Stevens Books

Mr. Harvey brings to light a side of history that goes unnoticed for the most part, with well-researched detail the story starts with the first canals and steamboats and how with courage and determination ambitious inventors, steamboat men, and capitalists helped to influenced other men and women in our great history to reshape our society and changed America forever.

He takes us through the first century of mechanical transportation with his focal point on the scenic waters of New York State and its Finger Lakes and shows us how it become a major link in the transportation system that moved America westward and also how each step forward in transportation technology they moved onward to bring about the modern age of travel.

He includes detailed drawings of the steamboats, constructions techniques, and how they traversed the Finger Lakes in the mid to late 19th century which I feel makes this book a delight to read and I would recommend this great book to students, history hounds looking for a wonderful addition to their library and the everyday reader who just wants a good book to read.

This amazing story of how we Americans went from having only our feet to trod dirt roads to possessing the worlds finest transportation system is remarkable! Mr. Harvey takes us through the first century of mechanical transportation and shows us how it reshaped our society and changed your nation forever. New York State and its Finger Lakes is the focal point of this story that starts with the first canals and steamboats and ends with Glenn Curtiss and his airplanes. This is a great book for students, history hounds and the everyday reader who just wants a good book to read.

Steve Harvey appropriately sub-titled this book "An American Saga." After horseback and buggies in the Finger Lakes Region of New York State came the steamboat making "It Started With A Steamboat" a most adept title. As I started reading I found myself engrossed with the words written and, almost, unable to put the book down. The discussions about the particular steamboats, including constructions techniques, then traversing the Finger Lakes in the mid to late 19th century are wonderful examples of Mr. Harvey's writing. His drawings of the steamboats are among the finest I have ever seen. In addition, it was a delight to read yet another discussion about Mr. Glenn H. Curtiss, far advanced beyond the Wright Brothers, as the leader in the development of aviation in this country and throughout the world. "It Started With A Steamboat" is written with the Finger Lakes Region as a focus but written as such so that any history buff would find it an interesting read and wonderful addition to their library.

A major chapter of the American story unfolded on the scenic waters of the Finger Lakes of New York. That area, now known for its wines and resorts, was once a major link in the transportation system that moved America westward and the place where the technology that made it all possible was invented or improved.

Mr. Harvey brings that story to life with rich and well-researched detail that tells the story of ambitious inventors, steamboat men, and capitalists and how they changed this country and and brought about the modern age.

Society is shaped, made possible even, by the technologies it uses. Mr. Harvey shows how transportation technology shaped America--how and where we lived and how we did business. His focus is on the steamboat age but he places that story in a continuum that moves onward to the airplane and the space ship, each evolution growing out of the previous stage.

A large cast of larger-than-life characters gives this book the immediacy of drama but Mr. Harvey also puts the strivings of these energetic men and women into the bigger picture to show us the world that they created and the legacy that they left.

I wish this book existed during the turbulent 80's and early 90's. Outmoded accounting system's, corporate reorganizations, high employee turnover, pressure to do more, faster with fewer resources. As a Controller, most of my biggest headaches involved the amount of time required to close the books. The original closing schedule was 10 days into the new period. Then it was 8 days. Then 5, then 4 days.

I can't even guess at the time I could have saved had I known the techniques the author demonstrates in Just-In-Time Accounting.

This is not your usual accounting tome, based on statistics and theory. This is real stuff. Built out of scar tissue, experience and real world solutions. They are not necessarily easy solutions but lasting solutions worth the effort to implement.

The content deals with streamlining some basic areas:

Cash - How to speed up the process but still keep control. Some very interesting ideas about corporate credit cards, using your bank and lock boxes to save time and money.

Sales & Accounts Receivable - Some good ideas about redundant approvals, and minimizing paper.

Inventory - With hundreds of physical inventories under my belt I can vouch for the absolutely necessity of doing what the author recommends. This area was one of my great bugaboo's. Nothing affects the balance sheet like an inventory error. This involves bills of material, suppliers, production records, and computer system's. This is a whole world in itself but the problem(s) and solutions are concisely described here. Get your inventory under control and the rest is cake.

Accounts Payable - Good stuff that took me a long time to discover on my own.

Cost Accounting - Mostly about why you need it and how it allows you to spot P&L problems before the month ends. This is one of the critical areas to review since it is necessary for faster closes. Get the major variances identified early in the month instead of wasting time digging it up 4 or 5 weeks after the events occurred. One comment I have is the need for weekly staff meetings to review what happened last week, how will it affect this week and what is being done about it. These meeting will point out problem areas for the controller to preempt delusional variance explanations after monthend.

Payroll - Many good ideas that work. I have used the barcode system's.

The Budget - You probably know about these already but there are some time-saving techniques to minimize constant re-casting and interations.

EDI - I'm not too familiar with this.

The Quick Close - It can be done. This tells you how and I can vouch for the soundness of the concept. I actually set a corporate-wide benchmark of 1-1/2 days using these techniques. In my view that is the real payoff since it is the realization and payoff of all the other hard work. Gives you more time to do yet another iteration of the budget.

Some of the examples apply to huge corporations but most of the principles are universal. I really can't find fault in this book. It tells the controller, in the real world, how to get your system(s) sorted out. I have seen many "instant pudding" or fad of the month cause real damage if it didn't really work. There is no downside to these techniques. This is motherhood and apple pie. You can't go wrong trying.

A great reference on aspects of operational accounting -- easy to read and use format.

This book is the best in the market so far for accounting process improvements. The author did a great job in outlining the traditional and revised accounting procedures. Lots of opportunities available to streamline the work process and enhance the information flow. There are lots of useful flowcharts and tables that you can apply to your company right away.

I wish this book existed during the turbulent 80's and early 90's. Outmoded accounting system's, corporate reorganizations, high employee turnover, pressure to do more, faster with fewer resources. As a Controller, most of my biggest headaches involved the amount of time required to close the books. The original closing schedule was 10 days into the new period. Then it was 8 days. Then 5, then 4 days.

I can't even guess at the time I could have saved had I known the techniques the author demonstrates in Just-In-Time Accounting.

This is not your usual accounting tome, based on statistics and theory. This is real stuff. Built out of scar tissue, experience and real world solutions. They are not necessarily easy solutions but lasting solutions worth the effort to implement.

The content deals with streamlining some basic areas:

Cash - How to speed up the process but still keep control. Some very interesting ideas about corporate credit cards, using your bank and lock boxes to save time and money.

Sales & Accounts Receivable - Some good ideas about redundant approvals, and minimizing paper.

Inventory - With hundreds of physical inventories under my belt I can vouch for the absolutely necessity of doing what the author recommends. This area was one of my great bugaboo's. Nothing affects the balance sheet like an inventory error. This involves bills of material, suppliers, production records, and computer system's. This is a whole world in itself but the problem(s) and solutions are concisely described here. Get your inventory under control and the rest is cake.

Accounts Payable - Good stuff that took me a long time to discover on my own.

Cost Accounting - Mostly about why you need it and how it allows you to spot P&L problems before the month ends. This is one of the critical areas to review since it is necessary for faster closes. Get the major variances identified early in the month instead of wasting time digging it up 4 or 5 weeks after the events occurred. One comment I have is the need for weekly staff meetings to review what happened last week, how will it affect this week and what is being done about it. These meeting will point out problem areas for the controller to preempt delusional variance explanations after monthend.

Payroll - Many good ideas that work. I have used the barcode system's.

The Budget - You probably know about these already but there are some time-saving techniques to minimize constant re-casting and interations.

EDI - I'm not too familiar with this.

The Quick Close - It can be done. This tells you how and I can vouch for the soundness of the concept. I actually set a corporate-wide benchmark of 1-1/2 days using these techniques. In my view that is the real payoff since it is the realization and payoff of all the other hard work. Gives you more time to do yet another iteration of the budget.

Some of the examples apply to huge corporations but most of the principles are universal. I really can't find fault in this book. It tells the controller, in the real world, how to get your system(s) sorted out. I have seen many "instant pudding" or fad of the month cause real damage if it didn't really work. There is no downside to these techniques. This is motherhood and apple pie. You can't go wrong trying

I referred to this book often in a Migrant Head Start Program. The kids love the activities, and so do the adults!

The creativity of each activity is amazing. They are organized on a day-by-day basis, corresponding to the different seasons. For example, in fall kids are painting with leaves, watching birds fly south, and creating projects with apples; in spring, they observe green life under the snow and plant seeds which they can tend into fall. It is the perfect book with which to cultivate a life-long love for nature in children living in a world of rapid environmental change.

Start learning today!

I bought this book when my daughter was in first grade and find myself using it on a regular basis. There are activity suggestions for every day of the year to help you and your kids learn more about nature, together! There are also games to play and suggestions for stories and poems to read. I find that the ideas are easily adaptable to each child and a great reference for the times when your child says "mom, I'm bored". An all-around great book for parents who want to teach their children a greater appreciation for nature and the world around them. I learned a lot, too!

This is a great outdoor book for kids of all ages. It literally has an activity for every day of the year and they are do-able activities to teach kids about nature!

This book is written in a calendar format, encouraging readers to engage in nature activities appropriate for that time of year (in a seasonal climate). My children and I found ourselves occupied with listening for spring peepers in March, sowing sunflower seeds in June, making leaf tracings in October and pinecone birdfeeders in January. Far from the usual stuff however, this book is also packed with great nature facts, activities and games that I've never seen anywhere else.
Excellent resource for families interested in going a few steps beyond to really learn about the natural world; also excellent for classrooms, scout troops and the like for kid-friendly ideas and activities which appeal to a wide span of ages.

Before I read this book (for a space history class at UND), I had only heard of Sergei Korolev and his work on the R-7 and Sputnik. My knowledge of the competing ICBMs was limited at best... but Mr. Zaloga's book widened my horizons immensely.

Anyone interested in the significant threat posed by the Soviet Union during the Cold War, and the weapons still aimed at the United States by the Russian Federation should read this book. Its written in a interesting way - not too historical, not too technical - from a very knowledgable source.

Kudos to Mr. Zaloga! (thanks for explaining who Chelomei was... ;-)

I found this book very easy to read and a well taught history of the soviet military nuclear power.
It describes the rise and fall of all the aspects of the soviet nuclear war machine, from the bomb itself, to the various delivery systems. It offers an outstanding insights into the decision making process of the soviet state machine.

It also describes the way soviets incorporated the post war german rocket engineering, to compare with american way (paperclip operation).

An excellent choice is the use of the soviet naming conventions and numbering. It also examines the SALT treaties and their genesis. The book is full of tables, pictures and easy data presentation. A lot of well documented tables are found in appendixes .

Worth buying and reading.

Steve Zaloga does an amazing job discussing a very diverse subject that covers the entire Cold War period between the US and USSR. He not only describes the Kremlin's nuclear weapons technology, but he delivers a history of the politics that inspired the development and deployment of the weapons. Zaloga's style is smooth and keeps the reader interested in the topic, and he manages to keep the reader from being bored while covering the often-times mundane details. I would highly recommend this book for use withing a graduate level history course.

Zaloga has done a masterful job of describing the internal politics that kept the Soviet program from achieving maximum efficiency in their arms race with the USA. Still, one has to admire the dogged determination the Soviets showed in this pursuit. He also updates the reader on the decrepit state of the post-Soviet arsenal today. That is even scarier than the past flirtation with Armageddon.

This is a story of a young women being persued by the Nazi's and her ability to get away from them. She was brought to jail for questioning but with a great deal of bravery she was able to get away. A MUST READ.

I couldn't put the book down until I read the last page. An exciting adventure of a young lady trying to avoid the Nazi's.

This memoir, rich in texture and detail, reflects the extensive research the protagonist's co-author, Steven Weingartner, seems to have done in preparation for writing this work (since so much of the history and background recalled here would have been beyond the ken of Lala Fishman, the story's narrator). The authors trace Ms. Fishman's family roots, from what was then the Ukraine into the Poland of that era, and provide, in remarkably vivid detail, a picture of what it was like to live through two back-to-back invasions of Poland: the joint Nazi-Soviet attacks of 1939 followed by the treacherous Nazi thrust against Stalin's Soviet Union in 1941. For Jews like Fishman, the advent of the Nazis into eastern Poland made a trying situation, under Communist rule, infinitely worse as the Nazis systematically undertook to exterminate the Jews.

Fishman recalls both the telling details and her own reflections as the Nazi terror swirled around her. From the initial indignities of Nazi restrictions on the Jewish population, to the construction of the ghetto and the unpredictable "actions" that swept Jews indiscriminately off the streets and into oblivion, to the whittling away of her own family members, one by one, as they are taken in the "actions," Fishman describes the growing sense of dread and helplessness that overwhelmed the Jews she knew. Witness to brutal hangings of Jews by Gestapo soldiers in the streets, arrested more than once herself, Fishman, on the verge of adulthood, finally recognizes that no help is coming and that there can be only one end to it all.

"It's a trap," she tells her distraught father and mother when the Nazis initially press them to enter the ghetto, a place to get all the Jews together she insists so they can finish them off. Her family, heeding her words, stays put for as long as they can. But they can't hold out forever and Fishman must finally flee the city of Lvov with what's left of her family (her broken mother and nine year old sister) after her uncles and father disappear and her elderly grandmother is grabbed from their apartment in a surprise Nazi raid.

But flight alone is barely enough, for Fishman can't escape the cruelties of the Nazis and their Ukrainian minions, nor the cold anti-Semitism of many Poles. Yet it's through other Poles, men and women of good will, that Fishman is finally enabled to survive. Relying on false papers and the training in Catholic ritual and teaching she receives in a crash course from Catholic friends, Fishman contrives to "pass" as a Catholic Polish girl. Still, she is taken and beaten by Nazi interrogators, stripped to her underwear for their inspection and finally, on winning a temporary reprieve, flees into the nearby countryside as the Gestapo pursue her and a friend. The journey takes Fishman into a new life, one of deception and paranoia where she must constantly live with the memory of her lost family, including the broken spirited mother and terrified nine year old sister she was forced to abandon to save herself.

Sometimes, though, there's almost too much research here, too much detail about things Fishman could not have known while she was living it all. But the episodes of flight and survival recalled by Fishman, and recounted here, make this story a valuable window into an era which saw the brutal eradication of Europe's Jews.

SWM

co-author of A Raft on the River the story of a young girl's coming of age in the shadow of the Holocaust in eastern Poland between 1939 and 1945

editor of Bitter Freedom: Memoirs of a Holocaust Survivor

Great book--exciting reading and has kept me up all evening until I completed it.

Lana's Magic Garden: Myths and Potions is well worth the money. Lana's life stories are better than fiction and the information is invaluable. If your looking for a good read or need to know ANYTHING about magic, this is the book for you.

This book was easy to read, understand, and follow. Lana is a true good soul and she just wants to help people achieve the most glorious life they can.

THIS BOOK IS FANTASTIC!!!
I LEARNED SO MANY THINGS THAT I DID NOT KNOW ABOUT MAGIC, BEFORE READING LANAS BOOK.
I THINK SHE IS VERY STIMULATING AS A WRITTER AND I CAN NOT WAIT TO SEE WHAT SHE COMES OUT WITH NEXT!!!

ASHLEY
02/27/04

This book is a page turner. I absolutely loved every minute of it!! I'd recommend it to anyone.

I am very happy with my law dictionary it was in great condition and very useful for my law class!

This little book will save any student while studying for exams.

There is not much that can be said for dictionaries except how much they help you. Whether you are a lawyer or layman, this is a valuable reference to those confusing legal terms you may periodical see on contracts, in the news, on warranties and other places.

Black has been around for a long time and is the most concise of all the dictionaries I have seen. Pick it up and you wont regret it.

This is a good Law dictionary. Easier to find meaning and easier to use it.

As previously noted in other "law in a flash reviews," these cards are highly beneficial in mechanical courses, and useless in more abstract and theoretical classes. One of the most useful sets is Evidence.

Evidence, as one learns, is primarily "tribal knowledge" in that many of the rules are just something you need to learn the exceptions to, and they don't always make sense. These are great for learning evidence, but they should not be used as your only "question pack" because the cards provide points without a complex fact scenario. Siegel's and other books provide MBE and written-style questions that are more useful, but these are good for the basics. It is a shame they are not available for more topics. Be warned - many of these cards are duplicated in the "CrunchTime" book by the same company.

Studying evidence can be intimidating. It is just an endless series of exceptions to the basic rule that anything relevant is admissible. And then exceptions to the exceptions. But the Law in a Flash series made it really manageable and easy to understand and remember in small pieces that are digestible even when your brain is mush.

There is nothing more riveting than the law in a flash series - especially the Evidence flashcards. I remember Christmases past, sitting around the sparkling tree at the old cabin and laughing over the intricacies of hearsay with the whole family. Every time I see a stack of flashcards, I remember Grandpa's Rule 403 joke and smile.

This book is a great toolbox for anyone managing or leading groups or teams. It is not about getting up and presenting to a group. It is more about getting up and tapping into a group's creativity, ideas, and expertise and helps to solve problems, execute tasks, or implement solutions. Just because you're leading a group discussion doesn't mean you're automatically the designated leader. I was put into a temporary project team where we were required to solve a major problem. For many of the individuals it was the first time we had met. Putting this information to use definitely helped us arrive at our solution more quickly.

This book is an all around good and useable book. It is something teams, leaders, facilitators, and even public speakers might want to consider who deal with people in a guiding capacity. Chapter 21 - Facilitating the Group From Hell - helps in dealing with those difficult and frustrating situations we can all relate to.

A excellent book for anyone who is leading, facilitating, or coordinating group or team meetings. This will help in facilitating groups to solve problems, collaborate together, plan, organize, and make decisions. Each chapter has a quick reference at the end which makes it easy when refering back to the tools and skills sets provided in the book. It is very user friendly. For those looking to improve teams as opposed to facilitating groups, you should try CMOE's other book The Team Approach: With Teamwork Anything Is Possible

This is a great book for anyone facilitating team meetings. The book is more of a tool kit on how to draw out ideas and creative energy to build team consensus. It is not a book about teams, but offers a process on how to facilitate and help lead teams to a collective group solution. Could also be a good resource for anyone wanting help with general meeting management.

The book highlights facets of our mixed, modern day lives and our own self importance. By stepping back to look at how we treat ourselves and our fellow human beings, we can see we are at odds with the natural course of our 'river'. The book helps one to analyse ones actions in order to bring harmony to this life we have to live.
Having met the author by chance, on a flight, I can see that this design for living truly works for her.
Namaste.

As a sceptical reader and a person who finds self-help books a challenging read,I found the messages in this book very easy to understand and will be beneficial to me in the future

As a sceptical reader and a person who finds self-help books a challenging read,I found the messages in this book very easy to understand and will be beneficial to me in the future

This book was such a breath of fresh air when reading. I knew all of these hints on life but it took the author's experiences and suggestions to help me see clearly through the mists of life.

Thank you so very much for sharing your lifes exeriences with us all.

Morag Robertson