O Books

I found this book while browsing the programming section of Borders (the programming section of my local Borders is amazing!), and I've found it to be a real gem.

The book covers so much more than just Apache security. It covers installation and configuration, and explains a little of how Apache works along the way. There are also chapters or sections on:

- Understanding and securing PHP
- An explanation of SSL
- DOS attacks
- Traffic shaping in Apache
- Logging is covered extensively
- There's a chapter on web security in general, where all the common attacks are explained
- Using Apache as a proxy or a reverse proxy

I especially enjoyed the Web Security Assessment chapter where the author explained how to systematically analyze and probe web applications/servers, with many real world examples.

There is a large section discussing mod_security, which is an amazing Apache module. Mod_security is an intrusion detection and prevention engine for web applications (a web application firewall). The book is written by the author of mod_security (Ivan Ristic), so he really knows what he's talking about in this area. Also covered is mod_dosevasive, which, obviously helps prevent against denial of service attacks.

I would not hesitate to recommend this book to any Apache administrator, user, or web programmer. Its one of my favorite books on my bookshelf.

Thanks a lot, we are very happy to have this book in our library!

This book is worth every single dollar. The examples are very clear and also provide invaluable information about security.

A must have for everybody using Apacge.

I recently received copies of Apache Security (AS) by Ivan Ristic and Preventing Web Attacks with Apache (PWAWA) by Ryan Barnett. I read AS first, then PWAWA. Both are excellent books, but I expect potential readers want to know which is best for them. The following is a radical simplification, and I could honestly recommend readers buy either (or both) books. If you are more concerned with a methodical, comprehensive approach to securing Apache, choose AS. If you want more information on offensive aspects of Web security, choose PWAWA.

Before I go further, I must mention that Ivan Ristic cites me and my books twice, on pages 2 and 229. While humbling, I tried not to let this fact influence my review.

AS is an extremely well-thought-out book. My favorite aspect of AS is the decision to start with a blank httpd.conf file, rather than accepting the file packaged with Apache and making edits as needed. By building up httpd.conf from scratch, the author shows exactly what components are needed in a very clear manner. This was not the approach used by PWAWA. I would like to see other technical books adopt this teaching method.

AS includes better coverage of several topics which I believe are core to securing Apache. I liked AS' discussion of chroot environments and jails, although the author should distinguish between chroot on Linux or BSD and jail on BSD alone. AS features a whole chapter on proper PHP deployment (Ch 3), and a whole chapter on SSL/TLS (Ch 4). AS devotes another chapter to explaining how to host multiple Web sites on one host (Ch 6), which is critical to many Apache environments. AS' chapter on Web infrastructure (CH 9) also covers topics not found in PWAWA.

AS is also less explicitly Linux-centric than PWAWA. As a primary FreeBSD user, I found AS' approach more applicable to my environment. PWAWA seemed to assume everyone was running Red Hat Linux. It's fine to use a single OS for all examples, but I had to personally identify tools and techniques that would probably only work on Red Hat.

I had very little trouble with any of the text in AS. My main concerns involve Ch 1, where the author spends time on certain security concepts. I would consider the following with regards to threat modeling on p. 5: (asset) what might be compromised; (motivation) why compromise; (vulnerabilities) where compromised; (attack) how compromised; (threat) who compromised you; (risk) threat X vulnerability X asset value. On pp 9-10 the author should also have used the risk equation just mentioned.

Overall, I really liked AS. The book really is about Apache security, so if you are more interested in attacking Apache you might prefer PWAWA. If you want to learn about Web application hacking in general, your best bets are probably Hacking Exposed: Web Applications, 2nd Ed, and Professional Pen Testing for Web Applications. I will read and review those two books shortly.

Excellent book. The chapters on PHP and logging are especially useful.

Simply the best reading I have done in months. The first chapter is worth paying for the entire book. Robert Alter just did it again.

Modern Biblical scholarship has tended toward a process of atomization: how many editors were involved in the creation of the Bible? How many different strands of tradition can we find in a given story? Robert Alter's "The Art of Biblical Narrative" at once provides a corrective to this tendency, and a striking alternative way of understanding the Good Book.

Although recent scholarship has emphasized historical- and textual-critical methodologies, Alter chooses a literary-critical approach; that is, he asks how we should read the Bible first and foremost as literature. Ancient Hebrew storytelling conventions were often radically different from those we use today, so we must learn to be attuned to things like a character's silence, or minor, telling variations in a scene that is repeated several times. In this way, Alter takes much of what may make the Old Testament (or Hebrew Bible) seem "boring" today--its Spartan narrative style, the apparent redundancy of many of its stories--and shows how these elements are actually integral to how the Bible tells its story.

Alter's prose style is scholarly without being suffocating. It is, however, dense with ideas. I often found myself reading as little as five pages at a sitting, as each sentence seemed so full that it was all I could take in before I had to stop for a mental breather. (I recommend reading the Conclusion first, which ten pages provide an excellent summary of the book's main ideas and may make it easier to digest them as the author investigates each one in detail in the rest of the book.) His examples are profuse, and well-chosen to illustrate his points.

Alter mostly steers clear of ideological disputes about what the Bible is or isn't, sticking to his purely literary analysis of the text. He occasionally makes comments to the effect that he sees the stories of the Bible as "historicized fiction," but his approach can still fit into any faith framework; it is just as possible for a devout Christian and an atheist to read the Bible as literature. What's more, Christians will not only find an enriching way of appreciating their sacred text here, but may even gain comfort in the face of some scholars who seem to think that a Bible with editors is inherently an unreliable Bible. Alter, to the contrary, shows that the Biblical author-editors must have been very sophisticated storytellers, and that what are often taken for mere inconsistencies today may well represent a deeply thoughtful approach to depicting the moral and social ambiguities the authors saw in their world.

"The Art of Biblical Narrative" takes effort to read, but those willing to take the time to absorb it may find their understanding of the Bible enhanced, deepened, even changed.

~

Alter's purpose in the book is made very clear, and that is to show readers of biblical narrative that there are authorial devices implanted in the narrative to heighten and signify parts of the narrative that the author feels is important or worth noting. He begins to show this purpose in chapter one by seeing the Bible as a literary piece of art. He illustrate mainly with the story of Judah and Tamar in Genesis 38 because it does not seem to fit with the rest of the Joseph narrative. However when one steps back and looks at the literary whole of Genesis they will see how themes of deceit and divine election run through Genesis 38 as well as the rest of the book. That one chapter may seem out of place, but in reality it flows beautifully in the larger scope of the book and not merely the Joseph narrative. One cannot read books as a compilation of short stories, but they must see the stories as having a literary and overarching theme that intertwines them together.
In chapter two, he further develops his purpose by proposing the biblical authors used literary devices like word-plays, embellishment, and fictitious characters to give color to the narrative. He suggests that the authors received the historical data from their sources, and then proceeded to make the message and intended application clearer by use of literary devices. So their use of a fictitious character would be acceptable because they are not changing the meaning or moral message of the text. He states that they would often detail the main characters speech and actions to give insight to their motives. It is helpful to see some of these literary features in seeing how the author might have pointed out characters and events in Israel's history, but only a foundationally different hermeneutic (as Alter pointed out) could accept all of these.
The third chapter really begins to illustrate Alter's purpose. Here he points out a literary device called "type-scenes", and they are the typical "flags" that the original reader would have expected to see for certain events. One illustration was the betrothal scene, where the typical events include a man (master or servant) goes to a well in a foreign land, meets a girl, wants to marry her, she goes back to her family, and etc. Alter points out the situation with Saul going to the well and instead of asking for a wife he asks for a seer. Then the story of Ruth where the roles of hero and heroine are reversed and Ruth goes to a foreign land and Boaz has his men-servants fetch her water. The idea is presented that the original reader is used to the typical sequence, and so when someone different or completely unordinary happens the author has now arrested their attention. That is the point Alter wants to make. The author wrote in such a way to highlight certain points or characters to the original reader, but the problem is that three thousand years later those literary features are not as clear. This chapter was really eye-opening to begin reading narratives looking for those points of deviation from the typical to better understand the author's intended meaning.
In the fourth chapter, Alter shows the importance of dialogue imbedded in the narrative sequence. The author uses direct speech to develop the characters in the narrative. The reader only knows what the characters are thinking by what the author has them say. The narrative events are a mere background to dialogue. Sometimes the speech that the author mentions is a shortened form of what actually must have been said. The reader needs to pay attention to when there is speech, when it stops, and when it seems that the author has purposely not said something that should have been said. This idea of dialogue intersects with the type-scenes and other literary devices to make the Bible a real literary masterpiece.
Chapter five points out the use of repetition in the Old Testament narrative. Alter says that this point of repetition is the one that is the hardest for the modern English reader and also the one feature that is most over-looked. For instance, the writer of Exodus repeats himself when he states the plague that is going to happen to Egypt and then he restates the plague when it happened. The modern reader is not going to think anything of this device; however the original reader was mostly likely hearing this read, and so the author is making sure the hearer gets the full details at least once. He also gives the repetition of key words or "word-roots" in the narrative and called it Leitwort. His example of this idea is the Samuel story and the repetition or emphasis on the words "listen, voice, word". This is not going to be done easily in an English translation, but it will aid the reader in understanding the author's intended meaning. He showed how different repetition is in poetry where there is no direct copying of a phrase or use of synonyms, but instead poetry is styled and creative repetition of thoughts that move the poem. Alter ascribes this use of repetition to the tension between the freedom of the biblical authors to write and the Divine plan for the text.
In chapter six, Alter describes the art of characterization as a literary device. It was already mentioned briefly that much of what is known of a character comes in direct speech. That is true, and it is often the most important things that can be known about that character is by what he says, because when that character acts then the reader has to infer things about that character. However in direct speech the character cannot hide what he is thinking or who he is. The author has the ability to only allow the reader to know certain things about each character. It must be noted why the author would switch names for a person, for instance, Michal is sometimes called the "wife of David" and other times she is called the "daughter of Saul". The author could be telling something simply by changing a name about the mindset of Michal, her current marital status, or another idea laid out by context. This is another interesting literary device that is probably overlooked by modern readers, but it can, like the others, aid in better understanding the author.
Chapter seven explains a literary device that has many authors each contributing to the finished product. Because the Bible has seeming inconsistencies in it, Alter assumes that it must be a book put together by multiple authors in a type of patchwork way. However, later he says that the author may have received differing historical accounts and then purposely put both accounts in the Bible. He says that the author could have contradicted himself and done it in such a way to be artistic.
The last chapter makes the argument that the narrative and narrator give knowledge to the reader. The narrator, he says, is omniscient because they know people's thought and even God's thoughts. The author is sort of "teasing" the reader with perfect knowledge, which the author seems to have and the reader can only see a glimpse of. However, the author often tells the crux of the narrative and then goes back and tells how that happened.
This book's purpose was to show how the Hebrew author's use literary devices to "jolt" the reader out of the norm. Although these devices are often purposely or ignorantly overlooked by modern reader because of the language divide, the literary features here (for the most part) are extremely helpful for the reader. Alter accomplished his purpose, and this text is very beneficial for Hebrew students to better understand the characteristics of OT narrative.

love this book. I am only on page 40 but am really enjoying every bit of it. Anyone interested in the Bible should read this book or any books by Robert Alter. He illuminates subtle literary devises in the text that you wont find anywhere else in Biblical scholarship, except maybe if you were a Torah Scholar and studied the Midrash Tanchuma (Hebrew commentary on the 5 Books of Moses) and understood it completely. But then Professor Alter translates all this into understanding the structure of well-written prose or poetry. Anyone who writes plots or makes film, or is interested in Joseph Campbell will find this extremely rich in content. He suggests that the Bible is not fictionalized History, but historicized fiction, a proposal too blasphemes for most "believers" to entertain, yet in reading this book, we find that it is not so blasphemes at all. This book will push your study of ancient Hebrew texts to a new level. All educators should read and be familiar with Professor Alters work. I think he is a breath of fresh air that encourages, not dissuades, people from going deeper into study of the Bible, from the secular to the ultra orthodox. It is densely written so if you have trouble with big words or lofty word filled sentences, this might be a problem, but I found each sentence strangely palpable and easily digested even for the non-scholar, mostly illiterate-type like myself. The book is magical and I am ordering it for a few of my same-minded friends

This book is dense with fairly small print, small margins and long chapters without section breaks; but, it is well written and does a good job showing the complexities and intricacies of scripture that lend credence to its inspiration. The author's perspective that scripture is historicised fiction can be ignored for the rest of the benefits of reading this book. Frankly, the argument for historicised fiction could just as well be used to suggest its inspiration.

Needless to say, as a result of reading this book, I bought Alter's book on Biblical Poetry.

_The Book of Questions_ defies easy description. Neruda composed over 70 poems in quatrains, two questions per quatrain - yet the depth of the questions and the variety of interpretations the reader can take from the questions is limitless. That the book contains English translations of the Spanish original is an added bonus.

The images are surreal, as if a Dali painting put to words. Further thought (and the poems ARE thought provoking) yields a different answer with each reading. There is a pervading sense of sadness to them, perhaps because Neruda was dying of cancer while he wrote them; but there is hope, here, too - and a wisdom that only a master poet can communicate. For example:

Where is the child I was,
still inside me or gone?

Why did we spend so much time
growing up only to seperate?

Neruda's _Book of Questions_ haunts and provokes, much like life itself. Highly recommended.

The BOOK OF QUESTIONS was written in 1973, a few months before Neruda's death to cancer. Troubled by the knowledge of his impending death, as well as by a U.S. backed coup threatening the Allende government in Chile (Leftist regime 1970-73), Neruda wrote several small books of brief poems, comprised simply of unanswerable questions, in the koan tradition (question/statement in the form of a paradox that disciples of Zen ponder). They are enigmatic, at times surreal, leaving you lost in labyrinths of deep thought, or in abstract bewilderment.

My favorite questions include:

Why do leaves commit suicide
When they feel yellow?

and

When the convict ponders the light
is it the same light that shines on you?

--ross saciuk

Pablo Neruda's BOOK OF QUESTIONS is one of those books that simply cannot be read just once. Though the poems are short, they are questions that make you ponder and think about through out the day. Neruda covers just about everything, such as politics, society, nature, and life in general.

The most enlightening thing about poetry, especially Neruda's style of writing poetry, is that it lends itself to much interpretation. Anyone that reads this book will have their own answer and interpretation of what they think Neruda was trying to convey. For example, Neruda has a knack for covering politics. He writes:

"How did the grapes come to know
the cluster's party line?

And do you know which is harder,
to let run to seed or to do the picking?

It is bad to live without a hell:
aren't we able to reconstruct it?

And to position sad Nixon
with his buttocks over the brazier?

Roasting him on low
with North American napalm?" (p.18)

For the most part, the book has a zen-like quality, which suggests a complexity to the poems -- the sense of not-knowing, and moving towards intuitive perceptions, beyond rehearsed patterns of thinking and feeling (viii). In a way, it appears complex, but at the same time liberating. Neruda's poetry is simple in its structure.

Beyond analysis, BOOK OF QUESTIONS is also helpful for anyone trying to refresh their memory to read and write in spanish. The translations are wonderful and practical. I recommend this book as well as other books by Neruda because of this added bonus.

Pablo Neruda is much missed as a poet and thinker. Since his death in 1973 there has been an even stronger growing of appreciation for his unique style of writing. During his last days he composed this strange little collection of some 300-odd questions and a number of poems all dealing with the life cycle as only one who sees his end at hand can write. The subjects are death, rebirth and nature in as complete a marriage of intention as any poet has created. They are beautifully translated by William O'Daly.

Intending his reader to be stimulated by his words to create a visual image that is personal, his questions from this volume so aptly titled 'The Book of Questions' open our eyes and our minds to some rapturously beautiful experiences. Examples:

'Why don't inanimate things
do something?

Where did a celestial body
leave something tonight?

Why don't they train helicopters
to suck honey from the sunlight?

Where did the full moon leave
its sack of flour tonight?'

Warmly humorous, touching and eventually elevating, the questions remain on the backs of our eyes awaiting reentry into our brains for relish at needy times. Neruda is a poet for all seasons. Just read this book and discover. Grady Harp, December 06

With this book, Pablo Neruda takes the universe and turns it inside out; in doing so, he brings forth questions for which there are no answers, and which, at the same moment, lead us toward the questions and vibrations of our own souls. The questions may appear as nonsense, but in truth, they are of another language, that of the poet, and they are neither meant to be answered nor translated into the realms of the logical and linear. He embraces humor: "What will they think of my hat, the Polish, in a hundred years?" and "Is there anything sillier than to be called Pablo Neruda?" Yet he also delves into mystery of life and living: "Is 4 the same 4 for everybody? Are all sevens equal?" and "In the end, won't death be an endless kitchen?" While perhaps never having read C.S. Lewis' "A Grief Observed," Neruda picks up a thread from two lines of this short memoir of grief: "Is yellow square or round? How many hours are in a mile?" But while Lewis searches for answers in a prosaic realm, Neruda remains the poet of questions. His work also brings to mind a poem by American jani johe webster, "the color of august": "what is the sound of a shadow / how do you say a hope / can you see time in a dream". For a truly amazing experience, read William O'Daly's translation of "The Book of Questions" side by side with Ben Belitt's: it is an amazing study of words, meanings, translation, and most of all, questions.

The Pelbar Cycle are books that stick with you for a lifetime. I first read them in college almost twenty years ago and I just recently read the series again for the third time. The books are fun, adventurous, and a great summer read, but they also have an interesting moral center that makes me remember pieces of the narrative years later.

Though the book started of a little slow, the pace picked up and I couldn't put it down. It's a great story and I can't wait to read the rest of the series.

Here's a highly enthusiastic plug for Paul O Williams who wrote only two things:

* the 7 book Pelbar Cycle.
* The Gifts of the Gorboduc Vandal, since republished with a sequel in an omnibus volume called Man from Far Cloud.

Gifts is the only book that I've ever read more than a couple times, and it remains among my favorite novels of all-time. The Pelbar Cycle IMO is a highly underappreciated work, with highly original sequels that explore various aspects of that world. In essence, I think Book 1 can be read as a standalone but the rest of the books form a unified story.

Williams was not just your usual churn 'um out fantasy/sci-fi hack (sorry - I didn't feel this way before in my 20s but as I've gotten older I have far less tolerance for this stuff than I used to). He was an english professor (as the new introduction to the trade paperback Breaking of Northwall reveals) who happened to get an idea for book and submitted it, unsolicited, as a completed work to Del-Rey. They accepted, and the series then followed.

Let me add one little note - these are mature works. Pelbar (and Gorboduc, which essentially has many of the same elements in a new setting) is not only one of my all-time favorite series but also my father's. There is a depth to some of these characters that could have only come from the author's own inner strength, intelligence, and maturity. In essence, though I don't personally know Mr. Williams I wish I did. I think he'd be a terrific friend.

This book (and the entire series) is excellent. I wish more had been written.
One thing to consider when starting to read is the time during which the series was written and published. The cold war was still in effect and the threat of global nuclear devastation was still prominent in the consciousness of a great many people.
This series explores a possible future several decades (or centuries) following such a cataclysm.
Put aside preconceived notions and enjoy the adventure. If you don't get all of the details at first, keep reading and everything will fall into place as you go.
I believe you'll appreciate the journey.

Originally published over 20 years ago by the Del Ray imprint, this book and its sequels have now been reissued as trade paperbacks by the University of Nebraska Press. Set in the midwest of the Mississippi Valley (the Heart River of the book), millenia in the future after a nuclear war, this book depicts the emergence of new civilizations controlling large swathes of North America. The author develops several different urban and tribal cultures, all with distinctive features, uses a bildungsroman type of plot to expose the readers to the various cultures, and then ties them together with an adventure story - romance involving inter-cultural warfare. Written decently and with a good degree of imagination. This is a stand alone book. I suspect the author wrote this book and after its success developed the rest of the series which are more interdependent. The University of Nebraska Press deserves considerable credit for bringing out relatively obscure but worthy books like this one.

I never really enjoyed reading but and I do not like flying, however whenever I travel the best way to take my mind off the flight is by reading a book. I grabbed this book by chance and am so glad I did. Now I have been hooked on all of Jonnie Jacobs' Kali O'Brien series. Whenever I pick one up it is soo hard to put down. Even when I do my mind is constantly thinking of what happened and I can't wait to continue reading I recently bought all of the hardcovers and am about to read her latest one "The Next Victim." After I finish that I am going to start from the beginning and read the earlier ones since I started in the middle with "Cold Justice." For someone like me that does not usually like books, this book is a must read.

I truly enjoyed reading this book. I like the character development and pace. HOWEVER - and this is a "biggie" for me - I was able to figure out who the real culprit was almost from the moment the character was introduced - the author made the mistake of revealing too much about this person's physical discription and the vehicle they drove - plus there was "motive". Perhaps I've read WAY to many mysteries and watched too much "Perry Mason" as a kid. The author did an excellent job of allowing for many "possibles" which sometimes made me think "maybe it's so and so??" - but alas when the identify of the killer was uncovered I was NOT at all surprised. This is the first of Ms Jacob's books that I've read and will most likely try another. I DO like the character Kali - she's very real.

If I have only 2 days to live, I know for sure that this is the one book I have to read before I go. The best book I have read so far. Usually books take me about 2 weeks to finish, but I couldn't put down this one. I had to run between classes so I could get to my class and start reading again. The only book I could not put down, not only to go to the bathroom.

I would recomend this book to anyone who wants to see what life is all about!! :)

I don't think I'll summarize the book because the other reviewers have already done a great job of that. But I've got to say this is my favorite Jonnie Jacobs book so far. If I remember correctly Jacobs' last books were first person viewpoint, from Kali O'Brien's point of view. Cold Justice is third person view point and it told things from not only Kali's perspective but from other characters as well. I felt this gave the reader better knowledge on the other characters' motivations. The only thing that I have a problem with is that Jacobs's minor characters (anyone besides Kali) tend to change with each book. I hope she continues some of the new minor characters in Cold Justice into her next book because they could make for some interesting developments.

As this novel of exquisite suspense begins, San Francisco lawyer Kali O'Brien has been stood up for dinner by her friend Anne. And then she gets the shocking news that Anne has been murdered in an apparent copycat killing. Anne's murder is eerily similar to the crimes for which the so-called Bayside Strangler, Dwayne Davis, has recently been executed. Both Anne and Kali helped prosecute Davis 8 years earlier. When a second, and then a third victim, turns up in short order, the heat is on and a team is put together to investigate the new murders and ensure that an innocent man was not executed. The plot is wickedly clever and the tension never lets up as Kali takes a leading role in the investigation and becomes a target for this diabolical killer.

I have only recently discovered Ms. Jacobs's Kali O'Brien series, and I am thoroughly hooked. She now definitely tops my list of favorites.

Many texts are oblique and indirect, written so the author can be published. However,Mr. Gronbach's book is a fresh, well written guide to accurate market forecasting that gives the reader immediately useful ideas and methods. Application of his well presented, easily understood method enables products to be brought to the market to catch the crest of the selling wave. Product planning and distribution techniques become clear and sensible. I have not seen anything that is this useful. I recommend anyone in consumer marketing to digest this book..

This book is simply written and simply...very insightful! The basic, simple and very practical formula of supply and demand based on population growth is simply explained. This formula is very practical in almost everything and anything. What ever topic it is this common census rule should be apply with the expectation of great results.
In a nut shell....It makes Common Census!

This book hits the nail on the head. It catches you shaking your head thinking "why don't they teach this in college??" A "must read" for anyone in the business world and anyone who just wants to understand simple economics! Ken is as brilliant a writer as he is a public speaker!

This book contains a point of view that many businessmen dismiss, or don't even consider. It teaches business in a simple way and portrays it in a way that IS common sense. It has helped me to think about the big picture of business and consider why corporations fail and succeed. I would recommend this book to anyone because it is understandable and simple, yet thought provoking and complex.

Common Census is curiously simple, yet profound. If you sell anything, goods or services, this is a must read before ramping up. This study of generational populations reveals why the Ipod is a homerun, and the retirement community, as we know it, will fade away. This quick read has helped me define where the money won't be, and the best generation(s) to market to. You'll want to read it over again!
L.L.Bowden

Most MDs really don't know much other than to tell patients with elevated blood pressures to cut back on the salt.

All the recipes that I've tried have all been tasty. If you really want to get your food intake in order also read the current bestseller "In Defense of Food".

This book is a "must have" along with "The No-Salt, Lowest-Sodium Cookbook", both are ESSENTIAL for anyone serious about low sodium cooking, lots of great advice, information about sodium content in common foods, great recipes - a real bargain.

This book is wonderful for cooking with low or no sodium. I bought this because my parents needed to decrease their sodium and potassium. This book does list the potassium count in the nutrition breakdown which helps me. I highly recommend it for people looking for healthier recipes.

I keep wondering why nearly all of the cookbooks have to be in book form. Use spiral bindings, please. Make them easy to use!

I agree, this is a must have for anyone following a low salt diet. Who says food has to be tasteless??? I learned so many cooking ideas from this book.

I bought a copy of this book about 25 years ago when a family member was put on a low sodium diet. It was a great beginner's guide to managing a low sodium diet, with lots of helpful tips. But even after I no longer needed to cook low sodium, I continued to use many of the recipes, just because they taste good. I finally gave my copy to a friend who was starting out on low sodium, and now I miss it. I think I'll have to get a new copy for myself, just for the recipes.

I really liked the first of the Jake O'Hara books. The characters were hilarious, the mystery interesting, the descriptions of different areas of NYC very well drawn. I particularly like the funeral scene in Calvary Cemetary. It was a perfect description of a burial in that old cemetery. This is a good start to the series.

I really enjoyed this book. One reason was because of the interplay between Jake, the amateur sleuth, and her mother with whom she lives. The book also covered an area of writing that has not been talked or written about much...the ghostwriter. It was interesting to learn about this group of writers and their feelings about their work. I couldn't help but wonder just how much was real and how much was author creation/speculation. All in all, an extremely good read.

Noreen Wald answers that question in her book Ghostwriter and she answers it well. This is a great first in a series.

A witty, quick read, Ghostwriter tells the story of Jake O'Hara, ghostwriter extraordinare. She lives in New York with her mother and belongs to GA (ghostwriters anonymous). All is fine until she is asked to ghost for the Queen of Murder Most Cozy and her fellow ghosts start turning up dead. Will Jake be next? Who is killing off her friends by the book? Could it be the handsome and wealthy Dennis Kim, a successful agent and a childhood enemy of Jake's? Could it be Too Tall Tom or the Mob? What about Gypsy Rose, her mother's best friend and occultist? Or the sensual therapist who seems to have a connection to everyone and anyone?

With the help of her family and friends Jake teams up with the police detective assigned to the case but can she find the killer before he finds her?

While this was not the most suspenseful mystery I have read it certainly was fun - mostly because of the wacky characters that Noreen Wald has so expertly drawn. I can't wait to read more of the series.

From Joan Mazza, author of Dreaming Your Real Self: A Personal Approach to Dream Interpretation.

Ghostwriter is a funny, funny book and a wonderful new character in Jake O'Hara. A page-turner as well. Can't wait for the next of the series! Noreen Wald's mix of humor, wit, and mystery lingers with a grin.

Ghostwriter was a fun book to read. The humor wasn't insulting and obvious. The author avoided stating the obvious, particularly when it came to the ethnicities of her characters. The final sentence was great. I particularly enjoyed the insight into the world of ghostwriting.

Gone with the wind is a novel packed with action, love, distress, hard times, and most of all, scarlet's strong sense of lofe. be it love of the land person, or thing scarlet is so emotional its almost unreal. it is an amazing book and i reccomend it for anyone with atleast a 9th grade reading lvl.
I think that the views expressed in this book about slavery and the civil war are more realistic than in any other book i've ever read. for instance, although uncle tom's cabin was another great book i believe that the viewpoint on slavery is too dramatic. i do not believe that all southern slave owners whipped their slaves.
i hope that reading this review has encouraged you to read this book. Gone With The Wind was deffinitely a book i can and will always remember, and i can't wait to read Scarlet, the sequel!

This is an excellent book that chronicles the making of the legendary screen classic "Gone With the Wind". The book moves in chronological order from it's start as a novel all the way through the pre-production, production and post-production stages of what was to be one of the greatest films of all time, if not the greatest. The book is filled with numerous photos, some of them in color, many of them rare and all of them crisp and clear. There are close-ups of all of its stars (Vivien Leigh, Clark Gable, Olivia DeHavilland, Leslie Howard), the crew at work, movie posters and it's world premiere. This is a great book that will make an excellent addition to any library!

This book is packed with information and great photographs, both in color and black and white. The majority of the book deals with the filming an abundance of behind-the-scenes shots.

Also of particular interest is the post-production section dealing with the public's reaction to the movie and the section on the Premiere. This is a great book to add to your personal library.

Gorgeous pictures. Wonderful history of the novel to movie story. All GWTW fans should have this.

First I was impressed by the quality of photos - excellent. I come from Poland where, for a long time of communism, the good quality was a rare luxury. I could see every single element of fabulous clothes. Good taste, an unattainable world of really rich people - different from those starving and hungry after war in "Gone With the Wind". A lot of pictures, too little stories and anecdotes, but this is an illustrated story, so I shouldn't complain. Vivien Leigh, Olivia de Havilland, Clarke Gable are warm and human as private persons. As actors they are shown as professionals.

Flannery O'Connor's correspondence is a fine testimony to humor, faith, and work in the life of a fascinating and absolutely unswerving human being. As she says in a letter to Andrew Lytle from this collection, the fact that she was a Catholic kept her from being a regional writer and the fact that she was a Southerner kept her from being a Catholic writer. If you want the best tutorial you're apt to ever read on how to write fiction, forget the usual "Write a Novel in 30 Days" garbage and get a copy of THE HABIT OF BEING. She'll also teach you quite a bit about living.

is like the impact of violence," Flannery O'Connor once wrote, which doesn't explain her stories but does help illuminate them. Having read her short stories and seen the cult film of Wise Blood, I nevertheless approached her letters gingerly. However, they hail from a time and tradition when letter writing was not only an art but a means of expression and communication. She works out a lot of the ideas she's writing about in her letters, which makes reading the finished works that much more fascinating.

O'Connor raised peacocks and lived on a farm in Georgia, but she also had lupus, an incurable disease. She's not sentimental about it (or about most things); she'd be a candidate for a Catholic realist (if there is such a category). Almost any writer or reader will find these letters fascinating for what they reveal about O'Connor and her method of working. Almost any spiritually-minded reader will find them equally intriguing for her insights on the human condition. Because Protestants don't have sacraments (Catholics have seven sacraments, Protestants have two), she once suggested, they have to make everything up as they go along. That seems to me to be the case in some post-modern churches where, it would seem, anything goes. But it would be incorrect, as Ralph Wood shows in Flannery O'Connor and the Christ-haunted South, to think she therefore held the fundamentalists who people her books in disdain, as did liberal Protestants and much of society in her time. Her generous nature is one reason so many are returning to reading O'Connor, and so many new readers are discovering her.

My thirty-five-year-old copy of this book is worn to tatters, and not just because of O'Connor's killer sense of humor. When overwhelmed by it all, this book does the trick. These letters won't be what her readers expect. True, they are ironic, economical, vivid, and eccentric. But their eccentricity runs not to blood, evil, and delusions; it runs to peacock farming. And--although a few noted writers are correspondents-- O'Connor mainly recounts the daily routines: setting the table, collecting the mail, entertaining the neighbors, reading the latest book. But seen through her eyes, these events are page-turners. Meanwhile, without one grain of saccharine, she conveys her acceptance, contentment, and steely dedication to writing while crippled with lupus (which killed her before she was forty.) But no bitterness here. Not only do you get absorbed in the writing; your own problems become trivial. By the way, aside from being one of the best writers I've ever read, she may also be the most authentically southern. By this I don't mean she's from the south. I mean she nails southern speech without ever resorting to embarassing attempts at "dialect."
If you're from the south too, you'll know what I mean.

This book is wonderful. If you're interested in O'Connor, you should definitely read it. AND, if you're NOT interested in O'Connor, this will make you interested in her. This book gives meaning to all her other stories.

I thought the title, "The Habit of Being" was extremely strange. But as you read it, it becomes very clear why a) it was titled that and b) O'Connor exemplified that motto.

Throughout this book you will see a thoughtful, kind, and analytical artist love on her work and her friends--in the most natural, uninhibited way. She spells words wrong. She speaks of her failing health. She talks about life on the farm. In the next letter it'll be theology and Aristotle though. It's beautiful and you will learn a lot from it.

That said...it's almost 600 pages long. BUT, I couldn't put it down.

She's witty and extremely funny too.

One of her best friends complied this set of letters to share the real Flannery with the public. That she did, and it is a blessing indeed.

These letters offer deep insight into the importance of the Catholic faith to Flannery O'Connor and to her audience of a number of decades ago. I found it an important book for today as well because we are still breathing in the toxic gas of nihilism. Not only did I enjoy her writings, but I found them to be exceptional well constructed.