It's the best book I ever saw. The colors are very bright. I especially liked when the animals were camoflauged. Porcupines ended up stuck up in the tree. I love the book very much. It shows all kinds of animals and they all were led by the panda named Milton.

I have had my own copy of 'Milton the Early Riser' since I can remember. It is one of my favorite childhood books. Milton the panda bear can't sleep. There is a big wind storm which rearranges all of the animals in the land, so to keep himself occupied, Milton puts them all back where they belong. By the time all of the animals wake up, Milton is so tired, he finally falls asleep.

Uncle Miltie does it again! This is a fine companion to his first big, fat hilarious volume. The good news is that the topics are not all the same as in the first volume (you do need both to have a complete collection) but the big laughs are as big as ever. You truly get a sense when you read Berle's jokes from this and his first book that he wanted to include some of his best and favorite stuff and get it out there to the public (and maybe other comedians, as a kind of legacy). I only wish I had the $ to buy his file's CD-rom version but until I do this and the first book are on my office reference shelf for use when I need a laugh, when I want to appear brilliant when visiting friends, or to plug a gap in a routine that I'm writing or a special show that I'm doing (I'm a fulltime ventriloquist). You can see how many of his jokes were "switched" from others over the years and that is a common practice. You can take a joke on X subject and reword it and customize it for a specific person or group. The main thing is: Berle didn't issue a thick, joke-filled book containing filler. Every joke, every page MATTERS. He gifted to all who pay the price some of his funniest stuff: one-liners, longer jokes, insults, riddles. Super high quality --and worth a LOT more than the book's price.

THIS BOOK GAVE ME SOME GREAT JOKES.

This book is very enjoyable to read. I found myself enthralled by this odd, athletic man who fairly stumbled into a profound understanding of the mind-body connection. His life-long struggle to bring his discovery to the light of day gives this book a dramatic edge. Milton Traeger started out as an acrobat and a boxer. While working at the post office, he took the advice of an employee notice: "Take a deep breath". The book continues: "Finding himself alone, he lowered his mailbag, paused and breathed. Many years later, he would say:"That was the beginning of me."' It's a great beginning of a great story.

I am an acupuncturist who has never had Traeger work, but I recognize key principles from Chinese medicine in what Traeger does and teaches. It is also similar to Chinese medicine in that most of the 'learning' cannot come from theories, it comes through the teacher. It's no wonder that his efforts to teach what he knew in his hands took him to such far away places.

I enjoyed this book so much that I deliberately read only a chapter at a time to savor it.

I recommend it to anyone, health care practitioner or not. I think it should be on the 'must read' list at massage schools. I wish my doctor would read it too. I hope you buy it.

this biography helped give me an insight into the field of alternative medicine, why people are so eager to go to alternative practitioners, and what non-conventional practitioners have to offer that is valuable. milton trager was one of a kind and defines not only what a healer is but also shows the healing capacities within each of us. well written and timely, as dr. trager just died this year at the age of 88

This is the most comprehensive and informative state atlas I have ever reviewed. Excellent maps, great charts and clearly written text makes "The North Carolina Atlas" a book that needs to be on the shelf of every public library and in the hands of all North Carolina devotes. Over the last century North Carolina has transformed itself from a struggling southern state to one of the fastest growing economies in the U.S. "The North Carolina Atlas" provides a definitive analysis of the changes that have created this wonderful state.

History, population, urbanization, and economy are transforming forces that molded North Carolina into what it is today. Each of these sections are clearly laid out so that the reader can make a critical analysis of the change and form an assessment of the coming changes that the future may bring.

Especially interesting are the sections that deal with quality of life in North Carolina. Crime, education, health care, water and air quality, cultural arts and outdoor recreation are profiled and supported by scores of maps, charts and diagrams. This is a book I would especially want in my possession if I was considering moving my family and business to this State. Highly Recommended.

As Governor Jim Hunt says in the forward, "North Carolina is at a crossroads in its history." This "atlas" provides not only a wealth of information, but an intelligent perspective on the future of the state as it enters the 21st century.

Subjects matter includes the natural environment, history, population, urbanization, economy, agriculture, manufacturing, transportation, trade, politics, air quality, water resources, crime, health, education, arts, and recreation. I found these topics to be presented in an effective manner and certainly more enlightening than the statistical record one might imagine.

I also discovered, before I placed my order, that I was able to preview some of the book's illustrations at the UNC Charlotte Cartography Lab web site.

I would recommend this text not only to students, researchers and teachers, but anyone interested in a comprehensive and knowledgeable summary of the diverse state of North Carolina.

Thanks to Edward Le Comte's great biographical introduction, and annotations, this is the best version of this classic work. Unfortunately it is hard to find, because it's 42 years old now. This old Mentor edition was a high quality printing though, so if you find one it stands a good chance of being a best buy!

A superb edition of the greatest poem in the language. Edward Le Comte performs an invaluable job of editing, providing copious annotations which give an encyclopedic overview of Milton's Biblical, Classical, theological, and personal allusions throughout "Paradise Lost" as well as "Samson Agonistes" and "Lycidas", which are the other poems of the title. The back-cover write-up gets it right-- here is the indispensable peer of Vergil, Dante, Homer. These are poetic monuments, cathedrals of sound and sense that are bound to exhilarate anyone who gives them even passing attention: Milton's reverence, rage, and sensuality burn through each line. Never mind even Harold Bloom's protestations to the contrary-- the poetry of the English tradition revolves around a double star, and this is Shakespeare's giant twin in greatness.

I very highly recommend, the sheet music to Yeston and Kopit's "Phantom." It's hauntingly beautiful to play as well as sing. It deserves all the stars it can get. They are divine songs, that stay with you.

In a project started, interestingly, before Webber's famous version, Maury Yeston and Arthur Kopit have created a very real Phantom. In giving us a more human Phantom, they also gave us truly wonderful music - uplifting at some times, humorous at others, heartfelt and haunting throughout. My favorite musical, and my favorite work to perform. Singing the part of Erik is a tenor's dream.

On one level, this essential and tragic study of English poetry offers a totally original and convincing argument as to how we arrived at the poetics we inherited today. But what is most tragic, and frustrating, is the subtext to Dolan's book: that English poetry didn't have to be the constricted, narrow, and ultimately abstruse genre that it has become. Why do we not read poetry anymore? The answer: Because John Milton wanted to become famous. Milton emerges as the anti-Christ in the devolution of English poetry, with Wordsworth as his Damien come to destroy once and for all the great possibilities in a genre that was once meant to be widely read and enjoyed, instead of narrowly studied and forcibly swallowed, as it is today. The same could be said of modern American academia and academic writing, which Dolan subtly subverts by writing an eminently intelligent book that is at the same time readable, funny, and engaging, instead of merely a latticework of footnotes and interdepartmental backscratching, as 99 percent of his rivals' books tend to be. Lastly, taking this book's thesis as to how English poetry isolated itself and fell back on the poetics of least resistance, this book offers a view into how modern literature, which is becoming increasingly constricted, dull and diminished through the crushing influence of creative writing programs, is following a similar pattern as that which destroyed prose's forebear, poetry. In other words, Dolan's book is both a history of the past and of the present... and a call to exhume Milton's body for ceremonial desecration. If only more American academic books were like this, we might be a little less dependent on those impressively cheeky French lightweights who dare to express unqualified opinions. Dolan's forceful, engaging and emotional prose, which is such a welcome departure from his rivals, should serve as a lesson for all American intellectuals.

What a shock this book was to me, and what was most shocking was the sudden realization that it had taken several centuries for an academic literary critic to start in the right place: poets write for fame and poor poets want to avoid starvation, and then locate the formal and material innovations of a genre in these desperate twin struggles. A real change from than naively biographic approaches to subject matter; mystical paeons to Genius; correct but essentially pointless formal analysis; wind-up deconstruction; over-sponsored soapboxing complete with cardboard heroes and villains. It would be misleading to call this book Marxist because it doesn't have trace of that shallow, fashionable cant, but the revolution isn't far below the lucid, reasonable surface, and the intimate connection between the means of production and distribution and the ultimate product is nothing if not Marxian. Not much on class influences, unfortunately. When I saw the link between form and motive, I first thought of Harold Bloom's "anxiety of influence," but ultimately this book's emphsis on material necessity and naked ambition was more convincing than literary Oedipal struggles. At the end of the book I thought back at what this Dolan had just done and laughed. The intense personalism of Romantic poetry came because the strict social/literary gold standard of "Truth" was bankrupting the poets' inspiration, so they went Keynsian - or maybe William Jennings Bryanic - and starting minting their own? The prose was so easy to take that I swallowed that before I knew what was happening. If Dolan ever gives the same treatment to the Victorians or 20th Century, I'll probably buy it, even at another $60! Ouch!

Without a doubt, the funniest taxonomic work on Ichthyology you will ever come across- and extremely and extensively informative to boot. Even the preface is a delight to read, where Love discusses the intelligence of fish (stupider than the stupidest mouse to ever live), if fish sleep, how their names relate to Communism, if they will harm us emotionally, and Love's relative intelligence when compared to other marine biologists. Then he goes through, fish by fish, all the main species off the Pacific Coast, from BC to SoCal. (If you're looking for fish from the Gulf of Alaska, you will be disappointed.) He begins with Myxini and Petromyzone, moves to Chondrichthyes, and then onto Osteichthyes. (Hagfish, Lampreys, Sharks and Rays, and Bony Fish- for fish are actually four different creatures, as separate from each other as Amphibians, Reptiles, Birds, and Mammals are from each other.) Each section looks at the identifying characteristics, distribution, anatomy, commercial fishery, and extra tidbits, still with that trademark humor. And then there's a bit of the parasitic at the tail end of the book. Perhaps my favorite line: 'Your average hagfish can take a bucket full of water and almost solidify it with slime in a few minutes. (I don't know about you, but that makes me proud to be American.)'

If you have any interest at all in the fishes of the Pacific Coast, this is THE book. I recommend it to the students in my Marine Biology class as one of the most accurate and fun (!) works they will find. The information is up there with the classics by David Starr Jordan, whose books are now collectables. Dr. Love, who is legendary in the world of Fisheries for his research and publications, has added his distinct sense of humor to the usually dry descriptions of fishes. If you are interested in Marine Biology of Fishes you need this book.

I remembering buying the book, and i brought it home and about 30 pages into the book, it had a plethora of information in it, the relaxation techniques worked, and i swore to god that i almost had an OBE experience, it wasn't scary as i had thought , but since it was my first time i think i lost my concentration, (i skipped a few pages to see that part real quick) But it is definantly worth the money, hell it's worth it's weight in GOLD,SILVER,COPPER, and anything valuable to the equation, in laymen's terms JUST BUY THE BOOK!

At first I was scared, but Craig's book made me relize that there is nothing to be scared of. He showed me how to look at my dreams from another perspective. To ask what does this dream teach me. He teaches ways to help, like how to use the ink blots and he gives examples. The imaginary friend method and we must not forget the drink water before you go to bed method. I never knew that it could be this fun or this easy. It used to scare me. Now, I look forward to dreaming and remembering my dreams. I am so amazed when I look back on my dream diary...the things that I have drempt, and what they now mean to me. I have learned much from this book, and if I can, you can. I am looking forward to buying and learning from his other books too!

I have a copy of the original version of the book that was published by Wiley. Often books like this one are added to the Wiley classic series and are reprinted in paperback. Although Wiley did not choose to do this, I am glad to see that SIAM decided to add it to its applied mathematics classic series.

Ingram Olkin was one of my professor's when I was a graduate student at Stanford. I met Milton Sobel through my colleague the late Ram Uppuluri, who I worked with at Oak Ridge.

Sobel was one of the originators of the ranking and selection approach to comparison of three or more populations. His work with Jack Kiefer and Robert Bechhofer was published in a text in the late 1960s. The basic idea was that many problems come up where several populations are being compared. An example would be the comparison of a placebo with two or more competitive drugs. The traditional analysis of variance tests equality of means versus a general alternative that at least one of the means is different from the rest. When the null hypothesis is rejected, the answer is that at least one mean is probably different, but it does not answer the basic questions. Which one or group of means is different and how large is the difference? Contrasts are then used and the method of multiple comparisons is used to identify populations with statistically significantly different means from rest.

The ranking and selection approach is different. It asks given the data on the distributions of these K populations, what is the probability that we can correctly rank them from worst to best? What is the probability that we can choose the best population (perhaps the one with the largest population mean)or at least the best M out of the K populations?

The idea is simple, the methodology is well developed but the approach has to this day not caught on as a basic component of statistical training and is not being applied in practice. This was the state of affairs that motivated Sobel to initiate the project of writing this book. The idea was that if the theory could be presented in an elementary way it might be better appreciated and more often used. Greater exposure of the methods could also stimulate further research.

The book provides the clear exposition. The fact that the techniques have not caught on remains a mystery. Milton Sobel discusses this issue in an interview that was just published in the May 2000 issue of the journal "Statistical Science".

The three authors each provide special talents that make this an excellent book. Olkin is thorough in his research and this is reflected in the completeness of the references (for that time). Gibbons is an excellent writer who must have had a strong influence on the clarity of exposition. Sobel is one of the founding fathers of the methodology who provides the knowledge of the theory and applications.

I will not duplicate what is in Vickie Kearn's review. She gives an accurate description of the book and its value. In my view the authors have successfully demonstrated the value of ranking and selection yet it has not caught on. Partially this is because everyone knows the standard ANOVA approach. This is what they are trained and it has consequently become their natural approach to such problems. It is unfortunate that many well trained statisticians do not even know of the existence of this large body of literature on ranking and selection. Sobel has noted in his experience that many younger statisticians rediscover the ranking and selection ideas. Until it becomes a part of the standard courses this will continue.

Another factor is software. These days procedures get used in practice only if they are included in some standard commercial package. The statisticians that invented ranking and selection did not see to it that it was incorporated in SAS or some other important package.

Another factor may be that the methodology might provide an answer like "the probability of correctly selecting the best population is 0.15" and this may not seem too spectacular an answer to the investigator.

Selecting and Ordering Populations: A New Statistical Methodology Jean Dickinson Gibbons, Ingram Olkin, and Milton Sobel Classics in Applied Mathematics 26

This SIAM Classics edition is an unabridged, corrected republication of the work first published in 1977. It provides a compendium of applied aspects of ordering and selection procedures and includes tables that permit the practitioner to carry out the experiment and draw statistically justified conclusions. These tables are not readily available in other texts. Although more than 1000 papers and several books on the general theory of ranking and selection have been published since this book first appeared, the methodology is presented in a more elementary fashion with numerous examples to help the reader apply it to a specific problem.

There is a dichotomy in modern statistics that distinguishes between analyses done before an experiment is completed and those done afterward. Ranking and selection methods are useful in both of these categories. The authors provide an alternative to the overused "testing the null hypothesis" when what the practitioner really needs is a method of ranking k given populations, selecting the t best populations, or some similar goal. That need and purpose is as important today as when the subject was first developed nearly 50 years ago.

Applied statisticians as well as researchers who use the basic methods of statistical analysis (psychologists, engineers, biologists, management scientists, etc.) will find this book a valuable reference. Readers should be familiar with standard first-year statistics; no knowledge of calculus is necessary.

Jean Dickinson Gibbons is the Thomas D. Russell Professor Emerita of Applied Statistics at the University of Alabama. She has published numerous articles and books on nonparametric statistics, both theoretical and applied. She has been a Fellow of the American Statistical Association (ASA) since 1972 and was elected to their Board of Directors for four different terms. Ingram Olkin is Professor of Statistics and Education at Stanford University in California and is a member of the SIAM Classics in Applied Mathematics editorial board. He has been a Fellow of the ASA since 1962. He was awarded the Samuel L. Wilks Memorial Medal by the ASA in 1991 and the Elizabeth L. Scott Award by the Committee of Presidents of Statistical Societies (COPSS) in 1998. Milton Sobel is Professor Emeritus of Statistics and Applied Probability at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is a Fellow of both the ASA and the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (IMS) and was elected a member of the International Statistical Institute (ISI). He has authored several books, published well over 100 journal articles and reports, collaborated with many researchers, and served as advisor to numerous Ph.D. students in statistics.

Contents Chapter 1: The Philosophy of Selecting and Ordering Populations; Chapter 2: Selecting the One Best Population for Normal Distributions with Common Known Variance; Chapter 3: Selecting the One Best Population for Other Normal Distribution Models; Chapter 4: Selecting the One Best Population Bionomial (or Bernoulli) Distributions; Chapter 5: Selecting the One Normal Population with the Smallest Variance; Chapter 6: Selecting the One Best Category for the Multinomial Distribution; Chapter 7: Nonparametric Selection Procedures; Chapter 8: Selection Procedures for a Design with Paired Comparisons; Chapter 9: Selecting the Normal Population with the Best Regression Value; Chapter 10: Selecting Normal Populations Better than a Control; Chapter 11: Selecting the t Best Out of k Populations; Chapter 12: Complete Ordering of k Populations; Chapter 13: Subset Selection (or Elimination) Procedures; Chapter 14: Selecting the Best Gamma Population; Chapter 15: Selection Procedures for Multivariate Normal Distributions; Appendix A: Tables for Normal Means Selection Problems; Appendix B: Figures for Normal Means Selection Problems; Appendix C: Table of the Cumulative Standard Normal Distribution F(z); Appendix D: Table of Critical Values for the Chi-Square Distribution; Appendix E: Tables for Binomial Selection Problems; Appendix F: Figures for Binomial Selection Problems; Appendix G: Tables for Normal Variances Selection Problems; Appendix H: Tables for Multinomial Selection Problems; Appendix I: Curtailment Tables for the Multinomial Selection Problem; Appendix J: Tables of the Incomplete Beta Function; Appendix K: Tables for Nonparametric Selection Problems; Appendix L: Tables for Paired-Comparison Selection Problems; Appendix M: Tables for Selecting from k Normal Populations Those Better Than a Control ; Appendix N: Tables for Selecting the t Best Normal Populations; Appendix O: Table of Critical Values of Fisher's F Distribution; Appendix P: Tables for Complete Ordering Problems; Appendix Q: Tables for Subset Selection Problems; Appendix R: Tables for Gamma Distribution Problems; Appendix S: Tables for Multivariate Selection Problems; Appendix T: Excerpt of Table of Random Numbers; Appendix U: Table of Squares and Square Roots; Bibliography; References for Applications; Index for Data and Examples; Name Index; Subject Index.

June, 1999 / xxvi + 569 pages / Softcover / ISBN 0-89871-439-7