This is a book that only contains game sheets, no writing or suggestions. The games are for a mostly older crowd. I'm 21, and most of the games involve questions that if you haven't been around long enough could not be very easy for example One game called famous couples your supposed to write in names of partner some people listed: George burns, Napoleon Bonaparte, Laura Ingalls. Some good Ideas for games but not for a younger group of people. I think I will only use one game out of the 8 listed.

The second title in a new series of subject-oriented garden books, Tender Perennials is essentially a thinly "Americanized" British book. It includes a few paragraphs on U.S. Zones and conditions, 'translates" our Zone system into a ranking of tender perennials from "fully hardy" to"tender," and equates those ratings to our Zones 7 to 11 minimum temperatures, all without taking into account the effects of summer heat, humidity, and sunshine. I found the resulting hardiness translations uncomfortable: For example, Agastache 'Firebird' is rated as "almost hardy," making it supposedly hardy only to Zone 10, contrary to the experience of many Zone 6 gardeners! The text also does not reflect the much wider range of tender perennials already available in this country. Tender Perennials is, however, well laid out and divided thoughtfully into four parts. After explaining the term"tender perennials" and providing some historical background, the author tackles plants in A-to-Z order with descriptions in short, concise language. This section occupies the bulk of the book - 90+ pages - and includes propagation information if techniques other than tip cuttings are required, plus a hardiness rating. Several genera are featured in detailed entries that include descriptions of individual cultivars: Abutilon, Argyranthemum, Canna, Coleus, Diascia, Heliotropium, Osteospermum, Penstemon, Pelargonium, Salvia, and Verbena. Part Three, Planting Schemes, includes chapters on using tender perennials in beds and borders, containers, conservatories, and so forth. Tropical plants are mainly consigned to Chapter 5,"The Exotic Look:"while Chapter 7 covers "The Mediterranean Garden:" which emphasizes foliage plants and gives closer attention to tree ferns and large palms. In this section of the book the photographs are outstanding. They include pictures of stunning mixed container plantings and examples of the type of bedding out with tender plants that has become so popular in our area in recent years. Color plans for various bedding out schemes are less successful: the undifferentiated blobs of color, while keyed to named plants, give no clue as to soil, lighting requirements, or physical attributes of the various plans. None of them is translated into an actual picture of a planting. Part Four covers propagation and cultivation, general care, and persistent problems in a nicely understandable fashion. The uneven quality of the photographs in this book was a disappointment, as was the choice of which genera to illustrate at all. Unfamiliar genera are only briefly discussed and not illlustrated, while two-page spreads show unobtainable cultivars of Argyranthemum, Heliotropium, and Diascia. Many photos make it seem as if the plants shown will grow only in shade in the UK, and therefore are hopelessly out of sync with conditions on this continent. Not so! Plectranthus spp. are all shown in shady situations, but P. argenteus was used stunningly last summer in full sun next to concrete and macadam roads just a mile west of my house. I did enjoy using this book as a quick course on where to see tender perennials in the UK. After browsing the appendices, photo credits, and guides to gardens lists, which give primarily British sources and collections, I made up a plan for a trip. The author holds National Collections of both Coleus and Canna, and last September I visited his canna display garden, located in a warm corner of an enclosed, brick-walled garden at Nottingham University. It was immediately clear that a wealth of cannas have become available since the book was photographed and written. His collection included many new and interesting forms. The coleus collection, under glass and held privately by the Cookes, was chiefly wife Joy's occupation and consisted of beautiful, wellgrown specimens. It was impossible to see even half of the sites mentioned, but that only leaves those delights for next year.

I thought that this story was really cute because
of the imagination this author had to keep children
interested, and to make this story even cuter is
the animals and their personalities. I recomend this
book to children ages 3-8 or if you are a huge animal
lover.

This book is organized into a series of sections that each present a solution to a very specific Win32 API programming question (e.g., "How do I rotate a bitmap?"). This makes it easy to find what you're looking for, as long as your particular problem is one of the specific simplistic cases covered in this book. Many of the examples seemed to be lifted right out of MSDN. In addition, although this book purports to be Win32-specific, in some cases a 16-bit Windows SDK code sample is used instead of a more appropriate Win32 API function. Some of the solution programs contained bugs.

A horrifyingly trite view on such a beloved author. The writing was commonish and rather juvenile. Chock full of the author's personal life, not that of Atwood.

Admittedly, any biography of Margaret Atwood has some intrinsic fascination--both for what readers do know about Atwood, and what we don't. We know that she is a very gifted and, above all, a morally serious writer; she is one of only a few writers alive today whose reputation and popular appeal rest on her concern with terrifying political issues. But the same thing has happened to Atwood as has happened to other writers in this situation: her readers and critics have come to know her mainly by reputation, even after reading everything she has written. Thus although she is one of today's most studied, quoted, and in some ways feared literary figures, little new is actually said about her, the positive pole focusing on her Cassandra-like gifts and the negative on her being a disgruntled woman. Neither does Atwood justice and this biography does very little to change that. We are indeed presented with a gifted and apparently rather complex human being, her friends speak of her with affection and some fear, but much as Atwood speaks of her cult with contempt, the culty atmosphere surrounding her is never dispelled and one is left with the uncomfortable feeling that the writer encourages it because, perhaps, she does not have the faith that human beings will listen to her painful messages without it. While it is admirable of Atwood to resist sexist stereotyping as a "witch," it is permissible for us to try to see her in context. Atwood's cooperation with this effort is simply to increase mystification by telling us we can only get it wrong, as if it were impossible to understand why a human being would be horrified at what she sees around her (though she accuses us of thinking this way). To her discredit, the biographer caves in every step of the way. Atwood the writer and Atwood the woman are rich material. Atwood the myth is not.

Without knowing Margaret Atwood personally, it is impossible to tell if the problems in this biography stem from a biased interpretation by the author or from the very biases of Atwood herself. Whatever the source, bias pervades this biography. While on the one hand the reader is presented with a picture of a woman who defied what she considered to be literary convention by living in rural areas and having a child and a successful relationship with a man, the reader also is left with the uncomfortable feeling that Atwood is attempting to set her own convention and is looking at those who do not conform to *her* conventions. The Atwood in this biography seems critical of the single woman, the childless woman, the urban (esp. New York City) writer, and the lower class writer. Although I cannot quote the book directly (I got rid of it in a fit of disgust), there is one scene that has burned itself into my memory. The author discusses Atwood's belief that a writer shouldn't poor. While it is true that one is freer to write when certain material comforts are present and when material concerns do not predominate, Atwood is then quoted as saying something to this affect: I've never been a janitor or held any other sort of low-class job, but don't quote me on that, because I know it's unfashionable. One is left feeling that if a writer *does* come from humble origins, one must not speak about it later or let it influence one's writing.Although I disliked the book because of its pervasive biases, it does present a comprehensive overview of Margaret Atwood's life and some insight into the artistic process. I think that an Atwood fan (which I myself am) who is married with children (or who desires that lifestyle), who loves nature and has had the luxury to live that lifestyle, and who has had a comfortable middle-class upbringing, might actually enjoy this biography. For others, though, you might just find yourself driven to furious rage at the potential creation of a new, but equally dogmatic, stereotype.

This book should have been titled " The US Constitution - A socialist's viewpoint" because thats what it actually contains.

He rambles on about the 2000 presidential election, how Bush did not win the popular vote. Does this info belong in a book about the inner workings of the constitution? I don't think so.

Mr Cooke also does not recognize our form of government as a Federal Republic. He refers to it in other terms.

He completely neglects to mention that the main source of ideas for the US Constitution was Christian beliefs as interpreted by John Locke, an English Philosopher and Scholar, although he mentions John Locke in passing.

Don't waste your money. Amazon has much better material on our country's great documents than this. Keep looking.

Postmodernist thought has its kernels of truth and insight, often afloat in a sea of verbiage only its writer may understand. Wouldn't some clear explanation of what is going on be refreshing? In this "Encyclopedia" one won't find discussions of ontology or deconstruction, however, but a loosely collected several dozen essays of mixed quality, ranging towards sickening. Very few are insightful, most are self-indulgently evasive, and some are infuriatingly fatuous. Nearly all will pick some notion read from a newspaper headline, a few minutes in front of the tube or a tabloid magazine, and then descend in cycles of increasingly tangled verbiage restating the same idea until the reader is completely frustrated. In few cases do the writers show actual understanding of their topic. The worst offender seems to be the editor himself, who is recognized even by dedicated postmodernists as one of their most mind-numbingly meaningless generators of confusing obfuscation. Many of the points he talks to death are cynical exploitation of postmodern themes, the kind of abuse that will drive it into the ground. He is an equal-opportunity ridiculer: trashing the innocent and unassuming along with the famous and pretentious. Few targets escape the splash of bile. It's enough to leave the reader feeling ill for days. This book has no significant insight, is uninteresting and barely understandable.

It is not even a good read.