Leningrad Oblast Regional Investment and Business Guide (World Spy Guide Library)

Book Description

The 15 detailed neighborhood maps in this guide will help you immediately locate the hotels, restaurants, shops and sights of Paris.

Customer Reviews:

excellent guide to enjoying Paris.......2003-04-12

We recently took this and two other guide books to Paris, and as another reviewer said, we did not even bother to carry the others with us after the first day. The guide is excellent for seeing the city on foot and attempting to experience the essence of the many different quarters. If you're looking for "the best of Paris in 2-3 days" you might look elsewhere. This book leaves it to you to decide what you feel is important to see (because there is just that much) and gives information according to location. A map is at the beginning of each section with numbers corresponding to all the things listed to see, do, eat and buy in that area. While restaurants are not listed by ethnicity, it never took us long to locate the kind of restaurant we were looking for in the book. In addition, each section contains a good introduction to the history of the quarter and the essence one should try to get from it.
My only complaint is that the street maps do not point out Metro stops, and we sometimes had to do guess work to calculate our routes after exiting the Metro. (though there is a convenient Metro plan inside the back cover)

Quirky.......2002-04-21

Better for pre-trip planning, you can sit in bed at night reading the insightful, almost personal descriptions of the restaurants, shops, galleries, hotels, parks, and markets that make up Paris. Seperated in the book by geographic areas, reading along is like walking along the streets, giving you an opportuinty to think ahead of time of some of the places you might want to explore or experience. Good information on hotels, descriptions that give you a feel for the places.
Quirky because, although you can find a great jazz club with hours open from 10pm to 3am in this guide, it won't tell you what time the Louvre or the Effiel Tower closes. The guide will give an acceptable descripton of a tourist attraction, then segue into a description of the bookstore, the cafeteria, the park next door without ever mentioning when might be a good time to visit along with the other tourists.
I enjoyed refering to it in the months before the trip.

Errors and omissions cost us time, money, enjoyment........2001-12-10

It is hard to believe a seventh edition would be so flawed. Another reviewer mentioned missing or wrong museum hours--the only hours mentioned for either d'Orsay or the Louvre are 10AM to 9:30 PM, but we had been at the d'Orsay for only a half hour on a Friday when we were told the museum closes at 5:30. Another reviwer mentioned the difficulty of finding restaurants in the book--it is indexed not by cuisine or by location, but by star rating! So, to find a restaurantin the index, one must wade through four separate lists--one for each of the ratings. Normally I love Access guides. Their strength is complete and accurate maps of each section of a city with restaurants and shops and points of interest shown on each local map, but that is a weakness in the Paris guide since key restaurants are not shown on the map or listed in the section where they are located. For instance, when I was in Montparnasse and looking for Le Dome restaurant, I could not find it on either the map or the listings for that section of the city. I did find it later, by accident, but neither in the index nor in the Montparnasse section of the book. While reading about "Le Dome Bastille" in the Les Halles section of the book, I found at the end of that restaurant description that "The famous Le Dome in Montparnasse is this bistro's 'maison mere'." This was not the only famous restaurant omitted from the map and section of the book devoted to its location, but then mentioned as an aside in a listing for another restaurant in another section of the city. Other omissions are the admission prices for the various museums. Other guide books point one toward the "Carte Musee" which offers admission to 70 museums, but it is not listed in the index to this book. One does find it in the orientation section of the book, but it does not tell which museums are covered, what the price is, or whether it makes sense for a particular traveler to buy the "Carte" or to pay individual admissions. Why buy a guide book if one has to visit the museums to learn the hours or the admission? Others have mentioned errors in the guide to the metro as well--we found the train recommended to the palace at Versailles leaves one at a station nearly a mile walk away whereas the train they should have but did not recommend lands one a block from the palace. Suffice it to say we eventually learned to turn to other guides. "Cheap Eats in Paris" was easier to use and gave us better restaurants at much cheaper prices. Knopf's Paris guide, though five years old, had all the information on museum hours, prices, metro, etc. that Access either has wrong or doesn't include at all. Given our prior reliance on Access guides, this experience left us surprised, disappointed, and frustrated at the lost time and money from the inadequate and erroneous information.

Use this Guide in Paris!.......2001-08-14

You will not be disappointed if this is the only guidebook you take to Paris. My husband and I, neither of whom speak French, took Michelin, Frommers, and this Access guide with us on our honeymoon in Paris. After the first day, we put all the other books back in the suitcase and relied on this book. The restaurant ratings are accurate both for price and quality. The color codings (red for restaurants, blue for hotels, black for history) make it easy to use on the fly. The maps are great as well.

Good recommendations and descriptions; bad for metro travel.......2001-05-29

Excellent restaurant reviews and fascinating tidbits about sites (Ex. if Napoleon hadn't changed his mind in the nick of time, Parisians would be staring at a 160 ft elephant squirting water from its trunk instead of the L'Arc de Triompe). But if you are planning to use the Metro (subway) for getting around, you'll need another book. The Metro map on the back cover is so small that even a person with 20/20 vision will need a magnifying glass. Also, the street maps do not show the metro stops. I'd recommend Eyewitness Paris for metro info.

Book Description

The United States is engaged in an ambitious agenda of defense transformation that is revolutionizing the way the U.S. military organizes, trains, fights, and even thinks about conflict. What impact will this have on America's European allies? How can NATO transform itself for the 21st century?

This volume examines the implications of U.S. defense transformation for NATO, particularly how America and its allies can close the "transatlantic transformation gap"—a looming breach in strategic orientation, spending priorities, and conceptual and operational planning and training. It examines European approaches to defense transformations and charts the progress made by the Alliance from Kosovo to Kabul—while showing how far it still has to go.

The authors approach the issue of NATO transformation from different perspectives. As a whole, however, their argument is straightforward. If Alliance transformation is to be successful it must include, but also go beyond, the purely military dimension. NATO must transform its scope and strategic rationale, its capabilities, its partnerships—its very ways of doing business. They offer a range of policy prescriptions for the NATO Summit in Istanbul and beyond.

Contributors include Richard L. Kugler, Rob de Wijk, George Robertson, Yves Boyer, Jeffrey P. Bialos, Andrew James, Hans Binnendijk, Manfred Engelhardt and Stuart L. Koehl.

Average customer rating:

Kerry "Lincolnesque"?

A True Patriot:

Wow, what a pile of rubbish

A Concise Review of the 2004 Primary

The Candidate: Behind John Kerry's Remarkable Run for the White House
Paul Alexander
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: B00080W3I4

Book Description

An all-access pass to the inner workings of the Kerry campaign, the grooming of the candidate, and how decisions get made and who will be making them in the run up to the November election.

Two years ago, veteran journalist and biographer Paul Alexander wrote a piece for Rolling Stone magazine that now seems prophetic: He named John Kerry as the candidate who would emerge as the Democratic front-runner in 2004, and identified the reasons, more than a year before Kerry announced his candidacy. Since then, Alexander has been following the campaign-often from a privileged position on the inside. This book will report what he saw, heard, and witnessed about Senator Kerry and his campaign along the way.

The Candidate will reveal what accounted for Kerry's strong, decisive showing in every political contest since the Iowa primaries, and why none of those factors were evident in the pre-Iowa polls. It will explain how the Kerry campaign staged this surprise turnaround, what voters need to know about what goes on behind the scenes in the Kerry war room, and how the campaign is preparing for the run from July to November. Granted unprecedented access to Kerry's family, his campaign team, his advisers, and members of his inner circle, Alexander sheds new light on the man who would be president.

"Writing a book from the campaign trail presents a unique opportunity to tell an important national story with great immediacy," Alexander explains. "The John Kerry story is dramatic, as is the story of how his campaign came together. This is a very different organization than the one I reported on in 2002. How decisions are being made now is a key indicator of how decisions will be made after the Democratic Convention and in the White House, should he defeat President Bush in November."

Customer Reviews:

Kerry "Lincolnesque"?.......2005-08-24

Forgive me while I start laughing. To me, Kerry always looked like a run-down, gaunt twin of the Eagles' much healthier looking Glenn Frey (makes you also wonder who really had the alledged coke habit)

Mr. Alexander's account is nothing but a slavish, fawning account why he liked a guy who besmirched his fellow servicemen, voted against almost every weapon development or intelligence-gathering operation designed to protect us before 9/11. A guy who went down to Nicaragua to endorse the Sandinistas, only to have those Marxist thugs make a fool of him by curtailing the liberties of the trampled Nicaraguan people. A rich patrician married to another rich patrician, both willing to increase our taxes, not only the rich like them, but the poor and middle class like the rest of us. Someone willing to outsource jobs even when Kerry was railing about "Benedict Arnold Corporations". Don't want to believe me? Just ask Teresa - or check those Heinz Ketchup bottles coming straight out of that well-known part of the Union called Canada.

And simply put, a big loser.

"Lincolnesque"? - no, to compare John Kerry to Honest Abe is a terrible insult to a brave, kind, decent man who was our greatest President. Mr. Alexander clearly needs to have his head examined.

A True Patriot:.......2005-01-26

This book truly shows the remarkable man John Kerry really is. It gets away from the portrayl the right-wing media/Fox News gives to this stoic man. I would recommend this book to anyone who is in search for the truth and tired of reading about the lies of those "Swift boat captains" who've shamed the political landscape for years to come.
This book deserves an excellent review.

Wow, what a pile of rubbish.......2004-08-28

Folks, I've read some whoppers in my day, but whoa! I really don't know where to begin. All I know is that John Kerry and this Paul Alexander character must be in love. Which really is no small feat because it is obviously difficult for Kerry to love anyone as much as himself. Folks, if you are a mental defective, you may buy this "John Kerry is George Washington, Paul Bunyon, and John Holmes all wrapped up into one" nonsense; but as for the rest of us, we know a steaming pile when we smell one. I have never heard of a boat taxi getting into so much harrowing life and death action in just 90 days, I mean this thing reads like a Swarzenegger flick! I expected the last few pages to reveal that Kerry saved the President's life, rescued his sweetheart from an international drug cartel, and made life on Mars inhabitable for the human race all in one day! I suppose the sad thing is that the only person who truely believes this drivel is actually the only person who should know it's a fraud. This is one narcassistic, power hungry, self deluding, compulsive liar; and one sick puppy. I hope he does become President, the ensuing terrorist attacks on this country will thin out the population and inevitably remove most idiots who believe this book from the gene pool. Happy reading (just don't forget the rubber gloves and golashes, because it gets thick real quick)!

A Concise Review of the 2004 Primary.......2004-07-29

Alexander pens a concise review of the 2004 primary with what he calls an "insiders perspective." Unfortunately what results is not news but rather a simple historical review of what happened. This book is poor on analysis and perhaps even poorer on its account and its claims of access to the candidate and the campaign.

However, for those looking for a short read on the simple events of the 2004 Democratic primary, "The Candidate" will suffice. Unfortunately, if one is searching for the magical key to Kerry's historical turnaround or how the Dean machine fell apart, bitter disappointment is the only result.

Book Description

Long before movie stars Ronald Reagan and Arnold Schwarzenegger became governors of California, a popular radio personality with no previous political experience—who wasn't even registered to vote—swept into the governor's office of Texas. W. Lee "Pappy" O'Daniel was a 1930s businessman who discovered the power of radio to sell flour. His musical shows with the Light Crust Doughboys (which launched the career of Bob Wills) and his radio homilies extolling family and Christian values found a vast, enthusiastic audience in Depression-era Texas. When Pappy decided to run for governor in 1938 as a way to sell more flour—a fact he proudly proclaimed throughout the campaign—the people of Texas voted for him in record numbers. And despite the ineptitude for politics he displayed once in office, Texans returned him to the governorship in 1940 and then elected him to the U.S. Senate in 1941 in a special election in which he defeated Lyndon Johnson, as well as to a full term as senator in 1942.

While the hit film O Brother, Where Art Thou? celebrated a fictional "Please Pass the Biscuits, Pappy" O'Daniel, this book captures the essence of the real man through photographs taken by employees of the Texas Department of Public Safety, most of which are previously unpublished. Reminiscent of the work of WPA photographers such as Russell Lee and Dorothea Lange, these photos record the last unscripted era of politics when a charismatic candidate could still address a crowd from an unpainted front porch or a mobile bandstand in the back of a truck. They strikingly confirm that Pappy O'Daniel's ability to connect with people was as great in person as on the radio.

To set the photos in context, Bill Crawford has written an entertaining text that discusses the political landscape in Texas and the United States in the 1930s, as well as the rise of radio as mass medium for advertising and entertainment. He also provides extensive captions for each picture. John Anderson, Photo Archivist of the Texas State Archives, discusses the work of Joel Tisdale and the other DPS photographers who left this extraordinary record of the greatest vote-getter in Texas history, who became one of America's first celebrities to cross the line from entertainment to political office.

Please Pass the Biscuits, Pappy: Pictures of Governor W. Lee "Pappy" O'Daniel

Average customer rating:

Please Pass the Biscuits, Pappy: Pictures of Governor W. Lee "Pappy" O'Daniel
Bill Crawford
Manufacturer: University of Texas Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000ORN1MI

Book Description

This is the unforgettable true story of a family torn by divorce, and how they manage to struggle through the Depression years of the thirties and the devastations of World War II. The account centers around Chuck, the second of five children. He tells about Growing Up in Lincoln County West Virginia. They eat wild game and grow their own food to exist. Chuck and his younger sister scavenge for food under a neighbor's apple tree. They carry home half-rotten apples for the evening meal. There is laughter, tragedy and hard discipline while being educated in a one-room rural schoolhouse. He fills the role of caretaker to his brother and sisters and prepares meals on a wood-fired cook stove. Finally, separated from his family, living with his grandparents, and sleeping in the smokehouse, his quest is to find family and home.

Customer Reviews:

Five stars if you haven't read Josephus..........2006-07-25

perhaps three or four if you already have. This book is essentially a summary of Josephus's books (especially his Jewish War). If you have not read those works, this is an excellent guide to Josephus. If you have read Josephus, this book will add a little bit to your understanding, but obviously not as much. What Lebel does best is add emotion to Josephus's relatively dry account: that is, she tries to explain the passions that drove both Josephus and the Jewish rebels.

On the one hand, Josephus believed that the Jewish rebellion was suicidal, and that the destruction of the Second Temple may have even been Divine punishment for the rebels' murderous tactics. Lebel speculates that the rebels were driven not just by nationalism but by the hope of divine intervention. Even seemingly insane behavior (e.g. the rebels' destruction of food that Jerusalemites needed to survive the Roman siege) makes sense if the rebels believed that their bravery would be rewarded with a miracle. Indeed, some language in Josephus' own work supports this view: for example, Josephus quotes one rebel as stating: "Even had they wings, the Romans would never surmount the walls of Jerusalem."

Good Starting Place for researching the Jewish Revolt.......2003-09-01

I concur with the previous reviewer's disappointment over the lack of summarizing appendices. I found Professor Hadas-Lebel's
account quite adequate, even stimulating as an introductory text on the twin research controversies over Josephus and the revolt to which Josephus is virtually the sole eyewitness/contemporary account (unless one counts the tantalizing fragments of Tacitus). I wish that the author had included a bibliography or a discussion of the conflicting modern academic or religious studies. Nonetheless, this book is both a good summary of the debate and a solid introcution to Josephus, the events he desribes and his predicament in the context of a hostile world. Particularly valuable is Hadas-Lebel's review of Josephus' legacy in art, music, literature and judicial polemics -- mock courts-martial and the like. I am pleased to see this book available again in paperback. I ordered expecting that some of the above defects would have been remedied. I hope that English-speakers might soon find translations of some of the author's other more recent work on the Jewish Revolt.

Pity this book is out of print..........2001-01-16

As an in depth introduction to the times and life of Flavius Josephus, this book is very good. What prevents me from giving it a 4-star rating is not the text, but the (bluntly) inadequate appendices. The there are no family trees of the kings and high priests of the period (167 BCE to 95 CE). The maps are very incomplete (no indication of the locations of Sepphoris or Jotapata, for example!). There is no time line of Flavius Josephus's life. The "Dramatis Personae" does not list the dates of birth and death of each person. Many characters who briefly appear are not even listed. One minor quibble with the book is the Epilogues; though the author is French, I wish she had leaned a bit less on French evaluations over the centuries of Josephus's significance. The basic book, lest I be misunderstood, is excellent. I appreciated her liberal use of external sources, including but not limited to, the Babylonian and Palestinian Talmud, the Tosefta, Suetonius, Philo of Alexandria, Tacitus, Pliny, the Midrash Sifre, among many others. The horror of warfare during the revolt, and the heart-breaking destruction of the Second Temple and the destruction of Jerusalem -- they are here. Josephus's predicament, as he is caught between the super-power of his time and the insanity of his own people blindly bent on bringing destruction down on their people and land, is tragedy. The futile attempts of one man to stop history -- doomed to failure -- are caught in these pages. This book is worth reading (but bring a pen and paper to compensate for the sorry lack of summary information normally provided in a good set of appendices!)

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