Great Book. Invalueable to anyone from rec. divers to commercial/tech divers. Now I'm waiting for the 4th edition to come out.

This is by far the best and most complete collection of diving knowledge i have seen. It is not an introduction to diving, but realy a manual for all levels of divers, from the novice diver searching for futher information, to the experienced instructor looking for the latest updates. Dont miss it.

I sincerely feel that the NOAA Diving Manual should be a required text for anybody who is a diving professional. The information presented is valuable to all divers: recreational, technical, scientific, and commercial. I refer to this text often and bring it to all classes I work.

This book encouraged me to buy Photoshop Elements and get started learning this powerful and complex software (I have used Microsoft's Picture It! and a watered-down version of Phtoshop before, the latter for several years). This book coveres several types of media. A number of different artists put together paintings using the software to aid in explorations of graphic ideas and planning. Basically, it is an introduction to using Photoshop (or, "...Elements") or other image editing program that demonstates the advantages, and some of the ways, a computer can be used by artists. It's chief value lies in getting you excited about expanding your tools and shows you how a computer can enhance your creativity, making it easier and quicker to explore the possibilites.

As an artist taking a Photoshop class, i was hopelessly lost in a deluge of material. This book sorts through the material and focuses only on what is necessary for an artist. Great way to take the pain out of thumbnails and value studies!

This book will be a very helpful tool for anyone using the new image-editing software to improve drawings and paintings. There are a number of examples that show what today's software will allow an artist to do. It gave me new ideas to try as I experimented with software, my scanner and digital camera. This book would be great for anyone who is looking for some great ideas and new approaches to art!

As an elementary school teacher I love sharing this wonderful story of a jewish man who shares the wonder of giving hopeless children a chance at hope. By reading letters to Santa written by children with no hope of receiving anything for Christmas, Jay Frankston played Santa to the joy and wonder of children of all ages in the Cleveland area for twelve years. A great story of selfless giving.

This little book reflects the true spirit of Christmas carried to the poor neighborhoods of N.Y.C., to children whose impoverished lives were made a little brighter by this stranger in a white beard. It's a treasure

This is my favorite Christmas story. It speaks to the hopeful child in all of us, who wants to believe in the unseen magic of a jolly old elf. It touches me every year since I first discovered this gem. Its power comes from the fact that it's a true story. Do something nice for yourself and read it.

I always wondered by Grigori Zakat never returned after his first appearance in Iceblood, considering the obvious effort involved in creating him.. Now the twisted Russian priest is back to bedevil the Cerberus warriors as they learn Zakat's ultimate goal is to trigger a another ice age and unite the survivors under his rule, his edicts enforced by Norse warriors from the lost land of Ultima Thule!

The set-up for Equinox Zero is terrific, featuring a Kane and Domi team-up on another "Lost World", Thunder Isle which is populated by all sorts of creatures pulled from different epochs of time. I think this element of the Outlanders saga is wonderful, offering many story springboards.

The scenes of Zakat's piracy with the Thulians are exciting. A standout sequence is a sea battle between Zakat's forces and a trading ship from New Edo, which tips off the Cerberus warriors that their old foe is back. Grant's anger directed toward Kane when he learns this is very realistic .

The exotic scenes in the timeless world of Ultima Thule are extremely well- wrought. Mark Ellis portrays the city from the days of ancient Norse mythology with colorful splendor,

There are a lot of high points in this novel: a great villain, excellent characterizations, a fast-paced plot, and incredibly exciting action sequences. Add them together and you have a superior Outlanders novel on every level. A must-read!.

Equinox Zero is another full-speed, balls to the wall, no-holds barred adventure novel. It has all the elements which has made this series so entertaining for so many years. First and foremost there's the return of a villian who last we saw had fallen off a cliff in Asia, way back in Iceblood.

It's Grigori Zakat, the ruthless Russian mystic whose religious cult worshiped the mummified penis of Rasputin (I can't think of too many bad guys with that kind of bizarre wrinkle in their backgrounds).

He's pretty angry at Kane, but his mission isn't just about revenge--he's making a bid to take over Ultima Thule, the lost land of Norse gods and become a version of Odin! Unlike Sindri who is an idealist bent on world conquest as a means to to an end, Zakat's ambition to trigger another ice age is the end to itself. The way he's portrayed makes the reader believe he could really pull off his mad dream.

The lost civilization novels in Outlanders are always my favorite and Equinox Zero might be the best using this theme. The civilization of super-Vikings under the Antarctic is very vivid and colorful. I particularly liked the warrior women, the Valkyries.

I also loved the opening chapters set on the Outlanders version of Jurrasic Park, Thunder Isle. There Kane and Domi are engaged in a dinosaur hunt, trying to end the threat of a tyrannosaur that Kane has nicknamed Monstrodamus. The hunt goes really bad but in the process we see a glimpse of a potential Kane/Domi relationship...particularly after she falls into what is a dinosaur latrine!!

As usual for Outlanders, it's the three dimensioanal characterizations that make this book so entertaining. Every book is almost like a visit with old friends now, finding out what they've been up to and what's been happening in their lives. All of the characters are in fine form, each one contributing a full share even the new ones from the Moon base. We also learn more about how the Imperator restored Lakesh's youth and find out it may not be the miracle he tried to convince himself it was. Grant also has some distressing news for his friends in Cerberus.

My only complaint with the book is that Shizuka has only a minor role. Her first appearance, way back in Doom Dynasty was a case of love at first sight.

This is a tight, fast-paced adventure story with plenty of action, exciting twists and unexpected turns. The lost land of Ultima Thule is a great concept, too. Equinox Zero is a solid five stars

In this latest installment of Outlanders, only the awesomely talented writer Mark Ellis can give you dinosaurs, vikings, and a renegade Russian in just one novel!
This was definately worth every sacred nuke penny I spent on this exciting and breathtaking book. This author always succeeds in one level or another to keep this series going strong with subtle changes that only seem to enhance future books to come.
Where DEATHLANDS is failing miserably (unfortunately) OUTLANDERS delivers in spades with each and every successful novel poring out of this highly talented writer.
Kane and Domi start this novel right off while hunting an unusual old foe - Monstrodamus! A dinosaur that Kane had briefly fought on Thunder Isle in a previous book.
The action is hot and furious and the characterizations of the leads characters keep you up to the wee hours of the morning, not wanting to put this book down.
From the hot jungles of Thunder Isle, to the freezing colds of Antarctica, where vikings out of legend emerge, the excitement never stops in EQUINOX ZERO!
I just can't wait for the next one. This is by far the very best in sci-fi/fantasy action/adventure entertainment out there today.
Hollywood needs to open their eyes to this series - it would be a mega-hit the likes of which they have never seen!

After reading Kate and Jim McMullan's delightful, I STINK, my children and I can't pass a garbage truck without smiling. This totally original book takes us into a whole new world of trash. Readers will relish every word uttered by the tough-talking garbage truck while falling in love with his adorable face. My children begged me to read and re-read the alphabet soup pages--a look at what every garbage truck slurps up in an average day. This is the perfect gift for children of all ages. My family anxiously awaits the next book by this very talented husband and wife (illustrator/author) team.

We think that the book I Stink is an awesome book. It's about a garbage truck, and he says he stinks. It has great illustrations and they are detailed enough that the book is awesome, but not so detailed that you can't read it out loud. Also the garbage truck tells everything that is in his truck in ABCs. This book is colorful, funny, and educational. Little kids would love it. While they would like it, they are also learning their ABCs. The ABCs are things in a garbage truck. Also, the garbage truck talks.

We can't decide what about the book we like the most: the story or the illustrations. The dialogue of the trash truck is so entertaining especially if you put a lot of drama and fun into the way you read each of the pages. The pictures are colorful and whimsical. We review the book at least twice in each sitting and find something new in the illustrations each time. You will love the alphabet soup! This book is fabulous fun each time we read it.

Starman: Sins Of The Father is the perfect book for people who think comics are infantile and insipid, because it proves they are idiots. The protagonist, Jack Knight, is a refreshing change of pace from typical comic hero. As the son of the legendary hero Starman, Jack has no desire to take his fathers place as defender of Opal City, and is content to run his "antique" shop(He sells 1950's Hawaiin shirts, old comics, vintage transistor radios, etc.) But Fate intervenes and Jack must become the new Starman to save his city, his Father, and himself. Mature without being vulgar, sentimental without being sappy, and all around well written, Starman: Sins Of The Father is a must have.

Re-reading Sins of the Father (the first of the many Starman collections), I'm struck by what a jerk Jack Knight is. Yeah, he's not a typical hero. He has a smart-mouth, and I remember when collecting view-master reels, old t-shirts and records were far more important to Jack than fighting crime. But it's amazing just how much he did grow up in the series.

Starman is about many things. It's about a man -- Jack Knight, son of a retired superhero, brother to a hero that's just been murdered. It's about the Starman legacy -- not just through the Knight family but the unrelated heroes who have used that name. It's about Jack's home Opal City, a city which doesn't exist on any real world map but with in a few pages, becomes a real as any city you know. It's about the junk that Jack collects. Little snippets of history. Dealing his father's greatest enemy who is out for revenge, Jack has to put aside his junk collecting business and fight crime. And deal with the far worse emotional burden of Jack coming to terms with his own family.

For decades, Starman was pretty much a cypher. A costume, a "cosmic rod" (or gravity rod, as it was once known) and very little else. But within this collection, writer James Robinson and artist Tony Harris have given the Knights a history, home and supporting cast as rich as Batman or Spider-Man.

Yes, there's lots of action. But the real heart of the story is emotional. Jack is a very real character, his concerns and feelings are true to life -- even if you or I can't fly.

The shadowed, angular, highly stylish and stylized art of Tony Harris perfectly complements this story.

Jack Knight doesn't wear his father's red and green tights. He favours antique WW II anti-flare googles and a worn leather jacket decorated with a Crackerjack sheriff's badge and an zodiac star design. Jack's a very modern guy, but one obsessed with things of the past. (Although oddly he intially rejects his own personal history.) This book charts a new direction, but also celebrates superheroics.

So, I think it will appeal to those who both hate and love superheroes.

The is a perfect example of great collaboration. Writer and artists work together to create a sum which is greater than the parts. Character development is equally weighted with action and plot. If anything there might actually be too much emphasis on Jack Knight's reluctance to play the hero. But that's a minor quibble. There's a great balance between Jack as a regular guy: brother, son, and small businessman; and Jack as Starman: soaring through the beautifully depicted skies of Opal City and mixing it up with the bad guys.

Opal City looks fantastic, and is a distinctive environment for Starman to flourish. Robinson and Harris have created their own world here, separate from our own. Opal City works on a similar level as Astro City works for Kurt Busiek's excellent series, and Gotham works for Batman. There are several panels where Opal City is featured, without the benefit of any of the stories' characters. This effectively enhances the impact and depth of the Starman saga.

The initial story arc included in this collection is phenomenal, introducing us to Jack and presenting his origin as Starman. The middle bits, including a few intriguing epilogues and prologues, hint at larger story arcs to be pursued in later collections. The final story detailing an encounter between the two brothers is both entertaining and insightful. I look forward to reading the second installment in this series of graphic novels.

There can be no more powerful telling of the history of slavery in the United States than to read it and hear it from the slaves' own mouths. Their recollections are, for the most part, graphic and chilling, but the diversity of these life experiences are also rich with good stories, too....slaves bonding together, looking out for one another and at times outwitting their masters and overseers. While the general knowledge of salvery has been known to many Americans for years, it is the actual detailed accounts of day-to-day life that make this book come alive. I hadn't known, for instance, that slaves were required to have passes in order to travel off the plantations or that Christmas and New Year's were largely times of rejoicing for both slave families and their master's families. Yet for the rest of the year the hardships and conditions that most slaves witnessed was incredible....beatings often for no reason, no shoes or lack of other clothing during the winter cold and often not nearly enough food. The clarity with which these former slaves recall their life 80 years or more before is an indication of how etched in their young minds life had been. The accompanying audio cassettes were the main reason l bought the book and they simply added a human dimension to the whole story. l had only two small disappointments with the audio segment....l would rather have had none of the actors read the transcripts...(the actual slave voices are far more powerful) and l wish that photos of the slave speakers could have been provided.... while there were many photos of the former slaves in the book they were not the photos of the slaves who made the audio tapes. In a time where revisionist history seems to be the rage it is, in a strange way, rather comforting to hear these stories told by the people who lived them. How these men and women suffered under bondage and lived for so many years afterward to finally tell about it is a tribute to their spirit and courage.

I am currently a high school student that read part of this for a Civil War class and let me say this is one powerful book. With people who were the slaves themselves tell you their stories, you learn alot about the antebellum period. I would recommend this book for any mature person due to the fact that some of these stories show the true horror of slavery.

For several years I've been reading powerful thought-provoking slave narratives. This is probably the most moving due to accompanying tapes of slaves discussing their thoughts and conditions when they were slaves. This book and tapes should be used in every high school American and World history classes. I recommend this book to everyone above the age of twelve. If you want to begin educating your children earlier about American history, specifically slavery have them read K.J. McWilliams books; The Journal of Darien Duff, an Emancipated Slave, The Diary of a Slave Girl, Ruby Jo, and The Journal of Leroy Jones, a Fugitive Slave. They are based on slave narratives such as this one and include many interesting photos as well as additional information.

"Queen Mary" by James Steele was everything i hoped it would be - and more. Although the author goes into detail with the ship's interiors to some extent, I think he told the "Mary"s overall story well. The book is packed with technical data and historic info all the way back to 1930, when this beautiful liner was ordered, until she was delivered in Long Beach, California, in 1967. Great photographs, too!

This book is sets the standard for other books to follow in its detailed description, in text as well as photos, of the history of the Queen Mary from the years of 1936-1967, when it was retired in Long Beach, CA.

The only shortcoming of this book is that it tells little of the history of the ship after its arrival in Long Beach in 1967. Perhaps the author considers the ship to be a shell of its former self. Indeed the Queen Mary has had an exiting "life" as a tourist attraction since its last voyage in 1967.

Still, this book is a must for any fan of the Queen Mary. It is beautifully bound and the photos are priceless.

Coloured photo's along with a history of this ship make the book not only comprehensive, but very interesting as well. The pictures alone make this book worth its cost. Highly recommended!

The third part of the Lost Earth trilogy more than makes up for the somewhat disappointing second entry. Although I had some idea of what to expect from the "preview" in part one, I had no idea Outer Darkness would be so epic, so spectacular and just plain entertaining. From the opening featuring a demolition derby with the newly-running war wag and Sandcats sent out by the baron to the suspense of Beth-Li's scheme to kill our heroes by sabotaging the mat-trans unit, Outer Darkness gets my vote as one of the top four novels in the "Outlanders" series. A lot of things happen in this book with a neat twist ending about the real nature of the Chintamani Stone and what Kane does with it. The final confrontation with Col. Thursh and the revelation of his true nature gave me the creeps. As another reviewer pointed out, the adventure in the paralell casement was like a Star Trek novel...actually, far better than most Star Trek novels I've read. Kane does a better than passable imitation of a certain starship captain with the same initials as he has. The action is explosive, the characters enticing (especially the women) and the parallel world colorfully detailed. I really liked the introduction of the Tigers of Heaven and hope they can be incorporated into the regular Outlanders continuity. Ditto for Sister Fand. I'd like to see her again, too. One of the reasons I love this series and prefer it to Deathlands is its level of sophistication. "Outlanders" doesn't talk down to readers or substitute the plot of an old western for an intelligent, action-packed and original adventure story. Yeah, "Outlanders" is still pulp fiction, but it's wonderfully realized pulp fiction. It's always imaginative and unpredictable. This series is superb and I hope it's around for a long time.

I was so disappointed in the second part of the trilogy, "Night Eternal," I didn't comment on it. I figured everyone can get off track once in a while, so I cut Outlanders some slack, hoping things would improve with the conclusion of the Lost earth Saga. I'm happy to report that not only is "Outer Darkness" an improvement, it's almost in a class by itself. I loved everything about this book, especially the Star Trek-like adventure in the alternate world. If the publisher was smart, he would create a new series featuring that universe's versions of Kane, Grant and Brigid. I particularly enjoyed seeing Fand again (from "Savage Sun"), or at least her parallel casement double. I read this book over the Labor Day weekend, which shows how much it gripped me.

As a fan of all things space opera, I was pleasantly surprised by the alternate world visited in this book--and the fact that it seemed so authentic. I can easily imagine the author writing Star Trek and Star Wars novels. "Outer Darkness" is one of the best novels in the series, very entertaining and enjoyable all the way through.

Martha Pearl is a spunky wonderful character. More than that, she is a wonderful Southern cook. Her son,James, shares her sense of humor and love of cooking. I adore the way she puts him in his place when he wants to "fuss" with her recipes. I am almost through with the entire cookbook. I have laughed and underlined and referenced. It is a great, wonderful read. Knowing recipes as I do, I can tell you that you can trust this book to give you great food. Don't wait. Don't even put this on your wish list. It's a keeper. Yum

James Villas makes no apologies for the simple ingredients that yield such delicious fare as found in this delightful cookbook. He makes it clear that these favorite foods of his childhood -- and adulthood -- depend on high-quality products and correct techniques, as well as the appeal of knowing that generations of his family have enjoyed and refined the same dishes over many years. Both reference guide and a slice of Southern culture (who won't love the inimitable Martha Pearl?), this book has a place in all kitchens. *Among many recommended recipes: Cheese Biscuits (you Southerners know that these are savory little party snacks, not bread), Yellow Squash Souffle, Crab Bisque, Peanut Soup and 1-2-3-4 Cake with Caramel Sauce

This is the cookbook I can pull out and count on to produce a wonderful dish every single time. I haven't come across a dud yet. Martha Pearl is delightful (and yes I AM hinting for a dinner invitation) and so are her recipes. The macaroni and cheese is a family favorite that already has stains on the page because I make it so often. The pecan coffee cake is another recipe I have made many times and always get compliments on. I live near Charlotte and keep hoping to run into Jimmy and Martha Pearl picking over the Silver Queen corn at the farmer's market. I would unabashedly tell her what a devoted fan she has made of this transplanted Yankee.