The Opera Journeys Mini Guide Series is just wonderful; it's like a "Cliff Note" of the opera, and extremely informative and educational. I particularly like the size; these guides are not cumbersome and fit right into my shirt pocket. The ladies will find sufficient room in their pocketbooks.

The story narrative with the music examples is excellent. I prefer it to a libretto; indeed, it's a much easier way to follow the essence of the story. The essay is magnificent; very well written, not pedantic, and extremely insightful and comprehensible. I congratulate Burton Fisher for a job very well done and Amazon for making these handy, information-laden booklets available. The Opera Journeys Mini Guide Series is a wonderful contribution to opera education and opera appreciation.

My tip: acquire the entire collection because you will be in easy reach of superbly presented opera guides consisting of story analysis, principal characters in the opera, story narrative with music highlights, background, analysis, and commentary.

Heinz Dinter, Ph.D.

Mostly, this is a collection of photographs of the SS. It has a large number of formal portraits in dress uniforms, when awards were being issued. There are also non-combatant photographs of troops in the field and on training exercises. A fair number of tank photographs as well. This is the only book I have seen with a moderate collection of photographs of the interior of buildings in the Bad Tolz and Braunschweig officer candidate schools. Read to see the contrasting fates of these two schools in the present day. Interesting things to look for: which well-known figure appears in 3 photographs with a perpetual grimmace, and which always has a bottle in his hand?

This book is immensely readable. It deals with some of the most dramatic events of the second half of 20th century Europe. It follows a young Romanian student through the years of Nazi occupation and Communist domination, until his escape to the U.S. It seems a good narrative of so much of the political turmoil that has gripped the world in the past 50 years. It also shows a new immigrant's long adjustment process as he tries to integrate into a new society. I highly recommend it.

The author succeeded in using a narrow topic to teach a broader lesson on the plight of thousands of Native Americans during the last century. Every American should understand our government's policies toward Native Americans and its effect both pro and con. Mr. Scherer succeeded by telling the story of the Omahas without prejudice and by allowing the facts to paint the picture. Imperfect Victories is a brilliant introduction to these issues and the resultant human consequences. Mr. Scherer does not portend to give policy insight, but he gives the reader the facts necessary to understand the decisions made by elected officials and bureaucrats that have lasting and real effects on living human beings long after these policymakers have faded from the public scene. I'm looking forward to more books in this series on Law in the American West. I hope other authors take Mr. Scherer's lead and tackle vital policy and judicial issues with clarity and his concise writing style. Though an avid history reader I gained more insight in the 200 pages of Imperfect Victories than from much larger and better-known volumes.

This is a masterful book that combines intellectual history and geography in a way that has not been done before, shining a new light on the issues of Russian identity and the interrelationship between exploration, conquest and nationalism.

At the center of Bassin's work is the region around the Amur River. The Amur, closed to the Russians since the late seventeenth century, attracted intense interest in Russia throughout the later part of Nicholas I's regime, but especially in the aftermath of the country's defeat in the Crimean War. Wild, unsubstantiated exaggerations fueled this "Amur euphoria." The conquest and settlement of the Amur came to be seen as a national imperative, compensation for humiliation elsewhere. Amidst this frenzy, eager promoters who had never set their eyes on the Amur tagged the river as the "Siberian Mississippi," hoping that it would do for Siberia--and indeed for Russia as a whole--what the Mississippi did for the United States. They attached great hopes to this river. The waters of the Amur were to cleanse Russia's wounds, and redeem her in her newly-asserted eastern destiny. Yet the euphoria proved fleeting. Not long after the Russians reconquered the Amur, the realities confounded the hopes.

Although the Amur region is at the center of Bassin's book, its real subject, as the title indicates, are the "visions" of that object-region. These visions are the reflections of the visionaries, and become in certain ways "self-portraits" (p. 274), to use the author's own apt metaphor that indicates a methodological affinity to other recent works, most notably Yuri Slezkine's _Arctic Mirrors_. Whether as "mirrors" or as "self-portraits," these visions reveal far more about the visionaries than the envisioned. The "Amur euphoria" of the 1850s reflected the desperate desire of the Russian visionaries, in the wake of the Crimean War debacle, to both turn away from a Europe that "spurned" them and wounded their national pride and, at the same time, reaffirm their own Europeanness as effective "civilizers" of the east. These are complicated, sometimes conflicting visions of an "imagined" region, but Bassin skillfully steers us through them one at a time with the exuberance of a Huck Finn sailing on his raft down the Mississippi. In the process, he produces a work that will be indispensable for anyone grappling with the hisitorical issues of Russia's imperial visions.

Experts in electrophysiology and engineering share their knowledge of ICD use and development. This book provides two essential functions. It teaches basic ICD design to clinicians and teaches the clinical aspects of ICDs to engineers. Extensive clinical topics are included. Design topics include: amplifiers and filters, high power switching and output circuits, lead systems, telemetry and therapy algorithms. The history and outlook of ICD development is also included.

Olga Markova of Moscow writes: I thought that the examples were interesting and sometimes even eccentric. I like the approach: linguistics + social situations + history = knowledge, interest, competence.

This book is a great resource for speech language pathologists who serve students with Down Syndrome. As a professional new to the field of speech language pathology, I found myself serving two students with Down Syndrome in the elementary school setting and making decisions about their communication. Jon Miller's book explains old theories about Down Syndrome, and introduces new research findings in an easy-to-read format. It covers speech intelligibility and language comprehension and production patterns.

If you are a speech language pathologist who does not know a lot about Down Syndrome, this is the book to help you learn about it and how you can approach speech therapy with this population. It has greatly influenced my decisions regarding the overall communication abilities and potential in my students.

Daley and Lee's compilation will be a great resource for teenagers to easily relate to other teens on a variety of issues.
I see this book as a teaching tool for high school religion classes. It is refreshing to see dedicated teachers publishing a book by teens, for teens.

I just saw this book on my sister's kitchen counter. We both have lots of apples from our apple trees and are always looking for interesting and delicious ways to use them.

First of all, the book is gorgeous. The layouts and the stories are intriguing and fascinating. The recipes are sumptuous, totally different from anything I've ever seen. You will not be disappointed!