Arthur Ransome's seventh "Swallows and Amazons" adventure is set not long after the action of "Pigeon Post". The action occurs, this time, in the south of England, rather than in the Lake District, and with just the Swallows alone. They are passing the time on the Rivers Orwell and Stour, while waiting to meet up with their father - due, at any time, on leave from his overseas posting with the Royal Navy.

What starts out as a few days quiet sailing, though, quickly turns into something rather more frightening, with the children suddenly drawn into a terrifying and completely unexpected adventure, when they find themselves and their (borrowed) boat being swept out to sea by a fierce tide. For once, the Swallows face a very real and serious danger that is to test their combined courage, fortitude and seamanship to the utmost. It is fascinating (for grown-up readers, at least) to see each of the children's highly individual (and completely characteristic) reactions to their predicament. Younger readers, of course, are more likely just to be carried away by the pure nail-biting suspense of it all!

While this is a gripping and enthralling tale throughout, the tensions (arising from the danger and the worries of the older children) are lightened for the reader by the pure infectious glee of the younger pair. They, of course, are less aware of the seriousness of their predicament - especially Roger, who, as usual, is perfectly content so long as there is plenty of food around - and rather enjoy themselves!

As in all of the "Swallows and Amazons" books, Ransome's story-telling abilities are second to none, here. The narrative is at all times feasible and this book is a completely absorbing read for young and old alike. This is an inspired and an inspiring tale. Readers who have worked their way through the earlier volumes will also not be disappointed when they finally do get to meet Daddy in this volume!

Of all the "Swallows & Amazons" books, this is the most compelling read -- it doesn't share the laid-back mood of most of the others, and the Walker children are in real danger, which is unusual for the series (the nearest to such would be the "Israelites" sequence {in "Secret Water"} or in "Pigeon Post" {in the "Moles" or the fire sequence} all of which are important but limited parts of the books).

Visiting aboard the "Goblin", the yacht of a young man they had recently met, they find themselves adrift in a fog, swept helplessly out into the North Sea as they drag (and lose) anchor, and then running before a full North Sea gale, with no idea where they are or where they are headed, and no certainty that they will not find themselves sinking on shoals or run down by much larger ships (In a particularly tense and thrilling sequence, just that almost happens, averted at the last instant by ingenuity and level-headedness on the part of Captain John.).

Facing the dangers they discover, drawing on their experience in sailing much smaller boats and on their own courage and common sense, they succeed in keeping themselves and the "Goblin" from harm, and even succeed in a mid-sea "rescue".

And, in the course of the adventure, John Walker (somewhere in his late teens, if i calculate aright) makes a major part of the step from boy to young man, learning valuable lessons about himself and what he is capable of, and keeping himself and his sisters and brother safe through the long, stormy night.

This is children's adventure at its best, with action, comedy, thrills and danger enough to satisfy almost any taste, but no violence, gratutitous or otherwise.

I have read all the SWALLOWS AND AMAZONS books several times since I was ten. Now I'm fifteen and they are still among my favorite books. I DIDN'T MEAN TO GO TO SEA is my favorite of them all. The Swallows are all of a sudden in a very precarious situation - How do we survive this? They are in a small schooner in a big storm at night on the North Sea. John must use all his seamanship to get them across to Holland. It is an awesome adventure against the sea and all the problems that arise every two seconds. Its not a book you can put down easily. I guarentee you'll love it.

This is a valuable book for anyone interested in the decorative arts, especially for understanding the impact of the respected artist and teacher, Arthur Wesley Dow within both the American Arts and Crafts movement and American visual culture. It is a book suited both for the serious academic as well as the art enthusiast. Nancy E. Greene an Jessie Poesch have achieved a fine balance between their insightful scholarly text and the beautiful illustrations of prints, watercolors, photographs, pottery and furniture by Dow and other well-known exponents of this aesthetic shcool. This is truly a visual feast, a great book all around!

I fail to realize why this book is not used more by chaplains and caregivers who help the sick. It contains prayers from the ages, and helps to describe the way prayer and faith speed the healing process.

I've read quite a few of Machen's books and short stories and this one is my favorite. The writing style is beautiful and poetic and there's a sense of sinister mystery pervading the whole thing. It gave me a lovely, spine-tingling feeling. A truly great read!

Martyn Green was one of the Great D'oyly Carte patter singers. This book has the libretti of all of the shows, except for Utopia and Grand Duke, and Simary arrangements of the music. It is a great first book for any lover of G&S and a must have for anyone with any interest in G&S.

If there would be a criticism, it would be the relative lack of explainations of some of the more obscure words in the cannon, but this can be remedied by reference to the Harry Benford Lexicon (also available from Amazon). And the little bits about production practice which litter the libretti, more than make up for this.

The other drawback is the absurd decision not to keep this book in print.

THIS is the heart of Torah. Each hidden nugget of Truth excavated, brought to the surface, and given to the reader as a jewel. One, of course, familiar, for they knew it somehow already. So that one may smile, beam, and nod at the end of a teaching- saying, "I know! And somehow I knew, already." For each member of humanity is a Torah and the students of Nahum describes all that we embody in this book. Accessible and complex. As is Torah, and so we, and our relationship to All That Is, was, and will be.

A must have resource for people of any religion (or no affiliation at all) interested in knowing what Torah is all about or simply to revel in an entirely different realm of thinking. Different from the everyday, yet completely integral of the everyday. Accessible every minute of every day. Enjoy.

This book gives a very complete, authoritative and up-to-date treatment of acoustic and electromagnetic fields generated by bounded sources from several intertwined viewpoints: (a) their representations by volume sources and by "Huygens sources" distributed over a surface enclosing the source region, (b) plane-wave spectra, (c) far fields, and (d) far-field radiation patterns. When field measurements are made in a plane outside the source region, the plane-wave spectral representation lends itself naturally to correcting for the characteristics of the probe performing the measurements to compute the true fields beyond the scan plane. This explains the subtitle "Near-field Scanning Applications." Throughout the book, the scalar (acoustic) and vector (electromagnetic) cases are treated in tandem, with the acoustic case usually preceding the algebraically more complicated electromagnetic case.

Whereas the above topics have been the subject of a number of previous studies, the novelty of the present approach is in examining them thoroughly in the time domain as well as the frequency domain. The time-domain formulations are derived in two ways: by Fourier transforming the corresponding frequency-domain expressions, and then directly in the time domain from the properties of Green functions. The identity of the results, sometimes after long and difficult mathematical manipulations, helps the reader gain confidence in the final product even if she or he was unable to follow all the details of the derivation. As a mathematician, I was especially impressed by the consistently rigorous level of the treatments. Although mathematical rigor is sometimes dismissed by engineers as largely academic, the authors give ample demonstrations of its practical necessity. For example, the proof in Sections 6.1.1 (or 7.1.3) that the probe output solves the homogeneous Helmholtz equation (or wave equation) outside the region occupied by the sources and the probe is a case study of the need to justify bringing partial differential operators under an integral sign, as a sloppy treatment simply leads to the wrong conclusion that the homogeneous equation is satisfied in all of space!

The book ends with some practical considerations on sampling and numerical applications of the foregoing results.

The book is a very quick read, and very exciting. But don't be deceived. The weight you lose will most likely not come from the workouts (8 minutes should tell you something), but mostly from the dieting. My favorite part is the Quick Start week. He tells you you can lose weight without going without the treats you love. In the Quick start week you get two treats everyday: one cup of air popped pop corn and one marshmallow! Wow! That's a total of 45 calories! Come on. If you can't have snacks on this diet, then he should just say so. If you have 2 cups of popcorn and 3 marshmallows, are you supposed to feel guilty? It's better than a pint of Ben n' Jerry's, isn't it? I got this book hoping to fit some effective exercise into my busy schedule. Having never dieted before, I suppose I got a little shocked when I saw the diet.
If you buy this, just be remember you're really buying a diet book, not a workout book. You may do situps for 8 minutes in the morning, but you will be dieting the rest of the day.

Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't
by James C. Collins, Jim Collins

Reviewer: John Meyer (see more about me) from San Francisco, CA USA
Life Changing April 13, 2002
I have a hard time making it through this book simply because I am rereading pages multiple times. I don't work for a large company such as those studied in the book, but I found the description of how to focus one's business to be priceless. I also have benefitted from the concept of a 'stop doing' list, as a foil to the 'to do' list that has too often overwhelmed me. Unlike rah rah management books this one relies on fact -- a large helping of fact -- garnered from a lengthy and presumably costly process of interviewing thousands of executives in great and not so great companies. If I could pick one book to read in 2002.... this would be it.

The prophecies of Fatima are almost as well known -- and respected -- as those of the famous French seer Nostradamus.In l9l7 three children had repeated visions of the Virgin Mary in Portugal. They were given prophecies concerning World Wars I and II as well as the world wide spread of communnism. But their third prophecy was not officially released until recently...and there are those who maintain that the real revelations were not disclosed by the church.This book not only reveals what the Third Secret Prophecy of Fatima may consist of; but also gives photographic proof that the Virgin Mary has appeared in over two hundred incidents in the last several decades.Arab terrorists? UFOs? End of the World?The book is very readable and presented in an easy to understand format. It has a good number of pictures and follows a logical order as oppossed to some other books I have TRIED to read on the subject. This is NOT an overly religious approach -- the authors do not seem to have any axe to grind. I recommend this book highly.

Sfat Emet is an incredibly succinct and somewhat enigmatic work. There are portions that are so cryptic that one must read them several times in order to absorb their full meaning. Accordingly, Prof. Green's elucidation can be quite helpful. Furthermore, while Prof. Green taps into the universalism inherent in Sfat Emet, he is generally moderate in his interpretation of the Rebbe's work. As a result, he very rarely offends the sensibilities of the more traditional reader (i.e., one that might refer to "the Sfas Emes"). Finally, the historical information is good reading.

First published at the end of the 19th century, this is a work of startlingly radical theology. Green summarizes one short comment:

"There is an openness in this teaching to an authentic universalism that is rare in Jewish sources. All the tongues of humanity praise G*d, each in their own distinctive way but as part of the universal chorus. The Moses who "created openings, gates of Torah" in all the places and tongues of the world is not like the religiously imperialistic missionary who translates his own Bible into all the languages and thus rejoices at the spread of G*d's word. Here the "openings" have to come from within those languages and the cultures that are an inseparable part of them. If we understand that there is really but one G*d and listen to the prophet who says: "Everywhere incense and sacrifice are offered to My name" (Mal. 1:11), we will begin to understand our task as participants in and listeners to the truly universal human chorus."

The Gerer rebbe points out the real Torah was the innermost utterance of Hashem which created the universe. Everything in the universe is manifestation of Hashem. Even the Hebrew Torah itself is a "clothing" on top of the original Torah - a kind of translation, if you will.

One can only marvel at the succinct style and unique vision of this great spiritual master. While studying the Sefat Emet, I am struck by the spiritual poverty of this generations Torah leaders.

This is just to say that I enjoyed reading the above erudite review by mneueruncle.