While this book is full of well researched information, the author seemed to forget that it also must be read and enjoyed. While the statistics included displayed knowledge on the part of the author, they made it extremely difficult to follow without reading each page over more than once. This book is a good source for further research, but not something to read casually.

Kenneth Warren managed to succeed where Samuel Schreiner seemed to fall flat. Henry Clay Frick was a man of many contradictions. Very insightful and well-written.

Kathie Lee is a sweat shop quee

Most of the stories are trite, except for the highly imaginative and quick-witted "The Day Before the Night Before Christmas." It's worth the price to have this special soon-to-be classic in your children's library. Author James Shock captures the spirit of the season with humor and warmth. A must read for children of all ages.

James Shock's Santa Claus poem is what makes the purchase worthwhile. I hope to see it published somewhere else, and I'd love to see more of his stuff. Someone should publish a collection of his work. Keep it up!

I found this book to be very disappointing. With a title like "Making Origninal portrait Dolls in Cernit" one would expect a bit more instruction. Amounts of Cernit needed for the project would be very helpful...but this info is lacking as is much more about working with this polymer clay. What is not lacking is a complete history of Rotraut Schrott doll making endeavors, her inspiration, her abilites and where they came from. This book is a sad disappointment. Not recommended for those who truely would like to learn how to work with Cernit in dollmaking. Lot's of pretty doll pictures though......

While the photos are great the accompanying instructions are only fair. I was left with a lot of unanswered questions regarding detailed techniques.

If you are looking for good instructions, it's not in this book. Mainly pictures of her dolls and a basic guide to modeling the Cernit.

Many of these glazes are from other sources , same for clay bodies , but have been altered slightly to be presented anew. No real emphasis on glaze toxicity . Fritting Barium and Lead does not guarantee safety in the finished glazes . It's a case of user be aware . No guidelines for glaze usuage on functional wares or decorative . Is the glaze able stand table use - who knows ? Another in the long line of Artistic Glaze books , Ho Humm.

I was disappointed by this book due to the lack of illustrations even if only of test tiles. If the author has tested these formulae I cannot understand why these illustrations were not included, but without them the reader is left having to conduct his own test to determine the effects achievable. If the author has not tested, then the book is little better than the lists of glazes available free on the internet. Either way the reader is left with a lot of work to do.

...merely a tool, which definitley involves work on behalf of the reader. There are no pictures or test tiles to rely on; you have to try them yourself... a refreshing change from the results usually included in glaze books because you have to experiment and come up with your own results. I used the 1970's edition of this book as an undergraduate, which included the original recipes - not revised to exclude toxins - and while the revised edition is informative, it lacks the conversions for the "toxic" ingredients which many of us still use for the stunning results they provide. As a result some of the best recipes have been excluded from the new edition, and unfortunatley, the replacements and substitutions produce nowhere near the results gained from earlier editions. Still a good tool for the potter who enjoys glaze experimentation, but if you can score a copy of an unrevised edition(there are two- and they are out of print), you are sure to be pleased!

Knowing almost nothing about PhotoShop and being thrifty, I purchased this book mostly because of the price and CD Rom Lessons. However, it quickly became clear that the book is so frustratingly full of errors, it makes it difficult for a novice. The learning curve is greatly increased due to the errors. I never know if no result or a poor result was do to "operator error" or book error.

For someone with basic knowledge of PhotoShop, this might be a reasonable text, but I would not recommend it for the beginner!

I just finished this book. The lessons took about an hour each, they were not grueling, and they didn't cover too much or too little.

And, now that I have finished the whole book, I really have no idea what the complaints are about. All the lessons on the CD are functional, so check your operating systems, people, or maybe, be a little more careful following through with the procedure in the lessons. There are some spelling errors. So what? The content is sound. I found no major errors like non-functional scripts or missing files. The chapter lesson for Actions DOES work. All the lessons work. I think the problem may be that anyone who uses this book still needs to utilize some critical thinking skills and some experimentation to get through the complexity of the software program itself -- the book cannot be blamed for the intrinsic complexity and redundant functions of Photoshop.

My final opinion is that this Andres book was actually "FUN" to use. It even made Photoshop fun to use -- and that is an achievement. I'm actually going to do the lessons on Layers and Masking over again for just pure enjoyment, because now I now feel comfortable using basic functions of Photoshop and I don't feel afraid of it anymore! **** for this one, Baby.

I had this book sitting around on my shelf for a year but I hadn't used it (nor Photoshop). I was cautious about trying it because I've had problems getting through other Photoshop manuals before, on account of boredom, and I had read the reviews below. But I really needed to make a layered graphic for a website so I tried it -- and after getting through three chapters on masks, channels and layers in three hours, I disagree with the negative reviews -- this book didn't abuse me.

I didn't find any problems using the Layers lesson as one reviewer described below; the lesson was pretty straightforward, I thought -- perhaps it was a memory allocation problem or a platform problem (I used it on Win98 with 64 Megs driven by PII400) -- who knows. I haven't tried the chapter on Actions yet, but I will post a follow-up.

There ARE errors in the book and I think on the disc but they amount to minor typos. I haven't come across any mislabelled files, yet. Here and there the author confused me when he referred to layers being on top or below, and he meant the stratification on the palette and not in the image itself -- I figured it out (hooray for me). So, the book isn't Perfection, but what I find attractive and useful about it is the author's style of instruction, which in general is easy to understand, not overly technical. Also good are the pace, the ready-made CD examples. He presented the subject directly and matter-of-factly without much digression, which I like. I tend not to like the extremely regimented and hyperformal tone of most of the Adobe Classroom in a Book editions -- those books have no typos or file errors but because of their minutiae, they induce sleep; I fell out of my chair frequently and injured myself, which required that I stop using them. They sit perfectly on my shelf, though. This Andres book isn't as detailed as the Adobe books, but you also don't get bogged down in extreme detail. It got me through Photoshop's ridiculously complex interface so I could experiment on my own -- which I think is how you learn programs like Photoshop, right?

Anyway, Roger, I give this book a Thumbs Up for friendly style, speed, ease of use, and fun examples.

First: Oliver Stone's "JFK" was only partially inspired by Jim Garrison's memoirs. It was based mostly on the Jim Marrs book and often used the Clay Shaw trial only as backdrop for Marrs' and Stone's theories.

Second: Jim Garrison did not find evidence of direct assassination participation of current employees of the intelligence, military, law enforcement, and judicial community. Rather he found evidence that these groups seemed to have been mostly negligent and desirous of covering up their negligence. The main groups thought involved were Cuban-exiles, right-wing militia members, and agent level former intelligence recruitees (i.e. former non-operative level puppets). Mafia and wealthy bankers were thought to have possibly provided some support. The assassination was supposedly caused by blow-back as a result of the failed Bay of Pigs invasion JFK had publicly taken responsibility for. Modern records actually prove the CIA had disobeyed his orders in the planning of the operation to include air-support.

Third: As Garrison's case proceeded, the Clay Shaw ties became murky in light of the actual player's and event's increasingly apparent complexity. In the end, the prosecution seemed a little obsessed with Clay Shaw. Even Stone's flawed film alluded to this.

Fourth: If you want to talk about lawyer control of the police, let's discuss New Orleans District Attorney Harry Connick (father of Harry Connick Jr., musician), rival and successor of Jim Garrison. He ordered a police officer to destroy notes and papers from the Shaw trial. The officer disobeyed and stored these articles of historical importance in his attic. When the Assassination Records Review Board, started by Bush and funded by Clinton, made its way to New Orleans, the officer attempted to give them the notes and papers. Connick promptly threw the man in jail and attempted to do the same with the only reporter in New Orleans who'd listen to the story. The Board eventually received the historical documents and the wrongfully imprisoned were released. As far as I know, the only news station which aired this story was the reporter's own local one. I am not aware of any national coverage of this except in one piece of obscure journalists' rights literature. In reality, many of the accusers of Jim Garrison had ties with the same media companies which refused to stay objective on the trial and later apologized for their conduct; NBC and company come to mind.

Fifth: False Witness seems to polarize and filter information on the subject, choosing some questionable sources to quote. It also tends to rely more on inflamitory alleged accounts than actual physical evidence - worse than the somewhat deficient Shaw trial. There is also sparse discussion on the strange disappearance and destruction of evidence shortly after the assassination.

Final Words: I cannot wholly recommend this emotionally charged book. I have a difficult time coming to any final conclusion on the JFK assassination. It's important to keep gathering evidence and accounts, paying particular attention to views and theories held by past and present parties. We will be able to have a more complete dialog on the subject when pertinent material is released from the National Archives on the specified date. Even then, one need remember that the CIA admitted during the Congressional MK-Ultra hearings to having destroyed a very large portion of its most sensitive and classified documents. Yet, out of the small portion of relatively benign documentation which remained came evidence of serious ethical violations, and suggestions of illegal acts. It makes me wonder what information was contained in the documents they were actually compelled to destroy.

I had the privilege of reading this book before it was published. In fact, my company, Bancroft Press, decided to publish it. But that decision came five days too late, as the author had accepted an offer from M. Evans, a publishing company which I greatly respect and whose publisher, George DeKay, is one of the best in the country. Ms. Lambert's skilled investigation and prose persuaded me not only that Oliver Stone was historically reckless in his movie "JFK," but that his protagonist, Jim Garrison, was just as reckless as a prosecutor. It is a small but important chapter in a story that may finally be going away -- a sad chapter where recklessness triumphed over decency. But definitely read it. It is a brief and riveting companion to Gus Russo's "Live by the Sword," which tells an epic story of which the Garrison/JFK developments are a part.

It is almost unthinkable, but after more than 30 years New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison still has a small but loyal following that believes he was on the right track in his investigation of the Kennedy assassination and prosecution of New Orleans businessman Clay Shaw.

Garrison charged Shaw with conspiring to kill the 35th President along with Lee Harvey Oswald (who, by the way, did have something to do with the crime) and David Ferrie, a pilot and self-appointed cancer researcher. After a trial that captured world-wide coverage and nearly bankrupted Shaw, he was found not guilty in less than an hour. The folly of Garrison's investigation has been well-documented through books such as American Grotesque by James Kirkwood and The Garrison Case: A Study in the Abuse of Power by Milton Brener. Most conspiracy-oriented researchers who initially embraced Garrison dropped him like a hot potato, some even before the case came to trial.

However, with the 1991 release of Oliver Stone's film JFK (which fictionalized the New Orleans investigation), Garrison has made a comeback that would have made Richard Nixon proud. Stone portrays Garrison as an American hero battling the military-industrial complex (and Lyndon Johnson and the CIA and the Mafia and God knows who else) in an effort to learn the truth about the assassination. His own account of the investigation, On the Trail of the Assassins (one of two books Stone used as the basis for his film), was on the New York Times Paperback Best Sellers list for 13 weeks following the film's debut.

Considering the apparent level of credibility given to Stone's film by the majority of the movie-going public (seeing is believing), the need for an ongoing evaluation of Garrison's (and now Stone's) abuses is clear. Enter Patricia Lambert and her 1998 book False Witness: The Real Story of Jim Garrison's Investigation and Oliver Stone's Film JFK (M. Evans and Company Inc., New York-ISBN 0-87131-879-2). Her book provides that evaluation while offering new evidence concerning both Garrison's methods and his own dubious background. It also provides a sharp look at Stone's personal reasons for wanting to make JFK and his choice of Garrison as his protagonist.

Lambert devotes a full chapter to Stone's film and makes some solid observations. The complete list of falsehoods and distortions in JFK is beyond the scope of this review and could be a book in itself, but some discussed by Lambert are:

1.The beating of Jack Martin by Guy Banister. Stone exaggerated the severity of the beating and changed the reason for it from an argument over phone calls to Martin's comment that he could "write a book" about the comings and goings of characters at Banister's office.

2. The cause of David Ferrie's death is suggested by Stone to be murder while in truth he died of natural causes.

3. Stone uses dialogue and flashbacks to suggest that Dean Andrews really did know a "Clay Bertrand" (and he and Shaw were the same person) while in reality Andrews denied that Bertrand was Shaw and refused to testify to that fact.

4.Stone excludes Perry Russo (except for Garrison mentioning his name to Shaw during the "Easter interview"), who was really Garrison's entire case, from the film completely and substitutes "Willie O'Keefe", a fascist homosexual prostitute, who also happens to be fictional.

5.Stone portrays Shaw as a arrogant, overtly homosexual individual. In reality, Shaw was "in the closet" and a respected community figure.

6.Lambert punches many holes in the "X" character portrayed by Donald Sutherland. Among these are the "DC phone system shutdown" myth and the "New Zealand papers had information too quickly" canard. She also shows that Fletcher Prouty, who was the basis for "X", has credibility problems.

7.Stone's portrayal of the Shaw trial is severely flawed. He mostly eliminated the defense portion and distorted Garrison's closing argument.

Patricia Lambert has done a tremendous service with the publication of False Witness. This book should be required reading for anyone seeing JFK; in fact, they should sell it at Blockbuster Video. I believe that the opinion of Stone and his film among the general public would be much different if it were. Stone knew, however, that the average movie-goer (especially generation "X" types) would not be knowledgeable about the subject, and he would be free to rewrite history.

Stone's motive in all this? Money, of course, but also he sought in this film (as he had in Nixon and Born on the Fourth of July, among others) to inject meaning into his own Vietnam experience. Garrison's motive in prosecuting Shaw in the first place? Most likely, he sought publicity that he hoped would help him attain higher office.

In addition to the material discussed in this review, Lambert adds a full chapter on the Christenberry decision in which Garrison was prevented from further prosecution of Shaw. Also included is an appendix, which lists the many lies and distortions of Garrison's book On the Trail of the Assassins.

In False Witness, Lambert shows without a doubt that Jim Garrison's case against Clay Shaw was completely without merit. She also demonstrates that any film based on this miscarriage of justice would be congenitally flawed This is a landmark work and should be required reading for anyone studying the assassination of John F. Kennedy, particularly Garrison's investigation.

This book does a very poor job of presenting what
little information it contains.

For the studio potter there is only one valuable piece of information:
in electric firing, slow firing is good and
long soaks are better for proper glaze development.
I've tried several of the cone 6 and cone 10 glaze recipes,
the results were mostly awful. The technical discussion
of materials and equipment is too brief to make this
a real resource in the studio. Most electric kilns now
come with computer controllers, and there's nothing on
how to use them - just a few graphs of what an ideal firing
cycle should look like.

As other reviewers have noted, the black and white photographs
don't do justice to the pieces. Furthermore, the choice of
examples is very biased towards the non-functional, sculptural,
and just plain academic ugly. The overall presentation -
choice of font, layout, and general lack of design also
contributes to ones overall disappointment with this book.

I'm a real novice at pottery. I've read a few books, visited many websites, taken a few classes & read the manual on my kiln (VERY brief & only containing minimal information). After looking through this book I realized that using my current resources, I could probably WRITE it!.

If you want to see TONS of mediocre quality BLACK and WHITE photos of esoteric pottery, you've got the right book. If you are looking for technical explanations and help on the process of firing pottery & ceramics, keep shopping.

If you even have an INKLING of expecting help on your kiln that has an electronic control device (Such as the Skutt KM models), FORGET about this book; there is absolutely NO information of any substance here. Or even if you want a more detailed description of how to understand and/or manipulate the manual process, don't expect to count on this reference.

A REAL dissappointment. I couldn't return it fast enough.

I am a ceramics instructor and find this book a useful text. I teach a class on ceramic materials and electric kiln finishes and use this book for class. It is laid out so students at any level can benefit. The photos both color and black & white are great examples of the topics covered in each section. A great resource for anyone interested in testing, developing or just getting started in oxidation firing and finishes.

There is only ideas on how to make pendants and things of that nature. PMC looks like it would be better for rings and chains than what they used it for. I got more detailed information from free sites online. Had I been able to see the table of contents online I would have passed it by.

Having only used PMC once before I purchased this book, I found Precious Metal Clay: Creative Projects for the Beginner to be a good starting point. Most of the projects are simple, and, therefore, helped me build confidence in my creative skills. The book suggested many ideas from everyday life that could be translated into jewelry design--everything from nature to hardware can serve as inspiration when working with PMC. While this book may not be ideal for jewelry and clay artisans, it is certainly practical for casual artists/hobbyists who are just beginning to experiment with this medium.

This book was helpful in getting me started with PMC. The projects were quite creative and motivating.

Unfortunately, at the time this book was written there was only PMC standard and plus. Many new products have since been released and so aren't covered.

I would purchase this book for easy, fun, creative projects, but would purchase an additional book for info on the newest materials.

these booke es badd the wordes aer toooo beg.hew em i supossede to undrestend werds leke prepilxe und thuw>? i hater theese booke

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"The Word Within the Word" is being used at my children's school (5th grade), and I have come to know this textbook well from quizzing my kids on their "stem lists". I am glad that my children get the chance to learn about the Latin and Greek stems which are the basis of so many English words. Children lose their fear of "big words", because these words start making sense to them.

However, I feel compelled to point out that this textbook contains a lot of errors and inaccuracies, both in the example words which illustrate a particular stem, and in the designation of languages (Greek or Latin) that these stems originate from. I am including a list of errors that I have found just in lists #1 through #9 at the end of this review - there are about 2 errors per page.

Some of these errors may be oversights, others are what I would call "imaginative": Deriving "ferry" from the Latin "fer" (carry) or "dinosaur" from the Greek "dyna" (power) makes an interesting story, but is nonetheless incorrect.

Correct information on the origin of words is easy to obtain from a good etymological dictionary which can be found at any larger library. I think we owe it to our kids to give them textbooks that are free of errors.

List of Errors on Lists #1 through #9 in "The Word Within the Word"
(capitalized words are example words used in these lists)

List #1, stem "mis" - bad (Germanic)
The example words MISERY and MISER are derived from Latin and are not related to the Germanic prefix mis-.

List #2, stem "bell" - war (Latin)
BELLOW is of Germanic derivation, and has nothing to do with the Latin bellum (war).

List #2, stem "port" - carry (Greek)
List #2, stem "centri" - center (Greek)
no, these 2 stems are Latin.

List #3, stem "spec" - look (Latin)
A SPECK of dirt on my shirt is something I look at (with displeasure). But "speck" is a Germanic word, and not related to Latin spec (look).

List #3, stem "fer" - carry (Latin)
FERRY is related to the word "fare" of Germanic origin, and not related to Latin fer (carry).

List #4, stem "matri" - mother (Latin)
METROPOLIS is of Greek derivation (from Greek meter = mother, the "mother city"), not from Latin mater.

List #5, stem "dyna" - power (Greek)
While many DINOSAURs were certainly powerful creatures, the word does not derive from Greek dyna (power), but from Greek deinos (horrible).

List #5, stem "son" - sound (Latin)
A SONG is a pleasant sound (Latin son), but the word origin of song is Germanic, not Latin.

List #6, stem "tang" - touch (Latin)
It is a very tempting fallacy to derive TANGO (the dance) from Latin tango "I touch". But the name of the dance is of African origin.

List #7, stem "il-" - not (Latin)
The "ill" in illegal is Latin and means "not". But the "ill" in ILL-MANNERED is Germanic, and means "bad".

List #8, stem "tact" - touch (Latin)
TACTICS is derived from Greek, and not related to the Latin stem tact (touch).

List #9, stem "lat" - side (Latin)
TRANSLATE is derived from a Latin root "latus", which is the past participle of ferre (carry). The stem "lat" as in side comes from another Latin word "latus", which means side. While spelled the same, the two Latin words are not related.

This book helps me learn my stems. Whenever I see a word I don't know, I break it down, use the stems I learned, and get a good guess at what the word means. This is my second year using the book. I have impressed teachers at my ability to define new words. I am in the 7th grade. This is the time when words get harder. I no longer have to look them up. I just break them up and go!