The man whom James Joyce considered the greatest prose stylist in the language is also the most persuasive of apologists. Christianity--and the Roman Catholic Church in particular--has received routinely bad press. Newman is its most eloquent, passionate defender.

There are many books covering this subject. However it is more common for Epilepsy to be a chapter in a Neurology or other textbook. The signigicant advantage to this sole subject text is the thoroughness and completness of the coverage. It is also better than other sole subject texts I have reviewed. Furthermore simple and what should be obvious matters are discussed yet absent in other texts. An example is the discussion on page 166 of the loss of speech during a simple partial seizure. This symptom is clearly stated yet absent from many other compendium. In fact a patient had just this loss of speech symptom after a neurosurgery procedure and it caused much controversy. Psychiatric consult was called and it was misdiagnosed as a panic/fear syndrome due to the surgery. The patient would have received the wrong treatment. . It was only after being presented with this speech arrest discussion that the diagnosis was changed to being symtomatic of this patients sim! ple partial seizure. This book has more than paid for itself and I await the new edition which should be out soon. There have been many changes since this last publication....

Got this after a desire to collect the 9-11 comics as my ending run in comic collecting, and I must say I am impressed with not only the size of it, but the consitent and diverse work inside. Loads of unfamiliar work that perhaps wouldn't be seen on such a public level with such quality, and at 200 pages for the price its at, its damn good.

The stories themselves? Some make you think. Some make you wonder. All make you remember.

There's really not much I can say about this book. The stories contained in it are poignant and touching and heartbreaking and hopeful all at once, and each and every contributor has given not only their time and talent to the project, but clearly they've also given a piece of their hearts. Being born and raised in New York City, the events of September 11th are especially painful to me, but I came away from reading this book feeling just a little more hopeful than I did when I started it. Kudos to all involved for a magnificent effort. (And all of the money goes to a good cause, too!)

The power of the comic book medium is that, by using drawings, they express emotions and reactions that are difficult to put down in words. Due to the extreme nature of this event, this is an excellent way to express what we have all been through.

The most impact is provided by the independent, i.e. non-superhero, writers who express what they went through with pictures and words. From the initial shock to the lingering malaise, the complete cycle is expressed. Reading this book brought back those feelings in me and, even though my emotions were swelling up, I kept reading. This event is now part of our collective experience and we are forever affected by it.

I recommend reading through when you need some perspective on what's important in life. Enjoy life, tell your friends and family that you love them because you never know when it may end.

This review doesn't get too into the content of the book but the impact that it had. As for me, that's the sign of a good read.

An excellent book for learning about sailboats and sailing in short order. The book is well laid-out and has lots of excellent high quality photos from various perspectives to illustrate equipment, setup and techniques. This is the best book I have found for getting informed about sailing basics in a hurry. Well worth the price even if you just want to learn about sailboats and not even sail.

It would be hard to imagine a more complete, user-friendly, and enjoyable text on beginner sailing will exist for many years to come. This book is one of those lush photo-illustrated productions that Dorling Kindersley and other British publishers are famous for: the future of the book in the age of computer and television will be assured if this type of publishing becomes widespread.
That said, there are a couple of caveats for the self-learner and beginner. The first is that the author does not clearly point out the distinction between sailing dinghies, that is, small racers or day-sailors without weighted keels or cabins, and keelboats, which are not covered. Many of the techniques and warnings found in the text do not apply to keelboats, such as pulling up your centerboard on different points of sail. Also, capsize on a keelboat is uncommon and the techniques for righting dinghies will simply not work if the boat hasn't already righted itself. And there is the usual problem of a British book using British terminology: in America the "kicking strap" is the "boom vang". The book is written from the point of view of a British instructor teaching "by the book" to a British audience preparing for formal dinghy racing, which means there is some emphasis on issues such as specialized clothing, but it's good to see the whole technique laid out this way--few other books have done it.

The book is an easy read with the most appropriate of illustrations. This is the best manual for beginners I have ever seen. Though designed as a self-teach manual for beginners the book is best used as a manual by both instructor and student as training boats vary everywhere and not all readers may have access to the same dinghy design as the Laser 2 used in the book. The instructor would benefit from the well laid out schedule of activities that a trainee interested in basic sailing skills should undergo. An interested student on the other hand would be more comfortable with the daunting sailing terms they usually encounter in training classes as the book explains them well and the manual organizes training activities such that they are easy to follow.

Another excellent medieval historical from Elizabeth Chadwick! Her books never disappoint the reader. This is the sixth novel I've read by this author and it is one of her best yet!

This story involves the lives of Miriel Weaver and Nicholas de Caen. Miriel is physically and verbally abused by her stepfather continually until he decides against her will to dump her in a nunnery. She eventually escapes with the help of Nicholas whom she had nursed back to health in the convent infirmary. He had been a prisoner with King John's baggage train in 1216 carrying all the royal regalia until the fatal tide and quicksand ends everyone's life but his own. He then takes a chest unknowingly containing a fortune in silver and Queen Matthilda's crown.

Literally down the road, Miriel parts Nicholas' company with some of the silver and Queen Mathilda's crown. He finds this out and becomes enraged and vows to one day get revenge. However, for much of the story they live out different lives with different people until they fatefully meet again.

I loved the detail and descriptions particularily concerning the wool trade, especially the manufacturing of the different types of wool fabrics and colors. This book had me turning pages until 2 a.m. anticipating what would happen next. A very exciting read!

English author Chadwick is the only author I can think of who manages to blend historical fiction with historical romance seamlessly from start to finish. I liked this novel better than her prior one, "The Love Knot", because this one gets to the story's central conflicts faster. Set in medieval times, like all of Chadwick's novels, Miriel and Nicholas are the lead characters, brought together when she nurses him to health in the convent where she is a novitiate. Miriel escapes from the convent and follows Nicholas, only to steal part of the treasure he recovered in the marsh so she can make a new life for herself. This sets the stage for a very rich tapestry of medieval life to unfold, which has a full complement of characters including various people to whom Miriel and Nicholas are married. The central villain is Miriel's second husband, Robert, whose evil acts as a wealthy merchant were common in this time period. Nicholas and Miriel come together and apart throughout the novel. For those readers who don't like lead character separations, this might be a problem but it was not one for me. If you like this novel, also read Chadwick's "The Conquest" and "Daughters Of The Grail," other five star novels by her.

In 1216 England, Nigel Fuller roughs his stepdaughter Miriel Weaver for her disobedience and disrespect. Wanting her out of his life, he dispatches Miriel to live in the St. Catherine's-in-the-Marsh nunnery.

Nicholas de Caen is a prisoner due to King John's false accusations of treason. The monarch destroyed Nicholas' family before branding him a traitor to the crown.

Nicholas escapes and finds refugee at St. Catherine's. Later he helps Miriel run away from her unhappy captivity among the Sisters. Although Miriel and Nicholas are attracted to one another, they depart on bad terms. She trusts no male and he is a wanted soldier of fortune with no name or future. Over the next few years, aristocratic roadblocks continue to insure no relationship forms between them.

THE MARSH KING'S DAUGHTER is an entertaining medieval romance that highlights the abuse of power that dictates much of the early thirteenth century noble lifestyle. Miriel is a brave woman, but her gender leaves her a victim as men make decisions that she dislikes for her. Nicholas is also impotent to help because he too is a casualty of the monarchy. Fans who enjoy an insiders look at a bygone era will gain immense pleasure from Elizabeth Chadwick's wonderful historical romance.

Harriet Klausner

If anyone, like the reviewer below, would like actually to LEARN some Linear B, the easiest way (short of going to Oxford) is to get the excellent book "Linear B: An Introduction", by J.T. Hooker (ISBN 0-906515-62-0), published by Bristol Classical Press, though you should be well at home with classical Greek before you start on Mycenaean. Good luck!

I enjoyed this book very much. I recommend this book as well as the other book on the decipherment of linear b. It's an amazing story.

When he excavated the Minoan city of Knossos in 1900, Arthur Evans found clay tablets containing an unknown language which he named Linear B (he also found variants he named 'hieroglyphic', Linear A, and Linear C). Evans himself began the decipherment process. He discovered that the tablets were palace records and deciphered their numbering system. Since there were about 90 different symbols, he noted, correctly, that the symbols represented syllables rather than alphabetic characters (too many symbols) or ideograms (too few symbols). Beyond these observations, little progress was made until, in 1952, half a century after Linear B was discovered, Michael Ventris announced that he had discovered the means to translate it.
John Chadwick tells the story of Linear B. Not to denigrate the achievement of Champollion's success with Egyption heiroglyphs, Linear B had no Rosetta Stone. It had to be understood soley from the internal evidence of the tablets. The book describes early "solutions" that were guesswork based on untenable analogies or theories. Ventris proceeded differently. The reader becomes amazed at his abilities (he memorized complete texts of symbols before understanding what they meant), his insights, and his thoroughly analytical methodology. The book tells in loving detail the steps leading to the solution. You almost feel you are taking those steps yourself and a sense of excitement grows as you see pieces falling into place. He builds a grid of vowels and consonants and painstakingly fills the symbols into their places. He finds words, and you share in the process of discovering they are an early form of Homeric Greek used in Mycenaen times at the end of the Bronze Age.
Beyond the decipherment, the book tells what we have learned from the tablets about life, economy, trade, agriculture, and armies of Mycenaen Greece.
This book is not only for people interested in the Greek language and history, it is also a fascinating detective story of the solution of an incredibly complex puzzle.

The late Professor Chadwick has left us with a fine work herein. In its 320 pages, he presents the reader with a lifetime of insights into Greek lexicography. He wonderfully critizes the Oxford Greek Lexicon (Liddell, Scott) adding numerous suggestions. This price of $85.00 seems a bit high, I purchased the book new from Oxford for $52.00 several years ago. For $85.00 one would expect nice signature binding, but it is instead glue/injected bound, still it is durable. courtesy of Mr. Gary S. Dykes

Having just read Simon Singh's brilliant book on codes, which has a brilliant chapter on the decipherment of the ancient Cretan language known as Linear B, I wanted to read further about it. This is as far as I have got so far and its a pretty easy second step. John Chadwick is of course the man who assisted Vestris to decipher this ancient language and perhaps that is why Singh's chapter on how the language was initially 'cracked' is so much more interesting than the chapter Chadwick provides on it. Chadwick determindly doesn't blow his own trumpet, in fact he almost glosses over some of the stages which Singh emphasises. Still it is a reasonable telling of it and Singh clearly drew heavily on Chadwick's own examples for his chapter.

Chadwick starts to get interesting in the later chapters where he examines the form of Linear B in far greater depth - how it was used and the sounds and its relationship to the ancient Greek language. He also discusses the advances which have been in made in deciphering the older, and as yet not fully understood writing, also found on Crete and called "Linear A". It is a short, pithy book, but a good further step for those interested in reading more on these languages but with no technical training in the subject (like me) - an enthusiastic amateur.

For those who have read "The Decipherment of Linear B" also by John Chadwick, detailing how Michael Ventris (with the assistance of several other scholars) deciphered the Linear B tablets found at Knossos on the island of Crete, "The Mycenaean World" will be a welcome companion book. "The Decipherment" was mainly concerned with the actual process used in decrypting the tablets; "The Mycenaean World" is Chadwick's valiant attempt to interpret the translations and apply them to what is already known about the Mycenaean World from archaeological evidence. Most interesting is Chadwick's take on the mysterious fall of Mycenaean civilization. He suggests everything from natural disasters, foreign invaders and internal political strife to explain why Mycenaean Greece went into decline, descending into the Dark Ages. An interesting, though scholarly, read.

This book was required reading for my History 302 class this term, and yet it still managed to be an interesting read, something that is shocking for college material.

It tells the story of a parson and squire in 19th century England who alone would be totally uniteresting in the grand scheme of history, but together they engaged in a battle that was well documented in their diaries, and which gives a good example of the way life was in Victorian England.

All in all, this was a very good read and a must for any English history buff.