Product Description
THE First Edition of this book was written, from beginning to end, in the short space of five months, without the aid of diary or notes, beyond those cited as such from a former work.
The Author, having no expectation that his reminiscences would be received with the kind indulgence of which this Second Edition is the proof, with diffidence ventured to tell so many tales connected with his own unimportant life as he has done. Emboldened by the reception his 'Tracks' have met with, he now adds a few stories which he trusts may further amuse its readers.
... Read more

Product Description
' - the hand was writhing in agonized contortions, squirming and wriggling upon the nail like a worm upon a hook. 'We'll keep it there until it dies,' he said. 'May I burn in hell, if I ever open the door of that safe again'. The brilliant and scary "The Beast with Five Fingers", is the first entry in this mammoth collection of strange and chilling short stories by W. F. Harvey, an unjustly neglected author of supernatural tales. This unique volume demonstrates clearly that Harvey is one of the masters of the genre. Along with such classics as "August Heat", which concerns two strangers whose individual fates become inextricably entwined in a nightmare scenario and the gruesome school yarn, "The Dabblers", you will find such minor masterpieces of the uncanny as "The Man Who Hated Aspidistras", "Sarah Bennet's Possession", "The Habeas Corpus Club" and many more stories which refreshingly avoid the cliche while at the same time creating that wonderfully eerie sense of fear. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Master of Strange Stories
William Fryer Harvey's short stories are dark, ambivalent, murderous & sometimes slyly humorous. In this regard, he pre-dates Robert Aickman. Like some of Aickman's best tales - "Trains" & "Bind your hair" spring to mind - quite a few of Harvey's best tales are based around wanderings and the strange encounters that ensue. In "The Tool" a man takes a walking tour and somehow loses a day, a day in which a heinous crime has been committed; perhaps by the narrator? In "The Hearthside Fire", another murder is committed at midnight in an isolated public house on the moors & the perpetrator finds no rest ; in "August heat", a painter leaves his garret, goes for a stroll and is astonished to meet the murderously visaged person he has just painted an hour before. It's a dangerous business stepping beyond your doorstep, as Bilbo Baggins once observed. There is also the title story, which is one of the slickest black comedies since "Arsenic & old lace"; the "Follower" & "Miss Avenal", which are respectively a tale of elliptic horror a la Conrad & a tale of psychic vampirism. All of these tales were written in the Twenties & Thirties. The prose is clear, and always in the service of telling a lean story. I've read and re-read these stories many times with growing pleasure & appreciation. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Essential Guide for Judaica Autograph Collectors
For those who collect Judaica autographs, or for anyone curious to see what the writings of famous Jewish people look like, this book is the only one of its kind to satisfy you.Virtually every Jewish leader in a dozenfields is represented, including Israel, Zionism, and Rabbinic leaders.Ilook forward to a follow-up book with more examples. ... Read more

Product Description
In Visual Basic .NET: For Experienced Programmers, a team of world-renowned corporate trainers deliver an advanced guide to Visual Basic .NET specifically focused on the features that give professional developers the greatest power. Harvey and Paul Deitel, whose best-selling textbooks have trained millions of developers worldwide, teach Visual Basic .NET's most powerful features using their unique Live-CodeaA A TM approach: every new concept is presented in the context of a complete, working example, immediately followed by windows showing exactly what the code does. The Deitels demonstrate how to make the most of Visual Basic .NET object-oriented features such as inheritance and polymorphism, then offer expert guidance on building advanced GUIs with Windows Forms. They introduce XML programming with Visual Basic .NET, cover multithreading, and present detailed coverage of files and streams, including a full chapter on networking with streams-based sockets and datagrams. The book includes practical techniques for enhancing database access; building Web applications and Web services; and utilizing .NET's powerful collection classes. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

Informative but too wordy
Very informative; discusses many concepts and targets intermediate to advanced programmers.However, too bloated with things like

"When a program opens a file and reads from the file, the program will later have to close the file to allow other programs access the file".

The authors must have never heard of "it", "they", and other time-saving features of the language.This makes it tedious and boring at times.I'm sure better books exist, but they (the books - get it? :) may not be as in-depth or contain as many examples.

different kind of vb book- ok for beginers too
Its really not that advanced and does a very thorough review of basic programming concepts.

It does have that wordy textbook feel to it, which makes you wonder what happend to the questions at the end of the chapter. But its thorough and really gives you a good understanding of the VB language if you've never done any VB programming.

Good or bad, it spends most of the first 8 chapters programing in console, no fun GUIs till chapters 9 and 10. Which is a bit odd as most of the VB books I peeked at jump right into the GUI. This may make it boring for those of us who are "visual learners".

This book helps you get up to speed on VB .NET quickly
I recently finished reading Visual Basic .NET for Experienced Programmers by Deitel, Deitel, Nieto, and Yaeger, and found it to be very well written and a great tool to learn Visual Basic .NET. The book covers all the important aspects of Visual Basic .NET (the IDE, object-oriented approach, graphical user interface, multithreading, XML, ADO .NET, ASP .NET and Web services, and the mobile Internet) in approximately 1000 pages - quite a feat. Each chapter contains several entire programs ('Live-code examples') and thorough explanations of the code, to illustrate the concepts covered in the chapter. Some of the sample programs are fun, such as dice, tic tac toe, and blackjack games. The book provides clear explanations of why and how things works (chapters on ASP .NET - chapters 17 and 18 - are especially good at making the complexities make sense). The authors also emphasize the terminology of object-oriented programming (explaining terms such as composition, self-referential classes, and abstract data types).

The only minor complaint I have about the book is that it doesn't provide any programming assignments (except for one small task) for the reader.

Although I haven't read other books on Visual Basic .NET (other than approximtely 100 pages of Balena's Visual Basic .NET Core Reference - which I found tedious), I feel that by reading andstudying the Deitel book you will gain a solid base of knowledge about Visual Basic .NET.

It deserves its price more than twice
It is easy to read. You must keep it on your desk as long as you continue programming in Visual Basic. I have found different programming styles and approaches. Actually I did not finish it yet. It is not easy to read it all in few weeks. It is filled up with knowledge of programming. I can suggest this book to any visual basic programmer. Because They can use this styles and approaches in VB 6.0, 5.0 etc too. Maybe you will learn this knowledge in two years but with this book you will make it very short. Time is money. So go on...

boring,boring, boring, avoid!
This is a rehash of the same Deitel style textbook which I suffered through in school. They were boring, boring boring then, they are boring boring boring now.

You would be much better off buying Gary Cornell's great book from Apress which has a similar title. It's much cheaper, much better written and it's not boring, boring, boring. Unlike the Deitel's, Cornell can teach real programmers with boring them.

The Deitel's seem to have created an industry of writing boring wordy textbooks and now they want to move into the Apress/Microsoft Press/O'Reilly space for books about .NET.

They don't offer anything over the established books that I have praised elsewhere so do yourself a favor and get the Apress book by Cornell. Then get the Balena book from Microsoft Press to learn how to apply .NET and you won't need anything more. With these books you'll learn a lot more and you'll save money to boot over the Deitel book. ... Read more

Product Description

Customer Reviews (19)

A scintillating read of a curiously intriguing man
Excellent read.Shilts has always been upfront about his sexuality and it seems to have served him well as he gained access to sources close to Milk that others might not have.Well-written, engaging and intelligent.

Decent but Movie Much Better
In "The Mayor of Castro Street," journalist Randy Shilts chronicles the life and times of Harvey Milk, who in less than five years would alter the landscape of local politics in San Francisco and, with his radicalism and with his assassination, bring gay rights into the fore-front of the American consciousness.

Randy Shilts with his books "And the Band Played on" and "The Mayor of Castro Street" memorializes San Francisco gay life in the seventies and early eighties.I've seen both HBO's very competent and solid television production of "And the Band Played on" and Gus Van Sant's movie "Milk," in which Sean Penn was both brilliant and mesmerizing as Harvey Milk.So I had high expectations when I begun this book, and because of these high expectations I was very disappointed.

There is nothing wrong with the book, but there's nothing commendable about it either.Mr. Shilts does a competent job of painting a psychological portrait of Harvey Milk, who suffered from a martyrdom complex:he rightly predicted that he would die before he turned fifty at the hands of a nutcase gay rights opponent.Milk had energy and resolve, and was a brilliant politician who changed gay politics forever in America by adeptly and sincerely building alliances with other constituencies.But he also suffered from anger and paranoia, and he constantly lashed out at his faithful lover and business partner Scott Smith.In his final five years he would channel this anger and paranoia via an impending sense of martyrdom into a self-righteous passion to promote the gay rights movement in San Francisco.Harvey Milk was actually angry when a proposition to make it illegal for homosexual teachers to teach in California public schools was shot down by a 75-25 margin in a referendum because he had hoped that the passing of the proposition would ignite gay riots across the state.He wanted a fiery beginning for the radical and violent gay rights movement in San Francisco so that it may burn across the entire nation, but in the end he had to settle for a fiery end to himself.It is the art of great biography to render a subject knowable and human, and here Mr. Shilts fails because we leave with the sense of Milk's passion but also of his weirdness.(Jim Jones and the People's
Temple play a large role in this biography, and it would've been interesting for Mr. Shilts to compare Milk and Jones.)

Mr. Shilts presents a realistic sense of San Francisco in the seventies, but we think it more a concept (the birthplace and incubator of the gay rights movement) rather than a city in which we can wander, lose ourselves, and actually enjoy.The author does a competent job in arguing the political impact of Harvey's rise (Milk taught the gay rights movement how to engage politics:witness how gays have turned a marginal disease - AIDS - into a mainstream global issue and a cause that generates billions of dollars a year) and of his fall (the gay rights movement lost its sense of passion and urgency, and returned to being divided and opportunistic).The author's greatest deficit is his writing style, which is bland and lifeless.All in all, the movie "Milk" is a much superior treatment of the man (mainly because of Sean Penn's performance), and the book on which it is based adds very little to the picture.

Harvey Milk
After seeing Gus Van Sant's compelling & marvelous production of 'Milk', I knew I had to read more about Harvey Milk, the first openly gay politician in the US. Randy Shilt's volume is a definitive account of Milk's entire life, capturing fully the personality that drove a man to soaring heights & to inspire & demonstrate to those like him (et al.) that if you aren't given rights, to go ahead & take them! Harvey even predicted his own demise, but I wonder if that was just his theatrical personality speaking rather than a genuine fear (at least it wasn't expressed in a foreboding sense).

Harvey Milk:Pioneer
Having lived in San Francisco off and on from 1968 through 1973, I was there for a good part of the time period covered by Randy Shilts' book, "The Mayor of Castro Street."Although I never met Harvey Milk personally, I was aware of his crusade and saw the effects of his political impact.He was a brave and courageous leader who was much more than a "gay supervisor."He cared about people, their lives, their needs, their quality of living.This book brought back a flood of memories of those days--of Haight-Ashbury, SIR, the "City" itself, and the tumultuous times that were the sixties and seventies.Much more than "just" a biography of Milk, Shilts captured the times, the places, the people, the events, and the mood.It is a classic and deserves to be on the bookshelves of every American who cares about equality, liberty, and freedom.

Remarkable both as a companion to the film and as a stand-alone.
After seeing "Milk," I was interested to learn more about Harvey than a two-hour Hollywood movie could offer.I couldn't have been happier to discover this book and I quickly devoured it.As the subtitle suggests, this is a book that is as much about America and the gay rights movement as it is about Harvey Milk.I had little idea about the plight of homosexuals in this country and Shilts does a masterful job of painting a chilling picture.More importantly, he also provides the proverbial warts-and-all representation of a complicated individual.As much as I loved the film, it is clearly something of a hagiography.You simply can't understand the man, the movement, or the time period without reading this incredible book.I couldn't recommend it more enthusiastically. ... Read more

Product Description
Here's an easy and informal language-teaching book intended especially for families with younger children. The book dramatizes a day in the lives of children, starting as they wake up in the morning and concluding that night at bedtime. More than 400 cartoon-style illustrations reinforce vocabulary retention and clarify meanings. Boys and girls pick up new words, phrases, and language skills as they are guided from their bedrooms (toys, clothing, numbers) and through the house (names of family members, rooms, furniture). In the kitchen they learn Spanish words for appliances and foods. Outdoors and down the street, they pick up words for workers, cars, trucks, buses, and more. At school they discover Spanish words for objects in the playground and classroom. Back home again and ready for dinner, they learn more Spanish words until bedtime. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

Very useful
Simple & easy.It has instructions in English. Beginners from 5+ years would find it easy to make progress with this book. As a native Spanish speaker teaching kids, I find it easy, useful and kids enjoy it. The illustrations may not be anything special but they do the job.

Another great transaction!
Exactly what we expected and quickly received at a great price...what more needs to be said?

From a teacher's perspective, a very good start!
I like that this book has a lot of white space, so is not overwhelming. I suggest this book as a fun introduction to ages 8 to 13 year olds. It has a casual approach and is directed to the student, with nice large letters and vocabulary lists that are thematic. The pictures are a huge plus, as well as the thorough dictionary and many pages of flash cards in the back.


The reason I deduct one star, is that though there is a good lesson on pronunciation of Spanish syllables in chapter one, and it's quite cleverly put together, no phonetic spelling exists throughout the book. Not in the glossary, no where. Students at this age range (and honestly through adults) simply have a difficult time sounding out Spanish words correctly. So, without an intermediate to advanced student available (or native speaker), I would suggest a CD or another book to supplement this, if you are unsure of pronunciation.

There are workbook type activities as well as speaking ideas and of course lots of vocabulary. A very good introduction that will build confidence and motivation.

Sra. Gose
Teacher and Author
Flip Flop Spanish: Ages 6-9: Level 1 (Book + Audio CD)
Spanish Fun Activity Calendar

Great Work book
I bought various books to try out with my 7 year-old on my two week trip to Mexico.This was the one book that she worked on every day of our trip.It maintained her interest from 30 minutes to one hour every day.I found it easy to review with her, and it also helped my Spanish out as well.The other books I took did not hold her attention compared to this one.She continued to use this book after we got back until school started.Hey if it maintains a 7 year-old's interest for a few weeks, that has to be good in my book

Good beginner book, but could use more flair
I bought this book for my 10 year old daughter who shows a lot of interest in Spanish.She was able to immediately jump into the book, learning correct pronunciations and phrases.In the first hour she was already asking what my name was in Spanish.The material is basic enough to be "up to date".On the downside the book is all black and white and has no multimedia component.It will have a difficult time keeping the interest of a 4th grader. ... Read more

Product Description

Few American artists in any medium have enjoyed the international and lasting cultural impact of Duke Ellington. From jazz standards such as “Mood Indigo” and “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore,” to his longer, more orchestral suites, to his leadership of the stellar big band he toured and performed with for decades after most big bands folded, Ellington represented a singular, pathbreaking force in music over the course of a half-century. At the same time, as one of the most prominent black public figures in history, Ellington demonstrated leadership on questions of civil rights, equality, and America’s role in the world.

With Duke Ellington’s America, Harvey G. Cohen paints a vivid picture of Ellington’s life and times, taking him from his youth in the black middle class enclave of Washington, D.C., to the heights of worldwide acclaim. Mining extensive archives, many never before available, plus new interviews with Ellington’s friends, family, band members, and business associates, Cohen illuminates his constantly evolving approach to composition, performance, and the music business—as well as issues of race, equality and religion. Ellington’s own voice, meanwhile, animates the book throughout, giving Duke Ellington’s America an intimacy and immediacy unmatched by any previous account.

By far the most thorough and nuanced portrait yet of this towering figure, Duke Ellington’s America highlights Ellington’s importance as a figure in American history as well as in American music.

Customer Reviews (5)

A missed opportunity
Duke Ellington could be a fascinating subject to be written about. Unfortunately, after reading it only partially, I gave it up after the first two hundred pages. It seems that the author does not make up his mind about one central issue, perhaps the most essential one of all: who was the Duke?
Instead, there are endless repetitions about his financial situation, his various sums of money that he had made during his illustrious career. Thiscatalogue of sums is hyper-emphasized so many times that I started wondering whether the author thought his readers suffered from some king of mental deficiency. With the exception of some individual passages describing the various concerts Ellington and his orchestras had during the Cold War as well as some statements about his concern for the welfare of the Blacks in the USA, this book is a waste of time, a waste of money and I concur with one of the previous critics here on this site about the fact that there was no editing done, or if there was such, the editor had perhaps missed some very important grammar and style classes in school. A great disappointment.

Too much, too awkward
Being a lifelong fan of Duke Ellington's music, and being familiar with most of the books written abouthim, I grabbed Mr. Cohen's book from the shelf the moment I saw it. Once I started reading, I realized it was a good thing I was such a fan. Otherwise, I never would have finished it.

Mr. Cohen has done a prodigious amount of research, uncovering a lot of previously unpublished material. But someone should have explained to him: just because you've found new material doesn't mean you have to print ALL of it.

Repetition is one of the book's greatest faults, along with Mr. Cohen's turgid, awkward, clumsy writing style. The book reads as if it had been translated phonetically from the original German.

The reviewer who said he needed a tough editor was right.The book would have been much better with prudent but ruthless inside cutting -- two or three phrases here, a couple of sentences there, an entire paragraph now and then. The result would have been a book 50pages shorter and considerably cleaner and more enjoyable for the reader.

Where's an editor when you need one?
There was much in the initial stirrings that made lugging around Mr. Cohen's tome on Ellington seem worthwhile.The mist faded, however, less than 100 pages in when I could no longer figure out where the author stood.Paragraphs alternate between demystifying Ellington's "genius" as simply genius marketing strategy to attributing (ad nauseum) his success to this very genius that was suspect enough to be placed in quotation marks to begin with.Said Marketing strategy becomes a four letter word for how many times it is printed and I began to wonder just when in Mr. Cohen's mind did such repetition stand in for cohesiveness.I would love to know where all of it leads, I would love to believe that enough sensitivity exists between these covers to boldly explore and highlight the relationship between an artist and a leader like Ellington and his sharply divided country.But at some point you simply have to get to the point.A good editor could have focused Cohen's fumblings into a lean mean 300 page machine.On this one, I say, if curiosity gets the better of you, save your hard earned money and borrow from your local library instead.

Excellent with a minor caveat
This book is an outstanding analysis of the person Duke Ellington was. Having followed his music to a modest degree I was intrigued about the author's focus on Ellington as a person and his socio-political views. The book is extremely well-written and easy to read. I disagree with the recent NYTimes review which argued that although they liked the book, their criticism was the lack of discussion about Ellington's music. In this case, I think it's completely appropriate and helpful NOT to go into technical discussions about Ellington's music. I am not a musician and I'm not interested in the specifics about technically what Ellington did. As Ellington himself would not, if the music moves you (e.g., the listener) then that's what matters. My personal feeling is that if you want to understand/hear Ellington's music, you buy the music and draw your own conclusions.

Cohen's focus on Ellington's 1960's work was also very illuminative. I liked his analysis about how Ellington (to a fault) refused to acknowledge his age (and impending mortality).

My ONLY significant wish about this book is that Cohen should have contrasted Ellington with other seminal African-American artists who were in similar positions to Ellington (although at different points in his life). For example there is virtually no discussion about the roles of Paul Robeson, Nat King Cole, Miles Davis, John Coltrane or Marian Anderson, all of whom held unique positions as African-American artists. The lack of comparison/contrast to particularly Robeson, Cole (and to a lesser degree Louis Armstrong - who Cohen does discuss a little more), creates the false impression that Ellington was truly alone as a prominent African-American artist. The sole compatriot which Cohen does draw an analogy to is Langston Hughes which is a thoughtful and insightful analysis.

Another minor point of regret is I wish Cohen had discussed Ellington's relationship with Billy Strayhorn more. Although he does discuss how Strayhorn's death affected Ellington, there is a lot more which could be discussed.

Overall if you want to understand who Duke Ellington was and his contributions to American culture (and obviously jazz) I would highly recommend this book.

Excellent Ellington biography!
Biographer Harvey G. Cohen has made a valuable contribution to understanding the complicated work, life and times of Duke Ellington. Despite the academic approach the 600+ page book is an accessible and enjoyable read. Although Cohen clearly is a fan, he never gets carried away by his admiration for the Duke, and keeps the kind of critical distance necessary for a good biography. Highly recommended, not only for Ellington aficionados, but for anyone who wants to gain a deeper understanding of 20th century American cultural developments, and more specifically, the roles of African-American art and artists. ... Read more

Product Description
The notorious tale of Dr. Crippen and Ethel Le Neve, reinvestigated by a prize-winning London TIMES journalist.

At a time when Edwardian Britain seemed a golden place, American physician Hawley Harvey Crippen and his wife, Belle, lived among the suburban villas of North London. After supper on January 31, 1910, the guests departed, and Crippen poisoned Belle, dismembered her, and buried part of her remains in the coal cellar. Crippen never confessed, taking the secrets of the crime with him when he was finally hanged for murder. It is assumed that Crippen killed for the love of his mistress, Ethel Le Neve. Living together as man and wife, but under intense suspicion, they fled disguised as father and son. The chase was widely reported in Europe and America, and Crippen was finally apprehended. In Supper with the Crippens, David James Smith reinvestigates this celebrated murder case. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

A good read
I can highly recommend this book. It is well-written and informative. The ultimate book on the Crippens perhaps?

Some cribs about "Crippen".
I must say that I was quite disappointed with this "new" take on the Crippen murder.
Perhaps I was mistaken in thinking that this book would shed new evidence on the crime or even allege a miscarriage of justice.
As it is however, it is a journaleezy, by numbers, account of the Pooteresque life of Crippen with lots of "he must have"s and "he probably"s. Right down to a rather sleazy voyeuristic speculation that Crippen's lover dressed as a man during the escape must have been a sexual turn-on for Doc Crip. Calling all "Sun" readers!!
The social background of this disappeared world is reasonably enlightening but the murder itself, the actual mechanics of what occurred are missing. His wife was there one night and then resurfaced under the floorboards.
Disappointing if you, like me, savour a salacious account of the murder itself. And if you tut tut me then you're a liar!
Anyway, expect nothing new. Just an atmospheric hedunnit with some interesting post-murder information that is rather unique in these kind of books, i.e. what happened the cast of characters afterwards.
Or perhaps the crime itself just wasn't that interesting.
Something about the name "Crippen" I reckon has given this murder longevity. It just sounds evil!!!

Best Crippen Book
Probably the best book on the Crippen case ever written. Full of well researched facts and as much newly uncovered information as presently exists. Excellent writing style. Strangely, even though the author is very openly against Crippen, cuts him no slack and obviously believes in his guilt, I really liked this book. I am on the fence about Crippen because as a reader of True Crime I've learned that we usually lack susbstantial knowledge about old cases, enough so that there should just about always be an element of doubt. But I liked the book because it is very well done. ... Read more