News and Media Books

This third edition of Scrooge Investing, titled The New Scrooge Investing, is a great update of a very valuable resource that I have been using for years. I was delighted to see that all of the things that I look for in other investing books (like to to get free investment advice, reliable hot stock tips, free trades, and cut taxes) are all covered in detail in this book.

Mark Skousen has a great sense of humor, and you'll love his references to Uncle Scrooge, the Disney character (his inspiration for this book). In fact, I have the same collectible set of Uncle Scrooge materials that he refers to in this book.

I feel like I am a knowledgeable investor, but I found new ideas worth tens of thousands of dollars to me in the next year in the 150 tips in this book. You will certainly be repaid for your investment in the book and the time you spend with it.

I have been a subscriber to Forecasts and Strategies for many years, and found that this book is a wonderful summary of the advice I have been paying for over that time. I suspect that I can cancel my subscription now and save even more money!

Here are a few areas where you can quiz yourself:

(1) How should you choose a discount broker?

(2) Why is a discount broker often a poor idea when you buy bonds?

(3) Why should you be looking at closed-end country mutual funds?

(4) How can you use the recent rise in interest rates to increase your income and your capital gains?

(5) How can you get into hot IPOs with discount on-line brokers?

(6) What are the best ways to buy rare art?

(7) How should you sell items on on-line auctions?

(8) How can you acquire foreign currency inexpensively?

(9) How should you approach day-trading on-line?

If any of these questions are ones that interest you, be sure to check this book out.

I thought this book was excellent. Skousen, editor of the financial letter Forecasts & Strategies, shows you the easiest and most effective way to increase your investment returns: lower your costs. He also points out how you can save money on insurance, collectibles, even art. I agree with Skousen. The internet and other changes taking place in the financial industry are allowing investors to control their financial destiny at a fraction of the former cost. This book is a virtual user's manual on how to do it. Well worth reading.

I have to admit I was a little surprised at the usefulness of the tips in this book. It covers so many areas with intelligent tips it really has changed my perspective about how to manage money. Thanks Mark! A book of this type can't cover incredible DEPTH on the various topics that are presented, but it does manage to get you thinking along the lines that can save you a lot of money. Some tips are common sense to people with a lot of experience, but there are surprising gems even for an expert. Some things were a little out of my league (I haven't started any offshore investment programs) but other things really hit home (some of the online/Internet information, for example). My experience is more Internet-related, and I can see that Mark can't cover EVERY red flag to watch out for, but he leads you down a path of figuring things out for yourself. Even for an experienced online user like me, he brought up some VERY good points, which I appreciate greatly. Overall, I think people of all levels of financial expertise will benefit to some degree with this book -- easily covering the cost of the book itself many, many times over! 5 stars!

This is an easy-to-read chapter book with plenty of pictures to spur reluctant readers on. The book has humor appealing to younger children.

I have read this book so many times that I have memorized the story but I still love to read it. SPONGEBOB IS THE BEST!

My sons love Spongebob and thoroughly enjoyed reading this book!

This is a very good book on a subject that is very interesting. I thought that John Kuo Wei Tchen did a great job.

In New York Before Chinatown John Kuo Wei Tchen explores the dramatic shift in representations of Chinese people throughout the 19th century that, he argues, are essential to the development of modern "white" identity. Tchen expands the late Arab/American critic Edward Said's theoretical framework "orientalism", which famously illuminated the fear, loathing and desire of the West for the East, to include cultural phenomena intrinsic to US American life. In doing so he argues that orientalism has been instrumental in forming US American cultural identity. Writing in 1999 Tchen modestly offers this study as an attempt to tease out "subtle patterns" in U.S. history. The academic discretion he employs in so framing his argument belies its power and, in a post 9/11 world seems almost quaint. There can be no question that orientalist scenarios are shaping our contemporary historical moment.

Beginning in the colonial period Tchen describes the struggle to establish a distinct American identity in orientalist terms. He writes, "The beginnings of US modernity in (the) decades after the revolution...were characterized by the rise of self-made men and radical changes in everyday economic, political and social life." The flux of this period was mediated through Chinese consumable goods as US American identities, caught between the modes of patrician Europe and the needs of the new nation, cohered. Tchen emphasizes the passion for collecting Chinese porcelain, which became known as "china" and the merchants who sold it "Chinamen and women." In this way oriental objects came to represent Asian people, a conflation that persists.

While the "tasteful display" of oriental objects was a signifier of wealth and class in Europe and colonial America such "luxury and profuseness" was viewed by some as cause for alarm. British novelist Tobias Smollet warned against oriental luxuries as harbingers of "Indigence and Effeminacy: which prepared the Minds of the People for Corruption (and) Subjugation." Smollet and his contemporaries read a threat into the absence of actual Chinese people that their luxury items represented. His use of feminine terms as a frame for moral degeneracy that prefigures a "fall" is a sexist tactic not exclusive to orientalist scenarios but nonetheless often finds its expression there. The eastern other often vacillates between a degenerate effeminacy and a robust, sexually threatening vitality: an iteration that Tchen describes later as the "Chinese devil man."

Tchen notes that despite such warnings the fashion for oriental objects ran unabated in colonial America. He writes, "Average Americans chafed at any sumptuary limits on consumables deemed foreign and therefore taboo." I'd argue that this early American exercise in white privilege is a scenario that plays itself out in our current moment not over Chinese tea, but Middle Eastern oil. Even as racialized representations of Arabs--which echo the effeminate/hyper-masculine representations of the 19th century Chinese--abound in our culture the hunger for Middle Eastern oil only grows. As in the "American century" our "desire for `oriental' goods (is) stronger than the threat of `oriental despotism.'"

This pattern of orientalist imagining of eastern others from paternalistic delight, to sexual fear (characterized by moral outrage) to demonization (characterized by physical and or mental abjection) plays itself out in the past via Tchen's study and the present through the ethno-racist tropes applied by the Bush presidency in its foreign policy. The arguments John Kuo Wei Tchen makes in New York Before Chinatown have, through the events of the past several years, become overt expressions of the material culture of the United States.

The study of the Chinese in America has been given a major boost with the publication of this important book by historian John Kuo Wei Tchen. In clear and vivid prose, Tchen has altered the landscape of what has heretofore been accepted as Chinese-American history. From George Washington's porcelain tea set to the Bowery to "Siamese" twins Chang and Eng, the book is filled with eye opening original research and thought provoking conclusions. Sure to become a standard reference in the coming years.

After suffering through the prolonged editor's remarks trying to fruitlessless explain Foster's life, go to the real meat of this book. Mr. Foster gives you an insider's look into New York City in the middle of the 19th century. Perhaps he exaggerates some points, but his writing style is rivetting and exceptionally funny for a 19th century author. A must-read!

This book was a delight to read. The fact that it was written as a first person account, using the vernacular of the time, made it even better. Also, the fact that the majority of the book is involved with nocturnal New York, and all the seedy goings-on one might associate with it in any time period, make it even more interesting. I especially liked the way Foster evoked a sense of adventure, by figuratively taking the readers hand and "leading" him down darkened streets and alleys, etc.

For a quick dose of NYC history from a perspective you can't get everywhere else, this book is highly recommended.

Stuart Blumin has done a brilliant job of capturing the essence of George Foster's contemporaneous accounts of New York as he presented it, in "New York by Gas-Light and Other Urban Sketches". By that I mean that this collection of "sketches" are not to be taken as literal accounts. This is not a history. George Foster was one of the acknowledged kings of sensationalism when it came to writing about mid-19th century New York City.

While the Five Points neighborhood was a crime-ridden, filthy neighborhood, its depiction in Foster's accounts are highly exaggerated. And while crime was an unavoidable element of a New York which, at the time, had no real police force, Foster's essays would lead one to believe that merely walking down the street--any street--was an invitation to mayhem. This was not true then, nor is it now. So why did he write these sketches? Why did he make Manhattan seem so undesirable? Because there was a profit to be made. Affluent New Yorkers bought these types of books to make themselves feel better about their own situations, and it offered them a bit of voyeurism into a dark world that was a part of their island. It also proved popular with people in other cities, as they could read about the terrors of a New York City that was cluttered with "filthy immigrants", criminals and chaos. And George Foster played it to the hilt!

If you can put aside the over-the-top stuff, however, there is much to be learned in these pages. The streets of lower Manhattan were congested, they did smell (think of the wild pigs or of the countless horses that were relied upon for transportation), and the misery of the slums was a given, if you were poor. Foster's language is also an undeniable historic artifact, as it captures the idioms of the day.

For my money, the more historic sketches are in the second half of this collection, the streaks of "sunlight". Here Foster presents a handful of vignettes of every day life in the growing city. "The Eating-Houses" is a delightful look at how ordinary men and women took their meals. And the "Quarter of an Hour under an Awning" is so lucid, so cleanly written--even with its pickpocket story--that it is the most "real feeling" essay in the book. The sudden storm that breaks out during the afternoon rush hour, the inablility to catch an omnibus (bus) or a hack (taxi) rings true to this day. At times, on my lunch hour, I walk by the street corner near City Hall where this quarter of an hour passed, and can watch it all transpire in my head. With so many of the old buildings still extant in that area, it's easy to do.

"New York by Gas-Light and Other Urban Sketches" is a marvelous book about a by-gone era in New York's history, as well as a great insight into the sensational sensationalist that George Foster was.

Rocco Dormarunno, author of The Five Points and The Five Points Concluded

The book is called New York Minute the Success of Jane Ryan's. She's doing fine until her hand held organizer was stolen. Then her sister Roxey got into trouble with the police and she was accused of stealing a jacket and got put in jail, but it wasn't her. Then they found out that it wasn't them and let them go. Also she was running for class president and someone was sabotaging it. Mean while she was getting into a relationship with her crush. She thinks he's the one who's sabotaging her but it's really friend because she's jealous of her. At the end she finds everything out and she wins the campaign.


I really liked the book because it's like a mystery. I would recommend this book to girls because boys wouldn't like it. Also for girls that like mystery type of books. Another thing is this is a Mary-Kate and Ashley book so it could be for Mary-Kate and Ashley fans. This was an exiting book and I couldn't keep my eyes out of the book.

The book is called New York Minute the Success of Jane Ryan's. She's doing fine until her hand held organizer was stolen. Then her sister Roxey got into trouble with the police and she was accused of stealing a jacket and got put in jail, but it wasn't her. Then they found out that it wasn't them and let them go. Also she was running for class president and someone was sabotaging it. Mean while she was getting into a relationship with her crush. She thinks he's the one who's sabotaging her but it's really friend because she's jealous of her. At the end she finds everything out and she wins the campaign.


I really liked the book because it's like a mystery. I would recommend this book to girls because boys wouldn't like it. Also for girls that like mystery type of books. Another thing is this is a Mary-Kate and Ashley book so it could be for Mary-Kate and Ashley fans. This was an exiting book and I couldn't keep my eyes out of the book.

She is the kind of girl everybody wants to be(secertly). But everyone is really like Roxy. This book takes you deep into Janes personal life and what she does. You think she's a goody-goody from what you've seen or heard will think agian. she has an adventures side to herself.

It's about time someone began some dialogue on something that should have been addressed a long time ago. It's voices like this that allow me to rest a little easier...just a little. I'm recommending this book to all my students and friends.

Just a wonderful read. It is about time a book like this came out.

Thought provoking ideas spring from every page, cover to cover. A must for journalists or those studying journalism and those who simply want to be more informed about what is going on in our media today. In this time, when understanding diversity is so important in our current culture, I couldn't recommend this book more.

The Nursing Home Handbook is thorough and well written. It answered nearly all my questions and many I never thought of. My remaining questions are: Which are the best places? Are they easily accessible? How much do they cost? I still have to do research, but this book provides criteria by which to judge.

I recommend this book for anyone who needs help choosing a nursing home or dealing with one already chosen. It may also help you decide, as I did, that a nursing home is not the right choice at this time.

This book is a quick read, but is stuffed full of good information and practical tidbits. I read it in just a few hours and learned a tremendous lot. I especially liked the boxed text in the margins with interesting little factoids and suggestions.

For instance, when I asked to read my loved one's medical chart I was told, "okay, but hurry. I don't want anyone to see that I'm letting you do this." In Davis' book, she states that we have a legal right to read our own medical charts. Her book is full of this type of "been there, done that" advice.

The next to last chapter, which gives some information on hospice and practical advice on how to sit by the bedside when it's time for your loved one to leave this world, was very well written and is alone worth the price of this book.

I've read many of these books and this is one of the few that I'd highly recommend.

Ruth Davis writes with humor and great practicality on a topic that I find uncomfortable and somewhat overwhelming. She provides information on all aspects of nursing home care --from finding the right setting, to coping with details of day to day life in a home, to the last moments. I love her use of sidebars, little snippits of advice, often filled with humor and always packed with common sense. I would recommend this book to anyone facing the problem of long term care for self or loved one.

This is an adorably illustrated book. I teach preschool and need a book with simple language and great pictures to get the point of the Thanksgiving season across - I think this one does a great job.

One Little, Two Little, Three Little Pilgrims is a delightful children's book for the very young. B.G. Hennessy's writing is clear-cut, and doesn't overreach, as many Thanksgiving books have a tendency to do. There is no mention of death, or the hardships the pilgrims endured. This is a pleasant story recommended to the 3 to 8 crowd, but I say children 2 to 5 are more likely to appreciate it. The illustrations are equally delightful, and bursting with color. The text is rhythmic, and entertaining. If you don't mind singing the Thanksgiving version in the shower, or when drifting off to sleep, then check it out. It's an addictive read, but very effective, and worth a look.

This book is a wonderful story for the preschool crowd. It is sung to the old Ten Little Indians, but is a little more multicultural. It shows(with very cute illustrations) the Pilgrim & Wampanoag Indian children ina positive yet accurate light, and also depicts the different foods that were eaten at the first thanksgiving.

Susan Barnes has the remarkable ability to, not only, simplify the definition of attraction but show the reader exactly what to do to receive the things they're looking for.

I bought five books and gift them to people who run a pattern of attracting the wrong men, wrong careers and wrong "friendships" over and over.

Once they delve into "The Power of Net Magic" I'm certain their lives will take an extraordinary turn for the better. They'll see that by merely focusing and becoming aware of Susan's techniques is only the beginning to their journey to bliss.Undercover Angel

This is am amazing book that reminds us of how powerful our thoughts and minds can be. I have read this book twice and will most likely read it again.
Susan Barnes teaches us how to incoporate more positive thoughts and to reap the results, not only in relationships with others but in our relationships with ourselves.
Good read.

The Power of Net Magic is so inspirational and empowering, is it a must-read for everyone! It totally changed my life, and I know it will change yours, too. :0)

There are lots of books on reading with your kids, but this one has many good suggestions which are easy to implement. Really Reading helps you rethink the way you spend the time spent reading with your kids and helps you use the time more productively. Well worth the money!

This book offers many useful, light-hearted ideas that help make most out of the time parents spend reading with their children.

This handy little book dispenses with jargon and explains how to get the most out of reading with children. It shows you how to encourage kids to become active readers -- readers who think ahead, figure out unfamiliar vocabulary, use their imagination and look beyond the literal meaning of a story to its broader implications.

This book has valuable suggestions for parents and grandparents and teachers of very young readers (and listeners), and older, more sophisticated readers, too. Plus, reading Really Reading! is not a major undertaking; you can read it in an afternoon and use its techniques with your kids that evening!

I've found that my kids enjoy the time we spend reading together more now that I'm using the things I learned from this book; and I'm enjoying reading with them more, too.