Although a very good and enlightening book, potential readers should be advised that the book is not what they would expect. The book flares off quite often to speak of other tribes, peoples, or nations, rather than discussing strickly of the Apache Medicine-men. If your intention is to study only the Apache Medicine-men, this book may seem to drag. However, if you do not mind learning of many cultures and customs, you will assuridly enjoy this publication.

Written during the time when most whites were afraid of any familiarity with the Apaches, this book brings detailed accounts of how the religion worked with the Apaches' daily lives ... from a white point of view. Very interesting for those who like detail.

The Dover Children's Thrift Classics of The Boy Who Drew Catsand Other Japanese Fairy Tales is amazing buy! All children should beexposed to the mythology and folklore of other cultures and the Dover Thrift library makes this possible by offering many other such titles from cultures ranging from Native American, Jewish, Russian, Danish, Chinese, Grimms, Hans Christian Anderson and Oscar Wilde. It is a wonderful way to build a library of knowledge affordably for any child. This particular edition is unabridged and contains the work of many writers. Like all fairy tales, they can be scary, gruesome and are used to ward off bad behavior by children. I will not belabor the problems of fairy tales but will say that if you enjoy fairy tales and take that aspect with a grain of salt, this is a fine introduction to Japanese folklore. It contains 11 stories and each has at least one accompanying simple illustration. Great for reading aloud and even more purposeful, when your children are reading on their own, it is a great way to expose them to other cultures. The writing is simple and easy to grasp but does not contain any stylish flourishes. The illustrations are simplistic and basic ink drawings. The stories included in this volume are:Chin-Chin Kobakama, The Goblin-Spider, The Old Woman Who Lost Her Dumplings, The Boy Who Drew Cats, The Silly Jelly-Fish, The Fountain of Youth, The Hare of Inaba, My Lord Bag o'Rice, The Wooden Bowl, The Tea-Kettle and the Matsuyama Mirror. They are competently written. Again, keep in mind that some details are scary and gruesome as it is with all fairy tales from any culture. A great buy! END

"The Boy Who Drew Cats and Other Japanese Fairy Tales" is an excellent, inexpensive introduction to the Fairy world of Japan. Inside this book are Oni Demons, Jizo-sama, magical cats, the Tanuki who turns into a tea kettle, Goblin spiders, little men who clean tatami and a host of other magical creatures.

Many of the tales are translations by Lufcadio Hearn, author of "Kwaidan" and "In Ghostly Japan." Hearn is famous for his study and work of Japanese folklore in the late 1880s. The translations are authentic and unabridged.

This edition is perfect for young readers, with large type and quaint black-and-white illustrations. The stories are very easy to read. The book is very short, only about 60 pages.

I recommend this book to any young reader or parent who wishes to be exposed to the myths and fantasies of Japan. Fairy tales are an excellent introduction to foreign cultures, and can be a stepping stone to a broader world.

And unfortunately I was looking for true clip art! However, I must say that the ornaments presented are truly stunning, and can easily be used in paper crafting of any kind. I used this book to create labels for gifts and to address holiday envelopes. I am a novice desktop publisher and was not disappointed.

Cris Cunningham

The ornamentation is very nice but something anyone buying any of the Dover Electronic Clip Art series books should take into account is that they are not actual clip art items. Dover has just scanned the art and put it on a CD, the items are not scalable or changeable in a usual clip art format. It is very helpful to have the images already scanned but if you want true clip art, this book is not for you.

I used this book for a complex variable course as part of my engineering study. I found this book very insufficient to explain things well as a beginner in the subject. There were often problems I could not understand because the book only offered a couple line explaination and no example. In fact almost all the class thought the book was terrible and didn't even read it. Now my school Rochester Institute of Technology has returned to its previous book. If you are well versed in math and want to explore another realm, go ahead with this book, but if you are no mathematician try something else.

It is wonderful to see this great book on undergraduate complex analysis back in print at even a more affordable price. I've used it in in one of my junior level courses and been totally satisfied with it. I will use a part of it again in a continuation course.

What is nice about this book is that it is a textbook, and not a cookbook nor a book that tries to include everything and fails at all of them. This book never lists too many results; instead it aims at the understanding of the subject matter. Its treatment of Cauchy's theorem clearly exposes the fact that different points of view (derivatives, series, integrals) in the complex plane lead to the same object, analytic functions. The sections on geometric and applied topics, such as linear fractional transformations and fluid mechanics, are a delight to read.

The book assumes nothing other than calculus (Green's theorem) as background. Topological concepts are kept at a reasonable level and some are introduced later when necessary so as not to hinder the development of its main topic. Some short side issues are discussed in tiny sections within the exercises. There are also plenty of regular exercises ranging from elementary calculations to rigorous proofs. This book also contains an appendix that I love on the zeros of polynomials, including the cubic and the quartic.

What attracted me most in this book is that one can read it straight through. There are no secondary undeveloped paths, sections to omit, unnecessary details, or long list of formulas. I recomend it for any course or self-study at the introductory level complex analysis.

Although the patterns in this book are beautiful, you should work with another book if you're a beginner. These patterns were written by/for thread companies that have long been out of business. The gage is very difficult to get correct on some of these and it took some research on thread to needle equivalents and a number of restarts to get going on a doily that would lay flat.

"The Crocheter's Treasure Chest" is an excellent, comprehensive book for anyone that loves to crochet or wants to learn. It has easy to follow directions and explains as well as illustrates how to make the stictches.

The book has a variety of patterns from doilies to large tablecloths to bedspreads. For those who want to tackle larger projects, you can make sets such as placemats and table runners with matching coasters.

There are also examples of how to combine crocheting with fabric for tablecloths and doiles. There are a variety of edgings which can be adapted to any fabric.

Overall, this book meets the needs of the beginning as well as the experienced crocheter. Happy Crocheting!

The price is certainly right. I used this book to teach a high-school poetry class. The selection of Blake is the weakest part of it: the selections from Innocence and Experience aren't ample enough to give a real sense for the book, and exclude some lyrics that I just couldn't do without (e.g. the "Holy Thursday" of Experience). The complete lack of notes (which originally I thought of as a plus :->) led to some unnecessary pain for students -- I remember one attempted close-reading of "The Extinction of the Venetian Republic" which toiled slowly through the poem, dealing with mysteries that wouldn't have been mysterious at all if there had been even a brief note on the political context of the poem.

On the plus side, there is not a bad poem in the whole book: every rift is loaded with ore. And it's an attractive paperback, nicely typeset, comfortable in the hands: it doesn't feel like a cheapo-cheapo book, which you'd rather expect from the price.

It has some of the best poems i have ever read in them! there is a need to buy this book if u are hopelessly devoted to love poems!

Inexpensive and filled with gems. Enjoying old favorites and some I had never read before.

After looking through this poetry book, I decided that it would be a great book for my first grade students to own. Our classical Christian School encourages poetry memorization, and I know that my students could read many of the poems, and their parents could read the others to them. What a great bargain for classic children's poetry.

There are six leaf stencils here, cut into heavy laminated paper. The stencils are: holly (5 inches long), white oak (5 inches), sweet gum (4 inches), yellow poplar (3-1/2 inches), maple (4 inches) and aspen (5 inches). The white oak, maple and holly are pictures on the cover (left to right). Depending on your project, you might want to shrink these basic designs a bit, but you can't beat this price for getting some good basic stencils.

This little book has six pre-cut stencils of leaves. Printed on sturdy cardstock and clearly labeled, the stencils are the perfect size for most projects. I've used them to paint and etch designs on jars and mugs, and to create a set of pillowcases and sheets. Included here are a sweet gum leaf, a maple leaf, a yellow poplar leaf, a holly leaf, a white oak leaf, and an aspen leaf.

some great stories here. by machen, lovecraft, cram and hodgson. also an interesting one by blackwood. but basically, that's it. the non-supernatural and most of the weird fiction was completely uninteresting to me.

This volume is an indispensible guide to the authors that have inspired modern horror, as well as a darn good read. Blackwood's "The Man Whom the Trees Loved" is a study in despair that will surprise even the most savvy of readers. R.H. Barlow's "A Dim-Remembered Story" creates a feeling of the surreal that is so strong, one begins to question the truth of our own existence. Machen, Lovecraft, and Lord Dunsany are also represented. The book is organized in a fashion that categorizes the stories as examples of various types of weird tales. Many of these stories are out of print, so to find a collection of the finest stories of the genre is, one might say, a stroke of Providence.

LeFanu is by many considered the foremost of Victorian ghost story tellers, but (and I may now be incurring in literary sin) although his writing skills are undisputedly of the finest caliber, I did not find his stories as poignant and spine-tingling as Edgar Allen Poe's or his style as graceful and fluent as E. F. Benson's, for example; in fact, I'd say there is something a little bit too elaborate and artful about some of the passages in this book as if LeFanu had thought it worthwhile sacrificing the pleasure of reading to the exquisiteness of his occasionally almost labored literary expression. There are actually instances in which I find it difficult to picture the scenes and characters in the narrative - take the descriptions of the inside and outside of Gylingden Hall (story 2) or of Sir Ardagh's castle (story 4) - though I recognize that such impressions may of course be unjust and ensue not from the text but from the limitations of the reviewer himself.

The first and last of the four stories collected in this Dover edition are definitely the most exciting and convey a feeling of completeness which is rather absent from the second and third tales. A very striking feature of the story "Green Tea", for instance, is the razor-sharp precision with which LeFanu distinguishes between subjective and objective psychic realities, and between suggestion and predisposition. The reverend in the tale has suffered damage to the subtle involucre protecting his physical body against unwanted sensory impressions and the leaking out of vital force, and so has become permanently exposed not to hallucinations but to involuntary contacts with entities or energies pertaining to the lower psychic realms, the intimacy of which most of us are mercifully spared. The problem seems to be mendable by physically occluding the fissures produced in his natural defense and thus restoring his involucre to normality, but the reverend himself sees these deeply disquieting trials as a personal chastisement from God - an interpretation of the facts which is always a valid possibility - and eventually succumbs, not to the charges of the enemy but to his own weaknesses and inclinations. A complex and fine plot, indeed.

The story "Green Tea" should be carefully examined by all whose job it is to treat or otherwise help people who suffer from psychic disorders or claim to be haunted by hallucinations - and by those, of course, who love to spend a couple of hours by the fireplace with a mug of hot chocolate and a good yarn.

This is another great find. Joseph Sheridan LeFanu was an Irish writer in the 19th Century. This thin selection of short stories is a tasty little collection. It is a forgotten art form: the ghost story but LeFanu does it quite well. This is Victorian age literature with guts. The tales are spooky but also reveal human psychology in the way great literature should. This is a classic of a bygone era. I will think twice when I hear footsteps in the attic and no one else is home. Many themes of suspense and terror are set down in these tales. Freddie Krueger can not hold a candle to tales like these.