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As a Catholic priest, I use this book for Pre-Cana (before you get married)counseling. I think it's the best I've seen, and I've recommended it to my Bishop to be used in the curriculum of our seminary. Would that people read this before they got married ~ also good as an eye opener if you are married, and for no matter how long. As the Chairman of the Board of Examining Chaplains for my diocese (who oversees academic stuff before a man is considered for ordination), I'll tell you that this book will be required reading for any man before he becomes a priest with pastoral cares.
Bravo!!!

This is one unbelievably fantastic book. Wangerin is a wonderful storyteller. This book stands head and shoulders above other Christian books about marriage. The chapters on forgiveness are incredible. He is transparent and real as he shares from his own marriage. Use it to make your own marriage stronger. Give it to friends, those married and those contemplating marriage.

I've read many books on marriage. This one is at the top of my list.

Wangerin's book feels like the smell of fresh-baked bread: Yeasty, homey, delicious, incredibly satisfying, and sweet without being saccharine, and with honesty, compassion, and real story enough in it to tear open with your teeth like a fine, chewy crust.

In a world of relationship books with all the nutritional value of paper (too many of them Christian-oriented) Wangerin's book stands out like a plate of that fresh-baked bread and a slab of sweet yellow butter.

Did folks buy this stuff? They sure did, by the millions according to Harry and Stall. Some of these products would really be hard to parody, the Chai Ceramic Pet that grows vegetation, the Turbi Twist, a hair towel with an elastic loop (with the predictable AS SEEN ON TV on the box) the Copper Tongue Scraper, PROVEN EFFECTIVE was the bold statement on its packaging but it really does look just like a piece of bent metal! Each product has a spread with photos, copy and several colored panels (more on these later) containing background material and other trivia. I liked the Product panels best with their Description, Availability, Claimed Innovation, Upside and the Downside, just read the Downside to each product and really get the truth.

The six basic chapters are Kitchen Marvels, Fashion and Beauty, Fabulous Fitness, Entertainment Breakthroughs, Home Improvement Miracles, and finally Get Rich Quick, between these chapters are some interesting features, pages 122 and 123 cover the rise of the home shopping channels where you will be amazed to find that QVC have studio tours (yours for only [x ammount of dollars]). Ron Popiel, the founder of Ronco, has four pages explaining the background to the infomercial techniques he uses to shift the goods. Incidentally the Ronco story is covered in 'But, Wait! There's More!' by Timothy Samuelson, lots of product photos, vintage ads and packaging and a fairly accurate history of the Popiel family. Ever wonder what happened to yesterday's celebrities, check out pages 74 to 79 to see the Top 100 infomercial-land stars from Allen (Debbie) to Zappa (Dweezel) you'll be surprised who's listed, well, perhaps not. 'As Seen On TV' is a fascinating and fun book covering a subject that most of us would hardly think twice about.

But, wait! There is more! DON'T TOUCH THAT DIAL! Buy this book and get absolutely FREE hundreds of words that only come out in daylight! The book's designer (unfortunately) decided to use pink panels, on many of the product pages, with text in light blue. Big mistake, because it is very hard to read in a normal domestic lighting environment and the type used for the headlines on these panels is hard to read even in daylight!

If you recognize this catch phrase from the Mr. Microphone ad, you'll love this book. Indeed any child of the '70s or '80s can appreciate the nostalgia and humor of the infomercial era, which is vividly and humorously captured in "As Seen on TV". It's all here, from Abtronic to Zamfir, Master of the Pan Flute. If you have any doubt about whether your money would be well spent on this gem, then to paraphrase Ron Popeil: "Just forget it and GET IT!"

This book read itself!

I bought this trip to entertain myself for a long drive home from Wisconsin to Florda. (Don't worry- I was the passanger, not the driver. Gusee I should've used the word 'ride' but I'm too lazy to backspace!)

I think the ultimate compliment to a book is when your constantly interupting other people around you to read the next wonderful thing you've read. I lost my voice from this book.

There's not too much to tell in this review. You've simply got to read it for yourself. It is so much more than just a list of goofy things sold via infomercials and TV ads. We get interviews, product history, trivia and much, much more.

We also get the lowdown on what was legit and what wasn't.

So the next time your using the flow-bee and screw up so badly your running to the store for some GLH (if you don't know what that sentence just meant, buy the book)... think of this book. It'll help ya.

And if you're just looking for some easy entertaing reading... this is it folks!

A girl at in my book club told me about this book. It's not the kind of book we talk about in the club, but that's going to change. It's so cool. Some of the language is bad, but it's used in a way that's not offensive at all. It's so real the way these people talk that I'm looking at other books I've read and loved and realized those books aren't true when it comes to the dialogue. Although it's a historical romance, or crime book I guess, at times you read it as an event is happening, but you're in the 1970s when it's happening. It's hard to describe. Either this author has the most brilliant, vivid imagination ever, or he's crazy. Probably both.

I've heard that he does have other books coming out and I can't wait to read them. As the Crow Falls is a masterpiece. Off the wall, but brilliant.

It's really weird the way this author writes so you are in the mind of the lead character. I've read books that are told by the main character, but this is told in a narrative voice and you are in the mind of the character. It's really strange. There are two or three pages in the whole book that are graphic, but it's needed to show what kind of people these characters are. The ending made me want to smack somebody. It's the best Mafia book I've ever read. Better than, The Godfather, Underboss, Wiseguy, you name it. It's as good if not better than any book in any genre. I couldn't put it down. Three pages in, you'll be hooked. Sad, funny, scary, sexy, you name it. This has it. Have a box of tissues near when you read it.

I loved it. A friend recommended it and I loved it. She warned me about one part, this child gets very ill in it and my best friend got sick when he was that age. It's not like normal Mafia stories I've read. One of the other reviews said it's strange. That's not even close. It's beyond strange. It puts you in the story. I don't think a person can explain it. You have to read it to understand. I haven't read a book in a long time that kept me awake. THIS DID! I love Mafia stories, but this isn't about a Mafia family. It's really a love story with all this other stuff going on and you react with the characters. You're with this couple for decades. You go from them falling in love to being old. And this guys battle with the bottle, is understandable and very real if you've ever been around an alcoholic/addict. From when they meet in the 70s until right up to now. You grow old with them. That's the part of it that's done much better than I've ever read. To be with a person and grow old with them in a manner that involves you. When they get married, you get married! When friends of theirs get sick, it's a friend of yours. When friends or realtives die or get murdered, it's your friends and family. You cry when these characters cry. I don't know how this author did it. One review said it was like watching a movie. In a way that's true, but I don't know how a movie could put you in a character's mind. And the parts that are really strange but real are when you're in the mind of a character when he is drunk or stoned!!! That is too real. My mom thought the language was a little harsh, but after awhile, even she said the launguage fits. It's really necesssary, because you believe the way these people talk is part of their personality. A+++++++ on this one!!!

This book is great because it covers various diverse areas in Roman life. It describes how the Romans had orgies, ate, cooked, drank, fought, worshiped, seduced each other, cheated on their partners, attended games, voted, made money, treated their slaves, accused others in court, defended themselves from accusers, cursed their enemies, praised gladiators, respected their ancestors, married, divorced, adopted, wrote, watched plays, studied in school, et cetera, et cetera... This book is by no means another lengthy discussion on the social history of Rome. Instead it's made up of short introductions by the author and numerous original excerpts from ancient time with plenty of footnotes for better understanding. And many of the excerpts are quite juicy and funny. A good toolbook for both serious historians and leisure readers.

An extraordinary book, it alternates concise, cogent discussions of every aspect of Roman life with equally concise, cogent and elegantly translated short selections from Roman sources that illuminate the topic, serving both as a window on the lives of the Romans and as a comprehensive introduction to the wealth of Roman literature and documents that have survived. I was always entertained and often surprised and moved by the insights the book offered into Roman attitudes about government, religion, family life, economic striving, military affairs, and much, much more. Ranging from the laments of dramatists about the short attention spans of their audiences to the complaints of neighbors about the noise of early morning classes for school children, the book is so comprehensive - and Rome has so pervasively influenced our lives today - that a selection even explains why for over two thousand years grooms have traditionally carried their brides across the threshold.

Students may not always like reading the primary sources, but the organization of this collection makes it easy to assign relevant text and skip the unnecessary materials. A good why to expose the class to the ancient's view of themselves without overwhelming them with reading. Best if used in conjunction with a good solid historical explaination of Roman life and history.

Great little treasure. I love the way the authors delivered this message.
It really is simple.
You get what you think.

IF YOUR LIFE IS A MOVIE SCREEN, THEN AS YOU WISH IS YOUR MOVIE PROJECTOR!

Earl Nightengale said the greatest secret in the world is the fact that we become what we think about. What a powerful statement! Gates and Shearon weave this universal truth into this modern day fairy tale in a simplistic yet profound way. Tapping into the power of the subconcious mind, Gates and Shearon point out that we not only become what we think about, but that we must stand guard over our mind to prevent negative self talk. Visualizing the life we all deserve is the first step to true success. Life will give us exactly what we ask of it. I've given this book to my wife, my children, my patients ... anyone who will stand still long enough for me to place a copy of this book in their hands gets a copy! Life changing information that needs to be read again and again and again ...

I agree 100% with the ESOL instructor from Lawrenceburg, IN. I, too, am an ESL instructor, and this book is absolutely my best resource. Each unit is a self-contained lesson (if you want to use it that way), with an explanation and examples of the point being covered, followed by a page of exercises for student practice. It's very easy to use for in-class work, homework, student self study, and even pre-class review by the teacher. I love it!

This text contains short lessons on at least a hundred common concepts in English, with straightforward, everyday examples.

In the appendix, there is the best-organized list of irregular verbs I've seen. The verbs are categorized according to their irregularity, so that the patterns can be studied. Each of my students has a copy that (s)he refers to often.

The Table of Contents is spectacular. Each topic is broken into several different units, which are each well-described. I find this organization particularly helpful when a student mentions (s)he is having trouble understanding, say, the use of the present progressive to express the future. I thumb through the contents, and in seconds, I know to show Unit 20. Especially helpful if you and the student don't know that it's called the present progressive, just that people say "I am playing tennis tomorrow." Waste no time flipping through the index of another book only to find it a dead-end.

Lastly, the sections on prepositions (which are so difficult to teach) are wonderful. We have teachers who won't use anything else and students who have found them very helpful.

I'm using this book to teach my girlfriend English. She is from Brazil. This book is excellent, well structured, and progressive. The vocabulary its controlled. There are a lot of work with the verbs (to be), and (to have).The book also covers progressives and irregular past verb tenses.

Am I Am, is a very compelling story that would make you want to read the whole book nonstop. This book would get you hooked from beginning to end. It deals with real life experience that goes on in todays world. It makes you see things in whole different perspective. You shouldn't change the way a person look, feel, or act. It would only make things complicated, it'll make you lose your love ones. You can give them advices instead of trying to rule their lives. Alyssa Naylor who is a teen model in highschool, loves giving her friends makeovers and dressing them up. She met a cute boy name Dante Michaels. They become closer while having to work on a project together for their English class. She soon changes the way he looks by giving him a haircut and gradually buying him expensive clothes and taking him out to fancy dinners. He soon relizes that he has changed and confronts her. He soon relizes that she changed him for the better. I recommend this book to teens who have problems accepting the way their boyfriends look, acts, and feel.

I really like this story because there were alot of parts were I just wanted to say awe that was so cute. I think the characters relationship was a good relationship. They really help each other grow in different areas of life. Dante' help Lyssa grow in her career choices. Dante' helps her decide for herself what she wanted to do with her life. And Lyssa help Dante' grow socially.By introducing him to school dances and showing him how to have more fun with his life. In all relationship you should learn and grow from them. Which I think is a good thing. I think you should really check it out!

This teen romance was definitly one of the better books in theseries. I love all the books in this series but this one wasdifferent. It showed teens in a different light. I think teens will appreciate the fact that the characters weren't "Typical" teens. Anyway, It was a very well though novel that was worth reading.

"As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning" is the story of Laurie Lee's travels (mostly on foot) from rural West Country England to London, and then through Spain in 1935-36. It's a joy to read (as was "Cider With Rosie"), and Lee recalls a world now lost due to the rise of the motor car and the arrival of the "global village": for example, I doubt that the arrival of a foreigner in a Spanish village would now be quite the event it was in 1935.

The majority of the book is devoted to Spain, and indeed this for me was the best part. It's a Spain in which Lee sees the faded glory of the past, but at the same time a backwardness reminiscent of descriptions of the Third World countries of today. Lee was no romantic - he devotes space to descriptions of the grinding poverty and social tensions he saw.

I puzzled over some parts of the book, however. Lee does not describe how he managed to pick up a working knowledge of Spanish. I suppose that youth helped (he was 20), and necessity can be the mother of education. If the dialogue was being reconstructed at some distance in time from the actual events, it might be best to consider that it was Lee's recollection of what might have been said rather than a truly accurate account.

Also, I was disappointed that while Lee followed the course of the Guadalquivir to Seville, he fails to mention the city of Cordoba. Did he visit it, or give it a miss?

In all though, a very enjoyable read.

"As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning" [1], author Laurie Lee recounted his first sojourn away from home. At age 19, our narrator-biographer, walked out of his village at Stroud, Gloucestershire, and headed toward London. As Lee himself recalled, he was 'still soft at the edges' when he said farewell to his mother (a poignant scene in the opening chapter). All he had with him that Sunday morning in June 1934 was 'a small rolled-up tent, a violin in a blanket, a change of clothes, a tin of treacle biscuits, and some cheese.'

After nearly a year of living and working in London as a cement laborer, Lee decided it was time to move on. He bought a one-way ticket and sailed to Spain. He settled for Spain because he had had an introduction to Spanish. All he could speak then, Lee admitted, was only one Spanish phrase: 'Will you please give me a glass of water?'

In July 1935, Laurie Lee landed in northwestern Spain. For many months he roamed the exotic and history-filled landscape, living off his music and the kindness of the people he came to love. From Vigo, he wandered southward through the New Castile region (Segovia, Madrid, Toledo). By December, he came to the coastal region of Andalusia (Cordova, Seville, Granada). There, Lee holed up at a Castillo hotel until the outbreak of the civil war in July 1936.

This author's second autobiographical sketch could have been subtitled "From Spain With Love." His inimitable poetic description of the Spanish landscape and its inhabitants is sensual as it is lyrical. The warmth and beauty of this passage [no pun], for example, undulates this reviewer's reveries, not of memories but of what has never been: 'When twilight came I slept where I was, on the shore or some rock-strewn headland, and woke to the copper glow of the rising sun coming slowly across the sea. Mornings were pure resurrection, which I could watch sitting up, still wrapped like a corpse in my blanket, seeing the blood-warm light soak back into the Sierras, slowing re-animating their ash-grey cheeks, and feeling the cold of the ground drain away beneath me as the sunrise reached my body.'

Lee's "As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning" and its third autobiograhy "A Moment In War" have had a farther reach than any of his other celebrated works. These writings have been adapted to music to which Charles Baudelaire could only spoke of metaphorically. In June of 2002, the Allegri String Quartet in The Salisbury Festival (UK) premiered "A Walk Into War." A musical piece which the quartet had commissioned based on the two latter biographies.

The author once wrote that autobiography is 'a celebration of life and an attempt to hoard its sensations...trophies snatched from the dark... to praise the life I'd had and so preserve it, and to live again both the good and the bad'. By all measures he had not done badly. He was and is the one modern author whose memoirs have transcended into the realms of music and visual arts ('Cider With Rosie', a 1998 film by John Mortimer).

1] Laurie Lee's autobiographical trilogy - Book 1:"Cider with Rosie" (1959); Book 2:"As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning" (1969); and Book 3: "A Moment of War" (1991).

It's a shame that this fine book is not in print. Those going after used editions--and you should--are encouraged to look for the 1985 reprint stunningly illustrated with classic paintings of Spanish life. But back to why you want to read this: in 1934, a young, naive Englishman who had never been out of his rural neighborhood packed up his violin and went walking, first to London, a hundred miles east and then via boat to Spain where he walked from Vigo in the north down to the southern coast. I'm having trouble shelving the book: is it a straight memoir? Certainly it is very much about the writer's encounter with the world at a historically significant time and about his own growth process. Or is it a travelogue? It is a very accurate account of the unique Spanish culture and countryside. Although written more than 30 years after the actual experience, Lee's account conveys a fresh sense of wonder and discovery and resists overlaying too much foreshadowing and hindsight. His style is lyrical, vivid as the blue Spanish sky and honest. He is refreshingly free of nationalism and prejudice.

Great book, but I have to take issue with the publisher's synopsis. The book is set in Mobile, Alabama, where Winston Groom was raised. Although the names are changed (i.e., he calls the town Bienville, which happens to be the name of Mobile's founder), the [unflattering] parallels between the fictional town and the real Mobile are unmistakeable to anyone from Mobile who reads this book. Even the Holt family is based on a real family from Mobile. Groom changes the names, but it's no secret who he's after.

The publisher probably thought As Summers Die is set in Louisiana because early in the book the author mentions the town being part of French Louisiana, which Mobile was the capitol of before New Orleans.

who's book Forrest Gump became a memorable flick. Winston Groom is not an average writer; he is an extrodinary one. "Forrest Gump," the original novel, may have differed from th movie but "As Summers Die" is a tantalizing novel. The prose and characters are solid and the descriptions of the South in the 50's are remarkable. Read this book

This is a great book that really translates the feelings of the south during the time of desegration and seperation of society. Winston Groom has a wonderful writing style. I loved the book!

Ok maybe u will think every book is the same like this one.But You can not compeare it before you test it.It was so helpfull for me.I did'nt apply the test yet but I hope I will be succesfull with that one.I tried some books before that but as I said,you can't decide which one is better.And it is also not expensive to have it.Think,with only few Dollars you will be able to pass this this test.Just try and see...

I have been teaching ESL for 15 years, and Barron's How to Prepare for the TOEFL test is not only the best book for students planning to take the TOEFL, but also for intermediate level students who need to add structure to their learning of grammar, and develop their vocabulary. A very interesting text to work with.

I went to buy the book pleas