from the point of view of theoretical physics then, this is a highly dissapointing book. You wont find the insight which usually is the standard practice in theoretical physics. with the exception of the last chapter all other are too much descriptive with minimum insight into the hard core of physics, that is mathematics and with no explicit mechanics analysis.

Perhaps the book is wriiten for engineers which belong to another scientific culture than theoreetical physics. But then why is it published in the m series?

finally I need to congratulate SPRINGER for its ability to produce nice hardbound editions at rational prices. Publishers
like Cambridge for example could not even dream offering hardbound books at thse prices. I only hope that in the future Springer will publish something more fundamental in fluid dynamic control.

'figaro gets divorced' is his most famous play, and reintroduces the famous quartet of Beaumarchais' 'Barber of Seville' and 'Marriage of Figaro' - the Count and Countess Almaviva; their married servants, Figaro and Susanna - seven years later, or over a hundred - we first see them flee an unnamed Revolution, not unlike the Russian one.

It may be distressing to see Beaumarchais' farcical subversion made heavy and Germanic in a three-hours, thirteen-tableaux political drama. The impish Figaro soon leaves his anachronistic employers to become, once more, a barber, this time in a sleepy, ultra-conformist, soon-to-be-Nazi German town. The bourgeoisification of this free, cynical spirit stifles his wife, and she has a brutal affair. Sex in this play is no longer, as in Beaumarchais, an expression of power, just an admission of defeat.

Figaro returns to the Communist State to become a prominent apparatchik; Susanna waitresses at a White cabaret where all the menials are ex-royalty; Almaviva gets embroiled in debilitating gambling and criminal activities. A lot of goodwill for these characters is carried over from Beaumarchais, Mozart and Rossini, so when we watch their inexorable decline, it's hard to know whether it is our memories, or Von Horvath's writing that affects us.

Certainly, there is something powerful about watching the spirit of one Revolution grimly debased in the age of another; and there is a vivid intensity to the playwright's expert tableaux. The dialogue initially seems lumpenly didactic until we realise that it is didacticism he analyses and undermines. Hearteningly, despite all the despair and misery, Von Horvath doesn't forget he's writing in an important tradition of comedy. More please.

The defendant has no right of appeal and is rarely able to present a coherent case - even if they do, those within the Vatican itself have to assess it. Lest anybody whatsoever think this will change in the future, the inquisitorial attitude of the Wojtyla papacy is certain to continue throughout the 21st century as the Catholic Church moves toward a smaller, but much more loyal, membership.

Of themselves, the accounts are by no means anything special, but do offer a reasonable degree of understanding. For those who know nothing about the Vatican, those involved must be described as the last generation of speculative theologians the Catholic Church will ever see, with diasgreements involved on such issue as papal power and female ordination.

The book is reasonable, clear, if disturbing, but it leaves one with a feeling of lacking an understanding of why the Vatican feels so concerned about its own power, and especially about those (believe it or not, mostly laity) who report such deviations in doctrine to the Vatican.

A worthy read if you do not have fear, but for those with any knowledge of the Vatican, superfluous.