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Book reviews for "Edwards,_Charles_Edward" sorted by average review score:

News from Lake Wobegon Winter
Published in Audio CD by HighBridge Company (1997)
Author: Garrison Keillor
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Broad and not shallow
This books is for administrators looking to secure an NT Server. It covers a broad base of topics with step by step explaining how to implement the topic. The book details what each setting does and explains it better than the NT resource kit. It is not as detailed as Windows NT 4.0 Security, Audit, and Control by Jumes, Cooper, et al; however, it does cover more topics.


One to One: Resources for Conference Centered Writing (5th Edition)
Published in Paperback by Addison-Wesley Pub Co (1997)
Authors: Edward A. Dornan and Charles Dawe
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A book for presenters
I think this is a good book for persons interested to know how make a good presentation. My special interest it's learn a good method to write and speak a better english and improve my communication.


Rear Window
Published in Paperback by I Books (2001)
Author: Cornell Woolrich
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Getting even deeper into Lewis Carroll
This is certainly not a book for the casual Lewis Carroll fan, but a book for the hard-core, already-own-the-complete-letters-and-diaries kind of fan. It's a fascinating look at Dodgson's Oxford writings, including many previously unseen by the public.

Charles Dodgson's Oxford writings are full of items that the average person, having not been to Oxford in the 1800's, might despair to understand, if it were not for the helpful explanations supplied by the editors of this collection. These explanations make these writings accessable, allowing us to explore a microcosm of collegiate life. Dodgson expresses massive displeasure with the architectural and staff changes going on at the college, often with satire so biting that you wonder how many friends he must have lost with these little publications.

There are also a couple more serious papers about doings at the college, followed by a tremendous amount of circulars about the common room at the college, which Dodgson was curator of. These circulars are very dry, sometimes amounting to no more than lists of wines in the cellars. These papers take up almost half the book, and present a problem: Surely every Lewis Carroll fan wants a complete collection of his writings, but is this simply too much? However, if they weren't included, the readers would be left wondering if there was anything worthwhile in these papers, and the answer is that yes, about 5% of these papers are worth reading.

Once again, this book is for the truly hard-core Carroll nut. If you enjoyed all the writings in, say, the Modern Library "Works of" Lewis Carroll, then you might enjoy this. But it is not for casual fans, especially at the gold-plated price of [money].


Pieces of Eight
Published in Hardcover by Discovery Pr (1988)
Author: Charles Johnson
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Good Pre-teen Reading
Reminiscent of the Hardy Boys books in feel and style. The reading level is suitable for pre-teens. The story was entertaining and should prove interesting to young boys (it has it all - a ghost, old house to explore, pirates and a dog, what more could you ask).

The historical elements provide a moderate overview of pirate life along the American coast in the early eighteenth century and seem fairly accurate without introducing some of the more unsavory elements of pirate reality. The historical figures involved, Edward Teach (Blackbeard) and Isreal Hands, are fairly true to life; Blackbeard may even be more realistic than the demonic depiction in Captain Charles Johnson's A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pirates.

Included in the book are various elements like a short biography of Edward Teach, a guide to ship's rigging, and a timeline. I would not hesitate to recommend this book to children with an interest in pirates.
P-)


Low Country: A Novel
Published in Hardcover by HarperCollins (24 June, 1998)
Author: Anne Rivers Siddons
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Fictional historical fiction from the Scottish master
I find "Redgauntlet" one of the less satisfactory novels in the Waverley series. Certainly, it has the local flavor, the dialect, the imaginative description of evocative landscapes all his novels have, but it is not a blast as some of the others are. The plot involves a fictitious third Jacobite rebellion, and it is interesting to see how Scott (especially in the notes from the Magnum edition, included in this edition) argues this time not for the historicity but for the historical probability of the events described. While Scott is often hailed as the inventor of the historical novel, "Redgauntlet" also shows him to be a forerunner in the historically probable novel--a genre practiced to great effect by our present-day history buff, Umberto Eco.

But probability alone does not a great novel make. Darsie Latimer's character is even less probable than his semi-historical counterparts, such as Edmund Waverley and Henry Morton. And this is strange, since moving further into fictionality, one could argue, a writer might allow themselves more latitude to make a character interesting, even if certain circumstances remain historical. Is this a conscious effort on Scott's part to show, after the fictionality of history, the fictionality of fiction?

Scott disturbs narrative conventions even further when the conspiracy against the Hanoverian King George III completely fails to materialize--ironically, for what seems to be the silliest of reasons: the Pretender (or the Chevalier if you're a Jacobite), Charles Stuart, refuses to give up his mistress. Thus, the main plot of the novel sizzles out and really not much happens in these 400 pages. Mind you, I personally don't need much to happen, but the 19th century novel did. Scott as a postmodern writer? That is pushing it too far, but this novel awaits a postmodern critique enlightened by a reading of Eco and Bakhtin.

That said, there are some really interesting things going on. Apart from the "regular" set of characters of Scott's Scottish novels, this one features an orthodox Quaker who is the epitome of anti-militant mercantilism. The form is also quite new for Scott--the novel is an epistolary, a set of letters between Darsie Latimer and his friend Alan Fairford. Thus, the novel's first-person point of view is split, and this provides for interesting contrasts.

For me, Scott sort of shot himself in the foot with this novel. His earlier novels ("Redgauntlet" is the last of the Scottish novels, written eight years before his death) lead one to expect a major action to happen before the denouement, and this one avoids that a bit too artificially. It seems that Scott was at pains to stick to history, and his own political convictions, a bit too much: a fictitious Jacobite rebellion is OK as a narrative vehicle, but it shouldn't interfere with the peaceful Great Britain (in which Scotland was in many respects subsidiary to England) that Scott himself inhabited and advocated. And so narrative excitement has to give way to Scott's pacifist politics--an honest choice, which Scott consistently maintains in all the Waverley novels--and character development and politics take precedent.

A final note: Scott has always proven himself a masterful and honest critic of royalty and nobility, especially of those characters he seems to love. "Waverley"'s Mac-Ivor is chastised for his political obstinacy, in "The Fortunes of Nigel" King James I (a Scot) is rebuked for his fickleness and corruption, and in "Redgauntlet" the formerly charismatic Stuart proves effeminate and tragic (dying an impoverished alcoholic, in the footnotes). And often enough, these tragic characters are of more interest than the somewhat ineffectual and sometimes foolish main characters: something for readers of literature to sink their teeth into.


My Greatest Day in Nascar: The Legends of Auto Racing Recount Their Greatest Moments
Published in Paperback by Griffin Trade Paperback (2001)
Author: Bob McCullough
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A surprisingly Good Book
Alright, I had to give this book four stars despite the painfulness of reading it. In fact, the only thing keeping it from a five is the memory of that torture (if that makes any sense). I gritted my teeth for the entire first three quarters of the novel but when I finally started in and read it straight through I truly appreciated it. It is a well written novel that I am glad I was forced to read. I recommend it to anyone who wants to get inside the mind of the Soviet system. I'll never forget this book and while I don't know that I would like to read more Soviet Realism, the cinematice style of Kataev has something to be said for it.


Reincarnation and Judaism: The Journey of the Soul
Published in Hardcover by Jason Aronson (1999)
Author: DovBer Pinson
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Ghor, Kin-Slayer: The Saga of Genseric's Fifth-Born Son
I have been a fan of Mr Howard for nearly 12 years now, which in my opinion, makes me a bit of a connoisseur, and frankly this book was a bit of a disappointment. Undoubtedly the contributing writers are well-respected and immensely able but their writing lacked the Howardian flavour I have come to love. Ghor's sudden personality shifts are hard to follow and the various ideas in the story lack sufficient depth. This book is not the way Mr Howard would have written it. Nevertheless, this should be read because the original idea belonged to the great REH.

GHOR is the Cthulhu's Conan.
Ghor is a nice blend of Conan and the Cthulhu Mythos together. Abandoned as a child because of a deformity, Ghor is adopted by a pack of wolves. Raised by them, he adopts the ways of the wolf, yet when he meets up with humanity joins them. Constantly struggling with his wolf upbringing and his human surroundings, Ghor becomes a mighty war hero wherever he goes.

This is an excellent adventure book that takes a Conan like hero and plots him against all sorts of evil (and good), including some Cthulhu creations as well.

Originally Ghor was an unfinished story by Conan creator Robert Howard. Upon finding this unfinished story, a magazine decided to finish it. What they did was have a different chapter every month written by a different top fantasy writer. It made the reading interesting.

While most of the chapters were great. Some were excellent. Unfortunately there were a couple chapters that I just wanted to get through to reach the next writers' chapter. Overall a really good read.

EXCELLENT BOOK
I WAS VERY SUPRISED ABOUT HOW WELL THIS STORY CAME OFF. THE VARIUOS WRITERS DID AN EXCELLENT JOB IN WRITING AN EXCITING BOOK THAT FLOWED SMOOTHLY. IT DID NOT COME OFF AS A SERIES OF SHORT STORIES. THIS IS AN EXCELLENT BOOK FOR ROBERT E. HOWARD FANS, AND FANS OF FANTASY IN GENERAL.


Database Modeling & Design: The Fundamental Principles (Morgan Kaufmann Series in Data Management Systems)
Published in Paperback by Morgan Kaufmann (1900)
Author: Toby J. Teorey
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Abridged? Decimated!
Anyone wanting to read Hodge, should go with the three volume edition. Yes, there is far too much interaction with the pseudo-science of the day, but this "abridgement" lays waste to whole areas of interest to anyone who would want to read Hodge in the first place. It's interesting that one of the areas where the cutting is most obvious is in the area where the "editor" disagrees with Hodge the most, that is the locus of "eschatology". The editor is a Premillennialist and Hodge, like all Princetonians was a clear Postmillennialist. If you want to read Hodge without the excess verbiage, buy A.A Hodge's "Outlines of Theology", which is based on the very same lectures that Charles Hodge published as his Systematics. It's simpler, yet doesn't alter the truth the way this chopped-up mess does. This abridgement is a master maligned.

Serious Binding Problems
Those of you thinking of purchasing the most recent Hodge's three volume hardcover edition should just purchase the abridged volume. The hardcover volumes have serious binding flaws that it will make your reading very uncomfortable (it's very difficult to separate and turn the pages!). The publishers (for some reason that is a mystery) decided to make these three lengthy volumes into the size of small paperbacks. Get an older edition of the three volume work with more flexible binding. I hope the publishers read this and know that if one wants a friendly customer base, they should take into consideration how to bind books properly.

Oustanding Reformed Theology
Charles Hodge remains one of America's greatest theologians, providing a crisp and clear perspective from the Reformed tradition of classic Christian doctrine. I also believe he presents competing views fairly, although with some language that is typical of the time (Roman Catholic readers may be put-off by his terminology when referring to their Church). This is a very worthwhile set of volumes, demonstrating the clarity of though that is frequently missing in contemporary theology. Hodge is the "thinking person's fundamentalist." He shows that one can meet the highest standards of scholarship while affirming Biblical truth. Theological liberals who look down their noses at conservative Christians will have to think twice when they read Hodge's work ... if they are intellectually honest, that is.


Darwinian Myths: The Legends and Misuses of a Theory
Published in Hardcover by Univ of Tennessee Pr (1998)
Author: Edward Caudill
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An intriguing and ghostly study of modern social thought.
Although there is something to be said for a catcy title, Myths and Misuses of Darwinism soon vanishes from the reader's mind. As the book is unacceptably skant in both content and innovation, the reader is unable to conjure the meaning of the book. Thus, the reader is forced to delve deep into the phantom pages in order to ascertain the author's argument. At times, however, by way of some supernatural sense, the author is able to express his views to the reader often without actually demonstrating them in the text. Although this book is unable to make a lasting impression, it offers a rare oppurtunity for the reader particpate a he must envision what the author will conclude about Myths and Misuses in Darwinism

Figments of Darwinian Historical Imagination
This is a superb snapshot of the legend-creation process that has always braided with the legacy of Darwinism. Ideology has been described as a lack of information, and the absence of historical knowledge in depth of the development of Darwinism by the general public has left the field to sound bite summaries, the fodder of legend, myth, and outright falsehood. Both sides of the debate have shown their colours here, although the genesis of Social Darwinism has been the worst of the whole process. The book covers a range of topics from the hollywoodization of the Huxley-Wilberforce debate, to the strange tale of Darwin's death bed confession, from the Spanish Civil War to the questions of eugenics, and finally the fearful shadow of fascism at the end of the whole business. The author starts with a fact little grasped, that Darwinism began with many of the tactics in their early forms of the modern publicity machine. The clear objections of many critics, in the confusion of the fact of evolution versus the theory of the mechanism, counted little as the promotion of the Darwin camp ensured the success of Darwin's theory irregardless of its deeper scientific merits as it tagged along with the timely spread of evolutionary thinking in general.


A Christmas Treasury of Yuletide Stories and Poems
Published in Hardcover by Budget Book Service (1996)
Authors: James Charlton and Barbara Gilson
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The Sunny, the Wacky, the Winning
Dr. Charlie Moore's winning and wacky personality is the real subject of this book of essays. Don't be put off by the notion that this book is about plastic surgery. It's about a sunny, semi-serious way of looking at life and the world by a guy who has enjoyed it all---or MOSTLY all.

A biased review
This review is "biased" because I am the wife of the author. You will have to forgive me accordingly, but with a cat in my lap as I type this I can honestly say, fascinated as we all are with "plastic surgery" and cats, this volume is a pleasant read. Its perspective, and I can guarantee it from having lived with the surgeon for 25 years, is altogether a different one from what is presented in slick magazines and talk- shows. With what I am going to call "happy good humor" my husband wanders all over the cosmos using his experience of the practice of plastic surgery (in a small, football town) as the focus of his slightly eccentric ruminations. But I am most proud that this book demonstrates that even in such a "glitzy", thought-to-be-glamorous surgical specialty as his he demonstrates that care and respect for people and their needs are alive and well in the practice of medicine. The book is, I think, really fun; and even if you do not want to read it there are some pleasant pictures of this and that. I am very proud of him. I hope you will buy his book, since he is very eager that the publisher, whom he much respects, makes back what it cost to print!


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