Initially, one would think that a truly talented author's quirky, unique style could not be very nearly duplicated. But Brad Strickland is doing a fine job with the characters that Bellairs created, and this is one of his best efforts.

Lewis Barnavelt and Rose Rita Pottinger have to participate in a talent show whether they like it or not. When they hit on the idea of doing a magic show (fake, not real), they end up consulting a friend at a museum who allows them to borrow some books on stage magic. But when Rose Rita picks up an old parchment scroll, she inadvertantly lets a drop of blood fall on some magic dust -- and the dust turns into a living spider. The two of them flee, but Rose Rita brings the scroll, with intent to return it.

Except she then starts acting oddly. When the talent show results in a dismal failure, Rose Rita is left with a burning hatred and a wish for revenge. Then she starts dreaming of becoming a giant spider, and hearing the voice of the scroll's previous owner -- Belle Frisson, a sorceress who now wants to use Rose Rita to rise again and live forever.

This is labelled as a "Lewis Barnavelt" book, but at least half of it focuses on Rose Rita. While fans of Bellairs will be well acquainted with Lewis's insecurities, Strickland takes the opportunity to delve into a few of Rose Rita's. He also manages to give us a message about revenge and hatred and grudges without beating the reader over the head with it. The Message is simply there.

How much of a "Bellairs" book is this? Very much so, and not just in terms of having creepy beasties and a megalomaniac villain. The pacing and tone are very correct, as is the usage of maybe-it's-real-maybe-not ancient magics. I could have used a little more bickering between Mrs. Zimmerman and Uncle Jonathan, but the comforting scene between Rose Rita and Mrs. Zimmerman makes up for that.

Strickland does an excellent job with the evil sorceress Belle Frisson, and uses the ever-growing, evil-spirit spider very well also. The idea of a drop of blood turning powder into a malevolent spider is not just good spinechilling material, but it also is quite Bellairsesque.

This is an amazing spinechiller. I do warn you though: Arachnaphobics should definitely not read this book, or they'll never sleep again.

I think that Brad Strickland Did a good job with this title. The story has some depth, and the character development is good, as well. I think this is the best Bellairs' novel that Strickland Has written so far, and would give it a full five stars!

At first serving as a finisher for the late John Bellair's uncompleted DOOM OF THE HAUNTED OPERA, GHOST IN THE MIRROR, and VENGENCE OF THE WITCHFINDER, Strickland took those characters to new heights in the late 1990s by churning out books like THE HAND OF THE NECROMANCER, and THE BELL,THE BOOK,AND THE SPELLBINDER which mimicked Bellair's writing style down to the letter. In SPECTER, Strickland goes from mimicking the man to being the man. He captures the vocabulary and characterizations of Lewis Barnavelt and company flawlessly in a terrifying story darker than all of the other books combined. Please check out this book. I hope Strickland continues to write. He is hitting his stride now.

Having worked in insurance for years, I expected this book would be of interest to people like me. I was surprised, however, to find it has a much broader appeal. It was fascinating to read how commercial insurance developed in conjunction with and support of our country's development. Many will be surprised to learn of its significant role in protecting our society and promoting our economy.

The personal stories about the people who developed the business are especially enjoyable--some of the most interesting are
about founders of major brokerages and those associated with
problems at Lloyds of London in the eighties.

I recommend this book to insurance and business professionals and to general readers with interest in American history.

Spreading the Risks: Insuring the American Experience is a fascinating account of the key events shaping the development of property and casualty insurance as an indigenous American business -- from colonial times to the present day. It is based on 13 years of research by an industry insider who had unique access to insurance leaders and records. It also is the most complete account I've found of how the insurance agency and brokerage system evolved through disasters and economic transformations into the 21st century.

It has an extensive bibliography and a comprehensive index that make it especially useful as a source of information.

Spreading the Risks does an outstanding job of telling the amazing story of the insurance industry. Who knew that insurance could be so interesting?

John Bogardus and Robert Moore have clearly spent considerable time researching this material and their "real life" experience in the field shines through beautifully. This book is incredibly valuable to people in the insurance field. However, it is written in a way that also appeals to the person who is simply curious about business, history, and life in general.

The book does a great job of demonstrating how the insurance business (in the past, and now ) affects all of us.

This was John Moore's first book for me. It introduced me to an entire world of not just the old west brought alive today, but true spirituality within the context of grass roots family living. Especially father-son relationships. I've recommended this book to well over hundred persons. A great gift for graduation! Both encouraging and sad. Encouraging that there are still folks like John and his family. Sad what is happening to our country with the loss of direct experience with life. Too much of our lives is lived through the media and PC--2nd hand living. This book will grab you with life on life's terms.

This book has been such an inspiration to my family and friends. We so believe that the lessons taught in Mr. Moore's letters to his son should be shared with young parents, we have given away over 75 books. We highly recommend this book to anyone whose responsibility it is to raise children to become adults of good character and strong faith.

John Moore writes this book from a spirit that lives within all of us. This book emodies the true value that books can bring us. John Moore has spent his lifetime to this point learning some immense lessons that we can be privy to and digest in the scope of an evening or two. I am writing a review of this book as I have come to send a copy to a friend. I would venture to say that anyone who reads this book, especially a man, who does not have parts of his soul stirred, is not wholly alive. And as a parent, it is great wisdom. I shared passage after passage with my wife, who had great appreciation for the human insight Mr. Moore shared. I now have a great desire to visit the ranch and man from which this book was birthed.

When Mrs. Frizzle has planned a field trip for a whale watch and the tour boat can't go, they use the bus. The kids get partners and go in mini-subs to see real whales. But it will be hard for the kids to come back right where they started when the radio system breaks? Will the kids run out of air and never come back again? Find the answer and learn a lot about whales in The Wild Whale Watch!

This review is by my 10 year old son. This book has moreinformation on Whales than other books I have read. First they go on abus tour. Then they turn the bus into a sub. Ms. Frizzle, Has four mini-subs. Two kids went in each sub. Ms. Frizzle, stayed in the bus with the Captain Gil. Then the adventure begins. I enjoyed this book very much.

This Magic School Bus Chapter Book is the best of the firstfour. It was very funny, especially when the class gets stranded underthe sea. Any MSB fan would love it.

These 3-D things really irked me until I finally got it. I don't have a clue as to how it works but all of a sudden I saw a snowman on the bookcover! Nice stocking stuffer kind of book.

My daughter loves the, "...'Twas the night before Christmas..." poem. We pass the book around so everyone can see the 3-D pictures (which drives my husband crazy!...he can't see 'em!) Very clever.

This book is very informative and to the point. The examples and analogies are perfect to the content explained. The author actually makes it fun to learn chemistry, and makes you want to pursue a future in it (I'm going into Chem. Engineering). Like most books this doesn't put you to sleep with boring facts after facts. This is recommended to any high school student or beginner of college, and will give you a good head start.

I've tried to read various "beginner" books on chemistry since coming back from a twenty-one year science sabbatical. This one is by far the best.

The author takes you from the very basic "what is an atom" and "how to read the periodic table" to more advanced concepts such as Nuclear Chemistry, with consumate ease. The book throughout is structured for the (nearly) absolute beginner, with few assumptions being made about your beginning level of knowledge.

My only gripe is that he doesn't quite explain chemistry symbology in as clear a manner as he does most topics - hopefully this can be rectified for the reprint.

In short: an excellent book for the beginner. The only "pre" knowledge you'll need is the ability to add, subtract, multiply, and divide. If you can't do that what are you doing trying to learn chemistry?

I've yet to take General Chemistry I at college but this will probably act as a good primer. I'd expect you'll need to do some more work and look at a textbook before going onto studying at college. This book will, however, give you the basic information you need to get going.

This compilation of contemporary Civil War advice for home and farm is an excellent source of information on how the South "made do" during those hard times.

While Mary Elizabeth Massey's "Ersatz in the Confederacy," republished in the last few years by the University of South Carolina Press, is a worthwhile history of home life during those times, "The Confederate Housewife" goes further by quoting the exact recipes and nuggets of advice that appeared in newspapers and periodicals like "Field and Fireside," "Southern Cultivator" and "Clarke's Confederate Household Almanac."

Reading these pages is like going back in time, when advice is needed to restore tainted meat ("take it out of the pickle. Wash so as to cleanse it of the offensive pickle . . . As you re-pack your pieces, it would be well to rub each piece with salt."), get rid of mosquitoes ("put a couple of generous pieces of beef on plates near your bed at night, and you will sleep untroubled by these pests.") or dealing with bloated cattle ("a dose of thoroughwort with a little tansey will afford immediately relief.")

If nothing else, it will make you grateful for indoor plumbing, air conditioning and refrigerators.

You don't know how good you have it until you read about how bad things can get. Boy those Civil War belles had to work from sunrise to sunset just to get a couple of potatoes on the table. This book was really fascinating and puts the War into real perspective in a way that no other book has done. A wonderful recipe book too!.

Director John Glen tells of his experience with the James Bond film series strait up. At the helm of five of the films as director Glen pulls no punches and offers great insight into the creative efforts of the whole Bond film team. This is a great book and even more so if you are a James Bond fan. I really like this book. There is really no gloss here. This is really about what went into making these films while Albert R. Broccoli was still alive and producing them. I highly recommend this book.

I have waited for months to get this book and believe me, it was worth the wait! John Glen, who directed 5 James Bond movies, takes us on an incredible journey into the world of 007, filmmaking, and his relationships between his cast and crew. Starting out as an editor, Glen tells the story on how Albert R. "Cubby" Broccoli gave him the opportunity of a lifetime when he asked him to direct 1981's For Your Eyes Only. Learn some of the reasons why Timothy Dalton's 1989 Bond film Licence to Kill was not only a flop with American audiences, but why it was also his last 007 film. Glen even tells us who he thinks should be the next Bond as well as his opinions on each of the five actors in the role. This book is a must for any Bond fan or any film student. Thanks Mr. Glen for a wonderful read! I couldn't put it down.

This book describes the way creationists approach evolution. If they can find just one thing that evolutionary biologists have yet to explain, they figure that one thing is enough to throw the whole thing out. Such a view is just wrong, and shows an abysmal understanding - or abuse - of science. There are more than enough transitional fossils to convince a fair minded skeptic, but no creationist would ever agree to classify anything as a transitional fossil. Not Archeoptryx, not Acanthostega (sp?), not the mammal-like reptiles. The beautiful documention of the evolution of the mammalian jaw from the reptilian jaw should convince anybody, but it will never convince a creationist.

Of course, there is a lot that scientists don't know about evolution. But there is a lot that we DO know, and there is just too much evidence to simply toss out evolution. This is a theory that will not go away, although I wouldn't be surprised to see it change as we learn more about genetics.

This book is not written for creationists, but for people who might be sympathetic to their cause. If people would learn more about the nature of science, they would be offended by the utter dishonesty and lack of integrity you find in scientific creationism.

FGTG is a 200-page overview of the 2300-year history of the development of the E/C dispute. As an overview, it has the typical advantages and disadvantages of that genre, being written in very simple language, with only a minimum of technical detail. It would be a good introduction to the subject for someone with little prior knowledge of the history of the dispute, but it might not be very satisfying for people looking for a discussion of the most up-to-date, scientific analysis.

The Preface states that science rests on two principles: (1) scientists must base their analysis about how the world operates, not on idiosyncratic, a priori beliefs, but on empirical data; and (2) scientists must subject their analysis to testing and confirmation by others. In this two-step process, scientists failing to follow step 1, would be caught and exposed by other scientists in step 2. The self-correcting nature of the scientific enterprise is perhaps its most important feature. Any human enterprise is subject to error, so having a built-in, error-correction mechanism is essential.

FGTG describes young-Earth creationist organizations, like the Institute for Creation Research, that do not follow the error-correction methods of traditional science. The logical conclusion from that is inescapable.

FGTG analogizes the E/C dispute to the on-going dispute over the 9,000-year-old Kennewick Man skeleton found in Washington. Scientists want to use traditional scientific methods to identify the remains, but local Indian tribes insist that such tests are unnecessary, because their ancient, tribal, religious beliefs have already led them to conclude that the skeleton is the remains of one of their ancestors; and conducting any scientific tests at all would violate the Indians' religious beliefs. The point here is clear: injecting religion into a debate brings science to a halt.

FGTG reviews some of the differences between religion and science as knowledge systems. Beliefs based on religious considerations have a very strong emotional basis and may produce strong feelings of personal satisfaction. Beliefs based on scientific considerations tend to have a much weaker emotional impact. Scientific beliefs, by their very nature, are tentative, because all such beliefs are based only on the evidence acquired to date, and that evidence is ALWAYS incomplete. No matter how much data has been acquired to date in support of Theory X and no matter how compelling the inferences from that data may be, it is ALWAYS the case that evidence discovered next week may totally invalidate today's "unassailable" theory. Ptolemy gave way to Copernicus, Copernicus gave way to Newton, and Newton to Einstein. Science marches on, and that may be threatening to people craving certainty in their lives. For such people, unchanging, superstitious explanations may be more satisfying emotionally than any rational analysis, no matter how brilliant it may be.

FGTG sketches the development of biological explanations, both supernatural and scientific, from ancient Greece to the present. One interesting tidbit reported that religious groups sometimes incorporated scientific work into their religious beliefs. Galen's scientific studies on anatomy and Ptolemy's on astronomy were incorporated into the religious doctrines of some Christian denominations (Protestant and Catholic), changing their character from tentative statements about science into unchallengeable religious doctrines. So when Michael Servetus, a Spanish physician, pointed out mistakes in Galen's anatomical descriptions, the Catholic Church burned him at the stake in 1553. Giordano Bruno met the same fate in 1600 for preferring Copernican over Ptolemaic astronomy. So empirical data and analysis can be incorporated into religious systems, but the data and analysis are then no longer open to question, which violates the second characteristic of genuine science as described in the beginning of the book.

Another interesting chapter compared the dramatically different versions of creation given in Genesis 1 and Genesis 2. If creationists believe that the Bible is inerrant in all its parts, then it is difficult to reconcile the fact that these two chapters are diametrically opposed to each other.

FGTG also points out that none of the original Biblical manuscripts survive and that the copies that do survive are significantly different from each other in many aspects. In the story about Noah's Flood, another key, creationist concept, one version says that only man, land animals, and birds will be destroyed, while another version says that all animals, apparently including even whales and fishes, will be destroyed. Again, if the Bible is supposed to be error free, it is difficult to explain why the Bible contradicts itself.

The history of the study of fossils and early attempts to reconcile them with the Bible was also interesting. The idea that a species could ever go extinct challenged belief in God's "perfect" creation as described in Eccl. 4:14.

FGTG reviews the early history of evolutionary theories, and very briefly reviews the data that evolution explains: sequential order of fossils (including Precambrian organisms); classification of organisms into nested categories (based on both gross anatomy and genetic data); data related to embryonic development (specifically recapitulating the embryonic evolution of the mammalian ear from its reptilian predecessor, and the vertebrate kidney); numerous intermediate forms (especially Archaeopteryx and horses); and radioactive dating.

The last quarter of the book reviews some of the major court battles over evolution education, especially the Scopes and McLean cases. One of the editorial reviewers complained about Moore's presenting evolutionists as "fearless truth seekers," but the sad fact of the matter is that evolutionists really have had to be fearless in opposing the religious bigotry that kept legitimate science from being taught. Michael Servetus, Giordano Bruno, John Scopes, and Bill McLean were indeed demonstrating fearlessness in opposing the religious bigots of their day.

The book's conclusion that both religion and science have a place in human affairs, but that the place of religion is not in a science classroom will come as no surprise. What may be surprising is the list of religious groups that agree with that conclusion, including Presbyterian, Jewish, Episcopal, Lutheran, Roman Catholic, Unitarian, and Methodist organizations.

Very interesting book, easy to read, and full of worthwhile insights. I recommend it!

What a breadth of knowledge this man has! What humanity! What generousity of spirit! I read it in one sitting because I found it so fascinating. It was worth sacrificing a weekend.

This book is basically a manual for Unicode 3.0. It is not a light read but well worth the price and then some just for the glyphs from all of the various scripts that Unicode supports.

At 1040 large (8.5 x 11) pages it is the ultimate guide to unicode. With information on scripts and glyphs I had no idea even existed.

However if you are just getting started with Unicode I would recomend you get Unicode a Primer written by Tony Graham from M&T books. If you understand or feel you are starting to understand Unicode then The Unicode Standard Version 3.0 is the best comprehensive reference on the subject out today.

Consider it an overview of the developing UNICODE standard. As such, it will serve the engineer working on software in English and many other European countries rather well. It will be a good _starting_ _point_ for engineers developing software for other languages.

This book is essential for software engineers, at least for the next ten years or so. All programmers should understand characters, and UNICODE is the best we have for now. Even if you don't need it in your personal library, you need it in your company or school library.

The standard is flawed, as all real standards are, but it is a functioning standard, and it should be sufficient for many purposes for the near future.

The book itself is fairly well laid out, contains an introduction to character handling problems and methods for most of the major languages in use in our present world as well as tables of basic images for all code points. Be aware that these are _only_ basic images. For most internationalization purposes, be prepared for more research. (And please share your results.)

**** Finally, UNICODE is _not_ a 16 bit code. ****

(This is well explained in the book.) It just turned out that there really are over 50,000 Han characters. (Mojikyo records more than 90,000.) UNICODE can be encoded in an eight-bit or 16-bit expanding method or a 32-bit non-expanding method. The expanding methods can be _cleanly_ parsed, frontwards, backwards, and from the middle, which is a significant improvement over previous methods.

Some of the material in the book is available at the UNICODE consortium's site, but the book is easier to read anyway. One complaint I have about the included CD is that the music track gets in the way of reading the transform files on my iBook.

This is not just a reference for computer people, but for anyone interested in alphabets, symbols and character sets.

Central to the book, taking up the larger part of it, are the tables of the characters themselves, printed large with annotations and cross-references. If you enjoy the lure of strange symbols and curious writing systems then browsing these will occupy delightful hours.

For the Latin alphabet alone there are pages of accented letters and extended Latin alphabet characters used in particular languages or places or traditions: Pan-Turkic "oi", African clicks and other African sounds, obsolete letters from Old English and Old Norse, an "ou" digraph used only in Huron/Algonquin languages in Quebec, and many others, particularly those used for phonetic/phonemic transcriptions.

The Greek character set includes archaic letters and additional letters used in Coptic.

Character sets carried over from previous editions with additions and corrections are Cyrillic (with many national characters), Armenian, Georgian, Hebrew, Arabic (again many national and dialect characters), the most common Hindu scripts (Devanagari, Bengali, Gurmukhi, Gujarati, Oriya, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam), Tibetan, Thai, Lao, Hangul, Bopomofo, Japanese Katakana and Hiragana, capped by the enormous Han character set containing over 27,000 of the most commonly used ideographs in Chinese/Japanese/Korean writing. Then there are the symbols: mathematical/logical (including lots of arrows), technical, geometrical, and pictographic. You'll find astrological/zodiacal signs, chess pieces, I-Ching trigrams, Roman numerals not commonly known, and much more.

Scripts appearing for the first time this release are Syriac, Ethiopic, Unified Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics, Cherookee, Runes, Ogham, Yi, Mongolian, Sinhala, Thaana, Khmer, Myanmar, complete Braille patterns, and keyboard character sets. And yes, there are public domain/shareware fonts available on the web that support these with their new Unicode values.

There are very good (and not always brief) descriptions of the various scripts and of the special symbol sets. Rounding out the book are some involved, turgid (necessarily so) technical articles on composition, character properties, implementation guidelines, and combining characters, providing rules to use the character properties tables on the CD that accompanies the book. After all, this is the complete official, definitive Unicode standard.

Of course this version, 3.0, is already out-of-date. But updates and corrections are easily available from the official Unicode website where data for 3.1 Beta appears as I write this. My book bulges with interleaved additions and changes. And that's very good. Many standards have died or been superceded because the organizations behind them did not keep up with users' needs or the information was not easily accessible.

Caveats?

The notes on actual uses of the characters could be more extensive, particularly on Latin extended characters. More variants of some glyphs should be shown, as in previous editions, if only in the notations.

Some character names are clumsy or inaccurate (occasionly noted in the book), because of necessity to be compatible with ISO/IEC 10646 and with earlier versions of the Unicode standard. For example, many character names begin with "LEFT" rather than "OPENING" or "RIGHT" rather than "CLOSING" though the same character code is to be used for a mirrored version of the character in right-to-left scripts where "LEFT" and "RIGHT" then become incorrect. And sample this humorous quotation from page 298: "Despite its name, U+0043 SCRIPT CAPITAL LETTER P is neither script nor capital--it is uniquely the Weierstrass elliptic function derived from a calligraphic lowercase p."