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From the opening pages of this book to the last, the book is a compelling journey through Oz. The collection of Mr. Carroll's Oz memorabilia is so large that it is like trying to comprehend the distance between stars or that a few people actually have a billion dollars. This colligation of Oz collectibles somehow unites every civilization, geographic location, and human condition. It is one of the few things that have true universality.
After reading John Fricke's take on Oz, of course, based on Willard Carroll's collection, I am left wondering how history would be different were it not for Frank Baum's Oz?
The pictures are glorious, the layout intelligent and thoughtful-I will never see Oz in quite the same way again. John Fricke's writing is stellar. Willard Carroll's collection ---what can I say, WOW! 100 years of Oz is entertaining, educative and provides a new look at Frank Baum's Oz through the other end of the spyglass. This is a visit to a museum with a very knowledgeable guide through an unforgettable exhibit. Thanks for the tour. I'll be back again.
This book is a must for all collectors.
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Are you overwhemled or caught up in day to day events? Mr. Templeton's collections of various authors and his own works will explain sometimes difficult situations into easy to understand english. For example, lesson "No one knows the weight of another's burden" on page 20 is about the young man in a male therapy group.
The men were in a group session and the person in the story is a new participant. The mediator explained that each person would have a few minutes to explain his problem and what they plan to do about it. Natually, the new person thought with his marital break down, near bankruptcy and poor health, his would be one of the saddest cases.
Before it was his turn to speak, a handsome young man in his 20's revealed that he was terminally ill and had 6 months to live. Rather than dwell on it, he decided to take up flying lessons and live! Naturally, everybody else was taken off guard and rediscovered the gifts they have.
Templeton's 200 lessons in this book address almost every situation around. You don't have to be struggling with life to enjoy this. Everybody needs a bit of down to earth insiration and you'll have it with this!
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I would greatly recommend this book for use as a suppliment to the Bible for study groups or individual study of the Scriptures. I also think that this book is good for both a historical and/or a theological study of the life of Jesus Christ. It really helps to make sense of what Mark had to say by reviewing what the people knew and thought during the time that Jesus was among them so that we could view the Gospel from that perspective as well as what it means to us today.
I think that every Christian will find that they will learn a great deal from this book. As a Christian I feel that this book should be on everyone's must read list.
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To those who were there when John Kennedy was in the White House, this book will serve as a touching remembrance and to people who know about the Kennedys from just a historical standpoint, the photos and words will provide a more personal glimpse into the years that are commonly referred to as the Camelot era. Richard Reeves words are not overly sentimental but an accurate assessment of the life and times of this legendary family.
Overall, The John F. Kennedys: A Family Album, is a pleasant, yet sometimes sad journey looking back at what was considered the perfect family of two successful, stunning parents and their adorable children. Behind the photos, all was not perfect but Mark Shaw's camera didn't lie -- in the end, they were like any other family with problems but in-between they knew how to have fun and simply enjoy each others company, as is evident in many of Shaw's photos, especially those showing them at play at their home on Cape Cod.
Followers of the Kennedy's will no doubt enjoy this book, as will those who are interested in what life was like for a very public family who shared their private times with a talented photographer and with the world. If you like taking a look back in time, you will no doubt enjoy the journey Mark Shaw and Richard Reeves takes you on.
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The Chapters are as follows: (1) Introduction (2) Probability Theory (3)Random Waveforms (4)Optimum Receiver Principles (5)Efficient Signaling for Message Sequences (6) Implementation of Coding Systems (7) Important Channel Models (8) Waveforms Communications and appendixes (A-D)
The chapter on probability is bar-none the most comprehensive I have ever seen in any digital communications book, and covers multidimensional pdf's and explains the significance of moments and other things you might only find in a book dedicated specifically to stochastic processes. The coverage of the topics on signal-spaces is fantastic, and the chapter on optimum receivers is also extremely thorough despite the age of this book. Wozencrafts treatment of "channel capacity" and the derivations which he provides are unlike anything in any other book, covering the sphere packing argument quite thoroughly (the only other author to ever get this comprehensive was Shannon himself, and Pierce in his 1960'is vintage book on information theory). His coverage of various important bounds is covered very well (i.e. Chernoff bound) such that even an undergraduate can understand it. Other chapters are equally well written. No, the book obviously is not as up to date as Sklar or Proakis and doesn't cover alot of the more "practical" aspects of modern communications.... but if you want a die-hard communication theory book... this is a classic must-have.
The highlight of this book is its excellence in explaning "signal space concept" and "sufficiency of observables for optimum detection". Forget other textbooks and references you have. Read this book. I haven't yet found any other book that has better explanation on these topics.
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There are many instances of humour. The reader is left to wonder how it might have been for the 'first' couple. Kierkegaard remarked that Adam and Eve must have felt trapped by their own freedom, not knowing what to do. I myself regard Adam and Eve as mythology but can see the curiosities of what a 'first couple' would have been like. Would they be happy? Would they be attractive? What were their conversations like? It gives to the imagination, undoubtedly. But like Twain, I can't take it seriously.
Throughout the entire delicious epic of the story, the two characters grow from unaware children to mature humans, able to make a living together through all difficulties.
Adam, on one side, starts regarding Eve in a critical way that reminds the rigorousness of an engineer and ends warmly with the calm passion given by a lifetime of togetherness.
Eve, on the other, depicted here as the essential expression of the womanhood, appears as a living miracle of contradictions. She is so playful, sunny, innocent and wildly alive, that Adam finally realizes he's happy to be sentenced to love her forever. It is worth saying that even the Sin is reconsidered here rather as an abuse of Eve's ingenuity than an assumed trespassing...
The friendly, optimistic approach to life, the art of putting strong, fundamental feelings into everyday's words, the gentle humor far from cheap melodrama, the subtle metaphor of the joy of living arising from each chapter made me to consider this novel the most touchy love story ever written.
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One thing, though. A reviewer below said the maps are inadequate... If you plan on anything more than a day hike, you should have topographical anyway. This is true for most if not all guide books.
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But knowing "The Company", it is more likely that this work is some sort of 'controlled' leak, softening the blow for the revelations of the inevitable congressional investigations that followed in the aftermath of the Watergate fiasco, the death of J. Edgar Hoover, and the continuing insinuations implicating the CIA of complicity in everything from the murder of JFK, to secret, malevolent control over the war in SE Asia.
Irrespective of ones' take on the voracity of the means of disclosure (whether legitimate whistle-blowing, or CIA damage control) this heavily-censored/redacted book ostensibly blew the lid off at CIA, with at least superficial examination of the structure, operations, methods, and mind-set of the U.S. intelligence apparatus. In the main, time has tended to validate this contents of this expose'.
Out of print and hard to find, this book nonetheless remains must-reading for anyone interested in intelligence, the Cold War, Vietnam, and the defense of the Free World up to the early 1970s. Buy it.
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Major disciplines coverd include: phonetics, morphology, syntax, and semantics. Also included in this new addition are new chapters on second language acquisition and psycholinguistics.
One of the best features of this text is how well it is laid out. It is a pleasure to peruse and even study because of it's logical and user friendly format.
If you love anything about language- whether knowing it's origins, or what part of the mouth is used to create certain sounds, or how language changes over time and for what reasons, or a host of other curiosities, you will certainly enjoy the wealth of information within Contemporary Linguistics!
One thing in particular that I liked about the format of CL was the treatment of more advanced material (marked "Advanced") in each chapter. The "Advanced" sections augment the material in the rest of the chapter and are placed in logical sequence with the rest of the material instead of appearing in an appendix at the end of the chapter. For example, a section marked "advanced" on X' (read X-bar) Theory appears fairly early in the syntax chapter. Having some knowledge of X' Theory allows the reader to proceed to examine the rest of the material with the knowledge that there exists an intermediate level of structure between lexical categories (N, V, ...) and phrasal categories (NP, VP, ...).
Most chapters in CL are pretty well written and technical tools to treat linguistic phenomena are almost always introduced at the correct juncture. However, CL does not treat Innateness properly (why Innateness and arguments for and against Innateness), and has a weak chapter on semantics. The reader would do well to augment the material in CL by reading Pinker's "The Language Instinct" or Jackendoff's "Patterns in the Mind" for a non-technical introduction to some ideas in linguistics, as well as sections of De Swart's "Intro to Natural Language Semantics" to get an idea of how semantics is done. If the reader is interested in looking at language from a cognitive science perspective, she would also do well to read most of Gleitman et al's "An Invitation to Cognitive Science: Language".
All in all, CL provides a relatively painless initiation into linguistics and I highly recommend it.