Paris

If you have difficulty understanding relativistic and quantum physics due to an insufficient grounding in mathematics, which I do, that does not mean that complexity equates with error. This book is a waste for those interested in science.

After reading this book it becomes clear how wrong Einstein really was.
The way mrs. Spolter tackled his theories is most convincing and gives me some comfort there are still some independent thinkers who know how to ring the bell.

There is very little in this book that isn't covered elsewhere in more detail. I bought this book and "The Complete Idiot's Travel Guide to Las Vegas" before a trip to Las Vegas with my two sons. The Complete Idiot's Guide had lots more info including info about kid friendly hotels, things to see, etc. Neither book included information about which hotels let kids stay free which was info that I was looking for.
Las Vegas With Kids includes lots of what to me was worthless information - for example: 5 pages are used to list the airlines that fly into Las Vegas, another 6 pages of websites for hotels, packing lists that list only the obvious (and only for the summer season).
My advice would be to buy a general travel guide to Las Vegas and don't bother with this book.

I thought that this book was an excellent starter when planning a vacation to "Sin City" with the kids. My husband and I were worried that it would be a vacation where we stayed in the hotel for 5 days and swam by the pool. However, we were able to use this book to plan our days. We were able to find local parks, historical sites and some pretty good restaurants. In addition, the book gave us ideas to keep our 8 year old active by trying things that we would not normally have done (i.e., horseback riding, etc.) The book broke down which hotels were "kid friendly" and what amenities were available to us at the hotel. My son was so excited about this vacation that he still talks about it to everyone more than a year later. I would highly recommend this book for anyone who has children and wants to stay away from the casinos.

This book is in French, but Amazon didn't let me know. I have read the English (original)edition and thought it was great.

I love this book so much that when I travel it goes with me wrapped in plastic and I like to know it's at the bottom of my bag, the best antidote for a delay at an airport or boredom on a long flight. It's so readable and amusing and informative and funny, yet profound and moving at the same time. It's a marvellous potted history of the arts and who was who and who became who from the end of last century to the end of this. It should never be out of print.

Misia knew how to live, and seemed to have such fun and style whilst doing it, captured beautifully by the authors. They make Misia live again, and with her Diaghilev, Stravinsky, Picasso, Chanel [especially Chanel] to mention but a few. Don't take my word for it, get hold of a copy and read for yourself.

After being delighted by their splendid Open Road London Guide, I eagerly awaited my copy of the Paris Guide. Hélas! What a disappointment! This lightweight book has almost no personal "insider" information (unless you want to eat in the 7th arondissement), and it's padded with lots of white space and filler like bare bones lists of French wine producers and food terms (what backwoods folk are these supposedly intimate guides written for anyway?). It's impersonal, superficial, skimpy on all kinds of information, from basics like museums, which include only the biggies, and at that only includes what you could easily find on any number of websites; to shopping info, which --- in this city of shopkeepers and fabulous places to browse and buy --- is pitiful. The Marais, for instance, one of the hottest new areas of the city, chockablock with boutiques and art galleries and the like, gets a total miss. Save your francs: there are literally scores of guidebooks, large and small, that do a better job.

This guide is the second Open Road Guide I have used as a foundation for an important overseas vacation. Their motto ' Be a traveler, not a tourist' could not be more appropriate. Every restaurant, hotel and suggestion culled from this guide proved to be 'perfect'. Everything the authors write about restaurant food and hotel amenities is right on the money. Their critical opinions are a welcome change to most of the other guidebooks available in print. They select places to dine and visit that are known mostly to just the Parisians, but that still welcome a friendly traveler. (We found absolutely no evidence of that famous 'French Attitude' towards Americans at any of the suggested locales.) No giude is better than Open Road's Paris Guide for planning the perfect trip to the most amazing city in the world. "Merci" to the authors.

it would be best to describe what kind of fashion like dresses, shirts,pants and is it just woman clothing or is it mens too? Please tell me more next time

From the days of John Adams, his wife, Abigail, commented in David McCullough's book about those times, how impressed she was with the fashions of the day in Paris and England at the time, but would never have worn such fashion here in America. The reasons she gave in her letters were that 1)America was mostly "puritans," and/or 2) poor so that much of the European fashion industry was alien to this country where women had to make do with simpler garments. Over the years, it's possible we have not had a clear vision of what constitutes female fashion to its fussiest and frilliest advantage. What little there was in the 1920's 1940's gave way to the men's wear fashions of today where women are taught to compete with men by wearing similar styles, sadly. The ability to manufacture more cheaply now could encourage a revival of designs that challenged Americans throughout her history that the times now may be right for, though not necessarily a return to Victorian times. "Play clothes," especially for women could be much more imaginative and fun, and perhaps women deserve that privilege without having to dress like men even while competing with them in business. Should femininity be so restrained as to make women anomalous and obscure in 2002 as to be nearly a uniform?

When you found this book, I hope you were not expecting beautiful photos of French Country or Classic styles of interior design. Instead, this book is the equivalent of a bad art house movie. It has out-of-focus pictures of grungy looking rooms taken at unflattering camera angles in bad lighting.

If you are someone who likes to polish up "diamonds in the rough," you may like this book. Because I think only people that can look at junk and find some intrinsic value in it will like this book. However, those people will probably like the book titled Big City Junk better.

This book is an original. Ms. Nabokov uses special film (purposely chosen, from a lot of film no longer available) to document various creative people's living rooms--people who are rich and some who are not so rich. She did a similar book called "New York Living Rooms." The rooms have no people in them, and Ms. Nabokov prefers owners would do no touch up of their spaces, when notified that she will be photographying their living rooms. The people covered are jazz players, designers, literary people--many names one would recognize. There is a subtlety to her technique. When I saw "NY Living Rooms," I snatched it up, and could not wait for "Paris Living Rooms." I was not disappointed. Going through the book puts me in a reverie of sorts. Some rooms are natural and show they are not the work of design "experts," whereas others are worthy of design magazines. The common element is that the personality of the owner shows through, even without the person being present. The combination of high end and low end makes for interesting viewing, and also makes me feel a bit like a voyeur, looking into someone's living room, unobserved. I will buy any future volumes by Ms. Nabokov.

No, this is not a book about "learning to speak French", as the subtitle indicates -- rather it is a book about a man trying to overcome his linguistic shortcomings in fluently speaking the French language, while skewering the Alliance Francaise (language school), French scholars of Descartes, and French bureaucracy, all in one extended essay (too short to be dignified as a "book", really). It passes all understanding that the author believes that anyone other than his nearest and dearest care about his traumas in taking French lessons or being snubbed by his fellow scholars in Paris (or being stung by a yellow jacket in the good old U.S. of A., for that matter). A total waste of a long afternoon. Watson and the reading public would have been better served had he just bought a set of Pimsleur CDs and then shut up.

When Richard Watson tries to learn to speak French decades after having learned to read it fluently, he has trouble. He tries very hard, hires a tutor, labors hours every day over exercises and audio tapes, but it just won't come. He spends months in France and still, he can't pass his exam.

Watson is a philosopher, therefore he must analyze the situation to death. He dissects his failure, perhaps it is because French sounds un-masculine, maybe he doesn't like the French, perhaps it is something deeper. Well, seeing as how he has evidence that his French really has improved by the time he leaves France, maybe he just set his goals unrealistically high.

The self-analysis gets tedious sometimes, but the story is interesting and understandable. Everyone has difficulty learning something, no matter how smart they are. And the observations of different cultures are eye-opening. Watson's story about an American who speaks fluent Japanese, traveling in Japan, being refused lodging in an inn because he didn't speak Japanese, even though the lengthy conversation with the proprietor took place entirely in Japanese, was amusing.

This title is bad. The "Extra Smart Pages" Star Wars title is great, light years better than this one. It is elaborate and complex, whereas this title is mundane, barely a step above your basic "push this button, get a lame sound" type book. The cover says it features the voice of Meg Ryan, but it doesn't sound like her to me. Regardless, the vocal performance on this title is limp, no panache or quality at all. Ok, I'm a 40 year old technoid who enjoys excellence, so maybe this would be good for a 4 year old who loved the movie, but I can't see it. The "Smart Pages" are just your basic "press here, get a sound" type books. The "Extra Smart Pages" are much better, pressing any given button will give you different sounds or variations depending on what you are doing at the time. That is, if the content authors made the effort to use the "Extra" smart portion of the pages. These authors did not. Of the 4 I own, "Anasthasia" is the worst, "My School is Cool" is good, "Hercules" is very good, and "Star Wars" is excellent. Enjoy.

This is a great book for first & second graders. It talks to the kids and prompts them with questions about what is displayed on the page. The voices are from the movie, and the locations of the answers change each time the page activity is read. There are only 5 pages, but the book will still keep kids engaged during many, many sessions. This is a great value. Having seen the movie helps, but is not at all necessary. Overall, this is a keeper.

Disorganized, laughably trendy in language, completely without a discernable argument, and remarkably passionless in describing momentous historical movements. Green chooses a great subject--the effects of the textile industry on the working classes in New York and Paris--does significant primary and secondary research, and then completely botches the write-up.

Even graduate students doing the same type of research will have a hard time getting anything out of this book. Avoid at all costs.

I thoroughly enjoyed "Ready-to-Wear and Ready-to-Work", Nancy L. Green's erudite and expansive study of a century of the garment industry in Paris and New York. I've worn clothes for most of my life, but never knew much about where they come from. Now I do. Clothes don't come from stores-- they come from people, piece by piece. People with a story to tell.

Green's vastly-researched work is not only a history of the people, usually immigrants, often Jews, who have populated the garment industry. It is also a social history, an economic history and a technological history. The book is not an easy read-- it is a complex analysis of complex topics-- but it is a worthwhile read. Green successfully weaves the topics into a fabric of consistently excellent quality from beginning to end.

I found the book fascinating. I recommend it to anyone who wears clothes. Naked people probably won't be interested.

How could a book writen by a good writer and a interesting man, with great subjects, books, history, education, ever be so boring? If this is what memoirs have come down to they need to be outlawed. I understand that writing about oneself is difficult indeed, and very few have pulled it off, but this is brutal. This gets my worse book of the year award. 0 stars

Books, education, thinking, and even history itself, have been collectively buried under. There is too much undifferentiated mush, a constant rush of gabbing plenty at the beleaguered individual. From under the rubble comes Victor Brombert's valiant memoir, a classic of pinpoint remembrance, a fully humane celebration of the potency of, well, something or other. For "Trains of Thought" is profoundly self-deprecating, a miraculous occurence for a fully vested professor of the highest rank. Brombert's magisterial touch with the very act of writing brings the proper lighting to every cinematic scene. "Trains of Thought" is a gift to succeeding generations, to the remaining intelligentsia, and to states whose recent horrid past is so little understood. Scholarly work on World War II, filling ocean tankers by now, cannot approach the vivid yet conflicted remembrances of a participant/onlooker. Surely there is an element of delusion in Brombert's infatuation with the representations of high culture as they apply to immense political events, but all human affairs are conducted with such vainglorious positionings. This is a towering memoir, in a almost literal sense - humanity has the chance, through this book, to look down upon the events of those times, and see what it couldn't see before: itself. Families. Schools. Boys and girls. Social events. Mass political insanity. Fathers and mothers. Death. Survival.