I am very pleased with this book as far as the content. As a Clinical Psychologist who works with bereavement issues, I think the exercises and handouts contained in this look very good and very applicable to people dealing with grief and loss. I was very disappointed though, to have paid $40 for a book that was listed and described as bound, and I received only loose pieces of paper that I now have to find some way to bind myself. Be aware that this description is inaccurate and I don't think it would have hurt the publisher to spend a little bit of money binding the handouts. Even if it was cheap binding, I'd feel better about paying $40 for somthing that was bound than loose pieces of paper!

These handouts are a godsend. I use them in my bereavement support groups and am able to use some of the handouts with other groups/individuals. I am pleased they are not bound as they are easier to reproduce. (pages are numbered and there is a contents page) Pfeiffer provides practical, concise and poignant information that is essential for the bereaved. As a professional counselor I send a copy of Pfeiffer's Book: A Different Season to clients/members of my church who have lost a loved one.

I have used these reproducible handouts with clients who are grieving, for the bereavement support group I facilitate, and as an adjunct to Mr. Pfeiffer's book "A Different Season". Each topic is so appropriate to the grieving individual--topics such as "anger", "depression", "how long will this grief last", and what to do with "possessions" of the lost loved one. I have recommended this to other therapists, bereavement group facilitators, and even a local funeral home. I also have utilized some of the handouts as assignments for clients in between sessions. I highly recommend it!

In Taunton's tradition this book is extremely well illustrated. Many of Lstiburek's points are translated into detailed crossectional drawings that builders and architects can readily adapt into their plans. Advanced concepts dealing with moisture transport in buildings are explained in practical terms. There's no doubt this book will further the application of good building science in residential construction.

Well focused and aimed at the home builder in 4000 degree-day climes with 20 inch annual rainfall or more, it contains a complete roundup of insulation, ventilation, and waterproofing problems. About the best book on the topic I've seen, full of useful detail drawings.

An outstanding book because it offers a different solution (and I believe a better solution) to home construction especially in the insulation and ventilation areas. If you are planning to build a custom home you must read this author's concepts on areas such as attic ventilation. I plan on using many of his concepts in building my own home. This book has convinced me that "normal" home construction needs to be updated!

I loved this book. The pictures and reviews definitely got me psyched for my upcoming trip to Rome. And, when in Rome, I had the best caffe and granita I could imagine.

But...the book refers to a map, that I couldn't find in my copy. A map would've been very helpful.

Reading Cafe Life Rome is almost as good as being there. The beautiful photos and the wonderful stories about each of these family-run Cafes and their owners transport you to the Eternal City with its sweet way of life.
An essential part of any trip to Rome is to visit the cafes, relax, enjoy the superb coffee, watch the Romani and soak up their world. This book helps you to find the best cafes in any area of the Centro Storico and should you care to, find one to make your own.

Ready for La Dolce Vita? I recommend this book to help you find it

This is more than a wonderfully descriptive book on cafes and bars. The layout of the book sets an ambiance that makes you want to pack your bags to fly to Rome immediately. Reading this book, I traveled to Rome and loved it.

It's well written in straight foreward style with good examples of WHY you should check someone out and how to start.
It has good summaries of where to go in the internet but needs more details.

I've read all the "background
checks" books, this is the
only one that was really
helpful. It's up to date
(unlike most of the others)
and very Internet-oriented.
It's the best by far.

Gives a good overview of how to use the Internet to run background checks from your home computer, and via phone calls. Easy to read and follow.

I read the last half of this book flying from Boston to Phoenix to coach one of my team members in a presentation. I was able to use the framework in this book immediately.

As a result of reading the book, I told my employee that I would be using a new system for coaching and I asked my employee what he wanted to work on and what I should watch for. This gave me a framework for my observations.

I also used the system they recommended to separate what I saw from my inferences.

The resulting discussion was useful for both of us. I was able to say things like "I saw that the audience was leaning forward and nodding. I took that to mean they were attentive. There was one woman who was leaning back and sort of looking around. I took that to mean she was bored." then the employee said that she had seen the presentation before.

I asked for his feedback at the end about my new coaching approach and he was very enthusiastic!

Excellent system!

I have read or seen most of the books written on coaching employees over the last 10 years. This book presents a practical and interesting approach to the caoching and development of your top performers, a group that usually gets ignored. Most books in this area focus on coaching the difficult or problem employees while in this book there is a definite focus on developing the best.
The Coaching manager is very readable and uses good examples and short cases to make the key points. The authors seem well-versed in business which I found refreshing after reading too many coaching books from former or current sports coaches who may have had one or two winning seasons before fading into oblivion.
I plan on using this book in our company's executive development programs. This book has great value for any manager.

I have read many of the recent books on leadership and coaching and I have found The Coaching Manager to be one of the best. The authors, James Hunt and Joseph Weintraub, are well-known consultants and professors from Babson College, the top-rated college in Entrepreneurship in the U.S. The book presents a model of developmental coaching that can be applied to many business and personal situations. It is also based on the authors' own research with over 2,000 coaches. Finally, there is a book on coaching that real managers can actually use. I recommend it highly.

Lately I havenÕt paid much attention to American Poetry. Provincial minds who spill their prosy guts over America's kitchen sink or worse and who belong into one of Ophra's spirituality binges. So it completely slipped me by, that the US had a Russian as poet laureate; the name was not familiar. Then I found his collected poems. Critics point to howlers in the translation, especially if committed by the author himself: it is true, there is space for improvement. But to blame it on the justified demand that translations of poetry have to be faithful to content and structure, rather points to inhibitions in the criticÕs judgement. As for me: I found at long last another poet of stature and rank. And yes he deserves a better presentation. (It can be done!) I became interested in his biography - born 1940 ... and then it hit me: he is already dead. And I felt sad, as if I had missed the arrival of a long lost relative.

This is a large and lovely book. It collects the most significant and important verse of J. Brodsky, winner of the Nobel prize. I highly recommend it.

Brodsky speaks of history's fortune and fate as he attempts a clarification of the poet's role in a world gone amuck. There are some gems here: "On Love," "I Sit By the Window," "Odysseus to Telemachus," "The Butterfly," "Torso," "Elegy: For Robert Lowell," and "Cafe Trieste: SF," to name a few.

Brodsky's poetic voice is imaginative and celestial. His words are as light and time-transcendent as the cloud-walk of heavenly angels.

I also recommend: Z. Herbert, C. Milosz, R. Hass, W. Szymborska, A. Zagajewski, and R. Jeffers.

Don't believe the petty, narrow-minded balderdash about supposed poor translations. Duh, he wrote in another language that most English speakers don't know and aren't about to learn, and it has to be translated so we can read it in English. Wow. The author, who is one of the greatest poets of the century, either translated it himself or had help from other giants of poetry, so it's how he wanted it - and it's brilliant. So it isn't exactly how it was in Russian...Ok, but it's still better than most of the poetry published in the last 50 years. Don't listen to the whining nit-pickers, and enjoy this wonderful collection. If it was up to them [those who are against translation in general] and their grotesque elitism, we wouldn't have anything translated into or out of English, or into or out of any other language, and that would be a disaster. Plus translations aren't anyway near as problematic as they think, but there's no space to go into that here.

This may not be one of the easiest books to read, but it is definetely one of the most informative and up-to-date on the subject. The theories of universe creation, galaxy and star formations, etc., as well as the supporting evidence are presented in full. Speculations on the future, as well as alternative theories to the big bang are briefly covered as well.

The book's difficulty and the fact that it resembles a textbook is the only reason why I downgraded my recommendation from 5 stars. Silk wastes no time and space, and pummels you with facts and theories from the onset, with little in between. The textbook feeling is also conveyed through the author's completely objective tone throughout. This may even seem frustrating to some, especially in the early chapters when Silk presents dozens of competing theories and observations, without even a hint as to which is more likely or which he himself supports. Nevertheless, he does proceed to elaborate on all the major theories and specifies which currently carry the most support in the scientific community and why.

Overall, I highly recommend the book, especially to those who are not new to at least the basic ideas of cosmology. Others will need to be a bit patient as the reading is quite dense -- Silk packs about a 1000 pages of info into 400 pages of text; inevitably you may need to re-read certain parts at times in order to follow the logical flow and development of presented theories. I found the observational data to be too technical sometimes as well, and just took the author's word that it supports the theory forementioned.

I truly believe that this is the only book you need to read. It has all the concepts, theories about the story. Densly written and every sentence has concept, theory in it. Starts with the history of cosmology and continues with Cosmological Models, Origin of Galaxies, theory of Galaxy formations and star formations and future of the Universe. Inflation and other theories are all covered to the extend that space allows. What I liked most in this book is that it covers everything and you do not need to read ten books to get the idea complete. For more technical oriented person, book has Mathematical section at the end describing the concepts with formulas. Author always gives brief description of concepts and usually he explains any conclusion with reasons so that if you can not derive the conclusion by yourself there is the reason.This book together with Kip Throne's beautiful book on Black Holes will make it complete.

The Big Bang, 3rd Edition Reviewed by: Chris McKinstry, VLT Operator.

This book is about the best introduction to the Universe that one could hope for. I think of it as a giant and highly detailed Scientific American article (including the illistrations and colour photographs.) This updated classic (2nd edition is 11 years old,) is both current and complete (it contains the most recent findings dervied from Hubble and VLT observations.) It even has a VLT picture I helped take of M104 that was released to the public just last month.

As with all good introductions, the math is in the background (actually in chapter notes at the end of the book) making this book accessible to everyone.

The photographs are excellent, but the index sucks. It is poorly organized and incomplete. Take my advice and buy this book for Neuroanatomy just for the pictures. The paperback edition is very afforadable. Just put lots of little flags on the pages or sections you use most. It will save you much brain-ache.

Hanaway's brain atlas is best neuroanatomy atlas for medical students in pre-clinical level. Its photos and illustrations are very clear and easy to understand. And it is good for self study.

"I will certainly use [The Brain Atlas] to teach our residents in neuroanatomy and will encourage them to purchase the book as well." --Volker K.H. Sonntag, M.D., Barrow Neurosurgical Associates, Ltd.

I.J. Singer's work is a large-scale novel, with a multitude of characters and plots, the first attempt of a Yiddish writer to break away from the traditional short fiction depicting life in the shtelt. It is the result of exposure to European literature late in the 19th century, and reflects the dilemma of Jewish milieu torn apart from its traditional roots and having to face the rise of capitalism and communism. The main character, Max Ashkenazi is despicable by all means, obsessed by money and power, with a Machiavellian mind, and despite all his success has a sad end in life. Considering the conflicting time in which the novel takes place (first four decades of the 20th century), the main plot reflects the author's pessimistic and skeptic view of the place the Jew might have in modern society: be it amongst the capitalists or the communists, the Jew will always be misplaced and will never loose his stigma as scapegoat in times of trouble. The reader familiar with wthe work of Joshua's younger brother (Isaac Bashevis Singer) will certainly realize that the brothers share little in terms of literary production, each one with his own merits, albeit I.B. Singer surpasses in magnitude and depth.

The story begins at the beginning, prior to the nearly simultaneous birth of two brothers. Not quite Cain and Abel, the brothers grow apart and together, mixing people,places,positions. With verve and breadth, it tells how each individual becomes his own choices, with the help and the hindrance of the Jewish community in Poland in the early 20th century. What a story!

This book is an amazing piece of work. You can really see the struggles that the Jewish population in Poland had to endure in the decades before WWII. Some of the characters are truly detestable at, other times they are to be pitied. All in all, a very tragic book.

The clumsy, poorly written text in the first few chapters is almost impossible to read. Since it's so disjointed and quotes too much from Cezanne's personal letters or from other writings, I skipped over a large portion of this. I was also surprised that the authors tried to make Cezanne into some sort of religious deity, rather than a master of his art; it could be marketing hype accompanying the show, but Cezanne's work speaks for itself. In spite of these flaws, the painting and sketches are wonderfully reproduced, and the accompanying description is pretty good. But because the accompanying description is always laudatory and doesn't adequately talk about his mistakes, it is sometimes difficult to distinguish between Cezanne's masterpieces and his OK work. The best part is learning what other artist, such as Monet and Matisse, owned what Cezanne painting (and then trying to speculate on why they liked a painting so much).

Picasso, speaking about modern art and artists, referred to Cezanne as "the father of us all." He was that rare artist whose vision -and ability to express it- was so keen and unique that it can actually impact the way we se the world around us. (How often I look into the trees and think "that looks like a Cezanne.") More than any other book of his work this volume succeeds in showing the sweep and depth of Cezanne's genius. The reproductions are superb and plentiful. The descriptive text accompanying each image, while interesting, needs to be taken with a grain of salt, as is often the case in catalogues of this nature. But the truth is I buy art books for the pictures! For text, try Rewald's book which is also excellent and contains some paintings not elsewhere printed, and deals extensively with the relationship between Cezanne and Zola. I also recommend Gotz Adriani's book on Cezanne. But if you can only have one, this is it.

This is a must for art lovers, in general, and for 19th cent. french art lovers, specifically. Rich in colour images and a detailed editorial on each piece. Also gives the history of ownership.

Absolutely wonderful. A must.