His chapter on Mishma, perhaps the most spectacular suicide of all the writers, is made as dry and boring as reading instructions on how to assemble a child's toy. The author's style is best suited for such or an academic dissertation, something one has to read rather that what someone would read for pleasure or information.

Those of us who are still alive have little reason to worry that our own mechanisms for clinging to life will be vividly portrayed in a book of this nature, but some people have official positions which call on them to interact with famous people in a way which this book cannot ignore. In the case of William H. Webster, director of the F.B.I. in 1979, his contribution to this book was a public statement concerning a rumor printed on May 19, 1970, "Papa's said to be a rather prominent Black Panther," (p. 335) about Jean Seberg, wife of Romain Gary, "but that the story had been broken independently by Haber shortly after the bureau had given the go-ahead to its Los Angeles division to disseminate the rumor." (p. 336). Webster's statement, "The days when the FBI used derogatory information to combat advocates of unpopular causes have long since passed. We are out of that business forever." (p. 336). Recent news that Webster has been appointed to head an accounting oversight board, after leading an auditing committee at U.S. Technologies which fired an auditor who wanted to dwell on derogatory information, leaves us up in the air on who is capable of coming up with more derogatory information, and what people who have it are supposed to do with it. Manic traits associated with such a situation include, "In conversation, she is a perpetual monologist, and ignores or disregards the interpolations of those about her. If someone continues to interrupt or contradict her, she may fly into a fit of virulent rage. Often she suffers from a persecution complex or else feels that she is surrounded by incompetents." (p. 435). Medicine might be more appropriate than death in most cases, but it shouldn't be surprising that one of the chapters of this book is about John Kennedy Toole, author of A CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES.

If you are looking for something more melodic, try Musso's Graded Fingerstyle Jazz Guitar Solos Book/CD Set. These are solos based not so loosely on jazz standards, which you'll have to recognize on your own as they aren't identified.

My advice - dispense with the "industry" of philosophy altogether, and especially its pathetic popularized forms. If you're not up to trying to read Heidegger (or any philosopher, dead or alive) himself, then just stay out of philosophy altogether.

Strathern also rightly raises the active and eager Nazism of Heidegger in the thirties that was indeed related to his philosophical ideas (p.62), although Strathern chivalrously tries to salvage the pure core of Heidegger's ideas from Nazi affinity. Finally, Strathern does not shrink back from recounting the failure of integrity and character seen in Heidegger's turning his back on his Jewish philosophical mentor Husserl during the Nazi era (p. 60) and from recounting the deception involved in Heidegger's lengthy adulterous relation with his much younger student Hannah Arendt (pp. 35-40).

Let me begin by saying any attempt to condense Heidegger's life and thought into 90 minutes is a cross between desperation and ridiculousness (someone like Woody Allen might say that St Peter would use it as a test to see who got into Philosopher's Heaven). I remember that trying to read three pages (sometimes three sentences) of Being and Time in 90 minutes was like speed-reading, and I still consider reading any part of Sein und Zeit to be a superb exercise for developing mid-term memory and cognition. To paraphrase Boswell, the miracle about "Heidegger in 90 Minutes" is not that it's done well, but that someone tried to do it at all.

Well, all that aside, I suppose this is as good an attempt as any, but don't get your expectations up. Strathern is heavy on the dark side of Heidegger's life (his Naziism, his ethical derelictions, his occasional philosophical and personal ridiculousness) but light on the good side of Heidegger (I don't think you will be able to impress a knowledgeable person with your knowledge of Heidegger by reading this book, if the subject should come up in a bar). He gives a reasonably good critique of Heidegger's thought and he focuses reasonably well on Heidegger's emphasis on Being as philosophy's major raison d'etre.

In summary, I think it's well worth the 90 minutes as an introduction, but don't plan on using it to write any essays for your philosophy class. Check out the internet, any good summary book of German philosophy, and the recent autobiography by R. Safranski. Make sure your pencils are sharp and your erasers plentiful. Bring a sense of humor and don't drive while listening to the audiotape (you won't fall asleep, but you won't pay attention to your driving, either).

As for the comment "some of the characters behave in such strange manner that their reasons for doing so just beggar belief. Unfortunately I cannot really go into this without revealing plot spoilers)", this is absolutely correct. I'd say read this for the characters, and give up on trying to make sense of the mystery.

I particularly enjoyed the development of Jane, the admiral's wife, in this story. Details regarding the legal rights (or lack of) for married women in Victorian England were particularly interesting, and the writer used the details to weave a story I couldn't put down.

The instructions were written as one paragraph rather than in steps and there are about two hand drawn diagrams accompanying the instructions for a garnish. Perhaps a professional chef can follow the instructions for complex cuts, but I could not since there weren't enough diagrams. There should have been numbered pictures that goes with the instructions. And there should have been a lot more diagrams. One diagram showing cutting on a mandolin was wrong -- the object being cut was shown in the wrong position so that you could not achieve the result using the diagram for guidance. An improvement would to use photographs instead of hand drawnings.

It also seemed that some garnishes were duplicates. That is it appeared that you read or seen the garnish covered before with little differentiation.

The tools should have been photographed rather than hand drawn since I could not make out enough detail so that I go out and buy a specific tool. It would been better if the author told you the part number and where you could buy the tool. I think there were a handful of referenced websites in the back.

Some offerings I have seen on PBS such as Yan Can Cook which are easier to follow seeing a video than the subject book.

The only good thing about the book were photographs for some of the finished products.

IHMO, I do not think that this book is worth buying.

Also the authors do not cover at all the Meta Object Protocol of Python or for example how it does virtual pointer-based interface inheritance. These are important concepts that a student of Python must know. Also missing is any information on the transmutation of objects under constraints.

All in all, way too elementary.

As a textbook it would be quite effective; if they would reissue it in a clean, easy-to-read format (like an O'Reilly or New Riders book for instance) I'd rate it higher.

This novel was copyrighted in 1993 so it is one of the earlier novels to use nantechnology as an integral part of the story. Paul McAuley also portrays an artificial reality in which many people choose to die and go to. McAuley writes, it appears to me, that man still struggles with himself, even 600 years into the future, that prophecy is almost sure to come true as we seem to have an innate ability and desire to fight among ourselves.

McAuley in this novel sometimes writes in a vague and discordant manner, which makes reading a bit difficult at times, and a reader has to pay attention to a lot of details to keep proper track of the plot. Also, I personally feel the novel could have been 30-40 pages shorter, as there are long dull stretches here and there.