Nonfiction Books

Well, I'm 14 and perfectly authorized to write a review for this book since it IS for teenagers. The entire freshman class is being required to read this book as a part of our 48 Books Program and some of us like it and some of us absolutely can't stand it. I would give it the fact that it's remotely interesting but it's mean in a way that if you do something wrong you're totally undermining your self-esteem and I think that's just plain wrong. To make this book better he should have put more in that are popular that people actually know about and are funny, not just being used to prove a point. Also, the way he wants us to write in the book and stuff just doesn't appeal to ANY of us because of the way it's phrased before a line to write. Most of us just kind of think about it and go on. It's hard to hold my attention on it for very long because just reading through Habit #2 makes you read over a hundred pages of boring text. My school is in the top 36 elite high schools in the nation and they expect us to read this boring book that's of little or no help to the majority of it's freshmen? I mean, my math teacher thinks it's the best book on the planet, but seriously, he's kind of old. Us teens (who the book was actually written for) think it's not all that great. Whatever. Read it yourself and see what you think, this is only my opinion after all, not that a whole lot of people are going to read it or anything.

This book helps to answer the question- What must I
do to be successful? The author discusses good habits of
highly effective teens, as well as planning and win-win
scenarios. Above all, a teen must be a good listener in
order to influence people. Poor listeners are identified
by the author; as follows:

o Do you pretend to listen?
o Is your listening selective?
o Do you listen to words only or take in other things
like body language?
o Are you empathetic?
o Does your mind wander in another galaxy?

These are all good questions which the author poses.
Each of us has a style. Some students are imaginative,
creative or spatial. Others are investigative or
inquisitive. Still others tend to be realists or
fatalists. A minority of people tend to be too analytical.
This phenomenon is called "analysis paralysis". Our
tendency to over analyze a problem actually gets in the way
of successfully executing a practical solution on an
immediate basis.

Teams have all kinds of people. Some are plodders.
Others are followers. Some may innovate while a minority
of people harmonize the group and aid in its ultimate
cohesion as a unit.

The book is an excellent value, The author poses
questions aimed at getting teens to identify and correct
sloppy habits/predispositions. These negative aspects
may hinder academic performance later on.

This is a very good book for middle and high school age kids. It gives them a direction and a way to plan how they live and interact with other teens and adults. I'd also recommend getting the companion workbook The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens Workbook [[ASIN:1929494173 The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens Workbook. It helps cement the concepts covered in the book

Like many of the reviewers on here, I too was one of the unfortunate teens who had this book thrust upon them in high school. I was always a negativist at heart, so I am naturally critical of self-help programs and feel-good books like this one. But since I was going through a rough patch in my life, I decided to give it an honest chance. Plus, it was given to us at no charge, which I did appreciate.

Unfortunately, this book is only helpful to one of two different types of teens, neither category of which I happened to fall into. First are the type of individuals who are already happy-go-lucky, self-confident, and have already fully developed a sense of identity. Teens who are depressed, have a bad family situation, have financial troubles, or have issues with self-image should forget this book even exists. The second type of rare teenage breed who might actually benefit from this book is the one who has the dedication and the energy to uproot his or her entire life in order to live it according to Sean Covey's strict specifications.

Personally, I found the book to be so overly enthusiastic that it actually sickened me. Covey seems to assume every teenager is of the same mold. He doesn't account for some very important variables which often contribute to teenage stress and hardship (i.e., moving to a new location, domestic violence, the death of a loved one, mental illness, etc.) and the issues he does address are often glossed over in a goofy, unrealistic manner. It's plain to see that Covey, despite his "I-used-to-be-just-like-you" attitude, didn't have too many problems growing up. Perhaps he should have let someone more qualified write this book.

Even the people who might enjoy this text will be turned off by its blatant profiteering. There are copious references to a companion planner that you are supposed to buy, as if all other day planners are somehow incompatible.

My advice for troubled teens: burn this book and keep listening to angry music and playing violent video games. It is far more therapeutic than reading "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens".

I come from a horrible background, my family has no moral structure, they're either on drugs or selling drugs.

My freshmen year of high school was really hard for me, my moms drug use escalated and I felt trapped. I was about to give up and go towards the bad stuff my family did/does. I just wanted to be accepted, I was too weird for the normal kids, but not hardcore enough the kids that let me hang with them.

I had no support, and I felt like I couldn't reach out, after a suicide attempt, I was put into a leadership class and the Curriculum was the Seven habits of highly effective teens

This book helped me:
Over come my family (I moved out when I was 16)
Get better grades (I went from a 1.6-3.8 in one year and graduated with a 2.5)
It helped strengthen my moral goals (and give me some also)
and It helped me take care of myself

I am now 19 a freshmen in college and working towards becoming an abnormal Child Psychologist.

A few good teachers and this book saved me from a life of crime and drugs.

I feel like there are a lot kids out there that need this book, and a few good teachers.


P.s. I still have my copy from my freshmen year, all beat up and highlighted and I re-read it every so often to remind myself of all the awesome stuff in there.

My son is 10 1/2 and has issues with anxiety. I thought this would help from all the great reviews it received. I think it is a good book but is better suited for slightly younger children. He read it all at once. I asked him did he feel it was going to help him. He said, "No, it really didn't talk about any of the things that I feel nervous about." "I'm not really afraid of dogs." I told him that he should be able to use the information he learned when they discussed dogs in his own situations. But, it doesn't seem to have made any difference with him. I think he just felt it was quite babyish and therefore it made him disinterested.

As with most self-help books, you have to pick and choose what strategies best apply to your unique situation. But this book has a lot of great tools to choose from! It's just what I was looking for and is helping to equip my daughter not only with strategies to deal with her worries and fears, but with a language to talk about them. I recommend reading it along with your child and discussing the ideas together.

This is an excellent book. It acknowledges how worried children feel and gives them tools to deal with those feelings while still validating that this isn't always an easy task. It is in language kids can understand but also also gives the non anxious person insight into what it is like to be anxious. It doesn't blame or judge but rather has an accepting tone. The strategies it gives are actual cognitive behavioral techniques used with kids and adults. What an excellent resource for parents, teachers, and therapists of anxious children! I highly recommend this book!

This book is great for a child that worries more than the average kid. My daughter is 9 1/2 and she has always worried about things that she can't control (house catching on fire, tornados, lightning, etc). This book has been a blessing! I wish I had discovered it a few years ago. It is written on a kid-level with chances for them to write/draw about their own worries.

This book gave my 8 year old the tools necessary to understand and combat her worries. Within a week, we saw an amazing transformation in her ability to manage her worries as well as her body's reaction to those worries. Excellent resource.

Besides being a thorough exploration of writing, it's a memoir with insight into both writing and life.

A cursory look at the index might have one thinking this is just another step-by-step guide to a successful, publishable writing career...with chapters neatly organized by "character, plot, dialogue..." Ever so subtley, with unexpected laughs around every turn, the first chapter pulled me in as if I was a kid listening to a good friend tell me a crazy story propped on an easy lawnchair in my own backyard.
I adore Lamott's down and dirty frankness about the odds of publishing, and hysterically saw myself (a hopeful wanna-be writer) as one of her eager if not naive students. What an incredibly refreshing way she has of 'teaching' "us" through the most satiric, sometimes moronic, always satisfying stories and examples.
I read much of the book on an airplane and caught myself laughing out loud at times. During the poignant and carefully observed and recorded nursing home scene, I had to hide my watery eyes, only to go back and re-read the author's uniquely touching phraseology over and over again.
I think Lamott is a genius author, a wise and witty spirit, a superb mentor who knows how to grab her reader and then, sereptitiously teach her invaluable lessons on writing and life that will stick because of the intelligent and humorous context in which she reveals them.
The read is fast, but the lessons therein will last a lifetime and interestingly, the book has given me the boost and confidence I needed to write, write, write.

As I tell my friends: this is likely the most under-rated book of all time. From organizing your thoughts, to finding your creativity, to getting it all onto a piece of paper, this book serves as a guide for every person that wants to improve their ability to communicate. Anne Lamott is a talented writer, but an even more talented teacher. Get this book if you'd like to improve every facet of your writing.

This is a put a pep-in-your-step writing book. It's really a book with instructions on having a WRITING life. I'm still in the thick of it but I've never laughed so hard or felt so motivated by a book to write.

The best advice is in the title, which is, in other words, "step by step." I can't remember if it is this book, or "Plan B," in which the author recounts taking rolls of dimes from an older black woman in the church she attended, even after she didn't need them any more, with the rationalization that it somehow helped the older black woman to give Lamott her meager savings. She can't even disguise her opportunist ways in her writing. This book is actually pretty bleak, to me. Just because Lamott has kinky hair and feels like an outcast, she attended black churches. How condescending to the members there: "I'm one of you because I feel like the lowest member of society and can't manage to get my act together. Oh, by the way, give me money because I had a child out of wedlock. That makes me so unusual." Lamott idolizes her father, who drank like a fish himeself, and allowed her as a minor to drink and hang out with his buddies, and vilifies and dismisses her mother who successfully completed law school and started a productive career at an unlikely age. This book, as all her books, recounts the author's serious drug addictions and her self-indulgence. How many can afford to spend a month or two in complete retreat to re-write a novel that was rejected? I guess if you don't mind taking rolls of dimes from poor black women, you can. But it's not on my list of to-do's for success. Stick to truly disciplined folk, like Michael Jordan for one, for advice on success in anything.

Diamond traces the spread of human culture, language, and empire-building across the globe in terms of "geographic determinism"--a pejorative term he deplores: ". . . Societies developed differently on different continents because of differences in continental environments, not in human biology."

Specifically, he traces the ultimate causes that some human societies who (literally and sometimes figuratively) developed guns, germs and steel were able to subjugate the continental areas of the globe: domestication of plants for food, domestication of animals for food, transportation, power, and military purposes, and east/west continental axes that enabled food production techniques and the resulting political organization, language, and technology to spread most quickly.

Diamond makes a compelling case in a way that takes the racism out of much of the "manifest destiny" writing that surrounds this topic. Doing so, however, he takes a purely evolutionary view of human history. No allowance is made, for example, for events such as a single point of creation, dispersal of language from Babel outward (even though it would address a mystery he is unable to solve), or a world-wide flood which wiped out existing patterns of human dispersal and restarted human history from another single point.

This book is interesting for those who prefer non-fiction. I bought this book for a friend.

While this book is difficult for many high school students, its ideas and the methods used to create his thesis are concepts your students can get. This would be a great jumping off point for an interdisciplinary unit and as the years go on, history and social studies teachers need to change the way we present history if we want students to be ready for the 21st century. In a time when students can get facts right off of Google faster than we could give it to them, we need to teach history as concepts and not focus on students learning only facts. Diamond interprets the facts to create a a thesis on why certain societies excel and come out on top. You could compare and contrast his thesis to the Human Web or the Kennedy's Rise and Fall of Great Powers. On its own, GGS could be a powerful tool in the classroom and teachers of all disciplines should read this text. All texts are biased and no one should expect perfection so if you want to be convinced of one particular view then you shouldn't read it. But if you are open to learning more and having more questions when you are finished (which is not a bad thing), then you should read this and give select passages to students.
For non-teachers, this book really makes learning history easy and interesting which may be different from your own educational experience.

Many reviews claim this book to be biased and bereft of some important additional components that have influenced human evolutionary history. Diamond actually does mention many of these components, but seems to think they're merely subsidiaries of the broader agents behind history's patterns (which he lists as government/religion, germs, writing, and technology).

This book isn't perfect, but it's a great start and leaves the door wide open for those interested in pursuing the study of human evolution. It's boldest claim is that geography was the greatest SINGLE determinant of the evolution of human societies (continental axes, climate, biology, geology, etc.). He doesn't claim geography did it all and does indeed discuss important other factors such as cultural receptivity to new technology, progress, and change. But I think it's interesting that he goes so far as to claim that the essence of it all is mere geographical location, and from that simple starting point our many complex differences have spawned.

Without a doubt, this has got to be the worst book I have read in a long time. What would have been an interesting blurb in the sociology section of 'Time' magazine, becomes hundreds of pages of pure mindless dreck in the hands of Jared Diamond. Let me save you a few days of your life by summing up the book: The reason why white, western / European societies flourished and the rest of the of the non-white, non-western world did not was because the European climate and terrain favored domestication of plants and animals while the rest of the world's terrain and climate did not. Therefore, western man had more free time on his hands to invent stuff and put a man on the moon, while the rest of the world, to this day, is still screwed up. Wow. I am so annoyed I read this book and wasted so much time doing so.

I was excited about seeing the new edition but there is nothing new and it still is tremendously dull and tired.

then this book is NOT for you. I tried to teach myself Spanish (I didn't know any) and this book just did not work out because of its poor construction. The concepts are not clearly described and all too often I found myself asking why is this grammar like this or what is the difference between the different tenses. The examples are not very helpful either.

However, I took a private introductory class and then returned to this book. Here, the book has provided some value with its vocabulary which is grouped by themes (festivals, family, etc). So the book has some value for a beginner if you are also receiving extensive instruction from another source.

Contrary to other reviews I find this textbook excellent. The chapters lead the student to learn Spanish with a minimal effort at a natural, comfortable pace. Recommended for beginners!

This book is touted as a beginners volume yet it fails to perform as specified. The contents are poorly written and few examples are given to help in the learning process. To further complicate the learning of a new language, Puntos de partida provides very little explanations and direction to ensure sufficient comprehension and understanding of the Spanish language. Unfortunantly, this review can speak for most Spanish text books on the market as my Universities Spanish program has realized. Puntos de partida will not help the beginner to learn Spanish. It will deter the beginner to seek further understanding and learning of the Spanish language. This is unfortunate.

This is the most comprehensive foreign language book I've seen. It's simple, a 6th grader could teach themselves Spanish with this book. Open it, read it, and memorize it. I had a terrible time with French and was not looking foward to learning Spanish, but I picked it up immediately as I went along with this book. When the semester was over, I spent the summer reading the rest of it at my leisure. As far as the other reviews go, I'm not sure what the problem was. It couldn't be explained any more clearly, perhaps they are moving too fast? Take a day for each page or something, whatever works. If you're not picking it up, it may be your study techniques and not the book. If you want extra practice, get the workbook. Both the workbook and the textbook have the answers to every practice exercise (of which there are an adequate amount) in the back of the book. Maybe the previous reviewers were unaware?

Another great Boynton classic with funny pictures and not a lot of words on every page. Whole family likes this one!

My two little girls really enjoyed this book. It's a nice big board book that fits in your lap easily with up to two little ones!

This is a great book for going to bed. It is oversized so it is easier to hold onto when kids get tired and it has a great story. Highly recommended.

Sandra Boynton's books are the PERFECT GIFT for baby showers....they are wonderfully rhythmic to read and babies love these! I always purchase these little board books for new parents who generally get all kinds of baby clothes etc. for showers but rarely get books to start a baby libary. You just can't go wrong with any of the books by Sandra Boynton, they beg to be read aloud!

A wonderful book with great illustrations, and the brushing teeth of course is a bonus, anything to get a child to do so is always welcome.

A good bedtime story.

I thought that it was cool he did this. It was a quick read, and it wasn't Earth shattering, but I thought it was insightful. Quirky guy.

An easy read. Though I skimmed much of the 1st 1/2 which is mainly memoir and a bit dull at times. Though I thoroughly enjoyed reading about King's alcohol and drug problems.

In the 2nd 1/2 King talks about writing and publishing. He explains how he works (he doesn't believe in days off) and how one might go about getting published. The actual writing advice itself is not new--leave out adverbs--don't say in 3 words what you can say with 1, etc.

I think it's a great book for a beginning writer to start with.

The postal service lost the product and so we never received it, but amazon quickly refunded the money.

Mr. King's story of his development into a noted and successful writer and his description of the writing craft is only one man's story, but a unique and inspiring one. Think of it as the first half of his autobiography - may he live long and well! Also, think of it as his tutorial and elucidation on how to write something worth reading. Two tales in one unique book.

King's early life was tumultuous; the reader begins to see how the writer of rather unusual stories was formed. After learning about his extended starving artist time, the reader easily celebrates his well-earned success and acclaim. His recovery from the near-fatal attack by a minivan illustrates real grit, and the extremely positive influence of his wife on his life it wonderful. King is almost as interesting a character as he the many he give us in his best books.

The greatest value of the book, however, at least to writers and wanna-be's, is in his candid explanations on how to compose, edit, re-compose, edit, edit again, re-write, proofread, and cut until the manuscript shines. Even for a master and journeyman like Mr. King, writing top-notch fiction requires focus, sweat, and time. It's tiring. I imagine if he could work more than four concentrated hours a day he would. While his description of the author's daily life is not glamorous, it nonetheless is realistic, and illustrates how a true writer can never be satisfied NOT writing.

Whether or not you usually read Mr. King's variety of fiction, if you even dabble a small amount as a writer you can benefit tremendously from what he has included in this wonderful volume.

Until I read On Writing by Stephen King, I had never read any of his books. To be honest, since On Writing, I've only read one other of his books which I didn't like so we've come to an impasse.... however On Writing is one of the best books I've read. The first half is a memoir of his life where we learn how his early jobs and experiences inspired the ideas for his best sellers. Every thing King sees becomes an obvious cue for him to think "what if". He is a prolific writer and I admire his constant discipline at sitting down and typing his heart out. He finishes a novel and then writes a novella followed by a short story and then he's back to a new novel. The man has ideas a plenty simply by always asking himself "what if" and then writing it down.

The second half of the book is a lesson on how to write. King has much authority on the subject not only due to his global success but also because he was an English teacher before the phenomenal success of Carrie back in the 70s. He teaches how to pair nouns with verbs so we can make sentences that come alive; for example, Rocks explode, which immediately takes the reader to a place where they can envisage rocks exploding... it's all about showing the story rather than telling the reader a bunch of words.

Stephen King is a master writer and teacher. A great book which even a non-writer will enjoy because King shows the reader, his Constant Reader, just how much fun you can have.

This is a great book to learn from, the workbook is also very helpful. This is one of the few college text books that I refused to sell back.

I needed this book for my spanish class and it provided me with the step by step instruction I needed.

this is not a bad spanish book. i don't know if i would say it is great. lots of group activities that are helpful, but they are pretty simple and repetitive. they need to be a little more thoughtful and put in lots of DIFFERENT activities. one last, quite frustrating thing, there is only a spanish-english dictionary in the back. extremely irritating because this is a spanish 1-2 book, and anytime you want to look up a word, you'll need to consult another dictionary.

I've been using Dos Mundos in my Spanish III class this fall and it's been a quite positive experience. I'm a former English teacher, and a long time psychologist, so I have some feel for the teaching/learning dynamic of a text. I'm finding DM to be intelligently written and organized, with many different kinds of activities that build on and integrate what you're learning. I like the way history, art, pop culture, geography, politics, music, literature, etc. are interspersed throughout DM. There's cartoons, color, and a reasonably unstilted, good-hearted consciousness in the book. For those of us used to American textbooks which have been reduced to squirmy blandness by pressure groups leaning on state textbook purchasing agencies, it's a bit refreshing to encounter occasional perspectives on economic and political injustice, environmental exploitation, etc. Not that this is a particularly political book, it's just that these things are usually soooooo sanitized. Some people have complained about the lack of an English to Spanish dictionary in this book. Face it---you need to buy a little dictionary to have when you're reading DM and learning Spanish. No added-on dictionary section is going to be complete enough to meet your needs. You'll only be wasting time using it, since half the time the word you're looking for won't be there anyway. You might as well go to the dictionary in the first place. To sum it up: I like this book and I'm in the process of reading the seven chapters which were previously covered in Spanish I and II, which I didn't take in this sequence.

I teach college Spanish and I love this text. It is thoughtfully constructed and provides numerous activities for communication in the target language. Dos mundos also provides very useful ideas for instructors. The pages are colorful and the content engaging. My students love all the activities I use from this text. I wish more Spanish instructors would embrace the methodology presented in Dos mundos. My level one Spanish students actually speak Spanish (albeit low-level Spanish). I don't know if I would recommend this text for independent study, however. I believe it would be most effective if used in conjunction with a dynamic instructor. I do agree that the authors should include a separate English-Spanish dictionary section. I also find the video segments to be very poor (and why are they exactly the same as the ones for Puntos de partida when they both have such different approaches to language acquisition?)

I read this book to my students and then used the predictable format to create a class book highlighting the important thing about each student. The students seemed to enjoy the story quite a bit.

I really like this book, and my little boy does too. It is an excellent introduction to metaphysics for toddlers. It inspires tots to think about what is important, distinctive, or essential about different things. As a philosopher, I was amazed to find a book that actually tried to teach that--and appeared to do so as well as other books teach things like colors, numbers, and letters.

We read this book every once in a while, and we think of something new each time.

It's not that we necessarily agree that the only important thing about an apple is its roundness, nor that the only important thing about the sky is its color, it's that we use these statements as a way to jumpstart conversations.

We read, then we ask - do you think that? If yes, then why? If no, then why not, what *is* the most important thing? Why do you think she thinks this is important? When something doesn't match her description, is it no longer the sky, no longer an apple, no longer a shoe? Why or why not?

Any book can ultimately be used to start a conversation, but we happen to find that this book is particularly good for it - even after several readings.

A simple book about what is important about things such as grass, rain, a spoon etc. It is a super writing prompt to have children write about what is important about themselves.

The Important book can be used in numerous ways. I have used it to write about the importance of friends, the importance of different math solids, and of different community workers. The format lends itself for many different ways a teacher can reinforce different concepts.