As a 28 year old women surfer I'm glad to see someone has finally addressed women surfers as athletes. The yoga stretches are direct and to the point. Surfers don't want to spend a lot of time warming up so the 10 minute yoga routine is great! The Wahine Workout is challenging with lots of good tips. The Surf Flex Workout done on a swissball is without question the best workout a surfer can do outside of the water. "if your going to play on an unstable enviroment doesn't it make sense to train on one?" Makes sense to me. This workout brings all your surfing muscles to the party! See you in the water!

As a 35 year old surfer I pride myself in my ability to rip! I keep right up with the younger puppies in the water. Lots of them ask me how I do it? I just smile and say 'surf alot'. Fact is I've been doing yoga for 8 years 4-5 times a week. A couple of years ago I was introduced to working out with a swissball. These two elements changed my conditioning radicaly. I never shared it with anyone, because when I'm 45, I plan to still be ripping while most of the young'un have stopped surfing because of bad backs,and shoulders. It may have been a bit selfish, but I thought it would keep the surf population down. So I could have just as easily given Surf Flex a 0 star rating, more healthy surfers more people in the water, bummer dude! But that would have been bad karma! Seeing that I haven't shared my conditioning secrets with my fellow surfers, I must say this is an excellent book. Its not a book that was published by the big surfing guns, Surfer Mag, or Surfing, so it not slick,thats what great about it. What it lacks in slick, it compensates with heart and passion. Ain't that something! Great swissball workouts, good foundations for yoga, dry land training and comments from world class surfers. I applaud the author, but, if I see him out in the water, he owns me a couple of waves :)

For anyone who wants to improve their surfing, Surf Flex is a must have book. I incorporated many of the flexibility and dry land workouts into my exercise routine, and my surfing has taken off! Not only did my riding and balance get better, but I felt so much better condiditoned to stay out there as long as I wanted. In rough conditions, I immdediately notice the added strength I've developed through the exercises from Surf Flex. If you want things to do outside the water to optimize your time in the water, BUY THIS BOOK. -- DAS, avid longboarder

I really enjoyed this book a lot! Out of all of Elvis' girlfriends June seems the most "real" of all of them! I have seen her on TV and she seems like a great woman! The times she shared with Elvis are so innocent and he treated her with such respect. It was the Elvis before he was touched by Col. Parker, Hollywood and Vegas. He was a semi-regular guy, Elvis, his mammas son. I was actually suprised how liberal Gladys was with June going into his bedroom in her home. She must have trusted her son a lot and June was a nice girl too. Gladys also seem to have loved June like a daughter. It is too bad his friends and fame had to come between them. I know Elvis had great works ahead of him, despite that it would have been nice if he could have had a real life like a normal person. He had such a good heart and tried so hard to treat others well. June has a wonderful book and I highly recommend this! You will not be unhappy, but more of an Elvis fan than ever!

I first borrowed this book from the library when i need to do a project about a famous person.I found it by chance because i don't know any thing about Elvis Presley at first.But after i read this excellent book, i was so attracted by the Elvis that June wrote about, and i rushed to the bookstore to buy this book.In this book, you can find that you are with the king of rock'n' roll.

A refreshing, affectionate, funny and ultimately sad look back at what in Elvis' own words were 'the best years of my life'. June takes us on a golden trip down memory lane to a place that we all sometimes like to visit which is what gives the book such a hold...we can all relate to it on some level. Coupled with that June gives a new humanity to a man who has been picked at and slandered from almost every angle over the years. We see them on a day to day level facing the almost impossible rollercoaster ride that was everyday life for Elvis. June conveys so well the enormous pressures that Elvis must have been under for so long without being at all judgemental. The story ends too suddenly with no insight into the feelings that were and must still be left behind. June mentions briefly her sorrow at hearing 'Unchained Melody' being played on the radio the night he died, a song he had sung specially for her 20 years previously and one that she had been waiting for to appear on a record for all those years between. You are left with the feeling that maybe June Juanico, had she stuck around, might have been one person who cared enough and had enough clout to have made a differnce to a man who was so talented and yet lived such a lonely life with no one to really guide him through the turmoil that was his every day existence until the day he died.

An excellent book. A very valuable addition to what must be by now an enormous library of books on the King.

Glasgow, March '99

I LOVE THIS BOOK! I've read nearly every Barbara Michaels book-and this is by far my favorite. I once spent two hours describing this book to my friend in minute detail-and she loved it! Dashing Andrea, dreamy Stefano, vivacious Miss Perkins, ever-changing Francesca are the key players in one of my favorite stories. Bravo, Ms. Michaels, for writing this story!

I have collected and read many of Barbara Michaels' Books and this one is My favorite. Set during the Italian Revolution, it gives you a different perspective of Italian History, through English eyes. It was very well written, so much so, that you feel as if the excitement in the book, is very real!! The main characters are intelligent, witty, and daring. You cheer for them throughout the book. I wish this were made into a movie, so visual people, like myself, could indulge in it further. Whether you're a closet romantic, history student, or mystery buff --- you'll want to read it twice....like I did!!!

I am a HUGE Barbara Michaels fan, quite possibly because she has the ability to encompass mystery, thrills, and romance, without dwelling too much on one aspect. Which holds true for this book as well. You will absolutely love Francesca, Stefano, and Miss P., for their wit, and intelligence. I wish this book were turned into a movie, so all of us visual people can watch all the events unfold, IN STEREO! At any rate, if you're a closet romantic, history student, or mystery buff, this is sure to enthrall you!!!

Book contains 46 pages on introductory propagation methods, followed by very specific information on propagating these plant types: 44 pages on trees, 54 pages on shrubs, 64 pages on perennials, 16 pages on annuals, 20 pages on cacti, 28 pages on bulbs, and 28 pages on vegetables and herbs. In the back are a glossary, an index, and north america hardiness map. Very complete.

If you can grow it, the instructions are listed in this book.

Book contains hundreds of small, but helpful photographs that demonstrate a process or identify some plant anatomy.

Solid information, well worth the money!

As a professional horticulturalist, gosh what a word, I spotted this delightful book in the Beaufort Public Library, kept it out too long because I did not want to take it back and it cost me a 75 cent fine...such a deal. Now I MUST buy my own, even though my birthday is less than a month away. It makes propagation a breeze. And what great graphics and photos. I'll be out gathering palmetto seeds soon. Ever wonder what to do with a sago palm seed? You won't believe what they need to sprout. Now I know why the plant is so expensive to buy. With this book you have the knowledge to start just about any plant you can think of.

I Have to say this is the best Garden book out of all my Garden books,all the pictures and details in this book is so great, this is one reason I have this book. I checked this book out of the library before I bought this book. The step by step instructions along with the pictures is so helpful. I have never been so interested in a book in my life. Now that I have this book I will be doing more Propagation for family & friends. I Love This Book, you must have if you love to garden.

This is a fantastic book for the first-time potter or for someone experienced hoping to learn more. The only weakness was too few photos of finished products to see the results of techniques being described in the book. Otherwise, a fun book that will inspire you to learn more about your craft!

I got this book as a Christmas present from 3 of my dearest friends last year and it has just been a FANTASTIC source of inspiration and information since. Projects were easy to follow and instructions were clear, illustrated with lots of nicely taken photos to guide you every step of the way. I would highly recommend this book to both beginners and/or experienced potters.

What a great book for all of us clay lovers. Not overwhelming yet offers information on about everything you need to know. I've had this book for several years and I keep getting out again and again.

I read the book, Women in the Material World after I saw the author at a young women's conference last year. I thought the book was great. It showed many women's points of view on life and the way they live. This book made me think about other women and how we are all very different but also the same. I think this book is very truthful and has a beautiful message. There are not many books like this out there so I commend Faith for writing it.

When I first ordered this book and received it in the mail, after opening the box it came in, sat down right then and there "just to take a peek". Well, let's just say, my short "peek" turned into an interrupted 30 minutes! "Women in the Material World" certainly joins the ranks of "can't-put-down-and-can't-forget-about" books. It is a very worthy sequel to "Material World", in which women from some of the "Material World" families are looked at more closely. Perhaps the most special thing about this book is a long, personal, and intimate interview with each women. The women are surprisingly open in responding about their daily life, their children, their marriage, and their future hopes. "Women in the Material World" simply lets the women speak for themselves, and in the process, breaks down many stereotypes (who would have thought a 58-year Chinese woman would love farming much more than her traditional household duties?)and lets others remain (the secluded life of an Indian woman). Statistics for that country, quick facts about each woman, a brief write-up on conditions for women in each of their countries, and field notes from the photographer further enrich this amazing book. The women in this book will inspire you, challenge you, and never let you forget this book.

I first read Material World: a Global family portrait. This one is similar, and has some of the same people in it, but this one focuses on the women in the family, and how she takes care of her family, what she thinks about, how she gets along in life in general.

There are some statistics about the country, things about how much money they make, the literacy rate, etc.. none of it boring. the book makes you feel like you are traveling around the world and meeting all of these people. The pictures are also beautiful.

I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in other cultures and the way that women live around the world.. i would love to find more books like this. It makes me thankful for how much I have and the opportunities in this country that are open to women!

Of Peter Matthiessen's non-fiction I have previously read only The Snow Leopard, but I have also enjoyed a collection of short stories called On the River Styx. Mr. Matthiessen's authorial voice is very prickly in Birds of Heaven, much more cranky than I remember it in The Snow Leopard, which was written in the wake of the death of his wife from cancer. The Snow Leopard was permeated with sadness and longing. Birds of Heaven is permeated with anger and impatience.

The book is arranged geographically. Beginning in Siberia, Mr. Matthiessen takes through Asia to Australia and then on to Africa and Europe and finally to North America. There are no cranes in South America (or Antarctica).

The author is at his best when he is combining his wry observations of the people and places around him with an enthusiastic and well-informed account of the natural history of a region. I felt that he was less successful when he lets his righteous indignation get the better of him and begins to make snide comments about the absence of a love of the natural world in Chinese society, the wrong-headedness of various bureaucrats and the corruption of local officials.

It is not as if I disagreed with his point of view, but I knew that I already shared it before I even picked up the book. I can't imagine anyone who had any doubts about the importance of cranes as sensitive indicators of the general health of the environment being won over to the crane's side by this hectoring, doctrinaire authorial voice. But then, perhaps this books is really just an extended love letter to the cranes and to the environment in general. As such, it succeeds wonderfully.

Peter Matthiessen includes stories of native people on all the continents that harbor cranes in _The Birds of Heaven: Travels With Cranes_ (North Point Press). He recounts some encounters with humans ("craniacs") who are trying to save the cranes, which are in trouble everywhere, but most of the extensive travels described in this book can only report trouble. If we do not, however, learn what the crane has to tell us, it will be despite Matthiessen's efforts, for in him, cranes have a lucid and compelling advocate.He has gone to exotic locales wherever cranes go. There are plenty of common denominators wherever he travels. Cranes, like so many other forms of wildlife, are hunted, trapped to sell as exotic specimens, and poisoned as agricultural pests. Cranes need wetlands in which to feed, and humans need wetlands to serve as repositories for waste and to be built over to make more space for more humans. It is clear everywhere that Matthiessen goes that humans are winning, and therefore losing.

He has produced an unforgettably bleak picture of ecological matters in China, and an optimistic account of our own country's efforts in getting whooping cranes started again. That we don't know what we are doing in dealing with the cranes is shown in a paradoxically happy outcome for them in Korea. Wars are, as the posters used to declare, harmful to children and other living things, and the Korean War was disastrous for humans and for cranes. There is now a Demilitarized Zone between the two Koreas, just a couple of miles wide but running from the Sea of Japan to the Yellow Sea. Human habitation is forbidden in the area, and farming is very limited. Matthiessen is thus able to visit the DMZ's boundary, accompanied by armed soldiers. ("One may visit a North Korean museum that reveals American atrocities, but we decline this educational opportunity, electing to go birdwatching instead.") He thus gets to watch cranes in the "most fiercely protected wildlife sanctuary on earth... an accidental paradise for cranes." Woe to the cranes if peace breaks out.

This volume includes paintings and drawings of cranes by Robert Bateman, lovely renderings that are more compelling than the usual field guide renditions. They complement Matthiessen's fine text. Cranes are long lived, and they often mate for life. Their windpipes are modified like French horns to produce eloquent and distinctive calls. Their size and their pugnacity, for they are protective birds and dangerous to handle, should make us respect them as fellow-citizens of the planet. There is no need to invoke anthropomorphism; there is a spiritual bond between humans and these animals which Matthiessen has movingly demonstrated. He knows, however, that "the time is past when large rare creatures can recover their numbers without man's strenuous intervention," and despite his romantic optimism, his stories show we are strenuously bent on something else entirely.

If you've read any of Matthiessen's non fiction you'll know that when he's passionate about a subject he has the ability to bring feelings alive with his poetic and vivid command of language. Tie that in with his inclination to be a naturally introspective writer - literally seeking inner truths through nature - and you've got the threads that are woven together here to make THE BIRDS OF HEAVEN a beautifully written book. In describing a glimpse of three Japanese cranes on a misty early evening on the snow covered banks of a river, Matthiessen is at his evocative best. "Sun silvered creatures, moving gracefully without haste and yet swiftly in the black diamond shimmer of the Muri River - a hallucinatory vision, a revelation, although what is revealed beyond this silver moment of my life I do not know."

While Matthiessen is poetic and romantic as a nature writer he is a blunt and critical social commentator. Our species comes in for some stick. We neither stack up well in creation - look at the beauty of an African Crowned crane, the "red-black-and-white head crowned by a spray of elongated feathers on the nape, like spun gold in the bright sun...how wonderful it seems that even the boldest colors of creation are never garish or mismatched, as they are so often in the work of man." Nor do we do so well with what we create - China's Three Gorges Dam will destroy some pristine crane wintering lands and is, according to Matthiessen, "a grand folly of enormous cost." Worse still is that we are such a self destructive species. The dam, he goes on to say, will also cause "social and environmental ruin" in this part of China.

Poignancy, yes, even sorrow at the passing of so many of the last wild and unspoilt areas of the planet, but sentimentality, wistfullness, hopelessness, and inaction are not words that are in this author's vocabulary. Indeed the fact that cranes are the central focus here is cause for cautious optimism. Cranes have always been a vibrant part of our cultural history and remain evocative symbols of our spiritual and creative imagination and are seen as omens of good luck and longevity in many countries.

The fifteen species of cranes (eleven of which are endangered or threatened) have lessons to teach mankind. Matthiessen's recounting of the sectarian squabbling that took place at an international gathering of crane conservationists is illustrative. While economics, politics, and nationality remain common dividing factors among the human participants, more than half of the species of cranes are content to make the Amur River basin in central Asia their common gathering ground.

A powerful book for Matthiessen's writing, the beautiful paintings and illustrations offered in support, and the stories of the cranes themselves - Saurus, Crowned Crane, Brolga, Siberian and the rare Whooping and Japanese Cranes - two of the most endangered species that Matthiessen says are "heraldic emblems of the purity of water, earth, and air that is being lost." We need to conserve, appreciate, and learn from these birds of heaven, and heed the "horn notes of their voices, [that] like clarion calls out of the farthest skies, summon our attention to our own swift passage on this precious earth."

Educational Research: Competencies for Analysis and Application by L.R. Gay and Peter Airasian is a wonderful textbook for assisting people who are writing a Research paper or doing their Masters thesis. Each chapter of this book is very understanding, well organized and written. This book goes through a step by step process of educational research, so that a person can fully understand what it is. It provides you with a variety of samples to help answer any questions you may encounter while doing your paper. This book was a great resource in helping me prepare for my Action Research paper.

As the introduction to Educational Research states, "one out of every two introductory educational research students uses this book." It is no surprise that college professors use this text because it is well written. The material is both in depth and reader friendly. The text takes you though a step-by-step process of planning, conducting, and evaluating research. Anyone who is struggling with writing a Master's Thesis will find the book to be a most helpful resource tool. The material is presented with a straight forward approach (along with some humor), and the book also provides useful chapter summaries and actual research reports. From a personal standpoint, the book is just that much better because it was written by a woman in a time when a woman with a brilliant mind was considered to be dangerous.

Educational Research: Competencies for Analysis and Application 6th Edition is an excellent introductory text to assist in writing a Master's thesis or Research paper. The book is well organized and will take you step-by-step through the process of educational research. It begins with selecting and defining a problem, gives strategies to prepare and evaluate a research plan, selecting measuring instruments, also includes the different types of research, to analyzing and interpretaing statistics, and to writing your final research report. This book teaches the importance of reviewing and analyzing your research related literature and includes samples of educational research reports. Excellent summaries are included at the end of each chapter. It is a great resource and my book is earmarked and tabbed throughout as I am working on my Master's Degree Action Research paper.

This 365 day journey compiled by Tolstoy is a journal that he himself read year after year following his authorship of it. The book contains wisdom from the world's various sacred texts, including wisdom from the Christian, Buddhist, and Muslim traditions, and more. A wonderfully inspiring daily devotional that is perfect for open-minded individuals of all religions. Buy this book!!

...laid gradually, day by day. There are still critics of Tolstoy who view his religious phase of life with anything from consternation to disdain. The fact is that he brought a probing intellect as strong as anyone else's in Europe, searing psychological understanding, and voluminous reading to bear on the fundamental questions of life. In this book he collected the wisest sayings he could find on a multitude of topics, plus his own distillations of their wisdom, and arranged them by subject for daily meditation. One effect of this book, which I'm sure Tolstoy desired, was that you'll want to go back to his sources with renewed eagerness. One professional reviewer described this book as "chicken soup for the soul without the schmalz". It's more than chicken soup -- it's the bread of life.

A Calendar of Wisdom by Leo Tolstoy. Scribner, 1997. FOR THE FIRST TIME IN ENGLISH, THE LAST MAJOR WORK BY LEO TOLSTOY!!! Created by one of the world's best novelists as a guide for moral living, this beautiful treasure offers, as Tolstoy wrote, "a wise thought for every day of the year, from the greatest philosophers of all times and peoples." Most of the pages were created by Tolstoy himself in 1903-1910 and are dedicated to love, faith, kindness, knowledge, sacrifice, family, meditation, prayer, etc. For Leo Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom (Russian title "Put zhizni"), was the most important project of his life, a book he proclaimed himself prouder that his materpieces WAR AND PIECE and ANNA KARENINA. Banned by Lenin during 75 years of of the Soviet regime for numerous quotes from the sacred texts of every major world religion, it is again a bestseller in its native land. "I hope that the readers may experience," Tolstoy wrote in 1908, in the preface, "the same elevated feeling which I have experienced when I was working on its creation, and which I experience again and again when I re-read it every day." It is better to know a few things which are good and necessary than many things which are useless and mediocre. -- Tolstoy You should study more to understand that you know little. --Monaigne The reason for rage is always inside of you. -- Tolstoy Bad books is a moral poison which dulls your intelllect. --Shopenhauer Light remains light, even if a blind man cannot see it. -- Tolstoy The translator, Peter Sekirin, is the author of a recent biography, THE DOSTOEVSKY ARCHIVE and is completing his PhD in Russian literature at the Universty of Toronto. END

I read this book before the I had ever heard of the case..If it hadn't been for this book I probably never would've watched the trials or got interested in the case at all

I bought this book at a grocerie store just to have something to do when I was bored. I found myself hooked on the book and I finished it in 3 days which is pretty amazing for me(and my mom!). It had great details and it makes you want to follow up on the trial until is over.

I*ve been fascinated with this case and watched more of this trial than OJ.I actually feel sorry for Diana and Adrienne*s family. This was the fastest I*ve ever read a book, and I really found out alot about David and Diana .I hope that Mr Meyer does a follow up after the graham trial