'Tis true my form is something odd
but blaming me is blaming God,
Could I create myself anew
I would not fail in pleasing you.

If I could reach from pole to pole
or grasp the ocean with a span,
I would be measured by the soul -
the mind's the standard of the man.

I bought this book many years ago, unfortunately I made the mistake of lending it to someone and I never got it back. This is a remarkable book. I was touched by Joseph Merrick years ago. For the past nine years, I have been running the Joseph Carey Merrick Tribute Website. It is a site dedicated to Joseph, the person - not Joseph, the disability. I'm presently heading a London and Leicester (UK) campaign to have a commemorative plaque erected in his honour. He deserves to have a permanent tribute. He has done a great deal to advance medical science, through his skeleton, and thanks to him, there will one day be a cure for Proteus Syndrome. It's time the world said 'thank you'. Please give your moral support by visiting the site. I'm not sure if web addresses can be mentioned here, so simply type the following in your web browser: Joseph Carey Merrick Tribute Website

I inherited this book from a deceased family member. I had heard about David Lynch's movie about The Elephant Man, but I never saw it. Reading this book made me cry and empathize with Joseph Carey Merrick for his condition and the ostractize he received from the world based on his looks and not his soul.

Joseph Carey Merrick was the real Elephant Man not a fictional character. Joseph had a loving mother that died when he was a child and his father moved and remarried. His step-mother didn't like him and scorned him for his looks and his inability to find work due to his lameness, telling him that what she fed him was more than he earned. Eventually he refused to return home for meals because he didn't want to listen to step-mother barate him anymore. His father stopped looking for him, but did get him a hawker's license to hawk wares on the street. But people were afraid of him and would not buy his wares, and he acquired a gathering of curious people around him. His uncle gave him shelter for a while, but Joseph left there too. He worked in the workhouse a place of refuge and work for the poor and destitute for 3 years, but hated it and left. He ended up being exhibited as a sideshow freak under the name of "The Elephant Man" because his congenital deformity made it so that he resemble that of an elephant (or so the posters showed him to resemble). When he was at Whitechapel Road, across the street from the London Hospital Dr. Treves saw him for the first time and brought him to the hospital to examine him. Over the next few years Joseph was exhibited, his managers robbed him of his life savings and left. Joseph went back to Whitechapel Road and to the care of the only friend he knew . . . Dr. Treves. He spent his remaining years under the friendship and care of the staff at the London Hospital.

I loved this story. Michael Howell and Peter Ford told a true and compassionate account of Joseph Merrick's life. A man who was like any other human being with hopes and dreams with one setback.. His congenital deformity that prohibited his ability to be like, and experience and sleep lying down on his back like other people. Through all of years and hardships, Joseph was scared, but kind and kept a calm serenity inside himself about his condition. He had so much gratitude for the staff and his new friends who helped him, he made cardboard models and sent these things to those people who saw to his care in his appreciation for their help. The book also includes pictures how Merrick looked when he was admitted to the London Hospital, and a display of his skeleton after death.

I first read the original article on the elephant man Joseph Merrick by Dr Treves in a magazine in the mid 1970s. I then saw the movie in 1980. The movie peaked my interest for further info so I bought the book. The book not only goes into extensive detail of the disease but goes also extensively into Joseph Merrick's life as well as life in the Victorian era as it effected the common man. The imagery of the period was brought out by the writers: the London Hospital, the surrounding area, the showmen and their lives, etc. The research was very detailed, although later after the book's publication we learned of the possibility that Merrick suffered from Proteus and not pneumofibromatosis. This book should be read by anybody interested in these diseases as well as anybody interested in this time period.

Peter Block has taken the principles and Edward Demming and put them into a usable methodology that will not only help any business owner focus on the essentials necessary for success but will also inspire members of the team at all levels. Block, who has written two other books on management, focuses on the prime issue for a success business: that those who are doing are the one's who should be making the decision on how to serve the customer. He writes that the old way of doing business, that of patriarchy, can never succeed in today's world that demands business be able to move with the customer at a moment's notice. The books is insightful about how to go about implementing a pardign change in a business and in your way of thinking about how business is being conducted. Block speaks of bottom up management, where the key to success as a mnanager is not to be in control, yet still be responsible. It is a life-changing typoe of book for any manager who can see that this is a style of management which will set free the entire work force to become successful stewards of your business.

Block demonstrates that centralized control, patriarchy and paternalism in organizations are bankrupt behavior which must be replaced by genuine partnership in which workers are truly empowered and share full accountability for the success of the enterprise. It is a compelling call to at last inject our political and social ideal, democracy, into the way we do business, government, and education. If we can move, even a little way, in this direction of serving and being served, the world will be a better place

Business consultant Peter Block is no stranger to controversy. A number of his previous works explored the reaches of transformational management, including his bestselling book The Empowered Manager. In an even bolder way, Stewardship - Choosing Service over Self-Interest offers a dynamic new organizational structure for our young century. Block defines stewardship as "the means of achieving fundamental change in the way we govern our institutions." He believes that stewardship is a choice "to preside over the orderly distribution of power." This means giving individuals at the bottom of the organizational structure the choice on how to best serve their customers, citizens and community". It also means accepting accountability at all levels. Block continues to define stewardship as being accountable to the larger organization by "operating in service, rather than in control, of those around us." His philosophy is centered on a need and commitment to service rather than self-interest.

Peter Block challenges the modern notion of strong leadership and suggests replacing the term with stewardship. His problem with leadership is that he does not believe it has the capability to create fundamental changes in our organizations. He also believes that leadership "inevitably becomes self-congratulatory and over-controlling. We expect leaders to choose service over self-interest, but it seems the choice is rarely made." Perhaps Block would have better made his point by discussing the various philosophies that pass as leadership rather than neatly collecting them all in one term. Indeed, leadership is often a vague and misunderstood term.

Stewardship - Choosing Service over Self-Interest is a book with three parts. The first part discusses the basic concept of stewardship. It highlights the promises offered by developing a passion toward stewardship in contrast to what we experience in traditionally managed organizations. The second part of the book discusses the redistribution of power in a practical way. This controversial section of the book butchers many managerial "sacred cows" and offers a vision of what stewardship can be like in action! Part three examines the reform process and explores how you and your organization can get from where it is today to an environment of stewardship.

If you are one who is not satisfied with the status quo, you will find this book exciting and refreshing. Sometimes written in almost theological terms, Block inspires the reader to expect more from our institutions and ourselves. This book should find itself on the bookshelf of every person interested in the study of leadership.

POSA1 is written far better than other related texts, such as GoF. (And be aware of the fact that GoF only contains design level patterns - it does not contain system architecture level patterns.) At the same time, after its nth reprinting and redesigned book cover, the text still contains non-UML diagrams (although there are some UML-like sequence diagrams included), and very few real code examples. The lack of code examples, though, can in some ways be seen as a positive aspect of the text. Compare this text with Applied Java Patterns, for example. AJP has very extensive code examples, but because the code examples for each pattern run for pages (rather than simply providing code snippets), the reader may be inclined to narrow their view of how the pattern is applied. For example, MVC is definitely not a pattern limited to GUI user interfaces! The point on which I think that POSA1 seems to come out ahead is that the stronger-than-ususal pattern descriptions and applicability, with a small amount of code provided where deemed especially relevant to the point being attempted to make, helps one understand the patterns better rather than memorizing language-specific implementations of patterns. This point is why I think the text was chosen to accompany Software Architecture in Practice for the graduate software engineering course in software architecture I just took.

It's a nice reading after the GoF book. The GoF book provides more practical and easy to implement design level patterns, so I suggest you start from it first. After that, if you want to continue your journey in the software patterns, you should read this one. The first 300+ pages, talking about Architectureal Patterns/Design Patterns, are very good. The rest 100 pages are still interesting, but are a little bit light. Overall, it's a worth reading for software architects/developers. I'd like to give it 4.5 stars - well, 5 stars should also be O.K., considering there are so many quick & rush computer books on the market.

This book is a perfect companion to "Design Patterns - Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software" (the GoF book) and it is more didactical than the later.

If you are new to patterns, I suggest that you first read this book and refer to "Design Patterns" when needed.

In "Pattern-Oriented Software Architecture", there are some chapters on pattern and software architecture concepts, but most of the book is dedicated to describing architectural and design patterns (there are a few pages on idioms). Some of the architectural patterns are well known: layers, pipes, filters, broker and microkernel.

The code is clear and written mainly in C++. The notations used are easy to understand (OMT notation is addopted for the object models and an adaptation of Message Sequence Charts to object interations).

The production (cover, paper, etc) is excellent.

As one of the poets featured in Will Work for Peace, one might expect me to be a bit biased, but nothing could be farther from the truth. Most poets work in a virtual vacuum, only tenuously connected to each other by the occasional workshop or shared membership in a 'poetry society'. When Brett Axel first approached me for a submission to an anthology he was considering, the names Marge Piercy, Lyn Lifshin, Moshe Bennaroch and so many others were abstractions to me as a fledgling poet. I knew these tremendous writers were 'out there' somewhere, beating down doors with their words and keeping a struggling artform alive. But to think that someday I would ever share a credit with these dynamic modern poets would be a pipe dream at best. It is through the sincere efforts of Brett Axel that many newer voices like mine have an extraordinary opportunity to appear with Pulitzer Prize winners and other poetic heavyweights. By way of an honest review, however, I will say this- not everything in this book will be to your particular liking. I myself came across some works that did not move me in the way the author may have intended. Some imagery can be raw and visceral, using shock value in place of craft at times. But to ignore those voices would be an even more shocking turn of events, so praise be to the editor for not sacrificing his vision to a senseless conformity. As Pete Seeger so aptly put it in his quote, trying to read all these poems at one time would be like trying 'to swallow Manhattan whole'. I say to you- buy this book, read this book, but understand that it's what you do after reading this book that will ultimately define who you could be. Poetry is alive and well, and lives in the blunt pages of Will Work for Peace.

Just amazing start to finish! I like the disregard for fame used in putting the book together. That great poems got in even if they were writtenby nobodys. Look at Roger Bonair-Agard's poem on page 74. Shortly after Will Work For Peace came out he won Slam Nationals, becoming Slam Champion of 1999, which will be getting him lots of offers. But Zeropanik Press didn't need to be told he was good by an award. They could tell by his writing! Good for them and good for all of us because Will Work For Peace is a literary milestone. It's a new standard for all future anthology editors to try to live up to. Thumbs up to Brett Axel and Thumbs up to Zeropanik Press for their guts and integrty.

Brett Axel visited my Church and I bought a copy of Will Work For Peace from him, not for poetry, but because I care about working for peace. I started reading through it thinking It'd just go on my shelf and that'd be the end of it, but the book grabbed me and kept me rivited. If I had known that poetry was this alive I'd have been into poetry. I've been reading some of the poems to my friends who also didn't think poetry was important and they are saying the same thing. Fantastic! There's no way to get through this book without having your old mindsets challenged. It's funny, powerful, sad, and uplifting. A book that deserves to be read by everyone. A book that really can make the world a better place!

It was a great book! I would have given it 5 stars based on story alone, but there are some editing problems. Not the author's fault of course, but it can possibly make it a bit harder to read than his other book "A Taste for Money." this book really gives you something to think about. While Mars' second book is about a good cop gone bad, this book makes it much harder to judge the cops either way. True, they are taking the law into their own hands, but when the law stops working as it should, is this really bad......?

It definitly is a "must read" much as I dislike cliche terms. I am not much of a "true crime" or mystery fan, but these were wonderful. Captivating, thought provoking. A good story and a question all in one. Everything a really good book should be!

Peter Mars has taken the reader through a series of scenarios that if real would shock any Bostonian! Having worked in Cambridge and knowing the surrounding towns that encompass to plot, one wonders what is potentailly real or not real in this shocker! Mars'30 years and experience in Police work in Boston shines in the graphic description of real life police experiences. You just know that he was there for some of this fiction! The creativeness of the expository in the various scenes as well as the main character's "first person" descriptions of a cop's feasible day to day routine puts the reader in the driver's seat of the patrol car. The two part sectioning of the book was intriguing and became a late "hook" for me. The first "hook" was one third into the book.. drama in the tunnel. Not knowing that remnant caverns of Boston's subway (the oldest in the US- the MTA, before the MBTA) existed, the author has created for the reader his imagination of what might be going on below the streets of Boston today. A must read for people that who like police action and envision justice prevailing when the legal system loopholes allow for repeat offenders to end up back on the street to prey on the public...

If your looking for an author who will pull you in on the first page, then Peter Mars is your man. I picked up this book and could not put it down; read it in two days. The story line keeps you rivited to your seat with a relentless tale of a few police officers that are fed up with the system and take the law into their own hands. Once you've read this book you won't blame them. There is a twist toward the end which blew my mind. Upon finishing this book, I picked up Mr. Mars' "A Taste For Money" and could not put that one down either! I am eager to delve into Mr. Mars' next book, which will be published in October, 2000. If your into Police/Mystery, dont miss these books by any means -- they really are Undeniably A Must Read!! Keep up the good work Mr. Mars!

This is the first investing book I have read which goes beyond the typical "Are you Very Aggressive vs are you Conservative?" question. By using the personality profile quiz, one reaches a deeper understanding of their investing psyche. From this one can develop an investing plan which works for HIM/HER! My wife and I both took the quiz and were enlightened with our different attitudes towards money/investing.

The asset allocation pies are very helpful and much more specific than most I've seen. I highly recommend it.

Because money is about personality, the genius behind linking money management to Myers Briggs does so much to customize money management to truly fit the personality. This book also helps couples who may have very different personalities gain insight into their money management styles.

I enjoyed Tanous's previous book, Investment Gurus, and this one lives up to what I would expect from him. Tanous speaks plain English and, unlike so many others, doesn't over-promise. Here is a formula for creating wealth in an intelligent, easy to follow, way which takes into account one's personal profile. I loved taking the test and learning what I was really like as an investor! The advice is sound, the writing is conversational, and I came away feeling like I had finally learned something which I could use to reach my goals on the stock market. Highly recommended!

Unlike 98% of people who've read Michael Malone's work, I was quite underimpressed by his "Uncivil Seasons" - it was fine as far as detective stories go, but it was a bit too quirky, a bit too unconventional for my taste. So I was not looking forward to "Time's Witness," which revived many of the same characters - I read it only because I love Malone's other work, and TW was the last I had to read. If you can muscle your way through the first 150 pages, grow used to Cuddy (the narrator's) unusual voice, I think you will be pleasantly surprised. Malone is a beautiful character writer and TW is as good as they come: the story is interesting, complex and raises some important questions. (While frequently preachy, Malone's first-person technique allows the reader to ascribe the preachiness to the narrator and not so much to the author.) The trial scenes toward the end surpass anything John Grisham has pumped out. A great read; find it if you can (I found my copy on Ebay)

If you liked the narration of Justin Saville in Uncivil Seasons, you will be pleasantly surprised by this sequel. The preceding book had Justin describing his good friend Cuddy as the classic good ol' boy. Well, this book has the same characters, but with Cuddy as the narrator. It gives us a different look at Justin, and some insight into Cuddy. He is not a dumb, semi-redneck, carefree guy. He is smart and serious, but he hides that, surprising a lot of people in a lot of ways. Uncivil Seasons has some great writing by Malone, who is my favorite author. However, this is a better book due to the complex plot and the wonderful drawings of so many characters.

Malone is a really gifted writer and Time's Witness is one of his best books (much better than Uncivil Seasons). Cuddy is the kind of man about whom women dream (he's smart, has incredible integrity and is a romantic---it doesn't matter that he describes himself as homely---that's just part of his appeal).
Cuddy's struggle to balance his own moral code (opposition to the death penalty) with the demands of his profession (chief of police in a state which uses the death penalty) is at the heart of the novel. But the book also explores other issues as well: class snobbery/elitism, racism, the nature of the "New South" and there is also, of course, an interesting love story with a great and very unconventional ending.
You will not regret buying this book!

Another great book by Hermann Hesse decribing the search of Peter for peace...

Peter coming for a very small town is taken by a priest to learn and get cultured. He spends a lot of his life trying to get that perfect combination, he goes through a tragedy in the loss of a friend, and misery romances.

Boppi shows up and life changes, standards change, and Peter starts seeing the beauty in the small everyday behaviors...

Hermann Hessse expresses in Peter some of the things he went through, the pain in the beginning before finally understanding what life is all about...

I've read all works of Hesse that I could find during my teenage years. I read them not as books but as a starving person would devour delicious food.

I have not yet encountered another book (Hesse or not) that is as striking as Peter Camerzind. That's partly because I had some tough times during my teenage years and in Peter C. Hesse is 100% realistic to me.

It's been 12-13 years that I had not read Hesse again with maybe with one or two exceptions. As I said before, I read Hesse when I was a teenager and I had no intentions to analyze, criticize or whatever ! There are too many people who go into to analytical descriptions of Hesse's works. Don't do it. I do not think that Hesse's works are intellectual. I doubt he is after anything intellectual, rational or analytical. It could be the opposite ! Forget about the feeling you had while reading, do you think a wolf wandering in the steppes would philosophize ?

I felt Peter Camerzind deep in my heart. That's all I have to say.

Hermann Hesse is a superb writer. This book is very good for a first novel (and very good for a novel, period). I have read all of Hesse's major novels except Gertrude and I can honestly say that none of them moved me in the way which this book did. Hesse's description of the yearnings of one's soul are always stirring. But the story of the narrator's relationship with the hunchback, Boppi, is unforgettable. To claim that Peter did not find what he was looking for and that "he does not enjoy life", as one reviewer claims, is absurd. It completely misses Hesse's point. Anwyays, read the book and find out for yourself -- don't take my word for it.

Most of the B5 fans I know were disappointed in the Thirdsapce movie. (It didn't compare well to the incredible effort of In The Beginning.) However, Thirdspace is actually a pretty nice story that comes out much better in the print version.

Things certainly make much more sense, at least.

I do notice a distressing similarity to "The Touch of Your Shadow, the Whisper of Your Name" (novel 5) -- they're by no means the exact same story, but they are similar.

The movie was good, much better than "River of Souls", but the books was incredible. Peter David has a way of writing that is absolutely incredible.

I love Peter David, and I love B5, so the two combined is very cool! If you are picking which B5 books to read, pick this one, In the Begining or To Dream in the City of Sorrows. They are just as good as the show/movies. If you saw the movie of this and liked it, read the book too, it has more than just what was in the movie!

It is a good written book. It explains things very well in general. It is not as complicated as other genetic textbooks

i have read this book once but i am very keen to read again this book so i want to read this book and for that i want to see the review of this book.

If you are looking for a book that describes classical genetics in great details, this book is not for you. To me, the main effort of the authors is to focus on the modern idea of how geneticists think and work. The organization of the text is nicely arranged so that readers can understand the concepts in one chapter that lead to the more advanced one in the next chapter. The materials presented are not too "introductory", and it is not too difficult for a typical undergraduate student to understand either. Also, It can properly serve as a good reference for a graduate student, like myself, when a time of need in some genetic concepts!