Plutarch tends to be moralistic and tangential. Thucydides slows down his narrative with an abundance of detail and set speeches. If you want a good, straightforward "rumpty tumpty" presentation of exciting and dramatic historical events, then Diodorus is your man. He doesn't shy away either from describing violence and brutality when necessary. Although Plutarch's characterization and Thucydides's clarity are beyond compare, Diodorus's history can compete because its sweep is so much grander.

This volume from the Loeb Classical Library, Greek on one page, English on the other, covers the period 431 BC to 405 BC. This, of course, is the period of the Pelopennesian War and so, in a sense, Diodorus's history is clashing head-to-head with that of Thucydides. In the event it stands up quite well. Although Thucydides presents a much better account of events in Greece, Diodorus edges him in his account of the Athenian expedition against Syracuse. He also finishes the war whereas the history of Thucydides breaks off in the year 411.

The most important event of the so-called Pelopennesian War happened very far from the Pelopennese. This was the Athenian attempt to capture Syracuse, which, although well planned and supported, ended in disaster. After initial victories, the Athenians just failed to wall off the city, then a run of bad luck saw them reduced to fighting for their survival until another fleet and army arrived to reinforce them. This sudden advantage, however, was thrown away in a single night by a confused attack in the dark on the heights above the city. After this, still confident in the strength of their 'invincible armada,' the Athenians saw even this, their last hope, whittled away in a series of naval battles. When there was still hope of escaping with their remaining ships, their superstitious commander, Nicias, delayed the attempt because of an eclipse of the Moon. This allowed the Syracusans to finally trap and destroy their would-be conquerors.

Following these exciting events, the drama of the book is maintained by Athen's attempt to survive the onslaught of its enemies. For a while the brilliant political and military talents of Alcibiades succeed in reviving Athenian power, but following his undeserved exile, the Athenian fleet is decisively defeated and Athens is helpless.

Diodorus rounds off events in Sicily by describing Carthage's response to the Syracusan victory - a massive invasion of Western Sicily - and the advantage taken of these events by the Syracusan general Dionysius, who used this emergency to seize power and set up his famous dictatorship.

As Always with Loeb editions, each page is dated in the side margin so that the chronology of events is always clear. Also, this volume comes with two maps showing the area around Syracuse in detail.

The book is written so anyone can understand and use the information on a daily basis. It provides valuable information on prevention, healing yourself, and has helpful ideas. The pictures are clear and the directions are very easy to follow step by step. You can learn the important pressure points quickly.
I have used the tehniques to travel 22 hours on a plane and did not get air sick, swollen limbs, or suffer from jet lag just from using a few pressure points and following the helpful hints.
The herbal and aroma therapy is also very helpful for relaxation and improving health. I highly recommend this book to anyone!

This book is very accurate and shows many examples for proof of statements. The authors didnot jump to conclusions for the sake of links to famous people or events. I found this to be a great guide for the novice researcher because it emphisises caution on assumptions. Tells you straight out if there wasn't enough proof for them to be positive but listed the information in case proof comes later It is easy to read and follow though the many generations. There are enough interesting tales, writings, wills etc to cause you to forget your original purpose and to begin to read as if it were a history book. Which may or maynot be a good thing.

The problem I see as the owner of both books Volumn 1 and 2 is that the index is in the 2nd book and you seem to be offering only the 1st book and this will leave researchers lost who don't know who is in which geneation, exact dates of birth, locations and which given name applies to your relative (some of which are repeated by every sibling in the family when naming their own children and on and on for generations). I suggest you make the 2nd book available to your customers too. It contains wills, property titles, lots of later date relatives witness to legal events and much more. The 2 books are of equal value to a genealogy researcher.

The phenomena covered by this monograph have a long history, going back to 1914 papers by Sommerfeld and Brillouin, but the topic is still not completely understood; Sommerfeld's and Brillouin's work contained errors that have since been corrected, but the topic is quite difficult in terms of mathematics, physics, and experimental apparatus and instrumentation, so much progress remains to be made.

However, much progress has already been made, and much of it by the authors of this monograph. I was unaware of it until very recently, and I found it startling and important reading. It has significant practical implications for various fields, but I gather that many people besides me have been completely unaware of the progress made since 1970; I have recent papers on nuclear effects, radar, and high-powered microwave weapons sitting in my office whose authors were obviously unaware of how much progress Oughstun and others have made, and these papers would have been noticeably improved if they had included consideration of what is now known about pulse propagation in causal dielectrics.

So I urge engineers, physicists and others dealing with issues involving steep rise times of electromagnetic pulses to read this book, and consider how it may affect their work and their conclusions.

Prof. Oughstun has been continuing his research on this topic since his book was published in 1994; his more recent papers are listed in his CV on the Web. I hope he will soon issue a revised edition of this monograph, incorporating his more recent results and those of others; that would be a considerable service to the community. I also hope that Oughstun, or somebody, will produce an equally up-to-date monograph about what is now known on the question of how the pulse propagation phenomena described by Oughstun can alter the properties of the causal dielectrics through which the propagation occurs.

I will conclude by saying that because I have been involved off and on since the late 1960s in work that's affected by the material Oughstun covers in this book, I am both mildly surprised and somewhat embarrassed that I, and apparently many others, have been so unaware of it.

Read the book!

I read this book several times while my son was doing a book report on it and was favorably impressed. HOWEVER, parents of children of broken homes may wish to pre-read this book; it could leave an impression that divorced fathers who have left the area don't really want contact, or that stepfathers are just-as-good, maybe-better, father replacements.
It is written in "layers," so that on a first reading the reader gets the plot, while on a second reading or further reflection, the reader picks up new details and shades of meaning, including the motivations and feelings of the characters.
Eight-year-old Eli misses his dad, who in reality left Washington state three years prior upon divorce for a new life in Alaska, sending a postcard every year or so. Yet Eli idealizes his dad, imagining that his dad (and his dad's new wife and baby) would love to have Eli drop in on them. As much as Eli idealizes his dad, he detests his stepfather, who is portrayed as a loving father figure.
So Eli decides to bicycle from Washington to Alaska. In one day, taking a sandwich in case he gets hungry on the way.
Just out of town, Eli is crossing the swamp on his bike when Eli falls. There right in front of him is the Swamp Man -- who, according to local child rumor, likes nothing better than torturing children. Yet the Swamp Man, by asking a few indirect questions, and using a ruse to delay Eli, not only figures out why Eli is running, but says the right things to help Eli realize there's no place like home.

After reading Larry Burkett's fantasies ("Coming Economic Earthquake", "Illuminati", and "Thor Conspiracy" to name a few), it was a real joy to read a book written by an individual with knowledge of macroeconomics and not merely a personal financial advisor. Burkett's books are thinly veiled conspiracy tripe and Sherman Smith's book is a well-written and thoroughly informed antedote to Burkett's far right wing conspiracy nonsense. Burkett's predictions have already been proven false, so that is all the more reason to look to a sane approach such as Smith takes. Highly recommended!

The human brain is dominated by the wrinkled sheet of gray matter called the neocortex. Almost all the information reaching this sheet arrives via an obscure but vital lump of 100 million nerve cells called the thalamus, the subject of Sherman and Guillery's exciting though forbidding book. The book is exciting because it breaks away from the sterile, narrow and hyperfactual approaches that have hitherto dominated this field. Even more exciting are the glimpsed possibilities it provides that if we could only understand the thalamus, we could perhaps also understand the neocortex, and hence, the human mind. The book is forbidding because the thalamus is complex, mysterious and seemingly useless - like the hieroglyphics carved on an old pointed rock sold in a bazaar as a hatrack. Other far more expensive tomes on the thalamus insist that it is merely a hatrack, but Sherman and Guillery rightly concentrate on the hieroglyphics, though they ultimately admit themselves stumped. We still do not know what the thalamus does, but the authors bring a number of new issues to center stage that will surely be part of the solution. First, the main cells of the thalamus can send two quite different sorts of electrical message to the cortex. Second, the message selection hinges on "modulatory" influences arriving from the cortex itself as well as deep brain regions that control sleep, dreams and attention. Third, when one part of the neocortex communicates with another, it often does so via the thalamus, as though it cannot understand messages unless they are thalamically interpreted. If you want to reach the basecamp that leads to the unconquered Everest of science, the human brain, struggle through this book.

I am a person who cannot agree with any one theory that says: "your ultimate way to happnies is 'X' or 'Z'". Yet, Harold Sherman's revolutionary concepts make you re think and re learn all you thought you knew.

Basically, the core thesis of his thought is: you create your own reality - wheter its in business, private or whatever. The universe works under a constant "cause and effect" law, ruled impersonally.

Put your mind to good use, hold clear images of what you would like manifested, beyond wishful thinking or simple day dreaming; clear images, and see your life change before your very eyes. My sincere wish is that all people would have a chance to put this very basic principle to use.

This book is a thoroughly enjoyable account of the last 60 years of Vermont's history. Sherman does a masterful job of weaving in details from all aspects of life. He even makes politics interesting- -something very few writers do well. His facts are supported and personalized by countless interviews with the people who made history.