The Path was given to me as a gift, and that it truly was. The book is a dedication to Percival's "Thinking and Destiny," but is written in a concise, clear and engaging manner. The author addresses the questions we ask ourselves on a daily basis: What is the purpose of life? How do I achieve my destiny? How do I come to accept the inadequacies of the human being? The book encompasses Mr. Matheson's thoughts and views on metaphysics in a simple way. I recommend the book for anyone who enjoys discussion of metaphysics, spirituality and humanity.

Percival's Angel uses the Arthurian legend the setting for a new story. If you are a fan of Arthurian legend and enjoy reading the stories that focus on faerys and their relations with humans you will enjoy this book. If you are looking for a more standard retelling of the legend however you should try Marion Zimmer Bradley's The Mists of Avalon.

This is a sweet story that is obviously told by a bird lover! It is a simple story with a bit of education tucked in! This book is a great gift idea, especially for families owning birds as pets. Folks acquire pets and don't always realize the extent of their pets needs, this story helps! In addition, this story book, because it is illustrated in black and white with lots of pictures, opens up the possibility of making it a coloring book in which any child could transfer the color of their own bird, into the story!

A splendid overview of modern power spectrum analysis, with an emphasis on multitaper methods. Perfect for any scientist or engineer who deals with time series data.

Good and rare book! Essential if you need to know the conception of the world in the Middle Ages. "Travellers Tales", Prester John legend, Cristian pilgrimates and Arab travelers and merchants could be understood as consequence of the ancient concepts fall and how cosmogonies took its place.

I highly reccomend this book to any fans of Piozzi or Johnson. It takes the odd position of defending Piozzi for re-marrying as opposed to the classic view that she betrayed her husband and children for love.

This book cannot be missed, it will and should be a cornerstone of biographical information about Piozzi.

Reviews of the first edition of this outstanding book include:

1. From the Foreword by Field Marshal Lord Carver: "In this extensively researched and meticulously documented book, Harold Raugh has made a major contribution to military history."

2. Correlli Barnett, Sunday Telegraph: ". . . the enigma of Wavell's character and controversies over his exercise of command are re-examined with dispassionate judgment and thorough documentation by an American infantry soldier, Harold E. Raugh, Jr."

3. Meir Ronnen, Jerusalem Post Magazine: "Wavell has been the subject of several highly critical biographies, but this is the first study that sets out to salvage his reputation and to lay much of the blame for his failures at the door of the war cabinet dominated by Winston Churchill."

4. Lieutenant General Sir James Wilson, Army Quarterly & Defence Journal: "Altogether there is much to learn from this clearly written and impeccably researched new study of a great soldier."

5. John Whitehead, Country Life: ". . . this careful assessment of Wavell's generalship is likely to win wide and permanent acceptance."

6. The Good Book Guide: "This excellent study by an American scholar-soldier rehabilitates Wavell's conduct of war from Cairo by going back to original sources -- including once ultra-secret messages -- and thus outflanks Churchillian historians' prejudiced dismissal of a man of unusual capacity and integrity."

7. Bill Woodhouse, Tank Journal: "[Harold Raugh] had made a particular study of Lord Wavell and writes with a refreshing objectivity. The book, with its valuable conclusions to each chapter, extensive chapter notes, select bibliography and useful index, is highly recommended for anyone making a study of generalship."

In "Erasure",Percival Everett has written a book within a book and the reader can be excused for feeling he or she has purchased two books in one. Everett is clearly fed up with the current plague of "blaxploitation" novels, badly written by writers with no art and even less craft, whose only purpose is to jump on the "ghetto fab" bandwagon and make a quick buck. His protagonist, Thelonious Ellison (with the name Thelonius, what else could he be called but Monk?), writes literature deemed too obscure (read: too "white") for a black audience and finds his work relegated to dusty corners in the back of the bookstores. Fueling his outrage is a piece of trash literature called "We Lives In Da Ghetto", hailed as an "authentic" voice of the "black experience" by reviewers who lump all blacks as ghetto blacks, which rakes in $3 million. What's a struggling author with bills to pay and a terminally ailing mother to do? If you can't beat 'em, join 'em... better yet, out-do 'em. In no time at all, Monk has banged out the blaxploitation novel to end all blaxploitation novels, a mishmash called "My Pafology" (later renamed a four-letter word I can't print here), under the pseudonym Stagg R. Lee, which not only wins the National Book Award, but also has Hollywood beating his door down for the movie rights. Everett is clearly disgusted both at those whites whose contempt of blacks runs so deep that they take trash "blaxploitation" novels at face value and consider them as representative of "the black experience" (as if there is one single "black experience"), and at those blacks whose lack of self-respect is so deep that they buy into the hype. As a black reader, I share his feelings totally. Everett at times takes himself too seriously and this is the only thing that kept me from giving this book five stars; but he's an enormously talented and promising writer who has the gift of making you think even while he has you laughing out loud. I'm looking forward to his next book.

My last few reads have been easy reads, just a step above watching televison in terms of depth and plot. Hey, sometimes I enjoy a nice breezy read.

With Erasure, Mr. Everett isn't making things that simple. It's not a complicated, boring textbook read but you will have to *think* (and in some cases, bust out a foreign language dictionary) and the more you think, the more layers you'll uncover.

While the main plot centers around Monk, a writer with marginal success, and his sudden fame at writing a ghetto fabulous new-wave Mantan novel, the incidents that surround this rise to fame touch deeply on other themes - family ties, socio-economic status, and love (to name a few). Everett covers a lot of ground with this book and ties it all together masterfully (and with quite a bit of humor).

If you're at all interested how race intersects with the publishing industry (i.e. "Hey, I wrote a book about plumbing and I happen to be Black, why is my plumbing book in the African-American section of the bookstore?"), pick this book up. If you want a good read that will make you think without making you choke on your own yawns, pick this book up. Hey, even if you like stereotypical novels filled with difficult to read Ebonics, pick this book up - just skip to Monk's mini-novel in the middle.

I wanted to be the first to say it but someone beat me to it. Erasure is a Awesome, a multifaceted satire of the NEW Black Literature scene, dead on target and right on time, no doubt one of the best books I've read this year.

Thelonius "Monk" Ellison is a lit professor slash writer who has had marginal success with his previous novels and now can't get a publisher for his new book because he doesn't write "black enough". While visiting his mother and sister in his hometown, Washington DC, he steps into a Border's bookstore and is mortified by the fact that one of his previous works was found in the "African American Studies" section of the store when his book has nothing to do with African American studies but instead a Greek tragedy. He comes across a book called, We Lives In Da Ghetto, and his sister lets him know that it's the hottest selling book right now and will be made into a movie. He opens the book and reads the first few paragraphs and again, mortified, "this is the black experience that they want him to write about." So he does, under an pseudonymous alter ego. The novel catapults him to instant success and money, which he is in need of badly to care for his mother who has Alzheimers.

The psuedo novel is included in Erasure and is complete with have finished sentences, Ebonics to the tenth degree and lots of explicatives that describe sex, violence and finally, life in da ghetto. Alas, he's written a "true gritty black novel." The pressure mounts when his publisher wants him to make a public appearance as Stagg R. Leigh, his alter ego. Does he show his face to the literature community that he once mocked for it's incompetence and ingnorance? The cover of the book pretty much tells the rest of the story.

_Beau Geste_ represents some of the finest pulp fiction of the eighteenth century. The story is tightly told and compelling; the mystery is fun. Some of the social attitudes of the character might seem old-fashioned to modern readers, but the tale told is still a great one.

After you read the book, check out the film versions of 1926 and 1939 (the latter with Gary Cooper).

I first saw the 1966 (starring Telly Savalas as the evil Sergeant Major) remake of Beau Geste in my early teens. It was not the best version of the story, with only 2 brothers in the story, and no mention of the stolen jewel, but it was action packed and the uniforms were awesome to a young teenage boy. Since then I have seen the 1939 (far superior) movie version, read the boooks and then read anything else I could get my hands on about the Legion in the early 20th century.

This book is the epitome of grand adventure stories, rivalled only by two others: The Prisoner of Zenda and Kind Solomon's Mines. It's a book that appeals to your imagination and sense of adventure when you are young, and then you never outgrow it. I won't rehash the story here, but I suggest you get a copy, turn off all your modern, grown-up cycnicism and enjoy escapist literature at its very best.

Seems like every few years I sit down and read this book again. There is enough adventure to keep me interested in each re-reading and each time I pick up more little clues in "the mystery" that I missed in the last reading.

The first time I read it (some years ago) I thought the characters were a little too stereotyped--the americans for example, spoke with too many expressions like "you shore said a mouthful Bo." The British, too, are always correct and formal.
Yet the story is so delightful that, on subsequent readings, one notices that the americans, with all their cowboy talk, are the ones who can be trusted and have the know-how to save the day.
The British, for all their coolness, stick to their honour and their duty.

The book assumes some recognition of French, as it includes lots of expressions and phrases in French without translation.
Some like "Monsieur l'Adjutant" one can figure out. Some like "medaille militaire" take a second's thought. There are several others, though, sprinkled throughout the book that one has to infer from the context or look up. A great many are fairly clear from the context and really did not detract from the story.
I had to hunt the used book stores to find my own copy, but I thought it was worth it!

Well written book. It would be nice to have some "MatLab" problems. Excellent motivational or explanatory examples.

I gave it three stars because most reviewers are far to liberal with their stars. To me 3 stars means worth buying, 4 means a must buy, and 5 means it'll be a classic for a long time.

I equate this book to Mallet's "A Wavelet Tour of Signal Processing". The subject matter is slightly different, but both are very readable.

Few wavelet books offer such a deep insight into wavelet methods
for time series analysts. It goes very deep within the applied
side of wavelet analysis on real time series while not compromising
the mathematical side. A lot of books and papers insist too much
on the mathematical side of wavelets while this one provides just
the right balance between rigor and practical insight. If your
interest does not lie in maths but just in wavelets as a tool,
stick to this one.

As a bonus, it contains a lot of exercices along with answers
at the end of the book...a very good textbook indeed...

As far as I am concerned,anything Don Percival writes about the topic of wavelets - or digital signal processing - is well worth reading. I was struggling to understand wavelets before I ran across a paper by Percival (and cohorts from the University of Washington) on interpreting remote sensing sea ice data using wavelets. After reading the very clear and compact description of wavelet analysis the light bulb clicked on for me. This book is a must read for anyone interested in wavelets from beginners to experienced practicioners.