I am a senior majoring in finance at the Curtis L. Carlson School of Management, at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities. I just got done taking a bond course called: Financial Markets and Interest Rates. For the class we used this text book. Although it is a well-rounded book on bonds, it is very hard to understand if you do not have other examples describing what is going on. My professor who holds an MBA had alternative notes on Microsoft PowerPoint made for us to supplement the hard to understand text. The examples do not fully give a clear idea of what is happening, especially to the beginner learning bonds. I would rate this book 2/5 stars and would look elsewhere for an easier type of book, perhaps a tutorial. This book is used at high level universities including mine and Princeton University. Fabozzi is not fooling around when displaying info on bonds.

A little too wordy, but as a management text, I guess its a prerequisite. It covers the gamut of fixed income securities, but only approaches the problems deterministically. The first thirteen chapters are "text" chapters, with the real math starting in chapter 14. However, the math used is elementary, and will not be of much help in the real world. For the fixed income math portion look into "Bond Pricing and Portfolio Analysis" by Olivier de La Grandville.

For a first course in bonds, and if the student has no prior background, this book will indeed be useful. But, for advanced students the book mentioned above should be more insightful.

If you think of this as an introductory book to the world of Bonds rather than a field manual for professionals you will find this to be a wonderful book. I find it to be engagingly written (yes, engaging!) with well-chosen examples. It is very nice to be able to read a book about Bonds and find it stimulating. It would have been easy to write a book that could act as a sleep-aid. Instead, this book provides learning objectives for each chapter and the prose is so inviting that I felt the book to be a page-turner.

The math used is not complicated and is chosen to help understanding rather than demonstrate the sophisticated math used in the actual world of bond trading. If you want that kind of material this isn't the book for you.

I don't know if there is a solutions manual available, but I couldn't find it. If there isn't, there should be. I have never had a college course that used the problems in the book for actual coursework and yet, no matter how simple the problems seem, it is nice for the student to be able to confirm that he or she has indeed found the right answer.

There are also many helpful footnotes that point to materials for further and deeper reading on the subjects introduced in this fine book.

I am using several business law textbooks for my self-study.Comparing to others,this book is difficult to understand.The selection of the Cases differs from others which makes me confused.Structure of the content differs too.It's a complicated book to understand for a self-studying person.

Some texts can be so completely dry, and this one has the potential to be so. Yet this book reads easily, and is kind enough to emphasize much of the text with highlights, boldings, and other wonderful devices to help draw your attention to important details. This book also has a fantastic variety of cases to point out certain aspects of the law. I would definately recommend this one if you are studing the law!

This book is even better than the excellent business law textbook I used (but no longer have) in college in the late 1960's. It has all the utilitarian features necessary for a textbook but likewise has enough depth and user-friendliness for a home reference tome.

The only significant criticism I can offer is that, for a book in this very high price range, it should have a more durable binding. It does have full cloth-covered hardback covers *but* the page section is only "perfect-bound" (i.e., pages held together merely with glue) rather than having a sewn binding. It seems to me that a ... book should have a sewn binding! I've noticed how most books classified as "textbooks" have such very high prices yet have rather cheap bindings. It's no wonder a college education costs a small fortune these days--- the textbook price alone is enough to drive one into penury, and even then the book(s) will eventually fall apart under very heavy use.

Anyhow, this book is wonderfully useful in its content and for that reason I recommend it highly.

Vathek is another work in an endless series with the Faust myth as its backbone. Except here, instead of being set in Germany, the setting is the ancient middle east in which genies and devils inhabit the land.

Vathek is a caliph who is loved but also feared by his people. In fact, if he really loses his temper, just the sight of his gaze can cause death. His court makes The Satyricon look like a sunday school with its voluptuousness and excess. There are even five wings of his palace, with each one dedicated to a sense with names such as "The Delight of the Eyes" and "The Palace of Perfumes". Oh, the decadence! Of course someone as attached to physical gratification as Vathek is sure to stomp on the moral and religious boundaries of Allah and get in trouble.

Much like God and Yahweh in the Book of Job, Allah allows Vathek to be tempted and tried by demons as a bizarre test of his faith. Actually, maybe in both cases it was a test of God's faith in man. The faith that man will do the right thing in the end. That he will turn away from evil. That he will have an epiphany which will redeem him. Vathek isn't so lucky.

An evil being in the disguise of a man, called the Gaiour, comes to Vathek's court with all sorts of magical artifacts which seem to give their bearer otherworldy powers. Vathek becomes entranced by the thought of having powers over spirits and other men and begins to follow a direct line to eternal hell. In order to court evil spirits, Vathek becomes a mass murderer, a blasphemer, a betrayer, a killer of his own people. He is helped in this by his mother, Carathis, who hasn't even heard the word goodness. She constructs a tower much like the Tower of Babel, in order to reach to the gods and to serve as storage for her arcane items.

The book, much like Dante's Inferno, becomes a little much at times. I mean, how many deeds of evil can we experience before we go, "ok, he's going to Hell now!" Sometimes you sense that some of this is intentional and tongue in cheek. At other times, you're horrified at the evil that most of the characters do. Any characters that are good are trampled upon by the evil. The last couple of pages are truly disturbing. I liked this book and would recommend it to anyone that keeps an open mind about fantasy or who is interested in the question of how much knowledge is too much knowledge.

Those are the three categories that I've seen this story put in. Vathek tells the tale about a man with an exceedingly high tower. This man named Vathek is very greedy. The reading can be a little rough at times, which is why I took off one star, but there are some very memorable scenes. Two that really stick out in my mind are: When the stranger in the dungeon escapes. And when Vathek ascends his tall tower, thinking how tall he stands over his minions--then he looks up at the stars and grimaces, because the stars are still the same distance away. Both of these scenes are towards the beginning, which I think is the best part of the book. The middle details Vathek's journey to some far off place. But then it picks up again towards the end. I don't normally read Gothics--if this IS a Gothic, opinions vary--but it is a very good book and definitely one I plan on adding to my permanent collection. Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges gave enthusiastic mention to this book in one of his works.

Leaving aside the question of whether this book is a 'gothic' novel or not, it is a dark fantasy. It shares with its more conventionally gothic brethren a tale of dark deeds in an exotic setting, where an alien and exciting religion is practised.

In the standard Gothic tale, allusions to Roman Catholicism, thought of by respectable Englishmen as a dark, oppressive, and half-pagan faith, were part of the conventional apparatus. Beckford chose instead to imagine the world of Islam, an even more exotic milieu that added some flashes of bright colours to the dark and sorcerous background of his book. His choice of an even more exotic setting allowed him greater freedom in portraying characters who defied social convention and fell into exotic habits of mind.

My understanding is that it is a matter of some debate to what extent the English text of -Vathek- is a translation from the French, or an original English composition. I do not have the French text in front of me, but it has been represented to me that Beckford's "original" French is rather like the French of Oscar Wilde's -Salome-, and needed extensive editing to be acceptable to a French readership.

At any rate, -Vathek- is a prime example of early dark fantasy. The description, of course, will be richer than you are used to, but Beckford's prose actually seems to move quite quickly. Fans of H. P. Lovecraft or Clark Ashton Smith will find that it is quite easy to slip into. And the tale is indeed a vivid one, right up to the exceptional ending when Vathek and Carathis are damned to the halls of Eblis, their hearts seared with unquenchable fire.

This is a good edition of the story, and the notes and maps are helpful.

there is a bit of truth in all the above reviews. It has not entirely been my bible, but more a Readers Digest version; if I need a quick answer, it is the first book I grab. Yes there are a lot of mathematical mistakes or misprints in it,and that includes a good number of the worked examples, which rather defeats the purpose. Yes it is very American orientated, but it also has tables and footnotes throughout, giving useful or immediate conversions to other systems, well, metric that is, not imperial. There are a lot nicer processes about, some definitely European. But that misses the point a bit: the most fundamental problem is that the book is nearly ten years old. Therefore it is not surprising that newer processes are missing. I am desperately looking forward to a fourth edition, and I'll be the first to buy it! In the meantime I'll keep using the third. But what happened to the (Indian) paperback version, which was a lot better priced for a book of this age? Still, there is no substitute!

The book gives the modern process engineer enough background to engineer complete waste water treatment plants. Specially the biological part is very good. Only at the physical chemical part, the information is based on installations produced in the US. The European (nicer) designes and developments are not described in the book.

I first got exposed to the textbook as an undergraduate student in civil engineering. Served as an excellent in depth textbook for that level. During my masters program it was a good starting point. As a consulting engineer, I can find most of the basic and fundamental answers. The language is lucid and simple. I have read lots of books on wastewater engineering. Agreed that there are more detailed texts available on specific areas of wastewater treatment, but this textbook does a very good job of striking that balance just right of covering material in enough detail for students and the practising engineer. It is usually enough unless you are writing a masters thesis or a doctoral dissertation. This text, together with the companion textbook, Collection and Pumping of Wastewater has served me very well during my college and professional career. Highly recommended to anyone looking for a good book on wastewater treatment. I very respectfully disagree with the gentleman from Istanbul above who feels that this book is poor. When taking my PE exam, if I was to be limited to just one textbook on wastewater, I would take this one.

"Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic" is a series of related essays on the composition of the Hebrew Bible. It is conservative in that it takes the general framework of the Biblical chronology as accurate, and Cross refers readily to "patriarchal folk", "the league" of tribes, "the empire of David and Solomon" and the "divided monarchy". Within this conservatism, Cross adheres to the relative conservatism of the Documentary Hypothesis, which is taken for granted by most scholars, but anathema to those who hold to the unity of the scriptures.

The book is radical in that Cross isolates themes and expressions derived from Canaanite mythology, particularly from mid-2nd millenium tablets found at Ugarit, written in an alphabetic script. He delves deeply into the names, titles and attributes of God, as well as into various sources which were united in the Bible as we now know it. "The Song of the Sea" rates a special chapter in which Cross demonstrates the independence of the poem from the story that surrounds it. He also reconstructs archaic precursor poems to various Biblical texts.

The book is challenging in that it is quite difficult and detailed. When I got started reading "Canaanite Myth..." 6 months ago, I quickly realized I didn't know enough to read it, so I took a few months to acquaint myself with the rudiments of Hebrew and middle-Eastern archaeology. Hebrew text, transliterations of Ugaritic, discussions of etymology and usage, sources of scribal error, and so on, using technical terms are the stuff of the volume, so it's not nearly as simple or neat as a least one of the other reviewers has suggested.

Finally, the book is debatable in that the reconstuctions of archaic texts based on the text we now have, the oldest exemplars of which date from the Hellenistic/Roman period, and projecting them backwards a millenium, and deriving political and ritual presumed practices from them seems to me highly speculative and ultimately dubious. For instance, while Cross does successfully demonstrate that "The Song of the Sea" is independent of the J and E sources, without more data, how can anyone possibly know at what point the poem became Yahwistic? The author cites archaic usage in dating, but it does not escape me that in our own culture, which is much less conservative than ancient cultures were, right into the 20th century, virtually all religious texts were translated into pseudo-King James English, which itself was archaic in 1611. Without securely dated copies, how would any future scholars date these? At the same time the book raises a number of issues which merit further study. This is not a book to read once and put on the shelf. It has much to offer for long term study.

This book provides valid theories concerning the evolution of the JudeoChristian creed from Phoenician/Canaanite religion.It will dispel many of the misconceptions perpetrated by jewish and christian fundamentalists for many centuries.Includes phonetically translated ugaritic texts semitic names and biblicaltexts, as well as detailed grammatical and linguistc essays on semitic languages.It is a must for anyone interested in near eastern mythology and language.

This book demonstrates the evolution of the Bible as we eventually wound up with it. This is NOT a book for people in possession of a conclusion searching for a premise. It will definitely offend Christian and Hebrew Fundamentalists, but then they have an enormous stake in maintaing their sense of place and livelihood with the status quo. Buy this book for an IMPARTIAL look at the history of what constitutes the bible.

This book is just so full of shallow characters. Their agendas are shallow, their motivations are shallow,the artwork is terrible, and DC over-prices the book. For a book that is supposed to be so good, it comes up short in every department.

I admit, in this tradepaperback it can get a little confusing, (hence the 4 out of 5 stars) since they compile a few storylines together and sometimes they end one section and start another without a full explanation. But it's all worth the last section where Black Canary teams up with the Huntress and Catwoman and aggravate poor Oracle to no end. That alone (plus the art work is excellent) is worth the price of this book.

BIRDS OF PREY trade paperback explains just how different, yet similar both the Black Canary and Oracle are. Seperate, they are formidable. Together, they are deadly. I have the MANHUNT mini-series and the REVOLUTION saga, so I just enjoyed the origin of the partnership between the two and the extra story with Lois Lane. Just so you know, I collect the monthly comic as well. These two characters have something special and they compliment each other well. For all action junkies looking for something different, this is your book. After all, it's not everyday that two beautifully drawn women take center stage to save the world and kick butt until their ankles are sore. Maybe it should be.

This is an absolute waste of $$ plus shipping. It has one sentence per page, and cartoon diagrams that say simply "don't get in a rut. And if you do, get out."

I was extremely disappointed.

Opens the door to creative thinking

This parable is an enjoyable little story focused on creative thinking within an organization. The story is a short illustrated cartoon that can be read in less than an hour, and illustrates how easy it is to get stuck in the comfort zone and how powerful and rewarding it can be when one taps into their creative spirit. This is not a deep read, but is a great reminder.

As the author of two books on creative thinking, I am always looking for other material that can be useful in my firm's creative work. I have found that this book is particularly good at reminding people of the importance of creative thinking, and how easy it is to get stuck doing...instead of thinking. C and The Box is a fun way to remind yourself of the power of creative thought.

Jordan Ayan, author of "Aha! - 10 Ways To Free Your Creative Spirit and Find Your Great Ideas" & "Ignite Your Creative Spark"

I often work with people to help them understand what stalled thinking is, and how to overcome it. One of the analogies that the majority of people get is thinking outside the box. I usually connect that thought to the old problem of how you connect the dots with fewer lines. Most people have trouble with that, until they start considering solutions that include drawing lines that go outside the apparent box formed by the dots.

This book takes a different approach. It explains how we become comformists, and comfortable with that comformity. Then it shows the downside of that conformity -- namely boredom.

The parable then goes on to show how hard it is to use resources that can get you out of the box, but how rewarding it is when you do, and share what you learned with others.

I find that most people don't see themselves in a box, which adds to their stalled thinking. I found the parable to be fresh and effective at addressing the issues, much like Who Moved My Cheese? does.

Although the book is short and can be read quickly, I see that as an advantage rather than a disadvantage. Be warned that the cost per word is high.

Be sure to read the two page epilogue. It has some ideas for helping you get out of the box. "Don't judge for a day." "Jump in a puddle." You will probably see one or two that will interest you, and that will help you out of the box.

Banish your stalled thinking! All you have to lose are your blinders!

We have the paperback version of this book. I never imagined that it was an actual "book"; I thought it was just a gimic book that the company sold through its cereal. Having said that, it's not a bad book.

First, the book counts from one to ten, with one number per page. Each page has the number, a picture of that number of Cheerios, a rhyming verse containing the number, and a picture of a different kind of fruit, also demonstrating the number. The rhymes are OK, but not quite natural. As we read each page, I like to count the number of Cheerios. In doing so it's hard to keep the rhyme going. Also, if we stop to notice (or count) the fruit, the rhyme tends to get lost.

Next, the book counts from eleven to twenty on two facing pages. There's lots of fruit to see here, too. The next two pages count to 100 by tens, with the second page having (what I assume to be) one hundred Cheerios on it. Zero is the number on the last page: it "is the number you get when you're done."

This last quote brings me to a likely picky point. The book uses contractions. For this reason, it probably won't serve double duty as an easy reader.

This is very cute. I think it is a great way to introduce children to counting by ones and counting by tens through manipulatives. And this comes from someone who doesn't like to buy into free advertising (in other words to have cheerio shoved down my child's eyes when I buy the book). But this is a great book.

Two thoughts- we have another cheerio book that has the place to put the cheerios as a little hole and my son likes that better. And, although the cover of this book lays flat, the pages do not. I had to put a little crease in the pages back by the spine so they would lay flat. This way my son's cheerios (or fakios) won't slip off the page.

Cute book though.

Enjoy.

My son loves food and this book is his first book that he will listen to and look at the pictures. He LOVES it!

"Chosen By Fate..." is a quick (less than 200 pages) and understandable read. However, that doesn't make it a great book. McKinley Lee goes to great lengths to paint himself, Suge Knight and the entire Death Row label as "victims" of a corrupt system and rampant jealousy. Lee makes no effort to provide an unbiased account, as his loyalty to the label that employed him as Snoop Dogg's bodyguard is evident on every page. The end result is a book that lacks the bite, depth and inside dirt of Ronin Ro's Death Row Records-themed work "Have Gun, Will Travel..." Lee chooses to cover the major hitmakers on the label (Tupac, Snoop, Dre, Suge) with others (Daz, Kurupt, Rage, etc.) receiving barely a mention. In addition, the bulk of the text revolves around Lee and Snoop's highly publicized murder case. Considering Lee was the trigger man (and pleaded 'self-defense') he doesn't provide much more than "I was just doing my job" as an explanation. Lee talks about the feeling of taking another man's life in one paragraph, while a few pages later it's evident that he has no remorse. By the end, the book has the feel of someone trying to cash in on Death Row's (fading) popularity.

This book really let's you know how it was in the midst of the Death Row project. I was really amazed on the life of McKinley Malik Lee, Jr. Buy the book. You will not be disappointed . I hear he is recording great music now (gospel rap) that should be released at the beginning of the year (2000). Wouldn't it be awesome to hear somthing with him and Snoop Doggy Dogg? Platinum baby!!!!! God Bless!!!!!!

Ok well Tupac Shakur is the best rapper that ever liver and no one will ever top him. It is a same what happened to him he was very talented and i wish he was still here. I have ever cd he ever maede and he is mostly all i listen to.. I think all the books writen about him are good as long as they say the good points about him to and how sweet lhe was.Tupac Amuru Shakur R.I.P.

These are not the stories that made Frank Miller famous, and if his creative output over his career had been limited to what is countained here, he never would have become famous. These are some very early stories in the career of a man who would eventually (elsewhere) come to redefine the comic book medium. Thus these stories are not the timeless classics on the level of (or even close to) "Dark Knight Returns," "Batman Year One," "Sin City," or "300." In fact, in one case, you don't even get to read the entire story. The first story arc in this compilation only gives you 2 parts of what appears to be a 4- or 5-part story, because Miller only drew 2 of the issues. Also, Miller's artwork here is much more conventional that one might expect, as he hadn't yet fully developed the unusual style which characterizes his later works. (I thought the art was similar to that of the 1982 "Wolverine" miniseries which he penciled)
Furthermore, the one issue which he writes does not bear the gritty, realistic quality which made the above-mentioned works so good.

On the positive side, you do get to see here all the work that Frank Miller ever did for Spider-Man, which includes 5 issues as penciller, one as writer, and 22 comic book covers. Also included are 2 more recent pictures which do appear more "Milleresque" (one of which is the cover to the book, so you can see it on this website, the other a beautiful shadow-portrait of Spider-Man and Daredevil).

The stories themselves are entertaining, as long as you aren't expecting "classics" which redefined Spider-Man's character. The issue written by Chris Claremont has a well-developed villain/anti-hero (as is typical for Claremont's writing), and the final story, written by Denny O'Neil, also is quite a good read. In addition, astute Miller fans will notice some of the qualities that would become even more prominent in his later art -- particularly the large, well-defined eyes and lips, and the creative use of shadow. And you get to see Miller's early artistic take on such characters as the Punisher, Dr. Doom, and Daredevil (before he began penciling DD's monthly titles).

In short, if you are a Frank Miller fan (like me), you will undoubtably find something to enjoy in this book and you'll be glad you bought it. But if you are just looking for some good Spider-Man back issues, and don't have a particular appeciation for Frank Miller himself, then you should look elsewhere. You can find other, better stories at a cheaper price. This book was published because Frank Miller's name was on it, and it is probably best suited for his fans.

Until recently, most of the hardcover reprint collections from both Marvel (the Marvel Masterworks series) and DC (the Archives series) have focused on either the "Golden Age" or the beginning of the "Silver Age" of comics publishing. The success of both the X-Men and Spider-Man movies, and the increasing market for graphic novels in traditional bookstores (rather than just the direct-to-market specialty stores) has both of the large publishers looking to see what they can repackage and gain some "found" money (i.e., don't have to pay for production, just publish and rake in the dough).

I'd decry such simple-minded money-grubbing except that along the way the art department of both companies must have gotten involved, because some of the most recent repacks have been providing comics scholars like myself some much-needed works that were previously only available to a few people (e.g., the Spirit archives) or forgotten by many, such as this collection of Frank Miller's earliest comics work. Sure, Marvel is pushing this not only on Miller's name (and the furor over his Dark Knight Returns 2) but also because it's Spider-Man, for gosh sakes. But if you want to see where Miller's style (both writing and artistic) evolved from, this is the book.

I remember owning a couple of these comics in their original form, but never connected them with Miller, whom I later admired for Ronin and his work on Daredevil and Batman. If anything, the stories here are the weak points, because they typically come from stand-alone "annuals" or team-up books, where Marvel often had a revolving door policy for writers and artists. The two best comics here are those that reveal Miller's work with cross-hatching (Spider-Man Annual #14) and the unique panel arrangements and interest in Eastern themes (Marvel Team-Up #100).

I'm not sure this is worth [the price], for the originals don't have the complex color separations that benefit from this nice paper. But as an archive resource, and for Miller fans, it's easier than hunting down the originals in dusty bins.

First off: This is NOT The Dark Knight Returns starring Spider-Man. A lot of people semm to be expecting a huge new Frank Miller Spidey tale, and are bummed out over getting some really old reprints from Miller's early days, before his style was fully formed. For those that know what they're getting, The Complete Frank Miller Spider-Man is a fun trip down memory lane. The stories, with one exception, aren't written by Miller, and the one he wrote was drawn by Herb Trimpe; You won't be getting the Miller writing/art combo that made him famous, but the stories are fun, if somewhat standard. The production values for the book are great- It's a really beautiful package, and the colors look awesome. In addition to the reprinted stories (Guest starring The Punisher, Moon Knight, Power Man & Iron Fist, Daredevil, Doctor Strange, and Doctor Doom, among others), there is also an extensive cover gallery, featuring ALL the Spider-Man covers Miller ever did, and the dust-jacket features a brand-new Miller illustration. For a long-time fan of both Spidey AND Miller, like me, this was money well-spent. Loads of fun!