Full of playful language, candy-like illustrations, and a zest for life, this fun loving and funny book promotes language skills while encouraging imagination and participation. It is the kind of book that entertains and teaches at the same time (which is, of course, the best kind). It is the kind of book that I, as an adult, enjoy reading to children again and again. It is the kind of book that simply makes me feel wonderful -- a great gift for anyone under 8 years of age, and for the people who love them.

This is the perfect children's book! I can't say enough good things about it. From it's Dr. Suess-like rhymes to it beautifully illustrated pages, it is sure to be a children's classic!

Ummm, the actual title of this very funny book is "I Ink, Therefore I Am". This is the twin to his "Going Local" -- local topical cartoons about San Francisco. Even though I don't live there, I find them hilarious and read them every day at sfgate.com. Thank you, Mr Frank for so much relief from all the troubles of the world!

Phil Frank has been drawing a daily cartoon for the San Francisco Chronicle for about 10 years or so. While I lived there his strip had always been the first thing I read in the morning, and I am rather happy that finally there is a collection of selected strips from '90 - '96. I guess I must have seen most of them before, but aside from a lot of fond memories I also got a lot of laughs out of this collection. But it certainly isn't one of the "you-had-to-be-there-to-get-it" things - I have loaned my copy to a couple of people her in Germany, and they also were rather amused by it. There is a fair amount of local politics that serves as a background for the jokes, but there are also many stories about the affairs of the heart of the hero of the strip, Farley, and his on-going realtionship with Irene the metermaid who makes parking such sweet sorrow for him, about the four bears who run the Fog City Dumpster for the four-legged gourmets of San Francisco, and ab! out Orwell T. Cat's carreer as a fall-cat in the White House. So just go ahead and buy it - it's really, really funny, and it's a lot cheaper than going to San Francisco yourself.

I found this to be one of the most useful books for teaching writing skills. It is loaded with ideas that can be used in the classroom and can be used with teaching teachers how to teach writing skills. This book has some of the most creative and effective ideas I have seen in a long time. In fact I loaned it to someone about a year ago and have not seen it since. This demonstrates its quality. It is an easy read with samples that one can use in class forever. I recommend it highly.

This book provides numerous ideas and suggestions for creative and purposeful writing activities for upper elementary level students. The activities are easy to intergrate in a busy classroom, can be adapted for different grade and ability levels, and the kids love them!

The authors have done a nice job of assembling essential information for the IFR pilot. The IFR Pocket Guide is a great resource for studying and brushing up on all that one needs to know to fly safely and proficiently in the IFR system. It also includes blank forms (clearance, PIREP...) to help with cockpit organization. The size makes if perfect for taking along with you when you fly. When flying, my IFR Guide is always with me. If you fly IFR, the IFR Pocket Guide should be with you too!

As a struggling IFR student, this pocket size book has helped me to not only learn procedures, approches, and systems, it has also enabled me to figure out the jargon, jumble, and seeming mumble of flying in good weather and foul. The memory aids -Goose a Cat is my personal favorite - can be literal lifesavers. The probable best, I use it almost everytime I fly, feature of this little manual is the Holding Pattern Entry Computer. It's set up for both left and right turns and puts approches in perspective in real and simulated conditions. Use this book a couple of times and you'll be as hooked on this book as I am.

Meyer was a former Communist, but he atoned for this by the many contributions he made to the anti-communist cause and to the conservative movement. The latter, I believe, owes an incalculable debt to him. Before 1960, Meyer, who was at the time a senior editor of National Review, began arguing that there was no inherent contradiction between the two major streams of the Right in America, free-market principles and traditional values.

        He further argued that if the conservative movement was going to succeed, adherents of both lines of thought, natural allies on most issues, must be fused together. Supporters of a conservative economic policy, he taught, couldn't expect their policies to be enacted without the backing of social-issue conservatives. And it was equally true, he continued, that social-issue conservatives couldn't expect their policies to be enacted unless they allied with economic conservatives.

         The presidential elections of 1980, 1984 and 1988, as well as the congressional elections of 1994 and 1996, were manifestations of the wisdom of Frank Meyer.

In this book, Frank Meyer attempts to consolidate two threads of conservative tradition (later referred to as fusionism) - that of libertarian conservatism (stressing individual rights and economic freedom); and that of natural or traditional conservatism (stressing virtue and order). Meyer makes the case (persuasively I believe) that while many in the conservative movement tend to stress one tradition over the other, there is no inherent mutual exclusion between them. In short, there ought not to be a rift between those that focus on different elements of the conservative tradition. Essentially, Meyer presents the individual (not community, not "society", and not the state) as the atomic unit. And from that unit radiates out all other constituent beliefs about the individual - the right to life, liberty, and property - including the freedom to pursue virtue as well as vice. Yet despite this valiant effort made by Meyer, the tension between the two traditions of conservatism still exist to this day. Those wishing to understand that tension in a historical context would certainly do well by reading this book. In any case, whether one agrees with Meyer's attempted fusion, In Defense of Freedom is a wonderful read in conservative expression.

Frank O'Hara poetry makes constant references to painting. He was friends with many painters, and was a curator at MOMA. This book provides a convenient visual tour of O'Hara art-world connections, including many paintings, drawings, and photos of the poet, along with his collaborations with Larry Rivers and Joe Brainard.

In Memory Of My Feelings is a collection which examines contemporary artist Frank O'Hara and his influence on American art, providing an excellent catalog of both his works and portraits of O'Hara as presented by his contemporary artists. Color pictures on almost every page accompany a scholarly survey of his life, times, and the art circles he worked with. An excellent catalog.

There's no question about it, this is one of the best books I have ever read. Besson has done a brilliant job in this first novel that is a combination of fact and fiction. I haven't been this excited about a book in a long time. This is an emotional story that is charming, erotic, sensitive, inventive, and lined with exquisite details of this period in history.

It's 1916 in Paris, and the Great War has been ravaging Europe for two years now. Vincent, who is 16 years old, a privileged young man, feels far removed from the horrors of the war as he is left behind in the city with mostly women. Thus Paris is a city "In the Absence of Men". Vincent's life is about to change forever as he meets two of the most important men in his life. On this beautiful and sunny day he befriends Marcel Proust, the forty-five year-old elegant and gifted writer, and Arthur Vales, who is home on leave for a week from the war, and who is the son of a family servant. Vincent begins a platonic friendship with Marcel that turns into a sort of mentor relationship. They spend many hours together in cafes, literary salons, and at the Ritz. On the other hand, Arthur awakens in Vincent feelings of love, and they begin a week of discovery of deep, emotional, sensual and physical love that is a coming of age for both young men. As the week ends, Marcel has to go away on business, and Arthur returns to the front lines of war. Vincent is once again alone in Paris. At this point, the story takes the form of letters between Vincent and Arthur, and Vincent and Marcel. It's in these letters that we learn how Vincent's life is altered forever, by a tragic event, and an unexpected confession.

It's amazing that a writer can cause us to get so involved with a book, and leave such a lasting impression. I know I will never forget this story, and I know I'll read it again and again. This is a book of love, of hope, of sorrow, and of survival. This is a touching story from a new and great writer, no question about it!

Joe Hanssen

And if there were more than Five Stars to rate this book, then the maximun number would be assigned! Phillippe Besson's first novel, IN THE ABSENCE OF MEN written in 2001 and published in France before the English translation became available to us this year, is one of those wonders of a book that plead the question "Why hasn't this concept been thought of before?" For all its brevity(a mere 166 pages) and enlightened style of writing, the story is what comes first: a wholly credible blend of fact and fiction. Yes, E.L.Doctorow and others have placed historic characters in a fictitious novel, but none to the enlightened extent of Besson's use of Marcel Proust as a focal figure.

This novel is one of the more poignant coming of age stories to be written in the past few decades. The title IN THE ABSENCE OF MEN was carefully selected to address many the issues that are cloaked in the intimate story. Vincent is 16 years old, in 1916 he is as old as the century, and is a brilliant young aristocrat who has escaped involvement in the Great War. In 1916 all of the men in Paris are in the War leaving the city poplated by women and those men who either by reason of health, old age or the luxury of wealth remain behind; Paris is in the absence of men. In one week's time Vincent discovers platonic love in the person of Marcel Proust - here portrayed as the wise, articulate writer we know from his magnum opus "Remembrances of Things Past" or "In Search of Lost Time" depending on whose translation you read, and as the longing would-be lover of men. Knowing the boundaries and responsibilities of amorous affliations between 16 year olds and middle aged men, Marcel serves to introduce Vincent to the poetic, Apollonian aspects of love between men. At the same time Vincent becomes physically aware of the sensual Arthur, the 21 year old son of Vincent's governess and separated until now by class distinction that only the presence of War can temporarily mutate. Arthur, who represents the Dionysian aspect of love, spends a passionate, physical week in Vincent's arms and heart and is then off to war. The remainder of the book takes the form of leters written between the lovesick Vincent and his mentor Marcel (who is away on holiday) and his lover Arthur who is on the battleground. In this brief summer all of the smoldering private mental wars through which all youth must endure in the rites of passage become contrastingly opera and chamber music. The novel ends in a surpise confession that brings all of the events of Vincent's epiphany summer to a life changing conclusion.

Besson's writing style excludes quotation marks and frequent paragraphs and reads more like stream of consciousness and thus takes some visual adjustment before getting involved in the story. That process takes no more than a page and ultimately creates a feeling of glimpsing a private diary between Vincent and Proust and Vincent and Arthur. The other message beneath the story addresses the intimacy and bonding of soldiers isolated from the world, fighting a war while finding comfort and sensual release only among themselves, secretly: Arthur, physically separated from his new love Vincent, turns to a fellow soldier to nurture that gaping need for tenderness and his letters to Vincent confess this love in an incredibly poignant way.

This is a very fine novel and introduces an author of exceptional gifts of imagination and skill in writing. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

No sane person reads about INCO terms for fun, and if your work requires that you understand the details of international quotes & shipping then this is a required reference work. The author, who sat on the international drafting committee, is perhaps as knowledgable on this subject as any American. He also teaches an excellent seminar on the subject.

After I first read Mr. Reynold's predecessor book on Incoterms I felt I finally understood this technical topic. The new book, fully revised for Incoterms 2000, follows the same format. Each chapter is devoted to one of the 13 Incoterms so it can be easily digested. Each chapter contains an easy to read scenario of how the Incoterm may be used in a real international trade transaction and how it affects all other phases of the transaction including the ability or inability to collect payment.

The most valuable feature is the ending section of each chapter, entitled "American Perspective." It discusses how Americans should or should not use this particular term, or at least be aware of any caution flags.

Incoterms for Americans is a valuable commentary on an important topic.

Although published in 1978, this book could be used as an introduction to the theory of operads and other recent work on homotopy theory and vertex operators. Vertex operators are not discussed in this book, but the theory elucidated herein is good background material for their study.

The author does a great job in motivating the subject in chapter 1. Loop spaces are function spaces of maps from the unit interval to a space with a chosen basepoint, with the property that each map sends 0 and 1 to the base point. The mathematician Jean Pierre Serre introduced the path space in order to study loop spaces, resulting in the famous Serre fibering. The nth homotopy group of the loop space can be shown to be equivalent to the (n+1)-th homotopy group of the original space. The homology of loop spaces can be calculated for some types of spaces, such as wedges of spheres. Infinite loop spaces are essentially sequences of spaces such that the nth element of this sequence is equivalent to the loop space of the (n+1)-th element. This sequence is also known as an "Omega-spectrum" and has the infinite loop space as its zeroth term. The name "spectrum" comes from general considerations involving sequences of spaces where the nth term is equivalent to the loop space of the (n+1)-th term; equivalently, where the suspension of the nth term is equal to the (n+1)-th term. The author reviews how a generalized cohomology theory yields an Omega-spectrum, giving two examples involving Eilenberg-Maclane spaces and complex and real K-theory. One can also start with a spectrum and construct a generalized homology and cohomology theory. Spectra and cohomology theory are thus essentially equivalent.

Chapter 2 is an overview of techniques needed to construct a category of spaces with enough structure so that the infinite loop space functor yields an equivalence from the category of spectra to the category of certain spaces. An example of the latter is given by the Stasheff A-infinity space, and its now ubiquitous property of having a product which is strictly associative. This property allows one to prove that a space is equivalent to a loop space if and only if the space is a Stasheff A-infinity space and that the zeroth homotopy of the space is a group. The Stasheff A-infinity spaces are also used to motivate the construction of 'operads'.

The next chapter the author is concerned with the concept of a space being like another one without being equivalent to it. He discusses the use of 'localization' in homotopy theory, an idea that is analogous to the one in algebra. The use of localization in homotopy theory is due to D. Sullivan, and involves use of the notion of a space being 'A-local', where A is a subring of the rationals. Remembering that a Z-module is A-local if it has the structure of an A-module, a space is A-local if its homotopy groups are A-local. Examples of the use of localization in constructing certain spaces are given. The author also discusses the use of the 'plus construction' that allows the alteration of fundamental groups without affecting the cohomology groups. Then after the construction of the Quillen higher algebraic K-theory groups in this regard, the author describes the relation between a topological monoid and the loop space of the classifying space of this monoid. This involves the notion of 'group completion', which is essentially an isomorphism between the homology of the path components of the monoid and the homology of the loop space of the classifying space of the monoid, but in the (infinite) direct limit.

Chapter 4 introduces the concept of a transfer map. A very elusive idea at first glance, the transfer map is motivated via the n-sheeted covering map of a space on another. The (singular) simplices of each then get matched up by the covering, and the transfer map between the spaces is then defined so that it is equal to the sum of the singular simplices of the covering space. It is in fact a chain map as shown by the author. The transfer maps are related to homotopy classes of the 'structure' maps of chapter 2, and the author gives a few examples of how they are used.

Chapter 5 is a quick overview of the Adams conjecture, which is essentially an assertion that the image of KO(X) in KF(X) can be characterized explicitly. Detailed proofs are omitted but references are given for the interested reader.

In chapter 6, the author restricts his attention to the K-theory of spectra. The treatment is concerned in large degree with the question of the existence of infinite loop map between infinite loop structures, and finding such a map, checking whether it is unique. This question is answered for particular types of spectra, via the Madsen, Snaith, and Tornehave theorem. Also, the Adams-Priddy theorem is proved, showing that one can construct on a space a unique infinite loop space structure. The reader gets more examples of the use of localization, in that some spaces can become equivalent as infinite loop spaces upon localization. The origin of K-theory in this chapter comes from the replacing of spectra that are not known by ones that are (namely the ones in classical K-theory). The author shows how the Madsen-Snaith-Tornehave theorem works in the context of both complex and real (periodic) K-theory. Detailed proofs are given for all of these results.

Reading this book made me excited about infinite loop spaces, which I had always imagined to be a very dry topic. Adams informal style reads as smoothly as a purely expository work, but gave me enough understanding and insight to make me feel like I could fill in the details myself if I needed to. Even if this isn't always literally true, it certainly oriented me well enough to be able to make sense of the literature. I especially liked the discussion of A_infty spaces.

Did you ever wonder about why IBM is pushing JAVA? Worried about the future of the AS/400? Concerned about personal computers or PC servers that have faster cpu speeds than an iSeries? You must read this book then! Only Frank Soltis could provide the highly readable in depth analysis of the internal architecture that appears to becoming the basis for the entire eServer line of computers to be built by IBM in the future.

For many of us who have invested heavily in the AS/400 and are worried about its future this book should put those fears to rest and demonstrate clearly how this amazing machine and its even more incredible layered operating system will be the basis for IBM's future!

Bob C.

This is your chance to find out what really is going on inside your AS/400. Everything you have always wanted to know. You won't find this out from anywhere else. It will satisy the appetite of even the most technically minded. There's even an historical perspective - the AS/400 really does come from an alternative universe. Fantastic.