Birds in Brazil is a big book, beautifully produced on quality paper. It is exhaustive but never exhausting on the topic of Brazilian birds . The color illustrations are beautiful, but unfortunately they are separate from the text about the birds. That is the book's only fault. The text is in smooth and enticing English, and where the same birds are to be found migrating to the United States, the information is quite comparable in completion and interest to the American field guides of Roger T. Peterson. That leads me to believe that the information about birds that we don't experience will be equally accurate. This book is captivating and well worth the price. It is a coffee-table style book that we will be proud to use and to display.

Sadly, this book is a disappointment. Using it was commonly an exercise in frustration and futility.

Unlike other books in the same series, there was a noticeable lack of information - particularly Plates - on even the most common birds. The Plates that were available often showed marked errors e.g. colouring, from the actual birds (eventually) identified.

I found quite quickly that my poor view of this book was widely shared by the local guides - it was universally criticised as below the required standard.

I wished I'd taken my "Birds of Costa Rica" instead - I would have been better off!

I haven't gone to Trinidad yet, but I thought I could go ahead and write this. I was flipping through the guide, planning my trip and daydreaming about birds, when I realized that there weren't very many plates. There are a LOT of plates that should have been included in this book, but were not. I generally expect a field guide to have pictures of the common birds. Yes, I will be able to identify a black vulture, common moorhen, or limpkin without the field guide. But you really have to bring two field guides if you're not familiar with terns, rails, gulls, and some other groups. In other words, only the pretty birds get pictures. I don't really want to bring two field guides, especially since this one is so big. Why is it so big, if it only has a few plates? It includes detailed measurements, banding records, and wordy descriptions. But, the food and behavior notes are excellent, and I believe they will aid in identification. Plus the introduction contains excellent information on the environment of Trinidad and Tobago.

An excellent field guide to Trinidad & Tobago's avifauna, the ffrench has been around long enough, & loved well enough, in its various editions, to be considered a classic of its kind. I've used it everywhere from Port of Spain's Botanical Gardens to the forests of the Northern Range to the Pointe-a-Pierre Wildfowl Trust to my own back garden & never failed to identify the specimen in question (& I am no more than an enthusiatic amateur). This book, for me, is the model of a natural history field guide.

Fans of any type of literature will find this book to be a grave disappointment. There lacks any main theme, aside from the man himself. It contains several articles regarding different aspects of his life and inventions, jumps haphazardly from one subject to the next, but its greatest failing is it's quality. It has the appearance of biography thrown together by an uninterested sixth-grader. There are many pictures, many of them poor quality photocopies, and there is even an article copied from an encyclopedia. It is rare to see sometihng of this poor quality, and it is always shameful.

Unlike the other review I read on this page I find this an Incredible Book. I first read it as a teen and was inspired by the story of an inventor who never has been truly admired by the mainstream. His rivalry with Edison, his failure in love and his unusual mental talents all combine to create an extraordinary story of a man who appears more like an Extraterrestrial than human. The book isn't full of pictures... because not many exist, but if you can aspire to your imagination and delve into O'Neill's description of this man you'll find it all amazing. I've come back to this book again and again... for the story and not necessarily the physics.

For teachers or trainers who use film to bring variety and excitement to the classoom, Prof. Champoux has written two useful film guides, one with a focus on management and the other on organizational behavior. Both have similar tables of contents and it is unlikely that students who have purchased one book would feel their money was well spent in the purchase of the second volume. Additionally, students may feel cheated by the formatting decisions made by the author and the publisher. Each book could easily be reduced in page numbers by at least half with no loss of content.

With these reservations considered, Champoux does provide a useful service for the reader. A few examples will serve to demonstrate the value of his work.

In Chapter 3 of the Organizational Behavior text Champoux reviews the 1970 Jack Nicholson film, "Five Easy Pieces." The category for this film is Quality Management and the scene Champoux uses to illustrate a breakdown in customer service is the now famous roadside restaurant confrontation where Nicholson attempts to customize his order with a waitress who advises him that he can't make any substitutions for any items on the menu. At first Nicholson attempts to use reason with the waitress in order to get the food he wants to eat, but when reason fails, his anger and savage wit combine in one of the most memorable putdowns ever filmed.

Champoux makes it convenient for the viewer to find the scene with fairly accurate tape start and stop times listed prominently before his accurate description of what the viewer will see. He then asks three open ended questions which seem obvious at first, but in reality are difficult to answer. Teachers will find it easy to add their own questions such as: Is the customer always right? Our conditioned response is yes, but the scene Champoux gives us requires us to think more deeply about this question. More than this, Nicholson is a difficult customer. How does a person in the service industry work effectively with such people? Students will be eager to discuss such questions and instructors will discover many teachable moments stimulated by the interest generated by the film clip.

As mentioned, this guide has been formatted into a workbook and always after the questions for discussion is a page for analysis of concepts or examples and then a place to write personal reactions to the film clip. All the content mentioned could easily have been formatted on one page and students can use their own notebooks or learning logs, which they are likely to do anyway, to record their observations.

With these reservations noted, I am still able to recommend this book. Prof. Champoux shares with us his years of experience watching popular films. The eighty-two films cited in the text are divided into twenty-five chapters that correspond to topics that students will find in the typical organizational behavior text like perception, motivation, and leadership. As in the Five Easy Pieces example mentioned, his selections are appropriate, entertaining, and thought provoking. Students and teachers will discover in Champoux's book many good reasons to bring a thoughtful attention to their next film viewing.