This science-fiction story for youth is the ninth book in the humorous Norby series about a young space cadet and his unusual robot Norby. In this tale, Norby, Jeff, and others travel to the planet Jamyn to go to a birthday party for that planet's ruler, the Grand Dragon. But, soon thereafter the planet is threatened by a giant cloud that completely covers Jamyn. They also soon discover that the cloud is sentient.

Norby and the Oldest Dragon had two main characters through the whole story, Jeff Wells and Norby a robot of Jeff Wells. They travel from earth to the planet Jamyn and attend a birthday party for the Grand Dragon. When they show up Jeff and Norby go on a adventure to an island to try to bring someone back. After that something bad happens and Jeff and Norby will try to save planet Jamyn. This book was really good and fantastic but it had some very hard words so I recommend this book for someone who knows how to read really well. This book was published by Walker Publishing Company in 1990. This book has won no award.

This book is a compilation of the humorous first two science fiction stories for children in the Norby series: "Norby, the Mixed-Up Robot" (first published in 1983) and "Norby's Other Secret" (published in 1984). The first tale introduces the reader to a 14-year-old Space Academy cadet, Jeff Wells, and his unusual robot, Norby. Norby has skills that other robots lack, apparently due to the incorporation of alien parts in his construction. In this first book of the series, Jeff and Norby foil a plot of a villian to take over the Solar System. Norby discovers he has "anti-gravity" capabilities as well as the ability to travel through "hyperspace" and great distances. [Isaac Asimov, in another book, apologizes for using antigravity in this series.] In "Norby's Other Secret" the robot discovers his origin, a dragon-inhabited planet, and some new abilities: traveling through time and telepathy.

I read this when I was quite young. I loved it. It got me hooked on sci-fi. I really like this book. It started me off on this great genre.

This is the seventh book in the humorous Norby series about a space cadet and his unusual robot. Norby and Jeff travel to Earth to do research on Norby's creator. Unfortunately, Norby is shot by an alien device that seems to remove all his memories and special skills. Jeff has to discover why and figure a way to help Norby.

Jeff's chief goal for the week off is to study. He isn't able to do that because he has to go home to stay with Fargo, who is hurt from spraining both ankles. In Manhattan there are reports of a person zapping robots. Norby decides to make a biography of one of his fathers, Moses MacGillicuddy, a person from Earth who found some of Norby's parts from an alien spacecraft. Norby's biography research leads them to the Higgins' House, an ancient landmark of Manhattan. Miss Mynn, MacGillicuddy's daughter, is furious that her father's robot was let into the house. MacGillicuddy had made a beautiful portrait of Miss Mynn. Miss Mynn thinks that MacGillicuddy liked the portrait and Norby more than he liked her. They find out that Miss Mynn is zapping the robots. Miss Mynn then gets angry and zaps Norby. Norby is deactivated! Jeff is heartbroken.

What can Jeff do?

To see if they can find a way to reactivate Norby, read the book.

I read up to Prop 6 and could not quite carry on. His language is not easy to understand. I hope someone will publish a Dictionary of it. Anyway, his proof of Kepler's 2nd theorem is clever, and he is very rigorous mathematically for his time. ...

I bought this book not for the purpose of learning Classical Mechanics from it, but for the scientific curiosity of learning how the great Isaac Newton presented his revolutionary scientific ideas to the world. Of course, it is difficult to read. This is an old translation of a book written in Latin more than 300 years ago!

This book is a jewel. Just like the original works of Einstein, Maxwell, Heisenberg, Schroedinger and all those giants. The person buying this book should not expect to find a clear didactic textbook when originally it was not written for the layman, but for the expert scientific community of its time. Buy this book, sit back, scan through it, and enjoy a true piece of history.

A nice, interesting book with a lot of useful information on probabilistic structural analysis, but does not follow the current industrial practice that is leaning towards stochastic FEA and FORM/SORM based limit state analysis. If you want to understand modern structural reliability theory, or plan to work in probabiistic design, I would strongly reccomend the textbooks by Haldar & Mahadevan. In short, Prof. Elishakoff's book will be a nice companion volume, but not a main reference. Cant beat the price, though.

This book is a very lucidly written one in the area of probabilitistic applications in mechanics and vibratrions. The first chapter is an introduction in to the history of probability and its roots. The book begins with an introduction to probability and probability distributions and this is covered in the initial couple of chapters. The second chapter deals with the basics of probability involving set thory. The third and fourth chapters deals with the basic concepts of probability and deals with different probability distributions in practice. In the next couple of chapters the concepts of derived distributions are covered. The concept of derived distributions along with transformations used are covered in the fourth and fifth chapters. The theory of random functions are covered in the sixth chapter. Then the application of probability and stochastic processes to structural mechanics for example stability, vibration theory have been covered. The final chapter is on the random number generation. It deals with Monte Carlo simulation of probability distributions and random functions.

This is the first book I ever pick up by Isaac Asimov & I hope his other books are better. I have to admit he is a good writer, but the book only goes over the basic of basics in chemistry & astronony (Not to say I have given up on him, but I guess I was expecting alittle bit more from a person who got his PHD at the age of 25). If you are just starting one of these subjects it is an easily understandable book.

Those who are expecting an advanced text of physics, chemisty, or astronomy are going to be disappointed. This is a popularization. It's aimed at people who want to understand the basics of science but who don't have formal training. On that level, it suceeds brilliantly.

Even those that do have formal training, however, could benefit from reading the eponymous essay which offers a great rebuttal to those who think that scientific theories are just current guesses that can be radically overthrown at any given moment.

Another installment in the Issac of Girona series.

This mystery is set in the 14th century in Girona, Spain, and features Issac of Girona, a Jewish physician, as amateur sleuth. The heat fo the summer is keeping Issac and his assistant, Yusuf very busy as everyone, even the Bishop of Girona, is suffering the effects of the summer heat. Unfortunately it's not his patients's health that is occupying Issac's mind, but murder.

It looks as if a con artist has come to Girona in hopes of conning some of the wealthier merchants of the city into buying a cup he claims is the Holy Grail. Gualter Gutierrez, a merchant that deals with fine leather, believing that the Grail will bring him more food fortune, sells all his asserts to raise the necessary cash to but the Grail. Unfortunately he is murdered and all his money is stolen, thus leaving his remaining family quite destitute. However it is Gualter's son, Marti, that causes Issac to become more involved in the doings of the Christians in his city. Marti gets it into his head that Astruch, the Jewish banker who had lent Gaulter some of the money for this failed enterprise, was somehow involved in his father's murder, and drunkenly begins to procalim this about the city. This of course dismays Issac -- it is quite a serious thing to accuse a Jew of killing a Christian -- and so in spite of his rabbi's disapproval, Issac decides to investigate matters before Marti's accusations against Astruch is taken seriously by anyone.

Who could have murdered Gaulter? Was it the conman? Or was it someone else with a more nefarious purpose? Issac will have to sift to much before he finds out the truth about who murdered Gaulter and why.

This is an interesting novel, and Caroline Roe does a wonderful job of evoking the feel of 14th century Spain, esp the politics and intrigue of the times. Another nice point was that she fleshes out more of the peripheral characters that surround Issac, thus making the novel more interesting and involving the reader more in the goings on in the novel. Also, I think that Caroline Roe has struck gold in her creation Issac the physician -- here is a chracter that does not allow the petty opinions of others to rule his judgement in his pursuit of justice. An enjoyable installment in an interesting series.

In 1354, rumors abound that in the Pyrenees Mountain village of Taull lies the Holy Grail. The cup that Jesus and his disciples used at the Last Supper is blessed and contains powers that many mortals want for selfish reasons. A peddler, Baptista offers a silver cup to the highest bidders among Christian travelers in Gerona, Spain. The winner Master Gaulter arranges to meet with Baptista at the nearby cathedral to complete the deal.

The exchange never occurs because someone kills the buyer and apparently takes the money too. Rumors fly that the sacred chalice is in Gerona leading to mass hysteria that the powers of the Holy Grail will destroy everyone. Isaac, a blind but respected Jewish physician realizes that Baptista's cup has no power except that being spread to misinform and frighten the townsfolk. When an unknown assailant murders Baptista, fear grips Gerona forcing Isaac to investigate what he believes is a human killer.

Readers receive a vivid picture of the Jewish community in mid-fourteenth century Spain and how the segregated group relates to their Christian neighbors. Some prejudice exists, but for instance, Isaac receives much respect as a successful physician in spite of his religion. The well drawn historical mystery pulls the audience into the tale and will send readers seeking previous novels in a strong series that gets better with each new book.

Harriet Klausner

Isaac Monroe Cline, writing of a storm he weathered off the coast of Veracruz, Mexico, made the prescient comment that "This was my first experience in a tropical cyclone, but it was not to be my last." Prescient, that is, for native Galvestonians who have listened to stories of the fateful, terrible Great Storm of 1900 from their forebears. I myself am a descendant of a survivor of an event that binds people together like Pearl Harbor survivors. Every B.O.I. (Born On the Island), it seems, had someone in the family or knew someone who made it through the night on September 8 one century ago.

Storms, Floods and Sunshine is one book that will be indispensable to storm descendants and Texas history aficionados. It is the autobiography of Isaac Cline, the weatherman who followed the storm as it crossed the Gulf of Mexico after its birth under the sweltering West African sun, traveling thousands of miles across the Atlantic Ocean, cutting a swath of destruction across Cuba before turning its fury directly on the industrious city of Galveston, the Wall Street west of the Mississippi and number one cotton port in the nation.

The chapters are short and the sentences are spare of the sentimental, flowery rhetoric one might expect of a Victorian-age Southerner born at the cusp of the Civil War in 1861. His life was one of Masonic diligence, Franklin-like in his pursuit of science and the betterment of mankind, shunning distractions like strong drink, gambling, even the company of women, until he could convince himself that perhaps the soft touch of a woman's hand could help him in social advancement.

Predictably, the longest chapters concern the development of weather technology, from its infancy under the Signal Corps of the U.S. Army., the political undercurrents, the infighting, and the agricultural aggrandizement. There are some snippets of humor, such as one forecaster who typed up the forecast for the week, submitted it to the newspaper, and took off fishing.

"History does not record a greater disaster in the United States, than that which occurred at Galveston, Texas, on September 8, 1900."

The one chapter that stands out, of course, is the one which changed the lives of thousands of residents and the course of a city. It materially changed Cline's life as well--he lost his wife in the disaster. Curiously, he is very silent about her other than a short description of how they met. Perhaps the memory of her death was too painful to relate in the wake of a hurricane that took at least 6,000 lives.

Some of the asides and anecdotes may strike the modern reader as a little bizarre. To put it in perspective, the writer is, after all, a devout Methodist who put aside a promising career as a preacher to study medicine and the weather. For example, a whole chapter is devoted to the novel idea that the ark was actually built in America--near the swamps of Florida and North Carolina, to be exact. Yet even here he marshals evidence he considers scientific, such as wood type and ocean currents. Plausible, maybe. Unusual, certainly.

It is a firsthand account of someone who helped a neglected branch of science become an essential part of our understanding of the natural world today. As Cline writes, "The slow progress made in the study of weather is surprising. The barometer was not invented until 1643, and the special study of weather and its changes did not receive much attention until two hundred years later."

In a field of science where writing can be used more as a weapon than as a tool for understanding, Isaac Cline still shines as a meteorologist who knew how to write in a way most anyone can understand, without "dumbing up" the prose. The only thing missing are pictures, charts, and diagrams, if for no other reason than as a necessary break from all the text. His short chapters work to the book's advantage.

Even after 49 years, the spirit of the author comes alive in his writings. He was in a unique situation - witnessing the birth of the National Weather Service, and leading to its eventual acceptance from a public unable to believe anyone could make a one hour forecast, let alone one for two days!

He expanded the role of the NWS in his 55-year career, and now has an award named after him, long after his demise. He lived to a ripe old age, doing what he loved most. His personality is in full effect - he comes across arrogant at times, and uses shameless self-promotion in order to get everyone to know all the contributions he has made to meteorology and Early American Art. It was, and still is, well deserved, however.

He goes over his role in the Galveston Hurricane, the 1915 New Orleans Hurricane, and numerous Mississippi River Floods, including the great crevasse of 1927. He put most of the pieces of the hurricane puzzle together, and advanced the science significantly. He raised a family, and still found time to restore old paintings and make great contributions to his community in Galveston and New Orleans throughout his life.

The lessons he learned in life were hard, but it helped make him the man he was. His story is still fresh, even after all these years. This book is well worth owning, and is valuable in its historical information. Meteorologists and local historians could do worse than do read/own this work.

This book is written in the 1800's. It deals with the romanticism period. It shows the struggle that Jane had to go through in order to find her happiness. She has to show Rochester that she is an equal to him in order to make it in life. She once said, "Do you think I can stay to become nothing to you?" This shows that Jane was different than most of the women in the 1800's. She was more determined to do things on her own, and things that only men were supposed to do. If you like books that deal with love and determination, then you will like this book.

I love this little boo

I enjoy this book, because when i go online i have SO much fun going to different sights! I think that other people reading these reviews should totally get this book! I promise you, you will never get on the internet and be bored again!