I know Alex Lee, as well as "Doc" Norton and Paul "Old Man" Keaveney. A. Lee says this book, in my inscription, is a book about love , the love one man has for another, so he is willing to lay his life down for the other! I heartily suggest you read this book, if you want an honest, frank account of war, as seen through the eyes of the men who fought it! I have worked with these men, and written about them. I think the highest compliment I could get was when Alex Lee said to me, Kevin, we read what you wrote and know what was published. You are "One of My Marines"! As a Young Marine Support Staff person, I have had Paul Keaveney come and speak to our Young Marines. I have had "Doc" Norton Speak at our USMC Birthday Balls. They are fine Americans, and honest, dedicated loyal U. S. Marines.!!!!! Semper FI!!

This is one of the best books on military leadership I have ever read. LtCol Lee's willingness to highlight not only what he and his unit achieved but also what could have done diffently seperates this book from being just another "I was there" book full of sea stories. Excellent read. I encourage any Marine or Army NCO or officer to pick this book up. Lots of lessons learned future generations can read here.

No matter what you think about differential equations, you just got to have that book. The software that comes with it, is dynamite, and fully adds to Mathematica's Dsolve. Fact is, after you read the book you may understand what Ordinary Differential Equations are all about. "By the way there is nothing ordinary about Differential equations". These guys really know their stuff. Even better they can really explain it well. The book reads like someone is constantly talking to you or guiding you. The presentation is great. My only problem is that I finally understood the stuff. [ A pleasant one at that] The other fascinating thing about the book is the historical backgound of the mathematicians who contibuted to the discovery of DEs. This makes the book so enjoyable. Read this book and your girlfriend/boygriend will think you are a true inspired genius. However make it fast. They are bound to find out for themselves. This book will be true classic. BTW, you c! ould also look up another great book on DE. Authors are Blanchard, Devaney and Hall. Published by Brooks/Cole. These two books are all you should ever need.

Really good, if not best. It is the resource text as an example for textbooks for the years to come. You learn to work out analytically first and then computing and numerically. The Mathematica notebook format of the acompaning CD-Rom is not only containing all the 900 pages of the book and it's graphycs but also animations and the solutions to exercises and Mathematica exercises. I would have liked that my first ODE textbook would have been like that one. Fantastic!

This book in on the USMC Professional reading list, but as a Marine (any rank) you should read this book to gain an understanding of where the top enlisted in our Corps came from. This is not a story. The book contains short biographies that give you insight about the Sergeant's Major of the Marine Corps who set the standard for future Marines. Simply a great source of history for Marines, or those who are interested in our heritage. Semper Fidelis!

If Malory's "Le Morte D'Arthur" is the backbone of Arthurian literature, Tennyson's "Idylls" are its flesh and blood. In this extraordinary epic poem, Tennyson has transformed Malory's automatons to living and breathing characters, and infuses the legend of King Arthur with passionate intensity that had hitherto been absent. In addition to this, for the first time King Arthur's story, told in its immensity, becomes something more than a dry cataloguing of events or an excuse to have knights and derring-do: underlying "Idylls of the King" is a vision of tragedy and destiny only vaguely hinted at in Malory.

Admittedly, this is not the easiest thing in the world to read, but simply reading major parts is worth it, without necessarily following the story of Tristram or other such details. Most interesting in this poem is the relationship between Guinevere and Lancelot, which is complicated and sometimes dark. Tennyson's characters are complex beings, complete with inner shadows and desires which sometimes conflict with the ideals put forth by Arthur's "Table Round."

Since it is after all Tennyson, the language is breathtaking, though one familiar with his other poetry might be slightly regretful, as I was, that it occasionally lacks the power of his other poems. Perhaps this is to be expected, given the length: and since it is Tennyson, less powerful than his other work is still marvelous.

Some may be irritated by Tennyson's moralistic streak, which is hard to ignore, as well as the distinct parallels with Christianity which the poet introduces from time to time. The idea that women somehow embody all sin certainly makes an appearance here, as Guinevere is sometimes portrayed almost as evil incarnate.

Nonetheless, with its almost mystical undertones, beautiful language and psychological complexity, "Idylls of the King" is worth checking out, whether you are a fan of King Arthur or Tennyson; it is an epic which combines emotion and the magical, life and the legendary.

This lengthy poem about King Arthur's court is written in grand epic style, in the spirit of the Iliad, the Odyssey, and Paradise Lost, and drawing on these and other great epics. Tennyson follows many of the traditional epic conventions here--the epic similes, the epic quests, etc. But this work is not wholly an epic, it is rather more of a Romance. The book is divided into various sections, each dealing with a knight (or knights) of King Arthur's court. The adventures they encounter are various and only remotely connected, but there is a back story to each. Something is going on behind the scenes. The first part of the book deals with the rise of Arthur, and of the glory of his kingdom. The second part focuses on the gradual decline of his influence, and culminates with the King's discovery of Lancelot and Guinevere's affair.

This is one of my favorite Arthurian romances. Tennyson's verse is beautiful and vivid, and his story is both compelling and easy to follow. No study of English Romanticism would be complete without Tennyson, and this is one of his finest works.

Idylls of the king is a harder read but the expirience is well worth it. Tennyson's language creates a vivid image in the mind of the reader. I would not expect someone without knowledge of King Arthur to like this book. But doing some background info is worth it just to read Tennyson's masterpiece. The mood set by Tennyson is quite captivating. As opposed th Lancelot and Guinevere's affair being in secret, Tennyson sets it up as a point of tension between knights. The story shows many qualities associated with chivalry but also shows what things a knight can do to disgrace himself (ex. Balin) If you do not think you want to read this whole book at least read the Idyll of Guinevere. The true character of Arthur is displayed as he forgives Guinevere before going off to die. Also this Idyll gives a new prospective to the relationship of Lancelot and the queen. Once again, it is a great book but do not jump right into it unprepared.

The visualization of complicated geometrical objects
is now routine thanks to the excellent software that
has been developed over the past two decades. Now
students and professionals can have a better
appreciation of the geometrical properties of these
objects thanks to these software packages. In this
book the author has done a great job of doing this,
having chosen one of the best tools for this purpose:
Mathematica. The book is a hefty one, totaling almost
1100 pages, but its perusal is worth the effort for
those who want a more intuitive appreciation behind
the concepts of differential geometry. Physicists in
particular, who usually need a pictorial approach to
complement the learning of a subject, should really
enjoy this book. It could definitely be used as a
textbook in a beginning course in differential
geometry since there are problems at the end of each
chapter and most of the results in the book are proven
with the required mathematical rigor, I.e. this book
is not just code and pictures, and a substantial
portion of it is devoted to definitions and rigorous
proofs. This is especially true for the discussion on
differentiable manifolds and Riemannian geometry. The
author also includes a brief biography of the
mathematicians who have been involved in differential
geometry at various places in the book. The
Mathematica code in the book though can be revised to
make it look more like standard mathematical notation,
thanks to the new features of Mathematica that have
appeared since this book was published (1997). The use
of color shading is not done in the book, except for a
short insert with pictures of several surfaces, but
the reader can easily experiment with the color
functions available in Mathematica if needed. A very
lengthy appendix that lists the functions and code
used in the book is included.
Some of the concepts that are usually
difficult to grasp intuitively for those approaching
differential geometry for the first time but are here
illustrated nicely include: 1. The computation of the
curvature of plane curves and the plotting of this
curvature. The curvature of the famous Lissajous
curves, very familiar from oscilloscope traces, is
computed. The author might have spent a little more
time explaining why the curvature plots have the shape
they do however. 2. The treatment of osculating curves
to plane curves. 3. The finding of curves whose
curvature is equal to the arc length times a Bessel
function. The resulting plots are very entertaining.
4. The computation of the torsion of a curve in space.
The discussion on torus knots is particularly well-
done. 5. The author's discussion on surfaces in
Euclidean space motivates well the concept of a
differentiable manifold. He plots a few surfaces with
coordinate patches that have a singularity, and shows
how to plot surfaces that defined nonparametrically.

Kummer's surface, of particular importance in
algebraic geometry, is plotted here. Even more useful
is the author's treatment of nonorientable surfaces,
wherein he shows the reader how to plot the Moebius
strip, the Klein bottle, and two realizations of the
projective plane using Mathematica. Several examples
of the Gaussian curvature of surfaces are plotted. The
Gauss map, one of the most important tools for the
physicist, is given detailed treatment. 6. Rare in
textbooks at this level of differential geometry is a
discussion of minimal surfaces, but the author gives a
very nice treatment in this book. The Enneper's,
Scherk's Henneberg's and Catalan's minimal surfaces
are plotted along with the Gauss map of Enneper's
surface. Minimal surfaces are extremely important in
theoretical physics, such as superstring and membrane
theories, and are also very important in optimization
theory, so it was nice to see a discussion of them
included in the book. In recent years galleries of
minimal surfaces have appeared on the Web, and this
book allows one to plot these without too much effort.
The author even introduces the use of complex analysis
in the study of minimal surfaces. Readers interested
in understanding the mathematics of string theory will
appreciate this discussion. In addition, the
Weierstrass representation, which allows generation of
new minimal surfaces, is introduced. Readers familiar
with the Weierstrass function for elliptic curves will
see it used here for this generation.

I strongly disagree with the reviewer at the bottom of this page. Having taken a differential geometry course last year using do Carmo's book (also excellent) I came to appreciate the intuition that this book lends to the reader. Also, this book makes greater use of elementary linear algebra than is common in some more standard texts, for example in defining the second fundamental form in terms of the Shape Operator. For students wanting to compliment their course notes or standard text with a book which will thoroughly explain both the fundamentals and isolated topics, this book is highly recommended.

Gray does not intend for you to buy his book if you don't haveaccess to Mathematica and simply want to learn about differentialgeometry from an axiomatic standpoint. Of course if you don't have access to Mathematica, this isn't for you, and even if you do have Mathematica, you will probably want to have a good "standard" text to go along with your learning. Having said this, the book and Mathematica make an excellent addition to anyone's diferential geometry course.

This was the swan song of Samuel Driver, the greatest Bible scholar of his generation. His commentaries on Samuel and Deuteronomy are still well worth reading; indeed, they are still unsurpassed in some aspects. Why is this book different? Firstly, Driver died before finishing it; most of the general commentary, and much of the "philological notes" (which occupy half the book), were by G B Gray. While he was a fine scholar, he was not quite in Driver's league. Secondly, Job is probably by far the most difficult book in the Bible to deal with. It is written in complex, allusive poetry which even Driver could not understand. In the last 80 years, a flood of new light has been cast on the Old Testament by archaeology, comparative linguistics and other disciplines. This has improved the understanding of every book, but Job has benefited far more than Deuteronomy and Samuel. Thus, while this book is by no means worthless, it has been superseded by more recent commentaries (notably "The Book of Job" and "The Book of God and Man" by Robert Gordis).