Martin Lindstrom does a great job letting the reader know that the root of success when communicating with kids is understanding kids, their lives, dreams and hopes. He not only analyzes data from 7 countries, but includes his own experiences with working with kids and with kids related brands. He is able to get his point across without being boring, looking at the subject form different angles.
I also checked out the MartinLindstrom.com site. I think it is a great site, with tons of brand info related to kids and general brand trends. Well done!

This book is the secret weapon for anyone who markets to kids or wants to. Lindstrom manages to make the subject entertaining and engaging while teaching you a pile of indispensible techniques to capture a kid's heart.

Not only does the book teach you how to market products better, it gets you thinking different. Suddenly, you're developing products and strategies with kids in mind, and you understand why certain products are big hits with kids.

Another funny thing about this book...it helps you to understand kids better. For readers with their own kids, this could be the greates value of all.

This is purely and simply and excellent book that manages to explain a difficult and topical subject by usind simple and effective use of examples and facinating data from the global BrandChild study. Everyone looking to market not only to kids but almost to anything must read this as it will rationalise the arguments against traditional marketing and promotion.

This book is very well written and explains Eminem very well.I'm only 12 and I listen to Eminem's language and know not to take his expressions personally.[....]To get to the point argue about his slang all you want .He makes his music for his self not for people to diss him. if you can say no to a ciggrate than you should be able to say no i don't like this,walk away ,turn off the t.v. or the radio.this book is great i give it two thumbs up and two toes up 2. [....]Peace!!!!!

This book has just about every fairly normal name with its origin and meaning and a great list of nicknames, without being at all overwhelming. This is a great guide for picking out a real name for your baby, unless you are looking for something really, really unusual or ethnic. It's brief enough that you can realistically skim through and consider all the main names listed and come up with a list of your favorites. It's got a good section at the beginning on deciding whether or not to pick an unusual or hard to spell name and a section on popular names, too.

Calculus Made Easy is truly a well-written book. It divides into over 20 chapters thorough examples and applications of calculus as well as the development of calculus itself, and everything is surprisingly contained in fewer than 300 pages! Authors of many modern-day calculus textbooks twice its size try to explain the same fundamental concepts but cannot achieve Thompson's levels of triumph.

Topics in this work include: limits, maxima, minima, successive differentiation, compound interest, law of organic growth, and more. Though the subjects are frequently isolated for each chapter, Thompson has nonetheless provided insights to the degree that one could synthesize or put together these various concepts to formulate their own interesting problems and procedures.

With the great Martin Gardner to revise this classic and to provide further mathematical expositions, Calculus Made Easy is highly recommended for the lover of mathematics as well as the teacher who wants to present mathematics from a better thematic standpoint.

I have been teaching Calculus for the last two years, and I just stumbled across this book a few weeks ago. What I found was a book that explains the philosophy of the subject in a very simple manner, making it easy to understand even for people who are not proficient in math.

The concepts in Calculus are really simple things; as Gardner puts it, "the universe seems to favor simplicity in its fundamental laws". But there's always the teacher's pride, which leads him to make it all seem difficult, expecting the student to be amazed at how much the teacher knows. Alas the true result is that the student is usually left confused, loses interest in the subject, perhaps gives up on a career that he/she otherwise would have succeeded in, etc. I know about this, because I am guilty of it myself.

I recommend this book to people who:

1. Are just learning calculus. The book uses easy-to-understand language, simple examples, etc. Read about the binomial theorem before reading this book, though.

2. People who want to grasp the essence of calculus, not necessarily for a college course. Easy, entertaining reading; as stated earlier, the philosophy of the subject is presented in a comprehensible manner.

3. Calculus teachers. Definitely a must! This book is a good example of how calculus should be taught. Though you may not draw totally upon it, having read through Thompson's book can give you a good idea on how to organize your course and how to explain fundamental concepts

This is the very best math book I have ever read. As many other reviewers have pointed out, this book is an excellent source for UNDERSTANDING calculus!!! If you want to understand calculus, this book is an outstandingly excellent beginning. I studied calculus over 30 years ago as a math major. I currently teach mathematics and was absolutely stunned when I ran across this wonderful, beautful, lucid exposition of the differential and integral calculus. Dr. Thompson is surely ranked among the greatest math teachers of all time. Of course, Martin Gardner's revision simply increases the lucidity, joy and beauty of this mathematics classic. MUST reading for any literate and intelligent person, who wants to UNDERSTAND mathematics. There are tons of books that one can read in order to learn how to "do" mathematics, but Thompson's book is in a class by itself, when it comes to excellence in teaching mathematial understanding. I simply cannot find the words to describe the sheer joy and wonder I experienced while reading Calculus Made Easy!!!!

A great novel, Roy Martin. Roy Martin weaves an interesting tapestry of words in Whisper My Name. A love story full of suspense played out in a small southern town, mid-century. The characters are so well depicted you can,t put the book down, and you really feel like you have lived in the South. You must read this book.

Roy Martin's Whisper My Name provides an ingenious twist on the ageless unrequited love tale by intertwining it with an excellent and believable mystery in a southern small-town setting. The believability of the protagonist & his motivations carries the reader over some bumpy spots caused by stylistic weaknesses and poor editing (as a former English teacher I am perhaps too sensitive to a want for graceful sentence structure, apparently a dying art in our culture). Martin tells a good tale with good characters and wraps it all up with an explosive and unexpected climax.

Roy Martin is a distinguished teacher and former journalist whom one might expect to write treatises of an editorial nature; but his new novel, Whisper My Name is a bona fide southern gothic with lots of atmosphere, set in a small southern town sometime in the 1950's. The novel is full of long-kept secrets, buried bodies and very eccentric characters; not the least of which is Miss Augusta Morefield. Miss Augusta is an archetypal southern spinster trapped in a web of lies that have made her a kind of recluse. When a body is found, the secrets the town has been keeping are in danger of coming to light and nothing will be the same again. Martin has woven a compelling tale. Whisper My Name is a stylish and enjoyable read. Reviewed by Anna Wentworth, Arts Reporter WVTF Public Radio in Roanoke, Virginia

Although there are maybe 3 or 4 really good stories in this book filled with short stories, the rest seem all too familiar to those old black and white sci-fi serials from the 50's or 60's.

My favorite one of all being the Bicentenniel Man short story. I read this years before they made the movie with Robin Williams (which, wasn't that bad of a movie, albeit a few bad translations of things from the book). By far the best short story in the book. I got this book as a gift from my father for a birthday. He paid around [$] for this one when he bought me the book Nightfall on a sale for [$]. A good buy for any old-time sci-fi fan.

...and delighted by how far ahead of their time these prescient authors were. From 'Rex,' the robot-surgeon striving for the perfection of the human race, to 'Star-Crossed,' the dual minds of a ship turned lovers and then ultimately destroyed, 'War With the Robots' provides a comprehensive view of robots, their progression and society, by some of the greatest minds of science fiction. All the stories are realistic fiction, and many give you the impression that the author was speaking his view of the future, prophet of space-travel and the development of super-fast computers.

The book is broken up into several sections, most with more than one story under its heading, all in chronological order (of the date they were first published). For anyone interested in the history of robot technology and ideas, this book is fun to read as well as educating. I recommend it for all with the drive to push technology to its limits.

This book by the reknown British Egyptologist, Dr. Martin, from University College, London, is a welthy source of prosopographical and onomastical data gathered together from 1838 private- and 71 official-seals (mainly scarabs or scaraboids), dating from the Middle Kingdom and the Second Intermediate Period (including the "Hyksos Age" so-called). The author has not limited himself to publish a minute recording of each and every testimony, but has also commented upon the dating and the typology of this specific historical kind of documents. Highly recommendable for the specialist; a less so, for the beginners.

Physically this book comes as hardback and a glossy dustjacket with rather uninspiring front cover art work. The pages are all high quality gloss which is a pleasure to handle. The book gives a history of 200 of military leaders rated by the authors as having contributed significantly or featured prominently in world military affairs. The leaders appear alphabetically throughout the book and at the beginning, a chronological listing by date of birth is provided. What is most satisfying about the book is that each leader is given a very good description of his personality and achievements. Despite there being 200 entries we are still provided with ample information on each leader. Most of the entries are for field commanders but a few 'ifluential theorists and administrators" such as Clausewitz, Steuben, and Carnot appear. Although there is not a picture or photograph of every leader, the book has many, and I particularly like the authors choice of photographs for the book. Pre-photography days are covered by pictures and drawings of leaders. All photography and pictures are black and white. Overall, this is an excellent general source of information on military leaders. It is the sort of book you can pick up now and again after you have read it through and read up on a leader that interests you. Well written. Recommended as a purchase.

Mr. Garder's book is one which makes us laugh at our gullibility. Since this book was up-dated on 1956, much of the information is about old crackpot theories, like Flat-earth cults, or medical cults. It is, however, a true account of contemporary quackery and fringe science, since many of the theories and motivations of the truly eccentric, and sometimes downright fraudulent types, can still be found among many of today's highly popular personalities who, using mass media and their own appeal, continue this trend to advertize oddball ideas and pseudoscience as truths, without allowing any type of validation or independent scrutiny.

We tend to believe we are somewhat safe from eccentrics trying to force their weird theories upon us or our children. We are not. Take the case of Dianetics, which is discussed in Mr. Gardner's book at the time it was just appearing and being promoted by Science Fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard. It did to the stablished psychiatric community what Afrocentrism is doing to qualified and professional history research.

It also presents a strong argument in favor of strict, closedly suppervised experimentation for validating new scientific theories, especially when those theories deal with human emotional problems or capabilities (like Repressed Memory and ESP). Probably most tragic for a scientist is discovering he has been deluding himself pursuing validation for his pet theory. He willingly falsifies data or ignores results in orther for his research to come out just right, conforming to his hypothesis. Also, this book emphazises the use of double-blind tests in highly difficult human research, as in the case of Dr. Rhine's ESP studies.

It comes with a word of warning to us all: scientific illiteracy IS dangerous. And even if certain crackpot scientific theories do us no harm, the same cannot be said about medical cults, which CAN cause early death for treatable diseases. Psychology is also a target for these fringe cults, and the trend is getting worse today as we see a lot of new "therapies" being advertised on TV. These so-called therapies can do harm to an individual's emotional well-being (it is my opinion, though, that even psychology rests on very dubious foundations, and is still more a "witch doctor" profession than real science, simply because the empirical data needed is found on "case studies", which yield very subjective results.)

I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the contemporary history of scientific frauds, quackery and eccentricities. It is very well written, and very amusing. Martin Gardner still writes and colaborates closely with "Skeptic Magazzine".

Sincerely:

Francisco Torres Laredo, Tx. USA

Although written in the 1950s, Martin Gardner's Fads and Fallacies is one of the masterpieces of science. Gardner tackles both seriously and humorously the pseudoscience of his day, including flying saucers, flat-earthers, dianetics, medical cults, dowsers, orogonomy, Atlantis historians, and many more. From Trofim Lysenko's efforts to overthrow Darwin's theory of evolution for Lamarck's theory of acquired characteristics in Russia, to the hilarious chapter on Charles Fort's philosophy of "accept everything but believe nothing" in our own country, Gardner paints a marvelous portrait that will make the reader roll their eyes and smile at some people's credulity as well as be shocked at how far some will go to search for and believe in what isn't there. What strikes me as the most prominent thing about this book is that he almost seems to be addresing the pseudoscience/antiscience of our day instead of decades past. In summary, his essays will bring the reader's mind to a more a skeptical level of thinking when faced with current claims that resemble those of yester-year. Gardner's book is a fitting prequel to Carl Sagan's The Demon-Haunted World as it not only debunks the false claims of pseudoscience, but also educates the reader's mind about what real science is while maintaining an apt for wonder.

Gardner's work debunking pseudo-science of all kinds is even more relevant today than it was when it was written nearly 50 years ago. Although it has been 30 years since I read it, I can still remember many of the funnier highlights of the book.

For example, some of his revelations on crackpot scientists are truly hilarious. In his chapter on health and health food faddists he discusses Gaylord Hauser, who was a famous name in the area long before people like Adele Davis, Ewel Gibbons, and so on.

Gardner mentions Hauser's famous theory that acidosis of the blood is responsible for just about all health ills, and recommended fasting to counteract it. Unfortunately, anyone even slightly familiar with human physiology will tell you that fasting actually causes acidosis, a little fact apparently Hauser overlooked. Another great theory killed by a nasty little fact, I guess.

Hauser was also unfortunate enough to have died suddenly of a heart attack during his interview on the Dick Cavette show. Probably too much acidosis.

Then there is the chapter, "Down with Einstein," where crackpots par excellence try to prove they are smarter than Einstein. One guy by the name of Gillette (no relation to the razor concern) says of Einstein, "As a physicist, Einstein is not a bad violinist," and insists his "Back-screwing Theory of Gravitation" is far superior to Einstein's. According to Gillette, "...gravity is naught but the kicked-back nut of the back-screwing bolt of gravitation." As you can see, Einstein is not the only genius physicist out there with a good theory or two.

The one person Gardner actually seems to like in this book is Charles Fort, the journalist who himself reported on much of the pseudo-science of his day. Fort was a diligent and witty writer in the area who seems to have been fascinated by things like UFOs, the paranormal, strange phenomena, and bizarre scientific theories, and who appeared content to write about and document it all without really believing any of it himself. The Fortean Society he founded to carry on his work is still around today.

I could go on and on about all the funny things in this book, but I will stop here and let you discover them for yourself if I've managed to peak your interest. This is one of the most entertaining books of science writing ever published, and really qualifies as a classic in its own right that is still as relevant as the day it was published 50 years ago.

I listened to an interview with the author on public radio. I was very impressed with her knowledge about unjust convictions and the criminal justice system. It appeared to me that she had significant and valuable experience to relate to listeners and readers. I was hoping for a book related to that subject. Unfortunately from what I can understand so far this book is about what to me is the quackery of "multiple personalities". If you like well written quackery books this might be perfect for you. But if you are looking for any kind of practical or realistic knowledge than don't waste your time. This author sounded in the radio interview that she had a lot to offer. I hope she writes a book about the criminal justice system in addition to this kind of nonsense. kenny ...

In Riverton, Wisconsin, Regina Coeli Hospital has admitted a rape victim with apparent multiple personalities. When the hospital doctor and a counselor from the nearby Rape Crisis and Domestic Abuse Center attempt to examine the patient, the young woman turns into a ferocious animal. Cate Lawson, on her first day as director of the rape crisis center, tries to talk with the animal-person, but luckily the ?host? Mandie Harwood resurfaces to take charge of her body.

Mandie explains to Cate that she was not raped, but her six-year old ?insider? Anna was raped by a low IQ person Will Forsyth. He insists he had consensual sex with an adult. Ambitious local district attorney Paul Josephson sees the case as headline news material that will give his career a tremendous boost. He goes after Forsyth with a vengeance, leaving Cate to wonder who really is the victim in this complex legal case.

MY NAME IS LEGION is an exciting complex psychological legal thriller based on a real experience author Sheila Martin Berry dealt with in Wisconsin. The complicated story line is crisp and entertaining. The charcaters, especially Mandie and her insider cohorts, and Will come across as very real. Ms. Berry packs too many emotional subplots including the tangle of Cate?s personal life into the novel. However, these sub-plots do not hinder a great main story line from providing fans of legal-medical thrillers with an insightful yet entertaining look at multiple personality disorder.

Harriet Klausner

If you liked the movie Sixth Sense, if you like psychological mysteries, you will like this novel by Sheila Berry. It is the story of a woman with a dissociative disorder (I am still stuck with "multiple personality disorder"), one of whose personalities is raped, and a series of events that involve a rape crisis counselor going through a divorce, local police, and an ambitious prosecutor. It is, as my wife, who reads three novels a week, says "a page turner," a "good read." I liked the story. Not having treated many people of this sort (I am a psychologist), but one memorable one whom I saw for about eight years, I do not have enough experience to generalize. I stumbled over one aspect which I prefer not to tell for the sake of the reader. All the rest, including the plot development, characterization of main players, and descriptive narratives were very believeable. If you are looking this fall for a novel that keeps your attention, keeps you turning pages for the next plot development which in good writing seems natural or "organic" to the characters, this is one that you will enjoy.