The book should have been called sleep inducing. Blah, basically what we have here is a 350 page boring article about who this guy met in his life - the bigger the name the more pages. I came away after reading half of the book wondering how this thing ever got the green light. You will not learn much here. Save your time and money.

This biography of David K.E. Bruce provides an interesting look into all the world of the Political heavy weights of the middle 50 years of the 20th century. Bruce managed to cross paths with an amazing number of famous people, from his days as a World War One Messenger to being Head of the US OSS Office in London during WW2, to his being US Ambasador to France, West Germany, the UK, and then US Representative to the People's Republic of China. I found this a great book.

Poor illustration, lengthy text,and not very well updated

The author can not explain the molecular aspects of biological processes well. The figures were fine but there are so many books that are far better than this. The author seriously needs to take some writing classes. I had to use another book in conjunction with this one, inorder to make sure I got the concepts correct. Compared to the other book, Eckert Animal Physiology is nothing!

I have been teaching University-level physiology for over 10 years. I have used at least a dozen books, from the "essentials" to the "encyclopedic". For a one-semester course on physiology that emphasizes recurring mechanisms from a cellular and organ-level perspective, with a great introduction to ecological physiology thrown in, Eckert cannot be beat. In my experience, the vast majority of students respond better to Eckert's illustrations than to the endless flow charts that appear in most of the other books. It nicely fills the niche between "just the basics" essentials texts (which are simply not rigorous enough for biology majors) and the "every little detail" encyclopedic texts that most students find bewildering. If I had to learn animal physiology from just one textbook, this would be it; and I'd save the cell & molecular details from one of THOSE specialty texts instead. The ONLY criticism I have about Eckert is its nearly complete lack of consideration of the immune system.

It is amazing that a supposed authority on accents, Dr. Stern, would be associated with this book (and especially the cassette that goes with it.). He is - allegedly - a dialect coach to the Stars. It may explain some of the atempts at foreign accents that have recently come out of Hollywood. The accents on the cassette are nothing short of embarrassing - A cringe a minute. I asked a fellow actor to listen to the French accent and guess what it was: He guessed Spanish! If you want a first rate book on accents, buy Robert Blumenfeld's "Accents - A Manual for Actors". Now where do I go to get my money back?...

I recently bought the CD version of this, and I am compelled to warn people who are thinking of buying this. If you are at a;; serious about learning dialects, do NOT buy this CD. ... A high school drama student would have done a superior job. You would be better off learning dialects from the Simpsons or Saturday Night Live. This is not an exaggeration, this is a flat out warning. Don't waste your money. ... Pygmalion is old school cockney. Not modern. You want authentic Cockney? Try "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels" and "Love, Honor and Obey." They're the best. "Scum" and "The Krays" are also pretty good. And that's on the authority of a real cockney girl (my girlfriend).

I own nearly all of Dr. Stern's Accent/Dialog books and tapes, including "Dialolect Monologues" I and II and over 20 of his individual accent/dialect tapes (example: Acting With an Accent/Norwegian & Swedish). While I do feel that it is worthwhile to own Dr. Stern's tapes in order to complete one's libary of accent/dialogue books and tapes, I do not feel that Dr. Stern's tapes are the best of the bunch. If I could only choose one author's accent/dialogue tapes I would not choose Dr. Stern's. Dr. Stern's system has several flaws. The first flaw is that Dr. Stern is a "one man band", meaning the only voice you will ever hear is Dr. Stern's. By contrast, two of the three other accent/dialect systems I own include lots of recordings of actual natives speaking the dialects. The second flaw is that Dr. Stern chooses dialects that bias towards educated middle class. For example, his tape on New York City accent does not teach the normal Brooklyn/Bronx dialect of the "Dese and doze, toity toid street" variety, but instead uses as his standard a sort of mildly Jewish middle class Manhattan accent as the single dialect he teaches on the tape. Similarly, his tape on the Polish dialect sounds so sanitized and educated that its really hard to tell what accent it is other than being mildly European and educated. Similarly, his Italian tape is of a European, educated person instead of the lower class Italian that one would expect to hear included on a tape devoted to Italian. A third and severe flaw in Dr. Stern's single-dialect tapes is that he repeats every exercize first in standard American and pauses for the student to repeat it, and then says the word or sentence in the dialect and pauses for the student to repeat it in the dialect. This effectively wastes about a quarter of the tape, as it doesn't teach anything to hear and repeat the words/sentences in standard american. A forth flaw is that Dr. Stern is obsessed with his pet theory that each dialect must resonate from a unique portion of the mouth cavity. Dr. Stern wastes from ten to twenty minutes of each of his hour long single-dialect tapes going on and on about the point of resonance of the dlalect. This is mind-numbingly boring to hear more than once, so one ends up fast forwading through it when listening on subsequent ocasions. The two accent/dialect systems that I recommend are not currently offered by Amazon so I will not give their names. Hopefully at some point Amazon will expand their selection of accent/dialect tapes. It would also be extremely useful if Amazon had a cross reference system in place so that one could show all video tapes or recordings that, say, give examples of a Cockney accent, an Irish accent, etc. For example, the 1938 video of Shaw's Pygmalian is an excellent example of Cockney, but one must figure this out on one's own as Amazon does not list videos by the accent/dialects they use.

This is a review on "Volume I". It is a warning for those contemplating buying Volume II".

It is amazing that a supposed authority on accents, Dr. Stern, would be associated with this book (and especially the cassette that goes with it.). He is - allegedly - a dialect coach to the Stars. It may explain some of the pathetic atempts at foreign accents that have recently come out of Hollywood. The accents on the cassette are nothing short of embarrassing - A cringe a minute. I asked a fellow actor to listen to the French accent and guess what it was: He guessed Spanish! If you want a first rate book on accents, buy Robert Blumenfeld's "Accents - A Manual for Actors". Now where do I go to get my money back?...

I bought volume 1 of this series and I just wanted to warn people who are considering buying this. If you are serious about learning dialects, do NOT buy this. If you think it would be fun to learn some different dialects and want to have a remote chance of fooling anyone, do NOT buy this. A high school drama student would have done a superior job. You would be better off learning dialects from the Simpsons or Saturday Night Live. This is not an exaggeration, this is a flat out warning. Don't waste your money.

While the actor who read each instructive monologue was talented, he has some weak points, (White South African was too close to Australian). The only "authentic" voice was russian. Also, each dialect could have been applied to the same text, rather than applying to culturally specific topics. Then, differences in pronunciation, emphasis, would be more evident.

I have to agree with the other review. I bought this at a bookstore, hoping to brush up on some accents. I can do a better southern accent than this guy, and I've never even lived in the south! His NY accent is hilariously bad. I'd rather rent "Shrek" than listen to his Irish monologue. The whole thing is dopey and phoney-sounding.

If you are serious about learning dialects, do NOT buy this CD. If you think it would be fun to learn some different dialects to try and want to have a remote chance of fooling anyone, do NOT buy this CD. A high school drama student would have done a superior job. You would be better off learning dialects from the Simpsons or Saturday Night Live. This is not an exaggeration, this is a flat out warning. Don't waste your money.

....not much else I can say. What a ridiculous book.

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