If your looking for a book that shows a picture of each cookie your out of look - not a picture in the entire book. The book shows a sketch of each cook - not an actual picture. I find a picture helpful in knowing what the cookie should look like. The book does have a good selection of cookies but since it does not contain any pictures, I am giving it a low rating.

I was looking for a book that has your basic Christmas cookie recipes. This one has some of those, but not as many as I was hoping for. It does have a good selection of cookies, however, and the recipes seem pretty easy to make.

This book is at the top of my cookie cook book list because of the originality, ease and sweet delectable taste of most of the cookies listed. I find most cookie books contain variations of the same thing, choc. chip, oatmeal, brownies, sickly sweet goop, etc. you get it. This one is different. Hasn't been one recipe to disappoint me yet. Recipes are well written with introductory descriptions/ history. Many old fashioned type cookies too. Many of the cookies turn out quite elegant as well. Great for parties and bringing to work functions.

You just can't go wrong with this book despite the other reviewer's complaint that it has no photos, only illustrations. The jam and the cream-cheese ones are my favourites. This is the Cookie Monster's "I'd take it with me to a dessert island" type of book!

The reviews and comments I had read about Mark Spitzer's novel CHUM intrigued me -- so I thought I would check it out. I was sorely disappointed in this book. The only character for whom I felt even mild, brief sympathetic feelings was the nun who appeared on one or two pages. Everyone else in this story is completely dispicable. The 'warning' on the inner jacket flap about the story being 'sex-obsessed, scatological, deeply offensive, violent...(&c)' is pretty accurate. The overall effect was like reading the toilet-seat fantasies of some adolescent...

I thought Spitzer's writing was skillful -- it just amazes me that he chose to focus his talents on such drivel. The quotes on the back comparing the novel to Melville (calling CHUM 'the Moby Dick of the millenium') and the work of Tom Robbins, and offering poshumous (always a safe gift) approval from the likes of Kafka, Kierkegaard and Ingmar Bergman were ludicrous at best.

The violence and degradation of women depicted in this book reminds me of nothing less than some of the more depraved 'underground' comics of the 1960s. What humor I found within its pages was not enough to redeem it. Sorry to be so negative, but that's how I feel.

For a vibrant, imaginative -- and by no means 'tame' -- story in a similar vein, check out Mark Richard's marvelous novel FISHBOY. It burns with the surreal qualities that I think Spitzer was shooting for (perhaps an unfortunate choice of words) in this book, and it's not nearly so morally reprehensible.

Mark Spitzer has written one of the finest novels I've ever read about what becomes of human beings in a savage land. Chum is dark, violent, funny, visceral, and incredibly profane - an icepick in the gut and a sledgehammer to the skull. It is, simply put, one righteous hum-dinger of a book.

Based on Spitzer's own translation of Secrets of the Island, an unproduced film treatment by Louis-Ferdinand Celine, Chum is a black fable of mad love and jealousy set among the people of a nameless rock of an island in the middle of the Bering Strait. The descendents of a boatload of Irish convicts originally bound for Australia, over two centuries of stultifying isolation and almost unbroken inbreeding have made them a race unto themselves. Violent and decidedly less than bright, the islanders exist in a meager and unchanging ecosystem: most of the men go out and dredge the ocean floor for bottom feeders to bring home to the women, who work in the cannery grinding the fish into dog food for the Russian and Japanese markets. When they're not working the men get drunk and rape their wives and daughters. The islanders are born and die breathing the cold, fetid air of despair. Nothing changes except the weather.

Chum begins with a storm, a black wall of weather that smacks the island with Old-Testament fury and washes two boats ashore. One is a fishing boat belonging to the father of nineteen-year-old Nadine Murphy, a girl with little in the way of brains but with enough dull beauty to aspire to better things than an islander's fate. These hopes increase exponentially with the death of her father and the survival of his good-looking crewman Yann, whom she decides on the spot she will have for her man.

Those hopes are tempered, however, when the owner of the other boat is discovered. She is young, blonde, wealthy, and beautiful in a way that makes her a goddess in the eyes of the island men and arouses the instant hatred of a group of diseased old seahags led by Mother Kralik, feared by all for her venomous invective and rumored powers of witchcraft. The girl, a B-movie actress named April Berger, is oblivious to the misery that fuels the island and, reveling in her anonymity among people who have never seen a movie or watched television in their lives, decides to stay there indefinitely. Suddenly what few charms Nadine possesses are rendered nonexistent next to April's, especially in the eyes of Yann, and so April becomes the object of all the vitriol Nadine can muster. The only problem is that Nadine also finds herself attracted to April...

What emerges is a bizarre triangle fueled by April's obliviousness, Yann's thick indecision, and Nadine's growing borderline-psychotic obsession with both of them, as all the while Mother Kralik attempts to engineer April's destruction with a manipulative skill that would shame Madame DeFarge. As it is anytime a new animal is introduced into a closed ecosystem, there is no question that something horrible is going to happen, and this book is driven by sheer schadenfreude. Spitzer's prose holds us in place to watch the spectacle like that contraption they strapped Li'l Alex into in A Clockwork Orange

Spitzer pulls the plow from start to finish here, from his breathtaking description of the storm in the opening chapter to heart-in-your-throat horror at the end. Even devices I normally despise, like excessive onomatopoeia, are used to great effect here: there is an entire page of nothing but the word "WHACK!", occasionally broken by a four- or five-word sentence, as the cannery women chop fish with their cleavers and work each other up into a frenzy of lunatic hate.

Even with these postmodern prose conceits, Chum lies solidly within that most terrifying of literary traditions, American Naturalism. Like Stephen Crane at his best and Herman Melville at his windiest, Spitzer pulls back from the human drama to show us that, as vicious and horrible as we human beings can be to each other, we are nothing before the implacable justice of nature.

Spitzer's shifts from the perverse microcosm of the island to the larger universe are daunting and ominous, tiny deliberate horrors reduced to their rightful scale in the face of the blind, chaotic Big Kahuna. This is not recommended reading for those looking for silver linings. But for those who believe that the real measure of savagery, in man and in nature, goes a long way beyond the artifice of Survivor, Mark Spitzer offers up a deluxe package tour of the abyss.

You will want to take a shower after reading Chum, and you might even need a support group. Roughly based on a play by Celine, author of Death on the Installment Plan, Chum drags us laughing through the lust, murder, and rape that the inhabitants of a small fishing village in the Bering Sea call recreation. Spitzer is a shockingly good student of human nature, and maybe that's why he can make us laugh at this stuff. Not haw haw academic "how clever" laughter. I mean really laugh as he spins his tale in the language of nasty porno and exploitation movies. Spitzer writes in American. Be afraid.

I started out with only this book as guide through the Cisco SNA/IP integration world. It was a good help although unreadable as a book, it's really a reference guide (nothing else than you'll find at CCO). It takes you through all the options there are available with Cisco equipment to integrate the SNA networks into your existing network, but does not really help out in the real complex configurations. i.e. it'll discuss CIP and APPN/HPR, CIP and TN3270, but not CIP, APPN/HPR and TN3270 which is quite common in redundancy cases. There are also quite a few mistakes in the examples (mainly wrong picture for the example), but this will keep you awake. What's really missing is the Cisco specifics, like APPN/ISR and not releasing session, which eliminates the need for APPN/HPR configurations (which are far worse to think up). All in all, an ok reference for on the shelve and still a good guide to check your options when needing to integrate SNA and LAN with Cisco equipment.

This book is basically a printout of the Cisco website. However it does read a little better than some of the Cisco web pages, and it since it covers content you'll need to pass your CCIE, its a must for every candidates collection. A really helpful companion to this book is the CCIE DLSw+ quiz

If you are trying to teach yourself the details of DLSw+, RSRB, IRB, etc, this book is full of complete sample configurations. Yes, you can find this same stuff on the Doc CD if have an hour to spare finding what you are looking for. I would particularly recommend this book to CCIE candidates because you will have these IOS documentation books at your disposal during the hands-on lab. You might as well start learning where to find things: before the lab.

Aside from the illustrations, I don't find much to recommend this book. There are no commentaries about the making of Wayne's films, no discussion of Wayne's working methods, no critical analysis, and nothing about the films' financial impact in the theaters. No character names are included in the cast lists, so they are basically useless in finding out who played who. Much of the information is inacturate. In the introduction the authors state that in his early days Wayne appeared in several Ham Hamilton comedies, but no such films appear in the main body of the book (in fact, I've never heard of a screen comedian named Ham Hamilton, although there was an animator by that name working for Walt Disney at the time). The plot synopis to many of the films are incorrect, listing wrong character names and describing incidents that don't happen in the film. And I'm still trying to figure out why Ward Bond is listed twice in the cast list of DAKOTA. There's a really great blooper in the write-up to CHISUM: The authors state that the true-life characters of Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid are included in the story and that Garrett is gunned down by Billy! Say what? (No, this doesn't actually occur in the film.) Oh, yes, if this book is the "complete" films of John Wayne, then why isn't COLLEGE COACH (1933) included?

My final verdict: Skip this book and seek out a copy of Allen Eyles' far superior (and, unfortunately, now out-of-print) book JOHN WAYNE AND THE MOVIES (re-issued as simply JOHN WAYNE).

If you are looking for John Wayne films this is the book to have. It tells what the film is about, who also starred in and what year it was made. It also has plenty of photos to help you recognize what movie it is and if it is the one you are looking for. The book has some interesting facts about some of the movies.

The real testimony to the value of a resource is whether it occupies eternal space on your shelf, gathering dust, or if it becomes so worn out that it bears replacement. I have dogearred, destroyed, or otherwise "used up" two complete paperback copies of TCFOJW over the past twelve years since it first appeared. It was not until the last replacement that I finally relinquished and went to a hardback copy. This book is an indespensable (if not exhaustive) resource for any serious John Wayne film buff. My only complaints (and, subsequently, suggestions for future revisions) are that the cast and tech lists are not complete; and that Wayne's appearences on radio and television are not documented. Another helpful feature would be to show which films are available in video and letterbox formats. You need this book

If you are not familiar with the series of which this is a hollow imitation, Neale Donald Walsch's "Conversations with God" trilogy, I urge you to check these out first, and then laugh at this ridiculous attempt to morph mainstream Christianity into something other than what it is: intimidation and pettiness. While Walsch's books are not flawless themselves (in fact, they are painfully derivative of New-Age mantras), this book stoops below even these. It is almost not even worth the time and effort to scoff at, if this tells you anything.

This is a wonderful book. It allows your imagination to float with the coversation the author holds with God. He doesn't humanize God but rather personalizes Him with the questions he asks. The voice language used for God is modern and relatable. This is easy reading and you come away feeling that God does love His children and why. It is also biblically based without the new age garbage that is in many books today.

I recommend this book highly and plan on giving them as Christmas presents to close friends.

Refreshing view of a loving caring God. He is not mad at us, in spite of what we do. He gave us the greatest gift. This book states just that. I didnt read the other CWG, so I cannot make any comments about it. Littletons book was very refreshing to me during a hectic time.

ANOTHER WASTE OF PAPER FROM HAROLDSON! THE GUY GOT RICH FROM TAKING ADVANTAGE OF THE UNSUSPECTING....HIS COMPANY WAS EVEN SHUT DOWN BY THE FTC. DONT WASTE YOUR TIME OR MONEY.

I found a copy of this in my local library. It is a great read. Some information is dated, mostly tax info, but the basic principles are still intact.I am looking forward to other books by Mark Haroldsen.

I first purchased Mark Haroldsen's "How to Wake Up the Financial Genius" way back in 1977. Using his techniques, I was able to build credit (I didn't have bad credit, just no credit) lines from 0 to over a $100,000. I bought rental properties and created a net worth of $500,000 (in 1977 dollars) within a years time."The Courage TO BE RICH" is excellent and goes beyond Goals, Guts and Genius.I like this book much better than the version by Suze Orman which only covers conservative personal finance strategies. The fact that someone like Suze Orman would copy this title should tell you something of the effect that Mark Haroldsen had back in the 70's and 80's.This is a good book and I highly recommend it. Some of the techniques are dated. Others are timeless. The overall message was worth over $500,000 to me.Good book Mark.

I bought this book hoping that is would be a well researched and supported overview of the development of the diagnosis for Munchausen By Proxy Syndrome. Unfortunately, it did not deliver. I wanted backround and research to support it, but none was forthcoming. The authors write mainly from the philsophical point of view and do not bother to examine whether MBPS is a valid diagnosis based on case study or clinical research. Many MBPS mothers endorse this book because they believe that it vidicates them, however, the mere overdiagnosis of a disorder does not prove it's nonexistance. A reader interested in this subject would do better to read Marc Feldman's book "Patient or Pretender" and/or review the joural articles on Medline. Buy a book about Factitious Disorders that has a more substantial foundation than this book does that is founded on research not supposition. This book is a waste for serious MSBP researchers. Pass.

I approach Munchausen by Proxy from a somewhat novel perspective: I have been trained as a developmental and philosophical psychologist, and I currently am the CEO of a child welfare agency. This cross-breeding makes me both sympathetic to the authors' aims and argument (the book reminds me of Ian Hacking's book on multiple personality disorder), *and* sympathetic with those practitioners who have diagnosed MBPS in their work.

One of the premises of this book is that MBPS is rampantly over-identified, and is in fact used as a tool for the continued subjugation of women. I am surprised at this claim, since in my experience social workers, physicians, psychologists, child protection workers, judges, and other professionals display either complete ignorance of the disorder or, if they know what it is, a high degree of denial and reluctance to acknowledge it. This is far from the picture painted by the authors of a Salem-witch-trial frenzy.

The simple fact is that there are people out there who, for various reasons, either invent or exaggerate their children's symptoms OR induce those symptoms. The question is WHY this happens. Sometimes it happens because the parent is seeking material gain. And sometimes it happens because of more complex motives, because in some way the parent is seeking the less tangible rewards of the sick role -- BY PROXY. This latter type of motive is what is involved in MBPS. Notice that there is a wealth of philosophical and sociological questions one could pose here that would also accord with the authors' basic assumptions: What features of modern society might be exerting pressure on mothers to fabricate illness in their children? What does this say about the availability of social supports for women in societies like the US? What pathologies of relationships might be involved here?

I greatly value the kind of analysis presented in this book. There is no question that, especially in the area of psychological disorder, societal forces play a huge role in the construction and identification of pathology. (I highly recommend, in this connection, Arthur Kleinman's book _Social Origins of Distress and Disease_. Nevertheless, I think that it is important to remember that when MBPS is alleged, it is USUALLY alleged by mental health or child welfare professionals who are highly well-intentioned and, above all, careful in their assessments. It is not a matter of judgmental social workers going of half-cocked blaming mothers for their childrens' illnesses. MBPS is a diagnosis that is made only after a lot of hand-wringing and searching for other possibilities.

In my opinion, there is at least as much philosophical interest in the question of what makes so many women fabricate illness in their children as there is in the question of society's interest in creating such a disorder. But this book is a valuable entry in what I hope will be a continuing conversation among philosophers, sociologists, social workers, physicians, and other thinkers.

I would very much like to sign my name to this review, but because of the work that I do and where I do it, I can't. But I'll keep watching these reviews to see if anyone has a comment on what I've said!

It is a real shame that Amazon.com has not really rallied behind this book, or at least has not offered a better discount. Munchausen-By-Proxy-Syndrome is yet another of those awful tools that prosecuters have to indict and convict people (women, in this case) without any real justification or evidence. The 'science' behind this "syndrome" is -- not unlike false memory syndrome, et al. -- a throwback to the days of witch hunts and the like. This text is the only one out there to counter the rampant conviction factory of shameless prosecutors and the FBI.

I must say I agree with Cramer when it comes to the wealth of Cuban culture. However I have a few concerns about this book. A most shocking part of this book is what is not in it. While it is true that Cuban citizens have no right to bear arms since all weapons were confiscated at the start of the revolution, gun violence is still a factor to consider in Cuba. Consider the case of Joachim Løvschall a Danish student learning Spanish in Cuba who was shot in the back and killed by Cuban state security with an AK-47... In addition, I did not care to hear about how JoAnne Chesimard aka "Asaka Shakur" a fugitive from justice, convicted of killing a NJ state trooper, had learned to adapt to life in Cuba. By sharing the story of Ms. Chesimard Cramer lends credence to her "story" of persecuted victim. In addition, Cramer says he will be balanced but by mentioning the story of Ms. Chesimard an allegedly former political prisoner in the US and not mentioning the plight of dissidents in Cuba (such as Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet... his commitment falls through. The US Department of State has suggestions not mentioned in Culture Shock for those wanting to visit Cuban schools and universities...

Culture Shock Cuba really did it for me. Any imaginable situation you get yourself in while visiting Cuba is mentioned. Coming from a Northern European culture there was just a lot for me to understand, if I didn't want to behave like a total weirdo. It is an easy and fun to read book I absolutely recommend.

I bought this book after I fell in love with the Buena Vista Social Club series and thus Cuba. It is difficult to find unbiased reporting on life in Cuba because most people have very strong feelings about this island. Cramer carefully considers all opinions but actually talks to the people who live there. He doesn't just interview those who love Castro -- in fact, most think Castro should step down. He interviews people who feel that Cuba is racist and those who feel that the "social experiment" has eliminated racism. The book is very intellectually honest which is rare any work but especially one on Cuba. Cramer demonstrates why he is horserace betting's most effective writer. He can teach while he tells amazing stories.

Cramer has written a fascinating look at an amazing island.

This is a book that truly disappoints. The story itself is adequate, but not great. There is more than enough to keep you interested, but it's almost as if the publisher told the author, "OK, that's enough. End it." The book ends with an epilogue that attempts to tie up all the loose ends of the story. Unfortunately, the ending is much too ridiculous to be believable. This is definitely a 'don't buy' book. Get it from a friend or the library. Maybe you won't be as disappointed as I was.

David Rothberg is a psychiatrist who takes on the job of evaluating violent criminals who are close to being paroled back into the society they menaced. His friend and supervisor
advises to rely on the computer program that analyzes the criminal and base his recommendation on that report. David disagrees and wants his recommendation to be based on his own personal interaction with the criminal. His first patient Victor Janko AKA the baby carriage killer. Fifteen years ago he was convicted of a crime that was brutally violent and occurred in front of the eyes of her young son. The computer program, his supervisor and the prison guard all say Victor is damaged goods and should stay in jail. David thinks this man can be helped through medicine and therapy. As he begins his evaluation of this patient startling revelations come to light which turns
everything upside down. ..... With him being a doctor this scenario is highly unlikely. The rest of his novel is original and has quite a few surprises in it. The ending fits the rest of the story and leaves readers satisfied yet you might have to rethink your feeling of guilt or innocence for Victor. Rating 9

The review by 'Publisher's Weekly' is way off the mark. This book was reccomended to me by a friend who simply couldn't stop raving. Far from being 'dull' as this reviewer stated, 'Dangerious Behavior' is a non-stop roller coaster ride...and the surprise ending blew me away. I can't wait to see the movie...and can't wait for Marks' next book. He is up there with the best of them. This book is page-turner and a must-read!!

Michael Harry

The author discusses some interesting topics, but I found the book far too full of vague statements about the usefulness of various ways of encoding XML and of database architecture. Similarly, the chapter on querying XML databases was enough to whet my appetite, but it was mostly on the representation of queries (useful, to be sure, but confusingly presented), had little about efficiency considerations (surely of paramount importance when discussing queries), and presented as "algorithms" methods that are so unrefined and simplistic that they're better labeled "query methodologies."

To be fair, I haven't been all that impressed with the other XML books I've been skimming...

XML is a critical emerging technology which has the potential to revolutionize database connectivity in enterprise software development. While the author provides knowledge about XML document design and delivery, the book falls short of providing meaningful insights to those who wish to construct integrated commercial XML/Database systems.

The writer doesn't seem to have a good idea of the history and development of these database concepts for commercial use. For example, he doesn't seem to know that Object databases have had repeated failures in terms of performance, maintainability and a host of other factors in mission critical applications.

He would have gained by referencing "Foundation for Future Database Systems: The Third Manifesto," by C.J. Date and High Darwin, and by familiarzing himself with "The Great Debate," where E.F. Cobb demonstrated how non-relational models are orders of magnitude more complex than relational models for the same problem.

As someone who has architected and developed large scale XML-based database applications, I sense that the author has come from a perspective of writing specialty XML document delivery databases for non-commercial purposes in the biotechnology industry, and provides minimal material which would be useful to anyone seeking to implement industrial strength XML databases (in an application server, for example) or to use XML messaging with relational databases (e..g., with webMethods and Rendezvous' Tibco.)

The author has a writing style which is quite chatty and unprofessional, which continually distracts from its purpose, which is to compare XML, Relational and Object database design issues. Buy this book to skim through it as a reference, but do not expect it to be of great value to many of the issues that are likely to be faced in building enterprise class databases. You can find better information of a higher quality on this subject for free by visiting [certain websites] and reading many of their XML-related articles. It may be of more value if you only wish to create XML document servers.

This is a great book, very useful for programmers, database developers, students, system architects, and anyone else who wishes to effectively use, design, or build XML databases. A basic knowledge of XML and databases is assumed, and the focus of this book is on pulling them together. Some advanced techniques are described in this book and the presentation is fairly dense in those areas.

The book covers variety of topics like:
How to design a schema for an existing XML DBMS beginning with the concepts of the field being modeled and resulting in compatible schemas for XML documents, relational databases, and object-oriented applications.
How to store XML data in a relational DBMS, object-oriented DBMS, or flat files, and how to make decisions on which approach to choose.
How to design a system architecture that contains an XML database, Web server, and user applications.
How to develop a user interface for XML data accessed via a Web browser or Java application.
How to query an XML database and what algorithms support XML database querying.
How to create a native store for an XML DBMS.