I own an English language school in Japan and this book is utterly useless. It might be of some use to you if your idea of teaching is to photocopy boring worksheets and pray that nobody notices. This book is a waste of money. There is nothing of value to any trained professional. (...) I bought several of her books and regret each purchase. In my situation, I need to not only teach the English language, but make it interesting and fun since that is what the parents of my students are paying for. Results. (...)

I have been teaching English as a Second Language for over a decade, and Elizabeth Clare's books have been staples in my lesson plans for much of that time! Her ideas are very practical and can be used in the regular classroom to help shelter and mainstream, or in small group or even individual pull-out programs.

I have taught ESL in grades K-12 for four years. This book has been by my side the whole time. It has tons of helpful information and blackline masters to use with beginning students of English. It is also a wonderful resource to share with regular ed. teachers who have questions about dealing with their ESL students.

It's rare when I can't finsih a book, but I tried in vain with this for a month and couldn't end it. The author spends far too much time going into detail about a small part of John Dee's life, and seems to lose presepctive about Dee's contributions. We get too much of his court intrigues and that can get mighty dull. This book could have benefitted form being a good deal shorter.

Woolley's book is good-hearted, an attempt to help modern readers see John Dee not at the fringes but at the heart of much that was going on Elizabethan England.

But the book's execution leaves *much* to be desired. As other Amazon.com reviews have noted, the thread of the story gets lost along the way (especially amidst some of the sordid details concerning Dee's relationship with Edward Kelly). There are a number of interesting facts and anecdotes, but they never quite come together as a coherent whole. And Woolley displays such an appalling ignorance of Catholicism when he attempts to describe the religious background of the period (and in some instances, ignorance of Christianity in general) that I tend to wonder whether he's gotten his facts about Dee's life wrong too.

While I'll give the book 3 stars for good intentions, in general, you're better off finding a copy of Peter French's _John Dee: The World of an Elizabethan Magus_.

Benjamin Woolley's 'The Queen's Conjurer' is the most recent attempt to present the life of the English Enigma, Dr. John Dee. Dee is an interesting character and one that has sadly been much maligned over the centuries. Since his death in 1608, he has largely been dismissed at best as an sorcerer and black magicican and, at worst, as a credulous old fool dabbling in astrology and necromancy. Today, despite his prominent historical role in Elizabethan politics and his great contibutions to many fields, he is hardly remembered at all. This book tries to alleviate that problem.

Wolley's work is well-researched and attempts to shed light on Dee's life and his many accomplishments as not only an occultist, but also as an astronomer, mathematician, explorer, and spy. Dee was a product of the Renaissance and devoured knowledge and information. He was an avid bibliophile, a voracious author of various works on astronomy, astrology, mathematics, occult philosophy, and was well-respected by many prominent people at the court of Queen Elizabeth. The Queen herself counted herself one of Dee's benefactors and visited him numerous times at his home at Mortlake, taking a genuine interest in his many magical and mathematical works. Today he is largely remembered for his works concerning "Enochian" or Angel Magic, due to the fact that these are the bulk of his writings that have survived the flames of history. Most of the second half of this book is concerned with Dee's European adventures with the mysterious scryer Edward Kelly, who is largely regarded by history as a charlatan and a rake. Kelly is a shadowy and intriguing figure and we get some insight into his character and motivations but he is never truly revealed to us, perhaps he never will be. In the end, Dee finds that despite a lifetime of great works and accomplishments, he is viewed with mistrust and suspicion by the general public and has lost favor with the new court of King James I. He dies a tired and broken man, and history would continue to tarnish his great name until well into the 20th century.

The Queen's Conjurer is a very readable account of a great and fascinating man.

Dear everyone who reads this review, i read the book, i ordered a source packet, and subsequently the products in the source packet (2 liver purge packages, colon hydrotherapy, soc capsules, lotion and racemized skin creme. i passed out hundreds of green liver stones, used the creme and lotion, ate the soc, and i am now looking better than i ever did in years! john thomas is telling the truth! the colon hydrotherapy is simple and extremely effective, though i do not have a lot of mucoid lining in my colon, i can feel my mood change when i do the therapy. even though his things are very expensive, they are affordable and effective. the thing about canola oil and soy bean oil is also true, i am using canola oil as an insect repellant in my house, i painted canola oil on the legs of my computer table that i use for making kombucha tea (which i did not order from young again but got it for free from someone else) and it works, whereas the olive oil and sunflower oil in my kitchen attracts kamikaze ants that often drown in them. you have to try it for yourself to know. what he say makes sense and any sensible person will know it.

Mr John Thomas writes so that he holds your interest in the different subjects he is explaining. Each chapter is so interesting that you look forward to the next. The titles of some of the chapters are such that you expect one thing and you get something different, and you are totally surprised. I found it to be most informative on things I never would have thought possible. The chapter on the tobacco was a shocker to me. I just did not think tobacco could be good for anything.
And the bit about the man regrowing his foot blowed my mind. Who would have ever thought of such a situation being possible.
You need to read the book for more.

John Thomas' first book, YOUNG AGAIN, was fascinating. I could not put it down. I am using his suggestions and have reversed my biological age by 15 years in three months!
I bought the book again for a friend. A must read for anyone who wishes to stay young and healthy.

Overall the premise of the book to use examples to teach is good, and the examples themselves were well chosen. However, the devil is in the details. There were numerous unexplained forward references, some incorrect information (its explanation of whether Applescript is reentrant comes to mind) and the example scripts included on the CD were buggy. It took all of one click (chaning the year) to crash the Date Minder script which they claim met their high standards. All in all because of these problems I wouldn't recommend this book, although there really isn't much in the way of competition.

J Schmitz

I found the book to be very useful for most of the book. Howvever, I found that the book did not emphasize enough on what were actual commands and what was data. Somtimes the syntax was a little misleading because of the way the examples were written. You will have to read the examples a couple of times to figure out what is applescript commands and what isn't. I was looking for a book that showed how each command was used and then how to put them all together. Most C and BASIC books are written like this.

This is a great book for any intermediate or advanced AppleScript developer who wants to develop in the the FaceSpan environment. The only weakness I see in this book is its usefulness as a reference. It can be difficult to track down a specific piece of information. THIS IS NOT A BOOK FOR THE CASUAL USER OR FOR THOSE WHO WISH TO LEARN APPLESCRIPT. If you want to learn AppleScript the best place to start is with the information and tutorials available from apple's web site and in the help menu on your Mac. If you already know some AppleScript and want to increase your skills Danny Goodman's AppleScript Handbook is a better place to start before moving on to this book.

Liz swears. She swears that she loved Tom to death, but yet she was cheating behind his back the whole summer long, even plotting ways to steal Ryan from Jessica. That's not love- at all. Liz just can't live her life without a guy to lean on. Indepedent, she is not.

Well, to put it nicely, the review before mine was kinda wrong. See, Jessica really likes the head lifeguard, but he doesn't like her. He likes Elizabeth. Jessica's mad at Liz and Liz doesn't know what to do, because she really likes Ryan (the head lifeguard) but she doesn't want to be disloyal to her boyfriend Tom either. But then really suddenly, Tom drops in for a visit....To see what happens read the book! It's actually pretty good!

Storm Brewed in Other Men's worlds is quite a book. It is breathtaking in both size and scope, but it is not necessarily well written. In fact, it often strays far from its goal as a history of the early southwestern U.S. for the layman. The author did a ton of research with particular emphasis on Spanish archives, and the oral tradition of the Comanche, Pueblo, and Apache tribes. It chronicles just about everything that ever happened in the Spanish administration of the southwest, including all of the governors and other administrators. Yet all the exciting stuff going on is buried in the minutuia the author inists on using. Bottom line: this one is for academics only.

The famous Mexican writer, Carlos Fuentes, said, in effect, that the Hispanic world did not come to America, America came to the Hispanic world. No book reveals this with more clarity and accuracey that this one. It represents 400 years of history of what is now the American Southwest. The author writes with the dramatic eloquence of a seasoned novelist creating a history book that is, of all things, a "page turner." It reveals epics, sagas, villans, and both noted and anonymous heroes. It is a shame so many of our educational systems do not teach this history becasue it is the story of millions of Amerians and fully one-third of United States territory. If anyone has ever looked at a map and wondered why so many mountains, cities, villages, rivers, plains, states, and people have Native American or Spanish names, this book will answer those questions and more, it will help them appreciate Mr. Fuentes' insight.

Hardback, 120 pps, over 90 full-color illustrations
Ranges from Gothic glass through 19th century to modern glass; includes works designed by William Morris, Edward Bourne-Jones, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Tiffany, LaFarge, Chagall and Frank Lloyd Wright. Good general overview.

The charming little format that makes the NYRB Classics series work so well for novels and memoirs actually works against this classic cookbook. The pages are so small and tightly bound that it's practically impossible to open this little paperback book open and cook from it: moreover, the publishers seemed to use a slightly different typeface for every single different preface David wrote for different editions of this book (all collected here) as well as for Wright's new foreword, which creates something of a headache.

The book in and of itself is something of a marvel, though. Elizabeth David was one of the first British or American writers to popularize Mediterranean cooking at mid-century, and this, the first of her cookbooks, is a true classic: superbly written, it will leave you hungry to sample the dishes she describes and recommends.

I got here after getting to Collins, after going through Dickens. This is an awful book, in my humble opinion. Why has it been resurrected? (Rhetorical) If you love Dickens, maybe you found Collins, and if you love Collins, then you and I are relevantly similar, so let me tell you, don't bother with this insipid tripe, or with "Doctor's Wife" for that matter. Unless you are simply obligated, because you are a gendered wannabe English professor, in some forsaken place, poor you.

I will have to agree that this is NOT Braddon's best work. However, it is not as bad as some of the other reviewers make it out to be. The biggest fault is that the story is quite slow to get going. If the reader can hang on and make it through about a third of the story, they will be rewarded with what we normally expect in sensation fiction. I was also somewhat put off by the little synopsis on the back of the book. It is very misleading. There is a lot more to the plot than what that little blurb suggests.
If you are new to Braddon, I would suggest starting with some of her other titles such as The Trail of The Serpent or Aurora Floyd.

During the 1860s Wilkie Collins, with his terrific The Woman In White, started the period of 'sensation' novels. These novels are rather over-the-type, almost slapstick-like mystery stories. Mary Elizabeth Braddon followed with her own flavor of sensation novels. While I love many of Wilkie Collins novels I was disappointed with Braddon's most famous work, Lady Audley's Secret. But when I ran into a copy of John Marchmont's Legacy I thought I'd give Ms Braddon a try. Was I disappointed? Well...

Firstly, the story is a typical Victorian era melodrama: family members squabbling over an inheritance, with certain members stopping at nothing to become rich. Ms Braddon does do a good job on the characterizations, and the ultimate mystery does build up to a good conclusion. The book is nicely structured (..unlike Lady Audley's Secret, where we find the story basically ending 100 pages from the finish).

However Ms Braddon is simply not a very good writer. Her prose is weak, especially compared to Wilkie Collins. Every third sentence ends with an exclamation point, which must be Ms Braddon's way of indicating high drama (?).

Bottom line: a unremarkable slice of Victorian literary history. Certainly not terrible, but nonetheless a far cry from Wilkie Collins material.

As a student I was excited to find so many new ideas in one place. However, when faced with writing a review of the ideas in this book, I needed to review my finance and accounting texts. If you want to be up on the popular terminology read this book. If you want to reinvent your financial office look somewhere else.

Reinventing the CFO is an extraordinary book. In Austria, Business Administration and Financial Management is over all based on hard "financial" facts. It is good to get to know a perspective, where strategic tasks are truly part of a CFOs work. The book is an excellent guideline, full of ideas. Remarkable is the invention of a socalled "Quickgrid" which allows the reader to check the situation of the financial function in his/her company. The only disadvantage: For a book of about 170 pages, it is very expensive (well, not if you pay amazon`s reduced price).

Some people find it hard to understand this book. But if you're an MBA graduate, terminologies like "value chain" isn't so hard to undertsand. Better to take Startegic Management first before reading this book.