Carol Frost's poetry really speaks to me. It is full of mystery--the mysteries of love, beauty, death, surprise, cruelty, art--yet at the same time is dazzlingly direct. Each of her best poems, and there are many, leaves an indelible scar. If you love poetry you can't afford to ignore this book!

"LOVE AND SCORN is highly original work. The poems are hard-felt and new, with surprises around every corner. Carol Frost is a realist, a realist of excitements and exaltations. She is one of the three or four best of her generation." --Donald Justice

There isn't much I can say about these poems in the way of explantion--that is, not without taking away any of the lingering resonance that they exude upon the reader. I will tell you that this is truly great, original poetry, written in lines that, though they are often quite free free verse, rank very highly on the memorability scale. Carol Frost, I assure you, will someday be considered a great and important poet, a poet of nature, bodies, myths--and with this book of new & selected poems, she is well on her way. Reading her work is a sometimes humbling experience, though it will leave you grateful.

Let me leave you with a half dozen or so of my favorite pieces: "Waking," "Flicker," "Sin," "Pure," "Scorn," "Apple Rind," "To Kill a Deer."

While this book gave me an overview of the basic process of donor insemination (DI), its pitfalls and successes, I found myself wanting...more. More information, more details on exactly how it all works, why, statistics, etc. This book is, in my opinion, more focused on the emotions of dealing with infertility -- complete with little vignettes *ad nauseum* from DI parents -- the DI process and dealing with postpartum DI concerns. (While those issues are indeed important and that info useful, it wasn't really what I had expected the book to be majoratively focused on.)

For single women choosing to parent alone or for lesbian couples, you may find this book a little tiresome, as a good 90% of the language and content addresses couples and nearly every vignette/personal story (perhaps 98%) is from a DI couple. The authors are very upfront about this right in the foreword for the book, but they should perhaps be more forthcoming about that fact on the bookjacket/editorial description, as by then you've likely purchased the book. :-) In the meantime, I've ordered Single Mother by Choice (by Mattes) and have higher hopes.

Where has this book been? This book has everything you always wanted to know about DI but had no one to ask. Helping the Stork is truly a support group in a book. This book is as technical as necessary but it deals with the feelings involved in the DI process. This is a very warm book and easy to read. No matter what feelings you are having you will find them in this book. The authors recognize that DI is a physical and emotional journey toward parenthood. Why should you own this book? Because although this is the only DI book published in the 1990s, it is also an excellent book. These authors acknowledge that DI is not just for married couples. There is a section on Becoming a Mom Without a Dad, Becoming a Single Mom Through DI, Lesbian Couples Creating Families through DI, and a section on Celebrating Differences. Other sections I think are wonderful include: Putting Together Your Medical Team, Emotional Needs At That First Insemination, Two Methods of Insemination, When DI Memories Come to Mind, and Selecting on a Donor's Personal Statements. My favorite chapter was chapter 10 - Humor in Hindsight. The book quotes dialogue from Wendy Levy's zany film SWIM, SWIM...TALKING TO SPERM AND OTHER DESPERATE ACTS. "I start to take Clomiphene, a relatively mild fertility drug, and thankfully, I experience no side effects, except maybe locking my girlfriend in the closet once a week if she forgets to vacuum her hair off the bathroom floor. Okay, a few mood swings..." And, if you enjoy reading, which I am sure you do if you are an Amazon fan, this book is worth the price just for the bibliography included in the end of the book.

If there was only one thing I could say about the book Helping the Stork it would be "Why did it take so long for this book to be written?" Carol Frost Vercollone and Heidi and Robert Moss have written an excellent guide for those thinking about using donor insemination to build their families, and also for those who already have their famlies through DI. This book was written for others to explore the issues surrounding donor insemination and to help them come to their own decisions about this common but not openly talked about form of family building. The added bonus is that it is also written for families, friends and health professionals to help in their understanding of the concerns and the issues that DI families face. The authors, from their own personal experience with DI and through counselling others want to provide reassurance that DI can be a wonderfully positive way to build families. This book has an easy to read style and is filled with numerous personal anecdotes from others who have either gone through DI or have some knowledge of it. I felt this was the best part of the book, the connection with others, their advice, fears, thoughts and honesty which can only come from people directly involved with this process. For those of you thinking you are alone in using DI, this book can certainly offer some comfort in the personal stories of others and the authors obvious intimate knowledge of this topic. The book goes through the various steps of DI, the decision making, issues of privacey and disclosure, and how to go about initiating the DI process. The authors are careful to try to cover issues concerning all individuals who may be using DI, including married couples, lesbians and single women. Also valuable in the book is the resource list and the bibliography. I'd like to share this passage from the book which I felt was it's strongest message. "Our goal, both in writing this book and in our counselling, is to change social attitudes toward DI so much that if you do tell, you can feel more confident that your child will ultimately view this news positively, not negatively. It may never be OK that there was so little donor information provided or that your family began with such suffering for the parents, but you'll certainly get across just how wanted your child was." Helping the Stork has been a long awaited for book that will hopefully do just that.

A useful book that provides a good summary comparing differing Accounting Standards and approaches between countries. However, it is not worth the price. It is supposedly written for later year undergraduate and masters accounting students. It is more suitable for general second year accounting students. Plus, as I am working with a multinational European bank in Japan, the book is, rapidly becoming, out of date. There is none of the simply but incisive commentary which can be found in other books about the differences and outcomes of general accounting principals drawn from different countries.

This book, written as a text for accounting/business students, provides an excellent overview of accounting standards around the world. Rather than providing a detailed listing of accounting standards for each country (best left for reference texts and online, easily updatable sources) the authors focus on the key features of accounting standards, disclosures and harmonization efforts worldwide.

This book provides an excellent, basic primer in international accounting. It is easily read by anyone with a basic understanding of business and finance and/or accounting. The authors provide numerous examples of international financial reporting, taken from actual financial statements and annual reports.