I am generally for contraception, however I was struck by the clarity of argument in the Encyledial that the contraception issue has a lot more to it. It is also seen as a line of defence against sexual irresponsibility which is unscriptual. I wonder whether that justifies the argument against contraception but it is worth reading in order to see a well thought and considered argument and that one needs to be prepared against those who wish to use the argument for contraceptives to justify fronication and practising homosexuality.

As a non Roman Catholic clergyman, I heartily recommend this short work. Penned by Pope Paul VI in 1968, this is the definitive document on the Church's position on artificial birth control -- a position which, until the 20th century -- was held universally by all Christians. (Translation: It's not a Catholic issue -- it's a Christian issue).

It seems that most people who attack this encyclical, do so from the perspective of not actually having read and studied WHAT the Church actually teaches and WHY!

This book provides a clear and compelling case for why what has ALWAYS been the position of Christianity as a whole, should remain unaltered (and be re-inforced).

"Humanae Vitae" cuts through all of the jargon, hearsay, and soundbites to provide the reader with a clear understanding of the Roman Catholic church's teaching on artificial birth control. Paul VI masterfuly explains the beauty of married love and its reflection of Divine love. In addition he clarifies many other related issues, such as natural family planning and the role of children in a couples' life. I also find interesting the prophetic nature of this encyclical. It is amazing to see that Pope Paul VI realized that artifical birth control would actually diminish society's respect for sex, rather than increase it. This book is a true eye opener and I strongly recomend Humanae Vitae to all.

The i-Mode Developer's Guide shows you how the most popular and profitable wireless technology on the planet works, the business model, and is rich with examples. This is useful for anyone serious about making a wireless Internet business. It is not simply about Japan which is perhaps 2 years ahead of us in cellular market maturity. It is also a way to reach the new AT&T m-life market. Developers find how to tweak simple HTML to do i-mode. This is a base every wireless content developer MUST master. The book goes on then to explain and give examples of i-appli Java, and details of the emoji icons if they want to get tricky.
I absolutely love the attention to the excellent service examples and their technical explanations - consider i-area, the very smart location-based service in Japan. Developers are show the key emulators, how to develop ringtones, animations. It also puts SMS and WAP into perspective comparing service structures and microbilling differences.
This book is thoughtful and an incredible research report from the future in a difficult to access part of the world for most US and European developers who want to prepare for the future.

Users of the I-Mode Developer's Guide by Paul Wallace will be able to quickly, as well as, efficiently build I-Mode pages using their most familiar text editor. Following examples and instructions based on Wallace's successful experience, developers will create or convert images from other platforms, create animations and sound files, and develop dynamic database driven I-Mode applications and Web sites using common scripting languages such as Perl, PHP, and Java. Readers will also understand the relationship between I-Mode and other wireless technologies, and it's unique business model. An overview of several of the "killer applications" that have fueled I-Mode's success will further prepare the reader to create applications that take full advantage of the options of small screen devices. An exceptionally strong reference for Intermediate to Advanced level users.

Excellent overview of both the business and technology aspects of global wireless applications and services. Covers more than simply i-mode, and is simply THE most complete wireless/mobile Internet book I've read.

WAP is not coming back from the dead, so the future is HTML-based mobile applications. This book gave me both a foundation for HTML and XHTML wireless programming, as well as a the technical understading of handsets, location based services, and generating revenue. I wish all tech books were so comprehensive!

The topics of ibogaine and the drug war in America are covered nicely in this book, with an emphasis on historical perspective and cultural insights. This is an important book, but it is also somewhat confused in its overall presentation. By that statement, I mean that it goes so deeply into the topic that it begins to confuse the average reader. This book is a must have however, for anyone interested in the current politics and background of ibogaine.

The book is an eye opener for sure. It really puts the war on drugs (the people) in the real world. It's a got to read kind of book, do your self a favor and read it!

Ibogaine, the illegal, boycotted and most effective treatment for addiction known to man. The ibogaine story reveals the behind the scene story of ibogaine and the bogus war on drugs. Ibogaine is a broad spectrum anti-addictive natural substance that has been used for thousands of years by native people. The attempt by the US government and pharmacutical companies to keep it off the market (and information about it from the public) is cruel and criminal. Being safer than asprin and not subject to any abuse potential it does not qualify as a schedule 1 controlled substance with the likes of heroin and cocaine, yet it is so scheduled. Why? Could the government actually want drugs on our streets? Could it be a threat to many billion dollar medications? Read the book for the answers.

I'm looking forward to reading more of Paul Walkin's books

A great read. The main character finds peace at the end of his lengthy journey. Watkins posesses a wonderful feel for use of symbolism in flight and the exotic landscape of Morrocco and France. A powerful journey from nothing to rebirth. In the Blue Light...possess great imagery and movement of time.

Never have I thought I could identify with a pilot from World War I. Much like Robinson Carusoe, Charlie Halifax, pushed towards the end of his moral and isolational limits, has estblished a friendship with a foreigner friend, becoming travel partners, like Crosby and Hope. Halifax remained passaionate yet myopic on his goal until the end, finally realizing new horizons lay ahead.

This book is every bite as unique as his Archangel. Also look for Peter Gadol novels.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book --found it an interesting read, though it did remind me, in parts, of The English Patient. The characters were quite well drawn out and I look forward to reading other books by Paul Watkins (which is why I am here at the site to begin with).

Viene con dos cintas.
Nos gustó mucho encontrar este libro y Spanish for Gringos para usar para vocabulario in nuestro clase de pares aprendiendo inglés y español. (y el segundo nivel para los más avanzados). Desarollé unas lecciónes que usan los dos libros y tienen más práctica (porque el libro es casi puro vocabulario.) A los alumnos les gustan las cintas y las explicaciones fáciles en su misma idioma porque animan mucho. Y con un nativo para ayudarle pronunciar es aún mejor. Están invitando y pidiendo copias para sus amigos.

Hola amigo este libro es buenaso, y te asegure que tu si vaz a poder hablar English, solo tienes que tomar tu tiempo en escuchar los types and repetir las palabras. Con practicas todo se puede.

Ingles para Latinos makes learning English enjoyable with little jokes and cute illustrations. You can listen to the tapes in the car for review. The tips on how to learn a second language are especially valuable.

A short book that has been very important in opening up the field of social memory and in bringing the work of Maurice Halbwachs back into focus. The book is a good introduction to the basic problems of social memory, useful to historians, sociologists and anthropologists. Connerton makes the important point that social memory is essentially performative in character and points to the importance of the bodily practices in memory. The final chapter on bodily practices is however rather disappointing in that he tends to equate bodily memory with 'habit memory', thereby putting stress too much on repetition and the incorporation of codes and missing important points on the phenomenological primacy and agency of the body. Still a classic, though.

Connerton's thesis about the communal/social aspects of memory prompted me to recall the proposed research project of a friend of mine in a doctoral programme, dealing with aspects of received knowledge of children - how do children of each successive generation, across social classes and often across cultural divides, seem to know certain things that are not taught to them by adults, particularly as adults seem to have forgotten these things themselves, but that are known by other children. How is this collective childhood body of knowledge maintained and continued without any formalised structure of preservation or transmission? This type of question can have relevance toward many types of study.

Connerton's distinction between social memory and historical reconstruction is an important one. We might know the factual (or, at least, the conjectured factual) details of lost cultures and societies, but their social memory is, by virtue of their disappearance, inaccessible to us, save in the possible elements that have been continued in present cultures or societies. However, I am not sure I can subscribe to Connerton's complete application of the principle of historical reconstruction being necessarily removed from social memory. Connerton writes, 'A historically tutored memory is opposed to an unreflective traditional memory.' (p. 16) We none of us operate as pure historical reconstructionists; our social memory influences even the manner in which we pursue an historical memory; surely there is a cross-influence as work as some level (and perhaps often different levels).

Connerton works with distinctions: distinctions between myths and rites; distinctions between gestures referential and notational; distinctions between rites as symbolic, rites as quasi-textual, rites only in context; distinctions between literate and oral cultures and cultural aspects. However, it is in the blending of these elements that most of life is lived. For instance, Connerton states:

'The impact of writing on social memory is much written about and evidently vast. The transition from an oral culture to a literate culture is a transition from incorporating practices to inscribing practices.' (p. 75)

However, our culture is not an exclusively literate culture; it has not become a non-oral culture. Perhaps the most non-oral, literacy-dependent aspect of modern culture and information/learning transmission is the advent of the internet, yet even here, the trend even in the infancy of the internet is toward an incorporation of oral aspects - from examining aspects as formal as those internet teaching methods that are most effective to as simple an analysis of which websites are most popular, those which are text-only seem to be less effective and have less impact, whereas those which have 'multi-media' elements (voice, music, etc.) are more effective.

Still, one must not neglect the very different character of certain kinds of information. Particularly when examining the past, the difference between oral-based cultures and oral/literate cultures (there have been no exclusively literate-based cultures in history), the kind of history formed, maintained and transmitted is different.

'The oral history of subordinate groups will produce another type of history: one in which not only will most of the details be different, but in which the very construction of meaningful shapes will obey a different principle.' (p. 19)

One of the difficulties with much religious study (which is the lens through which I approach this work) is the problem of dealing in a predominantly literate way with cultural aspects that were originally oral. This is true even of those groups that arise in a culture with literate base - groups may have foundational documents (a literate device), but the formulation of those foundational documents is often an oral recollection, rarely committed to paper, and even if such deliberations are committed to paper, such as gets recorded is selectively chosen, and important elements are frequently omitted.

Connerton believes that commemorative rituals create a form of "metaphysical present" where participants actually re-present the mythic events that contain meaning for them-they give it "ceremonially embodied form." There are three distinct types of memory (personal, cognitive, and habit-memory), all of which shape individuals and groups in social ways. The habit-memory is acquired in a similar way to language, and Connerton shows how the "meaning of a social habit rests upon others' conventional expectations such that it must be interpretable as a socially legitimate (or illegitimate) performance. Social habits are essentially legitimating performances. And if habit-memory is inherently performative, then social habit-memory must be distinctively social-performative." Social habit-memory is an "essential ingredient in the successful and convincing performance of codes and rules" (pp. 35-6).

In a chapter on bodily practices, Connerton writes of the "choreography of authority," which is expressed through the body, where the specific postures, gestures, physical habit-memories, etc. used in performance of ritual provides a "mnemonics of the body" then provide codes for incorporating practices (much like inscribing practices, the study of which has been privileged in the West) (pp. 74-5). The implication, then, that we can "read" incorporated practices through their appropriate interpretation (much in the way that a hermeneutic scholarship has been able to interpret texts of law and theology, p. 96) as "techniques, proprieties, and ceremonies" seems like the development of a new theory that could potentially transform the study of ritual and performance in anthropology. An ability to "map" the habit-memory physicality of an event, in its historical and sociological context, could provide a way to speak about movement and action that-up to now-has not been accomplished.

It pretty much is a factual account of Howard Stern's life from his childhood days to his days in Detroit and WNBC radio. Nothing risque is really discussed. I would recommend it to someone who is looking for a viewpoint of Howard's life other than Howard. The author neither supports or chastises Stern, but presents the facts without any bias one way or the other, and that's nice to see in journalism. It's definitely worth checking out.

I found Paul Colford's book interesting, well-written, and entertaining. I have all of Howard Stern's books, videos, CDs, and a large collections of magazine articles and such. King of All Media is a nice addition to my collection. But don't take my word for it. Go to the nearest bookstore and check it out for yourself. Then get online and order it for less $$ from amazon.com.

I found this book to be informative to Stern's rise to fame and fortune. Nothing really groundbreaking or unbelieveable, just the facts. A very quick, but honest look at Howard's personal life. How he keeps everyone at bay and tries to isolate himself from the world at this house, which is understandable. Private Parts offers more humor, but a lot of the same stuff, of course.

I liked this book, but found some parts of it depressing, Pual Zindels work is like that, I've found. This book is reminicent of the Catcher in the Rye, something about the style is similar. I wanted to buy a copy of Pardon me You're Stepping on my Eyeball because I thought it was a sequel but sadly it's not.

This isn't a bad book, it's a good insight into a certain kind of teenage boy's mind and heart, and shows some of the problems with entering into a physical relationship lightly.

This book was simply a work of genius. The characters of Dewey and Yvette were completely plausible in the era in which the book was written, and the story is excellant. Although it has to be read slowly and with a dictionary (at times), it is utterly worth it. Great for first-time readers of Paul Zindel.

Mounting a history of that dysfunctional beast known as rock 'n' roll journalism is probably impossible. The field is plagued by self-aggrandizing guru-dom (hallo, Robert "Consumer Guide" Christgau), near-unintelligible academia-speak (Greil "Doctor of Letters" Marcus), perpetual grudge-holding (Richard "I Coulda Been A Contender" Meltzer) and even -- not to put too fine a point on it - death (Lester Bangs), meaning that egos and revisionism hold sway over objective anecdotal reporting. But British author Paul Gorman, despite some comments along the lines of, "this is no dust-dry account... nor it is a chin-stroking debate on 'whither the music press in the digital age?'" obviously wants his version of the rise and fall of the U.S. and U.K. music press from the late '50s to the present to be definitive.

It's not, of course, and the great irony surrounding In Their Own Write is that you'd think Gorman's literary format of choice - the oral history - would be tailor-suited to the subject. There are some loud, boisterous voices jostling to be heard on these 400 pages. To his credit, Gorman conducted interviews with scores of participants, from Meltzer, Greg Shaw and Lenny Kaye to such celebrated UK mavericks as Mick Farren, Tony Parsons and Vivien Goldman, additionally tapping secondary sources for quotes from more elusive personalities including Jann Wenner, Nick Kent and, er, Bangs.

The book's central flaw is the lack of expository narrative linking the quotes; only quirky subheadings break up the topics or eras. With a dizzying array of personalities and oftentimes overlapping time periods to juggle, readers unfamiliar with the original publications themselves (Creem, Bomp, Record Mirror, New Musical Express, etc.) won't get the requisite you-are-there feeling. The quotes read colorfully enough, particularly the segments on the fierce rivalries between the UK weeklies during Punk's heyday. But the book is ultimately no more than a huge box of snapshots dumped onto the floor and then assembled into a more-or-less linear order.

Among the other drawbacks: The U.S. press gets short shrift after its '70s golden era, as if to suggest that Gorman was unaware there was a thriving fanzine underground in the '80s or (more likely) that he feels music writing is a spent force on these shores. There's not a single photo in the book; given the volume and velocity with which many of Gorman's subjects erupt, one would love to see if, for example, NME maverick Nick Kent, depicted along rail-thin, wasted-rock star lines by his peers, fit the bill. (He did by the way: see the photo accompanying a review of this book in the December issue of Uncut.) And the book's general attitude of "gee, we did lots of drugs and got away with murder!" consistently gets in the way of the reader determining how and why the music itself excited and motivated the writers. But hey, at least we know they all worked in "horrible" offices and that respected author Barney Hoskyns was a heroin addict.

In summary, better places to start your own inquiries would be Abe Peck's Uncovering The '60s: The Life and Times of the Underground Press, which provides context within which the music press would emerge and Robert Draper's Rolling Stone Magazine: The Uncensored History Book and Jim DeRogatis' Lester Bangs bio Let It Blurt (neither are overviews but have terrific behind-the-scenes material), combined with rock criticism anthologies such as Meltzer's A Whore Just Like the Rest, Nick Kent's The Dark Stuff and Nick Tosches' The Nick Tosches Reader. (There's also a great rock lit archival website [the internet].)

All that said, as a longtime fan of rock-lit hagiography, the book kept my attention riveted -- kinda like driving past a bloody wreck on the highway and you can't help but staring.

Gorman, author of The Look (a serious look at rock fashion) now offers the first serious appraisal of music criticism and its history. Having been interviewed for the book myself, I know from personal experience how knowledgeable he is, and how thorough his research has been. The entire history of rock criticism, from the '50s right up to the present, is presented in quotes from leading participants. Filled with outrageous opinion and balanced judgment, it's as wild and wooly a collection as the collection of maniacs and misfits who write about music for a living. There are some excerpts up on Rock's Backpages, a great site for fans of rock writing at its best.

Hi

I'd agree with Mills critique in but one respect: it IS fascinating, but mainly for the little nuggets which have been dropped in there: The beatles publisher tried to sell their music rights in 1964 because he thought the bubble ahd to burst, Uk critic Charlie Gillett being welcomed by John Lennon in LA, who appeared to know all about him, and the best one - that Danny Fields alleges he and Pete Townshend were boyfriends.

Rolling Stone has now picked up on this and Pete doesn't seem to have a problem (see latest RS), though beware: Fields says he can't remember saying it. Nevertheless, for those who have wondered about the world which informs pete's writing down the years, it's an insight.

So on an anecdotal, "wow never knew that" level In Their Own Write deserves 5 stars.

As an intellectual overview of the music press it doesn't cut it. No Simon Reynolds, William Shaw, Chris Heath, John Harris or any of the real heavyweight stars who have brought a solid critical perspective and opinion to the music press (at least here in the UK) over recent years.

Still and all - it's nice to get the inside dirt once in a while!

The first one I have to say was very easy, but the rest are fairly challenging. This is a pretty good book, It's really great for road trips and get-togethers of almost any kind. I would recommend this book along with other titles by Paul Sloane for anyone who likes lateral thinking puzzles and some that don't.

Ingeninous Lateral Thinking Puzzles is a puzzle-ing book! It really is ingenious! Even the first warm-up puzzle was really tricky for me. When I find a interesting puzzle that I like, I tell it to my friends and they always get stumped on it.

The book is GREAT! Perfect for road trips, get-togethers or when you're just plain bored. The puzzles are never impossible to figure and almost always make you "Geez! I KNEW THAT"! Pick up Ingenious LTP and everything else by Sloane. Well worth it!