When students begin biblical study, they are understandably inclined to reckon that the Books of Kings are among the most boring parts of the Old Testament. It is important that these events happened, but they have nothing to say to us. In this book Dr Moore demonstrates that nothing could be further from the truth. With lots of appeal to intertextuality and intratextuality and other approaches to interpretation, he shows that these books represent a series of takes on a number of issues that continue to be of vital importance - matters such as justice, famine, family problems, violence, and international relations. They have lots to say to us.

How can events from the Hebrew Bible possibly have any relevance today with all the education and technology of the 21st century? Dr. Moore's book demonstrates that the more things change, the more they stay the same! Faith is easy when things are going well, but it is only under pressure that faith is grown. The challenges remain the same today as in the time of the kings of Israel. Does one remain faithful even in the midst of injustice? Is it more difficult to keep the faith when things are too good? Faith unchallenged by the pressures of life, the same kind of pressures now as then, may get flabby and flat. It is only under the pressures of life that faith is challenged to grow, and with each challenge is the reward of a higher level, a greater faith. Dr. Moore has made the study of the Old Testament come alive as he shows parallels to the issues and temptations of our current culture. Great reading and even better to discuss with others!

Most books on biblical spirituality usually direct their readers to Proverbs or Psalms. Most of these books are written by pastors whose reflections are driven by their experience of caring for others. Most are directed to the powerless. Faith Under Pressure is a different kind of guide to the spiritual life. Moore takes his readers to the red meat of the Bible: 1-2 Kings. His interpretations are those of a scholar, based on the best solid, and current, biblical scholarship. His audience is decision makers. He wants Christians with responsibility to find in 1-2 Kings practical support for persevering both in ministry and in the marketplace. Faith Under Pressure is an informed, and an inspiring read.

OK, but it would help if the pictures of the plants were real photos.

This book is a good beginning book on edible and medicinal plants of the west. The pictures are excellent and really help in identify species. The only complaint I have with this book is that it is missing some important edible plant sources, and it is also could be more detailed in methods of cooking and eating the plants.

Full color photographs of every plant in the book, along with very complete, if brief, descriptions of characteristics and properties. The book itself is compact and easy to carry with you into the field, which is the ONLY place to truly study the subject matter. Enjoy this gem!

I enjoyed reading about western medicinal plants as well as the author's wry humor (I found especially hilarious that comment about the temperature of sitz baths and not wanting to "poach your privates") and obvious expertise. The recipes and directions for making medications out of the plants are outstanding. However, the photography leaves much to be desired. A few of them are blurred and most do not show sufficient detail to enable unequivocal identification. Moreover,the pictures for Yerba Santa and Yerba del lobo are switched in the last page of the color plates. NOT GOOD, if you are using this as a field guide. This then raises the question of, are there other inaccuracies in the book? Definitely check the appearance of the herb you're looking for in another book if you plan to use it.

Moore tells what each plant is used for, but just as important, he details where and when to find the plant. He gives step by step recipes for each plant, telling if it should be rubbed on, eaten, soaked in, or steeped and drunk. He writes at least two pages on every plant, and some plants have seven pages because they are so useful. The only way to improve this book would be more photos. Every plant is illustrated, but less than half are shown in photos.

After reading his stories of finding plants and prepration tribulations, I think Mr Moore is a big teddy-bear. He seems kind hearted and caring.
The book is an easy read with loads of information: location to find the plant , what it looks like (clear line drawings and description), what it does (also cross refrence tables) how to prepare plant (also a seprate section on prepration) and how to use (some recipes with multiple plants).
I even found a few plants nobody else was talking about!!yippe!

I have to give all the short story novels 3 stars. There are some stories you won't like but they'll 2-4 really great ones that will make the books worth the price.

... I actually liked three stories in this book. The poem is worthless, and a few more were downright too hard to read and boring, but if I had the desire to stick with them they might have been worthy. Get this book! If not for the stories, get it for the last story written by Weis and Hickman. You will be surprised that a Hero of the Lance makes an appearance! I can't wait to read the next book. Even though the poem in this was horrible, it was better than most early dragonlance books I have read, but I must say Knaak finally has a good story. Unlike his Huma and Kaz books. Bravo Knaak. Maybe he should always write short stories, but he did leave me wanting more for once. GET THIS BOOK!

As I am not a huge fan of short stories, I was surprised to find most of these excellent. 'Colors of Belief' was an further insight as to how the Games of Istar worked after Caramon's experiences in the Legends. 'Kender Stew' was very funny and a nice little story. 'The Goblin's Wish' was my favourite, a saddening tale of how different races banded together to fight Istar. 'The Three Lives of Horgan Oxthrall' was not so good. The scribe's narration is just silly, I think Douglas Niles could've just told the story and got on with it. Far and away the worst story was 'Filling the Empty Places'. I find myself being more and more disappointed by Nancy Berberick's work. Stormblade was okay, but her writing style has definitely gone downhill since. 'Off Day' was hilarious. And finally, 'The Silken Threads' again showcased Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman's wonderful talent which puts them at the forefront of the DL world.
Those disappointed by the other Tales books will find this a better one, with more information into a neglected part of Krynn's history.

I loved Moores movie "Where's Roger?" back when it came out. It was brilliant, funny and sad. His short lived series on TV was also entertaining and provocative but this book sent shivers down my spine. Oh sure, who agrees 100% with Michael? It dooesn't matter because he is funny and truthful right? WRONG! I was doing just fine with the book, laughing a lot, being provoked here and there and mildly offended now and then until I read Chapter 10. This is the chapter where Moore puts Hitler's anti-semitic views to shame by declaring that Germany is a nation that has not paid for it's sins and that all of it's citizens, regardless of age or lack of complicity, deserve being gunned down in the streets. He calls German retirees and tourists in Florida "Nazis" and thinks it would be humorous to arm South Floridians and have them "REALLY" end WWII
saying "Run for your life Klaus!"
Sorry Michael...you crossed the line.
Buy the book and keep it on your shelf as an example of how at some point the Left can stretch so far that it touches fingers with the Right.

Like most political satires and/or commentaries, those who agree with the author's point of view will generally enjoy this funny little book. Moore exposes the corporate crimes and hypocrisy that take place in this country, but is by no means against Corporations in general or the virtues of making a profit. He just feels that corporations have gotten completely unreasonable by firing thousands of employees while profits are at a peak and leaving cities after receiving tax breaks as an incentive for staying.

The picture of the Federal building bombed in Oklahoma City is placed next to the picture of a condemned factory in Flint, Michigan after GM pulled out. The pictures are nearly identical and the imagery is extremely powerful. What exactly is terrorism, Moore asks?

Many will disagree with Moore's opinions and some will be offended by certain things in this book, especially the chapter dealing with the L.A. Riots and the O.J. Simpson case. However, I do think it's worth a read, even if you disagree, if only to reinforce your views.

As an author with my debut novel in its initial release and an American government/economics teacher in one of the most impoverished high schools in the United States, I love DOWNSIZE THIS! Michael Moore is a brilliant satirist. This book owns a place on my classroom desk, and I often cite passages from DOWNSIZE THIS! to support my ramblings about the current state of the American political ecomony. I especially enjoy using his chapter on corporate criminals where I get a chance to point directly at students (who are wise enough by then to know they are supposed to agree with their instrcutor's positions which are routinely in sympathy with Mr. Moore's) who are using products produced by these "criminals." Mr. Moore's ravings about NAFTA may be growing old in some parts of this nation, but not at my school--rural and Latino--that is less than a mile from one of the "NAFTA HIGHWAYS." I treasure the memory of the day when a state senator came to speak to my class and found himself peppered with questions drawn from material in this book. I recommend DOWNSIZE THIS! highly, as I do Michael Moore's films ROGER AND ME, CANADIAN BACON, and THE BIG ONE as well as the video sets of episodes originally produced for his two television shows. I only wish he'd collect more of TV NATION onto video. I would love to use his Canada episode, his segment on Avon sales in Latin America, and the Coke/Pepsi rivalry in a Mexican village piece in my classroom. Great works all!

I am reviewing the 1st edition.

Dr. Stonebraker is a pioneer in the field of object-relational database management systems (ORDBMS). He writes with confidence and clarity; he knows the subject matter because he was one of the early innovators. The book is mercifully short and to-the-point. It is well organized, and it includes an index, references, short code samples, and plenty of diagrams.

The book assumes you have some background and experience with existing relational database management systems and SQL. It would also help if you have some basic understanding of implementation details like B-tree indexes and cost-based query optimizers. You should also have an understanding of OO concepts like inheritance and polymorphism, and some experience with an OO language like C++, Eiffel, Java, or Smalltalk.

Armed with this background, the book is an excellent overview of the motivation, architecture, design, and features of ORDBMS. I especially liked the chapters on SQL parsing and query optimization, and also the discussions of how inheritance affects query and trigger processing.

If you've never been exposed to the ideas and concepts of "object-relational," this is an excellent starting point. If you have the background described above, you will be able to read this book in a few sittings and come away with a basic - albeit incomplete - understanding of the field of ORDBMS.

I say "incomplete," because Dr. Stonebraker fails to write about the dark side of ORDBMS. For example, once pointer-like references are introduced, the system runs the risk of 'dangling pointers'- precisely the kind thing a purely relational system elegantly avoids. This issue is never once mentioned, and yet I know for a fact it is a danger that must be dealt with on one commercial implementation I have used. There are other issues to be confronted and understood. C.J. Date has written extensively on the subject. Although C.J. Date's writing is sometimes long-winded and pedantic, you won't truly understand the ORDBMS topic until you've read what he has to say.

The book is also a compelling marketing promotion for the product once sold by Stonebraker's now-defunct company. Given the "feature matrices" and other comparisons in the text, it is clear that his product was the hands-down winner at the time the book was written. This is all ancient history, however. The book shows its age and bias. First of all, Stonebraker's company Illustra (later renamed Informix) was recently acquired by IBM. Secondly, very little is said about Oracle, which has since implemented a very respectable OR system of its own. Lastly, most of the other vendors he mentioned have fallen completely off the radar map. These days, all the database vendors have most of their attention turned towards XML and raw OLTP throughput. So it seems like "The Next Great Wave" predicted by Stonebraker never fully materialized. Perhaps the 2nd edition of the book has updated the vendor list and features matrices.

I wish more was said about his early work on the "POSTGRES" system. If you're interested, you can find out much more about POSTGRES and its open-source offspring, PostgresSql, by using any Internet query engine. There is now a whole cottage publishing industry built up around PostgresSql. If you want to experiment and explore ORDBMS, PostgresSql may be a good choice.

Based on what I can see in the table of contents, the 2nd edition doesn't include too much new material. Dr. Stonebraker has added a chapter on application servers. I know from his other work that he argues that middle-tier application servers are wrong-headed, because business logic should reside in the database itself - where it is physically close to the data.

I rate the 1st edition of the book 3 stars because (1) It is dated (2) No space is allotted to the problematic issues of ORDBMS (3) "The Next Great Wave" never seemed to take off as predicted (4) it is overpriced, in my opinion.

Nevertheless, it is a worthwhile and useful book to read if you are interested in the topic. The 2nd edition will surely have an up-to-date comparison of the ORDBMS vendors as of 1999.

The authors have done reasonably well in presenting general design/architecture issues in the area of object relational database management systems.

Poor editing, however, abounds in this book. The reader must wade through paragraphs of opinionated comments, distracting (and often incorrect) pontifications and complaints. For example, hardware designers are roundly chastized for failing to support Multics-style protection-ring logic in today's microprocessors.

The text is heavily sprikled with superlatives such as 'explosive', 'incredible', 'astonishing', etc. It is irritating from a reader's perspective to be digging out good technical material betweeen snippets of pro-Informix marketing hype.

When not engaged in hype, the authors sometimes make curious and possibly false assertions. In one instance, they claim that Wal-Mart's huge data warehouse is utilized to 'rotate stock'. My uninformed suspicion is that they use it for much more than that.

Be prepared to read strange statements such as: "IBM is a hardware vendor - but they also happen to offer a relational database product".

Despite these destractingly spurious comments, I would recommend this text as good reading for those wishing to know more about object relational DBMS architectures.

The book describes in great detail all of the technology that surrounds the object relational approach. It describes in simple terms the trade-offs of different approaches and different techniques for realizing this type of database. I can hear Prof. Stonebraker's voice as I read the descriptions. This man is a true expert and has a deep understanding of all the issues and is able to make his points succinctly and clear. The book is not a sales job for a product, but an honest presentation of a technology and the different attempts to realize it.

Perhaps this book was written for policy-makers. It's not very specific about curriculum design nor technology, if that's what you are looking for. It does a pretty job of citing other research and case-studies of implementation. It also seems to state a lot of "basics": like "The study guide should do more than merely present subject matter. It should contain directions and guidance for the students..." (page 79). This doesn't seem very insightful nor specific to distance education.

"Distance Education: A Systems View" is a wonderful book for novices and seasoned professionals. It offers a board and deep foundation for the design, development, and delivery of distance education programs. There is a balance between conceptual and theoretical information, and a wealth of practical advice. It is written in easy to understand language, presents interesting case studies, and provides a solid bibliography

Not to put the previous reviewer down, but which culture hasn't studied the constelations ("fixed stars") & plenets ("wandering stars") for centuries?

This is a great book. The wording is very practical and down to earth. The subject matter in most of these chapters is formidable (given the limited space), and allows dialog between the reader & writer. What I enjoyed the most was not the diversity that was braught to the book, but the depth of knowledge that was braught to it. The chapter written about Chinese "Five-Element" Astroloy was my favorite. For more info about "this stuff"; I recomend anything written by DEREK WALTERS.

Now if you'll me let complane (which is what most of the critiques on Amazon.com do), I'll share with you what I don't like about most practicing astrologers. Most people (including Fagan) try to dispute the validity of using one Zodiac over another (sidereal vs. tropical). But the fact is that some Zodiacs don't even use the ecliptic! Incuding Chinese astrology. Or the Nakshatras, which most western astrologers "throw in"! And this is my point, that these Zodiacs are a cration. Our creation! And that's what makes astrology valid! Remember Arroyo. Don't forget Arroyo. He said, "If astrology is in fact an emination of universal mind or 'Collective Unconscious' or anything like that, then instead of imposing foreign dogma on astrology, I would say, let us open our eyes to what astrology already is! Let's acknowledge its inherent, extremely sophisticated, psychological [soulful] dimentions. It's all there. It's a tremendous tool, a language of consciousness and inner experience... This is one reason why traditional astrology has become quite meaningless to many of us; the astrology has not for the most part evolved to keep pace with our growth [in] consciousness. And it's why every culture has it's own astrology-the consciousness of that culture determines what level of understanding they can have of astrology."

I really need to emphisise this feeling I have about these truths! It seems as though all we need to do is look up and astrology becomes valid, alive because we are!

For another "good read" try The Origin of The Zodiac by Rupert Gleadow.

This is a book about astrology from China, India and Tibet. I do not know of any other book in which there are so many different astrological techniques from the East. Everything is clearly explained. In this book, you will find the wisdom of the sages of the East who have spotted the stars and planets for centuries. Now you can learn about their insights.

... but let's face it, that's over 20 years ago now. Back then you had to look _really_ hard to find anything with even a glimmer of a hint of tips on picking, or (gasp!) practical uses.
Michael's later books in the "Medicinal Plants of the" -series got steadily better, with the "Medicinal Plants of the Pacific West" being the crown of the trio, beating _all_ the other practical guides out there with a very wide margin.
Sure, buy this one, if you live in the Mountain West - as likely as not you won't find anything else as good on the plants in _your_ region.
Buy it, too, if you're a die-hard Michael Moore -fan. His writing was entertaining back then, too.

But if you don't live out there, or don't yet know Michael Moore's writings, go get the Pacific West book instead. And wait for the revision of this, his oldest book. It _should_ be out one of these years.

I've got to say that although I've never read the book and am at a loss to explain what it is about, this is a monumental achievement in the field of bookwriting, specifically bookwriting about plants that are medicinal, and it is the definitive book about plant medicine for people in the mountain west and a must have for all botanists and other plantpeople, whether or not you know anything about medicine, plants, the mountains, or the west, and you should buy this book as soon as you possibly can, for your life may depend on it, because if you are out in the wilderness and get sick you need to know how to heal yourself, and since there are no pills in the woods you need this book to tell you how to make them out of the plants that surround you, for if you don't, you could die of the sickness you have, but if you are in the east or in the west but not in the mountains you should seek out another book as well because this one is specific to medicinal plants of the mountain west, meaning that it only mentions plants that are medicinal that grow in the mountains of the west, but this is a wonderful book for all ages to learn more about nature and medicine at the same time, and I highly recommend it.

Math Bridge 5th Grade is in its second printing. DO NOT WASTE your money on this $10.00 book. You go to the first page of problems (page 5) and look at problem #14.

"Choose the decimal for 91/2 (Nine and a half)." ANSWER: 9.12 WRONG! Answer should be 9.5. This is an example of the book. Poor review and editing. Should have been caught in the first printing and corrected in the second.

I am a middle school math teacher who found these books to be very helpful. I am always on the lookout for workbooks that provide extra help on basic skills. These books fit the bill. Some answers are incorrect, but the majority can be checked with a calculator. These books provide good reteaching concepts as well as a good variety of sample problems. If you are looking to help your child in math, I would suggest these books.

I LOVE this series. It has been useful as reteach pages as well as make-up work assignments for absent students. The top of the page teaches the skill and there are plenty of practice problems without overwhelming the student.