This book contains a lot of wit and wisdom gathered from a vast array of sources. Gambling pervades the economy of the American masculine soul, so we need to study it as art and as disease, and this book is a wonderful resources in that regard. Like the man said in the pool hall, take this book to Las Vegas along with "Das Kapital" and your lucky mojo charm.

"Eat your betting money, but don't bet your eating money," may be true for some, but betting $20 of your eating money on this book will get you food for thought. The book groups quotations in categories and starts each category with commentary by editor Paul Lyons. Quotations come from writers, gamblers, sages, and whatall from all over the world and throughout history. A sure bet if ever there was one.

I've always loved gambling, whether in a friendly poker game or I'll place a trifecta during lunch so after work I can see if I hit--there's a thrill in not knowing, having the possibility--I mean, maybe you won ten grand and you don't know it. I never thought much about that thrill, but when I saw this book on the shelf in Barnes & Noble and flipped it open I came across all these passages with people's insights on why and how people gamble. I never really thought of gambling in connection to belief or religion, but this book shows how gambling goes way back into the history of many cultures and how it appeals to that contest between human beings and their destinies. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to understand gambling better.

its conviction that ADD/ADHD is a complex condition that can't be reduced to a single point of origin. Ken Vegotsky, one of the books contributors believes "It is unfortunate for children diagnosed with ADD/ADHD that the North American perspective tends to take a 'one-size-fits all' approach."

Most of the focus is on natural choices and options that are less intrusive than Ritalin, dextroamphetamine, bupopropin, and other drugs used to treat these learning disabilities. There is an impressive amount of information about the ten major drugs currently used, and their potential side effects. This includes an 'At-a-Glance Quick Reference(TM) Interaction Chart and Side Effects Reference Chart. In addition...

A preliminary study by doctors from Lincoln Memorial Hospital, Bronx, NY use of acupressure to reduce drug use, and even get children on Ritalin and dextroamphetamine completely free of these drugs - plus over 30 more chapters with powerful information from health care professionals on the inner ear/cerebellar-vestibular origins, healing the hyperactive brain through the science of functional medicine, essential fatty acids, thyroid gland and hyperactivity, environmental factors and organic acids, Chinese medicine, diet and nutrition, herbs, parasites and detoxification, mercury poisoning and chelation, homeopathy, Bach Flower Remedies, neurofeedback, music and guided imagery, exercise, tools to empower teachers and parents, plus more, including an overview chapter with an easy to use plan of action...

I discovered the full range of choices for dealing with ADD and hyperactivity and the first documented cure for autism and how it is linked to some cases of hyperactivity. From natural remedies and diet, to drug options and treatment plans, it is clearly and easily spelled out for your use.

Top experts from around the world include doctors from Lincoln Memorial Hospital, Bronx, N.Y. use of acupressure beads to reduce Ritalin use; Harold Levinson, M.D., successful treatment of 35,000 patients; Mike Lyon, M.D. protocols for the new science of Functional Medicine; the Feingold diet contributed by Jane Hersey, President of the Feingold Association, pharmacists clear explanation of the top 10 pharmaceutical drugs used by doctors, with easy-to-use-lists for side-effects and warnings, plus a quick reference drug-interaction chart, and top experts in the areas of herbs, essential fatty acids, parasites and detoxification, Chinese Medicine, pharmaceutical drugs, homeopathy, social and psychological tools, and much more are all tied together in the overview chapter on how to use this unique book.

Book includes a clear explanation of the top 10 pharmaceutical drugs used by doctors, with easy-to-use-lists for side-effects and warnings, plus a quick reference drug-interaction chart.

Social and psychological tools that empower parents, teachers, and ADD/Hyperactive children and adults.

An overview on how to effectively use the information in this book. Extensive listings of complementary and traditional support groups, resources for finding trained professionals, legal rights sources, books, music CDs, supplements, At-a-Glance Quick Reference™ charts, and more.

If you are starting to look for information or have already read several books on learning disabilities, this book is for you! Authors of numerous books in this area contributed clear and concise information in their own chapters. Each chapter is a solid description of what they use successfully for dealing with these learning disabilities.

A must have for anyone interested in successfully choosing those options which they are most comfortable with!

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This is a valuable text for the economical traveller who wishes to enjoy the people,customs and natural beauties of this country.

It has all the usual features many have come to expect from the 'Lonely Planet' guides.Good area/city maps,travel details, pointers for the culinary delicacies of particular areas,good information on inexpensive places to stay,as well as fascinating sights,places and people to visit,a brief introduction to the(amazingly simple and easy to learn)language,and interesting cultural,religious and other useful notes.

This edition and it`s excellent predecessors have played a major part in assisting me in all of my travels to Indonesia,in both the planning and research stages,and during the travel itself.I am certain that I would not have travelled to some of the unique and rarely visited places that I was privileged to see without the aid of this weighty and at times indispensible tome.

However,the most important thing to take with you is an open mind and heart,a friendly nature,and a desire to get to know the people and their customs.(Language is a great help too.)These ingredients(and the book !)tend to make for a most memorable and enjoyable stay. Bon Voyage !

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This is the most detailed book for a big place like indonesia. Indonesia (outside of Jakarta/Bali) is a perfect match of lonely planet's specialty in off the beaten track and/or budget traveling. Every part of Indonesia is covered, except for the small islands between Sumatra and Kalimantan that might be cool to check out. Its not the Riau - that's covered in detail. It has minimal coverage of the Natuna islands. I'm interested in the islands further south - Tambeian Islands, Dadas Isalands, and Pulau Pejantan. Once they add coverage to these islands then this book will be perfection. This book also a lot of information on Indonesian culture, about a 40% overlap with the culture shock indonesia book.

So far I plan a 2 month trip to indonesia. Fly to hong kong, spend 1-2 nights there. Then fly to malaysia or jakarta (whichever is cheaper). Then take a boat to Pontianak, spend some time there and sinkawang (probably a week). Check out the islands between kalimantan and sumatra (1-2 weeks). Then go to the todgean islands, getting their via ujung padang to ambon and then spend the rest of the time (probably a month) chillin and snorkeling / scuba diving. Then go back trhough jakarta or malaysia, spend another 1-2 nights in hong kong, and then come home.

On planning a trip to indonesia I found this guide book from the Lonely Planet Series. I was attracted by the clear concept of the book that makes it easy to find the information, that you need. It provides all the necessary information for a traveller who wants to get of the beaten trak, but also includes the "must see" sights. Specially the Places to Stay and Places to Eat sections are clear and give good and reliable information. It made my trip to indonesia easy and worth a while. I strongly recomend a Lonely Planet book if you like to travel and you want to see as much as possible.

As a resident of Bali year-round, the number one complaint by almost every lonely planet carrying visitor is how inaccurate and outdated the lonely planet guides are. Whether it is Thailand or Indonesia, information that is needed on a daily basis is history by the time the lonely books reach the traveling consumer. Bookstores throughout Asia are piled high with lonely planets discarded by weary travelers eager to lessen their load. Lonely planet books do offer historical perspectives that can also be found on the internet, but the insider's information the first time traveler needs to save money and sanity their first days in Asia is sorely lacking. Updated info on how to avoid being ripped off from lodging to transportation to moneychanging is of primary concern to almost all visitors to Bali that we meet. Books as heavy as bricks with pretty pics are nice but hardly handy when you are in need of fast, accurate information. Try "The Beginners Guide to Bali" on cd-rom- it has weekly updated info and prepares the first time traveler to Bali for the unexpected.

I found this book quite informative and useful in its information about many different aspects of visiting Bali. The book provides wonderful cultural insights, historical background and detailed information.

The only major discrepancy we came across, for instance, was that the book said that Kuta has problems with tourists being hassled by street vendors, but when we went in April, we found that the main street in Kuta (where the Matahari Department Store is) quite the opposite. It turned out that the officials had just recently come down on the street vendors and put a stop to harassing tourists there. Instead, when we went to the center of town in Ubud, we were hassled a great deal by taxi/moped drivers to get us to hire them; this caught us off guard.

In response to concerns that the book isn't current on it's information, I feel that you shouldn't rely on a guidebook for prices, and that as a whole Lonely Planet Bali & Lombok gives the information that you need to know. It tells you in great detail about what there is to see and do, and where things are and how things work. I mean afterall, by the time any book reaches publication, isn't a lot of the information out-of-date? Otherwise, a book would never get published; it would be a newsletter.

I gave this a rating of 4 stars only because when we went to Bali, we didn't travel enough of the country (and we didn't get to Lombok) to give the book 5 stars.

We have just returned from Bali (October 2000) and strongly recommend taking this LP with you. I have been a bit skeptical about the info of some LP's (Mexico-we hardly used it!) but in Bali whoever put this one together knew their stuff. FORGET THE PRICES MENTIONED, they've at least doubled for meals accomodation etc , but then so has the amount of rupee you'll get!! One interesting note. We took a taxi to the Temple of Gudang Kawi, an 11th century temple. LP justifibly raves about it. The only other tourists there we saw were holding a LP. Local tour operaters didn't seem to think tourists would be interested in it and must take them to more boring temples!(and believe you me, they get boring!)

NIGHTKILL is a novel about a sniper for the Mob, who gets set-up, paralyzed and recovers through a "new" surgery, and enacts revenge against one of the players of the Mob. It is marketed as a medical thriller, but believe me, it's a thriller with an emphasis on some horrible outcomes. Jake Nacht is a sniper for the Mob. After 17 successive kills, he is set-up, shot and paralyzed by a crooked cop, who is in on the set-up. While recovering, Jake meets Angel, a beautiful nurse whos uncle just happens to be on the verge of a successful new surgery to fix paralysis. After the surgery Jake goes on a revenge mission to get who set him up. In the process Jake falls in love with Angel, who is now being held hostage by the bad guy. As you can tell by my synopsis, its kind of a paint-by-numbers scenario. Everything is familiar and done by rote. This is not to say that the book is unenjoyable. Far from it. It's full of action sequences but the main problem is there are no surprises...everything IS as it seems and we are just awaiting the final shoot of so we can move on to the next book on the shelves. Not a very distinguishing book. Not recommended.

A very fast paced book, Jake is a character with whom i expect to see several sequals, I`d rate the character to have the ability to compete with a Dirk Pitt,Lucas Davenport,and a John Becker......Need i say More...

BROS., THIS BOOK IS DEFINITELY WORTH YOUR TIME. JAKE NACHT IS THE BEST HIT MAN IN THE WORLD OF FICTION AND DESERVES TO BE READ. YOU SHOULD ALL SEE THE STRUGGLING FIGHT FOR LIFE AND DEATH BY JAKE NACHT. A REAL FAST-PACED BOOK THAT'S SURE TO KEEP YOU ON THE EDGE OF YOUR SEATS. HOLD ON TO YOUR HATS FOLKS THIS IS A BOOK THAT WILL BLOW YOU AWAY.

'Complete Book of Calligraphy' is a very colorful and easy to understand book. I would suggest this title for anyone, new or well versed in the art of calligraphy. This book shows the endless possibilites that lie right at the end of a pen. Calligraphy can be used in so many creative ways, more than I even imagined! I thought calligraphy was just pretty words, but this book shows me that it goes well beyond that. This would also be great for gift-giving!

We recently traveled through Malaysia, Thailand and Cambodia and found this guidebook practically useless and certainly frustrating--definitely not worth its weight. We have used other LPs in the past and found them to be at least adequate but this one doesn't even rate that well. It lacked many important details--such as the time/distances between many points, availability of various transportation options and routes, decent maps--the list goes on and on. Even though prices change often and currencies fluctuate, even a vague idea of prices (is it $10 or $100??) would have been quite useful to help us plan better. Although we ran into many people all 'armed' with the LP, they all had the same complaints.

This book is an adequate guide but it needs improvement in several areas. I used this book during Janurary and February of 2000 when I traveled through Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Myanmar and Laos. Last year I used the Lonley Planet-India and found it was much better than Southeast Asia. Here are the weaknesses. 1. The numbers of the locations on the maps should be used in the text describing the location. This would grealy improve you ability to plan your day or route. 2. Maps should be improved. I would be willing to spend a few dollars more for better maps. 3. Hotel, restaurant, etc. names are not printed in bold type. This makes it more difficult to use. 4. It would be very helpful to grade the sites with a priority to reduce the time one spends reading fine print and get on with seeing the country. When I return to this part of the world next winter I will try to find additional books to correct these weaknesses.

I travelled through Thailand, Philippines and Hong Kong using this book. I initially bought this book with weight in mind. I did not want to carry three more LPs along with the other country books (LP Taiwan, Japan). Although much of the information needed to survive was written in the book, it certainly did lack the detailed maps and background information needed to have a care-free journey. SOmetime it certainly was a struggle , especially in Thailand. The Thailand Section prices were extremely outdated. Even in the height on the "asian economic flu", I had to triple the prices listed. The Hong Kong section was adequate, but HK is an efficient and easily travelled city. Of the three, I found the Philippine section the best, but some of the hotel quality ratings are out dated. Please do not stay at the Hotel Mercedes in Cebu!

This book would have been good had the author attempted to capture the interior world of the protagonist, Andy Hessel. He doesn't. A coming-of-age story must have this in order to be considered literature. Lyons is merely skimming the surface of character development and I think he is badly in need of taking a creative writing workshop or reading Catcher in the Rye.

This remains a gem of a novel on pool-hall cool and urban male passages. Witty and adept,this multi-talented author (now out in the Pacific) colorfully and poised like a pool hall Buddha captures one NYC neighborhood world and its enduring attractions, terrors, and male initiation rites with anthropological poise, transient exactitude,and the bliss of an ex-insider.

The Wheel of Time saga is an uninspired, hardly original, badly written pile of junk. It is difficult to see a plan into its development, and the story sounds like a free association of words at the psychanalist's office. If The Lord of the Rings had not been around may be the Wheel of Time would have had a shot...but, to be honest, if the Rings had never been written, Robert Jordan would have had nothing to (badly) copy.

What this is: an epic adventure. It would be imappropriate to review the WOT series when speaking of the Prophesies of the Dragon book; it's also not really a supplement akin to, say, The Monster Manual for D&D--the only extra skills, feats, backgrounds, etc are those directly related to NPCs in the campaign. What Prophecies is designed to do is take a party of characters through their first six levels of adventuring, which correspond roughly to the first six books of the series of novels. The players are allowed to play a key behind the scenes roll in the story of the novels and cameos have been scripted for many of the book's key characters. It's a really ambitious undertaking; players have to be given a compelling storyline, feel like they're making a difference in a campaign that covers over a year of game time, without letting them change what happens in the novels.

Does it work? I am currently GMing this adventure. On paper, it looks really good. Some of the scenes, especially in the later parts of the story, look exciting, moving even. Faile's cameo is perfect, for example. In practice, though, it's been an extremely frustrating experience. First, the early encounters (as pointed out by another reviewer) are unnecessarily difficult and add nothing to the plot. As things progress, the authors presume too much on the goals and motivations of the players. There is one chapter, for example, where the introduction says something along the lines of, "Upon entering the city, the players will want to find (a certain NPC) as soon as posible and will definitely want to investigate the actions of (another NPC)." The players in my campaign knew they wanted to talk to one of these guys eventually, but the other one was off their radar completely. Throughout, I've had to improvise ways to keep them approximating the plot line of the campaign and by chapter 3, they're feeling very manipulated.

The campaign assumes the party wants to do nothing more than hunt down dark friends and expose evil plots and will take great personal risk and go through great hardship (including, at one point, a monthlong trek through a winter wilderness without adequate provisions) on the chance of thwarting same. Characters with any other motivations (say, a character modeled after Mat or Nynaeve in the books) will feel forced into situations unnaturally. There has been more than one point where one of the players saying, "I *think* this is where the plot wants us to go."

So, in conclusion, while this adventure is excellent in its dreams and scope--and it's definitely better than something I could have designed myself--but it will fail often fail as a game. If you are intending to run a WOT campaign, buy this adventure, read it so that you thoroughly understand its scope BEFORE you even let your players make up characters. The characters need to be in the philosophy of the story or the story won't work.

It's not a supplement. That'd've been useful. It's a big adventure set. That could've been useful.

Then we met the Demon-Bear.

Allow me to explain. In d20, animals don't get feats. One of the early mini-adventures has a BIG bear that has lots of bonus feats...and a party of first and second-level PCs is supposed to defeat it. When it can kill a PC with one swipe of its paw. Right.

That's emblematic of the problems with this adventure set. It's written with little attention to rules or game balance, or even party survival. Some adventures throw opponent after opponent at the PCs, but with such poor healing capability, you'll inevitably have PC casualties. While those aren't necessarily bad, having the odds stacked so heavily against you isn't fun.

Another flaw is that, in many instances, PC decisions don't matter. You are, in fact, on rails in a good many adventures, and that's BAD. The adventure in Falme, in particular, comes to mind.

It could've been good. Really. Almost anything would've been better than the ... introductory adventure included with the main book (1st-level PCs...against 3rd-level trollocs that outnumber you, and, oh yes, have high strength and high-crit-range weapons!)...save this.

If you're intending to GM Wheel of Time d20 adventures, save your money and look elsewhere. You can come up with stuff that's easily better.

This book is really intended for kids - it has tons of pictures about the development of calligraphy, specialized writing, etc. It has little insightful information to help the beginner gain the basic skills of calligraphy