Did you ever come across a favourite song and say, "I wonder whatever happened to....? Abba took the world by storm back in the 60's when a quarter bought you an afternoon matinee at the movies, and minimum wage in my home town was $1.00 per hour. If you earned $1.25 or more, you had it made!

Abba possessed a unique blend of charisma, talent, and originality. Who can forget the sentimental lyrics of ,"I Had A Dream", the gentle flow of "The Rivers of Babylon", the melancholy strains of "Fernando" or the upbeat dance-hit, "Dancing Queen"? The list of hits went on and on.

What I particularly liked about this book was the numerous photographs all depicting Abba at their finest. Many photographs are ones not often, if ever, published before, at least not on this continent. In addition, the book reveals a lot of factual, personal information about the individuals themselves. The road to fame and fortune is not an easy one as readers will discover through the pages of this book. Some facts have been printed before, but other aspects of their career are presented here in a more complete, in-depth light. Fans of Abba, will no longer need to wonder, "what ever happened to..." because the epilogue tells you just that. Of all the books on the group, this is one of the best in print.

This book covers mainly the early years of ABBA's career. Most of the pictures we have seen before, but never in one place and packaged so nicely. The pictures here are different than the ones you will find in "From ABBA to Mamma Mia", so if you want to have a collection of pictures spanning ABBA's entire career, you really need to own both.

THIS IS AN EXCELLENT BOOK! FROM BEGGINING TO END! WONDERFUL PHOTOS, FUNNY ANECDOTES, INTERESTING NOTES, QUOTATIONS, INTIMATE FEELINGS PARTICULARLY FROM FRIDA, ETC. THIS IS A MUST FOR ANY ABBA FAN IN THE WORLD. I AM SO GLAD I BOUGHT IT, PLEASE DONT TAKE LONG TO BUY ONE, IT IS WORTH THE MONEY, IT IS A TREASURE IF YOU ARE AN ABBA FAN. TWO FINGERS UP !! LOVE TO ALL CLAUDIO

Never, never have I read any book that so perfectly diagnosed my condition. What a loving God we have - and how very much He longs to tell us. But the masks we wear to prevent that relationship is tragic. Sandy Wilson pictures it all so well - and in a gentle and loving way. She gives great encouragement that an intimate God is just a breath away - if we seek. Thank you dear Sandy, for your ministry.

It is not often that I call a book must reading, but this one certainly is. Sandra Wilson has written in such a way as to draw any reader closer to God. It is especially good for anyone with any kind of sense of having been left alone and lonely. But is is also a must for those who believe that they are closer to God than ever. I have reccomended it to many of my counseling clients and have bought and given copies to all of my children, my husband and my parents. If you don't read anything else this year, read this.

This is the best book I have ever read on seeking a personal relationship with God. I have read it for myself, given one to every member of my family and several friends and am recommending it almost daily to people I see in my Christian counseling practice. A book for anyone who has ever wondered where God is and haven't we all?

Whether you are considering weight-loss through surgery, medications, dieting, behavioral changes... This book has every bit of up-to-date information you need to empower you in your weight-loss journey.

A comprehensive and pratical approach to weight-loss is offered in "Beyond Phen-Fen". The author clearly explains and demonstrates how to lose weight, but more importantly keep it off. Of all the weight-loss books I have read, this book has impressed me the most and certainly helped me lose more weight and keep it off. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in reading about sound and effective weight-loss as promoted by the doctor who wrote it.

By far, this is the best weight-loss book I have ever read on the subject. Every page is full of useful and helpful information that will empower every person struggling to lose weight and keep it off. It is a must read!

A very entertaining novel with lots of great dialogue. The book is written like a movie. I couldn't put it down and it made me laugh the whole time. Thumbs up!

As a patient, I have always wondered about one aspect of medicine we never get to see: doctors and nurses behind closed doors with their thoughts and feelings and all the other things they never share with us as patients. "Beyond The Magic Scalpel" is the story of three doctors, three surgeons eager to save the world and the sick people they encounter. It is a tale about modern medicine, love, and glory. The doctor-author shares with us an aspect of medicine I wished every doctor did. I read this book in two days and couldn't put it down.

Funny... Inspirational... A heart-warming experience for every reader interested to know more about the world of surgeons and surgery. "The House of GOD" of surgery! A must read!

I bought this book on a whim because it was very cheap, and then, although I wasn't very excited about it, I thought I should read it so as not to waste my money. I'm glad I did because it turned out to be one of the most fascinating books on the craft, one could even say the art, of diplomacy that I've ever read. Eban was at the center of most of the events that led to the creation of the state of Israel and participated in its early years as a Jewish state and homeland. Eban gives an exciting picture of those times. He shows that diplomacy is a game of give and take with high stakes, the negotiations of which depend as much on the personalities of the leaders and their diplomats as the political events themselves. After reading this book, I have a much greater appreciation for the courage of diplomats who have to know when to issue an ultimatum, when to stand firm, when to compromise, and when to leave the table altogether. The work of these individuals can literally make the difference between war and peace and affects the security of us all. The book is extremely well-written and reads almost like an adventure story. I recommend it to anyone who is interested in the history of Israel or the workings of government and diplomacy.

Abba Eban is a fascinating person and his autobiography is the most enjoyable autobiography I've ever read. Although the book may seem rather long and Abba Eban may seem like not the most prominent 20th century figure, I can propose three reasons to read this book:

First, this book is about much more than just the life of Abba Eban. Abba Eban embodies a significant portion of Israeli history. In his autobiography he relates this history in first person. The book is less abstractly intellectual than his book _My People: The Story of the Jews_. Instead, Eban's autobiography focusses largely on the personalities who helped create Israel as Mr. Eban knew them. This means that one of the most sweeping and dramatic events of the 20th century comes alive through the eyes of one of its central figures.

Second, aside from being at the heart of the establishment and nurturing of Israeli statehood, Mr. Eban is one of this centuries foremost diplomats. Anyone with an interest in diplomacy or international relations will be thrilled with the inside view and personal analysis Mr. Eban gives. Eban discusses how he dealt with the down to earth Harry Truman, the volatile David Ben Gurion, the stubborn Golda Meir, and many more.

Third, Abba Eban writes in an engaging and insightful manner. Eban is a great story teller, using stunning descriptive writing, clever analogies, and plenty of dry wit. This may sound like an excessively strong endorsement, but I think the point is that Mr. Eban's command of language makes the stories he relates, fascinating in their own right, all the more powerful.

In conclusion, if you would enjoy a well written book with unique insights into the establishment and development of the State of Israel from the perspective of Israel's foremost statesman, then I believe you won't be dissapointed by Mr. Eban's splendid autobiography.

Edward G. Browne, the most famous British scholar of Iranian studies, for whom a street adjacent to Tehran University is named, has made an enormous contribution to Iranian studies in this and his other works. Professor Brown, whose other works span Iranian literature, culture, sociology and history, was a great friend to those who sought to advance the cause of liberalism and the rule of law in Iran.

This work is particularly valuable, as it is the only first-hand English language study of the Iranian Constitutional Revolution. It is particularly valuable for those readers unable to access works in Farsi, such as Ahmad Kasravi's seminal work on the Constitutional Revolution.

In this work, Brown vividly portrays the machinations of the British, Russian, and Iranian players in the constitutional revolution. One can sense the joy and agony in Browne's work as he describes the initial victory of the constitutionalists, and their eventual defeat at the hands of foreign agents and Iranian traitors.

Amanat's introduction is also valuable for the historical and biographical context it provides. Amanat, a scholar at Yale, has established his position as one the most prominent authors of Iranian history in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Those who enjoy this work, may care to also consider Shuster's work "The Strangling of Persia", also in the Persia observed series.

This book attempts to reconstruct the events and upheavels during the persian constitutional revolution. The author shows an intimate knowledge of his subject, having spent time in Iran previously. Amanat does a magnificant job in introducing the unknown part of Iranian politics, with accurate observations and conclusions.

Such insight and dedication to perfection is difficult to find. This is a fascinating book on the life of a Qajar Monarch that ruled Persia for one half of the 19th century. You will learn a great deal about how the era of industrial colonialism pushed an otherwise mighty and ancient empire into a defensive position that just keeping the nation in one piece became a major accomplishment. The life of the Nassir Al-Din Shah Qajar is so well depicted in this book that you live in 19th century Iran while reading it. A scholarly work of history by Professor Amanat that is a true contribution to Middle Eastern, Russian, and British History.

My compliments to Professor Amanat on this incredible book on the reign of Nasir al- Din Shah Qajar of Iran. What a refreshing new look on this Qajar ruler. Although Professor Amanat's book concentrates on the first half of Nasir al-Din's monarchy, his work is of great historical and academic value to Iranian history. Since the dawn of the Pahlavi Dynasty in the 1920's, Nasir al-Din has always been presented in a vacuum, by a resume style listing of events in his political career. These highlights of Nasir al-Din Shah's monarchy have shaped the popular understanding of this ruler. Most importantly, the killing of, Mirza Taqi Farahani (Amir Kabir), his disliked mother (Malik Jahan, Mahd 'Ulya), Nuri, his unpopular premier, the Herat military campaign, the Anglo-Iranian War, the Babi suppression (Baha-i Koshi), foreign intervention in domestic affairs, obsession with Malijak (Aziz-al- sultan), the tobacco concession, and his assassination in 1896. In this book, we finally get to understand Nasir al-Din by learning about his childhood, his world, and his time.

What one learns from reading Professor Amanat's book is that ruling Persia during the age of Europe's Imperial expansion, industrialization, and modernization, Nasir al-Din was able to prove himself quite effectively as an astute diplomat. What he lacked in military might, he made up for in diplomatic wit, playing the great powers against one another (namely Britain and Russia). What has never been acknowledged about him prior to this book is that he fared quite well in his attempt to assure Iranian territorial integrity and independence (preventing the partitioning of Iran).

Professor Amanat does not in any way put Nasir al-Din at par with Peter the Great, Nadir Shah, or Napoleon. He simply fills the vacuum surrounding the psyche, environment, and the character of this King, and presents the reader with a fresh new look on the Nasir-i era. This book is objective and focused on preserving history. It has not re-written history, it has contributed to it greatly. Having read this book, I still do not believe Nasir al-Din was by any measure a great king. In fact his religious beliefs, rooted in predestination, repeatedly resigned him to accept that which was quite unacceptable. Nasir al-Din's personal hero, Peter the Great of Russia, was never as docile as he was. Peter reformed, built, and strengthened his country, while Nasir al-Din Shah, at best, preserved the status quo. As for his capital modernization attempts, the introduction of the telegraph, the purchasing of the four cannon ship Persepolis, and the five mile long railway from Tehran to Shah 'Abd al-'Azim, were too little for a reign of 48 years to win him great praise. Great reform at times of weakness is indeed a historical possibility. Peter The Great of Russia set such an example prior to Nasir al-Din, as well as Mustafa Kemal Ataturk of Turkey, two decades after him. Change is facilitated through effective leadership. Let us never forget the praise given to Ataturk when it was written that "the will of the believer, become the creator of miracles."

I recommend Professor Amanat's book highly to anyone interested in history, biography, or nineteenth century imperialism. I give his book five GIANT stars and hope that the professor writes another book covering the second half of Nasir al-Din's reign.

Sloan Kettering first appeared in Hebrew in 1987 as an extended poema on Abba Kovner's terminal struggle against throat cancer. He died in Israel that year. But the poet's other struggle bleeds through the skin of this work. This pentimento effect renders these 61 poems subtle, bold, and classic.

Throughout history, Vilna's rich cultural life made it known to Jewish residents as the Jerusalem of Lithuania. In June 1941, the city fell to the Nazis. Kovner hid in a nearby convent.

That fall, few believed the muffled rumors of Nazi horrors. But Kovner, who had already suffered cruelly, was inclined to listen. In December 1941 he returned at great risk to learn from a 17-year-old girl of mass murders at Ponar and her survival beneath naked corpses in an open pit. As only a visionary leader could, he understood that this presaged Nazi extermination plans. Knowing their only hope for survival was to fight, he led the Jewish partisans, with his future wife Vitka Kempner and their friend Ruzka Korczak.

After the war, Kovner constructed an extensive Jewish underground to lead refugees from a criminally indifferent Europe into pre-Israel Palestine. Tens of thousands skirted Britain's draconian immigration rules, which illegally banned all but a handful of Jews from the Jewish National Homeland. Arrested in December 1945, Kovner was imprisoned in Cairo and Jerusalem on unspecified charges until 1946.

The UN's November 1947 partition plan ushered Kovner into Givati Brigade leadership to ensure safety for Jewish Palestinians, whom Arabs had begun to brutally attack. Yet that year, he found time to write and publish his first book of Hebrew poems. While There is Still Night (and 21 books of Hebrew poems that followed) reverberated with the enormous events that had shaped his voice. Forty years later, he lost that voice to cancer.

Sloan Kettering avoids self-pity or sturm und drang. Looking at his sons' photos, Kovner asks, "in their presence/ may one cry?" He speaks in understated irony. "We had the grandchildren for Hanukkah. I didn't/ sing 'Ma'oz Tsur with them, you know why." He lost senses, without complaint. He'll tell of that another time

if there is one.
P.S.
There will not be
another conversation. Just as this one is no more
than the invention of a throat in ruins.

Kovner also shows modesty. His "burden of molten/ rocks" is to "stay in the archives/ it is not for the operating table." One stanza of a poem instructing his heirs consists of the first two words of the mourners' Kaddish -- Yitgadal veyitkadash [magnified and sanctified]. He next notes the greater suffering of others--and remembers God, reciting the third and fourth words of the Kaddish--shemei rabba [is the Name].

He relives his fight for the survival of the Europe's Jews. He shudders here, like he did then, "challenged to stand up for his right/ to live." Were he alive, Kovner would perhaps agree that the poems reflect the current war against Israel, in which most of the world again stands ideologically pitted against the Jewish people, again asking how the vast majority can be wrong. Kovner knows the answer, presciently warning, "The worst of all comes back." He asks, "Will we ever/ get out of this terrible forest?"

In Sloan Kettering's silence echoes the great silence 65 years ago, when a Jewish prisoner was

cut off from his supervisor
finds himself running
from room to room
with no idea where to turn.

One encounters again "a pathless wilderness/ between yellow arrows/ and blue signs." Reflecting his furtive life in Nazi-occupied Vilna, the New York cancer center is "a trans-life corridor."

The fingers of a black nurse mirror "the velvet pad where Mother/ kept her needles." Impossible circumstances forced Kovner to abandon her to save others. His mind and heart, however, never left her. His nights end by telling her of his fears, and about her grandchildren. "She should have a little joy/in Ponar."

He recalls Itzik Wittenburg, betrayed to the Nazis on July 16, 1943, who hoped that going along would save others. In his cell, he swallowed prussic acid. "The gate is still open." ... "a nation holding its breath."

Kovner 's metaphors also reflect the life that cancer patients struggle to keep, against hope and time. In a sense, they capture it too, for these Eddie Levenston translations (like those in A Canopy in the Desert and My Little Sister), are larger than life. Kovner describes a Thai man, "from a country of free people/once" whose cities appear wretched to "those who live on, in solitude, in their dead world." His face looks like "Lost parchment/ in the heart of the desert."

Kovner understandably has no more "trust in the mercy of heaven," recalling "the day he lost patience waiting/ for the echo of his cry...to come back from empty space." Yet like all his work, these poems invoke Jewish prayers, themes and biblical proportions, some (though not all) detailed in the endnotes.

Readers may recognize Psalm 114 in Kovner's

mountains of Palmyra,
when they set up the most advanced of radio-
telescopes, the planners rejoiced
like young goats.

Though scientists may "scan/ the uttermost secrets/ of the universe-" its "uttermost ends flee and escape/...beyond space." This is Kovner's Jordan that fled backward. He asks, "isn't that how cancer sits,/ microscopically,/ lurking in his vocal cords"? ..." An abyss fine as a pinhead/ in ambush," whose mysterious patience resembles

the galaxies of emptiness
beyond the black holes
left in space
like a fateful seal
with no dawn-

These poems come as close as any to capturing absolute truth--that strangely elusive engine, invisible to most people most of the time, which poets spend their lives seeking to record. Kovner offers muted, simple humility. He writes so delicately of massacre and genocide--terms lately bloodied by their false invocation and overuse--that even readers unaware of his history, will find these poems pristine, awesome and beyond reproach.

--Alyssa A. Lappen

I'm not a big poetry fan, but this book is exceptional. I thought that a book about cancer would be depressing, but I found the opposite to be true. It's one of the most inspiring books I've ever read. And it is especially relevant now when there's so much talk about "heroes". The author was a true hero in the classic sense - a leader of the Jewish partisans against the Nazis, and he refers to that part of his life. But he - and many other people among us - are heroes in another sense: They are locked in a battle against cancer or other disease, and they fight it with all their might. The author is grateful for the magic of everyday comforts - his grandchildren's smiles, the rhythmic clicking of his wife knitting, the warm familiarity of his neighbors' voices. In spite of all his pain and fear, he has the guts to proclaim "death is not to be preferred". This book reminds us to cherish life.

This is a very well written text that is a particularly good reference on algorithms for the professional statistician. A nice feature is that it is concise and yet thorough. Many important problems in statistics are covered and presented through the deterministic and Monte Carlo techniques. Topics covered include the item response model, missing data and Bayesian methods. Most algorithms used to find maxima of posterior distributions can also be employed for maximizing likelihood. So those preferring classical inference can get a lot out of this book as well as the Bayesians.

The orientation is toward the Bayesian approach however, with good coverage of prior and posterior distributions, conjugate priors and Bayesian Hierarchical Models. The last chapter on Markov Chain Monte Carlo methods is mostly used for Bayesian inference.

This is a great reference source but can also be used in a graduate level course on mathematical statistics, probably as a supplemental text. There are many useful exercises in this edition. The book is fairly advanced and presupposes an introduction to mathematical statistics at the level of the text by Bickel and Doksum. It also assumes that the reader has had some introduction to Bayesian methods but only at the level of, say, Box and Tiao's text. It does not assume any knowledge of stochastic processes including Markov chains.

Convergence properties for the Markov Chain Monte Carlo algorithms (MCMC) are crucial to their success. Elements of discrete Markov chains are introduced in chapter 6 to make the algorithms understandable, but proof of convergence are avoided because they would involve a more detailed account of Markov chain theory.

Tanner provides a good list of the references that were available in 1996. The research in MCMC methods is continuing to be intense and so there are many good references that have appeared since the publication of this book. Robert and Casella (1999) provides a more detailed and more current treatment but even that book is a couple of years dated.

The EM and data augmentation algorthms are used for problems that are classified as missing data problems. The data may be missing as in a survey where particular questions are not answered by the respondents or it could be censored data as in a medical study or clinical trial. The censored data problem is illustrated by Tanner using the Stanford Heart Transplant data. Mixture models are also handled via these algorithms since the identification of the component that the observation belongs to can be viewed as missing data.

Tanner demonstrates a wide variety of techniques to handle many important problems and he illustrates them on real data. It is nice to have all of this compactly written in just 200 pages!

The book covers EM algorithm and Data Augmentation very good, and gives some info on MCMC. Very good reference book.

The message of this book is great, but it's just kind of dull. I think it would be good to read aloud to a kid, but for an adult, it didn't have as much content as I had hoped. The ending was beautiful, though. Worth reading....

This book is a delight to read. In just one sitting it so clearly show's you the heart of Abba, as only Manning can do. The tender story of healing in a boy that is you, and is me. As you turn each page the layers of your heart are stripped away to expose the tender heart that God created. The heart that beats only to love Him and to enjoy fellowship with Abba! I will be reading in anytime I need to be reminded of His love for me.

Perfect in it's simplicity, Manning's parable will warm your heart by revealing God's unconditional love and promises to you. What a joy to read for young and old!