Franklin Roosevelt was the first President to win a third term in the White House, but he was actually the third Presidential candidate to win the popular vote three times in a row. Grover Cleveland was the second and Andrew Jackson was the first. The problem was the first time around the election was thrown into the House of Representatives and John Quincy Adams cut a deal with Henry Clay to win the Presidency. Certainly young readers remember enough about that mess in Florida in 2000 (not to be confused with this year's primary mess in that state) to find this aspect of Jackson's political life to be rather interesting.

As with all of the volumes in the Our Presidents series, Ann Graham Gaines divides her subject's life into four chapters, looking at Jackson's life growing up in the south during the American Revolution, how he became a national hero during the War of 1812 at the Battle of New Orleans, his quest to finally win the Presidency, and the two terms he served in the White House. The book is illustrated with historic etchings and paintings, as well as a rare photograph of the aged Jackson. The margins of the book often contain interesting facts regarding Jackson's tendency to fight duels and how he got his nickname of "Old Hickory." There are also sidebars devoted to his wife Rachel, the Trial of Tears, and Jackson's home the Hermitage.

In addition to providing all of the basic biographical details of Jackson's life, Gaines does a good job of providing a concise account of Jackson's impact as President, from the founding of the Democratic Party to the controversial Indian Removal Act and the fight to destroy the Second Bank. Young readers will get a sense for how Jackson was a pivotal President in the nation's history and how he made his impact on history.

Come Unto Me (An Overview of the Bible in Poetry for Children)
is a marvelous book to introduce children to the Bible. The writer takes us from Genesis to Revelations using short four line poems, which are loaded with important information about each book. The scriptures cited are ones that children can easily learn and relate to. In the back of the book are the things that most children have to learn about in Sunday School.

Every family with children should have a copy of this book.

If you go to the UK version of Amazon you'll find all sorts of information about this book. Let's face it, when it comes to fish, the British are far more on the ball the Americans. They live on the stuff.

The recipes in here are REALLY easy to do, with very clear instructions, and tasty!!! What really amazes me is that I'll find some odd kind of fish I've never heard of before for sale at the grocery store at a really cheap price so I buy it. I come home, I open this book and there are at least 5 different ways to prepare it. I look in some of my other fish cook books, and I'm lucky if I find even one recipe.

You have GOT to get this book!!!

Jackson presents his typology of male intimacy patterns. Reminiscent of C G Jung's "Personality Types", Jackson uses his blue and red types to explain the phenomenon of (gay) male patterns in metropolitan life. Jackson identified the green and yellow types in his previous volume "The Secret Lore of Gardening", and now he approaches a more dangerous and shifting alchemy in male-male relationships. Cutting through the obsenity of new age and pop psych garbage popularly ranting on "what it means to be gay" or "the gay psyche", Jackson is not only trained and experienced to speak on the topic, he is also thoughtful and aware of the perilousness of the polarization present in such relationships. He identifies what may be at the core of male to male effiminacy and emasculation, and how this post-modern attempt that gay men stumble upon (as Percifal and the Grail King did in the 12th Century)is really a psychic meeting of the mother complex and the father complex to sqare off (and possibly account for, in this terribly deprived language we have, homosexual eros and amore). I reccomend this book to the lay Jungian and depth psych nut. I stumbled upon it with a little introduction from Walker, Hopcke, and Thompson-but would have been able to navigate through Jackson's words and ideas just as well without. Side by side Robert A Johnson's "We", Jackson's volumes enlighten the powerful and most idealized experience for us in the west-"Falling in Love". See also Johnson's essay in Hopcke's "Same Sex Love:A Path to Wholeness" for a likewise uncluttered and sustaining attempt at bringing consciousness to gay male love. This and the previous book by Jackson are difficult to find and buy. A true gem for gay hearts.

I used this book as a source for my term paper which was on shakespeare. I wanted to get essays written by people during the time the plays were performed. This was a great book with lots of essays written by people from all different centuries since the plays have been published. It was an easy book to use...just like a dictionary. All you basically need to find out if the volume number which you can find out quite easily. It was a great book to use and from now on it's the first one I think about using.

This, folks, is the reference book for my A Level Students.

A Level is the main exam route taking in the UK for entry into Universities.

The continual rapid development of computer technology means it is a nightmare trying to keep up with terminology and acronymns. This glossary has the defintions the examiners will accept. Very useful when different text books all have their own definitons.

The 4star rating rather than 5 is a reflection of the date of issue of this glossary. There must be another one on its way soon, we sure need it.

To clarify something that Reviewer Yves Chaix said... "As a reference though, I think that 90% of what I learnt, I actually picked from studying the excellent documents produced by the Workflow Manufacturers Coalition (www.wfmc.com)."

Readers should know that the organization in question is the Workflow Management Coalition, and the website is www.wfmc.org. The WfMC is releasing the Workflow Handbook 2001 in October 2000, by the way. This is the new definitive reference to workflow management, with particular attention to e-business and B2B integration. It includes the full Wf-XML specification and glossary.

My assignment was to evaluate a certain number of production type workflow engines for my client and, if the bill was too high, estimate what it would take to develop a custom engine. Since I knew - and still do - very little about workflow engines, obviously I had to turn to the existing bibliography. As a reference though, I think that 90% of what I learnt, I actually picked from studying the excellent documents produced by the Workflow Manufacturers Coalition (www.wfmc.com).

Anyway, my initial impression, when I went through my first diagonal reading of this book was "what a total waste of time". However, going over it more thoroughly, I did find a few chapters that brought interesting insights.

To sum it up, I find the title misleading "Business Process Implementation: Building Workflow Systems" transmits the idea that after reading the book, you will be able to BUILD a workflow (engine). Well, forget it. The content can only qualify as a basic description of requirements, at the initial step of the life cycle: analysis. What I feel was a wrong initial decision by the authors, is that a book offering to help you build workflow systems should assume that its readers will not be knowledgeable in data structure as a minimum. But the book dedicates fully 2/3 to 3/4 of its content teaching entities, relationships and a few basic concepts about object orientation, as if the reader started out without any knowledge about Information Technology.

All in all, chapters 4, 6, part of 7, and part of 8 actually deal specifically with worflow concepts. About 65 pages out of 227 are relevant to the field (Unless you accept the authors'premise that you also need to be taught how to design your ERD).

As for the relevant part, I liked the scope of the definitions given by the authors for what should be expected of a workflow engine. The relationships between the lifecycle, stages and tasks states are clear enough so you can start sweating over writing your own algorithms. There is a much too short mention about rules, enough to let you detect a black hole there, but not enough to know what to do about it. The treatment of backtracking is useful as well as that of relevant stages for a task (have not found it mentionned in any wkf engine) and so are the general ideas of when to start and end a task to minimize the cost of backtracking.

On the down side, don't look for block diagrams, structured map, component diagrams, UML definitions, state transition diagrams, sample source code, etc. that you would need to actually build a workflow system.

But then, the question becomes more general: "Can you expect to find in a $45 book enough information and specifications to start building what it took others $100,000 or a $1,000,000?". After all, the book is based on the acquired knowledge of developping a real commercial engine, so maybe I was a little ingenuous in thinking I would find it all ready to take home. I really don't know the answer to that one. Still, as an example among many, I have a book (Simulation Modeling and Analysis, by Law and Kelton) that give you the source code for a basic simulation engine in Fortran, Pascal and C. You really know what simulation is about after reading it. Maybe MM.Jackson and Twaddle could have been slightly more detailed with their experience!

So, if you are a manager and want to understand what the salesmen from FileNet or Oak Grove, are talking about or you are suddenly developping an interest in the subject but never heard of System Architecture I, then this book is for you. To be fair, I am still looking for the right book for what I need!

This book discusses a method by which workflow based systems can be developed. It focuses on delivering a clear roadmap for the business person who wants to be able to carry out process re-engineering in his/her organisation.

The discussion is at an architectural level and is kept independent of any particular implementation platform or specific software solution.

I liked the detailed coverage of the way in which high volume, parallel workflow can be modelled (including a diagrammatic notation). It is good to see that these concepts are proven to produce actual working systems (via the toolset which Twaddle has developed in his role as Technical Director at Beta Computers and Sherwood International).

This approach is particularly relevant when looking to move to web-based solutions (especially because of the careful attention given to the design of the workflow). At the end of each chapter there is a set of questions which helps the reader to check his/her understanding of the material. Some of these questions are quite challenging and thought provoking.

Business Process Implementation isn't a quick (or simple) read, but is a detailed and thorough coverage by two experts in the field. A 'must have' text for practitioners in this area of business.