King Kong: Meet Kong and Ann (I Can Read Book 2)

Book Description

A step-by-step guide of practical and proven math techniques for the retailer, vendor, or student in profitable merchandising. ALSO AVAILABLE INSTRUCTOR SUPPLEMENTS CALL CUSTOMER SUPPORT TO ORDER Instructor's Guide, 0-8273-5704-4

Book Description

As the flames draw nearer, the fire gets hotter. Ronin assassin Ogami Itto seeks to learn what's written on the secret messages from the corrupt Yagyu clan to the Shogun, and leaves a river of blood in his path. Elsewhere, a shamed woman attempts to force her husband to name his own child, but his job and honor stand in the way. Daigoro makes a new friend in another samurai fated to seppuku - ritual suicide - and defends the honor of a young playmate. The world keeps turning as the Lone Wolf and his Cub wander the land seeking revenge and answers, the questions to which are written in blood and ink.

Customer Reviews:

Brilliant compact stories.......2005-02-16

Although I've reviewed other LWC books on amazon, I took off for a while from reading them; I came back to the series with 13 and 14; 14 is especially good.

What is nice is that the reader gets a gritty sense of history all the while sensing the greatness of the characters. I would loan this out to friends who hadn't read the whole series -- friends who NOT might read all 28 volumes, but still want a good manga read.

The historical details really add to the impact of the individual stories as well as the full arc of this epic. O-Shichiri (the runner) is awesome tale.

Ogami Itto comes closer to the secret of the Yagyu letter.......2002-11-26

Sometimes it is hard to remember that Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima are maddening slow in parceling out clues about the secret message hidden in the Yagyu letter because our attention is always riveted on the particular tale being told in the manga epic of Lone Wolf & Cub. Volume 14 of the saga, "Day of the Demons," offers up the next four episodes of Ogami Itto's path along the Assassin's road:

(69) "One Rainy Day" is another poignant tale that takes place while Daigoro is waiting for his father to return from an assassination. A samurai renders the judgment of the people of twenty-six villages and slays the Daikansho, a corrupt local official. By taking responsibility for the killing, Harada Zenbe spares the peasants from being punished. After the official investigation, he will be allowed to commit seppuku. While waiting under house arrest, he encounters Daigoro--but only on days when the sun shines.

(70) "O-Shichiri Man" refers to the special runners who delivered letters written by the lord of Han, each of whom is assigned a shichiri (17 miles) over which to run. They are granted the samurai right to kill (up to three people) to make sure the mail is delivered. However, this particular O-Shichiri has to contend with the hatred of his wife because of something he has done. Eventually Ogami Itto becomes involved in the matter--after a really neat demonstration of his skill with a sword--until the tale reaches the twist at the end that we have come to expect in such tales.

(71) "The Kyushu Road" is over 100-pages long and finds Ogami Itto beset by masked assassins, including the spear instructor for Kuroda Han. The question becomes why the Kuroda are aiding the Yagyu, and Ogami Itto is invited to ask that question of Lord Kurdo himself. In doing so, we learn a bit more about the Yagyu letter.

(72) "Day of the Demons" is a story of the persecution of Christians in Japan during this period. Daigoro finds a young girl to play with, but when she and her family are rounded up as Christians, he stands by his new friend. Given a charge by the girl's dying mother, Daigoro is asked by his father: "You want to finish what she asked of you?" We know the answer to that question and we suspect the sort of heartbreak we will find at the end of this unforgettable story."

Once again I marvel at the way Koike and Kojima weave together all sort of different stories as they prolong our enjoyment of the journey Ogami Itto and Diagoro take as they life in Meifumado, at the juncture of the six paths and the four lives. For me the violence and the sex are so secondary to the character studies being offered up in these stories. Koike and Kojima are able to give the characters who appear in single episodes a sense of depth that makes their lives (and usually their deaths) a rich part of the tapestry. I have been reading one episode a night before I go to bed and I will probably start all over again once I finish "Lone Wolf and Cub" to better appreciate the grand design of this epic comic.

It brought me to tears........2001-12-17

Lone wolf and cub is a fantastic set of stories. Here we have another collection of great stores from the classic Japanese series.

It's usually hard to comment on these stories uniquely. They all reflect and explain Japanese culture and for that reason alone are a fine addition to any person collection or bookshelf. The storytelling is fantastic and the artwork first rate.

The second story in the segment WAS available in regular comic book form. I suspect there may have been some change in order in printing. If you like me thought the series was totally published in order, it may force you to check out some eariler issues to make sure you missed nothing.

As for the tears, they involve the last story. It deals with an encounter with a group of Japanese Christians who were hunted down, bounties offered on them and given the choice of denying Christ and Mary or death. Any faithful Catholic reading this story will be moved particularly when you consider events in Indonesia and China these days. It brings to mind the passage: "Everyone who acknowledges me before others I will acknowledge before my heavenly Father. But whoever denies me bofore others , I will deny before my heavenly Father" (Mt. 10:32-33) Of course nobody familar with the culture of Japan will be shocked since faithfulness unto death to any cause is a part of the culture.

Reguardless of the reason you buy it, buy it.

Amazon.com

Sling Blade, winner of the 1996 Academy Award for best screenplay, is the powerful story of Karl, who returns to his hometown after serving 25 years in a mental hospital for committing a gruesome crime. There he befriends a young boy and develops a close relationship with the boy and his widowed mother. These relationships evolve quickly and, ultimately, Karl's feelings for the mother and son lead him to a selfless act. Writer Billy Bob Thornton demonstrates a searing insight into the lives of ordinary people, portraying with equal skill both the good and bad who inhabit the small Arkansas town. Sling Blade is both the tale of one man's struggle to reconcile his life and of love's ultimate redemptive power.

Customer Reviews:

Great screenplay.......2001-05-21

Sling Blade is my favorite movie of all time. Even the smallest characters are so unforgettable. I've probably read this script as many times as I've seen the movie. I like that there were a few parts in the script that the movie left out. After reading this repeatedly, I realize that the movie was better off without the scenes, but there is some pretty funny dialogue concerning Doyle's friend, Randy Horsefeathers, who claims to be half-Indian. (If you don't know what I'm talking about, see the movie) There is also a pretty touching part (in the book) where Frank and Karl go to visit the girl who Frank has a crush on. It's a very emotional part of the story, but I'm glad that the scene didn't make it into the film. In the movie, the girl is mentioned and left at that. The filmed version would have thrown the film off balance, but it looks great on paper.

If you loved this movie, do yourself a favor and get the book. It's a must have for any fan and it can be read in a sitting.

"A nice home fried tater.".......2001-02-28

There are shooting scripts and there are screenplays. If you want to know more about a movie, if there's a shooting script, that's probably your best bet. If you just want the dialogue to a film, then you probably want to read the screenplay. Miramax doesn't publish shooting scripts as far as I know, so you're stuck with what they do publish. Often times, a screenplay doesn't live up to the film it's words are taken from. Fortunately, that is not the case here. This is an excellent screenplay with all the dialogue from the movie and just a tad bit more. If you've never seen the movie, this is a time when reading the screenplay before hand might be worth your while. There is a lot of great dialogue here and reading it on the page takes nothing away from the action you will see on the screen.

A must have for any Billy Bob fan.......1999-12-18

This book follows the movie pretty much word for word. I like having things in print--I love this screenplay and if you like the movie, you'll love it too.

Convinced me to see the film.......1999-01-21

I had the heard the movie was good, but one hears that about lots of movies. I ran into the screenplay at a bookstore. Now, how often does the average person buy screenplays? But I picked it up and began to read, and decided to buy. Within the next few hours the screenplay clinched my decision to see the film. The writing for the film deserved the Oscar and this screenplay deserves to be read on its own.

Some folks call it a Sling Blade- I Call it a Masterpiece.......1998-11-03

The film and the screenplay rock! I have never seen a better, darker, and more insightful independant film than "Sling Blade". For all of us film buffs out there, this screenplay is a great investment. It is really neat to read a screenplay because there may be a few scenes that were cut out of the final product, as in "Sling Blade". I recommend this masterpiece to anyone who appreciates good screenwriting and good filmmaking. Thanks, Billy Bob!

Book Description

Definitive biography of The Troggs-rock's original bad boys: as famous for expletive-packed exchanges in the studio as the proto-punk of garage anthem "Wild Thing". But their mellow "Love is All Around" was also a huge hit; covered by REM and Wet Wet Wet. The Troggs' no-frills rock has recently earned them cult status with a US generation raised on the Ramones.

Customer Reviews:

Unpleasant Reading.......2007-01-12

As a Troggs fan, I was thrilled to see a biography had hit the shelves. I bought it immediately. Joy soon turned to disappointment as I struggled to decipher the totally convoluted syntax filling these pages. Sentences go on and on and on, packed with references so obscure, I couldn't read it for more than a couple minutes at a time. And I'm very familiar with 60's British slang and culture. The book is still worth laboring through if you're a big Troggs fan, but be prepared for a difficult slog.

Disappointing.......2001-06-27

I grabbed this book with joy-at long last,a book on the Troggs!I struggled mightily to get through it,but it is written so strangely,it's really hard to get through.And I don't believe it's just because the authors are English.They've chosen to write in a very off-putting style.I have to rate this a major disappointment.The ultimate Troggs book is yet to be written.

The Troggs Files show you everything about a popcareer.......2001-03-05

The Troggs are often classified as simple or grandfathers of punk.What they really contributed to popmusic is the power of a good hook or melody. Together with some extra's as the image and the charisma of the leadsinger Reg Presley you can become famous. As they did and they still are touring during 35 years. They work and make the most important element of pop worthwile; being a popgroup that gives their audience the possibility to see them live!. That's what The Troggs are about. Together with some real big songs as Love Is All Around and Wild Thing they are famous and , at last, also recognized as important. Read their history and relive the ups and downs on the road.Excellent.

Average customer rating:

Rock's Wild Things : The Troggs Files
Alan; Ryan, Jacqueline Clayson
Manufacturer: Helter Skelter Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000MBQ6BO

The Troggs Files: Rock's Wild Things - the Official Story

Average customer rating:

The Troggs Files: Rock's Wild Things - the Official Story
Alan Clayson , and Jacqueline Ryan
Manufacturer: Northdown Publishing Ltd
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Music | Entertainment | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 1900711060

Average customer rating:

Good from begining to end.

The North Unveiled

Ravenloft Gazetteer II: Legacies of Terror (Ravenloft d20 3.0 Fantasy Roleplaying)
Philippe Boulle , John W. Mangrum , Steve Miller , and Andrew Wyatt
Manufacturer: White Wolf Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Puzzles & Games | Entertainment | Subjects | Books
General | Role Playing & Fantasy | Puzzles & Games | Entertainment | Subjects | Books
Miller, Steve | ( M ) | Authors, A-Z | Science Fiction & Fantasy | Subjects | Books
General | Fantasy | Science Fiction & Fantasy | Subjects | Books
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Ravenloft Gazetteer, Vol. 5 (Dungeons & Dragons d20 3.5 Fantasy Roleplaying, Ravenloft Setting)

ASIN: 1588468305

Customer Reviews:

Good from begining to end........2004-10-01

The Second of the Gazetteer's is an absoulutly solid product, We get an update and a real good look at one of the largest domains in Ravenloft, Darkon. Also are some really detailed looks at Necropolis, Lamordia, and Falkovnia. My personal favorite was Lamordia as I have always been interested in getting a closer look at the land of Mordenheim and Adam. Also the Who's Doomed section of this Gazetteer is packed. Not only the Darklords but 5 other personalities of note,(though you kinda figure Mordenheim as half a Darklord i guess.) I hope they keep pumping out products of this caliber..

The North Unveiled.......2003-08-13

This book is a great step upward from the first Gazetter and does an excellent job of portraying the Northern Lands of Ravenloft. The book discusses the domains of Necropolis, Darkon, Lamordia and Falkovnia. The author provides numerous potential starting points for adventures as well as ideas for developing the attitudes and histories of people from these lands. Also, the book gives insights into the newly returned Azalin and raises questions about why Azalin is interested in collecting information about all the different domains. I found the descriptions about Necropolis to be particularly useful since I have been eager to discover the nature of that domain. Altogether the book is an important addition to the Ravenloft collection and I encourage anyone who is interested in running a campaign in the northern realms to add this book to their library.

Average customer rating:

Outstanding book on how to deploy Six Sigma

Highly Recommended!

Six Sigma for Those Who Read Books for CEOs

The 6 Sigma Book for Leaders Planning a Deployment

An Excellent Book

Leading Six Sigma: A Step-by-Step Guide Based on Experience with GE and Other Six Sigma Companies
Ronald D. Snee , and Roger W. Hoerl
Manufacturer: FT Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Company Profiles | Biography & History | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
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Lean Six Sigma : Combining Six Sigma Quality with Lean Production Speed

Six Sigma Beyond the Factory Floor: Deployment Strategies for Financial Services, Health Care, and the Rest of the Real Economy (Six Sigma)

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ASIN: 0130084573

Customer Reviews:

Outstanding book on how to deploy Six Sigma.......2006-11-10

I strongly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in how to successfully deploy Six Sigma in a large organization. Most books on Six Sigma are either technical (focusing on the tools and methodology) or are high level explanations of the basics of Six Sigma and descriptions of the wonderful impact it has on organizations. This is one of the few books I have found that focuses on the details of planning, organizing and managing a Six Sigma deployment. It is thorough and comprehensive. I led a corporate-wide Six Sigma deployment for a Fortune 1000 company and can confirm that the advice they provide is right on target. They have good, practical guidance based on real experience.

Highly Recommended!.......2004-03-01

This book differs from most other Six Sigma guides in that it identifies, by name, companies that failed at Six Sigma. So many authors have presented Six Sigma as something magical that it is refreshing to see its warts. Make no mistake - the authors are not out to debunk or dethrone Six Sigma, a management philosophy and method that has been their professional life for many years. They clearly believe that Six Sigma is worth the investment of time, brain power, leadership and political capital that it requires. But they aren't afraid to point out the fact that it does require serious investment, and that management must sustain its commitment for years to unlock the full benefit of the Six Sigma approach. The book is a tolerably good read, albeit dry. It mercifully spares the reader any puffery or promotion, and it lays out the axioms of Six Sigma life in a very lucid format. Occasionally, it stoops to cliché, but not terribly often. We recommend it to those who need to know what it really takes to achieve Six Sigma performance, and how to begin.

Six Sigma for Those Who Read Books for CEOs.......2004-01-13

This is a book about getting your organization to adopt Six Sigma. This book focuses on excellent techniques that are needed for convincing upper management of the value of Six Sigma. The target audience seems to be CEOs and their top assistants. In fact the authors pretty much concede that implementing Six Sigma is impossible without CEO intervention. Little can be found to help line managers implement a culture appropriate for Six Sigma. This fine book would have been even better had they addressed line issues more aggressively and had more on how to communicate Six Sigma in a manner that would not leave the "rank and file" thinking Six Sigma is just "old water in new bottles".

I dare say in many companies, the rank and file will assume that Six Sigma is ineffective jargon. Further, this will to a large extent be due to oversimplified misunderstandings of Six Sigma. Most Six Sigma training emphasizes that Six Sigma is used when the solution is unknown. Yet I only hear people mention Six Sigma when they have a solution (sometimes a solution in search of a problem). "We need to finish this project to improve our Six Sigmas" and "we should [insert project goal] so we can all get our green belts" are typical of the comments I hear that are laughable to someone who understands Six Sigma.

This book's weakest sections are the first few chapters. The authors compare companies who had successfully adopted Six Sigma and those who did not. The authors believe that the successful adopters shared (and the unsuccessful companies did not have) the following characteristics:
- committed leadership
- use of top talent
- supporting infrastructure

The authors eventually come out and say that the CEO should dedicate a percentage of his/her time to Six Sigma: money is not sufficient! Having worked at GE, this conclusion seems inevitable: Jack Welch did, in fact, put a lot of personal attention into adopting Six Sigma. However, we don't all work for someone like Jack Welch.

In his autobiography, Welch describes not giving bonuses to those who were not working on Six Sigma. This was his way of ensuring that all the top talent were working on Six Sigma projects because otherwise managers would be unable to reward their top talent.

GE had another thing going for it that set the stage of Six Sigma: a culture of managing by facts and numbers and not opinion. Remember, when other companies were "focusing on core strengths" in the mid 1980s, GE was expanding in finance, particularly leasing. Why? It supported their other businesses and created tax shelters that saved tremendous amounts of cash. As long as these subsidiaries could demonstrate ever-increasing profits, they could get ever-increasing resources. Subsidiaries that could not come up with the numbers were sold or shut down, debates about "core" or not core did not enter into the picture. In this environment, if Six Sigma could demonstrate results, the corporate culture would adopt it. Certainly, Welch's actions made Six Sigma happen more quickly, but he had won the battle long before when he fostered a results-oriented culture.

Being able to briefly and clearly describe what you are trying to do has become a critical tactic in modern leadership. In business we call this a "mission statement", in politics, its called, somewhat derisively, a sound bite. The next edition would benefit from the reworking of one of the early chapters to one that would help management create a Six Sigma mission statement.

I've read some other books NOT on Six Sigma that by analogy bring home the weakness of Six Sigma literature. To learn how to create a mission statement, I recommend Carville and Begala (2002). They used a passage in the Bible, John 3:16, as an excellent example: "For God so loved the world, He gave His only begotten son so that whoever believes in Him shall not die but have everlasting life." They assert that this passage summarizes in 25 words the essentials of Christian theology. To paraphrase Carville and Begala, if the Bible can explain all the important tenets of Christianity in 25 words, surely 25 a word sample mission statement for Six Sigma can be provided for those who want to convince an organization to adopt it.

I would also recommend Michael Lewis' "Moneyball" as a companion book. Lewis (author of "Liar's Poker") uses Wall Street trading as an analogy to explain why the Oakland Athletics baseball team is one of the successful franchises with much less money than most. But I also see an analogy relevant to the topic of Six Sigma. "Moneyball" shows how one can achieve superior results by testing what everyone thinks they know with fact gathering and rigorous analyses. Moneyball will inspire anyone trying to implement Six Sigma to value testing assumptions with measurement.

A quick read of the reviews on Amazon will give you a feel for why people are skeptical of 6 Sigma: the feel-good tone of most writing on 6 Sigma and the insistence that it "is not a flavor-of-the-month management trend" make many of us suspect that 6 Sigma is not much more than hollow jargon and acronyms. The readers are left with the essential difficulties of positive change in any organization: you need to overcome assumptions that your organization's subculture may not even realize it has. What a corporation does by accepting Six Sigma is that it empowers people to gather data to challenge what "everybody knows". Most importantly, it sets a standard of very high quality, which reinforces the sanctioning of data-driven change.

I feel that this book comes up short in this regard, as do the other books I've read on Six Sigma, but otherwise is a good description on how an upper-level manager can bring about organizational change in general and implement Six Sigma in particular.

The 6 Sigma Book for Leaders Planning a Deployment.......2003-11-03

Of the many books I've read on 6 sigma, this IS the book on how to plan and deploy a 6 Simga initiative in a company. This is not a book on the tools and how to use them in detail. It is discussed, but more in terms of highlighting the training required and the caliber of people assigned.

There is a comparison and contrast of successful deployments and less successful deployments. The authors disect why they failed. They have a GE bias, in that at least on of the authors is heavily versed in the GE system. This is not to the detriment of the book, but it does color the successful path they advocate. That path is well trod and proven successful. There are variations to that that can be successful, and will depend heavily on the culture of the company.

The path they advocate attacks the common organization barriers that ANY initiative will face. So in that sense, the book is broader that just 6 simga. Those elements are:
* Active and strong leadership from the top

* Appropriate resources, people and funding
* Demand results
* Be willing to change internal policies and procedure to support implementation

This is a must read for anyone planning an implementation, or looking to fix one.

An Excellent Book.......2003-03-26

Without a doubt this is one of the best books ever written on Six Sigma and I should know as I have read nearly every book written on Six Sigma over the last three years. However, let me clarify something up front. This book does not delve into the tools of Six Sigma nor the actual statistical methods of Six Sigma like Air Academy Associates excellent books `Basic Statistics' or `Understanding Industrial Designed Experiments'. What this book does, however, is address the following topics which so far every other book on Six Sigma has failed to cover and clarify:

1. The right projects, the right people: Identifying your company's most promising Six Sigma opportunities and leaders.
2. How to hit the ground running: Providing leadership, talent, and infrastructure for a successful launch.
3. From launch to long-term success: Implementing systems, processes, and budgets for ongoing Six Sigma projects.
4. Getting the bottom-line results that matter most: Measuring and maximizing the financial value of your Six Sigma initiative

What makes this book such a good value is that the author's of the book clearly know what they're talking about and their wisdom from implementing actual Six Sigma projects is priceless. This book is really a blueprint for implementing and sustaining Six Sigma and provides excellent advice on how to avoid the pitfalls that so many companies have run into during their failed attempts at implementing Six Sigma. The book is written in clear, easy-to-understand language with just the right amount of graphs and charts so even people who know nothing about Six Sigma will benefit from reading it. My advice is to buy this book and Michael George's outstanding book `Lean Six Sigma' together so that you truly get an appreciation for what Six Sigma is and what it can do when combined with Lean.

Average customer rating:
Leading Six SIGMA: A Step-By-Step Guide Based on Experience with GE and Other Six SIGMA Companies
Ronald D, and Hoerl, Roger Snee
Manufacturer: FT Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OHE5C8

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