This hefty volume provides all the necessary information that a collector needs: prices of four grades, metal composition and weight, coin picture, mintage, dates, mint and a KM number of every coin. Additional useful appendices are also included, which can faciliatete the task of identifying cryptic coins (using this book, I've identified three previously unidentifiable coins!) My only criticism is that the coins appear in black and white. A color verion might augment the price, but at least in some parts, this is a must -- For example, when the authors explain how to grade coins, one can hardly see the difference between Unc and AU, or XF and VF. I also found one coin missing from the Israeli catalog, but other than that this is an excellent collector's reference.

THE BOOKS IS VERY FAMOUS AMOUND US-THE COIN COLLECTIONS FANS. I HOPE TO BUY THIS BOOK IN CHINA.PLEASE TELL ME WHERE I CAN FIND THE BOOK. I'M LIVING IN DALIAN, CHINA.

This book makes no bones about it, it is The Essentials of FORTRAN. If you are already a programmer looking to get into FORTRAN programming, this book would be extremely helpful. If you aren't a programmer, however, this isn't where to start. Good orginization allows easy reference to topice you may need help with.

It's short and has all the basics. I have been programming in C for a few years and had to do some Fortan programming. I bought this book only and it was a breeze to wade through. Smolarski writes very clearly and it's only 120 pages so it reads very easily. The only bad thing is that certain parts towards the end are not clear in the absence of examples. One thing that bugged me was the absence of an example of the COMMON statement and a description of how one would use it. The ENTRY statement also suffers the same lack description and I had to consult a colleague to figure out how to use it.

Overall, though, I am very pleased with the purchase. The price can't be beat and it's covers almost every aspect of F77.

The grim and sober notion of a monochromatic Puritan world is quickly put to rest by colonial scholar John C. Miller in his fine volume, The First Frontier: Life in Colonial America. Contrary to the stern stereotypical image of a thousand Thanksgiving pageants and grade school centerpieces, Dr. Miller creates an anecdotal quilt that captures a diverse frontier world that edged the rocky shore of the cold Atlantic. If Dr. Miller's book had been the primer for legions of school children there would have been little dozing in the classroom; America wouldn't have had to wait for Mel Gibson and the Patriot to discuss the finer points of "bundling." Nor would we have questioned Samoset's motivation when it's revealed he boldly marched up to the Pilgrims and asked for beer. The extarordinary range of detail, gleaned from diaries, letters and other primary sources surprises us with anecdotes of crime and punishment, recreation, education, dress, labor and medicine among others. From cockfights, slavery, urban life to mean cabins on the frontier, the first Americans emerge as a diverse species, as unique as the forest they push back from the sea. Consider that, Harvard educated and Stanford professor, Dr. Miller first wrote this thin tome in 1966, makes this undiscovered gem a treasure for any serious student of the American frontier. But, like Washington's Expense Account, it reaches across the coffee table and seizes the mainstream reader's interest. This is a Don't Miss. coleman@gunnison.com

Long a definitive work on the colonial period, this interesting work gives the reader the broad base of knowledge necessary to understand the period.

Alfred Chester, Head of a Sad Angel: Stories 1953-1966, edited by Edward Field (Black Sparrow, 1990)

Alfred Chester is something along the lines of the godfather of what we now know as eighties literature. Warmer than Bukowski, more detached than Faulkner, closer to the point than Sherwood Anderson ever got, the novels pumped out thirty years later by such authors as Ellis and McInerney could have been tarred by the same brush, though Chester mixed a kind of hard-boiled romance with his stark realism. And yet, as Edward Field reminds us in his introduction to the book's nonfiction appendix, Chester was almost totally forgotten by the time of his death in 1971, at the age of forty-three. The fact that an obscure, unknown, then-out-of-print writer could have still influenced a whole (albeit a bad) genre should tell us something: specifically, that Chester is possibly the most neglected important American writer of the twentieth century.

It seems to me that Chester became a forgotten writer as the stars of contemporaries such as Bukowski and Ferlinghetti were rising because Chester went the opposite way of such writers. What Buk et al. distilled from Faulkner was the no-nonsense prose, the ability to tell a tale in the elevated prose that marks poetry while keeping the work as readable as possible. This made Buk et al.'s work more accessible to the public, and thus it was ripe for mainstream consumption. Chester, on the other hand, wrote prose that's as close to poetry as one is ever likely to find; rather than work on the accessibility factor, Chester shuned the idea and mined the simple power of words, leaving them elevated, but unpolished. As such, Chester's stories often demand to be read at leisure, in small doses, and more often than not the writing is thick, many-layered, difficult; yet the reward is there. Chester was a profoundly good writer, and every story in this collection is a gem.

The second section of the book, comprising about seventy pages, is a series of reflections on Chester by those close to him during his descent into the madness that ultimately, though indirectly, caused his death. Such authors as Cynthia Ozick, Dennis Selby, Ira Cohen, and Robert Friend recount anything from one-page snatches of image to long essays on Chester's life. There's a lot of good material here (and it reinforces the autobiographical nature of Chester's work), but it seems to me that Chster's material could have stood on its own, and the biographical materil would have made for a good anthology-style biography of Chester.

The previously-mentioned descent is all too obvious in Chester's work. Early material is tight, ominous, less obtuse than the later work, and with more attentino paid to craft. "As I Was Going Up the Stair" is a horror story in the grand old tradition, but with a sense of newness about it that still rings fresh today; like the best of today's authors, Chester gives us not ghosts and ghouls, but the horrors of absence, of separation. This is stuff that should be in Norton Anthologies, without a doubt. In contrast, the fifty pages that have survived from Chester's final manuscript, "The Foot," show the contrast between the early, almost surreal prose of Chester's early career and the loose, ultra-realistic, somewhat rambling feel of later pages. I do agree with Robert Friend (despite how that last sentence sounds) that "The Foot" may well be the best thing Chester ever wrote; it's a perfect study in how to write a romance novel without a single drop of excess emotion. It is as beautiful, and as stark, as the cinematography in the film version of (Chester contemporary) Paul Bowles' landmark novel _The Sheltering Sky_. It seems that the landscape of Bowles' and Chester's Tunisia-- both were part of the early-sixties expatriate community in western Africa-- may have influenced Chester's writing more than even he knew.

This is very, very strong work, a piece of literary history America is in danger of losing, to its great detriment. Chester should be required reading for any short story writer. ****

This is a brillent collection of short stories written by one of the most talented authors and literary critics of the 20th century.

I found this book by accident in a bookstore one day, and ended up on the floor reading the whole thing in one sitting. It is a compelling and insightful account of the author's journey towards healing from SLE, exploring various natural and conventional therapies, and eventually finding relief using anthroposophical medicine, a system somewhat like homeopathy developed by Rudolph Steiner. This also led me to investigate this form of medicine and the field of anthroposophy in general.

Laura Chester is a gem. She writes and excellent journey of her issues with Lupus SLE. It is a wonderful insight to her soul and can help hundreds in dealing with this terrible disease. I think a big, big, big part of the diary is how she discribes her physician, Dr. Jesse Stoff. This medical doctor writes the forward to this amazing book and is mentioned many times on how he helped Laura understand this disease and what she had to go through to immune her immune function and left her body beat the disease. What Lupus patients have to understand is that Laura Chester's journey and experience is being true to herself on why the disease happened in the first place because of stress and imbalanced lifestyles and dealing with infection. All of these things are outlined in Dr. Jesse Stoff's two other books, The Prostate Miracle and Chronic Fatiuge Syndrome: The Hidden Epidemic. What's interesting in the updated version of Lupus Novice is that Laura doesn't even remember a lot of the pains she went through because she's on the road to recovery and that the past has nothing to do with her future of wellness, since it was her past issues in her life that caused the stress which lead to her disease. This is truely a fasinating book that I recommend at our Institute of Anti-Aging and Longevity to all our Lupus patients along with Dr. Stoff's other two books. In fact, the American Lupus Foundation, highly recommends Lupus Novice also to all the people with Lupus. Again, an outstanding book about, love, compassion, determination, self-actualization and witnessing to all those who suffer from lupus. Anyone interested in the protocals that Dr. Stoff applied to Laura Chester can email us at the Institute of Anti-Aging and Longevity... or call us at 1-800-878-6659 and we will be more than glad to put you on the road to recovery.

This book is definitely not for beginners or amateurs.It is an in depth study of independance by one of the great studio legends.gary Chester has taught well known drummers such as Dave Weckl, Kenny Aronoff and Danny Gottlieb.This is definitely a challenge for any drummer regardless of their experience.The exercises contained in this book are designed to open the players imagination. It is an excellent challenge and it is a must buy for anyone with professional drumming aspirations.Be forewarned it is not an easy book to master !

The greatest book for developing your four limb independance and improvisational skills.This is a useful and challenging book for players of all skill levels.Gary Chester is the master of drum education and he has taught drummers such as Kenny Aronoff and Dave Weckl.This book is a must read for any drummer that has professional aspirations.

This is classic noir crime fiction. The plot revolves around a perennial patsy named Jackson, his fortuitously named girlfriend Imabelle, and their involvement in a get-rich-quick scheme. If you've read any crime fiction, you know how well the scheme works out. Pretty soon, Jackson is left to survive by his wits, which is unfortunate, because Jackson ain't exactly overflowing in the "wits" department. Even more unfortunately for Jackson, the con men, brothel owners, drug addicts and policemen surrounding him are not only smarter than he is, but more violent as well -- particularly Himes's recurring detectives, "Coffin Ed" Jones and "Grave Digger" Johnson.

This book has great characters and vivid prose. I highly recommend it.

Whether or not you're a fan of detective mystery/caper/police procedural fiction--writer Elmore Leonard is considered a living master--there's a treasure of good reading and fantastic storytelling in store when you crack open one of Chester Himes' so-called "Harlem domestic" series. Take the case of the first one, A RAGE IN HARLEM, one hell of an introduction.

Working stiff Jackson may be the squarest square in Harlem. He's gullible, fearful, a bit superstitious and dense, but not stupid--he's Everyman as a member of the black workingclass. He also has one overriding passion: his woman, Imabelle, a down-home high yellow knockout with a shadowy background.

Plucked clean of his savings by black grifters running an old con game, deep in trouble with his boss and his landlady, Jackson's more worried that Imabelle's somehow in peril. He enlists his estranged street-wise scam artist twin, Goldy, to help find and rescue her. Meanwhile, hard-rock Harlem police detectives Grave Digger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson, themselves death on con artists, are also hunting the gang, wanted for murder in Mississippi. They use Goldy and Jackson to corner the gangsters in their hideout when one throws acid in Coffin Ed's face, triggering a whirlwind of bloodletting and madcap pursuit. The action is fast and furious, building to a spine-tingling climax and wry, incredulous close.

Black crime fiction didn't begin with Chester Himes, but nobody has done it better. He gives you more than your money's worth: snappy pacing, rapid-fire action. His short, staccato paragraphs are like cinematic quick cuts, accenting details of character, scene, mood. The range of detail--how people look, what they wear, eat, think; where they come from; particulars of location--is meticulous. You SEE and SENSE this world, this Harlem perhaps removed in time (but not in essence) from today, clearly. One thing I definitely like and respect is that his characters SOUND like real people; his black characters, particularly, sound like black folks I've known all my life.

This points up Himes' (who considered himself a serious artist and social critic) point of view--to try to be accurate and fair. To try, even within the constraints of a genre he scorned--pulp fiction--to turn the ugliness and suffering, the "absurdity" (as he himself put it) of life in a Northern black ghetto into a work of certain beauty and truth.

Well, beauty, or aesthetic, may seem too large a notion for a paperback detective novel, but Himes' sheer craft pulls it off. The book is well-written, richly character-driven, suspenseful. It's alternately side-splitting funny and bone-chillingly gruesome, a thriller you'll probably finish in one sitting. When you do, you'll probably want more. Fortunately, there is.

For those of us who were born a couple of generations after Robert Ruark hunted the African veldt and who cut our teeth on Peter Capstick's prose, this book is a must read. Ruark's tales harken to a halcyon age when hunters were still expected to follow up their own game, cut their own roads through the bush and build their own bridges. Anyone who has ever been bitten by the Africa bug, who has ever longed to seek out and kill something that could kill him in return and who has ached to feel his soul sweat in the glorious exertion of the hunt will appreciate Ruark's tales. Any collection on hunting or Africana is incomplete without this volume. Any collection on man searching for himself is incomplete without this book.

Between June of 1951, and his death on July 1,1965, Robert Ruark spent some time each year in Africa, both hunting and reporting on the changing scene on a continent he fell in love with at first sight, and this book covers those years using magazine articles Ruark wrote. It is more, far more, than a report on "today I shot this and yesterday I shot that" type of writing one so often sees in books of this nature. Some of Ruark's articles on the Mau-Mau uprising in Kenya are included, as fine a piece of straight reporting as was ever done on the terror of that period, along with a short story with (of course) an African/ Mau-Mau theme included as well. Some may complain about Ruark's apparent racism, but the best answer to that is to remind those critcs that both the English colonial government of Kenya AND its first "native" (black African) government both wound up banning Ruark from entering the country. When a reporter gets both sides mad at him its usually a sign that he is doing a fairly rounded job. Robert Ruark loved Africa as he loved no place (and few people), and the articles in this book show that. Those who disapprove of the sport of hunting will want to skip this book, since safaris make up the biggest part of it, but anyone interested in a view of Africa during the turbulent times of the '50's and early '60's would not want to miss it, and anyone interested the fine writing of the driven, self destructive genius that was Robert Ruark MUST have this book.....

This tome offers a comprehensive look at just about every nationally issued gold, platinum, and palladium coin. Specie are listed by country. All photographs are black & white and lifesize. I believe private issued coins are not covered. For all the listed coins, the mintage numbers, dimensions, and estimated value are provided.

All in all the most complete reference to gold, platinum, and palladium coins you will find in one book.

This is the catalog that has it all. Solidly researched and well illustrated. It is a gold mine of information all on its own. From novice to serious collector the information is useful.

This book is more than just a description of one man's life. As one wades through chapter after chapter of Don McCullin's thoughts and reflections, it's plain to see that he is a fighter. From a harsh upbringing in wartime London, to his constant struggle to bring images of conflict and misery into the public eye and his resultant battle against the ghosts of his death-stained past, a theme of conflict courses through the pages of this book like hot blood from a unstaunched bullet wound.

Unlike John Simpson's hedonistic autobiography of his life hopping between the earth's hotspots, "Strange Places, Questionable People", McCullin dashes past the glorifying clichés of foreign correspondence and portrays the harsh reality of a life under constant pressure, whether it be the initial social stigma of being of an inferior class within the media sector, the fear experienced as incoming artillery comes whistling towards him, or being locked up in a foreign prison, where death lurks around every corner.

This is McCullin's way of exorcising the demons of a life filled with frightful images that most of us merely glance at from time to time, and acknowledges this in the final chapter. Although McCullin does not delve as deep into the psyche as Anthony Loyd's memoir "My War Gone By, I Miss It So", this book rates as being one of the most sincere accounts of life on the front-line as I have experienced.

I came back to Don McCullin after accidentally coming across a collection of his photos many years ago. A photgraph he took of a starving albino Biafran boy had seared its self into my memory, though at the time I was too wrapped up in my college reading requirements to fully explore his work and autobiography. So five years later, while I couldn't remember McCullin's name, the power of that one picture egged me on until I finally, after digging through the university library's photo section for a few hours, found his books again.

The autobiography is amazing because of the incredible story and insanity of McCullin's career. It is all the more extraordinary because of the direct potency of the writing coming from a man who has suffered from dyslexia and generally avoided books. With this work McCullin shows the humanity of war and the morbid destruction thrust upon a people; the surreal insanity that must infect those living with and creating death.

With yet another large scale war impending this book is an illustration of the basic humanity that too often gets lost in politics.