Conferences Books

The BEST general reference book on Conservative and Old Order Mennonites. Explains the subtle differences between groups, as well as their history. Very readable for someone who is just generally interested in Plain People, and packed with detailed information for those seeking more depth. If you want info about Conservative Mennonites and can only buy one book, this is the one.

This book is probably the only book available which goes into detail about the different Old Order and Conservative Mennonite Groups. Its coverage of the Old Order groups is a little better than that of the Conservative Mennonite groups (such as the Nationwide Fellowship or the Bethel Conservative Fellowship). However, anyone who is serious about joining (or researching) the Old Order and Conservative Mennonites should definitely have this book.

This is a wonderful book--full of great advice, ideas, history of cats, treatment and handling of felines--and wonderful photos--full color! Excellent book just for looking at great felines! I loved it!

This is a really nice book, very informative and with beautiful photos of cats of all types. Wonderful gift for your favorite cat lover.

Outstanding compilation of research. Not "easy reading" but a treasure of useful information for serious students in music education.

The New Handbook of Research on Music Teaching and Learning is a very substantial reference work prepared under high scholarly standards and useful to the music researcher on numerous topics. It was a required text for a doctoral course, but I will keep it for future reference for many years to come. Amazon's price was the best I could find, even beating the used price of several other sites. Delivery was very fast.

This _Haggadah_ has an excellent English translation along with the Hebrew text. However, Baskin's exquisite illustrations distinguish this _Haggadah_ from thousands of other good choices. Get softcover copies for most _Seder_ participants (to save both money and space at the always crowded table), but (if the budget will stretch) get the large hard cover edition for the leader and anyone with poor eye sight.

Leaving out the Plagues would render both the _Seder_ and the _Haggadah_ nonkosher. They are there. Really.

We have been colecting this Haggadah soon after I inherited 5 of them from my parents. The version I own is dated 1923, grey hard cover, pictures and songs. I collect them in order to have one for everyone who attends our seder. I now own 18 and would buy more. The Haggadah is very complete as to directions, songs, games and illustrations. The only thimg missing is the "Plagues"

Now in a newly updated edition, The Portable Writer's Conference: Your Guide to Getting Published is a compilation of wisdom from over forty-five editors, agents, and authors, presented to writers from all walks of life seeking publication. From developing a concept pitch to hear an agent say yes, to crafting a professional-quality feature article for a newspaper or magazine, to tips and tricks for running a successful home-based writing business, crafting nonfiction or self-help books, what every author must know about copyright, and much more, The Portable Writer's Conference is a wisdom-laden supplement to getting one's feet wet in the writing profession. Though not a substitute for a straightforward instructional manual to the writing business, The Portable Writer's Conference lives up to its title as a confluence of hard-earned wisdom gathered from expert writers of all backgrounds. Highly recommended.

Yes, there are a lot of good books on writing, but many fall short of really helping you move ahead. This book, while not quite like a conference experience, takes you past all the doubts, and "How do I do this?" to a path toward success. I'm biased, but particularly pleased to see the publishing process explained in a way that encourages people to follow their path.

Helen Gallagher, Release Your Writing: Book Publishing, Your Way

This book has all the formulas and how to use them in such simple and easy to use format. My reference library would not be complete without it.

It is a very good step-by-step workbook for absolute beginners/learners in the field of industrial hgyiene without much science background.

Each chapter comprises a list of formula at the beginning followed by examples of calculations and a problem set. Generally speaking, most of the calculations shown are quite simple and easy to understand.

However, if you are looking for examples of long/ comprehensive questions reflecting real life situations of the factories, then this is not the book for you.

For example, in the chapter of "Noise", the book shows basic calculations on how to combine sound source of different SPL etc. but it does not have any lengthy problem which require consideration of continuous and intermittent sound source at certain distance from receiver within a room of certain absorbent material/room constant with certain reverberant characteristics for workers working some unusual shift.

The book also does not provide any derivation or a more in-depth understanding of the formulas.

Therefore, if you are looking for more advanced material, you may want to consult other textbook e.g. :

(i) Louis J. DiBeradinis, "Handbook of Occupational Safety and Health", 2nd ed. 1999 (ii) DiNardi SR. "The Occupational Environment-Its Evaluation and Control", 1997

Both of the titles are available at Amazon.com

I only read a few chapters, on "one man one vote" decisions, and skimmed a few others, so this is not a full-scale review. Despite the editor's ingenuous but severe left-wing slant, both in his selections and in his comments, this is still a valuable book. It reveals in a way that no other work could, what really went on behind many of the key Supreme Court decisions that re-shaped American politics, government, and life. If you believe that personalities don't influence history, or that the Court is above politics, this book might correct your misapprehensions.

This is the best book I have read. It is the Ball Four of the Supreme Court. It is a must for anyone going into law or who cares about how our country works. It is scary yet comforting to read what really goes on in The Supreme Court.

We have used this book many times and have given copies to lots of our friends. If you are interested in thru-hiking the AT, this is the first book you should buy.

This book is the bible for AT thru-hikers, and a fun read to boot. It's packed full of facts about the trail, the shelters, and the places along the way. Plus, lots of quotes and tips from previous hikers

Bailey explicitly states in his bibliographic essay that he has created a work of synthesis rather than a work of original research. This synthesis, however, is a wonderful work of history. Bailey excellently covers the movements of the post-World War I peace effort without spending too much time going back and forth between the armistice and the war or pre-war days. As such, this book reads very easily because the flow is very simple.

Bailey's writing style also makes undertaking a daunting task relatively facile. Bailey's topic may be relative to World War I but it is not a military history but rather, more along the lines of a political or even social history. He includes details about diplomatic efforts undertaken at the end of World War I and also covers issues relative to propagating the armistice in the United States. At the very least, the cartoons stand as period pieces that speak volumes about the life and culture of early twentieth century.

Those of you who have read Bailey's work before know that he writes in an intelligent and sophisticated manner but one need not be a college level wordsmith to fully comprehend or follow his work. Because this is a synthesis, this may not be a comprehensive study of everything that happened between 1911 and 1920. However, this is a great place to start. Think of this as a building block on which you might build an understanding of the world at the beginning of the twentieth century.

Bailey has written an excellent book. It demonstrates the reasons why Wilson's attempt to create a lasting peace failed, and then the author gives quality support that not only supports his view, but knocks down opposition to his standpoint. He also includes political cartoons from newpapers that allow you to see public opinion and they support his own opinion. I enjoyed the book for these reasons and because the way it was written helped me to remember what I had read. I would especially recomend this book to any student studying American History. Bailey's writing is clear and concise and will be an eye opener.

Ian Rankin's THE NAMING OF THE DEAD receives James Gale's award-winning voice and theatre training as it tells of Inspector Rebus, who begins work on a simple suicide case during a pre-conference dinner at Edinburgh Castle and finds his probe leads to some dangerous and unexpected venues of higher power and murder. Politics and drama come to life in this audio drama, a recommended pick for any collection strong in audio murder thrillers.

The latest installment in a long-running series featuring the alcoholic policeman and outsider John Rebus. This is another variation of the classic Raymond Chandler device of an alienated hero who is an obsessive seeker of the truth. In this case, set in the mildly exotic locale of Edinburgh. This book is as much about Rebus' partner, Siobhan Clarke, as Rebus himself, and deals with issues of revenge and temptation. Rebus' long time gangster nemesis makes an appearance. The quality of writing is above average. The plot, however, is excessively complex with a somewhat strained ending.

How you rate this Inspector Rebus story may depend to some extent on what you think of the solution to the mystery, which is obviously something a reviewer ought not to give away. On the other hand it will take you nearly 500 very enjoyable pages before you get there. So far as this reader is concerned, there is nothing much wrong with the solution. I can't persuade myself that it is the job of a detective story to turn out like a factual police investigation in real life, and although the outcome should not be preposterous it ought to be imaginative, and it is imaginative here.

I have no idea whether Ian Rankin belongs to the Agatha Christie school of whodunit plotting, or to the Raymond Chandler school. We know from Chandler himself that he wrote most of his Marlowe tales without knowing who the murderer was: Mrs Christie was not so forthcoming so far as I am aware, but surely she must have had the final denouements in mind from the outset and structured the rest of it round them so that we can be as amazed as the respectful and silent gatherings who listen to Poirot or Miss Marple explaining all over ten or a dozen pages. Where Rankin seems to me to side with Chandler is in making the rest of the story and the characterisation more significant in their own right than they are in the solution-focused Christie style, and I find that to my own liking. In fact this is the first Rebus story I have ever read, but it will not be the last. The glum, dogged and cantankerous old corner-cutter is getting on in years, now within a year of compulsory retirement and obviously facing a bleak outlook when that comes, as there is nothing much in his life except the job. His portrayal is sympathetic and quite convincing if not exactly delineated in as much depth as Hamlet, so is that of his oppo Siobhan Clarke, and convincing also, if less sympathetic, is that of the other main players. The storyline is absolutely excellent in my own opinion, and it held my interest completely through what is quite a long book. Rankin has true storytelling technique, the result of experience as well as of talent. Links between episodes are very artfully done and if one's attention wanders at all it is liable to mean rereading a couple of paragraphs. The background in July 2005 - the Gleneagles summit of the G8, the British Olympics bid for 2012 and the 7/7 bombings in London - is inspired, and the scene-setting in the author's native Edinburgh is as authentic as we would expect. The writing is of high quality, but in case anyone was wondering, a `rammy' is a fight and `Shug' is `Hugh'.

One detail in particular has not worked out in quite the way Rankin obviously expected, and Mr Blair's brainwave of obtaining `loans' rather than donations to the Labour party (the idea being to avoid declaration) blew back in his face in spectacular fashion. This very excusable misprognostication does affect the credibility of one aspect of the final outcome, I suppose, but at the end of the day this is fiction, and the historical backdrop is very convincing by and large. I don't believe I would have wanted the story to resemble the miserable real-life murder investigations that I have become all too familiar with. There is an appropriate standard for different kinds of things, or `Est modus in rebus' as they say in the Classics, and that suits me very well provided the narrator is good enough at his job. I was sorry to come to the end of this book. Dear old Rebus may be bowing out, but I have all his previous adventures to get to know, and I am looking forward to it.

"The Naming of The Dead," by Ian Rankin, current, highly-successful dean of Scottish mystery writers, is 18th in his "tartan noir" Detective Inspector John Rebus series, and is set in and around the beautiful-to-the-tourist, but not necessarily to the locals, east coast Scots city of Edinburgh. It takes place in July, 2005; Rebus's younger brother Michael, of whom we occasionally heard, has just died at 54, victim, Rebus proposes, of "Scotland's mortality rate that of a Third World nation. Lifestyle, diet, genes - plenty of theories."

The Group of Eight (G8) summit, of political and economic leaders of the most industrialized eight countries, is set to open in the famous golfing resort of Gleneagles, near Edinburgh. Leaders as diverse and famous as American President George Bush, British Prime minister Tony Blair, and Russian premier Putin are about to converge here, and all the British intelligence services, particularly Edinburgh's, and its police brass, are determined to keep a lid on things. They've warned off trouble-making Rebus, and buried him as far from the action as they can. But crowds of protesters, led by Sir Bob Geldorf, record industry figure/philanthropist; Bono, lead singer of the Irish band U2, and Bianca Jagger are coming too. The last thing they want to do is keep the lid on.

Then Ben Webster, British cabinet undersecretary, dies in a mysterious fall from his hotel room. It could be murder, and it could be suicide, and, suddenly, Rebus and his protégé, DI Siobhan Clarke, are on the scene, too, much to the horror of the mighty. Furthermore, there's soon another, apparently interconnected, serial murder case: someone's killing off really unpleasant sex offenders. Rebus and Clarke are on the case, no two ways about it; the brass is really unhappy.

This book is, unfortunately, complex and confusing. Rankin's reportage on the G8 summit is accurate and vivid: furthermore, we get the -imagined-- pleasure of watching a hung-over Rebus knock President Bush off his bike. Then, towards the end, Rebus veers off into the horrific London underground bombings that also happened that July, killing more than 50 people. I consider myself an intelligent reader, but I've no idea why he felt it necessary to do that. Any serious author wants to extend his skills; but the Politics and Current Affairs books are on whole different shelves, aren't they? The music books too, come to that. And when reviewers talk about a mystery transcending its genre, I worry.

However, the mystery as such is quite passable; the characterizations of the major characters, Rebus, Clarke, and Morris Gerald (Big Jer) Cafferty, Edinburgh's crime czar, continue to be enriched. The author can still deliver that city in lively, accurate detail. At one point, he discusses an Edinburgh neighborhood, "Once an area of breweries and factories, where Sean Connery had spent his early years, Fountainbridge was changing. The old industries had all but vanished. The city's financial district was encroaching. Style bars were opening. One of Rebus's favourite old watering-holes had already been demolished, and he reckoned the bingo hall next door - the Palais de Danse as was -- would soon follow. The canal, not much more than an open sewer at one time, had been cleaned up. Families would go there for bike rides, or to feed the swans."

Or: "The City Chambers had been built on top of a plague street called Mary King's Close. Years back, Rebus had investigated a murder in the dank underground labyrinth - Cafferty's own son the victim. The place had been tidied up and now was a tourist haunt in the summer." Guilty as charged; tourist, me. I do love Rankin's work, and a few years ago, did make a pilgrimage to Edinburgh, where I found the relevant tour, right under the City Hall.

Remember the G8 conference and the tube/bus bombings in London? Inspector Rebus' latest case revolves around those incidents, which captured the attention of the world. In addition to the hellacious security problems, Rebus is faced with the death of his brother, a serial killer, the apparent suicide of an MP, and the death of a local politician. The higher ups have had it with him anyway, and forbid him to rock the boat while the eyes of the world are upon Edinburgh.

Rebus and his protege, Inspector Siobhan Clark, aren't the type to just let things go, and they forge ahead, under the radar, regardless of what the chief constable thinks. They lose their way quite a few times, and it when they finally figure out what's what, they are astonished. Author Rankin brings his readers on a crawl through Edinburgh, from the richest to the seamiest, from the powerful to the punks. Nothing cozy here, nothing fancy, just gritty, dogged, intelligent police work. And real, multidimensional characters.

Naming of the Dead is worth a second perusal, just to pick up on all the missed cues and clues. Great crime fiction.