Professor Gordon is the sort of teacher I would have appreciated in school. One imagines him as a grey haired gentleman in rumpled slacks and cardigan with a pipe and sneakers who makes it his kindly mission in life to fill his students with a zest for his chosen calling.

His explanations are elegant, simple and fascinating. I can't think of higher praise for someone trying to make sense of a discipline as complicated as materials science.

The problem with most academics is an inherent need to appear learned. This leads to obscure and convoluted explanations that are, if not overtly, at least subconsciously designed to maintain the gap between the ignorant masses and the enlightened adepts. Even when such academics make a conscious attempt to simplify, their efforts are too often sabotaged by the bad habits of a lifetime.

This is why good popularisers are so difficult to come by, and why the Gordons of the world should be so prized.

This book isn't just about the science of materials, but about how such an exotic subject actually connects with our everyday lives. We live in a certain way, and not in a different way, because of the strengths, weaknesses, costs and working difficulties in the materials that we use. I don't think most laymen ever bother thinking about the world in quite this way.

This book is not actually meant for engineers or scientists, although most such technos would greatly benefit from reading it (if only to learn the meaning of true grasp and clarity). Its true benefit is to those curious laymen who wish to know more, but who find the usual explanations beyond them.

This book should be required reading for all undergraduates, not just aspiring scientists or engineers. In fact, it should be especially required for non-technical types.

This is an absolutely wonderful book. It is fun to read the practical examples and has unusual technical insight into how materials fail (or don't). Some very technical ideas are presented very simplely and clearly.

Far more than a textbook intro, it is a biographical narrative of the discovery of why some materials are strong, some not; how wooden airplanes were made in WWI and I, how plastics were found to be strong, or not, why fiber composites, such as fibreglass, were found to be so strong. Immensely entertaining, very educational .

If you have only read the first three of the series you must keep going. This book continues the saga of Jim, Brian,Daffyd, Giles, Secoh, Carolinus and more. The ending of this book over takes all the others in the series. If you can't find this book here keep looking becuase it is well worth it. This has the only ending in which it is possible to guess and makes realistic sense. This is the one book that really involves every charater in a major role and has a most impressive ending. Read this book if you liked any of the other at all.

This Book I felt was one of the best books'. Before I tell You about about how I felt how the book was, I would first like to give you a breif Summary of this book. It is about This person by the name of Sir James Eckert, Baron de bois de Malencontri et Riverroak. In this book It was About these seaserpents who wanted two kill the Dragons on england ( Also Sir James Who Has The Power to turn into a dragon at the wave of a hand ). These Searpents were not all that were in this book, No there Was Things like a giant Squid Who wanted to take controle of all the magickians in this world, And a BIG Freindly Seadevil by the name of Rrrnlf. Anyway These magickians were all over the world but one of the most renoun and best loved as a freind by jim is Carolinus. Carolinus Is one of three AAA+ Magickians in this magical domain. He is jim's mentour and advisor as a junior magickian. Now enough about the book before I tell you everything ( I geuss you will have to just read the book for yourself!!!) This book ( One of seven in a series ) is to me one of the best books that I have ever read. It contains More Magickians,Dragons,Kinghts in armour and a 1000 things Than any other book that you have ever read. It has a very intriging plot to this story. What I find is that gordan trie to enter in a few jokes here and there that I believe help perkin up a good book. Thats all that I have to say, and if your intreseted in these types of books here are the names of them. 1. The dragon and the George 2. The dragon Knight 3. The dragon on the boarder 4. The dragon at war 5. The dragon, the earl, and the troll 6. The dragon and The djjin( last word might be wrong!) 7. The dragon And the Gnarly King. These fine books you can find Right here on Amazon.com

This is an excellent book with an extremely insightful and fascinating chapter written by Mark I. Gruhin. He is a very skilled writer and lawyer, and I look forward to his future writings.

Being a lawyer in NYC, I was very impressed with some Inside the Minds: Interne Lawyers. Although it is impossible to cover every Internet related topic, the book does a good job at covering some very interesting topics. In addition, the individuals portrayed in the book represent a good cross sampling of different talents related to Internet law. I particularly enjoyed the interview with Mark Fischer at Palmer & Dodge. If you are a woman, make sure to also check out Inside the Minds: Leading Women.

I collect unix books, close to 300. This is the best book for beginners in unix, it actually shows a beginner how to install (the only beginner book that does this) 2 flavors of unix, sun solaris and sco's unix. the chapters are short and to the point. errors are nearly non-existent. If you are serious about learning solaris, then start with this one and go straight to answer2book, the solaris documentation set that comes with the operating system. You can easily multi-boot solaris with all the windows flavors as well as ms-dos. Mark Sobell's book is also an excellent source.

Steve Moritsugu and DTR Business Systems' Practical UNIX is recommended for UNIX programmers who seek a reference book of solutions for common UNIX problems. From modifying and compressing files to determining how to extract fields and using networking capabilities, this expands upon the UNIX platform of knowledge.

I bought and read this book when the softcover was first released, and had the chance to glance at it again just recently. The book has not lost any of its incisiveness and sting. James' astute and direct analysis of Black intellectual life has been long in coming. She articulates opinions that many people have probably had, but have not had the guts or gumption to put out in public. It's about time that public (and well paid) intellectuals such as hooks, Gates, West, and the others got some real criticism. I highly recommend this book, which should be required reading in introductory and advanced Black Studies programs. Its incisive and on-target critique of postmodernism alone is reason enough for it to be included in the curriculum. This feminist volume is rich in ideas, insightful in its critique, and is a refreshing antidote to most of the postmodern B.S. floating around the elite caucasian, leather-coated campuses these days.

Joy James' radical synthesis of political philosophy and African American feminist philosophy is at once provocative and intellectually explosive. Drawing from such diverse areas of intellecual inquiry as African American philosophy, Women's Studies, African American Studies, Lesbian & Gay Studies, postmodern and postcolonial theory, Critical Race Theory, and political philosophy, Professor James puts forward a relentless critique of contemporary African American intellectual life that leaves both the "conservative" and the "radical" sides of the African American intellectual arena suspect. In her employment of insights culled from the nascent Africana philosophical tradition, and both the classical and contemporary African American social and political philosophy traditions, James critiques and offers correctives to African American public and private intellectuals of no less distinction than bell hooks, Patricia Hill Collins, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Cornel West. James' books also provides a severely needed critique of W.E.B. Du Bois' much mangled feminism, Anna Julia Cooper's often overlooked contributions to Du Bois' thought, and Ida B. Wells' anti-lyching radicalism. Applying discursive formulations and practices normally reserved for the most highly revered among the Western European philosophers, Joy James utlizes her training as a political philosopher to elucidate a path of out the impasse that African American intellectuals seem to be caught in. This book is absolutely a must read for anyone interested in African American intellectual life, African American critical theory, and/or African American feminist philosophy.

This is another good book in the dragon series. If you liked the first you will surely like this one. The one disappointment I had with this book was that it leads you to believe there is much magic involved with the plot. However, in the final grudge there is really no magic but more strategy and war than any magic battle. The final ending does bring you back up to speed with an unsusspected surprise. Once again the mid-evil thriiler will grab you in the end and bring you back to the next book in the series.

This book is very exciting and does a good job how life was probably like in the middle ages, but it also has alot of suspence and action, and alot of times when you can't help to wonder how Jim(aka the Dragon Knight) can get out of his situation. It also has the interesing twist of comedy that makes you laugh every once and a while. This was a very good book but, I still like The Dragon and the George, better then this one, but they are both pretty simular. Never the less, this is a great book and I recomend it

This incredible book takes the best characteristics of a fantasy book and mixes them with a very particular way of seing every-day life during the Middle Ages. The author narrates the story with the fine humour that we see in all his work, capturing the reader with the crazy situations in which Jim and Brian are involved and trying to show us how beautiful and horrible can a life surrounded by magic and by unusual things can be. An excellent book full of magic, fantasy and optimism that any reader will enjoy a great deal!!!

I was drawn to this book for various reasons: it is a historical novel, it is about India, which I find interesting, and on the top of the book it says something like "After you read this book, you feel like it should win prizes." Well- if I'm going to feel that way then of course I want to read it!

I picked it up and read it on a plane all in one sitting. This book is a perfect book for that because it pulls you into a little web of a community (Englishman, Sikhs, and Eurasians barricaded in an English encampment, fighting against an Indian uprising in 1857). You start forming alliances with the characters, cheering some, scorning others, and smiling wryly over the overall dilemma they are in, and soon you really want to know what will finally kill them all off. For all of these reasons, this is a good book. From my point of view, the absolutely most fascinating part was the role the World Fair Exposition played in this book as evidence of cultural progress, bringing these Expositions to the brilliant context they deserve, and the fact that these expats in the middle of the dessert think excessively about culture. I identify with that! However, I do see detractions to the book. It is slow in parts. Their treatment of the local prince seems weird. The cholera debate is unsurprising. The end comes quickly and adds no real lessons to the whole ordeal the community went through. For these reasons, I am not exactly rushing out to give it to my mom. However, for any serious reader and certainly for a follower of the Booker Prize, this book is well worth the trouble finding.

What a fascinating place India is and, as this novel makes clear, almost as fascinating are the westerners who go there and misread the way that the country seems to work. Farrell's Booker Prizewinning novel is based on events in what has been called by the British the 'Sepoy' or 'Indian Mutiny' and by Indians the 'National Uprising' or the 'First War of Independence' of 1857. In particular, as the title suggests, it deals with a siege in a small town called Krishnapur from the point of view of the besieged British colonials. While the reader feels an extraordinary amount of sympathy for the suffering that they obviously undergo, it is tempered somewhat by the attitudes that Farrell critiques, even among the more enlightened (from a modern perspective) characters.

Whether it be the topics of theology, science and pseudo-science, relationships between the sexes, colonialism, or the way that we respond to extreme circumstances, all are handled intelligently. To my delight Farrell didn't try to give characters modern attitudes or feelings (the bane of much historical fiction) in order to make them more 'appealing' to the reader. Instead, what is most fascinating about the story is to think about how the individual reacts to change, and especially change arising from terrible events. The changes that particular characters undergo are simultaneously humorous and absolutely believable. This is an excellent read if you already have an interest in India, or in the impact that westerners have had upon other cultures. If you haven't when you begin, you may well find that you have before you finish.

"The first sign of trouble at Krishnapur came with a mysterious distribution of chapatis, made of coarse flour and about the size and thickness of a biscuit; towards the end of February 1857, they swept the countryside like an epidemic." When I was a young teacher living in China in 1984, an English colleague traded me his well-worn copy of The Siege of Krishnapur for my stack of back issues of The New York Times. Set during the British Raj, Krishnapur is the story of a slow-brewing sepoy rebellion and yearlong siege at a remote hill station, loosely based on the Indian Mutiny of 1857. (The sepoys comprised the native Indian regiments of the British army.) The late novelist J. G. Farrell perfectly captures the beauty of the Indian landscape. With deft irony, he tweaks the complacent, insular attitudes of the British ex-patriots, who are bewildered by the rage directed at them by the native population. More suspenseful and less sentimental than other famous epics about the Raj, Krishnapur is a wry, funny book. Incidentally, Farrell wrote two other comic novels about hapless Englishmen caught up in the sweep of history: Troubles, set in Ireland, and The Singapore Grip, set in Malaya on the eve of the Japanese invasion.

A fantasy set during the time of King Edward III, it is a complex tale involving magicians, dragons, goblins, the plague, and court intrigue. The author has invented history only casually related to real history. Overall, it is an interesting story but sometimes drags in long scenes which may seem peripheral to the main plot. Joan, the Fair Maid of Kent, puts in an appearance in a secondary role. It seems unlikely that Edward III would have had an illegitimate half-brother as his father, Edward II, was gay and not known to have mistresses. The real power behind the throne was the Black Prince's younger brother, John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster (events would eventually lead to the War of the Roses between the Houses of York and Lancaster).

The author oversimplifies the relationship between Joan, the Fair Maid of Kent, and Edward, the Black Prince, by calling them cousins. Joan's father, Edmund, was both a half brother of Edward II and a cousin of Edward II's wife, Isobel of France (who contrary to the motion picture, never had any contact with Wallace). A grand-daughter of Joan and Sir Thomas Holland would marry John Beaufort, a nephew of Edward the Black Prince, and a daughter of that marriage would later marry King James I of Scotland with descent to the present royal family.

I just wanted to let it be known that The Dragon and the Fair Maid of Kent, is not, as stated by Marc Ruby in his Oct. 17 review, the fourth book in Gordon Dickson's Dragon Knight Series.

It is actually the NINTH book in the series. It may only appear to be the fourth due to the fact that Tor only included in the list of previous books those which had been published by Tor. The rest of the series was published by Ace Fantasy, with the exception of the very first book, The Dragon and the George, which was published by Del Rey in 1976.

Essentially, I just didn't want anyone to miss any of the books out of this wonderful series. Happy reading!

By habit I read more than one book at a time. It keeps me from getting bored, and sometimes the odd juxtaposition of ideas gives me something unique for a review. Right now I'm reading a horror story so bad I regret agreeing to review it and a mystery story that makes too great an effort to be literature. It's slow going at best. The third volume is (or rather, was) this, Gordon Dickson's fourth in his dragon series. It took me exactly three days to read this hefty (500+ page) small print book from cover to cover, and I am not a speed reader. The other books just had to wait.

What makes Dickson so good that he has managed to author two major series (the dragon series and the Dorsai series) and innumerable other novels and collections? Personally I would call it superior plot making, intense dedication to details, and yes, heaps of talent. Dickson always takes the necessary time to draw his characters out fully, be they James Eckhart the knight/apprentice mage/sometimes dragon who is the hero of the story or the lowly master carpenter who keeps James in everything from chairs to outhouses. And he goes to know end of trouble to make sure that the reader painlessly acquires enough 14th century lore to make sense out of the goings on.

This volume finds James at Malencontri, his castle, trying to cope with both a plague of Plantagenet nobility and the very real plague which is advancing into James part of England. In addition, Carolinus, James mage master (one of the three AAA+ mages in the world, he'll have you know) is insisting that the King be protected at all costs. The Plantagenets on hand are Prince Edward the Fourth, the king's son and the beautiful Countess Joan, the Fair Maid of Kent. All they want is James assistance in a plot to make Edward the Third fond of Edward the Fourth again. This plot becomes ever more complicated until James finds himself commanded to appear before the King at Tiverton, where Edward III has retired to avoid the plague in London.

While this complexity develops James works overtime to prepare Malencontri against the plague. Since James and his wife Angie are actually visitors from our time who were unexpectedly thrust into the 14th century of an alternate earth, they know something of germs and disease protection. Since magic will not work on diseases, it is this knowledge which it their only hope. In the midst of all this confusion and stress, the EcKharts, their closest friends and Hob (the castle hobgoblin) are off to Tiverton to see the King.

Thanks to Hob, James is able to discover that an evil plot is afoot at Tiverton. Goblins, who are spreading the plague in order to take over the world, have slain the real castle staff and are now running it in disguise. James, due to his commitment to keep the king alive, goes into action. Since this is less that a third of the way into the book, it should be no surprise that Jim manages to use a small handful of men and knights (plus the unstoppable Hob and his buddy the hob of Tiverton) to completely mop up the Goblins and airlift everyone to Malencontri. Unfortunately James comes down with both the plague and magickal exhaustion simultaneously. Does he survive? Of course! Does he spend the rest of the book frantically trying to save Malencontri and the rest of England? You bet, but I will leave the rest of the plot for the reader to discover.

With this, fourth, volume in the series, it is getting a bit harder to simply pick up a volume and follow along. First of all you keep getting the feeling that you have missed several really good books, which you have. Secondly, there is simply too much background after three solid novels to present enough information to the reader. This isn't all bad though, you will get to read several very good fantasy tales. And if you do wind up reading it first, you will still love it enough to come back to read a second time. Highly recommended.

This is one of my favorite historical-fiction novels with masterful story-telling on a grand scale. J.G. Farrell has succeeded in creating a realistic impression of colonial Singapore and the effects of the war on the "Gibraltar of the East." My favorite part is the one chapter that takes palce on the night of Dec. 7, 1941, the night before the invasion. Here we see Brooke-Popham, trying to reach a decision whether to launch Operation Matador or not, Sir Thomas, the Governor of Singapore, sleeping quietly before the phone would shriek with news of the invasion, LT. Gen. A.E. Percival, asleep too, trying to wrestle with his inner self, Lt. Sinclair watching the events in the Operations Room at GHQ, Maj. Gen. Gordon Bennett sitting quietly in his room in the Strand Hotel in Rangoon, a Private Kikuchi on one of the Japanese landing crafts heading for the Malay shores, and, ending the chapter, a young Malay fisherman starts to hear the drone of aircraft, heading south...
A fine story with Farrell at his best, he writes in his usual style with which many have become familiar with, it is sure not to disappoint fans of "The Siege of Krishnapur." A classic that should be on every book shelf in every home.

If you were to select a subject for a droll and howlingly funny novel, it is doubtful that the fall of Singapore would be high on your list. Nevertheless, that's what you have here! The action centers on the British expat community who, intent on their usual trivial rounds of partying and copulating, are completely oblivious to the fact that the Japs are inexorably creeping down the Malay Peninsula. The novel properly darkens in tone as the city's situation becomes obviously desperate, but it maintains its ironic tone throughout. The result is an absolute masterpiece, and I don't use that term lightly.

An excellent novel about the plight of the British and Chinese before and during the fall of Sinapore. Meticulously researched, it fits under the genre of a non-fiction novel. Comparable in quality to Gore Vidal's "Lincoln" and Mailer's "The Executioner's Song." Simply brilliant.