CHAN KOM is considered a classic study and no doubt it is. It is a most comprehensive, painstaking study of a Mayan village in Yucatan. However, the research for it was done in 1930-31, which makes it now over 70 years old. Mexico has changed drastically in that time, just like every other country on earth. How much Chan Kom today resembles that long ago village (if indeed Chan Kom even exists today) I cannot say. Point #1---you can't read CHAN KOM to learn about modern Mexican society. Point #2---if you are planning to visit Yucatan, that heartland of ancient Mayan culture, you can use the book as a source of information only tangentially. Robert Redfield, the chief ethnographer, became one of the giants of American anthropology at the University of Chicago, which was at the center of the field in the 1930s. This pioneering work of his established a road which was travelled by numerous ethnographers after him. CHAN KOM, then, represents a style of anthropological research and writing that was once cutting-edge, but is now antique. Redfield's approach was to garner information on every aspect of daily life, from bee keeping to the beliefs about eclipses. Economy, tools and techniques, family, religion, ritual, world view-all this and more are discussed in astonishingly painstaking detail. There is even a long 'life history' by the most literate man in the village. Yet, for a reader not investigating the 20th century evolution of Maya culture, the mass of information is far too great. Nobody could absorb this much unless they were familiar with today's Yucatan or unless they were researching the period. There are a number of good maps and many extremely poor photographs. Yes, CHAN KOM is a classic, but for today's audience, its appeal is limited to specialists or those interested in the history of anthropology itself. It must be considered a work of social history, to be mined by scholars as background material on the modern Yucatan.

Redfield wrote a "sequel" about Chan Kom village later on, called "The Village That Chose Progress". I have not read it. Readers are advised to check that out, bearing in mind that it too may be somewhat dated.

This volume is worth the price for any Cantigas de Santa Maria enthusiast simply for the color plates (although many of these are repeats of those presented in the 1984 book by Keller and Kincade, Iconography in Medieval Spanish Literature). The index, a logically categorized list of specific aspects of daily life in the miniatures, is very thorough indeed and should be extremely useful for further research in Cantigas iconography. The short discussions about each general category do not delve very deeply, and are again only useful as a springboard for further research. Though the written content is not what I would have exopected, for those of us who do not have regular access to the facsimiles, this book is a major blessing.

Mr. Rojo, like many Spanish novelists of these days, has a surplus of titanic writing but soft muscle in the art of creating, nurturing and taming a John Grisham or Tom Clancy type of plot. "El ojo ajeno" is a well-bred suspense with original characters and can take the reader on a roller-coaster of speculation and double-guessing. But it simply misses a top-notch punch line. You will enjoy the trip, but not the destination.

Soy profesor universitario y me interesa revisar este libro para adquirirlo si me es últil

Science and technology has been the subject of public interest and support for centuries. The acceptance of a utilitarian argument for the public support of basic scientific research actually predates the Industrial Revolution itself. However, with a few notable exceptions, the organisation of the process of innovation has not been thoroughly discussed so far. This book edited by Alfonso Gambardella and Franco Malerba presents an integrated collection of contributions providing new insights into the importance of the organisation of economic innovation by approaching the problem at stake from a European point of view. This is quite a challenge, since the European economies have many different measures and schemes to enhance innovation and cooperation, and mutual benefits are often hard to achieve.

The book is divided into two parts. The first deals with the patterns of innovative activity in Europe and the second focuses on inter-firm collaborations and research networks.

After a short introduction, Giovanni Dosi and Luigi Marengo set the tone for the remaining part of the first part of the book by stressing the co- evolution of knowledge and organisation. They argue that path dependence, location and tacit knowledge are crucial for organising innovation. These arguments are also viewed as being important in the chapter by Keith Pavitt and Pari Patel (chapter 3). They find that in-house learning is an important determinant of the accumulation of these competencies. In chapter 4, Franco Malerba and Luigi Orsenigo deal with entry and exit of firms thereby dividing technological entry and exit into 'real' and 'lateral'. Their key finding is that while technological regimes affect both types of entry and exit, lateral entry and exit is also affected by technological proximity and by the degree of pervasiveness of a technology. Chapter 5 (Stefano Breschi) and 6 (Peter Swann) elaborate upon Dosi and Marengo's point of the importance of 'location'. Using patent data, Breschi finds important differences in the spatial agglomeration of different sectors and technological regimes. Swann observes that the larger European countries have many industrial clusters, while the smaller countries are probably too small to establish such clusters. Finally, the findings of the chapters in the first part are applied by Nick Von Tunzelmann (electronics industry) and Cristiano Antonelli and Mario Calderini (mechanical engineering) to show their empirical relevance.

In the second part of the book Patrick Llerena and Mireille Matt set the agenda for analysing inter-firm collaborations and research networks by discussing policy aspects of inter-firm collaborations. They focus on a market and an organisational perspective. These perspectives serve as a vehicle for the next three chapters, which all consider different industries. Antoine Bureth, Sandrine Wolff and Antonello Zanfei (chapter 10) look at the European electronics industry; Salvatore Torrisi (chapter 11) compares the European and US software industry; and Margaret Sharp and Jacqueline Senker (chapter 12) discuss learning and catching-up in the European biotechnology industry.

The most interesting parts of the book are chapters 13-15, which focus on research networks and the opportunities for cooperation in a European context. Paul David's work has shown that effective policies for the promotion of competitiveness and long-term economic growth through innovation in any country or region must be based on a consistent building block which generates, distributes, and exploits scientific and technological knowledge. In a relatively long but appealing and convincing contribution, David (with Dominique Foray and Edward Steinmueller) re-examines and extends his work by stressing the importance of explicitly dealing with the norms and behavioural styles of individuals and organisations in the institutions that form networks to develop science and technology. Only if consistent and useful complementarities are found and the right incentive structure is provided, will European efforts to organise innovation be able to blossom. This chapter is complemented by two studies of Aldo Geuna. The first (with Walter Garcia- Fontes) studies the effects of the funding effort by the European Commission (EC) on the supply and the demand of funds. The econometric results suggest that the EC generally serves short-term objectives, whereas long-term strategies are needed for a coherent innovation policy. In the final chapter, Geuna applies the framework of chapter 13 to an analysis of resource-allocation criteria between networks of universities.

The general tone in Gambardella and Malerba's book is that the concept, theoretical nature, and empirical application of the efficient organisation of economic innovation constitute an important contribution to a European science and technology framework. While the first part is a well- structured and thoughtful approach to going into patterns of innovative activity, it fails to provide many new insights into organising innovation in Europe. The more interesting contributions are found in the second part, which present an extremely useful and timely study of how to organise innovation.

I wasn`t expecting too much from this book , Azpiris style is never going to have the visual impact of Brom. But even so this book is a little disapointing, the pictures are nicely printed, but somehow the book doesn`t have much impact. Still if you like Azpiris style of hyper pneumatic space babe this is a nice enough collection. If you found the last comment offensive bear in mind that the publisher is "Eurotica" and the book is probably not for you.

the author though explained few points clearly, did not delve more into cmos design issues in it. there were hardly any examples provided by the author. this book is just a brief introduction to different types of references but nothing much understandable atleast to the beginners.

Main improvements to the book can be
(1)more number of solved examples as well as unsolved problems.
(2)more detailed understandable explanation to higher order bandgap references and designing issues for the novice designers.
(3) complicated math made easy to understand
(4) simulation techniques - can provide with some practical spice circuit etc etc.

certainly not recommended for beginners.