Mapping America's Past is an attempt at using maps to portray American social, economic, military, and political development. The maps that are included are excellent, but what was included is somewhat puzzling. The general analysis of wars, expansion, and elections are useful, but maps of political party development in the Cleveland area or prostitution in New York City are not entirely relevant to the general American history student. Similarly, many of the accompanying texts offer little detailed insight into the topics the maps cover.

This book should be considered a general resource, but for an in-depth historical atlas, the reader must look elsewhere.

A highly satisfying review of historical topics.I'm often able to read only in 20-minute bites; every spread of this book is a self-contained history lesson, accessible in 20 minutes but worth revisiting many times. Most important topics and events of American history are covered well, and the rendering of complex information (e.g. the six gauges of railroad in 1850 and how this incompatablity affected commerce, population and political power) is truly inspired. This is a superb gift for an American history buff.

I thought this book had a decent chronological assessment of Clemens' life. And it ends there. DO NOT look here for elaboration or insight. If you wish to find that, try "Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain" by Justin Kaplan. That reads like a text book but it is laced with some interesting stuff.

I am just a high school student, a junior, actually. I chose to write a biography on Mark Twain because I love his humor. However, I needed a nice afternoon-read book to give me a general idea on Mr. Clemens life. Reading this propelled me into the life of Mark Twain helping to probe all the connections between his personal life, the persona of Samuel Clemens, and his literary works, from the persona of Mark Twain. I recommend this book to anyone interested in the life of the greatest American writer.

This IS an important contribution to literary theory. The points that Lakoff and Turner make are very good, very logical, and will make you go "Of course! Why didn't I think of that?" It will not only change the way you read poetry, but will impact the way you watch t.v., listen to people speak, read the newspaper - any endeavor involving language. Why the low rating, then? Lakoff and Turner are structuralists, and they repeat everything over and over again, breaking things down to their minute building blocks. They made a very convincing argument in the first chapter, I thought, and didn't need to keep going the way they did. The third chapter, in which they apply their theory to a William Carlos Williams poem is also very good. Those two chapters would have sufficed. Again, an important book, but rather boring at times.

The important claim this book makes is that literary language does not differ from common everyday language. Poets make use of the same linguistic resources and cognitive mechanisms we all use in everyday situations. They just do it better, in innovative ways. The discussion of poems the authors provide to support their argument should perhaps be more articulate and systematic in order to be truly persuasive. At times one gets the impression that this book was conceived as a kind of divertissement in wait of future, more carefully planned incursions on the subject.
However, this does not diminish the importance of a book which urges literary critics and all those who like books to consider the cognitive basis of both everyday and literary communication. Also, More than Cool Reason can be read as an accessible introduction to Lakoff and Turner (and Johnson)'s theory of conceptual metaphor. For a much more articulate discussion, I would recommend Lakoff and Johnson's "Philosophy in the Flesh", but then you will have to draw the implications of their theories for literature by yourself.

This book gets you quickly setup with Fusion's most common uses. However, the book rushes through each topic so fast, the the reader is many times left wondering what happened. it's good to learn the basics (even those you learn them in small quantities). It could have been better made, with more example on how and were you would use each technique described.

I am so happy that I purchased a copy of this book. In pictorial layout, Hall & Wheeler helped me to understand a very confusing (to me) software package. I'm new at web site design, so this book was a great aid in getting me off the ground. Not perfect, but head and shoulders above anything else I have. Thanks, H&W. Ray Mathews, Raleigh, NC

This book was helpful in seeing how conservative institutions have influenced numerous issues, but it did have several flaws. I would recommend it, as there are few books on the topic, and due to the quality of the research, but with these disclaimers:

1. The authors come from a decidedly left-of-center perspective, which tilts how they view the world. Hence a moderate group may be described as a mildly conservative one. This is not a major flaw obviously. 2. Much of the material is rather dry, as in most real research. This isn't pleasure reading, and shouldn't be bought as such. 3. Satire is used way too much in title headings - it's not as bad as in some books, but pretty blatant, and it distracts from the quality of the work. 4. The opinion that liberals and others on the left should be an equal part of the debate so that we get a balanced picture is good, but the idea that those groups should rely more on think tanks and foundations is silly. The book's major point that I got is how those vehicles remove thought from the process in favor of ideology, and encourage close-mindedness. If liberals copy think tank stratagems, it's their loss. I personally would hope all ideologies abandon these inherently systems.

Anyhow, I'd recommend buying this or borrowing it from the library, but with these reservations and the caveat that you shouldn't expect too much.

"Follow The Money", deep throat told Woodward and Burnstein. No Mercy does exactly that. It traces the spider web of think tanks, endowments, and conservative politics from group to group. The authors provide an excellent path from the eugenics and racist Pioneer fund in the early '30s and how it, and other groups, intermingle. The details on the ultrasecret Council on Foriegn Policy, the Landmark legal foundation, and many, many others.

In fairness to the reader, this book is not a light read. The story is not fluid. It's a book for the serious political researcher, journalist, or political scientist.

Not Either An Experimental Doll, edited by Shula Marks details the relationship between an Englishwoman, Dr. Mabel Palmer, and a young Xhosa girl, Lily Moya, who requests her help.

The story itself, told through letters between Lily and Mabel, show the complexities of racial relations in South Africa at the time. The question of paternalism and white sponsorship arises when assessing the character of Mabel Palmer, an older woman who advanced the cause of education for black South Africans. Mabel was being very altruistic in helping Lily, she went without a winter coat so she could help pay her school fees. However, the divide in culture and race plays prominently in Mabel's relationship with Lily. Lily, a young orphan desperately looking for a mother figure, reaches out to Mabel, but is rebuffed by a woman who is still very much governed by the dictates of racial relationships and propriety within South Africa.

However, one cannot condemn Mabel and laud Lily as Shula Marks does in the introduction of her book. Reading the letters themselves, will reveal a disturbed and anxious young girl who the reader will come to pity and at the same time want to strangle. Lily herself, is a set of contradictions. She appeals to the reader's sympathy while at the same time repulsing the reader with her lack of gratitude and her attempt to adjust to her new situations.

What comes from reading the letters between these two women, is an appreciation for the complexities, misunderstandings, and the divide in understanding between two women of very different cultures. And that is what I reccomend. Skip the introduction and read the letters between Lily and Mabel first. Shula Marks, while giving a general history of the letters, also forces her own opinions on the reader which causes one to enter the narrative with preconceived notions of who is good and who is bad within this relationship. Also, one will see that Marks gives a ridiculous amount of importance to the third woman, Sibusisiwe Makhanya, a social worker. Her inclusion in the introduction serves as more of a literary addition to develop the ideal of three separate worlds. However, one can see the minimal role she plays within the context of Lily's and Mabel's relationship.

Read the letters and then go back and read the introduction and the epilogue. One must remember in reading this book to let the voices of Mabel and Lily stand for themselves, and they are strong voices echoing the history of a particular time period. Unfortunately, Shula Marks in editing this book imposes views on the reader which does not allow for an unbiased reading of the letters between these two extraordinary women themselves.

This book is a testament to the emotional and political jumble of the time between blacks and whites in South Africa. The reader should allow the letters of the two women to speak about this time and draw their own conclusions as to the political, social and cultural climate within South Africa at that time.

What a wonderful book! The exchange of letters is nothing less than fascinating. By reading these letters not only does one get a sense of the racial and economic divisions between the writers, but a glimpse is gained into what would be a peculiar exchange of correspondence even now: a seventy-something woman of well-intentioned but often misguided motives and a teenaged girl perplexed with all the rampant emotions and self-absorbtions of her age.

I cannot stress how inportant I feel it is to read the introduction by Shula Marks AFTER reading the letter exchange. Anyone who has even a fundamental knowledge of South Africa during this time would do better not to read the intro first. It's better to get caught up in the flow of the letters--and let their story unfold unadulterated. There is an almost voyeuristic aspect to them as they come to their conclusion. I highly recommend this book, and not only to those with an interest in South Africa or Womens' History either.

When I first saw this book, I was intrigued by the hypothesis but once I got into it, I couldn't help but notice the book is mostly just out-of-context quotes blended with some conspiracy theories, and loaded with venom. Hertsgaard is certainly unqualified to judge the press because he is so committed to his agenda it clouds his mind.

Even though he's short on facts and lacks a basic knowledge of how things work at the networks and big newspapers, Hertsgaard obviously spent a lot of time interviewing people and there are some interesting quotes from people in the press and in the reagan administration. If you don't mind reading every few paragraphs how evil and stupid Ronald Reagan was you can get some interesting quotes from people.

This is one of the best books ever written about the modern news media

This book should be renamed "Oracle Objects for OLE (OO4O) Developer's Handbook". It details the latest and greatest features of OO4O, including support for Oracle REF's, LOB's, and AQ. However, coverage of ADO/OLE DB is very weak, with only 7% of the book (the final chapter out of 14) dealing with Oracle's OLE DB Provider and ADO. It also lacks specifics (features and limitations) on Oracle's ODBC drivers, and practically there is no mention in the book of Microsoft's ODBC and OLE DB products. Microsoft MTS is only briefly mentioned in the OLE DB Provider chapter, but no detail is given on how to set up the database and web server to use MTS.

If you want to get the hard-to-find information on connection to Oracle from ASP pages, you will be disappointed again. Although there are 2 chapters on connection pooling and transactional control, they focus on the OO4O implementation. You will not find info on the best practice for achieving scalability using ODBC/OLE DB connection pooling, or how to deal with the pros/cons of storing ADO connection/recordset objects in session/application variables, etc.

The level of this book is at the beginner level, although the back-cover has it as intermmediate/advanced. A major portion of the book is spent repeatedly explaining what each line of code does, even though it is obvious towards the later chapters of the book. There are other types of inefficient use of pages such as instructions how to place a visual control on a VB form, i.e., details for how to use the VB IDE. People reading this book should be assumed to have basic knowledge of VB, even though they may come from a PL/SQL background.

To repeat, if you code OO4O, this is the best book on the market (there are only 3 other VB/Oracle books available, if I may add). If you do ADO/OLE DB/ODBC, this book is not going to help a bit. The OLE DB chapter I mentioned earlier is almost a rehash of the User's Guide that comes with the OLE DB Provider. For developers in the ADO/OLE DB camp, I recommend the 2 books from Wrox Press (Professional ADO 2.5 RDS Programming with ASP 3.0 and VB Oracle 8 Programmer's Reference).

The book should have been titled "OO4O Programming with VB" and that'd merit 4.5 stars!The authors (all being Oracle Tech and Support Analyst) do a very good job of describing the workings of OO4O. While a section is dedicated to ADO, ODBC, and OLE DB, this book is primarily for OO4O users-to-be. Since I was looking to use ADO and OLE-DB, I found this book interesting but useless (only 1 example). What tickled my fancy (and I am still reading it!) is the book "Visual Basic for Oracle 8" by Dov Trietsch (Wrox) which does an unbiased treatment.

Subtitled "Selected Lectures of Alan Watts," Out of the Trap is not so much a book as it is a transcript of recorded lectures Mr. Watts gave in the 1960s and early 1970s. Edited and published as it was in 1985 by its creator's son, Mark Watts, this printed version of spoken words might best be titled "Things Better Said Elsewhere."

This is not one of the better representation of Watts' extensive works for the simple reason that the presentation doesn't survive the translation from the spoken to the written word. There are passages here that go on and on ad nauseam only to make a minor point which was better explained in one of Watts' written works.

On top of this the editor, in preparing these lecture transcripts, let go some awkward wording and phrases in favor of preserving "the flavor and content" of the original talks. Unfortunately, all this accomplishes is to further engage the reader to reread some sections in an effort to try to recover the meaning in which they were originally spoken. This not only slows down the reading process but ads to the growing frustration the reader has in slogging through this material.

For the reader who is familiar with Watts' work, these transcripts cover little new ground, and in the end manage to restate, in a not altogether easily understandable colloquial language, favorite themes and topics Watts has covered elsewhere.

If you happen to come across this book in a library and you're wondering which of the seven lectures to dig into first, the last three are perhaps the best. These include "Historical Buddhism," "Philosophy of Nature," and "Tribute to Carl Jung."

For those of us who are Watts enthusiasts, we enjoy reading his works for his unusual ability to get to the essence of a point in an enlightening and sometimes entertaining way. Out of the Trap, however, provides few of these reading experiences.

These transcripts of Watts' talks would have been best left in their original form, as taped recordings, than to have been put on display in black and white where the flavor of the original presentation is missing as well as, perhaps, some of the fun.

I was told that "Out of the Trap" was not as good as some of the other books Watts wrote, but i found it totally enlightening. Watts had done more for me than any number of so called "gurus" (I dont think Alan liked being called a guru) but if the shoe fits (its probably ugly hahahaah)i would recommend the purchase of this book to fill out your watts library, if you have one going, like me..unfortunaley some of Alan's books are out of print and I just dont know why. Have fun with it..relish the phrases and immerse yourself into the philosophy of Alan Watts.. thank you and good day (Cleedy has left the building)

I received these tapes as a Christmas present - at that time I was 16 weeks pregnant. I have used the tapes fairly regularly, even though I have found a few things about them offputting. Nevertheless, I have found them to be helpful in teaching me basic hypnosis techniques.

Here are my criticisms. First of all, a male voice doesn't carry the same authoritative clout on a childbirth tape as a female voice. I have a hard time believing that he really understands what he is telling me since there's no way he can ever experience it for himself. Second, he mentions at one point that the listener should "loosen ties and belts". That seemed extremely out of place in that context! I don't know any pregnant women who are in the habit of wearing a tie or a belt! And finally, sometimes his verbal flow is not smooth. This is not a major criticism, but still bears mentioning.

(...)

I used this tape starting late in my pregnancy with great results. I was very relaxed through my labor and although I wouldn't say it was pain-free I think that it really helped to relax me. I would recommend it to anyone- just start early in your pregnancy.