The Everything Success Book: Reach Your Goals, Shape Your Dreams, and Achieve Fulfillment in Business and at Home (Everything Series)

Customer Reviews:

Loaded with Sensible Advice on Realizing Success.......2004-01-13

I received this book as a Christmas gift and was most pleased with what I found inside. The book's author, Joseph Nigro, started a business when he was 19-years-old! It was a pet food and supply store. Recently, he sold his eight superstores to the retail chain Petco for $19 million. An amazing and inspirational story! The book, though, doesn't concentrate solely on business and making money. There are excellent chapters on finding inner peace and writing personal mission statements. I especially enjoyed the book's breezy approach. It is not written in a smug way, and doesn't look down on its readers, as many "success" books do. I highly recommend this book to anybody who wants to realize success in life--and who doesn't?

Book Description

Packed with both nitty gritty financial how-to as well as anecdotal insights from real parents encountering these money issues every day, Family Finance offers a unique perspective to the challenges of running household finances. Covering both short-term issues (paying off debt, living on one income) and long-term goals (insurance, college education, retirement), the book offers a wealth of practical solutions in good-humored style from parents who have been down the path already.

Customer Reviews:

Response to Unreliable Information.......2003-01-14

Family Finance was published in 2001. The provisions of The Tax Relief Act of 2001 did not become effective until 2002. Starting in 2002, qualified tuition programs were made federal tax-free through 2010. The book has a lot of excellent advice that is not affected by changes in tax law. The book is meant to be a guide.

It is important to note when books were published. There are still many excellent financial books sold that predate changes in tax law. Internet users should also be aware of articles they read on many web sites. Many have been written years ago and never updated. Beware of those that have no date at all.

Elizabeth Lewin, Co-author of Family Finance

unreliable information.......2003-01-05

I bought this book strictly for the chapter on college savings advice. Admittedly, I have only read one chapter, but found the information pretty general and presented in a way that often left my questions unanswered.

Even worse, the authors don't have all their facts right. For example, they say that the earnings on college 529 plans are subject to taxation once you start withdrawing from the account. I did a little more research--this is just plain wrong. Until the year 2010, all gains are, in fact, completely sheltered. This is a pretty serious error for a personal finance book to make, especially when your children's education is at stake.

I wish I could comment about the rest of the book, but I don't trust it.

Book of Common Sense without Substance.......2002-07-18

Save money by sewing your own clothes! Put yourself on a budget! I was shocked at how little info this nearly 300-page book offered (and the number of exclamation points used). I forced myself to read the entire book, thinking that I would learn something -- unfortunately not. This book would only be suitable for someone truly lacking a shred of common sense, and even then I suspect the reader would finish the book without a real sense of where to start when it comes to financial planning for a family (let alone for an individual).

How to raise money-smart, finance-wise children.......2001-11-12

In Family Finance, Ann Douglas and Elizabeth Lewin have capably collaborated to offer n essential, practical, "reader friendly" instructional manual on all aspects of managing personal finances. Readers will learn how to keep their spending under control, how to start a fund to secure their family's future; how to plan for a child's educational expenses; how to maximize retirement investments; even how to raise money-smart, finance-wise children. The authors draw upon their own extensive experience and expertise in addition to the input and experiences of fifty parents to show even the most novice financial manager how to take control of their money, their credit, their future plans and their present lives.

Book Description

Phytoparasites and zooparasites of useful plants and the diseases they cause, are the subject of this multilingual dictionary. The major topics include: bacteria; fungi and fungi imperfecti; insects and mites; lichens and mosses; molluscs; nematodes; noxious animals and birds; parasitic plants and weeds; symptoms of disease; viruses and viroids. In view of the great interest that present-day society takes in environmental issues, the dictionary also includes ecological concepts which may be highly relevant to the vegetable kingdom, such as acid rain, air pollution, deforestation, desertification, forest fire, greenhouse effect, soil erosion and the like. The broad scope of the dictionary covers not only the widely known agriculture and silviculture of the temperate zone, but also to a certain extent, horticulture, fruit culture and tropical agriculture.

The dictionary is based on Elsevier's Lexicon of Plant Pests and Diseases by Manuel Merino-Rodríguez, published in 1966. Terms have been corrected where necessary, a large number of new ones have been included and Dutch equivalents have been added. English is now the first language instead of Latin.

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Elsevier's Dictionary of Pests & Diseases in Useful Plants/ English/ French/ German/ Italian/ Spanish/ Dutch/ Latin
Ernest J. Eylenbosch
Manufacturer: French & European Pubns
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Dutch | Foreign Language | Dictionaries & Thesauruses | Reference | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0828892067

Amazon.com

As an explainer, John McPhee is a national treasure. The longtime "New Yorker" staff writer has taken us inside the world of art museums, environmental groups, fruit markets, airship factories, basketball courts, and atomic-bomb labs the world over. Here he covers the complex geological history of California, the source of much news today. As Californians daily await the inevitable great earthquake that will send their cities tumbling down like so many matchsticks, McPhee piles fact on luminous fact, wrestling raw data into a beautifully written narrative that gainsays a sedimentologist's warning: "You can't cope with this in an organized way," he told McPhee, "because the rocks aren't organized." As always, McPhee enlarges our understanding of the strange, making it familiar--and endlessly interesting.

Book Description

At various times in a span of fifteen years, John McPhee made geological field surveys in the company of Eldridge Moores, a tectonicist at the University of California at Davis. The result of these trips is Assembling California, a cross-section in human and geologic time, from Donner Pass in the Sierra Nevada through the golden foothills of the Mother Lode and across the Great Central Valley to the wine country of the Coast Ranges, the rock of San Francisco, and the San Andreas family of faults. The two disparate time scales occasionally intersect—in the gold disruptions of the nineteenth century no less than in the earthquakes of the twentieth—and always with relevance to a newly understood geologic history in which half a dozen large and separate pieces of country are seen to have drifted in from far and near to coalesce as California. McPhee and Moores also journeyed to remote mountains of Arizona and to Cyprus and northern Greece, where rock of the deep-ocean floor has been transported into continental settings, as it has in California. Global in scope and a delight to read, Assembling California is a sweeping narrative of maps in motion, of evolving and dissolving lands.

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A cross-section in human and geologic time, Assembling California is a sweeping narrative of maps in motion, of evolvivng and dissolving lands

Customer Reviews:

Setting the Benchmark for Science Writing.......2006-07-18

What McPhee teaches us is that most of California, like most Californians, originally came from somewhere else. And he explains, clearly, beautifully and accurately, the complex geological history and consequences of those events.

Yes, this is my favorite in the geology series. Partly it's because I originally come from California, and know some of the areas he writes about. Partly it's because each of the geology books is a snapshot of of the plate tectonics revolution, and this book, the fourth, presents the latest and most developed snapshot. But mostly it is my admiration for McPhee's willingness to take on one of the most complex topics in geology, the ophiolite sequence and its implications, and the sheer elegance of his explanations. If this isn't a coursebook on California geology, it should be. The synthesis of so much geology is a staggering effort; combined with the lucid, even elegant explanations, this has to rank among the most formidable pieces of science writing ever.

Because this is a McPhee book, it involves much more than just geology. The history of Spanish and American exploration, the California gold rush, the technology of hydraulic mining, the mining ghost towns and, of course, a breathtaking narrative of the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake; even if geology is not fascinating to you, you will enjoy and admire this book.

This is not McPhee's very best book. That's still "Coming into the Country." But it is the best of the geology books and among the two or three best books McPhee has written. And when you are talking of a writer of McPhee's talent, that's saying a lot. My highest recommendation.

Explaining the World: A Joy to Read.......2005-09-03

_Assembling California_, John McPhee

Also recommended as a supplement to McPhee:
_The Behavior of the Earth: Continental and Seafloor Mobility_, Claude Allegre

Plate Tectonics has joined Darwinism as yet another scientific bulwark under attack in today's America, as shown e.g. at earthage.org, and I thought a review of a couple of popular books on the subject I enjoyed recently that give a very pleasurable overview of this field would be in order.

"The Summit of Mount Everest is marine limestone." John McPhee summarizes his tetralogy surveying the geology of the American continent with this phrase, indicating the depth of time, and the magnitude of forces involved in shaping the earth.

Fleshing this sentence out in the most wonderful fashion by following around a regional geological expert -- in this case Eldridge Moores -- and making the geology a personal story, while explaining technical terms by-the-by, and making the flow of time and movement of continents wash over the reader like a tidal surge, is a remarkable achievement.

_Assembling California_ is the most recently written of his geological tetralogy (gathered together in one volume now as _Annals of the Former World_), and shows the development of Plate Tectonics theory since its inception in the late '60s to the early '90s. One of the books indeed features a completely traditional geologist (_In Suspect Terrain_) who professes much doubt in the theory, while Eldridge Moores, on the other hand, is like a Plate Tectonics prophet, using the theory to explain virtually every geological feature on the planet.

This grumpiness and even hidebound intransigence of 'traditional geologists' who see their entire geological worldview literally swept away by the breathtaking scope of Plate Tectonic theory is a fascinating aspect of the human side of science shown in these books. McPhee himself notes this, referring to geosynclines -- a mainstay of the 'old' geology -- as "a rational fiction", and that "he is following a science as it lurches forward from error to discovery and back to error" (referring to an early mis-constructions).

A book I glanced through, _The Colorado Plateau : a geologic history_, by Daniel L. Baars, has an editorial-style Preface written by just such an annoyed 'old geologist', excoriating the "religious fervour" shown by adherents to the new theory. And I might add that, after reading several books with PT as a basis, I found this book (written in the '70s and re-printed), with it's 'old-style' terminology and complete lack of the plate-tectonic grand-scale overview of why such-and-such a geological feature is there in the first place, to be quite unreadable and boring in the extreme.

The other book in this review, _The Behavior of the Earth: Continental and Seafloor Mobility_, is neither boring nor unreadable, while providing an excellent historical approach to presenting PT theory, from Wegener to the current period (1988 was the date of publication, but this is no drawback from this general reader's perspective). It pays very welcome attention to the subject from a History of Science perspective, with careful attention to the scientists who provided each new advancement, while explaining the technical aspects of the theory with many pictures and diagrams. I found it an excellent supplement to McPhee's book, which mostly lacks visuals to fill out his word-pictures, and I referred many times to the seafloor-spreading and ocean-basin maps while reading McPhee. I don't know how available this book is now, but check the library anyway! Highly recommended.

rms

No index, please.......2004-08-28

The comments of others largely capture the brilliant and compelling writing that makes this book a pleasure to read. I was sorry when I finished it. But please, no index, glossary, or anything else! This is a book for the layman. Even with a glossary, in six months we would forget the precise geological meaning of andesite. What is memorable about this book (and McPhee's other writing on geology) is that the geological terms flow around you and wash over you as if you were an expert in the field. Combined with metaphors that are startlingly original yet perfectly apt, the end result is a glimpse of the depth and possibilities for fascination under the surface story. Mundane details like definitions would make this book dry and boring, just another textbook. Instead, you get the big picture, told in a colorful and informative way, that leaves you educated about geology without feeling like a geologist.

The Prose of Rock and Faultlines.......2004-06-05

With a precision of language and detail, John McPhee brilliantly evokes the terrain of earthquakes, desert, mountains, and coastline of California. McPhee's guide through the geological history and present-day is Eldridge Moores, a geological professor at UC/Davis who knows the land of California perhaps better than anyone and who can "see through the topography and see how the rocks lie in three dimensions beneath the topography." McPhee is Moores' interpreter, a writer for whom descriptions and metaphor comes as easily as geology does for Moores. Together, they take the reader through the diversity of land formations to form a complex understanding of all the forces that have been at work on this strip of land forming much of the west coast of the United States.

For those only marginally interested in geology and topography, this is a difficult read, though it is well worth sticking with it. I myself read it in chunks, only a single chapter at a time, since any more tested my patience. The writing is superb, however, and the information imparted is both instructional and fascinating. When McPhee writes seemingly simple sentences such as, "There were orchards of carobs, figs, and pistachios, and an understory of prickly pears," he paints an entire countryside in just a few strokes of language. What he does with the drier subject matter of basalt and limestone is extraordinary.

Bravo!.......2003-07-12

John McPhee is an essayist of significant talent. His ability to parse the technical into terms both enjoyable and understandable is literally striking. Turning a tome on geology into a page-turner must be one heck of a challenge, but McPhee manages to do so with regularity (see also: Rising from the Plains).

Assembling California is no different. McPhee starts in the Sierra Nevada with geologist Eldridge Moores and ends on the San Andreas fault during the Loma Prieta quake. Throughout, McPhee explains that California is actually an accretion of exotic terrains that tectonically migrated throughout the eons. I'll admit that on rare occasion some content rendered me a bit glassy eyed, but the majority of the writing was excellent and the San Andreas fault section was beyond outstanding.

Taken as a whole, Assembling California is a distinguished finale to McPhee's Interstate 80 geology series that began with Basin and Range and later became a compilation entitled Annals of the Former World.

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ASSEMBLING CALIFORNIA
JOHN MCPHEE
Manufacturer: Farrar Straus
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000O3J0VI

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ASSEMBLING CALIFORNIA
John McPhee
Manufacturer: Farrar Straus and Giroux
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000JWFXFG

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Assembling California (Unabridged Audio)
John McPhee
Manufacturer: Recrorded Books LLC
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Audio Cassette
ASIN: 155690889X

Product Description

Presented unabridged on 7 audio cassettes. By Recorded Books LLC. Read by Nelson Runger

Alameda County, California, U.S.A: The logical location for the Pacific Coast factory assembling or distributing plant of the Eastern manufacturer, where ... offers a challenge to creative genius,

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Alameda County, California, U.S.A: The logical location for the Pacific Coast factory assembling or distributing plant of the Eastern manufacturer, where ... offers a challenge to creative genius,
Mark Manderville Jones
Manufacturer: Board of Supervisors
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

General | Popular Economics | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Production & Operations | Management & Leadership | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
ASIN: B0006CFH3W

Assembling and processing freight shipment data: Developing a GIS-based origin-destination matrix for Southern California freight flows

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Assembling and processing freight shipment data: Developing a GIS-based origin-destination matrix for Southern California freight flows
Peter Gordon
Manufacturer: Available through the National Technical Information Service
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

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Assembling California
John McPhee
Manufacturer: Farrar, Straus & Giroux
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OHSN9E

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ASSEMBLING CALIFORNIA.
John. McPhee
Manufacturer: Farra Straus & Girous,
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000NYJDHY

Economic factors in picking, assembling and grading Sevillano Olives (California Agricultural Experiment Station. Giannini Foundation of Agricultural Economics. [Contributions] mimeographed report)

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Economic factors in picking, assembling and grading Sevillano Olives (California Agricultural Experiment Station. Giannini Foundation of Agricultural Economics. [Contributions] mimeographed report)
Gordon Russell Sitton
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding
ASIN: B0007G3F9K

Customer Reviews:

good book.......2005-01-26

compare to 'basic notions of condensed matter physics', this book is much easier to understand. u do not need background in solid state physics even. but a thorough mastery of quantum mechanics is assumed. otherwise, u will be turned to ur quantum book very often.

unlike the other solid state or condensed matter book, this book just treat those advanced level materials, like band theory in the presence of pertubrbing fields, elementary excitations, quasi-particles. all those concepts are intruduced in a comprehensive way that i can understand and the materials are arranged systematically (it is partly b/c prof. Anderson does not aim to cover everything in this thin book, just some concepts, as the title indicated).

another interesting thing about this book is that 2 Nobel prizes are related to it. prof. Anderson himself got oone. Sir Josephson, after attending Anderson's lecture in Cambridge with this note (the book is actually lecture note), got a Nobel prize as well.

Book Description

Covering the period from his birth in 1749 to his departure for Weimar in 1775, in Poetry and Truth Goethe recalls his childhood and youth as the son of well-to-do, middle-class parents, his education and literary awakening, early loves, and the creation and reception of works from his Sturm und Drang years, such as The Sorrows of Young Werther, Goetz von Berlichingen, and Urfaust. Not merely an account of Goethe's own life, this book also explores the influences on his early years--friends, mentors, famous personages of his time, intellectual movements, cities, and historical events--to draw a lifelike picture of his time.

Customer Reviews:

Classic Autobiography, boring anyway.......2000-05-06

Goethe is a bit like broccoli--one should like him better than one actually does. Goethe goes to great lengths to credit everyone who helped him become the most important German author ever. It moves at a very slow pace. It also is somewhat self-deceptive and misleading, as it ends when Goethe was in his late 20's. In order to get a more accurate view of Goethe's life, Dichtung and Wahrheit is best read in conjunction with a traditional biography. Goethe's autobiography appears in 4 parts, and this volume consists of the first 3, which were written earlier, and it is more thorough than the 4th part that appears in volume 5 of this series. Anyone seriously interested in studying autobiography as a genre should read it, even if it is slow going.

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