False Premises (Domestic Bliss Mysteries)

Book Description

Interior designer Erin Gilbert was dazzled by her beautiful, free-spending client and new friend, Laura Smith. Dazzled, that is, until she visits Laura’s magnificent house and finds that the priceless antiques she painstakingly acquired at Laura’s behest have been completely replaced with fakes! When Laura’s explanations ring as false as the erstwhile Louis XVI foyer mirror, Erin begins investigating her friend’s colorful life and times–and then gets interrupted by a murder.

As fate would have it, Erin has uncovered the same world-class scam artist who all but destroyed her handsome-but-embittered archrival, Steve Sullivan. While Sullivan aches for revenge, Erin wants answers–even while she juggles a sputtering romance, a burgeoning business, and one very boorish client. For Erin, it’s bad enough that bodies are being strewn in all the wrong places. It’s even worse that one suspect perfectly fits each crime: Sullivan himself!

Customer Reviews:

Yawn.......2006-06-06

This book and writer couldn't be any more boring if they tried. Her style is dry and old and it seems like she only writes to formula. Ugh. There are much better writers out there, so I hope people won't waste their time with this or any of her other books, including the ones she's written under Leslie O'Kane. She should have changed her style not her name!

Great Series.......2005-12-05

The second installment of this series is better than the first, with the main characters being fleshed out much more, and a good, solid mystery.

The dialogue between characters is a bit childish and amateur (particularly when one character has a long passage of dialogue), but it's not anything that really takes away from the story. Don't miss this one!

exciting amateur sleuth .......2005-06-29

Interior designer Erin Gilbert helps her clients Laura Smith and David Holland redecorate their mini-mansion with beautiful and costly antiques, and becomes friends with the woman. After an alteration with a man wearing a wig and carrying a gun, Laura flips him using a judo technique. When Erin goes to her home to check on her, she discovers that the valuable antiquities were replaced with cheap reproductions.

Laura tells the interior decoration that the antiquities are in storage where they will be safe and appreciate in value over the years. When Erin informs David, he insists he knows nothing about the switch because he was out of town but he can't see properly because he lost his glasses. Erin learns that Laura is the person who scammed interior decorator Steve Sullivan out of $300,000 dollars. Steve and Erin watch Laura's house. When Dave drives out they follow him to a storage facility where they find Laura's murdered body. Erin starts her own investigation discovering that everyone who knew Laura had a reason to kill her.

It is hard to believe that every person she was involved in ended up helping her and then wanting to see her dead but Laura was one such person, the perfect villainess and victim. There are so many people she hurt who had a motive to kill her that readers will find themselves trying to figure out who the killer really is. The heroine pursues her investigation even though there have been attempts made on her life but she is determined to identify the perpetrator so she can regain her own piece of mind. This exciting amateur sleuth tale is the perfect beach book.

Harriet Klausner

The WMD Mirage: Iraq's Decade of Deception and America's False Premise for War (Publicaffairs Reports)

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The Definitive Report
nothing but centrist propaganda!

The WMD Mirage: Iraq's Decade of Deception and America's False Premise for War (Publicaffairs Reports)

Manufacturer: PublicAffairs
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Asia | History | Subjects | Books

General | Middle East | History | Subjects | Books

Iraq | Middle East | History | Subjects | Books

Intelligence & Espionage | Military | History | Subjects | Books

General | Politics | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq
The Iraq Study Group Report: The Way Forward - A New Approach
Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq

ASIN: 1586483617

Book Description

Features the soon-to-be-released official report from the bipartisan Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction-named by President Bush to try to prevent similar policy debacles in Iran and North Korea.

It also includes the official speeches, United Nations reports, and declassified government investigation reports that show, step by step, how the United States got the crucial question of arms in Iraq so terribly wrong.

The documents show that:

The CIA concluded in 2002 that Iraq had reconstituted its WMD programs, but in fact Saddam had dismantled them.

American policymakers consistently assumed the worst case: regardless of his denials, if there was intelligence that Saddam might be making weapons of mass destruction then he had them and was hiding them. UN inspectors, by contrast, assumed that thorough inspection and insistence on complete Iraqi documentation could determine what the truth was

UN inspectors were frustrated by Saddam's refusal to cooperate freely and thwarted by American military impatience just as they thought themselves on the verge of success.

American inspectors sent in after the war in 2003 found no weapons of mass destruction and how they-and Washington insiders-began to question the basis of the prewar intelligence.

New York Times editor and contributor to The 9/11 Investigations (PublicAffairs; 2004) Craig R. Whitney has scoured the documents surrounding the search for Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. In The WMD Mirage, he has assembled the most revelatory and pertinent of these. The result is a startling narrative trail that leads readers through the intelligence and misinformation leading into Iraq-and a telling portrait of how the Bush administration, whether deliberately or unintentionally, with scant evidence and largely against the will of the international community, convinced the American people and their few allies of the urgent need for war.

A must-read for scholars, voters, and anyone interested in the goings-on in Iraq, the growing threats perceived elsewhere, and the truth behind our frayed international reputation, The WMD Mirage offers the real story of the missing weapons of mass destruction. In offering such a clear-eyed and documented picture of how we got it wrong in Iraq, The WMD Mirage is the first book that also includes the new conclusions of the Presidential Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission.

Customer Reviews:

The Definitive Report.......2005-05-14

Americans absolutely love conspiracy theories. It seems that it is much easy to believe in a conspiracy with 'they' being out to get you than to simply say that a bunch of people screwed up. And now it seems that we've finally found one to, hopefully, replace the conspiracy that killed Kennedy and perhaps even the one about the UFO's at Roswell.

The truth appears to be bad enough. The intelligence agencies of the United States, Britain, Australia, Israel, Germany, France and Russia all got it wrong. (Yes, France and Russia believed in the WMD's as well but didn't want an invasion because they were getting preferential oil pricing from Iraq to trade for weapons.)

The real problem here is that if we believe in a conspiracy, then we won't feel it necessary to take the steps to fix the real problem.

This book has been dismissed as centrist propaganda by one reviewer. I don't know what that is, left wing I know, right wing I know. Centrist to me says that the writer is trying to be unbiased - and that's what I really want to read. It seems to me that the book is pretty fairly balanced. My only real complaint is that it doesn't have an index, and with its format, it is sometimes difficult to go back and see where it said something.

For another report, the article in the Atlantic in the January/February 2004 by Kenneth M. Pollack titled Spies, Lies, and Weapons: What Went Wrong is highly recommended - It's available on line at no charge.

nothing but centrist propaganda!.......2005-04-24

This compilation of documents, edited by a New York Times reporter, is nothing but centrist propaganda. It focuses on "failures" of the CIA and intelligence-gathering, but includes NOTHING on the Office of Special Plans, the Lie Factory in the Pentagon that deliberately spun intel to support the neoconservative agenda of war-on-Iraq-no-matter-what and reported directly to Cheney. The excellent Mother Jones article called "The Lie Factory" has yet to be expanded into a book as far as I know, but look for it on the Mother Jones website. The best book on the subject is Bamford's A PRETEXT FOR WAR (see my review). The Carnegie Endowment for Peace was a source of excellent information debunking the Bush Administration's case for war long before the war was launched. The idea that "everyone thought the threat was real" until the post-war discovery of no weapons is nonsense, nothing but post-hoc propaganda which serves to justify the war.

See HOODWINKED by John Prados for a much better analysis of the "WMD" issue, with full documentation (see my review). The very category WMD is a propaganda device which lumps nuclear weapons in with the much less dangerous chemical and biological weapons, thus magnifying the threat from the latter. The mass media acceptance of the term WMD is one of the biggest victories of the neoconservatives.

There was a Senate committee report on the WMD intel that came out in the summer of 2004. It was eclipsed in the media by the 9/11 report. But that Senate committee report was supposed to have a follow-on, a Part 2, that examined the deliberate distortion of intel by the Bush Administration -- no surprise, the GOP-run Senate has never issued that report.

See my NEOCON LIES & WARS FOR OIL list for more.

The "intel incompetence" line is very convenient for Bush and Cheney -- it absolves them of responsibility for an unnecessary war. But it is far from a secret that they were itching for "regime change" in Iraq from the day they occupied the levers of power. Was the Pentagon Office of Special Plans a hallucination, or did Feith report to Cheney with intel cooked to support an invasion? Just look at Powell's pitiful presentation to the U.N. -- that's all they had? Obviously a decision had been made and the lack of evidence be damned. This is not an exotic conspiracy theory, and it's not "having it both ways." The CIA was not calling the shots -- the CIA incompetence from the P.O.V. of Rumsfeld, Cheney & Bush was not that they exaggerated the threat, but rather that they couldn't produce convincing evidence that a threat existed to support the plan for war. This has been in plain sight all along, and it is a blatant after-the-fact coverup to bury the truth in a blizzard of misleading official reports.

If you don't believe me, and you're inclined to think this is a "stupid conspiracy theory" as our helpful intel insider Maskirovka would have it, check out the books by Bamford and Prados, check out the Mother Jones article, and check out the website of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace -- look for the article "Origins of Regime Change in Iraq" by Joseph Cirincione, Director of the Non-Proliferation Project at CEIP, which traces the neocons' unceasing efforts between 1991 and 2003.

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False Premises
Winthrop Knowlton
Manufacturer: Random House Inc (T)
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Average customer rating:

False Premises
Winthrop KNOWLTON
Manufacturer: Random House
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000UZVLBC

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False Premises
Winthrop Knowlton
Manufacturer: Random House
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

False premises;: Five one act plays, (The British drama league library of modern British drama)

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False premises;: Five one act plays, (The British drama league library of modern British drama)
Laurence Housman
Manufacturer: Brentano's
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

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False Promises, False Premises
Petra Skrabanec
Manufacturer: Tarragon Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Medicine | Subjects | Books

Medical Ethics | Physician & Patient | Medicine | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 1870781112

$ME, MYSELF AND WHO?; HUMANISM: SOCIETY\'S FALSE PREMISE$
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ME, MYSELF AND WHO?; HUMANISM: SOCIETY\'S FALSE PREMISE
ERNEST GORDON
Manufacturer: LOGOS INTERNATIONAL
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000RZCWLS

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Me, myself, and who?: Humanism, society's false premise
Ernest Gordon
Manufacturer: Logos International
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Premises Liability in Nevada
Eron Z. Cannon
Manufacturer: Lorman Education Services
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Spiral-bound
ASIN: B000NRX36S

Product Description

Premises liability claims and lawsuits are ever increasing. Understanding the legal issues in these cases will assist you in managing the risk and settling or litigating these cases. This manual is designed to provide a practical approach to understand the issues in this area.

Customer Reviews:

Different Sort of Fantasy.......2006-03-05

This book is fantasy of the type sometimes sub-categorized as "magic realism." Jack Limekiller is a former Canadian, who has moved to the small country of British Hidalgo in Central America for a change of scene (to a scene that involves no snow). He stars in a series of short stories that were written between 1976 and 1993. The best part of all of these stories is the atmosphere, the way that Davidson catches the dialect of the people and the feeling of the land, down to the heat and wind and mosquitoes. Davidson himself lived in the country that would become Belize for quite some time, so truly knows whereof he speaks.

These stories barely have plots, and what plots they do have mostly involve ghost stories of some nature. However there isn't much sense of horror or mortal peril. They are almost treated as everyday or only slightly out-of-the-ordinary occurances. They seem incidental somehow to the overall flow of the stories, which deal with Limekiller trying to make a living and get some loving.

The writing style of the stories can best be described as stream-of-consciousness, which I personally can only take in small doses. And if you have trouble reading patois, that might cause you some trouble. However, the stories and the characters really grew on me over time. I found all the stories interesting, and I also enjoyed the inclusion of some non-fiction that Davidson wrote about Belize from when he lived there. The introductory material was informative, but was the hardest part of the whole book to slog through (introductions by Grania Davis, Lucius Shepard and Peter S. Beagle) and you can skip them if you'd like.

Overall, this is not the sort of thing that I usually read, but I really came to enjoy it.

Mystery/Occult in Imaginary West Indies.......2005-12-22

I've been wanting these stories collected for DECADES; I've long since worn out the magazines they were first printed in.

An easygoing young man takes his boat down the fictional West Indies isles of British Hidalgo, where he encounters mysteries and terrors whose visible aspects also echo or hint at more superatural meanings. I can't convey how much sheer FUN these are; joyous travelogues and character studies, well plotted, and gorgeous with local dialects and all.

I can never decide which is my favorite Avram Davidson series; these, or the Dr. Eszterhazy stories (similarly half-real mysteries in the imaginary Ruritanian empire of Scythia-Pannonia-Transbalkania).

At Long Last!.......2004-08-04

These great stories were written in the 1970s-1980s but uncollected until now. Great glimpse of a country that sounds fictional but is absolutely real. Not a clinker in the bunch. I've spent years waiting for this book and it was worth it. Now if only someone would reprint Crimes & Chaos I'd be a happy man!

At last !.......2004-06-08

I have waited for the collected Limekiller stories for years. They are all I hoped for - simply superb (three new to me - ahh bliss!!)

Avram is one of the greats of our time - unqualified!

This or any other of Avram's collections of short stories? ... seize them, ... seize them all!! ... and enjoy ..... enjoy.

And, if you are lucky enough to find any out-of-print works, let me know - I deserve them more than you!!!

Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness
Average customer rating:

Mindfullness

The Feeling Good Handbook

Meditation does not have to mean sitting still

WONDERFUL!

A remarkable book

Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness
Jon Kabat-Zinn
Manufacturer: Delta
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Self-Help | Health, Mind & Body | Subjects | Books
Stress Management | Self-Help | Health, Mind & Body | Subjects | Books
General | Psychology & Counseling | Health, Mind & Body | Subjects | Books
General | Health, Mind & Body | Subjects | Books
Kabat-Zinn, Jon | ( K ) | Authors, A-Z | Religion & Spirituality | Subjects | Books
Similar Items:

Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life

Guided Mindfulness Meditation (Guided Mindfulness)

Mindfulness for Beginners

Coming to Our Senses: Healing Ourselves and the World Through Mindfulness

The Mindful Way through Depression: Freeing Yourself from Chronic Unhappiness (purchase includes audio CD narrated by Jon Kabat-Zinn)

ASIN: 0385303122
Release Date: 1990-05-01

Amazon.com

Kabat-Zinn, founder of the Stress Reduction Clinic at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center, is perhaps the best-known proponent of using meditation to help patients deal with illness. (The somewhat confusing title is from a line in Zorba the Greek in which the title character refers to the ups and downs of family life as "the full catastrophe.") But this book is also a terrific introduction for anyone who has considered meditating but was afraid it would be too difficult or would include religious practices they found foreign. Kabat-Zinn focuses on "mindfulness," a concept that involves living in the moment, paying attention, and simply "being" rather than "doing." While you can practice anything "mindfully," from taking a walk to cleaning your house, Kabat-Zinn presents several meditation techniques that focus the attention most clearly, whether it's on a simple phrase, your breathing, or various parts of your body. The book goes into detail about how hospital patients have either improved their health or simply come to feel better despite their illness by using these techniques, but these meditations can help anyone deal with stress and gain a calmer outlook on life. "When we use the word healing to describe the experiences of people in the stress clinic, what we mean above all is that they are undergoing a profound transformation of view," Kabat-Zinn writes. "Out of this shift in perspective comes an ability to act with greater balance and inner security in the world." --Ben Kallen

Book Description

“Happy 15th birthday to one of the great classics of mind/body medicine! More than any other, Full Catastrophe Living is the book that enabled Americans to discover the inner life. This book has brought peace of mind to hundreds and thousands of people and healed countless lives. This is your chance to let it heal yours.”
–Rachel Naomi Remen, M.D., author of Kitchen Table Wisdom

It is everywhere around us. Even worse, it gets inside us: sapping our energy, undermining our health, and making us more vulnerable to anxiety, depression, and disease. Now, based on Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn’s renowned mindfulness-based stress reduction program, this groundbreaking book shows you how to use natural, medically proven methods to soothe and heal your body, mind, and spirit. By using the practices described within, you can learn to manage chronic pain resulting from illness and/or stress-related disorders…discover the roles that anger and tension play in heart disease…reduce anxiety and feelings of panic…improve overall quality of life and relationships through mindfulness meditation and mindful yoga. More timely than ever before, Full Catastrophe Living is a book for the young and the old, the well, the ill, and anyone trying to live a healthier and saner life in today’s world.

Customer Reviews:

Mindfullness.......2007-09-28

My boss suggested this book. He was correct that it would help me manage a personal crisis.

The Feeling Good Handbook.......2007-09-16

this is an awesome book to help those with anxiety,depression or someone expeiercing stress related problems . I only wish i had it sooner.

Meditation does not have to mean sitting still.......2007-07-28

Being mindful is a well-known technique for lowering stress. Jon Kabat Zinn has the experience to show us how this is done. I really liked this book and his descriptions.
However, as a person with ADD, the idea of trying to sit still for 45 minutes and quieting my mind seemed impossible. But after his explanations of walking meditation and using yoga as meditation I could see myself meditating.
This book is a classic and rightly so. Well worth your time (for reading and trying the techniques) and money (for the book, and if you use yoga for the accessories).

WONDERFUL!.......2007-07-19

I echo what others have said, it opens up a new way of thinking about life. All of it-the good and bad. How you relate to the world as a whole, and the possibilities that awit you. It's not magical and "out there" but rather down to earth and user-friendly.

Doesn't matter your religion/lack of religion. It integrates very well with my Christian faith.

This book lets you consider things at your own pace and doesn't force anything on you. It deals with your reality and success isn't defined as being 100% happy all the time. Are you sad? Deal with that. Are you scared? That's ok. Are things going well? Great, now we can move onto new things from here.

I also have "where ever you go, there you are". As a biologist I feel this one is more intriguing but they both have a place.

A remarkable book.......2007-07-03

This is an extraordinary work, which will be of immense value to those suffering pain or grave illness. Its value lies in very practical, repeat practical, advice based on clinical practice and experience which have benefited many. It is original and pathbreaking. Above all, it holds out hope to those who may have abandoned it.

Full Catastrophe Living - Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind To Face Stress, Pain and Illness

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Full Catastrophe Living - Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind To Face Stress, Pain and Illness

Manufacturer: Dell Publishing Co., Inc.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness
Jon Kabat-Zinn
Manufacturer: Delta
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Weir Cooking in the City: More than 125 Recipes and Inspiring Ideas for Relaxed Entertaining
Average customer rating:

Wonderful food from a wonderful chef

Buy This Book!

Excellent Source for Entertaining with Food and Wine

Weir Cooking in the City: More than 125 Recipes and Inspiring Ideas for Relaxed Entertaining
Joanne Weir
Manufacturer: Simon & Schuster
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Cooking, Food & Wine | Subjects | Books
General | U.S. Regional | Regional & International | Cooking, Food & Wine | Subjects | Books
Similar Items:

Joanne Weir's More Cooking in the Wine Country: 100 New Recipes for Living and Entertaining

From Tapas to Meze: Small Plates from the Mediterranean

Weir Cooking: Recipes from the Wine Country

You Say Tomato

Joanne Weir's Cooking Class

ASIN: 0743246632

Book Description

The American city is thriving. In urban neighborhoods across the country you can find intriguing restaurants, gourmet and ethnic markets, farmers' markets, and artisanal breads and cheeses. In her new book, Weir Cooking in the City, chef and teacher Joanne Weir takes readers and home cooks into our nation's ethnically diverse and vibrant culinary and cultural urban landscape.

Exploring her adopted city of San Francisco as a guide, Joanne invites readers to search their own cities for the myriad international flavors and tastes they will find there. From local ethnic neighborhoods to the butcher to the farmers' market, Joanne seeks out the best ingredients and most delicious dishes and shows how they can be re-created in home kitchens anywhere. A companion volume to her new series on public television, Weir Cooking in the City brings every city to life.

With chapters on Firsts, Soups, Mains, and Desserts, Weir includes more than 125 vividly flavored, inventive recipes, created with urban cooks in mind: those cooks with not enough time and too little space, but an appetite for creating memorable meals and social gatherings. Start your meal with Joanne's Straw Potato Cakes with Smoked Salmon and Caviar, Parmesan Flan, or Kale Soup with Pancetta and White Beans. Showcase beautiful salad greens in a Radicchio, Arugula, Golden Raisin, and Pine Nut Salad or a Duck Salad with Pecans and Kumquats, or spice things up with a Thai Beef Salad with Mint and Cilantro. Simple yet delicious main courses include Silver-Roasted Salmon with Sweet-Hot Relish; Pan-Seared Chicken Breasts with Mustard, Rosemary, and Capers; and Green Lasagna with Artichokes and Leeks. Sweets like Warm Chocolate, Cinnamon, and Coffee Tart; Plum Cake; Double Chocolate Ice Cream with Dried Cherries; and Panna Cotta with Raspberries will complete your meal. Each recipe is accompanied by wine suggestions from wine expert Tim McDonald.

Filled with mouth-watering photographs throughout, Weir Cooking in the City is the cookbook for the modern home cook, with essential information on stocking your pantry, matching wine with food, and effortless entertaining. From creating a party of Mediterranean-inspired small plates to a simple but sophisticated supper after a movie or play, from bustling neighborhood markets to Joanne's welcoming kitchen, this excursion into city cuisine will inspire you to create a weekday meal or an impromptu dinner party.

Customer Reviews:

Wonderful food from a wonderful chef.......2005-01-04

As she likes to point out, nothing Joanne Weir cooks is terribly difficult or complicated. The ingredients she calls for are not hard to find if one lives in a place of reasonable size. In a small town of 3,000 surrounded by farmland, the local supermarket may not carry certain items, but in larger locales frozen phyllo dough, a nice grade of olive oil, fresh herbs and nice cheeses should be available nowadays. The same should be true of a nice bottle of wine. Certainly, those who live in a city environment won't have any difficulty. What's amazing is how incredibly delectable Joanne Weir's recipes are given their relative simplicity.

"Weir Cooking in the City" is the companion volume to the television series of the same name, which can be seen on many PBS affiliates across the country. Ms. Weir's first position after graduating from cooking school was a five-year stint at Chez Panisse in Berkeley, California, and her experience in that restaurant can be seen in her recipes. She stresses the use of fresh, pure ingredients and the results are excellent.

This sort of food could be served at any number of good restaurants and people would pay a handsome sum to have it. But Joanne Weir says that she thinks of herself as a teacher first and a chef second and what she has done here is to make superb food available to the home cook. It's probably not the sort of fare appropriate nightly for a family of six, but it's wonderful for a dinner party or an intimate meal for two. In fact, that's just how she sells her product -- food for relaxed entertaining. Nowadays, that's what I'm after.

I have tried and can highly recommend from this book several recipes. By all means, try the triple-ginger pineapple cake. It's to die for and very easy to make if you know how to separate eggs, beat egg whites until stiff but not dry and fold them into cake batter. You'll need fresh pineapple, crystallized (candied) ginger, fresh gingerroot and ground bottled ginger - and what full-sized supermarket in the United States doesn't have those? The rest of the ingredients are completely mundane - ordinary flour, brown sugar, butter, baking powder, salt, milk and eggs.

The roast Cornish game hens with toast bread crumb salsa are outstanding. Toasted bread crumb salsa, as it turns out, is a sort of condiment made with bread crumbs, herbs, olive oil, lemon and some other ingredients that is absolutely delicious on poultry or even a steak - and it's easy to make. Most supermarkets nowadays have plastic packets of fresh herbs in the produce department and the rest of the ingredients are no harder to find than the game hens themselves (which can be frozen ones).

Equally amazing is a delicious soup made with bottled clam juice instead of stock, fresh fennel, celery, potatoes, fresh oysters and a cup of champagne (use a $15 champagne for this and serve the rest to drink). She's creative - one quarter of the soup gets puréed and added back to the soup with some cream to thicken it, before the oysters are added. Thus, the soup still has diced vegetables for wonderful texture, but a creamy, thick consistency. The oysters go in right at the end so that they are only lightly cooked. It's amazingly good and not difficult at all. I admit, fresh oysters might be hard to find in the middle of the country . . . .

Joanne Weir's recipes take their inspiration from the countries that ring the Mediterranean Sea. Hence, you'll find lots of fresh herbs and garlic used in her dishes. Ms. Weir is especially keen on "small plates," those foods served in Mediterranean countries as appetizers, things served to start a meal. Plenty of those are included in this book in addition to main courses, soups, salads, and desserts.

All in all, I think Joanne Weir is a wonderful author of cookbooks, bringing the most delicious food imaginable into the homes of those of us who have moderately decent cooking skills, and "Weir Cooking in the City" is a great entry into her series of books. If you're lucky enough that your local PBS affiliate shows the analogous TV program, so much the better, because you can see her prepare all the recipes and, more, you can find out how much she loves to cook and share her gift for cooking with others.

Buy This Book!.......2004-04-22

Joanne Weir has done it again! This cookbook is unbelievable. I live in an urban neighborhood myself, as soon as I had briefly looked the book over, I found myself strolling through the Italian, Asian, and Latin sections of the city searching for ingredients, visualizing the dish as I gathered the makings for a really fabulous and truely tasty meal. Joanne's show, Weir Cooking in the City, is a wonderful accompaniment to the book. It really brings the dishes to life. Good Job! I highly recommend it!

Excellent Source for Entertaining with Food and Wine.......2004-03-25

This new book by author, teacher, and PBS TV chef show host is aimed at helping people entertain at home when they are in an environment such as downtown San Francisco, where virtually every type of foodstuff imaginable is a few blocks walk away. At worst, you may have to take a cable car or motor scooter trip for a mile or so to reach your objective. Life is tough.

That last cynical remark is not fair. This is a very good book on both cooking and entertaining. It is as good as Sheila Lukins' new book `Celebrate', but complimentary to that book as Lukins is focusing on inexpensive family entertaining and Weir's target is more for young couples with few children to eat up disposable income. Both books gain from offering food / beverage pairings. Weir is more parochial in that her beverages are all modest to higher priced wines. Weir's book is clearly better than Ina Garten's book on parties, as Weir offers a really valuable instruction on a lot of the nuts and bolts of organizing and prepping a party. It is not in the same league as the classic Martha Stewart `Entertaining', which is really directed at large, catered parties.

The first feature about this book which impresses me is a table of contents which lists every recipe in the book, in chapter and page order, and chapters are arranged by course. This feature is doubly valuable in that chapters are based on very logical courses familiar to modern American families. These chapters are:

Firsts (Weir knows her stuff here, as she wrote a book on Tapas and Mezes)
Salads
Soups
Mains and a few Sides (Why not go to the very small extra effort to split these up?)
Desserts

Weir's cuisine is centered on the Mediterranean, with some East Asian and Latin American dishes added for variety. Interspersed with main dishes are recipes for pantry preparations such as salsa, preserved lemons, dashi, and potato chips. Many dishes are familiar such as spaghetti and meatballs, or variations on familiar themes such as Panini Caprese (the old familiar mozzarella, tomato, and basil combination).

All the cooking instructions are mindful of tips and techniques familiar to most Food Network junkies, such as being careful not to burn the garlic when you do a sauté beginning with garlic in olive oil. The author is also brave enough to recommend making your own chicken stock and her recipe may not be worthy of Judy Rodgers, it is quite good for the home cook.

My biggest problem with the book is with the section on pantry items. I have never seen anyone succeed with a viable pantry-stocking list, leading me to believe that no fixed pantry list will work for anyone other than the person who makes it up. By all means, buy this book if you like to entertain at home, but avoid the author's advice on pantry items. Her giving us three (3) different lists compounds the error. One for the Mediterranean cuisine, one for a Latin American cuisine, and one for an Asian cuisine. Heaven forbid if you want to cook from all three. Let me just cite a few errors in the Mediterranean list.

Does not recommend salt packed anchovies and capers over products packed in olive oil.
Does not give any warning on spoilage risks for nuts, nut oils and whole grains.
Puts phyllo dough on the shelf. I believe this must be frozen to preserve beyond a few days.
Pictures mozzarella as a pantry item, while authorities I know say this must be a serve on day made item.

The pantry notion is doubly misguided since the book is aimed at city dwellers who are both short on living space and long on availability to nearby markets and specialty stores. Best strategy is to simply buy what you need when you need it, keep a careful eye on shelf life, and never, never buy anything because you may make something with it in the future. You never do.

A cookie cutter blurb from Alice Waters graces the dust jacket. I give Alice credit for supporting a former employee, but I suspect the value of her endorsement may be wearing itself a little thin by now. More surprising is a rare blessing from Madeline Kamman. Not bad.

This is a superior book if you like to entertain at home and you do not have the time to wade through books devoted to regional cuisines to pick out suitable dishes (although I suggest Patricia Wells' books are an exceptional resource on this matter).

Highly recommended for people who entertain at home and wine and food fanciers.

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