- But most of the others are set in the same universe. 'Countercharm' concerns Dr. Conway's encounter with one of the hazards of his profession. Doctors at Sector General get their xenomedical knowledge from 'Educator Tapes' the recorded minds of ET physicians. The catch is you don't just get their medical knowledge but *everything* including their sex drive - which can lead to embarrassing and distracting consequences. In 'Kill or Cure' a Navy rescue team discovers their wreck is 'not of this world'. They do their best to help the injured, sluglike beings inside but do they dare let them contact their friends? An alien species is deliberately formenting military tensions on Earth in 'Red Alert'. Is this a preliminary to invasion? Or is something else going on? In 'Tableau' Earth's first contact with another species results in war. Then an Earth soldier and one of the alien Orligians find themselves trapped together in the wreckage of their ships and discover it's all due to a horrible misunderstanding. In 'Conspirators' the laboratory animals aboard the the first intersteller explorer plan their escape with the help of the ship's cat and a pet canary. In 'The Scavengers' a Terran taskforce is assigned to 'clean up' those aliens who survived the initial attack. And finally 'Occupation: Warrior' not only provides the missing half to the first Sector General story in 'Hospital Station' but gives the unexpected background of Fleet Commander Dermod.

I've just bought the latest Sector General books that are being published by Tor and there's something you new fans of the series need to know. Although Tor does NOT list *Aliens Among Us* as a Sector General book, it does contain a Sector General story as well as (if memory serves me correctly -- I'm not home to check) the story behind the two characters who helped to found Sector General. If you love the series, as I do, you must get this one. ANN E. NICHOLS

Most regional field guides that I've come across are poorly produced, minimally illustrated, and not all that helpful. Not so here. The writing is lucid, the section of color photos is well-reproduced and the text is arranged in an easily accessible manner.

Would that they were all so good.

Review of Amphibians and Reptiles of Delmarva
By Amy Wendt White and James F. White Jr.

This is the first field guide that I have read from cover to cover - a recommendation in itself. The descriptions of the habitats of Delmarva, the history of herpetology on the Peninsula, and the basics of observing and identifying local amphibians and reptile were all well written and useful. I would have liked a scale (like the ubiquitous quarter or rock hammer) in some of the photographs, but the photos themselves were visually stunning, and with the written descriptions, quite complete. I fully intend to use this field guide often, as a reference for teaching and as a help for identification when I am in the field.

Sally O'Byrne

This is a fantastic book! In only 87 pages, he touches on almost all aspects of grief. I am particulary impressed with his candid honesty.

Grief is messy and doesn't come in neat packages. He allows the reader his or her mess and offers simple, small steps towards recovery. I especially appreciate his candor when he says, 'God is big enough to handle your anger and your probing.' Because the truth of the matter is that, in death, we become angry over the loss and void we feel.

With that said, I want to leave you with a quote from his book! 'The more vital a part of our life that person was, the more deeply we will feel the loss, and the longer it will take to transition from what was to what is.'

I understand this so completely! When my grandmother died, I missed her but she wasnt a part of my every waking moment. When my daughter died, it was as though I had died. It was as though a part of me withered away and it has been nearly four years. I am still working through the loss. Yes, it has gotten easier, but it is still a part of me.

Alyice
http://goodmourninglord.com

Excellent resource for someone grieving the loss of a loved one. Mr White leads ever avenue back to the comfort of Christ. A great resource and a soothing ministry tool.

God's word in a format easy for all to read. The notes provide excellent background incite. Reading it makes you want to pray for those who's book reviews are tainted by Satan's awfull power.

As far as gift and award Bibles go, this deserves the full 5 stars. It has readable print, words of Christ in red, some color maps, and a small dictionary in the very back. The translation is the accurate NRSV text. This edition lacks the deutero-canon, but for protestants that won't be an issue. The only minor problem may be that it is slightly steep in price for a gift Bible.

This is a very good, highly readable history of James J. Hill, his family and his numerous successful business adventures, and the Great Northern Railway in particular.

Of the four major biographies of James J. Hill, this one is the best and most detailed. If it has a fault, it is that it is too detailed for many readers. But for those interested in the financial history of the Great Northern Railway and the personal history of its builder, this is the classic.

Martin had full access to the James J. Hill papers, now open to the public. Pyle's 1917 biography was also based on those papers, but Pyle was an employee of Hill's and tried to whitewash the truth, which actually made Hill look worse than he was. Holbrook's brief bio was based mainly on Pyle and rumor. Malone's 1996 book on Hill is to Martin's what Holbrook's was to Pyle's--a good intro but not as detailed as Martin's.

Excellent for Young pre school through grade 3 age. Easy to understand and the color in the pictures is great.

An excellent source for parents of color and their children. Now these families can explore a bible that reflects themselves through the lovely pictures and familiar spirituals included.

I was browsing at my local bookstore for a Bible. I wanted a Catholic version with the Deuterocanonicals/Apocrypha and I wanted a Bible that was comfortable to hold, light weight, with a nice comfortable font for easy reading (some Bibles are printed so that you need a magnifying glass, others are so big and heavy you need to take up weightlifting!). This was the only one that fit the bill. I was looking for the NAB version, but am now glad I got this one, which is TEV (Todays English Version). It's a wonderfully fluid translation, not at all stilted like some versions. If you don't mind a pink Bible with cute childrens illustrations, this is a great Bible. It has very nice maps. It comes in a white leatherette version too. Unfortunately, it's not a red-letter edition, and it's not the typical study version with multiple scripture links. But for children that shouldn't matter.

Wonderful Bible for Catholic children to grow with! This is a great first full text Bible with footnotes for beginners. Brief introductions with outlines precede each book. The color Precious Moments illustrations call attention to Jesus Love. The Presentation page makes this a great gift with the Record of Sacraments filled out for children to see that their journey has begun.

This is the last Sector General story in which Peter Conway is the central figure. After this volume, White never again used him as the viewpoint character, and instead began experimenting with telling stories from other perspectives (just as good, let me hasten to add). At this point in his career, Conway's been a rising star among the staff of the massive interstellar hospital for years, and has had a long and successful tenure as the chief physician of the medical team of the ambulance ship Rhabwar, working with his wife (pathologist Murchison), the caterpillar-like Naydrad (whose people have no concept of deceit since their body language makes it impossible among their own kind), and the fragile Cinrusskin empath Prilicla (whose species considers deceit a survival tool in ensuring a pleasant emotional atmosphere).

When Prilicla relays a summons from Chief Psychologist O'Mara, Conway realizes from his friend's agitation - and refusal to mention the details of the promotion it just received - that O'Mara has a surprise for him. Prilicla, it turns out, is replacing Conway as chief of the Rhabwar team - but Conway isn't being demoted. He's being offered promotion to Diagnostician status - the highest rank, and carrying the greatest risks, in the hospital. Not merely risks to life and limb, but to sanity; unlike physicians of lesser stature, Diagnosticians permanently carry multiple Educator tapes, those mental recordings that give them the total life experience - and assorted emotional baggage - of the alien physicians who provided them. (Rather like being possessed by several conflicting, and usually unpleasant, personalities at once, all of whom have their own ideas about everything from food to sexual partners. Diagnosticians usually can't stand to look at what they're eating because it distresses their alter egos, for example.) The job has a considerable dark side to it - especially for a happily married, reasonably content man.

Rather than being asked for an immediate decision, Conway is assigned to Goglesk to consider his future without interference but without wasting time. About half the book takes place away from Sector General, as Conway works with the Goglesk contact team. While White's Galactic Federation has a non-interference directive regarding species that haven't achieved starflight, the Monitor Corps tempers it with good sense for planets suffering severe distress.

Recurring characters introduced or revisited:
- Danalta the shapechanger makes its first appearance among a group of trainees listening to Conway's orientation lecture, which incidentally gives new readers a primer in the classification system used to identify species.
- Khone, the Gogleskan healer, reappears later in the series, as the Gogleskan problem does not have a quick and easy solution.
- The Protectors of the Unborn, first introduced in _Ambulance Ship_, take up a lot of this book, as Conway continues work on their problem.

Senior Physician Conway is happy as chief medical officer of the Ambulance Ship Rhabwar. His talented team inlcudes his beautiful wife, the second best Pathologist at Sector Twelve General Hospital; a bluntly outspoken Kelgian charge nurse, Naydrad; the frail, spiderlike empath Dr. Prilicla; and now a shape shifting alien mimic called Danalta. Then the Hospital Station's forbiding Chief Psychologist makes Conway an offer he finds difficult to refuse: A chance to join the elite that controls the Hospital. But Diagnostician status has it's drawbacks. Chief among them the necessity of sharing his mind with four or five alien entities. And of course, since this is Sector General, the crises keep coming hardly giving Conway a chance to catch his breath much less seriously address his own problems.

I obtained my copy of "The Watch Below" in an odd way: my sister-in-law, who knew of my love of science fiction, worked in a public library, and she brought me all the sci-fi books that the library discarded. After reading "The Watch Below" I could not believe that it was not a favorite choice for sci-fi readers. Apparently that's related to James White being relatively unknown in the United States. His "Sector General" series (of which "The Watch Below" is not a part) is wonderful.

"The Watch Below" is a very unconventional science fiction story. Two converging groups of characters are followed: a fleet of alien ships headed toward Earth to find a new home as their world dies (okay, that's not unconventional sci-fi) and a group of humans trapped in a submerged, torpedoed WWII supply ship (now, that's different!). The small group of humans, trapped with almost-unlimited supplies, survives for three generations. They have everything they need, except a way to stay sane. They invent a way, and their unusual surroundings prepare them to become ideal intermediaries to . . . the soon-to-arrive, wholly aquatic aliens.

The characters are well-developed, the story is coherent and well-paced, the writing is flawless, and the plot is strange but believable. Find this book and read it, if you are a fan of science fiction. After you do, I bet you buy at least one more book by James White! Try "The Genocidal Healer" or "The Galactic Gourmet" which I have also reviewed.

I am writing this review from memory of one of my favourite sf titles, so apologies for any errors. This story follows two separate yet similar threads. Firstly, a world war 2 cargo ship sinks to bottom of ocean and its 5 remaining inhabitants miraculously manage to find a way to survive in their very limited ecosystem. (OK, this does require some suspension of disbelief but it's amazing what you can do with a few bean plants, a dynamo for light, and a very large stock of canned food!) As two of the inhabitants are female nature follows its course and we end up following the lives of generations to whom the surface above has become a myth.

Meanwhile, an exodus of spaceships fleeing a dying planet faces its own problems. The crew was to spend most of the centuries long journey in cryosleep, with periodic awakenings to check controls etc. Unfortunately the freezing process is discovered to cause brain damage if repeated too often, so the only solution is for a small number of crew to remain permanently awake, over many generations.

As with his Sector General novels, some of the main protagonists are the ships' doctors, and the interactions within the two communities are sympathetically and engagingly plotted. I'm not going to say any more about the plot, as it's fairly easy to guess where the aliens will end up! As a stand alone book, I prefer this to the Sector General series, and I am very glad it has received a well-deserved reprint. (Now I don't have to try to steal my parents' copy!)

"Will It Sell?" is deap reading for the "idea person" who thought that there was a pot of gold waiting at the end of the "good idea rainbow." James E. White, author, tells you like it is--he doesn't mince words. He digs out every fact and every reason why your inventive idea can "fail," but he hopes that you will be the one-in-one-hundred-inventors whose invention won't fail.. He will be your mentor. When Jim explains a fact and each step to follow, you get the feeling that he is looking over your shoulder, correcting and helping you in your every move. "This is the book." If you think reading it is tough, then don't become an inventor. He'll tell you "how to get there," with every reference on each of the 300 pages. And he shows, like no other author, that if you fail on any one stage, don't even think about averaging-out the stages of invention to Pass. He tells the truth-- "No one said it would be easy." -- Who am I to tell you about "Will It Sell?" -- only the President of the Inventors Association of St. Louis, a large inventors' helping organization founded in 1984, that augmented in 1990 the United Inventors Association of the USA - which has over 3000 members. That's who! BUY THE BOOK - "WILL IT SELL"

Will It Sell? was specifically written for anyone considering bringing their invention to market. A key consideration in marketing a new idea or product is to determine its profitability, especially before investing capital on a patent. James White's practical, "reader friendly" informational manual will provide the non-specialist general reader with inexpensive techniques and practical steps to take in assessing whether or not their invention will be commercially viable. Fundamental issues are clearly addressed such as what a patentable invention is, the step for "idea development" and "product development"; advertising claims, getting professional help, even doing your own patent search. Dozens of Internet resources are provided with instructions for how best to utilize them. If you have an idea or an invention that you want to make money with, begin by a carefully reading of James White's Will It Sell?.