I am a Taiwanese PhD student doing research on Taiwanese amateur baseball in Warwick University, England. I have just received the book yesterday. It is very informative, but the part on Taiwan there are a lot of misconceptions by the author and misinformation provided by Taiwanese authority, who is trying to cover up the dark side of Taiwanese amateur baseball. For instance, Hungyeh played the 'World Champion' Wakayama little leaguers. Acutally they were not the 1967 'world champion' squad that most people believed they were (p141). The Taichung Golden Dragons was no way near Taitung Hungyeh, you have to cross a big mountain to reach Taitung from Taichung. Those two counties were not even connected. Moreover, Golden Dragons only contained two aborigine players. (p142) From the outset the Taiwanese LLB squads has been plagued by irregularities that violated LLB rules every year. Obviously one reporter of New York Times tried to defend Taiwan's wrongdoing by claiming 'Taiwan authorities has the stricest household registrations'. This is not true. From my research, government always turned a blind eye to under-the-table recruitment and even gave a helping hand through which schools could easily lure players from other counties. LLB officials could not discover the wrongdoings because they were not in Taiwan, nor could they speak or understand Mandarin Chinese. (p144-145) Tan Shin-ming was firstly signed by a Japanese professional team and went to SF Giants on an exchange player scheme. (p147) On the same page, the decline of Taiwanese amateur baseball is not the result of charges of cheating from the US. I will argue because of the sedentary culture of Chinese Confucianism, it prompted parents not to send their kids to take up exercise, not only in baseball, but other kinds of sport. On page 150, Sadaharu Oh is not a Taiwanese-born player, actually he was born in Japan and can not speak a word of Mandarin. The only connection with Taiwan is he is still holding a passport of Republic of China, because his Mainland Chinese father was a Chinese and hoped his son could continue holding Chinese passport.

As stated above, I am writing a thesis about Taiwanese amateur baseball under which many appalling conditions occurred, including over-training, fabrication scandals, vicious under-the-table recruitment, lack of education, just to name a few, all of which will subvert the beautifil images held by common people. Some Taiwanese people already accused me of unethical because you do not turn back on your country. But my intention is to expose the dark sides of Taiwanese amateur baseball and let people know it is not right to train and use student players in this way....

Robert Whtiing, the author of two classic books on Japanese baseball, writes on the cover blurb that Reaves' book is "an important, groundbreaking work of reserach. It will be the sourcebookon the subject for years to come."

I couldn't agree more. This is an awesome book.

I do not have a wonderous,nor knowledgeable background about baseball. But I am learning the sport and I am visiting foreign lands,...This book is very fascinating for me.

...With their closer pitcher, Kim, coming to Arizona from Korea, I became interested in learning how other countries reacted to baseball. This book was very easy reading and I didn't feel left out because of my meager background in baseball.

Any one who wants to learn more about other cultures needs to read this book because sports is very much a part of culture and baseball, the all American sport, is no longer just that.

Thanks for a great, entertaining, yet highly factual and informative book!

In these days of mass commercialization of Christmas, it was a lot of fun to read this book in December with my two children, ages 6 and 3. They couldn't wait to get to the "sticker" book each night! We alternated who got to put the sticker on the page. The stories were not preachy and were appealing to my children's ages. In fact, several times the story was pertinent to what happened in school that day and led to further discussion. The kids especially liked the short prayers and repeating them after me. The layout of the book was excellent. We did find 1 error in the book where the sticker and the words did not go together. Our biggest disappointment was finishing the book. I hope the author writes 1 for Lent. I was nervous that the book was going to be too religious and force feed religion but I was very happy to find it pertinent to my children's lives. I definitely recommend this book.

This is our all-time favourite family advent calendar and we have given it to many friends with children over the years because our children enjoyed it so much.

The book is a hardback and has two covers that open out to make a 19" tableau that is free-standing. Dry-cling stickers are provided for each day of December and small fingers will enjoy finding the right sticker and applying it to the appropriate space on the tableau. In the centre are spiral-bound pages that flip over the top of the tableau, one for each day, with a reading from the nativity story, a short, simple meditation and a prayer. Brilliant! We re-use it each year, just about to peel the stickers back on to the backing ready for December 1 (tomorrow)...

This unique book is a hands-on story book . One part of the Christmas story is presented each day in December. The kids place a sticker on the "mural" for each day. Every day's story sparks great family conversation based on biblical information. Helps kids understand what it may have felt like living during the time of Jesus's birth, what it may have felt like having an angel visit your home, how Mary may have felt carrying the child of God, etc. Written in easy, conversational tone. The kids couldn't wait to get to the next night's page.

I am in Indonesia, a country that had been under imperialism for decades. This book tell us (students) about the way... is patience more and much more.

This remarkable book contains the Transitional Program, the founding document of the revolutionary movement Trotsky built. As you will read in this book, it was not written by Trotsky alone, but was the product of the experience of fighting workers from every continent. It was written to apply the lessons of the Russian revolution to the world, particularly to the realities of class struggle in the United States. It also contains discussions Trotsky had with American revolutionists and union leaders like Farrell Dobbs and Vincent Dunne, leaders of the great Minneapolis Strikes of the 1930s that made the Teamsters a real force in the labor movement. It also contains attempts to apply this program to the struggles of African Americans and other working people. This is a practical handbook on how to change the world.

This book is a field manual of revolutionary tactics. It builds a bridge from the daily economic needs and struggles of the working class to the necessity for socialist revolution to successfully fulfill those needs. The Transitional Program is just that - a transitional program or approach on how to get from where we are today, the epoch of capitalist-imperialist decay to the socialist-communist society based on the works of Marx and Lenin. This is the Communist Manifesto for the 21st century.

JOSEPH SORRENTINO DID A GREAT JOB RELATING HIS LIFE'S STORY. I WAS SO IMPRESSED WITH HIS HONESTY AND HIS ACCOMPLISHMENTS. HE TRULY TURNED HIS LIFE AROUND FROM CERTAIN DOOM. IF HE CAN MAKE ANYTHING OUT OF HIS LIFE ANYONE CAN. HE HAD NO WHERE TO GO BUT UP. EVERY TEENAGER SHOULD READ THIS BOOK

Reading this book as a teenager was interesting, but I had never been through any real hardships. Twenty years later when I was at the lowest point in my life I rediscovered it on my bookshelf along with other high school literature books...Reading it again made me feel both fortunate and sure that I could overcome my own "little" problems. I am ordering another copy 30-years later so I can give it to a friend of mine who has yet to believe he can change his own life. God Bless Joseph Sorrentino.

I was so inspired by this book and a 1973 speech by Judge Sorrentino that I decided to go to law school myself. It is an incredible, but true, tale of how a young thug can develop into a respected jurist.

The drawings of Al Hirschfeld perfectly compliment S.J. Perelman's writing. The work of both men shows what astute observers they were of human behavior. With this work, and in their other collaborations, they draw caricatures that are not one-dimensional, and are instead more like snapshots of the human condition, flaws and all.

S.J. Perelman's writing is best described as finely crafted comedy. And what that means is that he loves words, he loves wordplay and he loves metaphor and Mr. Perelman works hard to share that love with his readers. Do yourself a favor. Start your Perelman collection today.

I read this book decades ago, and I can still laugh when I remember it. If you want to laugh at/with city folks who go to the country, this is a great one.

One of the funniest travelogues I've read; laugh-out-aloud-as-you-read writing. Written in the mid-40s, before the advent of political correctness, no one, irrespective of culture, race or country is spared his biting, sarcastic wit. Brilliant narrative with fantastic vocabulary. A must read. I now have to get my hands on Eastward Ha!

This excellent historical novel vividly portrays the anguish of the Irish people who suffered through the potato blight and ensuing famine that left over two million dead from starvation. O'Connor brings the human suffering to life through a series of chapters, written by a journalist on the ship, in which particular characters are defined, as well as the manner in which their lives intersect. Against a harsh background, the passengers on the Star of the Sea embark on a voyage that will take them far from the horrors they have known, to a new life in America. During the course of this voyage, one passenger will be brutally murdered by another, but whom and why remains a mystery until the end. Yet there is an air of expectancy in that knowledge, as the unfolding plot reveals close associations between some passengers, forged years ago by time and circumstance.

The Star of the Sea carries First Class passengers as well as those in steerage. A member of the English aristocracy, Earl David Merridith of Kingscourt, his family and their nanny are ensconced in relatively comfortable quarters, along with other such men of substance. There is a sharp contrast between First Class accommodations and the cheapest berths, below decks, where hundreds are warehoused like cattle and disease is rampant. The poor are forced to endure yet more punishment with unsanitary facilities and insufficient food. Vessels like the Star of the Sea, with its well-meaning Christian captain, are all that is left for such throw-aways. Many succumb daily to a variety of shipboard diseases, sent quickly overboard to their watery graves.

A man who wanders the decks at night, when the others are sleeping, is much remarked upon by all. He is a small-boned figure, with a crippled foot, who treads the upper deck incessantly, back and forth, mumbling to himself. Called "the ghost" or "the monster" in his filthy clothes and unkempt appearance, he is, in fact, one Pius Mulvey, a survivor of the unremitting brutality that decimates Ireland's poor. Mulvey has, in fact, become a monster, a creation of his own extreme circumstances. Traveling the roads of Ireland and England, Mulvey has tasted every form of depravity and honed criminal skills along the way. While others suffer tragedy and find a source of strength, Mulvey has fed off his own venal acts, capable of the most heinous crimes. As a creation of his situation, his survival-at-any-cost attitude, Mulvey becomes an "Everyman" of the famine, a stark example of what becomes of a broken human spirit after repeated degradation and suffering.

Due to unwise investments, the Merridiths have lost the land their family has held for generations and, by opting to save themselves, they turn away from the destitute souls who seek to stay on the land. The only Irish citizen they take along is Mary Duane Mulvey, the widowed nanny of their two children. During the course of the journey, the Merridiths take pity on the duplicitous Mulvey, believing him victim rather than victimizer. They welcome him into the intimate circle of their family, oblivious to his true nature. Mary Duane recognizes Mulvey at once and is loath to have anything to do with him, yet she has a history with Mulvey as well as with David Merridith, adding another layer of complication to the relationships.

O'Connor's writing is impeccable, his illustration of the socio-economic class struggle of the mid-1900's pitch perfect. This horrific tale witnesses the virtual annihilation of a proud race. There is great compassion on these pages and piercing awareness of a dispassionate fate, the legacy of the famine. For some of the characters, their endless trials render them more complex; but for others, the façade of humanity is ripped away, revealing a heart scarred by rage. The claustrophobia on the Star of the Sea is almost unbearable, each day a burden, another glimpse of the past. Many live in hell and it is familiar, as is depravity and the utter loss of hope. Whatever the future for these unhappy passengers, they are forever marked by the passionate love and abject loss of a land that no longer provides for the living, become instead a vast graveyard of dreams. Luan Gaines/2003.

When the "potato famine" of 1847 was over, two million residents of Ireland had died agonizing deaths, most of them from starvation. The events which led to the famine, the people who were directly affected by it, and the steps taken to ameliorate or escape it are the subjects of Joseph O'Connor's intense and heartfelt novel, Star of the Sea, named for the British-owned "famine ship" which is the center of the action here.

O'Connor presents four main characters who recall the pivotal experiences of their lives which lead them to make this fateful, 27-day journey. The reader becomes emotionally involved with their stories, acquiring a broad background in Irish social history--and its tragedie--in the process. Thomas David Nelson Merridith, Lord Kingscourt, is the ninth generation of his Protestant family to govern Kingscourt, with hundreds of workers dependent upon him. Now bankrupt, he and his family are going to America, first-class. Their nanny, Mary Duane, has recently joined the family, and her stories of her past loves, her marriage, and her loss of her own children illuminate the bleak prospects available to this warm and intelligent, but desperately poor, woman.

G. Grantley Dixon is a caricature of the liberal American do-gooder, whose reports about the plight of the Irish poor are influenced by his own socialism and by the reform-minded traditions of his family. Self-centered in his attitudes and limited in his social graces, he is detested by Merridith. Pius Mulvey is a mysterious ex-convict who comes from the same town as Merridith and Mary Duane, directly connected to both of them. One of over 400 passengers who have paid $8 per person for passage, he is crammed into the fetid and dangerous quarters known as "steerage," expected to stay alive on one quart of water a day and half a pound of hardtack.

O'Connor pulls out all the stops here in this big, broad melodrama, but an honesty of emotion and a fidelity to the facts here saves the novel from bathos and gives the reader cause for thought. Moments of both ineffable sadness and high drama arise, and O'Connor's imagery, especially his sense imagery, is arresting. Occasionally, his compression of time, for the sake of story, leads to anachronisms--several mentions of evolution, with parallels between monkeys and Irishmen, ignore the fact that Darwin's Evolution of the Species was not published until twelve years after this famine. Still, O'Connor presents a compelling story with many unforgettable details of Irish history. The ending is preachy, but the author does provide a follow-up on the characters after their arrival in America. The fact that at least one character becomes a politician (later accused of misappropriation of funds) will surprise no one accustomed to politics. Mary Whipple

In the bitter winter of 1847, a ship named Star of the Sea sails from Ireland, bound for New York. It is a miserable November, the cold seeming worse because of the Great Famine that has stricken the country. Thousands are dying from starvation and disease. Thousands are fleeing, after selling everything they owned to buy passage to America. And thousands are perishing in the attempt. Joseph O'Connor tackles a tragedy too long ignored. He turns the writing over to G. Grantley Dixon, an American journalist traveling home to Manhattan on the Star. Thus the story feels more authentic, as Dixon uses excerpts from the captain's log and bits and pieces from his own unpublished novel, along with other similarly clever literary devices. We join Dixon and other first class travelers aboard the Star, a ship with a dank hold overfull of steerage passengers with little choice but to bear the wretched filth --- and often too weak to care.

O'Connor has created some wholly unlovable characters. A notable few of the cast are brilliantly moral, despite overpoweringly desperate conditions in the midst of an historical bleakness. Lord Kingscourt, sailing with his wife and two sons, comes on as a quite likable fellow at first, a fellow fallen on hard times of his own --- and hard times of his own making. As you get to know him, his darker side slowly emerges. I finally found myself nearly devoid of sympathy for this errant soul. But Lord Kingscourt is a product of his past and his choices, as indeed we all are. He fell in love with the wrong woman and spent his life in marital misery. Mary Duane, his children's nanny --- and the object of his desire --- sees things from a different viewpoint. She lost a husband and a child, and now she does what she must to survive. Lurking in the corridors, on the decks and in the hold is the Ghost, Pius Mulvey, a murderous prison escapee with a plan for assassination aboard the ship. As the Star sails, Lord Merridith, his wife Laura, Mary Duane and the despicable Pius Mulvey are profiled.

Everywhere in this novel are the stark reminders of the chasm between classes. The present action takes place onboard the ship bound for America with her starving and diseased, but hopeful, cargo. Unfortunately, many of the steerage passengers, carried below decks in the frigid hold with clogged toilets and stinking blankets, will not make the journey alive, much to the good captain's sorrow. Meanwhile, in First Class, the tables are set with fine cutlery, the wine is abundant, and the beds in the private cabins are warm and snug.

I am a week late with my review of this book because I just didn't want it to be finished. I love to savor a good book, but this one gets inside your soul. There is so much going on --- injustices that evoke a sense of outrage, a dose of history (with a few authorial liberties taken), secrets revealed right and left about the characters, and a few famous ones, like Charles Dickens, wandering onto the page now and then --- that it helps to put it down and take a while to ponder O'Connor's message.

This is one of the best books I've read in a long time, written with the musical lilt of the Irish and a hint of the Erin impishness. O'Connor didn't simply write this book --- he choreographed it.

--- Reviewed by Kate Ayers

We seem to be at an unfortunate stage of music history writing. The approach of many books, including this one, is the antithesis of the hero worship books written by the shelf-full not too many decades ago. Do we really need this style of book as an antidote? To me, it seems to belabor the obvious that composers, even the very greatest, such as Brahms, Mahler, and Stravinsky, should be mere mortals after all.

Why is it important at all that we point out moments or even decades of pettiness, vainglory, or difficult family relations? How exactly is that supposed to help us understand the art? Why not write a book about a fellow named Bob who lives down your down the street and his ordinary to miserable life?

Of course, we don't write about Bob down the street because he is ordinary and he isn't Stravinsky. Haven't we long ago realized that even Stravinsky the composer is something other than Stravinsky the husband, father, or businessman. Of course extraordinary people have much about them that is quite ordinary.

Some feel that knowing the artist as a human being helps us understand his art. Maybe on the margins it could, but only children believe that a composer was necessarily sad when writing a sad piece or happy when writing a happy piece and so on. Nothing Mr. Joseph tells us about the composition of The Flood helps us understand how it comes out of a Stravinsky. (Even if the author is trying to put forward that in this case it DIDN'T come out of Stravinsky).

Don't get me wrong, this book by Charles Joseph isn't bad. Really, it has much to recommend it and I am glad that I read it and hope you do too. But I was frustrated by the mixing in of well known stories and photographs into a book that claimed to be revealing new things based upon new access to Stravinsky's papers and artifacts in Basel. It isn't that there isn't anything new or semi-new, it is that it isn't set apart from the ho-hum there's that old chestnut again regurgitation of Stravinsky tales.

It is like going to a dinner party and listening across the table to a very knowledgeable guest who tells a few enthralling tales about a very interesting subject, but then spoils the enchantment by going on too long by telling a few too many tales that have no spark or wit about them.

Joseph also doesn't follow up on things that ARE really interesting. For example, when he discusses the actual piano music performance scores that Stravinsky used and the interesting fingerings the composer used as a performer. But we don't get a picture of even one page of those piano scores nor do we get even a hint as to why Stravinsky's written in fingerings are telling. As a pianist of sorts, I can surmise why Stravinsky's fingerings would be interesting, but it would be nice to get even a bit of discussion on such an interesting topic. I would have traded all of those re-printed pictures for one or two of the actual new material and one page of the marked-up piano music.

Yes, there is a 1983 text available through ProQuest that talks about Stravinsky's piano music, but Mr. Joseph indicates in the book that there were new things learned from his seeing the materials in Switzerland. In any case, this book is generally available and his 1983 book is not. Again, why reprint the nude photo of Stravinsky that is NOT original to this book and leave out something that would be valuable and a real contribution such as Stravinsky's piano fingerings?

It would be a real service if Mr. Joseph (or SOMEONE) put together an edition of the piano works with those fingerings in them. Not that pianists will necessarily use those precise fingerings, but they would certainly aid in understanding how the composer himself interpreted the piece.

Especially annoying to me was yet another tired discussion about Robert Craft. Mr. Joseph does demonstrate that Mr. Craft did play a significant role in the genesis of Stravinsky's work "The Flood". The author approaches the point of almost intimating that Craft is at least the co-composer of "The Flood", but never is bold enough to make that accusation. My guess is because for all the support and creative priming that Craft provided for Stravinsky, the evidence is that the composer did indeed compose the music himself. For heaven's sake, every composer since music began based it on some other creative spark or borrowed a theme from another work or even included suggestions from performers for whom the work was written. Composition is not done in a vacuum chamber on the dark side of the moon!

However, anyone who knows anything at all about Stravinsky's output from the fifties onward knows that Craft did us all a tremendous service. Why anyone wants to criticize Craft is beyond me. Unless someone wants to make the case that Stravinsky simply signed his name to Craft's scores and present real evidence they should either whine to people who care or thank Craft for the music he enabled Stravinsky to make in the fifties and sixties.

All in all, it easy for us in our age of sarcasm and witless irony to see the flaws of books that extol our favorite composers as heroes or as flawless paragons of humanity. My suspicion is that it won't take too many more years for people to turn their backs on the recent spate of books that take as their mission the whittling down of the tree of the great artist to a toothpick of a human. It is just too easy to write about human failings. We don't learn much at all about the art from such books and they are tiresome to read.

Finally, I am curious about the surmise that I am not a music scholar? By what definition? In europe a student is a scholar. Over here, what is the definition of a scholar? One who agrees with your points of view? I happen to have spent seven years at the University of Michigan School of Music and have a degree in music theory and several years of graduate school before my life took a different direction. But I have always played my piano and kept up on music. So, my views are not uninformed.

I found this book to be an extremely new and interesting look into the mind and personal life of Igor Stravinsky. Understanding the artist as a person helps us to understand and appreciate the art he creates.

In response to Craig Matteson... everyone is entitled to their opinon (and of course, no better place to put one's opinon but in a review). However, Mr. Matteson was off on one point (well, in my opinon, he was off on MANY points, but I'll only discuss one). Joseph has written a very thorough book entitled Stravinsky and the Piano in which he studies Stavinsky's "actual piano music performance scores" in detail - fingerings and markings included. Maybe Mr. Matteson is unaware of this book because it is only available to music scholars, which quite obviously, he is not. So it makes perfect sense to me why Joseph did not include such information in this book. A) he already wrote a book about this, and B) this book is about Stravinsky's split lives (the person vs. the public composer) - therefore the scores and fingerings are obtuse.

Stravinsky, whether you like him or not, was one of the most influential composers of the 20th century. Alternately deified by his collaborators (like Ballanchine, W.H. Auden, and Robert Craft), or villified as a worthless hack by Schoenberg and his accolytes, the truth lies somewhere in between those extremes. While the composer has not lacked for documentation of his life (notably his own Autobiography, and the "conversation books" edited by Robert Craft), there's still a need to balance facts with Stravinsky's own carefully constructed fictions. Few artists in any discipline have been more self-conscious of their public image than Stravinsky, and there is a real need to sort out how much of the composer's lifestory was his own invention. Joseph's well-written, meticulously researched book stops short of being a hatchet-job, but isn't afraid to display the idol's clay feet. (If fact, there's a nude photo of the composer in the book, so you'll see more than just his feet!) Joseph leaves the musicological analysis to others, and provides an engaging, provocative look at the man behind the hype. Turns out, like most human beings, he had his share of flaws as well as moments of genius.

In the second volume of the series the author generalizes the results of the first to string theories where supersymmetry is present. The mathematics introduced is non-rigorous, and the strategy is to see how much of the formalism for the bosonic case can be carried over to the case where fermions are present. The book is purely an exposition on the subject of string theory, and so no attempt is made to give the reader an in-depth explanation of the ideas and concepts in this area. This is particularly noticeable in the chapter on Calabi-Yau compactification and in the discussion on mirror symmetry in the last chapter. Here is a brief outline of the contents of the book:

- Generalize the mass-shell condition (Klein-Gordon equation in momentum space) by using the Dirac equation.

- The gamma matrices will serve as CM modes of an anticommuting world sheet field.

- The resulting world-sheet supercurrents generate the superconformal transformations of the superconformal algebra.

- Counting the number of (3/2, 0) currents classifies the different superconformal field theories.

- Standard quantization techniques for constrained systems are applied.

- Free SCFTs can be obtained with the vanishing of the central charge giving 10 as the critical dimension.

- SCFT on a circle gives two periodicity conditions for the matter fermions (Ramond and Neveu-Schwarz sectors).

- Ramond and Neveu-Schwarz algberas result. - Holomorphicity constraints give bosonization via the relation between the R sector vertex operators and bosonic winding state vertex operators.

- In 10 flat dimensions, 16 sectors result from the R and NS sectors, 6 of which are empty.

- Consistency conditions yield type IIA and IIB superstring theories.

- The vacuum amplitude for a closed superstring can be found by imposing modular invariance.

- Divergences cancell in the cylinder, Mobius strip, and Klein bottle graphs.

- Generalize preceding constructions by looking for sets of holomorphic and antiholomorphic currents whose Laurent coefficients form a closed algebra.

- Consider algebras that are different on the left- and right-moving sides of the closed string, obtaining the heterotic string.

- Setting the dimensions to be the same at each side and 32 left-moving spin-1/2 fields gives the SO(32) string.

- Split these fields into sets of 16 with independent boundary conditions to get the E8 X E8 heterotic string.

- Use supersymmetry constraints to study interactions of massless degrees of freedom.

- Tree-level interactions can be studied within low-energy supergravity; one-loop gives rise to anomalies.

- Anomalies cancell in type IIA, IIB, type I, and heterotic string theories.

- Use string perturbation theory to calculate amplitudes and interactions.

- Introduce supersymmetry in toroidally compactified string theory, to obtain D-branes which are BPS states and carry R-R charges.

- Type I, IIA, IIB string theories become states in a single theory.

- Study strongly coupled strings using D-brane states.

- The five string theories are limits of a single theory in 11-dimensional spacetime.

- Study conformal field theories as a prolegomena to analyzing string compactification.

- Study string compactification via free world-sheet conformal field theories or interacting exactly solvable conformal field theories.

- Connect the compactified string theory to the Standard Model.

- Start with orbifolds and then the more general Calabi-Yau manifolds.

- Techniques from algebraic geometry are brought in to study the properties of Calabi-Yau manifolds.

- Deduce an effective (low-energy) four-dimensional action using the topology of Calabi-Yau manifolds.

- Elaborate on the physics of four-dimensional string theory.

- Try to deal with the strong CP problem using Peccei-Quinn symmetry and the resulting axion field.

- Try to understand how gauge symmetries arise in the different string theories and how they are related to the ones in the Standard Model.

- Try to connect the different mass scales in string theory.

- Study more advanced topics in string theory, such as N = 2 superconformal algebras, type II superstrings on Calabi-Yau manifolds, string theories on the 4-dimensional Calabi-Yau manifold K3, minimal models, and mirror symmetry.

- Mirror manifolds can be constructed explicitly using Gepner models.

- Use mirror symmetry to obtain the full low energy field theory at the string tree level.

- Flop transitions can occur in string theory, giving dynamical changes in topology.

Polchinski's book on string theory is a very well written book about the subject. Also, the problems given in the book are valuable for a further understanding. Using it together with the book by Green, Schwarz, Witten one will afterwards have indeed little problems understanding the papers on this subject. However one caveat: if one reads this book, he or she shoudl be always aware that this topic is still deeply a research subject and by no means settled like mechanics. If this is always kept in mind, then this book is of considerable help in understanding one of the current frontiers of physics.

Reading this book is the easiest way to become familiar with various topics that seemed to be extremely difficult before. The reader then shouldn't have any problems with understanding current research papers.

Like Sugarman's other books, this is a fast read that has some good anecdotes in it and not much to remember a day after you've finished it.

I read this book many years ago, and its message still rings in my ears. Sugarman lays it out, plain and simple, and he sticks to the fundamentals. Six of them. Each has its own chapter. The book starts with Sugarman telling his story and goes on to the success forces, which he attributes to his success. In each chapter, he illustrates the principles with incidents from his own life, making this a very readable book.

I'm the author of the book, Self-Help Stuff That Works, and I know something about what works and what doesn't. The principles Sugarman spells out here work, and they work every time. If you can find this book, buy it. If you know the publisher, tell them to reprint it.

Too bad this book is out of print; if you can find a copy, grab it! Joe Sugarman virtually pioneered the "order by 800 number" direct response ads that are everywhere today. He first made his mark in the 1970's, focusing primarily on electronics, always introducing the latest gadgets, and selling millions. Later, he also became another pioneer, this time in the infomercial industry, and had great success in selling many millions of dollars worth of "Blublocker" sunglasses. This interesting book chronicles the early days of his success, and includes anecdotes as well as good business advice. Sugarman wrote and created every one of his early ads personally, and he shares a lot of good psychology and marketing techniques in the pages of this book. If you're big on marketing, this is a book you'll want to add to your collection. If it doesn't inspire you, you are in the wrong business!

Encouraging, interesting, and helpful if one reads judiciously.
In my opinion, the author seems to thread dangerously close to
pantheistic ideas, perhaps without meaning to. Nevertheless,
reading the book prayerfully can greatly edify the reader.

As Emerson says, the only good in the universe is coming to you from your own field of corn.
The way for you to get rich is a way unique to you alone.
This book will guide you to finding that way, which lies within your very core and has everything to do with being most uniquely yourself.
This journey brings spiritual growth and material success together in a gestalt of wholeness!

When I first started reading this book, I thought it was going to be too much of the same info in Murphy's other books. But after the first part, the book started getting into some additional info that was very useful. Plus, the author gives real life examples of how thinking rich helped people. If you've grown up reading the Bible or even just hearing famous verses (who hasn't?) THINK YOURSELF RICH will open your eyes to some meanings you may have never thought of before. Reading this book will give you a better understanding of the admonition to "Bless them that curse you." Forgiveness is really about not punishing yourself for things others have done to you. Never give power to anyone or anything but yourself. You are the only thinker in your universe. No one should be able to deflect you from your aim in life. Einstein said, "Imagination is greater than knowlege." This is so true! Have you ever thought you had to settle for something less and then found what you got was even less than the something you would settle for? You should never settle. You can always get exactly what you want. It is true that you should reach for the stars rather than a blade of grass, because the higher your aim, the higher the target you will hit. After reading this book, I realized that there is a law of abundance but none of poverty. I put some things into action that were only ideas in my head before, and I expect that they are going to be quite successful. No one is helpless because we can all believe what we choose to believe. I choose to believe we were all meant to have the very best in life and I will hold on to that belief. "In quietness and confidence shall be your strength." (Isaiah 30:15)