this wonderful book is ideal for little children. it is a fun interactive book that encourages childrens' imagination. I first read this book when i was in the third grade. Now i am a freshmen in college and i saw this book and had to get it

Being a Reading Specialist working with at risk readers from first grade through fourth grade, any book that makes them want to read is a winner with me. My fourth graders wanted the information on how to find the book! The book also gave us a reason to review nursery rhymes without feeling that it is a "baby" thing for fourth graders to do.

We got this for our daughter for Christmas. That was a year ago. We have read this book to her at least once a week since then. It is one of her all-time favorites. We don't mind reading it over and over because we love it too. Such Fun! This year, she's getting another "Jolly Postman" book. She'll be thrilled!

I'm 34 years old. This book was given to me when I was 8. It served as the backstop against all of the angst, fear, anger and confusion of pre-pubescent existence. When "bobby" threw a rock at me, I turned to this book. When "jenny" didn't return my affection, I turned to this book. When "Joey" violated my trust, I turned to this book. Nothing can bridge the gap between the teachings of Jesus and the adolocent existence. My dear people, if you do anything for you youth, do buy this book. Give it to them. And let them use it as they will - with God's help. Surely, you will benefit.

This is a wonderful tool for parents who are trying to find a way to reach their children during family devotions. Each story begins with a theme Bible verse, and then presents a story involving children and their parents related to the Bible passage. Afterward, there is a series of questions so that you can discuss the story with your children. For older children there is an extended Bible reading listed. Finally there is a concluding prayer.

Not only will this help involve your children in family devotions, but the questions also help to develop listening skills. These benefits flow into church on Sunday morning. I highly recommend this book for anyone trying to involve their children in family devotions.

When my boys were young and My wife and I were newly born Christians, we purchased these two books. They were loved by our children more than anything else we provided for their Christian growth. Those two books have since disappeared from my library and I am so glad to have found one and I will keep looking for the other. I want them for my Grandchildren and friends. I want them for myself as well! I have never found another pair of books with a short story and devotional thought for each day that fits in so well with a childs everyday living and learning experience. Everyone can relate to each story. Excellent.

Were I charged with the task of managing a program to design and build a well functioning Stirling engine, this book is the reference around which the entire endeavor would revolve. The endorsements of Israel Ureli and Theodor Finkelstein lend immeasurable credence to the techniques and tools described by Allan Organ. The chapters on Similarity and Scaling are supported by a convincing and in depth look at the first principles of Stirling engine design from burner to cooler. The math of the derivations can be intimidating but the math needed for the actual thermodynamic design work is algebraic arithmetic that even a Calculus challenged engineer such as I can understand. Discussions of this book and the design principles it contains are ongoing at sesusa@egroups.com. If you are serious about building a Stirling engine that works, you need to buy this book and join the discussion.

The Stirling engine has been around for almost 200 years however no book has ever been published on the design of Stirling engines. All the various companies developing Stirling engines have been keeping their design methods secret. Why? Because the Stirling engine defies intuition - there are a vast number of relevant parameters to choose that affect the performance in complex, interrelated ways. Over the past 25 years Dr Organ has made it a mission to set that path right and this book represents the culmination of that effort. In the book he defines new dimensionless parameters in an attempt to reduce the number of variables, and has shown the vital importance of the regenerator to the machine. Furthermore he has lead the way to a design methodology which does not require extensive computer analysis. It is not easy to wade through the 623 pages crammed with diagrams and equations, however I strongly feel that this book is required reading for anyone interested in Stirling engine design. I believe that the introduction of this book represents a turning point in history of these fascinating machines.

Allan Organ has written the most in-depth study of regenerators to date. The intense mathematical treatment is accompanied by graphs and tables that make understanding the inner workings of the regenerator fairly straight forward. Secondly, the book covers design by scaling in a very easily grasped manner that is interesting and useful to the engine designer as well as being interesting in it's own right. Thirdly the design process for a complete engine is worked through including stressing parts, sizing bearings and balancing . The book contains design drawings and dimensions from a selection of engines that is not available elsewhere. I have personally gotten a lot of inspiration from Allen's book and incorporated a few of his ideas into my own stirling engine design software.

no hype. i couldn't stop laughing as i was reading this. and i mean laughing out loud. in a cafe. with everyone staring at me. but i didn't care. and i couldn't help it if i did. it's just too hilarious.

There is at least one author who may remind you of Stephen Leacock, namely Garrison Keillor of Lake Wobegon fame, but Leacock should be recognized as the ultimate master of quaint, bucolic humor. Leacock, who died in 1944, became arguably the most prominent Canadian humorist of his day (and probably of all time). What is ironic about that claim is that Leacock worked for most of his life as a professor of economics. We do not usually equate economics with humor, preferring to think of that profession as one of bow ties and supply and demand charts. Throw that presumption out the window and pick up a copy of "Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town," Leacock's best known work available through the New Canadian Library series.

For me, one of the funniest sections of the book was the introduction written by Leacock, where he gives you some background about himself and his profession. This short piece of writing quickly gives you an idea of the type of humor you will find in the actual sketches: a very sly, very quiet and clever type of humor that often takes a while to sink in. Leacock does not rely on rim shot jokes or manic posturing in his writings. Instead, he creates the fictional Canadian town of Mariposa and populates it with small town archetypes that are wonders to behold.

All of the characters are hilarious in their own way: Mr. Smith, the proprietor of the local hotel and bar, full of schemes to earn money while trying to get his liquor license back. Then there is Jefferson Thorpe, the barber involved in financial schemes that may put him on the level of the Morgans and the Rockefellers. The Reverend Mr. Drone presides over the local Church of England in Mariposa, a man who reads Greek as easy as can be but laments his lack of knowledge about logarithms and balancing the financial books of the church. Peter Pupkin, the teller at the local bank, has a secret he wants no one to know about, but which eventually comes out while he is courting the daughter of the town judge. All of these characters, and several others, interact throughout the sketches.

Leacock has the ability to turn a story, to make it take a crazy, unexpected twist even when you are looking for such a maneuver. That he accomplishes this in stories that rarely run longer than twenty pages is certainly a sign of great talent. By the time you reach the end of the book, you know these people as though you lived in the town yourself, and you know what makes them tick.

Despite all of the crazy antics in Mariposa, Leacock never lets the reader lose sight of the fact that these are basically good people living good lives. There seems to be a lot of feeling for the citizens of Mariposa on the part of Leacock, which comes to a head in the final sketch in the collection, "L'Envoi. The Train to Mariposa," where he recounts traveling back to the town after being away for years, with all of the attendant emotions that brings as recognizable landmarks come into view and the traveler realizes that his little town is the same as when he left it years before.

I suspect there is a historical importance to "Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town." These writings first appeared in 1912, a time when many people living in the bigger Canadian cities still remembered life in a small town. In addition to the humorous aspects of the book, the author includes many descriptive passages concerning the atmosphere and layout of Mariposa, something instantly recognizable to anyone who grew up in such a place. Nostalgia for the simpler life of the small town probably played a significant role in the book's success.

I look forward to reading more Stephen Leacock. While much of the humor in the book is not belly laugh funny, it does provide one with a deep satisfaction of reading clever humor from an author who knows how to tickle the funny bone. You do not need to be Canadian to enjoy this wonderful book.

Perhaps the finest comment about Stephen Leacock in the last half century is that "he is a
Will Rogers for the 90's."

Rogers, of course, is one of the most beloved of American humorists -- he was killed in
1935 when his plane crashed near Point Barrow, Alaska. Leacock died on March 28, 1944.
Like Rogers, he had been Canada's favorite humorist for decades.

Sunshine Sketches is about Orillia, Ontario, Canada, where Leacock had his summer home
on Brewery Bay (he once wrote, "I have known that name, the old Brewery Bay, to make
people feel thirsty by correspondence as far away as Nevada.") His home is now maintained
as a historic site by the town of Orillia. I lived there for almost 30 years, and the people of Orillia are still much the same as Leacock portrayed them in 1912.

These stories about various personalities in town were printed in the local newspaper in the
1910 - 1912 era, before being compiled into this book which established Leacock's literary
fame. The people portrayed really lived, though some are composites; the events are of a
kindly humorist looking at the foibles of small town life. Once they came out in book form
and soared to national popularity, everyone in town figured the rest of the country was
laughing at them because of Leacock's book and he was royally hated in Orillia to the end
of his life.

Gradually, and this took decades, Orillians came to recognize that genius had walked
amongst them for several decades. (It's hard to recognize genius when your own ego is so
inflated.) Orillia now awards the annual "Leacock Medal for Humor" -- Canada's top literary
prize for the best book of humour for the preceding year.

Leacock died when I was six, but I did know his son, who still lived in town. I delivered
papers to the editor of the "Newspacket," Leacock's name for the Orillia Packet and Times
(where I worked) and the rival Newsletter. The Packet had the same editor in the 1940's as
when Leacock wrote about him in 1910.

But the book is more than Orillia; it is a wonderfully kind and humorous description of life in
many small towns. The American artist Norman Rockwell painted the same kinds of scenes;
it is the type of idyllic urban life so many of us keep longing to find again in our hectic
urban world.

Leacock realized the book was universal in its description of small towns, and in the preface
he wrote "Mariposa is not a real town. On the contrary, it is about seventy or eighty of
them. You may find them all the way from Lake Superior to the sea, with the same square
streets and the same maple trees and the same churches and hotels, and everywhere the
sunshine of the land of hope."

True enough, which gives this book continuing appeal nearly a century after it was written.
All great writing is about topics you know, and as a longtime resident Leacock knew Orillia
well. As for Leacock himself, he wrote, "I was born at Swanmoor, Hants., England, on Dec.
30, 1869. I am not aware that there was any particular conjunction of the planets at the
time, but should think it extremely likely."

He says of his education, "I survived until I took the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in
1903. The meaning of this degree is that the recipient of instruction is examined for the last
time in his life, and is pronounced completely full. After this, no new ideas can be imparted
to him."

In reviewing Charles Dickens' works in 1934, Leacock wrote what could well be his own
epitaph: "Transitory popularity is not proof of genius. But permanent popularity is." The fact
his writings are still current illustrates the nature of his writing.

In contrast to the sometimes sardonic humor of modern times, Sunshine Sketches reflects
Leacock's idea that "the essence of humor is human kindness." Or, in the same vein, "Humor
may be defined as the kindly contemplation of the incongruities of life, and the artistic
expression thereof."

Granted, this book is not what he recognized to have widespread appeal to modern readers.
In his own words, "There are only two subjects that appeal nowadays to the general public,
murder and sex; and, for people of culture, sex-murder." Yet, anyone reading this will
remember scenes from it for much longer than anything from a murder mystery.

In today's world, where newspapers almost daily track Prime Minister Tony Blair's dash to
the political right, Leacock wrote, "Socialism won't work except in Heaven where they don't
need it and in Hell where they already have it."

He described his own home as follows, "I have a large country house -- a sort of farm
which I carry on as a hobby . . . . Ten years ago the deficit on my farm was about a
hundred dollars; but by well-designed capital expenditure and by greater attention to
details, I have got it into the thousands." Sounds familiar to today's farm policies ?

It's what I mean by this being a timeless work.

Leacock himself noted, when talking about good literature, "Personally, I would sooner have
written 'Alice in Wonderland' than the whole of the 'Encyclopedia Britannica'." This is his
'Alice' and it well deserves to be favorably compared to Lewis Carroll's work.

By all measures, it is still the finest Canadian book ever written.

I have nearly every book written on Nathan Bedford Forrest. He was a complex man, a man that should stand out more amongst the 'peacocks'. Who, having had any knowledge about the War Between the States, does not know JEB Stuart? Forrest did not believe in plumbed hats, jackboots or riding around the Union army to prove a point to the Union troops and his Father-in-law. He believed war was fighting and fighting means killing, and his brilliant military tactics demonstrated this. I think by being raised on both sides of the pond, Forrest first fascinated me because I saw much the same 'force' in Forrest I admired in William Wallace. They were common men, men who were willing to give all in a cause they believed, men that were driven by fighting at 110% and never giving quarter. Many of Forrest's tactics of near guerrilla fighting came from Lighthorse Harry Lee's tactics against the British in the Revolutionary War (Robert E. Lee's daddy by the way!!), a character in himself and much in the vein of Mel Gibson's Patriot. The North despised Forrest - why?? Because he was SO EFFECTIVE. One wonders, what the outcome of the War Between the States would have been had Forrest commanded the Army of the Potomac instead of Lee. Grant and Sherman hated him - Grant giving him the label of 'that devil Forrest', while Sherman admired him - grudgingly - considering him "the most remarkable man our civil war produced on either side", and by Lee `the most extraordinary man the Civil War produced'. Historian Shelby Foote called him one of the two great geniuses of the period (Lincoln being the other). Sherman moaned in disgust that Forrest's men could travel 100 miles faster than his troops could 10. Forrest 'liberated' more guns, horses and supplies than any other single Confederate unit. He did not play at war. He rose from the rank of private to a Lieutenant General - the ONLY man to do that in the Confederate army, but he was just as a complex man before and after the war.

Perhaps, you will not come away liking Forrest, but you cannot doubt his sheer genius, his driven power and his ability to spur men to match his dedication and willingness to give all - just as Wallace did.

There are many books that give interesting views of Forrest, but I hold a special spot in my respect for this book, for unlike the others that were written with the distance of time and careful study, this was written by John Allan Wyeth - a surgeon who died in 1922. Wyeth served as a private in the Confederate army until his capture two weeks after Chickamauga. This was written by a man who lived through the war, not an arm chair historian. So his view is unique, more vivid than any other writer or biographer on Forrest. The text is base almost solely on accounts of military papers and records and the people who knew Forrest personally.

So if you have come searching for information on Nathan Bedford Forrest, you collection MUST have a copy of this work.

First published in 1899 as "The Life of General Nathan Bedford Forrest", this renamed and updated account is not only full of facts, but the presentation of them is made most readable.

Motivational interest in this subject for me lies in the fact that a Great grandfather was a member of the Kentucky Brigade under service with Gen. Forrest in several of his most famous battles, i.e.- Tishomingo Creek (Brice's Cross Roads). This book was the first I'd read concerning Gen. Forrest's life and career. Since then I've read and studied much concerning Gen. Forrest, even travelling to some of the battlegrounds associated with his military campaigns. I think that Allen Wyeth treated the subject of Gen. Forrest with the respect and dignity due such a great man, without white-washing the controverial portions of his nature and career. He brings Gen. Forrest to life with startling clarity in this original account, full of subject material gleaned from actual eyewitnesses and other people from all walks of life who were acquainted with him. Enough time had gone by when the book was first published to gain an even better perspective on the life & career of this most remarkable soldier and man.

Truly the very nature of Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest is emboided in this book by highlighting his well known theory put into practice that: "The time to whip the enemy is when they are running."

If you happen to be looking for a great book on the South during the Civil War, be sure to read this book. I myself am not a Civil War buff, but I sincerely enjoyed reading this. It gave me insight into the life of a Southern general who I had previously known only as "the man Forrest Gump was named after." I had a rather large bone to pick with the producers of the movie after having read this book. He was a man of unmatched military genius, and a man of character. He was never a part of the Ku Klux Klan as he was portrayed in the movie, and they had no right to claim that as the sole accomplishment of his life. The book is an impressive piece of work, whether you are a history buff, or if you are just looking for a good read. Check this one out!

By Bill Marsano

Take heed: This enjoyable and informative book is those who love words and ingenuity; all others stay clear. Author Allan Metcalf, professor of English and executive secretary of the American Dialect Society proposed in 1990 that--just as Time magazine had its Man of the Year--the ADS should
elect a New Word of the Year. Done and done! This book looks at the winners (and many others) and what became of them; it encourages readers to create new words of their
own devising and suggests criteria for success.

And success has been mixed, not only for ADS honorees but for other new words (officially called 'neologisms'). For example, my own creations. I produced "oldveau riche" a dozen years ago, but seldom have opportunity to use it. Currently I'm struggling to popularize "e-dress," which is certainly more efficient than "e-mail address." The first ADS winner,
"bushlips" (for insincere political rhetoric), stemmed promisingly from President George W. Bush's "Read my lips: No new taxes," but, like Bush's promise, it went nowhere. "Frankenfood," a recent American coinage for
genetically modified food, is popular only in Britain. "Scofflaw," Metcalf says, was selected in 1923 from 25,000 contest entries. It's used for people who ignore parking tickets but was created specifically for illegal
drinkers during Prohibition, and it was thought to carry such a sting that it would shame them into reform. Fat chance!

Metcalf discusses other semi-successes. Gelett Burgess invented the very useful 'blurb' and 'bromide,' but their were supplied by others. Lewis Carroll invented lots of neologisms that remain pleasing (e.g., "'twas brillig, and the slithy toves, did gyre and gimble in the wabe . . . .") but are so obscure no one uses them. The champion failure would seem to be Rich Hall, said to be a comedian, who in the 1980s
published several paperback books full of "sniglets"--words, he said, that don't exist but should. The examples cited by Metcalf show why they've all disappeared: They're desperate, useless and ruthlessly unfunny.

Shakespeare, Metcalf says, is the all-time champion. Words and usages he produced four centuries ago are still in common use; his instinct for the right word at the right time was uncanny. Not so mine. A couple of years ago I came up with 'three-wuh' in the hope of getting around 'www' which, as someone else had noted, is the only word to have three times as many
letters as it does syllables. Fat chance again: www itself has almost disappeared because, being at the head of web address, no one needs to say it any more--or bothers to.

So, creative readers, buy this book and study it. Once you and your neologisms had almost no chance of success unless you wrote for newspapers and magazines. and were thus able to spread them around. But now you have the internet to spread the word, as it were. Use (and explain) your neologisms often in e-mails--which should be sent to everyone for whom you have an e-dress. Professor Metcalf included.

Want to make your mark on the world? Coin a new word. Just follow the rules set down by Allan Metcalf in Predicting New Words and you'll be well on your way. Along the way, he discusses the origins of newish words and phrases like "notebook PC" and "weapons-grade" signifying anything of as well as tried and true ones like "OK" and "moonlighting," examining them and coming to conclusions about what makes a word gain universal acceptance.

Predicting New Words is a fun read for those who are interested in words and their history (as well as their future). Metcalf's prose style is simple and easy to read and his transitions are smooth, making each dissection blend into the next. He goes into what is likely to make a word accepted and discusses how some words simply ache to be coined because they keep cropping up in separate instances over time by people who were unaware that anyone else had ever used the word before.

In the back of the book is an appendix listing the Words of the Year as chosen by the American Dialect Society, along with descriptions as to what makes them special. Words like "Y2K," the "e-" prefix regarding the Internet, "9-11" as signifying the events of September 11, 2002; all of these have been chosen as Words of the Year for their prevalence and usefulness.

Metcalf also proposes some words that are floating around now and puts them to the test using his "FUDGE factor" to decide whether they will be around in 40 years. All in all, Predicting New Words in an insightful and engrossing read, and I recommend it to anyone who gets a kick out of words.

If you feel yourself just one person in a sea of humanity who will be unremembered by future generations (and most of us are indeed going to be forgotten), and you'd like to claim just a little bit of immortality, you might coin a word that gets used by lots of people and then enters the dictionaries. That's what Paul Lewis did. He's a humorist and English professor, and his new word is one of the many reported in _Predicting New Words: The Secrets of Their Success_ (Houghton Mifflin), an amusing new way to look at new words by Allan Metcalf. Every dictionary which lists Lewis's coinage "frankenfood" and goes to any detail on its etymology will have to list him as the inventor (author?) of the word. "Frankenfood," meaning genetically modified comestibles, is a clever, funny new word. It gets its point across clearly, and will probably be around as long as genetically modified food itself is. Score a big one for professor Lewis, but beware: he has subsequently tried coining other new words, some of them seemingly clever and useful, but none of them have caught on. Metcalf's book tries to show why some new words catch on and why some don't, and how to make predictions. Maybe his prediction system is quite good; we will have to wait a couple of generations to see what words stick or fall away as it predicts, but even so, this is a fascinating look at how words come into being.

It is surprising that so many new words are created every day. You might even make a few yourself, like President Bush does; he comes up with words like "misunderestimate" rather frequently, but it isn't surprising that a lot of other people have come up with that one, all on their own, too. Often people perceive a need for a word and want to invent one to fill that need. This seldom works to make a lasting word. For a few decades we have been pondering replacements for "boyfriend" and "girlfriend," since older people are doing a lot of dating these days. It would be nice to have a word that meant "he or she" so that one wouldn't feel pressed to go for the ungendered but ungrammatical plural "they" as in "If anyone wishes to leave, they may do so now." As the millennium rolled over, we wondered if after leaving the nineties, we would be entering the "aughts" or "naughts" or "oh-ohs," but the decade still has no agreed-upon name, and maybe we will have to wait for the twenties for an easily namable decade. Words do not rush in to fill all gaps. But many of the new words here have surprising stories. "Scofflaw," though it sounds like something Shakespeare could have used, was invented in a contest in 1924. A member of the Anti-Saloon League offered a $200 prize for a word to mean "a lawless drinker, menace, scoffer, bad citizen, or whatnot." The word was widely publicized, and became immediately popular, although the original aim to deter such scofflaws seems to have failed.

Flashy words don't tend to last as well as the unobtrusive ones; in this way, an evolving language is something like an evolving jungle, with the fittest surviving. Since the American Dialect Society still is picking Words of the Year, Metcalf has proposed a rule that will more accurately predict a word's success. It is the word's FUDGE factor, an acronym of "Frequency of use" (popularity), "Unobtrusiveness" (seems like something we already know about), "Diversity of users and situations" (whether it is used by people in many different arenas), "Generation of other forms and meanings" (how fertile it is in creating derived forms), and "Endurance of the concept" (whether the thing it describes stays around so you need the word to describe it). This is all well and good, for a professional word prognosticator, but the rest of us can enjoy this new way of looking at our complex and amusing language, with many interesting examples, presented in an original book.

I have read most of the American poets, both past and present. For my money Poe is simply one of the best when it comes to rhythm and rhyme. Plus his imagery and themes are so dark and foreboding that poems, such as his masterpiece "The Raven" will stand forever as immortal verses from this master of shadows and sheer terror.

I was first hooked on literature in high school, having before that been strictly a reader of sci-fi and horror. I was wonderfully surprised to discover Poe's tales and poems, not only because they catered to my love of the dark and disturbed, but because they were something altogether different from what I'd been reading! This book contains the poem that Poe is most favorite for and one of my long time faves, the Raven. But it also contains a wonderful assortment of other poems so that you get the full range of Poe's literary ability in one slim little book! Whoever put teen angst in such beautiful terms; "From childhood's hour I have not been/as others were..." If you're looking for a cheap version with a good cross section of his poetry, this is most definitely the book to pick up.

What can I say of "The Raven" that has not been said? Beauty and sadness, grief and romance...

Lamenting the loss of a gentle but passionate woman, the narrator drinks, yet somberly dwells on her name. A local raven, with the capacity to utter like a parrot a syllable or two, repeats "Lenore," and "Nevermore." The narrator, tired and broken, believes the raven might be sent by God or even by the Devil, and tries talking with it.

The poem, like an long tale, draws the listener or reader to be in that lonely room.

Anyone who has ever been in love and lost that lover will known Poe's pain and supplication of god.

I fully recommend this book.

Anthony Trendl

The last revised edition of the Star Trek Compendium, from 1993, is a wonderful resource book about the first series. The adventures of Captain Kirk, (William Shatner), Mr. Spock (Leonard Nimoy), Dr. "Bones" McCoy (DeForest Kelly) and the rest of the original crew will always hold a special place for me. After all, none of the other spin-offs, would have been possible, without this show paving the way.

Written by Allan Asherman, the book is a fun trip through the early years of the saga, created by former arline pilot Gene Roddenberry. The book takes readers from the original pitch to NBC-TV, through both pilots (The Cage and Where No Man Has Gone Before), all of the 78 other episodes from 1966-1969, syndication and the growing fandom of the 70s, the short-lived animated series ('73-'74), the aborted Phase II television series, and all six motion pictures featuring just the "Classic Cast" The book has episode/film synopses, behind the scenes stories, and fun trivia. The guide has over 125 black and white photographs and a total of 182 pages (including index)

The compendium is highly recomended to any generation of Trek fan

This book covers all of the episodes of the Original Series and all of the movies up to Star Trek V: The Final Frontier. A great reference book for even those who only just care for the Original Series but prefer the later serieses (like me!).

This book does exactly what it says.... There is great preliminary information and rare pictures of the beginnings of the series. Then, you get writer, director, principle characters, and descriptions of each episode. You also get information on syndication, conventions, the second series, and the first five movies.

Psychiatry and psychology are growing out of their shells, and the intellectual and spiritual currents that they are being swept up in have never been so diverse and heady. This concise and authoritative collection of statements on a broad range of topics in the transpersonal field sets a new standard. Well done.

This book is a great reference book and if you are teaching a class in transpersonal psychology this should be the textbook for the class. It is very informative and the author is very clear in his understanding and dissemination of the information provided. It is a must have book.

I am trying to learn more about transpersonal psychology and transpersonal practices. This book more than did the trick. It gave a good overview of the different angles the field touches. It gave great anectdotal stories as well. It is defineity a must have. It introduced many of the fathers of the field and there perspectives; Jung, Maslow, Wilber, Freud, Assogolini. It also showed the contributions of spirtiual traditions:Buddhism, Hinduism, Shamanism, Christianity, Kabbalah. It introduced many techniques used:guided imagery, past life regression, meditation, breathwork, psychedelics.

McQuarrie's book is typically the standard text in many undergraduate and graduate programs, but I believe there are many other resources to learn statistical mechanics in a much clearer way.

I find the following things to be particularly annoying about the book:
1) The typesetting! The pages are very difficult to read, especially equations. It's a very old typeface and my eyes literally hurt after reading McQuarrie for too long.
2) Very few problems are worked out. Many important concepts that should involve more detailed discussion are simply left as exercises to the student. I believe that more peripheral results and extensions of fundamental material are better left as problems, as opposed to fundamental results.
3) The glaring absense of good discussion on spin systems (such as Ising magnets) and critical phenomena. These are VERY important topics in modern statistical mechanics.

I would recommend the following if you want to find good books on statistical mechanics:
1) If you want one comprehensive volume, use Linda Reichl's book.
2) If you are only interested in statistical thermodynamics, use David Chandler's book.
3) If you want both statistical thermodynamics and nonequatilibrium statistical mechanics, use Chandler and Robert Zwanzig's book.
Also, Kubo's statistical thermodynamics book is really good.

I really would not recommend McQuarrie. Save your eyes and get a more modern book with at least a better typesetting.

This is a good book, but it's not a graduate text for the first half. If you're just reading it and not taking the class, buy Hill instead. McQuarrie learned how to teach SM from Hill and it shows.

It's a fantastic book!. I'm studying it every day, and learn something new every day. Everyone should have this book.