Reviews Books

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.

Career choices for our children! Jodi Weiss' conceptual creation is a veritable encyclopedia of fascinating fun facts describing 145 potential career opportunities for the aspiring adult. A gentle guide to benefit the young and curious, "145 Thing to Be When You Grow Up" offers endless options and direction towards the pursuit and manifestation of 'the dream job'. Beginning to envision a path towards the creation of one's vocation is the single most important ambition in any one's life. After reading "145 Things to Be ..." one might have learned the invaluable experience of interning at 145 different employers. As a valuable and insightful adventure into the real world, Jodi Weiss has researched and written a real-life come-to-life pragmatic bible for the young adult. An entertaining MUST READ at ANY age.

I just got a copy of this book and it's phenominal! greay layout, easy to read, quick reference. definitely a must-have for every school, guidance counselor, head-hunter and EVERY high-school student. Such an eclectic array of jobs... covering the whole spectrum from Magician to Musician, Doctor to Dancer, Shoe Designer to Stock Broker.

I think I'll be a rock star and moonlight as a sailor or lobbyist...

I want to preview this book than sure that is i want.

This book ranks with PDR for Herbal Remedies, plus it includes minerals and other supplements. A great buy!

I was expecting another list book where someone gave their opinion about what he or she liked. I also expected to hate the list because I usually disagree with many critics on their top 10 or 20 lists. With an extra 30 to choose from I immediately snatched this book up and was ready to argue. I was pleasantly surprised.

There is no possible way anyone could agree with all 50 movies on the list, but there are some absolute gems that normaly get missed. In addition, the author adds his 10 favorite movies, making a clear distinction between favorite and best. That is not all.

There are also two other lists that Russo compares his list to. that is pretty brave in my opinion, because there are major differences and Russo sticks to his guns with his choices. I thoroughly enjoyed the book and will be sure to flip through it again and again as movies discussed are watched in the future. I might even check out his other book. If it's half as good as this one it will be well worth it.

Highly recommended, even for the occasional movie fan.

I agree with the first review on this page. This book is awesome. I love the fact that the movies are talked about in a conversational manner. It's like the author is talking to us, not down to us. I try to see as many movies as I can and this book has given me some great new movies to see that I never had before.

I hope they strart discussing it on the internet movie databse, because he talks about their top 250 list and points out some of the positives and the flaws. All in all a great book and one that I highly recommend to anyone who likes movies.

This book is packed with useful questions for the Interventional Cardiology boards, while the answer sections are mini-review chapters in and of themselves. The reader who finishes the book will be well prepared for the interventional boards, but will also have learned a lot of useful facts and pearls from some of the leaders in the field.

EXCELLENT BOOK! IT IS ALWAYS NICE TO REVIEW YOUR KNOWLEDGE AND TO FIND THE WEAK POINTS.ALL THE ANSWERS ALL SMALL DIAMONDS OF KNOWLEDGE.A MOTIVE TO READ YOUR REFERENCE BOOK AGAIN AND AGAIN...

Brad Stevens did a magnificent work, that enlightens all the aspects of Ferrara's movies. As a very serious historian, he multiplies the sources of informations, and we discover for example the youth and formation of the film-maker. As a brilliant analyst, he compares each film with a whole range of literary and cinematic works. It's a model in terms of monography about a director.
The book is wonderfully illustrated. The filmography is the most complete and detailed.
A necessary book for everyone interested, nonetheless about Ferrara, but about American contemporary cinema in general.

Brad Stevens, whose successful book on Monte Hellman was released in 2003, tackles another subject who doesn't always get the proper recognition that they so deserve. Through interviews with Ferrara himself (he wrote the brief introduction), correspondence with the main collaborators of the director, and enormous amounts of research, Stevens' book focuses on both the biographical and the theoretical nature of Ferrara's films. It's the most complete book on Ferrara at this time, and one would hope that Stevens would be able to update this text as Ferrara continues his controversial - but always impressive - career.
His section on unrealized projects alone makes this worthy of a purchase.

This book - like Janis Herbert's previous works - strongly recognizes the "learn by doing" educational method. The activities, while simple and straightforward, challenge, teach and provide a fun-filled approach to appreciating this great American president.

The Civil War for Kids: A History with 21 Activities (For Kids series)

I have all of the books written by Janis Herbert in this "... for Kids" series ("Leonardo da Vinci...," "Lewis & Clark...," "Civil War...," "Marco Polo..." and "American Revolution..."). Each of these books is excellent, so I had high expectations when I learned that a new one was coming out. And I was not disappointed in the least!

"Abraham Lincoln for Kids" is interesting, informative, entertaining, well-written and beautifully illustrated. And I can't imagine that there is any limit to the audience for this book. Clearly, it will be useful for classroom teachers, homeschoolers, and parents looking for a book for their children to read and/or to provide them with educational activities. But Janis Herbert's particular gift is that the content of her books and her writing style are totally accessible to and fun for children, but sophisticated enough to engage and enlighten adults as well -- and even those without children!

The timing of the publication of this book is also fortuitous. 2009 is the 200th anniversary of Lincoln's birth, and there will certainly be much discussion of, and numerous events celebrating, him, his life and his accomplishments before and during that Bicentennial year. Reading this book now will enable you and/or your children to enjoy fully and participate informedly in these discussions and events.

I know it's hard to find a good med-surge book out there, and I really appreciate the helping from the graduated nurse helping us out ! Also thank you for the price, as we all know everybody who been in the nursing program not have a lot of money :)

This book really helped me break down my med-surg text. As any nurse will find out or know the med surg text is huge and has a lot of info. After each section there are about 5-10 NCLEX questions and they also give a rationale which is always a bonus.

Frederick J. Veale's THE ADVANCE TO BARBARISM is a concise exposure of the injustice and hypocrisy of the Nuremberg Trials which began in 1946. Veale simply wrote a great book, and this book should be a warning to those who considere "war criminals" to be those who are far away and so defined by phony media "experts" who are ignorant of these staged trials and morality plays.

Veale begins this study with a brief but informative review of how the victors treated the vanquished during Ancient History. Basically, the ancients usually tortured and massacred the vanquished without the pretense of "trial." In other words they were more honest in their treatment of the losers.

Veale explains the transition from vengence to limited aims and goals that gradually occured in early modern European History. This transition took place after the terrible Thirty Years War (1618-1648). Crowned rulers sent forces to war commanded by men who usually conformed to the phrase of "an officer and gentleman." There was usually a concerted effort to avoid harm to the enemy's civilian population. Rulers and commanders understood war as a limited effort to gain land, resources, and economic access. The Europeans did not resort to wars of extermination or crusades against the forces of evil when the Europeans were at war with other Europeans.

However, this mutual understanding ended during World War II. The beginning of World War II began as a small war of the Germans and Soviets invading Poland in 1939. One should note that the view of an innocent Poland is false. For example, the Polish had already used military force to land from the Czechs, Lituanians, etc., in 1938 which obviously concerned the Soviets. One must remember that some of the Polish poltical leaders claimed that a Greater Poland's borders extended from Berlin to Moscow. As one historian commented, the Polish thought they were the carnary who could swollow two cats. As an aside, one might ask why the Germans were "war criminals" when they invaded Poland, but the Soviets were not.

Veale presents a clear case that some of the charges brought against German political leaders arose ex post facto. Prior to the Nurmemberg "Trials," there was no international law defining internal laws and acts of a soverign state as violations of international law. Yet, some of the charges were based on such flawed legal reasoning.

Other charges were "crimes against humanity and starting an aggressive war." This was bogus based on 6,000 years of history. The "jurists" representing the "victors" of World War II were citizens of governments who waged "aggressive" wars throughout history and continued to do so when European colonies were in a state of rebellion. One of the most hypocritical aspects of these trials was the presence of Soviet "jurists" sitting in judgement of the German defendants. The Soviet leaders under the sponsorhship of Lenin and Stalin committed mass concentration camp brutality and mass murder that made the accusations of the Germans almost look tame. Veale calls attention to the unprovoked Soviet invasion of Finland in 1940 plus Soviet forced absorbtion of the Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia. The hypocrisy of the jurists ignoring all this is startling.

Even upon closer examination, the charges of waging an "aggressive war" against the Germans appear ludicrous regarding Goring's plans to invade Norway in 1940. Veale proves beyond doubt that the British planned such an invasion in 1940 and started their invasion plans before the Germans did. The only thing the Germans did that was considered criminal was the fact the German effort was successful. Veale cites Churchill's speeches and Hansard's PARLIAMENTARY HISTORY to prove his case.

The accusation leveled against the Germans that they deliberately caused harm to civilians is refuted by the fact that the British started this breach of international law. Veale cites J.M. Spaight's book BOMBING VINDICATED to prove that the British started the deleiberate of German civilians on May 11, 1940 which Spaight called the "Splendid Decision." While the battle for France was being waged hundreds of miles from German civilians, the British, who should have focused their bombing to military targets such as bridge networks in France, bombed innocent civilians who had nothing to do with the Battle of France. In fact, Veale makes a good point that had the British concentrated their bombing on these bridge networks, destruction of these networks would have stopped Hitler's mechanized forces due to the lack of getting gasoline supplies. The German offensive would have stalled and would have been defeated.

An interesting episode of the Nuremberg Trials was the cross examination of Goring by the late Supreme Court Justice Jackson. Goring admitted to the charges that he planned to assist in ending the Weimar Republic and revise the unjust conditions of the Versailles Treaty. He bluntly admitted to having planned to create the German airforce and use military force to correct what many Germans considered unjust territorial impositions at the Versailles Treaty. Goring stated that he had planned to use military force to achieve political objectives as statesmen had done throughout history. Some of the British "justices" admitted to a grudging admiration of Goring's performance at the Nuremberg Trials.

What Veale suggests in a nuclear age is that the Nurember Trials only sufficed to make future wars worse. If the "losers" think that losing a war will resulet in their executiion, they may very well use the most destructive weapons to either salvage their tenure or to threaten possible "winners" with mutual destruction.

While recent events are well beyond the scope of Veale's book, one should note that some of the Serbian leaders who stalled their "war crimes" trials by arguing that they ordered counter terror campaigns to serious political threats. The recent attempts to try to Saddam Hussain have proven difficult when one considers that during the 1980s, Hussain only did what his then American sponsors wanted him to. Now to try him as a war criminal is so hypocritial as to deserve little comment.

Veale's book was first published in 1953 during the Cold War. Yet the implications in this book are thought provoking and applicable to contemporary events. Another feature of this book is that Veale's work is clear and readable. One should read this book as it is more than worth the price of the book.

Perhaps the most devasting of all the revisionist debunking of the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg and the other post-WWII trials. Knowledgeable, lucid English attorney F.J.P. Veale does more than skewer the judicial outrages of the trials of the Germans and their allies: he shows that these trials, by demonizing the defeated and glossing over the crimes of the victors, abolished the traditional code that had ruled European warfare for centuries. In a revisionist refresher course on mdern history, Veale draws on precedents from Napoleonic wars onto demonstrate the hollowness and hypocrisy of the Allies' judgement of the Germans. The Gulf War, Bosnia, and Kosovo seem validation for this books' prediction, grounded in its author's analysis of the IMT that Nuremburg would make future warfare worse for non-combatants by dividing warring nations into good (us) and evil (them).

This book is wonderful. These are similar to the questions asked on the registry exams. Not only do they give you the answer to the pretests, but they provide references to the subject so you can read about it to further your understanding. This is the best investment I have made!

This exam review text is well researched. It is very thorough in its content, following the format of the National Board for Respiratory Care's national exam. The book is divided into components for pre-testing without prior review, into review by specific areas of practice, and into the "real" exam, followed by in-depth explanations of the basis for the correctly keyed answers. Such an approach has been very helpful in preparing graduates of two year Respiratory Care programs for successful passing of the advanced national exam. As an instructor of Respiratory Care, I find this book to be more rigorous than the exam itself. While this book's exam questions are not the exact questons as administered by the national testing agency, they more than adequately represent the content of the exam. This very specialized book belongs in the hands of serious national exam candidates.