Above average early Nick Carter form 1969-70. Carter heads for Rio on his personal time to investigate the killing of a friend. The whole thing ties into a Cuban takeover scheme. One drawback-the intor on the 1st page of the book lists 4 suspects, although no hint of suspicion is ever thrown on one of them during the story and another quickly shows to be an ally. A bit misleading, I must say.

This book was interesting and had wonderful recipes. There were many old south recipes, for example; Collard Greens or Cornbread. There are recipes in this book that cannot be found in other cookbooks. I highly recommend this book for it's high quality recipes.

unfortunately, carter g. woodson does not grace the halls of african-american history like the names harriet tubman, fredric douglass or sojourner truth. but he should! this book is a fresh start to those parents and teachers interested in teaching their children about the legacy of Carter G. Woodson - the world-renowned historian and creator of African American history month. the vocabulary section at the end of the book is helpful and can be used as a classroom teaching tool. my only complaint is the "amateurish" format of this book -- perhaps colour pictures or a more refined font would have been a better choice.

This is a great book that's captivating from the very first sentence! Ron Carter introduces all the characters without losing any momentum. We read the book as a family to endless pleading for "just one more chapter, please?" With all the elements of a great mystery plus Orrin Porter Rockwell and teenage detectives this book is fun to read. I saw all the events unfold on the stage of my mind with such clarity that I wondered, "with writers like this in the world, why do we bother to watch TV?". The story takes place in the early days of Salt Lake City and has the Ghost Brigade gathering clues at the request of President Brigham Young with the help of many adult who are completely oblivious to the investigation. Before we even finished the book I turned to the Internet to see what other books he had written so that we could get others. If you like family friendly, nail-biting suspense you'll love this book.

An entertaining change of direction for Carter Dickson's irascible sleuth, Sir Henry Merrivale. It is a typically ingenious and baffling locked-room mystery centering on the fabulously valuable goblet of the title, and why a thief should NOT have stolen it when he had the chance; but for the most part, it resembles P.G. Wodehouse or possibly the Marx Brothers, as Dickson indulges himself in the manner of country-house farce. This is good fun on all levels. Those who have never read Dickson before should know that John Dickson Carr, the man behind the psedonym, ranks with Christie and Marsh among the greats of the golden-age detective novel, and was arguably more versatile than either. His speciality was the locked-room or 'impossible' crime, and he created two memorable detectives in Merrivale and the Chestertonian Dr. Gideon Fell. The latter stars in The Hollow Man (or in the US, The Three Coffins), one of his best.

This book is an excellent introduction to the concepts and techniques used to define invariants of closed 3-dimensional manifolds using the representation theory of U(sl(2)). Starting with the well-known results in the finite-dimensional irreducible representations of SL(2) via the Clebsch-Gordan theory, one can decompose the tensor product of these representations in two ways. The two decompositions can be compared using recoupling theory, with the coefficients being the ubiquitous 6j-symbols, so familiar to physicists in the theory of angular momentum. The orthogonality and Elliott-Biedenharn identities of the 6j-symbols have a geometric interpretation as the union of two tetrahedra. The quantum analog of these results for sl(2) leads to the Turaev-Vivo invariants of 3-manifolds, with the Elliott-Biedenharn identity corresponding to an Alexander move on a triangulation of a 3-manifold and the orthogonality condition corresponding to a Matveev move on the dual 2-skeleton of a triangulation.

The book could thus be considered an introduction to the theory of "quantum topology". The authors employ many diagrams to illustrate the beautiful connections between topology and algebra using the reprensentations of U(sl(2)) and the "quantized" version where the representation spaces are homogeneous polynomials in two variables that commute modulo a parameter. These constructions are generalizations of the ones that are employed in studying exactly solved models in statistical mechanics using the Yang-Baxter equation. This theory is now called quantum groups, even though strictly speaking, the objects dealt with are more general than groups and the adjective "quantum" means only a lack of commutation up to a parameter (usually called q). Very interesting is the way in which braid groups appear as realizations of quantum representation spaces. Quotient representations have to be considered since in general the representations of the braid group are not semi-simple.

For a representation of Uq(sl(2)) the authors define trace, called the "quantum trace", in this representation which gives the required invariants. These invariants however are not finer than other 3-manifold invariants unfortunately. The authors do show to what extent two 3-manifolds with the same Turaev-Viro invariants are similar, and show the equivalence between the Turaev-Viro and Kauffman-Lins invariants. These invariants are examples of topological quantum field theories, which have grown out of considerations from high energy physics, and which will no doubt continue to be of considerable interest in the future.

This is a challenging book to use if you are studying thermodynamics. It is concise; the theory and notation used were well done. There were some formulation mistakes in the Maxwell relations table and other little formulation mistakes. The author uses well known classical and statistical formulae well and good derivations (I liked that). Some of the problem sets were inconsistent with areas covered in a few chapters and some were oversimplified. Overall a decent book to use if your taking statistical thermo.

Coastal Dunes: Form and Process is a compilation of 16 research articles about coastal dune geomorphology with a focus on aeolian processes and landforms. The papers emphasize the complex dynamics of wind flow, sediment source, vegetation cover, wave action as well as rates and types of aeolian transportand how these processes influence and create coastal dune landforms.

I found this book to be an excellent source of background information for coastal dune research. It is also touchstone bibliographic reference for works related to coastal dune geomorphology despite the fact that it is 12 years old.

I believe that the goals presented by the series editor, Eric Bird, are in fact achieved in this book. The goal was to have a collection that was of value not only for specialists and students in the field but also for those that are concerned with management and planning issues in the coastal environment. To this end it is a successful book in that it is technical for students who are undertaking research yet the conclusions and section summaries are excellent for those that need a broader context without the figures and rigorous analysis.

The Sporting News has been putting out these books for a long time now and while very informative, the information is a bit dry. There are all sorts of statistical breakdowns including team records, yearly leaders, World Series records, and All Star Games. This is still the gold standard baseball reference. A great companion to Nemec's record book which has more interesting catagories (families, for example). Year after year, this is the one most fans will turn to but sometimes you will want a more interesing take on a record and it just isn't there.

The four tales in "Conan the Conqueror" cover most of the main aspects of the career of Robert E. Howard's character: raider, thief, pirate, and mercenary. (1) "Black Tears" by L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter is one of several pastiches written by the duo based upon hints in Howard's note and letters to fill up gaps in the saga. It takes place after the classic story "A Witch Shall Be Born" (in "Conan the Freebooter") as Conan leads his band of Zuagirs eastward to raid the cities and caravans of the Turanians. King Yezdigerd reacts by sending out a strong force to entrap Conan. (2) Shadows in Zamboula" by Robert E. Howard has Conan destitute after a week of guzzling, gorging, roistering, ... and gambling. This is an above average Conan the Thief story. (3) "The Devil in Iron" by Howard has Conan returning the seas as a pirate, putting together a crew from among his old friends the kozaki and the Red Fellowship of Vilayet Sea. Conan and his crew stumbled upon an inhuman creature and mayhem ensues. (4) The longest story in this collection, "The Flame Knife" was one of four uncompleted manuscripts by Howard completed by de Camp. This novella was originally an adventure in modern Afghanistan entitled "Three-Bladed Doom" staring Francis X. Gordon, Howard's brawny, brawling Irish adventurer. De Camp transformed the story into a Conan tale. After King Yezdigerd crushes the Kozak host, Conan retreats southward with a sizeable band and joins the army of Kobad Shah, king of Iranistan and one of Yezdigred's strongest rivals. These stories are rather standard fare, evidencing in part the problems de Camp and Carter had in filling all the gaps in the Conan saga. Certainly these are stories you would read out of a sense of completeness rather than because there are any real gems to be found within.