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This book will help Japanese Society to enter New Era, October 24, 2000 Reviewer: teruo miyagawa (see more about me) from hiratsuka, kanagawa Japan Deming's TQC(Total Quality Control) and Kanban method were the key for Miracle Japan economy growth after World War Two. Japanese economy were struggling during 1990's decade, one of the reason is to ignore the power of the information structure, and depend upon the old paper information system, which speed cannot catch up with the society change speed. This book will help Japanese Society to enter New Era. Last month, Daiwa Bank's ex-board 11 members were ordered 830 million USD indemnity, because of Daiwa Bank New York officer's fraud. Snow Brand, Mitusbishi Moter, Bridgestone/Firestone, many companies are facing trouble by lacking Total data Quality Management. This book is really help for 21 centure enterprize direction.

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WHY MY COMMENT IS NO VOTING BUTTONS? IS MY COMMNET NOT FAIRNESS AND IMPARTIALITY? LET ME KNOW. TERUO MIYAGAWA

Deming's TQC(Total Quality Control) and Kanban method were the key for Miracle Japan economy growth after World War Two. Japanese economy were struggling during 1990's decade, one of the reason is to ignore the power of the information structure, and depend upon the old paper information system, which speed cannot catch up with the society change speed. This book will help Japanese Society to enter New Era. Last month, Daiwa Bank's ex-board 11 members were ordered 830 million USD indemnity, because of Daiwa Bank New York officer's fraud. Snow Brand, Mitusbishi Moter, Bridgestone/Firestone, many companies are facing trouble by lacking Total data Quality Management. This book is really help for 21 centure enterprize direction.

IT has often had it backwards, such as when companies seek to automate what already adds little value. If the data are degraded in the process, you fall back instead of forward. The downside risk is real, as is the upside opportunity. While many books talk in abstraction about knowledge management, this book provides a practical process that will vastly improve IT effectiveness. IT managers should read this first, as should their clients. I hope that this book will be but the beginning of an emphasis on first dealing with the problem, then looking for the right way to deliver and use the data while protecting them, then look at the software and hardware choices. I look forward to future books that provide even more examples of what can go right and wrong with the knowledge and data. This is the way that best practices should be spelled out. I also look forward to seeing how best practices will evolve in this field into future best practices. There is a lot of room for improvement.

I call this review "Constant Companion Qabalah" because I keep this book always near my desk. As a professional astrologer, VisionCoach and expert Tarot symbolist, I find this book the single most profound reference of its kind. It has been my constant companion since I first read it back in 1989. I have since read it at least three times from cover to cover and I refer to it constantly in the classes I teach. Robert Wang has thoroughly mastered the material. He has access to the secret doctrines of the mystery schools such as The Order of the Golden Dawn. His approach is intellectually and practically balanced with a profound understanding of the spirituality and mystic wisdom of the Qabalah. This is a book that will stay with you at whatever level you meet it and meet you at whatever level you wish to take it to later. Perhaps it goes without saying, but a good working knowledge of astrology and Tarot is a real plus before cracking the spine of this one!

This book is a masterpiece - it's very informative & researched (which make it contrast sharply with the many - too many - shallow formulative books published nowadays), and gives a wide and deep view of the tarot.

Wang explains the tarot using the Qabala (especially the tree of life) and some astrology, based on the Golden Dawn tradition, giving it a context and underpinning - the tarot is presented not as a collection of pictures, but as the structured tool that has a structure and ordered basis in western occult tradition. To illustrate his explanation, he compares the Tarot of Marseilles, his own Golden Dawn deck, Waite's Rider deck, and Crowley's Thoth deck. The book can be used as a guide for all of those decks, or as the best companion guide to the books that accompany them (e.g. the Pictorial Key to the Tarot or Book of Thoth).

Though the book is not the easiest to read (and needs to be read more than once to be fully digested), the language is concise, the structure of material logical and clear, and is worth every cent of its price and every moment spent reading.

The only complaint I have about this book is the poor binding - the pages are poorly glued at the back which made the pages break into four groups quickly. I wish a plastic binding back was used instead.

This work is very well-researched and precise. I found the better way to read it was to study it one symbol at a time rather than reading cover-to-cover. It is so full of relations between symbols that one need to meditate on it. Studying it, I found I have a better overall understanding of the subject. But after intellectual comprehension, skrying is the next step.

This book provides a reference model called SEPRM (software engineering process reference model) against which the major capability and quality models can be quantitatively compared.

The models compared in the book are: ISO 15504 (SPICE; Software Process Improvement Capability Determination), CMM (SEI's Capability Maturity Model), Bootstrap (European Software Institute) and ISO 9000-3. What makes the book valuable is the methodical, quantitative manner in which each of the models can be compared using a process algebra against the author's software engineering reference model. This allows organizations that are striving for software engineering process improvement to make objective decisions regarding which of the models addressed in this book is the best fit for their business model, organizational culture and market.

Given that each of the four major capability and quality models discussed are internationally recognized, each with strengths and weaknesses, the decision making process set forth in the book can be made based on fact instead of bias.

What I particularly like about the book is the complete and deep understanding I gained about SPICE, CMM, Bootstrap and ISO 9000-3. I was quite familiar with each before I read the book, but the insights I gained about measurable strengths and weaknesses of each approach compared to the SEPRM were illuminating. Moreover, I learned a lot from dissecting the SEPRM itself, leading to an understanding of process modeling independent of software engineering processes. This in itself makes this book valuable to those of us who design and implement processes in environments where there are competing standards.

This book is an excellent source of information for software engineers and managers who want to examine, or compare their own software processes against the current SE process models. It is well written, easy to follow, and covers all of the current popular process models.

The book discusses the history, philosophy, and assessment techniques for CMM, ISO 9001, BOOTSTRAP, and ISO 15504. Each of the models is explained and a formal description of each of the process models is provided using a process algebra.

A reference model, SEPRM, that the authors have developed, can be used to transform and compare the various models between each other. It is this reference model that provides a domain that contains all of the process models. By using the SEPRM a software engineer can analyze the interrelationships of the current process models.

This book was very good and I found the information in it to be very useful. For anyone looking to improve their software development processes this book would be of great benefit.

With the increased awareness that software development is not done randomly but like all other engineering fields it also has to follow a process, this book focuses on the principles and applications of software engineering processes. It begins with fundamentals of Software Engineering to give a clear understanding of the techniques and processes for the reader who is new to this field. It speaks about how the Software Engineering has evolved from the past and what the modern domain of Software Engineering is. Then it talks about CMM, explaining in detail the CMM process model and its capability levels. It is further explained how CMM can be used for assessment of a software project, thus giving the reader good understanding of the use of much discussed model.

The book also talks about other process models such as ISO 9001, ISO 15504, BOOTSTRAP and SEPRM. It explains in detail about all of these capability models their process subsystems, the processes in the subsystem and the practices of the processes, giving description of the rating scale for all the models for doing assessments. The author has provided algorithms for all process models to do assessments and also put all the processes and their practices in an assessment form that makes the life of the auditors very easy. This algorithms and assessment form are also very beneficial for software engineering students as it gives them a feel how these models are used in industry for assessment.

I found the information on the SEPRM model to be very thorough. The book talks in detail on how this reference model helps in bringing forward the whole picture of the SE process system. Also, I found the model to be well integrated and comprehensive with the Software Engineering process. This model combines all of the above-mentioned models and it enables transformation of process capability levels between existing process models and standards. This is 2D model that helps in finding the weak areas in the software process that need improvement.

Overall, the book gives a good understanding of the various process models and their use. Besides, I found it very useful to get such good information on all of them in just one comprehensive text as it helped me to understand the application of these models simultaneously, and also helped me to compare them with each other. I would recommend this book to people who want to get better understanding of the software engineering process and the various process models.

"Verses, however masterly, cannot be translated literally from one language into another without losing much of their beauty and dignity." (Bede, English writer and historian, AD 673-735)

For the translator of poetry, and Chinese poetry in particular, the question is: shall I be true to the letter or to the spirit? Usually the answer lies somewhere in the middle. The best translations aim to be true to the spirit without violating the letter more than necessary.

David Young, a poet himself, hopes to be true to the spirit of the five poets from the Tang Dynasty (AD 618-906) while at the same time trying to create poetry in a different language and period. The impulse that lies behind his book is to rescue the poets "from the often wooden and dogged versions of the scholars" and to recreate the beauty and dignity of the poetry in a language used by an American poet at the end of the 20th century. The results are marvelously readable, beautiful translations that I enjoyed more than any other translations of Chinese poetry I have read before or since.

Preceding the translations, Young has written a short introduction to each of the poets. These include a discussion of the special qualities of the poets' works and a selection of recommended translations by other English authors.

The five poets represented in this book are (1) Wang Wei, a devout Buddhist and the Chinese poet of landscape par excellence who wrote poems of a deeply religious sensibility; (2) Li Po, the Chinese archetype of the "bohemian artist and puckish wanderer," a poet beloved for his Taoist unconventionality; (3) Tu Fu, China's greatest poet according to a widely held view because of his technical brilliance and "vigorous poetry that manages to transcend unhappiness and melancholy by its enormous range and immense humanity"; (4) Li Ho, a poet usually not ranked with the Big Three because he is too innovative and defies classification; and (5) Li Shang-yin, who has a reputation as a decadent versifier but, as Young shows, is a "human and humane artist who feels deeply and sees deeply into mysteries of our common existence."

One of my favorite poems in this collection is "Returning to my cottage." It is a good example of Wang Wei's ability to capture stillness and movement in a landscape, to balance observations of things distant and close by, and to create from these images an atmosphere of serenity tinged with sadness. It is a good example for David Young's style of translation, too:

A bell in the distance
the sound floats
down the valley

one by one
woodcutters and fishermen
stop work, start home

the mountains move off
into darkness

alone, I turn home
as great clouds beckon
from the horizon

the wind stirs delicate vines
and water chestnut shoots
catkin fluff sails past

in the marsh to the east
new growth
vibrates with color

it's sad
to walk in the house
and shut the door.

Bottom line: This is one of the few anthologies of classical Chinese poetry in which the English versions of the poems really sound like poetry. There is nothing of the stiff formality and awkwardness of most other translations that disable the lyric voice of the verses. These translations are full of the beauty and dignity of the Chinese originals.

I first read David Young's amazing translations of these great T'ang poets seventeen years ago, when I was one of his students at Oberlin College in Ohio, and they started me on a lifetime of reading and loving these astonishingly ancient and contemporary sounding poets. There is something vibrantly alive, immediate, and inspiring about these 8th century words and the personalities of their wise, striking authors. In reading many translations, you won't find many as clear and right.

This is THE book of translated Chinese poems which opened my eyes to the art of poetry. I've since searched for and read many others, but this remains the best. The translations are masterful - lucid, transparent, simple, and, in English, stand as wonderful poems in their own right.

This is an extraordinary book filled with pictures and information about every facet of Chinese Opera. It not only describes the operas and the regions from whence they originated, but also provides details such as the musical instruments used, and descriptions of the various the role types. Everything is illustrated, with color pictures on almost every page. The book certainly exceeded my expectations.

This is an articulate and visually stunning book on Chinese Opera. Better pictorial research on the costumes, make-up and architype body poses is not available in English speaking countries. This is a must have research book for those in film and theatre.

If you're looking for a gorgeous book on the fascinating world of chinese opera, this is it. Has quite a good text featuring stories of the more popular operas. Furthermore, discusses regional variations, history and development and modern developments in the art.

This is one of my favorite Christian books, and Carl Lawrence is a favorite author. The book repeats some of his earlier book, now out of print, "The Church in China." Even so, this does not detract. Lawrence details the movement of the Holy Spirit in China, while giving examples. Also, the book gives a history of Chinese missions, at least partly explaining this movement of Christianity in a hostile country. A great book!

Reading this book encouraged me greatly. The work of the Holy Spirit among Christians in China is phenomonal. The lesson of how God turns what to man seems evil into good is prominent throughout this book. I recommend this as reading for all Christians who believe that what we are about is to follow Jesus' command to go forth, make disciples, teaching what Jesus has taught us. I sincerely pray that this book will be printed again.

This book renewed me more than anything I've read in ten years. God is moving in China!

Contrary to what most people seem to think, this comic is not based on the movie of the same name. The movie was based on the fourth in a series of five novels by Wang Du Lu. The comic begins with by adapting book three and, if I've heard correctly, will adapt all the way through book five.
Anyway, the comic itself is definitely a sight to behold. There is so much detail and the art is so fluid and the colors are so vivid it just demands a second read to take everything in. The story is very interesting, beginning with two thieves attempting to steal the Green Destiny (a sword with great power) which of course results in some truly beautiful fight sequences. The pacing is perfect. It never seems rushed or too slow. Once you sit down and start reading, you won't stop until it's finished. And that leads me to my only complaint: it's too short, especially for the price. Though it is a very entertaining read and the production values seem to be pretty high (it is in full color) the story itself is only about 80 pages long, and those 80 pages go by really fast. I finished it in only about 20 minutes, maybe less.
Overall, an excellent and entertaining graphic novel. I'm highy anticipating the next volume.

This is a stunning example of Andy Soto's dedication to both his art and the material. The result is profound, inspiring and a delight to read.

I can't believe that this is a "film-based" graphic novel. Most adaptations are disappointing.

Mr. Soto excels under the pressure of following-up 2 years after the film, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and from meeting the Author's wife to research the book. This dynamic approach to interpreting the material provides a fresh story. Soto's illustrations create an intricate level of character design and rendering.

It is a visual masterpiece.

This is only book one. I greatly anticipate book two, but worry that this isn't being marketed to the Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon movie fans. The cover lacks pictures from the movie, or the movie logo.

Beautiful.. Delicate work...

In what I hope is going to be a long run of books, Andy Seto takes Wang Du Lu's classic martial arts series "The Iron/Crane Pentalogy" and transfers them into some beautiful Chinese manga.

If you ever wondered what happened before and after the movie "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" this will be the series to watch.

Up until now Wang Du Lu's books have never been translated into English. Seto does an excellent job with the translation and captures the look, romance and spirit of the film with his outstanding delicate art.

This is a MUST buy for anyone who loved Crouching Tiger and would like to know more about the characters and story.

Excellent read. Flawless art.

Flophouse is a collections of pictures and words by and about people (mostly men) who ive in the dwingling number of flop houses on the bowery in New York. There are some 50 or so snapshots of these man the spread throughout four hotels, The white house, the providence, the andrews and the sunshine hotel. Don't let the names of these hotels fool you they're no four seasons. The men come from various races, creeds and generations. Some are old men who've lived on the bowery for tens of years and don't want to live to younger men who have hit rock bottom and are trying to get back on their feel again. Each man featured tells his own story about how they got to the bowery. Most of their stories are sobering and the pictures are even more powerful. Many of these men were woking productive members of society until something happened to them to throw them off track. It is hard to leave a book like this one unaffected. If your only opinion of the homeless and destitute is that they are lazy, mentally deranged or drug addicted men this book may change your perceptions. I left this book feeling very somber about how fragile life is and how easily it can be taken for granted yet also feeling uplifted in a strange way. Many of these man despite their conditions still continue to keep on living their lives and keeping a postive attitude. The men in flophouse are a dying breed of america's growing underclass.

This book is an intimate look at the inside world of life on the desolate Bowery. It is as much intriguing, as it is mind-blowing. I have to admit, this book, is something to be read, not necessarily as a bedtime story, but more of a quiet, alone story. I suggest this book completely. wonderful!!! GOOD JOB DEAR FATHER! ATTA BOY DAVID!

Flophouse gives America a rare glimpse into the underbelly of the American Dream. With photos and personal interviews of 50 residents of genuine Bowery flophouses this book reveals the raw grittiness and humanity of those at the bottom of American society. So often politicians and other such moral crusaders seek to demonize those on drugs and welfare. The real story why these men have fallen into the abyss is often more complicated than simple explantions provide. The story of these men asks each of us to re-examine our beliefs about the least among us. I should know-I live among them and am featured in the book with my bicycle. Many of you who read this are but a few paychecks away from similar circumstances. I encourage you to buy this book and keep it as a reminder to save every dollar you can in a 401K-lest you spend your last days in a Bowery Flophouse!

I checked the book out of the local library a couple of weeks ago and have not stopped reading it since. The library volume is due back, so I just purchased it. My only complaint is that the last poem is Gary Synder's from 1978. I would like to see Mr Weinberger reissue the volume with latter translations such as Arthur Sze or Sam Hamill. And if any one is looking for a most needed project, a translation of all of Wang Wei's Wang River poems.

Poetry, said Robert Frost, is what gets lost in translation.
Poetry, says Eliot Weinberger in the introduction to this small volume, is that which is worth translating.
Both, of course, are right. That is what I like about poetry. It tolerates different points of view, a multitude of interpretations. A poem, or its translation, is never 'right', it is always the expression of an individual reader's experience at a certain point in his or her life: "As no individual reader remains the same, each reading becomes a different - not just another - reading. The same poem cannot be read twice."

"Nineteen Ways of Looking at Wang Wei: How a Chinese Poem is Translated" contains a simple four-line poem, over 1200 years old, written by Wang Wei (c. 700-761 AD), a man of Buddhist belief, known as a painter and calligrapher in his time. The book gives the original text in Chinese characters, a transliteration in the pinyin system, a character-by-character translation, 13 translations in English (written between 1919 and 1978), 2 translations in French, and one particularly beautiful translation in Spanish by Octavio Paz (1914-1998), the Mexican poet who received the 1990 Nobel Prize for literature. Paz has also added a six-page essay on his translation of the poem.

Wang Wei's poems are fascinating in their apparent simplicity, their precision of observation, and their philosophical depth. The poem in question here is no exception. I would translate it as:

Empty mountains
I see no one

but I hear echoes
of someone's words

evening sunlight
shines into the deep forest

and is reflected
on the green mosses above

Compared to the translations of Burton Watson (1971), Octavio Paz (1974), and Gary Snyder (1978), this version has a number of flaws. My most flagrant sin is the use of a poetic first person, the "I", while the original poem merely implies an observer. The translation reflects what I found most intriguing in the original text. First of all, the movement of light and sound, in particular the reflection of light that mirrors the echo of sound earlier in the poem. Secondly, the conspicuous last word of the poem: "shang"; in Chinese it is a simple three-stroke character that today means 'above' (it is the same "shang" as in Shanghai ' the city's name means literally 'above the sea').

This is a very simple poem. The simplicity is deceptive, though. What looks very natural, still wants to make a point. The point is that looking is just one thing, but being open to echoes and reflections is what really yields new and unexpected experiences. Wang Wei applies the "mirror" metaphor in a new way in his poem. This metaphor was very popular in Daoist and Buddhist literature, and says roughly that the mind of a wise person should be like a mirror, simply reflective and untainted by emotion. Wang Wei seems to have this metaphor in mind when he mentions echoes and reflections in his poem. A Buddhist or a Daoist, for that matter, would also recognize the principle of "Wu Wei" (non-action) here: nothing can be forced or kept, everything simply "falls" to you and will be lost again. In this sense, a person cannot "see" (as in the activity of seeing); a person can only be "struck" by the visible (as in being illuminated - the "satori" of Zen Buddhism).

"Nineteen Ways of Looking at Wang Wei" is a light, unscholarly book - and I mean this as a compliment. It is a pure pleasure to read the different translations together with Weinberger's lucid comments. Weinberger has a wonderful sense of humor to accompany his analytical mind; and he is allergic to pomposity. He enjoys mocking the pompous. This is what he has to say about one translator's misguided efforts to rhyme Wang Wei's poem: "line 2 ... adds 'cross' for the rhyme scheme he [the translator] has imposed on himself. (Not much rhymes with 'moss'; it's something of an albatross. But he might have attempted an Elizabethan pastoral 'echoing voices toss' or perhaps a half-Augustan, half-Dada 'echoing voices sauce')."

In the translation of Chinese poetry, as in everything, Weinberger notes, nothing is more difficult than simplicity.

Simplicity is particularly difficult for certain academics, it seems. A professor, who had read Weinberger's comments on Wang Wei's poem in a magazine, furiously complained about the "crimes against Chinese poetry" Weinberger had allegedly committed by neglecting "Boodberg's cedule." Weinberger later discovered that this cryptic reference was to a series of essays privately published by professor Peter A. Boodberg in 1954 and 1955 entitled "Cedules from a Berkeley Workshop in Asiatic Philosophy" ('cedule' is an obscure word for 'scroll, writing, schedule'). "Boodberg ends his 'cedule' with his own version of the poem, which he calls 'a still inadequate, yet philologically correct, rendition ... (with due attention to grapho-syntactic overtones and enjambment)':

The empty mountain: to see no men,
Barely earminded of men talking - countertones,
And antistrophic lights-and-shadows incoming deeper the deep-treed grove
Once more to glowlight the blue-green mosses - going up (The empty mountain...)

To me this sounds like Gerard Manly Hopkins on L S D, and I am grateful to the furious professor for sending me in search of this, the strangest of the many Weis."

The multiple translations of Wang Wei's poem are a door into the incredible spectrum of human thinking. This small delicate poem and its translations show how culture, translation and individual thinking change a work of art. I found myself writing a "translation" of the poem to discover yet another prismatic dimension of this jewel of a poem.

Any theatre buff will think he or she has died and gone to hog heaven. It is virtually impossible to put this gorgeous book down. Put together by the archivists who work for the Shubert Organization, this book covers Broadway with the Shuberts for the past 100 years. Currently the Organization owns 17 Broadway houses. A history of each theatre and what has played there is covered on these pages. The photography and beautiful design make this one of the best coffee table size books I have ever seen. And I have quite a collection. You won't regret your purchase!

An amazing book that I couldn't put down. The Shuberts have compiled a great tribute to Broadway theater. It's worth the money if you are a theater history buff!

A letter is missing from the subtitle of this book: it should have been "100 Years of Great American Theaters." Yes, this gorgeously designed and printed volume offers numerous historic production stills, but Chach et al. reserved the real glamour for interior shots of Schubert-owned houses. They include no views of backstage areas, nor do they mention the true history of the Schuberts and their attempts to replace and repeat the syndicate's dominance over American theater. Readers will find reproductions of rare items from the Schubert Archive interesting, and the price is certainly a good value. Libraries with extensive theater collections may wish to acquire it, but the volume is a coffee-table book best suited for theater buffs.