These stories are like potato chips--once you read one, you can't stop. They are sad and funny and wonderfully written by a master of prose.

If you are interested in any subject of position astronomy (motion of the moon, stellar navigation, astrometry, etc.) you must stat by reading this book. Eventhough it is basically a reviewed old text, it is still the most concise and complete reference on the area.

It contains from the basic formulas of spherical trigonometry to the full explanation of the conditions necesary to observe a solar eclipse, or principles of star parallax measurement, for example.

I think this book is useful not only for amateur and pro astronomers, but also for undergraduate mathemathicians and physicists, and even for highschoolers.

Martin Green's WRIOTHESLEY'S ROSES IN SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS, POEMS AND PLAYS adds significantly to our information about Shakespeare, of whom few have been able to tell us very much. The book captures the social milieu of the times, mentioning almost everybody who was anybody. It focuses on the well-educated, politically active, and sexually ambiguous coterie surrounding the Earl of Essex and their influence on Shakespeare's knowledge and concepts. Green's thesis is that the third Earl of Southampton, Henry Wriothesley (pronounced Rose-ly) was the "thou, my Rose" to whom the sonnets were addressed, the inspirer of Shakespeare's red and white and Rose imagery. One cannot but be impressed by the amassed evidence, starting with the Wriothesly coat-of-arms and the architectural particulars of H.W.'s Titchfield home. For all who love sleuthing, this book is a must. Stylistically a delight, partly because of Green's ready, wry humor, the book argues its case with the cogency of a skillful lawyer, anticipating and covering all points of view. In his insightful interpretations of Shakespeare's writings, Green highlights the puns and dark conceits that he says were there for artistic reasons and not out of legal necessity to avoid revelation of homosexual or sodomitical content. The book concludes with a short, lyrical chapter describing an initial meeting of Shakespeare and Henry Wriothesley, so beautiful that one ardently hopes it was so. Mr. Green is also author of THE LABYRINTH OF SHAKESPEARE's SONNETS, London 1974.

The main male charachter has reason to leave civilization and travels far into South American jungles, meets with native tribes, and finds one which takes him in. They all seem happy with him until his curiosity gets the best of him, and he goes to a 'forbiden forest' so feared by this tribe he becomes ostricised for having been there.

In the second part of this book he befriends a mysterious girl who lives in the forest and seems more farie than human. He finds himself doing things for her which he would have never thought he would do for another person.

This is a clasic love story, intriguing, beautiful, and tragic. This was one of my first introductions to the classics of lliterature, and prompted me to find and read more of classic literature which has greatly enriched the scope of my reading experiences.

I read the Classic Comic version of this book many times when I was a kid. I've only now just read the original and found it's haunting beauty lingered in my mind for the last 2 weeks. The description of Abels mental travails at the end of the book is a particularly memorable and inspired.

My mother having read this book sometime before I was born in the 50's, was so moved that she named me after Rima. When I was 12 I read it for the first time, and after moving many times the book was lost. I have always wanted to re-read it as an adult feeling that there was quite a bit more I would appreciate now. I am delighted to have located this novel, and will be thrilled not to have to explain to my friends once more where my name originated. I will just loan them the book!

Rilke's "Duino Elegies" form one of the most perfect collections of lyric poetry you can ever hope to get your hands on. Unfortunately for the David Young translation, however, there is much less Rilke than there ought to be; a series of strange decisions on Young's part casts a shadow over even the brighter moments of his rendering of this masterpiece.

For example, Rilke was a genius at enjambment; that is, he was a master at placing his most important words at the very end or very beginning of a line, in order to highlight them. Think of the first line, which ends with "Engel," splitting it from the first word of the next line, "Ordnungen." (Young merely gives these words together, as "angelic orders," at the end of the third line.) By divorcing the angels from their orders in the poem's very first line, Rilke sets the tone that not all is right in the heavens.

And Rilke's line breaks are even more important than those of other poets, because they are few and far between, since his lines are nice and fat, often more than 13 syllables. Young's lines, on the other hand, are broken up into tiny 2- to 8-syllable, bite-sized chunks. This changes not only the rhythm of Rilke's verse--which obviously would have changed anyway, in translation--but its compositional emphases, as the structure of the most important lines is simply whisked away. And that is a tragedy.

Young's excuse for this unfortunate decision? He happened, while he was working on the translation, "to re-read some of William Carlos Williams' late poetry," and he liked Williams' stubbier, tri-partite lines. Rilke, however, is not William Carlos Williams, and Young's rendering of Rilke as Williams suffers because of this incongruity. (Oddly enough, though, Williams is another poet for whom every line break bears an awful lot of weight; too bad Young didn't carry that respect for enjambment into his work on the "Duino Elegies.")

Those interested in Rilke should do themselves a favor and pick up Mitchell's translation. I simply can't recommend this edition. It gets three stars because, despite the muddle, there are SOME beautifully rendered lines, and some of the power of Rilke manages to squeeze through. And that's always a wonderful thing.

For me, at least, Rainer Maria Rilke's Duino Elegies are the very epitome of poetry. I know others who, even though they admire Rilke above all other poets, prefer other "Rilke" poems, such as "Evening." For me, however, it has always been, and always will be, the Elegies. Certainly they are the most extravagant and elusive of Rilke's poems, even for those who count others among their favorites.

Rilke, who longed for a place of solitude in the country, arrived at the fortress-like Castle Duino, high above the Adriatic, near Trieste, in December 1911. His hostess was Princess Marie von Thurn und Taxis-Hohenlohe, who had invited Rilke to translate Dante's Vita Nuova with her. Princess Marie, however, soon left for more sociable climes and Rilke was left alone on the stormy, wind-swept cliffs of Duino. Rilke, at this time of his life, was known to commit himself to a strict regimen of work. Nevertheless, his poems, he has written, always seemed to burst upon him suddenly, like a thunderstorm on a hot summer's afternoon. And, one afternoon at Duino, the opening line of the first elegy burst upon Rilke like a flash of lightening.

There is no problem with the Duino Elegies...if one reads and comprehends German. If one doesn't, however, the problems of translation can be enormous. Translation, always a fragile task, becomes even more so when it involves poetry, and reaches its zenith with a work as sublime as Rilke's Duino Elegies. So many versions of these gorgeous poems exist (at least twenty), that the Elegies are certainly suffering from a case of "translation overkill."

In the original German, the Duino Elegies are the most sublime expressions of awe, of terror, of love, of splendor, of Life, that have ever been set down by the hand of man. In hands other than Rilke's, however, they can seem clumsy and more than a bit melodramatic. Rilke wrote delicately-calibrated poetry, without excess words and, the dread of all translators, the hyphenated word. But, all that aside, reading the Elegies in translation, any translation, is better than not reading them at all.

No matter how "angelic" these poems may seem, never doubt that they are expression of life in the here and now. As Rilke, himself, tells us, "the world exists nowhere but within us." These gorgeous poems are about the difficulties of living in this world, of not being heard by the angels, and of the tragedy that can so easily befall us. They are about Rilke's desire for solitude and his desire to escape it, i.e., the need and the utter impossibility of understanding and being understood completely in this life.

Although many of the translations are flawed, as translation by its very nature must be, the Duino Elegies remain the epitome of poetry. They are a cry of terror, of awe, of joy, of splendor at the lonely and solitary condition of man.

"For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror we can just barely endure, and we admire it so because it calmly disdains to destroy us. Every angel is terrible." - Rainer Maria Rilke, First Elegy

The Duino Elegies are quite possibly the greatest work of Rainer Maria Rilke, himself one of the greatest poets, German language or otherwise, of all time. The elegies, writen in the cold vast chambers of Duino Castle, deal with all the greatest issues of human existence: love, death, tragedy, God, and life's very meaning. Their language reflects their origin: like the Castle's empty stone hallways, the words are perfectly formed; they are fragile and beautiful; weightless and profound. Rilke's first elegy begins with a reflection on the awesome, terrifying power of beauty. He longs to experience it, but knows that it would destroy him. As he writes on, the reader grows to understand and feel not only Rilke's longing, but his fear. The terrible beauty, looming behind all the elegies, is present in the text. The poems inspire wonder, raise profound quetions with ineffable answers, and fills us with awe as it calmly disdains to destroy us.

The German text is perfect, but MacIntyre's translation is splendid and best conveys the work's haunting and desolate undertones. While it seems to me that everyone should own and cherish the Duino Elegies, it is an absolute requirement for anyone seeking to construct a serious collection of great poetry.

Being already published in 1957, and again in 1962 and 1975, this book was for years one of the standard references about WW2 fighter aircraft. Since 1975 however, there has been sustantially more published about WW2 fighters than between 1945 and 1975, and though not all of those publications had new material compared to this one, quite a few did and quite a few of the new monographs about WW2 fighter planes were a lot more thorough, often discovering things in addition to this book or even sometimes contradicting it. Nevertheless it remains one of the best quick references for silhouetes and open airframe drawings, which have been used by Mr. Green over and over again in his later standard references such as the ten volume "Warplanes of the second World War" or the twelve volume "WW2 Aircraft Fact Files", both published by Macdonald and/or Jane's

A two-volume collection of factual text, drawings, and photos describing the evolution of the most important fighter planes of WW 2. An aircraft history buff's dream !

Green's text, specs, layouts and photos are marvelous. One can compare the Mustang to the ME109 on performance, payload, design changes and development. Best reviews of Japanese aircraft anywhere. Two volumes. By same author: Famous Bombers of WWII.

One thing can definitely be said for Tad Williams: in comparison to other fantasy writers, who start big and then peter out, his writing improves in leaps and bounds with each passing work. All the threads he wove together so cleverly, beginning with 'The Dragonbone Chair' and continuing in 'Stone of Farewell', are revealed to their fullest extent in this majestic conclusion. Typical fantasy this is not. Throw your predictions out the window when you read this series--Tad knows cliches when he sees them, and avoids them masterfully until the very end.

Toward the end, the story begins to take on the quality of a lush piece of music: marching in ever-twining threads which like strains of melody, spiral upward, constantly adding new threads of power and beauty whenever the tune starts to become familiar. There are moments so moving that they are transcendant, and so imaginative that one is tempted to predict that this is an epic that will last after many others have faded with the years.

The characters only get better, Simon in particular, who literally goes to hell and back. Tad Williams does not put his hero to minor tests and allow him to earn his status as the hero with the swing of a sword; rather, like Winston Churchill, he demands "blood and toil, tears and sweat" in relentless profusion. Yet rather than being an orgy in pain and suffering, the story is uplifting in its depiction of boy who begins as 'ordinary', and in overcoming tremendous suffering and tests of courage, becomes a hero worthy of the name.

There are some drawbacks to this otherwise perfect book. For one thing, Tad Williams is lacking in his portrayal of women, primarily Miriamele and Vorzheva. The latter is constantly whining and irredeemably selfish--it's difficult to understand how a great guy like Josua got stuck with her, let alone risked his life for her sake. The fact that the author is obviously in love with her does not make liking her any easier.

Miriamele is well-realized character, but toward the end she becomes sulky, and the problems that exist in her relationship with Simon are never resolved, let alone discussed, since any such discussion deteriorates into cuddling. This makes the abrupt resolution of their relationship at the end hard to swallow--so they slept together. Maybe it'll put off their problems for a night--but what about the rest of their lives?

I also thought that some very dramatic events at the end should not have been narrated by Tiamak after the fact--it took away any sense of immediacy, and belittled the importance of Cadrach's wrenching sacrifice.

Other than that, though, what is there to say? This is an epic that actually lives up to its length and delivers. The author obviously knew where he was going from page one, and his intent drives the story home by the end with stunning power. Not by any means a light read--but deep and immensely satisfying.

Yes, I have read LOTR, but i consider this better than that overall, though nothing can compete with LOTR history. Memory Soorw and Thorn by Tad Williams is a masterpiece. It's world and the charecters that call it home are totally believable. Everything about the story speaks at so many levels that I know that I will reread this series many times. There is no way that I can explain the book in under a thousand words. He takes many stereotypes and completly breaks them. Without ruining the story, all i can say is that by the end, I felt sorry for the storm king. Also, there is a twist that occurs at the end of this book, that puts the previous pages in a new light. if you are a fan of epic fantasy, or personal conflict, this series covers both and so much more.

"To Green Angel Tower" is the culmination of what I consider the best fantasy series by a living author. He has created a world as fascinating and detailed as Tolkein's, blending European history and mythology into a seamless whole that creates a land both familiar and strange. His bad guys are every bit as creepy as anything I've read, and the hero has just the right blend of courage and confusion to make him utterly believable. If you haven't yet discovered Tad Williams, you owe it to yourself!

One word of advice - buy the whole third book in the hardcover if you can - they had to split the paperback version up into two parts, which is awkward.

Yes, I have read LOTR, but i consider this better than that overall, though nothing can compete with LOTR history. Memory Soorw and Thorn by Tad Williams is a masterpiece. It's world and the charecters that call it home are totally believable. Everything about the story speaks at so many levels that I know that I will reread this series many times. There is no way that I can explain the book in under a thousand words. He takes many stereotypes and completly breaks them. Without ruining the story, all i can say is that by the end, I felt sorry for the storm king. Also, there is a twist that occurs at the end of this book, that puts the previous pages in a new light. if you are a fan of epic fantasy, or personal conflict, this series covers both and so much more.

Tad Williams did a great job with this book and with the series as a whole. The series is admirably written with great characterization & vividly described battle scenes. Also, age-old clichés are either given new and subtle twists or discarder altogether in place of fresh ideas. However there were long stretches that I felt could have been condensed. Did we really need to read about Simon stumbling through underground tunnels yet again with next to nothing happening to him except hunger and thirst (until he encounters Inch, of course)? I found this almost excruciating to read, not just of concern for the character but out of sheer impatience with the story. I don't know how else Williams could have charted Simon's journey to the Hayholt but I wish he could have found another way. The climax was tautly paced and this also was excruciating (in a good way), but the ending, i.e. the defeat of the Storm King wasn't explored enough. The reader is left to provide the details on how the Storm King gets vanquished. However, it's not too much of a stretch and it ultimately comes off as believable. There's a lot to be said for leaving things to the reader's imagination and Williams does that. Lastly - Aedon be praised! - there's an ending. After being hopelessly frustrated with Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time and despairing of ever seeing a resolution (which is why I'm hesitant to start Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth series), it's heartening to see a series that has an ending.

First of all, I must say that I'm giving this 5 stars to the whole trilogy. "To Green Angel Tower" I would give 4 and a half. Beginning of "Dragonebone chair" was a little slow, but when Morgenes died, everything started to flourish. Action, adventure, horror - the book had everything a fantasy fan can wish. "Stone of Farewell" was even more interesting to read. What I liked best about these books is that some of main characters are being killed. In a fantasy genre, it's pretty hard to find an author who wold kill his heroes. What I don't like about "To Green Angel Tower" is ending. This kind of utter happyend is not in accord to the rest of trilogy. The other thing is this scullion-becomes-king cliche. I suspected that Simon was of noble blood when he collected Thorn and killed the dragon, but I was hoping that in the end he would go away and live with Sithi. Nevertheless, it's a great fantasy series and I hope Tad Williams will write many more like this.

I was disappointed in this book, as it contains very little information that is applicable to trading strategies. The only information in this category is very general and would be found in virtually any trading book. Primarily, this book seems to be one big advertisement for the futures industry. A large section of the book is devoted to the history of online trading and the companies who shaped it as well as interviews with principals of these firms.

If you are a new trader, you may find something useful here. If, however, you are a seasoned trader, there is virtually nothing in this book that you will find helpful.

I have an advance copy of this book and the pages are allready dog-eared. This insightful book will point out the pitfalls beginning traders face as they enter the futures markets. All in all this book is indispensable.

This book starts out with the history of CME and progresses evenly into the future of electronic trading. Speaks in layman terms, concise and flows smoothly for the non-professional trader. The question and answer section was extremely helpful and interesting. A necessary handbook for anyone looking to become an effective screen trader.

The title is a bit of a joke because the book is actually quite small in the physical sense. Basically it is a list of words (primarily English language words) that seem to fit into a range of categories that can be general (male parts) or very specific (tasty terms). Some lists are set up as charts that focus on the play with one phrase or rhyme systems. The picture throughout could be funny or distracting depending on your personal taste -- I found them a bit of both. Once more we see that in the English language words relating to women's bodies and sexuality are fewer and less "active". It could be fun to read with friends but since no real definitions are offered for the terms, not very helpful to writers I think.

This is one of the funniest books I've picked up in a while. Its really just a listing of terminology and euphemisms for sexuality and the like. If you ever wanted to boost your dirty word list, here's your book.

I read a few reviews, one in particular complains that this isn't the best book on the subject, but I don't see any alternate choices listed. Ok, maybe this is or isn't THE definitive guide to the subject, but its pretty good, and pretty cheap.

Of all the odd and different books that are stored on my coffee table, this is by far the most popular pick. It's simply hilarious. And who can resist gaining the "knowledge" which it contains? A real winner for the fun at heart...