Frankly, this book is a disappointment
349807
This book didn't live up to my expectations.  Other reviewers took issue because of the Lutzer's faith-based approach,  but I went out looking for a book centered on grace, and was disappointed with what I found.  The first few chapters are infused with simplistic anecdotes of how various people were abused by others.  I had a friend who felt people wronged him, two sisters grew apart over time, a friend of mine relayed a tragic tale of a young man he knew that was wronged at a mission conference.  Enough already.  Can we at least stick to 2nd person accounting?  I set this book down and have not returned to it.  A waste of time, money and a great title.
2646078
I had high hopes for this book, but it has been a big disappointment.  Its subtitle is "A History of mAncient Rome," but it is not a history.  Rather, it is a string of disconnected miniature essays on Roman subjects.  Quite a few of the essays are interesting, but I would rather have had a conventional history.  Moreover, the book has many errors in grammar and diction.  They resemble the errors that I used to correct when I taught Freshman English.  The author and the editor have insufficient knowledge of the English language.

  a reader
361901
I was very disappointed with this book.  The first chapter is by far the most interesting as it goes into detail about the birds, their prey, and how they were trained.  The remaining chapters are nothing more than lists of falconers, what they were paid, and the types and colors of birds that the various kings received as gifts.  I felt as if I was reading the same chapter over and over again.

I wish the author had drawn more upon the various hunting manuscripts and works of art depicting royal hunts and less upon rolls and inventories in order to give at least some sense of what a royal hunt with falcons might have been like.  Given that the further back one goes in history, the more sparse the records, perhaps the very linear chronological approach Oggins used was not the way to go.

Read this book for the first chapter, but if you want to get a much better sense of what medieval royal hunts were like, read John Cummin's&nbsp;<a data-hook="product-link-linked" class="a-link-normal" href="/The-Art-of-Medieval-Hunting-The-Hound-and-the-Hawk/dp/0785815929/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8">The Art of Medieval Hunting: The Hound and the Hawk</a>, or better yet,&nbsp;<a data-hook="product-link-linked" class="a-link-normal" href="/Medieval-hunting-scenes-The-Hunting-Book-by-Gaston-Phoebus-Illuminated-Manuscripts/dp/B0007C73AQ/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8">Medieval hunting scenes: ("The Hunting Book" by Gaston Phoebus) [Illuminated Manuscripts</a>] and&nbsp;<a data-hook="product-link-linked" class="a-link-normal" href="/The-Master-of-Game/dp/0812219376/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8">The Master of Game</a>.
3784680
Being a lifelong Red Sox fan, I had great hopes for this book when I first saw it. Unfortunately, it didn't take many pages of reading for me to be totally disappointed in so many ways that it's difficult to know where to start. For those who are considering purchasing this book, it's format is that of each chapter being devoted to the rememberances of one particular player. Each chapter is then presented as being "in the words of the player". The author really does very little writing himself.

To begin with, it appears that this book was developed from the author sending out a standard questionnaire to as many living former Red Sox players as he could find. It doesn't appear that he actually spoke with or interviewed any of them, and there are some glaring omissions: Jim Rice, Fred Lynn, Carl Yastrzemski, and Carlton Fisk to name just a few from my generation. If they didn't respond, it would have been nice had the author tracked a few of them down. All of this would still have been fine if the author then took the responses he did get and attempted to weave them into a narrative, but he clearly failed to do so. Within each chapter, paragraphs jump from one topic to another with no rhyme or reason. Each chapter itself thus comes off as disjointed. After awhile, you can kind of guess what the question was by the answer given, but this is annoying at best. An improvement would have been if the author inserted the relevant questions that the players answered instead of just diving into those answers. And I'm sure he would have done so, but in so doing he would have let the reader see that all the questions were the exact same for every player. Further, not all players answered all questions, and some answered in greater detail than others, resulting in some chapters that are two pages long vs. some that go on much longer. In relation to some players' answers, followup questions begged to be asked, but never were. The end result is that the book is not so much "authored" as it is "transcribed". Any sixth grader with a little initiative probably could have created something approximating the author's end result... and probably could have done it better.

Another huge problem with this book is that, apparently, there was no one to do even the most fundamental of fact-checking. Names are mis-spelled or incorrect throughout. For example, Birdie Tebbetts is referred to as "Bernie" Tebbetts. Mistakes of this ilk go on and on and on. Place names are mis-spelled throughout as well, and in a few cases where players recount the years they played, the numbers don't add up. For example, this gem from page 52. In one paragraph, it reads "Gedman in the first two-plus months of 1990 was able to play in only ten games for the Bosox...". The very next sentence then says "Then on June 7, 1989, Rich Gedman's time with Boston came to an end". Beautiful. The end result of all this was that I wondered how many more incorrect dates were in there that I didn't even notice, since they were way before my time. In effect, no dates could be trusted.

Finally, the chapters are presented in alphabetized order of the players' last names. I might be being picky on this one, but it would have been easier to read had the chapters been presented in chronological order instead. After jumping from the 80s to the 50s to the 70s to the 30s and back to the 80s again, your head starts to spin.

If you do buy this book, be aware that at best it's a vaguely accurate trip down memory lane. At worst it will drive you crazy. I would guess that none of the facts within the players' narratives were ever checked either. So... read the book to bring back some of your own memories, but don't take anything in it as gospel.
2328957
An incredible disappointment. Cantor's book is little more than an unfocused, triumphalism-drenched, just-so story that ends up as a hagiography of medieval history itself. His sweeping claims lack any citations or footnotes. His cultural analysis is simple to the point of parody, with sentences like, "Everyone [in the middle ages] held in great honor and esteem the kings and their royal families." His historical analysis ends up being little more than a Great Men of History review of the Plantagenets, even with an attempt to devote one chapter to persecuted Jews and another to the Peasant Revolt of 1381, which skips over most of the uprising's salient details.

But the worst thing about this book is how pleased it is to remind you that freedom and capitalism are logical, nearly divinely-ordained, bedfellows. in his own words, "Thirteenth-century English society learned how interconnected were freedom and capitalism." He characterizes medieval serfs as largely contented with their situations, well-fed, and for the later serfs (14th century) able to purchase their way to yeomanship simply by being party to a lawsuit and paying the taxes and fees associated therewith. Cantor's analysis is simultaneously so puerile and facile that the book feels like it was written on a deadline, by someone who was established enough to simply make things up.

Do not read this book if you are interested in learning things about the plague.
4351416
I recently checked out this book (among others) from the local library prior to a trip to Oahu. For my trip, I was disappointed by this book, and found this to be one of the less-useful ones.

First, this book was largely useless because the author omitted almost any information about accessing different tourist sites through Hawaii's tourist-packed mass transit system, The Bus. Most tourists I met relied on mass transit and tour buses. What good is a guidebook if you don't know how (or whether) you can get to the things the author mentions?

Secondly, the author frequently lacks discernment and context in his suggestions. For example, the Waikiki Shopping Plaza is listed as offering "about a dozen [budget] ethnic and American restaurants", without context. When I visited, I discovered the usual set of food court fry pits that could be found in any American shopping mall. Why would anyone interested in "Hidden Hawaii" be interested in these?

Needless to say, I rapidly tossed this book in my hotel room, and carried around the Rough Guide around. Thud.
1974447
As much as I respect Bill Miller's tremendous record and unconventional approach to value investing, I have to say that this book is a big disappointment.  Fortunately, it's not his fault.  Because unlike many other books that are co-written by successful investors and their journalistic co-author, Janet Lowe appears to have tackled this project mostly on her own.  And it shows.  The book reads like one long Fortune magazine article.  I was hoping to better understand the intricacies of Miller's thought process and investment approach.  Instead, Janet Lowe borrows from practically every other journalist who has interacted with Miller, goes off on confusing tangents covering technological and economic theories, and then feebly attempts to glue all of these quotes and discussions into a coherent portrayal of Miller's philosophy, falling well short of that goal.  I've read investment classics by former greats (Peter Lynch, Marty Zweig, Jim Rogers) and I can say with little doubt that this one doesn't cut the mustard.
To give you a flavor before you decide whether to buy the book, consider the following:
- The real text of the book is about 160 pages (not 262).  Lowe wastes 50 pages highlighting two dozen stocks with outdated valuation numbers, a bare bones line chart with no volume, color, or an indication of where Miller's transactions took place, and a razor thin assessment from Miller which appears to be borrowed from his previous comments.  Useless.
- Miller's approach to portfolio management isn't seriously discussed until p. 79 (halfway into the book) and you don't get any serious stock analysis until p. 112
- Lowe makes several erroneous statements, such as claiming that Microsoft Word is packaged free with most computers (news to me - and probably to Microsoft) and that AOL beat Prodigy by giving away its browser for free (uh, wasn't that Microsoft killing Netscape?).  She also butchers the concept of "pro forma" earnings, even suggesting with one statement that fraudulently booking sales is simply dressing up the numbers.
Why give it two stars instead of one?  Simply because I believe that any text you can get on Bill Miller is worth something.  I had already read a lot about Miller and I understand new economy principles like "network effects" and "winner take most" markets.  So, I found the book repetitive and would not have bought it knowing what I know now.  If you've had less exposure to Bill Miller, then the book may still be worth reading.  But keep your expectations low.
1198059
I was disappointed in this book. It looks self-published and seems to be printed on demand. Firstly, there is no index. Secondly, the body text is double-spaced and rendered in a san-serif font. Thirdly, there are ambiguous technical descriptions, like the author's description of bandwidth, which he describes as influencing not the transmission speed of a network circuit, but the volume of data sent. Say what? An example of a volumetric unit of measurement is a liter or a gallon. Packets have lengths in bytes but not volume. The author did not mention frequency in the example. The use of acronyms is inconsistent. The convention is to spell the term on first use followed by the commonly-used acronym in parentheses; for example, gigahertz (GHz). Another odd quirk was the use of quotations to set off keywords. Quotations, quotations everywhere, ignoring the convention in American English to place trailing commas or periods within the closing quotation mark. It's not necessary to capitalize Hexadecimal (sic). And beware of the exclamation mark in the subtitle. Yahoo! does it but nobody else should. It won't sell more copies. On a positive note, I found chapter four, Industrial Plant Networks, the most useful. But the author needs a competent technical editor and the book will undoubtedly be improved.
362830
I really wanted what this book promised, what it held out to me in the "search inside" feature - but the deficiencies in style, content, and format are severe enough to warrant a serious warning against purchasing this book, or at the very least, this edition.

The text is written like new-age spiritual guidance lit - there are gaps in logic everywhere, and every argument is based off of a story instead of a fact. Providing some acuity on a color or its psychological effects would be what I would expect from a book that costs as much as a textbook, instead, the reader is put in the mood for the upcoming chapter with descriptions of color that read like horoscopes. Reds are divided up into "Powerful, lusty, and defiant reds," & "Anxious, angry, and romantic reds." Why not start off with cool reds and warm reds? Because you're being sold on the words, not on the colors, and not on some sort of proof.

Which leads me to the fact that there are 28 stills from films in this 243 page book. To reiterate: 243 page book on visual storytelling, 28 examples. Oh, there are some nice pictures of road signs and various other stock photos, and - no joke - some paintings the author's students made. 12 of those inside. They're kind of nice. But they are nothing more than a cheap magician's misdirection - these students come up again and again as proof that people "see" a color a certain way. Yeah, red's "anger" or "passion." I don't need a book, or someone else's experience to tell me this - I bump my head, or rub my eyes, and I see red. I want to be told how red communicates anger and passion to an audience. Simply stating that it does so is not providing me with a fact, it's providing a tautology.

Now let's look past the medium and to the message: as long as we take the emotional cues we're told to, we have a little interesting analysis underscored with flecks of color theory, but this is in fact still a problem - the text ought to be centered around the color theory; instead, the sections read like some films were screened, the author wrote down a couple obvious ideas, then filed them by color - and missed the best films and points entirely. Where is Kieslowski's COLORS trilogy? Three top-shelf films, each based around a color, ignored. Talking about the color orange in "The Godfather?" How about, I don't know, mentioning the ORANGES present when main characters are killed? No sir. How about a chapter for black, and a chapter for white? Not technically colors, sure, but we use them as and/or with colors. A lot.

If you're really considering purchasing this book, try very hard to find it at a library first. Or look up a color on wikipedia. If you're set on spending money, buy a color wheel, or simply look further for color theory.

I'm going to donate my copy to the library.
2120972
I am rather disappointed by this book, especially after

Exceptional and More Exceptional C++ which are wonderfull.

Yes, this book contain interesting information, especially about

some "dark corners" of C++. But I have the impression that the author

tried to "fill space" to make the required volume. For example in discussing

virtual/non virtual destructors he writes:

"If I had a penny for every time I've seen this debate, I could buy

 a cup of coffee" Ok, we get the idea.

but he continues: "Not just any old coffe, mind you- I could buy a

 genuine Starbucks Venti Extra Toffe Nut Latte ( my current favorite). Maybe

even two of them, if I was willing to throw in a dime of my own".

In the other place he devoted more than a page to explain the conventional

meaning of word "encapsulation" consulting several dictionaires.

Without this the book would be half of the current size
1580992
Catchy titles sell books. Sadly, I was deeply disappointed in this work. My 'prayer library' is extensive, and this is the first book on prayer that I have NOT enjoyed reading.

(1) 116 pages of nearly-double-spaced large text.  Almost a booklet.  (Translation: price far too high!)
(2) Poor or no editing. Painful! (Gross misspellings such as "Mylan" instead of myelin, who's instead of whose, wrong punctuation, sentences that aren't sentences, etc).
(3) A LOT of fluff and filler in a too-familiar conversational style, with a few good nuggets of info wedged in between.  Disjointed. Reads almost like a rough draft or 11th-hour term paper.
(4) Anecdotal evidence should serve as illustrations, not be the corpus of the work.
(5) I expected the author to emphasize that obedience comes both before and after hearing God, and is a condition (John 14:21) for disclosure.  This deserved a chapter, but was not discussed.
(6) The book seemed a "why-to", with the "how-to" relegated to five pages in the final chapter, summarized as "Get quiet, prepare your spirit, write down what you hear."  For those of us who have been practicing Listening Prayer for many years, that was extremely unsatisfying.
(7) I understand that a young person wrote the book under his dad's tutelage, but in my estimation one must write for a wider audience than one's own age group.  The style was far too flippant and casual for my tastes.
(8) I kept looking for substance and meat.  There was a lot of flavored broth that might remind one of meat, but do not choose this book if you prefer solid robust underpinnings.  It will challenge your spirit but not your intellect.

On the good side, here is what earned two stars instead of one:  (1) Bibliography contains useful works.  (2) Appendix 1 contains a handy list of many verses on healing.  (3) High school or college kids might appreciate the writing style and the "quick read" factor.  (4) Every author writes a first book; it usually is not their best.  With a strong and ruthless editor, Isaiah Kallman will improve, and his message will get out there.

I'll donate my copy to the public library.
666690
I must start by saying that I am considerably disappointed with this book.  The author spends a lot of time boasting about being a "tattooed Jew", tooting her own horn for organizing a tattoo convention in New  York, and talking about how "tattooed people are ok!" and  "bikers are just like everyone else".  There is definately too  much chatter and not enough information.  The list of tattoo studios in the  back of the book is not a very good resource, as the information there is  highly likely to change, such as addresses and phone numbers. There are a  lot of black and white photos, not "many in color!" as the back  of the book claims, and most of the pictures can be found in any number of  other books on the subject.  The book was inexpensive, and may provide some  insight into tattooing in New York, but it lacks substance and isn't worth  much more than a quick read.
4377329
straight to the point: this book was a disappointment.

i actually enjoy reading mainstream books that talk about christians. there's an almost voyeuristic fascination with finding out how we'll be portrayed. i'm often quite pleased with the depiction. a great example of this from my fairly recent reading was the young adult fiction book "evolution, me, and other freaks of nature", which (like this book) takes place in a public high school and revolves (at least partially) around a conservative church's efforts to pressure the school into their belief set. but, in freaks of nature, there were at least some of the christian characters who were portrayed in three dimmensions. another was "the year of living biblically", which -- i thought -- was very generous and gracious, even while having some fun with the extremist tendencies of some christians.

the abstinence teacher centers on the story of a liberal sex ed teacher who is forced to teach an abstinence curriculum she abhors, as a result of the pressure of a fundamentalist church lobbying the school board. a second key character is a reformed druggie who is a recent convert to this church, and the soccer coach of the central character's daughter.

problem is: the christians in the story are seriously two-dimensional. every single one of them is an idiot. well, that's not quite true: the soccer coach is a two-dimensional jerk until he starts to lose his faith -- then he becomes a fully-developed character.

i know there are idiots in christianity. i know there are churches who do the things portrayed in this book. but the book lacked because the author wasn't willing to make any of the christians with a mix of good motives and bad behavior.

bummer. could have been such a better book with a bit more complexity.
4351721
I highly anticipated this book for almost a year (even previous to its publication).  My wife begrudgingly bought me the book.  It arrived yesterday and although it is two volumes, it is still not worth the paper it's printed on. I returned it the next day.  About half of the work deals with mythical or supernatural creatures i.e. mermaids, unicorns, and the like.  The other third of the book deals with WILD MEN of a particular region.  I am so tired of wild men or ape/humanoid creatures flying in the face of evolutionary evidence.  This isn't science, it is the National Enquirer.  Also, Eberhart writes with very little skepticism, for example when he describes Patterson's film of Bigfoot he serves us a dollup of nonsense and speculation.  Almost every educated and reputable scientist/investigator considers this film now a hoax.  Also, the sections on loch monsters are nonsense as well.  Population and lake biologists repeatedly consider these lakes harboring populations of "monsters" as silly.  For two hundred bucks I expected thorough scientific scrutiny, not just field guide-type descriptions of cryptids.  The most despairing problem with the book concerns the filler material to make the book two volumes.  For instance, paragraphs and sometimes pages are wasted with alternate names for creatures.  While this may be good for bibliographical research, it is a complete bore and waste for most of us who were hoping for a coffee table-type book with glossy pages and beautiful pictures or artwork.  For two hundred, I also expected a more substantial and beautiful tome and more than just sixty or so pictures.  Some of the more interesting possibilities like the giant anaconda were given paragraph status.  The books would be sensibly priced at maybe forty dollars, not two hundred.  It seems as if Eberhart spent the better part of two years hunting down articles or books and consolidated the information into 700 pages of mostly boring and uninspired reading.  It would have been much more interesting if it had chapters on each purported cryptid or class of cryptid.  Alternate names and descriptions that are long-winded and listed alphabetically do not make for interesting reading.  I had expected to read the volumes cover to cover; instead I found myself just thumbing through the information for whatever seemed interesting.  Good for bathroom reading, but not much else.  Save one eighty and instead buy Matthew Bille's Rumors of Existence--if it could only be longer.
778159
I am normally a fan of baseball books, and was looking forward to reading this book. I was severely disappointed, and ended up abandoning the book about 25% of the way through it-something I rarely do. After seeing all the other positive reviews, I am honestly not sure I was reading the same book everyone else was-my review is based on the Kindle version.

It starts with a forward written years after the book, telling the reader how important this work was, and how groundbreaking it was in its day. No doubt it was, but it sort of ruins the "surprise" of the book, and quite frankly come across as overly self-serving.

The remainder of the book seems to be constructed of day-by-day notes of what Jim Bouton was thinking. He covers all topics, from voyeurism from hotel rooftops to his battles with pitching coaches over knuckleballs.

The problem is that his thoughts are about one paragraph long. Some stretch to two paragraphs, and there is maybe one or two that take up a whole page-but the vast majority of them are two sentence blurbs about some topic that immediately transition into a totally different topic, only marginally related. The first quarter of the book is nothing but these short little blurbs. It is like reading a essay written by someone with ADHD- or spending an afternoon with a senile uncle.

I couldn't get through it, and gave up.

Some of the material was interesting, although quite a bit of it was somewhat mundane and boring. No doubt back when the book was written people were shocked to find that major league owners would try to skimp on salaries by a few thousand, and that minor league facilities were shoddy-but much of the material does not stand the test of time. Bouton's condescending attitude and smugness didn't do anything to help.
956972
I am disappointed in this book, and certainly would recommend that a beginner gain the basics of spinning elsewhere.  Admittedly, the author warns in the subtitle that it is "...a compendium of information,advice, and opinions...".  It should be regarded as such, a highly eccentric and personal set of opinions in encyclopedic form. Though laid out as if it were a step by step tutorial, it definitely is not a teaching tool. Though mostly readable, it frequently bogs down with pages of unnecessarily technical discussions, many of which dead end with an offhand comment that the complicated calculations proves that the information is irrelevant. Why include it then?

While the book is mostly readable in its parts, it is disconnected at important points, skips entire steps, goes into too much detail about things the author is particularly enamored of while ignoring others. I enjoyed his often whimsical humor, but not his tendency to set up straw arguments about a subject he disagrees with in order, apparently, to snidely dismiss it.  That got old.  I was not impressed with most of his "plans", finding them overall to be too skimpy to be of use.

Amos' book will probably remain on my fiber bookshelf as a curiousity.  I may refer to it from time to time.  But I already have several excellent books that present similar information in a more accessible, meaningful way.  One positive comment I will make is that his discussion of wool cleaning was probably the best part of the book, and explained the process and the reasoning well. It is easy to follow.  Would that the rest of the book were so.
1438144
Frankly, I was disappointed by this book.  Having been raised as a Southern Baptist, I found myself thinking more about the people and matters the author left out of the book than the material he included.  Naturally, it is quite difficult to cover the entire Bible in one normal-sized book, but I found this work to be overly simplistic and lacking in its overall presentation of the true meaning of the Bible and Christianity.  The author devotes the first two-thirds or so of the book to a presentation of the geography and history of Biblical times, coupled with a quick summation of the poetical, prophetic, and instructional books.  Having completed that task, he ends by summing up eight basic principles of the Bible.  I had expected to find the real meat of the book in this last section, but I found it sorely wanting in terms of its exposition of Christian doctrine and guidelines.  The real meaning of Jesus' life never really emerged from the pages, and the importance of faith, while addressed, was not stressed or explained as much as I would have liked or expected it to be.
Certainly, the author's motives are noble, but his desire to make this book accessible to anyone and everyone results in a dry presentation that is not very compelling.  This book would be most useful to persons without any kind of religious background, but I fear that it will not bring real understanding to most of its readers, nor do I think it will convince many sinners to seek God.  Anyone brought up as a church-goer in a Christian denomination will learn nothing he/she didn't already learn in Sunday School as a child.