Griffiths book Modern Music clearly shows the main styles and trends af 20th century Music, he starts with the late Romantics and the Impressionists like Strauss,Mahler and Debussy and then devotes chapters on New Harmony, New Rhythm and Form. The revolutionary ideas of Schoenberg and Stravinsky are covered and how their ideas and others developed throughout the century. There's a chapter on Neoclassicism, Serialism and Total Serialism which developed after the second world war through composers such as Boulez and Stockhausen , he writes about the influence of the east on such composers as Debussy and Messiaen. Percussion, new ideas in rhythm, electronics and chance methods are covered, and then the last chapters are about Theatre and Politics and Minimalism and Multiplicity.

All the major themes and the most important composers are here so you get a clear Idea of how Modern Art music was in the 20th century, the book is not long so you don't get a detailed analysis of the works but what you get is a clear overall picture. A very good book to start with if you want information on Modern Music

Also recomended are his books "Modern Music the Avant Garde since 1945" which is a more detailed analysis of the second half of the century and his book about the Brilliant composer Gyorgi Ligeti.

Just a great book to read

Marine mammals share one common heritage - there ancestors were all once land dwelling animals who returned to the environs of the seas and oceans as some of the most highly adapted life forms existent today. The exhibit high intelligence (some having brains larger than that of homo sapiens); complex social behaviors; astonishing diving capabilities and abilities to withstand the extreme pressures of the deep sea; echolocating and communication skills; and more. In Molecular And Cell Biology Of Marine Animals, editor and marine mammal expert Carl J. Pfeiffer has assembled 76 authorities in marine mammalogy to focus upon the cell and molecular biology of aquatic mammals. The methodologies currently used to explore marine mammal biology are explained, including the genetic tracing of subpopulations of whales and seals by DNA fingerprinting, the use of immune system molecular markets, cell culture, ELISA techniques, and electron microscopy. Strongly recommended for academic and community library reference collections, Molecular And Cell Biology Of Marine Animals is an impressive body of accessible scholarship which is enhanced with numerous illustrations, photos, and graphs, as well as a "user friendly" index.

Unlike other ice-breaker or thought-provoker titles, the Conversation Piece series offers truly insightful and contemplative topics in an environment conducive to flights of fancy as well as serious reflection. No hypothetical "If you only had 10 days to live..." parlor games here.

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz was a par excellence rational thinker, i.e., one who accomplished his intellectual pursuits primarily by means of logically rigorous argumentation rather than by intuition. (It could be argued that both Descartes and Spinoza allowed themselves to be moved by feeling more than Leibniz ever did, in fact, Spinoza himself conceptualized this very tendency and named it the "third kind of knowledge" or the "intuitive knowledge of God" - cognitio Dei intuitiva). The outcome of this ruthlessly logical conception of the world is Leibniz's "Monadology". I believe it will serve best to focus on the main metaphysical thesis of this great work, by referring to the views, not of a professional philosopher but of a 20th century eminent man of science, the physicist Erwin Schroedinger (1887-1961, Nobel Prize for Physics, 1933). Schroedinger, in his book: "Mind and Matter" (Cambridge University Press, 1958) writes (Chapter 4: "The arithmtical paradox: the oneness of mind):

"The reason why our sentient, percipient and thinking ego is met nowhere within our scientific world picture can easily be indicated in seven words: because it is itself that world picture. It is identical with the whole and therefore cannot be contained in it as part of it. But of course here we knock agaist the arithmetical paradox; there appears to be a great multitude of these conscious egos, the world however is only one. ... There are two ways out of the number paradox, both appearing rather lunatic from the point of view of present scientific thought (based on ancient Greek thought and thus thoroughly "Western"). One way out is the multiplication of the world in Leibniz's fearful doctrine of monads: every monad to be a world in itself, no communication between them; the monad "has no windows", it is "incommunicado". That none the less they all agree with each other is called "pre-established harmony". I think there are few to whom this suggestion appeals, nay who would consider it as a mitigation alone of the numerical antinomy. There is obviously only one alternative, namely the unification of the minds or consciousness. Their multiplicity is only apparent, in truth there is only one mind". We observe that, both Leibniz and Schroedinger, in this juxtaposition of views, help us towards an awareness of the ultimate limits of the knowable.

I can't say enough good things about this book! Gompers and Lerner provide a crystal clear explaination of the role venture capital plays in the economy and offers an insightful view of how venture capital will change in the future.

Anyone who is launching a new venture should bypass the "How To Write A Business Plan" books and pick up a copy.

Robert Wolff confronts Marx's most demanding writing, the development of the value form in the first chapter of Capital, that even the most serious commentators shy away from. But Wolff's real revelation is that Marx's writing can be fun. Wolff turns the dialectic into a Jewish joke 'Mrs Feinshmeck's blintzes', to help the Germanic medicine down. For all that, Wolff's treatment is up there with the most serious exegetes of Marxism. Most pointedly Wolff explains that Marx's style is not contradictory in itself, but an attempt to capture the essence of a contradictory world

I love animals and bought this book to have in my library. It has darling photographs of apes and monkeys doing things that look so human. Plus, it also offers a lot of valuable information about apes and monkeys.

Have you ever longed for a study of literary monsters that does not lose itself in terminological jabbering and offers you concise, yet thought-provoking analyses of literary texts instead? Then you should have a look at Goetsch's book about monsters in English literature. In a broad sweep, it covers virtually all major works from romanticism to the end of WW1, starting with Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and ending with the English war poets. The comparatively broad definition of monsters Goetsch provides proves to be a gain, because this model allows him to take in many texts other theorists would exclude, such as Hamlet or the poetry of Wilfred Owen. At the end of the book, he describes recent developments in monster literature such as in postmodernism or in feminist texts. For all its merits, the study has one drawback: it seems to have been written in a rush, so that some of the footnotes contain misspellings or mistakes. Nevertheless, I think the book is a very valuable companion to monsters in English literature.

I first read this book in '91, I was in 4th grade and it scared the heck out of me. I still like this book, and pick it up about every year, and it is where I first learned about bigfoot and others. This book has stories on UFOs, The Mothman, all kinds of true stories of creatures that are unknown on this earth and also Aliens and UFOs.