This is an amazing collection of touching plays. Unlike most one person plays--- these stories are spoken through the voices of women, real women. I myself have seen a selection from this book performed and I was absolutely in awe of the unknown brillance of this tapestry of words. I can only hope this book will once again be published, so that others can enjoy it as much as I did.

Are you ready to sit back, relax and laugh a lot? Well, if you are, there is not a better book for you to read than Johan Padan and the Discovery of the Americas. Being that this piece of fiction is a fast read, it is great for a wide range of readers. From the young to the elderly, I'm sure everyone will see the humor. Behind the humor lies a story that will captivate many. Once you start reading this book you will realize that it is not very complex. It is almost a one character story with a few off stage characters. Dario Fo, the fantastic author of this book manages to fit one man's journey to America hundreds of years ago into under 150 pages. The novel contains humor, action, sex and many other concepts that help make any reader enjoy a book. Once you start, you will not put it down, and I do not wonder at all how Fo managed to win the Nobel Prize for literature. His ability to take a rather bland topic and spice it up is amazing. The ability to deeply describe scenes where Johan is alone or with another woman is amazing. He created a character with a strong voice and one very interesting journey. Johan meets almost everyone: from the men and women around Europe to the almost cave like Indians he encounters when he reaches America. This story will leave you spellbound and screaming for more!

I have chosen to review this book in English for a very good reason. I run a computer training school in Northern California. We have had a flood of interest from a very large community of Spanish speaking clients that have been frustrated with traditional computer schools that only teach in English. The students all report that it is difficult enough learning Microsoft Office 2000 applications, but even more difficult with the language handicap. These books have leveled the playing field. Now our students can focus on the application in Spanish while learning English at another school. Our lectures are still in English, but these books make it very easy to follow along. We are all pleased with the ease and clarity in which the books are written. If you know of anyone that is struggling with both English and Office 2000, I highly recommend this book. The book comes along with a CD that has examples, audio clips, text and lessons, all in Spanish. As an added bonus, there is included, a copy of Windows 98 second edition that converts your installation of Windows 98 from English to Spanish, making the lessons very easy to follow. We advise our students to focus on learning how to use the applications, but most jobs here, at least, require at least a competent level of English comprehension.

Dario Nardi's "Multiple Intelligences and Personality Type" represents a comprehensive look at the concept of intelligence through three sections and provides great "workbook-style" exercises for personal reflection. The first, personality and intelligence explores eight styles of personality type (Keirsey Four Temperaments taken a step further) and gives real-life character descriptions to provide concrete examples of those types. The second sectionon Multiple Intelligences, explores Howard Gardner's eight intelligences and gives you two different exercises to find out your strength in that intelligence---these are worth the price of the book. The third section, Intelligence and Conciousness, Dr. Nardi explores intelligence from a unique perspective--through the understanding of the different concious and unconcious perspectives people go to for analysis and learning. This section is complex, but is accompanied by exercises that put the learning to use and makes the information easier to grasp. I would say that anyone interested in personality and personal development should purchase this book. It seems like a great book for counselors, coaches--or the like--that need material to help people build interpersonal and intrapersonal skills for furthering their growth and development. I would like to see what others thought about this book---so if you have read it, let everyone know what you think--Thanks!

Now with a new introduction by Dario Melossi, Punishment And Social Structure by Georg Rusche and Otto Kirchheimer offers significant scholarship in the study of criminology, and one that traces the origin of its ideas to an article written by Georg Rusche in 1933, entitled "Labor Market and Penal Sanction: Thoughts on the Sociology of Criminal Justice". Expanding on the original article's ideas to classify the history of crime into three primary eras - early Middle Ages with emphasis on penance and fines, later Middle Ages marked by severe corporal and capital punishment, and the seventeenth century with its development of the prison system, Punishment And Social Structure is an involving essay about the foundation of society and its treatment of miscreants and a strongly recommended addition to professional and academic Law, Jurisprudence, Penology, and Criminology Studies reference collections and reading lists.

"Ruben Dario" is the pseudonym of Felix Ruben Garcia Sarmiento. He was born in Metapa, Nicaragua (today known as Ciudad Dario) in January 18, 1867.

From the inside cover of the book: "One of the greatest poets of all time in any language... [Dario] changed Spanish-language literature forever in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as the seminal figure in the international movement known as "modernismo". Perhaps not since the prodigies of Spain's Golden Age has one poet managed to influence the course of Spanish-language literature so profoundly and permanently, virtually defining poetry both for his generation and for those to follow."

Whether Dario's name is new or already familiar to you, this book will be a joy to read. Amazon.com made this book available for purchase several months before it was actually published. Considering the price of the book, for me it was a purchase purely based on the faith that it would be good. Well, I'm far from disappointed, it's worth every cent!

As a native Nicaraguan who's read much of Dario's work in Spanish, I can honestly say that the authors' translations demonstrate tremendous understanding, sensibility and affection for Dario's work. His poems are presented in Spanish on even-numbered pages and English translations are presented on odd-numbered pages.

The themes of Dario's poems run the gamut: life, love, death, despair, politics, etc. Here's a couple of excerpts:

"VERSOS DE OTONIO"/"AUTUMN VERSES"

When my thought strays to you, it becomes perfumed;
your glance is so sweet, it turns profound.
Under your naked feet there is still the whiteness of foam,
and in your lips you epitomize the joy of the world.

Short-lived love has a brief charm
and offers the same end to delight and sorrow.
And hour ago I engraved a name in the snow;
a minute ago I expressed my love on the sand.

Yellow leaves fall on the boulevard
where so many loving couples stroll.
And in Autumn's cup there is a vague wine
into which your roses, Springtime, will drop their petals.

"LO FATAL"/"WHAT GETS YOU"

How fortunate the tree that is scarcely aware,
and more so the hard stone because it no longer feels,
since there is no greater pain than the pain of living,
nor deeper sorrow than conscious life.

Being, and knowing nothing, and being without a true course,
and the fear of having been, and a future terror...
And the certain dread of being dead tomorrow,
and suffering because of life, and because of shadow, and because of

what we don't know and scarcely suspect,
and the flesh that tempts with its fresh-picked bunches,
and the tomb that awaits with its funeral bouquets,
and not knowing where we are going,
nor from where we have come....!

I bought this book our of curiosity as I wanted a historical reference on how people ate in the Mediterranean as well as general guidelines on how to eat healthier. For both these purposes it has exceeded my expectations.

The latter part of the book is filled with medical information regarding the Mediterranean diet as well practices one needs to follow to be accordance with the diet. For fun I followed the guidelines set out by the diet. The only difficult part was eliminating red meat, dairy and simple carbohydrates from my diet.

Amazingly (I am still floored by this) I lost 13 pounds over the course of two months. 13 pounds, and without any additional exercise! My goal was not to loose weight but eat a more natural, healthy way so you can imagine my surprise as the pounds came off. Additionally my energy level has soared and I find I have the endurance to work harder, longer.

Obviously this diet won't be for everyone and neither will the book. It is translated from Italian and there were a couple places where I felt something was definitely lost in the translation. But overall the authors vivid detail of ancient diets and well as today's current Mediterranean diet makes it a worthy investment. It has certainly improved the quality of my life which has endeared me to this little black book.

This book presents a proposal for a novel scanner design based on knowledge gained from the author's experience in the field of high energy physics that should allow faster data acquisition with less cost to health care organisations and radiation dose to the patient for cancer screening purposes. The use of the 3D-flow electronics system which proved to be very useful in other areas and constitutes one of the major contributions of the author might be a sensitive solution for hardware design of medical imaging systems.

The book is generally well written, unique ... useful ... brings together the essential elements of state of the art PET technology ... contains many chapters... very detailed information about ... methodology ... helpful discussion of ... underlying science and technology ... good breadth of applications and approaches ... a resource for the scientist ... valuable reference ... for the research student ... postgraduate courses could usefully use this as a recommended text. ... chapters ... grouped to emphasize the aims of the book . ... amply illustrated with relevant and helpful diagrams as well as extensive bibliographies ... should be on the bookshelves of both researchers and students of nuclear medical imaging.

During the last decade, a considerable number of articles and reports have been published reporting innovative designs of PET scanner's components, but only a few books are available and none of them has been published in the specific area of PET scanners design. The content covers very well the field as a book mainly intended for researchers working in the area of nuclear medicine physics and related fields, as well as for many of the physicians working in this specialty. Some of the proposed topics have high impact and many readers would welcome such good reviews that would alleviate the need for consulting many isolated references. There are, however, some minor mistakes due, in my opinion, mainly to the fact that the author belongs to the particle rather than the medical physics community.

It is amazing how revolutionary inventions come from the capacity of putting together technological progress in different fields and a few simple but smart ideas. The final result looks "simple", "evident", but only "after". This is the case of Crosetto's invention which is in my view a real a revolution: the possibility of transforming a PET scanner into a one year check-up tool is a real breakthrough in the battle again cancer and I wish it will be a reality as soon as possible.

Improving detector dimension and efficiency has been impossible up to now because of the bottleneck of the electronic system which should be capable of doing too many calculations in a short time: Crosetto's smart idea in coincidence detection is replacing the need of executing 26 thousands trillion comparisons per second and sending the results of these comparisons to a single channel, what it would have been required to increase the dimension of a PET from about 20 cm to over 150 cm. The implementation of his innovative algorithm, requiring only 12 million comparisons per second, is only made possible thanks to his innovative parallel hardware architecture. These innovations, allowing also the elimination of the boundaries between the elements of the PET detector (the book describes this problem in chapter 13), increase the overall efficiency of over 400 times: in practice they allow to capture 10 photons out of 100, instead of 2 out of 10,000 captured by the best PET currently in use. This results into a 1/30 reduction in the dose to the patient with a substantial improvement in image quality. This is really something!

I really hope that this device could be developed as soon as possible regardless of the current economical practice in the industry of delaying the introduction of innovative tools to absorb investment costs. Our health is much more important !

Oncologists and others interested in cancer screening: Pay attention to Dario Crosetto's book on cancer screening by PET. This is an important work. Positron Emission Tomography (PET) has been around for some time as a tool for imaging active cancer within the body and for research on the brain. PET shows regions of high metabolism, a characteristic of cancerous tumors. However, many oncologists dismiss PET. They are unfamiliar with its use and with interpretation of PET images compared to MRI or CT; the cost is high; the radiation dose is large; and until recently, insurance companies would not pay for a PET scan.

Crosetto's book describes how this situation can be improved by increasing PET scanning efficiency by a remarkable 40,000%. He focuses on improvements to detector geometry, as well as innovative data processing techniques that make better use of the raw detector data. Cost, time and radiation dose could be dramatically reduced, allowing PET scans to be widely used. No longer would anxious patients and their loved ones have to wait a few more months for another CT scan to see if that dreaded spot has gotten bigger, meanwhile possibly spreading cancer cells throughout the body. Also, a single screening PET scan per year could replace multiple cancer screening tests (mammograms, colonoscopy, lung x-rays, etc), and even circulatory system and coronary screening, for much less cost and more complete coverage.

The book's preface and several other sections describe the basics of PET, its promise and current limitations, and the main ideas of Crosetto's improvements, in relatively non-technical language. For those interested in early cancer detection or brain research by PET, it is a worthwhile introduction. The rest of the book is a detailed exposition of current PET equipment, technology and limitations, and a design recipe for an improved PET/SPECT/CT multimodal system. Ample technical information, detailed physics and logic flow explanations, and an extensive reference bibliography allow one to check the author's claims and evaluate the advantages of the proposed new system.

The book has minor flaws such as insufficient explanation of some factors and lack of units in a few formulas and equations, and missing references for some data, but these omissions are either unimportant or easily checked with a little research on the Internet.

Maitland has written a very admirable study of one of the world's most interesting horror filmmakers. She even goes to the trouble of defending the more nonsensical moments of Arengto's films. For example, the scene in Suspiria where a murder victim stumbles across a room full of barbed wire makes no logical sense, but after you read Maitland explain how Argento works (kind of like surrealists, he uses a technique called "Automatic writing" which involves very little, if any, editing) you begin to understand that maybe Argento isn't neccesarily TRYING to make sense. At any rate she does a fine job of defending him, as well as delving into recurring themes. One of the better books on a director you will ever read.

This is a great book. If you're a fan of Dario Argento, the Italian maestro of horror, or if you're just a fan of well-made, artistically-minded horror films, you should read this book (and should take a closer look at the films of Dario Argento).

"Broken Mirrors/Broken Minds" is out of print, but you can buy a used copy through Amazon.com (as I did) for a cheaper price. But then you must prepare yourself for a whirl-wind.

This book discusses in intimate detail the films of the great Dario Argento. The introduction gives us some context of who he is (ex-film critic, master of the beautiful and profane), where he came from (an Italian movie-making family and the tutelage of spaghetti-western-maker Sergio Leone), what he does (makes a particular style of thriller called a giallo and often draws on the broken imagery of dreams for his most effective material).

Then we're off on a film-by-film analysis of Argento's career. We study the films he's made, the choices he's made within those films, and gain an appreciation, if we don't already have one, of why this Argento is such a unique, talented film-maker.

"Broken Mirrors/Broken Minds" often reads like the film school thesis which it is. Words and phrases like "diegetic," "filmic," and the old favorite "mise-en-scene" abound. But you shouldn't let that deter you, even if you aren't of the overly critical, or analytical stock. There is a lot of fascinating stuff in this book, and you're sure to walk away from it with a bigger, more profound appreciation for the films and career of one of the greats in the horror field, Dario Argento. And if you haven't seen all of Argento's films, or if it's been a while, reading this book is a great excuse to catch up on them.

What surprised me most about this book was that it was written by a woman. I didn't realize until I turned the last page of the book and read the "about the author" section that Maitland McDonagh has two X chromosomes. I guess I assumed because of the subject matter--the deliriously violent, at times arguably woman-unfriendly world of Dario Argento's deep red "filmic" nightmares--that a man must have written the book. But what a great perspective is given from the eyes and mind of a woman writing intelligently about horror films. You must go get this book.

I have learned so much from reading this book.

I purchased it when it first came out (long ago kiddies) but since then have ordered an extra copy.

McDonagh is an excellent writer, very cerebral, very descriptive, and thorough.

She dissects each film bit by bit until you, the reader, have a COMPLETE understanding of Argento's films and the way he thinks.

This is SUCH a small price to pay for such excellent, in-depth research; it is like taking a film course for free, considering how inexpensive the book is.

Take my advice. If you love Argento (and not just because of the gore) read his films.

On the other hand, if you're the type who likes his films cause "the death scenes are cool" PULEAZE don't bother!

American theatre has been slower than any of the other arts to recognize the need to pay attention to what's going on outside the United States and Europe. Most introductory theatre texts make only passing mention of the theatres of Asia, Africa and South America. Anthologies of drama published in the States have likewise generally failed to address the dramatic literature of these regions. Consequently, most Americans, including theatre students, are woefully ignorant of the rich theatrical traditions of two thirds of the world's people.

In the context of this vast blindness, the Longman Anthology of World Drama is a milestone work. It includes both traditional and modern plays from China, India and Japan (integrated into the historical sequence rather than tagged on as appendices.) It treats of African theatre in connection with African-American diaspora theatre. It represents Latin and South American theatre with interesting works from the 16th century to modern Hispanic absurdism. On top of this remarkable diversity, it provides a very solid foundation in the traditional Western canon, with a particularly good sequence tracing the rise of modern realism out of romanticism.

There is an enormous amount of material in this tome, and much to commend. The only serious shortcomings are a sparseness and lack of clarity in the historical background articles (these will confuse students with no framework to build on), and some poor choices in excerpts of supporting criticism (the Victor Turner article will go completely over the heads of the uninitiated, and the excerpt by Zeami is a dull genealogy of the ritual roots of Noh theatre rather than any of the more interesting bits on the art of the performer.)

I'm very pleased with this anthology partly because of its international scope, but also because it provides useful theoretical documents that augment and support the plays the authors have chosen. The introductions to each period and country are detailed, interesting, and easy to read.

The students in my undergraduate theatre history course have almost unanimously agreed to keep this text as part of their permanent collection--a rare reaction indeed! The choice of plays was excellent, combining some wonderful translations of important Western European texts with interesting, hard-to-find world theatre classics.

I highly recommend it as a teaching resource--particularly for theatre history, world drama, and intro to theatre courses. Your students will thank you (and they'll keep this one!).