Lord Berners remembers childhood more accurately than most memoirists. He doesn't romanticize nor does he dwell on the darker days. He looks back with wry amusement at himself (an only child of a thoughtful and dreamy nature) and his family (relics of another era). Written with a deft light touch and adult insight into the ways of childhood. Don't miss this -- you'll laugh out loud!

This much talked about but rarely read character from the recent past is proved to be a real artist and talented writer in this lovely book. I dare you not to be enchanted by this wonderfully written and charming tale of a comfortable childhood. It is arch and queeny at times, but so utterly readable that it is sure to be consumed at a single sitting. For anyone with class!

For anyone with a good background in math, particularly from an engineering background, this book presents a broad overview of the neurosciences in a very understandable format. In fact, the math overview is probably better than that found in many calculus textbooks and the Matlab disk would certainly save a lot of time for many common problems. Again, any readers with an engineering background (particularly mechanical or electrical) will find the math and results to be rather familiar.

I suspect someone looking for another "popular science" book like Gleick's "Chaos" will be highly disappointed. This book is definitely structured for someone interested in pursuing study in the field.

I hope that Wilson now moves on to expanding on the hints of philosophical thought he has listed here. Anyone familiar with nonlinear chaotic systems MUST have some understanding of the implications of their non-deterministic nature; certainly a quick reading of Jantsch or Prigogine would help too. As Wilson points out on page 184, chaos and free will may easily be tied to each other.

Further study of Perlovsky's work (hopefully his book will be out soon too) will clarify many of the issues regarding neural net modeling and its philosophical implications. Certainly one can only wonder at Churchland's child-like beliefs that neural nets will resolve "folk psychology" and the fundamental questions of consciousness when confronted with nonlinear chaotic systems on the order of 10 the 10th order!

Highly recommended.

This book is beyond a doubt the foundation to a new approach. While too many of todays science books say me too, or action figure sold seperately this book is the action figure. Including Matlab linked library. As a student of chaos theory with a strong backround in the biological sciences imagine the warm and fuzzy feeling of seeing things involving chaos theory I had suspected in cognitive neuroscience but, not having the access to prove. Although the stronger the math backround the richer the text, Wilson's command of his subject guides the reader through 2 years of differential equations and feedback and control theory in 3 of the best written chapters I have come accross in major texts. Then just to make sure everyone is reading from the same sheet of music, he heads to, what is for me at least, the Grand Unification Theory. The difficulty is presenting this type of material in cohesive body should make this the basic text for future research in biomeimetic materials,nonlinear neurodynamics, biopharmaceuticals, and neural nets. As an example on page 126 Wilson has already anticipated my question of toroidial limit cycles saving long hours of computer simulations proving and disproving compatiblilies. Virtually all of the material is translatable to other computer math systems (Mathcad) since the book includes the formulas.

The talented and benignly eccentric Lord Berners wrote music, painted pictures, became a British diplomat, and developed an extraordinary writing style filled with wit, irony, and clarity of expression. I recommend listening to his ballet scores and his incidental music to a 1947 motion picture of "Nicolas Nickleby," but I also urge Anglophiles and lovers of British literature to read this slender and delightful volume of memoirs. The time is 1900, when, as Lord Berners writes, "international war still seemed a remote menace, and there were no passports." Gerald Tyrwhitt - for that was his name until he assumed Lordship in 1918 - has left Eton and is now preparing for a career in the British diplomatic service by visiting France for a year to perfect his faulty French, and to savor the culture of Europe. He is also experiencing complete freedom from academic and maternal control for the first time, encountering a late adolescent sexual awakening, and developing an artistic vision that will be the basis of his later creative life. In France he stays with an extraordinary woman, Madame O'Kerrins, the widow of a French-naturalized Irishman, who takes in British borders to support the Château de Résenlieu. The book documents his year's stay with Madame O'Kerrins and a few of her relatives and borders, and reveals the excitement and joy that a seventeen-year old British aristocrat feels when he confronts that totally different culture of provincial France. Written with the care and perception that is characteristic of Lord Berners' work, the book explores the changes that take place within the author. For example, Lord Berners explains his turning away from the heaviness of Romanticism and the overbearing denseness of Wagner's music and adopting the lighter, more impressionistic feelings of French music and art. These impressions, I believe, were solidified during this period and lasted his entire life. His music indeed sounds more like Satie than Wagner, and the lightness of his later work is influenced by the French. His perceptions of the people he meets and his descriptions of the provincial town of Gacé are beautifully written. His prose moves lovingly over each page, and his account of falling in love for the first time in his life with Mademoiselle Henriette is extremely poignant. I heartily recommend this short memoir by Lord Berners, for I am certain the reader, like myself, will be encouraged to explore his other works. In fact, I am beginning his "Collected Tales of Fantasies" as soon as I post this review!

Lord Berners' Collected Tales and Fantasies are six rather bizarre tales or short novellas, filled with dark and mysterious happenings. The characters who inhabit these stories are equally as bizarre and eccentric as the tales themselves, and, although they contain some hilarious satire in the style of Evelyn Waugh or "Saki," the narratives are laced with violence and tragedy. Lord Berners' characters include an assortment of eccentric artistocratic types that he knew between the years dividing the two World Wars. His characters include a mixture of neurotics, paranoids, megalomaniacs, pederasts, parasites, and what Monty Python would call "upper-class twits," all of whom partake in the most amazing adventures. In one of the best stories, "Far from the Madding War," the author himself makes a brief appearance as Lord FritzCricket. Berners admits that his own outlandish personality is that of "the Unstable Peer," an eccentric born into the aristocracy who can act in any way he pleases. Let us look briefly at a few of the stories. "Percy Wallingford," (written in 1914) tells the adventures of a self-assured and talented man who, on the eve of World War I, has his confidence destroyed by his wife, a fantastic woman who can see in the dark and who strips him of his self-assurance. "The Camel," (written in 1936) relates the mysterious appearance of a camel at a vicarage in the quiet British town of Slumbermere, which violently disrupts the easy life there and forces people to confront their own fears, anxieties, and jealousies. It is a deceptively dark and disturbing tale, perhaps influenced by the novels of Thomas Hardy and Anthony Trollope which also dealt with small-town British rustic life. "Mr. Pidger," (1939) takes place on the eve of World War II and is, in reality, a British country-house farce in the best tradition. Lord Berens takes the models of the genre - a dog-hating misanthrope, a missing will, an ill-tempered dog, an over bearing wife, and a reticent husband - and molds them into a bizarre burlesque with tragic overtones. "Count Omega" (1941) is a satire on reincarnation, Freudian sexual psychoanalysis, modern music, and practical jokes, which involves the ego-centered musician Emanuel Smith, maliciously modeled on the British composer Sir William Walton. "The Romance of a Nose" (1941) may be the weakest tale of the collection, a rather plodding story about a Queen with an enormous nose and the chicanery that takes place in international politics. Berners' final story in the collection, "Far From the Madding War" (1941) is in itself worth the price of the book. It is an outrageous reaction to World War II, peopled with whimsical neurotics and eccentrics in the university town of "All Saints." It is Lord Berners' satirical attack on Oxford and Cambridge Universities' reaction to the war, and an intimation of his own nervous breakdown during and after the war years when his private world was shattered. It is a hilarious yet disturbing story. I highly recommend these six stories to those Anglophile readers like myself who enjoy the works of such writers as Evelyn Waugh, "Saki," J.P. Donlevy, George MacDonald Fraser, or John Mortimer. Lord Berners is indeed a talented author who writes stylishly and with a sharp satiric thrust. I have enjoyed his music (now recorded on several CD's) and his excellent memoir, "The Château de Résenlieu," which was recently published. I hope that more of his fine literary work will be published.

I've loved Lord Berners' music for years. And I knew he was an eccentric. But these pieces knocked me out. Wry, ironic, hilarious, skewed, but also humane. He's someone I wish I'd had dinner with; I suspect it would have been a memorable encounter.

The reason to buy this book is the excelent photographs of the details of the ship. As a B&W picture book, it is excelent.

The text is generally weak with a number of technical errors. The author comes across as a fawning admirer rather an expert.

The book could have been much improved with more complete diagrams of the ship. (Has plans but not of the superstructure or lower decks.)

The Battleship Texas, now a museum, is a great attraction for tourists to the San Jacinto Monument and Battlegrounds near Houston, Texas.

Normal tourists wander through the ship, shoot a few pictures and leave.

Hugh Power, who lives on Galveston Island nearby, fell in love with the ship, its history and photo opportunity. He spent, to my knowledge, 3 years photographing every nook and cranny of the Battleship.

He took pictures morning and evening, at noon, with and without flash, from this angle and that. He spent hours in his darkroom developing the pictures, experimenting with different exposures and using all the tricks in the trade to create black & white art.

The effort was well worth it. The book is superb, a delight to both, the lover of good photography and ships.

A fabulous and interesting book about a fascinating part of history. Much of the artistry is actually in the pictures, diagrams, and text themselves.

Mr. Powers actually got some of the original Navy blueprints from the ship's construction, and this was the source of the drawings in the book. Occasional compromises were made in the amount of detail the diagrams offer due to space constraints.

Nonetheless this is a beautiful and fascinating way to learn more about this historic ship.

Do not buy this book if you are expecting an easy read, perhaps expanding on the "terroir" writings of Matt Kramer of Wine Spectator fame.

This book spends little space discussing the actual liquid that in contained within a wine bottle. What you get instead is an in depth examination of the geology which causes differences in the finished product. The feeling that the "product" is wine, seems to have no joy to the author. To me, that is what ruins this book. I get the feeling that if the author would have had as much enthusiasm writing upon the impact of different wavelengths of light on the lima bean.

Not that this book didn't accomplish what the author set out to do. Just know what you are buying.

"Terroir" by Wilson is a very good book, indeed. Johnson, however, has very little to do with it; he just wrote the foreword, which he does to so many books. Wilson's book is comparable to the older "The Wines and Winelands of France, Geological Journeys" by Charles Pomerol, 1989, English language edition, a much more cut-n-dried account of much the same territory. Both are excellent sources of information for people like teachers and people who wish to gain some intellectual as well as sensory pleasure out of their vinous beverages.

With a great anticipation I bought this book at the time when I was doing my PhD on terroir. To some extent, the book was a disappointment. Geology really represents only one element of terroir. Scientific evidence that would relate parent rock composition / structure to wine quality is non-existent. It is, as lawyers would say, circumstantial, not direct evidence. The role that soil type and local climate, as well as vineyard management and winemaking practices play in shaping up terroir is greatly undermined in this book. The impressive work on terroir done at INRA (the National Institute of Agronomic Research) in France by Barbeau, Asselin, Morlat and others is basically ignored. These scientists (as well as my own research) have found that physical properties of soil and subsoil, as well as local climate, are the most important factors defining terroir. However, this book does have excellent maps and a wealth of geological and regional information - so it is worth every penny on that account only. The only problem is that, in my opinion, the title is wrong. "Geology of the French vineyards", or something similar, would describe the book's content much more precisely.