Turner's writings on jazz certainly qualify him to write such a book. Like others in this genre of historical fiction, he endeavors to blend historical figures with fictional ones through whose eyes we witness events that are part of the lore of the Bix Beiderbecke and Capone sagas.

I'm not sure what level of interest the narrative will hold for readers unfamiliar with Beiderbecke. I raise the question; I'm not making a judgment so don't let an absence of knowledge about Bix Beiderbecke make you retreat. However, I would characterize things this way: The conventional plot associated with the fictional historical witnesses seems to me to be secondary to the larger character study that tries to get us inside Bix's skin. General readers may find the book "compelling" rather than a "I-couldn't-put-it-down." To the extent that this book may have the most appeal for those who know at least something of the Bix Beiderbecke's story, this is also, ironically, the community that may most bristle at it. They may also embrace it for raising the profile of one of their most closely-held heroes. I hope so; I think Turner has set out to do what he has artfully.

Although I'm sure it wasn't feasible, one might wish that such a book could be accompanied by a CD that would allow general readers to hear for themselves that the claims made so eloquently for Bix's horn in Turner's book are, in fact, no fiction at all.

So, let me urge any of you who decide to read this book and have no prior introduction to Bix Beiderbecke, that you order at least one Bix collection to make your reading of the book a more complete experience.

This novel based on the life of self-taught jazz pianist Bix Beiderbecke focuses on his career highlights and the evolution of the 1920s jazz scene, capturing a rich period in American music history by using the actual characters of the times and embellishing their stories. The result is a novel all the more compelling for its foundations in truth.

I dont particularly like Jazz .... but I loved this novel about it. Turner is a spellbinding storyteller who has spiced a sordid historical record with captivating fictional characters to produce a brilliant roman a clef.

This book is highly similar to the Reza book, also published by Dover publications. The Ash book kind of continues where the Reza book leaves off. In truth, this book is very, very rigorous... not so much in terms of proofs (see the small Khinchin book for great proofs), but in terms of it involves mathematics and concepts which require a higher level of knowledge. Undergraduate students would have alot of trouble trying to understand both math and general concepts.
Even graduate students would find this book daunting, because after all, it probably is one of the best books written on information theory.

If your a beginner seeking a good book, this is not it at all.
Aside from being too rigorous, it covers many topics which are of completely no use to a beginner or even somebody with a fair amount of information theory knowledge. Also, the book is not very motivating from a practical aspect. That is, much like the Reza and Kitchkin book, it's written more from a dry mathematical perspective and not an "engineers" perspective.
It doesn't examine information theory from the perspective of electrical engineering and communications theory... which might make it hard for some people to relate to if they can't be told what the practical applications are (see Pierce's books and Cover and Thomas for very good "practical" books).

For beginners, I recommend the Pierce book, subtitled "Symbols, Signals and Noise" which is bar-none the best beginners book ever written (or some of Pierce's other books). Pierce is one of the finest authors of his era and he published several books on information theory; most of which are more "engineer friendly" and are more relavent to the study of electronic communications.

Summary, this book is NOT for beginners. It will be almost completely useless unless you have a decent degree of information theory knowledge to begin with. Sadly, this was the first book I ever purchased on that topic.. and boy was that a mistake!! I spent 2 years trying to figure heads or tails of half the chapters.. Then I went ahead and got some more appropriate books (Pierce, Reza, Cover and Thomas) and when I had sufficient knowledge... only then did this book make any sense.

The book by Shannon and Weaver (1949) is the classic; Shannon almost *is* information theory. There is more to it: The present lovely little book appeared first in 1965, but is still very relevant. I think it is a good next book to read. At least the mathematical part of the subject stays more constant over the years, as do the fundamental principles;-- that is what Ash's book is about. I especially liked ch 4 on error correcting codes, and the mathematical appendix which is centered around the Karhunen-Loeve theorem;-- the latter having found recent exciting applications in wavelet theory.

I know what you're saying - Dover books have a reputation for publishing crap books, right? This book is just too cheap to be any good, right? Well, think again. This book is a no nonsense introduction to classical information theory. By no-nonsense I mean it does not have chapters like most books out there on "information and physics", "information and art", or all sorts of pseudo scientific popularizations of information theory. It does one thing: present with a minimum of hassle and with a maximum of details and examples the mathematical and conceptual framework of information theory, nothing more, nothing less. On the other hand, it manages to avoid the old "theorem-lemma-corollary" format of many other ultra-dense math books out there. This book actually makes an effort to explain where the math fits in conceptually. When introducing a new concept, it always accompanies the definition with an example. This is even true when proving a complicated theorem. Add to these virtues the interesting problems at the end of each chapter, each with its own detailed solution at the end of the book, and you've got a pedagogical gem.
It should be noted that the only prerequisite is a prior course in basic probability - conditional probability, Tchebychev's theorem, simple and basic stuff every 2nd-3rd year undergraduate should be familiar with.
If you're looking for the perfect introduction to information theory, look no further, this is it!

I was so thrilled to find this version of Mother Goose still in print. I had this book as a child, and I can close my eyes and still see the gorgeous illustrations. I am 33 years old now, and expecting my first baby, and when I saw this book on Amazon.com ... I had to buy it immediately. My copy is dog-eared and covered in crayon and the binding is shot. Not only is owning this book again nostalgic for me, but I look forward to reading it to my baby as my parents read it to me. It's not watered down Mother Goose. These rhymes reflect a different era and there is a bit of violence in a few of them. But I read them from a very young age without incident and I plan on letting my child enjoy this book as I did.

This is the definitive collection of Mother Goose nursery rhymes. If you love words and language, this is for you. This book has all the old favorites and many that you've never heard. Compare them with the modern versions of the same rhymes and you'll see how society has changed--as well as our attitudes about children.

To be culturally literate, English speakers should know their Mother Goose. Beware, however: These are not bowdlerized. Sometimes violent, always reflective of a rougher time, this book is perhaps not best for the casual reader just looking for a few rhymes. With my daughter (22 months), I pick and choose which ones I read. She loves them.

"Sing a song of sixpence, a pocket full of rye..."

My daughters are 17 and 14 years old. I started reading from this book when they were one and younger. We all loved the beautiful illustrations. Unfortunately our book is well worn. I have been looking for this book that I might give each of my daughters a copy when they have children. I also would like to give this book as a baby gift. This is my favorite Mother Goose book. I have not found any other that even compares.

Having enjoyed Mr. Buechner's biblical fiction, I also picked up this volume of his musings on the people of the Bible. I wasn't disappointed.

I don't know if I would recommend it as a who's who to non Christians who want a quick reference - some of the entries don't make sense if you don't know your Bible - but for those who do, it's an often amusing reflection on our faith. It's also sometimes profound. Some of my favorites - Why do discussions of David and Jonathan anymore seem to revolve around whether or not they were gay and miss the point of their wonderful friendship? What would Uriah have to say about his murder if he could chat with us now? Was Gabriel as scared as Mary during the Annunciation? What happened if, as is likely, Jesus and Judas met again when Jesus descended into hell?

This is one to keep next to your Bible. Mr. Buechner's worldview is comforting and compassionate, and this volume speaks as a little gospel light.

"Peculiar Treasures" is Buechner's second in a trilogy of lexicon-style expositions, this time focusing on Biblical characters. Including some virtual unknowns alongside the "heavyweights", Buechner examines each person and tries to discover what makes them unique. Since the Biblical characters might not always be immediately familiar to the reader, there is necessarily increased length to the entries, and thus fewer entries, relative to Buechner's other two books in this series. While not quite as good as "Wishful Thinking", this book is still excellent and thought-provoking.

Buechner brings out the insightful traits of many Bible Characters. Each sketch prompts thought and creates a desire to meet these people and ask them questions.

After reading these sketches you will never read another name in the Bible without thinking who this person was in real life.

This tale of Psmith and Mike's entry into the banking world is a wonderful send-up of corporate culture (and more), circa 1900. But many of the situations are just as relevant today, and anyone who's tried to navigate the waters of a new job should enjoy (and envy?) Psmith's exploits. There are many passages that are absolutely hysterical ("...Mr. Waller was a widower, and after five minutes' acquaintance with Edward [his son], Mike felt strongly that Mrs. Waller was the lucky one.") This book doesn't quite equal "Leave It To Psmith" in terms of plotting or consistent, side-splitting humor -- but it is a very enjoyable read nevertheless.

There's little I can say about this book other than if you love lighthearted comedy and 'comedy of errors', read this book. There's not a single book by Wodehouse that I haven't enjoyed to some extent, but the Psmith books are among my top favorites. Psmith's urbane charm and sly wit, combined with the typical miscommunication of a Wodehouse novel are perfect.

I read this book a dozen times and it still makes me laugh out loud. In the ten years since I have read it, I have given it away as a gift, and lent it out to scores of people, all of whom have enjoyed and went on to read other works by Wodehouse. What makes it so enjoyable? Perhaps the autobiographical nature of it (wodehouse worked in a bank and hated it) that adds an authenticity, and is just as fresh as when it was written over 80 years ago. But mainly, it is the character Psmith, one of the most delightfully eccentric characters in literature; based on an aquaintance his cousin knew at a public school, who was "impeccably dressed in savile row suits", called his fellow students comrade and had a "fatherly" way of talking to his headmasters. Also highly rec. is "leave it to Psmith"

It's unfortunate this is the only hardcover picture book of the Biltmore, available at the time of this review. Because it was the best one I could find, I bought it albeit, reluctantly as I like to have a picture book keepsake when I visit these places. There are many beautiful and often full page colour photographs, but there are also many black and white. Some of the latter are historical, so that is understandable, but others are not. With a predominance of construction pictures and the emphasis on the actual building process which of course ties into the history. This focus veers away from the main objective of a picture book momento, to include plenty of photographs of both the interior and exterior, preferably at least one colour photograph of each room. The estate boasts 255 rooms, and hardly 10% of them are represented. I would like to see this book enlarged to 3 times the size, with about 200 more interior pictures, then Rizzoli, who usually produces outstanding books of this genre, could up the price, but it would be worth it.

I enjoyed the story, don't get me wrong, but as for the pictures, yes it had numerous colors, but mainly black and white. I was surprised. Even pictures that weren't historic were in black and white.

When I purchased this book, I had hoped for a good floorplan of the home, instead I got a little sketch that could hardly be read with a magnifying glass.

Overall, very factual. It makes you realize just what went into the building process. Even if the paragraphs are a little too wordy.

I found this book on George Washington Vanderbilt's Biltmore Estate in Ashville, North Carolina, to be extremelly through. This book includes sketchs of many of the considered facades for the home, and what their floorplans would have been.

Pictures of all of the beautiful rooms in the house are included in this publication. Also included are sketchs of the many details of the home, included are the east facade, the Gate House, the gates that set next to the house, the Biltmore Village Church, and sketchs of many of the statues from Biltmore's gardens.

Also included in this book is the histories of many of the principal players in Biltmore's creation, including Fredrick Law Olmsted the landscape designer, Richard Morris Hunt the arcitect, and of course George Vanderbilt the home's owner.
Included is many of the landscape designs of Biltmore's gardens, and beautiful pictures of many of them. Pictures of Biltmore's Conservatory are included which sits in Biltmore's Walled Garden, to the north of Biltmore House.

All in all, this book is great, and a great companion to a day long visit to Biltmore! If you loved Biltmore Estate, you'll love this book, I garentee it!

In keeping with Professor Potter's work about Admiral Nimitz, this, IMHO, is the definitive work about one of the most controversial admirals in naval history. I consider this book as a THE reference work about Halsey.

Kept me interested from cover to cover. E.B. Potter does an excellent job of bringing history to life with this biography of Halsey.

I read all three of EBPotter's naval biographies and found the Halsey biography to be on par with Nimitz and Burke. While not as lengthy as other Halsey biographies, I could not put the book down because I found it so interesting and compelling.

I hate to say it, but i struggled through this book. I was looking for a book with more advice; more substance---a book I could sink my teeth into. "A Dangerous Profession" was NOT the one.

For us [brave enough to ADMIT it] wannabe 'writers', there are better books than this:.....There are too many books about creative writing to mention. But if I had the chance to 'do-it-over', I would NOT buy this book.

The very title is a challenge. "A Dangerous Profession." About writing? What's so dangerous? Suffocation by towers of manuscripts? Rejection of your work by editors? Paper cuts? Who does Frederick Busch think he is; Richard Branson?

No, what this university author's talking about in this collection of pieces are those writers who take risks with their works. Not to write the next potboiling, page-turning best-seller, but something more lasting and more personal. These are writers who live out their lives according to a sort of literary DNA, doing what they must at whatever cost to themselves.

There's Herman Melville, who felt himself finished at age 33 because the book he believed in, "Moby Dick," had earned him "the scorn of reviewers -- they questioned his sanity as well as his skill -- and, by the end of his life, a total of $157." There's Graham Greene's exquisite career writing about how we betray love, loyalty, ourselves. Or, as Busch puts it: "follies were his subject matter, finally -- how, in love, we betray the beloved; how, worshiping God, or a god, or a hope of one, we betray that hope or wish; how, striving to do good, we cause damage."

There's Charles Dickens, whose "David Copperfield" is nothing less than a novel about writing and the power of the written and spoken word can hold over its audience. The novel is also a reflection of the man himself, who carried on stage readings of his works that would leave him exhausted and probably hastened his end. That's writing capable of killing.

But Busch doesn't sustain the promise implied by the title, so the book's not a dirge. He leavens it by including essays on bad popular writing and bad literary criticism, memoirs recalling his early literary career, and a short humorous look at the writer's life from the point of view of the (usually) long-suffering wife.

It's tough to explain to someone who doesn't write why putting words on paper can be so difficult, why writers can turn into divas in their self-absorption and why those who work so hard to become so good seem capable of sacrificing so much. Busch's look at the writing life reminds us why it is so.

You should read this book if you are a beginning writer who wants assurance that others too have written and been rejected over and over again. IF you think you would like to be a novelist to have glamour, fame, and fortune, than read on so that you can persuade yourself to go into another line of work.

Frederick Busch knows about the dangers of writing, he is a best selling author of more than twenty works of fiction and non- fiction, but you do not see him on nightly TV. Busch examines what makes him and the writers that he admires including Charles Dickens, Herman Melville and Ernest Hemingway continue to write in the darkest hours. The reason is simply to share stories. Busch is the writer of the sixteen essays that are in the book. If a writer is honest with himself, he hopes that what he writes will be interesting to the readers.

Called a Notable book of 1998 by the New York Times, A Dangerous Profession will captivate writers and readers alike, inspiring them to pick up books that they would not normally want to read, which has been the case with me. I would recommend this book to any one who likes to read.

Very enjoyable read that examines some of the amazing contrasts in the German pysche. The author's own ancestors included a "good German", composer R. Schumann and a "bad German", a Nazi, and it is interesting to see him grapple with it.

As an American of German descent who has spent little time in the "Fatherland," I greatly appreciated Kempe's journalistic account. Kempe wrestles with the demons conjured by the spectre of one of his own relatives having been a brutal Nazi thug and along the way shows how the country is still struggling to deal with its past. The accounts of German soldiers having been used outside the country's borders for the first time as peacekeeprs in Bosnia was a good first step toward the "normalizing" of the German nation. But as Kempe shows, Germans psychologically still have a long way to go.

Kempe spends time interviewing several different "normal" Germans and reveals the complexity of German life 50 years after the Third Reich. A non-immigration country with a liberal immigration policy and a burgeoning Turkish-German population. A military peacekeeping force in the same land terrorized by Nazis two generations earlier; young soldiers are shocked by the brutality they see around them. This book shatters many of the stereotypes we Americans have about how Germans are, or should be, today. As the descendant of German immigrants, I especially appreciated Kempe's description of his emotions as he gradually uncovered and faced his relative's complicity in Germany's dark legacy. Highly recommended.

When the sleeper wakes is a fairly good book, but not something I would choose to read again. The book doesn't exactly give either a realistic or creative idea for the future, when 'The Sleeper' ends up in 2010. There are barely any things that change in those two hundred years, which is an odd concept to handle. How they refer to people is the same as in the beginning of the story when he's in the 1800's.

Another of Wells' dark futuristic visions, this novel is about a man who falls into a deep sleep in the Victorian age and wakes up early in the 22nd century. Wells predicts much of the technology that would be invented in the 20th century. This story is not just a fascinating read but a poignant social commentary.

H.G. Wells is perhaps one of the greatest modern writers, and his stunning book "When The Sleeper Wakes" is the embodiment of his incredible prohpetic writing. This is an essential book, if for no other reason than it's frighteningly close-to-home predictions of the future. The story follows a modern day Rumplestiltskin, named Graham, after he sleeps a couple of centuries and wakes up to find himself owner of over half of the earth. The story itself is well-crafted, as Wells demonstrates a strong command of the English language. But this book is not merely a "good read". The most amazing aspect is that H.G. Wells predicted the widespread use of airtravel over a hundred years ago, along with mega-corporations that dominate a single industry, and roadside billboard advertisements. These are just a few of the remarkable, and accurate, predictions H.G. Wells made. It's hard to believe this book was written in the 1890's. The story is engaging as well, even if your not concerned with the social and political warnings of this tale. Only a few of the characters are extensively, namely Ostrog and Graham. But since it's a short story, this doesn't detract from the overall plot. The setting and tone of the story are the most important elements, and these are expertly developed. There is little wrong with this book. It's a little on the short side, but it still makes for an excellent choice.