It is apparent the author does have a wealth of publishing experience in various endeavors. Still, I would have preferred more detail in each of the publishing phases, rather than a quick once over of each.

This is an excellent book if you are interested in publishing, but are not sure what you wish to publish. In other words, let this be a starting point. Then, if you decide to publish:

A - books, get Avery Cardoza's Complete Guide To Successful Publishing, or

B - community newspapers, get How To Produce A Small Newspaper

C - magazines, get Launch Your Own Magazine, and How To Start A Magazine, and Starting & Running A Successful Newsletter or Magazine - YES, YOU WILL WANT ALL THREE OF THESE!

Tom Williams generously shares his hard-won knowledge about making money as a publisher of periodicals. Learn from his mistakes and successes and you will stand a good chance of making it in this kind of business. His advice is comprehensive, thorough, and often surprising. This is a good business to try if you want to work at home, be your own boss, and create an interesting product.

Gives a good overview of the challenges of small mag/newspaper etc publishing and gives alot of nuts and bolts type tips. Better to spend a little money on alot of good advice then to make the mistakes and learn the hard way. The author writes like a veteran of learning the hard way and thankfully he is sharing his knowledge.

"The Southern Heirloom Garden" is a rich and instructive work.

At the start of the book, William C. Welch and Greg Grant tell us that "gardening is one of the oldest, and richest, of our Southern folk arts."

The authors divide the book into two sections. The first section refreshingly explores French, German, Spanish, Native American, and African-American contributions to Southern gardening.

The Spanish, for instance, intensely developed and utilized small garden spaces, while African-Americans used brightly-colored flowers in the front yard as a sign of welcome.

This section also has a commendable essay on historic garden restoration in the South.

The second section addresses the plants "our ancestors used to build and enrich their gardens."

There are nearly 200 full-color photographs here, along with dozens of rare vintage engravings. While some of the pictures are a bit small, they are still informative.

Southern gardeners and historians will particularly enjoy this fine volume.

This is a really great book. I loved the essays on each plant. Greg Grant is very humorous. This is not just a coffee table book, although the pictures are beautiful. It offers advise and inspiration to those of us who will never have the "Southern Living Landscape" look.

In these days of trying the "Western grass garden" or the "English perennial border" it's particularly refreshing to study a book devoted to plants that happily grow in the Southern humidity and heat. While the opening chapters on historical gardens in the new world (French, Spanish, etc.) were interesting, the later chapters on plants were the most informative. When reading I could hear my Grandmother using the same commonplace names, like "paw-paw" and how to make jelly from the fruit. The challenge will now be to find some of these plants. (The authors admit some plants are only available from old gardens in the South). It remains one of my favorite garden books for its affectionate commentary on one of the oldest southern pastimes - our gardens and the talking and sharing of plants with loved ones.

This book is an excellent resource if you review medical record documentation for any reason. I use it all the time as a nurse and a coding/compliance auditor. Everyone in my department has their own copy. It is a necessary tool in the industry.

Overall, I find Stedmans's is the best abbreviation book available. It is comprehensive and is easy to use. It gives multiple listings for each abbrevation. Don't struggle trying to read charts, buy yourself a copy!

Not only do we refer to "Stedman's Abbreviations, Acronymns & Symbols" in our own daily work as medical transcriptionists, we also recommend it to the thousands of MTs who visit our web site at medword.com every day. This book is always in our list of Top 10 Sellers.

The language of medicine is filled with unique words and phrases with new ones being added regularly. Abbreviations, acronyms, and symbols are also used extensively. This book is important for any medical transcriptionist to own since a number of abbreviations in the field of medicine may mean different things depending upon the physician's area of specialization. This book will help you identify which abbreviation or acronym best applies for the specialty you are transcribing.

We heartily recommend it with 5 Stars and consider it a "Must-Have" medical reference book for a medical transcriptionist.

This reference book is invaluable. It is easy to use and layed out in dictionary form. I found everything I needed to look up. Once again, another outstanding Stedman Word book!

Dr. Lowry's latest in a series of excellent books represents an edited version of the diary of Dr. William Marvel Smith, Surgeon of the 85th New York Volunteer Infantry (85th NYVI). Readers of this book will get a glimpse of the very private thoughts of a civilian doctor-turned-army surgeon doing the best he can to care for his men, while struggling with personal problems at home and in camp.

William M. Smith was born in New Jersey, the son of a practicing physician, and moved to southwestern New York State at an early age. After attending local schools until his mid-teens, he apprenticed himself to a local physician and studied medicine at Castleton College in Vermont.

He opened his own practice, and after some gaining some experience and success, Smith began to involve himself in local politics. He rose from being a local county supervisor, to election to the State Assembly, and finally as delegate to the 1860 Republican Convention in Chicago, where he cast a vote for the nomination of Abraham Lincoln.

Parallel with this success was tragedy: Smith's first wife died four years after the birth of their son, and his second wife died only months after the birth of another. In September 1861, Smith helped raise a company of the 85th NYVI and marched off to war, leaving behind his two sons and a new fiancée. The diary covers his service from June 1862 through May 1863, with entries for nearly every day.

Readers, perhaps lured by the title, should not expect a detailed treatise of the minutiae of battlefield medicine. After active participation in the Peninsula and Seven Days campaigns, Smith and the 85th spent most of their time "behind the lines" in Virginia and North Carolina. Indeed, many of the diary entries are simple recounting of daily sick calls or hospital visits. Still, there is plenty to satisfy the medical enthusiast.

The diary reveals that Dr. Smith had an excellent intuition regarding the dangers inherent in camping in the Virginia swamps. It was Smith's official report that finally convinced the brigade commander to allow the regiment to move to higher, and healthier, ground. An entry later in the diary, detailing an amputation procedure, shows that Smith was a capable surgeon as well. Other entries confirm the prevalence of venereal disease, especially among officers.

During his service, Dr. Smith was given the opportunity to appear before the Army Medical Examining Board in Washington, DC, to take a five-day test for promotion to a higher rank. The entire written part of the examination is reproduced in one of the appendices. Smith's detailed answers to the anatomical, medicinal, and surgical questions, provides an excellent perspective of the "knowledge bank" of a Civil War-era surgeon.
Dr. Smith had plenty on his mind above and beyond his medical duties. Indeed, Lowry contends that the diarist was fighting several "wars" at the same time: conflicts with officers in the regiment, struggles with political enemies at home, agony over leaving his young boys, and doubts about the fidelity of his fiancée; all compounded by idleness and loneliness when the regiment is not active in the field. These personal "battles" make for reading every bit as interesting as poignant as a combat diary.

Smith resigned from the service in mid-1863, returned home to marry his fiancée, and reopened his medical practice. His good reputation earned him the appointment of Surgeon General of the State of New York in 1872. In 1880 he was named the health officer of the Port of New York, a position he held for a dozen years. With more than a half million immigrants flooding the port each year, many disease-ridden, it was a position of immense responsibility. Smith earned praise for his work, a job made even harder by the scheming of politicians.

Dr. Lowry, best known for his own interesting and original works, such as The Story the Soldiers Wouldn't Tell and Tarnished Eagles, has proven himself to be an adept editor. He is at his best when goes beyond merely providing geographical or biographical references to names and places in the diary. As an experienced clinical psychiatrist, he is uniquely qualified to evaluate Smith's emotional and psychological state throughout the narrative. He is not afraid to chide the diarist when he is uncharitable, or diagnose morose entries as symptoms of depression.

In the humble opinion of this reviewer, the book does suffer a few faults. Though the maps are generally well drawn, one entitled "The Siege of Washington, NC" shows the general theater of operations, but no siege lines, making interpretation of the narrative more difficult than need be.

The nearly two-dozen photographs are well chosen, especially those of officers mentioned in the diary, although some of the captions result in confusion (one caption introduces an incident that does not occur for another hundred pages). A photograph or two of actual diary pages would have helped to personalize the narrative even more.

The book is somewhat "end-heavy" with six appendices, only a few of which add substantively to the narrative (for example, several pages are devoted to detailed descriptions of each transport ship and gunboat mentioned in the diary). Nevertheless, these distractions are minor, and do not detract from the narrative itself or from this reviewer's hearty recommendation.

In a history of the 85th NYVI, a writer noted that the day Dr. Smith left the regiment, the men all felt they were losing a "royally good man." Fortunately, Dr. Tom Lowry has brought Dr. Smith's story to light by writing a "royally good" book.

Swamp Doctor is filled with tidbits of Civil War life in 1862-63. Here is a 36-year-old doctor from Western New york, already twiced widowed and two young sons at home with live-in caregivers. Dr.Smith is regimental surgeon for a while, then goes home for a while to check on his boys and court his third wife, and returns to the often slow-paced War of the Rebellion. Surgeon Smith is a captivating storyteller and once you get the vision of life in camp and at home, it is hard to put the book down. Author Lowry has enriched the story with historical events, which adds to the relevance of Dr. Smith's experiences. If you have a passion for the Civil War, or are interested in what it was like being a surgeon in the swamps of Virginia and North Carolina, or just enjoy good non-fiction reading, Swamp Doctor is a book for you.

This is my candidate for Civil War book of the year. Dr. Lowry, perhaps the most accomplished researcher in the field, has published a series of books on the period, all of which are worthwhile, but this time he's done something a bit different. Publishing, for the first time, the Civil War diary of a regimental surgeon, Lowry has shown admirable restraint in adding only the introductory and bridge material (as well as the best footnotes I've ever seen) necessary for all readers to follow the flow of events in the context of the greater war. Surgeon William M. Smith, having lost his first diary during the initial fighting on the Peninsula, began another in time to capture the frustrations and confusion of the first great struggle for Richmond; thereafter, his regiment was posted to the Carolinas, an under-studied, but fascinating theater of war. The diary's value lies in its straightforward readability, as well as in its frankness. Dr. Smith worries over the loyalty of a fiancee left behind in New York, and wrestles with his religious beliefs; he observes rarely-reported battles and skirmishes, such as the inconclusive operations on the Virginia-Carolina line in 1862, then the subsequent forays from New Bern. In between, the reader gets the best account I've seen of the routines of camp life, of daily behavior in occupied territory, of how officers amused themselves (reading Les Miserables, for one thing), and even what room and board cost in the low country. The political nonsense that penetrated even the lowest levels of both armies is there, along with a rich variety of personalities, from selfless patriots to drunks and whoremongers. Throughout, I felt as if I were seeing the real Civil War at last, not some historian's vision through a high-powered telescope. As trite as it is to say this, I could not put it down. This well-written, understated book offers an incomparable window into the times, and I, for one, am grateful to Dr. Lowry for making this diary available to the rest of us. Very highly recommended!

We used this case book in our MBA course for corporate finance. The real cases are exciting. The topics are very broad and ranging from cash budgeting to financial risk management. Most of the cases are supported with good background material like charts and income statements. The book is excellent for class discussions, but not for the ambituous reader who wants to teach himself corporate finance. There are simply no right or wrong answers why there's no solution provided. It's a great book to work with, but deadly boring if you want to read it page by page.

As a student utilizing this text for class, I found it extremely insightful, as well as challenging in content. The book is subdivided in to various topib headings related to corporate finance, everything from debt and equity offerings to derivative risk management. After a chapter introduction outlining and reviewing pertinent academic information, there are several case studies on real companies. The book closes with three case studies which incorporate multiple topics highlighted in the book.

As the long title suggests this is a scholarly edition of Malory's classic story of King Arthur and his knights. As such, it forms a counter-balance to the edition edited by Vinaver and Field which is based on the Winchester manuscript. Even though I tend to prefer the Winchester manuscript's readings over the Caxton edition's, I believe this is an excellent edition of the Caxton. No Arthurian library is really complete without it.

Obviously if you are looking at this book you have more than just a mere passing interest in King Arthur and Sir Thomas Mallory's Le Morte Darthur. This edition makes available the origional text with the origional orthography adding only modern punctuation and paragraphing to facilitate reading. The book contains two volumes the first contains the actual text. The second contains some notes showing variations in the various textual versions of Le Morte Darthur as well as a glossery of middle-english vocabulary. The book can be used by the novice and the scholar alike. While the versions translated into a more modern english are fantastic there is no substitute for the flavour of the origional. As Robert Frost said,"poetry is what is lost in translation."

This, reader, is an unvarnished narrative of one doomed by the laws of the Southern States to be a slave. It tells not only its own story of grief, but speaks of a thousand wrongs and woes beside, which never see the light; all the more bitter and dreadful, because no help can relieve, no sympathy can mitigate, and no hope can cheer. -William Wells Brown, Clotel, or The President's Daughter

Clotel would have historic interest simply by virtue of the fact that William Wells Brown appears to have been the first African American to write a novel. But it's not merely a literary curiosity; it is also an eminently readable and emotionally powerful, if forgivably melodramatic, portrait of the dehumanizing horrors of slave life in the Ante-bellum South. Brown, himself an escaped slave, tells the story of the slave Currer and her daughters, Clotel and Althesa, and of their attempts to escape from slavery. The central conceit of the story is that the unacknowledged father of the girls is Thomas Jefferson himself.

There is an immediacy to the stories here--of slave auctions, of families being torn apart, of card games where humans are wagered and lost, of sickly slaves being purchased for the express purpose of resale for medical experimentation upon their imminent deaths, of suicides and of many more indignities and brutalities--which no textbook can adequately convey. Though the characters tend too much to the archetypal, Brown does put a human face on this most repellent of American tragedies. He also makes extensive use (so extensive that he has been accused, it seems unfairly, of plagiarism) of actual sermons, lectures, political pamphlets, newspaper advertisements, and the like, to give the book something of a docudrama effect.

The Bedford Cultural Edition of the book, edited by Robert S. Levine, has extensive footnotes and a number of helpful essays on Brown and on the sources, even reproducing some of them verbatim. Overall, it gives the novel the kind of serious presentation and treatment which it deserves, but for obvious reasons has not received in the past. Brown's style is naturally a little bit dated and his passions are too distant for us to feel them immediately, but as you read the horrifying scenes of blacks being treated like chattel, you quickly come to share his moral outrage at this most shameful chapter in our history.

GRADE : B

This is a exemplary novel that also deals with the harsh realities of slavery. This novel distinctly tells a true story, which is relevant to ALL Americans (believe it or not. This is a must reader for ALL.

It's been over 15 years since I received my copy of Day by Day as a freshman at the University of Notre Dame. Since then, I've sold, given away, or thrown out all my textbooks, notebooks, and papers, but I've kept this little book. I don't pray frequently, but I reach for Day by Day when stress and pressure begin to overcome me. I keep my copy in the glove compartment of my car. Occasionally this is handy when stuck in traffic. Usually, I read a few pages while sitting in the car after a rough day, before walking into the house and sharing my stress with my family. More than anything, Day by Day makes me laugh. I'll hold on to my copy for a long time.

As a Catholic I've owned this book since the 7th grade. I'm 22 now and this book has helped to raise my spirits through hard times. I would recommend this book to anyone.

"Philoctetes" takes place near the climax of the Trojan War. The title character has the great bow of Hercules, given by the demi-god on his pyre to Philoctetes's father. A member of the Achaean expedition that sailed to Troy, Philoctetes was making an altar on an island along the way when he was bitten by a snake. His cries of pain were so great that he was abandoned by his shipments, under the orders of Odysseus, and marooned on the deserted island of Lemnos. Alone and crippled, Philoctetes used the great bow to survive for the ten years the Achaeans have been fighting against Troy. During that time his hatred against the Achaeans in general, and Odysseus in particular, has grown.

Meanwhile, back at Troy, Odysseus and the other Achaean chieftains have learned from an oracle that Troy will fall only with the help of Philoctetes and his bow (a juicy tidbit it certainly would have been nice to have known eight or nine years earlier). Odysseus and Neoptolemus, son of Achilles, are sent to bring Philoctetes and his bow back to the war. Of course, Odysseus dare not show himself to Philoctetes and sends Neoptolemus to do the dirty work. Neoptolemus gains the confidences of the crippled man by lying about taking him home. During one of his agonizing spasms of pain, Philoctetes gives his bow to Neoptolemus. Regretting having lied to this helpless cripple, Philoctetes returns the bow and admits all, begging him to come to Troy of his own free will. Philoctetes refuses and when Odysseus shows his face and threatens to use force to achieve their goal, he finds himself facing a very angry archer.

In "Philoctetes" Sophocles clearly deals with the balance between the rights of the individual and the needs of society. But this is also a play about citizenship and the need for the idealism of youth to be give way to the responsibilities of adulthood. In fact, this lesson is learned both by Philoctetes, who is taught by the shade of Hercules who appears to resolve the tenses conclusion, and Neoptolemus, who finds his duties at odds with his idealized conception of heroism based upon his father. Although this is a lesser known myth and play, "Philoctetes" does raise some issues worth considering in the classroom by contemporary students.

"Philoctetes" is similar to other plays by Sophocles, which deal with the conflict between the individual and society, although this is a rare instance where Odysseus appears in good light in one of his plays; usually he is presented as a corrupter of innocence (remember, the Greeks considered the hero of Homer's epic poem to be more of a pirate than a true hero), but here he is but a spokesperson for the interests of the state. Final Note: We know of lost plays about "Philoctetes" written by both Aeschylus and Euripides. Certainly it would have been interesting to have these to compare and contrast with this play by Sophocles, just as we have with the "Electra" tragedies.

Good Greek tragedy. I especially find interesting the controversy behind the happy ending.

A group of plays, of which this was a member, won first prize in Athens. Philoctetes had been left marooned on an island several years earlier (because of his disease) under orders of Agamemnon and Menelaus. But, the two kings later discover that Troy cannot be conquered without Philoctetes and his bow, a bow given to him by Heracles. Odysseus and Neoptolemus (the son of the late Achilles) arrive at the island to persuade or trick Philoctetes to return with them. Neoptolemus wants to be noble in his actions; yet, his commander, Odysseus, wants to use guile. At the end, a deus-ex-machina device is used to resolve the conflict. The play has excellent characterization, a good plot, and steady movement.

This should be required reading for anyone medical professional working in the field of sleep medicine. Every clinical topic is covered in great detail and clarity. The drawback of this book (if any) is the "Methodology" section, which, for the most part, covers acquisition topics on a very shallow level. Also, don't expect to learn much from the last chapter, "Computers in Sleep Medicine". It covers six pages of nothing (those poor trees). Otherwise this book is 1301 pages of pure gold!

The book was edited by Kryger and Dement et al. They are frontiers of this new field of medical science. It is very regretful thing that most people do not have sufficient information about sleep disorders. Despite of deficiency of knowledge about sleep disorders, those are killing numerous victims all over the world. So I recommend this book to reduce avoidable deaths of precious lives.

Up to date, fully comprehensive text book on the science and practice of sleep medicine. Thorough discussions of physiology, behavioral aspects of normal sleep and disordered sleep. This is the gold standard for learning, reviewing or referencing in this field.