Customer Reviews (2)

Capturing My Heart
This book captured my heart right from the beginning until the very end. There is plenty of mystery and romance in this intriguing story. The plot was great and kept you guessing throughout the entire book. The characters seemed real and it didn't take me long to start caring about Clair and the disappearing artifacts. If you don't read this book you will certainly be missing out on a fun adventure.

C. LaRene Hall
Martha's Freedom Train

Fantastic, Must Read Book!
She's at it again, another fantastic book by Nancy Campbell Allen.This book has you enthralled from the first word and leaves you wanting more.This is a great story about Claire O'Brain and Bump St. James and the wonderful encounters they have while on a archeological dig.The great love story that slowly unfolds through the book is just wonderful and you will love this book right down to the last page. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Four Star Reader
The book is in excellent condition and I received it in a timely manner.It is a pleasure doing business with you

Love this series!
I read this series 3 years ago and have wanted to read it again ever since.I would recommend this to anyone!She brings life to the characters on the page and you laugh and cry right along with them.Full of history, romance, everyday struggles, fueding families and more!Will I agree the 4th book isn't as good as the rest, I still loved the closure that she gave to each character.Definitely read all 4 books they are all worth it!

good book
There are four books in this series.They are:A House Divided,To Make Men Free,Through the Perilous Fight,andOne Nation Under God.
I would give each of the first three books 5 stars.The fourth book was not as good.The series could have ended after the first 3 books. ... Read more

Product Description
This engaging collection of letters follows the course of a year in the gardens of two passionate gardeners, Nancy Goodwin and Allen Lacy. They share a climate zone (7A), but their gardens differ enormously. Lacy gardens on a 100-by-155-foot plot of former farmland in southern New Jersey, on soil so sandy that he must water frequently if he is to garden at all. Goodwin gardens on rich clay loam at her historic piedmont North Carolina home--which comprises more than sixty acres of woodland, meadow, and established plantings--and she refuses to irrigate, because she believes in growing only those plants that are naturally adapted to the conditions of her land.

Through their letters, Lacy and Goodwin provide a charming and revealing chronicle of their lives and the lives of their gardens. They exchange stories of their horticultural successes and failures; trade information about a great many plants; discuss their hopes, fears, and inspirations; and muse on the connections between gardening and music, family, and friendship. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Chatty exchange of letters....
A YEAR IN OUR GARDENS by Nancy Goodwin and Allen Lacy is a chatty exchange of letters and faxes between two old friends, both of whom have many years of gardening experience to their credit. Ms Goodwin ran Montrose Nursery for many years and is very informed and informing about plants -- native, cultivated, imported, and home-grown.

Dr. Lacy has written many books about gardening and garden design -- centered on his garden in New Jersey and other gardens futher afield. My personal favorite of Lacy's books is THE GARDEN IN AUTUMN, although THE INVITING GARDEN is probably his best selling book. I wouldn't recommend A YEAR IN OUR GARDENS to the novice gardener since it has no colorful photographs and a plethora of Latin named flowers and plants. Even the intermediate gardener searching for tips might find THE INVITING GARDEN a better read.

If you've been gardening awhile and like to read about green adventures from the comfort of your easy chair or need a good book for bedtime reading, you'll probably enjoy A YEAR IN OUR GARDENS. To me it's something of a cross between the books by Elizabeth Lawrence and Beverly Nichols. In fact, if Lawrence and Nichols had written to each other their conversations might have been a bit like the conversations of Goodwin and Lacey.

Goodwin and Lacey both had an affilitation with Duke University as did Elizabeth Lawrence though neither Goodwin nor Lacey is a botonist like Lawrence. Lacey wrote garden columns for the Wall Street Journal and New York Times and until recently taught philosopy and horitculture at Richard Stockton College in New Jersey where he lives and gardens. Lawrence's father was Lacey's professor of English at Duke University, and Lawrence lives and gardens near Hillsborough NC.

Both Goodwin and Lacey have gardens in growing zone 7.As they relate their experiences over the course of the year, it becomes obvious this counts for little. Lacey lives near the Atlantic, has sandy soil he must amend with humus, and experiences milder summers and colder winters. Goodwin lives in the NC piedmont, gardens in clay, and has hot-hot summers. Both have green houses that allow them to cultivate a variety of plants more suited to tropical climates. Lacey tends to grow many plants in pots on a large extended deck, while Goodwin has a much larger property with room for numerous shubs and trees and a woodland garden.Lacey says he prefers summer months for gardening, and Goodwin says she prefers anything but summer.

In addition to the exchange about plants, garden design and the various wildlife sightings, both correspondents share the ups and downs of daily living. Over the course of a year, Lacey undergoes major surgery and Goodwin's husband has eye surgery and her father dies. Both Godwin and Lacey travel to various locations to give lectures and undergo interviews on television and radio.Martha Stewart drops by for a fifteen minute tour of Montrose, and Lacey goes to Disneyland.

All in all this book is mildly entertaining, and a peek into the lives of two relatively well educated gardeners. ... Read more

Product Description

“This book’s broad overview can help an organization choose a set of processes, policies, and techniques that are appropriate for its security maturity, risk tolerance, and development style. This book will help you understand how to incorporate practical security techniques into all phases of the development lifecycle.”

Customer Reviews (1)

A disjointed rehash of earlier material
The Addison-Wesley Software Security Series is generally a great collection, with titles like Software Security: Building Security In (my rating: 5 stars), Rootkits: Subverting the Windows Kernel (my rating: 4 stars), and Exploiting Software: How to Break Code (my rating: 4 stars).I particularly liked the first of those three (SS:BSI), which I reviewed last year.I felt Gary McGraw wrote "a powerful book with deep truths for secure development."Software Security Engineering (SSE), by a collection of authors, pales in comparison to SS:BSI.You can skip SSE and stick with SS:BSI.

I started reading SSE very closely, underlining key concepts and looking for important ideas.About halfway through the book I realized it was mainly a collection of ideas from other sources.Very rarely do I read books that successfully present a dozen approaches to the same problem.What usually happens (as is the case with SSE) is the reader is left reading overlapping material and fragmented points of view.Frequently I found myself wondering "so what am I supposed to do with this?Where do I start?What approach matters?"

It is especially problematic when a book contains articles essentially republished from magazines.Each article author needs to frame the problem to make sense for the short period during which he has the attention of the reader.That works for a stand-alone article, but it doesn't work when all of these previously stand-alone articles are collected in one book.I can accept a book published as a series of independent works, with an editor overseeing the affair.I can't accept a book published as a single work, with magazine articles inserted at various intervals.It's incoherent and confusing.

Still, I found a few ideas interesting.Page 79 (a reprint of a 2004 IEEE article) says "Security is an emergent property of a system, not a feature. This is similar to how 'being dry' is an emergent property of being inside a tent in the rain. The tent keeps people dry only if the poles are stabilized, vertical, able to support the weight of wet fabric, and so on. Likewise, the tent must have waterproof fabric that has no holes and is large enough to protect all the people who want to stay dry. Lastly, all the people who want to be dry must remain under the tent the entire time it is raining. Whereas it is important to have poles and fabric, it is not enough to say, 'The tent has poles and fabric, thus it keeps you dry!'"

Page 73 (a reprint of a 2006 Build Security In article) says "When security requirements are considered at all during the system life cycle, they tend to be general lists of security features such as password protection, firewalls, virus detection tools, and the like. These are, in fact, not security requirements at all but rather implementation mechanisms that are intended to satisfy unstated requirements, such as authenticated access."

Page 59 (another reprint of a 2006 BSI article) says "Software can be designed and developed to be extremely secure, but if it is deployed and operated in an insecure fashion many vulnerabilities can be introduced. For example, a piece of software could provide strong encryption and proper authentication before allowing access to encrypted data, but if an attacker can obtain valid authentication credentials he/she can subvert the software's security. Nothing is 100 percent secure, and the environment must be secured and monitored to thwart attacks."

Pages 39-40 say "In software systems that include acquired or reused (commercial, government off-the-shelf, open-source, shareware, freeware, or legacy) binary components, application defense techniques and tools may be the only cost-effective countermeasures to mitigate vulnerabilities in those components."

Page 35 says "Maliciousness... makes the requirements of software security somewhat different from the requirements of safety and reliability.Failures in a reliability or safety context are expected to be random and unpredictable.Failures in a security context, by contrast, result from human effort (direct, or through malicious code)."

If you want to read a good overall book on software security, read McGraw's SS:BSI. ... Read more

Product Description
Daniel Boone is a familiar name to most Americans, but few know the myriad trails he blazed that led to his fame. Beginning with his birth in the Pennsylvania backwoods and culminating in his final days in Missouri, "Daniel Boone: Trailblazer" demonstrates the American legend’s pioneer spirit and his constant need for more "elbow room."

Although Boone spent a lifetime leading pioneers westward to find land, he continually lost his own to land speculators. This lively picture book offers young readers a simple, chronological glimpse of his gains and losses, adventures, and roles as farmer, hunter, surveyor, statesman, husband, father, and grandfather. Boone emerges as a heroic figure, successful and beloved despite his setbacks.

Always on the go, Boone’s persistence and frontier fortitude make this a riveting read for all ages. Illustrations by Joan C. Waites capture the spirit of the intrepid explorer and depict the American wilderness as it once was. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Fantastic, Clean, Romantic Suspense
I thoroughly enjoyed No Time for Love. I couldn't put it down and read it all in one sitting. I loved the characters and the plot was nicely paced with surprises along the way. Very well written! I'm looking forward to the next book, which I'm hoping will be about Bump and Connor's sister, the archeologist.:)

Pretty good, just not as good as the first book
Nancy's first book was excellent and a hard act to follow.This one is still a fun read, but it doesn't quite measure up to the first one.But I think Nancy's doing a great job and should definitely keep it up.

None stop action and romance!
I am not an avid reader, but this book somehow caught my eye when I read what it was about.I read the whole book in two days, and I was enthralled from beginning to end.The love story that unfolded between the two maincharacters was fantastic, and the action was outragous.Nancy AllenCampbell is a fantastic author, and I cannot wait to read the rest of thebooks that she has to offer.

An Adventure Love Stroy with LDS Morals!Great!
I picked up this book because I saw Big Ben and Parliament on the cover. I had no idea what I was going to read, but was pleasently surprised when I began to turn the pages. Espinoge,adventure, spy, and love. I could readmyself into the characters, they are very realistic. I couldn't put thebook down! When I finished the book I learned that it was second in aseries and now I have to go and read the first and third books! Overall,great book that will keep you turning the pages to find out what happens! ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Reader for the Audio Book was Annoying
I listened to an unabridged version of this novel and almost couldn't finish it because the reader was so annoying. The author had her characters smiling or laughing all the time, and the reader interpreted this to mean she should read entire passages as if they were laughing the words. Had Allen edited for word repetition more carefully and watched for redundancy in thought, she would have had a better book overall, and I don't think the reader would have over-used her laugh. I liked the way the plot all came together in the end, but if I had been reading a hardcopy rather than listening to a tape, I know I would have had to read with a red editing pen in hand.

A Must Read Book!
This is great book and a fantastic love story! This is a great book that really causes true refelection and how we feel for our true friends.You really feel for Jon in the book and how hard his life had been and how he did not want to burden another person with those things.Nancy's does a fantastic job of keeping the book moving, interesting, and the time will fly while you read.I don't know about anyone else, but I have a hard time waiting until the next books arrive, because I just love the way she writes and the great stories her books tell.

A Must Read Book!
This is great book and a fantastic love story! This is a great book that really causes true refelection and how we feel for our true friends.You really feel for Jon in the book and how hard his life had been and how he did not want to burden another person with those things.Nancy's does a fantastic job of keeping the book moving, interesting, and the time will fly while you read.I don't know about anyone else, but I have a hard time waiting until the next books arrive, because I just love the way she writes and the great stories her books tell. ... Read more

Product Description
Twenty-three nationally-known educators discuss educational technology and diversity, provide historical and philosophical insights into digital divide issues, and offer practical suggestions for teachers, administrators, and policy makers.This book is designed to help educators understand complex technology issues and to equip them to meet whatever challenges keep their students from having full access to a quality education through technology. It discusses how schools acquire hardware, software, and connectivity, and why some schools experience such success in these endeavors and others are heartbreakingly behind. Perhaps most importantly, it examines the most current research in the effectiveness of technology and pedagogy in diverse settings to make suggestions on how teachers can create powerful learning environments for all students.Technology coordinators, teachers and school administrators. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A superbly presented and highly recommended resource
Collaboratively compiled and edited by Gwen Solomon (TechLearning.com), Nancy J. Allen (Texas A&M University), and Paul Resta (University of Texas at Austin), Toward Digital Equity: Bridging The Divide In Education brings together writings from twenty-three experts in educational technology, who offer practical and affordable ideas for teachers, administrators, and education policy-makers charged with preparing the next generation for the digital age. Emphasizing ways to enhance the learning environment for optimum potential, Toward Digital Equity is a superbly presented and highly recommended resource for educators at local, district, state, and/or federal levels of responsibility. ... Read more

Product Description
This children's picture book tells the story of how the most popular song in the world began as a little ditty, "Good Morning to All," to greet kindergarten students each day. Sisters Mildred and Patty Hill wrote the music and lyrics and later changed the words to the familiar "Happy Birthday to You." ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Just the facts, ma'am...and a whole lot more!
Nancy Allen's book "Happy Birthday": The Story of The World's Most Popular Song is well-written and full of interesting facts about the two Kentucky sisters who came up with this beloved song that has been used at birthday parties from the nursery to the White House. With colorful illustrations, "Happy Birthday" is definitely a book worthy of a spot in every library and on every gift list in America. ... Read more

Product Description
Defines and explores the connections between librarianship and humanities scholarship as set out in the first edition of this work. This edition also updates and expands the subject matter, bringing in new contributions from history, the performing arts, religion, philosophy and other areas. ... Read more