Paul Bowles was a great writer who also did us the service of translating many Morroccan writings. One of these writers is Mohammed Mrabet. This little title Mhashish was put out by the City Lights label many years ago. It contains tales largely revolving around the use of kif (or hashish as Americans would call it) It is a delightful collection of tales. Mrabet is a talented writer. He draws up some tantalizing tales that delve into the positive and negative of this state of mind. It is a good introductory volume for the novice (admittedly I am a novice myself) of Morroccan literature. Mr Bowles did us a great favor in translating numerous works by Mrabet. Let us pray to Allah that City Lights finds it in their hearts to reissue these fine collections of exotic literature.

Mrabet teeters like an innocent child on the edge of paranoia and madness. These disturbed visions, bubbling up from the very hashish inspired dreams that Mrabet describes, provide insight into the bizarre world of Tangier and the Rif mountains where western values merge in an unsettling medley with ancient Berber traditions anchored in superstition, hallucination, and deceit. Bowles and his intrinsic understanding of this bizarre culture have brought us a most valuable translation that otherwise might never have reached western minds.

Mr. Williams has done a fantastic job of clearly and effectively laying down the foundations of the Mahayana movement. This movement, arguably the most colorful of the incarnations of Buddhist thought and theory, has a convoluted past, and Mr. Williams has expertly shown the reader the origins of the Mahayana and the origins of modern Buddhism. The only criticism that would in any way deter the reader from thinking this work to be one of the definitive in the doctrine is William's unfortunate tendency to mix his opinions which are for the most part religiously based, with philosophical quandries. Mr. Williams is the European Secretary for the International Association of Buddhist Studies, and I feel as such his opinion surfaces on several issues, most notably in the chapter on the Saddharmapundarika Sutra. The educated reader, or at least the reader able to assimilate William's position, can, however, easily overcome the minor references to academia based on faith rather than empirical knowledge. All minor biases aside, Mahayana Buddhism: The Doctrinal Foundations is a superior work when compared to many mainstream texts used in Buddhist study, which tend to be more esoteric, or treat only specific facets of the huge diaspora that spawned Buddhist practice in so many countries. Mr. Williams has produced a great work of fantastic merit in regards to understanding Mahayana Buddhism, and should be lauded for his work which makes, in my humble opinion, a stupendous read.

I found this book extremely helpful on mutiple levels. Beyond the fact that Mahayana Buddhism suffers from a lack of cohesive literature combined, Williams counters this problem in his gathering of doctrine and his own insight on the history, evolution, and spread of Mahayana. He shows great detail to the evolution of each "school" and how it was affected by the geographic, ethnic, and cultural environments that fomred each branches specifics.

A historical paper trail is fomed for many of the major works attributed to Mahayanist thought, so that we see roots formed. This grants immense clearity to many misunderstanding about certain school ideologies that might appear completely unrelated until all the details are shown within Williams book.

Although there are no actual sutras translated, the book is a perfect starting point for philosophies, history, and a listing of many of the great Mahayana sutras, which one could then find available to start forming an actual library for practice and reference.

As a Priest in the Pure Land tradition and trained in both Mahayana and Theravadin, this book stands apart in my findings of authors that spread knowledge in quanity and quality instead of minute chunks for only lineage lip service.

Really I would give it 4.5 stars if I could.

It's a good book, but it should be titled 'NT and 2000 registry'. It discusses both. This might be a bonus to some (who would like info on both) and a disadvantage to others (who already own stuff about NT registry). There are a few errors and some things I would change, and I wouldn't say it's as good as some other Oreilly books I've read.

There are sections just about policy settings which is good and a nice set of appendicies.

Regardless of your experience with the registry, this book can be of value to you. Despite the title, there are references in almost every section of the book on the Windows NT 4 registry, which can be helpful if you are working in a mixed environment or are coming from the NT 4 side of things.

The author starts the book by assuming you have no previous experience with the registry, and takes you on a 5 chapter tour, covering topics such as the history of the registry, how to navigate, what each part does, how to back it up and restore it, the different editors you can use, etc. From there, the book progresses for a couple of chapters on configuring policies - using the Policy Editor and GPO/OU policies within Windows 2000.

The author does include a surprising chapter in the middle entitled "Programming with the Registry" (Chapter 8) in which he covers many of the API calls for the registry and the Shell Utility, and then gives demos in C/C++, Perl and Visual Basic. My personal opinion is that that chapter is a little advanced for the book as a whole, but if you're not into it, it can be skipped without much loss to you.

The book also spends 2 chapters covering administration and tweaks (plus a great index section on the Group Policy Objects), and the final chapter documents what each hive in the registry does.

All in all, it's worth a read.

I liked it. I found very creative and interesting. I was never bored. Great work, Paul! :) I highly recommend it.

This collection brings the tradition of Latin American writers to the shores of the Hudson River. The work is unqiue and compelling.

This is a good first novel. It has a few of the faults one might anticipate in a first published work, such as occasional confused and wandering moments in the plot, but it is engaging and well worth reading.

The characters are not an ordinary group, or well, maybe I should say that these are not the sort of characters who usually appear in novels. The main figure in the story is a completely tattooed man, Mark. He is introduced to the reader as a man who has had male lovers and is now living with his wife and child.

When I read on the book's jacket that the plot involves Mark's child being kidnapped by his former (male) lover, I wondered if this would be another book that contains homophobic or even biphobic material. It does not. If anything, it does exactly the opposite by providing the reader with the insight that the character's sexuality does not affect their propensity to be moral or immoral, loving or unloving, honest or dishonest. The author has treated every character, from the heterosexual policeman to the lesbian grandmother, as an individual who is not solely defined by their sexuality.

The most engrossing chapters of the book, relating to the search for Mark's former lover and his child, do take an amazing leap into what could be described as magic realism or phantastic symbolism, or allegory. Despite their unusual concepts, they meld well with the suspensful story, and do work to enhance the plot.

The conclusion is a happy one for most of the characters, but it may not please every reader. Still, it pleased this reader, and that's why this review has been posted.

This book leaves one feeling that all ideas about "normality" and "the ordinary" need to be re-examined. It is also a tale that inspires the reader to believe that communication and trust are the only tools needed to untagle even the most excruciating human dilemmas.

It was pure pleasure to read this book. It evokes the settings (North Eastern England) wonderfully and gets inside the characters cleverly by changing perspective from one chapter to the next (Magrs seems to do this in all his books - I've read four of his now) which makes you sympathise with them all. It is also a very funny book.

I found this, and two of his other books I've read (Could It Be Magic & All The Rage) utterly life-affirming, joyful reading experiences!

The story of Max Factor as he rose from Russian immigrant to Hollywood royalty-the man who brought glamour to the stars and regular folks alike with the invention of pancake makeup, no fade lipstick and the idea that makeup should fit a woman's coloring. (He had rooms in his store for blondes, brownettes, brunettes and redheads-all color coded and enhanced to work with the skin tones of the women in each category!) The star of this book is definitely the photographs, however. Make-up test shots, his early years in Russia, wig making contraptions, print ads of the stars endorsing his products-the pictures tell a better story than the text!

Filled to the brim with glamour shots of some of the Western World's most beautiful women, this book shows us the man beind the mask, the incomparable Max Factor. Almost every shot is shown behind the scenes, how the look was created, etc. . .Truly a masterpiece work.

This book covers Paul's youth, parents background and some background info on his family tree. A great way to get comfortable with the environment which created Paul; as a son, brother, friend & ultimatly as a musician and enertainer.

Interviews with teachers, friends from Liverpool create a well balanced look at Pauls background and the dynamics of how and where the Beatles met.

A must read for Beatle and McCartney fans.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It is well researched and equally well written.

I really like the way interviews with people who knew the former Beatle are included; one gets a "personal" picture of Paul McCartney. This author is skilled at bringing Paul McCartney to the forefront of his readers' collective consciousness.

This book gets three cheers and a hearty "yeah, yeah, yeah"! from me!

I find Tournier's writing very agreeable. He goes into the task of seperating the personage from the person. Basing it on dialect with others and having communication with your own spiritual self Tournier provokes many interesting thoughts. A good read.

I believe Paul Tournier began his career as a medical doctor in Geneva, Switzerland, in the 1940's, but so many people who came to him about their physical problems complained about their religious and emotional difficulties, that he trained to become a psychotherapist. He was a scientist as well as a devout Christian, and one of the main ideas of his books is the restoration of the doctor-patient human relationship in the practice of medicine. In that he may have been a forerunner of the holistic style of medicine that emerged about twenty yars later.
"The Meaning of Persons" is a good book to start with, if you are inclined to read books on healing with a Christian point of view. His style is intimate, readable, and charming, and his translators are very good. You will want to read more of his books.

The book is an excellent primer for those wishing to learn about, or expand their knowledge of the structural steel industry. Not really useful for technical information and practically useless as an estimating guide (a new edition is called for), it is, however, wonderful as a guide to the business end of this old but unstoried industry.

For the first time there is a book on the market that covers Miscellaneous Iron and other Metals, such as aluminum and bronze. Steel stairs are also extensively covered. This book should be revised for actuality, in a new edition, regarding estimations, because it dates back to 1989.

This book is an overview of measure theory that is somewhat dated in terms of the presentation, but could still be read profitably by someone interested in studying the subject with greater generality than more modern texts. Measure theory has abundant applications, and has even gained importance in recent years in such areas as financial engineering. Those interested in the applications of measure theory to financial engineering should choose another book however, since this one does not even mention the word martingale. After a review of elementary topology and set theory in chapter 1, the author begins to define the elementary notions of measure theory in chapter 2. His approach is more general than other texts, since he works over a ring instead of an algebra. Measures on intervals of real numbers is given as an example. Measures and outer measures are defined, and it is shown how a measure induces an outer measure and how an outer measure induces a measure.

The next chapter explores more carefully the relation between measures and outer measures. It is also shown in this chapter to what extent a measure on a ring can be extended to the generated sigma-ring. The all-important Lebesgue measure is developed here also, and the author exhibits an example of a non-measurable set.

In order to develop an integration theory, one must first characterize the collection of measurable functions, and the author does this in chapter 4. The convergence properties of measurable functions are carefully outlined by the author.

The theory of integration begins in chapter 5, wherein the author follows the standard construction of an integral by first defining integrals over simple functions. Then in chapter 6, signed measures are defined, and the Lebesgue bounded convergence theorem is proven and the Hahn and Jordan decompositions of these measures are discussed. The all-important Radon-Nikodym theorem, which gives an integral representation of an absolutely continuous sigma-finite signed measure, is proven in detail.

One can of course take the Cartesian product of two measurable spaces, and the author shows how to define measures on these products in chapter 7, including infinite products. The physicist reader may want to pay attention to the section on infinite dimensional product measures, as it does have applications to functional integration in quantum field theory (although somewhat weakly).

The author treats measurable transformations in chapter 8, but interestingly, the word "ergodic" is never mentioned. He also introduces briefly the L-p spaces, so very important in many areas of mathematics, and proves the Holder and Minkowski inequalities.

The next chapter is the most important in the book, for it covers the notion of probability on measure spaces. After an brief motivation in the first section of the chapter, probability spaces are defined, and Bayes' theorem is discussed as an exercise. Both the weak and strong law of large numbers is proven in detail.

Things get more abstract in chapter 10, which discusses measure theory on locally compact spaces. Borel and Baire sets on these kinds of spaces are defined, and the author gives detailed arguments on what must be changed when doing measure theory in this more general kind of space.

The book ends with a discussion of measure theory on topological groups via the Haar measure. This chapter also has connections to physics, such as in the Faddeev-Popov volume measure over gauge equivalent classes in quantum field theory. The author does a fine job of characterizing the important properties of the Haar measure.

If you want to stydy measure theory from scratch, I do recommend this book. This book is based on a ring, not an algebra, and is a little old-fashioned. So some people feel uncomfortable. But in particular, product spaces, the Fubini theorem and extension theorems are written very clearly. I'm convinced this book will facilitate your learning in measure theory and probability theory.