This extensive book covers almost every tool made by Stanley. The author had assistance from the Stanley Works in Conn and many major tool collectors. Tools are very accurately described so that amature collectors can determine the model , manufacture date and current value of most Stanley tools. A very detailed review of the major categories of planes and patents is presented in the back of the book along with a complete index by tool model number.If you collect Stanley tools, this book HAS to be in your workshop.

The sine-qui-non of tool collecting references. If you can't find it in Walters book chances are you won't find it anywhere. Okay you have a #3 plane but what type of #3 plane? The differences can be subtle but important (like a fine wine). Any serious tool collector or curious tool user will enjoy this book.

As the other reviewed indicated, this book does use mathematics to support it's treatment of the topic, but is very verbose with well thought out descriptions and examples. The math is a tool, not the purpose of the book. Of course, with such a treatment there are certain esoteric topics that simply dont fit but overall this book was an outstanding supplemental text to me as an undergrad (the actual text was more math intensive so the explanations here complemented it perfectly). Too bad it's out of print. I still refer to it occasionally when I need a refresher!

Digital Signal Processing is the one subject that you really need a solid foundation in maths to proceed furthur. Beginners should go for the book by Richard Lyons ( Understanding Digital Signal Processing). Those who are interested in the maths behind DSP and yet dread Oppenheim might find this book really useful. Stanley takes you through a tour of DSP using maths, but does it so wonderfully well than Oppenheim. The two books, the one by Richard Lyons and this book should give you a head start over others in learning DSP. Use this as a ladder to take you to the books by Oppenheim and Prokias, and you won't regret taking DSP.

There are a couple of errors though - due to bad proof reading

Hopefully the publisher should realise that he has a treasure in this book and bring it back to print.

This book is one in Zondervan's Counterpoints Series, which presents the view of various (mostly) Evangelical writers on theological subjects. This book is sorely needed because Evangelical apologists have had a history of writing critically and polemically of one another (one thinks of the Clark/Van Til debate), with the result of the layman having a difficult time deciding among the various positions.

The problem with this book is either that the writers are too timid or are more irenic than their label would indicate. There are three authors who present variations on the traditional approach: the classical method (Craig), the evidential method (Habermas), and the cumulative case method (Feinberg). These approaches are quite similar, although some differences do arise. When the reader gets to John Frame's presuppositional method, he expects to get a starkly different approach. After all, Van Til was notorious for attacking "traditional" apologetics as "Roman Catholic" or "Arminian." Well, Frame tells us that he agrees with most of what Craig writes. The final writer, Kelly James Clark (who represents the "Reformed epistemological method"), says the same thing.

Perhaps the editor could have selected a follower of Gordon Clark (a rationalist who denied the proofs of God's existence) or a fideist to present a contrasting apologetic method.

Few books have seriously tackled apologetic method, or how Christianity should be defended rationally. The last book I know of that surveyed options in this regard was Gordon Lewis, "Testing Christianity's Truth Claims" (Moody Press, 1976; republished by University Press of America).

This book presents five different approaches, each represented by one of its exponents: Classical Apologetics (William Lane Craig), Evidentialism (Gary Habermas), Culumulative Case Method (Paul Feinberg), Presuppositionalism (John Frame), and Reformed Epistemology (Kelly James Clark).

Much ground is covered concerning the Bible's approach to apologetics, where apologetic arguments should begin, how certain arguments for Christianity are, and so on. I will simply make a few comments.

The presentations by Craig and Habermas are the most worthwhile because they are the most intellectual rigorous and well-documented. They also tend to agree with each on most things and reinforce each others views. While I tend to favor a cumulative case method (influenced by E.J. Carnell and Francis Schaeffer, but with more appreciation for natural theology), Feinberg's comments are the weakest by far. He never mentions the leading exponent of this view in our generation (Carnell) nor Carnell's apt and well-published student (and my esteemed colleague), Dr. Gordon Lewis. Not one word about either one! His comments are brief, his documentation is thin, and he fails to advance anything very creative or helpful, I'm afraid. A better person should have been chosen, such as Gordon Lewis. Frame gives his "kinder, gentler" version of Cornelius Van Til, which still suffers from the same kinds of problems--most notably the fallacy of begging the question in favor of Christianity. Nevertheless, the notion of a "transcendental argument" for theism is a good one, but it should not carry all the weight of apologetics. Clark's material is philosophically well-informed (one would expect this of a student of Alvin Plantinga!), but apologetically timid. Clark almost sounds like a skeptic at times.

A few bones more bones to pick. The editor refers to Francis Schaeffer as a presuppositionalist. This is false; he was a verificationist with more in common with Carnell than with Van Til. Gordon Lewis's fine essay on Schaeffer's apologetic method in "Reflections on Francis Schaeffer" makes this very clear. None of the writers address the great apologetic resources found in Blaise Pascal. I also found at least two grammatical errors.

Nevertheless, as a professor of philosophy at a theological seminary who teaches apologetics, I found this volume very helpful and useful. But let's not get so involved in methodological concerns that we fail to go out in the world and defend our Christian faith as objectively true, existentially vital, and rationally compelling (Jude 3)!

Douglas Groothuis, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Philosophy Denver Seminary

I got my copy from Amazon a few weeks ago and the day I received it I could not put it down. This is a wonderful text. The book covers five various apologetic methods from five well known scholars who promulgate and defend each of their own views. Moreover, once each of these five scholars have written why they use a particular method, the other four have an opportunity to respond. The responses are by far the best part of the book. However, the actual essays that cover the five methods give the reader a better grasp on that particular method. This book is helpful in several ways. First, it provides the reader a fairly exhaustive treatment of each of the various apologetic methods. Second, it allows the reader to actually see what proponents of the each of the various methods are saying about each of the other methods. Third, it includes some of the best, if not the best, scholars in each of the various methodologies covered. The contributors include, William Lane Craig (Classical Method), Gary R. Habermas (Evidential Method), Kelly James Clark (Reformed Epistemological Method), Paul D. Feinberg (Cumulative Method), and John M. Frame (Presuppositional Method). The only downside to the book that I can see is the idea that some may think that their particular method was not accurately covered by the scholar at hand. In other words, the Presuppositionalists may wonder why John Frame was used instead of someone else, etc. However, I believe that each method was given a fair assessment and the initial essays with the responses will make the book a wonderful reference for many years to come.

Fish's approach to texts, including statutes and the US Constitution (he is perhaps better known for jurisprudence than for lit crit) moves the text off the page, and into the class -- the interpretive community. But this is always a tricky move, and the way Fish executes it leaves us with no glue to prevent the fissioning of "interpretive community" into factions of one, just so many obstreperous individuals with nothing more to say to each other, because each has his own (mutually contradictory) inward disposition, a self-reinforcing dogmatism in the light of which all evidence is interpreted.

This is not law nor is it literature. This is the chaos of competing autisms.

The way out of this chaos would take us through history. It would involve the realization that history is not simply a collection of texts. The execution of King Charles I was not a sentence in a book, "King Charles was beheaded today," but was a real fleshy neck on a real block, as an axe swung through its downward arc. As a literary theorist, literary critic, and legal theorist, Fish has consistently dismissed the importance of such physical extra-textual events. It is no wonder that the texts become insubstantial if the world in which they are written is rendered insubstantial, too, so all we have is a group of graduate students sitting around in our own day gabbing about their own gabbling.

Stanley Fish takes an extremely hard line in this at-least-twenty-years-in-the-making study. Besides the terrific close readings, what's most amazing here is Fish's suggestion that Milton (as either the most or at least the second-most important writer in the English language) might actually have known what he was doing. The fact that this is today a radical stance is a comment on the bizarre orthodoxy of current critical thinking. One of the most hillarious set pieces of this book is a too-true list of "What Liberals Believe," after which Fish points out that Milton believes exactly none of these things. By the end of the book I was ready -- despite being a committed atheist -- to join the Creator's angelic hordes in a rousing chorus of "Amen!"

The outline of Fish's acerbic standing often eclipses his critical innovations (nearly 35 years ago now) in the invention of reader-response theory in his reputation setting initial study of Milton in Surprised by Sin. Now he returns to study of Milton in this magisterial book. Fish is popularly known for inadvertently setting off the most embarrassing scandal in the science wars when Alan Sokal's hoaxing contribution to Fish's journal, Social Text was denounced by Sokal as a paradoy of postmodernist cant. Fish's own pathetic comeback dampened the brief hegemony of postmodernist political trends. Fish is also a controversial legal theorist (The Trouble with Principle) and a glib combatant in the culture wars (There's No Such Thing as Free Speech and It's a Good Thing, Too), but it is as a reader of John Milton that he first made his most enduring mark, with 1967's Surprised by Sin.In the wake of the Sokal disaster, Fish has left the demoralized English department of Duke University for the University of Illinois, Chicago where he has returned his attentions to his once-revolutionary reader-response criticism in this surprisingly jargon free study, How Milton Works. This book concentrates on the whole range of Milton's oeuvre in prose and poetry. Fish asserts that the core of Milton's significance is richly theologically, in that "there is only one choice to be or not to be allied with divinity." In various chapters Fish reworks the rich mythic structure of Paradise Lost to show how the Fall that separated Satan from Heaven parallels Adam and Eve loss Eden. So the meaning of human existence is the attempt to find restoration in the Divine image. This is perhaps ironically the single foundation of meaningful action, politics, individuality, and poetry, including Milton's own. It is obvious that not all readers of Milton will so easily agree with Fish's premises or conclusions but it is likely to quicken Milton study as his earlier study did. Also his painstaking close readings and carefully wrought arguments, enough so that perhaps many will be encouraged to return and read anew this most British of our poets. The rich architecture of Milton's epics, it abstract phrasing and taut moral reach and ambivalence that is at once immobile in its traditionalism and radical in it modernism makes Fish's readings and argument another milestone in Milton studies.

I don't believe I've seen more than two of Mazursky's films but I enjoyed his book, especially the juicy chapter on his adventures with the increasingly more bizarre Peter Sellers. This is not a biography, but rather a series of essays about his involvement with different Hollywood people and some chapters about his current life and childhood. Recommended.

An interesting, light and witty Summer read that gives you insight into Mazursky's career and tales of movie production. Mazursky, born in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn started out as an actor (Blackboard Jungle), moved on to be a comedy writer (Danny Kaye, I Love You Alice B Toklas) when acting parts were infrequent, and made his directorial debut with Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice. My favorite scenes in the book? When a young Mazursky catches his zade eating his bubbe's herring on the afternoon of Yom Kippur; when Eisner and Katzenberg ask Mazursky if he thinks that the I.B. Singer story (Enemies, A Love Story) is too Jewish... maybe it can be about the Cambodian Holocaust instead of the WWII one; when Richard Dreyfus pulls out of the Enemies project; and the creation of Down&Out in Beverly Hills.

I loved reading this book, both from the standpoint of appreciating Paul Mazursky the director of many of my favorite films and reveling in Paul Mazursky the no-holds-barred storyteller. But--and, I'm sorry, there is a 'but'---why devote one sentence to the great Art Carney, who Mazursky calls the most pure actor he'd ever worked with, and then not tell the reader WHY he feels that way about Carney? There are no anecdotes to share about Jill Clayburgh or Robin Williams? Come on, Paul, give! This lapse is mostly compensated for by Mazursky's tales of traveling in the "then" Soviet Union and South America, his memories of working for Danny Kaye and his sharing the bitter and the sweet about his family, his friends and the ups and downs of his life. The chapter about Mazursky's relationship with his mother is especially powerful and a reminder that much of the pathos within even his funniest films came honestly to him. So, five stars for what's here---just would've liked to have seen more!

If everybody thinks Dick Clark started "American Bandstand," you're wrong. This book tells about "Bandstand" before Dick Clark became the host. It goes into great detail about the years between 1952 and 1956.
However, the book was slightly disappointing. I bought it in hopes the author would talk a little more about the kids who used to dance on the show (since learning my favorite disc jockey danced on the show in 1953), and it didn't. Can't win 'em all, right? Also there were many spelling and punctuation errors as well. But those can be easilly overlooked. All in all, this was a good book.

Colonial America : Essays in Politics and Social Development is a collection of essays concerning the British colonies in North America. The essays present the latest research from colonial historians working on a broad range of topics, from Cornelia Hughes Dayton's examination of abortion and gender roles in colonial Connecticut to Alfred Crosby's analysis of the impact of introduced Europan diseases on Native Americans.

This is not an easy read. The articles are dense, heavily footnoted, and packed with very specific information. Most of the authors assume that the reader comes to this volume already knowing a good deal about colonial history. For example, an article on the Bayard Treason Trial in New York takes it for granted that we already know about the Dutch history of New York, Leisler's rebellion, and the colonial court system.

MAny of the articles are brilliant, and this volume is a great example of the very latest historical scholarship in the field. But these essays are by historians writing for other historians. This is not an introduction to colonial history for the general reading public.

John Stanley's self-congratulatory intro aside, this is a very sloppy new edition with some glaring factual errors and gaps. There is a scant two paragraphs in the intro on DVD, which has revolutionized home video and brought numerous classics to a wider audience. The line "While the more expensive DVD made inroads amongst elitists, sci-fi and horror material continued to inundate the videocassette market" is one ripe example, since DVDs are cheap and have well-nigh replaced the defunct video-tape. He didn't even bother to rename his "sources" list: it's still called "Video/Laserdisc." The new entries are overlong, badly written, and even poorly punctuated. His opinions are often daft, such as praising Liam Neeson's somnambulant performance in THE HAUNTING and trashing the occasionally clever BRIDE OF CHUCKY. THE BEYOND, STENDHAL SYNDROME, CRASH, and RABID DOGS, key films by Fulci, Argento, Cronenberg, and Bava respectively, are not mentioned. His entry on BLOOD COUPLE (aka GANJA AND HESS) shows no awareness that it was completely restored and reissued over two years ago. This list goes on.

The older entries still hold up, but he's no Michael Weldon. He even gets in some tacky plugs for ordering previous editions of the guide direct from him. If you have a previous edition, there is absolutely no reason to buy this one. A poor update all around.

Far to many books have fallen flat trying to accomplish what this book has done. It is THE BEST book i have ever seen when it comes to catalogue Horror flicks both theatrically and direct-to-video. Have you ever heard of Black Devil Doll From Hell? Probably not, but this book has a review of it. Before you rent Class Reunion Massacre you should know that you may have already seen this movie under the name The Redeemer almost 25 years ago. I didnt know that did you? Well it has entries for BOTH titles making it an essential have for people who never want to see a movie twice under a different title. The reviews arent always the best. Honestly, i LOVED Sleepaway Camp 2. But they at least serve as a wonderful checklist of the horror video market through 1995. This book does need to be updated in Y2K but for now it is a MUST OWN, my copy is severely dog eared from many back pocket trips to the video store! Buy this book!

I'm a big horror fan so I had to get this book! It's so great! I disagree sometimes witht the bad reviews (Sleepaway Camp) but sometimes I agree with the bad reviews (Last Slumber Party). I recommend this book to horror fans! Oh! And best of all if it's a slasher movie it sometimes tells how the victims die!

everything about this book felt "written." I never felt as if i'd lost track of time and where i was or who i was while i read this book. everything felt like a scene as opposed to life. it felt like i had the author standing in my face telling me over and over again "these people are sad! do you hear me, sad!" but the sadness wasn't palpable to me. it was a hollywood producer's version of what sadness does (see: emma breaking the violin, dwight's guilt and descent into violence). the way schwarz draws the plot together was too neat, too tidy (again, a hollywood producer's version of solving a crime) for my taste. and was i the only one who knew the moment that grace's father's pistol was mentioned way, way back at the front of the book that it was going to be central to the resolution? judging from all the 5 star reviews, i was. i don't think that schwarz is a bad craftsman which should not be confused with being a good writer. in the end, i didn't care about the characters as much as i cared about the resolution which, ultimately, was a wet firecracker. if anyone's interested in what i would call great writing and great writing about a child's death please read frederick busch's "girls." the sadness is on every page but busch doesn't resort to easy, emotional "scenes" .

Schwartz weaves one of the most interesting tales I've read in a long time. An educated family are returning home from a concert when, while stopped at a rest area, their son is killed in a hit and run. Driver of the car is a divorced dad just getting his life back together. His own son is asleep in the car. The author switches from chapter to chapter who the narrator is (between the boy's mother, father, and the driver of the car) and does so with unparalleled skill. Usually this tactic annoys me, but here it works well. We get to see how the death affects all involved, as well as the relationships in the family and beyond. Tension mounts as the case goes unsolved with the police. Finally Dad takes matters into his own hands. He discovers who did it too, but here's where everything falls apart. Schwartz, for all of his skill until this point, just doesn't know how to end the book and the way he ends up going with is wholly unsatisfying.

There's an inherent problem in writing (and reading) novels which devote themselves entirely to unexpected death and its aftermath, entirely aside from the fact that it's a subject matter which has been done, and re-done, and overdone since the dawn of fiction, and is therefore very difficult to make fresh, interesting or insightful. The major problem is that the author runs the very real risk of dousing the reader with such unrelenting dreariness that finishing the book is almost a chore. As far as novels about death go, Reservation Road is far better than most. It's thought-provoking, sincere, and, for the most part, avoids melodrama. But there's not much new for Schwartz to explore-if grief is a universal language, the theme of personal loss is a literary staple. The ending of the book (I won't spoil it) is somewhat surprising, and emotionally fulfilling at first-until one gives it serious thought and wonders if the author sacrificed reality for the sake of making "a point" about human nature.

Two things save Reservation Road, however, and make it worth reading. The first is the character of Dwight, whose anguish and self-loathing in the wake of the accident he caused is arresting, complex, and unique. The second is Schwartz's prose, which is lucid and engaging-on occasion, it's even downright eloquent. In the end, the novel is an almost perfect hybrid of Jacqueline Mitchard's far inferior "The Deep End of the Ocean" and James Agee's superior "A Death in the Family." It may not be a lasting work of literature, but it's a good piece of contemporary fiction. I would consider sampling Schwartz's work again.

Jaki's book has a thesis well summarized by the first reviewer. The polemic to support this thesis gets in the way for this reader. Newman is not an easy companion for either pro-curialists like Jaki on the one hand or the liberal sorts who try to claim Newman. Jaki sees Newman totally on his side and to do that you have to ignore Newman's own problems with Rome and the English and Irish hierarchies. If Newman was as ultramontane (super Roman) as Jaki says, why did the conservative hierarchy at the time distrust him so?

It is obvious that Stanley Jaki" latest book, "Newman's Challenge" is a labor of love. The two men are soul mates. Jaki has been interested in, and writiing about Newman for a long time. In fact, "Newman's Challenge" is a compilation of lectures and previously published chapters from other books written by the prolific Benedictine priest. For the serious, searching Christian, and especialoly for Anglicans and Catholics,there is much in this volume to ponder. Newman's challenge in defending the supernatural took him on a stringently logical path that could only lead him to embrace Rome as the church of the apostles, the inheritance of the early Church Fathers. Thus, Newman's most remembered quote, "The Fathers made me a Catholic," is based on what he considered two striking parallels: the refusal of the Fathers to conform to the thinking of the ancient pagan world, and the refusal of the post-Patristic Church, led by the Popes, to "cave in to the relentless demands of an ever more aggressive secular world." "Newman's Challenge" is a readable presentation of a brilliant man's self imposed moral obligation to seek and find truth. After many years, his journey led him to the Church handed down by Christ to Peter. Enormously sensitive to the voice of his conscience, Newman's supernaturalism was sound, the author declares, because it rested on the natural. Jaki knows whereof he speaks. He is the author of more than 40 books and articles on the history and the philosophy of science. Readers searching for logic and reason amid today's bewildering interpretations of the spiritual will find this book rich in discernment and even richer in provocative thinking.

To try to answer Thomasthawaii's question in review #4: Newman was distrusted by some Roman and English bishops because they were clericalists, i.e. they tended to think that the clergy are what the Church is all about. Newman, for his part, agreed that the clergy have an important and distinct role; but he insisted that this role was not an end in itself, but rather an instrument to a higher end: the attainment of holiness by all Catholics, lay and clerical alike. But the attainment of holiness is unavoidably a supernatural project. Hence, Fr. Jaki's emphasis on Newman's emphasis on the supernatural.