Roberts and Guelff's "Documents on the laws of war" is a comprehensive collection of the treaties that created the body of armed conflict law and an essential tool for all students approaching this subject. The various documents are preceded by brief introductions which help even the most unacquainted user to orientate himself and to understand the origins, the context and the importance of the various sources. Even the practitioner will find it very useful, thanks to a detailed index at the end of book which allows to find the relevant legal material in few minutes. Last but not least, it contains the most recent treaties of this legal field, such as the 1999 2nd Hague Protocol for the Protection of Cultural Property in the event of armed conflict, or the 1998 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. I have recently used this book for my exam in international humanitarian law and it has certainly helped me to obtain a first class mark!

Renowned Oxford scholar Adam Roberts, once again has been able to put together an outstanding work, in collecting documents on the laws and by-laws of international treaties and pacts, international declarations and conventions, etc. The book is a reference book. However, it is also an extremely interesting and useful tool (for those interested in those matters) to 'browse through' from time to time. It is a book that cannot miss from the library of any international law expert. While it may be needed from time to time for a quick consultation on specific points, it will also provide huge amounts of information on the legal insights of international conflict.

Adam Roberts and Richard Guelff have further refined their excellent text on humanitarian law. This book is an absolute must for students, academics, operations lawyers and politicians alike. Written in clear, concise and exact English 'Documents on the Laws of War' is a comprehensive collection of treaty and customary law. An operations lawyer could be be considered as 'negligent' if s/he failed to have this guide to the 'law of armed conflict' by his/her side at all times. Essential reading and reference.

The authors of this volume desire to introduce the reader to the ins-and-outs of the English shotgun. Believed by many to be the sin qua non of the gunmaker's art. A considerable volume of work already exists on this subject. For almost 200 years, aficionados have written about English shotguns, their makers, technical refinements in manufacture and use, proper handling and etiquette, and their care. From words to the adolescent sportsman, to compilations of the street addresses of any craftsperson involved in the trade in the slightest degree, and through limited edition folios of the engravers art dedicated to Lordly patrons of bespoke arms, the libraries are filled. So why should anyone wish to read yet another volume dedicated to this subject?

Perhaps, it is because the authors admit in the first page of the introduction that the majority of publications written on the subject are, "... boring, devastatingly so." How refreshing. Enthusiast presses are famous for their unflinching stare into the deepest available navel of minutiae, yet here are two enthusiasts who can discern between information and lint. They follow this seminal observation with the raison d'etre of the present volume:

"This presentation attempts to reduce volumes of available material to an overview of the English shotgun, ... The objective, then, is readability at the sacrifice of detailed coverage..."

This is a worthy goal with a thoughtful caveat added for the reader.

Do they fulfill their stated purpose? The answer is a qualified, yes. The volume is split into two parts. The first section covers the history, manufacture, and advances of the English shotgun. It even has a snippet of connoisseurship under the rubric of, "Why the English Shotgun?" For the most part this is well done. It is an excellent first introduction to a complex history. Unfortunately, the second section takes on the all too familiar identity of a manual of arms. Better done by the readily available Orvis guides, no! t to mention the classic statement by Churchill, this section rapidly approaches the doom the authors inflict upon their predecessors. Somewhat relieved by their eccentric, and laudable, championship of the external hammer London best, their light style becomes mired in the details of foot placements, chokes, and bores (no pun intended). Rather than amalgamate two separate books into a less than pleasing whole, the authors would have been better advised to expand their addenda. Perhaps to include additional photographs of the London bests they discussed in the text, or a schematic or two for the curious.

Still, this volume does present the information in a straightforward and easily grasped style. It has some humor and tries to not take itself too seriously while educating. It provides a very nice annotated bibliography for each section. And, if one has never held an English shotgun it does impart a healthy respect for the art of the gunmaker's skill.

This is the ONLY book I have given a perfect five stars.
Amazing book, full of information regarding the details of building a London Best gun, with pictures and description of various barrel types, action shapes, stocking methods, third fasteners etc. Some of these are of very rare systems I never known exist.

Although I'm a very critical reader (check my other reviews), I still find this a perfect book.

Excellent, and written so everyone can have an understanding of the English shotgun and how to properly shoot one.

Robert Adams' latest book of landscape photographs - "Notes for Friends" - continues to challenge our views of what a landscape photograph can and should be. Beware though, not only are Robert Adams and Ansel Adams not related, neither are their photographs. I believe Robert Adams is responding to a reality that was only beginning to be recognized when Ansel Adams was producing his greatest works during the 30's and 40's. As a result, Robert Adams' pictures are not the glorious large format views of wilderness once synonomous with our concept of 'nature'.

Most of these pictures were taken at the boundry of commercial farmland and encroaching urban sprawl. If you think about it for a while, what else is there? Does it really make sense for any photographer to plant his tripod in the same spot as the previous dozen have done in order to photograph the same 0.1% of our land reasonably preserved as wilderness? Isn't the seemingly endless succession of photographs of pristine beaches, glowing aspens and towering clouds over unspoiled mountains a deception if not an outright lie? Does anyone in 21st century America still think this is 'nature'?

But, what if a perceptive photographer who truly cares about all this were to just go out a few miles from home and walk about with a 35mm camera any of us could afford to own? What if his goal were to find whatever beauty may still exist and, perhaps, some reason to be hopeful for the future? What would result? I believe the result would be photographs just like the ones Robert Adams has given us in "Notes for Friends". For those who can cope with what we have done to our natual heritage, it's a wonderful book of pictures. For others seeking refuge in the past, it will invariably disappoint.

Just this day received my newest purchase, by Robert Adams, wonderful dreamy and poetic, yet gritty and real.

Someone paid me the best compliment ever recently when they compared my own art to Mr Adams'

This book will take a proud spot beside my bed for the next few weeks it will be a joy to fall asleep with it in my hands dreaming of the impending spring and summer light that is soon to reach us here in the southern hemisphere.

I must admit I was pleaently surprised to see that it was almost exclusively images, I was expecting another collection of essays similar to his recent book "Why People Photograph"

Crikey I'm not complaining

I couldn't agree more with the previous review. If I see another (Ansel) Adams calendar on a wine-bar wall, I think I may just throw up. That stuff just feels like chocolate box kitsch to me now, whereas (Robert) Adams is at least trying to show us exactly what he actually sees, rather than a stage managed image of 'natural' perfection, and so to me at least, he feels more genuine and far less smug than his more famous namesake. But hey, I love this book, and this photgrapher, so I'm probably a tad biased.

This is a very nice fantasy/adventure book, about a guy who discovers a stairway to an alternate world. I especially enjoyed all the detailed preparations for the journey, the description of all the various supplies and the realistic consequences and repercussions in the real world. That, plus the scenes about the initial discovery of the ancient shipwreck was actually much more fun than the adventure that followed, which is the more typical monsters/swords/talking animals stuff.

The book ends on a cliffhanger and it took me many years to find the sequel, "Monsters and Magicians". It is somewhat of a letdown, about the gods of the magic world summoning the hero for a quest. Yawn. But the story doesn't end there either, and the concept is nevertheless interesting enough to make me wish there was a third book to tie up the loose ends. I'm still searching for it, and I still don't know whether Adams actually wrote the third part or just abandoned the series. If anybody knows, please speak up.

I really loved this book. It makes you think about all of the conections and possibilities out there. The author is a master.

An ordinary man stumbles into a dreamlike realm of awesome sights, and awesome dangers.

In a series of essays, photographer and critic Robert Adams goes beyond the images of landscape photographers and provides an impassioned plea for colleagues to care at least as much about our common lands as we do about preserving them for posterity only on film.

Adams is right: Photographers have something of a moral obligation to care about the fate of their subjects beyond the fraction of a second it takes to make an image.

This book has been of great assitance to me in my teaching and creative practice over the years. It has been a source of inspiration and motivation allowing me to continue working with my cameras and photography, at the same time reconciling different ideas about 'money', 'ideas', 'freinds', 'teaching' etc to enable me to maintain my faith in what I do.

The essays on teaching and money in particular have helped me clarify my position as both an artist and teacher, I highly recommend this book to anyone considering teaching or photography as a career.

This excellent book of essays reveals much about the motivations of photographers and provides thought-provoking subjects relative to a life in photography. Adams' writing is straightforward and insightful and an excellent inspiration in a sometimes confusing, but mysterious art.

The substance of this book is very good, if too wordy. There is no doubt that the authors have a firm grasp of their subject; now they just need to be concise in discussing it. As stated in the book, the book is designed for readers who have a basic familiarity with BizTalk -- however note that readers are expected to be familiar with MS operating systems and some scripting and programming languages. Not having this knowledge will make this book difficult to follow, especially in the examples.

Since the advent of the spell checker, no one proofreads any more. The book is rampant with errors. For example, the text will state that five parameters are required, then list six. In one case the publishing tool boldly inserts "ERROR! Reference source not found" when the text references a figure... Still, I'll give it high recommendations for content.

As a developer, I bought BizTalk Unleashed to evaluate the capabilities of BizTalk Server 2002. Specifically, I looked at how it can be used in EDI transaction processing and how to use .NET (VB.NET/C#) and I was impressed because the book has excellent examples, from general overview to step-by-step guide, on how to use every tools and technologies that BizTalk has to offer. Most importantly, the examples on how to use .NET (VB.Net/C#/) in developing COM+/COM/Web Sevices is very valuable. Not only they are valuable, all the examples I tried just worked which in itself saved me from frustrations!

I must say that with this book, I clearly discovered many great capabilities of BizTalk and I am confident that I can accomplish anything that involves BizTalk using BizTalk Unleashed!

By the way, the review just reflects my satisfaction of the book.

I'm purchasing my second copy of Caring for Your Collections. I am the curator of a house museum with a very diverse collection and I have found this to be a handy reference guide with easy to follow instructions for dealing with a wide variety of materials.

This book was assigned reading in the Museum Studies program I completed several years ago. I found it to be very readable and useful. It is geared to the person who is serious about preserving the treasures he or she has collected or inherited. Among its lessons is the fact that virtually everything we do to maintain our everyday household objects is not appropriate for objects that we would like to see survive for the long term. This book provides valuable guidance on what can be done to preserve the objects we value most. Today, I am a curator of a diverse museum collection, and still find this book helpful and a good refresher.

Everyone who has attended a number of Grateful Dead shows has become aware that something "magical" is going on. Those who "get it" are changed for a lifetime. This book is a compliation of social science research - usually as part of a Masters or Doctorate project - into that phenomena. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is looking for an academic approach to this magical and mystical experience. Be aware that the format is not in traditional narrative, but more the way scientific papers are presented - nevertheless, anyone who has been "on the bus" should put this in their library and those who are not on the bus, might finally get some understanding of why the Grateful Dead experience is truly transforming.

As a Deadhead, this is one of the things I've been waiting for. This is a wonderful collection of papers concerning one of the most influential "bands" in American culture. I recommend this to any Deadhead, and I recommend it to anyone who has ever wondered why we saw as many shows as we did, why we traveled across the country every season, and why we still continue to listen to their music. This should be read by anyone who never understood their sister's, brother's, or child's (make that parent's as well) need to see the shows and be among other Deadheads. This book covers so many facets of the Dead and their fanbase, and each paper is a scholarly piece of academia. Rebecca had such forsight to begin when she did, and I am thankful that she has found so many dedicated Deadheads who have written University thesis papers on the band. Joseph campbell and Jerry Garcia would both be very happy with this work, and I am again very pleased that a book covering this "long, strange trip" has been so wonderfully put together. A true sociological work, this should be considered by any sociology class in every University across the country. Thank you for a real good time.

Every now and then one stumbles across a relatively obscure author
whose work is nevertheless enrossing and highly relevant. "Cruel Tales" is such a work. It's unlikely that even many well-read people have heard of De L'Isle-Adam. And yet, his collection of short storie disturbs and enterains.

De L'Isle-Adam wrote in the mid-19th century, yet many of the idols he lampoons--commericialism, materialism, excessive patriotism, scientific objectivity--are all the more pervasive in today's society. De L'Isle-Adam writes witty, thought-provking satire without coming off embittered; this is no easy feat

Some of the tales have a shocking climax, such as "Sentimentality" or "The Eleventh-Hour Guest" "Two Augurs" is extremely funny; although it deliberately exaggerates society's trend towards conformity, it makes one ponder how much of an exaggeration it really is.

De L'Isle-Adam was a radical individualist and subjectivist. And these stories offer a metaphorical journey into human unconsciousness. One is tempted to call them poetical Freudianism; before Freud. In some ways, De L'Isle-Adam is similiar to Poe; though not as darkly offputting. I see a positive Enlightenment Humanistic impulse in De L'Isle-Adam as well, even as he lampoons much of the Enlightenment tradition.

Finally, I should note that although De L'Isle-Adam attacks science and reason and advocates a personal mysticism, he is not a religious apologist. If anything, the mysticism he has in mind is more of an idealism (perhaps even a solipism as the previous writter suggests); a probing of one's own mind and the very personal, often very weird world it has the potential to create.

In all truth, I think this book deserves three stars, but what the hell, I enjoyed it and I think other people might enjoy it too. It is definitely not a masterpiece of literature, but somehow it forms part of the Western literary tradition and its style has, directly or not, inspired much of current popular culture. Villiers de l'Isle was a member of that strange group, the French decadents, active in the last part of the XIX century, like Huysmans, Lautreamont and Mallarmé (the latter being much superior in strictly literary quality). The whole idea of decadentism is to reject the vulgar, noisy, superflous life of modernity, the disappearance of the nobility, the predominance of the cheap. Decadentists nostalgically praise the life of the soul, the reclusiveness enjoyed by old nobles living in gloomy castles. It is like Romanticism disillusioned, taken to the extreme. Hence comes the idealization of the Middle Ages, as opposed to the most optimistic century in history, the XIX. But decadentism also has a darker face: the fascination with death, sickness, twisted sex, darkness and retreat from society.

In these tales, Villiers treats these themes with varying success, but somehow they are attractive, so different from what we live, think and feel today. Two of the tales were, in my opinion, the best crafted: "The impatience of multitudes", about a warrior returning to an Ancient Greek city from a battle with the Persians. It is very vivid and indeed cruel, as the title of the collection suggests. It could even be said that it belongs in anthologies of this period. The other one is "The desire to be a man", a very sick story. The rest are very original (though it doesn't seem so, for the style has been appropriated by cheap entertainment and a few masterpieces) and they create the right mood, with pale full moons, crows, owls, night horse-rides and all which is now a cliche of ghosts stories. It is an easy and quick read, rather eccentric.

to some, adams is not even significant and wrote nothing of enduring or lasting value. to those of us who can recognize true decadence and solipsism when we see it, however, his work is indispensable to our dementia and creative depravity. how else could we justify our bizarre, reclusive lifestyles, our anti social bitterness, our out and out misanthropy, without recourse to adam's philosophy of pure ideation and subjectivity? sure, not all his material has necessarily dated well, but the exact same thing can be said of huysmans or any of the other decadents. the constant emphasis on religious faith and it's importance (it sometimes seems that adams is trying to convince himself of the reality of his beliefs and not the reader)may seem obsolete now, but it gives a real sense of mystery and wonder to his novels and short stories. adams is the defender of the aesthete and the introvert par excellance, and this collection of really intriguing and poetic tales is a treasure to the connoisseur of the imaginative, the purely mental, the mystical. for anyone who lives 'against the grain', this is an absolute necessity. BUY IT

i liked chees before this book. Now i just loves the stuff. thanks adam and rob.

I read this book expecting it to be a normal childrens book, short and sweet. I opened the cover and proceeded to read about the types of boys in the world, and although I am of the female gender, this applied to me as well, as I am one that KNOWS there are monsters. At that precise moment, I knew this would be a fabulous book. And it was. I could not put it down. The imagination of Mr Kent is quite vivid and intriguing and reminded me of my own monsters that I battled as a young girl. And although my children are grown I am passing this book along to them to read, for I know that they know about monsters as well!! Bravo to Mr Kent and Mr Smith. I was very pleased and surprised.

My kids and I absolutely love this book!! They haven't been this excited about a book we've read together since Harry Potter. Wonderful story, wonderful characters, wonderful book. I've been looking for other books by Robert Kent and Adam Smith, but so far I haven't found any. My kids and I read part of a book together every night at bed time and usually it takes us several nights to complete a chapter book like this one, but we read "Jim's Monster" straight through in a single night. Every time I'd start to put this book down and tell the kids it was time to go to sleep, my son, Devin, and my daughter, Dana, would lean forward in their beds and beg me not to stop. Usually I tell them no when it gets to be later, but this time I didn't want to stop either, so we kept on reading and we're going to read it again a few nights from now. The pictures are absolutely fantastic, like something Disney might do, and the writing is on par with Stephen King, only for kids. I was somewhat reminded of Roald Dahl, another of my kid's favorite authors. I simply cannot recomend this book enough. However, my other son, Donald, is only five, and I think the book may have been a little too scary for him. He sat near his brother and sister as we read, but I think he may have been too young yet for this story. But Devin is 7 and Dana is 9 and they both loved it. I'm 34 and I loved this book! Do yourself and your kids a favor and order this book right away. And, Mr. Kent, Mr Smith, if perchance you're reading this, you have four new fans here. We can't wait for your next book!!