How we rate a book depends primarily on what we are induced to expect from it. The title suggested that this book would offer ways to increase one's range of thinking styles.

Instead, what I found to my disappointment, were trivial exercises that aim to change routine habits. Most of it is about deliberately changing the way we perfrom our routines and mundane daily activities - like closing your eyes and opening your bathroom tap, taking a new route to a familiar destination, getting exposed to strong and unusual smells etc. This might be of help to those who have considerably aged and require any sort of mental stimulation to activate their brain cells. For someone like me, working as a bank clerk at the age of 30, brimming with ideas on creativity and imagination techniques, these exercises really do not make much of a difference.

I think what the younger population needs for brain development (not in the physiological sense) is a solid exposure to the different ways of thinking - analytical, logical, creative, lateral, absrtact, visual, holistic, intuitive, pattern-based thinking etc and ways to improve memory. The more tools you have to choose from the more ways you have to tackle and solve a problem. This book doesn't do a thing towards this objective.

If you feel what I mentioned in the last paragraph is what you're really looking for, I would whole-heartedly suggest Karl Albrecht's "Brain Power". That book really deserves to move up in the sales ranking. ("Brain Power" focuses on thinking methods. For memory improvement the only book you need to read, in my opinion, is "Your Memory" by Kenneth Higbee).

What follows might be an unkind comment, but I should mention it because the title does not suggest it, "Save this title for the time when you are old and senile".

"Keeping Your Brain Alive is easy to read and the neurobic exercises are easy to do. I thought they would interfere with my usually hectic day but far from it. The Science is also easy to understand and very logical. It is encouraging to think that I can actually do something to help keep my mind fit as I move along in years. I believe this book is important. That's why I'm takingt the time to comment on it. It is something we boomers can do, pardon the pun, without thinking about it!

Keep Your Brain Alive By Lawrence C. Katz,Ph.D and Manning Rubin

Reviewed by Nancy Newman whose novel "Disturbing The Peace" is to be published by Avon Books this fall

If you've been suffering periodic memory lapses lately and are worried a your middle-aged brain is turning to mush, take heart. Help is here in the form of a terrific little book called Keep Your Brain Alive by Lawrence C. Katz,Ph.D. and Manning Rubin. Based on the latest scientific research from around the world, the book offers a short explanation of how the brain functions, then goes on to describe a unique program called neurobics (aerobics for the brain) which can keep your mind healthy and agile even as you and your brain age

The balance of science and exercises is organized and written in a way that let's you understand enough about what's happening in the brain without bogging you down with technical explanations. Basically the system uses the brain's ability to produce it's own nutrients that strengthen and preserve brain cells and applies that to the discovery that nerve cells in adult brains can be stimulated to grow dendrites with these nutrients. As we age our lives tend to become so routinized that we rely too heavily on only one or two senses and many pathways in the brain's circuits become inactive. As a result there is a thinning out of dendrites. Since these threadlike tendrils receive and process information from nerve cell to nerve cell, our minds can begin to feel sluggish.

But according to the authors, this situation can be vastly improved by presenting the brain with unexpected combinations of the senses in novel ways, thereby stimulating it to increase the health and complexity of its dendrites and thus giving memory and mental agility a boost.

The eighty-three exercises offered in the book are simple, fun and easy to integrate into daily life. Try brushing your teeth or buttoning your shirt in the morning with your less dominant hand. Scramble the location of familiar objects in your office. Take a whiff of pungent spices at an ethnic market. Make your way through your bedroom without turning on a light. You're giving your neural pathways a workout. Soon you'll be thinking up your own neurobic exercises. Growing older doesn't have to mean growing dimmer, say Katz and Rubin, not if you start living neurobically.

If you've not read any Lawrence this is not the book to start with. It fails as a novel because there is no story to speak of, just a string of scenes to initiate discussion of the issues Lawrence wished to explore. Apologists describe it as picaresque, but there is far more unity to most novels that deserve that descriptor. Nonetheless, there are wonderful scenes that fitfully jar this book to life, Lawrence's admirable command of language, and a brooding homoeroticism aching to burst out. Try this book after you've hit the major works (i.e. Women in Love, etc.).

Aaron Sisson, a coal miner and amateur flutist in the Midlands, abandons his wife and two children and escapes to Italy in the hope of throwing off the trammels of his environment and realising his individual potentials. His dream is to become recognised as a master flutist. In Florence, he mixes in intellectual and artistic circles and has an affair with an aristocratic lady who redeems him in his own eyes. Like the majority of Lawrence's novels, the central theme is the relations between men and women, though this time, it is given a twist owing to Lawrence nourishing his mind on a reading of Nietzsche, who was then gradually becoming recognised in England. In his analysis of the concept of "love" between the sexes, Lawrence perceives it as a function of the will to power, a cycle of reciprocal domination and surrender, in which the man must conquer and the woman must submit. Elements of the rejection of the "herd morality" on Aaron's part and his endeavour at self-development are both ideas of peculiarly Nietzschean provenance. The fact that Aaron realises himself through music is another echo of Nietzsche, who regarded music as the purest and most supreme of the arts, in which the passions achieve immense gratification. The title refers to the rod of Aaron in the Old Testament, one of Moses's renegade priests who built the golden calf in the desert for the worship of the Israelites. The rod, his symbol of authority and independence, finds its echo in Aaron's flute, which is broken later in the novel during an anarchist riot. There is a price to pay, Lawrence seems to imply, for daring to oppose orthodoxy and to try to create a new life for oneself. Unlike Lawrence's more famous works, such as "Lady Chatterly's Lover" and "Women in Love", which are both admirable for their rich, poetic prose, "Aaron's Rod" is drably written and occasionally tedious, with a narrative that is sometimes poorly connected, as it dwells on irrelevancies. However, the message, that of an individual fulfilling his duty to himself, is an encouraging and refreshing one.

"Aaron's Rod" was a very elequently written book combining both powerful imagery along with a keen sense of imagination. The majority of D.H. Lawrence's books' are written in much the same style. 'Tis unfortunate that the written word of his day is not as visible in ours.

Once upon a time this book may have been useful, but now this text is more than 20 years old and badly in need of a revision. You would be better off to read a more up-to-date work instead, such as the books by Rothman and Greenland, Clayton and Hills, or MacMahon and Trichopolos.

This is a fine textbook, but I am compelled to respond to the first review. Nondifferential misclassification unfortunately does not always produce a bias towards the null. See more recent texts for details.

Most epidemiology texts I have seen do not show a proof of the commonly stated issue that misclassification bias always produces a bias toward the null. This text provides such a proof and does so eloquently

I was tricked into reading this book due to it being a well known classic and from a desire to read a good romantic story which I thought it would be. Well, um, IT'S NOT.

I like to read books that draw me right into the story and then a couple of hours later you notice you are turning page 250 when the last you recall touching was page 97. This book was not like that at all. Unfortunately, I was always conscious that I was reading print from a page but kept reminding myself that a book this famous had to get good sooner or later. Far from not being able to put it down, I found myself often looking to see what page I was on and if I had read my quota for the night. It never did get good and when I had finished the last sentence I felt frustrated and cheated.

I worried that my lack of appreciation for this classic must be due to my inferior intellect and that I must after all be just some obtuse hill-billy. Thankfully I found that several people who had offered their reviews here shared my opinions for this book and I was quite relieved that I was not alone in my reaction.

For me, Lawrence's supremely descriptive, possibly brilliant (although I really wouldn't know) and flowery writing is all for not because of selfish, unlikeable and unbelieveable characters who don't really do anything. At the very end, the only care I had for anyone in the book was poor little Winifred. I hope she was alright.

In conclusion may I suggest that you pass on Women in Love and read instead Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy. It is so much more a wonderful book about believable, likeable, women in love.

Women In Love written by D.H. Lawrence is not as explicit as his other novels, and instead of concentrating on sexual content, Lawrence chose to depict the relationships between two sisters and their boyfriends. D.H. Lawrence goes deep into the minds of human beings and reveals the real secrets of emotions, feelings, and thoughts that people usually hide inside. Statements such as "The Dead Should Bury the Dead" illustrate the content of living and dying, which the book frequently discusses. The book is difficult and long to read, but it opens up the reader's mind and forces the reader to reavaluate the content of his or her relationship with other people.

First of all, I have to own you up that reading Women in Love was one of the best experiences on books that I ever had. I know it's not Lawurence's masterpiece, but I touched me very deep. Everthing seems to wok in this book, from the characters to their enviroment.

It seems to me that Lawrence took daily events and showed them the way they are: unglamourised. He showed me what love and support seem to be. It's not about being happy all the time or that kind of love that happens only in movies. The book deals with the ordinary love, the one that normal human beings have the chance to face.

Following the experience of both couples made me see how different love can be and it is the still the same. I could perfectly understand all the worries and anxiets Gudrun had. And I think Gerald and she made quite a couple! Yet Birkin and Ursula look very nice together since the begin. Their love is not as 'wild' as the other couple's, but it is very strong indeed.

When the book was over I got down because I had to let them go. Following the lives of such people for a few days made quite an impression on me. Even though they may not be XXI century people like us, they have the same essence we do.

All in all, I know this review may read very emotive and personal, but this is a book that I couldn't apart in other to write about

I listened to an Audio CD version of the play and I regret to say that I found it unmoving. The Brooklyn accents of the characters seemed to fade in and out on occasion and they deep dark revelations about their personal lives seemed to be revealed without much emotion most of the time.

I really had high hopes for the drama but felt it was more gimmick than gripping.

I found Broken Glass interesting but disappointing. One expects the film to hold a much deeper secret and comes away from it thinking "This story has already been told." The three main actors, Margot Leicester, Mandy Patinkin and Henry Goodman, are all marvelous and far better than the script allows. I found Elizabeth McGovern a rather strange choice for the role of Dr.Hyman's wife. I own this film because I'm a huge Mandy Patinkin fan, but I wouldn't have spent the money otherwise.

The dimensions of healing placed in contradistinction to the tyranny of complaint.

Save your money and purchase the REAL stories 'outlined' in this cheap book put together to ride the wave of The Perfect Storm. The collection of stories is nothing more than a collection of extended abstracts of the real stories. Many of the 'abstracts' are taken out of context and the reader does not get an accurate picture of what and why the nautical situation developed or how it concluded. Pass on this one.

This book is in a series put out by Adrenaline books and each book contains certain selections chosen by the editor. The selections are either excerpts from books, excerpts from diaries and journals, short stories, or an occasional essay. I look at how good the writing is, and how good the stories are.

There are 16 selections in this book. Half of them range from good to great, and the other eight are fairly poor. The writing is okay throughout, with some being more exceptional than others, but it's the stories that differ the most in quality. Six of them, whether written well or not, have virtually no story whatsoever or are very poor. As it turns out, the best stories in this book are also some of the better written. This is where the book's strength shows up. The selections introduce you to stories and books you may have never read and after reading some of the good selections, it makes you want to go read the books they were taken from. So I would mostly recommend this book to people who have not read much or any sea stories. It introduces you to a wide variety of sea literature. But otherwise I would only lightly recommend it by saying that everyone would find some selections that they really like.

Clint Willis has created a fascinating series of books with Epic, Climb, High, Wild, Ice, Rough Water, and The War. Each of these volumes presents the best literature about their respective subjects in a powerful cohesive manner. These books are a quick read, but intricate and spellbinding. I have given many of them to friends and family as gifts.

Get the printed version (excellent!) instead. This high-tech version is underwhelming, especially for the cost. It apparently has the same content as the standard text, but the interface looks like it was written for a computer running Windows 95.

The book is especially good to understand the mechanisms of Cell Biology. The beauty of the book is that it does not look at Cell Biology purely from the aspect of a cell and it's organelles but goes a step further to give a clear picture of how cell organelles and their components function in a cell and how it is impossible to study the cell without it's amalgamation with molecular biology. The chapters on DNA replication and RNA transcription are very lucid. Signal transduction is also very comprehensively explored. The book has kept abreast with latest studies and makes it an especially useful text for 1st year Masters/Ph.D students

It is the most shallow coverage of Notes that I've ever seen. I still don't understand how they managed to pack so little information into so many pages.

For example, a new feature of 4.5 is Multidatabase indexing through a site search database. Here is the unabridged exerpt from this "reference" on site search:

"The Multi Databse Indexing feature enables you to create many indices at once. After these indices exist, it is possible to search more than one database at a time for data (such as a client's name or company name). This feature can be extremely helpfull when designing a Web page. As shown in figure 8.21, you must be a manager of the file to enable this option."

That's it. That pathetic, inane, useless, and technically incaccurate blurb is all the info this book provides on site search. They don't even know what a site search database is (its the tool used to actually build a multidatabase index). And the worst part is that the whole book is like this. Uhh... I don't know exactly what this is but uhh.... here's the property box for it and uhh... you can click boxes and stuff on it. And uhh.. oh, yeah, you have to have sufficient access to do that.

Avoid this one like the plague. New Riders Publishing should really be ashamed of themselves.

This book is less than useless, I had more questions than answars after reading it. The book is terribly shallow and never goes into any depth.

Read some reviews here.

Some folks feel it is not a good book, so I went to a local bookstore and spent an hour leafing ... for the 2nd time. For my project [ where there were some challenges, this book came closest to giving me script pointers, though not solutions]

I beleive this book is by far the best I have seen for Notes/Domino 4.x and would be happy if they released one for R 5.0 - same manner....

Great book in my personal opinion..and stands out in the Notes/Domino arena.

I RECENTLY TRIED TO 'GET THROUGH' VOLUME 1 OF LAWRENCES SHORT STORIES. I LOVE HIS WRITING. IT'S BEAUTIFUL AND FILLED WITH WILD SENSUAL IMAGES. HOWEVER, WHEN I FINISH EACH STORY, I WONDER: SO WHAT??? WHAT WAS THAT ALL ABOUT??? EACH STORY SEEMS TO BE SIMPLY A SLICE OF LIFE, MANY DEALING WITH MAN/WOMAN RELATIONSHIPS. BUT AT THE END OF EACH, I DID NOT FEEL THAT I HAD LEARNED OR GAINED ANYTHING FROM THE READING. ALSO, MOST DID NOT HOLD MY ATTENTION - EXCEPT FOR THE BEAUTIFUL USE OF LANGUAGE AND SENSE IMAGERY.

Honestly, I've never been an avid reader of DH Lawrence. This is not to say, I dislike him as a writer. Not true. The literature that I have read by him, most I've found interesting and good. It had been a while since I read any DH, until I picked up SELECTED SHORT STORIES. I picked it up primarily for the story "The Prussian Officer." I wasn't disappointed with the short story at all. It's quite a homoerotic story about a Captain and his subordinate, telling of DH and his other work in many ways. The story is compelling, yet tragic, which I liked. The other stories that followed didn't quite compare. I found the other's dry and verbose (especially "Daughters of the Vicar"). I'd recommend this collection just for the "The Prussian Officer."

D.H. Lawrence was a superb short story writer, and The Rocking Horse Winner is perhaps one of the greatest short stories ever written. The only other short story that is its equal is The Bet by Anton Chekhov. I would say more but that would be spoiling it for you. Let it suffice to say that Lawrence is now a much overlooked writer, however, his message of how modern industry is destroying all that is vital and natural in mankind is as poignant today as when he first wrote about it almost 100 years ago! So what's new?

I have been using this book for an Intermediate Accounting class that I have to take as a pre requisite for a Master's degree. Even though the book is quite complete in explaining accounting principles it is unecessarily wordy and extremely heavy.

The first five chapters (220 pages) provide a review of what accounting is, the accounting information system, the income statement and the balance sheet. Most of the what is written here is either too basic or will be later found in the remaining chapters of the book. These pages could be easily removed without sacrificing the remaining contents and the understanding of accounting.

Later chapters, however, are also wordy and take too much time explaining concepts that could readily be understood in a couple of lines. You end up getting tired of reading the same thing again and again.

In the end, we have to pay the price for so many pages. With 1300 + pages this book is the heaviest one I have ever carried around. Many people in my class have to use a wheeled backpack. I sometimes can't understand the fascination of editors in the US for such heavy books. If you go to Europe, Asia, and South America, books are usually thinner and much, much lighter.

I would recommend the book to be offered in a CD Rom (or e text) format. Carriyng my laptop around makes more sense than carrying the book.

This book for undergraduate accounting classes at the junior level was more confusing to me than the comparable book by Kieso et al. The sequence of the chapters is not entirely logical. More advanced concepts seem to be covered towards the beginning whereas some basic chapters are discussed towards the end of the book. It was especially confusing when not covering the chapter in chronological order - too bad that my class's syllabus was not outlined according to this book's chapter sequence. In a different class - when we used Intermediate Accounting by Kieso - jumping back and forth was not a big problem. This book by Spiceland also seemed to be very wordy. Studying by solving problems at the end of the book seemed to work. However, it is more important to know how your teacher designs the quizzes and exams and then study accordingly. On the CD that comes with it, there is a lot of ballast. The quizzes are the only valuable thing, I felt. There is not really a lot of use complaining about its weight - accounting books always seem to be extremely heavy and pricy. But this certainly holds true for this one as well!!! When I tried to resell the book at the university bookstore, they would not take it back because it was selling badly on a national scale. Very frustrating when you paid [$$$] just a couple of months earlier...

This book put me to sleep. It is a very bland book. This is based on the volume one edition chapters 1-14.