I spent a good deal of time this summer searching for this title and was thrilled to learn that it was to be reprinted. Catherine Sayler is an excellent character who is an interesting member of the California female private investigators who fill my bookshelves and entertain my friends and me. I recommend this to all who enjoy Kinsey Milhone and the other private "eyes" of California. Enjoy.

This book is the best of its kind for social workers--indeed any mental health professional or community organizer--on using the internet for professional and social change purposes. The URLs are OK--basically well chosen but too few and inevitably dated--like every other internet guidebook! But the overview is very clear and the applicationsections are outstanding! The best of its kind for personal learning or teaching purposes. [I don't know Grant or Grobman -- but look forward to meeting them!]

We use this book in our pronunciation/intonation ESL classes (for advanced adult speakers) because it covers all the essential areas of sound production: pronunciation, intonation, word stress, rhythm, and linking. The examples are very helpful and clear. The exercises are well written and relevant for adult speakers.

The supplemental materials are also great, especially for people working with a tutor. There is a speech profile to be completed by the student and reviewed by an instructor or tutor, which can help students focus on their strengths and weaknesses. There is also a good review of the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) which is very useful for students who are not familiar with this transcription system. There are also sections which give an overview of the vowel and consonant sounds of American English. It also has good suggestions for independent learning, which are great to give students who have finished a class and are wondering what to do next.

The book can be used with or without the tapes. You do need to have access to a native speaker to make use of many of the exercises. This could be your teacher or tutor, or even just an American friend. I don't see this a weakness, because anyone studying English needs regular native speaker feedback , but it is something to be aware of if you are studying on your own.

Overall, one of the best pronunciation books available.

In recent years Christians have become increasingly polarized around the question of what and how women should serve in the church and in the world, with rival organizations, conferences, books and articles all catching the public eye. Competing explanations of scripture, of history, and of human nature all vie for attention, while on the ground, churches and Christian ministries find themselves in tension between members who not only disagree, but question the fidelity of those with whom they differ. Linda Belleville has served us well with a book that moves sure-footedly through the issues: she gathers and concisely presents evidence for the actual roles women played in New Testament times, sets well the context for understanding Biblical statements, and judiciously presents and weighs differing interpretations of crucial texts about women and about leadership in the church. This is a book to move the discussion forward, eliminating some points of contention, and clarifying what's at issue in others.

Linda Grant has just won the British Orange Prize 2000 for her new book "When I Lived in Modern Times". As with her first well-received novel "The Cast Iron Shore" (out of print), this is a skilful combination of the personal and the political. In the Orange winner book, we follow the fortunes of Evelyn Sert who leaves postwar UK after her mother's death for a new life in Palestine. Evelyn never knew her father and grew up in what she describes as a 'shadow family', her mother the mistress of a married Jewish businessman. Arriving in British-ruled Palestine, Evelyn is like a blank canvas, in search of an identity for herself. An admirer of all things modern and with no interest in the past, she finds herself in a country with its face turned firmly towards the future. Evelyn settles in the modern city of Tel Aviv and soon becomes involved with the struggle for Jewish independence. Assuming the identity of hairdresser enables her to pass information about the policemen husbands of her British clients to her lover in the Jewish underground movement. Tel Aviv is home to the Jewish refugees of the world and Evelyn soon discovers that it is one thing to survive, but another to survive intact. Grant produces strong visual imagery and dynamic characters with memorable voices that resonate throughout this enticing and satisfying novel. A deserved prize, then.

If you've ever had a relative or loved one slip away into dementia, this book will strike home. And if you've had a friend going through this experience, this book will help you to understand what they are going through. This book, like the experience of living with dementia, is at times funny, at times tearful. It's an honest picture of what it's like to be with someone who is rapidly losing who they were.

I bought this book after hearing the NPR interview with the author, because a close friend was coping with a similar situation (mother slipping into dementia, angry outbursts, fighting to get out of nursing home). This book is a fascinating portrait of the author's parents, their good points and bad. Very readable. I didn't want to put it down.

This is a short, readable, heavily anecdotal account of women's history in sailing. It contains many amazing facts (e.g., The world's most successful pirate was a woman. The only teenager ever to captain a clipper ship around Cape Horn while pregnant was a woman.) The book gave me a different perspective on sailing and a different perspective on women's place in history. I wish the stories had been footnoted with sources, though. De Pauw explicitly cites sources in a handful of cases, but not in many others.

I think women pirates are cool to read about because I didn't know a lot about them. The book was good because it had a lot of imformation on women in the pirate days.

This is a wonderful book of biographies of 19th century seafaring women. The women vary from female pirates, to merchant ship captains to the wives of captains who went to sea with their men. I have reread it several times and find it a delightful addition to nautical lore.

I am British and I now live in Israel having emmigrated here (albeit in 1999 and not 1946). And I love Tel Aviv and its history.

To be honest I was quite surprised by the reviews that this book got since I was underwhelmed by truth in the writing. The book's description of Israel just strikes me as very flat and though there are portraits of inhabitants and characters (ie Yekkes, refugees, British soldiers, activists) the writing does not take you to what is the real Israel.

The writing style is good but as should be clear here not in my view prose fitting to describe Israel.

I am leaving aside socio- views - take it from a Londoner, what is overwhelming about Irael is the heat, the humidity, the vitality of the people. This absolutely does not come across in the book, to my mind. I realise 1946 was different when you are mixing amongst Yekkes and camp surivors but the still the description of the Kibbutznikim in the book did not describe the energy that jumps out of peoples'skin here.

The smells in israel, the colour of the sky, the heat, nature, the sea - all these things are overwhelming to a native Londoner and certainly a cosseted girl circo 1946 but none of this comes in the book. If you have never been to Israel and want to understand what I am talking about a good start are Israeli painters of this century such as Kalishman, Shalom Reisner, Aharon, Agam, Nahum Gutman.

The professional cricital reviews to this book that I have seen are very positive, To be honest I don't know why. Perhaps because they are written by people who are looking inside the lines of the book for some kind of cathartic English literature explanation for the State's Establishment and whatever they think they should read is contained within?..

This is one book that should bear out my personal experience to an extent but disappointingly I did not find that it did capture the lust and intensity of this land and instead was a tale of a Londoner who finds herself in the Middle East and just muttered "öh."

Linda Grants' story was captivating. It reminded much of my own experiences of living as an immigrant in Tel Aviv. I learned a great deal from her story about the early immigrants to the city and their unique characters and ways of behavior. The story follows a young English women who leaves England for Palestine in the years before the establishment of the State of Israel. One learns of the kibbutz experience and its hardships, of the difficulties of adjusting to life in a new country with its different cultures and norms. The descriptions of the British and the many different immigrant groups in Tel Aviv were insightful. As someone who has lived in Tel Aviv many of Linda Grants' descriptions run true to this day. This is book worth reading. As a side note Ms. Grant recommends a book on Tel Aviv by J. Schlor which I recently purchased which is fantastic. It offers historical insights into the creation of the city of Tel Aviv

Ms. Grant's fascinating tale of the life of a girl of confused and sometimes ambiguous identity is both enthralling and pleasurable to read. Its locution and intrictae symbolisms bespeak the literary facets that have in the past molded extolled classics. Notably, however, "Modern Times" is just as accessible as it is enigmatic. It is first and foremost a quest for understanding- of the human character, of sexuality, of nationalism, of race, of culture. The main character is juxtaposed with the convulsive chaos which is her setting, an Israel under a waning British regime seeking its own unique independence. It is a tale of femininity and masculinity, one of communism and capitalism, of the melange of Europeans who clash whilst Israel clashes with the British Empire. It reconciles wealth and poverty and death and life.

And from these entropic maladies and elysianities, a new sense of being is engendered- the modern one, in which time looks forward rather than backward, in which civilisation marches on in a triumphant Israel, and in which the main chacater finds herself abandoning a past which will be useless to her in the new state. Divorce from anachronism, from Europe, and for Jews from a hostile world is the explicit ideology, but that is also juxtaposed with the diversity of people who come into contact with one another- and are often in conflict culturally and ideologically.

This book will be a staple in classrooms within twenty years- it has such power. I encourage a thorough digestion of its multitudinous ideas.

This volume (as well as the series in general), is somewhat helpful for application of the text, but it certainly should not be used in isolation. I found this one to be rather shallow in that it gives little time to the historical situation in the text. A better commentary that includes extra focus on application, but without diminishing original meaning and history, is the NIV Application Commentary on Luke by Darrell Bock.

This commentary is the third one written on Luke by the same author. It focuses on contemperary application of Luke's message. One might need another (more detailed) commentary to determine the original meaning of the text. Those with necessary training in the Biblical Greek should consult his two-volume commentary published by Baker.

This is a great resource for preparing sermons on Luke, or even for just reading along while you read Luke in your own home. It's easy to read, and gives valuable insights. I'm glad I bought it.

This book, while helpful and a good start is a little too simplistic to be really useful. I was just expecting more from the book than I really got. While it makes writing a grant look easy, unfortunately there is no real meat to the book. I was somewhat disappointed in the book when I received it the other day. However, it does have some great lists of words that are useful for writing; to better convey your meanings and it does have some good graphic organizers to help you plan.

Teachers and administrators around the country are using this book as their #1 source for grant writing. It really works. In the past few weeks, I have heard from teachers who got [$$$] for a teen mentoring program and [$$$] for classroom book sets and field trips. One elementary school got 12 grants totaling almost [$$$] using the strategies. The money is there and this book can take you there!

Teachers will find this book easy to use and full of hints for writing a first grant or refining subsequent grants. I have both grant books that this writer did and they have helped my school to get dollars that we needed. A must have!

Of the modern commentaries of the New Testament, this may be one of the most easy to grasp. The writing style is friendly, and it doesn't bog the reader down scholarly analysis of every other word. As is the case with many Bible commentaries, I wish the typeface were a bit larger.

If you are a Bible Study teacher and would like one reference book on the NT, Raymond E. Brown's may be the most scholarly, but Barton's book is more friendly and, ultimately, more useful from the standpoint of your students.

Very useful tool to aid in your Bible studies. If you have trouble understanding what a particular verse means, or what it means in your life today, this is a good book to have. I looked at a few other books like this, but like the layout, and price of this one best.