Against the World: A Behind-The-Scenes Look at the Portland Trail Blazers’ Chase for the Nba Championship
by Kerry Eggers, Dwight Jaynes
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The Blazers win again! (2000-05-17)
Tuesday’s game was great! It was so phat. I think the blazers are ill. The best part was when pippen sunk that 3 to win by 1. Bryon Russell was gaurding him but pippen faked him out and launced the long range 3-pointer from way downtown.Pippen was throwing excellent passes 2 his teammates. Stoudamire was outstanding. He was scoring 3’s every 5 seconds. The book deserves 5 stars.peace.e-mail me at caseyc@adelphia.net ,or casey@krazymp3z.com , or pimpflex88@hotmail.com .e-mail me.my sn is pimpflex88 . bye.
***** More Detail/Buy Product. or price comparisons(if any) *****
Ice Blue
by Anne Stuart
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Excellent and exciting. (2008-01-04)
Taka, a spy for the British, is supposed to kill Summer, an American girl. He plans to kill her, but keeps delaying it. The bad guys, a religious cult, also want to kill her, but Taka keeps saving her from them. It is full of suspense, danger, and a couple of sex scenes. The sex scene on page 323 is great! There is a happy ending. This is the third book in her “Ice” series. I loved it. Sexual content: strong.Could the ICE series get any better????? (2007-12-03)
I am just blown away by this series by Ann Stuart! I cannot put these books down when I start reading them and I don’t even like mystery and suspense in most romance novels, the story is usually boring, aside from the romance part of the book. The story is well written and keeps your interest and the romance part of the book is well….you know, HOT! I have one more book in the ICE series to read and I am hoping for more in this series!! Get writing Anne!!!Painful love (2007-11-01)
Taka and Summer are an unlikely couple who are thrust together through the machinations of crazy cult leader. Taka’s job: Kill Summer & control the object Shirosama seeks. It seems so easy for a seasoned veteran of the Committee, but Taka falls just as Bastien and Peter before him. He loves Summer and cannot kill her. Taka & Summer interactions are little cold and forced. The overall story is a bit better than in the past. It was a good read and I cannot wait for the next installment to come out.An up and down reading experience (2007-09-09)
Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.
I was half enjoying this rather slow-moving romantic suspense. Doing my best to ignore some lapses in pc-ness, when on page 152, I was hit by the most gigantic bulldozer of an offensive ethnic stereotype. I had to stop reading and start writing the review. In retrospect, the stereotyping started long before then. In fact it started the minute the hero, Takashi O’Brien, rescued the heroine Summer Hawthorne. Not to mention the token African-American best friend who gets killed for no good reason at all.
Although the word is not used in the novel, Takashi, exemplifies the word `inscrutable.’ I just chose to ignore that fact. What I couldn’t ignore was when on page 152 he declares that his special skill is that he ‘knows how to (mid market clothing label).’ Oh brother.
Despite this I did finish Ice Blue. And I think to myself. How predictable the plots for this series are becoming. I wouldn’t say I know what will happen in each novel. I definitely can predict the order in which events occur however. Ice Blue is a pale pale shadow of Cold As Ice. Takashi would probably have done better with his Japanese intended. A movie I always vaguely remember seeing is Throne of Blood. Since then I just totally fall at the feet of scheming Japanese females.
Ice Blue is rather tame really. The first half is basically spent riding around in 3 different cars. I had difficulty in seeing what other reviewers have objected to. Is it that Takashi tries to murder Summer? Or that he gives her the big O and then leaves her lying in a boneless puddle on the floor. At one point I thought these two were NEVER going to get it together. And tbh the way Takashi treats Summer is a lot more interesting than the baddie part of the plot. You just know that on the day Summer presents him with their first child Taka-chan is going to have the most massive nervous breakdown as he remembers what he almost did.
Goes without saying I’ll be pre-ordering the next one in the series, Ice Storm.Stuart Is A Master of the Arrogant Hero (2007-08-11)
I love Anne Stuart. I love her arrogant, control freak heroes and most of the time I love her heroines.
When we caught a glimpse of Taka O’Brian in Cold As Ice I had a feeling he’d be next and I wasn’t disappointed to hear he’d be taking center stage in Ice Blue.
In fact, I wasn’t disappointed in anything about Ice Blue. This is classic Stuart, a hero who isn’t typical by any stretch. Flawed, damaged, hard as nails and you wonder if there’s even a heart in there sometimes. But there is and slowly, Taka’s character unfurls even as Summer’s own does too.
I haven’t ever read a Stuart novel where it felt comfortable and Ice Blue is no exception. Her books aren’t for the faint of heart or if you’re in the mood for a softer love story. From the first page, she will shove you to the edge and keep you there the whole time. It’s a powerful, exhausting way to write and I admire her skill greatly.
Anyway, as you can tell, I loved the book and I’ll definitely be back for more. She’s setting the stage for Isobel to get a story and that little bit between Reno and Jilly was telling too. I can’t wait
***** More Detail/Buy Product. or price comparisons(if any) *****
Birth of the Clinic, The: An Archaeology of Medical Perception
by Michel Foucault
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About freedom (2006-09-08)
Birth of the Clinic is a partner to Discipline and Punish: Birth of the Prison. They are both about political economy and the irony of how the modern ‘free’ world is as confining as previous historical eras just in an opposite way. This is kind of Foucault’s whole mission, to show us just how confined we really are and wake us up to reality. But he is always subtle about it. In a way his ‘philosophy’ and ‘methodology’ and the wild theoretical tangents the academies have taken it to, are a mask for his very powerful and even dangerous political indictments. In Discipline and Punish (Surveil in French) Foucault shows historically how individual time and space have been controlled by the ever evolving, profit-driven, techno-efficiency of the panopticon-state and the distracted aquiescence of its subjects. In Birth of the Clinic he will show historically how the individual person and their body have become property of the state via consensus (law) and the same somnambulent aquiescence. In many ways Foucault is a major conservative showing us empirically, through historical evidence, how the power-play of today is an interiorization of past power-relationships, interiorized to the point of invisibility and largely unacknowledged by the manipulated masses.Read Kuhn first, then Foucault (2005-06-15)
Wow, Foucault is truly a literary genius. Getting a small glimpse into his wonderful genius is pleasure enough to warrant reading this book. However that said The Birth of the Clinic lacks in certain areas. Obviously, Foucault is writing in the postmodern era, thus his ideas are not nearly as groundbreaking as they would have been had he been writing 30-40 years earlier. This book, as Foucault explicitly states, is not so much about the birth of the clinic, as it is about the birth of ideas and knowledge - how conceptions of good and bad science come to be. In that regard the book, unfortunately the book falters in comparison to some others. The one I have in mind is Thomas Kuhn’s “Structure of Scientific Revolutions”. The main difference between the two is in time of release. Kuhn’s book was released immediately after the Second World War. Subsequently, due to the nascent phase of the field, his book sets the foundation for the literature to follow in its tradition - such as The Birth of the Clinic. Therefore, readers interested in the development of scientific knowledge would be better served to pick up Kuhn’s book first, then move onto The Birth of the Clinic.
While an introduction to the topic is somewhat helpful, the value of this book must not be overlooked. Your impression of medicine will not be the same.
Not really about Medicine, more like Epistemology (2002-08-01)
In 1963 M. Foucault published The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perception. Passing on into the medical gaze from the “unreasoned” being “unhealthy”, the topic is one more time - health. The Birth of the Clinic is an elucidation of M. Foucault’s immense research pursuing his “archaeology,” searching for archival material in the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris. In this work M. Foucault shows us how at the start of the 19th century yet more discontinuity occurred. In the Classical Period we see the eruption of the practice of clinical medicine. The goal beforehand, according to M. Foucault had been to get rid of distress and to restore well-being. In the Classical Period, the diseased body itself became the central point of medical gaze, here we see a momentous shift in medicine. The common sense notion of “health” was uprooted with the aim of mending the patient to a condition of “normalcy”. In The Birth of the Clinic, we see the discipline of medicine grow and change into a science, and within this backdrop we see medicine tied together with sciences such as anatomy, physiology, chemistry, and biology. Taking its place with the institutions in society brings medicine into a place that associates it with other political and social institutions.
The concept of “normality” has political and social implications. If you are ill, de facto you are not “normal”. M. Foucault makes the link here with other works such as Madness and Civilization, where madness ran counter to the socially agreeable idea of what was normal which put one in at the mercy of the asylum. Similarly, in the realm of medicine the clinic evolves. Within this framework, M. Foucault performs, once again, his archeology to explore the ever shifting power relations that occur with one more knowledge. The premise for all these shifts come full circle in The Order of Things were he examines how these Epistemes and discourse became a foundational consideration. If M. Foucault was worried about being labeled a Structuralist - this book is proof positive that he may not have ended as a Structuralist but he certainly started as one.
After that almost threateningly short introduction (threatening in the sense that I run the risk of oversimplifying M. Foucault’s project) I wish to conclude with a few more thoughts. What I see M. Foucault doing in this book, is to identify various texts that he uses to explore methods, laws, institutions, buildings and the philosophy of medicine - as the mutation of discourse - which is representative of the Episteme. In reality, M. Foucault is not really writing about medicine as he is about epistemology. Medical perception is also rather ontological - since I see M. Foucault making a (albeit a thin) link in the modern age of death and the individual. In the end, M. Foucault’s importance is that he has boldly (in the tradition of Nietzsche) attempted to create a new method (despite denying it later) and a new framework for the study of the human sciences as a whole - for that one has to read The Order of Things (also available on Amazon.com). Be prepared for a brain twister.
Miguel LloraSound historical interpretation, hold the postmodernism (2002-05-10)
Foucault has been interpreted in the US as a pretentious standard-bearer of postmodernism - as an almost “evil” figure who threatens to undermine the foundations of Western knowledge with his problematisation of conceptual categories. It doesn’t help that his work has been taken up to justify just about any subversive perspective, whether well-conceived or not. This is only a pitifully small perspective on the man and his work. Foucault should be seen first as a historian, not a philosopher; second, his work should be lauded for the contribution it makes to Western knowledge rather than the superficial “threats” it makes to perspectives whose time has come in any event. Every revolution of perception has been accompanied by vociferous resistance, yet a great many of those sounding their disapproval loudly probably don’t really understand what the late Michel was really on to.
The Birth of the Clinic, MF’s most accessible work, is a well-researched, brilliantly interpreted account of the development of the clinical “gaze” in the wake of modern medical knowledge and practice. Foucault problematises the institution of the clinic, showing how clinical perception is the result of a historically specific constellation of knowledge and power. His ultimately emancipatory analysis is substantiated every step of the way with textual and historical examples. No metaphysics here, just a radical questioning of the nature of knowledge within institutional practice.
So, sorry (Objectivists!) if this is too much to handle. It’s good research, plain and simple. Don’t dismiss Foucault as a lightweight postmodernist - try to see him where he would situate himself, in the tradition of reflexive historical sociology.Structural analysis of the origins of clinical medicine (2000-01-28)
Here is a commentary:
Reviewer: A reader from California May 17, 1998 "Again, Foucault shatters our illusions.This book examines our cultural tendency to elevate the authority of the physician…" This reviwer’s summary of the book is incorrect because the work is not a study of power or "authority" (themes which would be important in Foucault’s later works). In "The Birth of the Clinic" we see how Foucault MIGHT HAVE made a crticism of clinical medicine as an authoritarian institution, but in fact this is NOT the focus of the book. This book is not the attempt to dispel a "myth", it is a description of the reality of the development of the clinical gaze as a discursive formation distinct from its historical predecessors.
Reviewer: spandex9@aol.com from Barbaraville, Manitoba (Canada) July 21, 1998. "Structures of Perception and Positivism Questioned". This review is much closer to the mark than the first one. In particular, in the second paragraph the reviewer touches on the implications of the development of anatomo-clinical medicine for "the human experience itself". In the conclusion to the book Foucault himself stated that "the experience of individuality in modern culture is linked to the experience of death" and that is one reason why we should be interested in this work.
Reviewer: Dr. W Y Wan from Hong Kong "A book with special insight– one that you cannot miss. I agree that this book can be of value to physicians who are genuinely interested in human welfare, and it’s unfortunate that most physicians never study the humanities during their educations.
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Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers
by Christian Smith, Melinda Lundquist Denton
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Good, as far as it goes (2008-01-10)
Excellent resource for anyone needing statistics on the current state of religious belief among US teenagers. Beyond the tables and figures, however, are even more important sections detailing some of the answers given by the large group of adolescents interviewed for the project. As the book cover notes, there are many surprises found in these numbers, and anyone involved in family and educational programs within their churches will find much to ponder and use in their own planning. While the book achieves its purpose in showing us the “religious and spiritual lives of American teenagers,”
I am giving the book only four stars because it covers only ages 13 to 17. The authors recognize the potential for large differences in outlook at the extremes of their own range, but, by not including the last two teen-aged years, I believe they have given only an incomplete picture of what their title promises. Once these teenagers are exposed to a year or two of college and/or their first experiences in independent living, my guess is there would be a dramatic drop-off in some of these more optimistic findings.Worth every minute (2007-07-18)
Although this book can be somewhat slow at times (it’s a book of analyzing statistics, what else would one expect?), it is a great glimpse into the minds of U.S. teenagers. Anyone who works with youth should read this book.social scientific conclusions about American teenage religiosity (2007-01-18)
First the good news. In their ground-breaking National Study of Youth and Religion funded by the Lilly Endowment, the results of which are published in their new book Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers (Oxford University Press, 2005), Christian Smith (the Stuart Chapin Distinguished Professor of Sociology at UNC and a committed Christian) and Melinda Lundquist Denton of the University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill) document that teenagers overwhelmingly admire their parents as the single greatest influence in their lives, and gladly imitate their religious beliefs. Further, their study showed that teenagers actually like church. The conventional wisdom of teenage alienation from parents and hostility toward religion is an entrenched but erroneous stereotype, they argue.
Now for the bad news. When Smith and Denton asked these teenagers to describe the particulars of their religious faith, they were “incredibly inarticulate” about even the most basic tenets of their beliefs and practices. Rather, the vast majority of kids were abysmally ignorant of the religion they espoused. Here, for example, is the response of a 15-year-old who attends church four or five times a week, when asked to articulate her faith:
“[Pause] I don’t really know how to answer that. [’Are there any beliefs at all that are important to you? Really generally.’] [Pause] I don’t know. [’Take your time if you want.’] I think that you should just, if you’re gonna do something wrong then you should always ask for forgiveness and he’s gonna forgive you no matter what, cause he gave up his only Son to take all the sins for you, so…”
This from their scientific survey of 3,290 teenagers (ages 13-17) and parents, and 267 personal interviews, conducted across four years (2001-2005). Smith and Denton conclude that most “Christian” kids really operate with a vague sort of Moral Therapeutic Deism: be nice, don’t do bad, for a remote deity wants you to be happy and feel good about yourself. In other words, says Smith, “we can say here that we have come with some confidence to believe that a significant part of ‘Christianity’ in the U.S. is actually only tenuously Christian in any sense that is seriously connected to the actual historical Christian tradition.” If these kids reflect the biblical illiteracy of their parents, which I suspect is the case, and if we add to this portrait the depressing conclusions about Christian lifestyles in Ron Sider’s The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience (2005), then American born-again believers have a long, long way to go in fidelity to the apostolic way of life.
If you cannot read Soul Searching, there are two brief reviews that I enjoyed. See Andy Crouch, “Compliant But Confused,” in Christianity Today, April 2005, p. 98; and Michael Cromartie’s interview with Christian Smith, “What American Teenagers Believe,” in Books and Culture, January-February 2005, pp. 10-11.Really important stuff, especially “moralistic therapeutic deism” (2006-08-12)
A sociological analysis of conducted between 2001 and 2005 at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill under the title, “National Study of Youth and Religion.”
According to the research of Smith and Denton, the vast majority of U.S. teenagers identify themselves as Christian, have beliefs that are similar to those of their parents, believe in God, and have a positive general attitude about religion. About half say that faith is important in their lives, and four out of ten say they attend religious services weekly or more often. Most of them have never heard the phrase “spiritual but not religious” or have any idea what that means. “The vast majority of the teenagers we interviewed, of whatever religion, said very plainly that they simply believe what they were raised to believe; they are merely following in their family’s footsteps and that is perfectly fine with them” (page 120).
But wait — there’s a problem. What is it that these teenagers have been raised to believe? “Our impression as interviewers was that many teenagers could not articulate matters of faith because they have not been effectively educated in and provided opportunities to practice talking about their faith. Indeed, it was our distinct sense that for many of the teens we interviewed, our interview was the first time that any adult had ever asked them what they believed and how it mattered in their life” (page 133). Yikes! Smith and Denton argue that “we suggest that the de facto dominant religion among contemporary U.S. teenagers is what we might well call ‘Moralistic Therapeutic Deism’” — a simple belief in a god (who is not very personal), with an emphasis on moral values and feeling good about oneself. Smith and Denton argue that this “Moralistic Therapeutic Deism” is “simply colonizing many established religious traditions and congregations in the United States.” (Moralistic therapeutic deism is discussed in detail on pages 162-170.)
Their analysis of moralistic therepeutic deism concludes: “We have come with some confidence to believe that a significant part of Christianity in the United States is actually only tenuously Christian in any sense that is seriously connected to the actual historical Christian tradition, but has rather substantially morphed into Christianity’s misbegotten stepcousin, Christian Moralistic Therapeutic Deism. This has happened in the minds and hearts of many individual believers and, it also appears, within the structures of at least some Christian organizations and institutions. The language, and therefore experience, of Trinity, holiness, sin, grace, justification, sanctification, church, Eucharist, and heaven and hell appear, among most Christian teenagers in the United States at the very least, to be supplanted by the language of happiness, niceness, and an earned heavenly reward. It is not so much that U.S. Christianity is being secularized. Rather more subtly, Christianity is either degenerating into a pathetic version of itself or, more significantly, Christianity is actively being colonized and displaced by a quite different religious faith” (page 171).
Wake up, church planters and church builders! I think we’ve just heard the voice of a prophet speaking.soul searching… (2006-03-22)
excellent content.
rather hard to read due to the font size.
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Colin’s Conquest
by Lisa Rene Smith
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Suspenseful Read (2008-03-05)
This book was an amazing page turner from the very beginning and I couldn’t put it down. The main characters were well developed and I found myself identifying with them, even caring for them. I especially enjoyed laughing everytime Joanna escaped and then feeling remorse with Colin after punishing her. There were so many ups and downs and escapades that I worried and cheered alternately throughout the book. I am so looking forward to the sequel “Chaos The Vampire Child”.Impressive (2007-01-05)
Being introduced to a genre I’ve never read before, I am thrilled to have read Colin’s Conquest, by Lisa Rene Smith, as my first vampire book. Raging with Joanna’s turbulance to conquer her internal instincts to join Colin made me shudder, laugh, and pant over their form of eternal bliss. A bliss I feel honored to have shared and am so looking forward to future adventures with Colin, Joanna and of course, Ben. This book is a must read.
***** More Detail/Buy Product. or price comparisons(if any) *****
How to Make Patent Drawings: A Patent It Yourself Companion
by Jack Lo, David Pressman
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A lot of information in one book (2008-01-14)
I bought this book and Patent Pending in 24 Hours. The latter was a complete disappointment (read my review of it). This book however, was fairly detailed and answered quite a few questions for me. I am trained as a Graphic Designer. So I was very interested in doing the drawings myself on the computer. While the book focuses on traditional drawings for the most part, the information is still relevant for computer drawings. The book tells you what parts you need to draw and what to leave out. It also talks about how to shade the different elements. Which is one of the major things the examiner uses to differentiate the parts of your invention that connect or are attached. The book also goes into detail about how to label your figures and numbering of parts.
The one thing that did bother me about this book is that more than once they tell you to reference Patent It Yourself for more information. I bought this book because it implies that it will tell you everything you need to know about making patent drawings. I thought it was ridiculous that they spread the information out into their other book as a ploy to make more money. Luckily, there is enough information here to do what you need to do.
Overall I thought the book is a good collection of information. Despite the references to their other book.Patent Drawing (2007-12-07)
I found this book to be excellent. Lot’s of information and concisely written. A MUST reference if you are planning to make your own patents. Some good info on CAD drafting software, also.Do It Right - Do It Yourself - And Save Money! (2002-08-18)
On the last couple of patent applications I submitted, I ended up doing 90% of the drawings myself because it turned out to be easier than continuously having to correct the mistakes of the draftsman. My attorney said that my drawings just needed to be shaded and cleaned up a bit, and have the legends applied, but otherwise what ended up going into the applications was essentially my drawings with a few more bells and whistles. His draftsman had just put them on a light table and copied them as is. But I still had to pay for the drawings!
This book was able to get me the rest of the way there by detailing the regulations that the USPTO puts on drawings. They’re not really difficult, but they ARE specific. Don’t be intimidated by them. The very simple drawing style specified by the USPTO is to allow clear reproduction and printing. My attorney charges $295 per figure, and one page can have 2 or 3 figures on it! The last application we submitted had about a dozen figures total. Some of the expense is the work of integrating and describing the drawings, but it is guaranteed to save you money if you do your own drawings. Besides, this ensures that you will be satisfied with the quality and accuracy. Don’t forget you can also have the draftsman do the difficult 3-D “Figure 1″ bit, and you do the simpler stuff. Like me, I’ll bet you’ll find it easier than you thought!Outstanding Step by Step for the Do-it-yourself Inventor (2001-02-03)
I have all of David Pressman’s books on patenting, you know why? Because I filed my own patent using these books. That’s how good they are. They really do have step by step instructions. He also has software that helps you prepare the docs. I sort of used that as well. Again, reasonable priced, and useful. I strongly recommend these books for anyone that wants to File a Patent. They will allow you to do it yourself without an attorney.The best I’ve ever seen (1999-06-16)
Where can you find other book like this that explains you everthing about the subject in really plain english.
Alex
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Brunelleschi’s Dome: How a Renaissance Genius Reinvented Architecture
by Ross King
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A must-read before visiting Florence (2008-04-20)
No, this isn’t a book about an Italian guy with a big head, although Filippo Brunelleschi certainly had a massive ego. Brunelleschi’s Dome is about the city of Florence generally during one of the greatest periods of genius and creativity in human history. It is also, specifically, about the life of Filippo Brunelleschi, a classic genius of the Italian Renaissance, and his magnificent dome which dominates the skyline of Florence to this day. Like so many of his contemporaries, Brunelleschi had a high level of expertise in a variety of fields. He was an artist, an engineer, a craftsman, a philologist, and an overall solver of impossible problems. He was also a bit of a whack-job whose failures were nearly as spectacular as his successes.
With this book, Ross King has penned an engrossing popular biography of Brunelleschi, as well as a history of the construction of his famous dome. While the book goes into some detail regarding the engineering behind the construction of the dome, the prose is never heavy and is written so that the layman, such as myself, never gets bored or lost.
My wife and I visited Italy in 2000 and climbing to the top of the Duomo was one of the high points (literally!) of the trip. I wish I had read this book beforehand! I therefore highly recommend it to anyone who is planning a visit to Florence. It will give you that much more appreciation for the amount of work–and genius–that went into the construction of the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore.Useful History: Short and Fun to Read (2008-01-08)
King’s book is historical, but it reads like a novel as it weaves Italian history in with the fascinating account of Brunelleschi’s rise from nowhere to become one of the greatest architects and engineers in history. Having toured the Florence Duomo and wondered “How did they build that with no heavy equipment,” it is amazing to find out how they really did. This book is reasonably short; well written; and very informative. Highly recommended.A must read before going to Florence (2007-11-22)
No need to get long winded here. It’s simply a must read before exploring the dome. Read it in one evening and couldn’t put it down. Added immeasurably to the experience.A Great Read, Especially If You Are Visiting Florence In the Near Future! (2007-11-09)
I picked this book up solely because I’m going to Florence in just under two months and I am trying to read as many fiction and non-fiction books that take place in Italy before I go!
Brunelleschi’s Dome describes in detail the building of the Duomo. Not just the building of it, but from idea to conception, everything about it. The author provides you with great back story on the main campomaestro, Filippo, his life before the Duomo and during the Duomo as well as on Florence itself and what was happening in the city and the country during the time the Duomo was built.
My only complaint is that as a lay person, a lot of the engineering and architectural talk was a little bit over my head. I’m a very visual person so reading descriptions of how machines were built to carry heavy marble and how each machine worked, etc at times was difficult to follow and really picture.
I did come away with a complete appreciation of the magnitude of a project like this - how much materials were needed, how many people it took and the new techniques that were created just to build this magnificent building. I look forward to learning more when I arrive in Florence!
Definitely worth the read if you’re visiting Florence soon, or if you are incredibly interested in building, architecture and engineering.Just what I needed on the Dome in Florence (2007-08-27)
This slim volume contains a lot of detailed information - both on the construction of the dome, and on the politics and rivalries behind the scenes. It is well presented and makes for an absorbing read.
The drawings of the unique hoisting equipment developed by Brunelleschi showed that he was as much an engineer as an architect.
I’ll be visiting the dome this fall and now have a wealth of information to make my tour more meaningfull.
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Unleashing Web 2.0: From Concepts to Creativity
by Gottfried Vossen, Stephan Hagemann
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Excellent Executive’s Guide to Web 2.0 Technologies (2007-08-03)
This book is an excellent book on Web 2.0 technologies and how they can be used to provide value to users in a Web 2.0 world. The book is a light on technical (programming), but rich on concepts and the business side of Web 2.0. What makes this book useful is the fact that it reintroduces common concepts such as blogs in a way that an executive can understand and take advantage of. The first chapter discusses a brief history of the web. The second chapter goes into explaining what web technologies such as CSS and XML are and what a web service can do for a business. There are a few other very useful chapters in this book, but by no means you should stop your Web 2.0 quest with this book. This book’s a great way to start your Web 2.0 journey and it even puts forth the notion of semantic web. But, once you figure out what area you want to concentrate on, I recommend getting a more comprehensive book on that specific topic.
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Speaking With a Purpose (7th Edition) (MySpeechKit Series)
by Arthur Koch
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Publisher: Allyn & Bacon
Salesrank: 423342List Price: $42.20
Our Price: $25.00
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Good Basic Speech Text (2007-09-01)
This text is a good one for basic speech students. It amplifies the rhetorical canons and is straight-forward and clear.Worked for me! (2006-02-26)
I used this book in class and I was totally satisfied with how well I did. I think it covered the material in a really understandable way. If your class is using this book - be happy!ehh (2005-09-26)
I never received the book! i had to buy it in the expensive bookstore in my school.For any type of public speaking (2004-01-03)
I agree with the book description above that this is the best of the short books available on the subject.
It’s very thorough for a book this size, and would be good for anyone doing any kind of public speaking, whether in church, in business, in college organizations, before the press, in politics and government, or even in high school debate teams or speech classes.
There are chapters on Audience Analysis; Supporting Your Ideas; Stage Fright; Impromptu Speeches; Nonverbal Communication; Persuasion; Deductive and Inductive Reasoning, and even one on The Job Interview! There is a lot here in one neat little package!
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Dental Benefits: A Guide To Dental PPOs, HMOs and Other Managed Plans
by Donald S. Mayes
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Publisher: International Foundation of Employee Benefit
Salesrank: 483200List Price: $60.00
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The best book on Dental Benefits in the word! (2003-11-07)
I first met Dr. Mayes during one of my visits to USA, and I had the honor to get in touch with his book "Dental Benefits" when it was still being prepared in his office in Hershey,PA. That time he told me the book will focus also the Dental PPOs, considering the exploding grow on the last years. When finally the book came published, I could confirm not only that PPOs were there, but the were many other interesting subjects related to all the business of Dental Plan in USA. The book is so completed that we invited Dr. mayes to visit Brazil and share your temendous knowledge and experience in Dental Benefits with our local market key executives. The firt Seminar of Dental Plans Management took place at American Chambers of Commerce of São Paulo, 26th and 27th of September 2002 and his book "Dental Benefits" were included for each participant of the Seminar. Since then the wook is largely used for many people, including the Agencia Nacional de Saúde Suplementar(ANS), the federal government agency for dental and health plans regulation. A significant part of Dr. Mayes book was also translated and used by ANS in the Referral Material in their first publication on Dental Plans - "Planos Odontológicos: Uma Abordagem Economica no Contexto Regulatório".
This and many other facts prove that Dr. Mayes book is not applicable for the "American Dental Benefits" , but for "World Dental Benefits" . Certainly it has a great value for the brazilian Dental Market at the present "growing" moment.
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