Berry Books

Although there were some worthwhile thougts in this book, the incredible amount of grammatical and spelling errors made it very difficult to wade through. It almost seems like a (very) rough draft that was never edited before going on to publication, with many of the errors being ones that a young child would have caught. It distracted greatly from the book's quality, and when I remember the book, that is what I recall, not the content itself.

This book is so poorly written that it was very difficult to read. The spelling, punctuation, amd grammatical errors were everywhere. Jargon was overused and over explained. The abundance of quotation marks drove me crazy.

I don't disagree with the author's points, but it reads like an editorial. I have to question what ax is she grinding? She says she worked at 3 clinics. Why work at 3 clinics if you are so at odds with what goes on there?

I went into this book looking to learn something new, but there is no documented research here. It's just one person's opinion.

Inside the Methdone Clinic Industry totally ignores the illegal diversion of Methadone and the Methadone overdose epidemic, which kills almost 4,000 people, annually, in the United States. Methadone overdoses now kill more Americans, than heroin. California inspectors discovered one Methadone Clinic was unable to account for 22,069 milligrams of methadone, over 400 potential fatal overdoses! Berry fails to discuss overprescribing of Methadone, during treatment initiation or for chronic pain. Berry provides no discussion of Methadone alternatives, including Suboxone, Subutex, Buprenex, Morphine pumps, Duragesic patches, accupuncture, or other pain treatments, including transdermal pain creams, prolotherapy, intravenous colchicine for ruptured discs, etc.

Berry discusses costs patients pay for treatment, which average, about $400 monthly. She makes a good point that most insurance plans should pay for Methadone Maintenance, but do not. She also discusses applicants for Methadone Maintenence Treatment, who die, while they wait for treatment openings, at Methadone Clinics and correctly asserts Methadone Maintenence should be more widely available.

The most useful information, in this book, is the perspective concerning counseling, at Methadone clinics. Berry worked at three different Methadone clinics, including one where staff turnover was 400 percent, in one year. She observes many chronic Methadone patients know more about Methadone and chemical dependency, than the green, inexperienced counselors, who are assigned to them, by the clinics. She explains Methadone counselors have little time for counseling patients, after completing documentation paperwork, monitoring urine drug tests, etc., and monitoring lines, at medication dispensing windows, or performing other security functions. Methadone counseling or casework is generally viewed as an undesirable counseling job, which some counselors endure while obtaining adequate experience or education, qualifying them for better counseling work.

Another problem with Methadone counseling, again partly due to rapid counselor turnover, is a tendency of counselors to distance themselves emotionally from patients. Many counselors have not been allowed to say goodbye to their assigned clients, when clients are discharged, move or the counselor leaves the program. Lack of an opportunity for closure, with counseling clients, encourages Methadone counselors to avoid an emotional connection, with their clients. Excessive turnover of counselors causes clients to avoid trusting new counselors, with their issues. Clients become weary of telling a procession of new counselors the same personal information.

From a counseling perspective, most Methadone clinic counseling is very ineffective, due to high turnover, inability of patients to select their counselor, underqualification of counselors, mandatory counseling for chronic pain patients, who often do not need counseling and inadequate time for patients, who experienced trauma or are in abusive environments or relationships.

The low pay and high counselor turnover, at Methadone clinics helps explain the following alarming information:

149 staff in U.S. methadone clinics were surveyed about their knowledge of methadone toxicity. Only 14% knew that a methadone maintenance patient's risk of dying was highest in the first two weeks of treatment, and only 15% knew that starting new maintenance patients on daily doses of 30 mg. to 40 mg. of methadone could be unsafe. (Maxwell, J.C., Pullum, T.W. & Tannert, K (2005).Deaths of clients in methadone treatment in Texas: 1994-2002. Drug and Alcohol Dependence, 78(1), 73-81).

The problems with counseling, at Methadone clinics are very credible, and have been reported by many Florida Detox Methadone Detox patients, who have received counseling, at Methadone Clinics, prior to Methadone Detox, at Florida Detox.

There appears to be no justification for the low pay and shortage of counseling and medical staff, at Methadone clinics, since the clinics appear to be highly profitable, with profits reported, from 16 to 50 percent of revenue, after taxes. CRC, treating over 20,000 methadone patients daily, reports daily profits per Methadone patient of $10.91 to $11.07.

Berry provides a good discussion of the undeserved, counterproductive stigma and discrimination suffered by Methadone patients, who frequently are responsible, self-supporting, contributing members of society, who work, support their families and often are well educated, sometimes with advanced professional degrees. She explains that no segment of society is immune, from chemical dependency, since any of us could be disabled, with chronic pain, with almost no warning. Her concern for chemically dependent patients is obvious.

Possibly the most important concept, conveyed by this book, is the vulnerability of Methadone clinic patients, when they do not have a choice of clinics. Since they are very dependent, on clinic Methadone, they are very hesitant to assert their rights, or complain about clinic policies or staff, due to possible retaliation or dismissal, from treatment. Berry also reveals the dissatisfaction of opiate dependent veterans, with Veteran's Administration treatment programs. Veterans often have even fewer treatment choices, in the Veterans Administration, and sometimes seek treatment, in non Veterans Administration programs, due to the difficulty of traveling extremely long distances, to the closest Veterans Administration facility, which essentially has no competition.

This short book contains numerous misspellings, incomplete sentences and grammatical errors, which could have been eliminated, with a spell and grammer checker. The number of errors is amazing, since the author represents that she holds a Masters Degree in Chemical Dependency Counseling.
_________________
Steven Sponaugle
Research Director, Florida Detox

The book was more poetic than informational. Did not help my research as much as I'd hoped.

I would have given it 0 stars if I could. A waste of money. The author has written random 1 or 2 sentence thoughts and made "chapters" out of them. The whole "book" is about 300 WORDS long. I may be overstating that. I considerd it a rip off when I saw it. The author was steaing my money,DONT LET HIM STEAL YOURS!

This should have been marketed as a book of poetry.

I haven't used this book much so I can't speak for it's overall quality. I would like to point out a significant error in the text which calls that quality into question. On page 363 it is stated that "A custom suppied constructor does not allocate memory" which is false. It also goes on to give an example which uses a constructor just for initializing an already existing object. An ordinary procedure would sufficed for this. In other words the author missed the point of the constructor keyword: it allows for custom methods which both create and initialize objects.

This Book, while covering a lot of ground only touches on each subject. The writing style is very terse, and generally left me more confused about a subject than before I began. In short, I found the delphi manuals more helpful

I have 10 books on Delphi, this is by far the worst. Nothing else even comes close. This book has no redeeming qualities whatsoever. I've had it for a year and have yet to find anything useful in it. This was my first Delphi book and I got roped in by all the pretty screen snapshots. Yes, it has a pretty face, but nothing of any substance whatsoever.

This book is without any depth at all. Pick any topic and it just summarizes what's in the Borland manuals. And it doesn't do a good job at that either.

The cover has a title saying it's "The Most Complete Reference". I think that must have been a typo. It should have read "The Most InComplete Reference". It also has "Special Edition" on the cover in large italic letters. Lordie! I wonder what the standard edition must have been like.

It has very very few code examples for you to learn Delphi programming. It goes on chapter after chapter showing you the various windows in the Delphi IDE and a brief summary of what it does.

The appendix has 167 pages of useless tables that the average person would never use. I suspect they added this in order to make the book look larger than what it really is. You could read this book from cover to cover and I doubt you could learn to program a single thing in Delphi. The only redeeming feature of this book is the CD-Rom which makes for a good coaster for your coffee mug.

This book will suck an incredible $49.99 (USD) out of your pocket. If you see this book lying on the floor in a book store, don't pick it up. To borrow a line from Monty Python, "Run away! Run away! Run away!"

I bought this book to read to my children, ages 6 and 3. I assumed that it would be written on a child's level because it is illustrated and sold as a child's book. My children lost interest by the middle of the book. I lost interest. This book was preachy, not charming. It seems written more to the adult who is reading it then to the child it should be reaching. I have not liked any of the books in the series.

Max, our narrator, is Carlos' dog. Carlos is a little kid, about 4 or 5 years old, who is used to getting his own way and getting his indulgent parents to do most things for him, like pick up his toys or clean his room. One day he even wants to mother to dress him. Max and mom point out that Carlos will have more time to play outside if he dresses himself instead of wasting time by throwing a tantrum. Max goes on to point out that tasks you don't want to do are easier if you just do them instead of complaining about them. If you're trying to tame a child through persuasion and reason instead of discipline, this book may prove a welcome resource. It has about 425 words.

I love tennis and 1990 was a terrific year in that it threw up eight different Grand Slam champions in the 4 slams. It saw the breakthrough of Sampras, vulnerability in Graf, history for Martina, Sabatini's lone moment of Grand Slam glory, the arrival of Capriati and cementing of Seles, a feel-good shock victory for Gomez and the third consecutive Wimbledon final between Becker and Edberg. But this book doesnt capture it. The interviews are uneven but the reporting even more so. The author has travelled to Leimen and Vastervik, but not to much avail. Read John Feinstein's Hard Courts instead - amazingly covering the same year, but showing us all how its done. Disappointing.

Berry reaches for the literary high ground, but he stumbles on endlessly repeated imagery and numerous stunning errors of fact. He's obviously interested in his topic, and perhaps a less confident writer would have paid closer attention and gotten the details right.

I was very excited to dig into this book. I drew a hot bath and poured a glass of wine as I prepared for a good case of the willies! They were a complete and utter no-show. You'd be mocked until the end of time if you pulled this book out at a campfire. If "Lady in the Water" scared you, you might like this book. If "Signs" is more your style this book will be a disappointment.

I'm scared to death of aliens, and I love nothing more than a good campfire tale, so I was so excited when I found this book. I expected it to be a collection of great, creepy, true-sounding stories, kind of like urban legends, that you could tell to a group of friends to keep them up at night. Boy, was I wrong. It's just a collection of short stories about aliens. Most of them are more sci-fi like than scary. I was expecting stories of the traditional "alien encounter" type, but that's not what's in here. They're not horribly written, just not really what the book promises.

The shape of the book is great, though. It's got a sturdy cover, and it's made sort of like a field guide. If it did contain creepy tales to tell around the campfire, it would be perfect to stuff in your backpack. Too bad.

I read the story and found it lacking. Although i think the illustrator should get credit.....why havent we seen more of her work in books before? I give the content of the book 1 star because I cant give it a 0....I give the illustrator 5 stars....keep up the good work Cynthia!

the author of this book contracted with Cynthia Yearout Lewis to illustrate it, but never paid Cynthia for any of her work !!! She does not deserve to be making all of the proceeds for this work!!!

Back in 1860, BJ Lossing wrote "Life of Washington" and first mentioned this fabricated story. Yes, there was a Thomas Hickey but he was tried on passing counterfeit money - not trying to kill Washington.

And Samuel Fraunces was not only white (he was a Freemason, a member of NY's Trinity Church and could vote) - but records do not show him even having a child with the name Phoebe.

What a shame to scam budding minds, when the truth could have been just as exciting!

On Saturday, July 29, 2006, I visited the Fraunces Tavern at 54 Pearl Street in New York City. I looked forward to this visit as I have always loved reading this book to primary and middle grade children. Most people looking at the Fiction category of this book would consider this Historical Fiction. Imagine my disappointment when I discovered while at the Fraunces Tavern Museum that this story is all bogus. Samuel Fraunces was a white man. What a sad yet valuable excursion.

I have bought many reusable sticker books for my daughter (a huge Strawberry Shortcake fan), so I thought this would give many enjoyable hours of playtime! WRONG!! The reusable stickers stick to the dolls OK, but when you try to put them back on the page they came from, they don't stick well at all!! So you end up with pages of bent and mangled stickers. The opposite happens when you try to use the reusable stickers on top of the cutout clothing! They stick so well that they tear off the surface of the cutout clothes!! I just wish once someone at the company that makes them would actually sit down and try to use them!! HORRID!! Try one of the "Sticker Stories" books instead!!

I LOVED the clothing they made for this!
BUT it doesnt work well at all!!!!
Half the stickers ripped just trying to remove then fromthe page, they really wernt reusable. while you may be able to peel some off, you had nowhere to store them and they would be wrinkled or torn from removing them!
The dolls didnt even punch out well! useing a scissors is a must!

AMAZING AS I RECALL IT JENNIFER WAS THE ONE GIVING THE DRUGS TO THE TEENAGERS.

After reading ms youngs book A teen's guide to living drug free, I would think that she would have named it a teens guide to being a drug-e, this book realy had good points but I dont think a book can do the work to keeping teens sober they need more drug education class's in schools.