Owens' fabulous characters and his descriptions of the Island where they lived and the times in which they lived as well as his attention to the changing conditions of their intertwined lives made me feel like I was one of them. I shivered in the snow and ice with Everett, salivated when Henri explained a dish he would cook, shuddered at the torture of Father Ray and through it all, prayed that they would all be spared from the harsh environment and the many challenges each of them faced. For the historical/adventure buff, this is a terrific read. I hope there is a sequel in the making.

Early in Peter Owens' fine novel Rips, Everett, a trapper and
fisherman on the St. Lawrence River, declares the central theme of
this work: "Ain't nothin' worse than a channel current goin one
way and the wind goin the other. That rip'll kill yah." The
unknown and deceptive can spell disaster.

Surviving in the North
American wilderness of the 1750s on the frontier between Quebec and
New York required a keen understanding of wind, water, sailing, the
river, Indians, soldiers, mariners and other people of all kinds, not
to mention bugs, animals and plants, and most important, the
all-pervasive, murderous weather. This thrilling tale skillfully
weaves the lives of six people as they fight to stay alive and
together in conditions that demand resourcefulness, experience and
courage.

Everett lives on an island in the St. Lawrence with the
widowed Ella, whom he has rescued from her burnt-out cabin, and her
son, Jamie. When the novel begins, Everett is trying hard to be a
father to Jamie, help Ella through the loss of her husband and to
steer clear of the warring French, British, Huron, Mohawk and
Iroquois, as well as protect them from thieving rival trappers and
fishermen; but the outside world keeps intruding on their already hard
life.

The fortunes of Everett, Ella, Jamie and their friends Lucy,
a half Iroquois trading post owner, Henri, a deserter from the French
navy, and Gilles, a French ship's officer, intertwine and fragment in
ways that are sometimes tragic, sometimes funny, and always exciting
as they risk their lives to help one another. We come to know these
people intimately and to share the author's affection for them, and
along the way we learn a lot about the human spirit and an
appreciation for the realities of survival.

Clearly Owens has a
vast knowledge of the period and place he creates for us, and tells
his story in some of the most beautifully written scenes I have ever
read. With wisdom and compassion his muscular prose leads us through
myriad complex adventures. Whether Everett and his friends are trying
to stay afloat in crushing ice, flying like the wind across the
river's surface in an ice boat, or crawling on their bellies through a
frozen swamp with a band of Indians, the writing carries us along with
the sureness and depth of the St. Lawrence itself. Rips is a deeply
affecting and exciting novel.

I look forward to seeing other books
by this talented author.

Rips provides an exciting look at the French and Indian War from a unique perspective, inhabitants of an island in the St. Lawrence River. The book reminded me of the recent movie (and classic work) LAST OF THE MOHICANS.

This book is an excellenct introduction for those who just need to 'catch up' with eveyone else talking Six Sigma. It is an easy-read, well-written synopsis of Six Sigma and Six Sigma implementation. It is not an indepth look at statisitcs, SPC or implementation--there are plenty of books out there for that, several by the same author, but it is a very helpful book that I will keep in my library and have already worn the cover by lending it to colleagues.

This is a fantastic overview of Six Sigma and Six Sigma programs. The only downfall is that the book leaves you so hungry for more!! In fact, because I enjoyed this book so much, I immediately rushed out and picked up copies of Pande's "The Six Sigma Way" and "The Six Sigma Way Fieldbook." If you're curious about what Six Sigma is all about, this is definately the book for you. However, if you want sufficient information to actually start a Six Sigma program of your own, skip this book and move directly to one or both of the Author's "Six Sigma Way" books. Highly recommended.

Before your boss sneaks Six Sigma into your vocabulary, or you're looking to rub elbows with the executive team, read this book. Without getting into a whole lot of theory, the authors explain numbers, acronyms, responsibilites and benefits of this popular business initiative. It's a great summary and a quick read. There are plenty of books you will need to study and review as you delve deeper into the Six Sigma processes, but this book is definitely your starting point.

I read this book when I was doing a project on drosophila menogaster, and this book really helped. There were some things that were hard to understand, but for the most part it was imformative and concise.

What a great book! Lawrence has managed to take the long history and complex details of genetic studies on drosophila development, and synthesize it all into an accessible summary that anyone can understand. This is by far the most concise and straightforward summary of fly development, and should be considered a must-read for anyone who cares about developmental biology. OK, full-time fly people will probably find it mostly too basic, but for the rest of us it's just right. Sidebars on the different techniques provide useful details for those who care without interrupting the flow of the prose. Defiantely recommended. Plus, the cover picture is really cool.

The general reader interested in not only how a single fly egg cell develops into a complex, formed fly, but how genetic and molecular biological experiments are used to determine such mechanisms, will find this book useful. The maternal systems that establish positional information in the egg cell, followed by the development of parasegments, and followed by expression of groups of cells, are described. It is shown that a large amount of genetic information is required to simply organize the embryo, besides building it. Many of the genes discussed have homologues in other higher animals such as vertebrates.

I think Peter Kreeft is a great thinker and writer. But be forewarned. If you are a person looking to begin a prayer life or you are a person looking to bring more meaning to your prayer life, I WOULD NOT suggest this book. At the beginning the book reaches out and grabs you with its potential. But as time goes by may become mired in lots of philosophical "if then" statements.

My thinking is that most people buying this book want some help. They are looking for a "how to" book and this is not that book. A better book might be Prayer Primer by Fr. Thomas Dubay.

I'm sure there are some that will get much out of this, but if you are a beginner to both prayer and a Christian life, you will find this book a problem.

Kreeft is straight-forward and direct. His thinking and writing are clear. This is book is immensely practical. It is small enough to be completed in a short time and deep enough to warrant re-reading whenever the beginning pray-er needs a boost.

Kreeft's point is that we must begin to pray. Kreeft first motivates. Then he offers an intelligent summary of the major forms of prayer and the progression from rote to contemplative prayer.

Kreeft speaks directly to the reader - to me - when he asks if I really want to pray, or if, by reading a book on prayer, I have deluded myself into thinking that I am doing it. What a challenge! What clarity of purpose!

Awe inspiring in simple prose and stating simple facts. The book gives a rational explanation of why we must suffer. The message is simple but difficult-love God above all else as Mary loved and obeyed God. Jesus Christ was and is our living example. The book brillantly explains the seeming contradiction of being humble and ambitious. One of the most important books I have ever read. A powerful book.

"Pope Joan" or "Papissa Joanna" was originally written and published in 1886 by the Greek author Emmanuel Royidis. The book tells the story of Pope John VIII, the purported female Pope who ruled Christendom for a period of two years, five months and four days in the middle of the ninth century. "Pope Joan" is a comic masterpiece of irreverence towards the medieval Church and the accepted pieties of its revisionist historians. Indeed, insofar as Royidis continued to propagate the legend of Pope Joan, to claim that the work contained only "facts and events proved beyond discussion", the text itself ingeniously combines history and legend, as well as brilliant wit, to subvert claims of authority. As Lawrence Durrell notes in his Preface to his brilliant English translation and adaptation, "the authorities of the Orthodox Church were horrified by what seemed to them to be the impious irony of its author-and no less by the gallery of maggot-ridden church fathers which he described so lovingly." Not suprisingly, Royidis was excommunicated from the Orthodox Church and his book was banned in Greece.

The first three parts of "Pope Joan" tell the story of Joanna prior to her arrival in Rome, before she became an historical personage. Set in the ninth century, the narrative captures the European world in disarray after the death of Charlemagne, captures a time when civilization was tenuous and the Church provided one of the few viable social structures. It is this part of the narrative that is unambiguously fictional, the imagined story of Joanna's life in Germany and then in Greece. After her parents die, Joanna clandestinely enters a monastery where she meets the monk Frumentius and develops a romantic relationship with him. When her true sexual identity is surmised, Joanna and Frumentius flee one monastery and then another, eventually ending up in Greece. Joanna soon becomes tired of her romance and her intellectual brilliance attracts the attention of Church leaders throughout Greece. She leaves Frumentius and departs alone for Rome, where the legend, some say the history, of Pope Joan begins. She becomes a papal secretary renowned for her intellect and, when Pope Leo IV dies, she ascends to the papacy. Pope Joan becomes pregnant and dies after giving birth during a procession through the streets of Rome.

While the general outline of the narrative may seem only mildly interesting, the brilliant translation and prose of Lawrence Durrell, together with the biting, irreverent wit of Royidis, make "Pope Joan" an unsurpassed work of comic genius. A flavor for this wit and style can be found in a short passage describing what ensued after Pope Joan gave birth: "Great was the consternation when a premature infant was produced from among the voluminous folds of the papal vestments . . . Some hierarchs who were profoundly devoted to the Holy See sought to save the situation and change horror and disgust to amazement by crying out 'A miracle! A miracle!' They bellowed loudly calling the faithful to kneel and worship. But in vain. Such a miracle was unheard of; and indeed would have been a singular contribution to the annals of Christian thaumaturgy which, while it borrowed many a prodigy from the pagans, had not yet reached the point where it could represent any male saint as pregnant and bringing forth a child."

While the apologist position has consistently denied the historicity of Pope Joan, there is at least some suggestion that the legend is indeed a fact. As Durrell suggests in his Preface, one telling point is that Platina includes a biography of Pope John VIII in his "Lives of the Popes". And no less an authority than The Catholic Encyclopedia states that Platina's "Lives of the Popes" is "a work of no small merit, for it is the first systematic handbook of papal history." Historical disputation aside, however, "Pope Joan" stands as a brilliant work of comic writing and masterful translation, a masterpiece of Royidis and Durrell.

People that buy the Cross version are buying the wrong book. Look instead to the beautifully written, gleefully and irreverently funny version by Emmanuel Rhodes, written over a 100 years ago, translated from the Greek by famed author Laurence Durrell.

Truly, there is no comparison between the Cross and Durrell versions. Jane Austen chided her gullible heroine in "Northanger Abbey" for indulging in pulp Gothic novels that were "all plot and no reflection". The Cross book is all plot and no reflection. Or even worse, it is all agenda and no reflection. It is unabashedly, tediously revisionistic, hell-bent on making Pope Joan an idealized, religiously progressive proto-feminist. Cross projects all our late-twentieth century values onto her, time and place be damned. And it bludgeons you with its purpose for hundreds upon hundreds of pages. Joan never emerges as a character, just a cause. This is a book that in 50 years we will be able to look back upon and say, "Oh, how '90s". Plus, the writing is cliched and really rises no higher than that of "genre" level prose.

The Durrell translation of the Emmanuel Rhodes book is everything the Cross book is not. The prose simply sings, even in translation -- there were passages that were so beautiful, they gave me a palpable headrush. It is filled with gleeful black humor, the plot is tight and well-constructed, and the book, though irreverent, is filled with respect and affection for the character of Joan. Rhodes has no agenda for Joan, he depicts everything with honesty and clarity. For example, he does not attempt to make apologies for anti-Semites, and even adopts their views in casual references as a device to voice the world views of the characters that is required to immerse the reader in the time and place of the book. And Joan's baser impulses driving her actions are never gilded over into something more heroic than they are. Plus, the Rhodes book is simply fun.

I enjoyed Cross's version of this story, especially the historical detours into the state of law and medicine in the Dark Ages. But, I'm glad I read it before I opened the Lawrence Durell/Emmanuel Royidis' version.

This is the funniest book I've read since Fried Green Tomatoes! It's a hilarious, irreverent, bawdy, sacreligious saga at the expense of every prudish, hypocritically pious notion ever spawned in Christian history. It's a scream! I wonder if my neighbors have been disturbed by my uncontrollable howling. As an example, there's the bit where Joan uses the leg bone (sacred relic) of a martyred saint which she and a group of monks are transporting, to fend off the overly-amorous monks during an episode of gluttenous over-indulgence!

This very literate debauchery is the work of a genius.

For a family member of a person recently diagnosed with Hodgkin's Lymphoma, this book is a valuable resource for understanding this rare condition. It's a difficult read, but the book is organized into managable sections. For a lay person, it is probably best read in conjunction with less-technical material to provide definitions and context. Topics covered include historical perspectives of diagnosis and treatment, current research, and up-to-date treatment options.It provides in-depth explainations of the role of various diagnostic techniques in classification and staging. Additional topics include the relationship between Hodgkin's and the non-Hodgkin's lymphomas as well as the association with Epstein-Barr virus. The issues of pediatric Hodgkin's and long-term complications of treatment are also covered. The book's strongest recomendation is that it is one of the few available with current information specific to Hodgkin's, as opposed to the non-Hodgkin's lymphomas. It provides the lay person with requisite information to discuss Hodgkin's with the medical team, in sufficient detail to make informed decisions.

As a layperson not familiar with medical terms and theories I found the book hard to follow and understand at first. After a bit of slow reading and comprehension it became a wonderful source of knowledge about cancer and hodgkin's disease

This timely review of the literature on Hodgkin's diseasereplaces the venerable work by Henry S. Kaplan and betters the master.The section written by Richard Hoppe, M.D. carries on the finest traditions of radiation oncology at Stanford. This is a very fine work and one anyone in the field of oncology should have on his/her book shelf.

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Excellent, very thorough coverage of the IMF

The story is offbeat and rather touching: The chickens who live on the Tweedy Farm are doomed to be made into chicken pies if they stay there much longer! Ginger, a clever hen desperate to feel of green grass under her feet, hatches escape plan after escape with no luck....until Rocky, a dashing rooster, literally flies into her life! Will these chicks ever escape the evil farm with their feathers still intact?

The book is a simple retelling of the irreverent film and is easy reading for the younger set. It's sweet, gloriously silly and a wonderful companion to the film. I especially enjoyed the claymation pictures which do a wonderful job of capturing the moment with just one glance. I'd read it to you kids at bedtime.

One side effect though -- don't be surprised if your kids refuse to eat poultry after reading this book!

I find this book refreaching,and that the whole family can enjoy reading it together. I would recomend it for young and old alike.

I successively declare each Lawrence novel I encounter to be the best I've read, but in my opinion, "The Rainbow" is especially brilliant in its painstaking and accurate depiction of the universal experience of adolescence...and especially noteworthy in its spot-on description of the evolving feelings and thoughts of adolescent girls. Lawrence's feeling for and understanding of his female characters is astounding, particularly when compared with that of other writers of his time.

This work is sometimes criticized because of "repetitiveness" in the writing, but I find the repeated phrases add to, not detract from, the power of the novel. As in Lady Chatterley, he also manages to work in many brilliant and cutting observations of the price of progress in an industrial society, and document in careful, keen-eyed accuracy the varying responses of his characters--and, through them, archetypal human responses--to that society.

Make no mistake: I would not have read this book unless I was compelled by, say, a teacher. And compelled I was. After finishing it, I think it's a great book and I'm glad that I read it, but paradoxically, I don't think I would do it again.

The only way to describe "The Rainbow" is that it would be more of a masterpiece if you didn't have to read it. If there was somehow a method in which you could absorb this book without cutting through Lawrence's prose, this would be undoubtingly be one of the greatest books ever [not] written.

Unfortunately this is impossible, because the style is inextricably connected with the thematics and direction of the book as a whole. So we as the reader must deal with the prose, because the text is as close as the reader will ever get to the novel, although I think that one of Lawrence's central themes is that the text cannot itself represent life. Hence you have text that attempts to depict life, text that knows implicitly that it will fail at this task, yet text that will try as hard as it can to draw out this picture of three generations of a family.

In class we listed a few adjectives that would describe Lawrence's style for "The Rainbow":

+Repetitive
+Lyrical
+Oppositional
+Fecund
+Slow-motion
+Translated
+Intense

...and the list goes on. If you are very patient and can deal with the text beyond the text, so to speak, you will like this book. If you are like me, you will not like this book, but you will be glad that you read it.

Lawrence's fame (or notoriety) rests on his sexual frankness, but what a lot of readers overlook is how well he wrote about parent-child relationships and family dynamics. The beginning of this novel is absolutely brilliant: Tom Brangwen and the Polish widow marry in haste, then find that they still haven't worked out their relationship. Her young daughter is an uneasy third party, and the child's sensitivity to the unease in their household is beautifully described, as well as her stepfather's gentle efforts to befriend her. As Lawrence continues the family history, his usual obsessions surface. But in general, it's a good story: sex is an organic part of his characters' lives rather than the mainspring of the whole plot (as in some of his other novels). And the characters come across as multi-dimensional human beings rather than talking heads (or other organs) for Lawrence's comments on life. A good novel for people who "don't like D.H. Lawrence."

The Peter Principle is an excellent book, if you want to know the secret to FAILURE.

Laurence Peter's self-proclaimed principle that "each person rises to their highest level of incompetence" only serves to demonstrate Peter's dislike for people and his own failure in life. It has been said that it takes no more than to read the first chapter of any book to determine whether or not the author likes people, meaning that the author is truly interested in telling a story, sharing facts regarding an issue or teaching a new-found knowledge to the reader. Peter on the other hand, begins assuming that people are inherently failures, and it is only a matter of time and effort before they become that. Peter's self-fulfilling prophesy, eeerrr, theory, is no better demonstrated than in his own book, the Peter Principle. It was the transition to his highest level of incompetence.

I would not recommend this book to anyone who believes in leadership, success, the trail and tribulations on the road to success and the richness and diversity of people and the endurance of the human spirit.

Napoleon Hill wrote in his book: Think and Grow Rich and I will paraphrase: The difference between those who are truly successful and those who are not is this, there are those who fail, fail and fail, then give up; they are the unsuccessful in life. Then there are those who fail, fail and fail, then get up; they are the truly successful. Unfortunately, Peter didn't realize the importance of encouraging people to succeed, instead he chose only to present the scenario that if you've done well, stop at that, you couldn't possibly get any better?!

I suggest to the Amazon.com readers to save their time and money from this book.

"The Peter Principle; why things always go wrong" by Dr. Laurence J. Peter and Raymond Hull, William Morrow & Company, Inc., New York, 1969, 179 pages in paperback. The Peter Principle: In a Hierarchy Every Employee Tends to Rise to His Level of Incompetence. The author provides an insightful analysis of why so many positions in so many organizations seem to be populated by employees who exhibit signs of incompetence. A most disturbing concept since we all tend to all rise to our own level of incompetence. This concept is likely to be ignored by most senior managers and consultants since to admit it is to admit that we may also be at our own level incompetence. Ignorance is bliss? The end result is that non-growing companies are more likely to have incompetent employees at many levels of the organizational structure whereas growing companies add new positions and employees so fast that the inevitable results of the Peter Principle may be forestalled as long as growth continues. "Employees", as the author points out, "do not want to be incompetent", but when management offers promotions that put the employees into their level of incompetence, the employees have no way of knowing that ahead of time. After all, if the offer is made it is because management "knows" the employee can do the job competently. Many managers are at their level of incompetence thus they make these poor selections.

Look at the bell-curve. Not the controvertial book by Herrnstein and Murray, but the statistical bell curve used in grading and whatnot. The bell curve proves two things:

1) One half of the people you meet--that is every other person you meet--is below average.

2) Only 1/4 of the people you meet are really smart--those of the upper quartile--and in a democracy they will always be out voted.

Our hope is in that upper 25%, yet they will always be in a minority, with the lesser 75% of us misunderstanding them, or dragging them down.

Now you see how this book makes sense!

Keep in mind that a theory is only as good as it's data. Luckily, we can verify the Peter Principle rather easily. Just look around your workplace, and look at what goes on. You will see the Peter Principle in al it's glory.

A painfully true book!