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The book is beautifully illustrated and has become a modern Christmas classic.
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The book does an excellent job of showing us life through the eyes of men who risked their lives every single day simply for the love of the job and for the satisfaction that they were helping in a place that in many ways was beyond help.
A quick read -- well written and quite thought provoking.
All in all, a wonderful story that grabs you at the beginning and doesn't let go until the last page.
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"Miss Nelson is Missing" was always a childhood favorite for me. One of my first picture books I ever read, I think. I even remember that my copy came with a record that you could listen along to as you read. Wow, does that bring back memories. I picked this up a few days ago, and found myself enjoying it as much as I did when I was little, if not more.
This is a book about a sweet and nice teacher who has one of the most terrible classes ever. Everyone is mean and nobody ever listens to her. Miss Nelson knows that something has to be done.
One day, when she doesn't arrive to class, the children are so happy. They think they have driven her away forever. They are all smiles and grins.....until....
They meet Miss. Viola Swamp, an ugly and mean teacher dressed in black and white makeup. She puts them to work, yells at them, and makes them do tons and TONS of homework. Desperate and worried, the children turn to a detective in order to solve the whereabouts of Miss Nelson.
This book is incredible. Fun for all ages, especially the young ones. It's fun and gives a good moral lesson at the same time. It has great writing and very cool pictures. The reading level is pretty easy. Nothing too mind-bending behind it.
I recommend "Miss Nelson is Missing!" to ANYONE! Yes, I don't care how old you are. You're never too old to enjoy a good children's book, and I'm starting to re-discover that. Check this one out whenever you can. And if you have kids, I can almost promise you that this will be a favorite.
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This book shows both sides of the man behind it all. Enemies and Allies alike are all shown in this book. He fought wars with Apple and IBM and had peace with people like his friend and partner in success Paul Allen and his mother. Is Gates really the "ruthless" billionaire as many consider him to be or a giving loving and gentle man as few people know? Well he's a little of both and the great insight that can be gained by many can be found here in this book.
I previously read a book about Bill Gates by Johanthan Gatlin and this book is far less indepth and much more for a quick read. HARD DRIVE is a book I highly recommend to those of you who are interested in knowing all about Gates. A little out date, this book was released before the release of Microsoft Windows 95 which in many ways brought Bill Gates up in power almost twice as much. At the time this book was written he was the richest in America. Presently he is the richest in the world. I reccomend going out and buying the sequal to this book "Overdrive" which I am about to do. VERY GOOD BOOK OVERALL. Go out and get your self a copy today.
More important is, the book gives us a glimpse of an often misunderstood genius, Bill Gates himself. Read this book and you'll get the idea what makes him tick. Really, he is not as bad as some people would like us all to believe.
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The book begins by telling of the commanding rule of SMERSH. The leader of this organization is General Grubozaboyschikov. Also working is Colonel Rosa Klebb and director of planning Kronsteen, who treats real people as if they were chess pieces. The muscle of the group is a homicidal madman, who follows orders, and is in practically perfect physical shape, Donovan "Red" Grant. These evil minds have planned the perfect way to destroy the life and reputation of James Bond. Their plan is to lure 007 with the beatiful Tatiana Romanova and a Spektor cipher decoding machine as bait. Then Grant will meet up with them eventually and kill them both. However, SMERSH will take it a step further to lie to the public that Bond and Tatiana were in an affair, and that Bond commits suicide. It's a perfect plan.
Bond indeed does travel to Istanbul, believing that this girl wants to defect, and will give him the Spektor machine only if he personally helps her. 007 meets Darko Kerim, and a wonderful gypsy fight adds to the fun of the story. Bond and Tatiana travel on a train back to Europe, where he meets Red Grant and is told of the plan to kill him. An extremely bvrutal gun and fist fight breakes out between the men with 007 shooting Grant. 007 goes to Paris with Tatiana to catch Rosa Klebb in a meeting. However, Klebb releases a poison knife from her shoe and kicks 007 in the leg, before being taken away by the police. The story ends with 007 lying on the floor of the hotel room...
Perhaps the finest story of Ian Fleming, filled with the excitement and adventure to give this book it's reputation as on of the best 007 novels ever!
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Getting through the book takes some work, less because of the story and more because of the depth of the allegory. Also, the dialogues between characters regarding salvation and righteousness often require a careful read. However, the story is exceptionally creative and thought-provoking, and the lessons that can be gleaned from it are timeless and worth the effort that needs to be expended. I recommend reading this one at least twice.
I urge you tolook at a remarkable book by the English Puritain John Bunyan(1628-1688), "The Pilgrim's Progress", which is one of the great evangelical Christian classics, though clearly that is not why it interests me and should interest you (although I AM interested in the puzzle that is the religious sense, which even the irreligious feel, and this book can give remarkable insight into that as well).
Rather its fascination lies in the pilgrimage it depicts, or in the fact that human traits, vices, virtues, &c are PERSONIFIED as particular individuals who are their living and speaking epitome, and who are encountered along the way in revealing situations.
Bunyan's hero is appropriately named Christian. Someone once wrote that "Christian's journey is timeless as he travels from the City of Destruction to the Celestial City, meeting such characters as Pliable, Talkative, Giant Despair, Evangelist, Worldly-Wiseman, Faithful, Ignorance and Hopeful."
At first this personification is merely amusing, even a bit annoying (as caricatures or truly stereotypical people can be); but after a while I found myself enthralled because I realized that the effect of this odd literary device was to give unmatched insight into the nature of such traits. The force of the whole thing comes from the fact that one journeys about in - literally INSIDE of - what is both a comprehensive and finite moral and psychological landscape (a "psycho-topography"), very much as though one were INSIDE the human mind and your "Society of the Mind" was embodied in the set of actors. This is more or less the opposite or an inversion of the 'real world' of real people, who merely SHARE those attributes or of whom the attributes are merely PIECES; in "Pilgrim's Progress", by contrast, the attributes are confined in their occurrence to the actors who are their entire, unique, pure, and active embodiment, and humanness, to be recognized at all, has to be rederived or mentally reconstructed from the essential types.
The effect, for me, was something like experiencing a multidimensional scaling map that depicts the space of the set of human personality types, by being injected directly - mentally and bodily - into it by means of virtual reality technology.
So Bunyan's book has something of the interest to a psychologist, neuroscientist, or philosopher that Edwin Abbot's "Flatland" has to a mathematician.
I don't mean to overpraise "Pilgrim's Progress", of course; it was written for theological rather than scientific purposes, and has conspicuous limitations for that reason. But its interest to a student of the mind who looks at it at from the right point of view can be profound.
- Patrick Gunkel
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This book surprised me by being an excellent management study. The lessons which are easy to take away from the book are aplicable to anyone who is faced with mission definition and achievement. It should be must reading in MBA programs.
Grant's lack of ego is surprising when compared to other Civil War figures and high achievers who have reflected on their lives and actions. By not only focusing on things that went right for Grant, the book has a tremendous credibility borne of real life trial and error, frustration, lessons learned and later employed.
A great book.
Lincoln loved Grant, as he was the first Union commander who seemed willing to fight it out with Lee's army, and who enjoyed any consistent success. When one considers Grant's predecessors at the helm of the Union army, one can understand Lincoln's enthusiasm. You had McClellan, who never read an exaggerated report of the enemy size he didn't believe; "Fighting Joe Hooker", flanked and embarrassed at Chancellorsville; Burnside, who foolishly sent wave after wave of Union soldiers across the Rappahanock to attack an impregnable stone wall at Fredericksburg; and Pope, who was soundly beaten at Manassas. Meanwhile, Grant caught Abe's attention with his successful siege of Vicksburg in the summer of 1863, as Meade was beating Lee at Gettysburg.
Reading Grant's Memoirs is a fascinating experience, as the war, at least that part of it involving Grant, comes to life in the hands of a thoughtful commentator. Grant was obviously there, and he shares informative communications with his inferior officers (such as Sherman) and with the President. Grant sent many men to their doom to be sure, (the Wilderness campaign comes to mind as being especially bloody and ineffective), but overall you get the sense that Grant was respected by his men, who were happy to be marching forward and not backwards after a battle. He restored a sense of pride and accomplishment that was sorely lacking in the Union rank and file. He gave cogent reasons in his memoirs for the actions undertaken, sometimes admitting mistakes in humble fashion, and sometimes explaining why a siege would accomplish the same overall goal without unnecessary bloodshed.
My only regret is that Grant didn't live long enough to write a companion memoir about his presidency, which was clearly outside the scope of this book. Readers who have gotten this far in the Amazon review process are no doubt aware that a broke Grant, stricken with painful throat cancer, wrote out his Memoirs of the Civil War right up until the end of his life to provide financially for his family, finishing the book days before he died. We should all be grateful that he was able to preserve these pages for prosperity, they are truly a model of military memoirs that I consider an extremely rewarding reading experience. When one considers the circumstances in which Grant composed this work, the end result is nothing short of miraculous.
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There is a boy named Peter Pan. He sprinkles fairy dust in Wendy and her two brothers. Then he shows them how to fly. He takes them to Neverland and shows them to the Lost Boys who live there. Wendy becomes their mother. She makes up rules, like any other mother would do. The boys have to follow these rules. Everything was fine until Captain Hook came with his crew to where the boys and Wendy were. While Wendy and the boys were at the lagoon, where they go every day after dinner, they see a girl named Tiger Lily, princess of her tribe. She was captured by Smee, one of Captain Hook's men. Then Peter saved her. A few days later Wendy and the boys were on their way to Wendy's house when they too were all captured by Captain Hook. Then Peter saves them. Then the lost boys, Wendy and her brothers go home. All except for Peter.
It is mostly about what the people in the book think is right with childhood. The kids in the book think that if you grow up it is bad, but in our case it is actually good.
Peter Pan is a violent book not really made for children under the age of 10 but people 10 and up can read it. It is violent because of the language that is spoken and the idea that killing could be fun. Also, the vocabulary is very difficult for children under 10 to understand. Even if you're older it is difficult to understand.
Overall, it is a good book but watch out for the violent ideas if you are reading it to little children.
It's difficult to know what to say about a book like this... everybody knows the story. But I guess that unless you've read this book (not just seen a movie or read a retelling), you don't really know the character Peter Pan, and without knowing the character, you don't really know the story. So read it.
By the way, if you enjoy this, you probably would also like "Sentimental Tommy" and its sequel "Tommy and Grizel", both by Barrie. There are differences (for one thing they're not fantasy), but there are also compelling similarities. Anybody who found Peter Pan a deep and slightly bittersweet book would be sure to enjoy them.
-Stephen
One of the best books any child, young or old, can read is Barrie's Peter Pan. Although written in the past century, it has something for any generation at any time. Its humorous views at the world from a child's mind left me rolling over the floor, laughing; the exciting storyline kept me busy with reading until the end; and the serious undertone made me think of whether the world wouldn't be a better place if we realised that deep down, however deep, we are in fact all children. So if YOU are a child, which you most certainly are, get yourself a copy and enjoy your ongoing childhood.