Florida meteorologist Kelly Tucker is carrying on the work of her late father Sherman Tucker. Taking an assignment at the Gulf Hurricane Center was important to Kelly, but she was unprepared to run into Ross King the man she blames for her fathers death. Kelly is not about to let her feelings for Ross get in the way of her job. Only someone does not want Kelly to do her job. The threatening notes could be chalked up to some coworkers petty jealousy, but when Kelly's personal safety is put in jeopardy she knows the threat is more dangerous than she first thought.

Ross King finds himself attracted to Kelly, but cannot let his feelings for her get in the way of him doing his job. Ross is at the Center to investigate possible sabotage of the Center's weather predictions. Mistakes have been piling up and evacuation warnings have come in late. So far no lives have been lost, but property damage has been severe. Now Kelly herself is in danger and Ross will do anything to protect her whether she likes it or not.

I was a bit bored with the story. I thought that the suspense part of it was easy to figure out. It did not take a rocket scientist to see who the bad guy was. The romance or 'love' story happened a bit too quickly considering the characters past feelings towards each other. And other than what is on the surface you never really find out much about the characters, their pasts, or who they really are. There just did not seem to be any depth to the story or the characters. But, from the information that we did get about Kelly and Ross, I liked them I just would have liked to know more.

Tango, school drop-out and no-hoper finally gets Crystal to go out with him. They fall in love and 15 year old Crystal gets pregnant. Tango tries to provide for his new family and make them happy but he learns this is hard as you can imagine it would be for someone his age. This novel dispels all romantic notions of teenage pregnancy. It is hard hitting, uncompromising and gritty...just like reality. A real eye-opener for any young person who thinks teenage sex and love is trendy and romantic. I recommend you give this to your teenage daughters and even teenage sons so they can get a bit of an idea how difficult it is to raise a child, especially when your still one yourself.

As with any publication in which Ursula Huws has a hand, this book contains a wealth of the statistical data and analysis that is so often missing from treatments of telework. Although now out of print, and reporting data from the 1980s, it is well worth while tracking down a copy of this book if you want to understand the background to telework and in particular the early research. Doing so would perhaps reduce the great amount of time and effort wasted by new young researchers who study again, usually less well, aspects that have already been covered by the professionals!

The term "viscosity" refers to a chemical procedure that measures the pliability of the latex material that adheres the base to carpeting. Pliability, the author says, is needed to have a successful social gathering, and flexibility is a trait he ascribes to some of his characters, especially an intriguing young woman by the name of Nugget. While this is a work of fiction, the area of action is readily recognized as North Georgia, though it could be any scenic area that has developed a factory culture.

The book's individuals are in all likelihood combinations or distortions of some the author has encountered, but his imagination takes these a step or two further in development, bordering in one instance on the surrealistic. A pervading sense of history is woven through the book. Times may have changed, Wortsman suggests, but human nature has not.

The confluence of diverse characters would make the book good material for a screen play. It is well worth the reader's time.

This book is worth the search! This book covers everything from cages, to feeding, to breeding to genetics. Although some of the newest mutations aren't listed, it's a great book to pick up if you are a beginning breeder interested in color mutation genetics. Wonderful book!

This book is written by a shortboard surfer who has taken up longboarding. It is written from that perspective. This is not a good book for beginners.

I am a longboarder with 2 seasons of limited experience. From this book, I gained a knowledge longboard design and how to choose one to suit my needs. I also gained info on techniques to get past the breakers. I didn't get much else.

I was looking for a good explanation and diagrams of etiquete, good starting techniques. I found brief explanations, again, written from a surfer-to-surfer perspective. I found more detailed info free while surfing the web.

I also agree with another review that the language of the book is surfer lingo (dude) and seems out of place for an instructional book.

I'm selling it back. I'll look for a good instructional video.

This book is written by a shortboard surfer who has taken up longboarding and is written exclusively from this perspective. If you know how to surf or have some working knowledge, the book has some good points. If you're a rank beginner, this is not your best bet for learning.

As a beginner longboard rider, I found useful information about evaluating a longboard design (picking a board). The surf ettiquete section explains the basics but lacks visual guides for the rank beginner. Much of the remainder of the book describes how to perform shortboard type manuvers on a longboard - not of much use for the beginner.

I agree with another review that the language of the book is in true surfer lingo (dude). That may be ok for the surf culture but seems unprofessional when reading an instructional book.

In all, I found better information, free, surfing the web for info. The info included diagrams of wave structure and formation, and surf ettiquete. I'll probably purchase a true instructional video and sell the book back.

Doug Werner has written a wonderful beginner's guide to anything and everything to do with longboarding. An extremely easy read, Longboarder's Start-Up has photos and descriptive text that literally walks you through the basics of longboarding. From the design of the board and how it effects different aspects of your ride to paddling out to standing up to shredding the wave on a vicious cut-back, Doug's casual style and crisp humor give the feel of receiving a world-class surfing lesson from your local surf bum. Interviews with pros and loads of great action shots make this as interesting a read as your favorite surf mag, only you don't have near as many pictures of beach babes. Altogether, this is a great addition to your library. Don't forget to bring it on your next beach trip.

This could have been a very excellent book but the author spends way too much time beating a dead horse. To her "facts" are only what can be measured by machine and everything else is "fallacy". While she is very knowledgable on the stones themselves, her debunking of the myths seems to center around information from questional books proporting to give the history of Atlantis and Mu. Information comming from a time before the discovery of modern medicine are also held up for ridicule. If the author had stuck with what she obviously knows and stayed off the editorial asides, this book would rate 5 stars.

This book has excellent gemological & sociological information. The author does come on rather heavy in her denouncements, but I interpreted it as a zeal for informing us about an area of our education that was lacking at publishing time. Also, there has been a trend in all areas of jewelry/stones to delude the consumer into paying an exorbitant markup. Many books published since this one have started including the mineral information. This is a GOOD thing. We have to be balanced between metaphysical & scientific fields. Having this one scientific view in your library will not hurt! If you appreciate Kunz's Curious Lore of Precious Stones then you'll like this one too.

Thanks for the "closit shaman" review. I would have passed on the book after reading the reviews about her efforts to debunk the higher spiritual properties of stones. As it is, I probably will now purchase a copy. Her view as expressed in you review reminds me of modern science in that they obviously have a great deal of information to offer but are still tied into the delusion of finite reality. I would probably call her a latent New Ager in this midsts of over kill. This personality sort are usually the first ones to step into the otherside and when they get there (suddenly open to the infinite universe) think that they have gone insane. Given that she hanngs out with a massive amount of crystal stones, when this one goes, she is going to go hard and heavy. I hope she has earned the priviledge of having good guides to help her out.

Sorry, but this book was somewhat a disappointment for me. The authors for the most part keep personal life and work of Gödel separated, instead of seeing them as a unity. A biography has to be the best of both worlds in my opinion. That's what makes the work of a biographical writer a difficult task. Maybe one of the two authors did the biographical part, the other one the mathematical ? And of course, everything about Gödel is great, brillant and alltogether grand. I am missing a critical view on his lifestyle and his view on music e.g.. Appearently the author of the biographical part was so in awe of Gödel, that he didn't dare to critisize anything about Gödel. Ironic, since Gödel stands for the idea, that you are allowed and even have the obligation to question everything to get to the bottom of the truth of things.
I am still waiting for the real biography of Kurt Gödel.

Casti and DePauli's book is interesting and informative -- a very good hors d'oeuvre but not a main course.

It's too sketchy to qualify as a biography (it's more like a very good encyclopedia article). You will get only the broadest sense of Godel as a person. As it turned out, his main role in life seems to have been that of a purveyor of very bad news. His main claim to fame was the dubious honor of being the one to tell the mathematicians that their idyllic world of faultless logic and ironclad proofs was an illusion. He proved conclusively that all logical systems are incomplete in that they will always contain theorems that cannot be proved by the axioms of that system. His greatness resides in the fact that he saw clearly what all the great minds of his time and before failed to see. In the grips of hypochondria and acute paranoia, he eventually starved himself to death.

The description of Godel's work is also very sketchy, but the fundamentals are adequately presented. At some points it seems overly simplified and at others it seems bewilderingly complicated. On the average it gives an adequate explanation of Godel's Theory of Incompleteness. What I found more interesting were the connections between his work and modern computer technology (including implications for artificial intelligence). It also delves briefly into his relationship with Einstein, his work in the realm of General Relativity, and the more mystical work of his later years at the IAS at Princeton.

Overall, I feel that the authors did a good job of cramming a complex life and a complex life's work into 200 brief pages. They also did a good job of piquing my interest and encouraging me to dig deeper into the life and work of this enigmatic genius.

I would agree with other reviewers who point out that Casti and DePauli's book really doesn't work as a biography. While there are some interesting biographical factoids, they are offered in such a disjoint manner that it is hard to see this book as a good biography of Kurt Godel.

However, as a book that gives an accessible overview of Godel's work, it is very effective. The best parts of the book deal with Godel's Theorem and Turing's Halting Problem. While there are other books out there that do a good job of making both those topics accessible to a wide audience, Casti and DePauli's treatment is worth a read because they also offer some unique insights not (easily) found elsewhere.

But the best part of this book is the second to the last chapter that gives an accessible account of Algorithmic Information Theory (aka 'Kolmogorov Complexity') ... especially Gregory Chaitin's work on the randomness of natural numbers. While Chaitin has also written some accessible works on this topic, Casti and DePauli does a great job of explaining this topic to a wider audience as well as showing the connections between AIT and Godel/Turing. This chapter alone is worth the price of the book.

A very interesting and insightful thing that Casti and DePauli did was to periodically re-define Godel's Theorem in terms of Turing's Halting Problem, Chaitin's work, and from other interesting angles.

The book is not without fault. Besides the rather haphazard biographical details, the chapters dealing with some of Godel's other projects (physics, mysticism, etc.) were rather poorly written. Also, Casti and DePauli did a very bad job with citations/suggestions for further reading. E.g., they often cite to other works, or suggest readers consult other sources for further details, and then do NOT provide those sources in the bibliography. There are some other examples of sloppy editing and writing that would be hard to point out to those who haven't actually read the book.

Having said all of that, the book deserves 5 stars because of the material on the incompleteness of mathematics, solvability/computability, random nature of mathematics, and some of the biographical trivia (to the extent that they are offered). My recommendation is that people buy the paperback if they are interested in AIT, mathematical logic, and theoretical computer science, and want those topics dealt with in an accessible and interesting manner without sacrificing on insights.

This is a lightweight introduction to fencing that deliberately avoids detailed technical explanation and historical background. The serious student should look elsewhere, but the book is intended more to spark interest in those who might otherwise be tempted to write off fencing as old fashioned, elitist and boring. 'Sport fencing' tries to combat this attitude. Mr. Werner's fencing diary is to be commended for its honesty, he does not always portray himself in the best of lights. For mature students starting out, or for instructors who want insight on how their students may see them, this part has value.

Although this book provides an excellent introduction to the sport of fencing, it lacks much detail in terms of various attacks and footwork. The book also seems to concentrate on the sabre area of fencing, usually not a concern for beginners.

I checked this book out at a local library in Kansas City when I was looking for a book to help learn the basic skills of fencing. When I first read "Fencer's Start-Up: A Beginner's Guide To Traditional And Sport Fencing" I thought I had discovered at least a primer for the on-guard position, parries and basic attacks. Unfortunatly the descriptions of the body mechanics involved for the moves were to shallow for me to make use of them. I started reading the second half of the book and that is when the book redeemed itself.

The author included a short journal of his learning experiences as a fencer. He did manage to be honest throughout the entire journal and that's what makes the second half so good. Not a lot of author's can be totally honest with their readers when they sit down to write even a simple treatise on fencing. The manage to write themselves into a good light as with most short autobiographies but this author didn't.

You all came to this book expecting a serious manual on the art of fencing and I think that is the wrong attitude to approach this book with. Try to think of this book as a tool to get a young person passionate about the sport by showing them how simple a game it is to play. Most of the books on fencing I have read have a stern classical view of fencing, one that keeps it's full people potential chained back by tradition. What I mean is that most of the books I have read do not make fencing look like something that can be done by just anyone. They confine the sport to the rich, the elite or those who already have friends or family fencing. This books was a small attempt to change that by showing people the game without a great deal of tradition. For that it is a book I would want in my library.

For those of you who don't agree with what I have said I say, "Tough."

I will admit that the first few chapters of this book were rather disappointing to me. The common thread seemed to be 'Archaeological Dig X gave incredible confirmation to this bible story. It's amazing! But then we discovered that we were wrong all along, and there was no confirmation after all." Next Chapter "Archaeological Dig Y gave incredible..." etc. etc.

I decided to stick with it, though, simply because the way the history is presented is far more interesting than any textbook I've ever seen, and as such, more readable, easier to remember and learn. I'm glad I did, as after the first few chapters, there are some amazing discoveries that are written about.

The best thing is that Keller takes nothing for granted. He's not the kind of scholar to ignore any evidence to the contrary, nor does he ever try to force any preconceived notions on the findings. Due to this, when he does present some amazing stories of corroborations between biblical and extrabiblical discoveries, it is easy to take on face value. Personally, I'm a suspicious reader, so I looked into some other books in the same field and was pleased to see that although the book does not always go into specifics, it never ignores the important ones to prove an erroneous point.

Not only Christians can enjoy this, either. The skeptic will still gain a lot. The purpose of this book is not to prove or disprove the existence of miracles, nor is it really sufficient to prove truth in the Christian faith. All it does is allow you to look at the Bible as a historical document, and evaluate its validity from unbiased grounds, whether you agree with the religion or not. From this point of view, it is quite amazing, and should be respected as one of the most complete and continually corroborated pieces of history we have.

. . . Dr. Keller ended the Introduction to this volume with these words and appropriately so. The Bible stands as the greatest work of literature and history this world has ever seen or will see. It is the all-time bestselling book. There is more tangible physical evidence for the Bible than for any other work of literature. Those who contend otherwise simply have not studied the Bible, relying on hearsay and speculation instead; or refuse to believe its truth; or ignore the crushing weight of historiographical and archaeological evidence the 20th century has produced in corroboration with the Biblical accounts. Dr. Keller's work addresses the last issue: fitting the pieces of peoples past with where and when the Bible said they existed.

"The Bible as History" was the first volume documenting the many archaeological finds in Palestine and the Middle East supporting the Biblical text. Prior to its first publication in 1955, there were no such works--only stacks of assorted reports from archaeologists from their digs. Since 1955, the book has sold over 10 million copies in 24 languages. In the meantime, Biblical archaeology has evolved as a hard science, yielding fresh data by the day.

This work traces all major discoveries relating to the Biblical text from Genesis 1:1 to the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The chapters are arranged chronologically to coincide with the Canon. There are three sets of black and white color plates and many illustrations and maps throughout the volume.

The book reads like a detective story. Dr. Keller begins his sleuthing from the Biblical text and works forward through history to attach archaeological finds to the verses. In doing so, he never gives the answer away prematurely, but entices the reader along until he or she truly realizes the impact of the magnificent discoveries. At times, the data contradict what the Bible says. Dr. Keller lays all the facts bare even if they seemingly controvert the Bible.

Every ancient race of people, every historical figure, every geographic place of significance finds mention in this book. "The Bible as History" provides a thorough survey of Biblical culture. This is a marvelous work written lucidly for the lay reader. It will make the Old and New Testament worlds come alive for the reader. Its critics invariably suffer from a lack of objectivity, a lack of interest in the subject, or are unable to face the hard truth that "The Bible is right after all!"

This book links the events of history with those of the Bible and demonstrates and validates the historical accuracy of the Bible. As a student of the Bible I often try to put myself into the time and circumstances of the events in the Bible. This book does just that - it fills in the political and sociological background for many of the Bible events. I thought is was truly fascinating and left me certain that much is still waiting to be found in the ever changing sands of the fertile crescent.