The portable cards which constitute this 'book' are well-designed. They will assist any student who is taking undergraduate organic chemistry course prepare for revisions. Although that they lacked details in some respects, their coverage did embrace wide areas.
They are particularly useful in learning about the various nomenclature, as well as the physical and chemical properties of a functional group in a given homologous series.
"OrgoCards" impressed me with the way it handled those nucleophilic substitution reactions that members of Carbonyl group undergo. Despite its haphazard lessons on Acylation, its efforts on Alcohols, Aldehydes, Ketones, Esters, and Carboxylic acids are quite commendable.
This "OrgoCards: Organic Chemistry Review" should be seen either as a textbook complement, or a notebook alternative. I will suggest that you consider buying it if your lecturer is the type that is not enthusiastic about giving class-notes.

These Orgocards were extremely useful not only while studying for my organic chemistry course but especially for the MCAT.

I tried making my own flashcards but I found them immediately obsolete after I got Orgocards which contain the critical information in a very understandable and easy to read format. They were also really a critical part of my studying for the bio section of the MCAT since a lot of the detailed info from o-chem had become a bit fuzzy by that point.

A definite must buy.

I used it for studying the o-chem portion of the MCAT this summer. These cards are fantastic, full of details and great summaries and figures. It is too bad that it was not available a year ago when I was studying for the course. Highly recommended!

Not to bad.... Great back ground story to the Vlad books. (I hope he writes more of those.)

Ghost Wolf

GENRE: Fantasy (mystery and meandering style)

OVERALL FEELING: Four brothers fight one another, as well as other magical antagonists, in a fantastic kingdom at the borders of a Faerie world.

MARKETING APPEAL: I'm not surprised this didn't sell particularly well; it was offbeat with good characters and some interesting ideas; good but not great; no high concept; mostly a slice of life or meandering story line.

SCORING: Superb (A), Excellent (A-), Very good (B+), Good (B) Fairly Good (B-) Above Average (C+), Mediocre (C ), Barely Passable (C-) Pretty Bad (D+), Dismal (D), Waste of Time (D-), Into the Trash (F)

DIALOGUE: B STRUCTURE: B- HISTORY SETTING: A- CHARACTERS: B EVIL SETUP/ANTAGONISTS: B EMOTIONAL IMPACT: B+ SURPRISES: B- FANTASTIC/MYTHOLOGICAL ELEMENTS: A PACING: B+ THE LITTLE THINGS: B+ OVERALL STYLE: A FLOW OF WORDS: A- CHOICE OF FOCUS: A TRANSITIONS/FLASHBACKS/POV: A COMPLEXITY OF WORDS/SYMBOLISM/THEMES: B+

OVERALL GRADE: B+

SYNOPSIS: Hungarian Folklore style fantasy story; breaks in between with legends of the lands which gives it texture; squabbling princes fight with each other and magical opponents of various sorts.

CONCEPT: This tale is interesting but not really high concept; there's no great goal for the hero to pursue; it's more of a meandering style and one has to get into it for the characters and settings.

PACING: It moved well in the first 2/3 of the story; lots of little conflicts; learning about the lands and the legends in between. But, at the end, certain parts with the whole plan began to gnaw at me. Not enough was happening and that may have been the problem. More time was spent as characters started to slight one another, but there was too much of a lull. At times, the story meandered so rising conflict was an issue. Of course, I liked the story so much and side stories that it wasn't really a problem. However, at the end, I wasn't as impressed so I began to feel that the story lagged too much.

OVERALL STRUCTURE: The structure of this story meanders . . . taking a slice of life here and a slice of life there. As I mentioned, there really isn't some great epic goal as one usually expects in fantasy stories. This is one of the reasons I liked it even though such things are hard to pull off. The narrator's voice into this story is great; it comes into the legends but is also used at certain points.

The palace is a symbol of the relationship between the brothers . . . as it crumbles so do the relationships between Miklos and Laszlo.

WHY IT WORKED FOR ME: For reasons stated above: this is the type of story that isn't heavy on pacing but is great on side steps and legends. Other reasons listed above. FLAWS: (1) Lack of a focused epic scope or some big goal which hurt the pacing; (2) not enough time on most characters which made empathy difficult, making them good but not great; (3) OVERALL STYLE: His narrative element is superb and catchy. Focus is weak in some ways as listed under flaws. No character is mainly evil or good; all are gray.

FAVORITE METAPHOR: Think of the Cellars as feet, and the sandstone pillars emerging from them as legs. The east and west wings (the latter of which collapsed many years ago) are arms. The hallways are veins and arteries; the Great Hall on the third story is the heart. The high, central tower, where only the King is permitted, is the head. Can we stretch our analogy even further? The kitchen on the second story is the belly, and the dining room below it is the digestive system. Nestled among these organs is the room that, only two years ago, was occuped by Miklos, the missing prince of Fenario.

FAVORITE ACTION PASSAGE: She made gentle sounds into his ear as she helped him to remove his garments, then they lay together on her cloak. Slowly, she taught him the games of love, and he taught her of an innocence she had never known. The reeds swayed above them, but there was no wind to stir them.

FAVORITE DESCRIPTIVE PASSAGE: First, consider the River.

Now, remembering this, Miklos decided that the River ought to rise from its banks and sweep his wounded, broken body away, out of sight to the east. But it wouldn't. Miklos was twenty-one years old, and dying.

Next, the Palace:

Now, observe the interior:

And the City:

Consider a tiny crack in wood that had once been bright and polished, but was now dull and neglected. Something appeared through the crack. What was it? Maybe a leaf. Maybe the first shooting of a new seed, straining for the light in a lightless room, from the dark of a soil that wasn't fertile before it became dull and neglected. Perhaps a weed that will exist for a time, then sink to death and decay, as the Palace itself foes.

Brokedown Palace fits into the Taltos tales, some how, some way. IT's from the other side of the coin, the mortal rather than faerie side, at least in some ways, and it's written in an offbeat, quietly friendly way that gives even the bad guy an almost benign feeling.

I think it's Brust's second best. (His best would be To Reign in Hell, no doubt.)

A serious book that covers the entire scope of good management practices. No cutesy language, and definitely neither for dummies nor idiots. The first few pages on goal setting and the model they provide alone are worth the price of the book. I actually started reading the book backwards. The chapters are self contained and well written.

That said, the book suffers a certain dryness in delivery. What would enliven it and make the content easy to remember is well placed diagrams. I do not mean the kind of useless icons one finds in Dummies books, but serious business oriented diagrams that visualize the concepts.

You buy yourself a great education in managing when you buy this book. You will not become a manager by reading the book; but if you are already a manager you can be a great one.

After several years of reviewing management books and observing live education sessions for managers, I found this book. It is a great reference; distilling useful information that is usually only found in small doses in other books and classes. It also contains a bibliography of other useful books at the end of each chapter.

I enjoyed every part of this book and I highly recommend it. It's easy to read and covers all the relevant areas of management. Very impressed with the breadth of topics.

Also recommend a companion book for this, which focuses on leadership and management as an ensemble: "The Leader's Guide: 15 Essential Skills."

Ever try to look up a word in a 600 page dictionary that isn't in any order known to you? Unless you know this book's secret you'll have to look through the entire book to find your weed, if it's in the book at all. There is a key on page 603 but no instructions on how to use it and the author apparently doesn't return email inquiries. This book is full of great pictures but if you want a book to help you identify a weed in your garden look somewhere else.

A must-have book for gardeners, hikers, rural residences. 100% color photos make it great to ID weeds about the house. Categorized by family so pretty easy to find. Books that have art renderings of plants just don't ID a plant for me, and I'm an artist!
Any negative about the book would be that it could use more descriptive type about the plant.

This book isn't for everyone, but it really fills a gaping hole in the reference library of any gardener interested in the use of native plants, xeriscape gardening, wildflower cultivation, etc. For anyone who has ever let a yard go to seed "just to see what happens" (or dreamed of doing so) this book helps you determine what weeds are really weeds and what weeds are hidden treasures. The book is amply illustrated with photos of both mature plants and seedlings, which helps you determine what to get rid of after monsoon rains have done their part. The descriptions are clear and the index functions fine. Plus I just love the idea of having an entire book on weeds!

I found this book to be one of the best books about command decisions and relationships between Politicians and generals during the Civil War I have ever read. It covers the battles and the leaders of the Confederacy, both great and flawed. I found it hard to believe that some Southern leaders/generals fought harder against their own side in stupid little infights and disputes. The book goes a long way in explaining Lee's strategy and that of Davis and how they were different and the results of that difference. This book concentrates on the Eastern Theatre, the author's other book 'Jefferson Davis and his Generals' covers the Western Theatre of operations and is brillant in its examination of this area. Both books are well worth reading.

It was ok but if your doing a report then it could get a little boring but it is great information!

As Osprey Campaign series books go this is one of the best. The focus of the book is the blunting of the Nazi counter offensive by the Patton's 3rd Army. It is laid out in the traditional Ospery style and as always gives the reader a broad overview of the campaign.

What makes this book better than most is that it does not get lost in the details of the military movements. It does a fine job of explaining the whys and the hows. Not an easy thing in the limited space avaliable. The most interesting part of the book focus on the German commanders, fresh from the Russian front, fighting the American military with the same Eastern font tactics. As explained, the American use of artilery and close air support made the tactics a disaster.

Steven J. Zaloga, the renowned expert on armored vehicles, has delivered a solid campaign synopsis of the battles fought in Lorraine between 5-29 September 1944. The campaign pitted General Patton's pursuing 3rd Army against the hastily-raised 5th Panzer Army under General Manteuffel and elements of the 1st Army. This campaign has received considerable attention in other far lengthier works, so this volume does not claim to break any new ground. However, it does offer a balanced account which covers all the key events and offers perspectives from both the American and German points of view.

As in all the Osprey Campaign series, the volume starts with a section on the opposing strategic plans. In assessing Allied strategy, Zaloga conforms to conventional wisdom in suggesting that if only Patton's 3rd Army in Lorraine had been accorded logistical priority in September 1944, then perhaps the year might have ended very differently. This is actually the voice of Patton glorifiers/Montgomery bashers. This conveniently ignores the logistic bottlenecks back at the beaches: even if Eisenhower had given Patton the bulk of available supplies, the Redball Express could not have supplied Patton very much further east at that time. The Allied armies were consuming vast quantities of fuel in their pursuit across France and they needed a deep-water port like Antwerp in September 1944 far more than a tenuous foothold across the Rhine. Finally, does anyone seriously believe that Patton's 3rd Army - which only had 8-10 divisions at the time - could have mounted a serious invasion of Germany with minimal support from the other Allied armies? Zaloga ignores the vast manpower and material resources that were still available to Hitler in September 1944. Despite widespread condemnation by many armchair strategists, Eisenhower's "Broad Front" strategy was the best course of action under the circumstances.

The section on commanders is a bit odd because the majority of the space is devoted to well-known higher-level commanders, including Hitler, Model, Bradley and Patton. The corps and below leaders who actually fought the battle are barely mentioned - the two US corps commanders receive one sentence each. Major General Wood, commander of the exemplary US 4th Armored Division, is barely mentioned anywhere in the text. Given the local nature of the armored battles in Lorraine, it is probably inappropriate to describe this series of actions as "Patton versus Manteuffel". These were battalion and brigade-level fights.

As expected from a technical expert, the sections on the opposing armies are quite good. In particular, Zaloga makes very good points about the US edge in battlefield communications. However, one major item lacking here is a discussion of tactical organizations: what did German armor battalions look like in comparison to their US counterparts, particularly in terms of scouting assets, support weapons and maintenance capability? As a former armor officer, I can attest that maintenance capability is much more critical in sustaining armored combat than is often appreciated. Unfortunately, Zaloga leaves this vital area blank and instead tells us that the Germans committed about 616 tanks and assault guns against 1,280 US tanks and tank destroyers.

The sections covering the actual campaign are quite good, starting with the destruction of the 106th Panzer Brigade on 8 September 1944 and progressing up to the final battles around Arracourt on 25-29 September. While the 3-D maps are quite good, the standard 2-D maps leave much to be desired since key phases of the battle are not depicted. There is no map depicting the German offensive that led up to the Arracourt battles, so it is difficult to determine how the Germans coordinated all their units. This tends to make it look like the panzer brigades were committed with support from other units.

The section on wargaming the battle is ridiculous as it usually is in Osprey books. With the availability of superb computer simulations of the Arracourt battles such as Talonsoft's WEST FRONT and OPERATIONAL ART OF WAR (which are never mentioned in this section on war gaming), it is absolutely ludicrous to read a discussion of a "war game" where the players "wear personal stereos, playing deafening music to recreate the effect of motor noise within the crew compartment. Players could also wear cardboard spectacles, with narrow slits to simulate the view through a periscope or vision port..." and so on. Please stop. Given the existence of Avalon Hill's SQUAD LEADER series and the Talonsoft products, which adequately cover the Arracourt battles, this section is a gross insult to serious wargamers.

Nevertheless, Zaloga's book is a useful campaign summary to keep on the bookshelf. Certainly the organization of the material is more interesting than the actual subject, for this overly-covered campaign was certainly not one of the epic struggles of the Second World War. The US 3rd Army was winded after a long pursuit and at the absolute limit of their logistical chain. Although beaten in Normandy, the Germans were starting to regroup but the Lorraine campaign offers one of the very few times in the Second World War that they fought poorly on the offense. Most of all, the strategic stakes were low in Lorraine. If the Germans won, they might have hurt 3rd Army a bit but they would probably only have bought themselves a few weeks respite. On the other hand, the US achieved a tactical victory but so what - the campaign still ended in stalemate for logistic reasons and the weather. This is a key factor ignored by Zaloga and most other writers on the Lorraine campaign: yes, the 3rd Army defeated the German spoiling attacks but how did this translate into a strategic success? The fact is that the strategic circumstances of September 1944 prohibited 3rd Army from inflicting a decisive defeat on the Whermacht, no matter how much tactical skill they demonstrated on the battlefield.

This little book gives an overview of a single campaign in France during 1944. It involved the liberation of the Lorraine area by Patton and his famous 4th Armored Division versus German armor expert von Manteuffel. The author, Steve Zaloga is a long-time student of armored combat in all areas. His expertise shows in this book as describing this campaign weaves the technical aspects of armor with the personalities of the commanders and the tactical situation. As with most Osprey "Campaign" series books there are chapters covering the larger picture, the opposing commanders, the forces involved and then looking at the actual campaign and significant engagements. At the end of the book are quick notes on touring the battlefield today and on creating wargame simiulations of the campaign. A quick and easy read, but packed with good historical information. Highly recommended for history buffs and armor fans.

Three cheers for a great read AND a great life - once you've read this book, you'll understand why Gen. Robert E. Lee still stands today as the most beloved and respected military leader of all time. The simple truth is the man was motivated by honor, duty and most important of all, faith, and everything he did was premeditated by him with those ideas in mind. How refreshing a story after one has been bombarded today with stories of those our children look up to who are motivated by greed and ego and talk about somebody "disrespecting" them - it is very difficult to respect someone spouting obscenities, covered with tatoos, hair dyed eye-popping colors, and sporting metal earrings dangling from various parts of their face! They say "I'm not a role model." I think that is a cop-out spoken by someone who decided he wanted all the glory and money and fame without living up to the responsibility that goes along with it. It's too bad strong and moral leaders, men who stood up for what was right and were willing to pay whatever price that cost, who knew they were role models and did their utmost to be good ones, whose stories we've read about in history class about men down through the years from earliest history through the colonies and the Revolutionary War to the Civil War, seem also to be "Gone With the Wind".

The account of a great historical figure---a gentleman of duty, truth and spirit---a man of God. Yankee carpetbaggers, scalawags and liberals alike, be forewarned: this book may shake you from your nihilistic mind nap. As Robert E. Lee so aptly put it, the Southern States had "sacred principles to maintain and rights to defend, for which we were in duty bound to do our best, even if we perished in the endeavor". Long live the South and those who have fought and died to keep alive her character and ideals! Indeed, those readers 'educated' on a strangulation diet of revised history may be enlightened, perhaps even intellectually emancipated, by this grand book. Five stars Mr. Wilkins, 100 stars General Lee!

This book reveals a side of Robert E. Lee that is not explored as much as it should be. The character and Christian testamony exhibited here should be an example to us all. I found the reading to be spell bounding and very hard to put down. Thanks to the authors for a non-bias view of this great American hero.

There are a few really compelling stories here - mostly the ones that focus on the victims and the rescue workers. But there is also, sadly, a great deal of garbage.

There's actually a fair amount of America bashing here. Some stories are patriotic, but, for the most part, the people holding or displaying American flags are protrayed as ignorant bigots.

Now, the artists and writers have every right to express their views. If that sort of thing is your cup of tea, I suspect you'll regard the more anti-American stories as provocative and stimulating. To me, they seemed like more of the same tired cliches I used to hear all the time before 9-11.

There's also a fair amount of the mushy-headedness about Islam which seems popular in this country these days. ...

The worst stories were those that tried to make some sort of political point. In one, an alien shows up and explains why we are all doomed if we don't adopt the Democratic party platform. (I'm really sort of neutral on abortion, but I always have to shake my head when someone starts preaching about the need to take care of the poor, the weak, the children, the elderly, the fish, the birds, the dung beetles, and then insists, even by omission, that destroying a human fetus is just fine.)

I guess what I'm trying to say is a lot of this felt very contrived. The more powerful stories and pictures were the ones where the author/artist was writing/drawing from the heart. The worst were the ones were the author was "moralizing," for a lack of a better word.

Firstly - I bought this book. Therefore, my money went towards the funds that helped victims of the atrocities of 11th September. It was the least I could do. (I also signed a book of condolence, but we all know how practically useful _that_ is.)

Secondly, this book is a remarkable ragbag of responses to the attack. One of the striking thing about the 9-11 attack is that it was the first time in nearly 200 years that the US mainland had been attacked. (Pearl Harbour doesn't count because, at the time, Hawaii was not a state of the US, it was still a "dependency" - shorthand for "ex-colony".)

The best responses in this book are the ones that take a, shall we say, dialectical response to the attack - those that at once focus on the innocent victims (cause it was a terrorist attack, and terrorism by nature is aimed at targeting the innocent in order to make the guilty feel guilty) and that also have a longer historical perspective. Because, and I'm almost embarrassed to point this out - the 9-11 attack did not happen because some deluded lunatics somewhere took it into their heads to be mean to Americans. It was the ultimate suicide attack, the nec plus ultra of the recent bombings in Jerusalem.

The best pieces in this book do not merely recognise the heroism of New York firefighters and police personnel - which is a sort of heroism that I, for one, don't doubt. But the facts are, this kind of heroism has been displayed around the world by populations under attack from US-funded or US-trained forces. It's not a very nice fact to have to face, but unless it is faced, there is little chance of events like 9-11 never happening again.

The sad thing is, much of the more ambitious pieces in here rely on "private" tragedy (as if these events had no more significance than the deaths of people in New York) and public jingoism - witness Stan Lee's asinine allegory about sleeping elephants. Stan, if the elephant's population was happy, it's because it had stolen so much from other countries already. Learn a little history.

Those of us who have learned to live with the potential for terrorist attacks on a daily basis are a little less naive than much of the authorship of this book. I grieve as much as anyone else for the dead of 9-11. But I cannot pretend that it isn't the kind of thing that happens around the rest of the world, as a result of the insanely inequal distribution of wealth.

This is a good book. But it is as much symptom as it is diagnosis.

I am using these two volumes to do my senior thesis and have read the other reviews and am convinced that some reviewers need to BACK OFF. This was written in commemoration for those who had a hard time dealing with the tragedy, not for you to criticize. The artists and comics who made these works did so as a way to understand and as a way to vent. I am sorry, but if you are going to criticize a creative effort to release you have no compassion. Some stories are disturbing, but the whole event was and has been disturbing. I am sure someone is going to think I am waving my flag a little to wildly, but you know what I am just calling it as I see it. Until you spent the day watching from your window as the towers fell down and smoked up the whole city to tell them how to do there job!

The content of Accidental Millionaire: The Rise and Fall of Steve Jobs at Apple Computer was interesting and certainly showed me why Apple is not as large or successful as IBM, Hewlett-Packard, or Microsoft.

However, the book itself was weak; the writing was bland, the author vindictive, and the information repetitive. (For example, I think I read the same passage three times at three different points because the book is not related chronologically. The changes in time themselves are confusing, but Butcher's repeted and overzealous attacks on Steve Jobs, his company and his character only exacerbate the problem.) Additionally, I feel compelled to beleive Jobs brought something to the company; after all, how did he stay around for so long, and why was he invited back? Sure, an immense amount of luck does seem to have gone along with him, but he had to have had some kind of marketable skill beyond deciding packaging.

Overall, I'd recommend Accidental Millionaire to only the most steadfast Apple fans.

I cannot begin to describe how much apple computers have played a part in my life up to the present. I can still recall the days of my early childhood when I would spend Saturday mornings with my Macintosh LC. The opportunity to discover the roots of these pinnacles of computing technology was welcomed with open arms. The book begins speaking of both Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak as small Californian children with a hunger for knowledge for technology. Wozniak, being the son of an engineer, had an almost instinctive approach to computing technology creating a 10 - bit calculator in his early teens. Steve Jobs, on the other hand, was more fascinated with what technology could do than how it worked. The first collaboration of Wozniak and Jobs brought about the "blue box", which was used to make free long distance calls illegally. As the two sought a more productive and legal venture, they moved on to computing technology. As the book progresses, it goes into the intense conflict between Jobs and what seems like the rest of the company of Apple computers. I used to believe Steve Jobs was the creator of everything in the early days of Apple; however, I was shown otherwise by this book. Steve Jobs actually was the man that put things in motion by inspiring an pressuring his fellow technical friends to make something of their skills and created Apple as the product of the collaboration.

I am afraid I cannot give this book a four or five star rating due to its frequent overlapping and unnecessary repetition of information. This overlapping actually makes the middle chapters of the book difficult to follow. For instance, one chapter will be talking about the apprehension of IBM's PCjr. computer in 1983 and then in the next chapter will start talking about Apple projects and company turmoil in 1982. In a book that follows the progression of company, it is important that the reader can easily identify the chronological order of the events. In spite of the many inconveniences of the writing style, I would still recommend this book to anyone interested in Apple computers or the earlier days of computers in general. I would even recommend this book to someone in a crunch to read two-hundred pages for an English class like I did.

This book gets behind the scene to portrait Steve Jobs not just as another entrepreneur/corporate executive of Silicon Valley but more as a person. More specifically, a person with major personality flaws who was fortunately enough to get where he is today.

You'll definitely learn what not to do as a startup. It will fundamentally change the way you look at Steve Jobs - for good or bad it's up to you to decide.

It's not always the most brilliant people who wins the race. Sometimes you got be crazy and lucky to get there. Steve got there. After reading this book you'll understand why Apple never became the size of Dell, Microsoft, or Sun - of course, they don't tell you that, you just know. :-)