I have a 5 and 7 year old. We all think this book is great! It's colorful and informative and Up-To-Date! One feature I enjoy pointing out to my kids is the little images which compare the dinosaurs size to a human child's size. That way we get an even better idea how big the creatures were.

Promising high interest and educational quality alike is this dinosaur 'field guide' for all ages, which packs in museum-quality dinosaur illustrations, expertise by two paleontologist authors, and details on dinosaur digs and places to see fossils in the field. Web sites, museums, and bibliographies are also included in this highly visual, appealing guide.

This is a great book, its got the most info on dino discoveries after about '95, plus interesting facts on previously known about dinos. Its also a very interesting and fun book to read, and is very educational. It has a cool fold out poster too, wich makes it even more fun. I strongly reccemend this book to any one of any age who like dinosaurs.

Enjoy the earth through literature, poetry and meditations with this guide. If you love the feel of dirt beneath you, the wind in your hair, or water on your feet, this is a book you must carry with you.

This is a fantastic book. It has a lot of beautiful poetry in it that celebrates the earth. If you are thinking of buying it, then I would highly recommend it. It is something I plan to use to share with others. I am one of those "treehugger" people, and I suppose that is why I like this book so well. There are several passages in the book that were so moving it brought me to tears.

Thank you Elizabeth and Elias for compiling this wonderful book of earth honoring prayers. I've used it many times to find an appropriate opening or closing to classes or other gatherings where a moment of earth gratitude and awareness was called for. In fact, I've used it so much that I lost it and need to buy another one! It is also a rich source of prayers to use for personal spiritual work, prayers that help slow me down enough to remember the sacredness of the natural world. Even if I'm hard at work in the city and can't be physically present in some of nature's more healing places, at least I can remember to feel the earth beneath my feet, and to honor her. It is a great book just to pick up and browse through, and contains prayers that are ancient and full of the energy of thousands of our ancestors, and prayers that represent a new awakening to our lost heritage. An earth bible for earth lovers! By the way, I've heard rumors of a Volume II. Is it true and can I purchase it here, or elsewhere?

Mary Jane Alexander, I am a New York film critic and enthusiast.

Film historian and authority James Robert Parish has done it again! "The Encyclopedia of Ethnic Groups in Hollywood," like all of Mr. Parish's well-regarded books, is comprehensive, thoroughly accurate and immensely readable. The sheer research is astounding and Mr. Parish uncovers the many fascinating tidbits that enliven film history. This is a book that is a must not only for every film and media library, but also for the general reader and film fan who wants is interested in the careers, lives and place in film history of the many ethnic stars who have thrilled us on screen. Bravo.

Also recommended: The Hollywood Songsters; Hollywood Divaas; and Hollywood Bad Boys

This is a wonderfully concise, detailed, and helpful general reference source for anyone researching ethnicity in the major films, television shows and performers of the past century. The Encyclopedia of Ethnic Groups in Hollywood is easy to read, gives only the important highlights of each title and personality, and is well-indexed. The photographs in the book are nostalgic and illustrative. It's all in here -- the breakthroughs, the award winners, the important firsts, as well as other contributions that make Hollywood history and today's Hollywood unique.

The movies have always help guide and shape moviegoers into an an understanding of who they are, where they're from, and where they're going. But much of the vast American public has been virtually invisible on the screen -- which is why this book is so valuable. Our overlooked ethnic groups -- African Americans, Asian Americans, Hispanic Americans, Jewish Americans, and Native Americans -- now have a wonderful reference source to help them understand who they are, where they're from, where they're going. This encyclopedia may be a bit pricey for average bookbuyers (where's the cheaper paperback edition?), but it will be criminal if every library in the country doesn't make it readily available.

This collection of essays, along with Rosen's other book _Life Itself_, are mandatory reading for any scientist or any astute layperson interested in biology, physics or philosophy of science.

Rosen was a very insightful and technically capable theoretical biologist. His work - first as a student of physicist and theoretical biologist Nicholas Rashevsky, and later as professor emeritus at Dalhousie - is unquestionably of the level of importance of Einstein's Special/General Theory of Relativity, or Godel's Incompleteness Theorems. This is a grand claim to make, but once you read Rosen's work, you will see for yourself.

These are not the easiest books to read, despite Rosen's excellent writing skills. The difficulty is two-fold. First and foremost, the new concepts and paradigms presented are of such breadth and profundity that it can take several readings to begin to fully grasp them adequately. Secondly, Rosen is mathematically (and otherwise) quite astute. The reader will encounter to some degree: category theory, topology, catastrophe theory (Rosen dedicates a chapter on genericity in _Essays_ to Rene Thom), differential equations, dynamical systems, Godel, Church-Turing, as well as philosophical topics of epistemology, ontology, and foundations of biology, mathematics and physics.

This should not, however, deter even the non-professional. Particularly in _Life Itself_, Rosen progresses carefully and patiently, even including a short intro to Category Theory. One can gloss over some of the math and still garner most of the insights from the text alone. _Essays_ utilizes a wider range of math skills, since that book covers a broader range of topics, but it is still quite accessible to the careful and astute reader.

In _Life Itself_, Rosen was investigating the question posed by Erwin Shrodinger originally in his 1943 lecture "What is Life?". Rosen's search led him to peel back in careful detail the foundations of Newtonian mechanics and reveal the underlying tacit assumptions of a state/phase-based physics and the repercussions for science in general, and biology in particular.

By setting aside state/phase-based physics, Rosen then proceeded to layout the groundwork for an atemporal relational biology based on functional organization and to methodically investigate the theoretical limits of mechanistic systems, including along the way: simulation, Turing machines, and the epistemology and ontology of such systems. The distinction eventually becomes clear that any such algorithmic mechanisms cannot embody the kinds of impredicative complexity that are characteristic of an organism. Because the syntax of Newtonian physics can express no such closed loops of entailment, "life" cannot even be described in that model of physics, much less modeled in any complete way. Thus it is that biological organisms are not a mere subset of current physics, but are representative of complexities that require physics to be enlarged.

In _Essays on Life Itself_, Rosen uses his considerable abilities across a broad spectrum of topics to continue the ideas from _Life Itself_. It is difficult to describe how topics as diverse as the assumptions of Pythagoras, the Turing test, universal unfoldings, morphogenesis, mind-brain problem, and more can be in the same book. Mostly, they all in one way or another accomplish one task: to look beyond the limits of how a problem is currently being viewed, and to see it from a larger perspective. Often, these perspectives take Rosen into terrain others would avoid, since they sometimes lead into the non-algorithmic / noncomputable, or the breakdown of the presumed subject-object division, or other kinds of "messy" scenarios.

Often they lead into "complex systems", where Rosen uses the word "complex" to define a certain class of systems - those systems have symptoms of being: impredicative, non-algorithmic, context-dependent, semantic, nonformalizable. This classification is not a desire for obfuscation or ineffability, but is as rigorous as the nonformalizability of Number Theory or the unsolvability in closed form of the n-body problem. It is a complexity akin to the size of a transfinite number: it is not simply a matter of merely being hugely complicated, it is rather an entirely different order of system structure.

However, guided by Rosen, one does not feel uneasy following his path. Rather one feels enriched both in knowledge and in paradigm. Distinguishing the broader generic case from the degenerate or special is a characteristic theme in Rosen. The unfamiliar terrain he argues to is thus not some void, but a grander scale that subsumes the orthodox view.

In that grander view, it may become more clear that some problems are based on incorrect assumptions, while some are more difficult or complex than in the more limited original view. However, it is apparent that Rosen is uninterested in making problems appear simpler by ignoring those difficulties - he is interested in where the science leads. It is an immensely richer, complex view of the physical world that one comes away with. As such, it presents some difficult challanges, but it also opens up vast opportunities - opportunities not visible in the neat and tidy fantasy model of science that generally prevails where it is assumed that with enough effort everything can be reduced or calculated.

Rosen writes deliberately and with precision, and is both a critical and a profound thinker. I hope that he one day receives the recognition and admiration he rightfully deserves.

This collection of papers and presentations, published posthumously, is a companion to Rosen's earlier books "Life Itself" and "Anticipatory Systems: Philosophical, Mathematical and Methodological Foundations". This is probably the most accessible of his work to those without a fairly solid mathematical background. Not that this should prevent people from reading the earlier work since there are many sections that will be quite clear; I just feel that unfortuntely the crucial points of "Life Itself" might be lost due to the seeming technical nature of the explanation.

This is truly paradigm-shifting, moreso than anything else you are likely to read about in science. The Sante Fe crowd such as Stuart Kauffman obviously did not even grasp what Rosen was talking about when they met back in 1994 and that is even more tragic. So much time has been wasted with such money-wasters like the genome mapping fiasco when it could have been going into exploring new axioms for science.

For you see, this is what Rosen so eloquently points out in his work: the present axioms of science are much too limiting to explain anything we really would like to know about the universe. It is very interesting to see that Rosen grasped the implications of what also caught Einstein and Schrodinger's attention: the problem of inertial and gravitational mass. Rosen also points out the myriad of other areas where science has been busy putting band-aid after band-aid on the present set of theories to try to make them predict real phenomena.

For this is the problem with the present-day paradigms: they are only useful for predicting the N+1 state for some dead (and therefore uninteresting) mechanistic universe. The evidence has been staring us in the face for quite a while and I am not sure why Rosen should have been the first to analyze where the problems lie; it is even more surprising why his work appears to be so little known.

I also like the fact that this book is much more polished than his previous work. The index is mostly complete and there is also a list of references. I didn't note very many editorial erros and the language is quite friendly. This is a very high-quality science book and I suspect the first editions will be going for large prices in about 20 years when the "establishment" finally figures out where they went wrong.

Buy this and read it. And read it again. Then wonder why we are rushing pell-mell to "engineer" the world when we don't understand it at all.

Robert Rosen died in December of 1998 after a long bout with diabetes and its complications. He left a significant quantity of unpublished notes and had this book in the publication process. His last "writings" were hand done on paper with great effort due to extensive peripheral neuropathy. It was a mixed blessing to be among the first to read his last works both this manuscript and the next, unfinished one. I am saddened by our loss even as I feel his presence through his writings.

Bob was an eloquent speaker and reading this set of essays is almost as good as hearing him in person. The essays were written to be published in a number of places, usually as invited talks, yet they may as well have been set down to be a book from the start. There is a thread of continuity that makes this the case. In addition, even though I had read many of the essays as they appeared earlier, their juxtaposition in this volume proves that "the whole is more than the sum of its parts"!

His stated purpose of this collection is to, in a sense, "flesh out" arguments in Life Itself (LI) that had to be short or even omitted for what might be called "logistic" reasons. In my opinion the essays do that at least. In LI he began with a caveat with which I am totally sympathetic. He warned the reader that he was weaving a very intricate cloth with a single linear thread and therefore much was being laid upon the reader's shoulders. My own experience is that it took numerous readings to begin to see how the weave was manifest. Once there, things fell into place more and more quickly, yet still a lot more was required because the design is so highly interconnected and rich in levels of meaning. I hope this book of essays will spare others that struggle. It will never be my place to evaluate that possibility since I can never go back.

The first part deals with the relationship of biology and physics within science, which can sound like an innocent enough topic until one understands that it is a revolutionary view.

Underlying it all is the common notion that physics is the source of all scientific laws and that chemistry and biology somehow must utilize physics to be scientific. Rosen rejects this notion and thereby opens a Pandora's Box. He uses the now more than fifty year old essay by Schrödinger, What is Life? as a springboard to the revealing argument about biology's more generic character in comparison to physics. As he does this he develops his notion of complexity as a description of this more generic view promoted by biology in contrast to the kind of "simple systems" which are the subject matter of physics. None of this should sound new to anyone who has read his earlier work, especially Life Itself, except for the new connections and new depths to which the arguments are taken. The result is a more solid whole than ever before

His introduction to this part of the book is worth having here to get a flavor for where he is going: "I claim that Gödelian noncomputability results are a symptom, arising within mathematics itself, indicating that we are trying to solve problems in too limited a universe of discourse." This is a nice capsule version of Rosen's message. If nothing else comes from his writings, this alone should change everyone who understands the message.

The book develops this theme along with the idea that science has limited itself unnecessarily. It created a surrogate world and then insisted that any observations about the real world not compatible with this model were "unscientific". The consequences are many and he explores them systematically. Whether you agree or disagree, an honest reading will require you to re-examine your beliefs.

Daily Bread will take you mere hours to read, but will remain with you for years to come. In frankly searching into his own past for spiritual turning points, Dr. Robert Meade helps us to find such moments in our own existence. Regardless of your personal faith, Daily Bread will will lead you to find the devine in this world, and in doing so will help you to gain some insight into the possibilities of the next. It is a read you will not regret.

Dr. Robert Meade discusses different aspects of his life, such as relationships, work and spirituality, in a comprehensible, insightful manner. The author's experiences demonstrate that he has found God in his life, which we should all strive to do. A genuine success.

Daily Bread: Seven Days To A Healthier Soul by Robert Meade (Kairos Team, Loyola School, New York City) is a powerfully written and deeply reverent of one man's personal spiritual journey, and its implications to leading a more fulfilled, enlightened, and faithful life in accordance with the wisdom of God. This "reader friendly", 63-page treatise offers a brief yet profound introduction to self-examination and expansion of the soul, as well as offering questions to reflect and ponder upon at the close of each chapter. Daily Bread is recommended for students of sanctity with a Christian context, as well as the conditions and circumstances of the human experience with the spiritual realities of contemporary everyday life.

It's hard to believe that Robert Rankin's books are so difficult to obtain on these shores: for my money, Rankin is, hands down, one of the funniest, most visionary authors writing in any genre. His style is loose and playful and, on the onset, seemingly completely at odds with the purpose of constructing a coherent narrative. Laugh-out-loud moments abound however, drawing the slack-jwed reader deep into a web of outrageous characters and even more outrageous situations. An absolutely stunning achievement! I wish I could have amnesia so I could read this book again for the first time!

I fell in love with this book. Mr Rankins inventive and at times, ingenious writing had me enthralled. I just loved the cruelty and revenge factors of this book... and its anti- world supremacy outlook. Just wait for the celebrity summoning chapters, in Roberts own bar on the necronet. Fabulous

This is one of Rankin's best books and is best read after after most of his earlier works (as there are several references).

As usual, Rankin provides a straight forward mix of thought provoking hi-tech concepts, old fashioned suspense, yuk and hilarity.

Easy to read with a title that's brilliant to show off on the train (only kidding) this book is a great example of why Rankin far outstrips Pratchett for action and humour.

The book leaves you wanting more of the same and I think that's a compliment!

This book is the best introduction to data structures and algorithms. Explanations are clear and straight to the point. There are a lot of examples well commented and explained. The web site for this book includes all examples and applets. Applets let you to visualize how all algorithms work in real not just abstract concepts. All the books I have encountered up to now were very mathematical and confusing. In opposite this one teaches you what you should know as a programmer/developer. If you make some research in this field, for sure you need more complex proofs and inductions found in very academic and dry books. Otherwise use this one to clearly grasp all difficult concepts. ALL CODES COMPILE WITHOUT A SINGLE ERROR. AMAZING!!!!!!!!

This is an excellent book on data structures and algorithms and would be a great addition to a student's text book. Fortunately Lafore does not dwell on the algorithm analysis as many data structures books do. This is a plus for me, as most texts on the subject get the reader bogged down in the analysis portion of the subject matter. Note: algorithm analysis is a very important subject I just don't believe it should be taught in parallel with data structures to the extent it is. Its easier for me and many others to first learn how to implement data structures and get a feel for their performance then move on to in-depth analysis.

In this book you'll learn the more important data structures without the heavy mathematics many algorithm and data structure books torture readers with. The book is written in very accessible language and the applets really help the inexperienced see the algorithms in action.

As I mentioned this book does not cover algorithm analysis in detail. A step up from this book would be one of Sedgewick's books which provides more detail on the analysis front and some really 'tight' implementations. A good book that focuses on Algorithm Analysis is Intro to Algorithms by Cormen. You better have your math skills up to snuff for the Cormen book however.

I am nearing the end of my Data structures and Algorithms course at the University of Missouri, and I'm doing very well, thanks in part to this fantastic book. I realized right away that I didn't like the assigned textbook for the class, so I did some research online and ended up buying a used, first edition copy of this book. One of the best investments I ever made! (I also purchased another book which I like - see the end of this review).

The explanations are so clear, I can honestly say it has been relatively easy to learn. I haven't really struggled at all. The author takes a very sensible approach, only focusing on the subject of algorithms and data structures. He criticizes the current trend of mixing software engineering and oop in with this subject (which is exactly why I don't like the assigned textbook). His goal when writing this book was to create "the most easily understood book ever written on data structures and algorithms." I'd say he hit his mark dead-on!

The only thing missing from the book is exercises. There are none (at least not in the first edition). But several times I have taken the code from the accompanying CD and rewritten it to suit my personal programming style, which has been very instructive.

I don't know what has been added/changed in the new edition, but you can probably find out by checking the publisher's Website. The author has given us a real gem, and for that I am grateful. By the way, another very good book is "Data structures and Algorithms" by Aho, Ullman, and Hopcroft. I highly recommend it as well. I think it's out of print, but I had no trouble finding a cheap, used copy.

Best wishes,

Greg Norris

If you are planning to drain a pond, please be careful. You never know what lies at the bottom of those bodies of water. And if you find something that is shaped like a mirror with a frame of petrified logs, don't dig it up. You'll be sooooorrrrrrryyyyy.

It just might be a match to the artifact found in a drained pond as told in Devil Glass, one that boded ill for all who come in contact with it. This is the artifact that came into possession of Joyce Robbins, archaeologist in Lima, Ohio, for the VanBerg Museum.

Up to this time, Joyce has been living a life of quiet desperation although she does not recognize it as such. She has everything a successful woman could want. And more. Yet, she is not happy. Her career is the focus of her life and it is her dream, one shared by all archaeologists, to make the one discovery that will guarantee her success and recognition. The artifact, as mysterious as its discovery, offer Joyce her chance. And when people begin to disappear, the mystery deepens. Joyce and others find temselves involved in a nightmare beyond imagining. Devil Glass is a tale within a tale within yet another tale. Mr. C. Robert Cales is a very talented author and this story will keep you turning pages.

This is really a great book. I will actually keep this one. I usually move my books out rather quickly as I don't have room to store them, but a select few end up on my shelf for keeps. This is one of them. You will love it.

Devil Glass is a thrilling book. I couldn't stop reading it. I was almost late for work several times because I couldn't put it down. Cales wrote the descriptions of everything so well it put you inside the pages. I was the characters I was reading about. "A love story laced with horror" is right on. Enough horror to keep an "anti-love story person" reading. Enough love story to make me want to see how it ends. I couldn't wait to read what happens next to the trio of friends. It's hard to believe that this is Cales first book. I can't wait for the second!

Dr. Leeds' Selection of Popular Epic Recitations was published in 1999, but I want to review it now. Not just because one of my pieces of rhymed poetry is included in his collection, but also because I am still amazed by the talent of this man and his devotion to rhymed poetry. The book contains favorites we all know: Annabel Lee, Gunga Din, Oh Captian! My Captain! Casey at the Bat; poetry that would NOT have lived on for years had it not been rhymed. Dr. Leeds' own story is worth a book. Author, poet, lecturer, professor, adventurer, explorer, soldier of fortune, mercenary, engineer, sailor, aviator, parachutist, muscian, dreamer, etc. He is a force to reckoned with. I highly recommend this book, and any anything else authored by Robert Leeds, to your readers. They contain everything a reader is looking for: poetry, adventure, humor and more, all wrapped up in the writings of just one man. He is my hero. My poem, Never Spend the Principal, was included amongst his choices of well-known poets. I am honored to have my work placed among such esteemed company. Dr. Leeds' acceptance of my poem encouraged me to go further in my writing career. I am now the author of "Dancing in the Dark." a creative non-fiction memoir, my short story titled, "Uncle Ben," was published by REMINISCE MAGAZINE" and I am also a freelance writer and regular contributor to MY TIME, a local newspaper in San Diego. I am now working on my second book. "A Different Kind of Memoir: The Meter of my Life." I want to thank, Dr. Leeds, for his contribution to literature and to his inspiration and support, and encourage everyone to read his books.

a truly enjoyable book of poetry - with so many great old poems - rhyming poems at that. one would have to brouse through many books to find them all. and they are all here under one cover. they make great reading.

Doctor Leeds' Selection Of Popular Epic Recitations is a wonderful anthology of narrative, story-telling poetry that ranges from the well-known sagas like Paul Revere's Ride to obscure works such as The Preacher's Vacation. This marvelous compendium is a true delight to merely browse through of an evening. But be forewarned! These poems are addictive and a few minutes of browsing can quickly become hours of deep immersion. Doctor Leeds' Selection Of Popular Epic Recitations is simply one of those volumes of poetry so easy to pick up and so difficult to put down!

I was already using Eclipse when I purchased this book. However, I did not know the tricks, shortcuts and I could not take adventage of the features of Eclipse fully until I started reading "Eclipse in Action". The examples in the book are easy to follow and help you quickly understand the ideas. I would prefer to see more screenshots though. Probably the authors did not want to increase the volume of the book. All in all, it is a great book!...

I have been a user of Eclipse for over a year and I found that Eclipse In Action does a great job of describing many of the facets of Eclipse that I found the most interesting, and in some cases the most complex, in a easy to understand format. Rather than covering every last aspect of Eclipse this book does an excellent job covering an important subset of Eclipse's functionality.

This book is, of course, not for novice Java developers. It is not a book on learning Java using Eclipse, but how to use Eclipse efficiently to develop Java programs. The bulk of the book covers the Java Development Tooling plug-in in a variety of scenarios using JUnit, Ant, CVS, log4j and a couple of open source plug-ins. The remaining 2 chapters are a nice introduction to extending Eclipse using its plug-in architecture. This book is clear in its explanations to a fault. Well done, David, Ed and Robert!

If you've wondered if switching to Eclipse can improve your productivity, check out the guy on the cover with three hands! I've been using Eclipse for over a year now and can't believe how much I was missing. Sure, I knew about Ant integration, but the book explains why some of my scripts run fine in command line and not from Eclipse. JUnit, CVS, log4j and Tomcat integration are all detailed as well. Eclipse in Action shows you how to create your own simple plug-ins, manage your coding activities and get the most out of this way cool IDE.