AS

The quilt that sold me on this book is the Attic Windows pattern. It is fabulous and easy. The great thing about the patterns in Quilts for Baby Easy as ABC, is that you don't have to make a quilt for a baby-make a quilt for anyone. Make a quilt as big or small as want. It is the most fun book on quilting and Ursula Reikes makes it effortless.

I have purchased tons of books for teaching kids how to quilt but none have been as easy as this. The publisher missed out on part of the market. The blocks are so simple the book should be available for children learning how to quilt.

I made one of the quilts based on the X-quisite block. I can honestly say that it took longer to pick the fabric than it took to make the quilt. I finished it in half a day (shhh - don't tell), machine tied and bound.

Perfect for beginners or people who want to make something special without a lot of time and fuss. The blocks rely on really great "conversational prints" to make the quilts work.
Change the print and have a lap quilt for an older person or pet quilt. It is also very easy to figure out how much fabric you need to make the quilt bigger so you can't go wrong.

It isn't just for babies - and it's so easy you will wonder what you were waiting for. If you have made a quilt before, get started today and don't be surprised if you finish it today. If you are a beginner, this is a great place to start.

Great book! I have never quilted before, in fact I just bought a sewing machine for fun 2 weeks ago. Since then, I have made 3 quilts from this book. It is so easy, I am looking for the first 2 in her series.

This is a terrific story of a young white man's time with the Piegan Blackfeet. James Willard Schultz came west for adventure and joined an Indian trading post 45 miles north of Fort Benton, Montana.

He not only traded furs, gold, liquor, and dressmakers goods to the Indians, but became fluent in the language of the Blackfeet, sharing in their hunts and wars and even taking a young Indian wife.

It's a somewhat self-conscious story from a masculine vantagepoint during a time when warrior bravado was in vogue and the buffalo were still thriving. This book portrays a segment of Native American life and culture just before the buffalo were diminished and the people were forced to reservations.

Given that _Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: an Indian History of the American West_ by Dee Brown contains only 2 or 3 pages in reference to the Blackfeet, a book such as _My Life As an Indian_ is a superb addition to one's bookshelf. Recommended.

I just came online to see if it was in print. I have had a copy of this book from the 1935 paperback that my Grandfather gave me when I was a boy. Not that I was a boy in 1935, it was actually in the early 70s. . .I was captivated by the stories JW Schultz lived! Helping his friend steal his wife from under the nose of the ever watchful father. It still grips me even today. Alas, my old copy is just that, old. That is how I came to write these words. Ordering a fresh paperback.

I cannot recommend this book more highly!

I absolutely loved this book, I couldn't put it down! I have been to the Blackfeet Reservation and Glacier Park many times, and while reading this book I could just imagine how it was back then. It gave me a new perspective on Indian life. I would recommend this book to anyone who loves a good story about the old west and the Indians.

Even though this book is not the newest guide to caring for chameleons in captivity, it's still the best. Filled with beautiful illistrations and lots of important, easy to read information, it's the chameleon owner's bible. Really, most of the pet care handbooks that Barron's publishes are great resources.

What you need to know about chameleons is in this book! I enjoyed reading it and learning everything about this little creature. From it's history and evolution, to it's anatomy and manerisms. What I really wanted was a book which explained how to care for the chameleon and I picked the right one.Francois LeBerre makes me feel comfortable caring for the chameleon. The size of the book is good for handling and storing. The print is large and clear, easy to read and the pictures are messmerizing. When I browsed through other books on the topic, they seemed like a joke compared to this informative publication! I recommend this to beginners (which I am) because you'll feel like an expert (LeBerre) when you're done. Enjoy!!!

The book gave me a lot of information and it had a lot of grate pictures. The book is easy to understand and they tell alot of info.

Marat/Sade is an excellent script. for all of you out there who love the book and the story come To Baldwin Wallace College in Berea, Ohio, november 20th through the 24th for a fabulous performance of the show. call the box office at 1-440-826-2240. ask for tony and if he's there tell him u saw this.

I have to say that this is an absolutly beautiful piece of literature. The language rolls off the tounge like a symphony with a harmonizing dissonance. The story itself is so simple yet complicated all at the same time. The emotion that one feels after reading this is numbing. You sit there not knowing what to say and think.

MARAT/SADE

"This play-within-a-play is about pushing at the limits", said Dramaturg William Lewis Evans.

I first saw the play performed by students of the Bishop's College School Studio Theatre in Lennoxville, Quebec. The text was phenomenally stimulating. The play was memorable, intense, and for the audience at least, indeed a little scary. Marat/Sade, after all, is the practical quintessence of what Antonin Artaud called the Theatre of Cruelty - theatre of the visceral and disturbing - theatre that "wakes us up, mind and heart". The highlight of that Canadian gala, for me, was when I witnessed an audience member and retired member of the French Foreign Legion (an outstanding citoyen-expatrie who should remain nameless) stand up - in the middle of this High School play - and leave the theatre in protest.

The play was, and remains, exceedingly powerful.

Years later I saw the play performed by Yale students in New Haven, Connecticut. If I remember correctly, Loren Stein directed. At one point during the performance, it became clear to the audience that one of the patients - an actor - had, during the course of the performance, in fact urinated on an audience member. As a reporter for Radio in New Haven, I interrogated that audience member at the end of the night, and caught a soundbite.

She said:

"It was wonderful. I don't know what else to say. This is Theatre, I guess. Real theatre."

Perhaps it should come as no surprise that this play should end up out of print, along with a dozen or so others like it, and be replaced on your roster with the latest celebrity-authored self-help books.

Maybe Oprah Winfrey will teach me how to fry tofu. It seems to be all we have a taste for anymore.

Franklin Pryce Raff

As a new ferret mommy I wanted to make sure I did all my homework before bringing the little one's home. This book covers all the basics and then some and offers the author's own experiences as a ferret owner as well. Even if you are not new to ferret parenting this book is a great resource for the lifetime of your ferret. I am looking forward to anything new Deborah Jeans puts out.

This book has precise and up-to-date information on ferrets, written with a tinge of humor. It is also complete with pictures and amusing illustrations.

From her touching memorial to her fuzzies ,all the way through the practical hands and hearts on information Ms. Jeans delivers what she promises a very practical guide to ferret care.All fuzzies should be lucky enough to have owners that have read this book. Better than raisins, a new snuggy sack or jingle ball. Thank you again Ms. Jeans

This guide is an interesting insight to the show and an excellent help if you like to review episodes. The behind the scenes peeks and actor information gives a new perspective to the show and characters. However if you haven't watched the third season don't read to in depth as there is spoilers contained in certain character profiles.

I have to say the best part of this book are the casts insights into their characters! After all, no one really knows the characters as well as the people who bring them to life.

The pictures are all wonderful, though I would have liked more of my favorite couple, Brian and Michael! They are the heart of the show for me.

The accompanying DVD in the hard cover book is excellant though way to short!

Ann Marie

The book is great, as it's great the serie. The pics are also awesome, would have loved more of my fave QAF couple: Brian and Justin.. Not everyone knows that, at least the hardcover edition of the book (which is the one I own, I don't know about the softback..) comes with a DVD, with exclusive behind the scenes material, which makes a cute addition to this already not-to miss-item for a true QAF fan! RECOMMENDED!

Gene Wright's first attempt at fiction is an engaging success. Although lightweight story and an easy read, this book compares favorably with the best of the genre. The plot is just twisted enough and contains a handful of surprises. The dialogue is smooth and witty. The characters are likeable, but clearly Mr. Wright plans to develop them in books to come, because he doesn't grow them much in these 200 pages. I can recommend highly this book to anyone who enjoys a good crime story that can be enjoyably put away in one sitting.

Be careful because this book will keep you up all night. I couldn't put it down when I started reading.
That is my idea of good mystery. I look forward to next installment. Kudos to Gene Wright.

Jerry Valdez has made a good life for himself and his family. He is well-qualified as a county sheriff and well-respected by the people who voted for him and by his collegues in other law enforcement positions. He likes being sheriff and has built a staff he can depend on and one that he has fatherly feelings toward. Then a crime occurs in his county that is shocking in its viciousness and one in which his young deputy is the victim. The reader knows Jerry will solve the crime and avenge the death of his protegee. As he proceeds to do this we learn methods of preventing jail breaks, dealing with the FBI, escaping attacks on his life and that of his family, and tracking the powerful evil behind the mayhem that has entered his life. We also learn about preparing good food, the best place to eat in South Dallas and what is wrong with Memphis barbeque. I liked Jerry because he is a man who cares about people and likes to help them. He instinctively knows how to take care of himself when forced into horrible events he could not have expected in his peaceful, rural part of Texas. Thank
goodness he does not allow himself to be corrupted by drug money. Instead he does his job with integrity and stubborn pursuit. He solves the crime legally when that might not seem possible and only pushes the reader a little bit to believe the ending. This mystery also lets the reader into the Valdez family with a husband and wife who love and support one another and a son and daughter who are pleasant company and independent children. The family of an ordinary man who is also a hero. I look forward to spending more time reading about Jerry Valdez.

Author Lois Hilton Spoon lived every word she wrote. Her courage during her long struggle with breast cancer will motivate and inspire others to trust in God and believe in miracles. Lois's love for God and her unwavering faith in Divine Intervention is evident on every page. With sparkling wit and humor and heart-warming intimacy, her inspiring stories will reach into every reader's life like a trusted friend, offering comfort and genuine concern.

This book is truly a blessing to be treasured and shared by all.

Written by Lois Hilton Spoon with the assistance of Brian Davis and Steve Dixon, Running As Fast As I Can: A Survivor's Guide To Winning The Race Against Breast Cancer is a powerful and personal testament to the strengths of life, hope, and faith. A religious wife and mother, diagnosed with terminal breast cancer, Lois is able to run and enjoy a marathon race one year after. Her personal story, and the meaning of her perseverance, love, and joy in life is revealed in this captivating, candid, inspirational and moving memoir.

What a wonderful, inspiring account of the daily life of dealing with cancer as shared from the heart of Lois's experiences. I have had the privilege of knowing Lois for the last nine years and treasure the time we have spent together. Her honesty, humor and love of life comes through the printed word to touch everyone who takes the time to stop and read "Running As Fast As I Can".

I picked this book up because it was suggested "in addition" to another book on hospitality that I read recently and thought was life-changing. This book is very good, it includes interesting and thoughtful ideas and it is pretty well written. I couldn't shake the feeling that I was reading some academic paper prepared in graduate school. While I liked the book fine and it definitely worth reading, I think if fails to measure up to some other books on the market right now. I would certainly suggest it for anyone doing academic work, preparing for a class or inventing some church program.

It is hard to know where to start. The book is elegantly written, it is full of interesting history of the early church. But more importantly, it speaks to a deadness in the church today. Often members of the church have learned to live distant from problems of their "neighbors" be they down the block or down the street in the challenged neighborhoods in our cities.

In the early church, members were the challenged people, they reached out to each other, but now much of the church is isolated and distant from the needy stranger. Read Luke 14 - decide if you have responded to principles in those scenarios described by Jesus. If you come up short, then this book will help with a compassionate analysis of our dilemma in reaching out to "the least of these."

In addition to setting the stage for individuals to learn to reach out to needy strangers, the book creates a context for the faith-based social service discussion. While members of congregations may not exhibit the skills of professional social workers, they have an important role to play in being present and responding to neigbors in their communities who need the touch of grace in their lives.

The book is a good read, but it requires more than one pass. If you invest in the book deeply, you will be called to action.

I read this book in preparation to interviewing Dr. Pohl for a magazine. It's terrific -- a thoughtful examination of practices that used to be considered an essential component of the Christian faith but which have, over the years, been institutionalized and removed from our everyday lives. How do we recapture the Biblical imperative toward hospitality in the reality of a modern world? This book doesn't give pat answers, but it does give you a framework for asking the right questions, and some suggestions that might point you in the right direction.

One does not need a mathematical background to follow the narrative of J.L.Heilbron's THE SUN IN THE CATHEDRAL but a knowledge of high school geometry will probaly help. Dr. Heilbron was aware of the "geometrically challenged" reader when he developed his book and has written the text for the lay person. Heilbron received the Watson Davis Prize for Public Understanding of Science for his work DILEMMAS OF AN UPRIGHT MAN. The average reader without a fear of math should be able to follow the ABCs in the text and link them to the ABCs in the diagrams. It took me several weeks to read the text, not because it is so difficult, but because it is filled with information and I had to take breaks to absorb what I had read.

THE SUN IN THE CATHEDRAL is nothing less than the story of how the Christian Church parented modern science and technology. Although the ignorant will persist in accusing the Church of being a roadblock, the truth is that the impetus and sustenance of scientific exploration in the West came from the church, and although one might call it an unholy alliance, Christian ideology and Science have moved in lockstep ever since. Heilbron predicts that eventually Gallileo, who was sponsored by the Church, will be cannonized a saint.

Why does this happen? Dr. Rock who invented the modern birth control pill was Roman Catholic. He developed the pill to help RC women control their fertility in a manner acceptable to the Church that had to do with the timing of the release of the ova. His method was not accepted by the Church, but nevertheless the use of Rock's pill has led to falling birth rates in the U.S. and other Catholic countries (U.S. is 40 percent RC) and a subsequent decline in the poverty rates. (Economic development is important, but per capita household income is affected by fertility levels.) Maybe he will become a saint someday.

How did the Church become interested in the study of time? The means of communication were slow in the early days of the Church and this slowness led to a requirement for advance knowledge of the moveable feast dates which the Church passed on to its far-flung parishes. The problem of determining when these dates would occur lay with determining when Easter would occur. The moveable feasts of the Church year fall in accordance with Easter (i.e. Chistmas is a fixed date, Pentacost is a moveable feast that follows Easter by 40 days, Good Friday and Lent preceed Easter by a fixed numer of days. Easter is calculated relative to the Spring Equinox which is the point at which the day and the night (solar) are exactly equal.)

To address the problem of measuring the Spring Equinox, the church employed bright young men (like Gallileo) and gave them the resources they needed including church facilities. THE SUN IN THE CHURCH is their story and the story of those who followed them who were sponsored by the Reformed Church and Royalty of both RC and Reformed persuasion.

The book suggests that even as one problem was solved, yet another arose (you need the geometric diagrams to understand the intricacies of these problems as well as their solutions). First there was the problem of finding a structure large enough to create a BIG sundial, since sundials were useful for figuring out the length of the day. This led to the use of cathedrals and other very large public buildings where even today a numer of gnomen (little windows that admit sunlight) and meridians (sun dial like stuctures inside the building) can still be found. Inside these cathedrals, pillars and other obstacles had to be overcome and how this was done is ingenious.

Obstacles to the precision of measurment led to discussions about the height of the terrain where a building was situated, the thickness of the earth under the building (some sank), the shape of the earth (affected the location of the center or apex of the triangle of measurement), the distance of the moon from the earth and the sun, etc., etc.

Most importantly, a discussion ensued about whether or not the world was heliocentric. If you start from a false premise such as the sun revolves around the earth, no matter how carefully you conduct your calculations the results will be wrong. The issue of heliocentricity proved a big stumbling block. In the end, the records of the scientists who said the earth moved about the sun were preserved (else Heilbron couldn't have written his book) but for a long time the Church held that the sun revolved around the earth, and anyone who said differently was speaking heretically. Some really funny compromises occurred, probably because intelligent church men knew they were not necessarily correct (some of the scientists were Jesuits or former clergy). And, at one point England and Italy were on two different calendars because the English refused to accept anything Rome devised, even if it was CORRECT!!.

The study of time led naturally to the study of space and both led to global explorations. The Jesuits (grey friars) traveled the globe and impressed their new converts with the science (magic) of the West. The Domincans came to the New World with the Conquistadors and recorded the science and magic of the inhabitants.

Protestants continued the tradition of exploration which led to the discovery of longitude. Seems the earth is not the same diameter every where. A team measuring the diameter of the earth in Peru was attacked by local Indians who thought the Europeans with sticks were lunatics or socerers. Ditto the Appenines in Italy. "Who would think Italian countymen could behave like savages" remarked one scientist. Geodetic surveys and even the GPS system in use today are descended from this research.

THE SUN IN THE CATHEDRAL is a fabulous book, and one every one who wants to gain a better understanding of the world around us should read. This book cancels the mistaken notion that the church tried to block science. This book is about how science and ideology interacted and framed the world we live in with "Western" ideas. And, as Heilbron points out, even in our so-called advanced state of knowledge censorship is alive and well. "All of which will be unpleasantly familiar to observers of the operation of political correctness in contemporary universities." Reason and science are threatened today by a much more insidious enemy.

J.L. Heilbron's The Sun in the Church: Cathedrals as Solar Observatories is a beautifully illustrated, finely written exposition of how the Roman Church used sacred space to perform astronomy. The most sacred day in the Church calendar is Easter, established as the Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox. As it turns out, this was an astoundingly difficult day to calculate, especially years in advance. As a result, in the Middle Ages the celebration of Easter "drifted" from the true date; the Church found itself commemorating Christ's resurrection on the "wrong" Sunday, a matter of grave concern. To solve this problem, astronomers determined that large buildings - most ideally churches themselves - could be made into solar observatories with a light opening at the apex and a meridian line placed on the floor. By this device, Church-supported scientists could observe the sun's precise position and movement with reference to the meridian line, and thereby make needed Easter (and other) calculations.

I confess that I am mathematically challenged, and much of this book is devoted to fairly detailed geometric and trigonometric proofs. I had no choice but to "bleep" over these sections. Heilbron's prose and argument are clear, entertaining, and persuasive, and I felt I lost none of his key points by needing to skip the proofs. Everything about Church history and astronomy in the Church - except a chapter about the unfortunate treatment of Galileo - was entirely new to me, and I was absolutely enthralled. For those who have read Dava Sobel's Galileo's Daughter, this is a useful second perspective on the Church and astronomy.

I'm a professor of mathematics, but I'm also a "closet historian". This book is a great work of scholarship both in terms of history and mathematics. It's true that if you don't know much about spherical astronomy, you may get a bit of shell-shock, but why don't you pick up Kaler: "The Ever-changing Sky" or Evans: "The History and Practice of Ancient Astronomy" to learn the basic. The you can go back to Heilbron's book to appreciate it fully. Believe me, it's worth the effort!
PS. One of my students has written a mathematical supplement to this book. It's available on my home page. (Amazon won't let me give you the URL in the review, but just do a quick searh on the web or look at the "äbout me section".) So far it only covers the first few chapters, but we hope to be able to expand on it later. I hope some of you may find it useful.