Vladamir Mayakovsky was the greatest of the early 20th-centuary Russian "Futurist" poets. For The Voice was a compilation of his most-quoted poetry, made in collaberation with bookmaker El Lissitzky. The book itself can be considered an art-object. The use of a thumb index so that poems could be found quickly is an ingenious touch. Mayakovsky was a great poet, but the poems included here do not in my opinion fully exhibit his talent. This is because most of them were written as pro-Bolshevik revolutionary propaganda, and meant primarily for agitation of the proletariat, rather then casual reading enjoyment. As a result some of the statements ie. "..We'll break history's horse./By the Left!/Left!/Left!.." seem a little less inspired, and more outdated then Mayakovsky's other work. He was still a genious, though, and this book is well worth the money. This edition consists of three volumes - the facsimilie, the translation, and a collection of very interesting essays and facts about Mayakovsky and Lissitzky (one section of which is a great help in understanding the poems at a deeper level).. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in Mayakovsky, Russia, or avante-garde bookmaking/artwork. For anyone else - FIRST look at some of Mayakovsky's other poetry..a lot can be found online...and maybe his other books, then come back to this one. His long poem, "A Cloud in Trousers" is highly recommended. Sad note : Mayakovsky felt so oppressed by the soviet society he wrote propaganda for, so tired of his poetic voice being stifled, and so dissapointed in romance, that he shot himself dead in 1930, aged 36.

Back in 1992, I was in New York to attend the exhibition "The Great Utopia" which was held in Guggenheim. The show was a dreamland for the soviet art of the twenties still not known as it should be. Moved by the great amaze the exhibition made over me, I looked for the editor Jaap Rietmann who had made an almost out-of-print fac-similar version of the historical book Dlia Golossa by Maiakovsky with El Lissitsky's graphic design. I was not successful. Mr Rietmann said me that this was a very expensive book and he discontinued. Years later, I made a contact with the excellent work of Mrs. Patricia Railing, one of the most gifted analysers of the period, in my opinion. She has not only a great inside information about the subject but held the courage to accept the challenge and publish this and others precious titles of the russian avant-garde. Books such as History of 2 squares (also listed here in Amazon), 32 Drawings by Kasimir Malevitch and others, as well as essays in various publications (Leonardo and others). Patricia Railing is one of these people who is so much dedicated to a subject to the point it makes the researcher go beyond any obstacle. The book is simply great, very well edited and - I must warn - hold it! because maybe another chance will not arise.

I do not agree with the reader above completely. The book is definately hot stuff and you won't find this kind of opinion readily available ... but the foreign policy of the US could have been more structured.

5 star just for being really out there! You will not find this type of writing in English anywhere! A month ago books on Iraq were old. Now there are some 20 titles written in the last 3 weeks. This is not the case with this book (russian copyright 2002).
"A humanitarian .... hero of his people ... loved by the masses .." yep, this is writen about Saddam in this book and darn well backed up with some uneasy facts and startling analysis. This book is for everyone who has been outraged by the blatant, vile right wing media propaganda following Gulf War 2. And what is most interesting that the author deals with post Saddam scenarios and is accurate to the millimeter ...and this was written last year!

The material contained in the textbook presents and discusses recent developments, but also important statistical (learning theory) concepts such as model selection, regularisation etc, in a unifying manner.
Although the authors are somewhat biased towards kernel methods, support vector machines in particular, they discuss the applicability and performance of other methods (neural networks, fuzzy systems, etc.). This is to be commended, as there are not many books that discuss all such methods in a common framework.
This book is highly recommended to readers wishing to gain a good understanding of the most significant statistical and other methods being applied in industry, and continuously experiencing significant academic research. A set of very good references (some mandatory and well known in the research community) presented at the end of each chapter directs the reader to some very useful material and scientific publications. This is a book that will particularly appeal to the research/academic community.

This book is excellent and easy to study. Graduate students will find the book statistical learning theory and support vector machines(SVMs),especially learning system based on recent advances in machine learning and multiobjective optimization. This book describes the Vapnik and Chervonenkis(VC) theory's generalization abilities. For statisticians, Applied mathematician, mechanical engineers and most graduate student are interested in reading this book. This is a very good excellent reference!!

This book by Kayta Arnold is a book which lends itself to discussions on animals relationships to other animals. Will the puppy discover which animal says meow? Children will enjoy the animal sounds and the bright illustrations.

I first read this book to my two and a half year old son in the library. We both laughed so hard I was looking for the "shushing" librarian. I had fun because my son had fun. We both had SOOO much fun I had to go out and buy it so we can do it again whenever we want. I say do it again, because it is like a game you want to play over and over.

Perhaps regrettably obscured behind Nabokov's famous novels and even his Lectures on Russian Literature and his controversial work on Eugene Onegin lies this short critical biography of Nikolai Gogol. The main thrust of the book is to portray Gogol as a masterful, if troubled and inconsistent, writer whose work is valuable not at all for its portrayal of Russia or for any seeming advocacy of social change, but rather exclusively for its artistic merit. Nabokov takes us rather briskly through Gogol's youth and his earlier works; provides detailed, quote-filled discussions of The Inspector General and the first volume of Dead Souls; summarizes the last ten years of Gogol's life, during which he attempted to write the second volume of Dead Souls but saw his artistic creativity fading; and gives a short exposition of Gogol's most famous short story, "The Overcoat."

Nabokov's essays on The Inspector General, Dead Souls, and "The Overcoat" are all quite illuminating and entertaining. He escorts us through each work, discussing the numerous ways in which each innovatively reflects Gogol's unique and charming quirks, and including, with annotations, numerous passages (each translated by Nabokov himself) which demonstrate Gogol's excellent prose. His emphasis is not at all on the plots of the works (which he only grudgingly included at the end of the book at the request of his publisher) but rather on their style, which he successfully shows to be a much more fundamental aspect of Gogol's works than any satire that one may choose to read in to them.

At times, though, it seems that Nabokov gets a little too caught up in his own dogma. Most critics nowadays would agree with Nabokov that Gogol was much more important as an artist than as a social commentator, but it's pushing it awfully far to say, as Nabokov does, that Dead Souls is no more authentically a tale about Russia than Hamlet is authentically about Denmark. Also, Nabokov confines almost all of his attention to just three works, which put together, if memory serves, wouldn't come to much more than 300 pages. He dismisses Gogol's numerous Ukrainian tales (the last of which were written when Gogol was 25; The Inspector General, by contrast, was written at the ripe old age of 26) as "juvenilia" which are emphatically not "the real Gogol," and pays little more than lip service to any of Gogol's other acclaimed short stories. The one other slightly irritating aspect of Nabokov's book that I can think of is that in the long passages that he quotes he insists on interjecting his own comments [in brackets] mid-sentence, thus ruining the flow of the prose that he took the trouble of translating so very well.

But these are all minor quibbles, and I hope you won't let them discourage you. Nabokov makes his point very entertainingly and very well, and although it might have been nice if he'd broadened his study to more of Gogol's work, his discussions of Gogol's three most important works are really excellent. Since it would be hard for me to think of a 20th-century author more suited to writing about Gogol than Nabokov, I had high expectations for this book, and I was not at all disappointed.

In this short, witty book about Nikolai Gogol, Nabokov captures perfectly the most important aspect of his writing: the dreamlike, irrational, surrealistic absurdity. My favorite book of all time is Gogol's "Dead Souls" (translated by Andrew R. MacAndrew, Signet Classics). Nabokov's book is a perfect tribute to Gogol. I haven't even read "The Inspector-General"- now I'm going to. At the time Nabokov wrote this book, there apparently weren't good English translations of "Dead Souls" so there is a somewhat pessimistic or despondent feeling that an English-speaker wouldn't be able to access Gogol. I don't speak Russian, so I can't vouch for this translation, but I have a feeling it would be all right with Nabokov. Anyway, this is a wonderful book.

It can be a bit discouraging to open The Other Side of the Moon and find a page devoted to the Cast of Characters that reads like a family tree. But don't let it divert your attention from this book.

Every character plays an important role in the way the story comes together. It is an adventure through many mysterious and exotic lands. Croydon Bates sets off to discover the secrets of his past and, along the way, discovers the secrets his family has hidden.

Croydon is haunted by visions of his dead mother. His great grandfather helps him understand these mysteries and helps him locate Croydon's estranged father.

As more characters are introduced, the narration changes points of view but the storylines continue to play off each other well like pieces of a puzzle coming together. The Cast of Characters list in the beginning of the book can come in handy when jumps in narration are made because the story flashes back from past to present so much and the characters take on new names from their reincarnations and past lives as these dimensional travels take place.

This novel themes around Christianity, reincarnation and the links between the teachings of Christianity and other religious beliefs. It also demonstrates how when one evil is expelled another evil will spawn in the world's cycle. Croydon tries to break the cycle and save them all from destruction and restore the world order.

The Other Side of the Moon is likely to break your aversion to the sci-fi genre so dip a toe into a distinctive piece of fiction with this novel.

Deftly written by Vladimir Chernozenmsky, the Bulgarian-American author of "The Lion of the Balkans", The Other Side of the Moon is a fascinating and imaginative novel about the transmigration of human souls throughout history, from the Pharaohs who ruled Egypt in days of yore, to the rise of Christianity and the tumult of the new millennium. An emotional, forceful, sometimes disturbing tale of the best and worst of human nature through the ages, The Other Side of The Moon is a unique and attention engaging read from first page to last.

Vapnik and Chernovenkis extended the Glivenko-Cantelli Theorem in their work on classification and statistical learning. Vapnik in recent texts has described a form of nonparametric statistical inference based on approximating functions and the Vapnik-Chernovenkis dimension.

In an earlier book published by Springer-Verlag he develops the basics of the theory. However to keep the mathematical level excessible to computer scientists and engineers he avoided the mathematical proofs needed for mathematical rigor. This text is an advanced text that provides the rigorous development. Although the preface and chapter 0 give the reader a idea of what is to come the rest of the text is difficult reading.

The theory has been quite successful at attacking the pattern recognition/ classification problem and provides a basis for understanding support vector machines. However Vapnik sees a much broader application to statistical inference in general when the classical parametric approach fails.

If you have a strong background in probability theory you should be able to wade through the book and get something out of it. If not I recommend reading section 7.9 of "The Elements of Statistical Learning" by Hastie, Tibshirani and Friedman. That will give you an easily understandable view of the VC dimension. Also sections 12.2 and 12.3 of their text will give you some appreciation for support vector machines and the error rate bounds obtainable for them based on the VC dimension.

This book aims at rigorours and deep treatment of statistical learning and is divided into three parts :

(I)THEORY OF LEARNING AND GENERALIZATION;

(II)SUPPORT VECTOR ESTIMATION OF FUNCTIONS;

(III)STATISTICAL FOUNDATION OF LEARNING THEORY'

For anyone intending to dive into this topic intriguing readers shull find their task rather not simple when exploring this mathematical exposition.This is because of the mature nature behind the basic theory .In order to gain most of the benefit ,interested and even involved researchers are urged and should assume all the requirements for a vast and solid mathematical background.

I Think the book constitutes a respectful and organized 'exhibition' that you will not find in any other place. Althought there are excellent books discussing SVMs and Machine-Learning/ Intelligence,eventually all emenate from the theory.Regarding the book rating it is was not rated upon how much you retrieve as concepts, but how well the propositions offer a precious appreciation of the substantial theory.In otherwords, this book is not the place for a first time learning, but it is serves as a bridge between interrelated elements of such incredibly growing area.

For the book: "The Nature of Statistical learning Theory" also by Vapnik you can find a review by Vladimir Cherkassky in The IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON NEURAL NETWORKS VOL. 8, NO. 6, NOVEMBER 1997 .

While mostly confined to the movie posters that the Stenberg Brothers produced in the early years of the Soviet Union, this book still includes enough general history to help the reader view them in the context in which they were produced. Well-illustrated (most illustrations are in full color) with easy to comprehend text, this would be a valuable volume for anyone interested in graphic design. It will also appeal to students of the Constructivist movement.

There have been many great graphic artists in the past several decades. In my opinion, The Stenberg Brothers produced some of the finest graphical works of art in this Century. The Stenberg Brothers lived and produced their Art in 1920's...and 1930's. Fueling the Soviet propaganda machine. Look beyond the thorns of the Soviet era propaganda machine. If you are a true graphic artist, you will definately appreciate the fantastic talents of the Stenberg Brothers and Soviet-era art. The Stenbergs were Masters of the Graphic Arts. This book should not be listed as a "book". Rather, it should be listed as an artists' portfolio. This "portfolio" of Soviet artwork is a MUST for everyone with an interest in appreciating the graphic arts. The Stenberg Brothers were truly MASTERS of their medium. This BOOK is packed FULL of high quality, premium-paper-stock reproductions of the best works these brothers have ever produced. I recommend it wholley!

Try as I might, I simply cannot get myself to enjoy or even appreciate this book. I am a longtime Nabokov fan and have read most of his books as well as several biographies and literary studies on the man. The only conclusion that I can reach is that, in this novel that followed the huge success of Lolita, Nabokov somehow lost his self-critical facility and wrote it faster and with far fewer drafts, convinced by the critics' pronounements that he was a genius (and he certainly was) and hence couldn't go wrong. This is what many of his critics and academic specialists say about this book - that it is sloppy and indulgent, and certainly nothing like his best work - and for once I completely agree with them.

Now a lot Nabokov devotees make fancy arguments about how this is his ultimate acheivement, a kind of cryptic Finnegin's Wake that engages the reader into a curious notion of time, etc etc. Well, apart from my own idolisation of this fabulous writer, I really did not see anything to justify this in this book, unless you like such banalities as "I don't analyse, I describe" or Van Veen putting on sunglasses and wondering if the tint influences his sense of time. Alas, a simpler explanation is that, in a fit of self-intoxication, the Nab got lazy with this book and simply blew it.

With all due respect to one of the greatest writers of the 20C, this book is too long, many of the scenes ring hollow, and the story is really strange.

Not recommended.

A burst of light, a entymological treatise, a love story, a dirty old man's sexual fantasy, a miracle. This is Nabokov's "Ada", his last great novel, but more a spilling of the soul than a book. Only Nabokov would have the audacity to try to write a literary masterpiece around a simple -- even simplistic -- plot of youthful incest, and the skill to pull it off in such a brilliant fashion. If wordy pretentiousness and precocious kids turn you off, you shouldn't be reading Nabokov in the first place. But if you are the kind of reader who loves the sound of complex consonance and takes pleasure in being forced to re-read the last two chapters to grasp the convoluted plot, this is your high-lit Bible.

Nabokov has written novels with better plots, better word-play and puzzles, more acute looks into single characters, but Ada brings it all together in an attenuated amalgam of all things Nabokov. The overall impression is as of watching an epic movie through a gauze curtain on a breezy day. Hints of vivid scenes and characters show through occasionally, but are obscured by a veil of history, language, and diversions. This book belongs in another era, but still challenges the concepts with which we define modernity.
This was easily the most difficult of his books that I've read, and is second in my mind only to Pale Fire. But where Pale Fire only hints at alternate reality and history, Ada plunges in. Where Lolita ultimately exposes the sticky-sweet banality of the nymphette obsession, Ada's poignant and heart-breaking love story challenges our assumptions of propriety. Nabokov seamlessly blends intellectual depth and playfulness with the pure physicality of the human body and its needs and desires.

I needed the annotated version of this short novel by Nabokov, because I'm sure that I missed many of the things that were happening here. Basically the story of a Russian exile who teaches at an American university (something Nabokov was quite familiar with, in the grand "write what you know" tradition), the top story is quaint and humorous, the title character being a likeable, if somewhat eccentric, man. He's close to the "born loser" in his relationship with his University and his ex-wife, but he's not just a simple sad sack. There's meat on his bones, and while he seems oblivious to the tumult of his life, he remains fairly proud and retains a reassuring naivete.

The story under this is what I could not quite catch. I'm sure that Nabokov was making some sly comments on University life and ex-patriots, but every time I thought the dawn was about to break, the sun slipped behind another mountain. The prose is enjoyable, and, had I not read two other books by Nabokov, I might not have felt a loss.

My favorite part here is a party that Pnin throws as a house warming, inviting over his supervisor as well as friends (ex-landlords) and acquaintances (including one fellow that he merely says hello to daily on his walk across campus). Following the party, his supervisor has to tell him that Pnin's job is not very secure, as the supervisor is taking a position at another university and his replacement may not be as open to keeping Pnin in his current position. After the joy of his party, this deflates Pnin, and he verges on becoming angry. Picking up the party debris and cleaning dishes, he is washing a prized gift from his son when it slips out of his hand and drops into the suds-filled sink.

He almost caught it--his fingertips actually came into contact with it in mid-air, but this only helped to propel it into the treasure-concealing foam of the sink, where an excruciating crack of broken glass followed upon the plunge'.Then, with a moan of anguished anticipation, he went back to the sink and, bracing himself, dipped his hand deep into the foam. A jagger of glass stung him. Gently he removed a broken goblet. The beautiful bowl was intact. He took a fresh dish towel and went on with his household work.

Here is Pnin's strength, I thought. His life is that bowl, occasionally being dropped, but, strangely, he never breaks.

With Pnin, Nabokov does what he has done elsewhere -- he spoofs middle-class, middle-century America, exploding its pretensions quite handily. But the subject matter here is a bit closer to home, as Pnin deals with the plight of Russian expatriates adrift in exile after the Revolution. One imagines Nabokov identified more than a little with his lovable, excitable protagonist, and at times the satire parts to reveal aching sadness.

The last two pages of Chapter Five, in which Pnin ruminates on the memory of a lost love who died in World War II, contain some of my favorite writing in the English language. I will quote here an exquisite paragraph:

"Pnin slowly walked under the solemn pines. The sky was dying. He did not believe in an autocratic God. He did believe, dimly, in a democracy of ghosts. The souls of the dead, perhaps, formed committees, and these, in continuous session, attended to the destinies of the quick."

In passages such as this, Nabokov walks an astonishing tightrope between caustic comedy and heartbreaking tragedy.

Pnin is a lovely book, and it reminded me of Seinfeld in ways more than one.

Don't look for a George, a Jerry or an Elaine; maybe you can find some Kramer in Mr Eccentricity - Timofey Pnin himself. But the absence of a plot and the constant, guilty smirk I had on my face (with the occasional laugh sprinkled in) reminded me of the times I spent in front of the TV watching my favorite TV Show Seinfeld.

The story is of Pnin, a Russian emigre in Paris, and later Eastern US in the 50s struggling to teach in a mid-sized liberal arts college. He certainly does not fit in anywhere except his research and the reader's heart, and the dissapointments he faces with his guardian angel in his department do not really cancel each other out.

Nabokov is a terribly funny guy, and the way he makes fun of 50s acedemia is quite applicable to anyone who has spent some time with research fellows in any US college. His play on words, and his play on a foreigner struggling in America is nicely crafted so that no bitter taste is left in your mouth afterwards.

Highly recommended, but please do not look for Lolita...