This was the first book I read and it was definitely the Ultimate. It displays the life of Mafia in Italy and is very knowledgeable as regards to the terms of the Mafia and how it operates. The story is about a Mob Leader who turned into a legal witness of the law. this Book Is SIMPLY AMAZING....... (_)?

fascinating book of how it really was. UPDATE>>>>>>> Vincent Tersea died with his family by his side...still in hiding in 1989

i have been tring to find this book, it has to do with my family. (munge) was my grandfather. I called him dado. I would really like a copy of this book if i could find it. i would like to to a family history on the rossettis' I barely remember him. But i remember he would sit me on his lap and i would smoke his cigars.

I picked up this book of various interviews that Charles Schulz did from the mid-1950's to the late -1990's to get a better feel for the creator of the world's greatest comic strip, Peanuts. There are some interesting insights here, particularly into Schulz's personality. You really see that the lonliness and feelings of defeat suffered by Charlie Brown for almost 50 years were what Schulz felt for his childhood and a great deal of his adult life.

A lot of the questions asked by the various interviewers dealt with Schulz's religious beliefs, given the fact that many of the Peanuts comics had a religious tone to them. I found some of Schulz's comments interesting, but I never cared that much for those particular Peanuts strips, so a significant portion of this book didn't hold much interest for me.

It was interesting to see how the interviews conducted by writers employed by comic book magazines seemed very critical of Schulz related to the commercialization of Peanuts (i.e. Ford Motor ads in the 1960's, MetLife, etc.) I think Schulz handled these queries very well and also shows how tough he could be when pressed.

I think if you've read Rheta Johnson's terrific biography of Schulz and seen thegreat documentary on A&E, you'll have the best background of Schulz. This book is best served as a "fill in the blanks" supplement to those media.

A great reader containing interviews conducted through the years with the great Charles Schulz. Schulz always gives a great interview and is always interesting. The centerpiece of this book is a lengthy interview with Gary Groth for the Comics Journal, which touched upon almost every topic you can think of. Highly recommended for fans of Peanuts and is another reminder of how much the man has contributed to our lives.

Not the usual skimpy biography or comic compilation, this is a lengthy (300-plus pages) and thoughtful Q&A session between Schulz and well-prepared and insightful interviewers. Schulz' modesty, thoughts on life and humor, and love of his craft are easy to discern, and the details of the history of "Peanuts" and the creative process are, quite obviously, as "inside" as they come. Amply illustrated with comic strips. A fitting tribute.

I enjoyed reading ANDERSON'S FAIRY TALES by Hans Christian Andersen. My favorite stories in this book were The Mermaid, and the story about the Dustman. I loved the vivid language and the way the stories came alive, seeming to burst like balloons from the pages of the book. I also enjoyed the way common household objects and animals were personified. I found fault with the story that had the better part of its setting in the Garden of Eden. The winds from the ends of the earth were personified well, but one of the winds dispargingly referred to Africa.

'The Snow Queen' is possibly the greatest short story I've ever read. Although its message is essentially Christian, its means of getting there is staggering, Surrealist and far from dogmatic. There is an Alice quality to the heroine's narrative as she seeks her abducted playmate, full of singing flowers, helpful crows and robber barons - the songs of the flowers are full of sexually loaded and enigmatic imagery. But the word-pictures as a whole are haunting, the blazing sheen of the snow, with the suggestive reds dotting it throughout. The final puzzle is worthy of Borges. Wow.

I believe that the path to a well-rounded child is the truth. Too often we sensationalize and sugar-coat the truth when it comes to our kids. This book is a good example of the way things are. My favorite tale from this book would have to be "The Little Mermaid", and it will be the first tale I read my children when they are born. Mr. Anderson was a firm believer in drama mixed with the hard knocks of real life.Here he has just transformed them into a fantastical story that every child needs to be told. The elements of the story are very powerful, from the loss of innocence to the loss of love,and sometimes we need a good dose of something that isn't wholesome. I recommend this book to everyone, children and adults alike.

Uno dei più completi libri sulla computer music attualmente disponibili sul mercato. La sezione sintesi è sicuramente il piatto forte, essendo applicabile a tutti i tipi di programmi e sintetizzatori in commercio(Digitali e analogici).Le sezioni sulla composizione e performance sono buone ma inevitabilmente rese lievemente datate dalla continua evoluzione informatica (mancano i riferimenti ai nuovi programmi di editing e composizione). Un libro che non può mancare in una bibloteca informatico-musicale aggiornata.

If your intent is to create music *by synthesizing the tones with a computer*, with a program such as Csound, this book is invaluable. It is *not about sequencing*, looping, controlling synthesizers or samplers with MIDI, etc. That said, the serious treatment of various types of sound synthesis is more than adequately technical, with lots of flowcharts, diagrams and a little algebra. The flowcharts illustrate generically how sounds can be synthesized, without getting into the specifics of particular programs. You must be able to leap the gap between the concept and the realization in a particular computer music program. Other chapters nicely introduce psychoacoustics, fundamentals of digital audio and the use of sound processing methodology. Warning: For a person with little technical (engineering-type) background, the book will be tough going in places, possibly overwhelming. It is not an introductory-level text.

I like this book so much!!! An invaluable reference for people interested in computer music composition with detailed explanation on digital synthesis methods, digital filtering, spacialization, etc... but what i like most is that in every chapter there is a section dedicated to compositional examples with very interesting info on structure, techniques, instrument designs... used in the development of each of the pieces. Also a chapter dedicated to live electronic performance. I love it.

No one can tell a good bird dog stort like Charley and this book is packed with many stories that will remind you of you and your dogs. I read this book in the off-season everytime it seems like opeining day will never get here. Charley loves the birds and dogs like no one else and it shows in this great book.

No one writes like Charley Waterman, and bird dogs are a subject that he knows well. This is not an instruction manual, per se, but you'll learn a great deal and have a laugh or two.

Unlike many writers on the subject of bird dogs, Waterman avoids maudlin sentiment. A big relief, since we do not need guidance in how to love and mourn our dogs.

One of the must have books for your hunting library.

If you buy this thinking that it's going to be science fiction, poetry, or horror or any of the other things that Disch excels in, you're wrong, but what you do have is an involved historical epic into the life of English figure and writer-Thomas Carlyle. You can smell the Thames off the pages.

The neighbors of the title are all the famous and romantic people who lived in Chelsea, London from Thomas Carlyle, who was one of the first to move there, to the PreRaphaelites and Oscar Wilde. The research is superb, the relationships wonderfully done and while the book is more than this, it has the engaging readability of one of those family saga blockbusters. This, of course, is a literary novel and the authors are interested in revealing the characters, as they perceive them, of some of the most famous and influential people of the 19th century. This is a book to love and read over and over again!

In the story of Puss In Boots, a miller dies and leaves one of his sons nothing but the cat. This cat turns out to be quite clever and earns the favor of the King for his master. The cat also obtains land and a castle for his master and gives him the title of the Marquis of Carabas. The King becomes so impressed by the Marquis that he offers his daughter's hand in marriage, and the simple miller's son becomes a prince. The use of clever illustration makes this book an effective piece of folk lore. "Narrative Expectations: The Folklore Connection" discusses the basic pattern of a folktale. The article states that every folktale begins with the main character of the story being no different from or more special than any other character. Then, out of nowhere, the character is boosted into a "supernatural world" and all of a sudden he is moved up to higher society and viewed as a hero (67). This resembles the plot pattern of Puss In Boots, with the Marquis being the average character who becomes a hero. This jump to a higher level of society out of luck is strangely enough realistic in the twenty-first century. With things like inheritance, lotteries, and the stock market, a person of today could easily go from the poor miller's son to a "prince." However, this is not a common occurrence. The article also states that folklore "functions in part as an informal system for learning the daily logic and worldview of the people around us (71)." The author chooses not to use human characters to represent Master Slyboots and the rich ogre. He could have done this easily with illustration by making Master Slyboots a servant boy and the ogre a Marquis. Instead, he uses an informal style, placing animal characters in the book. This represents a higher level: Using animals in contrast to humans in order to show the differences in people as a whole.

This new translation of the "fairy" story first presented by Charles Perrault (1628-1703) in his Tales of Mother Goose in 1697 was illustrated by Fred Marcellino and translated by Malcolm Arthur. It was a 1991 Caldecott Honor book (that is, a runner-up to the Medal winner) for best illustrations in a book for children. The youngest son of a recently deceased miller receives a cat as his inheritance. He feels that he will soon die of starvation (after he has eaten the cat) since he has no other possessions. But, the cat convinces him to get him boots. The cat proceeds to find a fortune and a position for his young master.

I regularly visit school classrooms and read aloud to children from Kindergarten through eighth grade. Finding books that appeal to more than one grade level is a challenge.

I have found that the pictures in this version of 'Puss' appeal immensely to kindergartners through third graders. (Fourth and Fifth grade children also like it, but are often embarassed to say so in a classroom setting!). Children who often have a hard time sitting still for a story have sat transfixed as I read this book, holding the pictures in front of them all the time and giving them lots of opportunities to check out the wonderful use of light and color. The illustrator uses a lot of wonderful yellow that is very appealing to young children and seems to draw them into the book. I love reading this book out loud both to see children's reaction and also because I love the detail and color in the pictures.

Reading this book aloud has also sparked some beautiful art work from young children.

I was dissappointed with the book. There's no in depth discussion on any event. It just reads on and states facts like those in High School text books. Didn't capture me at all.

A huge book that traces the history of America from pre-Columbus through present day. Although considered by many to be a "text book" for study, it is not written in that format. It reads easily and clearly. It is non-biased and informative. The pictures are helpful. It's the first book on American history that I have been able to finish. Although expensive, I think that every book collection should have a copy and it is an essential part of any history collection.

My AP US History class used this book as its textbook. Statistics speak for themselves: anyone who read and studied the book got a 5! It is one of the most comprehensive texts in American history ever published. George Tindall, the primary author, is a wonderful and knowledgable man who I have met in Chapel Hill,NC. An excellent buy!

Throughout the whole book, there are so much information being repeated over and over again. Otherwise it might be only 5 pages book. The author has limited knowledge in this area. It seems that the reason for writing this book is to make money out of his father's name (Edgar Cayce).

I am a practicing buddhist and contrary to the first reviewer I believe this book is very much in line with buddhist teachings. One has to draw their own parallels from it. But I strongly recommend it to any one who is interested in developing their inner world. Any one who believes that our minds/souls are huge un-tapped energy fields will enjoy this book. Its [inexpensive] and it is easy to ready. Great book.

This book is packaged as a massmarket paperback, the kind you'd buy in a supermarket checkout line. I bought it casually and didn't expect more than a mildly interesting collection of Edgar Cayce's thoughts on the subject of channelling. Wrong! Reed is an excellent writer, and presents some rather huge ideas with remarkable clarity. This book is intelligent, fast-paced (but thorough) and most of all -- exciting! I couldn't wait to try some of the end-of-chapter exercises, especially the one on communicating with your Higher Self through dreams. The implications for creativity (writing, music, etc.) are empowering too.

I'm using this book as part of a graduate class in Algorithms. I've got an undergrad in Math and CS and have developed code in C/C++, Java, Perl, etc. The pseudo code in the book is ambiguous from the point of view of either a student of math or a software developer. In either case you have more rigor and you expect to be able to read most of it alone, as it stands. In a "real" programming language you usually find variable names that are more descriptive than a single letter. You may even find a variable declaration that gives you the type, and if you're lucky a comment that describes it further. Math proofs usually start out with an introduction that serves a simillar purpose. The pseudo code in the book doesn't do much of eitehr. It doesn't make as much sense when read stand-alone as a proof or "real" code. The trick is to carefully read the text along with the pseudo code.

If one were to make a list of the 100 best books in computer science, then winnow that list down to 10 books, and then again down to 1 book, surely this would be that book.

Known in computer science circles as CLR (for the authors) or simply, "The White Book", Introduction to Algorithms by Cormen, Leiserson, and Rivest is the de-facto standard text for algorithms and data structures. It covers all the basic subjects (big-O notation, trees, graphs, etc...) as well as a few intermediate subjects (amortized analysis, matroids, etc...). Of course, this book is not the be-all and end-all of computer science nor does it pretend to be. It touches on NP-completeness only lightly and all but omits randomization; but if you wanted a text on NP-completeness, you would be reading Garey & Johnson and if you wanted randomization you'd go to Motwani & Raghavan. But if you need a reference on data structures and algorithms, this is the book for you.

Now, some have complained that while this book is an excellent reference that it is a poor text to learn from. I beg to differ. I concede that it is certainly more demanding than many other introductory texts, but this is a boon not a curse. By remaining true to computer science's mathematical heritage, Cormen et al. force the reader to become accustomed to rigourous, formal reasoning, something which is unfortunately absent in many computer science curricula. The authors present the concepts cleanly and clearly, without the distraction of any specific programming language/paradigm. Perhaps it is this removal from a familiar C/C++/Java/flavour-of-the-month/etc... milieu which makes some readers nervous. But it is precisely this separation which forces the reader up into the realm of abstraction where computer science truly resides.

This book has served well the needs of many researchers, scientists, and software developers since it was first printed in 1990. The authors have done a first-class job, and no-doubt the book will continue to be a good source of information in the next decade. Pseudocode is used to illustrate how to eventually code the algorithms, and exercises abound throughout the book. It has been, and will continue to be used as an effective textbook.

After a comprehensive overview of the mathematical foundations, the authors treat sorting algorithms, with heapsort, quicksort, and order statistics treated in great detail. They give an asymptotic analysis of the algorithms, and give an introduction to randomized algorithms in the discussion of quicksort. I found the discussion on order statistics very helpful for studying data polling algorithms in networks.

The authors then discuss data structures and how they can be used to construct algorithms for different problems. Queues, stacks, linked lists, and trees are discussed in detail, and the authors give asymptotic analyses for hashing and searching algorithms. The very important area of dynamic programming is also discussed at length. From the standpoint of someone interested in network modeling, I found the discussion of Dijkstra's algorithm especially well written. Unfortunately, the authors do not discuss in detail the Ajtai-Komlos-Szemeredi sorting algorithm. The treatment of this algorithm in the original paper is difficult reading so a better presentation would have been nice here. Parallel algorithms are given a nice treatment. The Fast Fourier Transform is given an interesting application to O(n lgn) multiplication of polynomials.

For readers interested in cryptography, the authors discuss the algorithm for the RSA cryptosystem. Primality testing is also treated, with the Miller-Rabin probabilistic algorithm given a nice treatment. The Pollard rho method for integer factorization is also discussed.

I found the discussion of string matching also very useful from the standpoint of computational biology. The Rabin-Karp and Knuth-Morris-Pratt algorithms are both treated in great detail.

A short but good introduction to algorithms in computational geometry, such as the gift-wrapping algorithm in convex geometry, is given.

The authors thus cover a large amount of material here, and each chapter could itself be a 1000-page book. But their selection of algorithms in each of the areas covered serves well to introduce the reader to the more popular ones available. A large list of references is given for further reading on revisions and extensions to these algorithms.