this book was full of words that are no longer used. Basically, I would NOT recommend this book. It was very dry and hard to follow, in other words, boring.

Okay,what I love about this book is the totally cool magic that everyone wants! I have it I put my friend on a spell with this totally awesome book!

the bookwas really good. i suggest that if you are having a relantionship problems, BUY IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

A.E. Waite could have spend his time better than translating this "French masterpiece". As always Eliphas Levi is ill-informed and doesn't care much about facts. The book is full of factual errors and Alphonse Louis Constant shapes history as it suits him. This doubtful "History of Magic" is therefore only interesting for uncritical followers of the master, reseachers who specialize in the history of occultism in the nineteenth century or for experts on the history of magic in general who can make distinctions between facts and non-sense. It is more or less misleading to rate this book five stars.

We are all intruigued by the mysteries of magic. But this book makes the most preposterous claims about magic, ritual, history and god knows what else, that I have ever seen. Far from the claim (in a review below) of his "empiricism," Levi does not seem to have been in the least informed by the sciences of his day. The real mystery is why the great esotericsit A.E. Waite bothered to translate it from the French at all. Need an example? India is described as "the Mother of all heresies" [laughable, were it not so pathetic an example of judeochristian resentiment]. And he seriously believes that the the books of the Old Testament describe the literal anthropology & history of the peoples of the Mideast, Ishmael=Islam and all the rest [fundamentalism so naive it would make a Trent Lott blush!]. The book's organization reflects the author's romance with Quaballah, but the chapters themselves are random collections of "ideas" on topics unrelated to the chapter titles [a stream-of-consciousness style the anticipated the great Joyce by half a century, albeit to no effect, aesthetic or otherwise]. The single high point of the book is Levi's description of spiritual love: "The true man elevates himself not by trying to possess the object of his desire but by raising himself to Her through devotion" [its a pity he didn't know anything about Sufism or the key difference between magic and devotion]. Try Israel Regardie instead, who is at least steeped in Renaissance memory training, neo-Platonism and other worthies. Remember that it is but a small (backwards) step that separates dog from god.

Eliphas Levi's "History of Magic" is probably the most singularly beautiful, profoundly romantic and Personal rendering of the history of Magic ever penned. It is as much a sourcebook for the Symbolist/Decadent fin-de-siecle generation as is Baudelaire's Flowers of Evil & Paris Spleen, and ironically, Levi collaborated with Baudelaire on the work entitled:"Les Mysteres Galants".(webb. Occult Underground,266) It is essential to grasp when involved in such a historical treatise as this, that in Occultism, as in religious thought: EXPERIENCE TAKES PRECEDENCE OVER DOCTRINE. If one is seeking verifiable facts given in chronological order that is simple to digest and retain, look elsewhere. For Levi is speaking of history in relation to his own private researches, to which he had dedicated his life since entering the priesthood in the Roman Catholic Church at the age of twelve. His is also a history of magic with literary antecedents; to the likes of Aurthur Rimbaud for instance, this work of Levi/Constant's was a veritable bible, whose symbolism permeates works such as "A Season In Hell" to a deliriant degree. There is perhaps not one writer or Artist regardless of medium between the years 1860-1930 who was not at least familiar with Levi/Constant; this fact extends from his own friends, such as Balzac, de Nerval, Victor Hugo, Dumas- to Breton, Crowley, Bataille, Meyrink, Henry Miller and innumerable others! The names cover from Western to Eastern Europe, as well as North America; and it is Levi who established what we define, in its cultural sense, as "Occultism" today. It is also largely because of his pioneering Occult works that the "19th century Occult Revival" merged with the Arts of the day, giving birth to the idea of "Art as Religion, & the Artist as Priest/magician". It was in the Occult that the Artist(spelled for the 1st time with a capital)found a definition of his own position, and most granted the highest respect and admiration to the Rabelaisian personage of Alphonse Louis Constant, which is Levi's real name. Aleister Crowley's lifework was centered around Eliphas's dream of a reconciliation between the arts of science & religion, for which he laboured and set down all that was required in his Occult as well as religious and revolutionary tomes, comprising together at least 20 works. The essential question in Levi's History Of Magic is NOT the accuracy of his scholarly objectivity, but his system's origins, structure, goals, and the benefits it bestows and light shined upon the Occultist's understanding of Magic in relation to the history of magic; that Levi's historical system differs from other interpretations is due to the fact that he was not so much interested in the historical facts as much as how the history and the knowledge it produced could benefit the modern-day Occultist operating in the world today. In this respect the text is given over to interpretation of all variety of magical personages, events, accomplishments, inventions, and works. Also essential to know is that it is thanks to the genius of the Philosopher/mathmetician Hoene Wronski and his CaBalistic insights that Levi gleaned much in his Philosophical approach. One may benefit also by disregarding any facts pseudo-scholar Waite provides on Constant's background as he had at the time of writing his prefaces' not one single work in regards to the life of Levi; his critical insights however are as valid as any, and for all his seeming hostility he in reality is truly, next to Crowley, perhaps Levi's biggest fan! waite is also to be commended for providing the bibliographical sources for those seeking "established facts"( which merely means some few people agree upon what they themselves only know from yet another source of questionable reliability) It is quite evident from a philosophical standpoint that the Occultist's rewards reaped from their experience outweighs in practical value what is the scholar's bane regardless of any amount of scholarly exactitude. In this sense, as much as in the exquisitely-toned bardic prose of Levi, he has created a historical work that will outlast innumerable others, standing as it does on the merits of great literature as well as being universally regarded as a pioneering classic of Occultism.

Arthur C. Clarke is most well-known for writing 2001: A Space Odyssey; Lord Dunsany for his fantastic The King of Elfland's Daughter and serving as a primary influence for H.P. Lovecraft. For such gifted writers, this correspondance is remarkably dull - mostly an eager, young, as-yet-unpublished Clarke fawning to his hero, who seems grateful for the attention. This collection is well-meaning but almost completely meritless.

Fenbug needs to get hir facts straight. Arthur C. Clarke was already a published author when he began to correspond with Lord Dunsany in 1944, and by 1956 -- the last year of their correspondence -- Clarke had published some of his best classic fiction, most notably Childhood's End (1953).

If engaging in reasoned dialogue on topics as fascinating as space exploration and imaginative literature is "fawning," then so be it.

This book is a valuable resource for literary scholars, fans of Clarke and/or Dunsany, and anyone with an interest in the early years of the Space Age. Keith Allen Daniels is to be commended for his editorial and publishing acumen, and for his understanding of the importance of these letters.

This is a good book. It provides a good review of Lully's life. However, it does not do much to explore the alchemical aspect of Lully's writing. Honestly, the reader is left with knowing about many of the legends about Raymund Lully, but still very little about the real man, or why it is that so many works were attributed to him after his 'death'. So if you want to know a little more about Lully, then I recommend this work. But if you want to know more about what Lully actually wrote, I would suggest looking elsewhere.

This book seems more than adequate for those who already have a hold on advanced mathematics and want a comprehensive guide to a new subject. The layout is utilitarian and serves well enough...

Although this book is used in introductory differential equation courses, it contains too few worked examples to work as an introductory text. The student who uses this book should have some (not a lot, but some) background on the subject, even if they get that knowledge from the professor's lecture. My professor gave formulas for reduction of order and variation of parameters that were easier to use than those given in the book. Then again, he explained the topic so well that I hardly had to use the book except for homework, and I still got an A+. The book is well written, but perhaps better suited for an intermediate differential equations course.

I have to admit I haven't read this book in detail - just browsed throught it at a bookstore. But I have studied a number of other ODE books, including Boyce and DiPrima, and looked at this to clarify a bit of confusion on the method of undetermined coefficients. It was very clear, clearer than Boyce. Also there seemed to be numerous examples of various methods, and a wide selection of methods in both ODE's and PDE's for an elementary textbook. My general impression was that it is rather similar to Boyce, but even clearer. Perhaps these books are a bit advanced for some beginning students though?

Clearly, the authors have not verified the examples they provided in the book. When I ran the example scripts, frequently I would encounter mistakes here and there. It is rather annoying to have such a stupid problem when you try to understand the presented concepts or convention.

I went through a few different books before this one, including "Learning The Bash Shell" , which I found cryptic and incomplete at best. I have to say that I am at a loss as to why this book has gotten such negative reviews. I had no example problems, and the structure of the book really helps build on previous chapters. The approach is also extremely clear and pedagogic-- all of the concepts are clearly illustrated in examples in a clear context. Its the time-proven "if you want to do this... type this in" approach extremely conducive to make readers want to explore or on their own. Given the enormous volume of Unix books that fails to do so, I think this books deserves a little more credit.
I would say this is a good introduction to Unix shell programming. I would also get E.Q. Shells by Example.

I don't understand all the negative reviews here. Perhaps they're expecting something else out of this book: intro to programming, or hello world or something. Yes, it's a fairly advanced book, but that's what I wanted in the first place! I am writing this review because I came to this page to buy another copy of this book: I keep wanting a copy at home for hacking on my Linux box!

Any basic tutorial can show you how to do basic if/then/else and loops and basic syntax rules. You need a book when you want to do something harder: mathematics, complicated scripts, etc. Best of all, it doesn't just cover Bourne and C shells: it also covers the Korn and Bourne Again shells (ksh & bash).

This is not one of those books that was hacked out in four weeks because Technology X just became hot and every book publisher on the planet is scrambling to spit out 1600-page shelf-benders. The authors have taken a lot of time to put together a truly useful book.

Books don't reach a fourth edition if they are so bad!

It appears I'm the only person not from ithaca to review this book. I assume they're using this text at Cornell, or ithaca college, but I used this text at Texas A&M. Perhaps it was the instructor, but i didn't think that this book was that bad. Some of the proofs and explainations and examples were pretty lousy, but the assignment problems were pretty diverse, and i thought most of the explainations and examples were adequate. What i'm trying to say is that this text isn't that bad....

Granted, the semester is young, but so far this book's not too bad. Especially considering last semester I had to endure part of the McCallum/Hughes-Hallet series of calculus books for Multivariable/Vector Calculus. In comparison, this book has far more practice problems where you just work out the equations, rather than having to contend with applications and word problems while still wrestling with the concepts. While the examples are a little convoluted, at least they draw parallels to the problems, something the McCallum et al. series does not. In short, this may not be the best math book, but it could be a lot worse.

This is the required text for a math class I am currently taking. While the book is not spectacular, it is written at an elementary level and it is not mired in proofs, so one can learn the material simply by opening the book and reading. A definite strength of this book is that it covers a wide range of problems, from ordinary DE's to some PDE's. But it also includes whole chapters on applications to mechanical and electrical systems(circuits), as well as numerical methods and Laplace Transformations. The book is clearly written as an introductory text, but it covers a broad range of material applicable to higher level courses.