I have been below average in Math for most of my life but thanks to Prealgebra by Blair, Tobey and Slater my grade went up considerably. I managed to maintain a B average thanks to this comprehensive and easy to follow book. It set a steady foundation for me. Thanks

This book worked good for me, I also had a good teacher though. Never found mistakes in it. Good beginning book to learn Pre-Algebra concepts

With the advent of what may become the second Gulf War, Tony Blair-Prime Minister is a comprehensive biography of the leader of America's closest ally. Prime Minister Tony Blair is an unlikely choice to be the foreign leader closest to President George W. Bush. British Journalist, John Rentoul has written about the rise and times of Tony Blair from his roots in a middle class British family to that of a rising socialist politician who became leader of the "New" Labor Party and Prime Minister of Great Britian.

Rentoul traces Blair's family and their political leanings. Blair's father Leo Blair was born to a pair of actors and given to a James and Mary Blair in Glasgow. Leo Blair as a teenager was a member of the Scottish Young Communist League and had ambitions to become a Communist Member of Parliment. However, after service in World War II as a member of the Royal Signal Corps, Leo Blair underwent a political conversion. Upon leaving the military he became a member of the Conservative Party. Leo Blair married Blair's mother Hazel from a strongly Protestant family from County Donegal while working at the Ministry of National Insurance in Glasgow. Leo Blair studied law eventually becoming a lecturer in Administrative Law at the University of Adelaide in Australia and eventually the University of Durham in Durham. Leo Blair eventually became a practicing barrister and active in the local Conservative Party.
Tony Blair was the second of three children. He is described as being the child most like his father Leo.

In the opening chapter of the book it states "Tony Blair's political ambition began at age of eleven, when his father Leo's ended, on 4 July 1964. At the age of forty, at the height of his political powers and looking for a Conservative parlimentary seat, Leo Blair had a stroke."

However, the book indicates that many of Blair's acquaintances during his school and law school years were suprised when he decided to become active in politics. Blair was not a member of any political clubs while in school or in-between. Blair had been a singer and manager of a rock n roll band "The Ugly Rumors", had long hair and a van. Unlike his American political counter parts, he never experimented with drugs, smoked marijuana or was seen drunk. In response to the question of whether he ever smoked marijuana, he said no, but if he had "he would have inhaled" in a jab at his friend President Bill Clinton.
One of the suprising discoveries found in the book about Tony Blair is his Christian Socialism. Unlike many American politicians not much mention has been made of the fact he has been a confirmed Christian since his Oxford days. Moreover, he is the only British Prime Minister since Gladstone known to regularly read the Bible.
Tony Blair and his wife Cherie Blair are as political a couple as the Clintons. Both have worked in local politics and both have run for seats in Parliment. When Blair ran his first successful race for his current seat from the Sedgefield Riding, Cherie was seeking a seat in a "marginal" Labor district or riding. However, after Blair won his first election, Cherie decided to forego elective office as one politician was enough in the family. Since Blair's election in Parliment in 1983, the Blairs have had three children and Cherie has continued her career as a successful barrister.
Over half the book covers Blair's career as leader of the Labor Party and Prime Minister. When he became Prime Minister at age 42, only tweleve years in Parliment, he became the youngest Prime Minister since Lord Liverpool who became Prime Minister in 1812.
The book is well documented with footnotes after every chapter. Because of its "scholarliness" it may tend to drag at times in the chapters which deal with his years as Prime Minister from May 2, 1997 through the time the book was written in January 2001. As such it chronicles in detail Tony Blair's first term.
In it, the achievements of the first term include the Balkans, Northern Ireland,as well as helping provide a better standard of living for all of Britian.
Blair is described as a "hands-on" Prime Minister, informal but energized and possibly hyper-working on the phone from planes, on vacation and on the weekend.
With as much detail provided of all aspects of Blair's life, TONY BLAIR-Prime Minister gives the reader and the world great insight into Blair's actions now in his second term as Prime Minister.

On 4-th of july 1964,Tony was woken by his mother in the morning and as soon as he heard the first words coming out from his mother - he knew that something wasn't right and he was right
about that.
Tony's father had a stroke and it wasn't sure whether he's gonna make it or not.
This day was the day when Tony's childhood ended,a day when his political ambition began, a life which taught him the value of the family and real friends who walked with his family in the worst moments of their lives.

Tony,a child of strict parents about manners :
Was always polite,kind,helpful towards other people and he enjoyed the attention so much so when he is only 16 years old he formed a group named The Pseuds - to act.

Soon, as a 'gifted guitarist' he starts meeting people of the same interest and talked about getting into the music world.
He loved The Rolling Stones and they were going to be the next Led Zeppelin or Free (Tony's most favorite bands).
So...the band "Ugly Rumours" is formed and THE LEAD SINGER-with
a fantastic voice is someone such as : the future prime minister of Great Britain - TONY BLAIR.

...John Rentoul's biography of Tony Blair-(was made to read easy as novel, even though it was Tony's life to make that possible). It is a well-researched book and tells just about everything you'd want to know about Tony Blair.

I purcahsed this hoping it to be similar to "Backroad Buffets and Country Cafes." Instead, Edge is more intersted in telling annoying stories rather discuss the food of the restaurants he has chosen. The author's style stinks with an obsessive use of alliteration--and how many times can one use "porcine" to describe barbecued hogs? Finally, and especially irritating, is Edge's constant injection of racial commentary on dining in the South in the era of segregation. I did not buy this book to read about defunct cafes that have historical significance in the Civil Rights movement or any other movement. Rather, I bought it as a travel guide for fun dining. If a guidebook is what you want, get O'Briant's book--more restaurants, no prententious babble.

Hunger is never a simple matter in the South and unlike other road food books, this one is not only concerned with what's on the plate, but also with the how and why and by-whose-grace it got there. Yes, you'll find out what you need to know about (and where to get a great taste of) Kentucky beer cheese, Big Bob Gibson coconut pie and great barbecue in Birmingham. But you'll also meet the people who make and eat this food, and learn the history -- some bitter, some sweet -- that lies enticingly behind it. The ability to notice and relate social/political/spirtual undercurrents behing the food of the South is what makes John T. Edge and Southern Belly such great companions both for the road or simply dreaming about it.

Southern Belly is to food books what "burnt ends" are to barbecue: chewy, smoky, tender and tasty. John T. Edge understands that food = culture, and he captures the sum of that equation with efficient writing, colorful storytelling, and an obvious affection for his subject matter. It's a nifty travel book that would serve quite nicely as a guide to The South. And it's a well-researched antropological study that traces the history and status of the region's culinary traditions. But mostly it's a love story.

If you love food, if you love America, and especially if you love American food, you'll love Southern Belly.

The Client by John Grisham is most definitely the kind of book you can't just stop reading, even if your tired. From the very first chapter, the plot is enticing to the point that you find yourself just having to read on to find out what will happen next.
The main character, 11 year old Mark, starts the story by trying to be a good guy. Ironically enough, his good intentions only lead him to trouble with both the authorities and the outlaws. And the more he runs from one side, the closer he comes to the other. Finally, as he twists and turns to escape from the situation all together, he finds himself forced to make the impossible choice between life on the run or life in prison. In addition to attention-grabbing, I also found the story to be funny in certain parts and still touching at others.
However, by the end of the story, I thought the actions and emotional stability of the boy became too unrealistic given he was supposed to be only 11 years old. I also felt that although the boy's dilemma was resolved, certain other important characters and their situations where not dealt with to full conclusion. I suppose Grisham could have wanted to leave room for speculation, but, more likely, I suspect he thought the implications he gave to the conclusions of these other affairs were sufficient. I think, though, the book would have been better had he followed through with every aspect of the plot and its characters. Hence, I rate the book at 3 stars despite the fact that in all honesty I couldn't put it down until I finished it.

I have read two of Grisham's books before this one, The Testament and The Firm, and this one is just as entertaining. It starts off with the young but wise character of Mark Sway who has a lousy home life. One day, he and his brother stumble upon a man trying to commit suicide in the woods and Mark tries to stop him. Unfortunately for him, however, he learns too much in the process. Because of this newly obtained information, he has a dangerous Mob member hot on his trails. This murdering criminal wants the boy to keep quite while authorities want him to tell all. Caught in the middle with no way out Reggie Love, a sassy lawyer with spunk, guts, and determination, tries to bring this case to safe ending. She lays it all on the line.
The plot starts off quite exciting in the beginning but varies in intensity throughout the whole novel. At times, the pages can go on about legal matters and be slow to get through, but before you know it, it has suddenly picked back up to its exhilarating pace. I think that this book is so much fun and easy to read because of its fast tempo. Things happen so quickly that you can't put it down. Also, I think the characters in Grisham's works are all very realistic and their actions are relative to the way most of us would react in their given situations. This, too, is another reason why Grisham keeps bouncing back with success upon success. He has all the key ingredients that would appeal to all readers. This is a book you should not pass up on the shelves.

Okay, I'm not a completely qualified Grisham fan having only read half (six) of his novels, but this one ranks near the top of my list, anyway, just below the sensational The Rainmaker and slightly above The Pelican Brief. I imagine this book will stay the near the top of that list for quite some time.

I found the book good on several levels. The plot is simplistic, but one of those "what if" scenarios that I'm sure many writers had thought about before but never voices. What if a child overheard important information in a criminal case and refused - for whatever reason - not to tell. In this case, that child is Mark Sway, an eleven-year-old trailor-trash type with a single mother who struggles to make ends meet for Mark and his eight-year-old brother Ricky. Mark and Ricky stumble across a man on the verge of committing suicide, try to save him, and the man spills the beans on why he's committing suicide - he's the lawyer of a much-sought and dangerous Mafia man who's hidden the body of a dead senator. The lawyer tells Mark where the body is and then proceeds to kill himself, just as he'd intended to long ago.

Perhaps what I liked about this book so much was that the main character wasn't a lawyer. Usually, Grisham's novels (at least the one's I've read) have had a lawyer as the main character, and it's told through a lawyers eyes. Here, we see everything with a child's innocence. Mark may be very mature for his age (having helped his mother file for divorce from his abusive father, among other things), but he still has that inner child that adds something to every scene - the questioning about whether to lie or not, the regret afterwards, the thoughts of his mother and his brother (who went into shock after seeing the suicide) and wishing he was back on a playground where things were simple, even the more mature thoughts of who he could trust. It's very easy to care for this child. I was with him the entire way.

The Client kept me interested. It wasn't predictable. Many of the scenes were quite funny, actually. Grisham develops fantastic dynamics between several of the parties involve - Reggie and the FBI, Harry the Judge and the FBI, even the mob members don't get along. And it doesn't dwell too much on the legal aspect of it, I'm sure everyone'll be happy to hear, and whenever it is used, it's brought down the child's level. Still, assuming Grisham actually knows what he's talking about, I did learn a little bit about the "system", as I would hope to from a novel that uses it. But it's only there to propel the stories and the characters forward.

Overall, I recommend this to any Grisham or non-Grisham fan out there. I started reading The Rainmaker last summer thinking I would set it down within half an hour, but I ended up finishing it in under a week. I'm not normally a fan of legal thrillers, but he's a fabulous, concise and easy-to-read author who has a knack for creating original and compassionate characters. Every once in a while you'll find a good moral, too, although he never preaches it to you. For this novel: Watch you say.

This book is for experienced developers who need to make the transition to VB.NET. It will also help programmers with previous knowledge of VB.NET who want to move up to the professional level.

The book begins with an introduction to the .NET Framework and common language RunTime(CLR). The CLR is responsible for managing the execution of code compiled for the .NET platform. The next few chapters focus on object oriented programming and how to derive classes from base classes using inheritance. Chapter 9 gives a detailed discussion on how error handling works in VB.NET by discussing the CLR exception handler in detail and the new Try...Catch...Finally structure. An entire chapter is devoted to multi-threading. You will learn how threads can be created, and the differences between multitasking and multi-threading. Chapter 16 discusses COM and .NET component interoperability, and the tools provided to help link the two technologies together. Chapter 18 gives detailed coverage of the ADO.NET data access technology. You will learn how to build flexible, fast, and scalable data access objects and applications.

The final chapters discuss building web applications with web forms, creating custom controls for Windows Forms and Web Forms, and finally, creating and consuming Web Services.

If you're an experienced VB developer and would like to make the transition to VB.NET, then this book is a must.

As someone who has spent over five years as a professional Visual Basic programmer I don't want to throw away all my knowledge when I move to VB.NET. Fortunately, this (big) book doesn't bother teaching you programming from scratch (you should definitely look elsewhere if you're a complete beginner) but will help you make sense of not only what's changed in the move from VB6 to VB.NET (a lot!) but also what you can take with you from VB6 (a surprisingly large amount actually). This means that you don't have to spend your time working through stuff like "this is a variable", "this is an if statement". Instead the book gets stuck into what makes the .NET Framework and Common Language Runtime tick - and explains how you can relate all of it to VB6.

The first third of the book serves as a reference to the VB.NET language - syntax, error handling, objects, inheritance, interfaces, and the differences between variables and types. While this means that you don't get to create many exciting applications early on it does mean that you have a thorough grounding in the essentials of the language.

Then the rest of the book takes a look at the most important features of .NET in turn: ADO.NET, XML, Windows Forms, Web Services, Data Binding, Remoting, Networking, Threading, Security, Web Forms, etc. You won't be an expert in any of these areas after you've read the book but you will have a much better idea of what VB.NET is capable of and how to get started using the advanced features of the .NET Framework Class Library.

Although there are a lot of authors that wrote on this book, which can spell trouble in my experience, the editors have managed to maintain a consistent voice throughout and there's surprisingly little overlap between chapters. Well worth the money.

The .Net platform has undoubtedly revolutionized the world of software development, whether web based or traditional windows. Professional VB.Net like other WROX books (pardon my bias) does complete justice to the subject matter, explaining every nuance and subtlety with the typical lucidness that WROX books have been come to be known for. I used this book to pass the 70-305 certification exam. Great book for learning the language and the .Net platform.

In trying to teach students algebra, I tried to use this book to teach them from, but I found that all the concepts were introduced at what is seemingly high school level. I think that a moderate high school student (with some curiosity) could teach himself the basics of algebra with this book. As an undergraduate text, though, it is way too slow and way too elementary.

This excellent book was my textbook for 2 semesters of senior level abstract algebra. The unique feature of this book is that elementary number theory, equivalence relations, and permutations are carefully introduced at the beginning. Other books launch right into groups and then have to make long digressions to cover these topics. Comparing this book to the best-selling Contemporary Abstract Algebra by Joseph Gallian, I like that Gallian's book adds many applications which students will find interesting. However, Beachy and Blair's book puts a greater emphasis on developing student's ability to do proofs. The book also incorporates more number theory than many other texts. Answers to selected problems are included, so I recommend this book for self study as well as a textbook for any undergraduate abstract algebra course.

Despite its age, "Desertion During the Civil War" remains the standard introduction to the topic. The book's major shortcoming is touched on in William Blair's introduction to this reprint: "Lonn relied primarily on the 'Official Records.' Although adequate for the time, this would be considered merely a good beginning today."

The "Official Records" are the most complete and impartial documentation of the Civil War, and the necessary foundation for any serious research. But they were never edited for accuracy, and many reports were condensed for space, and the information about the South was especially spotty in the 1920s. Modern historians are severely cautioned against relying on them without corroborating evidence.

Historians from Prof. McPherson on down have been saying for years that there needs to be a fresh study of desertion, especially in the Confederacy. But that would require a couple of people to spend the rest of their natural lives sifting through tens of thousands of provost marshals' reports and muster rolls of thousands of regiments.

So we're left with Ella Lonn. Her analysis of the "disease" takes into account both North and South, as well as mentioning the Napoleonic armies, Wellington's experience in Spain, the U.S. military before 1861, and the Franco-Prussian War.

Part of her thesis, now much-shaken by better information than was available in the 1920s, was that the South had a serious desertion problem for much of the war, and that it spiraled out of control in the last months. She wrote that the North seemed to get its own desertion problem under relative control about the same time -- largely by draconian measures.

Her conclusion is that one out of every seven men deserted from the Union Army, and one out of every nine men deserted from the Confederate army. Though the Union lost proportionately more to desertion, she feels the South suffered more because of the initial difference in manpower, and that desertion ultimately was instrumental in the South's failure to achieve independence.

Lonn concludes that Union desertions helped prolong a war that the South was losing, because the news of them gave the South hope and allowed it to cling to a dream of eventual victory long after that was practically out of reach.

Lonn seems to be writing with an eye on her own time, in the wake of World War I, which brought up a great many of the ugly things in American democracy that we think only emerged during the Cold War. She alludes to it often, and seems intent on pointing out that the horrors of war -- any war -- are more worthy of note than the characters of men who desert from armies.

I was prompted to read this book after having read "Cold Mountain" and having someone complain to me about the hero of that book being a deserter. How could someone write a book glorifying desertion! That got me to wondering and led me to Lonn's book. I found it very informative about many aspects of desertion, including: the reasons men deserted, what happened to them if they were caught, the means the governments (both Union and Confederate) used to persuade deserters to return to their units, the bounties paid to capture deserters, and many more aspects that I had never considered, most importantly, the effect it had on the outcome of the war. She also examines the effects of desertion on the civilian population, and how the stigma of desertion became what it is today. Some chapters were a bit redundant (she covers both North and South), and the sections on the numbers who deserted and from which states, etc. bored me, but overall I would recommend it to anyone interested in the Civil War.

The Illustrated Discography of Surf Music 1961-65 is an excellent source to find the what, who, and where of surf music produced in these influential times. While the book doesn't go into any great detail of the history of each song, there is a good and basic history of Surf Music and gives useful information about certain artists. This book contains a database-like listing of albums and is a useful guide to collecting albums. This book is worth looking high and low for.

What a fun book! I have found, from reading many Patterson books, that his novels have increasingly gotten more and more unpredictable and exciting. I love the way that the people that you think "dunnit" are the wrong people and how he makes the villains in his books people that you would never guess could do it. All of these different mediums that Patterson uses culminates in "Jack & Jill." I would recommend it along with all of his other books, even the early ones.

B.S Readers in Cleveland We all agreed that James Patterson's book, Jack and Jill was a good book. The suspense kept us into it and wanting to read more. We liked the interweaving of the two plots in one story. Different killers made the story interesting and more challenging to read. Patterson really made us think. Every time we thought we had figured something out, the plot gets twisted. (The best was the twist when Cross found the "supposed" Truth School killer dead.) The one thing that was very disappointing was the end. It seemed as if Patterson rushed through it. However, by dangling the plot, there is room for a sequel. We were angered that Patterson didn't reveal the motive of the killers. Also, the CIA is always involved in conspiracies and we felt it wasn't dumb to include it in the story. We did like how Alex Cross had more to him than just detective work. By including the kids, it showed that he was human and had feelings.

I loved Kiss the Girls and Along Came A Spider, and felt that Jack and Jill was a continuation of a look into one mans life. Patterson created a terrific character in Alex Cross. I can't wait for the next Cross book.