It is a beautiful book with very interesting informations. I liked to know the history of many plants, but the autor doesnt't know almost anything about South American flowers. All the flora of Atlantic forest was forgotten.There is almost nothing about the great family of blomeliads and orchids. It could be a great book. . There is a book written by Loerenzi de Souza who has a great knowledge about brasilian flora, Harri Lorenzi (plantarum@plantarum.com. br) that could help the next edition.

This is a great botanical history. I was impressed with the little vignettes of the great plant finders, many of whom lost their lives trying to find great new plants. I happened to be reading the book while driving through the Smokey Mountains and seeing the Lobelia cardinalis at the same time I was reading how the Queen of Spain named it because it was such a brilliant red it reminded her of a Cardinal's robe. If you love plants, you will love this book.

The book is orgainized roughly by plant family, which is fine. I was a bit annoyed that there were pictures of period gardens stuck everywhere throughout the book (in the middle of the plant family organization). Rather than being in the middle of the chapters, I think these wonderful pieces could have been between the chapters. Actually I was so interested in what I was reading, I didn't appreciate the also wonderful interuption.

By the way, I passed by a whole hillside of Tradescantia in the Smokey Mountains while reading about the Tradescants (father and son) who brought that great plant to Europe.

The only thing I would caution is that the book is great reading, but for history, not how to grow the plant in your garden, especially if you are in the US, since the author is from England and cultural requirements are not his strong point.

I think this is a very interesting book.

I had to buy this book for a class; if you're interested in a historical perspective on instructional technology, you might find this interesting. I didn't.

Winograd brings together a mix of software designers, computer scientists, graphic artists, architects, scientists, and consultants, and their conceptions and methodologies for software design. Each describes their design situations from his or her position of expertise. Each of the "designers" has a similar message, ease of use and interaction must be relevant to the user, not only to the hierarchical structure of the software. Another point in the book is, if software is designed in such a way as to have the user append knowledge, as opposed to throw all daily logic of how things work in their world out the window, the learning curve for new software would be minimal.

The designer's involvement needs to be invoked from the beginning of the software project, and should not be considered as just a "final coat of spray-on aesthetics". Thought and design energy need to be given towards the capabilities of identifying the skill level and needs of the user, so that the user can accomplish his or her tasks while enduring the least amount of frustration. Hopefully the user will also learn something through his or her experience with the software, which would then bring them up to a new level of mastery. The use of design teams, with members encapsulating differing points of view, is emphasized as a successful methodology for the development of such software applications.

This book is a collection of chapters focusing on design and design topics. The chapter authors are from a variety of disciplines including software and product design, technology, architecture, graphic arts, and philosophy. This diversity adds to the richness in which the book addresses "design," expands the notion of the "designer" community of practice, and illustrates the importance of multifunctionality in design by taking lessons of practice from a variety of disciplines. After each chapter a "profile" of a product or situation is provided as a real-life example of the key points of the chapter.

The following themes appeared throughout the book:

· There needs to be a move from product-centered design to user-centered (or maybe use-centered) design. Talking, observing, interacting and listening with the users are key activities in making this happen.

· The move to a user-centered design can be aided by recognizing and professionalizing the role of a designer in the software development process. (in this book people are variously referred to as software designers, interaction designers, artist-designers, software architects, etc.)

· There is a need for tools and materials developed for software designers to create a language of design, and to develop prototypes and models. These things are needed for use in the design process to allow for a "conversation with the materials," --to create opportunities for exploration of the design, which may lead to unexpected characteristics and surprises. These, in turn, allow for reflection and lead to the development of better questions about our design and design process. These tools and methods also allow for communicating ideas, changes and goals to others involved in the design process.

· Design is a team-sport. Successful designers will be familiar with the roles, language and concerns of everyone involved in the design process so as best to include them, and their contributions, into the overall design effort. It's also true that the design process resides within an organization, whose values, culture, management and business concerns have an impact on the success of design efforts. A skillful designer will be aware of (and perhaps challenge) the impact of the organization on the design process to allow the design effort to be as successful as possible.

This is a good thought-starter for anyone interested in broadening their definition of designer and incorporating additional perspectives into their design practices.

I am a fellowship-trained interventional pain management physician, and I purchased this book with high hopes after reading the first review and the editorial summary. I received it, and promptly returned it. It really falls short in my opinion. The positioning pictures uses three pictures that really add very little to the basic knowledge of positioning the fluoroscopy unit. It does not make the effort to explain nuances of using the C-arm to open up the facet joints, etc. The pictures of the blocks performed show only the final placement of the needle, without any guidance on how to get it there, which is what is really needed in a text such as this. Furthermore, the image quality is remarkably poor in some of the shots. I think anyone interested in a guide on using fluoroscopy for pain management is better off waiting for Prithvi Raj's book, which is due in fall, 2002. His book on Pain Management is excellent and I expect nothing less with his upcoming book, which I have pre-ordered.

We have been using this amazing, comprehensive manual in our pain practice for 4 months. The time that is saved by ustilizing the author's concise explainations of correct patient and flouroscope positioning has cut out time per procedure down and increased the quality of images 3-fold.

Included, are flouro images of each simple and complex procedure performed.

I highly recommend this manual to any radiologic technologist, interventional pain management physician, orthopedist, neurosurgeon and physical medicine and rehabilitation physician.

Radiology departments everywhere should have at least one copy for those technologists who are asked to participate in any injection or implantation procedure.

The cost of this easy-to-use book is paid for in a few days of using it!

The style of this author's work was very jumpy. One time it would be talking about one thing and jump to another subject very quickly. He also did not explain certain terms used until later on, which forces you to go back and find where he had used the same term. He provides good information, but it is hard to absorb a lot of it because of his style.

The study guide helps in the process of understanding the narrative of the main text. The multiple choice answers gives a correct explanation for each of the five answers. The guide has a summary for each chapter with an outline of the principle learning objectives of the chapter, a summary, study outline, and to check understanding there are review questions, and study-review exercises, issues for essays and discussion, questions on major political ideas, geography, and problems for further investigation. This is a very well structured guide that really helps to deal with the basic text.

I'm one chapter away from finishing the classroom manual. I expected that the author would do an excellent job on the complicated topic of diesel engines, but fell short of my expectations. In all fairness, the author did an adequate job overall. He starts out with a bang in the second chapter explaining the different horsepower ratings such as HP, BHP, FHP and IHP. After that terrific start, the succeding chapters got a little less in-depth. I do like the fact that the subject matter is divided into two topics- theory and application. The classroom manual covers the theory and the shop manual covers the practical, "hands-on", side of being a diesel technician. Delmar does this with all of their Today's Technician series of books. If you are interested in a thorough approach with much better diagrams and pictures then "Diesel Technology" by Norman, Corinchock, and Scharff is the book to get.

I bought and read this book(it's actually two books, the shop manual is spiral bound, the class text is glue bound) in anticipation of buying my first truck. I'm not a tech so take my review with a grain of salt. The theory and general information seem adequate. There are a lot of detailed descriptions of repairs that are probably best left to OEM specific instructions. The end of the book was the most pertinent for me. It describes diagnostic tools and signs of trouble like smoke. I would have prefered more detail on the more/most common failures/problems encountered in used engines and how to detect them, though there was a fair amount of that.

The book lost a point for not doing a thourough job of quality control. There are a lot of typos and missing/misplaced words and such. Not such a big deal, but kind of breaks concentration while reading.

Essentially, this book did what I wanted it to. It described diesel engines in a way I could understand and gave me a basis for evaluating used engines, describing the tools and techniques involved, although I will have to study further to feel at all competent at such a task. So, it gets 4 stars and a recommendation as a good (and just about the only one I can find) basic, foundational book.

I'm a former Roman Catholic. I got this book as a recent Christmas gift from a friend. I must admit, the evidence in this book is very compelling. If you're a Catholic struggling with your faith, you need to read this book. Or if you're thinking about becoming a Catholic, you need to read this book. God is found in the Bible and in its teachings. I must warn you-you'll find a lot of differences between the Catholic Church and the Bible if you read this book. As you read it, I'd suggest keeping a Bible close by. You'll find that all of the information these former priests give is 100% accurate. Excellent book!!!

Unfortunately, most major denominations are based on what some person, or committee, thinks of some passage or passages of Scripture, and not what God intended at all. The Catholic Church is just one of many in a long list. While being raised in Catholicism, many times I was taught that a thing was okay as long as I thought it was, and didn't feel bad about it. That's NOT how it works! First you have to read the Bible and get real familiar with what He thinks and adjust your thinking to His -- not the other way around! This is the truth that these ex-priests have found. We cannot do it our own way, or any man's way, and expect to get to Heaven. Sorry, but He says so -- it's His Word, and His thinking, not my own. It is a miracle that these men found their way out of the labyrinth of religion, and into the light of His infallible truth.

This book puts a human face on the number of those who eventually had to leave the Roman Church priesthood because they could no longer reconcile their changing beliefs with those that they were required to practice...and it does this via fifty testimonies of the over 100,000 men who have left the Roman Catholic priesthood since 1970

As these priest tell their stories, we are educated in a number of ways.

One, we learn a great deal about Roman Catholic Church theology, including the Mass, confession, justification, etc.

Two, we are provided fascinating insights into the various trainings, practices, duties and obligations of priestly and monastic orders. Some of these practices seem barbaric by our contemporary sense of spiritual awareness. It is appalling, for instance, to think we have Roman Catholic orders of monks who still practice medieval, physical forms of cruelty upon themselves (like flagellation) and their fellows (blows to the face) in an attempt to be right with and pleasing to God.

Since the spiritual journeys of these priests are internationally and ethnically diversified, we are also educated in terms of the Roman Catholic Church's role in various countries and cultures. In some countries, it is apparent that the RCC has a power that is every bit as dominant politically as it is religiously. Many of these priests feared for their personal safety as well as their future careers when they entertained notions of leaving the priesthood, because of the Roman Church's vindictive representatives in government, in the police forces and in the business community. Some of these priests, after having left the priesthood, were forced to leave their countries to find hospitable refuge elsewhere. Evidently, in some parts of the world, leaving the priesthood is not like quitting a job.

For these reasons, and the fact that many faced the potential of a cultural stigma as well as intense disappointment of friends and family, we learn that leaving the priesthood required a good amount of courage. The fact that all the ex-priests in this book left because of a crisis of conscience or belief, as opposed to yearnings for worldly or physical desires, make their stories even more compelling and credible.

We also learn the extent to which the Roman Catholic Church, despite calling Protestants "brothers," in actual practice in various locales considers Protestantism its number one enemy. Many of these testimonial conversions are remarkable considering the fact that the priests relating them were raised and educated to hate Protestants. Many actually were led to believe that Protestant Bibles were radically different than Catholic Bibles. Protestant literature, in one man's story, was kept in a forbidden, locked closet in a church library.

When reading this book, anyone who considers himself a serious Christian will be shocked by how little the theological training of Roman Catholic priests involves the study of scripture. One man testifies in this book that in thirteen years of training to be a priest, he had twelve hours of studying the Bible. Another stated that he was not allowed to even read a Bible until after he had turned 21, despite the fact that he had been trained to be a priest since he was a ten. One is left with the impression that since so many Roman Catholic Church dogmas (like the sacrifice of the Mass, the Marian dogmas, confession, transubstantiation, purgatory, the priesthood itself) have questionable or no scriptural basis, the Roman Catholic Church prefers to train its future priests with literature on what they say about the Bible, rather than risk having seminarians question Church teaching by reading the Bible itself.

Despite this effort, the constant thread throughout many of the narratives is how God brought the truth to anguished, confused, and troubled souls in spite of Roman Catholic "brainwashing" as one ex-priest phrases it. Many times the seed of God's truth was sown as priests were required to perform actions that in their hearts they knew only God was capable of, such as absolution. Many more times conversion occurred as a result of studying the Word of God and learning that the Gospel message of God's love and forgiveness, and Christ's one time perfect sacrifice blatantly contradicts the Roman Catholic view.

We cannot simply dismiss the conversions of these brave and intelligent men as being a result of ignorance. In some cases, these men experienced decades of training and learning in Roman Catholic teaching. An objective reader, regardless of denominational affilliation, must conclude that there is something wrong with a Christian church that shields not only its laity, but its clergy from the Bible...but when one sees how a thorough grounding in the Word of God can lead to exodus from that church, we can at least understand why.

A quick read: informative and surprisingly entertaining as well.

Hey fellas, how would you feel if you knew that hot phone-sex operator you wasted $40 on last night was really a GUY? This memoir of life in the highly profitable adult entertainment industry can be funny, but overall it is very disturbing to read about all the horrible things callers make the "girls" say and do. Lots of mysogyny, horrible cursing, sadistic and pedophilic fantasies...but I guess it's better these losers pay some girl (or guy) to take their abuse over the phone than inflict it upon their loved ones or strangers. A very surreal read, not for the faint of heart.

This book is not clearly written. Many terms are used incorrectly or in a very questionable manner. The answers in the back of the book for all odd-numbered "homework" problems and all test questions is very helpful and convenient. If I were chosing a textbook, it would not be this.

I had Bennett as an instructor and used this book throughout the course sequence. I found it to be a helpful resource for teachers who were unfamiliar or "rusty" with mathematics. However, if you are a math-minded person looking for more ideas, this book will not help you develop your potential. It is a good place to start thinking about ways to teach and learn mathematics, but not a great collection of information on the whole.

I couldn't agree more with the last two reader reviews, and would like to add a bit more. This work has two fatal flaws that undermine all of his analysis. It consistenly confuses correlation and causality, and deliberatly ignores portions of counter-arguments inconvenient to Bennett's conclusion.

Even using government funded studies, developed no doubt by Bennett's ideological kin, his defense of marijuana prohibition relies on an abusurd logical extension. First he shows that cocaine is a cause of violence. This is already a tenuous position in and of itself since he does nothing to disprove that cocaine prohibition is not responsible for more violence than the drug's pharmacological properties. The he relies on the long-defunct gateway theory to show that a lax approach to marijuana will generate thousands more violent cocaine addicts. Thus, marijuana must be thoroughly repressed. Yeah, obviously... no other way around that one.

He states with indignation that more 15-18 year olds see marijuana as relatively harmless than any time in the preceeding decade and a half. Well, unfortunately even a moral fiat from the good Dr. Bennett cannot change the fact that the perception of pot as relatively harmless is, for the most part, accurate; no matter how uncomfortable it may make him.

What about the claims that supply side drug interdiction is fatally flawed as a long term strategy? No worries, according to Body Count, since it worked in the very short run in 1992, it must be effective.

The 60% drop in casual drug use between 1980 and 1992 a smashing success, akin to saving 60% of the rainforest or preventing 60% of unwanted pregnancies? You bet, of course Bennett fails to mention that the same period saw an unprecedented rise in drug market violence, an INCREASING number of 'hard core' drug abusers, destruction of civil liberties, a mushrooming prison population, the shredding of urban America's remaining social fabric, the demonization of blacks and junkies as drug war enemies, skyrocketing quantities of preventable and drug related AIDS cases, a burgeoning culture of intolerance, and the list goes on.

To top it all off, in this book Bennett has the gall to criticize the media for not depicting the drug war as a success, when he, himself was frequently the one on national tv using fear-mongering rhetoric to drive the perception of a failing drug war.

Filled with useful information, this book blows away some of the standard liberal myths about crime - such as that "prison doesn't work" and "guns cause crime". But they also prove their even-handedness by dealing to a few standard conservative myths too However, I'd have to add that I disagree with some of the (lesser) conclusions drawn by the authors in the final chapter, particularly regarding "moral poverty" and the war on drugs. All the same, they did succeed in making me re-evaluate my position on drugs considerably. The book was worth buying for all the data in it alone, particularly the appendix with criminal histories of 40 "low-level" offenders - most illuminating! All the rest is a bonus, and it is largely clearly and cogently argued. It does have to be said that the religious viewpoint of the authors does tend to show at times, particularly in the final chapter, which will tend to put some people off (myself included!). Don't let this blind you to the many valid points they have to make, however.

So if it's not the handicaps we've imposed on cops and prosecutors, and it's not institutionalized racism, and it's not material want, then what is the fundamental cause of predatory street crime.

Moral poverty.

...[M]oral poverty is the poverty of being without loving, capable, responsible adults who teach you right from wrong; the poverty of being without parents and other authorities who habituate you to feel joy at others' joy, pain at others' pain, satisfaction when you do right, remorse when you do wrong; the poverty of growing up in the virtual absence of people who teach morality by their own everyday example and who insist that you follow suit. ...

The twin character scars left by moral poverty--lack of impulse control and lack of empathy--reinforce each other and make it far more likely that the individual will succumb to either the temptations of crime, or the blandishments of drugs, or, as so often happens, both. -Body Count

One of the more comforting aspects of conservatism is that you can adopt one set of principles--most elements of which are hundreds (capitalism and republican democracy) or even thousands (10 Commandments, Golden Rule, Sermon on the Mount) of years old, and have stood the test of time--and then stick with it your whole adult life. At any given moment several of the positions you adhere to will certainly be out of favor, but just as surely the tide will eventually turn back in your favor. New ideas and fancy fads will come and go, leaving trend-sucking liberals with their heads spinning, but you can just stick to your guns and ignore them all, secure in the knowledge that folks will eventually return to their senses and come scurrying back to the timeless virtues. This is especially the case when it comes to Crime and Punishment. Few issues, other than the equally intractable Taxation and Education, have been so susceptible over the years to "innovative" thinking and "radical" solutions as the problem of Crime. But time and again we all end up returning to the conservative mantra : what's needed are a societal emphasis on loving families and traditional morality, vigorous law enforcement, and harsh punishments.

This book then is an unsurprising call for a return to these first principles, in particular a clarion call for an effort to combat moral poverty, and, equally unsurprisingly, its policy prescriptions are currently back in vogue. Between the candidacy of Joe Lieberman and the victory of George W. Bush, religious belief is once again a central part of our national debate, morality is a hot topic, and a broad consensus has formed around the idea that faith-based institutions, with their manifest moral component, are better at delivering social services than government bureaucracies. Coauthor John DiIulio has, in fact, been named to be the coordinator of President Bush's Faith Based Initiative. And, what with now former President Clinton mired in a new scandal (which will inevitably come to be known as Pardongate) Bill Bennett is popping up all over the networks and editorial pages, getting to say, "I told you so" and preach the importance of morality in public life.

Meanwhile, in New York City, Rudy Guliani has proven that crime can be reduced and civic manners restored by relentlessly prosecuting even minor infractions. Perhaps most importantly, reforms like building more prisons, Three Strikes and You're Out, mandatory sentencing, and incarcerating even low level drug offenders, have helped to bring about a tremendous reduction in crime rates. It would seem that, in a sense, this book has been made superfluous by the very success of the ideas it advocates.

But never fear, already we hear calls to relax drug laws (many of them fueled by the new movie Traffic) amidst hand-wringing over the burgeoning prison population. Perhaps the best aspect of this book is that the authors actually go beyond just drugs and demonstrate the close connection between alcohol and crime. One of the most effective arguments of those who support legalization of drugs is the comparison to alcohol. The authors head off this line of reasoning by indicting alcohol too. You've got to admire a conservatism so fierce and intellectually honest that it's basically willing to refight some of the battles of Prohibition.

Another phenomenon we've witnessed in recent years is one of those patented psychic disconnects on the part of liberals that we conservatives so treasure, folks on the Left have actually taken to arguing that the statistics showing a drop in crime can not be right because of the size of the current prison population. Their characteristically fuzzy logic maintains that if crime really were going down there would perforce be less people in prison. This confusion over cause and effect, obvious as it seems, and the accompanying appeals to middle class white guilt will inevitably lead to an eventual relaxing of our guard and the pendulum will swing back towards leniency and permissiveness.

This book is somewhat dated now, because of its reliance on statistics and because too much of what it has to say has been adopted as public policy, but put it on a shelf for a few years and you'll be able to take it down during the next explosion in crime. Think of public policy making as a huge game of "Whack the Mole" conservatives always remain poised with the same hammer (a consistent set of ideas) and periodically have to bang away with the hammer when experimentation with liberal ideas manages to unleash a plague of vermin. Lift this book and you wield the hammer.

GRADE : B-

This book is an embarrassment. Poorly organized, full of debased lies so incredible that one wonders rather the author himself actually believed them, and of such a personally vindictive nature that the reader feels as though he/she have just sat through a 330 page temper-tantrum. I can't believe anyone takes this book seriously.
The first obvious clue to the unreliability of this book is Bennett's 60-page tribute to himself. It's been said, and I agree wholeheartedly, that anyone who needs that much space to prove the good nature of his character is a scoundrel of the worst sort. And scoundrel he was. He sold college diplomas under auspicies of a bogus university. At one time he abandoned a wife and children in Ohio. He was famous for seducing young women with the promise that, should they get pregnant, he would perform an abortion on them (he was a doctor by trade). Yet these facts (and many others) are oddly left out of his first-chapter shrine to himself. And, wisely so, for if anyone knew the true character of the man, no one would have read the rest of his book.
So, what is contained in the rest of his book? Actually, there is very little of Bennett's own material. The bulk of the work is simply a series of very long excerpts from previous anti-Mormon books. So, what does one have to profit from reading this work? Absolutely nothing.

Overpriced for the cliche approach. I'm sure I should have purchased a more innovative work.

First of all this book is not cliche or a rehash of earlier material as other reviewers have stated. This book is also not very good. The book is written by John Bennett the first mayor of Nauvoo and one of the first major opponents of the Mormon movement. It is one of the first works of anti-mormon literature. I give it a five not because of any inherent academic achievement by Bennett (it has none the book was little more than a money making scheme and a political tool) but because of what we can learn about early mormon dissenters and their views of Mormonism. It also has great significance as a first hand account, albeit a biased one but all views of Mormonism are obviously biased one way or the other.