Stanley Changnon and his colleagues have written the best, and most comprehensive analysis of what really happened with the biggest climate event of the century, the 1997-1998 El Nino. What is unique about this book is that they carefully look at both the devastation that occured and the positive impacts from the mild winter -- fewer deaths from ice storms, more shopping when people went out in milder weather, less fuel oil. They also point out the places where the forecast worked, and where it had problems. As society gets more and more sensitive to weather events, we will need more thoughtful probing into how we have responded and how we will respond. This book sets the stage, and is written by experts who have analyzed other big weather events. I strongly recommend it.

Stanley Chagnon and his colleagues have written the best, and most comprehensive analysis of what really happened with the biggest climate event of the century, the 1997-1998 El Nino. What is unique about this book is that they carefully look at both the devastation that occured and the positive impacts from the mild winter -- fewer deaths from ice storms, more shopping when people went out in milder weather, less fuel oil. They also point out the places where the forecast worked, and where it had problems. As society gets more and more sensitive to weather events, we will need more thoughtful probing into how we have responded and how we will respond. This book sets the stage, and is written by experts who have analyzed other big weather events. I strongly recommend it.

This collection of chapters is essential reading for people learning the narrative approach. Brilliant!

There are so many books on therapy that reiterate old ideas or advance faddish approaches: this is NOT one of them. The authors develop a new way of assisting clients in overcoming problems in their lives using insights from social construction. The approach is respectful, optimistic, and culturally sensitive. This book is a wonderful antidote to therapist burn-out.

This book is a sleeper that will ultimately find its place among the best books on race, children, and Black-Jewish relationships in post War America. Unlike so many books that relie on the invented memory of a few primary actors, this scholarly account closely follows the crisis among Blacks and Jews through the experiences of children. Besides being an excellent political biography of Mamie and Kenneth Clark, the book is a troubling journey into the lives of the children of the great black migration. Despite its seemingly narrow focus, this is a rich narrative account of recent American history.

This Book is about a king who lives in a castle. He has a baker called Adrian.The King always eats eggs. Adrian makes the king chicken eggs,goose eggs,duck eggs.Then he shouts More More More! The Next day he read in his Newspaper that a dodos egg was spotted on an island.So he told Adrian to prepare the boat.To get to The island.

I could't put it down. Most interesting stories of famous and popular musicians, composers, conductors,and their favorite recipies. It tells how they like to entertain and what they serve, and has many interesting photos of their parties and after-concert galas, and such. The recipies are great too.I saw this book displayed at a music school and immediately copied several recipies, and tried them. I couldn't wait to get my own copy. This one will be on my coffee table in my music studio for all my students to read. Highly recomended for both music lovers and anyone who likes good food!

Before you conclude from the title of this work that its contents are as dry as dust, let me assure you they are not. Notwithstanding its scholarly, measured language and meticulous documentation, this is a passionate, absorbing, and infuriating story of corporate greed and criminal contempt for the health of our country's foundry workers. The authors persuasively argue that the lower the status and power of the workers, the greater was their exposure to occupational health hazards. Despite the efforts of courageous lone voices in government and academia, the facts about silicosis were often suppressed. For example, a prestigious academic hired with industry approval to investigate the relationship between sandblasting and silicosis could not even publish his findings in a U.S. journal; his article was published in Germany instead! That millions of workers suffered severe disability and premature death due to silicosis had nothing to do with ignorance. As in the case of the cigarette industry, the facts were there: what was lacking was the government mandate and power to act on the facts. Anyone who carefully follows this tragic tale of unrelenting, unregulated greed and callousness by the foundries would do well to ponder the overly generalized assaults on the evils of big government in the U.S. Greater accountability and regulation earlier could have saved millions of lives. By the way, as the authors point out, industry was quite willing to embrace big government when it suited them. "Employers who had opposed the inclusion of silicosis... came running to the State pleading for the inclusion... so that they would be protected against the unlimited and terrifying common law damage suits which were being filed."

We just recently bought our first house. I did use this book often to check out definition of terms, but it was just a bit to simplistic for me. Don't get me wrong- I had no experience in this area (I didn't even know what earnest money was), and I didn't even fully realize what the process was. Still, I found this book to just be a bit to basic. The basics are definitely necessary, but a bit more depth is definitely needed.

I'm buying my first home, unfortunately in the ultra-expensive Bay Area. I read a few of the Dummies books, which were adequate, and then came across this book. Irwin's book is a fairly easy read - you can skim the parts you already know (i.e. if you're not buying a fixer-uper, skip that part), and concentrate on what you don't know. He doesn't go very far in depth into any one subject - the book is only 180 pages - but he gives a layman's explanation of almost every part of the home buying process, from offers, to financing, to inspections, to repairs. And I don't think you need anything more in depth than this to buy a home. I actually read this book half-way through my own home buying process, and I still found it very valuable and useful. I can't claim that it saved me any money - it didn't. But it did reassure me that what I was doing was right - and that is well worth the cost of the book.

I bought this book along with "The 106 Common Mistakes Homebuyers Make (& How to Avoid Them)" (Gary W. Eldred, Ph.D.) and enjoyed both. Irwin's book neatly describes the complete homebuying process and is extremely easy to read. Included in the book are several checklists that I found useful, and discussions on financing options, home remodeling considerations, and tax impacts that owning a home will create. I read the book in a couple days' time and often referred back to it as I was going through the homebuying process; I'm sure you will, too.

No editor would publish a novel if the author were to invent a character as contradictory, powerful, and susceptible as Nixon's. I couldn't put the book down, finding the subject as fascinating and as horrifying as ever. Is there any other president that could have an opera written about him? G.Gordon Liddy always referred to him as Machiavelli's prince, and relying on Nixon's own record of his days in the White House, Reeves goes back to the pre-revisionist Nixon, the one who could inspire immense loyalty, winning a second term in one of the authentic landslides in election history, and yet lose it all as a result of his global insecurities and inability to trust, how his idealism and ran side by side with complete disregard anyone else's reputation or semblance of legality; how constant a war played out between conscience and ambition. Other presidents have been as ruthless; few have been as conflicted, and this comes out very clearly in the book, the tragedy of a man who could never trust his better instincts, forever seduced by his own self-image of toughness.

"President Nixon: Alone in the White House" is one of those rare biographies that manages to capture the very essence of its subject. Mr. Reeves, who had access not only to President Nixon himself but to most of Nixon's key advisors and confidantes, has written a book that reveals Richard Nixon's motivations and thus goes a long way toward explaining some of the strange things Nixon did as President. What we see in the book is a man who assumes that all men approach life the way he does--and his approach is quintessentially Machiavellian. Nixon truly believes that all men cheat, lie and are out to get him. All is fair in politics. By assuming the worst in others, Nixon guarantees the worst in himself.

And yet one catches glimpses of Nixon the man where one feels a certain amount of compassion. Nixon was a melancholy and lonely individual, distrustful of those around him. He was a politician who had an aversion to people. He feels awkward in any social situation, to the point where his interactions are meticulously scripted beforehand on one of his handy yellow legal pads. In one hilarious sequence, Nixon is up all night writing and memorizing a script for an "off the cuff" speech he is planning to give the next day. What is amazing is that he does not see how ridiculous it is to be scripting an unscripted speech. Nixon also spends hours writing memos to himself about how he wants to be perceived. Each one of the memos drips with irony, for he sees in himself all the things that he is not. One cannot help but feel compassion for a man so out of touch with who he is.

Reeves argues that Nixon is at his best when looking at the bigger picture, in "connecting the dots" of major policy decisions and their historical precedents as well as the possible outcomes. This is the Nixon who takes the bold steps to open up Communist China and to bring a much-needed thaw to the festering Cold War with Russia. Reeves also shows a Nixon who realizes the disaster of Vietnam but doesn't know how to remove the U.S. and preserve the honor and dignity of the nation. One must admire Nixon for his foreign policy successes and for his broad thinking in this area. The book also paints an interesting portrait of Henry Kissinger, showing him to be brilliant but incredibly vain and condescending. Kissinger spends a great deal of time making sure Secretary of State Rogers is out of the loop on every major foreign policy decision.

Domestically, however, we see in this book a Nixon who is all politician and zero statesman. He waffles on integration, does little to help Blacks because they vote 90% Democrat, and panders in the worst way to groups he believes he must win over in order to win reelection in 1972. Nixon tells his dynamic duo, Haldeman and Erlichman, not to bog him down with policy details, then buries himself in such details as replacement shower heads for the White House or the clownish design for the White House security force. We also see Nixon the bigot, saving his cruelest cuts for the Jews. In these glimpses we see just how shallow and ignorant Nixon could be, despite his moments of greatness. The last section of the book deals with Watergate and the events that brought Richard Nixon to disgrace. It is not a pretty sight, and just goes to show how thoroughly Nixon was involved in the cover-up and how much he enjoyed the dirty tricks attributed to his campaign. At one point, after George Wallace is shot, Nixon laments the fact that Nixon's men didn't think to go into the would-be assasin's apartment and plant McGovern literature to discredit his opponent.

Upon finishing this book, I immediately wondered if Reeves began working on a sequel, following Nixon from his resignation through his period of exile and disgrace to the era of his partial rehabilitation near the end of his life. I certainly hope Reeves follows up, for the story of Nixon the private citizen in the years after his fall from power would be fascinating and remains largely untold.

This is a good book, and I believe that both fans and detractors of our former President would enjoy it. Reeves has not written it to discredit the man, but to try to explain him. After finishing the book, I felt I knew the real Richard Nixon somewhat better, and that had Richard Nixon had a different take on the motivations of his fellow man, he may have gone down as one of our better Presidents.

While much of the material in this book has been revealed before, its greatest value is in advancing the emerging consensus about Nixon and his role in Watergate and other illegal White House activities. The central question during the controversy was "What did Richard Nixon know, and when did he know it?", and that quesion focused on the Watergate break-in of June 17, 1972. What Reeves helps make clear is that focusing on the break-in misses the point of Nixon and his downfall. Watergate was a symptom of a much more sinister and cynical White House atmosphere that was created and driven by Nixon and a very small cadre of trusted aides - primarily Haldeman and Kissinger. The question about Nixon's advance knowledge of the June 17 break-in is less important than the systematic way Nixon and Kissinger conducted foreign policy and the way Haldeman (and to a lesser extent, Ehrlichman) conducted the president's domestic politics and goverment business.

It is a riveting portrait of Nixon and the men around him - a more dispassionate "Final Days" that has a surprising objectivity about it. Obviously, Reeves' selection of topics and facts is critical to the book's point of view, but there are a good number of sympathetic passages, as Nixon seemed to invest as much anguish wrestling with himself to do the right things as he did to do in his enemies.