[this review shall replace the already existing one]

Indras pearls provides a very well-made introduction to the basics of the theory of discrete groups acting on the complex plane. The whole discussion on the related limit sets had been accomplished in such a hand-by-hand method.
The reader starts from complex numbers and after he is led into the deepest concepts: Möbius trasformations, limit sets of discrete groups (Schottky, Fuchsian, ...).
These limit sets are related to another interesting topic in today maths: complex dynamics on the Riemann sphere (Julia sets, ...).
As known, computer experiments had been fundamental for supporting complex dynamics and the successive success of this latter topic helped to promote and increase the interests for discrete groups too: in fact this book evinces already strong interest in the visualization and in the study of the properties of such limit sets since '80s, due to the efforts of the same authors.
One of the major points of attraction in Indra pearls is that all the theory had been helped by displaying a lot of detailed and colorful pictures which, aside the historical biography of the mathematicians that contributed to this theory, set this book as one of the masterpieces in this topic, for his lucid
and fresh approach to basic concepts.
In addition, the presence of amusing comic-strips, explaining some topological concepts on manifolds (for example), guarantees the easy-learning for the reader and also the approach, as imaginaed and completely accomplished by the authors. In this direction, it is clear how passion had been squandered by authors.
The goal has been reached: finding an easy way to introduce the harsch theory of discrete groups.
Interested readers will be rewarded and also excited.
No doubts: this book strikes and it will be a corner-stone for present and future.

Indras pearls provides a very well-made introduction to the basics of the theory of discontinuous groups acting on the complex plane. The whole discussion about limit sets had been accomplished in such a hand-by-hand method.
That is, the reader starts from complex numbers and, after, he is taken into deepest concepts as Möbius trasformations and so to discontinuous groups (Schottky, Fuchsian, ...).
Limit sets of kleinian groups are related to another interesting topic in today maths: complex dynamics on the Riemann sphere (Julia sets, ...). The success of this latter topic helped to increase the interests for discontinuous groups too. Indra pearls also witnesses and resumes the last twenty years of efforts spent for studying the properties of the limit sets.
One of the major points of attraction in Indra pearls is that all the theory had been helped by displaying a lot of detailed and colorful pictures which, aside the historical biography of the mathematicians that contributed to this theory, set this book as one of the masterpieces in this topic, for his lucid
and fresh approach to basic concepts.
In addition, the presence of amusing comic-strips, explaining some topological concepts on manifolds, guarantees the easy-learning of the approach, achieved by the authors. In this direction, it could be evinced that authors were really enjoyed while writing.
The goal has been reached: finding an easy way to introduce the harsch theory of discontinuous groups.
Interested readers will be rewarded about their choice and also excited.

This book, translated from German, discusses the problem of circumcision which, since primeval times, has been practiced by countless peoples, independently of race and religion.

Imperial cities offer an unexpected view of the late 19th, early 20th century imperial cities. The book is divided in 3 parts, Imperial Landscapes, Imperial Display and Imperial Identities and gives us several examples in each category.

In Imperial landscapes we see London, Rome, Paris, Vienna. London is a world trade hub with a hodgepodge urbanism upgrading its landscape to match its global position after cities like Paris, Brussels and Vienna created their own landscapes to match their global status. Rome, the recent capital of Italy wants to become a national symbol and erase centuries of papal power. Paris is consciously targeting rich travellers, intellectuals, artists to become the world capital of pleasure and attract who's who in the World by her beauty. Vienna is trying to combine tradition of her centuries old empire, cultures of her multinational empire and prove the world she is also capital of an industrial power but does not quiet succeed. And a last chapter dedicated to the Bank of England remodelling between 1919-1939 shows the evolution from Imperial to Late Imperial England and its impact on the building concept.

In Imperial Display we see the the Pageant of London in 1911, the colonial exposition of Marseilles, 'capital of the French colonies' in 1920, the Iberoamerican Fair of Sevilla in 1929, the colonial displays at Sydenham Crystal Park and the tropical plants in English gardens to analyse the imperial discourse and how Imperial cities see their world.

In Imperial Identities, authors show us Glasgow, imperial municipality and the importance of the Empire for the city, the way empires do impact on man clothing and identities between 1860-1914 and reactions to Empire, the Pan-African Conference of London in 1900. And for a final conclusion, how this imperial age still remains visible/invisible in our societies and prepared us to the multinational and global culture of today.

The book is really worth reading because it explains the whole thinking process beyond those landscapes, tourists guides, displays and attitudes which modelled the cities and the people living in them. Once read you will understand London, Rome, Paris, Vienna, Brussels, Marseilles, Glasgow, Sevilla and other imperial cities and never look at them the same way because of the decoded message it suddenly offers. An excellent complement to 'Ornementalism' from David Cannadine.

There was a pronounced sense amongst many British, let alone Germans that the Versailles treaty was overly vindictive and would only serve to sow the seeds of the next great conflict. At the end of 1919 J M Keynes published 'The economic consequences of the peace' . He took great pains to point out the folly of the French position at the conference, namely to be as extreme as possible, cognisant of the fact that their claims would be moderated and noted that in several cases where the British and US delegations had no specific interest, provisions were passed 'on the nod' which even the French would not have subscribed to. Keynes was damning about both Clemenceau and Wilson and pointed out that almost everything had been done which 'might impoverish Germany now or obstruct her development in future' and that to demand such colossal reparations without any real notion of whether Germany had the means to pay was foolhardy in the extreme. Keynes book provided a fulcrum for British doubt about the treaty and an avenue for British sympathy with the fledgling German Republic. Keynes made treaty revision a thing of morality and enlightened self interest to avoid 'sowing the decay of the whole of civilised life of Europe'.

The Economic Consequences of the Peace was written in 1920 by Keynes, who was not already recognized as the most influential economist of the 20th century, a condition he would only attain when he wrote his famous General Theory some years later, and can be interpreted as a personal outburst against the heads of state of the four countries who participated in the Group of Four (France, Italy, UK and the USA) and decided the fate not only of the defeated countries (Germany and Austria) but also of the whole world, in a way that Keynes was adamantly against and which led to his resignation of his capacity of an important negotiator in the British delegation. One has also to remember that Keynes had always been against the war and lost some important friends in the conflict.

The portrait he gives of the different negotiating abilities of French's Clemenceau, United States' president Wilson and British Prime Minister Lloyd George is a devastating picture of the different motives each one of them had at the time: the aim of Clemenceau was to exact revenge to French's traditional enemy and to debilitate Germany as much as possible, thus postponing her return to prosperity and to menace again France. WIlson's, portrayed as a good man but lacking any negotiating feature a man of his stature should have, was a frail man only to save his face in the moral stances he took in his preliminary 14 points Armistice proposal, which led to the initial surrender of the Germans to the Allied forces. The British Lloyd George was only worried about upcoming elections in his country and was playing all the cards (good or bad) he had to save himself from an humiliating defeat to the Liberals.

The outcome of it all was a Peace Treaty who despised each and every point of reality, representing a burden Germany would not be able to pay, thus leading to the dismantling of an economic European system that led famine, social disturbance and finally to the World War II.

The book is a best-seller ever since and very easy to read and should be also recommended to every one interested in the power broker skills one has to have to succeed (Clemenceau) or fail (Wilson) in negotiation as hard as this one.

Great British economist John Maynard Keynes second book recounts his assessment of the economic consequences of the Treaty of Versailles, where he was a member of British delegation as an economic expert.
Keynes starts with providing a dazzling psychological analysis on how the treaty came to be.
"When President Wilson left Washinghton he enjoyed a prestige and a moral influence throughout the world unequalled in history ... Never had a philosopher help such weapons wherewith to bind the princes of this world. How the crowds of the European capitals presses about the carriage of the President! With what curiosity, anxiety, and hope we sought a glimpse of the features and bearing of the man of destiny who, coming from the West, was to bring healing to the wounds of the ancient parent of this civilization and lay for us the foundations and the future"
Alas, this was not to be. American idealism, French quest for security and British distaste for alliances and hypocrisy created an unworkable solution. Soul of the treaty was sacrificed to placate domestic political process, and as the result put Germany in the position of defiance and economic insolvency; the position which at the bottom drew sympathy from the former Allies and as the result contributed to brutality of the second conflict.
Keynes draws a picture of pan-European economy which was destroyed by the treaty and rightfully predicted that not only Germany will not be able to pay, but will be obligated to pursue the expansionist policy at the expense of her weak Eastern neighbors. Treaty did not contain any positive economic programme for rehabilitation of the economic life of Central powers and Russia. One just could not disrupt the economic position of the greatest European land power, at the same time strengthening it geo-politically and suffer no horrible retribution. ""The Peace Treaty of Versailles: This is not Peace. It is an Armistice
for twenty years." - said Foch about such a agreement.

This volume marks Clewell's arrival in the realm of poetry that contributes something substantial to literature. It's not as inspired on the whole as _The Conspiracy Quartet_, which is his best book to date, but it contains some of his best individual poems.

I wish you would buy this book. You need this book. Everyone you know needs a copy of this book. The holidays are coming up. Birthdays, Anniversaries, Mondays. All good reasons to get this book and give it to someone you care about. Your life will be better for it--his or her life will be better for it--I promise. It's all about seeing the world clearly and loving it anyway, or rather, because.

Intellect, lyricism, deft language, personality, topics of the heart, the landscape and everything in between ... This is the real stuff, a voice that has earned its clarity, honed a point of view, and insists on humor and good spirirts. Had enough of Jorie Graham? Try Clewell.

The book is expensive and in places cartoon copies seem to have been made from old unclear originals. But for those of us comic-book buffs who remember the old Felix with fondness, this book is a must. It plays its part in preserving the older comic art that surely one day must be rediscovered to give pleasure to new generations of children and adults. I can testify that it gave such pleasure to my own children, who are in their early twenties.

I think David is brilliant. A work of the late 20th century's great minds. David is a G-D-send! I love this work. I love David.

This is not a bad introductory documentation book, but quite skimpy in the amount of information and examples it contains.
Not sure it is worth buying at that price. I bought it after reading the previous reviews - I think they overrated it!

After reading my colleague's comments I rushed out and purchased this book. I, too, am trained and certified in Information Mapping© and was impressed at how closely the approach in this book is aligned to that method. However, what I like most is the fact that this book can be used as guidance for a wider scope than just documenting software architectures because it shows how to organize your documentation requirements, develop clear documentation and manage the entire process from start to finish.

I also like the clearly articulated and illustrated advice about how to augment text with graphics, and how to select the views and associated graphics to document requirements, specifications and the finished architecture. An example of how this book goes beyond documenting just architectures is a project in which I was engaged two years ago. One of the major deliverables was a set of operations guides. While this is related to architecture with respect to how its used after it's in production, there were no books that fully described how to go about it in a coherent way. Using the advice and techniques in this book I could have greatly improved upon what I did produce. While I cannot change the past, you can be sure that I'll use this book to its fullest the next time I need to write ops guides, especially when it comes to showing component and connector views, and elements and relations.

If you do technical writing either professionally or as a part of your job get this book and keep it nearby. If you read and use the material you're ability to communicate will surely improve, and you'll be able to tailor your documentation to each segment of your audience (business and technical), as well as to clearly communicate information. You'll also learn much about managing the documentation process itself.

Since reading a fascinating document titled "CMU/SEI-2001-TN-010 - Documenting Software Architectures: Organization of Documentation Package" a year ago and discovering that the approximately 20-page document was the basis for a book I have patiently waited, and am delighted with how the book turned out.

First, this book stands out as one of the clearest descriptions of how to not only document architectures, but how to manage the documentation project. Second, this is not a dogmatic prescription for how to document, but instead gives a set of techniques and views that can be used singularly or in combination to produce documentation that meets the needs of all technical and business stakeholders.

When I read the brief predecessor to this book I liked the way different view types and styles were introduced, but was left to my own imagination and creativity to employ them based on scant descriptions. This book rectifies those gaps by providing comprehensive guidance on how to create each view type and when it's most appropriate for inclusion into the documentation project. I was also intrigued by the earlier document because it discussed 'information chunking', which is the basis for a technique in which I'm trained and certified called Information Mapping©. The book expands on the earlier work, and it turns out that the material is not only consistent with Information Mapping© at a high level, but also shares many core principles. To me this is another plus because it will introduce readers who have not benefited from formal Information Mapping© training to powerful and effective document design and development techniques.

Another strong point about this book is the attention paid to managing the documentation process - it's one thing to write clear documentation and quite another to manage a process where many writers contribute to the documentation. I also liked the illustration examples, which epitomize how to effectively portray technical detail, and the discussion of other methods of documenting architecture.

In my opinion this book should become the standard for developing and managing documentation. It belongs on the desk of every technical writer and on the bookshelf of every architect and designer. I waited a year for this book and it was well worth the wait.

Zandman's historical part of this book is great. It gives you a great perspective of his life during the Holocust. More background would have been great. Got the feeling that his business associates have been less than desirable chaps.

An ageless and inspiring story of determination, survival, and ultimately triumph. Zandman's story brings home minute details about being Jewish during this horrific period of time--right down to the mindset of most Jewish families in Poland. This book clearly illustrates how subtle, calculating, and conniving Hitler was as he, not all at once, but gradually moved the Jews from their homes, to the ghetto and finally the death camps.
After I read this, the first time, I wanted nothing more than to meet Felix Zandman personally. Even the title inspired me to always push forward and to never give up.

As a stock analyst, I've seen many CEO's and heard many success stories. This is a heartwarming story of dedication and triumph unlike that of any other business executive. Despite spending his youth in hiding from Nazis, Dr. Zandman manages to get a PhD., move to America and found a small engineering company that ends up being one of the world's largest suppliers of electronics components.

In 'Greek and Roman Philosopy After Aristotle', there is and extended excerpt from 'Octavius' by Marcus Minucius Felix. Its summary of pagan Roman views on Christianity was so dead-on accurate, I just had to read the whole thing. Unfortunately, the Christian response isn't as incisive as as the attack. It is primarily a defense of the idea of a single creator god, coupled with the idea that Christians are restrained, ethical and good people. Jesus is not really menitioned at all. Felix's view might be called "Ethical Monotheism". The second work in the book, Justin Martyr's 'First Apology' is very revealing of 2nd century Christian thought, and touches on many practical and philosophical issues, not only regarding Christian practice and paganism, but Jewish uses of Greek philosophy. This book is quite a find. While it is not a new translation, it is a modern, idiomatic, if somewhat oversimplified, rendition of the translations contained in the hoary, 130-something year-old 'Ante-Nicene Library'. Portions of 'Octavius', and Justin Martyr's 'First Apology" are rearranged, to a degree, on a paragraph-by-paragraph basis, and other portions are relegated to appendices, but both works are present in their entirety, and a bit more logical, to modern readers, than the originals. At the price of $..., you'd be silly not to check these accessible, yet ancient works out. See what they were thinking in the 2nd century. They won't bite!

this book is simply wrong. not just details, but the big picture. the anarchists weren't like that. the artists weren't like that. these people lived in a ferment of intellectual and moral commitment. i didn't feel the author was 'sensitive' to them at all: very much the opposite. i felt he was dismissive and patronizing.

There's a difference between nitpicking over minor historical innacuracies and making up nonsense out of whole cloth. This unfortunate book is of the latter sort. It's distorted by what the late Hal Draper called "falsifictions": self-invented statements uttered with an air of scholarly objectivity. The work will indeed transport one to another world: naturally so, because it isn't real.

Fortunately there are alternatives which are vivid, entertaining, and careful with the facts. Richard Ellmann and Barbara Belford have excellent, colorful biographies of Wilde. June Rose has a very fine biography of the fascinating Suzanne Valadon. Alexander Varias has a good account of the fin-de-siecle anarchists. Roger Shattuck has a truly superb book on the rich artistic ferment of la belle epoque, the 30 years or so before the first world war: "The Banquet Years". Shattuck's book is at once a definitive work of scholarship and a hugely fun read. Sweetman's is neither.

Incidentally Sweetman's bio of Gauguin suffers from the same tendency toward posturing. Whoops!, suddenly we're in the midst of detailed technical excursus into problems of large-scale engineering, or of epidemiology. (Gauguin tried to live in Panama at the time of the digging of the canal.) Is the author expert in these subjects? He certainly seems to want us to believe that he is. Nevertheless one doubts and, in doubting, questions his expertise on the subjects of art, literature and politics as well.

If you're looking for an entertaining experience from the pen of an expert, read Ellmann or Rose or especially Shattuck. Give Sweetman a rest.

Great read, but it's the same book as another by the same author that is under a different title