Bryan Books

This is a terrific book. It covers the basics in depth and in an easy to understand manner. I teach a beginning photography class for the city and will be utilizing this book.

I would recommend this book to anyone starting off in photography.

Invaluable information, well presented, and easily referenced.

Bryan Peterson's book is excellent for beginners like myself. He walks you through basic prinicples of design and composition with many excellent examples. Most importantly he walks you through his thought process. Each picture has information about how he shot it and often why he shot it that way. The book also includes several useful excercises to help you develop your eye. Although it could be argued that the book doesn't cover all topics and is not as thorough as other books, it accompishes its purpose which is to get beginning photographers to see the world around them differently. This book rapidly improved my shots because the examples and principles are so clear. Now I am ready to move on to more complex and complete books. I highly recommend this book to get started.

A very good book of instruction and fabulous examples are given of creative picture taking.

The book is a must read and the author has an exceptional style in delivering the information in a very easy yet rich way.
If you already have an SLR camera and want to truely master photography, regardless of what camera you have then you will get a lot of help from this book.
The author has provided several effective exercises that help develope a "photographic eye" and makes you become comfortable using the different kinds of lenses. Plus the settings and lenses used under or next to each picture on the page.
Structured in a very systematic way, each subject in the book is more interesting than the one before it.
You may be able to operate your camera really well but lack the creative ideas or can't see the perfect picture when you look into a scene. This book will help you overcome that limitation and allow you to break your own barrier, taking you and your photographic work into a higher level.

Mine never came from Amazon, but the seller did refund my money.

I believe when I got this from the bookstore it was a later version for digital.

This book is a must have for every beginner to advanced beginner. It helps make sense of how the functions of the camera come together to form the image. As the books title Say's it WILL give you and understanding!

This book was superb, detailed information and easy to understand! Perfect for the beginner or advanced amateur!

One Bryan peterson is an amazing photographer, the latest addition of this book is one of the best I've read. I like it so much that I'm enrolling in his course at www.betterphoto.com

Not only is Mr. Peterson very knowledgeable but extreamly down to earth. I wrote him an e-mail asking about the course offered at better photo and he answered my questions in detail within three hours of when my e-mail was sent. Great photographer, great book, a lot of knowledge in a short read.

Even if you are not just starting out this is worth reading and if you've been in the business awhile this is a good way to affirm what you know and get some fresh ideas.

well worth the price!

I actually ordered this book twice. The first time it never came - lost in delivery. It was like pulling teeth to get a refund from the third party shop Amazon went through.
Anyway the main thing is this is a fine book full of great advice for film photographers (digital was really not even in existence much then in early 90's).
There's another book by the same author, same title that is the revised edition - Amazon: why not a link to this book to help out your readers??!! This is the version you'll want in any case. Suppose Amazon just helping their vendors clean out their warehouses.

In Understanding Exposure, Bryan Peterson thoroughly explains what he sets out to explain: how aperture, shutter speed, and film affect the images you take. I've read many other explanations of aperture and shutter speed, but never has it made such perfect sense to me as it did after reading Peterson's book.

The Cd begins with the powerful witches scene-great music-definitely causing my students to sit-up and listen.

The Dover Thrift Edition is a good choice for a reading text because it presents the entire, unabridged play, and has enough notes to be helpful to inexperienced readers without overwhelming or distracting them. The omition of a scholarly apparatus makes the Dover Edition more flexible and keeps it from becoming outdated.

This product was great. It helped my students and I read and comprehend Macbeth so much better than us trying to read it and comprehend it. The actors voices are great! I think they do a great job being the characters on tape!

Virtually all editions of Macbeth will have at least some annotations. Rummaging through five different editions, I preferred the Yale University Press version, edited by Burton Raffel, as having the most comprehensive and comprehensible notes, as well as an excellent introduction to Shakespeare's play. Raffel not only explains the meanings of obscure words, but also gives brief notes pertaining to relevant history, geography, stage directions, etc, that are rarely addressed as fully by other editors. In addition, Raffel frequently gives the proper way to stress the syllables in a line when reading it aloud, which can be extremely helpful. (However, in most places these stresses need to be very subtle, so that you don't sound like "taDUM taDUM taDUM".) And Yale's page layout is among the clearest that I've seen.

(To find this edition: at Avanced Search, enter ISBN 0300106548; or, enter Macbeth as title, and either Raffel as author or Yale as publisher.)

As a bonus, this edition includes at the back a long essay on the play by Harold Bloom. This is not an uninteresting commentary, but Bloom desperately needs a good editor. His essay is not only at least three times longer than it should be, but is startlingly repetitious. Yale would have been wise to have asked Bloom for a rewrite.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616) was a dramatist whose genius is universally acknowledged, with a reputation as an actor, playwright and poet. He lived in an age of vast and significant changes characterised by the rise of the middle class and of a centralised government and the disappearance of medieval religious beliefs. England was transforming into a modern state. This was a time when self-realisation, self-respect and boldness of thought and action was idealised. Shakespeare's drama merely reflected the dramatic times of the age.

Shakespeare's genius can be reflected by the variety of his productions, where out of the 36 plays he has left, no two are alike and he managed to articulate the diverse subjects with exceptional expertise, handling both tragedies and comedies with ease.

Macbeth is a tragedy, intended to teach us a lesson about the human condition. The play is a tragedy about a wealthy Scottish noble called Macbeth who kills his king to gain the throne. During Shakespeare's time, this was a terrible thing to do, and from then on, Macbeth was doomed to die a tragic death.

The play starts with three witches confronting the great Scottish general Macbeth on his victorious return from a war between Scotland and Norway. The witches predict that he will one day become king. They also predict that another General called Banquo will be the father of kings, although he will not ascend the throne himself. The Scottish king, Duncan, decides that he will confer the title of the traitorous Cawdor on the heroic Macbeth. Macbeth, with the urging of his evil and ambitious wife murder King Duncan and ascends to the throne of Scotland.

Macbeth and his evil wife begin to do strange things, partly because of what they have done and also because they never get a whole night's sleep. Macbeth thinks he has to kill two of his former friends because he believes that they threaten his new throne. His efforts fail and he is eventually killed.

Definition of a page-turner, loved it. The authors got so much out of their interview subjects, the personal thoughts and dialog left you feeling like you were a part of these negotiations. They portrayed everyone even-handedly when it was probably tempting to make villains out of Ross Johnson or Henry Kravis. Extremely entertaining, a first class example of literary non-fiction.

The author said it himself, "What does all this have to do with business? ". I bought this book hoping to get an insight into how large companys are run. Unfortunately it was full of details on how companys are sold, not run. I suppose if that is what you are after, then the book does its job. But if you wanted to learn something about real business, this is NOT the book for you.

The mantra "Greed is good" was uttered by that 1980s paragon of Wall Street virtue, Gordon Gekko, yet it could just have easily been any one profiled in this mind-warping 1990 account of the leveraged buyout (LBO) of cigarette-and-cookie conglomerate RJR Nabisco, starting with RJR's chief executive, Ross Johnson.

Johnson was the one who first saw the benefits of taking RJR's undervalued stock private, boosting both his wealth and control. Small economies were not for him.

"I'm telling you, we're not going to start running a pushcart operation here," he tells his LBO partners at the outset. "I don't want a bunch of your guys coming around saying we should have five jets instead of six."

Those jets, used strictly by Johnson and his C-suite buddies for such emergencies as shuttling Johnson's beloved pet dog to safety after it bit someone, were one of many symbols of Johnson excess. Just as odd were his stabs at practicality, like introducing a smokeless cigarette, "Premier", which drew like chalk and tasted worse.

Authors Bryan Burroughs and John Helyar, who covered the story in 1988 for the Wall Street Journal, seem to have been everywhere at once, and show no sign of suffering from lack of access. Whether it's LBO king and Johnson nemesis Henry Kravis, other bidding groups led by First Boston and Forstmann Little, or the RJR management board, everyone seems well represented. One gets the feeling some of these people enjoyed the chance to tell of their small part in one of the biggest stories of the decade.

Yet nothing seemed on the level here, least of all the money put up by the bidders, which had a heavy reliance on junk bonds. Numbers themselves made no sense. At one point in the bidding, Kravis engineers a deal whereby he and his partners are paid their operating expenses by RJR in exchange for hanging around another hour.

"Forty-five million dollars to wait sixty minutes. Incredibly [RJR head legal adviser Peter] Atkins and Company thought it was a good deal."

Burroughs and Helyar's greatest accomplishment is by sending you deep enough behind the looking glass that you understand Atkins' position. The authors do a great job of bringing the rest of the fantasy world to life with welcome doses of color and wit.

At times, especially at the end, they get hung up with the level of detail they present, telling us not only who was at a particular meeting but where they sat, who was eating an apple, who was wearing a puff handkerchief, what color it was, etc.

But the book is solid and well-written, and not nearly as snippy as it could have been. Only Johnson's buddy Ed Horrigan comes off as a complete hardcase. Johnson himself seems fairly amiable even at his greediest.

The well-remembered HBO adaptation softsoaps Johnson further by having him played by the quintessentially smooth James Garner. It's an enjoyable movie that made me want to read this. Now I find the book preferable for the more balanced way it handles other characters like Kravis and Ted Forstmann (a joke character in the movie, but a prescient figure in the book who came up with the expression that makes for the title.) There are a lot of brickbats in evidence here, but no axes.

Greed is still with us, of course, yet "Barbarians" takes us to a time when it managed at once to be more comical and stylish than today.

Many people I know have read this book and rave about how good it is. However it is really just a factual account of the events with no real insight. The writing is ok but you are not transformed into the action. You get no since of the pressure or the egos. The characters are the real deal and the writes don't all you to understand them or even get you to like or hate them. The book left me a bit flat but if you have no idea how companies are bought and offers are made it is still worth the read. If you know how companies are bought it is worth the read just to be scared to death.

Barbarians at the Gate is a classic of the business book genre, and with the private equity boom we have seen in the last couple of years, it is still as relevant as it was when it came twenty years ago. It is the story or some extremely unlikable rich people brought low by equally unsavory, but much smarter rich people, and it gives you an inside feel for the major wall street deal like no other book can.

Barbarians at the Gate is the story of an attempt to take RJR Nabisco private, and then the series of take over attempts that were instigated by the original privatization plan. Johnson, the CEO of RJR, comes off as pompous, full of himself, and not very smart. He's like a frat boy who makes it by glad handing people and buying rounds of drinks. Kravis, of legendary private equity firm KKR, comes off like a financier god. Brilliant, pushy, and beyond your puny human morals. Guess who gets the company in the end.

A must read for anyone interested in modern Wall Street.

After discovering that he can breathe fire, Billy Banister finds himself in a confusing web of legend and technology, trying desperately, with the help of a fellow half-dragon (this one with wings hidden beneath her backpack), to stay away from a dragon-slayer and his minions. Funny, interesting and action-packed to the extreme, Bryan Davis's first release does not disappoint!

If you like fantasy, you'll love this book... and the whole series! Raising Dragons is a great start to an outstanding series!!

Adults and kids alike will enjoy this book. Good vs. evil has always been the battle in this world and so it is here also. Billy's world is suddenly swept away by a father he thought he knew. Bonnie longs for someone to care about her. Raising Dragons is the first in the Dragons in Our Midst series. Do as I have and read them all.

When Billy Bannister discovers that his father was a dragon, his world turns up-side down! Why hadn't his father told him about his life as a dragon? Why didn't he tell him of this hidden secret? Then Billy makes another discovery at his school. He meets a girl, Bonnie Silver, who, like Billy, had a parent who was once a dragon! Now, if that wasn't strange and confusing enough, Billy learns that his school principal is out to kill them all!!! Will Billy be able to keep his faith in God in all the trails he will soon have to face? And will they be captured by the principal? Only God knows!!! 'Raising Dragons' has helped me become more like Christ. It is one of my favorite books! Bryan Davis is one of my all-time-favorite authors! He is a Dad of seven homeschooled children and had had many books published for young adults. God bless you, Mr. Davis!

This was my introduction to Bryan Davis, and my goodness, I don't think I put this one down very often! The plot keeps moving as everything gets more and more complicated, moving the reader swiftly to a satisfying ending. I finished feeling ready to read the next three, and thinking deeply about the truths included. Now I own the whole series!

I found this book to be an easy read and it sure helped with my google campaigns overall. Most of the screenshots are hard to read and outdated, yet still useful at some level. I wish there were more definitions of terms'; some newcomers may not be familiar with the google AdWords jargon and their importance so it would have been nicer if there were thorough definitions of CTR, CPA, CPC,etc.. and such. The name
"Ultimate Guide..." maybe a bit over the top but it's definitely a Great Guide.

Book needs to be updated but not bad for only $14.95. I would recommend it for the money. It's a good beginners guide to say the least.

A little out dated, but still has some useful information that I did not know about.

This book is good whether your brand new to Adwords and internet marketing or have been in the game a while. You'll pick up best practices and sound marketing advice in this easy to read, easy to implement guidebook. My advice: don't get on Adwords until you've read this book!

Loved the book. It is packed with useful information. If you are considering using AdWords, you owe it to yourself to get this book.

Book was shipped quickly and was in excellent condition. Exactly as it was promoted to be.

You already know if you're going to like this book. It was written in the 15th century. That fact alone should tell you that if you want a modernized version, look elsewhere. You should probably read T. H. White's The Once and Future King or Steinbeck's unfinished The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights. Both are retellings of this book, written for the modern reader, the former being the better, in my opinion, but the latter retains the same feel as Malory's work. If you're still not sure if you'd like this book, there are other reviews to explain in better detail why you should or should not try it.

I have always received the best service when I have placed an order from you. Outstanding!!!!!

First of all,let me start by saying that Malory is the most essential and best of all the Arthurian works.
Secondly,I'm seriously considering teaching an informal class for local folks who would like to learn more about the Arthur cycle. I don't know everything, but I've studied the 17 books I have on the subject intensely.
With respect, does anyone out there have any advice for me? Thanks!

I bought this Signet translation by Keith Baines after a frustrating attempt to read the Modern Library translation by William Caxton. Caxton's dry, stilted rendition left me hungry for a cleaner, more modern version.

Here's a prime example from page 1:

Caxton: "It befell in the days of Uther Pendragon, when he was king of all England, and so reigned, that there was a mighty duke in Cornwall that held war against him long time. And the duke was called the Duke of Tintagil. And so by means King Uther sent for this duke, charging him to bring his wife with him, for she was called a fair lady, and a passing wise, and her name was called Igraine."

Baines: "King Uther Pendragon, ruler of all Britain, had been at war for many years with the Duke of Tintagil in Cornwall when he was told of the beauty of Lady Igraine, the duke's wife."

If Caxton was my high school English teacher demanding that I diagram his sentences, I might forthwith set myself through with mine dagger most deadly.

Anyway, if you just want to enjoy the Arthurian tales in their cleanest English version, buy Signet's paperback. It's also half the price of other translations.

Happy reading!

When I say this is a crazy book I mean it! I do not mean that in a bad way, it is just that this book will take you on a wild journey. The journey is great and really exciting but still wild at the same time. Join a boy named Nathan who has to cope with the loss of his parents and the discovery that the world is not what it seems. A great adventure for teenagers and up. Sit back in your chair, set it to the relax stage and pick up this book. Buy this book and you will not be disappointed!

If anything, Beyond the Reflection's Edge is more relevant to the culture today than the Dragons in Our Midst books. Although Bryan Davis certainly does a lot of what I like to call "rearranging the universe," he manages to keep the "lesson" very close to home, at least for this teen.

I could not have been more encouraged and challenged by Nathan Shepherd's commitment to purity, and I became more aware of the consequences of my choices after reading this book. I will definitely be reading the next one as soon as I can.

This new series starts off with an amazing book! It is a great fantasy and I eagerly await the sequel.

Wow! Beyond the Reflection's Edge is just as powerful, action-packed, and deep as Dragons In Our Midst and Oracles of Fire. Each word continued to drag me into the story and share Nathan's and Kelly's adventures. Sometimes I felt as though I could hear the music, even if I didn't necessarily know one of the pieces Nathan was playing. From beginning to end I felt as though I were truly there, feeling the tension, the heartache, the fear, and even the laughter of all characters involved. I say "Bravo!" to Bryan Davis. Keep it up - I can't wait to read the next one!

Excellent start to new series by Bryan Davis. The characters and plot are complex and compelling. Great read.

This book has a lot of details and is very good. Don't expect this book to tell you lots and lots about the gangsters of the era... it's more of a detailed account of the FBI and how they got organized. Again, lots of details, making it slow reading, but very good material!

This is a great book. Author infers in his introduction that this was a labor of love and it shows in his writing. At over 500 pages, it shows the relationship of the five major criminal gangs of the 1933-34 time period. Those were the Barker Gang, Bonnie and Clyde, Pretty Boy Floyd, Machine Gun Kelly, Baby Face Nelson, and Dillenger. With the exception of Bonnie and Clyde (who were strictly small time), all knew each other and helped in raids. None of these people were glamourous since they all murdered people. Dillenger killed three policemen. Bonnie, Clyde, and Baby Face Nelson were psychopaths. Why people had admiration for them is beyond me, but the times were hard and many felt banks were as crooked as those who robbed them.

This book also details the rise of the FBI and how Hoover interferred with the progress of investigations. Purvis was mildly incompetent. Why some of these gangsters roomed the streets was due to FBI leads not being followed up. In the end, the FBI became more professional due to this crime wave. Hoover went on to become the Crime Dictator for forty years.

This is a great book and is very readable. For those interested in the Great Depression and the fall of the bank robbers, this is a treasure trove of information. Highly recommended.

A very interesting book. Let's you know exactly what happens back in the old days. Good reading.

Yes Mr. Burrough made a few mistakes with addresses and name spellings but overall I was impressed with how he made all the information flow together so well. This was a huge task to take on and I was surprised how good of a job was done. I did have to dock a star due to the amount Mr. Burrough relied on Alvin Karpis's word for word retelling of events that happened so long ago- it gives the book a bit of a fiction feel to it at times. Overall this was a very good read.

For history buffs, this is a find! I could not put this book down! WoW, loaded, just packed with information on the PUBLIC ENEMIES! With all the fuss now, with Johnny Depp starring in Public Enemies, based on this book, I am sure this will be THE book everyone will have to read. The movie is coming out in 2009. Filmed in the Midwest; Wisconsin, Indiana, etc, and even at Little Bohemia, in Northern Wisconsin, where the Feds goofed up bigtime and J.Edgar Hoover covered, or at least tried to cover up their blunder, when innocent citizens were gunned down, instead of the "gangstas". You will love this, you won't want the book to end, it covers all of them, Johhny Dillinger, Pretty Boy Floyd, Baby Face Nelson, Ma Barker and her gang, Machine Gun Kelly. It's all here, and of course, Bonnie and Clyde. You will be right at the scenes, even when they met their bloody early demise, and most of them went out shooting their tommy guns. The author did a magnificent job of researching his subjects. You won't be disappointed spending a weekend reading this one!

In the 1990s, the pride of Russia's space program was its aging space station, Mir. So much had changed as the Soviet Union broke apart, with nothing more apt to bring the changes home than the launch facilities' being located, now, in a separate and independent country. Yet that space program's culture remained the same, and the American astronauts who volunteered to serve tours of duty aboard Mir found it alien not just to U.S. culture - but, far more tellingly, to that of NASA. Especially to NASA post-Challenger, where every employee was encouraged to speak up about safety concerns.

It wasn't that way aboard Mir. The cosmonauts (two members of each three-person crew), working on a bonus and fines system, knew they had to stay aboard and keep the station operating no matter what. Even when their own rule book said it was time to get aboard the attached Soyuz capsule and abandon ship, after the first decompression of an occupied spacecraft in history, they refused to leave. Leaks of toxic coolant, fires, even complete power losses that shut the station down - leaving it in absolute darkness during the night phase of each Earth orbit - nothing convinced the cosmonauts it was time to go home ahead of schedule. Were they just plain wrong? Was their ground control, which expected this of them and made it absolutely clear this was the case, heartless and out of touch with the reality those aloft were facing? So it often seemed to the series of American astronauts, a varied lot who for the most part "volunteered" for this duty because each knew it was his or her only chance to fly.

Author Burrough brings out the facts in often exhaustive detail (so exhaustive that even this lifelong space program junkie sometimes had to slog through chapters while wondering, "Is this going somewhere? Really, is it?"). His research is meticulous, his sources impeccable, and his conclusions - when they're finally reached - wind up being the reader's own, because that is exactly what his writing achieves. For that reason, I'm calling this book a winner. Its only faults are being a bore at times (there really are passages I swear only an engineer would find interesting!), and switching tenses in a haphazard manner that's sure to drive readers who notice such things crazy.

This book is an excellent look at life on board an aging space station. The author does an amazing job conveying all the problems on board including the relationship between the cosmonauts as well as the problems with TSUp (the Russian "mission control"). What also makes the book even more exciting are the transcripts of the communication between the cosmonauts and the ground team in Russia. We really get a sense of actually being in the station and going through the chaos along with the cosmonauts. One of the best accounts of life on board a space station. Highly recommended.

This is a very well written and very well researched book. I was very much drawn into the story from the beginning of the book until the last page. Burrough did in depth interviews with about everyone associated with the program and conveys his interviews into a cohesive, interesting and very intriguing story . . . it was hard to put down!

This is a great book, very entertaining! You'll feel like you are really there, floating around in the space station.The book goes into a lot of behind-the-scenes personality clashes between astronauts/cosmonauts. Tells the story of the Mir and International space stations.

NASA these days is nothing like what I expected. I thought an astronaut had to have balls. You know, as in courageous. Apparently that is no longer the case. NASA is now just another bureaucratic monstrosity that is more about paperwork and kissing butt than exploring outer space. I read in despair about how everyone must act like a little girl if they want to fly into space. That is, they must be cute, pretty, obedient little cyphers. They must have a half dozen college degrees and have a clean record that reveals a predictable, risk-adverse character. They must also get on the good side of some fat bureaucrat who is in charge of the place. Yes, Abbey, I'm talking about you, you fat henpecked b*tch.

No wonder NASA is no longer breaking ground with its manned missions. It is now run like a freakin' accounting firm, complete with effeminate sissies who pass for men and plenty of loud-mouthed spoiled brats who enjoy being women.

This is an excellent, informative book, and I ate it up. And it is no wonder that space exploration has stagnated in the past 30 years. Every successful company needs to be initiated by a strong man with balls. But down the road, it is inevitable that the women move in and make everything complicated. Rules are made, rules are made, rules are made, etc. Layer after arbitrary layer. Risk is abhored and chased away. Then you end up with today's NASA, where a character like Abbey must have his butt kissed if a man wishes to ride the space shuttle. What ever happened to daring? Why do we let the soccer moms take charge and mess it all up???