Friends,
I read "Evolution of a Symphony Musician" while I was up in the Davis Mountains for a few days. It is by Joseph Mourek who was a French horn player with the Chicago Symphony for 49 years or so.

I bought the book for [$$$} on [Amazon.com] as a way of getting a few bucks to Mr. Mourek and at the same time getting something interesting to read.

It is the worst book I have read in my adult life. I can't remember all the books I read before the age of 21 or I might list this book as the worst book I have EVER read.

It starts out with very disconnected reminisces of Mourek's years with the symphony and never changes. The paragraphs by themselves are fine and informative but there is no rhyme or reason. It reminds me of talking with my slightly drunk uncle Buster.

If ever a book needed a ghostwriter this is it. There is a book in Mr. Mourek, but someone needs to get all the information and organize it in some fashion. An Editor is needed! The book repeats itself almost word for word in some sections. I picked up the book on the second day an honestly thought I had lost my place because I had read all this before. I looked back and found the same paragraph earlier! On top of that no one appears to have read the book before it was published. They did run it through a spelling checker but that is about it. Took me awhile to figure out that "bake frame the was" should have been "back from the war".

Is it of interest to horn players... almost nothing in it is about horn players or playing. I think the author was there when Brain passed through Chicago in 1949 but not one word about that concert.

There are comments about the audition process, the conductors of the last 40 years, there are a few neat stories about various musicians but again, it is all just a big jumble.

I am sorry to write all this but I am trying to cleanse myself. I think I have had bad dreams for the last two nights about this book.

I wish someone would sit down with Mr. Mourek and get this book right.

I cannot help but feel like I would like to toss my cookies when I recall this work. Certainly, the author made a futile attempt to provide an apelike overview of fluid mechanics, as it was at the time- but did he really scrutinise those engineering applications? Really and truly? As a reader, I must judge for myself-does this textbook actually present a serious attempt to disseminate the theories and methodologies of fluid mechanics, or is it just a convenient outlet for the author to convey to his readers his most bizarre and disturbing fascination with pipes, heads, and viscous fluids? Personally, I wonder....

The introduction to each experiment is extremely poor in this lab manual. Without explanation from another resource, such as the accompanying textbook or from a professor, you'll pull your hair out trying to understand what it's trying to teach. Additionally, many of the post-lab questions seem to have been pulled out of thin air. Without extra help, you will most likely struggle with many of them.

I need this book. But first I want contents of it. I live in Pakistan how can I buy it.

This short, but to the point, book emphasizes beating children in order to teach them to obey. In the book's defense, it does also emphasize love, patience, and never spank out of anger, and discourages constant nagging and scolding. However, I felt some of the "pro-beating" examples would give a potentially abusive parent permission to severely harm children. Here are some excerpts, you decide for yourself...

"Do you believe the Lord really means what he says in these verses? That if we love our children and want to obey Him concerning them we must take a stick and beat them when they disobey? I believe He means just that!" page 14

"take up the switch, use it patiently and severely on the older child, take him upon your lap and comfort him." page 18.

"So Daddy went in and woke him (their son) up. He sat him on his lap until he was thoroughly awake and then told him that Daddy did not have peace about the incident and confessed to him that we had not been obeying the Lord in being sure that he obeyed us. Daddy told him he would have to spank him because he did not obey. So he spanked him and put him back to bed." page 24

While this may have been a decent purchase during the Spring of 1998, it no longer is of any value. You may think you are getting a detailed recap of the year in racing. Instead you get a shallow preview of the "upcoming" 1998 races and contenders. Save your money and avoid this one.

I am sorry if this review may happen to hurt the feelings of people concerned. But this book really is not helpful for someone looking to be introduced to statitics. Throughout the book, important concepts are introduced randomly, in disorganized way. The definitions are generally unclear and mathematics proofs hard to follow, the exercises excruciatingly boring. Is this statitics? No, this represents math teaching at its worst!

I should have known better than to buy a book without actually holding it in my hands and giving it at least a cursory once through. One of the editorial reviews said that it was "lavishly illustrated", and that was good enough for me. There simply is not enough books with illustrations of the works of Joseph Cornell. Hence, I bought it, only to find that there's not a single color plate in the whole book. All the illustrations are B&W. Not only that, but most of the photographs of the works are not particularly well done. I admit, I haven't even looked at the text--so, call me provencial. Art books are about art. Art is colorful. In writing a review of a book, I would be ashamed to call it "lavishly illustrated" when not a single plate is in color. What, then, makes it lavish? You've got me. I'm going to bet that you're going to see a lot of used copies of this book in the near future. Frankly, if you need a fix of Joseph Cornell, buy the Prestel Post Cards of Cornell. You'll save money and actually get some idea of what his creative work was about.

I know Joe Keenan, He was my Grandfather. The only way to tell his story is sitting with a group of his friends and listening. He was a great storyteller and Mr Gannon never captures that fact.

To portray a Jew in Russia who went and joined the Czarist Christians whose favorite sport was killing Jews as anything but tragic and foolish is a decidedly dubious proposition, and this man is not only a fool but evil as well. If he had been in Nazi Germany he would have been a Kapo and his evil would have been well known , but since he was in Russia where the Christian Pograms didn't quite reach the Holocaust level (and not through lack of trying, they just didn't have German technological advancement) some fundamentalist Christian can pretend that this man is a hero. But the stench of evil is too pervasive and like Torquemanda, the Spanish apostate who convinced Isabel and Ferninand to expel the Jews in 1492 or forcibly convert them, or Ahab who worshipped baal and wanted Israel to do the same, Rabinowitz is another apostate Jew who has blinded himself to the glory of G-d for a fleeting pagan cult. Sad really. Too bad the author didn't have the courage to admit this fact