It is always somewhat disappointing to have to buy yet another sourcebook just to complete your RPG system. This one is no exception and you really can't consider running a serious Babylon Project game without having this in hand.

On the upside, it is in full color, just like the main rulebook, and is full of the same deep descriptions that give a clear sense of how it "feels" to be part of Earthforce.

The book is organized in a logical fashion similar to the rulebook comes complete with information on at least one ship from every major race (except Vorlon) and a quick system for ship to ship combat. This includes two pages of full color cardboard cut-outs of ship markers.

You will also find information not only about Earthforce's structure, but a full cast of important characters in Earthforce.

While I cannot list their URL, as per Amazon's review policy, the publishers of _the_Babylon_Project_ (Chameleon-Eclectic) have a wonderful intro to! the system in general on their website.

*They also include a vital addendum to the first printing of this book*, and other useful PDF's.

While it would be nice to have more specific geographical information, (in both this sourcebook and the rulebook) my only major complaint is that this isn't so much as sourcebook as a integral part of the system, and it should be sold as such.

Either way, the book is *still* one you really can't do without.

Lots of useful info and background, particularly useful if you are trying to run a campaign on the magnificent world Babylon 5 created for all of their fans.

It is a pity all the game supplements are so hard to find, I would love if someone reprinted them.

This sourcebook is very important if you have any EF personell as characters. Furthermore, it adds more equipment, skills and charactaristics. More importantly, it includes the Starship combat system for the Babylon Project. I like this system, although I have not had a chance to play it yet. It is fast, easy to understand and tactics are important. Moreover, it is one of the very few starship combat systems I have seen where ships obey the Newtonian Laws of Motion (except gravity drive ships, of course). The weapons chart was accidentally omitted from the book, but it can be downloaded from Chameleon Electric's web site and it was included in the Gamemaster's Screen, below.

I'm usually able to learn every other program on my own, but I struggled to figure out Access 97 without help. This book came to my rescue. The tutorials are well done and cover almost every aspect of the program. Great beginner book.

I purchased this text book for a college course, Intro to Programming using MS Access 97 and VBA. I found the text to be an easy read with lots of realistic sample applications and excellent tutorials. Tutorials are available to download from publishers web page,HOWEVER, only the first third of the tutorials are available from the web page. You'll need to get the remaining tutorials from an instructor.

Text provides excellent instruction of MS Access functionality, while briefly touching SQL and VBA. You'll need additional resources to learn them. Layout of the book makes quick referencing difficult.

Overall, an excellent book !!!

This book was purchased as a college text. Of all of the MS Access books I have read, this one is by far the best. It is very easy to understand. The only drawbacks are that you need data disks which are not all redily available (even on their web site) and the book isn't comprehensive, it's a beginners guide. After you finish it, you are left hanging, where do I go from here? All in all, I would still recommend it as the absolute best beginners book for MS Access.

This bok is great book for starters! I really do recomend it for starters. Other than that its an ok book. You can master the book in 3-4 days, and a magic book should last much much much longer. I do however recomend this book for people who are intrested in starting card magic.

This is not an excellent book, but it's not a bad book either. It's a good book: it contains tricks for you who doesn't know sleight of hand and for you who knows it. The self-working tricks contained here are not dumb, they do have that great climax too. You'll also find some tricks that require gimmicked decks, such as the Stripper Deck, but most of them only require a normal deck and/or usual props such as a rubber band. If you look for some classic tricks but not the one's shown on TV, you'll be happy to own this book.

This book has a wealth of information on card handling and technique. There are many top notch card effects including some different and offbeat tricks. Charles Jordan was definetely a card genius and you will see why in the way his card magic is done. A must have!

I felt that the first three writers were the strongest. Mintzberg promotes an idea that leader is just a role in his advocated all mighty manager. Zaleznik brings this down with his idea that managers and leaders are different kind of people and talk about managerial mystique. But maybe best advice how to solve present leadership dilemma comes from Kotter, who says that companies should pick up talented individuals and then put them to grow into leaders through tough challenges.

Gives an insightful view of a manager's job. It enunciates traits and behaviors of leaders and managers very well, and explains how it is important for a manager to have both traits. The material triggers a manager to look within to understand one's leadership and managerial styles. If one wishes to change or develop leadership and managerial skills this material is a great beginning.
It also points out that organizations and academic institutions are good at developing organizational specialists but not at training managers. The author thinks that these institutions should provide management programs that also focus on developing leadership and managerial skills. But to do that it's important to understand what managers and leaders really do.
Overall a very good read for a traditional manager to be introspective and effective.

Excellent book with eight fantastically different views on Leadership. Describes fundamental differences between leadership and Management and brings forth thought process which can help professionals in all fields. Contents are 1) The managers Job (folclore and fact), 2) What leaders really do, 3)managers and leaders (are they different), 4) The discipline of building Character, 5) the ways CEO's lead (5 different ways gathered from study of 160 CEO's),6)The human side of management, 7) the work of leadership, 8) whatever happened to the take-charge manager, also contains brief background about the contributors. Each chapter is from a different contributor

An excellent book that introduces us to Marketing concepts with the help of various real-life examples. I didn't feel like I was reading a textbook for my class at all. Rather, I felt like I was reading an interesting magazine. I would definately recommend this book. It is awesome!

I am using it for my thesis on the Music Industry and I find it helpful. 4 P's are so well explained.

This comprehensive revision of the last edition shows real improvements. Two new chapters are included on Competitive Intelligence and One-to-One Marketing. Both are welcome additions. The Internet chapter is on-line since it would be futile to try and publish on paper about a subject that changes daily. There are severeal references to internet subjects and even some of these do not exist anymore. The books design has been modernized and the cases and real-world stories are very up-to-date. I use this text to teach a Marketing Certificate program at UCSB Extension to International students and they find it very understandable and stimulating.

This is a very good biography of an overlooked great American thinker. Mr. Brent does a good job of recounting the life of Peirce without getting bogged down in the details of Peirce's philosophy which is well documented in several other books. The book also attempts to analyze Peirce's behavoir and why he failed as an academic, something that desperately needed to be done. As Peirce's reputation inevitatably increases, this biography will become a classic reference to this very interesting American.

This book contains a great deal of information on the life of a sadly-neglected philosopher; one of the most brilliant Americans of the 19th century. Dr. Brent has a wonderful, at times even poetic, writing style, and he has "lived" with Peirce so long that he has excellent insight into the man behind the philosophy. Struggling through Peirce in a class? This book may not make his philosophy "easy"--but it will make him more human.

We seem to be at an unfortunate stage of music history writing. The approach of many books, including this one, is the antithesis of the hero worship books written by the shelf-full not too many decades ago. Do we really need this style of book as an antidote? To me, it seems to belabor the obvious that composers, even the very greatest, such as Brahms, Mahler, and Stravinsky, should be mere mortals after all.

Why is it important at all that we point out moments or even decades of pettiness, vainglory, or difficult family relations? How exactly is that supposed to help us understand the art? Why not write a book about a fellow named Bob who lives down your down the street and his ordinary to miserable life?

Of course, we don't write about Bob down the street because he is ordinary and he isn't Stravinsky. Haven't we long ago realized that even Stravinsky the composer is something other than Stravinsky the husband, father, or businessman. Of course extraordinary people have much about them that is quite ordinary.

Some feel that knowing the artist as a human being helps us understand his art. Maybe on the margins it could, but only children believe that a composer was necessarily sad when writing a sad piece or happy when writing a happy piece and so on. Nothing Mr. Joseph tells us about the composition of The Flood helps us understand how it comes out of a Stravinsky. (Even if the author is trying to put forward that in this case it DIDN'T come out of Stravinsky).

Don't get me wrong, this book by Charles Joseph isn't bad. Really, it has much to recommend it and I am glad that I read it and hope you do too. But I was frustrated by the mixing in of well known stories and photographs into a book that claimed to be revealing new things based upon new access to Stravinsky's papers and artifacts in Basel. It isn't that there isn't anything new or semi-new, it is that it isn't set apart from the ho-hum there's that old chestnut again regurgitation of Stravinsky tales.

It is like going to a dinner party and listening across the table to a very knowledgeable guest who tells a few enthralling tales about a very interesting subject, but then spoils the enchantment by going on too long by telling a few too many tales that have no spark or wit about them.

Joseph also doesn't follow up on things that ARE really interesting. For example, when he discusses the actual piano music performance scores that Stravinsky used and the interesting fingerings the composer used as a performer. But we don't get a picture of even one page of those piano scores nor do we get even a hint as to why Stravinsky's written in fingerings are telling. As a pianist of sorts, I can surmise why Stravinsky's fingerings would be interesting, but it would be nice to get even a bit of discussion on such an interesting topic. I would have traded all of those re-printed pictures for one or two of the actual new material and one page of the marked-up piano music.

Yes, there is a 1983 text available through ProQuest that talks about Stravinsky's piano music, but Mr. Joseph indicates in the book that there were new things learned from his seeing the materials in Switzerland. In any case, this book is generally available and his 1983 book is not. Again, why reprint the nude photo of Stravinsky that is NOT original to this book and leave out something that would be valuable and a real contribution such as Stravinsky's piano fingerings?

It would be a real service if Mr. Joseph (or SOMEONE) put together an edition of the piano works with those fingerings in them. Not that pianists will necessarily use those precise fingerings, but they would certainly aid in understanding how the composer himself interpreted the piece.

Especially annoying to me was yet another tired discussion about Robert Craft. Mr. Joseph does demonstrate that Mr. Craft did play a significant role in the genesis of Stravinsky's work "The Flood". The author approaches the point of almost intimating that Craft is at least the co-composer of "The Flood", but never is bold enough to make that accusation. My guess is because for all the support and creative priming that Craft provided for Stravinsky, the evidence is that the composer did indeed compose the music himself. For heaven's sake, every composer since music began based it on some other creative spark or borrowed a theme from another work or even included suggestions from performers for whom the work was written. Composition is not done in a vacuum chamber on the dark side of the moon!

However, anyone who knows anything at all about Stravinsky's output from the fifties onward knows that Craft did us all a tremendous service. Why anyone wants to criticize Craft is beyond me. Unless someone wants to make the case that Stravinsky simply signed his name to Craft's scores and present real evidence they should either whine to people who care or thank Craft for the music he enabled Stravinsky to make in the fifties and sixties.

All in all, it easy for us in our age of sarcasm and witless irony to see the flaws of books that extol our favorite composers as heroes or as flawless paragons of humanity. My suspicion is that it won't take too many more years for people to turn their backs on the recent spate of books that take as their mission the whittling down of the tree of the great artist to a toothpick of a human. It is just too easy to write about human failings. We don't learn much at all about the art from such books and they are tiresome to read.

Finally, I am curious about the surmise that I am not a music scholar? By what definition? In europe a student is a scholar. Over here, what is the definition of a scholar? One who agrees with your points of view? I happen to have spent seven years at the University of Michigan School of Music and have a degree in music theory and several years of graduate school before my life took a different direction. But I have always played my piano and kept up on music. So, my views are not uninformed.

I found this book to be an extremely new and interesting look into the mind and personal life of Igor Stravinsky. Understanding the artist as a person helps us to understand and appreciate the art he creates.

In response to Craig Matteson... everyone is entitled to their opinon (and of course, no better place to put one's opinon but in a review). However, Mr. Matteson was off on one point (well, in my opinon, he was off on MANY points, but I'll only discuss one). Joseph has written a very thorough book entitled Stravinsky and the Piano in which he studies Stavinsky's "actual piano music performance scores" in detail - fingerings and markings included. Maybe Mr. Matteson is unaware of this book because it is only available to music scholars, which quite obviously, he is not. So it makes perfect sense to me why Joseph did not include such information in this book. A) he already wrote a book about this, and B) this book is about Stravinsky's split lives (the person vs. the public composer) - therefore the scores and fingerings are obtuse.

Stravinsky, whether you like him or not, was one of the most influential composers of the 20th century. Alternately deified by his collaborators (like Ballanchine, W.H. Auden, and Robert Craft), or villified as a worthless hack by Schoenberg and his accolytes, the truth lies somewhere in between those extremes. While the composer has not lacked for documentation of his life (notably his own Autobiography, and the "conversation books" edited by Robert Craft), there's still a need to balance facts with Stravinsky's own carefully constructed fictions. Few artists in any discipline have been more self-conscious of their public image than Stravinsky, and there is a real need to sort out how much of the composer's lifestory was his own invention. Joseph's well-written, meticulously researched book stops short of being a hatchet-job, but isn't afraid to display the idol's clay feet. (If fact, there's a nude photo of the composer in the book, so you'll see more than just his feet!) Joseph leaves the musicological analysis to others, and provides an engaging, provocative look at the man behind the hype. Turns out, like most human beings, he had his share of flaws as well as moments of genius.

I have always looked forward to reading the classic book The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. When I finally had time to read it, I wasn't disappointed. The Great Gatsby, written in 1925, is a fictional tale that takes place during the American Jazz Age. The story is set in the eastern U.S. and follows the journey of a young man named Nick. The book trails Nick from his home in the West to his new life in West Egg, New York. Nick becomes involved in the social scene is West Egg, which is mainly centered on the weekly extravagant parties thrown by the incredibly wealthy and strangely mysterious Jay Gatsby. As the book progresses, Gatsby's past is slowly unraveled. Nick witnesses Gatsby's gradual admittance of his significant secret. He discovers that Gatsby is deeply in love with Daisy Buchanan, a beautiful socialite, trapped in a miserable marriage to an unfaithful husband. Though Nick does not want to be involved in any way with the illicit love affair between Daisy and Gatsby, he is gradually takes a larger part in Gatsby and Daisy's dangerous romance. When Jay and Daisy decide to declare their love to one another, it leaves Gatsby in an unforgettable and risky situation that changes the lives of all involved. The Great Gatsby was one of the most interesting books that I have ever read. It included a beautiful love story, danger, suspense, tales of true devotion and friendship, and a wonderful, thought-provoking commentary on the society in post-World War I America, a time of excess and confusion. I have learned several lessons from the novel, whether they are about loyalty or remaining true to oneself. I would recommend this book to anyone above the age of thirteen because of some parts of the novel that might be difficult to grasp. The Great Gatsby is a truly wonderful book, and sure to be enjoyed by many for many years to come.

Just like the bright, yet bright, green light veering at Gatsby across the water from Daisy's West Egg abode, The Great Gatsby emits an amazingly translucent spark that galvanizes the reader from page 1 until the tumultuous end. F. Scott Fitzgerald has given us a timeless treasure to read and enjoy time and time again. The illusion of grandeur & the disillusion of marriage coupled with the search for love, happiness, The American Dream, as well as the imperceptibly foreboding desire to rekindle the past all make The Great Gatsby an incredibly entertaining, yet highly enigmatic, masterpiece of a novel.

No one can deny the greatness of F. Scott Fitzgerald. No author since has had the unique gift of such masterful and captivating use of the English language - combined with unparalleled social insight into his age and time. The excessively lavish and glitzy, yet highly impersonal, fetes of Gatsby, make one feel as if one is in attendance partaking in the debauchery - thanks to the effortless and fluid prose of Fitzgerald. The classic American tragic figure, Gatsby symbolizes all that we want to be, and not be, at the same time. Exemplary masterpiece.

"And I like large parties. They're so intimate. At small parties there isn't any privacy." - Jordan Baker

I haven't read Fitzgerald's 'The Great Gatsby' in almost two years. I picked it up again, to-day, though, and realized the truth of the notion that one learns something new each time one returns to a book. 'The Great Gatsby' just is a novel that must be returned to periodically to appreciate it properly.

While the characters in the novel remain ultimately unknowable at their indefinite cores, Fitzgerald does a great job tying his characters to their historical setting. The protagonist of the novel, to my mind, is Nick Carraway, the narrator. The hero of his story, which frames the novel, is the legendary Jay Gatsby - a legend in his own mind. Although Carraway's narration is often heavily biased and unreliable, what emerges are the stories of a set of aimless individuals, thrown together in the summer of 1922. Daisy Buchanan is the pin that holds the novel together - by various means, she ties Nick to Jordan Baker, Tom Buchanan to Jay Gatsby, and Gatsby to the Wilsons.

The novel itself deals with the shallow hypocrisies of fashionable New York society life in the early 1920's. It is almost as though Fitzgerald took the plot of Edith Wharton's 'The Age of Innocence' and updated it - in the process making the characters infinitely more detestable and depriving it of all hope. Extramarital affairs rage on with only the thinnest of veils to disguise them, the nouveau-riche rise on the back of scandal and corruption, and interpersonal relationships rarely signify anything permanent that doesn't reek of conspiracy. The novel's casual allusions to beginnings and histories often cause us to reflect on the novel's historical moment - when the American Dream and Benjamin Franklin's vision of the self-made man seem to coalesce in Jay Gatsby, a Franklinian who read too much Nietzsche.

No matter how you read it, 'The Great Gatsby' is worth re-reading. M.J. Bruccoli's short, but informative preface, and C. Scribner III's afterword are included in this edition, and both set excellent contexts, literary, personal, and historical, for this classic of American literature.

As the author of the forthcoming Psychics and Soldiers-A History of the Military-Occult Complex, I have researched the subject of remote viewing and can attest that the author of MIND TREK has produced the most valuable guide on the subject. It is not surprising, as McMoneagle is the most qualified remote viewer, with more than twenty years of experimental and operational experience in the field. Besides invaluable advice on techniques and protocol, McMoneagle's book challenges our thinking, our concepts, and our ingrained beliefs about the space-time continuum. A must read for students and aficionados of the paranormal, and the possibilities of human performance.

I began reading MIND TREK from the standpoint of an interested skeptic. I had only recently been (overtly) aware of 'remote viewing' and associated books, and was sufficiently interested to order it. Mr. McMoneagle's book was the definitive catalyst to my full belief in CRV, due in part, to his specific and ordered narrative on the mechanics of the subject matter. None of the previous information I had read made this available, instead substituting juvenile teasing and coy literary formulae for the sake of sensationalism, albeit profitable. The discriminating reader possessing a sincere desire to expand their knowledge on CRV would be well put to discover MIND TREK. Highly recommended.

I loved this book. First I should say that I read it after having first read other books on remote viewing, and after having "remote viewed" myself. I had precisely the "beginner's luck" McMoneagle talks about it in his book, which was just as freaky to me as was to him way back when at Stanford. (What I remote viewed was a page in a new magazine I hadn't yet opened. I stuck my finger in at random and then registered my impressions. I saw gray cubes like ice. When I opened the magazine, there was a photograph of an Art Deco skyscraper -- bluish-gray -- constructed of "cubes". Well, you could have mopped me up off off the floor. Another remote view was a page in a new issue of Time, again, one I hadn't yet opened. I saw green, just this incredibly intense field of green. When I opened the magazine, I found my finger on a large intensely green rectangle -- part of an advertisement.) Without going on at length about my own experiences, I'll just say that I know remote viewing works because I've done it myself. As a beginner (and a very unsteady one) I really appreciated the chance to read about it from one of the pros. Thank you Joe McMoneagle for a really terrific book.

Having read this novel sometime ago, I made myself go back and re-read it before attempting to critique it. Now, after going through it a second time my impressions of "The Zero Hour" have not changed. Joseph Finder captures the reader's attention with a daring jail brake from a South African Prison. If this novel was a chess game I would say this opening was to the point. I was hooked. Add a rather inventive plot concerning the revenge of an incredibly wealthy man by the destruction of a clandestine computer system which practically runs our planet, and this story picked up steam in a hurry. Where it did run into a snag was in the character of Sarah Cahill, the FBI agent that ultimately saves the day. Her character seems too weak and hardly at all a match for "The Prince of Darkness". It would be nice if a female characters in Sarah's position could be portrayed as strong and confident. The fact that she is able to foil, perhaps the greatest professional terrorist of all time is a fluke at best. The ending of this novel ruined all the good work that had gone before. This one looks like it was made for television. The truth of the matter is that professional operatives are rarely stopped, and when they are, it is by law enforcement individuals that are equally as brilliant. Two evenly matched oponents in a real life game of chess, that is what makes novels in this genre work

I read J.F. book, HIGH CRIMES, and it was very good. So I took another chance that his previous books would be the same. This story is fresh and quick paced. Finder is the best for drama and suspense. There ae surprises at every turn. The main charcater is Sarah Cahill, whose investigation turns into a desparate pursuit of a highly sophisticated and charismatic terrorist, known only by the code name Zero. Zero's identity is unknown. And get this, the Zero character knows Cahill intimately...very intimately.I could tell you how this happen but it would spoil the smile you woukld get when you find out how it happen in your reading of this book.

This is a fasten-your-seat-belt suspense and a guaranteed page-turner. You will kick your later if you don't read this. If you want to wait for a better review of this book to make up your mind, it is your choice...but I would not !!! Happy reading.

I recommend High Crimes and Extraordianry Powerrs; also as well as all my other reviews I have done. They are still worth a look.

TRIPP

This book is a lot of fun. I was reading along and thinking it may not be bad to have this happen to my place of work. This fast-paced book and the speed of the story helps to increase the tension and suspense. I hate to sound like a dust jacket, but this book really is an action-packed thriller. You have prison breaks, terrorists, low down scummy business tycoons, the CIA, and a good smattering of Joe everyday cops. An interesting and exciting mix that keeps the book fast paced. I have read other books by this author and he is getting better by the book. More of his books will make there way to the big screen if he keeps up his history of quality writing.