Showing the best of the game, the Angelic players guide gives so many ideas on playing a truly angelic character. But, you really need the core rules book, and the Infernal Players guide. Its also a good idea to have Liber Canticorum, the book of songs. Otherwise your character will only have the few powers in the Angelic Player's Guide. So, while its a good book, you need more than just the book to successfully play In Nomine.

that's right, i said "ever". this is the most captivating, best illustrated, and most useful book for In Nomine that i have seen. not only does it really let players and GMs figure out angelic life, trials, and tribulations, but it makes anyone wonder what those demons are talkin' 'bout. personally, it made me turn from a GM who never really thought about playing, into a psycho-smart GM who would kill for the chance to use my Ofanite of Creation (in service to Yves, of course). the only other book that has even close to this much to offer to IN enthusiasts is Revelations II: The Marches, for its Sorcerer rules and its Marches info (buy both!).

This was quite a surprise for the price. I am quite picky with my needlepoint books and what I bother to purchase. This was done differently than any other of them I own. Usually there is discussion for inspiration and the chart. The entire book may have the similar theme, page after page. This book by Sue Hawkins is really interesting in that it covers various themes- Tudor, Tunisian, Victorian, Shakespearian, Orient, 16th century, patchwork, and even a bargello. There are photographs of the items as usual, but often instead of only charting the needlepoint, there are actual full sized drawings to transfer to canvas easily so that is very neat I think! I bought this sight unseen- a dangerous practice indeed- but am very happy to own it.

This is the only needlpoint book I have ever bought that had more than one or two designs that were worth making. The Magic Carpet, Tunisian and Oriental designs are all stunning and the author offers suggestions for multiple uses and colour schemes. I can't wait to get started!

It was September 20, 1825, when seven year-old Matthew Brayton, with his older brother, William, started in search of some of their father's stray cattle near their home in northwestern Ohio. They traveled two or three miles, but could find none of the cattle. The boys met a neighbor, William Hart, who was in search of his own strays. Matthew, who was by this time very tired, was sent a short distance to another neighbor, a Mr. Baker, where he was told to remain until the two searchers returned for him. William and Mr. Hart continued to search for the lost cattle while young Matthew was left to fend for himself and find his own way to Mr. Baker's place by what was then a narrow and ill-defined path. When the search for the missing cattle was finished, William went to the Baker's, but discovered that Matthew had never arrived, nor had he gone home. This began an adventure of captivity that lasted for more than three decades.

In late August 1859, thirty-four years after Matthew's disappearance, word was received by the Brayton family that a former Indian captive, fresh from being released, had placed a notice in a newspaper asking for information regarding his parents and siblings. The released captive said he had been told that he was stolen from his family near Cleveland, Ohio by a band of unidentified Canadian Indians in revenge for some unknown wrong, then sold to a tribe in Michigan. He then listed a series of trades that eventually took him to the Snakes with whom he remained for much of his captivity.

The freed captive tells of traveling with his band of Snakes to Utah, then crossing the mountains into the San Francisco Bay area. He visited the settlement of Yerba Buena, now San Francisco, and tells about a raging battle involving his band of Snakes against diggers and Mexican traders in which one hundred fifty individuals were killed. He tells of scalping and burning alive captured enemy warriors, and of a battle in which he was nearly killed.

He tells of later traveling north where they were joined by bands of Utes, Flatheads, and Cree, then traveling even farther north, crossing the mountains, and finally uniting in about 1843 with a tribe he called the "Copperheads." Contemporary newspaper accounts say the "Copperheads" lived about three hundred miles from the North Pacific Ocean, and two thousand two hundred miles from St. Paul, Minnesota -- suggesting that they lived somewhere in the vicinity of eastern Alaska or southeastern Yukon, possibly in Russian territory. The captive says that his tribe traded at "Russian forts," but moved east to be near a Hudson's Bay Company post after nearly starving to death in about 1850. He was eventually adopted into the tribe where he married and started a family in 1851.

The released captive then relates his attempts to find his natural family and eventually being identified as Matthew Brayton. The story ends where he is welcomed back into his family in Ohio.

This makes a good story, but is it true? Very little of his story can be confirmed in contemporary records. We have only Matthew's narrative and his details are sometimes sparse and confused. How much of Matthew's narrative is true and how much is blatant fabrication or embellishment by an overly enthusiastic newspaper reporter, who might have been the ghost writer, is open to question. Certainly, Matthew's sense of geography was weak at best, and the distances he claims his tribe traveled stagger the imagination. From Ohio to San Francisco; back to Salt Lake City and Oregon; from there to northwestern Canada and beyond; annual journeys to St. Paul, Minnesota by way of Winnipeg; from the Colville River on Alaska's North Slope to Ohio and, ultimately, New York State. These all represent tremendous distances that are almost impossible to comprehend. And Matthew says he did it on foot or horseback and frequently through sometimes hostile Indian territory.

The details of his life among his captors, although fascinating and historically important, are sometimes frustratingly brief. Some of the specific events cannot be confirmed through contemporary records. Even the name of the tribe with whom he lived and married is questionable. There was no tribe in Canada or the United States called the "Copperheads," and personal names in other tribes where copper was used do not fit the linguistic patterns for names used in the narrative. It's possible the name "Copperheads" was a "catch-all" name for several tribes, including the Kutchin, Tanana, and Han in Alaska, and a western band of Cree in northern Alberta, but this is yet to be confirmed.

Some cynics said that the released captive was a fake, that he only wanted charity. To his credit, Matthew never asked for money, but said continually that he only wanted to find his family. The story of this released captive was published in 1860, reprinted in 1896, and now reprinted by Ye Galleon Press. Unfortunately, none of these publications contain information about the Brayton family, or what happened to the released captive after his return to his natural family. Those details will be left for another day. Nevertheless, this is an interesting account of one person's captivity. It is left to the reader to decide whether the person found in 1859 was the seven year-old boy lost to his family in 1825. I think he was.

It was September 20, 1825, when seven year-old Matthew Brayton, with his older brother, William, started in search of some of their father's stray cattle near their home in northwestern Ohio. They traveled two or three miles, but could find none of the cattle. The boys met a neighbor, William Hart, who was in search of his own strays.

Matthew, who was by this time very tired, was sent a short distance to another neighbor, a Mr. Baker, where he was told to remain until the two searchers returned for him. William and Mr. Hart continued to search for the lost cattle while young Matthew was left to fend for himself and find his own way to Mr. Baker's place by what was then a narrow and ill-defined path. When the search for the missing cattle was finished, William went to the Baker's, but discovered that Matthew had never arrived, nor had he gone home. This began an adventure of captivity that lasted for more than three decades.

In late August 1859, thirty-four years after Matthew's disappearance, word was received by the Brayton family that a former Indian captive, fresh from being released, had placed a notice in a Cleveland newspaper asking for information regarding his parents and siblings. The released captive said he had been told that he was stolen from his family near Cleveland by a band of unidentified Canadian Indians in revenge for some unknown wrong, then sold to a tribe in Michigan. He then listed a series of trades that eventually took him to the Snakes with whom he remained for much of his captivity.

The freed captive tells of traveling with his band of Snakes to Utah, then crossing the mountains into the San Francisco Bay area. He visited the settlement of Yerba Buena, now San Francisco, and tells about a raging battle involving his band of Snakes against diggers and Mexican traders in which one hundred fifty individuals were killed. He tells of scalping and burning alive captured enemy warriors, and of a battle in which he was nearly killed.

He tells of later traveling north where they were joined by bands of Utes, Flatheads, and Cree, then traveling even farther north, crossing the mountains, and finally uniting in about 1843 with a tribe he called the "Copperheads." Contemporary newspaper accounts say the "Copperheads" lived about three hundred miles from the North Pacific Ocean, and two thousand two hundred miles from St. Paul, Minnesota -- suggesting that they lived somewhere in the vicinity of southeastern Yukon, southwestern Northwest Territories, or northern British Columbia, although one article says they lived in Russian territory. The captive says that his tribe traded at "Russian forts," but moved east to be near a Hudson's Bay Company post after nearly starving to death in about 1850. He was eventually adopted into the tribe where he married and started a family in 1851.

The released captive then relates his attempts to find his natural family in 1859 and eventually being identified as Matthew Brayton. The story ends where he is welcomed back into his family in Ohio.

This makes a good story, but is it true? Very little of his story can be confirmed in contemporary records. We have only Matthew's narrative, and his details are sometimes sparse and confused. How much of Matthew's narrative is true and how much is blatant fabrication or embellishment by an overly enthusiastic newspaper reporter, who might have been the ghost writer, is open to question. Certainly, Matthew's sense of geography was weak at best, and the distances he claims he traveled stagger the imagination. From Ohio to San Francisco; back to Salt Lake City and Oregon; from there to northwestern Canada and beyond; annual journeys to St. Paul, Minnesota by way of Winnipeg; from the Colville River on Alaska's North Slope to Ohio and, ultimately, New York State. These all represent tremendous distances that are almost impossible to comprehend. And Matthew says he did it on foot or horseback and frequently through sometimes hostile Indian territory.

The details of his life among his captors, although fascinating and historically important, are sometimes frustratingly brief. Some of the specific events cannot be confirmed through contemporary records. Even the name of the tribe with whom he lived and married is questionable. There was no tribe in Canada or the United States called the "Copperheads," and personal names in other tribes where copper was used do not fit the linguistic patterns for names used in the narrative. The tribe appearing closest to his "Copperheads" are the Yellowknives of the Northwest Territories of Canada, but the language is wrong and the number of tribal members was much too small to fit his 2,000 travelers on the trading trips to St. Paul. It's possible the "Copperheads" were a western band of Cree, but this is yet to be confirmed.

Some cynics said that the released captive was a fake, that he only wanted charity. To his credit, Matthew never asked for money, but said continually that he only wanted to find his family. The story of this released captive was published in 1860, reprinted in 1896, and now reprinted by Ye Galleon Press. Unfortunately, none of these publications contain information about the Brayton family, or what happened to the released captive after his return to his natural family. Those details must be left for another day. Nevertheless, this is an interesting account of one person's captivity. It is left to the reader to decide whether the person found in 1859 was the seven year-old boy lost to his family in 1825. I think he was.

I mostly agreed with Eric Ma. There are some areas that Wrox needs to review the whole process of publishing Java-related books. Here are some drawbacks that I can draw from reading recent Java-related books:

(1) Repeated Contents: Materials about Servlet, JSP, EJB, JNDI, JDBC, XML, etc are repeated over and over many books. This could waste time, money, and papers for both Wrox and readers.

(2)Books or Articles?: I asked myself: is Wrox publishing books or articles? Each book is written by many authors and the book's flow is inconsistent. The assessment that it is not a book but a collection of articles may partially true. It is true that a book if written by a team of authors could speed up the process of releasing it, but if Wrox editors and coordinators have to do their better jobs.

I suggest that Wrox should review its strategy of publishing books to avoid the repeating of materials over and over and thus bring down the cost associated with publishing the books. The final result is: readers and publisher will both save time and money. Otherwise, readers will loose their belief with Wrox.

For the past 2 years Wrox has been publishing books dedicated to Windows-based data access (ADO etc.), but the same cannot be said about their Java/database collection. Although you find chapters on JDBC scattered all-over almost all server-side Java related books by Wrox, there was no single volume from them that teaches JDBC first, and then show how it is used by the newer dependent technologies, until this book arrived. After looking through this book, I must say the authors and editors have done a rather commendable job.

Why do I make the above conclusion? Let me give you my general impression of the book first. A theme repeated in several of my recent reviews on books from Wrox is about the problem in coherence associated with multi-author books. Well, having more than a dozen of authors for a single book seems to be a fact of life (for books from Wrox at least) now, as the publication cycle gets shorter. I was rather surprised to find out that the organization and coherence is very good in this book, i.e., there is very little overlap among chapters. Also, this books uses JDBC cleverly to tie other pieces of J2EE together, making smooth transitions from one chapter to another. If you want to know, this factor alone prompted me to add an extra star to the overall rating of the book.

Let's now run down the chapters of this book quickly. The first 115 pages deals object-oriented and database modeling, and can be skipped by any "Professional" developer. Then after your obligatory intro to JDBC API, the next chapter covers the JDBC 2.0 optional package. This is the best treatment of this topic I have seen. Then another chapter is all about SQLJ, another first. The effort of having a chapter on database performance should be lauded, where connection pooling, prepared statements and stored procedures usage are demoed. The reminder of the book is about applying JDBC in various J2EE components, such as JSP, servlets, EJB, JMS, and XML. For this part of the book, even though I accept the fact the proper stage has to be set for each one of them, I still don't believe the book found the right balance between focusing on JDBC and showing what these other technologies are about. A large number of pages are used to teach basic JNDI, servlets, JSP's, and EJB's stuff (remember there is already a book on J2EE from Wrox!). Therefore, it is up to the reader to discover the real nuggets of gold hidden in this pile, which are far and in between in places. I found that some critical issues are not highlighted or details are lacking, such as how to use connection pooling/data sources in servlets, JSP's, and EJB's, the threading issues related to sharing database connections, and good database practices in BMP EJB's. However, the one thing I cannot complain about is that the book did not forget to teach the transaction aspect of EJB with a good depth (there is a short ans sweet chapter on using JTA/JTS inside EJB). There is also a chapter on the brand-new JDO framework, even though the spec is still in a state of flux. Finally, there are 4 case study chapters in the book - although the design and implementation are limited in scope and as a whole those samples do not teach all you need to do know about enterprise scale J2EE system development, they do provide a flavor of how JDBC is used in real world, together with setting up Tomcat, JRun, Orion, and WebLogic to access MS SQL Server and Oracle databases.

Now my overall take of this book. For VB/SQL and pure back-end PL/SQL developers who are eager to jump on the Java express train and need a suitable platform (especially for the ones who learn best from playing with actual code), I recommend this book as one of several you should own. Compared to other JDBC books from say O'Reilly and Sun's JDBC Tutorial, this book is the most up-to-date, contains the most source code, and has the broadest coverage of related topics. But keep in mind some of the advanced topics such as EJB and JMS can be intimidating for new-comers. On the other side of the coin, people who are advanced in various server-side Java technologies are unlikely to benefit a great deal from this book and should look elsewhere for info (for example Wrox's J2EE and upcoming EJB titles).

The purpose of this book is to inform the reader about the resources of Near-Earth space (the moon, Mars and asteroids) that can be used to decrease the cost of space activities. It is composed of 33 (if I counted correctly) scientific articles, by some 86 collaborating authors. The articles cover everything from natural resources (minerals, water, etc.) to processing, lunar base siting, and terraforming.

Warning: These articles are not for the faint of heart, they are written by scientists, for scientists. They are highly technical in nature, which means that people unfamiliar with the subject matter might find them hard to understand. That said, though, this is a unique and highly informative book, one that I highly recommend.

An invaluable reference, covering many aspects of potential resource use of the Moon and Mars, as well as the asteroids. Not for the technically faint-of-heart, this book covers many aspects of using off-world resources.

In light of recent documentary discoveries in a number of European archives, I had high hopes that this volume would further the body of research into the Rosicrucian movement. Ultimately, it did, but in ways I did not anticipate.

There are some essential works here (Joscelyn Godwin's excellent meditation on Michael Maier and Rafael T. Prinke's article on Michael Sendivogius immediately spring to mind: both of which demonstrate the varities of meaning Rosicrucianism took on to those who sought to perpetuate the movement in different contexts) but also much filler. Too many of the contributions collected in this volume re-state a body of knowledge familiar to all students of the subject. Due to the original format of these contributions (i.e., speeches) this knowledge is -understandably- not communicated in a particularly useful fashion.

Having said that, this volume is worth its price of entry. However the content is certainly a mixed bag.
Lastly, the translations of the Rosicrucian manifestos contained in this volume are those of Thomas Vaughan's mid 17th century edition of the Fama and Confessio .

Before the 'New Age' there was the "Rosicrucian Enlightenment". At the beginning of the 17th century, a new awakening was heralded throughout Europe, announcing the universal reform of all known areas of human activity - religion, science, art, and society were to become one being. The chief proponents of this great awakening were the mysterious "Rosicrucians". Nearly 400 years after the first seeds of this movement were planted, over 100 students, authors, and scholars of traditional Western esotericism, of which Rosicrucianism is the foremost exponent, gathered in the medieval town of Czesky Krumolv in the Czech Republic, to discuss, explore, and in someway, reopen the 'Vault of Christian Rosencreutz' once again.

"The Rosicrucian Enlightenment Revisited" contains nine essays on the early Rosicrucian movement presented at this landmark conference sponsored in part by The New York Open Center, and copies of the first two Rosicrucian Manifestoes, the "Fama" and the "Confessio". It is a great read and ideal for anyone interested in what is truly the heart and soul of Western esotericism - the Rosicrucian Enlightenment.

A beautifully and classically illustrated book that interlaces the fragments of the Arthurian saga. Entertaining to both the avid Arthur reader and the literary newcomer, the story is simply but elegantly put, and it positively emanates romanticism. It is perfect for perusing over and over again, not only because of the textual material itself but also the vivid pictures that accompany it on every other page. Friends stopping by for a visit have picked it up and paused our conversation to flip through it. A very worthwhile buy.

The book begins with an introduction to parents, discussing not only children's natural curiosity but also reminds parents that science is based on forming a hypothesis, testing your hypothesis, and then comparing the results with your predictions. Parents are encouraged to involve their children in these steps as they do the activities presented in the book and in everyday life. The activities are divided into 5 categories (In the kitchen, High Energy, Quiet Times, Bedtime, and Bigger than a bite) and each activity notes an appropriate age range (includes 3 and up). In addition, each activity has a brief discussion of what you will do then a 1 - 2 (short) paragraph discussion of scientific facts related to the activity (info for the parents). During the discussion of the activity, questions for the child are noted. These help the parent to help the child learn from the activity. Almost all of the activities are very simple, for example listening to yourself chew various types of food (soft/crunchy). This book does a good job of helping parents to bring science into everyday activities. Although some of the activities are listed as age 3 on up, I believe that generally children ages 4 or 5 and up would get more from these concepts presented.

I found this book to be a great resource, specifically related to communication apprehension, from a research perspective.

This book is a wonderful way to introduce children to the bible at Easter time. The illustrations are truly gorgeous. The author trained at the Stroganov Academy of Fine Art in Moscow, and the illustrations are very much in the Russian tradition of religious art. What a beautiful book.