Dr. Freedman has succinctly explained the Intifada in an accessible and interesting manner.

After seeing the movie Blow and reading the related book, I enjoyed the subject so much I bought this book. I was disappointed. First, this is a very old book written in the 70's. Almost an amatuerish attempt. This book describes the drug smuggler, how he gets in the business, how he imports and makes his connections, and how he eventually is caught. Unfortunately, the author didn't know how to edit the book and instead starts on a story and then decides to give you an education on everything he has read about the subject. Then he goes back to the story. Therefore, I found this book to be verrrrry slow.

On the positive side, it's almost comical how this guy falls in the business and decides to go to Columbia to set up his product. Not really knowing anyone, he just meets street people and eventually runs into connections. The smuggler's real talent is concocting the scam on bringing the product in. Most of his shipments are not stopped, but even if they were, he develops stories so his mules can act like they had no knowledge and won't be charged. You should be aware, this is really not a big-time smuggler on the scale of the Blow character, but rather this smuggler brings in enough to last him a few months, then goes back for another trip.

If you're interested in drug smuggling, this book may fill in the holes. But from a pleasurable fascinating pleasurable read, there are better books like "Blow".

I heard that Robert Sabbag was a good writer so I decided to pick up Snowblind up and read it and I couldn't put it down. I thought that it gave a really close look into the drug trade and it was very detailed so you really got a feel for the life that was lead. I have started reading his books now and I can't stop. I have told many of my friends to read the book.

Snowblind begins with the Zackary Swan, the protaganist, telling his lawyer that even though cops found an ounce of coke, "they didn't find my stash." From this point on the book is a non-stop roller coaster ride into the life of Zack, the "every-man"cocaine smuggler/dealer. Sabbag's prose washes over the reader like a wave of intensity. Zackary's explosive story is the perfect mate to ride that wave into the reader's mind and psyche, making Snowblind linger in the one's memory long after he or she puts the book down. What I truly loved is the fact that Zack is not your stereotypical drug dealer- he is a smart, interesting character with a memory for details that will astound the reader. Sabbag successfully puts to rest the prejudice that all drug dealers are moronic scums. This should be a must read for both DEA agents and drug kingpins. Snowblind reads as a how-to book on drug smuggling. Zack's smuggling methods are as brilliant as they are simple. Sabbag's reverent wit in the telling of these methods makes this one of the best and most insightful books ever written on the narcotics trade. Snowblind is a brilliant book that I recommend for everyone.

Asher's "Concepts in American History" is a collection of essays written on recurring themes in the history of the united states, such as Democracy, Nativism, and Liberalism. Each of the 11 essays in the book chronicles the history of the theme to its relevence in history at the time the book was published (1996). For example, a chapter on Liberty begins with its conception in ancient Greece and ends with the Bush Sr. administration.

I found this book useful when writing essays. When asked to write about how President Roosevelt helped the United States to recover from the Great Depression, I cited ideas from Asher.

"Concepts in American History" can get dull at times, and sometimes Asher fails to make his point clear, such as his essay on Equality where he seemed to be overcome by his dissapointment in the American justice system. Overall, this is a usefull tool for American History studies.

This book is the product of international work since 1994 among close to 80 professionals from 27 countries in order to re-define and bring consensus to the issue of measuring and monitoring the status of children in our societies.
For many years many countries have gathered information and statistics about their children, but mostly in the area of basic needs and survival. This book and the international project is going beyond and looking at indicators to measure and monitor the well-being of our children. A task not easy to come about, but important, because it will provide important information, knowledge, tools for better planning and make monitoring more possible, when you have hard facts to compare with.
This book has nine chapters: Rationale for measuring child well- being, existing efforts around the world, basic guidelines, five new domains, indicators, how to measure, the community level, making of policy and summary with an agenda for future efforts in this field.
The message of the book is the importance of measurements of child well-being finding indicators that you will be able to monitor over time both improvements and change. The new approach can be described as looking at well-being instead of just survival, from negative aspects to positive aspects of child life, from well-becoming to well-being and from traditonal to new domains. The five 'new' domains the authors propose are in children's activities, children's economic resources and contribution, civic life skills, personal life skills, and safety and physical status with 49 indicators.
This is an easy-to-read book with good information for professionals trying to find ways to measure and monitor well-being in today's children and adolescents.

Professor Joav Merrick, MD
Medical director, Division for Mental Retardation, Box 1260, IL-91012 Jerusalem, Israel. E-mail: jmerrick@aquanet.co.il

One would have thought that after Chubb and Moe's book we would find new insight here; but these writers are not only not economists, but are generally 'conservative' in the sense that they simply won't admit that impoverished kids are desperate for better schools. This book is somewhat closed-minded, but there are valuable lessons to be learned as well. Those who seek profit in education are the vultures who await perched upon the current debate. But things are indeed desperate, and these troublingly complacent academics are not helping things, in my opinion. Worth a read, to be sure...

This text offers valuable information in which one can become a more informed citizen on the political rhetoric over educational reform. The text is not unproblematic however. The small section on "school as a civic sphere" needed to be expanded upon as well as the way in which all of the reforms focused upon math and reading test scores. Overall, these areas remain minor in comparison the benefits of this text.

The book is not a masterpiece by any means, but was interesting for me since my husband Todd Burdell and I are the ones that found the victim, Lynn. Imagine our horror when, after fishing at the lake, we try to put out a "brush fire" to be good samaritans, and wind up finding in the fire was a woman with her head gone... The author definitely took liberties with dialogue, since he never even asked us what we saw when we found her, or asked about our reactions. But I do believe he states this in the book that he was going to take liberties with certain conversations. Still think the book would have been better if he had interviewed some people in Litchfield where it happened!