When I was a teenager I watched the movie 'Ferris Bueller's Day off'; it was then I wished to own a vintage convertible. I ended up with not the Ferrari as in the movie but with a very stylish sports convertible Triumph Spitfire (1969). One sunny summer afternoon I was zipping through the windy roads of Big Basin California and it was there I experienced a disaster. Regrettably I was warned about this from a few mature friends and colleagues but I just failed to acknowledge it; the warning was breakdown do happen. With smoke blowing from the engine it was a sign for a bad news. My most capitalistic mechanic quoted me a maximum price for which I could have almost gotten another one of these mobile. I had a hard choice to either cut my losses and walk away or somehow get it fixed. My many memories spent in the car along with my childhood dream prevented the former action. My only choice was to get my hands greasy. Well that was the easy part; my minor limitation was that my
knowledge about working of the car was limited to three steps 1.Put keys in ignition and start the engine. 2. Something happens 3. Wheels rotate and car moves. Very simplistic I agree; but I needed more understanding in step 2. Something happens. So I searched around and I came across this bible for dummies in car repair. Over the last 8 months I have spent much of my free time under the hood and getting my hands dirty; my guide is this 300 pages manual. I have learnt immensely from it and am more aware of the mechanics of the car; I (surprised myself) was able to dismantle the engine diagnose the cause correct it and put it back together.
If you interested I found that I was running low on radiator fluid due to a hose leak; the car was overheating which caused the pistons to blow up. The machinist did a fine job in replacing the pistons and I had them oversized which adds more firepower to the engine. I have the car running but it needs minor adjustments on timing. My goal is to make this a high performance car and race with it. In my to-do list I intend to have high performance exhaust system; Side-Draft Carburetor; and an Electrical distributor, all this will add to the horsepower. I highly recommend this book to anyone still afraid of working on cars. The illustrations along with the text will guide you very comfortably and answer all the questions that may arise

A must have. The book provides all the typical Haynes information and is an invaluable assest in repair and service. It provides full and detailed descriptions on inspecting, tune-ups, and rebuilding all parts of the car from the electrical system to the carberators. The book good has many details about emissions controls, but could use more.

Women and Warriors of the Plains features the pioneer photography of Julia E. Tuell, whose black and white photos documented Native American women's lives and times. The Tuells lived among the Sioux from 1912 to 1929, with Julia using her photography to document their rapidly-changing way of life. Her photos are both artistic and historically important documents of early Sioux women's lives.

An excellent pick, Dan Aadland's Women And Warriors Of The Plains provides a review of the early photography of Julia Tuell, whose black and white portraits of Native American women are accompanied by fine accounts of life with the Northern Cheyenne and others.

Peter St. John has written the definitive book on air piracy and airport security. I have perused some 20 books and papers dealing with the challenge of keeping hundreds of millions of airline travelers safe. St. John's book is the best. It is at once a text and a page-turner, easily the most comprehensive, analytical, and readable study of a subject that should fascinate anyone who flies.

Where other authors struggle to arrange their material in some coherent manner, St. John's book has a chronology and organization that keeps the reader on track. Too many scholarly authors write pedantic (read: dull) prose; St. John delivers excellent expository writing. While most authors focus on one or selected aspects of this complex international problem, St. John manages, in seven chapters and just 190 pages of text, to examine 60 years of aerial hijacking and sabotage. Yet St. John's book is anything but a historical overview; he scrutinizes past and present situations to develop his prescriptions for improved airport and in-flight security. And although he presents copious detail, his concise, varied syntax reads more like a novel than non-fiction. Hoping to skim some sections, I found this impossible: each chapter captured my concentration, every segment proved integral to the whole.

An Associate Professor at the University of Manitoba, St. John pulls no punches, unhesitatingly criticizing his own government:

"Even after 331 people died on one June day in 1985 as a result of air terrorism in Canada, the government scarcely changed its policy of studied neglect of the airports of Canada."

"The central problem in both U.S. and Canadian airports is that the security personnel are completely inadequate...."

"But in North America at present, more attention is paid to illegal parking of cars...than to security."

In compiling this seminal textbook (for airlines and their passengers, for agencies and governments) on air terrorism, St. John invokes and duly credits more than 100 sources. However, he states his own specific and cogent conclusions as to what must be done, on the ground and in the air, to combat terrorism.

"Good airport security involves a delicate balance of human and technological expertise in which the human element takes the lead...it involves close cooperation between all agencies that can, together, block all security loopholes that exist...."

"The main problem ...has to do with chinks in the armor, the loopholes that are still far too plentiful in a Western commercial aviation system more finely tuned to profitability than to security."

Most of the loopholes St. John identifies relate to inadequacies not of machines, but of humans. His message is clear: excellent security is a function of not of resources, but of resolve. In terms of resolve, he cites Israel as the benchmark:

"No attempted hijacking of an El Al airliner has been attempted since 1970, and that one failed...."

St. John augments his study with ten appendices found nowhere else in the literature. These include chronological listings of aircraft sabotage (1949-1988) and of important aircraft hijacks (1968-1989), as well as diagrams of the "terror-proof" airports he deems crucial to controlling hijacking. Two non-statistical appendices, however, stand out as the most intriguing. The first is "Terrorism from Below and Above," which summarizes human aspects of terrorism through profiles of both terrorists and their victims. The other is "My People Shall Live," Leila Khaled's autobiographical account of the two hijackings she led. Khaled survived capture and temporary imprisonment to live on as the grande dame of the Palestinian Intifada.

St. John's book is fully annotated and well indexed. If you can own but one book on terrorism in the air, choose this one.

This is an extremely useful and well-thought out collection of essays on a variety of aspects of the emblematic culture in Europe during the early modern period, ably edited by John Manning and Peter Daly--two leaders in the world of emblem studies. The contributions are of the highest quality. This volume will be of interest not only to specialist in the field of emblem studies, but also those people who are interested in cultural history, semiotics, and poetic theory.

Essays on "Terminology, definitions, and cultural specificty" are provided by Porteman (introducing these themes), Campa (on the Spanish Tradition), Daly (on Wither), Silcox (on Puttenham), Bath (on Hoskins and Blount), and Hopel (on Schottel).

Essays on "Perceiving, Seeing, and Meaning" are provided by Russell (Approaaaches to "Reading" Early Modern Culture) and Arranz (Moral Teaching in Emblematic Animals).

Essays on "The Authority of Signs" are provided by Drysdall (Sixteenth Century), Engel (mnemonic emblems and humanism), Raasveld (Music and divine harmony), Loach (Counter-refrmation), Young (Bount), Beeler (Rosicrucians Symbols), and John Manning (Bibliography: Primary and Secondary sources--25 pages, which is worth the price of the volume in itself). Illustrations accompany the essays by Campa, Russell, Engel, and Raasveld.

Just get it. This is the real deal on reaching youth culture, and changing wineskins for a new generation revival.

Enhanced with both color photographs and drawings, as well as b/w sketches and illustrations, Peter Taylor's Bats Of Southern Africa showcases 78 species of bats native to southern Africa. The reader is provided with clear descriptions and accurate diagnostic features, as well as a wealth of information on the bat's habitat, social and roosting habits, diet, reproduction, echolocation call, distribution, and conservation status. A superb introduction and reference, Bats Of Southern Africa is a welcome and highly recommended addition to wildlife reference collections in general, and the Bat in particular.

Bergey's Manual of Systematic Bacteriology is a four-volume set covering virtually every known species of bacterium; articles on each species and extensive articles on higher taxa describe a great deal of value to the undergraduate microbiology student or teacher, often including hard to find information about culture methods and ecological roles. The high cost and heavy format of the four large hardbound volumes make them unsuitable for use in the laboratory, however. Bergey's Manual of Determinative Bacteriology is a lower-cost, paperback companion volume containing very brief genus descriptions but extensive tables of biochemical and growth charateristics necessary for the laboratory identification of bacteria. Student labs should include these paperback volumes near every workstation; once students have identified their bacteria, a trip to a departmental library or reading room to learn more about the organism from the four-volume set is in order. Together, these volumes are indispensible for any well-equipped microbiology program.

This is one of the best book I've ever read!

From the editors of the international social theory journal, the collection provides stimulating and tough-minded analyses of the dilemmas of socialism and liberalism, the collapse of communism, and the vagaries of contemporary democracy alongside strong contributions from prominent contemporary social theorists reflecting on the past and future of modernity. Intelligent and energetic writing.

This book has been nominated for the 1999 Science Book Prize and is one of the best I have ever read. Pure genius