"The Canonical Compendium" is the answer to a maiden's prayer! (provided, of course, that the maiden is a Sherlockian) With this book in hand, you will be able to answer any questions you might ever have about the Canon. Buy it!

If you want to find facts fast, this is the book. Indices of every story. Clarkson has done an admirable job!

There are many wonderful features to the Canonical Compendium, but four in particular set it apart from other index tools I have used. The first is its indexes to the indexes, which makes it easy to find the various categories and subcategories. The second is that the references are given in context, so that the researcher can find out immediately how the name or word is actually used in the story. This arrangement also spares the researcher from having to know the context in order to find the item in the first place. A third feature is the page layout and size of the book. The spacious two-column format allows the eye to scan the page quickly and accurately, and the book stays open to the page you are working on - no trivial matter on a crowded work table! The book's size also prevents concealment by any Gilchrists who might be tempted to use the Compendium to cheat on Sherlockian quizzes! But the greatest feature of the Compendium is Steve Clarkson's sense of humor. Take this reference item, for example: "Dog, Lady Brackenstall's, ignited by Sir Eustace. This is the only mention of a hot dog in the Canon." The Canonical Compendium is loaded with these little gems, making it the reference volume you will use with a grin on your face. How did I ever function as a Sherlockian without this book!

CONVICT CRIMINOLOGY IS AN EDITED BOOK THAT FEATURES SOME OF THE BEST KNOWN ACADEMIC SCHOLARS IN THE FIELD. I especially enjoyed the chapters written by the ex-convict professors. They are the real experts on crime and corrections. The reading is cutting edge, state-of-the art, a new paradigm in criminology. This book will blow the cob webs off the walls of the ivory tower. This is a new criminology!

RICHARDS AND ROSS EDIT A FASCINATING WORK ON THE LIVES AND OBSERVATIONS OF VARIOUS SCHOLARS WITH DIRECT EXPERIENCE IN THE PENAL SYSTEM. THIS EASILY DIGESTIBLE BOOK SERVES AS AN EXCELLENT REFERENCE WORK ON VARIOUS ASPECTS OF CRIMINOLGY, AND IS RECOMMENDED BOTH GRADUATE AND UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS. THE BOOK FEATURES 9 CHAPTERS BY EX-COVICTS THAT ARE NOW PROFESSORS OF SOCIOLOGY, CRIMINOLOGY, OR CRIMINAL JUSTICE.

There a lots of how to books out there but Behind Bars is something different. This book is assecessible to the general public and gives its readers, an inside perspective on prison. The language is clear and its points are made simply and directly. As an educator who has worked with "street kids," this book will be a useful tool at letting my students appreciate what it means to become ajudicated. Behind Bars is a "how to book" that you hope you will never need, or that your family or friends will ever need. But, on the other hand, maybe we do need to read this book so we get insight on this huge American industry. In order to be a well informed citizen I believe you should read this book.

I think this book is a must for any teddy bear artist - but especially appropriate for those who are beginning, like myself. It is easy to follow and very well illustrated. I look very forward to finishing up my first teddy bear! This book has illustrations of bears created by many of today's top bear artists as well. Very inspiring.

I just purchased this book today and I have completed my first bear just moments ago. The book is very informative, has step by step instructions, and quality pictures for guidance. This is great for beginners and the experienced as well! It also gives you great tips on how to give your bears unique personalities. A++++

This book contains a wealth of information for even the advanced bear artist. Whenever I need to refer to a basic pattern flow or vary the look of the bear, I always use this book. I recommend this book to anyone interested in designing your own bear with a little help from an excellent author.

This is a book you will read over, and over. I could not put it down. This book shows the westerner the humor, warmth and insight that can be gain by reading and understanding the Tao Te Ching.

The books illustrations go complement the translation. They are beautiful and inspiring. Sargent did a great job on the water colors. Just as Legge did on the translation.

This book is is very readable and its lessons about life are truelly fantastic. They are wriiten in a wounderful sage like style. I think that you will find that this book does one of the best jobs of tranlatting Lao Tzu's insights on the true working of the universe in a manner that is very clear to us in the west.

A must have book.

I am a long-time reader of Stephen Mitchell's books and have this title on his tape set. This book is a beautiful companion to his wonderful vocal rendition.

The Tao is a manual for life. Not a religion mind you, but a philosophy. As you read the Tao you will realize that you already knew the truths spoken of but overlooked them because they were so obvious. A must read for our age. By the way, it's not lite reading. Read only a few passages at a time and then reflect on them. This is one of the few books you can read over and over and still get something ne out of it. Also, I've read many versions of the Tao Te Ching. Many were not translated in to real world terms. Others were....well.... Dumbed down! Of all of these translation this version is by far the best. Real world language while allowing you to draw your own conclusions.
Enjoy!

Having owned a specialty food store, and having developed a unique food product that distributors were interested in marketing through convenience and other specialty food stores (including McDonald's Express) I can attest to the accuracy of most of this book.

If you are already producing a great tasting product in a restaurant or Deli and making a living, you probably are wise to concentrate on expanding your retail business. If, however, you are tiring of the daily grind of running a small retail business, but wish to concentrate on producing your product rather than serving it to the public, then you probably have considered wholesaling.

Your wholesaling options are numerous. For marketing through supermarkets I advise you to thoroughly read Packaged Facts book, How To Get Your Product Into Supermarkets.

First, though, you should try marketing through more specialized channels. Health Food Stores, C-stores and nearby deli's and local grocery stores. In such cases you will absolutely need this book and will find it saves you serious bucks and a lot of questions posed to distributors, health officials and your suppliers. I know, because I spent months researching the options and not finding half the information that this book so succinctly provides.

Note: I had so little success finding the information that I chose to team up with a businessman and I became vice president of Billy Bob's Pot Pies in Canby, Oregon. The ill-fated franchise attempt resulted in mny returning to work in the Middle East so I can gain sufficient funds to begin producing my meat pies for specialty markets. The name will not be Billy Bob's but you will know the product when you see it in your local food store!

This is well done, by one who has spent the time and provided his knowledge to prospective entrees into this market.

The material is up-to-date, with great stuff on Web Page Development, etc. I found his advice on channel management, i.e. where to sell, on finding distributors to be very useful.

All pertinent areas are covered, packaging to promotion to positioning. This is fine overview of the biz from a pro who has been down the paths and knows what it takes, then communicates it in an understandable, digestible and attractive manner.

I use From Kitchen to Market as the text for the weekend class that I teach through University of California Davis Extension, Getting Started in the Specialty Food Business. Hall's book is excellent; it is practical, not obtuse. He gets to the nitty-gritty of how to develop and launch a product. He also emphasizes the need to be market-oriented. You won't be guaranteed success just because you make a great tasting product; Hall discusses how you need to package,market and distribute your product effectively.

This book enriches and expands my appreciation for the work of the Jesus Seminar. The Seminar has now completed its 15-year historical research project and published their findings-a current scholarly consensus on the "more likely" authentic words and deeds of Jesus. From this "database" individual scholars continue to reconstruct a variety of creative and compelling sketches of their glimpses of the "historical" Jesus. But what does all of this have to do with the way we understand ourselves, God, and the meaning of human existence? History is not theology. And what do either have to do with our actual lives here and now? Stephen Patterson, a member of the Seminar and Associate Professor of New Testament at Eden Theological Seminary, explores the implications of historical Jesus research both for theology and for our life and faith. In the process, and in one of the book's major contributions, he also proposes a method for how history and theology can be related without one masquerading as the other. Patterson describes the 200-year history of the quest for the historical Jesus and shows how it has always been related to the search for God. With John Dominic Crossan, Robert Funk, and Marcus Borg, he explores what Jesus meant in the 1st Century and what he means today, but his consistent focus is always on how Jesus experienced and understood God. "What sort of God would one believe in if this God were to be seen in the words and deeds of Jesus?" To this question he develops both a "theology of Jesus" and an "existential Christology." The Gospel of Jesus is the unbrokered Empire of God (an Empire as God would run it, a political metaphor which the Romans would have heard as seditious) which offers the means of life freely to all and welcomes marginalized people fully into the human community. What makes it "of God?" There is no "objective" answer to this question. As a Jew, Jesus believed in God as a basic reality running through all of life whose character is love, and his parables imaginatively expressed that way of seeing things and invited others into it. Some who knew Jesus were moved to say that in his company and at his tables they had come to know this God in a deeper and more authentic way. They then took the risk of faith to live according to this new vision. Thus, Patterson presents an "existential Christology," the decision to see in Jesus the deepest of all truths about human existence, the truth that is God, and accept the challenge that follows: what am I do in the service of Jesus? Now, as then, Christian faith involves risk, decision, and the test of action. It is "trust in the God we have come to know in the life of Jesus of Nazareth." This existential understanding of the structure of the Christian faith is paralleled in Patterson's discernment of the limits of historical work. Historical scholarship can be a reality check against speculative fantasy, but it cannot be an objective starting point for faith. History always involves imaginative reconstruction. Patterson develops a "subjective," pragmatic, communal, and interactive approach to historical theological method that will not please either fundamentalists who seek essentialist, objective, Divine "truth" in biblical texts or traditionalists who would anchor faith in the christology of the early church and/or in church tradition. His method for doing theological reflection based on historical research involves two steps: 1) "establish as much as possible the significant experiences people had of Jesus;" and 2) "examine the words and deeds of Jesus for their theological content." For Patterson, "the words and deeds of Jesus do not necessarily mean anything in themselves." Their meaning must be ventured in the imagination and tested in living. The historian speaks of rules of evidence and probable facts, and the believer uses imagination to "see and experience more than is purely self evident, beyond the rim of facts that encircles one." In Patterson, historian and believer become one; imagination is a means of doing history and of knowing God. Both history and theology remain delicately related as human acts of creative, imaginative construction.

Reviewed by Mark Rutledge United Church of Christ/Presbyterian Campus Minister at Duke University and Associate Member of the Jesus Seminar

This highly readable work by Dr. Patterson takes one on a journey back in time to the First Century, a place in some ways so alien to our modern world that visiting it would be like landing on another planet. Dr. Patterson covers a wide range of topics: an overview of the quest for the historical Jesus, the concepts of shame and honor in first century Palestine, the radical wisdom of Jesus, a fresh look at the parables of Jesus, an analysis of the apocalyptic controversy (was Jesus preaching the end of the world?), and the meaning of the resurrection. This text is a good overview and analysis of many of the topics looked at by the Jesus Seminar and provides wonderful insights into the teachings of Jesus.

Once when attending a local revival as a guest of a friend, I was confronted by the fiery preacher with the question: "Do you know the Lord?" I, somewhat taken back by his zeal, lamely offered the typical liberal response: "Well, yes and no, depends on what you mean by 'the Lord.'" I was immediately "cast into the outer darkness," where "people will weep and gnash their teeth."
After reading this book, I replay that scene. This time I boldly reply, "Yes, if this is what you mean by 'the Lord,'" thrusting a copy into his hands. However, I still think that I would end up weeping and gnashing my teeth.
As a Christian, I have a serious major flaw. I have difficulty confessing that "Jesus is Lord." In my mind that's like saying that my big bother is Lord, something that sibling rivalry prevents me from doing. You see, I don't want to be enthralled by Jesus; rather, I want to be enthralled by what enthralled Jesus. And close to heresy, I don't want to see Jesus as God; but rather, I want to see the God of Jesus. This excellent book goes a long, long way in that direction. I can't recommend it too highly. And as an added bonus, there were parts of it that actually made me laugh out loud! Read it and see. Deserves wide circulation.

I'm a college student who frequently loathes her readings. NOT THIS ONE. It will challenge the way you think, it will challenge the way you act, it will challenge your perceptions, it will change your life and the way you see it...in a positive, worthwhile, meaningful, not condescending, warming, loving, caring way.

Do yourself a favor, READ THE BOOK. Rent it from the library, borrow a copy from a friend, buy it if you want. You can pick it apart, read the SHORT, CONCISE, WISE chapters in any order you want for any duration, and you will inevitably learn from it.

I am eternally grateful to my professor who assigned this book. It has made me a better person.

Stephen Levine is an extremely compassionate person who transmits this ability to the reader. He inspires the reader to be loving and patient with others and him/herself. Hope and love are inspired and it's an all together useful and reachable path that he shows us. This book is a must for any seeker or traveler on the spiritual path.

In 1989, I was in drug-rehab where I was given this book by one of the psychologists. It literally changed my whole point of view on many issues and introduced me to Spriituallity and Meditation. I still practice Vipasanna and Chakara Meditation to this day. The book itself is written very simply with passion and will appeal to all levels of intellect. I have since then bought every book that Stephen Levine has published and I recommend all of them highly!

I am a counselor and have been recommending this book to other parents, but I see now it is no longer in print. Please bring this book back! It is the easiest source I know of for dealing with a wide range of behaviors in a concrete manner.

Mary Roper, M.S.W.

I borrowed this book from the school social worker and would now like to get one myself. It covers every problem you could think of. I think it is a great book for new or experienced parents. This book should get back into print. Should be required reading for new parents.

I'm a nurse working for the Dept. of Mental Health as a Behavior Specialist, and I need a new book. The pages are getting worn from the constant wear. This book is used daily. Please bring it back!

"THE GYPSIES NEVER CAME is an insightful, touching account of a teenage boy's coming to terms with his physical disability and the deeper, unseen loss of his father. Stephen Roos tells this story with an abundance of wit, humor and audacity, brilliantly exploring the many ways that Augie masks his pain. Roos writes in a terse, masterful style that makes this story even more real and touching. What a lovely read this brilliant novel will make for any teenager and for any parent who is trying to understand one."

Stephen Roos' Gypsies Never Came tells of a small town, a kid with a deformed hand, and a collection of secrets which eventually involves Augie the secret-keeper himself. A fine story evolves of close-knit secrets, insecurities, and the power of friendships.

And also thought-provoking, too. Yes, the story is heart-felt. Wonderfully so. But it also makes you laugh (out loud!) and it makes you think too. It's about time stories for middle-graders got their brains back, isn't it?

Well organized book that does not skip on details. It explains in a clear and concise manner transmission line issues such as reflections, the why's and how's of matching impedance, and crosstalk among others.

Great explanations, with good examples. It is a very easy and interesting read, at the same time going into needed detail of high speed digital signalling issues. My course uses Digital Systems Engineering by Dally as text, but I find myself reading this book instead to get a better understanding, as it is clearer and better organized. Coming in really handy for my upcoming exam review!

This book is excellent. As an experienced I.C. designer, I found practical information about interconnect theory and design practices. The book was well written; a good balance between theory and problem solving. The information is useful from the chip level to the outside world.