A new Unified Theory of Music, presented with hundreds of graphs. Thought provoking, unusual, and generally unavailable in the United States.
Pohlert seems to have a clear vision of music and how it moves. He presents a way of looking at musical movement completely different than mainstream harmony, or classical composition (though he discusses these knowledgeably also). His unique vision reveals how nearly all chord movements are 'fifth descents'. He further takes chords apart to show how things such as major to minor movements (CMaj7 to Cm7) are actually concealed fifth descents.
He then presents a strangely simple way of looking at chords, wherein you may generally substitute chord forms a third apart. While this description over-simplifies, his way of looking at chords and their 're-interpretations' leads very powerfully to a simple method of improvisation. In fact, it is so simple that a beginner can start improvising almost immediately! With this method you don't need to learn all the modes and chord-scales in order to start improvising nicely.
This system Pohlert calls 'Basic Mediant', and his complete book 'Basic Mediant' is reprinted within the 'Basic Harmony' book.
But wait, there's more! He also has a third book called 'Basic Tritonic', also printed in full within the 'Basic Harmony' textbook, and this 'Tritonic' system analyses chords on the basis of the tritone interval (normally expressed in the dominant seven and minor seven flat five chords). He integrates the tritone intervals with the whole tone scale, and ... well, it just goes on and on.
The 'Basic Harmony' theory book is not always easy reading. The translation from the original German also adds a twist now and then! This is the kind of book that you go back to year after year, and each time find a new 'aha!'. Pohlert is awfully enthusiastic about graphs, and the book contains hundreds and hundreds of them. This is an unconventional work, extremely throught-provoking, highly original, probably like nothing you have seen before, and the 'Basic Mediant' aproach to improvisation given herein is surprisingly simple, quick, and powerful.
Pohlert provides the simplest approach to improvisation I've ever seen. For this reason, we have specially imported these books from their publisher in Germany to make them available in the United States.
This is a huge book, 767 pages. You get a lot.
-- Traktor Topaz, US Manager for Mobius Megatar Touch-Style Basses,

If you don't want to hear about theory, and you just want to learn to improvise quickly, then this book is for you. This is the same text as printed within Pohlert's 'Basic Harmony' textbook, but this book contains only the improvisation method.
Pohlert obviously plays both piano and guitar, and he shows with diagrams how to play the 'Mediant' approach on these instruments. For tappers playing straight fourths instruments, translation is simple. And for folks who have studied the Mobius Megatar 'Easy Touch-Style Bassics' method book, you will discover that you already know all the forms you need to improvise in either the bass or melody region using Pohlert's 'Mediant' approach.
What is the 'Mediant' approach? The word 'mediant' means the 'middle' tone of a chord, meaning the third of the chord. For example in a C-major triad, the three notes are C - E - G. The 'E' is the third of the chord, and the chord built on this note is considered the 'mediant' chord to C. Skipping over some detail, specifically we mean that E-minor-7 is the 'mediant' chord to the C-Major-7 chord. So if you're improvising a song and the chord symbol says CMaj7, you just play the tones of an Em7 chord. (Actually on the Em7 pentatonic scale, which has the notes E - G - A - B - D.)
Pohlert gives a simple set of four rules of substitution, or rather what he calls 're-interpretation'. It works out that all of the chords that you'll use turn out to be the minor seven form, so that's real simple. Oddly enough, when you apply the rules, you will discover that the same 'mediant' chord can often substitute for two or more chord symbols in a row, meaning that you do not have to change chords so fast.
For example, in a simple 'turn-around' chord segment such as CMaj7 - Am7 - Dm7 - G7, you could use Em7 to improvise over both the CMaj7 and the Am7, and then use Dm7 to improvise over both the Dm7 and the G7. Those of us playing two-handed tapping are lucky, like piano players, because we can hit roots or chords in the left hand, and then improvise using this system in the right. It takes practice, just like anything else, but it's easy to understand, fairly easy to do, and can be done with the forms in the 'Easy Touch-Style Bassics' book.
Pohlert provides the simplest approach to improvisation I've ever seen. For this reason, we have specially imported these books from their publisher in Germany to make them available in the United States. (See 'Accessories \ Learning' section at http://www.megatar.com)
'Basic Mediant' gives chord sequences for many common jazz tunes (along with suggested 're-interpretations'), and details fingering on guitar and piano for many of these songs. If you've ever wanted to be able to improvise, but found frustrating the usual approach of learning many positions to play endless kinds of scales, then this book is for you.
Pohlert's motto: "Do it Simply, Simply Do It." And he'll actually show you how.
--Traktor Topaz, Mobius Megatar Touch-Style Basses, http://www.megatar.com

The book looks at the dilema of a wee lass, unable to attend the ceilidh[party] It shows her determination to be in on things. The illustrations clearly show that the artist knows about bagpipes and pipers. The drawings are very accurate. Also about kids and their feelings. The final illustration speaks to that great, childlike joy of being let in on the ceilidh, after she went thru the range of feelings as her Dad piped his heart out. Great for anyone wanting to introduce their wee ones to the pipes and the Maritimes approach to a good time.

This book is very good at describing, in deep detail, the events that have shaped the Brazilian economy into what it is today. With a bias more towards history than economics, the book reads like storytelling sometimes, with less analysis than I had hoped for. The description of today's Brazilian economy is shorter than I had hoped for, but sufficient for a basic introduction.

The book serves as reference as well for any historical fact affecting Brazil's economy, especially in the late 20th century.

This book is great fun to read to 3-6 year olds. It reinforces knowledge of shapes and displays a sense of humor. It is essential to practice reading the book before reading aloud. My kindergarten students loved it! Some students memorized it, "reading" every page with expression! It is a wonderful gift for Valentine's Day!

Spatial statistics is an important subject, and there are excellent books such as Ripley, Cressie's books. However, very little work has been done on how to collect spatial data, though experimental design is an old but important subject in Statistics. This book, now in its second edition, makes an excellent start in this emerging area. This reviewer, fortunately, has the chance to participate in a multinational weather experiment in which one of the goals is to collect additional spatial data for improving existing data network and for improving short-time-scale and mesoscale weather forecast. This led to our study of adaptive design for spatial dynamical systems and spatial fields, leading to a 1999 paper on J. of Atmospheric Sciences and a book Chapter in Studies in Atmospheric Sciences published by Springer in 2000. Now, adaptive spatial design, or targeted observations, is an very hot area in meteorology, and many papers have published in meteorology dealing with various aspects of applications. There are good economic reasons also for doing adaptive design, though practical impacts of this approach need to be justified also. After making this unnecessary detour, what do I think of this book? Well, I think it's an excellent supplementary book for a spatial statistics course. This book only covers the classic aspects of spatial design, namely a frequentist approach to static design for standard spatial estimation and prediction, with applications such as in designing monitoring stations. By combining with our more recent work optimal design using Bayesian methods, you probably get a very good coverage of statistical design for spatial or space-time fields, an area which I foresee more developments in the future.

I came across this book at the local library recently. This slim volume tells the courageous but little known true story about how the Danish people saved the vast majority of it's Jewish population from the death camps. The text is complemented by a number of photos. This book is worth the effort to locate.

Although quite old, this book is the best one I have found on cory catfish. It's an invaluable reference for a catfish lover.

I think this is an excellent book. Contrary to all of the other books about criminological theory, this one goes deep into the philosophical roots of each of the theories within criminology. Just because of this, this book is good news, even though is kind of "old news"-it was published in 1995. In any case, Criminology is going through such a shallow stage that any depth in the thought process of a book is much welcome. This is the type of book that I was looking for to teach criminological theory.

I had to read this book since I took a cource in the university. The course is about data analysis using advanced methods.The book helped to understand some basic principles that may be hard for deep analyzing when heard for the first time orally during the lecture. It helps to base the knowledge an start to use it in practice. Such as an overall used Monte Carlo method is described quite ubderstandable in the book. It covers quite much of the course material although briefly.