Our daughter loves this book. She talks about Cheezak the Robot all the time when we have the book checked out of the library. We enjoy it as a Faustian tale of overweening pride leading to peril and heroic rescue leading to redemption.

Anatole was a good mouse and the father of a loving family. One day, when he arrived home from work, he discovered that his wife and children were missing. He receives word from his friend, Pierre the Pigeon, that his family had been captured by M'sieu Barat, the mean owner of of a toyshop in Paris. Barat forces the mice to ride around on their little bikes in his front window to attract customers. He then sets his cat, Clotilde, to watch them so that they cannot escape. Anatole would do anything to get them back. Will he be able to save his family without having to sacrifice his own life?
This story recognizes the amazing love that people have for their families. I highly recommend this book to anyone looking for a good story. I know you won't regret reading it.

Now fully updated and expanded, this New Millennium edition of Excursions Into Mathematics takes the reader on short "excursions" into several specific disciplines in the field of mathematics and explains mathematical concepts in such an easy, "user friendly" manner as to make them interesting and accessible to the non-specialist general reader. Anatole Beck, Michael N. Bleicher, and Donald W. Crowe have collaborated in this exciting revision to include new research and solutions to outstanding problems that have been solved since the previous edition published in 1969. Excursions Into Mathematics is a highly recommended introduction for any reader with an interest in mathematics, and has a great deal to recommend it to anyone wanting a refresher on mathematics and the progress made over the past three decades.

Think "Russian Revolution" and what date comes to mind? 1991? 1917? 1905?

Try: December 14, 1825!

Ninety two years before the Revolution of 1917 in which the Bolsheviks seized power, a miscarried Revolution occured which aimed for the first time ever, to change the Tsarist autocratic regime in Russia and institute a more liberal, democratic system. It failed, yet its repercussions continued to be felt for decades to come.

The First Russian Revolution-1825, by Dr. Anatole G. Mazour, published originally in 1937 and making extensive use of primary Russian sources stands the test of time as the definitive work on this little known yet profound event in the political life of Imperial Russia.

What came to be known as the Decembrist Revolt is traced back to its roots in the 18th century Russia where the development of an intelligensia is sparked by internal reforms and the Enlightenment thinking infiltrating from Western Europe. The economic problems caused by serfdom, where an astonishing 90% of the population of Russia lived as virtual slaves to the nobility; the influence of Russia's decisive participation in the Napoleonic Wars; Russian participation in European affairs; and increasing contact with the West stimulated the growth of these ideas.

The general brutality and cruelty of the Tsarist ministers and officals and their reaction to blossoming liberal ideas led to the development of secret societies of various philosophies and objectives culminating with a challenge the Tsarist government on December 14, 1825. It was the first day of the reign of Tsar Nicholas I.

The book is very well organized in an easy to read 290 pages which covers the social, political and economic conditions in the north and south of Russia, its relations with neighboring states, the revolt itself, and the trial and resulting punishment of the revolutionaries. It contains some surprising revelations, such as the extensive use of French as a language of Russian royalty and the nobility, and personal insights into Nicholas I and his unusual rise to the throne. Dr. Manzour ends with an analysis of the lasting effects of the revolt on Nicholas I personally and the Tsarist autocratic system, and the development of the Russian state.

Included in the appendix are excerpts of the testimony and letters of some of the principal revolutionists to the Tsar's investigative commission; their letters to Nicholas himself, and letters between Nicholas and his elder brother Grand Duke Constantine. Also included are numerous portraits of various participants. Unfortunately in the edition I have (1961), the letters between Nicholas and Constantine, as well as some additional documents are in their original French! Hopefully a future edition will translate these into English so they will be understandable, and with a footnote to indicate the original document was written in French.

This book is required reading for all those who want to understand the origins of Russia's long struggle to become a free, open, democratic society with a market economy ruled by laws and not by men. This endeavor continues, with more success, to this day...177 years later.

I got this book from my local library, and I wasn't exactly sure I would like it. After I had read it, it became one of my ABSOLUTE FAVORITES! I very much enjoyed the fact that Plumpet, the cat, could talk, and that Suzanna was made of glass. I think that the book is great also, because Anatole goes on the journey to the Island of Sychorax so his grandma can get rid of her asthma. It shows how kind some people can be.This book made me feel like I was there, and I enjoy imagining I'm there, so it was a great book. I think Nancy Willard is a great author.

Referenced in countless professional journal articles, this 1961 classic is one of the seminal treatises on the subject of Nuclear Magnetism. Topics addressed are: motion of free spins, basic resonant and non-resonant methods, macroscopic aspects of nuclear magnetism (Bloch equations, transient methods, detection methods), Dipolar line width in a rigid lattice, spin temperature, electron-nuclear interactions, quadrupole effects (fine structure), thermal relaxation, line width theory, multiplet structure in liquids, and effects of strong RF fields.

All of these topics are covered in consise, easy-to-understand language, and the treatment of the material is classic and elegant. A necessary part of any complete solid-state or NMR library.

This is a beautiful little book. A concise listing of UNIX shell script functions and all the operators. This book is far more convienient than searching through huge UNIX texts or scrolling through a manual entry. This book gives you the bare building blocks with no fluff to get in the way. I use it on almost a daily basis at work and I recomend it to anyone who needs clear and immediate answers to scripting commands.

This book contains a quick reference to the commands to the Unix newbie. Supplemented by a nice book on the operating system you are using, this book will help you understand how to easily make full use of BASH's command-line mode.

To the other reader.....BASH is Y2K compliant, but this is not the place to ask.

I don't have much desk space and I really appreciate this quick reference guide. It covers virtually everything needed and is small and fits in my desk drawer for easy access.

Can someone tell me if BASH is Y2K compliant... which version etc

This book is a comprehensive overview of modern dynamical systems that covers the major areas. The authors begin with an overview of the main areas of dynamics: ergodic theory, where the emphasis is on measure and information theory; topological dynamics, where the phase space is a topological space and the "flows" are continuous transformations on these spaces; differentiable dynamics where the phase space is a smooth manifold and the flows are one-parameter groups of diffeomorphisms; and Hamiltonian dynamics, which is the most physical and generalizes classical mechanics. Noticeably missing in the list of references for individuals contributing to these areas are Churchill, Pecelli, and Rod, who have done interesting work in the area of both topological and Hamiltonian mechanics. No doubt size and time constraints forced the authors to make major omissions in an already sizable book.

Some elementary examples of dynamical systems are given in the first chapter, including definitions of the more important concepts such as topological transitivity and gradient flows. The authors are careful to distinguish between topologically mixing and topological transitivity. This (subtle) difference is sometimes not clear in other books. Symbolic dynamics, so important in the study of dynamical systems, is also treated in detail.

The classification of dynamical systems is begun in Chapter 2, with equivalence under conjugacy and semi-conjugacy defined and characterized. The very important Smale horseshoe map and the construction of Markov partitions are discussed. The authors are careful to distinguish the orbit structure of flows from the case in discrete-time systems.

Chapter 3 moves on to the characterization of the asymptotic behavior of smooth dynamical systems. This is done with a detailed introduction to the zeta-function and topological entropy. In symbolic dynamics, the topological entropy is known to be uncomputable for some dynamical systems (such as cellular automata), but this is not discussed here. The discussion of the algebraic entropy of the fundamental group is particularly illuminating.

Measure and ergodic theory are introduced in the following chapter. Detailed proofs are given of most of the results, and it is good to see that the authors have chosen to include a discussion of Hamiltonian systems, so important to physical applications.

The existence of invariant measures for smooth dynamical systems follows in the next chapter with a good introduction to Lagrangian mechanics.

Part 2 of the book is a rigorous overview of hyperbolicity with a very insightful discussion of stable and unstable manifolds. Homoclinicity and the horseshoe map are also discussed, and even though these constructions are not useful in practical applications, an in-depth understanding of them is important for gaining insight as to the behavior of chaotic dynamical systems. Also, a very good discussion of Morse theory is given in this part in the context of the variational theory of dynamics.

The third part of the book covers the important area of low dimensional dynamics. The authors motivate the subject well, explaining the need for using low dimensional dynamics to gain an intuition in higher dimensions. The examples given are helpful to those who might be interested in the quantization of dynamical systems, as the number-theoretic constructions employed by the author are similar to those used in "quantum chaos" studies. Knot theorists will appreciate the discussion on kneading theory.

The authors return to the subject of hyperbolic dynamical systems in the last part of the book. The discussion is very rigorous and very well-written, especially the sections on shadowing and equilibrium states. The shadowing results have been misused in the literature, with many false statements about their applicability. The shadowing theorem is proved along with the structural stability theorem.

The authors give a supplement to the book on Pesin theory. The details of Pesin theory are usually time-consuming to get through, but the authors do a good job of explaining the main ideas. The multiplicative ergodic theorem is proved, and this is nice since the proof in the literature is difficult.

This remarkable book is by far the best rigorous introduction to many facets of the modern theory of (chaotic) dynamical systems. It introduces and rigorously develops the central concepts and methods in dynamical systems in a hands-on and highly insightful fashion. The authors are world experts in smooth dynamical systems and have played a major role in the development of the modern theory and this shows througout the book.

The book starts with a comprehensive discussion of a series of elementary but fundamental examples. These examples are used to formulate the general program of the study of asymptotic properties as well as to introduce the principal notions (differentiable and topological equivalence, moduli, asymptotic orbit growth, entropies, ergodicity, etc.) and, in a simplified way, a number of important methods (fixed point methods, coding, KAM-type Newton method, local normal forms, etc.). This chapter alone is worth the price of the book.

The main theme of the second part is the interplay between local analysis near individual (e.g., periodic) orbits and the global complexity of the orbit structure. This is achieved by exploring hyperbolicity, transversality, global topological invariants, and variational methods. The methods include study of stable and unstable manifolds, bifurcations, index and degree, and construction of orbits as minima and minimaxes of action functionals.

In the third and fourth part the general program is carried out for low-dimensional and hyperbolic dynamical systems which are particularly amenable to such analysis. In addition these systems have interesting particular properties. For hyperbolic systems there are structural stability, theory of equilibrium (Gibbs) measures, and asymptotic distribution of periodic orbits, in low-dimensional dynamical systems classical Poincare-Denjoy theory, and Poincare-Bendixson theories are presented as well as more recent developments, including the theory of twist maps, interval exchange transformations and noninvertible interval maps.

This book should be on the desk (not bookshelf!) of any serious student of dynamical systems or any mathematically sophisticated scientist or engineer interested in using tools and paradigms of dynamical systems to model or study nonlinear systems.

This remarkable book is by far the best rigorous introduction to many facets of the modern theory of (chaotic) dynamical systems. It introduces and rigorously develops the central concepts and methods in dynamical systems in a hands-on and highly insightful fashion. The authors are world experts in smooth dynamical systems and have played a major role in the development of the modern theory and this shows througout the book.

The book starts with a comprehensive discussion of a series of elementary but fundamental examples. These examples are used to formulate the general program of the study of asymptotic properties as well as to introduce the principal notions (differentiable and topological equivalence, moduli, asymptotic orbit growth, entropies, ergodicity, etc.) and, in a simplified way, a number of important methods (fixed point methods, coding, KAM-type Newton method, local normal forms, etc.). This chapter alone is worth the price of the book.

The main theme of the second part is the interplay between local analysis near individual (e.g., periodic) orbits and the global complexity of the orbit structure. This is achieved by exploring hyperbolicity, transversality, global topological invariants, and variational methods. The methods include study of stable and unstable manifolds, bifurcations, index and degree, and construction of orbits as minima and minimaxes of action functionals.

In the third and fourth part the general program is carried out for low-dimensional and hyperbolic dynamical systems which are particularly amenable to such analysis. In addition these systems have interesting particular properties. For hyperbolic systems there are structural stability, theory of equilibrium (Gibbs) measures, and asymptotic distribution of periodic orbits, in low-dimensional dynamical systems classical Poincare-Denjoy theory, and Poincare-Bendixson theories are presented as well as more recent developments, including the theory of twist maps, interval exchange transformations and noninvertible interval maps.

This book should be on the desk (not bookshelf!) of any serious student of dynamical systems or any mathematically sophisticated scientist or engineer interested in using tools and paradigms of dynamical systems to model or study nonlinear systems.

those blasted penguins were baptised and changed into penguins! this satire depicts the history of France! enjoy! :)

Anatole France spares no one in this satire about the the birth life and death of the Penguin empire. Starting from the baptism of the Penguins by St. Mael (and the associated debates in Heaven about the devine status of penguins) through the founding and subsequent fall of the empire, this story pokes fun at the Church, military, courts and every political movement known to man. The trial of poor Pyrot had me in stitches. If you like satire, READ THIS BOOK.

I first read this book at the age of 12. I remember receiving it for Christmas--an irony in itself. I recollect my feelings of incredulity as I read the chapters--how could such blasphemy go unpunished?! And then, slowly, my disbelief turned into pure joy at the nose-thumbing this author gave all institutions. The Church, the State, Socialism--you name it, he mocked it. I recommend this book for all those who continue to believe in Ideals.