I read this book in one setting. What a fascinating journey Sladen takes you on in this first hand account of a significant moment in history. I've been reading books on the west my entire life and I have to say this is the best single book one could read on the American Southwest. It chronicles the remarkable meeting between General O.O. Howard and the Great Apache leader Cochise. Sladen records Cochise's personality and style in great detail. He gives a vivid portrait of life in an Apache village. He presents Tom Jeffords and Howard as they really were. He describes the incredible county this drama played out in with the sensibility of a true lover of beauty and nature. Sladen's become one of my heros along with Cochise and Edward R. Sweeney who edited this book and wrote a brilliant biography of Cochise.

This book is an excellent, easy to read resource. It explains the basics of quality management in language that the layperson can understand. As a quality professional with 100+ books, this is still the one I refer to most often!

Like the name of the author, this work is executed in a "broad headed" way!

But seriously, this commentary on the second gospel reminds me the words of Jesus: "give to Caesar what is to Caesar's". The author would surely like to affirm "let's give to Mark what is to Mark's". And he did well. As we know, the markan gospel doesn't represent a considerable work if we evaluate its volume. Meanwhile it does represents the most colorful and vivid portrait of the Christ among the four gospels, a sort of abstract or essence of His deeds whatever it is called. That's why the author is not bound in simply describing and explaining the text line by line, meaning by meaning and by doing so, to add "unuseful" contents unfortunately too oftenly found in so called historico-critical or socio-rhetorical commentaries, but rather he knows with clairvoyance where to pass by and where to put the emphasis.

Simple, concise, brilliant and written in a style where even the first reader without any knowledge in the techniques of the literary criticism could find his way, this study of the compte rendu of the ministry of the son of man through the gallilean countryside brings the light upon the essential elements which are to be perceived. Thus the reader is not on the contrary a passive spectator sat on his couch before the screen of his television but a creator of the meaning of the gospel. The accent is put on the fact that the gospel of Mark is an assemblage of different kinds of events which seems to have any connection between them, if taken separately but constitutes a coherent and compact plot line if taken as a whole(What was the greatest benefit for me is that I finally could have understood why the markan gospel included so many miracle stories loosely which had tendency to distract my attention).

For all those who believe that the rigorous application of the modern literary approaches to the analysis of Mark is foolish and inappropriate enterprise would be deceived by such a reading; For all those who don't confine themselves in the form but in the "content of the bottle" would be happy to find here some new insights useful for their ministry, study or just simply for the pleasure of reading.

As franchises, strip malls,highways, fast food and outlets become more prevelant in America, it is refreshing and enlightening to read John Sherwood's, "Maryland's Vanishing Lives." His colorful and poignant portraits of ways of life in Maryland (a one-room schoolhouse;Tool bridge operator etc.) are a reminder of how things have been, but are quickly giving way to the mass marketing approach in our nation. Sherwood preserves the varied ways of life that are quickly going by the wayside in our impersonal age, and does so with an exquisite human touch. Bravo!

[excellent overview from the dust jacket]

MELVILLE, the first new biography of America's
great storyteller in twenty-five years [pub. 1975],
is a major achievement. Intricately and sensitively,
Edwin Haviland Miller depicts the delicate balance
between Melville's life and his creativity and offers
a new perspective on the impact of family members upon
Melville's artistic experience.
MELVILLE is an "inside narrative." It begins dramatically
in the year 1850, when at age thirty-one Melville was
completing the first draft of his greatest book, -Moby-Dick-.
On Auguest 5 of that year he met Nathaniel Hawthorne, an
experience which was to have an emotional and artistic
impact for the rest of his life. Hawthorne was not
simply the author of -The Scarlet Letter-, or the American
Shakespeare as Melville was to proclaim. Fifteen years
older, Hawthorne was the kind of father or brother whom
Melville the man and the orphans in his early fiction
had been searching for.
Miller weaves back to Melville's earliest years to
depict the family bonds -- the weak father, the dominant
mother, and the favored older brother. Herman's world
collapsed suddenly in his twelfth year when his father
died, bankrupt and mad.
The biography records the painful drama of Melville's
search for a replacement of the father which fictionally
took the mythic form of Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, and Ishmael.
The quest in life and art proved unending, continuing into
the pages of -Billy Budd, Sailor-, which was written in
his last years.
* * * [and from within the book itself]
In the letter as in the novel Melville sought the safety
of farce to disguise the intense emotional attachment; the
tenderest and most intimate scenes in all his writings
were those between Ishmael and the cannibal. Whether
Hawthorne understood or not, Melville here exposed his
love-starved heart, but, typically, the jesting tone
took both men off the hook.
-- Edwin Haviland Miller.

Edwin Allen Lee can capture the emotion of an event and create a incredible story that touches your heart and soul. I am proud to have him (aka Ken "Duke" Monse'Broten) included in our book "Chicken Soup for the Prisoner's Soul." The most powerful story is "The Sunray Catcher," which takes readers on a rollercoaster of emotions. It is one of many "WOW" stories in this book.

Many books that were well received when originally published ultimately fail the test of time and seem hopelessly outdated, or even silly to future generations. Occasionally, a book seen as a solid effort when it was written is found later to be the definitive work on the subject. The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science by Edwin Arthur Burtt is such a book.

Burtt investigates the origins of the modern scientific world view, a view that today appears to be ancient but is, in fact, only a few centuries old. The concepts that we use to describe the modern world -- mass, velocity, energy, time etc -- form the substratum of so many modern ideas that their very ubiquity has made it hard to imagine that any other view ever existed. With these ideas woven into all of our thought how does one separate these ideas from all others in order to better appreciate and understand them? Burtt attacks this problem by tracing the evolution of modern scientific concepts from their origins in Copernicus and Kepler through to their highest development in Isaac Newton.

It may come as a surprise that Copernicus and Kepler were not motivated by empirical evidence. In fact, the empirical evidence was stacked against their view that the sun, not the earth, was at the center of the planetary system. Anyone could see how solid the earth felt and how steady it was. If it were moving then its motion could be felt. The idea that something as large and solid as the earth could be flung through space was obviously ridiculous.

Nor were they motivated by a desire for greater accuracy since the Ptolemaic system that they would soon replace was every bit as accurate as their sun centered system with regards to predicting eclipses and positions of the planets in the sky.

Their motivation was essentially a desire for a mathematically elegant way to express planetary motion, a simpler way that could reduce the dozens of epicycles to a comparatively small number of circles. For these men, mathematics was not the key to nature, mathematics was nature and the simpler mathematical expressions that they found were true because nature was parsimonious and would not accomplish by complicated means (the epicycles) what could be accomplished more simply with circular orbits. A mathematical nature would reduce the phenomena much as a mathematician would reduce complex equations to a smaller number of simple equations.

Kepler's shock upon discovering that the planets did not orbit in circles, but in ellipses was genuine. The smooth constant motion of the planets was thought by Kepler to reflect the constancy of God himself. Only when Kepler discovered that equal areas were swept out by the planets in equal times was his faith restored in the mathematical universe that was held together by God.

In Galileo we see the beginnings of dualism. On one hand Galileo the empiricist laughs at his colleagues who refuse to look through his telescope and see the evidence of moons orbiting Jupiter. On the other hand we see the doctrine of primary and secondary qualities in which we do not perceive the world as it is, but rather as it affects our senses. This doctrine calls into question the validity of the senses which, presumably, are the source for Galileo's (and our) knowledge of the real world. With sense data either limited or distorted and hence, of questionable reliability, mathematical demonstration becomes the way past the senses to the ultimate nature of things. Descartes further mechanizes the senses and pushes consciousness farther away from reality thereby producing a full blown dualism in which man becomes a spirit trapped in a machine.

When we finally arrive at Newton, by way of Gilbert and Boyle, we have a new universe where the number of causes is reduced from the Aristotelian four, to only two. The formal cause has become mathematics which matter must obey in exacting detail. The efficient and substantial causes merge into a mechanical force compelling a passive matter to follow precise trajectories. Gone completely is the final cause as matter becomes the sole occupant of a universe whose future is completely determined by its past. The biological concept of goal directed action has no place in the billiard ball universe of unconscious motion. The irony is that one of man's greatest intellectual achievements, the formulation of the laws of motion, becomes a means to degrade man's intellectual status by reducing man's mind to matter in motion.

The above is a gross oversimplification of Burtt's work and cannot begin to convey the richness of his research and the clarity of his presentation. Burtt uses extensive quotes to show the reasoning used by the great mathematicians and physicists at the dawn of the Enlightenment and clearly demonstrates the shift in thinking that occurs over two centuries.

The only drawback to Burtt's work is that it was written nearly seventy years ago and the effects of these ideas on post-Newtonian thought are not covered. The author, in the revised 1932 edition, expressed regret that he could not incorporate these later developments into his revision of the original 1924 work. I too, feel regret that Burtt did not get around to another revision where he might shed some light on the effects of these ideas on quantum mechanics and relativity.

Anyone interested in the development of the modern philosophy of science will enjoy this intellectual journey through the minds of some of mankind's finest thinkers, those men who made possible the remarkable world that we live in today.

An excellent and comprehensive reference on this area with the author adding plenty from his many years of experience. As a result this is as valuable a reference for a researcher as it is for a practitioner or a utility. An excellent work.

... reading for the study of the Chinese Language!

I bought this book for a finance course, i audited.Book covers in detail about various option pricing models(CAPM,Single Index, Multiple Index). Portfolio analysis is covered in detail plus seperate chapter on International Diversification.Arbitrage Pricing Model(APT) is compared against CAPM, this might be essential in chosing efficient portfolio.

Also includes selecting efficient portfolio. Bond pricing with detail explanation of Black-Scholes model is the best chapter .

The authors have given a detail explanation of all financial terms, which doesnot make this book daunting for novices. Best part is the various references at the end of which chapter which provide for additional information.

This is a must have book for anybody intersted in finance.