Collaboratively compiled by educators and forensic specialists Barbara Gardner Conklin, Robert Gardner, and Dennis Shortelle, the Encyclopedia Of Forensic Science: A Compendium Of Detective Fact And Fiction is a comprehensive, 329-page tome of focusing on the modern science of forensics, its tools, its history, and the innovative people who advanced it. Entries are arranged in alphabetical order and disseminate accurate information on everything from arsenic poisoning, to X-Ray diffraction. The Encyclopedia Of Forensic Science is an excellent basic reference for both students of forensic science and writers of detective fiction seeking accuracy in their narratives.

An excellent book with wonderful pictures, from day-to-day tasks to warfare and elaborate rituals, accompanied by a fair amount of written information. It's a compelling still life of the Dani in the Baliem valley at the time civilization started to gain momentum and changed their way of life forever. Even though it's written mainly for an ethnographical audience, it's very readable and a must for anyone interested in the highland tribes of Irian Jaya and their cultural background.

It's About Time! Science Projects: How Long Doest It Take? by Robert Gardner is a selection of fun and educational experiments for young people, reflecting the central theme of time. It's About Time covers measuring time with the Sun; the water clock, the sand clock, the candle clock, the pendulum clock, reaction time, estimating time, and more. Whimsical color illustrations adorn the practical guidelines for a whole series of worthy science projects. It's About Time! is confidently recommended as an outstanding educational and enjoyable resource for grade-school aged children and would also be ideal for homeschool curriculum supplementation.

This book, long a standard, is well-organized, clear, concise, accurate, and inexpensive. It covers all of the basic measures associated with mortality and fertility. It shows formulas and example calculations and is ideal as a self-teaching guide, textbook, and reference tool. A must for any would-be demographer.

I first read this journal in its original format: a handwritten, early-19th-century document now kept in the archives at the Massachusetts Historical Society. I loved it on the first reading--Lowell is an articulate, insightful writer who recorded this journey for her friends and family back home in Boston. (Just as we take snapshots of a trip, 19th-century travelers wrote journals.) Now we can all read it without making a trip to the research library in Boston.

A well-educated, well-read woman, Lowell drew on a wealth of knowledge and considerable skill as a writer, but she was also somewhat more irreverent than she should have been, according to the conventions of the time. She took note of the local gossip, the scandalous histories of some of her hosts, and the harsh treatment of slaves on the sugar plantations. It makes for an engrossing read.

Professor Robert's introduction provides the historical context for the journal, covering the Boston background as well as the Cuban information.

Robert Gardner is easy to read. As a professor, I found his comments reinforced many of my ideas. As a teacher always wanting to bring enthusiasm and creativity to the college classroom enviroenment, his tips inspired me, and helped me to give myself the freedom to experiment with new teaching strategies and to get continual feedback from the students.

Highly recommended even for seasoned IP litigators; although this is a casebook, it has very thoughtful notes reminiscent of Hart & Wechsler's Fed. Courts casebook.

Lucky me. I spent the better part of today at the Metropolitan Museum of Art standing before fifty-five incredible 11th through the mid-15th century paintings from one of the great Buddhist civilizations of Asia. I've got to go back tomorrow. Luckily, in the meantime, I have Sacred Visions.If you can, see this exhibition and do not leave the Museum without the accompanying catalogue with wonderful reproductions and essays by noted scholars such as Steven M. Kossack, of the Met, Jane Casey Singer, Tibetan Art Historian, and Robert Bruce-Gardner, from London's Courtauld Institute. One will learn how Buddhism spread from India through Tibet and the effect the religion had on Tibet's people and, hence, its art.The details of the beautifully reproduced works of art are chosen to help illustrate the subtle and important aspects of the Tibetan artist while diagrams, such as for the Vajravarahi Mandala, further explain the iconography. I brought the book into the exhibition to gleen as much information as I could while standing before each work.If you have any interest in Tibet, rush to this exhibition (it closes 1.17.99) to see some beautifully presented mandalas, book covers, etc. If you cannot, you are not "settling" by any means to peruse the catalogue as you will witness Taras, portraits of Lamas, that are not only unique for their beauty and intelligence, but for the remarkable fact that we have them to admire.

This book is a beautifully written description and analysis of how Gardner works on himself in the process of therapy. He probes his ways of doing self-analytic work - "self inquiry" - using images and associations to further his understanding of his patients, himself and their relationships. It will be of special interest to therapists. As a training therapist I found this book helpful in opening paths for doing the work of exploration and figuring out between sessions. The book is poetic and thoughtfull, not at all reductive of the complex process of understanding that therapists are involved in. It is both a depiction of the process and a reflection on it.

I have read no book in the past 10 years that I have found more fascinating than this. It is, in itself, a graduate seminar not only on the life of Lyndon Johnson but also of the creation and the uses, and abuses, of raw political power. Johnson is a compelling enough character, but Caro's flawless writing and rich research make this book simply impossible to put down. I disagree with any reviewer who maintains that Caro's editors should have cut some text. I found everything covered in just the right amount of detail. Everything included here was essential to Caro's story. The first 100 pages, which were devoted to a history of the US Senate, were especially important to understand why Johnson's tenure as Majority Leader was unparalled in United States history. Despite its length, this book is actually a quick read because of Caro's surperb writing.

Importantly, this book is a self-contained story. While Caro's previous two volumes are equally interesting and provide an important background, this book can be read alone. Johnson comes to life here, if only for the 12 short years this book covers. I anxiously await Caro's fourth and final installment on Johnson's Presidency.

I can recommend no book more highly than this one.

Having read Mr. Caro's two previous biographical volumes on LBJ, my anticipation about "Master of the Senate" was acute. And, true to form, Mr. Caro did not disappoint! This tome was one of the most informative and enlightening texts about the previously darkly secretive institution of the Senate and the way Mr. Johnson acceded to power and influence in this body.

I particulary enjoyed Mr. Caro's detailed description of the Senate chambers and the historic figures who played out great National moments in their debates from the Senate Floor.

I sat on the edge of my seat as Mr. Caro rivitingly described the last-minute cliff hanging maneuvers either used by Mr. Johnson or against him by the various factions and the unlikely alliances LBJ had to forge to get legislation passed.

I must admit the LBJ of "Master of the Senate" sounded as ruthless as history has portrayed him, and when this volume is combined with the previous history of his boyhood in the Hill Country of Texas, and his tactics in winning his first election to the Senate, I understood the foundation for his intense personal obsession and drive.

For a real primer on Senate history and an understanding of how it resonates down through to the current political landscape, I surely would recommend "Master of the Senate."

Robert A. Caro is a national treasure. His three volumes (to date) on Lyndon Johnson are amazing: incredibly detailed, rich with beautiful prose, strewn with amazingly good sketches of other players on the scene at the time. The current volume, Master of the Senate, covers the dozen years that Lyndon Johnson was in the Senate, and the author makes sure you understand the situation when the subject of the book arrives in the Senate. To do this, he spends a hundred pages giving you a history of the Senate itself, from Daniel Webster and Henry Clay right up through the end of World War II.

This leads him to illuminate what had been going on in the Senate for the previous decades. Always intended as a decentralized body (unlike the House of Representatives), the Senate, when full of independant-minded senators, can be unmanageable in the extreme. If someone doesn't like a piece of legislation, they can filibuster it. It's very hard to override such a filibuster, because two thirds of the senators have to agree to do so. Remember that each of those senators might, in the future, wish to filibuster themselves, and so they might be reluctant to shut down someone else's expression of reluctance. This led to the Senate not doing a whole lot during the thirties and forties, or at least not a lot that was controversial. When Johnson entered the Senate, the first thing he was confronted with was a Majority Leader who was so inneffective he couldn't get re-elected, and his replacement couldn't either. By the time Lyndon Johnson got the job, it was considered the death knell of your career. It also took a good deal of seniority to get there (you had to hold your seat in the Senate for a long time), and Lyndon Johnson was a new senator.

How did he overcome both of these restrictions? Readers of the first two volumes, familiar with Johnson's obsequious relationship with legendary Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn (Mr. Sam) won't be surprised to find that Johnson found a mentor in the Senate and flattered the guy shamelessly. The individual was Richard B. Russell (one of the Senate office buildings is named for him), a patrician blueblood from Georgia who insisted that segregation was the only solution to the race problem in the South, and that anyone who said otherwise was trying to destroy Southern culture or something. He was courteous, friendly, elaborately cultured, and intensely polite. He never used ratial epithets on the floor of the Senate, as did some of the more virulent race-baiters from the deep South. Only very occasionally did the mask slip, and the racist emerge...

The author has a wonderful way with prose, and his descriptions of people make this an extremely worthwhile book. I would like to recommend it to anyone interested in Lyndon Johnson, or the United States government, or politics in general.