Do you know how old the universe is, why our galaxy is called the Milky Way, or why Venus is the smartest planet in the night sky? Do you know how far away outer space really is, if you could stand on Jupiter, or catch a shooting star? The answer to these and many other similar questions, can be found in Kenneth Davis' marvelous, fact filled, Don't Know Much About the Solar System. This is a book chock full of interesting information, fun facts and trivia and history about the universe, galaxy, solar system, planets, moons, asteroids, meteoroids, comets, stars, space exploration and astronomy. Mr Davis' text is written in an easy to read, question and answer, conversational style and complemented by Pedro Martin's humorous and engaging illustrations, that just add to the fun. Perfect for youngsters 8-12, Don't Know Much About the Solar System whets the appetite and leaves kids running to the library for more. So find out if there are aliens living on Mars, and enjoy!

Sandy Tatum's Amateur golfing career spans every facet of the game and has involved personalities from all walks of life. His book is a fascinating collection of short essays and thoughts about his remarkable life in golf. It is funny, perceptive, and engaging. And there is a short but splendid introduction by Sandy's close friend, Tom Watson. I recommend it to anyone who has ever picked up a club or just enjoyed watching others play.

This book is great! If you don't have access to college courses or the time to take them then this is a book for you. This book is clearly written and its exercises guide you through properly interpreting mass spectra. The first edition of this book is also excellent. If you compare this book to McLafferty's (Interpretation of Mass Spectra) this is much more effective for teaching the beginner. I highly recommend this book

Peter Mc Daniel, and Tiger Woods have written a most interesting chronological history of African American contributions, participation and interest in the heretofore, White world of golf. This book contains beautiful photoghraphs reflecting the joy we all feel while playing golf. In the past golf was a reflection of our American society complete with all of the racial restricitions present in this major American past-time. This history of Blacks in golf will serve as the most needed light that must shine on the dark secret world of, "Whites Only" golf. Uneven Lies presents another side to this unfortunate period in our sporting history by graphically showing that Black People made significant direct and supporting contributions to this wonderful sport even uder the stress of racial segregation. Uneven Lies takes you From the Caddies, the Stanford White Club House at Shinnecock Hills Country Club, in South Hampton, New York, to the UGA, PGA and the LPGA tours. Had African Americans been encouraged and subsequently, allowed to freely participate, as much as they were detered from participating in golf, one would wonder how many Tiger Woods and Althea Gibsons would we have today. Fortunately, we have all learned from the past mistakes and the sport is moving in a positive direction. Uneven Lies is an exceptional, warm and engaing historic representation of the evolution of golf both socially, as a sport and metaphor for life's trials, tribulations and resolutions. A must read and a must see.

Even though I have read many books and short stories by great authors and is dazed, and full of admiration of their work, it happens once in a while, that a book or a story, that one has never heard mentioned goes right in to your heart and won't let go. That is what Mary Wilkins Freeman's stories did to me. I felt as if I had found a friend. There is such a pleasure to be found in her stories, the fluent and smooth style, easily understood by all, as well as a lesson in living your life at your own pace. She is so unaffected and natural in her storytelling, that these stories, which easily could have taken place, are sweet, tender, bitter and then full of resistence. Her character do not always behave. The stories are mostly about New England country women, for whom Freeman has obviouly a great sympathy for and she writes about them with respect and affection

This book is valuable as a quick start guide to Mac OS X, both for users of earlier versions of the Mac OS and for "switchers" from Unix and Windows--Part I of the book is all about converting.

Part II covers the basics of Mac OS X including window usage and keyboard shortcuts, the Finder and Dock, the Classic environment, and managing user accounts and logging in. The "Basic Keyboard Shortcuts" chart is especially handy.

Part III discusses system preferences and the applications and utilities that come with OS X. A future edition of this book would be much more useful if it provided information on the various "iApplications" (e.g., iPhoto, iMovie, and iTunes) and the other applications that come bundled with OS X. The book currently provides a one-paragraph description of the various applications but nothing on how to use them. The section on Developer Tools is so brief as to be almost useless.

Part IV covers the Unix interface to OS X, focusing on using the Terminal application and basic Unix commands. This section seems to be confused about its target audience. Some things are discussed at a very basic level, but at the same time it assumes the reader knows why they want to work with the Unix interface in the first place.

Part V is called "Task and Setting Index" and tells how to accomplish various tasks and configure the system.

Any book about a specific computer technology will become dated. This book was published in May 2002, and at the time of this writing (November 2002), some items discussed in the book are already out of date with the release of Mac OS X 10.2 (Jaguar). For example, iTools is now .Mac, and Sherlock is no longer used to find files (that function has been moved to the Finder).

Why do I give this book four stars? Much of the information is so abbreviated that it is not helpful, for example, the coverage of the applications and utilities. There just isn't enough content to justify the book's billing as a "pocket reference". On the other hand, it does provide a good overview of Mac OS X.

This is a wonderful guide. It is small and very easy to follow. To perform a function it just lists the steps, no extra verbage, no pictures, just steps to easily follow. A good index makes things easy to find. It is perfect for me because I just want to use the basic things, nothing exotic. It might not be enough for someone who wants to do more, but for a basic user it is Terrific and small enough to carry easily. Don't hesitate!!

O'Reilly's new "Mac OS X Pocket Reference" hits a home run right out of the stadium!

Yes, Missing Manuals are good. As are Little Books, Bibles and Inside books. However few of those tomes fit your pocket, purse or brief case as beautifully as this little gem does! It's an essential quick-reference on OS X that all new users will use at least several times on the very first day it arrives.

Not only does it contain all the really essential commands and keys, it includes basic UNIX command info, printer, modem configurations, and a host of other important help one may need while at the desk or on the road. Add a user, remove a user, tune the dock, correct OS preferences, log in, log out, change passwords, and do just about anything the unfriendly new OS requires you to do.

I actually like it better than the frustrating online guide help. It is well organized, has a good table of contents and index, and is designed with a simple, easy to understand format.

But it's not just about help. Just thumbing through it you'll pick up tips that you hadn't thought of before. (Like building and using the powerful locate database!) It's a great little book, fits nicely in the brief case for travel and gives you the support you need when you need it.

Yes, I bought David Pogue's "Missing OS X Manual" for the kids and at home. I bought Robin William's wonderful "Little OS X Book" to send off to college with my son. But this one . . . it's in MY brief case all the time.

Although the Designer's Bookshelf concentrates on books in the visual communications fields, the Max OS X Pocket Reference caught all our Mac User's fancy and won itself a place in the Design-Bookshelf.com Editor's Choice Circle for July 2002.

Just Like Martin, I found at a bookstore when I was traveling in
Maryland. Not thinking I was down to my last few dollars I bought it. I was very disapointed until I started reading it. This book taught me to never give up and know I keep on reading it over and over. 2 big thumbs up!!!

Just Like Martin
By: Ossie Davis

What do you get when you take out the d, I, s, c, r, I, m, I, n and put in an H before the a? You get hate! Have you e ver been discriminated before? I think everyone has been in some way. African Americans have tried their best to stop it. They seldom did anything and they were just beaten to death from people like the K.K.K.'s. People like Martin Luther King Jr. who tried to stand up for what they had believed in. I learned in the book, a reverend of the local church has been organizing a peace march with server al other church organizations, and they had members from their church ridge private busses to Washington to march. They wanted the white people to know that there was no reason for them to be treated like this. One of the fathers in the story went to war with the reverend to defend The United States of America. They were at war with Korea. Since the war, the father has been very disturbed. He now carries a gun in his glove compartment of his pick-up truck. IN December when Dr. King held a service he had asked that the people in the service sing a "Negro Spiritual" ...
I though the book was great. It gave me a taste of what it was like to live back then if I were black. IT made me really think if I were black, would I want someone to do things like hang me, throw rocks at me, shoot high pressured water at me? I though for a while, why is different bad, but I sti9ll don't understand why because people of all different races, shapes, sizes are discriminated all the time. ...

"I Have A Dream"

In the book Just Like Martin there is a boy named Stone who is really trying to spread non-violence across the nation. There is a huge event where all black people come together and march. Martin Luther King was a leader in the march. He said his "I Have A Dream" speech.
Some bad things started to happen at the end of the book. It might change the meaning of discrimination forever. Read this good book to find out.
I really liked this book. It was exciting and it shows you that if you really work toward something that it might actually come true.

The book introduces the theory of computability and non-computability to the mathematically-comfortable. The theory of recursive functions provides entry to that theoretical territory at the limits of what is computable and what is solvable. The theory is relevant to important philosophical questions and also in the theory of computing and what is possible (and never possible) by use of computing machines.

The result for philosophy is establishment of absolutely unsolvable problems and undecidable questions, even ones that can be completely and precisely formulated using rigorous logic. The result for computing is problems that are absolutely unsolvable by use of a computer program.

So what problems are theoretically solvable by a computer program? First, the Universal Turing Machine (UTM) is presented along with the famous demonstration that all universal computers are equivalent in the sense that any one of them can be made to simulate any of the others, using a suitable representation.

So, if we establish that the computer we have at hand is a universal computer, we can be confident that, in principle, anything that any computer can compute, this one can also.

The book goes on to address what even universal computers can't do. The most well-known result in computer-science circles is the unsolvability of the halting problem. That is, if the computer is powerful enough to be universal, one of its limitations is the impossibility of an algorithm that will determine whether any program for that machine will always terminate for all inputs. It is as if the price of universality is the inevitability of programs that won't finish, along with having no absolute way of telling whether arbitrary given programs will finish or not.

Davis maps the boundary between the impossible (the unsolvable) and the merely inhumanly difficult (the computable). With that foundation, one can move on to other work that introduces what has been learned about computational complexity and how to apply the analysis of algorithms to finding computational methods that are practical and no more complex than absolutely necessary.

The book is an essential part of my library because of its availability and its standing as a fundamental reference in the theory of computation. Church's Thesis and the development of effective computability via the lambda-calculus and combinatory logic is neglected more than suits me. Available supplementary references are needed for access to those alternative formulations that promise to bear directly on having operational, practical computer systems that function at the limits of computability.

Another classic reprint rom Dover at a reasonable price. Martin Davis is a very well-known worker in the area of logical foundations of computing. This book covers much fascinating material and provides answers to some deep questions relating to the limits of computations. The material can be a little dry but worth the effort. The book is worth the price for the appendix which is a reprint of an article by Davis on the proof of the unsolvability of Hilbert's Tenth Problem.

Bernard Lewis's book is alternately fascinating and frustrating. If you come to it expecting either a history of the relationship between the Islamic and Western worlds, or an analysis of their relationship in recent decades, you will be disappointed. The book consists, rather, of essays dealing with various issues in Islamic-Western relations, such as problems in translating Arabic texts into European languages, the idea of country and patriotism in the Islamic world, and disputes between scholars of Middle Eastern studies.

Despite the somewhat esoteric topics, however, the book is not just for scholars. Lewis's breadth of knowledge, and a writing style much more interesting than that of most academics, makes this book intriguing reading for almost anyone with an interest in Islam and the Middle East. I picked up many intriguing facts and anecdotes from the book.

But it's not perfect. For me, the problem in Bernard Lewis's approach is summed up in one of the book's first essays -- on Muslims living in non-Muslim countries. Lewis offers a fascinating study of what various Muslim scholars have said over the centuries about the theological implications of Muslims living under the laws of non-Muslims. Then he admits that the average Muslim probably has little or no knowledge of these theological debates and it is uncertain what effect these ideas have on how real people live their lives. He insists, though, that they must have some effect, and in any case, how can we find out any information about religious ideas except by listening to religious scholars? That's pretty much like saying that papal pronouncements are the only knowledge we can have of what Catholics think. Scholarly and theological debates are interesting, but how religious ideas effect people's lives is even more so -- and that area is not only beyond the scope of Lewis's work (which is understandable), but is something that he writes off as irrelevant and unknowable (which is absurd).

And for me, this limitation is a problem throughout the book. Lewis is a marvelous and almost always interesting scholar when he is discussing the history of ideas. But he repeatedly jumps to the conclusion that those ideas filter down to ordinary people's lives with little change. It would be far more interesting, and relevant to the general reader, I think, to see how those ideas play out in the real world.

Bernard Lewis, the dean of Middle East scholars, has been much lambasted by people like Edward Said, who have pummeled him with all manner of polemics. None of that caterwauling masqueraded as debate has removed Lewis from his throne as the leading living Middle East scholar. What makes Lewis such a marvel is that, in a field beset with politics, he neither seeks to eviscerate nor canonize his subject. Here is a man who loves Arab culture and Arabic, but is capable of insightful commentary and analysis.
Lewis' work on how Islam and "the west" encountered each other, defined themselves as being in opposite of the "other," and the conflicts that arose is still the standard. Even more enjoyable, Lewis writes with a wonderful readable style and presents the information in an accessible way. I highly recommend this book and, if you like it, you should pick up his other classic, Middle East and the west. 2

Bernard Lewis is not regarded as the foremost scholar of Middle East for naught. Islam And The West is a serious dissertation not so much of the Muslim culture and Islam faith, which are very large subjects, but how one should even attempt to understand them. This is a short, but very substantial book.

The author points out that many popular interpretations and beliefs about Islam, which are common currency in the Christian West, are actually incorrect. Still more notions which are common in the West have no real equivalents in the Islamic paradigm.

It is not hard to see, with a deep understanding of the Islam faith and the Muslim culture, that many "commonsense" formulations of, say, the Palestinian solution, simply won't work, or why most people could not comprehend the Islamic Revolution (actions of the Ayatollah Khomeini and his followers,) or of the Taliban. This is simply because the Islamic faith is not comparable to the Christian or Judaic faith, the Islamic state is not equivalent to the Western state, or any other state, for that matter, and that the Islamic teaching is central and all encompassing to the purpose in life of the "fundamentalist" Muslim. Our faith in such fundamental concepts as patriotism, peaceful co-existence, trade, and a good many others are either non-existent or even forbidden in the Islamic mind. Use of these concepts in formulating political solutions in that part of the world will inevitably fail.

Islam And The West is a must-read for politicians, journalists, scholars and ordinary Joes like myself, who have a serious interest in the Middle East issues. Besides the high quality of the studies presented, Bernard Lewis's writing style, especially with his careful choice of words, and elegantly crafted sentences, surely has helped make this book a classic.

I love romance books but I didn't care too much for this book, it wasn't horrible but I found it boring and it was a struggle to finish it. Though I'm sure Lisa Jackson is probably a very good romance book author, her book Double Exposure and the characters Melanie Walker and Gavin Doel just didn't do anything for me!