Cunningham Reviews

"Understanding wasta is key to understanding decisions in the Middle East, for wasta pervades the culture of all Arab countries and is a force in every significant decision. . . . Wasta is a way of life." What is this mysterious force? Nothing very surprising: wasta is Arabic for connections, pull.

To study wasta, the authors focus on Jordan in the no doubt correct expectation that the phenomenon there broadly represents what's to be found elsewhere in the Muslim Middle East. They find that wasta has changed over time. Patrons who used to help their followers mostly for reasons of prestige now seek money rewards. Also, its main goal has changed from defusing tribal conflict to acquiring economic benefits: "Wasta evolved from conflict resolution as a means of survival to intercession to maintain one's place of honor in contemporary Jordan." Wasta has a positive side (humanizing the bureaucracy) but also serves as an "affirmative action for the advantaged" which has the effect of entrenching the haves and excluding the have-nots; it makes life miserable for concientious officials trying to live by the law but called on by family obligations to help their own.

Though social scientists, Cunningham and Sarayrah avoid jargon and considerately consign the theoretical passages to separate chapters. As a result, Wasta not only provides insights into an overlooked facet of Middle Eastern life, but is a pleasure to read.

Middle East Quarterly, December 1994

This book is for English speakers struggling with learning Japanese and want a comic book to stimulate some interest in continued learning. The slang is out dated and mostly likely used a few decades ago. The converse would be a Japanese coming to the USA speaking like Austin Powers, "Groovy Baby!" Naturally proper etiquette requires you would not speak such words in civilized company. As in the USA using out of date slang is most likely going to result in you getting laughed at, beat up or a combination of both. I say buy the book for a few good laughs and encourage yourself to learn more Japanese. I recommend Barrons CD set although it too is a little dated and when the Japanese women narrators speak they are almost inaudible.

I found this book pretty useful- but would have liked it more if it had some way to easily find a word you're looking for, or an index in back so you can look up what page a word is on.

Every language has its own "dirty words," whether you like it or not. If you want to REALLY understand Japanese people and their culture, this book can be a help. This book is loaded with slangish terms and expressions, (by the way, the title "Zakennayo" is a "correct" phrase,) but even to me(30+ Japanese) many of them seemed either "might've been cool a decade ago," "my parents might say that," or "only for mafias." Anyways, read this book to understand Japan, but don't use the phrases unless you don't mind being labelled as a crazy, dangerous foreigner by Japanese people.

i really cant give much information about this book, but i have read one of his. "living wicca" and I hated it. It is very bague and obtuse. THere are no specifics practically anything i do can be considered witchcraft. If I want to bang on a paint can run in cirles around a chair "it is ok, because it is supposed to make me feel comfortable, and that will bring the power to my spell or whatever" Well with his book there are no boundaries there is no wrong. I felt that he told me not to follow the procedures of spells, such as certain bindings require red ribbons, well with his imput i could use green ones and it is ok. Well i think it is garbage the way he writes. WItchcraft is conbines spells and researches from the ancient days not to put any charlatan telling me to use any clolor. If they say to use a red ribbon I will use a red ribbon.

Very vague, and obtuse way of writting.

La Brujeria no es la Wicca. "This book isn't the truth--Brujeria is not Wicca." That's the important part. Pretty obviously this book is a literal translation from English into Spanish and does not take any nuances or cultural differences into account. Brujeria is a tradition and a practice of its very own, wholly different from Wicca. To equate the two with the weak link "Brujeria and Wicca = witchcraft" does not do justice to either path. Skip Llewellyn texts involving "Brujeria", as they are no more than passionless translations out of English and give no real information on Brujeria itself.

this book is great to help stop false rumors about the wiccan communities.

The guide was written before the game was complete - specifically the final level. Their comment is "As of press time the final encounter was still not complete, so we don't know exactly what waits on the other side of that portal..." Not exactly helpful. Nor would I call it "Complete" or "Perfect"

The maps and narrative are quest specific. Other areas where you might encounter creatures, houses, or items are left out. The maps are inconsistent in quality. Some are thorough and well marked. Others are missing the letters being referenced completely.

The creature, item, and spells appendix is not much more useful than finding it in the game and examining it. Reference to where the items might be found or made is not given. The narrative text does list items that can be forged, but a hint to the rest (i.e. high level boss chest in ch4 only) is missing.

Multiplayer is not covered at all.

Final: If you are really struggling with the early and mid portion of the game, you are probably better off looking online. If you want to mule your way through making sure you get every quest, this book has some limited value.

I'm obviously in the minority here; I didn't hate the book, nor did I find it worthy of a great review. I think the book is just so-so. It does the job giving you a point in the right direction, but sometimes, only barely.

I love NWN, and purchased this book to help slog through the different possible quests. I think that the asking price was too much for a magazine-ish glossy book.

Aside from the price, there were other things to disappoint. There were errors in the book (I'm guessing that the book was written before the game was finished). Also, the layout and organization is horrible. Columns of text are punctuated with screenshots and cartoon-ish. The maps in the book are not great, either.

On the other hand, the book does point you in the right direction, and I found myself flipping through it in order to save some time and rack up a few extra quests.

A good portion of the book lists out spells, weapons, skills, and monsters. These sections are easiest to read and most uniform, more so than the little book that comes with NWN.

For those of us who don't get dressed up and beat each other with wooden swords on the weekends (or know the newer DND rules), this book is helpful, if you can get past the gaudy, glossy, cluttered pages.

I definitley can't speak for the rest of the people who reveiwed this game guide but I found it to be informative and detailed. I'm new to the rpg gameing experience so people who have played rpg's for a while might dissagree, but on the whole I found the charachter descriptions to be very well written and useful.

The only major flaws I found were the lack of markings on some of the maps which gets confusing, but the weapon appendix and spell appendix was way better than I could've hoped for. I also plan on getting the world builders guide, and I can only hope that is's half as good as the adventure guide. :-)

If your looking for a guide to building new modules for Neverwinter Nights this book is definately not for you. The book is so disjointed and unorganized that it lacks any real cohesive instructional value whatsoever. The beginning module builder would be much better off using BioWares excellent online tutorials both for building and scripting. The only value that this book has for the aspiring builder is the small Monster reference section but even these materials are available in the toolset.

Pages 1 through 124 are absolutely useless as the errors and false-starts out-weigh the positives. I did like the monster details. They're good for when I'm putting my ideas on paper for pre-planning.

And it has a cool poster in back.

After creating a couple of modules and reading the book twice, my appraisal of this Versus World Guide book is that it leaves a lot to be desired.

Chapter 1 is great -- the introduction to the Toolset (and the sample module you create during that introduction) gives you a great overview, explains most of the gotchas, has good general advice, is clear and concise and well-illustrated.

Chapter 2 is fine as a general set of advice about how to plan a module.

Chapter 3 and the rest of the chapters are not nearly as good. They go through the rest of the toolset in a haphazard manner, with too many script examples that aren't explained well at all, and the book doesn't have any coherent overall plan of how to explain how things work. Individual sections, like on how the Journal works, are fine. But typically the book brushes over each option without enough detail to be useful.

The Monster appendix is fine.

The C Language introduction appendix is atrocious. I know scripting, and I've been programming since 1980, but I couldn't follow at all the structure of what they were trying to show. They were far too stuck on using unexplained NWN module concepts for their examples rather than showing you the nuts and bolts of the language and how a While loop or an If statement works (I was just looking for how NWN-C was different than normal C, and it wasn't helpful for that purpose at all). If I didn't already understand variables and control structures, this book would not have helped at all.

But by far its biggest crime is that it lacks an index. As an introduction it's tolerable. For a reference, it's useless.

This book was very good, but I think it needed more action in it. It got kind of boring, but it was a good book. It needed some more story to it to.

I really liked Benny uncovers a mystery and I think you will too. Just take my advice. Don't expect too much excitement. I recommend this book to kids who like excitement and surprises!

Avoid this book. Poorly researched, with virtually nonexistant footnotes and a hit-and-miss, very small bibliography, this book purports to cover food-related magickal correspondences for all of Europe, the Americas, the Pacific Islands, etc.

Skimming this book, I noted an odd date for the introduction of the potato to Europe - checking the bibliography, I found that he referenced a *tertiary* source, which he admitted didn't have a bibliography of its own!

Any facts presented here are highly suspect due to the secondary and tertiary sources used. I took my copy back to the store and got a refund - save your money

This book is a nice addition to any Cunningham collector. Yes, it is a little under on his normal quality, but we have to remember that this was a revision of the original after he passed to the Summerland. His friends and family added additional things which they thought would benefit the book. I love it because it does emmulate Scott in a special way. I never knew him personally, but you can feel him in all his material. If you like other Cunninghams, I think you'll like this one as well, if you keep in mind it's very different from the others.

Some useful information but a lot of research and work wasted. The author has obviously worked hard on this but after laying out bits of history, he lapses into socio-babble and post-modernist claptrap. It's obvious that he had a pre-formed thesis in mind when he started and tortuously bends history to fit it. To a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

It was a fine book with as far as I got, but I t was not worth that price! I found it a bit incomprehesable, but rather nice. Just next time you make a book, try to keep it less pricey!

Hi Nan - The book publisher has a website where you can email them, though they do not list a phone number. The site is ...unitedresearchpubs.com and there is a "contact us" page.

I am really sorry they took advantage of you that way.

I need some help. I ordered the above Handbook out of the February 2002 AARP Bulletin on February 2002. I mailed them a check. I have not received my handbook. There was no telephone number to call to find out the status of the order. The mailing address is United Research Publishers Dept. AAS-7 PMB T; 132 North El Camino Real; Encinitas CA 92024. If anyone knows a telephone number that I could call, please give it to me.
Thanks
Nan Curtis

Not only is this book a waste of money but its title is so misleading that borders on the fraudulent. Only about 15% of the book deals with the puported subject (IBS). The only thing you are going to learn from this Handbook is that you should not smoke, take caffeine, drink alcoholic beverages or eat fat and sugar. And then only on general health priciples, not because this regime would be particularly helpful in alleviating the IBS syntoms. What a take!