Bill Murray has scored big time depicting the history of two football rivals in Scotland and how they mirror the attitudes of society as a whole. This book depicts the hatres, bigotries and misconceptions portrayed by both clubs. Murray also shows us how each club has parlayed their sectarian beliefs into a multi-million dollar business, not just in Scotland but throughout the world. And through it all both clubs deep down realize that each one could not exist without the other. I highly recommend this book not only to fanatics of football but to history, economic and sociology fanatics as well.

Bill Murray has scored big time depicting the history of two football rivals in Scotland and how they mirror the attitudes of society as a whole. This book depicts the hatres, bigotries and misconceptions portrayed by both clubs. Murray also shows us how each club has parlayed their sectarian beliefs into a multi-million dollar business, not just in Scotland but throughout the world. And through it all both clubs deep down realize that each one could not exist without the other. I highly recommend this book not only to fanatics of football but to history, economic and sociology fanatics as well.

Far too many authors of the English literature on Taiwan focus on the island through the narrow, arguably distorting, lens of the Cold War. Rubinstein is one of the few authors who have made an effort to address this vacuum by presenting an anthology of Taiwan from multiple angles, covering such issue as religion, the environmental movement, and the democratic struggle; as such I highly recommend this readable book as an introduction to Taiwan.

This is one of the very rare systematic reviews on Taiwan's development in all aspects. It covers major issues in that island, including identities, social movements, civil society, political economy, gender, religion, and environmental protection. Not only those who are not familiar with Taiwan before can get very good overall introduction, those trying to do further research on Taiwan can also get much insigtful references.

Les Murray is an iconoclast poet. His style is very much his own and while his precedents are apparent in ee cummings, John Berryman, and even Gerard Manley Hopkins, his voice remains one of a singer on the plains of the Australian landscape. This collection of short poems forces him (by choice) into brevity and for him this is not an easy assignment. Each poem is indeed like a photograph of a captured thought or sight or flight of fancy that he then gives to us as though we are in his darkroom, watching the meanings alter with each bath solution. Example:
"THE MEANING OF EXISTENCE Everything except language/knows the meaning of existence./Trees, plants, rivers, time/know nothing else. They express it/moment by moment as the universe. //
Even this fool of a body/lives it in part, and would/have full dignity within it/but for the ignorant freedom/of my talking mind." Terse, funny, touching, self critical.....this is a warm little volume of beautifully wrought poems. Makes you want more.

This sells so much less than his selected poems, it's absurd. It's not as if the selected poems is the only worthwhile writing of his. The sounds of this book are intense, so great; from the beginning all the way though, he has a powerful ear. & the thoughts & poetry his mind offers in this book are so crazy. It often flirts with nature poetry, but it is not nature poetry (don't worry). It's very modern. It's smart, & pretty carefree, also with some autobiographical little poems & Australian mythology. I learned that some of these are autobiographical from a reading of his I attended recently. These poems are, in fact, even much cooler than I was able to tell at the reading. I wouldn't say he's one of the greatest living masters by any means, but this is fun writing. You should read this. You'll like it. It won't take long.

This book goes through all the basics needed to master advanced mathematics. It covers differential equations; linear differential equations; Laplace transformations; vector analysis; multiple, line and surface integrals with the theorems; Fourier series and integrals; gamma and beta functions, Bessel functions, Legendre and othhogonal functions, partial differential equations, complex variables and conformal mapping, complex inversion formula (for Laplace transformations); and matrices. At the beginning is also a review of the basic terms and rules.

This is a good book to review to refresh your memory of what you studied in school. If you are in school now, this will be a good supplement. As with other books in this series, there are problems you can work to test your knowledge, but not all of them have the answers printed in the book. This is a little bothersome, but the book is still worth the investment.

It's a perfect book for training and reference. Theory is very short, and instead, it contains a lot of examples with solutions. However, the field 'Advanced mathematics' is so wide, that presumably, a reader will only be interested in parts of it.

This text is a good supplement to understanding the use of Fourier analysis and how it is used in real-world applications. The explanations are to the point and the solved problems are all fairly easy to follow.

At the end of the chapter, there are exercises to test your knowledge, and most of the answers are in the back of the book. Modeling the exercises on the problems, you can usually work out what you should do for the exercise.

This is a good study guide.

Very helpful to me in my medical imaging and signal processing assignments! A good buy for any student of engineering or science, particuarly useful to the study of signal analysis.

The authors relate that the paradigm shift in American education has necessarily taken a long time. Still, the systems do change and are changing and their book may be one more stone for completely the arch of change.

What I found most helpful was their stress on teacher empowerment in enacting change. Their research indicates that teachers need less layers of administrative control and more opportunities for entrepreneurial decisions in shaping their learning communities, in determining budget issues, in establishing curriculum and assessments. They applaud recent movemont for fair and rigorous assessments, not only of students but of teachers. If teacher's standards are raised as an educational community, expect respect (financially, socially) to be credited to them. To do this, teachers also need more peer control of their services, control in rating and evaluating each other, and in helping each other find opportunities for collaboration. The results will build better schools beyond the verbiage that blows hard during political years.

I became somewhat bogged down in reading it during the middle chapters. The lengthy reports of how schools have sabotaged their own success, although necessary reading and well presented(especially if one is considering entering education or has just entered the profession), seemed droll. For me, it slowed the journey of reading down.

But definitely read it to the end. Their book would be a good, educational companion suggestion next to Peter Senge's The Fifth Discipline.

"Teaching in America: The slow revolution" is a good read.

Particularly interesting, for me, was the history of the developing professionalism of teachers. The authors make the point that the first revolution, brilliantly captured by Callahan (Education and the Cult of Efficiency) which saw the rise of the administrator class while teachers "... remained locked in a (sic.) hierachical system in which they were treated as hirelings whose work was mandated by a male administrative elite."

The authors argue passionately for a second revolution in teaching which will see teachers recognised as valued professionals. However the price that must be paid, according to the authors, is that teachers need to "... convince the public that they have the will and capacity to make judgments about who is fit to teach and who should be dismissed for incompetence. Teachers must show that they have standards by which their peers will be judged ...."

The growth of teacher professionalism and autonomy will clearly be at the expense of current administrative roles and this is not examined in depth in the book.

Chapter 9 - Teaching in 2020 was excellent and in a section called "Contrasts between the two revolutions" the points examined are: The nature of peer control; Allocation of time and money; Credibility, serving the public good; A revolution by women; Pressure for more egalitarian outcomes; The nature of markets for professional skills; and Sharing authority with parents.

I thought the book presented lots of useful information and thought that the argument that teaching was devalued among professions because (among other things) it was seen as women's work was a call to arms.

Teaching in America is a book that should be placed in the professional reading section for teachers in every school.

Nothing is more frustrating than paying for an item, and not being able to use it. I had to wait till during business hours to call the publishers of this product in order to receive a special code to unlock the information on the cd that I had already paid for! To make matters worse; after writing the code down in the book for future reference I was even more aggravated by the fact that a month or so later, after my husband had deleted the program not realizing what it was, the code I had would not unlock the program for me. To top it off, I could not call the company, because it was a weekend, and they aren't available then to give out codes! As for the book and program itself, it is not comprehensive, as I have come across names while reading the Bible, that are not listed in the book. The cd was the selling point for me, and because of the amount of trouble I have had to go to just to use it, I am not happy with this purchase, and don't even care to call to get the code to unlock this program again. Why should a Christian publisher be so concerned about copy protection? Don't they trust their fellow Christian consumers? Isn't the spread of the gospel more important than protecting the bottom line?

This book is great for Pastors, Ministers, and anyone who wants or needs to be able to properly pronounce names from the Bible. It has really improved my confidence and credibility in this area. I recommend it as a standard tool in everyone's library.

When Josephine, our super-sized sleuth, receives a letter from Wolf
Lambert she decides to visit him in the beautiful Napa Valley while on
assignment there investigating grant applicants.

Wolf is a retired director, owner of a winery, and the proud producer
of x-rated films starring plus sized women. Josephine is also
interested in the tenant downstairs, one Mr. Mulligan who was also going
to be in San Francisco. Upon arriving at Lambert Wineries, she takes a
stroll around. There was a stack of empty wine barrels and half
barrels for sale as planters, and Josephine wanders over to that
display, while she waited to see Wolf, she noticed other people arriving,
supposedly for a tour of the winery.
When Wolf shows up he is blind drunk. As he staggers around he grabs
onto one of the bottom barrels making the whole stack start rolling
down. When the dust clears and Josephine rushes to see about Wolf, she
sees a pair of legs clad in blue jeans hanging out of one of the
barrels. Closer inspection reveals the body of a dead man.

Imagine, if you can, the job the detectives have (with Josephine's help)
sorting out the dead man, the drunken owner, several plus sized women
and a few men, waiting to make a porno film, and Josephine, trying to
establish a rendezvous with her boy friend. I have to admit this is a
first for me. Full of mystery, romance, and plus sized porn stars.

Review by: Ginny Welding

Ms. Murray has also written:
At Large
Large Target
Larger in Death

She's a full figured woman who is comfortable in her own skin, not caring that many people are prejudiced about her size. She works for Mrs. Madrone, a very wealthy woman who lives in San Francisco and gives away sizable sums to charities and organizations that apply to her foundation for a grant. Josephine Fuller, Jo to her friends, is the person who investigates the requesting organization and then reports her findings to Mrs. Madrone.

Jo's latest assignment is the Friend in Need Centers, an organization that councils pregnant women but in reality is a front for the pro-life radicals. At the same time she's performing her duties, she is looking for evidence for clearing her friend Thelma of a murder charge. Somebody doesn't like what Jo is doing because she is shot at twice and comes dangerously close to dying a third time.

The protagonist of this novel is a very likable woman who gains reader empathy but not their sympathy because she doesn't need it. She believes she's attractive and appealing and the audience accepts her on her own terms. The story line is fast paced and the reader never knows who the killer is until the author reveals it in an exciting and believable climax. A TON OF TROUBLE is a ton of fun in this amateur sleuth mystery.

Harriet Klausner

This book is well written and explaining about whole African continent from emergence of man in Africa, its language family, religion to art with lots of pictures. It gives you a good idea what is like as a whole. Information on each country, however, written in the latter half, is a little too brief. It only explains history and general information such as population and capital, etc. If it could provide us more information on cultural differences in each country in order to let us know how they live, for example, their diet, housing conditions, education systems, fashions, festivals, it would be much more informational and vivid. This is a good atlas to provide an overall picture of the continent Africa.

If you're interested in the future uses and directions of digitized images, Alan Rath's joining of digitized images with kinetic sculptures is worth considering. Rath doesn't see kinetic art as alienating, so he's a bit baffled by commentaries on kinetic art such as those in his interview with Meredith Tromble ("There are undoubtedly more electronic circuits in my home than there are bits of painted canvas, yet when I imagine art about daily life I still think of a still life or a family portrait."). Rather he sees our relationship to technology as being just as intimate as our relationship to more culturally established forms of art. His digital video sculptures--built from circuit boards, memory chips, frame buffers and wires--are meant to be playful investigations of people's relationship to machinery and technology. For example, though Rath uses digitized videotaped images of the human eye to lend a psychological presence to his kinetic sculptures, he resists tendencies to anthropomorphize his sculptures in order to discover and create new modes of exchange and social relationships. In Rath's "Watcher," a wall-mounted monitor showing a shifting pair of eyes-neither quite inanimate nor animate-the effect of the image isn't to create a kind of portrait, or suggest any real perceptual ability, but simply to draw attention to our emotional responses as our traditional modes of relating are questioned and thwarted.

A 2-D book format is obviously not the optimal format for experiencing Rath's kinetic sculptures. Nevertheless, if you don't have the opportunity to go to one of his exhibits, the photographs of Rath's exhibited works at SITE Santa Fe is the next best thing.