Though slightly smaller than Morcombe (6.5" x 9.5"), Pizzey II is a large format book (6" x 9") that is easy to read, but a bit heavy for packing in the field. Nevertheless, foreign birders visiting Australia would be well advised to take both Pizzey II -- for the illustrations -- and Morcombe -- for the huge quantity of useful information and detailed field notes on the (amateurish) plates. For routine use in the field, the guide of choice remains the light and compact (4.5" x 8") Slater Field Guide to Australian Birds (Weldon 1989). The other Australian field guide, Simpson & Day, is a worthy competitor with color plates of comparable quality to those in Pizzey II, though perhaps not as conveniently arranged.

In conclusion, all four current Australian bird guides are five-star books, though each has its strengths and weaknesses. Pizzey II is artistically the most pleasing and would be the guide of greatest interest to book collectors interested in fine bird art.

Vathek is a caliph who is loved but also feared by his people. In fact, if he really loses his temper, just the sight of his gaze can cause death. His court makes The Satyricon look like a sunday school with its voluptuousness and excess. There are even five wings of his palace, with each one dedicated to a sense with names such as "The Delight of the Eyes" and "The Palace of Perfumes". Oh, the decadence! Of course someone as attached to physical gratification as Vathek is sure to stomp on the moral and religious boundaries of Allah and get in trouble.

Much like God and Yahweh in the Book of Job, Allah allows Vathek to be tempted and tried by demons as a bizarre test of his faith. Actually, maybe in both cases it was a test of God's faith in man. The faith that man will do the right thing in the end. That he will turn away from evil. That he will have an epiphany which will redeem him. Vathek isn't so lucky.

An evil being in the disguise of a man, called the Gaiour, comes to Vathek's court with all sorts of magical artifacts which seem to give their bearer otherworldy powers. Vathek becomes entranced by the thought of having powers over spirits and other men and begins to follow a direct line to eternal hell. In order to court evil spirits, Vathek becomes a mass murderer, a blasphemer, a betrayer, a killer of his own people. He is helped in this by his mother, Carathis, who hasn't even heard the word goodness. She constructs a tower much like the Tower of Babel, in order to reach to the gods and to serve as storage for her arcane items.

The book, much like Dante's Inferno, becomes a little much at times. I mean, how many deeds of evil can we experience before we go, "ok, he's going to Hell now!" Sometimes you sense that some of this is intentional and tongue in cheek. At other times, you're horrified at the evil that most of the characters do. Any characters that are good are trampled upon by the evil. The last couple of pages are truly disturbing. I liked this book and would recommend it to anyone that keeps an open mind about fantasy or who is interested in the question of how much knowledge is too much knowledge.

In the standard Gothic tale, allusions to Roman Catholicism, thought of by respectable Englishmen as a dark, oppressive, and half-pagan faith, were part of the conventional apparatus. Beckford chose instead to imagine the world of Islam, an even more exotic milieu that added some flashes of bright colours to the dark and sorcerous background of his book. His choice of an even more exotic setting allowed him greater freedom in portraying characters who defied social convention and fell into exotic habits of mind.

My understanding is that it is a matter of some debate to what extent the English text of -Vathek- is a translation from the French, or an original English composition. I do not have the French text in front of me, but it has been represented to me that Beckford's "original" French is rather like the French of Oscar Wilde's -Salome-, and needed extensive editing to be acceptable to a French readership.

At any rate, -Vathek- is a prime example of early dark fantasy. The description, of course, will be richer than you are used to, but Beckford's prose actually seems to move quite quickly. Fans of H. P. Lovecraft or Clark Ashton Smith will find that it is quite easy to slip into. And the tale is indeed a vivid one, right up to the exceptional ending when Vathek and Carathis are damned to the halls of Eblis, their hearts seared with unquenchable fire.

This is a good edition of the story, and the notes and maps are helpful.

Review Summary: How can women improve their health by changing their lifestyle, diet, and activities? That's the question that this book answers. Based on the longest running and most authoritative sources of information, you should prefer the information here to what you will read in other resources. The book deals with factors like age, race, exercise, diet, use of supplements, weight, birth control pill and hormone replacement usage, smoking, and drinking in order to define how these affect the incidence of disease. In addition, the book also tells women how to improve their chances for avoiding diseases where where behavior counts for a lot.

Review: The detailed focus of this book is remarkable. Unlike most books about health that look at men and women together, this one drills down to many different perpectives on women. For instance, if you took oral contraceptives in the 1970s, what is the effect on your risk of breast cancer today? If you take supplementary calcium now, how does that affect your risk of having a bone fracture when you are past 70? These are the kind of specific, and important questions that this book looks at. And the data are not necessarily what you think. Calcium supplements, for instance, don't seem to help with reducing fractures. If you discontinued oral contraceptives some time ago, the impact on breast cancer incidence seems to drop off to nil.

The data for the book come from several long-term studies. The most significant is Harvard Medical School's Nurses' Health Study, which began in 1976. The base was 120,000 R.N.s aged 30-55. The original focus of this work was on oral contraceptives, but many other data were assembled in two page questionnaires sent every other year. Since then, biological samples have been added liked toenail clippings and blood. In 1989 116,000 more nurses were added in the Nurses' Health Study II, which tracks younger women than those in the earlier group who are now increasingly elderly. Nurses were originally chosen because it was thought they would be more accurate in their data and more likely to be open about sharing information about contraceptive and reproductive practices. Since then the National Institutes of Health have also started a tracking study focusing on the use of postmenopausal hormones, low fat diets, and the impact of calcium and other supplements on postmenopausal health. All three studies are used extensively in this book.

The book's first section looks at the studies and how to interpret the data that come from them. The second section (and the longest) looks at a different diseases. Instead of lumping cancer together, for instance, you get separate looks at breast, lung, colon, endometrial, ovarian, and skin cancer. Other dieases covered include heart disease, stroke, diabetes, osteoporosis, asthma, arthritis, eye ailments, and Alzheimer's. The final section is on advice about how to do better with physical activity, weight control, smoking, nutrients, foods, alcohol, vitamins and minerals, postmenopausal hormones, birth control, and aspirin.

Unlike many books coming from physicians, this book is easy to understand and apply. You get a lot of scientific data, but you also get lots of instances of plain English. For example, there are quotes from nurses and how one doctor provides advice in each section for what she or he tells patients about that subject. Also, each chapter has a simple, useful summary that you can use to put everything in perspective.

If the book has a weakness, it's that you cannot learn as much as you need to know about how to change difficult behaviors like smoking and eating foods that lead to excess weight in brief chapters. So, once you've decided you want to improve your behavior, I suggest that you also seek out other books that are more specialized on those issues.

Obviously, this book will be of interest and value to women. Why should men read it? I told my wife about how good I thought this book was, and she asked me how she should change her behavior based on the book's information. I was able to summarize for her in less than five minutes what I had observed that she could beneficially change. So this book can be valuable for men to read, if they share the information with women they know. Also, men can give this book to women as a token of their love and caring.

After you finish this book, I suggest that you also think about where you can get such authoritative information about other important subjects in your life . . . like getting along well with others, enjoying good mental health, feeling happy and optimistic, and giving and receiving love. Why not make improvements in all these dimensions?

Remember: You deserve the best that you can provide for yourself!

A Level is the main exam route taking in the UK for entry into Universities.

The continual rapid development of computer technology means it is a nightmare trying to keep up with terminology and acronymns. This glossary has the defintions the examiners will accept. Very useful when different text books all have their own definitons.

The 4star rating rather than 5 is a reflection of the date of issue of this glossary. There must be another one on its way soon, we sure need it.

In the rural back roads outside Castlemere, Detective Sergeant Cal Donovan rides his motorcycle before stopping for gas. However, Cal steps into the middle of an armed robbery at the gas station. The culprit slams a gun into Cal's face before driving away from the scene of the crime. Cal pursues only to watch the culprit crash into another vehicle. The crash shakes up the other car's occupant, but she turns out all right. Cal rescues the robbery suspect from the burning wreck.

The armed robber turns out to be Mikey Dickens, the youngest son of the local crime family. The sure shot case unravels because of Mikey's clever solicitor and the sudden loss of substantial evidence. When Mikey turns up nearly dead, all the physical evidence points towards an avenging Cal as the suspect. This leaves it up to other members of the police force to prove his innocence before Cal's reputation and that of the department is destroyed forever.

Many fans of police procedurals hold Jo Bannister in high esteem for her charming Castlemere series. Books like A TASTE FOR BURNING and CHARISMA are some of the sub-genre's top novels. Her current Castlemere tale, BROKEN LINES, may be her best novel to date. The author cleverly employs an elaborate who-done-it filled with suspense. She then fills that story line with an in-depth look at the various connections between the characters, leaving readers to ponder the meaning of relationships. Ms. Bannister provides the audience with a unique story that will cause a mass desire for the next book in this series to appear quickly.

Harriet Klausner