Buck Books

Paul Hater is an international thief known for jewel steal. He know more than anyone can guess and may even lose an eye while trying to uncover facts. When Hater is arrested in possession of a stolen necklace, the police wants to persuade him to reveal the location of the rest of the collection by using every possible motive He remains silent and has to go to prison for twenty-year sentence. The International Detective Agency, acting on behalf of the insurers, must patiently await Hater's release before they can hope to find out more because they have tried all mean possible to get their fact to no avail. But just as his day of release approaches, Hater is kidnapped by a ruthless international gang determined to force the secret from him and prepared to go to any lengths to do so. What a damn mishap. A freed prisoner isn't free yet.

This book is great as a brainstorm or rough draft. It leaves a lot to be desired though. Frances jumps from thought to thought, it seems she wrote using word association instead of a followable context.
It seems the goal of the book is to highlight each platonic month using the Bible as a reference guide. The details are sporadic, with grainy pictures tossed in for good measure.

The South Desert country was subject to recurrent and violent trouble, particularly from marauders below the border in Mexico. Constable Mulligan of Stillwater did not favour the law as administered by Judge Colt and tried to give every man a fair trial. Before the dust settled, however, Mulligan came to the conclusion that Judge Colt's kind of justice, bloody though it might be, as at least in some situations, preferable to the law of the land. And there was no appeal!

Buck Bradshaw is one of the many pseudonyms used by writer Lauran Paine on the hundreds of books he wrote, at least 38 of which he used for Black Horse Westerns alone!

This has often brought up comments that Paine wrote incredibly fast, often to the detriment of the story, and Judge Colt, for me, falls into the category.

The book just seems to begin in the middle of an on going story making the reader wonder if they've missed something. Maybe this will be revealed in a flashback, but no that doesn't happen, Paine just gets on telling his story of the hunt for a horse thief that just happens to be a cattle rustler too. The rancher wants to kill the thief, the lawman wants him to stand trial although he soon decides to turn his back if the rancher gets to the thief first; thus the law of Judge Colt. Where there could have been some gripping reading of a man struggling with his conscience this was dealt with in a matter of moments taking away any depth to the story.

If the book hadn't been so short I`d have given up on it long before the end. Perhaps I should have. This is the second Paine book I have read, the first I enjoyed slightly more than this one. Unfortunately I have quite a lot more in my western collection so I may just give one or two more a try; after all he did write the book that became the big film hit Open Range, so there must be a good one amoung them somewhere, mustn't there?

If you're like me and enjoy novels with a lot of werewolf action and violence then this might not be the book for you. It takes a while for the story to move along, it gets good in about 100 or so pages. Some parts are drawn out and others feel rushed. The author gives more detail when the characters are doing everyday tasks than when the werewolves are involved in the scene. There are also some grammatical errors that may distract from the reading. Other than that, the plot would have made a great story if certain parts weren't so rushed.

I'll start by saying that this book, as would be expected of its author, is a wonderful read and portrays many nuances of Japanese culture and its people in a lovely prose that captures your attention and doesn't let you down.

That being said, I would not recommend this book to anyone who is looking to learn about Japan. I would also be reluctant to recommend this book to anyone with a slightly more than basic knowledge of Japanese history and culture.

I did enjoy reading this book, Pearl S. Buck is a wonderful writer and she paints a picture of Japan as a magical place where she spent several years of her life. A casual reading of the book leads anyone to want to pack their bags and move to Kyushu as soon as humanly possible. However, the book is filled, and I mean PACKED with historical and cultural inaccuracies and nonchalant generalizations. Either Buck doesn't have a very good grasp of Japanese history or she simply generalizes to make Japanese history seem like a nice little fairy tale that readers will lap up. She leaves out important complexities and nuances of the past that not only make for a bad history reading, but can really negatively affect a person's perception of Japan and the Japanese.

One concept that I have a big problem with is her classification of Japanese people as an "island people" like the British. This classification isn't all bad and there are some striking similarities between the personalities and behaviors of the island people like the British and Japanese. However, she goes so far in her generalization of history and the geo-psychology of the Japanese people to suggest that Japan was itching to attack and conquer all of mainland China from Hideyoshi's invasion of Korea (mind you, not China) in 1592 all the way until the Sino-Japanese War of 1894; almost 300 years!. In concluding the bit about the Sino-Japanese War she also refers to Russia, the mediator, taking Vladivostock (which they already controlled) as a warm water port (which it was and still is not; that was why the Russo-Japanese War happenned, Russian ambitions in Northeastern Asia pointed to their desire to control some or all of Korea, then under Japanese contol, so they wouldn't be stuck with Vladivostock which froze over every winter as their only Pacific port).

Bayond the historical inaccuracies she tends to refer to the "people of Japan" as an amorphous conformist mass, with no diversity of thought or political discussion ever ocurring. Especially when speaking of the American arrival in the 19th Century she implies that all Japanese people were all for opening up Japan to learn about the West, which they had no knowledge of and no contact with (also wrong, the Dutch had been Japan's window to the West for centuries and Dutch learning [Western studies] had been promulgated for sometime in scientific fields). She only briefly touches on the heated political debate going on in Tokugawa Japan over opening of Japan's borders, referring in one paragraph to "reactionaries" who were mainly "old men" who hearkened back to the good old days. Furthermore, she does not even mention the political turmoil that brought down the Tokugawa Shogunate. She completely glosses over the Meiji restoration and the fact that Satsuma and Choshu were essentially alone (along with a few other domains) in leading Japan towards openness in the international field. As far as the readers are concerned, there was no struggle for power, and Japan simplyswung open its doors when the Americans arrived and the Tokugawa Shogunate lost power almostmagically only to have power be restored to the Meiji emperor (who was a teenager at the time and for the rest of his life allowed the Meiji oligarchs to create and execute policy while he complacently rubber stamped everything they came up with ).

I could go one with my tirade, but the book does have a few merits, but only after her clumsy and basically incorrect history lesson is over. Buck is surprisingly objective on the plight of women in Japan. Written in 1966, the situation with regard to females has certainly gotten better in Japan, but they still face an uphill battle in terms of patriarchy in the house, unequal wages and disrimanatory hiring practices. Buck stays away from feminist tendencies to either lament the Japanese women's subjugation at the hands of their evil authoritarian patriachs or to vitoriously boast of the fact that mothers in wives in Japanese households generally take care of all financial affairs of the house and do hold the purse strings when it comes to family expenses. It was surprising to see how she relates several stories where husbands basically dicated terms to their wives and the wives complied, without a hint of remorse or resentment. She takes gender relations as they are and gives equal time to how Japanese women are slowly becoming more liberated by taking on more Western concepts of femininity.

Her book is also peppered with personal accounts of a wide variety of Japanese people, ranging from poor farmers to Holywood producers. I really enjoyed heraing reallife stories of so many diferent Japaense people, something you don't find in history books or ethanographies of Japan. Although she points to the continuous strains in Japanese culture through socio-economic classes (again trying to gruop up all Japanese as essentially the same), she does tell the stories of many Japanese people from different walks of life, socio-economic statii and regions of Japan.

Buck's horrendous treatment of history and her wide generalizations of Japanese culture and behavior really fail what is otherwise a beautifully written and sometimes objective and insightful book. The prose, the treatment of women and the variety of expereinces she recounts in the book keep it from only earning 1 star. The glaring inacuracies and simplifications for the sake of a nice fairy tale history and an easy to understand culture (which Japanese culture certainly is not) firmly keep it from ever reaching a 3 or 4. Don't even think about 5. A better history and a more diverse view of Japan's people (in terms of behavior and opinions) would make this a must read, but in its current state, I really cannot recommend it.

The author is obviously a highly skilled pilot and has extensive experience. His recounting of the progress in the airline industry is very interesting. I bought the book expecting to read about progress in dealing with the problems encountered in adapting new technology and adjusting to the obviously over crowded skies. While the author states (over and over) that both are very real problems, he does not offer much in terms of what is being done to address the pilot's ever expanding workload. He seems merely intent on convincing the reader that the industry and the FAA are out to get the pilot. This book is not so much a study of human factors as a pilot's complaints about an industry that probably somehow just became something he no longer cared to be a part of.

I'm not sure of the market for this book. It's too general to be of use to technical staff and provides too much detail for management or an end-user. Seeing as this is the author's second SAP book - I was expecting more.

Soldier in Buckskin is a good portral of the life of Kit Carson. However i think there are many more entertaining westerns out there. But still a good story.

I thought this book would help understand how to change the settings (Shutter speed, F stops etc) quickly on the Canon Rebel, instead it shows you the very very basics of how to change picture types (Auto, P, Macro), format your CF card and very simple other things.

I would stick to the manual which shows you just as much and more then this book and save $5.

this is book is an insult, it will teach you nothing.

And just run a $5 bill through your shredder rather than wasting your money on this "simple to the point of being useless" book. If you really feel compelled to throw $5 at someone to essentially go through your owner's manual with a highlighter, this is the book for you. But if you expect to learn anything from this book that you couldn't easily find in the owner's manual or elsewhere, you'll be very disappointed.

I have some advice for you that I feel is far more valuable than any "insight" that this book provides. That would be that if you're such a novice as far as photography is concerned that you'd benefit from the extremely basic and simplistic insights provided by this book, you really should set your sights quite a bit lower camera-wise than the Digital EOS Rebel. For example, if you don't know the definition of depth of field (a very basic concept in photography for which this book provides a definition), this camera is probably way too complex for you in the first place. As they say, you need to learn to walk before you can run. Do yourself a favor and get a much simpler and less complex camera to learn on... there are many of them out there that have a much more appropriate feature set for the novice photographer that can still allow you to take great pictures and to grow as you learn. You can always trade up to a camera this complex if and when you've gained enough experience to benefit from its features.

At the same time, invest in a book that can provide truly valuable information and insight for the digital photography novice, such as "Digital Photography for Dummies". I can't imagine that there are too many people out there who aren't familiar with the "Dummies" series of books. But just in case you are, they're the perfect choice for the person who might say the following to himself or herself... "I'm really interested in learning about digital photography, and I don't know the first thing about it." The Dummies series are loaded with everything the beginner needs to know about the topic (such as, what is depth of field and how do I use it to take better pictures?). They always use a very light-hearted, "tongue-in-cheek" approach that keeps you entertained while you're learning the basics. Such a book does essentially everything that the book being reviewed fails to do.

The cover says "Only $5 - Really!" Well, a low price on something that provides as little value as does this book is no bargain. I think they rely on this "it's only $5" mindset to get you to purchase the book without any careful consideration. That's what I did, and had I not been rushing when I ordered this book, I would have taken the time to read the sage advice of Dr. Sunny and D. Penrice, who wrote reviews in the past to try to warn me and others that this book is a waste of money. Now I join them in trying to warn the rest of you.

If you're looking for a book to help the beginner, save the $5 that you might spend on this book and invest it on the slightly more expensive, but far more valuable "Digital Photography for Dummies". That will be a far wiser use of your money.

Here is a link from the Canon web site to the Canon digital learning center for the Digital Rebel (300E). It contains basic info about this camera. I found it helpful. Best of all, its free!

http://www.photoworkshop.com/canon/lessons/

This is a VERY generic book. Do not waste your time or money.

I wanted some basics to get into $5 dollar single table tournaments online and it worked for that. You will definitely need something more advanced as you progress into higher limits and this will not be useful for 'free' games.
Take two things from this book:
1. The starting hands based on position
2. How to calculate the 'outs' (a nice chart in the back of the book)
Adjust your starting hands based on your willingness to take risks and understand your outs based on the chart in the back. The rest is pretty basic and as everyone has stated thus far there are a considerable number of mistakes.
If you are going to buy another book watch the poker tournaments on T.V and find a player you most enjoy watching play, that you trust and that wins and go buy his book. There are no books that will teach you everything and there is no template for perfect play.

Ditto the other two reviews on this book. I thank my lucky stars that I kept my $5 in my wallet and borrowed this from the library. I give my co-reviewers A LOT of credit for sticking with this book - I quit reading after about page 15. I found no less than FOUR typos/incorrect statements on ONE page. My favorite botched advice is, early in the book, that: when holding a low pair [3's] and hitting a set [trip 3's] on the flop, one should be very wary of a pair of overcards on the board (in this case, a Q on the flop, and then another on the turn), because even one Q buried in an opponents hands will cause his trips to beat yours. Oh yeah? Last I checked, when holding a set and having the board pair-up, I've now got a FULL HOUSE! I think that beats 3 Q's!! Sheesh!

This book is god awful. The typos are brutal, and the flat-out wrong advice is even worse. Don't waste your time.

Buy (or borrow from your local library) Brunson's "Super/System," or any book by Caro or McEvoy. These guys are seasons pros, and know what they're talking about - so you will, too. ;-)

This is a 60-page overview of Texas Hold'em that surveys all aspects of the game from starting hands to postflop play and when to bluff. It discusses pot odds, bet odds and implied odds. There's a table in the back with the odds for your hand improving based on the outs you need. There's even a few pages about tournament play.

It's standard stuff, but distilled down to essentials and graphically well-presented.

So why only 3 stars?

The book is filled with typos. Cards are described in the same sentence as spade [the symbol] and "s" -- but both things refer to the spade suit. (And "s" could well mean two starting cards of any one suit.)

On page 32, he explains that you _should_ call when you do not make your queen-high flush. Huh? I've been folding my missed flushes.

As Straham proclaims on the cover, the book is only "5 bucks." Maybe he should price the book higher and employ a proofreader.

P.S. After seeing that the glossary --incredibly -- is not alphabetized, I wish I had given the book only two stars.

I agree with the previous reviewer, and pricing this book a few bucks higher to get a proof-reader would have been well worth the money.

This book is littered with typos.

Every few pages, I have to stop and try to figure out what the author meant to say. An example would be:

Page 24
"...Say you have J and 10 facing one opponent on the turn. You have an outside straight draw with a board of 2 5 8 Q and only the river card left to make it. Any 8 or king will finish this straight for you..."

I may be new at poker, but even I know you'll need a 9 to finish that straight, and a king will be worthless. Of course, he had typo'ed the board cards with an "8" instead of a "9", but this is just one of the many examples of the confusing and annoying mistakes you're sure to discover in this book. I would encourage you to search further throughout amazon, and deeper into your pocket book, for -- simply put -- a better book.