A good introduction to the mechanics, usefulness, and limitations of scansion and rhyme forms. His examples are well-chosen and illuminating.

My main beef with Fussell is that I think he puts too much stress on the limitations of convention -- on how much past use of a form shackles future use. But then, I'm a young poet with a couple bones to pick, so apply salt as needed.

You're lucky to have wound up here if you are looking for this sort of book. Expensive isn't it! But it's the most excellent book on writing poetry and poetic form I've read. Fussell has a masterful understanding of the material and handles it with great style and insight.

Fussell describes how forms of poetry define and focus the poem. He does this really well.

If I knew a really effective superlative, I'd use it here. Nothing comes to mind. Shouldn't have drunk so much.

This is the best book on poetry.

Unfortunately out-of-print, this great book contains many, many recipes from Chef Paul Prudhomme's family, along with a few from the King of Blackening himself. Meticulously detailed to ensure good results, the recipes are all failproof. Some recipes, however, serve better as conversation pieces than actual things you'd want to make. Hog's head cheese? I shudder to think. Red boudin ( made with fresh pork blood )? Eeek! All the same, the coconut cake recipe is really excellent, worth preparing your own fresh coconut for. A must for serious Cajun cooking fans.

This book has changed my taste buds forever. The food is SO good! IT takes a little more work than most of today's cookbooks, but the results are worth it. If you like food, you need this book.

A wonderful collection of some of the best recipes from Chef Paul Prudhomme's restaurant as well as the best of the best of Cajun traditional home-style cooking. You'll never be disappointed with any recipe. It is easy to reduce the fat content of any recipe in the book (old-time recipes aren't always real fat-concious). The stories that accompany each recipe are like you're sitting around the kitchen table listening to the family history. This book is a real treasure.

The book is useful, and it was badly needed when it was first published, but it was not written very well. For every paragraph of substantial or useful information, there is a page of repetition and imprecise fluff-- the book would have been twice as good had it been half as long. Again, the book is good and will not be a waste of money, but there are other pilot communication books out now that deserve a closer look. Don't assume that this book is better simply because it is longer.

This is an excellent book to familiarize yourself with air traffic control and tower talk. I'm a private pilot and I learned in a relatively low trafficked area in Maine. The Portland tower was nearby but I didn't take advantage of it too much. I read the book one summer while I was still a student pilot . . . when I went up with an instructor and we headed to a towered airport he was very impressed on how I knew how to call them up and respond to them, I understood the flow of frequency changes well, and understood all the instructions I received from ATC before he ever taught me any of that stuff. Even if you are already a pilot, but still avoid going to towered airports because you're afraid of getting embarassed you should most definitely get this book.
The actual examples he gives are right on the money. The good part is that he give you variations on how to say the same thing so in case you hear it differently from someone you'll be ready. I don't really have any complaints with this book that I can think of at the moment. It's helpful to VFR student, and actual pilots, it has realistic examples, good explanation of why things are the way they are with ATC, explains the ATC environment well. Get it!

This is a great book for learning communications protocol for the various conditions a private pilot will encounter, and for helping to organize the cockpit relative to radio communications management. I believe it's a "must-read" for every private pilot.

This book is one of many classical guitar-teaching books that I own. They are: Solo Guitar Playing (Frederick Noad), Progressive Classical Guitar Method (Jason Waldron), Pumping Nylon (Scott Tennant) and a couple of Mel Bay books just to name a few. Each one approaches teaching and how to play the classical guitar differently. This book by David Braid was made by an excellent publisher, hard back, spiral bound (stays open easy), full color pictures, top quality paper and a cute brunette model showing you how to hold the guitar between your legs. But as they say "Don't judge a book by its cover" the content of this book for me falls very short. It doesn't seem to follow any logical progression of teaching, example: It has you playing in two voices, chords, doted notes and ties before even teaching you the notes on the base strings. Then it puts nail care at the back of the book, and tells me to memorize the studies so I can watch my left hand (contrary to every other book that I have) This all to me just left me frustrated and confused. I am sure David Braid is amazing classical guitarist but just because you can play well doesn't mean you can teach well. Compared to the exceptional book Solo Guitar Playing and the no thrills but concise Progressive Classical Guitar this one sat and collected dust.

P.S. If you really want to give your fingers a work out try Pumping Nylon

Unlike "the Noad book" (which seemed to turn learning guitar into a chore,) Play Classical Guitar starts fast and teaches quickly. After only a few lessons, I already found myself playing pleasant little tunes.

Excercises quickly get more difficult, but reward you with songs that you're proud to play for friends. The included CD also helps you compare yourself to "the right way."

I heartily reccomend this outstanding book -- except for the fact that you need a lot of will-power to put it down!

This book starts at the beginning covering posture, notation, timing, dynamics, etc. There are exercises in each lesson segment. Each section builds upon a previous exercise. Of course, you are going to want to get supplemental material to build further upon your skills. Giovanni's 120 Right Hand Studies is a good book to help give an extension of finger picking.

I recommend this over many other books out there.

The accusations don't make sense. How could the person who claims to have an admin friend use a random SSN to discover that Paul is the person they claim? Paul would not be linked to the SSN. All of the detective nonsense about the SSN is implausible. The fact is that a overspirited reader found a webpage for a student who redesigned Paul's site, and then assumed the student was Paul. I found the page too. It has all of the info the person claims to have obtained from Paul's SSN. The student even says that he was redesigning Paul's site. Even if it is Paul, what's wrong with using pseudonym? At any rate, the book is damn entertaining. The sleights are well described and the photos are superb. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is curious about street scams or street magic.

The book is damn entertaining. The sleights are well described and the photos are superb. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is curious about street scams or street magic.

This book has lots of information about sleight of hand from a street operator's perspective. I really enjoyed the Three Card Monte section. The effects Price describes are miraculous. Although they take a little a bit of practice, the results are worth the effort. I highly reccommend this book. He also talks about street scams.

It has been a very long time since I have read works of contemporary literature that displayed such creative imagination and mastery of the written word. The story unfolds on a planet that is very similar to Earth. And for all I know it could have been our Earth in some dark past or distant future.

Imagine, if you will, a planet that is exactly like ours, but with some traits blown out of proportion, like social order, religion, politics, weather, etc. Imagine a social system that permanently determines one's stature in life and in the after life upon his or her birth. Imagine a religion whose scriptures are based on ancient erotic poems. Imagine seasons that last for thousands of days, where a man born in summer is unlikely to see the winter of the same year. If it all sounds too hard to digest then be prepared to be pleasantly surprised as you'll find those themes and many others blended beautifully to form the backdrop of an epic saga of love, war and faith.

Among the folds of the story I found a harsh critique and dark satire on our own lives. To quote one of the characters: "Legends speak of a planet very much like our own, but where a year only lasts a few hundred days, and a man sees many seasons in his life. If such a planet exists, then there can no wars there." But consider that a bonus, as the story is very compelling on its own.

The book I read for free reading was Soldiers of paradise and it made the most of my time. It was wrtten by Paul Park which is also a very intresting man and his past life will amaze anyone. the book is like a fantasy in the distant future but alot of war and illeagel drugs is involved.This book was a great choice because there were always surprises that poped up from evey cornor when you least expected it. This book was like no other because none the action never stops, theres always something intresting going on. A qoute from Thankar explains how much he hates alot of people in his world because everyone has to be a real hard case to survive and he dosent want to be one " I know him and I always hated him. we'll hang him higher than any bird can fly". That explains how Thanker doesnt like anyone because he knows that his friends can even stab him in the back just to survive. The future is so bleak with war and drugs its explained as med-evil times because castles, tourture and death is just business in the world he has to suffer in. in conclusion the book was great and the ending is what you least suspect.

This was a beautiful way of telling a story. Musical. I think the whole book should of been spoken the way the storyteller had spoken it. It may be hard to understand once you start reading it, but once you dove into it, it's hard to put down. I havn't finished it yet, but close to it, and so far it's beautiful, that 's all I can say. If you need a book just to pick up and read, try this one. Magical, ~Isirah~Weasel~

I did not find this book helpful or comforting. It basically was about the author's marriage and did not offer any helpful suggestions. I was comforted to know that another woman experienced the same hurt, however, I needed ways to help get through the pain....not read the details for her marriage.

The words of the author were a mirror image of the words of my heart, except I didn't know how to express it quite so succinct. This book provides practical and Biblical advice for couples faced with sexual addiction. It moved me from anger, bitterness and denial to coping strategies. I finally began to make sense of sexual addiction and how it has affected my marriage whether I realized it or not. I recommend this book for any wife that finds herself broken hearted and not knowing what to do next.

Stone Cold in a Warm Bed is beautifully written. The Wilson's have confronted a difficult issue with sensitivity, compassion and wisdom. They not only share their story, they take the reader through a step by step process of healing. Kathryn Wilson illustrates what women need to know and what couples need to share in order to bring their marriage back into a healthy union. Readers will learn how faith can rebuild a marriage and heal the wounds of a sexual addiction. Kathryn Wilson's personal account and guidance will instruct and inspire women. They will find the hope they need and never feel alone again after reading this book. The most helpful Christian book on this topic that I have seen!!!

Be warned that the "Programming Windows Solutions with ADO.Net" chapter (chapter 10) presents only toy applications.

Developers looking for real-world solutions will need to look elsewhere..

Rick's book is the best one I read on VB.NET with SQL Server. The flow of the book is unbeatable. Every chapter is clearly written and well planned to backup the chapters that will follow it. Executing stored procedures from VB.NET is the best part of the book because when I ran the code it worked. Other books I bought (too many of them!!!) do not compare to this book.
The other thing about the author is that he replied to my email about an issue not mentioned in the book as soon as he received it. I strongly recommend this book.

Like most people, I appreciate humor. But when I'm pressed for time and need to learn the nuts and bolts of a programming language, I'd rather an author save his chuckles for his own time. Or her own time. Whatever. Dobson's book is right up my alley. It's serious, but not complicated. The pages are filled with good, technical information, supported by concise examples and efficient diagrams. No wasted space, no wasted words.In contrast, Karl Moore's book (VB .Net: The Tutorials), though quite informative, was annoying in its silliness. This tome served as a refreshing antidote. Of course reasonable people can disagree on the humor thing--the disagreeable can go to Moore's work. In this book, multiple topics are covered well: SQL programming, including the all-powerful stored procedure, Windows application programming, XML programming and ASP.Net programming. Dobson's treatment of SQL in concert with VB .Net should help anyone get up to speed writing DB applications in no time. It is a wonderful text that successfully paints with a broad and serious stroke.

The book presents hundreds of interesting sauces but is not organized in a way that allows you to know what sauce to use and when. Rather than index sauces to match foods, this book presents a small blurb of suggested foods next to each of 600+ receipies. For example, I opened the book at random to a sauces that was recommended for crab cakes. But if I wanted to prepare crab cakes and was looking for a sauce, I would have had to read past 200 pages and 300 recipies before I found this one. The publisher could have spent a few hundred dollars to create an index of sauces that would have increased the value of this book ten fold. Too bad they didn't.

Knowledge, organization and clear. Excellent resource.

This book is more of a detailed textbook than a cookbook. It goes into a detailed history of how sauces developed over the last few centuries - dating all the way back to the Roman feasts. Better yet, it doesn't give mere recipes - it details the hows and whys of good sauce making.

This book may be too detailed for an amateur cook to use. It's not the sort of book that you simply take a recipe and use, not unless you're already well-skilled in the saucier's art. It does take the time to explain all the french cookery terms that make up the vocabulary of the text, and if you're willing to actually take the time to learn all the skills Chef Laurousse is teaching, you'll be a far better chef for it.

I'd been dying to read this book since I first heard Rosselson's song Ballad of a Spycatcher (basically the plot and best lines of Peter Wright's book). The book more than lived up to expectations. Although the style is sometimes dry and methodical, for the most part Wright takes the reader from the early "flying-by-the-seat-of-your-pants" stages of his work in counterintelligence as his branch of MI5 takes on a Soviet spy network 15 times its size, through the middle years when brilliant inventions and tactics are leaked to the Russians by an unknown, high-level source, through his heartbreaking autumn years when proving or disproving suspicions means long interrogations that can ruin the reputations of good men or let traitors slip away. Wright is a great guide through the arcane world of real MI5 work, and he has a splendidly British sense of humor that breaks the tension when needed. This book totally changed the way I thought of the British Secret Service.

After the first hundred or so pages, this book is non-stop thriller- similar to the best investigative journalism. This is the sort of specific insight history that prefigures the current global standoffs. As such it speaks reams to how the two former cold war superpowers continue to function on outdated paradigms for intelligence and espionage. We are not really certain if the former Soviet Union and its subparts are indeed, as they urge, our allies. The current state of global affairs indicates our lack of adequate information and comprehension of the dynamics of the so-called `New World {dis?} Order.'

`Spycatcher' reveals how extensively the KGB infiltrated the government and secret services of post WWII Great Britain. Much of the second half of the twentieth century's divided loyalties were born in the 30's and 40's when many of the Western intelligentsia in Britain and to some degree in the states supported Marxist ideals and the Soviet system. The most dramatic recruitment occurred in the 30's at Oxford. There, a group of `Apostles,' an elite, upperclass group of homosexual males insinuated themselves into the government to become the scourge of the reputation of the once-superior British secret service. Three of the infamous Oxford 5 would defect to the Soviet Union; Maclean and Burgess in the early 50's, and Philby, who prevailed through one interrogation, that was really nothing more than a cover up according to Wright, defected later. The 4th spy, Sir Anthony Blunt, the Surveyor of the Queen's Pictures, was `outed publically' in 1979, after having been granted immunity decades earlier. He was unrepentant throughout his lifetime and in retrospect, treated uncommonly well for the sparse information he supplied. Indeed, the high regard by which these British spycatchers upheld the law, not bending it as their American counterparts would do, was at once frustrating and laudable. Those were the years when Britain was racked with scandals; the other famous one, the sex/spy game of the Profumo Affair. The government and the crown were terrified of another embarassment and thus were easily used by the highly placed moles within the system to obstruct investigations. This, to the great chagrin of the United States and to Peter Wright. Wright spent many thousands of hours in grueling research, looking for the 5th spy that had been variously revealed through several Soviet defectors and captured spies. Wright, and then others, was convinced, following the glaringly obvious failures in their top secret operations, that the spy was none other than the Director of the Department, M15, Sir Roger Hollis. Wright pursued evidence doggedly for over twenty years. His tactics, his tenacity and his brilliance were remarkable; his actions, heroic.

This autobiography is a narrative of the murderous espionage game of that period where massive military takeovers went hand in hand with atomic weapons secrets and the ever-present threat of nuclear war. The time was also marked by the end of British Imperialism, where the home rule would be restored to various former colonies. In that too, many agents and plans were covertly put in place for the primary reason that should the new government not be well fortified, the respective militaries would grab power, destabilize the country further and remainder it vulnerable to Soviet interference. Philby's last assignment to the Middle East was one of this nature. Some, but by no means all of the foreign policy makers understood the need for a smooth transition to democratic government in order to retain a global balance of power. It was through the British Raj, after all, that spawned the country of Pakistan and Kashmir, the current hottest spot on the globe. Separated from India at Independence, the division has witnessed hundreds of thousands dead and the potential of a nuclear nightmare.

We were often gullible in the West, and falsely convinced that everyone wanted to defect to "better lives." Amazingly, the Eastern bloc defectors were still Russian agents. The CIA and the FBI even then were at odds. These were the halcyon days of Richard Helms, J.Edgar Hoover, whose number Wright had, and the maven or maniac whichever way you look at it of James Jesus Angleton. He practically went mad when the former intimate Philby defected. Because of that treachery, Angleton imprisoned and some say tortured innocent defectors. There were quite a few cowboy operatives in the U.S., big time drinkers and often running their own little shows. Some speculate that things in that regard remain the same. But others, insist that the CIA has become too risk aversive. History will no doubt tell. in the 60's, the CIA questioned Peter Wright about methods for assasinating or, the `wet' areas. Wright said the British were out of that game and they should submit the question to the French who were involved in that manner in Algeria among other places. We do know for certain that the CIA got heavily involved in what was `wet.' American secret services even tried to foment a revolt in the M15 to leak some information on Labor PM, Harold Wilson that they hoped would bring down his government. This was post-Bay of Pigs when the `Agency' was struggling, and Labor was too far left for comfort, no matter where it was. It was also a time of reckoning for many older British who had flirted, as did so many of their peers, in their youth with Marxism. Unfortunately, the labels, were often damning and the fear that McCarthyism would spread across the Atlantic was ominous- although as it happens, it didn't.
There were suspicious deaths that mimic current Anthrax scares and even some James Bondesque devices for recording that were created largely by Wright himself. Ian Fleming, Bond author, had of course worked in British Intelligence.

The book was unsuccessfully censored in England, with a stolen copy printed anonymously. It was most absorbing to read as a non-citizen so I can only imagine the excitement it engendered where the players were all well known. I highly recommend Spycatcher as both a historically incisive and entertaining book. I can't help but feel that as much as we can learn about the various secret information agencies will help us in our understanding of the current state of affairs.

From the end of WWII until 1965 when Roger Hollis left as head of MI-5, British counterintelligence was almost completely compromised. The Soviets outmaneuvered them continuously with a flood of diplomatic and illegal agents. This was a constant source of embarrassment as people like Kim Philby, Burgess and McLean defected to the USSR. The agents defecting in the opposite direction were frequently clever disinformants sent as ploys creating a "wilderness of mirrors." As former assistant director of MI5 the author was directly responsible for investigating the infiltration and gives a blow by blow account of how morale suffered as one by one potential moles were grilled and either cleared or ousted. Many interesting and authoritative asides keep interest high throughout the work.