The second volume of interviews with best-selling authors of mystery and suspense is an insightful book that provides fans with information about favorite authors. The twenty-two interviews include a Who's Who with noted writers like Koontz, Evanovich, Jance, and Parker (Robert B.) providing readers with motivations and inspirations to their story lines as well as why they avoid some topics.

The Gorman-Greenberg duo provides another insider's look at fan favorites. The interviewers consist of individuals with varying degrees of fame within the field. The dialogues are for the most part interesting though they occasionally drags on too long. Still, another masterful non-fiction from the kings of anthology interviews.

Harriet Klausner

All the interviews are revealing as little known, but fascinating facts about the interviewees surface. The one recurring theme that all the authors agree on is that writing is a demanding and difficult advocation. Readers, who enjoy stepping behind the scenes, will take great pleasure from this collection.

Harriet Klausner

The Lecture Notes in Physics (LNP) published by Springer Verlag is a treasure of physics knowledge consisting of about 600 volumes covering all areas of physics. The main role of LNP is to offer a comprehensive account of the hottest issues of physics, written in an accessible style, for a reader that could be quite unfamiliar with the treated subject. The main aim of a volume in LNP is to encourage the reader to start his/her own research after reading of a LNP volume. Starting with the year 2001, the LNP is available also in electronic form, and any volume published in the years 2000 and 2001 can be downloaded from the Springer Internet homepage.
Moreover, Springer Verlag has offered in the summer of 2001 free access to all LNP volumes published in 2000, and at the end of 2001 another free access to LNP volumes published in 2000 and 2001. Thus, the physics community was able to read the last volumes of LNP and to test their contents.
An illustrative example about LNP is its 569th volume, named Spintronics, edited by M. J. Thornton and M. Ziese. This volume of about 500 pages is the first book dedicated to the emerging area of spintronics. The large majority of electronic and optoelectronic devices are based on the dynamics and control of charged carriers when their spin orientation plays no role. The spin electronics and the spin optoelectronics briefly termed Spintronics are new areas of research entirely based on the control and transfer of the electronic spin orientation. There are only two spin orientations: spin-up and spin-down. Thus, in these devices the information is encoded in the spin orientation of the carriers and can be read, memorized, transferred and finally sensed as a certain polarity of the current flow.
Ferromagnets are natural sources of oriented spins because they contain a certain spin asymmetry. There is an increased interest in the developing of semiconductors able to work based on spin orientation, although the large majority of them are non-magnetic. An example of the emerging area of ferromagnetic semiconductors is GaAs, which becomes ferromagnetic when doped with a magnetic dopant. The spin orientation can be controlled even when the spins are tunneling semiconductor interfaces.
The applications of spintronics are promising, and some of them are already implemented and demonstrated in computer architectures: (i) high-density hard disks based on giant magnetic resistance (GMR) of spintronics materials when they are turned from a spin state to another by a magnetic bias, (ii) Random Access Memories based on GMR that are non-volatile and one million times faster than a hard disk.
A very important future application is the quantum information based on spin orientation. The already proposed solutions based on atom or ion manipulation are not reliable for real computing devices, being able to perform only some operations in predetermined sequence that cannot be changed. On the contrary, spintronics devices are more versatile: the spin orientation can be programmed, switched and memorized at picosecond time scales.
The book takes into account all the aspects mentioned above being an introduction in the spintronics domain; it starts with introductory chapters, then presents the materials used in spintronics and their applications for data storage, field sensors and magnetic imaging. The realization of spintronics devices using micro- and nanofabrication techniques is also reviewed.
The book reviewed above is only an example of the LNP collection of books, which is a must for any physics library. Since LNP is being available via Internet, it is now more easily accessible to the physicists at their work place or at home. LNP was a main tool of education and knowledge for some generation of physicists and will continue to be so in its new electronic form.

Daniela Dragoman
Mircea Dragoman

Univ. Mannheim
Dept. Optoelectronics,
B6, 23-29, Building C
68131 Mannheim, Germany

danieladragoman@yahoo.com
mdragoman@yahoo.com

Personal webpages:
http://www.geocities.com/danieladragoman
http://www.geocities.com/mdragoman

The Lecture Notes in Physics (LNP) published by Springer Verlag is a treasure of physics knowledge consisting of about 600 volumes covering all areas of physics. The main role of LNP is to offer a comprehensive account of the hottest issues of physics, written in an accessible style, for a reader that could be quite unfamiliar with the treated subject. The main aim of a volume in LNP is to encourage the reader to start his/her own research after reading of a LNP volume. Starting with the year 2001, the LNP is available also in electronic form, and any volume published in the years 2000 and 2001 can be downloaded from the Springer Internet homepage.
Moreover, Springer Verlag has offered in the summer of 2001 free access to all LNP volumes published in 2000, and at the end of 2001 another free access to LNP volumes published in 2000 and 2001. Thus, the physics community was able to read the last volumes of LNP and to test their contents.
An illustrative example about LNP is its 569th volume, named Spintronics, edited by M. J. Thornton and M. Ziese. This volume of about 500 pages is the first book dedicated to the emerging area of spintronics. The large majority of electronic and optoelectronic devices are based on the dynamics and control of charged carriers when their spin orientation plays no role. The spin electronics and the spin optoelectronics briefly termed Spintronics are new areas of research entirely based on the control and transfer of the electronic spin orientation. There are only two spin orientations: spin-up and spin-down. Thus, in these devices the information is encoded in the spin orientation of the carriers and can be read, memorized, transferred and finally sensed as a certain polarity of the current flow.
Ferromagnets are natural sources of oriented spins because they contain a certain spin asymmetry. There is an increased interest in the developing of semiconductors able to work based on spin orientation, although the large majority of them are non-magnetic. An example of the emerging area of ferromagnetic semiconductors is GaAs, which becomes ferromagnetic when doped with a magnetic dopant. The spin orientation can be controlled even when the spins are tunneling semiconductor interfaces.
The applications of spintronics are promising, and some of them are already implemented and demonstrated in computer architectures: (i) high-density hard disks based on giant magnetic resistance (GMR) of spintronics materials when they are turned from a spin state to another by a magnetic bias, (ii) Random Access Memories based on GMR that are non-volatile and one million times faster than a hard disk.
A very important future application is the quantum information based on spin orientation. The already proposed solutions based on atom or ion manipulation are not reliable for real computing devices, being able to perform only some operations in predetermined sequence that cannot be changed. On the contrary, spintronics devices are more versatile: the spin orientation can be programmed, switched and memorized at picosecond time scales.
The book takes into account all the aspects mentioned above being an introduction in the spintronics domain; it starts with introductory chapters, then presents the materials used in spintronics and their applications for data storage, field sensors and magnetic imaging. The realization of spintronics devices using micro- and nanofabrication techniques is also reviewed.
The book reviewed above is only an example of the LNP collection of books, which is a must for any physics library. Since LNP is being available via Internet, it is now more easily accessible to the physicists at their work place or at home. LNP was a main tool of education and knowledge for some generation of physicists and will continue to be so in its new electronic form.

My particular favorites are Quichelna Cattle Company's Rum ribs,Abuelita's Chicken Soup,Flour Tortillas, Way Station Pot Roast with Dumplings. I'm looking forward to trying the biscuit on a stick and Mrs. Swan's White Cake! YUM.

Fans of cookbooks and western cuisine are sure to appreciate this cookbook. The photos are huge, tasteful, and numerous, and the recipes offer a delightful mix of western and Mexican inspired food. Just reading this cookbook makes me hungry. =-)