The Bottom Line: This book is a must have in every white coat for Pediatric
clerkship students, and for interns as well. Covers all the basic topics,
and even a few that are more advanced. Great chapters that are full of
useful information are the hallmark of this book. Also would be great for
"bullet" presentations for students and residents for teaching. Excellent
job on the first edition!!

This pocket guide is a great addition to the pocket of all medical students and residents in family practice and pediatrics. It has concise reviews of critical topics and very practical approaches to patients.

Saint-Frances guide to Pediatrics is a surprisingly well-organized review
handbook that addresses the numerous core concepts of Pediatrics. Its
organization and succinct outlines, as well as its formulary, are ideal for
use in the wards, yet it is comprehensive enough to serve as a study guide
or review for students, residents, and any other health professional. The
downside to its brevity, of course, is that those unfamiliar with some of
the topics will be hard-pressed to learn from scratch the expansive
knowledge base required in Pediatrics from this book; however, as an adjunct
to a textbook, Saint-Frances Pediatrics has great potential to be a utile
handbook. This is a great addition to the clinic, ward, office, or
backpack.

This is an excellent book. It has been translated even in Greek Language and is widely used by Medical Students in Athens.

This book is a must have for Pathology. It is very easy to read and hard to put down. I wish I would have read this book before reading the Robbins.

I have had a chance to review the new edition coming this fall and it is a spectacular book. The artwork has been improved to full color drawings and photos. This is overall a much better book for the medical student by only giving the 'need to know' and leaving out the 'nice to know'.

I think this is an excellent book. The first five chapters develop rigorously the geometry and algebra of linear programming. I studied the book in the context of a class and read almost every word of it. I liked the authors' pace and style -- rigorous, but clear and illuminating. The latter chapters of the book were also good, in particular the integer programming formulations and methods chapters.

This is an excellent book to learn fundamentals of linear programming and its applications. It's easy to read and it has a great set of of problems, after solving which you'll definitely say that you know something. Among the advantages of the book, I can highlight a great amount of examples, which are easy to follow and very helpful.

There are several minuses of the book. I find it a little wordy, although as I said earlier the writing is very good. Also, the authors try to include as much material as possible, which makes some parts a little superficial. On the other hand the broadness gives the reader a good overview of the field.

Overall, it's a great book for both studies and references.

Prof. Bertsimas and Tsitsiklis succeed in writing a book which is fun to read, without being trivial. It doesn't require much mathematical background (thus being accessible to advanced undergraduates), but present clearly and with sufficient depth relatively new developments like ellipsoid and interior point methods (on the other side, the simplex is given less emphasis than other, older books). Stochastic and integer programming are developed in separate chapters. Another very nice chapter is on "the art of LP". Overall, the book provides the reader with the tools necessary to read the literature in the field. The problems are very well chosen. Unfortunately, the bibliography is not aimed at being complete, but is at least up-to-date

As both an Egyptologist and student of the Egyptian religion, I found this book a welcome addition to my library as well. By presenting the "gods" as a family and writing the book as if they were studying a group or tribe of everyday mortals, much information is gleaned about the structure and organization of Egyptian religion and its expression that can be missed in more lofty, philosophically or theologically-oriented texts. Where else can you read about the bodily functions of a divinity? Bravo to the Meeks' for adding a "foundation level" to our understanding of this most beautiful faith structure.

I am an Egyptologist, and I have read the manuscript of the English translation. This book is filled with a wealth of details missing from the other general books on Egyptian religion. It is my opinion that those wishing to read just one book on this subject will now have to read two: one of the other books, and this one

Bertsakas's Network Optimization is probably the most challenging graduate textbook on network flows and optimization. Besides the chapters on classical subjects as shortest path or max-flow/min-cost problems, (which are very rigorously dealt despite their very standard nature of the subjects) I've found especially the Auction Algorithms chapter very throughout and inspiring. The next chapters, Nonlinear Network Optimization and Network Problems with Integer Constraints also are good; these are not usually included in other graduate network optimization books. In each chapter, Author digs into almost all theorems, propositions or notions and don't miss the related proofs or demonstrations, which is usually omitted in other books. I guess it is an important feature for those who want to see theoretical background of the subjects. Its bibliography is very rich and sufficiently up-to-date (until 1997, not bad since it is printed at 1998!). I've found the exercises very challenging, one should consume a very lot of time to do the necessary proofs. These are not as numerous as in Bazaraa's or Ahuja's books, but their quality is by far superior; the author hasn't filled the book with the standard/classical exercises which can be found in all books. Since it deals in detail with the theory, the presentation of the subjects sometimes appears difficult to capture. I also advise to get the errata from book's homepage since it may create sometimes difficulties. The graph theory notions come usually omitted in the book, so one may need a graph theory title to accompany it. Also its appendix that contains a mathematical review somewhat less extensive than in his "Nonlinear Programming" book (almost a separate monograph!), which I recommend highly also. Thus the book comes devoted and concentrated solely on the Network Optimization theory and algorithms, and in my opinion, it became highly successful. I strongly believe that may become the standard title on the subject of the following years. For those who may find its presentation difficult, I suggest to use it along with Ahuja's "Network Flows" which has a more general structure and presentation. But I found the book clearly superior to that book or Bazaraa's "Linear Programming and Network Flows" whose Network Flows chapters are messy. Finally I may say, it is a highly successful book is very worth of its price.

This is a well-explained, well-illustrated introduction of some of the most important aspects of network flows. (Note: This is an Internet-centric review, even though the book is not about the Internet.) Although the treatment is theoretical rather than specific to the Internet, it is especially relevant now that traffic engineering is being applied to the Internet. Of course ATM and telephone networks have employed this for many years, but there is a need to go back to fundamentals when applying these concepts to the Internet (or other areas). The book starts with the shortest path problem, which is familiar to the Internet community. Then max-flow and min-cost problems are introduced. These are central to traffic engineering. Thereafter non-linear network flow optimization and discrete problems are attacked. Linear programming techniques such as the simplex method are also described. Is excellent training material for those having to wrestle with traffic engineering problems.

Bertsekas has always been one of my favorite authors. Nonlinear Programming is yet another of his masterpieces. An extremely well written book. Strongly Recommended.

If you are an operations researcher or someone interested in the NLP topic this is a must-buy book. Rigorous, extremely coherent and well written.

This was a book that you could not put down! I wish I could have the opportunity to meet the "godfather"! The incredible level of detail was astounding. You could truly envision a way of life that was simple, fair, uncomplicated, and fulfilling! A place where this lifestyle existed would be more human than we could possibly imagine. It would benefit a lot of us here on earth to look into a calmer, more humane way of existing. This book made me think and rethink of ways to make the life we have been handed more pleasant. Thank you for enriching my world!

995 words Dimitri Merejkowski's Atlantis/Europe: the Secret of the West, is a great book, but it won't turn up suddenly on the best-seller list. It has been around more than 50 years. (Merejkowski died in 1941), and was published in America in 1971 by Rudolf Steiner Publications (Steinerbooks) of Blauvelt, N.Y. The issue now available from Amazon was published in 1988 by Garber Publications (Anthroposophic Press), which I believe to be the same press under a different name. I do not know when the book was first published, presumably in Russian or possibly French. Merejkowski (hereinafter "M.") lived in Paris after he left Russia with the advent of the Bolsheviks there in 1917.

M.'s reputation as a brilliant and learned writer was established with his historical novel, The Death of the Gods, in 1886. That book and another novel, The Romance of Leonardo da Vinci, remain perhaps his best known works.

Paul Allen, in his preface to the 1971 Steinerbooks edition said of Atlantis/Europe, "This is one of those very rare books which is certain to give the reader the basis for a totally new orientation to himself, to his fellow-men, and to the world in which we live today." I believe that is true.

M.'s style is allusive and learned, but this book is not freighted with scholarly apparatus. He does without footnotes or supporting documentation of any kind.

M. is evidently familiar at depth with ancient history, ancient religions, Greek, Latin, and Russian literature, and the whole religious and cultural record of the Christian West. He was a friend of Rudolf Steiner, the founder of Anthroposophy. Steiner's famous "spiritual science," a highly individual and mediumistic talent that enabled him to penetrate the "Akashic chronicles," has its parallel in M.'s intuitive and (I do not hestitate to say) inspired penetration of the religious history of European humanity.

It seems clear that M. wrote this book to make a point, but it is not possible to state that point as one might make a brief abstract of a scientific article or historical monograph. But a review needs to attempt something like that; and this is an effort to do so.

Relying on Plato's convincing set-out of the story of Atlantis, M. posits there was an Atlantis and it was destroyed. It was the home of the "first humanity." Remnants from Atlantis established the "second humanity" in the Americas and the Mediterranean or, more broadly, Europe. M. is not interested in arguing about the physical evidences, or lack of them, for an "Atlantis"; he is chiefly concerned with the curiously consistent cultural and religious influences on the second humanity that can be taken to support the idea that an earlier and highly developed "humanity" had to have existed.

The clues are in the religious myths of ancient Europe and the Middle East. M. dives deep into them and isolates what they have in common, which he believes is what points to the real religion of first humanity. He contends that the true religion of the second humanity is, really, the same. He would extract from the apparently multitudinous diversity of ancient religions a central theme, a single tendency. In all the "shadows" that ultimately turn real in the primary figure of Western religion and history, the Lord Jesus, carpenter of Galilee, he discerns the original "Western religion," the religion of the suffering God, God sacrificed for man.

There is, in the eleven or twelve thousand years of history of 'second humanity," widespread evidence of another religion, the obverse or diabolical double of the true universal religion. (As to that true and universal religion, M. cites and clearly approves of Augustine's well-known mention of "Christianity before Christ.") The religion in opposition to it, the "second religion" (recall that the devil's number in the Pythagorean system is two), is the religion of man sacrificed to the "gods." And the gods men make for themselves are, we know from the Bible, evil, of the devil.

Ponder this passage that begins on page 421:

"We should never have found the 'Atlantean tablet,' the true meaning of the ancient mysteries, if we were not in possession of the Christian Mystery, the divine sounding-lead of ocean depths. If the finding of the tablet had occurred not in the spiritual but in the material, less real, order of things, then it is very likely that its impression would have been as staggering as that of any news from Mars. The Cross, the Lamb and the inscription, 'The Son of God died for men,' would have astonished us most of all."

No such physical tablet exists, of course. But the spiritual truth M. derives from ancient religions suggests that "our salvation depends upon whether we hear this cautioning call of our perished brothers, the Atlantes-these seven to us incomprehensible, forgotten and the most unknown of all human words: 'The Son of God died for men.'"

However, men are asleep now as they usually have been. They know not what they do, where they have been, where they are going. M. fears that Europe, the second Atlantis is going to be destroyed, just as Atlantis was, in a frenzy of war, of hatred, of devotion to the diabolical religion of the mass sacrifice of men to "gods"-to their own evil passions.

M. sees a dim future for real Christianity just as he sees a strong likelihood that Western culture will sink under the diabolical marriage of endless progress and endless war. His warning, that had no effect on international events of the years since the 1940s, is hardly likely to have any more effect on the warmongerers of the early years of the Third Millennium. But no one who has read Atlantis/Europe with something like an open mind and open heart can subsequently claim total ignorance of the error and danger in what is going on as nations arm and weapons makers vie for orders and the masses of the world's peoples sleep on.

Since the above discription is so complete, all I will add is that this work is very detailed and comes in under three pounds! THe articles are all balanced and scholarly, with great attention to the general reader. It is also a great way to find an updated bibliography on the subject as well, since all articles are followed by detailed biblios. There are few works like it in English. Enjoy!

Mitropoulos's career, method of working, extraordinarymusicianship are described in detail. Also described is his sweetnessand naiveté. Aside from some special pleading when he bashes other conductors in defense of Mitropoulos, Trotter does a fine job of pulling together the research of Oliver Daniel who died before he could write the biography.

When Dimitri Mitropoulos died in 1961 while rehearsing Mahler's 3rd Symphony the classical music world lost one of its most imaginative and original conductors. It was Mitropoulos through his New York Philharmonic concerts and broadcasts in the 1950's who really widely exposed American audiences to the works of Mahler (he gave the American premiere of the 6th Symphony). Trotter's biography gives an excellent account of his career from its early days in Greece and Berlin to his work in New York and Minneapolis. The backstage back stabbing that drove him from the New York Philharmonic is clearly laid out with names named and sources cited. To say the least some well known figures of the classical music world do not come out of this smelling too good.Trotter's biography will hopefully introduce to new
audiences to one of the 20th Century's great conductors who, within a few years after his death, nearly faded into obscurity.

I stumbled on the name Dimitri Mitropoulos quite by accident, as one never hears him mentioned much in the same way Karajan, Bernstein, and others are. Neither have I heard any of his recordings. This book helped me delve into this great man's life - what a singular purpose of mind he had - total dedication to his craft. William Trotter succeeds in giving us not just the details of his life (which, by themselves, are not exactly mundane), but also in bringing the reader the imagery, the depth of feeling of Mitropoulos' work. One can feel and see him conducting in his full glory. Having had this marvellous biography brought to me, I am now eagerly buying whatever recordings conducted by Mitropoulos that I can find. I agree with the other reader who commented - a discography would be most welcome.