Everyone knows Robert Louis Stevenson; everyone has at least one of the myriad books of his poetry. There are some stunningly illustrated collections of his poetry out now, notably two by Thomas Kincaide, among others. But how many of us have actually read all or most of his work? I'm guilty as charged.

This smaller, quieter version of Stevenson's poetry helped me finally, actually read all the Garden poetry. True, the illustrations are spare, but delightfully accurate. My children (7 and 10) were not as mesmerized by this book as they are by others with fanciful graphics, illustrations and larger type to accompany the poetry.

Still, this small book found its way into my purse to be used for waiting moments, e.g. at the orthodontist, doctor, and also to my bedside, where it's shear diminutive size did not dissuade me from reading "for only a minute or two." And within Stevenson's words and language lie the ferment of creative pictures. I liked to have my children close their eyes while I read short poems to 'force' them to use only their mind's eye.

I thoroughly enjoyed the adventures, moods, and images Stevenson conjures and at long last can understand why his poetry remains so classic.

Most everyone knows that Robert Louis Stevenson was sickly, both as a child and as an adult, and the happy result for the reading public was his nearly feverish flights of imagination. Here, in an edition of his classic "A Child's Garden of Verses," that fever is complemented in spades by the fantastical illustrations of English artist Joanna Isles.

Isles uses an arsenal of utterly frivolous flowers, borders, insects, birds, kings and queens, fairies, and more to expand upon the imagination exhibited in Stevenson's poems. The children in these pictures are depicted as being in charge, being at one with their environment, and being delighted to be alive.

Some of the illustrations hint at the influence of artists more famed than Isles (Henri Rousseau appears to be a special favorite of hers--see the illustration for "The Unseen Playmate," in which a boy lies down in weeds that might have sprung from the edge of Rousseau's painting "The Dream"). Using both primary colors and pastels, Isles creates a world within the world of Stevenson's verse. The marriage of the two is a happy one.

When I was younger, well 5 actually, I had the chicken pox. This was one of my mom's favorite books. The words in the poetry just soothed me. It seemed like the author, Robert Louis Stevenson, knew exactly what I was going through.

You can't forget about the little toy soldiers (a poem) at your feet because when you are sick for days, you can imagine all kinds of things in your mind. The curtains billow like sails, the bedpost is your anchor. I sat there in bed and just floated away with the fun of having someone to share my illness. It seemed like a had a friend right there with me.

I loved the pictures too. The little kids are old fashioned and it made me laugh because the boys wore silly clothes, but they fit the time period, my mom said.

I love this book and keep it by my bed when I need to be relaxed.

Hayley Cohen

This book contains some history, 8 palm changes of Wang Shu Jin's Baguazhang (presented by Mr. Pittman) and a little discussion on philosophy of art.

At first - this is not book for beginner who do not know the body mechanics of Bagua.

At second - there is nothing written about Bagua fighting. There are no applications of palm changes, nor combat principles of Bagua. IMO, this is the great disadvantage of the book.

But this book is not as bad as it seems for the firs view - it contains several training tips which could help you in understanding of Bagua.

Finally - there are better books on this subject, but also worst. My advice is: do not buy this book unless you are very interested on Wang Shu Jin's form.

Smith and Pittman have done a wonderful job in condensing vast knowledge in a short,concise and easy to refer book.Diligent practise of the presented forms answers many questions and insights which continue from where the text has left off,a natural way to learn and comprehend any Neijia system(from an eastern teaching point of veiw).It will not be helpful however to someone who is used to being "spoon-fed".Practise correctly and diligently and the system will reveal itself to you.

Robert Smith, in 94 pages, introduces us to philosophy, lineage, concepts and the internal power of bagua masters. There are no martial applications described in the book but there is an excellent presentation of a standard intermediate bagua form set. This type of set is usually done after learning to walk the circle with the eight mother palms. This book recommends walking the circle using the basic dragon palms.

This book is an easy, economical way to begin an exploration of Pagua without being ovewhelmed. It should be in everyone's Pakua library.

This book does a great job of describing Smith's experiences with various Chinese Boxing masters. It tells a lot of great stories and in that sense, it's a very interesting book and quite informative. But the writing is horrible. Smith is busy quoting someone on every paragraph, "As Mark Twain once said..." "Camus once mused..." "Jung stated.." etc.. He drops so many names, quotes so needlessly, that it's almost as if he's trying to impress you with how intellectual he is. It's like he's saying to himself, "Ooo let me quote Seneca here, not because it really adds anything to the effectiveness of my writing, but because quoting is so darn fun, and plus people might think I'm soooo deep because of it." Except for Smith's literary pretensions, this is a great book, a good buy.

There are many manuals of Chinese boxing. This is not one of them.

The author, then a US government employee, arrived in Taiwan when that nation's government was extremely grateful to the US. He was given introductions to many of the leading Chinese martial artists of the time, and took up every one -- adding what they had to teach him to what he had learned earlier in the US and during a posting in Japan.

Virtually all of the masters he describes in the book are dead and no longer available for interview. His accounts of what he saw, heard and experienced can never be matched, and Asian principles of loyalty to a single master mean that nobody other than he was able to study as widely from the leading teachers of the day.

The more you learn personally about Chinese boxing, the better this book shows itself to be. For those on the first steps of this study, the book's a profound inspiration.

I read this book some years ago when it first came out, and thought it was excellent. The book is basically a chronicle of Smith's trip to the Orient and his encounters with a number of different masters with descriptions of their methods and ideas.

Smith's travelogue makes for an absorbing account, and he includes many interesting anecdotes and stories about the various masters he meets. It is not a picture book or instructional book in that sense, but more of a personal memoir.

It is also interesting in that it bears a strong resemblance to the books written by John Gilbey, a purported textile heir and martial arts master who also travelled the world meeting many intereting and unusual masters, and who returned to write about his experiences.

The writing styles are quite similar--both Gilbey and Smith like to pepper the text with quotes from their favorite writers--the main difference being Gilbey's experiences are probably fanciful. It is likely that Smith was writing under the pseudonym of Gilbey for these entertaining books, so you should take his accounts with a large grain of salt, lest you be taken in by Smith's engaging, conversational style and his fascinating stories.

To give you just one example of this, in the most recent of the three Gilbey books, unfortunately the title escapes me right now, but anyway, he describes an encounter with an Icelandic master who claims to use the energy of black holes to obtain fastastic power, and which occurs in a train station.

Well, there is no train system, or train station, in Iceland and never was one. The only thing that ever existed in the way of a train was a small-gauge railway that wasn't for passenger service and which I understand no longer operates.

To give just one more example, in one of the other books Gilbey describes a Pakistani art by the name of Fiz-Lez-Loo whereby the energy of the attacker's blow is directed and reflected by the adept back into the attacker. This expert asked Gilbey to strike him on the nose, but Gilbey instead punches him in the groin as hard as he can. Gilbey passes out and spends the next week in the hospital recuperating.

While I have been a martial artist and instructor myself for almost 40 years, having started studying when I was only 11, and have seen some pretty amazing things myself in that time, I am fairly certain that this art doesn't exist, and that it couldn't be developed.

That having been said, I think Gilbey's books are worth reading for their entertainment value alone, as long as you keep in mind my warning about maintaining a healthy dose of scepticism and don't take what he says too seriously.

I was there during the period of this book, at a lower level of Security Pacific. I found the book almost unbelievably exciting and scary. It explains much about what was happening to the "troops" that we could not understand. Smith did a good job of keeping the true problems away from all of us, including employees and the public, as he no doubt had to in order for the merger to succeed. All in all, anyone with any interest in banking and finance should find this an exciting and informative book.

I bought this book because it looked like a people-book about big deals and mergers and I was surprised by how gripping it was. It is also extremely funny. It is not like any other business book I have ever read. I came away with a sense of the participants as people. It is also well written. The first half of the book is about how Security Pacific got into trouble with banking regulators and some famous dealers like Trump and Peter Uebberoth. This part of the book is fast and hilarious and fascinating. The second half is about the merger of Security Pacific and Bank of America,and here the story really took focus and became quite intense. I can't remember getting so emotionally involved in a story about business. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in business and banking--especially if you are sick of books promoting companies that masquerade as business stories.

Dead Bank Walking is a fascinating account of the rise and demise of a stalwart California Bank. Smith's narration is personal, and it eloquently captures the excess and arrogance that accompanied big business in the 80's. More importantly, it brings the complexity of senior management decision making to life by providing the content and detail required for the reader to effectively walk in the shoes of this aggressive CEO. Smith takes you inside the emotional roller-coaster of his mega-merger. From the comedic meetings with the period's renegade personalities to the devastating effects FIRREA's fine print had on Security Pacific's solvency, this book is a great read. You won't put it down!

I've been lifting weights for a little over a year, so have already experienced many of the benefits Kathy mentions in her book. I've lost 40 pounds and about 18% body fat by following a good diet and weight training at progressively heavier weight and added sets. Even though I am not brand new to weight training, I still found the book helpful. There is an anatomy chart, and Kathy dispels many myths about weight lifting, in particular that women shouldn't lift heavy or that they will get big and bulky from lifting. Also, there were a couple of exercises that I was not doing, so I was able to modify my current program a bit.

I tried using a trainer, but frankly have been disappointed, so I am now learning all I can on my own. Lift Weights to Lose Weight will be a book that I use. I like it much better than the accompanying video tape, which I have used briefly; it is not a very comprehensive workout.

I recommend this book to beginners and intermediates, and anyone who wants to learn more about the basic principles of weight lifting.

When I bought this book I didn't know the diffence between a rep. and a set. I have enjoyed the benefits of cardio workouts for years and I felt like I was ready to go a step further and begin stregth training. This book was EXCELLENT to give me the exact insight I needed to get started. Kathy takes an aproach that is often sadly missed in weight training books, she gives as much attention to home weight training as gym weight training. I love to train at home, and hate the gym scene, and yet so many books only tell you how to work muscles using only specificaly designed weight training machines, available only at the gym. From the beginning Kathy expains both the pros and cons of home and gym training and lets the reader choose. From there she balances her attention between both the home and the gym scene. I particularly loved that she went on to give helpful tips in starting your own at home set of weights for much less than you would think, and she explains how to add on to that set and what at home machines are worth their weight in gold vs. which one will more than likely only collect dust. Kathy goes on to explain the benefits of weight training and as well as tips to the most effective methods. For each exercise she specifies the muscle that is going to be targeted, the set up for the exercise, exactly what to do during the exercise, and what you need to focus on. By the time I was through this book I was sounding like one of my friends who is an actual trainer. This book offers great insight on weight training and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in taking the next step in their fitness training, I can't believe the changes I have noticed in my body!

Kathy Smith's companion book Lift Weights to Lose Weight to her popular tape and DVD is a strong reinforcement to her weight lifting program. The book describes additional sets, and is a complement to the tape. The extra information about benefits from weight lifting for general health and fitness is valuable. When I need a little renewal I read a few chapters in the book and I'm on track to keep with the program.

Mary Hanson-Robert's coloring of the famous Waite-Smith images provides a more soothing and eye-pleasing alternative to the often drab colors of the popular Rider-Waite version. Some may find these colors too soft, but I find this deck quite striking, and you don't have to give up the intuitive and easy to read images of the Waite-Smith system. Great for beginners -- skip the Rider-Waite and grab this deck when you want to learn Tarot.

Mary Hnason-Roberts has given the famous deck a much needed 'lift' by added colour tones and making the deck much more attractive to the eye without altering traditional colours. I do own the Rider-Waite deck also but have very rarely used it since with-holding this deck. I highly recommend it. Well done Mary and Pamela Coleman-Smith.

As a tarot reader & instructor, I have used several decks, favoring the Rider-Waite deck for over 10 years. However, the more eye-pleasing coloring of the Universal Waite Tarot has brought out a lot of details that were much more difficult to see in the original deck. I use the deck now in my on-line and in-person tarot workshops and find that the improved clarity of the images translates into improved clarity of students' tarot readings. The rich symbolism of this deck makes it easy to interpret intuitively without prior study yet, still offers a wealth of deep, esoteric knowledge for advanced readers.

Once again, Smith has created as a hero, an inarticulate Mormon young man. This time he's a missionary, leaving the typically atypical mom and dad for his two year mission in Tennessee. Those he encounters are universally physical and mental oddities without a normal human thrown to stabilize the too-thin plot and teen-age dialogue. This should set back missionary work in the Volunteer State by fifty years, if Tennesseeans make the connection.
And I am further left to wonder if the red Kool-aid sect behind the Wasatch Front really believes that the rest of the country is populated by this type of characature.

i thought that this book was a fun look at a small town and the missionary experience

If you ever want to sit down and laugh, you need to read this trilogy. They are sooooo FUNNY!! The author has a wonderful way of making small town life seem not so small. The characters are people you know, people that you can relate to. These books are great!

WROX books used to be the only ones I'd buy; after having a grand ol' time with the ASP and ASP Databases series. The Professional series has been a real disappointment (and waste of money!). The books tend to be more wordy than necessary and spend too much time on the obvious and too little on the abstract. Cold Fusion is a fairly straight-forward programming language. WROX has somehow managed to make it much more. Perhaps too many cooks in the kitchen; looks like they had 18 authors put this beast together.
Look elsewhere...

Being a ColdFusion user group president, I give this book my seal of approval. This book is well written with easy to understand examples. It will help someone with no CF knowledge all the way to the experts. This book is well laid out and is enjoyable to read. I didn't know what to expect from Wrox on this. I have been a huge Ben Forta fan but this book is just as good as his (if not better)! If you want to learn CF, or just want to get better, buy this book. You will be very happy with it.

This is a very good book!
Vale a pena galera!

This is a solid book, nicely written, and the authors have obviously put a lot of thought and good effort into it. However, in it's introduction, the authors advise that you don't really need to know anything about programming in order to understand the book. In my experience that's not correct. While a beginner can understand parts of the book, you soon get the feeling that you are in over your head. It gets into fairly complex code quite quickly. It would be a great book if you are taking a class or have a teacher to explain the parts that need clarification. But for a beginner like myself trying to learn VBA on my own, it's too much too soon. Another thing that this book (or any book) could do to help you learn is provide a lot of problems at the end of each chapter for you to try and apply what you learned, sort of the way we learned algebra in high school.

Evan Callahan's Book, Step By Step Microsoft Access VBA is a much more basic beginner's book. It takes you by the hand and gets you writing code quickly. It does not take you very far into VBA, but does get you going.

The next book I'd recommend is VBA Handbook by Susan Novalis. It's a much more gentle intro than is Sussman's book. In fact, after you learn Novalis' book you will probably be ready for Sussman's book.

This is a great book that covers many important aspects of VBA and access programming. The title "Beginning" of this book, however, is a bit misleading, because the pace is probably too fast for people who are new to coding. The exercises at the end of each chapter usually require the readers to use new things not covered in the book, so most of the time, I would have to look at the answers first, and then try to understand how the problems are solved. Therefore I feel that the authors are trying to jam in as much information as they possibly can on the topics within limited space. Fortunately the explanations for the codes are well done, and the author stick to their promise that this is a book about the VBA, not 'How-to-use-access'. The authors stick with DAO all through the book and leave out ADO entirely. I agree with them on that decision, so that one can really get a good feel for DAO and not lose focus trying to learn 2 technologies at once. If you can go through this book and understand the concepts and details, I would recommend, as the next step, a developer's reference, such as Access 2000 Developers' Handbook from Sybex.

I have about 12 books on Access development in my bookcase and this is one that I can't stop reading. Why? Because it's done like I think a good beginners book should be. Many books contain a lot of babbling and not enough 'good' examples. This one is different.

Hundreds of useful examples, well explained, waiting to be typed (or used from the CD) can be found. The book explains very well their choice of using DAO over ADO, I thing it's a very good idea. As far as I'm concerned, I thing it's one of the best solid introduction to Access VBA you can find. As an Access teacher, I found some very good concepts and approaches in their projects.

You're very familiar with Access interface? Was exposed to VBA a little? Willing to bring your apps to new heights? Want to see some examples? Then this book IS for you. The pace is reasonable, the writing is great, there are easy to more complex concepts explained. As the title implies, this is a beginning VBA book, not a developer's handbook. But don't be misled by the word 'Beginning', there is serious stuff in there like Class objects, networking issues and approaches to solving good problems.

You're tired of books saying, you could do this or do that without explaining how? This book is not like that. Finally, a book that left out that Northwind omnipresent database and came up with something different!

I originally read this book some 10 years ago. I found it interesting because an art that I began practicing in Korea in 1983 was "Profiled" in the book. I was never really sure of the precise heritage of my art, but Mr.Gilbey`s seems correct. But, with years, I found some of his information to be fictitious.A story that comes to mind is in the final section where he claims a man left a fist impression in a steel stancion! Please....! My original copy of this book was from the 1960`s -the author probably never assumed the world would grow so knoledgeable! Overall a good book.

This is a really entertaining and easily read book. Regardless of if this is all fact or fiction I have personally bought this book and even own it in hardcover. Funny in it's telling and light hearted in it's text. Recognise familiar fighting tactics that you or a friend may have used or seen, and then relate them to their country of origin. So if you have ever heard of,used or wish to partake of the Liverpool Nutter,the Ganges Groin Gouge, the Canton Corkscrew or one of many more fighting tactics then buy this book. If not for the knowledge then for the entertainment.

While most may not have any use for the techniques described in the book, I'm sure Bruce Lee read it. The Savate kicking sequence is the same form Lee used in 'Bruce Lee's Fighting Method' series (1977). And the sketch in Lee's 'Tao of Jeet Kune Do'(1975) of what he calls, "savate's purring kick," is remarkably similar to the sketch in Gilbey's book of the Patagonian Purr-Kick. Moreover, Gilbey's Peking Man talking about "being trapped" by one's technique and the notion of "seem[ing] to have no method" sure sounds like stuff Lee used to say. But whether Lee read it or not, one can certainly cull a philosophy of fighting from the book: 1) anything goes, and 2) keep it simple. Bye the way, the copy I have is the 14th printing from 1976.