Dictionary Reviews

I've been using this excellent dictionary since the last 8 years. Actually, I can undoubtedly say that this is the BEST dictionary I have ever used for learning English! It's very simple and user-friendly.
Features include:

- Clarifications of the use of a word in a spoken compared to written English.
- Graphs to show the difference in frequency of the use between words in speech and writing, between synonyms etc.
- Highlights thousands of phrases and collocations in the nearest possible way.
- Color and black-and-white illustrations from the parts of a car to the sounds !
- Over 80,000 words and phrases with easy-to-understand definitions.
- Pronunciation key with the proper stress in the word syllabus.
- Signposts in longer entries to help you find the meaning that you need.
- References to other words and phrases, and to pictures and usage notes.
- Words that are often used together are shown in dark type, and followed by an example or an explanation e.g. under the word (argument) you will find (have an argument) (get into an argument) (win / lose an argument) etc.
- Grammatical information is shown in brackets, or in dark type before an example.
- Shows the difference between British and American English including: the pronunciation & spelling differences, words & meaning, differences in grammar, and differences in phrases & collocations.
- Appendix contains Tables (Numbers, Weights & measures, Military Ranks, Word formation, The verb "be", Irregular verbs, Geographical names,
- 3rd Edition comes in 1668 pages, published in 1997.

This is a full discipline for teaching English, not just an ordinary dictionary ! It's essential for your desk, especially if your mother tongue is not English.

My nephew just immigrated from China and asked me to get a dictionary for him. I told him that I would get the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English.

I bought the dictionary when I was a student in London about ten years ago. I tried a number of dictionaries before I was introduced this one. My landlady used to show my dictionary to other foreign students as I used too often to keep in a good shape.

Well, I don't use it as much as I used to but I highly recommend it to any foreign student. You cannot afford not having it ! In fact, I bought one for my niece and I will buy one for my nephew too. I am sure that it will be the best gift for them ever.

I'm still trying to find any defect to this dictionary, but I couldn't yet... If you are a non-native english speaker, you have to get this one... does phrasal verbs drives you crazy??? All phr verbs are there... Usage notes of frequently used words are great as well as the illustrations!!!... the samples following the definition of the words are great to understand them... although I'm still learning, I know this book has improved my english...

Tarascon's pocket pharmacopeia covers practically all important drugs doctors frequently use. The major strength is its handy size and focussed approach. This pocket book is a must for every clinician.

This is a handy pocket sized drug reference book that i was introduced to first as a 3rd year medical student and I still use today (3 years into private practice). I refer to it often and it is updated yearly with the latest drugs and a new section on herbal products.

Plus it is small enough to keep in your coat pocket and packed full of useful information including drug dosing, pregnancy category, routes of metabolism and relative cost.

This book is a must purchase for those already in clinical practice and for students and residents.

As a second year med student this is a MUST HAVE. Well....unless you are walking around with one of those PDAs. But this is great, cheap, small and a very good resource. I use it every week and it served me well.

I had been living in Japan for about 9 months and was still having a very difficult time with Japanese grammar. I didn't understand enough grammar to be able to put together my ideas and express thoughts. All I could do was recite phrases I had memorized. I had read through other Japanese grammar books but I just couldn't understand the explanations. This book gives very concise explanations that I could understand and many very helpfull examples that give you the proper context. Also this book compares and contrasts similar grammar patterns. Before I bought this book I couldn't talk, but by the time I was 3/4 through this book I could hold conversations and express the ideas I had not been able to do for almost a year and it gave me a good base to build on as I became fluent in Japanese.

I bought this book in Japan, so I don't how how available it is in North America. This book has become a vital part of my Japanese language library, helping me in more ways than I can count. Along with my English to Japanese dictionary, verb ductionary, and my kanji dictionary, this helps me structure any sentence I've ever wanted. By memorizing a few formulas and understanding examples of grammar, I understand the language so much more, I can express most thoughts I want, and I'm a step ahead of most people in my Japanese class. This is the transition for a beginner student between simple and complex sentences.

I have been studying the reading, writing and speaking of the Japanese language for several years. I acquired this book and its companion of Intermediate Japanese Grammar in my second year of college study of that language.

In my opinion, this book provides the necessary grammatical information to bind and tie together the parts of speech to form proper and adult sentences. Grammatical expressions are indexed as both English and romaji which is helpful for creating as well as translating sentences.

The actual examples of each expression are usually plentiful and are written in Japanese using kanji, romaji, with the English translation. Also examples of incorrect usage are frequently given along with explanations.

Although the title is "A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar", the book will probably best be used after the first year of instruction. This book has been an extremely valuable tool in my endeavour of learning the Japanese language and I doubt that I will part with it.

Unlike most other computer dictionaries/encyclopaedias in its class, the inclusion of a companion CD-ROM gave this "Computer Desktop Encyclopedia" a comfortable jump-start in the superiority contest.
The book (and its attached CD-ROM) covered, in the most definitive way, all the important terms and acronyms that apply to today's computer and networking technologies. Hardware, software, and allied peripherals were adequately represented.
It is descriptive and well-illustrated, and included all the commonly used file extensions. With over ten-thousand terms and definitions, its scope is rich: in comparison to what exist now.
This computer encyclopedia ranks among the best currently on sale. However, potential buyers may be frustrated (at the moment) by its limited availability.

The best thing I love about this book is the writing style of Prof. Freedman and how easily and clearly it can crystallize, the otherwise complex computer terminology, components and concepts. The explanations used here are vivid. I have owned a copy since 1997 and I have never been disappointed with anything that I needed to look up, for instance 'kludge' is described here as - "Also spelled 'kluge' and pronounced 'klooj'. A crude, inelegant system, component or program. It may refer to a makeshift, temporary solution to a problem as well as to any product that is poorly designed or that becomes unwieldy over time."

It will be hard to obtain better explanations than they are written in here.

There are several other similar Encyclopedias around which I have never looked at, because I had no need to look for another Encyclopedia.

Now in a comprehensive, expanded and up-to-date ninth edition, Alan Freedman's Computer Desktop Encyclopedia useful reference text and CD-ROM package contains more than 10,000 terms and explanations - spanning a multitude of computer-related topics. More than a collection of definitions, the Computer Desktop Encyclopedia is a unique and practical reference which includes clear, detailed descriptions and illustrations of both basic and cutting-edge topics, and is a must-have for all computer professionals, students, teachers, and technicians alike. The Computer Desktop Encyclopedia includes clearly presented and "reader friendly" explanations of all the latest devices, operating systems, Internet-related technologies and acronyms. 1136 pp.

I used this book to learn medical terminology for my career in medical transcription. This book was excellent for that use. Fairfax Cty. Adult Ed. uses this as its text for Medical Terminolgy. The disks in the back are helpful too; assist a person with pronounciation of terms.

The structure of this book makes it easy to follow and constantly involves you with writing terms to help learn and retain information.The anatomical sections are very user-friendly and explain complex medical terms in layman's terms. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn terminology and anatomy as it never overwhelms you.

This book by Chabner is designed to help the premedical professional learn terminology by teaching how to break words apart and decode their meaning. Each chapter has a review of a specific topic and provides many opportunities, at the end of each chapter, to practice and review the material covered. The CD is the best part because it helps break up some of the monotony of learning the numerous prefixes, suffixes and word roots. The end of the book provides appendices for medical abbreviations, formulas and measurement. I highly recommend this book to anyone who needs to learn medical terminology.

Having taken over 10 years of French lessons through elementary and secondary school, I learned the grammar and had a decent vocabulary. However, after 5 years off of French lessons while attending university, I found myself struggling to form even simple sentences.

I bought this book because of its many (many!) exercises and complete "answer key" for instant feedback. It is organized almost exactly the way I learned it in school which I find very helpful. This book would be very difficult, however, for people with absolutely no background in French. It truly is for the intermediate level.

The book does not have much help for people with poor vocabulary skills in French, but it will drill the grammar into you, if you're diligent about regularly doing the exercises. That being said, if you own a dictionary and a verb conjugation book, the combination of those plus "The Ultimate French Review and Practice" would be a ***** combination.

I bought this book to relearn all the grammar I used to know. Having had six years of French (last class was ten years ago), I needed something that would take me through grammar lessons fairly quickly. This book does that.

This is a handbook on grammar and conjugations. It follows a simple pattern for presenting material--it provides short lessons with examples, and then gives 8-12 practice exercises (with answers in the back of book), and so on.

This book emphasizes grammar over vocabulary, but translations are provided for the words that are used in examples and exercises. Translations also appear for idiomatic phrases.

I learned of this book by researching the materials used in upper level French composition classes at various universities. This one came up several times as a companion to the literature that students were required to obtain.

Here are the contents of Ultimate French Review and Practice:

Part I, Verbs--Basic Forms and Uses: 1. Present tense, 2. Present tense of irregular verbs, 3. Negative sentences, 4. Interrogative sentences, 5. Imperative, 6. Passe compose, 7. Imperfect; imperfect versus passe compose, 8. Reflexive verbs, 9. Future and conditional; conditional sentences, 10. Pluperperfect, future perfect, and past conditional; conditional sentences, 11. Passe simple, 12. Present participles; uses of the infinitive.

Part II, Nouns and Their Modifiers Pronouns: 13. Nouns: gender, number, and articles; uses of articles, 14. Stress pronouns; subject-verb agreement, 15. Possessive and demonstrative adjectives and pronouns, 16. Interrogative adjectives and pronouns, 17. Adjectives; comparative and superlative, 18. Object pronouns.

Part III, Other Elements of the Sentence: 19. Numbers; time; dates, 20. Adverbs, 21. Negative and indefinites, 22. Prepositions; prepositions with geographical names.

Part IV, Verbs in Two-Clause Sentences: 23. Relative clauses, 24. The present subjunctive, 25. The past subjunctive; literary subjunctives, 26. The subjunctive (continued).

Part V, Idiomatic Usage: 27. The passive voice and substitutes for the passive, 28. Important idioms and proverbs.

Don't be fooled by the price. This is a great resource.

The low price initially made me skeptical, but I was pleasantly surprised at how thorough and encompassing this text is. A superb way to review forgotten grammar rules and an excellent source to have on hand. Cultural notes, a list of idioms, verb charts, and well-organized lessons make this an exceptional value.

This book as a reference is great. It provides me, the novice and working my way up gardener, with a great source for understanding the fundamentals of gardening. However, I think I'm going to purchase one of its sister books, American Horticultural Society A-Z Encyclopedia of Garden Plants. The A-Z provides more details about specifc varieties which can be helpful when you're selecting plants for your garden or simply trying to learn more about a specific plant. I believe the A-Z also contains much of the information contained in this one altough it is not as encompassing from a general perspective.

This book is head and shoulders above the rest of its type. It is a superb "how-to" gardening book, which provides detailed information on general techniques as well as specific instructions for various types of plants. It also presents extensive information on landscape/garden design

Being a California Certified Nurseryman, I can say that I've dealt with people all different type of gardening experience. This book is one of the best out there in terms of reference and guide for making gardens do really well. It covers everything from landscaping, management, soil preparation, and plant selection.

If you're wanting a great reference book that you'll look at time and time again, this is the tome to look for.

The Teach Yourself Series is a great modality for learning and/or acquiring a second language. Esperanto: A complete course for beginners, is exactly what it says! I have used other TY books, and the quality and level of material learned is excellent for adult learners either studying alone or in a group setting.

Definately worth the money.....recommended without reservation!

If you want to learn all of Esperanto, all you need is this book and a dictionary. It shows you all the grammar, conversation skills, writing skills, affixes (an important part of the language), plus a fairly complete vocabulary load. It starts out as if you were a complete beginner, and ends as if you were advanced.

For those of you who like languages, Esperanto is for you, and this is the book to make you fluent. This book took me from zero to advanced conversation in the course of just two months! The lessons are well composed and full of examples, and the ease of learning Esperanto has encouraged me to tackle harder languages, backed with the grammatical understanding I have gained from studying Esperanto via this book.

Stedman's Medical Dictionary is a near-perfect lexicon that should serve the needs of anyone interested in medical language. With it, you are assured of simple but precise definition of terms. Although its biggest shortcoming is having fewer entries than the Dorland's, its colourful illustrative figures are far better than the black and white charts that the Dorland's boast of.

Having just started my medical studies I was looking for a complete dictionary to meet my demand for a comprehensive and "easy-to-use" book to guide my among the vast and sometimes difficult medical language. I found quickly that Stedman's had everything i could ever ask for in a medical dictionary. It's up to date in current research and also has many entries for termonology of old. The book is very comprehensive and detailed and even surpassed my dictionary of organic chemistry when I studied the subject.

What I especially apriciate with this book is it's pedagogical illustrations and a passage with "building-blocks of the medical language" wich has been a great help for me in understanding and memorizing medical terms.

During my studies I have compared my dictionary with many other medical dictonaries and have found that Stedman's remains my first choise by far!

I have been using this great dictionary since I joined medical school. Even now as a doctor, I still use it when I'm stuck with a meaning of a medical word. Features include:

- Numerous colored illustrations including ADAM Anatomical Art, new diagnostic plates e.g. imaging and clinical and microscopic plates.
- Common medical abbreviations.
- Highly organized vocabularies.
- Highly organized entries and cross-references.
- Special reference to medical eponyms.
- Shows the difference between British and American spellings.
- Pronunciation key.
- Easy & simple Wordfinder.
- Genus Finder.
- A-Z vocabularies.
- Origins of the medical words e.g. Latin, Greek etc. which attracts me for the most ! Learning the origins of the medical words can be a boon to learning medical language. It makes remembering medical terms easier.
- Appendices including: Table of elements & their atomic weights, Comparative temperature scales, Temperature equivalents, Weights & measures, Symbols, Laboratory reference range values, Blood groups, Diagnosis related groups, Certified Regional Poison Control Centers, CDC Universal Precautions, AIDS - resources (By State), AIDS Hotlines (By State), and AIDS education & training centers (By region).
- 27th Edition comes in 2098 pages, and was published by Lippincott, Williams & Wilkins company (great company by the way!), 2000.

I wish there could be Stedman's Dictionary on PDA handhelds (e.g. Palm) in the future.
I strongly advise medical students and other health care workers to use this invaluable dictionary. 10/10

Perfectly suited to its target audience both in subject matter and in presentation, this little encyclopedia is guaranteed to be incomprehensible to anyone who was not a small child during the Ford and Carter administrations. It is an exhaustive laundry list of toys, television shows, and other products marketed to children mostly in the 1970's and early 1980's. Said children grew up, went to college, and spent many a late-night dorm room session processing their mixed amusement and time-gilded fondness for these products. Generation X's strangely premature nostalgia was in the mid-'90's documented and catalogued by the staffers of a 'zine called Ben Is Dead, and subsequently released as a book, published with a silver cover, adorned with a flaming disco ball and digito-futuro typeface, called "Retro Hell".

As with any encyclopedia, this book is not to be read cover to cover. Unlike with an encyclopedia, the entries will not strain the most fragile of attention spans, as they are brief and anecdotal. Some merely invoke the commercial slogan attached to the toy in order to clarify the meaning of the item. Chances are good that if you, a friend or a sibling had a particular game, toy, or favorite TV actor in 1976, it will merit an entry in this book, presumably to your surprise and affectionate delight.

OK, let's face it. We GenX'ers (my DOB: 12/20/69) had discussions about these silly things with our friends as far back as 1986, and it all began with our laughter at the memory of the Brady Bunch, with its plaid polyester and relentless good cheer. (Surprisingly no one has ever called attention in print to the sublime musical score of the Brady Bunch.) By the mid-1990's, most of us were a bit burnt out on that sort of discussion. And yet, the sheer inclusiveness of this book guarantees that the late-night discussions will continue for at least as long as it takes to comb through it, as the diligent editors of BID have dredged up for us memories of long-forgotten things like Wacky Packages, checkered Vans, and Operation!. One can imagine that this catalogue was generated with competitive passion, as the youthful 'zinesters engaged in that most cherished of all verbal sports, "Obscurity One-Upmanship", or "Who can recall the most marginal bit of shameless pop culture detritus from the furthest corners of their memory?

Their effort is worthwhile, despite its novelty. It is as ironic as the generation it was written for, as it is in fact useful trash. It is the narrowest history of minutiae you can possibly find, and therefore the most telling. As might once have been said on a nighttime infomercial somewhere around 1980, "It makes a great gift ! "

This book is great. It provides wonderful memories, clears up misconceptions/debates, is remarkably reader friendly and is a real laugh. But perhaps most of all it provides total proof that America has had a major influence on the development of pop culture throughout the world. I mean when someone from a small town in New Zealand (total population 3.6M!)knows what the authors are talking about when discussing Sid and Marty Kroft or that the wheels on skateboards today aren't as good as the wide ones of the seventies then if that's not an all-pervasive influence what is. Read this with friends - it's a scream.

If you were born during the tail end of the Baby Boom or are part of Gen-X, think of "Retro Hell" as a travel guide to Memory Lane. This book covers almost every aspect of life in the 1970's and '80's, from the most profound to the most trivial. What makes this book a joy is its ability to remind you of the little things you've forgotten -- toys, fads, fashions, one-hit-wonder bands, TV shows, commercials -- and bring back a flood of memories.

Though much of the writing is strongly tongue-in-cheek, it's not all cynical... which is quite refreshing. Not everything about the '70's and '80's was horrible; indeed, in an age of terrorism and war, roller disco doesn't seem so bad.

This book was originally published in 1997. If a newer edition is planned, adding some context would be especially helpful, now that the entire decade of the '90's has passed. For it's the seemingly frivolous things that ultimately shape our lives in unexpected ways.