Beyond Boundaries: Humans and Animals, Barbara Noske, Buffalo: Black Rose Books, 1997, 253pp.

Beyond Boundaries, by Barbara Noske, examines the human-animal relationship as well as the animal-human side. Quite often her discourse centers on the notion of power in this centuries old relationship. This is extremely apparent in the discussions about domestication, perspective, and devaluing nature. The book's construction can be reduced into three parts. The first section of Beyond Boundaries, chapters one and two, focuses on the phenomenon of human animal domestication, a forced human-animal relationship which shows the extent to which humans can control and exploit animal resources. Chapters four and five examine human ideas, constructions, and discourses about animals and about humans in relation to animals. The last section explores the animal-human relationship, where the consideration is given to the non-human animal's perspective in nature.

The three themes in Barbara Noske's Beyond Boundaries are (1) the human-animal relationship, (2) the object-status animals are assigned, and (3) humanity's need to reevaluate its perception of animals. The author puts forth very thought provoking arguments. She challenges the social construction of contemporary human-animal relationships and argues that animals should be portrayed as independent beings with special traits and behaviors that contributed to their interactions with people. She also argues that people should adopt a more critical and specific approach to animals. Non-human animals have a wider range of consciousness than do people, according to Noske. She believes that animals are self-aware and have an awareness of their group, biocommunity, other species, and biosphere. Noske explains that to define animals as human-like is to do them a disservice and treat them ahistorically. Instead of increasing their ecological worth, it reduces them to a less aware human status.

Barbara Noske is a philosopher and a cultural anthropologist, but essentially she is a cultural critic. In Beyond Boundaries she critiques the culture of nature. She argues for an interdisciplinary approach to evaluating animals (where humans and non-humans are equal) and nature (where humans are not exclusive of their environment). Barbara Noske tears down the socially constructed boundaries that exist between human and non-human animals. Beyond Boundaries is an asset to feminists, animal activists, scholars, farmers, veterinary clinicians, and anyone interested in the human-animal condition. The author takes a position that few scholars have concerning animals. Some readers may define Noske's views as extreme, especially those people that support an anthropocentric and androcentric worldview. They can not fathom such an integrated view of women, men, animals, and nature. Beyond Boundaries makes one reevaluate their belief systems about nature and their place in it. This book also calls for the creation of an integrated science between anthropology and zoology, which has been created since the book's original publication in 1989. Barbara Noske attacks the way women, animals, and nature have been subordinated by man and exiled literally, emotionally, and physically beyond boundaries.

I found Brown's suggestions in toward a constuctive historicism very interesting. Using Hans-Georg Gadamer's description of tradition as "play," Brown suggests that modern theologians be creative in reappropriating and reconstructing (as opposed to deconstructing) the traditions and symbols of the past, and at the same time be participants in a tradition critically embracing the inheritance of the past. Brown's final chapter is the meat of the book. Apart from the introduction the preceeding chapters are a sometimes daunting analysis of developments within the fileds of social science, historical studies, anthropology and philosophy. It is helpful to have these in the background to understand Brown's use of terms such as canon, ritual, tradition, etc. However, the "reader on the run" may want to skip to the final chapter after reading the introduction and after digesting it, review the previous chapters. Not the orthodox way of reading a book, but after reading Brown I guess I feel more playful.

Mr. Douglas, with the Dept of Interior, has done a very good job carefully, precisely describing the boundaries of the United States, individually and collectively. I was aware of issues related to the creation of the State of Ohio's northern border, and found a detailed and complete writing in this book. Also, the debate over the exact date of statehood for Ohio and the issue over the exact border of Michigan and Wisconsin are well documented. If you require a precise writing on state borders and issues related with their establishment, this is the text you are looking for.

While Kate displays a huge understanding on the area that this book covers, one cannot help to note that much of the backgound work remains unexplained . However, a commendable book written in a time that these boundaries cannot merely just change but must dissolve with time.

This book is based on interviews with economists and sociologist, who have tried to bridge the traditional gap between economics and sociology. Gary Becker, James Coleman, Mark Granovetter, Mancur Olson, Albert Hirschman, Jon Elster, Amartya Sen, among others, are among the interviewees. The reader will not find any remarkable insights in this book, but the interviews are generally quite nice to read. The book makes nice bedtime reading, but not much more.

I used this book in the course of Differential Equations in the university. In the theoretical part, this book is quite poor. If you belong to people that is interested to deepen in the development of each method of solution of differential equations, this is not a good book to buy. In him you simply found the recipes with which you can solve a differential equation and anything but. If you need speed and you do not have time for rodeos, it is a good book, which has great quantity of application exercises that take you step to step to the understanding of the theory. I could say that it is eminently a practice book, alone practice and anything more that practice. It is a book with a good collection of exercises. If you do not like difficulties, this it is a good book to buy, since this fact, in my humble opinion, exclusively for technicians, no for engineers or science students. The chapter Series of Fourier and Boundary Value Problems are alone a slight introduction to this topic, the same as the chapter dedicated to the Partial Differential Equations (that the authors included, surely so that the reader has a vision on the whole). Two quite simple chapters and that they will be good you to realize, lightly, of what you treat these topics they are the relating ones to the No-lineal Equations and the Stability and Equations of Differences that the book treat in an eminently practical way, with a quite poor theoretical content. Apart from this, the book does not move away from the general treatment that in its order, other books treat the field of the differential equations.

First & second editions of this text have long been considered standards in the land surveying profession, but I was disappointed with this (the 3rd) edition. The material is all there, but badly in need of a careful editor. Errors in punctuation and typography were frequent enough to be a real distraction. I found myself pencilling corrections in the margins as I read! For instance, long quotations, not set with a change of fonts, or even quotation marks, made for difficult interpretation. I had the distinct impression that certain chapters were revised in a hurry, and that perhaps each author thought the other was checking the work. In at least one chapter, it appeared that two different authors took a stab at addressing a single subject and both were included in the book although in DRAFT form! The authors also need to update discussions of measurement methodologies to include electronic total stations, data collectors and GPS. Though I'm not a real big adv! ocate of gender-neutral writing, the next edition should totally expunge the term "title men", which must appear 15 times.

Despite these drawbacks, the text remains a handy reference, and will probably remain a standard for some time. Hopefully the 4th Edition will be more carefully revised and edited.

The book was, in my opinion, not the most helpful introduction to the subject. The book is full of equations--it really is a masterpiece when one wants to "read" a book that will impress people around who know nothing about math(like the hot girl/guy in the seat next to you, who is looking over your shoulder ;-)). The unfortunate part is that the author does not really explain anything he is doing. The book does not give any real details or in depth explanations--just formula after formula. I can follow the formulas--that is not the problem--but the lack of statements introducing the methods, explaining the concepts, and leading the reader to understand the material on an all new level is lacking in my opinion. I like to understand the "why" and the "how" of the physical/application side--not just the mathematical formulas(although--if one works through the math, one will eventually figure something out). I was a little disappointed in the book. There are also multiple annoying typos, and spelling mistakes. In summary--the author is a smart guy--he knows the subject--unfortunately, he seems to have forgotten the hardships he had when learning the method. The book should be advertised as a "compliment reference" to a course where a prof would explain the method and ideas--not a great book to pick off the shelf and try to learn BEM by oneself!

This book deals with numerical methods for boundary-value problems in ordinary and partial differential equations (mainly linear ones) whose solutions have boundary layers due to a small positive perturbation parameter multiplying the highest derivatives. The proposed methods are robust in the sense that they effecively resolve boundary layers and preserve uniformity in the perturbation parameter both in terms of accuracy and time/memory requirements. A novice will probably find the book more useful and interesting than a specialist, as the book represents a good introduction to the field. A specialist mathematician may be disappointed by the lack of detailed proofs for most of the more complicated PDE problems. Some of those proofs exist in the not easily accessable works of one of the co-authors (Shishkin), but still remain unknown to wider public. On the other hand, detailed proofs are given for linear ODE problems everything is known about. An engineer will certainly appreciate that the book describes all possible difficulties that may be encountered when solving these complicated problems numerically. (S)he will find the robustness of the methods attractive but will be disappointed by their low accuracy (the order of accuracy is most often less than one). It is very likely that engineers will continue using the existing higher order methods, even though the requirements of those methods may be nonuniform in the perturbation parameter.

This book is an academic treatise, replete with references to research and to academic studies and documentation. It is fascinating, but primarily focused on sexual behavior and sexual deviance as well as violence and their treatment by the courts and by the medical profession during the years identified. I believe it may be of interest to those with an interest in the psychosocial/historical aspects of sexuality and men.