I had to look at the publication of this book. I thought it might be 1930. The section on Customs is really foolish. No one arriving in Italy needs to learn those foolish sentences about "This is for my personal use", "where are customs?" The train section is useless. Where is the smoking car? You select the type of car you want WHEN YOU BUY YOU TICKET. So old fashion! It is not useful for Italian of today.!

I bought all kinds of books, maps and even an electronic translator for my travels. I am not joking when I say this was the one item that was most helpful, easy and fun to use.

As a teacher of Italian language and literature, I was quite impressed by this little book. The phrases, transliterated for those who do not know Italian pronunciation, are those you will use if you are traveling to Italy or teaching the language. There was a surprising amount of information in this book, which was well worth its low price. I suggest you purchase some other titles if you are traveling to Italy, as it does not contain an exhaustive listing of Italian conversational terms, but it makes a valuable contribution.

A good basic introduction to Lebesgue integration, but a little sketchy in some places. Each chapter concludes with a good set of exercises. This book is good for getting the "idea" behind Lebesgue integration, but comes up short on many of the details. An excellent companion volume would be Jones' "Lebesgue Integration on Euclidean space".

I am using this book with two advanced undergraduates, after working through a basic introduction to analysis text the previous semester. Each section is about 3 or 4 pages long, giving the main results and most proofs, although some are left as exercises. Each chapter ends with a nice set of exercises, most of which are accessible to students who feel comfortable with epsilon/delta proofs. The book is very short and concise, 145 pages plus an appendix summarizing basic analysis results on sets, countability, functions, and sequences.

Chapter 1 reviews the Riemann integral and some of its drawbacks. Chapter 2 introduces the idea of outer measure and measurable sets, all on the unit interval. The next two chapters discuss properties of measurable sets and measurable functions. Chapters 5 and 6 then cover the Lebesgue integral and convergence theorems. The last three chapers introduce L2 spaces, Fourier series, and proofs of convergence.

All in all this is a good, very cheap way to learn the basics of measure theory and the Lebesgue integral, before moving on to something like Rudin or Royden.

This assumes some advanced calculus and then introduces enough Lebesgue integration amd measure theory to explain and prove the basic convergence results for (generalized) Fourier analysis. Second half of second year and above.

Everything is very well motivated and the book is not long, but quite a lot is "left as an exercise for the reader." This really hurts the book for self study in my view. If you have a bigger book on real analysis and want another treatment, or need a refresher this will do nicely. On its own -- you've been warned.

I'm a software developer, and have more than an avocational interest in probability. I wanted to get into the discipline proper and try to learn about probability as if I were a student in college again. This book reads like wading through waist deep bubble gum. I had to read the first couple pages about 10 times before I really understood what was going on. This book may be a good "Introduction" if you've already got a degree in math or statistics, but if you want to learn about probability from the ground up, start somewhere else.

Nice examples, a bit basic for my needs.

The target audience of this book would be 1st year undergradate students. Mathematically very simple, but everything is explained well.

I've never seen a probability book with such good examples. Most books on probability give you all of the equations, but they don't really tell you how to apply them to real situations. This book has nothing but real examples. It is the book on probability that I have been looking for

Although Emily Dickinson is a marvelous poet, this edition is not a good one to buy. The catalogue claims it is printed from "the earliest, most authorative editions" without noting that the earliest editions were heavily edited, eliminating much of what makes Dickinson unusual and brilliant. For example, another reviewer quotes from poem 258, which should read "There's a certain slant of light, / Winter Afternoons-- / That oppresses, like the Heft / Of Cathedral Tunes--"; the first editor didn't think many people would know what the word "heft" meant, so he (without Dickinson's posthumous permission) simply replaced it. Get a volume of Dickinson's poems, certainly! But not this one.

I don't doubt that it's possible to enjoy Emily Dickinson's poems in editions like this. But you should be aware that you are not really reading what she wrote. You are reading what earlier editors _wish_ she had written - a sort of 'tidied-up' and regularized version, a badly-tampered-with-text of a genius by those who weren't.

In a way, the situation is a bit like the one that prevails with regard to food. Would you rather eat natural food or genetically modified food? Maybe the modified food doesn't taste any different, but it might be doing harmful things to us that the author of real food never intended. So why take a risk when we can have the real thing ?

There are two major editors who can be relied on for accurate texts of ED's poems. These are Dickinson scholars R. W. Franklin and Thomas H. Johnson. Both produced large Variorum editions for scholars, along with reader's editions of the Complete Poems for the ordinary reader. Details of their respective reader's editions are as follows.

THE POEMS OF EMILY DICKINSON : Reading Edition. Edited by R. W. Franklin. 692 pp. Cambridge, Massachusetts : The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1999. ISBN 0-674-67624-6 (hbk.)

THE COMPLETE POEMS OF EMILY DICKINSON. Edited by Thomas H. Johnson. 784 pp. Boston : Little, Brown, 1960 and Reissued. ISBN: 0316184136 (pbk.)

For those who don't feel up to tackling the Complete Poems, there is Johnson's abridgement of his Reader's edition, an excellent selection of what he feels were her best poems:

FINAL HARVEST : Emily Dickinson's Poems. Edited by Thomas H. Johnson. 352 pages. New York : Little Brown & Co, 1997. ISBN: 0316184152 (paperbound).

Friends, do yourself a favor and get Johnson's edition. Why accept a watered-down version when you can have the real thing?

This little gem is a treasure trove of the best of Emily Dickinson. All of her best known works are found nestled within these pages. President John Adams once gave the advice that you would never be lonely with a poet in your pocket. It is so true. I carry this little book with me everywhere, and find myself inspired by the magic within the pages. The poems have been ordered in a logical way either by theme or topic. It includes "Hope" , "The Chariot", "March" and my favorite, "There's a certain slant of Light on winter afternoons that oppresses like the weight of cathedral tunes..." Buy this book if you wear your heart on your sleeve, your passion on your paper and your soul on your solitude.

i think it is reeally pretty. blake was a dork, and probably had nofriends like the people reading this right now.

William Blake is one of the giants of poetry. He is often overlooked because of the obliqueness of many of his poems. But this affordable (read: cheap) collection of poems is well worth the price of admission. Most of Blakes most famous and well loved poems are included in this volume. Most of us had to read at least a couple of these poems in school. The Tyger still stands as one of the great poems of the English language. The Fly, The Lamb, Children of a Future Age, London and Ah, Sunflower are all included here. These are some of the most beautiful poems ever written. Even if you struggle to understand the meaning, the sheer beauty and music of the verses can still carry you away. Anyone interested in poetry needs to read these poems. It is among the best ever written.

In order to understand Blake's vision, it's helpful to know as much as possible about the social and historical context in which he was writing, and about the kinds of attitudes and social conditions he was addressing. Without that context, readers are unlikely to appreciate Blake as fully as he deserves to be appreciated. Such readers may write uninformed and ignorant reviews in this column. Those who understand the context in which Blake was writing are likely to have a much deeper appreciation of Blake's poetic beauty and sharp social conscience.

This is a good tatting book, unless you are looking for a great deal of variety. The book explains fairly understandably how to tat, then gives some patterns for snowflakes. This is a book you will want near the winter holidays. The snowflakes make wonderful Christmas ornaments.

The individual photographs are close enough to count the stitches without using the written patterns. The designs range from beginning to advanced skills. Instructions about the process of tatting are clear and easy to follow. It can be difficult to learn to tat from a book, but not impossible. There are two 2-dimensional snowflakes and a few with beads and ribbons, perfect for holiday decorations.

I bought this book last fall and used it constantly throughout the holiday season, and I plan to use it to make more snowflakes during the remaining winter months. The patterns are varying, although I would like to have seen a few more and some that were more like actual snowflakes. You can tat these patterns in almost any size thread and add beads, glitter, sparkly thread to make them more lifelike, and they make great ornaments for the Christmas tree or decorations for windows or gifts. They're also nice to tat during the hot summer months when you think you're going to suffocate from the heat and humidity ; )

These cute little books kept my 5 and 7 year old busy at a doctor's appointment. Loads of shapes! They even liked just looking at the colorful pages and read the images names before the drawing began. Only one thing... it's just made out of paper... if it were a thicker cardboard or even a thin plastic, they would have lasted longer. Took it upon myself to use a clear sticky paper that's used to cover books so that they can last.

No longer do you have to labor to make your own stencils by hand! The dangerous, tedious and dirty work of stencil making is no longer a chore thanks to the folks at Dover. Most stencils that I would need are there but some foreign letters (such as the "c" with the thingie under it used in French) are missing. Still, this will save the average stencil artist many hours of work each month.

The book Tales of Terror is not that good as I thought it would be. I thought this book was going to be as good as the poems that he writes. Poe writes the best poems but now I am not so sure about his book,or stories. I think he could have done better.

I must admit that when I first recieved this book I didn't expect to like it, particularly since popular intrest in Poe has dramaticaly fallen recently, but I very much enjoyed it. It seems some things don't just fade away into the past.

My daughter, aged 5, thought these mazes were too easy. Keep in mind the size of the books- 4"x5" or so. Kinda small. Maybe they will be good for traveling.

These maze books are wonderful ways to entertain children on roadtrips etc.. They are terrific for children just beginning to do mazes as they are rather short and not too difficult. Our 4 going on 5 year old son loves them. Another nice feature is that each little book has many pages so children do not use up the mazes too quickly.

I RECENTLY TRIED TO 'GET THROUGH' VOLUME 1 OF LAWRENCES SHORT STORIES. I LOVE HIS WRITING. IT'S BEAUTIFUL AND FILLED WITH WILD SENSUAL IMAGES. HOWEVER, WHEN I FINISH EACH STORY, I WONDER: SO WHAT??? WHAT WAS THAT ALL ABOUT??? EACH STORY SEEMS TO BE SIMPLY A SLICE OF LIFE, MANY DEALING WITH MAN/WOMAN RELATIONSHIPS. BUT AT THE END OF EACH, I DID NOT FEEL THAT I HAD LEARNED OR GAINED ANYTHING FROM THE READING. ALSO, MOST DID NOT HOLD MY ATTENTION - EXCEPT FOR THE BEAUTIFUL USE OF LANGUAGE AND SENSE IMAGERY.

Honestly, I've never been an avid reader of DH Lawrence. This is not to say, I dislike him as a writer. Not true. The literature that I have read by him, most I've found interesting and good. It had been a while since I read any DH, until I picked up SELECTED SHORT STORIES. I picked it up primarily for the story "The Prussian Officer." I wasn't disappointed with the short story at all. It's quite a homoerotic story about a Captain and his subordinate, telling of DH and his other work in many ways. The story is compelling, yet tragic, which I liked. The other stories that followed didn't quite compare. I found the other's dry and verbose (especially "Daughters of the Vicar"). I'd recommend this collection just for the "The Prussian Officer."

D.H. Lawrence was a superb short story writer, and The Rocking Horse Winner is perhaps one of the greatest short stories ever written. The only other short story that is its equal is The Bet by Anton Chekhov. I would say more but that would be spoiling it for you. Let it suffice to say that Lawrence is now a much overlooked writer, however, his message of how modern industry is destroying all that is vital and natural in mankind is as poignant today as when he first wrote about it almost 100 years ago! So what's new?