This book is excellent and I would reccommend it to anyone who enjoys a colorful, descriptive and creative novel. I enjoyed the entire book but one character in particular was Assante, she was a true goddess. Mikeal really did an marvelous job with this book! I cant wait to read his next one!

Oh my.........what can i say? Page after page, I feel every emotion, taste every word and allow myself into character. Being that Valentines Day is around the corner, this would be an ideal gift for your loved ones. Sit back, relax and stimulate one another with his words......TRUELY AMAZING.....Keep em comin'!

Oh my.........what can i say? Page after page, I feel every emotion, taste every word and allow myself into character. Being that Valentines Day is around the corner, this would be an ideal gift for your loved ones. Sit back, relax and stimulate one another with his words......TRUELY AMAZING.....Keep em comin'!

Abby and the Notorious Neighbour is quite simply the best Baby-Sitters Club Mystery book I have ever read, and that is saying a lot, because I have read almost all of the BSC books, including the mysteries and the super specials and also the super mysteries, which are really exciting. In this book, Abby's sick and has to stay home for a long time and at first she;s bored because she has nothing to do, but then she accidentally comes across a show on TV called "Mystery Trackers" where they show the most wanted criminals on the loose and in one of the episodes, the show features a criminal who Abby is positive is her next door neightbour, Mr. Finch. So then she decideds to investigate and has a lot of fun doing it, so she's no longer bored. And there is a very interesting and suitable ending. I would recommend this book to any BSC fan or just anyone who loves a good mystery!

This book was great. No, more than great. Totally awesome! This was such a creepy mystery, and Abby and Kristy solve it in the coolest way. This was soooo realistic. The first time I read it I could hardly put it down.

The baby sitters club girls rae my favourite book carecters. they are sooo awsom. The mystery Abby and the notorios neibourgh was one of the best books Ann M. Martin ever wrote.

You don't have to have a chronic illness to get a lot out of Spero's "The Art of Getting Well." Maybe that's because living in our fast paced and relatively crazed culture qualifies all of us as chronically ill. Whatever the case, the accessible style and reassuring tone of this book give you the confidence and motivation to make real changes in your life. I'm especially pleased that Spero does not fall into the "blame the victim" camp. Getting sick is not our fault, although we can have a say in how or whether we get well, up to a point. Sometimes our luck runs out, but our spirit can still remain strong, furthered along by the compassion of bonafide healers and primo storytellers like Spero. Get two: one for yourself and one for a friend.

I'm one of the people whose stories appear in The Art of Getting Well. This book has particular power for me, since it captures my story as I have been finding my way after breast cancer surgery, with chemotherapy - that six month bodily assault - followed by radiation. And out of that whole devastating time there erupted the long suppressed and virtually forgotten drive to become an actress. A theater workshop opened me to feelings and experiences, and that led to acting in a community play. With the wealth of material in this book, you can find that life opens up, from what we feel is a disastrous time. We are much more than victims. We are actors.

This book is both eloquent and down to earth, chock full of interesting anecdotes and inspiration. You can feel the writer's humanity and courage in each page and feel the warmth of his hope. His vitality and tenacity in tackling problems and elucidating others' strengths and vulnerablities is fascinating! He is a gifted writer and has a sensitivity and compassion that come through as he relays his personal experiences and those of people he has helped through his career as a nurse and a personal coach. A must read!

This was a really good super special. A good job you're doing,Ms. Martin, and keep up the good work!

The Baby-Sitters Club aregoing on a school field trip. When they arrive on the bus, a terrible thing happens. The bus crashes but luckily no one was hurt.

Meanwhile, the Baby-Sitters are having a blast! What kind of vacation did they exactly have? Read this book and find out!

This book that I read was very fun. It taught me a lot of things to do over the winter. When I read this book I was scared that Stacey was going to get very ill, because how she has diabetes. I love Ann Martin's books because they are very enjoyable to read. I love the Baby Sitters because they have a nice career, personality, and a lot of love and care for the children they baby-sit.

This book that I read was very fun. It taught me a lot of things to do over the winter. When I read this book I was scared that Stacey was going to get very ill, because how she has diabetes. I love Ann Martin's books because they are very enjoyable to read. I love the Baby Sitters because they have a nice career, personality, and a lot of love and care for the children they baby-sit.

This book was really good! Throughout the series Claudia really never had much of a "love life". This book gave her some. Also in this book, we get to know Claudia's seventh grade friends better. I think it's great that Claudia's adjusted to seventh grade, and still going strong with the other members. Keep it up Ann!

This was a very good book.Claudia made some new friends in 7th grade in BSC #101 Claudia Kishi Middle School Drop Out.Then her teacher Mrs.Amer says she's not a STAR student she says Claudia you're going have to go back to 7th grade says Mrs Amer.She said you'll start on Monday.

THIS WAS A GOOD BOOK. IT WAS MY SECOND BABYSITTERS BOOK. I WANT TO BE A BABYSITTER JUST LIKE CLAUDIA AND STACEY AND MARY ANN BECAUSE THEY ARE MY FAVORITE BABYSITTERS IN THE BOOK!!!! I AM 8 YEARS OLD AND IN 2ND GRADE

Review Summary: This book deserves more than five stars.

Take the most talented dancers from the San Francisco ballet, give them special gossamer costumes for underwater, and see how their poses and moves soar in the relatively weightless space beneath the surface. The resulting color photographs capture exquisite forms, bubbles, reflections, and stressless arabesques. The photographs are done with a Nikonos RS camera and a Hasselblad underwater camera, lit by Balcar strobes.

Viewer Caution: These images contain many nude photographs of men and women that would earn this material an R rating if it were found in a motion picture. All of the images evoke freeflowing, tasteful versions of classical poses for dancers and nudes.

Review: Water Dance is one of the most original photography books I have ever seen. Most underwater images are of fairly still poses, while these are often dynamic in their movement. Mr. Schatz has also found many special effects that mimic mirror images, reflections on the surface of water, and bubbles caught in solid transparent objects. Flowing hair and costumes also serve to capture the undulations and movement in the water in ways that will remind you of the most delicate kites flying in the most gentle, steady breezes.

The dancers themselves are in marvelous shape and seem to have adapted well to making leaps and pas de deux that would be impossible above the water. Those images are the most ethereal. The images are greatly enhanced by the special costumes designed to work well in the undulating world of underwater.

Ms. Katita Waldo is clearly the dancer who has taken most naturally to this new medium, and you will be intrigued by her freedom of expression in these images. But many other dancers were able to achieve remarkable poses that were well photographed and reproduced in this wonderful book.

Here are some of my favorites:

Underwater Study #49 (Shannon Lilly); U.S. #229C (floating costume); U.S. #189 (Heather Nahser); U.S. #117 (Tiffany Heft and Nikolai Kabaniaev); U.S. #179 (Jessica Schatz and Heather Vaughn); U.S. #152 (Katita Waldo); U.S. #107 (Anastasia); U.S. #215 (Julian Montaner and Nicole Panone); U.S. #183 (Wendy Van Dyck); U.S. #130 (Katita Waldo); and U.S. #41 (Katita Waldo).

I hope that someone will take this concept the next step and choreograph a whole underwater video featuring such beautiful dance sequences.

After you finish marveling over these astonishing scenes, I suggest that you think about how your own work could be transformed by being moved into a medium in which it could operate with fewer constraints. What would glass blowing look like in outer space? How would writing change if it were dictated while roller blading?

Extend the joy of life in as many ways as possible!

Having gotten acquainted with several of Howard Schatz' books, and owning more than one, I vouch for the opinions of other reviewers that this collection of photographs of dancers, fabrics, bodily configurations and arresting visual phenomena underwater is just beautiful, and astounding! An earlier reviewer said, "The photos in this book are a bit rawer than those in 'Pool Light' - and by that I don't mean tawdry." Unfortunate use of the word; since true appreciators of dance and the human form don't consider the uncovered body as "raw", but exquisitely natural. Mr. Schatz is very discrete in his exposure of both male and female bodies in this fine collection. To my taste, this book is superior to the later one, "Pool Light" (which I also own and thumb through).

One of the arresting visual phenomena is the reflections of forms from the "mirror" meeting of water and air (mediums of different density) at the pool"s surface.

To me (dance buff) this is much more than a "coffe table" book.

I first saw this book over a year ago, and I have been captivated by it ever since. The high contrast cover says it all: Red and yellow fabric, and a redheaded dancer with cream coloured skin. I like drawing the human form, and especially dancers, but the positions that are achieved by the dancers in this work are floating and effortless. The use of primary coloured fabrics alongside the fair skin of the bodies is superb. The physicality of the movements and the bodies is breathtaking. This book belongs on every artist's and dancer's coffee table for all to see.

I love travel writing, of which this book is a great example. However, I only stumbled upon it because I happened to meet a friend of the author, and I think its a great shame that more people haven't been introduced to this writer. This book covers his journey from The Delmarva peninsula all the way to the Pacific NW. Along the way he took the time to meet with locals, and learn about their everyday lives and the changes that have been ongoing in many of the little nooks and crannies of this country. He had researched his trip well, and took the time to meet with local politicians and newspaper editors, all of whom added their own local flavor. I have been eagerly awaiting Bill Brysons next book and now I will add Martin Fletcher to the same waiting list.

Fletcher reveals the fallacy of American cultural homogenisation, by highlighting the infinite and remarkable complexity of the United States. A book you won't regret reading, but will lament finishing.

This is a really good read. Martin Fletcher is an Englishman who travelled the back roads of the USA. This book is about his findings. For the most part, Fletcher had specific destinations in mind, but the things and people that he introduces us to are remarkable. Some of the things that he writes about that amazed me are: a group of Americans whose speech patterns still smack of Elizabethan English, an island that is home to a herd of wild horses that are the descendants of a Spanish shipwreck from hundreds of years ago, the Mysterious Melungeons, and just about every other sub-culture group in the US. This is a very informative and interesting read. I couldnt put it down.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book, a delightful tour of a variety of topics in marine biology. The author, Martin Wells, wrote with enthusiasm, humor, and authority on a wide range of subjects. Even better, not only do individual chapter essays focus on a particular animal or group of animals, as Wells often uses them to illustrate larger points in marine biology or biology in general (or often issues in conservation).

I can't list all the topics that Wells dives into in this short review, but I would like to mention a few of the ones I found the most interesting. In the chapter titled "Hot Fish," he shows that simply considering mammals and birds as warm-blooded and other animals as cold-blooded is a gross oversimplification. Not only do not all mammals and birds maintain a constant high body temperature, but there are essentially warm-blooded fish! Several speices of tuna and sharks, the two groups having developed there "warm-bloodedness" quite independently, are both able to maintain muscular temperatures well above that of the seas in which they swim. Wells discusses not only how this is possible, but what effec this has on the life of the fish and the ecology of the ocean.

In "Diverse Divers," he discusses the physiological adaptations needed to dive, as well as some of the afflictions suffered from go deep beneath the surface. Discussing not only the problems faced by humans when diving (including a somewhat uncomfortable but informative discussion of the bends), Wells analyses how other animals deal with the challenges of diving, particularly seals and whales.

"Buoyancy" is another fascinating chapter, where Wells discusses how animals are able to float. Seemingly a simple subject at first, it is a problem for marine life, tackled by a variety of solutions. Wells analyses everything from the pressurized swim bladders of fish to the huge oily livers of basking sharks to marine mammal blubber to alterations in the ionic content of body fluids (such as in some types of squid) to the cuttlebones in cuttlefish to how the _Nautlius_ does it...I never knew there we so many ways to achieve buoyancy!

"Dolphins" is devoted to many people's favorite marine mammals, and was quite informative. One issue the authors explores is the well known large brains of cetaceans, particularly dolphins. Does that mean that they are most intelligent creatures in the sea, or does it mean maybe something else? Wells offers a theory as to why dolphins have such large brains, and it has to do with their echolocation. Fascinating.

Other chapters focus on the _Nautilus_, octopi, those marine organisms that attach to boats (such as barnacles), bioluminescence, the lugworm, and hermaphroditism in marine life, among other topics. A wonderful book, I highly recommend as it has something for everybody who likes the sea and marine life, from the most specatacular dolphins and whales to the lowest marine worms to the hated barnacle to dangerous sharks.

I am widely-read in the 'general science with zoological bent' book world. I know much more about all sorts of beasties than any non-zoologist or non-vet really should. And now I know even more than that, thanks to Martin Wells and his excellent book.
Wells writes with tangible passion and a great sense of humour and the bizarre. This is a lovely, engrossing read which I finished in just one day, despite trying to "leave some for later". And although the light and accessible writing style allows for even the complete beastie novice to become immersed (no aquatic animal pun intended), the amount of new and interesting information contained here is very impressive. I repeatedly interrupted my partner's activities to read him yet another descriptive/amusing/insightful/completely unexpected fact about this or that sea beastie.
A fabulous book which I would recommend to (I came close to writing "foist upon" there, because I've been telling all and sundry about this book) anybody who had even the slightest interest in biology.

Naturalists who pick up the pen have to work hard to make their objects of study-which obviously they find of great interest-compelling for the rest of us. This problem is made more difficult by the secret language that scientists speak, which is not as indecipherable as computer programmer geekspeak, but close. The naturalists that succeed at this provide a real service to the rest of us, their books refuges in which to indulge in a brief respite. In their hands we are immersed in a wonder-filled worlds that exists entirely (and amazingly) without special effects. Along the way, we even learn something. Martin Wells, a marine zoologist, succeeds at this task in Civilization and the Limpet, a book that not only marine zoologists would enjoy during a vacation at the seashore.
Wells begins this collection of quirky essays by objecting to the anthropomorphic bias of the media. All the articles about people! The animals seem neither available for, nor worthy of, comment. Wells hopes his little book will convince people that perhaps they (animals) do have something to say to us (people), though they more often than not seem aloof and wary of us (and rightly so.)
Wells studies some of the least respected creatures in the sea. The collection's first essay defends the "world's most unloved animal," the sea urchin. This spiky tide pool creature is known mostly for sticking in swimmers' feet. Only the Chileans and Japanese (and Wells) eat them with any relish. Wells informs us that sea urchins, and their relatives the starfish, exist without a brain, co-ordinating their activities, including the movement of hundreds of tiny tube feet to get around, with a neurological form of democracy. And while Wells doesn't convince me that sea urchins make scrumptious snacks (I've tasted them), he does make them more knowable, thus putting a little of the wonder back.
Wells book is a perfect resource for the recovering wonderer.. In one of the best essays in the collection, "Things that go flash in the night", Wells discusses bioluminescence, the certainly wonderful process whereby animals and plants make themselves glow. He writes: "Sailing at night in seas that luminesce is something splendid that is not given to all men. On a quiet night, with just enough wind to ghost along without the engine, it can be euphoric. Euphoria is worth seeking; we don't often achieve it in this rush-around world. You need a pause, or you miss it."
Don't miss Wells' book.

I searched through several publications on Candida, both online and printed materials, and nothing compares to the extraordinary, invaluable information packed into this book. I wanted something that contained the following: Explained what Candida is; Possible causes; Symptoms of Candida and closely related health problems; How to treat it naturally as well as through traditional medicine; Candida diet recipes.

A Candida diet was always difficult to find since many sources contradicted one another and/or contained food sensitivities while offering no alternatives. This book explains these contradictions, offers plenty of food alternatives, and guides you through the phases of your healing process. Best of all, the RECIPES TASTE SPECTACULAR! I was amazed at how delicious everything has been thus far, not to mention easy to prepare. Each dish has loads of flavor, making this diet seem not like a diet at all.

This book truly is a gift for someone who needs a complete, informative reference with a wealth of wonderful recipes to get them on track to recovering from Candida. Highly recommended!

I, too, am someone whose life was changed for the better with this book. It is thorough, comprehensive, well-organized, with both the Western approach and nutritional/herbal/homeopathic remedies. The recipes are fabulous. As many people have mentioned (and as the authors point out with infectious zeal in their book), even those without dietary restrictions will enjoy! Absolutely recommended. This book is one of the best investments in your good health you can make.

Having suffered from candida symptoms for years and knowing intellectually that I should change my diet(emotionally finding it hard), I started trying to educate myself by buying books. All the other books made me feel a little hopeless and isolated. Not eating meat cut down my choices of allowed foods. I'd get desperate and reach for the potato chips and candy bars again. This book is sooo wonderful. I'm excited about trying all the recipes--vegetarian recipes!-and taking the restaurant suggestions to heart so I can go out and eat with my friends. Also ,Miss Martin and Dr. Rona have the most comprehensive overview of natural anti-candida fighting actions I've seen. I don't feel hopeless anymore. Thanks for this wonderful book!

This is a very good book. In addition, I strongly recommend "Strategic Organizational Change" by Beitler.

Excellent descriptions of the challenges associated with a major change effort in organizations. Practical advice with checklists to guide managers. Best and most practical book I've read. This book offers not only what you need to do to manage a major change effort, but also provides tactics on how to resurrect a change effort that is stalled - great advice.

Mourier and Smith provide real-life advice, obviously learned from years of practical application of these tactics. This book is "real-world" - not just philosophy and theory.

What I like about this book, is the fact that it is practical. Many books in the area provide the reader with the WHAT needs to be managed during change efforts. This book provides the HOW TO.

I also liked the emphasis on both tactics for new change projects AND tactics for reviving efforts that are stalling. The many checklists are helpful and the focus on what Change Sponsors must do, what Project Team Members must do, and what Change Agents must do is quite appropriate.

I would have liked a little more focus on how to manage people in the organization who resist change.

I will be advising my clients to get copies of this book.