Bond Reviews

Ian Fleming readers will know what they are getting, and fans of the movie may not. This is the second Bond outing in novel form, the first being CASINO ROYALE. But like the movies, it's unnecessary to see or read them in order. There are a few references to the first novel, mostly vague "from the Royale incident" statements, but nothing major.
Bond is darker, less suave than the movie version, and it comes out in this dark novel. It's actually has more to do with the movie For your eyes Only than LIVE AND LET DIE. There's an ocean motif in this one, lots of sharks and underwater perils.
Vivid and exciting. good stuff

Live And Let Die was the second James Bond novel by Ian Fleming. It is one of my personal favorites of his. The new reprint of the novel is the first ever in US printing history to include the original title of Chap.5 and the somewhat "harsh" material regarding African Americans. One of the best plots yet...

The novel begins with James Bond arriving in New York and meeting up with his old CIA pal, Felix Leiter. Bond has been sent to investigate Mr. Big. A soviet SMERSH agent who is also the voodoo "God" of Harlem. He has been smuggling gold coins from Bloody Morgan's cove in Jamaica and using the money to finance SMERSH. He runs Harlem with his hundreds of men that patrol every part of the city and keep a close eye on Bond. After Bond reads up on the horrible voodoo rituals, he goes with Felix to a local bar that Mr. Big operates out of. Bond and Felix are captured and Felix is taken away, to be hurten and then later released. Bond is questioned by Mr. Big and his henchman Teehee. Mr. Big brings in Miss Solitare, a beautiful girl with supernatural powers. She is ordered to tell if Bond is lying. She covers up for him and says he tells the truth. Mr. Big believes this and allows Bond to leave, warning him that if he ever returns, he will die. Bond leaves, killing Teehee in the process and adding to the rage of Mr. Big. Bond then meets up with Felix. He gets a call from Solitare, who says she wants to escape from him because she hates the secluded lifestyle of working for Mr. Big. Bond agrees to travel with her on train to go down into Florida, (another operating place of Mr. Big.) (Felix flies down.) Bond and Solitare become good friends. When they arrive in Florida, their identity is quickly noticed and Solitare is captured. Bond and Felix meet The Robber, a worker for Mr. Big. Felix is later captured by The Robber and is tortured by being partly fed to a shark. (He survives.) Bond is enraged and goes and kills the Robber. He then goes down to Jamaica and meets Quarrel, a helpful local fisherman who trains him for the great challenge that lies ahead. Mr. Big is loading his boat, The Secatur, with the gold goins to make one final journey with all of the money. Bond must swim at night across the great reef underwater and get to the to rescue Solitare and kill Mr. Big. Bond eventually makes it, he attaches a limpet mine to the hull of the ship that will explode at 6am. Bond is then captured and taken to be tied together with Solitare. Mr. Big explains to them that they will be keel-hauled from the ship across the coral reef. This will result in great pain to their skin and they will eventually killed by sharks. The time slowly ticks down to the detonation. Bond and Solitare are finally thrown in the water for the haul, as Big watches from aboard the boat. Bond and Solitare are only yards away from the perilous coral when the ship explodes and Big is killed along with the rest of his men. Bond and Solitare are rescued and they finally enjoy a vacation.

The story is exciting, adventerous and laced with action and voodoo scares. One of the best Bond books ever!

This is a superb introduction to lucrative opportunities in securities which you are not likely to read about in the popular press. The common denominator amongst all the opportunities is VALUE --getting a dollar's worth of goods for 50 cents or so. Although the book was published originally in 1991, most of the priniciples Seth Klarman expounds are timeless. In fact, his discussion of thrift conversions (p. 182-189) is about the only portion of the book which is more or less outdated.

The book's only flaw is that the third section of the book, "The Value Investment Process", which discusses the search for value opportunities in spin-offs, arbitrage, rights offerings and bankruptcies, is not as detailed as value-investing neophytes are likely to want. Still, it's a great start to anyone looking for alternatives to momentum-buying in securities.

Few people outside the value investment arena know who the author is, but take my word for it: he's an investment superstar. Seth runs a private investment firm in Cambridge, MA called the Baupost Group, and isn't soliciting your money! Klarman is on par with Buffett, Ruane & Cuniff, et. al. His book is a MUST read for it's intelligent, frank discussion of intrinsic value investing. Don't look for this book if you're long E-Bay right now. You can probably find the book in a large library, I would look for it if you already found your way to this review!

I found this is the excellent book for anyone to understand bond yielding calculation. Whether you are experienced bond market player, or just beginner, you can always find something useful in the book. I would rate this book 4 stars.

Most people take for granted the calculations used to generate a yield, duration and other fixed income statistic. These values are, more often than not, taken as being absolutes by the people who should most know that they are not always absolute and that yields in one market sector are not always comparable to yields in other market sectors. This book, a long anticipated follow-up to "Money Market Calculations" codifies in a succinct manner the basic conventions used to calculate bond numbers for various market sectors. While the book is certainly not a page-turner, it is a very important reference that should be found on every buy and sell-side trading desk.

This book takes you through the life of an amazing man. It shows you how he built his life up from having nothing, to being a very successful business man. On the Brink also outlines Brinkers business strategy so it is easy to incorporate into your own.

Norman Brinker expresses his passion and desire for the restaurant business, focusing on his triumph to success. His entire company's management means and ways are incorporated into his book, "On The Brink". A truly outstanding book!

I am currently taking a college class in Plant Pest Management and this is the textbook for the class. I think it is a good book, but one thing I didn't like about it that the description of the pest is broken up by the plant instead of the pest. I think it makes finding the problem a little difficult, and it does leave out some we are studying in class. One thing I noticed is that the solutions are all Ortho products, but I guess they would think they have the best solutions..... Any way the Professional edition is more complete, but much more expensive and this should help most gardeners.

The Ortho Home Gardener's Problem Solver, in this condensed version, is a modern Horticulturalist's Bible" for anyone who tends to fret over plants that grow between two property lines, whether be it grass or daisey's. The unabridged version is a little pricier than this one, coming in at $100, give or take a few bucks, but both answer most of anyone's gardening problems.

Alan Bond's book, OVER 300 SUCCESSFUL BUSINESS LETTERS FOR ALL OCCASIONS gives several examples of actual letters. Examples of just about every type of letter you will ever have to write can be found in this book. It was written as a reference for the business professional and home correspondent.

OVER 300 SUCCESSFUL LETTERS FOR ALL OCCASIONS does not have a lot of tutorials. It does little to teach you to be a better business writer but is a very good source of examples of actual letters.

This book is best when used with BUSINESS WRITING FOR DUMMIES by Sheryl Lindsell-Roberts. BUSINESS WRITING FOR DUMMIES is just the opposite. It does a lot to make you a better Business letter writer but it has very few actual examples when compared to Alan Bond's OVER 300 SUCCESSFUL BUSINESS LETTERS FOR ALL OCCASIONS.

Used together, any person has a formidable arsenal to write a well-written professional letter regardless of the subject or circumstances.

I highly recommend that anyone interested in improving their business witting skills purchase both Alan Bond's, OVER 300 SUCCESSFUL LETTERS FOR ALL OCCASIONS and Sheryl Lindsell-Roberts' BUSINESS WRITING FOR DUMMIES.

This book seems to cover just about any business letter that you might ever need. The book itself is divided into 16 chapters covering topics such as LETTERS OF INQUIRY, BUSINESS ANNOUNCEMENTS, INVITATIONS, and COLLECTION LETTERS. In addition to providing many examples of letters the book also covers issues and approaches to creating letter for various reasons. This is helpful if you do not want to use the example, but still need guidance on how to compose a letter on a certain topic. The book also provides what it calls "useful sentences" that you can plug into a letter of your own design. There is also a "quick reference appendix" that show Forms of Addresses (if you're writing to a politician or dignitary), common spelling and grammar mistakes, and other helpful pieces of information. Overall I rate this book very highly and think that it should be on the bookshelf of anyone that writes formal business or personal letters.

I think that this book is exactly what the title eludes to. Read it but don't try anything...I paid the consequences!!!!!!!!!

Although a good book to read trying to use any of the techniques described in this book is likely to get you injured or arrested. Better try Tha Anarchists Cook Book.

Once you start reading this book filled with underwater non-sense and highjinx you won't want to stop. The book follows the show from which it was based very well. After this book, you'll want to join Spongebob and patrick in all their crazy mis-adventures.

This is a wacky book that is totally cool and doesn't get boring at all. Get it and you won't be disapointed! Get them all you person you.

Sondheim and Lapine wrote an excellent musical about the pointillist painter George Seurat. I really started to love the musical when I read Marc Bauch's "Themes and Topics of the American Musical" (Marburg: Tectum Verlag, 2001. ISBN: 3828811418), which I recommend to get to know how intertextually Sondheim worked. Bauch put Sondheim in the tradition of the American Musical with reference to his themes.

This show is like a work of the main Character Georges Seurat. Point and point are putted together to a great piece of art. Stepehn Sondheim who recieved the Pulitzer Prize for this astonishing work of American Musical Theatre puts all the points together to one brilliant composition of story and storytelling his co-author James Lapine who wrote the book while Sondheim wrote the lyrics does a great job, too. It is the most beautiful kind of lyric I ever had seen in this masterpiece: Children and art. I really enjoyed to read this book and it is essentially for everybody who is interested in the Musical Theatre.

This is a well researched academic study of the "New Deal" politics behind America's first great "war on crime," when J. Edgar Hoover's "G-men" defeated the highly publicized Midwest bandits personified by the likes of Dillinger, Pretty Boy Floyd, Baby Face Nelson, the Barker-Karpis gang, and Bonnie and Clyde, while simultaneously avoiding any serious conflicts with the forces of organized crime. Potter delves deeply into the popular culture of gangster adulation in the 1930's and also considers the racketeer influence on big city political machines as a factor influencing the Justice Department's crime war. In other words, it was not only surer of success but also more politically rewarding to pursue bank robbers than real mobsters. The efforts of Hoover and his boss, Attorney General Homer Cummings, to overcome state's rights advocates and create a national police agency (the modern FBI) was successful and rested largely on the Justice Department's promotion of Dillinger and other outlaws into national menaces. This is a great study of the era and well worth any gangster buff's time and study. The only real flaws I can see in this book are as follows: [1] it barely--and inaccurately--mentions the Kansas City Union Station massacre, which brought the FBI much needed public support and resulted in the "G-men" being granted the authority to carry firearms; [2] the author implies that there were more than four Barker children and some were honest, which I'm guessing is based purely on the erroneous relatives listed on the Justice Department's Identification Order on Arthur "Doc" Barker; and [3] many names are omitted from the index. These caused me to dock a star from an otherwise excellent work.

Potter brings to life the dynamic interplay between the various aspects (print, radio, film, law, etc.) of mass culture in the US during the 1930's and the omnipresent state "war on crime." Through the skillful depiction and dissection of interesting chapters in the war against crime, such as Bonnie and Cylde, Dillinger, the Barker-Karpis gang, the rise of the FBI, and Hoover's orchestration of crime-fighting operations, this work suggests a "new model for political history." This model recognizes and provides an array of examples that demonstrate that cultural phenomena and the political sphere intersected in the 1930's to produce a new, more modern sense of the American "state" during this period. This is an excellent read and I highly recommend it. In particular, I suggest it to those interested in crime in the 1930's, the politics and cultural passion for post-Depression criminal-heroes, and the nascent idea of a more imposing and powerful state bureaucracy.