Independent Books

Another killersmart addition to the Rough Guide series, this volume manages to be uber-informative and addictively entertaining -- you'll never get off your toilet! hehe... The section on B-Movie Mogul Roger Corman perfectly gets across whats great about even his not-so-greatest films, and the study of Miramax and Sundance is illuminating and demonstrates the enormous and positive influence these 2 entities have had on the medium. After pouring through this book, its impossible not to make a beeline to Netflix and add dozens of finds to your cue. One aspect of history that this book really nails, is the indie roots of stars like Jack Nicholson, Scorsese, etc and its fun reading about their early and raw cinematic adventures... Also, it was nice to see so many genres represented, the horror section full of ghastly gems...

Jill Freeze does an outstanding job in explaining the world of shopping online to people who might want to try it, but is concerned about privacy and safety. This is the perfect book to read if you've wanted to try online shopping, but need more information first.

Jill's style is entertaining and the book is quick-moving. You won't realize how much information you've accumulated while enjoying reading about the ins and outs of shopping online!

I highly recommend this book for newbies to shopping online. Jill explains everything clearly step-by-step. She also includes how to shop at Ebay and other online auctions. Most newbies would prefer to start their online shopping experience with something a bit easier, like buying this book at Amazon, for example, but everything you need to jump into the Ebay auction world is there if you decide to do that!

The book discusses how to look at the "big ticket items" online as well - things like houses and cars and colleges! You can do research online even if you end up buying the product at the local mall.

Jill Freeze is visually impaired and she is a perfect example of how online shopping makes life easier for SO many people in SO many different situations. I have been shopping online for a few years now, and have bought stuff from lots of e-tailers, including Amazon (yes, it was the first, and my favorite!), Webvan, Ebay, Half.com, Lands End, Drugstore.com, and many others. There's very little that you can't buy online, actually!

Jill discusses how to research the item you're looking to buy - she gives you lots of websites to check, but I found that she left out a few of my favorites:

BizRate.com - gives detailed reports on the different online stores - comparing on-time delivery, easy navigation of the website, prices, quality of items sold, etc. Yes, Amazon is very highly rated on Bizrate.com!

DealOfDay.com - looking for a deal? Check out what special offers are available at the online store of your choice ($10 off a $50 purchase, for example!)

BestBookBuys.com - My favorite thing to shop for online (and off-line, for that matter!) is books, and this website is the best for finding which store has your book at what price. You type in the title, author, or ISBN number, and it looks at about 30 different bookstores online and comes up with an easy-to-understand chart giving you the price (lowest price first), shipping cost, tax in what states, and best of all - AVAILABILITY of your book! Many shopping bots leave out this important fact. You can see the bottom line price - including shipping, and how soon your book will get to you. If you find that Amazon is your best bet for your latest must-have book (and it often is, all things considered), just click on "Buy" and BestBookBuys.com will take you right to the book detail page on Amazon (or whatever other e-tailer you click on) and there you are! Before buying from a bookstore that you aren't familiar with, check it out at Bizrate first.

Thanks, Jill, for a complete guide to the wonderful world of shopping online!

After wading through a few 300 to 600 page books recently, it was nice to come across a nice focused book. This is less than a hundred pages, but page for page it is a very informative book.

The author's start the book with something that everyone knows, the current education system is broken, so very broken. He mentions that in 1983 an education commission commented that "We have done something to ourselves that would be seen as an act of war if a foreign power were to blame."

His basic premise is market forces are very effective in stimulating reform. Either you meet the needs of consumers, or you go out of business. Not all consumers have to be expert consumers, we all benefit from knowledgeable consumers. Our country is largely successful because we use market forces to constantly improve most parts of our society.

The author goes on to say that while back in 1955 Milton Friedman proposed something like a voucher, but over the last 50 years we've never had a real competitive education market. The few places that vouchers have been tried have been very laden with restrictions and limitations.

John Merrifield convincingly argues that we need a true education market, or the children of the United States will continue to get a sub-optimal education.

There were a couple interesting points in this book:

Currently teachers are mostly motivated to please administrators, parents have very little influence.

In response to people who claim a true education market is too risky, the author responds that changing a badly broken education system doesn't risk much. (How could it get worse?)

If you are interested in education and/or school choice, this is a good book to start with.

I want obtain this book

I'm a Kindergarten teacher and I wish I had this book years ago. It's filled with recipes and instructions for homemade art supplies and crafts. So many ideas!!

This is one of the Lifeguide Bible Studies, which is generally a good small group study series. My former Sunday School class liked the Lifeguide format and consequently used many of the guides. So I have first-hand experience, in an actual classroom setting, using many of the books in this series.

I say all that to say this: This particular guide is the best, in my opinion, in this series. There are a couple of reasons for that. Some of the questions in these guides tend to be more subjectively focused on how you might feel about a particular passage or statement. The questions in this guide are more objectively focused on the actual text. The other reason is because the guide closely follows Stott's full-length book on this passage, which is also excellent (but that's another review).

All of that makes this a much better than average small group study guide.

This is the best book I've read on secondary education. Most educators would agree that small schools--where teachers and students know each other well and cooperate on meaningful work--are incredibly effective. However, standard high schools are large and chaotic places where students and teachers go through the motions and not much of great intellectual significance ever happens. Rather, they are like shopping malls, where customers (students) go into stores (classrooms) and are offered goods (knowledge) by merchants (teachers).

We convince ourselves, though, that large, shopping mall-style high schools provide a "choice" for students, and grant them numerous "opportunities" to achieve. (Customers can choose whether they want to buy what the merchant is selling.) Writing in a similar style as "Horace's Compromise"--what Ted Sizer calls "fictional non-fiction"--the authors challenge the notion that big is better, and that more content equates to more learning. They demonstrate how truly ineffective schools are when they force teachers to see 160 students a day for only 50 minutes at a time.

The book wraps up with a detailed history of secondary schooling in the United States that demonstrates how we got to a place where we expect schools to do so much that they cannot do any of it well. If you are a secondary teacher in a large high school, I highly recommend this book.

Very well written and will help you use your money wisely. Part 1 gives a good overview of "...what you need to survive" and paints a broad picture of the small business market.

Part 2 and 3 get down into the details of accounting for small business and investing, respecitvely. Of course each part is composed of several sections and throughout the book shows how technology can be used proactively, not just as a passive menace.

My favorite section is Part 4. If you are deadly serious about selling online then get this book today! WEB Storefronts is the name of this section and it covers such topics as "why you need a web storefront", "when to do it yourself, when to hire and ISP", "setting up electronic commerce" and other useful topics. The last section, Part 5, has 4 chapters cover credit cards, smart cards, adjusting your life style, being socially responsible and mentions of venture capital, angel investors and other financial hope for entreprenuers.

This book is a must for any small business who is serious about managing their money AND using the Internet to grow their business.

Dr. Morgan's magnum opus on left-handed German Socialists delves into the untapped absurdity of continental politics. While he fails to remain within the mid-1917-1922 timeframe, his description of Babylonian mythological tithe system was nonetheless apt. While Dr. Morgan professes to be unbiased, in light of his upbringing, his chapter on the German lawn-gnome fetish seems a bit peculiar.

Of interest was his meticulous account of the German handicraft looming industry in a time of great upheaval and phlox. His account of material oppression by German loomers against the Socialists was particularly draconian. While Morgan avoided the didactic style of his colleagues who profess to write in a "concise and precise" style, his writing issued forth with wisdom and witticisms, particularly his metaphor representing German Socialists as a smelly shoe.

Dr. Morgan's post-modern style leads the attentive reader to question "Does this book mean anything?" However when viewed in light of it's companion novel "Whips and Whipmaking, With a Practical Introduction to Braiding" Dr. Morgan's magnificent account of Babylo-German Socialists and their favorite pastime bursts in a crescendo of unsurpassed yonic imagery and historicity. novel

It's embarrassing that we Yanks need an Australian to write our history for us, but Shane White does it with humor, insight, and thoroughness. This is unquestionably the best book I have read on the subject of slavery in New York, and I've read all the books there are on the subject. (There aren't many.) White uses primary sources and original research, supplying data which our own historians have not bothered to ferret out. He gives an excellent description of the peculiar nature of the peculiar institution in New York, the different slave culture and different relationships between slaves and owners which in no way resembled that of the South.

Most recent books that deal with the subject of slavery in New York quote this book extensively; you might as well read it for yourself.