Product Description
Reta has enjoyed a loving family, good friends, and success as a novel writer. Suddenly, her beloved daughter drops out of life to sit on a gritty street corner, silent. Reta's search for the cause becomes a funny meditation on where we find meaning and hope. ... Read more

Product Description
This digital document is an article from The Exchange, published by National Telephone Cooperative Association on April 1, 2009. The length of the article is 1041 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Allen Russ joins the NTCA board of directors.(Interview)
Author: Tennille Shields
Publication: The Exchange (Newsletter)
Date: April 1, 2009
Publisher: National Telephone Cooperative Association
Volume: 28Issue: 2Page: 1(2)

Article Type: Interview

Distributed by Gale, a part of Cengage Learning ... Read more

Product Description
This digital document is an article from Arkansas Business, published by Journal Publishing, Inc. on September 15, 2003. The length of the article is 708 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Affordable health care choices.(Commentary)(Arkansas Blue Cross and Blue Shield)
Author: Sharon Allen
Publication: Arkansas Business (Magazine/Journal)
Date: September 15, 2003
Publisher: Journal Publishing, Inc.
Volume: 20Issue: 37Page: 7(1)

Distributed by Thomson Gale ... Read more

Product Description

Customer Reviews (2)

A saddlemaker's comments
From the saddlemaker's perspective, this book omits more than it includes. Saddlemaking is a very visual art form, and this book barely includes enough B & W photos to give the reader more than a skimpy overview of how a traditional saddle is made. It is DEFINATELY not a how-to book on making a saddle despite its title. Considering there are literally hunderds of saddle tree styles, the small scale "patterns" in the book are of no use. The style saddle shown in the book is not a style saddle that one would find in today's American riding arena, thus dating the book's photos three or four decades previous to its publication date. If the casual observer wants to look at a few pictures of some of the insides of an older style English saddle, then this booklet may serve as a five minute browse.

Saddlemaking guide requires intermed. knowlege of saddlery
The author describes all the basic steps of constructing an English saddle, but this is not a saddle making instruction manual, it's more of a detailed overview.. The author skips over many steps that a saddler would consider "obvious", therefore at least an existing intermediate knowledge of english saddle construction is required to make best use of this reference. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (29)

Uneven
Well, I've finally finished this tome. I read this on the Amazon Kindle 3 (iPad and Touch as well) and this thing has 23,074 locations (get used to the new system it's the future...probably...because it is more accurate).

Achilles was a good book but not a great book. Problems for me were that it was over written, fractious, largely speculative, and somewhat dated (having mostly been written before 9/11).

Essentially it is two books rolled into one. Another of its problems. The first book is concerned with the history of the Long or Epochal War...transformative wars which change the nature of states as they are fought. 1914-90 is a good example of this. The second book is about the evolution of the state and the argument that a new type of state is emerging.

Presently we are living at the fag end of the Nation State (which offers its people a better life) and are growing into the Market State (which attempts to offer its people better opportunities).

These two books are inadequately merged into a central thesis so the reader is left with a jarring experience.

In parts the book is brilliant and at other parts cliche...this unevenness was another issue for me...but the brilliant parts managed to give this book three stars instead of two. In truth I wished to give it two but it deserves the three.

Is it worth read? Tough question. I believe the book on the Epochal War is very worthwhile but the book on the evolution of the State less so.

Am glad to be free of this book...but it was worth the time...though, ultimately, unconvincing

Complementary readings to Bobbitt's book
There are already some good reviews so I will only suggest reading the following books instead of, or in addition to, Bobbitt's peculiar work: a) "War in human civilization" by Azar Gat; b) "War before Civilization. The Myth of the Peaceful Savage", by Lawrence Keeley; c) "How War Began" by Keith F. Otterbein; d) "War and Peace and War: The Rise and Fall of Empires" by Peter Turchin; and e) "War and the Law of Nations: A General History" by Stephen Neff.

Mind-changing
The Shield of Achilles: War, Peace, and the Course of History

A completely new philosphy of global politics. It is hard going and a big book. I'm still ploughing through it. But it invites fundamental rethinking of the strategic environment in which I've lived and worked over my 79 years - and way beyond both before and to come.

The Heel of Achilles
The Shield of Achilles by Philip Bobbitt is both more and less than has been reviewed.It is more in the sense that it is more of a familiar argument advanced by the Republican right for less taxation, less regulation, more presidential authority, more privatization, and the like--and less public investment, less social expenditure on health, education, and infrastructure.Dressed up as deep philosophy and insightful history, The Shield is in fact a poor substitute for both. It is, in fact, closer to a screed than an academic monograph.Over and above the lack of primary sources, this book offers a subjective monocausal explanation for the transformation of constitutional change in Europe for the last 500 years as background to the deterministic constitutional transformation the United States is allegedly undergoing--from that of a nation state to that of a market state. As such, the author suggests, we must get used to a plethora of market changes that will make the US less a constitutional republic than a free market playground, with all of the unsavory qualities of a deregulated credit default swap.Methodologically, the book suffers from an inability to distinguish necessary from sufficient with respect to causation, thus conflatingcausation with the author's subjective desire to "prove" the unprovable: a general thesis for historical transformation which can then be applied deductively to predict the future course of American constitutional, social, political, economic, and economic behavior.No, this book is to be avoided by anyone interested in historical analysis, but may be eagerly read by those interested in political propaganda.

The first volume of a three volume study.Volume 2 is Terror and ConsentThird is in preparation.
This is a sweeping view of history and international relations that is illuminating, seminal, unique.A whole college degree is social science, government, history, law and strategy put together.

Beautifully written. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

An Unusual Look at Life
Pulitzer Prize winning Carol Shields presents another haunting personal reality in "Small Ceremonies."

Her protagonist's train-of-consciousness reflections about her experiences are written in the first person and present tense, and bring this amusing character into sharp focus as she copes with her eccentric husband, her family and her career.

The result is a thought provoking read to which all of us can relate, for these 'small ceremonies' enter into our lives too, and all of us have our own way to consider them.

It is the unusual way that daily life is presented, and the clever commentary upon them, that is so delightful in Small Ceremonies, and makes it such a pleasure to read.

Excellent
I have not yet read anything by Carol Shields that I have not liked, so this book was no exception in that regard. As always, her characters are flawed, and likeable more because of that than anything else. Judith Gill, the main character in this book finds herself looking at her life in an almost bewildered way. She knows she should be happy, but wonders if she truly is. Shields has injected the novel with her usual dose of satire on academia, but one of the most wonderful things is how she pokes fun at herself here. One of the characters, a successful fiction writer keeps a terrible secret - I don't want to give anything away here, let me leave it at: Carol Shields was born in the US!

Sublime Prose,Timeless Observations
Carol Shields welcomes us in her first novel to the Ontario home of Judith Gill, and the table is set for a wonderful read.Shields's prose is tight and flows on humor, descriptive genius and observations that qualify as wisdom for any age.Lots goes on in this somewhat messy, subversive house: biographer and frustrated novelist Judith spins a tale of rude surprises, unexpected joys and everyday living over a 12 month period, laced with the anxious stuff of families.Husband Martin,academic and expert on "Paradise Lost"; teenage daughter Meredith, like her mother a "repository of innocence and knowledge"; and son Richard, 12 and "sour with love."The Gills in Shields's hands are enough to keep the novel charged, but visitors add to the flow: fellow-authors, academics, best friends, family and in-laws. Judith considers herself a prying spy; she ferrets for nuggets of enlightenment from those around her,and the results are wry and wise comments on life's long list of ironies.Shield's narrative entertains and delights with the ease of a life-long runner out for a jog; she lets her characters get lost in living, to enjoy the hilly and strenuous course.At the end of Small Ceremonies, after being enchanted by a maturing Judith and her eye for people and her faith in them, I knew more about life than when I began.Shields is an accessible author, somewhat quirky and without airs, a Canadian who keeps pace with Margaret Atwood and Alice Munro by being this person you'd really would have liked to have met.

A Magic Read
Small Ceremonies is a book to get lost in.Carol Shields has a way of making honouring everyday rituals, conversations and events and presenting them to the reader in a way that makes us savour her characters and stories.Like all Shields' novels, poems and plays, the irresitable Small Cermeonies, leads to contstant searching for more Carol Shields works.To publishers - devout readers want out of print works reprinted!

Enjoyable, but a bit dissapointing
Having not read any of Shield's more acclaimed works, maybe I shouldn't have started with her first novel.While I can appreciate how well and acurately she portrays day to day life, human nature, and the observationallifestyle of writers, in the end I can't help but be wishing that more hadHAPPENED in this novel.In the first half of the book nothing seems tohappen at all, and then all the events set up in the second half seem tohave no resolution of any kind.I understand that real life is alsowithout specific beginnings and endings, but I can't help but wish for alittle structure in fiction.However, it is is saved somewhat by the factthat it's beautifully written.I'd be willing to try her other books. ... Read more

Product Description
this book is currently being re-edited and is not available.
... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Very good
I"m currently researching German families and knights, this family is found in various places in Germany mostly in Aschaffenburg and Furth-Linnenbach where one member of the family currently lives and enjoys a life of art at the family owned galelry. I enjoyed the history and the information, it will be a help for me in my reserach. I love kindle and books as these that give so much. ... Read more