Let's get one thing out of the way. The Princeton Review is a successful company that helps thousands of students every year to score higher on tests like the LSAT. HOWEVER, in seeking to make a quick buck by leveraging its name brand with hastily thrown together, innaccurate and cynical books like this one, the company seriously imperils its own good name.

Clearly, there is no substitute for visiting a school to decide whether or not to attend. But for many applicants, that is simply not an option. Knowing this, the Princeton Review paid someone to whip together an "inside" guide to the law schools. They must have either paid poorly, or not paid attention: not only is this book chock full of factual errors, it relies on a very lazy, and perhaps even unethical methodology. After sending surveys to students at the law schools, the Princeton Review author pulls a few quotes from the few responses he managed to cull, and writes around them as quickly and cautiously as he knows how.

Nowhere in this book will you find substantive or even detailed information about life at one of these law schools--such as how the specific strengths and weaknesses of faculty; structure of the first-year curriculum; residential life situation, etc. But you will find comical lists of statistics such as "hours of study per night," as if the responses of .2% of a student body could provide anything resembling fair representations worthy of standing as a comparative figure in examining various programs.

This book gives information on how students rate the teaching, community feeling, student body, faculty and more aspects of the different schools. It also gives starting salaries and more helpful information for making a decision. However, since it was published in 2000, its statistics are somewhat outdated. There you get more, and more accurate information. So go to the magazine section or to usnews.com and spend your $ on "The Best Graduate Schools" issue of U.S. News and World Report.

I love that the book provides narrative information of schools, but I would not rely soley on this book. I would use it with the LSAD-CD to give me my chance of being admitted and I would even use the USNEWS or the New Educational Quality rank to give me more information. While I agree that it is important to visit a school and talk with students and professors, this book gives a quick impression that can help add schools to a prospective students list. I would not cross a school off my list because it didn't receive a good Princeton Review, though. Also I thought the "Hits and Misses" were kind of silly.

These books are ok but they aren't for everyone. I test well on standardized tests and took a practice test and scored very high. The more i worked in this book, the slower I became and the lower i scored. Take a practice test-If you are someone who scores high on standardized tests usually, you may just want to take the test on adrenaline and your good wits. That is what I will be doing next time, as I did on the SAT's as well. These books help lots of people I'm sure, but this is one case where someone scored significantly lower due to practicing methods not necessarily needed.

The tips and strategies in this book may be helpful for some people. But in my opinion, reading about such tips and strategies will probably not help as much as taking plenty of timed, full-length practice tests. That's the area in which this book falls short. True, the book offers practice tests, and the questions and explanations for the answers are generally well-written. Unfortunately, the tests are not "full-length," despite what it says on the cover. An actual LSAT has five multiple choice sections, of which only four count toward the score, and a writing sample, which does not count toward the score but is sent to law schools. The practice tests in this book only have four sections and no writing sample.

The omission of the writing sample can perhaps be forgiven, if the authors of this book are correct when they say that the writing sample will never affect the decision of any admissions committee. The omission of the fifth section makes these tests a fairly poor simulation of the real LSAT, on which you have to complete all five sections, because it is impossible to know which one will not count. The LSAT is in part a test of endurance, a test to see if you can retain your mental abilities after being subjected to difficult questions for nearly three hours. The practice tests in this book may help you figure out how to answer questions, but they cannot help you learn how to keep your mind working during that last 35 minutes. If you buy this book, just be aware that the publishers are apparently using a very unusual definition of "full-length" when they display this term prominently on the book's covers.

Tough read, but the sample questions and tests will prepare you for the real exam.

If you are in the kindergarden and you need a book, take this one

Whether you are planning to start a business or already own one, the Adams Streetwise Small Business Start-Up could be the only business guide you'll ever need. Organized into eight major sections covering strategy, marketing, sales, advertising, people, money, legal, and office, this book takes you from the very basics of starting a business through how to get the best and most effective marketing for your particular situation. It helps you deal with people problems that can waste your time and money. And it always keeps your eyes focused on your sales, costs and profits.

(c)1999, VentureConsult.com

Bob Adams' Small Business Start-Up: Your Comprehensive Guide To Starting And Managing A Business is a complete "how to" workshop under one cover and provides the aspiring entrepreneur and small business proprietor. Every aspect of aspect of getting a business up and running is comprehensively covered beginning with developing a business strategy and plan, to advertising, promotion and publicity, to financing, cash management, and employee recruitment. Regardless of the service or product your anticipated venture will be producing for today's highly competitive marketplace, begin with a thorough, cover-to-cover reading of Bob Adams' Small Business Start-Up.

Besides the lack of fact-checking mentioned above, I was bothered by the lack of basic writing skills Webb displays. The occasional misplaced apostrophe I can ignore, but this book is rife with mistakes, the most annoying of them being the author's habit of using incomplete sentences.

However, if you're not bothered by that sort of thing, this book is a quick and interesting (if not particularly accurate) read.

Adam Webb has done a good thing by bringing attention to Dennis Wilson's wonderful music. But this book needed some decent editing and fact checking in a big way. Webb continually makes mistakes that even the novice Beach Boy fan would catch. For example by stating that Dennis was not at the "Surfin" sessions. It is well documented that Dennis was there, his voice is obviously on the recording, and he sang a lead line on the B-side "Luau". Webb also states that Dennis sang lead on "Catch A Wave". No. That was Mike Love. Webb states that Brian's song "Lay Down Burden" was on his BW solo LP when in fact it was on his "Imagination" LP. These kind of annoying errors are rampant in this book. It takes away from the believability and enjoyment factor in my opinion.

I think this book rates really well alongside Jon Stebbin's book on Dennis from last year. There is some overlap, but Webb concentrates more on the music and deflating some myths surrounding the Beach Boys most underrated member. Most people know about Dennis for his rock n roll lifestyle and association with Charles Manson, but few know that he also created an awesome body of music.

Maybe it's a little one-sided but there are some cool interviews with key collaborators and Webb writes strongly with a genuine passion for Dennis Wilson's work. If you're intruiged by what you read here I strongly recommend that you search high and low for a copy of "Pacific Ocean Blue".

Adams is a great writer and story teller and I was swept up in her story right away. I found, however, that the main character and her best friend were just too passive about their love lives for me to relate to. Continuing to date men they did not like because they did not want to hurt their feelings, not calling the police when they were being stalked, it just did not ring true for me.

I would not have encountered my first Alice Adams's book, "Medicine Men" had I not seen a large-print copy in the book trailer from our local library. As a retired physician (ob-gyn), I was intrigued by the title, puzzled a little by the cover statements, and swiftly drawn into the sexy segments when I leafed quickly through it. I was even more intrigued when I found references on more careful reading to familiar names and locations, such as "Massachusetts General" and "Chambers Street". I trained at the MGH myself, and lived in a apartment on Chambers Street in 1956-57. Since Chambers Street was destroyed for redevelopment in the late '50's, I wondered at the vintage of the author, who tosed out bits of this kind of information as if she/he were an "insider", like myself. I wondered more than once whether the author might not be a man writing with a female pseudonym, since the sexual attitudes were largely masculine (i.e., casual sex, quick orgasms, and little or no commitment) Sexy scenes were for the most part intriguing, making for fast reading. But the more effective parts were the feelings of Mollie, particularly, as she became ill with a malignant tumor somewhere in her head. The fears and uncertainties she felt as her treatment progressed rang true. The same applied to the feelings expressed by the big stud "Raleigh" as he faced his prostatism at the end of the story. However, there were too many blind alleys and complexities to the plot, and at least some of them didn't work for me. The "twin" of Mollie's dead husband didn't add much to the story, nor did the return of her first husband. And I was sorry that nothing seemed to happen in Mollie's favor by the end of the story. We know that she survived her cancer, but had no identifiable relationships. There were too many loose ends and unresolved situations to suit me. As a physician myself, I'm certainly aware of how some physicians and some patients have interacted over the last fifty years, and personally know of liasons that took place such as depicted in the book, but gracious! How many lovers/mistresses/seductions/rejectins do we need to make a point? Overall, the novel was a quick and easy read, in part due to the large print, and from the entertaining but often meaningless interactions we experienced as we read on. The keen descriptions of how ill patients really feel, plus the references to Boston in the "good old days" saved it for me, but might not work for other readers. Will I read another Alice Adams story? Probably, at least one, to look for the "formula" he/she uses to make them interesting enough to get published. But I'm not clearing a shelf for the books in my library!

Medicine Men was my introduction to the wonderful world of Alice Adams. It was with the greatest sadness that I finished reading her complete works. Ms. Adams is indeed a modern-day Jane Austen. She chronicles the lives, loves, and angst of the "upper crust." Her satire on the medical establishement in Medicine Men is priceless -- Raleigh Sanderson is the ultimate brilliant, egomaniacal, and totally self-absorbed surgeon. Molly and Felicia are bright, funny, talented women who are just ditzy and vulnerable enough to be totally engaging. Medicine Men is hardly a chronicle of modern cancer treatment. And if all your encounters with doctors have been sublime and reverential, you won't get it. But if you've ever dated, married, had an affair with, or been the patient of a less than perfect physician, you will find enough stereotypical truth in the likes of Raleigh, Dave, and Mark to be delightfully amused, entertained, and perhaps touched.

This book is badly structured, verbose and chatty. A seasoned editor could have reduced it by at least 20 percent. More important, the book omits crucial features in FCP 3/DVDSP, such as using Markers to indicate Chapters. As a matter of fact, the subject of Chapters in DVDSP isn't even touched upon!

Further, in spite of the title, the book is heavily biased to FCP, with just a few scant chapters on DVDSP.

I'm very disappointed and consider this book a waste of money.

First thing I had to rename all of the files on the DVD to get started with the Tutorial. It was a problem but I over came it. Things worked out ok, then came chapter 7. This chapter was very confusing. He tells you to select the wrong tracks, he forgot to tell you to set up certain things in the canvas before you started the chapter and then he leaves you with a whole bunch of questions. The final project of this chapter left me more confused then before I started it. The DVD chapters do nothing for me that I didn't learn in the tutoral that came with the DVDSP. He gives us only 2 chapters on DVD Construction. I mean they dont even tell you how to make chapter tracks. Or outputing a master DLT for mass duplication. If you are trying to find a book that helps you beyound the manuals you get with these 2 softwars. Look for other books. If you are a beginner to FCP and DVDSP also look elseware. This book helps with shortcuts and Editing with DV only. He never touches on the un-compressed cards or outputing for true broadcast video in component or SD. I am sorry I spent the money and the time on this one.

All the previous reviews people are talking about things like the labels on the clips. You need to write those labels in yourself. That was designed from a teaching stand point. You have to start working right from chapter one with the tutorials. They all build on each other.

All I can say is this my second time though the book. A lot of the things people are unsatisfied about, are missed due to hasty studying. You have to label those clips yourself, right from the start! That book has helped me tremendously. I made the same mistakes the first time through the book. Final Cut Pro is very complicated, first time through you are going to miss things.

You are getting taught with this book. Making it though the book is not easy,however once you do make it. You will have a very good skill. This author is a teacher! The way he writes makes you think! He really takes you through at a good fast pace, and it is tough for the student(reader) to keep everything staight. There are so many details. Everyone tends to think that it is the author who is incorrect, I can tell you from experience that it is the reader, not the author or the book. I get that, Ohhhhhhhhhhh Yes, now I get it. But it took me the second time through.

This book gets you rolling. This book will get you right into it. You will learn extremely fast. If you take the free downloaded manual from Apple with this book you are set. Even better is Lisa Brenneis's and the DVD studio Pro manual too. I had these manuals for a year and did not get anything going. Then I got the Watkins book. I thought the same thing hey these clips are not labeled, I was in chapter four or five, I thought it was the author. No NO No you have to lable the clips yourself. And chapter stops are on page 289. You finish Adam's tutorials you will be able to take the book, computer, camera hook them all together and get very nice work accomplished. It is not an easy study it takes effort. Once you learn it, you can do a big project. You learn a lot from Adam Watkins, he is good teacher. I would easly buy this book again, I would only buy it sooner.

My past I used imovie for two years. I bought FCP and did not due a project for a while. Then I got Adam's book and started to get my hands dirty right away. I am not afraid to do anything with final cut pro. I learned a lot. The tutorial is great, good beat beat sound to set clips to. I can match sound and a clip together. I learned an awful lot from this book.

The combination of the authors' perspectives, the subject matter and its historical perspective, and the eyewitness accounts were
very interesting and moving.

The book has drama, history, and personality......a rare combination!

What a wonderful experience! Reading this book was like being drawn into the living room to sit around the fireplace with the authors and survivors to hear their stories. Crying, feeling, hearing for the first time, learning, and even a laugh or two with my newfound treasury of friends. How refreshing it is to hear the stories told by those who were there as they remember it. I write this as someone who knows nothing about tactics or war and wasn't even a glimmer in my mother's eye at the time, as she was only a few months old at the time. I've tried to read those books with "true historical accuracy" yet got only a distant sterile factual (and boring) understanding. This book has brought the Arizona alive to me. The Arizona is not just a sunken ship. The Arizona is a living breathing bleeding screaming crying brave and courageous part of who we are as Americans. If I may be so bold as to embrace the men and their families as my own. We, Americans, are who we are because these men and their families have deeply empacted their corner of the world, which has become ours. Thank you survivors, authors, publisher, you have awakened an important part of my history in me. Now to live in a way that honors their memory.
review by: The Rev. Pam Feeser

One reviewer commented on the accuracy of this book - "I found this book written on a very basic level, with well known facts wrong (i.e. on Dec 7 people were 'watching the Dodgers play the Giants in late season football'. I always thought the Dodgers were a baseball team."

I checked this out, there was also a NY Dodgers FOOTBALL Team in the NFL in the 1930s and early 1940s. On December 7th, 1941, they were playing football against the NY Giants in New York City. There is a famous radio broadcast on CBS of this game as the announcer had to break in to announce that the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor.

I bought this book and have to say I enjoyed it alot. It was a cool and original story with fantastic artwork. The story gets kind of shaky at times with complicated and confusing panels thrown in, but overall it was enjoyable and I do recommend it to any Manga fan.

I must admit, I am more than a little confused by the somewhat violent and decidedly unpleasant reaction others have given this graphic novel. I actually rather enjoyed the thing, and I believe the main reason for that is this: I never saw ANY of the "Bubblegum Crisis" animes before I read "Grand Mal." Science fiction fans, on the whole, are a rather obsessive and unforgiving lot. I should know, I'm one of them. However, my obsession with all things sci-fi has not left me so closed-minded that I will not accept any variations on some favorite characters of mine. A fan of the original "Star Trek" first, I stll gave "Next Generation" a chance, and ended up liking it better. Here, unfortunately, the BGC fans who have read this comic do not appear to have given it a chance, which is exemplified by the somewhat angry remarks I have seen, which were colored by this. For point of clarification: the story is good sci-fi, and the artwork is a good example of Adam Warren's "middle-period" drawing style. Now, as for whether or not this is good "Bubblegum Crisis," I still can't say. However, on it's own, I can say that this is a good comic.

Adam Warren is somewhat well known for his deeply sarcastic, satire-ridden, dark humor-laced writing style. Interestingly, he does not do much of that in "Grand Mal," which has to be the darkest and most serious of all the stories he has worked on(and I've read them all). However, some of that satire is still present, particularly in the depiction of the media, and in the "poetry" seen in the story, which is a blatant humorous imitation of the incredibly pretentious urban street poetry of New York, Paris, London, and yes, probably Tokyo.

The story itself is nice little piece of "cyberpunk"-class science fiction, involving an attempt by a brain-damaged, seizure-prone, and decidedly suicidal ex-mercenary to complete his final mission, two years after it originally failed. The "Knight Sabres," the main characters of "Bubblegum Crisis," just happen to be in his way, which is likely why so many BGC fans were miffed. The mercinary is the true main character of the story, and everything centers around him. Personally, I find it interesting when one can see known characters through the eyes of a third party, so I see no reason why a BGC fan wouldn't like this story.

The artwork: yes, it's a bit lacking compared to some of Warren's other work from the period, but there is a reason for that. This was the first comic Warren ever did in color, and an artist must alter their style accordingly to go from black and white to color. Warren didn't quite catch on here, but did make the proper shift eventually with "The Dirty Pair: Fatal But Not Serious" the following year, which looks excellent. Even so, the artwork is still clean, and nice to look at, and as I've said elsewhere, bad Warren art is still good art by most sandards.

So, "Bubblegum Crisis: Grand Mal" may not be ideal BGC, but it is still a good book. Personally, I like variations on a theme, and I thusly enjoy all four incarnations of "The Dirty Pair," especially Warren's version. Any long-time "Bubblegum Crisis" fan should have no problem enjoying "Grand Mal," so long as they keep an open mind. Highly recommended to sci-fi fans, manga fans, Warren fans, and yes, BGC fans. After all, there really isn't much BGC manga out there in the first place.

GEN 13 writer and creator of the English DIRTY PAIR comics Adam Warren gave of us this sweet slice of colorized manga heaven in this U.S. interpetation of Keichi Sodana's "babes in armour". This 4-part mini-series is actually a prequal to the original BUBBLEGUM CRISIS video series, but taking place after A.D. POLICE FILES. A runaway Boober threatens to destroy Megatokyo, and the Knight Sabers assemble to take care of him. This was one of Warren's best anime off-shoots and he did a brilliant job of colorizing it. The action is hot hot hot, and Priss is even hotter than that. If you liked either the BGC OVA or the BGC: 2040 remake, then you must try this out for size!

It amazes me that Barrett even got this thing published. He admits, early on, that he's "anti-Rudy". He not only insults Rudy, but the entire country of Italy.

Go have a root canal instead of reading this, you'll be glad you did.

After reading this book I have decided that a rule of mine should be never to read a book with an exclamation mark in the title. I picked this book up to learn more about the man that has been every where over the last year, what I got was a book filled with innuendo, conjecture and slanted comments meant to dirty the reputation of the subject. I would think that if this author dug into anyone's background and used his form of slash and burn reporting, the person - any person - would come off bad. Some of the barbs do have some truth, but given that Guiliani is a hard charging politician, they come with the territory. Sure he has stepped on some toes, changed or flip flopped on a few campaign statements, and maybe like all of us, taken a little too much credit for positive accomplishments, but that is not the view this author wants you to come away with. Lets face it, the author has a great deal of animosity toward Guiliani and he used this book to vent.

I also was bothered by the book setup, I like a biography to follow chronologically - I want to learn about the person through their life. This book takes subjects or topics and details his life via the subject so each part of the book covers the mans whole life. I also felt the writing was somewhat choppy and just not very smooth. To tell the truth I kept reading to find errors in what the author was saying. If you are looking for an unbiased look at Guiliani then keep looking, this book is nothing more then a political hack job.

If you like Rudy, you won't like this book.
If you don't like Rudy, the book will provide abundant ammunition when you make your case. Barrett is obviously biased against Rudy, and there's no ambiguity about that. But only the ignorant, of the hopelessly dogmatic, will accuse him of not doing his homework, or of being a 2nd rate journalist. Every assertion he makes is backed up with facts and data, sometimes ponderously so.
It's not light reading, or particularly entertaining, but if you want the facts (nothing but the facts, ma'am) on the phenomena that is Rudy Giuliani, this is the only book to read.