Ford Books

This book provides an indepth look at all aspects of falconry. The section on preparing to recieve a bird was very helpful and detailed. I have never read a book which has provided such a detailed description of all common birds used in the sport. I recommend that everyone who is beginning in this sport, or is considering taking it up should read this book. The only problem about this book is that it talks too much about the law in England, which is not relevant to us in North America.

This is a great book for anyone interested in falconry! EmmaFord describes everything in detail and she guided me through myapprenticeship with ease. However, it also contains sound advice for the experienced falconer.

She discusses the most common hawks used in the sport and guides one through the manning and training of the three main groups: Shortwings, Broadwings and Longwings. At the end of the part dealing with the training of the group, she explains hunting with them in detail.

There is a complete chapter on equipment and will help the apprentice to choose the right equipment, with the hawk's safety in mind .

For those unfamiliar with falconry terms, there is a nice glossary explaining them in detail.

I would advise anyone interested in hunting with birds of prey to get this great book by one of the leaders in the field! END

As a somewhat informed novice, I found this book very interesting and informative. It has good descriptions of the birds used in falconry as well as thorough beginning training techniques. However, the buyer should know this book was written for falconry in the UK. Topics such as governing laws, terrain terms and types of quarry are often "foreign" to ours in the U.S.

I found "Falconry: Art and Practice" very interesting and fascinating. The author included personal details, sometimes humorous, describing the beauty of the art, not just the instructions and facts, helpful as they were. The book was also easy and enjoyable to read.

This book was great!! It had so much information I had to read it 3 times to get it all. It has so much info like how to make your own equipment,how to train your bird, tells all the equipment you need to have, and so much more.

The book is very good except that most of the book is from a UK point of view. The book has some good adresses in the back for all of your falconry needs. If you are a novice a seasoned falconer,or just someone interested in Birds of Prey you should get this book.

I REALLY ENJOYED THIS BOOK. IT WAS GREAT TO READ ABOUT WHITEY'S OPINIONS, REASONS, EXPERIENCES, AND SOME GREAT BASEBALL STORIES. I AM A BIG FAN OF WHITEY'S AND HAVE BEEN SINCE THE 60'S. GLAD TO HEAR FROM HIM IN THIS ONE OF A KIND BOOK. WHITEY IS VERY HONEST, OPEN, AND HAS GREAT INSIGHT IN RANKING THE BEST TEAM IN BASEBALL POSOTION BY POSITION. A MUST READ FOR ALL FANS AND ESPECIALLY YANKEE FANS. THANKS WHITEY, FOR A GREAT READ AND A LOT OF ENTERTAINMENT. VERY HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

Whitey Ford's new book,with former Yankee beat writer Phil Pepe,is a winner.Picking the top 5 players at each position might seem easy,until you sit and think about the long line of great players the Yankees have fielded.Not that theres a lot of controversy,but a couple of Ford's picks might surprise you.Its an enjoyable rehash for older fans with mostly familiar anecdotes.It's also an education for younger fans who might not be familiar with past Yankee greats.And the cover photo is indeed a Yankee cap,worn by them in the early 20's,although I feel that the navy blue cap with the white interlocking NY would have been a better choice.

Reading Whitey Ford's "Few and Chosen" is like listening to him....soft-spoken with a twinkle in his eye. This is a book you can pick up and put down and not miss much. The stories are usually short (sometimes too short) and the anecdotes are just about what you'd expect to hear from "The Chairman of the Board".

I appreciate Whitey Ford's honesty with regard to players who preceded him. He doesn't comment on them much because he didn't see them play. Still, he gives what impressions he has. After reading Tim McCarver's disappointing and overworked "Perfect Season" several years ago, "Few and Chosen" is like a breath of fresh air.

There are a few new facts (new to me, anyway) that come out in his book, like the small numbers of home runs hit by players before Babe Ruth. Things of this nature help to make baseball more interesting to many of us.

Whitey Ford pitched the first baseball game I ever saw in 1963. I'm glad he's still around to pass on his observations to us.

I don't proclaim to be a great Yankee fan but a great baseball fan. This book has something for everyone. Besides ranking the greatest Yankees, I agree with most disagree with some, Whitey just provides some stories about players that are riveting. Most you have never heard or read anywhere else. That is what is exciting to me. These stories really bring alive a time and place that baseball was and is trying to get back to. You are brought back in time to a place in America when baseball was all important. Now you can at least experience the fun of reading about it and being there for a while.

I recently read the book written by Whitey Ford, entitled Few and Chosen, published by Triumph Books. I found the book to be extremely enjoyable and very well-written. Whitney Ford offers personal and insightful analyses of the five best players at each position, and the contributions made by the players. The book provides a very creative review of the accomplishments and the character of the great players who played for the New York Yankees. I enjoyed reading the book very much. I commend Triumph Books for publishing such a creative and enjoyable book, and I highly recommend the book and the work of Whitey Ford.

Gave this to my husband for his birthday after seeing the artist etc. on a TV show. He was thrilled, the pictures were really sharp and clear and it made for very interesting reading. Just loved it.

I purchased this book for my husband as a gift. He wanted it to put on our coffee table. The cover of the book has a crease down the middle of it. After what I paid for this book, is there anyway I can exchange it for one that does not have a crease down the middle.

Thank you.

Lisa Mitchell

The paintings are incredibly beautiful and text is informative. Great
coffee table book for a sports fisherman and lover of art.

bought for a christmas gift...and was perfect. shipping, packaging, price!

thanks

Once and awhile a book comes along that touches your senses and raises your emotions, FISH is just such a book. Flick Ford's beautiful watercolors of the 77 fish species are the best since S.F.Denton did his over 100 years ago. These complimented by the moving and lighthearted text of Dean Travis Clarke as well as Peter Kaminsky's introduction make this book sure to be a timeless classic. It's the type of book the reader can pick up at any time and turning to any page leave ourselves to go to that place inside that brings us all the peace we experience streamside, casting into a rolling surf, or trolling a pattern offshore. FISH is a perfect book, and anyone who even remotely loves the sport of angling or appreciates these amazing creatures should have a copy in their library and one wrapped as a gift for that special angling friend.

The book's central metaphor, comparing animation scriptwriting to a highway, was totally lost on me and therefore I didn't find the book very helpful. I understood the basic idea of the metaphor, but in presentation it felt as if I was being asked to learn a foreign language that I would never use again after finishing the book. I pretty much felt annoyed as I read through the book looking for information of value. "Central Question Avenue," indeed. Sections that listed the key points of animation scriptwriting in plain English would have been greatly appreciated. I consider this book an example of an author trying too hard to be clever. Concepts of narratology can generally be expressed in plain language and I would prefer that they are expressed that way. This book may work for you if you buy into the author's conceit and then follow it chapter by chapter and step by step in producing a script. I consider its value as a reference book next to nil. I had hoped for something more like Syd Field's screenplay books where you can use summaries of the process to prompt you after getting the basic overall concept. Also, I felt that Internet cartoons were ignored as is the case with most books of this type.

This is BY FAR the best, most concise, easy to understand, easy to follow, fun book on the subject of animation screenwriting. It covers 22, 11, and 7 minute formats and I highly recommend it.

This is a great book for anyone that wants to learn the structure of writing for animated shows. It reveals the formula for creating successful stories, characters, and scripts.

The only drawback was the overuse of the road sign analogies. Don't get me wrong, they work fine to illustrate the points, but I just felt there were too many of them.

In any case, an excellent book if you're starting out your career in animation...like me:)!

Is a shame that a great book like this only have one review until now ( and a wrong one ) hence I'll try to correct this.

NOTE: Be aware that this review is for the GARDNER'S GUIDE TO ANIMATION SCRIPTWRITING ( this review is wrongly appearing TOO in the "Gardner's guide to Multimedia & animation Studios", some kind of problem in Amazon.com I Think, :-( SORRY Chaz )

I bought this book in August 2001, if you are looking for books about scripts there are many ones, some very good, but any is writed exclusively thinking in animation and cartoons. For the animator this is an invaluable reference, here is the summary:

1.- Animation - An Overview
2.- Cartoon Genres
3.- The Moral
4.- Central Idea
5.- Dead End Ahead - The Central question
6.- The Characters and the Character Arc
7.- Introduction to Plot
8.- The Twenty-Two minute Structure
9.- The Eleven Minute Structure
10.- The Seven Minute Structure
11.- Make 'Em Laugh - Levels of Humor
12.- Prose
13.- Dialogue
14.- The Scene
15.- Broadcast Guidelines
16.- The Rewrite
17.- The Writing Process of Animation
Glossary, Cartoonography, Filmography, Road Map Forms, Apendix

The book itself have a good easyreading design, with plenty of quotations and references to well known movies or series, here you have the basics of writing but you can find more profound books about this, the special of the book is that is writed for cartoons specially, have 3 chapters studying the structures of the cartoonscript of 7, 11 and 22 minutes, of course you can apply all the information for an animation of any length, movies or shorts.

Including checklists for Structure, Characters, Scenes, Dialogue, Humor, Prose, 3 Structure guides, 75 Excercises, 37 Rules and an Animated 7 minutes Teleplay in the appendix: You have here a book that will go to occupy an important place near you.

I'm not an acclaimed screenwriter in fact I'm a novice in this area but I'm working with a firm producing some animations and I can asure you that this book can prevent you some rocky mistakes in this special field and even If you are a Pro you'll find some good points here.

I knew that scriptwriting was formulaic, with lots of rules about what should happen at what page and all of the structural details. But this book plots out exactly what a cartoon should do! From the general outline to the set-in-stone types of humor. Who knew that anyone had codified all this stuff! It's all here, from the Flintstones to South Park. This is how it's done.
Far from being confining, I'm finding that reading and re-reading this tome (easy to read tome!) is inspiring beyond belilef. I'm cranking up my DVD player and finding that every detail of every chapter is true down to the last nut and bolt. Professionals have been following these guidelines for decades!
This book must be the textbook for lots of classes about this subject somewhere.
I'm a 3d animator, and it's my goal to make animated shorts a lot more "arty" than Pepper Ann and Rugrats. But this book is such an eye-opener! I've never realized that even the cartoons that I've loved for years - Simpsons, South Park, Ren & Stimpy - all of them! They all follow the same rules.
One funny thing about this book: For a writing manual, it has a phenomenal number of typos. What a hoot. The book is incredibly easy to find your way around. The author is simply a master at her craft, and the insights are invaluable for anyone not employed in Callifornia. Yet you can find 1 or 2 typos or grammatical errors per page. I guess they skimped on the editing.
If you're concerned about developing content for your own animations, or aiming at a job scripting for cartoons, or just want to round out your knowledge about scriptwriting in general, this is an awesome book.

This book does provide some useful tools, but I thought it was often overly simplistic. The most helpful section - which does not apply to me - was the section on dealing with anger and your children. I would recommend the book for that section to parents having this problem.

I highly recommend the book "Getting Over getting Mad", by Judy Ford. It explained the importance of anger in our lives and how it "is an indispensable emotion, which when used productively allows us to develop ourselves and our relationships. Its only "when anger covers up pain and fear", that it "clogs our energy, dilutes our joy, and keeps us off track, going in circles, making no headway. Instead of helping us, anger becomes self-defeating." The book has ideas for managing anger in a positive way and using it to tranform our lives.

"From losing our tempers easily to feeling a slow burn to hiding how irritated we really feel, all of us experience anger as a troubling emotion." In Getting Over Getting Mad: Positive Ways to Manage Anger in Your Most Important Relationships," Judy Ford, M.S.W., explains why we feel anger and what to do about it.

A psychotherapist, consultant, and best-selling author, Ford has worked for over thirty years with children and families in a wide variety of settings. This is her eighth book.

She presents her information in four major sections: dealing with anger at personal setbacks, at significant others, at children, and at colleagues. Underlying everything is the concept that we all feel anger at one time or another. It's how that anger is expressed, not the anger itself, that can create problems. Ford says that "while I know that we all have reasons to be angry, I can't think of one good reason to stay mad for very long." She distinguishes between "distorted anger, which tears families apart, and healthy anger, which keeps relationships thriving."

Ford emphasizes using anger to help in personal growth and offers myriad suggestions on how to make anger work for us. She includes examples of how real people have learned to manage their anger. The key is to recognize and deal with the anger as soon as it develops, before it grows into a major disturbance. And contrary to what many people have been taught, repressing anger doesn't solve anything.

Ford's suggestions and tips are practical and simple. Most involve learning to recognize exactly what you're feeling, and then delving into what created that feeling. After that, the underlying cause of the anger can be resolved. Often, just recognizing what's happening frees us from negative reactions.

She says that "sarcasm, manipulation, passive-aggressive acts, physical illness, depression, rebellion, and violence all result from the ability to express anger and resolve disputes." If any of these symptoms are a part of your life, then Getting Over Getting Mad will provide the information and tools you need to turn your anger from destructive emotion to healthy growth.

As a counsellor and teacher who has studied human behaviour, one of the topics covered in my program is stress management; stress and anger often go hand-in- hand. Anger can be an emotion used to protect one from the challenges and obstacles in life he or she prefers not to deal with. Uncontrolled anger can be negative and damaging to ourselves and others, often steming from an action causing fear or hurt.

Judy Ford has written an excellent book on how to deal with negative emotion in a constructive manner. Left unleashed, or supressed, anger can cause a lifetime of pain and suffering for the recipient, particularly so when the recipient is a child. Anger can also contribute to a vast array of emotional and physical problems for the individual who cannot manage his or her own anger is a positive way.

"Getting Over Getting Mad" is like any other self-help book; in order for the message contained to produce results, the reader must be fully committed to improving and making long-term changes. Recognizing and accepting that one has an anger management problem is the first step, making a serious commitment to dealing with the problem is the next. Ford writes in a straight-forward, no-nonsense manner. The book provides excellent resource material and is well worth reading.

P>A new book, GETTING OVER GETTING MAD, covers four areas of life in which anger is often a problem: our relationships with ourselves, our partners, our kids and those we work with.

Anger is often a problem for ourselves. Few of us like ourselves after we've blown up. Yet, we are responsible for our anger. We can't blame it on someone else. Even if someone else acts foolish, that is no excuse for us becoming angry and blowing up. By learning how to handle anger within ourselves, we can deal with both ourselves, and others, much better.

Anger is often a destructive force in marriages and relationships. It may result in the death of loving feelings, or in abuse. We need to understand how to respond to this anger, both ours, and theirs, in safe and caring ways.

Anger can be destructive in parenting. Inappropriate anger is harmful and abusive to children. Explosive anger may hurt children physically, and may drive them away from us emotionally.

Finally, anger can affect us at work. It can turn jobs into hell. It can also destroy friendships and relationships.

"Getting Over Getting Mad" is the best book on anger I have read in years. It is written in the style of the Chicken Soup books, about a page per topic. I can't cover this book fairly in one column. So, for the next four weeks, I will share a few of the ideas, which are so excellently covered in this book.

Recognizing and understanding anger in the presence of yourself, is the only way to be in charge of anger, instead of having anger in charge of you. Getting Over Getting Mad, by Judy Ford has some excellent direction on this task, presented in a series of short, and very readable one to two page articles. Here is my understanding of a few of her ideas.

1.Uncover the hurt behind your anger. Anger is a shield hiding things, that you don't want to deal with. But if you face this fear, which is one of the emotions that hides under anger, you will find the courage to deal with what you really don't want to deal with. Dealing with these hurts and anxieties is the first step in understanding how to handle anger.

2.Frown Freely. You can express disappointment and unhappiness without losing control of anger. But if you don't deal with those things, they will eventually build up and catch up with you. There is no rule that says that you have to be or pretend to be happy all the time.

3. Let yourself be human and imperfect. Nobody else in the world is perfect, so why do you have to be?

4. See anger as a blessing. Anger can be useful and helpful is you recognize it and handle it appropriately. Using anger constructively helps clear the air and improve your relationships with others.

5. Get to know the little devil within. Once you accept you don't have to be perfect, then you can recognize the little devil in us all, that wants to settle a score with someone we think did us wrong. If you can learn not to take your little devil too seriously, or even laugh at it, you can be in charge of you, instead of that little devil controlling your life.

6. Walk the high road. Before you respond to some aggravation, ask yourself "What's going on here? What can I learn? What can I do positively to deal with it?" Once you purposely look for a positive way to respond, your mind is distracted from automatically acting in a negative way.

7. Take grudges to the dump. When you write something down, on and feelings outside of you for a moment. Then they are easier to see and deal with. Remember, the more often you clean out a garbage can, the less it starts to stink and bother you, and others.

8. Beat a drum, play a piano, dance. Ford suggests finding something safe to take out your physical energy on. Pounding a drum is a safe way to express anger to yourself. If you don't have a drum, an empty box, or a plastic wastebasket, placed upside down, becomes a good way to express your energy. Drum with a regular beat. You and your body will get in tune with that rhythm, and you will find yourself relaxing. Some years ago, while at a men's gathering, the leader had me lie on my back on a couple of mattresses and pound my hands into them. I felt foolish at first, but after 5 - 10 minutes of expressing physical energy, I found myself relaxed, both physically and emotionally.

9. Shout outside, scream in the shower. This idea is based on the question, "If a tree falls in a forest with nobody around, is there any noise?" We all need places to make noises and express emotions, in situations where we will not hurt or upset other people. It may seem funny. But, it's a safe way to discharge energy that you need to get rid of. You can't hurt a tree by shouting at it, and it doesn't shout back.

Anger is often a problem for ourselves. Few of us like ourselves after we've blown up. Yet, we are responsible for our anger. We can't blame it on someone else. Even if someone else acts foolish, that is no excuse for us becoming angry and blowing up. By learning how to handle anger within ourselves, we can deal with both ourselves, and others, much better.

Anger is often a destructive force in marriages and relationships. It may result in the death of loving feelings, or in abuse. We need to understand how to respond to this anger, both ours, and theirs, in safe and caring ways.

Anger can be destructive in parenting. Inappropriate anger is harmful and abusive to children. Explosive anger may hurt children physically, and may drive them away from us emotionally.

Finally, anger can affect us at work. It can turn jobs into hell. It can also destroy friendships and relationships.

"Getting Over Getting Mad" is the best book on anger I have read in years. It is written in the style of the Chicken Soup books, about a page per topic.

These are just a few of the 28 ideas Ford shares on dealing with anger, in one section of her book, called "In the Presence of Yourself." In the next three weeks, I'll share some of her ideas on doing the same with anger towards sweethearts, children and colleagues

Parents are both teachers and models for their children. We teach by how well we listen and explain, at a level appropriate to their development. We teach by how well we direct their choices in their formative years. We teach by our own role models. If we don't handle anger appropriately ourselves, they may follow our behaviour rather than our teachings.The section, "In The Presence of Children" in Judy Ford's book, "Getting Over Getting Mad" has many positive ideas for parents about children's anger, in short, readable one to two page articles.

When children are angry, you must first get their attention by recognizing and acknowledging their anger. You have to be what Ford calls "A Feeling Detective". Young children don'

I'm reading it again!! many, many inspiring and well thought out
stories or one liners that will inspire any writer or reader wanting a greater clarity on life.
Buy it or give it as a gift and it will find its place in your library next to "as a man thinketh" James Allen and "financial success" by Wallace Wattles. It will also be one of those books that I can always go back to when times of stress or challenge comes up and find a lift from the great work of Venice Bloodworth.
I think so many of these principles were lived by the greatest lives ever lived. That is why I re-wrote and brought back to the people "lessons from great lives" just as Debbie Ford did here.
Dan McCormick

This book is well written in short vignettes which allow the reader time to digest the morsels of Truth in each. Beautiful and inspiring. Perfect for anyone in the process of transforming their life.

I read this book when I was around 30 years old and desperately needed advice as my parents died when I was younger and felt there was no one to help me.. That was 32 years ago. This book helped me grow up and see the good in this world. Also, made me feel that there are possibilities for all of us. I call Venice my spiritual Mom.
I have bought around 7 or 8 books and given them away to people This book is simply written. Not like the modern day gurus.

I have read this book several timws over my life of 55 years and this book changed my life. Read it! Live it!

I enjoyed reading this book, all chapters were engaging to read. Health, Youth and Beauty is an excellent chapter and one I reread often. Plus the CD included with this book by Debbie Ford is an added bonus and teaches very grounded meditation techniques and is well worth having.

Being a great collection of masterly written articles, this book constitutes a deep introduction to a diversity of hot tech-topics. Surely, it will serve you well as a valuable skills thermometer in your professional growth planning.

Though, a couple of chapters awoke my interest and became the start point of further readings; I don't picture this book having a place in my "always at hand" book collection. I think this book, like those magazine subscriptions piling up in my garage, is a once in a lifetime reading.

Rather than having this professional guide to mainstream technological thinking dusting on my bookshelf; I would like to see it being passed around at the coffee table, inspiring, and guiding colleagues and friends. Definitely, this is not a book to own, but a book to share.

Articles by many notables - Scott Davis, Neal Ford, and more - pack an anthology covering all kinds of topics, from real-world web issues and applications to project testing, total object makeovers, and more, computer pros will find topics detailed, in depth and specialized to the computer geek world - and packed with logic and detail.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

This is certainly an eclectic mix of a book. Topics from 15 authors covering subjects such as language-oriented programming, through agile methodology and CSS.

Written by leaders in their fields, this book doesn't aim to be definitive, but consists of essays by those people about the stuff which interests them. I didn't follow all of the subjects covered, and I think that you would be hard-pressed to. All were well written and would appeal to followers of that particular facet of information technology.

One particular thing I liked about this was the appendix covering each author's favourite reads and tools, plus a comprehensive bibliography.

I'm sure you'll find, as I did, half a dozen topics of interest, with several others opening up previously unknown fields of study. I'm looking forward to the next edition.

I attended a NFJS conference last year and was very impressed by the quality of the speakers and content. So, when I had the chance to read the No Fluff, Just Stuff 2006 Anthology I jumped on it.

The book is a collection of 15 technical papers from NFJS speakers that will just make you flat smarter. I found each paper to be informative, well written, and enjoyable. For example, the first paper is "Real World Web Services" by Scott Davis. In it, he provides a broad overview of the various acronyms that make up Web Services. While I was already pretty familiar with WS, this paper filled a few gaps in my knowledge of the subject. In other sections of the book there are deep discussions on testing, continuous integration, methodologies, and more.

The NFJS 2006 Anthology cuts a wide swath across the topic of software development. And yet, each section manages to go quite deep into the subject. I found a nice balance of variety and detail. Some of the papers were on topics I wouldn't necessarily seek out but I appreciated the opportunity to widen my horizons a bit.

Check out the TOC and sample chapters on the Pragmatic Programmer site.

Think of it as a technical conference to go. Highly recommended.

There is not a single good reason known to me not to read the second No Fluff Just Stuff Anthology. Most engineers I know spend far more time coding than catching up on the latest tricks and trends in the engineering world. To those engineers, present company included, an anthology like this is invaluable. However, NFJS Anthology Vol. 2 is also grievously unbalanced.

Much material in this volume is written by agitators of the "new age" software movement, for lack of a better word. They gravitate towards weaker contracts (i.e. REST over WS-*), loose typing (i.e. Ruby over Java), relaxed processes (i.e. Agile over anything else), and so forth... While all authors are entitled to their opinions, I find it unsettling that the "new age" dogma dominates much of the publication. Brian Sletten assaults WS-* in his essay "Give it a Rest", but where is the counterargument? The three paragraphs Sletten himself offers? Or does the editor wish to suggest, quite falsely if so, that there really is no business case to explain why top enterprises leverage WS-* based solutions in spite of their cost?

How about Jared Richardson's article on JRuby titled "Integrating Ruby with legacy code"? Since when is Java considered legacy code? Since when has the free world stopped developing solutions in Java except when under the whip of mighty yet incompetent management? And once again, where is the refutation? Where is the essay on the dangers of mixing and matching languages and platforms? The weaknesses of purely-dynamic languages? Certainly not in this NFJS anthology (sorry, Jared, two brush-off bullet points don't count). And what of a counterargument to Venkat Sabramaniam's essay on Agile Methodologies? While deeply insightful into agile techniques, it also seems to offer Agile as a panacea of sorts, omitting any discussion of when an agile process may be unfitting or even crippling. Once again, shop somewhere else for the complete story.
Ultimately, the single greatest failure of this compilation can be attributed to Neal Ford's role as its editor. A quick glance at his blog allows one to glean Ford's biases with a naked eye. While the strength of Ford's dispositions does not detract from his status or credibility as a great speaker and author, it renders him unfit to edit such a compilation as this anthology. Ford goes so far as to violate a key principle of the NFJS series by propagandizing a $500 IDE (Chapter 10), while devoting less than half that real estate to Eclipse techniques (Chapter 11), despite the latter's prevalence in availability and market share. In short, Ford allows what would otherwise be an invaluable educational resource to become a hideous concoction of information and propaganda.

Fortunately, Ford's negligence toward balance was slightly tempered by the diversity and insight of several of the authors. Howard Lewis Ship's essay on testing tools and techniques (Chapter 7), David Geary's introduction to the Google Web Toolkit (Chapter 8), and Scott Leberknight's "Data Access using Spring, Hibernate, and JDBC" (Chapter 19). These chapters stand out due to both their relevance and their instructional approach. These essays teach, rather than preach, and set a wonderful example of what the rest of this volume should have looked like. While I look forward to attending this year's No Fluff Just Stuff conference in Boston and even hearing some of the people whose work I criticized in the preceding paragraphs, I hope the 2008 NFJS anthology will offer less demagoguery and more substance, less fluff and more stuff.

Book arrived quickly in great shape.

A cute book with interesting information.

EVERYTHING YOU EVER WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT SOUTHERN SOIREES....PRECIOUS PARTY PLANNING....JUST THE CUP OF TEA FOR A BELLE IN THE KNOW

GRITS stands for "Girls Raised in the South" namely Birmingham, Alabama. Well, I wasn't just raised here, I was born here in Tennessee. The first year of my marriage took place in Troy, Alabama, where I attended Troy State College (now University) and the art teacher wanted me to pose for his class, but wouldn't ask me himself. That's not the way they do things in the South; first, he sent a young woman teacher to 'visit' me; then, he has some female art students to approach me in the halls on my way to Bio-Scio classes. You want to know why I didn't -- I didn't have anything to wear! Now, that's funny!

We all saw Southern manners and Hospitality at its best in the Auntie Mame movie in which Lucille Ball starred. She was the best Auntie Mame and perfect as a Southern belle. Happy birthday to Bill Ross (8-11-32) wherever you are. Friends and family are the center of life in the South, or used to be -- in the old days. Now, you have to be the elite to enjoy that commodity. The poor are ever there, but they do no entertaining.

In Knoxville, it is the liquor they all go for at any event. Food can come as they have the time, but you won't catch those men and young women without a glass in their pretty hands. If you want to be 'the belle of the ball,' be sure to have plenty of 'spirits' of all kinds for your party. Elegance and wit is not what it is propounded to be; the women here are as dumb as those in the North with their noses in the air. I enjoyed the drawings in this little book and especially the pink pages.

Who but a gal from Birmingham would have been able to get away with that. In this town of my birth, purple is the color of choice, which perturbs me no end. Pink is girlish and easy on the eyes. I love to wear blue, but do get more attention in pink. Is it true that all women are 'pretty in pink' and 'all brides are beautiful,' or is that just a Southern thing?

If y'all want to know how we Southerners entertain, and learn a tad more about how important family and friends are to us, you need to read this book. Miss Grits can always be counted on to entertain, and I can tell y'all, no nicer or classier lady has ever existed. "Miss Grits" is no act, she's the real deal!

I thought this was a delightful and entertaining book. This book is packed with many different southern traditions and customs. Deborah Ford, writes with much passion and love for many of the southern manners, and social expectations. I really enjoyed that she packed this full of vital recipes such as how to properly make sweet tea, a must have if you live in the South. She also included many other recipes for gifts and other things you may want to have in your freezer just in case.

Puttin' on the Grits was a delightful book, with all sorts of illustrations, and tips. I thought she did a wonderful job of capturing the spirit of the South in the modern world. Deborah also gave many wonderful suggestions for learning all about Southern manners and those unwriten expections for those of us who may now live in the South. I would recommend this book to those who may want to learn more about what makes the Southern culture so unique.

John Ford, born Sean Aloysius O'Fearna in Cape Elizabeth, Maine in 1895, hasn't lacked for biographers since his death in 1973, but he remains an extremely difficult subject, for several reasons. One is the sheer sweep of his career, which, spanning 1917 to 1970, roughly paralleled that of American cinema itself and witnessed massive societal changes and world wars. More problematic is Ford himself, a man with a multiplicity of nicknames: Boss, Pappy, Jack. Joseph McBride, in Searching for John Ford, quotes Reverend Clayton (Ward Bond) in The Searchers telling Ethan Edwards (John Wayne) "You fit a lot of descriptions," a statement that nicely summarizes Ford's own elusiveness.

In this rock-solid, 800-plus-page biography, McBride shows that this exceptionally powerful but also deeply flawed man hid behind his films and behind a carefully constructed identity that was always in danger of cracking, and sometimes did. A sensitive, culturally literate, poetically inclined man, he pretended (in his own phrase) to be "illiterate" and called assessments of his status as the master of the western saga "horsehit." A passionate defender of family values in his films, he was also, frequently, a sadist on the set. The book shows him as a poisonous presence to actors like Jimmy Cagney (who called him "truly a nasty old man") and Henry Fonda (who may or may not have knocked him down) but particularly to his treasured stock company members Ward Bond and John Wayne. Without being overly psychoanalytical, McBride shows how Ford's personal behavior was often a projection of his anxieties. On the set of Stagecoach, he was publicly merciless to Wayne: "I really should get Gary Cooper for this part. Can't you walk, for Chrissake, instead of skipping like a goddam fairy." The irony here was that Wayne was apparently copying Ford's own much-noted "feminine" walk. The book also documents Ford's endless practical joking, much of it aimed at Bond, a rabid anticommunist whom Ford considered "stupid."

Searching for John Ford documents every phase of his life and career, from his early missteps to his canonization as one of the greatest -- and most widely influential -- directors in world cinema. The book gives what are most likely definitive answers to some nagging questions in this history, one of them Ford's alleged affair with Katherine Hepburn. McBride sifts methodically through every shred of evidence, including questionable portrayals by Hepburn biographer Barbara Leaming and Ford's grandson Dan, and a mysterious letter found among Ford's papers that purports to reproduce a conversation between Hepburn and an unidentified "Miss D" on the subject of her involvement with Ford. He makes an entirely credible case that this relationship was not physical, based on Ford's Catholic inhibitions and marriage vows. At any rate, despite Ford's wife Mary's willingness to let him have a private life outside his beloved home and marriage, alcohol had a stronger lure for him, eventually causing drastic problems on the set of such films as Mr. Roberts, which had to be finished (and perhaps was finished off) by Mervyn Leroy.

The Ford of this book is a charismatic but also authoritarian figure who used his gifts in ways that can only be described as schizoid. In a remarkably brave move documented in one of the most dramatic sections of the book, he publicly excoriated red-baiter Cecil B. DeMille over demands that the directors' guild members sign a loyalty oath. But typically, the next day he sent a fawning letter of apology to DeMille. The book also reveals that when actress Anna Lee, a friend of Ford's and one of his actors, was blacklisted by mistake (there was apparently another, more left-leaning Anna Lee around), he simply made a phone call to Washington to clear things up. McBride wonders, as will the reader, how Ford could so easily cut through such a monolithic force as HUAC to spare a friend, and sees this as a typically problematic act on Ford's part, showing both his loyalty and a power he could use for his own ends.

Of course, Ford was also a heroic, larger-than-life character who generated enormous loyalty among those who worked with him, even those who were the target of his insults. His friendships were both loving and long-lasting. Claire Trevor, who worked with him on Stagecoach, recalled him as both "absolutely wonderful to me" and a master on the set, whose sometimes unsettling decisions on the set -- in this case throwing out what Trevor thought was a crucial romantic scene -- invariably improved the film. He was also capable of transformation. He railed against being called a racist, a charge leveled at him off and on throughout his career (and one that McBride explicates evenhandedly). "When I landed at Omaha Beach there were scores of black bodies lying in the sand. Then I realized that it was impossible not to consider them full-fledged American citizens."

Searching for John Ford is arguably the most rounded portrait to date of this complicated man who transformed American history into cinematic art. McBride exhaustively examined the mountain of interviews, memoirs, and analyses relating to Ford, and fortunately the book documents all of these. It also contains cogent critiques of the films themselves. McBride is especially good on the seminal Searchers, interspersing a compelling production history with analysis and irresistible anecdotes from some of its contributors. (Henry Worden, an actor of German heritage who played Chief Scar, is particularly witty in his reminiscences.) If Ford remains an enigma at the end, it's less a criticism of this book, which is both substantive and a wonderful read, than a tribute to its subject's skill in camouflaging the depths of his personality and keeping the world safely at bay.

30 years of research isn't a career, its an obsession. One suspects McBride has long since completed his research and spent forever getting the thing on paper. At 720 pages, we learn everything about the man's professional and private life. Strangely enough, McBride spends a fair portion of the 720 pages beating around the bush. I found the book sadly lacking in clearly explicating the man's contrary personality. Oddly enough, Ford's relationship with his parents is all but glossed over. Particularly his relationship with his father; any growing boy's 1st and most important male relationship. For a man supposedly so devoted to the idea of family, he wasted no time in getting out of Dodge the moment he was old enough to travel. Interesting that his older brother basically ran away from home and would probably never have been heard from ever again if he hadn't become famous. McBride also fails to note the symbolism of John and Frank's rather cruel and even abusive mutually alcoholic relationship through the years. That sort of cruelty between adult siblings is often learned at home. Indeed, John does not seem to have been remotely close to any childhood kin, even his mother. Also, his abusive treatment of his kids, esp his boy, is most likely learned behavior. Abuse is passed from generation to generation mostly because an abused child grows up not knowing any better. Also, it was interesting to note how Ford's wife of 50 odd years is painted in very thin brushstrokes. How did she feel abt his abusiveness? His self destructive drinking? What was her relationship to her damaged adult children? She doesn't seem to be quoted much or say anything unkind abt her difficult, drunken, absent husband. Did he abuse her physically? Was she a silent partner? His long time acting collaborators Ward Bond, John Wayne, and Henry Fonda seem to have had ambivilant feelings at best abt their mentor/pappy but its not discussed much. It's hard to feel kindly toward a man who forces you to feel indebted and punishes you for your fealty. From what McBride says, the man basically lived in cycles. Making a movie w a makeshift (and rather forced) family of indebted actors and crew who were cowed into accepting his petty tyranny, humiliations, cruel pranks and forced machismo alternating with drunken binge vacations aboard his boat. This is repeated add nauseum until Ford's health finally gives out. The last 150 pages is spent slapping lipstick on a pig as Ford's pathetic drunken diseased decline is chronicled incident by drunken embarrassing reputation destroying incident. Even after this doorstop of a book, its hard to reconcile the maker of such beautiful movies with the horrid person he presented to the world.

I don't know why anyone interested in the seminal American director, John Ford, would not find this book utterly fascinating. McBride illuminates Ford's early life and the beginnings of his long career with detailed care. He explores his problematic character with skill, compassion and insight without ever being patronizing and without ever holding back about the darkest aspects of Ford's personality and behavior. For instance, McBride makes it very clear that Ford does not deserve as much credit as he usually gets for what was really an ambivalent attitude toward the notorious Hollywood "blacklist" during the anti-communist hysteria of the 1940s and '50s.

McBride's book is packed with vivid anecdotes from associates, observers of Ford and members of the legendary "Stock Company" (Harry Carey, Jr.'s stories are really wonderful!), and his own critiques of the films are sophisticated and augmented by quotes and assessments by other major "Fordians." McBride is generous with his inclusion of other critics' views and when he disagrees he himself is never mean or dismissive. His illuminations of the significance of the post-WWII western, his accounts of the intricacies of the "blacklist" and his sympathetic understanding of Ford's last films and what they represented are especially valuable.

There may indeed be other biographies just as good as McBride's but this is a captivating, comprehensive and intellectual volume for the Ford aficionado. It is immensely satisfying!

This is a very good biography of Ford. Yes, McBride relies on Sarris and Carey Jr. a good bit of the time, yet this book remains very interesting and does a thorough job covering the many films Ford made.

Strengths of the book include an eye-opening look at Ford's WWII service, (How many other guys were at both Midway and D-Day and managed to get to Burma and Yugoslavia as well?) a clear presentation of Ford's relations with the different studios (the list of "better" titles for The Quiet Man the head of Republic tried to force on Ford is hysterically funny) and an evenhanded evaluation of Ford's behavior during the blacklist era.

Perhaps the evenhandedness of McBride's tone is what I liked the most about the book. One could take Ford's life and turn it into a straightforward case of hero-worship, or one could take an axe to him up and down the line, pointing out his failures in family life, his bigoted comments, his questionable actions in some controversial issues. McBride avoids falling into either extreme camp. We get Ford warts and all here, and it is left up to us to decide.

My only complaint is that the book is too short. I would have liked more discussion on a few films, and I would have liked a chapter on Ford's posthumous reputation. McBride raises the issue in his introduction that Ford is being forgotten by the new generation of writers and filmmakers, but he never quite tells why.

Still, this was a fine book, one that I read quickly despite its length.

This might be the definitive(if that makes sense...)biography of the American Renoir (according to François Truffaut, who eventually came to understand and appreciate the director's work after years of disdain...contrary to Rohmer who never changed his mind), even if thoroughly researched works, among which quite recent ones, are already available: Tag Gallagher's, among others, seemed to embody the bulk of what could be said today of the "greatest poet of the western saga"( "horseshit", according to the guy himself...) or even the "Shakespeare of cinema"...until the release of Joseph Mc Bride's Searching for John Ford.
Mc Bride, with Michael Wilmington, had already explored with sympathy and insight the rich complexity, destructive contradictions and inner conflicts building up the director's work in their 1974 John Ford. The book was an assumed reading of the films in the light of Ford's search for allegiance as a first generation Irish-American, progressively doomed by disappointment and bitterness.The analyses of movies such as Straight Shooting (maybe Ford's first, with most of his themes already in...),The Searchers or The Man who Shot Liberty Valance conveyed a sense of poetry owing as much to the authors as to the soul of the works studied.
This new biography is a thirty-years job, exploring deeper than ever the interconnections between the director's inner life and his films. Nothing is here anecdotal,all is but aimed at understanding a man. As Martin Scorcese puts it on the huge volume backcover: Searching for John Ford should be compulsory reading. And even if Renoir did deserve a pretty good amount of good critical studies, the French John Ford has never been paid such a tribute.

Companies come and go, nations rise and fall, and the one common denominator is that every institution needs a leader. Leighton Ford looks at the one leader in world history that has shaped more hearts and minds and dramatically altered the course of human history more than any other person - the one person who was fully man and fully God - Jesus. Not a leader, some might argue, since he never commanded an empire or enterprise? Ford examines the leadership style and substance of Jesus and puts forth the concept that the leadership of Jesus was the ultimate example from which any and every leader can learn and follow His example - from the corporate executive to the household manager, the teachings and examples of Jesus transcend time, position and culture.

Ford examines how Jesus handed various situations from a variety of perspectives - Jesus the leader as a strategist, as a seeker, as a servant and so forth. Each chapter gives examples from Scripture and then relates these principles into real world scenarios for the leader today to examine. Ford drives home the point that the leadership of Jesus stems from His unique ability to truly understand the nature of man - his longings, his needs, his wants, his desires, and his fears. Jesus is able to work with his men and women from all walks of life to produce a unified front who shared the same vision and values as their leader. Following His own death, burial, resurrection and transcendence, the message of the gospel was carried on by these disciples and their followers who walked with, ate with, ministered with, and lived with their leader.

The message that Ford shares with leaders today is that we are all called for leadership in the kingdom of God - we are all followers of Christ, yet leaders of the lost to the cross. We have much to learn from the example of Jesus and Ford does an excellent job of mining some real gold nuggets from Scripture to make this book a gem to read and study.

Of the hunderds of leadership books I have read, "Transforming Leadership" by Leighton Ford is by far the most inspiring and informational.

Overview: The person and ministry of Jesus is seen as the role model for this study of the qualities of the kind of leadership that motivates, empowers and changes people's lives. After introducing the topic in the first two chapters, we are treated to twelve distinct aspects of the leadership qualities presented by Jesus.

Critique: For the most part, the various chapters are not given in any particular order so that they could have been shuffled and the effect would have been largley the same. At the same time, each aspect is well-presented and connected to corresponding Scriptures set in their correct context and thus reads like a sermon series.

Application: We are reminded that a leader need not lose his self-identity in seeking to be like Christ, but he does need to lose his pride and selfishness as he sets himself as a servant for those to whom he came to minister. If I personally have an area of weakness, it is in the development of a vision that goes beyond the basic premise of the great commission and the making of disciples. It is for this reason that I have in the past (and continue so today) to be content to work under the leadership of others and to draw from and to buy into their vision.

Best quote: Kingdom-seekers are leaders marked by loyalty, for they seek another's cause, by fidelity, for they tell another's truth; by humility, for they accept another's results; by constancy, for their wait another's time; and by expectancy, for they dream of another's glory (Page 97-98).

Leighton Ford has written an excellent book for the Christian leader. Among the principles Ford covers include:

1. Treat others as people created by God, not things to be used.
2. A leader has a transcendant purpose and is not distracted from it.
3. The servant leader depends on God's timing and seeks to glorify God.
4. True leadership is marked by servanthood, not lordship over others.
5. Leaders will always face conlict, just like Jesus did.
6. Those who display toughness at all times probably lack inner security.
7. God is more interested in our character instead of our actions.
8. We need times alone with Christ to see if we are serving Him or self.

An excellent and highly recommended book for leaders and aspiring leaders (everyone is a leader in some way)!

Leighton Ford, leader or leaders, spiritual director, crusader, evangelist, writes an amazing book on Leadership. The whole book revolved around the fact that we must be servant leaders as Christ modeled for us in the 1st Century. Leighton is humble, and strong at the same time in his presentation of this material. You can see the results of him putting this model into practice throughout his life and how God has used him to be an amazing influencer for the Kingdom. Every emerging leader should take note of what is said in the this book, and no pastor should pass it by either. Thanks to the author for this insightful, and compelling work on leadership. Joseph Dworak