Simmons Books

FOUND THE HISTORY WELL WRITTEN AND GREAT PICTURES, BIG AND INTERESTING TO READ!

This book not only tells what the boys got up to but also asks questions. If you are into motley Crue in a big way then this book is a must. Although it is now a bit out date because Vince Neil is now back in the band it still tells of how he left and new singer John Corabi joined and what he brought to the band Enjoy

What I ordered - on time delivery - good price.

I'm not a fan of the instruction format the publisher decided upon for this book. Complete paintings are shown with a detailed description by the author of what she painted how, why and where. It's an approach that reminds me of written instructions for finding a road as opposed to drawing a map. I happen to be more of a fan of the step-by-step painting in progress form of instruction. If you don't like step-by-step or don't mind all-in-one-shot instructions next to the complete painting then this book will probably rank higher. Having said that - the instructions the author provides are detailed and solid.

The paintings are in a very loose manner so don't expect highly detailed, color saturated paintings. Subjects range from landscapes (the most common) to florals to country cottages in meadows.

The Scientific 100: A Racnking of the Most Influential Scientists is an interesting book that provided many life facts about 100 interesting scientists. Anyone interested in science should definitely buy this book. It is packed with facts about the 100 most influential scientists in Science.

I had to put off reading this book until the summer because under normal conditions a person would pick this book up and look for a specific scientist, or science, and then get the wanted information on those specifics. This is not one of those books that you just pick up and read straight through. Most scientists are interested in a limited area of science. For example, Marie Curie was a chemist, a physicist, and interested in other sciences and the math that were involved in those sciences. Very rarely, if ever, did she wander into the domain of biological sciences (if she had, she may have been a bit more careful with the radium she and her husband were 'pocketing' on a daily basis)!

There are always a few men and women out there who remain curious about the entire world. Men like Leonardo de Vinci, Linus Pauling, even those outside of the world of science such as Thomas Jefferson. But the fact remains that this book would be used as a starting point or a reference by teachers and students to gain information about specific scientists and the fields they investigated; whether it be chemistry, physics, biology, or linguistics.

This is an excellent reference book. I can highly recommend it for use by teachers in gathering information about these famous men without going into so much detail about their scientific interests that the teachers who have not been trained in these areas, get lost. I especially recommend it for highschool and college level reference. If teachers of lower grades plan to use this book, I highly suggest they read carefully the information on specific scientists first rather than just handing the book over to a student. I am a little leery of recommending books that I have not read, or of teachers who recommend books that they have not read. The reason for this hesitation is that Simmons puts a small amount of personal information concerning these men and their families, especially their wives, in the chapters...and some of this information is not only not pertinent to their lives in science, but is actually slightly more detailed about their sex lives than a seventh grader needs to know. This is the only reason I gave the book a 4 star rating rather than a 5 star rating.

Otherwise, I enjoyed reading about so many interesting men and women (again, there is a limit on the amount of women and minorities in the book but that is in large part due to historical prejudices which were not overcome until the last century). There are definitely several scientists I am going to read more information on because of this book raising my interest in them.

Again, a highly informative reference book for science, math, and libraries.

Karen Sadler,
Science Education

A temptation of fate sends Nick Bardou home to confront
the demons of his past. And a beautiful witch stirs up a concoction
of magic and love to help end his pain...

Nick Bardou had vowed never to return home to New
Orleans. But something had drawn him here. Something
more than the tax sale on his family's estate or the scent of
honeysuckle mixed with jasmine. And then he saw her...

She was a vision. At first, Nick thought it was Sabine, the
one woman who evoked such vivid memories of his pain.
In fact, he had blamed himself for her tragic death ten
years ago. But this beautiful woman is Sabine's daughter.
With a little magic, she helps Nick uncover the truth.
And as she opens the door to the past-he opens
his heart to her...
**********
This book was pretty good, the hero and heroine were likeable,
it just lacked a certain something.The villain was pretty predictable
but that's usually the case in romances. I just wasn't as connected
to this story as to others I have read, but it was still an enjoyable
read. And it has a pretty cover too. :o)

A decade had passed since Nick Bardou fled New Orleans after the scandal of 1865 that rocked his family and led to him killing his father's mistress. On his return, the city still reeks and he cannot wait till he can go back to California. However, everything abruptly changes when he sees the woman he stabbed in the heart and had buried in a coffin deep into the ground, blissfully standing nearby, doing some sort of magical trick with falling flowers.

Nick soon meets Wendi Chastain, daughter of the woman he killed. Soon, Nick agrees to assist Wendi in her quest of finding the missing Book of Shadows, once the property of her mother. However, as the couple searches for the lost tome, they fall in love with one another. In spite of the beliefs of Wendi's Aunt Sybilla that destiny is correcting a past wrong, Nick has the baggage of his beloved's mother and his own father to overcome if he wants to share a lifetime of love with her.

Fans of historical romance with a twist of witchcraft will be SPELLBOUND by Trana Mae Simmons' latest novel. The story line is filled with poignancy and tension that is slightly relieved by comedic moments. The characters are heartwarming and believable, while fans will accept magic as the genuine article. A fun time is to be had by fans of the Post Civil War romance who enjoy a few twists to their tale.

Harriet Klausner

This book is a good complement to the oldie but still good Tech TV's Cutting the Cord book that I wrote back in 2002 TechTV's Cutting the Cord: A Wireless Consumer's Guide so you can certainly add it to your shelf especially if you're delving into the area of cross-platform content creation or next-generation TV or even want to be involved in the next-generation of content for all media. Price is right don't miss it. Watch for some of my current book to go wireless soon The Vision Board: The Secret to an Extraordinary Life

I was about to buy an Internet phone and get setup with an account, but I bought this book instead - thank goodness! This book helped me avoid major mistakes and I now have the right phone and the right plan for me (I'm saving more money every month than this book even cost!). Aside from that, it's full of practical tips and advice for anyone wanting to know more about the wireless Internet and how to use it.

WPA is a book that makes a horrible contradiction, it asks professionals working in related fields to the AIDS pandemic to examine certain kinds of structural violence regarding gender and poverty, which the authors correctly claim have been mostly overlooked - that is, poor women forms one of the groups most brutally hit by AIDS. No help, no medicine, no programs, no interest from academics, public health institutions, etc results in brutal and lethal suffering for poor women and their families. On the other hand, by the language they use to talk about prostitution systems, WPA authors practice and perpetuate serious forms of structural violence against poor women and children.

The book is divided into 3 parts: 1) "Rethinking AIDS" tries to take a global look at the AIDS pandemic specially regarding poor women; 2) "Rereading AIDS," examines problems with social science, public health, and clinical medicine on AIDS and poor women; and 3) profiles organizations who offer services to people with AIDS with a sensitive framework towards poverty and women.

Throughout the book, where the issue of prostitution regularly appears, the authors adopt the trend to refer to women and children in prostitution as "sex workers." They do alternatively use "prostitute," but the emphasis is "sex worker," "sex tourism," "sex industry," words which serve to hide any form of violence, crime, and torture in prostitution systems. Even in their own vignette of Lata, a prostituted teenager, which is such a typical case in prostitution or the rape tourism industry, which exemplifies so many of the forms of violence suffered by prostituted children and women, the authors use mostly a falsely non-violent language that serves to make invisible and push away from conscience the very violence the authors are describing. Lata is an Indian girl who is "sold" by her parents to a pimp, she is raped, kidnapped, and sexually and psychologically abused into a prostitution system, and after all of that, while still in captivity, while still being coerced to have sex with men (i.e. being systematically raped), she is called by the authors a "sex worker." It is particularly disgusting to see authors who write a book asking people to take into account structural forms of violence against women - in particular, the brutal consequences of poverty: lack of safety, human rights, medical care, care for their children, economic survival, psychological well being- and who at the same time use a vocabulary and language that serves to hide so many forms of violence perpetrated against these very women and children in prostitution systems. I don't see using "sex worker" as a step forward from "prostitute." If the word "prostitute" carries a stigma, the problem won't be resolved by using a language that serves to hide the violence involved in the system. Authors can come up with something less irresponsible than that.

The term "sex worker" is so comfortable, so nifty, so postmodern-chic, so trendy-but so disgustingly violent, so corrupt in its insensitivity to the suffering and trauma perpetrated against defenseless children and women in prostitution, and so in collusion with every single person who would like to erase from the public eye, and consequently from accountability and punishment, the great violations of various human rights involved in systems of prostitution and the rape tourism industry. This is particularly problematic in a book that has subtitles such as " the use of culture and construction of denial to explain this or that," "making it explicit: women, poverty, AIDS," "exaggeration of poor women's agency," and not least, "lack of accountability." It's Orwellian.

Authors such as those from WPA usually justify their practice of the above violence by saying that "sex worker, et al" is a vocabulary that does not stigmatize those in prostitution. But the compounded horrendous forms of violence (specially structural ones) in prostitution are much worse than the processes of stigmatization. So why, when there is so much violence in prostitution, have academics adopted such a camouflaged, deceptive wording? How privileged, dehumanized, and lacking in accountability regarding a language that erases real violence from conscience in prostitution systems are these and other authors?

The answer, unfortunately, is "very." Albeit WPA provides some very important information, plus heartbreaking profiles of diverse women, nationally and internationally brutalized by AIDS, plus the discussion of various serious problems regarding poor women and AIDS, it felt, in my view, like two steps backwards, one step forward. Purporting to raise issues of the violence of poverty towards women and their families - of which prostitution is a significant destroyer of human rights-the authors end up caught up in the same problem they are trying to denounce.

"Lucid, smart, passionate, and compassionate, Women, Poverty & AIDS puts the calss back into class analysis. Through a diversity of voices, experiences, geographies and disciplines, the contributors argue that poverty as a factor in the global HIV epidemic is pervasive, neglected, and urgent. Povery is inescapably linked to gender. Acall to arms on behalf of health and social justice for poor women, its impact is searing." --Paula Treichler, University of Illinois, Urbana, editor of The Feminist Dictionary

"Exceedingly well-written, this book shows that AIDS is a wake-up call--we must be about the business of transforming our world, if for no other reason than to prevent the creation of a worse epidemic, which could be the inevitable sequel to our failure to contain this one. A compelling presentation of people, programs and ideas, Women, Poverty & AIDS has an important message of hope." --Robert Fullilove and Mindy Fullilove, M.D., Columbia School of Public Health

"Moving beyond a simple biomedical model, this book compels us to view AIDS in women in a wholly new way, as an inescapable event in lives devalued by the forces of poverty, racism, and sexism. This extraordinary multidisciplinary effort should serve as the guidebook for those who want to understand how AIDS could become a leading killer of young women in a mere decade." --Deborah Cotton, M.D., Massachusetts General Hospital, editor of The Medical Management of AIDS in Women

"Women, Poverty & AIDS makes a major contribution by staying always close to the lived realities of real people in real places, and refusing the old, empty, pat answers to difficult questions. A hard-nosed, real-life analysis--an antidote to status quo thinking--this should be required reading for all who care about AIDS--or public health." --Jonathan Mann, M.D., Director of the International AIDS Center, and the François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights at the Harvard School of Public Health

It is a pity that this book appears to be out of print. There are some other good Anthologies still in print, but if you're also interested in ranking your favourite Scientists, and then seeing who else is up there alongside them who you might never have heard of, and thus prompt you to go off and study something new, then this book is excellent for that.

Alicia y Greta is a funny book about two witches. One of them (Alicia) uses her witch capabilities to do good, and the other... you got it! She does exactly the oposite. In this book kids will read about the naughty things Greta does with her magic and the nice things Alice acomplishes with hers. However, a problem arises when Greta forgets the "boomerang rule". The Spanish language used in this book is beautiful and at a level children can comprehend, many times the story's best parts get lost in the translations. Such is not the case with Alicia y Greta, a book all kids who love witches will enjoy!

This book is a condensed selection of choice passages from the 11th edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, which was peppered with absurd descriptions of social mores and sweeping generalizations about national characters. It's the acme of the imperialist mindset, distilled for occaisional reading; perfect for a professor's bathroom.

An excellent account of the 13 colonies. Easy reading, this book is a great reference for the revolution.