When selecting a book I look for author first and then read the opening section of the first chapter. I have always found that Ruth Rendell's opening lines make me want to read more. Her characters are well crafted and you can get a sense of realism that many authors fail to achieve. This time though the book concentrates more on the feelings of Inspector Wexford and less on character & plot development. The side plots did not blend together into a seamless whole and it was hard to link the different plots together. There are times when the book is very tense but mostly it lacked the energy to keep you enthralled. I felt I wanted to get to the end of the book to see how it all fitted together but was left with a disappointing "Oh is that it?"

I read this book (or rather listened to it on audiobook) just because it was written by my newest favorite author. It wasn't exactly exciting, though. Inspector Wexford is caught in the middle of a kidnapping when his wife is one of the hostages. I was looking forward to an exciting search but was surprised when shortly into the book, his wife was released by her captors. This group was supposedly against the new bypass being built through the town, objecting to destroying trees and killing wildlife, so that's the direction Inspector Wexford takes as he tries to find the remaining 4 hostages. I'm not great at solving mysteries but even I had figured out part of the plot before the end. Rendell does tend to drag things out, making the story longer than she has to, but I can't help but like her style of writing so much that it doesn't bother me. I have read one other Inspector Wexford novel and liked it too, but have to say her suspense type novels grab my attention better. By the way, if you have a chance to listen to any of her books on Recorded Books audio, the narrator, Divina Porter, is great. She has that cool English accent and I could listen to her all day.

"Road Rage" by Ruth Rendell. Subtitled: "An Inspector Wexford Mystery". Audio Book Version read by Christopher Ravenscroft. Random House Audiobooks, 1997.

I chose this audiobook because I thought it would be about the typical Californian or New York road rage where one person is yelling at or even shooting at another driver. The rage in this book, however, is anger against the building of a road through Markham Wood. At first it appeared that this might be the usual plot where an environmental group protests the construction of highway by kidnapping hostages. But, then, there are many plot twists.

The hostages were "randomly" selected by their unfortunate calling for a taxicab from a particular car for hire company. One of the hostages thus selected is Dora Wexford, wife of Inspector Wexford, which places a personal twist on the efforts of "Sacred Globe", the kidnapping environmental group, to enforce their position on the authorities. But there are even more twists than just this one, as Inspector Wexford pieces together all the clues and determines the location where the hostages are being kept, and where a hostage was killed. The ending is surprising!

I enjoyed the audiotape version of this book, performed by Christopher Ravenscroft, as I drove I-495, the ring road around Boston. To American ears, Mr. Ravenscroft did a credible job in providing "Cockney" accents, British police accents and, of course, the educated "Oxford" accent. He has a wide ranging repertoire of accents, for both male and female characters.

this book has nothing new. It is just a compilation of other books and studies. If you are currently a financial advisor the information in this book should already be known. If you are new to the business you should find a great benefit. As I read the book I kept thinking I had read it before word by word. I am certain I did not.

Financial advisors, treat yourselves to this book! And buy a copy to give a colleague new to our profession! The message of this excellent book is this: "Sell what clients understand and relate to: concepts and benefits, not facts and figures. For by explaining concepts and benefits, they will understand and will in turn trust you." Story telling is one of the oldest and THE most effective way of educating and passing on information. I have been a financial advisor for 26 years and I profited greatly by reading this interesting and well written book. I wish I could have read it many years ago. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!

This book explains why some very smart people fail to achieve their potential in this fascinating and competitive industry: They do not connect with their clients at the level where decisions are made. Smart investment professionals who truly want to succeed need to integrate every idea and technique it contains so they can help their clients overcome their fears of investing and move confidently toward their financial goals. As a certified financial planner, president of a securities firm, and industry veteran of fifteen years, I immediately recognized the tremendous value of this book. I ordered Storyselling for every investment representative in our company and for each executive in our financial services group.

Author Anthony Bourdain provides the reader with a quick 148 page story of Mary Mallon, known to history as Typhoid Mary. Mary worked as a cook in the New York City area at the turn of the 20th century and unwittingly spread typhoid germs to those she served, although she, herself, appeared healthy. Author Bourdain goes into detail as to how Mary was tracked down and fingered as the culprit in the spreading of typhoid. Mary strongly denied her role in the spreading of the germs to those she served. Mary spent the last years of her unhappy life on North Brother island located just north of Riker's Island in New York City. The author also provides us with living conditions in New York City at the turn of the 20th century.I had heard of Typhoid Mary and this quick read will fill you in with some very interesting details in her life. The author concludes the book with a visit he made to Mary's grave in the Bronx in 1973 in which he, himself a cook, left his first chef's knife at the base of Mary's stone behind the tall grass as a gift to her as he said, "from cook to cook." This book will also make you think about the cleanliness of restaurants you eat in today.

This book adds much useful and interesting color to the history of Ms. Mary Mallon, the woman who became known as Typhoid Mary. Mr. Bourdain takes his experiences as a chef and extends them into imagining what life was like for Ms. Mallon. He also tries to look at circumstances from her perspective, rather than the authorities who hounded her.

If you don't know the story, you should be aware that Ms. Mallon was a cook. She was a poor, single Irish immigrant who had to depend on her own efforts to make her way. Apparently, she was an above average cook, because she had an easier time staying employed than most cooks of the wealthy did at that time.

In the early 1900s, typhoid fever was a common disease. About one in ten who contracted it died. There was no treatment for it. You just got very sick. Antiobiotics and vaccines eventually became available, but not until the 1940s.

Some people who have the disease never get very sick, but never totally get over it. They continue to carry the bacteria in their intestinal system. The discharge of that system can then cause healthy people to become ill if they ingest the bacteria in their water or food. Cooked food is not usually a source, but ice cream can be. Many of Ms. Mallon's diners fondly remembered her peach ice cream.

She was discovered as the possible source when a wealthy family in Oyster Harbor came down in typhoid in 1904. The investigator looked into the fact that the cook had disappeared. Checking her employment history with an agency, he found that every family she had cooked for during the past several years had experienced typhoid. A new scientific theory was developing that some people could be continuous carriers. He wanted to find her and test her blood.

He eventually found her cooking on Park Avenue for a family with typhoid in 1907. The book details the unpleasant way that he treated her. Eventually, she was arrested after a tussle with five policement following an afternoon of hiding in a privy. The samples confirmed that she was a carrier. The health department incarcerated her for several years. Due to the efforts of her attorney and favorable press coverage, the health department relented and let her out if she promised not to cook again.

That was a mistake. How else could she earn a living? Someone needed to provide her different employment and supervise her.

After five years, there was a tremendous outbreak of typhoid among the doctors, nurses and patients at a hospital for pregnant women and newborns. Yes, Ms. Mallone was the cook. She spent the rest of her life in isolation at a hospital on an island, and worked in a laboratory there. She was allowed day trips away from the hospital, so it wasn't totally awful. She left bequests totally $4650 when she died in 1938 from the money she saved while working in the laboratory. Ironically, her disease may have protected her from the worst of the Depression.

The best parts of the book detail what goes on in a busy kitchen, the psychology of how cooks think about patrons, and the role that cleanliness plays (or usually doesn't play) in all of this. I was particularly impressed by the argument that cooks (and chefs, apparently) always work sick. There is also a lot of intersting material on how cleanliness in the kitchens of the rich had become the rage around 1900.

You will get a clear sense of Ms. Mallon's frustration. She appears to have genuinely felt that she had done nothing wrong. From a civil liberties point of view, she was kept isolated under health odinances without so much as a court hearing. The book needed to explore the civil liberties issues more in order to make this a five star book. The book also would have benefited from a look at how else her case might have been better handled.

I was struck that there were only three confirmed deaths traced to her employment. I'm sorry that there were three, but for her notoriety I would have thought the number would have been much higher. Certainly, it was a matter of life and death whether or not she cooked for others.

What do you think should be done if someone has a communicable disease that cannot be treated? Would your answer change if you were the person who had that disease?

See all sides to find better solutions!

In this diminutive book (amounting to fewer than 150 pages), the robust Bourdain tells the stormy story of 'Typhoid Mary' Mallon. The author and subject, it becomes clear, are much alike. Both are cooks, iconoclasts, and outsiders. The personalities of the two resonate with one another throughout. For the most part, this is a charitable portrait of a misunderstood woman, but Bourdain also admits that Mary had a misanthropic side. In the later part of her life, knowing she was a carrier of salmonella typhi, she worked as a cook at a hospital for women and children! At the same time, she had been wronged by the system -- treated unfairly because of her gender, her immigrant status, and her station in life. Bourdain successfully gets inside Mary's mind, and those of the bureaucrats who hounded her. His speculations on the inner thoughts of the players in this drama feel accurate. The mystery of Typhoid Mary is energetically brought to life in this wonderful account set in early-1900's New York.

Given how much I truly love the first three books of the Mode series, I never would have pictured myself giving the fourth, _DoOon Mode_, a negative review. Yet that's what I find myself doing.

To be fair, this book suffers from several disadvantages: longtime fans of the series have been waiting for it for years--some as long as eight, since _Chaos Mode_ came out in hardback in 1993. My expectations were bound to be high after a wait like that, particularly when I learned that it was to conclude the series. I can also imagine that perhaps Piers Anthony lost the feel of these characters, this reality; though continuity errors were few, _DoOon Mode_ didn't really seem in synch with its predecessors.

Now for what requires all those excuses. For starters, I didn't get any sense of depth from any character, even Colene, which may have been partially due to the frequent perspective-shifting--and this time, most of the perspectives were used a sum total of once. I couldn't really get into the heads of these protagonists, only seeing a slice of the action from their view. And while I'm on the subject of the action, it seemed awfully glossed over to me. Many things are skipped, shown entirely off-camera; I got little feel for the wonderful variety of the Virtual Mode, and instead have a hunch that Anthony was trying to cut travel scenes as short as possible. Saving, mind you, for one Xanth cameo that seemed totally unnecessary. The characters' conflicts aren't explored to any significant degree; plot threads turned up and were swiftly cut off, not appearing to serve any purpose in the meanwhile. (If anyone can figure out the *point* of learning that Nona's joy cannot be depleted, or the motivation for her change of mind/heart with regards to her home reality, could you please explain it to me?)

Meanwhile, I also have problems with the amount of sex in this. All of the Mode books are heavily into sex-related issues; it's to be expected, and I'm not complaining about that. What bothers me is that the sex seemed purposeless here, thrown in simply to have it present. Even the new revelations about Colene's past trauma had the feel of something gratuitous. And the sexiness of the young women is frequently described--something which is just the tip of the repetition iceburg. Each new perspective brought yet another account of how the traveling party interacted, from a different and yet painfully similar viewpoint. I lost count of how many times Colene was described as a 'vessel of dolor.' That, to me, was wasted space that could have been better spent on more depth of plot.

Which brings me to the most disturbing thing--while all of the characters do achieve conclusions, and those conclusions are marginally satisfactory, they're... well, shallow. Given how much I came to care about Colene and Darius, I was terribly disappointed with the book's conclusion; sure, they get the ending we all knew was coming, but it's so anticlimactic that I was dismayed all the same. (Not to mention that if there was a romance/sex scene that I wouldn't have minded seeing, it would be the consummation of that relationship--something which is entirely missing!) I have no real sense of closure with these characters. Their finale was quick, bland, and left a bad taste in my mouth.

That said, it shouldn't be surprising that I don't recommend buying this one. Certainly not in hardback as I did. However, Mode fans will probably want to read it just to know how things turn out--and it *is* worth reading, for all that I've said; my opinion of it may not be the greatest, but I'm glad to have had one last chance to slip into the worlds of Colene, Darius, and their companions all the same. Just don't make it the first Mode novel you read, and don't get your expectations too high.

We get a conclusion, but it is unsatisfactory. I feel that the last few pages was hurried and not planned as good as they could have been.
But I guess that any finish is better than none.
Since I have read all the other books by Piers Anthony I know that he can do better.
Read the book. But dont expect too much.

As an Anthony fan for 19 years I was deeply dissappointed in this book. It was not as well crafted as previous books in the series and the characters and plot lacked cohesion. I particularly disliked the inclusion of the rape and child abuse scenes - they added nothing to the plot and could have been handled better.

I enjoyed reading parts of this book because of the way that Robin Cook has the ability to intertwine medical research with suspense but ,about halfway through the book, you start to grow weary of the back and forth method that Cook uses to display the eagerness of Dr. Howard to solve the mystery before him. I must admit that the ending somewhat shocked me but overall I have to say that this was one of Cook's more cliche and simple novels.

Mortal Fear was a great suspense book. You never knew what was going to happen next. Robin Cook is a great author. He knows just how to get a reader's attention. He describes the characters in the book so vividly. You really understand and know about each character. The only complaint I have is the book jumped around too much. In the beginning of the book it all flowed together, but once uou got to the middle, it started to get off track. At one point, Doctor Howard was in Boston, but as you kept reading, you later found out he was in Seattle and not in Boston. That was totally confusing.

Just like the title of the book, Mortal Fear, I thought it was one of the scariest book written by Cook. Don't read it at night.. but like other Cook books, you just don't have any reason to stop once you open the book!

I read this book because I'm a die-hard fan of Piers Anthony's, and he's right when he says not to write to him. In the author's note he said he had an especially hard time writing this book because of all the letters he recieved...And it shows. This book reviews the life of the Magician Humphrey and moves over the entire history of Xanth adding tidbits of information to the past stories. The reason it had problems was it's inconsistancy... The chapters were tedious and drawn out at times.

The book is good. Of course I love reading history as well. And that is what is covered here. A detailed history of the never-before revealed story of Magician Humphrey. His recounting of his life will remind you about all the books before this one. A timeline of the history of Xanth is also provided. A good read.

This book showed the the history of Xanth in a very cool way, through the eyes of Magician Humphry. I loved how it slowly got into a predicament and how it was cleverly solved in the end. It showed what happened to Castle Roogna over the years and how Humphry was taught by demons and how he wrote the book of answers. It is, in my view, one of the best Xanth books ever written, and it gives you a lot of information on the history of Xanth and how Humphry lived it. Although it is a great book, if you are just starting to read the series, you should begin with the first book, A Spell for Chamelion.

This badly-written, poorly-conceived excuse for a novel makes me ashamed to admit liking Piers Anthony's work. Ever. It reads as though written and edited by a classroom of first-graders. Except that first-graders are generally more imaginative. This derivative drivel is... self-gratification splashed onto a page, ready for unwary readers. The characters are flat, the plot is trite, and the writing itself is so incredibly clumsy it made me wince just reading the first page.

I'm a 42 year old female, and as much as I love fantasy..... maybe it's my stage of development at this time in my life...but I didn't enjoy this book as much as I'd expected from the description of the story on the jacket, and my enjoyment of Piers Anthony's work in the past.

If this book was aimed at adolescents, personally I would like to have seen the two main characters react to each other on a strictly emotional level, rather than a physical one. It's hard enough for ADULTS to distinguish between lust and love.

I understand the need to escape into a dream wordl, but I never did understand abusive relationships because people who REALLY LOVE YOU don't treat you that way! I've met a lot of people who treat total strangers with more courtesy and respect than members of their own family, or people they supposedly love. I found the lead "heroine" annoying as rather than developing into a mature adult, she didn't take responsibility for HER actions in the abusive relationship. He was a BAD MAN, but she kept dragging the guy back after he'd leave her! Would like to have had this phenomenom explained more and the reader taught how to deal with that type of behavior in the real world we all have to live in. Escape doesn't SOLVE the problem. She did START to learn to stand on her own, rather than depend on her friends to rescue her.

Would love to see another book from the author, Julie Brady, in how her characters learn to develop mentally and emotionally into mature adults. I liked the idea for the book and hope to see more from this author.

This book was great! I thought that the story of Nola and her imagination was intriging. I can't wait for another book by these two authors comes out. I'll be the first on line. If you liked Piers Anthony's Chaos Mode series, you'll love this new world of dreams and wishes.

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This book covers a retired exam (640-507).

Passport does not produce the CCNA 640-607 book.

This book will not prepare you for the CCNA any more.
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Way too many errors. This is not a good book for someone who does not have any experience. The IP addressing section is a joke.

Lots of errors and all kinds of typos.
Some topics are missed.
Only good if you already know the material so
you will enjoy finding errors and misleading facts.
I am wondering if author ever read his own book.

This book is good in its own ways, like it has maps of all of the levels and it gives you tips on how to play this game effectively. The maps show where people are, where boxes are, where you can complete your mission objectives, where keys are, and buildings are. It is very useful in game play but this does not give you the cheat codes, you half to earn them.

I haven't got the book yet but I should get it tommarow. I'm glad that there are comments on how good the books are or I would of got the other because I don't have that much money.I guess that other GoldenEye book is a waste of money.

I just wanted to thank the people that helped me get this book rather than that other piec of CRAP!

This book is great and if you are a little novice holding the RCP-90 your'e going to be blown away.It has everything that you need telling you where the secrets are and how to complete the game.I would recomend this book to anyone and if you are going to or thinking about buying the game go out and buy it now.

The book is difficult to understand if you have no traditional video editing experience. There is an opportunity for someone to write a more comprehensive manual.

There are generally two types of Filmmakers/Editors: The Artistic and the Technical. The Artist knows what s/he wants to accomplish from the get go and just wants to know what the necessary functions are from a program like Premiere to get from A to B - from their head to the screen. Technical types aren't as sure what they want before hand and feel better knowing everything about the tools they use so that out of all the technical options, a creative solution may arise. This book is for the former, the Artists - and it's great. I found Premiere daunting at first glance, but this book set the clear goal of learning how to edit in clear concise steps. I was ready to go in 2hrs. If you want to learn how to edit and edit fast with all the ways thereof, get this book. After you get comfortable here then you can go on to the standard manual for specific advice on things like hardware and capture and all the bells and whistles or you can use the Classroom book. But this book has no lame tutorials - it doesn't need any. For the intuitive creative artist who just wants to get comfortable with the essence of the program look no further (it also sells at a price comforting to most,um, artists : )). However, Techies and hobbyists may be very, very disappointed...

I find this book to be extremely informative, well laid out and full of valuable information. I have found it easy to read and learn this complicated program.