Stanley Reviews

Stanley Tam used to (and maybe still does) give copies of this book away through his company (we used to order a lot of stuff from his, or should I say God's, company, U.S. Plastic Co.). The book is a lot of fun - basically the ramblings of a lunatic. When he would give these away for free it was always a lot fo fun to have free copies sent to friends. Check to see if you can still get a free copy before buying one.

This book challenges business leaders, as well as local church leaders to truly place God first. Too often, as business and ministry leaders, we tend to focus on our own personal agendas. This book shares the heart of a man who sincerely desires to place God first in every arena of his life. Mr. Tam's life is not broken into such divisions as business, personal and religious. His life illustrates a true integration of every aspect of being coming together under the Lordship of Christ. This book should be read by anyone who desires to live out the will of God in their life.

I would recommend this book highly to those who are business owners and Christians. Mr. Tam sets forth a good example of one called, and if one heeds that call, what they can do as a servant of Christ, and as a businessman or woman. He deals with those issues common to business owners, faith, inspiration from God, stewardship to name a few. I am finishing reading a book on Anthony Rossi, and to this point, I would recommend this book over Rossi's life. Both served God, but I believe this would be more of an inspiration, and you would gather more wisdom from it. Personal opinion....

Any author who tries to su up the life of Robert Johnson is going to have a hard time. The life of this man is a mystery beyond belief. The one thing that stands out is the music. I really feel that owning Johnson music is better than any book. Pick up the two CD set that has the booklet. Read that booklet and then put the CD's in and get ready for an experience this book can not give you. This book is good after you have done this. The music helps explain things a little more.

It's a long way from the Mississippi Delta to Australia but this screenplay allowed me to visualise and feel the passion and raw edge to the music and landscape of Robert Johnson. It seems a shame that no Director has been brave enough to attempt to put this tale onto film as it could surely be an outstanding work if properly attacked. The comprehensive attached notes provide the reader with an opportunity to fill in any gaps in their knowledge to the point where one can almost picture the juke joints with their duelling musicians. The brutality of life in this community was shocking to me and the early death of Robert Johnson now seems to be less of a tragedy and more of an inevitability.

I never read anything like this before--it was like watching an amazing movie in written form. This unique book is an undiscovered gem.

I must be a rubber necker to the highest degree because I always enjoy these type of books. It has the standard fair, nothing really new on the format. The author does give us a good amount of detail, which he is known for. I would always like more photos, but there is enough to tell the story. If you like this type of book then you will enjoy this one.

Stewart's penchant for detail is evident throughout this seminal work. A compilation of airline accident investigation findings which run the gamut from design flaws and adverse weather, to impatient pilots, and distracted controllers. Superior in content to many books written by non-investigators, or "hired-guns" who work for lawyers, the book does not elaborate on the events which occurred after the cause was determined, or the disposition of recommendations forwarded from air safety investigators. Though this may seem an oversight, some of these recommendations are STILL being considered by-or are rejected in compliance with-the regulatory body (in the U.S., that is the FAA). Nevertheless, one can gain a valuable insight into the root causes of many air disasters.

Stewart's book looks at twelve of the most terrible and important accidents in aviation history. Chapters are included on the crash of the R-101 airship, the Trident crash of 1972, and the 1976 midair collision over Yougoslavia, among others. This book is excellent. Stewart's writing is both factually informative as well as psychologically thrilling. He takes us moment by moment through each crisis. While none of the chapters are poor by any means, I think the best covered the Trident crash of 72 and the Munich football accident of 58. Each is written in the style of great fiction, but both are wholly true! I would recommend this book for anyone with an interest remotely close to the subject. Too bad that the book is out of print.

This is the 29th Perry Mason novel I've read (the 12th in the series). Forgive me for giving this one less than a rave review. Usually Perry Mason sees what no one else can see--a sort of mid-20th Century Sherlock Holmes. In this case the only surprise about the solution is that it takes Mr. Mason so long to happen upon it. The most interesting feature of this story is Perry Mason's marriage proposal to Della Street. (Holmes' own Doctor Watson got married in the "Sign of Four," but his wife was killed off in "The Empty House." I guess his wife "got in the way" one too many times. Could Della suffer a similar fate?)

If the writing style characteristic of the thirties and forties is something that you enjoy, then Gardner's mysteries are a must-read. In this early novel, mistaken identity plays a large role. We have a switched photograph, a bandaged man, a woman in thick glasses, and a family traveling under false pretenses. Perry Mason is initially involved to protect a young innocent from scandal, but he gets in deeper and deeper until it's finally all about murder.

So, you've heard about Perry Mason and would like to read one of his books? If you were to read one and only one of the dozens of books Erle Stanley Gardner wrote, "The Case of the Substitute Face" should be it. This book, written in 1938, shows Gardner at the top of his form, after he had fully developed his formula, but before it truly became a formula.

Gardner himself was a top lawyer. "The Case of the Chinese Shopkeepers" could have been one of Gardner's books if he hadn't done it himself. When Gardner heard the DA was going to subpoena one of his clients, a chinese shopkeeper in Oxnard CA, Gardner put another chinese man, who didn't speak English, in his client's store. The court officer then brought the wrong witness to court and, after much confusion, the case was dismissed.

This book is an excellent collection of essay by the leading producers of cool, far-out ideas alive today. Just reading it will expand your horizons and help you look at the final frontier in a new way.

Some of the essays, such as G. Harry Stine's on Single-Stage to Orbit spacecraft, are on near-term science and technology. Other essays, such as "Islands in the Sky," are longer-term and closer to science fiction. All are good.

My personal opinion is that the asteroids -- not the planets -- are the future of mankind, so the Mars-exploration essays by Zubrin et al. I found less enthralling. But you Mars fans out there NEED this book.

The essay, "The Economics of Interstellar Commerce" alone makes this book worth the cost.

Although I enjoyed John Lewis's _Mining the Sky_ more (simply because my bent is toward the asteroids), this book is better written and required reading. 4 stars.

I'm giving this five stars for the benefit of the chapters by Robert Zubrin and Martyn Fogg, which are ingenious and daringly original analyses of astronautic engineering and terraforming, respectively - each is the godfather of his field. The other material ranges from curiously quirky but not well-thought out (on terraforming Venus) to the kind of worthlessly unintelligent and uninteresting speculations you might expect to overhear from some goon at the bookstore but not to read in print (see the chapter on settling the Oort Cloud). This book was assembled as a "best of" selection from Analog; in a better world it would have been edited by the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, which would have known where to make the cutoff. Still, the good entries are fantastic enough to be well worth the purchase price.

The book deals with ideas about making space travel easy and colonizing space simple. The first few chapters deal with getting out of the gravity well we call Earth with known science and equipment. The next deal with using the resources that could be found on the Moon, Mars, Mercury and even the Oort Cloud (as well as planting a few colonies here and there)with the knowledge we have and the equipment we could have soon. After that is starts to get harder to picture doing all this projects with current technology. By chapter 8, for explain, we are dealing with terraforming and star engineering. Near the end of the book, starting with chapter 11 we are talking about interstellar space ships and the economices of interstellar commerce. But by than, you think all of it can be done! Each chapter helps to hold up the next one. For example, cheap, easy ways to get into space would cut the cost of space travel and allow for the next step which is exploring the planets and finding resources to help the next step.

Four stars for what has been carried over from the 1980 version, zero stars for what has been appended to it. We can't entirely blame the dictionary for the poor quality of most of these additions. The dictionary depends on a large pool of contributors, most of whom hold academic positions, and our academies are beset with insufficiently acknowledged problems.

One problem is the graduate-school analogue of what in secondary schools has been called "grade inflation". We might call it "degree inflation". Unqualified candidates are routinely pushed through graduate school; mediocre minds are awarded doctorates and assume faculty positions. This is partly the result of a misguided egalitarianism and partly the result of a quid-pro-quo cronyism. In any case, it is self-perpetuating and self-proliferating. It manifests itself here most obviously in rambling pseudo-intellectual essays on such empty buzzwords as "postmodernism".

Another problem is commercialization. It manifests itself here most obviously in vacuous and clumsily written (and randomly strewn with rock journalism cliches) extended accounts of various pop music figures, such as, for example, Bob Dylan and David Bowie. (Both Bob Dylan and David Bowie have composed interesting song lyrics and are worthy subjects for popular culture historians, but neither have any particular MUSICAL significance.)

One could never hope for a 'compleat' dictionary of music and musicians any more than one could hope for hope for a 'compleat'library of knowledge in one publication. But, just as the Encycopeadia Britannica has come to be seen the most comprehensive summary available of knowledge generally, so has Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians come to be seen as the ultimate summary of information available about music and musicians.

The question now is: when will 'Grove' follow the Encyclopaedia Britannica and reach out to a wider audience via CD-ROM and Internet on-line services? For this reviewer: the sooner the better

Ian Bowie

Discursive and authoritative, the one failing is the lack of convenient text search. When available on CD-ROM with that capability, it will be an ideal reference.

This book is definitley not worth considering if you want are trying to compose an effective cover letter. I have worked in human resources for several years and cover letters starting with either" books are as important as bread..." or "have you not found that granting loans involves knowledge...""I have been thinking of what else I might do to line up new buisiness opportunities..." are just not even worth reading. They do not catch one's attention or at least not the kind of attention you want to attract.The examples provided in the book are nothing but very simple written sentences like"...I wish I had space to list all of my qualities..."- I mean what kind of an excuse is that to make a letter short? I cannot believe this book was recommended on an online job search. It is a joke!

I sure hope this review gets posted as I do think bad reviews also have to be included to ensure the free marketplace of opinion! heikecita

I read through it and it is very well done. The writing is lively and you had alot of creative tips. It certainly was engaging for the subject matter. I particularly like your use of real-world examples and the 100 sample cover letters! The only thing I didn't like about the book was the cover, which seemed a bit cheezy. Barbara Mattleman

I wanted a cover letter that would make employers sit up and look at me enough to offer me a paid internship. We were told in school that cover letters would either make us or break us to the point of nonexistence. So I bought your book at Amazon.com. Cover Letters That Will Get You the Job You Want is fantastic. Hit a bull's eye. I started to wonder how my old cover letters got responded to when there are the ones done by you going around. I read your book cover to cover, and I am now armed to write.

"A beautiful and bygone era comes to life again in this exquisite chronicle of postwar Paris, elegantly penned by an award-winning American journalist who was there..."

Makes it sound thrilling, huh? You should want to dive into the novel and find out every detail of the wonderful Paris in the Fifties. Well, you know what? Yawn!

I just got finished reading "Rebecca" by Daphne DuMaurier while I was vacationing in Mexico and I was in a hurry at the Los Angeles airport coming home to find another book for the last couple of hours on the plane. I shoveled out ... (believe me, ... saves a lot!! Always buy before the trip..) from my pocket at an airport book store after I hurriedly found this book. Well, I gave it about 45 minutes (and I read fast, not to forget) and I gave up.

This book just did not capture me. I gave it more time after I arrived at home, but soon other books and events captured my attention. I'm not saying that you shouldn't read this book. I mean, if you love Paris, totally love it, try this book. Listen to the other people that have written reviews and enjoyed this book also. Everybody has different tastes, and maybe I just didn't give this book a long enough chance.

I've been to Paris twice. This is a very accurate representation of the one of a kind Paris culture. Excellent stories and personalities. Every second of this book was enjoyable. The only drawback was the difficulty to keep track of the personalities sometimes, other than that, one of the best ever!! A rareity..

The title of this excellent book is a misnomer. Although there is a great deal about Paris, the book as a whole rambles over much of France and even the Mediterranean. Beginning in the late 1940s when Karnow first went to Paris on the GI Bill to study and through much of the 1950s when he served with TIME in their Paris office Karnow lived in Paris. This book is a distillation of his memories and notes he kept from that period. Karnow, however, gives himself free rein to range over a host of topics, sometimes delving into French history, if it helps illuminate his topic. The result is a very personal view of France in the fifties. There is a great deal he doesn't discuss, such as French cinema and art in the decade. He writes of some of the literary figures, but not with any especial emphasis.

The range of topics that are covered in the book are not encyclopedic but they are exceptionally varied. He will write about wine, food, crime, famous politicians, infamous politicians, housing, French manners, Algerian patriots, people he knew, and a host of other subjects. Some of the chapters could be anticipated, such as a long chapter on French wine and a tour through the French wine districts. Some are unexpected, like a chapter on a man who was the last in a line of hereditary executioners. There is a good deal of name dropping (folks like Samuel Beckett pop in for brief cameos), but not too much. He writes of people whose names remain famous, like Christian Dior, and of many others, especially colleagues, whose names are not so well known.

One of the best things about the book is that while it may not give you all the facts about Paris and France in the fifties, it definitely gives you a feel for the time itself. It is also fascinating for what it reveals about the politics of the time. Karnow worked for TIME, which espoused a conservative Republican point of view (though more moderate than what would later characterize the late 1950s NATIONAL REVIEW), while Karnow himself was a liberal. In much of his political writing, therefore, one gets a sense of his take on one things on the one hand and the take of his employers, looking over his shoulder, on the other. The book therefore indirectly tells the story of how much of America felt about France during the fifties.

I can wholeheartedly recommend this book to anyone interested either in the years following the war or in France or Paris in general. It is entertaining and informative at the same time.

I'd like to add that the photograph on the paperback edition of the book (and I supposed on the dust jacket of the hardback) is one of the most remarkable I have ever seen of Paris. A couple somewhere in Paris (the angles make it look to be somewhere east of Montmartre) looks over Paris with Notre Dame and the Eiffel Tower off in the distance.

Individuals with any experience in running a project, whether it is a small focused job or a large-scale product development effort, will find subject treatises too fundamental. The chapters lack the in-depth coverage and focus as the apparent goal is to present a broad-based overview of basic concepts in the field of project management.

Here is a guideline to use in deciding whether or not to purchase this book:
How comfortable are you with using the Microsoft Project software?
If you are very comfortable with MS Project, I recommend that you try "A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge" instead.
If you have never used MS Project and/or have no idea what it does, then you should probably buy this book.

This book covers the basics of project management but does not include the "how to" tools to be "the reference guide" for project managers. Perhaps to be a project manager you can't be a dummy.

A solid book that introduces many tools and techniques central to project management. If you have to manage projects in addition to doing your "real work" this book is for you. If you're a project manager by profession, you should be past this book by now.

This book was, well, a peice of work. I'm only 14 and I found this in one of my fathers boxes of books. Before I read this I was EXTREMELY close minded. This book had me questioning my beliefs from the beginning. The fact that there might be a life after death was enough to have me ranting and raving for a whole day, but after I read this I started to wonder. Shapiro's look into that particular subject had me glued to the book. I would highly reccomend this novel to anyone who thinks they know everything. It might change your mind.

It moves at a brisk pace, which means it outdistances itself from any horror elements about four chapters in. But that doesn't even matter, because it weighs on your mind for long after you're finished. It's the kind of book you can't help but think about. The story of men trying to find what's beyond, and the sole survivor finding out that it's not nearly as you might expect is enough to make you question your own beliefs, however briefly. While my faith wasn't shaken or shattered (rather in some odd ways reinforced) I still had to give some thought to Shapiro's creation. The book is told in first person which gives it a much more credible feel, as if this were an autobiography of a real person. Truly amazing. I didn't give it five stars because frankly I feel that five stars is an honor that should be reserved for pieces of work that are beyond even exceptional. But that's no insult to Shapiro or his work, because this is damn close to being perfect.

This is was an awesome book. It crossed so many questionable bounderies about religios beliefs and medical theories. The text was written so poetically that every word seemed to me as if it could easily be put to music of the goth persuasion. I also learned quite a bit from this book about the balance of life, good and evil, and the effect of messing with things that you don't understand.I recomend this book to anyone with a curiosity for the supernatural. I loaned this book to a friend who has since passed it on to several of their friends. Good thing this book now only cost a dollar because I don't mined not getting it back.