It is a good book for anyone who wants to lecture in concurrent programming.This book will also help anyone explain the confusion among concurrent, parallel and distributed programs which have been around for the last three decades. The author touches the same three underlying concepts : processes, communication and synchronization. The ten chapters of the book is organized into four parts : basic concepts, shared variables, message passing and pratice. The first part, basic concepts, provides a formal presentation to introduce an assertional proof techniques for sequential and concurrent programming. The second and third parts, shared variables and message passing, elaborates the two major categories of synchronization technique in concurrent programming. Systematic method to solve synchronization problems are described throughout the chapters in two. In the last part, practice, the author provides an overview of five concurrent languanges : Turing Plus, Occam, Ada, SR and Linda. Comparison and performance experiments of all languanges are also provided in the last chapter. The book also includes some classic concurrent programming problems such as critical sections, producers and consumers, readers and writers, the dining philosophers and resource allocation. The 'Historical Notes and References' provided at the end of every chapter is a plus in which it provides citations to relevant literature and more insights to the related subject.

Having read primarily Andrew M. Greeley's novels since 1982, I discovered through his Web Page a host of non-fiction titles which I began checking some out from ABQ's Library Branch. I was intrigued by the title. Knowing his choice of titles is usually his way of "playing" with his readers, I wondered just how open his memoir would be. Also, having read almost every novel as well as his column over the years, I was curious about how much these novels reflected the author. I was amazed how Greeley trusts his readers, creating an intimacy which I would dearly appreciate from a parish priest. What a model of integrity for any priest! Greeley is a master story teller in his novels but he demonstrates a superior skill in creating a memoir that is honest, insightful and critical while maintaining a delicate balance between personal history and motives as well as creating a special bond with the individual bond. Reading this book, I felt as though Greeley was having an intimate chat with only me, in much the same relationship as Blackie Ryan and one of his Irish Tribe! I appreciate Greeley's ability to write with phenomenal intelligence yet never patronizing the reader. Reading his memoirs has brought me insights into my own life and history so that Greeley is not just a priest and author but also a teacher and counselor. I also think that he is too hard on himself. In any event, I have to OWN this book as I own all his novels. I just purchased Furthermore: memoirs of a parish priest and this one to have handy as my "reference for living!" I recommend Confessions of a Parish Priest for all readers of intelligence for so many reasons. Regardless of religion, any discerning reader would be entertained, educated and satisfied "chatting" with this very special author and parish priest. I even read this aloud to my civil engineer husband! He was amazed. I learned so much about myself in the process. I tell everyone about it and think there should be a re-printing of this book...it is timely even today. Do yourself a favor and read Confessions of a Parish Priest. I wish this was required reading for every priest and minister and rabbi. All married couples and soon-to-marry folks would be relieved to read this book. He validates the laity, honors marital love and celebrates young people. His only "flaw" is that he believes in the goodness of people, the wisdom of married couples and trust in our youth. Reading this book was for me better than a vacation; I will revisit it frequently to refresh my mind, to uplift my spirit and restore my soul!

I found this paperback clearance priced at $5. This is a book that is part history, and partly inspirational. It tells in a series of vignettes the stories of 64 Germans who resisted the Nazis and paid the ultimate price for it. Some are famous, some are not. Many of these sketches quote from their letters and diaries as they faced death: Eastern Front soldier Michael Kitzelmann was horrified by what he saw done in Poland after the German invasion, and quickly became an opponent of the regime. He was eventually executed for undermining morale. From his diary, as he awaited execution:

"I pray to Jesus the Crucified, who has led the way through the most bitter pain. And He answers me: 'If you will be My disciple, take up your cross and follow me.!'

"But I appeal to Him: 'Lord, I am still so young, too young for such a heavy cross; I have not lived my life, all my hopes, plans and aims are unfulfilled.' And he says: 'Behold, I too was young, I had yet to live my life, and as a young man I carried to cross and sacrificed my young life.'"....

"Now I live the life of a hermit. My day's work consists of praying, reading the Bible, occasionally scribbling something in my diary or writing letters. It is very painful, this separation from life, from the past, from all fond hopes and plans and particularly from my nearest and dearest. It is terribly hard to submit wholly to God's will in such agonising circumstances; but the only attainable comfort is to hold out to the end despite all suffering...."[pp. 30-31]

Motivations were varied: some were young socialists; some were conservatives, appalled by the horrors of what the Nazis were doing in the name of the German government; most were Christians who recognized the Nazi movement for what it was. From the Nationalist Party's Ewald von Kleist-Schmenzin's 1932 pamphlet against the Nazis:

"Religion alone stand between us and National Socialism, and always will. We believe that faith in God and obedience to His Word must permeate our public life; National Socialism holds a fundamentally different view, and let me say that questions of dogma have nothing to do with it. What it comes to is that Hitler regards as the basis of policy- the fact that he may occasionally say something else does not alter the case-the race and its demands. This is a crude form of materialism, and quite incompatible with Christianity. According to his theories, it is the duty of the state to encourage not ability, but racial characteristics. He reduces the state to the level of a cattle-breeder, and shows that he is quite incapable of understanding its character and obligations....

"What have we in common, spiritually, with National Socialism?"[p. 168]

Many of these were men and women whose only crime was to speak against evil, but many were men and women of action as well. Some were participants in the von Stauffenberg plot against Hitler. One of the socialists, Anton Schmaus, expected problems from the SA (brownshirts) early in the Nazi regime:

"[T]he SA forced their way into the house late that evening. They kicked his mother, who barred their way, and knocked her down. Anton was woken by her cries for help and found himself at the top of the stairs confronted by the SA. He told them to get out of the house, otherwise he would shoot. They took no notice, and closed in on him; and so as a last resort he pulled out a pistol. According to the police report of 5 July 1933, File No. IAdVI, three storm troopers were badly wounded and later died in hospital and a fourth was fatally wounded by a shot from one of his companions."[pp. 4-5]

Schmaus turned himself into the police, hoping for a proper trial. The SA demanded Schmaus from the police, who still had the courage to refuse the SA demand. The police escorted Schmaus to Berlin police headquarters, but along the way, 30-40 SA surrounded Schmaus and his police escort, and shot and killed him.

The individual steps forward from the ranks to sacrifice himself for others: this is the theme which emerges from the photographs taken at the trial, which underlies this whole story of resistance to tyranny, which is the embodiment of the Christian spirit and which finds expression in the great part played by the Christian Churches in the struggle with National Socialism. After describing the formation of a movement that called itself "Protestant National Socialists" or sometimes "German Christians," Leber describes how the Nazis took advantage of a widespread desire within Protestant Germany to unify the existing denominations:

"But it soon became clear that [the Nazis] regarded the Churches as useless bourgeois institutions and merely hoped to exploit them for their own purposes and to present the picture of the progressive assumption of power in a pseudo-Christian frame.... In May 1934, at a synod in Barmen, the Confessional Church was founded. This was not a territorial Church, but a movement within the Protestant Church to counter the false doctrines which threatened it. At this point the regime dropped even the 'German Christians' and from then on state measures were directed not at the reconciliation of the Church with the National Socialist Weltanschaung, but at the subordination of all things Christian.

"The attempt to oppress the Catholic Church was at first a little more circumspect and the negotiations which followed the Reich Concordat of 1933 gave some protection for the time being. But attacks on the Church, and the persecution of those who professed allegiance to it, steadly increased; and the Papal Encyclical With Grave Concern, which was read to the faithful from the pulpits in 1937, was tantamount to a declaration of war. Both Churches suffered confiscation, restriction and persecution, and both challenged the policies and ideologies of the state. They opposed the biological creeds and the idolising of the German people. They protested against the Oath of Allegiance and its claim to impose unconditional obedience not to God, but to man, and against the anti-Christian teaching given to the young, the arbitrary methods of the Gestapo, the horrors of the concentration camps and the ill-treatment of the population of occupied territories. They also protested most violently against the murder of incurables."[pp. 187-188]

Annedore Leber was there. She was the widow of the prominent Social Democrat leader Julius Leber, executed by the Nazis.

This is a fascinating and powerful work, well-written (or at least well-translated). It is history, and it is inspiring -- evidence that even in the darkness of Nazi Germany, where the full weight of the propaganda machinery of modern media was turned to the task of enforcing ideological conformity, there were those willing to do to fight against an evil that did not personally threaten them. We owe it to those who died in the defense of human dignity to not let these courageous men and women be forgotten. BUY THIS BOOK!

Andrew is a talented up and coming author. He has a real gift for description and a wonderful sense of humor! No story is predictable. You will enjoy this book, I promise.

It is very intresing how it works with fractions. I am taking algebra II and trig, and it's great!

Dr. Lester was a professor of mine and I have both heard him speak on this topic and have read his book with great interest. It's a terrific discussion of an emotion that many Christians are very uncomfortable with and often believe is sinful. As a psychologist, I use what I learned from Dr. Lester to help my clients understand and cope with their anger. It's the resource I recommend to Christian clients who have concerns about their anger.

This small volume, now some 35 years old, contains a dozen essays authored by some of the leading intellectual lights of the "New Deal" era, including Gardner C. Means, A. A. Berle and Andrew Hacker. The book is and, unfortunately, remains one of the few lights illuminating the rise of the corporation as the dominant player in American social, economic and political life. It is all the more remarkable because it foresaw the the internationalization of economics and the concomentant evolution of neoliberal politics in its service. Thus, these ideas form a necessary link for anyone seriously concerned about the past, present and future influence of corporate culture.

Even as a non-computational linguist, I found this book very readable. It covers a nice range of the relevant topics, and is very careful about defining terminology---a practice that other writers in computational linguistics would do well to follow. The book is unusually well-organized. Though there's not much depth of coverage of many topics, the references for further reading are very well selected, and do a lot to make up for this. The final chapter gives a very nice example of the application of empirical data to a theoretical question, and is worth the price of the book itself.

This is a nice book that introduces all of the basic material for inflation. I found that most of it can be found elsewhere (eg. in Peacock's book), and it isn't necessarily any more comprehensive in Liddle & Lyth, because the pace of exposition is slow. However, it's worth buying for the insights the authors give, for the careful treatment of cosmological perturbation theory and gauge choice, and because it is approached from an explicitly supersymmetric direction. (There is no technical information about supersymmetry, however, and if you are after a book on supersymmetric cosmology, then you will have to look elsewhere. I think Peter D'Eath has a book of this sort, published by CUP.) There is a "beyond the slow roll approximation" section, which is good, and the chapter of inflationary model building is the best I have seen.The level of mathematics is pretty much nil, anyone with basic algebra could cope. Other points of interest are that (1) the authors develop all spectra (power spectrum, spectrum of tensor perturbations etc.) from what they call the "curvature perturbation", which is new to me, although there's absolutely nothing at all wrong with it, (2) the section on large-scale structure (Press-Schecter et. al.) which is included, and (3) the fact that the bibliography gives eprint numbers for the quoted papers. A minor downside is a small amount of forward referencing. It's concise, modern and lucid, and the website has up-to-date info. Excellent.

A HANDBOOK FOR CLERGY COUNSELING FAMILIES
Counseling Families Across the Lifespan: A Handbook for Pastors and Other Religious Professionals is designed to be a text for those in training for pastoral ministry, as well as a practical resource for women and men engaged in ministry with families. The volume addresses family transition issues (e.g., becoming a parent, divorce, sudden job loss, chronic illness, retirement, untimely death) and related mental health problems that may be experienced over the lifespan. In this time of widespread concern about the demise of the family,it is especially important that pastors and others in ministry understand how to help guide persons through life passages. Part 1 offers information about the important role that clergy and the faith community serve in the mental health care of families. This section spells out the need for special expertise by pastors and other religious professionals about how to recognize and address important transitional lifespan issues and related family problems. The scientific evidence that non-punitive, nurturing religious beliefs and practices serve both preventive and healing functions is summarized. Finally, there is a review of the factors that cultivate strong and resilient families in spite of adversity. The heart of the book is found in Part 2, which is presented in a format that uses real life situations while highlighting practical implications for pastoral care. They reflect recent research on relevant issues and recognize that the demands on a family change over time in the lifecycle. The case studies are multidisciplinary in approach, integrating clinical knowledge in pastoral care, psychology, family medicine, psychiatry, nursing, gerontology, sociology, social work, and marriage and family therapy, along with current scientific findings on the role of religion in mental health care. The volume recognizes that the difficulties that families face do not stand in isolation from one another but are interrelated. For example, the chapters involving chronic illness also address caregiver stress and depression. The book is designed so that a reader can easily locate information on specific issues and related mental health problems for which families seek pastoral counsel. It is a practical, easy-to-use guide on how to assess problems and how to respond to them. The table of contents provides the subject of 20 situations that illustrate common issues experienced by families. Each case provides an example of a family member with a specific problem who is in need of help. Included in each chapter is information about how a pastor or colleague in ministry would assess the problem, what aspects of the case are most important, how to identify the major issues, specific directions about what the pastor and congregation can do, when to refer for professional assistance, and information about resources that can provide help. National organizations (often with toll-free numbers and internet addresses) that supply information and support for families facing these issues are identified for each concern addressed. Cross-cultural aspects are noted and discussed, as well. Technical terms are defined in the glossary at the end of the book. The text is written for people of all faiths, with an appreciation for the richness of the intergenerational and multicultural diversity found in religious communities. The authors are people of faith with specialties in mental health. Dr. Weaver is a clinical psychologist, licensed marriage and family therapist, and ordained United Methodist minister who has served rural and urban parishes. He has written over 80 scientific articles and book chapters and has co-authored 7 books. Dr. Revilla is a United Methodist laywoman and developmental psychologist who specializes in working with ethnic families. She also teaches at the University of Hawaii in the Ethnic Studies Department. Dr. Koenig is associate professor of psychiatry and internal medicine, as well as director of the Center for the Study Religion/Spirituality and Health at Duke University Medical Center. He has written over 170 scientific articles and book chapters and has authored or co-authored 10 books.