This is a somewhat difficult book to work through, one that at times adapts a very scholastic tone. As an Anglo-American I found all of the Arab placenames and surnames a bit challenging, but that was expected. So I am certainly not criticizing the book on that count; you should just be aware that if you don't have extensive previous knowledge of the Arab world, this book will demand more concentration and time of you than most biographies. Now three points of criticism: First, I would like to see more background information as to the history of the crusades, and how Jerusalem and other territories in the Holy Land came to be under European rule. Even a few paragraphs would have been appreciated. Second, the writing style is a bit dull. I don't expect prose worthy of Thomas Wolfe from a biographer, but in some sections I felt like I was reading a doctoral thesis. Third, Lyons and Jackson wait until the very end to comment at length on the qualities and motivations of Saladin, and on his importance in the grand scheme of things. I think that such commentary should be injected more than they are throughout the book, as critical events unfold. And then the final analysis should wrap up on themes already developed. The greatest strength of this book is that it is written truly from an Arab perspective. The European viewpoint is represented, but I always felt like I was observing from within Egypt, or Syria, or Palestine. I did not feel like an envoy from the Vatican - on the outside looking in. This is an accomplishment for the authors. What I found most interesting about Saladin's life was the paradox he faced: to consolidate power within the Arab world he needed the legitimacy of being a true believer, fighting the infidels in the holy war. However, to effectively fight the Europeans he needed soldiers from throughout the Arab world. So you see him in the book alternating his attention between his external battles and his internal ones. Lyons and Jackson do a good job in providing the details of these struggles - the dates, the places, the people, the numbers. But somehow they don't effectively convey the big picture; they don't explain the significance of the events as they unfold. The authors might argue that it is best for the reader to decipher that for his or herself. But I think the best historical books offer an opinion, with which the reader is then free to agree, or disagree.

In Malcomb Cameron Lyons and D.E.P. Jackson's "Saladin: Politics of the Holy War", the fact that Saladin was one of the greatest-known figures of the Middle Ages is proved very easily. This is true, various events proving it. An example of one was his attempt to unify the Muslims. In addition to that, he was a great military leader and at the same time a wonderful politician. The authors make great use of the many documents and letters collected of the Arabs. The sources are used very often and are quoted from. I think the Arabic sources were one of the greatest features of this book, even though they may have been confusing at times. Saladin is often compared with Richard the Lionhearted, an equally powerful ruler from the Christian lands. Was Saladin stronger than he was just because he held Jerusalem against him?

After the Turkish invasions, the Arabs were unorganized and didn't have a common goal or leader. Saladin unified them and was able to achieve a common goal, the Jihad, equivalent to a Christian Crusade. The goal was to gain control of Jerusalem. Jerusalem was important to them because it was their third holiest city, after Makkah and Medina. Saladin's leadership ability lies in the battlefield as in politics.

In order to restore order to the Muslims, Saladin had to be very persuasive. He used politics in order to swing people to his side and also to develop a stronger army. Saladin was able to conquer those that did not follow, a tactic that the Persian Empire also used.

One of the greatest features of this book was the various references to actual historical documents. One of my favorite ones was an excerpt from a letter that Saladin wrote to his father after witnessing his first battlefield, "This letter contains the first good news given to the master of the prey seized by his cub, who stood in his father's place and struck with his sword." (Page 250) This letter showed the significance of Saladin's first battle, he is coming to leadership. It is as if Saladin is now replacing his father, assuming a role of leadership.

It is inevitable that Saladin would be compared to Richard the Lionhearted of England, since he was Saladin's greatest opponent. Personally, I don't think that Saladin was as strong a ruler as Richard. Richard traveled to Jerusalem (maybe its only a rumor, but it is said that he only came within sight of the city); this is amazing because he was able to penetrate all of the defenses along the way. Saladin had a number of advantages: he had the element of surprise, he could ambush Saladin's troops as he wished among their journey; and Saladin was also fighting a home battle - he knew the land in which he was fighting and so he could take advantage of the locations for his troops to assemble (From reading about Saladin, had the situation been reversed with Richard defending against Saladin, I don't think that Saladin would be so successful). Saladin seemed to be more of a defender than an attacker.

One of the criticisms that I have of this book is reading. This book is more suitable for a senior in high school, rather than a freshman. I often found it very difficult to follow. The text seemed a little strange, there were many Arabic words and names and accent marks throughout almost every page of the book. This problem is very trivial when compared with the overall knowledge gained from reading in context. In summary, "Saladin: Politics of the Holy War" is a very tough read meant and for students who have enough time to read it in full context.

There wasn't enough politics of the Holy War, or Jihad. I don't think that the author spent time upon the wheeling and dealing that Saladin had to do in order to achieve unity in the Muslim army and assume a leadership position. Instead, there were too many details on every battle. Text could have been used explaining other points.

In conclusion, "Saladin: Politics of the Holy War" is a read only advised for skilled students who have the time as well as the determination to thoroughly read this book in context. Only at that point will he or she be able to fully understand the significance of Saladin's life as a military leader and politician.

I picked up this book a while ago and only got around to reading it recently. It is an extremely serious piece of scholarship, well-researched and thoroughly documented; this is no glossed-over wannabe history treatise.

I could detail its strengths and weaknesses but I believe the previous reader has provided a fairly thorough analysis. It is no easy read and is made, in my opinion, made tortuously difficult by two unnecessary things: (1) The publisher's stubborn insistence on not providing comprehensible maps that illustrate the campaigns being discussed throughout the book and (2) the disregard of the difficulty that Arab names pose for most Western readers.

I hope first that there will be future editions of this book for it is a very worthy effort and, I think, probably the final say on the topic for years to come. Secondly, I hope those editions will be more user-friendly -- including clear maps (showing rivers, marshes, mountain ranges, deserts, combatant positions, itineraries, etc., etc.) throughout the chapters, providing an Appendix detailing who the different players are, family trees for the major players and, perhaps, more sprinklings through the text as to who people are.

It is a safe to assume that a book isn't good if the author's(') name(s) is/are larger than the title. Many textbooks suffer from this egomania which can be easily cured with an exacto knife: Just cut around the name(s) and peel.

The book suffers from a poor use of the english language with ideas being presented with too many unnecessary words. Images are labelled with three numbers making the layout confusing i.e. "Fig. 14.9.5" This book has a sloppy finish to it and will only waste your time. Integrated Physics and Calculus is a much better buy.

I took a math class using this book and it was frustrating. The problems were challenging which was good, but the support offered by the book was poor. If you needed to understand something you couldn't use the book to help you out. All it did was spit out a few equations and inconsistent derivations of them. I found the book very frustrating and if you're looking to learn math skills I'd recommend something else.

If you are expecting to learn calculus on your own, this is probably not the book for you. However, if used by a competent lecturer, this is a very good textbook to learn the basics of calculus from. The problems assigned to each section are EXCELLENT for driving home the concepts presented.

Emphasis is on the military chronology, not the political or social history of the event that "created" the twentieth century. Starting with William Manchester's weak introduction, Burg and Purcell provide an almost daily account of events on the Western Front, with much less attention paid to other theaters. The chronology is filled with pictures -- many rarely printed and of some interest -- and generally useless sidebars that only barely scratch the surface of their topics. The maps are old, and completely inadequate for their purpose. The biographies are somewhat useful, but are only a glimmering of the promise that the book could have held. A basic reference work, little more.

Great day-by-day record of the war. Entries broken down by area (e.g., Verdun, Mesopotamia, German East Africa), includes both political and military events, though the former is by far in the minority (and arguably too light in this area). Several illustrations and photographs throughout, which I don't think add much, but are welcome, as they are not the usual US-British-French-German-centric fare of pictorial histories. Several "topics" are covered on pages scattered throughout discussing certain major themes (e.g. infantry tactics) or innovations (e.g., tanks, aircraft). Mostly very general, but brief and concise; helpful to the general reader--and a reminder to the well-versed of the period-- to understand the war machinery of the conflict.

My only gripe is that the maps are mostly useless, as the events detailed in the almanac occur at a much smaller scale than those included. A companion atlas or appendix with detailed maps would help a great deal towards following the events, especially in more remote locals, such as Africa and Middle East.

The book did have some irritating mistakes in the back (no more than the average math book), but I give it a thumbs up for being pretty clear and readable throughout. Some problems I had using the book though are:

-it doesn't provide adequate examples, too few and not on the same level as the problems
-towards the end, it loses some coherence by splitting up related ideas into many formulas and notations.

Overall word, the book teaches pretty well, but a good teacher is really needed to wade through some of the book.

i am using this book in my cal 3 class at this very moment. there are many mistakes in the text and the answers in the back of the book are sometimes wrong or they are factored in a weird way. the text is very easy to understand and with all it's shortcomings i dig this book

Although I liked the outdated 1988 version of this book, this one is extremely simplistic and omits much of the previously included material. Most of the information included can be found on the web and is shallow compared to Current Protocols or other texts. Although it serves as a reasonable introduction for novices to this area it's extremely overpriced for [money]!!!

I would reccomend Monoclonal Antibodies by Goding ([money]),

This is an exceptional reference for anyone using abtibodies in the laboratory. It is a *must-have* for anyone venturing into unknown teritory. For the experienced individual forced to bang out new protocols with a cranky antibody, this reference is priceless.

At its very best, nature writing lets us experience vicariously an environment that we're unlikely to ever encounter ourselves and, simultaneously, sets us to thinking about that environment in new or unusual ways. David Rains Wallace succeeds only in the first of these tasks.

Bulow Hammock is a wooded swampland in eastern Florida, around Daytona. Wallace, whose grandmother lived in nearby Ormond-by-the-Sea, has been visiting it since he was a child. In this book he writes, often compellingly about what he has observed there and he relates his own experiences to those of the great naturalist John James Audubon, who seems to have hated the place, and those of William Bartram, whose 1701 book, , was apparently influential in the development of Romanticism. So far, so good.

But, in addition, Wallace throughout tries to prove a rather dubious premise : that the human brain and the hammock have many similarities :

I wondered if I might explore the hammock not only as a home of wild plants and animals but as a connection to my wayward brain. The brain is like forests in being diverse and multilayered. I'd even felt in the western mountains that the old-growth forests might have a kind of consciousness arising from complexity. Like my brain, the hammock was structured hierarchically, with newer, more complex things growing from older ones. Most mysteriously, brain and hammock shared a propensity for mimesis, for producing similarities between different things.

This whole train of thought, which starts out merely silly, eventually trails off into pure blather. The desire of environmentalists and their allies to anthropomorphize nature is perfectly understandable--the more human that nature is made to appear the more likely we are to protect it. But here's one thing we can all be certain of, the trees of Bulow Hammock do not have a consciousness; they don't actually realize that they are a forest. Nature is fascinating enough without our overreaching to draw human connections which simply do not exist.

These rather dubious speculations on Wallace's part end up detracting from the book, rather than adding to it. I'd still recommend it for the beauty and wit of his observations, but it fails rather spectacularly in the reach for broader themes.

GRADE : C+

I used this as one of my textbooks in my Police Administration class at the U of M. We found it had some obvious errors however overall it was a good text for rural community policing policies and I would recommend to anyone working in a rural or small town environment.

Bueno, el libro que revise me parecio excelente sin embargo seria interesante colocar mayor cantidad de problemas solucionados.
Serias tan amable de enviarme tu prologo del libro nuevo

saludos

A novel of the life of Edward VII, it is nicely written in that it takes your attention and makes you continue. I found it interesting, though i don't know how much is novelisation and how much is fact, as i know little about Edward (Prince of Wales in this; Volume II sees him as King), and cannot judge accuracy. I suppose the best compliment i can pay is that i now want to find a true biography of Edward and read that.

I never thought about men being in abusive relationships,and when I read this, it really made me feel stupid. everytime i see something about an abusive relationship, I always think of a man beating his wife and kids. This was a good book that I can relate to how the men feel as well.