John Milton's Paradise Lost is perhaps the most debated work in western literature. On one side you have those who say that Milton was secretly on the Devil's side. (Due to the realistic portrayal of Satan and the seemingly far off and tyrannical portrayal of God) On the other side you have those who say that Milton's sympathies were with God and the angels. (Due to the loving portrayal of the angels and mankind) C.S. Lewis was of the later camp. In 1942, he stood up against those who said otherwise.

I have a hard time labeling this as a 'preface'; Lewis was obviously writing to the learned elite at Cambridge, not to new readers of Milton. But Lewis does an excellent job of explaining Milton's worldview and how it works in Paradise Lost. His chapters on Primary and Secondary Epics, Miton and St. Augustine, and Hierarchy are EXTREMELY helpful. (Particularly the helpful to American readers is the Hierarchy chapter; we just don't understand what it means to live under and totally submit to a king or emperor.)

I highly recommend this to readers of Lewis or fans of Medieval and Renaissance literature.

Lewis's lectures, though half a century old, speak today with the same clarity, simplicity, and depth of learning as when they were first delivered. His presentation of background information sets the great English epic in its contemporary context--literary, historical, and theological--with a minimum of fuss and footnotes. Some of his negative judgments, such as calling the last two books "an undigested lump of futurity," deserve reconsideration, but on the whole his judgments encourage critical reading rather than bardolatry.

This book was a pleasure to read both before and after reading PARADISE LOST. In fact, one can make a nice trilogy out of PREFACE TO PARADISE LOST, PARADISE LOST, and Lewis's PERELANDRA. Lewis's PREFACE should interest both the general reader and the specialist. Lewis gives a roadmap for working through Milton's epic poem, discussing what an epic is and why Milton chose it, for example, or why Milton used a certain style for writing; he also comments on Milton's theology, medieval hierarchy, and a number of other pertinent subjects with which the reader will probably not be overly familiar. The writing is clear, the discussion lucid and enlightening, and the subjects are interesting. This is certainly worth purchasing.

Once I started reading The Presidents' Doctor, I found it difficult to put the book down. What especially intrigued me were the insights into the personal sides of Presidents Harding, Coolidge and Hoover as seen by Dr. Joel Boone, who served as a White House physician during their administrations. Despite their prominence, the three Presidents had individual and family joys, sorrows and challenges just as everyone else.

As I read Mr. Heller's descriptions, I pictured myself in the shoes of Dr. Boone and his family. Imagine meeting, providing medical care to and socializing with key national (and in some cases international) leaders and then at the end of the day returning to "regular" home life and routines.

The book captures the spirit of the times it covers. As an example, the reader can easily imagine the scene of President Harding and his entourage on their meandering, transcontinental train trip followed by an ocean voyage to Alaska and then a last train trip down the Pacific Coast to San Francisco where Harding met his untimely death. Indeed, in our current era of ever-faster communication, it is hard to conceive of a President running the nation without the benefit of airplanes, televisions, computers, fax machines, cell phones, etc. Yet, despite the lack of these conveniences, the leaders of the time somehow were able to manage the country.

In summary, I highly recommend The Presidents' Doctor for an absorbing and personalized account of three Presidential administrations and life in the U.S. in the early part of the 20th century through the perspective of the extremely dedicated and talented White House physician, Dr. Joel Boone.

If this book were a novel it would be a great read.. It is lively, has fascinating characters, and colorful background.

As a novel, however, it would have one fatal problem. As my English professor used to say, it would lack "an aura of verisimilitude". To put it in plain English, "You wouldn't believe it!".

However, it's not a novel. It is a well researched and thoroughly documented LIVE history book. It describes an absolutely incredible man, who performed absolutely incredible feats in his admirable life.

A few examples:

Joel Boone was a medical doctor. He was awarded a congressional medal of honor, the nation's highest award for bravery, while he was serving as a doctor! There are few enough medal of honor winners, but did you ever hear of a doctor - a non-combatant - winning one? Now you have.

In his early days he led and commanded troops in combat, even though his commission was as a medical officer.

He served several U.S. presidents and their families as their doctor.

Any one of these by itself is interesting and unusual. Taken all together they are unheard of - until now.

The book has a tremendous advantage over a novel. Since it reports on a real person, who really did these astonishing things, you have to believe they really happened. Poetic license would never get you this far. This is a book you don't want to miss.

Milton F. Heller,Jr. tells the story of his father-in-law with grace and lucidity. Admiral Boone came out of Pennsylania, along with his wife, to carve a nitch in history. His career spanned 50 years, a youthful Medal of Honor, serving as doctor to three first families, to director of Vetrans Administration. This slim volume is just what the doctor ordered for all americans who love their heroes. Great Christmas gift.

I was lucky enough to take Dr. Friedman's two-quarter graduate sequence in price theory (called "microeconomics" elsewhere) in the early 70s at the University of Chicago. This book was the textbook. I have never revised my original opinion that Friedman's 301 and 302 were simply outstanding, maybe the best courses I ever had in economics.

You can put that in perspective when I tell you I spent ten years at Chicago, earning both my bachelor's and PhD -- by this I mean I took a lot of economics courses. If you know anything about the Chicago School of Economics you are aware that price theory occupies a special place in their scheme of things.

The good Doctor retired from Chicago around 1973 or 1974, if I am not mistaken (he moved to the Hoover Institution. You can't take "Milton" on price theory today -- but you can read his book. And it what a fine book it is. I recommend reading George Stigler's "The Theory of Price" before attemption this book. Master them both and you will have a very solid foothold on price theory.

A serious book for serious students - no glossy pages, no color, and not a single wasted word. Friedman's book is the most authoritative and definitive textbook on Price Theory around. The material may be more difficult than some textbooks but this is, after all, economics Chicago style. Price Theory offers a rigorous and demanding treatment of the subject, exactly what a serious student should want.

Price Theory is important in economics. Friedman has treated the subject very well in this book.

I have a filing cabinet full of papers on various aspects of materials reliabilty: solder stress calculations, mechanical behavior, diffusion, corrosion mechanisms, etc. Professor Ohring's book neatly summarizes all of that into one coherent text, covering topics such as electromigration, electrostatic discharge, solder mechanics, corrosion, semiconductor devices and more. But rather than touch on the practical aspects of these failure modes, as do several reliability books I already own, he delves into the underlying fundamental mechanisms involved, providing equations and explanations. This is why I consider Ohring's book a true textbook on the subject. The detailed explanations are valuable to me in that they provide a springboard from which to analyze more complex issues. For anyone involved with reliability of materials in electronics, I highly recommend this book. And one more thing: in some places Prof. Ohring writes with a refreshing informality. For example, he talks about defects and KILLER DEFECTS (his words and capitalization!). I just laughed when I saw that.

The book is an excellent summary on the topic and more! It provides excellent coverage of state-of-the-art production techniques and the influence of particular procedures and components on device reliability. I suppose that complete newcomers might find it sometimes difficult to understand the background of some contents due to the compact style. However they are rewarded with one of the most comprehensive and up-to-date texts I have ever seen on this subject. Moreover the reader is provided with many references for further in-depth reading. Considering the wealth of information the book provides the author did an excellent job in writing a well readable text.

I would recommend it as a textbook as well as for the experienced scientist/researcher.

This book gives the basic and latest issues in the semiconductor device reliability as well as issues that nails the failure analysts. This book covers all the major issues, including oxide reliability, ESD and electromigration. This book will be and should be considered for the aspring Rel and FA engineers as well as act as a refresher to those hardcore professionals.

This book IS different. I came across it when investigating a completely different thing from the computer field: data mining. And, well, this book is not so far from that. It is just like gold.

Most people have problems, of one sort or another. Life is never so easy. Many people try the typical self-help books and believe that they found a way out. Only to discover later that things have not changed a lot, apart from the good feelings that these self-help books gave to them (probably the only major benefit and the reason why many are best-sellers!). Yet the problem endures and these people will suffer from it further.

These books will tell you that you should need to overcome your problems and get to the magical solution (repeated over and over again in about every self-help book): check your values, decide what you want, from what you want make a list of achievable and measurable goals, and make an action plan on how to achieve each of these goals. Some books will add a little variation and tell you that you should not forget to set your priorities right in your action plan or that you should examine your values well. And that's about it. Your problems will be solved and you will be successful like the author(s).

"The fear of a certain consequence leads to behavior that virtually assures the consequence. This is the way in which self-defeating behaviors are born and nourished." "At each moment of life, an individual faces a choice between a road that ends in self-defeat and one that brings him or her closer to a breakthrough. We realize that this statement may seem dramatic, but we stand by it nonetheless."

If you have not noted it by now, the language and style of this book is different from the great majority of self-help books. Precise, clear and concise language describes a behavioral problem affecting millions of people and shows how this problem can be solved. Unfortunately solutions to most problems are too often hard to find. To understand yourself, your family, or your friends in trouble, you would better understand this book first.

The theory developed and applied by the authors may be wrong or not completely accurate. But if it is just about right, then you may be just a little more than satisfied:

"It is extremely unlikely for the results of a single self-defeating behavior or life-enhancing behavior to be alarming, exhilarating, or even noticeable. But a series of life-enhancing behaviors will, over time, lead to the sort of breakthrough that comes when our minds, bodies, attitudes and actions are integrated into the wholeness that is the source of our creativity, insight, usefulness, and contentment. On the other hand, a series of choices in favor of self-defeating behaviors will, if left unchecked, bring on physical illness, nervous collapse - and, in extreme cases, even death."

if you have ever emotionally fought yourself ( or are doing it now), in your heart you feel wrong but you stubbornly won't quit, get this book. I know what it's like to just feel like some puppet being thrown around by the tides of the outside world when you used to be in complete control and sure of yourself. This is the only book I've seen on this particular subject, and it's a great one. It shows you what you've done,what you're doing, and what you can do to stop yourself in your tracks and think about the big picture. This is a book that should be manditory text for psychologists everywhere. I also believe that SDB's are ultimately stemmed from the INFERIORITY COMPLEX, and after your done with this book should read up on this strangely obscure subject . which to quote Oliver Brachfeld's highly recommended book " Inferiority feelings in the individual and the group ", " It is interesting to note how little study has been made in the past of this complex, which is so fundamental an element in our psychological make-up. "

What is your life like? Is it a relentless procession of empty days, an endless cycle of meaningless, frustrating work and unrelaxing sleep? Do you repeat the same pattern of joyless days and empty nights ad nauseam? Do you bounce out of bed eager to face another exciting day filled with opportunities for enjoyment, human contact and personal growth? Has the memory of the irrepressible you faded into dust? Has your life become an arduous and repetitive ordeal? Do you keep hurting yourself, and does this recognition keep haunting you, day and night? Are you acting on misguided choices, doing and saying things that virtually guarantee dissatisfaction and unhapppiness? If you answered "Yes" (or even "Maybe") to any of those questions, have I got good news for you! The best book I have seen that specifically addresses how we can reclaim our mental, emotional and spiritual power from the traps we ourselves have built and continue to nourish is "Self-Defeating Behaviors" by Cudney and Hardy. On second reading, it is a truly phenomenal work. I have already purchased and distributed over two dozen copies. It provides a dynamic model of the way we construct, defend and nurture our self-defeating behaviors, while we simultaneously minimize the real pain heaped upon us and the people around us, and abdicate responsibility for the whole thing! We are each of us presented with a continuous stream of new moments of life, in which we exercise choices. Each of these choices can lead either to a self-defeating behavior or to a behavior that affirms and honors life. At certain times, we "learn" (i.e. we make an invalid association) that we can avoid work/pain/criticism or other fear by choosing a certain escapist behaviors or thoughts. This choice, expressed through various internal and external techniques, results in various prices that we must pay. In order to continue avoiding our fears, we proceed to minimize the prices (by saying, for example, "It's not all that bad; I can stand the discomfort"), and finally, to disown the choice we made ("It's not MY fault; it was my parents/teachers/bullies/social conditions/the government/ghosts/the voices/..."). That cycle, from our choices of developing internal and external techniques to avoid some (mythical) fear(s), and then refusing to pay the price, results in a full-blown self-defeating cycle, which feeds on itself, getting worse and worse, engulfing more and more areas of our lives. Even when new techniques are learned (such as NLP!!) which appear to offer the promise of positive growth, they quickly and effortlessly become swallowed up in the seething vortex of self-defeating behaviors, making it even bigger than ever! This black hole effect can easily escalate from disappointment to depression, food/alcohol/drug abuse, violence, murder and ultimately, suicide. Unless we recognize and terminate this vicious cycle, ALL of our other efforts can lead to naught, mired in our old habits of thought and action.

Excelent Book. Direct to the point. I have recommended this one to other project managers and they agreed with my opinion.

Easy to get, easy to undertand.

Best Regards

Rolando Ramos
Bogota-Colombia

I've read a number of project management books over the years, and very few of them fit at all in a product development environment. This book fits and matches product development very well. In fact, in my opinion, it is the best basic project management book on the market currently for application in product development. This shouldn't be a surprise though since Mickey Rosenau understands project management practice in the field of product development. Beware of the other authors who claim that they understand product development and then apply a traditional approach to project management. Project management in product development is different, and a traditional approach to project management doesn't work in product development. Stay away from the traditional management approach and get this book instead.

Excellent book, a good guide to improve project management

Open up the pages of this Adult fantasy action book, and you will discover a world of magic, monsters and mayhem.
This book will keep you on the edge of your seat.

If you love fantasy and action this is your book.
The action is vivid and nonstop as the Suzerain, Gary and their women battle the leng.
Open your book cover, and enjoy the exciting roller coaster ride as the action esculates between the black Suzerain, the lone star
Gary McMartin and their monstors.

A good read. Turn the pages and discover a world where anything is possible as the heroes battle the evil Leng who spread terror in an attempt to enslave mankind.

I found this book at the library by chance. I was looking for a more books about Queen Elizabeth I. This book is a great introduction to women in history. It is easy enough for my then 8 year old to read for the Texas Reader's club. I am definitely checking it out for my 7 yr to use for her TX Reader's club requirements.

I checked "Ten Queens" out from my local library to brush up on my reading of some of my favorite historical figures of all time- Cleopatra VII and Eleanor of Acquitaine.
While the book shed great light on two of the most famous women in all of ancient/medieval history, the author also brought to light lesser known queens. All of a sudden, I have a great respect for the fearless Zenobia, the corageous Boudicca, and, of course, the Biblical Esther. He has done an oustanding job of researching all of the queens and presenting them all in a favorable light (though let's not forget Christina's hypocritical ways, Cleopatra's love affairs, and Catherine the Great's promiscuity- for history's sake).
All in all, a great book worth the money.

My nine year old daughter thoroughly enjoyed this overview of famous women rulers from ancient times to the 18th century.

Sernett's volume is the single-best collection of primary materials related to the African-American religious experinece. It attemps to piece together important religious narratives from colonial time until the present. As such,documents include slave narratives, narratives from early church founders (Allen, Jarena Lee, etc.), and documents from the civil rights and black power movement. The documents are all fairly condensed and, as such, it is ideal for the class room. It would be an excellent text to use in an African American religion, African American history, Black Church, or American Religious history survey course.

This text is an excellent and comprehensive survey of African American History. From Olaudah Equiano's slave narrative to essays on Black Theology, this book offers the reader insight into the heart of African American identity.

The writer displays a unique perspective on the American political scene; he seems to enjoy tearing down the barriers of igrnorance which surround the secrets of government. He sheds light on the darkness, brings life to the dead, and works wonders with words

Only a total political genius could write such a masterpiece. A must read for all students of the law and the American Government. Go Chargers!