I am a nut about French Literature and History and this volume is one of my prized posessions. Most of the important manuscripts and relics of French Culture, from the 8th century on, are on display in this one volume. They are all accompanied by insightful and erudite descriptions on the part of the American and French contributors. It is like being led on a grand tour through one of the most important cultural repositories of the world (La Biblioteque nationale). I have been re-reading Froissart's Chronicles recently and they are magnificently represented as item #39. The volume also includes splendid maps of French territories from the Carolingian era to the Napoleonic Empire. These have been particularly helpful to me in my recent re-reading of Froissart and Joinville & Villehardouin's Chronicles of the Crusades. This volume is not inexpensive, but it is well worth the $ for any bibliophile or literature lover. It is the sort of book one can spend many enjoyable hours with and can study at leisure, giving one countless returns on his/her original investment. The illustrations are uniformily magnificent and the print quality is excellent. It is the type of book that should remain as a vivid reminder of what culture truly means for past, present and future generations. My highest recommendation and my highest commendation for all involved in this magnificent enterprise.

A must-read if you love French culture and history.For the first time the Bibliotheque Nationale de France displays cleverly her own treasures, with wonderfully written articles- especially regarding the illuminated manuscripts. This is the kind of a book you want on your shelves!

Emmanuel Levinas takes Jewish thought to new levels, adding very new, yet very ancient ways of thinking into his works. He has several highly recognized works in the philosphy world- "Time and the Other", amd "Existence and Existents", but his works that build directly off of Jewish thought (such as this one) are my favorites. He manages to cut through the shell of everything and shed a beautiful yet heavy light on life.... I think it would be more fitting to put a Levinas quotes from Difficult Freedom in this review, and let you see for yourself.

"At the dawning of the new world, Judaism has the consciousness to possess, through its permanence, a function in the general economy of Being. No one can replace it. Someone has to exist in the world who is as old as the world. For Judaism, the great migrations of the people , the migrations among the people and the upheavals of history have never presented a deadly threat. It always found what remained to it. It has a painful experience of living on; its performance accustomed it to judging history and refusing to accept the verdict of a History that that proclaimed itself judge. Perhaps Jewish thought in general consists today in holding on more firmly than ever to this permanence and this eternity. Judaism has traversed history history without taking up history's causes. It has the power to judge, alone against all, the victory of visible and organized forces - if need be in order to reject them. Its head may be held high or its head may be down, but it is always stiff-necked. This temerity and this patience, which are as long as eternity itself, will perhaps be more necessary to humanity tomorrow or the day after tomorrow than they were yesterday or the day before." Difficult Freedom, p.166

Several essays on Jewish issues and a brief and quirky, incomplete autobiography of Levinas, perhaps the finest thinker in post-modern Jewish philosophy. In this little volume are commentaries on Biblical and talmudic material, thoughts about current philosophical trends, what it means to be a Jew in the modern and post-holocaust world by a thoughtful survivor, and his unique wordplay. This book will shake your assumptions to their foundations. Never a casual read, but amazing to study.

There is a resurgence of research on Africa, following a number of global events. As the author of this book rightly suggests, the "release of Nelson Mandela from prison and his eventual rise to power and the scramble for new markets in Third World countries" (pp. 1-2)are responsible for the global new interest.

Nothing has been more timely to Africa's economic emancipation than the bunch of constructive ideas propounded by Dr. Ngwainmbi.

That he uses communication, specifically information technology, as a model to describe Africa's educational-political-economic futures is rife, since effective communication itself has been lacking among African policy makers and even the fast-growing middle-class.

Among numerous logically sound prognostics, he stipulates that "parastatal agencies and regional services operating beyond national boundaries will increase business opportunities for the private sector with national and international shareholders competing to provide efficient services" (p.3)

Already, the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) and a number of international telecommunication agencies have been cooperating with many newly privatised national telecommunication cooperations to provide cyber information access and other services to the African population.

The timeliness of Dr. Ngwainmbi's book is infact a blessing to Africa's economy in general and to young entrepreneurs and telecommunication policymakers in particular.

As a Canadian interested in the development of Third World economies, I have found this book very useful. I think internet service providers, telephone equipment companies, and other providers of information electronics in the Western Hemisphere have to read this book, if they want to secure Third World markets for their products and services.

I find this book useful for numerous reasons but due to limited space, I will enumerate a few.

Africa and the developing world have been ignored by researchers and scholars, despite their wealth of resources. Exporting Communication Technology provides a detailed and well-thought out account of how social, cultural, economic, and educational factors account for the well being of communication activity in Africa.

The book also describes with clarity market dynamics and the expectations of policymakers, foreign aid donors and local entrepreneurs in managing social, cultural, and economic forces and in promoting development on the continent.

I like the author's ability to blend market/basic economic theories with his own ecclectic representation of communication theories.

I would recommend the book to a friend, book committee in a university, task managers in non-profit organizations, and especially, a policymakers in local and foreign governmental agencies that assist developing countries in realizing their long term needs

This book is fabulous - witty, well-written and containing all the must-have addresses for the best food in Paris. It's different from other restaurant guides because instead of picking an area or a price-range for your meal, you just choose the dish you feel like eating. So for example if you want some Bouillabaisse you look it up and there are four recommendations, each of which will serve up their own delicious version of the Marseillaise speciality.

The guide covers eighty different dishes, both French and International - you can find places for sushi, tacos and curry as well as for pot-au-feu, fondue and coq-au-vin. The author, Emmanuel Rubin is great not only at choosing the finest food but also the places with the best atmosphere. He devotes a section at the end of the book to a guide to restaurants with special features; restaurants with a fireplace, restaurants for kids, restaurants in nightclubs...

Gourmet Paris is definitely the best present I've received since moving to France; I've been using the guide regularly every time I feel like eating out and I've had nothing but great meals since !

I'm planning a restaurant-centered trip to Paris for next spring, and am finding this little book an invaluable tool in my research efforts. The author has laboriously evaluated dozens if not hundreds of Parisian restaurants in terms of their execution of various regional cuisines and specialties. For example, if you're looking for a restaurant that specializes in the cooking of Lyon or the Auvergne, he'll have numerous recommendations--many of them small and off the beaten path, and unremarked-on even by the Paris Zagat guide, let alone Frommer or Patricia Wells. By the same token, if you simply must try a dish of aligot, pouchouse, or tablier de sapeur--because you've read about them in Elizabeth David or Waverley Root--you'll be steered directly to them. The book is small enough to carry in one's pocket while walking around the city, and contains enough information about the recommended restaurants (opening hours, phone, other specialties) to make ad hoc planning reasonably simple. Indexes by restaurant name and arrondisement are well put together. All in all, a valuable contribution to the small body of truly useful Paris restaurant guides in English.

This is a very complete book on GPRS. It is both technical and gives also very quickly a good overview of the system.
Implementation issues have been addresses.
A very rare GOOD book on GPRS. No hesitation to buy it.

LD from Nokia

Complete book that gives a good vision of the global GPRS system and that, for once, helps to get in the technical details of the standard.

I can't express how exquisitely these 4 volumes are packaged. Take a look at the price!!! There is a large case that contains four slender volumes bound in what appears to be handmade paper. Each volume focuses on one of four palaces. Each one contains watercolours with a description paragraph to the left. The watercolours are breathtakingly reproduced -- bright colors, intricate details. Treat yourself to these four, perhaps the most beautiful book ever produce on the subject of Imperial Russia. Go ahead and splurge!

These four volumes are a wonfderful collectionof watercolours and grisailles from the times of Imperial Russia. They would be suitable for anyone with an interestin art, architecture, Russia and St Petersburg. They show the four palaces (sadly there is no volume for other palaces such as Ropsha, Strelna or Oranienbaum) as they were before they were destroyed by the Germans in WWII. The palaces (both interiors and exteriors) as well as their gardens are brought to life by this wonderful collection. They are shown as they exisited throughout the 19th century and are interesting not only for their artistic and architectual merits but also for their intrinsic historic and cultural value. Very strongle recommended.

Reminiscent of a fine Hitchcock story, but with amazingly emotive power in its ending! Pleasantly horrifying and thrilling at the same time. I stumbled upon this book serendipitously, and it became my favorite.

Emmanuel Carrere has done the seemingly impossible with this slim novel. He has written a horrifying tale, yet it is not a horror novel. What elevates it above the level of the average paperback horror story is both the quality of the writing and calm, almost stately pace of the action. Just 28 when he wrote "La Moustache," Carrere writes with assurance and control. The story is simple. A man decides one day to shave off his mustache, then waits for people to comment on the difference in his appearance. Not only do his friends and family not notice the change, but when he finally points it out to them, they deny that he ever wore a mustache at all. The action spirals inexorably from this point. The ending is masterful--both gut-level shocking and seemingly inevitable. It's difficult to believe that this gem of a novel has not yet been made into a film, as the almost banal premise of the story finally precipitates extraordinary drama. While both Hitchcock and Kafka leap to mind as influences, Carrere makes this psychologically frightening story all his own.

I found Emmanuel Modu's book to be a necessity for all parents. Not just because it helps them encourage their kids into the business world, but also because it provides a guidline on how to help children become independent thinkers and happy individuals. Mr. Modu pinpoints many mistakes paretns [unintentionally]make while trying to teach their kids about the ways of life. After reading "The Lemonade Stand", parents will be able to overcome such mistakes and help groom their offspring into freethinking and dyamic people. If you take evertying written in this book to heart, you may be raising the next Rockeffellar or Larry Ellison ;)

This book should be read by adults as well as children. If you are a individual starting your own business for the first time and without any knowledge of how to manage a business then the lemonade stand is where you should start. chapters 10, 11 and 12 were very helpful for me. A well written book Mr Modu.

"Otherwise Than Being" is one of the only metaphysical text that seriously revise and rehabilitate the notion of the subject after Heidegger's deconstruction and critique of it. Proposing a "de-nucleated" subject, a subject that is non-indifferent to the other, Emmanuel Levinas continues the intuitions he first draw in "Totality and Infinity". But rather than simply continue directly and without revision the acquisitions of "Totality and Infinity", Levinas integrates Derrida's critique (drawn in his important article on Levinas,"Violence and Metaphysics") of the still to ontological/phenomenological discourse of "Totality and Infinity". Therefore, in "Otherwise than Being", his second Masterpiece, Levinas is developing a completely new style, a radically new way-of-thinking. Being not committed anymore neither to phenomenology nor to ontology, Levinas offers us an exercise of post-heidegerrian metaphysics that doesn't fall under the critique of philosophy as onto-theo-logy. The pre-original dimension of psychism, the an-archic dimension of the Self, or subjectivity as "other-in-the-Self" are themes breaking the classical metaphysical discourse without abandoning the primacy of the subject, or of ethics. Finally, "Otherwise than Being" is the first important challenge to Nietzsche's parricide, the first (and maybe only) text that tries to re-hear the authentic signification of the word (or name?): God.

This title deals with the otherwise than. A true masterpiece of the pre-ontological and ontological discouse which not only binds self to Other (through an asymetric responsibility--see substition) but also uncovers and builds off the earlier work of Heidegaar.

Mounier's Personalism

Mounier's blueprint for a personalist economy asks everyone to lay aside greed and materialism. It is in harmony with the Beatitudes: "On the plane of individual ethics we believe that a certain kind of poverty is the ideal economic rule of personal life. But by poverty in this sense we do not mean an indiscreet asceticism or a shameful miserliness. We refer rather to a contempt for the material attachments that enslave, a desire for simplicity, a state of adaptability and freedom, which does not exclude magnificence or generosity, nor even some striving for riches, providing such endeavours are not avaricious.." (The Personalist Manifesto, Longmans, Green and Co., 1938p. 192).

Mounier felt that the biggest problem of modern capitalism has been proclaiming the primacy of economics over history, over the life of the people, over community, over living out one's faith and one's values. The "extreme importance attaching today to the economic problem among human preoccupation is a sign of social disease."

We can readily understand what Mounier means by the primacy of the economic when we think of the tremendous pressure brought upon people to buy and posssess things, live a certain life style and always reach for the highest level of comfort. Social consideration and display are priorities. Even among church people we must let the economic factor dominate or be considered odd. No one in the U.S. is unaware of what putting the primacy of economics in the medical field has done to the availability of good medical care to all.

by Louise and Mark Zwick

Unique in contemporary philosophy, Mounier has inspired the likes of Pope John Paul II with his insights into human freedom, the nature of human existence and his understanding of the integration of all aspects of being human. His writing is poetic and humourous and profoundly liberating. A philosphy of hope.