It is indeed tragic that so little of Lewis' work is currently in print. Lewis was a gifted playwright, poet, Catholic apologist and Welsh Nationalist who wrote in Welsh. Pritchard-Jones' selection captures this multi-faceted writer brilliantly. The book really conveys a sense of the full vision and scope of Lewis' artistry and social conscience. The poetry is brilliant and deeply evocative. The theatre pieces are poetry in themselves. Unfortunately, this makes it all the more lamentable that Lewis' genius is not more readily available to a wider audience. Lewis' influences range from Pascal to Beckett to Medieval Welsh Poetry. This is a truly fantastic and rewarding book. I highly recommend it. IF YOU ONLY READ ONE BOOK THIS SUMMER... (sorry, couldn't resist that)... This is a truly wonderful effort. Thank you Harri Pritchard-Jones for your work in compiling it.

This is a great book for optometry students, and optometrists alike! If you've got any questions about the peculiar disease of glaucoma, read this book. Not only does it explain diagnosis of the many forms of the disease, but has an in depth section that explains pharmacological management as well as surgical management. The discussions are fairly up to date, and easy to follow. The text does a good job at integrating as much new information and research as possible. There are some editing errors, but hey we're not all perfect!

This is an excellent book which systematically reviews Lewis's reading and his reaction to different types of literature. This book provides a thorough background in Lewis's reading and thinking patterns. This is a must for anyone serious about Lewis!

"The Shenandoah in Flames," which looks at Phil Sheridan's Valley Campaign of 1864 makes a nice counterpart to "Decoying the Yanks," the earlier volume in the Time-Life Civil War series covering Stonewall Jackson's Valley Campaign. Jackson pops up in the opening pictorial essay that talks about the Virginia Military Institute, where Jackson was an instructor. "The Valley Imperiled" tells how General Grant decided to move Union forces into the Shenandoah Valley in 1864 to force the Confederates to defend the state's richest farmland. Unfortunately, the commander of the Union forces, Major General Franz Sigel, who had risen to his rank because of politics rather than ability, and who was beaten by Gen. John C. Breckenridge's forces at the Battle of New Market. "'Black Dave's' Orgy of Fire" details the efforts of Sigel's replacement, Major General David Hunter, who had to abandon his attack on Lynchburg and almost lost the Union's hold the Valley. "To the Gates of Washington" finds Confederate commander Jubal Early try to put pressure on the Union capital after forcing Lew Wallace's outnumbered troops to retreat from their defensive position behind the Monocacy River. "I Want Sheridan" obviously tells how Grant finally found the right man for the job, placing the commander of the Army of the Potomac's Cavalry Corps, Major General Philip Sheridan, in command of the four departments in the area. Sheridan proved his worth at the battle of Winchester. "Showdown at Cedar Creek" provides the historical context for the cover picture of Sheridan on his great horse Renzi rallying his troops after a surprise Confederate counterattack, which ended up being the last gasp of the Rebels in the Valley Campaign. When I was young I read a book called "Blow, Bugle, Blow," which told the story of a young Union shoulder who took part in Sheridan's Valley Campaign, so I especially enjoyed reading the "true story" of that event. The back of this volume has a fascinating set of contemporary artwork by James E. Taylor, a artist-correspondent for "Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper." These are reproduced with the original blue tinting, accompanied by Taylor's narrative of the Cedar Creek battle. Like all of the Time-Life Civil War volumes this won is illustrated from start to finish with historic paintings, etchings, and drawings as well as maps of the pivotal battles. I have had this series for years and I still enjoying looking through these volumes from time to time. The episodic approach, where a volume can focus on a particular campaign or battle like this, can be quite effective.

A very comprehensive book; everything from dog behavior in the wild, to your pet's behavior, to how to take care and train your pet. I own 2 dogs and have obedience trained them and this book was correct on so many points that are so important to a successful pet/owner relationship. Wonderful photos and captions emphasize all the learning points. I especially liked the Dog Care section that showed basic health care for your dog. Overall a wonderful and broad range of topics that helped me understand my dogs even more.

This is a wonderful coffee table book. It gives you a comprehensive look a wide variety of animals from many different habitats including forests, mountains, plains, deserts, ponds, rivers, seas & the arctic.

An adorable baby bears climb a tree. A porcupine mother kisses her child & a mother blue jay lovingly feeds her young. You get a close-up look at an owl stretching its wings & a glimpse of a cougar in mid-air ready to pounce.

Sun-dappled dolphins are seen diving in the sea & a large group of walruses are shown wading to shore. There is even an amusing photo of a polar bear resting on its back. Over 100 species are pictured in all.

The finest work of 19 photographers spans the continent. The captions are detailed and informative and there is additional text in each section going into further detail on a few of the animals featured.

This book was an eye-opening experience for me. Since my early teens, I've established a pattern of being in relationships that start out on a high and then eventually deteriorate and fail. I've never understood why I involve myself-a successful, intelligent, generally happy person-with people who leave me dissatisfied, feeling worthless, and convinced that I should just give up and relegate myself to a lonely Siberian outpost. A General Theory of Love enlightened me. Not in some namby-pamby, self-help, touchy-feely kind of way-but by explaining the science of brain development and the associated outcomes in our personal lives using accessible, easy to understand language that borders on lyric prose. Thank you Dr. Lewis for introducing me to myself!

The topic of love -- who we love and why -- is so complicated. Until you read this book! It gently tells you why and how and what to do about it. Best of all I liked that it finally -- after years of this "co-dependency" stuff -- gives us permission to need people and to depend upon them. There may be a right and a wrong way to do this, depend upon someone, but, as they so judiciously point out, we are mammals, with limbic brains, and we need to be in relationship with other people. I even look at my Lab differently now; my lab who comes and pushes her head into my lap when I cry. How does she know? What makes her do this? Read this book and find out!! I use this book to be a better personal coach in my practice, and I recommend it to my clients. It made me look at things differently. Well-written, clear, concise and full of new stuff you can really use. What more can you ask for in a book?

For a tri-authored book, this is remarkably clear, eloquent and thoroughly engrossing. Drawing on the latest scientific discoveries and 70 years of collective clinical experience, plus a host of literary references, three psychiatrists posit that a primordial area of the brain, far older than reason or thinking, aka the lymbic system, creates both the capacity and the need for emotional intimacy that all humans share. In short, our brains link with those of the people closest to us, and establish wordless, powerful ties that determine our moods, stabilize and maintain our health and well-being, and change the wiring of our brains. It also means that better relationships can be cultivated to rewire negative structures. It makes total absolute sense. It FEELS right. Who we are and who we become depend, in great part, on whom we love. At least the authors have convinced me of this.

Like other Ambrose books that I have read, Undaunted Courage is well written and researched. It tells the tell of Lewis and Clarks' great adventure across the USA. I have not read much of anything about this epic adventure before finishing this book, so I expected to learn a lot from one of America's best historians- I was not disappointed.

You get some great insight into what America was like in the early 1800s. America was full of great promise (the pioneer spirit, the land of opportunity, etc), but we also faced some serious problems (treatment of blacks, indians, woman, etc). One of the great ironies of the book is that some of the people who help Lewis and Clark to fulfill their mission, are treated the worst by the pair. Makes you wonder how such highly educated men (to include President Jefferson) could be so wrong about certain things, yet inspire others to accomplish great deeds.

Ambrose is a great storyteller, one of the best. His passion runs deep for this subject, so he gets long winded (as many other reviewers have noted) at times in the narrative. I think that is my main complaint about the book. Ambrose takes forever to get the explorers across the country, but returns them in a whirlwind. The book would have been better served if Ambrose took a more balanced approach to the expeditions timeline, giving equal weight to both parts of the trip.

I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in learning more about the cross-country adventure of Lewis and Clark. If you are ignorant about the subject, like I was (I thought it was just the pair with their female indian guide for most the trip), you will gain greater insight into one of America's truly historic events. Lastly, this book will make you appreciate many of the advancements we have made since then (i.e- transportation and communication systems), although it may also make you want to spend more time enjoying the wonderful outdoor parks of America.

This book is inimitable Stephen Ambrose. Like all of his books, he turned this book of history into his story --- a nonfiction adventure story. Stephen E. Ambrose actually evolved into what can be called a nonfiction novelist. Starting with historical facts, he blended-in a judicious amount of hyperbole, added a pinch of sensationalism, and came up with a new metamorphosis called creative history that was very successful at holding a reader's attention. There are now other authors (including yours truly) who do the same, but, Ambrose was the first and the best. "Undaunted Courage" is yet another book in a long line of his books that shows he knew how to inform by perfecting the knack of making history interesting. He shall be missed.

I found this an excellent book that transported me back in time to the days of the Louisiana Purchase. For me, such an experience is the definition of a good history book.

The subject, as anyone who reads the introduction will see, is one that is dear to Ambrose. His intimate knowledge of the subject comes through in what is a thoroughly gripping narrative.

Ambrose clearly admires Meriwether Lewis, but his writing is fair and impartial as he delves into the trials and triumphs of the expedition as a whole, and Lewis personally. The story begins at the beginning, well before the voyage of discovery begins, by establishing the relationship between Lewis and Thomas Jefferson that will ultimately result in Lewis being given command of the expedition.

Clark's role is not ignored, and Ambrose repeatedly points out that Lewis viewed Clark as a co-leader, although the government at the time recognized him only as Lewis's lieutenant. But, as the title suggests, the book focuses on Lewis, the great project's leader, and his sponsor Jefferson.

Lewis's tragic decline and eventual suicide ends the book and serves as a sad counterpoint for his great and yes, courageous, leadership during the expedition.

Altogether the book offers a fascinating read for anyone interested in the story of Lewis and Clark, or students of Thomas Jefferson looking for additional perspective into the events that shaped his presidency.

COM is a programmatic challenge in C++. Unfortunately many in-depth discussions of COM assume that you need to know all those pointer-level details. But as a VB developer, much of COM's interface complexity is handled automatically. Mr. Lewis approaches COM with this understanding.

The text is readable and thorough. Its diagrams have been stripped down to the specifics of each discussion. Even the lollipop diagrams are understandable. (I easily forgive the barnyard analogies.) The author attempts to clarify rather than dazzle. He makes IUnknown feel more like a friend than a stranger.

This is a worthwhile reference on its own, and a good supplemental text when studying for the VB Distributed (i.e., "VB COM") exam, 70-175. Its comfortable writing style belies a richness of content. The author's focus on his target audience is sustained and appropriate. No single book can cover everything (and you really don't want to see everything) about COM.

If you wish to bathe in the ugly realities of COM from a C++ perspective, Prendergast's MCSD Solution Architectures book is painfully detailed, and mostly about COM. (I do not recommend Prendergast for 70-100 exam preparation, if you're a VB developer.)

Weaknesses: Significant performance issues which relate to programming COM, DCOM and MTS are not addressed in great enough depth, nor with great enough emphasis. A good in-process COM object usually makes a dreadful object in MTS. Likewise, the critical need for custom marshaling of parameters to DCOM objects is slighted, as is the disastrous performance penalties of using collections.

A word about errors and editing. In the publishing industry, most book manuscripts require 18 to 36 months to reach the bookshelf. For books on emerging (and rapidly changing) technologies, publishers have gotten the cycle down to an astounding 6 to 9 months. Hence, more errors. My experience with Wrox books is that the errors are few, and tend to be typographical. Their technical editors are among the most thorough in the industry. In this particular book, the occasional errors are inconsequential.

Conclusion: If you are a VB developer who needs to learn more about COM, this is a solid choice. If you are a 70-175 exam candidate, read this book and enjoy that warm deja vu satisfaction after passing the exam. If you'll be doing COM with C++, buy a different book.

VBCOM by Thomas Lewis provides an excellent insight to the how VB programmers can use the power of Microsoft's Component Object Model (COM) to develop robust components for todays distributed applications.

This book is really aimed at beginners/inexperienced programmers who are just starting out with VB, but is also very useful to experianced programmers like me who just want to know more about COM, as it provides information and documentation that just can not be found in the VB on-line help.

The book gives the reader an excellent introduction to COM, and then goes on to discuss DCOM, ActiveX control and MTS development, giving tips on how these technologoies are best used. The book also has a good chapter on the future of COM, otherwise known as COM+ & DNA (Distributed interNet Architecture), so you also get an insight into Windows 2000, and Microsofts visions for the future of distributed component development.

By the end of the book you will appreciate how important a good understanding of COM is for really successful VB development, and how COM is actually very simple yet so powerful once you understand the basic concepts such as components, interfaces & coclasses.

Looking forward to the next book in the series.

Rich. VB/C++ Programmer.

Every VB programmer needs to understand COM, and VB Com by Thomas Lewis teaches you just that. It starts off with an introduction to what COM is, and its history. Subsequent chapters go in depth in COM components, such as Automation, ActiveX EXEs and DLLs, and ActiveX Controls. These chapters are very detailed and have several examples for each type of COM component. The DCOM chapter is especially interesting. It is one of few books that describe DCOM and its architecture, along with how to create VB applications that utilize DCOM.

The number of pages is relatively small when compared to other Visual Basic books. Nonetheless, all 320 pages are choke-full of information, without all the jargon. I don't recommend this book for the beginner programmer. It is more for the intermediate to advanced programmer. Thomas Lewis's writing style is casual, which makes it easy to read and understand.

Overall, it is the best book for learning COM with Visual Basic.

Matthew Lewis wrote "The Monk" in ten short weeks at the age of nineteen. Immediately the subject of controversy upon its publication in 1796, Lewis was prosecuted and subsequent editions of the book were heavily censored. Coleridge described it as blasphemous, "a romance, which if a parent saw it in the hands of a son or daughter, he might reasonably turn pale." Yet, "The Monk" was so popular that its author became a minor celebrity-coming to be known as "Monk" Lewis--and Sir Walter Scott prounounced that "it seemed to create an epoch in our literature." And whether "The Monk" truly created an epoch in English literature, or merely marked the early apogee of a genre, it stands as a stunning example of the Gothic novel.

"The Monk" tells the story of Ambrosio, the ostensibly pious and deeply revered Abbot of the Capuchin monastery in Madrid, and his dark fall from grace. It is a novel which unravels, at times, like the "Arabian Nights", stories within stories, a series of digressions, the plot driven by love and lust, temptations and spectres, and, ultimately, rape, murder and incest. It is sharply anti-Catholic, if not anti-clerical, in tone, Ambrosio and most of its other religious characters being profane, murderous, self-centered hypocrites cloaked in displays of public piety. And while it sometimes seems critical of superstition, "The Monk" is replete with Mephistophelian bargains, supernatural events, appartions, and spectres, as well as entombment and dark forebodings of mystery and evil. It is, in short, a stunningly entertaining, albeit typically heavy-handed, Gothic novel, perhaps the ultimate classic of the genre.

Lewis' The Monk is a winding Gothic tale of love, revenge, secrets, blood, the Inquisition, and pain. It discusses the fall of virgins, the wisdom of fools, and the death of good nuns, all centered around the evil of one man, Ambrosius or the Monk. Ambrosius is obsessed with his own supposed goodness and too proud of his reputation for virtue and glory in the eyes of Madrid. The clergyman has never before been tempted, and therfore never been tried, until he falls into a dark love for an unmolested virgin, Antonia. There are enough side plots and characters to complicate the story nicely without overburdening the plot.

Preserving typical Gothic elements, such as ghosts, murder, bleeding nuns, corrupt churchmen, and illegitimate children, the plot stays interesting even when a bit predictable, and it is understandable why Matthew Lewis came to be called "Monk" Lewis when this book was published c.1800. Like Shakespeare's Lear, when you think it can't get any more depressing, it does, and then it does again. A reflection of the human soul in all its glory and debasement, The Monk also manages to be entertaining and fun.

Matthew Lewis wrote "The Monk" in ten short weeks at the age of nineteen. Immediately the subject of controversy upon its publication in 1796, Lewis was prosecuted and subsequent editions of the book were heavily censored. Coleridge described it as blasphemous, "a romance, which if a parent saw it in the hands of a son or daughter, he might reasonably turn pale." Yet, "The Monk" was so popular that its author became a minor celebrity-coming to be known as "Monk" Lewis--and Sir Walter Scott prounounced that "it seemed to create an epoch in our literature." And whether "The Monk" truly created an epoch in English literature, or merely marked the early apogee of a genre, it stands as a stunning example of the Gothic novel.

"The Monk" tells the story of Ambrosio, the ostensibly pious and deeply revered Abbot of the Capuchin monastery in Madrid, and his dark fall from grace. It is a novel which unravels, at times, like the "Arabian Nights", stories within stories, a series of digressions, the plot driven by love and lust, temptations and spectres, and, ultimately, rape, murder and incest. It is sharply anti-Catholic, if not anti-clerical, in tone, Ambrosio and most of its other religious characters being profane, murderous, self-centered hypocrites cloaked in displays of public piety. And while it sometimes seems critical of superstition, "The Monk" is replete with Mephistophelian bargains, supernatural events, appartions, and spectres, as well as entombment and dark forebodings of mystery and evil. It is, in short, a stunningly entertaining, albeit typically heavy-handed, Gothic novel, perhaps the ultimate classic of the genre.