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The American Heritage Dictionary: Fourth Edition (21st Century Reference)
The latest edition of the American Heritage Dictionary is out, and that's hot news--not just for the resolute followers of lexicographical minutiae, but for the general reading and writing public as well. Why? Because the American Heritage is a long-standing favorite family dictionary (never underestimate the value of pictures) and one of the prime dictionary references for magazines, newspapers, and dot.com content providers. For scads of writers and editors across the U.S., it sets the standard on matters of style and lexicographical authority. So this new edition is exciting and noteworthy, but how good is it? In its favor, the fourth edition is as current a dictionary as you can get. It's six years fresher than the 1994 version, with 10,000 words and definitions you won't find in the still venerable but now slightly dated third edition. For example, unlike its predecessor (and also unlike the 1996 Oxford Encyclopedic English Dictionary), this fourth edition covers dot-com, e-commerce, and soccer mom, Ebonics, Viagra, and a surf definition for cruising television channels and the Internet. Its panel of special consultants includes authorities on anthropology, architecture, cinema, and law, plus military science, music, religion, and sports, and that is reflected in an impressively comprehensive coverage of the arts, culture, and technology. Sadly, however, there are no medical consultants on the panel, and that loss is felt in some substandard medical definitions. Other flaws: there's a greater than usual tendency to define a word with a form of the same word--for example, fuzzy, whose first two definitions are "1. covered with fuzz." and "2. of or resembling fuzz." And some definitions seem needlessly wordy, such as the entry for furious, which is "full of or characterized by extreme anger; raging." Compare that with the more succinct Oxford Encyclopedic entry: "1. extremely angry. 2. full of fury." On the other hand, there are valuable entries throughout the dictionary supplying additional information on synonyms, usage, or word history, and these extras, such as the history of diatribe and the usage notes on discomfit, are interesting. The layout is easy on the eyes, with dark blue/green bold type setting the words apart from their definitions, and 4,000 color photographs, maps, and illustrations that are both useful and delightful. On one page, the margin provides color depictions of Francis Bacon, bacterium, and a Bactrian camel. Theodore Roosevelt and a rooster share another margin, while a third page offers Isak Dinesen, a dingo, and dinoflagellate. It is a fascinating book to peruse, and a compellingly scholarly addition to the American Heritage Dictionary line. --Stephanie Gold.
Price: $3.25
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Elements of Style, The (4th Edition)
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The Divine Comedy (The Inferno, The Purgatorio, and The Paradiso)
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The Lovely Bones
On her way home from school on a snowy December day in 1973, 14-year-old Susie Salmon ("like the fish") is lured into a makeshift underground den in a cornfield and brutally raped and murdered, the latest victim of a serial killer--the man she knew as her neighbor, Mr. Harvey. Alice Sebold's haunting and heartbreaking debut novel, The Lovely Bones, unfolds from heaven, where "life is a perpetual yesterday" and where Susie narrates and keeps watch over her grieving family and friends, as well as her brazen killer and the sad detective working on her case. As Sebold fashions it, everyone has his or her own version of heaven. Susie's resembles the athletic fields and landscape of a suburban high school: a heaven of her "simplest dreams," where "there were no teachers.... We never had to go inside except for art class.... The boys did not pinch our backsides or tell us we smelled; our textbooks were Seventeen and Glamour and Vogue." The Lovely Bones works as an odd yet affecting coming-of-age story. Susie struggles to accept her death while still clinging to the lost world of the living, following her family's dramas over the years like an episode of My So-Called Afterlife. Her family disintegrates in their grief: her father becomes determined to find her killer, her mother withdraws, her little brother Buckley attempts to make sense of the new hole in his family, and her younger sister Lindsey moves through the milestone events of her teenage and young adult years with Susie riding spiritual shotgun. Random acts and missed opportunities run throughout the book--Susie recalls her sole kiss with a boy on Earth as "like an accident--a beautiful gasoline rainbow." Though sentimental at times, The Lovely Bones is a moving exploration of loss and mourning that ultimately puts its faith in the living and that is made even more powerful by a cast of convincing characters. Sebold orchestrates a big finish, and though things tend to wrap up a little too well for everyone in the end, one can only imagine (or hope) that heaven is indeed a place filled with such happy endings. --Brad Thomas Parsons.
Price: $2.24
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Advertising and Promotion: An Integrated Marketing Communications Perspective
Advertising and Promotion: An Integrated Marketing Communications Perspective, 6/e, by Belch and Belch, is the number one text in the Advertising market. As the field of advertising and promotion continues to dramatically change since the dominant days of high-powered Madison Avenue agencies, marketers must look beyond traditional media in order to achieve success. In order to best communicate with consumers, advertisers must utilize a myriad of tools (advertising, public relations, direct marketing, interactive/Internet marketing, sales promotion, and personal selling); Belch/Belch is the first book to reflect the shift from the conventional methods of advertising to the more widely recognized approach of implementing an integrated marketing communications strategy. The text underscores the importance of recognizing that a firm must use all promotional tools available to convey a unified message to the consumer. The integrated marketing communications perspective, (the theme of the text), catapults the reader into the business practices of the 21st century..
Price: $37.99
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Raising a Sensory Smart Child: The Definitive Handbook for Helping Your Child with Sensory Integration Issues
For children with sensory integration issues-those who have difficulty processing everyday sensations and exhibit unusual behaviors such as avoiding or seeking out touch, movement, sounds, and sights-this groundbreaking book is an invaluable resource. Long thought to affect only autistic children, or mistaken for ADHD, SI dysfunction is finally being recognized as a separate condition. Coauthored by a pediatric occupational therapist and a parent of a child with SI dysfunction, Raising a Sensory Smart Child is as warm and accessible as it is authoritative and detailed and is an indispensable guide for parents, therapists, and teachers who will turn to it again and again..
Price: $8.24
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Understanding Business, 7th Edition (Book & CD-ROM)
Understanding Business by Nickels, McHugh, and McHugh has been the number one textbook in the introduction to business market for several editions for two reasons: (1) The commitment and dedication of an author team that teaches this course and believes in the importance and power of this learning experience and (2) We Listen. We consistently look to the experts – full-time faculty members, adjunct instructors, and of course students – to drive the decisions we make about the text itself and the ancillary package. Through a series of focus groups, symposia, as well as full-book, single-chapter, revised manuscript reviews of both text and key ancillaries, we have heard the stories of more than 400 professors and their insights and experiences are evident on every page of the revision. As teachers of the course and users of their own materials, the author team is dedicated to the principles of excellence in business education. From providing the richest most current topical coverage to using dynamic pedagogy that puts students in touch with today’s real business issues, to creating groundbreaking and market-defining ancillary items for professors and students alike, Understanding Business leads the way..
Price: $36.00
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Consumer Behavior
Communicating a fascination for the everyday activities of people, this leading book on consumer behavior examines how our world is influenced by the action of marketers, and considers how products, services, and consumption contribute to the broader social world we experience. Its incredibly interesting and dynamic content proves hip and engaging, while reflecting the latest research. A four-part organization looks at consumers as individuals, consumers as decision makers, consumers and subcultures, and consumers and culture. For brand managers, marketing research analysts, and account executives. .
Price: $32.99
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Lucky: A Memoir
Enormously visceral, emotionally gripping, and imbued with the belief that justice is possible even after the most horrific of crimes, Alice Sebold's compelling memoir of her rape at the age of eighteen is a story that takes hold of you and won't let go.Sebold fulfills a promise that she made to herself in the very tunnel where she was raped: someday she would write a book about her experience. With Lucky she delivers on that promise with mordant wit and an eye for life's absurdities, as she describes what she was like both as a young girl before the rape and how that rape changed but did not sink the woman she later became.It is Alice's indomitable spirit that we come to know in these pages. The same young woman who sets her sights on becoming an Ethel Merman-style diva one day (despite her braces, bad complexion, and extra weight) encounters what is still thought of today as the crime from which no woman can ever really recover. In an account that is at once heartrending and hilarious, we see Alice's spirit prevail as she struggles to have a normal college experience in the aftermath of this harrowing, life-changing event.No less gripping is the almost unbelievable role that coincidence plays in the unfolding of Sebold's narrative. Her case, placed in the inactive file, is miraculously opened again six months later when she sees her rapist on the street. This begins the long road to what dominates these pages: the struggle for triumph and understanding -- in the courtroom and outside in the world.Lucky is, quite simply, a real-life thriller. In its literary style and narrative tension we never lose sight of why this life story is worth reading. At the end we are left standing in the wake of devastating violence, and, like the writer, we have come to know what it means to survive..
Price: $3.00
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