Product Description
A New York Times Bestseller

Undercover agent Chance Mackenzie knew that the best way to capture anelusive terrorist was to use the man's daughter as bait, so he seducedSunny Miller and set out to discover her father's whereabouts. Sunny'sown innocence was questionable, and gaining her trust was nearlyimpossible. And even with all his experience and training, Chancefound it difficult to overlook her beauty. However, Chance soonrealized that Sunny wasn't running from him - she was running for herlife, and she needed Chance's protection. But keeping Sunny safe wouldinvolve telling her the truth . . . ... Read more

Customer Reviews (98)

Great Book
I have not read all the books in this series.Only two as a matter of fact.I very much enjoyed this book.It had a good story to it and I loved the end.I would recommend this book.

Great service
I ordered the book on Saturday and had it in hand by monday.Great, fast service.The book was in the exact condition the seller said it was.

There are better Mackenzie books out there
I was so looking forward to Linda Howard's A Game Of Chance. I loved Mackenzie's Mission. It is one of my all time favorite books! A Game of Chance was okay, but not on the same level as other Mackenzie stories. First off, I did not like how the hero (Chance) told one lie after another to the heroine yet did not think anything about sleeping with her while he was doing this. That irked me and turned me off for the first part of the story. I felt like the second half was much better. I also liked how we got to catch up with the other Mackenzie family members at the end. I am glad tough that Chance finally got his turn to have a story. I kinda hope that Mrs. Howard will go on and right more Mackenzie stories using the grandchildren as the central characters especially the only girl grandchild. That would be one I would like to read.

great first half, very disappointing ending
I loved the first three of Linda Howard's novels about the Mackenzie family.They're a bit cliche'd at times, but overall, Howard's novels push a lot of my romance buttons and I'm a big fan.They're among the few novels that I keep around to re-read.I'd been looking forward to this one because Chance Mackenzie, who appeared as a side character in the previous book, seemed interesting.But this book ended so badly that I can barely even give it three stars-- which is too bad, because it starts out really well.

Chance Mackenzie runs a somewhat mysterious organization that fights terrorism.He and Sunny end up stranded in a box canyon for three days, a situation engineered by Chance specifically so he can seduce Sunny and pump her for information about her terrorist father.Sunny is used to being on the run from her father, so she doesn't trust Chance.Neither of them is being honest, so even given the setup, they are a matched set for the first half of the book.In spite of their efforts to resist, of course they both fall in love and some suitably steamy love scenes ensue.Finally, in a moment that would have taken a stunning amount of courage, Sunny comes clean and tells Chance the truth about her family and her painful past.

And here is where the book begins to fall apart.Sunny is telling the truth, but Chance continues to lie.He continues the deception of his original setup for nearly two weeks without breathing a word to Sunny of who he really is or what is going on.You can argue, of course, that he had to keep it up in order to do his job, but still it throws their relationship out of balance, and as a reader, you expect that balance to be restored by the end of the book.I kept reading because I was sure Howard could do this.

But you know how it is when the number of pages under your right thumb is getting disturbingly slim and you still want a lot more.By the time there was only ONE page left and there were still pages of resolution needed, I knew this book was a clinker.Chance never even apologizes, and Sunny never asks the tough questions I kept waiting for her to ask (for example: exactly how often do you seduce women as part of your job? I mean, really!He gets paid to do this!).It's like Howard just got tired of writing it and had them arbitrarily kiss and make up to get it over with.It was so disappointing, even infuriating, because with a better ending, this one might have been my favorite of the series.I enjoyed the chemistry between the two of them, and I really liked Sunny up until the last half dozen paragraphs, when she just caves in and forgives everything without ever having resolved the issues.In fact, I was so disappointed I pulled out my word processor and re-wrote the ending myself, something I've never done before.

So, read the first three Mackenzie books and skip this one (although if you have read the first three, stand in the aisle at the bookstore to read the first two chapters of this one, because Chance's visit to Zane's house with the "cheerfully diabolic" Nick and the predator babies is priceless).

p.s. after reading about Chance's "apology" in several other reviews here, I went back to look and see if maybe I had missed it.But if it's there, I couldn't find it.As far as I can tell, the words "I'm sorry" or "I realize I made it hard for you" or anything similar never come out of his mouth, although he does come clean about what had been going on.

Not worth the purchase
FBI agent Chance MacKenzie needs to infiltrate an elusive terrorist's organization to bring the terrorist to justice, and what better way to that than through his daughter. As he stalks Sunny Miller, befriends her in a moment of need, then proceeds to crash land their plane, forcing them to forage before being "rescued" he becomes attracted to her. Lots of sex later, and her head over heels for him, he discovers that she isn't going to be able to provide the foray into her father's organization like he thought. When he learns that she has no desire to be reunited with her father, he uses her as bait, leaking her whereabouts so that an FBI mole will take action. Will she be able to forgive him when she learns of his deception?

This is just Howard at her worst. An unforgivably horrible "hero" paired with her typical virginal doormat just don't make for compelling reading. It's a bit older, and the age shows and does not translate well as a contemporary novel. The dialogue is atrocious, the plot thin, and the hero just not worthy of a second chance.

© Tracy Vest, September 2008 ... Read more

Product Description
GhostWalker Kane Cannon's mission plunges him into a hot zone more personal than he anticipated: the hiding place of Rose Patterson-hunted fugitive, ex-lover, and a fellow GhostWalker desperate to save the life of her unborn child. Kane's Child. ... Read more

Product Description
BEGINNING C++ THROUGH GAME PROGRAMMING, THIRD EDITION approaches learning C++ from the unique and fun perspective of games. Written for the beginning game developer or programmer, the book assumes no previous programming experience and each new skill and concept is taught using simple language and step-by-step instructions. Readers will complete small projects in each chapter to reinforce what they've learned and a final project at the end combines all of the major topics covered in the book. Featuring twenty five percent new material, this third edition covers all the latest technology and advances. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (66)

3rd edition? Doesn't look any different from the previous edition
This sounds like a good racket to get into. Just write a book and every other year or so add a paragraph and call it a new edition. I liked the second edition but see no reason what so ever for justifying a 3rd edition. Its the same stuff almost verbatim. Nothing new of value is being added.

Total ripoff for a Kindle book
I bought the Kindle version of this book, so there is no companion CD-ROM.When you go to the website recommended for download of files for the CD-ROM, you are immediately redirected to a site that will sell you the CD-ROM (a company called Delmar Cengage Learning).Lucky me, I can pay $29.99 for the online companion, and I can't get the files, source code for the programs or games, will have to go elsewhere for the Bloodshed Dev-C++ (easy enough), and won't get the "useful links."I don't give a dang at this point if this is a good book or not, I feel completely ripped by the fact that I can pay nearly double for the "companion" information than I paid for the Kindle book.Total ripoff.

Not bad as an introduction to C++
This book does a fairly decent job of introducing new programmers to various C++ topics such as data types, flow control, functions and object-oriented development. It was pretty easy to absorb (with the obligatory struggle on pointers, of course), and I feel it gave me a pretty good start to learning more about C++.

On the other hand there were a few places in the book where the flow seemed to be just right, when all of a sudden a concept would be introduced that kind of seemed out of place or plugged in after the book was finished, as it was not nearly as well presented or explained as the reader had grown accustomed to seeing in the rest of the book. It would usually be only a brief departure, but each time it left me scratching my head and flipping back through several previous pages, wondering what I had missed. One example is the discussion regarding memory usage and the heap. I saw the disclaimer (paraphrasing) "This example is shown as an abstract diagram, because we are talking about an object, rather than a string literal." Used several times throughout that chapter, without ever being provided any explanation on why that point is even significant.

While the example code was straightforward enough and did serve to demonstrate the author's points, it often lacked enough context to provide a thorough understanding of the topic. For example, seeing the way pointers and references behave differently is good information, but no clue is given as to why or how you would determine which you need in a given situation.

All in all I found the book useful, but I'm certain there are better options out there.

Excellent learning material
This was a great choice for me to purchase this book and I have to thank all the positive reviews on Amazon for it. Some people were apparently confused by the title on the first edition and so it was altered on the second. This book is for people who want to learn C++ as opposed to people wanting to learn game programming. This is the perfect choice for absolute beginners. The author explains things really well and assumes you know very little about programming. His writing style is concise yet light and quite methodical, starting off with basic programming structures and building his way up to classes. This book alone will not teach you everything you need to know but it surely was an excellent introduction for me into the world of C++ and the fact it used game creation as a vehicle, this made it even more interesting for me.

GREAT
Great book it is written simplistically but not too simplistically he writes like he would teach it in a class and unlike some reviewers it was not written for computer illiterate just a person with no programming experience, for the people who are looking to get this book IT DOES NOT USE GRAPHICS there is no animation because with out something to supplement C ++ it has no graphics function it need direct x or something along those lines i personally recommend this book to anyone looking to learn c ++ but if you want to go more in depth and make a graphical game then get a follow up ook that will build on this one. ... Read more

Product Description
Welcome to "Game Coding Complete, Third Edition," the newest edition of the essential, hands-on guide to developing commercial-quality games. Written by a veteran game programmer, the book examines the entire game development process and all the unique challenges associated with creating a game. An excellent introduction to game architecture, you'll explore all the major subsystems of modern game engines and learn professional techniques used in actual games. This third edition features expanded content and coverage of the latest and most exciting new game programming techniques including AI, multiprogramming, working with scripting languages such as Lua, and writing C# tools like your level editor. All the code and examples presented have been tested and used in commercial video games, and the book is full of invaluable best practices, professional tips and tricks, and cautionary advice. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (30)

Dry read
A very dry read, even for a programmer.It eventually gets interesting but its annoying when it constantly wants to remind you that game programming is hard and taxing.

Excellent Guidance From a Game Programming Guru
As a newcomer to game development, this book has been worth its weight in gold to me.There are many books out there which can teach you how to use specific API's and mathematical concepts you need to build games, but few address the architectural and design-related questions as well as this one does.The author is obviously an experienced game programmer who can offer a lot of insight into how you should approach designing your project so you don't end up with a tangled, unmaintainable mess.Examples here include the author's recommendation for decoupling game components via the use of an event system, and a lightweight cooperative scheduling system for "processes" which must span multiple frames (e.g. animations).There's also a thorough example of how you should create a base "application" class that can abstract the plumbing associated with initialization and rendering, exposing simple methods to subclasses such as "Init", "Update Scene", and "Draw Scene".This sort of pattern can be seen in high-level frameworks out there today such as the XNA API.I'm an experienced programmer who had never done any game programming but had a really good idea, and this book helped me figure out fundamentally how I should build the game from an architectural point of view.It's surely saved me a lot of development man-hours.

There is also decent treatment here of the math fundamentals and some graphics programming, though I think programmers should probably look elsewhere for more comprehensive treatments of these subjects.If you're looking to get into game development, pick this one up and maybe another book on DirectX/OpenGL/whatever your graphics API of choice is.

Good for those who will understand
I bought this book a little bit early, and had to go review my C++ before i could fully use it, and when I did, I came to realize that I was holding THE book on game coding.

This book covers nearly everything, in that what the author doesn't cover (or one of the other guest authors) he gives you the next path you should go down in order to achieve your goals in that certain area of coding.

He also offers tons of tips and inside stories on what it's like working as a game developer in a recurring section called 'tales from the pixel mines' which are all very informative, and i enjoyed reading all of them.

Do not think, however, that this book will hold your hand throughout the process. In some parts of the example code the author literally says some thing like: "//type your own code here". this opens the readers' eyes to the fact that learning to make games is not a process of just being taught, but is mostly about discovering it for yourself (didn't Galileo say something like that?). Rest assured, when something has to be taught, the author teaches it, after all, at some point it wastes time to 're-invent the wheel' and that is where the true magic of this book comes into play. It leaves enough for YOU to do on your own, instead of just showing one way and expecting you to copy it. really is like having a teacher that you can open and learn from whenever you want.

in short, this is the best book on game programming I have ever had the pleasure to read, and once you have a good basis in Direct3D and can understand some advanced C++ concepts, you need to pick up this book. You NEED to.

Good programming wisdom
The book covers many topics. I was interested in more info on how to use Lua and was glad to see some pages about it (about 50 pages worth). The code is neat and easy to read. You may not like the idea of having to download the code though. All coding is done using DirectX. Was hoping to see some use of obj (even better fbx) file loading of meshes and wanted more info on XAudio2 or XACT3 but no such luck. So, it has a dated feel about it. Otherwise still a good book. BTW Thief was a good game.

Great insider detail, very schizophrenic however
This book has lots of pertinent information for designing/coding games from an industry veteran. The book discusses many aspects of the process including handling input, user interface issues, networking, all the things that go into making a game.

The problem is that he is a bit schizophrenic at times in his audience. At some points he talks at baby programming level, and then he can jump to talking about things that he never explicitly assumes you have knowledge of (graphics programming, for example) and makes a trite statement at the end of a section like "That is also why this model is a negative z-buffer axis model rotational handle function, of course". Which just makes close to 0 sense.

But it's a good book to have and I wish I have version 3 for more up to date ideas in making games. ... Read more

Product Description
Instead of "binding" symptoms of sickness, we can attack the sixteen strongmen or demonic spirits mentioned by name in the Bible. God names them, they are real, and He has given us dominion over them through the name of Jesus! Here is a scriptural, balanced, uplifting approach to present-day spiritual warfare. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (27)

Spiritual Warfare Guide
This book is one of the best and easiest to understand books on spiritual warfare on the market.It breaks things down in a way that is both comprehensive and interesting.I recommend it so highly that I bought two copies - one for myself and one for a friend.

Strongman's His Name...What's His Game?
This is an excellent easy concise description of real war we are in and how to overcome the enemy daily.

I use this Book all the time.
This is a must have for a deliverance minister. Great information in this book. Will help you bunches.
Great shape and a wonderful seller to work with. Fast ship.ThanksVickie

Spiritual warefare is real
This book is great and it's all scripturally based. It opens up your eyes to what goes on in spiritaul warfare. you no longer have to run around blindy wondering what's going on. Christens need to step up and stop pretending that spiritual warfare isn't real. Read this book and start taking authority over the enemy.

High Marks
Book was purchased for a friend who said he received it promptly and in very good condition. Many thanks ... Read more

Product Description
Since its original printing in 1984, The Game of Work helped thousands of companies and hundreds of thousands of managers and employees experience increased job enjoyment while producing extraordinary results. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (11)

Essential Book for Maximizing Productivity, Results, and Motivation of Self and Team
More, better, faster.This is an excellent book for getting the most out of your resources in business and in life.What gets measured gets done, and this book shows you "how" to measure so you can truly excel in performance and results, and the process of enhancing performance becomes a fun game rather than a tedious "should".I got great value from all of the real world examples in the book which opened my mind to unlimited ways to apply this to any business or individual.I'm going to start using it in my real estate business right away.I'm recommending it to all of my friends.These tools clearly increase any bottom line result, and in less time.Note to the author:It would be great if you could make the score cards and game sheets available as free downloads on your website.I've come to expect this type of "freebie" from business books that reference forms tools.

making work meaningful and fun
I have used the concepts and measurements in this book to increase my on the job performance they have helped me get promotions and increases in pay. I highly recommend implementing the ideas and concepts in this book as opposed to just reading it if you do nothing with the concepts it is a waste of your time and money

The scoop
After reading this book, I can understand how corporate America is soooo screwed up. I can only imagine how productive America would be if every company played by the models of this book.

Right on
This book was exceptional, I think it hit everything right on. I really enjoyed this book, Mr. Coonradt is brilliant, he covered everything in detail and it made sense, he offers such great advise. I have taken the things in this book and have implimented them into my life and work life.

Totally simplistic and unconvincing
Mr Coonradt's premise is that people are motivated to work well when they can keep score against very straightforwardly measurable goals.To bolster this argument, Conraadt points to what people do in their leisure time, claiming that people like and are motivated to do their leisure activities more than their work because score keeping and measurement in these leisure activities is very simple. He also claims that people who don't concentrate on their scores -- and in particular how they measure up against other people -- are "losers".

One clear problem with this argument is that the book totally and absolutely ignores the fact that many people the world over spend their precious leisure time engaged in activities where "scoring" and objective measurement doesn't even enter into the equation.think of artistic endeavors -- surely a very important area of human activity!In many aspects of arts (most?) scoring and measurement don't have a place at all -- is Van Gogh measurably better than Cezanne?Indeed, that very kind of thinking is anathema to artistic creation.Or think of the hobbies of reading, playing music, listening to music, watching plays, watching dance, painting, photography, etc. etc. etc. Why do people engage in these activities with such dedication when there is no measuring or scoring of any sort going on?Even if you grant the author his sports-myopic-vision, there are many sporting activities where scoring isn't important to the majority of participants, or isn't present at all -- fishing, sailing, kayaking, horseback riding, hiking, etc etc etc. Granted some people do these "non-scoring" sports in scoring settings.... but I would argue the vast majority of participants do not.There are far more recreational trail riders than there are grand prix show jumpers or racing jockeys: there are far more people who just "putter" in their boats than people who race competitively.

So, really the author's argument largely applyies only if you limit your thinking to a subset of sporting activity (itself a subset of what he should in fact be looking at and examining) and ignore the characteristics of a broad swath of the activities that humans in fact find deeply satisfying. He's focused on a very, very limited slice of life and basically writes-off people who are motivated by things other than simple scores.

Meanwhile, many companies provide their employees with very clear score-keeping parameters and the jobs involved are miserable (I've had experience of that myself in spades!!). Bottom line: when I applied this book's arguments to myself and what I have seen in my 20 year career -- what I find rewarding, what jobs I've found most satisfying, the environments and practices that make people thrive -- the arguments just didn't ring true to me. It certainly would be verycomforting to think that constructing a rewarding, highly productiveand humane work environment could be this simple -- that there's a magic bullet like this -- but I think how humans approach jobs and how we respond to work environments are just like everything else in human life -- complex and, at times, bewildering. And it also seems to me that American business in these times needs more of the kind of complex, nuanced analysis and judgment that belong in the sphere of the arts rather than the simple score-keeping of football or baseball.There are many good business books out there that acknowledge that and give better advice on how to navigate this area. ... Read more

Amazon.com Review
Business Model Generation is a handbook for visionaries, game changers, and challengers striving to defy outmoded business models and design tomorrow's enterprises. If your organization needs to adapt to harsh new realities, but you don't yet have a strategy that will get you out in front of your competitors, you need Business Model Generation.

Co-created by 470 "Business Model Canvas" practitioners from 45 countries, the book features a beautiful, highly visual, 4-color design that takes powerful strategic ideas and tools, and makes them easy to implement in your organization. It explains the most common Business Model patterns, based on concepts from leading business thinkers, and helps you reinterpret them for your own context. You will learn how to systematically understand, design, and implement a game-changing business model--or analyze and renovate an old one. Along the way, you'll understand at a much deeper level your customers, distribution channels, partners, revenue streams, costs, and your core value proposition.

Business Model Generation features practical innovation techniques used today by leading consultants and companies worldwide, including 3M, Ericsson, Capgemini, Deloitte, and others. Designed for doers, it is for those ready to abandon outmoded thinking and embrace new models of value creation: for executives, consultants, entrepreneurs, and leaders of all organizations. If you're ready to change the rules, you belong to "the business model generation!"

The Power of “What If” Questions
Content from authors Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur
We often have trouble conceiving innovative business models because we are held back in our thinking by status quo.The status quo stifles imagination.One way to overcome this problem is to challenge conventional assumptions with “what if” questions.With the right business model ingredients, what we think of as impossible might just be doable.“What if” questions help us break free of constraints imposed by current business models.They should provoke us and challenge our thinking.They should disturb us as intriguing, difficult-to-execute propositions.

What if...
…furniture buyers picked up components in flat pack form from a large warehouse and assembled the products themselves in their homes?What is common practice today was unthinkable until IKEA introduced the concept in the 1960’s.

…airlines didn’t buy engines for their airplanes, but paid for every hour an engine runs?That is how Rolls-Royce transformed itself from a money-losing British manufacturer into a service firm that today is the world’s second biggest provider of large jet engines.

…voice calls were free worldwide?In 2003 Skype launched a service that allowed free voice calling via the internet.After five years, Skype had acquired 400 million registered users who collectively had made 100 billion free phone calls.

... Read more

Customer Reviews (62)

Great book
This book will greatly contribute to the new trend in Internet and SW startups: develop a framework to iterate your business plan thru Customer Development and Lean Startup techniques.
This 3 concepts will become a trilogy in modern business strategy

Finally, a book that is relevant to today!
A friend recommended this book to me and I loved it from the first "thumb through".The first chapter is dedicated to actually understanding the book, and creates a common "canvas" to organize ideas, audiences, resources, etc.What I liked most about it was that it was written with a nod to the "visual thinking" movement, and is actually sensitive to the designer's point of view.The case studies are real world, and happening today...not years ago which gives this book a very fresh look at this complex process.True creativity is often about making the complex seem simple, and this book does just that.

Fantastic book - both content and presentation
Business Model Generation: A Handbook for Visionaries, Game Changers, and Challengers

I've just received this book and I am impressed with both the content and flow of visual presentation.

Great graphic design.This book not only helps with business plans and models but for a graphic designer is a great example of pragmatic visual presentation - very well done.Even the extra wide book width adds to the visual readability.

The book reflects the years of work the authors have worked on this presentation - honed with feedback and comments.

One of the first business books that I could not put down upon opening.That says a lot for me!

I plan on updating this review after finishing - I wanted to share my initial positive reaction - very pleased with it, and I already see some immediate application to my business and products. Love this pragmatic aspect - treat to read/view and yet very useful.

useful
Business model generation is a shortcut to imagine, understand and test your business model ideias. It`s a perfect toolkit for brazilian entrepreneurship companies.

business model generation
Business Model Generation help us easier to set up every products that deliver in IT solution in my company ... Read more

Product Description
The new GhostWalker novel from the #1 New York Times

bestselling author As bodies pile up, a violent new cross-country game is blamed on the GhostWalkers. To clear their name, they infiltrate the dangerous sport. And to survive it, they must ignore the rules. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (89)

For This Genre...5 Stars.S'good!
This was a really satisfying read. I'm so pleasantly surprised. I've given it five stars in a relative sense. I've mistakenly downloaded many books that are as deep and/or developed as a rain puddle or a Hallmark card, much to my chagrin. So, I've got to give it to Feehan. This woman is working AND making it work! After picking and choosing among the Carpathian novels, and enjoying them to varying degrees, I was unsure what Feehan would do in a different framework. This book actually made more sense to me then the vampire world that Feehan has created. I think of those books as kind-of paranormal dominance kink and I have to chuckle to myself when I read reviews of them which seem to decry the basic premise of the series. If you're reading it and enjoying it, you might as well own it. Once again, I have to question some of my fellow Amazon reviewers when it comes to this story. The "sex, sex, sex" referred to in other reviews just doesn't ring true for me. Yeah, there are several sex scenes but they make sense. Also, they're written in a somewhat more realistic and less overwrought voice then the vampire books (the writing is still over-the-top in places but it's tolerable in the scheme of things). If you're looking for less explicit prose, perhaps this isn't the author for you??If you're okay with the "adult" content, go for it and enjoy!

My Favorite Ghostwalker
While I liked all the Ghostwalkers, there was something so appealing about Kaden.the scene where he is making her come back is so poignant, the things he says about being lonely.In all the books, he stood out, something about him, so mysterious.I was very happy when his book came out and I wasn't disappointed.

LOVER OR SEX MANIAC
I was really looking forward to Kaden's book and was totally disappointed. He is portrayed as a sexually dependant male chauvanist.
what man who truly cares about his woman wouldget turned on laying next to herafter she's been brutally abused by a serial killer madman.Ms. Feehan your books are becoming more violent towards innocent women and childrenand horrifically descriptive. I read a book for entertainment purposes not nightmarish gore.
the ghostwalkers are superheroes not sexual deviants.how about leaving some of the brutal parts up to the readers imagination. And allow the heroine some pride and dignity Not make her a sex slave to a man who claims he loves her. Your stories are starting to sound alike only thecharacters names have been changed. I would like to see a stong willed man with some self control as the next hero. one that isnt needy having to constantly touch and be inside his lover every moment of the day.I truly enjoy most of your writing it is action packed and some parts funny and tender and easy reading.
this is my opionion of the book and after reading the other reviews a lot of us feel the same way.I hope you continue the Dark Series I like the family tiesin these books.
and the vampire stories.

So good, emotionally drained
I just finished this book and I am totally emotionally drained.It is go very very good.

A let down for Kadan fans
Like others I was really anticipating Kadan's story. Even as a secondary character in the other books, he's been strong and likable - until this one. In this one he's basically an out of control jerk. I'm so glad some of the other reviewers also felt there was just too much sex. I was worried I maybe had just been reading too much in this genre that I was building up a tolerance. But it's just gratuitous in this book - way over the top. Even the way Feehan writes the sex scenes in Murder Game is weird (she actually uses words like vaginal walls and cervix in the 'romance' scenes). It's like she's written so many sex scenes into this book she ran out of ways to describe it other than clinically.I gave it two stars only because of the non-romance plot was interesting, and there is a lot of play for the Ghostwalkers working as a team which is absent in some of the other books. Poor Kadan though, Feehan really let him down. ... Read more

Product Description

Men everywhere are under attack-your neighbor, your coworker, your pastor, even your husband. And, even in Christian homes, 40% of men have fallen to this foe that can destroy marriages and ruin lives.

Who is this devastating adversary? Pornography. It floods our airwaves and PCs, assaulting the senses, and luring its prey to return again and again.

Drawing from seventeen years of counseling practice, and using material that he's taught for more than ten years, Joe Dallas is helping readers face this enemy. Equipping those who have been caught up in pornography or other forms of sexual sin with the ability to abandon that behavior and never return.

Using the acronym ROUTE-Repentance, Order, Understanding, Training, and Endurance-Dallas walks readers through the steps necessary to attain-and maintain-sexual integrity.

"No one understands this subject better than Joe Dallas. And nowhere is there a more biblical and user-friendly 'game plan' for Christian men committed to reclaiming moral purity. A resource no man should be without!" --Hank Hanegraaff, president of the Christian Research Institute and host of the Bible Answer Man broadcast

"Joe Dallas has written a practical handbook for men who want to get serious about their purity. The Game Plan is the tool that answers one of the most troubling problems in the church today, and it does so with compassion, clarity, and a sound biblical base."--D. James Kennedy, Ph.D.

"You may beat your demon the first time through The Game Plan or you may need it through a long season, but it's a worthy companion. Joe's advice is sound and his format is friendly."--Tom Minnery, Focus on the Family

"I can tell you without hesitation that The Game Plan is one of the best books I've ever read on this important topic."--Robert Adrescok, Editor, New Man Magazine

Customer Reviews (14)

An excellent resource for staying sexually pure.
This book was an enormous help to me.Joe Dallas tells it like it is.

An excellent, practical guide to achieving and maintaining victory in this area
I've read numerous books on the subject of attaining sexual integrity.This one is the best I have read because it not only contained all the principles the others had, but it included a systematic plan of action, and one that is practical and yet only takes a small daily investment of time.This is a book that I will recommend to any friends who are looking for help in this area.

joe dallas book
Excellent book! I highly recommend it to any man attempting to live a life of integrity. Each topic is covered with the aim to provide knowledge followed by an action plan. It really helps to reinforce good behaviors with an internalized understanding.

Freedom At Long Last
After many many years of slowly becoming more proccupied with digital pornography, which in this day and age is literally 5 seconds away via the internet, this book instantly helped me break the chain of obsession that eventually ANYONE who toys with this garbage will suffer through.I have now been free of the obsession for well over a year, and God has lifted the compulsion from my soul.Thank you, and I have recommended this book to dozens of my friends, and will continue to try to help by recommending this book that helped me become FREE AT LONG LAST.

Pouring Grace into a Law Filled Taboo
In a world where shame and guilt can erode the soul's desire to do the right thing; The Game Plan lays out a grace based strategy that focuses on maintaining sexual integrity with refreshing awareness that a Christian's identity is not bound up in his behaviors, but in his relationship with God. Great perspective for those struggling with sexual sin issues. ... Read more

Product Description
Play To Win...

It's the ultimate game--the adrenaline surge of the hunt, the thrill of victory, the agony of defeat. For in this game, the rules are simple: To win, you only have to kill. To lose, you will have to die...

Play To Scream...

The victims are former beauty queens found with a single rose beside their bodies. Lindsay McAllister has seen this signature before, when she was a rookie detective with the Chattanooga PD investigating the death of Judd Walker's wife, a murder that sent the handsome lawyer off the deep end. Now, Lindsay has the brutal task of telling Judd that his wife's killer has struck again, and she's going to need his help to outplay their opponent--because the killer is getting bolder, faster, and more ruthless. The game is escalating, and no one is safe.

Play To Die...

Now as the body count rises, the rules are changing. A killer will do anything to win. And the only way for Lindsay to stop a madman's twisted game is to play it herself...

New York Times bestselling author Beverly Barton has written over thirty contemporary romance novels and created the popular "The Protectors" series for Silhouette's Intimate Moments line. This sixth-generation Alabamian is a two-time Maggie Award winner, a two-time National Reader's Choice Award winner, and a recipient of a Romantic Times Career Achievement Award for Series Romantic Adventure. She is currently working on her next novel of romantic suspense for Zebra Books. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (20)

Interesting and Irritating, but a Good Game
I like that a lot of Ms. Barton's books to this point include some of the same characters.Griff Powell makes another appearance in this tale but strikes me as an ass--hard to like and with too many secrets.

Lindsay McAllister is a likeable character, at first.She becomes a sap who actually seems to like being kicked over and over again by the man she loves, the supposed hero, Judd Walker.I quit caring about her and hope other women won't make her some kind of role model.This character has no self-respect.

Judd is a total SOB.Yeah, there are slivers of good in him, but as I read this book I truly disliked him and found the change that occurred in him unrealistic, and way too late.

I found it hard to feel any compassion for any of the main characters because they're all so shallow or just plain silly.There is a lot of promise with these characters, but I feel Ms. Barton fell short of making them into real people a reader can identify with.

I've always had a problem with Ms. Barton's characters but have always had to praise her storyline.THE DYING GAME offers a very challenging mystery.There is evil that has gone unchecked for something like four years.The reason for that is handled beautifully by Ms. Barton and this is a book I enjoyed--despite the irritating characters.I looked forward to the follow-up to it, THE MURDER GAME, and I enjoyed that, too, overall.

I believe Ms. Barton has a knack for storytelling, but lacks when it comes to delivering three dimensional characters.

Shelley Dawn, author of Sweet, Sweet Jessie and Dark Nights

Errors,Over-sights, & Unbelievable characters...
The first thing that bothered me about this was the weak main character. She is in love with a man who emotionally & verbally abused her into therapy. As if that wasn't bad enough, he tried to rape her & is obsessed with his dead wife. Did I mention he'a also an alcoholic? Throughout the book she tries to say she hates him but then makes spineless declarations about how she would give him everything and expects nothing in return. It's really sobering, especially since the woman, Lindsay is a former police officer and current private investigator. She works for a very rich playboy of a man,Griff- who has no experience,but a lot of money to bribe cops & government officials into releasing information. He also charms women and uses his past college status as a football player His best friend is...yes, the drunken, obsessive, woman-abuser Judd.
The one character it's not hard to like is psychic Dr.Meng, who should have her own book.
The plot focuses around a game of killing former beauty pageant winners with a point system for hair-color. The underlying reasons for the killings is really a false way to create a signature. It reality it's a fun game. Even the victims are not consistant. Any woman who has ever won any type of beauty pageant, no matter how small, is a possible target. They are then killed by chopping off whatever appendages they used for their pageant talents. This is where errors come in. One of the woman killed is a former Miss Usa who participated in Miss Universe. Error #1 is that those pageants don't HAVE talent portions. (Miss America does, and tiny local pageants do) The publish date for this book is 2007, but it seems like it's dated back much further. Maybe to garner sympathy for the victims, there is no updated reality on pageants. All of the kills leave the police and FBI baffled as to who could have done it. In an age where it's common knowledge that the Miss Usa/Miss Universe organization girls have had their share of nudity scandals, drug problems, bad public behavior, inner sabotauge, and a plethora of plastic surgery, it is a little hard to believe. It stands to reason that a serial killer would be a little more specific about his targets and that they wouldn't range so much. A LITTLE research definitely would have made this a little more beliveable. Most of the women fall into the killer's trap because they are sweet and naive, none of them divas. No one even questions that it may be a woman out for revenge after being treated badly by pageant girls or being a former pageant girl herself. Of course, this isn't the case, and the killer is obviously a man.
The second large error is a clue given away by the killer in a voice tape -he mentions to the victim that it's his "first beheading" and no one even blinks. I find it hard to believe that with the number of people and organizations working on the case, they could all be so stupid.
Of course, there is a happy fairy-tale ending to all of this, that also opens the door for a sequel.
I HAVE read previous books by this author that weren't this out there, error-riddled, and just agonizing to read.
I don't recommend this to anyone, and the third problem is the unrealistic romance prevails angle with all of the thrown in book-porn.

Barton needs writing lessons
This was the first Beverly Barton book I ever read. I picked it up in my desperate attempt to find an author as good as Sandra Brown (been an S.B. fan for years and am nearing the end of reading all of her books). Barton is yet another mistake in my quest to find a Brown substitute. Like so many female authors on the bestsellers lists, she simply cannot write. She has decent ideas, but no skill in executing them.

Barton is one of those "redundant for the sake of redundancy" authors who reiterates one phrase three times because she somehow thinks that makes the writing more stylish. You know: "She wanted to make love to him, go to bed with him, have sex with him". And let's not get into how many times she repeats information such as when the BQ murders began ("almost four years ago"!), when Jenny was killed, etc. as if after the 500th time, the reader can't remember these details. She repeats this information at least 3 times per chapter. The heroine, Lindsay, is a disgrace to the female sex. A pathetic, needy, masochistic, whiny excuse for a woman who "loves" the abusive Judd Walker so unconditionally, she actually forgives him (and still wants him!) after he tried to rape her. Thanks, Barton, for setting women back about a hundred years before feminism.

Barton introduces too many secondary characters (mostly agents) who contribute nothing to the plot and have no substance as characters, serving only to crowd up the pages with useless names. I don't understand why she chooses to skim over information that is essential to the plot like developments over the past 4 years of the BQK case, in regards to the case itself, the agents' involvements and how it relates to L&J's relationship, as well as to Griff's and Nic's. In doing so, she makes things that happen in the present seem far too random and improperly set up, such as the bitchy Nic Baxter's rivalry with Griff. Out of the blue and unexplained. We are simply supposed to accept that they hate each other for no reason, or rather Nic hates Griff though no reason is provided. If there are two types off female characters I can't stand, caricatures that untalented writers always resort to, it's the spineless doormat and the bitchy ball-buster. Neither emulates a realistic, believable woman and lo and behold! Both stereotypes are found in this book.

Apparently, the Griff and Nic relationship will be developed in the sequel (and this book really is nothing but a set-up for The Murder Game, so don't bother reading it). I just finished said sequel, as a way to give Barton a second chance to prove herself, but she failed. She is a terrible writer who lacks original style and has absolutely no skill in basic creative writing elements such as proper pacing, set-up, exposition and plot/character development.

Couldn't wait to get this book done
I've read two---soon to be three once I finish this book--- of Beverly Barton's books. Though I don't think they are the best, they are okay. When I picked up "The Dying Game" I wasn't expecting it to be awesome, and it's certainly not.

The plot is interesting, at least a little bit. A killer that focuses strictly on murdering former Beauty Queens, and doing so in gruesome ways, is on the loose, and for five years they have gotten away with dozens upon dozens of murders. The FBI and a Private Investigator hired by a husband of one of the victims have nothing on the killer and zero suspects.

Throughout the book the killer(s) get away with killing more victims while the people trying to stop the massacre travel from place to place in hopes of finding clues that could solve and end the case once and for all.

The book mainly focuses on two characters, Lindsay McAllister and Judd Walker. Their relationship is annoying and repetitive, in my opinion, and it made the book boring to me. Lindsay loves Judd, is obsessed with him. Judd claims he doesn't love her and tries to drive her away. He doesn't want to care about her even though he does. And Lindsay doesn't care if he hurts her. They talk about it so many times in the book and I absolutely couldn't wait to get the book over and done with. Thankfully, I am on the last chapter!

I think the book could have been better if it didn't focus so much on Lindsay and Judd.

I liked it!
I thought it had great suspense and yes, it was gruesome in parts but we are talking about a serial killer here....

I enjoyed the story of Lindsey and Judd.Furthermore, I could understand why Lindsey would act the way she did (I didn't always agree with it - she sometimes did behave like a doormat). But, we can't always help who we fall in love with, can we?I'm sure this was the case with Lindsey as well.

This was my first book by Barton, but it definitely will not be my last (finished The Murder Game already!).I love the characters in these books (especially Griffin & Nicole) and I can't wait to read more about all of them!! ... Read more

Product Description
An extraordinary book that will dramatically change the way you experience life.
Finite games are the familiar contests of everyday life, the games we play in business and politics, in the bedroom and on the battlefied -- games with winners and losers, a beginning and an end. Infinite games are more mysterious -- and ultimately more rewarding. They are unscripted and unpredictable; they are the source of true freedom.
In this elegant and compelling work, James Carse explores what these games mean, and what they can mean to you. He offers stunning new insights into the nature of property and power, of culture and community, of sexuality and self-discovery, opening the door to a world of infinite delight and possibility.
"An extraordinary little book . . . a wise and intimate companion, an elegant reminder of the real."
-- Brain/Mind Bulletin
... Read more

Customer Reviews (48)

For the person who plays with ideas
I've met people who seem to think that philosophy is about reading a philosopher's book in a week, listening to a two hour lecture that tells them what it's about, and moving on.This book isn't for those people.It's for people who as they're reading Aristotle, scribble in the margin, "But what about....?" If you like to think about big ideas that you haven't thought about before - to turn them around in your mind and feel the joy that flows out of these particular ideas - then this book is for you.The thinker who loves life.

Is life more accurately viewed as participitating in a game?
Finite and infinite games is a very different kind of book. Carse does direct the reader to an unusual POV concerning or our engagement in social roles and instutional responsibilities. Much of is indeed palatable even though you feel like he's hitting you over the head with the propaganda like structure of the book. Also, I must admit that I found the book kind of inspirational. In a sneaky sort of way, it validates some of our doubts about levels of committment and sanity in our social endeavors. In the end its about just that, and seeks to redirect our efforts to the cause of aligning our self with our social destiny...Ha..but maybe I'm wrong! Is it just a wacked out Self-Help manifesto?

Freedom In A Little Black Book
I read Finite and Infinite Games by James P. Carse when it came out in paperback and I still remember the THRILL of the opening premise, about there being two kinds of games, finite and infinite.

I bought multiple copies, giving them to my family and friends; keeping several around the house to remind me of the premise whenever I saw their thin black edges on my shelves.

If there is a Western writer of "koans" equal in power to the Zen Buddhists, it must be Carse. He starts with simple premises in the best Western logical style and builds on them. Before you know it you're going, whoa...

Out of nowhere, from reading toward the back of the book I gained an appreciation of why my mother enjoyed collecting silver (something I'd only rolled my eyes at before). And for that matter, why people collect ANYthing.

From reading toward the front of the book I gained a whole new insight about people (including me) wanting to make records that would "stand for all time". And how to still aspire to those without taking them (quite) so seriously. From that "aha" my life perspective gained a new calm and poise.

If there were one word to summarize what this book encompasses (and no, there is no such word), it's "freedom". Freedom to aspire, freedom to achieve, freedom to take life fully seriously but with a mischevious, fun, impish spirit behind it all saying something like, There, there, good job!

I want to be an Infinite Gamer
I've had this book for about 20 years.It is a difficult book on-the-whole.I was taken in by it from some of its more simple statements, but found some of its points difficult to understand.I'm still working on an understanding and his point-of-view has grown as I've grown, the shape of it changing with me over the years.

The book is relatively short at only 152 pages including the Index.It is laid out in seven chapters.Within each chapter, the author has assigned numbers to sections.The sections run from 1 - 101:

Section 1: "There are at least two kinds of games.One could be called finite, the other infinite.A finite game is played for the purpose of winning, an infinite game for the purpose of continuing play."

Section 101: "There is but one infinite game."

One can read, as I have, only the sections--and this, out of order.In fact, I have not read the book cover to cover.I intend to.Carse's book has some simple statements that are gems that I've carried with me over the years that make the book very worth while. Let me share some of what I call Carse's Infinite and Finite Gamer statements with a couple of my own:

"There are at least two kinds of games.One could be called finite, the other infinite.A finite game is played for the purpose of winning, an infinite game for the purpose of continuing the play."

"The rules of a finite game may not change; the rules of an infinite game must change."

"Finite players play within boundaries; infinite players play with boundaries."

"Finite players are serious; infinite players are playful."

"Finite players win titles; infinite players have nothing but their names."

"A finite player plays to be powerful; an infinite player plays with strength."

"A finite player consume time; an infinite player generates time."

"The finite player aims to win eternal life; the infinite player aims for eternal birth."


My list from May 4, 2009:

Infinite gamers: Gracious in a win or a loss. Finite gamers: Gloat in a win, poor sports in a loss.

Infinite gamers: "May the best man win." Finite gamers: "I will do whatever it takes to win."

Infinite gamers: Gracious in an argument and know when to stop. Finite gamers: Must have the last word.

Infinite gamers: Give more than they take. Finite gamers: Take more than they give.

Infinite gamers: See things from more than just one angle. Finite gamers: See things from only one angle.

Infinite gamers: Project the courage in their hearts onto others and treat them accordingly.Finite gamers: Project the fear in their hearts onto others and treat them accordingly.

I suggest you find a copy of this book and use it as a reference for adding more "infinite gamer" type thoughts to your finite life; a life of play and possibility.

good bits and boring bits
some interesting ideas, but lots of loosely sewn arguments and/or flawed logic, also there's more words in this book than there's ideas. Worth reading but you'll find you tend to skip pages. ... Read more

Product Description

An insider's revealing look at the hidden world of major league baseball

Doug Glanville, a former major league outfielder and Ivy League graduate, draws on his nine seasons in the big leagues to reveal the human side of the game and of the men who play it.

In The Game from Where I Stand, Glanville shows us how players prepare for games, deal with race and family issues, cope with streaks and slumps, respond to trades and injuries, and learn the joyful and painful lessons the game imparts. We see the flashpoints that cause misunderstandings and friction between players, and the imaginative ways they work to find common ground. And Glanville tells us with insight and humor what he learned from Jimmy Rollins, Alex Rodriguez, Randy Johnson, Barry Bonds, Curt Schilling, and other legendary and controversial stars.

In his professional career, Glanville experienced every aspect of being a player—the first-round pick, the prospect, the disappointment, the can't-miss, the cornerstone, the veteran, the traded, the injured, the comeback kid. His eye-opening book gives fans a new level of understanding of day-to-day life in the big leagues. 

Customer Reviews (19)

Delivered when promised
This book was ordered for my grandson. It was shipped quickly and arrived in good condition.

We're All Glanville Fans Now
Baseball fans should read this book because they will learn what the average better-than-average player experiences. Glanville gives the reader a glimpse into various aspects of a player's career and life, with occasional insight and frequent personal perspective. The writing surpasses what you would expect from a former player, but is burdened by cliches and stunted prose. Well, OK, just because the guy graduated from University of Pennsylvania doesn't mean he's Martin Cruz Smith (I hate Martin Cruz Smith anyway), but he doesn't have to be to reach his audience. The book and its author have maturity, thoughtfulness, and even wisdom; but I find Glanville's New York Times columns to be better written, and more nuanced. Still, I enjoyed this book and recommend it to everyone who loves the game. If you weren't a fan of Doug Glanville the player, this book will make you a fan of Doug Glanville the man.

Don't play the race card
A good enough book.Nothing exciting.He did tend to repeat certain information over and over, but tolerable.I gave the 2 star rating which otherwise would have been a 3-4 star rating, but Doug has to pull the race card which I would not have expected from him.Dear Doug, When a car salesman goes 0 for 4 on a Saturday he does not get paid.When you went 0 for 4 on a Saturday you still got paid.When a Mercedes dealer sees a man of any color stroll in dressed like he should be buying a used Dodge the immediate thought is that you are going to spend two hours with this guy and he's going to "think about it" and you will never see him again.Meanwhile, the guy who came dressed to buy a Mercedes just bought one in a half hour from the other salesman who will now be able to take his wife to a nice dinner.I'm not saying he was a good salesman, but I am saying the fact that you immediately went "there" seriously reduces my previously high opinion of you.

Incredibly insightful
This book is a great read. He provides a perspective unlike anything I have ever read about baseball. As a former major leaguer he lets you into the life of a Major League ball player, and all the stresses and benefits that come from it. A definite must read.

Inside look that's not that deep
I was somewhat disappointed by this book. As another reviewer said, it seemed like Glanville was trying to hard not to say anything controversial, especially about the steroid problem. I also found him somewhat self-absorbed, complaining about how hard it was for him to move his car from one city to another. (You know, when you make millions a year you can buy another car, Doug). Glanville seems unable to understand why there are less blacks in the league than 20 years ago. I'm not an Ivy Leaguer, but I can answer that question: 1. black kids today prefer the NBA or NFL to baseball, and 2. you may have noticed lots of Latino ballplayers in the league. The book wasn't terrible, but I would have preferred a more outspoken writer , perhaps Curt Schilling. ... Read more

Product Description

The long-awaited sequel to Sidney Sheldon's #1 New York Times bestselling masterpiece, Master of the Game

In his spellbinding bestseller, beloved author Sidney Sheldon introduced the glamorous, scheming Blackwell family and its unforgettable matriarch, Kate Blackwell. Now a generation has passed, and as the world has changed, so too has America's royal family.

Customer Reviews (38)

Just Ok..
I purchased this book on a whim since I am a HUGE fan of Master of the Game.I thought "how bad could it be?" and was honestly hoping for a trip down memory lane.

I am very disappointed.

I appreciate the authors attempt to bring the Blackwell family into modern times, but this book does not have that timeless quality that Master of the Game has.I do not see myself picking up Mistress for another read years from now or recommending the book to anyone I know.So much of Mistress of the Game feels forced with plot lines, locations, and characters that arethrown in randomly to push the story forward.Several good story lines were (for me) ruined by the unbelievable or sloppy way they were 'resolved' and wrapped up.

I gave this book 2 stars because there were a few good points, but I do not believe anyone who enjoyed Master of the Game should rush to buy Mistress.

Horrible
If you're a fan of "Master of the Game", I wouldn't bother with this one. Very disappointed and felt sad that Mr. Sheldon allowed this to happen.

Sheldon is Still the Master!
I've always said Sidney Sheldon was my mentor, even though he never knew it. I discovered his novels in college and learned from them as a writer. MASTER OF THE GAME has always been my favorite. When I saw MISTRESS OF THE GAME at the local bookstore, I initially passed on it, convinced that no one could write a sequel that could possibly do justice to the original. I finally took it as a free audiobook when I signed up for Audible.

I was pleasantly surprised. Nobody's ever going to measure up to the master himself (I should know; I've been trying!), but this was an enjoyable effort.

I'm not as disturbed as some reviewers here have been about the child rape. Lexie's kidnapping ordeal at age eight contributed overall to her psychological development. I was more disturbed by the "romance" between Lexie and Max--they were not only first cousins, their mothers were identical twins, and this fact was treated as insignificant.

As to whether or not Sheldon would write about child molestation, there was the kidnapping in RAGE OF ANGELS....

I did find some discrepancies in the characters' histories and many of the plot elements were contrived. Several reviewers have already mentioned them, so I won't repeat them here.The ending was puzzling, to say the least. I thought I'd lost part of the audio!

I would suggest the publisher not mislead readers by continuing to put Sidney Sheldon's name on Ms. Bagshawe's books. Let them stand on their own.

What a horrible twist to an old favorite!
Sheldon fans should avoid reading this book.While there is plenty of drama and negativity, few if any of the characters are well developed and/or spark the reader's sympathy.

This author takes every relationship that has the potential to be rewarding and twists them into something negative.When all else fails, kill off one of the couple and spend the next 30 pages reading how the surviving spouse is free-falling into an emotional abyss.Throw is some incest (cousin on cousin) and plenty of pedophile descriptions and the wonderful story continues.The love/romance scenes are poorly written and lackluster.

Then, after ruining many of the original characters and taking us through the lives of the next generation, this book is concluded with the thought process that there is room for another sequel.

If you *must* read this book, borrow it from a local library.You will regret paying money for it.

Some sequels are meant to be skipped or ignored.This is one of them.

Mistress of the Game
I have read every Sidney Sheldon book and this doesn't even come close.I am so very disappointed in Tilly Bagshawe.Sidney Sheldon must be turing over in his grave!He would never exploit children and the suspense was not even there.I wish I hadn't spent my money on this garbage ... Read more

Product Description
"Fantastic Learning Tool...Don't let this book title fool you. It is not an oversimplification of accounting and financial principles. It is, however, a serious and very effective examination of a very small but progressively complex business. There are not many books available on the market that make a complex and dry subject understandable and even fun. This book successfully does just that."
-Amazon Reviewer

The Clearest Explanation Ever of the Key Accounting Basics

The world of accounting can be intimidating. Whether you're a manager, business owner or aspiring entrepreneur, you've likely found yourself needing to know basic accounting...but baffled by complicated accounting books. What if learning accounting could be as simple and fun as running a child's lemonade stand? It can.

The Accounting Game presents financial information in a format so simple and so unlike a common accounting textbook, you may forget you're learning key skills that will help you get ahead! Using the world of a child's lemonade stand to teach the basics of managing your finances, this book makes a dry subject fun and understandable. As you run your stand, you'll begin to understand and apply financial terms and concepts like assets, liabilities, earnings, inventory and notes payable, plus:

--Interactive format gives you hands-on experience
--Color-coded charts and worksheets help you remember key terms
--Step-by-step process takes you from novice to expert with ease
--Fun story format speeds retention of essential concepts
--Designed to apply what you learn to the real world

The revolutionary approach of The Accounting Game takes the difficult subjects of accounting and business finance and makes them something you can easily learn, understand, remember and use!

"The game approach makes the subject matter most understandable. I highly recommend it to anyone frightened by either numbers or accountants."
-John Hernandis, Director of Corporate Communications, American Greetings
... Read more

Customer Reviews (74)

Good learning and/or review tool
"The Accounting Game" provides a simple, easy-to-understand presentation of the concepts of accounting. It is an excellent tool to teach accounting or to refresh your memory of business school classes. I purchased the Kindle version yet I would have benefit more from a paperback where I could have worked through the financial statement exercises.

Great summary of Accounting.
"The Accounting Game" is a quick read that summarizes the basics of accounting. Great way to set up the foundation of someone looking into the world of accounting.

Good introduction to accounting concepts
This book gives an overview of the basic concepts of accounting.The book empasizes clarity and simplicity.If you want a detailed discussion of US GAAP or IFRS, you need a big thick textbook.If you want to know what accounts you need to run a business and why they are their, read this book.The book is fun, but I found it sometimes bordered on too simple.Given the topic that's very forgivable.

An ABSOLUTE delight
I'd give 10 stars if i could.I couldnt put this book down.With no prior knowledge of accounting, i was fed up and decided to tackle the problem.I came across this book.Wow...I wish there were more books like that, and i believe it should be a mandatory read in high school.If you're clueless about about accounting, GET THIS BOOK!!!

GOOD TO LEARN BASICS
If you're just starting out learning accounting, then this book is great for understanding the concepts.It takes a different approach by portraying accounting concepts using real life analogies, instead of just showing you the form or routine of entering transactions in a journal or balance sheet and income statement.
For those who have already learned the very basics of accounting, this book is not for you. ... Read more

Product Description

Customer Reviews (24)

Bet you don't know you use it every day.
OK, everyone hates math. Everyone likes games. This is the basics of game theory. If you are trying to do better in your job, school, beat someone on the field of play or just grocery shopping, you are using game theory. Start with this one then try "The Art of Stragegy" by Avinash Dixet and Barry Nalebuff.

Very good, with practical applications
The author does an excellent job at presenting complex topics in a manner that you can either understand at a high level, or he also provides sidebars so that you can understand the mathematics of the conclusion.The author presents topics that are useful to everyday life, and can make you a better decision maker.What could be presented in a very dry manner, is instead presented with a nice touch of humor.

Boring, not applicable, and written by a 3rd grader
I found the book to be informing about game theory in the first few chapters, but after that it got completely worthless.What I learned in the first three chapters could was great, as it was basic game theorem related to everday life.As the book wore on though the author brought up a number of topics that are of no relevance to use in an everyday life.The stories are boring and the writing looks like that which should be read by pre-pubescent children.Save yourself some time and don't buy this book.You can learn 5x more by merely reading the wiki page on game theory!

Game theory should not be in the title
This book is not about game theory. The author touches on the subject for the first few chapters and then goes on to simplify it to the point of distortion and fill this book with pop-science fluff.

For a much better book on the topic, try The Compleat Strategyst: Being a Primer on the Theory of Games of Strategy It's put out by Rand, and it looks like it would be really dry, but it's the best intro to game theory that I've read- it's easy to understand, helpful, and even a bit funny in a playful way.

If you know even the slightest bit about game theory, don't bother
This book is a very, very elementary introduction to game theory. If you know anything about game theory at all, expect to get very bored, very fast reading this book. As another reviewer wrote, it is heavy on fluff, and light on actual theory/math/science, so if you are looking for a book that will make you think, this is not it. ... Read more

Product Description
The collapse of America’s credit markets in 2008 is quite possibly the biggest financial disaster in U.S. history. Confidence Game: How a Hedge Fund Manager Called Wall Street’s Bluff is the story of Bill Ackman's six-year campaign to warn that the $2.5 trillion bond insurance business was a catastrophe waiting to happen. Branded a fraud by the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times and investigated by Eliot Spitzer and the Securities and Exchange Commission, Ackman later made his investors more than $1 billion when bond insurers kicked off the collapse of the credit markets.

• Unravels the story of the credit crisis through an engaging and human drama
• Draws on unprecedented access to one of Wall Street's best-known investors
• Shows how excessive leverage, dangerous financial models and a blind reliance on triple-A credit ratings sent Wall Street careening toward disaster

Confidence Game is a real-world "Emperor's New Clothes," a tale of widespread delusion and one dissenting voice in the era leading up to the worst financial disaster since the Great Depression.

Christine Richard is a reporter with Bloomberg News whose work has been recognized by The New York Press Club and The Newswomen’s Club of New York. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (17)

An absolute must read for anyone who deals with Wall St.
This book really synthesizes much of what went wrong with the financial markets in the early 21st century.While it focuses on Bill Ackman, it stands as an indictment of virtually everyone involved in the real estate bubble, including regulators, banks, ratings agencies, and others.In 2007, I listened as bankers and financial advisors told our company to issue 7 day "auction rate" securities covered with bond insurance.Not one of the actors mentioned Ackman's criticisms of the bond insurers or the troubles with the CDO and other markets, and neither did the ratings agencies we met with.6 months later, the market melted down and we ended up paying default interest rates of 20% - to the same bankers who told us to issue the bonds in the first place!This despite the fact that our company was and is AA rated on its own, without taking into account "bond insurance" that initially made our debt AAA.It was disgusting.Of course, the actors in our situation have done fine, and we were left dealing with the mess they helped us into.

Turning to the book, because it's written by a journalist, it's very easy to read and terminology is well-explained.This is important, because most readers will probably not be familiar with many of the securities involved in the market meltdown.I was fascinated to read about how Ackman initially concluded the bond insurers did not deserve AAA ratings, and then how MBIA did everything they could to silence him, even convincing the NY AG's office to investigate him for potential crimes.Talk about playing hardball.In addition, the ratings agencies refused to take Ackman seriously, and his attempts at meeting with various other Wall Street institutions came to naught.MBIA was apparently manipulating the price of its stock by buying its own shares whenever bad press was released, undercutting the impact of the bad news.Even the author, working in her capacity as a financial reporter, faced pressure from her employer and others not to criticize the financial markets.Everyone was happily making money.

In any event, as the book unfolds, it will not surprise most people that Ackman's predictions came true, and then we had to bail out the same Wall Street shops that got us into the mess.As stated in the book:
"This wasn't the bond insurance business anymore.MBIA was providing a service that allowed banks to make huge amounts of securities disappear from their balance sheets. . . It allowed financial institutions to book all their profits on vast CDO holdings up front while assuming away the risk of default.As the risk seemingly disappeared, so did the need to hold capital."

Ackman gave the author, Christine Richard, a CD Rom with every e-mail he wrote that mentioned MBIA, access to appointment calendars, and access to 40 boxes of documents.So the book is extremely well researched and detailed.While some readers might find it painful to relive the market meltdown, it is interesting that things unfolded largely as Ackman predicted.

One thing that shocked me about this book is that Ackman came to his conclusions using analysis similar to that applied by "value investors," and among the books he read include Graham and Dodd's "Security Analysis," Lynch's "One Up on Wall Street," Graham's "Intelligent Investor," Cunningham's "Essays of Warren Buffett" and O'glove's "Quality of Earnings."

An interesting side-light to this book is the disagreement between renowned value investor Marty Whitman and Ackman.Whitman, who took a 10% stake in MBIA, clearly lost, but the disagreement between the two of them demonstrates just how even the most savvy investors could be mislead by the bond insurers.Ironically, Whitman's own books state that he prefers companies that don' t need to access the financial markets to raise capital, which is one of the shortfalls that undercut the bond insurers in the end.

This book provides a fascinating study in how our financial markets worked, and their flaws.But by tracking how Ackman uncovered the weaknesses in MBIA, it also shows some factors an investor can consider in analyzing a company.It's not always a pleasant read, and I have no doubt that some would consider Ackman to be arrogant/outspoken, and a publicity hound, but the truth is, after reading this book, he's one person I'd love to talk to over dinner because of his prescience in uncovering the derivative house of cards that we are trying to work our way out of to this date.

For me, this book is a must-read.

interesting, but WAAAY long
The story is fascinating, and is enough to make a cynic of anyone (the whole premise of MBIA's business is borderline-fraudulent, and they went way beyond the pale in exploiting their bogus AAA rating, and in manipulating the court system, etc). However, the story could (and should have been told in about 1/5 the number of pages (as, say, a New Yorker piece), and the legal-brief-like narrative is mind-numbing.

Also, making Ackman out to be a victim is a little disingenuous. The guy specializes in "piling it all on red", good sense be damned.

A superb account of the end of the credit bubble
Christine Richard has managed to make a story whose end we already know, about a topic that is still arcane to most (bond insurance), a page turner as good as any suspense novel I've read lately.She combines an ability to explain the big picture and the details of the economic story with a timeless David and Goliath pitting Ackman and herself against the monstrous con that was not only MBIA, but all of the multitude interested in preserving MBIA's public image because a downgrade would be so consequential to the corruption of credit: Democratic congressmen who wanted housing for their uncreditworthy constituents, Republicans who wanted to take credit for false prosperity and keep the money coming, and especially the ratings agencies, other bond insurers, and banks.This is one of the books that should endure to tell the story of the "oughts" fifty years from now.

Amazing
This book came out in late April, and the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and the Financial Times have all ignored it.

The lack of attention is a shame, because it's an amazing, amazing book.

Hedge fund manager William Ackman gave author Christine Richard impressive access. She writes, "Ackman gave me a CD-ROM containing every e-mail he had written or received that mentioned MBIA as well as years of appointment calendars and access to an office filled with more than 40 boxes of documents he'd collected in researching MBIA. He encouraged colleagues, advisers, and friends to talk with me and spent hours answering my questions."

The result is a fast-paced, behind-the-scenes look at how a "short" investor uses the press, stock analysts, and the government to beat down the price of a stock he has bet against.

Mr. Ackman's campaign that is at the heart of this book is his war against Municipal Bond Insurance Association, or MBIA.

Here the key journalist seems not to have been anyone at the New York Times, or even Ms. Richard, who worked for Dow Jones and Bloomberg. No, it was "Marty Peretz, the editor-in-chief of the New Republic magazine, who had been Ackman's thesis adviser when he was an undergraduate at Harvard."

Mr. Peretz, reports Ms. Richard became the first investor in Mr. Ackman's hedge fund after Mr. Ackman "drove from Boston to Peretz's summer house on Cape Cod to pitch him the idea." (Mr. Peretz tells me the investment was $500,000, made at the time and not subsequently increased.)

By Ms. Richard's account, Mr. Peretz wasn't exactly what you'd call a passive investor. After the SEC didn't really follow up on a meeting in which Mr. Ackman aired his allegations about MBIA to SEC staff, Mr. Peretz wrote in July 2004 to the chairman of the SEC, William Donaldson, "with whom he was friendly." Reports Ms. Richard, "Peretz's appeal stirred a response at the SEC, which asked Ackman to return to Washington."

If the SEC did not act against MBIA, Mr. Ackman would try another regulator, the attorney general of New York, Eliot Spitzer. Ms. Richard reports that in January or February 2005: "Ackman, along with Marty Peretz, and Eliot Spitzer were huddled around a small table in the attorney general's office, eating pressed turkey sandwiches. Peretz had arranged the lunch meeting. Ackman wanted to point Spitzer toward the important issues at MBIA."

If Mr. Spitzer and the SEC both did not act, there was always the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, Barney Frank. The book recounts Mr. Ackman and his lawyer flying to Boston on June 5, 2007 for a meeting with Congressman Frank, with whom they visited only after they "picked up Marty Peretz, who knew Frank from their student days at Harvard." Mr. Frank agreed to hold hearings on MBIA.

There's plenty of other rich detail here. The broker who gave Mr. Ackman the idea to short MBIA worked for, of all places, Lehman Brothers.

The dependent relationships among short-sellers, regulators, and the press are illuminated for all to see. At one point, Mr. Ackman asks an SEC official what it would take to get the agency to act. The SEC official's reply? "A story on the front page of the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times, especially the New York Times."

What to make of the whole episode? Well, it's certainly a newsworthy tale, and not only for those interested in hedge funds or short-selling. One MBIA vehicle named something like Latin for "black hole," Ms. Richard reports, "owned liens on 11,000 properties in Pittsburgh, nearly 10 percent of the entire city."

As an investment idea, shorting MBIA was a big success. The shares lost more than 80% of their value. "Pershing Square investors made about $1.1 billion," Ms. Richard reports. About $140 million of that was Mr. Ackman's personally, though, Ms. Richard reports, he has pledged the entire amount to charity.

Those troubled by Mr. Ackman's use of the regulators to press his position at least have to concede that MBIA and its allies also used the regulators to press their own case against Mr. Ackman, subjecting him to SEC and New York attorney general inquiries that were eventually dropped.

While Ms. Richard's book is finished, the story isn't over. Some value investors are now placing bets on an MBIA recovery. And short-sellers are circling the for-profit education industry using the same strategy of press and regulatory pressure that was deployed so successfully against both Farmer Mac and MBIA.

Confidence Game - a great book!
I think this book is a must read for anyone who is interested in how the financial crsis of the past few years could have happened. The author presents a fascinating recount of Mr Ackman, and others, who saw the inevitable on the horizon. The book does drag on a bit with the process and Mr Ackman's persistence but this is also important to understanding how long and deep the crisis was in its development. The author also got my attention with how she moved into the first person, on occasion, as she wrote about her involvement. This book definitely has a permanent place in my book collection. ... Read more

Product Description
How you can increase and sustain organic revenue and profit growth . . . whether you’re running an entire company or in your first management job.

Over the past seven years, Procter & Gamble has tripled profits; significantly improved organic revenue growth, cash flow, and operating margins; and averaged earnings per share growth of 12 percent. How? A. G. Lafley and his leadership team have integrated innovation into everything P&G does and created new customers and new markets.

Through eye-opening stories A. G. Lafley and Ram Charan show how P&G and companies such as Honeywell, Nokia, LEGO, GE, HP, and DuPont have become game-changers. Their inspiring lessons can help you learn how to:

• Make consumers and customers the boss, not the CEO or the management team
• Innovate to grow a mature business
• Develop higher growth, higher margin businesses
• Create new customers and new markets
• Revitalize a business model
• Reach outside your own business and tap into the abundant brainpower and creativity of the world
• Integrate innovation into the mainstream of your managerial decision making
• Manage risk
• Become a leader of innovation

We live in a world of unprecedented change, increasing global competitiveness, and the very real threat of commoditization. Innovation in this world is the best way to win—arguably the only way to really win. Innovation is not a separate, discrete activity but the job of everyone in a leadership position and the integral, central driving force for any business that wants to grow organically and succeed on a sustained basis.

This is a game-changing book that helps you redefine your leadership and improve your management game. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (22)

Process and Case Histories for Developing More Successful Offerings in Existing Business Areas
"For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth;
And the former shall not be remembered or come to mind." -- Isaiah 65:17 (NKJV)

How you react to The Game-Changer will be largely determined by what your experience with innovation has been. Most larger organizations employ one of two methods:

1. Technologists come up with new "cool" characteristics and then the rest of the organization tries to figure out how to make some money from the breakthroughs.

2. Marketers develop new offering concepts and ask the rest of the organization to help find ways to deliver the benefits at the heart of the concepts.

By contrast, in start-ups and smaller companies, there is more likely to be a balance between finding opportunities, using technology in new ways, and creating new business models (improved ways to deliver value to customers, users, and other stakeholders).

If you have experience with the first method, you'll love this book. If you use instead the second method, you'll be less excited. If you in the start-up and smaller company group, you may be wondering what all the fuss is about.

This book works best as a combination of case histories looking at how to make large companies accomplish more through innovation (especially business-model innovation) and change management.

The key elements are described by former P&G CEO, A.G. Lafley, and Ram Charan (ubiquitous chronicler of large company practices with celebrity CEOs) are:

Putting in customer-centric innovation as a core process for driving forward the organization's top- and bottom-line performance by employing

1. Motivating purposes and values
2. Stretch goals
3. More engaged decision making about innovation strategies and projects
4. Taking advantage of what you do best
5. Establishing missing organizational capabilities and structures
6. Adding support systems
7. Creating a better communicating and risk-taking culture
8. Inspiring and encouraging leadership

Most people will find the P&G example to be the most useful and best developed one in the book. There are also much less developed examples from Nokia, GE, Honeywell, DuPont, LEGO, that are mostly used to highlight one aspect of company innovation.

The stories mostly repeat common problems of those who don't succeed in innovation: creating products that managers, rather than customers and end users, like; getting people from different functions to work together; focusing on a short list of good opportunities rather than a laundry list from which few results emerge; and sharing information that's already known by someone else.

As I compare this book to studies done in the early 1970s of how innovation could be more productive I think the biggest differences come in seeking more ideas from outside the organization (something P&G has done well in the last decade) and making breakthrough innovations related to existing businesses a major corporate focus. If those subjects are of particular interest, this book will be very valuable to you.

A Perfect Strategic Guideline for Innovators
This book is not only a success story of A.G.Lafley's P&G but also a perfect strategic guideline for all innovators.

Very interesting read but every case discussed may not be innovation
Reading his every book, one can observe that Ram Charan is a very passionate advocate of organic growth of businesses through operational efficiency and healthy cash flow. Each one of his books takes up a specific management concept to explain how excelling in that area can lead to profitable growth. For example in "Execution" (Co-authored with Larry Bossidy & Charles Burck), Charan has very eloquently explained the role of flawless planning and execution of strategy in healthy business growth. In "The Leadership Pipeline" (Co-authored with Stephen Drotter, and James Noel), Charan spotlighted the role of leadership in making businesses profitable. Similarly, "Know-How" described how a business can make efficient use of knowledge to stay ahead of competition and witness faster and profitable expansion. Charan's book "The Game Changer" (Co-authored with A G Lafley) focuses on innovation as a core competency in the business world. Reading the book twice and hearing it a few times, I have optimistically mixed feelings about different aspects of this book.

"The Game Changer" is a well-written, well-narrated and well-organized book in describing the academic concepts of innovation and correlating them to the success cases from leading companies like 3M, Nokia, and Allied Signals. The most appealing phrase to me in the whole book had been the description of difference between performance review meeting and innovation review meeting; the former being "a review of past" while latter being "a review of future". If someone wants to promote and manage a cutting-edge innovation program in his / her organization, then this is the book to read, especially the second half. The authors explain every aspect of innovation management from risk & reward to sources of funding, to selling the idea to top management and at marketplace; it covers the whole gamut of innovation in a very articulate way. "The Game Changer" is a book worth reading (or listening).

On the miniscule downside of "The Game Changer"; the boundaries of innovative concepts have been stretched too far citing Proctor & Gamble cases. I had a few soliloquies listening to this book on "a dark desert highway" and asked myself several times if feature enhancement or repositioning a product to attract younger population could be considered innovation.

In a case of innovation at P&G, disinfectants were added to feminine hygiene products to protect against infections, but is it true innovation? If I were to judge this change by Akao's standards (Dr. Yoji Akao of Voice of Customer - VOC fame), it is simply fulfilling an unmet customer need. That reminds me of a very similar case from Toyota; when Toyota introduced ionic breezer in Toyota Camry's air-conditioning system in 2006 and touted it to be an innovation in automotive architecture; they were vehemently rebuked by Asahi Shimbun (leading Japanese Daily) on the grounds that use of a better air treatment system in a car could not be considered innovation.

In another case of innovation about a skincare product, the "Oil of Olay" or the "Oil of Old Lady" as the authors call it. P&G redefined Oil of Olay to appeal to younger women and enlarge the population of women using it. I wondered again if repositioning the product to appeal to more people could be called innovation. Ironically, a very similar example can be cited from Toyota again. Historically, Toyota Avalon is considered an AARP car and the median age of an Avalon buyer in US had been 62 years. In 2003, the Chief Engineer of Avalon program Shigeki Terashi was asked to add some flare to Avalon styling and bring the median age of Avalon buyer down to 46 years. When Toyota ran the ad about re-birth of 2005 Avalon through "innovation" they faced very harsh criticism from Yomiuri Shimbun (another respected Japanese Daily) for misusing the term "Innovation".

VERDICT - "The Game Changer" is worth buying and reading / listening book when you have time!

Where is the beef, Mr. Lafley?
I have read all the book reviews about "Game-Changer" on Amazon and the most recent contribution of Mr. Lafley in the Harvard Business Review "What only the CEO can do" (May, 2009). Mr. Lafley wants to make us believe that he has been able to change the rules of the game. Did he really?

As this sounds all too great to be true it has encouraged me to look behind the curtain for search for the real hard performance facts. All I have found so far in my analysis are indications of an excellently run managerial company, but not necessarily undisputable signs of a state of the art innovative company. Over the last 10 years the R&D expenses of P&G have remained flat in real money terms despite the tremendous growth through organic and inorganic growth (esp. Gillette in 2005). The reasons are explained in the Annual Report 2008. It refers to great improvements in R&D productivity - the implicit compounded improvement rate must have been around 5 % p.a. over the last 10 years. And what is more irritating that one has to dig deep into the Annual Report to locate the figures for R&D expenses as they are not shown as a separate line items in the income statement since 2005!

Of course, one needs to consider that the sequential approach of innovation centered primarily in the R&D function could have been changed to a more integrative innovation approach which is engrained into other business functions (boundaryless company). In addition, there may have been a structural shift in the R&D function from (cost-intensive) primary research to (less expensive) application-driven research. Therefore, the pure mathematical calculation of relating R&D expenses to net sales may be somewhat misleading to judge the true long-term innovation effectiveness of P&G.

However, this would all have been quite a feat, which I could even more believe, if we could witness the same improvement rate in marketing and sales expenses. And marketing and sales expenses are 4 times R&D expenses! But to the contrary, marketing and sales expenses have remained a constant percentage of sales revenue: approx. 10 % over the last 10 years! No gains in productivity, but surely a significant increase in distribution power and leverage over the consumer and retailers alike which may have contributed to the margin increase over the years.

In addition, I can see a lot of potential earnings management tools through significant restructuring expenses prior and post to the Gillette acquisition (in total > $ 6 billions) and the Gillette deal itself - worth $ 57 billions. Did P&G overpay in this transaction by issuing a lot of equity? Please note that the ROE of P&G has suffered dramatically post Gillette acquisition. A lot of the acquired goodwill is still sitting in the P&G books (in total $ 60 billions) and post 2006 US GAAP requires only (subjective) annual impairment tests, but no mandatory depreciations of goodwill. And how about the significant stock repurchase program of > $ 20 billions to boost earnings per share (this is the equivalent amount of 10 years of corporate R&D expenses!) Is P&G running out of ideas to innovate?

My comments should not be construed as discrediting Mr. Lafley's achievements in the turn-around of P&G. These comments are more related to the overarching question: How great are those touted achievements - in relation to the company and to the society? How sustainable will the future development of P&G be? Is P&G a truly sustainable and resilient company? Or have the last few years only been great marketing and impression management - managing for the short-term?

In sum: Where is the beef that can be relished by future generations? What are your thoughts? Did I miss something? Over to you!

An imperative read...
This book is definitely something...It is very well organized and interesting.I learned a lot about Procter & Gamble's history and achievements.I even learned about John Pepper's call to A. G. asking him whether he's prepared to be CEO.It was a quick phone call.Moreover, I learned about other companies' innovation initiatives that allowed them to be successful.Learning these is very helpful to my work.

Innovation is the center theme of this book.And it's very interesting how simple improvements can provide a huge impact to the business.The book is very informative and it motivated me to do better at work. ... Read more

Product Description
Gator Fontenot of the Special Forces paranormal squad must reel in the elusive Iris "Flame" Johnson, a victim of the same horrific experiments that warped Gator--and a red-haired weapon of unimaginable destructive powers bent on revenge in the sultry bayous of New Orleans. But can two people haunted by violent betrayals trust the passion that soon ignites between them? Or is one of them just playing another seductive and deadly night game? ... Read more

Customer Reviews (62)

loved it
This is my fav of the Ghostwalker series.Love Raoul. Now I want to see Ian and Tucker's books.

wonderful read
True to her style, Christine has completely done wonders with this high pack action series.She completely gets you to enter her world and the ghostwalkers are truly awesome.

night game
I am now caught up on this series, and look forward to more
I am a big fan of Christine Feehanwill continue to read her work

Really Really Great.
These books are great. I have loved every one of the series. Thanks so much.

Excellent
The author has a way with words that keep you interested in the story.Plus she has knowledge and done research to make the story real. ... Read more

Product Description
A 2009 Game Developer Magazine Front Line Award Finalist, this book covers both the theory and practice of game engine software development, bringing together complete coverage of a wide range of topics. The concepts and techniques described are the actual ones used by real game studios like Electronic Arts and Naughty Dog. The examples are often grounded in specific technologies, but the discussion extends way beyond any particular engine or API. The references and citations make it a great jumping off point for those who wish to dig deeper into any particular aspect of the game development process. Intended as the text for a college level series in game programming, this book can also be used by amateur software engineers, hobbyists, self-taught game programmers, and existing members of the game industry. Junior game engineers can use it to solidify their understanding of game technology and engine architecture. Even senior engineers who specialize in one particular field of game development can benefit from the bigger picture presented in these pages. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (18)

Video game bible
Read the first few pages and see if this is a beast you want to own.I think you will, because of the way this Text is written. The author gives you the correct terminology and the explanations behind them.This ones going to be on the night stand for a while because of the mere size and content. But dont take my word for it....check it out

Excellent High Level Game Engine Exploration
I recently finished a degree in computer science specialising in computer games. One of the things that was missing from the course was a good overview of game engines. We studied graphics, physics, maths etc... but we never went looked at the game engine as a whole. This book was a great high level exploration of game engines. I should stress high level, because it does not go into great depth on any one topic instead it motivates a particular topic, gives an overview of the theory then explains how that theory is adapted to games. It should be titled "Selected Topics Relating to Game Engines." It was very easy to read whilst still being professional.

The one thing that, to me, really gave the book validity is the constant references the author makes to commercial games he has been involved with. "In game X we did Y for reason Z." Something which you don't always get, but really should, when reading technical game books.

One of the great things about the book is the coverage - you will be bound to come across something you haven't heard of. For instance the chapter on c/c++ had a couple interesting tid-bits explaining the stack/heap, compilation process etc... The memory management section was very useful - often at uni when you develop small-ish assignments on PCs you don't get a chance to appreciate how important memory management really is in the real world. The only complaint I have is thatthe chapter I was most looking forward to which discussed the different types of game object models in the end felt underdone and under referenced for such a key part of game development. Although the book is very long it does miss out on a couple topics (AI, sound, game play systems ) which the author points out - not so much an issue because the book does not feel incomplete.

All and all an excellent read and one of the best game engine resources I have come across. I wish this had been written while I was still at uni - it would have been a big help!

THE BEST
It isn't necessary to commnet a long for it. It's the best book in the game engine section.
Simply, just rough reading of this book will increase your engineering knowledge and skill.

I was able to feel the fidelity of the book and surprised at the author's structural knowledge.
I think, the only defect of the book is the paper (its stuff), the publisher should have dealt it with more care.

Great, anyway!

One of the best to start with, for rendering engineers
From my experience this is one of the best book for Game Engine programming to start with. This is not the book which gives you the inner most details of the engine, but rather an overall view of the engine. It's a must read, I would say, before you take a dive on David Eberly's or Eric Lengyel's ...

In the initial pages this book covers on how to work with Visual Studio, adding watch, breakpoints etc. and gradually moves over to memory management ... design of an engine. I sincerely regret not having this book some few years before.

One of the issue that I found with this book is that, the book is scattered with some good URLs but you've to manually type it properly. Those URLs are added into the book's website ([...] ) Check it out.

Jason Gregory is a wonderful teacher and teaches in a way that you can absorb the material in a much simpler way. He keeps all the presented information simple, but not simpler. Well worth.

Great book
The book has that brief into that all Game *Design* books have, but it quickly dives into the guts of what we all want to know. I read half of the book in a day and it already confirms several theories and ideas I've had that I wasn't sure of. I would definitely recommend this book to my colleagues, but also students just starting in the industry. ... Read more