Buchmann's text provides an excellect introduction to cryptography for those who are comfortable with mathematical rigour, and have some knowledge of number theory. Buchmann does provide a review for each of the number theoretic concepts he introduces throughout the text. However, one who is unfamiliar with number theory and not comfortable with learning by proofs might get lost. The other problem with the text is its brevity. This might be suitable for a class on cryptograpy, but it proves quite detremental to self-study. The brevity is especially problematic in the section dealing with Elliptic Curve Crypto (3 and 1/2 pages) Overall, I would recommend this book to anyone who is comfortable with rigour, and doesn't mind brevity.

Very readable. If you are new to crypto,
this is the book for you.
Very well written.

For all its faults, this is an engrossing and valuable history. The Revolution and the Commune are brought to life particularly well and the broad scope of Parisian life between the two is portrayed in a painterly way, or in as painterly a way as possible in a book almost totally devoid of pictorial illustration and, more damagingly, worthwhile maps. For all intents and purposes, this book ends with the Commune. The rest of the story -- it purports to take the reader up to the First World War -- is dealt with in 9 pages which feel like an appendix. The most important social/political crisis of the period, the Dreyfus affair, gets half a sentence, two lines, which is inexplicable even under the circumstances. There is a problem with continuity. Following the excellent discussion of the Revolution, we are plopped down in the middle of the Consulate without a word about the rise of Napoleon. All of a sudden Charles X is king. What happened to Louis XVIII? This may not have much import for the story of Paris but it sure does for the continuity of the telling. A man's name appears without description -- we're supposed to know who he is. But he only appeared once, with his function, 30 pages previously. Fortunately, his name appeared in the index, but much else that should does not -- the index is inadequate. A glossary is needed; one forgets what the many French words and phrases mean and some are not translated. The one phrase we're all familiar with, however, "Ancien Regime", appears colorlessly only as "Old Regime". The text had, apparently, a good translator but needed a good editor and publisher to make it the book it could have been. These are not quibbles. But for all its inadequacies Paris: Capital of Europe is nevertheless a vivid in-depth portrayal of a fascinating city during a time when events there periodically gripped the attention of the world in a way unique among modern cities.

While Paris in not my alltime favorite city, I do have to admit it's special. This book, written by a German historian and journalist, traces the development of Paris in the 18th and 19th centuries and its transformation into the intellectual and artistic capital of Europe. Meticulously researched, Paris, the Capital of Europe, covers the years from 1789 to the First World War. The author presents the city to us in detail: the street life and repression, social customs, architecture, the growth of trade and commerce, health and hygiene, class problems, morality and art and entertainment. Willms then weaves all these threads together to show the reader why and how Paris became the capital of Europe. Anyone who loves Paris, European history or both should love, Paris the Capital of Europe. Paris! There really is no place like it!

This book was the perfect book for any school asignment. It gave very specific facts and dates. It only lacked in the fact that it was kind of boring. It gets more interesting as you go along though. Overall, it was a very good book.

For anyone interested in learning the basic facts about the Vikings, this little book is an excellent place to begin. Brondsted covers enough to give you a sense of the Vikings and their time. He also provides enough detail to spark interest in reading further.

_The Vikings_ covers:

historical overview of the 9th-11th centuries
weapons and tools
dress and jewelry
transport
towns, earthworks, and camps
coins and weights and measures
runic inscriptions
art
Viking way of life
Viking religious beliefs
the Viking spirit

Once you've seen the cover of this book, you've seen it all. All of the pumpkins throughout this book are simply variations of the same theme. If you're after recipes, you'll probably like the book okay, but if you're after carving inspiration, look elsewhere.

Who would have thought that you could get so many different faces from a pumpkin. The faces are true art and are quite easily done yourself if you wish to create your own.

I bought this book last year, created my own pumpkins that look just like these quite quickly. This year, everyone's calling us asking how we created those pumpkins and where they can get the book.

If you can hold a pumpkin and can handle a pocket knife the variations on the theme presented in the craft portion of this book will delight your children (up to 40+ years) and definitely your grandchildren. Giving titles of recipes in their orignal language but instructions in English is a delightful deviation from the conventional cookbook approach.

Historical fiction is at its best in Tracy Chevalier's novel Girl with a Pearl Earring. Although, the title itself does not disclose much in regards to the complexity of the plot; within the first fifteen pages of the book it is clear that the story's core is a fascinating blend of mystery, desire, and distrust.
These elements captivate readers just as Griet's peculiar vegetable artistry is able to entrance Vermeer in their initial meeting. After witnessing Griet's appreciation of color and her attention to fine details, Vermeer hires this 16-year-old girl to be a maid in his household. Griet must leave everything she knows: her caring mother, strong father, younger sister, her modest home, and even her Protestant neighborhood. However, the change is a matter of necessity; her family needs the income. Ever since Griet's father lost his sight in an accident at the tiling factory, money has been scarce. In the 17th century, the only viable option remaining was to rely upon a capable child.
Griet enters into the Vermeer household and learns the ropes quickly. Tanneke, a cantankerous maid who has been with the family for years, guides her. Griet is assigned the most tedious and disliked chores. However, one such daily task enables Griet to meet a young man who expresses special interest in her, even if Griet's feelings for him aren't always as clear.
A second challenge exists among Griet's relationship with the numerous family members residing in the house itself. Johannes Vermeer's wife, Catherina, is leery of Griet from the very beginning and her feelings of insecurity only intensify as time passes. Maria Thins, the domineering elderly relative, speaks harshly to Griet one minute and allies her in the next. Cornelia, one of the middle children, acts upon an inborn wild streak and succeeds in stirring up trouble on a daily basis. Thankfully, the other five children are relatively well mannered.
Lastly, but most importantly, there is the relationship between Vermeer himself and Griet. Vermeer is perfectly systematic as a painter, but completely unpredictable in all other aspects of his life. This characteristic leaves Griet with many questions. She feels the need to walk on eggshells whenever she is in his presence. One day, while cleaning Vermeer's workroom Griet is disturbed by the sense that something essential is missing in Vermeer's painting-in-progress. Boldly, she rearranges the folds of the blue cloth portrayed in the painting. When Vermeer inquires about the unapproved change, Griet replies, "There needs to be some disorder in the scene, to contrast with her tranquility. Something to tease the eye. And yet it must be something pleasing to the eye as well, and it is, because the cloth and her arm are in a similar position." This response is tremendously gutsy for Griet. After all, her role in the home is supposed to be that of a maid, not an assistant to the acclaimed artist. Nevertheless, within months this is precisely the role Vermeer secretly promotes Griet to. The more time Vermeer and Griet spend working together the more complicated their relationship becomes and consequently household tension escalates exponentially.
Reading this book is bound to spark your curiosity in Vermeer and you'll feel compelled to learn more about his actual life. This is true even for those who typically show no interest in art history; honestly, the book is that good! Tracy Chevalier has created a novel which infuses accurate details with a page-turning fictional plot.
Even after much searching and hypothesizing, nobody has been able to positively identify who the "Girl with the Pearl Earring" was, but reading this novel makes it difficult to believe she was anyone other than Griet, the young maid who left her mark on society.

The Girl with a Pearl Earring was an enjoyable read, but as a lover of sophisticated and surprising endings, I thought the book lacked a great conclusion. Up to the resolution, the story was well-written: the characters were vividly described through the eyes of the protagonist, Griet, with clear similes and her private thoughts about them. It was easy to imagine Catharina (Vermeer's wife) with her capricious, selfish ways, strong, level-headed Maria Thins (Catharina's mother) and her business senses, Tanneke ( the other servant)and her fickle-minded mouth, mean-spirited Cornelia and her hatred towards Griet, and Vermeer's quiet, lonely, alienated lifestyle. Almost like an arist herself, Griet leaves no details and events untold in the story, taking the reader through the first encounter with the Vermeers to the harsh life of a maid, and the beginning of a special bond between Griet and Vermeer, always remembering to voice her opinions and thoughts. The ending, though, was lacking, predictably drab, and anticlamatic. It was too realistic and harsh, when in fiction you can idealize and romanticize a bit to make. Still, this is only my opinion. For those down-to-earth, practical people who don't mind some dullness, the Girl with a Pearl Earring will suit you.

Also, this novel was a lot like I, Juan de Pareja, which is a story about a slave named Juan working for another big artist, Valezquez. Both books talk about how a painting got to be like it is in the present. Juan, like Griet, narrates the story and uses a lot of details to create intense images, but he later on has a happy ending.

This is a novel about fascination: fascination with colors, fascination with painting, but above all fascination with the painter.

Griet is a young girl in Delft in the middle of the 17th century. Because her father has gone blind due to a working accident, she has to start working as a maid. She is hired by the family of Johannes Vermeer, the famous Dutch painter. From the beginning she is fascinated by the paintings, the process of the painting, but above all by Vermeer himself. Her life at the Vermeer family is not exactly easy: Vermeers wife hates her, as does one of his daughters and the senior maid sees her as a threat. Moreover, Vermeers patron, the wealthy merchant Van Ruijven has taken a more-than-modest interest in her.

Even though Griet is at times a little unrealistically virtuous and her obsession with Vermeer is irritating at times, the descriptions of a lonely, intelligent girl trying to find a place in the world and of everyday life in 17th century Holland make this book definitely worth reading.

I bought this book because it was supposed to be a good intro into Alchemy. WRONG!!! I've had exposure to some basic terms and concepts from other books, but this author immediately begins with terms and processes that no beginner will have knowledge of and which the author never explains. It ends up being mumbo jumbo for the first 75% of the book. The rest of the book is in English but the first 75 % is never explained and will still remain incomprehensible. If you're a beginner forget this book.

This has some passages illuminating for the working lab alchemist. The development of the Azoth as an intermediary between the upper light and the lower light (i.e., your body & the water, that is, the two dragons, emerging as a tincting oil during their dissolution) helped me. This middle substance partakes of both, and is the priest or go-between that accomplishes the marriage.

It was somewhat difficult for me to get through the first part of this book (everything before part III). Once I got past that part, though, things started to be more clear. And now since I've re-read the first part, it's much more understandable. I'm sure that I'll be referring to this book while reading other books down the road. This book is an introduction/summary that ANYONE should be able read to get a good idea of Alchemy.

I recently ordered this book and was surprised when I recived it to find that it is TOTALLY IN FRENCH! (ALL 2400 PLUS PAGES) It appeared to have a wealth of information ( and of courses many thousands of names), but I had to return it. It would be nice if the web site indicated what language the books are written in.

Rietstap is good but DOES NOT contain "every valid European coat of arms" by any means. WHy do you propagate such myths???

Rietstap's intention was to compile the blazons of every armorial family in Europe, from Brittany and Utrecht to Dorset and Transylvania, and he made an excellent start before his death, though he ventured the opinion that the labor involved would be too great to complete it. Many, many names appear in his work that were previously collected nowhere else. The father and son team of V. Rolland and H. V. Rolland took twenty-three years to complete the monumental work (the Supplement), which eventually included more than 100,000 distinct blazons. The Rollands' six volumes of illustrations were intended to make life easier for those to whom formal heraldic language was as foreign as the French in which Rietstap wrote his descriptions. For uncommon names, and especially for non-English names, Rietstap and all the supplementary volumes to his original work can often provide a jumping-off point -- the discovery that, somewhere in the past, a family in which you're interested was important enough to be entitled to coat-armor.

And to the previious reviewer who complained that this was all in French -- if you have a serious interest in heraldry, you'd *better* have some familiarity with French, not to mention Latin!

This book has helped me while preparing for next year. I will be first year theology teacher, and focusing on morality. It has been a great stepping stone!

This book, which is part of the excellent series in Practical Theology edited by Don Browning and James Fowler et al, "aims at contributing to a practical-theological theory of moral education by striving to integrate empirically descriptive insights on the one side and critically constructive insights from philosophical and theological ethics on the other."

After an introductory chapter which lays out the author's framework and approach to understanding moral education (based on an interactionist standpoint - describing, analysing and explaining human functioning by looking at the interaction between the individual and his environment), the book looks at seven major modes of moral education, each in its own chapter:

- Discipline
- Socialization (these two are informal modes)

- Transmission (through formal moral education)
- Development (Fowler, Kohlberg, etc)
- Clarification (the values clarification movement)

- Emotional formation
- Education for character

In each, the author scrupulously lays out an overview of the major approaches first, even if he states that he will be focusing on one only. So in the chapter on Emotional Formation, he spends time briefly reviewing traditional emotion theories, from Aquinas through phenomenological approaches to cognitive behaviorism, before settling on the cognitive interaction theory of emotions as the foundation for the rest of the chapter. As promised, there is a rich mix of empiricial research findings with provocative ideas from philosophers from Plato to Ricouer. The writing is at all times clear and accessible (I am a layman in this area).

The last chapter weaves together a retrieval of classical theories of character with a narrative approach to a dynamic understanding of character, and was worth the price of the book alone. Highly recommended for anyone interested in psychology, theology and philosophy!

This novel is so original and surprising in its approach that the reviewer would do it a disservice to tell what it is all about. Suffice it to say that the narrator begins to describe the village, but then... And he goes on with his description, which leads to... And he explains what he has described, which means that... At every turn the reader's expectations are reversed, so that pretty soon he no longer knows what to expect and must share in the delight and sometimes the difficulty of continuous creation.

It looks very much like a classroom assignment subverted by a rebellious student, one of those wiseacres who disagrees with everything the teacher says. I will give nothing away if I remark that the village, its structure, its inhabitants, its government, its bureaucracy, its manner of thinking, once subjected to this treatment, become objects of satire. But at a certain point it becomes evident that the author is not just an upstart; he knows perfectly well what he is doing, for he is also methodically exploding conventions on a larger scale: language, logic, literature, the whole enterprise of social life and regulation. The novel-prank takes on a higher meaning, which is spelled out the conventional way in an afterword by the translator, Johannes Vazulik, who wrote his doctoral dissertation on the Austrian writer Gert Jonke. Vazulik is to be commended for making GEOMETRISCHER HEIMATROMAN, written in 1969 and revised in 1980, available in English for the first time. Judging by the examples of German he gives, the translation itself was a tremendous feat. (Dalkey Archive Press, with its wonderful list, is also to be commended.)

A final observation: there is a curious parallel between GEOMETRIC REGIONAL NOVEL and EINSTEIN'S DREAMS (1993) by Alan Lightman. Neither is a novel in the strict sense of the term, both return to the same scene again and again to achieve new perspectives and both occasionally leap into astonishing flights of fancy. There is one sequence in GEOMETRIC REGIONAL NOVEL that is absolutely breathtaking in its invention, horribly fantastic and horribly real at the same time. Lucian, Aristophanes and Kafka would have been proud to have conceived it, and if your heart goes where the wild goose goes you must read it.

We can read the writer's words.

Yes, let's read the writer's words.

Other than the meaning, the writer's words are empty.

Worth reading, reminds me a little of Calvino.

BORING. I could not get into this book for the life of me. I read through chapter 2 and quit reading......

What do art historians and radical Irish political groups have in common? In this book, a (fictional) Vermeer painting owned by the Queen of England. Patricia Dolan, bereft Irish-American reference librarian at the Frick, falls hard for her Irish cousin and within weeks finds herself ensconced in a remote cottage in Ireland with one of the objects of her desire--the tiny "kidnapped" Vermeer painting that is being held for ransom. Patricia tells us her story in retrospect in the form of a plain-spoken journal and simultaneously reveals her interconnected, immediate musings on loss, love, art history, philosophy (Walter Benjamin in particular), national identity, politics and geneaology. To her credit, Weber clearly and cleverly conveys her complex tale in this slim and compelling novel that manages to be, like a Vermeer painting, both understated and profound.

Historical art expert Patricia Dolan has never fully recovered from the death of her daughter that subsequently led to her divorce. She throws herself fully into her work at New York's Frick Art Reference Library to forget her inner pain.

Her distant cousin, Michael O'Driscoll comes to New York to obtain her help. Soon, the duo becomes lovers. She leaves America to live in a cottage in a remote part of Ireland. As the long winter sets in, Patricia has only a stolen painting by Vermeer, THE MUSIC LESSON, as company. As she keeps a diary, Patricia soon begins to transform herself, guided by the painting that is her sole companion. She now knows that she must choose between the beauty of art and the mundane pragmatic world of politics where love is not part of the equation.

THE MUSIC LESSON is a clever, but strange psychological thriller that will elate sub-genre fans. The novel is mostly told through Patricia's diary, but that device does not slow down the tale for even a nanosecond. The story line is crisp though readers will question the naive motivations of Patricia even in her numb state. However, what makes this novel a winner is the characters, especially Patricia and the person in the painting. As with OBJECTS IN MIRRORS ARE CLOSER THAN THEY APPEAR, Katherine Weber scribes a taut thrilling tale of self awareness.

Harriet Klausner 3/17/99