I ordered this book for my 6 year old grand daughter. Though it is a wonderful story, I personally felt that the discussion of hanging the blacks was too dark for the child's book and I returned it. I read the book and felt unfortable giving it, so I had my husband read it, he agreed. Though the truth of the history of the blacks cannot be hid, it really was not needed in this story of friendship.

This is a wonderful story that I read aloud to my children every year on Chanukkah. They love it and so do I.

I am such a huge Aminah Robinson (the illustrator) fan! Be sure to check out all of the books she has illustrated. And don't even think about buying any of them in paperback. The heart and soul that she obviously puts in to her drawings will move you to tears. This is one of my favorites. The Amazon review does a good job explaining the story to you. It really resonates with all ages. One bit of trivia I can give you is that Aminah herself was a personal friend of Elijah Pierce.

The authors set high goals for you and for themselves. "I want your stock investments to yield a 25 percent return." " . . . [T]his book is going to help you achieve those results." All of us would agree that such results are highly desirable. History suggests, however, that we are unlikely to achieve them. This excellent book is flawed by overoptimism about outperforming the averages. That arrogance is the only major flaw in what is otherwise a solid look at how to find higher performing technology stocks. The basic approach is a balanced one that involves concentrating your investments in individual stocks (generally recommended to be 30 percent of less of your portfolio) in 4 - 7 stocks; buy them cheap (and sell them high); do your homework before investing; find very fast revenue-growing companies (25+ percent) with great management who are long-term thinkers which customers love; and realize that best stocks are cheaper than you think.

Mr. Kwatinetz is a well-respected PC hardware and software analyst, and the book is filled with excellent examples of how he correctly followed Microsoft and Dell to glory. He is also scrupulously honest, and tells you as much about his mistakes as about his successes. I liked this quality of the book very much. Another valuable element of the book is found in the many interviews with top institutional investors who share their experiences with success and failure. Borland is a recurring theme in these discussions. The company promised a breakthrough and did not deliver on time, and the window of opportunity closed on them. This message is part of the buy great management lesson.

The authors warn about 7 deadly sins. These are hastiness, omission, arrogance, negligence, submissiveness, lethargy, and greed. Each is detailed in the section about doing your homework. But it is hard to realize that you are falling for these flaws while you have them. Another example of arrogance by the authors (presumably unwitting) is in the section on owning mutual funds (suggested as the core of your portfolio) that you take the time to pick out professional managers who will beat the averages by 3 percentage points a year. All the research I have seen says that only about 2 percent of managers do that well. More significantly, they cannot be found by looking at who just did so. The group of outperformers rotates a lot. On the other hand, they do point out the advantages of no-load index funds. If you follow that advice, you will be fine.

An important minor weakness in the book is that it doesn't say enough about how to decide when to sell. Some stocks are never high in valuation terms, but should be sold because the company's performance is about to weaken. Many professionals rely on technical analysis to spot such advance warning of the need to sell.

I liked the concept of a concentrated portfolio. That's what Warren Buffett uses, in part, to achieve his great success. Basically, you need two really big winners out of seven stocks for this to work well. That is a high average, however. Most people will probably find none or one. So keep your expectations in line with reality. I suspect that you should begin with this approach with less than 10 percent of your portfolio and see how you do before expanding it.

On the whole, I thought that ChangeWave Investing was a better book for spotting where to investment in technology stocks. Capturing the most important trends is very significant, and this book did not pay enough attention to that. In the book, the subject is addressed. You are encouraged to invest in companies which will replace physical products and facilities, like on-line brokers, on-line custom manufacturers (like Dell), and virtual companies (like on-line booksellers). You are encouraged to focus on 10 segments for the future, such as Web infrastructure and Linux-based software.

I thought that it was great that the two authors shared their portfolios. I was shocked however to see mostly companies in it that I would not think fit the authors' criteria. So much for how easy it is to do this analysis. As of the end of 1999, they both owned Applied Materials, Dell, and Microsoft. Mr. Kwatinetz also owned Boeing, Cisco, Compaq, Fannie Mae, Ford, Intel, and PaineWebber. Check the track record on those stocks since then, and I think you will be underwhelmed. The business performance has not been strong either.

You should also think about whether you have the access and skill to use these methods. Do you know the difference between great management and average management? Are you likely to get the access to tell the difference?

After you have finished studying this book, I suggest that you consider whether you have done an adequate job of setting your investment objectives first. The authors, to their credit, emphasize this. After you do this, you may find that you do not have to try to score with high tech stocks to achieve your objectives. Why then are you pursuing them? If it is for the thrill, that can be expensive. You could probably take less risk and lose less money by simply buying a lottery ticket every day. In my experience, the great times to buy high tech stocks come along only about 2 or 3 times a decade. The rest of the time you are better off ignoring them. I'm not sure we are in a place to begin buying them again now, even after the carnage of 2000.

May you always meet your objectives for investing!

This book was fairly easy to read. The author made it very interesting. Most important points are his insights into growth investing and how to make it different than the other popular methods.

Although there are lots of quantitative recomendations, I particularly liked his qualitative ones. For example, his recommendations on how to size up management were very good.

I think it would be easy for anyone to follow his quantitative advice: coming up with ways to screen out stocks based on financial statistics. But the real test is in applying the qualitative screens -- this is what makes the horse race.

In this light, his comments on: competitive advantage, loving companies that customers love, looking for long term thinkers were great.

On the negative side, I think he could have better described the relationship between growth rates and PE ratios. Also, I think he knows alot more than he has told us. I hope he comes out with another book, or a newsletter that describe his views.

I enjoyed his discussion about how growth rates return to a mean, and how to adjust your PE ratios to use next years numbers. Although his discussion of competitive advantage was good, I think there's a lot more here that could have been discussed.

Overall, I rank it as "HIGHLY RECOMMENDED."

John Dunbar

Whether you are a financial guru or investing neophyte, I think you will find this book to be incredibly informative, engaging and enjoyable. Just a quick look at the comments and reviews of this book given by top CEOs and portfolio managers will reveal that there must be something special inside. And there is. Danielle and Mike take us step-by-step through a specific paradigm for thinking about the constitution of a successful business. The tone of the text is such that novices can easily follow-along without alienating or boring the experts. Throughout the book, concrete examples are interspersed with anecdotal stories and interviews with successful investors. The whole package is a fantastic read, chock-full of excellent information. In a time when we are overwhelmed by business book after book, this is a worthy addition to the field.

A Review by Steffi

In a Dark Wood is a version of the story of Robin Hood. Only this interpretation has a twist; it¹s in the Sheriff of Nottingham¹s perspective. In this book you get to know more about the sheriff's (known as Geoffrey) story and what conflicts he faces. He is portrayed as a cold man not wanting to feel emotion, but the reader learns that he has a hidden heart, rarely exposed. A particular example of this is he can¹t express how he looks upon his squire, Hugh, as a son. Also in this book you see the impossible attempts Geoffrey makes to catch Robin Hood, who never fails to outwit the sheriff. It is the classic chase of Robin Hood, only through the sheriff's eyes.

One thing I liked about this book is its interesting approach to the tale of Robin Hood. Who would have thought to take a look in the ³bad guy¹s² point of view. It makes you realize that just because someone is cold doesn¹t mean they don¹t have feelings. In Geoffrey¹s case, his job forces him to do cruel things, such as punishing people who can¹t pay their taxes. Another thing I liked about this book is the poetic words and phrasing Cadnum used. Similes such as ³like a petal floating on dark water² were used throughout the whole book, which made it a really beautiful thing to read. One thing I didn¹t like, however, was the lack of Robin Hood. He obviously played a big part in the plot, but it wasn¹t enough for me, being a Robin Hood fan. Maybe if Cadnum would have done both perspectives of Geoffrey and Robin I would have enjoyed it more. I would have also loved to know more about Robin and Maid Marian¹s romance because that is an aspect of the Robin Hood story that really appeals to me. There was no mentioning this love in this book.

I would recommend this book to anyone interested in the tale of Robin Hood. It really is an interesting story to read, like a hidden background to the original story. This interesting and poetic adaptation is surely worthwhile for anyone to read.

This rich and complex story tells the story of Robin Hood, from the viewpoint of Geoffrey, the Sheriff of Nottingham. Geoffrey himself is a complex man. He is a product of his time, taught to reverence God and yet use horrifying violence when necessary. But he feels himself torn; he cannot measure up to the level of purity that his religion demands, and too softhearted to mete out the cruelty that his duty requires. And when that laughing rogue, Robin Hood, wanders into his jurisdiction, Geoffrey finds the thick and comfortable shell that he has built around himself begin to crack.

This story is entertaining in a very sophisticated way. The world that the author builds is believable and quite fascinating. I enjoyed that the author made believable characters that seem to have hoped right out of history, rather than modern Americans walking around in medieval England. I also enjoyed watching the characters evolve and change (often painfully) as their world changed around them. Though marked as a teen book, I highly recommend it to readers old and young alike!

A somewhat philosophical novel giving the sheriff's viewpoint of Robin Hood. It gives a realistic picture of the era, when torture was routine and common people could be abused with little recourse (the Magna Carta dealt with nobels' rights).

King John orders the sheriff to deal with Robin Hood, whom the sheriff had been ignoring as a petty nuisance. The sheriff has other problems closer to home than the king's highway, including his personal love life, wandering pigs, local thieves, and tax collections. The sheriff's encounter with Robin Hood causes him to get religion. There is no Maid Marian in this novel - in fact Robin Hood's band tends to be unattractive, grubby social outcasts.

The novel digresses into detailed descriptions of torture. That type of sidelight gives the novel, at best, a PG-13 rating.

I loved the care this book took not to become too dryly academic, but at the same time to provide good, useful information. Interesting topics and figures in early English history such as Eric Bloodaxe, Stonehenge and Sutton Hoo are introduced in an engaging way, with many intersting illustrations and maps. This is the perfect book for someone looking to find out more about this subject, but not wanting to be put to sleep.

We can only hope that the television series upon which it is based will someday become available for purchase as well.

Wood is best known as a BBC "presenter" of the PBS variety, but he's also an Oxford-trained historian. His books (and television series) are solid history but still accessible. This book and his Domesday: A Search for the Roots of England are almost two halves of a whole, an investigation of what happened in England between the departure of the legions and the arrival of William's Normans, and why, and what the effects were on the further development of the "English" (. . . Celtic, Danish, Norwegian, Norman French . . .) people. Lots of maps and illustrations, lots of archaeological plats, and a nice turn of phrase in nearly every paragraph.

Michael Wood's book is a great resource for the little understood period of English history commonly known as the Dark Ages. He traces English history from the fall of Roman England, the rise of Boudicca, Anglo-Saxon and Viking invasions, Alfred the Great, the little known Aethelstan, Ethelred the Unready, Eric Bloodaxe (not to be confused with Eric the Red, who discovered Greenland) and William the Conqueror (who never even learned to speak English). A good concise history with nice pictures and interesting insights.

This book was very interesting and had a lot of information to help me with my history assignments on this topic

this book is terrific for project and for just reading and learning

This book is designed to be an introduction to the technology of warfare in ancient times, for young readers. It covers everything from sticks and stones to Roman siege artillery, with many colorful pictures. Although it is too general and lacking in details to be useful for any school project, it's colorful presentation is bound to please youngsters.

I give this book a guarded recommendation.

Nice how-to material on the electronic resume, content and formatting. Could profit from including analysis of effectiveness of resume-posting on job sites. If you are interested email me. I am collecting Web job hunting resources available for WI jobs, and found a couple of good references in this book. I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to creat an electronic resume.

Michael Wood has put together in this small volume entitled 'Legacy: The Search for Ancient Cultures', a wonderful survey of the first civilisations to arise in human culture, and their enduring legacy for us today. It deals with cultures that arose across the globe -- so many prehistorical and ancient historical texts concentrate almost exclusively on the Fertile Crescent of five thousand years ago, to the exclusion of city cultures that arose in the Indus Valley, China, and the Americas.

The first city cultures (from which our civilisation ultimately derives in large part) arose largely independently of each other, in what are present day Iraq, India, Egypt, China, and Central and South America. This book was a bit of a self-discovery trip for Wood, as he had hitherto concentrated primarily on British history (from whence I know his work), venturing only to the limits of Europe previously.

Perhaps the Fertile Crescent of Iraq is highlighted both because it is the precursor of Semitic cultures (which give us Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, among many other things), but also because it was the first city culture to arise. All old cultures arose around rivers, for the sake of basic food necessity. In Iraq, there were agricultural settlements coalescing into cities as early as the seventh millennium BCE. These first settlement-builders were not Sumerian; they came later, about 4000 BCE, into an already-existing cultural structure. Who exactly the Sumerians were prior to this is still a mystery.

'Their language has no known affinities with any language, living or dead. But new discoveries concerning Elamite, the ancient language of Persia, may hold the key to Sumerian origins.'

Iraqi early cultures boasted the cities of Eridu (quite possibly the first city on earth), Ur, Uruk, Lagash, Nippur, and of course, Babylon. None of these ancient cities is still inhabited, mostly having been abandoned due to changes in the course of the rivers Tigris and Euphrates. Sumer has been conquered and war-ravaged many times, most recently again in the 1990s.

Indian history too is fascinating. The prehistory of India mostly went unknown until this century, when scholars began to take a serious look. While linguistic studies of Sanskrit have been going on for hundreds of years, it has only been in this century that the antiquity of Sanskrit and its place as a proto-language has been understood.

The lost cities of the Indus show that there were people before the Aryans in the subcontinent, particularly with the discoveries of Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa, and settlements occupying a space the size of western Europe, with extensive trade and culture. However, there was a period of about 1000 years in which there was no real urban culture in India, with the decline of the cities. Toward 600 BCE the Ganges and Jumna civilisations grouped in kingdoms, largely Aryan, began to arise. Hinduism and Buddhism are largely products of this process.

China has a long, unbroken history. China was the last of the Old World civilisations to develop, nearly 1000 years after Iraq. The Chinese concepts of civilisation are very different from the West, and different from Indian, too. Cities began not as grouping for residence or trade or manufacture, but rather as royal enclosures surrounding the king, in which all the dichotomies of life were played out. This remained true to the days of the last emperor.

Culture grew up around the Yellow and Yangtze rivers in China. Confucius was the great shaper of tradition, and China experienced a cultural advance unparalleled by the other Old World civilisation. In fact, China remained possibly the strongest power culturally and militarily on Earth until about the year 1000; only its relative isolation from all other powers kept them out of China's influence. China's self-centred decline in the past millennium allowed the Western cultures to surpass China.

Egypt is discussed in terms of tradition of the pharoahs, city developments along the Nile, trade and literary achievements that are still fascinating today. The Pyramids are the only remaining of the seven wonders of the ancient world. Egypt had an unbroken pharoanic rule for nearly 3000, until the time of Alexander the Great, and the continuing dominance thereafter of European-based empires. Egypt in fact consists of two kingdoms, the upper and lower. Strong natural frontiers kept Egypt safe during its development. Perhaps the first true city was Hierakonpolis, in the upper kingdom, with settlements able to be traced back to 4500 BCE.

In the Americas, Wood only really discusses the Central American cultures that arose around Mayan cities -- he does not do much work in the Peruvian/South American cultures. This is perhaps the one great flaw in the book. By 3000 BCE, there were settlements developing into cities in the Americas, but perhaps the first true cities was Teotihuacan, in Mexico. In 500 CE this may have been the largest city in the world, with 250,000 people. Independent of other cultures, they built pyramids and temples comparable to the Old World examples, a testament to the similarity of the human mind to response to the same symbolic ideas. Mayan culture spread throughout Central America as a result of indigenous efforts most likely, but Teotihuacan was a place of trade and pilgrimage and learning for these people.

With the collapse of the Mayans, the Aztecs gained ascendancy in the older region around Teotihuacan. The Aztecs, given to bloody sacrificial rites, were perhaps the first civilisation to be exposed to the Old World orders, and the first to suffer conquest at their hands.

Wood concludes with a chapter on exploration, conquest, investigation, research, and finally, some small understanding of the world which has been lost, but which generated ours.

The is a very complete book if you want to do anything to a piece of wood but paint it. 5 million ways to stain and repair damage to stained furniture. If you are looking for a reference to get a professional painted finish this is NOT the book for you.

I ordered Michael Dresdner book, "The New Wood Finishing Book" to only find it to be a dissappointing book. It was very vague and really only touch the surface of finishing and refinishing. I bought this book because it is an updated finishing book. The first book I bought is Bob Flexner's book, "Understanding Wood Finishing." This book I would rate "5+ stars", it is very detailed in all applications of wood finishing and refinishing. I am not an expert in woodworking, yet I am not a beginner either and do consider myself very experience in woodworking with over 20 yrs of experience.But as I said I don't claim to know it all yet! So I enjoy reading from the experts on their technics.

Please don't take me wrong Mr.Dresdner's book contained some good information.As mentioned before I bought this book because it is an updated version for wood finishing. Bob Flexner's book was first printed 1994 and at that time water based finishes and strippers were just starting to be used and he had little information about them. So I was looking for a book that addressed water based finishes and the new types of strippers. Michael Dresdner's book did this but only in an overview form. His book never went into detail on what finishes or strippers worked for certain kinds of commonly used woods. Nor the break down of certain brands of stippers or finishes as Bob Flexner's book did.I believe this is important steps in knowing what applications are best for the wood you are using."Understanding Wood Finishing" may have a copyright date of 1994 and lack some updates on new finishes, but the detailed information it contains on all steps of wood finishing is timeless.

This book contains all the information needed to make informed decisions about finishing, repairing damaged finishes, and hiding blemishes. Michael Dresdner is a personal friend and lives just a few minutes away from me. I have learned enough from him and his books over the years that many of my friends now come to me for finishing advice! Michael's book presents what many see as a dry subject, in an entertaining, informative, and easy to read manner. My copy is already getting the dog-eared, much used look of a cherished resource book. If you had to pick only one resource, The New Wood Finishing Book is the clear choice. I won't even loan mine to friends!