This book is a fantastic read for both child and adult. We bought it when my daughter was about 1 1/2 years old and she's just fascinated by the text and pictures. We use silly voices to tell the story and have fun looking at the pictures...if you look really hard you'll see lots of tiny animals peeking down from the trees! I missed those...the one year old is more observant! A gem!

My grandson and I saw this book at a bookstore, and he had to have it. He has a bear of his own that gets misplaced at times. The story was entertaining and the colors were delightful. A book that we have read over and over. In fact he has had two. I just ordered his third, one at home, one here and one at his ggrandmother's.

This is my 2 1/2 year old granddaughter's absolute favorite and has been for the last six months. She loves the rhyming text and the beautiful illustrations and recites the story as you read it - she knows all the words. The story has really captured her imagination. It's always the last story she reads at bedtime before going to sleep with her own special Pooh bear.

Thoroughly researched and detailed, Mark Lewisohn's "Complete Beatles Chronicle" will satisfy even the most knowledgeable Beatle fan. This monster reference book provides the who, what, when, where and why of nearly every day in the life of the Beatles. Every concert, recording session, film and TV appearance is painstakingly noted and described. In many cases, Lewisohn provides exact times and lengths of recording sessions. This is great for those of us who just have to know exactly when and where our favorite Beatle songs were recorded! Only upon examining the Beatles' grueling schedule can one truly appreciate how diligently John, Paul, George and Ringo worked to attain their status as the world's premier rock band. Simply put, the Beatles' earned everything they got and Lewisohn, arguably the world's foremost Beatle authority, drives that point home in this remarkable document. In addition to the daily entries, the author also includes rare photos, notes, concert bills and recording session track sheets. The overall scope and magnitude of "Chronicle" is nothing short of staggering. No other book provides such an accurate and detailed account of the Beatles' daily routines. Hard-core fans have long respected the dedication of Mark Lewisohn and, once again, have been rewarded with a Beatle document unlike any other. Highly recommended.

Why is this the "First Beatles Book One Should Read?" Simply put, Marc Lewisohn (an EMI records reseracher) volume is a true labor of love, but not a "tell-all" or a "I was John Lennon's mailman" rip off.

This is a true, scholarly effort. It is a day-by-day account of The Beatle's professional, not personal, affairs. More than just what they did where on an particular day, it shows how hectic their early days were, how incredibly frantic was the Beatlemania in Britian and the USA and their best work (from Revolver on) evolved in the studio.

The book is intelligently writtena nd produced. Each year is a separate chapter, starting first with an introduction which puts that year in perspective to the Beatle's career. What follows is a day by day retelling of every concert, recording sesson, Radio/TV appearance, etc. It's a great companion to Anthology (CDS and video) as you get an idea as to how certain events played how, how certain songs were recorded and again, how crazy the early 60's were for the Beatles.

If anyone wants to know the who, what, where and why (especially why the Beatles broke up as professional musicians) this book, which first appaeared in 1992 and is finally reprinted, is the one book to have. I've read it once and plan to go back again and again.

this is the 3rd book on the beatles by mark lewisohn that i have gotten, & it is sort of a combination of the 1st 2, "the beatles live", & "the beatles recording sessions"(the 2nd book paul mccartney wrote the intro to because he admired the 1st book so much).i swear, i have been reading books on the beatles since they have been being written from 1964 on, & these books by mark lewisohn are really all you need - maybe include hunter davies "the beatles",1968. "the beatles live" was my favorite, it describes so well the early days of the group in liverpool & hamburg.
if you know a lot about the beatles but you havnt read any of lewisohns books yet, you will find SO much info you didnt know. he researched these books for years, was given access to everything at abbey road, every show they ever did from 1957 on that is possible to know anything about is chronicled. Lennon would have LOVED the "live" book, it brings to life so well those early days in hamburg that he loved to remember.I dont know what else to say, i cant recommend them enough. these books are the next best thing to having a new beatle album, which we know can never happen.

Reading this book had a more profound effect on my life than hearing any sermon in a church. Trine succinctly and eloquently explains how and why we all must be "in tune with the Infinite." As the title page of his original 1897 book states, "Within yourself lies the cause of whatever enters into your life. To come into the full realization of your own awakened interior powers, is to be able to condition your life in exact accord with what you would have it." If he were alive today, I'm certain this would be an Oprah Winfrey "Book of the Month" club selection.

It has been long time since my exsposure to this gem. I like most of you loan our foremost treasures to our confidantes and "friends?" The particular book I had was part of a set of three at one time belonging to alocal man of repute his dated inside cover indicating a turn of the century period , as I recall when he so procurred .I surely hope the friend I loaned such {I'm sure!} treats this treasure as I do The world must never lose such heartfelt truth's

"In Tune With The Infinite: Fullness of Peace, Power and Plenty" is a book about the essence of the existence of mankind. And Mr. Ralph Waldo Trine couldn't be any more precise in explaining this when he said that, "The great central fact in human life, in your life and mine, is the coming into a conscious, vital realization of our oneness with this Infinite Life, and the opening of ourselves fully to this divine inflow". Based on some of Mr. Waldo's precepts, man is created to the image of the Infinite and by this grace begets the power to control his own dominion. We are ONE with It and therefore all connected to one another. For this reason, the cause and effects of our actions toward others will always reflect back. This book is soothing not only for the spirit and the soul but also for the body. Because of its profound ideas it may seem hard to read at first but as you begin to understand its words, it flows gently into one's mind. This book has helped me change my life. In tune with the Infinite. I highly recommend it to all readers.

I thought it easily captured the emotions of Melanie Braderman average girl and Justin Hart teen heart throb.It was entertaining and fast moving. If you love teen romance & I do you"ll love this book

I loved the book because I love reading about teenage love and romance and seeing what happens in the end, whether they stay together or they split apart. In this book Melanie Braderman falls in love on Fire Island with "Hart- throb," Justin Hart, who is a teen actor. They meet because Mel's brother throws a frisbee and accidentally hits Justin with it, when the wind catches it. If you love reading about teenaged love you'll love this exciting book

This book was awesome. I never thought that Justin was a tv star. I was just as suprised as Melanie when I read the part about him being a star. It has all the things I'm looking for in a book. It has romance, twists, and it keeps you wanting to know more about their new found romance. I just wished it would have gave you a better picture of how their relationship worked out in the future. It needs a sequal.

A great book. This engrossing fictional memoir spans the time from the idyll of rural France in the late nineteenth century to the brilliant salons of fin-de-siecle Paris to the horrors of two world wars, probably the greatest period of change in the history of mankind. The witness to this epoch and to his own internal and external development is the narrator, Lt.-Col. de Maumort. He has the best opportunities and teachers his era can offer, and he strives to evolve and to follow his conscience in a world in which conscience matters little. (The exploration of the step-by-step justification of fascism provided to Maumort by occupying Nazi officers, also men of education and cultivation, is a novel in itself, and unlike any other representation of the subject of how seemingly decent people rationalize evil). The story has a wonderful momentum. Unlike most memoirs, fictional and otherwise, which tend always to be self-serving, this one returns again and again to the truth, baring all of the failures, self-betrayals, and contradictions of a life. No wonder Martin du Gard didn't want this to appear in his lifetime. Though the book on the surface appears to be the recollections of a military man walled up in his library while German soldiers occupy his estate in northern France, in fact it's a universal testament about what it is to be human--the best of contemporary fiction, in which every moment comes alive. The translation is superb--far more accurate, literary, and sensitive than the sometimes muddled one of the new Modern Library edition of "The Charterhouse of Parma." This is a book to treasure and reread. The "Black Box" section at the end is an extraodinary bonus: the author, a man apparently very like Maumort, in dialogue with himself through a series of memorable apercus.

This book, brilliantly translated, is a treasure of treasures. Robert Musil's "The Man Without Qualities," from an ironic, intellectual and dispassionate viewpoint, called into question a broad range of our unconscious conventional assumptions about society and reality. "Remembrance of Things Past" brought personal experience under the lens of Marcel Proust's delicate and evocative aesthetic microscope--again, from the point of view of a detached observer. Roger Martin du Gard, using Lieutenant-Colonel de Maumort as his vehicle, is the ultimate participant in life and his examinations and judgments of his actions are honest and unsparing. Reading "Lieutenant-Colonel de Maumort", narrated with elegance and sobriety, was for me a cataclysmic, relentless and successful assault on many of the complacent assumptions about my "sense of self". The fortitude required of the reader to remain open to Maumort's(du Gard's) courageous exploration of the totality of his own life is repaid many times over. This is not a novel in any conventional sense. It is an experience.

I was hooked early in this amazingly ambitious novel by a lovely metaphor where the narrator Maumort compares the way our early memories follow one another to the fish that came each morning out of the lake on lines that he and his sister had set the evening before. Yet memory is only part of the story, as Maumort, a career army officer, is also in thrall to matters abstract, in love with ideas, theories, analysis--all that intellectualising that we Americans love to have the French do for us. However all that cerebration also serves du Gard in developing his characterisation of the Lt Colonel himself, a man determined to understand himself and his society. That such an ambitious story reads so fluidly and fluently is a testimony to both du Gard's and his two translators' splendid prose. Midway in the novel is is a cinematically rendered and unsparing account of a tragic seduction that utterly establishes du Gard's gifts as a novelist, and which by itself might justify the entire novel, were there not so much more here: the marvellously canny portraits of character after character who Maumort encountered in his life, the unflinching account of human sexuality (especially early male sexual experience), the lavishly detailed picture of French society, and as already mentioned, no shortage of food for thought. All this capped by a poignant and powerful moment of dark paralysis towards the close, as the aged Colonel, having just reclaimed his beloved rural estate from its Nazi occupiers, takes one last look back at a relentlessly examined life.

All the books by and about George Anderson are excellent and MUST READS for anyone experiencing the loss of a loved one. To be read with an open mind, - but in my case,(a former MAJOR skeptic) I literally began calling some of the people in the book and others that had met with him and was assured by ALL of them that the readings in the books were accurately reproduced. One suggestion - read "WE DON'T DIE" first, then "WE ARE NOT FORGOTTEN." "OUR CHILDREN FOREVER" is also excellent, and "LESSONS FROM THE LIGHT" is worth reading as well. Read the books & do your own research about George- he's been put to the test on TV (Donahue;Unsolved Mysteries/48 Hours) and they are worth having on tape.The readings in the books are very impressive, loaded with details he could not possibly have about strangers- it's easy to be skeptical and believe only what you can sense yourself. But George (who was close to death himself as a child)proves there is something MORE. And IF he were a "Con"- he wouldn't still be doing this at such high demand after 19 yrs. Read. Take comfort. Research it yourself. Speak to those who have spoken to him. "We are not Forgotten" includes the story of David Elliott's father's reading (he was also interviewed later on TV).This was a skeptical man who began his journey to George thru the "We Don't Die" book. THEY SAY ONLY DEATH & TAXES ARE CERTAIN. WRONG. Some people may cheat on their taxes, but none of us can cheat death.And until it affects us, we forget how many people are in pain everyday from grief.It doesn't end at the funeral, AND it does NOT end 2 weeks (or months) later either.Grief can last months, years, or a lifetime when you lose a loved one. If you have lost a loved one and are feeling the pain of the loss - read the books about George Anderson.They are worth reading AND re-reading!!! Open your mind and your heart. When you lose someone you love sometimes faith is not enough; proof is needed that your loved one is alright and George Anderson's books and readings help provide that. Excellent.

I first read "We Don't Die" several years ago after a close friend had passed away and a co-worker recommended I read George Anderson's story. I thought I knew how to grieve, as I had lost several family members and friends over the previous few years. I was overwhelmed. As soon as I finished the first book, I read "We Are Not Forgotten". His communications are truly healing, even for those who have not had the fortune of meeting with him. Reading his books reassure us that dying is not the end and that loved ones are not forever gone. And for those people who don't particularly enjoy reading, let them know that his books are very simple and extremely fast reading. This should not be missed.

George Anderson's books were a life saver for me and my family. After the unexpected death of my brother last year, these books helped us through the grieving process. The information offered so much hope and ultimately strengthened our spirituality. Joel Martin did such a wonderful job of proving George's credibility in George's first book, "We Don't Die", that we were compelled to read all his others. I highly reccommend these TREASURES to anyone who lost a loved one or who just needs to know more about life after life. I am eternally grateful to people like George Anderson. Not only has his gift helped so many people, but George's pure goodness shows through in his work. Because of George, I now know that my wonderful brother will live on forever, watching over us.

This book gave me a lot to think about when I was young, and of all the books with math and logic puzzles I enjoyed, this was one of the best. Gardner has a way of turning problems into challenges, making the solving of them fun, and he also provides interesting explanations of problems with simplicity and clarity. For children, this book is an opportunity to explore math as something other than repetitive calculations or irrelevant word problems from bad textbooks. Adults too can use this book to hone their problem solving skills.

The difficulty of aha! insights is the lack of technique in coming to such an insight. It's a spontaneous reaction, something sudden and unexpected when you discover a simple solution. These problems do not teach you how to have these insights, but allows for practice in order that they may become more frequent. But the point is: it's recreational math... Enjoy it for the sake of enjoyment.

I consider Martin Gardner to be the best there ever was in writing about mathematics. His essays are always entertaining and contain enough content to suggest other applications of the main point of his thesis. This book contains a series of short puzzles, most of which have quick solutions based on an "alternate" form of reasoning. That form is described as an "Aha" moment, where looking at the problem a different way leads to a simple solution to what appears to be a hard problem.
I first read this book when it was first published over twenty years ago and recently read it again. It has stood the test of time quite well and I consider it to be the best of the collections of material by Gardner. I have three children under the age of ten and they are occasionally subjected to a puzzle in this book. It is always interesting to see how well they do. Quite frankly, there are occasions when they get the aha! answer faster than I did.
Recent research indicates that the risk of developing Alzheimer's disease can be reduced by constantly stressing your mental abilities. Martin Gardner has received many accolades in his life, We can now add that his books can help prevent serious mental diseases. Go ahead and clap, he has earned the applause.

Unlike most of the author's other books on mathematics, this one is generous with whitespace, requiring less concentration. The puzzles are illustrated by the often-humorous cartoons, which greatly enhances the understandibility and readability of the book.

The book itself is quite thin with an attractive cover, reinforcing the idea that math can be fun. A great way to stimulate someone's interest in the subject.

I think this is a book that has the taste that people like to read. They each have their own most clearest or should I say vivid memory. My favorite ones are Mary Annes, Mallorys, Kristys, Shannons, Claudias, and Logans. But I liked everyones.This is a MUST-READ book for everyone. I simply loved the book.

The Baby-Sitters' Remember is the best book! I liked when Mary Anne Krist, and Claudia played tricks on Mrs. Tate Mary Anne's baby-Sitter. I also liked when Kristy 1st baby sat. You should definetaly read this if you want to hear memories of Kristy, Claudia, Mary Anne, Stacey, Dawn, Mallory, Jessi, Shannon, and Logan. Read it quick!!!!!!!!!

my favourite vivid memories are stacey's and shannon's stacey's is about her diagnose with diabetes and shannon's is about a friend... the other's are really great too! i've read this book twice, and stacey's story more than 5 times!

I thought this was a great book! My mom and I were searching on Amazon.com for a kid's book on Italy because we were going to go to Italy, and this book popped up. It was really great because I could really relate to Melanie, for example, we live in the same place, we both HATE spagetti with cheese on it, etc. I read about all the cool places to go in Italy, and we ended up going to most of them!!! GREAT BOOK!

Meet 10 year old Melanie Martin, your average american kid and child travel critic . Melanie keeps a travel journal when her folks take her and her 6 year old brother Matt on a trip to Italy. Remember those family vacations you used to take as a kid? Well trust me, when you travel with Melanie, it'll all come rushing back at you.

Melanie's accounts of plane travel, Italian culture ("Almost everyone here speaks Italian-even kids"), and her goofy adventures with her family (at a museum she plays a game with Matt to "Point out the Naked People") will have you in stitches. Ms Weston is not only a funny writer, she's a mom and it serves her well in her accounts of family behaviour. This book reminds me of my own family trips when I was a kid (hey, when I was 11, my folks took me to Italy too! I can't say I appreciated it as much as Melanie did, but then maybe she should have joined us for the ride!)

Funny, breezy and filled with the easily believable dialogue of a ten year old (complete with doodles on the pages!) This is a great book for would-be travelers of all ages.

I LIKE THIS BOOK BECAUSE IT TEACHES YOU ABOUT SOME THINGS IN ITALY THAT YOU MAY NOT KNOW ABOUT. I ALSO LIKE THIS BOOK BECAUSE MELANIE REALY ACT'S HER AGE LIKE HOW MOST 10 YEAR OLDS ACT'S. WHEN MELANIE GO'S TO ITALY SHE LEARNS ABOUT PAINTINGS,SCULPYURES AND ALL OF THAT REALY COOL THINGS. I WOULD RECCOMEND THIS BOOK TO AGES 9-12. MELANIE HAS A YUONGER BROTHER NAMED MAT AND SHE GET VERY ANNOYED WITH HIM BUT THEN SOMETHING HAPPENBS AND SHE ALOT NICER TO HIM. MELANIE HAS A DAD AND A MOM. HER MOM IS A ART TEACHER AND HER IS A LOYAR. WHEN SHE GET'S BACK HOME THERE IS THIS BOY NAMED NORBERT WHO IS A DORK AND SHE GETS NICER TO HIM TO SHE RELIZES THAT HE IS REALY NICE TO HER.

A must read! Lee Martin takes a deeply honest look into who is, where he has come from and how that will shape his identity. Never have I come away from a piece of literature and felt so moved. Martin's memoir has a sort of constant rhythm that propels you to take the journey with him into another time. He avoids with great dignity the "poor me" syndrome, and takes the time to reflect with honesty and integrity the struggles of life. While 1960s life on a farm in the midwest might seem a nostalgic and peaceful setting, Martin brings to life the kind of violence and true grit of living and emotion that takes place in this typically idealized setting. A pleasure to read in that you come away feeling that you've learned as much as about your own life as you have the author's.

Written with extraordinary eloquence, elgance and honesty, Lee Martin's powerful memoir "From Our House" deserves a national reading audience. Revealing the horrible and enduring hurt regularly dished out by his angry and bereft father, the author journeys where few have the courage to go: to the depths of the human heart turned against itself, to the terrain where lives twisted by loss and regret recoil against each other, to the crooks and crannies of our soul where we try to forgive, to start anew, despite all evidence against hope. Whatever words of praise I write cannot begin to measure the profound respect I have for Lee Martin. This slender, compelling work will be recognized, I have no doubt, as a masterpiece, and Mr. Martin will be recognized as a skilled and compassionategeographer of how families can enter the darker regions of abuse.

Three characters dominate the narrative, which follows the life of the author from childhood through the ultimately redemptive acts of both father and son. Lee Martin interweaves his story with that of his mother, Beulah, and his father, Roy. The most poignant character is that of the mother, a woman who married very late in life and appeared to accept an existence of diminished possibiliites. Beulah emerges as an amazingly strong woman, whose faith and quiet optimism never flags in the midst of a household of anger and violence. Lee Martin describes her as "a woman of duty and endurance, selfless and without need, at least none she was willing to place before the obligation she felt toward her family." Earlier in her life, she battled against her father's alcoholism; her adult life would witness her constant attempts to broken a sense of peace between her enraged husband and alienated and terrified son. The author is acutely aware of her emotional exhaustion and the gnawing toll an abusive home exacted on her physical and spiritual life. Ultimately, if anyone triumphs in this memoir, it is she. Her quiet optimism, faith in the future and belief in the power of forgiveness transcend the violence, anger and mistrust which were the hallmarks of their home.

If Beulah symbolizes faith and redemption, Roy represents blasted hopes and unfettered violence. The author's evocative description of how his father lost his hands in a farming accident foreshadows the rage and sense of impotence that will become life's companions to his father. Roy regularly whips his son, and for those of us who have felt the anger of a father as expressed through whippings, Lee's understated pain permeates this novel. Yet, Roy is presented as a whole being. Lee knows his father is a "sensualist," whose passions for life were stripped from him by the accident. We can see Roy's jaws kneading in anger; we feel his hooks clamp into us when he grabbed his son by the throat; we know how he can use powerful words to sublimate the frustrations boiling underneath.

Yet, the son, Lee Martin, must be the focus of this memoir. We see him as a little boy, yearning for the caress and embrace of his father. Instead, "although he never really maimed me, he often left red marks on my skin, marks that faded more quickly than the heartache that filled me on those occasions." Lee senses that his family was skewed and recognized that difference in the other dysfunctional families he encountered in his childhood. He grows up with a sense of shame, both of his family and of his own apparent evil, for mustn't he by defintion deserve the abuse his father so unsparingly gives him. His family's move away from his rural origins brings only temporary relief to his family; Lee is an outcast, an outsider -- both in his new environment and in his own family. By his adolescence, Lee dallies with delinquency, involving himself in theft and arson. His eventual embracing of his mother's religious convictions provides the lever by which he may offset his own sense of existential anguish and family displacement.

Not only does the author carry the narrative with conviction and purpose, Lee Martin is an amazing writer. Each page is exquisitely crafted. His description of his childhood farm/home is Whitmanesque. As you read this novel, you will constantly comment at how hard this author has worked for you. Redolent with pain and anguish, "From Our House" instructs us in the manner of living.

Lee Martin's memoir "From Our House" is more than an unsettling portrayal of a unique American childhood or the clash of generational values that were the seeds of the Sixties. It aims beyond a painful depiction of how rebellion and cruelty, even betrayal, can be bound up and contained within the love of a family. In fact, at its most daring, it is a suggestion of the very nature of forgiveness: that even as an offense and heartbreak continues, the indictment is never made and final judgement, despite so much bitterness, never rendered. It suggests something about the human spirit very hard to believe and by the end of the book, impossible to deny.

Martin uses a strong grace to tell us of the accident that takes his father's hands on the farm. "I'm free to imagine that day anyway I'd like: a brilliant sun glinting off the picker, the dry leaves of the cornstalks scraping together in the wind; or perhaps it was overcast, the sky dark with the threat of rain, and perhaps the wind was cold on my father's face." It happens when Martin is a baby, this event that will shake his family so powerfully, releasing his father's terrible anger and shame, and his own struggle to understand, gain approval and finally forgive. Later in the book he imagines being present at the accident, older in this dream, and able to warn his father to turn off the tractor before manipulating the picker. He dreams of the power to prevent the accident that leaves the elder Martin with steel hooks to drive his car, hold a cup of coffee or touch his wife and son. Remarkably, at the conclusion, we're not sure Martin would want to change the past, or that we would have him do so.

"From Our House" hangs in the heart and mind's eye, this image of what we can be, drawn with the sharp lines of what we are. I read the book a second time because it is good news and true, true because it never cowers at our inhumanity.

Martin's father and he share a rare moment of understanding on the morning of his grandmother's funeral. Coaxing his reluctant boy into preparing for the morning, his father lays beside him on the bed. "Such a strange day," he says. "You'd hardly think it was meant for you." The same can be said of this book, a stunning and beautiful declaration of everything we are.