Although the dialect rendering of Black English in these short stories may offend today's delicate politcal sensibilities, the reader should bear in mind that these stories were written in another century for a different audience. Get past that, and you have pure Plantation Tradition - the same tradition that inspired Margaret Mitchell and disgusted William Faulkner, James Branch Cabell, and Ellen Glasgow. The stories are simple, sincere and guaranteed to elicit emotion. Marse Chan is an American Classic, and No Haid Pawn has been likened to a tale of Poe. Get this, read it, and if you don't see life in Ante-bellum Virginia as it was, you can see it as Page thought it should have been.

I found that this book was the most authenic and has easy to follow instructions. The foods were wonderful just like my mom would make. The author who is the cooking school instructor at the time she wrote this book knows that people need to see how the food is made and how the finished product should look. By giving step by step instructions with pictures it was very easy to try the recipes. I've ordered her first book in the series healthful korean cooking and can't wait to recieve it.

I received this as a gift and it was great fun to read. It contains 26 short stories revolving around Xmas by some of the great writers such as Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh, Ellery Queen, Damon Runyan, etc. A great gift for the mystery lover!

since you have called up this information, chances are you already know that the swastika had been in use all over the world ages and ages before adolf hitler started using it for his sad and sick crusade.

it is important to note that this book originally came out in 1894 (no, this is NOT a typing error!), therefore the author was able to approach the subject without the knowledge we all have.

basically, thomas wilson examined where and - if information was available - when the different forms of the swastika appeared in history: on coins, pottery, fabrics, etc.

writing a review that does this book, and especially its subject, justice seems impossible, i must admit. let me just add this: the swastika has been known for milleniums in all parts of the world. furthermore it appears, that it was mainly a symbol of good luck. the term swastika originates in the holy language of sanskrit. it is composed of "su", meaning "good", and "asti", meaning "being": "good being".

what a shame adolf hitler chose this beautiful symbol and managed to make most of us feel uneasy whenever we see it. i hope we will one day overcome this...

I thought this book was outstanding, and definately deserved five stars! Willie Wilson is the best writer that I have met, and he is very outstanding!! Viggo is quite the charactor, and it seems as if he is a person, except in a mongoose form. Mr. Wilson wrote an excellent book! He was also a great teacher, the best one I ever had! His technique of writing is one that can not be defined with words, and is very worth having! I think anyone who is considering buying this book, should do it! I loved this book, as I am sure you will too. Its great for all ages, and is very realistic.

This review was wriitin by Shelly

This book has something for every event in a garden. Planting, designing, what to grow and how to grow it. It is one of the most useful gardening books that I have on my shelf and use it often. In the winter its great to read and work out any previous season problems and plan for the new year.

This book is an excellent resource for women and nutrition. It describes in detail all the vitamins and minerals women should consume either through foods and/or supplements. As it discusses the vitamin or mineral it lists the function of the vitamin or mineral, food sources, recommendations (both RDA and the author's suggestions), antagonists, toxicity, and warnings. It is a very complete look at each vitamin and mineral. I like that it recommends dosage ranges for women over and under 40. These are different from the RDA dosages which are minimums and which I feel should be revised. In addition to vitamins and minerals, they discuss many female health issues (bones, cancer, estrogen/hormone replacement, exercise, fish oils, heart, herbs, pms, skin and aging, weight, etc) and what you can do to prevent or lessen the effect of these issues. The book contains excellent information. I read it all the way through and will also use it as a reference for specific conditions and to help me plan the amounts of vitamins and minerals I will take. I buy a lot of health related books and alternative medicine(especially herbal) books and although this doesn't go a lot in to the herbals, this is a must have for anyone trying to figure out dosages of vitamins and minerals for a woman. This book also has a section on the different types of alternative and traditional health care providers (Herbal and Chinese Medicine, Chiropractic, Osteopathic and Allopathic Medicine) explaining each type of practitioner and the services they offer. Overall, I would say the main strengh of this book is the vitamin and mineral section with the general women's health concerns coming in next. If you are looking for an herbal guide there are many out there more detailed.

A most interesting and delightfully opinionated book is the latest offering from Tom Davenport and Larry Prusack. Easily digested, this book attempts to 'out-meta' the competition in the game of management idea mindshare, by giving a framework by which other ideas are evaluated for their applicability to your organization. 'He who owns the process wins' is an oft-quoted cliché at ManyWorlds.com and this book makes a good claim for the process. But more seriously, it does introduce some important (dare I say new) thinking into the faddish and/or fatigued of management ideas.

The most critical of those is that of the 'idea practitioner' - the role of the unsung heroes in organizations that translate the guru's missives from on high to that of the real-world working business. They are defined as 'individuals who use business improvement ideas to bring about change in organizations'. And to help you seek out these people in your company, Davenport and Prusack helpfully profile a number of real idea practitioners across a range of companies such as BP, Clarica, World Bank, BIC and many others. But chances are that if you are attracted to this book, you are probably an idea practitioner yourself, even in latent form.

The idea practitioner is an idea filterer who possesses the key skills of 'translation, harmonization and timing' and applies them to new ideas around the organization. It's the skill of knowing when to introduce an idea, to maximize its impact and benefit to the organization.

What's the Big Idea? examines the lifecycles of ideas, internal and external adoption rates as well as describing the categories of gurus. These include academic gurus (think Michael Porter), consultant gurus (think Adrian Slywotzky), practicing manager gurus (think Jack Welch) and journalist gurus (think Tom Stewart). Of course these categories are blurred but the distinction is useful. An interesting step would be to consider what type of guru your company seems most interested in. My guess would be that hard asset companies are likely to be swayed by practicing manager and consultant type gurus, high growth companies by journalist gurus and very large enterprises by academic gurus.

But the problem with being an idea practitioner is while you may be rewarded by a good profile in Davenport's next book, you may not be appreciated for your network and filtering skills by your own organization. Indeed, pursuing your interest in ideas may only be tolerated once you have proved yourself in more operational roles. Even so, such an idea driven route can be career limiting, since in every idea you sell to the organization, there will always be an ounce of personal credibility that has to go with it. But by taking the core of the idea, the 'zeitgeist' and perhaps even innovating a little on top of it to make it more acceptable to your organization, you can build on the foundation of initiatives before it.

Which is just as ideas themselves do. In every idea, the authors would argue, there is a kernel of good practice that should be adopted. The problem is that there is often so much emotion wrapped up around a guru, or a leading company or the idea itself is that this kernel is often ignored or dismissed. But gurus themselves are also guilty of this practice. They often battle against each other, dismiss others' ideas or do not give credit to their sources, teams or inspiration. Sounds just like the local management corporate politics wrestled with in 90% of companies, doesn't it? Thus the role of idea practitioner becomes all the more important to the corporation, navigating both the external and internal battlefields.

Overall, a highly recommended read .Additional highlights including a non-partisan ranking of the top 200 business gurus (contrast that with our traffic based rankings on ManyWorlds.com) and an interview with the immensely smart Steve Kerr, previously CLO at GE and now at Goldman Sachs, on how he 'idea practitions'.

Companies with an unhealthy culture, and with the associated weak/passive H.R. dept that perpetuate this sickness, ultimately cannot innovate. Their Mavericks get laid-off, fired, or bumped out of the way. Go along to get along behavior is rewarded, and the uninvolved get promoted instead.

So as I contemplate Davenport and Friends' latest book offering, I am moved to share this simple truth:

Unhealthy culture eats: strategy for breakfast, the project schedule for lunch, troublemaker and soon to be laid-off maverick employees for dinner, and all remaining discretionary funds in the annual operating budget 6-months early for a midnite snack.

We can talk until the cows come home about the latest and greatest ideas for maximizing the productivity of knowledge workers -- but the $500 question is: WHEN will executive management start treating culture management as a fiduciary responsibility?

Until this happens, NOTHING else will happen -- except for the razorblade ride down to zero margins. Also, 80% of all new jobs are in companies with less than 25 employees. For the larger companies in the business landscape who think that they're going places -- there's a MESSAGE there.

I really appreciate Davenport's perspective on things; and he's always been a good collaborator with other leading minds. Davenport's focus has now shifted away from I.T. and K.M. and full tilt into Human Capital and Organizational Effectiveness. AMEN! It's about time! I'm an I.T. veteran of 20+ years who is SICK of living and working in a cess-pool of low morale by staff and displacement of responsibility by executive management.

CIO's everywhere sit up and take heed -- the goldmine that you seek is NOT in integration of your processes or technology. Instead, it's in your Human Capital; everything else is merely a consequence/outcome of that fact. Can't sell that idea to Finance you say? Then read about cultural triage from Geoffrey Moore's "Faultline" (also available from Amazon) and see how any line functions that are underneath Finance in the org structure will slowly suffocate and drive out mavericks -- because the default culture of Finance is operational -- not innovative.

Read Davenport's "Big Idea" twice. Then read Dave Ulrich's book "Why The Bottom Line Isn't" (also available from Amazon). Then stop talking to software integrators and instead go out and get yourself a really good HRD-OD professional with an I.T. background -- and PLEASE don't wait around for H.R. to give you "permission" to do this or you really will be waiting for the cows to come home. It's time to get traction and move on already. Otherwise you'll find yourself fired only 2 years into a 5 year contract.

Heed this advice or else "CIO" really does mean "career is over".

For anyone who has felt overwhelmed by the barrage of business and management ideas and movements, and at times even skeptical of their individual and cumulative claims, and that is most of us, this is the perfect book. Davenport and Prusak are veterans of the last two decades of management revolutions-they have been in the game long enough to look back at some of the ideas with which they have been associated with critical detachment, and to make some novel and deep sociological observations about how ideas get made, marketed, used, abused, and superceded. However, they are less interested in a blanket judgment on the idea trade than in taking a closer look and identifying what works and who is doing the working. According to D & P, none of the ideas pushed over the past couple of decades is entirely new, and none is without merit. However, none of the ideas is, or ever was, the best solution for each company in every set of circumstances. So much depends on the particular company's situation, and so much of a company's success depends on those inside the corporation-the "idea practitioners"-who select, advocate, refine, and implement the otherwise general and abstract ideas of management gurus. D & P (& W) have done a great service in refocusing attention and credit from the brand names to the practitioners, without, of course, slighting the great contributions of gurus, like themselves, to the agility and productivity of modern enterprise.

Although it has been nearly two weeks since I finished listening to the tape of Where the Red Fern Grows, I am fighting to choke back the tears even now. I plan to order several copies for Christmas gifts.

Yes it is a wonderful epic adventure story about a boy and his dogs and their heroic devotion to each other. And yes, it is so well read that you live every moment right alongside Billy and Old Dan and Little Ann. But, like most great novels, it is much more.

I am a dog lover, a college teacher, and a retired field grade Army officer. I loved the book not only for the captivating story, but also for the slice of Americana that it captures and preserves. It is a time capsule of a way of life, of what made this nation great. The breadth, depth, and magnitude of the love, devotion, responsibility, integrity, courage, and tenacity of the characters is awesome. It was a simpler time, when modest, humble, ordinary people were heroes in their own right, but could not imagine being any other way.

If this story doesn't burst your heart with joy and then rip it out with painful agony, you are dead and worse.

If you think you're dead, it will awaken and electrify feelings you didn't know you had.

If you are looking for answers, you will find them all in this simple little tale of perfectly ordinary and unassuming heroes of epic stature.

Where the Red Fern Grows was one of the best books I've ever read. It was full of emotions such as love and sorrow. It kept me interested page through page.

It's about a 10 year old boy, Billy, that isn't so wealthy that lives in the Ozark Mountains. All he wants is two coon hounds, but unfortunately he can not afford them. With much determination he saves all the money he needs to buy them. Soon enough, he brings them home with nothing, but pure love and joy. The three of them later become an inseparable hunting team. All three them go through tough times, but they go through them together. The end of the story will inable you to relate to how Billy feels and you be left with tears in your eyes.

I strongly believe you should read this amazing book. It will fill your heart with love and teach you how far one is willing to go, just to get something.

3MEG

This book was the 1st book that I didn't want to throw out the door.This book is about a boy that lives in the Ozarks.His name is Billy and he really wants hunting dogs BAD.So then he deside's to ask his parents.They tell Billy, they don't have enough money. So Billy works 2 years for $50 to buy 2 hounds.He spends time training them to be the best coon dogs around.Why I say the best coon dog's around because they win a gold cup, silver cup and $300.Then the unexpected happened, the pups were severely hurt.Old Dan dies, then Little Ann cant stand it with out him.So she dies soon after Dan.A Red Fern grows in between there grave's.A Red Fern is planted by an angel. It means the land is sacred.When I read this book I cried!I love this book it's now my favorite book. Thanks to my teacher for picking this book for my class to read.
5HRB

The appeal in this Julie Andrews biography is the amount and quality of the pictures it includes. The book covers her childhood and then divides her career into Broadway, Movie and Television sections. The text is somewhat basic; informative but not very in-depth. Robert Windler's book is much more informative as to Julie's career and an older book that only goes through 'The Sound of Music' concentrates much more on her childhood and Broadway career. The Arnzt/Wilson book is a good overview of her life and career and the pictures are truly superb!

If my house was on fire, this is the one book I would grab. The pictures are outstanding, the book features much information about her early career and lots of memorabilia from her childhood years. These are not the overused pics of Julie that we all see over and over again. Not sure why Julie had it pulled from the shelves, but I would certainly describe this book as a love story to Julie from Arntz and Wilson. This book just warms my heart.

Julie Andrews. The world's most beloved singer and actress. The darling of entertainment closest to our hearts. But, there is just one problem. When the world thinks of Julie, they immediatly think of Mary Poppins (for which she won an Oscar) or Maria von Trapp. Nothing annoys me more than that. People can't seem to undertsnad that hse is NOTHING like Mary Poppins! The only thing I think they may have in common in they are both good with children.
I encourage all of you out there to read a Julie biography book! Heck, maybe I'll write one! But do yourselves a favor and get this book! Learning about the fascinating life of Julz Andrews will be something that will both surprise and capture you- you will NOT regret it!