"Realms of Fantasy" is an overview of the chief classic fantasy mileaus, of the most stolid and conservative fashion. It is a large, heavy book that starts out by attempting to define the genre and follows by classifying fantasy into several sections (fantasy set in the past, far future, alternate Earths, lost worlds, etc.). Of course, this is all absolute nonsense. Nevertheless, the controlled, easygoing tone and the parallels drawn between works in the genre make this useful, even slightly enjoyable reading.

After the introduction there is one of the most important pages in the book: a listing of the works set in the mileaus described within, complete with authors. I have yet to see a more useful list of reading suggestions in the sub-genre of classic fantasy.

And, finally, the bulk of the pages is occupied by the sections on the settings themselves. Sections on Middle Earth, Atlantis, Lost Worlds, Peake's Gormenghast, Urth, Earthsea, Thomas Covenant's the Land, Moorcock's Elric, and Robert Howard's Conan stories, cover the setting's idealogy, works of literature set in these mileaus, the author's mindset, and detail the chief events outlining these settings. Accompanying illustrations seek to further elucidate the settings. Oddly enough, several cornerstone settings are inexplicably absent (most noticeably, McCaffrey's Pern and Zelazny's Amber).

In a nutshell, these overviews are tepid invitations to enjoy the genre of fantasy. This book serves out its purpose well.

I found this book to be helpful in obtaining more knowledge on the Rolls Royce and Bentley cars. I would have like to have seen charts on the number of cars produced how they got their names, and more technical information. The book has some beautiful pictures of these fine cars as well as some original factory sales information.

The book explains the detail that the builders go through to make each of these cars and how the evolution takes place from year to year.

I would recommend this book to anyone who is an owner or is an enthusiast of fine automobiles.

The book interested me enough to seek out other Tim Simpson mysteries. Unfortunately they are out of print and hard to come by. If one wants a fun introduction into the art world Malcolm's mysteries are an agreeable vehicle.

This book deserves exactly what I gave it. It was somewhat entertaining, but failed to have any sort of hook to really grab the reader's attention. Furthermore, I felt the suspected deaths of several adults and pets to be a little scary for the youngest on the age spectrum for this book. I wouldn't give this to any child younger than fourth grade.

Three youngsters join forces to investigate the disappearances of neighborhood pets and eventually neighbors themselves. They stumble upon a slime that is consuming the area, but of course, nobody believes them and they must fight it on their own. There is quite a bit of factual science mixed into this book which saved its rating slightly. There is nothing inherently bad about this book, but nothing all that great either, which is why I left it in the middle of the range.

Why 3 stars?:
I have nothing overly positive or overly negative to say about this book. It was so-so. I wouldn't give it to children younger than fourth grade due to the subject material. The science is easily separated from the fiction. This is a mediocre book, but if it interests a particular student then it is worth having around. But, it is definitely NOT one to go run and grab off the shelves.

Schofield delves quite deeply into the minds of the stoics and their views of community or citizenship, particularly the cosmic city and being a "citizen of the universe" (kosmopolitai). In doing so, he presents perennial concepts that relate to the ideal city, such as natural law, friendship and the peculiar philosophy of eros (love), pointing out works that related this subject to the example of the male system of society that characterized both Sparta and Crete (37-39).

In the first two chapters, one has the tiresome task of getting through a defense over Zeno's Republic. His Republic was disowned by some later Stoics, one of them being Cassius. Schofield meticulously but without easy readability defends Zeno's work as continuing the tradition and style of political philosophy established by Plato (27,28,42,56).

Overall, I suppose this book would be an ideal book for someone who has studied Greek philosophy in depth, but for the common reader, nay, even the beginning student in Greek studies, it is a difficult work to get through. He occasionally uses Greek words without translation, naively assuming the reader has a command over the Greek language. I give it 3 stars because of its difficult readability.

Though the emphasis is on giving a strategic perspective to Purchasing the book lacks integrity on the subject. It provides good compilation of information on strategic management. Not recommended for beginers.

Wittgenstein is primarily known for his work on philosophy of logic, language and mind, but he was a cult figure at Cambridge when he taught there in the first half of the 20th century.

Part of this, I think, has to do with his eccentric but enduringly fascinating views on ethics and religion. In this book, the late Norman Malcolm, a protege of Wittgenstein's, examines a curioius remark Wittgenstein makes to his friend Maurice O'Drury--along the lines of 'seeing every problem from a religious point of view'. It's curious because W. was not religious in the traditional sense. Yet he was a deep thinker, passionate about his own attitude toward life. He was, in a sense, a grippingly spiritual man, and Malcolm's book is a worthwhile attempt to understand Wittgenstein's religious attitude toward life.

I recommend it for those interested in Wittgenstein, religion or spirituality.

I am kind of shocked at how many ugly hats the editors of Vogue could cram into this little book. I expect there to be a few --it is, afterall, a matter of taste--but I just couldn't believe page, after page, of hideousness. There are 2 or 3 okay looking hats in this book and the rest look like something you'd wear to a shriner's convention, or cover your teapot with. It is such ashame, as these little books are such a good idea. The Vogue knitting Mittens & gloves book is much better, if you can get passed the gloves on the cover. What were they thinking?

I was excited to receive this book because I have used Vogue Knitting patterns for years and loved how stylish and exciting they were.

But when the book arrived, I was sorely disappointed. There are a lot of hats included, but most of them are, in my opinion, ugly. Most are based on old styles (circa 1960-1970) and I can't imagine anyone wearing them. A few patterns are okay....but mostly, this book left me stone cold.

In fact, I went back to it this year, when preparing to knit hats for xmas presents for my friends and my opinion hasn't changed. So what am I knitting instead? A beautiful pattern featured in Vogue Knitting's winter 1993 issue.

Note: this book was ordered before Amazon offered the peek inside feature. At least with this feature, if you like what you see, you can order it. If you're like me, I'm sure one of the other hat books they offer will suit you better.

I like a few of the hats in this book, but for the most part was not impressed. I really had to wonder if anyone would wear a few of the patterns (a bit overdone on both color, patterning, and design).

Janet Malcolm's portrayal of Sheila McGough is of conscientiousness gone awry; the over-zealous lawyer, hired by a con artist names Bob Bailes, guards her client's rights all the way to a prison cell. McGough found herself in the big house after a conviction for fraud: the "crime" she commited related to the disbursment of funds Bailes had deposited into her account. It's probably impossible to relate the complexity of the "crime" and McGough's conviction here, and largely beside the point: Malcolm's interest is in how the letter of the law moves against its spirit, and in those, like McGough, whom she feels to be caught in the middle of this dynamic. McGough, according to Malcolm, suffered from the disease of "literalism," understanding the words and acts but not the intentions and conventions that govern legal proceedings. Her portrait of McGough is sympathetic, though she records her own frustration with her as a subject prone to discursive irrelevancy and excess. Malcolm notes that for the most part McGough's words and action are not precisely irrelevant: just relevant on a scale incommensurate with the gestural and abbreviated, and self-serving practice of law as we know it.

I enjoyed this book, though I found it a puzzle.It's immensly readable, but quite inconsequential in many ways. Malcolm avoids turning this into a case study of McGough's pathological literalism, which it surely could be, and instead presents her story as an allegory of the general disparity between intention and precise meaning. I found McGough, and her family, immensely charming, and found myself, like Malcolm, in sympathy with McGough's doggedness and loyalty, however misplaced.

I read this book in one evening. I couldn't put it down. I believe that Sheila McGough was innocent. What I can't believe is that Janet Malcolm never uses the word autism in the book. Does she not realize that Sheila was a very high functioning person with autism? Read Oliver Sacks's An Anthropologist on Mars for a better understanding of Shelia. I was also truly fascinated by the "bad guy", Bob Bailes. Geoffrey Wolfe has written a wonderful memoir of his father who was very like Mr. Bailes. I enjoyed getting to know all the people in this book. Ms. Malcolm does a wonderful job of introducing them to the reader. My only complaint is that I wish I knew how to pronounce Sheila's last name. Is it McGoo? McGo? McGuff?

This is the first full-length book by Janet Malcolm that I read, and it lead to my finishing almost all her books.

It is as engaging as, if not more than, other books by Malcolm. It reads like a profile of a defese lawyer who is idealistic to the degree of being obstinate. But at a deeper level, the book argues that the American legal system, which many automatically associate with such ideals as Justice, Fairness and Objectiveness, is more often a battle ground for competing narratives from the defense and prosecution. Malcolm seems to suggest that the winning of a case has less to do with facts than with weaving of those facts into convincing narratives. Being naively idealistic, Sheila McGough was so unsuccessful at being a likable human being (even Malcolm has difficulty liking her) that she tainted the credibility of her own case in the eye of the judge who just didn't find her commonsensical.

But was she guilty because she was a difficult human being/lawyer? This is the troubling question posed by the book. Depending from which angle one approaches the book, it's either a cautionary tale about the importance of being commonsensical or a successful attempt at deconstructing what we call seeking of truth as the goal of American justice system.

There are about four writers worth reading in this enterprise. Unhappily none of them has his name on the masthead. Figure it out, you four guys. Dump the captain and his surly and silly chief officers and form your own crew. You know and care about the game. Your bosses don't have a clue.

As a baseball fan who reads any book of analysis I can find, I eagerly awaited this year's BBBA. I was extremely disappointed that the editors found it necessary to go into childish tirades against their competition

I usually don't wallow thru all the stats that the BBBA folks put out as I enjoy the commentary more. However, since the commentary was more in the line of sophmoric back slapping and finger pointing, I thought I'd study the stats more carefully.

The BBBA folks will tell that they are right. I did find much of their analysis to countradict their competitors. While I don't know who is right or wrong, a least let me decide as to which information I find more useful, don't tell me.

I especially found the attacks on Bill James to be curious. Bill James started the revolution on baseball anyalsis, in essence giving these insolent writers their start. If you don't agree with him, just write it, don't rip him.

I won't spend another penny on the folks from BBBA.

A lot more self-indulgence than previous editions. Too often, BBBA tries to dazzle with numbers but is increasingly harder to read each year. What made Bill James successful was that he used to be a good writer, too. You do get a lot more information that you don't get elsewhere but much of that information is not useful. BBBA should get back to basics. You can crunch numbers any way you want to to prove a point but I feel that the authors are hanging around rotisserie leagues and sabrematricians too much and getting a bit out of touch with the real world. It almost feels as if they are now writing in rotisserie-speak. They need to get back to basics and re-read old editions of BBBA or Bill James' Baseball Abstract or even the STATS Inc books. The older editions of this book were ***** affairs but it seems that the book is now aimed at fellow number crunchers and not for the fans anymore.