Domain Books

This is a wonderful story for girls. Read it aloud, savor it, laugh and even cry over it.Whatever you do, though, just get it! You'll be glad you did.

I had never heard of this book until it was listed in the AmblesideOnline curriculum. We checked it out and my girls fell in love with it. I finally bought them their own copy and they treasure it. We read it again, and now they argue over who owns it, and who gets to keep it for their own children.
Great read!

Understood Betsy" was one of my favorite books from childhood and I was happy to see that it was available from Amazon. Even though it was first published in 1917, it is very contemporary in it's message about the importance of gaining self-esteem through accomplishment. In this day and age when parents tend to hover and worry over every small concern, this book show how Betsy, when sent to a farm to live, became a very confident and happy child due to the adults in her life who let her stretch her wings. Many of the ways in which these adults gave her a new life are very subtle but moving. Highly recommended for mid-elementary girls.

The book came in exactly the described condition and the delivery was prompt. I definitely recommend this seller.

I was introduced to this book by a friend while staying at their vacation home on Lake Champlain in Vermont. It had rained most of the stay and I had exhausted my own supply of books and was wandering through their dusty library shelves when the dame of the home entered and knowing that I am an avid reader, recommended this book. She is a woman in her 70's and said that to this day she reads the book about once a year. I was instantly smitten and spent the next day and a half reading constantly, much to the chagrine of my husband who could not believe that I took the book in the tub, on the boat, to bed, and to a hidden spot in the servant's quarters in the attic to finally finish the text.

The writing is easy and eloquent. The story is funny and simple. I love how Ms. Fisher gives us the ability to see what's going on in Betsy's mind and the haughty-taughty little gal is a hoot! I found myself wishing I was 12 and had just read the book. I know I would put on the character and emulate the old-fashioned principles idealized in this quaint story!

This is a must have reference book. If you are new to C# maybe you should try first an introductory text (such as the "Visual C# 2008 step by step", or the "Head first C#") but keep in mind that introductory books usually have things spread around ... and as such this "nutshell" text is still essential (not only as a reference, but also for filling-in any gaps/details the introductory books might not mention).

This book is a really great combination between a tutorial and a reference book. What I like the most about it is that it not only explains you how to use the different elements of the C# language and the .NET Framework core namespaces, but it also explains to you how they work in the inside. This gives you a notable insight when you try to understand a strange side-effect in your code.

All explanations are made very clearly and it is very easy to read. The different chapters of the book are arranged by topic, so it is easy to use it as a reference when you can't exactly remember something. It can also be read from cover to cover.

It is, however, not recommended for beginners (as it is stated in the introduction); if you are looking for a programming tutorial this book is not a very good idea.

great book, a must have! if you do not have this book you are not a C# developer! =)

The "In a Nutshell" series has long been my favorite's. I am glad they did C# again with .NET 3.0. The format of the book changed quite a bit with a much better format and lenghthy explainations and demonstrations. I truly hope they redo ADO.NET in a nutshell as that was my favorite as well.

This book is all you really need on C# and .NET framework. [I have many others, but always find myself coming back to this, and for good reason]

Pure awesome - if you're a good programmer already and want the skinny on what's new (or even great explanations on what you already think you know), spend the $10-$15 and buy this book. I love it and I buy every version they put out. There just aren't enough people like Joseph and Ben writing tech books!

This book was a gritty, involving book about the civil war. I only found this and the first one by going to Gettysburg book shops. It's a shame because Ms. Carey, they are AMAZING books. If anyone reading this review is interested in any small way in American history, you will find these books difficult to put down. If Ms. Carey even has a rough manuscript of the third, I'd pay $20 to see even that! Please write it?!?!

I WANT BOOK THREE!!! IF ANYBODY FINDS IT, WRITE ME AN EMAIL! MS. CAREY, PUBLISH BOOK THREE!!

I have read both this book and the first in the series and LOVE them. I have re-read them many times and have been looking for the third installment since I was in high school. It is very disappointing to find out that it was never published. Diane, PLEASE finish writing the series! It makes me sad to know those characters are languishing without the resolution of the plot.

I just finished Distant Drums and Rise Defiant and can't find Hail Nation. I'm hooked and want to know the ending. I own a used book store with thousands of books and I couldn't believe the third book has not been published. Help, somebody please publish this book.

I lied...I haven't read the book. However, I HAVE been in touch with Diane Carey, and she says that the publisher made the decision to abandon the trilogy due to some unrelated internal problems. She expressed that same disappointment that you all seem to; the series was very special to her. Count yourselves among the fortunate to have read the first two installments...I can't find them anywhere, despite my determination. In the meantime, Diane Carey also writes prolificly in the Star Trek genre. I imagine the very idea would put some people off, but I encourage you to give her Star Trek novels a try, particularly "First Frontier" and "The Great Starship Race". She is a genius with action sequences, and an emotional maestro. I doubt that anyone would be disappointed, and if you are a Star Trek fan, you will be overjoyed.

I was mainly interested in the MES implementation part and I found those chapters quite inspiring. We are usually lead by "common practices" which form our experience and we'll use them throughout our work. But formalizing and being able to communicate a technology is always an issue (unless you're going to di it all by yourself).
Excellent.

"Domain Specific..." is another excellent book from the "Fraemwork collection". It is a set comprehensive reference books as well as a authoritative textbooks by experts in this growing research field.

The description of practical experiences as well as more conceptual descriptions, are usefull to understand the complexity of achieving high levels of software reusability.

Managers and academics, will find a lot of material to help them decide if this is the way to go. Our research group in Web Engineering at the University of Sydney (weg.ee.usyd.edu.au) will us it extensively to improve our development practices.

An almost indispensable 3-volume reading to understand the success of framework technologies in today's software systems. The books include most of the top
articles on the subject, providing a thorough insight in both design and implementation issues regarding frameworks, also complemented with practical experience
about framework usage. Although the work is mainly concentrated on technical aspects, the articles are comprehensible enough to be taken as reference material by
a broad community, for example, software engineers, programmers, or technology managers. The books are useful for anybody planning to include
framework-based techniques in software development processes or planning to improve current object-oriented practices. It is also an excellent source for graduate
courses.

Volume 1 lays the fundamental concepts supporting object-oriented frameworks, and describes the problems and challenges that this
technology raises in software development. The book covers topics such as domain analysis, development concepts and approaches,
documentation, and management, among others. Of course, the compilation of articles makes some parts little redundant, but this is a minor detail compared with the
fruitful contributions made by the book. In particular, the articles on reusing hooks, hot-spot-driven development, composing modeling frameworks in Catalysis, and
composition problems, causes and solutions, are a sample of the outstanding level of this work. Each chapter adds at the end a number of related questions and
student projects aiming to reinforce concepts and promote further investigation. As a comment, novice readers should take the sections concerning hooks and
hot-spots carefully because these topics are presented in a slightly confusing way.

Volume 2 focuses on specific framework implementations, dealing with existing frameworks for different application domains, such as businesses, multi-agent
systems, languages and system software. In this book, the readers will find a level of detail much closer to specific implementations issues than in the previous
volume. Nonetheless, the writing style remains mostly clear and accessible for a quite broad audience. The case-studies and experience reports described by the
articles show an attractive industrial perspective of the framework approach, and more important, they go an step forward in the road of a more mature discipline for
software development. In addition, a
CD-Rom with concrete examples of these applications is included with the book.

Volume 3 completes this series with a number of domain-specific application frameworks developed by industry, showing how to apply the concepts and ideas of
the previous books in software products. In this line, it includes very interesting frameworks for manufacturing systems and distributed systems, among others. It also
goes through concrete software scenarios, illustrating the benefits of combining domain knowledge and object-orientation expertise. Although the level of the articles
is rather odd, the volume certainly provides the readers a realistic picture of the problems of building and adapting frameworks by learning from others' experience.
A CD-Rom is also included with this book.

Overall, these framework books collect the state-of-the-art on framework development, offering a comprehensive and
easy-to-understand guide for both academics and practitioners in the field. It is clear that framework technologies will not solve all the problems (perhaps they rise
more challenges than current approaches), however, taking advantage of the framework possibilities can make your development process more repeatable,
productive, and also less painful. The gains of this retrain are no doubt a good investment.

A great reference and compilation of timely material. For anyone interested in frameworks targeted to specific application domains, this book surveys a broad spectrum of example systems while providing detailed in depth information concerning the particular requirements and features necessary for each domain.

This book in conjunction with the books "Building Applicaton Frameworks: Object-Oriented Foundations of Framework Design" and "Implementing Application Frameworks: Object-Oriented Frameworks at Work" are a series of three books that constitute a complete and necessary guide for the design and implementation of application frameworks. They are based on multiple academic and industrial contributors experience building a wide range of domain-specific application framework. These books are very easy to read and understand and you can learn from them not only what a framework and an application framework are, but also how to apply this technology to real world domains, like manufacturing, health care, distributed computing, real-time systems, simulation environments, ...

First book, "Building Application Frameworks: Object-Oriented Foundations of Framework Design" introduces application frameworks, their benefits and problems. It addresses all the fundamental concepts behind OO application frameworks and provides guidelines for OO application framework development. It is organized in eight parts. Part one provides a complete overview of OO application framework technology describing what is an application framework, what are the problems and benefits of application frameworks and how to use, develop and evaluate an application framework. Part Two presents some historical application frameworks and discusses some general guidelines to increase the reusability of application frameworks. Part Three describes how to build a framework analysing a concrete domain. The rest of the book provides all the necessary information to completely build an application framework. It presents all the concepts managed in framework development, which are the different development approaches, how to test the resulting frameworks, the problems derived from integration and a question sometimes forgotten but very important, the framework documentation.

This book, "Domain-Specific Application Frameworks: Frameworks Experience by Industry" is focused in the experience of industrial and academic contributors in the development of OO application framework in different domains. Each chapter covers step by step the complete development of an application framework in manufacturing, distributed systems, real-time systems, telecommunication, multimedia, chemistry and data visualization domains. It includes the motivation developers founded to choose application framework technology, the problems they had to solve and the final solutions they developed.

Third book, "Implementing Application Frameworks: Object-Oriented Frameworks at Work", shows step by step how to implement application frameworks in different domains. It is organized in six parts covering examples about i) Business Frameworks with different examples in sales and administrative domains, ii) Artificial Intelligence, iii) Agent Application Frameworks, presenting interesting frameworks for speech recognition, neural networks and agents. iv) Specialized tool frameworks, v) Language Specific Frameworks, vi) System Application Frameworks, which present and analyse the application of OO frameworks in combination with other methodologies as component-oriented programming, language constructs or constraint programming and vi) Experiences in Application Frameworks. This last section is very useful because analyse the lessons learned using the application framework technology.

The Hunting of the Snark is a whacky piece of poetical silliness by Lewis Caroll. Complete nonsense, no-one knows what a Snark is, or why Snark hunters hunt it, or why anyone would want to become a Snark hunter to start with. Anyway, the poem is definitely amusing at times with some of the humour he slips in.

The Hunting of the Snark seems to be a very, very short imitation of The Canterbury Tales. The first chapter (titled a fit) introduces all of the occupations of all the different people going on a journey. However, instead of going on a general pilgrimage and telling tales along the way, their trip is very specific to hunting.

The Baker actually attempts to tell a story, but the Bellman (who leads the group) says there's no time for storytelling. They have to catch the Snark before nightfall.

Along with the Bellman and Baker, a Banker, a Bonnet-maker, a Butcher, a Boots, a Billiard-maker, a Barrister, a Broker, and a Beaver tag along to hunt for the Snark. The Beaver is afraid of getting cut by the Butcher, so he puts on a dagger-proof coat and talks to the Banker about buying an insurance policy.

The Beaver is involved in a hilarious scene with the Butcher later, when the two attempt to compute sums. But perhaps the funniest scene of the entire book is in the Barrister's dream when the Snark declares sentence on a pig, only to find out the pig has been dead long before the trial even began.

I'd highly recommend this short poem for Carroll fans, even though it's not big enough to contain but a small portion of what's to be found in the Alice books.

I have read a great deal of nonsense in the past, but this was by far the best nonsense that I have ever read. There is no point, no meaning, no sense, and no boringness. It is a delightful poem (which is well written and very fun to read aloud) about a crew on a ship hunting a snark. The crew includes a captain who only rings a bell, a beaver, a cook who only cooks beavers (the beaver and the cook did not get along well), a man afraid that the snark would turn into a boojum and make him disappear, etc. As you can tell, this makes for an insanely silly poem. The subtitle is rather fitting, as my sides were definitely hurting from laughter when I was done. Well done Mr. Carroll.

Overall grade: A+

Nonsense poems can easily miss the mark
Yet, this masterpiece has that spark.

"How do you kill a _____?", you ask
To find the answer was the hunters' task.

"What was their fate?", you wonder
Did they ever catch their elusive plunder?

A paragon of haunting Carollian lore
Be in no doubt that you'll finish wanting more.

This poem is just great!

First, this one of the most delightful pieces of writing that ever appeared in (more or less) English. It succeeds as a sustained exercise in illogic. I am sure that only a mathematical logician like Dodgson could possibly have pulled it off - only someone with such deep understanding of reason could master unreason so completely.

Second, Martin Gardner's commentary adds depth and background to the reading. Gardner explains terms that are now obsolete, but also adds his own analysis and a rich history of the Snark phenomenon. It should be no surprise that Gardner is still best known as the long-time editor of Scientific American's column on Mathematical Games, a mathematician himself.

I can't add much to the scholarship or praise that already surrounds this incredible poem. I would like to point out, however, that most non-native English speakers are unfamiliar with this poem. Many of them have only ever seen the serious side of the English language, and have never seen English at play. I consider this short work to be the ideal introduction to the very best of English-language nonsense.

//wiredweird

This is a very good book for people who want to learn the in depths of routing in general and cisco routing in particular. Protocol description is very well written going from beginner to advanced level. I recommend this to everybody who wants to make a networking career.

This is a corner-stone of Cisco routing engine explanation. It doesn't contain any braindump stuff like many books do. But it covers many topics: theoretical basis, IOS pseudo code explanations, configuration examples and trace/debugging methods. There are also many interesting details and gismos that I didn't find anywhere . It's very useful as a preparation guide -- you have to read this book if you do want to pass some sort of serious Cisco's exams (I mean CCNP or CCIE). So it's outstanding title (in other words -- it worth to spend 50+ bucks for it guyz!) :))

Btw, now I'm waiting for your next book. Why not? Will it be dedicated to MPLS or MLOSPF? Huh? :))

This book is not for the faint of heart.
Ever read a book and find a sentence that makes you say "man that one fact was worth the cash!". You get about one sentence like that every page in this text.

Example:
ip route 192.168.1.0 255.255.255.0 s0 172.17.1.33

I bought the book because I wanted to understand when, why, and how that command works. All of my questions were answered.

Since I'm not a programmer some of the explainations took me awhile to get, but worth it.

Gold.

With my CCNA exam date staring straight at me, I decided to finally read my copy of Alex Zinin's 'Cisco IP Routing.' This book clearly exceeds the level of knowledge to pass Cisco's entry level certification. It is aimed more at CCNPs or CCIEs who need a deeper understanding of Cisco routing. Nevertheless, I found the book's explanations of certain subjects to be absolutely outstanding, even for a CCNA candidate. I recommend anyone wishing to learn Cisco router operations read 'Cisco IP Routing.'

This book seeks to deliver the 'why' as well as the 'how' of Cisco routing. It was published in late 2001 and uses IOS 12.1 as its reference platform. This IOS version is recent enough to meet my expectations, so don't fear that the book may not apply to more recent Cisco software and hardware. Remember that the 2600 series router was introduced in January 1999, and the modular 2600XM series arrived only in May 2002.

The first compelling aspect of 'Cisco IP Routing' is its exceptionally well-written and thorough explanations of various routing topics. Although my understanding of the subject was improved by reading Todd Lammle's Sybex CCNA books, Alex Zinin's approach assisted me immensely. For example, he helped me understand that classful addressing offers basic subnetting, which 'was used in the real world long before VLSM [Variable-Length Subnet Masks] appeared' (p. 22). He made it clear on p. 52 that 'when multiple matching routes are available to the same destination, routers choose the longest matching route to forward the packets.' This allows specifying a default route that is only used when more specific routes do not match a given destination.

Beyond very insightful routing discussions, Alex makes his point using a variety of methods. In some cases he presents tables that compare protocols. Elsewhere he uses diagrams or figures. Throughout the book he demonstrates syntax and configuration, along with debugging messages showing how protocols work in real life. His innovative use of 'pseudo-code' shows how Cisco might represent protocol information within IOS itself. In many chapters he presents and answers frequently asked questions. These help to dispel myths readers may have concerning Cisco routers.

I cannot complain about any real aspect of this book. As a minor point, Alex's thorough examinations of routing packet headers should have been augmented by real packet traces. I would like to see a companion volume introduce topics like spanning tree, BGP, and other routing and switching issues. Readers looking for such coverage now might like Radia Perlman's 'Interconnections, 2nd Ed' and Iljitsch van Beijnum's 'BGP.'

If you want to truly learn what your Cisco router does when it makes forwarding decisions, you must read 'Cisco IP Routing.' I have not seen any other books so powerfully expose the inner workings of these critical systems.

The first time I heard this book is when I took the Internetworkexpert's online course. Brian McGahan recommended it. Becuase of its high customer rating, this book should have something worth studying. After reading through a couple of chapters, I feel it is a great book in IP Routing protocols.

This book presents concepts along with router outcome, so it's fairly easy to follow the author's logic in each different technology. This makes this book easy to digest. The way it presents how routing protocols work is very similar to Doyle's TCPIP vol.1. Yet, its editing style is more concise and it covers more in-depth materials in the IGP area.

Associated with Doyle's TCPIP and Parkhurst's OSPF, this book should be a required reading for CCIE RS candidates.

This book is amazing. It has helped me realize what this world would be like without the catholic church, the inherent dangers of secularism, and the path to rectify the evil of modernism. By doing this, it has helped bring me back to the catholic church. This author is on par with Aldous Huxley and George Orwell in both his ability to visualize alternate worlds with precise understanding and his ability to write in a eloquent yet succinct manner. It is a short book and I highly recommend it.

R.H. Benson wrote two mystical visions of the future. _The Dawn of All_ is an extremely romantic and improbable 1911 parable of a 1971 world mostly Catholic and at peace, ready for the Second Coming. _The Lord of the World_ came first, in 1907, and was a darker vision. A world of flying craft, major scientific advances, and comfort has become a place of materialist despair. Euthanasia is routine, for the desperately ill and the terminally bored. Oliver and Mabel Brand, a rising young couple, are the golden ones -- Oliver becomes a major political figure, but Mabel chooses the cool despairing end of legal euthanasia. Father Percy Franklin is one of the last Catholic priests in a world hostile to freedom, church, university, and history. Eventually elected the last Pope, he is restricted to the dusty forgotten village of Nazareth. Julian Felsenburgh is a charismatic American adventurer who means to and does become Lord of the World, anti-Christ. Details are less important than the very modern mood. Believing in progress as the only good, people are swept into any movement that promises it. The past is ruthlessly exterminated. The quest for one world government that begins with Esperanto ends with one world dictatorship.

Robert Hugh Benson grew up at the end of the nineteenth century, when it looked like Socialism would sweep over the world and make religious worship outmoded. His father was Archbishop of Canterbury; and he joined the Church of England but later converted to Catholicism. In his introduction to this book he wrote that he took the idea of Man (not the Son of Man) becoming the ideal and 'took it where it would go'.

Knowing that this book was written in 1904, before the Great War and the dissolution of the European Empires, and the nascent beginning of flight, it is interesting to read his views of what the world would look like in 100 years (or about now). He saw the end of poverty and hunger, and the raising of HUMANITY to the paramount position. His views on woman are arcane, as one of his characters dismissed his wife as 'just a woman', and that they make no strides of independence. He talks about inter-city flight at the amazing speed of 150mph, one year after Kitty Hawk.

The stories bottom line is that once Man begins to worship himself (in the guise of Julian Felsenburg), he not only has no need for idealized religion, but that the persecution of anyone who disagrees will become an act of Sedition and punishable by death. Religion is represented in this story by Roman Catholicism (all others having given in and disbanded, except for a few 'elderly jews wandering in Palestine) which fights a peaceable rear guard action against the forces of HUMANITY.

The language is a little difficult and flowery, while the ideas are interesting but sometimes the catholicism is hard to comprehend, but all in all it's worth reading.

Robert Hugh Benson (born November 18, 1871; died October 19, 1914) was the youngest son of Edward White Benson, Archbishop of Canterbury, and younger brother of Edward Frederic Benson. Benson studied Classics and Theology at Trinity College, Cambridge, from 1890 to 1893. In 1895, he was ordained a priest in the Church of England by his father.

His father died suddenly in 1896, and Benson was sent on a trip to the Middle East to recover his own health. While there, he began to question the status of the Church of England and to consider the claims of the Roman Catholic Church. His own piety began to tend toward the High Church variety, and he started exploring religious life in various Anglican communities, eventually obtaining permission to join the Community of the Resurrection.

Benson made his profession as a member of the community in 1901, at which time he had no thoughts of leaving the Church of England. But as he continued his studies and began writing, he became more and more uneasy with his own doctrinal position, and on September 11, 1903, he was received into the Roman Catholic Church.

He was ordained a Catholic priest in 1904 and sent to Cambridge. He continued his writing career along with the usual elements of priestly ministry. He was named a monsignor in 1911.

Lord of the World is one of his more exemplary works and well worth reading.

"A Century before Left Behind there was Lord of the World," reads the cover blurb in the striking Wildside Press edition. But while both books deal with end times, that's where the similarities end. In Benson's vision, Catholics are the last remaining Christians. The Left Behind books, named for a line in Larry Norman's song, "I Wish We'd All Been Ready," on the other hand, follow the idea of the rapture popularized in Hal Lindsey's bestselling book, The Late Great Planet Earth.

I ordered this book from Amazon after reading Gwen Watkins' essay in Charles Williams: A Celebration (also available from Amazon) comparing Benson and Williams as writers. Williams being my favorite author, I was very excited to come upon a similarly gifted novelist. Benson wrote Lord of the World in 1907; it takes place in a future about a century later (around now). That's also around the time that Chesterton wrote his novels. Both he and Benson write so colorfully that it's sometimes hard to know what's going on. Whether people were more imaginative then or that was the style at the turn of the century I don't know. But having read GKC helps one read Benson, and vice versa.

Williams is often held to be obscure for his descriptions of supernatural and occultic ritual. Benson's obscurity lies in his pre-Vatican II Catholic vocabulary and bits of the Latin Mass, which will not be familiar to many readers. That aside, this is an absolutely gripping story. Having once started, I couldn't put the book down. Uncannily, in this 1907 novel, Benson prophesied a dark future that became reality, first in Germany and then in the USSR. Writing in the then new genre of science fiction, he envisioned a technologically advanced world nevertheless rushing headlong to destruction. It's amazing how contemporary he sounds as he looks forward in time to our present and his future.

What a great book! Fishman's book gives a comprehensive overview of a subject only one in a thousand knows anything about. The Public Domain.

The public domain consists of art, music, literature, software, etc. that belongs to no one and can be repurposed by anyone for other use.

If you and your community group wanted to stage a musical version of Tom Sawyer set in the year 2502, you can do this very easily as Tom Sawyer (and all of Mark Twain's works) are in the public domain. There are no licensing fees.

Fishman gives you a methodology for finding and locating works and for understanding how to track them down and protect yourself should someone want to press a claim against (most likely spurious)

Highly recommended.

Cheers!

Copyright law is complex, sometimes counter-intuitive, and the rules change for each media type. This excellent book not only gives you the basics of copyright law, it expands on the specifics of the law for various media types. The best part of this book, the most brilliant part in my opinion, is the addition of a checklist for each media type. With this checklist, you can verify that your item is in the public domain or if it requires copyright permission. The checklist replaces an expensive copyright law attorney for cases where you can figure it out yourself. Anyone producing media for the public or using media released to the public should own this book. It is an invaluable resource in my professional library.

I made the mistake of buying the first edition of this book (published in 2001), but found it to be an excellent guide to the legal issues involved with public domain textual material. I have already published one book which relied heavily on public domain materials, and am working on a second, and when I bought this book I had several specific questions that I was trying to answer. This book answered all of them, as well as some that I hadn't thought of! I'll probably end up buying the second edition, just to see what has changed in the last few years.

This fat and informative book is a goldmine for anyone interested in public domain works, whether writings, music, art, films or just about anything else. The author, Attorney Stephen Fishman, begins with an examination of copyright laws and the public domain. After that, the book begins each of the chapters on copyrightable materials with a handy checklist for use in determining public domain status, and then launches into a discussion of how to determine the public domain status of such an item. After those useful chapters, the author examines the use of copyrighted and public domain works.

This is one of the most useful books I have ever encountered. It contains most everything you need to know in determining the public domain status of a work, and it is organized in a simple, easy-to-use format (ala the ___ for Dummies books), that is sure to inform the reader, and never lose him or her. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in whether or not something is in the public domain, and thus open to free use.

I probably had the wrong expectations for this book but I was hoping it would (quickly) help me validate whether info I've used required permission. I suppose it did this in an indirect way, however, the free use stuff included old songs etc. that were not appropriate for my topic.

Book is well written so long as it fits with what you need to validate.

I never thought someone could be so creative with "This Little Piggy." My son (20 mo.) and nephew (4 yrs.) LOVE it. They used it so much I've taped & glued it back together so many times that it's time to buy a new one - one for each of them.

The story line is based on a birthday party (VERY neat & creative). The first four little piggies are preparing a surprise party for the last piggy. The toes actually wiggle - or move, and a piggy pops up. You see them shopping at the market, wrapping gifts & decorating, cooking roast beef for dinner, etc.

My son loves this book. He received it for Christmas when he was 10 months old. He wants us to sit and read it to him over and over and over. Once, twice, three times is never enough. He just cannot get enough of this book.

What a fun book! It adds an extra storyline to the popular Piggy nursery rhyme. Everyone we've given this book to has loved it too. Though the book is pretty durable, when my daughter was younger, she did rip many of the pop-ups. That's okay -- we just bought another one now that she doesn't rip books anymore. : )

Nice and sturdy to take the rugged treatment of a toddler's hands. This book get passed around at play time and parties by all the kids - very popular. Great book

My son absolutely loves this book and has since he was about 10 months (he is 19 months now). We didn't even realize when we first received it as a gift that the little toes moved (duh!). He did it on his own. He tries to grab the piggy that pops up before we pop the piggy back into hiding. I'm also buying a second one because he has "used" this book almost every day for the last 9 months and has beaten it up pretty bad. I can't wait for him to see the new copy -- he'll be so excited. Anyway, it is so unpredictable which books kids will love. I think this one has been the reliable favorite of my son.

In the tradition of Wagons West and White Indians comes the thrilling saga of a frontier so wild, so free, so magnificent that only men and women of unyielding courage could claim it. This novel begins the saga of the Elk-dog People, the first Native Americans of the Central Plains to tame the horse for use in hunting and war. The first in an incredible ten-volume series.

Don Coldsmith paints a picture of a time almost forgotten. I own the whole "Spanish Bit" set. What a great journey.

This is the best book i have ever read and the whole Spanish Bit Saga is GREAT!!! You can't go wrong. Don Coldsmith has a gift of painting a picture of how it was. You will feel true emotion for the Native Americans. You have got to read it, you wont put it down and you will want to go out and get the next one.

Anyone who has held an antique in hand and felt the magnetic pull of the history of the object will enjoy this book. I had not previously been a student of Native American history or a fan of the western book genre, but Coldsmith succeeds in creating characters to whom I could relate as fellow human beings. The device of linking past to present through the spanish bit is ingenious.

In "Trail of the Spanish Bit," physician Don Coldsmith brings to life an interesting and varied cast of characters as they very well might have been at the time of early European contact with North America's native peoples.

Coldsmith's "Elk Dog People" are a prairie native nation that is a composite of a number of horse culture tribes. However, when they first encounter "Heads Off," the marooned Conquistador, the People are part of a pedestrian, stone age culture. For better or worse, this first Euro contact changes the People and their way of life forever.

Coldsmith is an excellent story-teller. His characters are well-developed and not the cardboard stereotypes usually associated with the genre. Dr. Coldsmith is a literary talent with a great imagination.

If you have any interest whatever in Native Americans or western history, buy this book!