i have never been an artist and don't have a lot of ability. i do; however, have the desire and the images in my head. this book really gave me the tool/skills/strategies necessary to get me going. i actually like the painting that i have completed. it looks better than i expected and i learned from the book to make it that way. as beginner as i am, i already feel i am past this book and ready for the next lesson. hmmm! i guess i'll buy something else.

I received this and several other books for Christmas from a professional artist who wanted me to share her passion for acrylic painting. This book is by far the best for a beginner such as myself. Most of the books my friend sent me were almost entirely devoted to technique, but this book also went into great detail about brushes, paints, canvas, paper, colors, etc. The author dedicates two pages to each topic, all of which are very well laid out and well organized (the pages even have color coded boxes in the top corner to help you find exactly what you are looking for). There are countless pictures that illustrate the effects of various techniques using different colors and mediums, which allows the beginning artist to skip over much of the initial experimentation usually involved when starting a new craft. There is no doubt that this is a book for beginners, but I think it is an ideal place to start. Secondly, despite its novice approach, the author covers nearly all of the techniques discussed in books that are considered to be far more advanced. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is serious about starting to paint with acrylics. Enjoy.

I am just starting out in acrylics and this book has been a fabulous resource. All the important information is very clearly and succinctly presented. The book has many photos so you can easily see what they are talking about rather than having to trudge through a lot of words. Highly recommended!

I picked up Blood Latitudes to look for some ideas for my own novella of exotic places & enjoyed it immensely.

Harrison seems to've taken a cue from Conrad & Bowles: white folks stuck in foreign cultures are an endangered species, especially when folks in foreign cultures have learned just enough stray facts from the white folks to be dangerous. Here, pop goes in search of son who's disappeared on assignment. Will Hobbs knows what to expect: the detritus of colonization.

Everything Will sees is a burlesque of Western intent: weird combinations of Marxism & voodoo, teenage armies, perverse respect for philosophy, & utter disregard for human life. The intensity increases with eage turn of the page.

Harrison is best know by his terseness of phrasing & his surprise, occasionally ironic, twists in short stories. That he can sustained his Spartan use of language & our attention for a novel is a credit to his talent.

William Harrison deserves high praise for this gem. I am still stunned and haunted by its vivid images. Harrison has drawn complex and unpredictable characters that will remain with you long after you finish reading this book. One character in particular, Papa Ngiza, presses under your skin with his twisted philosophies about life and religion. No matter how hard I resisted, I had to admit that his philosophies are somehow horribly true. The harsh and strangely beautiful world of Africa lives within these pages.

By the time his son, Buck, arrives in London, Will Hobbs has settled into the quiet and solitary routines of retirement with the grace and self-sufficiency William Harrison's The Blood Latitudes he carried through his years as a reporter in Africa. Buck brings along his beautiful wife Key, and the news that he's now covering Will's old territory -- the incendiary part of Africa that once was the core of his father's life. Then Buck disappears on assignment and Will sets out to find him in an Africa that is swept up and over with violence, fear, passion, and indomitable hopes. William Harrison is a writer of great and imaginative accomplishment who, as showcased by The Blood Latitudes, is clearly a master of the complex, intense, unexpected, and thoroughly literate novel. Also highly recommended are Harrison's early novels: Three Hunters; Burton And Speke; Savannah Blue; Africana; Lessons In Paradise; Into A Wild Sanctuary; and The Theologian.

This book was just as exciting as the other 2 in the trilogy, however it does not pick up where the 2nd one left off so you are kinda in the dark to begin with. The ending was very interesting but it was hard to say if it was real or storyteller. Definitely worth reading again.

Sue Harrison's work is not only about storytellers, but also by a storyteller. Her plots are engrossing and the reader can get lost in the emotion of the events.
CALL DOWN THE STARS is not only a wonderful stand-alone book, but a perfect culmination of all her books. In more recent times than her first trilogy, the storytellers in CALL DOWN THE STARS use the old characters from all the books as part of their history and continue to tell new additions to these people's lives while their own stories unfold.
I highly recommend this, and all of Ms. Harrison's books to anyone looking for something new or in this genre.

Sue Harrison is one of the best storytellers out there today-- which she proves in the completion of the storyteller saga. She manages to do by creating intriguing characters who are also storytellers, and manages to make a novel with two parallel plots weave together perfectly.

Harrison makes the way of life for the ancient people of Alaska come alive, in all its hardships and joys. She creates complex and differing characters, from K'os, the villain who thinks only of herself in a place and time where cooperation was a necessity to survival, to Daughter, who is gentle and helpful, even to her adoptive mother K'os. This is definitely a novel worth reading.

What a life Margaret lived with her mate in Russia! This is an extremely moving book. It leaves one feeling apalled at the horrendous conditions in which these people lived and tried to survive. Margaret's life story is certainly a tale worth reading.

Margaret Wettlin's book is insightful and very well written. She offers the reader a very personal account of her life under a regime which was as barbarous as any in history. Remarkably, despite all of the terrible events and deprivations she experienced in the Soviet Union, she expresses no bitterness or regret over her decision to live most of her life there. My only reservation about the book (and it is definitely not a reason to refrain from reading the book) is that her criticisms of the Soviet regime are far milder than that regime deserved.

I was so moved by Margaret Wettlin's courage. What a free spirit, so ahead of her time. She gave herself an education through her travels and experiences far exceeding anything we could ever hope for in a classroom. This book confirms that it is women who are the glue who hold the world together. I'll never forget the images she gave me of the women in Leningrad clearing away the thousands of starved, frozen bodies before the Spring. No one should miss this extraordinary perspective of an American living in Russia for 50 years including the harrowing war years and the oppressive years following them.

I used the book for a review course covering Prin. I & II. It includes excellent graphics and illustrations. Basic accounting topics are discussed and illustrated clearly. Mid and end chapter problems were great reviews. I highly recommend this book as an introduction to basic accounting concepts.

This book was a requirement for the Financial Accounting class in my MBA course. I was put off by the price but found it is worth every penny. The overall layout is very logical, each chapter has numerous 'real world' examples and ends with more sample problems than you could ever hope to solve. 'Check Figure' partial solutions are provided in one of several useful appendices.

I started out knowing absolutely nothing about accounting, now I have a firm foundation thanks more to this excellent book than my professor ...

I will never sell this book

I WOULD LIKE TO BY THIS BOOK PROVIDED THAT IT INCLUDES A SELF BASED LEARNING CD . IF NOT KINDLY PROVIDE ME WITH A SIMILAR BOOK WHICH INCLUDES A CD. TKS AHMED

THIS BOOK IS TYPICAL OF THE ENTIRE UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS PRESS PRESIDENTIAL SERIES. GREAT INSITE OF THE GROWING UNITED STATES DURING OUR POLITCAL DEVELOPMENT AND THE UGLY SIDE OF PERSONAL POLITICS. INTRIGUE REACHED A FEVERED PITCH WITH LESSOR KNOWN INDIVIDUALS ELECTED AS PRESIDENT WHILE THE ICONS, CLAY, BENTON, WEBSTER AND CALHOUN HELD OUR COUNTRY IN THE SENATE.

To my knowledge, this is the most recent bio on John Tyler, our tenth president. Tyler's presidential contributions are debated by scholars. This book highlights past scholarship and is quite detailed on the political events and people surrounding Tyler's presidency. It does an adequate job of setting the stage by explaining what was happening in American culturally and economically at the time of Tyler's term. John Tyler was a president without a party. He was despised and harangued throughout his term, and despite the trememdous pressures, he did some very important things. These acts and their later role on our nation, is well presented in Peterson's book. I still came away with mixed feelings about Tyler. I think this is because the views of him are so contradictory. Another book to compliment this one is Seager's and Tyler Too. Seager's book details Tyler, the man, and his married life to Julia Gardiner. Without reading both books it is tough to get a full picture. Highly recommended for a detailed and comprehensive look at Tyler's presidency. Well researched, many primary sources (letters) and a full bibliography in the back.

This book fairly and vividly relates the "accidential" presidency of John Tyler. The author conveys the unique difficulties faced by Tyler as he assumes the presidency from W. H. Harrison. In fact, Tyler was most courageous in standing firm against Henry Clay and his Whig cohorts, who tried extremely hard to bully Tyler into submission. Norma Peterson, the author, provides credit where it is due, be it with Tyler or his equally courageous Secretary of State, Daniel Webster. The story in total flows extremely well, and maintains the interest of the reader throughout. The author's stance overall is pro-Tyler, and she bases this on clear reasoning and factual analysis. In total I agree with her position, that Tyler has received far less credit for his accomplishments and strength of presidential character than most historians have given him.

I read this about 8 years ago. I loved its ambition, characters, pace, and setting. I recall the jacket mentioning something about this being the first in a quartet of novels. I haven't seen anything by him since, nor have I ever found another copy of this. Anyone know what's up?

Powerful prose and a naively blundering protagonist characterize this vast tale of pre-war hankering and post-war stumbling as Richard Thurgo, a young and reluctant London solicitor, gets sucked into a world which is never quite what it seems. Drawn to the Hamburg region of Germany as a young man, in the nineteen thirties, through the glamorous goings-on of a somewhat mysterious elder brother, the young Thurgo discovers a sense of comfort in the dark German countryside that he never found at home. Still he manages to stumble about and disgrace himself and lose what he most wants while there.

Back in England he tries to make a go of things before and during the years of conflict with Hitler but, when the war is finally won, he finds himself suddenly yanked away again, this time to a world of intrigue on the Mediterranean, courtesy of a dead relative. Smuggling, war-contraband and a case of mistaken identity suddenly give Thurgo a chance at a new life (and, perhaps, to revive what he had before the war) so off he goes to defeated Germany under an assumed identity where his pre-war facility with the German language enables him to pass himself off as a native. There he falls in with all sorts of reckless and feckless fellows, on the margins of cold-war politics, espionage and Hamburg's growing underworld, where he makes a place for himself, though it is never the one he thinks he has made. In the end he rises, more by accident than design, to be a kingpin in that underworld, though he is ever an outsider and a man who gets the signals wrong.

This is a tale of losing and finding and losing again, filtered through the clumsy and groping soul of a British expatriate who, for much of the tale, seems to forget he is English. But English he is and the homeland exerts a relentless tidal pull upon him at the end. This Thurgo is a sensitive soul, if lost and awkward in his dealings with others, as clumsy in his relationships with those around him, as he is physically: an overlarge and somewhat uncooordinated fellow whose imposing size stands him in good stead as lieutenant to a Hamburg gangster with a Nazi past. Thurgo, too, slides in and out of the Nazi shadow, abetted at times by unseen hands from home and in the British secret service in the occupied German territories.

From youth to aging underworld kingpin, Righard Thurgo conducts us on his magical mystery tour of a life which is as alien to him at the end as it was at the beginning. He is never clear why he gave up what he had for the German persona he adopted but in the end he cannot hold onto that either, or to any of those whose lives touched his. He is the lost ship which has slipped its moorings, wandering about on the open sea, wind-driven and storm tossed, a man of reflection in a body and world demanding action. And so he is a reluctant actor in that world, an always astute, if perversely unperceptive, observer of the activities around him. This is a big book and one which is filtered through the unreliable eyes of an unreliable spirit but it is rife with insight and recreates a world of new beginnings though these beginnings don't offer solace, in the end, to the soul which sought them.

I read this book about 5 years ago and have searched for other books by it's author. I've endured many embarassing moments asking big bookstore chain teenage employees if they have anything else by the guy that wrote "Richard's Feet," but it is truly a great book. I read several novels a week and I like books with strong characters, especially anti-hero's like in "The Ginger Man" by Donleavy. You'll love it.

i think this book is too deep and meaningful.. it enters too deep into the morals and values of man....

Following the ending of "Oedipus the King," Oedipus was exiled from Thebes, blind and a beggar. We learn from "Oedipus at Colonus" that his sons, Eteocles and Polyneices engaged in a civil war for the throne of Thebes (covered in "Seven Against Thebes" by Aeschylus). The two brothers kill each other and Creon, brother of Jocasta, becomes king. He orders that Eteocles, who nobly defended his city, shall receive an honorable burial, but that Polyneices, for leading the Argive invaders, shall be left unburied. This leads Antigone, sister to both of the slain brothers, to have to choose between obeying the rule of the state, the dictates of familial binds, and the will of the gods. This, of course, is the matter at the heart of this classic tragedy by Sophocles.

But I have always been pleased to discover that many students, when reading "Antigone," quickly come to the conclusion that it is Creon who is the main character in the tragedy (the same way Clytemnestra is the main character in Aeschylus's "Agamemnon"). In this volume, Gita Wolf and Sirish Rao retell the story so that the title character is indeed the main character (I suspect they are borrowing more than a few ideas from Anoulih's retelling of the play in 1944 while France was occupied by the Nazis).

It is too easy to see the issues of this play, first performed in the 5th century B.C., as being reflected in a host of more contemporary concerns, where the conscience of the individual conflicts with the dictates of the state. However, it has always seemed to me that the conflict in "Antigone" is not so clear-cut as we would suppose. After all, Creon has the right to punish a traitor and to expect loyal citizens to obey. Ismene, Antigone's sister, chooses to obey, but Antigone takes a different path. The fact that the "burial" of her brother consists of the token gesture of throwing dirt upon his face, only serves to underscore the ambiguity of the situation Sophocles was developing.

The chief virtue of this retelling, in addition to the excellent illustrations by Indrapramit Roy, is that young readers will better be able to put themselves in the place of Antigone as the tragedy plays out. Consequently, this is a much more personal version of the tale than the original play by Sophocles.

Superbly illustrated by eight of Indrapramit Roy's two-color silk-screened illustrations, Sophocles' Antigone is a splendidly presented retelling of the tragic story told by the blind prophet Teiresias of a Greek princess who discovers that her brother (a rebel against the rule of their uncle Creon) has been murdered and his body left unburied. Torn between her fealty to her uncle and her familial love for her brother, as well as deference to the gods, Antigone is a story of the tragic conflicts between love and duty, honor and the law. A physically beautiful publication, Sophocles' Antigone is a welcome and much appreciated work that will totally engage the attention and appreciation of contemporary readers.

First there was "The Stainless Steel Rat", our introduction to Slippery Jim DiGriz, aka the Stainless Steel Rat, a high-tech, futuristic conman and thief, who is caught after a long and successful career by the galactic special corps, and recruited to join them because it takes a thief to catch a thief. Then followed four more books in chronological order, "The Stainless Steel Rat's Revenge", "The Stainless Steel Rat Saves The World", "The Stainless Steel Rat Wants You", and "The Stainless Steel Rat For President". Then, apparently growing bored with the direction his stories were taking, Harrison retreated to the beginning and wrote the prequel, "A Stainless Steel Rat Is Born". This book is the sequel to that one, and is in turn followed by "The Stainless Steel Rat Sings The Blues".

There are dangers to writing prequels that were unplanned at the time the original story was written; this book mostly avoids them. It is necessary to make it plausible that the character/s have had these experiences prior to the later stories, and that their characters have developed from these experiences into the character/s they are at the beginning of the original. It is easy to see how the Jim DiGriz from this book became the Jim DiGriz at the beginning of the original. It is also necessary, and much more difficult, to make a story that is interesting, but yet have it remain plausible that the events in it are not referred back to in the chronologically later, but earlier written, stories. Surprisingly, that too is managed well in this book.

What that leaves us with is a book which succeeds well at what it sets out to do: to be a fun romp, action-packed, plot-driven, not to be taken any more seriously than it takes itself, which is not very, but enjoyable brain-candy. The dialogue is a bit stilted, the characters are somewhat two-dimensional, the "philosophy" propounded by the members of the alien culture is downright silly, and Harrison never lets a little thing like consistent characterization get in the way of keeping the plot lively; DiGriz is supposed to be brilliant, but he makes enough stupid mistakes to keep himself in one exciting crisis after another. This isn't anything like great art, but it IS fun, and sometimes that's all you want. For those times, this is a perfectly enjoyable light read.

When I first starting reading Harry Harrison, I thought that he was an average writer. Later, however, I realized that he is far from average,. His earlier Stainless Steel Rat were not as good, but I think he was just getting used to the Slippery Jim diGriz character. "Stailess Steel Rat Gets Drafted" was not his best but definetly one of them.I would tell anyone to read this, in a second. Thanks for taking the time to read this review.

This is the book that got me started on the whole Rat series. This book is great! It is exciting, and humorous. I recomend it to everyone.

I am really into this author. This is probably my favorite of her books. I really hope she's the real deal. Everything she says makes sense, but in the back of my mind I can't help but wonder about her credibility. For example, when she's telling someone about their deceased loved one, she'll say "Did they have beautiful eyes, oval shaped face, broad features, sweet smile?". That could be anyone! EVERYONE thinks their loved one has "beautiful eyes". You'll never hear a mother say about her dead son "Oh no, he was very unpleasant looking".

The last review is correct. Sylvia does give very good advivce and is inspirational. So I guess that makes this book worth it alone.

ive read the majority of sylvia browne's books and am always quick to snatch up new releases. i noticed they become repetitive even after reading only two or three. since i am a huge fan, this doesnt bother me. (well, maybe it does a little...)
Blessings from The Other Side is far from her first publication and it does mimic a couple of her previous books, but its so uplifting and inspirational, those few tiny drawbacks fall by the wayside. if you are someone who is interested but a little annoyed by the repetition, this is a book for you. especially if you've lost a loved one, like i have. it offers comfort and wisdon, just as promised.

I absolutely love this book. I've read it once already and am reading it for a second time. It really helped me to deal with the breakup of my boyfriend and I, and it gave me a lot of hope for the future. I've read many of Browne's other works, and I didn't find this one too repetitive. Sure, she covers some of the same ground as in her other books (mainly to benefit 1st time readers), but she does so very briefly. I can't say enough good things about "Wisdom and Comfort..." It really is inspiring. Even if you don't believe in her theories, her advice is practical and helpful. She discusses how to deal with grief, when and how to forgive others, how to choose a mate (wisely), ect. "Wisdom and Comfort..." is amazing. You won't regret buying it.