For people who care about language, learning, literature, and philosophy, this is an exceedingly interesting and important book.

Just finished reading this book... every story was a winner! From the back-cover: Two annual awards - the Hugo and the Nebula - stand as the twin pinnacles of achievement in science fiction. Now science fiction fans can enjoy the finest award-winning short fiction in a single volume. Stories that fill us with awe, push back the frontiers of the possible, and inspire us with the greatness of the human spirit. 17 stories in total spanning from 1981 to 1992.

It is highly cheerful to learn the idea from Hugo and the Duck of being brave. A very touching story from the cool and muddy pond to warm the readers' hearts. The book is particularly suitable to parents or teachers with shy kids.

This is a great set of lessons for learning Swedish. The lessons are well done and do not go too fast. I recommend this book and the cassettes for anyone who wants to learn Swedish.

Every science fiction fan needs a Hugo compilation book on their shelf. Forget "Legends" and that other stuff, which is always hit and miss anyway. Go for the tried and true lovely stories that you will read again and again until you grow old, die, and are buried with them. My favorite among this group is Asimov's "Super-Hugos" compilation.... For those days when you are weary of reading that epic 700 page book, buy one of these and dabble in lovely well-written sci-fi and fantasy. It's like little French chocolates. It makes you happy, and requires no effort to enjoy.

(10 out of 10: there's just nothing bad about them).

In this volume are the Hugo Prizewinners for 1973 through 1975, each with an introduction by science-fiction master Isaac Asimov. Among these special and fascinating stories are "The World for World is Forest" by Ursula K Le Guin, "Goat Song" by Poul Anderson, "The Meeting" by Frederik Pohl and CM Kornbluth, "The Girl Who Was Plugged In" by James Tiptree Jr, "A Song for Lya" by George R R Martin and "The Hole Man" by Larry Niven.

This volumn provides a treat from the very best writers chosen by the most prominent people in their field. Truly superior science fiction.

Just so you know, Jane van Lawick-Goodall is more commonly known as Jane Goodall - yes, the one that works with chimpazees. Hugo van Lawick-Goodall was the photographer as well as her husband during the chimpazee studies.

This book manages to make 3 animals that most folks do not have a lot of love for and make them interesting reading. I don't particularly like hyenas and the description of how they eat their prey alive is unnerving but it is also fascinating. Hyenas (as well as jackals and wild dogs) kill their prey with a method known as rapid disembowelment. The prey dies very quickly as opposed to the methods lions (as well as cheetahs and leopards) use which is suffocation. Suffocation can take at least ten minutes if not longer to kill the prey. I won't presume to know which is the most painful way, but rapid disembowelment would seem more efficent from the predator's point of view.

They spend over two years studying spotted hyenas, golden jackals and wild dogs. The information about the social structure the animals participate in as well as their hunting methods are described in great detail. You don't have to be a zoologist or have specialized training to appreciate this book, but I think being an animal lover would be a great help.

One of the more interesting parts to me was when M's van Lawick-Goodall talks about taking her baby son along on this expedition. She details how she tried to make it as safe as possible for Grublin and how he grew up with the animals.

The black and white photographs are excellent. The bat eared foxes are quite photogenic, as well as the cheetah cubs at play.The pictures of the books subjects are equally good.

M's van Lawick-Goodall does an excellent great job giving the reader a different viewpoint of these much maligned animals. Read the book and learn all about these "innocent killers".

In this uniformly excellent volume, Hugo A. Meynell mounts an argument for the existence of God as an explanation for the intelligibility of the world.

This argument is not the same as the recent (though also interesting) case for "intelligent design" mounted by William Dembski. Meynell's case is more general, and applies even in the absence of any evidence of such design (though of course such design is consistent with his thesis).

Meynell argues, basically, that (a) it is ultimately incoherent to take the "real world" to be anything other than what we get to know by right reason, and that (b) the existence of a necessarily-existing intelligent Creator is the best explanation for the intelligibility of that "real world." My short summary does not do it justice, but those are the (very) bare bones of his cosmological argument.

Meynell's exposition is extremely thorough. He begins by considering, and curtly dismissing, the common claim that arguments for God's existence are unimportant. He then spends a chapter considering standard arguments and counter-arguments for God's existence before setting forth his own argument.

The meat of that argument is in chapter three, in which he argues at length for the claim I have summarized briefly above: that the "real world" is an intelligible, coherent system which we come to understand through the proper use of reason. Chapter four then passes to God as an explanation for such intelligibility.

Meynell then closes with a cleanup chapter of "paralipomena" ("things left out" of the discussion to that point) and a two-page conclusion summarizing his argument. An appendix deals with A.J. Ayer's arguments against theistic belief in _The Central Questions of Philosophy_.

Meynell does not deal with the "presuppositionalist" view that all such arguments are question-begging, but it must be acknowledged that, strictly speaking, his argument is not _deductively_ valid. However, it does not need to be; what he is actually doing is setting out the absolute, axiomatic presuppositions of reason itself -- and this process is not deduction. (A full reply to the presuppositionalists on this point would take us rather far afield, but we may note briefly that the presuppositionalist argument collapses all reasoning into deductive logic -- a move I do not find terribly credible.)

I could probably manage to disagree with Meynell here and there if I tried. For example, he is at great pains to make clear that his view does not amount to "idealism," but here I think he is relying on a more restrictive view of "idealism" than I would prefer to take. (Nicholas Rescher remarks somewhere that any philosophy denying the existence of unknowable things-in-themselves not susceptible to reason is at bottom a form of idealism; I concur. Meynell seems to be rejecting only _subjective_ idealism, a rejection in which I happily join him.)

Be that as it may, overall this is _the_ best book I know on the argument to an intelligent God from the existence and axiomatic efficacy of human reason. It deserves to be reprinted and widely read by philosophers and theologians of all stripes.

For Anglophiles and serious students of modern British politics and economics, this is almost surely the best full-length biography of Margaret Thatcher that has been written thus far. Young concisely summarises the major events in Thatcher's career and provides sharp analyses of her personality and policies (eg, the effect on her of her class background, her closeness to Britain's Jewish community, etc). One wishes that he had written more about the economy, but since Young (who recently died) was a political journalist, his focus is understandably on politics. Especially good are the thumbnail sketches of the other major figures of Thatcherism -- Norman Tebbit, Nigel Lawson, Lord Young, etc.

Japan's International Relations

One of the best books I have ever read on Japan's international relations and a successful attempt to present a comprehensive overview and analysis on Japan's relations with East Asia, the U.S. and Europe.
This book is interesting for students, scholars and all those who are interested in the how and why of Japan's international relations.

The book is easy to use, is dealing with Japan's relations with East Asia, the U.S. and Europe separately and the chapters are divided in a way that you always and exactly know what you are reading.
The index at the end of the book makes looking for keywords very easy and so far there is no keyword that I have not found in this book.
It is certainly well-researched information, goes into details without loosing itself in them making sure that the reader gets to know the important facts of Japan's relations with the countries in its geographical region, the United States and Europe.

It is a European perspective on Japan's international relations and without a doubt a refreshing change from so many books on Japanese politics and economics mainly giving the American perspective.
I am dealing with Japan's international relations professionally and I use the book as dictionary as well as a source for information and facts that I have not known before.

The book is also going beyond the standard view on Japan's international relations due to the fact that the authors back their research also on numerous secondary Japanese sources.
Lots of interesting background information indeed, the footnotes are numerous giving lots of advice on further reading.

No doubt that the authors know what they are talking about and if you want to know how Japan's relations with the U.S., East Asia and Europe work and what they mean for Japan, this is the book to consult.

Well-done Glenn Hook, Chris Hughes, Julie Gilson and Hugo Dobson

Axel Berkofsky