This is an excellent book on stochastic convergence. The book is oriented toward advanced graduate students in economics and researchers that have to use econometrics in practice, and its main aim is to introduce this audience to advanced mathematical concepts that are needed in order to deal with stochastic convergence. The first part of this book (about 200 pages) is preliminaries from real analysis, measure and probability theory. Then it discusses theory of stochastic processes, introducing among others such concepts as martingales and mixingales, and then it moves to the main part - various limit results (about 300 pages). It discusses in great detail Laws of Large Numbers and Central Limit Theorems for various sequences of random variables: from simple iid cases to dependent non-identicali distributed. It concludes with the section on Functional Central Limit Theorems. This textbook is practically complete, it contains huge amount of material and almost all results are provided with proofs. It was recommended to as by prof. Phillips for his Time-Series Econometrics course ar Yale, but I find it very useful for other courses in statistics and finance too. It is just a great reference book and if you study econometrics at advanced level or you have to read modern econometrics literature you would appreciate it. It could be also a good idea to combine reading of this book with White's "Asymptotic Theory For Econometricians". The last one is very compact and it adapts results found in Davidson's book to the case of linear regression model.

When I began to read this book at first I thought, "What is this man doing?" I tend to be a heavy reader and read heavy works. James Twyman's "Ten Spiritual Lessons" is sheer lightweight. Reading further I realized there isn't anything wrong with that. I've hit an exceptionally heavy time of my life watching my mother slowly lose her life to Alzheimer's Disease. Sometimes I can't concetrate on anything else but my mother and my usual deep studies are just too much. Why Twyman's book caught my attention I didn't know at the time, but his uncomplicated writing style and vignettes took me away from difficult places and I actually had a hard time putting the book down. I even started to look at some of the most ordinary people and situations in my own life for the innate spiritual presence that truly exists everywhere. How silly the whole book seems, as I found myself often shaking my head. A retreat in the mall of all places. Did he write this because he had a deadline and he needed something simple? Well, I know I needed something simple for now--and I came away from his book energized and not so saddened by the seriousness that life takes at times, or by its appearance of superficiality. That is the paradox of the book: Its lightweight approach brings the reader to a deeper sense of compassion for the most ordinary of people and places. For what he set out to do I have to give it a five.

If you're looking for heavy reading, this isn't it. If your life is heavy and you need a reprieve, you've come to the right place. I thank Jim for that reprieve.

The book, Thank God, I'm Free, is a wonderful, inspiring piece of work. It is the testimony of James Robison, from the rape of his mother and his conception to his explosive, life-changing ministry. In his book, he tells of his life as a poor youth, being transferred back and forth between his mother and his foster family. He tells of how he met his wife, Betty, how he was saved, and how God called him to the ministry. He, then, goes to describe how God took a shy, quiet young man and used him to win millions to Christ preaching in churches, stadiums, colosseums, and eventually all over the world. This book is a must-read for anyone considering entering the ministry or who is looking to see how God can use them despite of themselves and their inabilities.

Interested in the later Shakespearean plays I didn't expect to be recommended a book on Shakespeare's theater quite like this one. What makes it unusual is a focus not just on Shakespeare, though he is here. He takes a back seat sometimes but only so you can get to see how something big was happening in London after the death of Queen Elizabeth and how a whole host of the leading playwrights of the day contributed to it. The importance of Jacobean Londoners' interest in Great Britain that Dr Tristan Marshall describes is a major theme and it makes for a fascinating read. King James I is rarely viewed in a positive light and this informs the way we see the dark brooding tone in plays by Webster like 'The White Devil' and in Jonson's 'Volpone'. Dr Marshall's analysis provides a context for understanding how an alternative focus for a royal interest could be communicated via setting plays in ancient Britain. As King James's biggest political manoeuver, making a British kingdom out of England, Scotland and Ireland was a highly contentious issue. The fact that so many playwrights were interested in it - and most of them very positively - means that we need to fundamentally re-think the way we view Jacobean political culture. This really is well worth reading. Dr Marshall has made an extremely valuable and timely contribution to a field of study whose champions have rarely spent time in this early seventeenth century period.

I am a historian myself in Modern Middle Eastern Civilisation and I can very proudly say that this book is well written, accurate and is full of useful information. The Armenians were treated very badly by the Turks and this book explains that in black and white. Buy this book it's well worth it.

This book was inturiging, and totally worth 5 stars. It made me remember playing on the court with my friends.It made me remember the big ball, dribbiling on the ground, and to think that James Naismith invented it all!

As a former student of Cooke's, I may be a bit biased. However, if you want true military insight, there is no one better. Cooke blends his experience as an Army General and war veteran with his decades of experience as a professor. This book, as well as his others, show an encyclopedic knowledge of the subject matter. I highly recommend any books by Mr. Cooke.

I regard this as one of the most important of the many books tangential to the history and politics of Northern Ireland written recently, and have no hesitation in heartily recommending it.

Loughlin investigates the evolution of Ulster Unionists' understanding of national identity in relation to understandings in the wider United Kingdom. An enormous academic industry has been built up around the problematising of the modern history of Northern Ireland (and, more distantly, Ireland as a whole). This in itself is not surprising since stark images of conflict are prominent in representations of contemporary Northern Ireland. However, focus on local conflict in Northern Ireland often carries the assumption (which such analyses fail to explore) that surrounding societies and identities without comparable conflict (principally Britain) represent some sort of norm. Such analyses thus implicitly regard it as acceptable shorthand to treat notions of British national identity outside of Northern Ireland as static, unchanging and reasonably homogeneous. Once properly explored by historians, these assumptions fall to the ground. The merits of Loughlin's approach are that while he focuses on interactions between the "Britishness" of Northern Ireland and the predominant modes of "Britishness" in the remainder of the United Kingdom, he assimilates a wider historiography which has demonstrated that the latter modes have been themselves varied, diverse, and a small proportion of the multiple identities of the United Kingdom. He suggests thus that there is no necessary reason why the national identity of Ulster Unionists should be perceived as alien to forms of national identity elsewhere in the United Kingdom, and charts the psychological distance between these two types of manifestations of Britishness as a process resulting from political and social change in Britain as well as in Northern Ireland. Loughlin's hypothesis is open to the charge of teleology since he has determined at the outset to investigate Ulster Unionism primarily in a British context, but this charge is no less valid against historians who investigate Northern Ireland in an Irish context. In each case the methodology must be evaluated according to the extent of historical terrain meaningfully illuminated, and in this respect I find Loughlin's work very convincing.

My main criticism is that Loughlin's comparison between national identity among Northern Irish Unionists on the one hand, and among Britons on the other, seems to draw disproportionately upon the British political Right. Admittedly, within Britain, right-wing voices have often been predominant (or at least noisiest) among expressions of British national identity and Ulster Unionists' closest political allies. However, the patriotic content of the thought of the political Left (recently explored by Paul Ward in "Red flag and Union Jack" (Woodbridge : Boydell Press, 1998)) did much to give expressions of national identity in Britain a consensual appearance. I suspect that Loughlin's relative neglect of left-wing expressions of British national identity may be explained by the fact that while sources of distance between British right-wing expressions of national identity and Ulster Unionism are subtle enough to require considerable illumination, sources of distance between British left-wing expressions of national identity and Ulster Unionism can largely be explained with cursory reference to the frequent ignorance of the British Left. If so, I wish this had been illuminated a little further.

Anne Somerset has written a comprehensive non-fiction account of the Overbury scandal that reads as if it were fictional narrative. The sources are exhaustive but not oppressive, so that this murder mystery turns out to be one of the best historical "whodunits" I have read. The plot is of the ages: the Countess of Somerset is young and beautiful; the Earl of Somerset is rich and powerful. In the Fall of 1615 the Countess and the Earl of Somerset were arrested on sucpicion of having murdered Sir Thomas Overbury. Does the passion, lust and greed
that lead up to their arrest turn the plot? This has it all.

Now in an expanded and updated 2002 edition, the V.I.P. Address Book presents over 28,000 addresses of the powerful, the famous, the infamous, and the celebrated, including political activists, sports heroes, journalists, singers, actors, computer experts, business moguls, and more. A direct, superbly organized, no-nonsense, and "user friendly" guide that lists the addresses in alphabetical order, V.I.P. Address Book is a first-class reference for anyone who needs to look up the address of a famous person quickly, from journalists and advertisers to fund raisers and researchers. V.I.P. Address Book is a core reference for personal, professional, and community library reference collections.