This book is a cynical attempt by some modestly talented poets in the main - excepting people like Campo - to jump on the bandwagon of the savage murder of Matthew Shepard. One gets the sense that poor Shepard's body was barely cold before someone decided that there was a buck to be made. Hopefully, word about the poor quality of most of the poems - many of which barely referred to Shepard - has got out so people don't waste their money. I would suggest that more good could be done by writing a check to anti-violence projects than supporting the self-indulgent and cynical exploitation of a tragedy...

Wow! Such mixed reviews on this one! It's true we cash in on the crimes that haunt us, but why look at it that way? Why not see the written word as a way to preserve that which we don't want to forget and that which we wish to use to teach others of our mistakes? MTV recently showed "Anatomy of A Hate Crime," the first movie-type documentation of this tragedy, but I didn't once think the station used it as a ploy to boost ratings. Have a heart! Who said true life is better than fiction? Yet, the tragedy of that "true life" is what has sparked the fire in so many writers throughout the past. Expression, imagination...freedom, let's not forget what we learned from this hate crime. So, I applaud the prose and am sure the poets meant it well. As for you readers who didn't get it, go take out your anger by hitting someone in the head 18 times with the handle of a gun and then let's see what you choose to write about.

This is a great collection of poems about Matthew Shepard. One of the poems that really made me think simply has a "," (comma) on the page, many of the others pages long.

All of the poems are excellent. Great job Scott!

Britt Montero, a seasoned 30-something crime reporter, works the seamy side of Miami for a major daily. If only half her tales are true of criminals and street people targeting tourists, I wouldn't want to go there, even for a day on the beach. According to Britt and her friends, the producers of the TV series Miami Vice (not actually named) spent millions upgrading dilapidated neighborhoods to make their level of degradation believable for TV audiences. In this stew of crime, heat, poverty, and traffic congestion, Britt uncovers evidence of racially-based police brutality. Pursuing such a story not only would sour her crucial relationship with the police, it potentially could divide the city. It's a trendy story, briskly written to pull the reader along. I couldn't say, however, that it stands out from the crowd of books featuring feisty single women, whose lives are full of people under 40. I listened to the recorded book, ably read by Donada Peters.

Edna does a fantastic job with the details and actions in this book. The main character is portrayed as a strong individual. This is refreshing because too often female characters always need a man to make them, or they are airheads, etc. Edna created a great storyline which will have you sitting on the edge of your seat until the end.

Edna Buchanan is an insightful and intelligent writer. The strength of her Britt character and the other women was nice to read. I get tired of the hapless naives that are usually swooning for attention and support in other novels. It's good to see a woman with confidence, intellect, and scruples measure up to the job at hand.

Good grief! I've never seen such a silly collection of interfaith ideas. If your faith is really important to you, and if it is also important to your beloved, you'd probably die a thousand deaths before you degraded yourself, God, and your families by using these superficial (and spiritually unauthentic) suggestions.

This author seems to feel that the most important point of a wedding is making OTHER people happy -- e.g., the families. Let's face it, if you're marrying someone of another religion, then faith is probably not really that important to you, and it would be a whole lot more honest to get married by a really great JUDGE, than to pretend that you're still really terribly religious.

Look, in marriages where both partners are Jewish, there's only a seven- or eight-percent divorce rate. In marriages where both partners are Christian, the divorce rate is between forty and fifty percent -- not great, but still better than the national average. In marriages where one partner is Jewish, and the other is NOT, there is a WHOPPING SIXTY PERCENT FAILURE RATE. My advice is, don't worry about the wedding so much -- worry about the marriage. Advice this author should be offering you!

Skip the intro. Skip the blah. Go straight to the sample ceremonies.

Whether you are interfaith or not, it is difficult to plan a complicated ceremony. Choosing what elements of each faith to put in, how religious to get, how to maintain balance between faiths, how not to offend anyone... how to choose? (despite what [...] said, being considerate of each other's family's is important... if you want to form a relationship with them at all.)

What this book offers that is useful, are several ceremonies of different interfaith combinations: priest/rabbi, JP/rabbi, etc. You get to read and pick what you like, see how other couples combined, and decide what you think works. I agree with [...] that some of the ceremonies are cheesy, but hey, it takes all types. My fiance and I just rolled our eyes and moved on.

I planned my ceremony using this book, Devon Lerner's book, and [the internet] for searching for quotes. I found Devon's book slightly more useful as it organizes by section all the different options for readings, ie., all 5 variations on the 7 blessings in one section for easy comparison. Devon's book is also more useful for learning about general trouble spots with interfaith weddings, marriages, and life.

I was a little hesitant to get this book after reading the other reviews, but I thought this book was very helpful to creating our wedding ceremony. It gave many different interpretations for traditions, that I am sure one of the interpretations would be favorable to either faith. The translations to some of the Jewish readings made sense and would create a beautiful wedding ceremony.

Well this book is alot of fun to read and very entertaining,and im sure there is some truth to some of it.But i can hardly imagine Bette Davis saying some of those things as well as Miss Crawford.But is is alot of fun and recommend it to any Joan or Bette fan. Take it with a grain of salt!!

I absolutely loved this book!... The amazing thing was, I expected to hate Joan Crawford and love Bette Davis, but my reaction to the book was the exact opposite. Bette comes off so cold and callous as to be downright inhuman. Joan, on the other hand, is fascinating, passionate, and utterly, utterly human. The funny thing is, it is obvious to me that the author shares my initial prejudice; clearly, he intends for us to love Bette and hate Joan, but even so, Joan comes off far more interesting and sympathetic.

The person who comes off the worst is Joan's daughter Christina, author of "Mommie Dearest." She appears as nasty, vicious and a total brat, even as an adult. Again, the author clearly intends for us to side with Christina against Joan, but I empathized with Joan. For example, on page 275, the author tells us Joan employed "mental torture" on Christina. Yet his only three example are, Joan burned a pair of Tina's "tight toreador pants", made her do "messy housework" and, for her birthday, gave Christina a single earring, with the promise that she would receive the other earring at graduation if Christina got good marks. This is mental torture? It sounds like basic parenting to me. I wish more parents would burn their teenaged daughter's [ugly] clothes. It makes me think that all of "Mommie Dearest" is grossly exaggerated, written by a bitter, vengeful Christina who desperately wanted to tarnish her mother's image.

The author tells us that Joan made many attempts to befriend Bette Davis, and was constantly repulsed in the most vulgar manner. Bette, though a far greater actress, seems a total bore in real life, unconcerned about her husband(s), her children, or anything except her own genius. She never passed up a chance to humiliate Joan. I'd much rather spend an evening with Joan.

This book is the best book I've ever read! Bette Davis & Joan Crawford are two of the most fascinating women of all time (and not to mention two of the best actresses ever to hit the movies). If you are a fan of either of these two women, this book is for you! Both Davis & Crawford say some of the most shocking, predictable and honest things I have ever heard of in my life. After you read this book, you learn two things: Bette was the "actress" & Joan was the "movie star." Bette envied Joan's beauty while Joan envied Bette's talent. You really get a good look into both of these women's private lives & after reading this book, you feel as if you were their closest friend. You will not be able to put this book down; it's just that good!

The book is, predictably, awash in Left Wing garbage. I would not waste my time with it if I were you. Linder simply made the choice to align himself with the wrong people, namely, Red Danny Ortega's Communist punks. Ortega was in bed with the USSR, and why anyone would support Ortega's regime is beyond comprehension. President Reagan came along just in the nick of time. Too bad Linder got in the way, but sometimes we make bad choices that are very costly.

Longtime pro-Sandinista activist Joan Kruckewit's apotheistic account of "red-diaper" baby, part-time clown and part-time Sandinista militia man (read the AP, LA Times and Dallas Morning News accounts at the time of Linder's killing) is a truly painful exercise in dreadful, warmed over "Sandalista" tripe. Tendentious, poorly written and dull, and playing fast and loose with the facts. The ultimate critique must be that the red and black mafia for which Ben Linder gave his life hasn't won an election since 1984 and is a totally discredited and corrupt political force. A really misleading and mediocre book about a controversial period in Latin American politics that polarized America.

If you are one of the many people who risked their lives when they traveled to Central America during the 1980's this book is for you! If you missed that experience but want to know what would motivate someone to risk their lives for peace and social justice by going to Nicaragua and participating in the revolution then, this book is for you!

During the 1980's U.S. foreign policy in Central America was driven by an obsessive effort to overthrow the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. The Sandinistas had overthrown a dictator and were developing a society that put people before profits. They set up free health care, carried out a massive literacy campaign, and gave land to small farmers.

This threat of "a good example" was countered by the U.S. which created a mercenary army (the Contras) who set out to overthrow the Nicaraguan government. Tactics included killing teachers, destroying health clinics, and forcing the Sandinistas to spend more and more of their resources on the military.

Ben Linder was an engineer from Portland who put his life on the line to support the people of Nicaragua. Ben was also a clown and often put on his red nose and clown make-up to juggle and unicycle in poor neighborhoods, where children had never seen a clown. He worked in a small rural village in Northern Nicaragua, maybe 30 miles from my communities sister city of Telpaneca, near the Honduran border. Like the Fresnan's who built a school in Telpaneca during the Contra War, Ben was working on a hydroelectric project trying in a positive way to support the revolution. THE DEATH OF BEN LINDER, THE STORY OF A NORTH AMERICAN IN SANDINISTA NICARAGUA is an insightful book that reminds us why people are willing to put their lives on the line for a cause they believe in. It shows the tragic results of U.S. foreign policy that seeks to make the world safe for corporations seeking to maximize profits.

I thought the book was a bunch of bolagna. I didnt care for it at all and someone should burn it. The only reason i liked it was because it had a bunch of short stories and not just one big book with a bunch of chapters. It had a lot of truth in it which is the only good part of the book. The book was basically about kids that dont fit in and are outsiders. Who ever get's this bpok should throw it away or tearit and burn it into peices.

The book deserved 2 stars because it was a terrible book. I really didn't care for it. it is basically a bunch of short stories about people on how they don't fit in. Alot of it was untrue because people only act bad when they are not liked by others. I also think it deserved 2 stars because it had a bunhc of short stories and there is no boring parts in it. If it would of been a long book i dont think to many peple would be interested in it. Over all i think if somone get's the book they should through it away.

"On the Fringe" is a book of short stories compiled by different authors. The stories do contain one central topic, youth that are considered outsiders. These outsiders face many different problems. One story focuses on hygiene problems, one is about a boy that is short, thin, and is nervous around his peers, and yet another is about an outcast who took his aggression out with a gun at school. These stories did not all focus on one person; several had a cluster of individuals that were ins ome way or another ostricized by the seemingly perfect in-crowd.
We all read this book with deep interest. We felt that it was easy to read due to the fact that they were short stories. We had a desire to find out what happened in each one. We felt like it was very informative. The stories definitely opened our eyes to a variety of issues that neither one of us had ever imagined existed. We, as a society, tend to close our eyes to so much that is unpleasant. This book brings out that side, the one that no one wants to realize exists.
As for liking this book and recommending it, we thought that it was very enlightening and educational, but we would not recommend it for school-aged children to read. It touches on many topics that do happen in our schools, and we do not think that children should be given examples of how to humiliate other students. This is a book that we would recommend to adults. This book illustrates what is going in the heads of kids that do not fit the perfect student role model. These are everyday young adults with problems. This collaboration of stories opened our eyes, and hopefully helped us to know who we, as future teachers, are looking for that need extra love and attention. Maybe with our eyes open, we will be able to counteract some of the negativity that these future adults undergo and keep them from performing a drastic event that will seal their fate forever.

This is a reprint of Perrott's dictionary that was first published in 1965 but based on much much earlier lexicographical work. It is a simple glossary with mostly single equivalencies given. The Swahili-English section is adequate for simple, basic sorts of vocabulary, but it contains none of the new terminology and vocabulary that has entered the language since the original lexicographical research was done. So, for instance, it would be inadequate for reading a modern Swahili newspaper, let alone a novel or modern play. Many of my students over the years have used this book and it was a useful tool given a lack of a pocket-sized Swahili dictionary that a student could easily carry around. But students had a lot of problems using the English-Swahili section of the book. Many times the gloss given for a particular English word, is not the correct one, or does not reflect modern meanings or usage.

I got this Dictionary with Teach Yourself Swahili. The both of the books are showing age, but especially the dictionary. At least the Textbook had a word for Computer(Kompyuta) in it! The dictionary has the needed words though, don't get me wrong. The word "to look" is very important.

Oddly, I did find a use for the dictionary in a very modern reference though. I translate some Swahili from the Simpsons myself and it added up to the translation they had on TV, so hey! I guess that is a bad example, but their are few good Swahili dictionaries and this one is pocket sized.

I ordered this dictionary when I was writing my novel Death by Bad Magic, I needed to have my Priest to speak in one of Africa's oldest languages and if I had not had this wonderful dictionary to guide me I really don't think I could have written my novel.

Maybe I'm lacking in imagination but the premise of a ghostly prostitute teaching Ellen the art of sensuality and showing her how to become a wine connoisseur hard to take. I kept waiting for something interesting to happen. There were a few episodes that were good but overall I thought this book was boring and I had no trouble putting it down. I bought this book because I enjoyed Black Satin also written by this author. Read Black Satin.

I was concerned when I read that 30'ish something Ellen moved out of her little Northern town to the Big Apple after winning the lottery! The thought that it will take nothing less than a nuclear explosion for this girl to make her next move scared me, but, now, after finishing the book my worst fears were realized.

I guess if you like books about common people continuing to do somewhat common things, even after they win the lottery, then you'd probably like this book. The absolutely tantalizing thing about erotic stories is the illicitness of sex, the sin of it, and the delicious chase, seduction and final submission. This book skips those things, and dumps any real spontinaity as we are continuoulsy reminded that Ellen practices ONLY safe sex as we are treated to very vanilla like couplings.

Cute

When I read erotic novels, I often let the lyrical and sensuous language take me to ecstatic proportions. Midnight Butterfly is one of said novels.

When Ellen Howard, a thirty-year-old aspiring artist, flies to New York City to work on her craft, she hadn't imagined that the journey she'd take would be one of steamy and uninhibited passion. Shy and insecure, Ellen is reluctant to enter a world she'd never fathomed. However, the aforementioned world opens doors to great possibilities...

Sensuous and imaginative, Midnight Butterfly will awake your senses as well as your mind. I highly recommend it.

I guess I didn't think bold would be hot and spicy in every recipe, I cook a lot and love fresh vegies and grilling recipes, I have a vast variety of ingredients in my cabinets but could not conjure up enough for even one of these in this book. Too much work, really a disappointing selection. I will stick to Martha Stewart and Susan Branch, more my style.

While the title suggests that these are recipes suitable for a good home cook, this is really a restaurant recipe book. Home cooks looking for ideas they can execte themselves would do much better with Bobby Flay's first, excellent cookbook, "Bold Flavors".

The Recipes in this cookbook are good!

I have Bobby Flay's first Cookbook! I also watch him on The Food Network!

A pretty awful book altogether. I love the Claire Malloy series, but this novel totally missed. I never could figure out why Claire cared for the fates of those appalling secondary characters, each one more loathsome than the next, including a bunch of tiresome Druids (a plot convention indicative of a desperate mystery author). Her daughter's misadventure with the mall Santa Claus was much more interesting.

While I enjoyed all of the Claire Malloy book series, I found this one wanting. The ending was not satisfying but incomplete and not up to author's standards. Hopefully, the next one will leave the reader feeling satisfied.

This book was not as interesting as poisoned pins. I hope the author finds a better boy friend for Claire Malloy than The CID Inspector Peter Rosen as he seem to have no depth of character. I eagerly await to read the next mystery.