This book had a magnificent whirl of fun twisted into it, while it still kept the seriousness of jing wang.

I think there is no task more daunting for a writer than to translate poetry from ancient China. First of all, the poems consist of ideograms, the so-called "characters". Vikram Seth's introduction to his book "Three Chinese Poets" has a good example how a Chinese poem looks in the original characters and in pinyin translation, and how a literal, word-by-word translation would sound: "lonely, close, brushwood, door/ vast, face, falling, light/ cranes, nest, pine, tree, everywhere/ men, visit, wicker, gate, few/ tender, bamboo, hold, new, powder/ red, lotus, shed, old, clothes/ at the ford, lantern, fire, rise/ everywhere, water-chestnut, picker, return home." The freedom given by the lack of grammar stands in stark contrast to the rigid structure of the poem. It consists of eight lines with five Chinese characters in each line. The lines 1, 2, 4, 6, and 8 end with rhyme words. Lines 3 and 4 have an identical grammatical word order, as have lines 5 and 6. Also, the images of the poet are symmetrically arranged. In line 1 a closed door stands in contrast to the vast expanse of line 2; line 3 sets the cranes everywhere in contrast to the few visitors of line 4; line 5 sees new powder against the old clothes of line 6. Only lines 7 and 8 do not contain contrasting images but rather an evening scene that reflects the evening scene of lines 1 and 2. Within this finely crafted structure the poet expresses a feeling: loneliness.

A translator has two options: to stay true to the Chinese characters and the structure of the original poem, or to stay true to what he feels to be the poetic message of the poem. It is essentially the same problem that a piano player faces when interpreting a sonata by Mozart or Beethoven. Seth chooses the conservative path of staying very close to the original, as he explains in his enjoyable introduction: "I should mention that the poems in this book are not intended as transcreations or free translations, in this sense, attempts to use the originals as trampolines from which to bounce off on to poems of my own [great image, by the way, for the arrogance of some translators]. The famous translations of Ezra Pound, compounded as they are of ignorance of Chinese and valiant self-indulgence, have remained before me as a warning of what to shun. I have preferred mentors who ... admit the primacy of the original and attempt fidelity to it."

Fidelity, however, is not all it takes to make a translation succeed. Sometimes the much lamented and maligned "freedom" of a translation yields better results. This is the case here. Let me compare two translations of a poem called "Moonlit Night" by the Tang Dynasty poet Du Fu (712 - 770 AD) to illustrate my point.

Seth translates: "In Fuzhou, far away, my wife is watching/ The moon alone tonight, and my thoughts fill/ With sadness for my children, who can't think/ Of me here in Changan; they're too young still./ Her cloud-soft hair is moist with fragrant mist./ In the clear light her white arms sense the chill./ When will we feel the moonlight dry our tears,/ Leaning together on our window-sill?"

For comparison, here the "transcreation" by David Young from his book "Five T'ang Poets" (1990): "Tonight/ in this same moonlight/ my wife is alone at her window// I can hardly bear to think of my children/too young to understand/ why I can't come home to them// her hair must be damp from the mist/ her arms cold jade in the moonlight// when will we stand together/ by those slack curtains/ while the moonlight/ dries the tear-streaks/ on our faces?"

Seth's translation keeps the eight-line structure and the rhyme words in lines 2, 4, 6 and 8. He does not give a pinyin (character-by-character) translation of the original poem. Therefore I cannot judge how true to the original his choice of words is. I would assume Young takes more freedom with the words. Young also breaks up the 8-line structure of the poem into a 3-3-2-5-line structure. In doing so he tries to highlight the train of thought of Du Fu: wife, children, beauty of wife, yearning for reunion.

The success of Young's translation lies in his bringing out the pain and longing of the poet who is separated from wife and children. This is where Seth fails. How pale is the pain of separation in "and my thoughts fill with sadness for my children" in comparison to "I can hardly bear to think of my children"; and how old-fashioned does it sound to end a poem with "leaning together on our window-sill" rather than with the poignant "while the moonlight dries the tear-streaks on our faces".

The best ancient Chinese poems pack a tremendous amount of emotion into a tight and formal structure. In this they can be compared to Shakespeare's sonnets. These Chinese poets are no lesser poets than Shakespeare is. Translating their poems, the success of the translation must be measured by the extent to which the emotion can be released without destroying the sense of structure in the original poem. Seth's translations with their stress on formal structure and literalness stifle the full emotional impact. The translations focus on the original structure rather than the truth about the human condition that the poet wants to convey to the reader. This is where Young's freer translation yields much better results.

The only objection one might raise against Young's translation is that it is reminiscent of a modern poet like William Carlos Williams. But I'd rather have Du Fu's substance in a modern structure than Du Fu's admirable craftsmanship at the expense of the impact his words have on my heart. His emotions are timeless - let them shine through with the help of a little "transcreation".

This cookbook is very, very bad. The recipes are really unappetizing. There is a picture given with every recipe, but all of the food looks gross. I have been a vegetarian for 12 years and LOVE Chinese food, but this cookbook is the pits. This cookbook seems to cater to vegetarians that still crave the taste of meat. Most of the recipes call for fake pork (gross) or chicken, fish(eel, cuttlefish even). Do not invest in this cookbook.

I was anticipating receiving this book, as I enjoy vegetarian food and don't mind meat substitutes, but was disappointed to find that almost all of the recipes call for "prepared" Asian meat substitutes (vegetarian cuttlefish, dried gluten balls etc.) that are nearly *impossible* to find, even online, it seems. Perhaps if one lived in a city that has a *large* Asian population and well stocked groceries, it wouldn't be a problem. I cook Asian and ethnic foods quite a bit, and my local Asian grocery is quite good, but I've never encountered any of these. Perhaps some could be substituted with TVP or similar, but the descriptions of the meat subs are so vague ("vegetarian meat," "vegetarian meat chunks" with corresponding pictures that really don't resemble anything I've ever seen before) that I would be afraid to try. I am familiar with the Wei Chuan cook books and realize that most already assume that you know something about what you're doing, but this one is particularly vague. So, I would really skip this book unless you have access to these unusual items (which frankly, sound very good and I would like to try!)

Finally, as a chef I have access to all of those fabulous 'meat dishes' made at the Bodhi and all of the great Vego restaraunts in Singapore. Unbelievable! As for the one star review, I guess one eats what one likes. Have you ever had Chinese food before? Or sat at a banquet? And been vegetarian and wondered how to do all those meat dishes, sans flesh? This is the one to get.

I have to admit that the promotors of the book did an execellent job in adding a spicy cover and provoking subtitle to the book. I am quite sure it will sell well: what else can be more enticing than gossipping on the conspiracy to destroy the world's only superpower by an upcoming superpower? I think this book is a must read for anyone who is interested in the geopolitical environment in the next few decades. However, the readers are encourage to read, ponder, and take the stuff with a grain of salt.

The original Chinese authors, Col.Qian and Col. Wang may sue Mr. Al Santoli and his publisher for misrepresentation of their original book and the misleading cover image if the latter do not have the former's approval. However, it is hard to believe that the publisher could list them as the 1st and 2nd author without their consent. Either way, I can see US $s flying into the 2 PLA officers' bank account. It is an uncanny union of hawks of two camps who believe that the collision and war between China and US are inevitable. As American, I worry more about our hawks. They have proved themselves to be capable of making wars against alleged enemies. We have heard enough recently about pre-emptive strike as our national defense policy, about US being a good empire obligated to spread our political believes around the globe. The unrestricted warfare advocated in the original Chinese version, on another hand, is primarily a defensive measure as a strategic black mail. It is not a "master plan to destroy America." It is out of the author's frustration felt by many in countries that have repeatedly humiliated by us. That's why people in those countries had cheered when Twin Towers came down. We have to make a distinction between people who undeniably share in some degree the same abhorrence towards us and the terrorists. We would defend our freedom by strength our home land defense and promote a new world order through peaceful means. Democracy cannot be imported and it has to start from inside despite the popular and very tempting believe nowadays that we are an empire and we out to do more militarily for the world. For Chinese, you should rein in your hawks as well. It is dangerous to let them get out of hand.

I have lived in Asia not just visited there. My degreed studies in Asian Studies and an understanding of two Asian languages and being married to an Asian lady gives me an insight to the thinking and traditional values and customs on the region. Many of your so called Customer reviews are clearly individuals that are attempting to cover and rewrite the history of our former leader giving our biggest enemy the technology to kill millions of Americans. Their opinions rate with the British that spoke against Churchill when he and others warned of the treachery of Hitler and the third Reich. The obvious attack by one of your rates on the "hawks" in the US is a clear socialist buzz word that has no bearing on this well written and detailed book. The book is very consistent with the Teaching of Sun Tzu and other Chinese History and is completely believable to any reader with an understanding of the material. The Book details some Information that is only known in some circles high above that of the average civilian. A good read with many good warnings. Not for the weak between the ears.

The title of this package is outright wrong. I've been programming for over ten years and when something says "COMPILER" I expect a compiler. The working model included in this package lets you build programs that run in the IDE but does not compile to EXE's. As for the book, no great shakes. It spends a great deal of time on the RAD but if you want to learn useful VB code, better look elsewhere.

If you are serious about learning V.B. 6.0, this book is not for you. The software that comes with the book contains no online help and does NOT compile. Spend a few extra dollars and buy "Visual Basic 6.0 Deluxe Learning Edition". It has the complete online MSDN library for all the help you need, and you can compile your projects into actual executable files.

While the book will get you started, alot is asummed. Previous programming experience is helpful.

I bought this book thinking that you could actually learn something from the labs. I was actually disappointed. First of all, it uses an old version of what it is now known as Webpack 5.2i from Xilinx, or foundations. the examples are very bleek and take the assumption you took the lecture before you can perfom this lab.

It is obvious this book is geard towards a technical school rather than an engineering school. There is not much you can learn from this book other than learning a lesson on how to be careful next time when buying books.

Disapointed buyer

This book was extremely difficult to understand in comparison to some of Salmon's other texts, such as Steel Structures: Design and Behavior. This text lacks a thorough explanation of problems. From a student's perspective or a first time learner's, this is not the best choice. Hibbler has a much better book on Structural Analysis with helpful examples and diagrams. This book expects students to work extremely difficult problems at the end of the chapter without working any examples of similar difficulty. For professors, this book does offer real to life problems that are complex and challenging, but another text may be needed to explain underlying concepts (e.g. influence lines).

I found this book to be pretty weak and out of date...

What can one say but, dont judge the book buy its cover. In my case (and everyone else who buys from amazon) i did exactly this, expecting too much, i was BITTERLY disapointed in the content of the book. I love scandanavian architecture and for some stupid reason the author decided to write a book on 20th Century architecture but left out the all important 1970 - 2000 buildings. The author focussed far too much on Pre-20th leading to. overall i hated the book. (the first one mind you ever! since purchasing from amazon in 5 years) If your interested in the background of swedish architecture then fine it's probably a great book, however if it's great design your after then this is certainly not the one!.

Overall, the book is a low-quality, PRC printing and binding, below Western standards; mine is coming undone after opening it only a few times, and some pages are faint, uneven, or otherwise unclear in places.

Explores the origins of 500 graphs in typical mass-market style, with focus on pictographs, one per page, with cartoons, rather than on the majority category of phonetic compounds and their actual evolutionary processes. Acceptable for the casual peruser, but not accurate or informative enough for the serious student of etymology. Like all such books I've seen now on the market, explanations are extremely brief, without references, and without noting competing theories, occasionally misleading the reader into thinking that his are the single, correct explanations, even though a handful of the readings are idiosyncratic or outdated (to be fair, most are correct). Examples: yao1 (now 'die young'), he defines as 'to bend' (following the outdated Han dynasty Shuowen and ignoring the established evidence that it means 'walk quickly or run, rush' based on zou3 'walk' and ben1 'rush'); bai2 (now 'white'), which he describes as 'a burning candle' (ignoring the two major theories that it is a loan of 'thumb' and 'head'); yin1 'prosperous; last Shang1 capital', which he describes as a man being beaten with a stick, despite the obvious presence of a graph for 'pregnant woman' which is probably playing a phonetic role and may even be its etymonic root (pregnant --> multitudinous, flourishing, prosperous).

Li is inconsistent in mentioning semantic and phonetic components in compounds, with omissions in graphs such as the role of ji4 'a mortar' in jiu4 'owl; old; ancient' regrettable. Polyphony is ignored; there is no mention of the role of li4 'tripod cooker' in two common compounds pronounced ge2, 'separate' and 'belch, hiccup', implying a second reading of ge2. Beginning students will not be able to make some of his leaps. For example, at ji1 'chicken' he mentions one component is phonetic, but does not mention its pronunciation or meaning; nor is there mention at the entry for that component, xi1, that it is phonetic in ji1 'chicken'. Similarly, decomposing ming2 'name', he fails to mention the origin or pronunciation of its top component (xi1, xi4), identifying it only as 'night' (although the illustration does show it correctly as the moon). Entries are sometimes slightly confusing, e.g., at wan4 '10,000': "Its original meaning was 'scorpion'. ... Later, it was loaned to be the numeral ten thousand, and was written as [ ]." This is somewhat unclear as to which meaning was written [ ], scorpion, or 10,000, and the printing quality in my copy was so poor as to render the graph [ ] illegible.

The 3-page preface, covering the history of the Chinese script, writes pinyin only, sans tones, for Chinese words, and a few minor details are incorrect (e.g., those oracle bones using turtle shells were mostly the plastrons, not the carapace, or back shell, as Li states). Otherwise the overview, albeit brief, is generally correct.

There is a stroke index by simplified char., while the main entries are conveniently ordered by pinyin.

A sequel with another 500 graphs was published as Evolutionary Illustration of Chinese Characters in 2000. Beijing Language & Culture University Press, ppbk; ISBN 7561908520. I don't plan to buy it.