If, as the Kirkus Review notes, you merely want a book as entertainment, you'll be bored by Kessel's stories. His work is intelligent, literate, and is intended to challenge readers. A cut above the mindless formula of most science fiction.

I'm a fan of short form science fiction, and this is one of the most under-appreciated collections I can recall. The enchantment lies in the unexplained premise behind most of the stories, situations that are taken for granted, as if they're perfectly normal. Such as the endless drive down an infinite highway mentioned in the Kirkus review. The writing is excellent and overall the collection is very entertaining.

Anyone who's ever had to name a pet will appreciate the predicament that this family is going through when they adopt a stray kitty. Everyone, from family members to classmates, offers suggestions: Kabuki, Nimbus and Fish Breath among them. But no one can agree on which name is just right for the black and white feline. As the family goes through name after name, the cat assimilates into the family's daily life. His curiosity gets him into some hot water, but his luck gets him out unscathed.

By the end of the story, when he falls out a window and luckily manages to land safely on his feet, a name chooses the cat. (And I bet you can guess what it is!) Pringle, a prolific writer of science and nature books for children, wrote this warm story after his family adopted a stray cat (whom they named Willow.) Potter's colorful pastel drawings are equally warm-hearted. Her playful illustrations of the cat "trying on" each of the names will please young readers.

What fun! Even if you aren't a cat lover, you'll enjoy the family's predicament as they try to find the perfect name for their newly adopted cat. Of course the cat's shenanigans and adventures result in a descriptive name that sticks.

This is a great story for families to read together. It's exciting for the young ones and engaging for their parents.

If a cat has ever adopted you, you'll identify with this story. Great job, Mr. Pringle and Ms. Potter!

....but I was a tad disappointed with the slight bias towards forms with lids and handles. Despite this, the book is a great guide for beginner and intermediate level pottery enthusiasts (using either hand throwing and coiling methods)as it contains a lot of ideas to make your next project! A good book to have if you are just starting out and want to break away from the traditional shapes of bowls and pots.

... well illustrated with photos of every type of shape and form... a picture book for potters! A fun reminder of forms often forgotten when busy producing a "type" of piece. Broken down into seven sections; including holloware, flatware and decorative, and further sub-sectioned by pages specifically for lids, handles and feet... each page has a color-coded technique key, as well as a photo example and drawn example of each shape or form. This well layed out and easy to follow book is a definite asset to any potter's library. Also includes term glossary.

This is, in my opinion, Ms. Potters best book.I have read it about four times now.I highly reccomend it.

this is by far the best romance i have ever read!!

When I first began this book, I was a bit skeptical. I wasnt sure at all that I could make it through the whole thing. But after a few chapters, I found myself falling in love with Miss Potter. It is a great story, for unlike most biographies I have read, It ends on a happy note. Her final years were much better than her first.

The late Margaret Lane, President of The Women's Press Club, the Dickens Fellowship, the Johnson Society, the Brontë Society and the Jane Austen Society has written this charming little book about Beatrix Potter.

Beatrix Potter's life was a very private one, carefully hidden from the public eye, although she is known and loved by generations of children. Her life began in joylessness and solitude, with drawing as her one fascination.

In the book we follow Beatrix Potter through her sad childhood, her struggle for independence, her illfated love affair and happy marriage, and we learn about how she created all these charming and whimsical characters - Peter Rabbit, Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle, Jemima Puddle-Duck, Tom Kitten and so many more. The book is illustrated with old photographs, and pen and ink illustrations by Beatrix Potter herself. A must for any Beatrix Potter lover.

Britt Arnhild Lindland

Far from Potter's most famous book, this must be one of her most gripping tales - and with the darker side of life more pressing than usual! Tabitha Twitchet has lost track of her son, Tom Kitten, somewhere in the old house they inhabit. As she searches, she frets about the rats that infest the hidden reaches of the walls. Cut to Tom, escaping mother's discipline via the dubious strategem of entering the chimney and exploring the flues, only to be captured by the enormous old rat, Samuel Whiskers, whose wife begins the work of turning terrified Tom into a "kitten dumpling roly-poly pudding!" My three-year-old adores this story, albeit with a tense excitement (no, it hasn't given her nightmares). It is a bit less lavishly illustrated than some of Potter's work, but there are a number of good watercolors and many fine line drawings.

This is one of my favorite stories when I was younger, and still is today. This story is so funny, and cute, and charming. In it you follow Tom Kitten along his adventure, more like a MISadventure. His mother is Ms. Tabitha Twitchit, a very fussy, over protective mother of her three kittens. Moppet, Mittens, and our hero of the story are silly kittens who are always mischeivious in any situation. They are always running away from their mother in their huge house, sneaking around, trying to cause trouble. Follow Tom Kitten as he goes on an adventure that is more dangerous than fun. When he gets lost and Tabitha tries to find him, her sister Mrs. Ribby, who is very fussy and angry with Tom, doesn't help the situation. See what happens to Tom when he gets trapped with two HUGE HUNGRY rates with no way to escape! This, in my opinion, is one of her best stories and the characters in it are unforgetable.

'The Tale Of Tom Kitten' sees Beatrix Potter at her most fey. Three young kittens muck about in the garden, tormenting their neighbouring creatures, and generally being boisterous-but-nice kids. Their class-conscious mother (very few fathers in Potter's world) is having relatives around for tea, and gives her children unwelcome baths and brushings down, before making them wear the most appallingly naff Sundaywear. Unfortunately, Tom's been eating one too many pork pies, and bursts out of his pale blue two-piece, looking rather seedy.

The charm of this story lies in the infectious playfulness of the children, their universally-understandable indifference to their elders' desire for 'respectability', and the quaint evocation of an Edwardian farmstead.

The Tale of Tom Kitten is Beatrix Potter at her best. It is certainly one of our family favorites. This is the story of three kittens all dressed in their best clothes and set out to play. They struggle to keep their clothes on only to lose them. They meet three ducks along the way who waddle off with the poorly fitted clothes. When the kittens return home their mother sends them upstairs while she hosts a tea party. Of course they cause a ruckus disturbing the "dignity and repose" of the party. The book ends with the ducks still searching for the clothes at the bottom of a pond. What makes Beatrix Potter so wonderful is her delightful vocablary that stretches a childs intellect. There is a mutual respect between Potter and the reader. Having drawn and painted animals and plant life since a child she is a master of anthropomorphisim, the giving of human qualities to animals or objects. Her delicate watercolors are perfectly suited to the playfullness of the story. This is a classic that should be a part of every child's library.

This is a well researched academic study of the "New Deal" politics behind America's first great "war on crime," when J. Edgar Hoover's "G-men" defeated the highly publicized Midwest bandits personified by the likes of Dillinger, Pretty Boy Floyd, Baby Face Nelson, the Barker-Karpis gang, and Bonnie and Clyde, while simultaneously avoiding any serious conflicts with the forces of organized crime. Potter delves deeply into the popular culture of gangster adulation in the 1930's and also considers the racketeer influence on big city political machines as a factor influencing the Justice Department's crime war. In other words, it was not only surer of success but also more politically rewarding to pursue bank robbers than real mobsters. The efforts of Hoover and his boss, Attorney General Homer Cummings, to overcome state's rights advocates and create a national police agency (the modern FBI) was successful and rested largely on the Justice Department's promotion of Dillinger and other outlaws into national menaces. This is a great study of the era and well worth any gangster buff's time and study. The only real flaws I can see in this book are as follows: [1] it barely--and inaccurately--mentions the Kansas City Union Station massacre, which brought the FBI much needed public support and resulted in the "G-men" being granted the authority to carry firearms; [2] the author implies that there were more than four Barker children and some were honest, which I'm guessing is based purely on the erroneous relatives listed on the Justice Department's Identification Order on Arthur "Doc" Barker; and [3] many names are omitted from the index. These caused me to dock a star from an otherwise excellent work.

Potter brings to life the dynamic interplay between the various aspects (print, radio, film, law, etc.) of mass culture in the US during the 1930's and the omnipresent state "war on crime." Through the skillful depiction and dissection of interesting chapters in the war against crime, such as Bonnie and Cylde, Dillinger, the Barker-Karpis gang, the rise of the FBI, and Hoover's orchestration of crime-fighting operations, this work suggests a "new model for political history." This model recognizes and provides an array of examples that demonstrate that cultural phenomena and the political sphere intersected in the 1930's to produce a new, more modern sense of the American "state" during this period. This is an excellent read and I highly recommend it. In particular, I suggest it to those interested in crime in the 1930's, the politics and cultural passion for post-Depression criminal-heroes, and the nascent idea of a more imposing and powerful state bureaucracy.

This book is a mischievous mix of fantasy and science fiction - magic and technology, old and new. The characters are well-written; the plot is full of suspense and surprises. It is multi-faceted and many-layered, and I hope the series continues for many years. For true fantasy fans, this is a gem of a find. Don't miss out

SPHERE REVIEW: In a fantastical universe, the Davan Empire had been at war virtually since its inception. Refugees from many worlds attempt to escape the marauding Shandal Empire, bent on destroying everything and everyone in its path. The Davans, an Immortal Race, responding to the desperate pleas from mortal races; and millenia later, the war still rages on. On occasion, a unique book comes along; one which can hardly be easily categorized. The "Winds of Dawn" is such a book. It blends Fantasy, Science Fiction, Mystery, Mysticism and Military Tactics all in one; and leaves the reader waiting anxiously for the next book.

Don't listen to those people that tell you that this is how you should start learning perl. After the first 20 pages I was extremely confused, mainly because of the discussion of classes in the very first chapter. The main problem I found with this book was that every paragraph seems to bombard you with a new subject.

It's good, though, if you're the kind that focuses intensely on your reading and absorbs every, single word; but if you're like the rest of us, you'll need something easier to start out with. It's certainly a good reference, although I'd recommend the Perl Cookbook if that's all you need...

For beginners, Perl from the Ground Up by Michael McMillan or Learning Perl (a bit faster paced) by Randal L. Schwartz and Tom Phoenix are the better of the bunch, but if you have a moderate programming background, this book's fine :)

The book itself, used as a Reference and for mastering Perl, is a five star book. But there are a quite a few disadvantages:

1. The book is not intended to the ones who have no programming experience at all. The read should be at least an intermediate programmer, because the basic programming concepts of the language (Variables, Subs and etc..) are badly explained.

2. Because of Perl's C Like Syntax, it is recommended that the reader will know C, Awk, or Grep and Some experience in the Unix Environment.

3. The Book itself is badly organized, certain complicated things are shown in examples and explanations, and those things are taught many pages afterwards. For Example: An Example of a perl program is shown on page 10, and that example contains subs and pattern matching, which are taught 100 Pages later!

These are the 3 Main Disadvantages. For Conclusion, if you're new to programming, or want to learn Perl easliy, buy "Learning Perl", but if you're a somewhat experienced programmer, and want to master Perl, this book is the best one you'll find for that purpose.

The book is definetely written for those who at least have some (or maybe a little more than just "some") programming background, and willing to learn Perl from the author of the language.

I read the first edition of the book, which was about 200 pages, or something in that range, which filled my mind with nothing but questions. Current edition, however, could answer to all of those questions (well, almost). Of course, to make it answer them I had to re-read the book four times. But none of the books I currently own (and I own quite a few) could've taken me to the innards of the language so deep no matter how many times I had read them. So the book is of value.

The Camel book, especially, does a great job on Regular Expressions and pattern matching. If you want to learn RegEx of perl in very details, you definitely need listen to the author of Perl. "Mastering Regular Expressions" by Jeffrey Friedl is also a good choise, but doesn't include the latest updates.

Formats aren't covered very well though. So you might consider "The Lama book" for that ("Learning Perl"). Still, none of the books can tell you about the innards of the Perl in so much detail overall than "Programming Perl".

OOP is also toched upon in the book. Since purpose of the author is not to preach you OO lingo (but plain Perl), you'll treat that part just as an intorduction to OOP and consider "Object Oriented perl" by Damian Convey as the next text book.

I found chpater 14, "Tied variables" very helpfull though. It might remind you of DBM/Berkley DB, through the syntax

tie my %db, 'AnyDBM_File', 'my_file', O_CREAT|O_RDWR, 0664;

but unfortunately it's not about DBM at all. It is about how the "tie" function works, and teaches you how to create your own classes for implementing with "tie". After that chapter, I even had to update some of my classes and saved lots of time for their updates.

"Compiling", chapter 18 ,is a must read chapter for those who "live & breath" with Perl (like me, may be ?).

I don't want you to buy the book unless you have a good understanding of Programming or/and have knowledge of some programming languages. Otherwise, it won't help at all.

If your purpose is just to get started with Web applications, go for "CGI progamming 101" by Jacqueline Hamilton. It is a good start. But if you want to go even deeper, "Learning Perl" and "Perl Coookbook" is the next choise. Keep the "The Camel" book as the next (but definitely, not the last).