I had brought this book on my 16th birthday and it will be a present that I will always remember. I have been a Boyz II Men fan since Cooleyhigh and I can proudly say that they gave a lot to their fans by helping to make this book! Buy it!

If you are a serious Boyz II Men fan, this is the book for you!!! This book offers their thoughts and their lives on and off stage. This book gives a clear picture of who these four fabulous people are!!!

I loved this book..I think any one who is a Boyz II Men fan should get and read this book...for one thing, it had great pictures and it also had great information...It's also a great book to have Boyz II Men sign especially because Robert (Mike's brother) is in it...I had Rob and Mike sign my book..their personal driver signed it too..but I think if you like Boyz II Men, you should definately look into getting this book because you will Apsolutely LOVE it..

The characters are extremely three dimensional, the action intense, the story both original and imaginative... and there is even a bit of tragic romance. You'll hate to reach the end, but more adventures of Kerebos are on the way, and I hear they are even more incredible than the first!

All too often, one picks up a book that tends to crowd the mind. Mr. Prata's Dream of Fire is NOT one of these books. Intense, intelligent, graphic, and cunning are just a few words I have used when talking about Dream. I too found it extremely difficult to put down. Though not an easy read for some, it excites the mind. I found the imagery dark and mysterious.
Major kudos to Mr. Prata's use of Military strategy! It is obvious he spent many years enlightening himself on battlefield tactics. If your looking for a read to make you laugh, read Kant. If you want something to just kick back and admire, please read Dream of Fire. You will not be disappointed.

Prata has done it again! Just when you thought you had reached the pinnacle of Mr. Prata's talents, he comes along and sweeps you off your feet like it's the very first time. Since I was on the lam as a rebellious youth and destined to be a great prophet, I can certainly identify with Kerebos' character. Perhaps that is why I found this novel to be such a fantastic read. The dichotomy of Kerebos' character set the table for the entire novel. Kudos to you Mr. Prata!

Collaboratively written by Mark Nicholas and Jane Christine for young adults with a taste for science fiction, Space Academy: Volume One Of The Kirsten Chronicles is an engaging adventure from cover to cover. Kirsten is an empathic, 16-year-old cadet at the Space Academy who shares a special bond with an extraterrestrial life form called a skeecat. Together they encounter danger and challenge when her roommate and dorm mother disappear. Determined to find answers, Kirsten embarks on a search to find them in this briskly written, highly enjoyable 148 page novel.

Thoroughly enjoyed the book as did friends I loaned it to. Kirsten should give Harry Potter some real competition. Recommend the book to anyone wanting a good science fiction/mystery. It may be written for teens, but even adults can enjoy it. The authors don't "write down", which is a definite plus in my eyes.

Space Academy moves at a fast pace and keeps the reader engaged throughout the entire story. This book is well written and full of realistic dialogue. Although targeted for the juvenile market, the book is enjoyable for all ages.

The Complete David Bowie is definitely the best account of David's work, presenting in the first part of the book each and every song he has ever written or sung and continuing with his albums, singles, movies and live appearances.

Don't get me wrong, Nicolas Pegg has done a great and painstaking job and the book is a great source if you're going to write a thesis on Bowie(!), but I wouldn't call it fun reading, mostly because of its structure, which is similar to that of a dictionary or encyclopedia! However, there are many interesting facts and quotes that will draw your attention, and you get to hear the explanation of many of his songs from David! 'e.g. I didn't know what the theme of Heathen (The Rays) was and why it brought tears to his eyes in one of his concerts'

I think it's a very good and detailed piece of work, as long as you know what you're getting!

The Complete David Bowie is definitely the best account of David's work, presenting in the first part of the book each and every song he has ever written or sung and continues with his albums, singles, movies and live appearances.

Don't get me wrong, Nicolas Pegg has done a great and painstaking job and the book is a great source if you're going to write a thesis on Bowie(!), but I wouldn't call it fun reading, mostly because of its structure, which is similar to that of a dictionary or encyclopedia! However, there are many interesting facts and quotes that will draw your attention, and you get to hear the explanation of many of his songs from David! -e.g. I didn't know what the theme of Heathen (The Rays) was and why it brought tears to his eyes in one of his concerts...

I think it's a very good and detailed piece of work, as long as you know what you're getting!

As a collector of Bowie's music, I found this book invaluable. It filled in some gaps in my understanding of the great ones music and cleverly clarifies the evolution process from one Bowie phase to the next.
The book makes reference to many rare and unreleased songs which is vital to a serious collector.
It is written plainly and factually with no hint of worship.
If you are only concerned with Bowie's music then this is the book for you. Essential.

This book is excellent and I agree with all the other people that have reviewed it in a positive way. However, what surprised me is that Nicholas included very little about the bad effects of Ecstasy, such as first-time user panic attacks, negative effects that might occur (anxiety, claustrophobia, fear of others,midweek crash, etc.) I agree totally with him that E should have never been made illegal, but I feel that he was (rest in peace) so passionate about the good part of E that he forgot that E has a definite downside. Ignoring this downside can make some readers think that E is ALL positive. I recommend this book because still it's very informative and obviously well-researched, I just want potential readers (and E users) to keep in mind that Ecstasy is a strong substance that should be used with respect.

Of all the books on MDMA I've read this is by far the best. Very well organized and goes through everything concerning MDMA from its legal status to the chemistry behind it. The text is very easy to understand even for those who do not know much about this subject. All his statements are backed by solid evidence derived from independent research and real life stories. Saunders gives the reader a chance to decide for himself, rather than telling the reader 'This is what I looked up so this is what I think, and therefore what you think as well'. I would recommend this book to everyone. The author has dedicated his life to this subject, as indicated by the quality of his work.

Saunders, a brilliant and inquisitive man, writes of his experiences, research, and overall knoweledge of MDMA. From the chemical make-up to the trafficing of the drug, Saunders tackles the entire realm of Ecstasy and its culture. A must read for anyone curious about the subject - #1 Thesis on Ecstasy

The Nicholas stories on tape are very easy to learn from because they are read slowly and clearly. They also keep the sentence structures pretty simple and repeat words and phrases a lot, which might be annoying for a book in your native language, but is very helpful to children learning a second language. My children don't like to listen to regular Spanish books on tape (often spoken quickly and the words seem to run together, more complex vocabulary, verb conjugations, etc.). However, they enjoy all the tapes in this series, even after we've heard them 50 times each.

My son is in kindergarten in a Spanish immersion school, so we always keep these tapes playing in the car to give him extra practice listening to Spanish. The tape has a dictionary portion with 50 words from the story, spoken first in English and then twice in Spanish. This might sound dry, but our kids really like this portion of the tape. Even our 20-month-old repeats both the English and the Spanish words during the dictionary section.

The story is read only in Spanish on the tape -- this has worked fine for us. However, the book is written in both Spanish and English, so if you wanted to enhance your child's understanding of what they were hearing, you could read them the story occasionally in English.

I would recommend first buying The Missing Cat and then A Visit to Grandma before buying The Five Crayons. (The music on The Five Crayons, while perhaps more culturally authentic, has some fast songs and is sung in a style that makes it a little more difficult to understand the words). In general, I've found that for my children to understand the songs, it helped a lot if I sat down with the book and read the English translations of the lyrics to them.

Overall, I'd say all that this series of books and tapes are a very good value -- lots of learning to be gained for a very small amount of money. If they made more tapes in this series, we would certainly buy them!

My 2 year old loves this book. The pictures are great as are the voices of the characters on the tape. The dictionary in the back of the book is repeated for you on the tape. My son repeats every word of it. I haven't got the other books by the same author but you can bet I'm going to get them!

We have both the German and Italian. Even my 4-year-old is learning. The story in each language is the same, it's nice to compare the different languages. After the story there are many useful words are said on the cassette (of course you can follow in the book too) followed by songs.

From the acheologist and author behind the superlative Road to Ubar comes this years-long search for the titular queen. Clapp knows that behind many a legend looms a historical figure. In contrast to his search for Ubar, however, Clapp seems a bit too willing to believe the most tenuous of connections when seeking Sheba's stomping grounds. As his ability to wander through possible sites becomes increasingly restricted (due to political unrest), his healthy critical outlook appears to take a back seat to his need for an expedient resolution. Clapp himself seems as likeable as ever, though, and many of his observations (especially those made while in Yemen) are as hilarious as they are insightful.

Nicholas Clapp may be better known for his remarkable discovery of the so-called "lost city" of Ubar in the 90's. What makes his discovery all the more remarkable, and entertaining, is that Clapp is a documentary filmmaker... not an archaeologist. Of course, one could say that a documentary filmmaker is something of a jack of all trades, a good description of Clapp, it seems, as he brought together a team of NASA scientists, a British adventurer in the Lawrence of Arabia vein, and his parole officer wife, among others, on an adventure he created from some serious, in-depth study of ancient texts and maps.

Clapp's Sheba takes place in a similar area, and again deals with the murky mists that cover mankind's ancient past, and with the myths and legends that may, or may not, be based on fact. However, Sheba is notably different than "The Road to Ubar" in that his quest this time involves a person and not a place. Unfortunately, places last quite a bit longer than flesh-and-blooders like ourselves, and Sheba should be approached differently than Ubar-- if you've read it-- because here there will not be that "aha!" moment when the seeming lump of sand gives up its treasure.

Clapp's quest for Sheba offers the tantalizing prospect of such "aha!" moments when and if Yemen becomes a safe place for large, organized archaeological digs. A vast, ancient city of 20,000 people awaits that intrepid Indiana Jones.

Now, having said that, Clapp shows more of his wonderful storytelling ability, and his historical detective work, looking for the weave of fact amongst the warp of time. His mission takes him to Jerusalem, and a monastery on the Sinai peninsula where strange monks are put to pasture; to the wild highways and byways of Yemen, and Ethiopia, where he spends the night overlooking the Queen of Sheba Barbershop. His sense of humor makes for several laugh-out-loud-even-if-you're-alone moments (I'm thinking specifically of the border crossing where the lone working lightbulb is ferried from one official's office to another). This wry amusement, however, extends only to the living. For when Clapp does finally find himself in the land of Bilqis, the Queen of Sheba, his awe is palpable, and the tale he eventually patches together is incredible.

I would recommend this book to anyone interested in history generally, the Middle East particularly, or anyone who likes fiction or non-fiction where each chapter, if not page, contains surprises.

Nicholas Clapp's search for the Queen of Sheba is one of the best non-fiction books I've read this year. The book is a travelogue, history, biblical study, analysis of Arabic mythology, and view of Middle Eastern and Eastern African politics all wrapped into one. Clapp is an engaging writer with a dry and subtle sense of humor that had me laughing out loud as I followed him on his often whimsical quest through Israel, Yemen, and Ethiopia. His frank, honest style and his ability to poke fun at and not take himself too seriously made the book and absolute pleasure to read. Like most books that focus on the world's great "unsolved mysteries," Clapp's journey often raises more questions than it answers. But that only added to my enjoyment of the story. When I finished the book, it felt as if I'd come to the end of a long stay with a good friend.

This entire series is powerful. The first historical fiction series I have read and I am HOOKED!

In this sequel, we see our hero, Claes or Nicholas, thrown into the complex situation in the middle east. Will the Sultan take over Trebizond where he has been sent as consul for Florence? If anyone can find succes in such a venture, Nicholas is the person, and he does. He succeeds not only in his trading, he saves his people from the Turks and also his step-daughter, Catherine.

Once again, the author has written a masterpiece. We are thrown from Florence to the middle east with all its complexities, but all the time we are rooting for our hero and he makes us proud!

And to think I still have more books to enjoy! I can't wait...

Reading this book is like taking a magic carpet to a mystical place. Ms. Dunnett has the knack of taking her readers to whatever era and place in the world she chooses. In this book our Niccolo has matured somewhat but he still has some hard lessons to learn about how lonely it is to be a leader. He also has to learn that a true leader leads without his employees or friends knowing that that is what he's doing. In fact, these books of Niccolo could be used for demonstrating leadership. I'm surprised that no corporate videos have been made from them. This is a good book even though Niccolo fails to fascinate as much as Lymond does, but I don't think there ever can be another Lymond. I don't find the characters as likeable in this series for one, and Catherine is certainly no Philippa (at least not yet), but there is high adventure, intrigue and enough court gossip to keep anyone interested in the politics of the 15 century.

J. David Pincus and J. Nicholas DeBonis have written a most inventive book. A fictional story about a CEO in crisis is told between chapters of this non-fiction assessment of CEOs and advice regarding how they can meet the needs of our changing corporate times. Based on ten years of research and interviews with CEOs in the Fortune 500, this book is very detailed, but written in an engaging conversational style. With a focus on communication as the key to effective leadership, the book humanizes its strategies so they come to life on each page. We... recommend this book not only for top corporate management and "top dogs," but also for anyone working in the corporate world.

I found myself looking forward to the switches between fiction and non-fiction equally. Top Dog entices the reader on both levels. I definitely got two books for the price of one. In terms of the non-fiction -- I'm not in management, I'm in managee, and I found this book to be an excellent insight to what upper management has to deal with on a daily basis. The fictional portion was as good as any of the novels that I've read from the New York Times Bestseller lists. It left me wanting more...

Top Dog: an instructive and entertaining blend of management text, fiction, case experience and leadership commentary. Pincus and DeBonis weave a well researched and reported account (fictional, or at least fictionalized) of a "cooking the books" crisis at a major hotel chain into discussion and presentation of the leadership and communication issues raised in the story. All this is supported by interviews with CEOs and reviews of current research and practice, and illustrated by many anecdotes and other cases. The alternating format is at first unsettling and then highly effective. It offers a much more appealing and enjoyable learning process than conventional management texts.

What is law & economics? It is the school of jurisprudence in which the tools of microeconomic analysis are used to study law. Those of us who practice economic analysis have a deceptively simple task. We translate some legal doctrine into economic terms. We then apply a few basic principles -- cost-benefit analysis, collective action theory, decision-making under uncertainty, risk aversion, and the like -- to the problem. Finally, we translate the result back into legal terms.

Law & economics unquestionably is the most successful form of intellectual arbitrage in the history of jurisprudence. Why? Traditional forms of legal scholarship were mostly backward looking. One reasoned from old precedents to decide a present case, seemingly without much concern (at least explicitly) for the effect today's decision would have a future behavior. Yet, law is necessarily forward looking. To be sure, a major function of our legal system is to resolve present disputes, but law's main job is to regulate future behavior. The law & economics movement succeeded because it recognized that judges cannot administer justice solely retrospectively. They must also consider what rules their decisions will create to guide the behavior of other actors in the future. Even more important, however, law & economics gives judges systematic mechanisms for predicting how rules will affect behavior.

Mercuro and Medema's text offers a comprehensive overview of law & economics. Unlike many texts, it is not limited to the Chicago School (as exemplified by such stalwarts as Manne, Easterbrook, and Posner). They also describe the New Haven school (classically exemplified by Calabresi), the public choice theory of Arrow, Buchanan, and others, as well as both the traditional and new institutional economics. By reminding us that law & economics is not a homogeneous field, and providing a fair commentary on each of the major traditions within the larger discipline, they offer an excellent introduction to this important area of jurisprudence.

One nice touch, which makes the text useful for a wide audience, is that it does not assume familiarity with either economics or law. The introduction offers a brief historical overview of basic jurisprudence, as well as an appendix explaining basic economic principles. Consequently, the book will serve well the interests both of lawyers who need to brush up on economics and economists interested in law.

Criticisms that led me to subtract one star: There is little in the way of critical evaluative judgment. Indeed, Mercuro and Medema disavow any effort at criticism. As a result, the reader is left to his own devices. Second, I am not persuaded by Mercuro and Medema's decision to include a rather lengthy chapter on critical legal studies. Criticism of law & economics has been a major project of CLS scholars, but CLS scholarship has had no influence of any significance on any of the dominant strains of law & economics thinking. In this case, moreover, the failure to exercise critical evaluative judgment means that the generalist reader may have difficulty assessing the (bogus) claims made by CLS. In general, while maintaining facial neutrality on their own part, Mercuro and Medema give far more attention to CLS and Marxist critiques of law & economics than they do to conservative critiques thereof or to law & economics criticisms of CLS.

The authors know what they are talking about. The book is a survey of the main strains of law and economics theories and approaches. It provides examples of each theory and that can be illuminating. However, more examples could have given a better sense to the differences across the several theories. The notes are well written and provide all you need for further reading.

Houman Shadab's review is right on the money -- including what's left _out_ of this otherwise excellent introductory work. Since I like Hayek, Barnett, and Rothbard, I find the omission disappointing -- but c'est la vie.

Anyway, if you're looking for a solid overview of the various schools of thought involving the relations between law and economics, this volume is a great place to start. (_Complete_ newcomers might also want to pick up Dennis Patterson's _Companion to Philosophy of Law and Legal Theory_, which includes a fine essay on "Law and Economics.")

One tremendous merit of the present volume is that it doesn't limit itself to the "Chicago school." The U of Chi crowd gets a single chapter, and the rest of the book is devoted to the other schools of thought Mr. Shadab has helpfully listed below. The resulting volume is therefore pretty comprehensive (with the exceptions already noted).

Readers interested in this topic may want to read Thomas Miceli's _Economics of the Law_ next. I don't personally favor the mathematical-models approach (for the usual Misesian/Rothbardian reasons) -- but Miceli's volume is a fine introduction to that approach and will afford the reader the opportunity to judge it on its merits.