I've ben GMing for something like fifteen years and this is the system I always return to. If I want to run someting of my own, this is the system I base it on.

Slim-line, fast, flexible, simple, expansive, effective. All words that describe Talsorian's game mechanics - it simply does not get any better.

As for the universe - this is a REAL world of darkness. No bright dawn, no happy ever after. Only your wits and tech, style and edge. No right or wrong, only power and death, a world of grey areas that seems only just around the corner.

If you are a gamer and you don't have this - get it now.

If you aren't a gamer but love the Dark Future setting, it's worth it.

Magnificent.

This is one of my all time favorites!! I got into the gaming craze at an early age and quickly tired of singing burds and happy elves. This game takes a long hard look at where were headed as a society and allows you the player to take part. It has one of the more versitile character creation systems and is not hard to follow the logical progression to modify equipment! Oh, and not to forget it supports two of my favorite philosophies: 1)Knowledge is power! 2)Attitude is everything! So don't lose any cool points chumbada, buy the book!

I was stationed in Vilseck Germany with the 2nd of the 63rd Armor when I friend told me about Cyber Punk. It was almost a year before we found someone with the books, and immediatly set up a game. It was a game that I have never forgoten. It sits in my mind like the begining of Secret of Mana, forever a defining factor in my oppinions.

This game does tend to drag with its role to hit/role to dodge rules, but it is more believable then any other game I have seen or played. The setting for Cyber Punk is OURT world, with OUR history. It is science fiction. We can look at our own lives, make few changes to the timeline, and see that it IS possible. In reality, these things would never happen, but in the game, it is easier for us to adapt to this new world because it is so close to our own. Realy, what has changed? The world has met a sort of anarchy, like in Mad Max. The government is now run by Corporations. Bionics are common enough that you see people with mettle limbs on a regular basis. This world is more real then any other I have seen, and this makes more believable. Since it is more believable it becomes easier to enter your charactor and enjoy the game.

If I had to rate all the games I have played, I would put this on tope, even with its long combat and ineffectiveness with machine guns.

I am a total JTT fan, and when I read this book, it really informed me evern more! I loved how it was so complete with stats, quotes, color pics, and everything from a-z! I couldn't put it down until I was done

Congratulations to Michael-Anne Johns! He has written a fantastic fun and fact-filled book on the life of Jonathan Taylor Thomas on and off-screen. Unlike some biographies, Johns uses more words than pictures, so you learn a lot more about what they're like, rather than what they look like. He has done a lot of research and included a nice review at the back of Thomas's favorites and quick facts. Every Jonathan Taylor Thomas lover should read this great book. Hopefully Johns will come up with a new JTT book to talk about Wild America and his new roles. Congrats again Johns

It gave me lots of information on JTT.
I learned so much about him!
If only I was able to meet him!
:-)
Everyone should read it!

Hey there Hanson fanz! This book rocked! I'm surprised that the author didn't even interview Zac herself! I love the pix and the quiz in it to see if you're the type for Zac. Very well written! There may be a tinie tiny bit of false info, but still cool!

As Zac once Said: "'Peace, Love, Happiness, and Bullet-Proof Marshmellows!!"

This book gave me tons of info on Zac. There were even 16 pages of great color pictures. It was the best Hanson book I ever read! READ THIS BOOK!!!!!!

Well, all I have to say to fellow Hanson fans is; if you haven't read this already...you better go out and buy it as soon as you can (if your local bookstore hasn't run out of copies yet!!) It has great behind-the scenes photos, cool tid-bit facts, and anything you wanna know about Hanson's drummer boy!!! (Beware of a little false info here and there)

But Congressman Lewis does not reveal it in his autobiography about participation in the civil rights movement. What we get instead is a brave highly motivated young man who put his belief into a free and equal society into action.;

Lewis, who is currently one of the few southern democrats in congress has a record of defending the civil rights of all groups. Although I had always admired his voting record, reading about the seeds of activisim was very moving and touching.

Braving arrests, poliice brutality, political apathy and confusion, Lewis and his friends were early disciples of Martin Luther King. Also interesting is the uncanny habit of rubbing shoulders with John and Robert Kennedy. Although revisionist history has cast some doubt on the actual motives of the civil rights position, Lewis fondly remembers both as American heroes.

According to Lewis, both men were genuinely anti-racist, but were unpreppared to deal with dixiecrat resistance to intergration or the actual sight of segregation. Indeed,many readers such as myself still find the conditions under which Affrican Americans were expected to exist horifying.

Although many books and memoirs have been written about the civil rights movement, Lewis attaches unparralleled grace. One can almost hear the representative personally narrating the epic journey himself.

John Lewis was seemingly everywhere during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960's. From the Nashville Sit-Ins, to the Freedom Rides to the famous march from Selma and more. It is akin to someone having been at the Boston Tea Party, Lexington and Philadelphia on July 4, 1776. Not only was Lewis there but he was an active participant, one of the many brave souls who risked injury, even death to bring down segregation. Lewis knew all the key figures in the Movement, such as Dr. King, and was a leader himself. Today, of course, Lewis serves his country in the House of Representatives.
It's hard to go wrong with such a compelling story to tell and Lewis doesn't dissapoint. With the help of co-author Michael D'Orso, we learn not only of one person's participation in the Civil Rights' Movement, but gain insight into the Movement as a whole.
Lewis is vastly under appreciated by Americans today. Hopefully Waking With the Wind will help future generations appreciate John Lewis, an American hero.

This work is a well written account of one of the most tumultous times America has seen this century. Its vivid descriptions of the many facets of the Civil Rights Movement take you through the mundane and the monumental, and make you feel as though you are there. Through the touching recollections of his family, and the friendships that he made during the Movement, this compelling book gives insight to what makes John Lewis one of America's living legends.

The ubiquitous Internet is a double-edged sword. A major benefit is sharing information; a major detriment is the risk to customers of divulging private information. For e-businesses, therefore, privacy is a showstopper issue. This book was written to promote e-business success by helping organizations evaluate privacy needs, establish a privacy task force, use technologies to provide maximum protection, formulate privacy policies and procedures, implement and test privacy procedures, and monitor and modify privacy protection. This one's a winner--for companies that want to "win" at e-business.

In today's security conscious world, nothing is more important than the privacy of personal information being shared on the internet. Erbschloe and Vacca present a blueprint for developing net privacy starting with a 10 step privacy needs audit, developing the enterprise privacy plan and lastly the implementation of the plan. Full discussions of topics such as employee training about privacy issues, governmental and legal issues, monitoring the privacy plan once in place, security of laptops and telecommuting help the reader understand the scope of the problems and how to solve them. One issue, I had not thought about: privacy of shared customer data with vendors is instructive. Besides being an essential resource to businesses using the net, consumers should read this book to understand all the issues surrounding the safety of their personal information.

"Net Privacy" by Michael Erbschloe and John Vacca provides an excellent reference for understanding the privacy issues associated with Internet use. The book provides a comprehensive description on how sensitive corporate data is handled to in order protect consumer privacy and corporate liability. The book contains informative tips and techniques for securing privileged information from a business standpoint, and provides an understanding to the Internet user and e-business customer of the security precautions implemented today in the ever-changing e-business marketplace. The book goes on to provide a framework for the development and implementation of a corporate privacy plan. For an IT professional this process can be extremely useful in determining if you have each of the critical areas covered in order to protect corporate interests in an e-business environment. The book also provides great recommendations for corporate privacy protection in terms of mobile computing and Virtual Private Networking (VPN) environments.

... covers just about everything imaginable, and does so in such a clear & concise way that there is little point in my trying to cover it again.
I am truly impressed. This so-called beginner's book scarcely rates that category; this is the very sort of information that beginners REALLY need but oh-so rarely ever get until it is too late. Moreover, it is presented in a form that beginners can understand and digest with ease. Truly a gem, and destined to be a classic.
The checklists, the explanations which make the complex simple, the techniques, the wonderful illustrations, the tips & tricks, the lists of common mistakes to avoid, ( and which species to avoid ) and the truly useful advice make this book very complete. It's 140+ pages are chocked full of good information without a lot of "fluff"; it's truly "all-meat, no filler!"
If I had to recommend just ONE book for the beginning marine hobbyist, I think that this would be the one. I even recommend it highly to intermediate hobbyists. While it doesn't cover every single aspect of the marine hobby, ( not that any one book, or even any given dozen ever books could ) it aptly covers the most important things, and most importantly, it covers them in a way which will make it the most useful to it's target audience...

I had already looked at many marine aquarium books before I found this one. I already have a freshwater tank, but really had no idea how to go about setting up a saltwater tank. I mean, I didn't know anything!

This book misses nothing. Other books may start off well, but tend to get skimpy on the things you really need to know and then focus too much on things that, at the moment, you don't need to know, such as page after page on various species of fish. That's important, but not particulary helpful if you don't know what you are doing.

The first part of the book goes into tank selection & setup. It goes over among other things, protein skimmers, power filters, & powerheads along with the other more rudimentary stuff such as heater, thermometer, etc. It goes into instructions on how to correctly mix the salt water and put in the substrate.

After that, a considerable amount of time is spent discussing live rock, what it is, how to choose it, how to take care of it, where to place it in the tank, etc. It even gives sample layouts - very helpful! The last part regarding tank setup walks you step by step through setting up the tank and live rock. If you follow the checklists, you won't miss anything or do anything out of order.

The second half of the book is on selecting fish and taking care of them. In the section showing the various species of fish, it also tells what suitable tank mates could go with the fish. Lastly it goes into feeding and maintaining the tank along with a section on fish diseases and how to treat them.

If you are interested in starting a saltwater tank, then this is an excellent book to begin with.

This is a well-done book providing plenty of information about marine aquarium setup and maintenance. My mother's a librarian so I've read several books on this subject all of which seemed too trivial and uninformative or written for the professional reef tank hobbyist but this book seemed like the perfect fit for me. The author takes the reader step-by-step through the process of identifying and purchasing the necessary equipment to seting up the tank and equipment to choosing and introducing fish to the tank and of course, maintaining the aquarium. The book is very informative and should bolster confidence in a beginner looking to setup a small to midsize tank. The author pariticularly covers filtration methodologies very well focusing primarily on the highly regarded "Berlin" method. A must have for beginners and intermediate fishkeepers looking to setup a marine tank. I would recommend a more detailed book for specifically covering choosing and caring for different types of marine fish, corals, invertebrates, etc., but this is otherwise a great book.

Super book! Theophany is an emotional and spiritual adventure. After reading a few pages, I loved Sarah and Josh. I couldn't wait to see what would happen next. I couldn't stop reading, except to try to recover my emotions. The story is going along beautifully, and then Mr. Vines sends a jolt to your heart. He does this several times. The humor and evil he adds to the story complete the adventure. Sarah and Joshua will be with me forever. I'm reading it a second time, and finding even more in it. I'd recommend it to everyone. I am anxiously awaiting the next book.

If you think you have read all of the "angel lit" (surely a whole genre by now!) that you can handle, I beseech you to try one more. Michael Vines' THEOPHANY deserves to be read as the unique story it is, rather than as just one more take on angelic intervention into mortals' lives. THEOPHANY begins with a "one two" punch in the first paragraph that lets us glimpse that this story will deal in the unexpected and in wholly new ways. The story opens with a description of a beautiful, tranquil scene in the Rocky Mountains. . . a scene that the young heroine, Sarah, contemplates as being "a wonderfully perfect place to die." The tone of the book reads mostly as a sweet fable...belying the tragedies and acts of pure evil that unfold in its pages. Sarah, seemingly a most-typical American girl, has an imaginary playmate. . .except he's not. Imaginary, that is. Of course, this companion, Joshua, is the angel in question. But this tale is not an an ordinary tale of God's assistance to a human being through angels. THIS human has been chosen for something special; born to it, if you will. . .but, and here is where Vines' message begins to take shape, so have we all. Vines traces Sarah's mission from her childhood and early adolescence, through first love and its horrible consequences, through numerous miracles, and lessons learned and taught. As Sarah says, "I cannot teach what I do not know." Vines style eases us into situations, and then lets the situation itself do the teaching. He rarely pontificates, with or or two permissible exceptions. His three main characters--Sarah, Joshua and The Stranger--are each compelling in specific ways. Leading us into a decidedly NOT typical mystery/thriller involving collusion, conspiracy and corruption at levels only we in the late twentieth century could begin to find plausible, Vines weaves in the lessons which Sarah takes to the world. "Moderation even applies to those things spiritual." "Sometimes the answer is . . .no answer, and sometimes the answer is simply . . .no." Sarah learns these lessons and becomes the most loved and hated person in the world as she goes about trying to impart them to a world in need of them. This book is one of those in which the reader must, of necessity, become a character in the book and interpret its message through the perception of his or her own "character." I am fairly certain a great many people will focus on the feminist aspect of Sarah, a female, being chosen as the vessel through which God reveals Himself. And on the message of love which permeates the book. However, for myslef, the primary message is one which Sarah articulates quite clearly, leaving no room for doubt: "But the real essence of hell will be knowing what your potential was and never being able to achieve it." Michael Vines has, perhaps, not fully achieved his potential as a novelist; but with this first effort he is obviously well on his way.

Theophany is a charming and touching novel, with a lovable main character that we quickly grow to care about a great deal. The story is so engrossing, that its not especially apparent that you are being challenged to think. Its message of spirituality, love and sacrifice, seem very apt in the manic, sometimes rather cold seeming world we live in. As Sarah makes her journey, we journey with her and see the light in humanity that Michael Vines obviously does. Its universality and hope will appeal to anyone of faith, or indeed to anyone who has faith in the human heart. I recommend Theophany highly

I happened to catch about 10 minutes of Mr. Redman on the Golf Channel. Every word he spoke rang true. After reading his book I rediscovered many of the swing feels I had accidentally discovered during my first three months playing but could never consistantly replicate. Three years and many lessons involving "modern" swing theory later, I have come home. This is the simplest and least physically demanding swing out there and Mr. Redman explains it in a way that any duffer can understand and quickly implement. I also appreciate the fact that he steered me towards Percy Boomer's book. The only drawback is that I can't find a golf pro locally who teaches this method. Right now I don't feel like I need a pro. This book is like having a teaching pro on my bookshelf. BUY THIS BOOK. It will take a few weeks to "unlearn" all the modern crap you've learned, but you'll end up with a more consistant, powerful, and easily repeatable swing. I'd give it six stars if they'd let me.

John Redman teaches the golf swing in its purest form. His method has been popularized by golf greats Bobby Jones, Percy Boomer and Tommy Armour. His swing is sometimes called the "older" or "drag back" method because it concentrates on the passive use of the hands and arms. According to Redman the power of the golf swing takes place with the lower body, mainly a natural single axis swing around the spine with all of the power being generated by a level hip and shoulder turn. (Remember Percy Boomer's famous axiom about "turning in a barrel?") In contradistinction to this method most modern tour players and teachers teach a two axis turn. This is often characterized by the Jimmy Ballard lateral move. Unfortunately, this is much harder to perfect and physically coordinate than Redmans method. Subsequently, according to Redman many amateurs come outside the line and "over the top." Slice... slice... slice! Redmans prize student is the famous golf pro and major tournament winner Paul Azinger. Many illustrations of Paul's swing are included in the book. If you are looking for an easier more relaxed way to create club head speed and a golf swing that you can use for a lifetime, then you should order this book before your next round.

IF I HAD RED THIS BOOK AND FOLLOWED IT 30 YEARS AGO,I CERTAINLY WOULD HAVE HAD A LOT MORE ENJOYMENT PLAYING GOLF.THE BASIC TECHNIQUE THAT JOHN REDMAN TEACHES IS SO SIMPLE,THAT ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS REMEMBER IT WHEN YOU SWING THE GOLF CLUB.I HAVE DROPPED 12 STROKES OFF MY SCORE!!!!

This book is really amazing. I thought that this was a very detailed book about John Michael Hayes and his rise to being a screenwriter, and how he came to work with Alfred Hitchcock. There are some great photos included that I've NEVER seen anywhere else before from Rear Window, To Catch a Thief, and more. I must say this is the best book that I've read about Hitchcock (and especially the best when it comes to talking about Rear Window). Whether you read this book for educational purposes or just pure enjoyment, you will be glad that you got it. I really recommend this to anyone that may wonder how a movie really comes about....how the REAL men do it!

At last someone has challenged the myth that Hitchcock did everything himself. Not so. He had some very skilled writers whose talents helped make his films so memorable. One of those writers - perhaps the most important - was John Michael Hayes, whose screenplays for Rear Window, To Catch a Thief, Trouble with Harry and the remake of The Man Who Knew Too Much, had a tremendous impact on Hitchcock's films of the fifties, and on the way we view Hitchcock today.

In "Writing With Hitchcock", Steven DeRosa gives Hayes his long overdue credit. Hayes' contributions to each of the films are described in detail, as are the steps taken by the censors to reign things in - to protect audiences from the idea that Cary Grant and Grace Kelly would have premarital relations, or that Jimmy Stewart and Doris Day's boy was kidnapped, are just a couple of examples! Each film is gone over in detail from the writing phase to release, and the reader is given a chance to see the relationship between the writer and director blossom, and then die.

There are lots of anecdotes and a summarizing of both Hitchcock and Hayes' careers after they parted which is very illuminating, especially the potential sequel to Rear Window that Hayes worked on that would have been far more interesting than the Chris Reeve tv version. The final chapter is an analysis of each of the screenplays, and this was especially interesting to me as an aspiring screenwriter. Well worth the price of admission! I only wish it was in hardcover.

One of the most important writers to work side by side with Alfred Hitchcock was John Michael Hayes, who collaborated with the director on Rear Window, To Catch a Thief, The Trouble with Harry, and The Man Who Knew Too Much. These films made over a two-year period (1953-55) lifted Hitchcock to a level of popularity at a time when he seemed to be growing out of touch with his audience.

This fascinating book details the relationship between Hayes and Hitchcock, exploring how the two collaborated on the writing and production of the films. Relying on a mass of documents from studio records to Hitchcock's and Hayes' personal papers, as well as anecdotal accounts, Steven DeRosa chronicles the ups and downs of this collaboration, and then analyzes the films themselves. DeRosa presents a fresh and complex portrait of the director while also providing one of the best accounts of the process of writing for film and the indignities screenwriters often endure.

I found this book hard to grade, but easy to read. Stories are the best way for people to learn, and this book has six interesting ones (about Josiah Wedgwood, H.J. Heinz, Marshall Field, Estee Lauder, Howard Schultz, and Michael Dell) describing entrepreneurs pulling themselves up by their bootstraps to create major brands. As a book of engaging business stories, this is a five star book. In terms of the insight you will get from these stories compared to the potential insight you should get, this is a three-star book. I compromised the two to come up with my grading.

If you want to learn about today's brand-building challenges, other books handle that subject much better. If you want to learn about how the Wedgwood, H.J. Heinz, Marshall Field, Estee Lauder, Starbucks, and Dell businesses got started, this is your book. The material is handled much like historical fiction (except the facts are meticulously gathered and documented), and you will find the going easy and pleasant.

If you like Horatio Alger stories, you will find those here as well. I suspect that exhausted entrepreneurs on long plane trips where their computer batteries have run out will find this book helpful in recharging their personal batteries. As Winston Churchill once said, "Never give up." That's the key lesson here. Through trial and error, these entrepreneurs kept trying until they found formulas that worked.

The choice of examples is a little flawed. Five are consumer branding examples and only one is a business example (Dell). Of the consumer branding examples, you will find that most are about selling to the higher income people. That gets a little repetitive.

The explanation of the examples is also incomplete. Considering that this is a business book, there is relatively little financial information other than annual sales and occasional asset turnover ratios. Qualitative example are helpful, but they are more helpful with more pinning down. For example, when you see the profit margins that Wedgwood had, that explains a lot about why the company could afford such lavish promotions. Without similar information on Heinz, you wonder why he was so successful in making sales but went bankrupt. Presumably, he had low margins.

The photographs and maps in the book are a plus, and I enjoyed them very much. The book was printed on such high quality paper (similar to that used for diplomas) that the images are on the same paper as the text. This permits the book to have many more illustrations than similar-sized business books.

The point about earning trust in the book is easily explained. At the time when these entrepreneurs were getting started, their largest competitors usually provided poor quality products, sometimes had inappropriate brand images, often failed to offer decent guarantees, and typically acted in self-serving ways. Earning trust isn't too hard if others are scoundrels or incompetent. Above all, these entrepreneurs stood for decent human values, and got that point across in one-to-one situations. I'm not sure that point comes out clearly enough, even though it is certainly present in each example.

Those who think the Internet age is unique will find the comparisons to the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in England and the transportation improvements in the United States to be valuable contrasts. But each age brings its unique changes. Entrepreneurs should seek to grasp those changes, but also see what others have missed. I think that the Starbucks concept could have been successfully innovated in the late 1950s. It's just that no one did it then.

After you finish enjoying these stories, I suggest that you think about the values that your organization stands for. Are those values presented and delivered in ways that make your organization more trustworthy than any other? How else do you have to be superior in order to establish a burnished brand image?

Be serious about giving people the best you can possibly provide!

This highly readable business book profiles six successful entrepreneurs from the eighteenth to the twentieth century. Each profile (Josiah Wedgwood, Henry Heinz, Marshall Field, Estee Lauder, Howard Schultz, and Michael Dell) details the milieu of the era and offers insight into the environmental business factors that each of these business builders faced.

It is this holistic approach to the subject of each profile that makes the stories so compelling. Using her command of history, Ms. Koehn outlines the period view of each of the products (pickles to perfume) and vividly draws the reader into the strategy of each of these entrepreneurs' approach to the market and building their brand. It is the power of these stories that gives the brand message such import. All of these people had a great number of competitors in their market niche but their focussed approach to the brand associated with their goods or services is what set them apart.

Ms. Koehn uses some excellent demographic and financial information (indexed to today's dollars) that provide the backdrop for the scale of the success each of these entrepreneurs' achieved. This provides just enough quantitative information to provide texture without clouding the real story in statistics.

As an executive in the software business today, I found a great deal of comfort in the fact that the challenges I face in today's competitive marketplace are not new. In fact, with great courage and resolve, they have been solved again and again in differing but similar ways over centuries.

Brand New is a brilliantly written book about entrepreneurs, brands, consumers, business history, and socioeconomic change. The book explores these subjects through the examples of six entrepreneurs-Josiah Wedgwood, H. J. Heinz, Marshall Field, Estée Lauder, Howard Schultz of Starbucks, and Michael Dell-and the brands and companies they created during times of economic and social change: Wedgwood during the Industrial Revolution, Heinz and Field during the Transportation and Communication Revolution of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and Lauder, Schultz, and Dell in our time.

Koehn is a perceptive historian and biographer as well as an astute analyst of brand creation, entrepreneurship, and organization-building. She explains how the entrepreneurs in her book were able to understand the economic and social change of their times and anticipate and respond to demand-side shifts. This understanding, she argues convincingly, enabled these entrepreneurs to bring to market products that consumers needed and wanted and to create meaningful, lasting connections with consumers through their brands. Koehn also focuses on the importance of these entrepreneurs as organization builders who understood that their success depended on developing organizational capabilities that supported their products and brands. Her book is very well-researched throughout, and uses primary archival documents extensively in the historical chapters on Josiah Wedgwood, H. J. Heinz, and Marshall Field. Koehn also brings her entrepreneurs and the stories of how each built his or her company and brand to life with her talent as a biographer and historian.

The book's emphasis on drawing lessons from both past and present offers many valuable insights for those interested in coming to a better understanding of brand creation, entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial management, and organization-building. Koehn's emphasis on the demand side of the economy and on entrepreneurs and companies making connections with consumers through the brand distinguishes her book as an important work of business scholarship on brands and entrepreneurship. A lively, interesting, and engaging read, Brand New is also valuable reading for anyone interested in business, economic, or social history or biography of business leaders. I highly recommend it!