I bought this book based on comments from other buyers and the book is great. In fact my teacher also purchased this book and it's so much better than our school text book. I like how in depth this book goes and the variety of surgical procedures it has.

This is an excellent book if you are a surgical technology student. I bought this book in addition to my required book for school becuase it was so much better than the required book. It is very descriptive and has lots of helpful pictures. The AST has done a wondeful job with this text book.

This book is full of information that is helpful. I am in my second term of taking a Surgical Technology course. We just start the real meat of the course... from patient position, drapes, and starting in a couple of weeks gi surgery. This book has it all and the instruments used in the major and minor tray. We have now the Alexander's which is good for the breakdown of different surgerical procedures but when it comes to the Surgical Tech's role there is not much. I'm glad that the AST has finally written a book. It will come handy now and throughout my career as a Surgical Tech. Kudos to AST...well done!

Parents receive so much information about possible dangers to their children and what they can do to protect them that they find it difficult to know where to draw the line. What safety measures should they insist their child and other caregivers observe? Which ones are less important? This book helps them focus on what is most important. As manager of Texas Children's Center for Childhood Injury Prevention and the local Safe Kids coordinator, I hear many stories from parents about what problems might have been prevented if they had only known . . . Since we can expect each year for one child in four to be injured badly enough to need medical care, this is a most needed reference for parents.

Keeping kids safe sounds scary, but this book offers some simple solutions. The authors not only educate readers about safety at home and school, in the car and on the bike, they also tackle safety and sports, pools, and even farms.

Did you know that falls from shopping carts are a major reason why kids visit emergency rooms? The authors explain how to keep your kid secure in the cart. Do you when your child is old enough to cross the street alone? The answer surprised me. Do you when your child is mature enough to be home alone? They offer a quiz to help you decide when your child -- and you -- are ready for that big step.

I recommend this book for anyone who watches kids between infancy and age 14. After all, keeping our kids safe and secure is just as important as letting them know they are loved.

I used this book to study for the Here's to Your Health DANTE exam. It was an excellent study guide and hit on each and every subject on the test. The practice tests in the back of the book were very helpful. I would recommend this text to anyone studying for a proficiency exam.

A visionary account of the developments in the world oil markets in the early 1970's that culminated in the formation of OPEC and the dramatic price increase of crude oil.

Aside from some small errors and a missing index, this book is the definitive guide to LGB. A must have book for anyone who owns or collects LGB engines and/or cars. A very well written narrative accompanies each description. This book is timely and well done. Highly recommended!

This guide is absolutely mandatory for anyone collecting soundtracks and cast albums. The price ranges are accurate and the lllustrations fun and informative. I have used my original copy so much that I am ordering another. A must have for serious collectors and those new to the hobby.

This has got to be one of the most informative books I have ever read on this particular subject. Paul shows his complete and utter understanding of the subject matter. Icant wait for the next book by Paul

SPADA is a journal that contains some of most current ideas on historical swordsmanship by a number of the field's leading researchers. As a student of historical swordsmanship myself, I think it is an excellent step in the right direction for the progression of this school of study.

As far as the contents of the book are concerned, my hat goes off to the editor, Stephen Hand, for distilling such a diverse, and yet interesting range of papers from the vast array of excellent treatises available.

The book also features some interesting reports on some of the most recent activities undertaken in the WMA community. This provides the reader with a very good 'big picture' perspective into what advances are being made in what fields, and an appreciation for the vast range of people who are now interested in historical swordsmanship.

With regards to it's practicality, the book caters for many different tastes - whether you are interested in the finesse of renaissance fencing, or simply a medieval re-enactor using the trusty 'sword and shield' method. SPADA provides useful insights and a greater understanding of historical methods of fighting.

I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in gaining a greater appreciation of historical swordsmanship, and anyone who is curious to know what the swordmanship community out there is doing. I rate it as a 'must have' item, and I look forward to more SPADA releases in the future.

cheers

Matt Partridge
Secretary
Order of the White Stag

This is the most complete compilation of the source documents about St. Francis of Assisi. Included are all of St. Francis' own writings and all of the early biographies, along with historical and critical analysis. The book is over 1900 pages. Yet, if one wishes to really come to know the Poor Man of Assisi, this is one work which must be read.

Wilmott's Derivatives is an accessible introduction to the partial differential equation (PDE) approach to mathematical finance.

The basis of mathematical finance is the observation by Black and Scholes that when pricing a derivative contract, for example a stock option, the randomness of the value of the underlying stock can be used to balance the randomness in value of the option in such a manner as to eliminate all randomness. A trader can thus by continually rebalancing his positions guarantee the price of an option. This price is the solution to the famous Black-Scholes equation. Thus the pricing of derivatives becomes a suprisingly rigourous branch of mathematics.

The Black-Scholes equation itself is not a particularly difficult equation -- indeed a few simple changes of variables transform it into the one-dimensional heat equation and a closed-form solution for the price of an option can be written down. The proof that it holds and the implications of the proof are however not so trivial and the book does well at explaining these.

Mathematical finance does not end with the Black-Scholes equation for two reasons. The first is that more and more complicated derivatives products are continually being innovated which require new mathematics to be invented. The second is that the equation is based on certain assumptions which while providing a reasonable first approximation are not perfect; the research of new more accurate models is therefore active and ongoing.

The author starts with the definitions of the basic financial instruments and gradually builds up to the Black-Scholes equation. He does so in a clear and detailed manner. He then goes on to discuss various generalizations to exotic options and more complicated models of stock price movements.

The principal defect of the book is that mathematical finance is not a branch of PDE theory or applied mathematics but rather a branch of probability theory. The probabilistic aspects of the subject are skimped on with only a brief coverage of binomial trees, and the concept of an equivalent martingale measure which is the fundamental concept of mathematical finance not discussed. Interest-rate options and many exotic stock options are more easily priced both practically and conceptually from a probabilitistic point of view and the PDE approach to them can become contrived.

To summarize, this book is worth buying but the reader should treat its contents with a pinch of salt and concentrate on the first two hundred pages. It should be read in parallel with another book, such as Baxter and Rennie, which concentrates on the probabilistic approach to the subject.

I myself find a hard time writing a review about this book, and thus not to be misleaded by the stars I gave. Perhaps what's preventing it from 5 stars is the nature of the task rather than the author's capability.

The book is so comprehensive such that it's going to be very difficult if not impossible to find the book with greater coverage on the subject. The level of discussion should be on the intermediate level or first-year graduate students. A good background on basic derivatives or mathematics ( algebra, differential calculus, and statistics) will proof sufficient in most of the cases to follow the mathematical detivations in the book. Working out the exercises at the end of each section will be a great pleasure to all the derivative students. Unlike many other text books which provided many difficult but interesting exercises but never the solutions elsewhere as if it's the author's intention to keep the secret with themselves forever, the Book's Instructor Manual with the solutions to all the exercises is separately available through the Publisher. However, I feel that the unexperienced readers should spend some time with a more directly accessible derivatives book such as Hull's classic ( Options, Futures, and Derivatives Securities ) before approaching this book. Once this is done, you'll realize that the Author knows the subjects very well and has his interesting ways to take you to a very heart of the concepts.

I think there are 2 limitations of this book that should be put forward. Some mathemetical concept on modern derivative pricing theory such as martingale or measure theory are only scantly touched throughout the book. Yet I have a good perception that it;s the Author's intention to follow his preferred PDE approach on derivatives pricing and to make a book more directly accessible to a practitioners i.e., derivative traders or researchers, rather than the full academic researchers. Also the treatments on interest rate through sufficiently comprehensive, is far from completion. However, the literature on interest rate derivatives is very farflung such that it should be treated in a place of it's own. I myself don't really look at this as a handicap on this book.

All in all, I can't find any good reason why this book shouldn't be on derivatives section shelf.

Derivatives is the best book I have read on derivatives theory and pricing. It includes clearly written and readable theory on derivatives pricing, from plain vanilla to exotic options. Worked examples using Excel or Visual Basic span the gap between theory and implementation, which is often overlooked in other textbooks. In terms of usefulness, I would compare it to Tuckman's Fixed Income Securities.