I thought Axis Mundi would be a valuable aquisition to my werewolf stories, but wasn't. The mage storytellers will not understand why, whitewolf told that book would be useful for Mage campaigns. I wasted my money... Don't do the same mistake

This is a pretty good book. If you are looking for information on some of the spirits who support the totems of the werewolf tribes, then this book is for you. You won't be disappointed.

However, I was disappointed with this book. The main reason for this is that I thought this book wasn't far reacing enough. According to the Werewolf universe, the Umbra is populated with thousands, if not millions, of different kinds of spirits, each with their own personality archetypes, wants, desires, interests, etc. But this book focuses mainly on the small number who serve the major tribe totems. This small slice of the spirit world is hardly fulfilling.

Another problem is that the book makes no attempt to describe how the spirits interact with each other, how any of the hierarchies of the totems work, or how any other spirits really behave or act out in the day-to-day life of the Umbra. Spirits are described as if their only purpose is to interact with the werewolves and not as if they are each self-sufficient entities.

So this book is good for what it is, but like many other White-Wolf supplements it fails to be all it could be. A much better book would have given more over-arching spirit information on a macro level so us creative-types could use the information they provided to populate our games with interesting individual spirits on a micro level.

This is a must-have for any Storyteller that deals with the Umbra and spirits, for Mage or Werewolf. It is a very information-rich sourcebook, full of guidelines and expanded rules on spirits, and packed with information on the spirits themselves. There is a spiritual history of the Garou that is very informative

Mr. Campbell's work, written as part of his current doctoral thesis at Hebrew University, falls behind the times regarding the rapid paced developments in the field of weapons of mass destruction. His socio-scientific approach stems from this works academic research requirement which was spun off as a coffee table book treatment of this important field. Well researched concerning nuclear weapons, but falling seriously behind in his regards concening biological or chemical weapons. I would recommend this book for those that need a very, very basic, primer concerning nuclear weapons but nothing more.

Potential terrorist use of WMD has been a topic of discussion among academics and intelligence analysts for the last 30 years or more. The continuing evolution of terrorism, to include its methods and tactics, has severely altered recent thinking about the increased potential for terrorist use of WMD. The $64,000 question among those tracking terrorist groups is "what would casue a group to resort to using WMD?". Mr. Campbell does an outstanding job of addresssing this critical issue. After a brief, but informative, discussion of the terrorist phenomenon, he presents a hypothesis, backed up by case studies, attempting to identify characteristics that may indicate a groups inclination to use WMD. Mr. Campbell's work is an excellent vehicle for both those wanting to learn about terrorism and as a foundation for academics and analysts exploring potential terrorist use of WMD. If the topic of terrorism is your interest; whether you are a student, academic, analyst, or just interested; this book should be a well used part of your reference library.

Commander Campbell provides a useful treatise on a vital subject explaining the national emergency articulated in Executive Order 12938. "WMD Terrorism" is the textbook of choice for the Weapons of Mass Destruction scientific and technical intelligence curriculum at the Joint Military Intelligence College and has earned deserved acclaim within the US Joint Military Intelligence Community as the definitive work on the subject available to the Public in open literature. He addresses two of the most difficult intelligence topics of our era--CW/BW/nuclear weapons/missiles (WMD) or weapons of mass destruction, as well as their employment by terrorism--and effectively describes their complexities and vulnerabilities. As Chief of the DIA's Weapons Team he brings real-world credibility to scholarly writing. I recommend "Weapons of Mass Destruction Terrorism" to all serious students of one of the most significant and pervasive threats of ourera.

James Reed Campbell takes the term "gifted" and applies it to the characteristics of high achieving students. Although Campbell's repeated point throughout the book is communication between parents, children, and teachers is useful, he ignores the characteristics and academic and emotional needs of gifted children. He recommends strategies to parents that will inevitably set students up for debilitating perfectionism, disappointment, and failure - as he recommends the parents setting their children's life goals and directing their children to reach them. He recommends pressuring children into achieving these goals and doesn't take into account circumstances under which gifted children do not achieve to their potential. Campbell considers giftedness a condition that can be reached through hard work as opposed to it being a natural ability. As a school district gifted specialist, this would not ever be a book I would recommend to parents of gifted children.

This book should be required reading for all parents. Although children are born with inherently different talents, this book teaches you how to work with and maximize your child's potential. There are wonderful summaries of each chapters and concrete suggestions to enrich your child's education--things that don't take a lot of time, just persistent effort on a DAILY basis. Anyone can do it. I have the most important pages copied and posted on my refrigerator at home and in my briefcase at work so that I can review. Rather than a book to be borrowed from the library to read once, this book is one that I review on an annual basis just before the start of the school year. Buy your copy today. You won't be disappointed. The things in this book are best applied after reading Mary Sheedy Kurchinka's Raising Your Spirited Child so that you understand how your child's personality affects learning and behavior.

This book is mainly just about the climb from one of the lowest rated, to one of the highest rated TV shows in the US. Not a whole lot of content on the anchors or anything, but very interesting in the way of how the show rose up and became an American TV Icon.

It takes a ... what? It takes more than this book recognizes to improve education. The rhetoric here implies that the so-called "reform" movement is the way to cure school ills. To most teachers, however, this is simply another year's bureaucratic fad to morph educators into paper pushers. Although I found several insights here, and detailed information on six inner-city school districts, I was somewhat amazed by two important omissions: teachers and students. Teacher unions were trivialized by the suggestion that each little school decide, on their own, if they want to unionize.The writer recommends "hiring halls" for teachers, putting us on a level with farm workers and factory hands. This writing shows absolutely no understanding about why teachers need unions or how such organizations originated.

This writer clearly identifies a target audience -- mayors, civic leaders and school board members. By decision, it excludes teachers and students. It's sad to think -- and I've seen this happen -- that ivory tower bureaucrarts actually make decisions based on this type of dubious theory rather than getting down in the trenches with the reality of the classroom.

Content here is peppered with educratic jargon which twists other terminology into bastardized educational theories. School "incubators" make me think of premature babies."Real dollar budgets" make me wonder if bureaucrats are playing Monopoly with our taxes. "CEO Strong Schools strategy" pretends that a principal, who is middle management, is a CEO. Get real. The only CEO in the school district is the superintendent who is hired by an elected school board.

This book, to it's credit, recognizes the inability of reform to reform anything (last paragraph, page 84). Any good book offers new insights and "policy churn" gets my prize here. Teachers are jaded by bandwagon bureaucrats who recycle new versions of old ideas, one after another, never saying, "stop this" or "drop that."

Hillary Clinton quotes the African proverb, "It Takes a Village." This book spins the idea into, "a city." I'm waiting for the next trendy realization for someone to discover that, "It takes a teacher."