Having studied PCR 1, 2 and 3 I found that there was a large leap up to PCR 4. The main problem being that all of the grammar explanations are in Chinese with no English translation, this can make it rather hard to get the gist of some of the examples. Another problem is the HUGE vocabulary lists, for the first lessons alone there are 72 new vocab words and 26 new words for the grammar notes. This all makes it rather hard to get through the text and understand it as the density of new words is rather high. Having said that the stories are varied and interesting as they introduce Chinese history and culture.

The layout of the textbook is text, vocab, grammar then exercises for each chapter, of which there are fifteen. At the end of every five chapters there is a set of more difficult exercises which review the last five chapters. The exercises are set at a good level to test what has been done and consolidate well. The criticism I would have here is the instructions for the exercises being in Chinese (and very brief) sometimes sends me looking for a Chinese friend to explain to me exactly what is wanted, perhaps if the explanations were a little more substantial it might make life easier.

This book is unique among the other chinese learning books I've seen in that the stories are written without pinyin. This forced me to actually read the characters, instead of just using the pinyin as a crutch. The text is also reasonably interesting. The only problem I have with this book is that the vocab lists for a single lesson are really long (more than 70 words per lesson) Otherwise, it's a great book. (P.S. Canada rules!)

I first read this book before I became aquatinted with the 'New Musicology' of cultural criticism. I assumed it to be a sociological report, rather than a musicological one. I did think it odd that this 'sociologist' took such as consistently hostile viewpoint of the musicians within I.R.C.A.M. and thought that some of the scholarship was not very rigorous. I assumed that this was because it was a sociologist 'out of her element,' discussing issues, with which she was not familiar. I figured that she must have had a passing bad experience with the modernists and gone to study them, while complaining about them in revenge.
Later, in the course of studies in musicology, I came upon the strange camp of 'cultural criticism,' and was surprised to learn that there actually is a group that does not attempt to make a logical argument. This viewpoint holds that it is futile to quest after truth, because all there is for anyone is a viewpoint constructed of a culturally specific semiotic code, that we can only understand the world through that code, and that we are therefore always biased to the point of being unable to really know anything. Therefore, in this viewpoint there is no knowledge, only a culturally situated set of biases, and any attempt to assert truth is looked upon as merely some sort of cultural power play.
Georgina Born fits into this category. Her scholarship is good compared to many examples of the 'cultural critic' literature, many of which are purposefully obscure and jargonistic, merely to intimidate the reader with rhetoric. This is a trick that they ironically picked up from academia (who largely did that unintentionally). However, when there is no truth, why not try to assert yourself over the others with whatever means? When there is no truth, there are no lies. Postmodern thought has recently spawned individuals who regard systems of logic as merely culturally situated (and oppressive, biased) semiotic codes, with no relation to reality. Georgina Born uses good logic by comparison, but it should be noted that this research was probably inspired by the work of those others that I have just mentioned. One of the things that is necessary to pave the way for such criticism is the clearing aside of those pesky scholars that still think (God forbid) that it is possible to know something and that some things don't exist for the sole purpose of oppressing the proletariat, the woman, the African American, etc.
This book seems primarily motivated as a 'slam' (to use such as vulgar colloquialism) on the avant garde. Part of the doctrine of the avant garde was that they were supposed to be bringing the 'future' and destiny of a civilization back to it; they were prophets or 'cutting edge.' This of course implies that there was something to bring back; the idea of truth is implicit in the statement. The postmoderns have spent a good deal of their time trying to discredit the bulwarks of the avant garde and the study of music theory. This book is part of that endeavour. It does contain some interesting titbits and some food for thought (the avant garde and certainly the institution of IRCAM could use some reforms here and there, no one is perfect). My question of postmodern scholarship in general is 'if there is no truth, what is the purpose of study'? This study could have been so much more interesting if it incorperated more points of view on the issues raised by ICRAM as an institution. Instead, we only find the scholars of deconstructionism, cultural criticism, postmodernism, etc consulted... in short, the book is dominated by a totalitarianism of the left.

The edifice of IRCAM, Insitut de Recherche et de Coordination Acoustique/Musique, an underground mecca for the new in Paris, well Europe is to foster a marriage between the current potentialities in technology and creativity,music composition. Pierre Boulez its founder and developer said so much in 1976, as part of the publicity. "The creator's intuition alone is powerless to provide a comprehensive translation of musical invention. It is necessary for him to collaborate with scientific research worker inorder to envision the distant future." This is the first in English at least, profile of this historic institutionalization of new music, or the avant-garde. Although any of these terms are meaningless today. Who can define anymore, what a progressive endeavor is with the fragmentation of culture. Ms Born lived at IRCAM, it is housed in the lower bowels of the Pompidou Centre, the well-thought out royal blue and bright red smokestacks of architect Renzo Piano punctuating the 19th century ambience which is Paris. The red light area of Rue St Denis is walking distance and composers from all over Europe who work by invitation at IRCAM never fail to find inspiration away from the sterility of their work in composition. Ms Born is quite interesting for she projects the agenda here as a social one. She sees a larger frame than the music itself by drawing on thoughts of noted sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. Bourdieu has done so much as eqaute how, who and why listens to new creations in music. And we learn it is now and perhaps will always remain an elitist cadre of those who follow and nourish themselves with culture. We learn through MsBorn, how a composer works and how she/he makes proposals,structures for a work with the scientific aid of someone who specializes in the electronic/computer end of music. There is many times a fine line which separates the two. Each the composer for one must have some knowledge of the computer potentialities and the technician should be versed in the history of c! omposition, the achievements the avnat-garde has made since the end of the War. We find quite fascinating work with multiphonics, where a soloist, say a flutist or trombonist, sings and plays simultaneously. The result varies in an out-of-tune (at least to the traditional Beethoven ear) chord, quite arresting in its effectation. All these materials have been amply indexed, the composer merely chooses, from a table,and can hear the result from an in-house musician,vigorously versed in all the extended techniques. Ms.Born also reveals the dirty laundry at IRCAM the lack of a stable agenda at times, in the beginning years the politics, jettisoning founding members as Vinko Globokar, an equally gifted composer/trombonist. And Boulez the ultimate composer. He does stand well above anyone in Europe today. I should say did ,the Seventies and Eighties were the Boulez years of high power. Now he has retired, not even conducting as much the Ensemble Intercontemporain, a select ensemble of virtuosi,who have toured the world with IRCAM's message. And what might that be? Ms Born it's quite bizarre, she doesn't mentioned specific names in her wonderful profile. She was told not to, or perhaps the insights she received might result in retributions at higher levels, a guillotine might fall unexpectedly. So as you read through this book, composers and personnel are encripted in code. Quite mysteriously haunting. Foucualt in an interview with Boulez in the early Eighties said that music (and Foucault was not one to speak of music) that music of all the arts has certainly kept pace with technology. And that's wonderful except that IRCAM seems to be an elitist endeavor. It received the lion's share of all funding for all the arts in France. And when you consider that Paris houses 70% of French composers, yet only a handfull actually receive the knighted honor to work at IRCAM, it seems the avant-garde wastes no time in acquiring the kings robes to encript its content. Of all the music I've heard from IRCAM, I can't say I can ! distinguish one composer from another. All seem magnetized toward the use of metal instruments, percussion, very cold gestures. Peter Eotvos, Boulez first conductor-successor was the first to realize the severity at IRCAM didn't make interesting music. SO Mr.Eotvos turned an ear toward the accessible yet not obviously so. His "Chinese Opera" for the Ensemble is quite powerful and evocative. It seems the avant-garde cannot cope with the real world, Just like the wood the ancestors of Venice once brought in 550 AD to buttress their city which is now Venice. The wood will not rot as long as it remains submerged,as oxygen hits it, the real social world, it rots. Ms Born in one chapter the "Social Problems of Production" draws light on IRCAM's social problems. Also there is a generous accompaniment of photographs of the instruments and computer systems used. As for the future of music and IRCAM well it will persist as long as it remains submerged ,cloistered away from the vagaries of the real world.

This is a civilian reprint of the 1983 ST31-91B. The issue version with it's waterproof pages is a collectors item and not worth much else. Both versions are now very outdated in much of their treatment and management of illness/injury. Frankly when I first got the book in 1983, I didn't find it's sparse outline presentation of information very useful. You can find more current information, better presented in some of the newer books on Wilderness Medicine

Its good if you are getting it for what it is intended for some people get it just to read it but its not really a reading book

You will not learn anything new in this book that you don't already know. The book consists of 4 or 5 different essays written by 4 or 5 different authors. It isn't a clear book describing the civil war. I was looking for a book that described each of the reasons for the start of the civil war. This book didn't do that. Each essay tried to make a different point - but it was not clear. The book was too scattered for me. So if you want a more in depth, and more straight forward book about the start of the civil war - try another author.

In the face of recent debates over the Confederate flag flying over South Carolina's capital, a lot has been said regarding the author's subject. Some contend that the war was over state's rights and others contend it was over the issue of slavery. It has even been suggested by many sources that Lincoln came to oppose slavery late. I bought this book hoping to read an author who both knew history and could examine the facts impartially. I clearly found both.

The editor explores pre-Civil War history through the voices of the main figures and groups. In the process I discovered that both states rights and anti-slavery contentions are correct. However, these two are so closely tied that it hardly matters, as you will discover through the eyes of the players. Please read this book. This book should be required reading in every high school history class in America.

I found the book to be the best slice of easy reading history I've ever read, and highly applicable to related debates of the 21st century.

Incidentally, if you are interested in the unique origins of the Republican party, the formation of our two parties, the demise of early parties, the early black leaders, the early womens' movements or even early trends in women's literature, this is an amazing read regarding those topics alone. Can't put it down, highligher in hand stuff.

I bought this textbook with the expectation that it would faciltate me in learning Brazilian Portuguese in combination with my Spanish, and despite the mediocre reviews, being the only "Portuguese for Spanish Speakers" book on the market, I purchased it. Please do not repeat my mistake! Avoid this book at all costs.

While it is certainly not the worst textbook imaginable, it merits a $1 price tag, nothing more. Some problems offhand: the grammar explanations are poor and do not get into enough depth (I felt that through my highly limited study of Portuguese I knew everything the book covered before even starting with it, except perhaps vocabulary); the organization of the book is confusing and not "user-friendly"; even the print/typeface used look cheap and make reading the book annoying; my biggest complaint, many of the book's exercises revolve around transcribing Portuguese sentences into the book's own system of transcription, (**NOT** IPA, if you're familiar with it) which I felt was a complete waste of space, time, and simply disconcerted me.

There are a very few number of useful tips/"pointers" etc. in the book, and the numerous vocabulary lists may help you if you don't like dictionaries. All in all, however, I strongly advise you against buying this book and I plan to get rid of my copy as soon as possible.

NOTE: The actual title of the book IS spelled correctly, it is Amazon's mistake ["Com Licenca!" (with the proper cedilha) and not "Com Licencia!", so don't let that put you off].

This is the only book of its kind in existence--a textbook of Portuguese for those who already know Spanish. It does a good job highlighting the differences between the two languages, and wastes little time on concepts which are identical.
That said, this book is a very poor guide to learning Portuguese. The organization is terrible, with some irregular verbs in the beginning, more later, and a few more splashed in here and there. The vocabulary doesn't follow any sort of progression throughout the book, either.
This book was the text in a course "Portuguese for Spanish Speakers" at CU-Boulder. The only reason I can hack it in Portuguese is because of my instructor. The book works much better in a classroom setting, but even then it confused my whole class.

I used this book to study Portuguese before I went to Portugal last year and had no problems making myself understood on my trip. If you know Spanish fairly well, this is the book for you. Although the subject of the book is to teach you Portuguese as spoken in Brazil, I would think that people interested in learning Continental Portuguese could benefit from this book as well. I highly recommend buying the audio tapes that go with this book as you will almost certainly not get certain pronounciations correct without hearing them. One of the reviewers faulted this book for its grammatical and typographical errors, which is nonsense. The reason it's in English is that it is aimed at native speakers of English who also happen to speak Spanish as a second language, such as college students who've had a couple of years of study in Spanish.

Having actually read the book, unlike most of the reviewers in this list that have not cracked its covers or turned a single page, I think that my review should carry some weight.

First, global warming is almost certainly due to macroenvironmental factors that are not due to human activity. This is widely documented from everything from studies of glacial gase entrapment to ocean sediments.

Second, wide variations in climatic conditions are the NORM. Thus the current period of global warming, that has continued since the Little Ice Age several hundreds years ago (and centuries before CO2 emissions from human activity were a factor) can not be thought of as a radical departure from normal climatic change.

Third, Carl Sagan wrote of a "baloney detector" that we should use when evaluating science. One of the surest signs of baloney is the "reducto ad hominum" argument. True, "only" two PHDs were involved in this book (there are countless books by a SINGLE PHD that are not attacked in this manner) but that is not the fault of the book. Also true, the book is sponsored by a pro-development group, but there are countless books by environmental groups that are not debased solely by that connection. Finally, most of the science is fully footnoted and you are able to check their conclusions. This is not true of most of the environmental movements polemics.

On the whole the book is readable and does not insult a laymans intelligence. The sources and bibliography are valuable for those that wish to take an honest inquiry further.

I have an open mind about all the subjects dealt with in this book and therefore found reading it very worthwile. Yes, the authors are from what one could call the 'other side' as they make no bones about directly attacking what the authors call 'ideological environmentalism'. However, the book is well written given the number of authors involved and clearly presents their arguments and information.

The book covers such topics as global warming, sustainable development, biotechnology, chemicals/pollutants and the environment, population, et. al. that should be of interest to everyone.

The strength of the book is the attempt to bring scientific research and data to bear on these important and sensitive issues and the policies that exist or that have been promoted to deal with them. This approach is very much needed and the authors should be commended for their work, regardless of where you might stand on any of the issues. We need reasoned debate.

The authors do engage in some of their own political poking at those they don't agree with and do resort to the straw man approach using 40 year old books and articles as the straw man and they do also use statistics in ways ranging from acceptable to somewhat dubious that present their case in the strongest possible light. They do ignore certain issues such as biodiversity where positive data (their obvious preference) is not available to support their strong optimism that markets and science have and will benefit humanity and solve all its problems. However, this political and economic perspective is to be expected from the American Enterprise Institute and is not presented in a too polemical tone.

Overall this book is comprehensive in its coverage, informative, well referenced and thought provoking, and therefore I can highly recommend it for those seriously and dispassionately interested in understanding these issues better.

I do not agree with certain of their analyses or use of statistics or all of their underlying philosophy but I commend them again for providing a sane and reasoned book that gives me the opportunity to study, analyse, raise questions, search references and become better informed.

Lets not shoot all the messengers or we can't discuss anything serious anymore.

and it's becoming easier to search for truth with the emergence of a brave group of people who are not afraid to go against the status quo and ask us to look beyond the sensational headlines and political correctness of the so called "green movement".

From global warming to biotech food to chemicals, Ronald Bailey and the Competitive Enterprise Institute risk a lot by going against "conventional wisdom" and asking us to re-examine some of the hottest topics in the headlines today. Well researched and written so even a lay person like myself can understand it, this is a don't miss book for anyone who wants to stop being scared all the time because some "green" group or bureaucracy needs to keep the public in a state of anxiety in order to survive financially. The greatest payoff from reading the book? I find that I feel much better about the state of the planet and things do not seem so hopeless. Thanks CEI and Ronald Bailey.

Beware: This book, besides having typographical errors and no index, does not conform at all (!) to the current edition of Robert's Rules (namely "Robert's Rules of Order Newly Revised" tenth edtion, the edition recognized by parliamentarians). The editor or author has added too much mis-information and has mis-defined too many terms for this book to be considered a "condensation" or "summary" of the motions, procedures and terminology of Robert's Rules of Order, of any edition. If your bylaws say that its official parliamentary authority is (some edition of) Robert's Rules of Order, then be aware that "21st Century..." is way too different from Robert's Rules to be useful as a gentle introduction. Instead, the book will lead you to practices that contradict the procedures in Robert's Rules of Order. I would not have minded a book that condenses the older (public domain) editions, and thus LEAVES OUT detail too rarely used, but to ADD new rules and new procedures that contradict Robert's Rules of Order is deceptive, and serves to fool the innocent reader who thinks he is reading a simple introductory text to the real thing. So, beware that the procedures in "21st Century" are the author's or editor's opinions, and not parliamentary law as described in any edition of Robert's Rules. In closing, in my opinion, there are too many bad definitions and too many new (i.e., unsupported) procedures to use the name "Robert's Rules" in its title. If you are looking for an easy-reading paperback that truly conforms to Robert's Rules, without including other non-Robert (contradictory) procedures, "This ain't it, folks!"

I advise a large, successful student government in Florida. I bought a copy of this book for each of my officers without really reading it, and wish I had. While it is good and helpful for explaining the standard rules of order, it doesn't always apply to a setting such as ours. Instead, it is much more useful for board meetings, and corporate business events. It takes a lot of interpretation and ignoring of some items for our use of the book.

Still, it does explain many things of use for all organizations, so if you need something to use, it will work, just be cautious about who you order it for.

This book was very helpful for me. It kept the meetings in order when in the past the meetings would get out of order. Other People in the meeting now understand the importance of keeping the meetings in order.

This book lacks any content. When it does say something, it is brief. Don't buy this book: invest in Elements of Style or the NYT Style Book. This one is skimpy and cursory.

This book may be a good, concise reference for a teacher. If you are trying to learn about grammar on your own, save your money: try ""Grammar Smart : A Guide to Perfect Usage (The Princeton Review)"" instead.

The best use I ever put five dollars to was in buying this book. A very handy reference, and I enjoy idly flipping through it, allowing one topic to lead me to another. Refreshingly simple and complete. A great book to have if you're at all paranoid about whether you're whoing when you should be whoming.

Contains errors and non-specifics similiar to the program. If you are buying it because you are just getting into Baan, you will be overwhelmed. If you are buying it to get the most out of your present Baan system, you will be underwhelmed by this book. Save your money.

This book is a very good source on Baan for a novice and moderate practitioner. Some modules like Baan Project are not covered much. On the contrary modules like Baan Finance are covered at length. Moreover the modules are not structured as they are in Baan. This makes it a bit difficult to follow through. Since this is the first book on Baan, the efforts of the author are appreciable in compiling the information on such a massive ERP application.

Upon initial scanning of the areas in Baan that I am familiar with (i.e. the Tools package) I found it very brief. The book tries to cover all of the modules within Baan. The breadth is noted, but so is the lack of depth. I will find this book useful when first introducing myself to an overview of what a module can do. If you want an in-depth knowledge of what a session does then look at the online help within Baan!

There is no doubt that Wole Soyinka is a good writer - his Nobel prize was justly deserved and not a case of affirmative action as another reviewer insultingly suggested. However, someone encountering Soyinka for the first time in this book would not be tempted to try reading his more famous writings: this book is, to be frank, not well written. Based on three lectures Soyinka gave at Harvard University in 1997, Soyinka touches upon the very topical reparations controversy in the first essay, praises the Senegalese writer Leopold Senghor in the second and spends the last examining African poets' attempts to deal with the legacies of colonialism and racism.

Through all three lectures Soyinka employs a very dense style, one that might have worked well when speaking for an academic audience at Harvard but one that does not translate well onto the written page. Phrases like 'slaves into the twentieth-first century, mouthing the mangy mandates of mendacity, ineptitude, corruption and sadism' sound impressive but are merely a means for Soyinka to play around with words when he could be spending his time seriously addressing very important issues like reparations. When he does get down to business, he writes that 'reparations would involve the acceptance by Western nations of a moral obligation to repatriate the post-colonial loot salted away in their vaults, in real estate and business holdings' but never goes into detail exactly what this would involve. What is more disturbing is his frequent references to the U.S., which reveal his real ignorance about American life: examples include his belief that David Duke could have been elected President in 1992 and that the Ku Klux Klan held or holds a 'tentacular hold over power structures across the United States.' If he knows so little about the country where he is giving his lectures (and also holds a job as a Professor at Emory University), should we trust him to do a good job at addressing the international debate on reparations?

I didn't give this book one star for the fact that Soyinka's second and third lectures are reasonably coherent and do a good job of tracing the literary history behind Negritude. (For instance, he discusses the reasons why American black writers were in closer contact with Francophone blacks rather than their Anglophone brothers.) Yet even here he does not attempt to present any kind of thesis, but is merely contented with quoting various poems and doing some quick literary analysis.

Readers with an interest in discovering why Soyinka won the Nobel Prize should thus turn elsewhere.

Wole Soyinka's mastery of the English language, as I have had occasion to say on another forum, borders on the supernatural. And perhaps therein lies the man's flaw--but that is a matter I will get to in a minute.

"The Burden of Memory, the Muse of Forgiveness," you must understand, is "in the obligatory [Soyinka] fashion," a compilation of oral lectures the learned professor gave at Harvard. You must understand too, that the writing is basically academic, and suited more to an oral lecture. And because we speak of Soyinka, the writing is characteristically difficult.

So then, his lectures-turn-books (including, of course, "The Burden of Memory, the Muse of Forgiveness") are not the best of works with which to appraise Soyinka's genius. For a true appreciation of Soyinka's literary prowess, you must read his plays and novels.

The flaw, of which I spoke earlier, is captured in the question a friend once posed to me (not Soyinka): "Is not the purpose of language to communicate?" Without a full-fledged dictionary, and the will to re-read whole paragraphs, one would struggle to keep up with Soyinka's writing.

In all, whether one likes it or not, the man is a literary giant, period!

I was extremely impressed with Professor Soyinka's argument for reparations not only for Africa, but for all victims of enslavement, colonialism, and oppression. His style may be difficult, but for the able reader it is an excellent introduction to the conditions, both past and present, contributing to the current state of affairs throughout the African continent. It provides much food for thought on the question of just what is justice. Bob Marley's song "War" was constantly in my mind. It would be an honor to shake Professor Soyinka's hand.