I tried to read this late at night in a guest room in Palo Alto (while I was still on Eastern time), at a house where I was also urged to read _Up and down California_, the narrative based on Brewer's own letters, still in print (first edition 1930). I got the latter via interlibrary loan but the memory of Alsup's vistas of rock has brought me to Amazon to buy my own copies of both.

This book is a great teaching tool... how NOT to act in school... read it and enjoy. All the Junie B. Jones books are irreverant and poke fun at ourselves as well as being great to read together with your child... laugh and learn TOGETHER!

Like the other Junie B. Jones books, this one was easy to read and funny. However, I really didn't like the extended discussion about whether Mickey Mouse (etc.) is real -- my 6-year-old reader didn't need to find that out from a book!

It is a very funny book about a girl named Junie Beatrice Jones except she just likes B. and that's all. She has trouble controlling her temper and excitement. Sometimes she yells out "YOU'RE A DUMB BUNNY!" and she calls her teacher "Mrs."...she has another name too but Junie B. just likes Mrs. and that's all. One day Mrs. said, "Boys and girls, please take your seats. I've got a wonderful surprise!" "IS IT JELLY DOUGHNUTS?" Mrs. put her finger to her lips and that means be quiet. "YEAH ONLY GUESS WHAT? JELLY DOUGHNUTS ARE MY MOST FAVORITE EXCEPT I ALSO LIKE OTHER KINDS!" After that, my mouth got very drooly and some drool fell on the table. I wiped it up with my sweater sleeve. Just then there was a knock at the door. Mrs. hurried to open it. "HEY, IT'S A..." to find out who it was...read the book! You didn't expect ME to tell you!

Mr. Bennett covers marriage and children with a lot of commonsense and backs up his ideas with statistics. He does put a lot of Christian teaching into the book which is interesting, but I don't think it should be a necessary part of dispensing common sense. While the lengthy chapter on gay marriage was well thought out, I found it weakened the overall thrust of the book (that we should recommit to marriage and family) because I really don't think most people care whether gays marry, and can't see much direct impact on our own families as a result. To devote such a large portion of the book to it was wasteful of the reader's attention to more urgent issues such as the delinquency of our children and their schoolmates, and the fact that divorce makes us unhappier, poorer and lonelier still.

Mr. Bennett's overall thrust is ahead of its time in courageously goring the sacred cow of "our right to self-satisfaction". I subtracted one star because the writing style is aimed at the PhD's among us (lots of triple-credit-words)...Mr. Bennett's future editor please take note....and along with the aloof vocabulary, the unnecessary new-testament-thumping, and lost-in-the-weeds march through New Hampshire's gay marriage law. The book could have reached a far bigger audience were it not for this, and I fear it will be lost in the Church reading room instead of put on the high school reading list.

In 1960, one in twenty births was out of wedlock. Now, the ratio is one in three. Celebrities such as Madonna and Jodie Foster have been upfront in getting pregnant but not getting married (thank God Madonna finally married her second child's father). Although the divorce rate peaked in 1980 (how much higher could it have gone?), it has not significantly decreased since then. Regardless of the fact that gays have legitimate rights to privacy, many groups advocate sanctification of the gay relationship in marriage.

Bill Bennett takes these issues on and, predictably enough, he decries the current situation. He notes that there has been some progress in solving our social ills such as a reduction in the welfare roles and a reduction in crime but, generally, the situation remains grim. I would have liked a better explanation of how the crime rate and welfare roles have decreased when there are so many out of wedlock births ... that seems to be inconsistent. However, I nontheless agree with his premise. A society which encourages strong families is more stable and has less social problems.

Certainly, some of Bennett's solutions are controversial, such as making divorce laws tougher. However, I agree that often while a spouse argues that it will be better for the kids if the marriage ends than if the kids live in a house with a rocky marriage, the opposite is in fact true. Unless there is abuse or some other catastrophic problem, how many children would vote to have Mom and Dad divorce if they had the choice? How many children, as opposed to their parents, are actually happier after a divorce? I would suggest very few are.

I am very conservative and the instability of the family is of deep concern to me. This book crystalizes my views and will be helpful in my formulating arguments for the preservation of the traditional family. Therefore, since Bennett echoes and elucidates my concerns, I like and recommend this book.

"Each divorce is the death of a small civilization." William Bennett quotes the words of novelist Pat Conroy as he eloquently explains why marriage and family are critical to the healthy community in his recent book, The Broken Hearth.

Bennett has always been timely in his writing. During the impeachment, Bennett quickly produced The Death of Outrage". After the invasion of Afghanistan, Bennett published Why We Fight to make the moral case for the war against terrorism. The Broken Hearth was the exception that proves the rule. Hearth was poised to serve as a forceful summation for the marriage movement which would bring the message to the large audience his books typically reach. Like so many other good things, however, Hearth was somewhat lost in the wake of September 11. Now that Congress is considering the re-authorization of welfare reform that emphasizes the importance of marriage lifestyles over serial cohabitation, it's a good time to revisit Bennett's superb work.

In six quick chapters, Bennett brings the reader up to date on the need for marriage-based families better than virtually any who have tried. He surveys the current situation, the meaning of family in history, and suggests productive ways to repair a culture that does too little to keep families together. Perhaps more importantly, Bennett analyzes homosexual unions with the sensitivity and erudition the topic deserves. He makes his points firmly, but without rancor. Get the book and read it with pencil or highlighter. It's the kind of volume that rewards careful reading.

This book is packed with information. James William Park does an exhausting study of Rafael Núñez. Moreover, he explains in great detail how regional differences destroyed attempts for national unity. Still and all, this book is dry. Facts are compressed and do not always come to life.

One feature I found valuable is the description of Colombia's many civil wars. Although the text does not go into great detail exploring the events leading to the "War of the Supremos" from 1839 to 1842 it does an outstanding job of defining the political differences that lead to the civil war of 1860 - 1862, the civil war of 1876 - 1877 and the civil war of 1884 - 1885.

This well-researched text also has excellent charts with data on government federal expenditures, federal income, income from customs and valuable regional population statistics. Park includes an excellent protrayal of the many problems between the Liberal and Conservative parties. He also defines the many problems implementing national railroads, a national education policy and negotiating the delicate relationship with the Catholic Church.

Any serious student of Colombian - American affairs must read this book to understand the long government pattern of ignoring the needs of citizens in the interior of the nation in favor of those in the big cities. Overall, Park explains how Rafael Núñez overcomes many political and personal obstacles to unite Colombia under one flag.

A fantastic introduction and discussion in the introduction by Elizabeth Meyer of UVA. No color photos, but good drawings. Excellent writing in architctural theory

Park does a very good job of exploring different bidding strategies. Theory is debatable of course, but Park does not develop a format in which to capture historical data. That is left to the reader. His software package is supposed to help the bidder develop a system to organize historic records and prepare bidding strategies accordingly. I found his software hopelessly outdated. The software package packaged with the book doesn't even recognize up and down arrow keys. You must turn off the numbers lock and use the old keypad arrows to make his software work. The software really needs to be updated, the theory better explained, and the price of the book brought back to reallity.

The map in the front of each chapter was nicely displayed showing the locations of the listed partks . However, I didn't find this book easy to use. I felt the way the Parks were indexed in the front of each chapter (by State) was incomplete. I was mainly interested in the ones that had camping facilities and I had to look at each individual park to find that information. I would like to have seen the Activities chart also have Camp Ground information listed. I don't forsee us taking this book along with us as we travel; the information was not any that I couldn't find easier in other Travel books or Camping guides.

The book has a great historical value. It explains the theoretical basis of the simplified methods implemented in most modern design codes. The emphasize is on strength design based on Yield Line method. But, nowadays slab design is governed by the serviceability criteria, rather than strength. The serviceability design is not well covered, which makes this book not very useful. It is an interesting book, but it is not very practical and it is not very relevant to the modern design practice.