While I am not a culinary student, I do love to cook and learn the science behind the food. This book is the most comprehensive, best photographed book I have seen. This is written for the student, or professional preparation in terms of quantities the recipes make. You can easily scale most of them to suit your personal needs. The book is divided into various sections there is a textbook feel as each area of food is explained thoroughly, then come the recipes. This book is nice as it offers many suggestions and ideas with each recipe. While this may not be the best choice for every cook at home, I think this is a good choice for people that want a little more out a cookbook.

From beginner to professional, Professional Cooking takes anyone who loves to cook on a wonderful journey. From the basic (making breakfast eggs and coffee) to the advanced (rich sauces and international cuisine), Gisslen shows how it should be done. Ever had question about cooking? This book has the answers. If you must have only one volume in your kitchen, Professional Cooking should be that one. It's a winner in all areas.

This is an excellent book for anyone interested in the Culinary Arts. Beginning with a brief story of the origins of contemporary cooking with Escoffier, going through Hygiene and Sanitation, Kitchen Equipment and utensils, covering all the necessary techniques for the future Culinary Professional, clear, step-by-step illustrations and excellent pictures, this is the most complete cookbook I have found. It combines both the French techniques with the collaboration of Le Cordon Bleu Chefs and the American influence with the expertise of the author. As a Chef Instructor, I will use this Professional Cooking as reference for all my future classes.

Subtitled "High fashion techniqus for creating great-looking clothes" the illustrations and instructions are thorough. There are two drawbacks: a substantial amount of decorative stitching described is not available on the average serger. In fact, one of the more attractive decorative stitches in the book was for a Bernina serger that wasn't yet on the market at the time of publication. There are a lot of creative suggestions anyone can use, but you may feel "left-out" because much is geared to coverlockers that also do chainstitching and a lot of the decorative work is chainstitch-based. After reading it, I felt like I needed a new serger and the one I have is less than a year old! Second, the "Garment Gallery" is too long, my opinion. The seamstresses are rightly proud of their work, but it was more than I wanted to see. That said, if you are well acquainted with your serger's basic stitching, and want to explore its creative potential, this is a great book full of tips and ideas.

Truly excellent, I refer to it all the time for creative ideas. Just like other books on sewing, some ideas are a little cheesy for my taste. Having said that, I still think this is the best creative serging guide out there. I love the serged toggle buttons, flatlocked zipper, chain stiched details, serged French seam and the keyhole back placket serging guide. My clothes have never looked better! As for the machine, they have suggestions on how to adapt sergers with fewer stitches. I bought my machine used & factory serviced--it was a much better buy than paying the same money for a new machine with fewer options.

Serger Secrets has been one of the best books on this issue that I have ever read. I loved the full color illistrations on the different stitches the serger can do. It helps the mind to use it's imagination and create anything it wants. I found so many helpful ideas throughout the book . It was just one great book.

It's not often that a book comes along that says, "read me." Really read me. We all can all name a few. They fall under classics, with a capital C. Mary Clare Griffin's Language Lessons is one of those books, for it calls our rapt attention, not just to its poetry, its language, music, mystery, but also to its content: brutal, raw, life stuff - death, reconciliation and redemption. Language Lessons reminds us, in the words of Rainer Maria Rilke, "everything that makes more of you than you have ever been, even in your best hours, is right."

Language Lessons IS right. It will make more of you than you ever been: it will make you laugh, and cry, and make you angry and fiercely committed to living your life with a heart and palm wide open. It will make you want to voyage, in the same way Griffin does, down your own personal river of self discovery, self knowledge, and yes, self indulgence: turbulent, dangerous, personal and utterly painful. And yet, so, so necessary.

Language Lessons invites all of us to witness Griffin's journey during four years of her adult life. Through oft-times pared-down diary entries (think emotional Zen) and carefully worded prose, Griffin takes us through the illness and eventual death of her mother, by observing, recording and uncovering her family's drama and trauma (including her own) springing from this tremendous loss. And what a loss it was. Not just the death of a friend, a wife, a lover and a mother of five, but the death of everything we protect so closely within ourselves: trust, need, desire, love. Innocence. It is this loss with which Griffin wrestles. And she does so with the grace and truthfulness of a poet. Indeed, she bares her life in stark, brutal honesty -- true, open, close-to-the-bone-language, the stuff of heartfelt prayers: help, wait, stay, love me, don't die, forgive, forget. Engaging, eloquent, at times elegiac.

Ultimately, Language Lessons transcends the grammar of death. It rises above finality to rest in the newness, renewal of reconciliation and redemption. Griffin's work delivers hope, for, if nothing else, she allows us to see her own soul, bare, wide open and full of grace. With such honesty and such beauty, we wait patiently for her next book.

Mary Clare Griffin exposes real life issues more honestly and poetically than any modern author I have yet to read. She offers inspiration that is unlike most other writers. Rather than telling her story as an afterthought, she nakedly documents her feelings and experiences as each day passes. Griffin chronicles her life as she cares for her mother (whose dying of breast cancer), as she battles with career choices and damaged relationships, and as she triumphantly finds the inner-strength to survive.

Her story of forgiveness, courage and love is an inspiration to anyone who has a loved one suffering with a terminal illness, anyone who has troubled relationships, and anyone who appreciates a work of literature that breathes style, grace, and talent.

In diary form, Mary Clare Griffin weaves the story of reconcilliation with her mother through the backdrop of her past and present. Beginning with an almost minute by minute chronicle of her mother's last days, Language Lessons is immediately captivating. From there, Mary Clare digresses to previous years and experiences showing the rift she had with her mother and family. I identified so much with the struggles Mary Clare had in her life with her family. From the betrayals of friends and even therapists to having to tell my mother of sexual abuse and being terrified of her response. Will she love me...or reject me? My own mother was not as loving as Mary Clare's...but I got to see how my experience could have been if my mother and I had healed with eachother the way Mary Clare did with her mom. Even in the aftermath of her mother's death, Mary Clare has difficulty relating to her father and 3 other brothers and sister. She loses hope and then recovers, resolved to share her experience with others. I can't tell you how greatful I am. She told my story...maybe not my details exactly...but that wasn't the point. I got the point for me...I hope everyone will read this book...it has something for everyone.

I picked up this book at a resellers shop with no cover on it or any idea what it was about.(It is hardback,not stolen).Norton is great and she doesn't let you down here.Smooth writing and great characters who you feel you know by the end of the book.My only complaint is that the book is fairly short and therefore not a terribly engrossing novel.Try it,you might be surprised as pleasantly as I was.

This is a fun book. One in a series that you just know she had fun writing! If you haven't read any of this series, this is an excellent place to start. I read my copy often.

This book is the second in the mini-saga of Andre Norton's Witch World, called The Turning. It is interesting and enjoyable, with the usual evil dangers and magic. The second story in the book would be hard to really understand, though, without reading the first book before it, Storms of Victory. Fantasy readers and non-fantasy readers will enjoy.

These stories are well rounded and interesting. They bring new ideas and flavor to the Witch World saga. Each book set here, whether by Ms. Norton personally, or a collaboration with another, "fleshes out" the place and the times. They don't have to appeal to everyone. That is one of the refreshing strongpoints to the series. She is not afraid to see new ideas or changes to the world she has created here. Just one more reason she is who she is.

Biggest waste of $35 I've ever seen ! This was a required text in school , and approximatly 25% of the formulas were completely unusable. It was if this character wrote these recipes off the top of his head without the slightest concern for whether they worked or not.I shudder to think how many copies of this waste of paper have been sold to culinary students and the general public alike.

I also had to purchase this book for culinary school. While this book can be difficult to understand, the quality of the instructor has a great deal to do with the user's comprehension of the subject matter. I find this an excellent book and continue to use it today (because I know how to make it work for me).

NOTE: The formulas in this book work, provided you have had proper instruction in how to use them, and in how to use Baker's Math to increase and reduce the yields.

This is not a cookbook for the home baker, but no professional should be without this all encompassing book.

USELESS OUTDATED PRICE GUIDE.

This book presents an academic approach to the subject of ceramic ware produced by Johnson Brothers during their existence as an independant company. It does not convey the romance that the antique collect looks for. I feel that Mary Finegan lost an opportunity whilst visiting the U.K. to talk to the very person that could have given her that insight. William (Bill) Norbury worked for Johnson Bros. for 50 yrs. He had that insight as designer and Master engrave and was still alive during her visit. Prof.Jean Zarruchi conveyed that romance during her lecture and exhibition at Keele Universtity, Staffs.U.K. Sept. 2000. Bill's unpublished record of his experiences conveys that insight into many of the designs contained in Mary Finegan's Book. (...)

The author has provided an extensive atlas of Johnson Brothers products, with details of available pieces, design variations, prices and representative color images of important patterns. Over 200, both current and historical, are shown in full color. A brief overview of ceramics and a history of Johnson Brothers are included. An invaluable tool for the flea-marketer, collector, or any lover of Johnson Brothers dinnerware.

I was warned about this book by a friend, but I was so desperate for a new Solar Queen story that I ignored her. That was a big mistake. I wasn't even halfway through the book before I was wishing someone would toss Rael the Wonderful out the nearest airlock. Later I started fantasizing about even worse fates for her. I was masochistic enough to finish the story, but I've been soured on any of the new Solar Queen books as a result.

The introduction of a female character made sense for a book written in the nineties, but why create one so offensive? Why not one better thought out? Why did Rael have to dominate the story, being the miracle cure for all problems, while whining way too much about how tough life has always been on her in spite of all the magical advantages she had?

Nonetheless, awful as Rael is, the book might have been tolerable if the other characters hadn't been pushed into the background and marginalized. The old main character (Dane) spent most of his time as a resentful nitwit. The shipboard niche Rael supposedly filled (medic) was already capably occupied by another character, who got shunted aside in her favor. The others were similarly treated. The only old character that got halfway decent treatment was the captain, and he was reduced to the role of Rael the Wonderful's love interest and sidekick. Gad.

I have to agree with the reviewer who described this book as "someone else's adolescent fantasy." That's exactly what it was. It's rare to see such a blatant case of "self-insertion of the author's fantasy self" in a pro novel. I can only attribute this nonsense to P.M. Griffin (whose other work I am unfamiliar with), since other Andre Norton books that I've read don't display this reprehensible trait.

For all you budding writers out there, this book is a perfect example of what *not* to do, unless you want to alienate your audience.

I grew up reading the original Solar Queen adventures - they were my introduction to science fiction (if you don't count the Edgar Rice Burroughs Mars books). I loved Norton's books for their thumping good plots, exotic, yet believable aliens, and most especially for her finely drawn portraits of the crew. Many of the fantasies that got me through a boring English Lit or Government class involved flying off into the wild, black yonder aboard the 'Solar Queen'.

Unfortunately, our library only carried the first two books in the series, but I finally located the two 'Solar Queen' novelettes and read them, too. They weren't quite as good - Norton was concentrating on fantasy by then, and somehow it didn't quite mix with the crew of the 'Solar Queen'. However, I never lost my original affection for the series.

Then, decades after the publication of the original novels, I found 'Redline: the Stars'. I couldn't wait. I bought it in hardback rather than holding out for a cheaper edition. The fact that it had a second author's name on it was worrisome, but I assumed I'd be reading mainly Norton.

Not true.

I read the book from cover to cover, hoping to find at least a trace of Norton and a trace of the original 'Solar Queen', then hurled "Redline: the Stars" into the wastebasket.

I felt totally cheated. I usually give up my non-keepers to the library and loan my keepers to my friends, but I couldn't pass this one on to some other poor, unsuspecting Solar Queen fan.

I am pretty sure that all Norton wrote was the introduction to "Redline: the Stars". The original characters were passive, uninteresting shadows - even the Captain and the Cargo Master!. I felt like I was reading someone else's adolescent fantasy of the 'Solar Queen' and her crew that never should have been published under Norton's name. Nothing seemed 'true to life' (if I can use that phrase about something that was a novel to begin with). It was a horrible reading experience - the literary equivalent of visiting an old friend who has advanced Alzheimer's Disease. I don't recommend this book.

If you just want something to read and you do not want to work too hard this is the book for you. I found it a fast read, exciting, but not too challenging. The main characters are never really developed. The minor characters all clump together with no distinct personality so you don't need to worry about knowing their names. The plot was always on the verge of great - but never really got there. The ending was tidy, but not powerful.

I enjoyed this book and went on to read the next in the series. It reminded me of the Star Trek original book series in that it takes reading several books for you to get to know the crew, and several books for you learn about why the Solar Queen is special. That is not immediately obvious in this book. But there is lots of action.

I recommend this book for teen readers who may be new to scifi and need to be "gentled" into it. No radical offworld ideas are set forth here. Good and bad are clearly identified, and sex is nowhere to be found.