Nash Reviews

This is the second self help book I have invested in. The book tends to go a bit over the top on statistics but does manage to give advice and information on bulimia, anorexia and BED all at the same time. The author is obviously well read in such matters and the book is full of useful information. Useful if you don't already know why you or a relative have disordered eating. Sadly as with the last book I knew all the information already, the book added nothing and certainly hasn't guided me in overcoming my eating disorder. The author does acknowledge that sometimes a person will need some kind of one to one therapy to overcome the problem. Perhaps those with minor disorders will find a solution here and I'm sure it will help others understand why someone has an eating disorder and how they can help. Unfortunately the book has convinced me that self help books like this are not the answer and that professional help is required. Coping with an eating disorder, let alone trying to overcome it is difficult enough on your own, I don't recommend this book as the answer it professes, a little help maybe but thats about it.

The book does a reasonably good job of covering the elementary aspects of using SPSS 10.0 for data analysis. Its primary weakness is the lack of data to duplicate the ample examples provided in the book. The book directs the reader to a web site for download of data. However, the data sets at the web site have changed and the results presented in the book cannot be verified or used for practice (e.g., the "bodyfat" data set is now "fat" and the data has changed). The book needs to be distributed with a data set. SPSS 10.0, Guide to Data Analysis by Norusis includes a data disk and it is nearly identical in most other aspects of the book. The Carver and Nash book has short sections on nonlinear models, basic forecasting techniques, and the Chi-Square tests not covered in the Norusis book if this is important to the reader.

I lived in Mexico for about a year as an English teacher. The chapter on race relations in Mexico in this book is somewhat flawed.

Mexicans who are not objective, and are basically jealous and contemptous of "gringos" will sometimes bring up the supposition that "we Mexicans married our Indians, and you Americans killed yours." This book tends to support that view.

I had a 3x great grandmother who was pure Indian (from Virginia). To my knowledge, our family never tried to hide this fact. Many Americans that I know ARE part Indian, maybe not very much, and never to my knowledge feel ashamed of it. Among Americans, Indian heritage is often a source of pride.

I found that when living in Mexico City, if I referred to the house maid, who was a native Indian, as an "Indian", 'that I would get chastised for using a term which most Mexicans consider to be the equivalent of the "N" word. "Call her 'the girl' for God's sake, just don't say 'Indian'!", I was told.

In addition, my Spanish was good enough to overhear some Mexicans denigrating the local Indian population - for example "You eat like an Indian!" (chuckle chuckle). Whenever I asked my students how much native "blood" they had, they would look embarassed and claim that they were white Spaniards, and "just a little" Indian. The book "A Vagabond in Mexico" also makes mention of an encounter the author had, where the locals all deny any "contamination" with Indian heritage, in spite of the fact that that brown skin they had didn't get imported from Spain.

This book give the impression that the Spanish influence of racism got removed once Mexico became independent of Spain. Hardly. If you've ever noticed, there is barely one president of Mexico who is of native blood. Most of the people in the upper echelons of politics, business, and show business in Mexico are clearly white Hispanics, with maybe just a little race mixing. And all those Mexican cocoa cereal boxes with the black face on the cover, Mexican kids making fun of blacks because they "look funny" - you can't tell me that Mexico doesn't have some serious race issues to contend with.

My Mexican friends came to my "rescue" when they found out that a Chinese guy I met there was interested in me. "Not good for you.", they told me.

Mexicans now living in America seem to think that they have a right to take over California because of their "Aztec" heritage. Aztecs were not the majority of the tribes in pre-hispanic Mexico, and certainly never made it into California. What makes this idea even weirder is the fact that the average Mexican does not identify with any tribe, but considers himself European. And last time I looked, the Comanches were the people who originally inhabited California, not the Aztecs.

All of this just goes to show how screwball politcal correctness is.

America tends to get blamed for all the race ills of the world -I think it would help if people did a little traveling (I've been to about 50 countries, and lived in 2 long-term), that they would see racism as a world-wide issue and not just as an American one. America is at least trying to work its problems out. Other countries sweep them under the carpet - cases in point - India, with its caste system based in part on skin color and its frequent religious riots, and Japan, where there has been discrimination against the native Ainu (a caucasoid race), ethnic Koreans born in Japan (the govt. refuses to grant them citizenship), foreigners in general, and oddly enough, against the Burakumin, who are native Japanese.

There obviously hasn't been a whole lot of legwork in terms of actual in-the-field research in this book, just a rehashing of "facts" from other politically correct tomes. Thus, the information is flawed. 2 stars.

At first glance, this book is very impressive. 560 pages, extensive research (or so I thought), and a generous amount of illustrations. My enthusiasm waned quickly as I read through the numerous sections. I must say I was rather disappointed in the how the various motorcycle marques were covered. In most cases, especially the sections devoted to the Japanese companies, no or slight mention was given to certain bikes that helped define the personality of each marque. For a book that touts itself as an "encyclopedia", there seems to be a great lack of continuity and thouroughness in the research of those companies. Harleys and the newest offerings in speed bikes seem to be the most favored here, but even the Harley section seems abbreviated in comparison to other motorcycle encyclopedias currently on the market. This book would make a good read for those who want a quick glimpse of motorcycling history. For those who want more, there are numerous other encyclopedias that are even more complete.

Dr. Quattlebaum has provided the dental practitioner and student with an excellent synopsis of the history and developement of managed care programs. But his strong, pro-managed care position would have more credibility coming from a private practioner citing peer review sources rather than a consultant to the State of California whose major reference is the National Association of Dental Plans (a dental HMO trade association). In fact, the Association of Managed Care Dentists in their current, 2000 survey states "The revenues received from managed care plans are no longer covering even marginal overhead, thereby creating a disincentive for practice expansion. Most likely this is why the vast majority of dentists reported that they are no longer signing up for new plans, and 63% have closed enrollment to some plans presently in their offices." Perhaps Dr. Quattlebaum should actually practice what he preaches for a year and attempt to run a real office at reduced fees before writing a book.

This little book is good for a quick giggle, but there is not much to it. A few gems here and there made me crack a smile, but it is nothing special. It might mean more to someone who watches alot of soaps for whom the quotes bring back memories.

This is an interesting book, enough so that I wish it were a great one. The generous delving into Hadewijch of Antwerp, her mysticism and its rights, right to the essence of Hadewigian spirituality-- there are some fine passages illumined with Bouyer's considerable gifts, and a superb translation (by Mother Columba Hart) of a Hadewijch spring aubade that leaves you pinned to its two pages for a spell! Bouyer's thought is lean and clean, and admirable for that, but pointlessly smug with a really old-fashioned modernism. Some of his remarks on Elizabeth of the Trinity betray this tendency, and in fact nearly indicate that he hasn't understood her mystic gifts one whit, however well-schooled his observations are. This affectation is less noticable in his remarks on Therese Martin, although he reckons Elizabeth Catez's family "more open to the world and generally more cultured" than the Martins. He loves Edith Stein most of all, of course, and he manages some genuinely interesting insights into a rather overexposed spirituality. The lines he draws between Stein and Husserl are interesting enough, but nothing new, I think because he's apparently miles from grasping the living charism of Carmel. While he devotedly mentions Teresa- "such a scatterbrain, the copies of whose spiritual writings betray superficiality and a pretentious vacuum on every page"- Fr. Bouyer might benefit most from reading again not only the 'Life', but 'The Book of Foundations' as well, to receive, hopefully, what he has not yet learned-- interestingly, the very Thing received freely, learned quickly and lived profoundly by Elizabeth of the Trinity. Predictable scholarship, book has no soul, take a pass.

Unable, or unwilling, to secure the cooperation of Adams' estate, the publishers of this book have used images from the US national archive.

These substandard images have been reproduced hair, dust and all! It's an insult to a man who spent his life teaching and promoting quality photography.

This book was done without the authorization of the Ansel Adams Photographic Trust, as was duly noted in the book.

The volume reproduces Ansel Adams' images in a way that badly distorts his style. Most of the images are so dark and over inked that all you can see are the outlines. Adams' work was all about light and using details to show connections among objects. The only benefit you will get from seeing these images is to realize why Adams insisted on such tight control over his work. You will also come to more fully appreciate his comments about how his "reality" depended on what happened with the print, not with the negative.

Miraculously, a few images were reproduced in wonderful fashion. But you have to look long and hard to find them. Don't bother. I suggest you stick with the authorized versions of his work instead, which are all published by Little Brown. The main flaws of those volumes is that Little Brown designed the books in many cases to make the images too small.

Why, then, did I assign this book two stars rather than one? Well, I rather liked the essay by Eric Peter Nash about Adams. Nash provides a good balance between writing a short biography of Adams as a person, his development as a photographer through using new techniques, and Adams' reflections on his contemporaries. The essay is much longer than in other books about Ansel Adams and added usefully to my knowledge about his photographic techniques.

My advice is to read the essay and consider it in the context of images in other books. I would suggest you avoid buying this book.

After you have finished reading the essay, I suggest you consider how your purposes might not be followed as you wish when you are no longer alive. For example, do you have any possessions that you would like to have given to a certain person or handled in a certain way? Do you have a will that provides for those events to take place? Do you have an executor of the will who understands your purposes and is likely to outlive you?

Pass on your insights with care!

I can't believe this 1978 book has been reprinted exactly as it was 25 years ago with only a tacked on chapter for the last 25 years!!! Not one word from the original book appears to have been changed, thus you get long dead people like Marty Robbins being quoted as if they were still around, even the forward is the same as it was in 1978 comparing Dolly to Farrah Fawcett and Cheryl Tiegs!!! First time readers might think they have fallen into a time warp as the book is written in the present tense much like a magazine article (which made the book dated VERY early on like say 1980). It's pretty shocking to read chapter and chapter on 1977 and 1978 and then bam - one chapter for 1979-2003!!

The book itself wasn't so great even in 1978 - Ms. Nash has a very bad habit of quoting "anonymous insiders" thoroughout the book many of whom make comments that Dolly is making bad career decisions and suggest she is about to mess up her career big time! Even these ridiculous comments were not deleted from this new (sic) edition!! Ms. Nash can be downright catty herself at times, especially to Parton's first biographer who put out a paperback the year before and whom Nash ludricously blames for a lack of participation by the Parton family with her book. (Nash wrote a rather nasty article for WRITER'S DIGEST after her book came out that claimed in essence Dolly tried to sabatoge her book, Ms. Nash fails to make any comments of the kind here in her "update" chapter.)

The repackaging of this old book with a recent cover photo of Dolly must be considered the literary equivalent of all those endless low-budget CD reissues of those very early teenaged tracks of hers like "Letter to Heaven" and "Making Believe" (cheapie productions that don't even sound like her) that are found in dollar stores. Alas, this publisher expects the consumer to cough up quite a pretty penny more than those budget CD companies.

If Alanna Nash wanted to bring this book back into print she should have rewritten it so it would make sense to a 2003 reader, instead it's just an tacky and lazy attempt to make a few extra bucks from the never ending public fascination with the great Dolly Parton!!