Languages Books

This is the definite cluetrain (doc searls et al)for broadcasTV news. Much the same way cluetrain sparked a marketing revolution, this does the same for broadcast journalism.
I first meet the author when she was interning for Florida Today in Cocca Beach.
Every point she makes in this book is vaild. The take on "fox fair and balanced" tells me she won't be on the O'Reilly factor anytime soon.
I found only one sort of error. FYI> Matt Lauer does have a broadcast journalism background on the local level. He came out of the same environment that former NBC correspondent and current talk show host (WBUR Boston) Robin Young did, PM Magazine at WJAR TV 10 in Providence Rhode Island. That's the only small flaw I could find in the book.
The suits at CNN don't want you to read the book. They are not happy campers and with good reason. The hollywood suits trashed the network big time, and with than came the opening for Fox news to fill. Rick Kaplan is currently doing the same thing for MSNBC that he did for CNN take it down the pike.
It's a fast read but once you start you wont' want to stop.

Finally---an insider with enough intestinal fortitude to call a sham a sham!!! One can just imagine the 6 o'clock news being primmed, powdered and perfumed with just enough tear (or smile) to make it palatibly entertaining. Ms. Anderson, with her years of experience and credibility, still believes that the American citizenry is due the news, the whole news, and nothing but the news. Reserve the spin and "holy cows" for the baseball commentators! If the media execs remain stoically entrenched in the annals of the entertainment world, then let them be reminded of the old radio classic, Dragnet, where the byline was...."the facts, Ma'am, just the facts".

Bonnie Anderson's book has brought to the light of day what I have felt has been a problem with the media for some time. Many of the newscasts are more concerned with form, not substance; how they look and not what they say. Her book is a very good read and pulls no punches in pointing out the way many in the media are more concerned with entertainment than hard news coverage. Her description of this type of coverage as "Infotainment" is right on point.

News Flash brings to the reader another big problem influencing news coverage which is how mega mergers are affecting the coverage that is being presented to the viewing public. Unfortunately the impact is not good and these large conglomerates are proving the old adage "bigger is not always better" to be very true.

From her experience at CNN as a reporter, managing director of a news division and Vice President of Recruitment and Training, Anderson offers the reader a unique perspective as to what goes on inside a large news organization. She provides an in depth look at what takes place behind closed doors when it comes to hiring, firing and staffing in today's media corporations and much of what she reveals should be quite disturbing to the viewing public. This book provides some very interesting statistics about the media and its management which I am sure most of us were never aware of.

While Anderson points out numerous things that are wrong with today's TV media and its management, she also brings out the good that the true journalist can and should do. At the end of the book she offers her thoughts on what the media can do to provide the viewing public with quality news coverage. She should be commended for taking a stand and bringing to our attention the problems and proposing solutions to get TV journalism back to the quality we need and deserve.

In light of Anderson's criticism of the TV networks and cable news channels, it will be interesting to see if any of the media will afford her the same opportunity to present her views as they did when Bernard Goldberg published his book on bias in the media. If they do not, shame on the media, again.

News Flash appears as a rising meteor against a field of weakening stars. Ms. Anderson's book takes the reader through the shenanigans of the TV news broadcasters in their unadulterated striving for place and profits while leaving behind journalistic investigation and integrity. Her words turn out to be an exciting journey of personal experience and incisive exposure.
As a long time news journalist Ms. Anderson sets a fair bar for news organization to reach. Her experiences and reporting often show just how good news organization can function. The same intimacy exposes the petty, inexcusable machinations of networks in journalistic decline.
Ms. Anderson's news flashes exposes the perfidy of CNN's executive wing in its Tailwind scandal, the staging of news as presented by NBC's Dateline story on General Motors in 1992 and the apparent homophobia of Roger Mudd given his attitude toward AIDS victims. But indeed, Ms Anderson is not a muckraker. On the contrary, hers is to excite the industry to better, to reset the standard of TV journalism. She gives as examples her own series on drought and famine in Africa bringing a change in American policy on humanitarian aid, or of CNN's initiative in covering the return of twenty-four U.S. Navy spy plane crewmen held in China. While these could be considered scoops, her admiration for her industry is best held by her words on the, "spectacular breaking news coverage of the 9/11 attacks."
Ms. Anderson words border on the requirement for broadcast journalism to return to its traditional values and to assure the public a clear and unbiased presentation of the news. Ms. Anderson carries the fight to those in the industry already sullying news broadcasts as entertainment and who have diluted their own professionalism for money, position, or simply hubris.

From her insiders view of the whole industry, Bonnie
Anderson delivers a searing indictment of our corrupt,
sensationalistic television news. She lays out fact
by fact, and name by name, just how, why, and most
importantly who is to blame for this once esteemed
institution's downward slide into the very muck it
used to deplore. For years, Noam Chomsky's theories
about the corruption of the news media have grown less
alarmist and eerily more prescient as the
infotainment age reaches its belligerent maturity.
But while Chomsky was lecturing about it, Ms. Anderson
was out in the field living it. She recounts, with a
journalist's eye for detail, all that went astray
within our large media conglomerates. The cast of
characters are all to familiar, Browkaw, Jennings,
Schwarzenegger, Striesand, O.J., Clinton, Leo,
Lewinsky, and Lettermen, as Ms. Anderson makes a
compelling case for the media's distortion from a
revered source of accurate information to an
increasingly grotesque and obvious fountain of
entertainment. "If it bleeds it leads" is the mantra
of newsrooms of our day, and may truth and rational
perspective be damned. Everything of value is
jettisoned in light of shocking and sensational video
footage about any subject, no matter how irrelevant
and trivial. No one will hear about the latest civil war in
Africa when every second of news time is dedicated to
footage of a shark attack in Florida, human interest
stories, a surfing cat, or another excessive
Hollywood wedding.

Stanley Lombardo has done it again!

His Odyssey is as fast-paced, lucid, poetic and punchy as his Iliad, but this time with a human feel, a warmth that the story calls for.

He brings real thoughts and real emotions to the characters...the like I've never seen! (I must have compared around 10 different translations).

...Lombardo has said that the "Iliad" is like the Sun blazing at its peak in mid-summer, whereas the "Odyssey" is like a setting Sun as fall sneaks in...

The best modern translation available! Get it with his amazing Iliad!

Cheers!

Do not buy this book. Instead, search Amazon and buy the cd, where the book is read aloud by the translator, Stanley Lombardo. Put the cd on your iPod, and listen to it whenever you walk the dog, or walk to work, or just take a walk. You will find yourself taking a walk in order to listen to the cd. The dog will not object. (But I actually bought both the book and the cd.)

I can practically guarantee that after you have heard Lombardo read his translation of the Odyssey, you will go right out & buy his cd of the Iliad. But I suggest that you listen to Lombardo's Iliad first, particularly if you have only a distant recollection of what you had to read in high school. It will help you remember some of the characters - Nestor, for example (remember much about him?)- who reappear one way or another in the Odyssey. It will also remind you of the ruthless and barbaric and somewhat alien society that these epics grew out of.

In a nutshell, this is the most accessible translation of the Odyssey I have ever seen. Any translator is faced with the need to convey the sense of a poem as well as the words. So much of poetry is evocative and associative, and depends a great deal on the knowledge and understanding of the reader or hearer. Lombardo manages to make the right connections with a modern reader.

The reading on the cd is among the best I have ever heard. It is as good as Frank McCourt's reading of Angela's Ashes, in my opinion. The performance is augmented by the subtle use of drums, lute and flute, horns, strings and even waves. Each "book" of the Odyssey on the cd is preceded by a brief synopsis of what you are about to hear.

Check out Jacket Magazine number 21 on the internet for an interview conducted by Michael Leddy with Lombardo concerning his translations.

You are going to have a good time with Stanley!

The Odyssey is mandatory reading for my freshman English classes and it has been quite difficult to teach. This literary work can be a very dry read for those who do not enjoy poetry reading (most freshmen). For this reason, I began a search for a translation that would make it easier for my students to understand. I read the previous reviews before buying it and I must say, I am glad that I did. Lombardo does an excellent job of making the translation understandable without dumbing down the text. My students this year have enjoyed this story much more than previous classes because of this. If you are looking to gain better understanding for yourself or to teach this text to others, this is the translation to get!

Stanley Lombardo's translation has brought back the original "feel" of the ancient Greek epic. Classical and Koine Greek are both what you call "earthy" languages, a tone lost with many established and contemporary translations. Lombardo restores the drama and the linguistic edge that the epic poem possessed in its original tongue. The Lombardo translation is quickly becoming standard among university professors and students of classical literature.

Lombardo's translation of the Odyssey, as well as his Iliad and Aeneid, receive much-deserved kudos as the most readable translations available. He writes with poetic and colloquial English that makes it easy for the lay person to understand.

Unfortunately, many of these same lay readers bash Lombardo's translations because they assume the personable nature of the writing makes it inaccurate. People expect a classic to have a certain formal diction to it, in the vein of Shakespeare and the King James Bible. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. The King James Bible, despite having the most formal prose, is certainly not the most accurate translation of the Bible. Similarly, verbose translations of Homer do not mean it is more true to the text. Lombardo's version of the Odyssey preserves the immediacy and hard hitting nature of Homer's original Greek poetry. You will notice in other reviews that readers disapprove based on what they imagine Homer should sound like. Trust me, they haven't read the original texts. Classical scholars, some of whom I personally work with, have given universally excellent reviews to Lombardo's translations. This translation proves you can have your cake and eat it too. It is highly recommended.

Dazzling and intense works. Good overview of his output. Although this is not the Collected Poetry of Heaney it does contain almost all his best poems up to 1996, as well as his Nobel Prize acceptance lecture (a gem) and an excerpt from his play Cure a Troy. Essential poetry volume.

I needed the book for a class... I went in to reading it like it was going to be garbage... But it actually was a little bit interesting...

strong poems, there is a sadness and a resignation of fog that permeates these poems. this is a melancholy man, one for whom the all-pervading glue of inaction and paralysis bounds him to a bleak world, soiled and grey and drab. this is a weary poet, too nauseated with reality's bruised soldiers, slovenly rudeness, the uncouth glutton, the debauched fiend. i enjoy him, immerse myself in his dust-gloom, his inability to soar into elation and falcon-freedom.

author of Lorelei Pursued and Wrestles with God

After currently studying the quality of Seamus Heaney's poems, i am quite sure that this book will not dissapoint you. The quality of Heaney's poems are somewhat outstanding, they are a shock, as you dont normally read poems of this sort, and once you read one, you have to read the others. One of my personal favourites is Mid-Term Break.

Written by Kirk Aged 14

If you have not read Seamus Heaney, then you are not in touch with what the English language is in its heart. Heaney's simple, unstrained word usage, coupled with a deep knowledge of the rich Anglo-Saxon which is our cornerstone, evokes a strength which comes not so much from what we see and know as from something which is rooted deeply in our psyches as Anglo-Europeans (or at least those living in and a part of such cultures). Heaney also brings to light the beauty of the ordinary, primarily by weighting it with the yoke of history and the various passions of his fellow man.

I bought this collection because I enjoyed others of his works (especially The Spirit Level and Seeing Things), which I uncovered at the library, too much to go long without his poetry. And this collection turns out to have all of my favorites from those volumes, as well as the best and most skilled of the poems of his earlier volumes. Do I recommend it? I wouldn't have prominently displayed the fact that I was reading it in numerous public places if I didn't, now would I?

Two caveats before I talk about why I love this dictionary:

1) If you have a passing interest in Latin, or are a student of Latin in your first few years, you do not need this dictionary. For such audiences the OLD is not a good value, as it goes far beyond what a beginner or a causal enthusiast requires and you may be overwhelmed with an excess of information. A more concise volume is much better suited to beginners and there are many such dictionaries available. For example, when I started studying Latin, I happily used the Bantam New College Latin & English Dictionary for several years, and I still use it when I need a dictionary I can toss into my laptop case.

2) This dictionary is for classical Latinists. If you are primarily working with medieval/Christian Latin, or even authors from the later empire (post 200ish A.D.) you are better off with Lewis & Short.

Neither of the above two points applies to me, and I truly adore this dictionary. If you belong to its target audience, I imagine you will too. This is one of the most beloved books in my library and I seldom go a day without using it.

On a practical level, I appreciate the clarity of presentation and the readability of the type face. The quality of the printing is important, too: the pages are thin but sufficiently opaque, and there is no sickening chemical 'inky' smell to give me a headache, as with so many other modern books.

From a scholarly perspective the book is even more worthwhile. The meanings given are accurate and precise. As for usage, the ability to quickly see the usage of each sense of each word in literary context via author excerpts is invaluable. I cannot count the number of times I have discovered a previously unknown point on etymology or an interesting parallel in usage because of this dictionary. The specificity and thoroughness of this dictionary are in all senses excellent.

The price *is* hard to swallow, and I wanted this dictionary for a good while before I actually bought it. However, given the use I have gotten out of this dictionary and the time it has saved me, I cannot imagine I would regret owning it even at three times the price.

I think editors of this book have the unchallenged right to boast the Chinese cliche" SHEWOQISHUI" (who can be counted for except me). You are to suffer a disgrace of depriving your bookshelf of this big reference book if you are a Latinist. Buy it now, linen cover and solid binding assures its endurance.
As a dictionary aiming at Latin language in its classical period, OLD traces every word in its actual appearance in classical texts with full provision of detailed nuances of various usages as well as etymology. Rare words even have their statistics indicated(it will tell you how many times it appears under whom......).
When using this dictionary you should adapt to something whimscal, such as using "i""u" as consonantal "j""v", thus you will see "iugum""ueritas"......Anyway we are going Romans.....

The Oxford Latin dictionary is the most beautiful book I own. Just the fact that so much information has been so succinctly and painstakingly collected for a language so old and currently unspoken is amazing. I agree with the other reviewers that the text is extremely well-organized and presented. Each word and its definition is given its own space making it plain and clear what definition belongs to what word. Any true Latin nerd is not living until they possess this dictionary. I am so glad I spent the money and bought it.

Splendid, magnificent, a monument of scholarship! Beautifully printed & bound in Italy, updated in 2006. This essential reference volumne (not only for Latinists) is laid out on the same lines & format as the "Oxford English Dictionary", making it doubly easy to consult in itself & then to compare with OED entries. Act like a serious scholar & get this!

The most complete, useful and easy-to-use Latin dictionary available. It covers Classical Latin up to the 2nd or 3rd century. It does not include Medieval or Christian Latin.

The problem I've seen with technical books is that either they are in tutorial/textbook format which includes lessons and then review questions at the end of each chapter, or they are purely reference type books ideal for looking up things on occasion and not really good for a beginner to learn the subject matter. This book was the first one I felt that was ideal in both textbook form as well as a reference book for looking things up.

The chapters were basic enough for the beginner to grasp the material, and the lessons were rife with hands-on examples which I thought was the best part. I like to try things out as I go through the lessons and so the material was very useful for me.

The printing of the material was interesting and draws the reader into the subject, important notes and pitfalls are highlighted between the text to avoid the paragraphs from becoming too long and drawn out. The writer's diction is sometimes humorous to avoid the reader from losing interest.

The book is kind of bulky and thick so as a consequence of regular use, the glue based binding gave way somewhere in the middle of the book so when I open it, the first half of the book is attched merely by a shred to the second half, so I have to be careful now when I lookup things in it. I wouldn't trade this book for anything.

I have never taken any instructional classes on Perl scripting and can safely say that everything I know about Perl scripting I've learned from this book. That being said I am able to write fairly sophisticated perl scripts and have the ability to understand fairly obfuscated perl code without difficulty. I use perl as a very strong and useful tool in my day to day tasks for scripting and text processing needs and I often dazzle and amaze my colleagues at work with the tricks I'm able to pull off by using perl scripting and I owe it all to this book.

In short, I give two enthusiastic thumbs up for this book and the 5 star rating that I gave this book was merely due to the amazon limitation on the number of stars you can give in your review.

I started learning Perl two years ago. I first browsed libraries, free tutorials, news groups etc... It was nice for the beginning but soon enough I understood that's not the way :)

I started looking around for good Perl books and somehow got to this one. I think I can clearly say, that this book did the work. Teached me Perl from the ground up. I'm now planning on buying "MySQL and mSQL" to start working with databases. I also consider buying "Mastering Algorithms With Perl" & "Programming Web Graphics with Perl & GNU Software".

Anyway, if you want to start learning Perl, buy this book. I also use it as a reference.

The book is a good and detailed tutorial for all novices who want to learn Perl. No hit around the bush stuff and the chapters were well thought of. Credit should be given to the author and the publishing group for these helpful information. The Source codes on the CD-Rom comes handy when when you want to test out the sample codes in the book. The questions at the end of each chapter is a good revision after scanning the chapter. I strongly recommend those who want to learn Perl to get a copy of this book as their first book.

After the Camel book, of course. This book is very well paced with well thought out examples. I needed it as a refresher last year, and now use it as a reference.

The only down side is that the Web Based interactive segment is no longer available. not a big deal since it's the same quizes as in the book, but there was a gee-whiz, isn't it fun factor to have it available online.

This book covers everything from soup to nuts. It starts the learner off slowly with the basic perl syntax and then smoothly moves into subroutines, OOP, DBI modules, Security, etc. all with the same interesting and amusing style.

I don't know if it's mentioned in the Editorial review, but the author is the Editor of The Perl Journal (www.tpj.com) which is a magazine devoted to the perl programming language. So Jon Orwant *knows* his topic.

I've read and use most of the Perl books out on the market today, but none comes close to getting you going well with Perl as does Jon Orwant's book. I still use it as a reference today, but it is the best any money can buy for learning Perl. I'm back buying another copy because I loaned mine to a friend and I miss it so much that I want to make sure I'll always have a copy handy. My old copy is so well worn that a fresh copy is enticing also. As for extras in the book: the quizzes are great for testing your understanding, and someone has done a great job at proofreading this book -- I don't know whether that person is at the Waite Group or is Jon himself, but I know that anytime I have questioned an answer, or a script, or anything in the book I have always found the book to be accurate on closer inspection. It is very much like the Camel Book in being authoritative -- what Jon says is Perl Gospel Truth - if I had to pick two Perl books, I'd pick this one for learning and the Camel Book for ultimate reference. Jon's book should be rated a 5 and a half star - this is the best that it ever gets!

I think it is probably the best book on decision-making psychology I read. This book is full of great insights and tips into the decision making. It gives a very well rounded overview of the many aspects of decision making: selective perception, memory, biases and heuristic, behavioral traps, etc. It is also one of the more easily read books on the very complex subject. It has a large number of relevant and easy to digest examples.

Lev Virine, author of Project Decisions: The Art and Science

This work by Scott Plous should not be taken lightly. Dr. Plous, indeed, reviews the literature, but he also puts the missing pieces to the puzzle together as you try to understand how we got to the point we are today in the Psychology of judgment and decision making. Without this comprehensive review, it is hard to put other books in context. Many books explore specific persuasion principles and the psychological aspects of decision making. The problem is, how to you put all of the pieces together to make sense of it all. Plous gives the big picture so you will have a place from which to view all the other articles and books you read. I read this book four times and tried to pick apart each paragraph to see how it could apply to influencing others. I promise you the pearls are there if read each page with the goal of understanding how it can be applied in the real world. This book was my top 2 of all time!

One of my favorite recommendations to non-cognitive psychologist friends in addition to required reading in several of my courses.

If you are interested in getting a glimpse into the way people make decisions under ambiguous, complex, or non-linear conditions, this book is a good place to start. I only gave it four stars, however, because it failed to leave me with a strong impression. Many experiments are covered, but there's little in the way of practical application or insight.

The book starts out with a 12 page reader survey, which I encourage you to skip. It took me an hour to complete, but didn't add anything to my grasp of the material. The author uses it to prevent hindsight bias, which I experienced vividly when telling my sister about one of the experiments covered in the book. "Of course," she said, like the whole concept was so obvious that the average idiot has already figured it out. That's hindsight bias.

Another interesting concept is attitude-behavior inconsistency. One example is the road trip a psychologist took with a Chinese couple in the 1930's when anti-Chinese sentiment was prevalent in the U.S. In the vast majority of cases the couple was treated quite well. After the trip, the psychologist anonymously contacted the places they had stayed at, and asked if Chinese people were accommodated. The vast majority of responses were, "No." Another example of attitude-behavior inconsistency given is when Seminary students on their way to give a speech on being a Good Samaritan ignored a person in an alley dressed as a bum who was coughing and moaning.

Another interesting concept was social loafing, which demonstrated that a person working in a threesome will expend 85% of the effort they would expend if working alone.

There were a few examples in the book, however, that seem to demonstrate a lack of understanding on the author's part. One was the experiment that demonstrated that doctors could be easily misled into diagnosing the odds of a tumor being malignant at 75% rather than the true probability of 7%. This is a fascinating result with practical implications, but this topic was not explored in detail, leaving me feeling quite unsatisfied. This is the second book that has handled this experiment superficially, unfortunately.

Another example was the chart showing weather forecasters versus doctors. The author commented that weather forecasters were more accurate than doctors in their predictions, contrary to popular opinion. In reality, the chart demonstrated that weather forecasters are much more aware of their limitations than are doctors, because they get immediate feedback regarding their predictive failures, and are therefore much less confident regarding their predictive abilities than are doctors who often do not receive such feedback.

The main takeaway I got from this book was that it is possible to make better decisions, if one listens to contrary opinions, and by empathizing with those who hold them. This exercise may not change your decision, but it will help minimize common biases and decision-making errors.

The author does a nice job at the end of letting readers know that even psychological researchers are prone to making many of the judgment errors discussed in the book. He also provides a list of books for further reading, including one of my favorites, How We Know What Ain't So by Gilovich. The Gilovich book is definitely my first recommendation for anyone just starting to explore this fascinating field.

A decade ago Scott Plous produced a very readable summary of research in social psychology and (what is now known as) behavioral economics.
Our understanding of how people actually behave (as opposed to our theories as to how they should behave) has been immeasurably enriched by work dating (variously) from Herbert Simon, Daniel Kahneman, Amos Tversky, Stanley Milgram and many others.
Management education has yet to fully take into account the many insights coming from psychologists, experimental economists and others so nicely summarized in this book.

After watching the adults use the classroom, full-sized SEE Dictionary, the students started doing it to look up words they didn't know in their leisure-reading books (they figured out how to do it all by themselves). We gave the books to them in their end-of-year gift bags and the books were a HUGE hit. They are perfect little mini-versions of the full-sized book. LOVE them!

If you're looking to learn SEE (Signing Exact English) then go no further. This book really has it all. A better way of signing then ASL in my own opinion because this teaches all the proper uses of the language, and in turn shows in writing and such. Good sized images for each of the signs.

i loved the book very conveient i would recomend this book to the big one any day.....

This book is extremely helpful and very well made. It definitely helps out those who are trying to learn sign language but need a little extra something. I strongly recommend it for beginners or anyone who needs a quick resource from time to time. Definitely worth the money

This is a great signing book for adults. some of the actions are a little tough even for me to be sure on. But gives you pretty much everything you need.

I am a huge Rick Bragg fan, and enjoyed this collection of his previously published newspaper articles.

Bragg's writing is powerfully humanizing. It's also beautiful and inspiring to read, not just because of the subjects he chooses, but in his prose. Wonderful light reading, and the short newspaper-story formats make it ideal for travel reading.

Rick Bragg knows how to capture a readers attention by his style of get to the point writing. No boring, drawn out, unneccessary words or wording. Very refreshing read. A chance to learn things about ordinary people and events that you may have never heard about or known. Thought provoking. This should be the next read in Oprah's book club.

If you loved Ava's man, all over but the Shoutin, etc., as I did you might be disappointed. These are simply news stories from his paper days. Well written but just news.

This book is the newpaper stories by Rick Bragg.If you like his style of writting, this book is one of his best.Moving stories about ordinary individualsat the moments that are most revealing.Rick Bragg makes you feel like you are there with him in each story.

This is an essential book for students of Spanish language. I used this book constantly as a student (over ten years ago ;), and now, as a tutor of high school Spanish language students, I urge all my students to make the small investment for this indispensable book. It has all the same information as "501 Spanish Verbs," but in a much more convenient "travel size." HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!

This is the pocket version of the Barron's 501 Spanish Verbs. The layout is exactly the same, but with 200 less verbs. Like the bigger 501 Spanish Verbs, it provides an explanation and examples on the different tenses and their usages.

The reason that I bought this book was that my 501 Spanish Verbs was getting ripped up from carrying it around everywhere. Because this book is so much smaller than the 501 Spanish Verbs, I'm more inclined to carry it around with me when I go traveling.

If you need to do constant drills to remember the Spanish verbs, this is the book to carry around. If you're a fan of 501 Spanish Verbs, you'll like this as a "pocket" reference book.

This is the best Spanish verbs book for beginning or intermediate students because it has about 300 of the most frequently used verbs with all the tenses, and it is of a size and weight to easily fit in a crowded backpack, briefcase, etc. 99 out of 100 verbs that you need to check the tense on will be in this book.

I bought this item for my daughter, who was having a problem learning verb conjugation in her Spanish 101 course in college. She started using it from the moment it arrived, and her instructor saw a marked improvement in her performance in class. It made sense of verbal conjugation for her, and will undoubtedly result in her doing much better in this class.

This is a quck reference card intended as a companion to the Barron's book -- 501 Verbs. It is not sufficient on its own. However it is a very dense compilation of essentials, much more easily accessed than having to dig through the 501 or similar grammar books when one is first learning the ropes and framework of Spanish.

I used this card very, very frequently for my first month of independent spanish study. I greatly appreciated having a compact source of key things I needed to read over and over while trying to form a landscape view of this language. I am still pulling it out often to review key points. I am now at the start of month #3.

On one side of the card (3 pages worth when unfolded), it describes the purpose of each of the 7 simple tenses, the 7 compound tenses, the imperativo, the progressive forms, participles (Present and Past) as well as active versus passive voices. Key examples are given. On the other side is a very detailed conjugation plus English translation of a model verb (comer). Then the same table used in 501 is given for several strategically chosen regular and irregular verbs: dar, decir, estar, haber, hablar, hacer, ir and lavar.

The overall presentation of the card utilizes good graphics and color coded variations to assist in quickly finding the highlights. Without this feature, the very dense amount of information would be overwhelming -- but given the authors/publishers attention to detail -- I find it to be very user friendly.

The card is laminated and should be durable if kept reasonably protected in a notebook. Using it during my novice stage of exploring Spanish clearly saved a lot of wear and tear on my copy of 501 Verbs -- a resource needed indefinitely.

Camille Chevalier Karfis has created a unique guide to Paris. Without omitting the best known sights, she also writes persuasively of others that are unknown to many tourists, but which certainly merit a visit. But beyond this, she has also addressed the needs of visitors who want to improve their French before they make the journey, by providing an engaging story in 17 chapters about a French-speaking couple from the U.S. enjoying a week in Paris. The vocabulary, grammar,and delivery begin at a very easy-going level but become progressively more demanding as the story continues; nevertheless, the slope is very gentle, and someone who can only manage Chapter 1 at first should be able to progress before long through the remaining chapters. The complete text and a translation are always available to those who can't grasp everything on a first listening. Those with intermediate skills, who will understand the material more quickly, can gain useful speaking practice by echoing each phrase - the relaxed pace always allows this. Even advanced speakers are likely to find the travel information of interest (and they might want to use the story on friends or family members).

Camille (at learnfrenchinboston.com) is evidently a very talented and inventive teacher, and has managed to break out of the inefficient traditional classroom routines that leave so many students stranded when they arrive in France, no matter how many tests they have passed. I can warmly recommend "Une semaine à Paris" to students and teachers alike.

Perfect for anyone wanting to understand daily French conversations! (and even be able to speak as well). No more quizzical looks when a shop owner asks if you need assistance. No more gesturing wildly to get your point across. This book, and especially listening to Camille's CD's over and over again, will truly enhance your next trip to France. There are so many ways to learn here - try NOT reading the book but rather just LISTEN to the CDs - amazing French education tool! Nothing like it on the market! Superb technical quality!

I bought this CD/book combination just before traveling to Paris, and I've enjoyed listening to and reading it many times. Now that I've 'been there,done that' in Paris, reliving my trip through Thomas and Angela is really fun. Plus I know my French has improved because now I can listen to most of the CD in my car without having to look at the text to figure it out.

A good nice story, with a lot to learn and a nice kiss at the end. You read and you listen.

Basically my title says it all; Camille should do more of these.
The book & CDs are good learning tools.
I have suggested these products to others.
Felix