This book is most interesting; the part that I like most is where Dr Bhatia asks for the golden pen of Baba's he sees in the dream and asks for it, wherein Baba says 'you greedy fellow' and when he awakes - lo! there's the golden pen on his bed still dripping the ink! After reading the book, I gave it off to others to read and enjoy it.

A very useful text for the serious student of second language acquisition research to keep on hand. Thorough and includes research not only in English but other languages as well. Covers concisely most of the best-known researchers and their work. Various theories, their history, development, and the research related to them are explained by a variety of experts in terms that most advanced undergraduates or graduate students would find comprehensible. The index is adequate and the overall organization of the text is generally good for searching a particular topic. Also much more relevant recent research included than in many other texts. All in all, a scholarly collection which puts together the same material a student would have to go through many lengthy texts to find, explained and organized in a very convenient way.

This book is an expansion of the author's lecture notes "Perturbation Bounds for Matrix Eigenvalues" published in 1987. I have used both versions for my students' projects. The book under review centers around the themes on matrix inequalities and perturbation of eigenvalues and eigenspaces. The first half of the book covers the "classical" material of majorisation and matrix inequalities in a very clear and readable manner. The second half is a survey of the modern treatment of perturbation of matrix eigenvalues and eigenspaces. It includes lots of recent research results by the author and others within the last ten years. This book has a large collection of challenging exercises. It is an excellent text for a senior undergraduate or graduate course on matrix analysis.

The book has nice and to-the-point concepts followed by excellent hands-on projects. Very good book for readers who know some Palm concepts and want some hands-on practice and know more.

This book is a classic with all problems associated. Half of the reference quoted have been written before the WWII. Very useful if you like to quote original papers. This book cover most topics of the classical optics but hardy cover modern topics.

However, it is hard to read and use a weird notation. Certainly not useful for rapid referencing. Like the bible, use it only when you have serious problem to deal with.

It is of course the reference for optics, and is very complete
and rigorous. I didn't learn optics from it, I only use it
as a reference and I suppose that is its function.
It feels a bit oldfashioned (for example, I haven't found
speckel applications in the chapter on coherence) but I
suppose that that is due to the fact that it is a classic.
My other, personal, objection is that I hate Gaussian
units, I prefer by far SI units. Even Jackson finally
conceded to switch to SI units, but Wolf clings on this
Gaussian system.

It is just a rare book on physical optics based on Maxwell equations. Rarely a book states the assumptions,the validity of the equations, the principles and how the equations arrived. Certainly, it is a great book for postgraduates and researchers in physical optics not so for undergraduate students who don't want to go through all the mathematics.

It's not easy finding in-print textbooks for learning Afrikaans, especially in the United States, and the fact that this course has audio cassettes is by itself a major advantage compared to the few other offerings. Although I already speak German and Dutch (and am interested in learning to read, not speak Afrikaans), I found the tapes invaluable, especially in identifying the relatively few (in my opinion) places that Afrikaans pronunciation differs substantially from Dutch.

Overall the textbook is very good and similar to the author's Colloquial Dutch course (including some of the same dialogs at that). The grammar descriptions, etc. are brief and to the point, the dialogs are also manageable, and there is sufficient review/exercise material as well.

The reason I didn't give it 5 stars is that there are a few words in each lesson that are neither defined in the lesson nor included with the glossary in the back of the book. If you're really interested in learning Afrikaans, I would recommend getting a decent dictionary like the Hippocrene A-E/E-A by Kromhaut or the very extensive (and very big) Reader's Digest dictionary, which you would have to order from South Africa. A final point is that the dialogs stop being translated after the first few lessons, and several times I would have liked to see an English translation of the later dialogs as a comprehension check.

Still, this is definitely the best book/course out there for learning Afrikaans, especially with the tapes and I would highly recommend it.

Professor Donaldson's COLLOQUIAL AFRIKAANS was a pleaure to study. His book includes many interesting dialogues using ordinary Afrikaans. The grammar sections are surprisingly easy to read. Donaldson also includes many short exercises which cover the material very nicely. For added interest, the book is sprinkled with cultural information. Finally, Donaldson includes generous glossaries, a key to the exercises, and an index.

The quality of this cassette is marvelous and I felt like checking my ears for accumulated phlegm when I took off the headphones. Side one deals with the basics of conversational Afrikaans and side 2 sets out a variety of expressions of belligerent condemnation.

Given that the IAEA declared Iraq nuclear-free in 1998 and thus far nobody has found any evidence that Saddam restarted the program after the inspectors left the country this book is more than ridiculous.
The sensationalist and flatly biased authors ignore the fact that Saddam's nuclear program evolved and almost reached its peak during the Reagan and Bush years but was completely dismantled during Clinton's tenure. Even if Saddam had wanted to nuke the US --which itself is a rather silly allegation-- he never had the means to do it.
If these so-called journalists think they know it better they should present their arguments to the IAEA or to the coalition forces who are now inspecting Iraq. I wonder what they could achieve.
This book is a good read for those who are either paranoid or pathologically anti-Clinton or both but not for those who really want to know what happened to Iraq's nuclear capability during the 90s.

"Brighter than the Baghdad Sun" chronicles Saddam Hussein's 25-year effort to build an atomic bomb, as well as his successful efforts to develop chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction.

The book also covers in gruesome detail how the Iraqi regime smashes all internal resistance using torture, imprisonment, and assassination. (Although, one sometimes wonders what their sources were for supposed conversations with the Iraqi leadership -- given that most everyone who betrays Saddam ends up dead soon after.)

The drawn out confrontation with the UN weapons inspection teams is detailed as well. That these teams operated for as long as they did is amazing when one sees how the Iraqis were always one step ahead of them (due to a Russian team member who briefed his nation's diplomats, who in turn told Baghdad). In the end, the UN teams left Iraq and Iraq managed to keep some of its nuclear weapons equipment intact.

By the end of this book the reader is convinced that Saddam Hussein will stop at nothing to develop nuclear weapons.

The book falls short of five stars because some of the conversations used to enliven the book are not adequately footnoted (the authors want to protect privacy and lives -- they could have at least characterized the source of the information). There is also some redundancy.

I recommend this book as an adjunct to Robert Baer's See No Evil. This book was written in 1999, well before Baer's book. A careful reader will realize that Baer is mentioned but not by name. There is no great political insight contained in this work but for anyone who has been following the UNSCOM fiasco and the general mishandling of Saddam Hussein and his nuclear program, this will connect the dots. Hussein is a thug with absolutely no compunction about killing anyone anytime to pursue his madman's dreams. This book been criticized as being too anecdotal but I believe that is because of the nature of the information. There is no doubt that sources are being protected. If this book doesn't scare you just a little you are either one tough customer or brain dead.

This book is clear and comprehensive, yet simple enough for a complete beginner. The reader can choose to learn just spoken Hindi or to also learn to read and write since all of the dialogs are written in romanized Hindi as well as in the Devanagari syllabary. The cassettes are necessary, but poor compared to the cassettes from other courses. The dialogs are read only once, very quickly, with almost no opportunity to practice repeating what you hear. The leftover space on the tapes are filled with discussion in English of questionable utility.

I have been learning hindi for the past two years, and I have been using many books in the process, including Snell and Weightman, an older book by Misra and Fairbanks, another book by Surendra Gambhir, and this one by Bhatia. For those starting from scratch, this book is the best option.

Snell and Weightman move way too fast and you quickly find yourself in way over your head (unless you already have a background in hindi). I found this Bhatia's romanization excellent because it emphasized the difference between english and hindi sounds, and most importantly, Bhatia was consistent throughout (though hopefully some of the typos towards the end will be fixed in a future edition). His pronounciation introduction is also the best I've seen as far as emphasizing and drilling Hindi vocal nuances. The pacing of the book is very comfortable for the complete beginner.

Bhatia also does not take anything for granted. A lot of important questions left unanswered by other books are treated thoroughly in this text (like the compound use of "lena", "jaana", and "dena"; the frequent ommision of the "a" sound in the middle of words; and the fact that words like "mahal" and "kahana" are pronounced "mehel" and "kehena"; just to name a few...) You are really able to digest everything as you go along. Bhatia's word list and grammatical summary in the back are god-sends, and his mnemonics like "nerd nouns" and "laal adjectives" are clever and effective. He also puts his lessons in a cultural perspective that is crucial for using your hindi socially.

One criticism I would make is the lack of emphasis on the devanagri script. If you use this book, you should really take the initiative and learn the script. It will help you as you progress to more advanced books.

It seems like the few who gave this book a bad wrap are educators who are used to hindi being taught in a certain way. I think the things that make this book different also make it the best.

My recommendation is start out with this book, then go through Snell and Weightman, using the early lessons as review, then go through Surendra Gambhir's pricey but excellent "Spoken Hindi" set. All these books have their lessons on cassette. I transferred all the lessons to CD, which made my studying much more efficient. Also get McGregor's beautiful Hindi-English Dictionary which will be a cozy campanion throughout. If you can even find the Misra and Fairbanks book, don't bother. It is quite antiquated and impractical, and the tapes are a nightmare. Happy studying!

An excellent book for beginners, like the title implies, it is mainly a course in Colloqial Hindi, and almost omits the Devanagari syllbary entirely. There is only one chapter on it, but that chapter is very helpful all the same. The tape that comes with the book is a necessary element; it is integrated with the exercises in the book quite nicely, so make sure you get the cassette as well. The romanisation scheme is weird, but it's not too difficult. As an introduction to spoken Hindi, this can't be beat. For a better knowledge of the Devanagari syllabary, I would recommend Snell's "Teach Yourself Hindi".

Ms. Baldwin's evocation of Punjab in the 1930's is so realistic one's throat becomes parched reading her brilliant prose. This novel is a story of the complicated interrelationships of Hindu, Sikh and Muslim families whose centuries-long guarded yet mostly peaceful co-existence is shattered by what is the violently-birthed beginning of the state of Pakistan. Ms. Baldwin's characters, particularly Satya, the first wife, and Roop-bi, the young, second, childbearing wife, are so real, one awakens surprised to find oneself not living near the cool storerooms of the mansions of the rich.

As political intrigue, the tale also regales. The perilous journey thousands of families were made to take, based on religious differences (the state of Pakistan is Muslim) leaves the reader fearful for the protagonists lives as they pretend to be faithful servants of religions they've only observed.

Satya, the Urdu-speaking barren first wife, is almost palpable. Her character would be played on American television by no less than Susan Lucci. She's Machiavellian to the core. She seethes with hatred when her husband brings home a teenage bride from a poor family to bear an heir. She plots revenge. How she obtains it is one of the most shocking and pitiful scenes in modern women's literature.

Roop has her own secret to keep, which, if revealed, would make her "unmarriageable" and a permanent burden on her family. She is aware that her husband gives her his first wife's jewels as presents and that her sole reason for being brought into a feudally-bourgeoise existence is for the fruit of her loins.

From my perspective, the men in this book almost don't count. They plan water irrigation systems, they hate each other's families, they rape and kill their perceived enemies, they are brutal and dense.

The portraits of Satya and Roop-bi alone (and the peripheraly historical Ghandi, referred to by an endearing nickname) is worth spending the three days nonstop it will take you to read.

Beginning in 1928 and referring back to the memories of the massacre at Jallianwala Bagh, Shauna Singh Baldwin's Partition-novel _What the Body Remembers_ integrates the political history of India, especially the effervescing religious factionalism, with the personal histories of two Sikh women--riddled with as much anxiety as the national history.

The novel offers a sensitive vignette of displacements, refugee dilemmas, and dispossessions interlaced with the specifically gendered violence performed on the bodies of women-drawn from recent feminist research studies. Notably, the story brings together women from Punjab and Bengal-the two provinces that were divided in 1947-fleeing from Lahore and places both in a situation of equal vulnerability on grounds of gender more than religion.

Besides the Partition atrocities that constitute the epic of the modern Indian nation-state, the novel touches upon various other subjects of topical interest: the socialization of young women, the devaluation of women in marriage as baby-making machines, the maltreatment of girl-children, the unlivable situation between co-wives, and the problem of dowry.

The characters of the men in the novel merited some more elaboration. The end seemed a little rushed. The Epilogue, however, is superb. The almost-clinical prose multiplies the psychological trauma of the event. As a narration of Sikh histories from the last few decades before Indian Independence, and especially the histories of women caught in the violence of Partition, Shauna Singh Baldwin's novel is a valuable addition to the growing literature on the Partition of India.

What the Body Remembers falls into the genre known among my friends and I as "awful/wonderful." "Awful/wonderful" books tell painful truths in such a compelling manner that the reader greedily ingests them, even aches for more. This book, with its no-holds-barred tale of the treatment of women in India, whether Muslim, Hindu or Sikh, can be painful to read--but it's impossible not to. Of all the novels I've read by and about Indian women's lives, What the Body Remembers was by far the most disturbing. And yet I was sorry to close it after reading the last page--it was throughly engrossing, and as fascinating in its way as Memoirs of a Geisha. I highly recommend it.

The dialog on humans rights has a repuation for rhetoric. This volume inevitably reproduces some of the empty promises and tried slogans, but also features contributions by people who have suffered human rights abuses first-hand. Owens Wiwa, brother of Ken Saro Wiwa and a noble crusader for justice in his own right, is noteworthy in this regard. His piece on the Shell Corporation and the Ogoni people of Nigeria is an engaging read. This book deserves a wide readership.