For those individuals who want an eas to read book about George Washington, I recomend this book. It goes through Washington's life from start to finish with commo asked questions and the answers. This is a cool book for grade levels 3-6.

Down The Columbia by outdoor enthusiast and river expert Lewis Freeman is a wild and exciting memoir of a bold journey down the Columbia river, before the Grand Coulee and other dams somewhat calmed its rushing flows. Filled with respect for the majesty and savagery of Nature, Down The Columbia is a vividly presented adventure highly recommended for armchair travelers who aren't afraid to get their feet wet!

This nostalgic look at Spokane, Washington takes the reader back in time to this historic town during the 1930's and 40's. I enjoyed the book very much. It is so well written, the pages turn themselves. Although I did not live through this era, I feel that I know much about Spokane during this time and I have gained a true feeling and understanding for this period. It is an excellent book, and a must-have for anyone who enjoys history, or anyone looking for a peek back in time, brought to you by an author who was really there.

i did not come to this site buying the book ... i wanted the translation og the monologe of "The blind man" into english .... it is tough, and a short cut of a life ...

I grew up in Oregon and spent most of my summers on the Oregon Coast. I live in Sourth Carolina now, and when I look at this book, it makes me cry ---every time. I am not an experienced travelor, but I know what beauty is. The Oregon Coast defines beauty for me. This book presents pictures that are breathtakingly beautiful. I remember as a teenager, walking with my girlfriends, lost in the Coastal mist, singing our hearts out. I was too young to appreciate the glorious visions that are there in my beautiful Oregon, just so abundantly available. When I go to the Oregon Coast,now, I just fall apart with emotion. Now more than ever, because my father is buried there, and he loved it SO much. When you look at the pictures of this book, remember my father, in his grave site on the cliffs, overlooking the beautiful sea. What a glorious final resting place. I dedicate this review to you, Dad. Thanks for showing me all the beauties of Oregon and our beautiful Pacific Coast. Barra (Remember our Oregon Coast song? I do!)

This anthology consists of a novel (Drum Beat - Dominique) and several short stories all written in the 1960s. All the short stories are well written enhancing the image of Chet Drum as a no nonsense private investigator who cares for his clients.

Drum Beat - Dominique. Government "ghoul" Jack Morley looks like the pits when old friend Chet Drum meets with him in Paris. Jack explains that he no longer is a State Department VIP having fallen from grace following a divorce. He works for the Army Adjutant General determining whether World War II MIAs are dead though two decades have passed. However, his problem is that US Senator Clay Bundy accuses him of blackmail and threatens to have him killed if he fails to back off. Jack wants Chet to inform the senator he is not blackmailing him. Chet tells that to the Senator and persuades him to hire him to learn who is even while someone murders Jack. Great tale that fans of tough intelligent, but concerned sleuths will relish so much they will seek other works by Stephen Marlowe.

This is the reviewer's first taste of Mr. Marlowe (finally reprints besides Dickens in which I was too young to have read the first time around) and can say the author lives up to his surname. Drum sleuths to his own beat; he is a strong private investigator, who hooks the audience in each tale, short or long.

Harriet Klausner

A very well written book!! If you love history or even if you don't, read this book! It tells about young George Washington and his first assignment for this country which was still under Englands watchful eye. It tells of the amazing hardship and luck that George experienced at the age of 21,in the Ohio wilderness. This would make a great film!!! Lots of action and true life experience. Just READ this and you will be hooked on history forever.

This book is a rare work of art. The extensive and excellent photography shows plants in garden settings; photos are numerous and clearly defined. The cultural descriptions, including things like explanations, size, form, zone and suggestions for companion plantings are also very well written-complete and easy to understand. If you are a serious landscaper or love unusual conifers, this reference book is a MUST!

Anyone who writes a book on elliptic curves will never do a bad job, for these objects are so beautiful that it would be a sacrilege to do otherwise. Those who study elliptic curves fall under their spell, not only because of their beauty, but also because of their many applications: the spinning top in mechanics, cryptography, exactly solved models in statistical mechanics, precession of the Mercury perihelion in general relativity, the proof of Fermat's Last (Wiles) Theorem, control theory, and string theory, to name a few. This book is an excellent treatment of ECs and would be good for a graduate student starting out in the field. The author gives many concrete examples of the main theorems, and helpful exercises are found at the end of each chapter.

The author begins the book with two neat problems that motivate well the subject of elliptic curves: the pyramid of cannonballs and the right triangle problem, i.e. which integers can occur as areas of right triangles with integer sides? He then immediately begins the elementary theory of ECs in chapter 2. The treatment is pretty standard, although he proves Pascal's and Pappus's theorems using the associativity of the group operation on ECs, which is not usually done in books on ECs. Also somewhat non-standard this early in the game is the discussion of reduction of ECs modulo various primes, and the subsequent definitions of additive, split multiplicative, and non-split multiplicative reduction.

The study of torsion points is done in chapter 3 with the Weil pairing on the n-torsion of an EC taking center stage. A fairly short chapter, the author delays the proof of the properties of the Weil pairing until chapter 11, where it is done with divisors.

Chapter 4 deals with elliptic curves over finite fields, and is one of the most important in the book from the standpoint of cryptographic applications of ECs. Hasse's theorem, giving the bounds for the group of points on an EC over a finite field, is proven in detail. The Frobenius endomorphism is introduced, and a proof of Schoof's algorithm for computing the number of points on ECs over a finite field is given a detailed treatment. There are many symbolic computational software packages in both the open and commerical realm which will do the counting straightforwardly, and anyone interested in cryptography will need to be familiar with some of these. Supersingular curves in characteristic p are introduced, and the author gives a good discussion of the reason why they are named as such.

The discrete logarithm problem, a topic also very important for cryptographic applications, is discussed in chapter 5. The chapter beings with the index calculus, and, recognizing that it does not apply to general groups, the Pohlig-Hellman, baby step-giant step method, and Pollards rho and lambda methods are discussed in details. The author then shows that for supersingular and "anomalous" curves, that the discrete logarithm problem can be reduced to an easier discrete logarithm problem. Along the way, two important concepts are introduced: the p-adic valuation, and the Tate-Lichtenbaum pairing, the latter of which is related to the Weil pairing, but applies to situations where the Weil pairing does not.

Elliptic curve cryptography is then discussed in chapter 6, and the treatment is fairly thorough. The author shows to what extent the Decision Diffie-Hellman problem can be solved using the Weil pairing. He also shows how to represent a message on an elliptic curve, satisfying early on any reader's curiosity on just how this is done. The El Gamal and ECDSA are compared in terms of their computational efficiency. An EC generalization of RSA is also discussed in some detail, along with a cryptosystem based on the Weil pairing. Chapter 7 then gives other applications of ECs, such as factoring and primality testing.

Chapter 8 marks the beginning of the "heavy artillery" in the theory of ECs, for here the author begins the discussion of elliptic curves over the rational numbers, which can be viewed as an example of Diophantine geometry. The famous Mordell-Weil theorem is proved, and as a sign that one is definitely in the arena of modern mathematics, the proof is given in terms of Galois cohomology, which is an abstraction of the Fermat method of descent. The reader gets a taste of height functions, and via some good examples, gets insight into why the rank of the EC is so difficult to compute. A neat example is given of a nontrivial Shafarevich-Tate group.

I did not read the chapters 9, 10, or 11 on ECs over the complex numbers, complex multiplication, and divisors, so I will omit their review. Chapter 12 introduces the famous zeta functions, and their use in obtaining arithmetic information about an EC. Zeta functions motivate the definition of an L-function of an EC, these being tremendously important in modern developments in the theory of ECs, such as the Swinnerton-Dyer and Birch conjecture, the latter of which is motivated rather nicely in this chapter.

The last chapter of the book is an excellent introduction to the proof of Fermat's Last Theorem. Considering the level of the book, the author captures very well the essential ideas. Readers will be well prepared, after studying more algebraic number theory and the theory of Galois representations (which the author only skims in the book), to tackle the full proof if so desired.

The book gives the greatest and indeed much needed insight on an African American Group of people, who fought many battles for religious freedom, and the right to educate their own children, through their own Church. Fighting for all types of Social injustices for all races. Having to fight government to keep property donated for the building of their our Church, and still having to sit in the back when White parishoneers would come to hear the music and visit the Black Catholic Church, so well known. A "Must Read Book for Washingtonians".