I have had this book for years, and have yet to use it a single time. It has about 10 or so "mini-scenarios" or interludes, a few of which are a bit longer. They are intended for insertion into an ongoing campaign. My main problem with the book is that many of them are set in way out-of-the-way places, like Siberia and India, and the 3 or 4 that aren't are short and not very good. This is definitely the worst Call of Cthulhu supplement I own. Although I should add that most of the ones I own are absolutely excellent, so perhaps my expectations for a CoC book are a bit higher than for most RPGs.

This book is broken down into chapters, each emphasizing a particular mode of travel or somehting similar, along with an adventure or mini-adventure revolving around that mode of transport or whatever. For example, one chapter is a short adventure set aboard a zeppelin, another set aboard a train...etc etc. I guess that sounds like a decent idea to start with, and ya know, different strokes for different folks, but I personally just did not like any of the adventures in this book. They all seem to me contrived and a bit cliche, and none of them seem more in the mood of Indiana Jones than Call of Cthulhu - there's plenty of adventure but not much suspense or scariness. About the only use I have for this book is for the deck plans of the zeppelin, train, and other info on vehicles. It is probably the least useful (or should I say most useless) Call of Cthulhu sourcebook I have. But take it for what it's worth - that's just my opinion. I would strongly recommend you take a good look at this book before buying it to see if it's really what you want.

Fearful Passages is a book containing several scenarios to the RPG game- Call of Cthulhu. All of them are linked with a way of traveling. I think its a good scenario pack, although some of the adventures are hard to play. No, i dont mean they're difficult, i mean it is hard to think of some good reason for Investigators to travel to India, Syberia or Irak. In my opinion the best adventure in this pack is "Fear of Flying". It was the first scenario we ever played in Call of Cthulhu and from that time we play CoC regulary. All in all Fearful Passages is an amusing adventure pack and a good way to spend your money.

This is NOT a good review book. I teach AP Biology and I can tell you that this book creates confusion. The way in which it was written is disjointed and cumbersome. It goes into WAY too much detail. In a way, the Barron's book reteaches... but doesn't review. I bought this book when I took AP Biology 11 years ago, I hated it it then and when I started teaching AP Biology I bought the new version. IT WAS THE SAME DANG BOOK!!!!!
Although biology has changed much in 11 years this book was the same long-winded read! I use it ONLY as a source of practice tests. If you want to read it, go to the library.... don't waste your money.

This book's not too bad..I used it to study for the AP Bio Test along with a careful read of the textbook (we used Campbell's textbook) and a few other textbooks like Purves and Orians.. and I pulled off a 5. However, I didn't think the material was written in a clear manner. I looked at the Cliffs version, too, and I think that one's much better, materialwise. The Barron's seem to be much more better at the hard test question-making.

I found that while this book did help in some aspects, it could have been a lot better. The reviews are, frankly, awful. They are dry and difficult to understand. Although the number of practice tests is great, the questions themselves were much harder than the ones on the actual test. (I usually got a three or a low four on the practice test, but I got a five on the actual test.) If you do use it, I would reccommend using it with a book that explains the concepts well, like the Cliff Notes version. I used Cliff's and this one, and they balanced each other out well, since the questions in Cliff's tended to be too easy.

I have to say I did enjoy this book. The mistake I made was reading it after MZB's Arthurian tales. It's good for a modern fantasy book, although not really my thing. This book was a little to creepy for me with the whole evil boyfriend scene. If you don't mind a little black magic in the story it's ok. It was well written and did have good prevail over evil which made me feel much better. I did feel that Marion Zimmer Bradley almost brought me over the edge with too much evil.

The Inheritor is an early attempt at occult fiction of the type that came to fruition in books such as Ghostlight. All things considered, this is a good idea for a novel. The problem is, it needs about a hundred extra pages to resolve all the character development and side plots that Bradley builds up. The story centers around a psychotherapist named Leslie and her sister, Emily. Leslie has been experiencing psychic phenomena before the story begins, and "The Unseen" seems to be tracking her down. She buys a house in San Francisco (the book was written in 1984, before the idea of a normal person buying a house in San Francisco would have been the most fantastic element of the story) which happens to be a vortex of occult power. The place was owned by another psychologist, an occultist named Alison Musgrave who died without training a succsessor. The reason she didn't train a successor is because the person who would have filled that role, a musician named Simon, had a nasty habit of sacrificing cats and junkies in the garage. Leslie is, of course, sleeping with Simon. These could have been the ingredients of a very good book, if Bradley were to follow through. However, so much is left unfinished that the novel feels like a Persian carpet with a thousand frayed ends.

I enjoyed The Inheritor, I only wish Bradley had seen fit to finish it before sending it to her publisher.

Marion Zimmer Bradley has written another well-known book The Mist of Avalon. It is on the bestsellers list of New York Times, as well as this book should be. The reading keeps you wondering where it will take you next. With the turning of a page, you are not sure what to expect.
The Inheritor holds your attention while the author introduces her characters to you. There are Leslie, a doctor of pschology and her sister Emily, a conservatory student of music. The book opens simply with Leslie looking at a house because the apartment that Leslie and Emily share has become too small for them. She looks till she finds this wonderful little number that gives her the feeling of home.
The book becomes more intense from there. With the turn of a page, you wonder what will happen or who will pop up. I would recommend this book to any reader that enjoys a suspense reader with a twist of an ending.

I often find that the negative reviews are as helpful as the positive ones, and sometimes more so. Both English reviewers of this book were dead on in their assessment of it. The plot was tissue thin. The characters were shallow, their actions were not credible, and their development was nonexistent. How the marquess came to the conclusion he loved Lucinda seemed driven simply by the fact that it was the end of the book, and therefore time to wrap things up. As a minor note, a lot of the regencies I've read have fairly dense, small type, which is necessary to get a fully fleshed out story into the usual number of pages. The type in this book is rather large, and there is a lot more unoccupied space on a page than I'm accustomed to seeing in other regencies, which I think is rather telling. I've come to enjoy regencies as pleasant entertainment, but some are definitely better than others. This is the first one by Ms. Chesney that I've read, and she seems to have a decent reputation so perhaps I'll seek out another one and give it a try. However, with better books out there, I cannot recommend this one.

Is Chesney simply a lousy writer, or is she trying to play a joke on lovers of Regency romances? This book is so bad, its plot so farcical, its characterisation so thin and unrealistic that I can't help wondering whether someone's passing off a spoof here.

*No-one* in Regency times behaved as Chesney's characters do. Lucinda's actions are completely out of place for a young lady of quality of that time. The idea that she would ask a Marquess to marry her, let alone that she would speak to his mother as she did, is completely unbelievable. And as for the Marquess himself, he seems totally irredeemable - so how could she possibly fall in love with him? There is no motivation, either, for his sudden chage of character.

And the other elements to the plot - the servant, the jewellery theft, the attempted murder... I was rolling my eyes in disbelief.

Chesney also needs to take some lessons in technical writing skills: her sentence structure and grammar need a lot of attention.

Finally, I'd suggest that if she's going to write any more, she needs to take a sabbatical first and go and read some English social and political history, brush up on her grammar and period language, and read some books by much better writers such as Balogh, Kelly, Oliver and so on.

Publishers: please be more choosy in what you publish!

This is a very poorly-written book, in a number of ways. To take the plot first, Chesney has created a set of completely unbelievable characters: caricatures, especially the secondary characters who are portrayed in a one-dimensional manner with not one redeeming feature between them. The hero and heroine aren't particularly credible either, and as a reader I had little sympathy for them. As for the events depicted, I find it hard to believe that they are remotely credible within the Regency setting. The heroine, in particular, speaks and behaves in a way no lady of the period would have done whatever the provocation; and the Marquess's mother is similarly incredible.

Leaving aside the thin and barely believable plot, the author seems to me to have little skill at her craft. Her writing style: sentence structure, command of vocabulary and so on, is immature and distracts from the content of the book. While she tries to provide some history for the hero to explain his motivations, her attempts at doing this are very poorly done; in this respect, she has not one-hundredth of the skill of Patricia Oliver, for example.

Finally, there are numerous inaccuracies, both to the period and to the language and vocabulary; a British-born writer such as Chesney should certainly be able to do better at avoiding Americanisms in the dialogue of English Regency characters. And young unmarried ladies in that period would know little or nothing about mistresses or sex.

I have already disposed of my copy, and I cannot recommend this book to any other reader.

What's wrong with the system of training M.D.s endure for three years? According to Robert Marion, everything. Patching together the diaries of '90s interns with excerpts from books and his own memories, Marion leads us month by month throuhg a year of medical internship. Much about how interns suffer, how hateful and intractable the medical system is, rife with sarcasm. Apparently interns have enough energy to write diaries of their experience with stupid nurses, vengeful lab techs and God-complex MD-CEOs but not enough to appreciate the wonder of human biology and the extreme privilege of being allowed to get paid to practice for three years on onwitting patients before going on to the highest paid, most prestigious job you can have in the USA by just being good at a science and jumping through the hoops--one of which is internship.

Having read Learning to Play God (excellent) and Intern Blues (very elightening), both by Dr. Marion, I was thrilled to find Rotations on the shelf of my local bookstore. His desire to convey how much and how little has changed since the mid 80s when Intern Blues took place is commendable. However, his effort was fair to middling at best (if you have read the previous two books). Women are more accepted (thank goodness) and family leave time for pregancy is no longer much of an issue. But, late nights, incompetent techs, and 9-5 nurses (and doctors!) still exist basically unchanged. The main problem that I had with this book was the paucity of NEW information. Refering to previous works (Intern by Doctor X is very educational) can add to a work, but I felt that Rotations relied to heavily upon them. Dr. Marion is an excellent and honest writer, but Rotations is not the first of his works that I would recommend to my friends.

This book documents the lives of young doctors in a pediatric internship. By following their lives I got a better understanding of what it's like to be in their shoes. This book has so many characters that it's hard to follow. Likewise, the many characters are given no background or discriptions so it's hard to have concern for them even though they are going threw so much frustration and hardship from their intership. This book reads like a documentary which is not such a bad thing, just different. This book would be interesting to someone that is interested in medical training.

I began this book believing that William Randolph Hearst's granddaughter Patricia Hearst would be able to provide some insight into her grandfather's life and character, as well as her family's idea of what happened to Thomas Ince. However, Ms. Hearst opened the book with a disclaimer that her grandfather was not much discussed by her family, and that with his having died before her birth, she could only speculate along with everyone else about what Mr. Hearst was like, and about what happened to Tom Ince.

In addition to having boring fictional characters and an uninteresting, unresolved plot line, this poorly-written book was filled with fictional, inaccurate stereotypes of actual people that are no longer alive to defend themselves. Were any of the real people Ms. Hearst wrote about still living today, she would have been liable to lawsuits for slander. Hearst and her co-author paint Marion Davies as a mean, conniving, stupid, ill-mannered floozy who was with Hearst strictly for his money. Every other reference I have ever read about Miss Davies spoke of her generosity and kindness, her fun-loving nature, and her deep admiration for Hearst. None of that appears in this novel. Ms. Hearst doesn't spare her grandfather an ugly treatment either; nor is she at all kind in describing the movie stars that filled San Simeon with gaiety, laughter, and good-natured hijinks. In addition to gratuitously trashing the reputations of the well-known people in this novel, Ms. Hearst and her co-author also get wrong the few well-established facts concerning Tom Ince's death.

Read Marion Davies' own book, "The Times We Had," or any of the numerous biographies of stars of the early motion picture days to get a picture of what Hearst and Davies were really like, and the facts and rumors that circulated after Tom Ince's death. Even the speculative movie "The Cat's Meow" will provide a somewhat more accurate view of the people and circumstances involved.

I hate this book. The writing style and flow of thoughts the authors composed were fragmented. Annoying characters like Marion the dipstick, made reading torturous especially since she's on like every page - "OOhh daddy poo!", talking in her damn baby drivel. The heroine, Catha Burke was soo bland. She never affected me in any kind of way so having to read about her as she pursued the investigation was a bore. This book doesn't resolve some of the main reasons for reading the story, like who killed Thomas Ince, and is mostly flashbacks of boring snobbish parties with a lost heroine going nowhere.

As a speculative story on the alleged events surrounding film producer Thomas Ince's death in 1924, it greatly disappoints, offering no clear or conclusive hypothesis and relying heavily on sleazy innuendo. It is rather sloppy on historical detail (e.g. Greta Garbo did not arrive in the U.S. until 1925, John Barrymore was in London rehearsing for Hamlet at the time of the alleged events.) What makes MURDER AT SAN SIMEON truly reprehensible, however, is its trivialization of the silent film era. Fascinating performers like Charlie Chaplin and John Gilbert are reduced to tabloid fodder. Poor Marion Davies comes off the worst here; Hearst and Biddle's hatchet job of her almost makes Welles's mockery of her in CITIZEN KANE seem complimentary. In order to fully appreciate and understand silent movies, watch films like THE GOLD RUSH and SHOW PEOPLE instead.

The Lincoln Brigade fought ON the side of the Communist Left ( Republicans) and participated in the many attrocities such as executions of the clergy, press,ect. They were funded by Eleanor Roosevelt who was a "closet" Communist,trained and sent to Spain to help send Spain into the Soviet orbit.

Interesting, if for no other reason than to see for yourself the nature of the "true believers" of the Left. We now know that Americans participated in Stalin-inspired Trotskyite hunts within the ranks of the International Brigades. While Merriman almost certainly met his end at a Nationalist firing squad, how many American Reds met their end at Merriman's orders? The writing style of the book was in the nature of a justification of a cause that was morally bankrupt, even in the context of fighting fascism. I recommend the book to anyone who wishes to better understand the mindset of liberal thinking . . .

"American Commander in Spain" is a vivid account of the last years in the life of Robert Merriman. The book was written by his wife, who followed Merriman when he went to fight in the Spanish Civil War. The book will not be helpful to the profesional historian, save perhaps a few anecdotes that could link specific historical characters to specific places during the war. The book is also not a novel and cannot be read as a work with high literary intentions. Rather it is an interesting portrait of a man whose life has the special quality of blending reality and legend. Merriman became fiction when Hemingway, who met him during the war used him as the basis for his character Robert Jordan in "For whom the bell tolls." The work will therefore be of most interest to those readers looking for the sources where Literature drinks from Life and with some emotional attachment to the historical context.

...For when one reads about Robert Merriman it becomes clear that he was an american patriot searching for solutions to get his own country out of the Depression and later trying to stop the rise of Fascism in Europe. That his countrymen were so blind then (and it seems still now) cost them dearly in WWII. The insensitivity shown by these reviewers hurts most those of us who look up to the american volunteers in awe, not for their ideological beliefs, but for their sense of sacrifice and love for freedom. It is a sin against Humanity to see Merriman's death any other way. If there is a God and these other reviewers are ever judged, I only hope that all their sins will be remembered.

Really! I thought I was getting a page turner for my first e-book and this was so formula and boring. Don't make the same mistake I did.

This has got to be one of the worst Historical Romances I've ever read -- don't bother!

Lord Charles demands Patricia act the part of a proper and boring young Miss. Worse, she has to spend all her waking hours in cultivating her mind with a horrid governess. Rebellion is the name of her game, and he soon sends her off to America to prevent a terrible disgrace! A few years later... SHE'S BACK ! And determined to turn this hateful tyrant into her lovelorn servent!

I just finished reading this book and i was appauled. The book covers nothing but stripper stories which do nothing more than make the stripper out to be a major whore! I have no opinion on women selling their bodies, stripping, or making movies, but this book would definately make me respect them less than I already do.

This book is a joke! It covers different stories told supposedly by women in Exotic positions, such as strippers, prostitutes and porn stars. The stories are very well made up, at least the author has a creative mind. All it really talks about is the hundreds of lovers these women take on, nothing else.

...a text and photographic interview with 35 women of all ages from America, Europe, and the Middle East. The book is just as much about, for example, a 43 year old American photographer, a 56 year old teacher from France, a 36 year old cigarette vendor from Morocco, a 47 year old civil servant from Germany, a 59 year old events coordinator, a 49 year old Norwegian health councilor, a 37 year old Israeli philosopher, as it is about the few women -- a filmmaker, age 30, from the States, or a 53 year old Israeli sex educator or a 25 year old Moroccan belly dancer -- who you might call sex workers in the broadest sense.

The authors, who themselves appear in the book, asked various women four questions:
- What does the word "erotic" mean to you?
- Do you remember your first erotic feeling and could you show it to the camera?
- Can you remember your strongest erotic feeling and show it to the camera?
- Do you have a certain fantasy and could you show it to the camera?

The answers are sometimes earthy, and sometimes lack what we used to call critical consciousness, but they're vivid, varied, and honest.

The most innocent reply is from a Moroccan woman who says after being bartered away as a wife to a nomad, "It was only after my divorce that I got to know erotic feelings. It was when I felt love for a man whom I still see today. With him I am free to express myself. I can love now in more than only the one or two positions which we traditionally know in nomad life. Sleeping together in one big bed the whole night long is exciting for me. I am free to praise Allah for these feelings."

Her photos show her lifting the bottom of her headdress to show... the full-length dress she's wearing underneath.

Some of the other interviews are wilder or more explicit, but each woman's story offers similar insight both into the breadth and the limits of eroticism in everyday life.

I bring this up because I just bought it in a bookstore. It seemed like an appropriate gift for a friend on her 40th birthday...it's neither moronic nor at all about porn stars or prostitutes... It's a cool book. I'm not sure it was worth [the price], but it's certainly worth five stars.

figleaf

When you use "Developer" you expect to find out something about the program that is not contained in other books. This was not the case here. The book spends a good three-hundred pages going through Excel conventions that could be considered "groundwork" for development but also "User's" material. The book never really get's beyond the "groundwork", however. I learned nothing that I couldn't have figured out with MSDN and some "hacking around."

Get Using Excel Visual Basic For Application by Jeff Webb for great introduction to Excel Development.

This is a must have book for those who are advanced users of Excel. You do not have to be a programmer to appreciate the advice and instruction found between the pages of this reference book. Gaining an understanding of VBA can only expand your Excel skills. This tool can assist even the beginner with adding automation to their Workbooks. Even if you only write your macros to complete the mundane tasks and save time, this book is an excellent guide.

Chris ...

This is the book I've been waiting for. I develop small applications for a variety of clients to streamline their operations. Some of them have quite a high turnover of staff so it is very important that new staff have access to some help when they run my applications. This book showed me how to control the office assistant so that helpful text is given at the time the user needs it. I haven't seen this in other Excel VBA books. I also know how to build a full-blown help facility for larger projects - also missing from other books. I also found it helpful for Web based projects as it shows how to spruce up excel spreadsheet for web publication - and how to publish them too! As you can tell I'm really excited about this book. It has been worth it's weight in gold as I've used quite a lot of the material from the CD with moderate adjustments - and it all works too!