Chesterton lovers and lovers of poetry in the classical English forms will enjoy this collection of poems by one of the 20th century's greatest stylists, G.K. Chesterton.

After a section of juvenalia, the poems are arranged by broad subject. My only complaint with the volume is that it is not complete, and that Ignatius Press has not yet released Part 2 of the Collected Poetry.

But you will find many things in this volume in no other collection of Chesterton's poetry, including his poem about Notre Dame football. So if you enjoy Chesterton, or poetry, or both, check out this book.

G. K. Chesterton on Charles Dickens. If you love one, you are probably genetically determined to love both. So why haven't you read this book yet? What are you waiting for, a personal haunting from the ghosts of London humorists past?

Like all Chesterton's bios, this one is not so concerned with dates and influences, and not always even with its nominal subject. But Chesterton delights in Dickens, and does manage to stick to the point most of the time. And watching Chesterton go off on a philosophical tangent can be just as much fun as watching Dickens allow his plot to get hijacked by one of his own characters. He may be fuzzy on mundane facts, but he is always clear-headed and often lucid or even brilliant when it comes to human nature and ultimate truths. In the end, Chesterton finds a way through to a vantage that is worth visiting. Here are a few sample insights from the first chapter: "Dickens had all his life the faults of the little boy who is kept up too late at night." "The bores in his books are brighter than the wits in other books." "'I am a fond father,' he says, 'to every child of my fancy.' He was not only a fond father, he was an overindulgent father. . . they smash the story to pieces like so much furniture." (Chesterton pointing out that another writer gets carried away sometimes! I like that.)

This may be the best of Chesterton's biographies, and one of his best books. I did learn a few "facts" about Dickens, but mostly got to know him a lot better. If you're a newcomer to Chesterton, the talk below about him being a "fuzzy dreamer" for whom a "miss is as good as a hit" may be true in regard to biographical detail. But don't dismiss him as a thinker to be taken seriously, until you've read and thought deeply about Everlasting Man. There is an intellect incisive and sharp as any modern precision instrument.

Author, Jesus and the Religions of Man d.marshall@sun.ac.jp

To begin with, G K Chesterton loved Charles Dickens so much that he wrote several books and numerous essays about him. Both men loved what is most characteristically English. Dickens, on the one hand, created hundreds of characters who remain etched in our memory as being somehow quintessentially English. On the other, GKC was himself like a Dickens character, perhaps Mr. Dick in David Copperfield (who could not get the idea of King Charles I's severed head out of his mind).

Chesterton was probably the inventor of fuzzy logic. What he says usually makes sense, but he is notorious for being too sloppy to check up on the exactness of quotes and facts. If you are a stickler for facts, you will probably not like Chesterton. But if you are a bit of a dreamer who thinks that a near miss is as good as a direct hit, he's the man for you.

Dickens and Chesterton were among the greatest optimists of our time: Dickens because he felt that people who were good and kind were always rewarded, Chesterton because he felt that there was a God who forgave small transgressions.

So when you read the books and essays in this volume, you will not come away with any new-found knowledge about the great Victorian novelist; but you will become party to an agreeable conversation and greatly enjoy the company.

This book gives an excellent overview of the topic, written in an easy understandable way. The authors have researched numerous articles and studies and compiled them into this work. The book also contains a lot of tables and graphs to illustrate the text. The foundations and the scope of target costing are well discussed and a small case study gives an idea how target costing is working in a practice. Moreover, there are a lot of references to literature and some examples from industry discussed. In the appendix there is a very useful collection of tools used in the target costing.

Definition and scope of target costing as explained in the book:

The target costing process is a system of profit planning and cost management that is price led, customer focused, design centred, and cross-functional. The target costing initiates cost management at the earliest stages of product development and applies it throughout the product life cycle by actively involving the entire value chain.

The difference between target costing and cost management is that the latter focuses on reducing the cost when they are already occurring, that means when the product design and the process are already defined. The target costing approach on the other hand helps to identify the allowable cost for a product in the design stage, the cost at the manufacturing stage are therefore known to be achievable and competitive. Further cost improvements are achieved by kaizen costing (continuous improvement).

this book is best for persons to understand the target costing indeeply with plain english. this book is also suitable for cost management in the globe.

This book provided more detail for target costings, more useful everyday, in both practical and theorical case. Moreover, this book use plain english for whoever in the world.

This is the story of a genuine hero, one of uncountable many that America produces and, thankfully, continues to produce. Someone said: Freedom isn't free and this is amply demonstrated in this book. The story of one person's dedication to duty is vibrantly told.
There is a bridge, a heavy, strong, and a very capable bridge. Ironically, built by the US Army several years before. It is the only big strong bridge across a river separating North Vietnam from the south.
A formidable armored column from the north is approaching, intending to use this bridge as their avenue to overtake the south. It is somewhat late in the war, and America is pulling out ("Vietnamizing" the war), but there is a lot of pain and agony still to go through. The destruction of this bridge slowed the advance of the northern armies by three years.
The book is written on the detail level and therein lies its fascination. We see that Capt Ripley climbs over barbed wire fences, swings across the under girding of the bridge, and fights this battle from street to foxhole around the little town of Dong Ha (just a few miles from the DMZ). The writing is wonderful and gripping, putting you face-to-face with the action as it unfolds hour by hour.
This book does lack a few essentials. The full context, with appropriate maps, in time and space is missing. Additionally, the reader is sometimes lost (as I was) in the minute details of the action at the bridge. A very local map or two would have helped.
The heroism of Capt Ripley is focused on his action in moving around under the bridge, while under direct small arms and cannon fire. It is difficult for a reader to appreciate this without almost an engineering drawing of the undersides of the bridge. We read of channels, stringers, girders, piers, all three stories above the river. Capt Ripley was swinging, crawling, and hauling explosives. I (and maybe this is the engineer in me coming out) would have loved to see drawings showing the design of the bridge, with little arrows and annotations ('crawled from here to here', 'pulled xx pounds of explosvie across this girder', 'I was here when the rifle bullets came in', 'the tank shell hit here').
Finally, we note the very emotional and wonderful human touches, the radioman, the commander of the South Vietnames unit, the commander's bodyguard, are described very well; their humanity is very apparent, as is their own dedication to their country. While we learn a little about them, more would have been a great addition. Similarly with Capt Ripley's American compatriot, Major Jim Smock (USA, Armor), who was with him at the bridge.
The book is 186 pages long; it could have been twice that and welcome.

In his desperate attempt to blow up the bridge at Dong Ha and keep some 30,000 men and 200 tanks at bay, Ripley endured three hours of direct fire to rig more than 500 pounds of explosives. Handwalking the beams beneath the bridge, crimping detonators with his teeth, and racing the burning fuses back to shore, he saved his comrades from certain death. This earned Ripley the Navy Cross. He is a 1962 graduate of the United States Naval Academy - - yet another fine American produced at Annapolis.

This book can be used in the international trade component of a two-semester ug course in international trade and finance (as the editorial review points).

The book uses - at least for me - an extremely useful approach to studying the rudiments of trade theory: after reviewing the standard concepts from consumer and producer theory, it provides a set of sufficient conditions that jointly determine the no-trade world. The core of the text then relaxes each of the mentioned conditions while keeping the others valid, showing why trade arises and at the same time providing a very clear overall picture. All models are discussed in a non-technical way but still with a fair amount of rigour, clearly stating the assumptions and proving the propositions.

The idea of using the revealed preference to show the existence of gains from trade in various settings is defenitely sth worth examining.

The trade policy part offers a chapter on strategic trade policy to shake the validity of the standard "trade barriers are harmful" belief from a perpective that is usually not presented by competitive texts.

Still, two elements could be improved: the part on the link between trade and economic growth is not very readable. Maybe the authors could do sth more about it by using algebra. Secondly, although the concept of intra-industry trade is discussed on many occasions, the authors could consider devoting an additional chapter to it just to summarise the already mentioned ideas.

To conclude: I consider the book as being better than, say, Krugman's or Salvatore's probably more popular texts.

We used this as a textbook for a one semester course in international trade relations. The writing is clear and the book is well-organized, making it very readable. It has very few errors, perhaps that's why a new edition hasn't come out lately. Most of the analyses of the models are done graphically and using only algebra, so it is suited for beginners of international trade theory/international economics. The questions at the end of each chapter vary from very easy to difficult, but the difficult ones can be answered after reading the text about two or three times and digesting its contents. This book is aimed primarily for undergraduates but first year graduate students can use this book as a review for more advanced texts in international trade such as "Lectures in International Trade",(1998) by Bhagwati et al. This textbook is highly-recommended and could be a better alternative than Krugman and Obstfeld's popular text ("International Economics: Theory and Policy").

This book provides detailed descriptions of most V8 models (it leaves out the 355 and 360) and the year by year changes. It is useful for somebody who is trying to select a specific model to purchase or possibly as a reference for concours preparation. As a book to read cover to cover, it isn't terribly compelling because only objective facts are given and there is no hint about what it is like to drive the cars. There also aren't any performance figures. I'm certain the author never actually drove any of the models, just looked up the detailed facts. There also are frequent repetition of facts in the book -- the same point might be explained 3 times for a particular model. It's a good book for contrasting the models, but don't expect to get any insight about how the different models drive.

If you're thinking in buying a Ferrari V8 this book will help you and ask your questions every time. It gives you the opportunity to overview all the original equipment and specifications of your dream car. It also will tell you which spares are the most likely to break down and what's the one needed exactly for your car. Plenty of information (in fact many useless information, true), nice pictures and some restauration technique will help your Ferrari come again to an "as new look and feeling". Only complain is the lack of information on some "rare" models.

This book provides a thorough overview of original equipment and specifications, but it is disappointing in its lack of perspective. It would be more useful if it compared and contrasted models and gave would-be purchasers and restorers an idea of what to look for in a potential purchase.

GENERAL IDEA: Broad coverage but it lacks depth and details - particularly practical details. That is, the presentation is often too sketchy, mainly because it approaches too many subjects for its available space. I would not say that this book is strong on theory either. It is quite obvious that it avoids getting too formal and rigurous, probably to remain attractive for non-specialists too.

CASE STUDY: One specific problem I had with the Hidden Markov Models, that are supperficially presented (or spread I could say) in several separate sections of the book, so it's not been a pleasure trying to actually understand them properly and completely as a fundamental concept, to make them work in my particular application.

TITLE: The book's title IS misleading because it starts with "Speeech" and this book's main subject is not speech but (written) language. Actually there are only a few chapters on speech.

CONCLUSION: Get this book if you are looking for a good overview of the field. As soon as you need in-depth coverage of some particular topic you will look for additional resources.

This book is a feat for anybody interested in Natural Language Processing and probably the most comprehensive book on this subject. It provides an in-depth overview of the most important aspects of NLP from regular expressions to sense disambiguation, discourse, and machine translation. I particularly like the bibliographical and historical notes in each chapter, which provide additional historical context and lots of references.

The book is well written and carefully structured. However, it contains several silly typos (real-word errors) that are a bit embarrassing, considering the topic of the book.

This book does not cover the hardware components of speech recognition. It only provides an introduction to the computational aspects. Nevertheless, I don't think the title is misleading (as other reviewers claim), but the back-cover should mention that it doesn't cover the electronic and signal processing components of speech recognition.

The book showcases a comprehensive and user-friendly approach to cover the leading research in the field of Natural Language Processing and Speech Recognition. It mingles theories and applications to demonstrate the full developmental cycle of computational aspect of NLP. It is a MUST-have for those who can afford only one book but desire to learn virtually aspects of computational linguistics.

Look, we all know that monthly price guides cannot possibly keep up with the explosion of basketball cards produced by all the companies putting out cards today. All they can do is focus on the name cards on the stars. But if you are trying to put together a set of 1957-58 Topps, 1986-87 Fleer or 1992-93 Hoops, then you need to know ALL the cards so you are prepared for dealers whether they organize their cards by number or team or player's name. With the "Beckett Basketball Card Price Guide" you have your best chance to find out exactly what is out there. True, in practical terms the prices quoted have a chance of being obsolete by the time you track down the cards you want, but the key thing about all of these Price Guides is that they list all the cards, including all the extras, bonsues, special sets and the like. Whether you are looking for a card of this year's MVP, Allen Iverson or Ernie Calverley (he was on the first basketball card put out by Bowman in 1948), this is the book you want to use to put together your want lists when I head out to the card shows.

This is a great source for the basketball collector. It is the most recent of the annual beckett price guides and provides listings for card sets that can't be found such as classic, scoreboard, chivas de guadalajara, and 5-sport sets. no card is left out has been left out. This updated book now gives you updated values for some of Kobe Bryant's rarest cards like the Scoreboard Die-Cut and the Chivas de Guadalajara team set Kobe RC edition. This book is recommended to all collectors.

This book is so cool.I suggest you get it.It tells you just about everything you want to know about your cards and how much they are worth.Worth your money to buy it.It is the best thing that I have and it can be yours

Laidler's is a superb introduction to the general field of chemical kinetics. The subject is well presented and clearly explained - the best text on the subject that I've found.

This is one of the most interesting books on this subject. The author covers a wide range of subjects, incl. radios, which are normaly not seen in one book. The photos and illustrations are very well chosen, but some more in-depth information could be useful. I heartyly recomend this book for anybody interesed in this period or the services involved. It does not go into "burocratics" but covers the materiel and some operations of the OSS &SOE, making it a "must" for research.

I found Vw Beetle Performance Handbook by Keith Seume the perfect book for a beginner. It has valuable information on all aspects of building a car Suspension, Brakes, Transmission, and Engine. I will definetly use much of the upgrades he described. Yet I find many of his engine modifications dangerous. What I mean by this is he says for the ultimate motor. Get an 84x94 engine, 44x37.5 heads, MSD 6AL, merged header with turbo muffler, and Weber 48 IDA's. This is all in all good advice yet he completely neglects valvetrain geometry and connecting rods. Without strengthening the valvetrain you will most likely suck a valve putting a piston through the case and wrecking the rod. Without stengthening the rod the most likely reaction to this would be a snapped connecting-rod effectivley wrecking you crank, head, and case. His vague descriptions could ultimately wreck YOUR case, connecting rods, piston, heads, and your bone-stock valvetrain geometry. In summation a good beginner book but his vague descriptions could paint you into a corner. I would definetly recomend you read a more specified book like VW Interchange Manual before attempting any major modifications.

I found VW Beetle Performance Handbook a very informative book especially for a beginner. It had musch usefull information that I will surely apply to my car. Yet I feel this book lacks in description. It lays out the preliminary knowledge but in no way talks about wether larger carbs or cams will affect driveability. It's engine enhancements advice are definetly dangerous for example it tells you for the ultimate motor an 84x94, 48 Weber IDA, 44x37.5 heads, large cam, MSD 6al ignition, and merger header with a turbo. He left out such important things such as the valvetrain geometry and the connecting rods. With this combination an engine could easily make 3 times its original output yet with no modifications to increase the valvetrain strength the most likely recourse would be for your engine to suck a valve and shoot a piston through the case effectively wrecking the piston, rods, head, and maybe even the case. So in summation good information yet a little vague I would suggest this book to gain a preliminary knowledge but consult something a little descriptive like the VW Interchange Manual.

This book is great, it deals with most of the issues surounding Beetle perfomance. There are a lot of books around detailing how to uprate your engine, but this book also deals with suspension and more importantly braking systems!