"All the Merry Little Breezes of Old Mother West Wind were hurrying over the Green Meadows. Some flew this way and some ran that way and some danced the other way. You see, Jerry Muskrat had asked them to carry his invitations to a party at the Big Rock in the Smiling Pool." Originally published in 1910, the Old Mother West Wind Stories of Thornton W. Burgess are brimming with just this type of endearing and whimsical imagery. They are quaint but clever, sensitive and fun-filled. This lovely book contains sixteen stories featuring many charming woodland characters such as Tommy Trout, Mrs. Redwing, the Willful Little Breeze, Billy Mink, and Little Joe Otter. Burgess was a dedicated conservationist and these stories were intended to instill an abiding love of Nature and wildlife in small children. They do a wonderful job of it and Burgess would be delighted, as I am, in this edition's beautiful illustrations that are the work of the talented Michael Hague. The first illustration in the book, featuring Old Mother West Wind in her flowing grey and blue gown and her long flowing hooded cape, is worth the price of the entire book in and of itself. We have come to expect great things from Hague but he outdoes himself in this book. I'm glad to see these wonderful stories available to another generation of children. Their gentle pastoral nature really is timeless and the less our world sees of natural habitat and woodland creatures the more we need this book. Treat yourself and you children to it. It's one of my favorites.

"Old Mother West Wind", is the first of many stories by Burgess of his imagined world of The Green Forest, the Laughing Brook, and the Smiling Pond. Originally published in 1910, it is based upon a series of bedtime stories Burgess wrote for his son. The characters are inspired by the variety of wildlife Burgess was surrounded by as a child growing up in the yet-uncommercialized Cape Cod, Mass. His love of nature and his desire to instill that love in future generations is conveyed beautifully in these classic tales.

Old Mother West Wind comes down to the Green Meadows from her home in the Purple Hills daily to allow her children, the Merry Little Breezes, to frolic among the residents of the area. In "Old Mother West Wind", you are introduced to many of the characters upon which later books in this series are based. As the back of the book states, "[This book] combines gentle lessons about wildlife and the environment with the fun of a good story". In addition, most tales contain a basic moral lesson (ie. don't steal, don't lie, etc).

Any imaginative child will be captivated by this book. The chapters are short, with simple language that children will identify with, for the most part. Read aloud to pre-readers, or read by children themselves, this book will surely be a family favorite in no time.

This republication by Dover Children's Thrift Editions costs only a dollar. If you are looking to fill in your child's library a little whithout breaking the bank, I highly recommend starting here (and with the other Burgess books). You'll be glad you did.

Note: the next book in publication in this series is the Adventures of Johnny Chuck. While it is not necessary to read the books in order, I just wanted to add that info in case anyone wanted to know.

I read Burgess as a child and have loved him ever since. These wonderful stories inspire a love of animals and a love of nature, but not at the expense of good, old-fashioned American story-telling, and those who dismiss them as "sentimental" are displaying an unbecoming pomposity, in my view. Old Mother West Wind is beautiful classic, a book that escapes the pushy realism of so much contemporary storytelling aimed at children, which is really the choice of the parent, and not the child. Let kids imagine! It'll last them all their lives. What a gift, indeed!

Book Review-Spintronics, M. J. Thornton and M. Ziese (Eds.), LNP 569, Springer Verlag, 2001

The Lecture Notes in Physics (LNP) published by Springer Verlag is a treasure of physics knowledge consisting of about 600 volumes covering all areas of physics. The main role of LNP is to offer a comprehensive account of the hottest issues of physics, written in an accessible style, for a reader that could be quite unfamiliar with the treated subject. The main aim of a volume in LNP is to encourage the reader to start his/her own research after reading of a LNP volume. Starting with the year 2001, the LNP is available also in electronic form, and any volume published in the years 2000 and 2001 can be downloaded from the Springer Internet homepage.
Moreover, Springer Verlag has offered in the summer of 2001 free access to all LNP volumes published in 2000, and at the end of 2001 another free access to LNP volumes published in 2000 and 2001. Thus, the physics community was able to read the last volumes of LNP and to test their contents.
An illustrative example about LNP is its 569th volume, named Spintronics, edited by M. J. Thornton and M. Ziese. This volume of about 500 pages is the first book dedicated to the emerging area of spintronics. The large majority of electronic and optoelectronic devices are based on the dynamics and control of charged carriers when their spin orientation plays no role. The spin electronics and the spin optoelectronics briefly termed Spintronics are new areas of research entirely based on the control and transfer of the electronic spin orientation. There are only two spin orientations: spin-up and spin-down. Thus, in these devices the information is encoded in the spin orientation of the carriers and can be read, memorized, transferred and finally sensed as a certain polarity of the current flow.
Ferromagnets are natural sources of oriented spins because they contain a certain spin asymmetry. There is an increased interest in the developing of semiconductors able to work based on spin orientation, although the large majority of them are non-magnetic. An example of the emerging area of ferromagnetic semiconductors is GaAs, which becomes ferromagnetic when doped with a magnetic dopant. The spin orientation can be controlled even when the spins are tunneling semiconductor interfaces.
The applications of spintronics are promising, and some of them are already implemented and demonstrated in computer architectures: (i) high-density hard disks based on giant magnetic resistance (GMR) of spintronics materials when they are turned from a spin state to another by a magnetic bias, (ii) Random Access Memories based on GMR that are non-volatile and one million times faster than a hard disk.
A very important future application is the quantum information based on spin orientation. The already proposed solutions based on atom or ion manipulation are not reliable for real computing devices, being able to perform only some operations in predetermined sequence that cannot be changed. On the contrary, spintronics devices are more versatile: the spin orientation can be programmed, switched and memorized at picosecond time scales.
The book takes into account all the aspects mentioned above being an introduction in the spintronics domain; it starts with introductory chapters, then presents the materials used in spintronics and their applications for data storage, field sensors and magnetic imaging. The realization of spintronics devices using micro- and nanofabrication techniques is also reviewed.
The book reviewed above is only an example of the LNP collection of books, which is a must for any physics library. Since LNP is being available via Internet, it is now more easily accessible to the physicists at their work place or at home. LNP was a main tool of education and knowledge for some generation of physicists and will continue to be so in its new electronic form.

Daniela Dragoman
Mircea Dragoman

Univ. Mannheim
Dept. Optoelectronics,
B6, 23-29, Building C
68131 Mannheim, Germany

danieladragoman@yahoo.com
mdragoman@yahoo.com

Personal webpages:
http://www.geocities.com/danieladragoman
http://www.geocities.com/mdragoman

Spintronics, M. J. Thornton and M. Ziese (Eds.), LNP 569, Springer Verlag, 2001

The Lecture Notes in Physics (LNP) published by Springer Verlag is a treasure of physics knowledge consisting of about 600 volumes covering all areas of physics. The main role of LNP is to offer a comprehensive account of the hottest issues of physics, written in an accessible style, for a reader that could be quite unfamiliar with the treated subject. The main aim of a volume in LNP is to encourage the reader to start his/her own research after reading of a LNP volume. Starting with the year 2001, the LNP is available also in electronic form, and any volume published in the years 2000 and 2001 can be downloaded from the Springer Internet homepage.
Moreover, Springer Verlag has offered in the summer of 2001 free access to all LNP volumes published in 2000, and at the end of 2001 another free access to LNP volumes published in 2000 and 2001. Thus, the physics community was able to read the last volumes of LNP and to test their contents.
An illustrative example about LNP is its 569th volume, named Spintronics, edited by M. J. Thornton and M. Ziese. This volume of about 500 pages is the first book dedicated to the emerging area of spintronics. The large majority of electronic and optoelectronic devices are based on the dynamics and control of charged carriers when their spin orientation plays no role. The spin electronics and the spin optoelectronics briefly termed Spintronics are new areas of research entirely based on the control and transfer of the electronic spin orientation. There are only two spin orientations: spin-up and spin-down. Thus, in these devices the information is encoded in the spin orientation of the carriers and can be read, memorized, transferred and finally sensed as a certain polarity of the current flow.
Ferromagnets are natural sources of oriented spins because they contain a certain spin asymmetry. There is an increased interest in the developing of semiconductors able to work based on spin orientation, although the large majority of them are non-magnetic. An example of the emerging area of ferromagnetic semiconductors is GaAs, which becomes ferromagnetic when doped with a magnetic dopant. The spin orientation can be controlled even when the spins are tunneling semiconductor interfaces.
The applications of spintronics are promising, and some of them are already implemented and demonstrated in computer architectures: (i) high-density hard disks based on giant magnetic resistance (GMR) of spintronics materials when they are turned from a spin state to another by a magnetic bias, (ii) Random Access Memories based on GMR that are non-volatile and one million times faster than a hard disk.
A very important future application is the quantum information based on spin orientation. The already proposed solutions based on atom or ion manipulation are not reliable for real computing devices, being able to perform only some operations in predetermined sequence that cannot be changed. On the contrary, spintronics devices are more versatile: the spin orientation can be programmed, switched and memorized at picosecond time scales.
The book takes into account all the aspects mentioned above being an introduction in the spintronics domain; it starts with introductory chapters, then presents the materials used in spintronics and their applications for data storage, field sensors and magnetic imaging. The realization of spintronics devices using micro- and nanofabrication techniques is also reviewed.
The book reviewed above is only an example of the LNP collection of books, which is a must for any physics library. Since LNP is being available via Internet, it is now more easily accessible to the physicists at their work place or at home. LNP was a main tool of education and knowledge for some generation of physicists and will continue to be so in its new electronic form.

A very interesting book, though the author is decidedly pro monarchy and particularly towards the Queen Mother. Wallis comes off as a shrew of the greatest magnitude, while the Queen Mum seems destined for sainthood. Having read a number of books about the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, it's interesting to see the story from the other side. Let's just say that both women had their fair share of faults...and leave it at that.

I was asked to review this text by a group of EMTs at the teaching hospital where I am employed as an ER physician and surgeon. The text contains conflicting information and is not well organized. I would not recommed this text for teaching new EMTs. It could be useful as a review for experienced technicians or paramedics.

While the information can, at times, be repetitive or confusing, overall the book stresses those skills and topics which are important for prehospital emergency providers. The book is easy to use as a reference, reads at a slightly higher level than many introductory texts, and can be a valuable resource even for an EMT-P. This book does require, however, some direction and sometimes elaboration from from a knowledgeable and organized "Basic" instructor.

Worth owning and using.

THIS IS A EXCELLENT BOOK TO USE FOR LEARNING THE BASIC EMT. THIS BOOK WAS USED BY MY PROFESSOR AND 16 OUT OF A CLASS OF 19 PASS THE STATE TEST. SO ADVICE IF YOU GOING TO STUDY TO BE AN EMT USE MOSBY IS THE BEST