I liked this book alot because it reminded me of real people I know. The kids go around on rollerblades, just the way kids do in my town. I liked the love story, too, and the way the gril, Cat, becomes a hero in the end. I think it showed kids the way they really are, how they like to hang out together and do all kinds of things together. The chapters are short. And this makes it fun to read.

It was a wonderful book... I loved it. But, it does have some stuff that I wouldn't suggest pre-teens or below read.

If you know a kid who's interested in racing, there's no better introduction to big-time motorsports than this book. It takes young readers (probably age 8 and up) inside the world of Champ Car racing, with thorough discussions of the drivers, cars, teams and events. When I was a kid, I had little concept of racing beyond the Indy 500, but a book like this would have added immensely to my understanding of the sport. The book's only shortcoming is that the information is somewhat dated now, but its young readers probably won't mind a bit.

This book helps you understand goes on in Indy Car racing. I recommed this book alot!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

although the book gave advanced problems, the book is not comprehensive enough ; more examples are needed. We had to use other resources to apply principles learned. And by the way, do you folks in Amazon have a solutions manual to this book ? Pls. notify me through e-mail at andrewiii@mailcity.com. :)

I am an educator in state college for governmet auditor (STAN)so I recommended for all student taking accounting course to buy this book. Unfortunately, the quality of the paper is not good enough compare to for example Intermediate Accounting by Kieso & Weygandt. Also, the price is very expensive for Indonesian educator and student. Please create cheaper book.

Having read both the book and the other review of it here, I'm in wholehearted agreement. But I did encounter one small downside. James Bain recommends only one source for upholstery material -- and that turns out to be a wholesaler to the trade only. I haven't checked the other recommdnations, but you should be aware that there's a possible problem here, however minor.

This book is an excellent value. It is packed with useful techniques for restoring just about any kind of furniture. The entire book is in full-color. Each project and technique includes a material and equipment list as well as clear step-by-step instructions accompanied by small photos.

The book starts out with tips on where to purchase furniture and what to look for when you do. Then it gives you the basics of getting started including tools, finishing, cleaning, stripping, and treating infestation or wood rot. It also has a wonderful section on understanding wood with a nice chart on 15 wood types, their use, advantages and disadvantages.

Consolidation of furniture including deciding what parts to keep, dismantling a piece or simply making the furniture joints stronger follows. Consolidation sections specific to chairs, tables, and a chest of drawers provide useful details. They teach things like replacing a broken chair stretcher bar, evening chair legs, mending major cracks, replacing a table chassis, carving a new leg for a tripod table or repairing worn drawer slides. There are two additional sections on metal fittings and upholstery. Molding a backplate, antiquing new metal fittings and replacing a double stuffed seat are just a few of the techniques taught here.

The next section focuses on repairing and beautifying surfaces. This includes a great guide to solving common problems like white water marks, dents and scorch marks. Veneer repairs such fixing blisters and removing an old veneer and reusing it as are also covered. It then goes on to demonstrate several surface effects including French polishing, working with gesso, gilding, aging paint, staining, graining, marbling and waxing.

The last section includes 12 projects that use the techniques previously covered. In one project, clients need a sixth chair. They find one with a matching back but must replace the entire seating structure and reupholster it. In another project an empire-style night table needs its brass fitting replaced and its tambour door dismantled and refitted. It also needs new stain, French polish and wax.

The information here will enable you to take on some tough challenges with satisfying professional results as you restore or enhance fine furniture. To help with any project there is a nice list of suppliers in the back.

i have to admit,james robinson really won me out on this one.this is his storytelling before his ideas started to grow a little stale,lately.it's an easy and fun read,is the best i can,or anyone else,can put it.it has a nice sense of fantasy and the mystery of unexplored places. chance falcon,a pre-adolescent school girl is trying to win her father out into the next "falcon",the title of a wizard passed down generations except the only catch to it is yo gotta be a son.and it's too dangerous for her anyway,but she proves her dad and all of us she take take the most dangerous of adventures and come out true.it's got suspense and adventure and paul smith's artwork fits in this series like a glove.it's simple yet gorgeous.kinda how jeff smith's artwork fits into bone,smith's illustration belongs in leave it to chance. read this book to go through a wonderful romp of adventure.

This graphic novel (originally published in 4 comic books) introduces Chance Falconer who lives in a modern world where magic exists. Chance is the daughter of the great Lucas Falconer whose family has protected the city from supernatural threats for generations. As Chance tries to prove to her father that she's ready to be trained in the "family business" a mystery is uncovered and a great adventure ensues.

I LOVE this book and the rest of the series. The artwork and the writing work perfectly together - telling a complex and intelligent story without losing the sense of innocence and fun that is at its heart.

I've given copies of the book to adult friends of mine, children, and early teens and all of them have enjoyed it.

I won't buy a book for a kid or teen unless I've read it and liked it. I've had a hard time finding adventure books about girls (there are so few) that fit this bill. But "Leave it to Chance" is a winner.

Fans of the Osprey Campaign series will enjoy this volume. The writing is clear and there are good maps. Unlike many Civil War books were are little more than a ctalog of the actions of individual regiments, the author gives a good view of the big picture of the battle, and how it helped Grant rise to prominence, as well as a good sprinkling of personal accounts by participants.

This book manages to explain in simple terms the complex struggle at Shiloh without going over the layperson's head. The illustrations are excellent and useful. It is one of the best books in the Osprey Campaign series I have read to date. The author goes into logical detail about the events before during and after the battle and keeps an exciting pace. I highly recommend this title to anyone interested in the battle of Shiloh. It is good enough to stand alone or as an excellent addition to the Campaign series.

The action is fast paced, the story is compelling, and the characters are very real. The author has created a universe of challenges and adventure in which the characters are forced to grow. The only disappointment I had was when I finished the book. A must have for fans of science fiction.

For his first novel this was very well done. I found myself wrapped up in the two main characters as they came to terms with the truth and lies that had been their lives. Both have established lives, but there was plenty of room for growth and I was left wanting more by the time the ride was over.

The Golden Age is another "Elseworlds" examination of comics history. By using such rarely seen characters as Captain Triumph and Mr.America along with the "big guns" of the era (Green Lantern, The Atom,etc.)James Robinson visits a Post WWII America where superheroes are considered suspect, and only those who conform are to be trusted. Using superheroes to comment on McCarthyism may seem to be a stretch, but Robinson makes the story challenging with many twists. The "alternate history" concept gives the author the freedom to take chances, but also eliminates the element of "this can't be happening" suspense. Too many sub plots (Hourman's addiction, Starman's breakdown) get in the way of the more compelling central tale.

Paul Smith's art is a wonder throughout. Shifting from the well-lit scenes of Dyna-man to Paul Kirk's despair, Smith constantly creates visuals that hold your attention and never let you forget the true wonder of this medium; the ability for two dimensional, brightly colored figures to fascinate and entertain.

This was the four-part Eleseworlds tale that put James Robinson on the map and set the stage for his history-spanning Starman series. It furthermore is regarded as the best thing anyone ever did with the original DC heroes since the actual Golden Age.

It's also a lot of fun. Great character play, sharp historic details - with a couple of odd exceptions - and top-notch art by Smith make this a must-read for super-hero comics readers. In addition, it's fairly accessible for newer readers since most of the stars of this comic are not that well-known and thus made accessible for once.

Much has been said about "Marvels" and "Kingdom Come" as being the best comics of the 1990s. But I'd gladly pit this against those, and with its grounding in the real world, it holds its own very nicely.

I'm a huge mark for Golden Age heroes. The major problem with the comic books of yesteryear is that the heroes were two dimensional, completely lacking in personality. They were all upstanding, usually rich, and basically boring, when not in costume. If it wasn't for the creative gimmicks and colorful costumes, the men and women behind the masks were interchangeable. James Robinson's updating of these classic Golden Agers is insightful and refreshing. He takes these legends and creates distinctive, and relatively believable, personal backgrounds for each of them. Yet he does this without diminishing the fun and nostalgia of those earlier tales. While congratulating Robinson, I feel inclined to point out the influence of Alan Moore's Watchmen. While Watchmen may have set the standard for alternate takes on the traditional DC/Marvel universes, Robinson and Smith's work here easily lives up to that lofty standard.

Paul Smith does a great job on the art, subtly employing updated pencilling techniques along with a very distinctive golden age era style. The colors in this book are also great, obviously far superior to the comic books of decades past. My only problem with the art lies with the lack of differentiation between some of the alter egos of these costumes heroes. Since most of these guys basically had the same blonde hair, chiseled features, erect postures, and well tailored suits back in the day, sometimes it's difficult to tell them apart, at least in the early chapters. As you read on, Robinson adds humanistic touches of doubts, addictions, regrets and redemption to enrich the characters well beyond their original incarnations.

This collection covers a complete story arc, which is great, but I must admit that I would love to read more tales of the Golden Age from James Robinson and Paul Smith. James Robinson is easily one of the top 5 to 10 comic book writers out there. Check out his popular, and critically acclaimed, Starman (another update of a Golden Ager) series if you don't believe me.

As the author claimed, you cut the book into about 160 peices then glue and assemble them into a working clock. I just finished making my clock. It didn't work. The pinions and gears just didn't mesh right. There must be tricks to get the precision of alignment necessary for the clock to run, but the author revealed none of them. Lining things up by eye, and being very careful just isn't enough. I was surprised to read other reviews where the clocks worked. Even so, I was amazed at the engineering of these paper parts, and am considering ordering a couple more books from which to re make parts (the author recommends this from the start). At the very least, reading this book, and making the clock from it, will leave one with a very good understanding of how such clocks work, but not necessarily an understanding of how to make clocks that work.

While this may be premature (I'm only on piece 40), I'm having such a great time constructing the clock, whether it actually works or not seems inconsequential. As others have mentioned, an X-Acto knife is essential if you really want to do it right. This fact alone precludes children attempting this study in patience. I've seen some horrific X-Acto blade accidents from folks skilled in their use. I kind of like the idea that the author does not take you by the hand as you build the clock. It's almost as if he wants you to experience the same discoveries he did back in 1947 (as the author's note explains)when he happened upon the book on which this clock is based.I also must mention what a value this book is. For a small investment I will have days of entertainment building the clock and explaining its inner workings to my kids.

This project requires considerable time and patience but you *can* end up with a clock that really works. As previously mentioned I think the best strategy to to work about an hour or so each evening, it took me too months to complete the clock with extra hours on weekends. It works! The key is the gears. The main issue is the concentricity of the gear wheels -- in other words, their outer edge rotates a constant distance from the center. Get this wrong and the wheels will bind as they rotate against one another. Two problems: finding the center, and constructing the gear wheels consistently. The first gear you meet is the main drive wheel, it took me a week to construct. Put an axl in it and spin it to make sure it's concentric as you build. Make sure the inner mesh gears of the secondary gear (and others) are consistent (no teeth wider or narrower than others, trim them with a exacto knife if needed. Tip: they should be bent into an straight accordian shape before glue, this way you can see that all teetch are even. The main gear and secondary innner gear are most important -- up to the escapement. The later hand gears are no problem. Once complete you need to patch, trim, reposition axles, cut... Note that on the book cover the squished main gear teeth that the author adjusted to make the wheel concentric!

The last completed novel by Henry James is, like preceding works of his later era ("The Wings of the Dove" comes up to mind first), very hard to read. That's the warning to every unwary reader who happens to think about starting to read Henry James anew.

The plot is simple: its about two couples of people -- Charlotte and Amerigo, and Adam Verver and his daughter Maggie Verver. Charlotte loves Amerigo, who, however, decides to marry Maggie. Soon after that, Charlotte marries Adam Verver, an American millionaire. Still, Amerigo and Charlotte maintain their former relations as lovers until their secret is discovered by Maggie unexpectedly with an advent of a golden bowl, which looks perfect outward, but deep inside cracked. Maggie, who greatly adores her deceived father, in turn, starts to move in order to mend the cracked relations, or secure the apparently happy family life without disturbing the present relations.

As this sketch of the story tells you, one of the favorite topics of the 19th century literature -- adultery -- is staged in the center of the book, but the way James handles it is very different from those of other American or British writers. The meaning is hidden in a web of complicated, even contorted sentences of James, and you have to read often repeatedly to grasp the syntax. The grammar is sometimes unclear, with his frequent use of pronouns and double negatives, and very often you just have to take time to understand to what person James' "he" or "she" really refers to. It is not a rare thing for you to find that a paragraph starts with those "he" and "she" without any hint about its identity, so you just read on until you hit the right meaning of these pronouns. And this is just one example of the hard-to-chew James prose. If you think it is pompous, you surely are excused.

But as you read on again, you find, behind this entangled sentences and a rather banal melodramatic story, something intelligent, something about humans that lurks in the dark part of our heart. I will not pretend that I can understand all of the book, but James clearly shows how we, with a limited ability of our perception, try to act as the characters of the book do, in the given atomosphere of society. To me, this book is about the way of the people's behavior luminously recorded; about the way of our expressing and perceiving ourselves without uttering them aloud.

Gore Vidal says about the book: "James's conversational style was endlessly complex, humourous, unexpected -- euphemistic where most people are direct, and suddenly precise where avoidance or ellipsis is usual (see his introduction of "The Golden Bowl" in Penguin Classics edition. This is exactly the nature of this book, which would either attract or repel you. Unfortunately, I admit, this is not my cup of tea, for I prefer more story-oriented novels. Still, if you really want to challenge reading something really substantial, I for one recommend this book.

There is a sumptuous film version of the book, starring Uma Thurman and Nick Nolte. It might be a good idea to watch it before you start reading the book.

I discovered James in college and read all his full-length novels before reaching age 30. The only one I had real trouble with was The Golden Bowl.

I recently reread the novel and reveled in its elegant complexity. (It would be nice to think that the passage of 20 years has brought wisdom and insight that made me a better reader, but the credit belongs to Dorothea Krook's illuminating discussion in The Ordeal of Consciousness in Henry James.)

The Golden Bowl is the last, the most demanding, and the most rewarding of James's major novels. Even its immediate predecessors, The Ambassadors and The Wings of the Dove, do not reach its deep examination of the mixed motives, the tangled good and evil, that drive human action and passion. Although he presents his characters' acts and much of what goes on in their heads, James manages in such a way that while Krook believes Adam and Maggie are on the side of the angels, Gore Vidal (who introduces the current Penguin edition) believes they are monsters of manipulation--and (as Krook acknowledges) both views are consistent with the evidence.

Much--too much--of these riches of doubt and ambiguity is lost in the Merchant/Ivory/Jhabvala translation to the screen (2001). The movie has some good things, but it could have had many more. Surprised by extraneous material (like the exotic dance), heavy-handed symbolism (the exterior darkness on the day Charlotte and Amerigo find the golden bowl), and needless oversimplifications (Amerigo's talk of "dishonor" to Charlotte, which exaggerates his virtue and his desire to be done with her), I got the sense that nobody involved in the production had read the novel with the care that it requires and rewards. Had they done so, their version could have been really fine--both as a movie and as an invitation to the novel.

It is certainly true that Henry James is a notoriously difficult writer. That's because he gives you very little to hold onto -- no clear statements of purpose, no overtly articulated themes, no ideas. Rather, he presents the very textures of his characters' minds as they try to make sense of what is happening to them. For James, such an act is the very essence of being human.

These difficulties are especially apparent in "The Golden Bowl," where virtually nothing happens. Yet in this dark masterpiece, James gives us a remarkably clear guide to what he is up to, namely, the golden bowl itself. On the one hand, it stands for all that is beautiful. But on the other, it suggests the fundamental brokenness of the characters in the novel, who view each other as mere objects to be collected, moved around, and manipulated. Maggie, Prince Amerigo, Adam, and, to a lesser extent, Charolotte, all suffer from this affliction.

The level of maninpulation by these characters is extraordinary. And the greatest manipulator of all is the novel's apparent victim, Maggie, who through insinuation persuades her father to return to America with Charlotte so Maggie can have Prince Amerigo to herself. This shatters all of their lives to pieces, just as the golden bowl is smashed to bits near the end of the novel.