This is a gem of a book for anyone who is interested in ancient Greece. Guy Davenport is a wonderful interpreter of Archilochos, Sappho, and the rest; his introduction, describing each poet is as interesting as the poetry itself. Davenport's explication of how translation of the ancient poets is done is fascinating, and lends integrity to the book. Mr. Davenport tells you when the papyrus he is translating is simply too worn to read (explaining gaps in the verse), but he also speculates about what the original poem might have been, when, for example, the entire left side of a papyrus page is missing. His "wishful thinking" about how a certain poem of Sappho's might have read (if we had the entire text) gives us a better idea why the Greeks and Romans loved her, but Davenport scrupulously identifies what is his "tuckpointing" and what is the actual text. Mr. Davenport's translations of the fragments of Archilochos are particularly powerful to me. He has captured with great sensitivity the thinking of this remarkable soldier-poet who is the second oldest Western poet after Homer. Archilochos' writing brings us a view of war in the sixth century before Christ with a realistic pen, and also a passionate one. This was the poet who could write in one poem of throwing down his shield and running away at the height of the battle ("somehow life seemed more precious"), and in another speak with respect of bravery and defense of home ("remember us, remember this earth when, with hearts against despair, our javelins held Thasos from her enemies"). In all, another fine book from an extraordinary author who range of learning is enormous, and is used to entertain as well as to educate.

This is a little book that will take your breath away. Most of the poets here survive only in tatters, rags of verse and words quoted by other authors. Yet the power that dwells in a handful of scattered words from a great verse is poetry itself, like haiku. Sappho and Archilochos read as though they could have been contemporaries of Ted Hughes. The key here is Davenport, a man of incredible sensibility, and the best bridge-builder between the ancient and the modern since Ezra Pound.

To me Joan Carris knows the minds of children, especially boys. Characterization was clean and sharp giving the mystery life, and an English flavor which is attractive to this age group. I have tried to give a French flavor to my new book, Animal Academy, and appreciated seeing how Joan did this. The learning impaired boy, Todd, gave the story a thread running through it to hold it together.

This is an excellent book on disabilities and living with the eldering. I use it as a read aloud in my fifth grade classroom.

This unique and beautifully illustrated book is based on a real live "Aunt Julie." Meg Davenport's, Aunt Julie, saved Meg's childhood by allowing her child spirit to soar. Julie always had millions of projects going at once and her love for life and the creative spirit became contagious to her niece and nephews. This book took 3 years to design and a year to illustrate. It is a true labor of love and should be in any Pop-up collectors library of the wonders of paper and art. Robert Sabuda, the kind of paper engineering, gave Circus! a 5 STAR in his Moveable Book Newsletter.

It is very attractive to reluctant readers. Appealing colors, action-packed, pop-up features, and ideal for remedial readers due to its fairly easy copy. Also great for 3 years old and up.

Written some time ago now, I read this in my teens after my Dad handed it to me and said 'I couldn't put it down, read this'. Being a good son, I did as he asked. I'm glad I did.

A plan crashes high in the Andes, high enough that oxygen is a problem. People are dead and injured. People are _not_ who they say they are. Everyone has a past. Gathering people together, our intrepid hero gets the survivors down to a mining camp, where they discover the bridge is out. Conveniently, a convoy is on the other side. Shame they're there to kill a member of the party, and everyone else to avoid witnesses. What follows is one of the tensest, tightly scripted series of action sequences ever. Holed up on one side of the gorge, holding off the determined bridge builders with limited weapons and ammunition, including a homemade crossbow, built from materials snafled from the abandoned mining camp, the party get whittled away by disease, hunger and attrition. Their hopes rest on a small number who have voluntered to climb the other side of the mountain looking for help.

Buy this book.

I read High Citadel about 17 years ago, but I remember it well because it was soo good. A plane crashes high in the Andes, but that's just the start of the action as the shaken survivors must resist attack, by improved means. Suspicion of a traitor in their midst grows. The story continues at a tremendous pace. This was the first Bagley book I read. In the next 3 years, I read all of them.

Few works of mortal man can even share a bookshelf with this magnum opus, a subtle yet devastating journey into the soul of speech, if you will. It took the combined genius of two authors, both scholars and gentlemen of the highest order, to shape this multifaceted work at Athena's own lathe, turning it to a fine finish, lopping off inaccuracies and dross with a ready wit and flawless methodology. But beyond the field of linguistics, I find myself returning to this book (and oh! how little justice that appelation does this masterly craft!) in my everyday life. When making difficult decisions, I find it helpful to open this work at random and point to a passage; it has never failed to offer wisdom, if not inspiration. I believe that holding this work above the bed of the infirm can heal them. I believe that nailing a copy of it to one's front door will ward off evil spirits and those of ill will. In fact, I am seriously considering dropping out of society completely to devote my life to study and reflection on the immortal words of MM. Davenport and Hannahs. Kudos, gents. You have written on velum plain the fiery words of truth itself, glory be to you both forever!

In my view, this book is the best introductory textbook to the fascinating fields of Phonetics and Phonology currently available.

As a mature undergraduate studying Linguistics, with no A Level English Language under my belt, I had no prior knowledge of the areas this book covers, and as such was disadvantaged in comparison to the other students who had done the A Level. However I soon found, with the aid of this worthy publication, that the playing field had been levelled.

This is not to say that this was the only book at this level that I read. In fact, I have at least four others in my collection. Why this one stands out is because of its clear and informative style, understandable examples, and sensible, logical layout.

Initially there is an overview, laying out the underpinning theory that the modern sciences of Phonetics and Phonology are built on. The distinction between physical language and the underlying mental representation of its physical form, as adopted by Generative Linguistics, is introduced, and Phonology and Phonetics are placed into the 'big-picture' of a total language model that includes Syntax, Morphology and Semantics.

Next comes an introduction to articulatory phonetics: the actual physical mechanisms used in the production of speech, including airstream, vocal cords and places of articulation. This then opens up the complete exposition of consonants and vowels, and details all the possible types of sounds that humans produce. Clear tables and diagrams are used throughout, making understanding and revision an easy task.

After this comes a chapter on Acoustic Phonetics, the captivating study of the properties of speech sounds. Not only does it consider the physical nature of these, but also focuses on the linguistically relevant acoustic features that play a part in production and reception. Here the authors have taken some complex physics and made it fathomable, no mean feat!

From here on, the book investigates the phonological rules and features used when we produce speech. Davenport and Hannahs introduce the Linear Model of phonology, as pioneered by Noam Chomsky and Morris Halle in The Sound Pattern of English, (1968. New York; Harper & Row), and developed by many, which to the uninitiated would make you run away faster than a gazelle! The chapters develop in a logical manner, each building upon the previous, and the reader comes out with a sense of mastery over the data.

Throughout this discussion, however, the book does not take this Linear Model as gospel, and the authors frequently highlight problems that the model cannot account for. They introduce several alternative models, like Autosegmental Phonology and Feature Geometry, and the discussion of the relative merits is open and unbiased.

Finally, the book concludes with a well-written chapter that stresses the need to constrain the phonological model so that over-productive rules are dismissed with. Concepts like extrinsic vs. intrinsic rule ordering, abstractness and the power of the phonological component are discussed, leaving the reader in a frame of mind to delve into further reading.

Overall this is an excellent book, well written and interesting all the way. As a student of Linguistics this is a must, with exercises at the end of each chapter to test your knowledge, not just at degree level, at High School Level too it will prove an invaluable resource. Also, for the non-academic with an interest in how we produce speech, Introducing Phonetics & Phonology is an excellent and enjoyable read.

One of the authors, Sandra Atwood, is my mother. She, Cheryl and Jenny are logging MANY, MANY hours to provide a 3rd edition. I also work in the medical field and many doctors and hospitals and colleges use this book. I don't have any experience reading EKG's but I have to say that after reviewing this book,I think I could do it!!!!!

I love this book! I am taking an introductory ECG class in graduate school & I found this book to study. It is simple, easy to understand, & includes all the basic concepts of cardiac rhythms with great explanations & examples. The required book for this class was Practical Electrocardiography by Barry Connor, but I am having a much more difficult time reading it. I have even suggested to the professor that he switch textbooks for the class!

Back in the 1960s and even 1970s, Desmond Bagley was easily one of the best thriller writers around. As a rule, his books tend to be short and to the point, filled with action and marked with innovative ideas. Landslide is one of my personal favorites which I suddenly stumbled upon after many years. Set in a "company town" in north America, this is a story of dominant business families and cowed townspeople which awakes when a stranger named Boyd arrives in town (Yes, you might almost say this is a classic Western novel!!). Recovering from a bad car accident and attendant amnesia, Boyd happens on the town by chance, then stays on as dim memory flickers make him realize he has been a part of it before - to what extent, his memory cannot say. In true "Western" fashion of course, the crimes are solved and he gets the beautiful girl as well. The story itself is very well told with Boyd as the narrator and the climactic collapse of the dam is every bit startling as it is educative. Great way to fill a holiday!

Some of the best books written by Bagley are based on a scientific phenomena.. This is one of them, based on a Landslide.

Nabokov claims to dislike Don Quixote and considers the novel 'crewl' yet spent a significant portion of time analyzing the novel and teaching it. I am reminded of Tolstoy's dismissal of Shakespeare and his dissection of King Lear. Orwell correctly pointed out that, among these giants, bothering to grapple with another's legend so completely is a nod to greatness, one doesn't bother to kill a knat w/ a sledgehammer.

What Nabokov does to that venerable Don Q. is to rip it apart, disembowel it, resect the viscera, muscle and bones, and demonstrate how it has all been fitted together, how its various part work and (more importantly) how and why some parts don't work at all.

I admit to having had a life-long aversion to Don Q., an aversion that is rooted in early efforts to make me read "children's versions" of the book by guise of educating me. I suspect that such dislike is widely shared by those who have dared attempt the original text, or even its modern translations. Those who love the story are likely to have limited their sampling to the musical version of the book: "Man of La Mancha."

And so it was truly a pleasure to follow Nabokov in his extraordinary feat of dissection. Nobody in nearly 400 years of Spanish critical appraisals of this awful book has ever come close to exposing the work as thoroughly and meticulously as Nabokov does in the six lectures that he gave at Harvard in 1952. Spanish critics of Cervantes are mainly hagiographers, incapable of noting the Emperor's nakedness. They are apt to compare Cervantes to Shakespeare (don't they wish!), a comparion which Nabokov insightfully reduces to this:

"The only matter in which Cervantes and Shakespeare are equals is the matter of influence, of spiritual irrigation -- I have in view the long shadow cast upon receptive posterity of a created image which may continue to live independently from the book itself. Shakespeare's plays, however, will continue to live apart from the shadow they project." By implication, Don Q. would not.

Nabokov even exposes the canard, much repeated in Spain, that Cervantes and Shakespeare died on the same day in 1616. They did not. It is true that each died on April 23 of that year, but they lived in different calendars, with a ten day gap between their true dates of defunction.

Before embarking on his lectures, Nabokov abstracted each of the 126 chapters of the two volumes, citing their essential elements. These abstracts are included in the book. In addition, he surveyed the work noting Don Q's "victories" and "defeats," a monumental task which lays bare each of his encounters and battles (40 all told), each scored as a "victory" or a "defeat." He comments, in amazement, about one critic who had said "Never, by any chance, does Don Quixote win."

Not so. When all the battles are added up the score is precisely 20/20. Don Q. won as many as he lost.

When Nabokov called this "one of the most bitter and barbarous books even penned" it did not gain him friends among the professional academics of the ivory towers; but the observation is true and constitutes one of the many explanatory notes about the book that allows the readers to understand their dislike (if they have a dislike) for this work.

Only six lectures. One of the great anatomical feats by that wizard Nabokov. It is not necessary to know the Qixote in order to enjoy this tour de force; in addition, anyone who writes fiction will love (and benefit from) the type of deep structural analysis to which Nobokov subjects this novel. Nabokov's handywork is a beautiful excercise in education "as it should be," and therefore it is worth the time and effort to read it.

We got this book for our daughter right before Halloween. It really got her interested in pumkins. She is only 17 months, but the way the teletubbies book it written, you can read it along right to her and she can follow right along with the story. It really speaks to them and their comprehension. She likes teletubbies anyway, but this really was a great book to introduce a holiday. The was her favorite book for a long time.

My 2 year old just loves Teletubbies! And being able to flip up the flaps, and play along, makes this book the book she brings to me to read most often. There is also very few words to read on any of the pages. So she doesn't make me turn the pages before I am done reading it.

Ever since I first read about the prime number theorem, I have been roaming the mathetmatical landscape, looking for the best proof of this result. I believe this book has it. It's not the simplest or the shortest proof, but it gives the deepest understanding of why the prime numbers behve like they do. In addition to this, it shows you the historical perspective in these proofs. All too often today math books give one short and slick proofs that leave you wondering how on earth they came up with it. In this book, however, one can almost feel the thoughts going through Riemann and Dirichlet's heads as they came up with the theorems. This book also has the proof of Dirichlet's theorem and Vinogradov's partial proof of the ternary goldbach conjecture. The vinogradov and following sections are considerably harder, partly because they were not written by Davenport himself. Anyway, if you're serious about Analytic number theory and how mathematicians think, this books needs to be on your bookshelf.

I like this book because it gives you a good understanding of where the difficulties in the subject are. It takes a historical approach, following more or less the same steps that the original discoverers of these results took. Today we have very slick proofs for many of these results, and it is sometimes hard to understand why it took so long to discover them in the first place, but this book will give you this understanding; Dirichlet in particular practically had to invent Analytic Number Theory to prove his theorem on primes in an arithmetic progression.

The book works up gradually to each result, for example proving Dirichlet's theorem first for a prime modulus (as Dirichlet did himself), then the general modulus. In most cases it proves first the result for all primes (zeta function) and then the generalization for primes in an arithmetic progression (L function), pointing out which parts generalize easily and which cause special difficulties.

Some of the more advanced results covered are exponential sums, Vinogradov's theorem that every large odd number is the sum of three primes, and Bombieri's theorem about the average distribution of primes in arithmetic progressions.

I haven't seen the previous (1980) edition; this new edition seems to be lightly revised from the previous one. The last chapter is up-to-date and gives a brief survey of new results and of new books on the subject.