This book is excellently written, authoritative and easily read, and will appeal both to the practitioner as well as expectant mothers and their families. The footnotes and bibliography are well done. If you are unaware of the extent of PPD, then it will open your eyes. It explains exactly what it is all about. Any technical jargon is footnoted at the bottom of the page with clear definitions. What bothered me is that it goes on and on with saddening case stories of infanticide, some of which seem only questionally related to a PPD background. After the first 100 pages, I felt that I was reading a compendium of child killings, rather than how a mother and her family should handle her depression. An important topic as it is, especially for practioners and husbands to know that they should look after the new mother with devotion and TLC, it goes a little too far with all the bizarre tales. Although it includes a list of resources to turn to, the book as a whole is more of an eye opener than a guide. Also, for a 190 page book, it's a little pricy.

The Postpartum Effect: Deadly Depression In Mothers by Arlene Huysman (a practicing clinical psychologist specializing in mood disorders) cites and explains a specifically defined clinical depression experienced by some mothers who are so stricken with this devastating condition that they were tempted to harm themselves or their children. Huysman also cites and explains common misconceptions about what can be a quite severe illness arising from the aftermath of giving birth. Denouncing society's tendency to criminalize affected mothers, The Postpartum Effect is a profound and welcome contribution to Parenting Studies, Health and Medicine Studies, and Psychology Studies dealing with Postpartum Depression.

I wish I would have read this book DURING my pregnancy! To understand the NATURAL hormone and emotional changes that occured after delivery of my child could have saved me so much heart ache! Dr. Huysman describes her own experience with Postpartum Depression, who is at risk, the warning signs, true stories of loving mothers who have suffered this illness plus treatment options. READ THIS BEFORE YOU HAVE YOUR BABY!

However one disagrees with Sartre's philosophy, his Marxism, and his anti-Americanism, it is difficult to argue against his personal involvement in what he believed in. Sartre was no pipe-smoking, arm-chair academic content to let others do his fighting. He was always there on the front-lines, perhaps bellicose in his utterings, but always visible. An issue he disagreed with never experienced-his-absence, and Sartre did not hesitate to also be a novelist-philosopher, and as such, he showed more moral courage than perhaps any 20th century philosopher. The equality of idea and action was perhaps an axiom for Sartre, and his life was definitely an empirical validation of such.

Definitely introspective to extremes, this novel, the second in his series "The Roads to Freedom", is the ultimate portrayal of life in France before the Munich Pact and the takeover of Czechoslovakia in 1938. As a reader, it is easy to get trapped in the stream of consciousness approach that Sartre takes in his novel. Each character is not to be found alone, but immersed in the quagmire of panic, and for some, exhiliration, at the prospect of wartime conflict. The characters define themselves by the instant, their attitudes caught in the flux, that flux impossible to arrest, but their choices completely free nonetheless. Their individuality is sometimes robbed by the gaze of the other, but captured again by choice. Ideology has a short time scale for them.

Sartre does not really shout at the reader through his characters. But their predicament is believable. Their anxiety sometimes familiar, but they also have a perhaps hidden optimism. They know it is themselves, and no other, that determines their future history. The (burden?) of choice is with them always, and they understand fully the power of consequences. But choice works for them as well as against. This makes the appreciation of these characters easy and familiar.

This is the sequel to "The Age of Reason", and I thought it was by far the better book.

It's the story of Munich 1938, when war seemed inevitable as the crisis over Hitler's territorial demands on Czechoslovakia reached its peak. Sartre examines the feelings of a wide range of people through a time period of just over a week, feelings ranging from fear of a repeat of the 1914-1918 War, to the excitement of others who looked forward to conflict as a means of finally giving a meaning to their lives.

Sartre's technique is to skip swiftly from scene to scene, and location to location, doing so sometimes within a sentence. It takes concentration on the part of the reader to follow this, but I found it increased the pace of the story, and gave a sort of kaleidoscopic effect - conflicting and contrasting attitudes are exposed more easily, as are the differences between social classes, and even between nationalities.

The book is a damning indictment of appeasement, and of France and Britain's lack of courage in the face of the rise of fascism. But at the same time as condemning the appeasers, Sartre is sensitive enough to understand why people felt the way they did, and that includes the appeasers themselves - perhaps the appeasers too were trapped by the ambiguity of their own and their public's opinions, lacking the freedom to do what was right.

The add to the praise, the book's ending is great too.

The only thing I will comment (because I do not give away the book) is the writing style. If you are expecting "Age of Reason" part II, then you will not get what you were looking for...the writing style or mode is very different. The way the book is put together is there are many characters all in different parts of French territory in different walks of life, ages, sexes, etc. Often times when you are reading you will lose sight of where one character speaks or thinks and the next one. you will have to go line by line in the same paragraph, where a sentence ina paragraph represents a though of a different character and that character will not be identified...but you will know...but it becomes irrelevant who says or feels what because it is about the collective consciousness of french people in the midst of war...and this is the biggest success of the book is that this technique so succesful and masterfully implemented. It makes the book feel like events are happening so quickly and things are moving so fast which lends to the urgency of the situation in France. I feel like its a forrest fire...that starts with a brush and picks up momentum until its raging! There are new characters in this book and he has carried the old characters over. Please do yourself a favor and do not read the series out of order.

This is a brilliant encapsulation of the rage of the artist. He has a contempt for mankind, society, it's progress, and yet can't escape society. He can be a "..." as artists where called back then, refuse to live a middle class existence, live a life of drunken debauchery, and yet that is just another societal role.
His imagery is powerful, his language self-deprecating and insanely sincere. It draws you in with its suffering.
At the end he finds his life as an artist, his passion, empty. It all ended with the gunshot to the hand that ended his affair with Verlaine. In short, he equates his artistry and homosexual affairs with hell, and a return to society redemption. This explains how he became a materialist later on in his life, a trader, even considering trading slaves.
It is a sad fate for someone who had such a poetic gift.
I still enjoy reading A Season In Hell, even after having read it many times. Ultimately, the work is flawed; it has a little too much affected insanity, angst, the sign of an adolescent work, but it is also full of pure poetry and promise.

These are the brilliant and mystical hallucinations of the original "enfant terrible" and his visionary raptures about poetry, innocence and guilt. Verbal deliriums suffused with pain and hatred, remorse and desperation, but also with a parodic, pathetic and fatalistic megalomania. The "mystical rage" transformed into pyromaniac wording. Poems in prose, of very high quality, which reflect the fury of the love-hate relationship of Rimbaud with life and Universe.

In the collection of prose poems and verse fragments that make up the short book A Season in Hell, begun in April 1873 in an outbuilding at Rimbaud's family farm at the village of Roche and completed by the end of August, he looks back in despair over his life as a poet. In one of the fragments, titled "Ravings number two" he talks about "the history of one of my follies. I invented the colors of the vowels!" he claims, and goes on: "I flattered myself that I had created a poetic language accessible...to all the senses...I expressed the inexpressible. I defined vertigos...I ended up regarding my mental disorder as sacred."

Rimbaud draws a picture of his affair with Verlaine in cynical terms, painting Verlaine as a weak and foolish virgin and himself as an "infernal bridegroom," a monster of cruelty. It wasn't far from the truth.

The last chapter of A Season in Hell is titled "Farewell." It has an air of exhaustion and relief about it. "I have tried to invent new flowers, new stars, new flesh, new tongues. I believed I had acquired supernatural powers. Well! I must bury my imagination and my memories. A fine fame as an artist and story-teller swept away! I! I who called myself magus or angel, exempt from all morality, I am given back to the earth, with a task to pursue, and wrinkled reality to embrace. A peasant!" A Season In Hell was finished in August 1873. Rimbaud somehow persuaded his thrifty mother to pay to have the book printed in Belgium. He sent his six author's copies to his friends and to men of letters in Paris. Many people see this manuscript as his farewell to literature. It certainly reads like that, although Enid Starkie believes that it was Rimbaud's farewell to a certain kind of literature--visionary, mystical, growing out of the selfish and hallucinatory lifestyle that had crashed to a halt only a few months before with his shooting and the jailing of Verlaine--and a commitment to something more humble and realistic. "Well, now I shall ask forgiveness for having fed on lies," Rimbaud wrote. He hoped that the French literary world would offer him the forgiveness that he was now prepared to seek, and give his book favorable reviews. He the proceeded to Paris to see how his book had fared.

Favorable reviews? He must have been mad. To those literary men, the dilettantes Rimbaud had mocked and despised a year or two earlier, Rimbaud was the insolent catamite who had destroyed their old friend Verlaine: sponged off him, wrecked his marriage, corrupted his soul and ruined his life, and then, when he had used him up, had turned him in to the police to face hard labour in a Belgian jail.

We have an eyewitness account of Rimbaud on the day when the last door in Paris had been slammed in his face, at the moment when he realized that the literary career he'd embraced so passionately was over. It was the evening of the first of November, 1873, a holiday, and the cafés and restaurants were crowded. The poet Poussin had joined some writer friends at the Café Tabourey. He noticed a young man alone in a corner, staring into space. It was Rimbaud. Poussin went over and offered to buy him a drink. "Rimbaud was pale and even more silent than usual," he later recalled. "His face, indeed his whole bearing, expressed a powerful and fearsome bitterness." For the rest of his life Poussin "retained from that meeting a memory of dread."

When the café closed, Rimbaud--who hadn't spoken to anyone all evening--set out to walk home through the late autumn countryside. It took him about a week. When he got to Charleville he built a bonfire and burned all his manuscripts. He didn't bother to collect the remaining five hundred copies of his book from the printer--they moldered there until they were discovered by a Belgian lawyer in 1901. That should have been the end of it. But Rimbaud couldn't quite let go. The following year in London he carefully copied out his prose poems, gathered together under the title, Illuminations. The year after that he tried to get them published. For the anguished but brilliant Rimbaud, giving up poetry must have been akin to weaning himself from a potent drug.

As a marine aquarium hobbyist I was disappointed with this set of books. It doesn't tell you much on the behaviour and characteristic of the fishes, invertebrates and corals. The most disappointed and surprised was the book on reef fish, such a thick book but only a few species were introduce.

If there is one set of reef identification books to own then this one is it. A set of three of the best books available, it contains Reef Fish Identification, Reef Creature Identification and Reef Coral Identification. Throughout the Florida, Caribbean and Bahamas areas there are no better books available. Each fish, creature, coral, grass or algae has it's own full color picture along with a line drawing that points out the defining characteristics of that particular species. With a plastic cover and the pages treated to resist water, it can be taken to the beach or onto the boat without much concern about the water damaging the book.

Each entry has complete information on the fish, creature or coral from size, depth, range and habitat to the level of concern that a diver should have for their safety around it. If you snorkel, dive or just have an interest in identification of the various things that you find on a reef then this set will give you everything you need to identify anything you find. Highly recommended.

We have used the Reef Identification series for years and this new update is a great addition -- many more fish are identified. The writeups about each fish are very detailed and explain behaviours and various color shadings well. The photos are excellent, and we have always been impressed by the amount of work and care that have gone into the series. This is the first time we have had the Reef Coral book and are as pleased with it as with the quality of the other two books.

Justicar, Henry, Enid (a sphinx), Escalla (a fairy), and Polk (a warrior turned badger) have defeated Lolth, Drow queen of the spiders, but they cannot kill her in any but her own plane. And now she is out for revenge, spending millions of spiders, drow wizards, trolls, and undead to destroy their planet. With only the talent and magic that they have learned, they must face a dark elf-turned god, her minions, and two enemies Lolth has pulled from their nightmares.

QUEEN OF THE DEMONWEB PITS combines continual adventure and action with humorous dialogue and characters. All of the four main heros, and especially Escalla, have their humorous sides as well as their warrior/mage powers. Polk, the ultra-serious chronicler/badger puts the entire adventure genre in perspective with his frequent advice that they take on unbeatable god-class enemies head-on with no strategy except glorious battle (needless to say, the other characters know better and at least attempt a bit of maneuver).

Readers of the genre will find QUEEN OF THE DEMON PITS to be somewhat predictable, but will certainly find it an enjoyable read.

This third book was awwesome! Escalla and Justicar are back most definately. The challenge of taking on Lloth and her demonic horde was both exciting and still had the sheer hilarity of the previous books. The ending was a bit much but was still true to the E&J style that's been prevalent throughout the 3 books. I can't wait to read more!!

The spider goddess Lolth burns for revenge, and she yearns for conquest. The Justicar and his fairie companion Escalla humiliated her, and destroyed her body on Oerth. Now is the time for revenge: to bring all of Oerth to heel, and destroy Escalla and the Justicar. So now, the Justicar and his companions must avoid the deadly opponents that Lolth has placed on their trail, and thwart her plans to destroy their entire world.

I must admit that I had trouble taking this book seriously at first: a ruthless ranger in love with a thong-wearing fairie? However, Paul Kidd succeeds in weaving a story that is wildly exciting and mildly funny. When I picked it up, I did not realize that this book was part of a series, the cover does not tell you that it is. Fortunately, though, this book functions quite well as a stand-alone story. So, the bottom line is that I loved this book, and highly recommend it to you.

This is not a book that promise You the quickest way to master the Endgame, but with hard work and good discipline You will get Your REWARD ! It would be an insult for this extraordinary
Master of playing chess to sell cheap ideas. Paul Keres did understand this very well ! His book is very efficient and it's up to You to make it amusing by getting the Best out of it. Step by step You will notice Your progress.
A good result after hard work is always amuzing !

arielmar2001 - Ingemar Ariel LINDGREN

I can't understand how a 2089 player can say this book is no good. Keres was one of the strongest players in the world and as a teacher, chess annotator and author was unsurpassed. His games are among the most impressive and technically accurate. All his books are of very high quality, and this one is NO exception. This book is complete, methodical, clear and the section on rook endings in outstanding. Anyone who reads this book conscientiously will reap handsome dividends. Keres's book is NOT for the TOTAL beginner, but for someone who has a rudimentary notion of endings, i.e., a beginner who has read books like Learn Chess, Vols., I and II by Alexander, for example, which introduces the notions of the endgame. After that, this book is ideal.
Keres was a master of the endgame, and this book shows it through and through. I highly recommend it. Once mastered it will raise your rating by at least 100 points.

As a FM who first read this book when I was pre or early teens, I couldn't disagree more with the reviewer who found this dull. Rather, this great master of attack goes through a number of pawnless endgames, pawn endgames, and those where each side has no more than one piece. There are many basic positions as well as examples from practical play. For endgames with more pieces, go to Fine's "Basic Chess Endgames" or for more advanced material try Shereshevsky's "Endgame Strategy". But for an introductory endgame book, this is pretty good.

The book by the same name by Chernev is not so practical, comprising endgame studies, which doesn't mean it's not pretty good anyway.

Prodigal Logic is the American-style Sherlock Holmes mystery. It is the type of novel Sir Arthur Connan Doyle could appreciate, being full of clues and logical deductions.



Imagine a computer that isn't perfect, but thinks more like man. Ray Gabriel is close to creating breakthrough software that will use certain criteria to establish logical thinking patterns, the way humans might. However, before the software design is complete, Gabriel witnesses the death of a priest and the church insists on using the "Sherlock-in-a-box" program to help find out if the priest's death was a an accident, or murder.



The church cathedral may house more than Catholics. Black Mass performed by Satanists is alleged. Though no one seems to be hiding anything, Gabriel struggles to find answers to plug in with the right questions so that his computer can lead him closer to the truth and nearly everyone he's come in contact with seems suspect.



Like any good mystery, Prodigal Logic mixes up the elements. The main and sub stories are each engaging and well paced. Aside from religion and atheism, there is clever reasoning and genuine mystery solving involved. Developed characters and seemingly seamless plot, Prodigal Logic is entertaining and amusing with enough action and suspense to make this cozy a wonderful read.


--Phillip Tomasso III, author of Johnny Blade & Third Ring

I really enjoyed this book. I "burned" through it in two days and definately enjoyed the plot twists and turns in the last few chapters. As a computer professional myself I have toyed with expert systems in the past and gave thought to what the next step might look like. Very nice.

Paul Petrucci actually lives in a floating home, close to the University of Washington campus. He is an Information Technologist for his day job, and writes mysteries at night. Prodigal Logic is his first mystery.

Ray Gabriel is the author of "Sherlock-in-a-Box," a software program that solves mysteries. He is trying to gain enough funding to launch his own company with Sherlock. But his involvement and attempted rescue of a priest who falls to his death at the campus Cathedral propels Ray into the middle of a murder investigation including a suspicious psychology professor, Dr. Julius Dexter; his nubile secretary, Zelda; a cathedral engineer in the person of Miriam Towson, who is beautiful and has a past she refuses to divulge; and some odd Satanic activity surrounding the cathedral. Ray and his program are enlisted to solve the mystery of Father Peter's fall, but not before he is dragged into a war of wits with Dr. Dexter:

"Regaining his composure and his ferret's smile, Wordsmith/Dexter said, 'I'm putting the final touches on a short story I've written. What do you say, Ray, to a friendly challenge? I'll put my mystery story against your computer program, and may the best man win.' 'Delightful!' Said Father Aquilino. 'Zelda and I can act as referees.'"

Ray finds himself in the middle of the most illogical of human situations: a murder that is associated with possible Satanic cults; two women who are involved in their own nebulous relationships with Dr. Dexter; the actions and personalities of the priests themselves; and a contest Dr. Dexter devises to play with Ray himself. Ray pushes himself to make "Sherlock's" sleuthing more sophisticated, even as he places himself in more than one kind of danger.

Prodigal Logic is an excellent first mystery, written around the tenets of Sherlock Holmes' mysteries. Petrucci uses the most illogical of human conditions to fit a scientific protagonist.. Indeed, Petrucci does a wonderful job of combining contradictions to make a plot with enough twists and turns to confuse even the most skillful reader. A great read!

Shelley Glodowski
Reviewer

This book doesn't even mention UML. It may be good if you want to use author's modeling.

I have used ROOM since 1993 - it is a very useful and flexible methodology. The authors present it in a very clear and well thought out manner. The examples also show that this is not a "toy" methodology. ROOM comes out of the author's years of experience in developing real solutions; I can only say that it has been very successful for myself and teams I've been on as well. That it has evolved into the real-time representation of UML only shows that these authors were ahead of their time.

It's very difficult to evaluate the book. There are actually two things to evaluate: (1) the ROOM methodology, and (2) the book publishing ROOM. The ROOM methodology is great: the only complete software development methodology I have ever seen. However the way it is discussed in the book is not an easy reading, even not for an experienced OO developer. Do not give up when you think you have lost. Reread sections until you understand the gist. Eventually, you will be very happy with the new tecniques you learned. I'm quite sure that ROOM is applicable not only for real-time systems. It should be adapted to non-realtime development too. Without reading this book you will not understand UML RealTime implemented by Rational RoseRealTime. My five stars are primarily for ROOM methodology.

Ok, I am a new sales rep, and I thought this book would make a difference for me. Well the only difference that it made for me was in my wallet, which is unfortunately much lighter now. The book had some good advice, but not worth all of the filler which the author overwhelms you with just so that they can sell a book. Save yourself the time, see if it is out in cliff notes. 10 pages was all this book really neede to cover the points that this guy wanted to make. Save yourself time and effort and look elsewhere.

Nothing new here. Want a good tonic for your sales slumps? It's called "Wall Street" and it's not a book--it's a movie. Breathe that movie's creeds and you will succeed...

I am biased in that I want to read a book by someone who has actual experience in the field. In the case of teleselling, I want someone who sells mostly by the phone. At least, they have to prospect by phone. This author states:

"I will be selling right up until my last breath... For me, heaven will be a small room with a telephone and a never-ending list of prospects... you cannot succeed at what you do not love. I am going to work very hard on making you love to prospect."

and

"I have two businesses of my own and attribute much of my success to my cold calling prowess... I have developed a prospecting and business development system that works!"

I'd say that this author is well qualified and, the book turns out very well.

At first I thought that my kind of business couldn't use teleselling: it was much too dignified. Then (this is a true story) I was sitting in a clients office reviewing my computer designs when I heard the client play back his voice messages outloud. One was from a competitor who was selling the same kind of services I provided. How could this be? I listened very closely and was extremely impressed with his technique. And had I been that customer receiving that call earlier, I might have responded to their prospecting call.

This book is highly recommended.

Already decades ago many excellent books dealing with relativistic quantum mechanics (RQM) have been published. Clearly one of the unique features of the RQM book by P. Strange is that it does not only discuss the general concepts of RQM in (Chapters 1-10), but also describes in a great detail electronic structure and various x-ray spectroscopy theories used in the state-of-the-art research of magnetic materials (Chapters 10-12). Also a student learning quantum mechanics for solid state might feel the relativistic one-dimensional Kronig-Penney model in Chapter 9 quite useful. Interestingly, a relativistic version of the microscopic theory of superconductivity in the framework of the Bogolubov-de Gennes equations has been presented in Chapter 13. A nice extra feature is that the SI system of units has been used throughout the book.

All in all, Relativistic Quantum Mechanics book by P. Strange works as a valuable textbook as well as reference material for graduate students and researchers. It is especially useful for those studying solid state magnetism from microscopic theory viewpoint. Bringing RQM into the context of solid state physics research (Chapters 10-13) is obviously one of the best features of the book.

I have read this book as a physics undergraduate and also since I started my Ph.D. in theoretical physics, and I have found it, unlike other text books, very well written and extremely helpful. It is highly recommendable for undergraduates and the maths is very easy to follow for any science undergraduate or graduate. It is definitely one of the best relativistic quantume mechanics books available.

As an final year undergraduate taking an option in Relativistic quantum Mechanics I found this book invaluable in helping me with the course. It's clear, concise explanations of Relativistic Quantum theories made the whole subject that much easier to get to grips with.