Butler Books

I needed this for a college class this semester. Used book was in good shape and shipped quickly after my order.

Needed book for college class....new book at great price. Great delivery.

But watch out for errors.

The problem with writing history books is that there are a lot of facts to check. I, for one, am harder on books where I discover inaccuracies since for each one I catch who knows how many others get past me, or worse, form my opinion of a subject.

One glaring error I found in the book occurred on page 189:

"The California school [the California Maritime Academy], operating on Treasure Island (man-made in San Francisco Bay for the 1939 World's Fair), was enlarged and relocated to San Mateo."

For starters, the California Maritime Academy operated during the opening days of World War II from the Ferry building at the foot of Market Street in San Francisco. In 1943 it moved to Vallejo, it's location ever since. At no time was it ever located in San Mateo. Since the school remains in Vallejo to this day, this would have been an easy fact to verify. So how do we know the more obscure facts are correct?

This may be nit-picking, since the book was well-written and very informative. Despite some inaccuracies, I'd still recommend it to anyone looking for a good, broad overview of maritime history. (And for anyone looking for further history of the California Maritime Academy, I'd highly recommend Walter Jaffee's The Track of the Golden Bear (The Glencannon Press, 1996).)

John Butler has presented a fascinating, informative, highly readable, and entertaining story of the rise and fall of the American Merchant Marine. While written from the perspective of an insider, the author never talks down to the reader, nor overwhelms the reader with needless detail. He presents the material in a calm and even-handed way, and hold the reader's attention throughout.

Stories about doctors and their patients fascinate everybody, including doctors themselves, and many famous literary works demonstrate how they can be widely told without violating the confidentiality of the doctor-patient relationship. Susan Woldenberg Butler, a doctor's wife, has collected many moving stories from her husband's colleagues, disguised them elegantly within a fictional framework, and presented them in this delightful book. Many doctors (and their spouses) will find it enlightening as well as entertaining and many patients will get some insight into the satisfactions, tensions, frustrations, and heartbreaks of front-line doctoring in all corners of the world.

'Jan Luydik haunts me. If he's honest, every doctor will admit to such a patient. Jan's one of the reasons I want to leave general practice." Susan Butler's "Secrets from the Black Bag" (SBB) is a collection of 33 quirky, fascinating stories about general physicians from the far-flung corners of the world. This is a great book for any health care professional, especially recommend for medical students and house staff who could use a dram of humility. Butler's doctors are honest, straight-talking chaps; not gods or goddesses, but humble people trying to do difficult jobs and often screwing up. One senses that Butler stands on the shoulders of writers like William Carlos Williams. SBB is an antidote to the preachy popular medical literature we read today; omniscient tales of self-styled experts. Compared to these, Butler is curiously refreshing. SBB is best taken in doses of two to three stories a day (like any good medicine.) One needs a bit of time to absorb the tart unsentimental messages. Ms. Butler's SBB has earned a place on my bookshelf next to Williams' "The Doctor Stories" and John Berger's "A Fortunate Man." Highly recommended to anyone interested to what lies at the heart of medicine.

This textbook has stood the test of time. It has seen multiple publishers and has stood up well. Although it is one of the older textbooks for English speakers learning Esperanto, it does not convey a dated feel. It is broken into over a thousand small, easily digestable lessons. This makes it extremely well suited to self-study students learning in their spare time. It's small size also makes it easy to take along.

This is my favorite Esperanto textbook. Because it is broken up into 1,000 + lessons, one can study as much or as little as one wants per day.

Other Esperanto language books that I've seen (including Esperanto) introduce a number of grammar rules (or exceptions), vocabulary, and exercises. This is way too much for a young child! But this book breaks every new concept into it's own section. For instance, in one section you'll learn that there is no translation of the articles "a" and "an" in Esperanto.

Now, that's obviously too small a section to take up at one time... but you might want to only cover 2 sections, or maybe you'll want to take on 8 sections at a time. It's up to you - how much time you've got on your hands, the age of the student, etc.

One section, which introduced the first sentence and a number of nouns, I spent a week on with my children. But it was just one simple grammar rule, so it wasn't overwhelming at all. We all had fun.

The biggest drawback to this book is that not all the words are defined - the author assumes you will understand that "monto" means "mountain" and "dromedaro" is "dromedary". You'll need access to a good Esperanto/English dictionary in order to really succeed with this book.

At the end of 2 weeks study with this book, my kids knew well over 200 words (and we skipped the ones that would be more difficult for the younger ones, like the translation for "ideal" and the cities and rivers). We were on page 6... and already knew hundreds of words.

There are some really entertaining poems and quaint little words of wisdom. The author is quite a character, and the book is very lively.

This is an excellent resource, and I highly recommend it. Please email me if you would like some suggestions about using this book with children - we've been having a lot of success and a lot of fun.

This story has soft illustrations with nicely rhyming text. It won't teach numbers and counting (as the title might imply), but it is a cute story about some friendly animals. There is quite a variety of animals included and the entire book was quite a hit with my two and a half year old.

If you or your child are into cute, fuzzy, young animals, these books will definitely be a hit. The critters are almost too adorable. But this book is much more than just a set of cute images because it also has nice rhymes following the hide-and-seek story, and because of the clever little tidbits the illustrator added to the brightly colored images. You're given some clues (mostly visual) about who the Bear will be finding next. And there is a little mouse scurrying around in most of the images, and at the end everyone's trying to figure out where the mouse is. It's really well done. I checked out Ten in the Den by the same authors at a bookstore afterwards, and thought this was an overall better storyline and offered more ways to interact with your child using the images.

My children loved this book! The story involves a typical day at a vet's office and is entertaining while being educational. The illustrations are bright and eye catching. The author uses many words associated with the profession (antibiotic, kennel, etc.) and defines the terms in the back of the book in a way that children can understand. We first got this one from the library and are planning to add it to our own collection.

This is the older version of Vicky the Vet, part of the Jobs People Do series. There is a newer version now on www.suesbooks.info, but it's still a great book. Children love the reading about the day in the life of a vet and other jobs. It's great for preschools. Notice that all the jobs also teach diversity and are multi-cultural.

As someone who grew up in the COGIC, with an academic background in women's studies and political science,I found this both a personal and intellectual pleasure to read. Her balanced approach to the shortcomings and hidden strengths of the church's history as it relates to women's voice and agency is honest and revelatory. For anyone interested in some of the little known history of this faith, this book reveals the origin of some of the traditions and mores of this faith to even the "un-churched" reader. It also entertains even the non-academic reader. I can't wait until Butler produces her next book!

Professor Anthea Butler's Women in the Church of God in Christ: Making a Sanctified World is a must read for all who are interested in the value of staying focused on an established mission. This book clearly demonstrates how a clear mission to sanctify the world deteriorated into an internal mission of sanctifying a denoninational church called the Church of God in Christ. From the founding of the Church of God in Christ with the support of Bishop Charles Harrison Mason, Mother Lizzie Woods Robinson and Mother Lillian Brooks Coffey created a standard for both personal sanctification and in extending the influence of the Church in the world through active participation in civic activities to elevate the quality of life for all. They followed the lifting as we climb strategy into social prominence and respectability in the community at-large. The emphasis in the Church went from dressing to look holy to dressing to reflect your status in the Church organization and in civic afairs. This book also addressed the unresolved issue of what to do with and about women of influence in the ministry and in the Church's organizational structure especially as they out-distanced the male leaders under whom they are supposed to serve. Unfortunately for women in the Church of God in Christ, it seems that their role in the second half of the twentieth century declined as the Church went through a period of turmoil after the death of the founder and the nation as a whole experienced the civil rights movement and the resurgence of the feminist movement in the 1970s which forced Church women to retreat to more traditional subservient roles. This is a marvelous study of the rise and decline of women power in the Church of God in Christ which also coincides with the decline in the Church's influence in cvic affairs.

I belive this book merits the G.K. Gilbert award;it explores aspects of geomorphology that have rarely been featured in the published literature. Butler is obviously an expert in this field.

This book is well-written, well-illustrated, and well worth the read. I wish its pricing made it more accessible to students of geomorphology. Concepts have international implications. Highly recommended.

Like Poe, strong roots in its Gothic horror era make this story too wordy to be read as a contemporary classic (contradiction in terms, I suppose), but the basic storyline does stand up over time.

A basic story, by the way, which no movie version has yet successfully captured, not even Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. That overwrought hyper-surrealistic version by Kenneth Brannagh captures the framework of the book in neat prologue/epilogue bookends, and Robert De Niro captures the menace and humanity of the creature, but Brannagh makes some boneheaded plot changes (particularly the handling of Henry and Elizabeth) that clank off the rim.

That said, though, it would be hard for any movie maker to capture this story which is told strictly in first person narrative, even when told through another's eyes or voice or pen. At one point, the narrative is retold with four layers between the reader and the actor. Good luck turning that into a movie.

And the basic conflict of the story still rings true, and is really what the book is about; unlike Brannagh, who dwells lovingly on the process, Shelley barely describes the creation of the creature, and wisely so. The focus is on the creature and its creator, not on the creative process. And as De Niro the creature says in the movie at a very dramatic turn, "I keep my promises". Frankenstein, the man and the creator, does not.

i read this book right after dracula and well, it's definitely a good read and an edge of your seat thriller. it has stood the test of time in terms of it's theme and lesson.

for the people who hated this book and gave it poor reviews. Really missed out on what may be the greatest novel of all time. For me it's hard to put down. And the themes are deep and everlasting ones that humans will forever struggle with. Life and death, God vs science, good and evil, spiritual themes, and social ones also, all wrapped up in a GREAT story. Oh well, you can't expect everyone to get it and resonate with it.

One thing about this Rieger version: it says it "reproduces for the first time in more than a century the text of the first edition published in 1818". Not true. Donohue produced at least three editions (I have them) around 1895 that are all the 1818 text.
Just an FYI.

Believe the hype! This book is hard to surpass. I virtually never give 5 stars to ANYTHING. This deserves it.

Once you read Shelley's classic you're going to scratch your head and wonder: Is this really the book that gave us the Karloff movie? Not to mention Herman Munster and Frankenberry. For over a century and half people have been cannibalizing this book for ideas, movies, other books, and products of every size, shape and type that our modern concept of Frankenstein holds little to no resemblence to the master work. While occasionally these bastardizations have had enjoyable results, like Young Frankenstein, it's criminal that so few people are unfamiliar with the source. Do yourself a favor and find out where it all came from. It's not nearly as creepy as you may think, but it's infinitely more thought provoking and it certainly doesn't hurt that this version is beautifully published at a very reasonable price.

Most editions of Mary Shelley's landmark book available today follow the heavily revised 1831 version. The impulse behind this trend is an honorable one (to present what is seemingly an author's "final revision"),but the 1818 version is preferable for many reasons. Looking back on her creation in later life, Shelley felt obliged to alter the book's focus in significant ways, adding what critic Marilyn Butler accurately describes as "long passages in which her main narrator, [Victor] Frankenstein, expresses religious remorse for making a creature..." The author sought to make the 1831 edition less controversial and thereby more palatable to the tastes of the reading public. The 1818 version is closer to Mary Shelley's original intentions, though it too, unfortunately, was filtered through the sensibilities of her husband, the poet Percy Shelley, who took many of his wife's rather straightforward passages and rendered them into his own more ornate and Ciceronian style. Still, the 1818 version remains more vital, more original, and less constrained by what the author believed would be acceptable to readers in 1830s England.

Admittedly, I'm not part of the target audience it was written for. But I just think that it could have used a little more character development and the plot could have been refined a little. Also, I felt that the ending was a little too abrupt.
But overall, it was not a bad read. There were some very interesting points in it.

Sometimes I have a couple of minutes that I have nothing to do. This happens rarely. Usually it's because I'm waiting on something else, or I have something to do but it would take more time than I have at that moment. Last week, I had one of those moments where, for a couple of minutes, I had nothing to do. I sure hate to waste those moments, so I saw a book that my wife and I had picked up at a community center for free, and I started to peruse it. The book, as you might imagine, was The Whipping Boy, and the effect was that, after picking it up, I had to search very hard for more free moments so that I could finish the book. I don't know that I would call the book a page turner, but I can say that I was very impressed by it. The Whipping Boy is a young adult novel, but it is written cleverly and uniquely, and while it resembles a lot of good literature, it is a style and a story all its own. Several times in the story I thought I knew what to expect, and in the end, it does turn out that way, but Fleischman does a good job of taking a non-traditional path to get there. He also shows a good understanding for the language and culture of the setting he presents, but he knows how to not bog down the reader into those things either (essential, I think, for a young adult novel). All in all, the story holds up well on its own, fills up the pages nicely, and wraps up appropriately. Maybe I should find another Fleischman story to carry with me in case I stumble across another couple minutes where I have nothing to do.

This book certainly deserved the Newberry Medal. Its a good and interesting story. One that is harsh at first but has a moral in the end.

This was purchased for my son. He says that it is a great book, and he enjoys it alot!

This title was on a Summer Reading List. It was a great, quick read for my son. He is in 6th grade. It kept his interest, he understood it, and he didn't get bored away from reading it. Boys his age were characters in the story.