Instead of Luc Tuymans, Anton Chekhov, Vratislav Effenberger, Milton Hatoum, Andrie Platonov, Victor Pelevin, Rebecca Solnit, I found in this issue of Grand Street (no 64) contributions of David Mamet, Suzan Lori Parks, José Saramago, Tony Smith, Tennesse Williams and Pablo Neruda

Written in easy to understand language, this book is both interesting and informative. It provides generalized maps of geologic highlights along the trail, black & white pictures, and drawings which all tie into the informative text sections. Spiral bound with vinyl cover for rough handling during the hike. Highly recommended!

As a scientist familiar with quantum theory, but not a physicist, this book was very frustrating to read. I felt satisfied neither as a layman or a physical chemist. The book quoted several key concepts of superstring theory but did not really explain them in a way that I felt gave me more than a very superficial overview of the field. The digression into twistors was made at a point where more space could have fruitfully been spent adding flesh to the concepts presented early in the book.

The book starts of good and in chapter 7 he breaks of completely from superstrings and starts talking about some new unheard of idea of things called twisters. This would not be bad but twisters are supposed to replace spiners. Spiners to the uninformed are just a very small part of superstring theory.An example is writing a book on a 1998 Corvette and writing about the car for 6 chapers, then the other chapters are about the plug wires. Very Disapointing. If you want to read about some real superstring theory buy any book by Michio Kaku, much, much better books. They actually stick to what they say their about.

This book is non-technical -- it has almost no equations, but is well-illustrated. Just having finished it, I feel it gave a good sense of the major issues involved in this still highly speculative and uncertain field. Readable summary of the state-of-the-art in 1988. Author condescends nicely to the reader: he takes pains to repeat over and over, in slightly varying words, the technical points; this made book wordy; but it was a good strategy since, w/o equations, these esoteric ideas come across vaguely at best. Repetition allows at least "ear knowledge" of the jargon. Please don't expect much more at this level.

Like another reviewer, I was not happy with one-third of the book being devoted to twistors, since these strike this outsider as higher on mathematical elegance than on physical content. I will not fault Peat, however, for doing this since: A) due to his friendship with the Penrose Twistor group he is specially qualified to popularise this subject, and B) the Twistor program, a child of Penrose's brain, is rich in guiding principles, and provides therefore a healthy antidote to the superstrings, which grew up higgeldy-piggeldy by a sequence of "accidental" discoveries -- "It seems to work, but, heck, we don't really know why." Twistors have been less a matter of trial and error. At least they work well for massless particles. (Sidelight: In a blackboard discussion w/ Penrose at Cal Tech that I chanced to overhear about 25 yrs. ago, Feynman told Penrose that no one had succeeded in making massless fields cohere together so as to act like massive fields.)

This is a good book for anyone interested in Formula 1, provides good information and an "inside" view, but I found two problems. First this is a 1997 book sligthly revised in 2000, but it covers mainly F1 before 1997. Second, 95% of the photos are BW. In a F1 book, hardcover, this cost ??? Please...

If you're already well-versed in the latest F1 technology and are looking to further your knowledge to the absolute edge of the "state-of-the-art", this book may seem a bit stale. Like any technology-related book, it has become dated quickly.

But if you're a information-hungry "techie" who is relatively new to F1, you will enjoy the book. It serves as a valuable reference guide to the recent (mid-90s) history of F1 technology. It helps you put things into perspective, explaining how current F1 technology arrived at its present state.

I was somewhat disappointed in "The Grand Fleet 1906-1922," this latest effort by D.K. Brown. It's just not up to the standard of his earlier works, of which I have a high regard.

He second guesses US designer's analysis of British ships (like I always say, 20-20 hindsight is a wonderful thing) but then admits that these were probably for ships for which he (Brown) lacks references for. He then puts up future DNC Goodall's contemporary analysis of US designs without noting the errors contained in them that have been exposed for literally decades (see Friedman's "US Battleships" for one).

Mr. Brown also raises the old bug-a-boo about the all-or-nothing protection scheme of the "Standards" as being possibly overwhelmed by numerous hits on their unprotected ends. Somehow, he seems to be forgetting the fact that every post-war British capital ship design used nearly the same scheme, to say nothing that such fears were shown groundless by the pummeling that the USS Colorado received during WWII. If the all-or-nothing protection scheme was so bad, why then was it copied in most of its essentials in British post-WWI capital ship designs? Why didn't the Nelson's, KGV's, Lion's and Vanguard continue to use the incremental armor scheme so favored in the pre-war dreadnoughts? Perhaps Mr. Brown is saving such thoughts for the next volume in this series, but it's a glaring omission, nonetheless.

But, my very favorite passage was where Mr. Brown discusses the wartime exploits of British battlecruisers. In what can only be called revisionist history, Mr. Brown states that "the author believes that the basic concept of the battlecruiser was sound. Invincible's glorious career at Heligoland Bight, Falklands and Jutland justifies that statement. The three magazine explosions at Jutland (and the later case of Hood) have obscured the real value of such ships."

Sorry, but that just reminds this reader of that famous U.S. saying, "Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?" The exploits of a single ship, no matter how glorious, can not be said to justify a ship type that is most remembered for "sinking and leaving barely enough survivors to man a Yugo," to use a phrase I wish I'd thought of first (my hat's off to Cen). I'm afraid that the author's admiration for these ships' undeniably powerful appearance has kept him from applying his considerable talent for design analysis to their equally obvious flaws.

That said, this book does offer very interesting insights into the ships of all classes being built in Britain in the 1906-22 time frame. If you stick to following what the author knows best, the British design process, you won't go far wrong. His examples of British naval design thinking are mostly original, and include details for the lessor known ships, such as destroyers and submarines, that are so hard to find for pre-WWI vessels.

Finally, he cleared up something that has always puzzled me; why the British were so reluctant to fit super-firing turrets on their warships. For that alone, this book was a worthy addition to my library.

The Grand Fleet: Warship Design and Development 1906-1922 covers exactly what the title sugggests, the developement of primarily the British fleet in the years leading up to, during and immediately after World War I. In my opinion this was a well written scholarly book that focuses on the design process and underlying assumptions that led to the developement of the modern battleship navy. The work is broken down into sections for each class of ship, I found the section on aircraft carriers to be extremely informative on the British methods of carrier operations and the developement of this naval arm. Each section is chock full of technical drawings and photos of the ships concerned. The actual descriptions of the shipos in combat during the World War is rather limited so I would not consider this book as a source for combat operations, the focus of this volume is on naval architecture. If you read John Massey's Dreadnought and are seeking more technical information then this book is definetely for you. If you are looking for a light read then I would steer elsewhere.

Duff has obviously done a great deal of research but his writing style leaves a lot to be desired; and, unfortunately, inaccuracies are many. If he doesn't reference his source, treat his comments carefully. He announces, for example, that Queen Victoria rejected the suit of the Prince of Orange for her daughter Alice because the Prince was in love with a Catholic archduchess. Looking at the Queen's letters, one finds instead that her objections to the Prince had to do with his "dissapated" lifestyle-- and that it was Prince Louis of Hesse, the successful suitor, who was feared to be inappropriately in love with a Catholic princess. Similarly, Duff announces that the marriage of Alice's third daughter was "arranged" by the groom's mother-- a reasonable guess, given how many marriages WERE-- but in this case, incorrect; researching the matter would have shown it. With Duff's obvious access to unpublished sources, this sort of sloppiness is inexcusable.

He does very little to address his thesis, that Princess Alice had sides to her character which were not shown in her letters to her mother; she did, but Duff provides no evidence of any.

I was also disappointed in Duff's treatment of the Hessian royal family. Alice's in-laws are relegated to a mere footnote and one or two mentions in the text. Considering the frequency in which they are mentioned in her letters, this would seem untoward.

There are some good points. The brief biographical notes on minor characters in Alice's life are interesting (but again, many people who should not have been are relegated to these brief notes). The author includes large excerpts from the fascinating but unpublished memoirs of Alice's oldest daughter.

But overall, the narrative drags, the analysis of the subjects seems superficial at best, and Duff often seems to display a "wow, look what I found" attitude towards his voluminous research. (It's nice that he knows what all of Alice's wedding presents were. Do we really need a one-page footnote listing them all?) It's a pity, since so little material exists on Queen Victoria's second daughter, and even less on her adoptive family of Hesse. Unfortunately, until something better comes along, we're stuck with "Hessian Tapestry."

The text is extremely wordy with major portion as quotes. Lots of focus on why certain car technology features are not allowed or used. Read Technology of the F1 Car by Nigel Macknight for a far more concise insight into the 1998 F1 cars.