The title of this Gervase Fen mystery is dredged from English folklore: "Buried on Monday, buried for health, /Buried on Tuesday, buried for wealth; /Buried on Wednesday, buried at leisure, /Buried on Thursday, buried for pleasure; /Buried on Friday, buried for fun, /Buried on Saturday, buried at one; /Buried on Sunday after eleven, /You get the priest and you go to heaven."

A more macabre folk jingle than, say "Monday's child is fair of face..." but appropriate for a murder mystery that our detective-don solves while standing for Parliament in rural England.

Along with the eccentric detective Gervase Fen, Professor of English Language and Literature in the University of Oxford, Edmund Crispin also features one of his eccentric animals in "Buried for Pleasure." This time it is a 'non-doing' pig that falls in love with the village's pub manager.

The plot also works in that most obvious of red herrings: an escaped lunatic who believes himself to be President Woodrow Wilson. His normal mode of dress is a pince nez, and he must be the only lunatic in literature who declares, as he is captured and led away, "I warn you that if my Fourteen Points are not adopted, Western Europe will be at war again within a decade." Since "Buried for Pleasure" takes place in 1949, his prophecy was correct, although tardy.

We never do find out exactly why Fen is standing for Parliament. One of the other characters challenges him to explain his motives:

"'Well, what on earth...I mean, why are you standing for Parliament? What put the idea into your head?'

"Even to himself Fen's actions were sometimes unaccountable, and he could think of no very convincing reply.

"'It is my wish,' he said sanctimoniously, 'to serve the community.'

"The girl eyed him dubiously.

"'Or at least," he amended, 'that is one of my motives. Besides, I felt I was getting far too restricted in my interests. Have you ever produced a definitive edition of Langland?'

"'Of course not,' she said crossly.

"'I have. I've just finished producing one. It has queer psychological effects. You begin to wonder if you're mad. And the only remedy for that is a complete change of occupation.'"

Read this book not so much for the mystery, but for Fen's final campaign speech when he decides that he doesn't want to get elected after all.

As for the mystery, Crispin ties all of his loose ends together in a climactic automobile chase that involves the lunatic who thinks he's President Wilson, the Cockney pub manager and her non-doing pig, the murderer, a candidate for Parliament, and the rector who is plagued by a poltergeist.

And the poltergeist.

"Buried for Pleasure" is vintage Crispin.

Ms. Provost is a gifted writer who provides a clear, concise guide to a complicated Federal program.

"Managing For Excellence" is a portable well-illustrated handbook, which harbours all the essential tips for improving (individual) performance. The book is very straightforward. It is comprehensive, and highlights all the important factors that strengthen and weakens partnerships.
This is one book which helps its user to better understand strategies and improve output. It is superbly organized, and presents its techniques in a practical format.
However, anyone who already has the "Successful Manager's Handbook" need not spend on this one. Both books contain similar information.

A well written 'how to' for novice astronomers. The book describes pieces of the telescope to seas of the moon in a organized fashion. Chapters are broken out as views of the moon and each attraction is mapped with directions. Historical anecdotes accompany each chapter and give good perspective to what we are viewing. The author respects the reader- there are no excessive words and he assumes intelligence. It makes you want to know more about the moon!

What a truly great reader this book turned out to be. Easy to pick up, difficult to put down, and filled with inspiration. While a small percentage of war techniques do not transfer to the business world; Axelrod pulls concise information and quidance from a library of the General's quotes. Wars are won by making the enemy die for his country. Always move forward. When in doubt, attack. The soldier is the army. Gather accurate information and make decisions quickly. And take the high ground.

My only complaint is with the author's desire to open the book with political-correctness and apologies for Patton's frank language.

This book will spark you up and fill you with pride, boldness, and audacity! I have found my Covey books and Minute Mangers have collected dust where "Patton on Leadership" is starting to look like a well worn Bible.

Frederick the Great may have said it, but George "Blood 'n Guts" Patton lived it. What a remarkable man, and what a remarkable presentation about that man, his life and his leadership skills. One should read this book just for the hell-of-it if not for any other reason. What a great first read for anyone wishing to know more about the General.

First of all, this book reads well and fast, and it's hard to put down. Mr. Axelrod tells a great story, conveys the essence of Patton's Generalship and Management styles, and along the way adds some very good history. Axelrod clears up the legends and myth surrounding the famous slapping incident, and details the campaigns into Bastogne and to Berlin in short, clear and entertaining fashion. It was truly enjoyable to read this book.

To keep the record straight, the format of the book allows for a 3 - 4 hour total read time due to the fact that many of the pages have only 18 - 25 lines of print on them, where as others are in standard layout. The stories will excite, entertain, and cause "out-loud" laughter. The language is harsh sometimes, but perfectly appropriate to the original situation.

I say get the SOB book and read it "...every God damn night", and smile.

Frankly, I had some reservations as I began to read this book. By now I have become weary of so many books with gimmicky concepts (eg Chicken Soup for Dummies, Caligula on Management) and was pleased to find that Axelrod has skillfully correlated Patton's expressed ideas on leadership with key issues in the contemporary business world. Many of those ideas probably reflect the influence of Sun Tzu and von Clausewitz whom Patton no doubt studied while a student at V.M.I. (for one year) and then the U.S. Military Academy at West Point from which he graduated. In any event, this is a well-written book with solid substance. After a Foreword and Introduction, Axelrod organizes 183 "Strategic Lessons" within ten chapters:

1. What He Did and Who He Was (Patton's Achievement and Background)

2. "A Commander Will Command" (On the Dimensions of Leadership)

3. "Always Attack, Never Surrender" (On Developing a Winning Attitude)

4. "How Do We Know That?" (On Fact Finding, Preparation, and Planning)

5. "Speed -- Simplicity -- Boldness" (On Execution and Opportunity)

6. "The Soldier Is the Army" (On Training, Mentoring, Motivating, and Inspiring)

7. "Letters of Instruction" ((On Communication and Coordination)

8. "Only One Direction -- Forward" (On Creating Efficiency)

9. "Success Is How High You Can Bounce When You Hit Bottom" (On Courage and Character)

10. "Audacity" (On Managing the Impossible)

I provide the chapter titles and subtitles to suggest the specific areas in which Axelrod examines Patton's ideas. Patton remains one of the 20th century's best-known and least-understood military leaders. Mention his name and most people immediately conjure an image of George C. Scott whose inspired portrayal provided an accurate but incomplete representation of Patton. It is worth noting that Patton's strategies minimized casualties of his own troops while maximizing destruction of those whom his troops opposed, that he assembled an extraordinarily talented staff to whom he delegated effectively and whose members remained steadfastly loyal to him, and that under his leadership his troops achieved truly stunning results, often with severely limited resources and under political constraints. There is a great deal to learn from this man...and Axelrod has done a brilliant job of suggesting what that is.

Axelrod includes a Recommended Readings section to which I presume to add Puryear's 19 Stars (A Study in Military Character and Leadership). In it, Puryear examines the careers of George S. Patton, Jr., Dwight D. Eisenhower, Douglas MacArthur, and George C. Marshall. You may also wish to check out Sun Tzu's The Art of War (Oxford University Press) and von Clausewitz's On War (Penguin).

Although I'm not in sales this is a timely book for me. I have had a lot of problems getting management to take my proposals seriously. This book has opened my eyes to all the mistakes I made in my approach.

Steve Heiman and Bob Miller pick up where they left off with the successful, seminal work on strategy sales called Strategic Selling with a similarly valuable book called Conceptual Selling. Sales today is not about tips and techniques - buyers have become quite sophisticated and expect more than product and service pitches from sales people. Conceptual Selling lays out a logical, approachable process that can be taught, coached, and repeated. What more could you ask for?

"Conceptual Selling" offers a sound and useful approach which should improve results for any salesperson. The authors do a fine job of laying out their philosophy and walking the reader through each step of their customer-focused sales process. This process is neither earthshaking nor mindbending. Instead, it is off-center enough to be innovative and intuitive enough to seem real, even before you implement it for yourself.

Readers looking for alternatives to hard-sell, "close-of-the-week" approaches will consider "Conceptual Selling" a welcome find. The authors do a good job of including check lists, work sheets and high-level summaries of key points and processes. The result is a book you can quickly put to good use and a resource you can easily return to time and again.

The only flaw in the book (the reason for four, instead of five stars) is that the writing was too often overdone and repetitive. To their credit the authors present their concepts clearly. However, it seems they felt the need to oversell a concept which is all about not overselling. Fortunately, the concepts and useful tools they present more than overcome this modest shortcoming. I highly recommend this book.

My stereotype of accounting texts before taking an accounting class and using this book was they were all focused on the mechanics of accounting, which are dull to most students. This textbook, on the other hand, emphasizes the usefulness of accounting in the real world before delving into all the rules and regimentation. Therefore, some subjects, like debts and credits, receive less attention than they might deserve, especially for serious accounting students. The textbook's diagrams are quite colorful and useful, and its language is simple enough for your average student to understand. Hence, I recommend the book to any introductory-level business student, but I think that more serious accounting students might prefer a more advanced or in-depth textbook.

This book is written in an accessible and practical format. It assumes nothing but at the same time treats the reader as an intelligent participant on the journey to understanding evidence based practice.

It is up to date and I was especially impressed with the web address it gives to ensure the reader is kept abreast of any changes since publication.

It systematically explains the need and use of 'evidence', how to find it (the search advice is comprehensive and includes details such as search terms and the best search engines aswell as web addresses) how to evaluate it and also how to act on it.

All in all this book was great, and I would reccomend it to anyone involved in evidence based healthcare practice as it will guide you through the thorniest problems.

I bought 2 books from O'reilly partly based on the good reviews for them on this site. I thought the publisher had good-quality books. Now I doubt the trust-worthiness of these reviews.

Book like this one, which is useless for any "computer guys" has 5-stars reviews. This inevitably makes me think that those are from the authors or the publisher.

The software on the site do a greate job in helping buyers to find and select what they want. But for the readers' review, as one of the local slang says : "Believe just 10% of (some of) it could be lethal to you (or your wallet)."

That brings out another issue - can this or other internet book-stores replace the physical retail stores, in which you can have a brief look and feel of the books yourself.

With a limited budget for so many (expensive) books, one should get a personal look at the book before committing.

Last time, I gave it a 3 stars.

Now I've gone through more of this pile of papers and I think there is really no computer guys/ladies who can benefit from this book except wasting some time if you've got too much money and time to spend.

But no "computer person" should have too much time to learn new stuff these days.

Two years ago, when I was merely a Novell 3.x administrator supporting Windows 3.x, I found this book to be a GREAT introduction to the power of NT. Now, as a seasoned NT support engineer, I still would recommend this book to any person new to NT support.

The book rambles and repeats itself a good bit, and I'm still looking for a good but concise explanation of TCP/IP and how to design networks properly for 10, 100, 1000, and 10000 users. I'd rather not spend $10,000 for a next-to-useless certification course if I don't have to.

Of course, if you already know everything about everything, you would be God and therefore don't need books, classes, tech support numbers, or anything. You just need to rein in your ego.

The book is overall quite good as an introductory text for accounting, but there are other books out there, equally good, that come a lot cheaper.