This is a great book. It is not difficult to read. The style is very informal and at times actually humourous. It does not follow the definition-lemma-proof way of doing things at the expense of leaving simple definitions out, but these can be easily found somewhere else. The book contains an enormous amount of information, and the authors are clearly men of great knowledge and depth. The book is very nicely produced (from a 1st edition) by Cambridge U Press. Very clearly printed, and at a low price for the volume. I highly recommend both volumes to anyone who works in stochastic processes, or mathematical finance (assuming one wants to learn things, rather than just talk about them).

Although not an easy read, this book contains a wealth of information on diffusion, martingales and Ito calculus. Reading difficulty is comparable to Karatzas/Shreve. Mastery of topics included enables the reader to get understanding of most of the current research papers in this field.

This book was extremely helpful to me while I learned all about the fishes at the Aquarium of the Pacific. It is very concise and yet includes every order and family that I ever encountered during my studies. I recommend it wholeheartedly!

This 1995 copyright date assures the reader s/he is getting the latest in deep-sea discoveries. Scientists can gather more information with the latest, quieter cameras. It has photos from the most beautiful to the most grotesque fishes. The text is organized, readable & enjoyable

This book, based on a series of talks given at the New York Library, biographers Robert Caro, David McCullough, Paul C. Nagel, Richard B. Sewall, Ronald Steel and Jean Strouse explain how and why they went about writing biographies in the way that they did.

Each biographer explains well how the life of the biographer becomes intertwined with that of the person they are researching. In each case, they stress that biography writing is both intense and time-consuming.

Lyndon B. Johnson biographer, Robert Caro, recommends Francis Parkman's "Montcalm and Wolfe" for two reasons. One, to show that the job of the historian is to try to write at the same level as the greatest novelists. Second, that the duty of the historian is to go to the locales of the events that will be described, and not to leave, no matter how long it takes...until the writer has done his or her best to understand the locales and their cultures and their people.

In the end, it means that the biographer must not only understand the person, but also needs to intimately know the area where the person grew up and lived.

This book gives its readers new insights into the lives of some of this nation's most prominent figures, through the eyes of six well-known biographers. In "The Unexpected Harry Truman," David McCullough shows the life of Truman through new eyes. McCullough stresses that a biographer must genuinely care about his [or her] subject because you are living with that person every single day. The process is like that of choosing a spouse or roommate, therefore, the subjects that he chooses must have a degree of animal, human vitality. In Truman, he said, as with Theodore Roosevelt, he found no shortage of vitality.

McCullough created a detailed chronology, almost a diary of what Truman was doing from year to year, even day to day if the events were important enough. He also used primary sources, such as personal diaries, letters and documents from the time period. Truman poured himself out on paper and provided a large, wonderfully written base of writing for McCullough to sort through and "find" the man.

McCullough says that the magic of writing comes from not knowing where you are headed, what you are going to wind up feeling and what you are going to decide.

Richard Sewell's "In Search of Emily Dickinson," research process took twenty years and he says, "In the beginning I didn't go searching for her, she went searching for me." The process took him two sabbaticals, years of correspondence and meetings with Mabel Loomis Todd's daughter Millicent Todd Bingham to uncover the whole truth.

Paul Nagel's "The Adams Women," gives readers a sense of how important the women in the Adam's family were. Nagel said that contemplating the development of ideology is good training for a biographer. After all, he said, the intellectual historian takes an idea and brings it to life. For Nagel, working with ideas establishes a bridge into the mind and life of the people who had the ideas he studies.

Nagel said that he likes and admires women and this is why, after writing about the Adams' men, he wrote about the Adams' women. Nagel also said that he has learned and taught his students that our grasp of history must always remain incomplete.

Ronald Steel said, that the hardest job a biographer has is not to judge his or her subject, however, most fail to keep their judgements out of the biography.

In Jean Strouse's, "The Real Reasons," she explains that the modern biography examines how character affects and is affected by social circumstance. Biography also tells the reader a great deal about history and gives them a wonderful story.

In writing about Alice James, Strouse found that there was not an interesting plot line to her life other than that her brothers were writers Henry and William James.

Strouse, when asked by another writer about the descendents of the three James' children, she said that William's great-grandson in Massachusetts, tired of being asked whether he was related to Henry or William, moved to Colorado where he was asked whether he was related to Jesse or Frank. Strouse reported that he stayed in Colorado.

Strouse realized that in order to tell the story of the James' family, she was going to have to use her own voice to give life to the family, especially Alice. This is not recommended for all biographies, but in a case such as hers, it needs that biographer's voice to connect all the information for the reader.

In Robert Caro's, "Lyndon Johnson and the Roots of Power," he talked to the people who knew Johnson to get a sense of the former President from Texas and what made him worthy of a new biography. He wrote the biography to illuminate readers to the time period and what shaped the time, especially politically.

This book will help writers understand the steps he or she will need to take to write a biography. It shows the difficult research processes and makes the reader want to either write a biography about an interesting person or never want to write again. Either way, this book provides new insights that one may have never thought about before. I recommend this book to both beginning and seasoned writers

If you have gotten this far, you probably have seen the movie ASIN: B00004RF9B. The book has better characterization and plot details. And of course it tells you want they are thinking; so you do not have to guess from facial expressions. The bulk of the story matches with movie with one big exception

What seems to be overlooked, is the WHOLE primes of the story. The animals are contemporary, not dinosaurs or wooly mammoths. In the movie the Krell brought the animals back from Earth over 1million years ago. In the movie the great machine transports material in any quantity and shapes anywhere.

The real threat is only in the book. The animals were contemporary because Morbius CREATED them from memory. He was not moving matter and the Krell were not interested in moving matter. Although that is what Morbius told the space crew. The Krell was creating life.

FORBIDDEN PLANET is acclaimed by many science fiction fans as the best and most accomplished science fiction film yet produced (including the equally legendary, 2001: A Space Odyssey). David Campiti and his associates have done a masterful job of rendering the epic film into the so-called graphic novel format without reducing the story to a simplistic "comic" or a grotesque interpretation that would destroy the subtlety and thought provoking implication found in both the film and original novel. Unlike a literal "translation" of the film, the graphic novel presents a beautiful background panorama artistically depicting another GARDEN of EDEN. The Myth of the Unicorn is a focus used to characterize Altaira, the innocent Eve of The Forbidden Planet as well as the concept of Forbidden Knowledge that is thematic basis of both the film and grapic novel. Make no mistake, there is plenty of action and suspense...along with the awesome Monster from

the Id...to hold the interest of Star Wars or Independance Day film admirers. However, FORBIDDEN PLANET is an epic precisely because it is an original incarnation of a myth...the myth of man struggling to transcend himself while remembering that he is a "mere" creature, not GOD. For a "comic" to explore such themes without trivialization or PC condescension is a genuine accomplishment that stirs imaginative reflection and is exciting reading...

If you are looking for an in-depth, complete introduction to Gigabit Ethernet (both copper and fiber) you have found the right book. In about 500 pages the authors give a professional introduction not only to the Gigabit version, but other Ethernets as well, talking about network design, MAC layer, cabling, and almost everything you can expect from a book so named.

Edgar Danielyan CCNP CCDP

Compared with other GigE books, this book offers much better discussions on optical transmission and impairments. This will be great for people who likes to understand where certain optical interface and limitation are from.

On the network subject, it also offers clear and orderly description.

This book tells the story of the KKK in Indiana. It turns out this was a real hotbed for the KKK and they were extremely powerful controlling cities, police, the governor. If you think of the KKK as Southern, this book will set you straight. The head of the Indiana KKK was D.C. Stephenson who was tried for rape and murder. A truly scary book, but a page burner and dead-on historically.

If you like true "whodunit" stories that still leave you wondering at the end, then this is the book for you. An unfathomable story leading up to a 1920s "Trial of the Century," Lutholtz raises almost as many questions as he answers in his quest for understanding of the mind and actions of D.C. Stephenson, a man so powerful he brought down a governor and a mayor in seemingly one fell swoop, controlled the police chief of a major metropolitan city of the time and had the temerity to claim "I am the law in Indiana." The author does a superb job in uncovering information concerning Stephenson's trial for murder that many Hoosiers don't seem comfortable discussing. Lutholtz also offers excellent coverage of the lawyers and judges involved, and the dangers and pitfalls they faced in trying a man who terrified just about everybody!

This book is simply the best for your bookcase if you are a voice dialogue designer. I would strongly recommend it to novice and expert alike, especially for those learning VoiceXML for the first time, or working with it day to day.

Grounded in hours of human-computer experiments, and a multi-disciplinary approach to user interface design - this book is a rare combination of a careful ear for human language and dialogue, extensive engineering experience, and pragmatic knowledge of the strengths and limitations of current voice recognition technology.

The second edition has brought it bang up-to-date. It cuts through the hype that has always surrounded each successive generation of voice technology - focussing always on the building of robust useable interfaces which work with the user rather than against them.

This book is so well organized and articulated it's bound to be of value to anyone doing ASR application development. My own experience in voice response runs from end-user representative to application designer and I found every chapter enlightening. In this second edition of Bruce and David's ASR style guide, I believe the end users will find the new sections on voice portals and managing your voice talent of particular interest. And all users should take particular note of the expanded discussions of usability testing and performance reporting.

I found the first version of How to Build a Speech Recognition Application so useful that I actually took the time to compared the new edition, page for page, with the original. That was a relatively easy task, because the authors retained the original section numbering wherever possible. My comparison showed that the original guidelines have been substantially updated, based on continuing research and the hands-on experiences of both the authors and other acknowledged experts. In addition, I believe the new sections and expanded discussions of critical design considerations are going to prove valuable to both novice and seasoned developers.

In short, developing effective telephony dialogues is a complex, rapidly evolving and downright expensive task. Given that reality, every development team ought to have at least one copy of this landmark style guide.

I am so pleased to have found this excellent book on Commedia Dell'Arte! We provide authentic Italian masks for performers, students and collectors all over the world and are frequently asked for more information. We highly recommend this comprehensive work by Duchartre, and will refer inquiries to Amazon for purchase now that we have located a source for the book. We invite you to visit us at maskart.com where you will find all the characters from The Italian Comedy brought to life.

If one is interested in the Commedia Dell Arte, buy this book. It includes a history, a disscussion of performance method, and a chapter for each of the basic stock characters and their family. Ducharte includes a collection of engravings detailing commedia work. A must. The only thing it lacks is a detailed description of traditional Lazzi.

Donald A. Marchand, William J. Kettinger and John D. Rollins, professors and consultants on information technology and management, explain how your company can improve its business performance using information orientation (IO). The authors present ways to improve corporate capabilities in information management, information technology and employee use of information. The authors draw from interviews with about 1,000 senior managers from more than 100 companies, representing two dozen countries and two dozen industries. The book uses case histories and examples from these interviews to support its central model, which is based on building, using and measuring these three information capabilities. The authors present innovative answers to the perpetual question of how to quantify subjective measures. The one shortcoming, beyond explanatory repetition, is the problem of sorting out programs with initials instead of names. Yet, we [...] found this book quite solid, albeit academically written, and suggest it to all managers and executives involved with IT initiatives at large companies.

This is a book that I consider to be one of the most refreshing business texts that I've had the pleasure to read in a long time. It was something of an epiphany for me as concepts I had always instinctively known to exist and to be right were suddenly being detailed and consolidated in a way I have never had the vision to do, and in a way I have never read before.

Time will tell, but the methodology presented here may just provide the hitherto missing link between what we pay for information and what we get from it. Remember that by the end of 2001, the US alone will have spent the lion's share of a trillion dollars on Information Technology, and though we may not like to admit it, much of that money will disappear down a black hole of failed projects and mis-used systems.

If the case studies are anything to go by, the company that has the foresight to apply the principles of "Information Orientation" will not only offer itself the best chance of avoiding the IT gravity well, but will also be putting itself on track to derive the maximum possible value from its expenditure on information systems, in a way that will be measurable in the real business terms of growth, margin and bottom line.

That's a claim I find pretty exciting and I'm looking forward to applying it in my own environment. The authors say it's no fad, and my gut feeling is to agree. I recommend you get a copy of this book before your competitors do!

These two novellas are witty, playful, irreverent, intelligent--everything we've learned to expect from Slavitt. This book is a must-have for any Shakespeare fan, but it's not only for the lover of Shakespeare. I haven't read Romeo and Juliet since high school and don't intend to read it again anytime soon, but Slavitt's version was at times laugh-out-loud funny and always interesting.

I personally prefer the the shorter novella, a retelling of Measure for Measure, set in a small, less-than-reputable Old West town. Need I say more?

The retelling of Romeo and Juliet is wonderful as well, uncovering hidden lusts for Juliet harbored by many older men. (We are reminded that Juliet is only 13 years old, which was rather young for sexual relations even in Elizabethan England, a fact mentioned then quickly forgotten in Shakespeare's version.)

There is, however, more than simple humor in these novellas. George Garrett has said that Slavitt does that rare thing in American literature: thinking. These novellas are not only humorous (often darkly so) retellings of classics, but also in depth excursions into the nature of civilization and the nastier parts of human thought and emotion.

Buy this book. You won't regret it.

Don't know any Shakespeare? Don't worry. Even if your education was as incomplete as mine, you can still follow along and enjoy these two stories. The writing is witty, sly and a delight to read.

Slavitt is at ease with language, Shakespeare, and human nature. I couldn't put this one down, not because I was on the edge of my seat, but because I kept falling off it laughing. Philosophy and Sociology were never as much fun as they are in this little volume. By the way, dust off the dictionary before you start this one.