Nonfiction Books

only 4 out of 5 stars cuz i'm not done reading it yet (so who knows!) but i found out i do a lot of smart things already, but was able to gain some GREAT information also, very easy read does not make saving $ complicated, it did have most of what i was hoping for so far (such as grocery stuff). would recommend!

I read it first and it does have some good lessons on how to plan ahead for things. Not great lessons that can really be used today, but good ones.

I read this book a while ago when I took an interest in personal finance. It includes lots and lots of helpful tips like describing how to freeze food (wrap bagged bread inside a grocery bag to prevent freezer burn) and describing how they and their friends have saved money in the past.
I don't know the source, but there is a triangle concerning goods. The three sides are price, quality, and time and you can't have all of them. You have to sacrifice quality if you want a better price in the same amount of time. The book emphasizes planning ahead and looking around. This book, like other books on the same topic, encourages creative thinking. Rather than going straight to a retail store to buy a new entertainment center, check yard sales, craigslist, etc. because people give those away all the time when they move. This can be applied to most purchases. A little preparation and brainstorming goes a long way. The Economides family really gets this across in their book.

This is a book I'd recommend to select readers, and which I'm happy I read. It seems to combine some basic financial advice with the general idea of consuming less, and consuming more mindfully while we're at it. The first substantive chapter is probably my favorite, all about grocery shopping. It drills down to some very specific tips for grocery shopping, but the main theme sort of screamed out at me: The more trips you make to the store, the more you spend, and specifically - the more you spend on impulse buys. Plan ahead. Make fewer trips to the store. When you're there, stick with the list! Many of the chapters were about things that I feel didn't really speak to me - buying used cars, planning inexpensive vacations, finding inexpensive medical insurance. Although I have no children yet, I really enjoyed one of the ending chapters about having children earn their weekly allowance and teaching them how to budget and save. I think that chapter's great, actually, and I hope I remember this book when I do have kids! I think the domestically-minded will enjoy this book - anyone living on one parent's income, any families (with or without kids) with an eye to living more frugally. People who are horrified by concepts of planning ahead probably won't do too much with the book's advice.

Didn't really glean any advice for myself, but it was a quick interesting read and I think it would be helpful to inspire frugality in those who are just learning the skill.

I got this when my twins were about 16 months old, and it immediately became one of their favorites. The book is very sturdy.

This is the first book that my daughter (now 12 months) clearly responded to, and has remained her favorite. From 4 or 5 months she would smile and coo at the babies' pictures, and showed clear preferences -- unlike another reviewer's child, mine doesn't kiss the babies, but she does bang her head into the page if she likes the baby! This book is slightly smaller than the standard board book, with a slightly cushioned cover, so it was also the first book that my daughter could easily pick up and turn the pages of by herself. Highly recommended as baby's first book.

My daughter loves looking at the other babies in this book! Her face lights up and her little legs start kicking when I pull this book out. There is no plot, so sometimes we make up stories about the babies in the pictures. She also likes that I let her chew on the cover of this board book.

The book came in excellent shape. Our little girl loved this book so much that I got it for my best friend for her baby shower.

My 14 month old likes this book just fine. Definitely not her favorite book. She likes to look at babies in general, so probably any of these books would have the same effect. To me, the faces the babies are making kind of don't match up well to the word or feeling underneath. The angry baby doesn't look angry to me, the puzzled baby doesn't at all look puzzled to me. Oh, and the dirty baby isn't dirty enough. You want to see a dirty baby face? I bet most parents have a better picture than that one! The book called "Baby Faces" by Playskool is better. The pictures are cuter, bigger, and there are more examples of each emotion.

This book is "cute". It forces students to look at arrays of objects and find shortcuts for finding totals. I teach in the middle school grades and have this on my bookshelf for kids looking for something to read during a study hall. Might be a nice supplement to an elementary math program. My two year old son really liked the poems (of course couldn't do the math) and the pictures were really interesting for him to look at.

This book is wonderful. Finally there are great books that celebrate math!! This is an awesome book for older children. I'd say at least 1st grade (some Kindergartener would really enjoy it). However, done properly, it's too time consuming for a preschooler. My 3 year old, even though he's very bright, could only hang for 3 pages doing it the right way. After that we just kind of made up our own *way*. Don't be discouraged to buy it, though, because no matter what the age, you can never encourage math enough!!! Great book, great buy!!

The Grapes of Math is a realization for all that math is all around us. An elementary student addresses many situations familiar to everybody that involve math. Her situations and problems are on-going and lead in many different directions, yet all still relative to math. The book is thought provoking and discussion inspiring. The book is most effective in teaching the relevance of mathematics in everyday life through creative riddles. Through its illustrations and imaginative word problems the book creates wonders and fun with every turn of the page for all ages. The Grapes of Math is a big success at motivating kids to see mathematics as a fun necessity.

My son got an excellent math start with this book. Since then, math problems get his attention rather than something to avoid. Now he is the top math student in his class. He often shows up on the Beestar math honor roll (a nice web site for math practice at Beestar.org). I think The Grapes of Math is the cornerstone of his achievement. I highly recommend it.

The Grapes Of Math by Gregory Tang and Harry Briggs has one genre of math problems presented in an amusing fashion with good art. The genre is patterns of objects with breaks in the patterns. The children are expected to look at the patterns as groupings or shapes to figure out the total number of objects without counting one-by-one.

This is a good book. The kids like it. The problems are amusing, even bordering on tickling. My only problem with this book is that an overview of methods for solving the problems should be at the beginning. But so what? There are a few ways to look at the problems and the kids actually sit down to do them without being pestered.

Let me repeat this: after the initial disappointment that I had purchased math books, on their own the kids actually sat down to do the problems without being pestered. If this isn't an endorsement, then what is?

First of all, I love the title of this book! When I saw it, I knew inside would be something equally clever and unique. Oh, was I right! This book is a visual and poetic feast, and yet, its focus is not on literature, but math. There are 16 riddles which challenge you to open your mind and solve mathematical problems by using a different way of thinking. Each riddle cleverly gives you some advice on how to solve it. For example, in "One Hump or Two?" you are asked, "Can you add the humps you see? Don't just count them one, two, three...To help you find the right amount, group by fives before you count." If you are really stumped, there is a handy Answer section in the back, complete with diagrams of each page as well as an explanation. The computer-generated illustrations are very visually appealing and the rhyming riddles are catchy. I love the titles too: Know Dice, Win-Doze, For the Birds, and Doggone It! to name a few. What a brilliant concept for a book! This is sure to make math easier to understand, not to mention fun for kids.

My 10 years old kids, Sara and Michela and myself enjoyed reading and playing with it. Very sweet way of being carefull about building the relatioship.

Purchased two of these books to give as gifts to grandchildren. Arrived in a timely manner. Only wished the book was a little larger in size. The mothers were very happy with the activities and anxious to participate with their daughters - interesting and fun "stuff" to do. Would highly recommend this activity book.

Our girls grow up so fast! The times w/ them can slip away if we let it.This book helps bring that bond even closer between a mother and daughter.We take it in the car or hang out on the couch w/ it. The folks at American Girl have filled it w/ quizzes and questions that allow you to know your daughter on a deeper level. Our favorite pages so far are "What were you doing when you were your daughters age" and "What do you think you'll be doing when you are your mom's age?" They say to tear the pages out of the book and switch answers, these pages have become little treasures I know I'll pull out in years to come.It's also just plain fun! Full of recipes, bookmarks, and coupons, Just Mom and Me makes those mommy daughter times even more special.

This author needs to take two classes at whichever university she teaches: (1) instructional design and (2) writing concisely. This book has quite a lot of good information, but it is all buried within convoluted fluff.

There are many other books on research methodology that (a) do a better job of explaining, (b) include more comprehensive rules for research, and (c) don't take up so much of your valuable time with fluff. I recommend you look at those other books -- especially if you are a professor who is choosing a book for your students.

I am teaching out of this book and the accompanying workbook for the first time, and I cannot express how terrible they are. The text is extremely overwritten (10 pages for something that could be expressed in one page), the statistics section is not clear at all, the workbook exercises are either too basic or overly complicated, and the text and the workbook answer key are riddled with errors. As a result of this last issue, not only do I need to do the usual work of crafting and giving lectures, I also have to comb the book for errors so that I can correct them for my students and redo all of the exercises so that I have an error-free answer key. I will never use these books again.

A great dictionary that's been revised and updated. I learned Spanish many years ago in High School; and want to update my knowledge. This book helps very much in my review of the language. Highly recommended!

The bare translation...with little to no commentary. It's cheap, though.

This is an excellent book with good reading and meditations to just sit back relax and enjoy.

Rene Descartes can go to a circle in hades for his mathmatics but his discourse on religion was flawed he had to first prove to himself he existed before he could prove God existed, there is the rub. He is justly regarded as the Father of Modern Philosophy because of the questions and problems he created. He helped to distinquish philosophy from science, which is a saving grace. This is a great addition to any library, since it serves to illustrate the evolution of philosophy in our civilization. I would also recommend Deism In American Thought by Woodbridge Riley and of course the Age of Reason by Thomas Paine.

Descartes seems like the sort of guy who likes the sound of his own voice, not unlike a philosophy professor! He has only a handful of points, a few of them interesting but the majority pure academic fluff, and he spends over 100 pages just reiterating his ideas and logic behind them. It seemed like a modern editor would read the manuscript, and whittle it down to a maximum of 25 pages. I am not surprised that various classes on philosophy only use excerpts of Descartes' work.

I would HIGHLY recommend instead buying an analysis of Descartes' works so that you can alternate back and forth between his original writings and commentary on these writings, as well as responses by other philosophers like Pascal.

This is a review of the Donald A. Cress translation of Discouse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy by Rene Descartes.

Philosophers disagree about everything: except about the fact that modern philosophy begins with Descartes. No contemporary philosophers agree with Descartes' positive views. However, Descartes left Western philosophy with a series of puzzles that it continues to wrestle with: how is it possible to know anything? (Descartes' "dream argument" and "evil genius" argument are powerful sources of philosophical skepticism.) What is the relationship between mind and body? (Descartes argues that there is a fundamental metaphysical difference between the two, so they cannot be identical.) Is there some certain, indubitable foundation for knowledge? (Descartes thought that we need one to escape doubt, and that he could provide it.)

Some historical context helps to explain certain features of his writing. In 1521, Martin Luther was excommunicated, beginning the Protestant Reformation and dividing Christianity. Luther encouraged Christians to read the Bible translated into their own languages (e.g., the King James Bible) and use their own individual judgment to interpret it. In 1543, on his deathbed, Copernicus published his book arguing that the sun was the center of the solar system, not the earth (as had been taught by Aristotle). In 1633, Galileo was forced by the Inquisition to renounce his defense of the Copernican hypothesis.

Given the sharp intellectual controversies of his era, it is not surprising that Descartes says he has "realized how numerous were the false opinions that in my youth I had taken to be true, and thus how doubtful were all those that I had subsequently built upon them" (59). Descartes concludes that the only way to escape his doubts is to reconstruct his beliefs using his own reason, rather than relying on traditional views. In this respect, he is somewhat like Luther. However, mindful of what happened to Galileo, Descartes begins the Meditations with a letter to the Faculty of Sacred Theology in Paris, defending the orthodoxy of his views and pleading for their support. In addition, Descartes wrote the Discourse in French (his own vernacular), but wrote the Meditations in Latin (the language of the Church), "lest weaker minds be in a position to think that they too ought to set out on this path" that he has followed (51).

If you are going to read only one work by Descartes, I recommend the Meditations. (However, you might want to quickly read Part 4 of the Discourse first, since it gives an overview of the whole Meditations.) In the Meditations, Descartes decides that, paradoxically, the only way to overcome his doubts is to doubt everything that can be doubted, until he finds something absolutely certain, upon which he can build up knowledge. (Descartes is therefore an epistemological foundationalist.) Descartes notes that his senses sometimes deceive him. Furthermore, for all he knows, he is merely dreaming right now that he has a body and is sitting in a room writing. It is hard to maintain such doubts, so Descartes resolves to pretend that an "evil genius, supremely powerful and clever," is attempting to deceive him at every step of the way. Descartes ends his First Meditation in this pit of uncertainty.

In the Second Meditation, Descartes realizes that, even if he is mistaken about everything, he still has to think to be deceived, and if he thinks, then he exists. (In Part Four of the Discourse, he phrases this concisely as "I think, therefore I am.") Descartes then realizes that, while he can conceive of himself as a thinking thing without a body, he cannot conceive of himself as a body that never thinks. So while he may, in fact, have a body, his body and his mind are metaphysically distinct. (Basically, since he can conceive of body and mind as separate, therefore they are, in principle, separate.) Thus, Descartes is a metaphysical dualist.

In the Third Meditation, Descartes argues that God exists. He gives a version of the ontological argument for the existence of God (defended before Descartes by St. Anselm, criticized after Descartes by Kant, and still later resurrected by Alvin Plantinga). Contemporary readers, even ones who believe in God, are unlikely to find Descartes' argument here compelling, but it is an important part of his philosophy. Descartes argues that, since we know that God exists, and since we know that God is all good, we can be sure that our senses and our reason are not fundamentally deceptive. (Why would an all-good God make us prone to systematic mistakes?)

But the Third Meditation suggests a puzzle: since God created us, and God is all-good, why do we humans EVER make mistakes? Descartes' answer in the Fourth Meditation is that belief requires both the intellect, which simply perceives ideas, and the will, which chooses whether to believe those ideas. So long as we only choose to believe ideas that we "clearly and distinctly" (87) perceive, we will only believe what is true. Error occurs when we precipitately choose to believe unclear or confused ideas. (Part Two of the Discourse describes the methodology Descartes recommends in a bit more detail.) This may seem like a trivial claim, but Descartes is actually arguing for something controversial (and probably false): we can and should withhold belief from anything of which we are not absolutely certain, and so long as we use our minds correctly, we can be guaranteed to never believe anything false.

The Fifth Meditation gives an alternative formulation of the ontological argument for the existence of God, and suggests that some ideas (such as those of mathematical objects) are innate, so that, "when I first discover them, it seems I am not so much learning something new as recalling something I knew beforehand" (88).

Finally, in the Sixth Meditation, Descartes turns to material objects and sensory knowledge. His general conclusion is that "I must not rashly admit everything that I seem to derive from the senses; but neither, for that matter, should I call everything into doubt" (97). In general, Descartes is concerned in this meditation with how we can have a God-given faculty for discovering the truth, yet so often be in error over sensory matters (e.g., the Sun appearing to be the size of a fist).

I do not read French or Latin myself, so I cannot comment on the accuracy of the translation. However, I will say that it is very readable. Furthermore, the selected bibliography is helpful. I do miss three things that were left out of this translation, though. First, Descartes meant for the Meditations to be read along with a series of "Objections" written by his correspondents and "Replies" he wrote in response. Second, perhaps the most insightful critic of Descartes was Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia, who raised in correspondence what is still generally considered one of the strongest objections to Descartes' dualism: how can soul and body interact if they are as radically distinct as Descartes suggests? Finally, Descartes' Fourth Meditation emphasizes the distinction between having a property "formally" and "eminently." In Cress's original translation of the Meditations, he has a footnote explaining this distinction. That footnote was left out of this enlarged edition. If these three things were included in this translation, I think I would give it five stars instead of four.

This book is currently banned in Australia and New Zealand. It has not been in the past and, hopefully, it will resume availability status in the not too distant future. One should be able to determine in this advanced historical part of history, particularly at mature age, to be able to buy and read whatever is relevant to them. Censorship goes too far in this instance. Ignorance is not necessarily bliss! For those that seek answers, this may answer some very important questions for them.

I am only in my 30's and not ready to leave this place just yet(if I can help it). Knowing that I have this book is such peace of mind for me and my boyfriend because should anything happen I want to control MY outcome. The book gives you alternatives on how to end it and gives you the information you need to be able to make sure you don't make mistakes. This is much better than trying something and have it go horribly wrong.
I REALLY THINK EUTHANASIA SHOULD BE LEGAL.

This is the only book of its kind that I've read that is so thoroughly researched. It's a pretty comprehensive study of the various ways there are to end one's life. And each method is rated in many categories including effectiveness, ease of obtaining the required materials, painlessness, etc. Near the end of the book there is a good description of how to obtain the best drug (in Mexico) and includes very helpful pictures of the products. I can seriously see cutting the pictures out and showing them to a clerk in Mexico who might otherwise not be able to figure out what I was looking for (because of language difficulties). However, you pay a stiff price to get this information in paperback form ($35.),there is a lot of scientific "padding" to fill out the pages and that is why I gave it four stars instead of five. However, it is the only game in town at this time as far as I know so I'm glad that I have it in my library in spite of the high cost.

This book was a bit of a slog for me, and much of the advice Mr. Lukeman provides seems somewhat outdated, especially in this era of the internet when so many agents and editors blog and there are so many more resources for writers on the net. There was one particularly wretched piece of advice about sending your query letters out express which made me wince. I can think of 5 agents off the top of my head who say NEVER do this. EVER.

Mr. Lukeman also belabors his points in his end of chapter "examples", bludgeoning the reader over the head with points which he had already expressed well enough previous. His "bad" writing samples are so awful they entertain instead of illuminate. Here is an example from the dialogue section on melodramatic dialogue:

"Oh, Henry! You know I've loved you so!"
"Oh, Magaret! If only words could express my love for you!...
"Oh, darling! What would I be without you? My love, my sweetness!"
"The world would stop in its tracks without you, my Magarita!"

A few of the exercises he assigns at the end of each section are helpful if for no other reason than to make a writer really focus on the words and take a look at what they've written. I liked the exercise at the end of the "Sound" section where he assigns the writer to rewrite one of their paragraphs "and reformat it on the page as if it were a poem" (51). This helped me smooth out flow and melody in my manuscript immensely and it was fun too.

I'd say if you're looking for really germaine advice about getting published you might want to start reading agent blogs instead of this book. Kristin Nelson. Nathan Bransford and the Bookends Literary Agency blogs are good places to start your publishing education. I wouldn't say this book is unless you lack even the most basic of writing skills and publishing smarts.

If you never want to do another rewrite DON't BUY THIS BOOK - if you want to get published and be professional - buy 2 copies! Great book, enough said.

This book goes beyond telling authors what to look for and correct to get agents to pick their manuscript from the many, but it reveals the secrets to create superb writing period. It goes beyond the first five pages. It takes you to the final credits on good writing that sits well with those that publish.

or if you're in the sixth grade, you might need this book. Trite, silly, so basic and ridiculous, it's insulting. Maybe if it were the least bit well written, it might be sort of worth it. But, please, let me SHOW you rather than TELL you what I mean.

The first sentence of chapter 4 (Comparison) reads: "A picture is worth a thousand words..." No, I'm not kidding. He wrote that. Then, I choose this from many, many examples of bad grammar, only because it's in the same paragraph: "Comparison is one of the few devices that really put (sic) a writer's skill in the spotlight...." Turn the page for this bit of poorly phrased wisdom: "Bad or cliche comparisons jump off the page. They indicate imprecision or laziness in searching for the right picture....If a writer doesn't care enough about his work to paint precisely the right picture, why should the reader waste his time reading it?"
My point. Exactly.

I have to agree with the February 2001 review by "A Customer": This book doesn't teach much about writing. I would go farther and say that some of what it says is either wrong or at least very unhelpful.

One can. of course, empathize with literary agents and editors who are deluged with manuscripts and must move as quickly as possible to extract a few needles of quality from the haystack of junk. There is value in this book in terms of bringing a writer -- particularly an unpublished one -- some sense of reality as to what he or she faces in the competition for attention. There is also value in making people sensitive to some of the most common "red flags" that will kill their chances for consideration.

But I found this book maddening, for a couple of reasons. First, Lukeman himself has much to learn as a writer. He writes in an overly elegant, self-absorbed style that should have earned the red pen of any competent editor. It becomes a little difficult to accept his wisdom about how things should be written when his own product is deficient. He constantly switches from the first person (both "I" and "we") to the second and third person, for example, often within the very same paragraph. What grated most on me, however, was his addiction to purple in his prose: "If you look back at your dialogue and realize you have scenes that are unsalvageable (like the last example), don't collapse in despondency." (p. 90). Collapse in despondency? Puh-leeze.

The second problem, to me far more serious, is that many of his exercises and proposed solutions to the problems he identifies are either useless or wrongheaded. For example, to solve the problem of pointless and mundane dialogue ("Hi there, how are you?" "I'm fine, and you?" "Nice weather we're having, huh?") he doesn't send people to reputable sources of help for writing effective dialogue; rather, he suggests that a writer should "train [his] ear." He writes: "Begin to pay attention to how dialogue is used in everyday life by different types of people. Eavesdrop on people -- in the subway, in a diner, walking on the street, in a store; especially try to eavesdrop on people who might be similar to your characters." (p. 89).

This suggestion is a recipe for disaster. Writing effective dialogue requires far more sophistication than the aimless guesswork that Lukeman suggests here. It would be far better for an aspiring writer with problems in this area to spend time with Gloria Kempton's Dialogue or Tom Chiarella's Writing Dialogue, to name just two helpful resources.

My suggestion, then, is that this book might be worth a look for the insights it provides into the most common mistakes that inexperienced writers may make in writing and submitting their manuscripts, but not for much help in solving these problems (except for those that can easily be avoided, like improper formatting of manuscripts). Rather, a writer who wants to create a commercially viable work should take advantage of some of the excellent resources available that really get into the hard issues that a writer must confront.

Some of the most valuable books I have benefited from include:

Beginnings, Middles & Ends: How to Get Your Stories Off to a Roaring Start, Keep Them Tight and Crisp Throughout, and End Them With a Wallop by Nancy Kress;

Plot & Structure: Techniques And Exercises For Crafting A Plot That Grips Readers From Start To Finish by James Bell; and

Characters, Emotion & Viewpoint: Techniques and Exercises for Crafting Dynamic Characters and Effective Viewpoints, also by Nancy Kress.

There are many others, of course, but a writer who thoroughly applied the advice in these three -- provided he or she had the basic ability to write in proper English -- would have a significant leg up in getting into print.

I've been able to find the meaning of words I couldn't find in my other Spanish/English Dictionary. Great book, especially the background on the words.

This like all Larousse Dictionaries is great but unfortunately this one for a travel option it a little big. The similar one with only 80,000 entries travels better. Unfortunately, that does not easily found here-- but I suggest searching for the smaller if you plan to travel with it

This dictionary, which our teacher recommended, provides me with all (and more) that I need for my Continuing Education's beginner's Spanish class. Since I am a beginner, I cannot comment on how comprehensive it is, but this dictionary is very clear and very concise. Highly recommended.

I really liked it...i mean a lot.
It was very informatie and I know really not a lot of spanish and i need to learn over the summer for class, and this book is definitely helping. Use this with Cliffsnotes spanish 1 for beginners and a spanish grammar book, and you're gonna be a great spanish speaker

Great dictionary but I didn't expect it to be 6 cm (2.5") thick. Not easy for carrying around. Great value for money though.