The book was very informative, precise and easy to follow and understand. It gives you a very clear understanding of what's available to you and what resources to check. It has helped me after one whole year of trying to figure out how to start my business, do just that. Everyone should read this, even if you already have a business of you own, it can help in many ways - Who doesn't need money and advice?

This is as state of the art as it gets. Very little fluff (like the Shuman "Encyclopedia". Gives some very interesting information about life in "the potteries", but most of all has photos of a great many Gaudy Welsh patterns. Photo quality is not stunning, but gives you what you need to ID pieces. I wish somebody would expand this work...maybe when I retire...

This text provides valuble information pertaining to half-lives in different media such as soil, air, and groundwater, aqueous biodegradation, photolysis, photooxidation, reduction and hydrolysis. I have used this information in the past on many occasions when discussing degradation of contaminants. I've foudn this to be a very useful book and am aware of numerous other consultant who have utilized this material.

The Earl of Surrey was the co-founder, along with Sir Thomas Wyatt, of modern English poetry; the whole procession from Spenser and Shakespeare down to Yeats and Eliot starts with Surrey and Wyatt. Surrey's most notable contributions were the creation of English blank verse and the development of the English sonnet from Italian models; without Surrey we should not have Shakespeare as we know him. Surrey was also a distinguished soldier and a loving husband, who was executed for treason at age twenty-nine.

The nineteenth century produced two excellent lives of Surrey, those of G. F. Nott and Edmond Bapst, the latter in French. The twentieth century had not done so well, as the principal accomplishment of Surrey's 1938 biographer, Edwin Casady, was translating Bapst's discoveries into English. William Sessions swings the balance the other way, his Henry Howard, the Poet Earl of Surrey being a magnificent tour of Surrey's life, his poetry, and his world.

Sessions offers the first fully integrated biography of Surrey, addressing his art, family, society, culture, religion, travels, and military career. The book is based on a massive amount of research, both archival and geographical, for Sessions visited virtually every site of importance in Surrey's life. The illustrations alone, some never published before or not properly identified, almost justify the cost of the book.

Sessions corrects many key facts of Surrey's unevenly documented career. He shows, for example, that Surrey was a moderate Protestant, whereas Nott, Bapst, and Casady simply assume that Surrey shared their own religious views--an approach complicated by the fact that Nott was a Protestant while the other two were Catholics. Getting Surrey's religion straight is absolutely essential to understanding a short life spent at the center of the escalating violence of the early Reformation. Finally, Sessions uses the full texts of the original documents concerning Surrey's downfall (instead of reading the published summaries), thereby untangling much of the mystery that occurred amid the religious strife, dynastic uncertainty, and naked ambition at the end of the reign of Henry VIII.

Quote (p352, IA 1997): As one would expect from williams, the essays are well-crafted and thoughtful. Not the least of his strengths as a political theorist is his ability to read sympathetically and comment on seemingly very familiar texts and bring something new to the surface. ... Overall, the book is an illuminating and successful exercise in genre and disciplinary building which has a good deal to offer political theorists and international relations specialists. It deserves a wide readership.

I had to buy this book as a Psychology undergrad for a Stats course. Ten years and two degrees later, I'm still using it as my standard reference.

...This is simply a reprint of a book that was first published in the 1640s by Roger Williams, who was the founder of Rhode Island and a respected friend ("netop") of the Narragansett tribe.

That said -- this book is not simply a vocabulary, or a grammatical treatise. It also includes dozens of insights into the daily life of the Narragansett tribe, at a time when most of them lived as they had from time immemorial. Every chapter includes not only the actual vocabulary appropriate to the topic under discussion, but also several paragraphs talking about the lives of the Narragansett. Sometimes Roger Williams ends a chapter with a little pedantic poem, but hey, cut him some slack -- he was a creature of his times, as are we all.

Here are a couple of things that I wish someone had told ME about, before I discovered this amazing little volume. First and formost -- the table of contents is at the END of the book, not the beginning. It does exist, you didn't get a defective copy. Second -- for a funny, fascinating set of examples of early native american onomatopeia, look in the sections on "Fowles" and "Beastes." Evidently, the Narragansetts told Roger Williams that they called a duck a "quequecum," a wild goose was called a "honck-honck," and a horse (which they learned about from the English) was called a "nay-nay-oumewot." Maybe this is just my own sense of humor, but I enjoyed envisioning a stern, austere, Godly Puritan, wearing heavy black clothes in summertime (and the hat with the little buckle on front), sitting down with a solemn circle of sunburned sachems, and doing bird calls. I can just picture the Cambridge-educated Roger Williams earnestly scribbling notes in his notebook, while the sachems sat there, pointed at birds outside the wigwam, and went "quack quack" and "honk honk" for his edification. I thought the duck was especially funny -- "Ah yes.... we callum that birdum a quequecum, Good Reverend Williams."

That is a minor point, but it does make the book a little more fun. Basically, however, let me hasten to add that this book is far more than fun. It is ultimately VERY serious. It's one of the few remaining sources of information into the tongues spoken by the early natives of southern New England. If you are capable of appreciating this, I recommend you look for anything by Kathleen Bragdon, or Ives Goddard, who have done a lot of work trying to keep the memories of these lost languages alive. If you prefer libraries to the internet, try to find articles by the 19th century Connecticut state librarian J. Hammond Trumbull, who wrote many articles on native New England place names, and Eastern Algonquin languages in general. You may also wish to seek out John Eliot's "Indian Bible," which is incredibly hard to find in print, but was put on microfilm by University Microfilms in Michigan. The "Indian Bible" was composed, with the able assistance of native speakers, in the Massachusett dialect of Algonquin, which is very closely related to Narragansett. Another little gem is William Woods' "New England Prospect," which includes a handy little SHORT vocabulary. Also, if you're internet-savvy enough, you might enjoy seeking out the work of Jessie "Little Doe" Fermino, a native Wampanoag in Mashpee, Massachusetts, who has recently been developing language classes in the tongue of the Wampanoag tribe.

But back to this book -- it is highly informative, and a tremendous boon to students of early native Americans in New England. Two thumbs up.

Unlike many books of this genre, Managing Windows NT server 4.0 is a well thought out analysis of each component of Windows NT server and how they interrelate. Rather than skim the surface, this book plunges head-first into the depths of the operating system to increase the reader's understanding of Microsoft's flagship product.

Examples of this include the chapter on Disk Administrator, which stands out as a sterling example of technical reference. Clear, concise and revealing, it is a pleasure to read.

The command-line technical reference is also stunning in its depth, and often reveals more items than digging through the manuals.

In all, an excellent volume.

What Beatrice was to Dante Thomas Howard is to readers of Charles Williams, whose novels are not exactly hell to read, but some may yet find them somewhat tough going. It's a pity, because as with the Latin Mass, if we only knew what we were missing we would clamor for more. Thankfully Ignatius Press has reprinted this book by Thomas Howard so that we do have a guide through this marvelous world. In this book, originally published by Oxford Press, Thomas Howard starts with the party line that Williams is a bad writer, and then shows us why he's a very good one (Thomas Howard can be very sneaky). He explains why CW can't be considered a "major" writer, and maybe not even a good candidate for a minor one, but by the end of the book one is convinced that the label "major" is too small to fit Charles Williams.

Howard is similarly dismissive of his own writing in this book, even though it stands as one of his best (his best to date, in my opinion, is On Being Catholic). He suggests the reader not even read the whole book, but just jump around to the relevant parts for the Williams novel he/she is interested in. Here again, I must take exception and express a minority viewpoint. The book that does seem pieced together this way is Howard's The Achievement of C.S.Lewis, whereas The Novels of Charles Williams reads seamlessly and grippingly start to finish. Not that Howard's Lewis book is bad--the bit on Till We Have Faces is very good, as well as parts on the Silent Planet Trilogy. But it seems to me that the prefaces for these two books got switched.

Anyone venturing into a Williams novel for the first time might find the water, as it were, initially cold and uninviting, regardless how heartily the swimmers urge him or her to dive in. Howard is like a personal trainer, both preparing the reader and helping them stay in shape when, gripped with the strange madness that afflicts readers of Williams novels, they recklessly swim further and further from shore. Howard is obviously among the initiates, and the more dismissive he is of Willaims' standing as a writer, the more you want to read him. 'Nuff said. Dive in. The water's fine.

Paul Carlson writes history like most novelist would like to write fiction. He is informative about his subject without being a bore. Shafter was the man who cleaned up after Wounded Knee, put down the Pullman Strike and led our Armed Forces in Cuba during the Spanish American War. Why wasn't he publicized as an American hero? Because, he was too fat, was involved in a scandle or two and wasn't popular with the press. Carlson tells it like it happened. And that makes this book the absolute best of its kind.

Jim Wynne