I bought this book, along with three others in the series, for Winter semester classes. Since I needed to know PowerPoint right away, I went through this book over Christmas vacation on my own. Each step includes a picture of what the screen should look like. That made it very easy to tell if I did the steps right. I occasionally used the CD, which showed every step of every lesson, and actually talked you through them. I learned enough PowerPoint that I will be able to create really good presentations! What a great way to learn PowerPoint. I'm actually looking forward to learning the other Office programs.

I bought this book, along with three others in the series, for Winter semester classes. Although the class lasts through April, I finished the PowerPoint book in December, then the other three in the next six weeks, because I need to know these programs immediately! Each step includes a picture of what the screen should look like. That made it very easy to tell if I did the steps right. I occasionally used the CD, which showed every step of every lesson, and actually talked me through them. Word is a fairly easy program to learn, and I moved through this book rather quickly. It was a fun way to learn for a visual learner. What a great way to learn Word. I highly recommend this series!

This is the only Washington biography written by a contemporary who knew him and served with him in the Army. Certainly the longest Presidential biography I know of written by a U.S. Supreme Court Justice. According to Senator Beveridge's later biography of John Marshall, Marshall wrote it in installments, and sold it through the U.S. Post Offic distribution network, to make enough money to pay off his massive Virginia land purchsse which in turn enabled Marshall's children to live out their lives free of the need to write books or make land deals. And it worked that way. But that's not all this is.

The first entire volume says little about Washington, because Marshall felt he needed to set the stage with a condensed history of the colonies prior to Washington. Few of Washington's later biographers went to such subsequent introductory lengths, but then Marshall's law practice ended up acquainting him with the early pre-history of the deeds and conveyances of Virginia, the further elaboration of which can be interpreted as enveloping the rest of the colonies.

This is also a history of the U.S. Army, and how it fought and starved in successive cycles which are described in minute detail exceeding most other accounts. Some of this covers organized military campaigns preceding the declaration of independence, the scope of which I had not heretofore realized by undergoing annual waves of pilgrim-study in "My Early Education."

Leading and embodying this story of land and armies, and ideas, Marshall gives us Washington, illuminated most clearly by excerpts from Washington's own letters. Marshall also gives us Marshall, distilling out of military examples and instances of weak government preceding 1789, potent arguments for increased federal power to do the things our federal government has since done quite well: raise armies, raise taxes, subdue the Indians, kick out the European powers, build a strong navy, and take no back talk from smallish tyrants resentful of centralized governmental power directly and simultaneously exercised on each citizen, and on each state.

When Hamilton wrote that we need "energy in the Executive" he had to have been thinking of Washington, and Marshall catalogs this energy with meticulous documentation of each British officer leading campaigns against us, each subordinate officer on our side under Washinton's command, and how the constant maneuver of armies up and down the length of our seaboard was accomplished--usually without many shoes and without much dry powder.

So Marshall knowing Washington probably insulated him from too much disconnected iconography, and his writing is free of modern fixations on negative or unseemly personal or pychographic tidbits of trivia. Modern readers are left to cling to factual reporting of how Washington handled this British Lord or that recalcitrant congress.

There's a lot here in all five volumes, and the flow of the over-written parts isn't that bad once you get used to it. When one man had such a central role in all of the key events of our country's founding, and rode out the formation into its institutional phase, thereafter to die in bed at home, Marshall may not have been able to write it any other way than to go over all of the events, to catch the essence of the man.

Neat discovery: LaFayette was only 24 years old while commanding the French at the battle of Yorktown. Marshall quotes from the letters of Cornwallis (or maybe it was Sir Henry Clinton) who refers to LaFayette as "the boy." This is the same boy who later presented Washington with the key to the Bastille, which today hangs on the wall of the stairway of Mount Vernon going up to the second floor.

This collection of Sasse's essay written between 1927-1939 are thus particularly fascinating and enlightening as the context of the Nazi regime and intro to American Christianity way heavy on the author.

Here one will discover what it truly means to confess one's faith in light of pressure and temptation. Thus, the lonely way.

Confessional words from this studied church historian and exegete and ecumenist pour forth on observation of his own ecclesiastical scene as well as ours here in the States.

The opening essay is fascinating, since it entails Sasse's initial visit to America. His comments are penetrating and analytical, e.g. "This churchliness of life has a down side to be sure: the secularization of the church. ... Tkhey have opened their doors in part to modern civilization, which has endangered the purity and depth of the faith. Here is the reason for that superficiality of American church life which repulses us Germans." "The consequence of this, along with the concurrent leveling effect of American life, is an elimination of confessional anthitheses. .... All this has created a common religious atmosphere, in which the confessional lines are blurred. Thus fighting has been replaced by cooperation, one of the great American catchwords."

Delivered in 1928, an essay on the church as body of Christ is yet another of Sasse's confessional themes, strongly confessing the Lutheran substance of sacramental presence of Christ: "The church is the body of Christ, is identical with the body of Christ, which is really present in the Lord's Supper. The participation in the body and blood of Christ present in the Lord's Supper is synonymous with membership in his body."

Instructive thoughts and admonitions which provide more than ample reflective thought of their adaptation and input to current theological issues and ponderings.

A valuable resource for the church of the Reformation and those interested in listening in on this timeless saint of the Lord's literary output.

This collection of pulp tales brilliantly shows just how different the meaning of a writer's work can differ between a fan and the writer. Editor John Stanley, host of the once popular San Francisco based late night horror movie television show Creature Features, put together many of Robert Bloch's 'famous' Lefty Feep stories. Each yarn involved a very contemporary (for the 1940's that is) con man named Lefty Feep who delighted in telling some long suffering schmuck in a coffee shop the wild tales about his failed get rich quick schemes. Written for the fantasy pulps of yore, each tale has a magical trapping of sorts (i.e. flying carpets, genie in a bottle, etc) that inevitably trip up our tireless, and quite clueless, fall guy of a hero. Not surprisingly Bloch barely remembered writing some of the stories (most were written at the request of the publisher and not out of any desire by Bloch to explore the character further) and this workmanlike attitude casts a humorous light on Stanley's obvious, and quite fanatical, love for the character in the interview segments with Bloch that bookend each story. The small press edition, from Stanley's own, and now defunct, Creatures at Large Press, was intended to be the first volume in a series, but none ever followed. Bloch, in his unauthorized autobiography, blamed the stories with his trademarked bemused self-deprecation. Highly recommended for both the silly stories and the probably unintended fan/writer insight.

I eventually bought this book because none of the libraries in my area had it! Marvin Pope was one of the big figures in Northwest Semitic studies a generation back. His ground breaking work in Song of Songs as well as his theories concerning the cult of the dead in the Levant provide the background for the title of this collection of essays. The list of contributors to this feschrift reads like a whose-who in ANE. Contributors incluse M. Dahood, W. Hallo, B. Foster, C. Gordon, R. Murphy, D. Pardee, and S. Parker just to mention a few. There are 35 articles in all. While the articles are a bit dated -- especially those involving the cult of the dead -- this is still an important work that will provide the student of the ANE with hours of fascinating reading.

I've been a linguist/translator for over 20 years (English is my native language). I've used literally hundreds of reference books in my life, and for the average user (H.S. and college students, parents helping kids with homework, people proofreading their own or colleaques' work...) I would rank this as one of the two best English grammar books I have ever encountered. It is well organized, so it is easy to find the right section. It is clearly written, so you don't have to decipher the text. It indicates whether particular items are required by grammar rules, or merely prefered, so you don't have to wonder if something could be phrased differently if you want to. I give it my highest recommendation!

This excellent text which is now in its 6th edition is probably the best general coverage of the science of parasitology available. I teach parasitology at the university level, which means that I have surveyed the competition. For completeness, abundance of relevant illustrations, and well-written coverage, this book is the best I have seen. I reviewed parts of the book for the publisher prior to this latest edition, and I believe that this latest edition is significantly better that the 5th. One point I should make is that this is not a clinical parasitology text covering only parasites of humans and our domesticated animals, nor is it a medical guide to treatment. Rather it is an excellent and broad coverage of the strange and interesting world of the parasites of animals.

This very beautiful book is a good introduction to Manuel Neri's sculptures, but it is also cherished by those who have followed his career for years.

The book is filled with fantastic photographs! The elegant photographs of his work (going back to the 50's) are magnificent. It is an art in itself to photograph sculpture, and I am sorry to say that my search for the photographer's name ended in frustration. He or she deserves a lot of credit.

There are also wonderful snapshots from Neri's life, with many nice photos of the artist with second wife Joan Brown (see Tsujimoto, Karen: The Art of Joan Brown). It's a real slice of an exciting era in west coast art: the 50's, 60's and 70's.

What Neri has done for figurative art covers a greater scope than that of the San Francisco Bay Area, yet he is firmly part of the Bay Area figurative tradition. All the contributors speak of the atmosphere into which Neri arrived as an art student, but particularly Beardsly places him in a unique, thriving artists' society. He does this by writing about how Neri's relationships with Joan Brown and Mark DeSuvero impacted his work; their images live and breathe with profundity in certain of Neri's sculptures (shown with the text).

The book is divided in two: the artist's work and the artist's life; both are compelling enough, it would have been unwise to mix them. The book is very well organized.

Neri's work may at first appear too rough to the eye that only knows Rodin and Donatello, but a second look will discover the grace and energy the artist creates in every work. It is a great book for anyone interested in figurative art. Neri's studies and drawings are quite beautiful by themselves... A great book for any artist who enjoys capturing the figure, either the one who just likes to dabble in life drawing or the serious and technically-minded draftsman. Anyone at all can find in Neri's work a new way to look at line and the figure. Also great for anyone who wants to get to know Bay Area art.