Califronia as it once was. A vast wilderness where the great grizzly bear still roamed free! The author's memories of northern California pioneer life in the 2nd half of the 19th century. Recounted years later for his daughter, Told with wry humor and wisdom. The stories ring true.

The first tale, "Bear on Fire," sets the tone. The author is guiding some artists near Mount Shasta when a wildfire threatens the entire party. Seeking shelter he keenly observes the wildlife as it too flees.

The second story & third stories hark back to the author's boyhood. The rest can be read in any order. Some of the stories range farther afield to Alaska, Louisiana and Mexico.

The tales often speak of the potential diasterous consequences of bad decisions and ignorance. Exciting, yet not gory. Good initiation theme stories for young and old alike.

The first two pages of this book (Chapter 1, since no intro or preface) consists of two large dense diagrams that aren't really explained. You think: maybe they are joking starting with these. Unfortunately, as you flip from page-to-page, you realize that this book is written by the sort of technical people that have no idea how to express ideas so others can understand them.

It's like sitting in a room where a technical person is mumbling about his favourite topic. You're pretty sure that he knows what he is talking about -- but when it is expressed so poorly and organized so randomly, who can tell?

I persevered and read through the long unstructured security chapter. It covers all kinds of apparently useful information. As usual, the presentation makes it hard to tell where they are going or how important any individual topic might be. I suppose that if you just wanted to sit there and type in a bunch of commands (half understanding what you are doing), then you could follow a book like this.

This book has more to do with setting up a first web server for your unique needs with Apache Web Server rather than an in-depth technical book about Apache. Provides many good strategies and pointers for corporations and small business setting up their first web servers, large and small ISPs. Good explanation on configuring firewalls and creating homepage web sites.

A full chapter on Using Apache on Windows NT and how to program the Apache Server. Some inaccurate information about the relationship between OpenSSL and SSLeay libraries.

All in all, this book is good for beginners wanting to set up web servers using Apache web server as it provides various configurations and strategies but not much for the seasoned Apache web administrator or developers as it lacks new technical information about Apache that other Apache books have not already addressed although this is one of the latest books on Apache.

I got this book to learn on web-servers and Apache was chosen because it's free. After 5 minutes of reading the book and I got Apache 1.3.12 up-n-running and had my first web-site on display. I don't know how this book is on the advanced topics, but it's excellent for all that want to setup a web-server.

How can anyone find this confusing? This is a pretty simple work, and I find it difficult to believe that anyone can be confused as to what it's about. And why would you need Cliff Notes for this?

In any event, my problem with this play is that its just too simple: not enough meat and the characters aren't all that interesting. Yes, it shows us how narrow-minded the Puritans were. It's also an allegory for McCarthyism, for those of you who don't know. But do we really need this play to point out what it tells us about human nature? I personally find it overly long and overly dull for what it's trying to convey.

i was required to read this book for an english class, and am glad i did, because it really made one think about how narrow minded the puritans were and how that really brought on the hangings of the so called witches. this is definately a book to read.

this is a great piece of art by arthur miller. he catches your attention with the lies and injustices of the 1600's. this is a good book because of it's content. the speech is, as it was in that time. it tells a tale of a little girl who gets caught being "naughty" and blames it on the circumstances of those she doesn't like or has problems with. this book teaches that to lie about something that could have been small makes it much larger and much more complicated to deal with. the girl in this this book is in witchcraft and is caught dancing naked in the woods by her uncle who is the reverend. with her are two other girls, a servant, and a cousin. the town is brought down to a level where every one is accusing every one else for past happeneings. farmowners are accusing neighbors of it so that the land is auctioned off at low prices so that they can increase the quality of their own land. it becomes a big issue when it could have been solved completely with a simple confession. the subject is blown out of proportion and it destryos a lot of lives and families. the truth is finally found after nine-teen people are hanged for the crime of witchcraft. i reccomend this book to anyone who enjoys "a good book".

I believe that English teachers should make a list of books that teenagers could understand without having to rely on cheat sources. My advice to you would be to choose books that you can understand easily without driving yourself crazy while writting your critical analysis. Death of a Salesman is not one of those books that can be easily understood, in my opinion.

For all you who have heard that this play is hard to follow, I would not disagree. Yet despite the difficult comprehension, Miller does an excellent job in relation to the characters' psyche. There is a much deeper meaning to this work. It explores the never ending chain of the importance of family. A must for all whose family is a little distant among each other. Touching, moving, extraordinary.

I read this play in one evening. At times I found it hard to follow, but I REALLY enjoyed it. Soon after I rented the movie with Dustin Hoffman which solidified the story in my mind and moved me to tears. A very compelling story.

This is a great book, very readable and scholarly. There exists one problem though: this book has practically nothing to add to what is written, just as clearly and just as easily accessible, in the old testament.

I read this book seeking to find a modern perspective on the old testament narrative, which would include all the findings of modern archeology and other sciences. What I found is that modern scholarship has precious little to add to what is already set down in the bible because the OT remains, with very few and mostly modest exceptions, our only source for this period. This is not the fault of the authors, of course, who are very noteworthy scholars. A few bits of history are scattered throughout the book which are not obvious from a reading of the bible, but the vast majority is just summary and interpretation (not usually very revealing) of the OT.

It goes without saying that if you are interested in the history of this period and have not read the bible, open the good book to Genesis 1 and start reading.

J. Maxwell Miller and John H. Hayes' A History of Ancient Israel and Judah provides a solid introduction to the methods and problems of studying the development of the kingdoms that came to be known as Israel and Judah. The book deals with events from the time of Israel's origins (the Late Bronze and Early Iron Ages) to the work of Ezra and Nehemiah (the fifth and fourth centuries BCE). On the whole, A History is more cautious with the biblical texts than other histories of ancient Israel, such as John Bright's A History of Israel. Miller and Hayes spend less time offering guesses about the more speculative aspects of Israel's history, such as the patriarchs and exodus, and concentrate their efforts on the later period (tenth to fifth centuries BCE) for which conclusions are more certain. From its beginning, this study is very much set within the geographical, political, economic, and religious context of the ancient Near East and Egypt as a whole. Perhaps the most attractive feature of this work is the inclusion of both photographs and fairly complete translations of extra-biblical documents pertinent to various stages of Israel's history. A History is divided into chronological segments, and the authors proceed by summarizing the biblical texts germane to the time period, critically examining these accounts along with extra-biblical and archaeological evidence, and then drawing conclusions. If the book has a major weakness, it is the absence of either footnotes or endnotes, but the authors provide a sizable topical bibliography at the conclusion of the book, and overall, A History of Ancient Israel and Judah is sound, readable scholarship.

I read this book as part of an English course on late-19th and 20th century American literature. It's the first time I've read a novel by Henry James, having so far only seen the movie adaptations of 'Portrait of a Lady' and 'Washington Square'. Having been wary of reading James (because of his reputation for dense, convoluted prose) I was surprised at this novel's relatively brisk plot and overall readability. The story itself, ostensibly a simple one about one man's inability to understand a seemingly complicated woman, also has interesting things to say about gender, class and the relationship between the United States (personified by the heroine) and the rest of the Western world. I was actually somewhat amazed that the image of America created through the characterization of Daisy Miller still rings true 125 years after this book's publication.

As is often the case for Henry James, there is scarcely a detail of his work that can be made better somehow.

DAISY MILLER: A STUDY, 1878, is among the principal novellas of history and literature. Very simply, the story involves a young girl Daisy Miller, wandering through Europe, and from America. She is sensitive and capricious. Her ways attract attention, such that perhaps she appears a lustrous woman of carnal desires, or disrespectful to cultures not her own, or stupid. At any event, she catches the eye of another tourist, Mr. Winterbourne, a "nice guy" who not unlike the nice guys of our own world lucks out. He does not get Daisy, but watches as she kisses another and loses herself to unappreciatve men. She does this from anger, resentment, and want of attention. She becomes a symbol of many things, and in the end she dies. The book has been debated for decades.

The dialogue is so well crafted as to be sacred. No further editing of this story is possible, for James took very great pains to edit his work multiple times over. And here, we see a flow of talking and happenings that seem to real to even be on the page. As for instance the communication of Mr. Winterbourne and Daisy's little brother (I believe). The little boys talks, and behaves, as a little boy would. And, Mr. Winterbourne likewise behaves as a young man would to a young boy. Greatest of all are the marvellous dialogues between Daisy and Mr. Winterbourne. They flirt at times, and one feels Winterbourne's longing for her. They feel his sadness, a real sadness, as when she is not feeling for him nearly as deeply. I likened myself to to the man.

I am glad to know that Mr. James was credited as having been "the Master."

I hadn't read James for about eight years or so when I came across a copy of Daisy Miller in a pile of discarded books at a local university. It sat on my shelf for a while longer, as I knew full well that James writes in thick sentences, making up for the lack of volume by quite a bit.

What I found was what I have come to expect from James, even in his early works. This book does a great deal in terms of pulling together many levels of interpretaion: Old World versus New World, common versus exclusive, and also the chaser and the chased.

This last viewpoint in particular is what stuck with me. We have a young girl, and a young man. They meet once for a few days, and the young man becomes utterly fixated on her, if for any other reason that she is playing, in his view, hard to get. When she turns her attention elsewhere, the ante is doubled and tripled when, for a variety of reasons most likely centered around our young hero Winterbourne, the American society in Rome starts to give our heroin the "cold shoulder". Given that James writes most often to examine the person most in focus in the novel, I tend to atribute most of the troubles of this young girl to both herself and Winterbourne, not just the society of the time. This is far from a safe academic interpretation, however.

The notes included in the book are helpful for getting into the mindset of the typical reader of James' day, but are not distracting. Overall, this would probably be suitible for an ambitios middle school student, and just right for most high school students.

Other reviews have described the plot, so I won't spend much time on it. A man, Julian West, goes to sleep in 1887 and wakes up in the year 2000. He finds a socialist utopia.

At first, the book is quite interesting. Bellamy does a good job of capturing the protagonist's surpise and confusion at the new world he discovers. The fact that Edith Leete looks like his fiance back in 1887 Boston is a neat twist. The socialist state the author describes is appealing to me, and as someone who believes that socialism can work, I found it thought provoking.

The problem is, there is not enough story or character development here. Bellamy's ideas aren't really suited to the fictional form. He'd have been better off to write a solely political tract. Because the author can't seem to decide if he wants to write a novel or a political essay, both the narrative and the politics are oversimplified, and given short shrift. The introduction by Cecilia Titchi (pardon my spelling), was excellent. In fact, the book fails to live up to it. If you know nothing about socialism, this book my enlighten you as to the philosophy. If it is an option for a political science class, it would be a good pick because it is easy and quick reading. Otherwise, I wouldn't rush to read it.

I grew up on science fiction, and many years ago read this book and was utterly unimpressed. Over the years, at SF conventions, I would ask other fans if they had read this book. Now these are fans who could regale you with quotes from Star Trek, or Star Wars, and who often had read most of Larry Niven or Andre Norton. But "Looking Backward"? Bellamy? Many had never heard of the book or the author. Those who had read the book often shared my opinion. By comparison, all I asked had read "Time Machine" by Wells, and had seen the movie.

I think it is instructive to compare the two books. Written within a few years of each other, with Bellamy's actually being the first, why did "Time Machine" live on, and the other being relegated to a well deserved obscurity? In fact, "Time Machine" is generally considered the first famous novel that describes the concept of time travel.

Try reading the two books consecutively. Well's story is gripping and dramatic. Bellamy's seems stilted and ponderous. Part of this is just the differences in literary style in the intervening century. But "Time Machine" is still a dashing read. Bellamy's text is a thinly wrapped polemic; a hosanna to his vision of a socialistic utopia. Most of the book is a hectoring lecture as to how late twentieth century Boston is a secular paradise, with the evils of capitalism just a historial curiosity. For one thing, books on utopia do not sell well. Regardless of your personal political beliefs, a book that is soothing and tranquil lacks a certain vivacity and drama.

This book is significant today, but NOT as science fiction. Rather as a guidepost to the socialistic beliefs of a certain subculture of a past century.

Don't hold your breath waiting for the movie!

Having never really heard of this novel or its author before, I was rather surprised to discover how immensely popular it was at the end of the nineteenth century. Edward Bellamy does an excellent albeit sometimes pedantic job of communicating his socioeconomic views and provides an interesting and informative read, despite the fact that the utopia of his fictional creation is a socialist nightmare in the realm of my own personal philosophy. It is very important to understand the time in which Bellamy was writing, especially for a conservative-minded thinker such as myself who holds many of Bellamy's views as anathema. It was the mid-1880s, a time of great social unrest; vast strikes by labor unions, clashes between workers and managers, a debilitating economic depression. Bellamy, to his credit, in no way comes off as holier than thou; his wealthy protagonist recognizes his own responsibility in seeing the world in the eyes of the more prosperous classes, basically ignoring the plights of the poor and downtrodden, having inherited rather than earned the money he is privileged to enjoy, etc. This makes the character's observations and conclusions very impactful upon the reader.

While I do respect Bellamy's views and understand the context in which they germinated, I cannot help but describe his future utopia as nothing less than naïve, socialistic, unworkable, and destructive of the individual spirit. Indeed, it sounds to me like vintage Soviet communism, at least in its ideals. Bellamy is a Marxist with blinders on. I should describe the actual novel at this point. The protagonist, an insomniac having employed a mesmerist to help him sleep through the night, finds himself waking up not the following morning in 1887 but in a completely changed world in 2000. His bed chamber was a subterranean fortress of sorts which only he, his servant, and the mesmerist (who left the city that same night) even knew about, and apparently his home proper burned down on that fateful night and thus his servant was clearly unable to bring him out of his trance the following morning. It is only by accident that Dr. Leekes of twentieth-century Boston discovers the unknown tomb and helps resuscitate its remarkable inhabitant. 20th-century life is wholly unlike anything the protagonist has ever known, and the book basically consists of a number of instruction sessions by the Leekes as to how society has been virtually perfected over the preceding 100 years. There is no more war, crime, unhappiness, discrimination, etc. There are no such things as wages or prices, even. All men and women are paid the same by virtue of their being human beings; while money does not exist, everyone has everything they possibly need easily available to them for purchase with special credit cards. Every part of the economy is controlled by the national government, and it is through cooperation of the brotherhood of men that production has exceeded many times over that of privately controlled industries fighting a war against each other in the name of capitalism.

Bellamy's future utopia is most open to question in terms of the means by which individualism is supposedly strengthened rather than smothered, how a complex but seemingly set of incentives supposedly keep each worker happy and productive, how invention or improvement of anything is possible in such a world, and how this great society does not in fact become a mirror of Khrushchev's Russian state. Such a society consisting of an "industrial army" and controlled in the minutest of terms by a central national authority simply sounds like Communism to my ears and is equally as unsustainable. Of course, Bellamy wrote this novel many years before the first corruptions of Marx's dangerous dreams were made a reality on earth. As I said, I disagree with just about everything Bellamy praises, and I think almost anyone would agree his utopia is an impossibility, but I greatly respect the man for his bold, humanitarian vision and applaud his efforts to make the world a better place. In fact, many groups organized themselves along the lines of the world Bellamy envisioned, so the novel's influence on contemporary popular thought is beyond question. Looking Backward remains a fascinating read in our own time.

I should make clear that the novel is not completely a dry recitation of socioeconomic arguments and moralistic treatises. Bellamy makes the story of this most unusual of time travelers a most enjoyable one, bringing in an unusual type of old-fashioned romance to supply the beating heart of a novel that had the potential to become overly analytical and thus rather boring reading otherwise. He also managed to grab me by the scruff of the neck and shake me around a couple of times with his concluding chapter, quite shocking me with a couple of unexpected plot twists. This great humanist of the late nineteenth century can teach us all something about what it means to be truly human, although I fear that his socioeconomic theories are themselves far too romanticized to have much practical relevance in the lives of modern men and women.

I was very surprised when I ordered this book and found out that yes, indeed, it was merely a very tiny portion of what I had expected. I suppose I should have known from the price, but the description (at least at that time) did not make it clear that it wasn't the entire dictionary.

While this may be a very thorough source for the words it covers, it should be noted in the basic information that this is ONLY 128 pages of a 15,000 page work. The description above is very misleading.

itz a dictionary. what more can i say

My Lady Wayward was a huge disapointment. Ms. Miller gave so much attention to the filth, the plague, and the lack of hygiene that she forgot to "complete" the story. I kept on reading the novel through boring and repetitive sections, because I was curious about important details of Gresham's past that he could not remember. I wanted to know why he left his pregnant wife; who took his son away to be fostered; why his wife was unfaithful to him; why he abandoned his son, etc. But when he finally recovered his memory Ms. Miller was in such a hurry to finish the book that she neglected to include those vital facts. We were led to believe that the hero was really a thoughtless cad who deserved to be disowned by his father before his injury, after which his personality changed drastically for the better. When at the end of the book Gresham tells his son that he killed the mummer, we don't even get to know how the boy took this information and how this fact affected their relationship. As for Meg, she was not a very interesting heroine, but she was acceptable. How could Ms. Miller do that to her readers? She should refer to Josie Litton's novels: Ms. Litton gives meticulous attention to every detail, and does not leave a single lose end. I think that many historical romance readers are intelligent, educated, and demanding. We expect excellence and respect from authors, and right now I feel very let down and disinclined to buy or recommend Ms. Miller's books in the future.

The mummer finds the severely injured knight, Gresham Sedgewick lying unconscious near his hurt but awake squire. The mummer takes Gresham to the nearby St. Swithin's Abbey where the nuns can nurse him back to health even as his frightened squire flees.

Siblings, Meg and Elizabeth Redclift, are the first to see the still comatose Gresham lie very still just outside the abbey. Meg decides she must tend to the man's injuries, but when he finally regains cognizance he has no idea of his identity or who attacked him due to amnesia. However, the tiny tidbits that flash in his mind tells Gresham he has lived a violent life. As he and Meg begin to fall in love, he feels unworthy of his cherished soul mate because of the possible atrocities he might have conducted. Still, the duo goes on a quest to help him find his past and to insure her other sister Gabriella is safe even as the plague sweeps the land making travel hazardous.

MY LADY WAYWARD will invigorate those medieval romance fans who want a deep enriching flavor of the times throughout their plot. The story line is at its majestic best when Meg and Gresham encounter various people on their journey. When Gresham turns introspective the audience has a dual edged sword to deal with as he becomes more understandable yet he slows down the plot. Linda Lael Miller has written an appealing historical romance that the audience will appreciate for its sonorous texture.

Harriet Klausner

An Evolving Dialogue gets three stars for attempting to facilitate genuine dialogue on the topic of evolution. A number of contributors rightly point out that even if contemporary Darwinian theory is correct, it doesn't imply atheism, since the idea of "divinely-planned" evolution is simply outside of science's domain. That tact likely explains the absence of Richard Dawkins from this collection, since Dawkins is a Fundamentalist Atheist who bases on a career out of blending science's rules to propagate his own militant religious beliefs.

However, this book has a number of flaws that lay readers should consider before accepting it wholesale:

1. The evolutionary data is purely orthodox neo-Darwinism. There is no real question about natural selection's ability to create complex life forms, other than a nod to Stephen J. Gould's "punctuated equilibrium" theory. But a growing number of qualified, credentialed scientists are questioning neo-Darwinism, and not all of them are theists. Many are proposing "complexity theory" as an alternative. The editors should have acknowledged that the theory is in a state of transition. A number of statements made in the book - e.g., the universality of the genetic code - have been proven false in recent research.

2. The section on intelligent design gave two ID proponents (William Dembeski and Michael Behe) a chance to speak for themselves instead of being interpreted by hysterical neo-Darwinists. This is good. But the format gives the ID proponents an article followed by a Darwinist rebuttal, without giving the ID proponents a chance to rebut the rebuttal. The articles on the "design inference" of William Dembeski is too far above the non-mathematician's head to be comprehensible by either side. But the exchange between Michael Behe and Brown University biologist Kenneth Miller was more accessible. Miller's rebuttal should not have been allowed to stand, because his arguments (the condition of the genetic code, and "imperfections" in living organisms) have been conclusively debunked in numerous forums. Miller doesn't seem to understand the Intelligent Design position; he seems to confuse it with instantaneous creation, when actually Intelligent Design stands much closer to theistic evolution. Giving Miller the final word on the subject isn't wise, since Miller's analysis falls short and his arguments are known to be flawed.