This was the first Jack Higgins book that I've read, and likely not my last. This book was easy to read and the action was consistent throughout.

I do think Higgins could have done more to develop his characters. I don't feel that I really got to know the book's most exciting character, Harry Martineau.

I've read this book 3 times and it is still action packed till the very end. Higgins is a great writer and I can't wait for his new book to come out.

Wow! what a book! Great fun. The ending was very exciting. Higgins did it again!

This absorbing and probing book explores the biological drives that explain our choices and behavior. Bridging the gap between evolutionary biology and the social sciences, this extraordinary interdisciplinary work shows that our actions are a consequence of a continuous struggle between four innate, subconscious, brain-based drives. These are the drive to: acquire objects and experiences; bond with others in long-term relationships of mutual care and commitment; learn and make sense of the world and of ourselves; and to defend ourselves, our loved ones, beliefs and resources from harm. A very interesting chapter applies this concept to work and organization. The authors present a model to explain human behavior and reveal a common heritage of all humans. The authors suggest that if we attempt to balance our four drives, we will progress forward to the next stage of human evolution. This is a rich and insightful work. Very highly recommended.

OK, there are some parts of this book that I disagree with but I'd be nitpicking. The authors propose that the four core drives to acquire, bond, love and defend shape almost all of our choices. I simply loved this book and found it brilliantly written by the guys from Harvard. The practical applications are obvious and you NEED this book in your library. I thought of a dozen ways to utilize this information immediately and average three underlined sentences per page.

Buy this book, read this book, apply it to your business and your life. It will change the way you think about human interaction forever.

Kevin Hogan
...

At first glance this book seems to be leaning too much toward the scientific/academic side. I was actually dreading to read the book, however the authors have done a magnificant job of livening up each academic part with real world case studies. The main theme of this text is how we base our decision making on four psychological drives that every person is born with regardless of religion, race or other factors:

1.) The Drive to Acquire (D1) - We all have it, it is normal but some have too much of it. Those who have an overdose of D1 tend to teeter on the edge of self-destruction and those around them.
2.) The Drive to Bond (D2) - Everybody likes to feel wanted and belong to some type of organisation (family, cultural, religion, hobby, etc., When a person engages in decicion making, they will usually decided positive for the person who has something in common with them.
3.) The Drive to Learn (D3) - Learning is a part of life and when this drive is not satisfied in people they become aggressive and restless. Have you ever seen a highly intelligent well-paid co-worker leave a job although this person never had any problems with peer or superiors? Chances are that this person was in dire need of a cerebal orgasam i.e. The person was somebody who needed to be mentally challenged.
4.) The Drive to Defend (D4) - We have learned certain beliefs and take them to be true until proven otherwise. When somebody attacks or tries to show us otherwise we become agitated, angry or beligerent because deep down in our subconscious we have a defense mechanism that does not want to be proven wrong.

This is an excellent book for markets, negotiators and employers. What makes us tick inside our crainium. The authors have excellent examples taken from Hewlett-Packard and how they created a bond between employees and the company. Other scenarios show why some companies work extremely well with labour unions and some companies never seem to have any peace between management and unions. Why do we prefer a product over another? All of these answers are in this text.

I wish I had known about this book three years ago when I became a PowerBuilder/Sybase programmer. This is a very clear and easy to ready book on a not too easy to understand subject. The authors have done a superb job in explaining what the SQL language is and how it works. I highly recommend this book to anybody dealing with RDBMS systems. It's a book that should be on anybody's reference library. The chapters on queries and referential integrity are very well written. Also the chapter on building dynamic SQL is a "must read" for anybody doing this type of SQL access

This book is the best! It doesn't tie itself to any single SQL-based product. Instead, it guides you through the actual SQL standard with a few notes on deviations by specific products.

With this book, I set up a freeware/generic SQL server and had a working database within an hour. Aside from this book, I have no database experience...just programming and systems experience. I found it a great resource for setting up tables and queries, including under specific products such as "Access97" and other (server-based) products.

This is a great book to begin to understand how to write queries for databases in SQL. It starts off with the simple queries, and moves onto the more advanced commands that are used for maintaining databases.

It is a simple and clear text, and has been an invaluable source whilst creating databases and writing code to interact with these databases.

My recent software engineering graduate course on software architecture relied mainly on this SEI text, along with several of the many SEI white papers posted on the SEI site, and such texts as Buschmann's Pattern Oriented Software Architecture (POSA) and Stelting/Maassen's Applied Java Patterns. Since the second edition of the text was available just two weeks after the start of the course, I decided not to purchase the first edition, and instead purchased the second edition. However, having used both editions for the course, I must say that the second edition is superior to the first even when only taking the architectural view notation into account (it uses UML rather than a cryptic, proprietary notation used in the first edition, although at this high of a level in modeling, UML sometimes disappoints as well). The addition of content from some SEI white papers to the text is also a benefit of the second edition. The text, regardless of the edition, is well written and very understandable.

The book is well written and quite comprehensive on the subjects covered. It provides an extensive coverage of topics around software architecture and explains the relationship between software architecture, architectural styles, systems, etc. It also includes a substantial number of novel discussions on issues such as architectural qualities, architecture-based system development, and architecture-based reuse. It uses extended examples to illustrate the points being made.

The only thing I didn't like was the lack of a more formal approach to presenting the subject matters.

I found this volume to be extremely useful. It contains very insightful commentary on what architecture is (a term that I find is misused a lot), what architecture affects, and how to evaluate the qualities of an architecture.

Two of their best insights for me:

* Architecture affects the organization of the company/business unit. (In my company, we didn't realize this and we failed to create an organization that could support the architecture.)

* Virtually any architecture can accomplish the functional needs of a system - what differentiates architectures are how they provide the essential qualities (performance, modifiability, maintainibility, etc.) to the product.

The book is strongly based in the real-world, with practical examples. I never felt they were straying into "theorectical" land.

I also bought "Applied Software Architecture" but didn't like it nearly as much - I highly recommend "Software Architecture in Practice"!

As a person who was thin for about the first 30 years of my life, I haven't been able to figure out my "problem" with not being able to lose the weight I've gained. I know WHAT to do (reduce calories and exercise), but I lack the motivation to do it, and also feel hungry almost all of the time. Dr. Rivas' book explained the brain science behind my situation and even helped me peg the events/timeframe that this became an issue for me. I will be talking with my Dr. about his recommendations, although I'm glad he gives natural supplements as well as prescription medications as alternatives. This is not another "6 weeks to a great body" type book. Turn Off the Hunger Switch provides practical recommendations - as long as you're willing to ingest natural or pharmaceutical supplements to achieve your goals! P.S. Calories and exercise do matter as well, but they're not the end-all and be-all according to Dr. Rivas. His ideas are worth reading and considering if you're not having success with the regular approaches.

I am and EMT and have to grab a meal whenever and whereever I can. It's not easy to get good nutrition that way. When I read this easy-to-read book and began to try to figure out my own profile, I started trying different supplements and amino acids that Dr. Rivas recommended in the book. In 4 months I lost 34 pounds and have maintained the loss for the last 5 months. The first 16 pounds were lost Without using Phentermine. I've lost from a size 18 down to a 12. Before that I had not been able to lose any weight in the past 25 years. This is the easiest thing I've tried. The hardest thing is just swallowing the vitamin and supplement pills every day and that is only discipline!

I heard the tale end of an interview with Dr. Rivas on the radio this past Spring, enough to spark my interest anyway. The few reviews that were currently on this site indicated that the book was probably worth the read.

Even though I run regularly and try to eat a healthy diet, I have continued to gain weight for the past 8 years. I tried counting calories, increasing my weekly running mileage, group weight loss programs, etc. The scale just kept creeping up.

After reading this book I was able to determine what "type" I was and purchase the supplements recommended. Since starting on the supplements 8 weeks ago, I've lost 8 pounds. I'm eating well, but the sugar cravings and compulsive evening eating have dissappeared. I'm not "dieting," simply eating when I'm hungry and making good food choices most of the time. When I do decide to eat something decadent I don't feel complelled to eat great quantities, a little is quite satisfying these days. All of the behaviors that have sabotaged past attempts at weight loss are gone!

What a great, uplifting book - for all dog lovers! The authors captured great topics with light easy reading paragraphs on each topic. I have read it twice and plan to read it again. The book is like a big Dog Magazine with short interesting chapters!

If not the best, it is one of the best dog books I have read and I have read several. The book is written with the reader in mind and flows as you read. I read cover to cover as soon as I opened it and now go back to get answers to questions that pop up. I just reread the chapter on Dog Allergies and while I had the book open took another look at Expensive Gifts to Buy Your Dog. Most dog lovers on my gift list this year will find this truly fun and educational book in their stocking. I hope there is a new one in the wings.Be sure to take the Dog Nut quiz at the end.Your dog will love you for buying this book.

Briefly speaking, I really enjoyed the information because I have not read this in other dog books. I would recommend this book for all dog lovers :).

Perusing the clunkily-jointed, cliche-addled sentences of "Milroy..."'s reviews, one is far from surprised that Theroux's real achievment in this novel escapes mention: his genius for invention. Who but Paul Theroux could give us a sentence so gorgeous as this (as Milroy removes his tongue magically): "He held it out to me, panting from the effort and then he whimpered, his mouth a great gaping hole, his eyes blazing with ecstasy, and the thing vanished from his hand, leaving a slight ripeness of breath in the air." A gorgeous, plainly-worded, smellable sentence. That's Theroux's magic. And that's the vast, unappreciated pun of this book, which retails the regimen of a Biblically-styled health cult as a sideline, but is really another installment in Theroux's ongoing plea for appreciation. He is a woefully under-appreciated artist. Re-animating Allie Fox (from "The Mosquito Coast") and blessing him with a grander name and supernatural powers, Theroux reminds us that everything written, from ornithological surveys, to grocery lists, are thinly-veiled autobiography. Theroux is that yankee inventor (i.e. Fox); Theroux is that magician (i.e. Millroy). What was Thomas Mann's nickname, after all, but "The Magician"? Theroux, so crafty with his toolbox of earthy, hearty onomatopoets (e.g., "stomp", "clomp", "flap", or the limericky "fossick") builds a complicated object out of words, a breathing, farting, world...is that so common a miracle, considering the current surfeit of crappy prose afoot? That the ending of "Milroy the Magician" is a trifle cinematic, and pat (he's had luck with Hollywood in the past...can we blame him?)is barely a bother. If I read books for their endings, I'd simply skim all those words that come first. Like the reviewers listed. This is my review of their reviews.

Paul Theroux is a writer whose sentences are, to steal from protagonist Millroy, tangibilised. It would seem to be impossible to read him without a stream of images flowing through your mind: bloody eyes, detachable tongues, finger cutlets, Ezekiel bread and closely shaven heads.

This novel is a showcase of a writing that invokes as much as it provokes, and it does both exceptionally well. In addition to the brilliant use of image, olfactory and texture to construct a disjointed yet vividly real world, this book provides a thoughtful read that remains playful.

"How can people who eat such good food be so evil?"

That, I think, sums up centuries of debate over religion, the will of God and humanity itself. It's also a delightful sentence completely in tune with everything that had preceded it.

This is not a rollercoaster ride, but it is certainly shipborne voyage. At times it is rocky and at times it is soothing, and ultimately you can't help but be thrilled with where it ends up.

What a book! What a man! Who wouldn't want to be Milroy, the magician who can perform miracles and feats of wonder? What young girl wouldn't be fascinated by a caring, devoted health fanatic who can rescue her from the mundane to the wonderful world of "Alice in Wonderland"? And what man in his middle age, beset by paying bills, a boring life and wife, would't want the ending Mr. Theroux gives his protagonist, Milroy. However, Mr. Theroux manages to give this complex and humorous book a satirical twist which is also a political and religious commentary. "Milroy the Magician" could only have been written by a lonely writer lost in his own mid life crisis.This book is Mr. Theroux's fantasy salvation and the reader's riviting entry into one writer's wonderland.

Ben Graham may have done for investing what Euclid did for geometry, but the Graham student must take a long and winding road to collect and organize Grahamian "theorems." Greenwald modernizes and thoughtfully organizes the value framework originally expounded by Graham, and shows how investors might take -and in the final section of the book, how several master investors DO take- Graham's notion of buying dollar bills for fifty cents and apply this central idea in creative ways to some of the less frequented areas of the market.

Greenwald et.al. show a terrific aptitude for remaining informal and conversational while maintaining brevity and orderliness. Neophytes are unlikely to encounter a clearer, more concise explanation of 'discounting future cash flows', and most students of value investing will be well-served by Greenwald's order of equity valuation: (1) Asset Value, (2) Earnings Power, (3) Growth, all of which are clearly explained. Additionally, Greenwald discusses a useful addition to common metrics such as 'net asset value' and 'liquidation value' with the concept of 'replacement cost'. Greenwald also acknowledges and thoughtfully attempts to quantify the value investor's less traditionally acknowledged principle of 'franchise value', which he judiciously attributes to Warren Buffett as the latter's singular contribution to investment analysis.

The book's admirable brevity is also its primary shortcoming. Whereas Graham included senior debt and convertible debt vehicles both in Security Analysis and in his investment practices, this text is for all practical purposes only an examination of equities. If the authors of "Value Investing" ever opt to write about a value approach to bonds and other instruments, I'll bet they'd have a captive audience.

This is a required read for any practicing or prospective value investor. I have read most of the books on value investing and found this one to be both insightful as well as practical compared to the others. It offers a great mix of both philosophy and practice. A great starting point for the aspiring value investor. This book also introduces a lot of new content. The principles of sound investment will never and have never changed, but the application of those principles is constantly changing. This book brings us to the future by showing us the different ways in which value investing can be applied. There are various examples from Glenn Greenberg at Chieftain Capital Managment, who applies a concentrated value approach, to Walter Schloss who applies a diversified value approach. There are plenty of methods for the aspiring value investor to choose from. There is also a great profile on one of the future's great value investors-Paul Sonkin. Rarely do we hear about the next generation of value investors.

I am a professional investor (CFA charter holder and portfolio manager) and would suggest this book for anyone interested in the value style of investing. I would not recommend the book for a novice investor since some terminology is not explained. (Perhaps read this book after reading and understanding Benjamin Graham's The Intelligent Investor.) However, the book is an excellent read for someone with an understanding of investing. The book is divided into two main parts: The authors' views of different ways to value a company and profiles of successful value investors.

I think the authors' Earnings Power Value (EPV) approach to valuing a company is cutting edge. (Basically EPV is a rehash of Enterprise Value.) Most investors tend to value stocks based on P/E ratios - only looking at equity in a company. However, the proper way to value a company is to look at its whole capital structure - Debt, Equity & Cash. EPV is a much better tool than the P/E ratio for calculating whether a company is undervalued.

The second part of the book that profiles a half dozen or so successful value investors is interesting. It illustrates there are many different ways to execute a value oriented approach. The profiles do not give any hard cut rules that each investor follows, but it does give you a general idea. (I have been successful at applying some of the ideas in managing my own account.) The only flaw of the profiles is the lack of any type of track record. It would have been helpful to list the year-by-year returns for each investor compared to an index. (i.e. S&P 500 Index)

Overall, it's a great book and it deserves a spot behind Ben Graham's Security Analysis and Intelligent Investor.

Although this book was good -it is almost thouroughly impossible to miss with Paul Zindel- it was very much like his most famous book, The Pigman. In The Pigman, two high school friends, Paul and Lorraine, befriend an extremely lonely elderly man and live out his last days with him. In A Begonia for Miss Applebaum, two high school friends, Henry and Zelda, become closer friends with their lonely elderly high school science teacher. Both are good reads, but it was annoying to read the same book in a different guise.

Overall, A Begonia for Miss Applebaum was a good book. It was poignant, gentle and somewhat funny. However, the similarities to The Pigman were so glaring that it interfered with the book.

I first read "A Begonia for Miss Applebaum" when I was 10 years old. It was the first book that made me laugh and cry (sometimes simultaneously!). I absolutely love the scene where Henry, Zelda, and Miss Applebaum are playing elevator roulette! After reading this book, it sounded like so much fun that a couple of friends and I decided to do it. The imagery is vivid and the portrayal of the character is brutally honest. It's definitely a book that I can relate to on a personal level. I fell in love with Henry from the start with his "Luke Skywalker good looks", and Zelda is just terrific! I strongly reccomend that you get a cup of frozen hot chocolate with extra whipped cream from Large Marge and curl up with this book. I do so every year.... A Begonia for Miss Applebaum never gets old, and I discover something new every time I read it. Thank you Paul Zindel!!

A Begonia for Miss Applebaum was the best book I have ever read. Paul Zindel understands teens, what we're going through, and how we feel. Never, in as long as I have been reading, have I found such an author as Zindel. A Begonia for Miss Applebaum is a delightful, terrific story that will touch your heart, warm your heart, and even break it. Get to know Paul Zindel, he understands you.