Forget this lame outdated atlas. For a beginner's atlas, try Wil Tirion's "The Cambridge Star Atlas" instead. This includes a similar limiting magnitude of stars, but plots many more deep sky objects (and gives many common names as well, completely lacking on Norton's maps). The graphics and printing are much cleaner in Tirion's tome, and deep sky objects are color-coded.

The moon atlas in Norton looks like a bad photocopy of a photograph. And Norton's star charts go right into the gutter. Just try to get a look on Map 5/6 at delta Orionis (the westernmost star in Orion's belt). The Reference Handbook in Norton is OK, but beginners should try Terence Dickinson's "Nightwatch" and "The Backyard Astronomer" instead. Sure, Norton was great for its time, but who wants to drive a Model T today?

Just because this book isn't "pretty" is a lame reason not to buy it. The star charts are not meant so much for telescopic work as to give you a naked-eye reference. Sometimes, not having a million stars crammed onto two pages is nice. No self-respecting astronomer (apparently the 1 stars aren't) would be without this book. Heck, even the editor of Sky & Telescope uses it...

As another point, the star charts only comprise about 15% of this book. The "Reference Handbook" is where this is a gem. The lists of objects to view interspersed between the star charts are invaluable as are the 100+ pages of astronomical information. If you skip this book because two reviewers gave it one star (while the others gave it a 4 or 5) you don't deserve it. Sure, the information concise, but when you're out at night, reading through fluff isn't what you want to do...

This is probably a book to buy after you've stuck to the hobby for a year and know yo're hooked :)

Clear skies!

PS Never trust people who only buy things based on how "pretty" they look...

Norton's simply keeps getting better. Earlier editions nurtured multiple generations of amateur (and not so amateur) stargazers. This latest edition is a concise, complete atlas AND reference. The Sky Atlas 2000 or Cambridge Star Atlas are also fine road maps to the skies. An even better bargain is the Bright Star Atlas 2000 (Wil Tirion did all three and is tops as a celestial cartographer), but all lack the wealth of other reference information that is contained in Norton's.

The style is definitly in the Sgt. Friday mode: "Just the facts". But there are so many of them! Page after page of succinctly written information on practical astronomy, the solar system, moon, deep-sky objects, etc.

For an evening looking at the heavens, if you don't want to carry around the local library, this one volume easily suffices.

Just so you know before you buy, this is only the chorus book. It includes only songs where one of the chorus' (pirates, daughters, or police) is singing. No solos or smaller numbers are included and neither is the script.

We're staging a production of "Pirates" in April 2002, and we have two editions of this score by G. Schirmer. The cheaper one is for the chorus, and has just the choral passages. The more expensive one (listed here) has the complete vocal music and dialogue.

I have seen both, and would rate them at five stars except that the original page plates are a little dirty, introducing some confusing dots and spots.

I'm not sure what an earlier reviewer is saying about this score not having the solo stuff. This book has the complete score and dialoge. I've used it for two productions of POP and it is missing nothing.
Unless this is a different edition than the one I have..but it has the exact same cover and credits so I doubt it.

Cranfield and Moy do manage to get across a few useful facts and strategies for straight pool, but there's really nothing new here. Not only is the content of the book fairly weak, it's also full of technical inaccuracies. Considering the level of play that Cranfield was at, it's interesting to note that he apparently has no grasp whatsoever of the actual effects of english and throw. While a good player of any of the other cuesports might find this a useful introduction to the strategy of straight pool, I think a beginner may find this book does irreparable harm to his understanding of basic fundamentals.

I've had the pleasure of watching Babe Cranfield play on numerous occasions. In my opinion, he ranks as one of the the top straight pool players of all time. The beauty of his game was an aggressive style coupled with brilliant pattern play. Few could run a rack in the simple uncomplicated manner of the Babe. This book conveys the importance of pocketing balls in the correct sequence to ensure run-outs without moving the cueball all over the table - a lost art to the modern nine ball player. While there are no new fundamentals or deep secrets revealed, the reader does gain insight from one of the finest gentlemen to ever play the game.

This was a thoroughly enjoyable read. In pool speak - a "dead on" combination of personal anecdotes of one of pool's greatest champions and useful techniques for improving your game. This book is much easier to read (and thus, in many respects, more useful) than a number of comprehensive treatises on the game that are available. Larry Moy has made a great contribution to the game and, together with "Babe," has gone a long way to making a difficult, but exciting, game a little easier and even more enjoyable.

This book is about a man who runs away from his father because the father does nothing but yell at him. This book is one of my favorites, even though I gave it a four, because it had a lot of action and it made me want to keep reading. Although I still think that the orignal was one of the better ones that have been written.

The book "Rip Van Winkle" is about a guy named Rip and his father, Dame, who thinks that Rip can never do anything right. Dame is always yelling at Rip. Dame really got mad when Rip sold part of the family property, so he went away for awhile and met some strangers and started to drink quite a lot of beer. You have to read the book to find out what happens next.

Several of these other reviews are for a different version of this story. The one I am reviewing is an "All Aboard Reading" version. It is definitely written for beginning readers (1st-3rd grade)

This version is a good introduction to the classic Washington Irving story. I do not like the way Rip's wife yells at him to get to work or how Rip is only "maybe...a little" sad when we finds out that his wife has died after his long sleep. Neither Rip nor his wife were the most exemplary characters! :-)

Still, that is the way the story was written and can be a good launch into a talk about character.

I listened to an Audio CD version of the play and I regret to say that I found it unmoving. The Brooklyn accents of the characters seemed to fade in and out on occasion and they deep dark revelations about their personal lives seemed to be revealed without much emotion most of the time.

I really had high hopes for the drama but felt it was more gimmick than gripping.

I found Broken Glass interesting but disappointing. One expects the film to hold a much deeper secret and comes away from it thinking "This story has already been told." The three main actors, Margot Leicester, Mandy Patinkin and Henry Goodman, are all marvelous and far better than the script allows. I found Elizabeth McGovern a rather strange choice for the role of Dr.Hyman's wife. I own this film because I'm a huge Mandy Patinkin fan, but I wouldn't have spent the money otherwise.

The dimensions of healing placed in contradistinction to the tyranny of complaint.

I bought this book ...in hope to get some help in explaining basics of musical acoustics to my college-age kids in a systematic, organized manner. What a disappointment!

In page 56 the author lists "Measured Values of Components of a Set of Guitar Strings".
One would expect a discussion about string inharmonicity as an explanation why partials of different strings have different frequencies while having the same fundamental' frequency. An utterly important and well known phenomenon is "responsible" for correct musical instruments recognition and perception is completely avoided in the text. Moreover, in the page 66 we found that "It is easy to verify ... that lopping off the higher frequency members of ...harmonics does not alter the perceived pitch of the sound". This statement is simply wrong: it is an established fact that the spectrum of the sound DOES affect the perceived pith. On the page 194 another treasure left me wondering what the author meant by "Compact, small, solid objects act somewhat as new sources of sound that originate new impulses of modified shape whenever an impulse is incident upon them". Here's more of the same amusing kind on the page 574:
"Brass instruments, particularly French horns, often "talk" to one another, so that the sound radiated by one of them enters the bell of its neighbor and thence joins in at the player's lips to influence the regime of oscillation." Tell this to a brass player!

There're glowing phrase on the back cover of this book by Audio Amateur, American Scientist, Physics Today and Stereo Review. While the first and the last - now extinct - publications can be "forgiven" as being amateur indeed, the American Scientist's and Physics' credibility is drastically diminished in my eyes; it's hard for me to believe those magazines fell for this misleading and in many cases simply wrong, book.
As a whole, this Mr. Benade' creation is anything but "a landmark book in its field, hailed for its astonishingly clear, delightfully readable statement of everything of acoustical importance..." as stated on the back; rather this book is nothing more that a pathetic waste of paper.

This book, like practically all Dover science books, is a reprinted old book that does not incorporate any of the recent research in acoustics. For example, much research on acoustics as related to the design of a theatre is not in here. However, if you have a good grasp of fundamental physics (say, you took some good college physics classes but it has been quite a few years back), and now you just want to see how the physics you learned apply to the making of musical instruments, this book provides a nice overview.

I studied with Dr. Benade, taking his course in musical acoustics, at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, some years ago. Dr. Benade was a brilliant and dedicated scientist in the area of musical acoustics, but he was highly opinionated and sometimes inflexible. He refused to accept, for example, that flutes could produce "whisper tones", a standard 20th Century player's/composer's technique which I have used many times in my compositions (and can perform myself on the flute).

Nonetheless, this book is a very important book to read and own if you are interested in the fundamentals of the acoustics of musical instruments (not performing spaces as other reviewers have pointed out). This book was the text which Benade used to teach his courses. Add this to your collection of musical acoustics books...and be sure to include "Horns Strings and Harmony", Benade's earlier book, as well as the book by John Pierce and of course the book by Helmholtz.

Anybody who wastes their time reading this book will undoubtly realize that Artie has put his friends and acquantices up to writing rave reviews of a horrible book. Art's entire body of work only exposes his own shallow narsacisitc personality. Hey Art, go and crawl back to your hovel and fade from our memory you creep.

This is the first Nersesian book ive ever read and it will probably be the last. Its not that i didnt like, its a great book, but nothing special.The random philosopy was great, i couldnt get enough of hearing him describe the manner of people in ny city.Nersesians portrayal of life in ny was without a doubt fascinating and intriguing. Although the plot was weak and not so great of an ending, yet there was a sense of redemption at the end. However i think this book had some of the most unique characters ever, who wouldnt like a porn star turned soccer mom and a neurotic schizophrenic lawyer? I loved the characters.
I would recommend this novel to anyone, but beware of explicit sex scenes. And dont judge this book as a psychosexual thriller cause its not. the VHS packaging was a great idea too. overall this was a good book.

Publisher's Weekly states that the author of this novel has a "cult following." I've never read a Nersesian novel before, and I'm definitely not of the cult follower element, but I thought this was a great novel. I nearly didn't buy the book because of the unfortunate way the publisher opted to cover the book. But, believe me, it's worth a closer examination. This is not a genre novel. It is beyond the psychosexual thriller label it was given. This it literature. This is a carefully written, closely observed, character study that pulled me in from the first page, through the finely wrought time shifts, and on to the satisfyingly redeeming end page. I will certainly read more by this author, and if that makes me a cult follower, sign me up. Congratulations on your creation of a great piece of literature, Mr. Nersesian.

I have the third edition and the latest edition of this book. In my opinion, the later editions have been dumbed down considerably. In addition to developing the basics of vector analysis, the older editions included splendid discussions of curvilinear coordinates, tensor analysis and touched on differential forms (the wedge product being introduced). While the latest edition features appendices covering specific applications such as Maxwells and Navier-Stokes equations, the explanations are far too brief to be of much use. I suggest that interested parties attempt to get used older editions whose content were presumably under the control of Davis (not Snider) being much better written and probably less expensive. The older edition had few typos with very useful and entertaining problem sets. A better alternative book might be "Vectors and Tensors in Engineering and Physics" by Donald A. Danielson in paperback.

This book was used in my vector calculus class at UCSD. I think if I was in one of my upper division engineering classes it would be great to use as a reference to help me figure out problems. However, as a math book alone, this was not too helpful. Many of the explanations lack clarity and are from a mathmatician's point of view (in other words, very difficult for lower division students who are not math majors to understand). Also, a lot of the problems are practically impossible. The only reason I did alright in this class was because I had a great teacher. I would recommend this book for people who are in science or engineering classes and need a superficial introduction to vector calculus, but NOT for math classes that go into deep analysis of vectors.

This book provides a great reference for people studying the physical sciences. I'm a Ph.D. student in Physical Chemistry and have been using it extensively to help out with some other courses. It might not be as good for someone with a more puritanical or abstract interest, e.g. a mathematician, but it's great for anyone that needs a handy reference that explains the rudiments of vector analysis.

Most popular books in search of the historical Arthur (and there are many such books and just about as many theories regarding who the "real" Arthur was) use the same classic sources (Gildas, Nennius, Geoffrey of Monmouth, and a few others) and, increasingly, archaeological data. Welsh literary sources, such as the "Brut Y Brenhinedd," the Triads, and bardic poetry, are generally relegated to the background and are often wholly ignored, despite the rather obvious fact the Welsh people are the primary cultural heirs of whatever society in which the historical Arthur existed. Blake and Lloyd reverse this approach in "The Keys to Avalon," giving their main focus to such Welsh literary sources. Their approach certainly is not without controversy. They follow the lead of a few earlier writers who contend that at least some versions of the "Brut Y Brenhinedd" derive independently from the same source used by Geoffrey of Monmouth to write his great "Historia Regum Britanniae" and are not, as most scholars contend, simply Welsh translations of Geoffrey's work. The difference is crucial since the "Brut" uses Welsh names for locations which differ greatly from the English names in Geoffrey's book. Blake and Lloyd contend that Geoffrey altered the Welsh originals to make his book better suited for an English audience and for political purposes. This is an important point and, if true, could mean that the historical Arthur operated on a smaller stage (North Wales, for the most part) than most popular accounts which have him ranging over large portions of present-day England and Scotland. I certainly am not qualified to absolutely judge the validity of what Blake and Lloyd have to say on the matter, but I do hope their book inspires others to take a serious look at this possibility, either to confirm their analysis or to disprove it.

I have little doubt that Blake and Lloyd in their enthusiam for their Welsh-oriented reconstruction of Arthurian fact have at least in a couple areas gone well beyond what the evidence can support. Specifically, I find their claim that Offa's Dyke (a mammoth earthwork almost universally credited to the Eighth Century Mercian King Offa) was built by the Third Century Roman Emperor Severius to be entirely unconvincing. (There is now archaeological evidence that Wat's Dyke may date from the Fifth Century and thus might explain accounts of a wall in northern Wales prior to Offa.) And secondly, I consider their re-writing of the history of the Anglo-Saxon conquest of much of Britain (moving events from their traditional locations to an exclusively Welsh context) to be very unlikely, as it seems to ignore non-Welsh and archaeological sources that bear upon the question.

Nonetheless, I think that "The Keys to Avalon" is worth reading, even if with a sceptical eye, for its intriguing analysis of the North Wales sites associated with a possible historical Arthur.

As someone very interested in Arthurian legends I bought this book not really expecting to read anything really new - especially as a work has recently appeared on Arthur in Wales. I was wrong!

O.K., you can argue about place names and whose source material is better than whose until doomsday, but nothing helps more to give a book that 'something extra' than a good dose of common-sense.

My initial reaction was one of sceptcism, especially when Geoffrey of Monmouth appeared on the scene, but I took a jump of faith and waded in. Once you have read the entire book - and not tried to nit pick on every individual piece of evidence - the overall picture is extremely convincing.

I may not agree with everything held within this books cover, but there is certainly enough here to warrant further study and debate. I take my hat off to the authors for an extremely well researched piece of work.

Suddenly, the Dark Ages make sense.

The Keys to Avalon explores fact, folklore, myths and legends and brings them together in a work which offers a stunningly simple,logical explanation for why so many 'academics' have struggled for so long to make sense of the Dark Ages.

Put simply, it is the survival of the ancient Welsh language and culture which provides the Key to this new understanding of the Dark Ages.

Until this book, Arthurian (and other) legends associated with the Dark Ages have been interpreted from the anglicised (as in Anglo Saxon) view, with errors having crept in through translations from Welsh to Latin and then to English.

The Keys to Avalon goes back to the original Welsh records of these times, and unlocks the door to a greater understanding of the period by considering the meaning of the original Ancient Welsh language, which differs from the current Welsh language in some critical ways.

In 'The Keys to Avalon' the authors seem to have compared the ancient Welsh accounts of the Dark Ages with the standard versions based on the Anglo-Saxon accounts. The authors give due regard to the fact that there is often a grain of truth in folklore, myths and legends passed down verbally through the generations. This seems particularly appropriate in Wales where even today, despite the celebration of the survival of the Welsh language in the various Eisteddfodau, the majority of fluent Welsh speakers have difficulty in reading and writing the Welsh language.

This book brings to life the Welsh countryside - looking at names and features on maps and showing how the Arthurian legends suddenly 'fit' into specific geographic areas of realistic extent.

Once in a while something comes along which is so blindingly obvious that you think 'why didn't anyone say this before?' I can imagine there are a lot of academics and authors out there who will be wishing now that they had made the same efforts that Steve Blake and Scott Lloydd have in their work, which literally does rewrite Dark Age history.

This is a superb book which will be enjoyed by anyone with an open, unprejudiced, mind.

I think that just listing this book with its now inappropriate title, "The *New* Encyclopedia of Freemasonry", and saying it was published in 1994 misleads a lot of people even if you throw in the word "reprint". If you want to do historic research on what people thought in the early 1900s, it's fine. But there has been a lot of research since then. If you want a good up to date Masonic Enclopedia, get Coil's Masonic Encyclopedia which was extensively revised in 1995.

I give this book 4 stars because it has alot of great information in it, but it is very old, and the verbage is outdated.

There are a few things every mason must have and he should seek these as soon as possible, or maybe his lodge will give them to him when he become a mason. First: he should have a copy of the great "White Light," The HOLY BIBLE; then he should also have Book of Constitions (his Grand Lodge Bylaws), a copy of the "work" (manual of freemasonry or Grand Lodge issued key), bylaws of his own lodge, and a dictionary. With these basics we begin our journey into masonry and my first recomendation is The Builders next this Encyclopedia