First, this book is enormous! 800 full-size glossy pages - it must weigh 15 pounds. Not something you want to carry around in your backpack.

This book is truly a labor of love. Everything about it is of the highest quality, from the text to the photographs to the printing and binding. Not only do the authors know their subject intimately, but they delight in sharing their knowledge with the reader. A remarkable work, and a great tribute to everyone involved in its production.

As an amateur naturalist and nature photographer I was intriqued by the colors, patterns and variety of lichens, but knew little about them. As my lichen photography collection grew,I wanted to identify the lichen species I had photographed, so I did some research. I returned over and over again to a website that highlighted the chapters and images in "Lichen's of North America." The book seemed an expensive investment for an amateur like myself, but, after reviewing other books on lichens at the library and in bookstores, I realized this book has no equal. Inevitably, I placed my order. When the book arrived, I was first surprised at how BIG it was. Hundreds of four color images jumped off the pages, each a work of art. Most importantly, the text is fascinating and easy to understand, even for a non-scientist. I read the first 14 chapters over the weekend. I was amazed by the important role lichens play in the biodiversity of life. It opened my eyes to an understudied and little understond life form that has a profound influence on the past and future of our planet. I recommend it to anyone who has any interest in biodiversity, natural succession, preserving the environment and nature in general. You will see Lichen in a whole new light!

Wow sums it all up. The description said "hardcover, color photos, 'X' amount of pages, yet when I picked up a huge, heavy box, I had no idea the book was this great. Touches on just about every lichen in North America, and the pictures are a huge help. Offers identification tips through visual assessment and chemical testing. If you need to research lichen, this book is a great investment at a wonderful price.

This book is a must-read for anyone interested in World War II. It tells the story of the real heroes of Bataan, the men who refused to surrender but went into the mountains to continue the war against the Japanese. Lieutenant Edwin Price Ramsey should have been awarded the Medal of Honor for his service in the Philippines.

...

Those words barely begin to speak of the sacrifices Lt. Edwin Price Ramsey gave for his fellow countrymen, the war effort against the Japanese in the Philippines, the behind the scenes guerilla movement, and the Honor he bestowed upon the United States of America through his actions and his command. This gentlemanly young officer went from the glory of Army Polo into the depths of an unsuspected Hell in a matter of months to become well known as the leader of the very last Cavalry Charge in United States Army History for which the Distinguished Service Cross was bestowed upon him, at the age of 24!

This in-depth bio eloquently traces the Lieutenants' life from childhood to the end of WWII. His remarkable true story has more twists than a licorice stick as well as plenty of eye filling emotional sledge hammers.

I recommend this book highly to anyone who would like to know what the phrase "sacrifice for country" really means.

My father in law was a guerilla fighter from the age of 12 to 16 in the Bataan area and this book brought to life for me what he went through. Unless you've lived it, this is as close as you can get to being there. I think it should be mandatory reading for high school students so they can better understand not only what the Americans were doing in the Philippines but what real honor is all about. Ramsey could have tried to escape the island, or like others, hid out til MacArthur returned to save them. He had something we all wish we have when the going gets tough. He saw the bigger picture.

This book was the best Steven King book I read. Most books I can put down and read later but this one was glued to my eyes. The movie was about a quarter good than the book. It left out so many great parts like Craig Toomey's mother, Albert Krasner's dreams about "The Arazona Jew", and Brian Engle's dream about "Shooting Stars Only". I have read this book so many times that I am going to have to get another copy because this one is getting distroyed. I give this book 5 stars everytime I finish it.

this book kept you on the edge of your seat. it never got boring. i would tell anyone to read this.

I purchased "Four Past Midnight" last year(a collection of four novellas, one of which is "The Langoliers"). Stephen King just grabs your attention with his intelligent plots and terrific imagery. I'm slightly partial to his work; I'm a colossal King fan, but I think that anyone with literary taste will agree that this is a fine piece of writing. LONG LIVE HORROR!! KUDOS TO THE KING-MAN!!!!!

I found this book very informative and practical. I particularly liked the emphasis on using your head and not making silly decisions because of all the hype.Lots of good information throughout.

I bought the book after having seen the book featured in TIME magazine. It was well worth the it. My husband had not been interested in hearing or reading anything about Y2K saying that the whole thing was overblown. He picked-up the book after I received it and he couldn't put it down - I haven't seen it since. I found out today he has now loaned it to a friend, so I am buying myself another copy, but I am having it sent to my office this time!

So many Y2K books focus on telling you why you should be shaking in your boots. This book presents researched facts along with more useful and usable tips and advice than any other book I have read. And this one was also EASY TO READ and didn't contain pages and pages of technical stuff that, frankly, I don't understand anyway and don't want to understand at that. I HIGHLY recommend this book to everyone who wants straight info about Y2K and useful information. After reading the book I bought copies for my family and friends as gifts - my highest compliment!

In an ocean of business books, Beyond e stands out as a prize catch. Too often, today's "gurus" write books that trumpet their personal accomplishments conveniently leaving out practical applications to specific business category needs. If we want real solutions, the cost raises from a $25 book to $25,000 per day consultation fee. Steve Diorio gives it all away in his book. Beyond e can also be called beyond best practices. He is the one guru I would invite to help my organization apply new technologies to our sales and marketing efforts. Read the book, pick up the phone and give him a call.

Steve Diorio has written a meaty and relevant book about selling technologies. In an age when there is so much E hype and fluff that only serves to confuse, we needed a book that was born from practical, everyday consulting and research in the offices of the best companies. The salient ideas about which Mr. Diorio expounds are absolutely critical for growth and profit. They carry with them an imperative that to ignore the protocols of this newest e technology will lead to peril and a fatal falling behind the power curve.

I read the excellent reviews in which professors recommended Beyond E. They were impressive. But, this book was written for executives and senior managers who have the very life of their corporations in the palm of their hands. It is obvious that Mr. Diorio has spent considerable time with his clients and sweat blood with them to achieve the best e-practices in marketing, promotion and selling.

I believe the book is about stretching the IT and Internet sales budgets so that busineses can grow at an accellerated rate. The book Beyond E is truly futuristic because it clearly outlines what the best companies have been doing and what the leaders of tomorrow (the followers of our leaders today) will be doing in late 2002 and in 2003. The blueprint is drawn up, the creation of dynamic selling technologies has been built, but, sadly, few understand it, and even fewer have actually implemented it. Companies like Dell Computer, IBM, Charles Swab, Amazon and e-Bay are only a few of these futuristic leaders that Mr. Diorio writes about. They "get it". How long will it take others? Mr. Diorio lays out in detail what needs to be done right now.

Mr. Diorio is like a drum major for executives to immediately order "the engineering of sustainable technology innovations into the sales and marketing process", to quote Stve Diorio. The traditional software analysts and programmers in companies are not prepared for the accelerated rate at which customer service and marketing creativity must be coded to stay abreast of changing customer needs and wants.

It is about knowing the mind of the customer and changing systems at every level of the company so there can be real-time change. I got a distinct sense of urgency in reading the book. As a management consultant, I now feel driven to alert my clients that "getting it" is urgently critical. Steve Diorio virtually screams out at us that positive results can be realized only from the implementation right now of dynamic marketing, selling and customer service e-systems.

Mr. Diorio understands how important all of these ideas are in order to create cutting edge business models and viable ways to turn IT chaos into order and opportunity. I am glad I read the book. I've recommended it to many of my clients and colleagues.

Having taught a variety of marketing courses at the undergraduate, graduate and executive levels, I am always looking for books that present the ways in which new technology (and the Internet in particular) are affecting market relationships. Often these texts are full of exaggerrated "war stories" or can be easily summarized into a few general points. Steve Diorio's book, in contrast, is current, meaty and well substantiated. He not only provides several examples of recent successes and failures but synthesizes this new information into the age old framework of serving the customer and firm by adding value to both. I highly recommend this book to any marketing professional as well as any professor who wishes to bring their marketing strategy or course content into the 21st century.

THE MUFFIN CHILD is a beautifully written book about loss andlove. Tanya, the protagonist, will steal your heart quietly andcompletely. It is the kind of story that catches up on you as you find yourself turning page after page. And when you get to the end, you'll find yourself reaching for a tissue...and wishing for more. THE MUFFIN CHILD would make a wonderful gift.

The Muffin Child is a novel of unusual beauty and power. On nearly every page, I found a phrase, a sentence, a paragraph that I read aloud to myself -- "It was one of those days that promises no sun, and then just before sundown the sun finds a crack in the clouds and glances over the countryside. The orange light caught the insects floating over the grass." Yes, exactly!

The story of loss denied was real to me. Tanya denies loss, plans for the return of her parents: "She was basking in the heat when the thought came to her to warm up the oven and make muffins for her parents. They would be hungry when they came. They would welcome a plate of hot muffins waiting for them. They would all have muffins and tea -- Tanya, her parents, and the man driving the cart."

But then there is the painful scene in the village when the cruel words and violence of the villagers brings the truth to her mind:

"They were dead. They had drowned. She'd heard the villagers say it. No one had ever come out and said it before. Now it was true.

"She knew it was true because, in a way, she'd known it amost from the beginning, as a kind of cold frightening thought in the back of her mind. In the back of her mind was a place like the well on the farm, when you leaned over its stone rim and looked down and couldn't see anything, but you felt the chill breathing up at you. Tanya had felt the chill ever since the night the river roared over the bridge."

"Now it was true." The cruel words of the villagers made it true.

Milenka, the cow, worried me at first. A cow that provides affection like a pet could easily have been very sentimental. But it didn't turn out that way. Menick carefully kept avoided that trap:

"Then she thought of Milenka. She should milk Milenka. Tanya went out and crossed the barnyard. The dawn was turning purple, with the silver of the moon like a golden weather vane on the top of the barn.

"It was warm inside the barn and it had that smell Tanya loved, the smell of cow and hay. The chickens rusted in their coop, and the geese in their pens lifted their heads and looked. Tanya heard something up in the hayloft -- the barn owl, home after a night's work.

"'Good morning, Milenka,' Tanya said, and as Milenka turned her head, Tanya felt the cow's wet breath on her arms. She reached down and pulled, and Malenka's milk squirted into the pail and smelled sweet."

A warm relationship, but, still, Milenka is a cow to be milked. And the milk makes possible those muffins.

Historical novels are not my favorite kind of reading. Some strike me as mostly "historical" and, therefore, removed from the immediacy of the lives of living human beings. Others seem to me to be modern sensationalism set uncomfortably in another time. Not The Muffin Child. The author brilliantly creates a world that is clearly very old and very distant; but he also creates a young girl who is so alive that she lives both now and then and other characters, selfish, even evil who also live in their own time but in my immediate world as well.

I understand that the final chapters of the book, where the Gypsies become major players, have caused some negative reactions. I guess I can understand that only if one forgets what the villagers do to the Gypsies, who (Anton, the knife sharpener and supposed friend of Tanya) turns out to have done the evil to the disabled child, Nikola, and why Tanya ends up with them. And, of course, the frame of the story -- a mother today telling a story to her rather disagreeable daughter, also named Tanya -- tells us at the end who the Tanya of the story was and brings the two Tanyas together:

"In the middle of the night the cow got out from under the covers. Tanya brought her back in. Milenka smelled like stale chocolate, or like a dog just in from the rain.

"Later, Milenka smelled like herself, like Milenka. The sun rose in the dark and burned the insects floating over the meadow. Tanya looked for the Muffin Child but didn't see her. The grass rustled at her feet, and she could feel Milenka's hide under the palm of her hand."

For the writing alone, The Muffin Child deserves a full five stars (six or more if that were possible). For the insights into loss and love, evil, cruelty, and forgiveness, I'd give it the Newbery Award if it were mine to give

A deceptively simple tale, "The Muffin Child" is a powerful story of loss, with its current of inner strength woven seamlessly through Stephen Menick's vivid and poetic writing style. Anyone who loves the magic of language and complexity of character, will love this book!

AUGUST PATRIOT is all inclusive; it has patriotism, loyalty, history, romance, suspense and action all rolled into one. Leland G. Stephens is a master with words and presents a sapient vision beyond his time. A compelling book and a must read.

August Patriot is a very well written, detailed and interesting book. But that's what I expected from a guy like Leland Stephens. He's been there and done that. If you like adventure, romance and realistic action... you'll like this book.

I consider it a great honor that Steve-O asked me to write a review of his thoughtful and exciting novel, August Patriot. After reading it, I'm convinced that the whole of it is true-only the names have changed.

As a part-time deputy sheriff, ranch hand and retired squid, I remember well the drug war that began in the U.S. during the 1960s. Sadly, during the late 90s, this war has escalated to the point of our country's moral self-destruction.

Our government of the 90's has failed to stop the flow of drugs across our borders on Mexican 18-wheelers and aboard ships bound for Cuba and other Caribbean islands. Why? Steve-O may have come up with the answer.

Master Chief Petty Officer Gary R. Smith (Ret.) RMCM, USN Jacksboro, Texas

Gary Smith is co-author of Death in the Jungle, Death in the Delta, and sole author of Master Chief and co-author of Demo Men. The first three books cover his military career chronologically as an UDT/SEAL/EOD Navy enlisted man from 1964 to 1984.

This book seem to focus far more on two other topics, NDEs (near death experiences) and saints, than it does on its title subject of angels. The whole angel theme seems in fact to be kind of an incidental inclusion, like a thread of only secondary importance. The tenuous angel theme thread ties the other two themes together, themes which form the actual substance of the book.
I would recommend this book to those interested in NDEs; I would also recommend this book to those who are interested in the mortification, stigmatic, and pain aspects of Catholicism, which are dwelled on quite extensively in this book. I'd also recommend this book to anyone interested in saints. But to someone purely interested in angels, I regret I have to advise you to look elsewhere for real substance on that subject.

This book is more than I ever expected; the honest, investigative research style of Pierre will turn any "skeptic" into a believer in the existence of angels. His bibliography and "permissions list" were also worth the price of the book; they opened up a new world for me. I sincerely hope he will write another book. Thanks to Amazon for making these 5 star books available used.

This book is written with humor, eloquence, journalistic perspective/restraint, and passion. After an inexplicable escape from what might have been a fatal shooting on the L.A. freeway, Mr. Jovanovic began on a journey to investigate whether angels do in fact exist. He approaches it with the experience and restraint of a professional journalist, which he is. He looks at Near Death Experiences (the famous tunnel with light at the end etc.), interviews the woman who made famous the 'stages of dying', and Georgette Faniel, a stigmatist who some believe is a living saint; the book explores such diverse topics as Medjugorje, Padre Pio, apparitions of angels and The Virgin Mary; and yet never gets syrupy or precious. In fact, it manages to be all the more powerful reading due to its step back from the topics. Friends gave me a copy of this book and I was amazed by it; it's very quiet in tone, yet not without humor, and explains itself very well. The reader goes on the journey to discover whether angels exist, right along with the author, yet at the end you don't feel pushed toward any conclusion but your own. I highly recommend this book to everyone, not just those who already believe in such things as these. (Oh ! PS, if you net-search on this book title you will find its author's own website, which has more about the book, including a the first chapter available to read online for free).

I would in fact prefer to award this 3.5 stars, but the Amazon system seems to compel one to choose between 3 and 4, and I think 4 is too generous. To begin with the text, there is no doubt that this is not the best Shakespeare to buy. It is to a large extent based on the Oxford Shakespeare, which - quite rightly, in my view - has attracted a lot of criticism for some of its peculiarities. Thus, for example, Oxford prints TWO versions of *King Lear*, the quarto text and that of the folio. Norton rightly takes issue with this, and produces the kind of conflated text that most readers would want, but adds the other two AS WELL (so we are offered THREE versions!). This kind of thing is, in truth, academic self-indulgence - it shows an undue respect for academic concerns which to most readers are not of the slightest interest. There is a similar tendency to pay scant regard to what most readers really want and need in the Introduction: that tells us a good deal about Shakespeare's time, and the material is interesting, but it is not often shown to be relevant, or necessary, to an understanding of what Shakespeare writes. The explanatory annotation accompanying the texts is not bad, but often inferior to that of comparable editions, notably Bevington's. The introductions to individual plays are usually stimulating, but not necessarily convincing. Thus Greenblatt on the one hand says about Macbeth's murder of Duncan, "That he does so without adequate motivation, that he murders a man toward whom he should be grateful and protective, deepens the mystery ..." (p. 2558), yet adds a few lines later: "Macbeth and Lady Macbeth act on ambition ...". Precisely, that IS Macbeth's motivation for the murder, as Macbeth himself points out unequivocally in 1.7.25-7 - there is, therefore, absolutely nothing mysterious about his motivation. The edition does, however, offer a number of good references to other writings about Shakespeare. All in all, I do consider 3.5 stars is a fair "grade", in seeking to assess this for the benefit of the majority of readers looking for a complete Shakespeare to buy; but I consider David Bevington's by far the best edition of the complete works, then the Riverside, and only then this one - though, with its annotations, it is certainly more useful than the Oxford edition on which it is based. - Joost Daalder, Professor of English, Flinders University, South Australia

I confess that after examining 5-6 of the top-selling complete Shakespeares I tried not to like the Norton. There are less expensive editions, there are editions with glossy pages and colored photographs, there are editions that are half the weight and bulk of this leviathan, which is far more Shakespeare than the average reader--perhaps, even scholar, for that matter--would ever require. But despite its bulk and unwieldyness, its 3500 (!) thin, flimsy pages, its sheer excess, I couldn't ignore its advantages. The small print enables the publishers to squeeze in contextual materials--in the introduction and appendixes--that in themselves amount to an encyclopedic companion to Shakespeare's works; the introductions to the plays are written not in "textbook prose" but in an engaging style worthy of their subject; and perhaps, best of all, this is the only edition that places the glosses right alongside the "strange" Elizabethan word instead of in the footnotes. You can read the plays without experiencing vertigo of the eye. So this is the edition, though you may wish to go with the smaller, bound portions that Norton publishes of the same edition--especially if you can't afford the cost of a personal valet to carry this tome from home to office. On the other hand, the complete edition is excellent for doing crunches and other aerobic exercises--activities many of us who read the Bard are abt to ignore.

As a fervent admirer of Shakespeare, this complete collection, comprising excellent introductions to each play and helpful textual notes as well as informative writings on the history of both England and the art of acting that shaped Shakespeare's writing, was like a dream come true. While before I had to walk around trying to find a good edition of the play I wanted to read, now I can open the Norton Shakespeare and read without being afraid of not understanding words or missing the point of the play. This book's obvious drawbacks are its heft and, as mentioned, its delicate pages, but these are easily outweighed by the abovementioned advantages! Buy it and read!

It does seem to have an awful lot of recipes crammed in there, but I was looking for a book with a bunch of curiosity-provoking, colorful pictures... something to make a guest say "hey, I want one of those!" It looks like a phone book inside-- lots of small writing, listing one drink after another.

I had to write a review after reading the prior one of a man in search of a picture book. There are a plethora of [bad] picture drink books on the market. It is funny, he was looking for a common thing (a [bad] picture drink book) and he got the finest drink recipe book ever written. The author painstakingly alphabetized and reworked thousands of drinks. He threw out all the [bad stuff] and made a No [fooling] essential tool, that restaurants, bars, and liquor stores must carry (they all seem to). The book is unbiased (no liquor companies pushing their product) It lays flat so I can work and read at the same time. I own a 4th, 5th and a 6th edition and I await new editions. I have learned from them all....THE BARTENDER'S BLACK BOOK IS A 5 STAR BOOK.

I'm a bartender and there is always one customer who comes along and orders a drink you dont know how to make. Behind the bar we keep several drink books, but this is the only one that actually gets used. Easy to read recipies, non-coded names for liquors, short, sweet, and to the point. Spiral binded so the book will not close while you are mixing. Contains the most variety of drinks I've seen from Vodka Collins for beginners (which most books don't have) through Long Islands all the way to a Mongolian Mother for the more adverse. Highly recommended for anyone who wants to shake, stir, or blend.