I HAVE JUST FINISHED TAKING THE FIRST LEVEL OF ASL CLASSES AT THE COLLEGE I AM ATTENDING AND I HAVE FOUND THAT THIS BOOK CAN BE VERY HELPFUL IN LEARNING ASL, BUT IT DOES HAVE IT'S DRAWBACKS. SOME OF THE ILLUSTRATIONS WERE A LITTLE HARD TO SEE SO I FOUND MYSELF MAKING THE WRONG HAND SHAPES AT TIMES. ALSO THE BOOK ONLY HAD ONE SIGN FOR EACH WORD. FOR EXAMPLE THE ENGLISH WORD "RUN". THERE IS A SIGN FOR RUNNING WATER, RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT, RUNNING AWAY, ETC. THE BOOK ONLY HAD THE SIGN FOR RUNNING AWAY. THE BOOK DID NOT HAVE ENOUGH SIGNS TO DISTINGUISH BETWEEN THE DIFFERENT MEANINGS OF THE WORDS. IF YOU ARE TO BUY THIS BOOK ONLY USE IT TO ACCOMPANY A CLASS OR A LESSON FROM A PERSON WHO IS EDUCATED IN ASL. IT IS NOT POSSIBLE TO LEARN ASL WITH ONLY THE USE OF THIS BOOK. WITH ANY LANGUAGE YOU HAVE TO NOT ONLY READ WHAT YOU ARE LEARNING, BUT ALSO SEE IT IN ACTION. I RECOMMEND THE RANDOM HOUSE AMERICAN SIGN LANGUAGE DICTIONARY IF YOU WANT TO SEE MULTIPLE SIGNS FOR SINGLE WORDS.

I used this book in an adult evening course at The American School for the Deaf in West Hartford, Connecticut. ASD is the oldest school for deaf people in the US, as well as, the birthplace of American Sign Language(ASL). The book combines both basic sentence struture and useful vocabulary words. An example is Lesson 1, which covers sentences with predictive adjectives and 40 vocabulary words. So at the end of lesson 1, I was able to sign sentences such as She is beautiful. & I am tired.

The book also gives a good introduction into the deaf community and culture. As a parent of a hearing impaired son, this book gave me the ability to see useful results at the end of each lesson. I found this book very effective.

After a semester of Siglish, I took 4 semesters of American Sign Language (ASL) in college as my foreign language requirement. The course was superby taught by a husband and wife team, both who worked at residential schools for the deaf for over 25 years. This book was the text for the first 2 semesters and I still have it on my shelf.

Extremely detailed, lots of exlplainations and superb drawings. The text is spiral bound, which is awesome for laying a book flat while practicing signs. If you carry this book with you in a backpack, however, you should keep the book in a protective bag... the spiral binding makes the book very vulnerable to pages ripping away while being jostled in a backpack.

This text should not replace classroom instruction. There is no text that can replace a real human being explaining how one sign looks exactly like another depending on context, facial expressions and body language. You can easily embarrass yourself by assuming you can figure out the drawings and go about conversing in ASL with someone w/o the benefit of real one-on-one practice with another human being. Signs like "prostitute" and "shy" are almost identical to the learner and if you're talking to someone and you say "I'm shy," you might end up getting a bunch of raised eyebrows if you don't do it just right. Signs for "lemon" and "lesbian" are also very closely similar... you can imagine the types of mis-understandings that can occur if you don't learn these signs properly.

This warning is not meant as discouragement. If you have already learned the manual alphabet and find yourself to be quite adept, ASL will probably be a breeze to you... at least it was to me. Some people really take to it and others don't. Spoken language is not my strong suit and I was a late talker to begin with. If my college didn't offer ASL as a foreign language requirement, I would have never graduated. Regardless of your aptitude, study and practice is essential for good, rapid signing... and more importantly, signing that can be understood. Even if you become a wiz at signing, you must have practice at reading other people's signs or you won't be able to have a conversation. It's been 8 years since my last ASL class and wlithout anyone to practice with, I've forgotten a lot of signs, so I constantly refer to this book... it's a great reference for those wanting to freshen up on forgotten signs or to use to learn in the classroom or with a study partner.

This is an excellant book with very useful diagramatic and grapic details of operations and good descriptions of both old and new procedures. Most chapters have been written by pioneers in the field and there is a lot of practical advice added to make the book a valuable addition to the library of urologists and trainees alike. I have no hesitation in recommending this book to be in the library of all urological institutions and practitioners alike. The book is also reasonably affordable.

This is the best adult urology atlas. It covers most of the basic urologic procedures and a well put together way. If you do surgery on the GU tract, this is a must have book.

This volume is an essential guide to every surgeon who practices urology. Also great stuff for residents in urology. A must-have.

Many newer guides have been published about birds of this region, but this book still deserves its place on the bookshelf of anyone interested in birds of South-east Asia. Illustrations are good, and descriptions are detailed and mostly accurate. A bit bulky to carry in the field, but not a problem if you bring it in a backpack. The situation with forest fires in South-east Asia (especially Indonesia) is growing worse each year, so get out there and see some of these extraordinary birds while you still can!

Any serious birder to the listed regions of this book would buy this book.

It is the best guide of the region so far with excellent plates and useful details. What I find especially useful, particularly for the raptors, is that they show illustrations of the birds in flight.

The drawings appear consistent and the bird's information at the back of the book is easy to access.

The birds are categorised according to their family which definately makes for faster checks and identification, which I find important when in the field.

The spine of the book though is a little week and you might want to have it rebound before it falls apart - especially with all the browsing that is to be.

This was the book that everyone who seemed to be serious used in Borneo, but if you are going to be out in the bush for more than a few days and make frequent use of field guides, consider having it re-bound before you leave -- many people I passed along the way were finding that the plate pages were starting to fall out.

I have just finished reading the "Spider Stumbled" by Frank Paul Venis, a new author. I was more than pleased by his unfettered story telling ability of a very realistic experience of life in a once middle to upper income Queens NY neighborhood. The detailed account of a young teenager from a good family, but nevertheless inexplicably involved in murder,sexual promiscuity, racial bias and a host of other threats to normal progression to adult life by many of our teenagers regardless of their surroundings. It gives the reader pause to consider the question is their anything society can do to remedy these conditions which threaten so many of our young people. The book can be considered alarming, or, a warning. Nonetheless I enjoyed it. Good reading ,fast paced, fine first effort.

I grew up in Queens, NY, so that is why I was drawn to the book. But you don't need to be a New Yorker to enjoy this tale. The plot keeps you interested and involved up until the last page. In fact, I hope there is a sequel so I can find out what happens to Spider and all the others.

I thought this book was excellent because of the diversity of plots and subplots. To me, this book was a composite of various small stories occuring at once, all tied together. There were stories of racial tensions, the strengths of friendships, the temptations of the criminal element and the confusions of being a teenager. It is well-written, and the various themes are deftly handled and linked. I would strongly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys reading even on a casual basis.

I just returned from a trip from Ecuador where I used extensively Volume II of Ridgely et als' book. Having already some acqaitance with both the birdlife of the Neotropics and the bird books on the region I found the plates and the text still very useful when identifying the birds I and my travel mates saw. The weight and the size of the book is, however, making its use very difficult out in the field. The paperback editions did not hold very well during the three weeks, and publishing the book in 3 rather than two volumes could have helped that a lot. Even though the plates do not live up to the quality of the standard dictated by Guy Tudor in the, yet, two-volume handbook on South american birds, but I still found the pictures very informative. The text on habitat, altitudinal distribution, call, and the range maps often helped to narrow down the number of look-alike-species to a manageable level, especially when identifying hummingbirds or tyrant flycatchers.
All in all (and getting back to the question in the title) I could not call this book a champion in the league of field guides for being overweight (just try to carry it on the 'D' trail near Bellavista), although it truly deserves the four stars for the text and the plates alike. If you use it as a 'hotel' rather than a field guide or need it as a reference work for your home library (or have the plates and the text of Vol. II rebound separetely, as I did) you will appreciate the amount of information gathered in this book.

What a set of books, no doubt about that! For the first time, there is a full set of very useful color plates for one of the core South American countries. It is certainly a great accomplishment to have all the species pictured in color and on a more or less consistent standard. However, I do not agree with other reviewers who rave about the plates. Too many of the bird pictures have an overall flat appearance, with the color rendition being too simplistic or too bold. And while a good number of the birds are depicted in good or even unnessessarily large size, others would have benefitted from a larger sized rendition. Just because a species is small does not mean it has to be depicted in a diminutive size, unless there are larger species of the same group on the plate. Thus, while the plates are most useful, it is nevertheless disappointing to see that the overall standard (except for the plates being all in color) is rather lower than what was already published decades ago e.g. in "Birds of Colombia".
The field guide volume has excellent range maps and very helpful comprehensive texts. A somewhat more compact layout would have allowed for a smaller overall size of the book, however. The way to do it is being demonstrated in the book itself. The texts facing the plates use the suggested compact layout most convincingly. Spanish bird names are given in the main text, but, unfortunately, there is no index for them. To conclude, this is by far the more useful field guide for the general area than the also new "Birds of Peru" with its almost non-existing texts, lack of range maps and much less satisfactory plates. (P.S. This is a revised review as I think my first version did not do the book justice.)

I just received my copy of the The Birds of Ecuador and am very
pleased with it. I think the plates are very good with a lot of
detail. I compared plates for the same species in the book: A Guide To The Birds of Costa Rica, an excellent book also, and
found the detail to be better in The Birds of Ecuador. I also
really like the distribution maps for each species. I am
planning to do a birding trip to Ecuador and the maps will help
in making the travelling plans.

Read the workbook and found that although I'm sure that it is useful for others you really have to be of a christian faith to use this workbook. It does have many ideas and suggestions in terms of weight controll but I felt it emphasized to much on "God" and "problems with your family of orgin" and not enough on making us realized that we are in controll and we are responsible for our weight not anyone else. I would although recommend it to someone whose had a horrible childhood.

The Love Hunger Weight-Loss Workbook has literally changed my life. The workbook forced me to look into the issues behind Why I eat rather than What I eat. This book is an excellent tool for anyone looking to make permanent changes.

The book is easy to read and understand, and easy to use -it has daily readings which help you stay focused. Excellent tips that I had actually never heard before. Explains all the inner workings of your diet behaviors. I highly recommend it, and I've already bought it for several friends too.

This book has been most helpful in reviewing real life classroom and educational issues and seeing how others address the situation. I do not always agree with the steps taken, but it is enlightening. Especially helpful for student teachers.

"Case Studies" is the best book I have read regarding music education since, "What They Didn't Teach You In Choral Methods". While, I believe, Mr's. Abrahams and Head were targeting the Student Teaching and First-Year crowd, everyone can benefit from reading the book. I have known teachers with 10 years experience who have benefitted from using the book to analyze and re-iterate their teaching styles and choices.

This wonderful book includes case studies which end in choices you, the teacher, must make. Get a journal and begin! Whether you're an experienced teacher or new to the profession, you'll be glad you took the time to seriously consider such topics as Copyright infringement, your personal music ed philosophy, stereotypes, faculty relationships, auditions, learning styles, technology integration, grading policies, defending your program choices, and other interesting dilemmas.

Do not overlook this book! Many of us did not receive this kind of guidance in undergrad or even in our master's work. It never hurts to go back to basics and re-learn what you think you already know about yourself. You might be surprised!

Came across this book when I'm browsing through a whole range of Turbo Pascal books. The illustrations are clear with reference from detailed examples especially those on the difficult topics. Pictures are also helpful in illustrating the more hard to visualize topics like those in ADT and trees. Generally a more helpful book compared to most other titles emphazisng on basic concepts only.

Use the book for introductory data structure, elementary software engineering, or advanced programming and problem solving. It fill up a lot of missing links that other data structure books trying to provide. Read it up.

As the webmaster of the 27th Pursuit history and research page, I have been involved in primary research into the life of Frank Luke Jr. since 1995. The Haibers' new book is without a doubt the most thorough and best-researched work I have read on the topic.

Much of what passes today for the Luke story was published between the 1920s and 1940s, and for the most part this body of work is fraught with error. Luke has always been a romantic figure, and a great deal of his legend is simply that. Legend. The authors of September Rampage not only did a good job of developing new information about their subject, but they also do an overly exhaustive job of trying to put Luke in his proper historical context.

My notes from my pre-publication review copy of the book indicate some areas of conflict with my own research, but they also point out well-documented facts that I missed in my studies.

September Rampage is not the definitive work on the 27th Pursuit or Frank Luke, but it is the best history available. Not only is it recommended reading for those interested in Luke (along with Hartney's "Up and At 'Em" and Hall's "The Balloon Buster"), it is the first book one should read on this topic. September Rampage is to be applauded as the first significant advance in this field in the past 50 years. I sure wish they had published this one years ago - it would have saved me a LOT of time.

Major Congratulations to Mr. Billy Haiber and gratitude to his lovely wife for putting up with him while writing this incredible book. He has covered virtually everything that can be known about Frank Luke Jr from his ancestral heritage to the last days of his life. His passion for knowing the full story led him to detail page after page of photos, documents, and credible source material. Anyone who has tried to search online for meaningful info on Frank eventually discovers NO BETTER SOURCE. September Rampage seemed to reach its ultimate goal when on November 18, 2000 Billy, the town of Murvaux, France and many representatives from around the world met at Murvaux to rededicate the memorial to Frank Luke Jr. Even if I wasn't interested in US Military Heroes, September Rampage would inspire me. Thank You, Billy.

In a state of depression and desparation I felt an overwhelming urge to drive to [a bookstore] in search of help. I didn't even know what I was looking for. I did know my search would defintely begin in the "Self-help" section. I picked up several books on relationships and read the backs of them. The third one I picked up was "Love is a Choice", and when I read the back I started to cry. It was like divine intervention because I had only heard the term "codependent - I didn't know exactly what it meant and certainly didn't know that it applied to me. Boy, did it ever. This book was such an eye opener for me and truly has changed my life. I know I have a long way to go in the healing process (maybe a lifetime), but now I have hope and the power of knowledge on my side. The greatest (and most unexpected) benefit of reading this book was that it helped me to get to know God - someone I didn't think knew me or loved me. I am so thankful that this book was written, and that there are people with the knowledge, experience, and expertise out there willing to work hard to make a happy and healthy life a reality for so many of us. Thank you!

I can honestly say that this book changed my life. I first read a page of it during a boring sermon at church, at a time when my marriage was going downhill. It sucked me in so fast I couldn't put it down. It was a shocking experience to read my entire life story written by complete strangers . It has a very straightforward style, but I think it's also easy enough reading that a teenager could understand it. The mix of psychology and scripture was exactly what I needed, and I don't know if I could have accomplished effective healing without it. The book is effective alone or in a group setting. My church even used it in place of a Sabbath School class: While everyone else was in groups studying Daniel and Revelation, I was in a group studying codependancy from a biblical perspective. I would also recommend this book to pastors looking to meet the emotional needs of their congregation.

This stellar book has helped me discover the cause of most of my problems. Now, I'm on the road to recovery. At first I read it for a thesis paper dealing with compulsive behaviors (which it is extremely helpful for), then I read it for myself! It changed me; it's the best!