This book gathers together some half-dozen plays presented by Ireland's Abbey Theatre in the early 90s. The title is somewhat misleading, as all of the plays were presented at the Peacock, the Abbey's new writing stage. Its main purpose is to make the plays available to readers and potential producers, and in this it succeeds admirably, although there are a couple of notable plays from the period that didn't get included, presumably because they were already available elsewhere. (This makes the volume somewhat unrepresentative.) The plays themselves are of varying quality. Michael Harding's "Hubert Murray's Widow" is an interesting, darkly funny tragicomedy (or comitragedy) about a dead gunman and the events surrounding, and after, his death; Donal O'Kelly's "Asylum! Asylum!" is a characteristically angry piece about the treatment of an African refugee, written some time before the number of refugees in Ireland skyrocketed, and thus anticipating a major current social issue. Tom MacIntyre's "Sheep's Milk on the Boil" is an impenetrable scrap of whimsy, and Niall Williams' "A Little Like Paradise" is a sentimental mood piece about the West, the kind of play that has since been stamped into a bloody pulp by the erratic genius of Martin McDonagh. Neil Donnelly's "The Duty Master" is dull but worthy, a portrait of an Irishman teaching in an English public school, and about as exciting as it sounds. There are some excellent production shots, but one is not told which actor played which role and thus identifying what scene is being depicted is not easy. Plus, the American editor suffers from a too-misty-eyed appreciation of Irish drama and the respective qualities of the plays, and tries to hard to fit them into the familiar canon. But a useful book, especially for those that want to put the plays on.

I did not read the book but I did look it over carefully. I was hoping it would be a clear step by step guide to using IBD to apply the CANSLIM method. There is so much information in the paper that it is not easy to apply all the techniques in an efficient manner. There are almost too many choices and directions possible. This book is not a step by step guide nor is it all that clear. I did find it to be unnecessarily wordy and vague. It just seems to go over the whole paper in a long winded fashion but does not get down to the nuts and bolts of "Smart Investing" as I was hoping it would. Refer to William O'Neil's books for better guidance about how to invest. Also, if you are a subscriber, there is a large amount of useful information on the IBD website at Investors.com.

Being a student of William O'Neil's CANSLIM method of stock selection I found this book tiresome to read mainly because I know the subject matter so well. Dr. Sethna was certainly long winded and rambling in his writing style and could have said what he did in a third of the space he used. If you desire to learn about William O'Neil's methods purchase his book, "How to Make Money In Stocks." Lastly, Investor's Business Daily has added many new features since Dr. Sethna wrote this book so some of the information he shares about the paper is dated.

If you are totally new to investing then you should start with "24 Essential Lessons to Investment Success" & "How to make Money in stocks", both by William O'Neil. If after reading those books part of the Investment Business Daily newspaper makes no sense, I recommend this book. Once you feel successful and comfortable in the stocks you pick, you would want to understand the whole picture. Though this book will confuse you in the beginning and I agree with many of the reviews, remember it is a brake down of the newpaper and how you can use each part of it to understand everything of the market and how Investment Business Daily feeds you that information. I strongly recommend it. Puts together the Big Market picture from the pages of the Investors Business Daily paper. It should glue together some loose ends.

Miguel-Bronx New York

Out of time, out of money, out of technology - an utterly complete waste of time! You get advice to better buy an Intel 486 PC(sic!) instead of lower numbers (!), an explanation of the Quick Ratio and a sample sessions of how to access financial information using (an outdated) internet service(!). Absolutely not up to the title and an offense to the serious modern investor. Rubbish! Nil Stars (not foreseen, sorry)

This book is horrible. If you know nothing about investing at all, maybe it could help you. But it implies that it is a book about online investing and provides you almost NO information pertaining to on-line investing. If you want help doing stock research do a search for stock sites. You can find them easily using any of the search engines. Many investment magazines will reference useful sites as well.

This book provided absolutely nothing worthwhile regarding on-line investing and just rehashed a number of ideas much better presented by their original authors (like William O'Neill's book).

If you want this book I will give it away free. Just send mail to magicease@aol.com. You pay the shipping and I will mail it to you. If I don't hear from anyone, I will throw it away, total waste of printing materials.

I am a computer programmer and I have read loads of book on the Market. Forget it do not buy it. Instead consider "Secrets for profiting in Bull and Bear Markets" or CANSLIM method by O'Neil.

The only play Shakespeare wrote that I did not like at all was "Othello." "All's Well That Ends Well" was never that popular. It lacks the hilarious tone of "The Comedy of Errors," the superb construction of "Much Ado About Nothing," or the profound messages of "The Merchant of Venice." Also, we can very well be in two minds of what to think of Bertram's rejection of Helena. The characters are not that convincing, and much of the humour is based on bad taste. But the play is not quite a flop. There are moments of suspense. There is some delightful comedy (especially when Bertram chooses to stay in battle rather than go home and marry Helena). And at times, Helena is memorable. I would not make time to read this play, but then it's not a waste of time either.

Buy this book if you have deep pockets and will indeed open your own bank. But again, if you have that kind of money, chances are that you are already familiar with the nuts-n-bolts of the banking industry, in which case the book will not be of much use. In my opinion this book would be most useful for the banking industry analysts...