I don't have any children of my own but was drawn to this book based upon my own encounters with the increasing number of "Toilet Trained for Yale" tots and their stop-at-nothing push-parents.

The author delivers an insightful, biting commentary on this parenting trend, that in the effort to produce the brightest and best baby, these parents will do and try almost anything!

"Parents are not raising a child. They are raising a living resume."

Through laugh out loud passages, the author takes us a step back to look at the hilarity and obsurdity of the ever prominent baby and me classes, music for the womb cd's, and all other gimicks that are touted to insecure, compensating, over-achieving parents.

A funny, quick read. However, based on the content and length, I would reccommend waiting for the paperback!

I was given this book as a gift from my in-laws. I can't thank them enough. It's very hard to look around at other kids whose parents are taking them to gymnastics class, 2nd language class, music class, scheduled play class, etc. and not feel like you are deficient as a parent if you're not doing the same. I easily fall into the trap of panicking that my daughter, who is 18 months old, isn't being exposed to enough, or talking enough, or climbing well enough. This book really helps me keep my feet on the ground and remember that Laura Ingalls Wilder didn't have the benefit of "language flashcards" at 12 months and she turned out just fine. Oh, and the "reading" 6 month olds...give me a break!

Ralph Schoenstein has done a fantastic job of taking my generation's tendency to push-parent and showing us all just how ridiculous we are for doing it. Every Mom who has played Mozart for her baby while still in utero, or grilled her pre-schooler on the differences between white and ecru needs to read this book. From now on, I'm giving copies of this book as baby shower gifts -- to save the next generation of babies from push-parenting!

Louis-Ferdinand Celine is honestly one of the few writers who really really makes me laugh. You gotta love this French S.O.B.'s outrages. Who else has this audacity? Mama Mia!

Published in English seven years after his death, this is considered one of Celine's darkest novels. It is also autobiographical. Like the author, the novel's central character is a Nazi collaborator who is nonetheless destroyed by them. Mixing black humor and piercing cynicism, Celine recreates his own experiences at a castle in Sigmaringen, Germany, where the Germans installed remnants of the French collaboritionist government after Allied landings in 1944...

Castle is a book that Celine felt he had to write before he died,...in it he describes his flight from France in 1944 and engages the reader with the last vision of the dying Vichy government in exile...Celine is humorous and even shows a hint of redemption for the destructive behavior of man that produced World War 2...

This book is one which ALL Star Wars diehard fans must own. It is a complete systematics of the various starships of the Rebel Alliance. Basicly it is the blue prints and scientific explanations that are best. However i gave it a 7/10 because for most of thos with no previous Star Wars experience or no scientific knowledge, this book is cryptic.

Star Wars books are the best in general, And this is a really good one. It tells about another chapter in the rebel alliance. characters are well developed and interesting. with a good plot and several sub plots.

This book is very detailed and gives a lot of useful information and backround history for those who are die-hard fans of star wars and the empire. It is also a great tool for those who play the role playing game also.

Ralph Waldo Emerson's essays don't make for an easy read, but Emerson, luckily for us, decided not to accept the easy, run of the mill explanation of the life he found around him. It takes discipline and effort to tackle Emerson's work, and I have to say that it was well worth it for me. This small paperback collection has got to be one of the best places to start for those of you interested in having a go at one of THE Trascendentalist writers. This collecion brings together in a very inexpensive buy most of his greatest prose. With this, you get "Nature," "The American Scholar," "Man the Reformer," "History," "Self-Reliance," "The Over-Soul," "The Trascendentalist," "The Poet," "Experience," and more. If there is one place to start reading Emerson, than this might as well be among the top choices. Not only is it inexpensive, but it's small, light, and easy to take around. It also includes a great introduction (by Larzer Ziff) to Emerson the man and the world in which he wrote. I highly recommend it.

This book asks the reader to think quite a bit. When I initially read the collection, I was turned off by the monotony of the diction and the drab subject matter. However, I found that Emerson asks his reader to think about his own thoughts and gain insight into the ideas he presents. This collection is an impeccable work of Transcendentalism and can be related to modern life as well. If you choose to read this book in the historical sense, you are sure to gain information about the mindset of the time in which it was written. Emerson's view on Man, Society, Nature, and the world in general is certain to provide you with hours upon hours of analyzation, introspection and plain old satisfaction. I recommend this collection essays enthusiastically.

For anyone who enjoys beautiful prose with intellectually stimulating ideas and thoughts--this book is a "MUST-HAVE" for your library collection! These classic and quotable essays are enlighting and refreshing! If you (like I do) reject the Transcendentalist doctrine and theology, you may find yourself dismissing a couple of the essays as too tasking ideologically as they are at times on the fringe of transcendental ideology. Emerson's use of the English language, however, is a breath of fresh air in this era where the common vernacular is characterized by the grotesque abuses of ebonics, profanity, and laziness. It would be incredibly wonderful if all Americans would return to the most eloquent and beautiful use of our language as Emerson does.

I really had mixed feelings about this book. I started several times to just quit and go on to something else. It is about Jeston Nash, his leaving home and joining Jesse and Frank James and the "Boys." He kills many, gets shot several times, and all the good things men did at that time. I think his best friend is Quiet Jack Smith. You can feel the characters some times but the book just never got to me like othes of Cotton's have.I think there are five more books in the Jeston Nash Adventure series but this one takes him all the way, at least it looks that way to me. I wonder if the others are just flashbacks to previous times. Don't think I will try any more.

I have just got into Westerns and where I live, there are no bookstores that sell them. It was when I was visiting my friends up in Canada when I found this book in a used bookstore. At first I wasn't so sure about it. I like factual books and wasn't into historical fiction sorts. This book changed my mind. I loved the adventures and the vivid images of the characters and their personalities make the book come to life and make it believable. There were several times when I had to remind myself that these were fictional events. This book is a keeper and I'm even thinking of getting the rest of the series :)

Jesse James had a twin brother: his cousin, Jeston Nash.

Jesse James? Even today the name rings with excitement. Ralph Cotton brings that excitement roaring to life in his romantic first novel: WHILE ANGELS DANCE published by St Martin's Press.

One thing about Jesse James, everybody has an opinion, and nobody else agrees with it.
With a subject this volatile, you open the book with a ready sneer, ready to pounce on all the facts sure to be a little awry. But there is a delightful surprise in store. This writing is so good the sneer is immediately transformed into a grin of sheer delight.
Who cares about chasing down facts when you can go chasing down the old owlhoot trail with the 'real' Jesse James that Mr. Cotton has dreamed up?

A writer's job is to raise that curtain of the mind and create a reality the reader can actually see, hear, touch and smell. Ralph Cotton jumps right in, and pulls the reader in after him. In just a matter of minutes the smoke is boiling and outlaws with the bark on stand in the shimmering light with guns blazing.
There's no turning back, from the first page to the last, you will be anxiously watching the shadows to see what happens next.

"You could stumble into more trouble in two minutes than you could crawl out of in a hundred years." in those days.
Jeston Nash killed a Yankee soldier over a horse trade in Kentucky and the only place he could run to was the home of his Aunt Zeralda Samuel, the mother of Frank and Jesse James.

"Look here," she said to Doc Samuel. "He looks enough like Jesse to be his brother."

Frank and Jesse were off riding under the black flag of Quantrill's guerillas. The rumors of Nash's presence bring them back, leery of a trap. "I'd been drawing a fresh bucket of water from the well; the only sound in the stillness of morning was the squeaking crank handle and the clucking of chickens scratching in the dirt. Then all at once behind me, a horse nickered low, and the single heavy thud of a hoof jarred the ground. I froze, felt the skin ripple on my neck, and wondered in that split second how the hell a rider could've slipped in without them chickens raising a fuss."
It was Frank. "Frank could lock on to your eyes like a coiled viper, and though I learned to overcome it in time, that day at the well, off guard, I just stood there staring, dumbfounded by the sudden appearance of this stranger with a friendly smile and a voice like gravel wrapped in silk. And behind him ... less than fifteen feet ... not one rider ... but six! They'd slipped in as quiet as smoke, and sat there atop their horses, looking hard eyed and evil."

WHILE ANGELS DANCE has two things going for it: The characters are so real you dread finding out what might happen to them next, and the outlaw humor has your face laughing before you realize your belly is shaking.
For example, Quiet Jack had been living with a widow for some time when Jeston came to call. "You know, she killed her husband," Jack said casually the day we dug up the bank money.
He smiled affectionately. "Yep, stabbed him in the heart while he was asleep."
"Does that bother you when you go to bed of a night?" I asked.
"Why should it?" he laughed. "We ain't married!"
However, the token sex scenes are much too toxic even for a professional reader like me. Is all this trysting really that necessary?
The first one is more than a chapter long and could easily have been cut in half without the novel suffering any serious trauma. The blue language is almost black in places, but so naturally used that it doesn't actually ruin the story.

Only two, very brief scenes, jar the jaded senses. Both are deep into the novel and this reader probably only noticed them because discovering any less-than-perfect writing was a shock by that time.
A movie from this effort is almost unavoidable. Unfortunately, like Hondo, not even another John Wayne could make it as good as the original.

I bought it as a reference book during an MBA class in Financial Statement Analysis. Helpful and complete.

In all honesty, this is the sexiest thing ever to be committed to the printed page. All the players are here: FASB, AICPA, APA, IASB, EITF...delicious. Discussions on technical bulletins, interpretations and opinions are all concise and easy to understand, but still so lovingly complete. I used this book every single day in accounting theory and it proved incalculably useful. Clocking in at over 1,200 pages, the girth of this tome also made me feel more masculine as I lugged its enormousness past the droves of simpering art and english majors.

This book is especially useful if you need to research a wide range of accounting topics quickly. The format is very clean and easy to follow, but this is by no means a replacement for your other, likely numerous, accounting books. Basic to intermediate accounting knowledge is assumed and the level of detail is not akin to your standard accounting textbook; as there are relatively few examples and practice exercises (though they ARE there). If you are an accounting student, or just need to keep current, this is an invaluable tool. FYI: It also makes an excellent bludgeon.

I've been using the Wiley GAAP guide for the past four years and I couldn't practice without it. It presents the standards in a clear and easy to read format. I find the interpretations tell me exactly what I need to know in plain English. I always know I can depend on this book for information and keep in handy on my desk at all times.

The beginning zoology student has a daunting task before them. There are at least thirty phyla of animals on earth, most with several unique ecologically important sub groups. The arthropods, for example, include almost a million species of terrestrial insects as well as countless aquatic animals ranging in size from the minute copepod to crabs over two meters in width. To get a grasp on all of these requires a good bit of effort, a well organized mind and no small amount of perseverance. While anybody who has tried is no doubt familiar with the several very good invertebrate zoology textbooks available this is the only book on the subject that can be appreciated by the mass market.

The book groups animals by the traditional phyla, and gives critical information on each. Characteristics, development, ecology and diversity are all included. There are many good black and white photographs and a few good line drawings. If I had one complaint about this book it would be unity. I would like to have seen each chapter organized along a set pattern. This would be no easy feat either. I would also have liked to seen more line illustrations. I did like the books treatment of the protozoans as well.

If you are a student of zoology, beginning or PhD, you should try and get your hands on this book. It will help you understand things better than anything single resource I have seen.

I have used the book "Animals Without Backbones" for 5 years now in my Honors Zoology class here in Maryland. This text is great - it is easy to read and understand and the photos are fabulous! The only thing is that all the pictures are black and white, unlike the "fancy" new biology books. It reads at a level lower than my students, which are honors juniors and seniors. I give them additional information to supplement their studies, but I can't say enough about the photos and the labelled diagrams! A great book!

As a new teacher of Zoology, this book has become my most valuable resource for the invertebrates. The information is easy to understand and the labeled photos are wonderful. If I could chose a textbook for my students, this would definitely be it. My students have also found it to be a great resource for their studies.

In recent times, there has been a lot of interest and books about the Tulsa and Rosewood Massacres ("American Kristilllnachts" as a writer of a book on the Tulsa massacre put it). This book, orignially publsihed in 1961, shows that these were only two of thousands of such incidents in American history. Read it and see what your history teacher was not likely to have told you.

Ralph Ginzburg in this historic book show that African-Americans are justified in their fear of White America. The graphic details of lynchings show how racism can make people do to their fellow man. Anyone who wants to understand the roots of Black Nationalism should read this book.

Given its politically and culturally loaded history, lynching is one of the most difficult topics to teach in American universities. Ginzburg's book makes the job easier by providing the instructor with primary documents with which to examine the phenomenon. In particular, Ginzburg's collection is useful because it draws upon newspaper articles intended for a number of constituencies. Some, directed at racist whites, cheer the lynchings. Meanwhile, black newspapers and those directed at more progressive whites decry the practice. As such, the collection is a perfect tool for examing the place of lynching within various US communities in the latter 19th and early 20th century. Even more excellent when combined with the visual record of _No Sanctuary_.

I like Asimov generally, but Susan Calvin has got to be his worst protagonist -- she's arch, acerbic, narrow-minded, and rarely bearable in any form. Its a shame she figures in so much of his work. Even so, there are some good stories in this book, particularly 'The Bicentennial Man,' which manages to have scope and sustain a gentle, forlorn quality throughout.

This book is a great collection of Asimov's robot stories. Robot Visions was intended to be a companion to Robot Dreams. Both collections have older stories with a few new ones written for the book. You can really tell how Asimov thought about his beloved creation, the robots. The various stories show every point of view possible, from a robot's view or a man's. In the back of the novel, Asimov wrote several essays explaining his views on robotics. Definately a pleasurable read, whether you are a sci-fi fan or not.

Wonderful book! It is my most favorite book. His visions of the future are neither disparaging nor overly glossy. The robots seem like actually people instead of being cold metallic objects. It is a must read for anyone who wants to read about robots!