I love the approach taken by the authors of this book -- here are the key techniques, here are the ingredients needed, here are the key flavorings (marinades, sauces), and here are some recipes to try. The authors then encourage you to experiment with these basics to suit your own taste. Very refreshing.

If you are brand new to wok cooking, you may want to follow the recipes closely at first. But after your confidence builds (and these excellent recipes help that process along brilliantly) you are free (encouraged in fact) to try your own combinations. Don't like the sound of black bean sauce with a chicken stir-fry? Great, use the tangerine sauce instead. Once you understand how ingredients cook in a wok (shrimp take almost no time, chicken takes x amount of time, etc.), you will be able to substitute and interchange ingredients in no time. This freedom should be one of the goals of a good cookbook -- to stimulate not only your taste buds, but also your imagination.

Sadly, not many authors take this approach. All too often cookbook authors offer the "my way or no way" approach. Do you know someone (maybe even yourself) who is afraid to vary from the ingredients in a recipe? Fortunately, not too many people are that timid, but it is rare to see substitution and experimentation encouraged in a cookbook.

I also appreciate the courage of the authors to "name names" in terms of ingredient brand names. If you are new to Asian food and have no concept of which company produces the best soy or oyster sauce, where pray tell do you learn? The authors actually give you several brand names that they use and recommend. Most ingredients have two brands listed in fact. I learned the hard way how important this information can be. Once I prepared a hoisin-based sauce with whatever brand was available at the local market and it tasted so vile that I could not serve it! Thanks to a few brave souls on the Internet and the authors of this book I now have some brands to purchase that are of a high quality and flavor. I have lost my fear of hoisin!

The recipes in this book are simple and tasty. My favorite sauces so far (there are many to choose from) include the tangerine and basic veggie stir-fry. They are full of flavor but do not overwhelm the meat, fish, or vegetables in the stir-fry. The authors cover quite a few main ingredient groupings (seafood, poultry, vegetables, etc.) in this fairly slim book, but it is not a comprehensive list of recipes by main ingredient. You won't find twelve chicken dishes and fourteen beef dishes in this book for example. However, with the basics mastered you can easily imagine your own perfect dish involving your favorite ingredients.

If I had one desire it would be that the authors would have included a section on salads and salad dressings. What you say, but this is a wok cookbook! Of course it is, but a lovely salad with your stir-fry is a nice accompaniment. Oh well, perhaps this prolific cookbook team will produce another Asian cookbook with salads included.

I highly recommend this book. Buy it and let your imagination run wild. As of this writing (6/12/2003) I see this book is out of stock. Ten Speed Press does a great job on cookbooks in general, but lately I've been seeing a lot of their books going out of print. Hopefully, this book is only between printings. Whatever the case, this is a book worthy of a search - used or new.

I've gobbled up Barbara Tropp and Gloria Bley Miller's books, which I find thoroughly pedagogic and comprehensive if you want to become a smarty pants in Chinese cooking, but in the end I always fell back on Ken Hom's "Quick Wok" because it seemed to me more practical for whipping up tasty weeknighters in a wink without much fuss or ceremony. That was before "Wok fast" came my way and became as indispensable in my kitchen as the stove itself. As with Ken Hom, the dishes presented in "Wok fast" are delicious and so fast they won't take up more of your precious private time than you're willing to spend cooking dinner after a tiring day at the office or juggling household and/or kids. This fabulous primer explains all the ins and the outs of Chinese cooking in a clear, easy way, and the over hundred recipes can be prepared hours ahead to fit into any schedule. But what I love the most about this book are the recipes for marinades and sauces galore that can be interchangeably used in any of the recipes, a useful section which is missing or incomplete in other books, and which will definitely soup up the simplest, run-of-the-mill stir-fry combination. If you must have just one book on Chinese cooking, let it be "Wok fast." If you can have two, add Ken Hom's "Quick Wok." The others you can dust once in a while for the sake of reference only.

This book gave me a great appreciation of the versatility of the wok. Each recipe follows a flexible formula of carefully cutting the meat and vegetables, marinating the meat, making a flavorful sauce and then pulling it all together in a delicious dish. For me, the marinades and sauces in Wok Fast transformed good stir fry dishes into delicious meals. The book also well describes how to cut and prepare your food before cooking. With dozens of beautiful pictures, you'll recognize some of your favorite Thai and Chinese dishes and will be able to cook them better than most restaurants (and with better ingredients). I wholeheartedly recommend a wok and Wok Fast to anyone who enjoys asian food and great creative easy cooking.

Entertaining from beginning to end. Aspiring writers will love the antics throughout the book. The characters, luminaries and exotic locales make this an enjoyable journey. Perfect for summer reading.

I not only enjoyed it I loved it - ate it up - devoured it. Also delightfully described.

There is a particular scene in "Agamemnon" that I always want to point to in order to show students the genius of Aeschylus as a tragic playwright. To really appreciate any of these ancient plays you really have to have an understanding the peculiar structure of the classic Greek drama. The better understanding you have of this structure, as well as the key elements of tragedy as delineated by Aristotle in his "Poetica," the more you can appreciate any of these plays, but "Agamemnon" in particular.

The play is the first drama of the Orestia trilogy, the only extant trilogy to survive from that period; of course, since Aeschylus was the only one of the three great tragic poets whose trilogies told basically a story in three-parts. Sophocles and Euripides would tell three different but thematically related stories in their own trilogies (the Theban trilogy of Sophocles is an artificial construct). In "Agamemnon" it has been ten years since he sailed away to Troy, having sacrificed his daughter Iphigenia in order to get fair winds (the tale is best told by Euripides in "Iphigenia at Aulis"). For ten years Agamemnon's wife Clytemnestra, the half-sister of Helen, has been waiting for his return so she can kill him. In the interim she has taken Agamemnon's cousin Aegithus as a lover.

This brings into play the curse on the house of Atreus, which actually goes back to the horrid crime of Tantalus and the sins of Niobe as well. Atreus was the father of Agamemnon and Menelaus, who a generation earlier had contended with his own brother Thyestes for the throne of Argos. Thyestes seduced his brother's wife and was driven out of Argos by Atreus, who then became king. Thyestes eventually returned to ask forgiveness, but Atreus, recalling the crime of Tantalus, got his revenge by killing the two sons of Thyestes and feeding them to their father at a banquet. That was when Thyestes cursed Atreus and all of his descendants and fled Argos with his remaining son, the infant Aegithus.

This becomes important because Aeschylus has two people in the palace at Argos, each of whom has a legitimate reason to take the life of Agamemnon. But in this version Aeschylus lays the crime at Clytemnestra's feet. When Agamemnon returns with his concubine Cassandra, daughter of Troy's King Priam, the insane prophetess symbolizes all sorts of reasons for Cassandra to renew her desire for vengeance. However, it is also important that Agamemnon reaffirm his guilt, and this he does by his act of hubris, walking on the scarlet carpet.

Now, one of the key conventions of Greek tragedy was that acts of violence happened off stage, in the skene, which in "Agamemnon" serves as the place at Argos. Consequently, the Athenian audience not only knows that Agamemnon is going to be murdered, they know that once he goes into the "palace" he is not coming out alive and at some point a tableau of his murder will be wheeled out of the skene. However, despite this absolute knowledge Aeschylus manages to surprise his audience with the murder. This is because of the formal structure of a Greek tragedy.

Basically the tragedy alternates between dramatic episodes, in which actors (up to two for Aeschylus, three for Sophocles and Euripides) interact with each other and/or the chorus, and choral odes called stasimons. These odes are divided into match pairs of strophes and antistrophes, reflecting the audience moving across the stage right to left and left to right respectively.

After Agamemnon goes into the palace and the chorus does an ode, the next episode has Clytemnestra coaxing the doomed Cassandra into the palace as well. With both of the intended victims inside, the chorus begins the next ode. Once the first strophe is finished the corresponding antistrophe is required, but it is at that point, while the audience is anticipating the formal completion of the first pair, that Agamemnon's cry is heard from within the palace. The antistrophe is the disjointed cries of the individual members of the chorus, in contrast to the choral unity of the strophe.

This is how Aeschylus surprises his audience with the murder of Agamemnon, but using the psychology of the play's structure to his advantage. Because we do not have any examples of tragedy that predate Aeschylus, it may well be more difficult to really appreciate his innovation as a playwright. But while the Orestia as a whole is clearly his greatest accomplishment, it is perhaps this one scene that best illustrates his genius. While the fatal confrontation between Clytemnestra and Orestes in "Choeophori" has the most pathos of any of his scenes, there is nothing in either it or "Eumenides" that is as brilliantly conceived and executed as the murder of Agamemnon.

This is an excellent translation of the first play of the Oresteia trilogy (the only extant Greek trilogy). I particularly enjoyed it because of the ongoing commentary and annotations. This trilogy should be required reading of any college student and it should occur early in their college life. The trilogy won First Prize at the Greater Dionesia in 458 B. C. Agamemnon returns to Argos from the Trojan War. He is killed by his wife Clytemnestra and his first cousin Aegisthus. Clytemnestra's reasons for the murder of both Agamemnon and Cassandra were questioned even in ancient Greece: was it for revenge for the death of her daughter Iphigenia or was it for her adultery with Aegisthus? In one of Pindar's odes (c. 474 B. C.), "Pythia 11", Pindar asks: "Was it Iphigeneia, who at the Euripos crossing was slaughtered far from home, that vexed her to drive in anger the hand of violence? Or was it couching in a wrong bed by night that broke her will and set her awry?" The Oresteia trilogy is a study in justice. Agamemnon's death must be avenged; but, this means matricide. Orestes, in the next play, should not have been the hand of vengence.

This is a thoughtful and elegantly-written work. It is inspired by scripture as a source of wisdom, but non-believers may find much of interest too. The tone is temperate and heartful, and seems wise. I felt respected as a reader.

Black revels in the spiritual nature of true friendship while, at the same time, cautiously warning his readers that only friendship with God will ultimately satisfy their desires for true intimacy and tender affection.

Friendship is a sweet gift from God for our good. It is "an occasion for growing in grace, for learning love, for training the heart to patience and faith, and for knowing the joy of humble service" (p. 29). God uses our friendships to help us evaluate our own profession.

Black also proves that friendships can ennoble us and lift us higher than we would be if left to ourselves. Not only do they call us to loyalty and commitment to one another, they also are a help against temptation, providing positive peer pressure to keep us from the embarrassment and humiliation that comes from letting our friends down through our own personal sin.

But this all comes at a price and with a risk. However, the alternative is even worse.

Black is realistic in his assessment of how friendships are made and kept. He admits that friendships can't be forced. He also readily concludes that almost all friendships are unbalanced--usually one partner gives more than the other. But this should not keep us from forming friendships, because the real joy of friendship is in giving, not getting.

Black continually emphasizes that relationships demand much care, nurture, time, and attention. He notes that the reason that many of us have few friendships is that we are not willing to put in the time or effort. " We would like to get the good of our friends without burdening ourselves with any responsibility about keeping them friends" (p. 22). In order to prevent our friendships from dying due to neglect, we must pay attention to small details and learn to love our friend in big and little things alike--since life consists primarily of little things!

Throughout the book, Black emphasizes certain qualities that sustain a friendship. For example, friends should be honest and not flatterers. However, their candidness should always spring from a sympathetic and understanding heart. Friends must also be patient and forbearing with one another. No one can hurt us more than our friends.

Ultimately, human friendship is limited. No matter how much we long to give ourselves to others, there always remains an aspect of ourselves that we cannot give away, if for no other reason, because we do not understand ourselves well enough to do so in the first place. As much as we fill our lives with others, we ultimately remain a distinct and separate life.

Ultimately, all human companionship is fragmentary and partial. Human friendship is meant to lead to friendship with God. Human friendship is a valuable and sweet gift and is able to ennoble and elevate the soul, but ultimately, it is a reminder that only God can truly fill the human heart.

This is a great God-centered book on friendship--its ups, downs, limitations, and joys.

BRUTAL HONEST FRIGHTNING . HUGH COLLINS ACCOUNT OF LIFE AS A GLASGOW HARDMAN AND PRISONER IN SCOTTISH PRISONS IS TERRIFYING AND TOUCHING AT THE SAME TIME.THE BEST BOOK I HAVE READ IN TEN YEARS.I AM HOPING FOR SEQUEL.THIS MAN IS A LITERARY TREASURE.

NO HOLDS BARRED ACCOUNT OF HUGH COLLINS TURBULENT LIFE IN AND OUT OF SCOTTISH PRISONS.A TRULY REMARKABLE STORY OF ONE MANS BATTLE TO RECOGNISE AND OVERCOME THE DEMONS WITHIN.COLLINS IS A GIFTED WRITER WITH A GREAT TALE TO TELL.

If you have seen every episode of year one, you will find nothing new. However, if you haven't taped all the shows and watched them three times over you will enjoy going back a wee bit in time to rural Ireland--the Ireland without bombs and the IRA. A delightful place to spend your spare time.

My Ballykissangel books arrived on spring break from college and I was thrilled to have the time to "devour" them. The characters are so genuine and lovable- I can't wait for the next book to continue the heartwarming journey of a rural village that has become like family to me. Thank you to the writers for a delightful tale.

The Battlefield: Algeria 1988-2002 by Hugh Roberts (Senior Research Fellow of the Development Studies Institute at the London School of Economics and Political Science) is a close and meticulous study of the recent violence that has wracked Algeria. This impressive history eschews oversimplifications reducing the conflict to simply Islamists vs. a secular state, or the generals vs. the common people. Carefully examining the makeup and motivating forces for the Islamists, the Berberists, various factions in the army and in the general regime, The Battlefield is a compelling dissection of the heart of bloodshed. A work of considerable scholarship but one which is easily accessible by the non-specialist general reader, The Battlefield is highly recommended for students of 20th Century Algerian history.

Hugh Roberts is the leading anglophone expert on Algeria and this book will cause you to question all of your pre-conceived and half-baked notions of what has been going on in Algeria during the last decade and a half. Roberts is a passionately committed scholar who questions everything and comes up with original and serious critiques of what passes for scholarship and with fascinating reflections that will reward your curiousity and cause you to think deeply about why we understood so little about Algeria.

In this book, Gilles Deleuze analyzes and supplements the work of philosopher Henri Bergson. The importance of this book lies in its ability to give insights not only into the work of Bergson but also into the later work of Deleuze.

For example, the first chapter of this book deals with Bergson's method of intuition. Interestingly enough, Deleuze applies this method to Bergson's own philosophy. In very basic terms, this method involves distinguishing "differences in kind" between elements (this is important, since Bergson believes that we usually go by false generalizations) and then bring together these elements once again but such that we understand them as they truly are and not as what Deleuze calls a "badly analyzed composite". In analyzing Bergson's philosophy, Deleuze distinguishes elan vital, duration, and memomory as the basic concepts. Furthermore, each of these concepts can only be understood in terms of intuition for various reasons; for example, that only intuition can grasp pure movement (duration). Throughout this book, Deleuze usually (although not always) gives an account of Bergson's concepts without assuming complete knowledge on the part of the reader, which is helpful. However, on the other hand, Deleuze doesn't always tell us what is "his" philosophy and what is Bergson's. Because of this, "Bergsonism" should not be utilized as a summary of Bergson's work. That is, even though Deleuze is clear enough for someone with little background in Bergson to understand much of this book, this does not mean that this person would then "know Bergson" but rather a Bergson-Deleuzian hybrid. This isn't a flaw to the book; rather, it merely suggests how it ought to be read. This short book is complex, but very well written by Deleuze, allowing for a maximum amount of information to be intelligibly conveyed in relatively few pages (although this isn't necessarily true of his later work); it moves at a brisk pace without losing the reader and is reccomended for both readers of Bergson and Deleuze.

This book is about Bergsonfs notions (especially matter and memory), but constitutes Deleuzefs view of the world because of his own interpretation of Bergson. At first, Deleuze mentions to this bookfs aim which is to determine the relationship between the three notions, duration, memory, and elan vital in Bergsonfs philosophy. Then, he considers intuition in Bergson which would be a method to achieve the aim. He sets five rules on intuition and probes the relationship between the three notions. Finally, he relates them in the process of differentiation. This notion of gdifferentiationh is very important in Deleuzefs philosophy, which is clear in his other books. Moreover, this book contains some interesting discussions such as criticism to Einsteinfs theory and to evolutionism. I think that this book is important to understand Deleuzefs philosophy and that it must be a very helpful guide to read his gCinema 1: The Movement-Imageh and gCinema 2: The Time-Imageh.

What a wonderful honest account of the struggles of a man, Hugh Gregory Gallagher who at his peak suffered a tremendous loss as a result of polio. Yet in spite of it, and in part because Mr. Gallagher was blessed with a smart mind and strong spirit, overcame the obstacles, making a statement to society about his worth as a human being, as he pursued his dreams, then ultimately made the world a better place for thosewith disabilities. As a polio survivor and one who is facing the challenges of the late effects of post polio, I applaud Mr. Gallagher for his courage and have read and re-read his book to help me gain my strength and courage to face the challenges before me.

From Jack Trombadore Book Reviews New Jersey Polio Network
NEWSLETTER, Fall, 1998.

In this collection of essays, journals, writings and personal recollections spanning almost half a century, Hugh Gallagher courageously reveals himself in a compelling autobiography as both protagonist and antagonist in a drama with countless scenes in three acts. Throughout the first two acts he forces himself to overcome the role of emotional anti-hero until he achieves final freedom from the talons of clinical depression at the beginning of a long, ongoing and productive third act.

Stricken with severe paralytic polio at nineteen, Gallagher never walked again. A freshman at Haverford in the spring of 1952, he was young, beautiful and free; he was in love with a beautiful girl, the novels of Thomas Mann, Italian opera, politics, and with life. He was young, strong and invincible.

Polio, My Account, was written twenty years "after the event" and never previously published. Here, he tells us what it "felt" like to have had a life sentence of disability imposed without hope of pardon or parole. The physiological aspects of his polio were just representative of the inward tragedy of the collapse of a young life. He saw himself watching his own deterioration from outside his body. He saw the horrific progression of the disease the first days: legs, trunk, breathing, arms, hands, neck, double and quadruple vision, the tracheotomy on a body too weak for anesthetics, the rush down corridors in the arms of non-medical personnel to the iron lung, the108 degree fever, last rites.

His body was the battlefield for the doctors and his presence was "accidental." No one disclosed what his ravaged body would be like if they succeeded in keeping him alive. The overwhelming question became: stop or go, yes or no, live or die. He decided to live.

After a year in hospitals, he was admitted to the Warm Springs Foundation in Georgia. He spent nine months there, learning the "functional" tricks of the trade that would enable him again to live in the outside world. He was physically independent, healthy and in a wheelchair. He still is.

He obtained his American B.A. in 1956 from Claremont McKenna College in California. It was the only college of the forty to which he had written that was fully accessible. His first application for a Rhodes Fellowship to Oxford was returned unprocessed; Gallagher was not "fit in mind and body" as required by the will of Cecil Rhodes. His was the first application Oxford had ever received from a disabled person. However, he did attend Oxford with a Marshall Fellow scholarship and studied there for three years at Trinity College, the only one of Oxford's thirty-five individual colleges that was "wheelchair accessible." He was the only person at Oxford in a wheelchair. There he endured unbelievable hardships.

The water closet was a block away, down a ramp and up a ramp, nearly always slippery from the constant rain. The bath facilities were inaccessible and he did not bathe or wash his hair for a year at a time. His legs turned blue from the cold and stayed blue until the late spring. Despite having acquired an outstanding education and lifelong friends, Gallagher now looks with awe and disbelief at the hardships he willingly endured in those three years.

In 1959, as a member of a senatorial staff on Capitol Hill he was once again the only person there in a wheelchair. There was no handicap parking, there were steps everywhere, and the bathrooms were not accessible.

In 1962 Gallagher began his life's work, the search for equal access and equal rights for disabled persons, when he joined the staff of Alaska's powerful, popular and supportive Senator Bob Bartlett (D. Alaska), a member of the Appropriations Committee. The Senator authorized him to work on disability issues and agreed to support this work. Gallagher drafted the Federal Architectural Barriers Act of 1968, the first legislation anywhere to treat equal access of disabled people as a civil right, and the precursor to the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990.

One is thrilled by the account of the political maneuvering, and the political blackmail engineered by Gallagher and the ever-willing Bartlett in the Johnson years to achieve accessibility to the Library of Congress, the National Gallery of Art, the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, federally funded hospitals across America, and many more sites.

On Bartlett's death in 1968 Gallagher went to work for British Petroleum, Ltd., where he acted for five years as that Company's chief political officer in London and Washington. The discovery of vast oil reserves by BP on its Alaska holdings made it the holder of the largest crude reserves in America. Gallagher tells us he was playing with the "Big Boys."

On the 4th of July weekend, 1974, Gallagher left his office and never returned. He was in total mental and physical collapse and spent the rest of the decade recovering from his clinical depression. It had begun two years earlier at his 40th birthday party when he realized that "youth was past." He had been frozen with fear as he felt a giant black buzzard flapping its wings high above him. The experience was repeated in a few months. He continued working until he could no longer do so, filled with dread and unable to go out.

"The great black buzzard sat heavy on my shoulder. It would not go away." " ...the pain of acute paralytic polio in no degree equaled the agony and despair, the abject helplessness of depression." This period of Gallagher's life ended after a long and successful course of psychiatry and psychoanalysis.

Gallagher has long since assumed center stage in the Third Act of this heroic human drama, writing (FDR's Splendid Deception), traveling, speaking, and advocating nationally for the rights of the disabled. A must read.

I must agree with Eric from Bakersfield on this one. I listened to this tape until it wore out and started unraveling in car stereo. Thanks alot Hugh! Anyways I can't believe there's nothing more out from this guy. What happened to him?

I first heard this spoken work album/audio book back in 1997. As a writer myself, I was immediately impressed and inspired by Shu's wordsmith ability. His stories are not only hilarious, but create indelible mental imageries that put you in the stories. My only question is, "Where are you, Hugh?" Such a brilliant writer should be enjoying a higher profile of fame and notoriety, not to mention should be producing more excellent works for us to enjoy. His stories of an artist's everyday experiences in the surreal environment of New York City both make you want to move there and leave you feeling that you already had. He gets to the heart of every matter brought up, and they are many. So give the world more words, Mr. Shu... some of us wait with bated breath!