elizabeth bowen's stories are well crafted. reading them (for me... i was born in 1974) is like peeking into the drawing room of a time long gone and now crystallised on the page. i gave the book 4 stars instead of five, because while some of the stories are real gems, others fell flat to me. this was my first experience with her work, and 760 odd pages of short stories was a lot of stories!

i would recommend, unless you just want to read a few stories at a time, (the book is broken up into decades and then pre and post war sections)or you are already a huge fan, to start out with a smaller collection of her work. then again, why not pay a few extra dollars and get them all at once?

i escpecially recommend the stories of the twenties and thirties, they really are delightful... the ghosts and murderessess inhabiting some of them are intriguing, there's a flavour to her work you simply don't find in newer fiction. reading her work was like entering another time zone, quite interesting stuff!

Peterson and Bomberg provide a comprehensive but readable introduction to EU decision making.

They distinguish between three levels of decision-making. At the so-called "super-systemic" level history making decisions about the EU system are being made. Examples of this kind are the Maastricht or Amsterdam treaties. At the systemic level, the EU institutions (Council, Parliament, Commission, Court of Justice) interact and decide directives. Details of such directives are worked out at the sub-systemic level where the committees of these various institutions are active.

The authors also spend some time explaining the basic makeup of these EU institutions.

They then concentrate on the most important policy areas. All in all, this book can be recommended both to beginners and further advanced students of European integration.

This text provides a quick, concise review of the pimary topics covered on emergency medicine exams. I found it to be a good way to prepare for inservice exams and the written boards.

This book was cool. It certainly lists a lot of songs...but if you have the knack for it, you could make up a lot that are better than some listed. But all in all it really helped my campaign, I wouldn't say it is a must buy but it does help.

The book Old John by Elizabeth D. Crawford is a fasinating and cool book. Some of the parts where sad and other were happy. The book is a bout a family that wanted their grandfather to come visit them. The only problem was that insted of visiting he comes into the Schirmers yard with a moving van to live with them. The Schirmers are the main family. They where sort of mad at John came but they calmed down. Father was upset at Old John because one he only wanted him to stay for a while and plus the house was way to small to fit five people. The kids Jacob and Laura love their grandfather becuase he tells them stories about his past. This book is for anyone who just loves to read.

This book had some good information to allow the reader a beginning understanding of Tuscan interior decorating. The pictures were very helpful, but as a small book it couldn't go into too much detail.

I don't know if anyone has noticed but if you go through the SVU series in order and look at the sales ranks, they go down with every new book. Doesn't that tell you something? I think the series is going down the tube and the characters are falling apart. Is there ever a happy ending? Everything is overly dramatic, and always so sad. Doesn't anything good happen? It's always death and heartbreak. Everything is coming apart at the seams, more noticeable in the last few books. Liz irresponsible? Jessica always depressed? Nina running off the raw? Todd dropping out? Liz was always so studious, albeit "boring" in other words, but smart and content, so in love with Tom (I admit it, I want Tom and Liz back together too! Drat! I was just getting used to them) and Jessica was always so happy in High School, the life of the party but now she is always depressed, and Nina was just like Liz which was why they were so close at the beginning of the series, and Todd? The most outrageous and out of character things have been happening! Is Laurie John running out of ideas?

This book finally ends the Sam/Liz saga. I like her better with (old) Tom than slacker Sam...doesn't Liz get wary that all Sam's friends are stoners?? You would think straight-arrow Liz would be friends with journalists, English majors, or engineers...who weren't slobs. This book, as well as preceding books, starts every other sentence with some underlying ad for a designer product or store. Note to author: bring back realism, excitement, romance w/o jumping into bed and LOSE the talk about what brand of makeup & clothing everyone is wearing. It used to be Pascal/John used phony names even for the mall stores & the only recognizable brand were Bruce's Porsche...what a change to now. Jess is still involved with the sorority, and Chloe appears to have grown up some...I still root for "mousy" (a.k. doesn't look like everyone else--GOOD!) Val and her intelligent, funny beau Martin...finally someone in these series dates based on personality besides Denise, who is hardly mentioned anymore. Overall a good end to the series...note to readers--the diaries do not follow these books, they are set in an earlier time...I think the "next" book is Face Off.

This book is cool.The Sam-Elizabeth thing is finally solved.It also has unexpected storylines like the Chloe and Nina storyline.This book is also the book to end all the problems faced by Elizabeth,Jessica and people before the beginning of summer.Great book!:Þ

I put this on my 'I want to read list' but I was a bit disappointed. Why? Because this hardly mentions Elizabeth. I am still going to read the other five books in the series because they might be better. Elizabeth is a total different character in these books. She goes impulsively to London for a spot at university, finds it's been filled and is stuck without a job. But then she becomes a kitchen maid for the Lord Pennington. If that isn't strange enough she gets a crush on the earl's son Max. Really, really unrealistically (Sweet Valley style) he gets a crush on her too. And what is stopping him from getting together with Liz? Oh yes he's engaged to a snotty nineteen year old girl called Lavinia and of course this is an arranged marriage. Thrown into the mix is Max's sixteen year old sister who is disobeying her father for her boyfriend, a kitchen maid called Vanessa with a nasty tongue who's got in in for Liz and is searching for the evidence that the earl is her father and one of Max's rich friends James who has got a serious crush on Vanessa but of course she doesn't like him and you've got a totally unrealistic story. Okay parts of it are realistic but most of it is like one massive fairytale.
I read this hoping for more realism than people portrayed it to have but alas it is not much different than what they said. But don't, DON'T let that you put you off the book. It is a really great book and like most Francine Pascal books are really easy to read. I look forward to reading the rest of this fairy tale like series!
Happy Reading! :)

This is a great book. I love the Elizabeth series although i'd like to read about Jessica too this is a great change. It bothers me that it doesn't follow the series of Sweet Valley High when Jessica and Elizabeth both visited london. In this series it shows Elizabeth visiting for the first time as if they were never there. But it's a great story. I'd recommend it to anyone. Even Adults!

.....I love that laurie has had elizabeth branch off into her own world, and she did it in a way that if you didn't read her other series, you can still enjoy this one. The only draw back may be that the series can't last that long, because we all will want the twins to make up eventually. But it was definatley a great book and i would reccoment it to anyone who enjoys her other series'.

This is a highly revealing book about Senator John McCain, one of the most fascinating figures to hit the political scene in many moons. Those who followed his unsuccessful but energizing presidential campaign will be delighted to see the more complete and complex figure who emerges in these pages. He is shown as a serious strategic thinker who keeps his eye on the ball to achieve a long term legislative goal. While describing McCain the book also gives a lot of insight into the process which led to the passage of the campaign finance overhaul. It's a great read for anyone interested in McCain, Washington politics, the campaign finance system in this country or all of the above.

John McCain is not only important, he is chronically interesting as well, whether running a campaign or plotting legislative strategy. Elizabeth Drew ably captures the many fascinating facets of this compelling figure. You can't understand what's happening in Washington without understanding McCain. And you can't really understand McCain without reading Drew's compelling book.

I never thought that I would write a review of a book on campaign finance reform and call it a "page turner," but this one is just GREAT....It keep me enthralled all the way to the end, which is more than I can say about other books on similar subjects.

Despite what many think, living inside "the beltway" does not necessarily equate to an knowledge of the inner-workings of Congress. In fact, although I read the news coverage of the protracted campaign-finance reform battle, I didn't have a clear understanding of the difficulties behind-the-scenes.

What I enjoyed most about Elizabeth Drew's latest book--Citizen McCain--is that it delves into all of the inner workings: the wrangling and deal-making that accompany Congressional legislation. Ms. Drew is able to explain it in plain English--and it's fascinating.

I definitely recommend this book.

Keynes had a great economics mind, but little talent explaing it. The book is very hard to read due to convulated, odd grammer and very long, complicated sentences Keynes uses. The challange is understanding the language, rather than the ideas.

A typical sentence/paragraph from the book:

"The fact that two incommensurable collections of miscellaneous objects cannot in themselves provide the material for a quantitive analysis need not, of course, prevent us from making approximate statistical comparisons, depending on some broad element of judgement rather than strict calculation, which may posses significance and validty within certain limits.

Sure.

This is the first book in years I gave up reading in the middle.
Until someone rewrites the book for humans - avoid!

Keynes, for better or worse, must be counted the most important economist of the 20th century. This is his most influential work, and no person who desires a basic education in economics should be unaware of its contents. Unfortunately, it is at times almost incomprehensible. Particularly maddening is Keynes' penchant for merely dismissing competing theories with which he disagrees without discussing why he disagrees. I found this suspicious since Keynes was brilliant - it couldn't possibly be because he didn't understand those other theories. I suspect he understood them all too well and recognized their threat to his own work.

Plowing through this book will pay off, but you may not enjoy it. The reader should be advised, however, that according to Keynes' good friend (and opposing theorist) Frederich Hayek, shortly before his death Keynes told Hayek he disavowed this book in general. Hayek's account can be read in "Hayek on Hayek."

Undoubtedly, Lord Keynes's this book is very influential, not only to economics thought, but to the world economy. A genius's work is always tough because too many ideas and concepts are filled in only a few sentences, and there is no expeption with Lord Keynes's this book (Economist Paul Samuelson also called this book a genius's work).
Lord Keynes is a member of Cambrige School of Classical School in the early twentith century. Professor A. C. Pigou, Alfred Marshall were his teachers, and William Jevons, Francis Edgeworth, J. Robinson and Frank Ramsey were his colleague and friends. Surrounded with so good an academic environment and endowed with his own talent (Also heavily influenced by philosopher Moore), Keynes is the most important and influential economist in the 20 century. In his thought, economist should not only sit there and work out mathematical problems, but go outside and do something. Economist should not only just observe the "Storm" appear and pass by but find solutions to overcome the economic problems for the nation and people. Some people disagree so much with Keynes's economic thought that they thought Keynes was a criminal of the concept of "Gonvernment inteferes people". I think they miss something and I'm sure that the miss will be reduced if they know exactly what kind of person Lord Keynes was and exactly what the core concept of his economic thought is.
Anyway, this book is just like what Paul Samuelson ever expressed, you'll get something (maybe very many things) from this classic. If you read it carefully, maybe you will get something different from the macroeconomics textbook and those chapters which are about Keynesian thoery in that textbook. You will be stunned with Keynes's mind, his way of watching things, his thinking, etc.. This book requires very good logic and a mind of willing to think.
"In the long run we are all dead." True, go read this book and seize the concepts of the most important economist in the twentieth century.