This book is teeming with wit that parents will enjoy as well as a grand sense of imagination and creativity that children will cherish. Despite being what some might call an uptight "yuppie" high school principal, I love it nearly as much as my kid! I've read it to my son Sam and even my colleague Keith's son Ronnie about 6 times through, simply because we all enjoy it so much. The 124 pages ensure that it won't just be another picture book you can read your kids in one night. You can spend a few weeks on it, and your kids will want to hear it over and over, so you save money on children's books! It is a story of resiliance that teaches good lessons, and the amount of creativity captured in the tale is incredible. What is more incredible is that this David J. Stott unfortunately has no other books to buy; however, I check the site frequently, anticipating any possible future work of his. He is a talent to say the least, and his ability to appeal to youngsters is something I could sure use in the faculty of my high school! In conclusion, this is a book you should order right away--your kid will be so hooked on it that he or she might even read it on their own (if old enough), and reading is surely a much safer activity than many others that appeal to children these days, such as dodgeball, MTV, and the like. There are some big kids that play dodgeball these days...

The Bucky Wilson Story is a wonderful adventure for children of all ages, whether a read-to-me story for a pre-reader, or a book for the more experienced reader. Bucky Wilson shows children that you don't need to be big in size to be important, that the size of your heart and your courage is much more important. With Christmas just around the corner, this book makes for a perfect gift!

hey this book is very cool! i think everyone should read it.. even if u r afraid of clowns!! the clown in this book is the bestest clown ever!! so anyways i recomend this book to anyone!! 4 all ages!

I've read several of the books that are often suggested as introductions to Reformed thought. This is the first one that doesn't focus on Calvinistic soteriology to the exclusion of other equally (or perhaps more) important aspects of the Reformed view of what Scripture teaches. My only real quibble is that the title ought to be Back to Intermediates, because there are more foundational doctrines than these - but all Protestants agree about those.

The book is divided into four sections, each written by a different author:

Doug Wilson contributes the chapters on salvation. He very able covers justification and predestination. Doug Jones contributes the section on covenantal theology. Covenant theology is the true heart of the Reformed viewpoint. These few chapters ably lay out the scriptural basis for it and explore the implications of it. A third section concerns the church, including its nature, the sacraments, and church discipline. This is the weakest section of the book, but still adequate for the overall purpose. Particularly, one wishes that more time would have been spent on the nature of worship and on the place of the sacraments in the corporate life of the church. Finally, Hagopian himself handles the section on the Christian life, which is mostly a theology of sanctification. This is perhaps the most immediately practical of the sections.

Each chapter ends with a dozen or so review questions. We are considering using this book in a Sunday school class, so that is a very definite plus. Any criticism that could be leveled against the book would be on the basis that it could have treated a subject more thoroughly, but doing so would have necessitated expanding the book beyond its purpose.

This book is responsible for introducing me to the Reformed faith. For years I had been told of the "evils" of Calvin and his twisting of God's character... afterall, he's a lawyer... and who can trust those guys? But what I found shocked me! The reformed faith actually made sense (go figure...)and had no semblence to the caricature the critics like to draw of it.

I was going through a rough time in my faith and I decided to re-examine things I had been taught in church when I stumbled on this little gem of a book. This book was the stepping stone to my discovering the Reformed faith and gave me a firm foundation that had never been built in my life. I continue to return to my copy from time to time for its concise examples, thoroughness and extremely readable style... my paperback edition is extremely dog-eared.

If you are interested in testing the waters of historical, evangelical Pretestantism, I heartily recommend this book as a launching point.

I read Sproul's Grace Unknown, and while it may be a good basic introduction this book is far superior. The writing is good enough to communicate deep issues of theology to those without much exposure, as well as thorough enough to satisfy those who have put much time and thought into understanging God's character. Douglas Wilson writes the section on Conversion and if you have never read anything from this man, please do so quickly. He is always two or three steps ahead of most of the writers you would recognize and respect in terms of his originality and thoughtfulness.

Antartica strings together a series of short stories about a twenty-something living in New Brunswick, NJ. The book beautifully captures the sadness and anxiety connected with relationships between people and s young persons attempt to make sense of the world he'll be stuck with for the next 50 or 60 years. Touching, funny and thoughtful, it would be hard to find a book that was truer to the life it's describing.

Kevin, a post-college man in his mid-20's, drugs and drinks himself into a stupor with his post-college buddies in the college town that he refuses to leave. He's discovered that being an adult means that most of the time you are not happy, and he's not sure what to do about it. We Americans believe that happiness is our birthright, yet we find little happiness in our day-to-day lives, as we chase after the Big Money that we believe will buy us our birthright. Kevin has discovered the Big Lie early on. But what do you do with the rest of your life knowing this? An excellent book. Highly recommended. Also recommended: "Drinks for the Little Guy" by Sean Carswell.

These short stories are as intriguing and satisfying as any others. I've lent my copy out to a few friends and I know others who have bought it. I've heard nothing but praise and I've yet to know someone unable to finish this book once they've begun it.

Captures like nothing else the experience of the vast majority of us who served in what were referred to rather dismissively as "combat support" roles in Vietnam. I highly recommend this book and its sequel, The REMF Returns, to anyone who wants to get a taste of the day-to-day life "in the rear with the gear and the beer".
These two books served as a major inspiration for me to finally get off my [rear] and write my own REMF book, A Bad Attitude (which is also available on Amazon.com).

Thanks, David, for paving the way.

As a Vietnam veteran, this book made me chuckle with the author's well-depicted description of what it was like being a lowly clerk in a non-combatant environment. No one else, and this is important; because of the real courage it takes to tell about one's "real" war experiences, which are often not daring exacerbations of Herculean heroics as depicted in many books about Nam, has cut out the self-serving---"I won the war single-handed," chaff, like the simple well-written satire of David Willson. In one form or another, we all complained in Vietnam. What I have liked about the book is that it reeks not the John Wayne bull (No offense intended to the ninty-nine percent of those who served as Navy SEAL's, Green Berets, CIA ['So bad, man---I still can't talk about it.'], and the several hundred Spartacus clones who arrived back in "the World" with a genuine shrunken head of Ho Chi Minh dangling from a dried piece of enemy intestine around their necks.) I can identify with all said, and this must have been hard to write---No other book covers REMF's (Rear Echelon Mother F-----'s) with true candor like this. A rare jewel for the serious student of the Vietnam war, but God knows the author's photo on the cover will never make an Army recruiting poster. The ending is a fitting climax to a very unusual, well-written, and honest down-to-earth book about the finer aspects of the war in Vietnam. Sincerely, Franklin D. Rast, author, "Don's Nam," and "Ghosts In The Wire."

With tongue firmly planted in cheek, David A. Willson presents another side of the Vietnam War, the nonRambo rear echelon. The main character in REMF Diary, an army clerk, is funny, wise, sarcastic, and philosophical. I loved this book! Diana J. Dell, author, A Saigon Party: And Other Vietnam War Short Stories.

The work of Virginia Wilson in this book is to be praised. People with RLS will get so much out of this book, it is easy reading for everyone. Because of her hard work and dedication I have learned so much about RLS, having it myself after 11 back surgeries I can now tell my doctors to read the symptoms of other people that I have been complaining about for years. Because of this book I am taken seriously, I take her book to my doctors and have them read some of the pages. One of my doctors (Whom I admired dearly) put me on myopex, now I can sleep a few hours at night, compared to no sleep at night before. I don't dread bedtime anymore. Virginia, I can't thank you enough for what you have done for me and hopefully for so many sufferers. I read your book all day and thank God not all night. God Bless. Joan D'Agostino

This is a must read for RLS sufferers and their family. I have been suffering from RLS and its "cousins" for at least 23 years. For the most part, doctors have never taken me seriously. This book says it all. It describes the syndromes, the reactions of freinds, family, and the medical community (we are imagining it all), and offers some help and comfort. The latter in knowing what we knew all along: we have a real ailment that is making our lives miserable! Pressure your doctors to look into this disease. Change doctors if you must until you find someone who listens. It was infuriating for me to learn that Dr. Daniel Picchietti, a noted expert in the field referenced in this book, has been working at Carle Clinic, where I have been a patient for 17 years, and no one ever told me about him or refered me to him. I have an appointment now. Thank you so much, Virginia! [Footnote: I did see Dr. Picchietti and found relief. Daily doses of Mirapex have been a great help. For once I am being taken seriously and treated that way. Get help, fellow RLS sufferers.]

Virginia Wilson pins it down it down to a t when she gives an excellent and concise overview of RLS and how it affects it's victims. She and the doctors who wrote with her also give hope to the millions of those afflicted with what I call the scourge of my life, RLS. The book is a good source of info and places to get help. As a health care professional I felt the book was a good source for medical professionals and laymen.

Altruism has always been a problem for evolutionists. How does one explain a creature giving up something for another, sometimes its very life? Why, for example, will a monkey give a warning cry that alerts other members of the troop, but that gives away its own position? How could genes governing such behavior persist in the relentless competition for a place in the genome?

The kinds of reasoning used to explain behavior that is good for the group but perhaps not so good for the individual performing it is as old as Darwin. Until George Williams demolished whole classes of argument in his lovely 1966 book, "Adaptation and Natural Selection", it was common to invoke "group selection" as an analog to individual selection, and explain, in a vague, hand-waving sort of way, how altruistic behavior could arise by enhancing the survival of the herd, or school, or flock. And after Dawkins, both the individual and the group were banished from consideration, and the selfish gene reigned supreme.

Only one category of altruism has been taken as consonant with the unit of replication being the gene, namely "kin selection". This is the favoring of relatives: since relatives share genes, helping a gene-mate helps one's own genes, whether or not it benefits one's self. Yet much altruism in nature goes unexplained by kin selection. Think of the soldier who falls on the hand grenade so his (unrelated) buddies can live. There are many more examples from the lives of many creatures, most of whom never saw a war movie. How does one explain the clear patterns of altruistic behavior in animals at all levels of consciousness and cuddliness? Wilson, a biologist, and Sober, a philosopher, dare to think the unthinkable, or at least the unfashionable: is it possible that individuals or groups really do play a replicator role in evolution? They believe that group selection deserves another chance, but this time more rigorously specified.

I was very impressed with the first half of the book, in which they justify a group-selection model for adaptive evolution that can explain a persistent strain of altruism. What they show is that selection can take place at the level of a group of individuals in many more sorts of situations than were thought possible. (A nice bonus of this approach is that kin selection can be explained more simply using this more general context of the group.) Groups, however ephemeral, do have a role to play in selection.

The second half of the book is less convincing, as it involves psychological and philosophical arguments for "psychological altruism" in humans (that is, you not only behave unselfishly, but "want" to behave unselfishly), which, by its very nature, is hard (or very hard) to tease out in experiments, or to introspect to. However, the authors are reasonably convincing that nature would most likely not employ some Rube Goldberg-type of mental devices that depended on hedonism (pleasure-and-pain-driven behavior) to accomplish important tasks, such as child-rearing, but rather build in directly the mechanism to make a parent care to care for its child. In that way, the care of its child would be a primary motivation, rather than an intrumental one (sorry about the jargon!) on the way to getting pleasure or avoiding pain. Parents will find this convincing, as the desire to take care of one's children seems not to depend on how much we "enjoy" doing it.

This book is detailed, conscientious and well-written, but it covers a lot of ground and many of its arguments, especially in the second part, are subtle. So I recommend reading it more than once: this is contentious material. While the authors do not make anything of the political and social implications of their work, these are always waiting in the wings. Altruism, after all, is in direct opposition to selfishness. Many people see in this a political point, and a social point. Those issues are not properly a part of such a work, but do give great interest to its arguments and conclusions. And whether or not its conclusions finally survive intact, this book's arguments and approach seem exemplary and fruitful.

This book is a continuation of those books that keep moving us closer to where we came from. After decades of wandering in the jungle of postmodernism, we are finally emerging to find our roots. This book is not for the casual reader. But it is an important contribution in understanding the evolution of groupism, why humans go to war, and why belonging to the human race is not enough to bring forth altruism. Altruism evolved as a means of group consolidation of the ingroup, and genocide towards all other groups. This book should be read along with "Demonic Males" to get a good understanding of how altruism evolved.

For more than a generation now, students of evolutionary biology have been taught that natural selection is a process that works on individuals. Where there is a conflict between the good of the individual and the good of the community, the selfish almost always prevails. There are good theoretical reasons to believe this should be so. Most of the work that has been done in the last century to turn Darwin's theory into a quantitative science seems to point in that direction. Individual selection should be fast and efficient; group selection slow and unreliable. Yet the biological world that we see seems to fly in the face of this conclusion. So much of the adaptation we see in the natural world looks like it benefits the community or the species, often at the expense of the individual. So the pure individual selectionists (99% of evolutionary biologists today) have had to concoct a series of excuses, kluges, and workarounds. There are a multitude of reasons! that what looks like a group adaptation is really an individual adaptation. Most of our community has unthinkingly adopted the view that the "selfish gene" perspective holds a key to understanding the "illusion" of group selection. Wilson has been working for 20 years to reform this situation, and to restore common sense. If it looks like a group adaptation, it probably is a group adaptation. No surprise here - except to that 99% of the academic community who has been raised to think that "group selection" is a dirty word - something like "Lamarckism" or "Creationism". Wilson's book is just the kick in the pants that the 99% of us need. It is readable, yet meticulously documented. He traces the history of our prejudice against group selection, and exposes the faulty logic in those kluges and workarounds. Group selection really is necessary to explain what we observe in nature. Then, he goes on to offer us the th! eoretical foundation we need to make group selection plausi! ble. There are mechanisms overlooked by the quantitative theorists that make group selection a far more viable process than they give it credit for. If you're a lay person, you may think "of course - what's the big deal." But if you're an academic evolutionist educated in the last 30 years, you need this book; your thinking about altruism and fitness of communities will be changed forever. All this is in the first half of the book. The second half, presumably contributed by Sober, is much less focused and scientific, more apt to dwell on definitions and philosophical distinctions. The attempt to connect the sound conclusions of the book's first half to attitudes about human cultures is both more speculative and somehow less ambitious and important than the book's first half.

You can spend five minutes or five hours at a sitting with this gem. Even a casual browse through a few pages will teach you something you didn't know about Vikings. A must for anybody studying Norse culture, and a valuable addition to their collections.

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A cultural atlas presents its readers with a tremendous amount of information. Even a casual browsing through this work reveals enough information to provide the seeker of knowledge with a firm grasp on the history, geography, and culture of the efficient, effective "Warriors of the North" known as Vikings or Northmen.

This atlas explains and defines the Viking Age, beginning in the 8th century and ending in the 11th century with the creation of the Scandinavian nations of Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and Iceland. These tall, blonde, blue-eyed Vikings also left their mark on lands from North America, across Europe into Russia -- which was named for the Rus, a Swedish tribe -- and into the Byzantine Empire of Asia Minor and beyond. The Vikings endowed the Europeans who followed them with the Viking genes for bravery, impudence, physical beauty, and intelligence, genes which Viking warriors spread widely in the Northern Hemisphere.

The compilers of this work, edited by James Graham-Campbell, present the reader with a plethora of charts, maps, and captioned photographs illustrating and enriching cogent expository text.

Everyone on the planet, ... will recognize this book as a valuable tool in the study of a great European people.

I love this book. It has lots of maps and illustrations. Best of all it covers the entire gamut of the Viking universe. It is a wonderful resource for getting your head around the big picture of the Viking age. I have researched Viking Age history for years now and this is one of the BEST books I have ever found

Whaley and Wongs updated bible for paediatric nurses is essential reading now it has gone in to its seventh edition, Those who had the 1995 version will already be familiar with the fully comprehensive care plans and evidence based practice rigorously detailed within the book, but 2002's new edition not only updates knowledge but also improves clarity using excellent illustrations, and also includes an entire new chapter regarding community care- an issue at the forefront of modern nursing. This is a core text for all students and qualified nurses alike.

I have a hard time reading some books that are required in nursing school. However this book is exceptional! I loved this reader friendly textbook. It is very easy to understand. I wish more of my books were like this one. Thank you Donna Wong.

The 6th edition of this textbook is the best ever. Wong as usual provides the latest research with every topic covered. The color-coded chapters make it easy to use. The CD-ROM is very useful as a study aid and to view clips of nursing procedures. Highly recommended for nursing students and practicing pediatric nurses.

This is the best handbook out there. In the past I have used the MGH manual, Ferri and the Washington manual, as well as one I made myself. There is no question that this is the only book, aside from Sanford, that I use on a daily basis. I use it for calculations, quick reviews, and even for teaching. On more than one occasion I have based a lecture on the format used in this handbook.

This book is now literally the only book (besides my Palm Pilot) I carry on the wards. It has an amazing wealth of information from ECG criteria for the diagnosis of wide complex tachycardia, to Coumadin dosing algorithms, to guidelines for thyroid nodule evaluations. All guidelines/recomendations are extensively refrenced to the primary literature. Ounce for ounce, the best and most comprehensive medical handbook!

Ever since I started carrying this book around, I have had no use for all the other cards and books I used to carry. In fact this book and the palm pilot with epocrates are the only things a medical resident should ever need. The information is complete, concise and up to date with full references. The book is well written, perfectly layed out and easy to navigate. And of importance to any housestaff/medical student, it's small and light and fits in any coat pocket...

(...)If you are an animal lover, or want to use the book as a reference guide, this book will appeal to you. (...) To date I have seen no other book quite like it on any book shelf. Every fact and aspect of animal life is included here and the photographs are absolutely out of this world! Classification, behaviour, habitat and everything you wanted to know about each species in the animal kingdom is contained here and it is quite in-depth. What a wonderful gift this would make for that special animal lover on your list, and it would also make an excellent coffee table book for yourself.

(...) Highly recommended and worth a million stars in rating.

This book arrives in a cardboard box type cover to protect your investment.

Once you open up the box, you will find one of the most beautiful books on animals you have ever seen. Not only is the photography superb, the details are fascinating. The contents are divided into eight sections:

Introduction, Habitats, Mammals, Birds, Reptiles, Amphibians, Fishes and Invertebrates. An Index helps you find the animal you are looking up super fast.

As a reference, this is outstanding, clear, comprehensive and thought-provoking. If you are a wildlife enthusiast, you will enjoy the photographic portraits of each animal. Each species profile is supported by symbols showing habitat, size, population and conservation status.

An introduction to the animal world helps to explain classification. The animal groups are listed and there are four pages to summarize the classification scheme used in this book.

The Habitats section is especially interesting as it describes how animals survive in grasslands, deserts, tropical forests, temperate forests, coniferous forests, mountains, polar regions, freshwater, oceans, coral reefs and even urban areas. Each page shows the habitat and then pictures of the animals living there.

The rest of the book is set up in a similar way for each section. First there is an introduction for the CLASS (Mammalia, etc) and then there is a introduction for each ORDER (Marsupialia). Then the families and species with detailed information. There is a map next to each animal picture showing where they live, their social unit, status, length, weight and pertinent information.

The Glossary helps to explain terms like species: a group of similar organisms that are capable of interbreeding in the wild and of producing offspring that resemble themselves.

The section on cats was especially beautiful, however in reality, cats really need their own book. >^..^<

This book is just gorgeous!

A beautiful visual book. The photography is captivating to say the least, the text though short is very informative , the layout is something else and very well designed : easy access to general information. Some have objected to the fact that there is no mention of the human species; to those I say that the book's cover does say: The definitive visual guide to the world's WILDLIFE. I do admit that since invertebrates form 97% of all the known animal species,the chapter concerning them was a bit lacking and too short. One may not find enough research material for any specific animal, but nevertheless it is nothing short of stunning, it's the kind of book the whole family will enjoy and every household should have.