This book is amply illustrated with futuristic pictures of robots in probable modes. Some of these may even come true! The book is for children of all ages.

In "Shakespeare and Macbeth," Stewart Ross takes us to London, 1605 as the Elizabethan era has come to an end and a new Scottish king sits on the throne of England. Knowing King James loved the theater and was fascinated by witchcraft, Shakespeare wrote a play to please the king. Ross tells how Shakespeare conceived and wrote "Macbeth," covering the playwright's sources (such as Holinshed's "Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland") and telling about the actors who performed the play at the Globe theater, such as Richard Burbage. Ross talks specifically about how Shakespeare transformed the raw facts of history into his tragic drama, putting in things that would hopefully impress the new king from Scotland (when we see Banquo's heirs that will come to sit on the throne the last figure represented is, of course, King James himself). The artwork by Tony Karpinski and Victor Ambrus is based on careful research with regard to period clothing and the like. There is also a cut-away diagram of the Globe Theater and in the back of the book there are some excellent pencil drawings accompanying the synopsis of the actual play (I believe Karpinski did the paintings and Ambrus the drawings, but do not hold me to that conclusion). "Shakespeare and MacBeth: The Story Behind the Play," has a foreword from actor Kenneth Branagh, who praises it for conveying much of the excitement he felt when he was first introduced to "live" Shakespeare. The strength of this volume is that it does indeed give young readers an idea of how Shakespeare's plays were written and produced. True, it only scratches the surface of such things, but then the book is clearly intended as an introduction to the world of Shakespeare. As such, "Shakespeare and MacBeth" certainly succeeds in its goal, just as the Bard succeeded in having King James calling for a performance at court during the first state visit of King Christian of Denmark to England (when Ross has Shakespeare cut out a reference to a Scottish victory over the Danes during the performance you have to be impressed by his attention to to details).

William H Rau (1855-1920), one of Philadelphia's preeminent photographers, was commissioned by the PRR in 1890 to photograph hundreds of scenes along its lines in order to promote travel by the general public. This book contains 87 of his 463 original images, which are owned by American Premerier Underwriters, Inc., sucessor firm to the Penn Central and PRR railroads, and on deposit with The Library Company of Philadelphia.
John R. Stilgoe, Orchard Professor in the History of Landscape at Harvard expresses in one of the book's three essays, "These photographs glisten with an energy born of opening, not the opening of pioneers opening the forest nor the opening of the first half-century of railroad technology, but the opening of wholly constructed, wholly controlled, scheduled and maintained, wholly artifical space."
Rau was a world class photographer and this is a fine selection of his PRR work. Therefore, it would be difficult to rate this book as anything other than first class.
These are excerpts from my complete review of this book, which will appear in a future edition of "The Keystone," the official quarterly publication of the Pennsylvania Railroad Technical and Historical Society (PRRT&HS).

Alan B. Buchan
Member, Board of Directors - PRRT&HS

A wealth of valuable insights into the workings of the new global economy. Halal, Taylor, and their contributors have laid bare the type of world we will soon be living in. I can't praise this book enough. Buy it!

Everything you need to install, use, and extend VTK. Detailed examples, installation procedures, developers guide, file format descriptions, how to write imaging and graphics filters, plus data object API details for VTK version 3.1. Includes source code, updated HTML documentation, release notes, data, and PC binaries. User's Guide is 356 pages and comes with the VTK CD.

The VTK Users's Guide is a companion text to The Visualization Toolkit text. While The Visualization Toolkit stresses algorithmic and data structure details, the VTK User's Guide stresses how to use the software. The VTK User's Guide includes a CD-ROM of VTK 3.1.

This is a big, beautiful book portraying the works of an architect who strived not to design monuments with a signature style, but instead create wonderful places that fit their landscape. The book chronicles twenty of Turnbull's projects beginning with the Sea Ranch Condominium (with MLTW) and ending with Turnbull and his wife's own weekend retreat, Teviot Springs Vineyard. All but one of the projects (Sea Ranch Athletic Club)are residential, which reflects the nature of Turnbull's career. The book contains essays by Mary Griffen (Turnbull's wife and business partner), William Stout, Mitchell Schwarzer, and Donlyn Lyndon. Turnbull's buildings contain innate beauty, sensitivity to site, and the ability to bring common, conventional construction to a high art. Morley Baer's black and white photography is powerful and captures the wonderful subtleties in Turnbull's sometines simple and conventional structures that are truly "GOOD" architecture.

this book is perfect for practicing as well as studying postgraduation. a comprehensive volume on fundamental and advanced endo

"Utilizing a vast array of the government's own sources, this book captures the irony of a patriotic minority again being neglected by a myopic nation."--M. L. Tate, University of Nebraska at Lincoln. For all adult readers."--CHOICE, January 2001

Kenneth Graham achieved a masterpiece with The Wind in the Willows. Please don't judge it on the basis of Disney's "Mr. Toad" cartoon; the book itself is lyrical and engaging, with fun characters in wonderful settings facing a number of thrilling adventures. Some scenes are purely down to earth, such as Mr. Toad's escapades with his beloved automobiles, and some are sheer magic, as the Piper at the Gates of Dawn chapter. Reading the musical Christmas chapter has become a holiday tradition in my family.

This is truly a book that anyone can enjoy, a claim that is often made on the front covers of teen-market books but which rarely stands up to the promise. In this case I could read this book to my youngest and oldest child, and all three of us would be entranced.

This childhood favorite is as fresh and charming as when it was first published--and when my father read it to us with obvious . delight when we were kids. The animal protagonists--Ratty, Mole, Badger and Toad--remind us of folks we know, which endears them to us with their all-too-human dreams and foibles. For both People and Creatures struggle to survive in the forests and streams of life.

Exhausted from his strenuous spring cleaning, Mole sets out into the world Aboveground, where he discovers the joys and challenges of riverbank life with his new friend and host, the water rat. But beware the perils lurking in the adjacent Wild Wood!

Kenneth Grahame weaves a gentle tale with willow strands of friendship, dedication to ideals and personal sacrifice for others. Come ride the roads with Toady, and scull down the river with Ratty; savor the sentimental whisperings of Home with Mole. Then join the ranks of Badger's Avengers to honor ancestral memories. This beloved classic combines humor and pathos with lively adventure in an animal realm which closely parallels human endeavor. This book is a true gem, to be rediscovered by successive generations and treasured by children of all ages!

Kenneth Grahame's classic children's tale can be enjoyed by people of all ages. As we follow the rural adventures of Ratty, Mole, Toad, and Badger, we encounter moments of earnest emotion, and intense moments that brush the depths of what it is to be human. For Grahame's characters, taken from amongst the familiar animals that inhabit the English countryside, have all the vulnerability and sensitivity of real human beings, and we genuinely warm to them as together they learn life's lessons.

The early scenes of Ratty and Mole's boat trip and picnic are a delight, and the story progresses into absolute hilarity as we meet Toad and are introduced to his crazy adventures and ill-fated escapades, as well as his incorrigible, over-inflated sense of self-importance. The most humourous episodes involve the wise and avuncular Badger's attempts to thwart Toad's hairbrained schemes and his seemingly endless conceitedness. Toad never seems to learn his lesson, and he remains a tremendously loveable rogue, though a rogue nevertheless.

Ernest Shepard's brilliant illustrations will only add to what is an incredibly touching, joyful, and involving experience.

Macbeth is one of Shakespeare's more gloomy plays. It is downright grim. It starts grim and only gets blacker... ...It is one of Shakespeare's better plays

Macbeth is one of Shakespeare's more ambiguous main characters. Motivation is always a big question with him. Sure, he is hungry for power. Yet he also needs prodding from several quarters to take most of his actions.

Lady Macbeth is really no different. She comes off as eager for evil early on, but is utterly shocked by its repercussions. Her attempt to go against nature leaves her absolutely unhinged and thirsting after guidance--only to find despair. In this regard, Shakespeare anticipates the psychology of Dostoevsky.

Macbeth is also one of Shakespeare's most supernatural plays. Regardless of whether one wants to debate the reality of Banquo's ghost, there are forces at work in Macbeth that are often unseen, but which drive the plot. The witches and all the unnaturalness come up against the forces of nature (the trees) and the divinely appointed King.

The most remarkable thing about this play is, for me at least, that it becomes a true tragedy only in its last moments. Only when all the stuff has hit the fan, and he has realized his doom is eminent, does Macbeth show the courage and nobility of a true tragic hero.

Macbeth is a great place to start if you are new to Shakespeare. It is a fun place to return if you're not.

While I was basically familiar with Shakespeare's Tragedy of Macbeth, I have only recently actually read the bard's brilliant play. The drama is quite dark and moody, but this atmosphere serves Shakespeare's purposes well. In Macbeth, we delve deeply into the heart of a true fiend, a man who would betray the king, who showers honors upon him, in a vainglorious snatch at power. Yet Macbeth is not 100% evil, nor is he a truly brave soul. He waxes and wanes over the execution of his nefarious plans, and he thereafter finds himself haunted by the blood on his own hands and by the ethereal spirits of the innocent men he has had murdered. On his own, Macbeth is much too cowardly to act so traitorously to his kind and his country. The source of true evil in these pages is the cold and calculating Lady Macbeth; it is she who plots the ultimate betrayal, forcefully pushes her husband to perform the dreadful acts, and cleans up after him when he loses his nerve. This extraordinary woman is the lynchpin of man's eternal fascination with this drama. I find her behavior a little hard to account for in the closing act, but she looms over every single male character we meet here, be he king, loyalist, nobleman, courtier, or soldier. Lady Macbeth is one of the most complicated, fascinating, unforgettable female characters in all of literature.

The plot does not seem to move along as well as Shakespeare's other most popular dramas, but I believe this is a result of the writer's intense focus on the human heart rather than the secondary activity that surrounds the related royal events. It is fascinating if sometimes rather disjointed reading. One problem I had with this play in particular was one of keeping up with each of the many characters that appear in the tale; the English of Shakespeare's time makes it difficult for me to form lasting impressions of the secondary characters, of whom there are many. Overall, though, Macbeth has just about everything a great drama needs: evil deeds, betrayal, murder, fighting, ghosts, omens, cowardice, heroism, love, and, as a delightful bonus, mysterious witches. Very many of Shakespeare's more famous quotes are also to be found in these pages, making it an important cultural resource for literary types. The play doesn't grab your attention and absorb you into its world the way Hamlet or Romeo and Juliet does, but this voyage deep into the heart of evil, jealousy, selfishness, and pride forces you to consider the state of your own deep-seated wishes and dreams, and for that reason there are as many interpretations of the essence of the tragedy as there are readers of this Shakespearean masterpiece. No man's fall can rival that of Macbeth's, and there is a great object lesson to be found in this drama. You cannot analyze Macbeth without analyzing yourself to some degree, and that goes a long way toward accounting for the Tragedy of Macbeth's literary importance and longevity.

Noble Macbeth and the story of his decay due to the seduction of the forces of darkness - I liked it. The play sets off with an impressing scene, the chant of the three witches, a perfect use of language, I dare say. It takes only about a page and I knew it by memory after two times reading. We used to quote it during the breaks, and actually still do so sometimes. "When shall we three meet again...and so forth. After this promising start the language gets quite hard (I'm not any native form Enland, the US or any other english speaking part of this planet). One can follow the action though and every five or six pages there's a reward for your patience, at least for anybody who likes the power Shakespeare's language is able to display in their good or best moments: "Have we eaten on the insane root?" and the likes. Of course there's also the famous "It is a tale, told by an idiot...". It's for these moments, where Williams knew how to transfere a feeling of one of his caracteres into the realm of a universal significance, that I enjoyed the play...