If you are at all familiar with the Bayeux Tapestry, which is a staggering masterpiece, then this may sound incredible, but this book does it full justice. I can not get over my amazement and my feeling of being incredibly lucky to have discovered a book that reproduces the entire work-all 70 meters-in plates large enough to show fine details of the embroidery stitching (invaluable for the historical needleworker!), in what I believe (or at least devoutly hope) is faithful color. You don't miss anything at the edge of each page because an inch or so of the edge of each plate is reproduced on the next. The author wisely saved the historical and cultural explanations for another section of the book, allowing each plate to fill a full page. The historical explanations are printed in the last third of the book (the first two thirds being given entirely to the color plates) under a small black-and-white reproduction of the tapestry which is marked with plate numbers so that you can easily refer back to the large color reproduction. The author's commentary is very readable, and he sometimes demonstrates dry, British wit. The book also includes a stylistic analysis of the tapestry, and, with the aid of photographs, dicusses artifacts similar to those depicted.

Breakfast with Sammy is a sweet story of a darling kitten and a loving little girl. I also enjoyed the glossary which helps the young readers I know understand some of the tricky words. I really loved the illustrations by Susan VanLaar; so much so that I scanned in some pictures from the book for the desktop background on my computer! A great read!

Attentive students will recall that Prime Minister King was a bit odd, perhaps a mild eccentric, but this book will throw the door wide open. Essentially, WLM King was a loon. He obsessed over his mother and submitted to her control to the point where his visions of her ghost still guided him. King was a mystic, who engaged in seances and table-rapping to communicate with such "advisors" as his mother, Wilfrid Laurier, FDR, and other sympathetic spectres. If only people knew what was running through his mind every time he glanced at a clock, or took his dog for a walk... A very revealing book about a very mysterious man.

Here is more from the Hopeful Gospel Quartet. Although I adore Garrison, I'm glad he is just singing and not talking in this album, unlike the other album featuring the quartet. I love listening to this encouraging album. "Life Is a Ball Game" is the only song that rubs me the wrong way, a little too juvenile. But the rendition of "I bid you goodnight" is so incredibly sweet. "How great thou art" and "Just a closer walk with thee" are two more songs that are beautifully done by this quartet. It is hard to find simple gospel sounds and the old hymns featured on this album are worth the money.

Great snappy reading, the authors must have had fun doing the research. Recommended for anyone who loves chocolate, New York, or both. Hope they do an updated version for 2000 and do a book on another New York food subject.

I read this book cover to cover and found that it only provided me with 80% of what I need to know for the exam. The chapters on ActiveX technology were poorly written. The other chapters were better. I guess having multiple authors will lead to the inconsistency. These guys should have proof read each other's work. The test CD was soooooo disappointing. Some test questions were poorly worded and about 20% of the answers were incorrect. i'm sure that you'll be frustrated when you work with the practice test. Don't forget to download the errata.txt file. My final advice is to supplement this book with something else. Aside from the CD, it's still a decent book with good information. However, you need other references to fill the gap. I was able to use the Mastering VB5 CD from Microsoft and the VB Online Help file. Well, the good news is that i was able to pass the exam this morning with a score of 915. Good luck to you!

It is a good book to passing the exam and i feel good by taking this book and i am looking for other books from new riders

The best thing about this book is the CD that comes with it. The computer graded test are great and help you locate your trouble areas. It's not going to show the exact questions that will be on your particular test (i.e. cheat). The practice exams (and flashcard test)will test your readiness to take the MCSD Visual Basic 5 certification exam offered by ICCP. Even if your not going to take the test the book and computer aided testing software give all Visual Basic programmers strict coding guidlines. You won't just learn how to pass the test you'll also learn good coding techniques. I wouldn't rely solely on just this book as your only source/means to pass the test, you'll have to work very hard to become certified in any worthwhile field. If more books came with test like these you can mark me down as a potential buyer.

What does the discipline of Canadian history need? To quote Samuel Gompers it needs more, more of everything. More social history, more comparative history, more economic history, and, in this case, more political history. Wardhaugh's book seeks to show that the decline of the Liberal Party in the West is not so much the fault of Pearson or Trudeau, but that its roots could be seen in the era of William Lyon Mckenzie King (leader 1919-1948, prime minister 1921-1926, 1926-1930, 1935-1948). According to Wardhaugh, King was sympathetic, in a vague romantic way, to the West in the twenties when he needed the support of the Third party progressives to hold power. However he lost sympathy for it when the West's poverty in the depression threatened his support for economic orthodoxy. In defense of this book, one could say that it gives a throurough account of the many splits and factional problems that King had to deal with on both a federal and provincial level. In this respect it fills a niche. We are given plenty of quotations from King's diaries and papers which show his pompousness, narrow-mindedness, smugness and callous indifference to every issue and principle except maintaining power.

Yet ultimately the book is deeply flawed. The book is oddly proportioned as well, devoting 127 pages from 1919 to 1930, 67 pages from 1930 to 1940, and 33 pages for the last eight years of King's ministry. The problem is not that King's policies were good for the West. The question that arises is whether they were any better for the rest of the country. If not, then the flaws of these policies cannot explain why the West was especially alienated from the Liberals. After all the Liberals have been competitive in Ontario despite having only governed the province five years since 1943. The Atlantic provinces are worse off in Confederation than the prairie ones, but that has not weaned them off liberalism. Why would conscription and the problem of postwar reconstruction be any less pressing in the rest of English Canada in 1945 than in the West? Yet according to Wardhaugh any disaffection was markedly less permanent. Wardhaugh points out that organization was weak, yet the Progressives in the twenties showed an almost continuous decline, while the conservatives were almost always in desperate straights before 1958. Other parties in other regions have been bothered by factionalism, yet have made up enough to win elections. Liberal politicians may have been anaemic, but were the other parties any less mediocre? King did not really know about the West, but as the career of Ronald Reagan shows, you do not always need real knowledge. The problem is that Wardhaugh consistently takes up a "high politics" approach which ignores questions at the base. Who voted for the liberals? What were their class, ethnic, religious and occupational background? How did they approach politics, what were the ideological assumptions, what were the material basis of their partisanship?

Another problem is that the Liberals actually put in a creditable performance in 1926, 1935, 1940 and 1949, which does not really match Wardhaugh's constant pessimism. By constantly reminding the reader of the Liberal party's ultimate fate he produces an illusion of inevitability, and he reduces much of the Liberal party's problems to King's obtuseness and the obtuseness of a few leaders. (His notes consist largely of King's diaries and papers, supplemented by the papers of Crerar, Gardiner and Dafoe). His treatment of issues is consistently unimiginative and conventional. The three prairie provinces are reduced simply to agriculture. No mention is made of increasing urbanization or economic diversification, and the problems of the prairie farmer are reduced to one issue, tariffs, with an occasional mention of freight rates. Why were nativist appeals successful against the liberals in 1929 and 1930, and what does this say about western political culture? Often Wardhaugh glibly speaks of public opinion in the West, as if it was an undifferentiated mass. (When you look at the notes it is largely just Dafoe complaining.) That King was an unimiginative leader is not in dispute, but Dafoe and Dunning, Bracken and Brownlee were not much better or more thoughtful. Like it or not, there was a market for incantations of balanced budgets and economic orthodoxy in the West, in patent definance of overwhelming economic catastrophe. In the West you had to suffuse this with a some regional self-pity, some cant against "established parties," and a little "reformist" goobledygook. Perhaps that helps to explain why Diefenbaker, a politician with more rhetoric than competence, would be so successful in the future.