According to the jacket, this is the first book for this author. You can't tell after turning the last page. Well written, easy to read history of the Hoover Dam project. Never overly technical, yet highly informative.

Excellent book. I have read a number of science/engineering histories and this is one of the best. It follows the building of the Hoover Dam from start to finish. If I ever go to Las Vegas, it will be because I wanted to see the Dam. It has just the right amount of detail, both technical and political to keep me interested. It read faster than its size would suggest.

I was a young boy who lived in Boulder City for five years when my father helped build the dam. This is an excellently written - maybe one of the best I have ever read - and very accurate account of the construction, the people who did it, and life at the time. I stop and reminisce every time I go through Boulder City and drive over the dam. I loved my Dad and am very proud of his participation there. This book took me back in a very instructive and entertaining manner. It did the entire project proud. I won't hesitate one second to recommend this book to anyone who appreciates excellence in writing, or who loves America and its history. For this was a truly great undertaking, excellently and excitingly performed. And by people who, in my opinion, are prime examples of the so called "Greatest Generation". Detailed accounts of the construction of the dam are available, and are also excellent. But that is not the focus of this book.

Is this book actually pretending to tell the truth about the life of Jesus, over and beyond what the new testament narrates? I don't know, and frankly, I don't care.
...Are the mortal sins imported from Egypt? Or shall adultery be punishable in the eyes of God? Well, in the eyes of the church, yes. And we know this is control. I have never accepted the idea that God could give us tools only so he could forbid us to use them. It's like putting candies in the hand of your own child and telling him that he may not -ever- eat them. What is this? Love and care, or torture?
At least Eugene E. Whitworth had the courage to expose his ideas.
If you don't like the idea that this is another 'truth' about the life of Jesus, why not simply accept it as a daring novel?
Eugene E. Whitworth is offering you HIS truth. This deserves respect.
I'm not knowledgeable enough in theology to give any opinion on how truthful the book may be. But then I'm back to quoting the author: what is the difference between reality and actuality?
...

I have read this book 3 times and will now purchase it again for a 4th reading, since I loaned it and well, you know. But, this book I believe carries so much truth with it that the soul cannot deny it and continues to seek it out, read after, read after, read. I find it to be an amazing amount of wisdom and spiritual teaching, more than I ever got from the New Testament. For me, it is more of the bible, or what I believe they would never print, or allow to be written in the bible then I have seen before. It feels like a channeled piece of work though I do not believe it claims to be so. But, it feels like Christ is speaking to you and telling you his story, how it really happened, and what he really meant when he said and did the things he did.

I read the Nine Faces of Christ many years ago before Dr. Whitworth ever thought of publishing it on the open market. It was and still is considered very controversial. I've read it over and over many times and always find something different. It is an insight into what the "missing" years of Christ were like, and makes one think of what "Jesus, the man" may have been like. It is said that this book may offend Christians. If you are a Christian with an open mind, it is not offensive at all, and makes one think more about our Savior. Many times after reading the book, I've looked in the Bible for various things. Yes, it contradicts the Bible, but you must put it in prospective, it's a fiction book and a "what if..." I feel the book can open a lot of minds to what may have been. The book is an interesting read and can take you places you've never been.

It tells a lot for a scrapbook. It has a lot of picures that are rare. Its a must for any Mary-Kate and Ashley fan. It would be good for a beginner who knows nothing about the Olsen Twins or knows veary little. Its also good for someone who knows a lot about them but best for someone who knows less because someone who knows a lot probably wants to know more. They might get tired of hearing the same thing over and over.

This book tells about the young girls, Mary-kate and Ashley, as the grow up from when they were babies on Full House till when they were kids making videos, movies, CDS, and books. It has gret photos too!

Who here is a huge Olsen Fan? Well if you are one then you came to the right place. This book is for you. It shows you rare pictures of them and gives you inside scoop on them. Although if you really want to get to know them more check out Mary-Kate and Ashley Our Story the Official Bioghraphy.

Joseph K. Lange's extensive use of polarizing and "enhancing filters" on his landscapes made this book very difficult for me to look at. Some otherwise wonderful landscapes were turned into pictures I found hard to look at.

I can not recommend this book.

The author covers the necessary subjects of composition, lighting, exposure, equipment, and other items specific to landscape photography. My complaint with the book is with the photos. Mr. Lange makes extensive use of an enhancing filter, and I quickly became tired of looking at the world through rose colored glasses. The objective though, is to be able to make the photographs come out the way YOU want them to look, and this book can help you learn that. The book is definitely a good purchase, if only for the expertise that the author shares with the reader. For me the book paid for itself within the first few pages though, as I learned to save the cost of purchasing an enhancing filter.

This is a great book to teach basic and intermediate tips for landscape photography. I am new to photography (less than 1 year) and found this to be a very useful resource.

The book also has a lot of beautiful photos illustrating the tips and techniques discussed.

I highly recommend this book.

I must admit that after reading Grey Eagle's Bride and Hunter's Bride, I was just a tad dissapointed with Joseph. But just a tad!! Oh, after you read these books, you wish fervently for the Beaudine brothers to come alive and sweep you off your feetin real life, just as they do on paper...never have I met better heroes that these fine brothers, although i gotta admit, Orion is my favorite...! I recommend that you read this one frist, then Grey Eagle, the Hunter. My least fave to my fave...they just get better!!!

I loved Joseph's Bride as I loved Grey Eagles Bride. Jessica is a wonderful writer and has quite the sense of Spirit as was shown in Joseph's bride. The scenes with the horses are breath taking and I Loved Joseph and wish more men were like him! Not pushy, just patient and confident. I am having difficulty finding Hunter's Bride, but I'll not give up!! Jessica..write more like these books! They are wonderful and the writing reminds me somewhat of Rosanne Bittner!

DO NOT miss this book in fact do not miss any of the three. Jessica has made each brother different but the same and a hard choice to pick.If you like westerns then you will not regret buying these and do not forget her last trilogy set which is a must. I would also like to know when her next trilogy is coming out, please let me know.

I've read "Joshua" and "Joshua and the Children" and enjoyed both of them. I recently started reading "Joshua in the Holy Land" and considering putting it down. If you are a born-again Christian, you may struggle with some of the "sermons" given by Joshua in this book.

Speaking to a group of Jews, Arabs, and Christians, he tells them that they all have the same heavenly Father and that they will share the same eternal reward because of their faith in the Father. I have some real problems with this - it's not consistent with Christian (Biblical) doctrine which teaches that through faith in Jesus Christ we are saved. While Christians and Jews do share the same Father God, from what I've studied of the Moslem faith, the attributes of allah are not the same as our GOD of the Christian faith.

So while the intent seems good, the former Catholic priest Joseph Girzone should better understand the teachings of the Bible before writing more modern day parables about Jesus that are inconsistent with His teachings in the Bible.

This is also a great book by Joseph Girzone. I great story about what would happen when Jesus came backk to earth for meetin g his people. It deserves all thre stars it can get.

This is a wonderful book. It is extremely well written and contains many true to life situations. It exemplifies ways that we could all work together for peace. It visits sites that Jesus was familiar with and walks you through gospel territory. Mr. Girzone knows how to captivate his readers. I would have liked to hear a homily presented by him. A great storyteller.

If you'd like to read a broad slice-of-life account of life in a medieval city, then Life in a Medieval City is a fine place to look. Based on the copyright information, it's clear that this is one of the Joseph and Frances Gies's earlier works, and the style comes off as fresh and exciting. Like the Castle and Village books, various aspects of everyday life are examined topically, with an emphasis on what is common and typical.

The focus in this volume is on the French city of Troyes in 1250. This allows the authors to be particular, and to make life come alive for that time and place. As Troyes was the site of two large annual fairs, drawing merchants from all over Europe, aspects of the fairs are described in regards to the economic life within the city. In some cases, such as in describing medieval doctors, schools, or cathedrals for example, the discussion becomes very general, and not focused on Troyes. This is obviously appropriate. The chapter on books and authors has little emphasis on cities at all, but it still is mostly in keeping with the style and content overall. On the whole, this is probably the Gies's best and liveliest Life in a Medieval (whatever) book that I've read, and I would recommend it to anyone with an interest in the subject.

Required to read this for a class, I found the book a great overview of life in a Medievil City. The chapters devoted to various subjects make it a good reference book. The writing style is light yet presents the indepth information.

I have been researching the Middle Ages for a number of years and this is one of the most even -handed books I have come across. The authors are researchers par excellence, and have presented their findings in an imminently readable form. If I were not already a student of the Middle Ages, however, I might have found the wealth of detail somewhat overwhelming and some of the terms and references obscure. This is a book for people who really want to know.

This book provided a decent walthrough of MySQL and its JDBC driver, however it made some shocking conceptual mistakes. For instance, the "Consistency" principle in ACID transactions has nothing to do with referential integrity, but dirty uncommitted reads. A type 2 and NOT 4 JDBC driver is frequently the best performing type (Oracle's OCI outperforms its Thin and DB2's App seriously outperforms its Net driver). Furthermore, it had one of the most shocking mistakes I've ever seen in a technical book: The "JavaScript" example provided is really just scriptlets inside a JSP -- To me, not even understanding what JavaScript is seriously undermined the credibility of this book.

Rarely have I been so irritated with a book that I felt compelled to write a review. I feel that the 5-star rating that the book had when I bought is undeserved. It's replete with errors. Even the URL for the companion website is incorrect. I tracked down the companion website with the help of Google and downloaded the samples, but of course, they wouldn't compile. The authors admit to the challenge of timing the release of book with the release of the Connector/J driver. Too difficult to allow for decent quality control it would appear. Detailed examples can be very helpful, but not when the details are wrong. That just makes for massive frustration.

I haven't found the errors that other reviewers have mentioned (that's not to say they're not there, but they weren't an issue to me). However, I have found this to be one of the most useful technical books I have ever used. I knew nothing about mySQL configuration and a passing bit of experience with JDBC and this book helped me setup an enterprise-used database that is very well designed and works like a charm. I have a TomCat servlet server running and used this developer's guide religiously. It is actually interesting to read, not only as a reference. Of course, I'm interested in this topic, so I'm a little biased, but I really recommend this book to anyone who wants to use this EXCELLENT, free database and write powerful apps using Java.

NO LAUGHING MATTER has some great moments. In places Joseph Heller demonstrated his ability to be funny and touching at the same time. The book was a great inspiration to me at a time when I needed the help it gave me. As the author of SOLOMON'S PORCH, a novel about a man with CIDP, the slow version of Guillain Barre', I was fascinated with this book about Joe Heller and his caretakers. Most of the material that I have read about GBS and CIDP focuses almost exclusively on the patient, but Mr. Heller wrote every other chapter of this book and had his friend, who became one of his caretakers, write the alternate chapters. At the time I read NO LAUGHING MATTER, I was beginning to formulate SOLOMON'S PORCH in my mind. NLM gave me some good ideas about structure.

Not exactly a laughing matter, but certainly one presented with plenty of humor. Author Joseph Heller developed a nerve disease called Guillain-Barre after years of seeming good health, and later wrote a book (coauthored by his pal Speed Vogel) chronicling his declining health and his fight back to semi-normality.

It was a day like any other, just before getting a divorce and starting a new novel (which became "God Knows"). But Joseph Heller found that his food tasted funny, his body felt abnormally heavy, and he was having problems putting on and removing clothing. He checked into a hotel, and sure enough -- he had had a problem. What's more, he had a nerve disease called Guillain-Barre, which could cause permanent paralysis.

While his mind remained sharp and unusually witty, Heller's body became paralyzed. His pals Speed Vogel, Mario Puzo (of "Godfather" fame), Dustin Hoffman and Mel Brooks all clustered around to help their friend as he began to regain control of his life.

The account is funny and kooky, full of eccentric people like Puzo and Brooks. But there are deeper undercurrents in "No Laughing Matter," in which the friends help keep Heller from sinking into a frenzy of displeasure and cabin fever. There are no gooey monologues about the power of love and friendship -- it would probably have made the authors gag, even if it didn't make the readers. But the accounts of an admittedly difficult-to-deal-with famous author being helped out, despite his eccentricity, is very touching.

There is a lot of serious content, with Heller's decline in health and the details of his time in the hospital. (Constantly lying in a hospital bed, mostly paralyzed, unable to grip a pen and with a tube in his nose) But he manages to give a funny spin to almost everything in the book, including his encounters with Valerie Humphrey, a beautiful nurse who became his second wife, and media-shy Mario Puzo telling him how lucky he was to be sick and paralyzed, since he wouldn't be require do interviews. Half the book is Speed Vogel's voice; he offers an alternate, somewhat humbler viewpoint. He also gives more entertaining anecdotes such as Mel Brooks painting his "SNORE! SNORE! SNORE!" message on the wall, or the lobster dinner, or just arguing with Joe about the thirty-person dinner.

Funnier and more heartwarming than most "disease diaries," this gives us two different viewpoints: The patient, and the loyal pal. Definitely an intriguing and interesting read.

NO LAUGHING MATTER is a very informative and entertaining piece of writing. Co-authored by Joseph Heller and Speed Vogel (who write alternating chapters) it details the effects of the rare debilitating affliction called Guillain-Barre syndrome. This autobiographical/biographical chronicle passes along a lot of information without once falling into obscure medical dullness.

Guillain-Barre is a disease that attacks the central nervous system, rendering the victim completely paralyzed. Although what Heller contracted was a mild form of the disorder, in an extreme case mentioned a patient was only able to move their eyes. Recovery is possible from this disease; if it's caught early enough, the patient can be hooked up to a respirator if need be and then slowly rehabilitated. NO LAUGHING MATTER is two stories. The first is that of Joseph Heller the patient who goes from being in (seemingly) perfect health to being utterly bedridden in a matter of days. The second part of the tale is told by Speed Vogel, a friend of Heller, who took care of virtually all of his financial, legal and personal obligations.

From reading some other reviews of the book, one might be under the impression that this is a light and fluffy feel-good story of friendship where one will be forced to read numerous passages on the deeper meanings of love and caring. People learning great life lessons by sacrificing much that they have purely in the name of camaraderie. Chicken soup for the soul and novocain for the brain. Fortunately, one couldn't be further from the truth. While the two authors obviously have a great fondness for each other, you won't find any obvious soliloquies on the healing power of friendship. What you will find are people who care a great deal, but aren't afraid to share a lot of good-natured abuse. While in sickness and on the road to recovery, this never feels false or sugarcoated. It's an honest account of what real friendships are made of.

Despite the title, much of the book is laugh out loud funny. Heller may have been bedridden but he didn't lose any of his trademark wit. Celebrity cameos of everyone from Dustin Hoffman to Mario Puzo to Mel Brooks help to liven up an already interesting narrative. Both authors have a warm and engaging style of writing that makes even the more incomprehensible medical jargon understandable. The jokes are great and serve also to counterpoint the feelings of desperation and of loneliness.

The book is extremely intriguing, though there are one or two sections that don't quite work. Heller was going through what appeared to be a fairly messy divorce and the legal proceedings got a little bit complicated. For a section, Heller even reproduces a few pages of the court transcripts in order to show his lawyer in the right. As justified as he may be in including these segments, they aren't nearly as interesting as the rest of the book and pale in comparison.

NO LAUGHING MATTER shows us illness from two viewpoints. From Vogel we see the outward appearance of the disease and its effect on Heller. From Heller we experience the sickness firsthand. It's a fascinating dual look at the nature of the affliction. Well worth a read.