The older editions were geared towards professional bakers
or those that wanted to be. Joseph Amendola's work is
hard to see in this latest edition. They have dumbed this one down. To quote "Chemists in large industrial-sized bakeries have actually conducted studies that determined the optimum specific gravity and pH levels for each type of cake. Knowing this, of course, makes it all the more worrisome to be at the mercy of a plain old recipe book, with no such equipment on hand to provide guidance or reassurance. Fortunately, some room for variation exists in cake baking." I just don't see someone of Amendola's background and reputation writing this...Understanding the science of baking is crucial for baking success. Most retail bakers understand and utilize specific gravity when baking cakes...this insures accuracy in baking-and this translates to dollars and wasted product saved. A nice book for the home baker perhaps, but as a text book, it is a regression. Too bad.

"Understanding Baking" is a dry-as-toast recitation of the principles underlying the preparation of baked goods. The book would appear to be intended for the culinary student, since the authors apparently didn't feel burdened with need to make the subject matter interesting to a wider audience. It a 'just the facts, madam' kind of book with nary a single recipe to be found. (See "Cookwise" by Shirley Corriher for an example of the complete opposite.) The chapters are curiously organized -- some are done in straight narrative with review questions at the end, while others are written in a programmed-learning, question-and-answer style. Some chapters are a mix of both. The editing is sloppy in spots, and I would swear there are at least two instances where the author's insertion notes were carried right on into the final printing (pgs. 16-17, and 46-47). All that being said, however, the book is indeed crammed with information essential to the professional baker, and there are several very useful charts showing cake/cookie/bread/pie faults and their causes. Home cooks will benefit if they can stay awake, but the book is clearly targeted toward the professional and professional wannabe.

This book is great because it covers the fundamentals of baking. I believe that fundamentals are important as they serve as a starting point for pastry chefs. I appreciate the fact that they've included all aspects of baking - from the simplest of information for the beginners to the complex stuff for the professionals.

Racism exists, yes, but titling a book "White Racism: The Basics" is downright reprehensible as well as racist. The author could teach that SOME people of DIFFERENT races have been and are extremely xenophobic, but to just pick on whites is irresponsible. The West actually led the charge to ABOLISH slavery, lest we forget in the midst of all of the attention paid to a relatively small number of truly fringe people, like the neo-Nazis in America. Fortunately, these people are not huge in terms of numbers, and that is a good thing, but the way some Leftists whine about it, you'd think they were just about ready to take over the whole world, all...well, however few of them there are.

Xenophobia is NOT unique to "white" people, and there have been conflicts over not only race, but also over social and economic classes! Please read "Death by Government" by R.J. Rummel, Professor Emeritus of the University of Hawaii, for a good look at the numbers of people killed due to government "democide" sometime. Look at how many people the communists slaughtered sometime.

While it is clear that there are racists who are white in this country, the book's focus on only "White Racism: The Basics," comes off as downright racist. It is just as bad as Kevin MacDonald singling out the Jews in his book "Culture of Critique." And look at the flap THAT book caused!

Shame on the author. This type of thing will probably lead to the murder of white people in retaliation for past injustice during the time of slavery in America if this type of narrow-focus teaching on only "white racism" keeps up. Racism should not be off limits for study, but it should apply equally to everyone, not just "white" people. Will the author be writing a book about how Mugabe seized land from white farmers? That is racism, yet if someone titled a book "Black Racism: The Basics," there would be total outrage.

The authors speak of real problems, but address them ineffectively. By peddling generalizations of the white race, they perpetuate the victim/victimizer dichotomy which divides instead of uniting. Further, the boundary between victim and victimizer is drawn rigidly along racial lines. They fail to recognize that any progress has been made in the decades since the civil war toward a more loving, color blind society. This truly dishonors the memory of those whose blood and tears watered the garden from which African Americans now harvest financial and educational opportunities as well as self worth. A better discussion, in my opinion, can be found in Joel Kovel's book by the same title.

After reading some of the reviews, and finishing this excellent study, it is apparent that the message of this book did not come across to some. Feagin is not picking on "white" (European Americans) people, he is merely pointing out the inequalities that exist within the United States. This book is thorough in proving the experiences of people of color and of European Americans are extremely different. Feagin found police brutality, for example, occurred increasingly more for people of color than for European Americans. African Americans experience harassment far more than European Americans, and the cases Feagin uses illustrates this fact. Also, the recent debate of affirmative action is also covered well in this book.

"Reverse racism" as many would like to claim Feagin is guilty of, is not real. People of color cannot be racists because racism is linked to power. People of color can be bigots, but since power in this country is held by European Americans, as Feagin points out in many of his chapters, people of color cannot act on their hatred or resentment. Since European Americans are found in government, police forces, Fortune 500 companies, and other vessels of power, "white" interests are protected.

As one can see, this book causes the reader to think. Even though you might not agree with Feagin's conclusions, it causes us to examine a social ill that has been with this country since its founding. I will not only answer questions, but help raise critical questions about ethnic relations in this country.

Not a great novel at all, and not satisfying to someone looking for fiction concerning poker in particular.

Five childhood friends live their lives obsessed by poker and haunted by a secret tragedy. Every year, four of them get together for a weekend-long reunion in San Fransisco where they play an epic game of poker and relive their youths. Only one -- Bobby McCorkle -- has refused to attend these games until finally, the details of that hidden tragedy threaten to bubble to the surface. This year, Bobby attends the game and, over the course of one chaotic weekend, the truth is finally revealed. Its a good premise for a thriller but Mark Joseph's The Wild Card ends up promising more than it delivers.

Probably the most important element of any thriller are creating credible, believable characters. If you can buy the characters and their motivations, even the most improbable of twists can be accepted. Unfortunately, with the exception of Bobby and occasionally gambling addicted Alex, the main characters never really stand out from each other. Each is given one trait to set them apart (one is gay, another Chinese) but otherwise, they're basically interchangeable. Since very little seems to be happening inside the characters (and most of their dialouge feels forced and leaden), the book's attempts at creating a psychological thriller fall flat. As well, the deep, dark secret should be obvious to most readers as soon as they read the first chapter. With a few noteable exceptions, the book lacks a certain element of surprise that a succesful thriller needs to keep the reader on the edge of his seat.

That said, there are also a few elements that work quite well. The author is, himself, a poker player and the game scenes crackle with a vibrancy that the rest of the book lacks. (Though, by the end, his oft-repeated message that poker represents the twists and turns of life starts to feel just a bit heavy handed and forced.) Though he's hardly a master of prose, Joseph is a good story teller and the book is a quick read. Even if it didn't enthrall me, the Wild Card certainly didn't bore me either. As well, the ending's final twist, if a little improbable (as most final twists are), is a genuine surprise and does stick in the reader's mind after he finishes the book. On the whole, an uneven thriller that certainly has its moments. One could do worse when looking for a book to pass a rainy afternoon with.

Joseph's new book, "The Wild card," finds the author taking an interesting break from his usual techno-thriller style of writing and exploring new territory as a spinner of more broadly accessible suspense yarns. The result is a rather winning piece of work, at least in terms of storytelling. First of all, the whole book has a sort of Americana, meat-and-potatoes ambience in terms of its writing--Joseph brings to mind Stephen King's knack for evoking eras, places, and events in the recent American past and in the present, and the ability to capture the straightforward emotions of individual characters embroiled in those "snapshots of time,"--especially in somewhat questionable, shady situations.The feel reminds me of King's short story "The Body," upon which "Stand By me" was based, and this is a favorable comparison, obviously. The book starts right off the bat with suspense; within two pages Joseph conjures the indelible image of a busy riverside suburb in northern California--an image suddenly twisted by the problematic discovery of a skeleton. 'The Wild Card' is a character-driven tale, so it helps that the reader can't help but take a liking to the very first character Joseph draws: a female bulldozer operator who discovers the bones and is forced to take a ten-minute cigarette break in the cab of her vehicle, pondering in the workday heat while her inner-moral compass decides whether to report the finding or simply "ditch" the cadaver and keep her paycheck secure. Being, as Joseph describes, "an honest sort," she spills the beans and sets in motion the typically American brand of frantic investigative activity that usually leads to the suspicion of foul play. Now, the stage is set for the heart of the story: five men with a potentially shattering secret in their pre-Vietnam era past--four of these men still meet annually for a raucous poker game in a San Francisco hotel suite, but ONE of the former clique, a near-vagabond gambling addict named Bobby, has ostracized himself from his friends' yearly revelries. Trust me: he has good reason. However, with the grisly discovery, the jig is suddenly up and Joseph successfully creates the tense, charged atmosphere of an almost ritualistic poker gathering. Instead of halting their good time, the discovery of the skeleton brings this bunch of guys together in a palpably tense, almost frightening manner. Joseph's writing is effective enough here that you almost want to reach in and wipe the sweat from their foreheads. What each of them has to reveal about their recollection of poor Sally (and her long-ago fate) seems designed by the author to show the nature of the tricky business we might call "individual human perspective." Of course, card game imagery is "shuffled" into the plot at a number of turns, but it doesn't come off as being too contrived because Joseph is sort of churning toward a conclusion that brings these images into union with his number one image: *THE* wild card--poor, enigmatic Bobby McCorkle. Obviously, the story whips up the suspense quotient at a swift pace, and the whole point is to make you salivate for the conclusion (and believe me, you do). Also of note:the San Francisco setting is used to extremely good effect throughout the tale--if the author is planning another thriller set in the city by the bay, then that is good news, because his particular vision of San Francisco grabs. On a very minor note, the dialogue of Joseph's characters can be inexplicably clunky, but only on a few occasions, and their use of profanity is often so gratuitous as to be genuinely irritating and too contrived. This book is, without question, the ideal read for a man who wants to kick back in his easy chair after a hard-day's work, drink a Scotch (or a Bud), and sink into a fast-paced, gripping tale about five other guys who are knee-deep in some potentially serious manure ...basically,this book has "guy" written all over it. It's hard to find a man who hasn't taken part in the thrill of a poker game at some time or another, so "Wild card" is probably the best book out right now to buy as a gift for a man--whether he reads a great deal or not. Buy it, and watch how easy it is for your husband or boyfriend to really bond with a book.

I currently am reading this book, and find it very difficult. The author skips around from one idea to another and its all on the same page. I do not understand his thinking in transforming all the Austrian names into an English version. This loses the historic context of the story and country. Had I know this I probably would not have bought the book. At this point I do not know if I am reading about an Austrian Emperor or an English king since Franz has become Francis. The author did a great harm to the history in doing this. I do regret buying this book and will advise others against it. When you write about history you need to present all the facts, and he did not do this. The names are the first example, skipping around and glossing over events without exploring them deeper is another.

The book is full of information about a very interesting time in history. I didn't mind the jumping around that another reviewer mentioned, but I am COMPLETELY distracted by the author's need to change the names. If you can't handle "Franz Joseph," you should try a little harder. Who is Archduke John? We are lucky he didn't change "Maria Anna" to Maryanne. Dear Author, please give your readers some credit.

This is a very good book. The only reason that I did not give it 5 stars is due to the fact that I am waiting to read several other Palmer titles and then rank against them. My interest in Franz Joesph originated in the start of WWI and how Franz Joseph played into Austia being the main country to instigate the Great War. I was also interested to find out more about the Austrain-Hungary royalty that was famous to intermarry with other nation's royalty. Palmer answer my questions and succeeded in providing a different viewpoint of Franz Joeseph. History books portrayed him as an aged man who was interested in nothing but war and out of touch with the modernizing world. I learned this to be unfounded rhetoric. This book gave an excellent overview of Franz Joesph and his Empire and the inevitable decline and fall of his empire. If you were curious about Franz Joesph or Austrian history, this book is an excellent read.

This book comes from a person who is into legends and lore. I'll give him credit for that much of his book. The information he talks about is not 100% accurate, the dates are wrong as one example. For someone who is suppose to be an expert in the field, only makes you wonder where he got the information. To my knowledge its all legneds & lore in the book and no actual research. The tours he gives is basically a bar hopping event, makes you wonder why they see spirits. I couldn't find him to ask a question at one of the off the bus stops, maybe he is also a ghost. The tour was more of a party bus and its goes so quick by some of the locations you barely see anything. If your looking for a party take his tour.

I have been on numerous tours with Richard and have always tried to remember everything that he covers within the 5 hours. And now with the book it greatly helps out with the smaller details muched overlooked by some. Keep up the good work.

I have been on NUMEROUS tours with the famed Richard T Crowe and have been interested in Chicagos vast supernatural history since a young age. The book is a great fountain of information of folk lore stories, locations, and even it you don't believe good information on the windy city. Keep up the good work,Richard.Check out his tours when in Chicago

The book has lots information. It's just organized poorly. It has several spelling mistakes in a couple of the chapters in the beginning. I haven't looked at the rest yet. It is a shame that this is the quality of educational material that people are satisfied with.

Be warned -- the latter half of the book's title has been chopped off of the webpage! This is the second volume of a two volume set, covering (if I recall correctly) 1861 onwards.

This book is read in my AP US History class at school. It gives a very clear picture as to what was going on historically in the United States. It is easy reading for the class and is great preperation for the AP US History Exam. The only problem with the book is it gets out of chronological order at times. For example at one part the presidency of Jefferson is talked about before a president who came before him chronologically. Despite the book being somewhat out of order it is good reading material for preparation for the AP Exam.

The first three chapters of this book, a whopping 44 pages, give an overview of the concepts behind fantasy football, Mr. Sheridan's scoring system, and a guide to drafting players. The advice in latter is useful primarily if you are in a league using Sheridan's rules. The bulk of the book -- 250 pages -- is devoted to a review of the 1999 NFL season. Sheridan's commentary on players is fine, and accurate to the time the book went to press, but is typical to that which can be found on the internet for free. Some inclusions render the book obsolete, such as discussions of the merits of Dan Marino and Steve Young, both of whom have retired since the book was published. Fantasy football depends upon timely information and a book, no matter how qualified the author, cannot compete with other information sources which are more timely. It's a pity Mr. Sheridan did not make better use of the strength of the medium and expand the first 44 pages to provide the definitive guide to creating and managing a fantasy football league.

I have been active in many fantasy football leagues and Danny Sheridan really misses with this book. The point system he suggests becomes the theme of the book, so if you're not using his system, 80 % of it is useless. There is not much in depth analysis, and no real predictions! He continually mentions what players he has forecasted correctly, without making any new predictions! His Quarterback section completely skips Peyton Manning, a QB that in 1999,could be as valuable as a Drew Bledsoe or a Mark Brunell!

Once again, Danny Sheridan's fantasy football book is right on the mark. I have relied on his rankings religiously for the past 5 years, and have won my league 4 times. His commentary teaches you how to evaluate the true fantasy value of a player, regardless of your league rules. Plus, the tips provided in his rankings are extremely useful in evaluating which players to draft for the upcoming season.

O'Callaghan's history of the Iberian peninsula, though exhausting in its detail, falls prey to typical western biases and employes the fallacious traditional historiography of Iberia, emphasizing the "Re"-Conquest and a supposed "move towards unity." This approach is woefully inadequate for understanding the events of Medieval Iberial, and fosters an unfair appraisal of the Muslim culture that flourished there for centuries. Additionally, O'Callaghan has managed to, through his exceedingly dry prose, completely emasculate this otherwise exciting and vibrant subject. In all my years as a history student, I have never read another text from which I retained so little; my classmates concur on the matter. Therefore, I wholeheartedly denounce this text.

The major problem with this book is that it tends to get bogged down in narrative without enough analytical insight. The result is that the reader is faced with hundreds of pages of which kings fought which, married whom and so on. While there is commentary on which events are more important than others and why, it is a little sparse. I read all but the last 100 pages or so as I just ran out of steam. However, as a person who is interested in Spain and Spanish history, I plan to keep it on my shelf for reference purposes.

The book is sensibly divided into major historical time periods (i.e. Visigothic, Caliphate, etc) that give a good organizational framework. Each time period typically has two chapters. The first is more or less a historical narrative and is usually the more difficult to get through. The second is an often interesting discussion of the social and political institutions of both Christian and Islamic Spain. For example, there is a chapter that outlines the major officials of the Umayyad caliphate, their roles, powers, prejudices and so on.

O'Callaghan provides us with an in-depth (728 pagess), well written survey of medieval Spain, starting with the Visigothic era in 415. The major sections of the book cover the monarchs, government, society, economy, culture and religion through the reigns of Ferdinand and Isabella. The book includes numerous maps, illustrations and genealogical charts. I highly recommend this book for the historian, student and general public with an interest in medieval Spain.

Gearld Astor's biography of Dr. Joseph Mengele tells an important story to be sure. The notorious Auschwitz camp doctor who personally comdemmed thousands to their deaths and performed hideous experiements on many others is an important symbol of just how depraved the Nazi regime was. That a man of science, a man sworn to prevent human sufferning, could allow his profession to be so grotesquely perverted clearly demonstrates how fundamentaly evil Nazi ideology was. Mengele is a real life villian for the ages, someone the likes of whom humanity will hopefully not see again.

Unfortunately, Astor's portrait, while compelling and informative, fails to really capture essence of the man. Perhaps becuase the author apparently received little cooperation from Mengele's (prominent!) family, there isn't musch information about Mengele's early childhood or adulthood, nor of the period from the end of World War II to his escape from Europe in 1949. The two periods of Megele's life where Astor's information is most complete is his time at Auschwitz from 1943-44 and the last two decades of his life, when he lived in Brazil before drowning on the beach in 1979.

There's almost nothing in the book about Megele's marriage, nor of his service on the Eastern front with the Waffen SS before a battlefield wound sent him to the death camp and his infamy. Even the Auschwitz period is strangely stilted. There are eyewitness accounts of the atrocities committed by Mengele and of his experiments, but a thorough account of what he thought he was accomplishing is strangely lacking. It must also be said that Astor's prose is at times somewhat stilted, and he occasionally digresses into pop psychology--a dangerous thing to do in a case such as this. Ultimately, Menegele comes off as despicable but still a mysterious figure.

Overall, I would give this book a qualified recommendation only because of the importance of its subject matter.

Gerald Astor has done an excellent job recounting Joseph Menegele's life both before and after the Nazi regime. He paints a pretty depressing picture of a man with no remorse for his crimes against humanity while hiding from a world that hates him, and rightfully so, and the family that protected him. He also shows the greater impact that the personification of Menegele as Evil Incarnate had on the world and media. However the psychological motives for Menegele the man's actions during the Nazi regime remain a mystery. Perhaps this kind of evil always will.

The later half of the book is better than the first, especially detailing Mengele's unrepentant life in hiding in South America. However the man with forever remain an engima. An interesting tale, but one with no real ending for it offers no insight to a man of many, many questions. But for those who want to read about the real Holocaust then this book should be searched for.

Rost offers a good and adequate account regarding the definition of leadership and its prevalent confusion with management. Unfortunately, this is more or less the only point made by the author. the book is greatly redundant and points made earlier are reiterated throughout several chapters. the only thing I took away from this book was Rost's definition of leadership.

Rost no doubt did a great deal of research before writing this book. He shares his thoughts on his own concept of what leadership is, as well as shooting holes in the concept of past authors. I found a great deal of his theories enlightening; however, I disagree with his primary concept of leadership. Rost preaches the collaborative concept of leadership. Implying that anyone in the group could take over the leadership role at any time, depending on their amount of influence on the rest of the group(rank, position, and authority goes right out the window). I felt he is threatend by any type of authority and detests the military or the "Great Man" style of leadership.

Not wanting to be totally critical, because I believe he is right on the mark when he talks about influence, coercion, and shifting paradigms. He has some great ideas, just a little too liberal for my idea on leadership.

Having said that, I still recommend reading this book. I couldn't help but picture Rost's knowledge in leadership as having been aquired by purely academic means and very little life experience, such as through military, government work, or business. However, I did learn a lot. And, it is always good to study the other camps way of thinking. Again, I do recommend it.

As a scholar and practitioner of leadership, I was a student of Joe Rost for several years at the University of San Diego. I had the luxury of being in the author's class on leadership -- and was guided, painfully at times, down the path of knowledge, toward the light of understanding. We were required to read several other "leadership" books, many of which have received high marks from outside readers on their "readability" -- and, inversely, low marks from those of us in Rost's class that understood their purposful seduction away from scholarly understanding toward a "feel good" or "cook book" approach so many other authors have used (quite successfully though) do no justice to our desire for understanding.

What's the point? Read this book if you dare to try and understand the depth and complexity of leadership studies. It is a ride that requires one to put away ALL preconceptions of what one may believe leadership is... as Einstein is often quoted as saying, "... one may not solve a problem from the same consciousness that created it."

Open your mind... open this book -- READ. It is a true seminal work on leadership, one to place along side of MacGregor Burns' "Leadership".