The beautiful reproductions of Mark Stock's paintings enticed me to keep reading this interesting book about a gifted man and his work. I recommend this book to anyone who is interested in art and the artist of the 21st century. Mark Stock is the modern Renaissance man.

Mark Stock has designed several critically acclaimed sets for the Los Angeles Chamber Ballet and other Los Angeles-based dance troupes. He has authored the screenplay for the 1993 film Fleshtone (based loosely on his life and painting motifs). He spends most of his evenings drumming for a professional jazz trio at the Cypress Club in San Francisco. With the publication of Mark Stock: Paintings, he will now be recognized as a superbly talented and imaginative painter whose artwork is as memorable as it is engaging. The majority of the 112 oil paintings featured focus on the tribulations of romantic passion and ranging from sympathetic to ironic. Barnaby Conrad's lucid text, sprinkled throughout with black and white photography, uniquely showcases and introduces Mark's artwork. An informative essay by Mark Huge Miller deftly examines the connection between much of Mark's work and the seductions and betrayals that were so characteristic of the film noire genre. Mark Stock: Paintings is a highly recommended addition to any personal or public library 20th century artbook collection.

This magnificent book is a must for all boxing fans. The writer focuses on (recent)fights and events in the boxing world.Each occassion is brought to life with exquisitely descriptive prose so excellently constructed,that the reader will find it hard to put down.Some parts are genuinely sad,while at the same time Mr.McIlvanney's gift for humourous observations and anecdotes is hilarious.Intoxicating!

Hugh McIlvanney is often described as the best english-speaking boxing writer of our time. After reading this book I must agree. The book consists of McIlvanney's insightful coverage of the major boxers and fights in the last four decades. His expert boxing analysis and masterful handling of english language is of the same level as Muhammad Ali's footwork or Larry Holmes' jab.

Speaking as a native New Englander, I feel like I've seen enough terrific-looking towns that I can appreciate a really beautiful village. The ones photographed in this book are spectacular. This really is a great coffee table book. The colors in the photos just draw the eye in. It's hard to describe... You will see a whole village of ancient stone buildings, with rock walls in a sort of dusky brown, and suddenly, off to the side, a brightly colored painted boat. Or maybe just a little flower garden, with lots of little Manet-esque red blossoms. And the architecture, or course, is uniformly, yet diversely, amazing. Roman, medieval, and (slightly) more modern, it all just fits together so beautifully. Furthermore, the whole book is full of cool little articles talking about historically interesting tidbits of history, legend, etc. from the region.

Also -- if anyone who enjoys this book has reading ability in French, I'd like to recommend "La Langue Gauloise", by P.Y. Lambert. It talks about the original language of France, "Gaulish", an early Celtic tongue, from before the days of Caesar and friends. I think that one of the intriguing things about Brittany is that this original, pre-Romance-languages tongue of the region was largely reinstated, in the 5th and 6th centuries A.D., by Celtic-speaking refugees when Britain was being overrun by the Germanic-speaking Angles and Saxons. I think it's interesting to look at the place names in Brittany, and try to learn whether they were named back in prehistoric times, or in the era since the 5th and 6th century. This is the kind of question that this book raises -- the concatenated sense of sedimentary century laid upon century, laid upon century, is absolutely enthralling.

This book is one in a series of "The Most Beautiful Villages of...". Although they all have different authors the photography is exceptional. The book concentrates on four areas and the villages that make up each area. There is a short history of each region as well as interesting information on the villages and captions on the photos. In my opinion it is the photographs that give this book five stars. It is a wonderful "coffee table" book to own.

I love the whites and blues of the hillside villages overlooking the Mediterranean. This book is an inspiration for a quality of life that we simply don't have in the US. Simplicity is an art in these wonderful villages and homes we are allowed to explore in this wonderful book. Flowers abound. Life is wonderful. This book is something to treasure until you get your chance to see it for yourself. And in response to that silly editorial review....not everyone is watching that Raymond TV show!

Breathtaking photographs that would convince anyone to travel to these villages. Excellent source of information pertaining to the photos as well.

This book provides more information and insight on the daily life and culture of the people of Sierra Leone than anything else in print. Its descriptions of the terrain, climate, economy, and politics give such a life to the narrative that the reader is absorbed to the degree that it is hard to put the book down until the last page has been read. I was left wishing that the author had written more. It reads like a historical novel. It is both entertaining and educational. It is exciting and it is tragic, but most of all it is inspirational. It speaks of sacrifice and faith that result in an amazing story in which thousands of lives are changed for the better as they come to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ.

God sent the O'keefes into the poorest nation in the world, torn with strife and political corruption. In spite of all the adversity, they established 53 churches. A moving, touching true story of how God used these unselfish missionaries for twenty-four years in Sierra Leone, West Africa.

Ever since I first read about the prime number theorem, I have been roaming the mathetmatical landscape, looking for the best proof of this result. I believe this book has it. It's not the simplest or the shortest proof, but it gives the deepest understanding of why the prime numbers behve like they do. In addition to this, it shows you the historical perspective in these proofs. All too often today math books give one short and slick proofs that leave you wondering how on earth they came up with it. In this book, however, one can almost feel the thoughts going through Riemann and Dirichlet's heads as they came up with the theorems. This book also has the proof of Dirichlet's theorem and Vinogradov's partial proof of the ternary goldbach conjecture. The vinogradov and following sections are considerably harder, partly because they were not written by Davenport himself. Anyway, if you're serious about Analytic number theory and how mathematicians think, this books needs to be on your bookshelf.

I like this book because it gives you a good understanding of where the difficulties in the subject are. It takes a historical approach, following more or less the same steps that the original discoverers of these results took. Today we have very slick proofs for many of these results, and it is sometimes hard to understand why it took so long to discover them in the first place, but this book will give you this understanding; Dirichlet in particular practically had to invent Analytic Number Theory to prove his theorem on primes in an arithmetic progression.

The book works up gradually to each result, for example proving Dirichlet's theorem first for a prime modulus (as Dirichlet did himself), then the general modulus. In most cases it proves first the result for all primes (zeta function) and then the generalization for primes in an arithmetic progression (L function), pointing out which parts generalize easily and which cause special difficulties.

Some of the more advanced results covered are exponential sums, Vinogradov's theorem that every large odd number is the sum of three primes, and Bombieri's theorem about the average distribution of primes in arithmetic progressions.

I haven't seen the previous (1980) edition; this new edition seems to be lightly revised from the previous one. The last chapter is up-to-date and gives a brief survey of new results and of new books on the subject.

This book should be in the household of anyone who listens to Christmas music, whether or not they can actually sing. Although I do not read music, my sister does, and we were able to learn a carol that I had heard on a Christmas CD and perform it as a duet at Midnight Mass.

The New Oxford Book of Carols makes available an extraordinarily rich collection materials that bear witness to the resilience of the traditions of popular piety. These "carols", along with their editorial, historical and performance annotations, provide a rich insight to paths by which complex theological materials were filtered, tranformed and made personal expressions of great beauty and joy. Re-presents materials lost, forgotten, or discarded in a clear, simple, and readily performable format. Performance notes are specific, and clearly systematized.

...Hypermodernism at it's best. Great ideas - well explained-126 games - covers all the variations..I'm winning with black..

The best work on the Nimzovich defense ever published! It is worth of your money.

This book (known in Europe as 'The Women and the Warlords') is Hugh Cook's darkest and least 'heroic' novel presumably because the protagonist is female. He may be the only fantasy author who has confronted the probable 'reality' of a woman's life in the traditional fantasy environment and the result is a book which may be too drepessing for some readers. Despite this, it is a humourous and entertaining read which, although it lacks the polish and sheer inventiveness of the later books, well repays the effort of reading. In short, Hugh Cook has written better, but not many other authors have.

First of all, especially if you live in the USA, this book is MUCH better than it looks. I have seen a US edition which depicts the heroine as a youthful and voluptuous girl in what appears to be chain mail underwear. The edition I own simply has a snowy landscape on the cover, the only figures visible being clad appropriately for the weather.

This book has LOTS in it. There is the clash and death of cultures (focused on more than the military aspect), lots of detail in the characters and societies, gritty and unheroic events and plot, and best of all, distinctly different and most unheroic (in the Hollywood or normal fantasy novel sense) characters.

Yen Olass, the main female character, has had it tough. She most definately could not pass for the bikini babe on the US edition cover. She is stocky, middle aged, tough, and passes for a man for part of the novel. Her homeland has been destroyed, and she has been subjected to appalling treatment by the invading race.

Regret and ashes are a dominant theme.

There is lots more to say, but the book says it better. Read it, it really is good - fantasy, but without the dross you usually have to filter out. Hugh Cook's books showed what was wrong with some of my former favourite fantasy authors, and how much better the genre can be.

I just received this book, and have skimmed to locate items in my particular field of interest -- I am a military historian for fun and (very little) profit.

As I peruse favorite topics, I find it quite impressive. It's pretty comprehensive considering it has to include some trendy topics such as gender and war, as well as more traditional subjects such as battles, campaigns & leaders. There are a number of surprisingly complete and helpful articles on more obscure battles (most run about 300-600 words) and good overviews on campaigns and wars. The length of each essay, or blurb seems appopriate to the complexity or importance of the particular topic.

Comparisons with other compendia are appropriate. Brassey's published a two-volume encyclopedia of military knowledge in the mid-90s, each containing about 1200 pages, the first covering biography and history, the second military theory, concepts and weapons systems. The Trevor Dupuy "Encyclopedia of Military History", whose fourth edition appeared in 1993, is set up in a chronological and geographical scheme and runs over 1600 pages. At 1048 pages the Oxford Companion embraces the themes contained in all those volumes plus sociological matters, literature, journalism, humor, and pop cultural topics.

An impressive group of contributors, all prominent in their specialties, provide ample information both for the novice and the professional wishing to jog his or her memory. Sidebar treatments (some running several pages) on Artillery, armored warfare, airpower, seapower,uniforms, rank and insignia, signals, etc. are very handy reviews of these topics.

I have a few quibbles with the suggestions for further reading. Perhaps some out of print classics focusing narrowly on their subject might have been more appropriate than the suggested recent books that covered the person, battle or campaign as a minor part of a general history; but this is a very minor drawback.

Thhis is a very handy reference indeed, and most importantly, a pleasure to browse.

As a writer, I am often interested in selecting a military example for a point I am making about business. Invariably, I have a hard time locating the facts to see if the examples I have in mind work for my purposes. Weeks of fruitless research have often followed from wanting a fairly minor example. Then, in editing, much rewriting occurs because the details were slightly off in the draft. With the Oxford Companion to Military History, those problems are now all behind me.

I began my investigation of the book by checking out every military history question I could ever remember having had for my writing. Sure enough, this volume contained enough information to have answered each and every one of my questions more than adquately. That was very impressive to me, and it made me decide to add this volume to my reference library. One of the many nice features of this book is that each listing also refers to the best full-length works on that subject, for those who want to get a lot of detail.

The book has more than 1300 entries, written by more than 150 specialists in these military subjects. The subjects are elaborated on by more than 70 detailed maps and 15 pages of diagrams. Each entry is in alphabetical order, with cross-references to more general and more specific topics.

The book focuses on land warfare, so air and naval warfare are in the book primarily to round out the picture on land. So you will find Billy Mitchell, but not the air raids on Ploesti during World War II.

As the editor points out, "There are dictionaries of battles, of military leaders, and even of military history. This is none of those things, although, in its way, it subsumes them all." The purpose is to provide "dependable information and thoughtful assessment for intelligent readers of many kinds . . . ." The book is also designed to be a "reliable and quick reference for scholars . . . ." The limit is that "no companion can claim to be comprehensive."

The subjects include battles, individuals, campaigns, wars, military concepts, weapons, uniforms, equipment, and wider issues (like the military in politics, gender in war, and casualties). I was impressed with the fineness of the detail for many fairly obscure references. Anyone but a military historian would rapidly add new knowledge from just scanning the listings.

Here are some sample listings I found while searching for answers to my old questions: Gulf War, battle of Thermopylae, Alexander the Great, essay on Strategy, Clausewitz, battle of Shiloh, battle of Stalingrad (with maps), Mau Mau uprising, Hundred Years War, siege of the Alamo, and diagrams of how to construct nuclear devices.

After you have a chance to become familiar with this important reference work, I suggest that you think about questions that we should ask about what humanity has learned from warfare. What lessons can be drawn from military examples?

Turn the history of swords into visions of better plowshares!