Some of the people pictured are my relatives,one is my father.
I've found this book to be a good connection to my past

For anyone interested in African American History in St. Louis, and particularly in Webster Groves-this book is a must! Filled with interesting photographs and charting the development of a unique community, this book lovingly portrays North Webster as only a resident could. If you know the area, you are sure to see places you'll recognize!

This is a great edition of Webster, and the fullest around that's actually affordable. It includes the old classics, "The White Devil" and "The Duchess of Malfi," plus "The Devil's Law Case," and as a bonus the comedy "A Cure for a Cuckold," which was co-written with William Rowley. This is a great reading experience, and "A Cure for a Cuckold" is a fine work, not to be dismissed. The only criticism I can offer for this edition per se is that there are a few misprints (in my copy at least).

This set of 4-volume encyclopedia is a great and comprehensive resource of information on biomedical instrumentation.

This book is one of the best book covering measurement and sensors. The book cover almost any sensor you think of, describe it function (the background physics) and then explain how it work with some application in software. This book must have for any one working with sensor (engineers, physicist...). the book start explaining it material assuming no prior knowledge for the reader which make it much easier and easy to follow up, start from simple point to explain and then get more complicated with mathematics applied for that particular sensor. I have a degree on physics and I believe this book is a good reference even in physics and I enjoy this book so much. It is a lot fun to read for professional or even for any reader. Any time I was searching for more information about specific sensor this book never turn me down. In short it's on of the greatest book I bought and I don't mind paying it's price because it worth every penny.

This perpetual calendar is a daily joke, offering a moment of light humor for the office.

The Origin and Evolution of Viruses is the most comprehensive and up-to-date treatment of virus genetics available today. Starting with pre-biological evolution in the primitive RNA world a billion years ago and coming right up to date with present concerns about HIV and hepatitis C, this book covers all aspects of virus genomes. The treatment of all the subjects is covered in depth and given the space needed - this is not a superficial review of a few virus families - just what one would have expected from editors as well respected as these. Although in places the book would have benefited from a little colour in the illustrations, and the mathematical treatment of some subjects may be off-putting to the uninitiated, this is required in a book which will undoubtedly become the definitive source on this subject in years to come.

wonderful index makes this a very usable se

The last installment of the "A History of the Plantagenents" succeeds admirably. Costain has a way of transferring is love and excitement of a subject onto his pages. It's a method that has yet to be rivaled. He gives each character a distinct personality no matter how trivial. William Caxton being a prime example. About half the book is concentrated on Richard II, which is fine because most historians either concentrate on the Black Prince or Henry V and skip over him. Here we see a sympathetic monarch who was easily bullied and who made some bad decisions early in his reign. After Richard II, he continues on through the kings until Richard III. Here he breaks protocol and gives evidence in defense of Shakespeare hunchback, citing Tudor propaganda as the catalyst. Normally, Costain is careful to present detailed accounts of both sides to an arguement, but here he takes a stance. It is quite refreshing and readers will eat it up. Highly recommended as well as the others in the series. My uncle gave me these books and I plan on returning the favor when the next generation comes my way. Treasure these.

English History at it's finest. You feel as if you are there with these people, living their lives. Always in good form, this is one of Costain's best.

Mr. Costain is a very good historian. His scholarship is thorough and his conclusions are always logically wrought and sometimes surprising. His sensibilities are surprisingly contemporary, although I would not term him a "revisionist," (he wrote this history in the 1950s). For example, in his defense of Richard III (in this, the final book in this four-volume history) he travails against conventional opinion to demonstrate why King Richard was, indeed, not the Richard III of Thomas More as popularized by Shakespeare and held true to this day. And in the first volume, the author dashes myth and idle folklore to side with those historians who portray Eleanor of Aquitaine as the wise and effective check on Henry II and her sons that, she no doubt was. In so doing he disperses, through well-reasoned argument, the rumors and "Entertainment-Tonight" kind of fluff (History-Lite) that many still believe. I had been told these four volumes were classics. After reading them, but without being a scholar of history, I think those critical readers might be right. Certainly, Mr. Costain opened my eyes to a different kind of history telling, one in which an historian does not hesitate to conjecture or opine openly and to honestly make his case and then leave it for a reader's judgement. From front to back, from first through fourth volumes, this is a valuable and pleasurable experience. Mr Costain, presents, argues, harangues convention and, always entertains with a use of the language that is as sharp as his reasoning and as precise as his scholarship. Mr. Costain is a very good story-teller.

John Webster's play "The Duchess of Malfi" is a violent play that presents a dark, disturbing portrait of the human condition. According to the introductory note in the Dover edition, the play was first presented in 1613 or 1614.

The title character is a widow with two brothers: Ferdinand and the Cardinal. In the play's opening act, the brothers try to persuade their sister not to seek a new husband. Her resistance to their wishes sets in motion a chain of secrecy, plotting, and violence.

The relationship between Ferdinand and the Duchess is probably one of the most unsettling brother-sister relationships in literature. The play is full of both onstage killings and great lines. The title character is one of stage history's intriguing female characters; she is a woman whose desires lead her to defy familial pressure. Another fascinating and complex character is Bosola, who early in the play is enlisted to act as a spy. Overall, a compelling and well-written tragedy.

This is a review of the New Mermaids edition of The Duchess of Malfi by John Webster. Elisabeth M. Brennan edits this edition (ISBN: 0393900665.) I mention this incase it is cross-posted under some other editor's edition.

I bought this after reading snippets of it in other books. I do not recall having to learn this in school. Only now do I intend to read "The White Devil" in anticipation of it being encountered in other works.

Well what do you know? This animal is based on a true story of the Duchess of Amalfi. Evidentially there were several books written on this and he picked one for the outline of the play.

This edition is almost as good as taking a class in its self. The introduction gives you a back ground and the basic story that the play was based on. You get some information on John Webster and some of his other plays. There is even a further Reading List. There are even notes on the text and how to read the notes for the different versions of the play its self. By the time you get to the play you are well prepared to read it.

The play its self has stanzas, line numbers and notes to help you through the difficulty of understanding what the words mean in context. It is almost like reading a bible. You soon pickup speed and then actually get intrigued in the writing and story.

Now I desperately want some local theater to present "The duchess of Malfi"

Of the "popular" editions of this play that by John Russell Brown (Revels Student Editions) and Elizabeth Brennan (New Mermaids) are both useful, though it must be said that no edition as yet does adequate justice to Webster's compexity - notably his presentation of Ferdinand. The play is both a tour de force and profoundly searching. It is perhaps the first major feminist play in England, with the Duchess presented as an outstandingly noble even if fallible character, the victim of her two evil "partriarchal" brothers. Of these, her twin brother Ferdinand is among the most intelligently conceived characters to appear on the Jacobean stage. Unknowingly (i.e. in his "unconscious") he is incestuously in love with his sister. Unable to cope with this "taboo" feeling, he tries to "repress" it unsuccessfully, and finally his ... "libido" comes to express itself in a violent wish to destroy her if he cannot ... own her, and he ends up believing himself to be a wolf, attempting to dig up her grave after he has had her killed. Obviously, then, this is a very Freudian work - anticipating Freud's insights brilliantly by some four centuries, and without lapsing into Freud's extravagantly improbable claims about such matters as the Oedipus complex. It is the working of the unconcious, as a reservoir of what we do not understand and cannot control, which is quite central in this play, and Ferdinand's ... confusion is potently contrasted with his sister's openminded, acknowledged and generous ... health. An outstanding play, recommended as among the best of its time (comparable in quality and interest to e.g. *Othello* or *The Changeling*). - Joost Daalder, Professor of English, Flinders University, South Australia

This book shows us a new dimension of our universe. It offers a theory on thought forms that we create every time we think. We create around us (astral plane and mental plane) some forms that affect us and people around us. If we have good thoughts we create pure forms and bad forms if not. Well this book describes differents forms that a medium could see and that is my main reproach. Somebody that has not this gift or who has not developed this power to be able to see in astral or mental plane can't verify this theory. Knowing that in theosophy you should verify before believing, there is a contradiction. So it is an interesting theory and that's all for most of us!

If you're into symbolism, intuition, and exploring the human condition -- Thought Forms just might blow your mind. I can't guarantee it for you, but with my life experience the author's depiction of how clairvoyants see our thoughts and spirits acting seems very true. Probably the best book I own on the occult, believe it or not, the statements made with images are profound. If you have any tendency towards being a mystic this book will give you a charge, the content will connect.

There are a number of methods that we can use to clarify and describe something elusive. In my own work I combine phenomenology (which slowly and carefully works through the ways in which something shows itself) and transcendental arguments (which move from what is observed toward what may or must be presupposed to explain what is observed). Using these two methods together can produce a (hopefully) powerful strategy for bringing the more hidden or esoteric realm into the less hidden realm of common discourse and description. Even though they did not use this technical methodological language (especially since phenomenology was just being born in 1901), Besant and Leadbeater were certainly using the same dual approach. That is, in probing into the human aura and the thought forms that emerge within and through it, they carefully describe the data that clairvoyants almost universally report. Since both authors were themselves gifted in this area, they were in a position to evaluate what others had said about those phenomena that reside outside of the immediate boundaries of the human body. The transcendental strategy comes into play when they argue that the world must be set up as a series of more and more refined fields of energy that condense themselves in order to become relevant to the physical orders. Simply put, phenomenology describes what appears in clairvoyant seeing, while the transcendental argument tells us what the world must be like in order to explain just how thought forms got to be the way they are. Three traits emerge from the phenomenological description. Thought forms manifest: (1) color, (2) form, and, (3) variations in definiteness of outline. The correlation of color with mood and even quality of thought is well known in the literature. The form of the thought is correlated with its intention, while the outline is related to the thought's intensity of focus. For Besant and Leadbeater, thoughts are causal agents in the world of so-called physical matter and can act to alter the brain states that are mistakenly taken to be their source. The aura-entwined thought form is causally prior to the later brain state activity (to which it is often reduced). The social aspects of thought form activity are given their proper role and are sometimes manifest pathologically in what Wilhelm Reich called the "emotional plague." It is this plague ridden thought form that lies behind such phenomena as fascism and group psychosis. Of great value are the many color renditions of thought forms and their emotional correlaries. Each thought contains an emotion and vice versa. Musicians will be especially interested in the color plates that depict the energetic effects (pictured as manifesting themselves high above a church wherein the music was played on an organ) of the thought forms of the music of Mendelssohn, Gounod, and Wagner. Needless to say, the music of Wagner's Overture to "The Meistersingers" has the most powerful expression of the three. It broils 900 feet upwards in mountain-like crags with intense color fields of red, green, and purple. Before reading this book I would have laughed at such an idea, but now I am reasonably persuaded that Besant and Leadbeater got it right. John Algeo's introduction locates this text historically and conceptually and prepares the reader for the strange things that are to come. "Thought Forms" is more akin to the real thing than many of the fluff books that came later. This book would make an excellent text for a seminar on esoteric thought because of its combination of careful reflection and iconic representation.