Beck Books

Look in this book for a mainline, UK media perspective on how and why the 2003 war happened. Beyond shallow newsbytes, this report goes deeper into the macro forces behind the pro and con debates for the 2003 war. Favorite Quotes:
--There was more to this than a dictator's vanity. It was a careful and conscious political strategy to provide the Iraqi leader with such a sense of permanence in the eyes of his people that any alternative would seem unthinkable. It was the very essence of totalitarianism.
-- "The majority of the Arab leaders feel challenged by the idea of a new Iraq," the Jordanian political commentator Uriab Rantawi told me from his office in central Amman. "Iraqi oil will rival Saudi oil on the world markets. A moderate Iraq with strong ties to the West would challenge Egypt's regional role. A democratic Iraq would challenge all Arab countries."
--"There are 22 members of the Arab League and not a democracy among them," he said "The main obstacle to change is our own rulers. The coalition took on the worst of them and threatened the others and they're responding. Egypt is now proposing to abolish state security courts and hard labour and set up a higher council for human rights. It may be cosmetic but it might at least allow civil society to begin to work."
-- The easiest way to secure large supplies of oil from Iraq, and lower prices, would always have been to ignore Saddam's misdeeds, lift sanctions, and let the oil flow freely again. This isn't to deny that the US may try to exploit its position after the war, or that it may apply pressure on Iraq to undermine OPEC by increasing production.

For me, the one thing I can always count on from the BBC is quality. I had the opportunity to watch BBC coverage of the war as well as many other American and European networks and by far I felt the coverage the BBC had was the most in depth and even handed. So it was a quick decision for me to buy this book once I found it in the shop. I was not disappointed, but I would add that I was not overwhelmed either. Overall I thought the book was interesting and well written. The authors go into a depth with many stories that just could not be done on TV. They also go a very good job of covering the British politics. I know that reading a historical account of an event as large as this little more then a few months after the end is a bit risky, but I wanted to learn more so I gave it a go.

I only complaint would be that that there was not enough battle front reports in the book. I wanted more detail on the battles and the book just did not give me enough. There is also a slight let down reading about a battle when the author practices a bit of British understatement. I want drama and excitement with my battle details. This is a small complaint, overall the book comes off as even handed and well written. There will no doubt be a number of books to come out of this war for decades to come and I bet many of those books will reference this book because of the high quality of the BBC reporting. If you want an early book this is a good one.

A wonderful idea, playing catch across America. Hartshorn has a simple but elegant voice. He and/or the act of playing catch draw people out and reveal some of the common threads that make us unique as Americans. It is truly a wonderful book.

I am about to buy my 2nd, 3rd, and 4th copies of this book for friends and family.

I enjoy reading those Chicken Soup/feel good books. Catch is that and more. Catch makes you think and it makes you feel. It is about real people with real faces. It has great human interest stories that you will never see in an internet chain letter. No sick kids needing postcards here.

The book is set up into nice sized conversation so you can read a little at a time, but I found it very hard to put down.

Plants and gardens have long been a source of inspiration for embroiderers, and for a blackthumb like me, embroideries of plants is about the only way I can guarantee to have them always.

In this book, Thomasina Beck has managed to combine the two, with pictures of embroideries set in, of, and inspired by gardens.

The book is well set out, and takes you through all the steps necessary to design your own garden-inspired embroidery, right down to discussing different techniques to portray folage and flowers.

The techniques used to portray the various pieces pictured are varied, and I guarantee that every embroiderer will find some way to use her favorite technique.

Ms. Beck provides a treasure trove of inspired embroidery projects. The book is full of beautiful, full-color prints of unusual and original works of art created with thread and fabric. She also provides many line drawings that can be combined to create your own embroidered garden scene. The artists in this book use thread, dye, fabric, and ribbon. Most projects combine straight embroidery with ribbon embroidery and applique and as well as quilting. The effects are just amazing. This book is bursting with inspiration, it will make you want to start your own project as soon as possible.

I really enjoyed this book. It is a very fast moving book I thought.
Three women are the main characters of this book: Kelly, Kirstin & Ericka.
Kelly is fantasizing of having having an extra-marital affair so her girlfriends set it up for her to have one.
The affair effects each of their lives in a different way.
Great Summer Read!!!

I haven't read this book in around 10 years but I remember it as basically a good beach read. A woman who is bored with her marriage fantasizes about a fling with another man. She soon meets a man and things get complicated quickly.

My 4/almost 5 yr. old and I love this book. Yes, it is simple but for this age (3-6), it is perfect. The illustrations are clear and though there are 2 story lines (the nursery rhyme and the line's interaction with the characters) it's easy to follow, easy to read aloud to the child and the pages are uncluttered. With it's familiar text and some repeated lines it will have your child chiming in to provide lines (and possibly even reading along with you) in no time. The line's rescues reminded us of the Super Readers on PBS. Now when we read a particularly sad or scary Mother Goose Rhyme we can think of ways the line would help and change the story.

Our young reviewers liked this clever tale of a line that changes shape to save Mother Goose characters from ruin, but think it best for a younger audience. They advise parents to share nursery rhymes with their kindergarteners and first graders before reading this silly bedtime story. Second graders predict the younger listeners will find the hero line helpful and hardworking, and will enjoy the resourceful rescues made for Little Boy Blue, Jack and Jill and Mary, Mary. Our seven- and eight -year-olds thought the simply-drawn illustrations worked well with the simple rhymes and would appeal to sleepy youngsters, as would the page borders creating a book within a book. In order to draw an older audience, the author is encouraged to add more sticky situations featuring Humpty Dumpty, Mary and Her Little Lamb or the Cow Jumping Over the Moon in any planned sequels.

Lewis White Beck has done a fine job of selecting the works that represents Kant's political and historical views. What is particularly interesing about these writings is that they reveal a teleology in Kant that suggests that perhaps our will is not as free as his ethical and metaphysical works say. Perpetual Peace should be required reading for political philosophy classes. Highly recommended, and surprisingly easy to read, considering who the author is.

Lewis White Beck has done a fine job of translating and selecting these essays, which reveal Kant as a political and historical thinker. Reading "Perpetual Peace" makes one wonder why it is not required reading in political philosophy classes. The essays also unearth Kant's teleological thinking, and suggest that perhaps our will is not as free as he believed it to be in his ethical, metaphysical, and epistemological writings. Highly recommended.

Overall, this is a great book! I got it for my soon-to-be nephew, and of course took it out myself to play with, as these types of books were my first memories growing up. One thing I wish is that there were a little bit more difference in textures and such for each different animal.
Otherwise, a great book!

This & the other Magic Windows Touch & Feel books are my highly tactile 16-month-old son's VERY favorite books (well, it's a toss-up between these and the "That's Not My..." series). He loves to look at the bright colors (including lovely effects like the shimmering iridescent butterfly wings) and feel all the different textures, not to mention notice the changing pictures and "reveals" when I pull out the center panel of each page for him.

This series has a much wider variety of textures than most touch and feel books -- not just the usual furry and rough, but also slippery, sticky, bumpy, etc. It's also blessedly free of the usual "scratch & sniff" page, which usually gives me a headache.

I'd give this 5 stars except that the inner tab panels are very difficult to pull out, even for me, and will probably still be too difficult for him when he's 3 or 4 and will be moving on from this kind of book. Also because of the moving parts and assembly of materials, it's not the most durable book -- my toddler only gets to play with it when I'm with him, as I'm afraid he'd destroy the book and/or choke on parts he pulled off if left with it unsupervised in his crib or playpen.

I just got finished reading Steve Beck's debut novel, Nothing Gold Can Stay, and I must admit that it's not a brilliant piece of work yet it's not a complete screw-up either. It is the story about three characters who lives appear to intertwine in an almost Oedipal manner. Jamey, the protagonist of the entire story, appears to be the only credible character. Jennyree, Jamey's older cousin, and her husband, Mike, appear to be characters thrown in roughly for a second plot, in which both plots appear to be travelling the same road: indecision and betrayal. Also, Beck's attempts at giving the different characters different voices almost fails. In the early chapters, only by the description of experience is one able to distinguish between each separate character. In fact, the author appears to notice this since he titles the chapters by the character speaking. There's no pattern to the characters; at one point, Jamey fills up three or four chapters in a row almost completely extinsguishing any fire behind the second plot with Jennyree and Mike. But Jamey's chapters grow intense and almost human towards the end of the book whcih is what makes the book an overall satisfactory novel. It starts off slow and it ends in the Faulknerian mysticism life tends to leave us all with.

Steve Beck is a wonderful story teller and writer. In his first (of I hope many!)published novel, Beck tells us the story of how a North Carolina man comes to grips with how his choices have affected his relationships with the people around him. The character development was authentic. I liked the way Beck had some of the characters surprise the readers with their reactions. Nothing Gold Can Stay is a short, but powerful story that I did not want to end.

This book is a good outline guide, but it seems to be a little short on information- especially for the price!

This book has many case studies and describes each aspect of postpartum disorders in great detail. Overall a wonderful book. Cheryl is an excellent writer.

The Book consists of two interrelated theses. one reflexive modernization and other issue of risk. The concept of risk is directly bound to the concept of reflexive modernization.It shows how classical modernization is different from reflexive modernization. Risk may be defined as a systematic way of dealing with hazards and insecurities induced and introduced by modernization itself.The risk and hazards of today is of global nature of their threat to people,animals and plants .It results in global industrial pollution,contamination of air,water,foodstuffs etc. and also sickness ,death of plants, animals and people. Another dimension of risk is social transformation with modernity.There is a process of individualization deprive class distints but inequalities by no means disappear.There is a shift from the system of standardised full employment to the system of flexible and pluralised under employment.Risk of scientific development increases disproportionately faster than solution. With the globalisation of industrial society political system looses its function as modernization, technoeconomic system changes the realms of social life and on other hand political systens pre-supposes condition of the system.

Ulrich Beck argues that industrial society that used to be known as the distribution of goods has now been moved toward distributions of risk and hazard named as risk society. In other words in the advanced modern world, the social production of wealth systematically goes hand in hand with social production of risks. Accordingly, the problems and conflicts of distribution in a society of shortages are over layered by problems and conflicts that arise from over-production, definition and distribution of scientifically and technologically produced risks, says Beck. Then He argues that science has changed from an activity in the service of truth to an activity without truth. Likewise the consequences of this reflexive modernization contain a tendency toward globalization and ignore the boundaries of nation states which lastly results in continuous global endangerment.

The book also describes the way that the general forms of social life has moved from traditional societies in the mid 18th century to early modernity in 20th century and lastly toward reflexive modernity in the late 20th century which individualism is widespread. No longer, unskilled and uneducated people required and instead of high value on long term loyalty to the corporate institutions of the 20th century a shift to the self as the primary agent (i.e. a shift to I) had taken place. To sum up, Beck gives a new identity to risk which long has been dominated by rational doctrine. Manufactured Risks which are at the heart of the Modern society have become a taboo. The modern corporations have build a "Family of Myths" among which the most important is the "Myth of Rationality".