Modelling Sailing Men-of-war
Never seen anything better!
This book traces the progress of the construction of Majestic, 74, each step in the various stages is meticulously photographed in close-up, with the work actually in progress, and fingers or rulers giving a visual guide to scale.
The first chapters describe Mr.Reed's background, his workshop & tools and the reasons for his choice of scale and model.
Then the book takes us, in logical, but not necessarily chronological order, through the planning and construction process. Mr Reed favours a solid, excavated, then planked hull in preference to a built-up hull, as it was a commissioned project; this certainly saves time and effort, is more robust and looks more lifelike than the exposed interior of admiralty-style models.
In the text accompanying each photo (typically 4 per page), the author describes each process and gives hints and tips along the way. Some things I would do differently, but there are some interesting techniques used which I shall definitely adopt. The section on ship's boats is particularly helpful.
In the middle of the book are colour photos of the finished model, at anchor in a carved sea, surrounded by several bumboats - this looks so lifelike at first sight, one does a double-take! It is only the figures in the boats that give the game away - and they were not made by Mr.Reed!
I heartily recommend this to any amateur modeller, as a perfect teaching aid and inspiration to tackle bigger, more complex models.

I found "Modelling Sailing Men-of-War: An Illustrated Step-by- Step Manual" by Philip Reed to be well worth the price of the book. Following the builder/author through the modelling of the 74 gun ship HMS MAJESTIC in both text and photographs provided me with several techniques which I have already implemented.

The book includes a brief description of the ship and her history, an introduction, a description of the author's workshop and the building of the model with copious photographs that are well captioned. The captions not only describe the activity in the photograph but include many building suggestions and techniques.

I not only enjoyed reading the book but will certainly use it as a valued resource in future miniature shipbuilding projects.

Philip Reed has long been known for his superb miniature models, He has finally published a step-by-step manual of his modelling techniques, recorded during the building of Majestic, a 74-gun ship-of-the-line. While Mr. Reed builds to smaller scales than many modelers (typically 1/92 scale) the techniques he uses would be suitable for any scale. The book is composed of 385 black and white photos with brief captions that cover the construction of Majestic from hull to rigging complete with realistically furled sails. Also included are eight color photos of the completed model. Mr. Reed's photographic skills are superb and one cannot help but marvel at the model as depicted on the front and rear covers. Ship modelers in general and admirers of superb miniaturist Donald McNarry in particular, will surely want a copy of this book for their library.

This is a tale wonderfully told of an explorer's quest to fill in the blank spots on the map of Asia. Not only does Hedin present a clear and highly entertaining view of his travels, but he also gives us a portrait of his character. He shows us that he is a man with high goals and is undeterred in achieving those goals, even when all odds are against him. He shows us that he is also a very caring man, very much concerned about the welfare of his men and his animals. He also is a man that is awestruck by nature and is very concerned about not unduly intruding upon it or unnecessarily destroying it.

But most of all, this is an adventure story that is just plain fun to read.

A suggestion to readers who are not very familiar with the geography of central Asia would be to have on hand some good maps as the ones Hedin draws are quite limited and often fail to give the perspective that may be desireable.

I concur with NDylanRay@aol.com. This book is exceptional. I could hardly put it down. You feel the excitement and intensity of his adventures, you begin to understand the force that drives him (and you respect him for it), and you meet the people and the places that make Turkestan and Tibet 100 years ago like no place that you could ever imagine.

Sven Hedin's "My Life as an Explorer" is an exceptional work. Stylistically situated somewhere in between scholarly works such as those by Aurel Stein and pure "adventure for its own sake" works such as those by Thesiger, Hedin's explorations are astounding and wonderful stories. His bravery and thirst for adventure are unmatched--he seems to have a total inability to turn back from his goals. Yet the goals are noble, and his methods meticulous and scholarly, so one is not left with the impression that he is simply a daredevil seeking thrills. He singlehandedly filled in, in a fairly detailed manner, one of the last white spaces of "terra incognita" on the map of the world.

At certain moments in the book, especially (in my opinion) the discussions of the Lama Rinpoche, who vows to remain walled inside his cave for his entire life, Hedin's narrative reaches the heights of great literature, placing his work, I believe, among the greatest travel or exploration writings ever produced.

I read this book to prepare myself for a salescourse at the company where I work. As it turns out I am no salesman, but the trainer did note that I had a very good insight into the salesprocess. So good, in fact, that he advised me to become a selling consultant for my company instead of a salesman. All that, thanks to having read this book in combination with "The New Strategic Selling" (also by Heiman). If you really want to start selling, you must read this book!

Throw the old rules of traditional sales out the window. Stephen E. Heiman and his co-authors, Diane Sanchez and Tad Tuleja, state in no uncertain terms that to remain a successful sales professional, you need to change the way you view the selling process. They advocate a customer-driven model of sales as the only approach for long-term success. The book includes “personal workshops” to allow you to apply these concepts directly to your sales situation. We ...recommend this book to anyone frustrated by the limitations of product-pitch selling. Note: This book is a revision of Conceptual Selling (by Robert Bruce Miller with Heiman and Tuleja, Warner Books, 1987), which has been updated to reflect the economy of today and tomorrow.

This was another fantastic book by the same people who brought you Strategic Selling. It provides the blocking and tackling of sales situations that fills out the strategic approach of their earlier book.

This is a professional, mature approach to selling that is sadly rare in the profession.

This is an excellent text, especially its challenging problems and also the wonderful explanation of historical contexts. This 1st edition (743 pages) was published in 1971 and is the most appropriate one to use for a more leisurely course that covers both mechanics and some history of mechanics. Definitely less daunting than "An Introduction to Mechanics," by Kleppner and Kolenkow, 1973 - which has more difficult problems.

The 2nd edition (310 pages) was published in 1986 and was renamed "Introduction to Classical Mechanics," by A.P. French and M.G. Ebison, Kluwer Academic Publishers. This latter updated edition is much more compact and drastically removes most of the historical and discursive material. More emphasis is placed on rapidly developing the principles and applications, thereby achieving the same depth but reducing the number of pages by more than half; unfortunately, it's also much more expensive - characteristic of Kluwer books. It seems to be more often used in British universities.

I worked through French's challenging problem sets in Newtonian Mechanics while I was in the military and found out that I could "do physics." I immediately returned to school to earn my physics degree. A lot of authors mention in their prefaces that the best way to learn physics is to do problems. I agree. Reading the text of this book is easy for anyone who desires enough to do it. Working the problems (always the tougher and less convenient half) will pay dividends in confidence and deeper understanding. This book--like the rest in the MIT physics series written by French--has all of the answers to the problems in the back of the book that allows independent study. The book is well-motivated and gives a lot in return but asks a lot of the student in his or her maturity and perseverence.

I think it's THE book of mechanics for Physics' students. Itcovers from basic mechanics (kinematics, newton laws...) to sometopics of classical mechanics. It has many clear demonstrations that are not found in other books for engineers (like Resnick, Tippler...) and contains excellent examples. It has a high level but is very easy to understand. French style, that combines history, original observations, clearity and high-level topics makes you love Mechanics.

This is a wonderful Study Bible. The scripture translation is very understandable.. for those who can't really get into the thees, thous, and thines, this is for you. Passages are also indexed by topic... if you need to find a scripture on lust, faith, love, whatever, the index is helpful.

At the beginning of each book in this Bible, it gives you a background / history, as well as how you should read the book.

Also, it has 3 reading plans so that you can get to know the Bible on a regular basis... I really cannot express how much I love this Bible.. It is an awesome thing.

Also included are:
Well known biblical events, Noteable psalms, an outline of old testament history, a map index, and other goodies.

If you are a newcomer to Christianity or a have been keeping the faith for years, this Bible is perfect for all. I am 22, and out of all Bibles I have ever purchased, this is the one I was able to comprehend most. I definitely recommend this.

God bless.

Looking for an appropriate Bible for study is frustrating when half of them at the store are shrink-wrapped. I took a chance on this and was pleased. Intelligently written and with good notes. I would hope that the authors continue to update this book over the years. I would certainly buy each new version for teaching my teen Bible study classes.

I was browsing over the bookstore, hesitant to buy a bible because I already have one which uses words such as "Thou, Shalt", but this one caught my eye. Not because of its color. Its presentation is quite simple and uncatching for my eyes.

Opening the book was an entire different story. Indeed, it was. I read some description of some of the books in the bible. It tells you practices and beliefs of the Jews and how these practices are passed on from one generation to another, thus, it affects the the collaboration of early Jew Christians with the Gentiles (outsiders "us")

This book is for people who wants facts, reflection and realization, but we must pray for God's wisdom and guidance. The short explanations are man-made and we should use them with discretion. We must also reflect on our own time.

Always remember that the bible is the Word of God. And the Word is Jesus.

God bless all those who believe. May the Sprit of God dwell on them. May the LOVE, faith and hope for God and Neighbor justify ourselves before Him.

Time and this world is passing by so fast. All forms of evil has oaraded before our very eyes-- from the wars, mass murder of jews by hitler's regime, merciless killings of Japanese in Asia, children used as juman experiments in Asia and Europe, Famines in Africa and other places., Earthquakes in various places in the early and late 1900. Now, the yeast of Las Vegas and Hollywood that controls the mind of our youth in America and in the World. I come from Asia and I have experienced the abomination of this world brought by media. The wrong is justified as right, and the right wrong. Sex revolution is considered modern and it has side effects. It caused divorce, illegitimate children, lust, violence, promiscuity etc. The world is getting drunk with evil. People doesnt even accept the fact that evils are no longer the wars or the murders, it is in our books, magazines, televisions, video games, etc.

My country has natives that live naked or half naked. When I look at them, they have innocence in their eyes and they're not afraid nor ashamed. wherelese, the naked women parading themselves on TV conveys the opposite of what I saw. How different!

This bible made me realize these reflections as I go on with my daily life. Pieces by pieces I try to put the puzzle together and I'm beginning to realize. I simply searching for the answer with what I should do in my own little way.

To all of you, just remember said " When you see the clouds rising in the west, immediately you say 'Its going to rain,' and it does. And when the South wind blows, you say, 'its going to be hot,' and it is. Hypocrites! you know how to inerpret the apperance of the earth and the sky. How is that you dont know how to interpret this present time?"
- Luke 12:54-55

HEARD ABOUT BOOK VIA ART BELL RADIO SHOW. ONE THING: DID NOT KNOW AS AUTHOR CLAIMED, THAT 1994 CRIME CONTROL ACT OF CONGRESS FORBADES HOARDING MORE THAN A 6 MONTH SUPPLY OF FOOD. AUTHOR WELL LEARNED, ARTICULATE AND WELL ABOVE GROUND, IN CLEAR THINKING; RICH IN PRACTICAL ADVICE. THIS IS A SUPER BOOK.

I loved all the hints and practicality of this book, it was full of pictures and charts and other resources.

This is the first book that I have read, that covers all phases of surviving a nuclear attack. It is the authors view that the chances of a surprise attack has actually increased since the end of of the Cold War. But he clearly shows that it is quit possible to survive an attack. The book is not politically correct, making it enjoyable to read and study.

"Philip Jenks should be feared for what he's yet to write. His first full-length book reads as if Patmos had been an island in West Virginia, and now that Jenks is back among us, all will be converted to 'The New Jesus,' or at least made to look back over our shoulders. These are poems of reckoning, and poems to be reckoned with. Some of what sets Jenks apart from the slew of 'new American voices' is his comfort under a quilt of dialects, and with schools of thought that run the table up through a Foucaultian paranoia (in the foreboding 'Panoptikos') to the domestically ominous eye that his mother paints on the clock: 'His speech is from crevices / running diagonal through the /underneath what was A&P.'"

--Christopher Mattison, Boston Review

Philip Jenks has written one of the first great books of poetry in America in this new century. I can't think of a stranger, more necessary set of poems than those gathered here. Superficially, Jenks appears to have been schooled in some of the tactics of Language poetry, but the disjunctions of these lyrics feel less theorized than Language work and much more embodied, as in a spasm or a psychic hiccup. The "hypothetical antipodes," for example, engages the idea of an upside-down netherworld as a map of perverse inner space perfectly reflecting an injust outer world. It's as if Blake had read Olson or Hannah Arendt. "My mind gleams like the fangs/ of a viper in white heat/ dying to sink my teeth into/ the throat of something wrong." I noticed that Peter O'Leary unpacks some of the poems in this book (already!) in his book on Robert Duncan, Gnostic Contagion: Robert Duncan and the Poetry of Illness. Evidently, Jenks has epilepsy and O'Leary tries to attribute some of the aspects of his poetry to this condition. Whether you buy this connection, you should buy this book regardless. It is unconditionally terrific. Essential.

Philip Jenks has written a poetry of shards and ruins washed up from the Monongahela with Appalachian spirit, linguistic acumen, wit and terror. Some might note a disjuncture of sequencing, I find these disjunctures - the spaces between the poems - like the spaces between image and sound, audience, writer, reception and dictation. What is said and what is unsaid cohere in pithy and vibrant flashes of lyric. For what it's worth, I don't know who to compare Jenks to - all the better.

Osbert Sitwell, in many ways, could be considered a dreadful man: irascible and litigious, snobbish and bigoted, a W.C. Fieldsian hater of dogs and kids, even a sometime admirer of Italian Fascism. Philip Ziegler's biography notes Sitwell's glaring faults, but also his shining virtues, so that in the end Sitwell appears profoundly sympathetic, even lovable. He was accused throughout his life of being an aristocratic dilettante, yet in the end he produced more than 50 books, including some of the most vivid memoirs and art criticism of any English author. He was notably quarrelsome--as were his siblings Edith and Sacheverell--yet to family and friends he showed touching loyalty and generosity. Osbert Sitwell was one of the biggest fish in the big pond that was English literary society between the wars, and Ziegler does a brilliant job not only of portraying that society but of delineating Sitwell's significance in it--both as an individual and as a member of the brilliant, outrageous Sitwell family.

Philip Ziegler's Osbert Sitwell provides a new biography of the poet and novelist, surveying the Sitwell family and the literary temperament of the times which influenced and formed his life. Recommended for any student of the Sitwell family.

Author Philip Ziegler poses the question: Is Osbert Sitwell worth a book? Naturally, having written a superb and colorful biography of a second-rate writer but world class eccentric, his answer is yes. I agree. Osbert is a piece of work -- and a bundle of contradictions. An elitist with kindness and thoughtfulness for all classes of people; a pacifist who liked to be known as Captain Sitwell for his brief stint in a fashionable regiment; an epicure and lover of luxury who was nonetheless broke for much of his life; and a never-quite-in-the-top-rank poet and novelist whose most enduring work is his autobiography. Ziegler's biography is meticulously researched and documented; fluent, witty and affectionate.

I have only one thing to say, and it's more of a question than anything else:

Why is such a masterpiece (this book), the best of it's kind on one of America's greatest showman, out of print?

That's too bad because this has got to be the best book ever written about P.T. Barnum. The authors have done a meticulous job of researching this man's life and work, along with providing hundreds of long-gone pictures and posters covering every inch of Barnum's career. Books of this kind are rare and don't get any better than that!

This book is one of those books that you love to look through, tons of pictures, nicely laid out. And not only is it aesthetically magnificant, but it is quite possibly the most extensive source of information on Barnum available anywhere. It also has a good index and is laid out in a way that makes all of the information easy to get to, without reading millions of pages of stuffy prose.

The publishers didn't pull a Barnum on the public with this one. They deliver what they promise -- a fascinating, detailed, and engagingly readable biography of the first true showman. Amply illustrated, often with rare photos, this is a great book for anyone, not just circus buffs.

Read this book in two seatings. First rate non-fiction from my favorite author. Vivid scenes put you in his shoes; sad and happy at the same time.

Just bought it for my father for father's day.

With the possible exception of Goodbye Columbus when you undertake a Roth novel you are in for some heavy reading and a major time committment. No so with this novel. At almost novella length, Roth spins a somewhat possibly fictionalized story of the elder Roth's late life which despite being the father of a famous author, he is also a man full of memories and regrets.

The most moving of scenes which will touch anyone who has lost a loved one is the trip to the Mother graveside. Ultimately no matter how you behave during the visit; if you talk to the deceased, weed the plot or whatever, you walk away the same as you came in...alone... to paraphrase Roth. This an other flashes of the master make this and all Roth novels worth reading over and over.

Patrimony is a non-fiction account of the last years of Philip Roth's father, Herman, covering as well the family history which was so important to Herman. Not only is Roth a fine stylist, but the sensitivity of this account transcends even the exceptional style. By turns tragic, sardonic, humerous and moving, this book is a window into the values of late twentieth-century America, both good and bad