This book contains three stories. The first is When The World Screamed. In this story the formidable Professor Challenger sets out to prove that the Earth itself is a gigantic creature swimming through space. The second story is The Disintegration Machine, wherein Professor Challenger has to deal with a foreign scientist who has created a machine of mass destruction.

And now for the unfortunate part: the bulk of this book is taken up by the third story, The Land of Mist. In this story, Edward Malone and subsequently Professor Challenger are introduced to Spiritualism. The story is long (about four times as long as the other two combined), and rambling. A.C. Doyle wrote this story as a polemic, and it makes very poor fiction indeed. If you don't need to read this story, then don't.

So, let me sum up by saying that the first two stories warrant 5 stars, and the last warrants one (or zero).

I bought this book because it's illustrated by Arthur Robins, the illustrator of the "Where Did I Come From?" series of books, and indeed this book is marketed as being another book in the series -- and it's size and style matches "Where Did I Come From?". As a book in this series, this book matches the quality, style and humor, and I'm pleased to have it.

As for the subject matter -- having to wear glasses -- I don't feel able to comment so well. It's written for children who do have to wear glasses (or children who can empathise with those who do), but perhaps don't understand why they have to wear glasses and other kids don't. It explains the modern benefit that glasses provide people with problem vision, gives an eye-anatomy lesson, tries to illustrate blurred vision, discusses seeing an eye doctor, and how wearing glasses is beneficial.

27 x 27 cm, 44 pages, color cartoon-style drawings, large print.

This book seems more than adequate for those who already have a hold on advanced mathematics and want a comprehensive guide to a new subject. The layout is utilitarian and serves well enough...

Although this book is used in introductory differential equation courses, it contains too few worked examples to work as an introductory text. The student who uses this book should have some (not a lot, but some) background on the subject, even if they get that knowledge from the professor's lecture. My professor gave formulas for reduction of order and variation of parameters that were easier to use than those given in the book. Then again, he explained the topic so well that I hardly had to use the book except for homework, and I still got an A+. The book is well written, but perhaps better suited for an intermediate differential equations course.

I have to admit I haven't read this book in detail - just browsed throught it at a bookstore. But I have studied a number of other ODE books, including Boyce and DiPrima, and looked at this to clarify a bit of confusion on the method of undetermined coefficients. It was very clear, clearer than Boyce. Also there seemed to be numerous examples of various methods, and a wide selection of methods in both ODE's and PDE's for an elementary textbook. My general impression was that it is rather similar to Boyce, but even clearer. Perhaps these books are a bit advanced for some beginning students though?

The heroes were superficially ideal. Alexander, the prince, is handsome, dark-haired, muscular yet slender, and his lack of intelligence is made up for by his talent with the sword. Alice, the pilgrim, is pretty, slender, and adventurous yet feminine. There are many confusing legends included in this book, taking up pages with content irrevelent to the plot. Despite the superficiality of the plot and the too-good-to-be-true characters, the book reads surprisingly fast, though the complete lack of depth is often irritating

Although not quite as interesting as the Merlin series, Prince and the Pilgram was entertaining and a worthwhile read.

I thought this was a very sweet book and I enjoyed it a lot. Am I missing something? This is the first and only book of Mary Stewart's I've read. It was very entertaining and the characters were likable and understandable. Maybe this is not a masterpiece, but I very highly recommend it as a feel-good, fun-to-read book. Especially if you don't know much about the Arthurian legends, it's pretty self-explanatory. Definitely, read it.

I counld not belive the ending it was very poor.

There's nothing I enjoy more on a Saturday morning than a Friday night pizza. Somehow it manages to satisfy some base need. Maybe it's the nomadic sense that I'm foraging for food. "3001: The Final Odyssey" is the cool leftovers from an intense evening before.

That said, I wasn't expecting anything particularly profound. I wanted to finish the series and 'see what happens.' No car chases, no lewd or baudy scenes. And while I get the distinct impression - from the notes in the back of the book - that Mr. Clarke is beginning a new genre: the pre-historical novel, I enjoyed the read. He absolutely makes clear what the future is like: the world is a kindergarten class on Ritalin. One can have fun imagining what we only do in our dreams, and in that respect the book offers some fresh ideas. The novel is a reflection of what life is like: it's a lot less interesting and romantic...it usually plods along with a couple of punctuations for flavour. Is it the best A.C. Clarke book ever written? No. Is it A.C. Clarke? Most definitely. Should you read it? Hey, it costs less than a movie and is better than most of what's out there on film.

This book is a big disappointment. After the thrill of the original 2001 and the two subsequent books, I was looking forward to a capstone book where we learn much about the social and political structure of the universe. I expected this to come from some knowledge regarding the builders of the monoliths and their real purpose in creating them. However, it turns out that they are just stupid machines, most likely not even as intelligent as HAL, yet somehow sophisticated enough to absorb the personality of David Bowman, who still manages to 'live' and influence the actions of the monolith.
The book begins with the discovery of the body of astronaut Frank Poole in deep space, where he is still alive after a thousand years. He is revived, and the story largely revolves around his attempts to acclimate to a new society. This gives Clarke the opportunity to make some predictions about the future course of social and technical advancement, most notably the near abolition of religion. While such a situation is of interest, the real point is to reach some understanding concerning the purpose of the monoliths, and that is just not covered.
I read the book because I felt the need to complete the series. However, it lacks the drama and mystique of the previous books, even the social commentary is not up to Clarke's previous high standards.

I was bored with this book. Could not read the whole thing because I felt like I was reading "strange Days" all over agian. Her whole focus is Jim Morrison. Boring book.

I feel for Kennealy-Morrison, I really do. But I must agree with other reviewers here that this book is far below the quality of her earlier work. I loved the original Copper Crown series, they were vivid and engaging. This book is so obviously and painfully autobiographical that it's quite hard to read.

I sympathize with what she's been through. And I know writers are supposed to "write what you know". But this was too much for most of us, we don't want to share this stuff. Let Jim go Patricia, and get on with your life. We'd like to read more excellent fiction the like of which we know you're capable of, but this, sadly, just isn't it.

While I'm quite fond of the Keltiad series, I have to say this is the weakest of the series. If your both a fan of Patricia Kennealy-Morrison and her late husband Jim, then yes, you might like this book, both for the inside references and what might have been.

However, if you're not a Doors fan and have no interest in their music, this book becomes a painful exercise in patience. Ultimately, one has to realize that this book is Patricia Kennealy-Morrison's attempt to exercise the ghosts of her past and is in fact her therapy. It's a shame her readers had to foot the bill though. It's a shame her husband died, but life and the wheel goes on, and Ms. Kennealy-Morrison needs to let go of her husband's ghost and live for herself again.

Besides which, this book, (along with "The Deers Cry"), has horrid, vile, "romance novel" style covers. This hurts the book worse than the writing does, because those who might be interested in Fantasy/Science Fiction tend to avoid romance books, and romance readers will get turned off by the F/SF elements.

....men in suits could kick drunks on the street
....brilliant kids could stop speaking to their parents
....welfare mothers could just get their acts together
....kids would just follow the rules
....the strong could get rid of the weak

All would be well for this book.

....Nada. One of the characteristics of a PoMo writer is his shifting of shapes. Cantor slips from the shape of the traditional critic reading Hamlet line-by-line to that of the critic tackling the most PoMo of topics--a TV show like Gilligan's Isle. Such shifting presumes a certain above-it-all divinity in which Cantor is in all shapes (close reading/cultural studies//canonical/pop culture//Hamlet/Gilligan's Isle) and in no shapes. Downright nihilistic, one might say...

This is a great introduction to the play within a Reniassance context. The author does an admirable job in reconstructing the historical and literary contexts surrounding Hamlet. For example, the conflict which the play embodies between classical ideals of heroism and Christian skepticism is well-developed. Overall, this is the best place to begin any study of Hamlet, and it may be all you'll need. The language is clear and concise, in contrast to the pompous jargon-laden prose of so many "post-modern'" critics. Well-written, well-argued, well-informed: one of the best works available on this quintessential Renaissance play.

Clearly, the authors have not verified the examples they provided in the book. When I ran the example scripts, frequently I would encounter mistakes here and there. It is rather annoying to have such a stupid problem when you try to understand the presented concepts or convention.

I went through a few different books before this one, including "Learning The Bash Shell" , which I found cryptic and incomplete at best. I have to say that I am at a loss as to why this book has gotten such negative reviews. I had no example problems, and the structure of the book really helps build on previous chapters. The approach is also extremely clear and pedagogic-- all of the concepts are clearly illustrated in examples in a clear context. Its the time-proven "if you want to do this... type this in" approach extremely conducive to make readers want to explore or on their own. Given the enormous volume of Unix books that fails to do so, I think this books deserves a little more credit.
I would say this is a good introduction to Unix shell programming. I would also get E.Q. Shells by Example.

I don't understand all the negative reviews here. Perhaps they're expecting something else out of this book: intro to programming, or hello world or something. Yes, it's a fairly advanced book, but that's what I wanted in the first place! I am writing this review because I came to this page to buy another copy of this book: I keep wanting a copy at home for hacking on my Linux box!

Any basic tutorial can show you how to do basic if/then/else and loops and basic syntax rules. You need a book when you want to do something harder: mathematics, complicated scripts, etc. Best of all, it doesn't just cover Bourne and C shells: it also covers the Korn and Bourne Again shells (ksh & bash).

This is not one of those books that was hacked out in four weeks because Technology X just became hot and every book publisher on the planet is scrambling to spit out 1600-page shelf-benders. The authors have taken a lot of time to put together a truly useful book.

Books don't reach a fourth edition if they are so bad!

Gave up after 220 pages. Hidden plot, cardboard characters, disjointed storyline. Clarke must have had little to do with this yawner.

Having thoroughly enjoyed Clarke's solo works, especially Rendezvous with Rama, I thought I would give Cradle a shot as that story idea looked interesting. I would soon be disappointed however as I began sinking in the quicksand that is Gentry Lee. If you are looking for a really good science fiction book, you should pass on this one and continue your search.

The first few hundred pages are filled with more-or-less pointless character development, clearly written by Lee, that would be perfectly at home in a Harlequin romance novel. A few pages of sci-fi, clearly written by Clarke, are interspersed so that the reader may be reminded that they paid $6 for a Clarke novel and not $2 for a grocery store romance tome. To be fair, I will admit that the general character interaction and background does come into play later on. But it just drags on and on and is littered with unnecessary sex scenes. I fail to understand Lee's obsession with writing about sex in the middle of a science fiction novel. Once would be OK, but after about the 4th time I found myself dropping the book and thinking "again?!" In addition, Lee's obsession with race, with each character being introduced as being black, white, Arab, Mexican, etc. is very annoying. The way that the race is then portrayed in the most cliché way is increasingly so. Lee may be an able and accomplished scientist, but his writing does not belong on the same pages with that of Arthur C. Clarke.

For some reason, probably because I had paid 900 yen for the book, I decided to stick with it and see the story through to the end. Around page 250 (of 408 total) the book got interesting. From that point forward I found myself wanting to continue to see what would happen next. But 250 pages is a lot to plod through before hitting something worth reading. In the end, the book wasn't that bad. The story could have been rather good had Clarke gone at it alone and focused the book on the sci-fi. As is stands, the bulk of this novel has very little to do with! sci-fi. So all-in-all, Cradle disappoints. The back cover says basically that something terrifying lies at the bottom of the ocean and could mean the extinction of the human race. This whole concept lasts maybe a dozen or so pages at the end of the novel and is never terrifying. The "scary" part is introduced and resolved so quickly that there is hardly time to assimilate it. And as the final words were read, I found myself wondering if the duo had just grown tired of the story as it seemed to suddenly end with several issues unresolved.

I read this book when it first came out back in 1990, and it took me three days to finish it. It was stolen along with my car and because it had held my attention so completely, I just had to go out and buy it again so I could read it once more and add it to my collection. The first pages of Cradle caught me by the immagination, and from then I was hooked. Maybe I'm not as much a hard core sci-fi reader as the rest of these other people are but I didn't seemed to be bogged down a bit in the character development that was assumably Gentry Lee's contribution of the novel. I say that it served its purpose to make the novel more personal. I found myself rooting for our reporter friend and her two co-conspirators that they keep the knowledge of their find away from the treasure hunting "bad guys" for their own sakes, The coincidence that the military would lose on of its missiles in the same vicinity just turned up the heat on the plot. I felt sorry for Winters, that he couldn't escape his own life and duty. I had to read this book twice because I thought it was that good!!!

My humble comments on the Piston-deVoto book:

This book is dry and uninspirational. Its exercises do their best to be 'writing' exercises, whereas they have to be exercises for 'hearing' .

Positive Points: Its expansions on Piston's first edition do some logical revisions, altering the ordering of chapters, and making the book more -systematic-; some of the exercises look a lot like the exercises in the initial chapters of Piston's 'Counterpoint', so that's also an indication that the latest DeVoto edition tries to be careful about the contrapuntal dimension of music that you simply cannot ignore if you're asking the student to write exercises other than block-chord progressions.

I'm pretty much a novice in 'Harmony' and 'Counterpoint', but I have to say that among all those books that I have examined, the best one by far was Sessions' book. ***You have to evaluate a harmony text by the types of exercises it has, because a harmony text is nothing other than a simple guide to have you discover certain things for yourself, preferably with the assistance and critical evaluation of an experienced tutor.*** I've tried to benefit from the first and fifth editions of Piston's "Harmony", Gauldin's "Harmonic Practice in Tonal Music", Rimsky-Korsakov's little known "Harmony", Schoenberg's Harmonielehre (A work of genius, which really should by evaluated on a different plane than what we're discussing at the moment.), Hindemith's "Traditional Harmony", and Sessions' "Harmonic Practice". Gauldin's book is a confused appempt to reconcile Schenkerian pedagogy with the general frame of mind that you see in Piston. The result is only un-inspirational, and 'dry'. What are we aiming to do in 'harmony' study? Are we not trying to acquaint ourselves with ears as unprejudiced as possible, with the materials and technicalities of a certain system, which has not just descended from the skies, but has evolved, -as a very efficient and easily comprehensible way of organizing the thought-in-tones? How can we do that? Not by memorizing formulae, or individual 'functions' for sure: You can't learn a language by memorizing sentence-forms. 'Detailed' as the Piston-DeVoto-Gauldin approach may be, it lacks the fundamental element that the student must feel himself free with his exercises, from beginning to end, so that he later has the ability to 'talk', and perhaps, much later, to express himself with/in that language.

Sessions incorporates the figured bass-melody harmonization-figured soprano scheme of Hindemith with the Schoenbergian idea of having the student listen and discover for himself the meaning of harmonic usages by concocting his own structures from the beginning. That's a very interesting synthesis (remember how Schoenberg hated melody-harmonization!), and I must add that he also takes the relevant aspects of Schenkerian theory. From the beginning, he makes you think in contrapuntal terms: You can't do that if your 'book' forces you to think in terms of roman numerals, and in terms of roman-numeral-restrictions that seem to belong not to a liberated understanding of tonality, but to a very curious 'style' within functional-harmony. That's why people have accused the Piston-DeVoto book of having nothing but note-drawing exercises: I concur with them!

Interesting to read the reviews about this book. Just because a book is "hard" or confuses you doesn't mean it's a bad book. Look, I'm a professional musician, composer and teacher. This book is the most complete and best harmony text out there. There's plenty of room for personal preference, and it's probably not fair to say one book is better than another. This book, however, is truly exceptional, and the 5th edition is the best so far.

BTW, I taught myself harmony from this book when I was in high school (with the guidance of a teacher reviewing my exercises) and tested out of all theory at a prestigious university. Basically I got the equivalent of an undergrad theory background from studying this text.

Pay no attention to the reviews bashing this book. True, it IS a hard book, but once you've made your way through this book from cover to cover, your understanding of music and classical harmony will be SO much stronger. The excercizes are thoughtful and offer many challenges, which help to enforce the points taught in each chapter. And it isn't TOO hard. I'm a junior in high school (and a DRUMMER, to boot), and I've really enjoyed this book thus far (I'm on chapter 14). Grab this book. With the proper amount of dedication paid to it, it will serve you well.