Bradford Books

Haven't read much of the book. It was required for class. Useful to learn certain processes so far.

This was the assigned text for a short section on electrophysiology in my first year graduate neuroscience course. I did not have a math or electronics background, but had worked in a neurophys lab for two years. I managed to learn stuff from this book, but it was hard work and I couldn't have done it without my lecturer and classmates. It's obvious that the authors really know their stuff, but being able to explain it to novices is another thing... And I agree with the other reviewer who noted that the index is *completely* useless, almost random lists of page numbers after topics...
Unless you have to buy this book for a class, skip it (and if it is the text for a course, ask your instructor why!!)- buy Molecular and Cellular Physiology of Neurons by Fain instead, it doesn't cover as many topics, but breadth is no use if you can't understand the content. My department switched to the Fain text last year because so many people complained about Johnston et al.

The book cover boasts that this is the only book with through discussions in mathematical equations, etc. Indeed! Except that there are other mathematically oriented books with kindly worked out examples. Some concepts, such as deriviation of the cable equation, were wonderfully presented. However, no attempt is made to obtain the solution. To think about it, that might have been an appropriate choice, for a physiologist does not have to know all the mathematics. However, the Rall model (Sec. 3.5) should have been approached in analogy with impedance matching. A unique feature of this book was somewhat detailed discussion of the Stochastic nature of ion channels. This is a good book, I believe. Overall, mathematics is thorough and abstract concepts are well chewed over.

This book is chock full of equations concerning the Hodgkin-Huxley Model, Kinetics of Ionic Channels, Presynaptic & Postsynaptic Transmission, LTP, LTD, quantum vesicular release and reuptake, & a "scant" neural net theory. There are a plethora of 'end of chapter' problems with derivations & applications to solve. The book is going to be confusing and tedious, even for computationally trained neuroscientists. For me, this book is a reference only. The format is similar to Thomas Weiss' Cellular Biophysics 2 Volume Set. There is too much on the Hodgkin-Huxley Model which is very important historically, but of less interest today than it was in the 1960s. The authors also use cable theory to model neuronal & dendritic function.

This book covers a lot of material. The quality varies from chapter to chapter. Figures are sprinkled here and there with very little explanation of what they mean. Additionally, there is not much consistency between figures. This book might be serve as a good companion to a course, but it's virtually useless for self study.

My background is engineering and neuroscience, but I still found the math to be poorly explained. If you're trying to learn about biophysics and cellular neurophysiology, pick another book. If you're unfortunate enough to have this book assigned to you for a class, make sure you attend the lectures.

The index is also terrible and virtually useless for anything that I've tried to look up. The only good thing about the book is that it references a lot of stuff, so you know where to look.

One star is for the breadth of topics covered and one is for the references. The Matisse drawing on the cover is also a nice touch.

I was very disapointed when I read this book. I am a professional graphic designer and very interested in information design. This book is a paradox. A book about information design wrapped in ugly design. It is too big, too selfabsorbed and seems to be oldfashioned too. A group og designerfriend padding eathother on the shoulders. It is not woth buying, however the book: "Information Anxiety by the same author is great, but has ugly confusing design too, -I dont understand why!

Many of the pieces in this book are wonderful, both the graphics we see and the narrative accounts of how projects were done. But why is the book so hard to read? Is it the abundance of white on black text, of exclusively sans serif type, of a little block as a substitute for standard paragraph indentation? Why is it hard to cite the book? If Peter Bradford is the editor, what is Wurman? And why is it so hard to find the publisher information? In brief, maybe what the book needed was a good book designer.

Saul Wurman is one of these artistic types who use closely spaced white on black text. The book is therefore an example of bad design and extremely difficult to read. His examples might be good, but it is hard work to read about them. The book is therefore NOT a design guide for information. However, the pictures look nice, so you may want to leave the book around if you have no other means of impressing visitors.

This year, those of us who always gravitated to the picture books on library day have had two reasons to celebrate. Edward Tufte published his third magnificent work, Visual Explanations, and Richard Saul Wurman has favored us with this beautifully produced edition. First and foremost, this book is about sheer visual delight. The delight we get when we discover new facts and relationships revealed in graphic ways by the information architects presented. White text on black backgrounds notwithstanding, (See another review elsewhere in this section. I don''t find it difficult for my 45 year old eyes to follow) Wurman has the good sense to resort to extremely high quality design and printing methods to compliment the books contents. Okay, after all that frothy introduction, what's this book really about? It's about information design and "the heart of a good explanation". It presents the work of 24 individuals or groups of designers, faced with a "Tsunami" of data, whose passion "is to make the complex clear." The designs range from Alexander Tsiaras' computerized photographic medical visualizations and Clement Mok's web sites to David McCaulay's insightful freehand sketches and finished drawings. The presentation of the evolution of McCaulay's book, Underground, gave me the chills. I felt plugged into his brain as the concept develped into the finished book. This book, like it's contents, is about discovery. The "rediscovery" of Richard Curtis' work for USA Today and Don Moyer's work for the Steelcase furniture catalogs are recognized for the style and clarity they brought to those media. This is a book that I return to often both for it's sheer beauty and because each time I return, something new is revealed in it's illustrations. Based on my experience with this book, I picked up Wurman's Access travel guide to Boston before a recent trip. Another revelation and very a well presented visual guide. I'll check for Wurman's Access guides before taking any more trips. This book earns my highest recommendation (could you tell?)

Well, what can you expect of a book? And what can be expected of this book? In it I found a collection of some good responses (from press, to brochures, websites, interactive CDs, etc) to complex communicational problems, even when not all of them satisfy my aesthetic expectations, each work must be understood as "for who is it made", "in what media it will reproduce" and "what wishes to communicate". This book isn't a hip catalogue of what's cool, trendy or fashionable. The only short come of the book is that the comments are "just that" in most of the examples.

It is a measure of the pioneering nature of this book that its contributions lack any synergy. What we have here are specialists from a wide variety of fields attempting to apply their expertise to a new and undeveloped field. The results are all over the map. Some of the papers strain to be relevant; a few are major steps forward. Some of the papers are badly written; I had to re-read every sentence in one of them. I do not recommend this book to any reader seeking cogent answers to the problem of the origin of music; the truth is, we don't have those answers yet. This is a book for readers willing to accept the uncertainties at the edge of our knowledge, willing to plow through indirect approaches and early clumsy efforts. It is a purely academic book, with all the strengths and weaknesses implicit to that style of writing. In any case, it remains the best effort we have in this direction, by virtue of being the only effort we have in this direction.

The number of books devoted to language evolution could now fill many bookshelves. So it is very exciting to see the first book ever devoted to the question of music evolution. This book is unquestionably a landmark and will be discussed for many years to come. Evolutionary musicologists will certainly have a lot to learn from their cousins in the language field but they will also get the chance to explore important new ground not covered by them. The book deals with animal song, general issues in human evolution, different proposals for the evolution of music and a final section about universals in music. I was pleased to see renowned thinkers like Derek Bickerton, Peter Marler and Dean Falk writing about music for the first time, and doing it so cogently. That, in itself, is worth the cover price. The book fulfills its promise of opening up an interdisciplinary dialog on the subject of music origins. The editors can be congratulated for bringing together an international group of contributors; no fewer than 8 countries are represented in the contributors list-a rare occurrence in such edited volumes. Despite this, the writing style is consistently high and with the exception of a few typos, the book was quite easy to navigate. Some of the chapters, like Miller's chapter on sexual selection reflect current "hot" topic in evolutionary psychology, and will no doubt lead to lots of discussions. Other chapters, such as those on universals, touch on topics that have been dormant or forgotten in musicology. It is exciting for me to see musical universals being discussed again after so many years of silence. The section called Theories of Music Origins will, no doubt, spur future thinking on the topic. This book is a strong beginning and I highly recommend this book to people who really want to delve into something completely fresh and new. They will not be disappointed.

After an 18 page introduction to biomusicology the reader is left to sift through the papers of around 25 experts in this field. Quality ranges widely as do the topics. There is some worthwhile information in this book but finding it may not be worth your time. Nonetheless, it is a positive step forward.

"The Origins of Music" derives from a 1997 international workshop of the Swedish Institute for Biomusicology. The result is a fascinating journey into a vast world of ideas, with interplay, disagreement and contradiction abounding. Few readers will have the background to move easily through all these articles. However, wading through the quagmire of scientific writing rewards the reader with some remarkable insights. Little is actually proven, and the editors could have done more to reconcile or enumerate the contradictions between some of the approaches. But for the most part, the writers are sufficiently aware of the difficulties involved in applying their specific research results to general theories about the origins of music.

An introductory chapter discusses the comparatively new field of biomusicology, with its tripartite subdivision into evolutionary musicology, neuromusicology, and comparative musicology. The issue, which will command much of the book, of whether certain features of music are biological or cultural is raised. Unfortunately, all too often the weight is given to the biological answer without overwhelming evidence.

Another significant question is the relevance of animal "song". Only those working directly in the field of animal song approach this with caution--none argue anything stronger than a "convergent evolution" between animal and human music. To apply the terms "song" and "music" to aural animal communications is to raise a whole host of related but probably irrelevant associations--those of art, aesthetics, etc. Where music is so broadly defined as to include animal sounds (which can indeed be "musical" and quite lovely for us to listen to without being classified as "music") these associations muddy the water, and all too often the contributors simply accept these problematic issues. One writer even wallows in them--in the book's final article, composer Mache absurdly claims that birdsong can ONLY be explained as an aesthetic act. We unquestionably have very limited understanding of how even the human brain processes our own music; that we have even less understanding of how animals perceive their own sounds and how their brains process them makes any statement about any complicated animal response speculative at best. Slater's chapter is noteworthy as he addresses this very issue of relevance with commendable caution: "Considering only songbirds...there are close to 4,000 species....It would thus not be surprising if almost any characteristic found in human music were discovered in one or a few of them. But such similarities are likely to be coincidental..."

Articles on human evolution of musical potential are fascinating explorations of real evidence. Although of course music does not fossilize, these scientists have taken various ingenious approaches from the thorough examination of a Paleolithic bone flute to the casting of brains inside fossil skulls to examine their gross anatomy, and the results are couched in appropriate language. Richman, in his wildly speculative theory of music origins, resorts to quite poor reasoning ("...complexity always comes from previous, but different complexity." and "...language always comes from previous language."). Similar points are articulated more thoughtfully in the subsequent chapter by Merker. Equally intriguing is Miller's, in which he argues convincingly that a Darwinian approach to the issue of musical evolution allows only the single explanation of sexual selection. His colleague Todd supports this hypothesis in his article on computer modeling of musical behavior. In perhaps the most interesting contradiction in the book, Dissanayake takes a totally different approach, arguing equally convincingly (although smothered in jargon) that musical evolution most likely occurred as an outgrowth of mother-infant interaction. Finally, Freeman suggests that music evolved to fulfil a sociological role of group bonding. These four articles, by Freeman, Dissanayake, Todd, and Merker are superbly argued and maintain the highest standards of intellectual rigor; curiously they come to wildly different but equally reasonable conclusions on the origins of music, thereby highlighting the difficulties of the issues.

In the final section, the musicians get their turn, and as a composer myself I'm sorry to say that my colleagues' results are relatively disappointing. Trehub attempts to find musical universals by studying the behavior of infants. This leads her to the conclusion that "small-integer frequency ratios" are "preferable" (such as 2:1 and 3:2--the perfect octave and fifth) to large-integer ratios (the ONLY example she gives is 45:32--the tritone). She concludes that "dissonances" are not naturally a part of an inherent universal musicality, but her argument shows no apparent understanding of the issues. Imberty's contribution is largely a defense of Lerdahl and Jackendoff's Generative Theory of Tonal Music, and although he makes some excellent points, especially about atonal music, the reader unfamiliar with Lerdahl and Jackendoff's work will find little of value here. The eminent ethnomusicologist Nettl suggests a number of likely musical universals, some of which I must contend against: among them are the presence of an undefined cadential element (as music exists in time and must end, this seems to me inevitable and inconsequential unless further defined), and, that music exists only as particular songs, compositions, etc--that "one does not ever just sing or play, as for example, one may simply dance, without performing a particular dance composition." (wildly incorrect, as any jazzer, mother or Deadhead will attest!) However, Nettl raises valid concerns about the concept of musical universals--I regretted that his contribution wasn't much earlier in the book as it seemed so appropriate to so many of the claims made within. Finally, composer Mache provides what is surely the least intellectually rigorous, most romantically speculative chapter. Mache based much of his workshop contribution on recorded comparisons between various human and animal musics to which the reader has no exposure. It is a real pity that for this article and several others no CD was included. Regardless, Mache's concept of a truly universal biological music including an aesthetic sense ignores historical fact and convergent evolution in favor of an interspecies brotherhood of musicians. However attractive the idea, the International Federation of Musicians is unlikely to start issuing cards to avian and simian members any time soon

One of the authors cited several times in the Origins book (regarding the Neanderthal flute and ancient music) is Bob Fink, who has recently published several books, including a new one (2005): On the Origin of Music, published by Greenwich press, 516 Ave K South, Saskatoon, Canada S7M 2E2. See www.greenwych.ca for the full list of books that go into hard and convincing detail (archaeology finds, scales & acoustic parallels) that tend to create an outline of the actual origins of music -- no longer all speculation). -- Terry Geebe

The Other Wise Man is a great story. This version, shortened to tell to children, was the right length for my purpose. I read the story aloud at our family Christmas gathering and it touched everyone's heart, young and old. The tale describes a fourth wise man who is delayed because he helped people in need on his way to see the newborn King. He feels sadness that he failed to bring his gifts to the Christ child, but is assured in the end that God noticed his kindness to those he met. A great story, beautifully illustrated.
There was one flaw: the cover on this book was mounted backwards! I would not have wanted to use it as a gift for this reason, but it suited my purpose well and I sent it on to my grandson out of state who missed the family party.
I heartily recommend the book for children or adults. It gives an excellent parable of the way our response to others is actually a response to Christ.

The Other Wise Man was written in the 1890's but is just as beautiful today as it was then.

Let the buyer beware; this is a children's book, a retelling of story in short, childrens form.

My English teacher read this to my class in Grade 12, and I remember crying in class. Very touching story which reminds us of the meaning of Christmas. I have purchased this for the children and adults in my life so many times that I have run out of copies. I guess that Amazon doesn't mind that...

This is not the story that Henry Van Dyke wrote. It is a retelling of his story by another person. The description does not state this fact.

The book was in good condition, however, I have not had time to read it again. I should have more time at Christmas during a break in college classes!

Loved this continuation of the saga of Emma Harte and her family. It continues to showcase someone who rose from nothing into the head of her own dynasty, all the while doing it with style and grace. It also speaks loudly for lifelong friendships and what they can add to a person's life.

PRESENTLY "PLOWING THROUGH IT". iT'S BORING, IT'S WORDY, IT'S MORE OF THE SAME OF HER BOOKS.

To Be The Best is the third book in the Emma Harte saga. This book focuses on the grandchildren of the late Emma Harte. The grandchildren are all grown up and trying to live their lives the best way possible to please the memory of their beloved grandmother Emma. This book dedicates time to each of the more prominent grandchildren: Paula, Phillip, Emily, Alexander, Anthony, and Jonathan. This book doesn't have much about Emma's children in it except for her daughter Daisy.

I found this book very interesting and was glad I didn't pass it by due to the other two reviews that were written about it. This book does jump from place to place but that is because Emma's grandchildren live in different places and travel because of their careers. Some of the past is relived but this is so someone who hasn't read the two previous books will understand a little bit better what is going on and why it is happening. There is sadness in this book but life isn't always happy and this book is written to reflect the lives in a most true (if somewhat exaggerated) sense.

This book was a wonderful read for anyone that has read the two previous books in the trilogy. It updates you on the lives of the Hartes, O'Neill's, and Kallinski's. I think this was an easy book to read and was well written. It has all the characters I had grown to like and some I'd grown to dislike from the earlier books and also some new characters to keep the book fresh and interesting.

I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who has read A Woman of Substance and Hold the Dream. I would suggest that anyone wanting to read To Be The Best read the other books first to get a feeling for the characters and their lives. This is most definitely a five star read!

I READ THIS BOOK ALTHOUGH I HADN'T READ THE ONES PRECEDING IT. AND TO BE TRUTHFUL I'M GLAD I DIDN'T. IT WAS ALITTLE "JUMPY" GOING FROM ENGLAND,NEW YORK, AUSTRALIA AND I THOUGHT THEREWAS ENOUGH SADNESS IN FAMILY WITH THERETARDED SON OF PAULA AND THE LEUKEMIADEATH OF ALEXANDER BUT IT WENT TO SOAPOPERA LEVEL WHEN PHILIP'S WIFE MADDYSUCCUMBED TO A BRAIN HEMMORAGE. I COULDNOT BELEIVE SHE HAD HER DIE. BARBARA,WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?

This is useless to me after the first three months. No ongoing info given thereafter. I was/am not pleased.

I got this book after a week that my twins were born at 28 weeks of GA.
Found it very helpful to understand and very precise when you are overwhelmed with this emotional roller coaster and when you are trying to understand the terms of all the conditions that you babies are dealing with.
IF you are at a more advance stage, where your kids are about to go home OR have been already in the NICU for a while, then, you may know already everything that is explained in this book, therefore, you should look for something else that will teach you how to deal with situations you may come across after your babies go Home

This book was comprehensive and broke down the information into a simple format. It included many great pictures for references.

I'm eleven and I want to be a NICU nurse and I think it gives a lot of information. It has many pictures that help explain it. This book is great!

This book is an excellent resource for a new parent of a preemie. Its primary focus is on parenting your baby in the NICU, and its filled with advice on how to handle your baby, ways to provide comfort and more protection and assistance in interacting with professionals in the NICU. Overall it is a comforting book which introduces you to the astonishing world of neonatal intensive care.

The title is really a bit of a misnomer, as what the book does best is provide information for the new parent, especially one whose baby is doing relatively well and is not extremely premature. For someone whose situation is more fragile, I would recommend this be supplemented by one of the more extensive books in our recommendations on prematurity.org. However, there is a broad audience for this book, as most preemies will do well in the NICU and after; for those parents this is a gentle and supportive introduction.

Anthony Summers and Tom Mangfold did something extrordinary when they discovered Sokolov's original file on the Tsar. They discovered he had withheld evidence to what he found on the Tsar's murder. The book pretty much dispells of the Sokolov investigation and its faults and is way ahead of its time in that sense. But of course the second half of the book has lost most of its validity since the bodies have been located. But it is interesting how many people claimed to have seen the Empress and her daughters alive and being used by Lenin as pawns. It's a perfect story for those in Russia who still believe that the Romanov bones are not authentic. I think they are though. The part of the book which discusses Anna Anderson is very interesting as well, and makes you wonder how this woman could have truly been a Polish factory girl.

Many people have dismissed "File on the Tsar" as another Conspiracy theory, however it is far from that. File on the Tsar, is an extremelly well researched investiagtion into an alternative theory about the fate of the Romanovs.

Many people dismiss this book because it does not hold that the family was massacred at Ekaterinburg. The fact is that contrary to popular belief the massacre is still a theory, it has not been proven as fact, and the File on the Tsar provides informative generally unknown information on how some of the evidence for a massacre was fabricated.

WARNING SPOILER

Spoiler; For instance when the massacre theory was first being investigated shortly after the Romanovs disapeared, it was claimed that they were shot in the dinning room, not the basement.

Secondly three seperate investigations were conducted, the last investigation is the only one that ever saw light, primarily because it was the most shocking. Early investigators did not find nearly as many bullet holes, bayonet holes, ect . . . as later ones.

SPOILERS END HERE

Even the discovery of bodies does not prove that the alternative theory in File on the Tsar is untrue. The Imperial grave was opened more then once after the family was believed to have been shot and buried, and the remains could have been disturbed.

In short File on the Tsar simply provides comprehensive information, and an alternative theory as to the familys fate, whats more it also could explain the absence of two bodies from the Imperial grve site. The massacre theory does not.

Is it somewhat dated? Yes. Unproven by modern science and DNA? No.

All scientific and fernsic evidence can equally be used to support the File on the Tsar's theory, as it can the massacre.

I recomend if nothing else, that even if you disagree, that you read it.

Many people have criticized this book because it can be labled as a "conspiracy theory." However, it is remarkably well-researched and has some valuble info, such as the fact that Anastasia and Alexey couldn't possibly have been burned to ashes within one night out in the open. The authors can be forgiven, as it is an attempt to explain the fate of the Romanovs before the definitive DNA analysis concluded that at least 9 of the inhabitants of the Ipatiev house were brutally murdered. Also, it was written before Yurovsky's testimony came to light. I don't think it merits Henry Kissinger's "crap" statement about it. It is outdated, but its authors nevertheless command respect from historians. It was right about one thing - that the Sokolov investigation was fixed and Medvedev's testimony is unreliable, as Yurovsky's "confession" demonstrates. If one wants a definitive book about the fate of Nicky and Alix, I suggest Robert K. Massie's "The Romanovs: The Final Chapter."

Sadly, with the advent of DNA and the fall of the iron curtain there is less and less mystery in history.

This book is a fine example of the fog and questions which surronunded the death (or disappereance) of the russian imperial family. However, as time has moved along, we now know that most of the ideas the authors suggest never occured.

That said I liked the book and felt that it gave a good treatmeant of the context within which the last Tsar and his family met their tragic end. The reader must always exercise caution about the conclusions even as you enjoy the text.

File on the Tsar is interesting as a compilation of escape theories popular in the 1970's, most of which have since been proven to be false, particularly in Radzinsky's The Last Tsar (which would be a good book to read after this one). Still, the writing style is engaging and the photos are well chosen. Take it's theories with a grain of salt and it is a fun read.

I received this book from an old friend who I hadn't seen in nearly twenty years--she showed up unannounced, spent a few hours sitting in the sun, and then disappeared just as unexpectedly. I still don't know if she meant to leave the book behind, but I've decided that I won't give it up. Cornell's boxes have a strange beauty that seems to attract strange birds--deceptively simple, at first you barely realize how quickly you can slip into these lost, overlooked, forgotten worlds that seem to hum along according to an amusingly skewed logic. Many of the stories and poems show writers who've successfully crossed over and have sent back postcards filled with the fresh and unfamiliar voices of travellers far from home.

... I was so psyched when I first saw the book, but then I noticed that many of the contributors to it--famous though they may be--pretty much just handed in whatever they had in the bottom of their drawers for this collection. I don't know that for a fact, but it seems that way. The poems and stories in here are vapid, lacking any of the kind of creative formal risks that Cornell and his boxes are known. Add to this the fact that the editor included one of his own stories in the anthology (alongside the famous chaps) .... WAy over priced too, I'd say. I can't recommend it. The book offended me in fact.

With it's tipped in plates and beautiful end papers I think this book is a bibliophile's dream. Being a big fan of Cornell's work I was very impressed and pleased with the overall packaging, which I find to be quite lovely, and the quality of the writing. Finally I was really impressed when I found out that the editor put it all together while he was still in college. I think this is a great book for fans of Joseph Cornell's boxes.

I'm a huge Joseph Cornell fan, and own every book that has anything to do with him. This is the best! Not only are the images beautiful and plentiful (and many new to me), but the stories and poems are so unbelievably entertaining and different from one another. I've never seen a book quite like this one, and I'm going to give a copy to everyone I know!

I too am a big fan of Joseph Cornell, and this sort of new book, A Convergence of Birds, is one that I was eager to read. The first short story, Emory Bear Hands' Birds, by Barry Lopez is powerful and worthy of being placed in this anthology. But the rest of the collection, pa-tooey. Even the Joyce Carol Oates contribution is suspiciously unworthy of publication. The rest of the pieces, both the poetry and short stories, are simply stream of consciousness junk writing that should never have found publication anywhere, least of all, in this beautiful-looking tribute to Cornell. Perhaps there are writer snobs "out there" who claim to understand this stuff, but once again I'm afraid the emperor is wandering around looking for his underwear.

This is a love story with a mysterious twist. It slips back and forth from present to the past, and the heroine discovers that the sad childhood she had has more to it than she actually remembers. She was a part of history. This story has a historical basis for her sad childhood. I was intrigued and went on-line to check out the news of the subject and discovered that my memory was correctly tweaked and found articles about English children in orphanages. A great listen!

I was anxious to read this book after noting the good reviews it had recieved, but was very disappointed. The entire book dealt more with the details of remodeling Inns than it did with the characters. Too much time wasted telling a story that was mediocre at best. The ending was also tedious. dead end after dead end leaving no time for a proper conclusion.

A very fast read. Good book. Element of mystery. Always look forward to her next book

This book was fun to read but Barbara Taylor Bradford usually leads us way beyond the everyday realities of life. Her heroine (as usual) is beautiful and bright and is an awesome business tycoon (even though she has no education, training, or experience in these matters). She becomes a perfect mother, friend, and homemaker. Unlike most of us, her very sad past never seems to daunt her ability to rise above all. This is a perfect book for idealists.

Barbara Taylor Bradford really touched me with this book. I normally read mysteries, thriller, and suspense. This book held my attention through out the book. I really felt Merediths' pain and struggle. I recently saw the movie on channel 8, the producers did the novel no justice. For those who saw the movie and did not read the novel, please read the novel. This is must read.

As a past student of Dr. Bradford's, I can honestly say I don't know why anyone would choose to use this book either in their own course or in casual reading. Yes, it does provide some introductory grounding in Philosophy, but it is more a compendium of Dr. Bradford's philosophic views than a truly introductory text.

This book is full of Contradictions! What a hypocrite!!! I would not recommend this is anyone unless they want a good nights sleep!

I was a student of Dr. Bradford and enjoyed the classed I had with him. This book helped a great deal in providing a solid foundation for further understanding as well as a coherent point of view. Thanks, Dr. Bradford.

I am also a former student of Dr. Bradford and a Philosophy major. This book gives a good introduction to ideas and issues that thinkers have grappled with throught the ages. I highly recommend this to any first year Philosophy students. The book, however, is written in such a straight forward, jargon free style that it can be enjoyed by anyone curious about Philosophy.