I have previously read "Men's Wardrobe" from Chic Simple and found it very good. Bought "Shirt & Tie" by the same authors, hoping for more of the same quality. Sorry to say it was sadly missing. Shirt & tie is a much abreviated edition. Small in size, small in information. I in fact managed to read it on breaks before I even got it home from work. Color Photos and a crisp layout can't make up for the lack of content. Finished the book and came off with the feeling that it could have been very good. Even the shirt & tie combos given as examples of what worked together didn't. Better off staying with the larger, more informative Men's Wardrobe.

Here is collection of pattern suggestions for shirt/tie combos. with useful sections on color, pattern and fabric.

Useful helps on various tie and bowtie knots.

Chic Simple books are just as the title implies: simple, for the fasionably impaired, yet very chic and well designed. I bought this book for a male friend, hoping he might take the hint! This book would be perfect for a male who has the potential to be fashion concious. Chic Simple is a series of books that combine beautiful photography of different fashion outfits or elements, with simple guidelines on how to wear them. They are probably most well known to readers of InStyle magazine, they have fashion spreads in it every month that are always helpful. As I said before, this would be a great gift for a male with fashion potential!

Obviously not up to the standard Gaiman started out with in the Books of Magic mini-series, but then again it was not expected to be. Only Gaiman can write like Gaiman. The plot is a little hap-hazard and it has a few confusing moments. The significance of Tim's dueling tatoos, what exactly happened to Cupid, what happened to that director guy... there are a lot of plot threads that are totally abandoned or unexplained. But the magic of the story is still in there somewhere. It may not be seen in the monsters and mermaids and fairys. The magic in the book is the beautiful way Tim and Leah and Molly's goofy adolescence is perfectly portrayed (even if Leah is several thousand years old). Good. Not Gaiman good. But good.

When I started reading the series, I thought that the Books of Magic were really great. The illustrations, the storyline, the depth in a graphic novel that is rare in comic books nowadays. When I worked my way to _The Girl in the Box_ , the quality that the previous issues had was slightly tattered, and the story was not so fascinating, but all in all, it's still a great book.

I first started reading the Books of Magic series about a year ago. I love this comic and thought the Girl in the Box was just as good as any other. This book disserves 5 stars.

...too bad he is not a more passionate writer. He seems to miss so many crucial elements in the life of Moses. Yes, there is much missing about this great man known and loved by millions, but Kirsch seems to exult in the petty. He writes as an uninvolved observer of this extraordinary man. There is no love, no passion, no sense of deep respect for Moses in this text. I kept waiting for the page that would reveal some astonishing, delightful insight into this spiritual giant but I read in vain.
Kirsch chooses wonderful subjects but leaves the reader with less information and more questions than when they first picked up the book. More insightful and intiguing studies have been done on the life of Moses. I suggest looking elsewhere for inspiration, no offense to Kirsch.

At this time of year, many of us will dust off our video copy of DeMille's THE TEN COMMANDMENTS, prop our children in front of the tube, and bask in the glorious figure of Moses a la Hollywood.

But perhaps our time would be better spent getting to know the enigmatic figure presented in the Bible.

Jonathan Kirsch's book MOSES: A LIFE helps us to do just that. In clear prose, Kirsch attempts to knit together a portrait of one of the most influential figures in Western Culture...a figure who may not have even existed.

In so doing, Kirsch draws not only upon the Bible but also on other records related to the man credited with delivering God's Law. These sources include rabbinical literature as well as the writings of philosophers (Philo, Freud). While the result is not without its puzzles, the overall effect is that of understanding. It is perhaps fitting that Yahweh, the enigmatic God of the Hebrews, should pick as his messenger a man as complex and contradictory as himself.

Kirsch does not flinch from recounting these contradictions (nor does he allow sympathy for his subject to cloud the fact that no contemporary record of Moses--outside of the Bible--exists). Further, he is not above explaining some of the darker passages of Holy Writ--including God's attempted murder of the messenger he had just chosen to deliver his people (a truly bizarre and difficult passage). As a result, the popular myths about Moses fall. But what remains is a figure far more interesting.

Kirsch does assume that the reader is somewhat familiar with the J, E, P, D composition of the Pentatuch (a theory now widely accepted and explained very well in Friedman's WHO WROTE THE BIBLE?), and, at times, his examinations of rabbinical special pleading are tedious. But, overall, MOSES: A LIFE is a highly readable and interesting work, with much to offer for non-fundamentalist believers and non-believers alike.

Since there is no archeological evidence that Moses ever existed, author Jonathan Kirsch uses the words of the bible,together with modern biblical scholarship to re-create the great prophet who exists between the lines of scripture. Kirsch goes through each chapter of the bible beginning with the book of Exodus and ending with the book of Deuteronomy and shows where various traditions and counter-traditions might have intersected. He shows the Moses who is portrayed as a great hero by the "Deuteronomist" and the Moses whose role is diminished by the "Priestly source." He discusses virtually every theory including the theory that their were two Moses and the first was murdered! This is surely not the book to read if you are a bible literalist (or an Orthodox Jew) and I certainly don't agree with all his points, being partial to the biblical story myself. But Kirsch is a lively writer and it is an interesting read nonetheless, as is Kirsch's "King David".

Gross starts out explaining the chemosynthesis that supports deep sea bacteria, archaea, very well. His extreme life bacteria are interesting, shedding light on life prior to the earth's oxygen atmosphere, but then what? The book becomes repetitive. Yes, some life forms can endure extreme heat, pressure, cold and drought and he explains all of this perfectly. This all lends support to theories of possible bacterial life on other planets and to what was the first forms of life on earth. Beyond that it is only a treatise for graduate students seeking a higher degree. It is a lot of new words-not for the general reader.

I had to read this book for a college biology class and it was not an easy read. It is very detailed in explaing the extreme enviorments in which these creatures live, beacause it gets down to the chemical and molecular make-up of everything. You really need a biology dictionary to go with it.

The author chose the playing field on which to analyse the Sixties---through the lives of 19 influential and somewhat well-known "Boomers," as opposed to the average Joe or Judy. Fine. So you can't really complain that Donald Trump doesn't belong here--sure he does, he was born in 1946--but in the end his chronicles tell you less about the Sixties and more about himself, more than he'd probably care to admit. Several of the other life stories are much more interesting than Trump's, but in the end they also don't tell me much more than I'd already ascertained; that when people grow, they change. Some here haven't change much except idealogies; conservative Barbara Ledeen apparently still sees heinous conspiracies in everything, only they're left-wing conspiracies now instead of the right-wing ones of her former Marxist incarnation. Others, such as Doug Martlette, Marianne Williamson and David McIntosh, did major overhauls in their outlook and POV. But none of these chronicles really tells me anything about what made the Sixties more influencial than, say, the Fifties or the Eighties. This makes Michael Gross' book a qualified sucess as a cultural history of America, but a very engrossing collection of people's lives---the good, bad, ugly and lovely.

Within the first few pages of Harold Robbins's latest and final novel -- completed shortly before his death -- his hero, Jerry Cooper, has lost both parents in a car wreck and has had a steamy sexual encounter with a girl downstairs.

The Predators keeps up this breathless pace, tracking Cooper from Manhattan, where he works for his uncle, a small-time crook, to Paris during World War II. There, Cooper gets involved with a Corsican gangster who traffics in smuggled cars. Robbins doesn't waste time on niceties of style or subtleties of characterization as he follows Cooper's rise to power and respect-ability.

There's something quaintly old-fashioned about this no-frills potboiler and something distasteful in its tired, one-dimensional takes on homosexuals, African-Americans and endlessly compliant women.

When I discovered the books by Harold Robbins I joined a world unlike any other I've seen till then. The world of bussiness, fame, fortune, losing everything, the dealing with the defeat, sex, sex, sex. At first sight, I was mesmerized and shocked with such books. Reading them I learned things I'd never even imagined. And when I started reading THE PREDATORS, I knew the real Harold Robbins. It's a book full of emotions, feelings and the odds of these things. Of course, with more sex than in any other of his books. If you like that kind of books, read this one. THE PREDATORS is the kind of book you should read on a Sunday afternoon, when you have time to enjoy yourself and have nothing much else to do except have fun. Nothing's perfect, and this book is not, 'cause the end lacks a little in criativity. But who cares when all your main reason to read these books is have fun?

ok this book is just amazing. i didnt like the homosexual scenes but its a great book. the regular sex scneces werent bad but thats not what makes the book good. (SOME SPOILING AHEAD) the endning was pretty much a blank but its better like that. anyway the book is a must read and its all about having your heart broken and learning alot. people are sneaks and liers and you can relly learn something. those who say this book is horrible are plain stupid.