SPADA is a journal that contains some of most current ideas on historical swordsmanship by a number of the field's leading researchers. As a student of historical swordsmanship myself, I think it is an excellent step in the right direction for the progression of this school of study.

As far as the contents of the book are concerned, my hat goes off to the editor, Stephen Hand, for distilling such a diverse, and yet interesting range of papers from the vast array of excellent treatises available.

The book also features some interesting reports on some of the most recent activities undertaken in the WMA community. This provides the reader with a very good 'big picture' perspective into what advances are being made in what fields, and an appreciation for the vast range of people who are now interested in historical swordsmanship.

With regards to it's practicality, the book caters for many different tastes - whether you are interested in the finesse of renaissance fencing, or simply a medieval re-enactor using the trusty 'sword and shield' method. SPADA provides useful insights and a greater understanding of historical methods of fighting.

I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in gaining a greater appreciation of historical swordsmanship, and anyone who is curious to know what the swordmanship community out there is doing. I rate it as a 'must have' item, and I look forward to more SPADA releases in the future.

cheers

Matt Partridge
Secretary
Order of the White Stag

I was introduced to this book by a visiting British teacher. She shared it with my fifth grade class. I began reading the tales to my students and I was hooked! The stories are entertaining and perplexing. The endings surprise adults as well as children. After reading part of "There's No Such Thing" to the class, they created their own endings to the story. Their work was the best writing they had created all year!

I had a great time reading Blood is Pretty. The story kept surprising me, and I especially found the characters to be very fun to be with. Except, of course, Mr. Rand, and his henchmen. (Rand himself, I thought I recognized) I love that Anne was so smart. I love that Petey was such a nut. And I loved the way Leiva pulled it all together. The dialogue was wonderful, whether it was Fixxer and Roee debating a philosophical point, or Batsarov "expressing self." The Fixxer himself, of course, is just fascinating. A great mixture of brutality, gentility, passion and cool; a philosopher and man of action. His resourcefulness makes James Bond look like a damsel in distress. If you leave this book with one jealous note, it's that, if only you could have a shepherd, or seer, like Roee. Marvelous marvelous character. Reminded me of the fellow who helped out Cary Grant in To Catch A Thief. But Roee is far beyond that. A total original, and a delight! I can't wait to read the promised sequel: Hollywood is an All Volunteer Army.

"Blood is Pretty" reads as if the reader is also watching a movie. Author Leiva writes well and shows off his obvious experience in the world by interweaving pop culture and cutting edge trends...This fast paced read is never dull and the believeable characters move the plot, the way a good book should. Two thumbs up!

Blood is Pretty has everything. This book is a page-turner with aspirational characters that are both real and intriguing, a plot that both twists and plunges forward faster than an NFL running back, humor dryer than Bond's martini and explosions, guns and creams, all of which cannot even be mentioned on a family site.
Leiva delivers us the Fixxer, who is a Hollywood insider asked to help a starlet's potentially doomed career. His fee? Only a large percentage of her future income; forever.

He has a personal assistant who is ex-Israeli commando, he never drives the same car twice and has acquaintances from every walk of life that help him tackle what turns into a serious and ambitious encounter with a Bulgarian cowboy, a film director, and an international team of ner-do-wells. And all this in a story of daily life in Hollywood, on steroids. Blood is Pretty is literally and figuratively a blast. Proceed with abandon!

Paul Rand was a giant among designers, and one of the key reasons that graphic design exists as a profession in the United States. Heller, obviously a great Rand fan and friend(not to mention a prolific author), has given his subject his due, tracing Rand's evolution as an artist and the arc of his career. From a 1942 Autocar annual report whose design is astonishingly current to some work for Dubonnet that perhaps hasn't stood the test of time as well, Heller's choices of accompanying materials is excellent, illustrating as well as telling Rand's core philosophies: Effective graphic design is straightforward, purposed, and well-reasoned. This is a straightforward, well-assembled book that falls short in two very minor ways: While much is made of Rand's European influences, none of this work appears in the book, and select examples rather than just mention of Rand's contemporaries would have done a better job of placing his work in a more historical context.

I just received my book today and have not been able to put it down. Beautifully written and lavishly illustrated, Paul Rand by Steven Heller pays true homage to a man who was blessed with true talent, wit and intelligence. An amazing talent, and a fascinating book. A must-have for any serious design student or professional.

a book to keep for designers. heavy with ideas and great graphics. having known paul rand and being inspired by him the book also presented some graphics i have not seen as it was before my time. a book to refer to about design in general. solid text and research. miho

This book is a thoughtful and highly readable text about two thoughtful and deliberative members of the U.S. Senate. It would be very useful for any government class interested in learning how the system really works and interested in learning how two honorable men conduct their work.

This book is an excellent comparison of two very important men in American politics, a definite buy.

Mr. Lamb's elegant expose of the sordid social and political lives of two U.S. senators deserves high praise. Who would've known that two of our country's most distinguished luminaries are afflicted by a neurotic obsession with cheese? Who would've suspected that two of the hottest stars on the contemporary political scene exhaust valuable office time smearing each other with various dips and sauces. Between you and me, they're partial to Hollandaise sauce, but that's all I'll say. I don't want to let any more cats out of the bag. There is, though, a final kitten that I will set free. Buy this book. Next to my collection of Charo biographies, it's about the neatest batch of words I could hope to come across. Ciao. Foofy McDougall

This book promised many twists and turns, and it delivered. I was stunned at the ending. The courtroom drama (and legal procedures) were quite entertaining. In addition, the action and adventure of the pre-trial investigation, complete with bombs and bullets, had me turning the pages in rapid succession. My only complaint was how the ending left the problem that some of the events were extremely coincidental - would have been much nicer if they had all been truly related in some "cause and effect" manner. In other words, it left me feeling that the hero of our story was very lucky.

I was very pleased with the work of Steve Martini in Undue Influence. This is the first book that I have read by him, but I am sure that I will read more. The numerous plot twists and courtroom excitement kept this book open in my hands for long periods of time.

I am an avid reader of courtroom dramas. I picked this book up on a whim. Martini is a superb writer, and unlike Grisham, gives depth to his characters. Martini not only has a good story, he knows how to develop it. The only thing that bothered me throughout the book was his continual use of similes and cliche comparisons. If you can bear with those you'll enjoy the book. This is something I'd read again

Working in public accounting for a long time, but beeing new to the accounting world in the U.S., I found this book very instructive and helpful to resolve practical questions on one hand and finding access to the underlying "World of Statements", the scientific backbone, at the same time.

First it offers a red thread through most of the relevant areas of accounting and financial reporting. But even more important, the book contains a reliable and quick guidance to find solutions for a lot of different actual practical issues, occurring in specific industries and situations.

This set is the most comprehensive, informative, and complete writing on accounting. No other book is necessary! These are hard to find though. Good luck!

Powerful instruction in how to kill unborn children in 'collateral damage' language. The language is terse but succinct enough to focus on the procedure rather than the ethics. A concise textual reference in 'termination' of the unborn.

This text provides a thorough overview of social and medical aspects of abortion, written at a level appropriate for physicians and medical students/residents. It is a comprehensive and well-written introduction to abortion practices and techniques and a great reference.

This book fills an important gap in medical literature. It is a comprehensive review of modern abortion care. It is an essential book for every medical library and for every abortion provider.

The author provides us with beautiful photographs of Vietnam, a thousand year old country. Pictures of mountains, seas, paddy fields, towns and villages alternated with those of children afflicted with war induced deformities and a veteran amputee receving treatment. What makes the book interesting is the juxtaposition of black photographs of the war and colored images of the present.

For the past is interwined with the present. The horrors of the war have left indelible marks on the people and country alike as Raymer has shown us in his book.

The authors do an excellent job of transposing the "American Image" of Vietnam into the beautiful and complex country that it really is. It draws from that "American Image" rooted in the drama of the war years, and gradually leads us to a clearer understanding of just what the country is today (and what it was before the intensity of the U.S. involvement)and where it may go in the future. It is encouraging, and very hopeful, to see the country and its people re-anchored in their traditional values--in spite of the current relic of communism--and to appreciate the renewed emphasis on education, family, business, and integration into the world economy. Clearly, it has been a long hard row to hoe, but it is moving in the right direction. Jack Smith's introduction lays this out, and it is reenforced by the text and Mr. Raymer's revealing photographs. The result is a far better sense of place and people.

Jack Smith's introduction says it all -- Vietnam is a beautiful, peaceful land that is going places. Doing this book brought back a lot of memories and was a tonic for the soul. Enjoy it!

This book reviews some ideas Halmos worked on in the 1950s: the algebraization of predicate logic. The result was polyadic algebra, which has been unfairly neglected since. Tarski, Henkin, and their Berkeley students worked on a rival research program that culminated in the better known cylindric algebras. The treatment remains at the undergrad level, because Halmos stops short short of polyadic predicates. Halmos's "Algebraic Logic," which AMS keeps in print and is a fine read, contains all of Halmos's professional writings on polyadic algebra.

While Halmos does not cover all of first order logic, he does an excellent job of introducing the reader to the great power and depth of Boolean algebra, revealed by Marshall Stone and Tarski in the 1930s, and other Poles in the 1950s. By this I mean Boolean algebra coupled with the notions of filters, ideals, generators, and quotient algebras. The metatheory of the propositional calculus has a very elegant Boolean representation.
For that matter, the completeness of first order logic has a nice polyadic algebra translation.

Lattice theory is an extremely powerful generalization of Boolean algebra that has not attracted the attention it deserves. If Halmos had written a text on lattice theory, that situation would in all likelihood have ended. Halmos and Givant include an all-too-brief tantalizing chapter on lattices.

If this book has a drawback, it is the relative unsophistication of its first 40 odd pages, an introduction to logic. This is especially disappointing given that Givant is a logician, and an excellent one at that, being a student of Tarski's.

The books main asset is Halmos's lively prose style, unparalleled in modern mathematics. Math PhD students should study this book closely as a superb example of how to exposit mathematics.

It can be strongly argued that logic is the most ancient of all the mathematical sub-disciplines. When mathematics as we know it was being created so many years ago, it was necessary for the concepts of rigid analytical reasoning to be developed. Of the three earliest areas, geometry was born out of the necessity of accurately measuring land plots and large buildings and number theory was required for sophisticated counting techniques. Logic, the third area, had no "practical" godfather, other than being the foundation for rigorous reasoning in the other two. In the intervening years, so many additional areas of mathematics have been developed, with logic and logical reasoning continuing to be the fundamental building block of them all. Therefore, every mathematician should have some exposure to logic, with the simple history lesson automatically being included. This short, but excellent book fills that niche.
The title accurately sets the theme for the entire book. Algebra is nothing more than a precise notation in combination with a rigorous set of rules of behavior. When logic is approached in that way, it becomes much easier to understand and apply. This is especially necessary in the modern world where computing is so ubiquitous. Many areas of mathematics are incorporated into the computer science major, but none is more widely used than logic. Written at a level that can be comprehended by anyone in either a computer science or mathematics major, it can be used as a textbook in any course targeted at these audiences.
The topics covered are standard although the algebraic approach makes it unique. One simple chapter subheading, 'Language As An Algebra', succinctly describes the theme. Propositional calculus, Boolean algebra, lattices and predicate calculus are the main areas examined. While the treatment is short, it is thorough, providing all necessary details for a sound foundation in the subject. While the word "readable" is sometimes overused in describing books, it can be used here without hesitation.
Sometimes neglected as an area of study in their curricula, logic is an essential part of all mathematics and computer training, whether formal or informal. The authors use a relatively small number of pages to present an extensive amount of knowledge in an easily understandable way. I strongly recommend this book.

Published in Smarandache Notions Journal reprinted with permission.

In his "automathography" Halmos described his views on logic which he had in the 1960's. He felt that logic, as usually stated, was very un-profound, unrigorous, combinatorial amusement. He felt additionally that logic could be put on a firm algebraic footing through the theory of Boolean rings. At that time he interpreted many things in logic in terms of Boolean rings. This book is, in some sense, the child of these labors. Halmos created this book in his usual easy to read style, and when he said that few prerequisites were assumed, he meant it. I found the (short) book very interesting, but I also found the introductory pages seemed to drag. Perhaps this is because I already know something about logic, but the rest of the book was interesting and self contained. This book was lighter than most logic books I've seen. These books were mainly written by philosophers in some capacity or other, and they never stopped their thick prose.