I like crafts. So my mom got me this book to make beads and other cool stuff. I want to make a lot of flowers to put around my room. I will also make them as gifts for people. If someone asked me what a good clay book is I would say "Baked Beads" by Laura Rice Bergan

Sir Richard Burton was a true legend -- he spoke more than 25 languages, travelled to all sorts of remote places, and had a fascinating life. If you enjoy armchair travel books, this one if for you. Rice travelled extensively in the 10 years it took him to research Burton's life. Burton has many "firsts" to his name: the first European to look for the source of the Nile, the first to discover Lake Tanganyika, the first to disguise himself and visit Medina and Mecca, and the list goes on. If not for Burton, we would not have the Kama Sutra nor the tales from Arabian Nights. You can just see Burton in his tent in Africa translating and keeping diary notes. This is one of the most interesting biographies I have ever read. A true adventurer.

If you design steel members and connections this book is an absolute necessity. It contains the standard AISC member properties, as well as standard specifications for connections. Most importantly, Vol I includes the complete LRFD design specification(s) (1993) along with 500 pages of detailed notes carefully explaining each section of the LRFD design method. I found the notes and design examples very useful, thorough and easy to follow in actual practice. AISC of course provides the same extensive design charts that were used in ASD, as well as expanded appendices for design practice and commentary for this "new" method. The only drawback is the typical supplement of errata for this printing.

The most incredible thing about this book is the fact that it's true! Burton led such an extraordinary life! I would recommend this book to anyone who is curious, but reluctant to travel, experience, and live. This book is also excellent for anyone who is interested in language, religion, or travel. Burton spoke 26 languages, experienced firsthand an assortment of different religions including Hinduism and Islam, and shows just how much one person can accomplish in a lifetime. Only 4 stars due to some dry bits in the book, but never a dull moment in Burton's life...

This was by far the best biography of the illustrious Richard Burton I have read. The level of scholarship displayed by the author is impressive and does justice to a man whose gifts made him one of the most impressive characters from history. I highly recommend this book as well as those written by Burton himself.

A mostly gripping account of an absolutely fascinating life. Rice tells in great detail the travels and troubles of Burton as he searches for the source of the Nile, penetrates the forbidden cities of Mecca and Medina, brings the Kama Sutra to the west, translates the Arabian Nights, and joins a snake cult in India, and that is just a small sampling of the accomplishments and endeavors of Burton, a man who was constantly exploring himself and his world and transforming both in the process.

Rice tells the story with such attention to detail you feel like you are traveling right beside Burton, and when he doesn't know certain facts about a specific incident, he will tell you that he is conjecturing, and how he came to the conclusions he did. The net effect is that you feel like you can trust what Rice has written as being authentic and accurate.

The book is kind of slow during the earlier chapters, but stay with it and you will be rewarded with one of the most fascinating accounts you have ever read. I read it more than 5 years ago and still recommend the book and find and give away stray copies to friends. GO OUT OF YOUR WAY TO GET THIS BOOK ! !

What struck me is that this book analyzes natural law within a legal context: many of the contributing authors are attorneys as well as philosopher. This is particularly helpful to our nation today, as I think more citizens will have to reassess the role of the judiciary these days.

For the latter half of the 20th century, worries over "judicial acitivism" and judges' making decisions that should be made by legislatures have been the domain of conservatives, with Roe v. Wade probably being the chief example. But now liberals have said similar things about the Supreme Court's Bush v. Gore decision. It is high time for intelligent discussion, and this book is a solid foundation for a dialogue.

By looking at natural law historically, legally, and philosophically, the authors of this book examine how natural law works and various challenges to it. This book is a very good introduction, and I have come away with a greater respect for natural law and its vital role in our nation, and also new questions to pursue (and more books to buy...).

The contributing authors are an impressive team of formidable thinkers, and while most of the writers clearly come from a religious background, the are pretty good about keeping what they say applicable to a secular society (the last two essays tend to be more theological than philosophical, and I thought that hurt their impact).

I think MacIntyre's essay on the role of the ordinary person in natural law is particularly valuable: if the American citizenry cannot execute sound moral judgment, our nation as a constitutional republic is in grave danger. Fuller's essay on Locke's struggles with natural law is an honest and challenging look at natural law's theoretical chinks. Riley's essay on tort law gave excellent lessons on liability, but with lawsuits being as common as they are nowadays, I would have hoped for more practical insights on today's situation, and possible remedies.

On the whole, this book is a good read and a good challenge. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in ethics or concerned about the present condition of the United States.

Common Truths: New Perspectives On Natural Law is a collection consisting of cogent remarks and prescient essays: Are There Moral Truths That Everyone Knows? (Ralph McInerny); Natural Law: The Legacy of Greece and Rome (J. Rufus Fears); Aquinas, Natural Law, and the Challenges of Diversity (John Jenkins); John Locke's Reflections on Natural Law and the Character of the Modern World (Timothy Fuller); Theories of Natural Law in the Culture of Advanced Modernity (Alasdair MacIntyre); What Dignity Means (Virginia Black); Natural Law and Positive Law (Robert P. George); Natural Rights and the Limited of Constitutional Law (Russell Hittinger); Natural Law and Sexual Ethics (Janet E. Smith); Contract Law and Natural Law (Edward J. Murphy); Tort Law and Natural Law (William N. Riley); Criminal Law and Natural Law (Ian A.T. McLean); and Natural Law in the Twenty-First Century (Charles E. Rice). Common Truths is scholarly, intellectually stimulating reading for anyone wanting to better understand and appreciate the permanent norms of human action and their relationships to a moral and political life.

I've enjoyed reading Martin Fowler other books. I've enjoyed this one as well. I did have a hard time reading this book at first because of the organization of the book. The book starts with discussions about patterns and their trade-offs. I was familiar with the architectures presented, but I was not familiar with the pattern nomenclature that was being used. I was easily thrown off track because of that. Luckily, Martin Fowler's web site ... has a nice catalog of the patters with short summaries that helped me understand the definition of the pattern name. After spending 1/2 an hour on his site, that the discussions were easily understandable and enlightening.

With that said, I'm disappointed at the structure of this book. I would expect the definitions of the patterns to appear up front, and the discussions to appear after the pattern definitions.

This book is the masterpiece. As Martin Fowler's Refactorings, this book will be a handbook of many, many developers. It is strange that after reading reviews of this book, I've found that many people do not understand the whole idea behind this book. If you come from the J2EE world you might not agree with some of the patterns presented in this book. But only experience in the field will show how you were wrong. If you have really complex business logic, trying to implement it with entity beans is almost always impossible. If you spent weeks fighting with your appserver environment instead of concentrating on business use cases, you would understand the value of these patterns.

Martin Fowler does it again. He manages to capture complexities of enterprise class application development in a simple, easy to read book.

If you've read any of Fowler's other titles, the structure of this one will come as no surprise. The first have of the book discusses the patterns in "narrative" format, and the second half presents them in reference format. If you are new to this subject, I highly recommend reading through the narrative section to understand how the patterns fit together.

If you've been involved in enterprise application development before, chances are you can simply flip to the second half of the book and start skimming the patterns. Each is only a handful of pages long and is accompanied by a description, use cases and example code.

Like other "patterns" titles, if you've been doing software development for a while you'll read the patterns and think "oh.. of course, I did that in xyz project". The patterns themselves may not be groundbreaking and chances are you've seen them in some form, but having a well documented reference of them nearby will be an asset to any software development effort.

Very well researched, this book reads more like a textbook than a literary piece. One would expect more from an author of 20+ books, though laying out the vast amount of information Edward Rice has gathered is no easy task. Albeit we should pay tribute to his concern for accuracy and discussing different accounts of Burton's life, the reader is easily distracted by too many details and the author's constant digression. But if you're patient enough to get through, you'll be fascinated by the adventures of Sir Richard Burton and his erudition. A geographer, explorer, linguist, writer, soldier, diplomat and a spy, he traveled through four continents, describing in immeasurable detail the cultures, traditions and places he experienced.

Burton lived a remarkable life and this is the definitive account. If you want to go deep into his life and adventures this is the book to get. But if you're looking for some light reading or entertaining adventures, search somewhere else.

Sir Richard Francis Burton spoke, proficiently, over twenty languages. A prolific writer and skilled translator, he wrote a very large number of books on the most diverse subjects (history, religion, geography, travel, sexology, ethnography, etc.); introduced the Kama Sutra to the West and translated from Arabic the Book of A Thousand Night and a Night (the Thousand and One Nights). He was also an explorer, soldier, fencing expert and, specially, a secret agent. He visited, a hundred and fifty years ago, some of the farthest corners of India, Africa, and South America, travelling, in most cases, through hostile and uncharted territories. He was one of the few Westerners who entered (and survived) the sacred Islamic city of Mecca, disguised as an Arab, and he was the first one to enter the forbidden city of Harar, in the heart of Africa. With a personal history like this (yes, it is all real, and there is more) it seems to me that even the least competent biographer would write an interesting book. Edward Rice, however, is more than a competent biographer and his book is really good. He describes in detail the adventurous and turbulent life of Burton, providing useful commentaries on the places Burton went to, the nature of the religions he became initiated in and contemporary society in general. Throughout the book it is evident that he researched intensely and that he visited some of the places where Burton lived. He is also objective to his subject, always justifying his statements with information. The book is clearly written and never boring. I am sure it is one of the best biographies of Captain Burton.

This is by far one of the best biographies I've read in recent times. Not only is the subject matter astonishing, capturing the life of one of the most exciting figures of the 19th century, the author focuses on the man's profuse writings, thankfully leaving out the once fashionable psychoanalytic approach of interpretation when writing biography. This is the third life history I've read on Richard Burton, and it's certainly the finest written and the most thorough.

Those of you, who are not familiar with R.F. Burton, are in for a thrilling reading experience. This man, probably more so than Byron himself, is the archetypal Byronic figure of the age: a linguist, (29 languages and numerous dialects), scholar of eastern literature and religion, particularly the mystical arm of Islam, Sufi; a practicing mystic; explorer of Africa (co-discoverer of the source of the Nile); a secret agent working for her majesty during England's acquisition of India's wealth, known to historians as 'The Great Game'. He was also one of the first white men, who made the Pilgrimage to Mecca, and as Rice argues, Burton was and continued to be a practicing Muslim, therefore his pilgrimage was deeply religious as well as a journey of danger and adventure. Burton was dashing, an expert swordsman and horseman, and a prolific writer, poet and translator who rank as one of the best of his time.

Burton is known to most as one of the scholars who brought 'The Arabian Nights' to the West...he heard a lot of the tales through the Persian oral tradition; memorized them in their original language, and sat around many a camp fire in the desert, re-telling these wonderful stories to anyone who would listen. Burton was a storyteller in the truest sense. But 'The Arabian Nights' only scratches the surface of his many translations from eastern literature - 'The Kama Sutra of Vatsyaya' and 'The Perfumed Garden of the Cheikh Nefzaoui: A Manual of Arabian Erotology', to name an infamous few...

What impressed me most about Burton was his alarming intellectual curiousity, his exhaustive industry as a recorder of foreign cultures. While other 'gentleman' of his time would rather murder the wildlife to take back to their drawing rooms, to then hang on their walls, Burton preferred to sketch and write about the places and people he came across in his travels to then share with the rest of us. He was an incessant scribbler. The man's thirst for life was daunting and this magnetic soul ensured he did not waste a minute of it...

Edward Rice's ~Captain Sir Richard Frances Burton~ is the definitive biography.

A very interesting look at the late Thomas Merton by Edward Rice, one of his close friends. The book is fairly small and easy to read and contaons a wealth of information by and about Merton which other sources leave out. Included are some of his drawings (rather "naughty" ones, too!), the way his opinions changed from the time when he first entered the Catholic church to the time of his death. Merton's views were continually changing and Rice is the only person who actually has come out and said in print what was quite plain to most of his readers: that at the time of his death, he was far more a Buddhist than a Christian. Many photos are included, as well as several of Merton's hermitage out in the woods of Kentucky, and several of Merton and his friends in his beer-swilling fraternity days along with his boasts of early sexual conquests). A great deal of commentary is given on the contemplative life (particularly useful to those considering becoming hermits) and on the role of peace as the full flowering of the mystical life. At the tome of his death, Merton was going to ask permission from his Abbey at Gethsemene to stay in Asia, as he considered the monks there to have a far superior insight into one's relationship with god and deep meditation than the ones in the West did, and with whom he seemed to be running into nearly continual conflicts with. great for anyone interested in Buddhism, Zen, Merton, or mysticism.

I recently hunted down a copy of this book. It was worth the trouble.

Written by a close friend of Merton's shortly after his untimely death in 1968, it is one of the few books "about" Merton which please me nearly as much as Merton's own work. Fluid, perceptive, it brings to life Merton's time and the struggles he and his world were confronting.

More importantly, however, it presents in a living form the concerns and hazards of the contemplative life - useful information for serious explorers who may be following a similar path.

Finally, "Sycamore" is illustrated with dozens of photographs, and also reproductions of Merton's own drawings. The author, Edward Rice, commendably keeps himself out of sight, but his own clear writing is a pleasure to read.

if you hate communism or Karl Marx this book is for you, I have read some other works by Marx and Engels and I felt this book was showing what the past of Marx and Engels lived like and trying to downgrade a movement. I would recommend this book to anyone because you do need to read both sides of a view point

This book gave an interesting viewpoint into the interworkings of communism and how it became such a world phenomenon. An excellent book for students!

The summaries in the book were way too short and wanted to kill them. the index in the back is too brief and does not contain every thing I wanted to know

I didn't knew anything about X-files characters and stories before reading this book. It is a great way to understand the stories behind the stories (why they did that story ? Why this character reappeared ?). However, if you are an experienced x-files' viewer you will not find a good reference about episodes, characters, writters, etc. Anyway, I enjoy its reading and it is a good reference for new or intermediate x-philes.

What can I say? it was great.