This is a really excellent book! I love it for the first reading, and I love it more at the second! Everyone who wants to think about the mankind, the history, the politics or the arts must read it.

The borders of the past and the present do not count any more. Fiction and reality take place in same time. To read this poetic and beautiful but dark lines, to imagine how Ovids exile at the Black Sea passed by, to get to know the old and strange stories of roman and greek mythologie, ... It is not at all amazing that Ransmayr got the highest european literature price for the Last World in 1992. How actual his story is shows the example of Romania of 1989 where the publication of the Last World was forbidden.

This novel has a very Eastern European flavor, with attitudes about power and empire that recall another Austrian, Robert Musil. Ransmayr's writing is beautiful and he has an excellent voice. I found it to be difficult, but very rewarding in the end.

Having lived with the Bruderhoffers (including author Arnold) for twenty years I find the contrast between the values advocated in this book and the methods employed by the Bruderhof in dealing with ex-members and critics intriguing. My sensitivity to the unique language and syntax of Bruderhoffers informs me that with almost complete certainty the preceeding reviews were submitted by Bruderhof insiders.

The original edition of this book has gone out of print, but only to make way for an expanded version. Find the latest edition of A Plea for Purity under ISBN 0874869609. My wife and I have turned to the author several times for advice in our own marriage, so I recommend him highly. This book is very thought provoking, and confronts the western myth of romance and dating as the route to "living happily ever after". The Foreword by Mother Teresa were some of the last words ever published from her.

Marriage starts with a fire, at least ours did eight years ago. Wherever there's a good thing though, the bad want's to take over. In subtle ways, the fire cools. It was at this point that a friend (unknowing of our inner situation) suggested A Plea for Purity. He was angry at its anti-gay stance. I took it, in the hopes of finding fuel for arguments with him (I enjoy heated arguments, especially on such topics). What happened though was that the book hit home. The more I read, the more I saw my own sitation. It was depressing and firmly and steadfastly uplifting at the same time. I saw where I was in my relationship, but also the door to where I could and should be. I'm not really a religious person (haven't gone to church for years) but here was solid rock. It changed my life. As for the gay-sympathetic friend of mine, he was wrong. The book is not anti-gay, its anti-gay lifestyle. What I mean is, again, it shows them the way out. It condemns the lifestyle but at the same time points out WHY its not a good way to live and what to do about the problem. Tim Major, United Kingdon

I bought this book to understand the mathematics and physics in A-Life and Complexity. Instead I found this book very long winded and difficult to comprehend exactly what was trying to be said. The content and layout of the book is great, just wish a better writer had been the author of this book. Lots of fancy, big words that are not needed to get the basic points across. Very hard to understand what is being said. It takes smarts and skill to explain complicated, abstract ideas in a meaningful manner. This book does not do that. I wish it did!

This is the ONLY book I have seen which brings together all the many and various strands which are essential to the exciting new subjects arising currently around the question: What is Life? It is a stunning tour de force of the basic knowledge you need to possess to work in the areas of A-life or biological complexity.

I should warn: it's not a book I could read through in an afternoon, by any means. At times the descriptions are a little cryptic, so that I had to work at understanding what was being said. But the effort I had to put in was always rewarded with greater understanding. Thank you, Chris Adami.

Adami demonstrates how to use the tools of artificial life to conduct pure scientific research. A very clear and readable textbook on the subject, Adami makes me want to go back to graduate school. Here is a chance to take an introductory course in an exciting field of research that is truely table-top science. I loved the book and I didn't even use the CD and software that came with it.

The book is very short, which is good, but not written in a particularly interesting fashion (i quit about halfway through it). The 'awakening' that is refered to by the title is the spiritual transformation of the town. Skip it and read "Hostage to the Devil", which is well written, has a variety of contemporary posession cases and contains the Roman Catholic "Rite of Exorcism"

When I first read an older version of this book some years ago it scared the heck out of me. The haunting fact that kept coming back to me was that this was NOT fiction. Since the new edition came out I have re read it several times and this time what hits me most is God's total victory over even the most frightening powers of darkness. Blumhardt takes on the worst of the worst in a desperate two year prayer battle for the soul and sanity of a possessed woman. God intervenes and gives a victory that impacts the whole town, with experiences of inner and outer healing.

Not the work of a writer's imagnation, this story (c 1840) puts a different spin on the occult, spiritualism and its relation to the reader simply because it really happened. Conversations with the dead, inexplicable shufflings and bangings, a young ministers two year prayer-battle with darkness for the soul and sanity of a possesed woman. Watch out! this book may not only change the way you view the supernatural, it could change your entire outlook on life.

This books reads like an advertisment that following Christianity will be a cure all for everyone. I took it back to the library after flipping through it and realizing this

This is yet another one of Christoph Arnold's great books. I am sure at some time or another everyone has felt like they are living in hell, just as I have. Christoph has a way of showing us how to cope with life's difficulties in a simplistic manner that everyone can understand. I would recommend this book to everyone, especially those who are full of despair and lacking hope for their future. There is always hope and this book will show you where to find it within yourself.

This Book, "Escape Routes" is so profound that you will not be able to put it down. These are stories about people like you and me that are trapped in today's Hell. But do not give up there is hope for all who read this book. Just think that there are many people out there that have the same struggles. Arnold makes it clear that not all have found there way out of Hell but we need to keep looking for our own Escape Route.

This book is a great introduction to organometallic chemistry, covering the history, practice, and theory of the field. A perfect book for an undergraduate course in organometallics, and a useful reference for the practicing chemist.

This guide to organometallic chemistry is a wonderful resource for advanced undergrads as well as graduate students. It is useful for both the organic as well as inorganic student.

Antonio da Sangallo the Younger was one of the most important architects of the Renaissance during the first half of the 16th century in Italy. A few of his buildings belong to the guiding examples of public and private architecture. Overshadowed by better known artists like Bramante or Michelangelo, his reputation among his contemporaries was as least as high as that of those. But he is also the one architect by whom survived more drawings than of any other one of that time (and even of later times). The long-prepaired edition of these drawings - from the collection of the Florentine Uffizi - is a milestone not only in architectural history, but also in editing important art historical material at all. A group of famous and highly-skilled architectural historians made this work available with a lot of deep-going contributions to the analysis of the drawings. So, reading comments about fortresses, machines and other buildings normally not thought of to be of great interest at all, lets one understand how an architect with great skill and experience (and a large group of collaborators) managed "his job". In fact, Sangallo seems to be the first architect in European history, who organized his work in a way very close to the one still used today: the architect gives ideas to further development to his collaborators, corrects their contributions and organizes the whole work of the "studio" rather than doing everything himself - as others did at the same time. I think, one can not only learn a lot about a special architect in a special time from this book, but also, how architectural invention and execution was organized in the renaissance (and from then on). The detailed analytic descriptions of the drawings sometimes even read like a step-by-step solution of complicated riddles, and it's interesting to follow the discussion of such a complicated matter. If you are interested in architecture or art history, this book is a must!

Lattis' biography of Christoph Clavius tells the story of a man once well-known and influential in science, although virtually unknown today. It tells about the birth of modern mathematics and astronomy. And it tells about how medieval and modern attitutes collided in around the time of the birth of the scientific revolution.

The book appears well-researched, it has numerous footnotes, and I felt that it gave a good description of an interesting period, an attitude and an environment. I recommend it for those who what to know more about the period of the birth of modern science, and in particular to those who want to know more about the views of those that opposed Copericus, Kepler and Galileo.

This book provides a useful study of how the Soviet military approached a future war with the U.S. Interesting details are provided about the Red Army's philosophies, obtained via author interviews.

The book's conclusions are that the Soviets did not buy MAD theory, and actually believed a nuclear conflict could remain limited and end to the Soviets' advantage.

Even more interesting are the insights into how and why the USSR collapsed in the political sense. Gorbachev's failures are convincingly presented as key, and overall the book is a good read.

The premise of Driven into Paradise involves the forced exodus of so many European classical musicians. Each of the essays in this book deals with this theme, albeit in a rather academic and dull manner. Thus I would not recommend it as light reading. By contrast, is a serious musicological work that analyzes a unique cultural phenomena associated with the Holocaust; namely, what was the effect of this musical exodus not only on the United States but on Europe as well?

Unfortunately, the collection the essays that comprise Driven into Paradise come up with some fairly predictable conclusions. The first, the conclusion that the United States gained from the cultural expertise of the refugees, is not arguable. The U.S. lacked the cultural resources of Europe and gained composers such as Erich Wolfgang Kornwald, Kurt Weill, Paul Hindemith, and a host of others, as well as some world-class performers and teachers.

However, the second, that Nazi Germany became a musical wasteland, is more difficult to validate. We don't really know what the musical standards were during the 1930's in Germany. Recording equipment was certainly inadequate by today's standards. Moreover, orchestral playing around the globe was far below the current standards demanded of professionals, so even with adequate recording systems, we would not be able to evaluate the German orchestras of Nazi Germany against the largely Jewish ones of the United States. Finally, the Germans still possessed a number of first-rate artists including Richard Strauss, Furtwangler, Karajan, and many others.

Driven into Paradise also contains a great deal of discussion about the plight of refugee musicians relocated in the U.S. There were the usual difficulties with language as well as the expected clashes between native-born musicians and the European émigrés. Nevertheless, this flood of immigrants was perhaps better off than their counterparts from the 19th century. The largely Jewish immigrants were well-educated professional musicians. The cliché that music is a universal language certainly helped these people in their attempts to procure employment in orchestras, as teachers, conductors, composers, or soloists.

Thus, while Driven into Paradise offers a promising study of the effects of the Nazis on the musical arts, it doesn't deliver any conclusions that are not predictable. The book is, therefore, hardly a path-breaker. Nevertheless, it has much to recommend it provided that the reader possesses a sophisticated knowledge of classical music.