I never built a building before, I did help build a deck.
I bought this book to build a small music studio (16'x24')
and it was easy to read. It had everything I needed in it to build the building and the project came out great. After reading this book you will think it is easy to build small buildings.

This is a great general building reference book. I pull it out whenever I'm starting something new or if I want a refresher. This book has helpful detailed information on all phases of building design and construction. This includes: 1. Foundation design layout and pouring for slabs, piers, & footings of all sorts; 2. Framing design & construction-- whether pole or platform framing, roof trusses or rafters; 3. Siding & roofing options, design & construction details for each; 4. Wiring details from power to the service panel to switches, lighting and outlets; 5.Plumbing from the well to the septic leach field.

It also has over 20 plans for various buildings ranging from pole barns and equipment sheds to guest houses, garages and studios. I have built several sheds from plans in this book and plan to build more.

I was interested in learning how to build a outdoor storage/workshop building. This book gave me a great foundation. With it's acurate how to list, materials and dimensions, it give confidence to all do it yourselfers. I felt that the step by step from supplies to completion really proved invaluable. I would suggest this book to anyone interested in building their own buildings. I look forward to trying out the next design, a green house/garden shed. I feel this book should be apart of all libraries.

This is quite possibly the best gardening book I've ever read. I have discovered that, while I love gardens, I don't especially like gardening. Thanks to Marianne Binetti and her very practical advice, I can have an attractive, low-maintenance garden in no time. Especially helpful are her picks for the best bulbs, perennials, and shrubs for lazy gardeners, including sturdy species of roses for those of us who thought roses were too fussy to grow. Marianne's style is easy to read, funny, and makes me feel so much better about myself and my less-than-meticulous gardening skills. I highly recommend this book.

If you're a gardener or a would-be gardener, and you like books that make you grin, books that include lots of easily understood information, and books that are short and succinct, Marianne Binetti's Tips for Carefree Landscapes is the book for you. And, Marianne's tips are perfect for those of you who don't have hours and hours to spend gardening and "lawning." The last chapter, "Gardening Horror Stories" with sub-titles such as The Footprints of Death, lets readers know that they're not the only ones who have had or will have fluky garden experiences! And each story has a "gardening moral." Read. Learn. Grin and enjoy! I did.

I love buying books and this book is the best book I have ever bought for gardening. This is a book for the weekend gardener. I only spent may be 1 hour a week for the yard. It is fun to read. This book is really good for beginner too. Marianne told a lot of not to do stories. It also contains what are the best plants to use for a carefree garden. I remembered I found this book too plain the first time I read it, but over the past 4 years of gardening I can only said that what are in this book really make sense. If I have followed it's advises from the start I would save myself lot of troubles I am having now

There's something for every kind of gardener in this well designed book. Lots of reference material, too, from web sites to bibliographies. Well structured. A delight to use.

As far as selecting apples, and actually creating cider from them, this book is abount as detailed as it gets. The tables in in that describe US and EU apple types as well as their traits is worth the price alone.

However, if you're looking to make hard (alcoholic) cider the book only takes you half way. Anyone looking to do hard cider should buy a seperate homebrew book that goes into detail about the brew process. Combine it with the information from this book and you'll have some great hard cider.

This is a wonderful, inspiring book like few I have read recently. It opens a huge world that I never imagined existed. Cider isn't just the jugs in the grocery store and the 6-pack in the liquor store, its an important part of human and American history. The author has put a lot of time in researching this book, and is thick with fascinating information such as cider-only apple varieties, cider tasting terms, French vs English cider, etc etc etc.

The book does describe cider making, but that is not the main focus of the book. Still, any self-respecting cider maker should have a copy.

Many of the books on cider making skim over the selection of apples, including English bittersweet and bittersharp varieties that are critical for outstanding cider production. Not Watson in this excellent book.

Several great lists of varieties and a good description of the cider apple classification methods is represented more clearly than I've found elsewhere.

A bit more clarification could have been given to the production process, as well as pressing details, but overall the book has been my favorite on the topic.

This book is a must have if you are even thinking of building a stone building. Great details with a clear picture of the work involved, and lots of heads up pointers. Could of used more pictures, the ones it had were all black and white. The only thing about this book I didn't like was it was written in 1991 and after 10 years some contruction methods change.

If you don't like to get dirty, don't read this book. But for the rest of us, this book is a great source of information that really teaches one how to build a cathedral-styled house, market, or any other design to get get peoples attention!

What did slipform mean ? In which condition I must use slipform ? In which condition I don't have to use slipform

Disclaimer: I am a civilian employee of The Salvation Army (i.e., I am not an officer or a Salvationist), and an academic sociologist by training.

This book is not a cookbook for effective leadership. You can't read this book, apply a couple of techniques, and expect to be as effective as The Salvation Army is at raising funds, running programs, and improving communities.

If you are interested in effective leadership and you're willing to reflect on your practices and, more importantly, the principles underlying your business and/or management style, this is a book you should consider reading. If you're looking for some sort of quick-fix to improve your own management, look elsewhere.

Instead, this book provides several general guidelines with supporting commentary drawn largely from Watson's experience as an officer with (and ultimately the National Commander, or Commissioner, of) The Salvation Army. According to Watson, the central tenet of The Salvation Army's leadership effectiveness is to, "engage the spirit."

The remainder of the book elaborates on this point with other related ideas (i.e., put people in your purpose; embody the brand; lead by listening; spread the responsibility, share the profits; organize to improvise; act with audacity; and make joy count). Watson and Brown don't tell you specifically *how* to do these things, but provide examples of how The Salvation Army and, in some cases, other companies and executives accomplish these things.

To be clear, the book isn't about The Salvation Army itself or its operations. You can gain insight into some of The Army's programs, but they vary too much from one community to the next to get a sense of the massive scope of what they do.

This is actually an interesting book. It tells the reader how the Salvation Army is an effective orgainzation. I bought this book for a college management class assignment on leadership and found the book to be very helpful.

The Salvation Army's role and effectiveness may be the best-kept secret that is out in the open for all to see.

Reading this book is a deeply moving spiritual experience. " . . . [T]he real secret of our success is getting them [those the Salvation Army serves] to accept responsibility for integrating their hearts, their minds, their souls with transcendent purpose."

In grading this book, I was most heavily influenced by how much it added to my knowledge of the Salvation Army (clearly a five star operation) as an organization, and its key leadership and management principles. Like most people, I mainly know about the Salvation Army through tiny glimpses of its work as seen in good neighborhoods (while most of the work takes place in more challenging environments) . . . rather than as a case history in organizational effectiveness. Now, as a result of reading this book, I can see the whole a little and see it as being much more than the sum of the pieces.

Compared to the potential to tell the Salvation Army's story, however, you may find that this book could be improved upon. I certainly did. The examples from businesses, sports, and music as well as the many references to famous management books usually just stole space, in my judgment, from telling more about the Salvation Army. A more useful counterpoint in the book would have been to explain how for-profit organizations fare in performing many of the same tasks that the Salvation Army does.

I'm also not sure that the book totally captured the full lesson of the power of the Salvation Army's mission: Potential and actual volunteers and donors, those who need the Salvation Army's services, the families of those who need the Salvation Army's services, and the communities in which the Salvation Army operates (regardless of religious faith and personal beliefs) find the Salvation Army's purposes of principles to be inspiring and worthy of both active and moral support. In this dimension, the closest I can think of another organization for its mission's powerful appeal is Habitat for Humanity.

As a student of leadership and management, I came away totally awed by thinking about how you provide services over 30 million people with around 5500 executives and managers (about a third of whom are "retired") in so many different, difficult activities: alcohol and drug rehabilitation; rehabilitating prisoners; helping homeless people get back to normal living; community recreation; disaster relief; rebuilding communities after disasters; and providing for the poor. The Salvation Army takes justifiable interest in measuring how effectively it performs these tasks compared to other organizations. The comparisons are usually very favorable. To put this in perspective, did you know that the Salvation Army had its first portable canteen on the scene within 20 minutes after the Oklahoma City bombing? Within minutes, three canteens were there.

Then, I was totally flattened to realize that those who run all of these activities must raise the funds for them locally. Beyond a little start-up money (which must be repaid), each effort must be financially self-sustaining. So when a need arises, the leaders must be serving the need and raising the money at the same time. Somehow, it all comes together.

Commissioner (retired U.S. national commander) Robert Watson describes these successes to the way the Salvation Army's mission engages the spirit of people. "We must always be mission driven." "If a proposal doesn't advance our twofold mission, we're not interested in it."

The mission is:

"The Salvation Army, an international movement, is an evangelical part of the universal Christian Church."

"Its message is based on the Bible. Its ministry is motivated by the love of God."

"Its mission is to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ and to meet human needs in His name without discrimination."

This mission is based on the injunction to teach in Matthew 28:19 and to serve in Matthew 25:40. These are two inseparable obligations. Yet the book is full of examples of those who are not observers of the Christian religion who support the work of the Salvation Army.

In pursuing the mission, the Salvation Army looks for holistic solutions. As William Booth, the Salvation Army's founder, said, "Take the slums out of people." For homeless people, this may mean providing them a place to sleep, helping them overcome any drinking or drug problems, making clean clothes available, helping them polish up skills to apply for jobs, assist with learning to read better, and rekindling the spirit of wanting to take charge of their lives again. At the same time, their spiritual needs and self-worth need to be nurtured just as much.

The holistic solutions carry over to building its staff. Many are sons and daughters of staff members or families that received aid in the past, as was true of Commissioner Watson. Both the wife and husband share a job. They both wear the uniform, and follow the rules. Assignments are made in ways to be best for the family and the Salvation Army. The children are often enrolled in the same youth programs that serve the poor in the same community.

"God, please make us worthy of such trust!"

My favorite quote from the book is that "you can be forgiven a great deal for honest mistakes committed in the act of trying to save the world."

Does your work reflect your spiritual values? If not, have you considered taking on volunteer work that would? Who knows where it could lead?

As the book's final point reminds us, be sure you are having "the fun of work."

I didn't read every word on every page. I have used it more as a reference. Captivating set of color illustrations, well written, obviously edited thoroughly to give a more professional read. If you're drawn towards the rewarding art and science of working with stone, this book is a must.

We've been looking for the 'recipe' on how to make light weight Rocks and Trough's, This is the only book we've found to do more then mention that it can be done. One of the best all around books for folk who don't have a Daddy Warbucks bank account.

I found this book to be very poorly written and unsatisfactory. It contained lots of bad algorithms and poor coding. Much of the code was unusable and the methods explained were very simple. I could have done without it to be honest. Avoid this book if you want to learn how to program properly

Im not an advaced programmer, but reading some parts... I learned a lot of good things. I couldnt describe them here, but i will implement them on the future projects ahead. Things that I think are essential to the industry grade programmer and to becoming one.
The material was delivered clearly, not necessarily simple... but it is clear. The book is worth all my hard saved money... and im glad to have it, and its fun to read too...

When seeking a reference, most experienced programmers will rather buy a reference that focuses more on the advanced issues than the language concepts itself. Mainly because almost all decent compilers come with extensive help files that cover most of what the programmers might need regarding the language itself. This book doesn't explain much about C, but instead uses C as a tool to explain some very useful issues that are crucial to almost all advanced programmers.

The book wastes no space on trivial stuff like how to open your compiler or use a non-standard C function. Instead, it goes directly into what's important, explaining the concepts and giving concrete examples where appropriate, all using ANSI C.

Since most of the issues aren't dependant on the implementation schemes, almost any advanced programmer would benefit from this book, even if he/she is not programming in C (assuming advanced knowledge of C, of course). The only exceptions are the topics that talk about the ANSI C rules and code organization and optimization. The only disadvantage here is that this book doesn't cover object oriented concepts, but that's not a surprise of course as the book is titled "C Unleashed." But still for anything else other than that, this could be a great help even to C++ programmers.

The book chapters have been written by more than 10 experienced programmers, 6 of them are really good, which makes each chapter standalone as a small tutorial on some issue. The writing style of Richard Heathfield and many of the co-authors is very nice to read and clear to understand. Some parts, of course, do not have that nice writing style, but throughout the book, the technical information is very clear and easy to comprehend.

I wouldn't recommend this book to any new programmers. But for the more advanced ones, this is something they would want to check.

-Mokhtar M. Khorshid

The book started off getting me real excited about sustainable farming. I was eager to turn the page and learn more, but as i turned the page, nothing materialized. I learned a lot about soil health and management, but when it got around to details about specific vegetables, growing seasons, and pest prevention, the book was lacking.

This book is for people who either live and farm in the country already, or have some realastic experience about what it is to work for a living. Anyone who has ever tried to bring in a crop, will appreciate the down-to-earth basic information provided. If you are looking for information about how to make a pretty garden, look elsewhere. this is a not to be missed reference, right up there with your county extension agent's telephone number.

Anyone owning or planning to own a small farm will find this handbook an invaluable guide to both the real potential and the harsh realities in making a full or part-time living on the land - buying land, growing and marketing your crops. Concise how-to. 134 pages.