Let me tell you, this book is worth every dollar, do not be scared off by the price! Over 2,000 ingredients reviewed in an easy to comprehend way, you don't have to be an expert in chemistry to find out what exactly is in your favourite cream - effective ingredients or just pore-clogging chemicals, preservatives and irritants! There are also 3 chapters on skin physiology, product penetration and skin types and conditions. I would highly recommend this book for consumers, cosmetics sales people and estheticians.

As a former aesthetician and current president of a vitamin and nutritional company I am well accustomed to using chemical, pharmaceutical,and medical reference books for formulary research and scientific information. Most of these books are extremely technical and difficult to understand. Milady's Skin Care and Cosmetic Ingredients Dictionary is the exception.

Milady offers one of the most comprehensive and easy-to-use guides to understanding what is in every bottle of cream or cosmetic item that you use.

This book will allow you to make informed decisions about what skincare products to buy and most importantly what each ingredient REALLY does, along with any negative side-effects. Whenever we begin formulating a new product, we always consult
"Milady."

An EXCEPTIONAL reference books / ingredient dictionary!
Have you ever wondered what those ingredients in your cleanser or make-up REALLY were? Now you can find out.

This comprehensive book not only includes an extensive list of ingredients and their uses/definitions & more...

(AN EXAMPLE: "linoleic acid (vitamin F) - an emulsifier. ...prevents dryness and roughness. A deficiency in linoleic acid in the skin is associated with symptoms similar to to those characterizing in eczema, psoriasis and a generally poor skin condition. ...is an essential fatty acid found in a variety of plant oils, including soybean and sunflower." )

...but the book also includes a chapter on skin types, conditions and appropriate ingredients for treatment that would provide a quick reference so address your (or your clients skin care needs), a thorough explanation of how chemicals and ingredients interact in cosmetics and more!

I HIGHLY recommend this book to skin care professionals and beauty connoseurs that want to know the "insider secrets".
I will never go a day of work (as an aesthetician) without this book!

If you're looking for an introduction to Russian, with dialogues and lessons, this book is not for you. It is, however, the clearest book I've found to explain the grammatical concepts. If you're self-teaching with tapes or software programs, you will most likey come to a point where you've learned an expression or a change in word endings without fully understanding the grammar behind it, this is where to look to quickly get the explanation. It does not contain much vocabulary, or full sentences, it is made up of chapters explaining particular grammatical structures and rules, so you're not going to learn to speak using this book alone.

I agree completely with the reviewer from Oregon. I am starting to learn Russian from a cassette series (Learn in Your Car, which I also highly recommend) and this book is a very well-organized, valuable reference. In fact, it is one of the best organized special-purpose reference books I have seen anywhere. It has plenty of tables, and very clear descriptions of things like 'Why do Russian nouns have so many cases?' After teaching myself Spanish, Russian is my next goal, and it is quite a challenge. I think I would have given up by now without this book.

I bought this book as an additional reference to my class textbook. I use it constantly to review key concepts. Most language textbooks are not organized to make good reference material, but this one (inexpensive) book makes up for such a shortcoming completely.

You can use Master the Basics to quickly zero in on a particular concept whether it be the parts of speech, pronouns, verbs, case declension and the concepts are presented in a very concise and straightforward manner. I especially like the well-organized charts scattered throughout as they make a clear summary with graphical-style impact that makes things easier to remember.

If you intend to pursue Russian seriously at any level, then this is a must-have book, handy and gets right to the point. Do svidannya!

Robin Blake's Anthony Van Dyck could also have been featured in our arts section but is a powerful biographical sketch which should not be missed by any interested in biographical history. Van Dyck was a portrait painter who saw his own works passed over in favor of his contemporaries, although they were compared to Titian and Rubens. Blake examines Van Dyck's life and art with an eye to revealing the underlying influences on his works; in the process imparting a fine bit of history. Recommended for any student of portraiture.

Diane C. Donovan Reviewer

This is by far the best bio on van Dyck in print today. I purchased it a year ago, from Amazon UK, and am very glad to see it available in the States. If you have the catalog from either the recent show in London or the Washington DC show from '90, use the images from that to go with Robin's text and you're in for a real treat. Bravo Robin!

The journal 'Nature' (1991, vol.352, 29 August, pp.767-768) published a review of this book including the following comment:

"Good new book on ageing".

The published review was written by Dr. Thomas B.L.Kirkwood, Ph.D. who was the head of the Laboratory of Mathematical Biology, National Institute for Medical Research (London, United Kingdom) at that time.

This book is selected and cited by Encyclopedia Britannica as recommended reference on longevity topic. The book was also reviewed by Nature (1991, 352: 767), British Medical Journal (1992, 305: 431), BioEssays (1993, 15: 359), Quarterly Review of Biology (1993, 68: 92), Population Studies (1992, 46: 366), Population and Development Review (1992, 18: 555 and 1998, 24: 381), Am.J.Epidemiology (1994, 139: 231), Experimental Gerontology (1992, 27: 251), Gerontologist (1991, 31: 707), Human Biology (1992, 64: 630), J.Epidemiology & Community Health (1992, 46: 630), J.Institute of Actuaries (1992, 119: 379), Age and Ageing (1992, 21: 386), Ageing and Society (1991, 11: 509), Archives of Gerontology and Geriatrics (1992, 15: 192), Educational Gerontology (1993, 19: 92), Free Radical Biology & Medicine (1992, 12: 331).

Ginzburg tells a very touching story of a very close, honest group of friends whose main source of communication is the seemingly lost art of letter writing.

If you read anything by Natalia Ginzburg, read this gorgeous novel set in various houses and flats around Rome, Italy and New Jersey. The story is told in letters, but Ginzburg's characters are not emotionally-confined as one might expect with this genre. This novel examines love and its duration, across years of friendship and parenting.

Natalia Pushkarevna has produced an incredible wealth of material gleaned from resources now available in Russia. You will truly enjoy her perspective of women from the earliest days of the Kievian Russ through the Soviet Union. She dicusses political dynasties, cultural and social norms as well as offering a valuable introduction into each period of history.

Especially interesting are her descriptions of little known women of influence and authority rarely spoken of in traditional histories, beginning with Grand Pricess Olga in the 10th century. She provides a somewhat contrary view of Catherine the Great compared to other Russian histories that tend to whitewash her atrocities with trappings of the Enlightenment. She offers equally thought provoking treatments of women through every era.

You will find this a refreshing and revealing volume. I encourage you to read it.

Well worth reading for those interested either in Russian history and culture or women's studies.

The person who drew this cover was a good artist

Great for kids from 8 and more.It is captivating. You canÂ't stop from reading it once you started. It is imaginative and very creative, and I think it will be very successful.

This book is excellent reading for "armchair enthusiasts", serious mountaineers, or anyone in between. Before reading this book I did not even know who Anatoli was. Now, I see him as one of the true great mountaineers. I really related to his feelings for the mountains, and I share many of his philosophies regarding climbing. Reaching the summit is not success; to be successful, you must make it safely down. Even if Mallory and Irvine reached the summit of Everest, they didn't achieve success by living to tell about it.
As a mountaineer and author myself, I was very pleased how easy I could relate to Anatoli's feelings and philosophies about the sport of mountaineering. On page 123 he states that he treated the mountains "like cathedrals where worship gives you strength and strips off the scale of ordinary life." He also told a different version of the accounts of the disastrous climbing month in May 1996 on Mt. Everest, which catapulted high altitude mountaineering to the front pages of newspapers around the world. I still view Reinhold Messner as the best mountaineer of all time, but had Anatoli lived longer he would have surely closed the gap.

TJ Burr
Mountaineer/Author
"Rocky Mountain Adventure Collection"

Anatoli Boukreev was one of the most remarkable mountaineers in history. This book gives the reader great insight into Boukreev's thoughts, as well as the Soviet culture. Having read many other books, the similarities between Soviet athletes, chess masters and intellectuals is stunning. Anatoli Boukreev hints at the pressure placed upon him and others prior to the fall of his government. "Above the Clouds" has excellent narratives about climbing, but it is much more than that. His writings about the Everest tragedy are striking.

This is a terrific book by one of the most famous and least-understood mountain climbers of our time. Boukreev was known to only a small group of mountaineering insiders before the publication of Krakauer's Into Thin Air and then Boukreev's own bestseller The Climb. Here, he reveals himself to be a thoughtful, poetic yet tough-minded, and extremely intelligent writer. This book not only covers adventures on Everest, Mt. McKinley, K2, Annapurna, and elsewhere, but also reveals little known and fascinating details about Russia and Kazakhstan and the USSR climbing culture in which Boukreev was raised. Anyone interested in climbing will love this book. (It has terrific photos too, most of them taken by Boukreev from the tops of the peaks he scaled.)

A fascinating book, if you have had frequent brushes with those that have died and not gone to a heaven of some sort or other then this is a book for you. I spent the first part of the book wanting to meet the O'Sullivan's to compare ghost busting notes, the second part being slightly frustrated by the emphasis on Tibetan Buddhism. I came away with the decision that the overt Buddhism did not outweigh the help that this book would give to searchers on the path towards understanding the nature of the unquiet dead.

The personal stories recounted in this book range from the tragic to the down right frightening! The first story of Kadamba Simmons and her murder is perhaps the most tragic, yet it also leaves us with a feeling of hope as she finds peace in a shower of butterflies at her burial.

Their information regarding possession would be of help to a lot of the living. I have found that those who 'dabble' in the paranormal seem to expect to be possessed at some time or other. As I have always considered that notion to be daft perhaps the chapter dealing with the subject will help answer some questions.

I do not agree with everything that they say, but the majority of it is the 'real macoy'. I also found the style of the book made for easy reading.

I am nearing the end of this book and am saddened by that fact since there doesn't seem to be a whole lot written about understanding ghosts/spirits who have not left this dimension. I have found this book to be a wonderful resource for what I have felt and known all along, but have now found validated in print. It's encouraging to know that people, as sensitive as these authors, are out there helping others, even if we cannot see these 'others'. Ghost therapists, who would have thought! Good job Terry & Natalia!

A quite amazing and honest account of how a young boys open mindedness brought him on to a road of clearing wandering spirits. A book to take away the fears of anyone who has been bothered by bumps in the night. Easy reading and interesting.