I have watched Dharma Mittra's incredible poses live and through his poster, and I have wished to scrutinize each under magnification and learn from each pose to the fullest. My wish came true. This book is an incredible reference and inspiration, covering the full scope of hatha yoga (many poses come as a surprise even to the experienced). There are beautiful introductions to the chapters written by Dharma. Otherwise, the focus is simply and brilliantly on the asana (1 per page- one can also interestingly use this as an animated "flip book" to better understand Dharma's movement in the sequences). There are no distractions of accessory text or excessive design on these pages. Although the book has a contemporary look, I feel at times I am viewing an ancient book on yoga...and I realize in many ways I am. We are told the best path to perfecting our hatha yoga practice is to watch a yogi master practice to perfection and then emulate them. Here is our opportunity.

Pictures say more than words. These 608 pictures truly does. For the Intermediate to the Advanced student, you don't really need a descriptive guide - the pictures tell you all. This is going to be an inspiration to me all the time. For the great price Amazon.com offers, think no further. Just buy it and your Yoga practise is bound to get more inspired.

The size of the book (small) is a plus as you can carry it along even on your vacation. The quality of the pictures is not going to impress the aesthetically prone, but the point is the variety of asanas come out quite well with few words!

Dharma Mittra put Yoga to work in the form of Karma (Yoga), when he spent time and effort in photographing himself and distributing it to the public (I have read he did this free). Pure, selfless action results in such works that will stand the test of time!

Dharma's little pocket book (it fits in my purse), much like his poster, is truly an inspiration. It reminds me of Light on Yoga without the explanations and would be a wonderful companion to this book. Much like Iyengar in Light on Yoga there is something about either Dharma's expression or body language that demonstrates a deep devotion. You can tell that Dharma sees the yoga postures as a dedication. Truly a work of art and devotion.

The book is very will written and illlustrated. The capter on metallurgy is excellent; direct and clear with no unneccesary techno-babble. The expanded chapter contains wonderful tips on fabrication and repair. I have been in the metals industry for twenty-nine years, and this is the best welding manual I have come across. Whether you are a beginner or a seasoned veteran, I think you will agree.

If you really want to learn how to weld and not just shoot sparks around the room to impress your friends, get this book. Welding is not simple as it might seem. To choose the correct process, weld safely and KNOW what you're doing is not easy. Where Galvery and Marlow make this book a winner is in the title. They bring the welding essentials into a reader friendly format. The explainations are concise and clear. The illustrations compliment the text. Stuck in an overcomplicated textbook? Help is here. This one is a keeper. Glad I bought it.

This is the book for all weldors, students and journeymen alike. With its bilingual Spanish/English Glossary of Terms, it takes books of this kind to a new dimension, recognizing the need for this kind of aid. It is the clearest book on the elements of welding that I have ever read, and I have read books on this topic for nearly 40 years. Simply put, every interested person will benefit from the book--and at the same time, believe it or not, every interested person will *enjoy* reading it. A grand example of how to write a book that informs its audiences.

As soon as I finished reading the very first Gourmet Detective novel (published in 1994 but read last week), I leapt right into 'Roux the Day,' the latest in the series. This latest is dramatically better than the first, and so I am interested now in reading the rest of the titles in the series to see how the improvement progressed.

In this one, our nameless hero is in New Orleans on what should be a relatively straightforward affair: to verify whether an historic restaurant's chef's book (as distinct from a cookbook) being offered up for auction is the real deal. But someone else purchases the book before he can even see it, and the chase is on. This leads quickly to murder, and then to another murder, as well as to many, many lovingly described New Orleans meals and lots of coffee with chicory.

Many of the faults and idiosyncrasies I noted in 'The Gourmet Detective' have been weeded out of this title. Our hero is no longer comparing himself to every fictional detective ever published -- he has much more self-confidence now -- nor is he making us sit through long, descriptive passages detailing his every lunch and dinner (this doesn't contradict what I said in the last paragraph: here, the meals described have relevance to the story; before they felt more like space-filler intended to establish the hero's credentials as a gourmet). Most importantly, it's the detective's own skills that solve the mystery -- just what we'd expect in a mystery novel.

This isn't to say the story is perfect. There are still a few dots I'm not certain how he connected, even though I read the relevant passages several times over. On the whole, I still prefer Rick Riordan's atmospheric Tres Navarre series, set in San Antonio (one of the few American cities as interesting as New Orleans). But this one is growing on me, and I'm fairly certain I'll be looking up the other books in the Gourmet Detective series.

Homicide is the furthest thing from the Gourmet Detective's mind when he is invited to New Orleans to authenticate a cook book that is going up for auction. When he arrives at the place where the book is supposed to be, he discovers that a bookseller bought it before auction even started.

He traces the bookseller back to his store only to find the man shot dead and the book is missing. He is asked to continue looking for the book by his original client and a group of female chefs who promise to pay him as well as feed him. That is an offer he can't resist but in between five meals he finds another corpse, this one a man who tried to sell him a counterfeit edition of the book. The Gourmet Detective doesn't know why there is so much interest in a cookbook but he intends to find out because his reputation is on the line.

ROUX THE DAY is a delightful mystery that doesn't take itself too seriously. The Gourmet Detective is a likable hero whose fascination with food is a sensual experience, one that the readers can experience by reading the mouth-watering descriptions of his meals. Peter Kings latest installment in his long-running series is a treat that readers will devour.

Harriet Klausner

...in A. E. Housman's "A Shropshire Lad." He is obsessed with death and the brevity of time. He is determined to wring meaning out of a teen soldier's blood-soaked shirt, to bring beauty out of tragedy.

Poets' critical reputations move up and down like a sine curve. Given the increasingly unread status of poetry, however, one would think that Housman's rep would be on the upswing, since he presents his ideas with clear language, pleasant rhyme, simple trochaic or iambic meter, archetypal imagery, and intense emotion; his is among the most plain and accessible poetry a major author has ever crafted, a boon to the genre at a time it's largely being ignored.

Still, people tend to read Housman wrong. They claim he's either promoting or deriding war. In fact, he's doing neither; war is simply an unfortunate fact of life for Housman. People must confuse him for Wilfred Owen, who actually does fulminate against war or Rudyard Kipling, who actually does promote it.

... Even the lovely rural setting of the poems, which in another book he refers to as "the land of lost content," suggests the rapture and freedom of boyhood is being mourned as it passes. Battle death is often a stand-in here for the death of innocence. War is only slightly more awful toward the body than time itself. War is only Housman's metaphor; love is his objective.

This review refers to the Dover Thrift Edition Paperback of "A Shropshire Lad"....

Without getting too analytical of the poetry itself or the meaning of Housman's works,as I am not a poet myself, I will say that I throughly enjoyed this edition of "A Shropshire Lad". Although Housman's words at times may seem a bit like the antedote to exhilaration, he seems to speak from the heart and wisely about the cycle of life. The never ending scheme of things.The seasons and the earth changing year by year. Young men falling in love, going off to war, coming home wounded, dead, or finding their loves no longer want them. It brought to mind for me, the song by Peter, Paul and Mary "Where Have All The Flowers Gone".

Although these words were first published well over 100 years ago, I found there is still meaning in his words.Many of the lines in this book I found to still be quoted today. For example in poem LVI-"The Day of Battle", he ponders this:

"Comrade, if to turn and fly
Made a soldier never die,
Fly I would, for who would not?
Tis sure no pleasure to be shot

But since the man that runs away
Lives to die another day,
And cowards' funerals, when they come,
Are not wept so well at home,........."

This Dover Thrift Edition is a great value for the price. It contains all sixty-three original poems of "A Shropshire Lad" including XIX-"To An Athlete Dying Young"(which you've heard if you have seen the film "Out of Africa"). It has an index with notes on the text which will clarify some of the names and places Housman uses that might be of geographic or historical value to the reader, and also has an index of the first lines, helpful in finding a specific poem. It's a small lightweight book you can easily throw in your purse, briefcase or even a large pocket, that you can pull out to read while you have time to kill or while traveling. It's something to add to your cart when you need just a little bit more to put you into that free-shipping catagory!

Dover Thrift has many of these little books of great literary works, I plan on adding more to my collection....enjoy....Laurie

the title of 'A Shropshire Lad' indicates both rural specificity and human universality, and it is in the gap between the two that the poems' tension and tragedy lie. they evoke a timeless pastoral world, of streams, plains and roses; of ploughing, carousing and love-making; of villages, churches and football; all belonging to the unchanging cycle of the seasons. In this context man as a type, as a member of a community, is eternal also, not least in the folk idiom in which Housman's classical clarity is decaptively cloaked.

as an individual, however, the 'lad' is insubstantial, doomed to leave or die as rural life continues unchanging without him. Many of the poems are narrated by exiles or ghosts, crushed to find the old routine the same as if they had never existed - the phantom of 'Is my team ploughing?' discovers even his grieving sweetheart now warm in his interlocutor's bed; he of 'Bredon Hill' plans his wedding, only to attend his own funeral.

Housman uses a direct and simple vocabulary and metre with devastating resonances, the very music of the poetry at once rooted in the eternal communal land and yet indicative of sadness and loss. Written in 1896, the irony of death and change in the never-ending countryside was doubled by the reality that the countryside was changing, that the centuries-old lifestyles were being encroached on by industry and modernity - what seemed to be inviolable itself becomes obsolete. in hindsight, a third, poignant irony is added - within 20 years of publication, these lads would be sent to the slaughter in World War One, as previsioned in 'On the idle hill of summer'. One of Housman's greatest admirers, the composer George Butterworth, who wrote two song-cycles based on these beautiful poems, would be one such victim.

I came to Copper Crown after first reading Lane's second book, The Unfastened Heart. Both books share amazing women characters. In both, the men are decidedly imperfect while the women are fully fleshed with rich detail. Copper Crown is episodic in construction with no huge climax at the end, but a great sense of journey. Cass, through whose eyes we hear the story, is a practical girl who we come to fully love. She sees the world with a second sight that can also see into the spirit world. We see almost a parallel universe of spirit figures who inhabit and intertwine with the living. The story is also remarkable in the sense of friendship that we taste between Cass who is white and her best friend Allie who is black. With a story that spans 1913 to 1932, we see a friendship unusual for its time and a book with the great moral that we ought to consider people first as persons rather than judging by the color of our skin. The minor characters are good too, although the men are much more loosely drawn. Skeet, the dining house owner who first hires Cass, is probably the clearest, however unpleasant. Lloyd, the artist who repaints one canvas over & over, was also a favorite of mine, however brief his appearance. If you've ever watched the series "Any Day Now" with Annie Potts on tv, you might see a similarity here. This book is a good story, an excellent journey, and a friend you hate to part with at the end. Enjoy!

The story takes place in turn of the century Texas. The two main characters are young women who are the best of friends, one is white the other is black. The lynching of a black townsman sets the girls off into the world to find their own space. Fabulous descriptions of the land, food and people of the time. A great story with moving characters.

I know less about the times of Richard Harding Davis than I should, and was pleased to learn a little of it by peaking over his well-clothed shoulder. I would, however, enjoyed learning about the character of RHD more if the author liked him better. There's certainly something to be said for a biographical author who is not also a sycophant, but there's also something to be said for having at least a modicum of respect for your target. Yes, RHD certainly seemed silly, prissy, pretentious, sentimental, overdressed, and moderately rediculous - in fact, a charicature of his own public persona - but I would quite like to have figured that out for myself without Lublow constantly, and in so many words, calling the man ridiculous. He certainly wrote the rest of the book well enough that we would have figured it out for ourselves.

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Highly recommended for the adventurous at heart.

When I began reading Lubow's biography, I knew nothing of RHD, other than he was a well-known journalist at the turn of the century. A major discovery was in store. During this most interesting read, I became fascinated with his persona, his rise to fame, his peculiar first marriage, and most especially his experience and adventures in covering (so many!) wars.

Equally fascinating is the criticism that followed him.

His writing was "overblown." He put on airs of royalty. His fiction was simple-minded, etc. etc. etc. Deserved? Maybe on some points. He wrote a certain way for a certain time. It may not all have been high art, but it worked, famously. So what really nagged his critics? HE WAS TOO POPULAR.

We can only imagine how big a star he'd be today. He was the best known journalist of his day. He was startlingly handsome. He wrote best sellers. He worked in New York City. He built a dream house in the country. He loved to party with famous friends. He enjoyed plays on Broadway. He WROTE plays for Broadway. He was a member of a social elite few could ever join, and fewer would ever want to leave. Enough? Now add his European, Latin American, South African and Far Eastern war adventures, some of which were astonishing, and you've got the makings of a major, major modern day celebrity.

I was happy to make his acquaintance.

It is unlikely that another so detailed biography will be written of RHD. It is as factually correct as any will get (footnotes abound). Yes, there could have been more analysis and commentary, but as written, we are left to make our own judgments about the man. Read the book, if you can still get it, and you will be happy to discover Richard Harding Davis.

A final word. When he died, Theodore Roosevelt and Winston Churchill were among those who wrote him tribute. But most memorably, here are the final lines offered by Booth Tarkinton:

"Youth called to youth: all ages read him, but the young men and young women have turned to him ever since his precocious fame made him their idol. They got many things from him, but above all they live with a happier bravery because of him. Reading the man beneath the print, they found their prophet and gladly perceived that a prophet is not always cowled and bearded, but may be a gallant young gentleman. This one called merrily to them in his manly voice; and they followed him. He bade them see that pain is negligible, that fear is a joke, and that the world is poignantly interesting, joyously lovable. They will always follow him."

Wow.