Elliott Books

My 12 year old son (6th grader) is a reluctant reader. I usually set a number of pages that he must read and he actually went beyond the goal at the first sitting. I know this book is geared for ages 7-10 but it held his interest and he enjoyed it so don't let the age range be your guide. It's a good read for boys who seem to be more interested in...well other things besides reading books--Mission Accomplished.

Margaret Peterson Haddix's DEXTER THE TOUGH tells of new kid Dexter, whose defense against being new is to assume a tough exterior confronting principal, janitor, and kids who laugh at him. His determination to handle family and school problems with a tough display will lead to trouble unless he modifies his approach in DEXTER THE TOUGH.

I truly enjoyed this book. Is the personal narrative of rev. Charles Todd Quintard who fought for the Confederacy in the Army of Tennessee. Dr. Quintard had several good uses in the army: one is that he was a doctor that had practiced medicine, another is that he was a fine chaplain. He had some personal friendship with some of the Confederate generals. One night he and General Kirby Smith went together to a church. They both knelt and prayed that the war would soon come to an end. These are stories that I will never forget. Dr. Quintard published a little devotional book called "Balm For The Weary and The Wounded". He sent this little booklet out to the men in the Army of Tennessee. Sam R. Watkins who wrote "Co. Aytch" praised Quintard highly for helping to lift the spirits of the men. Quintard ran several Confederate army hospitals.
This book is great reading for fun and information.

A smorgastborg of material - a memoir, a short diary, generous identifying footnotes, a lengthy bibliography, a name index - present the war and post-war experiences of Charles Todd Quintard. Read this for a sense of the fervent religious climate of the times and one of the great men who nurtured it.

For the most part the stories in Fetish were very predictable. You've read one erotic compilation you've read them all. However, there were two stories that stood out for me which were the twisted, raunchy "Trisexual" and the freaky, perverted "Balcony".

If you want to get your groove on, all on your lonesome, then pick up a copy of Fetish! I had a blast with the Threesome story,the Kat Burglar and The Voice! I would love to see this book go film! All of you who like a good, juicy sex book with all the trimmings need to get a copy, get a good cup of java and some chocolate and endulge yourself into the world of Black Fetishes! I can't wait to see another book like this!

The compilation of articles in this book gives a wide overview of the many techniques that are used in economic forecasting and each article compares the virtues of its approach with others that are used. Some readers, especially those who are just beginning their careers in econometrics and financial modeling may believe that economic models form a hierarchy, with the best ones being on top while the marginal ones are at the bottom. In addition, some may believe that more modern approaches are better than the ones taken several decades ago or conversely that no improvements have been made in economic modeling since it was established as a profession. As an example, recently a former chairman of the Federal Reserve stated that the economic forecasting tools of today are no better than ones in existence fifty years ago. He offered no evidence for this claim, no doubt because of the gargantuan amount of effort it would take to establish it. Indeed, to compare econometric models requires agreement on what constitutes a "valid" or "good" model, and once this is settled one frequently requires another model to do the comparisons. In addition, models are built for particular situations, domains, and contexts, and it is very common for a model to work much better than another in one context but fail miserably when compared to the other in another context. Ordinary linear regression for example can be better than more "sophisticated" approaches like neural networks in some areas of application. A more complex model is therefore not necessarily better than one that is relatively simple. So economic models do not form a hierarchy under any nontrivial classification of merit, nor can it be said that no progress has been made in economic modeling over the past fifty years.

The approaches to economic modeling as outlined in this book definitely support the idea that there is no free lunch when it comes to forecasting. It is the context that governs the efficacy of one model over another, and it might be said with fairness that the ability to select the proper model for this context comes with experience. This experience is definitely reflected in the authors that have composed the articles in this book. Readers will probably not read every article in the book, but will instead select those that interest them or those that show the most practical promise.

For this reviewer, some of the highlights of this work include:
* The discussion of the two principles behind Bayesian forecasting: the principle of explicit formulation and the principle of relevant conditioning. The later principle is always violated by non-Bayesian forecasting techniques
* A view of economic models of being "means", not "ends". This distinction is one to be kept in mind especially at the present time where financial modeling and economic forecasting is being blamed for much, if not all, of the turmoil in the financial markets.
* The discussion of the importance and need for discarding irrelevant information when doing simulations of joint distributions. As discussed in the book the justification for this omission can be given a sound, quantitative foundation.
* The importance of doing simulations rather than finding analytical solutions in economic modeling.
* More in-depth discussion on how to choose the prior distribution in Bayesian economic forecasting, thus removing some of the objections of this selection always being "purely subjective."
* The discussion on `hyperparameters' and their connection to latent variables and `hierarchical prior distributions.' These notions have recently been applied to forecasting of housing prices. The book mentions many other applications.
* The discussion on the `Bayes factor' and its use in assessing the evidence in favor of one economic model versus another. Recently the notion of a Bayes factor has been generalized in the field of artificial intelligence, wherein it is used to measure to what degree one machine is more "intelligent" (i.e. can better solve problems) than another.
* The discussion on the role of `posterior predictive' distributions in the construction of new economic models.
* The discussion on state space models, particularly the Kalman filter and its Bayesian interpretation. More discussion on the evaluation of the likelihood function would be appropriate here, especially computational issues surrounding the inversion of the innovation matrix.

Some of the downsides to the book include:
* There are relatively few explicit numerical examples illustrating the efficacies of the different models.
* Some of most important discussions are delegated to the references, although the reference list is quite extensive.
* The more "exotic" approaches to modeling, most of these coming from the field of artificial intelligence, are omitted or are only discussed briefly. Omitted topics include support vector machines, hidden Markov models, and inductive logic programming.
* No in-depth discussion of the tractability/computational complexity of the econometric models included. Issues of tractability are very important to those who are to implement these models in practice.

This is the most comprehensive and authoritative source of reference for the econometric forecasting, I've seen. The editors and the writers are from the top of the discipline. Many texts are fairly mathematical, so the solid understanding of the basics of the statistics and the time series econometrics is required.

Heiress Beware is the 6th book in the Elliotts series. It is Bridget Elliott's story of love, romance and definitely intrigue. Bridget is set out to destroy her grandfather, the patriach of Elliott Publishing Holdings, Patrick Elliott, at all costs. The family have been put through enough time after time at Patrick's doing. Therefore, Bridget travels to Colorado to "dig up" dirt or "uncover" information to put in the book she plans to write to set things straight for her family, especially her beloved aunt Finola. However, things does not go as planned. Bridget's car breaks down and she falls, hits her head, and suffers amnesia. Therefore, she does not remember who she is or where she is from. She is rescued by the young, handsome sheriff, Mac Riggs. Bridget goes home to live with Mac and his sister. During the time Bridget is there, she falls for Mac and the feelings are mutual. Oh Mac, what will happen when or if Bridget regains her memory? Will she leave the man who loves her or will she choose to stay? Dear Mac, Bridget is an heiress, so beware of the heiress. Is she too rich for your blood or will love overrule?

Bridget Elliott is the photo editor at Charisma magazine and a member of the prestigious Elliott family of New York. Her family's money comes from their publishing empire headed by patriarch, Patrick Elliott. Patrick made his money through scheming and deception, and as his granddaughter Bridget hopes to expose his many secrets in the hopes of bringing her family's shady history into the light. To that end, she goes on a trek across the country in order to find her aunt's missing love child who was given up for adoption against her will. When her rental car breaks down in a small town in Colorado, Bridget decides to try and walk to the nearest city. She wakes up on the side of the road with no recollection of her past or her name. The sheriff who finds her, Mac Riggs, offers to let Bridget move in with him and her younger sister while she recuperates from her amnesia. Calling her Jane Doe, Mac can't help but be attracted to her good looks and lush body. With no past memories to come between them, Bridget makes a new life for herself as Jane and begins to fall in love with Mac. Only they both know it's just a matter of time before she regains her memory...

Heiress Beware is one of the best Harlequin romances I've read recently, even if the title is a misnomer. First of all, Bridget is never in any danger. No one is out to kill her and, as far as we know, she just fell while trying to make an impossibly long hike back to town in high-heeled boots. Therefore, "Beware" is a little unnecessary. Still, Charlene Sands has the talent that many other Harlequin authors lack. She fleshed out her story completely, her love scenes were solid, and her hero was interesting without coming off as brooding or pompous. All in all, it was a solid little book. Still not up to the quality of a full-length romance, Heiress Beware is about as good as you're likely to get from Harlequin. In that respect, it comes highly recommended.

This is a solid review book. My son did exceptionally well using this review book (He won a scholarship because of his scores) and additional practice tests from other review books.

This is a great book to prepare for the entry test to Catholic schools. My child used the review questions over and over to get a "feel" for the test questions. She aced the test and received early admission to the school of her choice.

After I purchased this book, I realized that the book looked very much like a sub-set of the 1200 page Engineering Drawing and Design by David Madsen published by Delmar.

This is a very good text/reference book that is written very well for anyone who is looking to learn and to create engineering drawings. The book is very user friendly, with numerous illustrations and white area. The book covers the in-depth ASME drawing standards. If you are looking for a great book that covers both drawing and design, purchase the Engineering Drawing and Design book. It is more expense, but you get 500 pages of additional design information.

This is an in depth tutorial and reference book, masterfully written and made accessible for whoever is looking for the serious knowledge, the part dealing with geometric tolerances is particularly impressive, the author did his best to nail down this elusive and often skipped subject. I am recommending this book to my students

This book is both a travel guide and an informative short history of the Jewish experience in and around Bialystok, Poland (near Belarus). I recently journeyed to Bialystok with it as my guidebook. If you are thinking about going on a similar journey, this book is absolutely essential as both a guide (be sure to go on the walking tour of Bialystok) and as background reading. Even if you are not planning a trip, I still recommend this book for its rich collection of old photographs and lucid historical discussions.

Since the Nazis so effectively erased most signs of the Jews in Poland (and the communists erased some of what remained), this book is like a treasure map. Wisniewski identifies every memorial plaque, grave, and building that was once connected to the Jewish community in Bialystok and about 30 smaller communities. Each description is accompanied by a short discussion of the relevant history. Unlike guides that only describe what is visible, in 'Jewish Bialystok,' when there is nothing left (or next to nothing), Wisniewski informs the reader what happened before, during and after WWII. My sole criticism is that the directions are often vague and the maps inadequate. These shortcomings were more than made up by the wealth of information Wisniewski provides about each town and village. The book also includes sources for additional historical and geneological information.

I can trace my roots back to the area but was unfamiliar with much of the local history, so I thoroughly enjoyed the book and will recommend it to others interested in Jewish life before the Holocaust.

I wrote a longer review for the Narewka mailing list I run, if you want to joing send a blank message to narewka-subscribe@j-geek.org.

Finally this Shabbat we received the long awaited Bialystock book (Jewish Bialystok and Surroundings in Eastern Poland, by Tomasz Wisniewksi), I spent one afternoon on Succot reading it.

The book was small only 147 pages and I was able to read half of it in one afternoon. It is well written and provides a good insight into how people must have lived in the region. It also inspired my father and I to want to visit the area, perhaps in the next year.

The 'chapter' on Narewka was brief, about three pages.

This 2nd volume to Lang Elliott's excellent series follows the same format as the 1st. 35 common birds from Killdeer to Canadian Geese to various Owls and Woodpeckers are included. They are grouped into 5 categores: Open Country & Brushy Areas; Marsh, Lake, Stream & Swapm; Forest & Pinewoods; Northwoods & High Mountains and Saltmarsh & Seashore(though fortunately this does not change the track listing and seems to serve more as a thematic than a practical difference from the first volume).

The selection is not as inspired as the 1st and the series has been usurped by the easier to find (still in print as of this review) "Common Birds and their Songs" book and audio and the "Stokes Field Guide to Bird Songs". Still, if you come across Vol. 2, I would recommend it.

This 2 volume set is great. It gives lots of bird sounds, including different kinds of calls for each bird. It seems accurate and is helpful for the serious or amateur bird watcher. Not that it matters a whole lot, but it comes in a nice looking, sturdy case too.

They might produce offspring like Mr. Roosevelt.

This is a very bad book, and an insult to the memory of Mr. Roosevelt's great mother, Eleanor. Mrs. Roosevelt isn't the only one to suffer, Joan Crawford and Tallulah Bankhead are made to do some rather nasty and entirely fictional things.

I had just recommended this book to a friend and was appalled to read the nasty review. they forgot that it is fiction.

I loved this book especially since we go every year to Pawley's
Island where it is set,

The use of personalities already known of jusst adds interest to the plot.

The estate at Hobcaw Barony was given to the state of S. C. and may be visited with a tour given.

Hope this will be helpful to those who might otherwise be put off by the review.