But the Locket did change my view of him. Richard is a very, very good writer. I finished it in a couple days with the last 4 straight hours reading it through the end. I really like the way the story goes and how each character is woven into each other. It's a love story, but not the type that made you sick in the stomach. Instead it touches my heart. A few times it brought tears to my eyes. Very touching. I particularly like the Forgiveness chapter. Several excellent thoughts on life surface throughout the book.

I see that everyone else on this page has evangelised so there is no reason for me to add anything except my endorsement. These are extraordinary books and easily among the best books I have read. Do yourself a favour, cast aside any moleist prejudices and buy it, buy all three.

This, of course, is the story of a stuffed toy rabbit who seems to have a life of his own. "The Boy" finds the rabbit in his stocking at Christmas. After playing with him for a short time, the rabbit is put away on a shelf where he is to stay for an extended period of time. While on that shelf, he befriends a fellow stuffed toy animal called the Skin Horse. The horse tells the rabbit all about what it means to become "real", and the rabbit is quickly enamored by this aspiration. One day, the rabbit is taken off the shelf and given to the boy who cuddles with him every night and takes him wherever he goes during the day. The rabbit feels truly loved, and is thrilled when the boy tells him that he's real. There's a touching part of the story where the rabbit toy is confronted by two real rabbits who tease him about being just a toy, and he vehemently maintains that he, too, is real because "the boy said so."

I'm not going to give away the ending, but I have to admit that I felt the same lump in my throat while reading this book now as I did when I first read it many years ago. I know of college students who've had to read this book for class. There's a great deal to be learned here about beauty and love. While the story remains the same, the message changes as one grows older.

This book is a definite necessity for anyone's personal library.

For a detailed description of the chpaters in this work, look at the detailed review by Shard here at Amazon. I found this book well written and authoritative and learned a few things about Euler and number theory that I hadn't known from my undergraduate and graduate training in mathematics. Yet I did not give the book five stars.

There are a couple of omissions that I find reduce it to a four star rating. My main objection is the slighting of Evariste Galois. Galois was the great French mathematician who died in a duel at the early age of 21 in the year 1832. Yet, in his short life he developed a theory of abstract algebra seemingly unrelated to the great unsolved questions about constructions with straight edge and compass due to the Greeks and yet his theory resolved many of these questions. I was very impressed in graduate school when I learned the Galois theory and came to realize that problems such as a solution to the general 5th degree equation by radicals and the trisection of an arbitrary angle with straight edge and compass were impossible.

Now, Galois theory is certainly beyond the scope of this book but so is non-Euclidean geometry and aspects of number theory and set theory that Dunham chooses to mention. He spends a great deal of time on Euclid's work and the various possible constructions with straight edge and compass. Also, in the chapter on Cardano's proof of the general solution to the cubic, he also presents the solution to the quartic and refers to Abel's result on the impossibility of the general solution to the quintic equation. This would have been the perfect place to introduce Galois who independently and at the same time in history proved the impossibility of solving the general quintic equation by radicals. Oddly Galois is never once mentioned in the entire book.

In discussing number theory and Euler's contributions, the theorems and conjectures of Fermat are mentioned. This book was written in 1991 and it presents Fermat's last theorem as an unproven conjecture. Andrew Wiles presented a proof of Fermat's last theorem to the mathematical community in 1993 and after some needed patchwork to the proof, it is now agreed that Fermat's last theorem is true. There are a number of books written on Fermat's last theorem including an excellent book by Simon Singh. It seems that Dunham's book is popular and has been reprinted at least 10 times since the original printing in 1991. It would have been appropriate to modify the discussion of Fermat's last theorem in one of these reprintings.

This is the kind of book that would make almost anybody learn to love mathematics. Although I myself have always liked mathematics, I can heartily recommend this book to anybody with just a passing interest in the subject.

Some of the theorems that are discussed could be somewhat involved. However, those who are not interested in the details can skip them without compromising their enjoyment of the book. William Dunham seamlessly weaves a story of these wonderful mathematical geniuses, the times they lived in, their motivations and last but not least, their theorems. A great mathematical epic unfolds as you move from one era to another and from one genius to another. The author's love for the subject is obvious and a lot of it is bound to rub off on you too.

Recommended without reservations.

The lyrics are the same, from book to book, but the fanciful illustrations in this one are enough to engage adults and children as they read this book together.

The perfect gift for any family whose Christmas tradition includes reading this classic!

SHARPE'S TIGER is the first in the serie (of about 12) in chronological order. Even though Mr. Cornwell does'nt write them this way, if you want to appreciate the historical flavor and Sharpe's career in Her Majesty's army, you want to read them chronologically.

The reader looking for nice fancy figures of speech will be left unsatisfied. Political correctness is also left in the closet. It is blunt, direct cannon-fodder daily life we are looking at and it is written that way

One thing is sure, we will all finish that book with the smell of gunpowder floating around us and a smile in the historical note about general Wellington

In Sharpe's Tiger, chronologically the first of the score of Sharpe novels, Cornwell has our hero a dashing, raw recruit of the 33rd regiment in India. At the island fortress of Seringapatam, the Tippoo, enemy of the British, is holed up plotting an alliance with the French to remove the British from his lands forever. When a senior British officer is captured, Sharpe is given the task of saving him, as a way out of the huge number of lashes he has just been given as punishment for striking an officer. The sentence is the result of the utterly odious Sergeant Obadiah Hakeswill's incessant victimisation of the soldiers beneath him - Sharpe being his least favourite.

And there the fun begins. Firstly the infiltration of the fort, then the discovery of the captured officer and then the escape. Except Sharpe cannot do anything the easy way. In fact the beauty is that he seems to go out of his way to find the trickiest route, causing as much mayhem as he does it. It is a credit to Cornwell that Sharpe never suspends belief for the sake of more amazing thrills. Everything he allows Sharpe to do is possible and in some instances, probably rather close to a re-enactment of some courageous derring-do of a real-life British soldier 200 years ago or so. It is the adroitness of Cornwell's writing that he manages to carry this off with such aplomb. If you like this sort of thing, then I think it safe to say there is no better than Mr. Bernard Cornwell.

And now onto Sharpe's Triumph (I am doing them in chronological order, you see, I believe that to be the best way.)

There are only two elements that need more attention: 1)There needs to be a little section within the first chapter which sumarizes the history of left-brain/right brain theories - as currently presented the authors assume that the readers are familiar with this debate. This addition would make it easier to to grasp the whole approach. Given the amount of theory swirling around the ADD topic, one needs more information on this subject to help make an assessment. (2) The programme for Spelling, Math, Speed Reading and so on is excellent but cries out to be presented in a more user-friendly, task-oriented format. As a trainer who has helped design sessions on management topics, which have to be alert to adult learning needs (and in this case you need to educate the parents as they try and help their children), I found myself itching to transform the exercises into a more structured format. However, I am a little hesitant since I am not a trained middle-school teacher.

A workbook would be a great companion piece. And would give a parent more material with which to practice the techniques of visual learning etc. It will definitely be a god-send for those parents who are unable to relocate to Colorado, stay in line for two years and pound on his door to ask him to tutor their kids!

Hope this feedback gets back to Mr Freed. I am sure its not the first request for a follow-up book!

Thank you for revealing what these children truly are...GIFTED. Mr. Freed and Laurie Parsons. You have given me hope. For that I can't thank you enough.

Richard Sharpe is a well developed character, an everyman that developed not only into a super warrior, but also into a superb leader of warriors.

In this novel the author gets right down to the story, and wastes no time getting to the heart of the story. The writing is straightforward and clean.

Highly recommended

His army has been defeated and the French are pushing the English towards the coast of Spain and into Portugal. Through a series of mishaps he finds himself under the loose command of a Spanish Major who is intent upon flying a holy banner from a major city deep within the French area of control. Sharpe must win the respect of his men, fight an invincible French Colonel, and vie for the attentions of a beautiful English missionary.

I admit that I was a fan of the PBS series before I read the books. However, when you start this book you will have a hard time putting it down. Cornwell writes in plain English and his dialog is great.

He kept coming to mind as I was reading this incredible book, as the characters, stranded on an island with absolutely nothing, accomplished such amazing feats as draining a lake, making a home, building a ship, making an elevator, and a great many other things. There is excitement, suspense (what IS going on on this mysterious island??), and wonderful, likeable characters. Not a real well-known Verne book, but fortunately still in print, and one of his best and most entertaining.

(Incidentally, if you want a children's version of the same story, try to find "A Long Vacation" by Jules Verne, which is extremely similar in plot, but with younger characters and for a younger audience - very charming!)

By the way, please do read 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea first, if you have not already done so. Evidently, Verne assumed that everyone had when he wrote this novel.

Great reading!

Mention Jules Verne, and books that spring to mind are 20,000 Leagues, Around the World in 80 days, and Journey to the Center of the Earth. The Mysterious Island is one of his lesser known works, which is something of a mystery itself.

The book surpasses one's imagination and never fails to surprise. From the initial pages when Capt. Cyrus Harding and his friends decide to escape from a prison camp, the story seizes the complete attention of the reader, and unfolds at a pace and in a direction excelling Jules Verne's characteristic stories. The spirit and ingenuity of man is demonstrated in almost every page, as Cyrus and Co. find themselves marooned on a deserted island, and armed with only their wits, transform their desperate situation into a wonder world of science and technology. The reader is drawn into the adventure and finds himself trying to find solutions to the problems and obstacles that lie in plenty for the castaways, as Cyrus and his indomitable friends surmount myriad problems in their fight for survival. They are aided in their ventures by an uncanny and eerie source that remains a mystery until the very end.

This book cannot fail to fascinate and inspire awe in the mind of any reader. One begins to grasp the marvels and inventive genius behind the simple daily conveniences and devices that are normally taken for granted. The line between reality and fantasy is incredibly thin, and for sheer reading pleasure and boundless adventure, this book will never cease to please.

PS: The book has been adapted into a movie, which is one of the worst adaptations of any novel that I have ever had the misfortune of viewing. It is criminal to even mention the movie and the original work in the same breath.

Read this novel - for entertainment, for fresh words, for disarmingly beautiful story, and for restoration in the faith that we are a meaningful part of what was and, therefore, what will be.