Very readable - explains complex subjects eg: Physiology, in a simple and understandable way. Covers all aspects of aviation medicine from transport of patients by air, problems associated with altitude, legal aspects of inflight emergencies to crew fitness for flight. Also has interesting chapters on medical emergencies in the air and manned spacecraft. Particularly relevant for nurses considering in flight nursing, for doctors and for anyone with an interest in aviation. Reasonably priced and small enough to fit in a medical kit.

John William Corrington is one of the South's finest, if largely unknown, writers. His prose is exquisite and he is a masterful storyteller. His ability to get a story underway and keep it moving equals anything we find in today's action-oriented writers.

Corrington is also worth reading because he was an awfully interesting man (and it shows in his writing). He began his career as a professor of English at LSU and soon began to make his way as a poet. He befriended Charles Bukowski and they carried on an extensive correspondence before they had a falling out that ended the relationship (Bukowski wasn't much for loyalty to friends and he was no better with Corrington than so many others). Corrington published several collections of poetry, but he eventually gave up poetry to write serious fiction. Corrington's first novel, And Wait for the Night (set in the closing days of the Civil War and the early days of reconstruction) is a beautiful, if painful, story and marked Corrington's skill and craft as a writer. While Corrington's novels are all worth reading, in particular And Wait for the Night and a later novel, The Bombbardier, it is in his short fiction that Corrington reveals his greatness.

Corrington took up screenwriting (for Roger Corman) and gave up his academic position. At age 40 he took up the study of law and practiced law in New Orleans for three years. After his first exposure to law, Corrington began to feature lawyers and judges in his fiction. There are six (quite long) short stories in The Collected Short Stories of John William Corrington which are law-related and they are, in my opinion, some of his strongest writing. A reading of any one of these legal stories is enough to suggest that Corrington was a great master and deserves far more attention that he has received to date. In my view, Corrington produced in these law-oriented short stories, and in two novellas collected in All My Trials (University of Arkansas Press, 1987) some of the best legal fiction of the 20th century.

Corrington's work and life are more fully explored in two recent symposium issues of the Legal Studies Forum (Volume 26, 2002).

Corrington is a fine writer and I highly recommend his work.

Now gone, the Eliza furnaces of Jones and Laughlin once had a place on the Pittsburgh skyline. Prior to, and including their demolition, Mark Perrott snuck through the fences to record these pictures, which are some of the finest industrial photographs published in a long time. Some of the most moving photograph show the areas where men and women worked, and how ghostly those areas are when the workers have gone. In some photos, it looks almost like some sort of biological weapon or neutron bomb has killed off the workers; everything looks as though they just walked away, and the mill awaits their presence. But of course, they would never return, as the mill was turned into scrap, and probably fed into another company's steelmaking furnaces. Interspersed with interviews of some Eliza workers, this short book has a hard impact, showing the end of a mighty industry. Well worth it.

This is the book to put into the hands of anybody who still thinks that Economic and Monetary Union would be good for Britain or for any other country. John Mills is a very rare person, an economist with business experience in trade and production. In this excellent book, he shows that Economic and Monetary Union would be bad for all our economies.

Experience shows that the more economically integrated the European Union has become, the worse it has performed. From its start in 1958, the original six members had no form of economic or monetary union, and they grew by 5.4% a year. Then in 1972 they created the currency snake; it lasted only until 1976. By 1974, economic growth had ceased. After the snake expired, growth resumed: 4.9% in 1976, 3% in 1977-80.

They created the Exchange Rate Mechanism in 1979 and it lasted until 1993. The ERM slowed growth and raised unemployment across the EU: growth was only 1.7% a year; unemployment averaged 7% and inflation 7.8%. Even so, we joined, because the whole establishment wanted us to, not because the people wanted to. Polls in 1989 showed that 93% of the Chief Executives of large British companies and City institutions believed that we should join the ERM. We joined in October 1990: during our two-year membership unemployment rose by 1.4 million and national output fell; manufacturing output fell by 7% and manufacturing jobs by 14%. It was worse for us even than for the rest of the EU.

In the same period, the rest of the world grew by 3.2%, proving that the EU's slow growth was not due to world conditions. The ERM was the main cause of the EU-wide recession: from 1990 to 1993, growth ceased altogether. After ERM expired, growth resumed: 2.9% in 1994, 2.4% in 1995. But implementing the Maastricht criteria for EMU slowed growth again and raised unemployment. EU unemployment is now 12%, 30 million, according to ILO figures.

What would entering Economic and Monetary Union mean for us? It would mean deflation, higher unemployment, slump. It would also mean the end of Britain's independence. Politics and economics are indivisible. The arguments for constitutional, economic and political independence are one. The experiment of making the Bank of England independent has clearly failed: we should call on the Government to reassert control of interest rates. This is a political demand, a constitutional demand, and an economic demand.

Under EMU, eight unelected European Central Bankers would control our currency, and as Keynes said, "Whoever controls the currency, controls the Government." To make EMU credible to the markets, they would keep interest rates high, imposing deflation. This would mean higher unemployment and taxes, lower wages and lower public spending.

The Gold Standard was a way of trying to fix currency values together. It failed disastrously, ending in the Great Crash. Economic growth ceased. After the Gold Standard expired, growth resumed. In 1931, Britain left the Gold Standard, devaluing by 24%; money supply rose by 34%; interest rates were about zero, and there was some tariff protection. Labour's 'Iron Chancellor' Philip Snowden said leaving the Gold Standard "would reduce the standard of living of the workman by 50%." What actually happened? From 1932 to 1937, manufacturing output rose 58%; 2.7 million new jobs were created (1.3 million in manufacturing); growth averaged 3.8% a year, and living standards rose. Lower interest rates brought a boom in house-building.

By contrast, the French Government stayed in the Gold Standard and kept the franc overvalued: GDP fell by 17%, industrial production by a quarter, until the Popular Front Government devalued the franc.

This Government claims that the way to restore industry's competitiveness is to invest in skill. But this will not restore manufacturing while there is still not enough demand in the economy. The present regime of tight money and high interest rates, leading to a high exchange rate, doesn't work. It's like putting on the brakes when you're going up hill. An overpriced pound means dear exports and cheap imports: in the first quarter of 1998, our goods trade gap was £4.7 billion, the worst since 1990.

The remedy does not lie in reforming the labour market or the public sector. To stimulate output and employment, we need more demand, higher wages and more public spending. Supply-side reforms, better education, more information technology, may improve efficiency and productivity, but without an expansion of demand this can lead not to growth but to more unemployment and unused resources.

The Maastricht Treaty which set up EMU has only money and budget targets, there are no real world targets, for full employment or higher growth. It is innately deflationary: those not meeting the targets must deflate, yet those meeting them do not have to reflate. A Treaty cannot be reformed; it can only be accepted or rejected. Sir Nigel Wicks, Chair of the EU Monetary Committee says, "I would not regard monetary policy as an instrument for solving unemployment." We who have experienced decades of monetarism in action regard that as an understatement. EMU is monetarism on a European scale; it is Thatcherism on a European scale.

We need lower interest rates to fund projects fitting in to our plans for rebuilding Britain. We need lower taxes on jobs. We need taxes on capital: tax Murdoch, not toady to him. We need to legislate so that pension funds, which are heavily subsidised by taxpayers, are required to invest in British industry and services. The Government could promote investments with a high social rate of return. We need to reimpose controls on speculators. But we can't do these jobs when in EMU: EMU forbids them all.

We need to keep out of EMU. Joining would clearly be bad for our health. Then we will rebuild Britain as a self-reliant, industrial and sovereign nation.

I have read all Jane Austens books. They are funny and colourless. Most of all I liked the book: Pride and Prejudice.But Emma is funnier. I have seen the movie:Emma,and the movie: Pride and Prejudice.They were very funny!

On the eve of the Great Depression, textile workers in Gastonia, North Carolina, walked out of the town's largest plant to protest management's efforts to speed up the production line. The Communist-led National Textile Workers Union saw the walkout as an opportunity to unionize southern industry and sent veterans of the Passaic textile strike to assume leadership. Two years after the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti, Gastonia quickly became an international cause celebre. Despite daily coverage in the New York Times and other major newspapers at the time and the later publication of six novels on the strike, the walkout has long since been forgotten. John Salmond's account brings to life the bizarre collision between the Communist Party and Bible Belt populism, which resulted in the murders under mysterious circumstances of Gastonia's police chief and a striker who was a talented country singer, kidnappings, ghost sightings in the Mecklenburg County Courthouse, and the eventual escape of the strike's leaders to the Soviet Union. For me, a particularly telling instance of cultural incomprehension was the decision of a sidewalk Pentecostal preacher to quit the strike because his participation conflicted with the "principles" of the Ku Klux Klan. A few weeks later, the national leadership of the NTWU decided to spotlight the union's dedication to racial integration in its strike pamphlets, eroding local support. (This was 1929, and the KKK had yet to become disreputable, even in some northern states.) Given the charged and intemperate nature of the contemporary accounts, I appreciated Salmond's efforts to sort out where accounts agree and where they conflict. I highly recommend this exceptionally well-written and fair-minded book

Joseph Hamburger, who passed away in 1997, has left us a rich legacy by virtue of his trenchant analysis of the complete Mill. While most scholars have focused on On Liberty and his essay on Utilitarianism, Hamburger has chosen to focus on the entire corpus of Mill's work.

Hamburger is the only scholar who has successfully argued that Mill, long considered amongst the pantheon of great liberal thinkers, offers us a look at the conservative strain of Mill's thought. This is arrived at through a close textual analysis of Mill's less well-known but no less salient work, thereby giving us a more balanced view of this important 19th century thinker. A must read for those who wish to understand Mill as he understood himself.

Letters To Dalton: Higher Education And The Degree Salesmen by education observer and commentator John R. Turner is an impressive collection of thirty-six letters in which he deftly presents a variety of attitudes and viewpoints critiquing high schools and colleges. Sometimes invective, sometimes inspirational, always with an eye toward the foundation of educational institutions rather than their surface issues, Letters To Dalton: Higher Education And The Degree Salesmen is an erudite presentation and highly recommended reading -- especially for those charged with responsibilities as educational administrators, policy makers, and curriculum developers.

I was born in Pittsburgh during the 50's. Steel was King everyone in your family work at the mills. By the time I graduated from high school (74) the steel mills were shuting down and being destroyed. This book has the greatest number of human interest pictures and stories I have ever read about Pittsburgh's Steel area. This book not only coveres the large miles located in the downtown area but also brings to life the number of small towns who whole survivial was built around the mills. The era that is covered is before safety was a major concern. You can see in the pictures and the well written stories that these imagrants came together in dangerous and hard work situations to produce the greatest product of its time STEEL. When the Steel died so did much of Pittsburgh. This book shows the world how you lived and died the Pittsburgh steel way...beautifully.

John Mills' excellent new book shows that full employment is quite achievable. We will have to base it on manufacturing industry, and we can only achieve it outside the euro.

The closer the EC members have got to economic and monetary union (EMU), the slower their economies have grown. From 1950 to 1969, when the original six members had no form of EMU, their average growth per annum was 5.5%. When they linked their currencies in the 'snake', from 1969 to 1975, it was 3.7%, falling from 6.9% to minus 1.2%. From 1976 to 1979, it was 3.6%. When they again linked their currencies through the Exchange Rate Mechanism, from 1979 to 1993, it was 2.1%, falling from 4.7% to minus 1%. Unemployment remorselessly increased. So both the snake and the ERM gradually squeezed the life out of the EC's economies!

The Treaty establishing EMU put price stability first, above full employment, high growth or better living standards. This is Thatcher's monetarist fallacy, that the battle against inflation is the overriding economic aim, because low or zero inflation will produce higher growth. John Mills showed that in practice low inflation is not the cause of high growth but the effect of low growth, and conversely, that high inflation is not the cause of low growth but the effect of high growth.

Mills shows that 'supply-side' reforms increasing productivity do not in themselves increase competitiveness. In fact, when a currency is overpriced, reducing its value increases competitiveness, and thereby increases productivity. Our continually overvalued pound increases companies' costs, and therefore export prices, pricing their goods out of the market. For instance, Britain's export prices rose by 380% between 1952 and 1979, while Japan's rose by only 33%.

Most importantly, he proves that manufacturing is crucial to productivity growth, because increases in productivity are relatively easy to achieve in manufacturing industry. As initial fixed expenses become spread over longer production runs, costs per unit fall. Further, as workers make improvements to these greater numbers of goods, and to their methods of production, costs fall even further. As volume and quality increase, production costs fall. Companies can then go for lower prices and higher sales volumes.

Industrial revolution brought great wealth to the owners of capital, who then increasingly turned away from industry to financial operations. Rule by finance capital has imposed literally counterproductive policies on Britain, keeping the currency overvalued, so imports rise, exports wither, manufacturing declines and living standards stagnate.

Similar policies achieved similar results in the USA. In 1950, manufactured goods comprised only 7.5% of US imports, by 1960, 20%, by 1983, 50% and by 1996, 56%. Between 1977 and 1997, US productivity rose by 5.7% a year in agriculture, by 3% in manufacturing, and by just 0.4% in financial services; it fell by 0.9% in services. Only 15% of US workers work in manufacturing, and only 8% in other high-growth sectors. 77% of workers were employed in sectors where output was static or falling. Consequently, output per worker rose by only 0.8% on average, and American workers' average real earnings per hour dropped by 9% between 1973 and 1998. As a further result, just 6.7% of US graduates are engineers, compared to more than 20% in Japan and Germany. In Britain, only 11% of our graduates are engineers. We need full employment, so we need manufacturing industry and we need to reject the euro.