than the sodium in convential foods

I find the size of the book (small pocket book size) difficult to workwith in the kitchen... the print is typically small...and the pages will not stay open without breaking the spine of the book... It would be easier if it would lay flat when cooking...

Recipes are easy to find in this book, and it's not just 30 variations on a similar recipe, or obscure dishes that you can't really tell what it is until you make it.

Once you start eating without adding salt (or salty products) you begin to dislike overly salty food. Our bodies ultimately know how much salt they need. Who doesn't know that too much salt is bad?

On this book. It's pretty good. But you can't eat from it every day. I also recommend Gazzaniga's "No Salt Lowest Sodium Cookbook" to compliment this one. As long as you're here, why not order them both? (uncompensated endorsement)

I was put on a very low salt/sodium diet a year ago because of Meniere's Syndrome. Since that time, I've tried several cookbooks and I usually found only two or three pretty good recipes in each one. This book is different. So far I've tried twenty-six recipes and they have all ranged from good to excellent.

The best thing about this cookbook is that, once you buy the different spices, almost every other ingredient can be found in your kitchen cupboard. The ingredients you need to buy can be found at any grocery store. The recipes are also easy to follow and several are quick to fix.

It's a must-have for those on low-sodium diets. I highly recommend it!

This slim volume is sprinkled with photographs primarily by Robert Mapplethorpe. They are well chosen to grace the poetic prose elegy by Patti Smith. The prose reminds me in a strange way of the writings of H.D. - the story of facing death is told in mythic terms - in terms of the sea, the search for the Hercules moth, the sighting of the Southern Cross as his uncle had promised, of Greek gods. Its strength is in the description of Mapplethrope as artist - fascinated by arranging, estranged from nature. The writing is not without flaws but it is interesting and telling.

What a wonderful book. Patti Smith's poetry is full with an intense personal feeling. I can only echo the comments of previous reviewers; this book shines a bright and pellucid beauty, both in its poetry and in the sublime photographs. Spending an afternoon with The Coral Sea took me into a serene, meditative, dreamy state. It has that quality. Something of it reminded me of Visconti's film, Death in Venice. This is a book I shall always have.

Patti Smith his come aways since HORSES. Or maybe not very far at all. Lurking beneath the poet/punk of the famous mapplethorp cover was a woman of profoundly mystical bent. In this, a fable and an elegy , for Robert as she writes in the dedication, Patti smith imagines a man searching for the southern cross, and a man dying. Each of the very short capters are accompanied by a mapplethorpe photograph. Profound, wrenching prose, which caused me to wince in pain and recognition, and ultimately, which delivers a coda to a life. This is amazing stuff, the kind of book that should be passed to loved ones wrapped in a ribbon of silk,, cherished as a gift. It is that good. It moved me like few books have in my life.Nothing in Patti smiths work had prepared me for the overwhelming beauty of this book. A staggering book of wonder.

I have read this book cover to cover and have re-read chapters. Kaplan ensures that you grasp the fundamental concepts by keeping things simple. He illustrates the concepts with easy to understand examples. I gained very little knowledge from the first 3 ABM books I read, but after reading "Cost and Effect," I felt that I had a good enough grasp of the fundamentals to actually implement a costing system.

After reading several academic papers concerning activity based costing I still wasn't convinced about the usefullness of the methodology. After reading Cost & Effect I revised my opinion on Cost Management. This book gives all the answers to effective Cost Management. It takes you from the ABC Age to the Activity Based Management Age and clearly helps you to understand what costs are alle about. Once you really understand the topics of this book you will be able to face and manage costs in whatever business you are in. Read it!

Cost & Effect will most appeal to those who have had extended experience with Activity-Based Costing (ABC) or operate in manufacturing industries.

If you are interested in learning more about Activity-Based Costing, this book is not the best choice for you. Professor Kaplan has co-authored books that explore this subject in much greater detail.

Most people set as their initial priority the need to have accurate financial reporting for the entire enterprise. Falling below that level of effectiveness is Stage I in the terms of this book. Once you have that financial reporting done accurately, you are at Stage II. But you know almost nothing about how to manage your costs better. In order to do that, you will need to establish ad hoc financial reporting processes designed to help your organization learn from its experience and identify opportunities for improvement, built around Activity-Based Costing (ABC). ABC is simply a way of more accurately applying overhead costs back to activities and then processes that permits accurately understanding more about which combinations of products and services and customers are profitable and which are not. Then, within each activity, you can also see the inefficiencies in what you are doing that present opportunities for improvement. The book also has a nice discussion of Kaizen costing that is widely used in Japanese companies looking for on-going cost improvements, based on Professor Cooper's research. There are a few case histories to illustrate the principles, but most will find these insufficient to guide them through the process. In other books, Professor Kaplan has pointed out that there is a lot of acquired art in the subject and you probably need help to get it right. I concur. Once you have ABC operating in stand-alone systems, you are at Stage III.

At this point, you will have a financial reporting system that is separate from the ABC system. How do you put them together? That the subject of chapter 14, which is the key value-added part of this book. You will see what the systems architecture and process flow needs to be in order to combine ABC with Enterprise-Wide Systems (EWS) of the sort that many large companies have invested in during recent years. Putting the two together will greatly improve planning, budgeting, design of new products and services, and operational improvements. Chapter 15 expands into the area of how to apply the combined system to budgeting and transfer pricing. Combing ABC and EWS puts you at Stage IV, a level rarely reached today.

The book's main message is that it's a mistake to try to go from Stage II directly to Stage IV. There's a lot of experimentation and mistakes that you can benefit from in an extended Stage III. I agree again, based on my experience with ABC.

The one caution you should have about ABC in this context is that if you are going to radically change your business model every 2-5 years as many companies are, Stage IV is probably unattainable and undesirable. You can't hold back business model innovation for better cost systems. The next business model innovation will probably give you better costs than tweaking the current business model with ABC will.

Seek out the fastest route to progress, and do more of it!

It's welcome recognition of the rich body of American noir writing that the Library of America has decided to gather these novels and include them in it's collection. This volume, along with it's companion, "Crime Novels: American Noir of the '50s", is perhaps the definitive collection of this genre. While this volume is not as strong as the second volume collecting hard boiled writing from the '50s, it more than makes up for it with the inclusion of two seminal novels from the genre: "The Postman Always Rings Twice" and "They Shoot Horses Don't They?" The themes that would be later expanded on by Jim Thompson, Charles Willeford, et al. are here: the uncertainty of reality, the indifference of fate, the allegories on the disfunction of mercantilist capitalism, the femme fatale as deus ex machina, the erosion of moral standards...themes that are that much more relevant today.

It's comforting in a way that these novels, which were considered (and still considered by some) as trash, disposable items of consumption, are collected along with the novels of Melville, James and Hawthorne...."elevated" to high brow lit.

Perhaps the original authors of these masterworks would disagree on the modern critical re-assessment, but to readers like myself, it's just confirmation of something we've known ever since we first discovered them.

The Library of America is a first-class organization. The LOA is consistently reprinting volumes of literary achievement by the most notable authors in American history. They have reprinted everything from political speeches to poetry to historical works. This volume is the first in a two volume set dedicated to American noir stories. The stories in this book were written in the 1930's and 1940's in what seems to be the golden age of the genre.

The first story is from James Cain, and it's a whiz-bang of a tale. I had heard of "The Postman Always Rings Twice" before, mainly in reference to the two film versions of the story. This is one dark read. Adultery and murder never seem to mix, and it sure doesn't here, either. Told in first person narration, a drifter gets himself mixed up with a washed up beauty queen who is tired of her Greek husband. The result is classic noir: a conspiracy to murder the poor schmuck and run off together. As usual, the murder brings about tragic consequences. This story has more twists and turns than you can imagine. The ending is especially atmospheric. This is certainly one of the best stories in the book. I always like to see a story where the blackmailer gets a good beating.

Horace McCoy's "They Shoot Horses, Don't They?" is next in line. This is another great tale that was made into a film in the 1960's starring Hanoi Jane Fonda and Gig Young. The movie is soul shattering, with depictions of dehumanization in the neighborhood of "Schindler's List." The story is not quite as good, but it still packs a heck of a punch. The story is set in Depression-era America and depicts the horrors of a dance marathon. These marathons were apparently quite popular during the 1930's, until they were ultimately outlawed. Contestants were required to dance for hundreds of hours with only ten minute breaks every two hours. The couple that lasted the longest won a thousand or so dollars. The public would come and pay admission to watch this sorry spectacle. It's like poking sticks at animals in a cage. This story is loaded with dark depression and sexual innuendo. The conclusion is suitably depressing to merit a noir award.

"Thieves Like Us" was pretty substandard when compared to the other stories in this book. This one really didn't seem to have those noir elements that I like so much. Actually, it's more of a Bonnie and Clyde type story. A penitentiary break leads to a crime spree across Texas. Banks are robbed and cops are killed while the gang lives on the lam. A relationship between Bowie, the main character, and a girl named Keechie really doesn't add much interest to the story. There is some good dialogue and a bit of desolate atmosphere, but not enough to lift this to the level of noir. I don't know why this story is included here. Try and guess how the story ends (the clue is "Bonnie and Clyde"). I hope that Edward Anderson's other stories are better.

Kenneth Fearing's "The Big Clock" is excellent, and brings the level of the book back up to where it should be. Set in a magazine publishing house, this tale is sleek and smart. The story is told in first person narration, but Fearing shifts the narration to various characters in the story. These constantly changing viewpoints turn the story into a roller coaster ride of epic proportions. An editor at the company makes the mistake of sleeping with the boss's woman. When this lady turns up dead at the hands of same boss, all heck breaks loose. This story is riveting and has a great ending that is all suspense. A must read.

William Lindsay Gresham wrote "Nightmare Alley" after some discussions he had with some carnival workers. This story is the longest one in the book and is a decent addition to the volume. Full of unpleasant images of murder, swindle, cynicism and downright perversion, you won't be disappointed when this one comes to an end. A scheming magician decides to take his con to the big time by posing as a Spiritualist minister, and as usual, the end result is tragedy all around. This story is downright depressing, and if you don't feel sorry for Gyp, you have got a problem. I didn't really care too much for the (...) addition of the black Communist towards the end of the book. Gresham had a flirtation with the Redski movement, so this apparent insertion makes some sense in that context. It goes nowhere in the story, however. There are some other holes in the plot but overall this is an entertaining story.

The final tale comes from the sumptuous pen of Cornell Woolrich. "I Married a Dead Man" becomes instantly familiar within a few pages, mostly due to the numerous films that have copped the plot. The writing here is far superior to any of the other stories in the book. I'd say it's far superior to most writing in general. The metaphors are extraordinary. Look for the description of Bill lighting his cigarette in the doorway. Wow! The story centers on a case of mistaken identity with a strong dose of blackmail thrown in for good measure. Of course, there's also a murder. This story is outstanding.

Overall, if you are just starting to read noir, start with these two volumes. It is good to see some of the best noir has to offer, and you will find some of it in these pages. The book clocks in at 990 pages, but it reads really fast. There is also a nice summary concerning the careers of each author at the back of the book. Recommended.

I was surprised at how modern the themes and writing of this compendium were. I read "Thieves Like Us" just when the Texas 7 episode was happening and was amazed at how little the views of crime and punishment, justice and desperation have changed since that writing, especially in Texas where the story takes place.

"They Shoot Horses..." was my favorite of the bunch for it's depiction of deperate people doing desperate things to survive in the form of a Dance Marathon. But are they doing this out of deperation (even the winner of the prize money, after months of physical torment , will end up having made less than a dollar a day)? Or becuase there is nothing else to do? What is futile and what is meaningfull, the story seems to be asking.

"Nightmare Alley" brought the Tyrone Power movie back home, only the ending seems more poignant. The author organzies each chapter along the 22 minor arcana of the Tarot, a device used by later authors like Robert Anton Wilson and Umberto Eco.

"The big clock", filmed at least twice with variations on themes, uses a unique writing style of shifting narratives from the main characters' points of view and has an awfully modern motive for the murder (probably a little too modern for that period).

"The Postman.." and "I Married a Dead Man" story were also very dood. The Noir theme of "Crime Does Not Pay" runs through most of theses stories, but when you read them, you realize that it's not as simple as that. In the end, who really wins and loses and does it matter?

I don't think one can do better for reading the greats of American Literature than through the Library of America seri