As an active certified court interpreter, I have found this dictionary a great help. In contrast to anything I had seen before, it is up-to-date, relevant, and practical. The translations of court forms provided at the end of the dictionary are a wonderful aid, not only for an interpreter like me who happens to work in Multnomah County, but for any interpreter or interested party, since the forms are similar in other jurisdictions. The only real deficit is space; there is so much legal terminology one could include, but obviously there were restrictions on space and size.

"English-Russian Dictionary of American Criminal Law should be of great benefit to law enforcement officers and criminal investigators in their interactions with the Russian speaking community in the United States. It is critical to our work with Russian crime victims, witnesses and suspects that we have resources to assist us in accurately translating written communications. This Dictionary provides us an excellent reference for interacting with the Russian speaking community.

I am a criminal defense attorney practicing in Los Angeles, California. I also write a monthly criminal law column for a nationally distributed Russian newspaper.

As a native speaker of the Russian language, I found the inaccuracies contained in other dictionaries quite frustrating at times.

This dictionary is like no other I have seen or used in the past. Finally, someone has put together a collection of accurately translated criminal legal terms. My complements to the authors.

I find this book indispensable whether I am dealing with clients that speak only Russian, or writing for the paper. I wholeheartedly recommend this dictionary.

Vishnevskaya's reputation for forthrightness AND the sub-title she chooses here --A Russian Story-- indicate strong intentions for this book. Not 'MY Russian Story', but 'A Russian Story', because Galina Vishnevskaya tells an epic Russian story, honoring with a severe truth the Russia of sorrows of which her story forms but a unique part. This is no prima donna's idle tableau of a curtained career. Vishnevskaya's art comes of suffering, & she doesn't head down that road. She divulges her art generously, but her attitude never self serves. Her aim is always higher - she's interested to say not only what HAPPENED in Soviet life, but what WAS. and WHO!--- Vishnevskaya regularly excoriates with galvinizing abandon the soviet lackeys with whom she had to deal! She names names and motives, because it's the damned truth! The West in general and artists in particular owe a huge debt to Rostropovich and Vishnevskaya for the willing sacrifice of themselves in exile for the simple truth. Rostropovich garners the commentary in the West with the cello & conducting, but Galina is the heart of genius, and THAT seems the telling component in this book. Her depiction of Solzhenitsyn is heartrending, and stands as the book's axis; everything leads to it, and derives from it. Her friendship with Shostakovich, her brilliant feelings toward him-- an almost daughterly reverence informed by the highest artistic aesthetic. It's also through the part Shostakovich played in her life that we meet a musically learned Galina as well. She was a musician FIRST, singer second. How rare and wonderful - no wonder Slava fell in love! Galina dances with the shadows of Shostakovich throughout, & it's one of the book's endearing aspects. There are wonderful stories too of Britten and his music, & a surprisingly frank exposition of Furtseva, soviet Minister of Culture, whose enigmatic machinations both helped and ill-served Galina more than once. Vishnevskaya can sing AND write! The book ends when you don't want it to, leaving Russia... it's ultimately a love story -- Galina and Russia. Maybe she'll yet write her American story.

Galina, né Pavlova, has many interesting stories to tell about her remarkable life: as a baby abandoned by her parents, an army officier and a polish/gypsy mother, she was raised by her paternal grandmother. Galina overcame so many difficulties in her life, surviving the blockade of Leningrad during the war and so many hardships such as tuberculosis and starvation. Unlike so many singers' biographies, this intelligent artist shares more than anecdotes about the opera world and her many successes in the theatre. She speaks of her personal friendships with people such as composer Shostakovich her neighbor, scientist Andrei Sakarov, also a neighbor, and writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn, a live-in guest in her dacha. There is much commentary written with not a little bitterness about the Soviet authorities who so often thwarted her career and blocked free expression in the arts within the Soviet country and in other countries where she was invited to perform. She writes very well and with much insight into philosophy, human relations, personalities, etc. I found the book very absorbing and hard to put down. Her close friendship with British composer Benjamin Britten also yields many stories of their memorable times together both at Aldeburgh and on vacation in Armenia and Russia. Her remarkable and at times stormy marriage to cellist/conductor Mstislav Rostropovich, her third husband, brought about big changes in her life, and their mutual courage and boldness to stand up for freedom against the Soviet regime cost them their citizenship.

"...We were actors in real life and human beings on the stage."

Thus spake Galina Vishnevskaya, in interviews she and her husband, Mstislav ("Slava") Rostropovich, gave in Paris in 1983, captured in a companion book ("Russia, Music, and Liberty: Conversations with Claude Samuel.") to this one. The quotation barely begins to suggest the Kafkaesque world in which they lived, when they were musical artists of the highest order in the Soviet Union.

Vishnevskaya was a "prima donna assoluta" at the Bolshoi Opera during her prime, arguably the finest Russian soprano of all time. And, as her prime overlapped those of Maria Callas and Renata Tebaldi, one can only wonder what her international reputation might have been had her career been entirely in the west; the first two-thirds (and best) part of it was largely away from the gaze of the international music community.

This is, as she subtitles it, her "Russian story" covering her life up to the final hours in 1976 when she left the Soviet Union, eventually (two years later) as an exile. And it almost ended before it ever started.

Born in poverty to parents who abandoned her to her grandmother, she possessed an incredible voice as a child. Largely self-taught, and then - at age sixteen - improperly taught - she didn't learn proper voice technique until after she had established a beginning career in operetta. Then she contracted TB, and the doctor caring for her offered that the only cure - which she refused - was to collapse the infected lung. It was only by mortgaging her future singing fees for black-market purchase of scarce antibiotics that she recovered.

In 1952, in her mid-twenties, she auditioned for the youth group of the Bolshoi Opera Theater, was instantly accepted, underwent a meteoric rise through the Bolshoi ranks on her voice and talent, and soon became the prima diva of the troupe. In 1955, she met Rostropovich, whose courting of her is one of the few lighthearted sections of an otherwise chilling tale of intrigue, deception and lies in the intelligentsia circles in which the pair of them existed and performed.

The next two decades (1955 - 1975) of this journal focus largely on one person, and the special relationship that they had with him: Dmitri Shostakovich. As artists, it was only natural that their paths would cross and thereafter, for the rest of Shostakovich's life, intertwine. But this was more than acquaintanceship; it was friendship based on trust during Shostakovich's years when it was virtually impossible for him to trust anyone. And Vishnevskaya defended that trust with the ferocity of a tiger. One anecdote of her ferocity will suffice as an example.

In the early 1960's, the poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko was well-published in "accepted" Soviet literature journals despite his "rebelliousness." His famous poem, "Babi Yar" (1961) about the German slaughter of Ukranian Jews during WW II, gained overnight success, and Shostakovich, moved by the poem's message, placed it at the core of his Thirteenth Symphony with Yevtushenko's warm agreement. The work received its Russian premiere "as is" on December 18, 1962, and was tumultuously received by the audience but not by officials of the state, who read into it a message of Russian complicity in the matter of anti-Semitism, a subtext of Yevtushenko's that was undoubtedly accurate, as he revised the text shortly after the premiere without consulting Shostakovich. Some years later, in London where Vishnevskaya and Rostropovich met up with Yevtushenko, Vishnevskaya gave Yevtushenko a tongue-lashing over his "revisionism" that runs several pages.

In an act of supreme political courage involving another Russian writer, Rostropovich provided refuge, for four years in the early '70's, to Alexander Solzhenitsyn, whose writings on conditions in the Soviet Union were officially banned. Solzhenitsyn subsequently went into political exile, but this act of courage was to have its effect on the careers of Vishnevskaya and Rostropovich, particularly the latter, who for all intents and purposes had his abilities to perform and conduct stripped away from him. Only by "pulling in markers" were the two of them able to secure permission from Brezhnev to go abroad on a two-year "artistic leave."

"Galina" ends on a note of uncertainty and apprehension, as Vishnevskaya, in 1976, boards a plane with her two daughters to join Rostropovich in the West, eventually (1978) in exile when their citizenship was revoked for the Solzhenitsyn matter. But this is merely the end of her "first" Russian life and the beginning of another, more international, one. Her own career as a diva continued for nearly another decade; Rostropovich went on to become an internationally-known conductor while continuing his career as a preeminent cellist; with "perestroika," they made an historic return to Moscow in 1990 (after Gorbachev restored their citizenship), at which Rostropovich conducted what is to me the finest performance of Tchaikovsky's "Pathetique" Symphony (immortalized on a Sony CD that also included Sousa's "Stars and Stripes Forever" and William Schuman's orchestral arrangement of Charles Ives's "Variations on America").

Nowadays Vishnevskaya loves to brag about her six thoroughly-Americanized grandchildren. They oversee the Rostropovich-Vishnevskaya Foundation, a charity for immunizing Russian children against disease. She recently founded the Galina Vishnevskaya School of Opera in Moscow, for providing master classes to promising young artists. All in all, a rather remarkable "follow-up" for this peripatetic pair of seemingly perpetually-young 75-year-olds.

But the clock cannot be turned back. "Galina" serves as a gripping reminder of how things were over the fifty years that the two of them spent in the Soviet Union. And, at least as important for me, it serves as one of the most honest and accurate appraisals of Dmitri Shostakovich the person as one is likely to find, from one who knew and loved him as a true friend.

Even in a totalitarian society, supreme artistry can sometimes carry clout. For Vishnevskaya (and Rostropovich), there was enough clout - barely - to get out and "live to tell about it." Thankfully.

This textbook by Stilman and Harkins is definitely my key resource for learning the Russian language. I have learned far more from this book than I did from the two conversationalist based texts that I used when studying Russian for two years at college. I'm convinced that any native speaker of English needs to learn Russian with a rigorous approach to learning the grammar, because the case differentiation is so crucial and difficult to master. This book is a first year Russian textbook, so it will be good for the introductory student as well as for someone who has some familiarity with the language. The lessons are clearly and logically presented with excellent explanations of Russian grammar, clear and concise declension charts, and extremely useful pattern sentences (in Russian and in English translation) that illustrate the principal grammatical objectives that are emphasized in each chapter. This allows the student to be cognizant of grammar while also developing an internal sensibility to the natural syntax and rhythm of the language. This textbook teaches you not only useful phrases, but also explains why, grammatically, they have to be in a particular form. This is essential for really learning the language. Stilman and Harkins also infuse the chapters with useful vocabulary words that can be learned quickly due to their organized approach to the lesson plans.

Even though this book needs to be revised and updated (this edition, even though it is still in print, is the edition originally published in 1972), this is by far the best textbook for learning the Russian language that exists. I hope instructors begin using this user-friendly text again, because it is ideal for classroom use as well as for students' independent studies. This book is so well planned that students can easily read ahead of their classroom lesson plans and not feel lost, because Stilman and Harkins teach the readers everything they will need to know in order to read and write correctly in Russian.

I find the Stilman book to be the finest college level treatise on the subject. It provides a detailed analysis of the language, the liguistics and rules which are all complex. Stilman et.al. presents the material in an orderly easy to understand but yet leaves out none of the complexities of the language. I recommend this text to all serious students of the russian language. I do not believe you will find a better explanation of the language.

Stillman et al have produced an excellent course book for studying Russian. I have used other books, the best of which emphasizes conversation and is geared toward the college and university classroom ("Russian Stage One"). Russian is a difficult language, especially for English speakers. It is not readily accessible like Spanish or French. The vocabulary is difficult and the declensions of nouns, adjectives, and pronouns make it as difficult as Latin or Greek. For this reason it is refreshing to find a text which attempts to teach the grammar first. This book is complete and comprehensible to anyone studying Russian, particularly if he or she knows English grammar well, or has already studied an inflected language. Other books might be better for those who are learning Russian as their first foreign language.

This book is a great resource for engineers and scientists in the field. I have several other texts on diamond but found this one to be the best. I use it all of the time.

The industrial handbook of diamond and diamond films is the most comprehensive text on the subject of industrial diamond available. I would rate it as the finest available and highly recommend it. It is well thought out and well written. It is obvious that a great deal of work and care went into the preparation of the text. I have used it as a reference text extensively over the past year and it has been outstanding. This text has saved me hundreds of hours.

This is a great book! It will not give you the test questions and answers for the test. What it will provide is a great source of information relating to routing and an introduction to Juniper's routers. The depth of information in Juniper Networks Certified Internet Associate Study Guide is sufficient to pass the test. The questions in the book and on the CD require the same level of understanding as the actual JNCIA exam. In fact I scored the same on the bonus exams (located on the CD) as I did on the actual test. I have been working with Cisco equipment for over eight year and with Juniper routers for a little over a year. I have my CCNP and CCDP. With my background, this book and three weeks, now I have my JNCIA certification. Don't take the JNCIA certification test lightly. I would rate it at the same level as the CCNP and CCDP. With this book and some time you should be able to pass the exam.

I'm gearing up for the JNCIA/S exams, so have just bought the JNCIA book.
In addition, I have the Complete reference too.

As a history thing, I haven't been that impressed with Sybex revision books - mainly from a Cisco perspective.
This book however seems to be a step away from the norm - which is quite refreshing.

A CD is included (like all the similar Cisco Press books for CCNA/CCDA/CCNP/CCDP).
You get flash cards, 100's of exam questions, study guides, a palm/pocketPC revision app & the bonus of a pdf covering the entire book (aka Cisco) !

At the front of the book is a detachable pull-out study guide which recommends reading certain chapters for different parts of the exam.
When quizzed, the author certainly wasnt denying the fact that it could almost be a hint at what you will be tested on.

Book is split into sections (naturally) which run through the following;

Chapter 1: The Components of a Juniper Networks Router
Chapter 2: Interfaces
Chapter 3: Protocol-Independent Routing
Chapter 4: Routing Policy
Chapter 5: The Routing Information Protocol (RIP)
Chapter 6: Open Shortest Path First (OSPF)
Chapter 7: Intermediate System to Intermediate System (IS-IS)
Chapter 8: Border Gateway Protocol (BGP)
Chapter 9: Multicast
Chapter 10: Firewall Filters
Chapter 11: Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS)

Differences between the JNCIA and the Complete ref are;

JNCIA has multicast.
JNCIA has CD.
Complete ref has a lot more about the 'boxes'.
Complete ref has intro to VPN (but not much).
Complete ref is a lot heavier.
Complete ref has more configuration examples.

If you're thinking of revising (and if you haven't got the complete ref) then this is the book to go for.
Combine this with Routing TCP/IP, a glance through the most excellent Juniper tech pdf's, hands-on the box and the Boson software exam guides ..... you should breeze through..

On the whole I am impressed with the book.
Its straight to the point, tells you what you need to learn to pass the exam, splits it into attainable sections then tests your knowledge on what you've learnt.

I have been suffering from chronic back pain for 10 years. After reading the book "Mafia against God" and practicing the healing exercises, the back pain is completely gone and I am able to go on with my life. I never thought it would be so easy to heal without seeing a doctor. Thank you Galina, you have saved me.

I have been suffering from chronic back pain for 10 years. After reading the book "Mafia against God" and practicing the healing exercises, the back pain is completely gone and I am able to go on with my life. I never thought it would be so easy to heal without seeing a doctor. Thank you Galina, you have saved me.

This is an extraordinary account of her own life by a woman who is not only a world-famous opera singer and wife of a great man, but also a person who has lived through the Stalin era in Russia, (barely) survived the 900-day blockade and famine of Leningrad, beat tuberculosis (then a fatal diagnosis in Russia) to become the Bolshoy Theatre's star singer, and even then, most of life's trials and tribulations were still ahead of her. Galina Vishnevskaya does not mince words in life or in her book. She describes not only the life of great artists in post-war Soviet Russia but also the life of ordinary people, the cunning and resourcefulness it took every day to accomplish everything - from buying toiler paper to avoiding KGB recruitment. Unlike many other artists who wrote their autobiographies - such as Maya Plisetskaya - Galina does breathe life into her own past and that of her country. Apart from being a great read, the book is written with a great sense of humour, and sometimes, sarcasm. A thoroughly enjoyable and edifying read.

I found this well-written account of the remarkable Kashpirovsky absolutely fascinating. The author researched her subject well and presented an unbiased account of Kashpirovsky's often controversial activities. A must read for all persons of present day Russian affairs.

I had the honor (and pleasure) of reviewing the book... It is very solid and will definitely benefit the SQR community as a whole... It seems to cover "all areas" of SQR development including Internet, Graphics and Printing Topics... as well as arrays, functions, I/O, decision logic, SQL, commands, syntax, etc... Although the book has 'PeopleSoft' in the title its' Main Focus is SQR programming in general... Think of the PeopleSoft chapters as an added bonus! (That's one of the things I really liked about the book - it doesn't stop at the basics)... The PeopleSoft chapters explain the ins/outs of Menus, Run Controls (Records/Panels), Process Scheduler, Process Monitor, Effective Date Processing, Interfaces, Conversion... You can find information on the book (including table of contents) at Manning's website (www.manning.com)... I could tell in my review a great deal of time and careful planning went into writing this... I'm especially pleased because I've recently had the opportunity to work with Galina at a "mutual" client and it's been a very positive and rewarding experience... She's very knowledgable, professional and very enthusiastic about her work! As a reviewer it was difficult finding fault with the content! I noticed the first review of this book on amazon.com was unintelligible! I'm curious how this individual derived his 'star-rating'??? New and experienced SQR developers will be very happy with this book!

I work as PeopleSoft technical consultant and use this book at least once a week when writing and/or modifying SQR programs. It's a great desktop reference book - solid examples and easy-to-understand text. I use it to supplement the technical manuals that come with the SQR product.

I reviewed this book very recently and the author exceedingly well articulated the information. This book will give an insight to the beginners who wish to learn SQR in PeopleSoft. The authors deserve special thanks from me.

While nothing in this book, is not found in the PeopleSoft training material for the particular topic, it does put it into one compact book. The chapter on Cobol was the most of interest to me, because this information is hard to come by. I compared to the internal documentation given to PeopleSoft consultants, and found this book to be much better. My only question is, when will the PeopleSoft 8 version of this book be released. Also, more information on running PeopleSoft in the OS390 DB2 environment would be very good. I usually work in this area, since it is hard to find consultants that can perform in this arena, and the larger customers tend to use DB2 on big iron.

The text is easy to digest, full of illustrations and sample code. Topics are discussed in detail, with no long and boring introductions. All chapters are summarized with a list of key points. I develop mostly for Financials and although the examples of this book are based on the HR application, it hasn't affected my understanding of the material at all.

I suggest having at least some exposure to Application Designer, PeopleTools to get the most out of this book. A PeopleTools I/II class will do. You may find that this book also serves better as a reference rather than as a textbook that you read from chapter 1 through the end. The book was divided in 7 independent parts. It is not strictly mandatory to read Part 4 on Customization to be able to read Part 5 on using SQR or Part 7 on App Engine.

The book includes the following major topics:
PeopleSoft architecture, development tools, data management tools, Operator Security, Application Designer, PeopleCode and the Application Processor, PeopleCode debugging, Tracing, the upgrade process (brief), SQR, Process Scheduler, App Engine and COBOL.

It also discusses some aspects of PeopleSoft 8, still in development at the time this book was written.

The appendixes include PeopleTools system tables, Operator Classes, PeopleCode built-in functions, App. Engine functions and App. Engine examples.

The book doesn't cover Query and nVision.

I highly recommend this book. Some of the material is also relevant to PeopleSoft 7.0 and 8.x

For many of us, attending PeopleSoft classes are a luxury. Often technical manuals are not available at work. Maybe you're in between jobs or assignments and want to polish up certain areas of expertise that you haven't had an opportunity to work with recently.

The Essential Guide does all this and more. I have taken PS 5.0 technical classes and worked with 7.5 for several years, but this is the first book that I have come across that fills the gaps on Tools I, II, Peoplecode, COBOL, and App Engine. You can't find this kind of information anywhere else. The only way to beat this book is to be able to sit down in a room with the original PeopleSoft developers.