Had I been able to view this book before I purchased it, I would not have bought it. There's only a few banners shown and the artwork is too detailed for sewing.

While the designs shown are very impressive, this book does not offer a very comprehensive selection. If you are looking to spice up your banner selection with a few new ideas, then this might be a great book for you (there's a beautiful baptism banner design). But if you are looking to make quite a few banners or have a specific need in miind, this book is very limiting (for example, there are no designs provided for the Lenten season).

- Cover is very inviting and aesthetically attractive. - Banners are spiritually uplifting and symbolically meaningful. - Text/instructions are easy to read, well-organized. - Exquisitely artistic designs. - Have been privileged to see a number of these banners "in person" and they far exceed the imagination in beauty. - Truly an awesome (in the true sense of the word) and unique form of Christian celebration and praise! - The time put into making these creative banners is well-worth it! - Thank you Marie E. Pierce-Ruhland Koehlinger for sharing your gifts with the rest of us!

I was disappointed that this book provided very little by way of teaching techniques. A book like this needs to give more thought to attention getting and fun drills.

I play tennis and was hoping this book would help me to teach my son. Much of the information is very basic and would be useful only to a non-tennis playing parent. If you play tennis and want help in teaching your child, I doubt the book will offer any useful insights. The drills are not particularily helpful because they are geared to groups. This book will be useful only to the true novice parent-teacher

Mr. Kelley has done a wonderful job imparting his wisdom and expertise into this book. I found it very helpful teaching my son and daughter tennis. The book provided drills and techniques for the begining tennis player. The book also provided helpful hints which carry over into other sports as well. Thank You Mr. Kelley for this book which has made teaching tennis easier and more enjoyable.

I used this book to teach an undergraduate course on leadership. The book was not my choice. The articles and research were edited in such a way that the reader really didn't feel that any of the theories were supported or substantiated by the data.

If it was the authors' intention to leave room for personal reflection and opinion, they succeeded. As for the assessments, the text, including the instructor's manual, provided little direction for interpretation.

I wish Pierce and Newstrom spent more time on and went into greater detail with the chapter introductions.

(2nd ed.) This book is a compendium of 44 articles on leadership, intended for higher education audiences, especially management students in college. The authors also include 19 self-assessment instruments for the reader. The book finishes with 11 case studies and "experiential" exercises (as opposed, I guess, to cognitive exercises?).

The topics are slanted toward social-psychological (roles, gender effects, group dynamics, leader behaviors, cross-cultural contexts, and so forth). As a result, the writings can be tediously "scientific." The book is very well referenced, but, as the authors state, it is not a review of the leadership literature.

The cover drawing is one of five people putting sails on a boat that is not in the water. I presume this is sort of a Magritte comment on leadership. I think it also is a comment on the patchwork tedium of the subject. And after all the sails are on, what does one know about leadership? And, is one a leader?

AFTER READING THIS BOOK YOUR IMPRESSION IS FRANKLIN PIERCE IS THE GREATEST PRESIDENT EVER. THIS BOOK IS VERY ONE-SIDED. I WONDER WHAT THE AUTHOR RESEARCHED: NOT PIERCE.

The project of reprinting this edition of Hawthorne's biography of Franklin Pierce was undertaken by students at the Brett Middle School in Tamworth, NH, under the guidance of their teacher, Brian Wiggin (OK, he's my cousin, but that does not diminish the validity of my praise for this project). In doing so the students had to delve into material on Pierce outside of the original text.

They did a most impressive job. For one, this was not one of Hawthorne's masterpieces. His prose is extremely bloated and garrulous. How these middle school students waded through it is a miracle. Two, this book, which was essentially a campaign pamphlet from the 19th century, does offer modern readers some fresh, even though biased insights on Pierce, who is considered one of our worst presidents by many historians. It is quite clear that Pierce neither sought nor desired the position, and was ill-prepared to handle the imminent breakup of the nation he loved.

The best part of the book is the excerpt from Pierce's journal he kept during the Mexican War. Only U.S. Grant's Memoirs contain more and better first-hand recollections of that conflict. Grant wrote his nearly 40 years after the war, while Pierce's were written during the war, so it is quite enlightening to compare the two.

A definitive evaluation of Pierce as a man and as a president, and it is quite damning, is in volume two of Allan Nevins's eight volume work, "Ordeal of the Union." No comprehensive biography of Pierce exists which bridges the gap between Hawthorne's friendly hagiography and Nevins's portrayal of Pierce as weak, lacking conviction, and of small character. Certainly Pierce occupied the White House in a definitive time in our nation's history. Someday a competent historian will undertake the task of writing a balanced biography of Pierce and his administration's role in either delaying or fomenting the Civil War. If the publication of Hawthorne's book has illustrated this need, then the Brett School project was, indeed, quite successful.

Imagine, if you will, Martin Scorsese directing a half-hour biographical sketch of George W. Bush. What would that be like? I suspect it would the the year 2000 equivelent of this 19th Century book.

Nathaniel Hawthorne, author of 'The Scarlet Letter' and 'The Marble Fawn', was a friend of Franklin Pierce. So much so that he agreed to write the future president's campaign biography in 1852. Here we have an interesting relationship between a man considered by many to be one of the country's greatest men of letters and a man considered by many to be among its worst presidents. What does Hawthorne say about Pierce? It is pretty much standard fair for an antebellum election, and of course it is quite lauditory. But, how many candidates could recruit a writer of Hawthorne's stature to write his campaign literature.

Please remember this is a campaign biography. Its purpose is to help get Pierce elected - to put him forward as the best option (over old Fuss and Feathers Winfield Scott) in 1852. It is a product of its times and an amazing read, but not much of a biography by today's standards. If you want an analysis of the personality and presidency of Franklin Pierce you should look elsewere.

This book has literally hundreds of factual errors, and that makes it useless as a reference guide. But those errors are not the worst of it. In the introduction, the author writes, " . . .Elvis was the antithesis of society's morals. His wild performances broke from the bland American mainstream of 'Ozzie and Harriet' or 'Father Knows Best,' and the oppressed, youthful minority went wild over this raunchy, flagrantly sexual boy from the wrong side of the tracks." Of course, none of that is correct. "Morals' or "wild" never entered the picture for Elvis in the 1950s. Kids went to his performances because the music was new and exciting.

I have been an Elvis fan and collector since the fifties. I pride myself on my personal knowledge of and my extensive library on Elvis. If you want a book full of grossly erroneous information, this is it! There is no shortage of readily available data on every aspect of Elvis' life, but this "author" does not know how to do research and, clearly, was herself as ignorent on the subject of Elvis when she finished her book as she was when she started. A waste of money to buy and a waste of time to read! Useless as a reference book because it is full or major errors. I rate this book zero stars.

If I only could have one fact source book about Elvis, this would be it. It contains the most complete overview of his life I have ever seen, compiled in chronological order and supplemented by detailed lists of Elvis data. A word of warning: If you want to keep your eyes closed to all but the positives in his life, this is NOT the book for you, because it contains the good, the bad, and the ugly aspects of his life. I am of the belief he was the greatest popular entertainer of all time, and this book certainly attests to that. But he also had way more than his share of human foibles, and they are included too. I'm glad it's part of my research library, and I have and will refer to it often.

With misinterpretations of current theory (particularly on consonance and dissonance), an arrogant focus on mostly the Stanford and MIT group of the past, this book should be avoided.

There are many problems with symbols used in the text, many of which are non-standard (he uses P for intensity when it is used as Pressure in most books).

The book has mostly lame, tacked-on material on digital sound (played up incorrectly as a feature on the back cover). Music V is from the late 1960s!

The revisions are minor to the first addition.

This is not a modern work, not a good exposition, not worthy of American university classes.

There is absolutely no cross-cultural material on tunings, or discussion of musical instrument acoustics.

The ordering of material is startlingly disjunct, the focus unclear, except that the author liked these subjects, while rejecting myriad issues.

I no longer have this book, so I can't comment on the details, but it was the main text of a class that I took at UC Santa Barbara. I was very excited about the class, which was an amalgamation of two of my favorite disciplines: music and physics. Well, the class and the text were both disappointing, and I dropped the class. What I remember of the book is that it seemed rather dull, and it tended towards older ways of thinking about music, particularly in regards to the psychology of pitch (consonance = happy! dissonance = disturbed!). It did not seem like a real scholarly work to me. And I have to agree with a previous reviewer that the computer music section was totally out-of-date.

1) This book is replete with errors. Two examples:

p.68: "A minor third has a frequency ratio 6/5, so the fifth harmonic of E should have the same frequency as the sixth harmonic of C (a G)." No, the fifth harmonic of E is G#, so presumably the author means "the fifth harmonic of Eb". But a 6:5 minor third is really only one of many possible minor third tunings. The Pythagorean minor third, for example, is 32:27, and the 32nd harmonic of this C is the 27th harmonic of this Eb. (To ignore the Pythagorean scale is to ignore two thousand years of music history; here it is given very short shrift.) The point this chapter misses in regard to just intervals is that beating is a matter of degree. We have only to venture up one harmonic along the 6/5 Eb's series: its sixth harmonic (Bb, 36:5) clashes with the 7th harmonic of C (7:1). They are 49 cents (a quarter tone) apart and well within the "critical band".

p.100: "In his fine piece 'Stria' (1977), John Chowning used partial spacings and pseudo-octaves in the ratio of the Golden Mean (approximately .618)." Sorry, the Golden Mean is not a ratio; the Golden Mean means moderation. Presumably the author intends "the Golden Section". This is small error, but nevertheless inexcusable. The book ought to have been proofread and edited.

For an introductory text I recommend Sir James Jeans's "The Science and Music". For an historical text I recommend Helmholtz's "On the Sensations of Tone". For an accurate text explaining current thought I recommend Juan Roeder's "The Physics and Psychophysics of Music".

Pierce provides a nice overview of two distantly related subjects - writing a good country song and the business of country music. Neither topic is developed completely, though the songwriting portion of the book is definitely more insightful and informative than the business analysis. The author briefly describes the roles played by writers, managers, publishers, labels, etc. in the country music business, but doesn't really provide the detailed information a prospective writer or artist would want or need. Royalty splits and the like are barely mentioned while the radio side of the business gets a lot of airplay. An inordinate amount of space is devoted to definitions straight out of the dictionary - yawn. The songwriting analysis of Buffet and Croce tunes is very well done, if not fascinating. The insights from various industry professionals range from useless one-paragraph postcards to very interesting multi-page interviews. All in all, a good book if you know absolutely nothing about the business of Nashville. If you want to improve your songwriting or obtain some insight on getting into the business, try some of the other titles listed above.

Mr. Pierce has imagined a white bread world where the heroes are always polite, drink nothing stronger than root beer, and use quaint, anachronistic language reminiscent of Sherlock Holmes. However, Mr. Pierce has a ways to go to emulate the great Conan-Doyle. His long digressions about the external life of his protagonist seem hopelessly unrelated to the plot line, and left this reader puzzled about why he included so many meaningless chapters. Having lived a good part of my life in rural Minnesota, this book does not ring true. Perhaps the hot sun in Scottsdale has fried our author's brain and dissipated our former Minnesotan's memories of living here. It might be a good idea for him to return for a visit sometime and spend some time talking to real people.

I wish I could recommend this book, but I cannot. I was left with the impression that the author was seeking his own 15 minutes of fame by writing this rather than trying to truly chronicle Mr. Pierce's life and career. If you feel you need to read this book, please save your money and get it from the library. Then, find a VHS copy of "Charles Pierce at the Ballroom" and enjoy Charles at his best.

To avoid any confusion. This item has nothing to do with the TV show "The Honeymooners". It is a box in which couples can place their photos and memories from their wedding honeymoon.