you can't complain when you're set in the world of the three laws of robotics with a beautiful young woman and a man without a memory--first rate pastiche by the two authors in the book. I loved it!

The saga of Robot is continued in this novel, which can only be described as exellent, with a dose of brilliant, and a side of superlative. The story of Robot City is expressed through the further development of the characters Derec, a man who crash landed in the aptly named Robot City, a city run and inhabited entirely by robots. Having lost his memory in the crash landing, he takes the name of Derec, which is the manufacturer of his jump suit. Throughout his journey, he meets the mysterios Katherine. After a bout of being captured by extraterrestrials, and such other madcap antics, Derec and Katherine are deposited in Robot City together. It is here that the plot begins to thicken, and the character development becomes signifigant. This volume of the series is a perfect book for any science fiction fan, and perfectly expresses the three laws of Robotics and their applications in the real world.

Many years ago, I read this series of books when they came out in paperback, while Asimov was still alive. I had forgotten how entertaining they were. All the classic elements, including continuity between different authors in the series exist. A must read for people who like a substantial, yet easy to read book. Definately not for those with a short attention span or someone who would rather see the movie then read the book.

Loving What Is introduces and inspires the reader to do "the work." This is a term used by the author to describe the self-discovery process required to change unexamined thoughts so that unconditional love can be experienced. Doing "the work" is important because unexamined thoughts are the source of all suffering and pain.

The strength of this book is the verbatim dialogues of several people who openly and candidly answer their self-discovery questions. We can easily see ourselves in these people because we all have the same issues. Typical life problems are explored including hatefulness, money, adultery, addiction, parenting, and more. Katie's abundant awareness and wisdom is authentically revealed through her interactions with these people.

Note that the introduction to Loving What Is does not provide a big picture overview of the process that Katie is presenting. Because of this, the first few chapters are somewhat hard to follow and do not fully grab your attention. Consequently you may be tempted to put the book down, but don't. You'll be rewarded for hanging in there or for cutting straight to the dialogues.

This book received a score of 7.875 on a scale of 1(low) to 10(high from The Spiritual Reviewer.

"When you argue with reality, you lose-but only 100% of the time," Byron Katie says. To help us stop our painful and hopeless arguments with reality, Byron Katie gives us much more, or much less, than another psychological Band-Aid or superficial pep-talk. She gives us The Work, four penetrating questions that, when asked sincerely, can help anyone tear through years of painful beliefs -"I'm too fat." "My partner should love me more." etc.-leaving the peace and freedom that come naturally from "loving what is."

I found The Work a little slippery to understand the first time I heard of it (it's been spreading through word of mouth for years). How can asking myself some questions make any difference? But after I did it, I was blown away! Loving What Is makes learning this process fairly simple, through detailed instructional material, humorous anecdotes (Katie is famous for her sense of humor), and dozens of powerful examples of The Work in action. Co-author Stephen Mitchell's intelligence and precision are evident in the book's seamless structure, and in how naturally Katie's clarity and warmth make it to the page. This book still requires "active" reading-and you have to do The Work yourself in order to really get it-but for those who are willing to try something new, Loving What Is really could change your life. It changed mine. (I highly recommend the audiobook as well.)

What can I say to recommend this book? ...there is nothing out there that surpasses what Katie is doing and the power of the Work..There are PLENTY of teachings and techniques out there more complex than this method of inquiry but there is nothing more profound and direct...It's not a philosophy or a religion but philosophies and religions you've studied in the past will become far more accessible and comprehensible..more simple and more clear as a result of doing The Work...Too often we try to access Reality through the "medium" of the profundities and Wisdoms we've read or heard discussed...It's akin to trying to appreciate the Grand Canyon by merely reading about it's beauty, agreeing that it's wonderful and spending lots of our time discussing how great it is with other people..we do that so much we start to think we've actually been there..until we DO go there...when that happens, words fail us..That was my experience anyway...Don't be fooled by The Works simplicity...E=MC2 is simple too...

Daily accounts of experiences while kayaking the inside passage. I found the entire book engaging and interesting. However, it does not offer deep or wide coverage of kayaking or the cultures or natural history of the inside passage (fine by me). Little tastes of these topics throughout the book. This surprised me given the length of the bibliography. Many interesting interactions with people living in these areas. I highly recommend this book for those interested in travel/adventure non-fiction. As mentioned by previous reviewers, much text is devoted to descriptions of travel from point A to point B but we have no map.

I have sailed and paddled the Inside Passage from time to time over the last 24 years. I am an avid reader of true outdoor adventures. I usually judge a book by its ability to hold my interest and ultimately to motivate me to leave the comforts of home and to take a stoll down "the road less traveled." I have been eyeing my kayak and checking my gear since finishing Homelands. When the ski season is over, I'm packing my kayak and heading north. My only regret is that I do not have the luxury of duplicating the entire trip.

The author provides an engaging and captivating description of this courageous undertaking in a journal format. This format serves the book and pace of the adventure well. The poetic language used to describe characters, places and events is excellent and conjures memories that parallel my own experiences along the British Columbia coast. The author has done an excellent job of capturing the flow, feeling and character of this region. This is not a Fodor's on kayaking the Inside Passage but rather an adventure of the soul and mind, at water level, along one of the most rustic, beautiful and inhospitable coastlines in America.

Homelands is a wonderful book. While many adventure writers choose to go the He-man route of disaster, mishap and mayhem, Ricks sees fit to pay attention to the subtler events of this journey with his wife. Make no mistake, there¹s plenty of adventure; the narrative can be enthralling; the challenges of embarking on such an arduous journey in tandem are ever-present. Still, what I like most about this book is its fidelity to the landscape, to the seascape, to the people, to the history of the region. The voice is eloquent and full of verve. The story is tinged by a sense of community that drives home the notion of multiple "homelands" in a region still faced with the consequences of a frontier mentality. I hear echoes of Barry Lopez and another terrific writer of place, Wallace Stegner. This book is thoughtful and wise. I look forward to reading more from Ricks. Highly recommended.

This book progresses quite rapidly through the various topics; usually begining with a one dimentional analysis and then proceding to more general treatment. This more general treatment tends to consist of Tensor analysis which is explained to a working extent in an appendix. However, after these general equations have been derived they are only refefered to by there location out of a comprehensive chart. Furthermore, the student is trained to use intuition in their approach to problem solving.

In general the text is incredibly consistant and well written. The examples and problems grow from a relitively basic level to those that can only be solved with advanced engineering Mathematics. The progression builds on itself in a nice way.

The unified visulisation of those phenomena provide to Chemical engineers a very clear idea of the momentum and heat transport, but the basis of the chemical engineers study is the mass transfer and here we found a very good description, else more, Bird, introduce and gide us to solve this kind of problems. Other very interesting side of this book is the tensorial approach that can be percived in his study. For a best start in chemical engineering, this book provides what you need and what you wuill need.

The most enduring text ever written for students of chemical engineering, BSL's "Transport Phenomena" leads the way with its study of momentum, energy, and mass transport. The structure and writing of the book make it unparalled in its usefulness to both beginning students of transport phenomena, and intermediate/advanced students looking for treatments of convective and turbulent transport, and mass transfer in reacting systems.

After having read "Cain" and "Hunter", I was on familiar ground with my third Huggins book. As with the others, it is a story of good superhero vs. evil monster. As with the others, however, it has most of the same flaws. This time there are two heroes instead of one, in the form of a viking Catholic priest named Thor and a grim handyman named Jackson Connor. Thor is literally a giant with an axe to grind and the mind of a literature scholar. Still, how can a man be both eight feet tall and built like Hercules? Even the tallest NBA stars aren't eight feet, and they look like beanpoles. Jackson Connor, however, is much closer to a normal person than any of Huggins' other heroes. He's simply a smart, tough guy with a background in fixing everything, and he generally outthinks the monster instead of outfighting him, unlike the others. This makes Jackson the most plausible and empathic of the main characters in the three books, but there are some flaws. 1) The relationship with his young son is pure sap. 2) Everyone calls him by his last name, even his wife. 3) Why is Jackson working as a foreman at a research site, even for extra pay, when his wife is obviously a computer genius? On to the monster. This time it's an honest-to-goodness dragon, making it the most invincible, and coolest, of Huggins' other monsters. The science behind the artificially created beast is believable enough for this genre, and the idea of a fire-breathing lizard running around making charbroil out of a bunch of idiots is very appealing. In one of the better parts of the book, Huggins even has Thor recount (apparently) genuine historical writings on actual dragon encounters in recorded history. HOWEVER, there are more than a few mistakes. Thor actually fights the dragon hand to hand in one unconvincing, if epic, battle, and the result is completely implausible. The dragon actually sees the shadow of the Devil, directing the beast to kill the boy. Finally, the wringer Jackson puts it through at the end is unbelievable. Not even the wounded Leviathan could withstand the whole series of traps he lays at the end. Finally, the evil-bad-guy-project-director is the same stereotype found in the other books. Then there are the usual literary mistakes. Huggins uses the same adjectives over and over again. The introduction of the dragon's statistics is a ham-handed presentation. There's a totally unnecessary side trip into virtual reality. And when Jackson finally kills the thing at the end using a particular tool, the method he employs should have killed him too if you pay attention to the details of its use. Yet all of this isn't to say I didn't enjoy it anyway. It's just disappointing to see the same stuff over and over again, even though that's what action books/movies usually boil down to. After the first third of the book it becomes a constant pulse-pounding action sequence as the good guys lay traps and fight the beast with a constant barrage from grenade launchers. Huggins introduces some interesting history and mythology without laying on the Christianity too thick. The science is pretty cool, and Thor is interesting, if implausible. In the end, this book is a lot like a good action movie: turn your brain off, bring plenty of popcorn, and have a good time.

As a simple comic book premise turned novel Leviathan is entertaining enough. I have read somewhere that Huggins is/was a screenwriter which explains why so much information is delivered in highly unrealistic and stilted 'speeches' rather than built into creating three dimensional characters. I'm no scientist, but it looks as if Huggins did at least some homework and his explanation as to how a fire breathing dragon might be able to actually exist seemed plausible (not that that matters too much to monster fans, we'll take any explanation as long as we have groovy monsters running around wreaking havoc), for that I give it three stars. Fun stuff that is difficult to dislike in the long run.

This was the first book I read by James Byron Huggins. Now I have all of his books. I really like his books, because they are filled with characters with warrior hearts, and faith in God.

I don't want to give too much away, but this book is basically about man trying to play God, and it turns around and bites him in the butt... literally! Man creates the ultimate machine, and then looses control of it. I won't say anymore... so you better get it, and read it. [....]

The Tell Tale of Heart by Edgar Allen Poe wrote about a mad man who killed someone, Eventually tells on himself. This man is known to be crazy. Every night he goes in a room and watches the man with the evil eye. Until one night he decides to kill him. The mad man thinks the evil eye is after him. This book would be of interest to middle school level to adults. I loved his vivid details and use of vocabulary. This story is one of many stories I loved of Edgar Allen Poe. His twisted mind makes many of his works enjoyable. I recommend this book to many people.

Within The Tale-Tale Heart, a disfigured old man becomes the object of the narrator's wrath. With precision the narrator sneaks into the old man's home and kills him because of a grotesque eye that has obsessed the narrator. Through the narrator's actions, Poe destroys "the external universe as usually perceived and eradicates the barriers erected by time, space and self. With the destruction of the reasoned world, the world of the imagination can take over [allowing] Poe to confuse sight and sound, sight and smell, fire and water, life and death, and the various other elements which man's reason keeps apart or regars as polarities" (Ketterer 28). Through the narrator's slow creeping motion into the old man's room (which lasts hours), Poe is able to not only alter reality, but also our concept of time.

As in The Black Cat, the narrator in this story also leads the police to the body. However, it is not an outside force that leads to his capture, it is his own mental state. "In the conclusion of the story, the ringing in the madman's ears first is fancied, then later becomes distinct, then is discovered to be so definite that it is erroneously accorded external actuality, and finally grows to such obsessive proportions that it drives the criminal into an emotional and physical frenzy" (Howarth 97). The beating of the old man's heart that the narrator hears in his mind is an distortion of his reality. The man's heart is not actually beating, but the narrator is convinced that he hears the sound because Poe has created a sound illusion. Reality and illusion in this story merge to create a new world where anything is possible, even the beating of a dead man's heart.

It was a very good book. It is about the narrator who is convienced that this old man's eye is evil and it is going after him. His compulsive disoder takes him to go and see the eye every night. Until one night he goes to see it and the old man is up. The mad man shines the light in his wide open eye. the man kills the poor old man and does unmetionable things to him. The police finally get there and question him. To convience them that he is inocent he invites them in for tea. While sitting down he starts getting insane and hears his heart beating, but he thinks it is the old mans. He finally fesses and is sentenced to death.

The Cask of Amontillado is a well written story, but can be hard to read because of the outdated language the narrator uses. The plot is carefully thought out, but again can be hard to pick up on or comprehend. Poe writes this story along the basic story line of many of his other books. The story of a man who gets away with murder is definately one of Poe's favorite tales. If you are fond of strange stories or stories about strange people this book will probably wind up somewhere on your top ten list

E.A. Poe's work in "The Cask of Amontillado" is either hated or loved very much. To most people they miss the entire point of this story. One of only few stories, such as "Animal Farm" by G. Orwell, if you read it over again, and again, you gain more insist of what is really happening. The most missed part, and exciting is the ending. When the question is answered. Why is Montressor telling this story? Poe sends your mind not only thru the endeavors of a premeditated revenge but also transcends time at the end. I suggest after reading it, read the very last paragraph, sentence by sentence, in its own entirety so you can grasp the power of the story.

This is Classic Poe... It was a required reading for me in school but after I read it I was compelled to re-read it. This story captivates the reader, while forcing you to ask, Why? Poe never really gets into the insult that occurred, but it is obivious that Poe is the master of Payback. He takes one of his greatest fears, being buried alive and transcends it into this story. What I find fascinating it the extent that he is willing to go to exact his revenge. Not only is his enemy buried alive, but he knows the person who has committed this endeavor

With every new biography of Byron the previous writer's conjecture becomes the new writer's fact and a starting point for yet more conjecture. Pretty soon Byron will come full circle from the homosexual pedophile / rapist portrayed here, to the rakish romantic poet he was. Ms. Eisler's work is a well-written tome with plenty of detail and the effective tack of incorporating more of the man's poetry into a bio than any previous author. But it lacks a sense of mood; of time and place in the Regency era (Beau Brummell is mentioned once) and has a number of troubling conclusions as well. Perhaps most disturbing is her use of Caroline Lamb's and others testimony to portray Byron as having raped his wife, Annabella while she was pregnant (preposterous conclusion) and seduced his page, Robert Rushton. A jealous and jilted lover out to destroy Byron's reputation does not a good witness make. There is no solid evidence that Byron ever had homosexual affairs. There are facetious remarks in his letters about "culling Hyacinth's" in the East, but since when does a flower ever refer to anything but a young woman? The homosexual inferences are drawn from admitted homosexual, Charles Matthews in his reply. Byron obviously felt attached to John Edleston, the Cambridge choir boy, but staunchly denied theirs was anything but a "passionate, though pure" attachment. Nevertheless, this and other shaky evidence has been used by one biographer after another since Marchand's great work. I suppose this is the "new" information that the public hears about every two years. Other flaws are less subjective. Here are but a few: Fletcher, Byron's lifelong and faithful valet, is called an "older brother" figure. He was 6 years younger than Byron. Hazard, the ancestor of craps, is called a "card game"; An unforgivable sin for a Regency scholar that must have Georgette Heyer spinning in her tomb. No mention is made of his meeting with the Prince Regent, where they discussed their mutual admiration for Walter Scott. Alas, Ms. Eisler looks so knowing and satisfied in her picture on the jacket. Certainly, Byron was no saint, nor did he pretend to be, but I can't help thinking, wherever he is, he is none too pleased with all this.

This new Byron biography does her subject justice in a lively, insightful, well-written biography of the romantic poet. A complex character who had a public as well as private life and lived both to the hilt, Byron is a rare being whose life cries to be told. The author enlivens her text with many quotes from his poetry (often autobiographical), giving a reader a goodly sampling of a poet whose work tends to be underappreciated today, especially his great poem, Don Juan. If you are looking for a really good read, that is also thought provoking and intelligent, this is the biography to get.

An excellent biography. Eisler presents the life and times of Byron and his circle with extensive excerpts from works, letters, and other documented materials. An objective and fascinating journey of the brief rise and subsequent downward spiral of the man and the poet. Eisler's writing is exemplary - highly recommended.

This was a fun book to read. It had action, sorrow, and romance.

But, when I look back now, I see that it was not a very likely scenario. I dont want to give any secrets away about the book, so I'll keep it simple. Hunter is the best tracker in America, he can track anything, and at any time. It starts out with him trying to find a lost boy, it is cold, and the boy is near death. But does he find him? Well of course he does, this is that kind of book where everything good happens, and not many "good" characters die. After that, he is given a mission to find a weird beast that has killed many already. And so on, and so on.

It is a really good book, and I hope you run out and buy it right now. Mr. Huggins is a good author, and I am waiting to read his next novel.

If books were ranked according to how nasty the villian was, this one would be off the charts. Huggins has created a surprisingly believable genetic-monster "bad guy", that -- wouldn't you know it -- likes to feast on human brains. Of course the beast has the interest of lots of people, including government officials who the author successfully makes the reader loathe. This bloodthirsty superhuman is persued by the best tracker in the world, Nathanial Hunter.

If you've read any of this author's works, for instance CAIN, you'll be at home reading HUNTER. If you are a mother looking for a gift for your young son who likes to read thrillers, skip it. The author, who entered new territory when he included profanity in his last book (the first one he had done outside of the Christian publishing realm), takes things even further with HUNTER -- the "F" word appears several times and our aforementioned protagonist Hunter has a sexual encounter with the only female in his creature-tracking entourage.

On the positive side the book does include a light moral lesson (i.e. it's a bad idea to try to achieve eternal life through scientific experiments), amidst a great deal of action. Further, Huggins writing exudes storytelling. When he wants to create an ominous tone, in one paragraph he does it as well as most bestselling writers do in an entire novel. His word choice and imagery drips with talent.

If you're looking for something "safe", this book isn't it. If you just want a good read, go for it.

I must admit that Mr. Huggins style is immediately immersive, the pacing lightning fast. I was at first intrigued by the fearless tracker Nathaniel Hunter and his huge wolf Ghost. The action was intense and bloody, the weaponry and the tracking information extensive. But then the story got repetitive. Which made me feel kind of cheated. Overall I enjoyed this novel and the trek across Alaska to kill an enemy that seemed impossible to kill. But the suspense level really wasn't all that high, I had a pretty good idea how this book was gonna turn out. Some of the twists were slightly unexpected, the characters were well developed (especially Hunter and Ghost) and the monster was a true vision of Horror. However, I do have a major problem with characters being thrown into the same situation again and again, only to prevail and fight another day and blah blah blah. The story kept building up to the same climatic scene over and over, just in a different way with a higher and higher body count. It kinda made me question the intelligence level of the elite special forces unit sent to track the creature. But, taken for what it is, an action novel, Hunter does deliver the brainless goods. I must admit I had fun reading this and I daresay, if you're an action fan, you'll enjoy this fast paced book too. You just might get a little irritated toward the end. Overall, a good, quick read, that you will strangely recommend to friends.

The authors explain their hypothesis that people tend to treat computers, television and new media like they would human beings, and that people react to media-based presentations as if they were real-life situations -- even when people consciously realize this is not the case. It's a really interesting premise and the authors do an excellent job explaining their ideas.

The only reason I didn't give this work 5 stars is that the authors do not provide enough data on the results of their experiments. They frequently mention "significant" results, but they do not offer the results themselves for the reader to decide just how significant those results may be. This book is clearly written for a large audience, most of whom probably prefer to have the authors offer an interpretation without padding the work with lots of charts and tables. I would have liked a footnote or two with the actual experiment data, but regardless it's an excellent and intriguing read.

I would highly recommend this book to anyone interested in interface design or media studies.

The media equation, as introduced by Nass and Reeves, is that "media equals real life" and that our interactions with media are "fundamentally social and natural" (p. 5). This book is a popularization of established, replicated research on how people interact with television advertising, tutoring systems, error messages, loud noises, sudden movement, etc. For instance, one widely replicated result is that computer tutoring systems get better evaluations if the evaluation program is run on the same computer. Moving the reviewer to a new computer (with the same program), significantly lowers the score. The social science literature shows that teachers who collect their own evaluations score much more highly than those whose evaluations are collected by others. This is the kind of evidence Nass and Reeves bring to bear in support of the media equation. They don't claim that we are consciously thinking about the computer's feelings and don't want to hurt them. Rather, to the contrary, subjects claim they were doing no such thing. Yet the evidence of our behavior seems incontrovertible.

The media equation is a good enough predictor of user behavior, at least for telephone-based spoken dialog systems of the form my company builds, that it has informed our designs from top to bottom. Our applications apologize if they make a mistake. Callers respond well to this. Sure, the callers know they're talking to a machine, but this doesn't stop them from saying "thank you" when it's done or "please" before a query or feeling bad (or angry) if the computer can't understand them. Another strategy recommended by Nass and Reeves that we follow is trying to draw the caller in to work as a team with the computer; again, Nass and Reeves support this with several clever experiments. There is also a useful section on flattery, looking at the result of the computer flattering itself and its users; it turns out that we rate computers that flatter themselves more highly than ones that are neutral.

Among other interesting explanations you get in this book are why we're more tolerant of bad pictures than bad sound, why we focus on moving objects, speaking rate equilibrium, what we can do to make someone remember an event in a video, and the role of gender.

This book is very quick and easy to read. I read it in two days while on vacation it was so fascinating. In contrast to the classical yet dry social science format of hypothesis, experimental methodology, results, and essentially a summary of the results as a conclusion, Nass and Reeves only vaguely summarize their experimental methodology and take a no-holds-barred approach to drawing conclusions. This may annoy social scientists, most of whom expect their own kind to be far more circumspect.

This book is an absolute must-read for anyone designing mediated interfaces. For those who don't believe the results, I'd suggest running some experiments; our company did, and it made us believers.

Anyone working in "new media" (writers, political consultants, market research, advertising, software designers, tv and movie makers, webmasters, cinematographers, etc.), not aware of how our "old," hunter-gatherer brains interpret the modern world, isn't working with a full tool box.

Authors Reeves and Nass show, through their experiments, that people (including programmers and many others intimately familiar with how media works) cannot disengage hard-wired caveman brains when working with software, playing a game, watching an ad, or seeing a movie. If we could, then why did that horror movie make our hearts race? And why did it make us jumpy afterwards?

So how do we treat computers like people? Here's one example from the book. In human interaction, one is likely to politely agree (a/k/a fib a little) with an acquaintance who says, "Isn't this a great sweater?" One also tends to be more honest discussing the sweater with a third party, "That sweater isn't my favorite color."

If people do treat computers like humans, then (substituting computers for people in the example), a person would agree with Computer A (out of politeness!), but tell Computer B the truth. And that's what happened in the authors' test lab.

People were quizzed by Computer A (programmed to perform poorly), "Aren't I doing a great job?" -- and they gave Computer A high marks. Then, in another room, Computer B asked about Computer A's performance... and people rated Computer A more honestly (and consistantly lower than they rated Computer A "to its face.") The pattern of response to the computers matched the way people interact with each other.

In example after example, covering many, many areas of human behavior (from politeness to flight-or-flight and even to how little it takes for us to perceive something as male or female and how that colors our thoughts), Reeves and Nash show us how our old brains are responding to our high-tech world .

The ideas in this book should provoke discussion, controversy, and more study. But, those in media need to adjust to the reality that if you want to talk to the 21st century human -- you better learn, first, how to appeal to the caveman.