I recently ordered Iggs' Florida Adventure book for my 4 year old son. I read it to him on a plane ride down to Florida. He loved it. I read it to him about 10 times before the plane landed. It's only about 20 pages long, but the artwork is great. Best of all, we actually saw many of the things that we read about. It was great to read a colorful book to my son, and then see the images come to life. My only problem is that now he wants an iguana and he'd like to move to Florida (from Chicago). Great job Iggs.

My son would choose a toy over a book any day, but to my delight, he selected Iggs' book in a childrens' gift shop while vacationing in Orlando. The book was thin, and it didn't look like it had many pages. I realized after I browsed through it that they used a special kind of glossy paper which helped bring the images to life.

I like this book because it is very colorful. I took it to school and showed it to my teacher. She loved the pictures, and she let me read it to the whole class!! My best friend liked the horse picture in Ocala, but my favorite picture is where Iggs is in Miami. He has parrots on his tail, and a big whale ready to splash him.

Please Please Please tell me that the next edition will have an INDEX! It's much much easier to look up favorite bits of Jimmy Buffett info. if there's an INDEX.

This is a must-have for anyone who considers themself a Parrot-Head. Ranging in facts from why Buffett loved New Orleans but loathed Nashville, and also the true tale of Buffett's scalping by a legend in law enforcement, Sherrif Buford "Walking Tall" Pusser. If you thought that you knew it all about Buffett, think again, this book is bound to teach you something new.

This book is packed with a lot of great information that the truly committed parrot head would appreciate. For Example. did you know that Buffett's 1974 song, "A Pirate Looks At Forty," was based on the life of Miami drug smuggler, Phil Clark? Another great feature of this book is that it is crammed with great pictures.This book is a "must have" item for any Buffett afficianado

Many mergers, acquisitions and alliances fail due to lack of preparation before, lack of care during, or lack of focus after the deal. Joining Forces is a sober, to-the-point manual directed at business leaders who want to provoke successful combinations, as well as managers and employees who have to deal with the burdens, both mental and physical, of combinations. For the past decade, corporate America has embraced M&A - often with mixed results - and the consolidation pace seems to be accelerating. But too few people inside and outside of the companies involved understand what the combination process means or how it should be handled. Organizations must be willing to focus on the psychological impacts of a combination on their employees. Joining Forces provides a rough sketch of how this can be accomplished - minus any unnecessary strategic details or legalese. We [...] recommend this book to executives, managers and employees at every level - all of whom probably will have to face the realities of corporate consolidation some day.

In 1998, Marks/Mirvis and Clemente/Greenspan set the M&A world on its head with two very different yet equally groundbreaking books. The former pair's pioneering guide focused on preparing for the transition, team building, and identifying psychological barriers, while the latter duo revealed the secrets behind successfully combining cultures, strategies and processes in their timeless classic-- Winning at M&A. I've read them both many times -before, -during and -after each of my firm's acquisitions, and while new copy-cats and rip-offs continue to be published, no books as effectively walk the reader through the problems, their detailed solutions, and most importantly -- the real-life examples that offer step-by-step guidance on how to succeed. Deals fail all the time and these authors explain why and what they've done to turn failure into success. After each read, the information is still fresh, relevant and insightful. Virtually every other book on the subject is either fluff, history, or a cheap imitation. This is the real deal.

Marks and Mirvis are veterans of the merger battlefield and report the action extremely well. The book is filled with examples and approaches to resolving some of the most common problems encountered when two firms integrate. The other plus about the book is its heavy emphasis on the people and cultural issues that so often get ignored in most corporate combinations.

Kingdoms of Kalamar is a campaign setting from Kenzer & Co, the makers of the Knights of the Dinner Table. This book however, although aimed for the KoK player, is most useful for a regular D&D player. Why?
- a lot (I mean a lot) of new feats anybody can use
- several variant core classes like the Gladiator or the Infiltrator that can easily be used in other campaigns
- new prestige classes (like the Golem Master)
- canons (holy books) for Kalamarian faiths. They are written up very generically, so they can easily be used in FR/GH or wherever
- new equipment: poisons, alchemical items etc
- a lot of spells
- how to make rulers more powerful
- gaming rules for clerical hierarchy

The book suffers from some errors, mostly editing and playtesting. The art is sometimes irritating and some 'crunchy' bits have already appeared in other books. I, however have found this book to be of excellent value.

Another in the line of excellent books from Kenzer, this book has a lot to offer. It gives you more background on playing characters in Kalamar, including some more information on playing various demi-humans. For those who want still more rules, they have some new classes (we have a very effective Brigand in a current campaign) as well as some new spells, a comprehensive list of clerical domains and a whole lot more. I highly recommend this book.

This is a great book with tons of information that you can put into any D&D setting. It is geared toward Kalamar, but is written so generically that you can insert the information contained in this tome into any D&D campaign.

Classes: This book takes the Dungeon Master's Guide's advice and takes the initiative to create variant classes. These range from more specific versions of a class with cool abilities (like the Gladiator and Shaman) to classes that combine existing ones into exciting new classes that are much different than the old ones (like the infiltraitor). These classes are as flexible as the old ones and are fairly well balanced. Also are new prestige classes that cover specific jobs (Mariner, Muse) and a few of the many orginizations on Tellene (Sentinels of Providence, Alliance Merchant).

Feats: Absolutely tons of new feats in this monster. New types of feats like the Enhanced Familiar feats (which give your familiar better abilities like a higher intellegence or the ability to speak) and regional or race-based feats which you can only take at first level help shape your character to exactly what you want and brings the game back to roleplaying.

Religion: This book details the canons of each church. Although these are specifically related to Kalamar gods, they can be adapted to fit any setting. In addition, this book gives ideas on how clerics can advance through the church and very basic game rules like time spent and how to advance to the next level and what you get at each level.

Other rule stuff: The equipment section isn't too terribly exciting but it does give a shot at pushing the edge. Included are (some) new weapons and rules for slaves. The most exciting part is the new alchemical mixtures that will get you thinking of your own and are all interesting in their own way. Their is repeat in the domain section, but not a large amount. The new spells are kinda cool, but what is really nice is the scalable spells. These are kind of like Wheel of Time spells where you choose the level it is cast at.

At the end: The white pages. If you are thinking telephone book when I say that you are on the right tracks. In these are a comprehensive list of all feats and spells (divided up by class) in all official D&D products and where they can be found. These can then be copied to use as a spell sheets. Also back here is a gigantic Place of Origin table. Only useful if you are playing Kalamar but it is non-obtrusive and only takes 7 pages.

To close, this is a great book for all D&D players and DMs alike. If you don't have it yet, I recommend you pick one up.

Another fine publication from Osprey, this one is a concise coverage of the battle of the Kursk salient. Strategy of the German offense and the Russian defense are detailed, and colorful "3-D" battle maps are provided for every step of the campaign. There are bios of leaders, archival photos, descriptions of equipment, and color plates of military uniforms and hardware. Kursk has in the past been defined as a German loss rather than a Russian success. Osprey presents it as a definitive Soviet victory, critical to the outcome of the War.

I received this book today and was extremely satisfied with how it describes the battle. Much more than I anticipated is revealed with the turn of each page. Data tables are precise and maps flawless. Especially interesting was the fact the Tigers of Army Detachment Kempf were unable to reach Prohkorovka to help in the outcome.Also, how strong the Soviet defences were and how minefields took a terrible toll on the panzers and just how costly the campain was to both sides.

Kursk 1943 : Tide Turns in the East (Osprey Military Campaign Series, No 16) by Mark Healy is a fine short history of one of the critical battles on the Russian front.. Healy's writing keeps the reader centered on the battle and the whys and therefores. What is the strongest part of the book is the discussion of what each participant knew and didn't know. For instance, a critical failure of the Nazi offensive was their failure to realize the depth of the Russian defenses.

Healy's lead up to the battle is compelling. The conflict between the suggested strategy by the German generals of a mobile defense and Hitler's Operation Citadel is another example of Hitler's imposed "strategy" losing the war for the Germans.

This is one of the better books in the Osprey Military Campaign Series. The maps are excellent and after the book is finished one has an appreciation of the climatic battle.

Logic of sense is a very difficult book to get in toto. I'm not sure that it's even meant to be read that way. The book is arranged in a series of paradoxes that each take on a concept or problematic through which Deleuze undoes the hermeneutics of "meaning" in order to replace it with one built around "sense." What makes this book rewarding is its importance to an understanding of expression and imagination in Anti-Oedipus, and various images and signs in his two cinema books. But it almost takes having read his books on Spinoza, Nietzsche, and Bergson first to get the most out of Deleuze's strange and non-subjective ideas of sense and event. I will agree with the reviewer above that the book leans hard on the Stoics, but to stop there would be to miss Deleuze's project here. He wants to create a logic that establishes sense neither in speech nor in language, neither in sign systems nor in structures. He wants to place the production of sense in a philosophy that has restored its grasp of movement and becoming, has shaken its dogmatic belief in concepts and abstractions, and that creates and affirms through virtual qualities and events that, while communicating in fact and through the repetition of the familiar (order), still relate to and express pure qualities. This is really the companion piece to the cinema books but on literature. I don't know that his theory of sense carries well to performance and social convention. Which is frustrating, because we need a some good theories of social convention and language that can take us past linguistics and speech act theories. This is a fantastic book and one of his most inventive.

This was the first book of Deleuze's that i read. The book begins with an analysis of Lewis Carrol's "Alice in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking Glass". The often playful style of writing is deceptive; the concepts explored are often extremely complicated. Furthermore, i personally found it difficult to link together the various concepts, although of course Deleuze is not trying to write a unified whole. The first section of the book in which Deleuze deals primary with Carrol discusses, amongst other things, paradox, "pure becoming", and explores the relationship between the "surface" and the "murky depths". Somwhere a little after half way through "The Logic of Sense", Deleuze begins the "pyschoanalytic" portion of the book, applying several of the concepts developed previously, especially the relationship between "surfaces" and "depths". Personally, I enjoyed the first half of the book, and all of the talk about phallus' and orality seemed to come out of nowhere; there is no transition or preparation for this shift. The essays including in the appendix provide added (and helpful) insights into the main text and into Deleuze's thought in general. Overall, i found the "surface" of the Logic of Sense not too difficult to grasp, but the inner workings are indeed elusive.

The Logic of Sense is a deceptive book, for you feel after the first 30 pages or so that you kinda grasp what's going on, only to put it down, take a breath and go: "Eh?" A reviewer once famously called it 'dry as a biscuit' or something to that effect, but I don't think it's dry so much as weird. Weird, that is, that it comes off so calm and *logical* when it's really so insane and delirious. Compared to Deleuze, the majority of postructuralists are like so many Fregeans.
All of which is not to say that the book is as inefficacious as he claims sense is. See, the book works almost as sense comes to by the end---at first shimmering but sterile, and then fecund and obscure. But rest assured, you do find your zone of clarity.
It is difficult, but nowhere near as difficult as the companion piece, Difference and Repetition. One will find many of the arguments there updated and clarified here.
Logicians and the analytic minded might find it annoying that Deleuze keeps referring to sense (which they might read "Sinn") but seems to be completely oblivious to the great Gottlob and his ilk. 'Tis true, after all, that Deleuze sleeps with the enemies in this one; namely, the Stoics and that evil ontological hyperinflationist Meinong.
Which brings me to a word to the wise: it can only help you to have a good understanding of Stoic physics, logic, and ethics before coming to this book of Deleuze's. He may jump from place to place a bit, but--and this is my reading--this book remains fundamentally Stoic. Basically, change "God" to "the aleatory" and endow "sayables" with a potency they were often denied in Stoic logic, and you got yourself a pretty good grasp of the material you'll find here. Or at least a start. IMO, it really does help to just slap your mind into Stoic mode and think about his approach from that angle, rather than simply trying to wrestle Anti-Oedipus or Cinema 2 into the Logic of Sense rubric.
I agree with one of the other reviewers, and believe me it pains me to say it, that the six or so series (chapters) on psychology and dynamic genesis pretty much blarney. They're boring and seem to stop the motors of the book by needlessly colliding with Freud. And since they take us away from the interesting Stoic stuff, and bring us to the other psychology stuff, one can't help but feel they're at least obsolete with respect to Anti-Oedipus and the Fold.
Other than that, it's mega.

I think Mark Dowie did a great job showing some problems of today. Even though I feel this book was meant to be read in the mid-1990s, Dowie's points are still valid. Dowie also showed how different groups that call themselves *environmentalists* have different areas of concern (not all are out to save the "cute fuzzy animals," but have other important concerns/issues).

Although this book is now 7 years old, it seems more relevant today than when Dowie wrote it. I keep hoping for a new, revised, edition. The elections of 2000 and 2002 have shown that the mainstream environmental organizations in the U.S. have lost most of their strength in the political arena. Despite major attempts to influence elections. . .the Senatorial race in Colorado for example. . .their efforts were either not effective or salient to the electorate. The Green Party seems to have filtered off those voters who are primarily concerned with environmental issues and most indications are that those voters are not impressed with the mainstream environmental establishment in the U.S. The Green Parties of Europe seem to be making a resurgence, but progress in the U.S. is not evident.

Dowie's main critique is of the established, major environmental organizations; those groups who enjoyed so much growth during the Reagan era as a reaction to James Watt and others in the Reagan Cabinet. While Gale Norton is from the same mold as Watt, and Christy Todd Whitman is not far removed, they do not seem to be provoking the same degree of unrest among America's electorate. Arguable the Administration of George "5-4" W. Bush is even worse than Reagan Administration in Environmental Policy, and seem to be drifting even further since the 2002 elections. However the major environmental organizations do not seem to be able to focus attention, or perhaps interest, on this issue. The reason for that may be changing social and cultural norms, but it also may be due to the perception that these organizations are not relevant.

Dowie's book may be a bit out-of-date, but it is well worth the read. I think Dowie was right in 1995 and his ideas still ring true today.

I havn't read much about the history of environmentalism so when I saw this at a used bookstore I decided to pick it up. It gave a very good overview about how environmentalism progressed throughout the 20th century and the different groups involved. At the end the author gives his theory about where the environmental movement is heading in the future. Overall I would recommend it to anyone interested in environmental politics and the movement in general.

most of the others reviewers here have told you all you'll need to know about the story of "Mail Order Bride" so I'll leave those details to them.
I'd like to talk about how good the art is in this 200+ page graphic novel. Mark first got my attention back with a mini-series he did called "Alex" which may or may not be available in trade paperback form. His expressive and economical art made me a fan from that first issue, and I eagerly await each new project.
"MOB" shows his skills with sequential art growing even more precise and detailed. He uses many repeated images and wordless panels to great effect, and captures more emotion in a look from his characters than the dialogue ever could.
I'm a big fan of fellow indie creator Andi Watson, and both he and Mark have an economy of line that is so refreshing in today's comics field. Andi's line is thick and minimalist, while Mark's is thin and detailed, but both pack so much feeling into their work that you'll soon be a fan too.
"MOB" is the best $$ I've spent in a comics shop in some time.

A great piece of graphic storytelling. I'm a lifelong comic fan and take pride in keeping apprised of independent, critically acclaimed works (even if I don't read them all), and I was surprised when I never heard of Mail Order Bride. This book completely flew under many people's radars, I believe, and my opinion is that it would have sold much better with more attention.

The story and artwork are truly beautiful. Mark Kalesniko takes on a subject matter that is rife with stereotypes and cliches, and lends them depth and humanity. The story is moving, the individual panels are rich and emotion-invoking, and Kalesniko makes good use of the sequential panel structure to tell a story without words at many junctures. Most importantly, no character is two-dimensional. True, the premises surrounding each character are stereotypical, but Kalesniko eventually proves that he treasures his creations as individuals and not as plot devices.

Here, the reader is invited into the world of Monty Wheeler, a comic book store owner and lonely man, and Kyung Seo, his mail order bride from Korea. The reader accompanies them from their first meeting through their first awkward months together as husband and wife, observing as they initially try to do nothing but make the other happy. Slowly, their expectations of each other are not met and unhappiness and dissastisfaction results, because their expectations were artificially inflated by preconceived notions of each other.

Ultimately, the star of the book is Kyung, who comes into her own and discovers within herself a strong and independent woman, only to ultimately discover that this is not who she is. A tragic, if curious ending.

The only complaint I had about this book is that the author glosses over details that if included, would lend realism to his story, but inconvenience the plot. For example, Kyung speaks perfect English upon arrival in Canada. She chalks this up to always being good with languages. That's preposterous. Also, there's virtually no culture shock. Although her character is one that is trying to leave her past behind, I don't think that anyone completely can do that without feeling some longing or regret for their home culture. Especially in the case of an immigrant from East Asia to the U.S., the cultural differences are so vast, I don't see anyone adjusting as well as Kyung did. I don't know that the author appreciates this.

However, these small details were easy to overlook because of the touching story and rich characterization.

Complex, believable characters and an unusual, well-conceived plot make this one of my favorite graphic novels. The conflict between the comic book store owner with an Asian fetish and his new Korean mail-order bride is beautifully told in a series of small, telling vignettes, developing slowly as it takes a series of unpredictable turns. Kalesniko's art is, as always, both incisive and gorgeous, and his use of panels and pacing are just brilliant. He obviously has a lot to teach others in the medium of comics. He apparently did work on The Lion King and Mulan, but his wonderfully cinematic storytelling skills have been evident since long before that. I'll admit the ending of the story goes a bit over the top for my taste, but what remains is a dense and fascinating look at a very poignant, very real relationship. I've read it 3 times now and continue to linger over the captivating way Kalesniko tells the story. If you're looking for a graphic novel for people who say they'll never like "comic books," this is one to buy.

If you are reading this book because you think it is a good follow up to the Spear of Destiny you are wrong. Don't waste you time buying this it has nothing to do with the Spear. He talks about the Freemasony being a platform for occult groups, 777, ect. If you can get this from a library do it, but don't buy it. The Co-author, Tim Wallace-Murphy, needs to write his own books instead of stealing ideas from classic works. Overall it's a quick read, somewhat interesting, but nothing compared to the first. R.I.P. Ravenscoft

Spear of Destiny, Cup of Destiny and now this make the ultimate triology, this is the Lord of the Rings and Star Wars with one difference its real and is going on in our lives right now. These are historical figures in the battle of good vs. evil and its still being played out right here right now, and to make things more interesting. The one who comes to entrap us all is here. Read about it, and prepare, for it all prepares the way for yet another event. These books have changed my life. He cometh with clouds. Mark B.email grokfish@gte.net

I am familiar with Mr. Ravenscroft's work and believe that he is truly at the top of his form. If the subject interests you, do read his earlier work, and please take a look at The Spear of Golgotha, Richard Greenwald, a fictionalized delve into familiar territory. Five stars for Ravenscroft.