I'm ordering a replacement copy of Fodors Exploring Boston & New England (97 version). It did such a good good of supplementing our tour guide's very good materials, that she was going to get her own. She was nice, so we gave her ours. Wonderful blending of short synoptic items, great selection of points of interest, and excellent photographs with additional two-page extended essays on pertinent subjects ranging from early Americana to Native American gambling institutions. Very attractive and lively layout, good indexing, and very informative. The text is not burdened down with lots of places to stay, eat, or pay for entertainment. But suggestions abound in separate compact sections at the back of the book. Good maps. Very convenient size. A great book to point you in the right direction, then to bring back the memories. Both my wife and I give it a 10: which means it does an excellent job of satisfying both right- and left-brain appetites for information on this marvelously rich region.

Anyone who thinks Britain is dull will have their minds changed by this colorful guide book. Shorter but livelier than Folder's more traditional guide to Britain ("Fodor's 2000 Great Britain"), "Exploring Britain" has a color picture or two on every page, clear maps of every region of Britain plus larger cities, and dozens of marginal notes on every topic, from "Waterway Vacations" to "Mountain Safety." The main text opens with a number of introductory topics, such as "The Pub" and "Kings and Queens," and then goes on to provide easy-to-follow touring guides to 10 British regions, including London, Scotland and Wales, as well as England. The information is provided in a brisker, more personal style than the traditional Fodor's Guides, which tend to be encyclopedic but dry. Most tourism sites described in the book are given ratings, from one to three stars, a time-saver when you have to pick and choose. A condensed guide to accommodations and restaurants rounds out the book, making it a guide that could stand alone, although the traveller needing more information in depth really needs "Fodor's 2000 Great Britain" as well. In short, 'Fodor's Exploring Britain" is compact, colorful, and easy to use, and a good way to whet your appetite for travel to Britain.

this book includes one of the most helpful accounts of the connection between the 'social contract'and the 'second discourse'in rousseau's philosophy that i've ever read. hoffman is clear and to the point, but manages, at the same time, to bring up original and insightful points about the rousseauian project. i highly recommend it.

This book helps you to build the confidence you need that no one teaches you. Reading this helps you understand that you have to begin from the inside building the foundation of your confidence levels and working your way up!

Dick Locke, founder of the San Francisco-based Global Procurement Group, is a leading authority in the field of international purchasing. He shares his expertise in his new book, Global Supply Management. His clear and concise writing demystifies the topic of international purchasing and presents it as a manageable business process.

Locke concludes each chapter with a summary of key points and includes a number of "tests of understanding" throughout the book, both of which serve to reinforce the topic he has just covered. I also found Locke's practice of including references and resources at the end of each chapter to be more useful than a general compilation appearing in an appendix.

That's enough about style; let's talk content. The book begins with an outline of some of the challenges that face international purchasers - challenges that even experienced domestic buyers may not be aware of. Locke then takes his readers through a detailed explanation of the cultural differences that affect international purchasing. In his approach to this topic, he doesn't provide a collection of cultural cliches, but rather draws upon the work of well-known researchers and applies their findings to real-life business situations.

After identifying the cultural differences and their potential impact upon international commerce, Locke offers practical advice for overcoming these differences, and cautions about the dangers of stereotyping countries. He includes useful communication tips concerning the use of language, such as the importance of checking for understanding throughout meetings with others whose native language is not English. The book also covers the differences in legal systems and contracting practices that the international buyer should understand. The author explains how cultural issues will affect both the form and the content of international purchasing agreements.

I found one of the book's real strengths to be its very thorough coverage of foreign exchange issues. Back in the early '80s, I was buying industrial parts from Germany and Italy and was using a French freight forwarder to handle the shipping details. In each case, we had contracted to pay in the seller's currency. Things worked out well, and we generally benefited from these arrangements. I would like to be able to tell you that we did so as part of a carefully crafted plan to manage our financial resources. However, the fact is that we were simply lucky due to the relative strength of the dollar at the time. By agreeing to pay in the sellers' currencies, we had assumed the "exchange risk," a concept that I understand much more fully after having read Locke's book. He dedicates a full seven chapters to foreign exchange issues and does so in such a way-with liberal use of his tests of understanding-as to make the topic understandable to even a nonfinancial manager.

Customs and logistics matters also present their own sets of challenges to the international purchaser. As the book explains, a purchaser does not have to be an expert in these areas to be successful in global supply management. However, buyers do need to know the factors that are involved and be able to communicate with the experts. Three chapters of the book address these issues and give pointers that are designed to minimize the costs as well as the hassles and delays that an inexperienced international buyer might encounter.

The book also provides solid advice on other choices that the international buyer must make, such as: paying the supplier (letters of credit vs. documents against credit vs. credit terms); purchasing channels (international purchasing offices vs. U.S. sales offices of foreign companies vs. buying direct from the factory); and supplier selection and management.

The book concludes with three appendices that give answers to the tests of understanding, provide a supplier survey that can be used in the supplier selection process, and supply buyers' guides containing key information about 14 countries that are, or are about to become, major exporters to the United States.

Locke has managed to pack a wealth of useful information about international purchasing into his book. I highly recommend Global Supply Management to anyone who is, or should be, involved in international purchasing. It is an excellent addition to a purchasing professional's strategic tool kit.

-Brian Caffrey is president of Solutions Consulting Group, a Jackson Heights, N.Y., consulting practice that specializes in re-engineering and continuous improvement of purchasing and supply management processes. Contact him at bcaffrey@solcon.com.

As published in Electornic Buyers' News, CMP Media Inc. June 10, 1996

I love this book! In a lovely tale, the book describes how the seaside village of Sconset on Nantucket began. My son loves the illustrations and enjoys trying to find the seagull character on every page. True Nantucket!

With Wander locked away at a secret base called the Citadel, Consuela and her fellow crew members aboard the Avenger (including her friend Rick) set out to rescue him. This book kept me guessing all the way to the end. Tons of action, a bit of romance, Locke's believeable science fiction universe, and the overall message of Christ all fit together to create a book that I couldn't put down and was diasppointed to finish.

This was a GREAT book. It kept you captivated and worked to keep you guessing. It was similar to watching a good mystery movie.

This first book by poet and essayist Christopher Locke is a must have for anyone who likes real poetry. The author uses images from the natural world with true animism. He envisions a world in which "mosquitos sucker punch" his neck and "brains are quilted with the geography of sleep". These poems sing with a creativity few people in this world will ever possess.

In his great _Introduction_ to the works of David Hume, Thomas Hill Green found that he had to subject the entire tradition of British empiricism to close scrutiny beginning with the doctrines of John Locke. The result is a swingeing critique of empiricist epistemology that works quite well as a "standalone" work.

Green was one of a handful of philosophers who introduced German idealism to England, arguing (very effectively) that British philosophy had contracted a case of empiricism and could be saved only by an infusion of Kant and Hegel. And in the present essay, he turns a hawklike eye on the imprecisions that made empiricism seem plausible to begin with.

The essay wanders all over Locke and Hume and is probably impossible to summarize succinctly. Suffice it to say that Green repeatedly discloses the active role of intelligence in the creation of knowledge and disabuses the reader once for all of the confused notion that purely sensory experience can do the things Locke required it to do.

Any number of modern readers might profit from this now apparently seldom-opened work, but it should be of particular interest to readers of philosophers who wish to locate the origins of all knowledge in purely sensory perception. Green's great work is a sustained argument that this project is doomed to failure, and as far as I know his argument has not yet been successfully met.