The title said so. This is the guide for writing statement. Unlike other books, this book won't show the typical format. This book, however, shows the "real" statement of applicant who success. Many examples are interesting. Moreover, the guideline of recommend letter request is very good. It's not only for people who ask letter of recommendation, but also for the recommendation letter writter can see what they should said to thier students. I disagree with other reviewer that this book is not limited only Law, Business, and Medical school. It's true that the title said it and the examples are to Law, Business and Medical school. However, if you read it carefully, many examples and guidelines can be used in other school as well. This book is well written and organized. However, due to limited resource, example and guideline, this book is only in 3 stars.

I find the previous review disturbing. It is obviously the editor or author of the book giving themselves kudos.

I liked the book. It made me realize that the personal statement should not only be a self-marketting piece, but also be entertaining enough as to not get sorted into the circular file.

Every year, college students across the country prepare to enter the workforce or graduate school. One important part of this process is writing a personal statement that describes and applicant's goals, experiences, and future plans. Mark Alan Stewart is an expert on graduate level entrance exams. His book, Perfect Personal Statements, provides information and advice for college students seeking admission to graduate and professional schools.
Stewart's book is easy to read and understand. He answers the common questions like, "How will my essay be evaluated?" and "Should I discuss that glaring blemish in my past, or should I ignore it?" Stewart also provides students with minor details, like how to dress for an in-person interview. Finally, the advice from medical, law, and business school experts could prove to be helpful. The experts provide specific information about what they look for in an application. Each type of school has different standards and it is beneficial to know what admission offices across the country like to see.
College students applying to graduate schools tend to be very busy. They don't have time to read a long and confusing book. Mark Alan Stewart seems to have kept this in mind. He has packed a lot of information into only 114 pages. The book is also divided into sections that allow the reader to quickly find information on certain subjects. Stewart's book helps to simplify the application process and provides students with strategies to prevent them from feeling overwhelmed and frustrated.

Not recommended. The biggest shock was the author's pedantry. The first third of the book is an obscure treatment of history which assumes too much knowledge on the part of the reader. The book needs a glossary with the pronunciation of unusual spanish words, names, and places. I found myself constantly stumbling over them.

We teach a summer elective in Mexico for health professional students. Our 2 week in-country course focuses on learning the culture and language and health care systems of Mexico. This book is very useful because it gives a quick down and dirty synopsis of Mexican history (much longer and messier than U.S.history)that allows us, as teachers, to move into what we see as the aftermath, in the country today. It then moves onto the author's own experiences navigating the culture, with excellent tips, "to blend in" and understand what is going on around you. The details the author provides, such as going up to a stranger's house in the country, and asking "do you have any extra food today?" were true 20 years ago and are still true today. This provides the cultural context and informational detail we need, dealing with immigrants from these areas, in health care settings. It is not a guidebook. It is a hybrid...and very useful for those travelers who blaze their own paths, not the usual tourist tracks of Mexico.

I read this after reading the US State Travel Dept. Info Sheet which tends to be overly conservative and makes places sound like demilitarized zones. This guide put a little reality back into it. The author gives some cultural tips mainly for the gringo (US citizen) to help mostly in social situations. Especially useful, were the tips on how to recognize a good Mexican restaurant, how to address people in social situations, and other Mexicanisms such as various commonly used slang. The author also describes regional differences and urban/rural differences you may come across. I feel this is a good guide to get a feel for the people and the place especially for the casual visitor going to the non-tourist areas of Mexico so you don't act like such a gringo. Not really a book to keep as a long-term reference to Mexico, I'd try to borrow it before buying it. The author does give minor Mexican differences in pronouncing Spanish, but I think he assumes most readers have a basis for Spanish, or will have a phrase book for this.

Perhaps the Seattle teacher should learn what the word "editor" means: Bloom's role in this series is an EDITOR, not a WRITER. What Bloom does in this, and many other series, is sort through chaff to find the wheat of criticism, and presents it to his readers so that they will have a rounder view of the literature at hand. As always, some of this work is above the heads of all but the finest readers, but in Bloom's collection there is very little of the self-serving nonsense that passes for criticism these days. Kudos to Bloom Brontosaurus!

Truely a classic. A must read for everyone who can even remotely claim to know literature. Read it--now--you won't regret it.

It is very difficult to review so superb a work but i will try:in short there are two basics things in the Divina Commedia that attract the reader:one is a very comprehensive descripition of medieval society,history,religion and science made by a first class scholar like Dante Alighieri,the other is a most penetrating and revealing analysis of the "ethernal" human being with all the good and the bad everyone of us experiences in his daily life.In the Commedia every aspect of life is examined and accounted for.But i think that the real magic of Dante is the almost super-natural ability to express his views in the most exquisitely crafted verses of Italian literature.Try for example to read Dante and Virgilio encounter with Ulysses or with Paolo and Francesca and you will be almost lifted by the author powers of dramatic rendering of life to another plane of existence and knoweldge.I adore Dante and hope everyone loves him too!Best Italian book ever written!

The problem with this book is that it offers an astounding bibliography, being therefore a mandatory list to further readings, but unfortunately it is entirely teleological, as it considers neoclessic economics of the most conservative kind to represent the acme of all economic thinking.

I have always felt uneasy with this book since I was an under graduated student, 30 years ago. This is undoubtedly a quiet useful book for anyone who needs a bird's-eye view of the classics in economics. If you don't have time to read Smith's Wealth of Nations or Marshall's Principles, here you have the book you need. However, it is not here that you can look for a good analysis of the meaning and implications of the main schools of economic thought, as well as the relevance of the work of its most distinguished authors and their social and intellectual environment. That is reason why I always preferred Schumpeter's History of Economic Analysis. Today, that I am lecturing this course my dissatisfaction has increased, among other reasons because you have more and better textbooks, such as Lionel Robbins' History of Economic Thought, Mark Skoussen's Making of Modern Economics, or Jürg Niehams' History of Economic Theory, which I really enjoyed reading because they try to make a portrayal of the intellectual and human stature of the most important economists of all times and their background.

as an econ major i found this book highly informative and interesting. however, if you are not mathematically inclined you might find some of the models and graphs difficult to follow, especially the ones involving differential equations.
but if you are an econ dude, this book is great. lots of insight about how commonly used theories and models came about. well written for the most part, but somewhat wordy at times.

This book is a collection of tidbits of knowledge that anyone could have put together by simply reading each author's biography. The author's dry, pedantic style is as exciting as eating cardboard, rendering what could have been an interesting book into a simple reference work. This book is simply a reference and a third-hand reference at best, good for writing undergraduate and high school term papers, as little if none of the information seems to come from a primary source. There are no fresh insights, nothing much new here, just the same things one would find in any reference book, and only here they are condensed into a single source. Written like a reference book, the author could have produced the same thing, by cutting and pasting from an encyclopedia

His chapter on Mishma, perhaps the most spectacular suicide of all the writers, is made as dry and boring as reading instructions on how to assemble a child's toy. The author's style is best suited for such or an academic dissertation, something one has to read rather that what someone would read for pleasure or information.

A lot of this book is thoroughly literary, with psychological insights. Irony is not listed in the index, but addictions, alcoholism, depression, drugs, manic depression (bipolar syndrome), mental illness, overdose, paranoia, schizophrenia, Vietnam War, World War I, and World War II are listed as some of the mechanisms which were either meaningful to certain writers or a means of explaining their behavior. Readers may pick other topics as their favorite parts of this book, with a few preferring the musical highlights relating to Adolph Hitler, Richard Wagner, and someone whose family was full of the suicidal tendencies of people who have problems adjusting to the world as it is. The ultimate irony, for me, would be if this book demonstrates something about the fatal nature of truth, if each of the subjects can be shown to have known something that the rest of us have not figured out yet.

Those of us who are still alive have little reason to worry that our own mechanisms for clinging to life will be vividly portrayed in a book of this nature, but some people have official positions which call on them to interact with famous people in a way which this book cannot ignore. In the case of William H. Webster, director of the F.B.I. in 1979, his contribution to this book was a public statement concerning a rumor printed on May 19, 1970, "Papa's said to be a rather prominent Black Panther," (p. 335) about Jean Seberg, wife of Romain Gary, "but that the story had been broken independently by Haber shortly after the bureau had given the go-ahead to its Los Angeles division to disseminate the rumor." (p. 336). Webster's statement, "The days when the FBI used derogatory information to combat advocates of unpopular causes have long since passed. We are out of that business forever." (p. 336). Recent news that Webster has been appointed to head an accounting oversight board, after leading an auditing committee at U.S. Technologies which fired an auditor who wanted to dwell on derogatory information, leaves us up in the air on who is capable of coming up with more derogatory information, and what people who have it are supposed to do with it. Manic traits associated with such a situation include, "In conversation, she is a perpetual monologist, and ignores or disregards the interpolations of those about her. If someone continues to interrupt or contradict her, she may fly into a fit of virulent rage. Often she suffers from a persecution complex or else feels that she is surrounded by incompetents." (p. 435). Medicine might be more appropriate than death in most cases, but it shouldn't be surprising that one of the chapters of this book is about John Kennedy Toole, author of A CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES.

Some of the greatest writers in the world chose an untimelydeath by suicide, and this charts their lives and psychologicalconditions. It's hard to easily categorize this treatise, which considers both their literary lives and their psychology; but any studying such writers from Anne Sexton and Ernest Hemingway to the more modern Michael Dorris, will find Final Draft an important survey covering more than a century of literary figures.

A positive alternative to Baudrillard's dim view of the postmodern condition can be found in Mark C. Taylor's 1997 book HIDING--a philosophical re-visoning of our contemporary Western society that instead of clinging to vestigial epistemic notions of depth and foundationalism, embraces a holistic, worldwide web view of social structures. By way of an extended, elaborate metaphor that describes our ontological condition as being intimately related to our embryonic development (we are nothing more than layers of skin upon layers of skin, ad infinitum), Taylor suggests a new epistemic outlook that no longer makes an issue of depths, but rather focuses upon the complex relationship of interactive, interacting phenomena--in his phrase, "the profundity of surface." Emergent, virtual technologies retroactively point to our own socially constructed "reality" as always-already virtual itself, and to get caught up in the trap of defining contemporary phenomena in terms of outdated analytical models will only succeed in an inescapably circular logic; as he puts it, "After (the) all has been said and done, the question that remains is not 'What is virtual reality?' but 'What is not virtual reality?' (267). This shift in focus allows us to give our undivided attention to the realm of practice, to aesthetics, to surface; like Slavoj Zizek in TARRYING WITH THE NEGATIVE, Taylor would have us interface with things-in-themselves, allowing us to become aware of our positioning within a complex web of relations between phenomena, as well as what that positioning will allow us to do.

This book provoked consumer behavior for me. I am shopping for a good coffee table on which to place it. _Hiding_ is marvellous to look at, as well as to read. Taylor offers a sequence of interrelated inquiries into perceptions of the relations between the surface and the "realities" underneath. These inquiries are concerned with phrenology and eugenics, body piercing and gold-card fashions. This book may not emerge as the most important in recent postmodern theory, but it is one of the more enjoyable reads. With it located on the coffee table, your guests will believe you're hip to the latest theoretical fashions, your children will wonder what you're thinking, and your housekeeper will quit smoking to read during breaks.

I first resisted Hiding. I wanted to disapprove of its subject matter (skin, mystery novels, fashion, Vegas, and on!). I really tried not to like it. But it's grown on me in ways that I find quite challenging. And that challenge is what's best about it.

There was a review in BookForum about Hiding that couldn't let go of the central tenet of this cunning book: surface is not to be underestimated. Surface (as opposed to depth) is not simply a dead-end but the beginnings of a new worldview. While older worryworts and curmudgeonly librarian types may protest this premise, sorry, I've got five words for all of you: Sean "Puffy" Combs, Grammy Winner.

The layout of the book is as provocative as its content: our current state of affairs. Supermodels are celebrities, COPS is reality television, Las Vegas is a family getaway, tattooing is our youth's version of long hair. All of these topics get brought up and explored in studied and thoughtful detail. Yet, Taylor doesn't dissect these cultural changes from a sterile laboratory atop an ivory tower -- he digs right into it. His section on fashion reads like it's a special pullout to W magazine (let's see that happen!) and you don't need a dictionary to make sense of the fundamental mysteries being wrestled with throughout this fast-paced tome.

It can be difficult, at times, to make sense of some of the more poetic or lyrical moments but then I also don't care much for rap or French cinema. All in all, I'd put this (quite beautiful to look at) book right up there with anything Barthes has written -- with the added bonus that this is an enthusiastically eclectic and sincerely postmodern collage.

One star if you read it all the way to the very last page. Some sentences in that book are just wonderful, I wrote them down in my notebook so I could read them later! But unfortunatley I did not loose the book and I did read the ending, and it ruined it all. So, seriously, if you read this book- and you should, its fantastic, but towards the end, when your thinking "how are there that many pages left? this is the ending, right?" stop there. rip out the rest of the pages. burn them.

In contrary to a previous review of this novel, I found this story to be deeply moving and intriguing. The characterisation and depth made the reader warm to Stone and the heartache he suffered at the end when the twist was revealed made I, personally, feel for him. Having in the past read both 'Toady' and 'Stitch' by Morris, and having found them both interesting reads, I must still say that 'The Immaculate is by a long shot Morris's best novel of the three. Having read a large number of horror novels in the past I must say that Morris has not followed the genre and produced a genuine shocker, but has done more than that in combining the supernatural with social issues to create something far more superior to many horror works, something that is truly moving and makes the reader think. I believe this is a very fine novel, but if you want more mainstream horror then stick to King or Laymon. CHRIS WARD.

I always thought of Mark Morris as a good, if not what secondrate British horrorwriter. I don't mean that in a negative way, but he always had the footsteps of people like Clive Barker, Ramsey Campbell and James Herbert in which to follow... and that's not an easy task!
It's perhaps ironic that those writers also seem to have had a big influence on him. I remember his book 'The Secret of Anatomy'to be an entertaining Barkeresque romp and his 'Doctor Who' novels were lighthearted, not all too serious fun.

The Immaculate changed all that...

I can't help but have the feeling that the story is strongly autobiographical (the parts about the writer anyway, offcourse not the supernatural bits...I hope).
The book is about a writer who returns to his hometown after his abusive father passed away. When he starts having bad dreams and hears his father's voice through the phone I just knew it was going to be THAT kind of story.

I was wrong.

I couldn't for the life off me have expected where this story'd wind up. I won't spoil it for you, but it was brilliant, and much more mature than similar efforts from someone like Herbert, who always likes to have the blood and guts flying. You wont find that in this novel.

The Immaculate is by far Mark Morris' best work. I am an aspiring writer myself (aren't we all?) and I totally got pulled in by the world in which the main character lives. For example, I loved it when he pulled found this old case in his attic and started flipping through the pages of all the books he so adored during his childhood. Marvelous!

Like I said before, this doesn't go for the gross-out, but it's good supernatural horror, with strong psychological and social overtones.

...there comes a sheaf of 400 pages of nauseating corporate doublespeak diligently arranged as a collection of unlikely situational progressions. Here's how you go about "Correcting a Client's Behavior", you start by saying: "I need your help in restrategizing the way we approach this whole negotiation..." Er... restrate-what?

What a joke. If you ever speak to anyone in that dry and phony, clicheistic language you're going to succeed only in making a fool of yourself; and I'm not even mentioning any of the offered logical progressions, that can only have emerged from a sterile mind of a lethargically lucubrating lawyer in process of being frozen so as to save himself for posterity. My counter-advice would be to remain straight and honest when dealing with people, to speak simply, and above all, to avoid at all costs the stolid, inhumanely politically-correct, excessively roundabout and formulaic droning that Mr Pollan recommends in his book as the acme of human communication.

This is an excellent book to keep in your collection for reference. You never know what difficult situations may arise, and this book gives example conversations for how to handle those situations.

I wish I'd read this book long before I had. The authors present you with some of life's stickiest situations and then tell you exactly how to handle it with words. What makes this book so invaluable is that the authors don't assume that the situation always involves bitterness--for example, their suggestions for leaving a job actually admit that it could just be a peaceful exit.

If you want to know how to disentangle yourself from an employer you're sure is going to hold a grudge, they give you elegant ways of telling your future employer about it. Use their method, and you won't sound whiny, belligerent, or even disgruntled! If anything, their methods make the former employer's words about you look questionable and stilted. I did use their ideas on this, and THEY WORKED.

To be brutally honest, this book is all about spin and the power it holds. So often in communication with one another, we forget that what we say is just as important as how we say it. In the age of emails and faxes, we're losing our manners and making unintentional enemies in the process. This book will re-educate you on the finer points of being nice and, dare I say it, being emotionally neutral.

The authors clearly illustrate that our emotions keep us from being objective about a situation, and this is why Lifescripts is so helpful. They teach you how to distance yourself just enough to see the whole picture and then give you the words/actions necessary to properly deal with the problem. They also teach about a long-forgotten nuance of communication--take a pause and think before you say it/do it/write it.

It's an excellent book that any manager, employee, or senior executive could easily benefit from, and I think it's even appropriate reading for high school age. Knowing when to say what can save you a lot of trouble...

I found thins book to be not at all helpfull to me in moving to New Zealand. In fact I found it to be very out of date and the back section that talks about the Kiwi people and their way of life seemed depressing to me. I found the book to be constantly stereo typeing Kiwis. Sheep, beer, rugby etc. I think that the information in this book was true 10 years ago but a lot has changed in New Zealand in that time, especially in the cities. The information in this book is all available on the internet and it is constantly updated there.

I read this book before i went on a vacation to New Zealand last year. It was fairly informative. If you have absolutely no knowledge of the country, this book will be very helpful. However books such as this one are not extremely useful, even if they were updated each year. (which this book isn't) The section about Television in New Zealand was outdated. This book makes it seem that even the best satellite service will not compare to even cable in the US. In other words, their television offerings are scarce. However, I found that to be untrue. Sky TV offers many channels and has good variety. This is just an example of how this book cannot possibly keep you informed about a rapidly changing country like New Zealand. The point is, if you really want the scoop on living in New Zealand, ask your friends who've visited for information. An even better way is to search on the internet. Go to a chatroom that has New Zealand inhabitants and ask them. They are very friendly.

I bought this book about a year ago, just as I was beginning to think of a move to New Zealand. Well, here we are, one year later... and I'll be there in four weeks time!

This book helped me so much that I simply had to write a review of it before leaving. There are only about twenty books on my list to take with me to NZ, and this is one of them. I can't recomend it highly enough.

I've been to NZ a handfull of time now. I find this book to be right on the mark. It captures just about everything you need to know about living and working in NZ, and many thing you don't need to know... but are entertaining in their own right.

Mr. Hempshell touches on everything that a prospective migrant would want to know, with a great deal of humor as well (I love the little cartoons). I also bought books which were supposed to be about immigrating to NZ. Steer clear of these books. They tell you nothing that you can't find out for yourself on the NZ immigration web site.

If you are thinking of moving to NZ this is the book for you. Of all the books about NZ I've bought this year, this is the only one I still refer to. You'll not go wrong, trust me.

After reading the book, seeing the movie and reading the reviews. I have to wonder. What were the authorities thinking. Here we have adopted parents, who went into this with good intentions. Than you have a woman, who lied several times and whoeveryone forgives for causing all this. Than there's Dan Schmit, who is lied too and forgives Cara. Okay so he made mistakes, haven't we all. This child should have been taken immediately and placed in a foster home till things were worked out. But the authorities allowed the Deboers to keep and nuture her.
Now both couples are divorced and there are three children being raised by single parents. Go figure!

This story is so so tragic. I really felt for the DeBoers. I have only read this book and know nothing of the movie or what has transpired since. I felt torn as this child was from the only parents she knew. I think Cara and Dan should have left it alone and let Jessica stay where she was. I am sure she is or seems to be okay now but the trauma that child had to bear was unnecessary. This book is really touching and makes you look at yourself and wonder what you would have done. The story is well written as Robby DeBoer writes from her prespective she does not unfairly treat Dan and Cara. Recommend this book!

I just couldn't believe how Jessica's best interest was overlooked! The book clearly shows the contradicting the testimonies of both Dan and Cara. I hope Jessica forgives Dan and Cara for the pain that they caused her! I'm sure she loves both Dan and Cara for caring for her, but it's obvious from reading the book that her best interest would have been to stay with her parents that she had known Jan and Robby DeBoer. They truely loved her and Cara didn't file a petition to get Jessica back UNTIL AFTER THE PROBATION PERIOD! ..., it was not the fault of the DeBoers but it was the fault of Dan and Cara for putting their own selfish interests before Jessica's! Jan and Robby had grown to love Jessica and to have her ripped away from them was painful for all three of them, especially Jessica since she thought she was still too young to understand why she was taken away from her mommy and daddy! The DeBoers were not the cause of it. Someday Jessica will meet up again with her adoptive and thank them for taking care of her when she was a baby. She will thank them for loving her and giving her the best home while she was in the years of vulnerability! I'm sure hope that Jessica is living a wonderful life with the Schmidts, I hope that Jessica (now Anna) adjusted well.