Aviation, overall, is a demanding science. Many who enter here do not leave unscathed! The courses are intense, and the material must be absorbed, because the airman shares the sky with you and me. Joseph Benkert, in his book "Introduction to Aviation Science", breaks aviation down into little itty-bitty bites, easy to understand and much easier to "swallow" than what you get from your run-of-the-mill flight instructor! Instead of studying "meteorology", Benkert breaks it down into "Atmosphere" and "Moisture" and "Weather Systems" - so your studies of meteorology begin to make sense. He does this throughout the book. Instead of studying "aerodynamics", he shares valuable information on "Flaps and Other High Lift Devices", and subjects designed to make it ever-so-simple to study the complicated delight we call "aviation"! Not only is it a good read, you cannot help but come away from the book with a sense of having learned - in detail - what appeared so difficult to you before! Each chapter has questions to provoke thought, with an answer key in the back of the book. With all the "pilot" gadgets available out there, this is the most useful information you can take to the cockpit with you. I am an instructor, and I teach from it! Joseph Benkert can say it so much better than I can, and my students understand! Instruments, Air Pressure, Night Flying, the Wind Triangle...it's all there! And, it is timeless! An incredible text!

I have used this text for the last three quarters and most of my students have kept the book for future reference. Over 60% of Winter 1997 students were ESL and they found it to be the best text they had used. It will be dated by the end of 1997 and I look forward to a new edition

This book takes the reader through the ins-and-outs of the modern PC. Explanations are well written and aided by graphics when needed.

This book is enjoyable to read. A person who knows nothing about contemporary classical music can read this book and know about the lives and the music of all of classical music's most important composers. It tells about the distinguishing features of the composer's musical work in general and goes in to more depth on several of modern music's most important compositions. I highly recommend this book.

Schacht still remains a towering figure in the study of Islamic Law even after ~50 yrs., and his introduction gives you the ideal figure figure as a guide. This work is not just a simplistic review of Islamic law, but it is also a work of scholarship. While it is unfortunate that his most important work, ON MUHAMMADAN JURISPRUDENCE, is no longer in print, this work serves as a good alternative and even a much more readable entry point to this field of scholarship.

This is what philosophical logic used to look like before the linguistic philosophers got hold of it ;-). And the fact that the book is still in print is a very good sign.

H.W.B. Joseph was one of Oxford's leading philosophical lights in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This book, originally published in 1906 and republished in a revised second edition in 1916, is a classic exposition of the entire subject of logic. It's got everything you look for in a philosophy text: clarity and accuracy of exposition, breadth of scope, and a keen sense of the philosophical importance of every topic under discussion. I've had a battered copy of the second edition for many years now and I still refer to it fairly often.

The range of subjects will probably seem remarkable to the modern reader, who expects logic to have something to do with mathematics and set theory. There's not a truth table in sight; in fact, there's no discussion of formal, propositional logic at all. Instead there's discussion of e.g. the existence and nature of universals, the principles of the syllogism, the nature of the propositional judgment, the nature of causation (and whether it's reciprocating -- i.e., whether effects determine their causes too), the meaning of "explanation," and the nature of reasoning in mathematics and science.

Joseph's logic is a branch, not of mathematics, but of metaphysics. And one thing the reader will notice right away is that Joseph engages the metaphysicians of his day -- especially the neo-Hegelian idealists, like Bradley, Bosanquet, and Joachim. His criticisms are cogent and invariably well-taken. But in fact Joseph, a Platonist himself, is far closer to the "spirit" of the British idealists than he is to that of modern more or less analytic philosophy; my own view, at least, is that idealism could easily have taken up his criticisms and moved on.

At any rate, this is a fine, fine text, and when I noticed it was in print, I couldn't resist reviewing it. If you're interested in this subject, do yourself a favor and buy a copy.

One of the better-kept secrets in English lit is the surviving poetry in Old English, the dialect of Old German which developed independently in Britain during the five centuries preceding the Norman invasion of 1066 and evolved into Middle English subsequently. The Old English meter is a stichic (i.e. non-stanzaic) variation of the Old Germanic head-rhyme on the head-stave common to Old Norse as well (still possibly descended from Gothic), which became pervasively and elaborately stylized under Celtic influence in Britain in the forms of riddles, runes and inscriptions as well as formally literary works. The best-known modern English examples are from Book 5 of The Lord of the Rings, including the one which begins

Down from Dunharrow in the dim morning
With thane and captain rode Thengel's son.

It's difficult to imagine that anyone will improve on Bliss's Introduction to the topic, where, Old English being a dead language, there can be no question of his statistics becoming obsolete, unless more Old English verses are discovered, which is at this point highly unlikely. His account of the only apparently anomalous hypermetric line/s, which he found to be metrically consistent with the rest of the poetical Old English corpus, is somewhat in apposition to commentaries which have sought to limit the hypermetric line to a five-stave maximum, because Bliss confirmed the survival of six-stave Old English hypermetric lines. Not that Bliss sought to explain the apparently random locations of these lines, which explanation must by now be also regarded as highly unlikely: so far from doing so, he stated categorically that we do not understand why hypermetric lines appear where they do.

I would recommend four supplementary sources: the Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics for context on Bliss's contribution to the field (start with the article on alliteration and follow the cross-references); the Mitchell/Robinson Guide's diagram of Sievers-scansion mechanics; the 10-unit syllabic-verse-weight system presented in Tolkien's "On Translating Beowulf," which I found crucial for understanding this meter's relatively obscure refinements, i.e. anacrusis and particularly resolved stress (partially definitive for the Sievers D and E verses); and the responsible source on the Old English verse-combination rules which I have not yet discovered--my only negative criticism of Bliss's Introduction is its having omitted to include an account of those rules.

Notwithstanding which objection, this book is an exemplarily economical and straightforward summation of what we know about an ancient meter which has remained influential-most prominently in Bob Dylan's "It's a Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall" and "Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands." Even Bruce Mitchell might agree that Alan Bliss has been Tolkien's very best pupil.

This book is not just a "get rich quick" manual. It may help you DO that, but it will also help you change your life. The ladder of success, as presented by Joseph K. O'Lear, is a down to earth but in-depth view of how we live and strive for success in every aspect of our lives. Easy to follow, this step by step manual will give deep insight into the basics of what you are doing and what you need to change in order to make and meet your goals. It is a "must read" for the reader who is serious about making those changes that will bring success. The goals may be high, but with this book's help, you CAN reach them.

This book really helped me to understand the basis of Maple and C computational problems. I would recommend the potential customer to obtain this extraordinary book by Joseph L.Zachary.

This translation by Joseph Adler of Kenyon College provides a facing-page, annotated translation, together with a scholarly introduction and the many charts that accompanied Chu Hsi's original manuscript.

The Introduction to the Study of Changes is one of two written by this great Sung Confucian philosopher on the subject of the I-ching. It was intended as a primer for both study and divination. Its four chapters include Chu's explanations of ways in which yin and yang generate the individual hexagrams, a discussion of the most important charts that presented the hexagrams, and instructions on how to undertake divination with the I-ching. This is the first translation of the work into a Western language.

This is the inaugural publication of the Consortium for Bilingual Texts, which has the goal of producing scholarly, annotated, and reasonably priced translations of Chinese texts in a bilingual format.