Werbner, an anthropologist from the University of Manchester UK, made a wonderful work in editing this book, which brings together high quality researchers and works. His excellent introduction gives the foundation for an anthropology of memory and the past in contemporary Africa, and raises essential questions about the colonial legacy, power, and memory as a public practice. Excellent book!

"The Challenge of the Disciplined Life" by Richard Foster is a very good book. Foster writes about how modern Christians can face the temptations of money, sex and power in the modern world. Foster proposes the use of the spiritual disciplines as weapons in this battle. As with all of Foster's other books, this one is very well written. Foster is the master of engaging his readers; all the while enlightening them. I recommend this wonderful book for everyone walking the path of the Spiritual journey.

This is a thorough overview on the vast issue of energy recovery form the oceans. It is important to classify it as trully useful brief guide in all currently proven technology fields, tidal, Ocean thermal (OTEC) and wave energy. Practically an assembly of thoroughly compiled papers, this guide will assess theoretical infrastructure, technological approach, advantages and problems, future research, added to an elementary assessment on economics; all within about 300 pages.
The rapidly rising international concern on wave energy technology, is faced with a considerable hazard in obtaining some basic and resumed information on wave energy technology and perspective. An increased percentage of the inquiries addressed to my office, are focused on demand for proven financial and feasibility data. This guide should prove of particular importance to students, academics and engineers seeking some comparative financial information on wave energy projects, compiled by the pronounced authority of Prof. J.Falnes. Although considerable progress has accumulated since when published in 1992, the book remains a definite and solid introductory guide -particularly so for the popular OWC (Oscillating Water Column) technology.
State of the art...is a risky issue to attempt -even as a title effect. That is among reasons on why only four stars are awarded.

Our descendants from 500 years in the future have to leave their own time frame because earth has been invaded by creatures which are systematically wiping out the population. Gale the leader states that the whole population of 3 billion people will be travelling through timegates to temporarily settle in the present day. They then plan to build new timegates which will carry them back to the Miocene era so they will not upset the natural evolution of man. The rush is on to get everyone through as soon as possible because the threat of one of the aliens arriving through time would be catastrophic because of their fast breeding cycle. One creature gets through and the chase is on to destroy it before it breeds. Simak creates a believable situation in regard to how our politicians and religious leaders react to the invasion from the future. This was a thoroughly enjoyable book and if the subject of time travel is your genre then I suggest you check this book out

This is a smoothly written book about the various things that varioius (western) cultures have considered evil throughout the ages. It covers topics such as faeries, Hell, the afterlife, the Devil, the deities of ancient civilizations (and how yesterday's "in" gods are today's evil spirits), and spends not inconsiderable time on the question of how Christianity has struggled with the concept of evil over the past two millenia. For example, in most Christian belief, God is omnipotent, and herefore all things, even evil, work only through His grace. But the Devil is also omnipresent in Christian history, and some Christians adopted a more dualistic attitude toward evil. One of the more interesting parts (to me) of the book came toward the end with the discussion of the early Christian sub-cultures of the Gnostics and Manicheans.

Anyway, a fascinating study. My main initial complaint with it was that it entirely neglects Eastern cultures. Well, duh, the subtitle is "in Western Religion, Magic, and Folk Belief". (Cut me some slack: on my copy, "The Powers Of Evil" is in bold red letters and the sub-title doesn't appear except on the title page.)

Once I straightened out my own misunderstanding, I enjoyed the book thoroughly, particularly at first. Toward the end I started to feel as though the scholar had specific biases that were coming out. For example, Cavendish seems to find the idea of latent psychic abilities in man a more plausible explanation for certain phenomena than the presence of spirits (poltergeist phenomena, for example).

There was also a fair amount of outright contempt for Aleister Crowley, who probably deserves it for all I know, but which seemed out of place in a scholarly work. There were other passages which seemed to express contempt for Satanists that while often contextually understandable still seemed out of place. (I don't need any help to feel contempt for wrongdoers or megalomaniacs.) And I find that I have come away with a somewhat muddled view of Satanism though that must at least be attributed in part to the muddled views of many Satanists.

The ending seemed to flounder a bit, but that's really okay, since the book isn't necessarily trying to make some larger point that can be neatly wrapped up and driven home by a closing chapter. Ideas of evil are not at all a uniform package and I would've been suspicious of any over-arching conclusions made.

Overal, I found the work very interesting; not as dry as it could have been, and very thought-provoking.

This book is a nice effort to give the reader an overview of the physical and metaphysical aspects of the sedona vortices. It includes great descriptions of the differing points of view on the vortex pheonomenon. On the down side, this book is kind of a tease -- it could be about three times as long. It is clear from the book that the author is very knowledgable. I wish he would have shared more of this knowledge. The author gave a good overview but left the reader wanting more. References would also be nice.

A nicely detailed account of the Napoleonic Wars. This book details the strategies of different Admirals used to attain victory. It discusses some of the different vessels used during the war. Almost every page at least has one picture on it. The book covers several battles fought during the war. It also gives details on the life of some the men (Officers mostly) who fought in the war. Presents a view of the politics of the nations involved. While most of the book discussed the Bristish, French and Spanish, the final chapters covered other nations not directly involved in the war.

Mr.Powers possesses grand ambition. He chooses to write about large and potentially profound topics. In this novel he gestures towards the potential use and abuse of the human imagination - the image he chooses is that of a blank white room, suggesting the interior of a human skull along with the proverbial bare page confronting a budding author. In one strand of the novel, this room is filled with borrowed art and other worldly concerns, imaginatively re-invented through recent computer technology. In the other strand, an isolated mind first covers the walls with memories, focused upon a former lover, and later partly disintegrates through lack of contact with the outside world. Salient to each situation is the idea of how much effort should be devoted to representing the world, and how much to living in it - while not a simple moralist, Powers seems to be warning against representation divorced from any heed to social and political realities, be these personal or global; that is to say, he at least complicates the notion of art for art's sake. The danger of becoming obsessed with the image, and forgetting the reality, is explored through the ultimate use made of the beauty of the virtual room, and through references to religions', particularly Islam's, prohibitions on representation. Powers also seems to be making a plea that we all need each other, for in high-tech Seattle, a team of people must work together in order to succeed, while in the hostage's cell in Lebanon, a mind atrophies when denied company.
*
At the end of the book, Powers acknowledges a debt to the memoirs of Western hostages held in Lebanon. His research certainly gives realism to this part of the story. He also uses literary techniques favoured by bestselling authors, such as Stephen King, to grasp the readers' attention. Thus, the protagonist, Taimur Martin, is quickly placed in jeopardy, he experiences pain and humiliation, and the entire tale relies on the tension in waiting for his potential release or escape. In a sense, this is all legitimate and engaging storytelling, but it does have a cliched and manipulative aspect. The depiction of the suffering mind is partly convincing, but pales when compared to, say, Solzhenitsyn, or Primo Levi (very high standards, admittedly). A weakness is also revealed in Power's ability to create characters - Taimur's thinks and converses with his captors much like he does with his remembered lover and, what is more, much like the way Adie and Steve and the all others in Seattle deal with each other. Prime among the conversational strategies of all these characters is a recourse to weak humour - weak puns, irony, and benign sarcasm - in Seattle this is merely annoying, but in the context of horrible depravation in Lebanon it is distracting, unconvincing, and inappropriate.
*
The Seattle strand of the book makes up its bulk - around three quarters of its pages. It is structured as a quest. This exact same structure is used by Powers in 'The Gold Bug Variations' and in 'Galatea 2.2'. Again, it is a proven way to co-opt a reader's interest, but in this novel the mechanism is obvious, and the quest itself of questionable appeal - consequently it feels rather crude. There are a large number of characters - they are differentiated by quirks and mannerisms, yet in conversation they blend, in part due to the failed humour mentioned previously, and also due to the relentless parading of references to works of art, literature, and music. This parade is especially galling as there seems to be an implicit thesis that in order to be part of the club of 'intelligent', 'interesting' people, one must be familiar with a canon of 'great works' - the works chosen are very conservative, as in other of Powers' books, and can not legitimately be said to be simply alerting the reader to the existence of works otherwise unknown. Another shared characteristic, both within this novel and across Powers' other books, is the attitude taken towards, and the depiction of, love. Every character adopts a nostalgic stance to love. Love largely occurs in the past; love is passive and motivates few actions; when love does bear consequences, as in the birth of a child, then this is rendered in a perfunctory, almost abstract way. It is as if Powers' wants love to be important, but is unskilled in actually embodying it living within his story. His characters are emotional adolescents. The core of this problem lies in his refusal to address the darker currents in human nature. If his characters have sins, then they are ones of omission. Malice, hate, true envy, jealousy, are not genuinely present; consequently his characters 'do' very little to each other. If they are reprehensible, it is for their lack of constancy or lack of passion. They are bland and, at the very least, half empty. Powers is never going to create a Macbeth, or a Hamlet, or an Iago. You might think that those holding and abusing Taimur in Lebanon embody darker forces, but they are hardly characters, being inarticulate and skeletal, and so their malice is not embodied but abstract.
*
Powers' language deserves special comment. I am baffled by those who call it poetic or beautiful. To me, it is ungainly, approximating the abbreviated rhythms heard in technical gatherings, conferences, or in recent journalism. It reads more like an introductory paragraph in 'New Scientist' or in 'Wired' than a poem. There is a laziness to his insistence of adding an extra clause, or several, when a single, well-crafted one would be far more potent and graceful (to some extent Don Delillo shares this failing, and he too is revered by some for his style). For beauty in prose I would turn to John Hawkes, or Samuel Beckett, or Denis Johnson.
*
Overall, it is hard to recommend this book. Powers has strengths, and these are probably best showcased in 'The Gold Bug Variations'. He has glaring deficiencies too. I doubt he will overcome them, since his writing, in its detail and in its overall structure, has not progressed from that novel to this. To read him is to come into contact with an 'encyclopedic' mind, as widely said, but, for mine, it is a mind in many ways immature.

It took me three tries over the course of a year to get started reading this book; each time I'd get a few dozen pages in and then give up. But the concept - paralleling the stories of the creators of a virtual reality system in Seattle with that of a man held hostage in Beirut, with liberal doses of Yeats, Byzantium and personal angst thrown in - was so intriguing I kept giving it another try, and eventually it took.

Still, it's a dense book, full of half-explained concepts and obscure literary references, and it's not for everyone. Sometimes you can get several paragraphs into a chapter before you figure out who's speaking; given the subject matter, I'm sure the resulting sense of disorientation is intentional on Powers' part.

"Plowing" explores the world of the internal - everything that happens in the outside world, from failed love affairs to Tianamen Square, has an internal side effect on the characters. Even some of the dialog between people is in italics, like thoughts rather than words.

Powers weaves together several stories that illustrate his themes of immersion and isolation: the brilliant mind trapped in a crumbling body, the blind-folded hostage, the computer programmers working day and night to create virtual reality while losing track of the real reality. In all the characters, the hidden internal world, with its past injustices and hurts, has to work itself out before the person can rejoin the outside world.

To really appreciate this book, I think you have to be able to step back and look at what Powers is doing. Trying to enjoy it for plot alone could be frustrating and confusing. By the end you have a pretty full sketch of each character, but Powers doesn't lay it all out for you - you have to piece things together as you go along. As an English major, I enjoyed doing the detective work, but it's not for everyone.

Knowing a bit about Yeats' life and themes before you begin would enhance understanding of this book. It also helps to have a general knowledge of world events in 1989-90 (Tianamen Square, Beirut, the Berlin Wall), because while Powers does a great job of capturing how it felt to watch these iconic events unfold on television, he doesn't always explain what he's talking about.

Overall, "Plowing" was challenging but intriguing. It wasn't always engrossing, but it felt good to finish it, like I had figured out something rather than just been entertained.

Richard Powers has a unique ability to see his characters' deepest inner workings and lay them bare on the page. I've read practically everything he's written, and the process of evolution from the start to end of each novel, from expectation and exegesis and exposition to synthesis, denouement, and afterglow is similarly mindbending and remarkable.

Plowing the Dark shows the evolution of many interrelated characters, not just the main two elements of the affectation of the book: a parallel of a man kidnapped and held hostage in Beirut's development of an internal mental landscape and a woman who has held herself captive in her real life as she creates a new world in a virtual computer environment.

Never a missed note in this book: never a misstep. The hostage goes through crises of soul and flesh; the woman becomes more and less complex, viewed through the deepest darkest parts of the people she works with.

Ultimately, and frankly, Powers can't bear to end his books, and the endings are often difficult to parse and appreciate. One story comes off well; the other plotline fades a bit for more. But in a way that gives rise to me thinking more about its conclusion.

It's trite, but his books don't really end when you finish them.

Power of Purpose would make a great magazine article, but there is not enough content here to make a good book. "Creating Meaning in Your Life..." is not what this book is about. There is lots of talk about how important it is to have purpose in your life, but little about how to create it. Mr. Leider has a great reputation -- it must have come from his other books.

Richard J. Leider believes everyone needs to find an individual sense of unique purpose. When you have this sense of purpose, you can use it as a central core of direction to guide your life and give it meaning. The book is simply written, easy to understand and targeted to a general audience. However, it also seems quite repetitious, in that the same ideas are explained many different ways. Some of these concepts are quite familiar, echoing some basic ideas about the importance of having a sense of mission, path, and goals, much like Laurie Beth Jones' book, The Path: Creating Your Mission Statement.... Finally, while some readers may respond deeply to Leider's spiritual and religious references, others may find them problematic, given the split in the business community about spirituality in the workplace. We... recommend this book for readers who have not yet considered this mission-focused dimension of life planning and for managers who wish to understand this perspective.

In 1999, I read this book 3 times, during what I still say had to have been the worst possible time in my life. It was a time of profound family betrayal, or acceptance of what I didn't want to believe about who my family really is, what they had expected of me for my 43 years of life, and the role that I blindly held. This book was a painfully compelling book for me to read, yet one that had supported me through my crisis, and led me to convert my family history into becoming a public speaker, a gender-based self-esteem coach, and a journalist. Last week, I decided to read this again, as I noticed that I am being invited to events that signal to me that I have made giant steps since reading this book in 1999. I am so excited about writing and presenting tailored training to make a difference in each of my client's lives. I had written so many introspective documents, for so long, that now, even though I continue to introspectively write, I am consciously and unconsciously talking as someone who is here to make a difference in everyone whose life I do touch in some way. I have found a level of peace through reading Richard J. Leider's book that required me to look deeply in my soul and befriend everything about myself. I actually giggle when I reread my journals from 1999, where I had written profound painful feelings that I experienced. I giggle because I see how I weathered my way through living the life I am meant to live. I gave myself or found in myself gifts that I definitely approve of having.

Regardless of where you are in your life, I suggest that you read this book, with a pen in hand to write down what you are thinking and feeling. Accept that this will be scary, at first. Do this, knowing that you deserve to love yourself for all who you are -- you are sent here to make a difference.

I had the same problem as a few other people in that following the code exactly for programs 1 and 2 they DID NOT work. I bought this book only a year ago so I shouldn't have gotten a bad CD but I must have gotten an old copy. Ventana is gone and the update obviously doesn't work - I am pissed that I am out the $$ for a bad book. It should have been a great book, however it falls far short as the CD is useless which makes the book just as useless.

Once you figure the problem with the CD, everything works just fine. I was able to use the provided codes to develop other real life application programs.

This is a case where the publisher has really messed up. From the other reviews I've read, some of the readers weren't able to get a replacement CD since some of the books went out with bad CDs. Although Ventana online no longer exists, the author has made replacement files available. I've found the book to be very useful once I got replacement files.