This book was a revelation when I read it; I didn't think physics books could be this clear! By replacing equations with diagrams, this book allows non-specialist readers to fully understand the concepts in relativity without the slow, painful progress so often associated with this sort of book. If you want just one book on relativity, that will allow you not only to know how relativity works, but to intuitively understand it, then this is definitely the book for you. I cannot recommend it highly enough.

I'm not a physicist or physics major, but I do like reading physics on a lay-level. When I hit special relativity in college physics, it was no surprise--because I'd read Epstein's book and gotten past the biggest hurdle, being able to conceptualize what's going on. (I can tell you that as far as math goes, special relativity at this level isn't difficult at all as long as you don't get your frames of reference screwed up...which I usually do.)

And that's where Relativity Visualized excels: helping you get your brain around these strange, strange, STRANGE ideas. No math. A little geometry, and believe me, you don't need to remember much from HS geometry to make sense of this, if you're curious about relativity. While I've no complaints about my college prof's treatment of relativity :-) this would have helped the poor freshman engineer in my class who, upon learning why the twin paradox isn't a paradox, said in bewilderment, "But that's stupid!" It isn't--it's just hard to accept.

I owe a lot to this book. I've since gone on to read more advanced books on relativity, quantum physics, and string theory. What makes this book special is that it will make relativity an intuitive concept. As relativity is a foundation for so many other things, I needed a book which would give me a rock solid foundation. The book made relativity so simple that a child would understand it. And not only understand it, but be utterly convinced that it is correct. I now understand how relativity works about as well as I do the law of conservation of energy, as an example.
After you read this, you will want to move on, and I recomment "Quantum Reality". It's not simple like this book, though. I haven't found any books that do for quantum physics what Epstien does for relativity.

This book gets one excited about physics. Common physical phenoman like rate, speed, mass and force are explained in very ingenious ways. What is more the writing is good and to the point. Even though there is not much math to speak of the author explains things in a concise manner. What got me hooked to this book is that it does require thinking on part of the reader. One quickly finds out that what may seem intuitive and common sense is in fact precisely the wrong answer. Another major advantage of the book is that you do not have to read it from page one onwards. Turn to any segment and you are sure to be sucked in. Page after page is filled with nice little nuggets of fun. Get this book you will not regret it.

If you ever took a college class in physics, or maybe even high school, or ever wanted to understand physics, this is the book for you. I'm an electrical engineer, and my physics classes were 20 years ago, but I love this book. It really does make you think!! Buy it now (and get one for your friends).

This is a jewel of a book. The latest second edition includes additional material on waves, which addresses a lack in the earlier edition. There are sections on optics, momentum, kinetic and potential energy, etc..

My favorite problem, and this is typical of the sort of material presented, is to decide whether or not a car suffers more damage in

A. hitting an immovable brick wall at 50 m.p.h.

B. having a head-on collision with an identical car both travelling at 50 m.p.h. ?

The usual response is to say B. However, Newton's 3rd law of motion, ("forces always act in pairs; if a exerts a force on b, then b exerts an equal and oppositely-directed force on a), maintains that the damage is the same, i.e., the wall strikes the car with the force of a head-on collision. This problem, by the way, is particularly juicy - I remember the head of a university physics department discussing this one at considerable length with two other physicists! (They more or less agreed, with provisos, that B. is indeed correct.)

The author encourages thinking without mathematics, to come to terms with the physical reality of what is occurring. This approach closely mirrors that of Michael Faraday and James Clerk Maxwell, who felt that mathematics was useful only as an adjunct to science and no substitute for clear thinking... A marvellous book.

I hardly ever buy nonfiction but seeing this at Borders I knew I had to have it. Lewis Carrol is one of the greatest writers of the nineteenth century, surpassing even Tolstoy,Dostoevsky,and Dickens. I have a complete collection of all of his works and enjoy them all(except for the math puzzles, math has never been my strongest point.) If you are a fan of Lewis Carroll then this is the book for you. Gorgous illustrations and photographs, an interesting and informative text, this is a wonderful little book to own. It is also informative if you are interested in Victorian England such as Iam (probably due to my Lewis Carroll fixation) There are also examples of Lewis Carrolls photography and pictures of the Liddle children. I highly recommend this book to anyone who loves the world of Alice and who is obsessed with Mr. Dodgson's books.

A small in size book, being about 5 x 6. It is printed on glossy paper with many photographs. It is an exceptional buy for the amount of money tendered. If you read anything by Mr. Carroll you have to have this book too. Mr. Carroll's work is a must for anyone writing anything. The simple truth is his writing means nothing as far as plot, but his style is brilliant.

Is there anyone out there that knows what the name of the writing style used by Mr. Carroll. For instance his characters are telling a story to someone small Mr. Carroll aims his text at a small animal. The small animal answers back in small type. When someone is running and talking, there are long drawn out sentences.

This book provides a well written description of the conditions and environment that led to the writing of the Alice books. The reader is immersed in Victorian culture both verbally and visually. The profusely illustrated book is a joy to read and informative as well. It fills the niche between biography and textual analysis.

Joel Birenbaum, president of the Lewis Carroll Society of North America

Lewis Carroll is a great author for kids and he represents a completely new phase in children's literature. Children are children and they only have grown-up age in front of them as a limited world and a perspective, the latter of which they may change when they are grown up by remembering what childhood was for them and the tales they entertained when they were children in order to tell them to a new generation of children. Lewis Carroll leads Alice into a world where everyday objects and animals, but also strange objects and animals, mix. Everything is right and wrong at the same time. Too small or too big. Everything speaks and tells stories or sings songs that remind Alice of songs she knows but that come out strange and distorted. This whole world of wonderland is a suddenly animated pack of cards in a doll's house and doll's garden. But at the same time Lewis Carroll invests the fears and the fantasms of the child into this world. We then can have and see a father figure and a mother figure that loom high in this world and represent a completely aborted sense of justice. Alice, the child, becomes the one who puts things together and back to straightness by just dreaming this disrupted world awake. She only nostalgically remembers the fascination that was hers and the strangeness that was that world's. Waking up brings her back to normality and clears this wonderland of the menaces it contained. Lewis Carroll is a genius when he thus depicts a world of fear and frustration and shows how this world can become marvellous in real life because it is the antipodes of everyday regular society.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

Do you remember the first time you saw a painting by Marc Chagall? His fantastic creatures wearing hats and trousers, people kissing while floating in mid air, layers of events happening at once, and conversations between animals and flowers? If Chagall was alive and asked to illustrate Alice's Adventures, it may have looked very similar to this.

Only this is better.

Simple and yet very rich illustrations bounce you from page to page. They are vibrant but not overwhelming, you are curious about where the images will take you next, it makes you hungry for more. And you get more! There is a printed illustration on almost every other page of the book! There seem to be as many small images, lending themselves as nuances to Carroll's text, as there are full-page illustrations. In a word, it's fantastic.

I disagree with the editorial review of the School Library Journal. While I see this book as sophisticated, I also see very young children relating to the artwork. The dream is at times spooky and frustrating like the real world can be, just as at other moments it can be a playful party. Although Alice in Wonderland may not have been originally intended for child as young as three or four years old to read, they will be enticed into trying. A child as young as four will relate to this Alice, she is a small girl with flowing hair and dresses in an easy style. Deloss McGraw has illustrated a modern and truly dreamlike interpretation of Carroll's classic. Finally we have a total departure from the formal British and more grown up Alice that John Tenniel portrayed all those years ago and has been an influence upon artists attempting it since.

Albeit a short, but important side note: the size 14 - 16 font is very readable for both old and young eyes, and comes in very handy for those readers-out-loud at late bedtimes in a dimly lit room.

Of all the illustrated versions there are of this classic story, this will be the version your child would first pick up from the shelf.

This book has blown my mind...incrediable....the most colorful illustrations ever...and it's a book for all ages

Graeme Base has lent a thrilling vision to Lewis Carroll's poem, illustrating the complete poem with seven dioramas -- lush, layered cutouts that are an interesting departure from pop-ups and lift-the-flap books.

It is not the only possible imagery, but it is very entertaining, well engineered and, in my opinion, faithful to the spirit of the text's author.

This is my 2 year old's favorite book. We have read it so many time that he almost has the whole poem memorized!! The illustrations are wonderful for adults and children. I find new things in the pages almost every night. I highly reccomend it.

I LOVE this poem by Lewis Carroll. It is extremely well written and inspires the imagination to soar to new heights. I am a big fan of illustrator Graeme Base. His bright and colorful creatures makes this Lewis Carroll classic a MUST for anyone.

This is a book for children (with wonderful illustrations) that attempts to tell the story of the friendship between Alice Liddell and "Lewis Carroll". It is written is a somewhat episodic style. The episodes are chosen, for the most part, due to the bearing that each one has on illuminating characters and situations found in the "Alice" books. The author does not completely avoid the controversial, and this is somewhat of a pleasant surprise. Though originally written in Swedish, it reads very well in translation. I found the book to be both poignant and scholarly (i.e., well-researched), and with great adult appeal for a childrens' book. (Even if the text were less rewarding than it is, the book would be worth keeping for the illustrations alone)

Although The Other Alice is technically a children's book, any fan of Lewis Carroll will find it rewarding. The meticulous art work, showing Alice Liddell and her sisters and Charles Dodgeson [Carroll] and many Oxford settings is superb. The book is also includes many actual photgraphs of Alice, her family and Dodgeson's other child friends. Although this is a book for children, it does not shy away from the rather sad life and obsession which drove Dodgeson, nor does it give an artifically happy ending to the story. If you wonder where many of Dodgeson's plot developments came from [e.g. the Dodo, the wet 'caucus race' you'll find it all here. The author [who also wrote the delightful Linnea in Monet's Garden] and illustrator deserve kudos for this book [translated from the Sweedish, there is apparently a different translation avaiable in England under the title Alice's Oxford Adventure]. Well worth reading in a more adult approach is Staphanie Stoffel's Lewis Carroll in Wonderland [which includes some of the paintings done by Erickson for this book] both are better reads [and far more fun] than Gardner's Carroll biography.

"The Hunting of the Snark" is a brilliant nonsense-poem. Yet Gardner has seen fit to put pretentious, geeky, ...pedantic annotations all over it. Now I like nonsense, but the vulgarly rational "sense" of some of these annotations irritates me. Do we really need to know that the word "BOMB" begins and ends with B (thereby relating it to the Boojum) and that OM is the Hindu name of God??? Do we really need to know of a political cartoon in which Kruschev says "BOO", and does Gardner have to tell us that he was trying to say Boojum??

Annotations should be done in the manner of Gardner's own annotations of Alice in Wonderland. Now those were annotations that made *sense*. Annotations that simply explained out of date concepts, gave relevant details from Carroll's own life, or obscure humour. That's all! That is what annotations should be like.

The pedantic geekery of these annotations remind me of the...games of Star Trek fanatics (or Sherlock Holmes fanatics).

The poem is brilliant, though; and the illustrations were funny, before the annotations over-analysed them.

Lewis Carroll is brilliant in this piece. First of all the poetical music is perfect, absolutely perfect, and yet the words don't mean much. Many of these words are not even to be found in any dictionary. Be it only for the music, this piece is astonishingly good. But the piece has a meaning. I will not enter the numerical value of the numbers used in the poem : 3, 42, 6, 7, 20, 10, 992, 8, and I am inclined to say etc because some are more or less hidden here and there in the lines. Hunting for these numbers is like hunting for the snark, an illusion. But the general meaning of the poem is a great allegory to social and political life. A society, any society gives itself an aim, a target, a purpose and everyone is running after it without even knowing what it is. What is important in society is not what you are running after or striving for, but only the running and the striving. Lewis Carroll is thus extremely modern in this total lack of illusions about society, social life and politics : just wave a flag of any kind, or anything that can be used as a flag and can be waved, in front of the noses of people and they will run after it or run in the direction it indicates. They love roadsigns and social life is a set of roadsigns telling you where to go. Everyone goes there, except of course the roadsigns themselves who never go in the direction they indicate. Lewis Carroll is thus the first post-modern poet of the twenty-first century. He just lived a little bit too early.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

I am a fan of Lewis Carroll, but somehow was unaware of the existence of an edition of "The Hunting of the Snark" with annotations. As someone who tremendously enjoys Martin Gardner's "Annotated Alice," I heartily recommend this book to like-minded readers. Gardner's annotations and introduction set the stage for the reader, putting the composition of the poem in its proper context in Victorian England, and in Lewis Carroll's life. And as with "Annotated Alice" the annotations are fascinating and amusing in their own right. "The Hunting of the Snark" is one of Carroll's lesser-appreciated (or at least lesser-known) works, and this paperback is an excellent introduction.

I noticed some confusion in the Amazon listings for this book, so let me clarify that the edition with Gardner's annotations is the paperback, and for illustrations it contains reproductions of Henry Holiday's original woodcuts from the 1800's. There are only eight pictures, and these are in old-fashioned style which may turn off some modern readers. This edition does not contain the illustrations - listed in the review of the hardcover editions - by Jonathan Dixon, nor the illustrations by Mervyn Peake also listed as available in hardcover from Amazon.

To Snark fans, though, I would unhesitatingly recommend both those editions as well. Dixon's is little-known, but excellent, the most profusely illustrated Snark, with pictures on every page in lush, gorgeously detailed and humorous pen and ink. It may still be available through the website of the Lewis Carroll Society of North America, who published it in a small edition. Peake's drawings are also in beautiful black and white, and capture his own rather dark, quirky "Gormenghast" take on the poem. (A good companion, too, to the recently released editions of "Alice" with Peake's drawings.)

The book IS inconsistent. Unlike the brilliant Alice books, there are places where what Carroll is trying to do just doesn't work. But this book is written on a GIGANTIC scale. Carroll tries to take the basis of Alice, and expand it into something of real profundity - something that covers an entire moral and ethical universe. And much of the time, he actually *succeeds* at such an impossible task. There are scenes that are hysterically funny, and scenes that will make you weep. The book is VERY touching, and gives a strong and unforgettable message on the totality, wonder and all-conquering nature of all-conquering love. Sylvie, the fairy-child, is Love Itself, embodied. Despite its spottiness, this book is very, very impressive, and you will want to read it more than once, just to re-experience the good stuff, which is very, very good.

"For I think it is Love. For I feel it is Love. For I'm sure it is nothing but Love!"

Indeed. And Amen.

It cannot be separated from the second part "Sylvie and Bruno Concluded".
In this set of two novels, Lewis Carroll appears as what we rarely know about him. He is the prophet of modern literature. He constantly passes from real life to fairyland, from reality to imagination, from realism to moral depth. Many lines are entertwined in this tale. the story of Bruno and Sylvie, two delightful young fairy children. The story of Lady Muriel and her love for and from Arthur. The story of Arthur Forester, MD, and his dedication to healing as far as far can be, even if it includes his own death in this dedication. Many other lines, I said. The line of Bruno and Sylvie's father, the deposed King who becomes the King of Fairyland. The line of the Professor and the Other Professor, and this drastic vision of both responsible and irresponsible science. The line of pure poetry constantly scattered among the pages. The line of so many children's tales in the form of tales or nursery rhymes and other Mother Goose productions. No one can come to the end of this richness and to a complete enumeration of all the stories and intricacies that are woven into this fascinating novel. A masterpiece that has mostly remained unknown or unrecognized.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

There is *nothing* disappointing about Sylvie and Bruno. It is not anything like Alice.. it surpasses Alice in every way.
This book is filled with a goodness that just can't help itself... and while it can be silly at times, and crazy at others, in the end it brings me to tears, every time. It is noble and honest and the characters steal your heart...
Not all of life is suffering... and this book is about that. I would really encourage you to pick it up. The first few chapters are a little crazy as you get used to this half-reality half-fantasy style... but it pulls you in so quickly, and will really blow you away.
An absolutely wonderful book!

This is an incredible book, a collaboration, really, featuring reproductions of the wood engravings that were created by Gustave Dore in 1875, inspired by this epic poem by Samuel Coleridge. (the editorial reviews are confusing, because they describe books by different artists) There are 42 magnificent illustrations, on 9 x 12 pages no less, for just six bucks and change. You won't find a better bargain here.

I have to disagree with the bad rap this poem often gets. Sure, Coleridge's 4-3-4-3 meter is simple and easily imitable, but that does not change the fact that he used the meter masterfully, that his verse is beautiful and his imagery splendid (even without the woodcuts). The story is fairly simple, though its effect is somewhat chilling. Yes, I've even heard the Mariner compared to Popeye with a dead bird around his neck. But all joking aside, this is a beautiful poem.

On the surface, this may just seem to be a simple poem by an English Romantic. But there is so much more. There is a lesson to be learned, one of respect for God's creatures and for all of creation. This is certainly a Romantic point of view, and Coleridge puts it forth very nicely in this poem.

This is a great beginning poem for novices of poetry, for beginners and for people who dislike poetry if it doesn't rhyme and have a definite rhythm. This is definitely Coleridge's best poem, one that everyone should be familiar with. This version with the woodcuts makes for a very attractive package--the illustrations add nicely to the poems overall effect.

And all the boards did shrink. Water, water, everywhere, nor any drop to drink." These famous lines, like the opening lines of Coleridge's Kubla Khan, are often quoted, but I sometimes wonder if the people who quote them have read this wonderful poem. The poem is full of mystery and horror, from the Mariner stopping the wedding guest, to the incident w/ the albatros, to the gambling of Death and Death-In-Life... I could go on and on. The language is so rich, and the poet's comments make the content more clear for anyone who becomes confused. The illustrations of this edition are beautiful and definately complement the text. This is a haunting poem that you will want to read again and again. If you have not read it before, do yourself a favor and find a copy.

Victorian-era readers of Lewis Carroll's delightful fantasies knew the poetry and song and public figures referred to; we moderns need to have the jokes explained to us, and Martin Gardner does a masterful job of it. We're fortunately past the more bizarre Freudian and Marxist interpretations of Alice that Gardner takes to task in his preface, but Gardner's annotations survive, as they should. The White Knight's encounter with Alice is heartbreaking when you know the background information, the lyric the White Knight's doggerel alludes to. By all means, give this to children at risk of being pithed by exposure to a certain indigo reptile; as children, they'll appreciate the story, and as they mature, they'll appreciate the commentary, and you'll have saved a budding intellect.

Alice in Wonderland is an extraordinarily fascinating and delightful story, replete with jokes, puzzles, and nonsense of the highest order. But in order to appreciate it fully, the modern, non-Victorian reader requires some guidance, as well as an adequate background on the man and the times that produced Alice. Martin Gardner, the greatest figure ever in recreational mathematics, provides readers with all the information they need to appreciate this story at its various levels. This book occupies a place of privilege in the library of every serious Alice fan.

A joke is always funnier if you understand it, and the Alice tales are so full of inside jokes that you need someone to explain them. The Annotated Alice does just that. Carroll's tales are here, complete and unabridged, and the editors have painstakingly provided every piece of explanation and commentary you could ever wish for. Complete with Tenniell's original illustrations (although, alas, not colorized), this is a book any girl, little or big, can cherish.