Interactive Books

This book is a must have. It dispells myths and has current up-to-date information on diets, using sugar sweetners (splenda,aspartame etc) great ideas on how to lower cholesterol, foods that are high in carbs, vitamins, fats, minerals etc. Great to use for teaching purposes as well.

This book was not required but highly recommended by my professor for my class. It's worth the money. Easy to read and understand. Get this book if you want to learn about nutrition (whether in a nutrition class or not) in a clear and understandable manner!

I thought the book did a great job in introducing the concepts of Philosophy. It's a must for Freshman Students.

takes your brain on a trip if you're not pressured into reading it...helps to have some interest in god and morals.

This is an excellent resource. The illustrations and photographs are wonderful. Carolyn is not afraid to use actual photographs of male and female genetalia....how refreshing! There is nothing worse than medical text using drawings. In real life you will being dealing with the real thing....why not see the real thing in your textbooks! Beyond that...this book is very easy to read and understand. This is a book to keep and use well after you get out of college.

I am a first year nursing student and I must say this book has been an excellent reference guide. No more lugging around huge nursing books for reference purposes. The book is clearly worded and is illustrated to help the beginner. The organization of the book is excellent as well, allowing you to find what you need to know in a hurry without having to flip through hundreds of pages found in bigger books. An excellent guide for anyone in the healthcare profession.

The applets on this is just great for understanding many physics concepts. It covers most topics (mechanics, waves, electrostatics, magnetism etc), it has interactive menus so you can change the parameters in the experiments and it logs the output and plots them for you.

Highly recommended for any high school student and even university students. An excellent teaching and learning tool. I highly recommend it to my students since it moves abstract concepts closer to the concrete stage.

If you are a parent, this is a MUST have for your child to aid their learning of physics concepts.

The downside is some of the applets do not work but they are a small minority. Note you need to enable the java function on your browser, just go to Sun Microsystems website, it should work.

This book is an attempt to teach modern physics to students by enabling them to visualize various physical phenomena via Java applets designed to demonstrate various physics concepts - thus the name "physlets". The book and its accompanying CD contain around 250 such physlets that span a broad spectrum of physics courses, although the emphasis is on quantum theory. The book has some discussion of the concepts involved, particularly in the context of the parameters of the particular Physlet being examined, but this really wasn't meant to be a textbook. It's just a supplementary text for a variety of physics courses in which visualization of a concept is a real roadblock in learning. The book has 200 exercises, and they are not what you would expect in a physics book. The problems largely consist of running a physlet and answering some questions about your observations, or you are asked to change the input parameters to a physlet and explain what you observe versus what you observed when the default parameter was active. At no point does the author assume you are a Java programmer yourself and ask you to code up your own physlet, although if you know how, that would probably be a very educational activity. The following is the table of contents:

Chapter 1: Introduction to Physlets

Part 1: Special Relativity
Chapter 2: Space and Time in Special Relativity
Chapter 3: Relativistic Mechanics

Part 2: The Need for a Quantum Theory
Chapter 4: From Blackbody to Bohr
Chapter 5: Wave-Particle Duality

Part 3: Quantum Theory
Chapter 6: Classical and Quantum-mechanical Probability
Chapter 7: The Schrödinger Equation
Chapter 8: The Free Particle
Chapter 9: Scattering in One Dimension
Chapter 10: The Infinite Square Well
Chapter 11: Finite Square Wells and Other Piecewise-constant Wells
Chapter 12: Harmonic Oscillators and Other Spatially-varying Wells
Chapter 13: Multi-dimensional Wells

Part 4: Applications
Chapter 14: Atomic, Molecular, and Nuclear Physics
Chapter 15: Statistical Mechanics

Darling, delightful, all those lovely words describe this true girly girly fun activity. The little stores and shops are filled with actual hands on items. It's just cute, cute. It's so English and European like. I'm holding on to mine. It's too lovely to part with.

My daughter just loves this "book". It has alot of pieces so there is more to play with and is very detailed. I haven't been able to find any other paper doll books that even come close to this.

Jakers! is by far THE cutest kid's show out there. The fact that it teaches life lessons is the icing on the cake.
Love the characters and love the message it delivers. My 20-month-old enjoys this show too! :)

Jakers is a wonderful cartoon for youngsters. It is on PBS only one day a week, so having a disc is a wonderful way to enjoy it anytime. It is set in Ireland, and the characters have the accents to go along with the setting. These adorable friends get into so much mischief and learn important life lessons along the way. I highly recommend.

Pinto's Hope is an inspiring portrait of a young boy faced with a terrible tragedy and his triumph over it. An exceptionally vivid and stirring account of the land mine crisis that exists today. Clearly and well written with literature discussion questions, and a glossary of terms. Can be used in the middle school classroom with the CIR/Northwestern University Artificial Limb Design Project or individually. An excellent book for the young reader who wants to learn more about the world around them.

Talking to children about war can be difficult. So how does one even begin to help children understand such things as land mines, and their terrible consequences to the innocent? In Pinto's Hope author Deborah A. Harrell reveals how land mines continue to kill and mutilate in war-torn countries, long after the fighting is over.

Living in El Salvador with his mother and younger sister, twelve-year-old Pinto dreams of going to the university some day and perhaps playing soccer, professionally. But when Pinto and his friends select the wrong spot for a game of soccer, a land mine shatters his leg and his dreams.

The story follows Pinto's recovery as he valiantly adapts to life with crutches. With the love of his family and best friend Joa, Pinto learns to cope. But when he travels outside of his small village, to go to the market with his mother, he gets a harsh lesson in how the world treats those with physical disabilities. We have come to know this great kid who has learned to do his chores with crutches and has summoned the courage to return to school. Now he is forced to realize that the world only sees him as a cripple.

Pinto's Hope is a well-written story with wonderfully developed characters and setting. Not only will young readers learn about land mines but in getting to know Pinto and the challenges he faces, they should better understand the challenges faced by classmates with disabilities. One would have a very hard heart indeed, not to be touched by Pinto.

I strongly encourage parents, grandparents and teachers to introduce their youngsters to Pinto.

The Pirateology Handbook

This is a complete handbook, for a boy who wants to be a pirate hunter.
The book is setup like a ships log or diary, with a hard cover and a wire binding.

Captain William Lubber gives details on his mate's jobs aboard a ship, from cabin boy all the way up to captain.

Captain Lubber tells the boy everything he needs to know, from memorizing the flags of different pirate ships, to how to recognize the ship bells. He tells the cabin boy: four bells is six o'clock in the morning, and time for a cabin boy to report to duty.

At the end of every chapter, the captain gives an assignment: copy the map and learn the main islands, or, learn the knots needed on board a pirate ship. A cabin boy will also learn the parts of the ship.

The office of Cabin Boy, Able Seaman, The office of Bo'sun, and the rank of Captain are all outlined. Until a boy reaches the office of Able Seaman, he is not entitled to any of the treasure, taken by a pirate ship. Captain Lubbor outlines the pay scale on a pirate ship and lets a boy know that there are no slackers.


This is great book for any boy who is interested in pirates. He will learn about notorious pirates along the way, and how they met their fate. He will also learn about famous pirate ships, and where they sailed.

Jill Ammon Vanderwood
author: Through the Rug
Through The Rug: Follow That Dog (Through the Rug)

Is there anyone out there on the seven seas more swashbuckling and cunning than a pirate? Yes! A pirate hunter. In order to outsmart and outmaneuver a pirate, a pirate hunter must know all about the pirate's dastardly ways. Captain William Lubber has written THE PIRATEOLOGY HANDBOOK to help fledgling pirate hunters learn the ins and outs of their trade. "If you would dare to join those brave souls who risk their lives daily to make the seas a safer place, then this book...will be a faithful guide," he writes. Thus the course in pirate hunting begins.

Through the ranks the reader goes, from cabin boy to able seaman to bo'sun to captain, finding out more and more about pirates and how to foil their thieving plans. One must master flags and bells, knots and watches, all the while learning about pirate history, favorite pirate ports and the most wicked pirates, male and female, who strike fear in the hearts of landlubbers. Hard work and study is rewarded by a special appointment by the king (and four pages of cool and colorful stickers at the end of the book).

Written and illustrated to look like a useful and weathered book from 1724, this guide is clever, informative and fun to look at. From the parts of the ship to navigation and secret codes, it is a perfect blend of history, geography, maritime science and pure fun. The illustrations are well done, both exciting and authentic looking, and the text is readable and full of fascinating facts. Each section has an "off-watch activity" challenging readers to apply what they have read.

While the text is unfortunately but accurately addressed to "cabin boys," female pirates are not ignored. So girl pirate hunters hopefully will not feel completely excluded.

Overall, this is a smart and attractive book that approaches the ever-popular theme of pirates in a new way. Here is another 'Ology success to inspire, educate and entertain readers. Only the bravest sailors are needed for this adventure, and all pirates, buccaneers and privateers be wary!

--- Reviewed by Sarah Rachel Egelman

my 4 year-old son is inspired to read because he wants to solve this book himself without my reading assistance. Otherwise than the really complicated words, he is doing fairly well. He loves the illustrations, wish there were more of these books.

This is by far the best book of all time. I stumbled across it once, and never found it again. You and your robot monkey friend, ME-2, are on a quest to find your space ship that has crash landed on "the planet of terror." Each two page spread is a new mini-game involving hidden items, mazes, and simple math. Some of the problems may be easy, but the book is ridiculously fun. It is quite imaginatively drawn, and the storyline is as interesting as it is diverse. You travel through starship junkpiles, monster forests, futuristic cities, inside computers, and fake earth enviornments to name a few. This book/game has an excellent replay quality. I wouldn't hesitate to recommend this book in an instant to anyone who wants an amazing family heirloom to keep for generations to come.

A couple of years ago, I got Podcast Solutions and was really impressed with its' overall content. For its' time. Of course, with everything on the web, practically everything changes and thus, a new edition of this book had to be released. And it's still probably the best book out there. Lots of updated information on how to create, edit and upload podcasts and for the most part, do it on the cheap since if you're really looking to make a million bucks doing this, keep looking. Lots more stuff on video which has truly taken off thanks to YouTube and similar sites and newer ways to promote and get advertisers to your site. You'll also learn how to use WordPress and similar blogs and create a podcast site as a result. That's what I did with one of my clients. Not as thick as the Bibles out there but at least you won't get a hernia trying to lift it. You should be getting ideas for your own (or your clients own) podcasts within minutes of surfing thru this book.

Yes that's right, this is the perfect book for any and all podcasters. If you are a podcaster, or want to be one or just want to find out what it's all about buy this book.

The title says it all; Podcast Solutions. Chock full of info, written concisely, humorously, intelligently, informatively and in language that anyone can understand (even me) this is the one book to buy on the subject. It takes you step by step down the road to conceiving, creating, recording, producing and profiting from your show idea. This book covers every nook and cranny of the considerable field of information on both podcasts and vodcasts.

I personally have used both editions of this book to help me get my podcast going as well as optimizing it once it was up and running. What I really enjoyed about this book is how the authors explain things so that not only do you know what to do next but also why it works. Not only that there are many highlighted sections where the authors share a personal experience that really drives a point home. This brings the whole process into very sharp focus.

And their personal experience goes way beyond the technical aspects of podcasting and vodcasting. On page 85, for example, they share a tip that is critical to anyone who really wants to make effective communication with their material. And that is this; "speak as if you are speaking to one person". That one piece of advice can turn a blah and lifeless presentation into one with depth and impact. This book is loaded with tips like that.

I can't say enough good about this book. Without it I may not have gotten my podcast going. The two guys who wrote it have been doing this since it began and they know all the tricks. Don't think about, just buy the book. You'll thank me and more importantly you'll thank the authors Dan Klass and Michael W. Geoghegan.

Geoffrey Leigh Tozer
Producer - Sly Crooner