Well, I might say this is a great book, believe me. It was the first book i read of the author and I enjoy it for over 7 years. And for 6 years i looked it all over my country and didn't found it. [thanks God there are places like Amazon.com :-) ] This novel makes you dream inside the characters. I love China, although I am not of that country and this book makes me feel the difficulties of the epoch, the thinking and the hope of people. I can grant that you won't be dissapointed. 4 stars up! ENJOY

If you read Dragon Seed, the prequel to this book, you will know that you read this book because you couldn't live with the ending that was given! So you read this book and it continues to provide more historical information and answer some of those questions that you had from the last book. However, by the time this book ends, you seem to have more questions than before. I won't spoil it for you, but I was thinking that perhaps the title might explain all unanswered questions simutaneously! Also, the book tends to become a little boring at some parts. Yet every second of boredom is compensated for by later events of extreme excitement. Doubtlessly though, it is a GREAT book and a fine sequel, though more could have been done with the plot. Read it!

This book is written with short sentences and easy-to-read vocabulary for the youngest of readers. Sid and Sam make children smile when they are able to read on their own like the "big kids." This cute book will surprise readers with its unexpected ending.

This book has been designated for preschool children, but I have used it for emergent readers in my first grade classroom. The words are primarily phonetic, one-syllable words. This book is a wonderful resource for introducing the /s/ sound.

It is an entertaining book that keeps the interest of its reader.

The many photographs in the book are great. A great collection of photos covering 90 years of Police bikes. However the author assumes a lot of things that are not factual. Simple things like a motorcycle that has the radio speaker mounted on the handlebars he says "The red light is turned to the rear, which is a mystery to this author". He then identifies the famous picture of four 1920s police sidecar units in front of Ernest Cerini's Donora, Pennsylvania Harley dealership as "somewhere in West Virginia". He shows a photo of the Los Angeles Police Dept. Drill team on page 116 and again on page 117. but on page 117 he identifies them as riders in American Legion uniforms. He shows a photo of an officer wearing the early CHP uniform with what he identifies as a 1936 Indian Chief with early CHP logo on the gas tank. He then misidentifies the officer as a Los Angeles County Motor Patrol officer. The L.A.C.M.P was merged into the CHP six years earlier. These photo misidentifications are just part of the errors in the hastily prepared book
The photographs in this book are priceless. But don't put a lot of faith in the authors description of what is on them. The author really needs to do a lot more research on this subject and learn how to use spellchecker.

... presents a unique comparative study on the transfer to China of American ideas about the organization of scientific research and its roles in society. Though the author is primarily interested in the social history of American science in a period of rapid industrialization, about a third of his book is concerned with Chinese students then in the U.S. and their perceptions of the American models and Chinese society. The book gives extensive coverage on the views of policy-makers of the Rockefeller Foundation's China Medical Board, which sponsored the Peking Union Medical College (Beijing Xiehe Yixueyuan), and that of the Boxer Indemnity fellowship program (later to be named as the China Foundation for the Promotion of Education and Culture).... The book pays special attentions to the social and institutional framework in the development of modern Chinese science, in particular, the roles of the Science Society of China, which was modeled after the American Association for the Advancement of Science and founded at Cornell University in 1915. Among the founding members of the Science
Society of China (Zhongguo Kexueshe), the most prominent figures include Hu Shi (Hu Shih), Yang Chuan (Yang Xing-Fu), Zen H.C. (Ren Hong-Juan), Zhao Yuanren (Chao Yuen-Jen), Bing Zhi (Ping Chih) whose activities and views have been covered extensively in Peter Buck's book.

Despite the contributions of the American-trained Chinese scientists, however, Peter Buck's main conclusion of the book is that the attempt to make science take root in China had largely failed. Quoting the phrases of a Chinese sociologist, Fei Hsiao-tung, from his book of the 1940's, China's Gentry, Peter Buck wrote: It was clear that "the need in present-day China to modernize quickly" could only be "met by the introduction of Western knowledge," but those Chinese who had the requisite technical abilities had~~ isolated themselves from their countrymen. They had conspicuously failed to~ "find a bridge by means of which they might bring over and apply their knowledge to their own communities. Without such a bridge modern knowledge [was] ineffectively hanging in the air."

According to Peter Buck's analysis, such assessment of the new scientific establishment in China was not only shared by some Chinese scientists and observers, but also by their American sponsors and advisors. ...

Many readers of this book may find Peter Buck's conclusion to be unfairly critical towards the effort by American-trained Chinese and their American mentors to implant modern science on the Chinese soil. This is true to a certain extent...The tremendous political and social constraints presented during the timeframe (1876-1936) might well be beyond control of the Americans and the Chinese scientists. Peter Buck himself acknowledges that there is no easy alternative method for underdeveloped countries to develop science:

"There can be no question but that, in exporting science, the West has been more preoccupied with furthering its own ambitions, imperialist and otherwise, than with meeting or even attempting to discern the needs of backward countries." Yet, according to Buck, the apparent alternative-refraining from exporting advanced science and technology and making no effort to construct or to encourage others to construct more appropriate bodies of knowledge--was and is no solution at all. The most valuable contribution of Buck's book is that it presents more perceptive questions than ready answers. As a Chinese reader who is more interested in the response of Chinese intellectuals to the West than in the subtlety of American thoughts on the sociology of science, I am somewhat disappointed with the unevenness of statistics concerning American-trained Chinese in the book. I believe this book is not suitable to serve as a source book or "bible" on the American-trained Chinese. However, it can serve an equally, if not more, important purpose, i.e., to stimulate our reflections on the intellectual footsteps of our forerunners. The American-trained Chinese covered in this book are known for their dedications to the uplifting of China through the development of science. ...

This volume is a coffee-table book cataloque of the Egyptian collection of the Brooklyn Museum. A finely produced book, which contains a sumptuous amount of finely produced photos (mostly color). Though not a comprehensive catalogue of the entire (or even the majority) collection, the items that are presented and very nicely discussed, offer the reader, both lay and academic, and well-rounded view of, and an introduction to, the history and culture of ancient Egypt, and stress the importance of the Museum's Egyptian collection. For those interested in more detailed descriptions, the more comprehensive catalogues of the Museum collections (which as of yet do not cover the entire collection) can be used. In summary, this is one of the nicer catalogues of Egyptian art available to the English-reading public.

i got a closer look into billie holiday's life with each band she was introduced to. this book shed some light on her personal life, but it gives more reference to her career. i still enjoyed the book

Pearl S. Buck, A Bridge for Passing (Pocket, 1962)

The strength of Pearl Buck's writing, it becomes evident from page one, is in her ability to tell a story as if she were sitting next to you sipping lemonade on an unseasonably cool August day. Her observations are flowery, well-described, and often at least a touch naïve; one wonders, had she written the book ten years later, if it would have had the same tone it does.

A Bridge for Passing intertwines the filming of her novel The Big Wave, the first major collaboration between Japanese and American filmmakers (and now unforgivably obscure), with the death of her husband of twenty-five years. And oddly, though the ratio of the two in page real estate is about 90/10, the reviews, the blurbs, and the cover reverse the ratio when talking about the book. To the rest of the world, it seems, A Bridge for Passing was a precursor to the spate of books that started appearing roughly a decade later about how to handle major life crises. The movie was just an afterthought.

Not so, Othello. The movie is the mechanism by which Buck learns to deal with her grief, true, but there is much more to it than that. This is no fictional memoir; we are treated to the lives of real people, most of whom have remained obscure from the American perspective, but some of whom are not (Big Wave director Ted Danielewski, for example, has a pair of kids well known to media critics, House of Leaves author Mark Danielewski and his sister, the singer known as Poe). And when one keeps one's mind on the idea that these are real people, one starts to realize the enormity of the task Buck and her cohorts have set themselves. This is not just an on location shoot, this is politics of the highest order (and only fifteen years after the unpleasantness at the end of World War II).

There is much to be said for the way in which her husband's death pervades the book, but any Buck fans who have avoided this, fearing it to be nothing but a celebrity-penned self-help tome, put your fears at ease. This one's a keeper. *** ½

This book was good, it really helped me out, but the pictures were in black and white. I was dissapointed. Also, the pictures aren't really clear. Otherwise, it was a great book.

Buck Clayton shows himself to be a most articulate musician, covering his life and times from the midwest to California to China. His period with Count Basie was, of course, the most important part of his career, and one wishes that Clayton had written more incisively about that time. But, he writes so well that the book is always entertaining, up to and including his later years when he was forced to play Dixieland music in order to work.

Genetic engineering, alien pubs, obscene amounts
of drinking, shootouts, strange beings from
other worlds all richly illustrated. You
can't lose.

Foglio's artwork is unique and very expressive.
Probably my favourite "light" graphic novel...