This is a companion for any serious tolkien reader. After I got it, I read "The Hobbit" for the second time and the Guide threw new light on many of the characters, places and events that I found obcure at first. Page references to several common paperback editions of Tolkien's best books are included. It is intended to be a lightweight, handy, quick reference; so if you expect drawings and pictures you'll have to get another book.

This Guide contains the two things most necessary for any serious study of Tolkien's works: clarity and correctness. Foster clearly did a lot of homework when creating this Guide, because it covers all the Ages of Middle-earth and so can be used both by those who have only read 'The Hobbit' as readily as those who, like myself, own and have read almost everything Tolkien has ever written.

When I need to know some fact about Middle-earth and don't feel like hauling out the appropriate book, I turn to Foster's Guide -- you should, too.

I feel a bit of nostalgia whenever I open this book because it takes me back more than twenty years to when I was first beginning to study Tolkien's world. Robert Foster's glossary is now sadly outdated because so many informative books have been published by Christopher Tolkien, but none of the tertiary sources written by other Tolkien researchers even come close to Foster's dedicated achievement.

Unlike some early Tolkien indexers, Foster usually refrains from mixing his opinions with the facts he is reporting. His occasional guesses and interpretations may be wrong but given the information available when the book was written they are solid and well-considered. Many more recent books have contained unforgivably egregious errors because those later authors had access to material Foster didn't.

The sources that Foster covers include some of Tolkien's private correspondence, and the research has been vindicated by Humphrey Carpenter's Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien. Foster's other sources include The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion, The Adventures of Tom Bombadil, Pauline Baynes' 1969 map of Middle-earth (on which she was advised by Tolkien himself), and the first edition of The Road Goes Ever On.

The most impressive section, however, is Foster's attempt to devise a chronology of the First Age. Such a chronology could be achieved with any hope of accuracy only after Christopher Tolkien published The War of the Jewels in 1994, 16 years after Foster published the Complete Guide. Foster's guesswork was off by no more than a few years. I still glance through his chronology for a quick reference when I just need to be reminded of critical dates.

My only regret is that this book was never updated, although I heard a rumor that HarperCollins was looking for someone to revise it. It would be good to see a much fuller guide published, but only if Foster's impeccable standard was adhered to.

Christian Mythmakers is a good overview of some of the thoughts and ideas of various Christian fantasy writers. While the chapter on John Bunyan is basically little more than a summary of Pilgrim's Progress, the rest of the book is interesting and thought provoking. The chapter on Charles Williams is a "must read" for anyone interested in or confused by Williams' work.

This book is a fascinating look at ten Christian mythmakers, that is authors who have used the power of myth to convey Christian truths in a new way. The narrative begins with John Bunyan and his seminal Pilgrim's Progress, continues through George Macdonald, G.K. Chesterton, Charles Williams, J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and finishes up with Madeleine L'Engle, Walter Wangerin, Robert Siegel, and Hannah Hurnard.

Professor Hein begins with a short biography of the author, and then proceeds to explain the author's work, examining its theology and significance. I found this book to be quite fascinating, with the author giving me a look at these masterpieces of Christian literature in a way that I had never thought of before. If you are a fan of any of the authors above, then I highly recommend that you get this book!

I had the privilege of taking courses under Dr Hein in the early 90's at Wheaton. He is a very knowledgeable teacher and has great affection for the people he is writing about in this book. If you have any interest in these authors, this book is a must read. I wasn't aware that he had written this book when I came across it looking for books on George MacDonald and C.S. Lewis. As an Economics major, I somehow ended up taking four Lit. classes from Dr Hein because he is such a good instructor and passionate about his subject matter.

introduction to cost control and what is a cost control

This is just what I needed to get started on my breakdown sheet for costs of job site work. Thank you.

I sold Real Estate in the Detroit Metro area back in 1978, it was a tough market back then, left Real Estate for an Engineering position after two years. I have worked for this company that follows every business fad that comes along. Seven years ago we re-engineered and we Engineers had to be jacks and/or jills of all professions (Marketing, Accounting, Engineering, Administration etc....). At first many of us were scared and afraid to sell or market anything. It had been 20 years since I sold Real Estate but I looked at my old selling manuals and nothing seemed to help. I read about Ralph Roberts in a local paper here in Macomb County and went right to his office and purchased his book. This book has helped me sell over a Million dollars worth of Product and I am the No. # 1 Salesperson for our Company. This book is not only about about selling Real Estate but about preparing and being mentally ready to make sales, I've fallen in love with selling again. Thank You Ralph - Someday I would like to meet you and buy your lunch.

I read this book in one day. It is an easy read and has a great deal of information regarding sales. I haven't read "Walk like a Giant, Sell like a Madman" yet but now I can't wait to order it. Ralph Roberts is amazing. I am in my second year of real estate and have come away with many great ideas to put in practice with my business. Thank you Ralph for sharing your knowledge and experience!!

GREAT BOOK!! FULL OF IDEAS THAT WORK STRAIGHT FROM A TOP PRODUCER WHO PERFORMS DAILY. PLEASE READ HIS LAST BOOK "WALK LIKE A GIANT, SELL LIKE A MADMAN" IN BOTH BOOKS RALPH GIVES YOU GREAT THOUGHTS AND IDEAS THAT WORK, MUST READS FOR ANYONE IN SALES..

As all other books start off, you'll start with a project and more elements are slowly added in as you go thru each chapter. Of course there's the usual side notes, explaining certain tips, concepts and more advanced features. It starts off with the basic controls, but doesn't get carried off by explaining every single one, which can be good or bad in a way.

The book goes with idea that if you know some of the controls, you can figure out the rest. After dealing with various multimedia features of Director, it finally reaches the Lingo language, but rather than explain the basic semantics, its starts quickly with functions and procedures which hopefully can be figured out later.

If being proficient in Director is what you aim to be, then this book is definitely a good buy. But if you're more into average projects with decent animations, and yet can't be bothered reading too much or knowing too much too early, then you'll be better off with the Visual Quickstart book. I found that after covering more than half the book and finally reaching the Lingo chapters, I stopped coz I felt I didn't need to know all that unless I was doing hardcore projects. Besides, its also cheaper than other books which are just as THICK.

I turned to this book after making the mistake of buying Lingo Sorcery to learn object-oriented programming in Director. It was a great relief to find (at last) a coherent introduction to OOP in Lingo, with lots of examples in the text and code on the CD. The rest of the book is terrific, too.

When I began reading this book, I had been a user of Director for about three years. While my experience producing multimedia CD-ROMs using Director had been good, it always took forever to work out the bugs in my Lingo code. I knew there was a better way to write the Lingo scripts using object-oriented programming techniques, but I didn't understand the concepts or how to do it very well. I was also reluctant to change from my tried-and-true style of programming that had worked for me since beginning with Director 3.

I'd read other books about Director and tried a few things to push my personal envelope, without a lot of success. But as I began to read in this book about how to use OOP structures in behaviors, it was like a light turned on. This book made it very understandable. I kept (figuratively) slapping my forehead and saying "of course!" as I tried the examples in the chapters. I can't remember the last time I've become so excited about learning something new as I have with this book. It has really empowered me to become a better multimedia developer. With the new understanding this book gave me, I'm more confident that I can build any interface feature I want into my Director projects. Before, when a client would ask for some feature, I would be hesitant to agree or promise it. Now I don't have to "kludge" things together...and I can implement it fast and with high reliability so that works consistently in cross-platform projects. My turn-around time on projects is also a lot faster now.

After four years of college, I could no longer run from chemistry. After numerous drops from the class, I finally found a chemistry book which is easy to understand. This book has every example problem you could think of. Every chapter gives you a good introduction, then cuts strait to the points every novice chemistry student should know to pass a general college level class. I do suggest a run through of chemistry in high school before stepping up to this book. I would have liked to have seen a book accompany the text which shows the drawn out ways to answer the review questions at the end of every chapter. Other than that this book is very down to earth and easy to follow.

This book is very well written, with helpful diagrams and detailed examples. It is easy to understand and text and with this book it is truly not hard to understand chemistry and do well. I easily got an A in Chemistry I and I believe that everyone who failed the class simply didn't look over the book or their notes after class. It certainly wasn't the fault of the professor or the text- both explained chemistry very well.

This is a very good text book. It has many colorful pictures to keep my interest when I was reading it along my course. Generally, it is well written and easy to understand.

The book is fine. ()It only contains standards from 1932.This book is not very usefull to anyone building to current standards.

It has 154 more pages than the 9th edition, so it has new information, but as you page through it you will find it seems almost identical. They need to keep most of the old data, so I wouldn't take off points for that. You can see the publisher's review for all of the new features: I noticed that the Historic Preservation chapter has been shortened a bit.

Potentially, the biggest addition is the CD-ROM, which has CAD files ready to use, and includes pretty much everything from the book. You might think that you are getting all that for the cost of the book, but...no. The "demo" CD comes in a sleeve inside the back cover, and is noted: "Full functionality, Limited data." You can access a drawing of a bar joist, for example. It exports a DWG or DXF file with layers based on line weights. The interface is pretty clear; you don't have to read any instructions to start using it. The CD actually has all of the data, but you have to pay another $425 online to "unlock" it. That could be a bargain, but I suspect that most firms will feel that their own detail library is more applicable to the work they do. Still, $425 represents less than a day's worth of billable hours.

Every architect knows the value of this book, and most every architecture firm (in the U.S. anyway) will want at least one copy just to stay current, and because the old one is getting worn out. You might as well get it now, and decide on the CD-ROM later. I'd love to have a special edition set with each page ever published in all of the AGS books, or even just the last 3 or 4. I'd give that 6 stars.

A good reference book but of limited use, Its tables of materials is quit limited, especially sections dealing with steel,wood and concrete structural properties. The book tries to touch on all things at the expense of specificity in regards to basic materials and building techniques, The book would be fine for Architectural students but would be of limited use as a reference book for design. Severly over priced.

There are 60 illustrations, excellent paintings, with the accompanying text that inspired it. The colours are very well down, and each painting is brilliantly done in terms of publication. There are nine artists represented. These are:

Inger Edelfeldt: 7 paintings

Tony Galuidi: 2 paintings

Roger Garland: 10 paintings

Robert Goldsmith: 2 paintings

Michael Hague: 7 paintings

John Howe:10 paintings

Alan Lee: 10 paintings

Ted Nasmith: 10 paintings

Caro Emery Phenix: 2 paintings

My personal favorite is John Howe. He brings out a lot of dark imagery. I don't know why, but Hague's stuff just does not appeal to me. I have seen him do Lewis's Pilgrim's Regress, and some other stuff, and I just don't like his style (also saw his illustrations for WIZARD OF OX). His are of THE HOBBIT. Galuidi has almost a computer generated quality, and his work is especially intriguing, although there are only 2 of his paintings in this collection. Lee is good. All in all, this is a fair book, collecting the paintings of artisits brining about their own vision of Tolkien's classic saga. Over all, a four star book (bumped up one star because of Howe's supreme quality).

This is a collection of 50+ paintings based on various works by Tolkien, which fans of Tolkien will no doubt enjoy. It may be of speial interest to those who watched the movies (and who hasn't, who read Tolkien...) as you can clearly see how some of these paintings are replicated in Jackson's movies; it takes but a moment to catch it in the film, but if you see the pictures enough you'll recognize it.

The quality of the paintings are uneven, and each one has its favorite. Like many people, I find Hague lacking, but also Edelfeldt, who isn't bad but whose style is not unique enough in my opinion.

My favorites, on the other hand, are Howe, Garland, Nasmith, Lee and Galuidi. Garland, my favorite, has a unique and glowing, almost 'mystical' style that does the book justice. Howe's pictures are also intriguing and beautiful, and feel true to the book (and thankfully, he seems to dominate the book in terms of the number of contributions). Nasmith has some splendid landscape pictures, though his vision of the characters leave something to be desired (especially of a fat, distorted Boromir!) Galuidi's sci-fi, computerized style may not appeal to some, but I find them interesting. Finally, Lee's soft watercolors are very appealing, and his vision of the characters is near-perfect (especially Galadriel and Gandalf).

"Tolkien's World" is a very handsome book: large, hardcover, sleeve-cover, fine print and paper. It consists on a serie of paintings divided by books (The Hobbit, LOTR, Silmarillion, etc.) printed in the largest scale possible and with great definition. Beside the picture there is the passage of the book which inspired the painting. In the end there are one-page texts about or written by each of the artists, explaining their influences and relation with Tolkien works. My favorite artist is, without a doubt, Ted Nasmith, that draws very realistic pictures. Second place is John Howe, with his dark and intriguin style. All in all, a pretty nice book. I was very satisfied with it and it helped me to figure the places and events of LOTR. Be aware that there's a book that is kind of a sequel to this one: "Realms of Tolkien: Images of Middle-Earth", which I'm planning to get. It is written on its purchasing info that the author is Ted Nasmith, so is the cover authory. Lucky me.

I have read and applied a lot of sales and marketing books in the past few years. The book starts off with Ralph proclaiming his greatness and unfortunately that is how it continues right through. Some good images and on the whole worth the purchase as the basis for explaining the basics of a sales career or a new business plan, but if you are just after a shot in the arm or even something life changing, you are better off reading the following authors if you haven't already; Harvey McKay, Anthony Robbins, Jack Welch Speaks (by Janet Lowe), Jonah C. Nader and Michael Gerber. Ralph Roberts is a real patriotic American character and he talks to much about himself, in his gung ho American style, but he doesn't mention any more than a rough concept of his business, or lecture enough about what he actually does to succeed at his level. I would call the book a great sales promotion tool for Ralph personally, but it is not big on intelligence nor is it a REAL guidebook, such as Jonah Nader's 'How to Lose Friends and Infuriate People', or Michael Gerber's 'E-Myth'. Still, he seems to be a bit of a dude to get this far and with such a friendly disposition you can't help liking him!

I think one of the keys to liking or disliking a book on sales is whether or not it fits your personality. I don't think you can stray too far from your core.
That said, Ralph R. Roberts and I appear to be kindred spirits and I laughed, loved and learned while reading his book. If you want to be bold, innovative and fun, and have that help you in your sales career, this book is great. If you're looking for something regimented (especially for real estate) read Danielle Kennedy, who also has some great books that I've learned from. But she doesn't fit my style.
Bottom line, after reading Ralph's book and implementing some of the lessons my RE career has started quickly and I've become known as the "go to" man in my farm.
Thanks Ralph!

I truly enjoyed this book! As a Vice President for a small firm in the Detroit area, this book has enlighted me to tell everyone one I know about this book. In fact, I have refered all of my college professors about it and suggested that they use it in their class rooms. Its REAL and it WORKS!!

The concepts are very well explained and this would help anyone build their knowledge and expertise in this area. Most of this information is not avaliable in SAP help. Tips and advice from the author compensated for my lack of years of experience in this area. The IDocs section is very impressive as the author draws a comparison between the traditional methos of exchanging data using files vs IDocs. No fluff, this book has solid information. All in all, a great book for anyone in the ALE, EDI area.

I've read both the Arvind Nagpal and Rajeev Kasturi books, and I conclude that the Nagpal book is much better for me, a person who has been doing SAP EDI for several years.

I do not know either of these authors. I do not have anything to do with the publishers. I bet this is more than many of the reviewers here can say!

I know that sheer bulk is not what we are buying here, but let's do some numbers to examine one aspect of the comparison. The Kasturi book starts with 388 pages. Well over 100 pages in the back are tables out of SAP that we can print any time we want (or save a tree and just pull up a screen). Since I've worked with SAP EDI for a few years, I didn't expect a lot of things to be new to me in the first 3 or 4 chapters, but man, there was nothing even moderatly interesting to me in the early part of the book. That left about 150 pages in the middle that, I'll admit, I only skimmed. But the per-page cost of those few possibly valuable pages is quite high! There was a strong ALE / example flavor to the book. As if someone wrote about a few of their favorite implementations.

Now, the Nagpal book starts with quite a few more pages (786). There is NOT a huge section of this book dedicated to stuff I could print out of or look up in SAP. Yes, some of this stuff is 'light' too. And again, I'll admit to skimming a lot of it that I didn't have a pressing need to know right now. And yes, there are quite a few print-screens in the book (but I LIKE print-screens). The bottom line is that I, a person who's been using SAP-EDI quite a while, found the Nagpal title MORE INTERESTING, INFORMATIVE, and found it had MORE INFORMATION than the Kasturi book.

--Dale--

Thank you for an excellent book! I think it would be safe to say that this book has saved my company more than $30K in consulting costs already. I expect the savings to increase because his recommendations will allow us to implement a system with the proper controls in place to avoid costly errors. I have found Mr. Nagpal's book an invaluable reference to assist me in connecting our SAP 4.0B system to our major Canadian retailer customers.

I think SAP or the EAI vendors should give this book out with every licence! It's like a patient (and affordable!) SAP EDI consultant walking you through every step of the way.

I own both books and this one is by far the most useful. We did a customer master file load using ALE techniques and some program names were covered in the other book but Mr. Nagpal's book is the one I refer to daily.

If you have to do EDI with SAP then don't hesitate to buy this book.