I've coached little league for many years with great success but the game on the bigger diamond (13 yr olds and above) is much more complicated. This book is outstanding in that it is packed with practical information for coaches. I especially appreciate the fact that the author is able to substantiate his advice with probability and statistics.

This book is a suspenseful and exciting easy read with its many twists and turns. It makes me understand how people of its generation lived without movies or television. Southworth has the power to captivate readers and bring them into the world she creates. I would recommend this book to anyone.

This is a really good book for learning about color. The pictures and examples are very useful and the glossary is good for quick reference. It's small enough to carry around for reference, unlike some other color books. It's concise and easy to understand. The author does not try to talk over your head or impress you with color jargon. I highly recommend this book to anyone in the printing or graphics field.

As an academic, I could resent the sometimes acerbic references to academics in John Southworth's Shakespeare the Player, but as an academic I learned more from this non-academic book than I have learned from many academic books on Shakeespeare. The book is written by aprofessional theater person, an actor/director, who has a thorough knowledge of Shakespeare's plays and of the interactions among casts and playwrights and stages and plays and performances. From this background, he proposes and credibly supports four lines of argument: a) that there cannot be any lost years in Shakespeare's biography: to do what he did, Shakespeare had to have had an extensive apprenticeship in the theater, and Southworth adds evidence in support of the theory that this was Leceister's company; b) that there is no credible evidence that Shakespeare ever retired from the theater, and much circumstantial evidence from theater lives to suggest that he did no such thing; c) that Shakespeare was primarily an actor/director in his own plays, and not primarily a playwright, in his own eyes and the eyes of his colleagues; and d) that the roles he chose for himself, roles like Iago in "Othello," were characterized by being somewhat detached from the action, frequency of appearance on stage even when not speaking, and often a kind of controlling relationship with the other characters. The style is clear, unpretentions and very readable, the presentation direct, knowledgeable and carefully argued with detailed and credible evidence. I found the book to be the most helpful single book in illuminating Shakespeare and his plays that I've read in the last ten years.

Thsi is a good book for 7th grade learning. It tells you everything about parts of speech and parts of sentance. A great classroom text book.

I had always thought a scientist of the calibre of Dr. E. O. Wilson was perhaps out of my league; I'd partly read his Diversity of Life and perhaps got the most out of it by jumping around and reading what interested me. His other famous books seemed too specialized for me, basically a lover of fiction or action stories. However, I saw recently that Wilson had endorsed the book jacket of "Nabokov's Butterflies", one of my favorite writers, whose biography "Nabokov's Blues" was a great read last year. "Naturalist" is a word often spurned by modern scientists, I'm told; its sometimes another word for generalist-- whom "real" scientists often don't take seriously. Nabokov had been one (and not often taken seriously); it interested me that Wilson would use that term to describe his own journey into professional science. What Wilson explains so well here, in his own story, is that it is growing up with a FASCINATION with nature, first perhaps as only a hobby, that based on this "fascination for life", great scientists are sometimes born. Wilson makes the point, echoed by another commentator above, that all of us with a fascination for nature are not so different and perhaps science has not done itself a service by make its field seem so rarified and only for that highly educated PhD. FIRST perhaps comes the youthful fascination with things that then leads to the productive scientist. I know when I was a kid I enjoyed reading the biographies of John Audobon and other naturalists. E. O. Wilson was not well known at the time. But, any youth, parent or teacher who wants to get a proper perspective on what seems to make great scientists, that is, the ongoing fascination with life itself and what makes it tick, will find great support in this biography of, yes, a famous Harvard professor, but also a person not so different from you and me. An autobiography worth reading.

How far have city-bred enterprises removed us from our natural heritage? E.O. Wilson, author of so many wonderful ideas and books, has here revealed himself as a human being of immense strength and courtly self-awareness. Sharing with us so many aspects of his personal life and scientific endeavors, Wilson shows how a bit of dedication can overcome obstacles most of us find daunting. Raised in the rural South, losing the sight of one eye, his struggles to gain a place as a scientist are inspiring. More importantly, he makes clear how much remains to be done by the upcoming generations in determining our true place in the natural order. This work is a clarion call for aspiring young scientists to enter research, following paths similar to his own.

The editorial reviews here focus overmuch on the sociobiology 'controversy'. Sociobiology is a major thesis in examining humanity's place in nature. Rejecting this idea out of hand continues to impair understanding of how important an idea sociobiology is, although he spends little time on it in this book. Much of his work has focussed on animal behaviour from ants through mammals. People remain resistant to the idea that we are somehow associated with 'the beasts', but Wilson demonstrates the continuity of behaviour patterns throughout the animal kingdom. Until we address that issue honestly, which is a major aspect of Wilson's work, we will never understand who we truly are. His studies stress that until we achieve that understanding, we will continue to unwittingly intrude on our own environment. The loss of species threatens our own existence.

The major advantage of this book is its honesty. Wilson pulls few punches and reviews his own prejudices and how he overcame them. He demonstrates how important this self assessment is to scientists and the public alike. The growth of understanding of genetics has impacted all biology. Wilson relates candidly his own grudging acceptance of the new ideas genetic research have given us. He's to be commended for both his candor and flexibility.

To me, it looks as if Wilson turned to be a great scientist against all odds. He did not come from the academic royalty, but from a broken family in Alabama. With strong intuition, lot of hard work and endless enthusiasm, he became one of the great scientists of the 20th century. A well written book, that would probably change the course of my life have I read it at the right age...

I purchased this book just expecting a general overview and thats what I got. If just want to see an overview of all of America's special forces, this is the book for. If you're looking for lots of detail, find something else (recommend Tom Clancy's Special Forces, Airborne, and Marine)

I would recommend this book to people who do not have a very good understanding of US Special Forces. For those of us who have a deeper knowledge of the Special Forces that our country employs, I would not recommend this book.

The book reads well and includes chapters on the Army Rangers, Navy SEALs, Air Force Special Operations (Combat Controllers and Pararescue Jumpers), Army Special Forces (Green Berets), Delta Force, Marine Force Recon, Army Airborne, Army 10th Mountain Division, Coast Guard Special Operations, and CIA Paramilitary Forces.

The inclusion of the Coast Guard "Special Operations" is a bit suspect as a special operations group, but that chapter is enlightening and informative.

The book does not go into very much detail on any of the special operations forces so I would only recommend this book to someone who wants a very general overview.

One of the major gripes that I had with the book (besides being overly simplistic) is on page 188. In the chapter about the 10th Mountain Division, the book mentions how a "young Lieutenant Bob Dole was badly wounded. After a couple years in a hospital he would go on to be vice president of the United States..." Umm, am I missing something here or was I asleep when Bob Dole was the Vice President?

Anyway, if you are a stranger to the world of US Special Forces, this is a decent book to get started. However, if one already has a pretty decent grasp of the subject, I would recommend looking elsewhere.

This is a very informative and entertaining look into the special forces of the US. I like the way each chapter has its history and missions explained. Especially interesting, are the brief accounts of each branches' successful and failed missions. All the way up to the current fight against terrorism, it gives people a look at something almost as good as the RAMBO and BRADDOCK movies. A very good and informative reference for Army Rangers, Army Special Forces, Army Delta Foce, Navy SeALs, Air Force Special Operations, Marine Force Recon, Airborne units, 10th Mountain, and CIA Paramilitary Groups. Everything is good, except the constant reference in every chapter to JFK and his concept of unconvertional warfare. I take it these two guys were fans of his. I highly recommend it.

After reading this book, the only thought that came to my mind was that the heroine was just lucky to get through all the hurdles without even a scratch.

Too fantastic to digest. But then aren't all such books are.

I just couldn't understand few things, how Capitola managed to get out of every difficulty without problem, and how, all the smart villians, become dumb and do the stupidest act while she is there (whether they know it or not) and things are always in favour of our great heroine?

Capitola is a true heroin! Once you buy this book you'll never be able to put it down. Capitola is a lovable character and Ms. E.D.E.N Southworth, did a marvelous job at selecting each of her characters including Captain Hurricane, Black Donald (the criminal) Capitola is a remarkabl eyoung girl and you'll definately laugh and cry with her through out the book! I recommend this book to all who have read such novels as Pride and Prejudice and Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen! You'll LOVE this book!

I just loved this book. I started out reading it for a class, but the class was cancelled. I finished it anyway, and I think everyone should read this book. Capitola is sassy and brave and daring and smart.Everything a heroine should be!!

First off, this was a good book. But of course there are going to be downsides, as there is to this one. My main complaint is the first time I tried to read this book, it went way over my head. This is a book for people who know a bit about DOS already, but this is sort of an advanced study handbook, as I see it. All around a decent book though.

Southworth's novel maniupulates many of the tropes of sentimental fiction in a uniquely subversive way. She stuffs it all within her pages- the damsel in distress, the dastardly villian, the orphan- but ultimately achieves a surprisingly feminist ideology. Her heroine, Capitola, is self reliant, creative, and genuinely heroic. She romps through Southworth's pages comically overturning many of the 19th century's most concretized stereotypes about femininity. All told, it is a marvelous read, deceptively subtle, surprisingly subversive, impossible to set aside once begun due to its breathless narrative rate. Well worth the investment.