This very good book presents school safety concerns from three perspectives: (1) the high salience of current safety issues; (2) in-depth discussion of seven standards for school safety; and (3) questions that parents, teachers, and safety experts ask about school safety. He concludes with an appendix which gives the list of seven school safety standards and specific recommendations for each.

I thought this writer was clear, dispassionate, very informative, and useful. He does not have a "theory of discipline," but instead incorporates the best of both reflective and "conservative" disciplinary procedures. He is keen on building student self-discipline and safety through appropriate use of information (rules themselves), consequences (logical), resolution, and restitution; but he does not shy away from considering alternative programs. He was very informative about safety for Special Education youngsters.

Most readers for this book will be professional educators in training. It is more helpful for curriculum specialists and administrators than for teachers, but the integration of classroom rules to school-wide rules receives serious consideration.

The Elements of Public Speaking is a textbook i used for the course of public speaking this year. Surprisingly, it's not only a textbook, but also an useful book for all communicators. It provides a clear concept to be a successful public speaker - good communication skills, avoid using jargons and comfortable eye contacts, etc. Anyways, it's a MUST-READ guidebook for all public speakers and communicators as well.

People with a scientific background, and working far from physics (as me), will find this textbook very interesting. A quick but also deep survey of what physicists are currently doing, in which students of _some_ years ago can recognize subjects whose birth they happened to study. Being my M.S. thesis about Boltzmann equation, I found very fascinating the chapters about diffusion theory, particularly the search for dendrytic solutions of diffusion equation. But whatever the thesis field could have been, the wide variety of described subjects is able to meet interest of every person who happened to study Physics in his/her education.

Daniel Burston, a professor in the existential-phenomenological psychology program at Duquesne University and a respected Laing scholar, has put together a very well-written, interesting, but uneven work on the manifold ways in which Laing's thought can be connected with psychotherapy. After reading his excellent, rigorously intellectual biography of Laing, _The Wing of Madness_, I had expected to find in the _Crucible of Experience_ an equivalent depth of scholarly knowledge and clarity. And some sections of the book do possess this. The chapter on normality and the numinous, for instance, offers a very patient and careful teasing-apart of the many meanings of "normality" and how Laing treated these different meanings in his understandings of mental disorder. Other sections, however, were not as impressive. The chapter on Laing's roots in existentialism and phenomenology, for example, was far too reliant on secondary sources, and its summaries of the views of the various existential and phenomenological philosophers often felt curt and staccato. One more serious problem I had with this work was that it mostly ignored Laing's conceptualization of what he termed "knots:"- contradictory, paradoxical, and entangling patterns of relatedness that create vicious circles. (see Laing's own book _Knots_) From my perspective, "knots" are probably the most relevant element of Laing's thought for psychotherapy, thus, their omission is rather glaring. Overall, however, Burston's book is a well-written, enjoyable, and thoughtful journey through the labyrinths of Laing's thinking.

Roche's book offers a very complete view of clothing, dress, and fashion (the three are not the same for him) during the early modern period in France. Ranging from notarial inventories to linen theft, his empirical evidence support his main thesis that rapid changes in society ultimately culminated in a clothing revolution of sorts in the latter half of the eighteenth century. His in-depth analysis of even the most esoteric aspects of clothing and dress in the Ancien Regime prove just how diffuse the effects of those items were on all aspects of society. His arguments regarding the development of a sexual dimorphism as a result of changes in and perceptions of fashion presents a particularly interesting viewpoint on how clothes came to "make the man" or women, as the case may be in that argument. Equally interesting are his discussions on linen and cleanliness and the inventories of clothing taken upon a persons death. Importantly, Roche's analysis travels far beyond just a cursory look at the nobility and courtly attire into the world of the bourgeois class and especially on the lower working classes of France at the time. Where other authors fall far short of offering a complete view of attitudes toward fashing, dress, and clothing in the early modern period, Roche ably fills in the gaps and never shies away from an exhaustive look at the many aspects of clothing in the Ancien Regime.

This book is well illustrated. Very easy to follow visually, unlike most books of this kind. The "Cunning Stunts" are refreshingly above average.

Definitely, a great book. Besides the theory, it incorporates MATLAB files for demosntrating the concepts. The authors are definitely masters on the topics. The DAFX conferences' papers, which could be donwloaded from their web sites help to dive deep into the subject. Unfortunately it doesn't give enough coverage to some topics, rather gives a lot of resources (papers, books) where to look for more concise information. Without additional information and knowledge you could not implement any of those awesome effects.

I purchased this commentary as a young lawyer teaching Sunday School in 1980, and it has helped me communicate the stories in this book to many. I found the book useful as a layman and after attending seminary found it remained helpful at the scholarly level as well. Baldwin breathes life into the fabulous stories with which Daniel begins - stories usually taught to children and rarely preached or made the subject of adult Bible study, and the book is most helpful in illuminating these stories - the four Hebrew youths in captivity, the fiery furnace, the lions' den, and the writing on the wall. The more eschatological material that forms the latter part of the prophet's book is well treated, and the author avoids falling into the abyss of too closely pressing the details. It is a sound book in a sound series (Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries), and should help anyone teach, preach or simply enjoy the faith stories of Daniel and his friends.

When Daniel is wed to Hildie Raber his parents wonder if the match is wise. Four years later Hildie mysteriously disappears and everyone is shocked. Daniel is left with 5 young children and a heavy heart - surely Hildie didn't leave by her own choice! Then an Englisch [English speaking person]who has an auto accident, accuses Daniel of not having proper 'road manners'. When man threatens to take Daniel to court, what will happen? Will Hildie ever return? To find out read "Daniel", by Mary Christner Borntrager.

E.J. Young's justly famous _Commentary on the Book of Daniel_ is now back in print, after too many years. Unlike many published works on Daniel, this book is thorough, sober and credible.

Young was one of the 20th century's masters of Biblical Hebrew and many other of the Semitic languages of the ancient Near East; he was also a conservative Christian theolgian of considerable skill. He brings both of these skills to the Christian nterpretation of one of the Old Testament's most difficult books, one of the few Biblical texts to be written in two ancient languages, Hebrew and Aramaic.

Interacting with the original text, and with other interpreters of Daniel both ancient and modern, Young constructs a thorough account of the meaning of this elusive book. The position he defends stands in sharp contrast to two other schools of thought that have proved to be influential in the years since 1949, when Young first published this commentary.

One of those competitors is the historical-critical school, which typically treats the Book of Daniel as primarily a product of the 160'sBCE, composed in response to the Jewish revolt against the Seleucid king, Antiochus IV Epiphanes, and written under the old hero Daniel's name as a kind of pious fiction.

Young defends a sixth-century BC date for the book's primary authorship, attributing it to the real-life Jewish exile in Babylon named Daniel, as chapter 1 of the biblical book claims. Young's treatment of the authenticity of the book is one of the more important defenses in the English language. His defense, one also pressed in other published works, will not convince everyone, but it should supply the reader with food for thought in reconsidering the origins of the ancient Danielic tradition.

Young's second set of competitors come from the dispensational school of Evangelical Christian theology, which, like Young, takes the book as a true prophecy of Daniel, written in the 6th century BC. Unlike Young, these interpreters think the book is addressed mainly to the close of what dispensationalists call the "Church Age," that is, the present era of history as it leads to "the Rapture of the Church" and the "Great Tribulation," recently popularized beyond all belief by the Jenkin/LaHaye series, _Left Behind_, part of which will soon be a major motion picture. Daniel's book, so they claim, is about the times leading up to Second Coming of Jesus Christ.

Not so, says Young. The book's forecasts of the future primarily involve the first Advent of Jesus Christ.

To take one case in point, Daniel 9.26 predicts that "an Anointed One will be cut off and shall have nothing, and the troops of the prince who is to come shall destroy the city..." (NRSV). Young and his dispensational critics agree that the reference is to the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, in about 30 AD. But Daniel 9.27 adds: "He shall make a strong covenant with many...and he shall make sacrifice and offering cease; in their place shall be an abomination that desolates..." (NRSV).

Dispensation interpretation generally holds that this line refers to a final Antichrist figure, who desolates a newly-built Temple in Jerusalem, in the (near?) future. Thus, there's a leap of at 2000 years or more between 9.26 and 9.27, in what looks like continuous narrative.

Young resists this line of thought. The anointed one in 9.26 is Christ; and by his atoning death-by-crucifixion he puts an end to all further need for sacrifice and atonement. Thus, Young argues, the temple of Jesus' own day is rendered obsolete, and all that remains for it is to be destroyed by the Romans, as took place in 70 AD. That approach looks sane and sober to this reviewer.

In brief, then, I commend this commentary to serious students of the Bible. Even if you end up disagreeing with Young, the journey will have been worth it.