Radford Books

After being spoiled by Goodkind, Hobb, McKiernan, Fallon...this was not what I was expecting. Interesting ideas, but not terribly well-organized or easy to read. I bought the first, I won't buy any more.

I wouldn't say this was a BAD book--well, not an AWFUL book--but it definitely was not a very compelling story. I didn't finish it (I know, you're thinking, "don't knock it till you've read it!") but this is one of the few books that has EVER failed to hold my interest until the end. It's not romantic, even in the love scenes; it's not exciting, even in the chase scenes; it's not filled with interesting concepts, even in the "magic" scenes... It's just bland, bland, bland.

This book, the series, are incrediable. They are amazingly accurate, every happening seems to be researched, every thing is thought out. The way this series describes magic is so belivable, so...logical. the book, as all the books in her series, is so intense, i always seem to be thinking how the hell are they going to pull this off? and she makes it fit together perfectly. If you love magic, dragons, fantasy, mystery, you will love all of her books.

I fully recommend this series!

The Perfect Princess was full of magical mystical events! It was also very suspensful! I would recommend this wonderful book to anyone who enjoys fantasy and magic!

Irene Radford blends words and imagery together into this wonderfully delightful book. The third book of the Dragon Nimbus History is just as fascinating as the ones preceeding it. The use of different names for places fits in wonderfully with the plot, like for instance "Terra" referring to "Earth". I do wish that in the next book, Nimbulan will get his magic back.

'The Renegade Dragon' disappoints both as a novel and a story. Radford's writing is painfully stilted at points. A case in point 'We must not destroy this world called Kardia Hodos as my people destroyed Terra' (p. 3) I understand why Radford put that in, she's trying to relay information to the reader, but that's just awful. There are several other instances which lamentably I didn't jot down.

Radford's universe in one where the people on this planet are apparently descended from human settlers. Radford uses abbreviations for modern amenities. Electricity = 'tricity. Remotes = 'motes. Subsititute kardia for earth in every form (ie. kardiaquakes). It's not very imaginative.

Perhaps the book's most egregious error is in a machines=bad slant. Radford spends the entire book telling how humankind started a virulent plague which wipes out huge numbers of people, all because of technology. Now the kind people of Kardia Hodos must stay free of technology so they won't die as well. It's ridiculous. The only way the good people can stay free of the disease is from a tree called 'Tambootie'. It sounds like a word a 5-year-old could invent.

Couple this with cardboard characters (characters named Scarface, Hunchback, and Red Beetle are not surprisingly evil) and you've got the makings for a disappointing read.

Intriguingly, this is the second DAW book to come out in December that had a character named Scarface and used 'ley' to tap into magical powers.

I purchased this book after being extraordinarily pleased with Vogue's other book, "Vogue Make-Up". After reading both books, I would DEFINITELY recommend "Vogue Make-Up" over "Vogue Beauty". Whereas "Vogue Make-Up" provides detailed advice and information, such as which *specific products* are used by fashion models "in the know" (e.g. for a neutral lipliner, some models swear by MAC Spice), "Vogue Beauty" is more of a coffee-table book, with pretty pictures, and text that covers topics only superficially, lacking the detailed sought by readers who already know the *basics* of beauty and haircare. Another quirk of "Vogue Beauty" is that it seems to have been written for (and is more applicable to) readers in the UK, than for readers in the US.

This book is beautifully laid out and seems wonderfully comprehensive and contemporary.

I found this book to be a decent survey of Linguistics. It is written at a higher level, assuming the reader already knows a bit about language, which I appreciated, yet is not so complex you cannot follow it. Obviously a graduate level read. I recommend it for anyone who is brushing up on linguistics and already has a background in it. It is an overview with more depth than typical linguistics books.

I own a dozen introductory linguistics textbooks, and this is my least favorite. Physically, the book is short and thick, with narrow margins, which makes it hard to read without breaking the spine. There are few exercises, and almost none include data from languages other than English. The bibliography slightly exceeds four pages. It is the only introductory textbook I have ever seen without a glossary.

The title is misleading. This book is really an introduction to Chomskyan generative grammar, not an introduction to linguistics. Students who read this book will be plunged into the world of empty categories, covert movement, Merge, and the Economy Principle; on the other hand, they will never encounter the terms spectrogram, ergative, pragmatics, or Indo-European. If that sounds like your idea of what an introduction to linguistics should be, then I suppose this is the book for you.

I found this book to be a decent survey of Linguistics. It is written at a higher level, assuming the reader already knows a bit about language, which I appreciated, yet is not so complex you cannot follow it. Obviously a graduate level read. I recommend it for anyone who is brushing up on linguistics and already has a background in it. It is an overview with more depth than typical linguistics books.

The review posted by watzizname slams this book on a few fronts, but the slams are unfounded. Watzizname may be a casual observer of linguistics, but he doesn't seem to know what is going on in the field presently.

For example, when referring to case, watzizname says that English no longer uses case, but is a positional language. This is true to some extent, but most contemporary theories of syntax use case as a crucial component, even when the case is not overtly marked (as in English). The Principles and Parameters model of syntax contains the "case filter," where all overt DPs (or Noun Phrases) must be case-marked at Surface Structure, else the sentence is ruled ungrammatical. In the more modern Minimalist Program, uninterpretable case must be "checked." These apply to even non-case languages like English, since they refer to abstract case, not morhpological or "inherent" case. Pronoun case markings are simply the most concrete way of explaining case in English, since we have few morphological reflexes left.

The other gripe of watzizname's was that Noun Prases are referred to as Determiner Phrases in the book. Watzizname clearly doesn't know where the theory is nowadays. Noun Phrases are now thought to be embedded withing DPs, with the determiner serving as sort of a 'fuctional shell,' even when there is no overt determiner in the phrase. These function just like the 'light verb' "v" serves as a functional shell for verb phrases and TP/IP/AgrP/CP serve as functional shells for clauses (preveiously termed "S").

So, please ignore watzizname's complaints about this book. What he is complaining about actually reflects some of the more recent developments in the fields of syntax and linguistics and should actually be considered PLUSSES for this book, not detractors. Most intro to linguistics textbooks show you where the field was 20 years ago.

This book consists of an introductory section followed by three parts covering three major divisions of linguistics. Part 1, "Sounds" (chapters 1-7) covers phonology; part 2, "Words" (chapters 8-16) deals with morphology; and part 3, "Sentences" (chapters 17-26) is about syntax.

Part 1 is particularly difficult for the typical American reader because most of the English language examples are based on Received Standard pronunciation (or something near enough to RS to be less than illuminating for one brought up to speak a dialect close to Network Standard).

But worse by far than that is the authors' lack of understanding of how the English language works. For example, on page 227 is the following sentence: "Additionally, . . . "I dog Bill" and "Bill dogs me" are interpreted quite differently, and these different interpretations are due to the choice between nominative "I" and accusative "me" and the related choice between "dog" and "dogs." (because this text box does not permit me to italicize or underline, I have put quotation marks around words that are italicized in the book.)

Once upon a time, several centuries ago, case inflections of pronouns had some grammatical significance in English, but English has since evolved into a positional language. In modern English, direction of action is determined solely by position, and the remaining vestiges of nominative and accusative case inflections have no grammatical significance whatever. The only case inflections that retain any grammatical significance are the possessives, and in some dialects of English even those are disappearing.

The third and final part of the book discusses syntax, and features an altogether ludicrous reclassification of the components of sentences. If the authors were to describe a house like they describe the structure of English, the living room might be viewed as subsidiary in importance to the coat closet, and the kitchen and dining room as minor adjuncts to the pantry. Auxiliary verbs are accorded more importance than content verbs. Here we find no Noun Phrases; they are called Determiner Phrases if they contain no case marker, otherwise Prepositional Phrases.

For an introduction to the fascinating subject of linguistics, as Consumer Reports might put it, there are better choices.

Above is my review exactly as originally submitted. "A customer" strongly recommends that my criticisms be ignored, or perhaps counted as plusses. I leave it to you, the reader, to decide whether the false statement on page 227 is a 'plus' for the book, and whether the words in caps in the following sentence are the most important words in the sentence:

THE constitution OF THE united states is THE supreme law OF THE land.

watziznaym@gmail.com

The ending of this book is rather sloppy if it really is the last in the Dragon Nimbus series. It left a lot of loose ends and unanswered questions. Like, does Mikka get to have her babies? Does Miranda return to her country to help it rebuild? Are the laws against magic repealed? Too many loose endings to be the end of the series.

It was also a rather abrupt ending. I had to check to make sure someone didn't rip the last few pages out. So while I enjoyed the story and writing, I did not think this was the best of Radford's writing. It really just seemed like she got tired of writing and gave up.

It would be nice if Radford made another book answering these questions and tidying up the loose ends. Otherwise, I find this to be a very unsatisfactory series end.

That's not to say that this one was horrible. I just did not find it quite as interesting as the others. This book mostly revolves around Marcus and Robb. Senior Magician Jaylor had sent the two young journeyman on a mission to bring the dragons of Coronnan back to the kingdom. On their journey, the two magicians are trapped by a spell set to protect a jealous ghost's treasure. Back in the kingdom, Jack is sworn to free the Queen from the cat personality that has been sharing her body and to take his love, Katrina, back to her home land of SeLenicca. While I did not find this book to be as interesting as the other three, it continues the story of the dragons of Coronnan. I'm sure it's a necessary part in the ongoing series, and the ending was rather satisfying.

I have read all of Irene Radford's Dragon Nimbus and Dragon Nimbus History books. I fell in love with them instantly. Like all books I had my favorite characters and there were characters that I didn't really like. But to my surprise I'm wishing she'd write a fifth book in this series so I can read more about the characters I didn't used to like as well as the ones I'd always loved.

I only had two problems with this last book. First, she seemed to focus mainly on two characters that had minuscule parts in the first three books, when I feel she had plenty of other characters that I had grown to love to write about, however I did grow to enjoy reading about these characters as well. Secondly, to fully understand this book you really need to read the Dragon Nimbus History Series first. There are at least three characters mentioned in more than just passing, to say more than this might ruin the ending and I don't want to do that to potential readers.

I hope Irene Radford left open some aspects of the story and added new ones in order to allow her to write more on this time of the Dragon Nimbus. I will be forever looking for new novels by her. Including those promised on her website about a time before the History trilogy.

I highly recommend this and all others written by Irene Radford.

I found this book to be a big disapointment. To be honest, I found the other books in the series were o.k., not great but not bad. The author's use of magic is all over the place with no rhyme or reason. Her more interesting characters, Brevelan, Jaylor, Rejiia, et al. are either just mentioned or are relegated to cameo roles. The two magicians in the book took forever to figure out how to break the spell...I knew how within the first page or two. She should have wrapped up the series with the Lonliest Magician.

After reading the first three books in this series, I expected the fourth to be just as good as the last three. It surprised me, though.

First off, Jaylor and Brevelan-who were basically the main characters in the first three books-were barely mentioned. They were only included when Darville or Jack needed advice on a problem. Marcus and Robb who were secondary characters in the third book suddenly became the main characters. Secondly, the book also left a lot of unanswered questions. What exactly happens with Jack and Katrina? Do the ever discover Lyman's secret? What happens with the situation in SeLennica? Or right in Coronnan with Darville and Mikka? The book ended abruptly, with no epilogue to even tell you what would happen in the lives of her main characters. It seemed to me that this book was hurridly finished, with no care or thought given to how the character's lives who many followed so faithfully in the first three books were affected after Marcus and Robb and the old monastary. Foes were still left alive, if not sane, and as I stated before, many question as to the lives of Jaylor, Brevelyn, Jack, Katrina, Darville, Mikka, and all the others remain to be answered. I hope and expect a fifth book in this series. So, to all the readers who have so diligently followed the series as I have, I warn them not to get their hopes up to high, because this book does not live up to its predessors.

Always disappointed with the stereo-typed future forecasting methods too popular, I have been finding a new way of thinking.
Scenario planning seemed to be a very fresh tool . Rich real cases were much interesting, so, very useful for my job in the forecasting.
But, follow-up informations for the scenario planning application would be better one for many practitioners and scholars.
Inspite of that, it seemed superior to any other books ever before, because it included much new sight and experiences.

According to this book:
In the 70's the french invented everything, and the rest is history.

This "work" purports to be an "analytic approach" to the problem of scenario building. Instead it is a mish mosh of chapters and unordered subsections which have no obvious relation to each other. Moreover, if the book had containd any real (useful) information, it is lost between the lack of: ability to write, the editor's sacred reponsilibty to do his job, and the translation which I found bordering on criminal.

Still you can get out enough to know that there is no content to this book whatsoever. Warning, this task entails much mental and physical anguish!

STILL if you are dying to know what this book is trying but failing to say, look up the paper by "Ioannis A. Sideris" entitled: "THE USE OF SCENARIO PLANNING METHODOLOGY IN MOBILE BUSINESS AS A LEARNING TOOL". I do not want to give more info...just Try Google.

Finally, if you want a true sample of an analytic approach, look at various people's work at Rand, particualrly on the global warming problem. Particualrly works by R.Lempert.

Professor Michel Godet is a Frenchman with 14 books and over 200 papers under his belt. A specialist in strategic planning, he emphasizes the careful use of tools such as scenario planning.

The book is a valuable contribution to the literature of serious-really serious-strategic planners. It will be most appreciated by those who have a very strong scientific bent and are comfortable working with models. Godet's approach is considerably more rigorous than futures-thinking approaches applied in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. The concept of the book is very long-range, evidenced by quotes like "the faster the car, the stronger the headlights must be" and "the longer a tree takes to grow, the earlier you have to plant it." English-speaking futurists tend to look more short-range and medium-range with more of an application of intuition mixed with scientific research.

Americans have become accustomed to engaging in quite a bit of internet research to gather information needed for evaluation, decision-making, and planning. Godet describes the internet as "a computerized dumpster," all the while acknowledging that one may still find gold in a dump.

This book is complex and slow reading. The content is "heavy." Nine chapters are followed by a bibliography and index. The first five chapters are titled How to Think About the Future Now, Why Do the Experts Get it Wrong, Hunting Down Cliches, How to be Rigorous with Scenario Planning, and Initiating the Entire Process. The balance of the book, save the last chapter on The Human Factor, consists of case studies.

Good marks for content. Marks off for not making the learning a bit easier to move through. If you're not a real pro-or aspiring pro-in strategic planning, save your time and money.

I was inspired by this book to focus on the future more in general, and in particular to deliberately imagine the future as a spectrum of possible scenarios, which I could watch emerge and either became more likely or fall away as possibilities.

The book was very dense reading, really an MBA text, and had some good case studies and methodology description.

Lot's of comment about the author's reputation and consulting gigs.

I was surprised to learn that the French had made so many very, highly, significant, and important contributions to strategic thinking.

I found this book to be of little use. In fact, I looked through it in about 10 minutes and have not picked it up since.

Had it not been so inexpensive I would have sent it back.

I'm obsessed with bungalows and cottages, so I found this book a wonderful resource. Some of the designs and plans shown were absolutely bizarre...I'm always looking for local examples to examine. I also loved the practical use of space and simple designs, like smaller bathrooms and larger living areas. Call me crazy but these houses have twice the charm of the monstrosities being erected today. If you tend to wax nostalgic, I recommend adding this book to your home library.

Radford's Artistic Bungalows is one of a series of books from Dover (publishers) about house plans. These books are actually exact reprints of original plan books from the turn of the century (1880-1925, roughly). Dover adds little or no modern explanations, just presenting the catalog as it was. So when one looks to review these books, one isn't really judging the modern-day publisher, or editing, or writing. The only modern element is the accuracy of reproduction- in some cases, if pages in the originals that Dover found are damaged or torn, that page is reproduced in the original with the tear, smudge, blot, or hole showing. So to judge the books, one has to compare each one to others of its kind, and then to decide whether the material in it is thorough and complete according to the standards of its time. Since there are several dozen of these catalogs published by Dover, we have the basis for such a comparison.

So how does this one shape up compared to, say "California Bungalows of the Twenties" or "Craftsman Bungalows"? Well, there's very little text. Other than an introduction (from the original catalog maker), there is no descriptive text accompanying each house plan. In fact, the same boilerplate paragraph about what the blueprints and specifications include is the only text on each page, other than the house dimensions and the price of the plans. Then, there's no suggestions for furnishing, for colors to paint the house, or for what kind of lot or location the house might be best suited for. Many other catalogs include this kind of description. The illustrations of each house are elaborate drawings/paintings, presented at an angle view. Some catalogs present many of their houses face-on, which means you can't visualize what the sides really look like; the views in this catalog give you an idea of the front and at least one side in every case. There are no photos, and no illustrations of any of the interior of the house, nor of any of the specific styles of built-ins available. Some catalogs show a typical bathroom, a typical living room, etc., and have a few pages showing the styles of kitchen cabinets available; this one doesn't.

On the other hand, this catalog includes a wider variety of architectural styles than the title might suggest, and some of the most interesting exteriors I've seen. Our own house, built in 1919, has curved eaves on the gables meeting curved eaves on the main roof, and we've always wondered whether the architect was on drugs. Now we know that he may have gotten his inspiration from Radford; several of the houses in this book have curved eaves meeting each other. Haven't seen that in other catalogs. The book has a wide definition of what's a bungalow, so there are houses with gambrel roofs, 3-room cottages, and 9-room expensive houses with servants' quarters. One interesting thing about the Radford plans is that, although published in 1908, virtually all of the houses have indoor bathrooms - only 2 plans in the whole book, that I recall, don't have an indoor bathroom. In 1908, that's unusual - many other contemporary plan books have as much as a quarter to a third of their models without a complete indoor bathroom or even an indoor toilet. Not only that, many of Radford's houses have both an upstairs full bath and a downstairs half-bath (toilet and sink) - almost unheard of at the time! So the architects were apparently fairly forward-thinking. A few houses even have two full baths, a feature that otherwise wouldn't become common until 40 years later.

The floor plans are, for the most part, large enough to be clearly readable, and there are only a couple of cases where the architects have left off the dimensions of a room. Ceiling beams, pull-out beds, built-in seats and benches and shelves, are all indicated on the floor plans.

In sum: good variety of exteriors and floor plans, some advanced features for the time; poor in its lack of interior illustrations or actual photos of completed houses. This shouldn't be your only plan book - there are others with lots more detail if you are just getting acquainted with the genre - but if you are collecting several such books, then this one is a nice addition to the variety in your collection.

This book was as useless as the German version of Strarwars that I received on Amazon

This is a reprint of Radford's 1909 Plan Book and (may I one day be forgiven for saying this, but), some of these houses were ugly. I mean really and truly UGLY.

But some of them weren't so bad. If you were a wanna-be homeowner (almost) 100 years ago, you'd peruse the pages and pick out a house that suited your needs and your pocketbook. Then you'd send in a few bucks (typically $5 or so) and receive a full set of blueprints that you'd use to build your dream house.

The quality of this reprint is good and this is a fun read, if for no other reason than to get an idea of the evolution of American architecture.

Rose
author, The Houses That Sears Built
co-author, California's Kit Homes

Penelope refuses to go to sleep because she just knows that there are monsters lurking in the dark. That's the only way to explain the dancing drawers, creaking closets, and bouncing bed! Even though her own father won't believe, plucky Penelope takes on gnomes, trolls, and giants! Imaginatively written by Sheri Radford, and featuring the lively illustrations of Christine Tripp, Penelope And The Monsters is a charmingly delightful picturebook which is ideal for family, school, and community library picturebook collections. Also very highly recommended is Radford and Tripp's first title about this unusual and comic little heroine, Penelope And The Humongous Burp (1894222830, $15.95).

As a librarian, I once told a co-worker that if I came across one more I'm-scared-of-monsters-at-bedtime book I'd scream. So AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH! My advice to the publisher would be to select more imaginative manuscripts. This one's stillborn.

This is a rather frustrating book. It takes a strongly critical but well-supported look at a major part of the dark side of U.S. history, but it gives little attention to the social movements that have resulted in significant progress in broadening American democracy, concluding with a single chapter on prophetic voices for change that makes them seem isolated from the nation's history and suggests little hope for social progress in the future.

The book has major strengths in its recounting of the role of racism and racial exclusion in the creation of the United States, the treatment of native americans, slavery and war with Mexico and the use of religion to justify racism. I particularly liked the material on the Mexican view of the U.S. rush to war with them and their response to racist view of Mexicans by the U.S. authorities, as this was new material for me. The book also reviews U.S. foreign policy and the frequently imperialist role, also often justified by racist arguments, taken by the U.S. toward Latin American and other "third world" countries.

After a reasonably balanced look at the Revolutionary War that includes both the acceptance of slavery and the democratic idealism of Thomas Paine, the book moves into a thoroughly one-sided mode. It pays little attention to the Civil War or World War II and the New Deal despite their importance in the history of the U.S. Remarkably, the books time line skips over the years 1935 to 1944. Apparently the author does not want to take time to deal with the strengths of American society and history, such as President Abraham Lincoln's remarkable ability during the Civil War to use both civic and biblical argument to support preservation of the Union and, eventually, abolition of slavery. Nor is there recognition of President Franklin Roosevelt, the the rise of the labor movement, the New Deal, the defeat of fascism in World War II and the sucessful reconstruction of Japan and West Germany as democracies. The prophetic voices chapter skips from Eugene Debs to Martin Luther King Jr. without pausing for major New Deal period voices such as John Dewey, pragmatist philosopher of a progressive vision of education and democracy, or A. Phillip Randolph, the African-American labor leader.

The section on the Cold War with the Soviet Union is particularly weak. There is no recognition of the evils of Stalin and Mao and their regimes. Nor is there any recognition that the policy of containment, avoiding outright war with the Soviet Union or China, was a major accomplishment that resulted in the ultimate demise of the Soviet Union without another war in Europe or nuclear holocaust. The author's critique of American foreign policy in the third world, such as the destructive war in Vietnam, is weakened by this lack of perspective and balance, especially in a critique of the Korean War that fails to recognize the appalling nature of the North Korean regime of the Kim family. With regard to domestic policy page 143 contains a telling error, in which the author claims that the Taft Hartley Act banned union officers from supporting socialism. This is wrong. The Act required union officers to declare that they were not members of the Communist Party, a requirement that the U.S. Supreme Court threw out as unconstitutional in 1965. Many union leaders openly espoused socialist beliefs. Most socialists in the U.S. have been democratic socialists, who opposed the Soviet Communist dictatorships, but the author seems unwilling to give attention to the difference between the two, thus becoming an unfortunate mirror image of the right wing attacks on progressive movements as equivalent to Communism.

Two final notes. The author makes extensive use of Robert Bellah's concept of an American "civil religion" along with her review of the role of biblical religion. However there is very little discussion of the concept or how drawing on a civil and primarily secular tradition of reverence for the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution might differ from drawing on the Bible.

The author's use of the "kkk" in the title is a deliberate provocation, since KKK usually stands for the Ku Klux Klan, the Southern racist terrorist organization and the spelling Amerikkka usually is intended to suggest that the U.S. is as racist as the KKK. This ensures that few people who don't already agree with the author will read her work. This is a shame, because while I have spent most of my review on my disagreements, the book has a lot of good material. It just could have been so much better.