I started this book in my 20's. It did not do very much for me then. I liked the exotic location and indeed the characters who peopled it. I hasten to add that I had just finished the Enderby Trilogy and that is a hard act to follow, and I was expecting similar.

Some 20 years after, I have revisited the book. What you get are the sites, sounds, smells, ambience, attitude (loved the bit about the young Malaysians adopting 50's rock and roll attitude)and the entire human continent of Asia unfolding in one locality - sikhs, tamils, chinese, arabs, mestizos etc. You can feel the heat and humidity and anxiety.

This is book is cinema for the imagination. I just hope that the film rights have been sold to right people.

This trilogy is composed of books published over a 3 year period [1956-59], and are called Time for a Tiger, The Enemy in the Blanket and The Beds in the East. The Trilogy was re-issued later as The Long Day Wanes in 1981.

The central character is Victor Crabbe, an idealist liberal working first as a teacher, then as a headmaster, and finally in the Administration of the Education department in Malaya [now Malaysia]. Anthony Burgess (John Burgess Wilson) denied that Crabbe was based on himself, but there are some obvious similarities in the careers and in Burgess's own attitudes to his compatriots.

In the first book, Time for a Tiger, Crabbe has profound difficulties with his wife, Fenella, who like many expatriate wives in that time had a problem in coming to grips with life in a petty-minded and prejudiced environment. This is the last few years before Malaysia was granted independence, and so there is no more empire-building, only commercial exploitation. This theme is repeated throughout the 3 books. Crabbe has a permanent guilt about the death of his first wife in a car accident, for which he may or may not have been responsible, and this theme also recurs throughout the trilogy.

She leaves him at the end of "The Enemy in the Blanket" and so in the third book he is alone and struggling with internal politics in running his department - his overall concern is to do a good job and to leave the education department in good hands for the future, when the country attains its independence.

I think this book wil appeal more to people with a knowledge of life in colonial Malaysia. Crabbe has several irritating characteristics, and the references to music, and classical literature may irritate some readers unfamiliar with these subjects. Burgess was a frustrated composer, and this is evident in the writings of the Trilogy. Words in the major National languages, Malay, Tamil, and Cantonese are used quite freely throughout the text, and a glossary is provided; however the Malay is in the old spelling and not the modernised Bahasa Malaysia. Sometimes the plot and sub-plots seem weak and wander away from a logical conclusion. The theme of the book isof course somewhat dated, and the prose style does not have the charm and interest of say, Somerset Maugham, who was writing about a much earlier era in colonial history.

I like this book for personal reasons, I have travelled frequently and widely in Malaysia for over 30 years, and have family there. It is interesting to compare events from the time when the book was set, and now, and be thankful for the positive changes.

I used this text for a junior level mass transfer and separtions course at Michigan State University. It's a good book because it covers everything from the basics of formulating mass transfer models to convective mass transfer to distillation, absorbtion and extraction, but I believe the book is better suited to graduate students or chemical engineering professionals. My undergraduate course only made use of the second half of the book, and I didn't feel it had enough design and application material.

I've used the book in my mass transfer course in Cemical Eng. at Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana and I think thet this book is the best oriented book to the first sight to the subject. However, I think that it could be a little deeper in design oriented themes. That's why I would invite to all seniors and majors in ChemEng to study it and reflect it. After having a good base, any one of you may see a good design book such as Brown's Chemical Engineering Operations.

This is a good textbook on explaining mathematics for economics gradually. However, it does not contain enough further details on certain topics such as optimization, game theory, linear programming. But it is worth reading if you are starting your undergraduate program in Economics.

This book is great for undergraduate economics students who need to brush up on essential calculus and matrix algebra. It's absolutely packed with worked examples to get your problem solving skills up to speed. It's also a bargain in paperback. However, it is not a comprehensive mathematical economics textbook. I found it very useful up to the advanced undergraduate level, but for graduate level work in economics you will need something a bit more rigorous.

Ashby et al have made a timely and very useful contribution to the literature of metal foams. The book will provide an essential resource to designers, developers and researchers in this exciting emerging field. The coverage is very thorough with material on manufacturing methods, design, economics and current applications. The section on web resources is very topical.

I have been using this book for my research for the past year. Over all the this design guide by Ashby is excellent. It is well written for those who do not have any background in design using metal and polymer foams. The chapters are short and concise. If, after reading this book, you want to dig deeper in the world of foam, then read Cellular Solids by Lorna Gibson.

The scientists aren't gonna like this one! Using modern science to have a more effective experience of life. I'm betting readers of this book will have to prove Anthony's theories for themselves. If they do, there'll be no limits on what they can do, IMO. I've started the work Anthony has suggested and it feels right. May I suggest all books be coil-bound? That is SO convenient.

Anthony Hamilton has written a highly accessible book on a very complex subject. He moves beyond theory and shows practical processes for achieving what you want. The book is well structured and supported with many examples. It is obvious that this book is the result of many years of observation, trial, testing and thought. It is believable, doable and practical. My recommendation, buy this book! Cornelis Slenters, Program director 'Creative Achievement'

This book, when compared to what is written today, is excellent. Trollope is a master with words - as all readers of his works will agree. He has a tremendous command of the written word - unlike authors of today!! However, for Trollope compared to Trollope, the book is just so-so. Many of his other novels are far superior. The book concerns the trials and tribulations of Miss MacKenzie after she inherits a fortune and then looses it. We see how her friends, neighbors, and male paramours react to her as her status in life changes. It's, as all Trollope books, enjoyable, but not one of his better books.

Anthony Trollope spends so much time doing the things that well-meaning creative writing profesors now tell one never to do--his editorial voice peppers each novel, he avoids subtle foreshadowing in favor of telling you essentially what will happen next, and he consistently drives plot towards a theme. Yet Trollope, a consummate Victorian, seems intrinsically modern whereas many more "literarily correct" modern humorists grow antique in a week or less. The secret, of course, is character, an eye and an ear for class distinctions, and a skewering wit combined with tremendous fellow-feeling for the foibles of his characters. Miss MacKenzie contains much of Trollope at his best--the title character is a beautifully observed genteel poor spinster-to-be suddenly visited with the misfortune of fortune. The author assiduously exposes flaw after flaw in Miss MacKenzie and her social milieu, and yet we like her better for the harsh light. In this world of tremendous unkindness, it is nice to remember that one can be honest without being brutal. Trollope, a writer of genial works of whimsy, brings the quiet honesty of literary fiction home safely here.

This book, an expansion of Burgess' earlier _Language Made Plain_, is a fabulous way to learn how language works -- how we make sounds, how words change through the years, how languages differ from each other. Burgess' book on language is in many ways a curious sort of literary autobiography, as so much of his writing has been wordplay of one sort or another. As always, his writing is lively and lucid.

Anthony Burgess was, excuse me, I just have to say it, a truly cunning linguist, and wrote many books about the English language, as well as the dialogue for 1 Million B.C. Grunts and snorts, but grunts and snorts researched in chronological retrospect; from his vast knowledge of present-day languages, he traced language backward to its beginning sounds, much like he took modern-day Liverpool slang and projected it into the future for the speech in A Clockwork Orange (his admittedly worst and regrettably best-known book). He read and reviewed dictionaries for the London Times, always finding a lively and humorous way to present his serious content. This same man, as a linguist, produced a lively analysis of language in A Mouthful of Air. For anyone who loves words and language and the way they roll off the tongue, Anthony Burgess is a must

There seems to be an almost infinite variety of approaches to the study of nations and nationalism. The book of Anthony Smith is a good trial to summarize and review, if not all, plenty of them. Because of that, I think it is worth reading it.(Content: 5 starts; readability: 3 stars)

Other general overviews (not so good as Smith's but pretty fine): "The Sociology of Nationalism", by David McCrone; in Spain, "Enciclopedia del Nacionalismo", Andrés de Blas Guerrero (Director).

Books that are nowadays "classic" or almost: "Imagined communities", by Benedict Anderson, "Nations and nationalism", by Ernst Gellner; "Nations and Nationalism since 1780", by Eric Hobsbawn, "The Invention of Tradition", edited by Eric Hobsbawn and Terence Ranger (all of them tend to be critic with nationalism).

Focused on a country or countries: Germany, "The nationalization of the masses", by George Mosse; France, "Peasants into Frenchmen ", by Eugen Weber; UK, "Britons. Forging the nation 1707-1837", by Linda Colley; Spain, "Mater Dolorosa. La idea de España en el siglo XIX", by José Alvarez Junco; England, France, Germany, Russia and USA, "Nationalism. Five roads to modernity", by Liah Greenfeld; Quebec, Catalonia, Scotland, "Nations against the State", Michael Keating; Basque country, "El bucle meláncolico" by Jon Juaristi.

Others: "Kindoms and communities in Western Europe 900-1300", by Susan Reynolds; "State and nation in Europe", by Hagen Schulze; "The God of modernity. The development of nationalism in Western Europe", by Josep R. Llobera; Hugh Seton-Watson, "Nations and states. An Enquiry into the origins of nations and the politics and nationalism".

And more and more...

This book by Anthony D. Smith, Professor of Ethnicity and Nationalism at the London School of Economics, is perhaps the best overview of the many theories of nationalism in one volume. As a sort of sequel to his first book, _Theories of Nationalism_, Smith summarizes each major theory and offers his critique. He spends a good amount of time on the seminal theories of Ernest Gellner and Elie Kedourie plus has significant sections on John Armstrong, Benedict Anderson, Michael Hechter, EJ Hobsbawm, Tom Nairn and many others, including himself. Each chapter is organized by theme, starting with the grand old men of sociology, Durkheim and Weber, moving through the modernists, primordalists, perennialists and ethno-symbolists before ending with the postmodernists. (If you've never heard of some of these distinctions before, Smith spells them out quite clearly and succintly in the conclusion.)

This book is thus valuable for all students of nationalism, even if you don't agree with Smith's critiques: his summaries alone make the book worthwhile.

These gems from just after WWII include stories from the last year of Basil Rathbone's tenure as Sherlock Holmes. While the stories are somewhat contrived, and the list of suspects nearly always amounts to 3 people (the reasons for the 4 out of 5 stars), the charm, the wit, the joie de vivre of the cast and scripts I find disarming and irresistable. To hear again that incredible baritone of Rathbone and the charming slur of Nigel Bruce come through my stereo from ages ago transports me to simpler times and more polite civilization. I cannot recommend these enough - and encourage all fans of the Great Detective and those who enjoy Old Time Radio to purchase this collection. You cannot go wrong ... and if you find yourself smiling or even with a tear in your eye, you too will understand why this set is important and wonderful.

Nigel Bruce's Watson is a loveable bumbler--quite a contrast to Conan Doyle's capable but unimaginative Watson. The stories tend to be somewhat contrived and suffer in comparison to the BBC productions of original Doyle stories in which Clive Merrison starred as Holmes. The organ music gets monotonous, and if I weren't already a teetotaler, the wine commercials would make me take the temperance pledge. Despite all that, the productions are wonderful. The chemistry between Bruce and Rathbone is perfect, and the simple stories move swiftly to their satisfying (if sometimes obvious) conclusions. Although Holmes purists tend to hate Nigel Bruce's Watson, I found him to be irresistably likeable. I'd want Doyle's Watson guarding my back in a tight spot, but I'd rather sit by the fireplace and swap stories with Bruce's Watson. I particularly liked the host's introductory visits with Watson in which Watson sets the stage for the mysteries.

Simon & Schuster originally published these plays as single cassettes. Later they collected the plays into six "gift sets" containing four cassettes and eight plays each. This collection contains all the stories from the first three volumes of the "gift sets" and the first two stories from the fourth volume.

So the potential purchaser won't fall into the mistake of buying duplicate stories, here is a list of all the stories along with my individual ratings: ("Conanical" stories are based on actual Conan Doyle plots. Apocryphal stories give the details of mysteries only alluded to in the "Conanical" stories)

"The Unfortunate Tobacconist" *****; Very well plotted.
"The Paradol Chamber" **; Contrived.
"The Viennese Strangler" *****; Good plot.
"The Notorious Canary Trainer" ***; One of the apocryphal adventures.
"The April Fool's Day Adventure" **; Holmes & Moriarty meet for the first time.
"The Uneasy Easy Chair" ****; Murder most ingenious.
"The Demon Barber" *****; Death stalks the production of a famous play.
"The Headless Monk" ***; Contrived, but entertaining nonetheless.
"The Amateur Mendicant Society" ****; Another apocryphal adventure.
"The Vanishing White Elephant" ****; Holmes & Watson in India.
"The Girl with the Gazelle" ***; A locked room theft.
"The Limping Ghost" ****; Moans and chains in a drafty castle.
"The Out of Date Murder" *****; A corpse that couldn't be.
"The Waltz of Death" ****; A serial killer attacks dancers in Vienna.
"Col. Warburton's Madness" ***; Another apocryphal adventure with a gaping hole in the plot.
"The Iron Box" *****; A new year's story for the new year.
"A Scandal in Bohemia" *****; One of the few "Conanical" adventures in the collection.
"The Second Generation" ****; Irene Adler's daughter matches wits with the Great Detective.
"In Flanders Field" ****; A WWI story for a WWII audience.
"The Eyes of Mr. Leyton" ****; Here's looking at you.
"The Tell Tale Pigeon Feathers" ****; Holmes performs a virtuoso feat of observation and deduction.
"The Indiscretion of Mr. Edwards" ****; The fate of the Empire depends on keeping Mr. Edwards out of trouble.
"The Problem of Thor Bridge" *****; Another "Conanical" story. I believe it's one of Conan Doyle's best.
"The Double Zero" ****; It's a gamble.
"Murder in the Casbah" *****; One of Holmes' rare ventures outside England.

"The Tankerville Club" *****; Another apocryphal adventure in which Holmes confronts Col. Moran.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle invented Sherlock Holmes, but Edith Meiser translated him to radio and wrote many, many more Holmes stories than Conan Doyle. She took a hiatus from writing Holmes radio plays during the WWII years, and the duties devolved upon Dennis Green and Anthony Boucher. Green and Boucher wrote the best radio plays up until the coming of the BBC series with Clive Merrison. The Merrison productions have to date only been "Conanical" stories, but beginning in January/February of 2002, the BBC will air all new Holmes stories. It remains to be seen if they will top the Boucher-Green team's stories.

For advanced students in biblical hermeneutics, this book is indespensible. No more comprehensive analysis of the history and present state of this field is available anywhere. Thiselton traces the more significant developments in hermeneutics in great depth from Schleiermacher up to the present day. In the earlier sections, Thiselton has a tendency ramble. His style becomes significantly more concise, particulalry as he moves toward the contemporary era and the impact of general literary studies on biblical hermeneutics. One of the problems with most discussions of hermeneutics is that they stay almost exclusively on the theoretical level, and rarely venture into application of the methods dsicussed. Thiselton's work is somewhat uneven on this count. The application of some methods is presented and critiqued, while in other areas the biblical text never comes into view. Thankfully, Thiselton does move in determined fashion toward his own hermeneutical perspective, outlines his principles clearly, and offers a preliminary application to some Pauline texts. Biblical studies students will be frustrated that developments in hermeneutics are not more consistently related to the history of biblical exegesis. The hermeneutical assumptions and implications of source and form-criticism, for example, are never discussed directly. These criticisms aside, Thiselton has taken on an immense task and, while his execution is not perfect, there is likely no scholar in the world who could surpass his performance in this vook.

This is not a work for beginners. While biblical hermeneutics are in view, it really concerns how we interpret any text. Thiselton has one major concern: are there standards of meaning that go beyond any particular society and embrace all humanity, or not? Thiselton argues throughout the book that there are, while thoroughly and (I think) fairly presenting the alternative viewpoint(s). His major supports include the later Wittgenstein, the speach-act theory of Austin and Searle, and (to a lesser extent) the eschatological vision of Pannenberg. His major targets are the deconstruction of Derrida and Barthes, the pragmatism of Rorty and (some but not all) liberation theologies, and the reader-response theory of Fish. In a typically understated British way, he cheerleads for the one side and pans the other through the whole book. In both modes, however, Thiselton keeps an impressive critical distance (most of the time) in admitting both to the strengths of those he opposes and the weaknesses of those he supports. While difficult, I know of no better one volume treatment of the subject. A thorough and discerning work for the serious student.