Brooke's heart-stopping good looks are the essence of this epistolatory account of the romantic friendship between James Strachey and England's eternal Golden boy. He who penned the heroically mawkish yet strangely thrilling:'If I should die/ Think only this of me/That there is some corner of a foreign field/ That is forever England' is here revealed through Strachey's eyes in the guise of romantic muse, love object, sex god. Unfortunately for Strachey, his passion was unrequited.

Strachey is be-dazzled by Brooke during their first year at Cambridge, and the subsequent correspondence betrays all the hallmarks of adolescent infatuation: in turns importunate, with Strachey's 'declaration' early in 1906; adulatory:'You were so beautiful tonight';desperate: 'I suppose you know what's wrong with me...I'm in love with you'; ever hopeful: 'Why not come quietly to bed with me instead?' in response to Brooke's request for contraceptive information; finally hopeless: 'The sudden sight of him across a room made my heart...bound ... it's no use...' But it is with a start that one realises that this is no adolescent, but rather a scion of the Stracheys - long time members of the intelligentsia, darlings of the Bloomsbury set - assistant editor of 'the Spectator', putative translator of Freud.

And herein lies the fascination. Keith Hale's painstakingly edited and annotated edition of the correspondence vividly presents Strachey's personal drama of unstinting adulation of the man seemingly pursued by a host of admirers of both sexes, but also features most of England's literati and glitterati in supporting roles. Here are Vanessa and Clive Bell, Virginia Woolf, Maynard Keynes, society hostess Lady Ottoline Morrell, together with representatives of an older order - Thomas Hardy, not to mention Henry James who, for goodness sake, Brooke cycles off to call on at Lamb House as casually as if he were the man next door! And interspersed with these semi-mythical figures are the domestic details that form an integral part of Brooke and Strachey's lives. The trivia is engrossing, with its train timetables, motorbuses and postal orders: 'I'll enclose the tickets and a postal order for 10/6.'

But we never stray far from the central motif - that of Strachey's heart-sickness for Brooke. Coupled with our fascination, though, is also the uncomfortably voyeuristic sensation of being privy to Strachey's intimate yearnings and his longing makes for painful reading: 'It is You and my love that makes the universe magical....' and one finds oneself wishing that Brooke could have been kinder.

Hence it is with a start that one reads Brooke's own account of his seduction of a former university acquaintance. One wonders what the besotted Strachey could have made of his graphic and lengthy account of the physical details of his night in bed with Denham Russell-Smith. Brooke's literary executor Geoffrey Keynes vowed that the uncensored Brooke letters would be published 'over my dead body.' And such has certainly been the case as it is only since Keynes' death that the letters have been released.

Brooke's image makers certainly knew how to 'spin', and it is really only now, nearly 90 years later, that we have a clearer view of Brooke the man as opposed to the legend. Perhaps Strachey's words on Brooke , many years following his death, are the most revealing: 'He was not nearly as nice as people now believe him, but a great deal cleverer.'

This is simply a must-read for Brooke fans and anyone else interested in the aesthetists and their times. It's absolutely fascinating. By the time you finish the introduction, you will be hooked.

This is quite an achievement in editing. Brooke and Strachey comment on so many of the prominent figures of their time that, coupled with Hale's impressive footnotes and other editorial material, the book serves as a virtual history of Edwardian England. I personally am not crazy about Brooke's poetry, but I thoroughly enjoyed reading this work.

This is one of the best books out there. I not only used it in my vibrations class back as an undergraduate (and I had vibrations with Magrab too!), I have continued to find new ways to use it in the work world today. Dr. Magrab and the others have written a very useful book that definitely relates engineering to this program.

This one is really for engineers, it goes over the basics first, subsequently it goes into more details. It has handy examples of mechanics, dynamics...etc. if you are a mechanical or an electrical engineer, and you are a matlab user, this book would mean a lot to you.

Many 'engineering' matlab books don't live up their titles. They are simply written as general introductions to matlab with a few useless thoughts about engineering thrown in.

In my opinion, a good matlab engineering book focuses less on general tips that you could get anywhere, and more on practical problem solving techniques and methodologies that provide insight into a paticular engineering problem and its solution.

This books succeeds in that respect. Though it gives space to the more general issues of using matlab, it gives ample room to specific engineering problems. I found its information and examples very useful. The topics are focused on mechanical engineering fields, such as vibration and control; however, the math used for such topics are used across engineering and science disciplines. Thus, any scientist or engineer will find this book useful.

The book is written so that engineers at many levels can benefit from it. For example, as a former graduate student, I found the treatments of vibration response analysis insightful. However, an undergraduate or otherwise inexperienced user would benefit from this book as well, because there is alot of general discussion of how to effectively and efficiently use matlab and write m-files.

All in all, I found this book excellent for both its treatment of high level engineering analysis issues and its more general matlab tips and discussion.

I too, as the above customer, bought this book to plan the installation of a PACS in our 150 bed hospital. The experiences of the authors and the depth of coverage was excellent for myself (RT/PACS administrator) and the chief of our department (radiologist) as we planned our PACS system. I learned everything I needed to have an intelligent conversation with the vendors we chose to deal with. Our next task will be voice recognition which the book discusses in detail. Thanks!

We are in the process of installing a system wide PACS system at our 350 bed hospital and this book was a god-sent. Explanations are clear and concise, pertinent for all levels of users. I am a radiologist, but our administrator and PACS (to be) administrator also gained much valuable information from this publication.

Financial Accounting is a difficult subject and Hermanson and Edwards do a very good job at bringing it down to the "understandable" level. They offer a multitude of ways to learn subject matter: from text, to graphs, to problems, to internet research (with web sites to visit) to real-world examples.

This paperback literature unit is a wonderful tool for use in the classroom. The price is right! Get this book today if you plan to read James and the Giant Peach to your students. It if full of good ideas for implementation.

This book has been used as the text for my introductory philosophy class. It does an wonderful job of conveying basic philosophical arguments to the reader. Overall, it is a great book that discusses a few basic philosophical issues with clarity and precision.

What I love about Starman is that you can pick up nearly any of the trade paperbacks and understand the story as you read along, but reading ALL of the trade paperbacks before it (STARRY KNIGHT is the 7th in a continuing series of volumes,) creates such a richer enjoyment of the book.

James Robinsons writing is phenomonal as always; he left nothing to be desired in his intricate, three dimensional storytelling and fleshing out of the dozens of characters. There are comic-books out that DEFINE why comic fans have such an infamous reputation, but this book is the antithesis of that sentiment. It creates deep characters; not cardboard cut-outs like SUPERFRIENDS and television's BATMAN made so famous back in the day.

STARRY KNIGHT shows the first part of Jack's adventure in space as he ventures through the stars in search of Will Payton, a Starman prior to he. Saying anything about the actual plot would ruin so much of the storyline, so I will not. I will only insist that you read it, and strongly recommend buying all the previous 6 trade paperbacks. The issues collected within are 47-53. Try it out and feel free to let me know what you thought of it.

Wisconsin Father's Guide To Divorce And Custody was written by experienced men's rights advocates specifically for Wisconsin men having to consider or deal with a divorce and its emotional, financial, social, parental, and familial aftermath. Specific, practical, effective advice covers the entire gamut of pertinent issues including choosing a lawyer, Wisconsin divorce laws, developing a winning strategy, fighting judicial gender bias, why "temporary hearings" aren't really temporary at all, preparing for mediation, containing legal costs, continuing to be an active father during and after divorce, and much more. Wisconsin Father's Guide To Divorce And Custody is a user friendly, highly recommended "how to" manual that will significantly reduce the financial costs of legal fees, reduce the confusion and anxiety of not knowing what is going on or why, and enhancing the chances of a divorce settlement that is fair, unbiased, and as satisfactory as circumstances can permit under Wisconsin's legal system.

I'm a graduate student in Comp Sci, and I recently had the opportunity to take a networking class again just to refresh my basic knowledge (my dissertation topic isn't related to networks). It was a pleasant surprise for me that the class utilised this textbook. I have been at the university level in CS for 8+ years (grad + undergrad), and this book is *by far* the best introductory computer science textbook I have ever read in any CS subject.

The book is very well-written and extremely interesting to read. I was never bored in any chapter. Kurose and Ross are knowledgable experts in their field, and their exposition of the material is fantastic. Unlike Tanenbaum's book, they start at the application layer and move down. IMHO, this is a far better pedagogical strategy, because young students these days already have an excellent layer-5 understanding thanks to daily interaction with HTTP, IM, P2P file sharing, etc. If I remember correctly from my undergrad days, my own experience in a bottom-up approach, starting at the physical layer, really put me to sleep and put me off from networking. That's a shame, because networking is a really exciting field.

The best parts of the book are the breadth, thorough use of real-world topics, and the illustrations. In fact, the diagrams and illustrations are just plain great. Most technical writers often rely too much on the written word. Here, the authors augment almost every pair of pages with an illustration; this is simply remarkable. The explanations of fundamental topics (such as packet-switching, DNS, TCP congestion control, IP routing, and ethernet) are *extremely* clear. More advanced topics are very up-to-date, covering cutting-edge subjects such as P2P, CDNs, security, NATs, 802.11, RTP, etc. I have not found a better introductory explanation of CDNs anywhere else. Although networking does have a lot of math in various areas, this introductory book does not get too much in detail in mathematical discourse, making this book very readable. That's a fine approach in my opinion, as a deep mathematical analysis of various topics is best left for grad school or a professional job.

The authors' academic background really shows. Every topic is filled with citations/references to other work. This is great, because this book is just an introductory book with wide breadth but is otherwise lacking in significant depth. The interested reader (future grad student or network engineer?) can easily follow up on any topic he/she likes thanks to the exhaustive list of references.

As if all of that were not enough, there is an accompanying website that has interactive Java applets demonstrating various topics as well as a set of Powerpoint slides for download. Furthermore, I enjoyed the interchapter dialogues with various famous researchers in the field.

All in all, this is an outstanding book for the undergrad level, and I expect this would be a great book for professionals who want to have a firm grasp on networking fundamentals. I wish all my undergrad books were written as well as this one.

I am student at the University of Massachusetts and I had James Kurose, the co-author of this book, as the professor for my computer networking class. Not only was the class excellent, but the book was also. Everything is explained very clearly and proficiently. The book is not math-based which makes it much easier reading and great as an introductory book. There are lots of concrete analogies and examples used in the book to help the reader understand the more complex concepts. Since taken the class I've read through computer networks by Andrew S. Tanenbaum and although that it is a good book I would not recommend it for those who are just being introduced to the world of networking.
The online supplementary content that comes with the book is also very beneficial and complement the book well.

This is the best book from two respected networking researchers. It explains the TCP-IP model unlike the most other networking books which explore the outdated OSI model. Compared to Tanenbaum, the new networking concepts (such as Diffserve) are addressed and well explained. A side effect of Tanenbaum's book is that you are lost in the details and can not see the overall picture. I loose my motivation and excitement when I read Tanenbaum's book.

If you want to really learn the underlying motivations for the current Internet protocols Kurose and Ross's book is the best. Highly recomended, even for the professionals in the networking business to brush up their knowledge and improve their understanding of networking concepts.

This text covers every important aspect in the field, from experimental techniques and basic concepts to reviews of immunology, cancer, and developmental biology. I used it as a reference in four different undergraduate classes, and have prepared for several job interviews by reviewing the relevant information in this book. The illustrations are all relevant, the organization is excellent, and the prose is so well written that I take the book off the shelf and read it for fun. A new edition would be useful - some of the more speculative information is outdated - but this is still the best textbook I own.

Well, considering that this book got me through a full year of molecular and cell biology as an undergraduate, I'm pretty fond of the book. Especially considering that the second half of the year was taught by two people who had never taught a class in their lives before. Reason for the five stars is that this is an INTRODUCTORY level textbook written about 7 years ago. Even considering that, it's thorough enough and comprehensive enough for an entire year. I wasn't expecting work done last year to be included and I wasn't expecting that it would delve into the intricate details of photosynthetic reaction centers or the latest in optical methods in single molecule dynamics. If you want that kind of detail, go to the journals or specialized texts. However, for those undergraduates undertaking a full year of MCB, I can't recommend this text highly enough. And if you're looking for prokaryotic information, I'd go pick up a copy of Prescott, Harley, and Klein's "Microbiology."

Most people, when commenting about this book, tend to compare it to Lodish's Molecular Cell Biology. I own both, and I must say that they are quite similar in their content but different in the way of explaining concepts. Although Lodish's book is a little more up-to-date, it's just a matter of time until a new edition of MBoC is published. In fact, a great number of concepts are clearer in Molecular Biology of the Cell... and vice-versa. About the book, it is the authoritative text of molecular biology for beginners and a reference guide to all fields of cell biology. The chapters concerning the structure of the cell and of the organelles are amazing and include in-depth explanations. It also comprehends the best revision chapters on macromolecules compared to Lodish's. The team of authors was accurate to compose one of the best books in molecular biology for students of all biological and biomedical sciences.