Jane Kern presented a realistic, detailed picture of the challenges she faced when creating a quality school. The detailed events, hurdles, outcomes, and fellowship bonds allow the reader to actualize her experiences. A must read for educators creating a charter, magnet or private school. As the founding principal of MAST Academy, a USDOE Blue Ribbon School of Excellence,I related to the passion, energy, conviction, anddetermination Jane demonstrated in the school'sevolving years. The leadership, competency, fellowship, and pride among the faculty, parents, students and administration helped create a fabulous school. Well done!

An open, heartfelt look at a school, from beginning to present. Jane held nothing back - she wrote her feelings, her inspirations and most importantly, about the issues and accomplishments that make Seacrest Country Day School what it is today. My kids are going to read this so they, too, can truly appreciate the efforts and caring that have made their school so unique and special. A truly wonderful book written with love and dedication by a special lady about her incredible journey.

Dr. Kern, her students and their parents have developed a solution to the impasse currently plaguing education. How does one strike a balance between the cookie cutter method of teaching and methods allowing children more freedom of choice in devloping their interests? Hers is a fresh approach and the results speak for themselves. Anyone interested in bettering our schools should read this book.

I found this book to be very refreshing and uplifting as well as erotic. He uses eroticism just enough to get you to the edge without KNOCKING you over. My favorite by far was Check One, because of its simplicity. Love it!

There is no other way to decribe Mr. Williams except for Da Bomb. He definitely has it goin' on with his book Simple Love. The fact that it's so simple is what makes it so extraordinary. He is so expressive that by the end of the poem you feel every emotion that he was feeling as he was writing it. Keep it up Mr. Williams. I am definitely feelin' you (Especially on that --If I Could Hear Some Saxaphone--) I am awaiting the next release of your great works.

Ondrea Nicole Lewis

Simple Love is a misnomer. According to the brutally honest poetry of David Brian Williams, there is nothing simple about love. Williams has treated us to an unusally candid perspective of the often masked pain felt by men in love. His touches of eroticism reveal his desire to please, and his plea heard in "Check One" begs for an easier approach to dating and mating. There is nothing in "Simple Love" that any of us can not relate to. This man wants to love and be loved. Don't we all?

As an Information Technology consultant working w/health care professionals, I needed a standard reference to better understand my clients' needs.

I was working on my Masters of Accountancy after finishing my MBA, and I was lucky enough to find a Health Care Accounting course which used this text book.

I cannot recommend the book highly enough. If you take the time to read the different sections of the book, and read the (copious) scenario problems at the end of the section where the lessons are applied, you will acquire a much richer understanding of the accounting dynamics in health care.

I work in a health care administration postion and found the book to be very useful for refreshing me on basic accounting concepts as well as covering more complex topics of health care finance and cost accounting. I would highly recommend this book as a reference for health care institutions (especially hospitals) for orientation and as a way to educate their managers. The real-life examples and problems are invaluable for explaining the topics covered in each chapter.

I will teach some concept about hospital accountiny at the Nursey School in my University, I think this book could help me to improve my knowledge about thgis topic. I

I am a former Russian journalist and a documentary filmmaker who has also worked at NASA in the US.

"The Anatomy of Russian Defense Conversion" touches on many more subjects then just Russian Defense Industry. This is a very thorough, informative and important work that analyses the history of US and Russian Defense Industries, weapons exports and conversion, and possibilities of transformation from a militarized to a civilian economy in the new millenium.

The book also reflects on the current state of defense industries in the US and Russia, and "brain drain", or loss of intellectual capital in Russia and other countries after the Cold War.

I found reflections in Arkady Yarovsky's chapter "From the Culture of War to the Culture of Peace" very contemporary, especially in the light of recent events in the Middle East:

"Our time is unfortunately still characterized as "the culture of war." The culture of war is evident first and foremost in the hostilities between people and states, between nations and faiths, and in the inability to solve conflicts by peaceful means... Humanity has made it into the third millenium because the lust for power has been restrained by fear of nuclear war, but this restraint is not to be counted on permanently... The danger hidden in the separateness of people of different countries, unfortunately, remains a legacy for the next century... If humanity renounces the legacy of the culture of war, it can start down the road of cooperation, peaceful creation, and enlightenment. This is the only road leading to the culture of peace."

One can imagine that I, as a small child living in San Antonio, Texas, next to three Air Force bases and an Army base, living through the Cuban missile crisis, thought about the threat of the Russian military. I also met my parents' wonderful emigre' friends, and to this day have had warm relations with Russian people.

This book tells of the enormous cost to the Russian people of building and maintaining their war industry for so many years, a militarized economy where people got second best. Since the breakup of the Soviet Union, defense industry just about shut down, but civilian industry has not grown great enough to support the population. There are horrendous unemployment, and terrible health and social problems. There is some danger that the path of least resistance for Russia, if we neglect the situation, could be to re-start weapons production, for export at first.

In my opinion, the United States also, to a lesser degree, has neglected the manufacture of quality consumer goods, importing them instead, and has let its physical economy deteriorate, despite much activity in the financial sector. We, too, have been insufficiently careful of the environment. This book provides some idea of what these trends could lead to, if carried to extremes.

Perhaps the involvement of United States companies in Russia, could lead to more of a recognition here, of the importance of the physical economy. Hopefully, both countries could also work to put industry on a healthy environmental footing as well.

There is awareness of the problem of Russian defense conversion, at high levels of our government. I hope this book helps educate people and sustain that interest.

Our Earth is the Blue and Green Ark adrift in the dark. This alphabet book is poetic, rich in imagry and ideas for conservation, respect for life and the environment. The lyric language, imaginative illustrations and striking juxtaposition of content worthy of further reflection will intrigue most readers and touch many more with a reverence for nature.

Winner of the English Association's English 4-11 Award for the Best Children's Picture Book of 1999 - Non-Fiction Key Stage 2. We considered the scope and imaginative power of this work to be quite exceptional. Brian Patten takes each letter of the alphabet, presented by Sian Bailey as a work of art, in the fashion of the key letter of a medieval manuscript, and explores fascinating aspects of our planet from the origins of the earth to the development of the child in the womb. In free verse and with the help of 11 gifted artists he evokes images of the creatures in the oceans, on land and in the sky, of features of the earth like rain forests and volcanoes, of the planets and the stars in the heavens and of the technological achievements of human beings. This exploration in poetic language of such wide ranging phenomena make the book a wonderful celebration of our world for the new millennium. It also reinforces the notion that non-fiction can make a strong appeal to the imagination and can be the beginning of the reader's further investigation of concepts and topics. Further help here comes in the form of an exceptionally fine glossary with a scholarly flavour. Readers of different ages will be inspired by this highly original and informative book and will return to it again and again.

I recently became a guardian of my young nephew but could not afford and didn't want to deal with a lawyer. This book made it possible. It layed out the steps in a well structured manner. I was very satisfied with my purchase. The forms it included with the book were just great. Buy it.

As an attorney who regularly represents clients in guardianship proceedings, I strongly recommend that my clients read The Guardianship Book so that they understand the sometimes confusing process. In some cases, I hand the book to my clients during our first meeting, as "homework" to read before I will prepare and file a petition. For those who cannot afford an attorney, I recommend this as a resource that will save considerable time and avoid court hearing delays. For clients who can afford to pay my fees, the book still saves my time explaining many issues -- the $25 book can easily save $250 in attorney fees. (Mark J. Welch, Pleasanton, CA)

If you are looking for a basic, comprehensive source of information and insider stamping tips you need this book. Included in it are pages of images from a various stamp companies, store locations, how to tips, product sources - the list goes on! A great buy for the novice a MUST for the stamp entusiast!

There's a danger to publishing a resource book. By the time it hits print, how many of those resources will no longer be available? Like venerable rubber stamp authorities Miller and Thompson, David Ward doesn't just offer us a catalog of catalogs, though images from dozens of rubber stamp companies make up the bulk of this book as well as a listing of stamp stores, manufacturers and suppliers. What makes this book valuable are the articles about tools and techniques, articles that will never go out of date. Sure you can get the same information in other stamping books, or probably learn them online or at your local stamping store, but the combination of articles, project ideas (with color plates of finished projects, none of which use outrageously difficult techniques or expensive materials)and a vast resource base which includes many well-established companies which will probably be around for the next X-number of years, makes this book a must-have addition to the collection of dedicated stampers. This is an idea book, a book to sit and daydream with, as well as a practical guide to the who, what and where of the art/craft of stamping.

Having just finished reading it for the third time, I believe that Cancer Ward is a very fine novel, rich at many levels: in its depiction of Soviet provincial society in 1955, a poor society just emerging from Stalinism; in its portrayal of many separate characters (doctors, nurses, patients, hospital workers) in that society, many of whose lives have been permanently damaged by the terror and the GULAG, but in different ways; and, as I know from personal experience, in its depiction of the isolated world of the cancer patient, from which the rest of society is seen dimly, as though through dirty glass. In spite of all medical progress, the basics of this world have not changed much in 50 years: the core treatments are still surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy, and the side effects both long and short term can still be brutal.

The ending of the book will disappoint those who want a happy ending, or just an ending with all the loose ends tied up. In real life, though, loose ends usually stay loose. My thought is that Solzhenitshyn intended the reader to understand that for the characters and the society who are so damaged by the past there can be no happy endings; the best they can hope for is to continue from day to day, grasping at whatever happiness briefly comes their way.

Cancer Ward is often overshadowed by its predecessor, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, and its successor, the immense memoir, The Gulag Archipelago. While the worldly impact of those two works is perhaps greater, the aesthetic power of Cancer Ward is stronger than both of those works. The story is poignant and powerful, reaching out and probing deeply into the essential questions that are never answered by not only Soviet society, but western culture as a whole. The religious message that emerges is stunning and unique, recalling the works of Dostoyevsky. Overall, this is an excellent book, and any reader who enjoyed One Day or Gulag will be blown away by this work.

Those were the words that Dorothy used to describe Oz after waking up in the bosom of her family. The same intense feeling came over me while reading this book, a task that spanned several years, as I often put it aside for other things, always returning, drawn by the power of the author's prose in opening his world to us. The realness of Solzhenitsyn's worlds makes him perhaps the most accessible Russian novelist. As he described the village where Kostoglotov, the protagonist, lived, or in recounting how Ruasov, the villian/fellow victim ruined lives while justifying his actions, a vivid portrait fills the reader's imagination.
The human struggle to find hope and beauty in the most tragic of settings is what this novel evokes so well. Soviet medicine, cancer, a Zek fresh from the Gulag, and in a twilight turned dawn, Solzhenitsyn finds for his semi-autobiographical protagonist happiness, not only in winning victories against a malignant tumor, but in thoughts of perhaps one more summer to live, with nights sleeping under the stars, of three beech trees that stand like ancient guardians of an otherwise empty steppe horizon, a dog that shared his life there, and of a young nurse and spinster doctor, both of whom he hoped at times to love.
The picture one often got (accurately) of the Soviet Union was of greyness, gloom, uniform drabnes, and of a totalitarian police state. This book serves to remind the reader that, despite such circumstances, even desparately sick human being might still seek, and find, happiness in his own, private world. Along with that, Solzhenitsyn never lets us forget the utter corruption of the Soviet state, often in the person of Ruasov, an ailing bureaucrat who has managed to turn personnel management into an exquisite art form, as an instrument of psychological torture, slowly administered.
Of all Solzehenitsyn's works, this is my favorite. The people one encounters are vividly real, and the ending isn't what one would think (or hope), but is fitting, nonetheless.
-Lloyd A. Conway

Very helpful for devout Catholics, returning fallen-away Catholics, and for anyone interested in understanding the Catholic religious tradition. I especially like the biblical references that show the scriptural source of the sacrements and religious practices. This book will answer any questions you have about the Catholic tradition. The only reservation I have is that there are no answers given to the questions at the end of each lesson. Other than that, it's a great resource.

This book was recommended to me by my Spiritual Confessor as a book to be studied on a daily basis. He said that is should be well understood and memorized. What I really love about this book is that it's question and answer format along with commentary and Scriptural references makes our Catholic Traditions easily understandable. Since it is a question and answer format I can also take a couple of questions a day and memorize them. This is an ideal book for New Catholics as well as Cradle Catholics. This is a great investment for the price.

A previous "reviewer" obviously has never seen this book since it is not intended for use with children. It is clearly aimed at young adults who already have an understanding of the basic truths of the Catholic faith. These catechisms are styled after Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologiae, which is universally recognized as one of the greatest philosphical and theological works ever! For those wanting an introduction to the Catholic religion, I would suggest the first book in this series, which is geared to children and catechumens.

A look at both growing up and getting old. Growing up inAlabama with a message for everyone. Humor, tragedy, the dramatic andthe mundane. In short, the shape of life.

This book takes you back in time when it was the type of world we love to remember. It's a sentamental journey in time to a place that was special to all those who grew up there. It warms the heart with each page. I enjoyed the nostalgic stroll down the byways of a wonderful small Alabama town.

Robert David Ward brought together a diverse mix of people whose lives were linked by time and place, revealing both the uniqueness of this small southern college town and a common culture familiar to those who remember World War II, danced to the music of a young Frank Sinatra and big bands, and listened to The Lone Ranger on the radio. It was a time when children created their own entertainment and adventure, limited only by imagination and invention. Although the setting was unique to those who lived it, many of the experiences brought me back to my own childhood in a small southern town. Their stories pulled me right into their lives as they shared the experiences that shaped their futures. I felt as if Montevallo was my town and its young people were my best friends. Not since I read the stories of Rebeccah Wells and Pat Conroy have I felt such a kindred spirit with the lives of those portrayed in TIME HAS MADE A CHANGE IN ME.

The broad mix of voices who shared their recollections and images convey a history more authentic than any history book of deadly dull facts and dates. This book will make a perfect gift for my children and grandchildren!