On-the-money

Poorly written, badly researched and apparently not even edited. A truly awful book about a fascinating place. Mr. Manso's feelings about the gay people in Provincetown is made abundantly clear, ad naseum. I wont rehash it here. Instead, he chooses to glamorize small time crooks, drug smugglers and adulterers as the heroes of his sordid little book. His chapters about Jay Critchley, a sort of mea culpa for the hatemongering that comes before and after, don't even begin to flesh out a human being, let alone a strong gay man. He manages to reduce the extraordinary down to the most common of stereotypes.

Your best bet would be to get in your car, and head up Rt 6 to see for yourself. Since you're a visitor, it will only serve to drive Mr. Manso crazy. GOOD!

This is a sloppy, lazy, badly written piece of work whose only purpose is to argue that Provincetown has been ruined by those awful homosexuals. Manso tries to cover himself with stories about Jay Critchley, but the real driving force of the book is his hatred of gay people. If you hate homosexuals, especially those with money, you might enjoy this book. Otherwise, I suggest that you skip it.

Peter Manso presents an anecdotal history of Provincetown drawn freely from historical records, the use of artists' diaries, through his stories of individuals who have lived and worked in the town, and from his own experience as a resident.

While the book's historical and social accuracy will undoubtedly be debated, Ptown entertainingly tells of the his take on the evolution of this small town from a small Portuguese fishing village, to an artist colony, to a tolerant (and often enough intolerant) haven for hippies and dropouts, to a summer resort for gays and lesbians before it was ever acceptable to acknowledge such an identity, or to welcome these groups anywhere else in the country, to now, a seemingly emerging shift toward the town becoming an exclusionary home for the wealthy.

Ptown is not a lineal or uncontroversial history. It is clear that the town has changed over many years through almost invisible, often overlapping events, that have actually been doorways to larger changes that would later unfold. The result is a history that looks more like a complex tapestry woven in odd stitching, in overlapping often-odd patterns and in bold and extremely garish colors.

Manso's organizes the story of Ptown around engaging tales of individual people who have lived in Provincetown at one time or other in the past century. He tells of simple fishing families, famous writers, struggling artists and men and women struggling with who they are at their very core. The stories run the full gamut of human emotion and circumstance. In many of the same individual's lives, we witness the raw and all too real ride through life.

A fast and enjoyable read, even if faulted in its objectivity and accuracy. Ptown possesses all that interests our human curiosity. It is the story of openness, bias, intolerance, hatred, murder, sex, corruption, greed, change and triumph. As a reader I found myself running the entire emotional range from laughter, to tears. Highly recommended.

the vote.com website is laughable, the opinions expressed there are the result of numerous right-wing extremist sites providing direct links to the voting polls- heavily skewing the results. This guy proposes that the world will be revolutionized by the internet. I don't doubt it. He claims that it has the potential to make america a democracy- (whereas before only very tiny countries could be true democracies) there I agree as well- if the path is followed very carefully. The book, however, is an adverisement for his website, and his website is totally worthless.

As someone who likes the idea of using the internet as a vehicle for public opinion, he should REALLY consider taking a statistics class sometime. He would soon realize that his methods of sampling don't come close to representing american demographics, and his questions are sometimes quite leading.

This would just be fun and games, except that politicians use polls like these to claim that president bush has a 90% approval rating or that the american public is disinterested in campain finance reform. Both are totally false.

As an independent, I am quite frustrated by this site. Anyone with a hint of ethics- democrats and republicans alike- should voice their discontent at sites like this that add to the mindlessness of american politics- and push for one of 3 things:

1) big disclaimer that the opinions do not relfect those of the general population (for those with no statistics background that might otherwise be fooled into believing the opinions on this site)- and CERTANLY don't sent these warped opinions to the politicians!!!!! (they say that they do!)

2) change the polling procedure so people can only vote once, and such that the sample is drawn from as random a group as possible. -that means that they can't just let whoever feels like it arrive on their page and vote if they want it to reflect reality in any way, public opinion polls can be accurate with as few as 4000 votes if they have close to 100% response rate and they are sent to a random set of people (even a random set of people with email will be skewed, since more democrats don't have internet access (i.e. the old and/or the poor).

3) shut the site down. my favorite option, since I don't think the author is level- headed enough to follow path #2 : L

Vote.com is ostentatiously a book about how the emergence of the Internet will change the political process. It seems that in referring to "Internet voting" Morris has conflated two ideas: informing and campaigning, and actual polling and voting. As to the former, it is undeniable that the Internet potentially has a major role to play in breaking the elite media stranglehold. Finally having uncensored access to right-wing viewpoints is, if you will, a breath of 'fresh air'.

The second point is a little stickier. Touting the power of Web polling sites (such as the one run by Morris himself, mentioned several times), it's not obvious why politicians should pay them particular attention compared to more traditional methods, particularly given that Web polls are notoriously unreliable, self-selecting, and open to abuse. As to actual voting on the Net, glossing over the serious inherent security and privacy issues, it's unclear why the act of voting for a presidential candidate through a Web site would do much to change politics-- except to lower the barrier to electoral participation. But if we don't even trust someone to make the effort to cast his ballot on Election Day, can we trust him to take the trouble to inform himself?

Morris argues that as the Internet has cut out the middleman from stock transactions and travel bookings it will do the same in politics. But it's unclear who this might be, if not our elected representative, and it's completely unfeasible to take him out of the loop. No citizen has the time or interest to engage himself on every possible issue. The whole point of representative democracy is that we place our trust in a proxy. While the Internet may enable us to register our opinions with our representatives, we already have this power through telephone and mail.

Morris does have interesting ideas on the application of the Internet to campaigning, such as the use of political banner ads, pseudo-interactive multimedia sessions with the candidates (along the lines of early-generation adventure games), or the 'Internet presidential debate'. Although banners will be less effective in modifying my own political beliefs since I disable them in my browser, I have to admit that there is something irresistible in the idea of Bush and Gore slugging it out in a chat room. He flatters us by saying that Internet campaigning will be better because we will reject 'negative' campaigning as less interesting. But it seems just a little optimistic to believe that the 'alienated Internet generation' will magically become engaged by all of this technology.

The book isn't too sharply focused, and ventures into unrelated forays that call on Morris' personal experience as a political campaign advisor. These include his thoughts on how Clinton shrunk the Presidency to fit the president, and on what he calls the 'unimpeachment'. The attempts to interpret every recent development in politics to a devolution of power from the mass media to the Internet seem a little strained. Without index or footnotes, this book seems somewhat cobbled together.

Morris may be right in that traditional campaigning will expand to include this new medium. But as to actual voting, lowering the presidential election to the level of voting on OJ's acquittal would do much damage to the solemnity of the occasion.

I don't pretend to know how many of his predictions will come about, but his comments about web site development, traffic generation and cost are right on. If it is available, you can register a domain name of your choice(...). This gives you a worldwide platform from which to present your views. It has room enough to hold hundreds of pages of text and images that support whatever position you choose. If you are clever, funny, interesting, people will find it. Never in history has it been possible for an individual to make his/her thoughts so available for so little.

He is also right about the established parties not getting it. Just for fun, take a tour of web sites. Try to connect to each states abbreviation + GOP and then .com .net .org For example, what is displayed at TXGOP.net. Lest you think I am bashing Republicans here, consider that there is no reason Democrats or others can't register such domains and use them as a platform in the "enemy camp".

You will find that some are for sale, many are registered but not hosted, so they show "error 500 server errors", few understand the concept of reserving multiple domains and redirecting to your main site. Most have that "Corporate" = Boring feel to them. Only one was funny.

There is clearly opportunity waiting for someone to exploit this. I found his insights very helpful in thinking about the possible application of these concepts in the real world.

This is the worst investment book that I ever bought. How the author ever managed to get published is beyond me. Example: "Way #XX: Don't buy on margin, it's too complicated." There may be reasons not to buy on margin, but come on. I honestly got the impression that margin was too complicated for the author to understand. He gave a money example, showing how you will loose on margin even when the stock price rises that was just flat out wrong. I couldn't believe it.

a very factual to the point book. very unlike most books about the markets which are mostly author biographies, war stories, and personal opinions. this one gives a good illustration of how peddlers and sharks of the business work their craft.

This book suffers from the kind of obfuscated language that a growing number of scholars seem to be able to get away with. Don't get me wrong: there are some interesting ideas in here. But their rewards do not outweigh the costs of sifting through the jargon-laden prose. The author should take a basic writing course.

I had much hope for this book. I was expecting a work which would shift debates about globalization in a new direction. What we get, on the other hand, is poorly written, badly argued, and repetitive work that offers very little in the way of substantive theory or analysis.

The book is a collection of essays that Sassen has published elsewhere between 1984 and 1997. Except for the introduction, there is no new material here. Furthermore, in many cases the content of one article is reproduced in another article in the book. Rather than reinforcing important arguments, it seems clear that Sassen is trying to get as much mileage possible out of her work. It doesn't work.

The book contains hundreds of endnotes (in many cases they contain the most important information) which should have been incorporated into the text. Furthermore, she offers no conclusion to her analysis and the last chapter itself is quite unsatisfactory.

In short, this book is poorly written, tedious, and unoriginal.

What purports to be a book on globalization is actually only peripherally about globalization writ large. Sassen is interested in more specific aspects of globalization: its impact on migration (the huge theme of this book), its place-specificity, and its resultant dispersal of powers that used to belong solely to the nation-state. Her points are good, but you don't need this book to get them, since she's made them all elsewhere and ages ago; in brief, the occasional new insights are not worth it.

Sassen's biggest contribution to the theorization of globalization is her attention to the global city, which she posits as a site of the physical infrastructure that enables the more diffuse projections of the world market. In these cities (like New York, L.A., Tokyo, London, Rio, etc.), high-wage, white-collar workers brush against the low-wage, largely immigrant diasporae that keep the global city running; immigrants form blocs that see a certain degree of enfranchisement and force adjustments in transnational immigration law; and globalization marches on. It's interesting stuff, but it's not new. Sassen's own book on "The Global City" scoops these chapters. And that's pretty much true of the rest of the book.

The two chapters on gender and globalization are much more valuable (and more recent) here, as she starts in on what she calls "the unbundling of sovereignty," the appropriation of political punch from nation-states and the relocation of it into the hands of NGOs and the global market. Unfortunately, while she opens up a great area of inquiry, she doesn't take it very far at all, "since the effort here was not to gain closure but to open up an analytic field." As they stand, these chapters are frustratingly suggestive but ultimately not very thorough or useful. Hopefully she'll revisit the theme later.

The stylistic question is a thorny one; several reviewers have already blasted Sassen for the way she writes. She's certainly not the easiest read, and her incessant neologisms are annoying. ("Operationalizing"? Can we not say, "making operational"?) You can fault her for that. But you can't fault her for writing like a sociologist, and that is largely how she writes. It's dry, there are charts and facts and figures, but the prose is economical and fairly clear (fake words aside!).

By and large, though, this isn't a must-read. If you're really interested, check out her books, "The Global City" and "The Mobility of Labor and Capital." They treat the same subjects, but in more useful detail.

This book is full of falacies that no one could live by. It's a purely fictional world in which a miserly lifestyle would have to be adopted. Wealth is not only monetary. Slaving over numerous minimum wage jobs does not define wealth. It might work for Mr. Steamer, but I think the majority of us would like to enjoy their jobs and the fruits of our labor.

Mr.Steamer's suggestions imply that in order to become a millionare, one must be essentially perfect and alone- that is, having no health problems, minimal bills, no family, and find the cheapest place to live. I think it can be assumed that if one were to live alone and have perfect health in the cheapest city in the world and not spend their money on frivelous things, they too could be a millionare. Personally, I would rather sacrifice the millions of dollars that James Steamer claims I can make, and rather have a family, accept my imperfect health (and treat it with the backing of health insurance), and spend money on fast food or an occassional movie once in awhile.

I was disappointed in the book. Perhaps I've already read too many financial books, but I honestly didn't get any new good ideas from this book. One of his ideas really concerns me - Mr. Steamer offers that if one is fairly young, in good health, and has no family history of health problems, he/she could consider going without health insurance (in effect, they become self insured paying their own costs out of pocket). He doesn't explictedly recommend this, but he does offer it as a potential cost saving. I believe this is a bad idea, since a major medical emergency (although perhaps remote), would lead to financial ruin. It's just too great a risk in my opinion. I should add I'm in no way affliated with the healthcare or insurance industry. I also believe that most financial planners would agree with me that this is a bad idea.

The other thing that bothers me about the book is that we're to believe Mr. Steamer somehow managed to sock away $250,000 over a ten year period with a cumulative gross salary of only $220,000 for a family of three. At one time, I tried to live by myself on an annual salary of less than 17K and it was difficult (and I consider myself a pretty frugal person). The book offers cost savings tips and financial advice, but I don't see how you could achieve what Mr. Steamer claims he has even if you used all of his ideas. I guess that was the biggest problem I had with the book. That fact kept bothering me as I read more of the book. Perhaps Mr. Steamer should have included some more factual information on how he himself achieved all that wealth. I wouldn't have been so bothered if he claimed to have gotten real lucky in the stock market, bought a house at auction for next to nothing and fixed it up himself, etc.

For Don Lapre making money means riding the back of hard working people. This book is one big ad for you to call his office and sign up for a...web site...Don't buy this book or anything else he sells. If you do remember these words, "I told you so". Instead of this book, you could probably get more useful information about the internet from a book THAT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE INTERNET. Point clear?

I saw his infomercial on late night television and he does nothing but tell you how to make money by placing tiny classified ads in newspapers and how he got rich,then he has people that probably work for him telling us how they made money buying his package,I saw more people than what he broadcasted on t.v.
he even had a "private investigator" tell us how he made money in 5 hours but one thing his employees because thats who they are dont show you is proof just words
I have his manual about internet marketing eh,he has three maybe four different infomercials about his money making package and still manages to go bankrupt

I read some peoples reviews who found this book useful and some who didnt find this useful so decided to check it out myself. Since I know almost nothing about computers, this truly helped me. I am even making more money now from home, then i did working in retail, and i dont have to be on my feet 8 hours a day! I think those who found this book unuseful were those who didnt know how to absorb information.... or they probably already knew some sort of info. already about this sort of thing and in that case they shouldnt have bought it in the first place because this book IS titled, "How to make money on the internet," its a basic step by step type guide for basic knowledge to help people get started, and it sure helped me. So to the author, Thank You, I acknowledge your work and the information that you have provided me to help me start making some cash over the net.

KAM

This pamphlet, filled with grammatical errors and typos, purports to help writers make money writing on the Web. Unfortunately, it's more about conducting Web searches than anything else, providing a list of out-of-date search engines as a starter. Lacking any kind of transition from chapter to chapter, you wonder why some of the material is there at all. The last chapter talks more about selling products on the Web than writing for sites. You won't learn much at all here on finding writing work on the Web.

It is a shame that a book touting "writing" on the web should be so poorly written and lack any real new information. If you know how to perform a search on the internet, you don't need this book.

The book is a small pamphlet like booklet. It is very technical; it goes through searches, free web pages, and designing a web page, not much about writing. Some helpful information about getting unpublished work seen.

This document is available for free directly from Aberdeen, amongst other places. Also available amongst most AML link libraries. It is really a review of various software available to financial institutions for AML.

I was entertained by this book and the quips and cartoons were fun. However, I was hoping to find something more educational and was disappointed. I'll keep looking.

I thought the book lacked substance as far as mutual funds go. The only value is the list of web pages, most of which you could find on your own.