I must be a rubber necker to the highest degree because I always enjoy these type of books. It has the standard fair, nothing really new on the format. The author does give us a good amount of detail, which he is known for. I would always like more photos, but there is enough to tell the story. If you like this type of book then you will enjoy this one.

Stewart's penchant for detail is evident throughout this seminal work. A compilation of airline accident investigation findings which run the gamut from design flaws and adverse weather, to impatient pilots, and distracted controllers. Superior in content to many books written by non-investigators, or "hired-guns" who work for lawyers, the book does not elaborate on the events which occurred after the cause was determined, or the disposition of recommendations forwarded from air safety investigators. Though this may seem an oversight, some of these recommendations are STILL being considered by-or are rejected in compliance with-the regulatory body (in the U.S., that is the FAA). Nevertheless, one can gain a valuable insight into the root causes of many air disasters.

Stewart's book looks at twelve of the most terrible and important accidents in aviation history. Chapters are included on the crash of the R-101 airship, the Trident crash of 1972, and the 1976 midair collision over Yougoslavia, among others. This book is excellent. Stewart's writing is both factually informative as well as psychologically thrilling. He takes us moment by moment through each crisis. While none of the chapters are poor by any means, I think the best covered the Trident crash of 72 and the Munich football accident of 58. Each is written in the style of great fiction, but both are wholly true! I would recommend this book for anyone with an interest remotely close to the subject. Too bad that the book is out of print.

As the sister of one of the author's I am sure anyone would expect me to give a positive review, and I do! Not just because Nancy is my sister but because I have been taught since I was a young girl how to be assertive by my sister and at the age of 44 I now see how vital that teaching has been for me over the years. Nancy and Stanlee have given their best in this book and I have to say that every reader with a sister needs to share this book with them. My personal sense of identity comes as a direct result of being taught by Nancy at the age of 10 that I don't have to allow myself to be intimidated for fear of alienating someone by telling them "no". I learned self respect at a young age because I didn't allow myself to be "labeled" as a young lady when I felt that was not a proper discription of who I was! I was a young woman, big difference! I also learned that I don't have to accept someone else's name in marriage just because society expects me to! I was given the gift of freedom by my sister and her teachings and now I have a manual to refer to when I get lost along the way. I am also a counselor and have found that assertivenss does not only apply to women! I have male clients that benefit from the techniques I have learned through the book! Way to go Nancy and Stanlee!

Congratulations to Stanlee Phelps and Nancy Austin on the 4th edition of their book, "The Assertive Woman". They've been at it since 1974 (I've gotten each edition and referred them to my clients during my 30 years as a career and management consultant and coach.) This revised and updated edition continues to be a timely, relevant and reliable resource for women as they navigate the landmines on their assertiveness journeys. The book offers real-world examples, communication guidelines, self-awareness exercises and lessons learned in the authors' work with corporate and entrepreneurial women. (And I believe the solid advice and information is valid for all women of all ages regardless of their work status.... especially young women in high school and college who are just starting their assertiveness journeys.) I found the 14 page Resource Guide an especially helpful tool as it includes additional books, articles, newsletters, videos, websites, and professional associationsas available for any woman to find what she needs to support her in her assertiveness journey. I also loved the cover. Every photo has an interesting story behind it to convey that one size of assertiveness does not fit all! And it shows how far we've come.....

I read this book just around the time I started to build my own tax practice.

Why? Only because my first corporate client was Stanlee Phelps' Career Concerns. And it seemed wise to read my client's book.

What an eye-opener!

For someone starting out on their own (man or woman), it was THE best book I could have picked up.

Stanlee Phelps and Nancy Austin provided tangible information about how to get what you want or to make your point. They did it, though, by imparting a sense of grace and sanity, not present in the days of Women's Lib. (Don't worry, the Feminist feelings do run strong in the book.)

Their questions and exercises helped me learn so much about myself. It made it much easier to make the changes necessary to become a success in business. (And, inadvertantly, it helped me overcome my fear of public speaking. And how!)

One of the best lessons I took away from that book, (to paraphrase)

"Just because you CAN be assertive, doesn't mean you always should."

Holding my tongue, at times, has gotten me greater rewards than speaking up - just because I could.

If you're out there selling your products or services, making bids on contracts, working with contractors and staff...even if you're a man, pick this book up. It's a quick read

I've never told Stanlee quite what an effect this book had on me. But, really, it was remarkable. Thank you!

The Berenstain Bears are my secret weapon in my constant battle to instill good habits in my kids. My kids may not listen to me nagging them to clean up their rooms, but they will listen to Mama Bear. Since there's a Berenstain Bear book that covers just about any problem that crops up in our house, we know Mama, Papa, Brother and Sister Bear almost as well as we know our next door neighbors (and they're related to us!).

If you only know the Bear family though some of their more recent books, you might be surprised to learn that the first few Berenstain Bears books aren't about problem-solving at all. Instead, they are rhyming books about life in what later came to be know as "the tree house down a sunny dirt road in Bear Country."

In the very first book, an empty honey pot sends Papa Bear and Small Bear (later to be known as Brother Bear) on a quest for some honey. Mama tells them to get it at the honey store, conveniently located just outside the front door. Papa Bear, however, has grander plans.

"Not at the store. Oh, no, Small Bear. If a bear is smart, If a bear knows how, He goes on a honey hunt. Watch me now!" If you've read any of the Bears' adventures, you'll know that of course Papa's grand plans backfire. He and Small Bear end up hiding in a pond to escape a swarm of angry bees. On the last page, Mama watches with a knowing smile as Papa buys honey from the store.

There's one person in my family who cringes every time a new Bear book shows up on the night's list of requested reading. My husband doesn't like to see Papa always portrayed as a buffoon. Sometimes, just to make my husband feel better, I'll let Papa be the sensible one and Mama be the comic relief.

This story is a fun adventure with lots of expressive illustrations and easy-to-read words. With 61 pages, a child really feels like he's accomplished something when he finishes this book.

Small Bear and Dad Bear go in search of honey. Mother tells them to go to the honey store, but Dad Bear has a better idea. They go in search of a honey tree. One mishap after another, they finally find their honey - only, where a bear finds honey, he also finds BEES.

Dad is clever, though, and they manage to escape unscathed... and they come home with honey, too!

A fun book, and great for beginning readers.

This pleasant book I remembered from my childhood and have read it to my 3 children scores of time. With similar books (eg: 'The Bike Lesson', 'Sam and the Firefly', 'Danny and the Dinosaur')my kids learned to read by age 4 and had a tremendous time doing it. There is something pleasant in these simple adventures and the action, the humor, makes the repetition easy.

Not being familiar with Elkin or his work, it was a pleasant surprise to read 'Dick Gibson.' Elkin has an amazing imagination, and a wonderful ear for wordplay. The 'guests' on Gibson's radio shows just can't help but reveal their deepest, darkest (usually sexual) secrets. And Gibson is too smart to step in their way. This book is amazingly prescient about the advent of 'entertainment' like Jerry Springer, "reality" programs, and all those radio shows people call just hear themselves think. It's a shame this programming has none of Elkin's sardonic wit - or his intelligence. I'm looking forward to reading more Elkin.

Elkin is not an easy read, but he's funny, brilliant, dazzling and dizzying, the kind of writer that might emerge if Proust were cloned with I.B. Singer, or maybe Damon Runyon. This book shows him at the top of his game. His sheer energy and love of language blasts through on every page. Forget about plot. Elkin is to writing what Cirque du Soleil is to entertainment. If you like well-plotted books that will leave you with a moral or a memorable story, Elkin may not be for you. If you like language for language's sake and appreciate sentences sculpted by a lingual Michelangelo and marvelous displays of craft, try this book. Elkin is a limited writer and an acquired taste, but within his limitations he was the best. I know of no other writer who could, for example, write a novel about terminally ill children (The Magic Kingdom) and make it funny and moving without ever getting anywhere near sentimentality or the kind of somber earnestness you'd expect. If you like this book, try Magic Kingdom and also Criers and Kibbitzers, a short story collection of his.

This is not quite Mrs. Ted Bliss but in some respects it is probably better. I don't know - I loved them both, but being a woman perhaps liked Mrs. Ted better. Still - Stanley Elkin is a man with a jumpin' mind! The twists and turns of this novel are magnificent - and what I love most is that his writing is not predictable. You keep reading just to see what new trick he'll pull.

This book is degrading to Mongolians. In order to be funny the author uses good people as his victims. In fact the humor is in extremely bad taste. A good writer with poor judgement.

I very much enjoyed this travel book! I especially like the lead-in, Stanley does not just drop into Mongolia - he leads the reader across Asia and into Mongolia through history and beautiful transitions. It is tough to believe he passed up so many female opportunities. But I am hoping he was just being British! I enjoyed his positive humorous outlook on all the people that crossed his path.

Since 1980, the Thomas Cook Travel Book of the Year has been considered the travel writing equivalent to the Booker or Pulitzer, and this Stewart's second book to win the prestigious honor. The book's framework is Stewart's plan to travel from roughly the western edge of the 12th-century Mongol empire to the mountain in eastern Mongolia where Ghengis Khan was buried. The first quarter of the book covers his trip from Istanbul to the the Crimea on a decrepit Russian cargo ship, across Ukraine, Russia, and Kazakhstan by train, and by air into Mongolia. This is all warmup for Mongolia itself, as he intersperses the history Mongol conquest with that of a proselytizing mission made by a Franciscan monk to the Mongol court in 1253, as well as his own encounters with a gun-toting teenage Russian smuggler, a Dickens-loving Russian procuress, and various lonely souls.

Once in Mongolia, Stewart switches to horseback, as his plan is to ride over 1,000 miles across its breadth. With a succession of translators, guides, and horses, he find that the happiest and healthiest Mongols live virtually the same nomadic lives as their ancestors of five centuries ago. Even accounting for a certain degree of romanticization of the countryside, it's hard to find anything redeeming about the settlements he passes through. Virtually all are crumbling towns with few permanent residents beyond a mayor, policeman, and a few other caretakers. These regional centers are ugly concrete legacies of the Soviet era which have been largely abandoned since the end of Soviet aid and seem destined to return to the earth.

Out in the countryside, Stewart meets innumerable nomads, takes part in a wedding, visits a shaman, goes to a festival which includes horse-races and wrestling, and generally finds the people to be friendly and curious. Of course the landscape features prominently, and people with horses may find themselves yearning to across the world to ride next to history's most famous horsemen. The real pleasure of the book is that while Stewart does all these fascinating things, he writes about it in simply stunning prose liberally sprinkled with humor and heart. [...]

It's a fascinating and funny book, and one that should read by anyone with an interest in other cultures. One interesting footnote: in discussing the book, several professional reviews have said that the Mongolian nomadic life will likely "die out in our lifetime." This is directly opposite to what Stewart describes! He is very clear that the nomadic lifestyle is the only one which makes much sense in a country like Mongolia, and that the vast majority of people prefer not to live in urban areas!

This book was not nearly as helpful as I expected it to be. The photographs and drawings seemed like they would be really helpful. However, I found it very confusing to try to figure out which picture corresponded to what my specimen actually looked like. It was most helpful for muscles, and least helpful for nerves and vessels. It is also very time consuming to look up the particular item and then flip through many pages looking for a picture that shows your item of interest clearly.

I am a currently a second-year veterinary student working as a teaching assistant for the first-year anatomy class. This book has served as an invaluable source of information to me. The color photographs supplemented by explanatory diagrams make this the best reference book I have found available on canine/feline anatomy. Highly recommended for first year veterinary students.

THIS BOOK CONTAINS EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT CANINE AND FELINE ANATOMY. IT IS PERFECT FOR THE VETERINARY STUDENT. IT HAS FULL COLOR PHOTOS OF THE BODY PARTS STILL INTACT. PLUS, BESIDE EVERY PHOTO THERE IS A FULL COLOR DIAGRAM LISTING EACH INDIVIDUAL PART. IT'S VERY EASY TO READ AND UNDERSTAND. IF YOU ARE IN THE VETERINARY FIELD, YOU NEED THIS BOOK!

Anyone who enjoys whole foods cookery, herbal healing, and organic gardening will appreciate Crawford's observations. Those with a philosophical bent will appreciate them even more. His reflections on a life lived close to nature are a bit like those of Thoreau or Jefferson, but Crawford appears to also be very much the guy who brings fresh produce to your local farmer's market.

Few of us have probably given much thought to the growing of garlic bulbs, which really consist of "cloves" that can be divided and planted or used to season everything from marinara sauce to stir fries. You might have noticed the green sprouts that begin to emerge from cloves of garlic kept too long in your refrigerator, but Crawford suggests garlic plants are difficult to grow because their life course is different from that of many other plants. Garlics have adapted to life in stressful places where rainfall is not always forthcoming but when they need moisture, they need moisture. To avoid death, the bulbs spend a good part of the year "resting" or dormant. In a chapter called "Waiting" Crawford says that's exactly what the garlic farmer does. Much of the year, garlic like other bulbed plants are in hiding, and the farmer must be patient and wait until they are ready for the harvest.

But Crawford's interaction with plants isn't only about garlic. He relates how he "tasted the landscape" as a child in his native California-peeling and chewing the white pulp of anise growing by the side of the road in winter; sucked the syrup of nasturtiums, smelled the pepper tree berries, and searched the orchids for loquats, limes, and mandarin oranges. Today, children are not so fortunate. Pollution, chemicals, other noxious matter have made much of the landscape dangerous. Crawford toyed with both conventional and organic farming. He says he wishes to ask those who enquire whether his products for sell at the weekly market are "organic" if they lead organic lives. Do they earn their money in organic ways. He says, "Perhaps in the poisonous desert of the city there is little else you can do besides seek out what you hope is "pure" food. In addition to being informative and philosophical, Crawford's book is provocative.

When Henry David Thoreau left the comforts of civilization to build his own house with his own hands and deliberately live close to nature, his experience at Walden Pond became a classic in American literature. Even today, many of us trapped in the mundane horrors of urban life long to escape, as he did, to a small plot of land somewhere outside the realms of commerce, overcommercialization, and petty-minded consumerism.

Novelist Stanley Crawford had the courage to do more than dream about it. He left California for the rigorous, simple life of a New Mexico garlic farmer and, like Thoreau, has written a wise and thought-provoking book about his experiences. His account spans a year in the life of garlic, tying topics as diverse as the nuclear bomb and the challenge of maintaining community to the rhythms of building one's own house from adobe and learning to plant and harvest responsibly.

After closing the cover of this book, I was ready to drive to New Mexico and seek out Crawford in the Farmer's Market, to buy my own bulbs of top-setting garlic and somehow bring some of the beauty of his life into my own. I may never stand in Santa Fe behind his pickup, buying a woven garland of organic garlic to hang in my kitchen, or perhaps I will travel there and stammer some foolish words about his writing as I hand him a handful of crumbled dollar bills. In some sense, the physical journey has become irrelevant: Crawford's New Mexico has already illumined my heart and wakened me to the rhythms of my own life. I don't have the strength or the patience to tend a field or a garden, manufacture adobe or create a home, brick by brick. But I, too, have a place in the world, and eyes to see--A Garlic Testament is one of those books that wakes us from habitual slumber and reminds us, as Thoreau so aptly put it, to advance confidently in the directions of our dreams, and to put the foundations under our castles in the air.

This is one of the best-written books that I have ever read. Each word is well-chosen, effective, and yet easy to read. At one point in the book, he alludes that he has written poetry previously. Each of the 39 chapters is a few pages long, presenting a brief essay on something related to garlic farming in New Mexico. There's an obvious love and care that he gives to his work (both garlic farming and writing), and he's able to show respect for others who have not chosen this path. The book also presents some information about how garlic is grown, but it's by no means a gardening book. It's a descriptive story of the cycles of the growing season. Like in his other excellent book, Mayordomo, the author also shares his community with us - talking about how farming, farmers markets, irrigation, and such intertwine a community, even one that contains members who originally went there to "get away from it all."

Individuals with any experience in running a project, whether it is a small focused job or a large-scale product development effort, will find subject treatises too fundamental. The chapters lack the in-depth coverage and focus as the apparent goal is to present a broad-based overview of basic concepts in the field of project management.

Here is a guideline to use in deciding whether or not to purchase this book:
How comfortable are you with using the Microsoft Project software?
If you are very comfortable with MS Project, I recommend that you try "A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge" instead.
If you have never used MS Project and/or have no idea what it does, then you should probably buy this book.

This book covers the basics of project management but does not include the "how to" tools to be "the reference guide" for project managers. Perhaps to be a project manager you can't be a dummy.

A solid book that introduces many tools and techniques central to project management. If you have to manage projects in addition to doing your "real work" this book is for you. If you're a project manager by profession, you should be past this book by now.

This book was, well, a peice of work. I'm only 14 and I found this in one of my fathers boxes of books. Before I read this I was EXTREMELY close minded. This book had me questioning my beliefs from the beginning. The fact that there might be a life after death was enough to have me ranting and raving for a whole day, but after I read this I started to wonder. Shapiro's look into that particular subject had me glued to the book. I would highly reccomend this novel to anyone who thinks they know everything. It might change your mind.

It moves at a brisk pace, which means it outdistances itself from any horror elements about four chapters in. But that doesn't even matter, because it weighs on your mind for long after you're finished. It's the kind of book you can't help but think about. The story of men trying to find what's beyond, and the sole survivor finding out that it's not nearly as you might expect is enough to make you question your own beliefs, however briefly. While my faith wasn't shaken or shattered (rather in some odd ways reinforced) I still had to give some thought to Shapiro's creation. The book is told in first person which gives it a much more credible feel, as if this were an autobiography of a real person. Truly amazing. I didn't give it five stars because frankly I feel that five stars is an honor that should be reserved for pieces of work that are beyond even exceptional. But that's no insult to Shapiro or his work, because this is damn close to being perfect.

This is was an awesome book. It crossed so many questionable bounderies about religios beliefs and medical theories. The text was written so poetically that every word seemed to me as if it could easily be put to music of the goth persuasion. I also learned quite a bit from this book about the balance of life, good and evil, and the effect of messing with things that you don't understand.I recomend this book to anyone with a curiosity for the supernatural. I loaned this book to a friend who has since passed it on to several of their friends. Good thing this book now only cost a dollar because I don't mined not getting it back.

In recent years, any number of systematic theologies have been written by Evangelicals. Stanley Grenz is a moderately conservative theologian and his book is a welcome overview of Christian theology from a Baptistic perspective. One of the best features of this book is that the discussion is clear and thorough, but never simplistic. Grenz achieves this by focusing on the Biblical material and leaving the historical discussion to a few key thinkers in any area. This prevents the work from reading like a telephone book, unlike many systematic theologies. In addition, Grenz has a purpose to his work, namely to integrate his discussion with the communitarian aspects of Christianity. Finally, the work is less than 700 pages, making a bit less intimidating than other theologies.

This book is very indepth and is well worth the read. While adhering to historical orthodoxy, Grenz is also quite creative. His bibliology section, for example, appears in chapter 14, rather than in the traditional theological prolegomena (introductory) section of most systematics texts. His integrative motif of 'community' is excellent, but I disagree with Grenz at several points. His characterization of the Holy Spirit as the bond of love between the Father and the Son makes the third member of the Trinity rather impersonal. I would have preferred a more unequivocal assertion regarding the real personality of the Spirit. The 'concretization' of the relationship between the Father and the Son seems to be an inadequate description of the Holy Spirit as presented in the Scriptures. Grenz gives excellent hisorical background on each topic, the work is saturated with the Scriptures, and the author clearly is a passionate Christian believer. Wonderful text for spiritual enrichment and undoubtedly a solid introductory volume for college and seminary settings.

As a ministry student I find this book immensely helpful in our postmodern culture because of its emphasis on community. Grenz does an outstanding job integrating church tradition with contemporary culture and theology. His relational view of the trinity is his paradigm for understanding community. This relational view is present throughout this work and is a refreshing idea in today's western society where individualism is dominant. For a one volume systematic theology it is comprehensive and thorough. Grenz's writing is easy to understand for theology students, but I would recommend his Pocket Dictionary of Theological Terms if you are new to reading theology. I think anyone could benefit from reading this contemporary evangelical theology.