The book is broken up into small (~3 page) chapters for each sound, forty chapters in all. Each chapter gives a description on how to form the sound, approximately twenty words with the sound, comparison words with similar sounds, practice sentences, phrasing and intonation exercises, and a review dialogue section. Each lesson takes twenty to thirty minutes to teach to a small class of ten or less.

The exercises are very well designed and practical for a class setting. My students make significant improvement with each lesson. The only thing I find lacking is a section on which sounds are typically difficult for different language backgrounds.

Susan E. Ryan's "Robert Indiana: Figures of Speech", Yale University Press, is a significant contribution to art history. Although there have been several good monographs on Indiana, Ryan's is the very first that details and synthesizes his biography, art, and contemporary place. It reads like a mystery novel as it explains how Indiana's career stalled around 1970 even though in the sixties he was considered as seminal as Warhol and Lichtenstein. Concise, well written and provocative, Ryan's "Indiana" is a must for all those interested in contemporary art. -Herbert Lust

I bought this book for my daughter. I read it first. It is a good introduction for children to medieval English life, somewhat unrealistic in spots, but nonetheless nicely written. It is just a simple story about a boy, whose faithful dog is stolen, and in his search for the dog, his father Roger the Minstrel loses him. Adam's adventures and misadventures help him learn courage, self-reliance, gratitude,as well as generosity. He learns the value of work, perserverance and friendship. It is a little slow in places, but the story is more about a boy growing up than it is about a boy looking for his dog. The illustrations by Robert Lawson are beautiful and really capture the spirit of the book. In general it's a very good book.

So many of today's children know little of true hardship and deprivation. It's good to let them read about what life was like when one traveled on horseback or on foot rather than by wagon or car, when one used candles rather than electric lights, and when one was warmed by a campfire or fire in a hearth rather than by central heat. The detail provided in "Adam of the Road" about the way that young Adam supported himself on a daily basis makes history come alive for the reader. Adam's existence was hand-to-mouth, gritty, and portrayed quite realistically.

SYNOPSIS: Adam Quartermayne, a minstrel's son, travels all over southern England from June, 1294 to April, 1295, first accompanying his father, Roger, and then in search of his dog Nick--and then in search of his father. In the process Adam grows up and becomes more resourceful and self-reliant. Both Roger and his son are honest and believe in working to earn their keep. Adam learns the hard way that most others of the traveling-minstrel profession are unscrupulous. A minstrel named Jankin gambles with Roger and wins Bayard, a retired workhorse, from Roger. When Jankin abuses the animal and makes it lame, he steals Adam's beloved red spaniel for the dog's companionship and for the tricks the dog can perform.

IMPRESSIONS: "Adam of the Road" can certainly serve to teach many positive messages to young readers. Adam's perseverence in the face of discouragement, his courage and positive attitude in the face of failure and disappointment, and his ability to adapt to change are wonderful values that it's important for children to learn to recognize and incorporate into their own characters.

If you like action, drama and romance (well not much romance) then you will like "Adam of the Road." The story begins at St.Albans abbey in the June of 1294. When Adam Quartermayne, the son of Roger, the minstrel of Lord De Lisle, gets picks him up at the abbey by his father the adventure begins. Adam's father loses their horse, Bayard, to another minstrel Jankin. Jankin rides Bayard so hard that Bayard becomes lame and Jankin does not want Bayard anymore. In the middle of the night, Jankin steals Nick, Adam's cocker spaniel, and heads out before Adam awakes. Then the case begins taking Adam all over England. I won't tell you anymore about the book other than it is a great book and you should read it!!!!

There are over a thousand good hiking trails in North Carolina (Allen de Hart's "North Carolina Hiking Trails" describes 968 of them), yet this book only covers fifty. And much of the material simply quotes from trailside signs or visitor information pamphlets that you'll see anyway when you hike the trails. On the positive side, the book contains reproductions of topo maps for each hike listed, so casual day hikers can save themselves the trouble of buying topos. Unless you need the topo maps, Randy Johnson's "Hiking North Carolina" is a much better bet.

Found this book in B&B in Blowing Rock. It was a great help in planning our hikes. We had limited time, and it helped us find the best entry point, and to know, for example, that hiking to the top of Grandfather Mtn. was beyond our time and experience limits. That saved us $20 and no telling how much grief!

Good maps, good descriptions. Definitely will buy if plans to move to NC from Houston pan out.

Let me start off my review by saying that this is the first and only book in the MYTH series that I've read, as well as the first and only book by Robert Asprin that I've read. The MYTH series was always highly recommended to me, but my local bookseller didn't have any of them, so I waited for the next installment so that I could sample it and see if the rest of the books were worth tracking down.

Well, from reading the reviews on this page, it seems I jumped in on a bad installment, when the series was losing its luster and the author was losing interest. That is not to say that what I read was not at all good. In fact, I thought it was very funny and very well written. However, as a complete novel... well, it just isn't. It seems that the whole purpose of having Skeeve debate whom to love or not to love came up as the result of a situation that had something to do with marrying Queen Hemlock, which I assume was a major plot point begun in the previous installment. Well, the situation was never resolved, so this book accomplishes nothing at all in terms of advancing the series.

The only advancement to speak of comes at the end when something happens to Skeeve's dragon, Gleep, who seems to be able to talk now. There were hints all along that there was something up with the dragon, but the ending still came very suddenly. The good thing is, it left me wanting more. The bad thing is that, so far, there is no more. The new book, if there ever will be one, isn't out yet.

It seems like this series is a lot of fun. A shame that my first impression of it had to be a poorly-crafted installment of it. If you're a follower/fan of the series, you'll probably love the book and should read it (I had fun with it even though I had no idea what was going on). Still, in and of itself, there's not much to it.

I highly recomend any of Asprin's works. If you like this, try Piers Anthony on for size

it's funny, it's madding but it's great. It's the first book I have read by this author and cannot wait to read his other works.

This book describes how the US mortgage and credit card industries approach modeling, from the industry standard practioners point of view. It is best read by those familiar with the industry. It ignores the potential of current thinking outside industry standard practices. However, everyone interested in the subect needs to know the way FICO does it; they are the standard.

I agree with everyone else, but they are comming from a different point of view than the person that would benefit from this book.

This book is very nicely done for the beginner who wants to read his first book on credit risk.

Even for me I found some information in it that was extremely beneficial; it will probbaly save our corporation a great deal of money.

The title says "Design and Application"; the book serves the title very well. Concise, loaded with different angles. Some writers' names are big in other fields. Surprisingly, a good economist's review is also included, Mark Z's. I once reviewed about 90 relevant publications in the credit scoring field for my thesis project. One impression was the literature was fragmented and heavily European oriented. This book clearly interests me more as it relates to American experience more.

The title does not say "Theory and application". So I don't complain about its "lack of substance". I don't believe either it is for beginners. Design is related to science, but design is often more an art than science; I don't expect it to be a theoretic tome. It is more like a "programmer's pocket book". So certain level of prerequistion and experience will max out the benefits for the reader.

I look forward to seeing another update.

I was very surprised when I ordered this book and found out that yes, indeed, it was merely a very tiny portion of what I had expected. I suppose I should have known from the price, but the description (at least at that time) did not make it clear that it wasn't the entire dictionary.

While this may be a very thorough source for the words it covers, it should be noted in the basic information that this is ONLY 128 pages of a 15,000 page work. The description above is very misleading.

itz a dictionary. what more can i say

I'm a big fan of both Osprey and Robert Rush, who are an outstanding publisher and historian respectively. The approach of this books is innovative and interesting. We follow a fictional soldier, Michael, from his enlistment in a New York National Guard regiment in 1938 through his discharge from military service in 1945. Along the way, we learn about his clothing, equipment, tactics and training. The writing is excellent.

Unfortunately, the execution is not up to Osprey's usual high standard. There are too many typographical errors, the maps are mediocre and difficult to correlate with the text, and the color plates are also mediocre.

I bought this book thinking I would get a good overview of each of the countries the authors lived in. Instead the book consists of lengthy conversations between them and their friends, intersperesed with really trivial and banal comments. Given that both authors are academics, I expected some depth--but there was none. A real waste of money.

The Arab World - Forty Years Of Change had a tendency of praising most things that are in some ways connected to arab culture. Everything is "wonderful" or "interesting" and so on. This tendency is enhanced by the fact that the authors seems to have more interest in achieving insight in Arab culture than Western culture, and thus have a pretty narrow and onedimensional view on issues that concerns Western politics and behaviour. Issues that are far more complex than the authors seems to believe. Anyway, The Arab World is also a book written by two people who seems to be genuinely interested in the matters that they are dealing with, and the analytical approach that the end of every chapter contains is a delight to read. In the next update of The Arab World, I would like a more balanced and critical view. It would double the quality of the book.

I would like to know more about this book. Miniatures is too general. Is it about Doll houses or Military /Fantasy lead Figures.?

The book is an introduction to painting miniatures (portraits, landscapes, animals, still life scenes) in oils, watercolours and gouache. I found it very useful in discovering the techniques used and being able to follow examples given by a number of expert British miniaturists.