Bloom Books

I used this book in undergrad and, although the pictorial illustrations in the book were useful, overall I found this book to be more confusing than need be. They were overly vague in areas where it wasn't necessary, yet would go into detail in areas that were not key points. I would not recommend this text for a physio psych book. I have since found other books, such as Carlson's Foundations book, that I would much rather use in my classes.

The semi-serious comic book fan will already be familiar with much of what is disussed here, especially if they follow the comic-related press. The casual comic reader will find little to put the transition of comics from mere heroic fare into, for a while, gloomy anti-heroism. The "context" of this transition, namely that society itself had become increasingly dark and depressing and violent and that comic literature reflects society, is barely touched upon. The interviews in the back are interesting, however and the book DOES serve as a very basic primer for super-heroics.

This book combines a (very) concise biography with several critical essays. The biography was a decent rough sketch of Austen's life and writing compressed into about 30 minutes worth of reading.

The included summaries of Austen's works were hasty and thus vastly oversimplified, to the point of uselessness. They contain several minor errors as well, stupid things that the editor should have caught. Anyone new to Austen could get a better overview reading middle school book reports.

The critiques are at least thought provoking although not exactly to my taste; the one by Brian Wilkie in particular was a magnificent piece of specious sophistry.

If someone needs a quick source for a paper due the next day, the material in this book might be sufficient to make a C, but reading the real thing would be much more satisfying.

This text is hardly comprehensive, and a student of a health profession could certainly not rely on it alone for information and reference. Having said that, it does give a brief overview of many conditions on a systems basis. The diagrams are quite good and useful for teaching others, service-users in particular. This text is the 15th revision of the 1953 original, and this is obvious, not least from the photos used! Student nurses beware, this text is written solely by doctors and nursing care is not covered in any great detail (but is 'prescribed' in some instances under the heading of 'treatment'!)

Not nearly as good as the first two in the series. There's a bit of feminist hogwash and gun politics at the end which is distracting from the story. I also didn't like the way she made the original YaYas seem a bit on the deranged side.

Overall this book was OK. It presented the key information in money and banking and the authors often made it entertaining to read. However the one major flaw with the book is the lack of ANY math. I know that some books are marketed for a more mathematical approach and thus contain more advanced mathematics accordingly. However this book had so little math it was laughable. I recall one section where the authors said "this can be proven mathematically, but for now just take our word for it..."
NO, I won't take your word for it, because knowing the underlying principals is to truly understanding anything.

Principles of Money, Banking, and Financial Markets contains a great deal of information regarding economics in the United States. As a student, I find it to be poorly written. The authors/editors make constant reference throughout the text to other sections of the text. For example, we will discuss this in depth in chapter seven, but for now, lets reflect our continued study from chapter two and three. By doing so, we will be better prepared to read chapter eleven when we get to it. If the authors / editors left out the references and just left the actual information needed to learn the material, the student would be able to follow the material and perhaps understand the topic better. I am strongly encouraging our economics department to seek another text for future semesters.

A Schnoodle is a mixed breed, or a mutt- just like any other mixed breed or mutt. To call mutts designer dogs is a little silly in my opinion, but that's how the breeders of such dogs make their money. Anyway, this book on "schnoodles" is NOT about schnoodles. It is filled with general information (care and otherwise). The only thing that might be relevant to someone interested in "schnoodles" specifically is maybe two pages on how the origin of the mutt is not known and the possibility that they come from "truffle dogs." Also in those pages is maybe a paragraph or so each about poodles and schnauzers. In my opinion, if you are interested in learning about your mixed breed dog, read the books on the breed it comes from, not the designer dog book. This book is worth no more than a dollar.

The book was put together wrong. It was missing one chapter, and duplicated another. Maybe it was just the one I got.

was anxious to receive this book to get started on on a profitable venture. I was EXTREMELY DISAPPOINTED. For the cost of the book, I was expecting at least a few color photographs. There were NONE. Instead the pictures in the book are very grainy, black and white shots, difficult to see. It is impossible to tell what the author is trying to demonstrate. In addition, there are no decent pictures to show you what the finished product should look like. I am extremely let down and and would not recommend paying more than $6.95 for this book, if that.

I was extremely excited to receive this book and overwhelmingly disappointed upon receipt. ALL of the photos in the book, demonstrating the techniques described by the author, are faded, grainey, black and white pictures. They are too faded, in fact, to even make out what the author is attempting to show. Without the pictures, the written instructions can be very confusing to follow. Definitely not worth the price paid...

We found the quality of the images in this book to be horrible. By the time it arrived to us we had spent $30 for a paperback that contained unuasable images. I would not recommend this publication to anyone.

As a French person, I find the book of Arthur Bloom very offensive. He does not know France. Also he is very racist man, with a narrow spirit. He is obviously a Republican man, in the American meaning. I think if he is writing in this way about France, he does not desserve the carte de résident.

The German novelist, Leon Feuchtwanger, remarked that the 140,000 words of Mein Kampf represented 140,000 offences against the spirit of the German language. Arthur Bloom's book does no greater service to English. Ostensibly a portrait of contemporary life in France's capital city, as experienced by a Harvard graduate and distinguished academic, Tales of an American Emigré in Paris is little more than the disjointed rigmarole of a self-opinionated bore. Not to put too fine a point on it, Bloom cannot spell, cannot punctuate, and cannot write. Despite the author's frequent pretensions to education and culture, it becomes clear, after only a few pages, that not only is he both ignorant of French culture and society, and a bigot to boot, he also comes through every paragraph as a distinctly unpleasant man. And here we come to the core of Arthur Bloom's problem. He despises the French (the professions, the authorities, the labor unions, his neighbors, the dogs), because the French apparently have little time for him. Each chapter contains some instance of how he, the putatively eminent Arthur Bloom, has been snubbed by some official, colleague or neighbor. And what conclusion does Arthur Bloom draw? Why, quite simply, that the French are indulging in rabid anti-Americanism. They shun his company and reject his overtures because they are unreasonable, chauvinistic and communistic. The French are not impressed by his Harvard degree, because they furtively wish they were clever and successful like the Americans. They nurture a secret envy that France is not more like the United States, and are filled with self-loathing at the realization that they can never aspire to such greatness. Yet anyone who has spent any time in France will be aware that the French are a highly sophisticated, educated, aesthetic and cultured people, with universities and schools that equal or surpass their American equivalents. Would he really have his readers believe that he is discriminated against by his building's concierge, because of a presumed ideological opposition to America's interventions in the Caribbean? Were a random, comparative test of general knowledge and verbal reasoning to be performed in the streets of Paris and Boston, is there any doubt about what the results would be? Do the French perhaps cross the road when they see Arthur Bloom, because he is a pompous and arrogant buffoon? Or solely because he is uninteresting? Page upon tedious page of this book offers descriptions of how Arthur Bloom and his acquaintances take out car loans, sign up for insurance policies and conduct disputes over their bank statements. Just as one is wondering what the outcome of a particular story is supposed to demonstrate, the narrative erratically lurches off onto another, equally soporific, subject. The reader is forced to endure Bloom's pathetic put-downs (in response to the lady who asked him, during the course of a dispute about his dog's bowel movements, if he was American, Bloom retorts in French, "But Madame, you are French, you are French"; the lady, palpably confounded by Bloom's unexpected wit and linguistic flair, allegedly flees from the scene).
Tales of an American Émigré, however, becomes compelling reading, as one is perversely lured by the prospect of some new inanity or sweeping statement. As someone who has lived in France, some of his contentions are quite astounding. There is, for example, no such wine as a Sauternes-Barsac (they are separate dénominations). Bloom claims that most of France's African immigrants are from former colonies such as Senegal and Tanzania. Tanzania? Anyone with a faint knowledge of colonial history will know that Tanzania - or Tanganyika, before it united with Zanzibar, was actually a German colony. Bloom might have cited numerous other African immigrant groups in France, some of them more numerous than the Senegalese, such as those from Mali, Congo, Cameroon or Ivory Coast. But, as we gather from his descriptions of his cosseted life in one of Paris's most affluent districts, Bloom doesn't get to frequent many Africans, apart from those he meets as he queues to renew his residency permit. In one memorable passage, he claims that Africans use an elaborate ploy to jump queues, by borrowing a neighbor's baby, who is then pinched so as to be made to bawl at the top of his or her voice, in this way inciting the compassion of all those around. He goes on to assert, however, that the Vietnamese have collectively decided to abjure this practise, preferring to queue patiently. How did Bloom come up with these bizarre allegations that litter the pages of his screed? He dismisses American interference in Haiti, remarking that Haitians had never had a democracy anyway. He claims the Turks are taking over France and getting all the jobs, to the detriment of the hard-working French. He asserts that the French, like the English, do not have as active sex lives as people imagine. So not only do the French decidedly not want to listen to Bloom, talk to Bloom or employ Bloom, they don't want to sleep with him either. Is it any wonder? Certainly, Bloom's insidious snipes are not based on any conversations with any of the communities he lambastes. He labours on and on about being a graduate in French language and literature from Harvard, and yet his French is consistently either misspelled or grammatically incorrect. He himself, with affected modesty, describes it as "pigeon" French (he presumably means pidgin French, not the variety spoken by those grey birds that inhabit metropolitan areas). His pretentiously abundant use of French words becomes annoying and pointless, and his view of the French is clichéd and absurdly anachronistic. Although written in 2001, Bloom alludes to Michelle Morgan and Josephine Baker as though they were the hottest acts in town. In Bloom's Paris, the taxi driver should look and talk like Jean Gabin, and Saturday afternoons should be spent promenading in the Bois de Boulogne with Maurice Chevalier. Any French harpy is compared to Madame Desfarges, and the French intellectual elite (with whom he claims to identify, in his passage on café society), is naturally represented by, you guessed it, Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. And in case you were wondering, yes, he does cite Edith Piaf. His prose style is irritating, as he fumbles along, attempting to conceal the fundamental banality of his ideas behind words he doesn't fully understand (see how he uses "hegemony" or "discrete"). His tales sound contrived, and one has the sneaking suspicion that despite the proliferation of "friends" and "acquaintances", these are none other than pseudonyms for Arthur Bloom, and the anecdote is yet another of his own, dull and dreary experiences.
And what is his grand conclusion, the sum of his profound reflections on France and the French (intended, as his preface bombastically proclaims, to bridge cultural gaps between France, Britain and the United States)? Well, he hits us with it in the final chapter: Bloom's conclusion is that there is something that can be termed as "The Mystique of France". Who, or what, on earth, is La Mystique (sic) of France? A perfume, a nightclub, a celebrated fortune-teller? Or just Bloom's final admission that he has nothing of interest to relate, and nothing of substance to impart?
Harvard should take that degree back, and Bloom's publisher should be tried at The Hague. And as for Bloom, well, if you happen to see him, nose in the air, smugly prancing down the Bois de Boulogne, do as the French do: avert your eyes, cross to the other side of the road, and keep going until you are safely home.

There are no words to aptly describe this book. The best way to appreciate how bad it is, unfortunately, is to actually read it and that would be too harsh a punishment for the most crimes. Between the spelling and grammatical errors, the overused clichés, the constant misuse of both English and French words, the author's pompous, self aggrandizing ranting and the overt bigotry, it is hard to decide exactly where it makes the transition from just being a really bad book to becoming the most horrible work of fiction you've ever come across. Don't be misled, the back cover refers to the book as a work of non-science non-fiction but fiction is what it is. I know, I've lived in Paris. By the end of the first paragraph one realizes this book is the author's way of getting back at the French for not changing their country's laws and customs to suit Arthur Bloom's needs and halfway through the book one realizes it is also his opportunity to show the English and American people, his target audience, what a nice, bourgeois existence he is leading in Paris.
If you are a writing instructor looking for the perfect example of how not to write to show your students, this book is the perfect tool for you. I highly recommend it. Otherwise my best advice is to stay as far away from Mr. Bloom's book as possible.

This is not a very good C/C++ programming book. I liked the C Toolbox Library, but thats all. The cover is not right; it says:

Featuring ANSI C++; (so far as I know, there was no ANSI C++ in 1993. Very, very little C++ at all)

Three books in one: Tutorial, Reference, Function Library; (I guess thats not too far off)

With in-depth information on GUI, OOP, and dynamic link libraries; (a page or two on drawing boxes to the screen, two pages on OOP, nothing on DLLs.)

Over all, this is not a good book. NOT worth buying.