Positives: Gorgeous photos and substantial fact-based descriptions of pre-1971 Mercedes Benz SLs.
Glaring NEGATIVE: Only five sentences and no photos on the SLs from 1971 to the present (350SL, 450SL, 380SL, 500SL, 560SL, SL-class, etc.).
IMHO, if it could be retitled "Pre-1971 SLs", it would rate five stars but, as it is, it was a near total disappointment for this '72 350SL owner.

SL lovers will find Meredith's book fun to read for the pictures alone. Lots of neat restored 300SL coupe & rdstrs, 190SL's and 230/250/280SL's with many nice detailed photos of obscure options, etc. I particularly liked the last chapter showing raw data from the factory about production details. Be aware that the book has numerous factual errors. For example, Meredith says that the W113/Pagoda cars had black engine compartments, including the underside of the hood/bonnet. This is WRONG. Those areas should be the same color as the exterior of the car. There are other errors as well. It is a pity that a book that is so informative and that so many people will doubtless refer to for many, many years helps to spread misinformation. Future restorers beware.

This book is a hazard to human mental health. Its portrayal of a certain woman of Middle Eastern extraction paints her as so atypical and promiscuous that it is offensive to me, even though I am not Middle Eastern. I doubt I could find one woman in the story who is not portrayed as overly sexual. Thousands die. It might give someone nightmares. The Japanese might also find this book offensive, for the overdone connections between Japan and evil terrorism. ...

Signed,
Julian Garberson, Linda's son,
who read this book.

The USS Louis & Clark has been hijacked. Commandeering the sub, a band of skilled mercenaries tie up the crew and sail the sub out into the Atlantic. The sub, an SSBN, carries nuclear ballistic missiles - enough of them to start and finish WW-III through WW-IX. Thus begins the "The Triton Ultimatum". The aims of the hijackers aren't known, but they are experts at running a nuclear sub, and they clearly have plans for the ship's missiles. With an odd hint of "The Hunt for Red Oktober" (which came out 6 years after this book) we learn that the hijackers are not only brilliant, but have their own grudges against the world. Meanwhile, the US tries to hunt the sub down, even as some of their own leaders ponder how to turn WWIII to America's advantage. "Triton" is smart, not in its mastery of military details, but with its undercurrent of dark humor. The author never tries to overplay the atmosphere of imminent doom, and frequently adds a sort of surreal touch. (one example has the President trying to debrief the L&C's Captain over a lavish breakfast in the oval office; the poor captain, after floating for days in the Atlantic, can barely hold a butterknife). This is probably the most fun you'll have reading a technothriller. Not quite up to "Red Oktober" or "To Kill the Potemkin", it's a reader nonetheless.

The application of numerical methods to problems in celestial mechanics does not really seem to be the main focus of this text, as might be taken from the title. Instead, the reader is guided through many related topics that could be aimed at different audiences: some would be of more interest to observational astronomers, while others are perhaps relevant to astronautical applications involving Earth-orbiting satellites. One entire chapter is dedicated to "Odds and Ends," for example.

There are many anecdotal but ultimately useless admonishments, such as "I also remind the reader that any child can keep the CPU of the largest machines continuously going - it takes a bit more thought to have it compute something interesting or useful." (p. 394). Unlike the author's better book, Computational Spherical Astronomy, the presentation here is somewhat overbearing (the "Taff-Hall technique" [p. 282], "Taff's proof" [p. 266], etc.). While entertaining at times, the editorializing is overdone and results in a substantial loss of technical readability, if not credibility. This is regrettable, since some of the work in this book is seemingly original in presentation or idea. The author himself implies that some of his strong viewpoints are alienating (i.e. "It may be so much of a minority opinion that it is unique." (p. 288)). The subtitle "A Computational Guide for the Practitioner" seems ironic then, as one often finds unique philosophies at the very opposite of "practical".

To his credit, Dr. Taff intriguingly suggests that history's high regard for Gauss' re-discovery of Ceres using least-squares is based on historical myth (although I wasn't sure how this helped the practitioner in his own computations), and that Gauss himself was prone to exaggeration (p. 220) when claiming that it was possible to determine an initial plantetary orbit from a few days observations. But, the author counters that Gauss' classical method of initial orbit determination is generally unacceptable based on the partial justification "I have computed more initial orbits on high-eccentricity objects using angles-only data than has anyone else" (p. 274)! Since this books publication (and because of it), Gauss' method has seen sound defense in the open literature (i.e. Marsden (1991), Astron. J. 102 (4) p.1539).

In summary, this text is probably valuable as an example of how *not* to present technically-oriented material. However, the publisher's asking price for this paperback is nothing short of shocking: the curious reader would be best served by making his purchase from the plentiful supply of used copies or reviewing it at his local library.

This book contains case-studies on Clairvoyance from 1916. This is not a book on developing Clairvoyance or any psyhic powers. This book is only a clear description of what Clairvoyance is and the various types of psyhic powers. So in other words, pick up a dictionary and look up the meaning of "Clairvoyance" and you will get just as much info as you will reading this book!

Laurence Tribe sacrificed an almost sure nomination to the Supreme Court by lending his academic credentials to the attack on Robert Bork's nomination to the Court. He succeeded in keeping Bork off the Court, but in doing so, was removed from consideration for a seat himself. Ironically, it is not the hapless Republicans who have kept him from a nomination: it is common knowledge in Washington that the Democrats themselves have dropped him for the simple reason that one does not appoint a hitman to high court.

This is tragic, because reading Laurence Tribe side by side with Bork makes it clear what America lost when they both were denied a position on the Court. Both men are brilliant. Both are flawed. Together, each of them supplies the ingredients the other one lacks. Tribe, with his aggressive role for the Court, tends to disregard the fact that we live in a democracy, while Bork gives excessive deference to tradition and popular will. Together, they would have balanced each other out, providing thesis and antithesis at an extremely sophisticated level. The country would have benefitted. Instead, we have to suffer Justices Souter and Breyer, living examples of the Peter Principle in action. What hath Tribe wrought?

Tribe's work, like that of Bork, really deserves three stars, but I have demoted him because of the McCarthyite tactics of Tribe and his allies in defeating Bork, tactics which included breaking into the video store Judge Bork used in order to find dirt against him (unfortunately for them, Bork's tastes ran to opera, symphonies and classic Hollywood fare of the 30s and 40s). Perhaps the Tribes and Borks of the future will face a less rabid political process and the Supreme Court will have a place for them both. In the meanwhile, read Bork and Tribe together and try to imagine what a splendid place the Supreme Court could have been.

New organisational trends and fads are a big business. If you manage to introduce one, you can be assured of lucrative lecturing and publishing deals. You cannot avoid thinking these realities of modern consulting as you read how Birchall and Lyons try to glue together ideas like teleworking, hotdesking, networking, distributed teams, business process re-engineering, virtual and learning organisations, etc. in order to build their concept of Future Work. The problem is, there is nothing new in this book, and quotes from literature make up a considerable part of the 274 pages. What is more, there is a lot of redundancy in addition to the introductions and executive summaries of each chapter. Finally, the language used is unnecessarily tangled and tricky. A good editor should have been able to shave away dozens of pages without removing any actual content.

The concept of organisational metalanguage might have been interesting, had it been discussed in detail, but now it felt just like an addendum located at the end of the book. This way it just makes the reader confused.

Kaplan's "Farewell, Revolution" is an utterly petulant work. It is, of course, an attempt to defend the "Jacobino-Marxist" position on the French Revolution through the deconstruction of two great historians (he does not neglect attacking their personal and professional lives),Pierre Chaunu and Francois Furet, who both have traced the wages of extreme-left, revolutionary ideology to the genocide committed by both the French Terror and twentieth century Marxists.
He insists on the error in Furet's hieraerchy of values, namely, that the history of ideas and their effects on events outweighs the sociological background of these events. He also suggests that Furet's Critical Dictionary is not critical or "open" at all, and he contradicts himself by applying right-wing ideological precepts to his massive tome centering on French Revolutionary historiography.

But his argument doesn't fly. It doesn't fly for Furet's insistence on the primacy of ideas and the actions which resulted, is absolutely correct. It is substantive when a historian can trace an idea emanating to either its logical end or what effect that (political-social-economic) idea had on the general actions of governments and/or mobs.

Furet is welcomed and such a relief after a century of Marxist dogma and their much vaunted ability to look at history "transparently." Kaplan serves the Reds well, but his deconstuctive diatribe piqued my interest of Chaunu and Furet and didn't turn me against them.

Lawrence Abbott's I Stand in the Center of the Good is described on the book flyleaf as a forum of interviews that aims to addrss "what is Indian art?" Through the words of American Indian artists who challenge the public's conceptions of contemporary Native American art, Abbott's interviews attempt to cover several topics -- with mixed results. This collection of brief interviews dates from 1991-1992 when most of the artists were preparing works for Quincentennary exhibitions. Abbott has included interviews with seventeen personalities who have established themselves over the last twenty-five to thirty years as primary forces in the Native art scene; but except for Canadian-born George Longfish, the omission of Canada's First Nations artists is a serious problem to any book that purports to address contemporary Indian arts. Most members of this group have served as spokespersons for thematic Indian art since the early -1970s. A second serious problem is the absence of artists such as James Luna, Gerald McMasters, and Carl Beam who should not be omitted from any general survey of contemporary Indian art. I wished the author had broadened the range of artists to include the "contemporary-traditionalists," -- those artists whose work is a direct link to older tribal based art traditions. Disappointed, I wondered if the editor inadvertently narrowed his list of artists too closely, losing a clear perspective on the variety and breadth of Indian arts produced today. One problem arising from a limited view point is the mistaken notion that American Indian "Fine Arts" exists as a singular category. The idea originated from older concepts surrounding Euro-Western art traditions and is limited to artists working in easel painting, sculpture, and graphic arts. I wished the editor had pursued the point of art training of the artists selected. The misperception persists that Native American artists create from an untrained, instinctual base articulated by the cult of the artists. Artists represented in Abbott's collection have clearly benefited from formal western art education and from taining in prestigious arts academies and university art programs in this country, England and Italy. A closer examination of this common ground could be useful to consideration of their art. Abbott's intention to provide a forum for the artist's voice is neither new nor novel. The time has come for Native American artists to take a serious, critical approach to other germane issues. Have ideological theme museums, galleries, and patrons who have continued to define Native arts as qualifiers of difference effectively manipulated development of the arts? And, what of Native American artists who perceptively see advantages to maintaining the idea of "otherness" as profitable? Abbott skims perplexing, complex and politically charged issues that have merged into the study of Indian arts. This book is another well-intentioned, but non-critical book for those interested in the field of Indian art making. it is a general reader to be catalogued under 'I' for Indian, not 'A' for art.

Although the information you get is quite nice, the way it is brought to you is not. Winans is so pro Tisch it becomes silly. Most of the world is bad and Tisch is fighting it. I, for instance, would love to learn more about the, so convenient, burning down of the two money losing and well insured hotels.

I had to read this book for Language Arts. I didn't like it at all. It's good read, don't get me wrong, but unfortunently it just doesn't have that...um...spark that I'm looking for. It's a good book for a memior, but I wouldn't suggest it. In short, you shouldn't read this book.