This book is a rare collection of russian chastushek (short poems to sing). The most of those chastushek you can't ever see anywere else because of their rough contents. Uncut! Mat i chernuxa, no ochen uzh skladnaja.

This is the most exciting book I have ever read in my life! It was so interesting that I could not sleep for two weeks! This book greatly broadened my knowledge on control and filtering. In fact, everything I know on these topics I learned from this book.

Written by Tretchikoff, this book is a wonderful insight into his establishing years as a painter. It reads like an action novel, following his life and times in Singapore when the Japanese invaded, and his subsequent harrowing escape. Separated from his wife and child for many years only adds to the tragedy of his situation. All the while he paints, and the inspiration for some of his most famous works, including the 'Chinese Girl', comes from this period of his life spent in Asia.

Eventually he finds his family and settles in South Africa,at the same time establishing himself as a very successful painter.

This is an action, drama, and romance novel all rolled into one, and what makes it great is that its all true.

If you're a fan of Tretchikoff and of all things kitcsh this is a must for the bedside table. I read in in two days and cannot recommend it enough. What a find!.....And yes, there are pictures.

Soloviev is Kant of Russian philosophy. No understanding of any trend in Russian modern thought may be complete without at least a cursory acquaintance with Soloviev. This is as true for Russian Marxism as it is for Russian religious philosophy, which Soloviev so brilliantly represents.

A cursory reading, however, is impossible, once you start browsing the book. Soloviev is not just a philosopher, nor even the greatest Russian philosopher to day (which he is); he is so much more than that. Soloviev is a sage and a prophet, who was sadly not heard in Russia of his times. He is still less than properly understood in the West. There are people who frame him as Russian nationalist; others see just an Orthodox mystic or just a constitutionalist, Christian Democrat and so on.

With a similar success, you could try to stick some sort of a mundane label on, for example, Lao Tzu. Was he a conservative - or a reformist? Chinese traditionalist or a mystical revolutionary?

What impresses me most in this collection of essays is Soloviev's rational post-rationalism, a brand of thought which is postmodernist and post-traditionalist at once. Soloviev did not believe that human happiness can be constructed by rational design, be it a Marxist or a capitalist/consumerist design that sways today's world. At the same time, he was not preaching passivity and resignation, but rather revival of human spirit and conscience in a community of free individuals. For him, Christianity was the answer. Yet, his view was truly ecumenical in a sense that no races were excluded from the project of universal love based on universal compassion and modesty, something that only humble service to the God's idea of humanity can accomplish.

It is impossible to read Soloviev without thinking of painful moral dilemmas of today. He has offered answers to many of those; answers that deserve to be heard in our present debates. Still more importantly, he had shown the way to approach the dilemmas that are yet to come; this way is called Christian humanism and it goes beyond not only grand schemes of modernism, but also grand disorientation of the postmodern "alternatives" to them. This sort of reading enlightens soul, and not just satisfies your intellectual curiosity. Are there many books out there that go that far?

A sincere gratitide must go to the translator for doing the job. We can only wish it was a two-or three-volume collection, which could do more justice to Soloviev the thinker.

This "portable edition" of Nabokov's work is actually a reprint of an earlier collection entitled "Nabokov's Congeries" first published in 1968. The compilation provides a superb introduction to one of the greatest literary minds ever. It begins with excerpts from the author's memoirs, and proceeds through eleven of his short stories, several essays, three self-contained excerpts from novels, and ten poems. It also includes a complete novel ("Pnin") which is a comic masterpiece. The introduction by Page Stegner is one of the best and most accessible overviews of Nabokov's career one could find. For those who do not yet know Nabokov's work, or those who know him only as the author of "Lolita" -- this is a perfect first step.

Just returned from the Czech & Slovak Republics. Recommend this book highly for use in Prague - a delightful, friendly city full of great castles, museums, restaurants, and shopping (and hotels that need to be air-conditioned). This book has good details, pictures, maps. Very helpful! Phrase section was all that was needed, so don't buy an extra phrase book.

The concise Prague, 20th Century Architecture is easily the best current guide to an architecture that until 1989 was mostly inaccessible to the culture vultures of the heroic period of architecture (the period between the wars, to others). Arranged in geographical order, the entries spiral clockwise from the center of Prague's old and new town (Stare and Nove Mesto). Collected are veritable gems from Art Nouveau (a style that flourished during the Belle Époque is Prague with equal facility as is Paris and Bruxelles), each illustrated with a small photograph, basic information, and its location on a map keyed by numerical order. A summary overview of Prague's development precedes the entries, and these are followed by a useful chronological register, list of architects, and list by functional groups (housing, schools, etc.)

My boss'll probably laugh till he falls over if he ever reads this review. He's an atmospheric physicist (translation: "a meteorologist who doesn't want to be in the same category as the empty suits on the evening news,") who programmed a lot in FORTRAN before he changed over to management. He likes to goad C programmers showing signs of prima-donnaism by saying he could write XYZ in FORTRAN, no matter what XYZ happens to be.

What earthly use is FORTRAN these days, you may ask (apart from any unlucky soul who has to maintain some hunk of ancient code), and thus, what use is this book? Well, that depends.

In the last numerical analysis class I took, I opted to do the programming assignments in FORTRAN, after one or two aggravating forays at writing them in C with a limited amount of time. Translating the algorithms into FORTRAN required a lot less work (duh, you say; the language exists for FORmula TRANslation). Still, with a time limit for homework assignments, it can be useful.

(In real life, a mathematician attached to a project I'm familiar with designs algorithms, but he's not a programmer, so his assistant has to implement them. Well, the mathematician actually writes them in FORTRAN, and the assistant gets to translate them into C...)

This particular book is, of course, somewhat elderly, as the title will tell you, but that can actually be in your favour. It's *extremely* easy to follow, and quite short, so it's easy to find what you need. And no matter how old, unmaintained, and just plain obsolete the FORTRAN compiler you're dealing with happens to be, this book will support you in writing code that can work with it.

Even though I don't work with FORTRAN these days, I keep it as a reference just in case, because it's worth its weight in platinum if you need to write something in the language.

This young chicken is beyond admirable..he should be a diety. These words not only struck my heart, but they left me with a feeling of deep, yet incomplete solitude. Just as one's first experience of seeing the enormity of the Grand Canyon leaves one humbled, so do the simple yet penetrating words and emotions of this text, which seem to explode from the pages. It is as if the words themselves have an inner being amidst the remembrances they provoke in the daily lives of its readers. The bearing of one phrase which can ignite so many feelings of love and desire, loss and regret. To the author: Thank you for calling to mind so many rich and warm experiences that have lingered so long in my mind. You have brought me a way to retrieve the closeness of my own heart.

When I was in college, I was required to read this book. I was struck then by the insights that Tismaneanu had. This text gave me the greatest understanding of why Bulgaria kept the communists while the Czech Republic has put its arms around a market economy. Recently, I went back a re-read this book, and was struck at how timely the analysis still is. I would whole-heartedly recommend this book to anyone looking to understand what has and will occur in Eastern Europe.