My summary says it all.Halls of the Arcanum stands as one of my all time favorite human books. They are so unique and it is written so well it is unbelievable, how it went out of print is beyond me. The compilation is worth it just for that. Acolyte is dry and not too good but hey its got hedge magic rules, which are fun for everybody, even Bastet. Well thats it i would give Arcanum 5+ stars and i can't tell you how good it is, just read it. Acolyte while not too great is not useless and is kinda worth the extra dough. Have fun.

As the parent of two adopted children I read this book with mixed thoughts.

We are an older couple that wanted to adopt infants. We were told that we were asking the impossible, even as a mixed-race couple (Asian/European) in a state that historically has had a hard time placing mixed race children (specifically African/European or African/Hispanic). In fact these children are so hard to place locally they are considered to be "special needs children" along with the physically and mentally handicapped!

However, despite our ages and various ailments, 7 months almost to the day of first walking in through the door of the agency we were the proud protectors of a 15-day old baby girl. Two years, two months and two days later, our son came to us through the same agency.

Other friends and acquaintances were also looking to adopt during this same time, yet their experiences were much more like those recounted in this book. They tried again and again, through agencies, private arrangements, foster care, and so on, and many gave up. Children were placed with them and removed, they went to court time after time, they waited years, and spent thousands of dollars. What was the difference between us and them?

There was a degree of luck on our part, in getting a social worker who was intelligent, unbiased, hard-working, organized, etc. Yet that same woman turned down the application of our friends, saying they needed marriage counseling before they could think of adopting, despite 17 years of marriage.

The biggest difference that I can see is that before we ever walked in the agency door, we read books like this one. We knew what it would cost and saved up the money. We knew there would be questions about child-rearing, religion, race, and so on, and we talked it all out before we went. We knew the pros and cons of each type of adoption and deliberately chose a church-based private agency with a viewpoint we agreed with. We also were completely, totally, 100% honest and open, and still are, with the agency, the birth parents, the judges, our families, and our children, who have pictures and letters from the Moms and Dads that made them.

If you want to adopt you don't have to go to China or Rumania, unless you want to. You don't have to spend $25,000 to "buy" a baby, unless you want to. There are hundreds of babies here at home, and they need you as much as you need them. But you never get something without working for it. Do your homework first! Read this book!

This book is well illustrated. Very easy to follow visually, unlike most books of this kind. The "Cunning Stunts" are refreshingly above average.

This is an instructive and useful little book. And it's one of only two books in print on euchre that get it right (the other is The Columbus Book of Euchre, by Natty Bumppo). There are no glaring errors.

There are some highly helpful hints on what to lead, and an interesting suggestion to lead a nine to save an ace (pp. 25-27. The author may have a point, but he does not explain it). There's an interesting section on bid euchre (both "partner" and "buck"), with good instruction.

There are some annoying grammatical errors, such as "lead" as the past tense of "lead" going on for several pages beginning at page 23 (the author finally gets it right with "led" at page 32), and some syntactical number confusion (e.g., at p. 32, "If diamonds is trump . . . ," and at p. 38, "In buck euchre each player plays for himself . . . . Each player bids on the number of tricks each feels they can win").

And because the book was printed before personal computers made "desktop publishing" a household possibility, it's not the most attractive book out there: The only color is on the cover, and the small type makes it a little hard to read.

But the content of the book makes it well worth the price.

I thought this was a great book for learning more about The Bible. There are many facts that you don't even notice until it is broken down to the ridiculous. This book gave me many laughs and challenges. This book is a great gift for any Christian, especially trivia buffs.

This book supplements the GURPS Traveller system by describing the history, organization and tools of the mercenary's trade. Written by two veteran Traveller authors, the attention to detail is refreshing in a gaming supplement. The mercenary's life is thoroughly described in the main text and typical of the GURPS products, spiced up with lots of interesting snippets on the sidebars. New templates and new equipment will be of interest to players keen on dishing out (as mentioned in the preface) "Grade-A violence to all comers". The only (minor) fault I could find is that the sample characters are not particularly inspiring.

The original Mercenary book was arguably the most exciting of the supplements published by the now-closed Game Designers Workshop when I first started playing Traveller. This new version for GURPS Traveller is even better. Easily the first supplement I would get for the GURPS Traveller system.

Gardner weaves the magic of mathematics again in this awesome math "thriller". After 'Time Travel', this is the second book I read, and I think Gardner does a wonderful job of going about math in a non-boring way. At some points of time, I had difficulty understanding whether I am supposed to be a complete novice or an advanced student, hence the 4 stars.

First, a small correction. This collection of mathematical essays was assembled as a tribute to Martin Gardner, on the occasion (20 years ago!) of his retirement. This book was not edited by Gardner, but it is in the same spirit (and the same size) as his "Mathematical Games" books of his Scientific American columns, so it does make a nice companion volume.

There are lots of good things in this book, but the best is Doris Schattschneider's essay "In Praise of Amateurs," on the ways of tiling the plane with convex pentagons. Does this sound like an incredibly arcane, useless subject? Well, I suppose it is, but it's also a delicious story, and this volume is the only place where I have seen it told in full. There are 13 essentially different ways to tile the plane with convex pentagons. Many of these beautiful patterns were discovered by Marjorie Rice, a San Diego housewife with only a high school education. Furthermore, she discovered these designs years after it was "proved" that there were only eight ways. If you thought the aperiodic Penrose tiling of the plane was a fascinating discovery, you will want to read this essay, admire these 13 patterns, and ideally find a fourteenth.

This essay alone is worth the price of the book. While the rest of the book is not quite up to its standard, it too is quite worthwhile. There are essays by Scott Kim, Donald E. Knuth, H.S.M. Coxeter, Solomon W. Golomb, and many others, all clearly illustrated. The section on 3-dimensional tiling is also quite cool.

The Rolemaster Campaign Classics series was a series of carefully researched titles which contained all of the background information and story hooks that you could possibly need to run a successful campaign in the setting.
Mythic Eygpt is a fantasy setting closely based upon the myths and legends of ancient Eygpt. Mummies, pharohs, gods, djinns, encroaching deserts - its all here; with game statistics for both Rolemaster and Fantasy Hero.
This makes for a perfect backdrop for running campaigns similar to the TV shows Xena, Hercules or Sinbad. Anyone fasinated by the mythologies of Greece and Eygpt should pick up this title, and Mythic Greece - its companion title dealing with Greece and the Trojan War.

If there were a mathematics of watching paint dry, Martin Gardner would make it interesting. Without peer as a popularizer of mathematics, he is equally adept at explaining all areas. This book, another updated collection of his Scientific American columns, is a twenty member set of polished pearls. Although somewhat mundane as a descriptive adjective, the word readable fits his writing like a custom made body stocking.
Always interesting and entertaining, reading his essays is somewhat like eating tiny chocolate bars. You can't get enough, each seems too small, and there are no negative side effects.

Published in Journal of Recreational Mathematics, reprinted with permission.