I have read Death Rides a Chestnut Mare and have just finished The Shadow of a Noose. In reading these books with the description that Mr. Compton uses in his writings, I can visualize the canyons, the towns, the cattle drives and the shoot outs. I have read many books that really turn me off on the writer, however, I would highly recommend Ralph Compton's books to anyone. I rate him with Louis Lamour, who, in my opinin was one of the greatest western writers.

This book was as good as all the outhers i have read by Ralph Compton. Mystery,adventer, and realism of what it was like to live in the mid 1800,s. I have lost count on just how many of his books i have read. But i have never been disapponted with any of them. Only wish he could write a lot faster. I have also read Death rides a chestnut mare. Can not wait for the third book to come out. Demon,s pass is also wounderful.

In The Shadow of a Noose,Ralph Cotton entrails us with saloon scenes and trail drive scenes so vivid they are are more like looking at old Remington paintings than reading words on a page. Danielle and her twin brothers are the kind of young people you actually worry about from page to page until you see they have found safety at least for awhile. Old western dialogue and old time pride and honor keep these charactors always in the thick of things. Yet, as rough and tough as these people are, you still see them as vulnurable children and want give them advice. Interaction between brother and sister over their mother's death are touching and deep, and scenes of violence and vengence are breathtaking. Bravo Mr. Cotton. I look forward to Misery Express. You and Mr. Compton Write the kind of western we all grew up on. Please don't change.

This book is a remarkable tool for any writer. You want to write but: have no time, are too scared, think you are no good . . . whatever the reason, this book answers it, in such an understanding and powerful way, that you think you have no choice but to put pen to paper at last! It is truly unique. The author also dispells a lot of myths about writing (how difficult it is; you have to suffer, etc.), and, most importantly, deals with each and every fear a human being could possible have which prevents him or her from creating. He states emphatically that all writing takes courage, sometimes tremendous courage, but that overcoming the fears, and finally doing the writing is well worth it. By the way, this book is definitely not just for writers; I gave it as a gift to an artist friend, and she found it to be so encouraging that she entered a work in a contest because of it. In addition, I also loved the section in the book where he explains that we naturally write about that which we have never "resolved" in our past; I had never seen this written about before, and it blew me away. The subject matter I write about definitely falls into this category. Do yourself a favor and read this book.

You are not alone. The author tells us that the difference between a person who wants to write and a person who actually writes is the willingness to face fear- and write anyway. In a warm writing style, Mr. Keyes teaches how to capitalize on anxiety instead of giving in to it. Fear takes many forms- fear of...rejection, criticism, ridicule, looking silly, failure, success. Writing is a lonely endeavor.The author includes remarks from accomplished writers and lets us know that fear, in all its forms, is common. My first book is scheduled for release next year and I am terrified nobody will buy it. After reading this book, I know I am not alone. Only 1% of the people who want to write ever write. If you want to be in this 1%, I recommend reading The Courage to Write.

You don't have to have writer's block to be aware of your fear of writing. Fear can keep us from submitting our work, writing with any depth at all, being honest-even from being honest with ourselves. Ralph Keyes knows what he's talking about. He writes about fear with sensitivity, while he offers a variety of solutions. He knows that getting a book accepted and published only opens up a whole new variety of fears. Whether we are published or not, we can use our fears to deepen our writing by sharing our personal truths candidly with others, letting go of our need to be admired, approved of, or liked by friends and family. If we worry about what others will think, we will never do our best writing. Keyes helps us to be honest with ourselves so that we can be naked on the page. This was just the book I needed at this stage of my writing career. ~Joan Mazza, author of DREAM BACK YOUR LIFE and DREAMING YOUR REAL SELF

The ``Application Framework'' series (building, implementing, and domain-specific applications) are truly excellent experienced-based guide on building and implementing object-oriented (OO) frameworks. Each book in the series is a gold mine; excellent examples of successful implementation at corporations from all around the world are provided. The examples practically walk one thru all steps of developing and implementing a framework. The series provides numerous invaluable technical as well as managerial tips. This is a very unique practical series and most essential for those who want to be successful in enterprise software development in 21st century.

The authors/editors are well-known experts in the OO arena and that sure adds to the credibility and value of the series.

I'd recommend all three books to practitioners and consultants. It is a money well invested. I also recommended the first book for a graduate course in object-oriented development.

An almost indispensable 3-volume reading to understand the success of framework technologies in today's software systems. The books include most of the top articles on the subject, providing a thorough insight in both design and implementation issues regarding frameworks, also complemented with practical experience about framework usage. Although the work is mainly concentrated on technical aspects, the articles are comprehensible enough to be taken as reference material by a broad community, for example, software engineers, programmers, or technology managers. The books are useful for anybody planning to include framework-based techniques in software development processes or planning to improve current object-oriented practices. It is also an excellent source for graduate courses.

Volume 1 lays the fundamental concepts supporting object-oriented frameworks, and describes the problems and challenges that this
technology raises in software development. The book covers topics such as domain analysis, development concepts and approaches,
documentation, and management, among others. Of course, the compilation of articles makes some parts little redundant, but this is a minor detail compared with the fruitful contributions made by the book. In particular, the articles on reusing hooks, hot-spot-driven development, composing modeling frameworks in Catalysis, and composition problems, causes and solutions, are a sample of the outstanding level of this work. Each chapter adds at the end a number of related questions and student projects aiming to reinforce concepts and promote further investigation. As a comment, novice readers should take the sections concerning hooks and hot-spots carefully because these topics are presented in a slightly confusing way.

Volume 2 focuses on specific framework implementations, dealing with existing frameworks for different application domains, such as businesses, multi-agent systems, languages and system software. In this book, the readers will find a level of detail much closer to specific implementations issues than in the previous volume. Nonetheless, the writing style remains mostly clear and accessible for a quite broad audience. The case-studies and experience reports described by the articles show an attractive industrial perspective of the framework approach, and more important, they go an step forward in the road of a more mature discipline for software development. In addition, a
CD-Rom with concrete examples of these applications is included with the book.

Volume 3 completes this series with a number of domain-specific application frameworks developed by industry, showing how to apply the concepts and ideas of the previous books in software products. In this line, it includes very interesting frameworks for manufacturing systems and distributed systems, among others. It also goes through concrete software scenarios, illustrating the benefits of combining domain knowledge and object-orientation expertise. Although the level of the articles is rather odd, the volume certainly provides the readers a realistic picture of the problems of building and adapting frameworks by learning from others' experience. A CD-Rom is also included with this book.

Overall, these framework books collect the state-of-the-art on framework development, offering a comprehensive and
easy-to-understand guide for both academics and practitioners in the field. It is clear that framework technologies will not solve all the problems (perhaps they rise more challenges than current approaches), however, taking advantage of the framework possibilities can make your development process more repeatable, productive, and also less painful. The gains of this retrain are no doubt a good investment.

This book in conjunction with the books Building Application Frameworks: Object-Oriented Foundations of Framework Design and "Domain-Specific Application Frameworks: Frameworks Experience by Industry" are a series of three books that constitute a complete and necessary guide for the design and implementation of application frameworks. They are based on multiple academic and industrial contributors experience building a wide range of domain-specific application framework. These books are very easy to read and understand and you can learn from them not only what a framework and an application framework are, but also how to apply this technology to real world domains, like manufacturing, health care, distributed computing, real-time systems, simulation environments, ...

First book, "Building Application Frameworks: Object-Oriented Foundations of Framework Design" introduces application frameworks, their benefits and problems. It addresses all the fundamental concepts behind OO application frameworks and provides guidelines for OO application framework development. It is organized in eight parts. Part one provides a complete overview of OO application framework technology describing what is an application framework, what are the problems and benefits of application frameworks and how to use, develop and evaluate an application framework. Part Two presents some historical application frameworks and discusses some general guidelines to increase the reusability of application frameworks. Part Three describes how to build a framework analysing a concrete domain. The rest of the book provides all the necessary information to completely build an application framework. It presents all the concepts managed in framework development, which are the different development approaches, how to test the resulting frameworks, the problems derived from integration and a question sometimes forgotten but very important, the framework documentation.

Second book, "Domain-Specific Application Frameworks: Frameworks Experience by Industry" is focused in the experience of industrial and academic contributors in the development of OO application framework in different domains. Each chapter covers step by step the complete development of an application framework in manufacturing, distributed systems, real-time systems, telecommunication, multimedia, chemistry and data visualization domains. It includes the motivation developers founded to choose application framework technology, the problems they had to solve and the final solutions they developed.

This book, "Implementing Application Frameworks: Object-Oriented Frameworks at Work", shows step by step how to implement application frameworks in different domains. It is organized in six parts covering examples about i) Business Frameworks with different examples in sales and administrative domains, ii) Artificial Intelligence, iii) Agent Application Frameworks, presenting interesting frameworks for speech recognition, neural networks and agents. iv) Specialized tool frameworks, v) Language Specific Frameworks, vi) System Application Frameworks, which present and analyse the application of OO frameworks in combination with other methodologies as component-oriented programming, language constructs or constraint programming and vi) Experiences in Application Frameworks. This last section is very useful because analyse the lessons learned using the application framework technology.

The Dinosaur Alphabet Book is a unique book because the dinosaurs are very intresting. My favorite letter was is Vv, because I love velociraptors. Velcoiraptors were some of the most vicious dinosuars, that is why I like them.

The Dinosaur Alphabet Book was good.I thought the T would be for T-Rex but it was not but it was o.k. I learned a lot about Dinosaurs.

I think the dinosaur book is a wonderful book for toddlers.It helps them learn more about history and helps their imagination grow. But older kids might like it because it has interesting facts about dinosaurs they probably haven't heard of. It's also good for teachers so they could teach it to their students.

Ralph Maseillo did some creative and colorful pictures in the book called The Yucky Reptile Alphabet Book. Ralph Maseillo added interesting details to make the pictures realistic looking. I liked the illustrations.

The Yucky Reptile book is great. The thing I like about this book are the illustrations and the reptiles. My favorite letter is R and the animal is the rattlesnake. The other cool thing about this book is that it tells outstanding facts about reptiles.

I've just read The Yucky Reptile Alphabet Book by: Jerry Pallotta,illustrated by: Ralph Masiello. It has amazing reptiles that I have never knew even existed. Reptiles are my favorite type of animals. I am in 5th grade and I really don't read alphabet books,but this reptile and alphabet book is extraordinary. I like this book. Ralph Masiello is a great illustrator. He draws incredible reptiles in The Yucky Reptile Alphabet Book.

This book was fun to read. I would recommend it to my 4th graders. Cleary gives Ralph, a clever mouse, human characteristics that children can identify with. He has to use problem-solving skills, while helping his friend get along with others. Good book for discussion with your class!

I really liked this book.The mouse was very clever and enjoyed lots of adventures. It was very easy because there weren't any hard words in the book.I also liked this book because I think that mice are cute. I loved this book and I hope someday you will read the book Ralph S.mouse.

...This book is about a mouse and his most pesky relatives. The mouse (Ralph) and his relatives live in a hotel. One day he got so mad he went to school with his friend Ryan to get away from his relatives. The moral of the story is don't bug someone or else they will get very mad. Another message is when you get mad don't try to run away from home. I think it's a very great book because it's adventurous. I recommend this book for people who like exciting moments. I think you should read this book too.

Great Story! Lots of facts, pretty accurate except for Bonnie and Clyde's death. This book uses the movie Bonnie and Clyde version of their fatal end. This is not the way it happened.

Running With Bonnie and Clyde may be the best book yet on Texas' favorite Depression outlaws. The extensive documentation is impressive, priceless interviews with now deceased Barrow and Parker kinfolk, former associates and adversaries, and previously unpublished photos makes this an invaluable addition to the library of any '30's gangster aficionado. But problems exist here, too. One is that the recollections of one of Phillips' principal informers, former Barrow gangster Ralph Fults, are sometimes questionable. From past testimony of James Mullens, Floyd Hamilton and others, it is well authenticated that the Eastham prison break was planned from the inside by Raymond Hamilton and that Clyde became involved almost by accident, which makes one wonder about Fults' allegation that the Barrow gang was formed with the intention of oneday staging a crashout. The $33,000 bank robbery Phillips reports in 1932, based on the recollections of Fults, raises more questions than it answers. Phillips gives no exact date for the robbery but, on pages 68-69, reports that it was of the First National Bank in Lawrence, Kansas. In his source notes, however, Phillips expresses uncertainty as to the location of the bank or the amount stolen and admits that the crime "cannot be verified by hard evidence" but accepts the story on the trusting basis that it was the only Fults tale that didn't check out! So was the robbery in Lawrence or somewhere else? Was $33,000 taken? Or more? Or less? Where do these details come from? If Fults provided this information it should have been easy to confirm through contemporary newspaper accounts. Phillips owes his readers a major explanation here. Later, describing the ambush of Bonnie and Clyde, Phillips wrongly records that every man in the posse was armed with a Browning Automatic Rifle. The only B.A.R. present, other than the three in Clyde's car, was fired by Deputy Ted Hinton, as both he and Hamer reported. Phillips seems to have a thing about Brownings, though. A photo on page 245 shows an officer armed with a Remington Model 8 Autoloader--the type of rifle carried by Hamer and Gault at the ambush--which is misidentified as a B.A.R. The author's gun expertise may be somewhat lacking but guns play such a prominent role in the Bonnie and Clyde story that it demands accurate firearm identification. This may be the best Bonnie and Clyde book yet but it remains seriously flawed.

Great book! There are footnotes all throughout the book to let the reader know where the author got his information. It reads like a novel yet the information seems a little more acurate than most nonfiction books since most of his writings come directly from interviews with the ones involved. Since the book was published all of the people involved are dead, so this is the end of the personal information. After reading this book one can understand why this couple went so wrong, and why they are America's most notorius outlaws.

i am currently a sophomore in high school. as part of my ap english class, we are forced to read six books in six weeks with six different writing assignments. i read herman hesse's siddhartha and i was suprised by the story that i read. it was truly a good book. many of my classmates did not think that highly, but i believe it to be one of the best books i have ever read. it makes you want to read it again, so you can think about every sentence more and maybe find some sort of meaning to our lives.

This book starts out when Siddhartha, a Brahmin's son, leaves his family to find inner peace. Then the book didvides into three parts of his life. The ascetic, which is when siddhartha becomes Samana, the lover, which is when Siddhartha falls in love with Kamala. The final part is the ferryman, where Siddhatha spends the rest of his life searching for inner peace. At the end of the book he finds inner peace and becomes a Buddha. I think Siddhatha was a well rounded character. I like how he was never staisfied with himself and determined to find inner peace. This was a great book to read.

In my English 9 Honors class, we read this book, Siddhartha. I thought that this was a really good and interesting book and I liked it a lot. I liked the way that the author, Herman Hesse, wrote about Siddhartha's life in religion. Also I liked the way that this book progressed. To me this book got so much better and more interesting towards the end of the book than the beginning. Also, in our class we got to read some of Herman Hesse poems and I liked that too. I reccommend this book to all that reads my comments.

At a mere buck (eighty cents after Amazon's discount!) this book should be owned, and more importantly, read, by every single American -- no, every person who can read English. It is profound and brilliant, and deep and complex enough that you will discover something new each time you read it. People say those sorts of things about books all the time but with this book it's actually true. If only the ideas of Emerson, Thoreau, and their group had been widely accepted, we would live in a very different, and I think much better, country.

P.S. Maybe it's just me, but I tend to be skeptical of reviews by people who use words like 'cognitive' without knowing what they mean.

This is one of the greatest books I have ever read. I know that many people don't like to read essays of any kind, but all I can say is that Ralph Waldo Emerson is simply different! Nobody has the gift to write essays and analyze life like him.

His words and ideas are so powerful and deep that we soon realize that they didn't come only from a brilliant mind, but also from a warm-hearted soul!

That's exactly what this book is about: Its sentences break through your brain and penetrate right into your soul! Emerson's optimistic view on human beings and life can only reinforce our courage in mankind and, especially, in ourselves!

What else can I say? His speech is direct, he defends all the good values, tell us to have confidence in ourselves and show us that passing through life with dignity is a matter of choice and courage, and that it simply doesn't change with time. It was like this a thousand years ago, it will probably follow the same rules a thousand years f! ! rom now.

This is the book I grab to comfort my spirit when I'm having difficult times... :) It is a guide that make us believe that anything is possible when we really want it! " Self-Reliance ", one of the essays inside this book, is a masterpiece in its own and I believe it should be studied in every high school, instead some of the crap we are usually obliged to read!

This book can shape your spirit and your mind. It is also possibly THE BEST self-help book you could ever own and, yet, a great literary work.

I would rate this book as ageless and I'm sure the future generations will be still interested in it, in the same way we are in those ancient Greek and Roman texts.

This is precious culture and food for your soul as a bargain! Do not waste more time. READ IT!!!

Emerson and Thoreau are THE two greatest writers regarding transcendentalism in American Literature. Emerson is a genius according to his own definition and the ideas he presents are truly part of what it means to be an American. He preaches to us about self-reliance, basically saying that if we want to make it, if we want to be geniuses in our own niche, if we want to succeed, it needs to come from inside of us. It cannot be from anyone else. These traits define the American. The American is self-reliant. He succeeds on his own. He builds his own dream, and despite impossible odds, succeeds. It is no coincidence that the most stories of rags to riches, 1 week millionaires, and overnight successes are of Americans. The language he uses is beautiful, and simply stated (yet complex in the number of ideas expressed in each word). For these reasons, some people may find it a hard read. I had to read it two or three times myself. But I assure you, the knowledge gained from this book is worth it, and truly gives one deep insight into the power of the self. Therefore, I give this book 5 stars. Emerson paints such a vivid picture of an American trait, that this book has already become an American classic, and thus I believe it should be made an essential component of every American Library.

This book presents a view that is difficult to find in print It's easy these days to find books that advocate the wisdom of investing/saving for retirement. Purveyors of investment vehicles often make us feel guilty for not saving every last cent of our disposable income.

The view that this author presents is rarely expressed -- namely that we can live on less than we think and that there are ways that we need to prepare for retirement besides focusing on money. I welcome this refreshing view.

Warner wants us to think about the "whole person" and not just about money. Now I find myself asking whether I've planned adequately for friends, family, activities, and interests.

This book makes me think of a good friend of mine who retired two years ago. She and her husband hadn't planned enough in terms of the "whole person." They're thinking about moving back. If they had read this book, I wonder whether they would have moved in the first place.

As someone who will probably retire within the next dozen years, I was beginning to wonder whether the doom-sayers were right: I don't have a million bucks in savings or a fat stock portfolio, so was I being foolhardy in assuming that I'd have enough to live on comfortably in my old age? This book was tremendously reassuring. Some of the author's main points are: (1) The difference between a happy, fulfilling retirement and "waiting for the undertaker" is not money but quality of life -- family, friends, good health, and meaningful activities that give you a reason to get up in the morning. (2) It's possible to estimate fairly accurately how much money you'll need to live on after you retire, and in most cases it's nowhere near the "70% of your present income" that the doom-sayers insist that you need to maintain your present lifestyle. (3) The loudest doom-sayers are the ones who are trying to sell you retirement plans! The author tells readers how to access a free set of "retirement calculators" on the Nolo Press web site to assist them in financial planning, and that alone is worth the price of the book. But what really "made" the book for me was his many interviews with happily retired people from all sorts of backgrounds and economic levels -- just reading about them was a real upper. There are plenty of books on how to provide for your retirement financially, but this is the only one I know of that adequately addresses the REST of your life. Read it!!

Get a Life Stresses the importance of planning ahead.

It notes that older people who have happy marriages, plenty of friends and warm relationships with other members of their famlies live longer than older people who don't. So it tells how to improve family ties, make new friends to replace the ones who die and work at having a happy marriage.

It has a useful chapter about health and fitness which you should supplement with three other books: Fats that Heal, Fats that Kill, by Udo Erasmus; The Healing Nutrients Within, by Eric Braverman and any book by Barry Sears about his Zone Diet.

It tells how to avoid nursing homes or pay for them if you can't avoid them. It has tips about buying used cars and pre-paying mortgages.

Chapter 8 surveys where your retirement money will come from. It tells how to save enough for retirement, even if you think it's impossible. And it presents what it calls the savvy peasant's investment guide. Here it covers bank savings accounts, bank certificates of deposit, money market accounts, U.S. Treasury bills, U.S. Government bonds and notes, municipal bonds, corporate bonds, stock, stock mutual funds, variable annuities, immediate or fixed annuities, real estate and precious metals and exotic investments.