This is not a book to learn about Thomas Merton the thelogian, Thomas Merton the literary figure, or Thomas Merton the Catholic monk. In these pages, you learn from a close friend about Merton the human being.

Seitz takes pains to recall Merton's gestures, speech patterns and poeticism so the reader can sense why the Trappist monk was an imposing world figure: because he lived and perceived the world in a remarkable, creative, insightful, intelligent, earthy, human way.

But this is Seitz's book, not Merton's. By the final pages, you get a sense of what Seitz lost when Merton died in Bangkok, 1968. And through his sad remembrance, you feel what the world lost too.

Ron Seitz is a poet who was befriended by Thomas Merton during the last 10 years Of Mertons life. He recorded this "memory vision" about Merton, and it is a delight. He wonders early on why Merton seeks him out and confides in him, then a series of meetings over the final 10 years of his life are explained, full of imagery and delightful wordplay between the two poets. Setz is firm in his belief that Merton was first and foremost a poet, and a poet of the first order, and this is where the initial identification tales place. They became so close that it was Seitz who drove Merton to the Louisville airport as he began his "Asian Journey" which eventually led to his all to early death in Thailand on Dec 10th, 1968. The volume is illustrated with many photographs by the author, and decribes some delightful anecdotal moments. Meton at a jazz club with the author and his wife, The author trying to impress Mertons publisher, the legendary j. laughlin of New Directions{and failing,miserably, until a wonderful musical moment brings it all together], merton and seitz meeting the wonderful minimalist poet {and Mertons best frind] Robert Lax, Merton doing an impromptu dance with Seitz three children around the dinner table to a Jimmy smyth organ piece,and toher such memories.Mention is made of the affair Merton had with margie Smith, a young nurse who attended him in a Louisville hospital after back surgery,without anything salacious... Seitz is a good writer,his memories are heartfelt and above all honest, and has honored his friend by this book. And us, too.

and falls short. Jane's Chem-Bio Handbook is much improved over the freebie notepad version they gave out a few years back, but it suffers from a lack of focus. The small size, spiral binding, and tabs suggest it is intended as a first responder or incident commander handbook, but occasional topical discourses suggest that it is meant as a textbook. As a result, it is hard to find the information that would be needed on the scene (an index helps, but only slightly), while the coverage of the various topics is too uneven for it to be a good text. In some places, it seems to be simply a compilation of information from various (US) field manuals.

There are some good ideas, but they seem to be sabotaged by the execution. The checklist version of the "Agent Indicator Matrix" (based on the Defense Protective Service model) is a good idea, but it is spread over three pages (instead of being arranged to fit on two facing pages in a landscape presentation or provided as a foldout) so that it can neither be copied easily or used easily in the book. A section on the threat of stolen military munitions, after noting that stockpiles in other countries are not as well secured as those in the US, then proceeds to a description of US weapons without describing distinguishing characteristics of chemical munitions relative to conventional munitions or how the munitions described might relate to foreign munitions.

There are also some surprising errors in the hodgepodge of facts. The volume I purchased indicates that it is from the sixth printing, so I have to presume that most typos have been corrected. One particularly egregious error is in the characterization of liquid phosgene as "...not hazardous except as a source of vapor." This statement is highlighted in a little box with a finger pointing at it on page 106, and repeated on page 108. While certainly it is the vapor that kills, liquid phosgene splashed into the eyes is known to produce opacification. Subsequently, it is stated that "Phosgene [vapor] does not damage the eyes or skin..." Yet it is well known that concentrated phosgene vapor will irritate both the skin and eyes, and, while this would not be fatal, and is usually not permanent the downplaying of these risks is certainly inappropriate, to put it mildly.

To try to close on a positive note, this book does have some good information salted in various odd spots. If you are responsible for a training program, it would be a good book for you to look at, provided it is not the only reference you use. The table of emergency decontamination materials found at a K-Mart, for instance, suggests an obvious bit of homework for your trainees.

In summary, this handbook should not be your first or only purchase, but it probably has a place in a comprehensive library. Given the reputation of Jane's, a bit more proofreading would have been in order.

Among those involved with the planning and implementation of specialized, multi-casualty incident response, this book is quite useful. Field personnel, command staff, and planners - all will find it helpful. I found it to be concise, packable, and physically handy. About the only thing I'd change would be to laminate the pages for weather resistance.

R.D. Lopez, Emergency Medical Services and Disaster Specialist, Dept. of Public Health

This is a wonderful book for any first responder to have.
It is very easy to use because not only does it come with on and off scene procedures, but it also has quick reference tables and charts. On a scale of 1 to 5 I give it a 10!

I would suggest this book to the scholar anxious to follow Merton's life story ,but it is certainly not a book for those interested in developing their christian faith and needing a book to help them know the Lord more.It is so full of contradictions,I am not even sure that it represents an adequate picture of firm christian life , let alone monastic life.I would imagine that his experimentation with so many other forms of spiritually led him to lose his identity.And what of the statement in the previous volume that he was to remain faithful to "M" all his life.A year later he was burning her letters without even opening them!A rather open form of fidelity! The book is probably a must for historical scholars,but for those wishing to find a book that steers the pilgrim in the rough and tumble of spiritual life, this book is not for you!

I found this book at my local "Catholic" bookstore and it re-arranged my head for the better. After being a pretty regular journal writer, I found myself completely taken with the "place" that Merton created as he wrote day-to-day. I discovered that I simply "lost track" of about four decades of my life......either that or his style and words brought me so completely into my past and present that time lost all meaning and I was both myself now and myself then. Since I read his last journal as my introduction to Thomas Merton in general, I have read several of his journals.......I still cannot believe that he died in Thailand when I was in high school since I feel his
presence in Fall River MA each night as I write in my own little book....must be the sign of a truly awesome writer.

Patricia Walsh

As an avid Thomas Merton fan who owns almost every book this Trappist monk ever wrote, I have been eagerly anticipating each new volume of the Merton journals as they have been released over the past few years. This final volume is the last in a simply superlative set, every volume of which is a "must have" for any Merton devotee.

As the books are journals that were not really intended for publication, the voice is not "Thomas Merton, Best-Selling Author and Religious Thinker". The voice we hear now is "Thomas Merton, Sinner Just Like the Rest of You, But Doing the Best He Can". And the bottom line is that I really like this voice! I like Merton! Not just the best-selling author Merton, but the every-day guy Merton - who makes mistakes, gets angry or even irratible, and sins in spite of himself.

Highly recommended for any Merton fan, but also of interest to religious scholars and biographers (the books are well indexed) and even everyday folks who are merely interested in the life and times of a Trappist monk in the 20th century.

Interesting that you basically ignore native XML DBs. They are the definitive choice in most XML Document Centric environments. While RDBs remain quite strong in XML Data Centric models, they must resort to BLOBs or risk an order of magnitude of sluggishness compared to native XML DBs, such as our GoXML DB. Even with BLOBs, you cannot create a new document from multiple existing documents because of the columnar structure. The lack of a full table of contents when your title is 'Professional XML Databases' is disappointing...

Concerned XML Enthusiast

this is very well written book. the material presented in this book are exhaustive and gets you good insight on how xml would be used with dbms. the chapters 2,3 and 4 are very informatiove as they list ou tthe steps required for converting db table to xml and vice versa.

I read through this book at more of an advanced developer level, so I'm going to treat it from that level.

The chapter on XQuery was great; it answered many of my questions concisely. There is very little information on the web about XQuery outside the W3.org site, so I was surprised to find such high quality information in a book.

XPath is also a newer API that is covered well in this book, giving you enough information to get your project going.

If you're planning to do any kind of development with XML coming in or going out of a relational database, this is an excellent book to buy. I also recommend Professional XML from Wrox and O'Reilly's XML in a nutshell.

I love cooking. I love history. I love the Aubrey-Maturin novels. Hmm. Maybe that explians why I like this book.

One of the great things about O'Brian's books is that there is not only battle, but details of day to day life, including music, clothing, and games. Above all, however, there is FOOD. This book fills in the gap for the would-be Killick to set the table for the captain. Be forewarned -- this is not The Joy of Cooking. This is a cook book for people who already know how to do more than heat-n-eat.

Much like Cosman's Fabulous Feasts, this book gives you something on table manners, habits of cooking, lore of food, and, of course, the recipes (or at least as close as we can guess to them). The recipes are neatly divided into sections, as with most such books, and care is given to preparing authentic food. Some of the ingedients are obscure and some of the tastes will be ... acquired. Personally, I was fascinated that there was even a recipe for ships biscuits (and a few less savoury items) right along side the haute cuisine of the day.

If you would really like to know the flavours behind Jack's 20 stone, read this book; better yet COOK from this book.

Which I've just got it for you here, ain't I?

If you are a fan of the Aubrey/Maturin naval fiction novels of Patrick O'Brian, there is one theme underscoring the appearance of Captain Jack Aubrey RN, and that is food, whether it be the weevilly sea biscuit and salt horse of the midshipmans' berth or the prodigious dishes served in the great cabin aft.

They are wonderful dishes with wonderful names. drowned baby is a dessert. Sea pie contains no fish. Spotted dog is not a dalmation. We are given tantalising glimpses into their nature, but recipes are not to be had. Patrick O'Brian was a wizard with words, but no cook.

The deficiency is rectified in this invaluable companion to the canon. Every dish is tracked down and recreated. The authors not only give the recipe, but tell you precisely how to do it for those unfamiliar with the utensils and methods (and ingredients) of a bygone age.

I cannot recommend this book too highly, but I must issue a hearty warning. Do not partake of the dishes described without at least a dozen mates to help you eat them! Or you will wind up as stout as Captain Jack.

And mind you lay in a good stock of madeira, sillery and port for atmosphere.

A glass of wine with you, dear reader!

I once knew a lady who had a vast collection of cookbooks. She read them, too, even if she indulged in little adventurous cooking. I often wondered how one could find entertainment reading recipes - was the recreation as adventurous as poring over the instructions for assembling a barbecue pit one was not going to assemble?

Perhaps if I had peeked into her cookbooks I would have discovered some enchanting prose among the recipes, as I have in "Lobscouse & Spotted Dog". Open the book anywhere ... Aah, here on page 92 is the recipe for drowned baby, also called boiled baby, introduced by this passage from "The Nutmeg of Consolation":

"The gunroom feast for the Captain was if anything more copious than that of the day before. The gunroom cook, by means known to himself alone, had conserved the makings of a superb suet pudding of the kind called boiled baby in the service, known to be Jack Aubrey's favourite form of food, and it came in on a scrubbed scuttle-cover to the sound of cheering."

Sure, I read this passage during my several reads of "Nutmeg", but standing here alone it seems to sparkle with more clarity. Now I clearly see the pudding, gliding in on a scrubbed wooden hatch cover (to the surprise of no one there) and I thrill to the sound of cheering.

Here, once again, the perfect team has stepped forward to contribute an enchanting and tantalizing contribution to the Aubrey/Maturin series. A daunting task it must have been for this multi-talented mother and daughter (sailboaters, too, they are), to unearth and translate into modern terms the scores of recipes found in this book, to translate the contemporary equivalents of their ingredients.

And, in addition to its being seasoned with exquisite excerpts from the novels, we are served a selection of the songs encountered in the stories - words and music.

While you are satisfying your literary and musical appetites, you can sample some of these recipes. I found I could actually create the ones I've tried. To think that now I've figuratively dined with Aubrey and Maturin ("There you are, Doctor. Good morning."), Tom Pullings, William Babbington, Mowett ...

What is it about Patrick O'Brian's writing that so challenges and inspires readers of such fine tastes and writing ability of their own? First, it was A.E. Cunningham, who edited "Patrick O'Brian: Critical Essays and a Bibliography", a wonderfully enlightening collection of articles published not too long after the O'Brian wave swept ashore.

Then came Dean King with "A Sea of Words", his splendid glossary of everything we couldn't fathom in O'Brian's sea stories. With John B. Hattendorf, King followed with "Harbors & High Seas," a desperately needed atlas and geographical guide to the stories. And right on the heels of those came this beautiful work of art, a cookbook like no other. Happily, I have not observed evidence of an opportunist at work among those contributing to O'Brian's legacy.

"Lobscouse & Spotted Dog" is another brilliant achievement, infinitely worthy of standing at muster alongside the O'Brian stories and the other contributions to them. Authors Anne Chotzinoff Grossman and Lisa Grossman Thomas have labored mightily to assemble these recipes, and to season them with such delicate care. That much is evident even to the meanest understanding. Patrick O'Brian himself recognized the quality of this work and provided its apt foreword. Not surprisingly, publisher W.W. Norton put it all together very nicely.

A glass of wine with you, my dears. And let us also raise a toast to my Amazon.com friend who knew, just KNEW, that I would love your book.

I found this book to be a useful addition to the Matlab user-manual. Editing, however, could have been better. There are simply too many little annoying writing and spelling errors, and the coverage of certain Matlab commands sometimes lacks a logical structure. Having said that, I still would recommend the book for Matlab users who want to explore advanced graphics or GUI-design.

Despite the promise of this text (Graphics AND GUIs, not just graphics), only one chapter (out of 10) is fully dedicated to GUIs. It provides ways to do most everything, but some things, such as exclusive radio buttons, can be implemented better using other source code (from MATLAB documentation or from online resources) as examples. However, the explanations of handle graphics and general graphical functionality are very useful (for example you can graph R^3 functions with adjustable transparency), and although it is not perfectly understandable at times, it is certainly better than most of the MATLAB resources (especially the standard documentation) you may find out there.

Before expecting to program GUIs, it should be advised that the reader should know a programming language similar to MATLAB's; C would be the most useful to know since MATLAB's language is based on it. That said, there are many well-commented code examples to follow to improve your understanding, but if you have a hard time following the code, the book often won't clear much up.

Since there are few MATLAB books covering graphics and GUIs, this book may be the best to have at the moment. Still, one should buy this keeping in mind that it is most useful to those who already have background in programming. It is not a tutorial.

This book does a good job of going into the details of handles and properties to allow the reader to get a good feel of how to use the tools available. There are also good examples in the book. I have worked with quite a few different languages so I found it very enjoyable to read, but I don't know that a beginner will have a good feel for the execution of code associated with a user action (ie Buttondwnfcn) or not. I think if they take time with the examples they can get a good understanding though. Excellent book!

I purchased this book from Amazon because I wanted to expose myself to some alternate views of "The Crying of Lot 49"; and in that respect, this book was quite helpful. Including the five essays in this book, I have read about a dozen pieces of criticism on the novel, and there is virtually no agreement among any of them. Every single essayist interprets names, symbols, events, and passages differently. So "New Essays" won't lead you to the one key truth of "Lot 49", if there even is one. What's better though, is that this book will expose you to five divergent ways of thinking about the novel. Reading and understanding various conflicting arguments about "Lot 49" will only help you in your own quest to understand this book. I would give this book only 3.75 stars, however, because of the quality of some of the essays contained within. Some of the essays are quite excellent. Johnston's look at semiotics in the novel very interesting, thought provoking, and well written. Further essays on "disrupting story" and the use of metaphor are also very good. The book's first essay, a comparison of Borges to Pynchon, is not as strong. Perhaps my dislike of this essay was fueled by my inexperience with the work of Borges, or the fact that I only took Spanish for six years and was unable to understand many of the passages the author used by Borges. Mainly, I felt that this essay was not as insightful as other essays. Yes, it linked Pynchon and Borges well, but it didn't have too many interesting ideas about "Lot 49" itself. My biggest problem with the book was its final essay. This essay, written by a professor of American Studies at the University of Paris, attempts to look at the novel in the context of the 60's in the USA. This essay was boring and uninsightful. All in all, I'd say that this was a good buy, although at 16 dollars for what I judge as 3.5 good essays, some people may find it a little pricey.

Are you writing a paper on *The Crying of Lot 49*? If so, this book will come in handy.

Thomas Pynchon can fill a book with everything imaginable and still bore you to tears, but on the other hand one page about a banana breakfast and it is in your head for a lifetime. If Jim Morrison didn't die; I certainly believe that Thomas would be a good name for him...

I have reviewed Thomas Hughes' Dictionary of Islam, and I have found that, despite being written by an Englishman clergyman over 100 years ago, it presents a fairly comprehensive view of the Islamic faith, based essentially on the orthodoxy of the Hanifite (madhab)-- School of Islam Law.

Most of the scriptural information contained therein come from traditional Islamic texts (such as Mishkat al Masabih, Hidaya, etc.), but several biographical sketches and translations of the Qur'anic Surahs are based on the works of Western orientalists, containing inherent biases. By and large, the traditions and rules are universal and not subject to polemics.

The lexicon undoubtedly contain vast amount of information that can only be found in other voluminous texts and encyclopedias, such as the New Encyclopedia of Islam, still under production.

This dictionary will be of great value to the lay Muslim (wanting to know more about Islam) as well as the serious student of the faith. It contains far more historic information than the Concise Encylopedia of Islam by Cyril Glass, even though I put the latter a step ahead because it prepared by a man of the faith and it is more up to date.

Nonetheless, this book would be a good addition to anyone's library. I use it all the time for quick references, especially on 'far out' topics or questions including those that may be considered 'esoteric.'

I have no hesitation in recommending this book, if only because there is no other out there (produced from Muslim sources) that is available in a comprehensive format to the lay Muslim, outside that of Cyril Glass'.

This book, written by a Christian Missionary wandering in the Indian Sub-continent in the 1800's is a very copmprehensive work on the Islamic doctrines, beliefs and practices. It practically has a definition for every Islamic term or concept that you ever wanted to know. Apart from these it also contains informative articles on the lifestyles of Muslims in the 1800's on ceremonies like marriage, birth, death and other festivals and rites. Its many illustrations and easy to read format will prove invaluable to any one who wants to learn about Islam and Muslims and will be a great gift for non-muslim friends.

It is a wonderful idea to make available recordings of great speeches. I hope we have more of this in the future.
In the case of older speeches, the selection is very good, considering the restraints of time, and the readers are uniformly excellent.
As for the modern speeches, it is a marvel of technology that we can hear these speeches as delivered. It is incredible that we can hear the voice of William Jennings Bryan. I can listen to Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" a thousand times and never tire of it! How I wish I could listen to the voice of Patrick Henry! But this selection is too heavily weighted to the modern, and many of those do not deserve billing as the GREATEST speeches of ALL TIME. Also, some of the modern speeches which are included are abridged, e.g. Reagan is cut off in the middle of a sentence, while lengthy and undeserving speeches are played out in their entirety.
Also, with only a few exceptions, the selection is almost entirely American. It is hard to understand why Jimmy Carter's lengthy speech on energy policy is included, while Pericles' funeral oration is not; or why only a small portion of a single Winston Churchill speech is included; why while Bill Clinton's complete 1993 pulpit address, in excess of 20 minutes, is included.
It would be helpful if the complete list of speeches were available to online buyers, as it would be to shoppers in a brick and mortar store.

I have listened to this collection twice now, both times with pleasure. Hearing the acutal voices of Amelia Earhart, Rev. Martin Luther King, Winston Churchill and Neil Armstrong made a deeper connection than simply reading their words. The collection showcases different subjects and many times contrasts opposing viewpoints of the ideas. This volume is a fantastic introduction to the moving ideals and sometimes sad truths that have influenced Western Civilization.

This a great tape for driving. The action is fast paced, the images exotic and the characters are interesting. The plot revolved around the escape of an Australian who is being framed for the murder of the Indian Prime Minister's wife. Fans of the Paul Scott's The Raj Quartet will enjoy the houseboat scenes in Kashmir.

The author narrates the book very well, which is sometimes not the case when authors are recorded. He's English -- an accent which I love...

This is not a chef d'oeuvre of litterature, but one will get glued to it very rapidly. The plot and action will thrill any reader with a sense for adventure and foreign and unknown countries. A book to take in the suburb or train or other noisy places, no problems of concentration, the difficulty is to extract oneself from it...