Recently, I was working on a project in which I needed images and data on wolves. This purchase was an afterthought, and turned out to be a great little book that offered all of the information I needed. I found it to be quite helpful and intellegent for a kids book, with everything neatly distilled down to basic data.

The style is that of a picture book, with lovingly detailed paintings of various breeds of wolves and their daily activities. Roberto Osti has excelled here with the realistic artwork of the animals and their habitat.

The book covers just about everything you'd want to know about the basics in a sort of FAQ of wolf questions and answers.

Although the reading level is listed as 4-8 years old, this is not exactly the best book for pre-schoolers. Some younger children may be upset by realistic depictions of wolves chasing and munching on bunny rabbits. For the older reader (say, 7-8 years old), this should be just fine should they develop an interest in these fascinating creatures.

One of the few recent books that has dared to take up the challenge of producing a good single volume (452 pages) on *all* cat species, there is an inevitability that this volume will be compared with the likes of Guggisberg's "Wild Cats of the World" (1975).

In approach, the Sunquists' have chosen to create a more "scientific" presentation than Guggisberg; focusing less upon anecdotes and narrative, and including much summary information from previously published researches, many of which are indeed difficult to obtain first-hand.
In many areas, of course, this shows how *little* we actually know about many felid species: the entry for the flat-headed cat, for example, is brief and contains little new information from the last 27 years.

For each species, we are given a color image (bound in two signatures), one or more black and white pictures as a chapter heading, followed by a more-or-less detailed species account which has a core format (description, distribution, ecology, behavior and status in the wild) to which is added various other information, as is available.
Given the number of sources available in many cases, these accounts are well written and fully referenced within each species' chapter; a major plus for further researches.

Further chapters on study and conservation, the introduction ("What is a Cat"?) and appendices on communication, reproduction, trade and status (IUCN/CITES) seem to be somewhat "tagged on".
The first and last of these would be ably complemented by the IUCN's "Wild Cats: Status Survey and Conservation Action Plan" (also available free-of-charge, on-line), whilst Andrew Kitchener's "The Natural History of the Wild Cats" and Paul Leyhausen's "Cat Behavior" would be of considerable interest with regards the other aspects; albeit there is, as yet, no single-volume reference work covering all felid-related topics in detail.

On the down side, the Sunquist's book appears to show a wilful and selective neglect of work carried out on a "non-scientific" basis. This is perhaps most obvious to the layperson in the section on translocation and reintroduction which totally fails to mention the Adamson's ("Born Free"), Billy Singh ("Tiger Haven"), and others. Given that issues surrounding the reintroduction of human-socialised big cats are of importance, it is surprising that such discussions are totally avoided, here.

Other worries include careless interpretation (such as the family tree of wild cats on page 14, suggesting that many felid lineages diverged from the same common ancestor at a single instant in time) and the avoidance of scientific works not published in Western sources. The dustwrapper inscription suggests that the authors "have spent more than a decade gathering information about cats from every available source", yet on tigers alone they totally miss key books and papers in the Indian literature on man-eating (Chakrabarti), white and other color variations (Desai, L.A.K. Singh), olfactory communication and social behavior (Choudhury, Sankhala, etc.) and ethnographic impact/human interaction (Chakrabarti, Niyogi, A. Singh, etc.). The same absence of references to primary Russian sources (for the Amur tiger) is also noted, and similarly for other species (such as the only worthwhile book on the Asiatic lion, Srivastav's "Asiatic Lion: On the brink").

It is also unclear what the authors have to benefit from the assertion (in the Introduction) that 25 years ago, "the biology of even easily recognizable species... was virtually unknown, and nothing was known about what they needed in terms of space and food". Despite the fact that our knowledge has increased greatly in recent years, a review of the available literature from the 1960s through mid-1970s proves this statement to be largely false: indeed, references to these "non-existent" sources are made throughout the Sunquists' book....

On balance, then, good reading and a most worthwhile addition to any wild cat reference library, albeit our understanding of these intriguing and fascinating animals is in a continual state of flux and it can be dangerous to place *too* much credence in any single volume written at a given date.

The 1936 election marked the birth for pollsters George Gallup and Elmo Roper, whose names are now well-known. But no one knows the name of Emil Hurja, who was the driving force behind the Roosevelt campaign. While the Literary Digest was predicting a landslide victory for Republican opponent Alf Landon, Roosevelt was entirely confident of his reelection because of Hurja's work. Holli, seemingly the only person to even mention Hurja's name, amazingly recounts his life and details how Hurja led Roosevelt to be consistently victorious. A must-read for anyone interested in the history of public opinion polling or the New Deal Era.

This book validated painful experiences my team discovered in establishing our Year 2000 project management offfice. Specifically, I found the book's brief and practical coverage of relationship management and configuration management important to the modernization of our project management office. Since our executive steering committee intends to support our project management office beyond the Year 2000, this book will be required reading to all program managers, project managers and team leaders as well as our contractor staff.

This book complimented and helped improve our corporate project management methodology.

As a trained mechanical engineer, I struggled with an assignment to establish a global project office. This book was a much needed reference that helped me get started. I recommended it highly.

The author knows a lot about the accounting principles mentioned in the book, but he has forgotton that he is writing a textbook, not a novel. He has written too much and has failed to make good use of diagrams or tables to illustrate some concepts which are too difficult to grasp when expressed only in words.

This book is a learning book for accounting principles but it isn't for the novice student. This book looks at the settings for reports that all accountants need to learn and looks at them closely. In going through this book you see the various items that need to be reported in financial statements, how certain calculations are made in the accounting principles and provides a good base for any accounting student.

This is he quintisential goto book for all you accounting needs. Quite well written and an excellent refernce.

+5 for stories but -4 word selection I enjoyed the humerous plays - great writing/acting - and agree that these are words you need to know, but I'd assume you already do unless English is a 2nd lang. If you don't know Technology, Perceive, Compound, Drudgery, Implore, Tinge, Badger, Realm, indiscriminate, (some of the 17 target words from the 1st play, act 1), then this would likely be a good tape for you. Many idioms are also covered. Typical level of difficulty are the 3 from the 2nd play, "cold feet", "keep a stiff upper lip", and "look a gift horse in the mouth". One or two words per story are at a more difficult level like prognosticate, nefarious, pique, but why endure all the definitions of elementary words/idioms when WordBuilders is available? Tip to authors: Lose the idioms, introduce only 7 or 8 words per act, and select more advanced words. Your stories were the best!

Wordplay was given to my 9th grade son and he enjoyed them. He usually cannot listen to tapes but he found this very entertaining.

Harsh, annoying, dull. Could not make it through all the tapes. Found it to be a grade school level.

I read this book after having watched the A&E production The Crossing. The screenplay for the video was written by Howard Fast, who also of course wrote this book. The video is much better. The book is not well written and it does not go into great depth about the Battle at Trenton. It does, however, provide information that is not in the video and thus is a useful companion to the video.

The book makes clear that the video changed some things for dramatic effect. For example, the book makes clear that Washington did not choose to attack Trenton on Christmas Day because he expected the Hessian troops to be caught off guard on that day; that is the day that coincidentally was the first day he could launch his attack. The video, though, makes it seem as though he calculated it to be on Christmas Day.

The book does not capture the heroic qualities of Washington in the same way as the video. However, it is worth reading as a way to enhance understanding of what is being depicted in the video.

I read this based on the fact that I enjoyed the movie adaptation so much. The movie credits characterized it as "a novel", but if it is a novelized telling, I can't say that I cared for the almost complete "third person" way in which it was done. If Howard Fast could write such great dialogue for the screenplay, I'm not sure why he didn't do it for the book itself. I believe it would have had a more readable flow to it. It couldn't seem to decide if it was a novel or a factual narrative. His historical notes in the back were more interestingly told than the "story" itself. I may have thought better of it if I had read the book first, but after the screenplay, it was a disappointment.

I've read the historical accounts of the Delaware Crossing and the subsequent battle of Trenton. However, Howard Fast's work puts you inside the head of the characters. Granted some of this can be done with historical documents, but it can be clumsy and certainly less literate than this book. It's not a true history book, but it's a great way to get started or to help you visualize what happened.

Melvin Bukeit is a talented writer, no questions on that score. In "Strange Fire" what bothered me was Bukiet's cavalier attitude towards his locale: the mideast. His agility and cleverness with languge miss the beat here. He's not a writer who creates caring toward his bizarre (in good and bad sense) characters, nor about their situations. I think he needs to amplify his ability with words with heart. That is just one man's honest opinion. Because, without heart and soul, for lack of better words, the plot isn't intimately gripping.

Bukiet writes well about blindness, conveying a keen sense of his protagonists' reliance upon others and his other senses in order to stay alive. This could have been worked well into a parable about the Middle East-- how the religious ecosystem, with one holy place on top of another, demands a forever-uncertain reliance on others. This seems to have been completely ignored, however, in favor of a roller-coaster political thriller. It was an enjoyable book, but one that a) only revealed a superficial understanding of the religious depths of conflict in the Middle East and often resorted to caraciatures rather than true examination and b) seemed to dumb itself down to find a more common-ground audience.

Bukiet is a very good writer and is capable of more.

In Melvin Jules Bukiet's novel, the lead character, Nathan Kazakov is exceedingly clever, wickedly funny, and a hopelessly addictive international thriller. He's gay. He's blind. He's fatherless. He's a speechwriter for Russian group.

The jist of the book is, Kazakov's left ear is destroyed by a bullet meant for his boss, the Israeli Prime Minister. Consumed by the desire to discover exactly what happened, Kazakov begins an investigation that leads him into a web of conspiracies involving messianic Orthodox settlers, Arab terrorists, and the Israeli secret service. Was the bullet intended for Kazakov? For the prime minister? Or perhaps the prime minister's charismatic son Gabriel, an archaeologist who does not share his father's politics? One trail leads to Leviticus, another beneath the Temple Mount. This book really makes you feel what it is like to be blind.

Again, I highly recommend this book to all who like a great thriller that still has a gay underlying theme.

NEVER EVER READ THIS BOOK! This is the worst book in the world. It has no plot and no action what so ever. I can't believe people would read this book for pleasure. I only read it because I had to write an essay on it. I am never going to read any of Carson Mccullers other books and I would strongly recomend you not to either. It is poorly written and I hate Carson Mccullers for writing it!

A word of advice---Ignore the first review. It was obviously written by someone looking for an easy fix to a classroom assignment. No plot? Well---I guess that's because it's a book of essays written ABOUT McCullers work. The author HATES McCullers for having written it? She didn't. It's a series of essays analyzing McCullers' work. The collection was gathered (that is edited) by Clark and Friedman. If you want critical work about McCullers instead of the ramblings of someone who obviously put no thought or knowledge into a response, get this book.

Needless to say, any book that gathers well-thought, professional essays on Carson McCullers' writing/thought is essential reading for any literary scholar. While not inexpense, it contains journal articles that the reader would not be able to obtain otherwise, or if so, at much greater cost.

Having read other "Five Views" books before, I really looked forward to this one. However after finishing the book I was somewhat disappointed. Of the five views presented, only three of them struck me as really different from each other: the Wesleyan, Reformed, and dispensational views. The Pentecostal and Keswick views sounded far to similar to the other three to justify their inclusion. In fact, the responses of the authors to each other's essays was almost always "this view is so similar to mine." While that was nice because the debate was never uncharitable, it really just seemed too repetitive.

It would have been better to keep the three views I mentioned above, the Wesleyan, Reformed, and dispensational, and added a fourth view that was tragically not mentioned in the book: the so-called "Oberlin" view of sanctification. This was the view propounded by Charles Finney and Asa Mahan. Though Oberlin professors themselves had slightly different views on the subject, President Fairchild best pinned it down in that Oberlin sanctification does not have the "second blessing" distinctive that Wesleyan sanctification has, but does teach that it is possible to obey God completely. That view is very important historically, and as I said, was not even mentioned in the book.

There are however, occassional discussions in the book that I found myself appreciating that were well referenced.

As it stands now, I'd not highly recommend this book. I would recommend "Wholeness in Christ" by Greathouse for a good presentation of Wesleyan sanctification. Then I'd say to pick up another book (though I haven't found a great one yet) for a presentation of Reformed sanctification. I think the only way to learn about Oberlin sanctification is to read older books by Finney on the subject.

I had to read this book while taking a college course on ethics. I found the studies to be very thought provoking with some having stronger, biblical arguments than others.

I had some problems with the strong remarks held by Dieter and Hoekma for Stanley Horton, the only Pentecostal of the five scholars. Horton, a very graceful and well educated man whom I have met, gave an excellent treatment to the Assemblies of God approach to the doctrine of sanctification. Dieter (Wesleyan) and Hoekma (Refomed) treated Horton with much contempt while not arguing against his points using various texts to back up their points.

I would encourage you, if you are like me and you enjoy studying various theological camps on many issues, this is a book you will enjoy reading.

The New Testament exhorts Christians to "walk in the Spirit". What does that look like practically? How does the evangelical church teach believers how to "be holy" as God is holy? Too often we do not critically examine our teaching -- and the consideration of our teaching against other evangelical views that attempt to do justice to Scripture is often very helpful in evaluating our own position. That is precisely the reason why this book is helpful. This book allows you to read proponents of the views in their own words -- which is a helpful antidote against the mischaracterization that can sometimes occur in a standard theology text.

That being said, because all 5 indeed attempt to do justice to all of Scripture, they are actually not that far different from one another. Where they differ is in nuanced visions of sin, "walking in the Spirit", the question of the old v. new nature struggle, and in "being filled with the Spirit".

Don't be put off if the terms "Keswick" and "Augustinian-Dispensational" are unfamiliar to you. They are actually very common views in evangelical Christianity -- and related forms of both are taught throughout the evangelical Christian church (just not often identified by those terms)! Two very well-known ministries that espouse Keswick teaching are the Christian and Missionary Alliance and Campus Crusade for Christ. "Augustinian-Dispensational" is just a term Walvoord uses to identify the teaching on personal holiness which has been historically associated with Augustine, the early Reformers, and many dispensational and Bible churches today. You'll find it in Jerry Bridges' "Pursuit of Holiness", and probably much other contemporary Christian devotional and theological literature. It basically contends that the old and new natures are alive and active within the Christian believer, whereas the modern Reformed view is that the old nature is empirically dead.

Especially interesting is how each author traces the historical development of the teaching.

I did not find Dieter's and Horton's arguments to be well-defended from Scripture. Fundamentally, I find that the Wesleyan understanding of sin as applying only to intential wrong-doing and the Pentecostal understanding of being "baptized in the Spirit" as referring to charismatic experience are both problematic. The other three make compelling arguments from Scripture, but I must bark this note of caution: all of the authors make too much of the Greek verb tense! Unfortunately, the arguement of the tense of Greek verbs in the New Testament is only a good indicator, not a firm foundation, particularly the aorist -- which does not have to refer to a fixed past event! Rather, the aorist is best described as "undefined" and somewhat fluid in meaning. So we hold must hold exquisitely nuanced theological positions on sanctification in humility -- clinging to the essentials and allowing for some apparent paradox (Paul loves to say again and again in his epistles that 'you have put off the old nature' and then implore his readers later to 'put off the old nature'!).

May God bless you as you read this fine exploration of this important topic of faith and practice.