I wish I had this book when I was learning LaTeX! It is a concise beginner's guide that will get the reader up to speed in a short amount of time. The book does a nice job of briefly introducing more advanced topics, and where to go for more information. This book will get you 80% where you want to go, and I would recommend it as the best book for any new LaTeX user. As a side note, Section 5.6 of the book, "Great Moments in LaTeX History" is absolutely hilarious!

This amazing little book is the best introduction to LaTeX (version 2e). It is hard to believe how much useful information it contains; it shows you how to incopporate pictures, create indices, tables of contents, math typesetting, etc. The style is wonderful and witty. The left half of each page shows you what LaTeX commands produce the output on the right half. I've been using LaTeX for a while without really reading any book cover to cover, big mistake and many frustrations.
My best recipe for learning LaTeX is: Start with this book, read it cover to cover, practice it, then move to Kopka and Daly's book.

This book, geared for the absolute LaTeX beginner, will have anyone up and running in no time. In many ways it is very similar to Gratzer's small book only shorter and without the discussion of AMSLaTeX. Some of the organizational choices made by the authors, however, are quite puzzling. It's not until the middle of the book that they discuss quotation marks and dashes. That material should have been in the second chapter, though in a book this small--80 or so pages which could be profitably studied for two or three days--I suppose that does not matter much. If you've ever wanted to begin the daunting task of mastering LaTeX, this book along with Gratzer's and Diller's will make you impressively adept in no time.

This is an excellent book on a subject that's gotten disproportionately little attention in the west. The majority of English books available on Chinese military cover only the "modern" era, that is, from the Opium War and on. Graff covers a great deal of the times before the Opium War. This books uses the format of a collection of articles, written by some leading experts in the area.

One thing I really like is that there are some very good, insightful, and especially original ideas. The authours cite many sources of Chinese and non-Chinese oigin, but always question the sources' reality, validity, and authenticity. The questions and analyses have great depths, and the scholarship manifested in the work is outstanding.

There are discussions of different kinds of of warfare since the ancient time -- how chariot warfare was started as an aristocratic monopoly, to the rise of infantry as conscription became more frequently utilized, to the genesis of calvary as a reaction to the threats of the Nomadic peoples from the north. There are frequent comparisons between the west and the east and other parts of the world. For example, it's remarkable that China was able to conduct warfares with very large armies, supported by a complex economy, a sophisticated conscription system, and relatively advanced communication, supply logistics, and tactics. The ability to sustain this kind of warfares were usually not emulated in other parts of the world until the Industrial age.

I also like the writing style. It is concise, fluid, and well written.

I highly recommend this book.

This is a brilliant book. It is well-researched, well written, a joy to read and the best book I have bought all year. It is also the sine qua non on the grossly neglected subject of Chines military history.
Professor Graff, a young Professor of Chinese military history has taken a wealth of secondary and original sources and woven a tight, chronologically-based history of Chinese warfare over 2000+ years. Graff's love is medieval Chinese warfare and this is amply demonstrated in the exhaustive treatment of pre-Ming Chinese warfare. Most interesting were the asessments of chariot warfare, archery and the use of light cavalry, especially when one reads this in conjunction with Sun Tzu's The Art Of War. I also found some of the later writing, especially regarding the Taiping rebellion and the European colonial interventions, fascinating. Graff somewhat neglects the Chinese lead in technology-they having invented stirrups,gunpowder and artillery 1000 years before the Europeans, but to be fair he ahs an enormous subject to cover.
I would reccommend this book to any advanced student of military history or Chinese scholar. I would also reccommend that one purchase Sun Tzu's "The Art Of War" and "God's Chinese Son" to read along with this book.

Edward the Elder is perhaps the most neglected of the Anglo-Saxon kings. Overshadowed by both his father Alfred and his successor Æthelstan, he did much on his own to expand the domination of Wessex across all of England.

This book is a series of papers presented in 1999 at a conference on Edward the Elder held at the Manchester Centre for Anglo-Saxon Studies. Twenty-two papers by some of the most noted experts in their fields explore the archaeology, charter evidence, textiles, dynastic marriages, coinage, foreign relations, scriptorium production, and more of Edward the Elder's reign.

Of particular interest is the consideration of Edward's activities as king. Was he merely continuing his father Alfred the Great's program of recovering the Danelaw, fortifying the burhs, and incorporating Mercia into a comprehensive "Kingdom of the English"? Or did Edward follow his own policies in light of the opportunities he faced?

An outstanding multi-disciplinary insight into this much overlooked Anglo-Saxon king's rule.

This book gives a solid sense of what it must have felt like to be a Jewish immigrant to New York around the turn of the century. I enjoyed the fact that the book was not only a very interesting adventure, but also a fascinating account of changing class consciousness and socialization to a new society. Kahan's account of what is gained and what is given up in this process allowed me to understand my own ancestors at a deeper level. He writes well in a journalistic style and is constantly providing details about his present that help me to understand the meaning of what was going on.

This is a highly recommended book for anyone who is interested in the history of the Jewish Lower East Side in the late 19th century and early 20th century. It is written by an author with intimate knowledge of the time and place. Written in 1917, it is a very captivating and compelling story of an Eastern European Jewish immigrant's plight on The Lower East Side. I highly recommend it.

I first read this book in the mid-70s when it was assigned as part of an undergrad history course. I devoured it then, rediscovered it ten years later and found I enjoyed it even more on a second reading. Subsequent readings have not diminished my admiration for the novel.

"Levinsky" is a rare example of the novel that works both as history and as literature. Cahan's firsthand observations of late 19th century industrial America and of the immigrants' struggles to adapt to life in a new land are compelling in their own right. But this is no mere slice of life realism. Cahan created complex characters who face conflicts beyond the struggle to survive.

Cahan's main character, Levinsky, spends the first part of the book struggling to master the Talmud in his village in Russia. Here Cahan introduces us to Levinsky's incisive mind, one that will serve him well when he goes to America and begins to serve a new master: business. In the opening section, Cahan also develops one of several beautifully drawn supporting characters: Levinsky's mother.

By novel's end, we realize the irony of the novel's title. On one level, Levinsky's story is a classic tale of rags-to-riches, American-style success. On the other, his story is one of failure to achieve the rich, personal, intellectually stimulating connection with others that he has craved since childhood.

This great novel deserves to be on the short list of indispensable American fiction. One seeking to understand the roots of our country would be hard pressed to do better than to read it.