I visited San Diego in September 2001, and spent most of my time in the Mission Beach area. San Diego is one of the best places I've ever visited, and I loved the culture, people, beaches and the weather. I liked San Diego so much that I'd like to move in the near future and, bought this book to find out more information about San Diego neighborhoods. But, when I read the description of the Mission Beach area...I found the description to be vague and general and not representative of the the area at all, in any way, shape or form. This guide book is extremely conservative, and doesn't give the reader any insight into the "real" feeling of the city. The description of Mission Beach sounded like "anywhere USA" and nothing like the incredible place I spent over a week in. If you want to find out where to go golfing or antiquing (whatever that is), then buy this book. If you want to find out what San Diego is really like, don't even consider buying it. After reading the Mission Beach description - I can't trust any of the other information in the book, and will be either throwing it away or selling it.

When you spend less money traveling, the more traveling you get to do. Even thought I am big believer in the Let's Go travel series, Frommers will always take a close second. The maps and the walking tours outlined in the book are excellent. A great bonus was a pretty good outlined itinerary depending on how many days you have in San Diego. The walking tour hit all the major sites. One complaint is that the authors do not list any hostels under the moderate accomodations. There are some killer hostels under 20 bucks a night right on the beach close to public transportation. Stay cheap when possible and meet exciting people. Still, there is nothing better to do in San Diego than lay out on the beach and watch time go by. For some reason, everyone in life is trying to go somewhere, but in San Diego you are already there.

I bought this book before I moved to San Diego, and have found it helpful for not only planning my first vacation out here, but also as a newcomer to San Diego. I am still using it often as I plan day trips to wine country or take my weekend guests to the zoo or Wild Animal Park. I have found the book very user friendly, easy to read, and accurate. A must have for San Diego!

Do not, repeat DO NOT, trust any information found in this book if the correctness of the information is important to your safety or the successful completion of your travel. We trusted the statement on page 9 under ENTRY REQUIREMENTS, where it states that " Americans, British, Irish, Australians, New Zealand, and now Canadian citizens need only passports (no visas) for stays under 30 days." My wife, an Australian, was "disembarked" at the Zurich airport because she did not have a visa. The Czechs require Australians to obtain visas in their country of origin (the US in our case) and THEY MAKE NO EXCEPTIONS! Needless to say, our trip was ruined. There is absolutely no excuse for this kind of incompetent reporting of critical data, the edition we purchased was published in 2000, and so was our trip. The Czech visa policy has been in effect for years.

Use this book with caution. Restaurant reviews are very helpful and the walking tours get you into the tourist parts of town. But don't trust the telephone/fax numbers. Of the three I tried, all were wrong. Overall, worth using though.

Just returned from Prague, and this guidebook was by far the most valuable resource we had. Walking tours and restaurant reviews particularly valuable.

Putting Together the Tale

In Howard Pyle version of King Arthur's tales, King Arthur and the Knights of the Round table, he puts in many magical items to help him secede in his mission . He raises Arthur from coming birth to his death. He tells many other tales that you normally never here, like the white knight and the magic cap. It is set in the medieval times and the themes keep coming back .
This book is a very good book for younger people. I thought it was the worst book I ever read. I do not recommend this story to anyone over 11. Although I do think you should look for the illustrator in other books, the illustration were superb. The showed the right picture at the right time.

"King Arthur and the knights of The Round Table" is an excellent abridgement of mainly the first but also the end of the fourth of Howard Pyle's unabridged four King Arthor novels. It isn't detailed enough for adults or very advanced kids to enjoy. It got under four stars in my view, but I rounded up. This rating would only meet one for adults. This book has action, magic, and romance and all youngsters will love this version of King Arthor. It has the Athorian basics; such as Arthor suceeding in pulling out the magical sword in the stone to become King of England, breaking this sword in a duel and receiving the more powerful excalibur, the marrige of Arthor to the magestic Guinevire, and Sir Modred trying to take his own uncle's throne. The ending is a tragic one, but I will not give it away. The is only one drawback from this book and that is that this book does not include more than a few sentences about Arthor's knights. It has the Launcelot and Guinevere thing (only having them more innocent), but doesn't say much about the other amazing Knights. I would reccomend for adults or very advanced kids, other books by Howard Pyle and "Morte D' Arthor". "Mortte D' Arthor" is intended for more mature readers, but isn't vulgar and sitcomedys are worse.

"King Arthur and the Knights of The Round Table" is an excellent book for readers who are young in age. It isn't quite four stars, but I rounded up. This grade is for children; as an adult book it would be only one star for the lack of detail and blood. This book is based on, the amazing aurthor and artist(unfortunately this book doesn't include his drawings), Howard Pyle's four King Arthur books; though this abridgement only includes some of the tales from the first and last of his series. It includes the basics of most Arthurian tales; the drawing of the seord in the stone, Arthur breaking this and then receiving the even more powerful sword excalibur, and Sir. Modred's atempt to take over the King's throne. This book also includes black and white pictures on every other page and have romantic and action stories which all young children will love. For adults or advanced children, I recommend "Le Morte D' Arthur" and other unabridged books by Howard Pyle. It should be said that "Le Morte D' Arthur has some adult context, though it isn't vulgar and most advanced teens would be fine with it.

I'm beginning to think that the positive reviews were written by the author. There is nothing good about this book. He doesn't have a story to tell, he cannot write conversational dialog, the story jumps all over the place within a chapter and he has absolutely no character development skills. The worst part is that he has developed a non-believable version of a Nazi-controlled America.

He did construct a believable scenario of how Germany won the war, but it goes downhill from there. The examples are too numerous to mention all of them, however, the most glaring is that after ten years of occupation, the Nazi's still allows Jews to live in America and they allow Asians to serve as officers in the military.

So let me get this right ... within a few years after starting WWII (and in the middle of conducting a massive war effort), the Nazi's were able to murder almost all of the Jews in Europe. However, after 10 years of occupation of America they still allow Jews to exist? The author makes a token reference to Death Camps but it's obvious that the author doesn't really understand the nature of the Nazi regime.

Also, one part of the story has a Korean Panzer officer. Huh? Do you mean to tell me that the most racist regime in history would allow a non-Aryan like a Korean to be in the military, much less an officer???

For a book like this to succeed the author has to construct a believable scenario. He does not do this. The examples of his lack of understanding appear on almost every page.

Please do not spend money on this book. It has no value whatsoever.

The Last Reich is a novel with a twist on World War II. Germany wins the war but America reacts with fury and fire. Arthur Rhodes is at his best with his description of the four battles. He writes crisp and cunning plots, a complex thriller. He is not one to go into great detail, but moves the story along at footrace pace to the final battle. Older readers will recognize many of the famous names in the book, and why the Normandie Invasion failed with General Clark in command not General Eisenhower. Mr. Rhodes waves the flag a great deal and appeals to the young and young at heart. I especially was taken with the young Commander Iberson who wins the battle at the Golden Gate Bridge and the Rio Grande with his amazing feats, and courage. He is a man who can inspire Captains to carry ammunition.

What if FDR died in 1942? What if America had not been able to muster all her resources to aid the allies in defeating the German and Japanese war machines? Arthur Rhodes took me on a journey through history that is at once plausable and quite disturbing.
"The Last Reich" is a legitamate page-turner, quite honestly, much more so than I expected. The story moves quickly, the characters are defined without being cumbersome. The author's research was obviously thorough yet not over-whelmingly detailed.
I found it an easy book to read, although the publisher should be embarrassed by the horrendous gaffs found through out the novel. In fact that is the very reason I deprived Mr. Rhode's a fifth star, sorry Arthur!
I have heard rumors that "The Last Reich" may not be the final chapter of Mr. Rhodes' revised history lesson; I for one hope that this is true. I highly recommend this book and anxiously await the follow-up.
Bravo, Mr Rhodes!

The culture of the Khazars, a central asian tribe that adopted Judaism over 1000 years ago and was then destroyed by Gengis Khan, is a facinating subject worthy of study. Sadly, it always gets mixed up with an old 19th century idea that modern European Jews are decended from the Khazars and not the biblical Jews. That theory, highly popular in the middle 19th century served the duel use of, for some, proving that the Jews around Europe were not the same as those of the Hebrew Bible, giving great comfort to anti-semitic Christians. For others, they wanted to prove that Jesus was not Jewish, a strange branch of racist psudo-theory that goes on even today.

In the 19th century Jews could simply role their eyes but had no evidence to disprove the theory. The best evidence against the Khazar theory was lingustic, as neither Hebrew nor Yiddish seems to contain any trace of a cetral asian language. Now, with gentic evidence, we can positively identify common ancestry of Jews from areas as far flung as Germany, Spain, Yemen, and Russia. Identical Y chromosome markers can be found among members of every community. While it may be that some Khazars married into the larger Jewish community, the evidence indicates that it never happened in overwhelming number. Indeed, their is considerable historic evidence that the Khazar were largely cut off from the rest of the Jewish world.

Many reviwers point to the idea that many European Jews show non-middle eastern features (blue eyes, blond hair, etc.) However, the existance of large scale conversion to Judaism is a clear historical fact. Particularly before Christianity became firmly rooted in Eastern and South Eastern Europe, many locals converted to Judaism. Many of the modern Jewish attitudes against conversion are in fact reasonably recent, tracable to the strong and often violent action Christians took against communities where individuals chose to become Jews.

Given the vast amount of genetic evidence against the theory one has to wonder why it still gets so much play. After all, if all Jews contain common genetic markers from locations across the world, what possible evidence could be for this strange theory?

The book gather old and distant sources to show the magnitute and extent of the Khazar empire from 9th century to the 12th century. The author describes in detail the rise and fall of Khazaria, the Khazar empire but does not go into much detail about the Jewishness of the people. The last third of the book is devoted to argue that the Jews of the "Pale of Settelement" (Poland, Lithuania et al) are really Khazar Jews that escaped the eastern invadors to their empire, and that modern Ashkenazi Jews are mostly of Khazar descent. Intruiging as it is, the author employ a slew of propositions to strengthen his argument, some are rather far fetched, especially the quasi-genetics he employs regarding the "Jewish nose" and other such features... It is a good introduction to studying the subject but it should not be considered the last word on it.

No they do not, as Mr. Koestler explains in this illuminating work. Koestler reveals from ancient sources that the Khazar Empire was converted to Judaism by Rabbis from Babylon in the 700's AD. The Khazar tribe was originally from Central Asia and had moved west by the first century BC. After the Khazar empire was dismantled in the middle ages, the Khazars moved west into Poland and Russia and there formed the famous Jewish communities in Eastern Europe. Popular mythology says that these Jews came east, fleeing persecution in Western Europe, when they were from an ancient Turko-Finnish people. The Hebrew alphabet was adopted to the Khazar language which survives as Yiddish.
A letter from the Khazar king to a Jewish diplomat in Spain says that although the Khazars consider themselves Jews, they actually trace their decent to Ashkenaz, who was one of the sons of Japeth. Shem was Japeth's brother, and the Biblical Patriarchs (Abraham, Issac and Jacob) are traced to Shem, not Japeth. 90 percent of todays Jews are of Ashkenazi heritage, and since Ashkenaz was not a child of Shem, the term "anti-semetic" does not apply to them because they are not Semites. The Arabs of the Middle East are Semitic however, since they are descendant of Abraham's son Ishmael (Ishmaelites).
The most bizarre set of facts that Koestler reveals are about the figurehead monarch that the Khazars had as king. This king had only symbolic importance, and weilded little temporal power. However he was regarded as extremely important, much like the King in a Chess game. This king was also ritually sacrifced at the end of his reign.

If you have a copy of "Taking Profit from the OEX" by Arthur Darack then just re-read it. This book, supposedly published in 1995, is just a re-hash of the previous book. Even the chapter headings have the same name, and the same content. If nothing has changed since the first one (198?) then why change the title. Stan Graham

On reading further -- each chapter has been exended to include later trades (1990 - 93) and some strategic changes to the approaches are suggested. The book is interesting reading, some of the comments are good (amusing) but not always helpful in trading. The discussion of SP500 futures should deter many a would-be trader, I would think.

After reading this book on trading the OEX, I had a better insight as to how this instrument works. Personally, I'm still considering whether or not I should start trading the OEX. This book helped me a lot in my decision. If you have any interest in OEX trading, you should start by readin this book.

Have you ever driven your car of of a cliff, and were caught in your car for a week and a couple of days? Well Jimmy Korne did in the book Trapped by Arthur Roth. Jimmy was driving to his uncle's house after a graduation party,and a deer jumped out in front of him. Jimmy slammed on his brakes but it was no use,Jimmy hit the deer and lost control, and Jimmy drove his little station wagon off the cliff. The accident threw Jimmy all of the way accross the car into the passenger's seat. Jimmy's car lands right side up, but the whole side of the dashboard lands on his foot and he can't get it loose. Jimmy's worse injury is the cut on his arm. During this accident the window broke, landed on Jimmy's arm and cut it wide open. For food Jimmy has a couple potatos, and a bag of marshmallows. Jimmy has a lot of problems right now, such as a lack of food and water. Jimmy also hasa couple of injuries. Jimmy also has to go to the bathroom. He also has problems with some of the weather throughout the the book. Jimmys station wagon landed near the river. After a couple of days Jimmy finally found out how to get the water. Jimmys idea is to hook a bucket to the hook of his fishing rod. Jimmy casts the bucket to the nearest pool of water Jimmy lets it sit there a couple of minutes then he starts realing it in. jimmy gets the bucket stuck between 2 big boulders. Jimmy gets another idea stuck in his head. Jimmy cuts of a piece of sleeping bvag and attaches it to the hook. Jimmy casts it to the nearest pool of water and lets it soak there for a litttle while. he reals it in and now he has water. Will Jimmy survive or die? What would you do if you were trapped in the middle of the woods with hardly any food?

i think this is a good laugh and it is good book to read.I loved the part when the bear put his head in the car that was also scary.i havent read the hole book but it is good so far a kid in my class dosen't like it

"Trapped!" is about a 17-year-old boy who is trapped in his station wagon after he nearly hits a deer while driving on a remote gravel road. The car rolls down a cliff and his foot is caught in the twisted frame of the dashboard. No one knows he was planning to visit his uncle, and if he doesn't get out soon, he will die.
It is a survival story of a different kind. Instead of being able to roam freely, he can barely move, yet he manages to get water from a nearby stream, pick berries and signal for help.
It is a good book for the whole family. If you liked "Hatchet," you will like "Trapped!"

This collection of essays and speeches from the late 70's and early 80's features many of the themes that Clarke is commonly associated with: Space, the future, and Sri Lanka. The biggest surprise is the long chapter of essays on subjects literary, including some comments on Olaf Stapledon's Last and First Men, a reminiscence about George Bernard Shaw, and an essay on how Space is described in English poetry. Unfortunately, much of this section is devoted to forwards written for books that the average science fiction fan will never read, so that while this chapter is at least different, it's may not be of much interest to those legions of fans of Clarke's fiction who would be most likely to read this book.

The rest of this volume is more in line with other collections of essays Clarke has published, and suffers from most of the same weaknesses. For one thing, the level of repetition in these pieces gets tedious rather quickly, as a long series of articles describe the advantages of and history behind Clarke's main obsession of the period, a satellite-based system for surveillance of the earth's surface. Another point that is hammered home repeatedly is the predicted development of "electronic tutors": imagine a Game Boy except that instead of having fun with it, you learn from it. Of course this book was published before the personal computer revolution, so Clarke can be forgiven for not realizing that kids would know when a program was trying to teach them something, and quickly move on to something more entertaining. This is not to say that Clarke was wrong about the use of electronics for teaching, but rather that the development of machines whose sole function was teaching was unnecessary - modern PC's being versatile enough to be used for any number of purposes - but then, who among us was smart enough to foresee that?

Perhaps the best piece in the book is the entry detailing Clarke's (then) recent trip to the Soviet Union, coyly titled "To Russia, with Love..." and featuring the pacing, personalities, and ideas that make his fiction so interesting, but there is little else in the book this good. The weakest group of essays is on the subject that should be Clarke's strength - Space and Space travel. Most of this section had a decidedly historical bent to it to begin with, and the passage of another 17 years has only exacerbated the problem. Collections like this one may be interesting enough while they're still current, but too much of this material is either dated or completely unscientific.

This is not Clarke's best collection of essays, but it is an interesting - and, for him, somewhat unique one. There are a couple of his non-fiction books that everyone should read (The Promise of Space, Profiles of The Future, Greetings, Carbon-Based Bipeds), and this is not one of them, but it will certainly delight fans of the author. It's split into four sections: the first, War and Peace In The Space Age, gives the book its title. This material, which mostly discusses the peaceful applications of communications satellites and other such things during the early 1980's is invariably somewhat dated, and could be easily casually tossed off as outdated Cold War paranoia. And, though this is certainly the well from which the material sprung, Clarke is a great enough writer for the material to remain interesting. He has some nice views, too: there's another instance here of his famous coinage "We will take no frontiers into space." Another sections deals with, of course, space; this is an intersting take, as it always is with Clarke, and one of the most novel pieces is a bit on the myths and absurdities of space travel: in these, Clarke dismisses common paranoic delusions involved with space travel, and clears up some of its most common misconceptions. Another section is somewhat surprising coming from ACC: it deals with literary subjects. It includes a couple of forwards to books he wrote for other people, including the hilarous introduction he wrote for his agent's book, and a document of his hilarous correspondence with the late playwright George Bernard Shaw. The last section is a series of articles he wrote about his home country, Sri Lanka - these are nice, enlightening pieces. Also, the book ends with an article entitled "The Menace of Creationism; in it, Clarke - one of its most outspoken modern critics - launches an interesting attack upon said subject, invoking the Vatican's views on the subject, and declaring that no Creationist should be allowed to teach Biology or the Earth Sciences in school (surely a rational view.) This could be a fairly controversial piece, and should be read by all those who find themselves in agreement with Clarke's views on organized religion. In the end, you will want to read this book if you are a fan of Arthur C. Clarke; and, if you're not, you won't bother.

I am returning this worthless book. Large amount of totally false, inaccurate information. Most marks displayed are bizarre, seldom -- if ever -- seen, and many are totally incorrect. Book not worth five cents!!!!!

This book was really interesting and gave me a better understanding about how the glass business works.

I purchased this item because of other books in the Practice Planners series. I have a number of the homework planners, which I use frequently. The software included allows the clinician to revise and customize the forms. I bought this item because more than 50% of my practice is with adolescents; I was very disappointed. First, the exercises are more appropriate for pre-teens (ages 10 through 13) than for teenagers. Some exercises could be used for even younger ages. For example, there is a section on enuresis and encopresis; I do not know many teenagers with bowel control problems (pre-teens, maybe). Another example is in the section on depression. In an exercise called "Surface Behavior/Inner Feelings," there is a narrative about a boy and his teacher. The boy is described as a sixth grader. That would make him 11 or 12 most likely. The story was good, and I used it - but I had to change the age, grade, and a few other details to make it applicable to my 16 year old client. That is not to say that none of the exercises are appropriate for teens (ex: the No Self Harm contract), but certainly the majority are geared toward younger ages. Even they way they are written suggests a young audience, not a teenage one. In addition, there are no exercises regarding drug use, peer pressure, ethical decision making, or sexuality (except gender identity disorder).

Another issue is the software. The "text" file contained many items not included in the book, and vice versa. This was confusing.

I think the authors should either revise the book to be more contemporary with adolescent populations, and/or publish a similar "planner" for the pre-teenager.

I am pleased that a disk with the activities comes with the book. I often need to personalize the activities and my clients seem to appreciate it as well. This book was especially helpful since my agency uses the Therascibe software, which encourages the use of this book for homework.