Many quality color plates and detailed etchings, with examples from the masters. Michelangelo, Rembrandt, Goya, Picasso! The accompanying text is collegic, informative and precise. This book illustrates the romantic qualities of the mystical utilized to represent emotion and change in the environments of both history and the artist. This is not fantasy art, and is not a mere coffee table book. This is a SERIOUS book which describes the timeless relationship between the occult and art. Also includes poetry and detailed source materials.

Las historias, unque no son de autoría de Asimov, vienen acompañadas por su introducción individual y él mismo explica porqué le ha llamado tal o cual historia, que es lo que abarcaría un cuento. De verdad los cuentos son muy llamativos, como los otros dos de la serie. Lo malo es que después el lector enferma de "solitosis".

This is another volume in Isaac Asimov's series on the universe, primarily directed toward elementary school children. This book presents beautiful pictures and discussions of galaxies and galaxy groups. There is a 1995 updating of this 1988 book: It is titled "Our Vast Home: The Milky Way and Other Galaxies" Children interested in the stars will love it.

A heartfelt collection of stories from 30 youth who have been or who are currently homeless.

Authors do a good job in pointing out the tremendously diverse reasons and causes of teens and youth being forced to live on the street. Effectively provides an opportunity for these youth to share their life stories and give voice to their pain, opportunites which are rare for this population.

But the book falls short in the opportunity to look at these social issues more deeply and explore what can be done to support and assist them. The reader is left feeling tremendous compassion for these kids, but also a sense of hoplelessness and helplessness to make a difference in combating the problem.

Overall, the book does great for a far as it takes you.

Ever since FASA discontinued their mediocre Star Trek game, I've been waiting for a new one. The folks over at Last Unicorn Games have done a great job with this one. Thier Icon gaming system is simple to learn, yest intricate enough to hold the interest of seasoned gamers.

Designing a player character for this game is a lot of fun. The templates and overlays are well thought out, and the advantages and disadvantages add the extra flavor to make all the characters in your campaign stand out.

The book can be a little wordy and confusing at times, but that point is barely even worth mentioning. Many more supplimental books are available and many more are scheduled to be released soon. A definate good buy.

This novel is very entertaining, although it does have problems. Featuring the introduction of Steve, Jane, Hunter, The MC Governor Robot, and Wayne Nystrom, it starts a series about a chase through time involving six small robots, their obsessive and selfish creator, and a group of people attempting to keep the robots from detonating in nuclear-warhead like fashion.

The creator is a jerk, and he is an easily hatable villain, which is nice. However, some of the other characters are a bit thin. Chad, for example, was a paleontologist who butts heads with Steve for most of the book. This is a poor method of character development in a novel this short, and more thought needs to be given to it being a character development on the part of Steve throughout the series. He, Jane, and Wayne have that time, but Chad should have been a bit less antagonistic.

Another problem is that there are pacing issues. Sometimes the action moves along nicely and everything makes sense. Other times, the story seems disjointed and the characters seem to have some knowledge that they shouldn't, merely to keep it going.

It is an entertaining book with a modicum of good scientific data in it. Well worth reading, and worth purchasing, although it is geared more toward a younger audience, I think.
Harkius

For a political biography, THE RAGE OF EDMUND BURKE/ PORTRAIT OF AN AMBIVALENT CONSERVATIVE by Isaac Kramnick goes a long way into the psychology of social breakdown. Burke is remembered mainly as a conservative, old enough at the time of the French revolution to be appalled that anyone thought an attack which left the queen's bedchambers in Versailles full of mayhem and dead bodies could advance civilization. The revolutionary freedom which America is currently attempting to bring to foreign portions of the world by demonstrating air superiority might be considered as deranged as the situations examined in this book, which was published in 1977, when hardly anyone had reason to suppose that the form of freedom offered by American military conquest was similar to the acts of Medea conjured by Edmund Burke into a description of the nature of rebellion in his REFLECTIONS ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE, quoted in this book as an instance in which "Burke might well have sensed the relationship between his own radical streak and his enduring hatred towards his father. Guiltily, however, he recoiled from the bloody horror and emphasized the loving and caring son. The good subject, he insisted,

should approach to the faults of the State as to the wounds of a father, with pious awe and trembling solicitude. By this wise prejudice we are taught to look with horror on those children of their country who are prompt rashly to hack that aged parent in pieces and put him into the kettle of magicians, in hopes that by their poisonous weeds and wild incantations they may regenerate the paternal constitution and renovate their father's life." (p. 64).

Other major figures mentioned in this book include Bedford, James Boswell, Charles James Fox, Warren Hastings, Tom Paine, Joseph Priestley, Rockingham, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Richard Shackleton, and Mary Wollstonecraft. The beginning of the book emphasizes the role that religious dissenters in England played "in scientific and political innovation." (p. 13). Joseph Priestly, "founder of the modern Unitarian movement," (p. 13) opposed the "Poor Laws, which for the bourgeoisie were one of the most onerous of the old order's interferences with economic liberty." (p. 14). In those exciting times, a mob "burned his laboratory and home in 1791, sending him to finish his days in dissenter's paradise--America." (p. 13).

Freud is mentioned well a few times in this book, showing that it is possible to take a modern view of times that were shaking the foundation of everything that was not America. People who are used to the pampered civilized existence which Americans of today expect others to worship even as they experience extreme forms of chaos might learn a few things that provide a better perspective for understanding Freud than the middle class version of conservatism provides. This book is interesting, if you can stick with it.

I have always liked Asimov's style of writing. His books, no matter how complex the subject are always very readable and this is no exception. Since I have studied weights and measures for a long time, I was looking for more depth and more obscure units than I found here, but the book does not pretend to be a work on ancient and obscure, so I can't fault it for that. If you are looking for a good basic understanding of measurement systems and units with some interesting historical sidelights thrown in, this book will do the trick.

The great German poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was also an enthusiastic amateur scientist saying that of all his work he considered his scientific work to be the most important. This is no trivial matter considering the great works of prose and poetry Goethe produced eg Faust, Erlkoenig etc etc.

Probably the most well developed of his scientific investigations is his book on colour theory which studied many aspects of the formation of colours. Proskauer in this book reviews and also extends some of Goethe's work on colour as well as allowing the reader to experience the phenomena first hand through a small prism attached to the book with special cards to serve as "light/dark" sources.

The book starts with an introduction to Goethe's work which contradicts Newton's theories such as the notion that ordinary "white" light is constructed from a combination of the colours and that the prism separates the colours already present in it. Proskauer demonstrates that the spectrum observed by the prism is in fact a construction which arises due to two distinct spectra overlapping and that a spectrum is noticed only in the presence of a light/dark boundary. Further fascinating aspects are disclosed and provide a strong argument for a scientific approach akin to Goethe's. The colour phenomenon is observed without abstraction used to construct a colour theory.

These are the good aspects of the work, however the writing is at times speculative and goes counter to Goethe's original approach to "never leaving the phenomenon". Somehow it never quite convinces but nonetheless it certainly wakes up the mind from the mechanistic slumber of ordinary science. Perhaps a deeper approach would remove some of these problems.

A good book with great potential.

When I picked up this book I thought that Isaac Asimov was a scifi guy, not historian. By the time I was finished reading the book though, my thinking had changed.

Information is presented in just the right amount of detail. It doesn't read like a textbook, but it scope is broad, and yet he was able to zoom in on certain interesting points of minutia.

All in all, for general information, this book is tops.