Directories Books

If you have every tried to find THE nursery with the best selection for a particular plant this is the book for you. Plus you discover all the nurseries that are in your area that you probably did not know existed.

As a horticulturist who is always looking for the unusual and hard to find plant, I found this guide to be an treasure. The authors divide the nurseries down by geographical sections, and then break each nursery down into whether they are wholesale/retail/mail order, plant specialties, brief history/description, how to get there and general information. Also covered are Horticultural Attractions and a list of plant societies. If your a plant nut like me, make sure you add this book to your collection.

The only thing better than the outstanding art design of this up and coming guide to dining in Boston and Cambridge is in fact the restaurants chosen for this delightful publication. All of Boston's favorite restaurants are featured, with map, menus, and a picture of the dining room included. Restaurants are grouped by location, which is helpful when you have an area of town in mind. All in all I place its value up there with my Zagat's guide to dining in Boston, and find that these two publications compliment each other nicely.

I bought this book in the middle of a book buying spree. Unsureat first, it is now an essential part of my dining guidecollection. My girlfriend and I use it quite often. The sidebars with sample menus and other tidbits of important information like hours and dress code are really helpful. I've discovered many new restaurants with this guide. Highly recommended if you live in or around Boston, and even if you plan on visiting the city for vacation. Thanks for the great dining publication!

Fun read for anyone traveling to Paris and also for the arm-chair traveler, Informative and helpful for more than just shopping.

Great - need it for a trip to Paris!

This is an excellent reference source on England and the world at large from a British point of view.

Full of global "factoids", this book is indispensible for business and home use.

Firstly, this book is very entertaining and fun to read. That's why it gests five stars - there is nothing that innovative though. I am a systems auditor - these are the sort of things that make going to work entertaining.

Some of the suggestions are a very quick way to get into trouble - PC anywhere in particular is a high risk product in it's own right - if the security settings are scrwed up. Who is monitoring your network traffic? Do you want them to know what's on your home PC? Have you set up PC anywhere securely?

If I discovered an employee routing (confidential)email outside the company network I'd be more disturbed by the security implications than the employee slacking off. Who at the ISP has access to the email?

The ideas in this book are rather similar to spending a sick day at a ball game, which your boss is watching on TV .... fine until the camera picks you out!

Fun book. Make sure you know your companies policies before you start to play ........

I have really enjoyed reading this book. It has some really funny, neat and clever ideas in "sticking it to the man" or boss for that matter.

The techno gadgets of today were supposed to make life easier, but what it's done is elongated our work week. Now, we're expected to work all the time. It never ends...

Well this book, takes a very tongue in cheek approach and will teach you how you can make it look like you are spending those hours working away, when you can be really spending time with the family, at the movies or just plain slacking off.

Cahill has written a thorough and penetrating review of the scandalous lack of transparency on who owns land in Britain.His explanation of the historical reasons behind why it is that the largest (often aristocratic) landowners continue to hide the true size of their land banks is to be particularily commended.

This is a remarkable and original survey of landownership in Britain and Ireland, detailed county by county.

For Britain, Cahill analyses this landownership, showing how a tiny minority exploits British society. 160,000 families, 0.3% of the population, own 37 million acres, two thirds of Britain, 230 acres each. Just 1,252 of them own 57% of Scotland. They pay no land tax. Instead every government gives them £2.3 billion a year and the EU gives them a further £2 billion. Each family gets £26,875.

By contrast, 57.5 million of us pay £10 billion a year in council tax, a land tax, £550 per household. We live in 24 million homes on about four million acres. 65% of homes are privately owned, so 16 million of us own just 2.8 million acres, an average 0.18 acres each.

The top landowners are the Forestry Commission, 2.6 million acres, the Ministry of Defence 750,000, the royal family 670,000 (including the Crown Estate 400,000 and the Duchy of Cornwall 141,000), the National Trust 550,000, insurance companies 500,000, the utility companies 500,000, the Duke of Buccleuch 270,700, the National Trust for Scotland 176,287, the Dukedom of Atholl 148,000, the Duke of Westminster 140,000 and the Church of England 135,000.

The Forestry Commission, Britain's biggest single landowner, runs its holdings conservatively and secretively. We could expand the forest estate by a million acres a year, producing rural jobs, getting profits from the sale of wood and pulp (cutting our balance of payments deficit) and reducing the output of greenhouse gases. This would cost between £588 million and £750 million.

Through the 18th century enclosures, the landowning class stole eight million acres from the people. They still hide their crimes and their takings. The 1872 Return of Owners of Land was made, but then hidden and never updated. Shares have to be registered; land doesn't. The Land Registry does not know who owns between 30 and 50% of land.

Cahill compares Britain with other countries where revolutions have ended the feudal tenure of land. Denmark redistributed its land to the peasantry in 1800. In Ireland, in 1876, 616 landowners owned 80% of the country. By 1930, 13 million acres of Ireland's 20 million acres had been sold to owner-occupiers. Now, there are no landlords - home ownership is 82%, Ireland's 149,500 farms are 97% owner-occupied and owner-farmed, there is no poll tax, water is free and pensioners get free transport, TV and glasses.

Cahill claims that Blair's reform of the House of Lords "definitively cut the permanent link between power and the landowners." But just as in 1872, the state is defending landed capital by making it less visible. Class power does not depend on sitting in the House of Lords, but on private ownership of the means of production, protected and subsidised by a capitalist state. The Greens, like the heritage lobby, shield the landowners against public ownership of the land.

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs says its mission is to shift EU subsidies from food production to land management, but the EU already does this, with its £2 billion annual subsidy to the landowners, not to working farmers. We need to produce our own food: food production is in our national strategic interest. It is a national security issue that must not be determined either by the EU or by the market.

Landowners' wealth is a parasite on Britain, the least productive part of the economy, with the most state support. Their wealth comes not from farming, nor even from renting, but from trickling land onto the urban housing market. They sell land to property developers, at an average price per acre of £404,000 in 1999. The clearing banks and building societies strip our industries of investment capital, then support their clients the landowners by running the rigged and overpriced land market.

Britain needs land reform. "Windfall gains on development land should be made subject to windfall taxes." We should also tax land and stop the owners avoiding tax through offshore trusts; this could raise £17 billion. The European Convention of Human Rights says there should be no confiscation without compensation. Haven't landowners had enough compensation already? We need more land for housing. This would cut land prices, free more to invest in good quality, spacious homes and gardens, and revive the building industry.

Active Directory is without a doubt the most important part of Windows 2000 and this book -- written entirely based upon the release version of Windows 2000 (not based on the betas) -- is a comprehensive introduction and reference to this important technology.

Building from the ground up, it combines step-by-step instructions to do complex tasks instead of dismissively telling you that you should do X (where X is undocumented elsewhere) and also teaches basic VBScript and integrates scripting solutions alongside point-and-click and command line methods.

The topics covered range from understanding and installing Active Directory through all the constituent parts to Group Policy, other Intellimirror technologies and advanced topics such as troubleshooting, interoperability and design issues.

I hope you enjoy the book.

I have gone over several books on AD but this is the only one that provided me in depth information. This is not a book for the very beginners of Active Directory but is a book that needs to read.

If you only want one wine book to help you choose the wine to buy from each region, this is it. It is not fully comprehensive for lesser known regions but the main ones are covered in depth. Very satisfying buy.

This book has been a fantastic tool to quickly gain knowledge about wine. Most of the best wines, winemakers,and vineyards in the world are described in enough detail to help the reader zero in on wines to try. I have shared this with friends in the wine business and they consider it invaluable in helping to select wines to carry in their stores.

There's a vintage guide by region, along with summary recommendations for each region. A very good index will get you to a writeup of most of the winemakers in the world. This writeup provides the nuances of most of the wines that each winemaker produces. You also get valuable information on the relationship between vineyards and winemakers.

I highly recommend this book as a tool to vastly improve your knowledge of wine.

I'd always thought my proposals were well written. But after reading Winning Strategies for Developing Grant Proposals, I got a much better understanding of what grant reviewers are really looking for.

I must say that I've had more success getting much-needed funds for our community projects. It's easy to read, and makes a lot of sense.

I'd always thought my proposals were pretty good. But after I read this book, and got the inside details on what grantors are really looking for, I had much better success in landing much-needed money for our projects.

It's really important these days to go the extra mile to get limited funds. And Winning Strategies for Developing Grant Proposals really made a difference.

In The Wireless Age: Its Meaning For Learning And Schools, Judy Breck (director of academics at bigchalk.com, an education portal serving the K-12 learning community) offers a jargon-free presentation of insights into the wealth of educational resources the Internet offers the classroom and students of today. Breck blends a theoretical explanation of the growth of cyberspace with a practical exploration of the tools available for its maximum utilization in the learning process. The Wireless Age is an invaluable introduction for classroom teachers, school librarians, education policy makers, and the non-specialist general reader with an interest in improving and enhancing the quality of public, parochial, and private schools.

Judy Breck's The Wireless Age is an enlightening and passionate prediction of the future role the Internet will play in education worldwide. Wires and plugs will disappear and all students may be empowered with their own handheld computer devices that will be as inexpensive as telephones. In the authors words:

"I predict that wireless handheld computers that include Internet access will make teaching in now difficult schools less frustrating and more fun. The kids will respond to having their own tools, just as ghetto kids did a century and a half ago to learning their letters by writing them on a tablet. The optimism of kids is the elixir that will restore the good health of teaching in America."

Making all that is known available to all children, through a far-reaching technological transition, raises crucial questions about the nature of teaching and learning. Will teachers understand how to apply this new, powerful global tool? To what end will it be applied? How will teachers engage students to use this wealth of knowledge? Will it change the meaning of learning? Will students know what it means to use knowledge to discover and create? What does all this mean to the standards movement engulfing American education? The author concludes:

"The Great Change will be complete when a student can hold in his or her hand everything that is known."

And our understanding of its meaning for learning and schools will just begin.