The Little Jesus of Sicily can be read at many different levels. On the surface it is a captivating tale. At a deeper level, it is a voyage in time, an account of life in a rural Sicilian community, a reality that has almost vanished. Pasqualino ponders the loss of customs and traditions of his native village while reflecting on the impact of industrialization and modernization on society. It is possible to discern a still deeper level--a spiritual one where Pasqualino shares his Christian beliefs without ever resorting to pious platitudes. Imagination, poetry, and faith are at the core of Pasqualino's spiritual quest as he asks simple but fundamental questions about the meaning of existence. A profound meditation on the human condition, this novel depicts in great detail the hardships and the ordinary pleasures of day-to-day life while examining the beliefs and forces that sustain people through suffering and adversity. The novel renews a tradition of literature found in works of regional and southern Italian inspiration and belongs to that category of rare books which are suited to please children and adults alike: Grimm's legends and fairy tales, La Fontaine's fables, Saint-Exupery's Little Prince, or Cervantes' Don Quixote. I decided to translate The Little Jesus of Sicily for one simple reason: I feel in love with it. I started the novel and could not put it down. I saw myself in it, I saw my child, and I saw the child who resides in all of us and longs for wonder. It was beautiful, it was funny, and it made me happy; I wanted to share this precious feeling of joy with other readers. I hope you will enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed translating it.

The Little Jesus of Sicily is a wonderful story that transcends both age and religion. The author recounts his experience as a young child chosen to be Jesus for a day for the Feast of Saint Joseph in a small village in pre-World War II Italy. As the story winds through the fanciful imaginations and commonplace activities of a youngster, the reader is reminded of his/her own experiences as a child and is introduced to an historical glimpse of a bygone era. The translation from the Italian is superb -- it was awarded the PEN American Center's 1996 Renato Poggioli Translation Award -- and the thoughtful illustrations, which burst off the page, are an asset to the work.

The subject of a class titled "A Spiritual Journey" taught by our Rabbi, this small book has engendered the deapest spiritual discussions-yet on an intellectual level-which one can imagine. However, be prepared! If you expect to get the most out of this book, you will need a very comprehensive dictionary.

While any serious reader will probably find Soloveitchik's insights helpful, it has to be said that if you don't have a solid, working knowledge of the Hebrew language and its development, together with a thorough knowledge of the Jewish religious traditions, you will miss much. Therefore, study with a Rabbi, as well as with others, is highly recommended to extract the full benefits from this book.

But is it worth it? Absolutely! You will want to read this book over and over again, something which will be easy to do because every sentence of this small volume packs hours of thought provoking insight into its discussion of the two stories of The Creation.

Soloveitchik published only a few titles during his long life as the leading Orthodox rabbi of this century. This is the one new readers should start with. It is rather difficult, and for some a dictionary may be needed, but its rewards far surpass its difficulties. Soloveitchik's thesis is that there are two stories of creation in the Bible, not because there are two literary traditions, but because there are two sides to man. Majestic Adam sees God in the splendor of the universe, and shows reverence through science. Lonely Adam craves a personal relationship with God, which is glimpsed in fleeting moments. Soloveitchik has no use for cheap "spirituality." His is the real kind, which takes deep thought and a lot of work. His is also the kind which, once attained, lasts a lifetime.

The reviewer below got it right....this is a beautiful, inexpensive edition that houses two fine, fine novels.

This is a truly excellent edition (and compilation). It may seem like a small point, but I really love the typeset used. And the prefatory material, especially that of Robert Kaplan, is particularly good. The selection of Lord Jim and Nostromo was also well done, for it juxtaposes two of Conrad's best and, perhaps, most representative works. On the one hand, there's Lord Jim, largely psychological and personal, in which the title character struggles with, and constantly returns to, a trying moment in which he acted questionably. On the other, while no less psychological, there's Nostromo, which enters the realm of politics, revolution, and ideology--a more mature Conrad and certainly much more complex, stylistically and thematically. The works themselves, of course, deserve five stars, but so, too, does this stunning Modern Library edition.

Now that the U.S. has ratified the Genocide Treaty, and the hitherto unknown legal category "hate crime" is making headlines, this insightful study of the "genocide" idea, as seen through the career of Raphael Lemkin, the refugee Polish-German jurist who coined the word in 1944, has renewed relevance. Dr. Martin provides a masterful unraveling of the ways in which the specter of "genocide" has been manipulated by the powerful for political gain, and how this dubious international legal concept has done nothing to deter actual crimes against peoples. Written by an outstanding American revisionist scholar, author of numerous books, whose teaching career spanned 25 years.

That is the answer, what people usually have if they are ask who was the person that startet the international campaign against genozide. Raphael Lemkin, lawyer from Poland, who emigratet into the U.S.A. to fight for humanity. In his book Martin Joseph rewrites the life of Lemkin, his fight against genozide and gives an wonderful impression of the personallity of the "inventor of genozide"

Upon review, I found this inch thick book to be a remarkable compendium of investigative techniques, tips, tricks etc that included national contacts for abandoned property, court clerks, governors offices, medical boards, dmv offices etc.

Everyone that's looking for someone should have this book. It has absolutely everything you need including Internet resources, what to do if you don't get information that you've requested from the government, military resources, inmate locating information, numerous sources that you may not think of that you can access both online and through the mail and by phone. It's easy to understand and shows you step-by-step how to find any missing person in the US.

This is one of the rare pieces of literature that may seem to be coarce but in the due cource of attempt he is revealing and is full of wisdom.

Should somebody wish to have a glimpse of the world's evolution in short or should one dare to rush through the mamoth 12 volumes of history philosophised "Study of history" then this is the best bet to begin with. This is one of the few naratives toyenbee has contributed to us and once through them his literal theoretical discources would be easy to comprehend and gem to cherish thereafter.

The best bety would be to go through 11 volumes of naratives of Will Durrant's The story of civilization and then Toyenbees complete work would complete the first phase of universal erudition.

T

Arnold J. Toynbee presents history the way it should be presented: Without bias and without overly rating the importance of some civilizations over others. Unlike previous authors, who treated western civilization as being supreme, Toynbee makes it clear that our earth has been and is home to other great cultures and people. His evaluations of China and her major impact on the world, by invention, art, and literature, are especially enlightening. A must-read for everyone, who wishes to broad his horizon by viewing history as the sum of all civilizations.

In this book Campbell has covered the entire field
from Ancient Egypt via pre-Buddhist, Buddhist & post-Buddhist
India to China, Japan & Tibet.

Apart from a multitude of references, citations and amusing
legends illustrating his nominal concern (Mythologies)-the
center of this book (a part of "The Masks of God" tetralogy)
lies elsewhere. Essentailly, all Campbell's work (and "Oriental
Mythology", with its chapter 1 "Signatures of the four great
domains", is a particularly good example) is a predominantly
Jungian (with a few Freudian insights assimilated) comparative
analysis of the dominant traditional mindsets.

For instance, he sharply differentiates between two
"Western" archetypes (Jung again) & "loyalties":

1.Promethean hero-the Greco-Roman legacy
of ever-expanding and conquering being
2.Job-the Levantine legacy transmuted into Christianity

Or, "Eastern" loyalties of:

3.Yogi- ascetic absorbed in transcosmic cataleptic trance, as the "trademark" of India
4.Sage-essentially the Chinese ideal of harmony ("flowing" with Tao, or realizing
one's tao in society (Confucians))

Be as it may, this is a treasure trove of ideas, associations & insights.
I haven't encountered any richer or profounder work of late.
And, as a ghastly surprise, book ends with factual report on Chinese
communist invasion of Tibet (mutilations, castrations, sterilizations,
public executions & humiliations), as all the horrors from the "Bardo Thodhol"
have descended on our earthly reality. A horrendous reminder that
mythologies are not dead, dated nor irrelevant.

This is the most impressive book I've ever read about mythology.Just buy it, and let it introduce you in a new world,full of spiritual knowledge.

This book is the book that everybody working with ENVY should read. From the newbie to the confirmed developer you will still learn a lot. The differents processes of releasing and versioning application is worth reading it, believe me and the authors have really a deep knowledge of ENVY. This is really a pleasure to have an excellent book like that. Do not complain not finding good books on Smalltalk if you do not buy the good ones!

Review written by: Vinay Mutha Director, Technical Services Dynamic Consulting Vinay@DynamicResources.com http://www.DynamicResources.com

Cambridge University Press is publishing a new book named Mastering ENVY/Developer. This book addresses a long-standing need of the Smalltalk developer community. It also proves that, despite claims to the contrary by some vested interests, Smalltalk community is still thriving. Recently I got a chance to look at the manuscript of this book.

This original work is an in-depth exploration of ENVY/Developer, IBM's team programming environment for Smalltalk and Java. This book is written by well-known experts in the area, viz. Joseph Pelrine of Daedalos Consulting, Switzerland, Alan Knight of Cincom and Adrian Cho of OTI (IBM).

In the first part Pelrine, Knight and Cho introduce the basics that a developer or development manager must know to use ENVY in a project setting. The second part covers advanced programming and customization, including detailed information on administering, troubleshooting, and extending the tools. The book presents both introductory and advanced topics with detailed examples. It also includes lot of useful information about the development process and the organization of applications. The authors treat VisualAge for Smalltalk, VisualWorks, and VisualAge Generator in detail. In addition, the concepts and management they present apply to VisualAge for Java. Additional features are code examples, tools, and add-ons, on CD-ROM.

Dave Thomas (of OTI fame and not the Wendy's founder) will be writing a forward to this book. This book will be part of the SIGS Series: Advances in Object Technology. I am certainly looking forward to its publication in 2001. The book price is $39.95, but the publishers are offering it for a discounted price of $31.96.

The CONTENTS of the book include: 1. Getting started 2. Basic concepts and operations 3. Team Development 4. Advanced Development 5. Packaging, testing and delivery issues 6. Extending and customizing the system 7. Administration 8. Goodies 9. Packaging 10. Troubleshooting

The book also has an Appendix containing a Selected Annotated API of ENVY System Classes. Although authors refer to this as an API, many of these classes and methods are not well documented and have changed over time. That is why this appendix becomes very useful, as it gives very useful information needed for advanced programming tasks which is not easily available elsewhere. Another wonderful part is the creation of Glossary of envy terms. As many of these terms look and mean very similar to regular English words but may not have exact similar meaning in the context of ENVY.

It is amazing to see how these authors have compiled so much detailed information and still kept the number of pages down to only 350. What I like most about this book is that it clearly marks things that are applicable to a particular dialect of Smalltalk, say VisualWorks. This allows the developers to concentrate on their project and the applications they are working on in a no-nonsense way. It also gives you knowledge about how to tackle major problem areas in software development throughout the development cycle. E.g. 1. Managing the software components developed by different developers in the team. 2. Software versioning and development history management. 3. Software configuration and the management of the different releases. 4. Properly controlling the changes made by the developers without letting the quality and quantity of the work suffer.

This book is available on amazon.com. On amazon it lists the third author as Jan Steinman, who was initially supposed to co-author this book. Unfortunately, Jan had to drop out for personal reasons, so he was replaced by Adrian Cho of OTI (IBM). This turned out pretty good too, because Adrian has been principle developer of ENVY at OTI for a number of years, and has direct experience with all the code including the internals. The book is scheduled to be published in February 2001. You can reserve your copy even now with either amazon or the publisher directly.

Probably the best book I've read on how to build a p2p application. Covers all of the basics, with a very clear introduction to JXTA and related technologies. But the best parts for me were the tutorials showing how to build real-word apps from beginning to end. The detailed code examples really helped me in developing my own p2p project. Definitely worth the price of admission.

One of the most striking things about this book is the inclusion of real-world examples. Those who have used the distributed.net application will like the chapter that uses JXTA to build a framework for distributing computations.

The chapter on building a three-tier encrypted storage system shows the power of the JXTA specification and JAVA implementation.

I highly recommend this book for learning JXTA. The writing is clear and the numerous examples will have you coding peer-to-peer applications in short order.

I like to read a lot. I am particularly fond of non-fiction books. I have read Joe's book. In comparison to all the non-fiction books I have ever read, Joe Mancuso's book is the single easiest to read book I ever read. Joe practices what he preaches.

Mr. Mancuso practices what he preaches. Mastering Technical Writing is the single most easy to read non-fiction book I have ever read. Way to go, Joe