I offer many praises to Dr. Sami Aldeeb Abu-Salieh for writing this book and Dr. Sheldon Gosline for translating it into English. They have provided us with the first clear picture of Muslims in the West. Although much of the research is specific to Islam in Europe and Switzerland in particular, the conclusions are universal to all western nations. Dr. Aldeeb spent a lifetime studying this subject and his knowledge is totally evident. The translation into English of the original French and Arabic text was a massive task. It was undertaken with great care. If you are at all interested in the subject of Islam you must see this work!

This work is an outstanding compilation of Islamic and western law concerning all aspects of life. It is a subject that touches all of us since the tragic events of Sept. 11th.

Translated into English by Sheldon Lee Gosline, Muslims In The West: Redefining The Separation Of Church And State is accessibly written by Sami A. Aldeeb Abu-Sahlieh (Director of Islamic Law, Swiss Institute of Comparative Law, Lausanne) who drew upon his more than twenty years of personal and professional experience to examine the cultural, social, and political interactions of Muslims in Switzerland. Individual chapters address everything from conflicts of religion and the right to worship, to issues involving religious cemeteries and burial grounds. A very thoughtful and insightful work offering principles and wisdom that can be generalized to the Western world as a whole, Muslims In The West is an original and welcome contribution to Islamic Studies reference collections and supplemental reading lists.

Finally, a compilation of Howe's fantasy, and 144 pages, at that! I admit that this review is premature, but I am totally excited to snag this new arrival...

John Howe and Alan Lee are the indisputed masters of "Lord of the Rings" artwork. And this fantastic compilation of Howe's artwork, of all kinds, is a wonderful collection of artwork by an immensely talented artist. (And a cute part at the end has photographs of Howe in armor)

A great deal of the book is devoted to Middle-Earth and J.R.R. Tolkien's works. There are the creepily reptilian dragons, spiders chasing hobbits, the majestic Elves, several different incarnations of the Balrog and its battle with Gandalf, the black-armored and evil Morgoth, the dwarves dining in Bilbo Baggins' hole, a misty Treebeard, Smaug asleep on his glowing gold, the Dark Tower of Mordor with a hissing Fell Beast in front of it... all sorts of goodies. The pictures come from book covers, book illustrations, game boxes, and so forth.

But Howe's artwork is not just for "Rings" and Middle-Earth. Oh no. There are sketches (uncolored) and previously unpublished artwork. There are illustrations from picture books like "Jack and the Beanstalk," "Rip Van Winkle," Howe's fascination with armor and Arthuriana, which includes lots of solid horses, armor, and sword-wielding knights; his illustrations for books by Anne McCaffrey, Robin Hobb, Charles de Lint, Guy Gavriel Kay, Jan Siegel, Margaret Weis, a compilation of Merlin-related stories, and much more.

Howe's artwork has a lot of variety, and many of them look almost like photographs. While you can tell that they're paintings, they're frozen in one second, often in the middle of an action scene. So you almost expect them to start moving. He uses light and shadow expertly, such as in the pic where we see Smaug on his gold -- under his wings, the golden reflection of his treasure is lighting up his face and scales. Or when he is shown attacking Laketown, where everything is dark and shadowy except the fire.

When the "Lord of the Rings" movie trilogy was given the go-ahead, Howe (along with Alan Lee, ) was hired by filmmaker Peter Jackson to help with the sets and landscaping and other designs. Now Jackson has written a foreword to this book, in which he talks about what a fan he is of Howe's artwork (and was, even before the movies!), and how his artwork served as a guide of sorts to how certain things should look. (Such as Ian McKellen's "Gandalf" look, which was based on Howe's famed picture of the wise old wiz) And the afterword was by fellow artist and friend Alan Lee, who describes how they met in New Zealand in 1998, starting work on the movies, and praises Howe for his energy and skill.

This is a fantastic read for fans of J.R.R. Tolkien's works, not to mention people who enjoy good artwork and fantasy/SF pictures. A lush, fantastical book of dragons, halflings, Elves and suits of armor. Marvelous.

I shall just get right to the point: if you are fascinated by the world of Tolkien or just like to read books with some extraordinary fantastic art, this is the book for you.

This book shows you a collection of the art of John Howe, a well-known artist of fantasy art, and someone who designed a lot of visual aspects in the Lord of the rings movies. It contains lots of artwork that has to do with the work of J.R.R. Tolkien, but also some of Howes other work with various subjects.

I can really recommend this almost everybody,because it's just fun to have this for the pretty pictures. The impressive things are not only the detail, the design and the colorscheme, but also the fact that the work really seem to show a certain greatness and movement. They make you believe that those moments were keymoments in the history of some other world.

This a MUST-HAVE.

If you want to see colorful manuscipts that show a varity of medieval insects, plants, flowers, fruit, sea shells, initials, designs, and even a few animals, then this is the book for you. There are 41 full color manuscripts to choose from. At the end of the book, are discriptions of each manuscript, listing the medieval name for each. Example: The identifications of specimens proceed from top to bottom and from left to right. Common names have been provided whenever possible. In the case of the insect identifications, British English common names have been used, since most of the specimens represented do not exist in the United States. Where a different American common name is known, it has been included following the British Name, seperated by a slash. The names of higher taxonomic groups (families and orders) have been printed in roman type, while genus and spicies names appear in italics.Folio 1 Rotunda script in "trace letters"Vinca minor L,: Common periwinkleMalus domestica Borkh,:Common appleLacerta(?):LizardFolio 5 Antiqua scriptMatthiola incana (L.) R. Br.: GillyflowerEphemeroptera: MayflyDiptera Cyclorrhapha Heleomyzidae (?):FlyPulmonata Helicidae Cepaea sp.: Garde SnailEnd Example.A great sorce of Medieval Nature.

"Nature Illuminated" is wonderful collection of illuminated manuscripts from the Getty's extensive holdings. Perusing these pages shows that the chasm between (representative) art and science is really not so great.

For such a small book, this is crammed with new ideas for both calligraphy and drawing from Nature. You have to look close, and have an idea of how techniques can be applied, but this book will serve as an inspiration for my work for years to come!

I loved this book. It was a very good read, and it kept me turning the pages. I liked the way the WoD line of books used to be, like this one, for they were good short reads. (Comparitively speaking to the common three-part sages White-Wolf is currently publishing.) It had many good plot twists and superb character developments. I do hope that the author, as he said in his own review, can get around to bringing the vampire hero back once again for another story.

I love this novel...usually, I am into reading vampire romance novels, but this book was a pleasent surprise, I mainly read it to have something to do. I am very happy to have read it, I certainly recommend it.

Again, very well written. I wondered if the other book were a fluke (On a Darkling Main), but this also proved a pleasant surprise. If anything, it was better than its predecessor. The character development was stronger and the plot remained good. SUMMARY: Zane's lover is brutally murdered. To find out what is behind the whole thing, he hooks up with a bored vampire elder . His story intrigues Sartak and he agrees to help. They find out that Rose was a doppleganger of a powerful psychotic and all of her "sisters" aren't dead. The hunter turns out to be a human psychiatrist / psychic that has power over the Prince of Tampa. Some of the characters return from On a Darkling Main to be shown in a different light. Very enjoyable.

Wow! I really enjoyed this one of Linda Chaikin's first novels. It took me awhile to find it and purchase it but I think it was well worth the wait. This book is about a young woman named Jade travelling with her sister, Holly and brother, Shaun to Nevada in 1860 searching for their father, Thomas O'Neil. Jade O'Neil has had a long bout with sickness (tubercluosis) but is determined to settle in at their father's claim and make a living by the portraits she paints. Roark Montgomery is also looking for Thomas O'Neil but to bring him to justice for killing a man and crippling his father who was a well-respected surgeon. Jade and Roark meet as they both search for Thomas and Jade finds herself drawn to the lawman who has come to arrest her father. She also feels depressed about her long illness and was already hurt in her last courtship. She learns that the Lord has good plans for her despite her illness and that she is precious in His sight. Roark must struggle with the feelings of revenge and forgive the man who has shot and crippled his beloved father. A great story on love, forgiveness, romance and discovering one's worth to the Lord. I will read this one again and again.

This book is so good! I couldn't put it down! I recommend this book to anyone who likes Christian romances.

This is a really excellent book by Linda Chaikin! It's about a young woman named Jade who is weak from almost a lifelong illness known as Tuberculosis and her battles with feelings of unworthiness. Nevada Jade is a very enthralling book about compassion and learning to trust God with ALL the details, including the ones that we pretend don't exist.

i have the whole series and have read them over and over. i am a ninjutsu practitioner, and i can assure you, stephen hayes is the real deal.

Life and resources are too short to waste on fakes. Hayes is the real thing. Ninjutsu can't be learned through books. It must be learned from a qualified teacher. These books in the Ohara series are useful to understand your instruction better. They are all treasures when used that way.

This whole series is wonderful. I highly recommend them all to any martial arts student. Very useful and enlightening!

A fine work like this is timeless. You really got a feel for what it was like to be in an old biplane during the First War. This story was totally believable too, with no bragging or exaggerated accounts of heroics or daring-do. An honest diary account of what a typical fighter pilot endured during those hazard filled days. Too often we think of WW I dogfighting as glamorous and exciting with the Red Baron zipping across the skies. This book will make you feel like you've really been there.

This book is a compilation of letters and diary entries. They were made in the heat of the day, and through their immediacy let the reader feel what is was like to be a fighter pilot in 1917.

Lee tells us of how cold it was while on patrol at 20,000 feet and how peaceful the trenches seemed. Later we learn how stressful it was to be tasked with with ground attacks in a Camel. The reader also learns about all the little things in a pilot's life, like shooting frogs in a pond and partying like there was no tomorrow. And burying your squadron mates with frightening regularity.

This book is simply written, and makes no pretext of being a significant historical work. What is does, and does so well, is tell the story of the average joe trying to stay alive in the skies of the Western Front.

It is a story that will stay with you.

This is a work that deserves to be re-printed. It is accessible by the layman, and its aerial combat sequences are clearly written. The author has a pleasing writing style, and he does not fall into the self-worship that sometimes afflicts the writing of combat fliers. Lee effectively communicates the gallantry and the hopelessness of aerial combat without a parchute.

One of the most fascinating parts of the book is Lee's exploration of the irrational, purely negligent, decision not to equip pilots with parachutes. Parachutes were available prior to the war and were used by balloon-observors throughout the struggle and German aviators in the last year. Due to simple, murderous bureacratic inattention, pilots went to their deaths who could have been saved by a bundle of silk.

Finally, Lee's work is the only one I know of that takes up the ground attack role of aircraft in the First World War. This is often thought to be a development of the Second World War, but Lee provides details of the tactics and missions flown by his unit in this vital role.

It's hard to imagine today, but there once was a time when the simple written word could send shudders of fear and loathing down the spines of mainstream America. And no one gave Mr and Mrs Front Porch USA the shakes more than Terry Southern. His novel "Candy" was banned and branded as pornography before it even reached our shores; his take on the military in "Doc Strangelove" earned him the label "pinko." But, like all great satirists (which he certainly was) know, "telling it like it is" often times means "taking your lumps like a man." And Terry took plenty of lumps, and humps, but never let his trials and tribs get in the way of "making it hot" for people. Although the mighty lions of 60's pop culture are now - alas! - all nearly gone, this volume of previously unseen TS works serves as an excellent reminder of a time when humor meant more than just being funny, and words alone had the power to give people the coniptions. And as "Now Dig This!" reminds us, while Southern took on all comers and suffered no fool gladly, he was a gentle giant who did so whilst nudging us playfully in the ribs - not poking us in the eye. "Now Dig This!" is a great addition to any modern humor library, and a worthy addition to the Southern canon. Bravo.

In these heartless consumerist times, irony has become debased. Thus the arrival of this anthology of previously uncollected and unpublished work by Terry Southern is not only a delightful surprise, but profoundly neccesary. Just as his 1967 anthology, Red Dirt Marijuana, proved that Southern was not just the great black humorist of the post-WWII era, but a great short story writer and essayist, so does Now Dig This affirm that status. No one has ever managed to quite duplicate Southern's mastery of so many forms: the letter as put-on, gonzo journalism, literary criticism, screenwriting and short fiction. Southern fans will be delighted at the inclusion of "Heavy Put-Away", a superb essay on Kurt Weill, and reminscences of Stanley Kubrick and Frank O'Hara. For first time readers, I have only envy. Now Dig This will be your all expenses paid ticket to a world of darkness and laughter. To paraphrase Ringo Starr, who acted in adaptations of two Southern novels, Candy and The Magic Christian, Buy a Terry Southern book today. Now Dig This is a very, very good place to start your spending spree.

Hard core Terry Southern fans and first time readers alike will find much to enjoy in Now Dig This. This anthology is a wonderful distillation of uncollected and unpublished work spanning the buttoned down cool of the fifties to the post-Reagan and Bush nineties. Now Dig This offers readers a chance to rediscover Terry Southern in his many guises: as a great short story writer, master of the zany epistle, screenwriter par excellence, raconteur (his memories of working on Dr. Strangelove and staging pranks with Frank O'Hara are worth the cover price alone), critic, journalist (doing Gonzo before everyone else), and all around grand guy. For those who have become numbed out by the coopted irony of our consumerist present, it is refreshing and inspiring to back to the source. To paraphase Ringo Starr, buy a Terry Southern book today.

I am a photographer who lives in Iran. I'm so glad that finally could find somthing about my most favorite photographer Mr. Lee Friedlander in amazon web site.

The majority of celebrated modern photography of the female nude smacks of the conceit of light games. Worse: most of the best-reviewed contemporary works are, if truth were told, more about camera technology than aesthetics. It often seems as if the riptide of post-feminism has rid us of the privilege of inventive eroticism and made eunuchs of photographers and harlots of models. Can the aficionado really bear another misty-lensed Caribbean superwaif or mottled, breastless sub-celebrity? Helmut Newton has taken the daring of Blumenfeld, Man Ray and Edward Weston and spiked it with humor, but Lee Friedlander, in his innocence and directness is - ironically - closer to the wake-up call of Maplethorpe. These are beautiful photographs of real women in real, average rooms, carved with basic flashguns and noonlight, much in the informal style the French Symbolist Pierre Louys (who also used domestic settings and natural light). Texturally they come closest to Weston: the monochrome has his luxurious, colorful feel. But architecturally the pictures recall Georgia O'Keeffe in their adventurous embrace of hip sweeps and knee bends tight-cropped like zoomshots of winderness outcrops. The women are hairy, fragrant and alive. What warms the heart most is the reality of their expressions: self-possessed, agitated, engrossed, bored, antsy - by turns. These are real women, monumental in their personalities, as in their natural curves and caves. Madonna, now pop legend, was one of Friedlander's early models and it is moving, almost disturbing, to see unaffected beauty before the jazzy conceptual tricks of consumerism. Lee Friedlander's work isn't confined to nudes: seek out his other provocative portfolios.

Friedlander exquisitely captures the true essence of real women. These women, usually photographed in their own apartments, are not models -- they are authentic. Friedlander's work shows every blemish, hair, and "imperfection", which made this reader almost feel as if I could hear them breathing, smell their skin. To see such a beautiful work with wonderful women who did not see the necessity of applying thick layers of makeup, shaving body hair, or wearing excessive jewelry was truly refreshing. Thank you Mr. Friedlander for "exposing" what women really look like!

I'm an emotional intelligence coach with an international clientele, not a realtor, but this book helped me tremendously. I would recommend it to anyone with a multicultural clientele or consumer-base. Concisely, and with great empathy, Mr. Lee describes cultures in a way that saves you reading tons of others books to get the same information. It saved me a lot of grief as I coached my first Pakistani client to know the difference between Pakistani and Indian, and explained to me why clients from certain cultures never seem to quit negotiating. Since emotional intelligence involves social skills, relating and empathy, it's crucial that I have a working-knowledge of how other cultures differ. One culture's "love of negotiating" is another culture's "pushy." One culture's "affiliative" is another culture's "not-sticking-to-business." And now I know not to cross my legs with a Middle-Eastern client. It's broadly applicable. If you have an international clientele, or do business on the Internet, you can't afford not to read this book. Really outstanding.

This is an incredible book to read, well worth your time and money.

The author goes into detail of what makes the various ethnic groups unique and how you can apply this knowledge to being able to deal with your clients and customers most effectively.

I would highly recommend this to anyone that would like to be more knowledgable about other cultures and their ways of life.

This is a well-researched and insightful book for anyone in real estate, related fields or home sellers who find themselves doing business with buyers from outside the American culture. This book helps you understand people from other cultures and their beliefs as they relate to real estate. The author not only explains what multicultural people do differently but also the reasons behind their unique practices and superstitions.

I found the sections on beliefs and negotiation to be particularly valuable. I always wondered why some groups continued to negotiate after a purchase contract had been signed or which were lucky addresses -- now I know.

Also, the background information on people from Asia, Mexico, Latin America, the Middle East, and Europe was extremely enlightening. Get this book if you have any contact with people from other cultures - it will save you not only time but frustration as well. It could also be useful reading for people in industries outside real estate which do business with other cultures.