Curtis Books

This is a GREAT book. Steven Curtis Chapman gives us looks at his personal life, and Scotty Smith gives us better insights on becoming better Christians. Great for all! Grade: A+

I'm at a loss for words, just read this gem of a book if you want to walk in the light with two brothers who know what that means.

Speechless has helped me grow deeper in love with my father and look at my life in a better Prespective. Also if u listen to his music cd it really does help...

What's with those reviewers stating that Scotty Smith takes the grace of God as a license to sin? If you agree with them, PLEASE cite examples. I am troubled by these accusations, which seem to me to be unfounded.

This book is truly inspirational. Steven and Scotty are really open on their struggles and hardships. Each story teaches us something new. This book has reinforsed how being a Christian is more than just being obedient and obeying God's Word. It's trusting in Jesus to work through you. Grace is an awsome thing to understand and accept. This book even brought an even bigger meaning to my favorite scripture of 2Cor 5:17. If your really looking to know more about God's Grace then read this book.

Through death, divorce, or other means the dynamics of many American households has changed from when our parents, or even we were raised. Duties that used to be handled by a cohesive co-parenting unit are now taken on fully by single-parent ones, and most often the head of the single-parent home is a woman. Even if the father is still in the picture, the bulk of raising the children falls largely on the mother, who plays chief cook, bottle washer, and all around Jill-of-all-trades to juggle this task. An overwhelming state to say the least, but in A Single Woman's Parenting Journey, author Carla J. Curtis offers practical and much needed survival tidbits to help make this journey a little less rough.

Backing all of her tidbits with scripture, Carla helps to unlock the strength behind them according to the will of the Creator. She presents a well balanced dose of real life examples, support suggestions, and most importantly prayer - remaining close to the premise of Chapter One and her first survival tactic, putting God first.

CARLA HAS A WAY OF MAKING COMMON SENSE NEW AGAIN! SHE UNDERSTANDS, TRULY, HOW MUCH EXPERIENCE AND SUFFERING AND SUCCESSES AND FAILURES CAN BECOME A FOOTSTOOL TO A BETTER WAY OF LIFE AND ENDURANCE.

THIS BOOK IS A MUST FOR WOMEN AND FOR BROTHERS LIKE MYSELF (ONES WHO WANT TO BE REAL MEN). I'VE LEARNED THINGS FROM HER TO HELP ME PREPARE FOR WHAT'S TO COME...PRICELESS KNOWLEDGE FOR EVERYBODY.

WE'RE LUCKY HER BOOK COST AS [little] AS IT DOES!--FOR REAL!

There was no mention of the religious tone to the book in the description. The book has very large print, which I believe the publisher used to make the book seem like it has something to say; it doesn't. The book is filled with cliche after cliche. There are lots of good books out there for single moms/parents, and this is not one of them. I rarely return books, but this one is going back.

Getting through the day's demanding events can be taxing for most. However, if you are single and trying to raise children alone, maintaining your sanity is more taxing. Carla Curtis has found a solution. She's been there, and through her strong sense of faith,Carla can help fellow sisters find answers. Her survival tips will guide many with good coping techniques and ways of maintaining your daily life. I highly reccomend this author for your perusal. "A Single Woman's Parenting Journey" is right on time.

I appreciate how Carla Curtis includes scriptures for encouragement and has taken the time to research the topic to reach her target audience.

A Single Woman's Parenting Journey is in a simple to read format that can easily be incorporated in the single woman's day.

Chapter 3: Set Your Goals and chapter 4: Love and Pamper Yourself are crucial in any woman's life, yet more so in the life of a single female parent. Re-enforcing goal setting and supporting self-pampering are important "survival tidbits"! I recommend reading these chapters first if you feel lost in a career or over-worked.

A great close to this book are the sample prayers which target specific areas which effect single female parents. This is a great addition to a single female parent's library! -LC

Congratulation. A new standard has been set. Curtis J Montgomery has written a clear, concise and profound investment book based on the timeless wisdom of Sun Tzu's The Art Of War. It is indeed exhilarating to read how the taoist understanding of human psychology (and by implication, the behaviour of capital markets)
as epitomised by Sun Tzu's the Art of War can contribute to superior investment (bottom fishing).

I am going to be in the minority here, and give the book a negative review. This book is only suited to those who have very little experience in fundamental analysis, or those who are a little interested in the Chinese culture. For those who want to learn about Sun Tzu's work, this is probably not a good place to start as the book covers only a small portion of it. Montgomery tries hard to make analogies between Sun Tzu's combat strategies and investment, but only manages to sound convincing half the time. Each new chapter will begin with Sun Tzu's philosophy. Parallels with investment strategies are made. The rest of the chapter would then concentrate on fundamental analysis. The sections of Montgomery's book on fundamental analysis are sound, and the case studies he cites are interesting. Investors who are new to investment would certainly enjoy stories of great investors such as Warren Buffet. The section on how to read financial statements is simple and will gently lead beginners into the area. Perhaps the most frustrating aspect of the book is Montgomery's incessant criticism of technical analysis, day-trading, and swing trading. A biased one-sided comparison given during introductions should be enough to vent his apparent anger at day-traders. Instead, the author launches a fresh salvo every chapter, and enjoys associating technical analysis with tea leaves reading, and likes to take his time to equate day-traders with fools. I think a more grounded argument would have been preferable to petty name calling. One wonders why 1/5 of the book is spent on bashing people who don't do long term investments. A chip on his shoulder, perhaps? If he had any training in technical analysis, he would realise that Sun Tzu's philosophy of universal truths also applies well in that area. My advice: For the price of $30+ (current price), there are far better books on investment (fundamental analysis), and certainly much more enlightening ones on Sun Tzu. If you see this book going for $10 one day, buy it for a change from other investment books. This book is ideal for beginners who want to kill two birds with one stone.

It's amazing how the reasoning and the tactics of an ancient Chinese warrior apply to the modern day stock investor. The battlefields are different but the strategies sre the same. The author makes these comparisons in an easy-to-read style. No wonder he's known throughout Asia as the "Singapore Sage". It is a fine piece of work.

This book has showed how ancient war strategies can be put into practise in todays investment war field. There are illustration on some existing companies showing how Sun Tzu's strategies is being applied. A value add to investment knowledge.

Curtis Montgomery's Sun Tzu on Investing has helped me, a novice at investing, to see the simplicity and strategy involved in making wise investment choices. His use of Sun Tzu's war concepts, such as thinking independently, creativity, and patient planning make investing seem easy. I hope to apply these concepts to any of my future investments, and highly recommend this book to anyone interested in broadening their knowledge of the basic principles of investing.

I can't wait to start using this book! If you like doing crafts with kids, this is a great book. Many projects, all very easy and each one teaches a different form of handbuilding, and one chapter covers throwing. I found the projects very cute and easy!

This is a great book for people who really don't know anything about Clay and want to explore ceramics with their children. It gives enough background and technical information that projects can be successful, but not too much to be overwhelming. Nice very basic information about wedging clay, slab, coil and pinch techniques, and some decorative ideas.
If you already know a little about clay, however, this book is not likely to add much. If you've taken ceramics in college or a community art center, save your money and just grab your kids, a hunk of clay and have some fun!
As Bob Pittman at the Towson State Ceramics Department always said, "Clay is the Way"!

This book really had some great ideas for kids of all ages to build clay projects. The projects are varied, creative and start from very simple projects for little hands - up to more challenging projects for older children. I recommend.

I love this book, as an elementary art teacher I love reading things that are inspiring and that promote creativity in my students without presenting everything step by step. I like the direction of how to put things together and technical items discussed...and the encouragement to take it from there! Great resource for ideas.

The book is full of great projects for kids on the wheel and handbuilders. Most importantly are the helpful instructions on how to teach the wheel thowing process. I gave copies of this book to several new after-school teacher's assistants so that they could understand the teaching process better. It definitely helped.

This is a great story, but this printing is a huge disappointment. The type is large, which is nice, but the book is cheaply made. I have another, older, paperback version that is so much nicer. Better yet, spend the money and buy the hardback.

Great Book. The book came quickly and was in great shape.

I have a vivid memory of reading this book when I was in the 2nd or 3rd grade. It is a great read, a colorful twist on the familiar Cinderella-story of a conventionally "poor" lady and her romance with a very wealthy male lead.

As a child, I gained confidence in reading something called a "chapter book" and I imagine that your children will appreciate that as well, without facing the daunting consequences of reading a chapter book beyond their capabilities.

For the very young, I would suggest reading with your child as I remember struggling with some of the words in "The King's Equal" when I was 9.

And as other reviewers have pointed out, this is a great book for its illustrations as well. I don't know if this version is the same that I read (I remember a teal cover) but if it is, check out the page where they display some of the belles of the ball. Those ones are the most fabulous throughout.

Generously illustrated and beautifully told, this story of companionship and cunning invites us to play with perspectives and the possibility that perhaps the greatest magic is the support of a friend.

I would recommend this book if only for the beautifully detailed illustrations. This is truly a wonderful book with a great message about the value of character and friendship rather than physical beauty and wealth. Not your typical fairy tale. Has a very positive, courageous girl character.

A Very Good Screenplay! Like it like the movie!

"~This simple story about a travel bookstore owner and a famous actress is a romantic-comedy that's actually funny! appreciated with the written screenplay, which is where this hilarious movie formed from.

I'm a sucker for this guy. No, not that guy, not Hugh, but Richard Curtis. And Tim McInnerny. I liked the movie, of course--otherwise I wouldn't have bothered reading the screenplay--but the screenplay was better than the movie. Edited-out scenes, alternate storylines, a very funny afterword, lovely pictures. Plus the book's printed on just the most wonderful paper. I'm a sucker for good paper.

I enjoyed the movie greatly, but it was reading the script which really made me appreciate the sheer genius behind it all. Kudos to Richard Curtis! It is amazing how much he manages to get into a scene - everything WORKS, to tug at the heart strings or strike the funny bone.

The script reveals a few of the artistic choices that had to be made in the process of creating the script and the movie; however, this is a very polished end product - definately a last draft (with a few choice bits of scenes that did not make the cut at the end) and perfectly co-ordinated with film stills and photographs, all on luxurious glossy paper.

However, it is amazing how, having watched the film and knowing the charactrers, it is possible to visualise scenes in your head while reading the script - an especial plus for the left out scenes. I am now dying to compare my imagination with the director's cut, which I have been told might be available on the DVD version.

This is one of my favorite movies, and incidentally, my favorite screenplay! It's an excellent representation of the movie--many full-color pictures of the best scenes in the movie. It even includes story boards, cast and unit lists, and an afterword by Hugh Grant. The photographs were taken by Clive Coote, one of Great Britain's most famous photographers.

Almost everything I'd seen before I bought the book only included pictures of Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant--this book is different! It doesn't leave out Spike or any of the other small but memorable characters.

Anyone who's a fan of the movie will love this exquisite book. It gets an A+ from me!

well-written--anyone interested in the life of Edward Curtis will find this "fiction" an absorbing read.

Curtis is one of my favorite photographers, and I bought this book solely on that criterium. What a delight, after setting it aside for a few months, to pick it up and realize it was so much more interesting than I expected, that I read it in a morning. Beautifully crafted and wonderfully descriptively worded -- what a pleasure.

Both postmodern and post-9/11, this enjoyable novel covers a lot of different ground, mixes genres and happily writes its own author in as a central character. Fortunately for us, Marianne Wiggins (the character) is one heck of a travel companion, paying a cross-desert visit to Las Vegas that evokes droll memories of the high spirits still echoing there from Hunter Thompson's drug-addled visit more than 35 years ago. I speak here of the novel as it "lights out for the territory" on page 155. Before that, it's chiefly a fictionalized history of a young woman's cross-country trip to 19th-century Seattle, where she has the misfortune (there's no other word for it) of crossing paths with renowned Western photographer Edward S. Curtis - not just crossing paths but marrying him for better or worse (mostly worse). Without giving too much away, it can be said that the novel accounts in this way for the appeal of "go west, young man" for a certain breed of men with a specific sort of impatience for civilization and its discontents.

I admit, I was ready to write off this novel at p. 155 for its slow pace and the funny but facile observartions about life in LA common to those who come here from somewhere else - turgid freeway traffic, fault lines, vapid movie people. But, hold onto your hat, the book takes off like a firecracker after that. I don't know if this helps, but I was reminded of my gleeful reaction to David Lynch's "Mulholland Drive," with its crazy but inevitable turns of plot. And while multiple interlinking plots do provide the framework for the narrative such as it is, Wiggins' own ruminations on the American experience of the West are really at the core of the novel, especially as she keeps connecting dots and pulling together loose ends, sometimes bringing the threads of several independent streams of conscious together into a single paragraph. Suspend your disbelief at the door and plunge in. This one is a treat.

It is hard to know where to begin praise for this book, there are so many different mysteries to be solved. Wiggins has managed to incorporate themes of race, identity, holocaust, personal freedom, responsibility, and has even added touches of humor that make the reader laugh out loud. There was a section that almost made me put the book down, where it slid dangerously close to romance novel, but remembering the early, contemporary scenes that so thoroughly engaged me, I kept at it, and was very very glad I had. That section was weak for a reason, which although not spelled out, became apparent in the resolution.

This story weaves the past (1850-1950) and the present (post 9-11) where Wiggins, the author and also the narrator, tells the story of the legendary (but complicated) life of photographer Edward Curtis (and his family) along with her own introspective and retrospective look at her father's life. Both men were in search...were on the run...were absent and disappearing fathers...who left a trail of consequences behind.

Human beings are not what they seem to be on the surface - there are nuances and shadows which we will never fully understand - yet in many ways, we are all connected between the past and the present. Here are a few words from Wiggins' book to give you a flavor of the beautiful writing you can expect:

"I watch the smoke braid and rise into the tree, a shadow branching growth, a ghost, and I think about the ways that lives can intertwine, the way one life touches on another, our lives and all the lives of others a long continuous tread - a train - of independent yet contiguous action."

If you enjoyed this gem of a book, you'll love Wiggins' "Evidence of Things Unseen," a National Book Award finalist.

The thing I didn't like about Elijah of Buxton is that I was having trouble with the slang... I understand that it added kind of a uniqeness to the book, but what's the use if you can't even READ the book? So that was a little bit bothersome. And also, there's not as much dialogue, (which for my prefrance, I enjoy lots of dialogue) and Elijah sometimes rambles a little bit throughout the book, which can sometimes get boring and endless.
I had to read this book for book club, and I ended up just skimming it, because I just really didn't like it... This is only my opinion. The one good thing about the book though, is that it's religious, and sends a very positive message to stay strong in tough times.

Christopher Paul Curtis is one of my favorite adolescent authors. I read Bub, Not Buddy to my 8th graders every year (Great Depression) and The Watson's Go To Birmingham: 1963 (during a Civil Rights Movement unit). This school year I discovered Elijah of Buxton and read it to my students during my unit on American Slavery. None of my students had read the book and we were all on the edge of our seats together. This book has great voice and I especially enjoyed the dialect. My students and I throughly enjoyed this book. I would highly recommend it to students to read, parents to read to their kids and teachers to read to their students! I cannot say enough good things about this book.

Like Christopher Paul Curtis' other books, Elijah of Buxton is full of emotions from laughter to tears. It is a touch of history with a surprise ending. I loved the adventure, the suspense, the humor, and the characters. As an educator I highly recommend this book for adults and older children to enjoy.

*Elijah of Buxton* is an exciting historical fiction book about a boy named
Elijah who is the first child born free in Buxton. It is about the Preacher
who doesn't care for anyone in Buxton and who lies about everything. He
tells Elijah that one type of snake is outrageously dangerous and when his
mom plays a trick on him he finds that they are harmless. He still trusts
the Preacher so he goes to a carnival in a neighboring white town. The
preacher takes a boy in slavery from the white town and brings him to
Buxton. Then a single wife in Buxton finds out that her husband has died so
she gives her wood cutter Mr Leroy the money she was saving to buy her
husband out of slavery so he can buy his family out of slavery. Mr Leroy
gives the preacher his money because everybody still trusts him and because
he has contacts to buy people out of slavery. Elijah goes away from Buxton
and comes back with a slaves baby he found. The book ends with many
questions and is open to lots of predictions and questions.

Elijah of Buxton captured my interest on the first page. It is emotional,
dramatic and leaves you wondering at the end of each chapter. If you are
going to read a historical fiction book start with this one. I would
definitely recommend this book to 4th grade and up.

This is one of the most amazing historical-fiction books that I have ever read! How the author mixes in survival, action, and comedy into the theme is absolutely wonderful. What adds to this already fantastic book is that it touches on how most free slaves in Buxton would never go back to America. That just shows how bad things were. One of the many shocking things is when Mr. Leroy back-hands Elijah to the ground. It was so fast and unexpected. Personally, I find it unsurprising when Mr. Leroy's money is stolen. Also, the fact that Elijah uses chunking stones to fish and defend himself from a vicious dog is very unique to me. The only thing that I did not like was the ending, that is it. There is a lesson to be learned from this story: with persaverence and an iron will you can make it happen. The climax of the book is when Mr. Leroy's money is stolen. The most exciting part is when Elijah and Mr. Leroy go after the thief. That is one more thing people will never forget about Elijah, along with being the first freeborn in Buxton and throwing up on Mr. Frederick Douglas as a baby. This book also shows how much different Canada and the U.S. were back then, and maybe even today.

I've read several of Coel's Native American-themed mysteries featuring Arapahoe attorney Vicky Holden and Jesuit Priest John O'Malley. If you live in the West, or just like the West, these books are a must, as Coel, a Coloradoan by choice, does much to evoke the weather, colors and feel of the high plains. All of the mysteries are set in Wyoming's Wind River area, including the large Indian reservation there. In this outing, two mysteries, one present-day, and one set at the turn of the 20th century, come together, and before all is said and done, 6 Indians are murdered, three in the name of a twisted and prejudicial justice. Old photos that have recently come to light may hold the images of Bashful Woman's true murderer's identity. Unfortunately whomever owns those glass plate images today is in danger of also being killed, hired by a mercenary of one of Wyoming's most influential ranchers/politicians, who also happens to be running for president. Despite much bloodshed, the two mysteries are nicely melded together, and the very likeable characters of Father John and Vicky are the glue that makes it all stick; their deep and abiding passion for each other, forbidden by the church that Father John finds himself questioning more and more, serves as a good foil to another romantic character, attorney Adam Lone Eagle, who has serious designs on Vicky, but whether or not his intentions are personal or professional is left up in the air. Coel tells an interesting story, set in an interesting part of the country that is remote enough that not many people really know about it, and yet mysterious for that very remoteness. Highly Recommended.

This series does truly keep getting better and better. This is my favourite book so far, and I still have two or three more to go. I love Father John O'Malley. He is so real that I can't help going through all his angst with him. Vicky is a good character too. This book has non-stop tension from beginning to end. It actally starts in October 1907 and Coel weaves back and forth from then to the present day. When an historic photographer's works are shown at the Wind River Museum, Father O'Malley has no idea that these pictures would wake up a sleeping terror that has lain dormant for almost 100 years. Vicky and Father John are drawn into a web of terror and a cover-up that is incendiary as it was in 1907. Of course there are more dead bodies along the way, but Father John and Vicky stick with it until they discover the truth of what happened on the reserve in 1907. This books was riveting, and I just couldn't put it down. Can't wait for the next one.

A reconstruction of plains life for an 1907 photograph by Edward Curtis was used as a mask for murder. The killer reaches into the present to eliminate any knowledge of the tragedy of Bashful, the young women who was murdered.
Past and present collide as when the photograph goes on display at the Mission Museum. A descendant of one of the chief's in the photo is murdered and the director of the museum disappears. A close friend of Vicky Holden's is murder. Then her husband is tortured and murdered.
Father John and Vicky must reach into the past and to the powerful to find the answers to the string of deaths in the Chief Sharp Nose's family.
A fast read with the smooth flow of Margaret Coel which makes the Wind River series one of the best of the Native American mysteries.
Nash Black, author of TRAVELERS and SINS OF THE FATHERS.

Margaret Coel has a new fan. This is the first Coel novel I have read and I truly enjoyed it. Coel deftly weaves the murder of an Arapaho woman in 1907 to a present day murder of another Arapaho woman. In 1907 Edward S. Curtis captures the murder of Bashful by her White husband during a stagged attack on an Indian village, but the evidence remains hidden for nearly a century. When a Wyoming Senator, the grandson of that long ago White man, wants to make his bid for U.S. President Curtis's pictures become important enough for him to kill for, and that he does by killing a direct descendent of Bashfu in order to keep the truth hidden.

Despite the obvious history between Coel's key characters; Attorney Vicky Holden and Priest, John O'Malley, the reader does not need to know about it to have the story make sense.

There are some disappointments in Coel's writing. For example, the Wind River reservation is comprised of Arapaho and Shoshone, not just Arapaho, and there was not one mention of the Shoshone. There is no Arapaho County in Wyoming, but there is one in Colorado where Coel is reported to live. More detail to the traditional and contemporary lives of the Arapaho people would have made the book that much more interesting. All in all it was a good read.

T.J. Painted Horse's wife, Denise, is dead, an apparent suicide. Further investigation reveals that she was murdered. The obvious suspect, T.J., swears to his attorney Vicky Holden that he didn't do it, and she believes him. Until she finds out that he's been cheating on Denise for quite some time, that Denise was thinking seriously about divorcing T.J., that his alibi is non-existent. T.J. maintains that his enemies, the people on the rez who want some methane gas drilling sites allowed, killed Denise because they couldn't get to T.J. This is a reasonable possibility, but not first on anyone's list.

At just about the same time that Denise is killed, Christine Nelson,the new curator at the local museum, disappears. Is this a coincidence? When her husband comes looking for her, the disappearance becomes ominous; her husband is a very controlling, very dangerous man with powerful friends.

While investigating Denise's murder, and trying to protect her client, Vicky Holden uncovers some ties to a local politician. Wyomin Senator Jaime Evans is getting ready to announce his bid for the presidency. Evan's grandfather was married to an Arapaho, Bashful Woman. She was killed during the photographing by Edward S. Curtis of a staged attack on an Arapaho village. The Indians portraying the attackers were convicted of killing Bashful Woman, and hanged. Since then, some descendants of Bashful Woman's father, Chief Sharp Nose, have died; their deaths have not all been from natural causes, the murders have not been solved.

Wife of Moon is a very well-written mystery. Margaret Coel has written seven other books in this series. This is the first one I've read. There is obviously a lot of history between Vicky Holden and Father John O'Malley; while not knowing that history made me curious, it did not detract from the story. The plotting is tight. The characters, even when not particularly likeable, are believable. I know about half-way through the book what the key to the story was, but not how it would be used, or where it would take me. The interweaving of the back-story (from 1907) and the current events was seamless. The historical details in the author's note at the end were interesting, and relevant.

All in all, this was a thoroughly enjoyable read. I will add Margaret Coel's series to my list of "Stuff I Want to Read", and see if my local library has The Eagle Catcher in their collection. I suggest that if you haven't already read Coel, and you like contemporary mysteries set in the southwest, with Native American protagonists, that you do the same.

I am a fan of the Briefcase Series; this is my fourth or fifth book from the series. However, I am a little disappointed with this book because it did not offer practical advice on a particular problem I am facing, inheriting a troubled project / turning around a troubled project. To my surprise, Project Management for Dummies, which was one of my first books on PM several years ago, actually dealt with this topic. So perhaps I had an expectation gap. If you are new to Project Management and need a good overview of the fundamentals, this is probably a "5 star" book for you. If you are already a practicing, experienced PM, then this likely won't be very valuable to you.

Book is good for someone that already has experience in project management. Some of the sections are kind of drawn out but good none the less. I would recommend this to others.

I've been in the field for roughly 10 years and I find this book to be provide sound theortical and practical advice. There are a lot books that explain the theory/science of project management (pm), but few that also deal with the art of pm. Yes, advanced theories and methods are useful, but 80% of your time is spent on the basics, which most PM get wrong, at least part of the time, during a project.

The book's focus in on-track. It provides the author's personal perspective and advice based on "war wounds." I use it as a primier reference for day-to-day issues on projects and serves as a useful reminder on issues we take for granted.

This is an excellent text for indviduals new to project management as well as experienced project managers. While short on advanced project management tools and techniques, the book does provide solid advice and best-practice guidance for achieving project success...well done! One recommendation would be to package a CD with document templates.

This is a basic PM book with little insight towards growth of your PM skills. Too much is not covered like SOWs, Activity Charts and such and very little is really touched in depth. Another downside is the Brad story is so simplistic as to be boring. Pass by.