this book is brill. it goes into the religion and the does and donts it was the best book i read on voodoo.

Ruth Handler tells it like she lived it. She is one of the most dynamic women alive today. Ruth and Elliot created Mattel Toys that revolutionized the toy industry. She tells her personal story. A fascinating tale of a modern woman of today who helped found the biggest toy company in the world in her garage. She did this when men would not accept women in business. Read about the wonderful world of Barbie from her conceiver, Ruth Handler.

I loved it because I lived it and I know Ruth and Elliot. I hope you do also.

this is a great book for starting out in flash mx and shows you all the basics plus the advanced. it comes witha cd which has, of course, a trial of flash mx and many other programs. this is a good buy even if it is expensive

Katie Shannon is not my favorite of the Fabulous Five, but this was a pretty good book. Mainly it's about how Katie wants to join the school's Teen Court, which 'judges' kids who get detention and teaches them about the judicial system. Katie makes the team, but her first case involves the boyfriends of Jana and Beth, two of her best friends! I think it's cool how she handeled it, but I can also see Jana and Beth's point of view too. Katie also has to put up with a lot of rap from the boys at school because she's such a feminest. And things really get crazy when she gets a crush on the school's biggest 'macho man'! This one you should probably read if you plan on reading a lot of Fab. Five books. PLEASE COME BACK IN PRINT!! YOU WOULD PLEASE SO MANY!!!! And I would like to please ask the girls who are so loyal to BSC not to dis this series so much. I know they act different then the girls in BSC, but I think one of the coolest things about American Girls is that we are all different.

Very good and easy to just fill in the blanks and delete the instruction parts.

It is good enough IMO to help perform the function you want it to do. (Discouraging employees from using your business plan, structure or customer base to steal business away from you.)

As with any legal document, it's first source of power is derived from your own willingness and ability to take people to court.

How to Write Mysteries is a must for the libary of the budding author. Not only does it offer practical advice, but it offers plenty of inspiration.

Everyone with even a causal interest in business valuation respects Shannon Pratt. He lives up to his reputation in The Market Approach. My favorite is the contrast and comparison of the different data available for private transactions.

If there is any criticism, it has to be his subtle efforts to market Pratt's Stats. No one would blame him too much for that.

Like to know the # 1 song the day you were born? The day you were wed? Or the day JFK was assassinated? Or the day Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon? How about December 7, 1941?

Well, if you were born anywhere from 1930 to 1980, this great book will tell you what the top song was on each of your birthdays, including your first, or your weddding day, as culled from Variety Magazine for the years 1930 to mid-1935, from Your Hit Parade from mid-1935 to 1959, and from there to 1980, Billboard's Easy Listening charts.

Author Brooks also provides, prior to each year, a thumbnail account of the year in question, including films, Broadway hits, sporting events, and political news.

If there's one fault it's the omission of the names of any artists - understandable, perhaps, since in the early days it wasn't uncommon for one song to be covered by multiple artists. Still, it would have been nice to have the names of the those with the TOP version.

For that reason alone I deducted one star. But that's from MY perspective and it certainly shouldn't prevent you from obtaining a copy if you can. The ensuing hours of enjoyment and trivia treasure-troves will delight you for hours on end.

This review is certainly belated, but the 1996 collection of New Stories from the South is worthy of review nevertheless. The curiosity of the collection is William Faulkner's "Rose of Lebanon", a story written in 1930, but only recently rediscovered and published in The Oxford American, thus "qualifying" it (as if there are judges standing by with little cups for the various stories to pee in?) for inclusion in this year's anthology. Although Kirkus Reviews and Booklist hail the rediscovery, I have to think there must have been a good reason Faulkner himself did not pursue its publication more actively. While the plot and characterisations are admirable, there is a certain awkwardness about how the tale is told. Consider the following sentence, "She looked like something made in an expensive shop, of lace and bright frosting, and turned upside down in the center of a hollow square of troops all young and none of whom had ever heard a bullet; by strange faces which, for all their youth and inexperience and perhaps foreboding, wore none the less of doubt for that." Beautiful writing indeed, but that is supposed to be a line of dialogue. Also: "They all galloped bareheaded with brandished sabres when they had them, but anyway galloping, off the stage altogether, into a lot more rain than a December drizzle; maybe into somewhere else where they could bang themselves to pieces again, like puppets banging themselves to pieces against the painted board-and-plaster, the furious illusions of gardens and woods and dells; maybe to meet brighter faces than Lewis Randolph looking out a carriage window halted in a muddy road." True, the South has a long tradition of storytelling and oratory which Faulkner, via the speaker, is clearly tapping in to; but it all seems a bit much for believable dialogue. I grew up in the South, and although I love run-on sentences more than most, I've never heard anyone talk like that. But this is a minor quibble, and the story is certainly worth a read, as are all the stories in the book. Tim Gautreaux's "Died and Gone to Vegas" taps into the modern tradition of Southern Oratory--lies told over a card table; and while, like many of the stories, it is afflicted with a touch of the stereotypical view of Southerners as trailor trash, is nonetheless equally amusing and touching. My favorite story is "Jealous Husband Returns in the Form of a Parrot" by Robert Olen Butler. Inspired by a tabloid headline, what seems to be an absurd idea actually takes on poignancy and becomes a surreal study of regret. Susan Perabo's "Some Say the World", Annette Sanford's "Goose Girl", and Lee Smith's "The Happy Memories Club" all portray female protagonists at odds with the world and making their place in it as best they can. Ellen Douglas's "Grant" rings with the truth of lost chances, when the narrator's husband's uncle, dying of cancer, moves in with them to live out his remaining days.

Most problematic was Tom Paine's "General Markman's Last Stand", which Kirkus Reviews pans as "simply unconvincing." There is certainly an aspect of the story than makes it seem that Paine began with a vision of the final scene and worked backward from there. But in some ways it is the most intriguing of the bunch--suggesting rather than telling. Markman is a Marine general at the point of retirement who has earned the respect of his men by falling on a grenade (which turned out not to be live) in Vietnam. He has a dark secret, though--he has a fetish for women's lingerie, and the shame of his fetish drives him to self-destructive behaviour. The cause-and-effect of Markham's life is not clear. Paine hints that his fetish developed in the battlefields of Vietnam, where his wife's underwear (originally sent as a reminder of her?) took on a totemic power providing for his personal safety, and that Markham's valiant grenade dive was actually an attempt to destroy himself. Markham finally manages at least professional self-destruction, but somehow Paine's story doesn't quite come off. Perhaps it is as simple as needing to know what happened next. But it certainly has one of the most shocking opening lines I've read, "The General's panties were too tight."

If the 1996 anthology is any measure of the quality of the whole, New Stories from the South is a series to watch out for. 15 stories and not a bit of absurd gunplay, just touching or amusing slices of Southern Life.