If a bear wanted to find out his/her family history, this would be the encyclopedia to buy. Being a teddy bear is still very in vogue. This is a fascinating way to find out why we love teddy bears and why they appeal to collectors all over the world.

You can read about all the best-loved bears, from the original "teddy" to "Winnie-the-Pooh. The latest collectibles such as Beanie Bear and the Millennium Bears are also included. Pauline Cockril is the internationally recognized expert on the history of the teddy bear. She is also a regular contributor to Teddy Bear Times.

If you see a teddy bear and instantly want to buy it...this book IS for you. Also look for The Ultimate Teddy Bear Book which is considered to be the bible of arctophily (bear collecting) and is used by collectors, dealers and toy shops around the world.

The first bear listed was made in 1902 and was an experimental Steiff bear. The bears are listed all the way up to the year 2000. If you think you have seen it all...wait until you see the Pink Dino, a Swiss bear with characteristic elongated designs that I think looks more like a monkey. I much prefer the 1991 Pam Howells bear that has a lace collar, shaggy golden mohair plush "fur" and a cute hat trimmed with fabric roses. The Australian Teddy bear on pg. 137 looks somewhat like a koala bear for some reason. :)

I know a place where a lady has bears sitting everywhere in her Bed & Breakfast. You just want to take one of the bears home with you. In each room, she also has a "resident" bear that sits on the fluffy down-comforter covered bed. The whole place is like one big teddy bear picnic. I bet she knows about this book!

It is just unbearable not to own more bears. I must go shopping since I gave away most of my teddies when they had a teddy bear drive for kids. It was sad to say goodbye to some of them, but I know they are now happily living with a child who loves them. I do think it is time to start collecting again!

This is a great "beginner" book to learn about the points that distinguish one bear from another. Somehow they all seem to look alike at first!!

This book teaches you to pay attention to whether the nose is stitched up and down or from side to side. Are the feet big or are they little stumps? Are the eyes glass or plastic? Are the ears close together or far apart? Are the arms long and pointed or short and stumpy? These all are clues as to the date and manufacturer of the bear!!

Includes a section on repairing an antique bear (less is better!) as well as a section on newer bears!

A great learning tool! Written so it is easily understood........you don't have to already BE an EXPERT to BECOME one with the help of this well written book!!

It's a fast read, providing a giggle on almost every page. Although he focuses on the colorful Yiddish language, Leon Gilden guides the reader through the history of the Jewish experience from the shtetel to comtemoprary America.

The title is deceptive. I expected definitions of Yiddishkeit in the workplace (who knew that "glitch" came from Yiddish) but the book,in about 125 pages, covers life,love, food and a broad range of the Jewish experience.

I would have liked a pronuouncation key, next to each word. Without it, one has to guess whether the acccent is on the first or second syllable.

But who's complaining? It's fun to read and a good resource. I plan to give it as gifts instead of "ruggalah".

If Leo Rosten's The Joys of Yiddish is the Bible to Yiddish, then Leon Gildin's swift, funny book is the Cliff's Notes. It is a quick, easy read. Not studious. But you get the flavor of Yiddish without suffocating. If you run out of air, it'll only be from laughter.

The title is misleading. This is hardly a businessmen's guide. It is a guide for everyone (with the exception o the chapter on curse words. This is R-rated).

You don't have to be Jewish to read and enjoy this book. It has an index to Yiddish words, and could use a similar index for English words and phrases. Small gripes for a book that provides a fun jaunt to your bubbe's world, or neighbor's bubbe.

"Archaic Bookkeeping" is an edited translation of the catalog that accompanied the sale of 82 proto-cuneiform tablets from the Swiss Erlenmeyer collection by Christie's in 1988 in London. These tablets had been purchased in late 1950s, but had not been subjected to any detailed study. Personally I am not opposed to individual ownership of antiquities, but I do believe that preventing these valuable texts from being studied by scholars for decades is inexcusable. The tablets analyzed are mainly from Uruk, and date to the Archaic period in Sumerian history, circa 3000 BC.

The casual observer might think that the study of ancient cultures might be a field without much in the way of rapid change, but this would be false. The advent of powerful computer programs have recently allowed the processing of large amounts non-numerical data and graphic information. A researcher is therefore able to instantly access an entire body of text when testing an hypothesis. The authors of "Archaic Bookkeeping" made use of this powerful technique, which is becoming more useful all the time. This is made clear by the fact that as of 1993 (the date "Archaic Bookkeeping" was published), only 600 of the 5000 archaic tablets from Uruk had been sufficiently published.

I am an interested student of Sumerology, and my purchase of this book was an attempt not so much to understand archaic bookkeeping but to see examples of the actual translation process, and, to the degree that I could, follow along. There is currently very little of this sort of material available for the interested amateur. In general it seems that this information is both too difficult to have much amateur appeal, and too rudimentary for specialists in the field. For those looking for a good introduction to Sumeria, I highly recommend "The Sumerians" by Samuel Kramer.

I found the prose in this book to be very clear and well-constructed, with no trace of the fact that it had been translated from German. I found it surprisingly free of philological and linguist jargon; its main purpose was the practical communication of how the authors used the tablets to extract information about Sumerian field administration, labor organization, and animal husbandry. The book's area of focus is quite narrow, but it needs to be to cover the subject fairly. I found the tablet photographs and diagrams to be a highlight of the book and uniformly excellent. The bibliography was arranged by chapter and was very useful.

I saw this book featured in the AIGA annual for 1999. It is VERY nicely designed. Also, it was refreshing to read about cultural aspects of typography, instead of the same ol' stuff about leading, tracking, etc.

This is an important book for future generations. The revolutionary work done by Pinochet and his advisors, copied not only in Latin America but the world at large.

It is also important that this book calls Pinochet by his real name, a Capitalist. These days anybody that doesn't agree with marxists-liberals is a fascist.

I'm still waiting to see how fascists implement free-market reforms like Pinochet did.

In summary: Pinochet is a Capitalist, fundamentalist if you will, who allied with the U-S during the Cold War, which was the fight between Capitalism and Communism. For a Latin American fascist look at Peron.

Wether you are in favor or against Pinochet it is important to get your facts straight.

this book is one of the most concise and clearly thought out atlases on histology that I've encountered so far. It is amazingly easy to use and is chock full of only relevent information...no rambling. Three thumbs up!

This book is a must in the health care practice

Part fantasy (literarily speaking) and part historic fiction, this is a neat little story, charmingly illustrated. A boy named Jim goes on a self-appointed mission to retrieve pirate booty from a haunted island along the New Hampshire/Maine coast. The print job is a little unwieldy, and if anything the story is too short. But I give 5 stars for the content: the boy Jim has a good heart, and Paul Peter Jesep succeeds in infusing a little of the local history and lore into the tale.

Add it to the canon of New England-based children's literature.

The companion book to this, "Lady-Ghost of the Isles of Shoals," unfortunately seems to be unavailable now.