What is success? For Amanda Shaw it's a promotion to partner at her New York City law firm, an elegant apartment, and enough money to give her the financial security she so desperately needs. For Zach Porter, Amanda's friend since childhood, success is a healthy, happy family and a perfect day on the slopes of his Vermont ski resort. But when a family illness forces this mismatched couple to work together to save their childhood home from developers and investors, Amanda and Zach realize that their visions of happiness aren't so far apart after all.

The best thing about Linda Barrett's debut novel is her characters. Zach and Amanda struggle with issues and concerns we can all relate to-career vs. family, taking a risk vs. playing it safe, and learning from our past vs. allowing it to control us. Zach and Amanda are real and engaging, and Ms. Barrett has included a warm cast of secondary characters as well. But it's the relationship between Amanda and Zach that really shines. I was moved by Zach's loyalty and generosity to his family and his beloved resort, and I loved watching Amanda come to terms with the fact that real life and love aren't risk-free. I couldn't wait for these two friends to fall in love, but it was just as much fun watching the sparks fly when they didn't see eye to eye. The setting may be cold, snowy Vermont, but the romance is hot. I thoroughly enjoyed this book. If you're looking for a novel with characters that will make you laugh, touch you, and perhaps even inspire you, curl up with LOVE, MONEY, AND AMANDA SHAW.

Skillfully written, this debut novel reads as if it had been penned by a veteran. I truly enjoyed the believable characters, realistic family relationships, and the satisfying plot. I predict that Linda Barrett has a long and successful career ahead of her.

This book is wonderful. It's full of hope, love, fear, caring and love that anyone might exprience. I suggest everyone read this book and all of Linda Shaw's books. She can tell a romantic story as well as any of them. I give her and her books 10 stars!!!!

Finally a book that addresses student-specific reasons for procrastination. This book gives insight into the six types of procrastinators and lets you categorize your type through short quizzes. Although it offers a lot of information about WHY we procrastinate, I wish the book said more about HOW to stop this terrible problem. I'd like to see audio tapes made for the book's creative visualization exercises.

This book will help any Christian out

It's been 20+ years since I read this, but I was much impressed at the time. I no longer have a copy so I hope I'm remembering the facts correctly.

Whimbey, a professor of psychology ran a special school in California for 10-11 year olds who seemed to be getting nowhere in the public schools and who had IQ scores around 85. He concentrated on drilling the students in three principles of thought:

1. Have a reason for everything you say. (Low IQ people do not.)

2. Think long enough about a problem to solve it. (Low IQ people often limited their effort to no more than 5 seconds of thought. Many problems simply require more than that.)

3. Consider all the information available before making a judgment . (Low IQ people jumped to conclusions based on the first observations they made.)

What most impressed me about Whimbey's approach was that he was attempting to develop intelligence in general, i.e., reasoning ability. This was not just about reading better or doing better arithmetic. He claimed that, after one school year of intensive drilling in these basic principles, the average child went from an IQ of 85 to an IQ of 115, and the change was permanent! The children were able to do better, because they could think more effectively, in all subjects.

The book explains his program for inculcating these principles.

Being optimistic, or at least hopeful, about the future of humanity, I found this book gave me renewed hope. Whimbey argues very convincingly that the ordinary human brain is a pretty good instrument for thinking. What is needed is not more geniuses, though genius is always a wonderful thing, but better training of all of us ordinary folk, in order to build a more intelligent community. He backs up his argument with real results achieved with real children.

I heartily recommend this book to any teacher or anyone else who wants to develop general intellectual ability, not just teach specific skills. And I hope that all teachers will try to do that.

Apollo 13 was a really well written book that tells all about not only the voyage of Apollo 13, but of the space program from begining to the end of the Apollo era. It covers the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs extremely well, and captures the suspense and action of the Apollo 13 voyage from all angles, whether it was the bleary-eyed crew, crammed inside the lunar module, or Marilyn Lovell facing the very real possibility that her husband may not come home again.

A MUST READ!! TEN STARS!!

Most of the other first person accounts from ex-astronauts are mearly a re-hashing of their careers, but I think that Jim Lovell must be the one true "story-teller" amoung the former Apollo astronauts. That virtue plus his inclusion of the Misiion Control transcripts from Apollo 13 make this story stand out from the rest (it also doesn't hurt to have an amazing story to tell like the near disaster of Apollo 13!). If you're like me and think that the people in Mission Control and their roles are as important as the astronouts, than you'll love this book. Read this before any of the other astronaut stories and I'll bet that you agree that this is the best one...

I don't want to repeat all of the well-deserved accolades in the other reviews, but knowing how these kinds of co-authored books really are written, it appears that most of the credit for the marvelous, engrossing writing style of Apollo 13 goes to its co-author, Jeffrey Kluger. Astronaut Jim Lovell provides Mr. Kluger with lots of information and leads to information, but Kluger was the one who put it all together in this magnificent book. As one who has followed his other writings, too, I must say that Kluger deserves recognition as one of the best writers of our era, particularly in his facile ability to explain complicated scientific information to a lay audience. Read Kluger's later book, "Journey Beyond Selene" (being rereleased in paperback as "Moon Hunters"), and you will know even better what I mean.

"Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes" is the only title I have seen specifically looking at the process of how one goes about collecting and writing ethnograhpic data. The book begins with theoretical issues, then moves into jotting, full fieldnotes, and finally discusses how to analyze fieldnotes and write a full ethnography. In general it is an excellent treatment of the subject and provides very practical advice which is well-illustrated by samples collected by the authors and their students. The authros show a marked preferrence for interpretive and processual anthropology (there are frequent referrences to Clifford Geertz among others) so researchers and students with strong comittments to other approaches might not find it as useful as I did. If the book suffers from any shortcoming it is that at points the explanations become too wordy bogging the reader down somewhat. While this book would not be of much interest to the non-professional reader, I highly recommend it to anyone who is studying, practicing, or teaching ethnographic method. I found it very useful and practical.

Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes was written to fill a gap in ethnographic methods training - students are seldom guided through the process of turning notes jotted down as they do observation into publishable ethnographic documents. Not laden with academic jargon, the easy flowing text makes this book readily accessible to the undergraduate student - but the content is such that even an experienced ethnographer can benefit.

True teachers, Emerson, Shaw and Fretz (UCLA faculty) show just as much of the process as they tell. Step by step, readers are walked through the process of turning initial chicken scratches jotted down on scrap paper to publishable ethnographic documents. Rarely will you find more than a page between excerpts from real fieldnotes.

The authors recognize that every field situation is different and ethnographers rarely, if ever, find themselves in ideal situations for writing. Thus, they explain the tensions that constantly pull at ethnographers and also what things will become much easier as ethnographers gain experience. They discuss how to balance observing with writing, and demonstrate that how you write fieldnotes (what you emphasize, point-of-view used, quality of description, representing community members' voices) is just as important as what you write.

Redundancy might be a weak point, but overall the re-explaining of things in two or three different ways serves only to make the reader experience and assimilate the process of writing fieldnotes. Readers can then naturally employ the procedures rather than constantly referring to the book as a "checklist" when doing fieldwork.

I would definitely recommend this book to anyone seeking to understand the worldview and customs of another culture, or doing social research within their own culture. Even if your goal is not to do anthropology or to publish ethnographic documents, turning your experiences and observations into written text helps you to process things. Writing also helps you gain insights about the community you are working with by increasing your observational skills. You will not regret taking time to read Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes.