The Heart of Mathematics is an unconventional math survey aimed primarily at social science and humanities students. While students in "soft" majors are the primary intended audience, math majors and others who have already progressed beyond the introductory level are likely to find this book of great interest as well.

The book gives readers a good feel for the variety of problems that mathematicians tackle. In fact, one of the book's great strengths is the range of topics it covers, from number theory and games, to topology, to chaos and fractals. It does this with little use of conventional mathematical notation or jargon, and the level of presentation is so elementary that the book can be "read" just as any non-technical book can be read. At the same time, the authors go to great lengths to encourage reader participation. Many hands-on demonstrations and experiments are provided, and the end-of-chapter exercises ask readers to discuss the material with others and write about their experiences.

The topics presented are fascinating. I read this book on my vacation and found several passages to read to my wife and daughter almost every day. (This provided a lot of amusement for everyone when my 12-year-old daughter would solve problems in a few seconds that I had been pondering without much success.)

The book's subtitle is "An Invitation to Effective Thinking," and the authors present problem-solving strategies that can be applied to problems within and outside the field of mathematics. While readers will no doubt be familiar with many of them already, it is difficult for me to imagine anyone who would not benefit from at least some of the strategies presented.

The authors' writing is very informal with a lot of corny humor - possibly too much for a lot of people - but at the same time you do get a sense of the authors as good guys who know some important things and want to share the wealth.

In summary, this is a most unusual and stimulating book. Highly recommended.

Dr. Starbird teaches my number theory course. Just needing to fulfill requirements, I'm taking the course as a wash (I've already had the more advanced courses). I figured since he saved us money by not requiring a text, I could spend the money to check out his (co-authored) book.

It's well worth the money ... and, at best, will enrich your daily thought process. At worst, if you are a student of mathematics, it will at least help you along in the more abstract approaches, giving you a basis and idea of the thought process mathematicians use to approach problems. I wish I had encountered it as a freshman!

After browsing this book for a while in a book store somewhere near Tokyo station, I decided to buy it immediately, even it's price will about almost doubled the price I would get if I buy from internet. (I bought it for about $115).

But, it turned out to be one of the best decision I'd ever made in my life as a book-worm. (Well, I do love reading :-)

This book will change the way you look at the world, the way you look at yourself, the way you think, and so on. It is cleary one of the best books on Math I've ever read so far (I do love Math as well :)

Instead of throwing you the formulas, the authors lead you to the Mathematical Thinking. How to think this, how to solve that. What Mathematic really is and what are its applications, and why it had been used that way. All explained through simple but fun-to-think example/problems. Using non-technical language, and almost no formula(!). In fact, almost everyone with little math background can enjoy this book. It doesn't seem to require anything more than middle school math. So, you can really see the pictures, the very big pictures, clearly in your mind, which is really importand.

With the wide range of content, from Prime Numbers to Chaos, Fractals, Infinity, 4th Dimension, and more. The concept of each is well-explained, in a manner I mentioned earlier. This book will definitely help you to understand the making of "modern" science better.

One more thing is: Mathematic is not something that far from our everyday life as some might think. It's the alternative way to view our everyday life. The way with reason, pattern, logic, relation betweening things, and more. (Well, I realized this before start reading this book. But for those who haven't realize, this book will open the door for you).

Math can also be fun. (In fact, it IS .. That's why I love it :-)

And this book tell you why, and how to find and feel those "fun" and enjoy Math. Without any complicated computation, and limited only by your imagination.

It's difficult to easily categorize these dark works of fantasy: they are short stories written by such notables as Ray Bradbury, Michael Bishop, Nina Kiriki Hoffman and others, blending literature and art and all based on the strange kinetic sculpture Crowded After Hours by Lisa Snellings. Dark carnival stories probe the limits of humanity.

Strange Attraction is a fascinating anthology that combines quality writing, art and binding into a unique synthesis. This showcase volume presents memorable and highly recommended work by Michael Bishop, Ray Bradbury, Ed Bryant, Richard lee Byers, Nancy A. Collins, Jack Dann & Janeen Webb, Charles de Lint, James Dorr, Harlan Ellison, Neil Gaiman, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Alexandra Elizabeth Honigsberg, Caitlin R. Kiernan, Brad Linaweaver, Jason Miller, Fred Olin Ray, Robert J. Sawyer, Darrell Schweitzer, John Shirley, S.P. Somtow, Chet Williamson, David N. Wilson, and Gene Wolfe.

Strange Attraction is a fascinating anthology that combines quality writing, art and binding into a unique synthesis. This showcase volume presents memorable and highly recommended work by Michael Bishop, Ray Bradbury, Ed Bryant, Richard lee Byers, Nancy A. Collins, Jack Dann & Janeen Webb, Charles de Lint, James Dorr, Harlan Ellison, Neil Gaiman, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Alexandra Elizabeth Honigsberg, Caitlin R. Kiernan, Brad Linaweaver, Jason Miller, Fred Olin Ray, Robert J. Sawyer, Darrell Schweitzer, John Shirley, S.P. Somtow, Chet Williamson, David N. Wilson, and Gene Wolfe.

Colorful, captivating, a novel of freedom, self-reliance and humor. Twelve Quiet Men is a great read based on the little known Vigilante activities of eastern Montana and western North Dakota. The author has obviously done his research, compiling facts that have been delibertly hidden and forgotton. He uncovers the true mood of the Montana territory by showing the character of the men who took the trail to clean up the rustlers and killers of that time period. Leaving the reader searching for more information concerning the events of those historic times.

I've read so many "western" novels and such that I could almost feel the imaginary spurs on my heels when I walked down the carpeted hall on the way to my PC at the office, but I've finally found the real deal. This book removed those pesky spurs and replaced them with a real understanding of what life, and survival, was truly like in the effort to settle the west. Beyond that, and perhaps more importantly, it's an excellent story. I am not too much of a stickler for accurate details, but I must have an entertaining read. Here I found a great read, so I did a little bit of research. The author actually pulled it off; he combined a great story with historical accuracy! Ladies and gentlemen, that's a rarity.
As I've said I'm a western novel nut, and in this one I've found attention to detail that surpasses all others.
This guy obviously did his homework, and then was able to turn history into a page-turner that I simply couldn't put down. Get it, enjoy it, and let's hope that he gives us more!

Aaron

In the 1870's and 1880's, from central Montana into western Dakota Territory, organized outlaw gangs terrorized the region, rustling, robbing and killing. The law was powerless to stop them and the U.S. Army refused to help. Finally, a small secret group of determined cattlemen, led by Granville Stuart, abandoned their ranching responsibilities to hunt down and exterminate these lawless predators.

Wow, what a story! This is a forgotten chapter of the American West. Many are aware of the Vigilante activities in the Virginia City area during the 1860's when twenty two members of the outlaw Plummer gang were killed. Twenty years later, nearly one hundred outlaws were hung or shot in less than two years, but little has been written about it. Why?

Twelve men formed the active Vigilante group and they knew how to keep a secret. While they had the silent, active support of many ranchers in the region, they revealed their plans to no one. I, like others living in Montana and Dakota, have heard rumors of these events for years but never knew the complete story.

The author has done a commendable job in his research, reviewing period newspapers, delving into obscure records and capturing bits and peices of the events from various sources. If you like western historical novels or action/adventure tales, this is the book for you. It contains so much detail about life in those times, it speaks with authority and rings true.

I highly recommend this book. It's a great read!

This is an amazing show. Everyone can hum "One" but who can recite Paul's heartbreaking monologue? The script to this show was one of Broadway's first to be frankly honest about all aspects of life, and this really shows in reading it. It is an absolute joy to read. Totally reccommended!

C'mon! A chorus Line is THE best musical ever written! Now you can have the chance to own a wonderfully published script to this amazing music. I also suggest buying the cd to the musical to go with the script. It's just a pity that this script can not encapsulate the performances of the original cast as well. But I guess you can't have your cake and eat it too. But you can buy this script... and for a severely discounted price!...Congratulations. Jump at this deal immediately.

ALTHOUGH KAPLAN'S BOOK CLINICAL CHEMISTRY IS MORE EXTENSE, AND COVERS THE SUBJECTS QUITE DEEPLY, THIS BOOK IS A CONCISE, AND GOOD, ALTERNATIVE. IT'S MAIN ADVANTAGE IS THAT ALL SUBJECTS ARE NEWLY REVISED AND TRIES TO OFFER THE CLASSICAL AND NEWEST METHODS IN USE IN CLINICAL LABORATORIES.

Homogeneous assay for direct determination of high-density lipoprotein cholesterol evaluated

This book touched a part of my heart that I did not know existed any more. It is a wonderful story for children of all ages. The writing is well thought out and the illustrations are wonderful. The author should be commended.

The theme of the story is a universal one that subtly teaches us that the golden rule is larger than any one person or any one country. It is thought provoking on many levels, even though its primary audience are elementary aged children. The illustrations were wonderful and the writing flowed marvelously. I highly recommend this book to parents

I am a public owner and find this book to be one of the most complete and easy to understand discussions of the design-build process that I have seen. Beard, Loulakis and Wundram are well-known industry experts and all active in the Design-Build Institute of America. They bring their years of practical experience to their writings and have a strong sense of reality. I particularly found the contract and liability chapters written by Loulakis to be very helpful. I also enjoy the other books written by Loulakis, particularly "Design-Build Lessons Learned," (2001 Edition), which has the most up-to-date analysis of design-build caselaw and is a great resource to keep up to date with this subject. I'm anxiously awaiting to see if the authors decide to come out with another book in the near future. Keep up the good work, gentlemen!

Design-Build: Planning through Development covers most aspects of this project delivery method and is an excellent source of information for all the parties involved in the design and construcion business. Owners, Contractors, CMs and Designers can benefit from this book by obtaining guidelines and good orientation of how and when implement D-B as an effective project delivery method that is getting more followers everywhere.

This book is a must for anyone who enjoys Englands long and interesting Royal history. The photos are awesome, and text very well written. I have to get the whole video Tape series. Buy this book, you will be pleasantly surprised, it is wonderful!

This a great book. Every site that is mentioned in this book is lovingly told with witty and paranormal anecdotes and pictures galore. Well worth the money! I Highly recommend this book. BUY IT NOW!

For those who respond to fires and other emergencies, this is a needed a valuable book. It covers a lot of what is left out of standard training. I recommend it.

Wayne D. Ford, Ph.D., author of "The Firefighter's Guide to Managing Stress" docwifford@msn.com

Whether you are part of a public safety agency, or just curious as to what "rehab" is, this book is for you! This book was instrumental in helping me plan a rehab sector standard operating procedure for my fire/EMS department. A must for any firefighter/EMT!

The following review of _Encounters With God_ appeared in _Choice_ (Jun. 1999), published by the American Library Association. The reviewer was Bruce Stephens of Pennsylvania State University (Delaware County): "Winner of the Brewer Prize of hte American Society of Church History, this fresh approach to the theology of Jonathan Edwards avoids the narrow specialization of recent studies, yielding a sense of the whole rather than a glimpse of fragments. Twin themes of 'spiritual perception' and Edwards as Christian apologist open onto this larger vista. McClymond (St. Louis Univ.) argues that Edwards's genius was his capacity to delve into the fundamental principles of the inherited intellectual tradition of the Enlightenment and, through deft reinterpretation, to put it to work in the service of his own theology. This reworking of the Enlightenment tradition allowed Edwards to link idea and emotion, the cognitive and the affective, theology and spirituality. Setting major Edwards texts within their larger 18th-century context, McClymond reexamines Edwards's metaphysics in _The Mind_, his spirituality in the _Personal Narrative_ and _Diary_, his ethics in _End of Creation_, his view of history in _The History of Redemption_, and his apologetics in the _Miscellanies_. All of this in 112 well-honed pages, plus 46 pages of insightful notes and a judiciously selected bibliography. Recommended for a wide readership, from undergraduates to research specialists."

In Michael J. McClymond's book, Encounters with God: An Approach to the Theology of Jonathan Edwards, he seeks to synthesize all of Edwards' writing around 'spiritual perception' and 'apologetics,' or 'experiential manifestation' and 'integration.' Surveying Edwards's "reasoned" response to the Enlightenment obsession with reason (as opposed to faith), McClymond sees Edwards as "modern yet with a twist." In the Introduction, McClymond introduces a short historiography of Edwardsean scholarship. He also introduces a bit more, the 'spiritual perception' he sees in Edwards. 'Spritual perception' is the particular attention paid to defining and describing the subjective and objective realities of religious experience, for "Edwards contrasted with the later Romantics, who focused exclusively on the inner experience of religion." To this end, McClymond's comparison between Edwards and Schleiermacher provides a fascinating look into the nuances of religious experience perceived by both men. Furthermore, McClymond uses the introduction to stress the "apologetic orientations of Edwards's spiritual perception" and his "perceptually oriented notion of Christian apologetics." In other words, Edwards labored in his writings to 'teach' spiritual perception while all the while maintaining an 'apologetic' tone. As John Gerstner put it, Edwards was indeed a "rational biblical theologian." Chapter 1 is primarily concerned with defining further and offering examples of Edwards's sprirtual perception. McClymond 'exegetes' some of Edwards's writings, such as Religious Affections, and shows that "there is no dichotomy in Edwards between the spiritual sense of divine things and the philosophical, theological, and historical reflection that may be engendered by it" (p. 26). Chapter 2 shows the apologetic tone in Edwards's metaphysics. In contrast to the "anthropocentrism of the Enlightenment, his metaphysics were primarily theocentric in tone." For Edwards, the measuring stick for all reality is God. After discussing the 'theocentric motif' McClymond delves into Edwards's notions of "God and Being," "God and Knowing," and "God, Beauty, and Causality." Chapter 3 highlights Edwards's contemplation as spirituality and spirituality as contemplation. Expositing the Diary and Personal Narrative, McClymond paints Edwards as a contemplative, a Christian thinker. In contrast to the introspective contemplation of the Puritans, Edwards's "theocentric contemplation" provides a departure from the 'subjective' tradition of his forebearers. Chapter 4 is a look at the ethical strain in Edwards's corpus. Looking at End of Creation, McClymond concludes that, "it does not portray the inscrutable God of Calvinism, who eternally elects some merely for his own good pleasure and whose purposes and actions can be known only after the fact" (p. 58). This is the case because Edwards "anthropomorphizes God" by showing the Aristotelian notion of the "superior man" that is "not subject to the whims of popular approval yet does not ignore well-deserved and well-founded praise" (p. 61). In short, "the God of End of Creation resemebles an enlightened despot in the sense that God possesses unlimited power but uses it for the sake of others" (p. 61). Chapter 5, "Drama and Discernment in History of Redemption," looks at Edwards' view of the unfolding character of history and the "comprehensiveness of God's activity in history" (p. 69). Of course God's providential, paramount activity in history was the death of Christ whereby He secured salvation for His people. Additionally, an eschatological element is present within Edwards's view of history. Acting as a sort of 'contemplative prophet,' Edwards wondered if he would witness the Millennium, beginning in America after the Great Awakening, wherein Christ would reign on earth for 1,000 years. The sixth and final chapter looks at Edwards as Christian Apologist. McClymond charts the obfuscation of God that took place in the modern age and shows the "explicit" and "implicit" character of Edwards's apologetics. Before doing this, however, he looks at the apologetics of William Paley, Joseph Butler, and Frederich Schleiermacher. While these three thinkers took three different avenues in the defense of God, Edwards "is more encompassing than any of [them] yet shows affinities with all of them" (p. 84). The explicit nature of Edwards's apologetics rests with his arguing for the "credibility of Christianity, the existance of God, and the historical evidences for Christianity," just to name a few. The implicit nature of Edwards's apologetics is the subtle way in which he attempts to reinterpret the reigning genres and styles of writing in his own day. He attempted to use his critics' style to defeat them, turning it on its head. As McClymond puts it, "he "baptizes" every eighteenth-century idea and intellectual tradition he could lay hands on" (p. 101). In the Conclusion, "The Religious Outlook in Edwards," McClymond does another sort of historiography of Edwards' thought. In surveying Edwards' worldview, he concludes that "Edwards set for himself the prodigious task of rethinking the entire intellectual culture of his day and turning it to the advantage of God" (p. 112). In this sense, then, Edwards is indeed "modern yet with a twist." McClymond demonstrates his intricate knowledge not only of scholarship on Edwards, but the corpus of Edward's own writings. He articulates the main ideas in Edwards's writings and conveys them in a scholarly, yet readable fashion. He continually prompts the reader to turn the page. Encounters with God is a must for all students of not only American religious history, but American history in general. The quiet, yet profound Puritan from the eighteenth century speaks again!