Detective Doug Shearer is awakened from his sleep with terrible news - three beheaded manatees are floating in Pine Island Sound. A local commercial fisherman is arrested, but there are other, unknown people involved. Doug attempts to solve the crime with the help of prosecutor Roger Barklett. While investigating the crime, Doug's personal life is turned into a shambles when his ex-flame decides she wants him back. Sit back and enjoy the ride as Doug Shearer tries to solve the manatee murders.

Throughout the last 100 or so years, artists, collectors and curators have debated what a museum should be. Unfortunately, most museums are buildings that immediately focus on art as icon. Many contemporary artists want just the opposite. MASS MoCA represents a breakthrough in establishing a new sort of museum. Its purpose is to "mount in-depth quality work that would otherwise remain unseen for lack of properly scaled, appropriately tools facilities." That purpose has also been expanded to include being a location for the performing arts, both outdoors and in a theater.

Located 5 miles from the Williams College museum of art and 35 miles from Tanglewood in North Adams, Massachusetts, MASS MoCA adds an important new element to a major cultural center (especially in the summers).

The story of the museum is also very interesting, having been based in a rundown series of converted mill buildings that had housed manufacturing since 1768. Most recently abandoned by the Sprague Electric Company (who originally took it over from the Arnold Print Works -- makers of printed fabric), the facility covers 13 acres and over 780,000 square feet of building space. Originally, Massachusetts had planned to provide most of the funding. A recession and change in political leadership greatly slowed the progress, and much of the funding eventually came form private donors.

The book has many wonderful elements. The director, Joseph Thompson, has a fine essay explaining the museum's roots and concept. The architect, Simeon Bruner, also weighs in with his thoughts about the design along with drawings of his plans. The pieces de resistance, however, are the wonderful photographs of the site (both before and after) in black and white and color that capture the transformation. These were done by Nicholas Whitman, and started before the museum was planned. He and his father had both worked in the Sprague plant, and he wanted to preserve the memory of the space before it was torn down. There are some stunning side-by-side photographs of before in black and white, with after in color with beautiful art on the walls.

Most of the current photographs were taken during the 1999 grand opening of the museum, which I had the pleasure to attend. The classic piece that defines MASS MoCA during that opening was the display of Robert Rauschenberg's "The 1/4 Mile or 2 Furlong Piece" from 1981, which can only easily be displayed in full in MASS MoCA. There are also nice photographs of Natalie Jeremjenko's "Tree Logic" and James Rosenquist's "The Summer in the Econo-Mist." There are some fine John Chamberlain sculptures as well.

This book is a great resource to have for any contemporary art lover, or someone who is interested in new museum forms. I also recommend it as a working document for a museum still in progress, for most of the development of the MASS MoCA site is still ahead. If you are a museum trustee or are planning a new museum, you should read this book, as well.

I should admit that I collect contemporary art, and love to visit collections of contemporary art. If you share that love, you'll adore MASS MoCA!

Abolish your stalled thinking about what a museum is and should be! Also, be sure to give yourself a treat, and visit MASS MoCA soon. It's well worth a special trip from Boston, New York, or Philadelphia.

Donald Mitchell

Coauthor of The Irresistible Growth Enterprise (available in August 2000) and The 2,000 Percent Solution

(donmitch@fastforward400.com)

Excellent novel. You gotta buy it!

John Stuart Mill sets the stage for all liberal political thought. He discusses such topics as the role of society over the individual, the role of the individual over society, the death penalty, the importance of the individual, the ideal voter, the ideal citizen, the role of women in society, and the importance of personal liberty. Alan Ryan superbly organizes this edition by also including some constructive criticisms of Mill's thought in the last partition. This book is an excellent edition for any student of political philosophy.

I am currently a director of a brain trauma program and was quite pleased with this text. The information is well written, easy readable and has many excellent clinical points for teaching. I am giving copies to all my residents

Elie Elovic

Star of Light is a beautiful, yet sensitive fictional book (though it seems like non-fiction) . Set in North Africa, this book is about a little boy named Hamid and his blind sister, Kinza. Because Kinza is blind and a girl, a double curse in that part of the world, Hamid's stepfather wants to sell her to a beggar who will use her to make money. But Hamid loves Kinza and is determined to save her from an inevitable life of abuse. So he steals her away and brings her to a strange English nurse who loves all children no matter how they look or what disabilities they have. Truly a spellbinding book. I liked this book because I felt like I was there, in North Africa, years before I was born. If you like this book I would also recommend The Rainbow Garden,also written by Patricia St. John, and The Hidden Jewel.

I think this book is very useful in helping you deal with the practical debugging in the real world. I have learned a lot from this book. To my curious, the available title by John Stuart Mills in many bookstores are only rubbish such as "on liberty". I really can't understand why they don't re-publish this real classics.

This book is very personal--my late mother- and father-in-law were two of the founding members of the Mill Reef Club (they are both buried on the island in St. Philip's Parish) and it's wonderful to study the old photos and see the genesis of one of the most beautiful places anywhere. Robertson (Happy) Ward created something unique and lovely in the club itself and in the houses--the open uncluttered living spaces, the soothing pastel colors and, always, the inviting views of the beach, the bougainvillea, the expanse of impossibly unique blue of Caribbean water. If there is a paradise, for me always it will be the remembered aspects of the club; the mornings under the huge thatched umbrella on the beach when everyone gathered to visit--periodically getting up to walk into the shallows to cool off. In the struts supporting that umbrella were stored flippers, snorkeling gear, forgotten sunglasses, suntan lotion, odds and ends. Residents and guests, visitors invariably found their way to the umbrella--an ever-elastic gathering that was the focal point of the farthest end of the beach from the club. Everyone made the long walk along the sand, back and forth to the club, admiring the houses fronting the water--those pastel creations that looked almost edible. It was an intimation of what heaven might be like. And this book offers portraits of the original members, insight into Ward's creative gifts, and a singular view of another time in another place.

This electronic book is part of the PLEASE COPY THIS DISK collection. The full catalog can be seen online at www.samizdat.com/catalog.html

The material on this diskette is in plain (ASCII) text, formatted for a PC (not Macintosh). You can manipulate it with your favorite word processing program to enhance the format or to print out portions just the way you want.

We provide these texts as they are found on the Internet. We do no additional editing. We believe the people who originally input or scanned these texts made every effort to be accurate. But we cannot guarantee the accuracy.

Please accept these texts "as is," in the spirit of sharing which prevails on the Internet. (If for any reason you are not satisfied with a disk which you purchased directly from us, you may return it for replacement or refund.)

We encourage you to become an active participant on the Internet. We believe that by providing you with this service, by helping you easily get the information that is most improtant to you, we free you up to engage in the exciting and creative opportunities offered by the Internet, instead of being bogged down in the time-consuming chores of hunting and downloading.

Remember, much of the value of having public-domain texts on computer disk comes from the ability to copy them. For example, those of you who are teachers can: 1) use a disk as a substitute textbook -- have all your students bring in their own blank disks and make copies at your computer center or library; 2) take texts from several disks and make your own anthology, as easily as you might make a "mix" of your favorite music.

Remember that the disks you buy and the anthologies you compile also benefit the rest of your department, who in turn can do what they want with their copies. And remember that you can reuse these texts in the same manner for years to come.

Richard Seltzer, B&R Samizdat Express, seltzer@samizdat.com

I'm a lover of Shakespeare's works. I found a used copy of George Krapp's 'Troilus and Cressida' at a local book store. This Modern Library version is an reprint of his classic translation. If you love to read the sources for Shakespeare (Plutarch, Chaucer,Homer and Ovid) then I believe readers will enjoy this poem.

CHAUCER : TROILUS AND CRISEYDE. Translated into Modern English by Nevill Coghill. 332 pp. New York : Viking Press, 1995 (Reissue). ISBN: 0140442391 (pbk.)

Nevill Coghill's brilliant modern English translation of Chaucer's 'The Canterbury Tales' has always been a bestseller and it's easy to understand why. Chaucer was an intensely human writer and a great comic artist, but besides the ribaldry and sheer good fun of 'The Canterbury Tales,' we also know he was capable of other things. His range was wide, and the striking thing about Coghill's translations are how amazingly faithful they are to the spirit of the originals - at times bawdy and hilariously funny, at other times more serious and moving when Chaucer shifts to a more poignant mode as in 'Troilus and Criseyde.'

But despite the brilliance of Coghill's translations, and despite the fact that they remain the best possible introduction to Chaucer for those who don't know Middle English, those who restrict themselves to Coghill are going to miss a lot - such readers are certainly going to get the stories, but they're going to lose much of the beauty those stories have in the original language. The difference is as great as that between a black-and-white movie and technicolor.

Chaucer's Middle English _looks_ difficult to many, and I think I know why. It _looks_ difficult because that in fact is what people are doing, they are _looking_ at it, they are reading silently and trying to take it in through the eye. This is a recipe for instant frustration and failure. But fortunately there is a quick and easy remedy.

So much of Chaucer's power is in the sheer music of his lines, and in their energy and thrust. He was writing when English was at its most masculine and vigorous. And his writings were intended, as was the common practice in the Middle Ages when silent reading was considered a freakish phenomenon, to be read aloud. Those new to Chaucer would therefore be well advised, after reading and enjoying Nevill Coghill's renderings, to learn how to read Middle English _aloud_ as soon as possible by listening to one of the many excellent recordings.

Coghill certainly captures the spirit of Chaucer, but modern English cannot really convey the full flavor and intensity of the original. Learn how to roll a few of Chaucer's Middle English lines around on your tongue and you'll soon hear what I mean. You'll also find that it isn't nearly so difficult as it _looks_, and your pleasure in Chaucer will be magnified enormously.

As usual, Chaucer has come through as the greatest poet of Middle English. This is by far the best expansion on Homer's epic poetry to appear since Publius Vergilius Maro's Æneid, and I'm sure Augustus would have enjoyed it just as much! Shakespeare's adaptation, Troilus and Cressida, is an excellent play but does not give this poem justice. I would definitely recommend it to any serious fan of English literature!