An excellent presentation of how one minister's church responded to the search for God's will for a church and its people. It is sure to be helpful in at least some ways for all churches. Seeking God's will is always a first step. He has some excellnt ideas that have been proven in his church and I am certain they will work in most churches today. Revival of the "dead" in our churches is at a critical point. Too many people merely warm the pew. Rev. Wills gives some excellent and detailed steps to church renewal. Well written and easy to put into practice, with God's blessing, of course.

I was moved by this book and immediately gave it to my pastor, just as I did Purpose Driven Church. This book is much more spiritually oriented than Warren's approach, although I think highly of Warren's approach. To think a church the size and denomination background such as the author's would turn to spritual discernment in its council meetings is great. I went to a council meeting in our church the day I finished the book and had a whole different perspective on how much time we spent dicussing the cost of the pastor's car insurance. Not once did we discuss the areas of our church where God was calling us to action. Wills' story is a powerful statement on seeking God's will as a church body.

This was the four-part Eleseworlds tale that put James Robinson on the map and set the stage for his history-spanning Starman series. It furthermore is regarded as the best thing anyone ever did with the original DC heroes since the actual Golden Age.

It's also a lot of fun. Great character play, sharp historic details - with a couple of odd exceptions - and top-notch art by Smith make this a must-read for super-hero comics readers. In addition, it's fairly accessible for newer readers since most of the stars of this comic are not that well-known and thus made accessible for once.

Much has been said about "Marvels" and "Kingdom Come" as being the best comics of the 1990s. But I'd gladly pit this against those, and with its grounding in the real world, it holds its own very nicely.

The Golden Age is another "Elseworlds" examination of comics history. By using such rarely seen characters as Captain Triumph and Mr.America along with the "big guns" of the era (Green Lantern, The Atom,etc.)James Robinson visits a Post WWII America where superheroes are considered suspect, and only those who conform are to be trusted. Using superheroes to comment on McCarthyism may seem to be a stretch, but Robinson makes the story challenging with many twists. The "alternate history" concept gives the author the freedom to take chances, but also eliminates the element of "this can't be happening" suspense. Too many sub plots (Hourman's addiction, Starman's breakdown) get in the way of the more compelling central tale.

Paul Smith's art is a wonder throughout. Shifting from the well-lit scenes of Dyna-man to Paul Kirk's despair, Smith constantly creates visuals that hold your attention and never let you forget the true wonder of this medium; the ability for two dimensional, brightly colored figures to fascinate and entertain.

I'm a huge mark for Golden Age heroes. The major problem with the comic books of yesteryear is that the heroes were two dimensional, completely lacking in personality. They were all upstanding, usually rich, and basically boring, when not in costume. If it wasn't for the creative gimmicks and colorful costumes, the men and women behind the masks were interchangeable. James Robinson's updating of these classic Golden Agers is insightful and refreshing. He takes these legends and creates distinctive, and relatively believable, personal backgrounds for each of them. Yet he does this without diminishing the fun and nostalgia of those earlier tales. While congratulating Robinson, I feel inclined to point out the influence of Alan Moore's Watchmen. While Watchmen may have set the standard for alternate takes on the traditional DC/Marvel universes, Robinson and Smith's work here easily lives up to that lofty standard.

Paul Smith does a great job on the art, subtly employing updated pencilling techniques along with a very distinctive golden age era style. The colors in this book are also great, obviously far superior to the comic books of decades past. My only problem with the art lies with the lack of differentiation between some of the alter egos of these costumes heroes. Since most of these guys basically had the same blonde hair, chiseled features, erect postures, and well tailored suits back in the day, sometimes it's difficult to tell them apart, at least in the early chapters. As you read on, Robinson adds humanistic touches of doubts, addictions, regrets and redemption to enrich the characters well beyond their original incarnations.

This collection covers a complete story arc, which is great, but I must admit that I would love to read more tales of the Golden Age from James Robinson and Paul Smith. James Robinson is easily one of the top 5 to 10 comic book writers out there. Check out his popular, and critically acclaimed, Starman (another update of a Golden Ager) series if you don't believe me.

I finished reading this book only a few weeks ago for a college class I'm in. It certainly wasn't the kind of book I'd pick up just on my own, but I wouldn't say I didn't like it.

The story is set primarily in Boston and somewhat in New York during the 1880's. At the request of his cousin Olive Chancellor, southern lawyer Basil Ransom comes to visit. He accompanies her to a meeting where the young Verena Tarrant speaks wonderfully on women's rights. Olive is so impressed with Verena, she starts what's debatably a lesbian relationship with her, but Ransom is taken with Verena as well and so a struggle begins between the two for Verena's affections.

I think Henry James does an excellent job of giving complete descriptions of each character and you really get a sense of who they are. Olive comes across as rigid and passionate, Verena as young, full of life and curious and Basil as sexist and determined. Basil uses all his ability to wrench Verena from Olive. As I mentioned, the relationship between Verena and Olive is debatable. There are no sex scenes in this novel, but the implication is there. Additionally, I've learned in the class for which I read this novel that many women during this time period engaged in very intense romantic relationships which may or may not be described as sexual.

There are of course other characters such as Verena's parents and other women's rights activists, but the whole focus of the novel is on this struggle for Verena. It wouldn't be completely unfair to say that in some ways nothing much happens in this novel. It's truly a character driven story. There aren't really antagonists and protagonists in the story, but more just people whom all have faults and are just trying to make the right decisions. Although my description of Basil above may sound like a bad guy and although he's unapologetically sexist, he perhaps is no worse than Olive who sometimes seems to be using Verena, a young woman whose thoughts and feelings are maleable. At its heart, the novel is still a love story. Overall, I'd say this is probably worth reading if you like novels about this time period, about love or if you like this author. I wouldn't go so far as to say I'd read another novel by James, but I don't regret reading this.

Though James is certainly not known for his sense of humor, he displays a keen sense of satire in this novel. The two senses are not identical--many readers expect satire to make them laugh out loud, and those readers will be disappointed in this book. James' satire is more likely to make readers feel uncomfortable. He repeatedly mocks the two main characters and their struggle to control a young woman who hardly seems worth the effort that these two egoists put into her pursuit. James allows Olive Chancellor and Basil Ransom (whose names evoke the satiricomic tradition in which he is writing) to take themselves seriously while allowing the readers to see them as stereotypes. While satire depends on such stereotypes, James' fiction typically delves into the psychological. At times, he is able to keep this balance, but often the tension is too great and the characters seem to fall flat. Verena Tarrant--the object of Olive and Basil's affection--is virtually absent psychologically (as others have noted), but her lack of character is built into the novel. She begins as her father's possession, and the novel hinges on whether Olive or Basil get to own her next. While the novel is certainly not without faults, it is interesting to watch a novelist as self-conscious as James attempt to write a novel of this type. While he wasn't destined to become a comic genius, this novel is a step toward the psychological, satirical and comic success he was to have in a novel such as "The Ambassadors."

When he says the "Bostonians" he means "the lesbians." I was pretty interested in the story of a Boston marriage, but it got increasingly mean-spirited toward the end, when the dashing right-wing Mississippian convinces the young woman to leave the older one and a full suffrage lecture-hall and run away with him-- she finds it seductive to be told she must have no will of her own.

I went looking for criticism of this book and found little in Gale, but two essays from 1990s by Wendy Lesser and Alison Lurie. Lesser argues against the feminist line that the book is a misogynist polemic; she responds that Olive (the lesbian) and Basil (the Mississippian) are both complex characters, sometimes weak, sometimes strong and sympathetic. (She quotes Hardwick that James is our best female novelist because his women are powerful and interesting.) Lurie looks at the novel as more about politics than gender: James came home from Europe and found he hated America; showed the South re-conquering the North in Basil's conquest of Verena.

I disagree with Lesser: Basil is shown as naive and occasionally weak but dashing and full-hearted -- I'm sure he is an idealized self-portrait of James. Olive is honest and principled but so bleak and unhappy that her love is purely destructive. Her strength lies less in her principles (Mrs. Birdseye after all is equally principled but utterly weak) than in her vaulting ambition. She reminds me of Dixon's Thaddeus Stevens in The Klansman -- passionate, scheming, perversely principled, but essentially evil. Both come from Milton's Satan, seen as a Yankee.

Which brings me to Lurie's version. I agree with her that the novel is about politics, but disagree that he was writing against America -- I think he was just writing against Boston. The hostility the novel met at the time stemmed from his nasty portrait of the old transcendalist Elizabeth Peabody (his minor character Mrs. Birdseye); this is a less irrelevant reaction than critics portray it, since she's a stand-in for everything he despises about his own Boston roots, a hatred which drives the novel. An equally weak but even more despicable character is Verena's father, a mystical fraud whose nomadic career has certain resemblances to James's father's -- resemblances strengthened if Verena is modeled on Alice James. The Boston reform tradition is alternately weak-minded and hard-edged, and basically loveless -- a spirit of drafty wet lecturehalls. Where Basil is hot-blooded -- he feels about Mississippi a tragic love he can't bear to speak of in conversation -- Olive's New England feeling is only cold philosophy.

How real is the political alternative which Basil represents? We see much less of him than of Olive; James knew Boston but not Mississippi. But I think James like some of his peers yearned for a certain reactionary romanticism which northern intellectuals associated with the South -- a Burkean spirit of cavaliers and kings. (Basil's name means "king," and his emerging career is writing political essays said to be hundreds of years out of date.) Basil's defeat of Olive to marry Verena -- he imagines his own seizure of her from the podium of Fanuiel Hall as a political assassination, with shades of John Wilkes Booth -- is clearly a re-conquest of the North by the old South. What he offers for an American future is less Enlightenment, more Middle Ages -- less rights, more responsiblities -- less cold charity, more warm friendship.

James/ Basil reminds me of Henry Adams in the "Education." On the one hand, Adams saw the warm (mildly homoerotic) friendship of exceptional men (modeled on himself and John Hay) as a strategy for national progress. On the other, Adams developed a similarly St. Gaudensian aesthetic of the medieval -- the cathedral against the dynamo. This was the first, aesteticist reaction of the northern elite to the soullessness of postbellum America, which we forget because it was replaced by Teddy Roosevelt's more muscular alternative.

This book made me want to scream, or cry. The characters are beautifully rendered, and some of them are dispicable people. That's what made it so unenjoyable to read for me.

The heroine, Isabel Archer, begins her adventures with much vitality and promise, yearning to see life and the world and not to settle prematurely into marriage and domesticity. Although James shows she's not perfect -- she's naive and somewhat conceited -- it's still pretty easy to fall in love with her. You look forward to seeing what great things her life will bring.

And then it all falls apart. After 200 pages of building her up, James marries her to a scoundrel and spends the next 300 pages suffocating her, one liberty at a time. Others have described this book as "uplifting" and spoken of Isabel's strength and courage; I honestly can't see what they could mean. I found it genuinely painful to see such a beautiful character destroyed. With all credit to James's writing skills, this book made me miserable. I couldn't wish it on anyone.

Henry James is one of my favorite authors and The Portrait of a Lady is one of his greatest works. In it, he creates a unique and unforgettable heroine, Isabel Archer, and then proceeds to let her make all the mistakes the young are capable of making. In fact, Isabel is so sure of herself that, at times, I found it difficult to have much sympathy for her poor choices. But one thing I never felt for Isabel Archer was indifference, all to James' credit.

The Portrait of a Lady is truly 19th Century literature at its finest, but that means it also contains elements that might be distracting for the modern reader. There are lengthy descriptions, the pace is rather slow and James never lets us forget we are reading a book. He makes liberal use of phrases such as "our heroine," and "Dear Reader." While all of this was expected in the 19th Century, some readers today might find it annoying.

Those who don't however, will find themselves entranced by a beautiful story of love and loss, unforgettable characters (there are many more besides Isabel, most notably the enigmatic Madame Merle) and gorgeous description, all rendered in James' flawless prose.

Anyone who loves classics or who wants a truly well-rounded background in literature cannot afford to pass this up.

The best thing about 19th century novels is that they take so long to unwind, you know that you are guaranteed a long and satisfying trip into a story. I initially bought this book after seeing the Jane Campion film, (which I actually wasn't too crazy about)but I always think it's a good idea to read the source material. After a few false starts (warning: one needs to devote all their attention to James in order to enjoy him)I finally got into this book, and couldn't put it down. From the great settings of the novel, to the variety of fascinating characters (the liberated Henrietta Stackpole, the sinister Madame Merle, the beloved Ralph Touchett, Ralph's eccentric mother, the flighty Countess Gemini, the deadly Gilbert Osmond, and of course, Isabel Archer herself... James gives characters great names as well) "Portrait" is a great novel not only of self discovery, but self deception. How many of us in this world have liked to have thought ourselevs as free to make our own chocies, and were excited by a future full of "possibility" only to allow something (or usually someone) to get in our way and make us realize just how quickly we can lose our freedom and be in a cage that we need to get out of. (Pardon my bad grammar.) Those of you looking fora Jane Austen type ending, this may not be the book for you, but I think this book is more of a spiritual cousin to Austen than we may think. It all comes down to making choices, and teh effects of those decisions. Throw off any reservations that you may have because this book was written over a century ago, it's as fresh, funny, tragic and riveting today as it was then. (And hey, buy the film soundtrack which perfectly captures the mood of the story for accompaniment..that was a plug!)

Dick Grier is a proven expert in the field of serial communications and Visual Basic as documented by his peer-support contributions in both the VB Compuserve forum and VB Microsoft Newsgroups over the years. His book, "Visual Basic Programmer's Guide To Serial Communications" is well structured and well written including a serial communications primer, Modem FAQ (and answers), and the ins and outs of implementing data communications using all versions of Visual Basic (2.0 - 5.0) . Coverage includes intricacies (and code examples) of the Visual Basic MSComm control, and discussions relating to the use of the Windows data communications API and Visual Basic. If you are involved in any type of Visual Basic related serial communications development I would highly recommend this book

This is an excellent, excellent reference for using serial ports with VB. I can't say enough for this book. The author knows his material and communicates his knowledge very well. I am using it to write a communications program to interface with field devices using the modbus protocol. The book doesn't specifically cover modbus, but I still found this book to be very helpful. Again, excellent!

This book is very helpful for using either the MSComm control or the Win API for serial communications in VB. Anyone who has to communicate with a serial device using VB should have this book in their reference library. I used the information to help me write some serial drivers for a Human Machine Interface (HMI) application...

Yes, it's a great novel. Yes the language is rich, the story is subtle, and the psychology is complex. And yet, I didn't like it.

Of course, who am I to review Henry James? Granted, I read more books and watch less television than most of my peers, but still I think I might be too "late Twentieth Century" for this book. Maybe despite my strict avoidance of video games I just can't help detesting the millipede pace of this book. I've never had much affinity for drawing room conversations to begin with, and unlike my father I don't believe that wit must be meted out in tortuous sentences.

But it isn't my background or personal prejudices that make me recoil from "Wings of the Dove". There is something about the deliberate quality of Henry James that bothers me. He knows perfectly well what he's doing with his fat succulent sentences. He won't feed you a meal of lean pork and vegetables. He'll serve you tons of tiny truffles and oil-oozing, crispy skinned duck.

To read "Wings of the Dove" is like encountering a cookbook that decided to include as much of the delicious fatty foods as possible. Of course its a rare meal and quite wonderful in its way. But some how, it made me a little nauseous at the end.

First things first, it is a very nice novel, but very hard to follow. Personally speaking, sometimes I couldn't get very exactly what Henry James was trying to say, but I could understand the situation as a whole and be able to move on.

As everybody knows, Hery James is not an easy writer. His appeal is very difficult and complex although it doesn't read very old-fashioned. The story is very interesting and timeless, because it deals with passion, money and betrayal. The books follows Kate Croy and her beloved Merton Densher when then both get involved - in different degrees and with different interests- with the beautiful rich and sick American heiress Milly Theale.

Most of the time, the book kept me wondering what would come next and its result and the grand finale. But, that doesn't mean I was fully understand its words. As I said, I was just feeling what was going on. As a result, i don't think I was able to get all the complexity of Henry James. Maybe, if I read this book again in the futures, it will be clearer.

There is a film version of this novel made in 1997, and starring Helena Bonham Carter, Allison Elliot and Linus Roach, directed by Iain Softley. Carter is amazing as always! Kate is a bit different from the book, she is not only a manipulative soul, but, actually, she is a woman trying to find happiness. One character says of Kate, "There's something going on behind those beautiful lashes", and that's true for most female leads created by James. Watching this movie helped me a lot, after finishing reading the novel.

I've carried on a love-hate affair with The Wings of the Dove for more than 20 years. In that period of time, I started the novel (the same beautiful little Signet paperback edition) at LEAST 15 times and could never get past page 30 or so. But it kept nagging at me to read it. Last summer, I plowed through its dense prose thicket, and I felt as though I were peering through a glass darkly. Several times I felt like tossing it aside. I've studied Enlish and literature all my life and yet I had one heckuva time with those daunting banks of prose. But I'm glad I read it. It's masterful. Worth all the effort. Those scintillating scenes in Venice. Nothing like them! I just read The Golden Bowl, another difficult but rewarding book. There are astonishing scenes in it, like when the husband of the busy-body watches her in a pensive mood as if she were in the middle of a lake, coming closer. It's just an extraordinary scene! I love early James too, like that perfect jewel of a book, Washington Square. Sometimes, great as the late books are, I really do think they lose something of the wonderful clarity James achieved earlier. There are still a few scenes in Wings and Bowl, for instance, in which I have NO IDEA what James was trying to express. Talk about super subtle! But do make the effort, folks, they're incredible books.

I will not argue the fact that Joyce is a master of the English language. Nor will I argue that at times he has very good insight into the psychological motivations of art, religion, and sociology. He possesses both of these talents. However, the manner in which they are presented in this book is simply disappointing. I am an avid reader and can appreciate thick philosophy woven artistically into an intriguing story. This book has sparse bits of philosophy and an occasional artistic stitch, but by and large fails to create a fabric that sparks my interest. Throughout this book, I found myself hopelessly holding onto the idea that, "this is one of the greatest books ever written in the English language," and was left there holding onto that hope afterwards because it failed to deliver anything more.

The story drags at the beginning, and while the minutia of Stephen's life is important to understand where he ends up, its focussed on way too much; the first 80 pages are useless and will leave you rolling your eyes for relief. Next, while a certain degree of specificity is important in terms of describing a scene, the precision to which he describes things, largely irrelevant things, can only be construed as "filling" to make this very short book acceptably long. Say something. Repeat it for emphasis. But don't fixate on it for pages and pages and pages. Lastly, the "meat" of the book, that being what actually made the man into an artist, is so sparse and loosely hung on the frail skeleton of plot, that any person reading this book hungry for some sort of insight or depth is ravishing and unsatisfied at the end, anxious to be filled up by some other book.

Kundera is much better at doing what this "master" was intending to do. He cuts off the fat and leaves raw, creative, chiseled, philosophical muscle on the bone for a reader to savor. I wish I would have spent my time rereading something of his instead of deciding to pick up a book about the very slow and boring progression of this artist's perception.

"Portrait" is arguably Joyce's best work, truly a masterpiece from the greatest writer of the 20th century if not ever. Even if you are not a writer (I'm an engineer), after reading Joyce you will want to write--albeit sadly not as well as Joyce, but you will want to write nonetheless. As for the rare bad review that you may see on this forum, well, there's no accounting for taste! More seriously, it can be a tough read and people often get more out of it the second time through (for fellow members of the Television Generation, we call that "replay value"). So give the heretics who scored it two or three stars a few years for their tastes to mature, and we'll see what they say when they read it again.

When I first read Joyce, I did not catch many of the nuances of Portrait, so I understand how some may find this a challenging book. Hence, I highly recommend buying a copy of the "The Dubliners"--the Dover Thrift edition costs $1.50, though it has no notations. (Also, if you are a busy person, a taste of Joyce may help motivate you.) Dubliners is a collection of short (4-10 page) stories that, beyond being excellent in themselves, will help you get acclimated to Joyce. And for a little more than a buck, you can afford to throw it in to some order to get a nice preview of Joyce before spending the time to read Portrait. (Not that Portrait takes a long time--it's just over 200 pages.)

"A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" is an impressionistic, semi-autobiographical work in which Joyce, through the character of Stephen Dedalus, relates the events and impressions of his youth and young adulthood. The novel flows effortlessly from Stephens first memories as "baby tuckoo" to his final journal entries before embarking on a promising literary career in Paris. In the pages between, Joyce's virtuosity of prose explodes in passages with frightening intensity. Even those who dislike Joyce's confusing, sometimes-infuriating style, should be awestruck by his undubitable writing ability.

However, as anyone reading this review should already know, despite his virtuosity, Joyce is not for everyone. He is simultaneously one of the most beloved and despised writers of the twentieth century. For those of you who are unfamiliar with his work and hesitantly contemplating becoming acquainted with it, here is some food for thought: first, start with "Portrait," it is far more accessible than his subsequent works and a better introduction to them than the also-excellent "Dubliners" is. Second, do not try to judge "Portrait" by the same standards as other books. Joyce is not trying to tell an amusing story here, he is trying to relate the impressions of a young man torn between two existences: a religious or an aesthetic. If you are a meat-and-potatoes type of reader, meaning the kind of reader who prefers a "story," Joyce will not be your cup of tea. Lastly, Joyce's reputation perhaps does his works injustice. Yes, he is extremely encyclopedic and takes on many themes in his works. But perhaps too many readers get sidetracked from the aesthetic merits of his works by concentrating solely on the intellectual values. It is his prose which can be universally appreciated, whether you understand the ideas it portrays or not. His prose is his bread-and-butter. Some people pompously brag of their "getting" Joyce without actually appreciating what he does. I don't claim to be a bonafied Joyce scholar, but it is my experience that to enjoy Joyce is to appreciate "literature for literature's sake." If you enjoy literature, poetry or prose, than you should enjoy the style with which Joyce writes, that is to say, all styles. And he has seemingly mastered all styles. That is not to say that the many thematic levels in which his novels succeed are to be ignored, for their expression is not seperate from the means with which Joyce does it, but congruous with it.

To read Joyce is to revel in the limits of artistic creation and then to read on as the limits are then stretched further.

Bon Apetite!

I have been teaching calculus at a university for over 20 years. I was on the adoption committee to select calculus texts. I had heard that the Stewart text was a national best seller, so I volunteered to review it. I was startled. I can see now reason why this text is widely used. It is even more difficult to believe that its author has had any classroom experience with honest-to-goodness calculus students. The writing is rambling and obtuse. The design is not helpful and blends prose with examples. The art is irregular, some art is small and some is huge, some topics that cry for graphs have none and some that don't need graphs have several. I have used several other texts and it appears that the author used a cut and paste technique to create this text, taking liberally from other best sellers. After a careful review of this "popular" text, I felt obligated to write this review. Someone needs to point out that the "emperor is not wearing any clothes!"

This book was a required text for the Vector Calculus course. The style and content are fine in the first chapters (Ch. 12) until I needed an alternative viewpoint. I was amazed how straightforward was the material which I couldn't understand from Stewart's book. The author rambles from one point to another, intersperses easy topic with advanced instead of building on what has already been explained. Moreover, in many cases he just gives a senseless definition and only after several pages (sometimes chapters) illustrates the essence of the principle and its application to the real world. Despite the obvious drawbacks, the book has two pluses: accurate (solvable) exercises and good intros to each chapter. Nevertheless, it is still hard to get used to applying the topics covered after a single reading, so the former positive moment doesn't help much. If you want an intuitive approach to calculus, get Thomas/Finney's book Calculus and Analytic Geometry (I used 1990's edition).

Reader reviews on the 4th edition are split (see below), but I liked this book in the calculus class I was taking at University of Massachusetts. The breadth is good (almost too much for a two-semester class), the content well presented, and, yes, many problem sets are well done (although I learned to hate related rates problems in the first semester). Students will need some additional materials, however: (1) the Student Solutions Manual (James Stewart, 4th ed.) which gives the answers to all odd-numbered problems (Brooks/Cole guards its teachers' answers and reserves the even-numbered ones for the teachers' edition). (2) The CD/ROM Journey Through Calculus (Win 98/2, Pentium II or >) was helpful in the first semester, but less so in the second. Most teachers require use of a TI-86 calculator, so you will need not only the TI manual sold with the calculator, but also (3) Single Variable Calculus 4th ed., James Stewart ("Calclabs with the TI85/86"), which was annoying because the sequence of button-pushing was not all that clear, and the correct answers to problems are not given (so you have no way to check)--but you need the book to figure out the TI-86, which is not intuitively obvious.

I sometimes wonder: what other calculus books are out there? And how much of a market share does Brooks/Cole have, with this integrated set of materials?

This is by far the best biography about Richard Feynman to date. All the others, even the ones written after this book, pale in comparison. It is wonderfully written. It lets you see and feel Feynman not only as one of the giants in 20th century physics, but perhaps more importantly, as a human, with his passion, his idiosyncracies, and the same struggles and pain he had to go through just like everyone else.

Ironically, Gleick never met Feynman, which goes to show how great a writer he is. I never spoke to Feynman, but he was invited to our freshman physics classes once (at Caltech), shortly before he died. I remember waking up the morning after he died, found out about it, and was very much saddened, and saw the banner "We love you Dick" hung across the Milliken Library on the Caltech campus. For readers who never met or saw Feynman in person, this is truly a great biography. I read it a few years ago, and I still recommend it to my friends all the time.

-- Ed Lee, Santa Barbara.

A man as brilliantly lucid as Richard Feynman deserves a biography equally brilliant and lucid. James Gleick achieves this. And though Richard Feynman is painted in human tones, the reader still experiences the mystique which surrounded this legend of science.

Some of the most enjoyable sections of this book deal not with physics or biography, but Feynman's philosophy and refreshingly rational worldview.

This book is a testament to the power and beauty of a great intellect, in its all its humanity.

My only reservation with this otherwise astounding book is that it was, at times, a bit too glowing and not critical enough. Feynman is presented as a scientific hero, but as we all know too well, even heros are not without their faults. As for these, as Feynman himself said, "it does no harm to the mystery to know a little about it."

The author not only succeeded in portraying the wonderful life-loving Richard P Feynman but also in writing a book even a layman (my girlfriend) could enjoy. Writing about Feynman is a rewarding experience, I think, for an author. All the ingredients are there: Creativity, drama, originality and fun. He (Feynman) rubbed shoulders with the all the great players in the scientific community of the 20th century. I was always interested in the people around the development of modern physics. Feynman was one of the key players in that field. I recommend this book to everyone interested in original people.

This is a biased account but entertaining none the less.
If only things in real life were as plain as this book portrays events between the middle east and the west. Not to detract from the skill with which the narrative was written, but the book left me questioning the objectiveness of the author. Of course, all history is written with a human bias, but Reston seems to favor Saladin's side heavily.
To start, this book attempts to be fair to both the western crusaders and the muslim defenders; in depth history is given about both protagonists so we can understand their motives for joining the war and perhaps empathize with them. However, once we reach the actual events in the middle east, Reston contiunally calls the actions of the Crusaders barbaric and harsh. Even their champion, Richard the Lionheart, is belittled; his incredible feats of survival in battle are criticized as too brash and reckless. Even though this may be true, he is not given as much credit for his leadership abilities as Saladin, who is only portrayed throughout the book as pious, righteous, brilliant, and merciful. This was clearly a romanticized potrayal of the respectable Muslim leader.
For example, Richard is criticized for slaying his muslim captives after the stalled concession talks after his capture of Acre, and rightly so, but Saladin is never condemned by the author when he slays his christians captives after the battle of Arsuf and during the march to Ascalon. This book is not without merit; the author writes in a light, sometimes whimsical narrative. He never gets side-tracked with too many details or techinical aspects of the battles, and keeps the story moving. His heavy reliance on the acounts of bards and court biographers must have made reporting the facts a hard task indeed. But he does a good job with taking the reader on a journey through those sweltering hot days in the holy land.
If you are looking for unbiased and footnote heavy information on the third crusade, look elsewhere. If you want a quick novella on the subject, you've found it. Its an above-average introduction to the third crusade.

Warriors of God, by James Reston, Jr., is, as goes the subtitle, the story of Richard the Lionheart and Saladin in the Third Crusade. The author has picked two fascinating medieval heroes at the pivotal moments in their career and, from there, the story almost writes itself. The abundant use of Moslem sources makes this book a refreshing and different read from other accounts of the various Crusades available. The most interesting fact to learn for this reader is just how little both sides understood about the other, particulary the Crusaders charging in from the West in search of glory. It would have been helpful if the author had been a little more skeptical in treating the comtemporary accounts but he was not writing as an historian so he could pick and choose among the various sources those which would move the story along and provide the most interesting details. It is a good book that will probably frustrate the historian but will be a pleasure for the those seeking an historical adventure.

"Warriors of God" is a compelling narrative that draws the reader into the Third Crusade and the lives of its two great leaders, Richard the Lionhearted and Saladin. Reston's story is spiced with the words of poets and bards, and it breathes life into a fascinating and all but forgotten time.

I have not read a great deal about the Crusades, so it is difficult for me to judge how historically accurate Reston's book is. But I can say that "Warriors of God" is very entertaining, that the story is often moving, and that the characters are fascinating.

Saladin was a remarkable leader who united Egypt and Syria and captured Jersualem for Islam. Equally striking, according to Reston, he was a relatively decent man in a brutal time--he preferred bargaining to killing and went out of his way to avoid destroying the people that he defeated. Legend has it that he sent King Richard two fine Arabian horses when Richard lost his mount in a battle with Saladin's troops--after all, a King should not be on foot with his men! Whether or not the legend is true, it says something that it was apparently repeated and believed.

King Richard was cut from a much rougher mold. He was a charismatic but tough leader, and he was not above killing prisoners to make a point. But for all his hardness, he lost his nerve and the Third Crusade when he was on the verge of capturing Jerusalem. After he withdrew from the Holy Land, he embarked on an odyssey, spending a year as the captive of the Holy Roman Emperor and finally returning to England in time to save the country from his brother, John.

The focus of the book is on King Richard and Saladin, but the minor characters are intriguing in their own right. One of these was Sinan, the "Old Man of the Mountain," who ruled the cult of the Assassins. Reston calls him brilliant, ruthless, mystical and ascetic, "with eyes as fierce as meteors." Sinan's followers owed him unquestioning obedience and would regularly kill at his command. "Once, to prove the devotion of his followers to a Crusader leader, Sinan had given a fleeting hand signal to two fidai high in a tower at Kahf, whereupon the two leaped to their death in the ravine below." Not a person to be taken likely, and a reminder that sometimes the past is not all that different from today.

Reston tells us that shortly after Saladin died on March 4, 1193, his scribe Beha al-Din wrote "so passed those years and men, and seem, both years and men, to be a dream." In "Warriors of God," Reston has done done a good job of bringing those years and men to life for the modern reader.

If you enjoy "Warriors of God," you might also want to take a look at Reston's "The Last Apocalypse," which is an equally entertaining book about Europe at the turn of the first millennium AD.