Quainton & Vinestock have produced an extremely helpful edition of Ronsard. From his hundreds and hundreds of poems, they excerpt 85, presenting French text complete with running English translation and relatively complete endnotes. Moreoever, their edition includes a long, robust introduction and a helpful appendix on metre. This book is, in my view, a model of the way in which Romance literature ought to be presented for Anglos. Indeed, the production and design of the volume reminds one almost more of one of the newer Loebs or of the I Tatti Renaissance Library!

This book heals the theoretical schism between individual and group psychoanalysis or therapy. Harwood's sensitivity to the fine nuances of cultural factors enriches her clinical work in both settings.

This is the best in the series. It's the perfect blend of mystery and teen romance. I've read all the books in the series and this one is the best by far. It kept me guessing until the end. Do yourself a favor and read it.

As a beginner-to-intermediate painter, I have bought several watercolor books and this seems to be one of the best ones for me. It is not a beginner book, as it is targeted more for the intermediate painter; short on fundamentals and long on technique. In reading it, I had more than one "light-bulb moment". The book sets some realistic goals, and accomplishes them. I really enjoy the painting style represented here, fast and loose with implied rather than explicit detail. The book has lots of example excercises and many full blown projects with varying levels of guidance. It will likely stay on the top of my stack for a while.

This third installment in the tales of the Stevenson family covers 1854 to 1863 and brings a climax to the saga that proved for this reader the most enthralling of all. The sobriquet "Lord John" takes on a new and literal meaning as it's wearer is created Baron Cleveland after near suicidal service to the Empire during the Crimean War. Thus the Stevensons join the ranks of nobility, but as John and Nora rise to new social heights, troubles magnify. Strong, loving, noble John ceases to exist and his name and person are posessed by an impostor who while able to continue as a roaringly successful businessman takes up a navvy's sledgehammer anew only to apply it to his family relationships. One is seized with the desire to trot out to one of the Stevenson works, pick up a vagabond brick and aim it at John's head in hopes that the impact will resettle his brain back into it's proper connections. If Nora's heart was not completely broken by his betrayal, mine was, and it is up to her, while enduring the greatest mental torments of her life, to steady the helm of the family until the storm somehow passes. The focus shifts to the rising generation of Stevensons. John Junior, nicknamed "Boy", and Caspar undergo the forming experiences that will shape their lives--school, mentors, love, tests of ability, coming of age while father John heavy-handedly decrees courses for them and their eldest sister Winifred that would surely mean profound misery for them all. What's a mother to do? Should she stand by and out of her love for John allow him to make a series of colossal and devastating errors, or should she stand in his way and once again avert disaster, both personal and financial, for iron and steel made the Stevensons, in more sense than one. MacDonald introduces us to the "public" school and shows us an excercise in entrepreneurship, as well as riots in New York caused by unpopular aspects of the Civil War.

This book could simply be stated as an excellent attempt to introduce the foundations of NMR. It is a very good primer on all theoretical aspects that are essential to an understanding of the subject.
It offers a methodical, step-by-step approach. Useful tools and consistent terminology are the most attracting feature of this volume. It is well-illustrated; and controversial issues are highlighted in the "Notes" sections at the end of each chapter. It has illustrative problems at the end of each chapter, with solutions provided at the end.
Interestingly, the appendix covers many important aspects that are needed at a more advanced stage. Useful tools for the understanding of NMR are developed at appropriate stages. These include: the box notation for coherences, populations, density matrices and transitions; the origin of NMR spectra from individual coherence terms in the density matrix; origin of 2-D NMR signals as well as many important concepts in Fourier Transform NMR are described. The origins of relaxation enjoy a very readable and simplistic approach in the last chapter.
Whenever simplistic approximations are used, the author never claims of completeness or rigour. Distinction is made between terms that are physically correct and terms that are sometimes misleading, but enjoy widespread use in the NMR spectroscopy convention. The essential tools in quantum mechanics are outlined, product operator descriptions are used frequently and repetitively, that enhances understanding and provides more practice. Pictorial representations have been given where possible, a view-point beginners like myself find very useful.
One drawback, is a careful side-lining of the very important technique of using pulse-field gradients, although their cousin technique, named pulse-cycles is quite elaborately explained. I hope, the next issue of the book would also cover up this important technique.

I particularly like Gerald Durrell's books because of his humor. I lent it to my sick friend and she laughed so hard she got better. My mom has to yank it away from me before I listen when she wants something done. I am sure you will buy up the whole series when you read one of his books. Be patient at first and then it gets better.

This book really captured your imaganation. It was funny at the same time as telling as that we can ut up with stuff

It is no doubt Lowry initiates, scholars and afficianados at whom this book was and, therefore, this review will be, primarily aimed. I have no inkling as to why only Volume II is included here. It may be simply a slip on Amazon's part (I didn't realize myself that there were two volumes amounting to almost 2,000 pages until I ordered it) or that the first volume is listed as out of print. But this review applies to both volumes which, by the bye, may be ordered as one, if not from Amazon, from Edward R Hamilton booksellers.

It is difficult to put into words the boundless joy that accompanies the reading of these letters. Here is Lowry at his most winkingly self-deprecatory, literarily allusive and, above all, charming and downright funny. For anyone who values the English Language and English literature highly; as, in fact, necessary to life, as Lowry did, these letters will hold you spellbound. Here is indeed the record of a man who, quite literally, lived and died for language and literature. As his most famous letter here, the one to his publisher which ultimately led to the publication of Under The Volcano, has it, "...but just the same in our Elizbethan days we used to have at least passionate poetic writing about things that will always mean something and not just silly ... style and semicolon technique: and in this sense I am trying to remedy a deficiency, to strike a blow, to fire a shot for you as it were, roughly in the direction, say, of another Renaissance: it will probably go straight through my brain but that is another matter."

It is clear from almost every letter here, that Lowry was trying his damnedest,in all his writings, to live up to this manifesto; that, despite the continual tragedies of his life, he was always picking himself up and wringing from his life "passionate poetic writing", which, it is clear from these letters, was, to a great extent, lived as a literary endeavour.

That the shot did eventually go through his brain, so to speak, was not entirely unexpected by Lowry or anyone who knew him. - But neither was Sir Walter Ralegh's unjust execution. - Ultimately then, these collected letters live up to the title: Sursum Corda!-Lift up your hearts!-Here is page upon page of writing about things that will always mean something: Love of life, literature, words and a delight in language in and of itself.-

Unrealistic though my expectaation of their reading of these two massive tomes may be, I would recommend them to anyone who suffers from the peculiar fate of being human.

This book is 'a history of visibility'; it shows how the swastika became the key device in the Nazi colonisation of the visual field. It does not deal with what the swastika 'means' but rather with how the contradictory messages of racist ideology were given form in the swastika as symbol or 'brand'. This book was described by Stephen Heller, in Design Issues (Autumn 1995) as 'one of the most important books about design history and design's role in political and social persuasion that has been published to date'. Heller is the author of The Swastika Symbol Beyond Recognition (Allworth Press 2000).