Good content, dryly delivered
350822
The content of this book is valuable and a worthwhile addition to the world's research on Morocco. It is also a rather dry read. If you are interested in the facts and details you will appreciate the book. If you want to experience the life behind the events, you might be a bit disappointed.
2471232
My wife using this textbook in a masters degree program in educational technology. She says that the content is good and has been helpful in her course, but the physical quality of the textbook is disappointing. It's basically a paperback book, printed on low quality paper. For the cost of textbooks, it seems like they could do better.
832967
My 2-star review is only concerning the dryness of the content. This book was required for a class, and after attempting to read about three pages, it lost me immediately. I'm an avid reader, so, frankly...I'm not hard to please (unless it's horrible writing). But this was simply too dry and boring for me. This is also coming from someone who typically 'likes' reading textbooks (just ask my friends). I realize this book has lots of relevant and necessary content, but I could not get through more than three pages. And when I got to class, every single one of my classmates (MSW program) said the same thing. Boring, and way too confusing. The book arrived in excellent condition, and the process to rent it was wonderful. Just...zzzzzz (definitely recommend if you need something to help you fall asleep with!).
4877020
An enjoyable reading of Chesterton requires:

(1) enduring appreciation for a certain type of meandering, chatty wittiness that likes to play with words and state things in unexpected ways, offering food for thought or just an appreciative chuckle;
(2) lots of time and patience, since each page must be read with careful attention in order to "process" the style and squeeze out and absorb the serious content
(3) some sherry on the side.

Unfortunately my own reading of this work was hampered by an inadequate supply of all three of the above. I read the first few chapters with due diligence, and found the style and content quite enjoyable. Chesterton does offer many unique turns of phrase and "quotable quotes". He supplies both humour and interesting thoughts.

However, after some time I started getting impatient. My attention wandered as I became a bit fatigued of the style, which began to annoy me a bit as too long-winded. I started skimming rather than reading, then skipping pages, then chapters.

This book would be better served as a captivating and brilliant series of lectures. However, in the written medium I prefer more fast-paced and straight-forward language - I read less to enjoy the style than to get the content. That is my own fault, not Chesterton's. As an original thinker and an entertaining wordsmith, he is certainly worthy of the faithful and enthusiastic following that he has commanded since his books were written.
4258711
Great content. The index in this book is weak weak weak.
3974441
I like the content of the book, but I dislike the author's choice of words. I believe there is definitely away for grad students like me to learn about Transnational Management without having to spend extra time figuring out the meaning of words or what was being said.
By the way, I really like the case studies available in the book.
1694926
Like a lot of people, I found this book to have quite a few good bits of advice.  When you put it all together, especially if you do the homework he assigns, you will become a better speaker.  Some of the advice is stuff one should know or find obvious, but they are only obvious in hindsight. Like telling stories about yourself instead of other people.  He's right--stories about yourself are more interesting that stories about someone other than the speaker.

While the advice is pretty good, the delivery is a (oddly) rather dry.  He keeps either getting onto tangents, or just prattling on about some story that is often not very amusing.  There was a bit too much rambling which detracted from the message of the book.  I suppose to make the book long enough to charge money for, and to keep it from being a dry how-to, the stories were needed.  Overall though for advice, I would give the book 5 stars.  For readability, I docked a star.
4348811
The Author of this tome knows his stuff. (This afforded him the second star.)

That said, this book lacked a few things:
A) a decent editor: sentence structure problems abounded; words often were repeated in a manner consistent with a refining of thought in mid-sentence, but the error was not taken out,
B) more than 4 Qigong examples,
C) 85% of the book was description of things.

I really expected more instruction, what with the 4 current glowing reviews. Instead, it was a walk down memory lane, with only ONE form drawing, a couple illustrations of Qi movement, and about 3 word-picture Qi examples. None of this was within the first 50% of the book.

I read the book in less than an hour, and took a 20 minute nap in the middle of it.
4029364
This has a really important intervention against sociological and pundit-based common wisdoms about the supposed polar differences between "spiritual" and "religious."  That's three steps forward and creates an argument that needs to be widely digested and discussed.  But the descriptive chapters in the middle sections of the book are at least one step backward-- far too repetitive and at times surprisingly lame and/or limited in scope.  Stick with first couple of chapters or the article version of the same-- that's five stars.  Conclusion is worth five stars for the content and four for presentation.  As for the rest of the book, it was a let-down.
2731505
The book was useful in some respects, but was too generalised for my purpose.

However, the content was well organised and laid out.
2288495
Good content but almost difficult to consume because of the design of the book. There is a lot of empty space with tiny font. The paper is too shiny and reflective and combined with tiny font, it makes it a poor reading experience. Otherwise, would have been a great manual.
334757
I would have given this book 4 or 5 stars but the print is VERY SMALL. All the information I want is there but when my eyes are tired I have to use a magnifying glass along with my regular glasses.

Great content, poor delivery.
307240
I'd give this 5 stars for the concepts, but the way they are presented make this a long, hard slog. You can get the value out of this book by purposely skimming through it quickly.
2929270
The content of this book is solid, but the translation is a little dry in a noticeable way.
I might recommend a text that is not a translation for students speaking English.
1245434
The content is good, and will be useful to anyone who studies the book carefully and takes the time to do the exercises. This, however, will not be easy, because the exposition is poor. It is often difficult to tell what the instructions intend for you to do, and hard to tell what constitutes a recommended routine. These difficulties can be overcome if you study it patiently, have an alternative source for description or presentation of Tai Chi movements, and use your imagination. But it's tiresome.
563408
Rich in content. However, the writing style is too distracting and difficult. I had planned to stop reading it several times, but plowed through it due to the wealth of information. I am a college graduate, but this author wrote in a difficult style to an audience who likely wouldn't engage in spiritual warfare.
2303267
The content of this book was informative and relevant - I used it for an American Jurisprudence class and learned quite a bit.

The layout and production value, however, were awful. There were many typos; a call-out box would interrupt a section in mid-sentence and the other half of the sentence would be several pages ahead. This issues were incredibly distracting from trying to learn the material. Maybe this does not bother other people as much as it bothers me, but the weak production is why I rated this book as a 3. This book needs a heavy copy edit and revised layout.

Also, why were citations not in Bluebook, or at least some kind of standard format? Most people using this book are using for an introductory class to the law, so seeing properly formatted citations would have teaching value to people new to the legal field.