I love old movies. They have some kind of magic that sadly I can't find in movies today. What this book does is to study the classical years- The classical narrative and how the system, style and people made together these classical movies. The starting point of this book is that almost all of the movies from 1917 to 1960 have the same elements, the same style- the style that today we all referring to when we think of hollywood- the way the story goes, the technical making (filming, editing) that tries to stay unseen and more. The authors choose 100 films from these years,almost all of them are not famous ones or films that made special impact, but films that were made out of the system. Out of these films they show the reader how the hollywood style make us blind to the technical elements and to the similarity of them- because although the norms changed all the time by films that broke the old norms- they all have similar basis. This book is very interesting and I recommend it to everyone who wants to learn more about classical hollywood from the films themselves. The only complaint I have (and it's refering to the edition I read, which is from 1985)) is that the pages are divided to columns and it makes the reading a little uneasy, but still worth the reading.

David Thompson was an explorer and cartographer of great magnitude. These personal journals document his explorations in the Canadian Rockies and northwestern U.S. from 1800-1811. His responsibilities were to discover and map new trade routes for the North West Company across the mountains and eventually to the Columbia River Basin. The journals depict the many hardships he and his men endured while on several exploratory trips: the impenetrable mountain snows; surviving severe winters of -30 F; the trials and tribulations of building trading posts, canoes, sleds; the demeanor of local Indian tribes; lack of food; etc. As Dr. Belyea says in her introduction, "David Thompson's Columbia journals require of the reader a perseverence that is well rewarded..the journals are dry and difficult..and the reader must work hard to create his or her own pattern of understanding". It is a worthy book from an exceptional man. The seven reproductions of maps by Arrowsmith, Thompson, etc. are quite poor in quality and I would therefore suggest an atlas for those unfamiliar with the geography of the area so as to follow his whereabouts.

This was the first of the Wilderness series that I read and I am hooked. If you like Judal Sackett by Louis L'Amour, you will love the Wilderness Series. Thompson is a lot like L'Amour in that his characters are seeking the great wilderness to be free. The characters are flawed but that is what makes them so great. Lots of suspense. The story is about an old miner who stubles into a gold mine about the time he is about to give up. Then he is kidnapped by some outlaws and that is were the hero comes in. Great story.

Because of its academic nature, this book was a slow read for me ... but worth the effort. While I've been managing for years, I did not have an appropriate appreciation for how my words and actions influence those around me. By employing the psychological principles in Managing People, I see clearly how I can (and should) become a better manager of people.
This is not a "flavor of the month" book. While books about techniques die on the 75% off table, this book will live on. It addresses the root of all management - dealing appropriately with people.

In a world ripped apart by war, a missionary couple is killed. Their son begins a long road to wards college, medical school and eventually surgical training, in order to return to the mission field where his parents died. Along the way he discovers God's hand working all around him. The path he follows leads far from his dream and in an honest and candid style, the author reveals his disappointment and frustration. There are valuable lessons learned in the process about sacrifice, servanthood, joy and commitment. ON CALL is peppered with stories that reflect a keen sense of humor.

An "easy read" that will challenge an uplift.

Beginnings, endings, murder, sex, adultery, treachery. The Bible is full of it all. Our Christian history. The Thompson Student Bible is a very readable, easy to use more youthful addition of the Thompson Chain Reference Bible. This bible has 45 portraits of such bible greats as Moses, Job, John the Baptist, Miriam and more linking their accomplishments with the verses where they are found. Study aids that give background information and history on the Bible, a list of fulfilled prophecies concerning Jesus Christ, charts on Bible People, and maps. This bible is one of the most complete I have seen.

Complete with 3-D glasses, this interesting book gives the reader a sampling of the variety of visual perceptual images that make the brain work in order to understand what we are seeing. Compact and brief, I believe Dr. Thomson illustrates how the eye and the brain make an effort to work together, yet sometimes face a battle! I recommend this enjoyable book, and plan to use it to introduce some of my students to how the eye see, and what the brain thinks.

Having worked at Orbital during the period this book covers, I was shocked at the inconsistency throughout this book. The author writes as an authority on Orbital, but in reality, he has had a very small slice of insight into what went on during that time. Critical events affecting the company as a whole which almost everyone at the company would know about did not show up in this book. For instance, two highly publicized failures of the Pegasus Rocket which occurred prior to the flight of Orbcomm were not even discussed. These failures definitely had some impact to the Orbcomm project. When you talk about Orbital, you talk about an end to end space company. That includes building the satellite, launching it, and providing the infrastructure to control it. The attempt was made at getting this across, but it really did not do justice to that topic. The book should be described as the incomplete history of the design of a satellite, not a history of Orbital. I do have to say that management personalites were described rather accurately. The engineers in the story are really depicted as an inexperienced bunch of kids who came right out of school with their "license to learn" (degree) and were directed to design a satellite system with nothing but their egos. Quite a bit of the book describes the long hours they worked and the stress involved in getting it done. This wasn't a superhuman abnormality in the engineering world at Orbital, as the author would lead you to believe. He could have told us about it in maybe 3 sentences, not 300+ pages. With that out of the way, the author could have brought this history of Orbcomm into recent history, instead of stopping before the constellation was launched. In summary, I have to say this book was a big disappointment. It doesn't do justice to Orbital or provide a consistent picture of the Orbcomm constellation development.

As someone who worked at the 'old' OSC during the time that this book covers, I knew a lot of the characters portrayed here and am acquainted with the Orbcomm story. It's not only accurate but it also tells a lot more about the engineering team and the management of the project than most people in the company knew at the time. Some people fault the book for only covering the time period to the '95 launch, but for the three critical years of the start-up's story, he captures every significant facet. I'm sure some engineers might not be happy with how they're portrayed, but this is not a technical book. As a story about entrepreneurial guts and the essence of engineering it's one of the best. The recent award from IEEE was highly deserved.

One of the most inspiring business books of the past year tells how a little company full of big ideas, Virginia-based Orbital Sciences Corp., got into the business of putting commercial satellites into space. In Silicon Sky: How One Small Start-Up Went Over the Top to Beat the Big Boys into Satellite Heaven, author Gary Dorsey chronicles the progress of a pipe dream as it has evolved into a company with 1998 revenues of $734 million. Orbital founder David Thompson gave Dorsey unfettered access to the company's inner workings -- from the beginning of its efforts to design a commercially viable communications satellite in 1992 through the first launch in 1995. The author clearly identifies with Thompson's entrepreneurial ardor, contrasting Orbital's culture of discovery with the 'feudal,' unimaginative culture of old-line aerospace companies addicted to government contracts. What Dorsey lacks in objectivity, he makes up for in clarity. From his fly-on-the-wall perch, sitting in on company meetings and peering over the shoulders of workers in the lab, he has observed and distilled into concise prose the details that made Orbital's success possible. Dorsey explains the technology behind the business so fluidly that it hardly seems like rocket science. BOOKPAGE, June 1990 REVIEW BY E. THOMAS WOOD

This book takes the reader on a fascinating journey through a time when what lay west of the Alberta Rockies was merely a faint whisper of great rivers, mountains and forests that beckoned the tough and determined fur traders of the Hudson Bay and Northwest companies. Of course, the prize that each of these competitors sought to find first was a trading route to the Pacific Ocean. There was word of a great river's estuary located to the southwest across the mountains, but the rivers west of the Rockies all flowed northward! David Thompson, after whom the Thompson River in British Columbia was named and perhaps the most unsung of the great North American explorers, was faced with a mystery to solve. And he did so -- surviving bitterly cold winters in the unforgiving outdoors without today's Gore-Tex garments and GPS gadgets. He followed the stars tenaciously and spent may hours out in the elements making and checking his triangulation calculations the old-fashioned way --longhand.

I read this book several years ago and remember well how it readily took me away from today's comfortable but harried world. It's well recommended to anyone with an explorer's bent who would like to join Thompson's party as he searches for the route west of the Rockies in Canada's early back yard. He certainly has earned my respect as one of the great, devoted explorers who opened the West. Nisbet brings his personality to life in a very readable, interesting book, obviously the product of a great deal of detailed research by the author.

This is truly an incredible story, an adventure that I can't believe hasn't been made into a movie by now. By comparison, the Lewis & Clark expedition seems dull and uninspiring. It makes me wish I were canadian.

Jack Nisbet does an excellent job by citing David Thompson's journals, including some of his original maps (lack of maps in a book can be annoying when you are talking about early explorations) and commenting on the area today. Wonderful accounts of early Indians in Northwest. The story of this early explorer is a must-read for all Lewis and Clark fans as it occurred about the same time. I found the book easy to read and it makes one want to explore that area of Canada.