"Mr Willowby's Christmas tree/Came by special delivery./Full and fresh and glistening green-/The biggest tree he had ever seen." So big, in fact that when it stood in place in the parlor, it not only touched the ceiling but "bent like a bow." Mr Willowby realized that something must be done, and had his butler, Baxter, chop off the top. And what happens to that tree top, makes for a wonderful and endearing Christmas story..... Originally published in 1963, Mr Willowby's Christmas Tree is just as fresh and magical today, as it was all those years ago. Robert Barry's rhyming text is lyrical and joyous, and complemented by his delightful and expressive artwork. Perfect for youngsters 3-8, this is a charming and simple treasure of a book that really captures the holiday spirit, and is a lovely read-aloud story the entire family will want to share again and again, year after year.

Each year when my family is able to be together, we curl up around the christmas tree and read Mr. Willowby's Christmas Tree. It has become a family tradition and one that I cherish, even as an adult.

We were so concerned about this book going out of publication and to know that it is being sold again is wonderful - If you are looking for a story you all can share, year after year, this is the one!

It has seen us through over thirty years and is still going strong!

I am 29 years old and have never forgotten the story of Mr. Willowby's Christmas Tree. I cherished the book as a child and have a special place in my heart for it still today. This book is enjoyable to read any time of year not only at Christmas. I enjoy giving hardcover versions of my favorite childhood stories as treasured gifts. This book deserves more than 5 stars. I do not wish to give a summary of this story, but encourage you to please read and ENJOY!!!

I first read this book years ago and I've revisited it as an old friend many times since. Presented as a generational saga, the book is wrapped around a fascinating and little-known historical event-the settlement of the Bahmas Islands by British plantation owners who found their lives after the War for Independence unendurable.

The story is first-rate with characters you care about. The struggle to recreate southern plantation life on the Outer Islands is brought to life but it's the characters who keep you turning the pages.

My book is falling apart so I need to buy a new one!

My husband and I were fortunate enough to have had the opportunity to read this book while we were sailing the Caribbean for 2 years. Much of our time was spent reading the volumes of books exchanged between us and other cruising sailors. This book became especially dear to us as we had just borrowed it, so are thrilled to have found it again! It is a gripping tale of the Bahamas, the way it was before tourism, beautiful and unspoiled, the way the "out islands" still are.

As a Boat delivery Captain, who has traveled thru the Bahamas I had heard of the book from many old salts and finally found a well used 1st edition of the book. It is a page turner and transports us easily back to the times of the early settlers of the Islands. I have heard of a sequel called Blowin in the wind, But I have never seen it. Wind from the Carolinas is one of my treasured positions.

This is by far the finest computer book I have ever read. I recommend this book to people wanting to install and use Samba because no other book, HOWTO, or online forum explains SAMBA so well. I also recommend this book to people just getting their feet wet with networking because it comprehensively examines both Linux and Windows networking issues in an extremely easy to read, step-by-step way.

This book has screen shots -- a lot of them. This book has examples -- a lot of them. This book has very easily followed writing that tells you how to set up your Linux and Windows machines and how to get Samba going. The book sits down with you, rolls up your sleeves, and shows you how to progress in a way that yeilds desired results -- Samba installs and works on your network! It blends instruction with just the right amount of background explanation without forcing you to read page after page of useless, smothering detail. A lot of authors would be well advised to achieve this kind of balance in computer books and darn few succeed. I had my Windows box talking to my Linux box via Samba in just a day. I spent about 2 weeks going over the book and studying my existing Windows network before making any software changes whatsoever.

This book offers a comprehensive networking fault tree people new to networking will find extremely useful. Follow this fault tree and you will be able to correct general networking problems as well as specific Samba problems. When I had networking problems back when I first got into Linux with Red Hat 6.0, I could have fixed them with this book's fault tree. It would have saved me hours of frustration to have worked through this book's fault tree.

I think everyone wanting to connect Linux boxes to Windows boxes should rush to order this book and then spend 2 weeks reading it cover to cover before messing with ANY network settings. You will be rewarded for your money and patience with results and a feeling of genuine accomplishment.

I've noticed a trend in Linux books where the authors like to waste space and reader's time with useless banner "warnings" and sometimes repetitive moralizing. Some writers print warnings every 2 pages and sound as bad as hoax emails. Well you won't find many warnings in Using Samba. They are worth reading when found.

As far as I can see, there are only 2 bad points about this book and you can't blame the authors for them: unless it is lovingly revised in a new edition, increasing rollouts of Windows 2000 will rapidly obsolete the excellent Samba advice you can get here. As of this writing (August 2000), Windows Millenium Edition will be available to consumers September 14, and depending on sales this may help obsolete the book also. The second bad point is that Samba has not gone into a new version which can deal with Windows 2000 and Millenium Edition yet. It is still stuck at 2.0.7. Hopefully the Samba team will release a new version in the near future covering Windows 2000. And I sure hope The Samba Book, as it is called, is revised to cover the new Windows products!

I've beed using Samba for the last 2 years and this book helped me finally understand how to properly configure it in 1 night. Very well written and easy to understand. Topics like oplocks and network printer configuration are explained in an easy to read manner. If your using or plan to use Samba, you need this book. Well worth the money.

Samba is one of the wonders of the Open source movement. A small bunch of guys in out of the way Canberra, Australia develop a product that emulates a Windows Server Message Block (SMB) server. They do such a good job that within a couple of years they have sponsors assisting programmers around the world in bringing out a product that does a better job than anything Microsoft offers.

I've installed Samba in a number of different environments and used it both as a server and client. I wish I'd had this book. It does a good job of explaining how to set it all up, get it running and maintain it. Nothing else does as good a job. While you can (probably) install and run Samba using just the online manuals you will find it a lot easier if you buy this book. It certainly saves me a lot of time.

It is well written, easy to read, thorough and well paced. It contains a large number of examples and goes through the almost monolithic smb.conf file till it feels like an old friend.

While it does cover some of the underlying network protocols it does not unnecessarily dwell on them, it is a good mix of explanation and getting your hands dirty examples.

The book is well structured, starting with simple configurations and proceeding through to complex ones involving printers, domain controllers and the like. A marvelous way to learn, at the same time it is easy to find particular snippets of information when you require them. I find Appendices C (a configuration option quick reference) and D (a summary of the command line options for the daemons) and the fault tree in Chapter 9 particularly useful.

I would recommend this book to everyone who wishes to integrate Samba into a Windows environment, regardless if it is a small home network or an entire office building. And yes, you can download the entire text for free - the Samba team have now adopted it as part of the official documentation thanks to the authors and O'Reilly, but call me old fashioned, I like having the paper.

I love Ringer's books. Though I've never met the man, over the years I have come to regard him as a kind of trusted advisor.

When I screw up (and that happens a lot) I can always pick up "Looking Out For #1", Ringer's previous book, and see why. Invariably, the cause of my failures can be easily traced to my lack of adherence to the "Universal Truths" found in Ringer's books.

These "Universal Truths", however, are found in just about every other book on success ever written. What makes Ringer special, then, is his humorous, no b.s. style of writing. He goes out of his way to relate his own failures in life--something few success authors do--with such self-effacing humor that you won't mind when he slaps you in the face to point out where you need improvement.

With "Million Dollar Habits" Ringer somewhat rehashes his earlier material--thus the four stars. He uses the time-tested technique of all successful authors in fluffing up a spin-off to his earlier works. Indeed, you will find that "Million Dollar Habits" feels surprisingly familiar to "Looking Out For #1", and it is.

Nevertheless, I will likely buy and read just about anything Ringer publishes. I need to hear what he has to say from time to time. We all do.

I've read a lot of books on success, and they all say basically the same thing: Have a goal, keep a good attitude, work hard. But reading it isn't enough. Some fundamentals have to be constantly reinforced. Ringer presents ten basic principles for success and presents them well. He adds a couple of important principles many writers neglect, like how to deal with people who drain you of your enthusiasm.

It is easy reading, and will reinforce your commitment to doing the fundamentals. Sometimes you just have to hear something one more time to make it stick. I'm the author of the book, Self-Help Stuff That Works, and I am an expert on effective self-help material. Million Dollar Habits fits the bill. Definitely worth reading.

This is the first, but not last book I'll read by Robert Ringer. He has an excellent writing style that wouldn't let me put this book down. I do feel that million dollar habits must be cultivated. They don't come natural- unless you have been born into several generation wealth. Even in that case they must be worked on. This book was not merely about becoming financially rich, rather, changing ones lifestyle. I do not know of the writers origin, but he seems to have lived a rags to riches life. Great read.

Each time a re-read a chapter of this book, it is further enriching. I had no background in business finance and only an introductory accounting background prior to reading this book. It is approachable and quite deftly introduces one to the field of finance. Broad coverage of major topics such as financial forecasting, management of growth, debt vs. equity, financial instruments, valuations, discounted cash flow, and drawing from financial statements. Higgins places things in proper context and builds upon knowledge at good, steady pace.

"Analysis for Financial Management" is an excellent text that covers the major topics of financial management: how to evaluate and interpret financial statements, the tools a manager should use to forecast future earnings and manage growth, how to properly valuate businesses and investment opportunities, and so forth. This book is ideal if you are familiar with basic accounting and finance concepts but want a deeper understanding of finance in a corporate setting. Each chapter contains a recommended reading list for those who want a more thorough explanation and analysis of the topics covered. There is a website the author has put together that provides more examples and tools. Unlike other textbooks, this book actually has all the answers for exercises at the end of the chapters! Lastly, Higgins provides a number of examples and explains all the major concepts with a touch of humor. This is definitely one of the best books I've seen out there.

This book was required in my William & Mary MBA program. It covers everything from discounted cash flows to ratio analysis to business valuation. My brother liked it so much he "stole" if for months. I took it back and now he wants it for his Christmas gift. So, here I am buying it for him. The net present value of this book is -- real high:) I highly recommend it for business owners or anyone involved in finance and accounting.

Having read a few dark fantasy novels in my day, I would definately classify this work as belonging in that sub-genre.

If you are into good hard-hitting violence and are up for a rip-roaring ride through Robert E. Howard's Hyborian world, then this book is for you. Having been the only full length novel written featuring the legendary barbarian, Conan, Howard delivers a very solid piece of work with Hour of the Dragon.

Powerful mages resurrect a being of astonishing power and set out to conquer the world. Of course, one of their first acts is to dispose King Conan who is a direct threat to this conquest. With some supernatural help, they succeed in this venture. The rest of this novel features a mad Conan that hacks his way back to the throne of Aquilonia. Recommended.

Robert Howard wrote most of his stories for the pulp magazines so popular in Depression era America. As a result, most of his writings were short stories. Howard had many heroes (Bran Mak Morn, Black Vulmea, Red Sonja, Kull, Solomon Kane), but Conan was his best developed character, and the Conan stories were the best of his writings.

Howard got an opportunity to publish a novel in England, and he fell back on his old standby, Conan, to serve as the protagonist. Howard expected that his English audience would never have heard of Conan, so he borrowed a number of motifs from several of his short stories. Those who take the time to read all of Howard's Conan stories will recognize many of the elements in "Hour of the Dragon."

Alas, the book deal fell through, and Howard had to publish "Hour of the Dragon" in a pulp magazine.

Whatever Howard's difficulties in publishing the book, he had no difficulty in writing a wonderful tale of heroic fantasy. Conan is the ultimate sword-and-sorcery hero, and this is Conan's ultimate adventure.

If you really like Conan, you might want to compare "Hour of the Dragon" with "Conan the Conqueror," a paperback republication which was "edited" by L.Sprague DeCamp and Lin Carter. "Conan the Conqueror" is about 90% Howard, but DeCamp and Carter polished Howard's grammar and softened some passages they deemed politically incorrect. Howard's original version is more rough-hewn, but then Conan was a rough-hewn hero.

I read this book as a teenager in the late 1950s under the title Conan the Conqueror. This is the same book. Certainly, if one thing set my life on the course it did, it was this book and the man who wrote it - Robert E. Howard. For me to recommend this book is both a pleasure and an honor. Howard's writing and this book fired my imagination and my life. I went on to get a BA in English (concentration in professional writing) and had a 15+ year career as a journalist and editor. Over the years, my copy of Conan the Conqueror has gone the way of all things. I'm ordering a copy of Hour of the Dragon today and will cherish it forever. Hopefully, I can pass on this book and my love for it to my grandchildren and keep the cycle going.

This book is a collection of theoretical summaries, reports, analyses, and strategies all quite useful to anyone interested in generating some thinking and action around change. The team of five writers (Peter Senge, Richard Ross, Bryan Smith, Charlotte Roberts, and Art Kleiner) provide some original work, but also serve as editors to a vast quantity of material drawn from practitioners, theorists, and writers in the field of organizational improvement. According to Senge, "great teams are learning organizations - groups of people who, over time, enhance their capacity to create what they truly desire to create." (p.18) This book is really about creating and building great teams. The learning organization develops its ability to reflect on, discuss, question, and change its current and past practices. To do this, people and groups in the organization need to meaningfully pursue the study and practice of the five disciplines - personal mastery, mental models, shared vision, team learning, and systems thinking.

The learning organization - Senge's vision for the productive, competitive, and efficient institutions of the future - is in a continuous state of change. Four fundamental questions continuously serve to check and guide a group's learning and improvement (see page 49): (1) Do you continuously test your experiences? ("Are you willing to examine and challenge your sacred cows - not just during crises, but in good times?") (2) Are you producing knowledge? ("Knowledge, in this case, means the capacity for effective action.") (3) Is knowledge shared? ("Is it accessible to all of the organization's members?") (4) Is the learning relevant? ("Is this learning aimed at the organization's core purpose?") If these questions represent the organization's compass, the five disciplines are its map.

Each of the five disciplines is explained, and elaborated in its own lengthy section of the book. In the section on "Systems Thinking" (a set of practices and perspectives, which views all aspects of life as inter-related and playing a role in some larger system), the authors build on the idea of feedback loops (reinforcing and balancing) and introduce five systems archetypes. They are: "fixes that backfire", "limits to growth", "shifting the burden", "tragedy of the commons", and "accidental adversaries". In the section on "Personal Mastery", the authors argue that learning starts with each person. For organizations to learn and improve, people within the organization (perhaps starting with its core leadership) must learn to reflect on and become aware of their own core beliefs and visions. In "Mental Models", the authors argue that learning organizations need to explore the assumptions and attitudes, which guide their institutional directions, practices, and strategies. Articles on scenario planning, the ladder of inference, the left-hand column, and balancing inquiry and advocacy offer practical strategies to investigate our personal mental models as well as those of others in the organization. In "Shared Vision", the authors make the case for the stakeholders of an organization to continually adapt their vision ("an image of a desired future"), values ("how we get to travel to where we want to go"), purpose ("what the organization is here to do"), and goals ("milestones we expect to reach before too long"). The section offers many strategies and perspectives on how to move an organization toward continuous reflection. In "Team Learning", the authors rely mostly on the work of William Isaacs and others, and make a case for educating organization members in the processes and skills of dialogue and skillful discussion.

This book is enlightening and informative. It has already found a place on my shelf for essential reference books.

Everyone who reads THE FIFTH DISCIPLINE comes away excited about the benefits of having a learning organization. Yet many get stuck in a rut as they try to implement what they learned in that superb book. THE FIFTH DISCIPLINE FIELD BOOK helps fill in that lack of understanding with dozens of questions, examples and exercises. You'll have a ball with this, even if you only use a little part to focus on where you need help. A great related book for building a learning organization is THE 2,000 PERCENT SOLUTION, which teaches a new thinking process that simplifies and speeds up learning for an organization. It also shows you where you need to get rid of old thinking that is holding you back. You should read and use both.

Bridging the gap between text and context, The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook offers everyone a deep and refreshing look at what work can be and should be. The authors ground their stories, examples, exercises in five conceptual touchstones--personal mastery, mental models, shared vision, team learning, and systems thinking. And these disciplines accurately reveal three core tasks in leadership: looking at self, developing others, and seeing the larger picture in order to chart a meaningful course. Stories enliven the ideas while examples and exercises offer practical models to use in any organization. Generous side margins, different colored ink, and graphic icons are visual treats as well as immediate graphic guides. And the narrative references to related issues make reading the book more intuitive, more interesting.

In fact, these physical details model the whole point of the book--that learning is essential for sustainable growth, for organizational and personal development.

Kip Russell lives in average small town America with slightly eccentric father and loving mother, when he wins a space suit in a competition. He rehabilitates same and is suddenly kidnapped and finds himself in an alien spaceship headed to the moon. He teams up with a supergenius little girl and a friendly alien to defeat the aliens and save the world.

While this is a simple adventure story on its face, it has deeper levels. First of all, there are discussions of science which are interesting and educational--look at where Kip figures to himself that they are really going to Pluto, and how he schemes to fill the cell he is in with water so he can float out the top.

There are also social messages woven in. Kip learns to appreciate his parents a bit more--to him, they are just "his parents", but through hints dropped several times in the book, we come to appreciate his father far more than for just, rather oddly, bundling up a box of small change and shipping it off to the IRS every April 15. Even if we were not explicitly told about Mr. and Mrs. Russell towards the end (and, frankly, I wish we weren't, it is too unsubtle), we would come to appreciate them for the way they steered Kip to maximize his potential. However, they were less successful in making Kip a social individual, and that is what starts to change during the novel.

At the start of the novel, Kip displays really good relations with adults, but limited, and not so good, relations with his peer group. Kip starts out a bit of a loner--he has friends, but none seem really important to him (certainly no one helps him in Oscar's renovation). At the end, he's more assertive and, having identified himself with humanity in the climactic scene, may have found himself quite a bit more. I suspect there's a lesson for Heinlein's juvenile readers there, many of whose spiritual home was in the stacks of the library. Nothing wrong with that, but . . . Heinlein manages this better than he does in Glory Road, where Scar comes home, wins the lottery, kicks sand on the bully, etc., etc.

A good read, but then go back and read it again.

I think I must have been around 9 or 10 when I read "Have Space Suit Will Travel". I found it in the school's library and was immediately taken with the book. I must have read it and re-read it a dozen times by the time I moved on to Junior High. Heinlein took a common theme in boy's literature- the young boy who goes off to sea- and moved it into the twenty-first century in this tale of a boy who finds himself suddenly swept off Earth and involved in a struggle far away in space.

I recently gave a copy to my nine year old nephew who is similarly entranced with the book; not bad for a sci-fi epic written over fifty years ago. Any book that can drag a twenty-first century schoolboy away from the high-tech amusements of today certainly qualifies as a classic.

Have Space Suit Will Travel is one of the best sci-fi I have read. The environmental descriptions are well done and the character interaction is believable even in the midst of a scene on Pluto (if you can believe that!) Mr. Heinlein makes the scenes come alive with descriptive narration and it is easy to suspend reality when reading this story. The story takes the reader on a journey from a young man's back yard to the moon then to Pluto and beyond. Of course, the message in the work is very strong. Definately a good read!

This is one of my two favorite Spenser books (The other is A Savage Place.) Early Autumn was the first Parker book I ever read and also the first suspense/mystery. My parents and brothers all read Spenser but I shunned them, preferring scifi. I was desparate for a read one summer night and my mother pressed this on me, saying "You'll like this if you just give it a chance" I was 15 and I read it that night, reporting back to her bedroom and saying, "Next Book! More! More!"

This book is about Spenser's surrogate fathering of a lost 15 year old boy named Paul who is a pawn in his own life. It is sort of a coming of age novel, but really not because it is told from Spenser's perspective like all the Spenser books.

This is one of my favorite books of all time. I highly recommend it to any Spenser fan or to any one who remembers 15 and that lost in your own life feeling.

This is the seventh novel in Robert B. Parker's Spenser series and by now it is quite clear that whenever you start one of these stories the question is what is the new twist this time around. You can never call one of these novels an unconventional Spenser novel because they all tend to be unique in some key way. in "Early Autumn" our hero is hired by Patti Giacomin to find her son Paul, kidnapped by his father. Spenser finds Paul almost immediately and it quickly becomes clear that neither parent really cares about the boy, who is just a pawn in the wake of an ugly divorce. Paul needs someone to teach him, well, just about everything (except how to shrug; the kid does that really well in response to every question asked by Spenser). "Early Autumn," a metaphor for a 15-year old kid who has to grow up really fast, finds Spenser talking more than any of the previous books, although at the end his detective skills will again come into play. A large chunk of the book is Spenser and Paul talking about a whole bunch of different topics. In doing so, Spenser explains his view of the world, a task usually left to Susan Silverman. There is also an unforgettable twist as Hawk lends a hand at a key moment. As always, Parker's novels are quick reads, perfect for commuting or nice hot baths.

This is my first Spenser novel and my first Robert B. Parker novel. Parker's writing style is sparse, quick and fun. It's an easy read and so far, thoroughly enjoyable. Last night A&E aired Thin Air, a made for TV Spencer movie. I was going from watching spencer to reading spencer. Robert B. Parker now ranks up there with my other favorite authors, Trevanian, Conor Creggan and Donald E. Westlake. I'm glad that I discovered Parker so late as there is so many old books I can back and read!

Journey with a guy with much testosterone, but a HUGE heart. I was not looking forward to reading this book for my 18th Century British novel class, but upon starting to read I found it to be a pleasurable story. This piqaresque novel has a humor that I have seldom encountered in other narratives. What is ironic is that Fielding wrote this piece during one of the most traumatic periods of his life. His wife just passed away, his daughter was dying, and he was inflicted with the gout. One would never think it from the clever way the book is written. The point of view gives us an in so that we feel as if we ourselves have roles in the storyline. Rooting all the way for Tom despite his flaws, we find out more about human nature along the way. A good read, light a candle and sit down with some wine like they would've and enjoy this classic comical delight.

It was so hard finally putting this book down.

The friends you make!

Tom, Sophia, Allworthy, even Western himself.

But most of all, Henry Fielding.

The humor, the humanity!

What an author and what a man. And to think he
penned his comic masterpiece in his darkest days.

With all that, Tom Jones can be tough going. The
language requires you read fairly slowly. And the
novel is huge. And the plot is intricate.

You may benefit from book notes; I did, especially
during the second half.

If you love Tom Jones, check out Thackeray's
Vanity Fair. And Guerney's translation of Gogol's
Dead Souls.

While you're at it, grab The Brothers Karamazov
and go crazy.

I first picked up Tom Jones because to put it bluntly I am a bibliophile and it was a cheap book. However, I was suprised at how engaging and hilarious the story was despite the claims on the back cover, which are often far off. To tell the truth I did not expect to make it through this extremely lengthy tome, I only wanted to satisfy my curiousity.

Although I am a fan of Jane Austen I was shocked by the freshness and wit that Fielding's writing still retains. Every book in the novel begins with an essay by the author. Do not skip these, they are one of the best features of the book. My favorite is the essay before the ninth book which explains the purpose of these introductory chapters. What a riot!

The story of big hearted and big appetited Tom Jones and his adventures and misadventures is one long satirical gem. Fielding's interpretation of morals, piousness, love, and high society is still as hilarious and relevant as it was in the 18th century. For anyone who appreciates wit and history, this is a must read.