Nonfiction Books

I am posting the same review under both titles. I have both sets of CD's. They are VERY different from each other. Each has strong & weak points. Which you chose depends on your goals.

Advice:
If you are leaving for a Spanish-speaking country within one month, and if you want to be able to get by and ask "At what time does the last bus leave for the beach?", "Where is the bathroom?", and "The air conditioning does not work.", then buy Learn Spanish in Your Car. No question.
If you have never taken any Spanish in school and do not even know what it means to "congugate a verb", then buy Learn Spanish Like Crazy. No question.
If you know the very basics, and want to build your vocabulary quickly, like for a vacation, buy Spanish in your Car.
If you want a supplement to a Spanish class you are taking or about to take in a classroom setting, buy Spanish Like Crazy.

Summaries:
Learn Spanish in Your Car:
Lots of vocabulary quickly. Travel focused. Does NOT teach verb congugations until far into the course. I took 1 year of Spanish in school 20 yrs ago. If I did not already know that "tengo" and "tiene" are the same root word, I think I would have been fairly lost with this course from the onset. Within a month on commuting, however, I think this course will have you getting by for a vacation. If you care mostly about getting by (directions, time, booking a hotel room, buying a bus ticket), and not about perfect grammar, I like this a lot.

Spanish Like Crazy:
Starts like a Spanish class would in school. You start by congugating -AR verbs. Then you learn questions, "Do you practice Spanish?" and possessive pronouns. The lessons are like drill sessions: "Now ask, 'Is the coat his?' Now answer, 'no, it is not his coat. It is mine.' Now say, 'It is my coat, but the hat is not mine'." Intense, but you'll know the grammar by the end. Vocabular comes later, but it does not seem travel oriented.

I like using them both. However, I have 6 months before my trip to South America.

This course is a good complementary for Pimsler's course.
It is build as talking dictionary: English word - Spanish word, with very little
phrases and no conversations.

I'm getting married in Punta Cana in a few months. I don't have time to learn everything so I am extremely happy with this series of CD's because it starts me off with the basics that I will most certainly need when I travel. I can definately recommend this system.

It is fairly difficult to learn only by listening, but these CDs will make a long commute to and from work worthwhile. This set should only be an aid to learning Spanish and I would not recommend it as a single source of learning Spanish. You will have to go through each CD a couple of times to memorize the phrases and vocabulary words. The price makes it affordable.

These cd's use rote memory and repetition to teach. This is the best method I've found for learning a foreign language. The pharses used are of the type that you would use in normal conversation. They do not take a lot of time explaining a lot of abstract consepts and useless history.

I'm very satisfied with my order because in my opinion Borderlands/La Frontera is one of the best books about chicano identity.

This book is a tormented stream of consciousness from a lady who was obviously fighting major demons. It is exactly the type of book that you would expect an amateur academic to "wow" and "gush" over, as it nicely fits into the dogmatic radicalism of Chicano Studies. The discerning reader, on the other hand, sees page after page of outdated cliches, sob-stories, and anger-filled tantrums. Anzaldua would like you to believe her suffering and self-searching is all the fault of the "white" culture encroaching upon the enlightened cosmic race of the mestiza. She'd like you to think that her mestiza/chicana/lesbian/female identity is the sole cause of her misfortune and hardship. What becomes overwhelmingly evident upon reading her unabashed torrent of decadent self-pity is the learned and self-enforced quality of her "opression". Anzaldua helplessly wallows in her romantic fatalism dreaming of the great mestiza revolution that will fix all of the world's problems by turning the middle class value system upside down.

If you like romantic literature, and enjoy the hopeless and sorrowful ramblings of society's self-marginalized, I might suggest "The Sorrows of the Young Werther" by Goethe or some poems by Lord Byron - at least then you get some literary value.

While most reviewers seem to be bent on lauding Gloria Anzaldúa's "insightful and progressive" writings, I can't help but take a different viewpoint. The vast majority of her essays, while cloaked in a sense of righteous equality, are quite simply racist drivel. She speaks of acceptance and tolerance for foreign cultures in America, and harps on the evils of correcting students when they use improper English, yet instills her writing with a blatant and offensive racism.

I make specific reference to the article "How to Tame A Wild Tongue". In her conclusion, she praises the perseverance and endurance of the mestizo race/culture, making reference to walking by "the crumbling ashes" of American civilization. An eagerness is felt to see the day that "white laws and commerce will rot in the desert". One would be hard pressed to come up with a more hypocritical conclusion. Here is an author preaching tolerance and acceptance of different languages and cultures throughout her entire article. She whines about the troubles she had fitting in with English speaking people. She goes in depth to explain the numerous bastardizations of Spanish that are spoken in various Hispanic cultures and tries to convince us of how each is a viable language, even so-called "Spanglish", just a blend of English and Spanish that you might hear in a high school Spanish I class ("el chairo = chair,la ceilingo = ceiling, etc.) . And after all that talk of acceptance, she ends by completely blasting American culture and expressing her wish to see it crumble to dust, while at the same time presenting the mestizo as the dominant race which will endure this fall. Talk about racist. I understand pride of your country and people, but this goes far beyond simple nationalism, especially in light of the overall message of the article. Tolerance is right out the window here.

Don't be fooled by Anzaldúa's overly wordy diction and pseudo-intellectualism. She is a flat out racist that for some reason is tolerated (forget that, praised to the roof!) in many academic circles. Her educational philosophy is naive, irresponsible, and fundamentally flawed. Hopefully her writings will soon fall out of the limelight.

I find it interesting that such a supposedly important and relevant contemporary work has only been reviewed by 11 people at the time of this writing. That alone tells you all you need to know since this is a book that is classed under both Latino and Women's Studies, and is part of many university literary programs.

The book is pretentious claptrap of the worst kind. If this book were judged on its merits rather than by popular, politically correct notions, it wouldn't come close to making the cut.

Alas, academia has embraced the book as a great work, and so it is required reading for an English M.A. program at a major university that I was accepted into. An English M.A.! Once I saw that this book was part of the program, I didn't even bother registering.

I don't mind rants against social, cultural and economic injustices. I've read many. But Ms. Anzaldua is no James Baldwin, that's for sure.

Not much can be said to some of the postings I see here--to those that suggest the third tier prose, those that call this work "racist," those that implore statements like "I hated it." These are the same people that vote for their own oppression, these are the very people that fancy their success on some sense of entitlement. Relax, you do not have to agree, but hear me out.



Classic. Classic.



With the colorful enagement of gender, consciousness, and subconscious indeterminacy, the creation of a new utopia (racial, linguistic, gender, cultural, etc) is suggested by the prose of self actualization. This book is about all of us--it is about the exchanges we have with domination, be it familial or societal. It's loose diction is its very strength, it does not confide to the subordination of patriachal, hegemonic forces of tradition. The reflexive allegorical stories and unpacking of our human complexity give it a breathing body and a compelling face.



Anzaldua suffered greatly for not writing like "the male pimps," those that claim a fanatical space in some high art and legitimacy canon. It was her filter of difference, it was her cries for something else, that connects with everyone at a spiritual level. I do not know how this can be connected to some mundane powerpoint presentation at a university; this piece involves the full of enagement of mind, body, and soul. To contextualize it--one needs to read consistently. In order to feel out her domain, one must be willing go beyond what "our mom said" or "what our 6th grade teacher" told us about this and that. This about the struggle for agency; this about search for Thoreau's Walden amidst sociohistorical forces that still "do not see."



Welcome it. This classic work of literature, philosophy, education...remains one of the most unrecognized treatises on being and becoming.

The text itself was helpful; however, both my original purchase and it's replacement both had defective DVD's to accompany the text. I was very disappointed in this.

The book is in good condition, however it is missing many pages. This is not helpful. It was represented as only slight wear from use. This is disappointing for a student to discover while working.

Super Kids restorted my faith in buying over the internet. Book was perfect and got me fast!

The text 'Basic College Mathematics' is used at the college where I tutor in mathematics as the foundational course for mathematics in all programmes. While many students test out of this level into algebraic topics, for those students whose mathematics is decades old, or was never perfect in the beginning, this book offers a fairly clear and systematic approach to mathematics topics.

The chapters cover the broad topics in this order: Whole Numbers, including the basic arithmetical functions (addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division), was well as basics of exponents and rounding; Fractions, including the basic arithmetical functions as well as beginning to deal with mixed numbers and order of operations; Decimals, including the basic arithmetical functions as well as continuing with order of operations and decimal/fraction conversions; Ratio and proportion ideas; Percentages theoretical and applied; Basic Measurements and conversions of units between British/American units and metric standards; Geometry at the most basic level of shapes and arithmetical formulas dealing with those shapes for area, perimeter, etc.; Statistics at a very elementary level, such as reading charts and graphs, histograms, and the three concepts of mean, median and mode; Signed and special numbers, including the negative numbers, as well as scientific notation; and finally a brief introduction to Algebra, which introduces the basic concepts of variables, like terms, and equations.

Each of the chapters deals with things in a mathematical as well as an 'English' way - explaining in words the concepts and operations being carried out in the numbers. Each section of each chapter covers only a few key concepts, with enough problems for solving that reinforce the principles thoroughly. Each section also as word problems (story problems) to test the real-world applicability of the numerical/mathematical concepts being presented, so when students ask (as they always do and shall), 'When am I ever going to use this?' there are examples drawn from typical situations.

Tobey and Slater have also worked to make various connections with geometry, graphs and charts, tables, as well as internet resources to provide the most up-to-date and useful text. There are specific problems along the way that assume the use of calculators (as most of real-life mathematics now involves calculators).

The book's design is interesting from a graphic-design standpoint, but from the standpoint of clarity to the students, the pages are a bit `busy'. While I appreciate the need to reduce the number of pages in an effort to keep the costs down (text-book prices are typically higher than popular-book prices, and this text is no exception), more white space on the pages would probably help the accessibility and make it a little less intimidating.

This book serves as a good foundation for students to proceed at our college forward into Beginning Algebra (another book by Tobey and Slater on this topic is used for the next-level course), and then further into Intermediate Algebra and beyond.

Super Kids restored my faith in buying over the internet. Book was perfect and got me fast!

almost a new book, arrived before the class start which is good for me to prepare my reading as a chinese reader

Not only did this book come in perfect condition, but it came long before I expected it. This efficiency makes me want to order all of my text books from Amazon.

the shipment of the product was fast and i received it in time for class. also, the price was reasonable and way below the price at the university bookstore.

I'm graduating this semester in Health Care Mangement. I reference this book my entire time. This book was a great summary of healthcare. Many say it's hard to read, but I think it did a very good job getting the point across. Before reading this book, I had no knowledge of health care. I felt this one book was able to cover every aspect of health care. This book is well worth it.

Now in an updated fifth edition, Health Care USA: Understanding Its Organization And Delivery by co-authors Harry A. Sultz (Dean Emeritus School of Health Related Professions State University of New York at Buffalo) and Kristina M. Young (Instructor Department of Social and Preventive Medicine School of Public Health and Health Professions University of Buffalo, State University of New York) is a solid guide for students, professionals, and lay people to the latest industry developments, cost increases, and legal transformations to the American health care system. From the organization, origin, and performance of hospitals, to the nuances of financing health care, managed health care, long-term care, and mental health services, Health Care USA spares neither depth nor statistical analysis. Charts and graphs help illustrate the meticulously researched data, and exhaustive notes and an index round out this "must-have" reference guide for any reader seeking a better understanding of America's governmental health care bureaucracy.

I just want all parents out there to understand that while "sexually experimenting with other boys" (chapter nine) may be "normal", it can also easily be considered a CRIME for which your son can be prosecuted.


BE CAREFUL WITH THIS BOOK!!!!!!

My son went through puberty early (10), and was too embarrassed to talk about anything. I gave him the book. He read it (he hid it, so I have no idea when he would sneak a peak!), and then when I would bring up things, he already knew about them, or would finally ask questions. It actually went along quite well with his school "family planning" program they have in the fifth grade. And I'm talking about a Catholic school!

I am more liberal than my husband, and I found this book didn't offend either my conservative husband or my more liberal feelings.

A must!

This book contains a wealth of information. Most pre teen and young teen boys need the information this book provides, but use caution. You should read it first and decide if it is right for your household and values. I had my son read the first half which I felt was age appropriate and valuable. However, the second half discusses sex in a very casual nature. If your target reader is 10 to 14 years old the word abstinence should be mentioned at least once! Statements in the book seem to give permission to become sexually active if the reader feels he is ready. Plenty of boys "feel" they are ready long before they have reach the maturity level to handle the consequences of sex. We read each chapter in the second half and discussed them together. This allowed me the opportunity as the parent to be sure our household beliefs were upheld and gave me a chance to comment on statements that I felt were reckless, such as the comments on boys masturbating with each other, which could have legal consequences. Also, the statements regarding childbirth not being necessarily painful was almost laughable. There are also comments about being asked by a stranger in the men's restroom to perform sexual acts and the books suggests that the reader tell someone "if you can". In the world we live in the author needs to have been more responsible with her statements.

Great book for my nephew - he enjoyed reading it and asking me questions a bout it.

I purchased this book and "What's Happening to Me?" for my 11 y/o son. He read "What's Happening to Me?" with no problem. He started reading this book the same day. He brought it out to me after reading 3 chapters and said he wasn't ready for it and didn't want to read any more of it. He came back out a little later *very* upset by what he had read, crying and saying he couldn't live with it. It took him 2 hours to calm down enough to go to bed. He asked me to write this review. He says the book goes into too much detail about the sex aspect. He said he thought the book would tell what happens during puberty but this book dealt too much with sex.

BUY IT BUY IT BUY IT! If you have a child coming up on SAT's or even in middle or elementary school, this is the best book out there! It was recommended to us by a reading specialist. I love to read the book just to see if I can recall words. Love IT so BUY IT!

This is a fantastic book. I am in 6th grade and got this and loved it. I would reccommend this for grades 6th -- 11th. The way it works: first it shows the word, say "copious". Next, it shows the definition -- in this case, "abundant;plentiful". Underneath, it shows a link word. For "copious", the link word was "cup". An amusing cartoon strip follows, such as the one for "copious" which showed a grinning man proudly holding a massive cup of coffee. The caption read, "A COPIOUS CUP of coffee". Then, there are three good examples. At the end of every ten words, there's a review to make sure you understand. This book is wonderful, and I reccommend it to everyone! I loved it. In total, there are 290 words.

This book is a delight! Both this and it's sister version (Vocabulary Cartoons 2) are wonderful vocabulary builder starters before you drift off into harder works like "The Wizard of Oz Vocabulary Builder." That book sounds easy enough, but it's actually geared towards 12th graders and beyond.

These books are wonderful for visual learners, although, others might get something out of them. Building your vocabulary is a process, but the time spent will be well rewarded. A strong vocabulary helps everything, including foreign language and math skills. As you delve into harder works, you'll be learning Latin and Greek roots which build excellent decoding skills for standardized tests.

These books are perfect for summer education. You want your kids to enjoy themselves, however, it doesn't hurt to move ahead academically either. These materials -- and ones like them -- are fun summer pleasure readers. And they'll learn something along the way. Adults will likely enjoy them too!

No one cares about your education more than you do. Fortunately, we live in the day and age where materials just keep getting better and better. So supplement, supplement, supplement. Have no fear: it can actually be fun. A+

this book was a simple, fun way to review vocab for SAT

This book has been one of my most valuable resources in my classroom. Each of my students owns a copy, and through class activities that incorporate the vocabulary into various literature lessons, I have seen results. One student recently took the SATs for the second time and reported a 210-point increase in his verbal score--an increase that he ascribes to this book. I highly recommend this resource to any literature teacher and college-bound student.

This would probably be a useful book for children under 12. Changing behaviors is always best done at an early age.

Of all of Dawn Huebner's books, I like this one the best! As a therapist this book provides a multi-sensory approach with lots of options and choices that the kids can make in learning to control their anger. I had one child this week really get into the relaxation techniques, and I love the "vacuum cleaner" concept of not getting "sucked in" to anger.

A good and well written cognitive behavioral plan to help children and adolescents control their anger and behavior. May be hard to use by children without the guide and motivation of an adult.Excellent material to be used by a psychotherapist. Adults may easily apply these same principles to enhance their own self control.

The Mom's Choice Awards® honors excellence in family-friendly media, products and services. An esteemed panel of judges includes education, media and other experts as well as parents, children, librarians, performing artists, producers, medical and business professionals, authors, scientists and others. A sampling of the panel members includes: Dr. Twila C. Liggett, Ten-time Emmy-winner, professor and founder of Reading Rainbow; Julie Aigner-Clark, Creator of Baby Einstein and The Safe Side Project; Jodee Blanco, New York Times Best-Selling Author; LeAnn Thieman, Motivational speaker and coauthor of seven Chicken Soup For The Soul books; Tara Paterson, Certified Parent Coach, and founder of The Just For Mom Foundation(tm) and the Mom's Choice Awards®. Parents and educators look for the Mom's Choice Awards® seal in selecting quality materials and products for children and families. This book has been honored by this distinguished award.

Hi. My son is 9 and has difficulty with anger which has been a continuous but generally not overwhelming problem. After an episode where he broke his brother's favorite video game we had a chat and then I showed him the book. We went over each chapter after he read it but he said it didn't really help. He said it was boring and he didn't see how any of the suggestions given could help him. I thought it looked pretty good and I will pass it along to our school psychologist. Perhaps in a more formal setting it would be more effective.

Very nice selection of texts, helpful biographical info about authors - everything that a textbook needs.
The only downside is the price, but it's worth the money.

I find it helpful as a Spanish language learner that they define a number of the words that are not used in Spanish today. I wish I was more interested in hispanic literatura but so far I find most of the stories boring. I use this book in my required spanish lit class, so I had to buy it! Maybe by the end of the semester I find it more enlightening!

I used this book in a class at the University of NC. I actually liked the book & the class. It gives a nice overview of different literary periods and literature written during each one. It contains poesia, drama and narrativas.

This is an extremely helpful book for those who start studying literary analysis in Spanish as well as for very green literary scholars. The introduction to the special terms is easy to follow and the english equivalents are in their right places and don't distract you. Go ahead, you'll love using it in your Spanish or literary analysis class!

Aproximaciones is a wonderful tool for the student learning about Spanish literature. The selections are well analyzed by the author and the biographies provide an overview of the cultures and perspectives of the different time periods. The chronological order of the readings makes it easy to understand the different stages of the Spanish literature and the various literary movements affecting the arts, the philosophy, and society of medieval to modern times.

I've just started to try and read this book as part of my MBA, however the book is of terrible production quality. The pages are all out of order, and some are falling out as I turn over the pages. If you have this book mandated as part of a course as I did, you'll just have to live with it, otherwise choose another book that you don't have to hop around in just to get the pages in order.

This textbook is quite a comprehensive of introductory macroeconomics. Great graphs, well-explained, carefully thought out. The one downside is that it is quite idealistic, as one would expect of a neo-classical economist. The author does not recognize flaws in the theories nor does he acknowledge that the real world is not so cut-and-dry and ordered as we would be led to believe. However, as stated before, this is a wonderful introductory text for anyone who wants to understand the economy today.

Although the concepts are presented in a fairly understandable way, they are not tied together well for someone new to macroeconomics. Particularly annoying are the missing variable definitions for formulas. With Barron's as a supplement, it makes more sense.

I bought the book as supporting material for a masters degree course I teach called "Quality management in the Business of Sports". The phrase Quality Management was clearly defined in the key-word list the authors presented. My dissapointment came when I saw that the book is mostly a general primer covering many aspects of the business of sports, but none in depth and specially nothing specific about quality management.

I am a junior at the University of Massachusetts, and I had the opportunity to read and study this book for my Sports Management class this past spring. It was a great experience and served as a great foundation for my education in the sport management field. The book touched upon every aspect in which a sport management professional in one capacity or another may be inclined to deal with. Principles and Practices of Sport Management by Lisa Pike Masteralexis was easy to read and comprehend. At the same time, the book was informative and challenges the reader to constantly keep an open mind to the different areas of sport management. Marketing, promotions, facility management, legal issues, historical facts and event management are just some of the topics one will read about in this highly recommended guide to successfull sports management.