I love Edward Lear's story and James Marshall's illustrations are magical. I don't like the version with Jan Brett's illustrations. I've never liked Jan Brett's illustrations. I've spent hundreds of hours looking at children's books and I always pass over Jan Brett's books. Her illustrations just don't appeal to me. Her illustrations are distinctive and I can always recognize her work but I don't like them. There is just something missing--they don't have any life to them or something. I can't explain it. I have always loved James Marshall. His genius transcends understanding. His illustrations complement Ed Lear's beautiful tale perfectly.

A very good illustrated version of the classic poem- the pictures are beautiful with a distinctly exotic flavour, great for all ages!

This book is just so cool. Longing for a trip to the tropics? Read this version of the book to your little one and you can at least feel like you are there. The illustrations are really sweet. They have a lot of details so that kids kind find new things with each reading. My two-year old loves this book. It is a great twist on an old tale

Unfortunately, it took a catastrophic event like September 11th to bring home the reality of terrorist attacks to most of us. For Paul Blais, he and his family have been dealing with it since June 25, 1996. Paul's son was in the barracks at Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia when a terrorist bomb killed 19 American servicemen. At first he thought his son was among the 19. Days later he found out that his son survived, but had suffered a traumatic brain injury. While the rest of the world got caught up in the next big news story, Paul and his family entered a foreign world trying to understand the magnitude of so many unknowns associated with TBI.

So many of us are guilty of losing interest in a news event a few days after the news hype has died down. We hear a number associated with the deceased and wounded and give little thought to the decimated lives of the victims, or their families. After reading this book, I will never again hear of a terrorist attack without shedding tears for survivors, deceased, and their families. Terrorism is such a cowardly act!

Paul has created a well-written, poignant account of his only son. This is an honest, thought provoking and indredibly moving story of a young man's will to survive and a father's love for his son. I can guarantee that readers will be as engrossed in this story as I was. It was impossible to put this book down.

It is easy for me to highly recommend this book. My best wishes go out to the entire Blais family. They personify what the American Spirit is all about.

"Resurrecting Paul", is a difficult book to read, and an even harder story to comment upon. The book is very well written; it shares a painful, very personal story, and causes all manner of emotional turbulence for readers. It is written by a father about his son, a young man who decided to serve his country, and what happened to him and the balance of their family and friends when Paul became a victim of the single most definitive word of cowardice: Terrorism.

On June 25, 1996 a tanker truck loaded with fuel parked next to a fence in Dhahran Saudi Arabia, specifically in front of Khobar Towers. The invertebrates that drove the truck there, left. The truck exploded, and 19 young men died. The parents of Paul Blais waited 4 days for confirmation their son was dead, only to be told an error was made and he was alive.

Alive in the sense he was in a coma, was unrecognizable from his wounds, was being kept alive via a ventilator and a variety of feeding tubes and catheters, and had sustained a horse shoe sized massive blunt forced trauma to his head causing severe brain damage. Machines breathed for him, tubes fed him, and tubes removed the poisons all our bodies produce, Paul was alive. This young man, still working his way through the second half of his twenties was irrevocably damaged, all his dreams and his career taken from him. To this day despite indictments of over one dozen of these cowards, no one except Paul, his family, and their friends have been punished, have had their lives changed forever.

Paul's father, the author, will take you through a nightmare that is just about unimaginable. He and others around him are subjected to a combination of great care and concern...and hopeless incompetence. One would think that bringing parents to see their son in Germany is something the bureaucrats could manage. They could not, and they did not. One would think that German officials would have the ability to make decisions. They did not. A person should know that their elected officials will be there to help, especially when the incident garners international attention. Some do, and some cannot be bothered.

I expected that The United States Government would place great value on the life of any of her citizens, especially those who place themselves at risk to protect us. It does not. At 27 they discharged this young man from the service; medical retirement with a full pension just over $800 per month. What reaction, other than incredulity and outrage, is a reader of this injustice supposed to feel?

How about rehabilitation facilities for our veterans? One would expect it to be the best, or at least comparable to what civilians have available to them. The facilities they expected the author to place his son in smelled so badly of human waste that standing inside for more than a moment was impossible.

The author gives an extraordinarily balanced account of everyone, and every piece of stupidity his son was faced with. The vast majority of those he dealt with appear to have been excellent and caring people. But in a case such as this, that is not good enough, it is not acceptable. It is not even close.

The author's son Paul has made a recovery that no one thought possible, he is not the person he was, his life is still a shadow of what it once was before the terrorist bomb destroyed his life and ended the lives of 19 others. Paul has come as far as he has because he has an incredible will to fight and the discipline to match. Paul has family and friends who are all heroes, and who, I would venture to say are in large part responsible for helping him fight his way back. Paul is a hero, and everyone who helped him are heroes. The men who died in Saudi Arabia are heroes, and the families and friends they were taken from are all remarkable people in their own ways.

Books like this are rare, always relevant, and particularly so today, as we are on the verge of yet another conflict in The Middle East. More young men and women will come home like Paul, and many will never come home at all. I wish for them to have families like Paul's, who will be there for them when they come home, to help them heal.

I also hope that the politicians who violated the trust of their offices are able to feel shame, and that the next soldiers returning home requiring long-term help are not offered rehabilitation centers that are kennels where you would not choose to board your dog.

I thank Mr. Blais and everyone else for sharing this story, books like this should be required reading, for they are history books, raw and without any romanticism that all too often turns history text books into historically based fiction.

Terrorism shows our species at its ugliest, and the stories should cause anger and even rage. This book will also cause tour throat to tighten and your eyes to fill, whether you are a parent or not, regardless of your political affiliation, regardless of your place of birth or your manner of worship.

Terrorists live outside of society, outside of religion: Christian, Muslim, any other you care to name. They are outlaws wherever they are and should be treated with the same lack of concern they show their victims. We do much better than that, however, for we are a nation, and mostly a world of law and justice, and these cowards will eventually find that out...and that is why their kind will never win.

Paul Blais's world was plunged into traumatic turmoil when his son Paul became a victim of the June 25, 1996 Khobar Towers tragedy in Saudi Arabia. Had it not been for the fact that young Paul had left his room and the video game he and a fellow Air Force friend were playing to visit a nearby rest room, he would have been killed instantly, as was his pal.

Young Blais lay in a coma for a time, and his father, due to the inability of Air Force personnel to properly identify him, for a time believed he had been killed in the terrorist bombing. When the elder Blais attended a memorial service for the Khobar Towers victims he was able to empathize as a parent who,until young Paul was finally identified, believed that he too had been deprived of a son.

A notable element of this compelling account is the manner in which the author, despite trauma and sorrow, is able to put his emotions behind him and focus on the issue at hand, providing young Paul with all the love and support necessary to surmount a tragedy and helped propel him toward recovery. Paul was a young man with a penchant for vigorous athletic activity and a preference for water sports. As a result, starting from scratch, learning to walk and talk anew, at one point propels young Paul into suicidal depression. The unwavering support of a loving father, his mother Maria, Paul's ex-wife, along with two supportive step parents, help turn things dramatically around. The elder Paul is delighted to participate in his son's graduation from flight school.

The story contains an interesting surprise twist at the end, with the elder Paul being prouder than ever of the progress his son has made. The ultimate triumph demonstrates the results of a solid game plan built around faith and love, two cornerstones Blais emphasizes repeatedly in this moving work.

Blais also focuses on the important element of feeling for others, which he believes enhances human stature on an individual and extended basis. He states with resolute conviction that people throughout the world need to be more aware of and empathize with each other's tragedies, whether the victims of terrorism be in America, the Middle East, Europe or Africa.

This book gets one excited about physics. Common physical phenoman like rate, speed, mass and force are explained in very ingenious ways. What is more the writing is good and to the point. Even though there is not much math to speak of the author explains things in a concise manner. What got me hooked to this book is that it does require thinking on part of the reader. One quickly finds out that what may seem intuitive and common sense is in fact precisely the wrong answer. Another major advantage of the book is that you do not have to read it from page one onwards. Turn to any segment and you are sure to be sucked in. Page after page is filled with nice little nuggets of fun. Get this book you will not regret it.

If you ever took a college class in physics, or maybe even high school, or ever wanted to understand physics, this is the book for you. I'm an electrical engineer, and my physics classes were 20 years ago, but I love this book. It really does make you think!! Buy it now (and get one for your friends).

This is a jewel of a book. The latest second edition includes additional material on waves, which addresses a lack in the earlier edition. There are sections on optics, momentum, kinetic and potential energy, etc..

My favorite problem, and this is typical of the sort of material presented, is to decide whether or not a car suffers more damage in

A. hitting an immovable brick wall at 50 m.p.h.

B. having a head-on collision with an identical car both travelling at 50 m.p.h. ?

The usual response is to say B. However, Newton's 3rd law of motion, ("forces always act in pairs; if a exerts a force on b, then b exerts an equal and oppositely-directed force on a), maintains that the damage is the same, i.e., the wall strikes the car with the force of a head-on collision. This problem, by the way, is particularly juicy - I remember the head of a university physics department discussing this one at considerable length with two other physicists! (They more or less agreed, with provisos, that B. is indeed correct.)

The author encourages thinking without mathematics, to come to terms with the physical reality of what is occurring. This approach closely mirrors that of Michael Faraday and James Clerk Maxwell, who felt that mathematics was useful only as an adjunct to science and no substitute for clear thinking... A marvellous book.

At their absolute best. For this album and this album alone, one should be able to rate 10 stars.

The songs on this album are all well-crafted, featuring the usual Be Bop Deluxe jaw-dropping musicianship and orchestration.

If I live to be 1,000 I will never understand why this band never enjoyed much commercial success in the States. And this album is probably their best effort. Worth many listens.

Do not buy the Greatest Hits CD, This is the best of Be Bop Deluxe!-Period.

When this record first came out, I was not well-schooled in the music of BeBop Deluxe. Their previous recording, "SUNBURST FINISH," had received some airplay where I lived (Los Angeles), but not much beyond the song "Fair Exchange." But I liked what I heard, and I somehow got this gut feeling that this band had in them something special. That "something special" turned out to be this recording, "MODERN MUSIC," which boasts good vocals, solid guitar work, interesting songs, but most of all - a special feeling or aura that seems to envelope the entire concept and project.

When this record came out I somehow felt compelled to buy it before ever hearing any of it on the radio, from a friend, or anywhere. I just plain bought it sight unseen, and it turned out to be one the best 'flyers' I've ever taken with regard to my impulsive music buying habits. "MODERN MUSIC" is Be Bop Deluxe's best album in every respect. More than anything, it's a completely conceptialized whole, comprised of two song sets, the former sides 1 and 2. Both boast strong songs, carefully sequenced and performed with energy and taste. The second of these is the elegant and powerful "Modern Music Suite," where the songs crossfeed dreamily one into another. Both "sets" of music have held up for me over an untold number of listens, spread out over a significant number of years (this record was released in the late 1970s).

Excellently recorded and produced, this is Bill Nelson's peak with regard to his Be Bop Deluxe period. If you enjoy other vintage 1970s recordings such as 10CC's "HOW DARE YOU," Genesis' "LAMB DIES DOWN" and "FOXTROT," "Todd Rundgren's "A WIZARD, A TRUE STAR" and "SOMETHING/ANYTHING" or any one of a dozen or more other such treasures, give this recording a try. The uninitiated among you will likely enjoy this time-capsule nugget as much as I have, and do.

NOTE: As others have mentioned here, this is apparently the same "REMASTERING" that resulted in the 1990 re-issue of this recording on CD (the one I own). Therefore, if you already have this record on CD, it is probably this very same re-mastering, as I don't think it was available on CD prior to 1990. In which case, enjoy your copy and spend your money on Bowie's "Scary Monsters," Television's "Marque Moon," Utopia's "Oops Wrong Planet," or some other 1970s classic.

This is a book that you'll love. There's a lot of things to learn in it and some terms you probably can't listen anymore. A perfect book for a really baseball fan !

This baseball dictionary is clear, concise and helpful, particularly for people like me. I love baseball, but when I was growing up, girls weren't raised on sports, so I became a fan with sketchy knowledge of the rules and nuances of the game. Since I bought this book, I've learned a lot about pitching maneuvers, stats, history of the sport, slang terms and dozens of other things that make baseball more and more interesting to watch. I'm very glad I own it.

In baseball, what is a crackerjack? A cradle? A drawing Card? Feel the apple means what? What happens when you go to the pump? Who made up Murderers' Row? Open the New Dickson Baseball Dictionary and you'll find out.

This A to Z complete listing of baseball term is about the best book on the subject there is. Paul Dickson has put together over 570 pages of facts, terms, definitions and trivia that are sure to please every baseball fan.

Filled with over 100 photos and illustrations you are sure to find just about every baseball word you can think of. Also included are a thesaurus, a section of abbreviations and a fully annotated bibliography.

The baseball purest is sure to love this book as a gift, and it is priced to meet most budgets. Overall this book is great reading and makes the perfect handy reference book!

I have numerous cookbooks and reference books, but this is by far the most valuable book in my kitchen. I refer to it almost daily, and can't recommend it highly enough. It's packed with useful information.

So I look it up here. That's all. Sometimes in my travels ie ChinaTown. I find some very weird ingredients on the packages w/the few english words that is supposed to suffice us written for Americans. I'm grateful for this book, I found out some really good nutritional information on obscure seaweed that I had no clue was being used in pasta making in China. Image that, exactly what I needed for my thyroid gland. But best of all is the TCM and Ayurvedic info on these herbs & roots. Now I buy lotus root by the lb. But the best is correlating the info & giving my cooking a punch I never thought possible nor that I was capable of. I know that if it's something you put in your mouth, this book has got the goods on it. A must have in any kitchen witch's bookshelf.

Well, Ok not quite but almost! A few months ago my teenage daugher and I were diagnosed with numerous food allergies and told to follow a rotation diet. A life long vegetarian, it was an almost overwhelming to be told I could no longer eat soy, eggs, pinto beans, kidney beans, avocados, etc. And my daughter is not allowed any legumes as well (nor sugar either).
Clearly the protein was going to be a challenge (we really dislike flesh foods of any kind) but then I read the guidelines for the rotation diet itself and quickly discovered the extreme limits of my food knowledge! Sure I had heard of (but never cooked) quinoa and flax but amaranth and yautia? Not. And even if I could find where to purchase these items, how would I prepare them?
Both our weight and our attitude dropped signficantly in the first few weeks. Then we "modified" the guidelines and found ourselves physically sick again. Luckily for us, my husband purchased this book on a trip to Dallas. While I was skeptical about it's holding my interest as an actual "read through", I found it quite engrossing from almost the first page.
Not only do I now know what to do with the foods on a rotation diet list (knowing that yautia is similar to potatoes means I can now make a favorite soup that otherwise I would have passed over) but because the index is brilliantly organized I can easily look up say "warming foods" and adjust my internal thermostat rather than the whole house which made my husband doubly glad he had bought it! The same for high BP, colds, cancer, you name it.
And I can relax about the protein issue as well knowing which foods on "our list" are highest in protein instead of just choosing those foods with which I might have previously been most familiar. I bought a copy for my mom for her birthday and she can't put it down either!
If you are really interested in preparing a variety of healthy foods no matter what your current state of health might be, do yourself a favor and buy this book. It might not save your life but it will certainly liven up your meals no matter what kind of diet you follow!

Seldom has a book about spiritual warfare been as timely and relevant as this one.

I have read many excellent books on the subject, but this really is an absolute must read!

Spiritual warfare is an aspect that cannot be avoided by Christians, and wisdom in such matters is absolutely paramount to prevent us from unwittingly falling into Satan's snares and to protect us from Satan's onslaughts.

John Paul Jackson examines the parameters of our spiriutal authority in facing Satan and his demonic realm, together with the practical guidelines that need to be followed to proceed in such matters on a Biblical basis.

A number of real-life stories are referred to in what is a highly recommended read. All Christians need to access the information provided in this book. Kindest regards.

This book will redefine spiritual warfare for you.
You will find the material within is well written and easy to understand with timely prophetic words for the body of Christ in this season.

John Paul is a transparent servant of Christ, often highlighting his own mistakes, in order to teach us the right path to walk.

There is good fruit from this tree.

John Paul Jackson's teachings have changed my life! This book made me aware of foolish ways I had engaged in spiritual warfare. I changed them immediately! There is so much conflicting information about spiritual warfare today, especially about binding, loosing, and commanding the powers of the enemy. I had never felt completely comfortable with some of the ways I'd been taught to excercise my authority as a believer. After reading Needless Casualties of War, I went to the scriptures and asked Holy Spirit to confirm this to me. He did. Then I went to my knees in repentance. I was horrified at how some of my methods of prayer had actually empowered Satan to operate, by attributing more power to him than he has.

Now my prayers are not only more effective, but my relationship with the Father is more intimate. As I focus on staying under God's cover and listening for His instructions, He can send me on "strategic" intercessory assignments of His planning and not my presumption.

This book has actually saved many ministries and lives, who, like myself, had unknowingly thrown themselves directly in the sights of the enemy's artillery. I have given this book to many ministers and intercessors. They have thanked me for it.

Thank you, John Paul. Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

The perferct mix of avant-garde art which represents a philosophy. The framed narrative, its necessity that is, is the only aspect of the work I would question. A must read of the French writers.

Jean Genet's seminal Our Lady Of The Flowers (1943) is generally considered to be his finest fictional work. The first draft was written while Genet was incarcerated in a French prison; when the manuscript was discovered and destroyed by officials, Genet, still a prisoner, immediately set about writing it again. It isn't difficult to understand how and why Genet was able to reproduce the novel under such circumstances, because Our Lady Of The Flowers is nothing less than a mythic recreation of Genet's past and then - present history. Combining memories with facts, fantasies, speculations, irrational dreams, tender emotion, empathy, and philosophical insights, Genet probably made his isolation bearable by retreating into a world not only of his own making, but one over which he had total control.

The imprisoned narrator "Jean," who may or may not be identical with the author, masturbates regularly; like a perpetual motion machine, his fantasies fuel his writing and his writing spurs on his fantasies in turn. Nothing illustrates this more than the brief scene in which self - sustaining "Jean" describes his Tiamat.... Legs thrown over shoulders, "Jean" is not only the serpent that eats its tail but becomes a small, circular, self - imbibing universe all his own. A motto attributed to the alchemists could be the narrator's own: "Every man his own wife."

Though the narrative is not the primary focus of this or any of Genet's novels, most responsible critics have failed to remark on the fact that the narrative of Our Lady Of The Flowers is the least compelling of any found in his five major novels. Our Lady Of The Flowers, does, however, lay the basic groundwork for the novels to come: The Miracle Of The Rose, Funeral Rites, Querelle, and The Thief's Journal (all written between 1944 and 1948).

While Our Lady Of The Flowers is Genet's only novel to feature a predominantly effeminate homosexual man (Divine, who is at least partially a transvestite) as its protagonist ("Our Lady Of The Flowers," a virile young thug, is a secondary character), most of the other elements of the book will be very familiar to those who have read the balance of his fiction. Transvestites and transvestite figures abound, as do handsome, amoral, and homosexual or bisexual "toughs," jokes and extended vignettes concerned with lice, flatulence, constipation, and feces, mordant examinations of manhood and the criminal's code of honor, obsession with personal power through emotional betrayal, the long vagabond road to "sainthood," theft, masochistic love, prostitution, and vivid examples of the way in which physical desire and sexuality secretly and subtly fuel, in Genet's view, almost every aspect of life. As in portions of his other novels, the characters here, even the swaggering, virile young men, are known among their friends by fey pet names like "Darling Daintyfoot," "Mimosa," and "Our Lady of the Flowers," which are intended to be simultaneously affectionate and mocking. To further confuse, Divine is referred to as a "he" and referred to his surname during his youth and as a "she" and "Divine" in maturity. As in the Miracle of the Rose and Funeral Rites, characters mesh into one another, exchange identities, and move backward and forward through time at the narrator's whim. Both "Jean" and the individual characters fuse their own and each other's personalities together as needed, and all occasionally lose control of this process: but Jean Genet, master puppeteer, never does.

Genet's readers are probably aware of the existence of haughty establishment critics who pretentiously embrace Genet's work but nonetheless treat it like something best held at the end of a very long stick. "Evil" is the word most commonly used to describe Genet's fiction by stuffy, anxious middlebrow critics who, while distressingly stimulated by his work, feel duty - bound to officially decry its potential for pernicious influence. Many artists are said to create a "moral universe" within the body of their work; Genet is one of the few that actually does, though his is a mirror universe where amorality reigns. Genet's world is so exclusively concerned with flea - ridden prostitutes, child murderers who don't wipe themselves, handsome pimps who eat what they scratch out of their noses, [prostitutes] with rotting teeth, strutting, uneducated alpha male hustlers, and masochistic sodomites -- bourgeois emblems of horror all -- that the question of "evil" as such in Genet's work becomes obsolete.

While Genet loves and personally glorifies his memories, fictional recreations and their outcast lifestyles, he never objectively condones their actions to his audience. In all of his novels, Genet finds beauty, suffering, and vulnerability - humanity - in everyone, thus setting a far better example than his hypocritical reviewers. There is as much "evil" in Genet's books as there is represented by any typical novel's reality principle (for example, all of Genet's characters reveal more humanity and innate dignity than the crass, vacuous crowd Nick Carraway falls in with in Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby) or, for that matter, as there is in the lives of those unstable, morally - confused critics who are simply too cowardly to recognize the world as the diverse, dangerous, devouring, and unstable place that it is. If Our Lady Of The Flowers proves anything, it's that fifty years after its initial publication, the book is still effectively upsetting the wormy apple carts Genet intended it to.

From the standpoint of Jung's psychological types, Genet's feeling and sensation functions probably predominated in both his life and his writing. However, his thinking and intuition functions were clearly constellated as well, giving Our Lady Of The Flowers and the masterpieces that followed it unmatched macrocosmic perceptiveness, poetic resonance, and gripping, all - inclusive dramatic power. Like alchemical "totality" the hermaphrodite, a shaman, or a legitimate Christian saint, mystic Genet seems to have written from a state of undifferentiated consciousness and enjoyed a state of perpetual participation mystique with life.

Somebody should make an opera of this book! I've loved this book since high school, perhaps more than all the others! Genet as always is like a dark narcotic; impossible to shake, and constantly ecstatic. His genius is like a kind of suffocating honey on the page, it pulls your heart out. This edition has a substantive Introduction by Sartre, whose "Saint Genet" is one of the seminal books of the late twentieth century. If you've never read Genet, you've got something coming! What is there to say about literature of this standing? Read it and be ennobled.

This book is unmissable. Idiscovered it shortly after it was first published and it was unbelievable. I've since read all of his, some brilliant, all good, but this remains the best.

Yet another fantastic story from Robert Goddard, and that's what it is A STORY - so all the historians out there who don't like history being tampered with, should remember that it's fiction!
You really feel for Martin, the central character, who is a historian down on his luck when he is offered an opportunity of employment in researching former cabinet minister Edwin Stafford's memoir. As is typical with Robert Goddard there are plenty of twists in the tale, this is a brilliant book and I'd recommend it to anyone who just wants a good read.

Past Caring was brought to me from England by my sister years ago.It is now available here.For years it was not.

This novel is one of my favorite books.I read all of Goddard's books, but Past Caring remains my FAVORITE.

I was glad to find this book and Inglés Para Latinos to use as the vocabulary for our class of partners who help each other learn English and Spanish. (and their second levels for the more advanced speakers.) I've developed lesson plans that coordinate the 2 books and give practice (because the books are nearly all vocabulary.) The students like the encouraging tapes and the easy explanations in their own language of the meanings. And they want copies for their friends.

The book is very funny yet informative, making it an easy read for the beginner. The video version (also published by Barron's) runs along similar lines, but with the added benefit of being able to see Bill Harvey in action.

I brought this book to help me brush up on my Spanish. I spoke a little before I brought the book. I am a Cuban / Dominican that was born in the States and never really learned Spanish. This text helpped me like no other. What is great about this text is that it also give you words specific for different countries. The author gave words that are used in Cuba and Puerto Rico and Dominican Republic. I highly Recommend this book to anyone first pass at learning Spanish.