An above average treatment, although a bit too brief in many areas, especially the various unit operations. One must have some basic understanding of chemical engineering concepts to follow through the pages, although the initial few chapters tried to address that. However, there are still plenty of useful insights with regards to pharmaceutical process engineering. Could do with more figures of actual equipment used in the pharmaceutical industry.

This was pretty good book with great insites on the band Phish. I suggest any Phish phan read it.

STARMONT READERS GUIDE 20 BY: MICHAEL R. COLLINGS SERIES EDITOR: ROGER C. SCHLOBIN

This book is not from Piers Anthony, but about him and his writing dated 1983

Expensive book. Syme started this book back in 1939. It was suppose to be his first book, but ended up shelving it. Some 60 years later a profesor from Germany (Anthony Birley) took on the project of dusting off Syme's original manuscript and a bunch of unpublished papers on the region which is the second title of this book. Syme died in 1989, but not before leaving all of this material to have one more book published posthumously. I read only one other Syme book (Emperors and Biography) and despite the prose being a little dated it was a good read. The Provincial at Rome is the first 120 pages of this book and is an excellent survey of the Roman Senate. He also covers the time leading up to Augustus, but I have read much better books on the early Empire. He does have an interesting take on the justification of Augustus' rule as compared to that of Julius Caesar. The last 70 or so pages is about Rome's involvement in the Balkans and that is why I read this book. I have seen very little written about Rome and the Balkans. Syme was one of the few historians with published works on the subject. However, even Syme is only able to "outline" the history. He has some detail on Macedonia, Dardania, Illyricum, and a great chapter on Caesar's plan to carve-up Dacia and Partha. A good read, but dry in parts. It takes a real Roman history nut to read this stuff. It has a couple good maps. The best part is the editor's choice to use footnotes instead of endnotes. It's so much easier to read footnotes.

Anthony Spare and Paul Ciotti make a logical, but uninspired, case for making Relative Dividend Yield part of one's equity valuation and also one's buy/sell decisions. The book is clearly written and offers ample graphs to substantiate the notion of buying equities when dividend yields are high, and selling them once they are low.

Actually, the graphs may be too ample...readers of this rather expensive 248-page book will quickly learn that the text is a bit long on charts showing individual equity dividend yields relative to stock indexes over time, and a bit short on specifics concerning the avoidance of issues whose yields are high for good reason.

That's the book's essential deficiency: the authors devote a mere twelve overly general pages to "Pitfalls and Preventative Measures" (Chapter 6). Also, since investors will likely have a difficult time constructing the kinds of charts the Relative Dividend Yield methodology requires, it would have been helpful to offer tips on a cost-effective means to make this methodology applicable in real-time. The authors do, however, provide graphs with prior relative dividend yield histories, with room to continue plotting these yields, on several "blue chip" dividend-paying equities.

This is a book on a current topical subject. In the wake of 9/11 a number of writers have attributed the different attitudes in the Islamic world to secularism (and other issues) to the absence of a phenomenon in the Islamic world comparable to the Renaissance and Reformation. At the same time, others have argued that part of the roots of at least the renaissance lie in Andalus, i.e. Islamic Spain, where muslim philosophers like Averroes have helped to transfer Greek philosophy from the antiquity to the post-medieval age.

This book had been well received by critics (at least some I have read). However I found it to be an extremely detailed description (in chronological order) of innumerable events and actions of people involved in the genesis of the Renaissance and the Reformation. Although the author attempts to put both events in perspective, with an introduction on scholastic thought which had been dominant in the Christian West before the Reformation, I believe that it is certainly not an introduction to how Renaissance and Reformation have come about because it leaves many really big-picture questions unanswered. This book is excellent though for the reader who has had all those answers already and would like to know every discreet step of how this process unfolded.

To give you an idea of the author's style, here's one typical sentence :

"But Groote's spirituality also avoided the religious tensions imposed by Ockham's insistence on the potentially arbitrary nature of the decrees of a transcendent God, on the unicity of the divine act of foreknowledge and predestination which appeared to make effort otiose, and on the paradoxical and unsupported belief that God would nevertheless give grace to those who did whatever lay with them, while offering no means for individuals to ascertain their own spiritual state."

I suppose some will love it for its detail and quite a few others will hate it. I thought it was interesting, but hard work.

"Saint Anthony of Padua: Our Franciscan Friend" has a quote from Pope John Paul II on the back, implying the book is a study of Anthony's life. This is a collection of novenas, not a short biography.

Unfortunately, the history provided here is weak, with only a few pages dedicated to describing the facts. Besides a few dates, mostly this book is a collection of novenas and prayers, and some stories surrounding the myth of St. Anthony. The writers don't cite or footnote the source of the stories either, except for a brief bibliography (seven items).

Of interest to me was a nicely designed map, showing where Anthony traveled and preached. Also, there is a chronology of events of his life, with contextual events.

For those looking for approved Roman Catholic prayers and devotions to St. Anthony, this is the one to get. However, if discovering an introduction to the historical Anthony of Padua, missionary, scholar, apologist evangelist and teacher, look elsewhere.

Anthony Trendl

It was missing alot of information in the area of new users and granting privileges. Quotations marks were left out of key commands to grant privileges and there are limits...There were misspellings of words. The book should have gone through spellcheck and a thorough test of examples.
I would rate this book lower but I admit, it helped me get started. If I didn't have teaching and other data processing experience I would be bald trying to follow this book.

This book is almost the only treatment of this battle available in English unless you want to buy an out of print war game on ebay or a set miniature rules. Like most Osprey books you will find a formula presentation with workman like but not inspired writing. Osprey battle studies are utilitarian at best and his one fits the mold. Illustrations as always are excellent.

I received this book from a friend who is a passionate gardener and who thought this was the loveliest thing she had read in years. My great passion is reading, not getting dirty in the garden, but she thought that I would still share her enthusiasm.

To a certain extent I do, and it is certainly full of warm and witty stories and anecdotes relating to the joys of gardening. But it is just that which has failed to hold my attention. It is about gardening.

If you can find a copy for a gardening friend, or if your greatest joy is planting, weeding and identifying obscure flowers, you will adore this book. If not you will still appreciate its warm humour.

A nice book, which could be truly wonderful, depending on your ties with the garden!