The story deals with Red Sonja getting mixed up with a prison break. The prisoners are made up of a band of thugs and a wizard who has sold his soul to an ancient and very powerful Hell spawned demon. Needless to say, Sonja joins forces with a military expedition set out to bring the convicts back in line. This story has it all, adventure on the high seas, acts of piracy, loads of action, character development(a rarity for this series), and an overgrown mud monster. Also in this story, we finally learn the origin of Sonja's famous, or rather infamous, metal bikini battle armor. But bummer of all bummers, as soon as we learn it's origin, it's destroyed in battle, and Sonja replaces it with more practical armor:( To date, this is the best Red Sonja novel I have read. I was strongly tempted to give it 5 stars, but it just falls short of this lofty rank. As with all Red Sonja novels this item is long out of print. But if you are diligent in your search, you will be well rewarded. As with all books in the series, renowned fantasy artist Boris provides a truly gorgeous cover painting. Fortunately, Boris chose to depict Sonja in her more famous metal bikini on the cover rather than in her knew practical armor:)

One thing which you perhaps shouldn't have in mind when reading this book, is the strange idea of Pasternak's that men are poets by making poetry, while women are poets by making children, as that could disturb your sympathy with the author.
On the other hand, that is exactly what this book is about.
Pasternak's concept of what discerns poets from other people, is that the poet fights to understand the world, while other people don't really care, or have been given all the answers already.

As Zhenia, the heroine of this book, enters her puberty, she has to learn to understand a world that doesn't help her much in her struggle. She has to learn why she should be ashamed of her menstruation, and why no one wants her to know about her mother's miscarriage. Not until she realises the connection between the both - that she, like her mother, can bear children - Zhenia is able to mature into a complete human being.

And just as Zhenia's pubertal existence is like a fever haze, Pasternak's writing is as fascinatingly hard to get a firm hold of. The modernist he is, he has in his writing dissolved all the 'solid patches' of conventional prose.

Let me first say a couple things about myself so you can better know how to interpret my review. First of all I am a physician who was previously a biochemist, and I have been an assistant professor of medicine at a major university; and secondly (actually primarily as a person) I am a devout Catholic Christian. Now for my review.

Mr. Hoare starts his book out with a solid review of the scientific research done upon the Shroud. This does help for those who want to review what has been studied. And to his credit Mr. Hoare does this rather even-handedly. Where the author really fails is what he does after reviewing the data. And what contributes to his failure is his very poor understanding of Christianity, despite the fact the book describes him as a "protestant". This quote from the book should help explain what I mean:

"Experience and studies have shown that on this earth there are certain laws that operate. Is the only answer really that God stepped right outside those laws in the case of Jesus?" (p. 130)

This short quote fairly clearly shows how the author either doesn't realize that Jesus Christ is Himself God (in the second person of the Holy Trinity) and therefore not subject to the laws of nature since He is the creator of all that is, or it shows that Mr. Hoare does not believe in Christ's divinity. Either way it leads him to draw seriously flawed conclusions about Jesus. He basically suggests that Jesus was in a coma in the tomb and removed by followers who nursed Him back to health!

This brings us back to the basic truth that how we see and interpret everything depends on our belief (or disbelief) in God. A poor analogy might be that if someone saw a jacket hanging on a door and had no knowledge of "hooks on doors" then their entire interpretation of gravity would be incorrect since they would postulate reasons why the jacket did not fall to the ground. This of course would not be reality - infact it is the layman's definition of insanity (failure to recognize and live in reality).

So in essence his book reviews the evidence fairly soundly but draws conclusions from that evidence that simply are far beyond what the evidence is able to say. Mr. Hoare arrives at the correct conclusion about the shroud being that of Christ but simply takes too much liberty beyond that.

If other researchers along with forensic scientists say that the body on the shroud is in rigor mortis state, how can the man on the Shroud be "Comatose"? Although this book tries to give proof of the Shroud's authenticity, it turns into a "sour" experience once you find yourself with such a contradiction (not only for researchers and readers in general, but for Christians that believe in the death and resurrection of Christ).

The explosivness of the shroud of turin is that if you assume that the man under the shroud was dead, there is no natural explanation for the formation of the image. But if you assume a living body, not only the formation of the image can be explained by a natural process, but also alle the other findings (like the padle of blood under the back) can be explained.
Rodney Hoar dared to brake a tabu: Yes - under the shroud lay Jesus, but the man of the shroud was not dead - the evidence for this is clear.

Oh woes me! I lost my Penguin dictionary and had to shell out [price] for this sub-par and seriously inferior dictionary. Compared with Penguin...well there in no comparison: This one seriously lacks in idiomatic expressions, slang, synonyms and sentence examples for their words. I need to get another Pengiun dictionary fast!

Why are good Russian materials so hard to find? If you're a Russian guru, make some money and alleviate this problem!!!

This is a big thick heavy volume printed in nice large
font on fine white paper, and it is mostly useless.
I am a native Russian speaker and pretty good in English,
having studied it for good quarter a century. I was looking
for a decent dictionary to look up more difficult words,
and I was specifically looking for one volume two-way
Russian-English dictionary for ease of use.
This dictionary turned out to be a waste of money. It only
has the most primitive words both in Russian and English
sections, no slang (and I am talking standard slang, not
street speak), definitions are poor, very few synonyms.
It may be good for beginners but as a reference dictionary
I would not recommend it to anybody.

As a Russian translator in the U.S. military, I have used this edition as well as earlier ones in my work, and I have to say that this is an improvement upon the others, which were already very good. A question for the reviewer who wrote that the back cover contained spelling mistakes in Russian: Where are they? I know the spelling system of the language quite well, and reading the back cover several times, I could find neither spelling mistakes nor incorrect case endings. As for word choice in Russian, it could be that native speakers would have phrased some things differently (as a non-native speaker, it's hard for me to judge), but the Russian text is certainly grammatically correct and the meaning is clearly conveyed.

Ann and Mr. Loomis are the only two characters in the book. They both live in a valley and are the only two people alive on the planet (that they know of) because of a nuclear war, causing radioactivity. Ann is a smart, hard working, and very dedicated 16 year old girl. Mr. Loomis is a smart chemist from Cornell College in New York, who has beat the radioactivity and got to the valley by wearing a "safe suit".He is also very sly. At first they both work together in the valley and hope to keep it alive and prosper, until Mr. Loomis changes his mind. A good part of this book is when Mr. Loomis is very sick and Ann is taking care of him. Because of his fever, he has nightmares and thinks they are real. He talks out loud and gives Ann alot of information about himself and his past. At one point he hallucinates and sees a person from his past. When he goes to shoot at him, he actually shoots through a window. I recommend this book to anyone because it is very interesting and keeps you wondering what is going to happen next. Even if you are not a big science fiction fan (like me), it is still very good and is hard to put down!

I have read most of the negative reviews on this book and I think that the most popular comment was "unrealistic". I have studied human nature in school so I knew that this situation is possible. This book was supposed to be disturbing! It is supposed to make you realize how cruel human nature could be. Shakespeare said that "security is morals greatest enemy" so if you don't like to know what the world is really like than don't read these kind of books! This book may also require some maturity so don't read it if you can't handle it. Anyway, here is my review... This is a story about human nature. It takes place after a nuclear war that has left Ann Burden alone in her safe valley. She thinks she is the last person on earth until a man arrives. Several things happen which dramatically change the relationship between Ann and the stranger. This book seems to be showing the harsh side of human nature, but I think it is very realistic. I though about what I would do in the same situation and I can't honestly say that I would have made a better, more humane, decisions. I'm not sure that this is the best book in the genre, but is worth reading to help you understand life better and make better decisions later on. Read this book for a different perspective on life. Thanx 4 reading this!

Z for Zachariah Z for Zachariah is written by Robert C.O'Brien. This is an excellent book for reading. The beginning of the book was very interesting but in the end I don't have expect that Ann going to left Mr. Loomis alone in the valley. They separate in the end but they suppose to be stay together. I don't like Ann when she killed her dog. But still I like this book because they told you every thing that happened in the valley. For example, they told you what they eat for their dinner and what they did all day. I think this was necessary to tell all this because they were in that kind of situation that we need to describe that entire scene. I really like the diary format. It is really difficult to write a diary. The way he described the story that was an excellent. He told us that John Loomis was sick and Ann helped him from his fever. She helped him every minute but Loomis had broken her all believe. They had a brilliant dog like Faro. I don't like the part when we can't find out what's going to happen to Ann after she left the valley because has no one talk or see. Because as they described in the book that their no one left in the world alive. I think teenagers and adults should read this book. Teenagers should read this book because they would get ready to fight with the problems. I think they should brave and intelligent like Ann Burden. This book would be good for book report. This is not like other books but it has his own kind of story that every one likes to read this book.

If you read in other reviews that this book is mostly a reprint of the Sybase documentation, believe it

This is the book that Powersoft should have provided with the libraries. And nothing more. It is absurd that a library like PFC should be sold with just a list of function and objects. The authors of this book are very good at organizing the original list and presenting it in a more friendly way. I still would like to know why the release of the book was held back 6 months. Was it because of the chapter on PFC 6.0 that never made it into print but is included in the CD? On the bright side, the authors are household names for the PB/PFC community and it is like having a friend's book on the shelve.

I routinely recommend the PowerBuilder Foundation Class Library Professional Reference to other PowerBuilder developers who are interested in using PFC. By reading it before starting a PFC development project this spring, I cut approximately 4-6 weeks off my development effort. By the time I got around to taking an actual class on PFC, it was all review.

The text is a relatively easy read for an experienced PowerBuilder developer with a good understanding of object-oriented principles. It provides step by step code examples for implementing key PFC objects. Watch out, though, for the occasional typo!

Although I refer to it less frequently now, I still keep the book handy on my desk. More significantly, I refuse to loan out my copy. I tell everyone to go get their own copy from Amazon.com.

The latest Niven book 'The Burning City' looked interesting, and having heard that 'Magic..' was a prequel-of-sorts, I decided to read it first.

This was my first experience with Niven and if it's representative of his body-of-work as a whole, I can see why he regularly collaborates with others...he's not very talented with the written word.

Most of this book was stilted throughout. Topping that off, it's just not horribly interesting. Perhaps we can give Niven a little credit for being one of the forerunners of the modern fantasy boom, but calling this book a classic isn't something I'll ever do.

The fact that other reviewers have remarked on its similarities to a popular children's fantasy game speaks volumes.

Here's an overview: Four magicians and a Greek soldier combine forces to find new sources of mana. Mana is what allows magicians to perform magic but it is a resource in limited supply and magicians in the past have squandered the supply away. They use the last bit of mana they can find to travel to northern Europe to find the last living god and steal its mana.

I read this book a number of years ago when I was younger. I decided to read it again because my memory of it was good. I can't say the book was bad, but it wasn't great. There were some interesting ideas about magic and the scene of travelling on a cloud still gets me excited (it sounds like fun). If you're into fantasy and magic this book is for you. It's a quick read and the version I have has fantasy drawings on almost every other page. It's almost like a fantasy comic book.

Most of Larry Niven's considerable oeuvre takes the form of the Heroic Quest,but using the vocabulary of hard science fiction. In "The Magic Goes Away", he leaves the space ships and gravity generators on the shelf, and addresses the Quest directly.
In doing so, he reveals a level of poetry of language and sensitivity of characterization that is rare in any genre, and unheard of in science fiction. "The Magic Goes Away" is in a class with "The Circus of Doctor Lao" and "Green Mansions": Small, easily-read fantasy novels that will stay in your mind forever.

Enjoyed the book immensly. Author(s) do an excellent job in outlining the issues and providing the necessary background as to how and why things developed and insight on decision points and future offerings. Author did not bite on the hardware red herring but stayed the course on issues and requirements. Only crticism was over marketing of Broadbeam middleware woven into middleware discussion. This is easily excused when compared with other "white paper" type offerings. Very easy reading, recommend for technical and non technical alike.

I recently read "Wireless Data for the Enterprise" and found it well written and informative. In addition to the history of wireless data and a section on determining whether the wireless approach is right for an organization, I enjoyed the case histories. The writers have also included practical tips on choosing mobile devices, network providers and developing wireless applications. Finally, for those like myself who aren't "techies," it includes a handy glossary of terms at the end for reference purposes. Most books written by business executives tend to be dull or promotional, but I found this enjoyable reading and informative.

When I opened the cover of this book I knew very little about wireless data, which I had to rectify as I contemplated deploying it for my business. I forced myself to start reading and by page two knew that I had picked a real winner. It's a technology book that reads like a novel. The graphics, case studies, and elegant prose make it one of the best business books I've read in a long time. It took me through the issues, steps, and considerations I will face in adopting the technology, making no attempt to sugar-coat the challenge, but presenting enough success stories to make me understand that it is doable.

This book is subtitled "An Introduction to TRIZ" and it completely lives up to this promise. It gives a brief history of TRIZ, states very systematically how to apply TRIZ and also has all the necessary tools to implement TRIZ. Sure enough, a 200 page book does not replace a multiple day course. Nevertheless, this is the first book I've read on TRIZ and I feel very confident that I understand and can apply TRIZ. I am charmed by the concept and will continue to explore it further. I found this book to be a very decent intro, provided you start off with an eagerness to learn, but that goes for all books on concepts/techniques/processes.

A brilliant book explaining the work of G Altshuler, making it available to all people

If you want to be more creative than you are now you must read this book, it will change the way you aproach creativity

There are several wonderful reference books on the theory and background of TRIZ. This book, however, is one of only a few that leads the reader "Step-by-Step" through the process of actually implementing this powerful method.

I applaud John Terninko in recognizing the need for such a reference for those of us struggling with using the theory that the other books have taught us.

This is a whitewash from beginning to end. Nobody who knows contemporary Russia could endure it. Therefore, Aron must be addressing an audience deeply ignorant of Russia. Who else would stand for a biography of Yeltsin which in 750 pages makes only four brief references to Boris Berezovskiy? Writing a Yeltsin biography without including Berezovskiy is like writing the Life of Pinocchio without mentioning the carpenter!

Yet Aron expects to get away with it--and based on the reviews of this book, he will succeed. The New York Times has termed Aron's book "a fine, full-blooded portrait of Yeltsin." With the help of ignorant blurbs like that one, Aron's target readers will end up believing that Yeltsin and his friends were doing God's work, or at least Adam Smith's--rather than divvying up the plunder of a fallen empire while its stunned, exhausted people were too weak to resist.

None of the great scandals of Yeltsin's reign are mentioned, let alone explained. Where's the Loans-for-Shares scheme, possibly the biggest single act of embezzlement of the twentieth century? Aron has such contempt for his readers that rather than come up with an alibi for Yeltsin, he never so much as mentions the whole sleazy deal. In fact, Aron has so little respect for his readers that he actually attempts to tell them that the oligarchs are a myth:

"...The secrecy in which the Russian robber barons cloaked their dealings resulted in a vast exaggeration of their wealth and power both by the Moscow rumour mill and by the resident correspondents of Western newspapers and television networks..."

Having assured his readers that Yeltsin's accomplices are mythical beasts, he goes on to deny, without elaboration, some well-proven charges against Yeltsin:

"...equally bizarre [is] the 'theory' that explained Yeltsin's dependence on the oligarchs by the gifts which they showered on his family--as if the President of Russia, should he decide to do so, needed intermediaries in raiding the country's treasury."

What's so "bizarre" about that "theory"? "Intermediaries in raiding the country's treasury" is, if anything, a mild description of people like Berezovskiy and Chubais, who may well be remembered as the greatest thieves in the history of the world. Yeltsin's job was to present a "democratic" face to the West while the robbery was being carried out, not to heft the sacks of cash out to the car by himself. (He's not in that kind of condition.) That's not a "bizarre theory"; that's simple division of labour.

But the sleaziest move of all is Aron's slander of every Russian who objected to Yeltsin's regime. Aron, trusting once more that his audience is totally ignorant of Russia, dares to assert that all those who opposed Yeltsin were anti-Semitic fascists. In other words, Russians who objected to seeing their jobs, their savings, their country whisked away were no more than Jew-baiting racists. What to do, then, with a man like Yavlinsky, the half-Jewish leader of the only truly democratic anti-corruption party in the Duma? Aron, whose tolerance extends to monsters like Chubais, loses control whenever he's forced to mention Yavlinsky's name. In Aron's grovelling tale of the Yeltsinschina, Yavlinsky--virtually the only uncorrupted politician in contemporary Russia--becomes a villian.

Goebbels would be proud to have written this book. Aron was no doubt well paid to string together so many pages without a glimmer of truth. And judging by the response of the American press, it was money well spent.

This is an important book, which helps to set the record straight on Yeltsin. It isn't entirely convincing though.

Stylistically it is fairly readable, though it is probably longer than it needs to be, and a bit heavy-going at times. As you might expect, it is not as readable as some of the journalistic accounts of Yeltsin's Russia. Aron relies a lot on formal sources like Yeltsin's speeches. Although he did go so far as to hunt down and interview some of Yeltsin's old acquaintances in Sverdlovsk, the same kind of intimacy with insiders is lacking later in the book.

One peculiarity of the book is the amount of space devoted to Yeltsin's career before he became president. This is both its strength and its weakness. Aron does a convincing job of showing that Yeltsin was no bumbling alcoholic, but a first-class manager and an astute analyst of Communism's failure. He rose to power because he was the quickest to recognise the irredeemable failure of the Soviet system which Gorbachev was trying to fix. Aron accurately depicts the Soviet economic collapse - something which gets almost forgotten today, when everyone wants to blame Russia's economic problems on Yeltsin.

Unlike the yes-men which the Communist hierarchy bred in droves, Yeltsin also had remarkable political courage. He showed this on several key occasions, most notably during the coup of 1991. Yeltsin correctly foresaw that the coup would fail, at a time when this was far from obvious to everyone else.

While the analysis of Yeltsin's early career is welcome, it could have been trimmed down. It seems a bit eccentric to devote less than a third of the book to Yeltsin's presidency (with only a single chapter on Yeltsin's second term). This compares with an entire chapter on a trip Yeltsin made to the US in the 1980s, for example.

The account of Yeltsin's presidency also makes some important points. Yeltsin's main political opponents were indeed a pretty unsavoury bunch, and not misunderstood social democrats. Yeltsin did launch real and necessary economic reforms - another act of political courage. Under Yeltsin, Russians have indeed become freer than at any previous time in their history.

But Russia isn't entirely democratic either. Aron skirts around some more unpleasant aspects of Yeltsin's rule. While he is surely right that there were many objective reasons why Russians voted for Yeltsin in 1996, several Yeltsin advisers have admitted that the elections would have been cancelled if Yeltsin had believed that he was going to lose. Fraudulent privatisations are mentioned, but they don't get much analysis. Sometimes we find that other inconvenient facts (like allegations of vote-rigging) are confined to footnotes.

As well as the bold (but rather intermittent) reformer, there was also another Yeltsin: the ex-Soviet apparatchik with his bevy of unpleasant cronies. This Yeltsin does crop up in Aron's autobiography, particularly in the second half of his first term. Aron is quite forthright in his condemnation of the Chechen war, for instance. But he regards this Yeltsin as a kind of temporary abberration.

The trouble is that this Yeltsin actually had a habit of recurring. The book ends rather abruptly with the appointment of the Primakov government in 1998, but extending the story to 2000 would probably not help Aron's rehabilitation of Yeltsin. The last year of Yeltsin's presidency was dominated by sordid corruption scandals, a new war in Chechnya, and an unceremonious struggle for succession.

All the same, the appointment of Putin looks a lot smarter than it did at the time (something which can be said about several of Yeltsin's mercurial hirings and firings). And with the political stability that Putin has provided, the economic reforms of the 1990s now seem to be bearing fruit. Despite fears over Putin's authoritarian tendencies, the democratic achievements of the 1990s also seem pretty secure.

A case can be made for saying that despite all the scandals, Yeltsin was guided in many key decisions by a consistent vision of a reformed and democratic Russia. This is essentially the case that Aron makes. Not everyone will be convinced, but Yeltsin probably deserves more credit than most people are inclined to give him these days.

The timing of this thorough, scholarly journey through the life of one of the twentieth century's true world historical figures is unfortunate. Released in mid 1999, it misses the final, and decidedly pivotal, story of Boris Yeltsin's last months in power, when he finally identified a worthy successor to carry the standard for free markets, democratic process, and rule of law in the erstwhile authoritarian Russian state. After gamely ushering the reader through the (almost literally)heart-stopping crises and byzantine political intrigues of Yeltin's career, the book ends with the ailing president mired in the financial debacle of 1998, running out of time and options, and forced to play ball with his reactionary Prime Minister. Luckily we all know how the story played out in the end, with Yeltsin's dramatic New Year's resignation and the ascension of Vladimir Putin to the presidency. As the reader comes to know Yeltsin in the course of this book, the scope of his political genius and daring reveals itself so plainly and effectively that this reader yearned to know something about why Putin impressed him to the point of bequeathing his legacy to him. Nonetheless, as a work of history rather than political evaluation, "Yeltsin: A Revolutionary Life", succeeds broadly in demonstrating the varied levels of its subject's titanic efforts to transform a near-death society into something which may well one day become a great nation. Yeltsin's successes unfold on three levels. The first, and most central to the book, is the defeat and dismantling of the inhuman Stalinist Soviet society which had strangled Russia for sixty years or more. This astounding victory set the stage for Yeltsin's assumption of the presidency, after full and free elections, and the various political victories he achieved over the course of his two terms in office. Finally, and probably most importantly for Russia and the rest of the world, Yeltsin began an irreversible process in this country for the first time in its history: a drive toward private property, free prices, and enterprise which began the nation's slow march into the community of liberal-minded societies. The book does a fine job of demonstrating the ruthless personal drive which propelled Yeltsin to greatness. From his early days in the semi-Siberian city of Sverdlosk, when he blew two fingers off his left hand while stealing munitions from a factory on a dare from some teenage friends, the author paints a vivid portrait of a budding iconoclast. This reader yearned for more about these formative years, but the thinness here is understandable, given the opaque nature of Soviet style historical documentation. The inner workings of the communist maze confounded Yeltsin as much as is does the reader--it's a truly incomprehensible system, and makes for slow going sometimes as we follow Yeltsin on his journey of discovery. It becomes exciting as his speeches start to reflect his sense of the waste and obscene inhumanity of the entire system. This reader was looking for that pivotal moment, though, that one or two unique events which crystallized Yeltsin's thinking and made him realize his destiny. Sadly, those moments are buried as effectively as the system Yeltsin brought down. This book gives us a great record of the "how" of what happened, but only hints helplessly at the "why". All in all, it's an ambitious read, but an informative and thoroughly competent one. In a way, it makes sense to leave Yeltsin at the end struggling and fighting away against his physical and political decline. This is the milieu in which he clearly thrived. Overall victory seemed to soften him. So, in order to get a sense of the real man, perhaps we have to forgo the happy ending.