Two Seasons is a love story in poetry. I read it with awe and understanding. No occasion would be too great or too small to share or feel the gift of this amazing celebration which reflects the lives in time of two women related as mother and daughter. Each has her own experiences and differences of expression yet are intertwined by the umbilical cord of love passed down in two generations. I could feel the words of the mother in the words of the daughter. It was beautiful, moving and inspiring.

As a newcomer to the world of poetry, I found the book to be delightful and thought-provoking. I found myself relating many verses to my own journey in time. It was beautiful, inspiring and breathtaking.

Paula

Once having read "Two Seasons" for the heart, I thought the second time around would be an excericise for my mind. However, it continues to touch my heart and spirit as I explore my own feelings about mother/daughter relationships, lost loves, and a myriad of other subjects. Not intended as a "self-help" book, Rose Moore Tomlin's compilation of her mother's poetry, along with her own, inspires understanding, acceptance, forgiveness and compassion. And for those of us who love springtime, it puts words to our appreciation and awe of the gift that is April. "Two Seasons" will make great Mother's Day gifts.

Though Forster structures his essays around such fundamental novelistic elements as plot, character, and language, this is a rather loosely constructed and free ranging discussion of the literary form that has come in the past two hundred years to dominate the Western world's literary preoccupations. It is not systematic, nor is it comprehensive. Its tone is more personal and impressionistic. Fortunately, Forster has a large number of tremendously perceptions about the novel and novelists, and because he couches these reflections in frequently brilliant sentences, this book makes for reading that is both insightful and delightful. It is also an intensely personal book, so that we gain a great deal of insight into Forster's tastes and quirks.

Nearly every chapter in this book has something to offer the reader, but I have found his discussion of the difference between flat and round characters to be especially useful in reading other novels. In Forster's view, a round character is one that can develop and change over the course of a novel's story. They adjust, grow, and react to events and people around them. They are fuller, and therefore more lifelike. A flat character, on the other hand, is essentially the same character at the end of the tale as at the beginning. They do not grow, do not alter with time, do no admit of development. Flat characters are not necessarily bad characters. As Forster points out, correctly, I think, nearly all of Charles Dickens's characters are flat characters. Not even major characters such as David Copperfield change during the course of their history.

I have found this distinction to be quite helpful in reading the work of various novelists. Some authors have almost nothing but round characters. Anthony Trollope is a premier example of this. All of his characters develop and change and are effected by events around them. Some authors have a mix of flat and round characters, like Jane Austen. As Forster points out, she is even capable of taking a flat character like Mrs. Bennet, expand her suddenly into a round character, and then collapse her back into a round one. And her round characters are very, very round indeed. Compare Elizabeth Bennet or Emma Woodhouse with any character in Dickens, and the difference is obvious. On the other hand, someone like Hemingway tends to have round male characters and flat female characters, or Iris Murdoch, who has round female characters but flat male characters.

The book is filled with marvelous, frequently funny sentences. "Books have to be read . . . it is the only way of discovering what they contain." "Neither of them has much taste: the world of beauty was largely closed to Dickens, and is entirely closed to Wells." "The intensely, stifling human quality of the novel is not to be avoided; the novel is sogged with humanity." "The human mind is not a dignified organ, and I do not see how we can exercise it sincerely except through eclecticism." And one could go on and on.

If one wants a systematic and exhaustive history and discussion of the novel, one ought to turn, perhaps, to another book. But if one finds a pithy, impressionistic reaction to the form by one of its better 20th century practitioners, one could not do better than this find book.

...the fundamental aspect of the novel is its story-telling aspect... -EM Forster, Aspects of the Novel

I liked this collected series of lectures on what makes for good novel writing much better than almost any of the novels that Forster actually wrote (A Passage to India being the lone exception). Forster treats seven different aspects--the story, people, plot, fantasy, prophecy, pattern, and rhythm--in a breezy conversational style. Along the way, he offers examples, both good and bad, from literary history. I found myself agreeing and dissenting about equally, but the whole thing was immensely interesting and entertaining.

Here are some of the observations that I agreed with and why:

A story "can only have one fault: that of making the audience not want to know what happens next."

One inevitably thinks of James Joyce's Ulysses, which by now has surely retired the title of "the book most likely to remain unfinished". No matter how revolutionary the technique, how insightful the observations or how compelling the characters, a book that you can put down and not care what happens next has failed in its most basic task. ----------------------

The constant sensitiveness of characters for each other--even in writers called robust, like Fielding--is remarkable, and has no parallel in life, except among those people who have plenty of leisure. Passion, intensity at moments--yes, but not this constant awareness, this endless readjusting, this ceaseless hunger. I believe that these are the reflections of the novelist's own state of mind while he composes, and that the predominance of love in novels is partly because of this.

Forster elsewhere sites DH Lawrence favorably, but he seems to me to be an author whose characters are so obsessed by passion as to be too novelistic, if not completely unrealistic. But, the example I would site here actually is not a case of love predominating to excess, but rather Crime and Punishment , where the characters' constant awareness of the philosophical and moral implications of their every thought and deed is such that it could only be the product of an author in intellectual overdrive. If real people truly lived their lives this way, nothing would ever get done. ----------------------

In the losing battle that the plot fights with the characters, it often takes a cowardly revenge. Nearly all novels are feeble at the end. This is because the plot requires to be wound up. Why is this necessary? Why is there not a convention which allows a novelist to stop as soon as he feels muddled or bored? Alas, he has to round things off, and usually the characters go dead while he is at work, and our final impression of them is through deadness.

Anyone who's ever read one of his books will instantly call to mind James Clavell. I recall the jarring sensation of finishing his great novel Tai-Pan when, many hundreds of pages into the book, unwilling to see it conclude, but obviously noticing that their were a dwindling number of pages; I could not imagine how he would conclude the main plot line so quickly, let alone tie up all of the remaining loose ends. And then, BOOM!, our hero is dead and the book is over. And why? I was ready to read on for as long as he wanted to keep writing. Or, at worst, he could have just stopped in mid story and said: "To be continued..." But Forster is right; the conventions of the novel almost require authors to

let the tiger out of the cage at the end, and, more often then not, it leaves a bitter taste in the reader's mouth, regardless of how much we'd enjoyed the book up until that point.

There is much food for thought of this kind in this witty, opinionated, fascinating survey of the novel. Add to that a really fine hammer job on Henry James and the fact that said hammering upset Virginia Woolf and we're talking big thumbs up here.

GRADE: A-

This very unusual book is highly recommended to all lovers of classical or even modern literature. It provides some fascinating insight into the creative process, as well as a deeper understanding of the artist E.M. Forster.Invaluable criticism and advice from perhaps the greatest English writer ever.

Morgan Wootten is probably THE most successful high school basketball coach, and his book is one that I believe coaches at all levels can benefit from. I have found that the principles, plays and strategies he has written to be very beneficial in my own development as a coach. Plays and diagrams are simple and complete, and his focus on developing his kids as both individuals and players is great reading. This book is one you will want to take your coaching and your team to "the next level."

This book does much more than just teach the game of basketball, it shows coaches how to prepare their kids to be successful in life. And does an excellent job at both. His experience and record speak for themselves, the man definitely knows the game. But I feel his expertise at the X's and O's is just icing on the cake. I first discovered Mr. Wootten's masterpiece about five years ago while preparing to coach a Y.M.C.A. travel team (my first gig). It was the main source I used to develop my program. I recieved rave reviews from both the parents and the Y.M.C.A. Over the past five years I have endorsed the book in social settings(when the subject arose) but hadn't seen the book since then. In the meantime I've had an increased yearning to coach basketball, which I've gone back to school to accomplish. Today I found out, it was Mr. Wootten's book that caused me to believe I was born to coach.I recently landed an Assistant Coaching job for the Varsity Women's basketball team at the Div.III school I'm attending. Preparing for the upcoming season I deciced "Coaching Basketball Successfully" was the first book I'd reread. Very quickly I realized where my passion to coach came from. The coaching philosophy paper I had to write the previous semester was eerily similar to many of the ideas in Coach Wootten's book. Since the copy I'm reading now is from the library, I intend to buy my own copy and one each for both the Men's and Women's Head Coach here at my school. Coach Wootten's wonderful book optimizes the true meaning of the word COACH..,and sparked a fire in my soul, to be the positive influence and guide that a coach is supposed to be. Exactly what our children deserve.

Morgan Wootten's book,Coaching Basketball Successfully, is a blue print for running a championship program and is a must have for any high school basketball coach. He reveals his secrets to organizing practices, player development, evaluating programs, and teaching methods.

Ted Morgan's "Wilderness at Dawn" is one of the best of a crop of North American colonial histories published since 1990. Rather than a comprehensive history, it is a series of incidents that add up to a very readable whole. Morgan begins with pre-Columbian history and goes on to relate the experiences of the Spanish, French, Dutch, and various flavors of English colonies. One of my favorite stories is how the godly Pilgrims found themselves neighbors to a riotous colony led by one Thomas Morton. Before Miles Standish put their rivals out of business, Morton's drunken crew traded guns and booze to the Indians in exchange for beaver pelts and sexual favors. Anyone who believes history is boring has not read Ted Morgan's and other recent works about the American colonies. The last section of this book addresses the problems of post-Revolutionary War colonization, including chapters about the appalling dangers of trans-Appalachian settlement and about how the Old Northwest was surveyed.

Ted Morgan, a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist from New York City, who has written biographies of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Sir Winston Churchill, and Somerset Maughan, organizes his "story of an empty continent filling with people" (p. 11) by the usual chronological structure (from ca. 1490 to the early 1800s). Yet his frontier approach is quite fragmented, and therefore very realistic. He includes the Spanish presence, the French, Jamestown, Pilgrim, Dutch, Puritan, Manorial, Chesapeake, Black, Salzburger, and Quaker frontiers. His careful distinction between pilgrim and puritan is to be applauded, and his viewing the Virginia tobacco planters (Manorial), the Charlestown rice culture (Black), and Austrian Lutherans in Georgia (Salzburger) as their own "frontier" gives an important geographical specificity to the peculiar characteristics of the various areas of settlement. Of note is Morgan's interweaving native interaction with the Europeans. This he does frequently, so a separate chapter about any Indian counter frontier is unnecessary. However, the idea of a moving "frontier" against an established Indian presence does belie the Eurocentric perspective of the author. WILDERNESS AT DAWN is chocked full of compelling stories of "known" and "unknown" players in the American drama. These stories cover a broad gamut of human experience. In essence, nothing is left untouched, and the verisimilitude simply oozes forth from the narrative. The story flows beautifully while the veracity of the events is not at all compromised. Ample anecdotes from diaries, monographs, and public records move the reader through gripping eyewitness accounts. While the lack of footnotes might frustrate the technical historian, such certainly enhances the readibility of the book, especially as story. Primary and secondary sources for each chapter are listed appropriately at the end of the book. Worthy of special mention are Morgan's excellent brief broad syntheses--sometimes historical, sometimes geographical, sometimes a mixture of both. One excellent example is the importance of Pope's rebellion in the present Southwest as illustrative of geograpical persistence, i.e., the Indians could not completely purge Spanish influence, as they were "Hispanicized beyond return" and had become "irretrievably hybrid" (p. 216). While some generalizations in the narrative do exist, Morgan is not prone to such as his rich details about people, places, and events paints a full, realistic portrait. On the deficit side, however, is his unfortunate rehashing of the Bering Strait origin myth (chapter one), without any reference to alternative explanations from Indian traditions. Otherwise, the book is really a mine of excellent information. These are stories to be passed on. They are worth the telling and worthy of hearing. Maps in the work are good, but sparse, as there are only eight. More would be better. The only illustrations are black and white, and they depict relevant art, relics, photos, letters, documents, quotes, etc. at the beginning of each chapter. Notes are provided at the end as well as a fine index. In summary, while the critical revisionist scholar might bewail Morgan for his portrayal of a different America, and charge him as guilty of a gullible swallowing of Turner's "frontierism", the reality of America as "no one's clone" and as "self-invented, sui generis, underivative and wholly original" (p. 492), in the mind of this reviewer, remains valid and intact. "America was a smoking test tube, a braying infant, a blank page; it was change made palpable, change glorified, change as a stated goal, fluid, undetermined, unfixed, defying the logic of the centuries, observing its distant horizon lines, a ship that had strayed from the fleet and was off on its own uncharter course" (p. 493).

Breathtaking approach to a well known subject. History from the people's viewpoint. No dull dates, battles, generals, presidents; but living, breathing stories by and of the most unique and most common. Must also read Shovel of Stars, the sequel (also 10)

We ordered 5 extra to send to friends & family who like to cook. The book was easy to read, but the website support is just the best! I like to cook and watch cooking shows on cable, but I don't understand alot of the terms. The best part of the book for me was the sections on how to set-up a kitchen (the items that are needed) and explaining what the cooking terms really meant!!! The recipes are easy to understand and follow. Watch out, I'm on my way to better meals!

With At Home In The Kitchen, home chef and cooking instructor Jorj Morgan shows even the most novice cook how to successfully plan and prepare complex, exotic dishes, and to think of cooking as a form of personal growth and giving. Included are timely instructions on kitchen organization, 230 fun and delicious recipes set out in an easy-to-read, step-by-step format (no more than ten steps per recipe); as well as a wealth of tips, tricks & techniques. From Spinach, Apple and Pecan Salad with Citrus Vinaigrette; Rum Soaked Sweet Potatoes; and Pan Chicken with White Wine "Gravy"; to Black Bean and Toasted Corn Salsa; Pumpkin Brownies with Cream Cheese Frosting; and Sauteed Green Beans with Caramelized Pearl Onions, At Home In The Kitchen is an elegant, practical, and much appreciated addition to any culinary reference shelf!

This cookbook has a wealth of tips, hints and most of all well tested recipes. The recipe choices have great variety and because of all the tips I think I'm more inclined to try something new. Wonderful all around cookbook!!

I do not know where to begin praising this book. One indication is a list of the books I was reading and enjoying that I set aside once I picked up The Dragon's Son: The Lord of the Rings; The Ear, The Eye, and the Arm; Charlotte's Web; The Wind Singer; The Bridge to Terabithia. All enjoyable or important, but I could not seem to focus on them until I had finished The Dragon's Son. The book does a spectacular job of explaining the motivations behind characters' actions, and it creates characters whom you never want to let go of and whose stories stay with you for days after reading the book. Thomson has a deep, humanistic sympathy for all of the four complex, damaged characters who serve as narrator for the book in turns. She is able to make you ache for the characters and their plights, even as they make terrible choices and unleash evil and havoc. [Spoiler ahead.] When Medraud's lover asks him how many people he is willing to kill to get his father to notice him, a whole life that hasn't been explored elsewhere springs into being. It makes other versions' renderings of these characters seem so naïve and uninteresting. [End spoiler.] The book brims with striking images. The battle scenes are particularly well-choreographed, exciting, and always clear. Geographical and historical detail are never ladled on, but glanced tastefully and tantalizingly in passing (J.R.R. Tolkien could have learned something from this book). There is a perfect balance in the time spent on describing physical things and settings against the time spent on describing characters' inner thoughts. The book is studded with examples of incisive turns of phrase, from a description of a handsome bard's crooked, disarming smile, to a description of a frown, like that of a priest at a Midsummer festival. And all of it achieved not through gussied language, but through simple, athletic prose. A real achievement. Also, the book's structure is quite skillful. It is told in four interlocking stories, with main characters glimpsing each other as side characters in multiple refractions. The effect is a wonderful feeling of non-linearity and involvement in the dynamic lives of these characters. You feel like you're ducking in and out of rooms in a bustling house, and peering into rooms through front-doors, then through peep-holes. Couple other things that make this book unique. First, it is one of the rare books that manages to depict lovers convincingly. You are never told that a character is sexy or alluring or charismatic, you're given vivid examples that arouse the reaction. Second, the book's feminism is subtlely and maturely incorporated. The book operates on a personal level, then on a political level, and never feels polemical or revisionist or didactic. I realize now that I've written this reader review for adult readers, although this is marketed as children's lit. For parents, educators, or kids, let me just say that any kid who likes Greek mythology (and all the neatest kids in every generation in every country all love Greek mythology), will like The Dragon's Son. It has exciting plot, it has really interesting characters, it has thrilling battles. And it also has a good deal of heart and guts to it that make it transcend mere entertainment. I would say that Megan Whalen Turner's The Thief and The Queen of Attolia and Philip Pullman's The Golden Compass are its closest analogs and peers, and that's meant as very high praise. Highly recommended to all intelligent readers.

Also recommended: The Thief, Megan Whalen Turner The Queen of Attolia, Megan Whalen Turner The Golden Compass, Philip Pullman

I can't say enough wonderful things about this book. The lyricism, the intricately crafted structure, the character insight...it puts every single other Arthurian book I've read, from The Once and Future King to The Mists of Avalon to hosts of lesser-known novels, to shame.

From the very first sentences you're drawn in by the vivid, almost poetic prose: "I could wander all day along her banks and she would always lie there, like a silver string behind me, to lead me home in the dusk." The author blends foreshadowing, atmosphere and imagery without a single wasted word, with sentences like "I thought he would murder like a saint prays, and with the same hope of blessing," and "On the edge of the surf, in the white foam, in the place that is neither land nor water, he was killed by his uncle's spear and his blood flowed into the waves."

The plots are also much more compelling and carefully crafted than those of most other Arthurian novels. It's fascinating to see these well-known events through the eyes of characters who usually don't get a voice, such as Merlin/Myrddin's love Nimue, Mordred/Medraud, who is almost always portrayed as hate-filled villain and is never allowed to show why he might resent his father, and lady-in-waiting Gwenhwyfach, who dropped out of sight in modern versions altogether. When you're reading about those familiar events, you suddenly see a new interpretation and a new motivation for those events; on top of that, the author imagines new events that somehow make the legends even more real. So that's why Nimue turned on Myrddin, you say, or Oh, that's how Owain/Lancelot wound up married to Elen/Elaine. Not a detail is wasted or out of place -- everything that happens matters later in the story, or in another narrator's story.

The book leaves you feeling as if you've finally read the real version of the King Arthur legend. The details of the Welsh setting are carefully researched and woven in so skillfully that you feel you're there, not just reading about it; the motivations of the characters are so well explored and convincingly told that you finally understand why characters like Nimue, Morgan and Medraud did the things for which they have been vilified by later writers who could only manage one-dimensional, black-and-white versions of the tales. It says something that to this day, when I'm remembering or talking about the King Arthur legend, I find myself thinking of the events in this book as "canon" -- that's how strong an impression it left on me.

As someone who has studied and read Arthurian Legend quite a bit, I thought that I could no longer be surprised by any new retelling of the tale. This book proved me wrong! By telling the tale through the points of view of secondary characters like Nimue and long time antagonists like Medraud (Mordred), Thomson weaves an exciting new version of a famaliar story. However, my favorite part was her choice to include two fascinating characters that were dropped from the Arthurian Tales most people are famaliar with today and buried for years in Welsh Lore. These two are Luned, a faithful lady in waiting to Morgan Le Fay's also forgotten sister, Elen, and Gwenhwyfach, Gwenhywfar's crafty, but abused sister. I thoroughly enjoyed reading about these two characters who added whole new dimensions to the story. I can't recommend this book enough to fans of the Arthurian legend looking for a twist or just anyone looking for an entertaining tale.

Okay. First I just want to say I'm not UNDER 13, I'm 13. I just ain't buying anything here. Anyway, the book:

Demolition Winter was great. It had all what the Show Space: Above and Beyond had. Danger, action, romance, humor...everything. The only thing that troubles me is that the characters seems differnt. Shane is all the sudden angry and let it go out on the squadron, Damphousse (the Engieneer) know less than Wang about planes and stuff...and McQueen is all smussy. This is not our Ty. But the book is nevertheless good. And Nathan has never been better.

Demolition Winter (Space : Above and Beyond) by Peter Telep takes the S:AaB universe another step forward by giving the characters more depth than a 45 minute episode ever could.

It is also faithful to Morgan and Wong (the Producer's) vision for S:AaB, which is a relief.

The characters show how young and inexperienced they are, as adults and yet they manage to survive and work together to complete their mission.

This S:AaB book is well worth the cover price and is a great read for anyone who loves S:AaB or just loves a good military story.

GOSH I LOVE SAAB AND THIS IS A GREAT ON

Morgan's books uniformly challenge traditional thinking. Unlike her other works, which postulate a novel thesis, then go on to provide conjectural evidence for its validity, this one is a wealth of information which is finally brought into a conceptual framework. In this book, her theory of human evolution passing through an aquatic phase remains the basis for why the human fetus develops in ways vastly different from our nearest biological neighbours, the chimpanzees and great apes.

In order to establish a foundation for her claim, Morgan takes us along a highly detailed, but characteristically readable, trek. The journey commences at the moment of conception, follows the stages of development of the human infant. Along the way we are introduced to the pros and cons of older theses of fetal progression. The difficulties of birth are intense; Morgan augments the event's hazards with abundant detail about the baby's physiognomic changes occurring at this moment of entry into the world. She manages to downplay much of the mythology about 'birth trauma' by showing how evolution has equipped infants with natural defenses against this abrupt shift of environment.

Morgan then continues the development of children and the many parental and other social obstacles children endure. Children spend an immense amount of time and energy in learning to communicate. Parents need to learn to listen to these efforts and understand the process more adequately. While Judith Rich Harris' THE NURTURE ASSUMPTION hadn't been published when this book was written, Morgan stresses the strong impact of peers on children's development. As Rich Harris points out, this area needs further attention, although it's doubtful it would change Morgan's ideas.

Morgan's ultimate goal in this book is two-fold. Children's individuality is poorly addressed by our society. The idea of children being 'little adults' must be abandoned in favour of fuller understanding of how a child functions and why the differences between adults and children are important. She is sharply critical of conditions in the UK [which can readily be projected to North America] dealing with children's needs.

The other goal Morgan seeks, of course, is wider acceptance of her notion that fetal and infant differences between us and the other apes is symptomatic of different evolutionary paths. Her physiological evidence is clearly presented and lucidly explained. What is lacking, of course, is valid fossil evidence in support of the idea. The area that might provide that evidence remains under water, which is where the thesis must reside, as well.

Morgan's prose style is clear and unpretentious. It's hard to dispute information so well organized and lucidly presented. She panders to the FemiNazis with lengthy excuses for referring to babies as 'he'; space which could better have been used to review her thesis in more detail. Still, like her other books, this one raises many questions requiring answers, not evasion. Her brief bibliography is a good starting point, as is this book.

The Descent of the Child: Human Evolution from a New Perspective wriiten by Elaine Morgan is a book that is very thought-provoking and opens your mind to the biological origins of human naturalness and its role in our modern life.

The author has a very friendly narrative as she takes the reader through the generation of new life and its gradual development into an adult human. Also, you'll engaged in science of human development making for an interesting read.

The author brings to light why among primates is it that man's newborns are more helpless than chimpanzee infant. There are a lot of things that differ between man and the rest of the aminal kingdom. Why is that way? How come man is diferent? This book attempts to answer these questions and others.

For a book, this is a highly readable account, that can give new insight with facts both biological and social, making for some very fascinating reading. I found this book, not only enlightening, but entertaining... it kept my interest till the end. This book is about the human evolution and why it is as it is... human intelligence is a byproduct of evolving babyhood. Interesting... indeed.

This superb book is great for new parents. They'll learn much not only about their own child and its developement, but why the child's nature is in so many ways responsible for our adult nature. This book is perfect for laypersons, but it's also recommended for evoltionary biologist. It just may change your view of children.

If you have any interest in sports, you have to read Glory for Sale. Jon Morgan has written a fascinating and carefully crafted book about the inner workings of professional sports. Few of us have ever been privy to the secret meetings, the betrayal, the calculated lies, and the greed at work whenever a professional sports franchise tears free from a city. This book is more than the tale of Art Modell's apostasy, it is the frightening blueprint for a society whose religion sports is founded on a single commandment: Thou shalt win. -- Tim Green, author of The Dark Side of the Game and sports commentator for ABC's "Good Morning America," "NFL on Fox," and NPR's "Morning Edition

Glory for Sale is a fascinating read. Morgan manages to penetrate the personalities and structures of the NFL in a lucid and compelling fashion while providing a probing and critical analysis of city stadium subsidies, franchise movements and the business of football. -- Andrew Zimbalist, author of Baseball & Billions: A Probing Look Inside the Big Business of Our National Pastime and co-author of Sports Jobs and Tax: Economic Impact of Sports Teams and Facilities

. . . a detailed, engrossing and fast-paced account of am increasingly volatile aspect of sports. -- Bortz & Co., Sports and Media Consultants

Team relocation is a controversial and complex issue that hotly divides avid sports fans. Jon Morgan's Glory for Sale insightfully lays out the importance of stadium economics in building a competitive team, and it clearly, easily explains why teams move. It is one of the best analyses I've read. --Paul J. Much, Houlihan Lokey Howard & Zukin (financial advisor on sports economics to teams, leagues, stadiums, and governmental agencies)

Morgan goes through excruciating detail as to how the cities of Cleveland and Baltimore will now be forever conjoined. The book gives the reader a true perspective of the shenanigans by owners who are looking for the "easy money" of professional sports and how they will stoop to breaking the hearts of thousands of loyal fans just to fatten their wallets. Not only does it cut to the quick about the move of the Cleveland Browns to Baltimore; it also touches off on that fateful winter's night when Bob Irsay packed the beloved Colts onto the Mayflower trucks and stole away the heart of a city. A great read for Clevelanders and Baltimoreans alike; both of which can take small consolation that the heartbreaks of '84 and '95 will finally be resolved when the Browns return next August.

"Glory for Sale" is full of the sort of detail most football fans only dream of accessing...the book enables readers to become part of the franchise process, to feel as though they were actually there. Jon Morgan's style is fluid and literary, and the book, however intricate, reads as easily as a novel. This is a must-read for anyone interested in the world of sports, and for anyone with a solid appreciation for plain old good writing.

When this book came out a couple of years ago it was the first and only book on designing speech recognition systems. It was very valuable then, but now more books are available that cover the same information and more, for a lot less money.

Developing speech applications is not easy to master. Even with VoiceXML becoming more widely adopted, there are a lot of intricacies that that a developer must understand. This book will provide you with a solid foundation to become an effective speech application developer.

The book did very well in presenting the limitations of the current speech recognition technology (dialog design, large vocabularies, promtp design, etc.) and made suggestions on how to overcome such problems in specific situations.

Author, Bruce Balentine's goal with How to Build a Speech Recognition Application is to produce the Strunk and White of speech recognition. An electronic musician and composer, Balentine was a pioneer in the speech recognition field. The text's examination of the problems of navigation from human perception to machine recognition give comprehension to even the layman. The book is well organized and structured with the +,/,- system which allows a novice to follow. According to linguist, Dr. John White, the first chapter could stand alone as a treatise on the dynamics of the human speech interface with the machine.