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If you are a woman or know one, don't miss owning this book. In the spirit of the Whole Earth Catalogs, this book is an incredible collection of cutting-edge information and ideas for women. Beautiful graphics, original reviews of over 2,000 resources and eye-opening articles grace these pages. With contributions by Anita Roddick, Joan Jett, Mary Daly and more than 200 women from around the country, this is one book you don't want to miss

If you are a woman or know one, don't miss owning this book. In the spirit of the Whole Earth Catalogs, this book is an incredible collection of cutting-edge information and ideas for women. Beautiful graphics, original reviews of over 2,000 resources and eye-opening articles grace these pages. With contributions by Anita Roddick, Joan Jett, Mary Daly and more than 200 women from around the country, this is one book you don't want to miss!

If you want to get the flavor of this great resource, check out the website for The WomanSource Catalog at http://www.womansource.com. Not only can you sample the introduction, table of contents and many pages selected from The WomanSource, but you can also find a terrific assortment of women-powered links. There's even a place to share your own resources or submit links for publishing on the site

Most readers will first of all be most drawn to the photographs of the sixteen women writers interviewed in The Paris Review's Women Writers at Work. But there are other visual clues to the personalities of the women whose words we are about to read, including a swift evocation of the writer in her lair--her view, her books, her style, her looks--along with a page from a work-in-progress, often heavily annotated.

Rebecca West's page is decorated with line after line of a script so microscopic it looks like miniature embroidery while Anne Sexton's poem is uncorrected and drifts definitely eastward. The manuscript page submitted by P.L. Travers has a drawing of a snail posed against a beach of text while Elizabeth Bishop's page looks untidy and musical. Mary McCarthy's page, on the other hand, has been typewritten, and of its five corrections, three have been typed in, with the consequence that we are given very little sense of how she works when she's alone and feeling spontaneous. And yet the interview with McCarthy is marvellously opinionated and candid; she also gives an intriguing answer to the interviewer who asks her what she thinks of the category "woman writer" by first defining a certain kind of "woman writer" (WW, as she puts it): "I think they become interested in decor. You notice the change in Elizabeth Bowen. Her early work in much more masculine. Her later work has much more drapery in it."

And so it's with apologies to Mary McCarthy that this reviewer is going to do what the WW's do and describe--in the present tense although many of the writers are now dead--some of the living arrangement of several of the writers in Women Writers at Work: P.L. Travers' front door is pink, the same pink as the cover of Mary Poppins at Cherry Tree Lane, and in her hallway there's an antique rocking horse. In Rebecca West's hallway there a drawing of her by Wyndham Lewis, done in the thirties. ("Before the ruin.") Toni Morrison's office at Princeton is decorated with a large Helen Frankenthaler print, pen-and-ink drawings that an architect did of all the houses that appear in Morrison's work, a few framed book-jacket covers and a note of apology from Hemingway, a forgery meant as a joke. Susan Sontag lives in a nearly unfurnished apartment in Manhattan, but she is the owner of over 15,000 books. Eudora Welty will not discuss her private life and is, in any case, interviewed in a hotel room. And Maya Angelou can only work in hotel rooms; she insists that the staff take down all the pictures and she will not permit the maids to come in to change the pillow cases and sheets.

Are any of these writers poor? They don't seem to be. With the possible exception of Dorothy Parker who says, "I hate almost all rich people, but I think I would be darling at it." Parker also shares a small New York City apartment with a youthful poodle that has the run of the place and has caused it to look, as she apologetically says, "somewhat Hogarthian."

In their opinions of other writers they are both scathing and generous; Dorothy Parker says she so much wants to write well, "though I know I don't. But during and at the end of my life I will adore those who have." Marianne Moore says of William Carlos Williams, "He is willing to be reckless; if you can't be that, what's the point of the whole thing?" Susan Sontag responds to being asked if she minds being called an intellectual by saying "Well, one never likes to be called anything. And I suppose there will always be a presumption of graceless oddity--especially if one is a woman." Nadine Gordimer feels that the solitude of writing is "quite frightening. It's quite close, sometimes, to madness.. the ordinary action of taking a dress down to the dry cleaner's.. is a very sane and good thing to do." Elizabeth Bishop tells us that when she was a student at Vassar she believed that if she ate a lot of cheese before going to bed she would have fascinating dreams; this conviction led to her keeping a huge hunk of Roquefort cheese in the bottom of her bookcase. Anne Sexton, speaking of Robert Lowell's gifts as a teacher, says that he "worked with a cold chisel, with no more mercy than a dentist. He got out the decay, but if he was never kind to a poem, he was kind to the poet."

Marianne Moore talks of her longing to write plays. "To me the theatre is the most pleasant, in fact my favourite, form of recreation."

INTERVIEWER: Do you go often?

MOORE: No, never.

Rebecca West, at the time of her interview, is in her late eighties. She wears a bright caftan; her eyes are penetrating; she wears two pairs of spectacles on chains like necklaces; she wears beautiful rings. She is also too old to monitor herself, and so she's a particular delight to read. She thinks T. S. Eliot a poseur and says of Somerset Maugham, "He couldn't write for toffee, bless his heart." But when the conversation moves on to Arnold Bennett and the interviewer tells West that her reviews of Bennett's work were absolutely sparkling--"I love the essay you wrote about The Uncles"--West says, "Oh, Bennett was horrible about it. He was a horrible, mean-spirited, hateful man. I hated Arnold Bennett."

INTERVIEWER: But you were very nice about him.

WEST: Well, I thought so, and I think he was sometimes a very good writer. And I do think The Old Wives' Tale was very good, don't you? He was a horrible man.

INTERVIEWER: Was he in a position to make things difficult for you then?

WEST: Yes, he was not nice....

And so it goes. Katherine Anne Porter is scathing about the nineteen-twenties: "A horrible time: shallow and trivial and silly. The remarkable thing is that anybody survived in such an atmosphere--in a place where they could call F. Scott Fitzgerald a great writer!"

INTERVIEWER: You don't agree?

PORTER: Of course I don't agree. I couldn't read him then, and I can't read him now.

Mary McCarthy is brutal about Simone de Beauvoir, calling her "pathetic" and "odious"; Susan Sontag who was, early in her career, compared to Mccarthy says she has no desire to write like Mary McCarthy, "a writer who has never mattered to me." Nary McCarthy admires Tolstoy, but Rebecca West considers Tolstoy overrated. Alexander Woollcott says of Dorothy Parker's work that it's a "potent distillation of nectar and wormwood, of ambrosia and deadly nightshade", but Dorothy Parker is mainly charitable towards the writers of the twenties and thirties and says that they might have seemed like flops, but they weren't. "Fitzgerald, the rest of them, reckless as they were, drinkers as they were, they worked damn hard and all the time."

Two very different writers--Anne Sexton and Nadine Gordimer--both quote Kafka, and not only do they quote Kafka, they quote the same words from Kafka: "A book ought to be an axe, to break up the frozen sea within us~" And Katharine Anne Porter gives us a brief but fine lecture on the pleasure (and esthetic necessity) of using simple words, while Joyce Carol Oates speaks bracingly about the writer's life: One must be pitiless about this matter of "mood". In a sense, the writing will create the mood. If art is, as I believe it to be, a genuinely transcendental function--a means by which we rise out of limited, parochial states of mind--then it should not matter very much what states of mind or emotion we are in. Generally, I have found this to be true; I have forced myself to begin writing when I've been utterly exhausted, when I've felt my soul thin as a playing card, when nothing has seemed worth enduring for another five minutes...and somehow the act of writing changes everything." These consoling words about the writing process are just one of about four hundred reasons for buying this spirited collection of credos and opinions.

This book of interviews with women writers, originally done for the Paris Review, is the finest book I have ever encountered on women writing or doing any committed creative work. There's really nothing like it out there. It is a prize in itself.

Most definitely needs more stars!

If you read (have read) or admire any of the sixteen writers profiled in this awesome book, then this little jewel will not disappoint you in the least. It's enlightening, inspiring, encouraging and instructive; a voyeuristic peek into the minds and writing habits of some of the best women writers of our generation. I loved what Anne Sexton told the interviewer when asked if she had any advice to young poets. She said, "Put your ear close down to your soul and listen hard."

The writers interviewed are: Dorothy Parker, Marianne Moore, Maya Angelou, Susan Sontag, Anne Sexton, Katherine Anne Porter, Simone de Beauvoir, Nadine Gordimer, Toni Morrison, Joyce Carol Oates, Joan Didion, P.L. Travers, Eudora Welty, Rebecca West, Elizabeth Bishop and Mary McCarthy.

wonderful book for students especially for sat students.... not that hard but still useful

Word Smart: Building an Educated Vocabulary
Word Smart II: How to Build a More Powerful Vocabulary
by Adam Robinson
Word Smart for Business: Cultivating a Six Figure Vocabulary
by Paul West Brook

These three books are permanently placed on my working desk, next to my portable computer. I find them very useful as reference guides to writing smart.

The first two books have a combined inventory of almost 1,700 important words. They have been written by Adam Robinson & The Princeton Review Team. As some readers may know, Adam Robinson happens to be also the author of 'What Smart Students Know' a very good book about smart study techniques. The two books are originally targetted at students preparing for SAT & other standardised tests, but I find them very useful for working professionals.

The third book has an inventory of over 4,000 important business terms, covering quite a broad spectrum of business disciplines. It has been written by a noted financial planning expert.

I enjoy browsing these three books from time to time. I often refer to them as I write my daily business correspondence as well as my reviews on amazon website.

I strongly recommend these three books to readers who want to communicate effectively, be more persuasive & more importantly, get more from your reading.

I used to work as a professional SAT Reading coach, making big bucks; the key issue for most of my students was vocabulary. Rather, VOCABULARY. (The other is slowing down and thinking as--not after--they read.)

Many questions on the SAT reading section amount to vocabulary questions.

What this means is that if you want to improve your SAT scores, if you are an ambitious student trying to get into one of the top schools, there is no two ways about it: you have to study vocabulary.

And study vocabulary.

And study vocabulary.

You cannot study simply one book, or even one series of books. You have to study several series.

However, the Princeton Review Word Smart series is the best that I know of. You should start here. Even if you think you have a good vocabulary, start here just to be on the safe side, and you can move on later.

You would recommend studying any of the vocabulary books that I've ever seen--but I recommend mastering the Word Smart series. These really are by far the best--if you are shopping here, it probably means you need these books.

If you were one of my students, your parents paying lots of money, I would force you to master these books, and I would ride you like a horse until you did. And then your scores would come up, your parents would love me and tell all their friends, and I would get more jobs and more money. That's how it works.

Anyway, these are certainly the best vocabulary books on the market. Even if you're studying vocabulary for some other reason, these are probably still the best.

Good luck!

I received the book promptly. The material was in new condition without any flaws. I was very pleased. Thank you!

She tries to help you understand the reality of her life. It is much more than you can imagine.

What beautiful writing! It's pointed out in the intro that, more than most of us, her world was shaped with WORDS. I've only read about four essays so far, and am profoundly touched. I've always admired Helen Keller, but am newly re-impressed with her wisdom and vision, and touched that she can write so clearly as to make me feel how little she felt limited by her handicap. If Helen Keller had simply learned to behave and ask politely for her food, etc, it would have been an impressive accomplishment. The fact that she grew to fully embrace her intelligence, her world and her potential . . . wow. I know so many people who are content to just do the bare minimum, to not stretch their limits at all, to not show any intellectual curiosity . . . she had the perfect excuse to exert the least effort, yet she didn't. Once she was given the key, the entree to humanity, she didn't let her handicaps stop her. I love that even all these years later, she is still able to share that.

Wonderful for history buffs of all ages. Approiate for younger readers, filled with activities to spark dialog about War and sacrifice.

My 7 year old son is a WWII fanatic and loves this book. It discusses not only events in the war itself, but also the impact of the war on life in the U.S. The activities encourage kids to think about far-reaching effects of war, not just the exciting battles.

"World War II for Kids: A History with 21 Activities" really has three key components. First, there is a history of World War II from Hitler's rise to power in 1933 to the surrender of the Japanese in 1945. Second, Richard Panchyk provides excerpts from actual wartime letters written to and by troops on both sides along with personal anecdotes from people who lived through the war. Finally, there are 21 activities that can show young readers how it felt to live through World War II, both on the battlefield and on the Home Front.

Actually, the first function is the least impressive part of "World War II for Kids," although Panchyk provides a solid history of the war. It is just that the personal writings and recollections, along with the activities, are where Panchyk goes beyond what you would find in your standard American history textbook, which is why this is an excellent supplemental volume. Teachers can certainly use the activities and quote from the letters found in this volume to give students more of a sense of what it was like to live during that time.

The 21 activities are fairly interesting and cover a variety of subjects. Some are fairly complex, such as substituting a potato for an incendiary bomb and following the instructions on how to extinguish it, or staging a radio adventure program, while others are relatively simply, such as drawing a recruiting poster. There is an exercise in code breaking, learning how to camouflage, making a ration kit, going on a reconnaissance mission, figuring oat a coastal defense, the physics of dropping bombs, and a game that helps demonstrate the difference between mortar and howitzer fire versus anti-tank and anti-aircraft fire. There are also "Home Front" activities like making a bandage, putting together a care package, growing a Victory Garden, sending V-Mail, and extending butter, as well as a couple of activities having to do with the Holocaust by making a Jewish star and trying to find good hiding places in your home for the student and an adult helper.

Obviously some of these activities are going to be more practical and more beneficial than others, but Panchyk has made an attempt to come up with different ways of giving his young readers an idea of what it was like for kids and adults during World War II. Again, while young readers can certainly read this book and try the activities on their own, "World War II for Kids" is even better suited as a resource for teachers to use when teaching the pivotal events of World War II. Comparing what life was like for their grandparents during that war as opposed to the rather limited impact on their lives today during the war on terrorism could be quite an eye opener for young readers.

Writing Smart Junior, by C.L. Brantley, is a very beneficial guide to any junior-higher in need of better writing skills. It is very clearly written and easy to follow. The key element is how educational the storyline is. Brantley has written it in such a way so that you are intrigued with what is happening with the characters and what they are experiencing, and at the same time able to comprehend what they are learning. So, in a way, you feel like you are a part of the team trying to accomplish the assigned quest for the lost art of writing. This is an exellent book; an addition to my bookshelf that I am extemely grateful for. It has helped me through some of my most difficult times in my English class. (I originally had a C, but thanks to Writing Smart Junior, I now have an A!)

I like books such asXANT

This book is excellent, and not only for middle school children. I've used this book in teaching writing seminars for adults, and the rules still apply. Though the lessons are taught in story format, they are invaluable.

I agree, this is the best yoga book on my shelf. It is very easy to follow the poses and the plan. I would recommend this book for any yoga beginner.

I thought it was going to be a little hard to follow a Yoga book, but this one makes it easy for the anyone to understand the postures and the mental state behind them. In an easy to do 12 month program, this book introduces the reader to the oldest form of spiritual and physical training. Suitable for young or old people, Yoga made easy has been a great daily program in my life and has balanced my energies for good.

This is one great Yoga book. I've looked at them all. No question this tops the others. It color photography is excellent, showing each move in detail. Easy to read text and well designed pages makes this easily the most informative and helpful guide I've used. Bravo

This book was great and I can't wait to read it again

This book told of the trials and tribulations of the characters of the past. It helped new viewers to catch up on the events of the past, while taking life long watchers on a trip down memory lane. Great Job!!

As a huge fan of the Y&R from its inception, I was very entharalled and delighted with this book. It is a *MUST* read for any fan of this show. Not only does it take you down memory lane, but it refreshes the memory of many story lines.

This question book is extremely well written and useful for studying for the ABEM written exam or in-service exams. I highly recommend it.

This book has great, relevant questions that are very similar to those on the EM Inservice Exam and on Boards. I highly recommend it.

Those are the words I would use to describe this little gem of a book. I received this as a birthday gift (along with a DVD of the Criterion Edition Seven Samurai, I might add). At first, I just kind of went, 'Oh, a quiz book.' Boy, was I wrong. I had a blast reading this. More than anything, the book is informative. I had fun answering the questions I knew ('What is Rosebud?' Duh.), but the ones I didn't know turned out to be a treasure-trove of information on these movies. Really, really fun book. Two thumbs up!

Despite the fact that I don't fully approve of the american film institute's choices for the 100 greatest american films, I am a huge fan of a great deal of these films: sunset boulevard, taxi driver, the wizard of oz, gone with the wind, citizen kane, et al. As a film buff and amateur film historian, I felt I knew a great deal about these projects and their histories. Yet, to my amazement, Mr. Raush's book consistently brought new facts to light. While I'm not really much of a fan of quiz books, I liked this book immensely. In fact, the title is kind of misleading since its really more of film history book than anything else. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and found it an able companion to Roger Ebert's The Great Films book. I would heartily recommend either of these books to anyone interested in movies and movie makers.