I have been a devout reader of Burn's Black Hole comic since I first found it on the shelves a couple of years ago. That he is a mesmerizing artist goes without saying. Black Hole has a very meandering plot at times, and it gets somewhat overshadowed by it's technical virtuosity. Big Baby, while it has less scope, is much more concise and places the reader directly in the path of evil. The final story in this volume "Blood Club" is a really haunting tale that I believe is his best work. One minor note, the image above is from Blood Club but it is not the actual cover on the book...It has Big Baby playing with some toys.

Graphic storyteller Charles Burns hits his artistic and narrative stride in the three immaculately rendered black and white comics stories reprinted in this beautifully bound, library-quality volume from Fantagraphics. Originally serialized in alternative weekly newpapers in the '80s, CURSE OF THE MOLE MEN, TEEN PLAGUE, and BLOOD CLUB portray the suburbs of "Leave It to Beaver", seen through the eyes of child who can't turn away the violence and seething sexuality behind the facade. Burns is possibly the finest draftsman to come out the 80s comics underground, and integrates a Bauhaus design sense with a flair for Fifties EC horror. Highly recommended for fans of EIGHTBALL, Psychotronic films, and anyone who grew up in Fifties or early Sixties suburbia.

I am the author's 48-year-old daughter. My mother's voice is unique. She speaks with compassion, love, and a rare level of insight. I have shared these poems with friends of all ages and backgrounds, and they all have taken keen pleasure in their discovery of this book. Many have told me that they read and re-read it. I highly recommend it.

This book has the finest poems that can really touch your heart. There are poems about family members that really distantly you can meet the authors family her writing is so descriptive! There are so many poems in here that you will just have to read over and over again they're so amazing! If you read this book you will find yourself going back for seconds! Elizabeth Elliot obviusly worked very hard on this book for the writing is so detailed!

This book brings an interesting approach to eating and weight control based on two points. The first is that everybody has a built-in metabolic rate (or burn rate) that determines how a given level of calorie intake affects their weight. The second point is that dfferent foods "burn" at different rates, that is their intake will provide a sense of satisfaction and fullness for only so long (carbohydrates burn quickly and fats burn slowly). The trick to losing weight (assuming that is what most of us want to do) is to mix foods in our diet and spread our eating over the day so that we feel full and acknowledge what level of calories we need to take in (given our internal burn rate along with our level of exercise)to attain a certain weight level.

This diet (really a way of eating) is a very individualized approach that begins with a burn rate test diet in which you a eat specified for 2 weeks and see how that affects your weight. This lets you see if you have a high or low burn rate. From here, you eat pretty much without a lot of strict rules but take account of how the foods you eat are burned by your body and affect your desire to eat. The right mix of foods and the timing of your eating (given the burn rate of the foods) will help you feel full while allowing you to lose weight. As you lose weight, you should then be able to match your eating to your burn rate (which changes with your weight) to get a balance between the calories you take in through eating and those you expend through your basic metabolism of sustaining your body and the calories you spend on your activities, including exercise.

To me, the book seemed to present a credible theory of why people can eat very differently and still have the same weight (or eat the same and have different weights). The book has an good discussion of other diets (such as Atkins and the Zone diets) that links them to the framework of this book. My understanding is that this method of eating is fairly close to the zone diet, i.e., you eat foods over the course of the day with sense of how they affect your blood sugar and feeling of fullness.

The best part of this book is its confident support for the idea that being overweight is not a sign that you are mentally and psychologically deficient, as so many people would have overweight people believe. Being overweight usually means that you have a slow metabolism, something you were born with.

This book is one of two valuable new books on creating a more individualized approach to eating for better health and weight control. The other book is "Live Right for Your Type." I suggest that you read both of these books and apply their lessons together. If you are a woman, I suggest you also read "Outsmarting Female Fatigue" as a good complement to these two books.

One of Dr. Van Schoyck's best qualities is that he listens carefully to his patients when they describe their weight issues. While almost everyone has a stereotype of fat people as binge eaters with no self-control, he has found that "fewer than 20 percent of my patients actually overeat." The culprit instead is a slow metabolism, the rate at which the body burns calories. His book offers you a chance to find out the extent to which your weight level is maintained by overeating, by not enough exercise, and by a slow metabolism. For most overweight people, the last will be the primary reason.

The good news is that with the proper diet, you can actually increase your metabolism to its full potential (which still may not be that of the skinny person next to you) so that you can have a more enjoyable, healthy life. That may also mean that your ideal weight is not what the insurance companies and physicians use. It may be higher than that. But you will probably be healthier at that weight than at a lower one that is all but impossible for you to maintain. So this approach should help you avoid yo-yo weight loss and gain.

Getting started is the tough part. You have to follow a test diet that will tell you what your metabolism is for two weeks. Since I just got the book, I have not yet done that. The diet is not too difficult. It is not designed to cause you to lose weight, and you can substitute a lot. The diet is what a "normal" person could eat and maintain weight. So, for some people, it will be an increase in eating.

The book then tells you how to take the results (how much you gain or lose) and construct an on-going menu-planning system that fits your metabolism. You can also use the authors' web site (for free) to do this, which is what I would recommend. That's easier.

The book has an excellent discussion of other diets and what is right and wrong with them that you will find valuable. It also is very strong on the idea of customizing how you eat to fit yourself. There is a wonderful discussion of how the body burns newly-ingested food, and stored food already in the body that helped me to understand how to adapt how I eat. Some people (I am one of them) can live off of burning stored fat for more hours than others. I always find that I feel best when I only eat once or twice a day. That's because I am burning fat evenly the rest of the time. Other people feel fatigued when they are burning fat, and need frequent meals. My wife is a good example of that. So we each need to eat quite differently for our metabolisms to be optimized. It also happens that we have different blood types. I am an "O" and she is a "B." From reading "Live Right for Your Type" I had learned that we need to eat a different mix of foods. She should strive for balance and more frequent eating while I should emphasize proteins, especially beef, a bit more.

With the combined knowledge from these two books, I should be able to manage both my energy and my weight in much more healthful and easy ways. I look forward to the results!

By the way, if you like to snack, that may be just the right thing for you to do. And this book has many good suggestions for how to make snacking improve your energy and metabolism. You will also get to eat foods that I have never seen on another diet. In fact, it's not really a diet in the sense of a weight-loss diet. Rather it's a way of eating that will maintain your weight at its natural level.

I suggest that you also share this book with everyone else in your family. Since you will be eating a lot of meals together, that will make it easier for all of you to follow through on what makes sense for each of you. Otherwise, your new eating plans could simply cause disruptions in your relations with everyone else. I can still remember my Mother happily feeding us "O" people in the family her idea "A" meals. They didn't work very well for us, but she sure loved them.

May your life be filled with lots of health, happiness, peace, and prosperity as a result of the new understanding of your metabolism and how to eat that this book provides you!

Every play Lanford Wilson writes is intelligent as well as passionate and dramatic. It is almost beyond belief how hard it is to combine all of these qualities in the same play. In "Burn This", Wilson is in top form. Pale (the male lead) is such a clearly written and deeply felt part that an actor does not have to fill in any gaps; if an actor can read well, he is assured of at least an above average performance. The dialogue is spicy, funny, sad, bitter and more. In movie terms, it is a Nicholas Cage part (although Malkovich originated it).

Pale's love interest and foil (the Joan Allen part) is not secondary to Pale because she has the power to heal him. A magnificent love story.

This play is a meaningful, and yet almost simple, masterpiece. The story unfolds with the death of a gay man, which ultimately brings an unlikely match closer together. Wilson's use of homosexual issues is the perfect sprinkling: it is not the main focus of the play, but gives it just the extra touch. This is how homosexuality should be written about in the theatre (or any form of entertainment). It isn't over-played or under-played, but just right.

"Burn-in" by Finn Jensen and Niels Erik Petersen. Sub-titled: "An Engineering Approach To The Design And Analysis Of Burn-in Procedures". John Wiley & Sons, 1986.

The main purpose of this book is to provide an organized approach to the development and implementation of a burn-in program. This book does give you the basics in developing burn-in, that is the application of elevated temperature to cause latent defects to fail at the manufacturing plant rather than to have the unit fail during use by the Customer. The book, however, is truly a rather complete text in reliability, dealing with the three stages of a product: infant mortality, useful life and wear out.

I have used this book over the past decade or so, and taken portions of the text for proposals, when a project was just beginning, and, at the other end, used the text for Weibull functions to ascertain the end-of-life of a product. It is an excellent book, describing reliability principles far more clearly than some other fundamental texts.

I received this book at a burn-in seminar taught by Dr. Finn Jensen. Dr. Jensen is a slight, bubbly man, whose English is impeccable. At the seminar, he fleshed out the examples in the book with details and anecdotes showing that the book, "Burn-In", is grounded on a wealth of real-life experience. If you buy one book on burn-in, or on reliability, this is the one.

John Peter Rooney, MSEE; ASQ Certified Reliability Engineer #2425.

This book emphasizes a no-nonsense approach to burn in and is suitable for the experienced engineer who is faced with difficult questions about test and reliability. It is fast paced and avoids excessive advanced statistical analysis to achive an engineering result that is adequate 90% of the time.

First time users of burnin technology will want to familiarize themselves with the statistics of failure analysis before advancing onto a burn-in plan.

The book may also appeal to senior manufacturing line personnel who have witnessed first hand experiences in burn-in and wish to pursue further the cause and effect relationship. Using the methodologies outlined within, production line resources can be maximized for yield and quality.

The read is enjoyable and refreshing - without sidetracking - It dives right into the topic at hand and plows through to a solution and implementation plan.

Och, every Scots should have a copy!! Maurice Lindsay is a well-known poet, broadcaster and writer on many aspects of Scottish life and Literature (see his Castles of Scotland for one). He has written several on Burns already.

If it touched Burns, it's listed here. This is not a collection of Burns poems, but a companion to them. An excellent work for people just becoming acquainted with Scotland's beloved poet and need to understand the poetry better. Many editions of Burns works have glossaries to help with the Scots, but it still leaves the general reader or student with a lot of questions. This book fills in the gaps, so should be used as a study companion piece to books with Burns' complete works.

Highly recommended for fans of Burns wanting to understand the man and the period he lived.

Just about every person, place, or thing mentioned in the songs and poems of Robert Burns (1759-1796) is given a paragraph or two. Indispensible encyclopedia on the "most gifted British soul" of the 18th century.

If you have ever begun the task of writing a book you know how difficult it is to cover a subject without losing the reader in a mountain range of details. This is so much truer when the subject is intended to be a comprehensive guide to a complex process such as nurturing a business.

Burns and McCullough tackle this challenge by a combination of concise writing and clever formatting. With quick summaries, pointers to print and online resources, as well as forms, lists and service directories, this book is designed to be a constant companion.

Although the book reads like a workbook, it contains the depth of information only found in a desk reference. If you have that entrepreneurial spirit you will read it hungrily like a novel. Yet, even as you attend to the daily tasks involved in your business you will keep Business Savvy near your workspace for quick reference.

One trick used here to bring this sea of advice into real settings is a case study or success story of a fairly average retail business started by two sisters. The challenges and solutions are added piece by piece throughout the book as they coordinate with the current chapter. In many books case studies are chosen to demonstrate a single rule. Here we see how application of good business practices works as a whole while we follow the same two sisters in their adventure.

New entrepreneurs will find this book of priceless value, while seasoned entrepreneurs will devote a special spot on their desks to keep it ready for reference.

I have read this book and found it to be one of the best books for small business want-to-be's and owners that I have seen. For the past 19 years I have worked as a small business and self-employment training consultant and have read and examined lots of small business books. This one, unlike many of them, is truly written for the small business person. The four sections of the book -- Choose your Business, Establish your Business, Build your Business Operation, and Make your Business Profitable -- can help you regardless of where you are in the development of your business. The forms and worksheets throughout the book and in the appendix are worth the price of the book alone. Pay particular attention to the wide side margins throughout the book where you'll find great additional information including tips, insights, red flags, and resources (hard copy and internet references, as well as software). Marilyn Burns and Cathy Bolton McCullough know what they are talking about. They have a wealth of small business experience and can become your personal consultants as their ideas lead you to success and greater profits in your own small business. Need I say more? I recommend this book highly!

This is an excellent compilation of Burns' work, including many poems that were previously unpublished, unpublished in English language compilations or published under Burns' pseudonyms. The annotations, translations, and commentary are both helpful in understanding and interpreting this evocative and beautiful cornerstone of modern Scottish culture

There are of course many editions of Burns's poetry available, but sadly most mass-market editions seem more concerned with perpetuating some kind of twee, Brigadoony version of Burns and Scotland. Of the ostensibly scholarly paperback editions of Burns, however, I have not seen anything that comes close to Andrew Noble and Patrick Scott Hogg's for comprehensiveness, annotation, and context. Noble's introduction is brilliant and takes great care to rehabilitate Burns's image by taking him out of the hands of St. Andrew's Society sentimentality and resituating the poet in the political and social climate of his time. Burns was politically radical, sexually promiscuous, and intellectually engaged...all qualities that are effaced by the defanged, Burns supper bardie image that has been so popular with many Scots and Scottish-Americans alike. If you're seriously interested in Burns as a man and a poet, this is the edition you should own. If you want something to dust off once a year on January 25th (along with your kilt, sporran, and bagpipes), go buy one of the editions with the tartan cover.

This book does what no other book of its class has ever done...teaches boating safety rules to children while being very entertaining for adults too! The storyline is charming and illustrations are tops. Dee Cache's book should get an award for saving lives!

As a father of 4 young children I find this book must reading for the entire family. Beautifuly and cleaverly illustrated. A long overdue book for boating safety.

By far the best on the subject. Offers complete coverage of any aspect of concurrency with Ada, including real-time and distributed programming issues. Burns and Wellings are the acknowledged experts on this topic.

The best aspect of the book is the analysis of features and their interactions, providing a depth not available in other texts covering the entire language.

Assumes you know some Ada, but includes an introduction to the sequential part of the language.

I own quite a few books on Ada; this is the one to get if you want the details of Ada concurrency.

Ada has been one of few languages which provides facilities for concurrent programming, but readings for the feature had been limited. This book is not only the first but also an excellent guide to the capability of the new Ada standard.

It covers,

1.@The Ada Language

2.The Nature and Uses of Concurrent Programming

3.Inter-Process Communication

4.Ada Task Types and Objects

5.The Rendezvous

6.The Select Statement and the Rendezvous

7.Protected Objects and Data-Oriented Communication

8.Avoidance Synchronisation and the Requeue Facility

9.Using Protected Objects as Building Blocks

10.Exceptions, Abort and Asyncronous Transfer of Control

11.Tasking and System Programming

12.Real-Time Programming

13.Object-Oriented Programming and Tasking

14.Distributed Systems

15.Conclusion

Not only Ada programmers, but also all professonal software engineers who design real-time, embedded systems, advanced students of computer science, and even beginners should find it quite useful.

I've read the original print published in 1995, which has been out-of-print.

I am so happy to know it is now to be RE-PRINTed, and every programmers would be.