How to Read Music: Fundamentals of Music Notation Made Easy Review

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How to Read Music: Fundamentals of Music Notation Made Easy ReviewIn the first part, the book covers the basic notation in detail, step by step. Author asks you to do a review and make sure you know all the previous material before attempting musical sight reading exercises. The second part of the book covers the more complex notation found in the classical pieces. It is more fast paced because the author assumes that a reader has accumulated the knowledge from the first part. At the end, there are: a directory of musical signs, a directory of all notes on the piano and guitar, and a short musical dictionary. Very handy reference.
Are there better books on the topic? I do not know. I'm not an expert. In my opinion the book does what it advertises. You'll certainly learn how to read the music. Price is really acceptable. Check out the reviews for other books of Roger Evans. Rather impressive. Then judge for yourself.
I'll give it five stars.How to Read Music: Fundamentals of Music Notation Made Easy Overview

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Ditch Medicine: Advanced Field Procedures For Emergencies Review

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Ditch Medicine: Advanced Field Procedures For Emergencies ReviewIf one normally carries adrenaline doses, I.V. needles, bags, tubes, and other medical paraphinalia including a wide rage of antibotics into the field with one's self, then this is the book for him or her.
Frankly I was disappointed with the content of this book. I was looking for a book that would educate me on the do's and don't's of treating a wounded person in the wild, away from any hospital or civilization, and with just the bear neccessitites. Instead, what I got was a book that assumes it's readers carry drugs and anti-biotics around with them. This book would be a great field guide for an EMT.Ditch Medicine: Advanced Field Procedures For Emergencies Overview

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Hedge Funds For Dummies Review

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Hedge Funds For Dummies ReviewI hate to admit but this book is actually pretty good. Being a financial professional as well as marginally positively biased towards the hedge fund industry, the publication of this book initially caused laughter as well as sadness in the industry. The title alone is cause for laughter: Hedge Funds for Dummies. Hilarious. It is also sad: The industry becoming mainstream so fast is somewhat sad in a sense that it loses some of its exclusivity.
The target audience is not, as the title rhetorically suggests, idiots but reasonably educated and curious people (essentially people who buy books for the purpose of acquiring knowledge and insight rather than public display). The reason for this book getting five stars is the following: Most books on hedge funds are written either by academics or practitioners. The books written by academics are quite often perceived as hoax by the investment profession because the content is abstract and dogmatic, i.e., a desperate attempt to fit the hedge fund phenomena into the corset of old paradigms such as "relative return investing" and EMH and CAPM whereas it too often transpires that the authors never have come even close to visiting or experiencing the dynamics of a trading floor in the real world. Books by practitioners on the hand often lack rigor and occasionally lack a sense for understanding the other side, i.e., the investors and their needs, requirements and constraints. Hedge Fund for Dummies finds an attractive balance. A balance between explaining or highlighting the theory including where the theory breaks down or is a poor description of investment reality on one hand and having the investor in mind on the other.
In addition, we all would seriously be better off if this book were required reading for US Congress.
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Understanding by Design, Expanded 2nd Edition Review

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Understanding by Design, Expanded 2nd Edition ReviewWith respect to some of the previous reviewers, I really don't think they have done justice to this book. I'll completely expose my inner geek and admit that curriculum design is fascinating to me, and add that I own a considerable number of books on the topic. I am particularly interested in differentiating curricula, and I purchase books about educational theory and classroom ideas the way other women purchase shoes--insatiably. I have constantly challenged myself to create personalized lessons with meaningful learning goals throughout my teaching career, but I will say that this book has definitely changed the way I view teaching and curricular design--and for the better.
I liked this book because it embraces the numerous messy variables that exist in the real world of teaching, and provides a template for you to construct meaningful, integrated learning activities for students. These messy variables include differing student interests and abilities, the struggle to keep activities engaging as well as applicable to important premises of a given discipline, as well as logistical restraints, such as time and access to resources. Other models provide neat flow charts that look beautiful, but often prove unusable given a unique teaching situation (and who doesn't have a unique teaching situation?) This philosophy expects messy variability, and gives a vision and a plan to work with that, instead of hoping everything will turn out neatly.
Here are some of the huge ideas I got from this book. First, it is essential to clarify the "so what?" of whatever you are teaching--the big ideas, the principles of the field, the "It" things you want students to come away with. I have always done this instinctively, but I have not been so great about communicating those principles clearly and repeatedly to students (and parents and colleagues). The idea that students can be actively involved in the philosophy and understanding behind the curricular design (as well as, of course, make choices as part of the lessons), was a light bulb for me. Also, teaching often tends to become scattered with lots of facts and pressure to "cover" information, and clarifying these big ideas and working from there makes intuitive sense--if it doesn't connect to the big ideas you've established as critical, then the lesson doesn't belong. Perhaps these ideas seem like huge "duh" statements, but in the real world of teaching, I think very few people manage to adequately establish the critical issues, articulate and refer to them with students, and connect them to related ideas throughout the term. This book really is a valuable resource for doing the hard, thinking work that teachers really are capable of doing. It provides direction in an environment bound by paperwork and directives that have us running in circles. It is not the idea of backward design that's revolutionary, but the practicality of the technique that aligns so well with what good teachers instinctively know works best.
The reviewer who took issue with the philosophy as being problematic because it was inherently incapable of being truly student-driven raises an interesting point, but I'm not sure it's really a downfall of the book. There are very few schools (with a notable exception profiled on 60 Minutes some years ago) which allow students to determine what they will study based solely on their interests. I appreciate the question, and it's a worthy one to discuss--after all, is it only worthwhile to investigate and learn about things that really interest us? Or should every person be responsible for a core set of knowledge before branching into specialization in a field? Most schools operate with the latter premise and have requisite standards to be met, so a student-driven curriculum is not an option for most teachers. Further, a central tenet of the book relates to designing curricula so that students will "uncover" truths--rather than having a teacher or textbook "tell it" to them--students uncover meaning in an authentic way as it relates to a given topic in a discipline. To me, this is meaning-making--learning--at its best.
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Learning the Tarot: A Tarot Book for Beginners Review

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Learning the Tarot: A Tarot Book for Beginners ReviewI have been Tarot'ing for many years. I spent ridiculus amounts of money on tarot how to's and general tarot books and ended up giving most of them away for lack of basic but comprehensive information one can really use, something down to earth and realistic that really spoke to me and could help me bond with my cards and most importantly, understand them and their meanings. A book that could be used as a springboard alongside what I already intuitively knew, something that would help guide you and not leave you feeling overwhelmed with learning all the minor and major arcana in the deck set with so much fluffy stuff or on the flip side, heavy unimportant ramblings. Finally, I found this wonderful book. Its brillant, its simple, its warm and user friendly. Illustrations with Universal Rider Waite make it the first book you should pick up if you have this deck or are thinking about buying it. Sections are divided up into Lessons, Principles of Interpretation, Exercises, Suggestions for exercises, card descriptions and follows to the end with minor arcana, Celtic Cross Spread and informative appendices. I love the format and the fact that this book is big on comprehension, small on extra tarot chit chat book filler. The exercises alone are stellar, unique to ponder and work at. all in all, a tarot-tastic book! A must have for the beginner, a must have for your tarot book collections! An asset in assisting your tarot travels.Learning the Tarot: A Tarot Book for Beginners Overview

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Writing the Breakout Novel Review

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Writing the Breakout Novel ReviewI'm a published author with a division of Random House. I wondered what this book might have to offer, after hearing great things about it from amateurs to pros.
My response is two-fold. Yes, I'm one of the midlist authors that Maass addresses, and I did find some true--albeit painful--comments that pertain to my mediocre success. The man knows the market and the publishing industry. Don't let artistic snobbery keep you from seeing the realities that he portrays here. I still have much to learn, and some of those lessons have started with the reading of this book.
On the other hand, the book is focused on commercial success. Like many others, I get suspicious when I see Nicholas Sparks mentioned as one of the examples of a breakout novelist. In a world of Starbucks and WalMarts, do we really want every writer to break things down to the same commercial aspects? I don't.
I have novels in stores; I've earned money (though not enought to live on) from this side job; and ohhhh, how I'd love to make a great living at it. As Maass points out, though, those who want to move past the midlist must adhere to certain principles of great storytelling. Great writers are not always great storytellers. Joining the two crafts can create miraculous things, and this book has challenged me to do so. Putting aside my artistic differences, I believe it can be done.Writing the Breakout Novel Overview

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Art for Dummies Review

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Art for Dummies ReviewI give Art for Dummies one star for its one good piece of advice: to immerse yourself in art, to rely on your own eyes rather than on the opinions of others, and to go look at original works, rather than photographs, whenever possible. That's what I've told my Art History students for years. However, IDG Books is aggressively marketing this manual for use as a college textbook or a supplemental reading assignment, and the thought of putting it into the hands of undergraduates, especially intro.-level students, makes my blood run cold. A number of reviewers have commented on the lack of adequate illustrations. I might add that not only are they few, grainy, and postage-stamp size, but a lot of them are printed backward. What really bothers me, though, is the number of careless errors in the text. I'm not talking here about matters of opinion or interpretation, but of documented fact. On Page 5, there is a section with the heading "The Temple of Apollo at Olympia." The temple at Olympia was dedicated to Zeus, not Apollo, although Apollo appears on the sculptural decoration of the pediment. There's a really important difference in Greek religion between the supreme god of Olympus and one of his sons! And on page 48, we learn that " . . . while the Parthenon was being completed, other grandiose artistic achievements were happening. One was the invention of lost-wax bronze casting . . . The sculptor Polykleitos is probably responsible for this method . . . " BULLS**T! Greek historians credit the invention of lost-wax casting to two craftsmen on the island of Samos who lived at least a century earlier than Polykleitos, but Egyptians and Mesopotamians had mastered this technique even earlier. One thing's for sure: competently cast life-sized bronze statues existed in the Greek world long before ground was even broken for the Parthenon, because the Charioteer of Delphi (illustrated by Hoving on page 42! ) can be dated by the evidence of an inscription to 470 or earlier. Polykleitos benefitted from at least a century of workshop tradition in bronze-casting. He was a great and innovative artist, but his influence lay in his system of proportions and treatment of the body in motion, not in casting technology. Now, admittedly, ancient art is not Hoving's field, but shouldn't he at least have asked colleagues in other areas to review his chapters for him when he ventured outside his own area? And shouldn't he have done a little fact-checking for himself? I can just imagine the frustrating conversations in store for any professor who assigns this to college students: "Professor, you made a mistake! It isn't the temple of Zeus at Olympia, it's the temple of Apollo. It says so right here in the book." Students tend to trust what they see in print over what they hear in lectures. I have nothing against the concept of a breezy, informal book about art that avoids a pretentious tone or specialized jargon. But a handbook on art can't be slapped together quickly in the way that a manual for a computer-program can. "WordPerfect 8 for Dummies" will be obsolete as soon as the next upgrade comes out (maybe it already is?), but if the Dummies series is going to venture into other areas, they should give their contributors the time and editorial assistance to do it right.Art for Dummies Overview

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Home Theater For Dummies Review

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Home Theater For Dummies ReviewI went out and got Home Theater for Everyone (Harley), Build Your Home Theater in a Weekend (Bruyn/Karabian), The Complete Idiot's Guide to Home Theater Systems (Miller), Use Your PC to Build An Incredible Home Theater System (Farkas and Govier), and Home Theater for Dummies (Briere and Hurley). (I've posted this review in each of the books).
There's a clear difference among these books, and approaches. In order, I would get these books:
1. (tie) Home Theater for Everyone; Home Theater for Dummies. This surprised me. I've heard a lot about Harley's book and it is great. It's getting dated though, and some stuff was simply way over my head for what I'm going to do with my home theater. But it's one of those books you have to read even if you don't understand a lot of it (and mind you, I've got seven computers in my house, a 100Meg LAN, multiple wireless systems, etc...I'm not scared of technical stuff.) It's not so much not understanding it, as much as it is that a lot of it while important to a magazine editor such as Harley, it's not something that you're going to use in putting in your home theater.
Home Theater for Dummies surprised me. I must say, I found it incredibly well researched, practical, and more homey and less academic than Harley's book. I think the title would keep a lot of the HT mags from reviewing it, thinking it beneath them. And the authors clearly know how to have fun (they have sections on how to create your own drive-in and another on bathroom theater.) They cover home theater PCs and Windows XP Media Center PCs, as well as wireless projectors -- so this is truly up to day at publication time because these are relatively new things. (Harley's book does not even mention HTPCs and gives relatively small coverage to personal video recorders (PVRs) which HT for Dummies covers well. I'd say just get this book, but no one would believe me.
3. User Your PC To Build An Incredible Home Theater System. This is a niche book for the techies that like to build their own PCs. Sort of like me :-) I found it knowledgeable and fun, but like I said, you would not buy this book to build a home theater.
4. The Complete Idiots Guide to Home Theater Systems. I liked this book's coverage of budgets and little facts in the book. However there was nothing on HTPCs, the pricing is already dated, and there was nothing in it not covered in Home Theater for Dummies. So if I have to choose between being a Dummy or an Idiot, I'd say I'm a Dummy.
5. Build Your Home Theater In A Weekend. This was basically a waste of money. It was a nice effort, but outclassed by the competition above. It's not worth a longer review.
If you are looking to put a home theater in your home, I'd recommend Harley and Briere/Hurley. Briere/Hurley also wrote Smart Homes for Dummies which they referenced in the HT book -- I'm getting that now, because it basically tells me how to extend my home theater all over the house. Since I spent a lot of money on my home theater, I'm betting, based on HT4Dummies, that their book is worth the $$$.
My two cents.Home Theater For Dummies Overview

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Verbal Command - Increasing your Potential One Word at a Time (Audio Success Suite) Review

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Verbal Command - Increasing your Potential One Word at a Time (Audio Success Suite) ReviewIt is good; however, there is no instruction for how all words are spelled. It will be better if a list of words provided with the product. It is very hard to listen to new word and not so sure how it is spelled.Verbal Command - Increasing your Potential One Word at a Time (Audio Success Suite) Overview

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SQL Server 2000: A Beginner's Guide (Book/CD-ROM) Review

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SQL Server 2000: A Beginner's Guide (Book/CD-ROM) ReviewThis book provides a solid, useful introduction to SQL Server 2000. The coverage is comprehensive and informative. The writing is mostly clear and accessible though I was unable to understand a few points that the author covered. Very few books attempt to cover the Transact-SQL language, database concepts, and server administration in one volume and this one does it fairly successfully.
You have to be pretty determined to make it through this book. The author covers a lot of ground and I did not find it to be particularly engaging. I coaxed myself through by reading chapters from the section on system administration in parallel with the earlier chapters on SQL language, syntax, and queries that were pretty dry. I didn't want to skip anything because I did not want to miss any of the new features of SQL 2000.
It is clear from this book that the big change between SQL Server versions was between 6.5 and 7.0. The continuity between 7.0 and 2000 stood out in this reading. There are significant changes - from data types to syntax to utilities and more, but for those who are familiar with 7.0 the latest version will feel pretty comfortable.
I rated the 7.0 version of this book 4 stars and this one 3 stars. Actually the book is about as good as the previous one but I have read a lot of SQL Server books since then and my expectations have risen. This isn't a bad book but it is among the dullest treatments I have encountered.
Is this a good book for beginners? Yes. Many readers want a one-volume source and this one meets that need. If you want to learn SQL Server this book offers the basic education you need. A few sections will make no sense to a beginner. They made little sense to me and I'm not a beginner anymore. But if you keep at it by the end you will have a good general understanding and ability with SQL Server 2000.
I picked up this book to prepare for Microsoft's beta exam on SQL Server 2000. Pre-test I think it does a pretty good job of covering material. While I found it boring I appreciated the review of Transact-SQL. I spend more time troubleshooting problems than writing scripts so I had gotten a little rusty. A reader who is up to speed on SQL Server basics might skip over the first two sections of the book to concentrate on the sections that deal with system administration, analysis services, full-text search, and XML support where more new stuff is introduced. What is new in the first two sections is very minor.SQL Server 2000: A Beginner's Guide (Book/CD-ROM) Overview

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Edge of Darkness: The Art, Craft, and Power of the High-Definition Monochrome Photograph Review

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Edge of Darkness: The Art, Craft, and Power of the High-Definition Monochrome Photograph ReviewAfter fifty years of dabbling in making pictures (starting with Size 116 and 127 Roll films), I have a library full of photographic textbooks, 'coffee table' books, and other specialist photographic publications.
Most books I bought new. Some were already classics when I bought them secondhand. Some rate well enough to be used (read) again and again. Others languish - gathering dust- on the bottom shelf, often simply because I cannot throw any book away. Let's face it, there are some very ordinary books sold as 'the answer to a photographer's prayers'. I have my share of them.
I think Barry Thornton's book,'Edge of Darkness', gets my 'top shelf' award for 2002, and may be on that top shelf for many years. This man writes common sense, in simple terms, and backs his words with recorded deeds. His pictures are nice. I like the way he explains the emotions behind the recording of the images, and the mechanics he employs to produce great negatives. These aspects are key. Once you have a fine negative, time is on your side to make a great picture. And how you approach the making of the negative image, emotionally and technically, will determine the final result.
(Show me a printmaker who says he gets a perfect result first time and I'll show you someone who should be in politics.)
If you want a very informative and readable book, well written, and illustrated with good examples of the Black and White craft, you should buy this book. If you heed Mr Thornton's words, you are bound to benefit in your craft.
"Edge of Darkness" is a very good read.Edge of Darkness: The Art, Craft, and Power of the High-Definition Monochrome Photograph Overview

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Medical Sign Language: Easily Understood Definitions of Commonly Used Medical, Dental, and First Aid Terms Review

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Medical Sign Language: Easily Understood Definitions of Commonly Used Medical, Dental, and First Aid Terms ReviewThis dictionary helps address an important issue in medical communication: Just because you or the interpreter knows the correct sign for a medical term doesn't mean your deaf patient does. This spiral bound book is designed to be laid flat on a table during a medical interview. It not only illustrates the proper signs, it also gives definitions of medical terms in plain English. In addition, it defines many terms which would need to be fingerspelled because they have no established signs. There are anatomical diagrams in the back to assist with explanations as well. It does not discuss grammar and doesn't address Deaf culture as it relates to medical care, so it is not intended as a stand-alone book for medical professionals or interpreting students.Medical Sign Language: Easily Understood Definitions of Commonly Used Medical, Dental, and First Aid Terms Overview

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