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BEING DEAD IS NO EXCUSE: THE OFFICIAL SOUTHERN LADIES GUIDE TO HOSTING THE PERFECT FUNERAL
Gayden Metcalfe Manufacturer: Miramax ProductGroup: Book Binding: Hardcover Similar Items:
ASIN: 1401359345 |
Customer Reviews:
Laughter.......2007-10-08
A True Gem for Those of Us Who Live It !.......2007-09-06
If you like cookbooks..........2007-08-13
Hilarious Book for Any Southern Belle!.......2007-07-27
Girls raised in the south.......2007-07-20
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It's All About the Shoes: Hope, Heartbreak and the Search for the Perfect Pair
Yvonne Williams Manufacturer: Sourcebooks, Inc. ProductGroup: Book Binding: Hardcover Similar Items:
ASIN: 1402207123 Release Date: 2007-04-01 |
Book Description
Women have a nearly universal passion for shoes! Our shoes are inseparable from our joys, heartbreaks, challenges, and dilemmas. These 50 true tales of shoe moments, memories, and mishaps reveal a wealth of humor, insight, and encouragement that every woman can appreciate. From the humorous to the heroic, the funny to the profound, the heart-warming to the heart-wrenching It's All About the Shoes. Inspiration is only as far away as your feet!Customer Reviews:
Got to Have It.......2007-08-13
Pleasant Surprise.......2007-05-22
Great Book- wonderful gift.......2007-05-12
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Corporation - Partnership - Fiduciary Filled-In Tax Return Forms (2007)
Manufacturer: CCH, Inc. ProductGroup: Book Binding: Perfect Paperback Similar Items:
ASIN: 0808015877 Release Date: 2007-02-15 |
Product Description
This popular CCH resource provides sample filled-in reproductions of several commonly-used business tax forms along helpful coordinated explanations of the tax law. Updated annually, this new edition includes discussion of law changes made by recent legislation that impacts the preparation of 2006 returns in 2007, including the latest new tax developments affecting completion of business tax returns. Current year forms and related discussions included are: - Form 1120 and schedules (corporations) - Form 1120-S (S corporations) - Form 1065 (partnerships) - Form 1041 (fiduciaries) "What's New for 2006" highlights the most significant new changes that must be addressed by tax return preparers.To help readers understand specific items on the returns and associated calculations, the filled-in forms contain cross references to the related CCH Explanations. These instructive explanations cover the separate items and schedules of each return and are keyed to the actual illustrative figures. Tax Rate Tables for Corporations and Estates and Nongrantor Trusts are also included for convenient reference. The expert CCH explanations, coordinated design elements and large format make this title the perfect quick-reference for tax return preparers and a great tool for staff training or personal brush-up for tax season.
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The Perfect Gift: The Philanthropic Imagination in Poetry and Prose
Manufacturer: University of Indianapolis Press ProductGroup: Book Binding: Paperback Similar Items:
ASIN: 0253215420 |
Book Description
This collection aims at cultivating and enlightening our philanthropic imagination. Addressing us all as philanthropists, present and future--as human beings who give and serve, seeking to promote the well being of others--its readings lead us to the basic issues we must ponder if we are to wield our philanthropic powers well: Why should I give? How should I give? To whom or for what should I give? What should I give? Can giving be taught?
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To Form a More Perfect Union: A New Economic Interpretation of the United States Constitution
Robert A. McGuire Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA ProductGroup: Book Binding: Hardcover Similar Items:
ASIN: 0195139704 |
Book Description
Many important questions regarding the creation and adoption of the United States Constitution remain unresolved. Did slaveholdings or financial holdings significantly influence our Founding Fathers' stance on particular clauses or rules contained in the Constitution? Was there a division of support for the Constitution related to religious beliefs or ethnicity? Were founders from less commercial areas more likely to oppose the Constitution? To Form a More Perfect Union successfully answers these questions and offers an economic explanation for the behavior of our Founding Fathers during the nation's constitutional founding. In 1913, American historian Charles A. Beard controversially argued in his book An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States that the framers and ratifiers of the Constitution were less interested in furthering democratic principles than in advancing specific economic and financial interests. Beard's thesis eventually emerged as the standard historical interpretation and remained so until the 1950s. Since then, many constitutional and historical scholars have questioned an economic interpretation of the Constitution as being too narrow or too calculating, believing the great principles and political philosophies that motivated the Founding Fathers to be worthier subjects of study. In this meticulously researched reexamination of the drafting and ratification of our nation's Constitution, Robert McGuire argues that Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, George Mason and the other Founding Fathers did act as much for economic motives as for abstract ideals. To Form a More Perfect Union offers compelling evidence showing that the economic, financial, and other interests of the founders can account for the specific design and adoption of our Constitution. This is the first book to provide modern evidence that substantiates many of the overall conclusions found in Charles Beard's An Economic Interpretation while challenging and overturning other of Beard's specific findings. To Form a More Perfect Union presents an entirely new approach to the study of the shaping of the U.S. Constitution. Through the application of economic thinking and rigorous statistical techniques, as well as the processing of vast amounts of data on the economic interests and personal characteristics of the Founding Fathers, McGuire convincingly demonstrates that an economic interpretation of the Constitution is valid. Radically challenging the prevailing views of most historians, political scientists, and legal scholars, To Form a More Perfect Union provides a wealth of new findings about the Founding Fathers' constitutional choices and sheds new light on the motivations behind the design and adoption of the United States Constitution.Customer Reviews:
A Compelling & Thorough Look at the Economic Interpretation.......2004-01-31
"McGuire essentially resurrects Beard's hypothesis and offers substantial evidence in favor of the view that the Founding Fathers' personal interests had a significant influence on the process of constitutional design and ratification. In light of the substantial body of empirical evidence this book provides, it is likely to bring the personal interest view back into widespread acceptance among academics. Although McGuire draws some of the analysis presented in the book from his previously published journal articles, at least half of what he offers is new and original. What makes the book so compelling is the use of today's significantly better empirical methodology to analyze data, in contrast to the techniques available during the 1950s, when the counterevidence to Beard's hypothesis was presented.
"Readers searching for a middle ground in the debate over whether personal self-interest shaped the U.S. Constitution will find refuge in this book. McGuire repeatedly makes clear that these personal interests were relevant at the margin in the Founding Fathers' decision calculus and that many other factors (such as general political philosophy) influenced these individuals' overall behavior. Among the most compelling findings: (1) personal interests played a bigger role in the specific content of the U.S. Constitution than in the document's overall design; and (2) the framers' debt holdings and slave ownership and the degree of commercialization in their local communities are significantly correlated with their observed behavior and, hence, with the content of the constitution they produced....
"One of the book's strengths is the amount of underlying background data and statistics provided. For example, McGuire includes tables that show not only each individual delegate's vote on an issue (the data used for the dependent variable), but also the predicted probability of a yes vote for that delegate from the estimated logistic regression model. As anyone who has estimated a logistic regression model knows, it is possible for these models to fit well overall but still do a poor job of predicting individual votes. Throughout the book, however, McGuire provides the evidence necessary to comfort readers worried about such potential problems. The book's main weakness is that at times it becomes rather lengthy and dull, but this aspect is simply a cost of being thorough, which is necessary in this case because of the controversial nature of the theory being tested.
"For the great number of readers who are likely to use the results of the book as a single-sentence footnote or reference in their own research, the eleven-page prologue provides all of the background and summary information necessary to make an informed citation of the work. The remaining three hundred or so pages merely fill in the sufficient details to support these conclusions. In that sense, the book reminds me somewhat of Bjorn Lomborg's Skeptical Environmentalist (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).
"Had I been a reviewer for the book prior to its publication, the only suggestion I might have offered to improve it would have been for the author to include a fuller discussion of the debate surrounding the adequacy and structure of the document that preceded the U.S. Constitution, the Articles of Confederation.... Had McGuire presented this discussion, he would have provided a fitting framework in which to view the Founding Fathers' choices as marginal institutional changes relative to the existing constitutional order.
"To Form a More Perfect Union undoubtedly will elicit additional research in this highly debated area of constitutional research. Future research will benefit from the 122 pages of raw data and empirical results provided as appendix material. McGuire's book most likely will meet with a better initial acceptance than Beard's book received (it was banned from high school libraries in Seattle and condemned by President Taft and by the president of Beard's own university).
"One important implication of McGuire's book is that the condition of a Rawlsian `veil of ignorance,' putatively necessary to produce a `just' social contract, is not and cannot be satisfied in reality. Any constitution or social contract will be shaped by its designers' individual self-interests. Modern public-choice scholars who favor theories based on the premise of methodological individualism will find comforting reassurance as they read To Form a More Perfect Union."
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Excerpted from a review by Russell S. Sobel in "The Independent Review," Winter 2004.
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Aphrodisia 2 -Art of the Female Form
Craig Elliott Manufacturer: Aristata Publishing ProductGroup: Book Binding: Perfect Paperback Similar Items:
ASIN: 0975491237 Release Date: 2007-02-15 |
Product Description
Aristata publishing is proud to announce the second edition of Aphrodisia: Art of the Female Form! Aphrodisia is a full color art book showcasing over 200 artist s celebration of the female form. The artwork of Aphrodisia comes from professional artists, students, and art directors from around the globe, all of whom have entered Aphrodisia s competition for a place in the book. The artwork of Aphrodisia depicts the female form in all of her facets, from charming to haunting, silly to sensual. Artwork in the book falls under the categories of fine art, fine art nude, pinup, sculpture, and 3D computer generated art. Many artists featured in this year s book are world renowned, and have worked for such prestigious companies as Lucasfilm, Dreamworks, Dark Horse, Marvel, DC Comics, Dungeons and Dragons, Time, and the New York Times. Among them are Dave Dorman. Stephen Hickman, Don Maitz , Mark A. Nelson, Mark Rogers and many more. Along with the artwork of the entrants, Aphrodisia showcases the work of the judges and gives a rare insight into their working methods and studio life. The 2005 Aphrodisia judges include artist Julie Bell, Iain McCaig, Robh Ruppel, and Danielle Bedics.
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Perfect Form
Don S. Lemons Manufacturer: Princeton University Press ProductGroup: Book Binding: Paperback Similar Items:
ASIN: 0691026637 |
Book Description
What does the path taken by a ray of light share with the trajectory of a thrown baseball and the curve of a wheat stalk bending in the breeze? Each is the subject of a different study yet all are optimal shapes; light rays minimize travel time while a thrown baseball minimizes action. All natural curves and shapes, and many artificial ones, manifest such "perfect form" because physical principles can be expressed as a statement requiring some important physical quantity to be mathematically maximum, minimum, or stationary. Perfect Form introduces the basic "variational" principles of classical physics (least time, least potential energy, least action, and Hamilton's principle), develops the mathematical language most suited to their application (the calculus of variations), and presents applications from the physics usually encountered in introductory course sequences.
The text gradually unfolds the physics and mathematics. While other treatments postulate Hamilton's principle and deduce all results from it, Perfect Form begins with the most plausible and restricted variational principles and develops more powerful ones through generalization. One selection of text and problems even constitutes a non-calculus of variations introduction to variational methods, while the mathematics more generally employed extends only to solving simple ordinary differential equations. Perfect Form is designed to supplement existing classical mechanics texts and to present variational principles and methods to students who approach the subject for the first time.
Customer Reviews:
Fascinating Look at Variational Methods and Applications.......2004-03-06
I have occasionally encountered variational methods, but until reading Perfect Form I had not appreciated the significance and scope and even fascination of this topic. In a little more than one hundred pages Dr. Don Lemons does a credible job of introducing a wide range of physics problems amenable to variational methods.
He begins with optics and Fermat's Principle of Least Time and thereby motivates the derivation of the Euler-Lagrange equation. In later chapters he examines the principle of least potential energy, Lagrange multipliers, the principle of least action, and Hamilton's principle, in both a restricted and more general form. The supplementary problems at the end of each chapter are few in number, but are carefully defined and are more like tutorials than standalone problems.
In my experience textbooks dedicated to this topic - like Calculus of Variations by Robert Weinstock and Introduction to the Calculus of Variations by Hans Sagan - are difficult and require considerable mathematical maturity. Other texts - like Advanced Calculus of Several Variables (C. H. Edwards) and Advanced Mathematical Methods for Engineering and Science Students (Stephenson and Radmore) and Mathematics Applied to Continuum Mechanics (L. A. Segel) - often relegate this subject to a single (and often final) chapter.
Most undergraduates are unlikely to have time for a formal course in calculus of variations. With this book Don Lemons has convinced me that this topic is too important and too interesting to ignore. I recommend that you acquire a copy of Perfect Form for self-study or as supplementary text.
A nice short readable introduction.......2003-11-26
Moreover, it motivates the material well. This is one of those books that keeps driving home a few, just a few points and avoids too many topics. For instance, I was never knew why the lagrangian should be the difference of kinetic and potential energies, this book will motivate this form.
Finally, its a realistic book. I found no great effort in reading the entire book and working about 3/4 of the problems (some I just didn't find interesting) on my own in a busy semester. This is just a fun little book that shows you some variational methods!
Very readable introduction to calculus of variations........2000-01-30
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Perfect Form
Kal Yee Manufacturer: Second Glance ProductGroup: Book Binding: Hardcover ASIN: 096315740X |
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Your Perfect Home-Based Studio: A Guide for Designers and Other Creative Professionals
Poppy Evans Manufacturer: North Light Books ProductGroup: Book Binding: Paperback Similar Items:
ASIN: 1581801327 |
Book Description
Creative professionals who work out of their homes face a number of challenges, both anticipated and unexpected. Simply knowing where to start is perhaps the most difficult obstacle of all. In Your Perfect Home-Based Studio, everything from taxes and setting up a workspace to the psychological aspects of working at home is covered. Whether the reader is a graphic artist, a new media designer or an illustrator, all the information they need is here, including:* the basics of setting up and running a business
* sure-fire methods for getting clients and getting paid
* suggestions for structuring a studio environment
* guidelines for putting together a powerful business plan
* how to get the best deals in equipment and furniture
* information on getting legal and professional advice
* how to stay in compliance with federal and local tax and zoning regulations
Designers will also find invaluable sidebars full of tips and advice, and samples of business forms and bookkeeping systems that make Your Perfect Home-Based Studio the perfect home business reference.
Customer Reviews:
The Perfect Guide For Setting Up A Home Office!.......2001-12-27
Your Perfect Home-Based Studio written by Poppy Evans is the perfect resource for those persons looking for professional guidance in setting up their own home office studios. This book includes a wealth of design options - furniture, accessories, home design and decorating options, and discussion of important business matters.
Poppy Evans guides her readers through a number of important decision-making topics pertaining to the setting up of a home office - the arrangement of furniture and equipment, the importance of having an ergonomically correct workstation, choosing the right computer equipment and service technicians, dealing with children, and establishing an effective online presence. Business matters discussed include determining what kind of business to establish, dealing with local government authorities, maintaining financial records, keeping track of expenses, paying taxes, and dealing with slow-paying clients. Thrown in is plenty of other important details necessary for setting up and running a productive home-based business.
While setting up a home office may seem an easy task, there are some important considerations we should to keep in mind. Because one's place of work is confined to the home, as Poppy Evans points out, it's necessary to establish workplace discipline, being as accessible as possible, maintaining contact with clients and the business world, and to cultivate good working and long-term relationships with clients. The recognition and the paying of close attention to these concerns and others addressed in the book will go a long way to help readers operate successful home businesses.
The book is beautifully illustrated with high resolution photographs of actual home office designs. A number of case studies are included to provide readers with actual home-based business experiences. The content, layout, and over all quality of the book makes it an excellent guide. This is must reading for consultants and anyone desiring to set up their own home office!
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The Perfect Fit: What Your Shoes Say About You
Meghan Cleary Manufacturer: Chronicle Books ProductGroup: Book Binding: Hardcover Similar Items:
ASIN: 081184501X |
Book Description
Shoe expert Meghan Cleary wants women everywhere to forget the constellations and open up their closets, because The Perfect Fit is a horoscope based on footwear! After all, what says more about a woman s personality than her choice of stilettos and sneakers, mary janes and mules? Quick questionnaires help readers get in step with their true selves, while detailed shoe profiles answer every woman's burning questions: Which career will sweep me off my feet? How do I achieve my perfect look? Who is my arch supporter? And most of all, Is there any problem in life that can't be solved with a new pair of shoes? Sleek illustrations highlight thirty shoe personalities, and sassy sidebars showcase fashion tips, shoe history, and inspirational advice. As easy to slip into as a comfy pair of ballet flats, The Perfect Fit is fanciful, fabulous fun that's just plain good for the sole.Customer Reviews:
GENERATION GAP .......2007-07-17
Disappointing stereotypes abound..........2007-05-07
Luv Shoes? Are your shoes telling on you?.......2006-03-16
Charming!.......2005-11-27
Must Have!.......2005-11-24
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