this book explores great works and the career of Richard rogers , the quality of photographs ,sketches and text really suitable for this great architect ... Recommend it highly .

I highly recommend this book for any light lyric soprano or any singer for that matter. There is a whole series dedicated to each SPECIFIC voice type, but it might take some digging to find your voice type. The book has great interpretations, diction, story lines, technique, and a whole section dedicated to the explaination of the specific voice type. A very informative, interesting, and insightful book for any singer or person interested in learning more about singing.

This book is among the best myhology books I have ever read. It is expanded to the best and most popular of Greek Myths. For example, The Labors of Hercules, The Quest for the Golden Fleece and more.

Finally a book that ask's workers what they want, rather than some pontification of a organizational theory or anecdotal information by a Ivory Tower Guru. The authors used a multi-part survey that ask workers about what they wanted - participation in the organizations is what the workers seeked. Workers voiced their opinion in that they believe that greater participation in their jobs and organizations would both benefit the organization and the employee. The authors, Richard Freeman, Ascherman Professor of Economics at Harvard and Joel Rogers MacArthur Professor of Law, Political Science, and Sociology at the Univesity of Wisconsin believe representation and participation of the workers at their jobs would benefit both the employee and employer, who would gain a more engaged and committed workforce. A interesting section in the book covers, "Why Care about What Workers Want? The authors answer these questions with some thoughtful discussion. Compelling and honest! I thoroughly recommend it to Executives, Administrators, Managers and Human Resources professionals! I

An interesting, and beautiful, look at Wright's most personal work. Some of the best stuff I've seen on Taliesin West. Added bonus: the photography in this book is mouth-watering. Straus is no novice at photographing FLW's works, and in this book, it shows.

This is a book I regularly use in my coaching practice. It's a fun, easy read that has helped my clients (and myself) move past self-limiting thoughts and behaviors. Carson's light-hearted approach and the great illustrations keep the process fun and simple for the everyday reader. Enjoying yourself is key to having a prosperous, abundant life - emotionally, spiritually, and financially. Everybody should have this in their personal library, and it is absolutely a must-read for coaches. Enjoy!

I love this book! I especially like the way Carson makes mindfulness a practical experience rather than a lofty spiritual concept. I couldn't help but notice however that some people seem to have the impression that Carson borrowed the term "gremlin" from the coaching profession. Carson borrowed nothing from the coaching world. They borrowed the term "gremlin" from him. Taming Your Gremlin has been an international success, making a positive difference in the lives of thousands of people since its publication over 20 years ago (1983). It explicates a uniquely streamlined, practical, and powerful approach to inner contentment and successful living and pre-dated the emergence of the coaching movement by many years. Taming Your Gremlin has, however, greatly impacted the coaching world and is used extensively in some training programs. As a certified coach myself, I heartily recommend this work to all of my clients and to anyone interested in experiencing the difference between a good life and a GREAT life!

Whoa! What an amazing book! I know I 'm going to be reading it over and over because each time I flip it open I find something that hits me in a way it didn't the first time I read through. For those of us who have been waiting for something more from Rick Carson, this feeds the salivary juices quite well!
This newly Revised Version of Taming Your Gremlin® has a super clear road map to capturing self-limiting beliefs and concepts that get in our way as we work towards creating fulfilling relationships and obtaining our goals. It's perfect for anyone in the human service profession who is looking for just the right book to recommend to clients. While the original version was wonderful in it's simplicity, this version has so much more content for those of us who want to go deeper by using the workbook style exercises. Yet it still maintains a level of playfulness and humor with the familiar illustrations and bold print that helps keep the content from feeling so heavy. Unlike other self-help books that teach certain ideas about how to improve our lives, this book has an experiential element to it, a beautiful mystical quality about it that goes beyond the words. It reinforces the Zen theory of change and reminds us that in most circumstances, it's more valuable to focus our awareness on how we are rather than why we are. I give it your highest rating!

If you've got a fair background in beginning Calculus and elementary physics, you may find this book very worthwhile. I wouldn't know.

Don't be fooled, however, by reviewers who claim that Feynman explains things in such a way that even without those basic tools, the book isn't incomprehensible. I've HAD basic calculus, albeit a LONG time ago, and I'm a tad rusty. And I have even less grounding in physics. But I'm far from mathematically illiterate, or incapable. And it isn't true that I got nothing out of my reading of this book; the sixth chapter did, in fact, answer the question that I'd hoped to have answered when I bought it. But by and large, the book was close to impenetrable. Now, clearly, this may well be due to my lack of preparation in the prerequisites for understanding it. But it definitely is NOT the first step in the process of understanding physics, as one reviewer actually called it and others implied. Read "Six Easy Pieces" first, and brush up on first-year Calculus. THEN consider tackling this book.

These lectures where designed to give the student the reasoning behind relativity. Unlike some books, this book does not just explain the results or phenomena of relativity. Feynman actually explains the problems with Newton's laws and actually derives and gives the reasoning for Einstein's theories about relativity. These lectures need only some calculus and basic physics knowledge to appreciate. However, as with most bonfide scientific literature, the more "mathematically and scientifically mature" the reader the better. Feynman uses pieces of calculus (very basic stuff), algebra (symmetry, vector notation, cross products, and dot products), geometry (non-Euclidian), and basic physics knowledge (conservation laws, Newton's laws, Maxwell's equations etc). You don't need all of this to listen and understand the lectures, but obviously the more the better. Feynman also does a good job of explaining some the mathematics involved as well. The lectures pretty much follow the book so you can read along while you listen. These are actual lectures that Feynman gave at Caltech to undergraduates so they are very rigorous. In short, the lectures were clear, very understandable, and offer something to everyone. You don't need anything more than a solid background in calculus and introductory physics to get something out of these lectures.

Six Not-So-Easy Pieces is the sequel to the book Six Easy Pieces. The first book is a collection of six of the easier lectures from Feynman's freshman and sophomore physics classes at CalTech. Six Not-So-Easy Pieces are some of the more difficult lectures from those classes. In contrast to the first book, these lessons are much more mathematical. Freshman calculus is definitely a prerequisite to reading this book. Courses in vector calculus and differential equations will help the reader to more completely understand the works, but they are not absolutely necessary. However, without much mathematical knowledge, one can just take Feynman at his word for all the equations, reading mainly the conceptual explanations, but one will invariably miss out on some of the points. For anyone reading the book, Feynman's teaching style is something that can be enjoyed. He explains the concepts in a comprehensive and not-too-difficult manner and seems to have a full understanding of what the student in the lecture hall is thinking. The six topics (chapters) covered in this book are: Vectors, Symmetry in Physical Laws, The Special Theory of Relativity, Relativistic Energy and Motion, Space-Time, and Curved Space. This book is in no way a survey of physics. It is more of a sampling of Feynman's teaching. However, the common thread that runs through the six pieces is that they all relate to understanding relativity. For the layman who has a mathematical background and wants to understand the concept of relativity, this book is an excellent help. I would suggest reading Six Easy Pieces before reading this book, but it is not necessary. If you enjoyed reading the first book, I would highly recommend this one and vice versa.

....This set of audio tapes was a disappointment to me. I had wanted a set of bird songs to accompany my new Peterson Eastern Birds field guide, 4th edition.( Previously, I had owned the 2nd edition and its excellent, page-coordinated, accompanying tapes and had used them for years.) I bought this new set of audio tapes blind, so to speak, because they were shrink-wrapped with no real description visible. No one in any of the retail stores I consulted knew anything about them nor was willing to break into the shrink-wrapping.
....Birding by Ear, Eastern/Central is actually a 3-tape short course in identifying bird calls. It is essentially useless for field identification. To make use of this set of tapes, one would have to sit down and listen and listen and listen to interminable commentary by a sonorous male voice introducing bird calls in clusters that are of minimal use because they are grouped by similarity, which often doesn't translate into geography or habitat. The second side of the third tape is a "review" that is actually a test.... one must listen to a series of unidentified songs and try to remember what they are, after having spent the hours required to listen to the other 5 sides of the tapes.
.... The up side of this set of tapes is that the bird song recordings are excellent. They include both the song and the call. (But they are useless in the field in this format.)

If you live in North America east of the Mississipi and want to identify birds by ear, read on...

This audio set is a very well thought out and produced tutorial for introducing beginning "ear" birders to the world of birding by ear. The audio quality is excellent with several renditions of each song and call. The pace is well suited to the target audience - only after repeated listening will you want to skip ahead through sections. The groupings of similar songs seem well designed, and reflect situations in the field that pose problems. Each song is described verbally, with an onomatopoetic description. I wish the CD were coded so that sub-tracks could be accessed directly without the introductory descriptions, but the design of this set isn't as encyclopedia of song, rather as short course in learning how to identify song.

Buy this and the "More birding by ear", listen to them for 10 - 30 minutes a day (great drive time listening), and master the art of birding by ear!

Great learning tool for the novice and a great reminder for the seasoned veteran.

This book covers in details the exciting discovery of Turkana boy, a nearly complete junvenile H. erectus skeleton. Although a little limited in scope (look for other books for a good overview of the current state of human evolution) it does a great job of detailing the discovery and its significance. Leakey also does a good job of trying to peer into the minds of these primitive hominids, examining their intellect, speech, compassion, etc. in the last several chapters and what makes us who we are. This book however is more of description of the discovery than anything else, as shown by the considerable amount of space dedicated to the descriptions of the area and the sequence of events leading to the discovery and excavation. Overall a good book with some good anthropology in it and also an exciting depiction of the discovery.

Richard Leakey introduced millions to the evolution of humanity in his first "Origins", but over the years it had inevitably become outdated. This book is less dramatic but far more complete scientifically, and is an essential read for anyone who wants to keep up with our past. Moreover, where the first book tended toward philosophical speculation, in this one he builds theory on facts; where before he focused on his own views with little discussion of other researchers, in this one he quotes them with the dilligence of a reporter. Where the first book was often gramatically infuriating, this one has the polished language and clearly stated logic that make learning complex concepts seem effortless.

Best of all, this time he takes us along on the adventure of discovery. Leakey is no closeted academic; he can find food and water as the ancient hunter-gatherers did, with no modern tools, in what looks to the untrained eye like a dry wasteland. He understands the politics of the illegal ivory trade as well as the interpretation of fossils. He was not stopped in either his explorations of human origins or his quest to save African wildlife by years of kidney failure, near-fatal pneumonia, death threats from poachers, or even the loss of his legs in a plane crash. He covers the science in full detail, yet the reader has a sense of immediacy one never gets from the academic literature. We are parties to acrimonious debate and feel the thrill of pouncing on the apparent error of a rival. We spend months in the bush, and are immersed in a lifelong search that yields, after innumerable frustrations, to the occasional astonishing discovery.

There are a few shortcomings; Leakey glosses over some of the points he made eloquently in the first book which turned out, in retrospect, to be radically incorrect. The photographs, critical to understanding the discussion, are grouped together and hard to relate to the appropriate text, and the critical diagrams of the human evolutionary tree are small and difficult to read. But overall, the theory is so cogently explained, and the narrative has such a sense of realism, that we feel we could do it ourselves, flying over the Great Rift, sifting through ancient sand and rock, pushing back the frontiers of time to discover ourselves.

I found this book both enchanting and informative; not academic, but personal. This is probably the next best thing to sitting around a campfire on a dig, and listing to the shop talk about what's going on.

The reconstruction of social necessities from the fossil record is excellently done. The lesson regarding (the lack of) directed-ness in evolutionary trajectory should not be missed. The human evolutionary tree has become the evolutionary bush, with mostly dead branches. One might speculate on the fate of current primate relatives given the fate of Homo Neandertalensis, Homo Heidelbergensis and Homo Erectus, all existing when Homo Sapien emerged. Additionally, the example of persistent coevolution of related anatomic or ontogenetic phenotypic expressions such as lengthening childhood, larger mature female birth canals and expanding brain size represent evolutionary puzzles with more than a touch of mystery.

This is an exceptional book that is intended for children aged 9 to 12, but is fascinating even for adult readers. You get to see and learn about a fully functional castle in it's heyday. A grand medieval castle is divided into it's many different subsections. Each part of the castle is shown and described in great detail. Its inhabitants, from the Royalty and their residential area, to the toiling peasants and craftsmen, to the military with their weaponry and defenses, are included. There is also a "Where's Waldo" type "Find the Spy" hidden in each cross section. While the squeamish may have some objection to the miniscule amount of material depicting the treatment of captured enemies, and some potty humor involving the functioning of the castle lavatory, I suggest it's a good opportunity for discussion as it really only enhances the thoroughness of the material. It is a good educational resource and a fun book to "read".

This is an exceptional book that is intended for children aged 9 to 12, but is fascinating even for adult readers. You get to see and learn about a fully functional castle in it's heyday. A grand medieval castle is divided into it's many different subsections. Each part of the castle is shown and described in great detail. Its inhabitants, from the Royalty and their residential area, to the toiling peasants and craftsmen, to the military with their weaponry and defenses, are included. There is also a "Where's Waldo" type "Find the Spy" hidden in each cross section. While the squeamish may have some objection to the miniscule amount of material depicting the treatment of captured enemies, and some potty humor involving the functioning of the castle lavatory, I suggest it's a good opportunity for discussion as it really only enhances the thoroughness of the material. It is a good educational resource and a fun book to "read".

I was reading Michael Crichton's "Timeline," which involves an attack on a medieval castle, and was looking for something to help me better appreciate the details. One of the most useful books I found was "Castle: Stephen Biesty's Cross-Sections," because in addition to showing how castles were built and how they lived and worked, there is something of a narrative to this book. At the beginning we see an enemy army approaches and people from the town flee to the heavily fortified gatehouse to enter the shelter of the "Castle." At various points in the book we see the enemy attack and the castle being defended.

Of course, "Castle" does more than simply provide cross-sections of the title feature. All sorts of details about medieval life are jammed into this book by writer Richard Platt (who claims to have been a serf earlier in life) and illustrator Stephen Biesty. The feudal system is explained, as are arrow loops, how to test beer, tax demands, and finger pillories. Readers are encouraged to "find the enemy spy" as they read the book, and will discover dozens of minor unexplained details (e.g., a baby being born), that will have you looking carefully at every square inch of these drawings. The key to education, whether we are talking children or adults, is getting them to pay attention and "Castles" certainly gets its readers to do that.