The Trail of the Lonesome Pine takes place in the Kentucky mountains, bordering Big Stone Gap, Virginia. It is a story of love, as well as change. At the heart of this novel are the Tolliver & Falin families, who have been in a feud with one another for as far back as anyone can remember. The story begins as life in the mountains is beginning to change..coal mining is starting to boom, and the oustide world is creeping into the simple ways of mountain life. A town is blossoming in Big Stone Gap Virginia..and the Trail of the Lonesome Pine connects the town with Lonesome Cove, home of the Tolliver family, and a pretty little mountain girl named June. When John Hale enters the Tolliver/Falin territory, June is immediately drawn to him. The entrance of this "furriner" will change June's life forever.

Not being from the region that the Trail of the Lonesome Pine is written about, I was definitely reading it from a "furriner" point of view. The Trail of the Lonesome Pine is really two stories in one. Part of this novel is a love story, centering on a young girl, June Tolliver & her love interest John Hale, the "furriner." The other side of this novel focuses on what life is like for the "mountain people" and the effects of the coal mining boom, and the influx of foreigners into their way of life. Both stories are very interesting and blend well together. At times though, I felt the writing was hard to get through and difficult to follow. The last 1/4 of the book really picked up, and by the time the story concluded, I was glad that I read this and look forward to reading more by John Fox, Jr.

My 75-year-old father remembered this book from when he was a teenager--it made an unforgetable impression! I highly recommend this novel for several reasons: lovalable and believable characters (although the lead can do no wrong to an exaggerated point), well-flowing and interesting story that you can't predict (I like suspensefulness), beautifully described setting, historically set in Civil War Kentucky. I bought a copy for myself and then bought one to share with my family and another for a friend. I will save this for my pre-school aged children to read when they are older.

This book shows the mtn and city people in Kentucky as they go through the Civil War. However, my favorite part is at the end, when young Chad chooses to leave the area and go the westward way, to start all over again. When I was 15, I decided not to marry but rather to start all over again like Chad did. I'm grateful to John Fox Jr for showing me that choice.

This book is a beautiful and simple way to read about Jesus' life. Great for people who find it hard to follow the Bible and also for those who need a fresh look at the life of Jesus.

All of the Girzone books I have read are wonderful. So refreshing and uplifting. Also, easy to read and understand.

I highly recommend this book.

Having read all of Fr. Girzone's other books, I thirst for each of his new offerings. This book did not disappoint me. His ability to inject warmth and a personal perspective transform the Gospels from a more historical context to making the reader feel as though they were part of a beautiful story.

Anyone who has felt a bit arm's length when reading Scripture will find that they are welcomed into God's story as part of it. Fr. Girzone's writings continue to help bring my God closer to me.....and for that I thank him.....eternally.

Lowell Rinker

It is a wonderful read! The story of Jesus pooled together by Fr. Girzone and the Friends of Jesus, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. A smooth telling of the life of Jesus that allows one who is a "beginner" or "expert" of the Gospels to envision the life of Jesus through a flowing account.

My husband and I fought for rights to read this book first. Because there are 6 short stories we alternated ownership. Very enjoyable

Sit down with a glass of Pomeroy's finest wine and settle in for a good read. Rumpole continues his battles with Judges, avoiding Chamber politics (and efficiency experts) saving Claude Eskine Brown from his failed romances, and staying in the good graces of "She who must be obeyed". Hilda gets her say in this book too, as her letter to Dodo Mackintosh details on of the cases and even she says "he was a man in his element" in the courtroom. Indeed! May Rumpole always avoid the Angel of Death!

In this latest--is it the last?--addition to the Rumpole saga, She Who Must Be Obeyed lifts a pen and the result is "Hilda's Story", an engaging piece that shows that Mortimer is still coming up with new and entertaining angles on Rumpole. The only sour note is that "Angel of Death" rounded out the third 'Rumpole' omnibus, and the devotee fears that this could be the last. If it is, it's also one of the best.

I first read this book when I lead a discussion of it with a large class in the Arvada United Medthodist Chruch. They found it both a challenge and too conservative for their taste. I am now leading a discussion of it with a smal mens class in Cortez Colorado. They are having much the same reaction. It is a kind of late 20th century revisit to Neo-orthadoxy. Or Barth in the Postmodern generation. Hall may or may not be too conservative but he does call us all to think the faith trough and not just go with the latest fad and heart vibrations.

I read "Thinking the Faith" while on vacation and though the beginning was slow-going, the book was great. Hall has a grasp of the contemporary problems confronting people of faith. His contention is that theological solutions created in Europe for European theological problems may not be and probably are not appropriate for 21st century Christians in North America (i.e. Canada and USA). He also believes that the faith community has abandoned "knowledge" to technocrats. I am looking forward to reading the 2nd and 3rd volumes - "Professing the Faith" and "Confessing the Faith".

'Thinking the Faith'' presents Hall's dialogue betwen revelation and reason. He accurately sums up the problems in North American (ie USA + Canada) which people of faith must confront, beginning with their abandonment of "knowledge" to a purely technical definition. This is an important book for Christians at the dawn of the 21st century. I finished it while on vacation and know that I will be able to use it with a lay group I mentor.

There are many things to like about this book, most of which are described well by the other reviewers. What really struck me about this book (perhaps because I listened to the unabridged tape) was how so much of the plot turned on what happens when a writer is less than precise with language. Mortimer does a masterful job of creating Felix, a writer who doesn't even realize that his misstatements are misstatements or the trouble those statements cause.

Overall, it took me a while to warm up to the book but by the end I was rooting hard for the truth to emerge. The actual ending was a little corny but ok. It's a book filled with a fun assortment of characters. More than a few humorous jabs are made at the modern publishing world and modern society in general. Not a laugh out loud book but one that made me chuckle to myself.

A New York Times notable mystery in 1997 - for those who are fond of books with credentials.

A hapless middle-aged midlist author gets embroiled in the British legal system when he is accused of fathering a child and not paying support. You may need a certain amount of anglophilia and interest in the literary scene to fully appreciate it. The only fault I could find was that it's too short. I hate finishing books in one night before I fall asleep.

John Mortimer is the writer of many charming and wonderful books, although he is no doubt best known for his stories of Horace Rumpole, the irascible British barrister. In Felix in the Underworld, Mortimer showcases his comic and satirical talents most admirably.

Mortimer reminds me a little of bestselling Japanese novelist, Haruki Murakami, in that his characters in this book are quite ordinary people who live quite ordinary lives but have the absurdly bad fortune of simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The protagonist of Felix in the Underworld, Felix Morsom, is a moderately successful, quiet, sensitive novelist at Llama Books who manages to become involved, much against his will, with a man named Gavin Piercey.

Soon after meeting Piercey, Felix notices the man everywhere in his life: at book signings, during radio talk shows and, most especially, at one fateful meeting where Piercey introduces Felix to a woman named Miriam. This meeting will have serious, but hilarious, repercussions on Felix's life.

From the moment Felix meets Miriam, his life becomes one of turmoil and wild, unbelievable events. He receives a letter from an agency calling itself PROD; he is accused of a brutal murder; he becomes involved with London's homeless population.

Mortimer's handling of the plot is superb, his writing as smooth as silk and the characters, although slightly cliched, are still polished and hilarious. One of the funniest is the lawyer, Septimus Roache, the man Felix turns to in desperation when he attempts to prove his innocence in the murder. Roache is an obtuse and self-satisfied man who has little to no interest in his clients and really doesn't listen to a word Felix is telling him.

Mortimer, who himself was a successful barrister before becoming a writer, knows how to create a rollicking good murder mystery and this is part of why Felix in the Underworld works as well as it does. Another large part is Felix, himself, an engaging character we can't help but like; a man who maintains his dignity and poise even in the face of adversity of the highest, and most unexpected, order.

Mortimer calls himself a "Champagne socialist," and is a champion of the poor and the downtrodden. In this book he manages to take us on a trip through contemporary British society, especially homeless society. The book is fun, though, above all, and never sounds like polemic. We can credit Mortimer's superb writing skills for that.

The snobbish character of Simon Tubal-Smith, Felix's boss at Llama Books is contrasted wonderfully with Esmond, a homeless man who was, at one time, a manager in a supermarket. Esmond left his job and home for a life in the streets when tragedy struck. Felix, himself, spends some time as a member of London's homeless population and is reminiscent of George Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London.

The dialogue is pure Mortimer and always fun. When Felix is temporarily residing in jail, his cellmate is a man named Dumbarton who allegedly beat another man to death. "You killed him?" Felix asks. "Thoroughly," Dumbarton replies, quite satisfied with what he did.

Felix is both self-effacing and hilarious as he attempts to cope with unhelpful lawyers who do just as much to convict as help him, as he tries to sort out the mystery behind PROD, as well as develop his budding relationship with Brenda Bodkin, his publisher's publicity agent.

Although this book is a little formulaic at times, the formula works and works well. Maybe that is because Mortimer is a master who never lets us down. Felix in the Underworld is a first-rate murder mystery, a comedy of errors and a satire of the British class system. It is always delightful and filled with surprises up until the very last page.

The not-so-grand finale in the Charlie Resnick series certainly exhibits the signs of Harvey's weariness with the series. The highly predictable main plot features an escaped murderer with a sordid childhood, and is the least interesting element of the book. The police efforts to stem a series of drug-related killings brings in a number of minor players from past books and is somewhat more interesting. But of course it is the developments in Resnick's private and professional life that drives the book and rescues it in the end.

I did not realize until nearly at the end that this was the last of the Resnick novels. I'm embarassed to admit that he has become a part of my life and that I awaited his next installment like a child on the first day of school. I feel like my life will somehow be incomplete without the wisdom of Charlie but anxiously await the latest character.

This series will be well worth the attention.

Mr. Harvey, how can you leave us to be a publisher? Charlie deserves to go on and on and on.

If you dont understand what the words Futures/options are and you want to know it, this is the place to start. hull(from McGil i think!) has excellently presented information on these subjects for the student as well as for the practitioner. As a student of MBA(finance) this was the prescribed text and I can safely say this compares with the best. sepcifically this book deals with the entire gamut of Futures/Options/Swaps with mathematical models where required. From CBOT to this day!!

Hull wrote a classic book for the introduction to futures and options markets. It's for the serious reader who doesn't want to all the deviations and basics of option pricings. If, after reading this book, you're still interested in derivatives you cann proceed with Hull's "Options, Futures, and Other Derivative Securities", Kolb's "Futures, Options, and Swaps", or for the very ambitious student Wilmott's "Derivatives or Quantitative Finance".

The material is similar to his other book, Options Futures and Other Derivatives, but much more easy to read. With Brealy & Myers, this forms a good complementary text.

This is my first book by Anne Rivers Siddons. I must say she has a fine way with words and story-telling. However, I expect this group of stories played better in 1975 than it does today. Siddons portrays herself as awfully childish in almost every essay, crying buckets of tears and fretting over the most superficial aspects of life. If you like the modern-day southern belle genre, you might enjoy this, but if you like your women a little gutsier, steer clear.

The evening news has always drawn me like a magnet - but sometimes watching it is soul wrenching. Past months have been particularly poignant. Mass murder in the name of God and parents murdering or abusing children entrusted to them, and on and on, it all become cumulative. I knew I had to replace my copy of JOHN CHANCELLOR MAKES ME CRY and re-read it. Isn't it too cool when a book is even better the more you read it? Can I recommend this book enough?

Ms. Siddons' foray into non-fiction is an excellent introduction to the depth of feeling and emotion in the many fine books she has written since. There is something that touches me on every single page of this year long glimpse into the life of this very REAL lady. Weather, stepchildren, cats, suburbs, politics, it's all there, along with a delicious slice of Maine and summers on the seashore. "On fast-darkening twilight patios, when you are thrumming with sunburn and clean and still damp from a shower, in fresh cotton and on your second tall drink, it can steal away your workday soul." I find myself again and again in this deliciously emotional piece of non-fiction. "I am a natural if sadly undisciplined and haphazard hostess." "Do not go gentle into that good night." Her love of words, her politics, her empathy make for one of the best reads EVER. Please read this, and love it for me?

I have recently found Siddons works,and have read 6 so far. They engross the reader, take him into the story, and keep him there to the end. I would love to know more about the author, and exactly how she totally captures the audience. Thank you ms. Siddons for many engrossing hours.

1. The book is comprehensive. It describes many algorithms, and includes several studies on statistics about text compression and language modeling. It is very good in this respect.

2. Math theory is not approached systematically neither algrebaically. For instance, a proof that arithmetic compression works can take less than a page, and the details given take a lot of space and are not as clear as they could be.

3. Although the book emphasizes the idea of separating the model from the coder, the language used is the C programming language, which imposes severe restrictions to this separation. The model and the coder do not exist as entities on their own, they just have different memory space allocations. Compare this to a reasonably good implementation in a pure object environment, where you can actually model a coder object and a model object.

4. I wrote a final project based on this book consisting of several kinds of compression algorithms with implementations for the course Mathematical Objects in Smalltalk at the University of Buenos Aires.

Hi y'all...

The authors have released the second edition of this book titled as "Managing Gigabytes : Compressing and Indexing Documents and Images". It is more upto date & also covers image compression rather than the first edition (this book, that is, Text Compression) covering only textual compression. It also has lots of other new info in the second edition. Btw, the second edition is cheaper than the first edition.

BTW, this is a tremendous book to have if you are brand new or a pro in compression technology. One of the authors also wrote another book called "Data Mining: Practical Machine Learning Tools & Techniques with Java Implementations", which is a really good addition to one's library!

Sir, I am an Undergraduate student. I like to be different from others. While all are looking in the above layers of programming i look into the core level. I am in India. If i see the cost of book as some 50 $, i comes nearly to 2000 Rs which is nearly 1/3rd of my family income. So if you make this Cost factor considering the Cost of living of other countries then it will be really a boon for the Indian People who has stuff but no proper guidence. Thank you for listening my Comments. Avail disounts for Students.

Reynolds Price is a brilliant, prize-winning writer, an ancient languages scholar and Christian, apparently. His approach, from the literal translation of two gospels, to the writing of his own, is fresh and eye-opening. Highly recommended to those who choose to look deeper into Christianity and its founding texts.

Reynold Price's translations of Mark and John are good in that they try to transliterate the style and feel of their Greek originals, but truth be told they just don't read as well as the translations to be found in other Bible tranlsations. But Price's commentaries on these two Gospels are the main factor in this book. He utilizes something that's missing from the "detective kits" of most other Biblical scholars: common sense. I've read a great majority of the books on the "Historical Jesus," each of which - as the old saying goes - reveals more about the author than the subject. Instead of going off into groundless supposition, as most other Historical Jesus questors are known to do, Price gives us the evidence that we have and makes common sense conclusions on who wrote the Gospels: when, where, how, and why. He doesn't make any mention of the so-called "Secret" Gospel of Mark, true; but I think this is less Price being unaware of it and more of him just realizing it's a phony and unworthy of mention. Read Akenson's Saint Saul, which brutally brings this forgery to light. Price's extra Gospel, which he wrote himself, is interesting, but ultimately the selling point of this book are his commentaries to the two ancient Gospels themselves.

Ahem.Mr Price is not the Editor. He's the author! (I wonder if any one reads these reviews and notes its contents). Its still a wonderful book, with a fresh new look at the Gospels of Mark and John. And frankly, after reading it, one gets a new perspective of the relationship between God and man. It certainly gave me a stronger foundation and background to the two gospels and an insight into Christ.