I consider myself an expert on Disneyland; I'm a former Imagineer and a collector of Disneyland information. Michael Broggie is not exaggerating his father's importance to the realization of Walt's dream. This book goes slightly beyond the sanitized "official" version that the Disney company promulgates and includes some stories and details that haven't been widely known. It's a beautiful coffee table book, complete and accurate (except for one or two nits someone like me might pick). I love it particularly for all the never-before published photos--you get so tired of seeing the same old approved shots when you collect Disneylandiana.

In case Amazon doesn't provide links, I would also recommend "Walt Disney Imagineering" by David Mumford, et.al. and "Inside Story" by the late Randy Bright. Both are "official," but just as authoritative as Broggie's.

I normally only read technical books. I picked this book up just to look at the pictures. Then I started to read the short articles within the chapters. I found them so fasinating that I found myself reading the main articles. My son asked my wife "what is Dad doing reading?". Walt Disney said that it all started with a mouse, but after reading this book you will realize that it all started with a train.

I have always loved the trains at Disneyland more than any other attraction. I always had dozens of questons about the trains that I wished I could get answers to. When I found out about this book I ordered it immediately. (My first experince with "one-click" ordering by the way, and WOW how easy!!) The book arrived on a Friday and I sat down to read it as soon as I got home from work. I could not put it down! I read straight through until 4am the next morning and finished it. It answered all the questions I ever had about the trains at Disneyland. It is a wonderful glimpse into the life of Walt Disney, and the group of incredibly talented people who worked for him. If you love trains, this book is a must. If you love Disneyland, this book is a must. If you could care less about trains and Disneyland, but you love a good story, this book is a must. Thank you Michael Broggie, for sharing this wonderful story.

I am a former Russian journalist and a documentary filmmaker who has also worked at NASA in the US.

"The Anatomy of Russian Defense Conversion" touches on many more subjects then just Russian Defense Industry. This is a very thorough, informative and important work that analyses the history of US and Russian Defense Industries, weapons exports and conversion, and possibilities of transformation from a militarized to a civilian economy in the new millenium.

The book also reflects on the current state of defense industries in the US and Russia, and "brain drain", or loss of intellectual capital in Russia and other countries after the Cold War.

I found reflections in Arkady Yarovsky's chapter "From the Culture of War to the Culture of Peace" very contemporary, especially in the light of recent events in the Middle East:

"Our time is unfortunately still characterized as "the culture of war." The culture of war is evident first and foremost in the hostilities between people and states, between nations and faiths, and in the inability to solve conflicts by peaceful means... Humanity has made it into the third millenium because the lust for power has been restrained by fear of nuclear war, but this restraint is not to be counted on permanently... The danger hidden in the separateness of people of different countries, unfortunately, remains a legacy for the next century... If humanity renounces the legacy of the culture of war, it can start down the road of cooperation, peaceful creation, and enlightenment. This is the only road leading to the culture of peace."

One can imagine that I, as a small child living in San Antonio, Texas, next to three Air Force bases and an Army base, living through the Cuban missile crisis, thought about the threat of the Russian military. I also met my parents' wonderful emigre' friends, and to this day have had warm relations with Russian people.

This book tells of the enormous cost to the Russian people of building and maintaining their war industry for so many years, a militarized economy where people got second best. Since the breakup of the Soviet Union, defense industry just about shut down, but civilian industry has not grown great enough to support the population. There are horrendous unemployment, and terrible health and social problems. There is some danger that the path of least resistance for Russia, if we neglect the situation, could be to re-start weapons production, for export at first.

In my opinion, the United States also, to a lesser degree, has neglected the manufacture of quality consumer goods, importing them instead, and has let its physical economy deteriorate, despite much activity in the financial sector. We, too, have been insufficiently careful of the environment. This book provides some idea of what these trends could lead to, if carried to extremes.

Perhaps the involvement of United States companies in Russia, could lead to more of a recognition here, of the importance of the physical economy. Hopefully, both countries could also work to put industry on a healthy environmental footing as well.

There is awareness of the problem of Russian defense conversion, at high levels of our government. I hope this book helps educate people and sustain that interest.

This is the long awaited basic textbook for osteopathic medicine. It is surprisingly complete, covering philosophy, history, research, and manipulative techniques. The beginning osteopathic student may find it most useful for its practical discussion on the techniques--high velocity, myofascial release, etc. I believe it is also helpful in standardizing our terminology, which will make it easier when taking board exams or talking with colleagues from other osteopathic schools. It includes contributors well known within the osteopathic community, including Michael and William Kuchera, Melicien Tettambel, Eileen DiGiovanna, and many others. As a family practice resident I frequently turn to this textbook first when I want to know more about how to treat a patient or when preparing lectures for students and housestaff.

This text is actually required reading for most if not all osteopathic medical students. It is a 'textbook', however, and hence completely (sometimes exhaustively!) comprehensive. But it is easy to read so that anyone with an interest in OMT will get a methodic how-to for myriad techniques, also a thorough history of osteopathic medicine to boot! One of my OMT professors at the University of Health Sciences College of Osteopathic Medicine wrote or co-wrote a few of the chapters so of course, I think those are the best! If you are looking for an educational approach to learning manipulation and the reasons behind it, this is a valuable resouce.

If you've ever visited the Art Institute and wished that you could spend more time enjoying the Thorne Rooms, this book is a way for you to visit them as often as you would like.

"Miniature Rooms" begins with a brief history of Mrs. Thorne and how the rooms came to be. The rest of the book is a complete catalog of the Rooms, divided into two sections - the European rooms and the American rooms. Every room is beautifully photographed from at least two angles, using the existing lighting in the rooms so that each has the same realistic quality enjoyed in the Institute. Along with each photograph is a description of the room and its furnishings. I would recommend "Miniature Rooms" to anyone who enjoys the Art of Miniatures.

Although I have been away from the world of Miniatures for 20 years, I was really inspired when I opened this book. The rooms were beyond beautiful! I will make every effort to see these miniature rooms in person when I next visit Chicago.

I'd love to own a room box or two but would REALLY love to have a full-scale version of these rooms to live in! So realistic and detailed!

This is a wonderful book for anyone who loves tigers. It is packed with spectacular photos of tigers, most in their natural environment. There are also some pictures of other wildlife & of native peoples.

There are pictures of tigers with their cubs, ready to pounce & many close-ups. Sadly, there are others of tigers in captivity. I loved the pictures of the white tigers especially a rare one with orange stripes instead of black.

If you can tear yourself away from the pictures the text is equally impressive. The author tells of his adventures in national parks throughout Asia.

He also discusses the plight of tigers & other animals of the area being killed for there furs or horns and what is being done to protect them. There is a list of conservationists in the back if you want to help.

I thought that this book was remarkable in the explanation of the year of the tiger and with what cultures that it pertains to.

This was a very readable book, that I have just completed. I read about eighty percent of it, only skipping or skimmimg a few sections. Admittedly, this would not make a good introductory book, and probably not even a good second book, on the period, but if you are interested in the period and have a working knowledge of it, I am sure you will find much of interest. The book begins with an evocative 150 pages or so of narrative historical overview, with the latest interpretations of chronology. Some of this material is then covered in a more thematic way, and also in an area-by-area manner, later in the book. There are also many sections on various social aspects. One such that I gained much from was the one on education. Interestingly, there was no separate section on women. The bibliography is 100 pages long, so the reading matter itself is about 1000 pages. The book was worth the money to me.

This book provides, for the first time, a single complete reference on microphone arrays. Top researchers in this field contributed articles addressing their specific topics of study. The results cover the current state of the art in microphone array research, development, and technological application. Part I concerns the problem of enhancing the speech signal acquired by an array of microphones. Part II is devoted to the source localization problem. Part III details some specific applications of microphone array technology available today. Part IV presents expert summaries of current open problems in the field, as well as personal views of what the future of microphone array processing might hold. The individual chapters selected for the book were designed to be tutorial in nature with a specific emphasis on recent important results. They are of utility to a large audience, from the student or practising engineer just approaching the field to the experienced researcher. Table of Contents: Pt. I: Speech Enhancement ch. 1 Constant Directivity Beamforming ch. 2 Superdirective Microphone Arrays ch. 3 Post-Filtering Techniques ch. 4 Spatial Coherence Functions for Differential Microphones in Isotropic Noise Fields ch. 5 Robust Adaptive Beamforming ch. 6 GSVD-Based Optimal Filtering for Multi-Microphone Speech Enhancement ch. 7 Explicit Speech Modeling for Microphone Array Speech Acquisition Pt. II: Source Localization ch. 8 Robust Localization in Reverberant Rooms ch. 9 Multi-Source Localization Strategies ch. 10 Joint Audio-Video Signal Processing for Object Localization and Tracking Pt. III: Applications ch. 11 Microphone-Array Hearing Aids ch. 12 Small Microphone Arrays with Postfilters for Noise and Acoustic Echo Reduction ch. 13 Acoustic Echo Cancellation for Beamforming Microphone Arrays ch. 14 Optimal and Adaptive Microphone Arrays for Speech Input in Automobiles ch. 15 Speech Recognition with Microphone Arrays ch. 16 Blind Separation of Acoustic Signals Pt. IV: Open Problems and Future Directions ch. 17 Future Directions for Microphone Arrays ch. 18 Future Directions in Microphone Array Processing Index

This book should set the standard for pathology color atlases and texts. The figures are excellent and the text provides a large amount of information and numerous references. Anyone working with mice in medical research should have this book.

Michael Kennedy has created a most entertaining and informative book which explores an, heretofore, unexplored aspect of why Toyota, and companies like Toyota, excel at bringing new products to market with 4 times the efficiency of their North American competitors. The book is written in a fictionalized style, ala "The Goal", and conveys the philosophies and paradigms that Toyota embraces which set them apart, in time-to-market and profits, even in this post-bubble economy. Kennedy draws from his life experiences, both as an organizational developer of concurrent engineering processes at a Fortune 100 company, and from his involvement with an NCMS collaboration which studied and documented this subject. His volume chronicles how IRT Industries, struggles with their product development processes, their discovery of how Toyota uses knowledge-based paradigms, and how IRT grudgingly realizes that major paradigms shifts, not process changes nor process compliance is required to be a world class product development company. And, maybe best of all, he provides a detailed plan and methodology by which enlightened companies can implement what they learn from this volume.

This is a great book of photographs of the old times in Newark
if you are from the area or had relatives there, the
pictures will take you right back.

I thank Michael Immerso for putting this book together. He puts together a history of the Italian-American culture that flourished in Newark. This culture that was so strong that despite the fact that the First Ward is vanished (as the title points out), its legacy still lingers in New Jersey (anyone remember 'Nicky Newark'?)

For fans of this book, there was an New Jersey Network documentary that accompanied it, which airs occasionally on NJN and WNET/channel 13. A copy of the video is available.

Also, the Newark Public library ran an exhibit concurrently with the release of this book, and if I am correct, the exhibit is now part of their archives.

My parents are first generation Italians who lived in Newark. I was born in Newark and lived there until I was five years old. To this day my parents still talk of how great Newark was back in those days. I read the book and loved it. I gave it to my mother who also loved it. Great work. I hope Michael Immerso writes a follow up book.