Ultimate Guide to YouTube for Business by Jason R. Rich

Ultimate Guide to YouTube for Business by The Staff of Entrepreneur Media, Inc.; Jason R. Rich ISBN-13: 9781599186191 Paperback: 304 pages Publisher: Entrepreneur Press Released: March 27, 2018

Source: ebook review copy from the publisher through NetGalley.

Book Description, Modified from NetGalley:
YouTube delivers more than a billion minutes of streaming content to 1.3 billion active users every day. That's equivalent to one-third of all internet users and at least a billion reasons to start creating videos that promote your business, brand, products, and services today.

Entrepreneur Magazine's Ultimate Guide to YouTube for Business is the video marketing blueprint you need to create videos that educate, entertain, and inspire viewers to take action. You'll learn how to plan, edit, promote, and share your videos with the public, as well as how to leverage YouTube's tools to help spotlight your business and your products without spending a fortune.

This guide shares advice from successful YouTube experts to help you. You'll learn how to set up your channel, become a YouTube Partner to start monetizing your videos, create a virtual community that uses your products, cater your videos to your target audience at every stage of production and promotion, optimize video titles, descriptions, and tags, and promote your YouTube videos using Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and other social sites.


My Review:
Ultimate Guide to YouTube for Business is targeted at small businesses who intend to use YouTube to tell their potential audience about their business, their products, and how to use their products. The focus was on helping your business present polished videos and get word out about them so that people will view them. The book helps you figure out who your target audience is, what type of videos will be most effective for your company, how to set up your account on YouTube and upload your videos (step by step), and how to advertise your videos or have advertising on your videos.

While they did briefly describe the type of equipment you would need to do your own video work, you can get more detailed descriptions of this from an online search than from the book. They recommended that you hire someone to do the video work instead of doing it yourself, so they didn't spend much time on this aspect. They did list and describe a variety of video editing programs, but they provided only general information on the other equipment. If you want to know how to set up lighting, run a video camera, or use that editing software, they suggested looking it up on YouTube or certain magazine websites.


If you've read this book, what do you think about it? I'd be honored if you wrote your own opinion of the book in the comments.


Excerpt: Read an excerpt using Google Preview.

The Family Tree Historical Newspapers Guide by James M. Beidler

The Family Tree Historical Newspapers Guide by James M. Beidler ISBN-13: 9781440350627 Paperback: 240 pages Publisher: F+W Media Released: March 20, 2018

Source: ebook review copy from the publisher through NetGalley.

Book Description, Modified from Back Cover:
There are more historical newspaper resources than you think--and they're easier to access than you know. When researched properly, no other type of record can beat historical newspapers in "taking the pulse" of their times and places, recording not just the names, but also information important to the community. This comprehensive how-to guide will show you how to harvest the "social media" of centuries past to learn about your ancestors and the times and places they lived in. With step-by-step examples, case studies, templates, worksheets, and screenshots, this book shows you what you can find in online (and offline) historical newspapers, from city dailies to weekly community papers to foreign-language gazetteers.

The Family Tree Historical Newspapers Guide features:
Tips and techniques for finding crucial genealogy records in newspapers, such as birth announcements, obituaries, and even news reports

Step-by-step guides for using popular online newspaper databases such as GenealogyBank and Newspapers.com

Case studies that will put information found in newspapers to use


My Review:
The Family Tree Historical Newspapers Guide helps you to optimize your use of historical newspapers to discover information about your ancestors or a time period. The author focused mainly on American newspapers. He started by providing a brief history of newspapers, especially how they handled death notices and such. He used many examples of how someone's research turned up interesting information, often in unexpected spots. He talked about the types of things to look for in the newspapers, like birth notices, marriage announcements, death notices, divorces, and community articles.

He covered free-to-use and pay-to-use historical newspaper archive sites and how to use their different features. He also covered ethnic and international newspapers. He explained things like how to search for names that may have a variety of spellings or a name which also belongs to a famous person (but not the person you're interested in). Overall, I found this to be an informative and useful book of tips on this topic.


If you've read this book, what do you think about it? I'd be honored if you wrote your own opinion of the book in the comments.

Drawing Birds by Raymond Sheppard

Drawing Birds by Raymond Sheppard ISBN-13: 9780486820323 Paperback: 128 pages Publisher: Dover Publications Released: Feb. 15, 2018

Source: ebook review copy from the publisher through NetGalley.

Book Description, Modified from GoodReads:
This helpful instructional volume offers a wealth of well-illustrated advice on depicting all manner of birds. British illustrator Raymond Sheppard was celebrated for his nature and animal studies, and this book combines two of his most valuable guides, How to Draw Birds (1940) and More Birds to Draw (1956).

This single-volume edition of Sheppard's two great guides provides in-depth studies of the shapes and visual construction of a variety of birds, from domestic fowl to birds on the wing. Topics include anatomy; the representation of wings, feathers, and flight; and details for drawing beaks, feet, and plumage. Common birds such as thrushes, redwings, blackbirds, and starlings appear here, along with many other species, in addition to ducks in and out of the water and birds of prey such as the barn owl, buzzard, and golden eagle. Drawing Birds offers an abundance of pointers that will benefit amateur and professional artists alike.


My Review:
Drawing Birds is an art book combining the author's guides "How to Draw Birds" and "More Birds to Draw." He assumed that the reader already knows how to draw, so he didn't cover topics like tools or techniques. Rather, he provided tips on how to accurately draw birds.

He started by explaining bird anatomy, from wings to beaks to feet. Then he talked about specific types of birds, like ducks, eagles, ravens, etc. He gave information about each bird like you'd find in a nature book plus some tips about how to capture the bird's pose and personality. For each bird covered, he provided a page full of studies he's done, ranging from rough sketches to detailed portraits.

He also provided tips on how to make a bird in the water or air look natural and how to quickly capture the bird's body shape and stance. Overall, it's an informative book and has lovely bird drawings, but it's probably of limited use to complete beginners.


If you've read this book, what do you think about it? I'd be honored if you wrote your own opinion of the book in the comments.


Excerpt: Read an excerpt using Google Preview.

Sibley Birds of Land, Sea, and Sky: 50 Postcards by David Allen Sibley

Sibley Birds of Land, Sea, and Sky: 50 Postcards by David Allen Sibley ISBN-13: 9781524761820 Publisher: Clarkson Potter Released: March 8, 2018

Source: Review copy from the publisher through Blogging for Books.

Book Description from Goodreads:
Birdwatchers everywhere will love this beautiful box of 50 postcards featuring original bird paintings by renowned ornithologist David Sibley. This brand new vertical format offers 50 postcards of birds lovingly rendered in watercolors by David Sibley and chosen with their individual beauty and prominence in the country in mind. Housed in an elegant keepsake box with tabs dividing them by type (sea birds, birds of prey, songbirds) for ease of choice, these postcards are ideal for mailing to friends and family, framed and used as décor, or attached to presents as unique gift tags.


My Review:
This is a collection of 50 postcards that are decorated with watercolor paintings of birds by David Allen Sibley. The postcards are 4" by 6" and on a thick, sturdy card stock with rounded corners. They come in a sturdy box. The postcards have a bird on one side (with the bird's common and scientific name) and the standard postcard writing areas and such on the other side. The birds are realistically drawn, so you can identify the birds from the pictures. I double-checked with the post office, and these postcards do ship for the regular postcard postage rate.

They come in categories: waterfowl, woodpeckers, wading birds, songbirds, owls and raptors. For waterfowl: blue-winged teal, wood duck, spectacled eider, hooded merganser, pink-footed goose, cackling goose, barnacle goose, mute swan, greater scaup, and snow goose. For woodpeckers: Williamson's sapsucker (male and female), red-naped sapsucker, nuttall's woodpecker, Lewis's woodpecker, red-bellied woodpecker, ladder-backed woodpecker, pileated woodpecker, northern flicker, and hairy woodpecker. For wading birds: lesser yellowlegs, surfbird, white-faced ibis, American oystercatcher, sandhill crane, great blue heron, killdeer, American bittern, whooping crane, American woodcock. For songbirds: scissor-tailed flycatcher, American redstart, blackburnian warbler, western tanager, rose-breasted grosbeak, tufted titmouse, yellow-rumped warbler, cerulean warbler, le conte's sparrow, and eastern bluebird. For owls and raptors: bald eagle, peregrine falcon, eastern screech-owl, red-tailed hawk, great horned-owl, snowy owl, barn owl, boreal owl, northern saw-whet owl, and northern goshawk.


If you've read this book, what do you think about it? I'd be honored if you wrote your own opinion of the book in the comments.

The Life and Times of Sherlock Holmes by Liese Sherwood-Fabre

The Life and Times of Sherlock Holmes by Liese Sherwood-Fabre ISBN-13: 9780998411231 ebook: 80 pages Publisher: Little Elm Press, LLC Released: Feb. 28, 2017

Source: ebook review copy from the publisher through NetGalley.

Book Description, Modified from Goodreads:
Step back to London, 1895. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's stories are full of references to everyday activities and events from Victorian times that make the twenty-first century reader run to the reference shelf. Few, for example, are intimately acquainted with the responsibilities of a country squire, the importance of gentlemen's clubs, or the intricacies of the Victorian monetary system.

These twenty-four short essays explore various aspects of life mentioned in the original tales of Sherlock Holmes, providing modern-day insight into the nineteenth century world. Originally shared through various Sherlockian newsletters around the world, they are gathered here for the first time. Essays cover:

The Life of a Country Squire, The Holmes' Family Connection to the Vernets of France, The Fate of Second Sons, The Victorian Medical Practice, Victorian Transportion, The Origins of Scotland Yard, The River Thames, Apiculture in the 1800s, Westminster Palace, Sherlock's Christmas Spirit, Practicing Law in Victorian England, The Second Anglo-Afghan War, Gentleman's Clubs, Tobacco, 221B Baker Street, Abductive Reasoning, Dog Breeding, Poisons, Fingerprints, Phrenology, Communications, The Monetary System, The British Museum, Chloroform. These examinations bring deeper meaning and color to the adventures of the world's most famous consulting detective.


My Review:
The Life and Times of Sherlock Holmes is a collection of 24 short essays on the historical context of things mentioned in Sherlock Holmes stories. The footnotes show that most of the information was found online or in a small number of books about Victorian England, so you could look up much of this online for yourself. However, it is an interesting and informative read. Each essay was inspired by a comment made in a Sherlock Holmes story. For example, Sherlock Holmes mentioned country squires in his ancestry so there's a essay on what a country squire did and his rank in society.

Topics covered include country squires, inheritance laws, doctors and surgeons, transportation, the origins of Scotland Yard, the Thames River, beekeeping, Westminster Palace, Christmas geese, solicitors and barristers, the Second Anglo-Afghan War, men's clubs, tobacco use, dogs and dog shows, poison, phrenology, types of money and how much it was worth, the Postal Service and telegraphs, the British Museum, fingerprints, chloroform, and more.


If you've read this book, what do you think about it? I'd be honored if you wrote your own opinion of the book in the comments.

Old English Medical Remedies by Sinead Spearing

Old English Medical Remedies by Sinead Spearing ISBN-13: 9781526711700 Hardback: 152 pages Publisher: Pen & Sword Released: Feb. 28, 2018

Source: ebook review copy from the publisher through NetGalley.

Book Description, Modified from NetGalley:
In 9th century England Bishop Ælfheah the Bald is dabbling with magic. By collecting folk remedies from pagan women, he risks his reputation. What will modern science make of the elves, hags and nightwalkers which stalk the pages of Bald's book and its companion piece Lacnunga, urging prescriptions of a very different, unsettling nature. Cures for the 'moon mad' and hysteria are interspersed with directives to drink sheep’s dung and jump across dead men’s graves. Old English Medical Remedies explores the herbal efficacy of these ancient remedies whilst evaluating the supernatural, magical elements and suggests these provide a powerful psychological narrative.


My Review:
Old English Medical Remedies looks at Bald's "Leechbook III" and "Lacnunga," where he recorded medical recipes and rituals from 400 to 900 AD Britain. The rituals often targeted supernatural causes of disease, like elves, hags, and night walkers. While the recipes usually do include herbs, the author points out that many of these herbs are toxic and so would not be used in modern medicine. Also, no amounts are recorded, so we can't replicate what they did anyway.

Since many of the remedies involve visualization, focused intention, transference, curses, sympathetic magic, and ritual, the author looked at other ancient traditions and modern things that we do which are similar and how it may help the sick. It's more a philosophical look at the rituals than a scientific one. However, he did consider the medical action of the various herbs and how it may have helped the person, as well as the psychological benefit of the rituals. He also looked at how the church tried to repress these remedies and the memory of the healing women who used them as the Christian Church came into power.


If you've read this book, what do you think about it? I'd be honored if you wrote your own opinion of the book in the comments.

A Most Deliberate Swindle by Mick Hamer

A Most Deliberate Swindle by Mick Hamer ISBN-13: 9781910453421 Paperback: 240 pages Publisher: RedDoor Publishing Released: Sept. 28, 2017

Source: ebook review copy from the publisher through NetGalley.

Book Description, Modified from NetGalley:
On a warm April morning in 1906 a crowd of expectant correspondents from London s leading newspapers gathered at the Hotel Cecil in the Strand to view the new wonder of the age the electrobus.

This clean, green machine was gearing up to take on the noisy, polluting petrol vehicle, which was just starting to replace the horse-drawn omnibus and surely had the potential to be a game changer in terms of what it would mean to Londoners and other city-dwellers who were already choking on petrol fumes.

Disastrously though, the London Electrobus Company was in the grip of a gang of greedy and fraudulent financiers, who systematically conned shareholders, looted the company's coffers and drove the promise of the electrobus into the ground.

Rammed with fascinating characters and vividly capturing the Edwardian era, A Most Deliberate Swindle uncovers one of the biggest frauds in history and reveals why a century later this historic scam has left us all gasping for breath.


My Review:
A Most Deliberate Swindle is a well-researched historical true crime story. This interesting tale started in April 1906 with a company promising to run battery-powered buses in London. This was at a time when the new petrol-powered buses were not popular due to the smell and noise. There were also steam-powdered buses vying to be the technology to replace horse-drawn vehicles. Though the battery-powered buses were very popular, they were also more expensive to build. However, they may have become the norm if the company first promoting the buses hadn't been a fraud.

This is the story of the technology, the fraud going on at that time, and the main players who carried off this is astounding fraud. They managed to keep people interested and sending them money even after the company was exposed as a fraud. The company didn't shut down its buses until the early 1910s when new technologies offered better cons. Overall, I'd highly recommend this interesting and cautionary tale to those interested in stocks and new technologies.


If you've read this book, what do you think about it? I'd be honored if you wrote your own opinion of the book in the comments.


Excerpt: Read an excerpt using Google Preview.