This is an excellent text for adolescent development. It is an easy read for undergraduate students and it provides summaries of a variety of current research projects. I have used Steinberg's text for two years to teach a course in adolescent development and I have yet to find a better undergraduate text on adolescence.

Steinberg is an incredible writer and a top researcher. This textbook is the best of its type.

This textbook by Steinberg sets the standard for texts in the psychology of adolescence. Steinberg has distinguished himself not only as one of the major researchers in the area of adolescent development, but as a writer who can translate scientific jargon into language that is accessible. This text is well-written, well-organized, and contains most of the important research on adolescence.

How can the author claim to write the "true story" of the Osage murders without citing ANY research documentation whatsoever? Obviously, Hogan did not interview any Real Osages, nor has he visited the Osage Museum or the Whitehair Memorial. This book is yet another attempt by a white person to recreate Osage history from his own perspective and call it factual. And, as far as selling "thousands of copies" of the book, well, that does not establish its veracity. As an academician, I cannot endorse this book. No research, no interviews, no inclusion of Real Osage accounts = no true story. Finally, I take exception to the publisher's attack on the only other person who wrote a review similar to mine. A review should be just that--an opinion of a text's quality (or in this case, failure). This book does nothing but perpetuate negative stereotypes of Osage Indians. In any case, the subtitle should instead read "One White Man's Fictionalized Account..."

A pretty good book. The author had a great story to begin with....it would make an excellent motion picture. However, I thought it had a few shortcomings. The absence of an Osage perspective on the whole ordeal was a major flaw. Surely, Hogan could have found some documents from tribal members who experienced the "Reign of Terror" or interviewed the few remaining Osage members who lived through this period. Also, as a Native American, I thought the use of "Squaw" and "Squaw Man" was gratuitous and offensive. Furthermore, the jumping around from case to case was confusing at times. Nonetheless, I have recommended the book to many friends. As a person who works with the Osage Tribe, I found his account consistent with my knowledge of the "Reign of Terror" that I have accumulated through many meetings with tribal leaders and elders in Pawhuska. I was also pleased that he included an accurate, though brief, tribal history section at the beginning of the book. Furthermore, the author was successful in giving the reader a adequate sense of the setting in Osage County during the 1920s- a place replete with scoundrels, bootleggers and con men. Additionally, I was very pleased with his writing style. Often times when a "true crime" story is being told, the book is bogged down with picayune details of court proceedings. However, Hogan was able to offer a succinct, yet comprehensive account of the trial involving the Osage Indian Murders.

I half expected ghosts to step out of "The Osage Indian Murders." The book is that dry, that dusty. Yet from the author's chapter-and-verse narrative and bare-bones prose comes a haunting look back at a lawless time and place.

In 1870 Congress forced the Osages to sell their lands in Kansas and buy lands from the Cherokees in what was then Oklahoma Territory. The price quoted was 25 cents an acre. When the Osages hove into sight, of course, the Cherokees upped the price to 70 cents an acre. It was a seller's market.

Who could know that the "poor grave" (as the Osages called the new reservation) would start gushing oil in 1897? The real tragedy of things to come was these once-proud Plains warriors had never wanted money. They wanted to hunt buffalo, plant a few field crops and steal horses -- a special passion of the Plains Indians.

But the oil flowed, the Osages spent money with both hands and the vultures circled. One way for a white thief to get his hands on Osage money was to marry an Osage woman, have her killed and inherit her headrights.There was always someone willing to pull the trigger -- a shiftless hanger-on or an outlaw hiding in the woods of Osage County.

This, then, was the setting for a string of Osage Indian murders that terrorized both Indians and whites. In 1923, the FBI was called in. Agents worked undercover for three years, turning over one rock at a time to put their case together. Trials began in 1926 and eventually several life sentences were handed down.

Author Lawrence J. Hogan -- a former FBI agent and former U.S. congressman -- did voluminous research for this book. He quotes from original documents, interviews and confessions, and organized an interesting bibliography.

Old black and white photos of Indians and outlaws, murder scenes and city streets evoke the time and place in ways that words never can. The people in the photos bring the story to life. They look straight out of the page and their eyes speak volumes.

After a while it sinks in: They were real people, and they really did those things.

Note: This review is excerpted, with permission, from a review I wrote for The Hanford Sentinel newspaper.

As much as my friends and myself admire Jackson's classic works, I must agree that this is a pretty mediocre collection of short stories. Because many have not been seen for over 50 years however, they certainly belong in the library of every Shirley Jackson fan. "The Possibility of Evil" is stunning. Sometimes Shirley either tried too hard, had writer's block or simply experimented with the bizarre; whatever the reason, most of her works were ahead of her time and when she was good she was the BEST-there are, unfortunately too many rather dull and uninspired stories in this collection. Shirley was the female Stephen King of her day!

that's how i felt when i saw this book on my library shelf. it helped to quell a hunger that i have had for many years. thank you laurence and sarah for compiling these works. i would love to see the out of print works of shirley jackson back on bookstore's shelves.

There has been tons of controversy over this book about whether or not is should have been published. My personal opinion is that is should not have been published because these stories were private stories and were not published for a reason. However, now it has been published and there is nothing anyone can do about it but enjoy it as a learning experience. The reason I gave the book five stars was because it is a very accurate representation of Shirley Jackson. Writing was always theraputic for her -- she used it to express the other dimensions of her life and her self which no one could understand. Writing was a way of putting everything that went on in her mind down on paper. Therefore, reading these stories is like reading her diary -- she expressed her emotions through fiction, and the variety of characters and plots that can be seen in this collection are a representation of a certain period of her life through her eyes. If you are looking for the edited fiction that made Shirley Jackson famous, this is not the book for you. However, if you are interested in the inner workings of the author's mind, this collection of stories and essays is the closest one can get.

Cranfield and Moy do manage to get across a few useful facts and strategies for straight pool, but there's really nothing new here. Not only is the content of the book fairly weak, it's also full of technical inaccuracies. Considering the level of play that Cranfield was at, it's interesting to note that he apparently has no grasp whatsoever of the actual effects of english and throw. While a good player of any of the other cuesports might find this a useful introduction to the strategy of straight pool, I think a beginner may find this book does irreparable harm to his understanding of basic fundamentals.

I've had the pleasure of watching Babe Cranfield play on numerous occasions. In my opinion, he ranks as one of the the top straight pool players of all time. The beauty of his game was an aggressive style coupled with brilliant pattern play. Few could run a rack in the simple uncomplicated manner of the Babe. This book conveys the importance of pocketing balls in the correct sequence to ensure run-outs without moving the cueball all over the table - a lost art to the modern nine ball player. While there are no new fundamentals or deep secrets revealed, the reader does gain insight from one of the finest gentlemen to ever play the game.

This was a thoroughly enjoyable read. In pool speak - a "dead on" combination of personal anecdotes of one of pool's greatest champions and useful techniques for improving your game. This book is much easier to read (and thus, in many respects, more useful) than a number of comprehensive treatises on the game that are available. Larry Moy has made a great contribution to the game and, together with "Babe," has gone a long way to making a difficult, but exciting, game a little easier and even more enjoyable.

I have read this book and the very first time, it is true that it gives an impression of overwhelming death and sorrow. The protagonist, Vanessa, comes into contact with life, that is REAL life and she just finds it hard to cope. But it is a story which is just so incredibly true-to-life that any one can identify themselves with the main character. It is only many, many years after that Vanessa understands what had confused her when she was 10 : her grandfather, so much feared and respected, and all the deaths which she had to endure in her family. If you have ever been at that stage, losing some of the people you loved in your heart of hearts, you will understand what Vanessa had to go through and see yourself in her position in front of new things as painful as death. It is not morbid at all, it just shows you that your family is there to help, but that in any case, everything's not hunky-dory!!!

This is a book I chose for a Grade 13 English ISU up here in Toronto. This book is in essence, about the developing process of a young female writer, Margaret Laurence, portrayed in this book as Vanessa MacLeod.

I found the story entitled "The Loons" was the most interesting, it dealt the Native Indian issue of segregation and compared it with the crying of the loons.

I think that these short stories are great. I read the book in 11th grade English. I think she is a great writer

In one surviving account, Joan of Arc was quoted as saying that her judges were merely putting her on trial because they were members of the pro-English faction and therefore her "capital enemies"; unfortunately, this play tries to claim otherwise. One of Shaw's primary themes is the notion that Pierre Cauchon and Joan's other judges were acting as "sincere" defenders of the Church in their prosecution of her, a view which is contradicted by document after document as well as the above quote from Joan herself. Cauchon and his cronies are well known to historians as having been long-term supporters of the English and Burgundian factions, and the eyewitnesses said repeatedly that they prosecuted Joan out of revenge for the defeats that their side had suffered at the hands of her army, rather than out of any genuine belief that she was guilty of heresy. Cauchon even allowed her to take final communion (which was never done in the case of heretics), indicating that even he didn't truly believe the charges against her. As Shaw was aware, these charges were soundly debunked when the case was appealed after the English were finally driven from Rouen in 1449; and the arguments put forward in this ruling have been confirmed as accurate by experts in medieval theology and canon law, whereas Cauchon's arguments can easily be refuted by consulting medieval theological works - his arguments are, at best, merely distortions of what the medieval Church actually taught. Here are some specific examples which factored prominently in Shaw's play:
- Shaw, like Cauchon, claimed that Joan was guilty of heresy for wearing male clothing allegedly as a personal preference, despite the fact that both of these men were aware of her own statements to the contrary. She was quoted as saying that she wore soldiers' clothing (of a type which had "laces and points" by which the pants and tunic could be securely tied together) primarily to protect herself, as her guards had tried to rape her on several occasions; this reason is also given in some of the 15th century chronicles, along with similar quotes from Joan herself on the need to protect her chastity while surrounded by the men in her army. The medieval Church allowed an exemption in such cases of necessity (read St. Thomas Aquinas' "Summa Theologica", or St. Hildegard's "Scivias", for example): the practice of so-called "cross-dressing" was only condemned if it was done as a preference. Shaw rejects all of the above based on the specious argument that the "other women" who accompanied armies in that era didn't wear such clothing, ignoring the fact that these "other women" were: 1) prostitutes, who wore provocative dresses because they were trying to encourage sexual encounters rather than the opposite; and 2) aristocratic women sometimes were given command of their family's armies in the absence of their husband or son, but these women did not bed down at night among the troops in the field, as Joan often did. Shaw chooses to ignore these circumstances.
- On a somewhat related subject, Shaw tries to portray her as a rebel against "gender norms", again ignoring her own statements and the circumstances of the era. She was quoted by one eyewitness as saying that, quote, "I would rather stay home with my poor mother and spin wool [rather than lead an army]", which hardly sounds like someone who is trying to reject traditional gender roles. When another woman, Catherine de la Rochelle, wanted to get involved, Joan told her to "go home to your husband and tend your household". At no point do we find her making any 'feminist' statements. She was given titular command of an army for the same reason other religious visionaries sometimes were given such a role in that era, not as part of a "feminist crusade".
- Shaw admits that Joan was a devout Catholic and yet claims her as "the first Protestant martyr" - in the same sentence. This seems to be a rather willful contradiction, and the claim of "Protestant tendencies" is merely based, once again, on the old business of accepting Cauchon's claims about her at face value while ignoring the circumstances. If you read the documents you will find that Joan never opposed the Church as a whole: she merely stated her objection to being tried by a panel of pro-English clergy, and repeatedly asked to be given a non-partisan group instead or to be brought before the Pope. It was a violation of Inquisitorial procedure to stack the panel of assessors with people who were pursuing a secular vendetta against the accused: what Cauchon and his cohorts were doing, as Inquisitor Brehal later pointed out during the appeal, was itself an act of heresy. The notion that the medieval Church viewed all Inquisitorial panels as "infallible" and therefore not open to question is just a stereotype, bluntly contradicted by actual medieval theological writings: St. Hildegard, in her 12th century book "Scivias", warns the clergy against judging someone in error or out of anger, as it would be the offending clergy who would be punished for it by God. Joan was perfectly within her rights, even under the rules of the medieval Church, to question her biased judges, and was declared a martyr for Catholicism by Inquisitor Brehal when her execution was declared invalid in 1456. Shaw ignores this. The claim that his play is somehow vindicated by the fact that it was "vetted" by one Catholic (out of the hundreds of millions of Catholics worldwide) is a pointless argument: there are "Catholics" who claim that Joan was having adulterous sex, and all sorts of defamatory allegations. The bottom line is: this play does little more than repeat the slander leveled at Joan by the men who cruelly put her to death, despite the work of generations of scholars to bring a more accurate picture of the issue to light.

when i read this play for my junior AP english class, i truly enjoyed it and thought that while joan is rather naive and intolerant, she is a feminist icon--rebellious and unconventional. she is portrayed as being brave, unlike the romantic fluff-chick that various publications make her out to be. while i did enjoy the informative preface, there were sections in which shaw sounded like a typical elitist male and that disappointed me very much.
all in all, i'd like to think that it was a decent play, and definitely worth reading.

Shaw was a close friend of a Benedictine Abbess, Dame Laurentia, who "vetted" his plays for fairness to the faith. This play is fun, takes lots of bites out of politicians and clergy, and says something beautiful about the imagination. This Joan is no dolt and had to be burnt at the stake. That is a complement to her faith.

These authors, and this book (in an earlier edition) were the first wave of today's spam onlsaught. If you need immigration information, please look elsewhere. If you -really- want this book, please buy the used copy. In the perusing of it that I've done, I found it to be not entirely uninformative, but I certainly wouldn't give it accolades, and, given it (and its authors') background, I wouldn't pay money for it if you held a gun to my head. Go ahead: type "Canter and Siebel" into Google, and see what you get.

Beware, these are the pair that invented spam. Laurence Canter lost his license to practice law after sending out the infamous green card spam on Usenet.

My husband was born in Pakistan and isn't a U.S. citizen. Due to September 11 and the unstable economy, we have decided to change his status. U.S. Immigration Made Easy has given us a lot of great pointers on the process and how to best fill out all the necessary forms and paperwork. This book has been a great find. I just bought 3 additional copies for my husband's family!

"Capone" not only details the life of Alphonse Capone, and the gangs of Prohibition-era Chicago, but also his family members. The author makes the point, well almost his thesis frankly, that Capone was more than a common thug; he went to great pains to ingratiate himself with Chicagoans (and Floridians when he bought his estate there). This is not a revisionist history, though: the author clearly reminds us that Al had murdered others personally and ordered others to kill, and also profited from prostitution and protection rackets. He was not simply a bootlegger as some romanticized bio's have made him.
An aspect of the Capone legend that must be addressed is his nemesis, at least in the popular conception, Eliot Ness. Bergreen dispatches him to the relative obscurity that Ness historically deserves; it was the IRS quietly working behind the scenes that brought down Capone-not Ness' showboating. The IRA agents who were the real heroes, get their story told in full.

Having said this, there are some shortcomings. Too much space is given to his elder brother "Two-Gun" Hart. As has been pointed out, his reputation is much exaggerrated, and the chapters devoted to him do not show the same research as Capone. Speaking of sources, the author is probably a little too accepting of some statements made by those who were related or simply knew the subject. All in all though, a good overview of Capone's life and death, and the machinations of Prohibition-era Chicago.

This is truly one of the best books I have ever read. I really feel that this book, shows the reader the human side of Al Capone (something anyone who knows, we're not shown in movies and through historical accounts) and allows us to get aqcuainted with the times. It gives you the sense that you are there and allows you to relate intimately with the story of Capone. Bergreen does an AWESOME job detailing the lesser known events of Capone's life, and then accentuates the more famous (i.e. St. Valentine's Day Massacre). If you are interested in Capone, Chicago's history, Mafia-related stories, a good biography, or just a good book., pick this one!

This book deserves better than it has gotten; I am surprised by the vehemence of some of the reviewers' reactions to it. It offers a broad, interesting, historical view of turn of the century New York, then Chicago, early 20th century politics, prohibition, the hero-worship of the Roaring 20's, the mafia, the FBI, syphillis, Alcatraz -- a whole Ragtime-like panorama. It is entertaining and instructive. Those who pan it appear to have a problem with the somewhat sympathetic portrayal of a morally objectionable person or quibble over arcane facts.

Having lived in Lansing, Michigan and spent time in the northwoods of Wisconsin, where Al Capone summered, I can say that the legend of Al Capone is still very much alive in those two locations; he rivals George Washington for having supposedly slept or shot up more places than anyone else. The author captures this aspect of Capone's life, as well as his charismatic, sympathetic Robin Hood-like persona which humanized him and endeared him to a portion of the masses.

I wa not bothered by the diversions of attention to Al Capone's brother, Two Gun Hart and his supposed nemisis, Eliot Ness, and found them interesting and germane to Capone's life story. I had not heard of the brother before but was aware that post-Capone, Ness ended up as a police official in Cleveland. Nor was I bothered by what some call an overly-sympathetic portrayal of Capone; he has aspects that frankly are sympathetic.

What strikes me as most interesting about the author's portrayal of Al Capone is that he shows how Capone -- certainly not stupid, and trained as a bookkeeper -- was the first man to apply systematic business and financial practices to the running of the mob, and increased its bottom line. He also was either more politically astute than those gangsters who came before -- although at times, just as crude in his methods -- or was lucky enough to have blatantly corrupt, receptive mayors in Chicago and Cicero when he came to power.

The author does a good job of showing how the federal government wanted to get Al Capone in the worst way and finally figured out how to do it with the Income Tax Code. The book lays out the dogged determination and methods of the agents who persevered to nail him. In the end, given the author's somewhat sympathetic portrait of Capone, you feel sorry that he got caught, and even sorrier to learn of how he was treated by fellow inmates at Alcatraz. Most biographers seem to gravitate toward either abhorring or loving their subjects and this author is no exception, tending toward the latter.

I recommend this book. Unless you are a Capone fanatic and know all there is to know about him already, the factual presentation will not put you off. I frankly did not know if I was reading the truth or not, but it seemed like it, and it was interesting and I thought, reasonably well-written. I am curious if there is any difference in the texts or otherwise in the newer paperback edition, versus the original hardback, which is what I read.

What is a book titled "Pornocopia" about? The worditself means nothing, except it hints that the book is aboutpornography in abundance and variety..." All this is true about "Pornocopia," but the subtitle, "Porn, sex, technology and desire" is misleading..." I can imagine a book about porn without "sex" and "desire," but the inclusion of those words seems more to confirm that yes, we're talking about the regular usage of the term "porn" and not some non-sexual metaphor. But "technology" is the twist. The book must be about the nexus between porn and technology. Don't be fooled by the cover. It isn't.

Laurence O'Toole is an unabashed porn consumer advocate. His goal, with "Pornocopia," is finally articulated in the closing words of the book: "Legal change is unlikely to come about...without a continued and far greater shift within the mainstream towards a brighter, more informed view on porn. Hopefully this book can feature as part of this cultural change" (p. 350). The "legal change" O'Toole seeks is an easing of restrictions on porn, especially in the United Kingdom...O'Toole imagines a world where reliable "mainstream" publications review porn so consumers can make better choices, where the law comes down on the side of the porn consumer rather than the anti-porn activists, and where the content of porn is debated for its potential to arouse rather than its moral implications...In trying to change culture, his enthusiasm damages his credibility. We get the point early on that he likes porn and doesn't think much of the arguments of porn's critics. He dismisses the traditional objections with this statement: "it is possible to expose the moraltarians' ideological position as unacceptable to most people...their doctrine is refutable if you decide that you don't want to live in a theocratic state..." (p. 26). That's about it for the "moraltarian" view (although he later addresses laws conceived of by such under-explored views). Instead of the addressing the traditionalist objections, O'Toole promises to focus on the objections of some feminists such as Andrea Dworkin and Catherine MacKinnon...O'Toole starts to with vigor, but then he trails off into a brief history of the porn industry...

The history is one of the strongest sections of the book. Here, basically factual information is conveyed in a linear narrative. The logical next chapter would have been about the state of the industry today, but instead O'Toole veers off again, this time with a chapter that gripes about the lack of an industry in Britain...O'Toole jumps between only two countries, the U.S. and the U.K. The U.S. story is interesting, the U.K. story is not. I'd imagine that even a British reader would share this opinion, because this is essentially the author's point. The problem is that too much time and attention is spent proving how boring porn in the U.K. is...

But the weakest chapter of "Pornocopia" is the one that actually is devoted to technology. Up until "The perils of cyberspace," O'Toole's approach was basically to argue that "it's not as bad as you think."...But by the time O'Toole gets to "cyberporn was not so 'pervasive' or 'ubiquitous' after all," (p. 248) everything that came before seems suspect...There is a lot of porn on line, and it is almost impossible to miss it. That fact does not imply the rightness or wrongness of the state of affairs, but any argument based on the opposite premise is very weak.

O'Toole's writing only gets weaker as the book draws to a close. What exactly he's trying to do is very unclear...The resulting "Vox"- lite is worse than you're imagining and what it is doing in the book is anyone's guess.

"Pornocopia" manages to make an inherently interesting topic very dull...O'Toole's position is not untenable. Far from it. He simply over-reaches, lets his enthusiasm get the better of his argument, and covers too many angles with too little depth.

there is a lot i like about pornocopia -- for one thing, there aren't many books that examine the relationship between porn, sex, technology, and desire. o'toole's book definitely occupies a unique niche in the pornography book genre. i also really appreciated o'toole's use of narratives and the voices of sex workers and porn viewers. too many theorists, writers, and academics have written about porn without talking to either sex workers or porn viewers. finally, o'toole's voice is witty and entertaining and it makes pornocopia a fast read.

however, there's something odd about this book ... it's tone constantly moves between being an academic text (there are thorough footnotes and o'toole references many well-known texts about pornography) and being exceedingly casual. it's hard to know exactly where o'toole is coming from. also, a lot of the ground he covers in this book is covered better by other writers. he spends a lot of time discussing the history of pornography -- linda williams does this brilliantly in her book hard core: power, pleasure, and the frenzy of the visible. (he does cite her a lot). what's unique about o'toole's work, his examiniation of the way technology has shaped and impacted the porn industry, doesn't come until the end of the book.

i think this is an interesting book which provides some unique theorizing about porn -- but, i think if you're going to read one book about pornography, this shouldn't be it.

This is a good book! Yes it takes a position, but that position is open and frank. Porn, sex, and profits are here to stay and in fact will boom during the next decade. If this makes you nervous you should consider leaving the planet. Accept it, live with it, in fact you should start enjoying it. We bet your neighbor does, your coworkers do, and probably your spouse. Read the book, it is fun and informative.

I think lator gator is very boring.Only if the alligator hadnt
died it wouldnt be that depressing.

I think Lator Gator is very boring.If the alligator hadnt
died the story wouldnt be that depressing.Any way it
dose not make sence!!!!

This was a ok story because bobby was suppose to buy teddy a turtle.But he got him an alligator his mom was mad so was he dad but teddy was really happy.The alligator made thare house smell realy bad.