A great read of the historical turning point of the U. S. Civil War. Haskell describes the three days of battle and the aftermath. Haskell was subsequently killed in one of the latter battles of the Civil War. Although inaccurate at places, it gives a first hand account of this battle, and the subsequent suffering of the soldiers. This is a good account of the life of a soldier.

Colonel Haskell's perspective on the Battle of Gettysburg provides intriguing detail and insight omitted by secondary sources.

As a writer of historical articles, mainly on the arts, I once did a highly successful speech on the Swedish Broadcasting System on Mathilde Kschessinska. And here was indeed stuff to draw upon. The life of Mathilde Kschessinska was a fairy tale come true. As a one-time lover of the last czar of Russia, she was also a wonderful artist and ballerina and a very astute woman. One could, maybe, opine that her biography is hardly a literary achievement - it is rather full of gossipy details of what she was wearing and eating and drinking. Yet, it is a historically vivid account of life and social life in Petersburg in the beginning of this century. She eventually married a man of the Imperial family and became the princess Romanovsky-Krassinsky. Her only son, was, as one Swedish historian so aptly put it: "Of uncertain parentage, but one thing is at least certain, the boy was a Romanov". This very remarkable woman later taught in Paris, where she finally made her home, right up to her death in 1971, at the age of 99. She was considered to be one of the finest teachers. Read it - enjoy it - but do not expect a masterpiece - but a truly delightful account of life in Russia and in France.

The memoirs of this legendary ballerina span the 1870's to the 1950's. Kssechinska met Tchaikovsky in 1893, she was mistress of Tsarevich Nicholas, later Nicholas II, she worked with Diaghilev. She was a celebrated ballerina in her own time, and led a life of supreme luxury, villas conveniently supplied by her lovers, all Grand Dukes. Her collection of jewels was admired by her friend, Anna Pavlova. Although forced to give up her first love, Nicholas, when he made a dynastic marriage, she recounts that he always looked after her interests. Whenever she was denied a part due to the machinations of her enemies, she had only to send the Tsar a message, and she was reinstated. How lovely a life! She became mistress of another Grand Duke, several years her junior, and bore his son out of wedlock in 1902. They were only able to marry after the Revolution, with the permission of the head of the Imperial Family in exile. A marriage between a member of the Imperial Family and a ballerina would of course have been unthinkable in pre-Revolutionary Russia. In the Revolution, she lost her villas, dachas, golden cups, luxurious furnishings and exquisite gowns, but she and her family escaped with their lives. No small accomplishment. This is a fascinating life of a remarkable woman and ballerina. It quite surpasses the memoirs of any ballerina of our own time, because of its vivid depiction of a bygone age. Dancing in Petersburg is a box seat on history, not just ballet history.

This book is very detailed I would recommend to for anyone from beginner to expert

I spent some considerable time reviewing available texts which cover the HC12 processor and found this text by Richard Haskell to be excellent!

I was looking for a text to use for an introductory microprocessor lecture and lab course which I had to teach at a local University. I ultimately chose the Haskell text. The book expects some very introductory background on microprocessors -- you need to know what one is, the fetch execute cycle etc. -- the kind of material you might expect to find included at the end of an intro to Logic I course. I developed some of my own intro notes for the first two weeks, and then was able to move fully to the text.

I chose the text because of it's clear and intuitive style. Dr. Haskell does an admirable job of making complex topics plain -- a feature that the students really appreciated. I also chose the text because it introduced HC12 assembly language programming by developing a complete FORTH based interactive development system (called WHYP FORTH by the author). All code is provided for free (on an included floppy), and an associated web site provided different code versions, to target different HC12 processor configurations. I was very impressed with WHYP FORTH, and the interactive development provided. The book also provides a number of lab projects: controlling LED and Liquid Crystal displays, keyboard interfacing, and the design of a digital compass for examples. My students concluded their lab with the construction and programming of a complete robot system. The code generated was much tighter that some C compilers I have used, and executed very quickly. Additionally, the time spent developing complex code in WHYP was much shorter than in assembly. Also, the code was more structured and modular than equivalent C code.

Overall, I found this to be an excellent text.

Maybe Ellie needs a break from the twins. This book plods rather than waltzes. Cannell's usual sparkle is missing, and Ellie's character is somewhat anemic, showing little of her usual goofy charm. The ending is Victorian mush, which may appeal to some, but seemed overdone to me. Spring tonic? Vacation in Mazatlan? Let's hope that the next Cannell outing shows more spunk. In this one, Roxie rules.

The opening of this entry is as funny as the opening to *The Thin Woman* [first in the series], which I recently reread. The rest of the book is delightful. One of the things that I like about this series is that Ellie is among the handful of female mystery solvers who is permitted to be happily married. I'm so glad that Ms. Cannell hasn't broken up said marriage or bumped off Ben. The end of the book made me wonder if Mrs. Cannell was thinking of Louisa May Alcott when she wrote it. The atmosphere reminded me of *Little Women*, the book that taught me that book friends are never lost. (You just turn the pages back to the beginning and your friend is alive again.) Then again, perhaps I felt that way because Vanessa's daughter, Rose, made me think of Ms. Alcott's Rose in *Eight Cousins* and *Rose in Bloom*. I look forward to my next stay at Merlin's Court. Ann E. Nichols

It is Spring and Ellie Haskell's nesting instincts are in full bloom. She cannot wait to get started, along with the help of her trusted cleaning woman Mrs. Malloy, to whip Merlin's Court into tip top shape. There is only one problem with her plan. Mrs. Malloy is leaving her to become a full time nanny to her newborn grandchild. However, she has arranged for Mrs. Large to replace her as the cleaning woman on the staff.

Ellie feels that her new employee will work out until she is found dead, a victim of an accident, in the home of the Miller sisters. When her next helper is also found dead in her own home and a third corpse is found inside her missing car, Ellie finds herself working another murder mystery. She intends to solve the case so she can keep her help a little bit longer.

Dorothy Cannell, author of the classic THE THIN WOMAN is in fine form with another extraordinary Ellie Haskell mystery. The cast of eccentric characters that readers have loved for years are all present in THE SPRING CLEANING MURDERS, which is one of Ms. Cannell's most humorous novels to date. Anyone who needs an uplifting experience should try this series that hopefully will have another entry soon.

Harriet Klausner

A rollicking, slapstick story of four absurdly awful mother-in-laws and four put upon wives. On an evening of low spirits and hard liquor, the ladies conspire to "accidentally on purpose" knock off the old girls. The delightful Ellie Haskell, loving wife to the handsome Ben, mama to the darling twins Tam and Abby, and mistress of Merlin's Court gets the action going when she plans an anniversary celebration for the in-laws -- only to find out that the actual wedding never happened. Set in the charming English seaside town of Chitteron Falls, this story is action packed, completely over-the-top, full of delightfully eccentric characters and wickedly witty dialogue. Accidents begin to befall the mother-in-laws, and when one of them dies exactly as dreamed up by the quartet, the saga goes into high gear. A delightfully far-fetched cozy mystery sure to charm.

Well, darn; bought this book hoping for ideas! Kidding; however they did come up with some goodies with naughty results.
This mystery cozy is set in England and has the funny sign-song style I love.
When four "ticked-off" daughters-in-law, get together, they find they have much in common and chat about ways to get rid of their acquired Mothers-in-law. The end result is funny, but has a scary moment or two. Plus I was guessing up to the end, which is pretty unusual, as I'm really Sherlock Nose in disguise!

Absolutely the funniest book I have read in a long time. If anyone has had to deal with a Mother-in-law then this has to stike a cord. Even if your mother-in-law was one of the best. An excellent book, one you can recommend to anyone.

"What is to be done?" is the novel in which noted leftist critic Nikolai Chernyshevsky outlined his vision of a future of economic cooperation and women's rights. Though it is remembered more for its political message than its literary merit, a few words about its plot seem in order. We meet the main character, Vera Pavlovna, as she is about to be betrothed to a man who, though there's nothing especially terrible about him, she does not at all love. She meets the enlightened Dmitri Lopukhov and they fall in love, so, much to her parents' chagrin, they run off together and get married. After a few years of marriage, the odd behavior of Dmitri's close friend Alexander Kirsanov reveals to Dmitri that Alexander loves Vera, and Dmitri correctly suspects that the feeling is mutual, and that although Vera cares for Dmitri very much and appreciates all he has done for her, her passion for him was a youthful indiscretion. Ever sympathetic to his wife's interests, Dmitri contrives to get out of the lovers' way, and Vera and Alexander are happily married for pretty much all of the second half of the novel. Meanwhile, Vera has founded a highly successful sewing union, and Chernyshevsky uses this to preach the value of worker ownership of businesses and also to illustrate women's potential for industry outside the home.

Chernyshevsky admits at a number of points in the work that he wasn't born to be a novelist, and it shows--especially annoying were his inability to stay in the same verb tense and his periodic silly asides to "the sapient reader." Still, I was pleasantly surprised at how gripping I found the work; I was ever anxious to find out what was going to happen to the characters next (partly because their rather unorthodox views on marriage and other matters, especially given the time period, were bound to keep me guessing), and that made the fairly long novel go by a bit more enjoyably than I expected. Some of Chernyshevsky's views, and especially his prophecies for the future, seem a bit naive nowadays (though in my edition, translated in 1886, the translators gleefully note that Chernyshevsky predicted the invention of the electric light), but given when he was writing (1863), it's easier to see how he might fall into some of the traps that he did, and in fact the novel offers a very interesting look at Russian socialist thought in its relatively early years. All in all, though the novel's not great, it's better than it's generally given credit for, and if you're interested in the history of leftist thought or Russian literature, it's a worthwhile read.

Any reader of Russian Literature or interested political observer can recognize how this book condemns the very similar circumstances of Russian society in the post-serfdom and its modern search for idenity in Western Capitalism. Chernyshevsky does not waste anytime hiding what could be considered propaganda in a somewhat didatic novel, but well worth its weight. Considering he had been condemned to a Siberian lifetime exile and hard labor before beginning it, the book is surprisingly fresh and up beat. Definitely a book for readers of Turgenev rather than Doestoyevsky or Tolstoy.

Probably no other single novel or writing has had enough influence on the history of Russia, or for that matter, the modern world. While Marx provided the means and ideas, Chernyshevsky kindled the strongest spark towards the revolution of the peasant masses towards gender and class equality. This work, along with Chernyshevsky's others, was held in the highest esteem in the Soviet Union, shelved along with the philosophies of Marx and Engels and Lenin.

"What is to be done" swept through the liberal student bodies of the Russian universities in the late 19-century, and it was the rereading of Chernyshevsky's novel at Lenin's scholastic exile in Kokushkino that inspired the young man to forge his life's course as a revolutionary. The historical importance alone needs to be understood and appreciated.

Aesthetically, "What is to be done" leaves behind a dry taste in one's mouth; yes, the book is tedious. But at the same time, you can feel the author's energy and fervor at espousing what he really feels is the best course for Russian life, which had been left improved a little, reformed a little, but not wholly bettered since the time of Ivan the Terrible. This is functional art at its best, and it's no question why Chernyshevsky, with his views on art and science given in "The Contemporary," is believed to be the forerunner to Socialist Realism.

Any Russian lit readers should welcome the forerunner to countless Doestoevsky and Tolstoy parodies and reactions, as well as Turgenev's intended "perfect" revolutionary, Bazarov.

Readers of Dorothy Cannell's "The Trouble with Harriet" may be disappointed. After such wonderful stories like "The Thin Woman" and "How to Murder the Man of Your Dreams," "The Trouble With Harriet" drags with little humor and passages more suited to dramatic soliloquies. More time was spent on Ellie's father's bouts of depression and ill-humor than I thought was necessary and the premise of the mystery itself was a bit bland.

I'd really like it if one of these books were to take Ellie and Ben away from Chittendon Falls on a holiday and then shove them headlong into a mystery....but please! Let's get these two together without the kiddies and Freddie lurking about. Frankly, I'd love to read more of Ben.

Although the book was acceptable, I found myself skimming and skipping, a sure sign of boredom with a story.

This is a fine little British cozy with some escapades in Germany on the side. I was drawn in by the title. I had never read this author or series before, and was pleasantly surprised and entertained. Ellie Haskell (sometime interior decorator, full time Mom, daughter of the prodigal Morley) and her husband Bentley (chef and restaurateur) are confronted and confounded with the remains of the mysterious Harriet. Or are they? This domestic duo reminds me somewhat of a Goldie's Colorado Catering (the series by Diane Mott Davidson) Goes Across "the Pond." But the Haskells are more witty and their children far better behaved.

It is a fun frolic with some Saints, sinners, relics and characters endearing and quirky.

Cannell's fans will no doubt agree that Ellie needs a good vacation away from the twins and the most interesting residents of Chittendon Falls. . Understandable then is the reader's frustration, surely shared by our heroine, that yet again that her plans are hijacked by her dramatic and high maintenance family. Instead of jaunting off to a well earned rest and recreate exploring the epicuriously rich France we are delighted to have another Ellie Haskell adventure even if the poor woman must stay at home at Merlon Court.

Readers are again held hostage to Cannell's British wit as seen through her characters old and new. Delightful was the creation of new characters, annoying as they may be, and comforting was the venerable Mrs. Malloy to dazzle us with her adventures, sage advice, and forked but witty tongue.

A slow start but a dazzling finish brings the reader to a delightful and smiling close that seems to never fail to disappoint this devoted fan of the author, leaving me, and I'm sure other readers, hungry for more adventures. In agreement with some of the other reviews, I'd certainly like to see Ellie and Ben on holiday without the Kids. Someplace far from the family and relatives that often bring Ellie to her wits end, Perhaps a cruise to Australia or an African Safari, or even an adventure in the Scottish Highlands. Would it still be the same however, without the family antics that keep our heroine busy and readers in stitches?

Don't miss this witty adventure, excellently written, very amusing continuation of the misadventures Ellie Haskell, her accidental partner and husband, Ben and the usual witty characters of Chittendon Falls.

If you're expecting a gothic that keeps you flipping the pages to experience the fear and desire the heroine has for the hero until the very end, look for another book. The beginning was promising enough, as Lil (kept seeing a little old lady with this name...) arrives in Cornwall, a fitting location. Quickly enough, we get into the murder of the previous heiress, a curse, some shady neighbors and a darkly sexy hero. I settled in, more than ready to be enthralled. Then a funny thing happened. Lil and her man/wolf Ian had sex. Next thing you know, they are a bonded duo, fighting the reality of the curse together. They are in LOVE. Don't get me wrong. I want romance to end this way. I just don't want to read 200+ pages of love joining their fates so they can overcome the curse together. I suppose some will find that romantic. I simply found it dull. Gothics are supposed to be about uncertainty and danger and razor tension. I just didn't get that here. Besides, it was a tad unbelievable that Lil didn't freak out when she realized the guy she loved had a part-time gig as a wolf. That would be too weird for me...

One of two lead titles, The Wolf of Haskell Hall is a promising start to the new Candleglow gothic line form Love Spell.

A failed love affair, a premature child, an untimely death, and a gyspy curse set things in motion pitting Griffith males against Haskell heiresses for neigh a century. Now the last remaining members of the two families have come together at last, will this be the end of the line or a new beginning?

Cornwall 1878: The grizzly death (by wolves) of her predicessor finds young American heiress Delilah Haskell Trent the new owner of Haskell Hall where she meets her groundskeeper Ian Griffith for the first time. She is not yet aware of the history between the two families, however he is. A clash is inevitable for she is arrogant and he is insolent. The combination fires a passion between the two but Ian has a secret that could tear them apart. Lil is in his blood but so is the call of the wild! Lil is certain she can find a cure, but can she find the key to atonement before it's too late?

The story contains an interesting group of side characters, a banty former sailor, and a female horsemaster/detective by the very appropriate name of Holmes, several judgemental members of Cornish society, and two very soulless villians, who will stop at nothing to keep Lil and Ian from breaking the curse.

A good blend of romance and horror, with a prevailing theme of redemption. Readers anxiously awaiting the return of gothic romance will not be dissappointed.

Leslie Tramposch ~ Managing editor PNR

A super romp. She is the heir to Haskell Hall, a forthright American. The LAST Heiress. Her fate is tangle with Ian Griffith the last of his line as well. Both are bound by a 100 year old curse that says Ian will stalk the night as a wolf and will kill the Heiress of Haskel Hall - just as his ancestors killed all the others - unless Lil can find away to leash the heart of the wolf and set them both free.

Ian is a brooding character that will live on in your mind, long after the book is put down.

An absolute super read!!!

This book may indeed be suitable for beginners in functional programming. Having had some previous exposure to FP, I found it very slow going, with tediously long discussion of trivial toy examples.

Aggravating these flaws is the typography, which is not just ugly, but dysfunctional: The font used for the unnumbered section headers is not sufficiently distinguished from the text font, so it is impossible to skip over the examples to new material being discussed.

This was my first text on Haskell, and it certainly got me up to speed on all the essential elements. I prefer Hudaks text for most things, but there is no good reason not to own every Haskell book you can get your hands on. This book is especially strong on learning how to prove things about programs.

It doesnt get to Monads until near the end, but perhaps that is a good thing. It depends on what you want out of a text.

I used this text for self study, and it is well suited to such a task.

I read this book as my first book towards learning functional programming and Haskell specifically. With many years of (imperative and object oriented) software engineering behind me, the concept of functional programming was interesting.

The good parts of this book are that it is extremely well organized. It includes many helpful exercises (which I highly recommend) and a very good introduction (the first ten or dozen chapters).

Later on in the book, however, I found increasing difficulty. The author picks up the pace of the material without, in my opinion, justification. By the end, he covers what, from reading several other books and many online articles, I consider the most confusing topic in a single chapter or two. Reading it several times, I'm still uncertain how to build an I/O intensive program in Haskell, and/or what a Monad truly is and/or how exception processing is properly handled.

That notwithstanding (because it seems to be a fairly common complaint of new Haskell students) I quite enjoyed the book. Before you buy it, though, you may wish to consider books from Paul Hudak (a Yale professor and nice guy) and Richard Bird, both of whom have written on Haskell; Paul actually taught a class which I avoided back in the early 90s - too bad, too, because then I wouldn't have to start from scratch so many years later.

This is the first book I have read of Cannell's and I like it very much, but not without some reservations. Her writing is tight and often very funny. Yet there is something just not quite right about the character portrayal.

I think somehow that Cannell is too reserved in her portraits, especially the main characters of Mrs. Malloy and Ellie. In the right situation I think Cannell should let Ellie go "over the top" so to speak. Everything is so muted even when the situation is totally absurd. When she does allow the characters to exhibit a little more life, as in the scene where the sleuthing duo meet the hilarious Merryweathers, the pages seem to come to life.

Elsewhere, Ellie's observations as the narrative voice just seem lifeless. I think one example that stands out is the bird attack (shades of Hitchcock) on Ellie -- she is in danger and narrates it so matter of fact that it is hard to buy it. Was she in serious danger? Was she truly frightened? Did she feel like Tippi Hedren? It is a dramatic/comedic opportunity lost.

Still, Cannell writes well in general and the story is clever indeed. I will probably try one more of her Ellie Haskell series to see if this one (her 12th I believe) was just created at a point in time where Cannell ran out of steam even as the publishing deadline loomed. The potential is just too great not to give her another shot.

Ellie Haskell is in deep trouble. She has just finished redoing her husband Ben's office. She sent all of his beloved and crummy furnishings to charity and now he hates the new ones. Just in the nick of time Roxie her erstwhile charwoman calls for her help at her new place of employment, a private detective's office. The detective has left for a holiday and an aristocratic client shows up three hours after her scheduled appointment. She wants them to find the daughter of a disgraced and dismissed parlour maid named Flossie Jones. Flossie had apparently been accused of stealing a brooch and fooling around with the gardener and was fired. She died not long after giving birth and terrible things have been happening to the family since then. Lady Krumbly wants to make up for accusing Flossie(the brooch has turned up recently) and to end the curse on the family.

This isn't the best of the series, but it is still alot of fun, Ellie and Roxie really could have used the services of the Flowers Detective Agency, but went on their own with adequate results. Hopefully, some of the older characters will make a reappearance soon, but in the meantime I really enjoyed this one.

Ellie Haskell and her housekeeper, Mrs. Malloy are visiting in the detective's office Malloy cleans when a late client drops in. An elderly aristocrat claims that her family is suffering from a curse left behind by a falsely accused maid. The woman, believing that Ellie and Malloy are detectives, asks them to investigate. A gunman attempts to persuade them to drop the case, but only makes them more anxious to find the truth.

Egged on by her friend, Ellie agrees and the two women set off on a proper English play of manners. There are no end of suspects: a nephew who may have killed his parents with an exploding train set; the nephew's wife who is interested in blackmail; actresses turned maid; the elderly lady herself; and the mysteriously missing Ernestine. It takes continued efforts for Ellie and Malloy to get to the truth--and still make it home in time for Ellie to take care of her family.

Author Dorothy Cannell writes a funny, fast-paced novel. The character dialogue kept me chuckling, as did the rather mad-cap action. The mystery itself won't pose much of a challenge for hard-core cozy readers, but in the case of THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING ERNESTINE, getting there is where the fun is. And there is plenty of fun in this charming novel.