Allen Shawn's book is clearly a labor of love. This is remarkable, given that Schoenberg is notoriously difficult to love! I strongly recommend the book to anyone interested in one of the most influential composers of all time. Shawn is a composer, and presents careful treatments of several major compositions, complete with excerpts from the scores. He includes some fascinating biographical information, but the focus is the music. Schoenberg pioneered "atonal" music in the years right around 1910 parallel to Kandinsky's pioneering abstract painting, and in fact the two were friends and collaborators. Here is an amazing quote from Schoenberg:

"It has never been the purpose and effect of new art to suppress the old, its predecessor, certainly not to destroy it. ... The appearance of the new can far better be compared with the flowering of a tree: it is the natural growth of the tree of life. But if there were trees that had an interest in preventing the flowering, then they would surely call it revolution. And conservatives of winter would fight against each spring. ... Short memory and meager insight suffice to confuse growth with overthrow." (p. 141)

I don't understand musical notation, but when Mr. Shawn goes into detail, his inspiration is transmitted to me, and I want to go hear the work.

Schoenberg is tough, true. But I hope people will read this book and see he was human and passionate.

It's really silly that I haven't had the opportunity to hear one of the greatest composer's music in concert. Will that change?

With more advocates such as Mr. Shawn, I can hope so.

Thank you, Allen Shawn, for putting Arnold Schoenberg in the light that he deserves to be viewed in.

I own everything written by either Arnold Lazarus, Phd or Allen Fay, MD. Their best ...are the books they did together. This book is a gem. No shrink, patient or psychology student should be without it!

The authors have distilled from thousands of therapy sessions some truly effective healthy philosophies. It's a quick read which delegitimizes some common irrationalities and gets to the heart of the self-help matter. A good extension of REBT and CBT ideas...addresses disturbance-causing beliefs head-on. You won't regret buying it. A welcome change from all the crappy psych books out there!

This book is terrific! It helped me realize that I was poisoning my happiness with my own thinking. More importantly, it gave me the remedies I needed for achieving a more balanced outlook and better mental health.

I thought this book was great! The pictures of the objects are beautiful. Where a picture could not be obtained there is usually a detailed sketch of the object. The descriptions give not only insight into use of the archaological object but also surrounding information like similar objects and archeological context. Then the essays descibe the time period and unknown/debated issue of Egyptian Archeology. As a newbie to Egyptian Archaeology I found the book easy to read and felt that things were explained well.

Most of us have a life filled with myths (e.g. its important to be right, other people are happy, don't hide your anger). This book takes on some of the most common myths...and provides another way to look at them. Its written by two of the most famous living therapists... a psychologist and psychiatrist who are both masters. Its easy to read and truly life changing. There aren't many books I can say that about. The book was a best seller in an earlier edition (in the 1980s) and went out of print. I assume this new publisher bought the rights. I'm really happy its back in print. Its a classic.This has long been one of my favorite books. Do not miss it!

"Royal Women of Amarna" portrays not only some of the most beautiful pieces created by any craftsmen of the ancient world with both text and fabulous plates, but also the personalities of the women who inspired such timeless masterpieces. This work is more than a mere collection of museum pieces; it tells the tale of every known Queen and princess of the period, spanning from the reign of Amenhotep III to that of his son Akhenaten, even those princesses who are attested by name only in the historical record. The possible reasons for the prominence of females during this period are examined, as well as the symbolism embedded in the art: a personal fascination for me was the theory that the shape of Nefertiti's blue crown is based on the hairstyle worn by women about to give birth, stressing both her fertility and her link to Tefnut. Whilst examining the women who made up a great part of his life, the book also gives some insight and wonderful, suggestive hints towards the personality of Akhenaten, himself. Again, the plates are the best one could ever hope for, making each piece seem tangible to those who have never seen them first hand(including myself) but plan to (including myself:), and the book would be worth purchasing for them alone if the text were not just as compelling. "The Royal Women of Amarna" is a must for any Amarna bookshelf and works of the late, great Cyril Aldred should find no shame in sharing company with them.

It seems that the Old Kingdom and it's works of art are many times overshadowed by later periods in Egyptian history. This book will go a long way in changing that. This book is beautifully illustrated and very well written. There are a multitude of sections going into many aspects of Egypt at this point in time. I would highly recommend this to anyone who wants to get a good overview of the Old Kingdom and it's treasures. It will be money well spent.

The aim of the book is to capture the many artifacts of the old kingdom. in this regard, its aim is not to be informative by being detailed on the old kingdom history - there are many books which attempt to do this.

having stated the aim of the book, i should judge it on the quality of the pictures: they are superb!! one of the best pictures i have seen, especially considering that they are indoor pictures! the grain is non-visible, this makes a difference for such a relatively pricy book.

Many of the pictures fill the whole page and this creates a striking image! It is a great buy if you want to collect good pictures on egypt!

One minor disappointment is that they omitted some of the most interesting pictures or artifacts of the old kingdom, which you find in other books. For example and most importantly the bas relief of king djoser at the ny metropolitan museum. yet, i probably know why..

This book is oversized, thick (560 pp), densely illustrated, and has a scholarly text that is fascinating and detailed. It contains photos of plenty of ancient art, mostly sculpture, and the large part of it will never again be available for viewing beyond the walls of the museums which have collected it. I recommend it for reading, from the library if you don't feel the need to purchase it. I also recommend it for purchase, because it is quite up to date from the standpoint of conventional Egyptology. Another great book for the coffeetable. Turn off Total Request Live and just read this.

This book is very hands on. Apparently written by professionals on the street. The author goes into the nuts and bolts of fixed income mathematics. You can expect to find a lot of details on formula, day-count convention, examples and exercies. This book is part. good for people who need to code these formulae. Overall speaking, it is a very good practical guidance, which it cuts out all the unneccessary information as in a lot of other books.

This book may indeed make a good reference for one who regularly deals with the subject matter. However for the uninitiated (me) this book was a truly awful experience. It was used as a textbook my Probability/Queuing Theory class. It is almost completely useless for this purpose. Its language would be clear only to someone holding an advanced degree in mathematics, never to an undergrad. Our instructor had 20 (and growing) handwritten pages of errata.

If your instructor requires this book, you should waste no time in writing nasty letters to his superiors. You are in for a real trial.

Avoid this book at costs.

The book covers a lot of relevant material in sufficient detail. It's hard to find a good book on probability and queueing theory applied to computer science. This book is one of the best I have seen. The author does an excellent job of explaining the variables used in the different equations contained in the book, and also clearly explains the context in which various equations are used. Everything is well presented and easy to read. I continue to use the book as a valuable reference and highly recommend it.

Excellent resource for statisics and queueing theory. Clear in depth presentation and plenty of examples. Author has a good presentaion style and is humorous as times. Makes you actually want to learn the material. Only fault is that it doesn't have any spreadsheet examples. (understandable though considering when it was published)

This marginally entertaining "novel" is a shining example of big publishing bandwagon-jumping. (Its antecedents are Sex and the City, Bridget Jones' Diary and The Girls Guide to Hunting and Fishing.) It is peppered with thinly drawn characters with obvious names like Holly Flake and Spitty Clark and lazy, self-satisfied lines like "She couldn't imagine a time in life she'd ever aspired to going anywhere--except maybe back to sleep." Rosenfeld does a pretty good job bringing to life Phoebe Fine's many neuroses, but to what end? Any tension she creates is almost immediately dismissed, as in the case of Spitty Clark, an aging frat guy who may or may not have committed rape. How does Phoebe Fine deal with this knowledge? She offers herself to him sexually after a miserable Greek formal but is spared consummation when Spitty vomits during their make out session. Two pages later it's on to another ill-fated relationship, again defined by Phoebe Fine's predictable insecurities her current male foil's supposedly humorous one-dimensionality. It all goes on far too long and none of it is particularly inspired. I was excited by the Pablo Miles section when I read it recently in The New Yorker, but whatever charm that piece may have had on its own is not enough to sustain a novel. What She Saw reads less like a finely constructed piece of literature and more like an ambitious grad school manuscript. Look for the movie sometime next summer.

I read Lucinda Rosenfeld's "What She Saw..." in one night, and it was like riding a roller coaster. At times, it was exhilirating and refreshing, funny and insightful, at other times it dragged beyond belief, and I couldn't wait to move on to the next chapter/guy. Not surprisingly, the characters and stories Rosenfeld clearly spent more time and thought developing (Spitty Clark, Humphrey Fung, Bruce Bledstone -especially Spitty Clark!) were the best and most interesting aspects of the book. The others (i.e., Kevin McFeeley, Arnold Allen) should have been left out completely; instead, they were brushed over in perfunctory, seemingly obligatory fashion. Certainly a better read would have been one that narrowed the list of ex-boyfriends to the few who played important roles in the character development of Rosenfeld's protagonist, Phoebe Fine. That way, their interrelation could have been explored and examined in greater detail. Nevertheless, Rosenfeld is a terrific writer, and I found myself laughing out loud at times. She just has to work on putting it all together in her next work, which I look forward to reading.

dreadful and fun is the conundrum i'm put in when i begin to go back through the quite thick entanglement of the boys, boys, and men i've dated, and in the book "what she saw", i was given the chance to delve into someone else's mess.

each chapter takes a look at a different boy/man the main character dated/went with/screwed. a fun idea, but there's such a distance on the page... it's difficult to understand her convictions. i wanted to laugh, and groan in aggreeance, but was left slightly unsympathetic and befuddled. the book begs to be written in the first person, but for some bizarre-o reason lucinda rosenfeld gave us a third person story.

after reading the first chapter i thought it was clunky, and decided to shut it for good, but i was at work, with nothing elese to read, so i kept going, and somehow fell in. i still didn't really like it, but felt hooked nonetheless. weird.

i gave it four stars due to the 'it hooked me factor;' what does it all mean? i suppose it's just as confusing as what she really did see in all of those guys.