Every now and then I stumble across a textbook that is well organized, authoritatively written, and comprehensive, while remaining comprehensible to a general audience.

This modest-sized book describes each function of the camera, and when and how to apply it. It won't make you a professional photographer, but it will make you a pretty good amateur. And you will know exactly what you paid for in your camera. Hey Canon: wake up already and include this book with your four-hundred-dollar camera!

As an amateur photographer, I purchased the book to help make lens choices for landscape photography. The book succeeds in jazzing up a fairly dry topic and is more illuminating than culling lists of Canon lens specs. The authors, unaffiliated with Canon, endeavor to give a map into the almost bewildering array of Canon EOS 35 mm lenses. The authors are professional photographers with somewhat complimentary interests, which leads to a more balanced appraisal of various lenses. Neither however necessarily favors fixed focal length lenses over zoom lenses and both are sensitive to tradeoffs of price, weight, speed, and context of use. Their assessments are tempered by practicalities; inasmuch as hikers, backpackers, or travelers have limited space and weight budgets: it may be preferable to carry one zoom to several fixed focal length lenses.

The authors have used all of the lenses that they canvas. Lenses are discussed individually; a photo shows fine detail on the lens; and each lens is accompanied by a chart that usefully tabulates properties such as lens construction, length, weight, etc. Extenders and macro lens accessories are also treated. Sixteen pages of colored photos, as well as additional BW photos illustrate capabilities of particular lenses. The discussion of Canon Tilt-Shift lenses and the photos taken with TS lenses are excellent. The sections on ultra-wide angle and wide-angle lenses are personally valuable.

The book does not cover all Canon lenses. The copyright is 1995 and Canon continues to design new EOS lenses. One hopes that the authors will expand the book in a second edition to include the rest of the lenses. Nonetheless, I was able to use this book to help make lens choices more efficiently. The authors' viewpoint about the quality of recent zoom lenses was key. If the book were up to update, I would award it five stars.

This book first appeared as a hardback in 1985, just after the 1983 Code of Canon Law was released. The paperback "study edition", virtually identical to the hardback, came out later. In either form, this book is the standard American commentary on the revised code. It generally shows a high degree of scholarship and canonical insight. Written by a variety of commentators, however, the quality of writing is uneven, and some sections are open to criticism. One should not assume that opinions presented in this (or any other) commentary are official opinions, or even widely accepted. A substantially revised version is currently underway and can be expected around the end of 1998. Even so, this earlier version of the work will remain a valuable resource for practicing canon lawyers and others interested in Catholic Church law and practice. In particular, given that most of the commentary was actually written toward the end of the canonical reform period (which ran roughly from 1965-1983) the commentary herein tends to reflect accurately this period of uncertainity and speculation which affected all aspects of Church law following the Second Vatican Council. I use the book daily in my canonical practice and often recommended it to careful readers. The index is excellent. There is, alas, no Latin original text provided.

This is the standard American translation of the 1983 Code of Canon Law. There are a few translations in it which have received criticism, but because the Latin original text is provided on facing pages (a benefit which distinguishes the American translation from the British), these flaws are not serious. There are no footnotes in this edition of the code, and no commentary on the canons. The index of terms is hardly sufficient. Still, the advantages of the book (for example, its portablity) make it very useful for Americans, second only to a major comentary on the canons.

A short book, consisting basically of overviews of workshops done in the early 1980s by the CLSA on canon law in practical pastoral situations. Dated by now, of course, but still worth a quick read. Does not contain text of canons nor significant research commentary. Is actually better as a "vocabularly builder", i.e., something to help one figure out what kinds of canonical topics might be involved in a pastoral situation.

In 56 pages there must be over 30 heroines discussed and drawn in this book. While originals are unclear for many of the images, the text is well written to give us an idea of who each was the role she played in relationship to the Civil War of the USA. I say "relationship" on purpose but not all of these women were soldiers or directly involved in the war. The illustrations are a bit too shaded and detailed for easy coloring.

Manlio Bellomo's book, The Common Legal Past of Europe, 1000-1800, is a valuable work of historical scholarship. The author's exploration of law and its codification in European society gives the reader an appreciation of how central justice and legal learning and organization were in European society since the Middle Ages. The book's approach provokes one to consider the common traditions connected to learning, law and justice that many Europeans shared, regardless of ethnic or national boundaries.

Although this book is hard for a layman to read, it contains information that some Afrocentrists and "radical" black groups crave. On the other hand, it contains information that Eurocentrists would much rather "cover up" or ignore. The most facinating aspect of the book is that it contains the longest African-Arabic slave narrative known to exist in the U.S. It contains pictures of the original Arabic manuscript as it was found, an Arabic replication of it and a translation of it. The knowledge contained in this book should be in all High School curriculums in the US

i read this book on the road, and found many of its essays to be trite and simplistic, but some very exciting. so i admit some got skimmed and some pored over.
it is very easy to call Kant a woman hating enlightenment ivory tower jerk, which is pretty true, but harder to defend him.
some of the essays are very philosophically technical, and some are technical in their use of feminist concepts, but this book is primarily for folks who know a fair amount of philosophy (alot, in some cases, like the stuff about aesthetics and some political philosophy) and quite a bit less about feminism.
alot of the arguments assume the primacy of the "ethic of care" as suggested by gilligan, but some better essays answer this argument with alot of footnotes to "Feminist Ethics", which is a book for people with a larger understanding of feminism, and less of "philosophy" (e.g. kant and stuff).

this book assumes that you know alot about kant, or have certain popular impressions of him, like that he thought inclination was bad and duty good.

overall, if you think kant is a big loser and a jerk, and get angry every time he uses a male pseudogeneric, you have either already read this book or should.

also, it is well footnoted and i found many of its footnotes and citations very helpful.

This is an excellent collection of essays on Derrida's relevance for Feminist theory . . . ranging from an early piece by Spivak (1980) to articles published for the first time right here. It also includes Derrida's "Choreographies" interview, which is pretty essential reading for anyone interested in JD an feminism. As most of the contributers point out, Derrida's usefulness for feminist theory and politics has long been debated. But since this is the case, why didn't Holland include a few more negative appraisals? There are plenty of interesting CRITICAL interpretations of JD by feminists as well . . .