An excelent book, it reminded me that historical figures such as Rilke, Nietszche and Freud were also confronted with fear and angst. I read this book in spanish and I guess some of the things I did't like from it (like the translation of Rilke's poems) had to do with the translator, not the author. Thou, I found the book quite interesting; the life or Lou Andreas-Salomé (her courage to live by her rules and believes) has to be known by every person who feels every now and then that life is some place else.

As a reader, I don't frequent the biography sections of bookstores. But I chose to buy and read this book, because Lou Salome's name was familiar to me from Irvin Yalom's book "When Nietzsce Wept". She was the infamous femme fatale who played a very signinficant role in lives of some of the most remarkable men, intellectuals of 19th-20th century Europe - Nietzsce and Rilke to name just two of them. Though she might have destroyed them emotionally, she also inspired and guided them intellectually and creatively. That's what makes this biography such a fascinating read - Lou Salome had a life filled with most exciting men and most extravagant choices. This book grabs you with its light writing style, eventful "plot", and interesting yet not overwhelming insights into the people and spirit of that era. This a book I enjoy to go back to, and re-read certain parts of it.

This is a tough little book that argues against naturalistic accounts of perception and language by showing how they tacitly rely on non-naturalistic assumptions to avoid incoherence. Olafson's negative arguments are more persuasive than his account of what should take naturalism's place. The writing is non-technical and clear but assumes some familiarity with 20th century philosophy, especially Continental philosophy. Readers lacking this background may have trouble following the argument and may even wonder what all the fuss is about.

I am a fan of this apparently too little known and appreciated philosopher. I've studied Olafson's 1987 and 1995 books for years. He shows brilliantly why the usual "scientific" explanations of the nature of perception, language, and person are impoverished, inadequate, indeed logically incoherent--a highly unpopular position in our scientific age! His critiques of scientism are great (I do have the credentials to make this judgement), though I do have some problems with his proposals for alternative approaches. Also, his syntax sometimes needs unscrambling--too many nested clauses, ambiguous pronouns--but it's worth the effort. This book is a concise, clear, and efficient summary of his previous work, especially of his 1995 book, and has some new ideas too. Don't just read it, study it--and approach it with an open mind. It is meaty and valuable. Chap.5 alone, "What does the brain do?", is worth the price of admission. ...

Frederick Buechner's "Now and Then" is, at its core, an engrossing story. It is the sequel to Buechner's first piece of autobiographical literature "The Sacred Journey."

"Now and Then" picks up where the prior volume left off--Buechner's entrance into Seminary. It follows his life up until the publication of "Godric."

Don't be fooled by the slimness of this volume. There are many lessons to be gleaned from Buechner's look back on his life. From the lessons of an extended youth in seminary, to the rigors of representing God in a semi-hostile environment, this is an education crammed into a few pages.

Yet the main message of this book is best expressed by Buechner himself. About two-thirds of the way through the book he says:

"Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery that it is. In the boredom and pain of it no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace."

Get this book. See how one man's life shows forth something of this universal truth. I recommend it highly.

As a Christian who spends every day searching for a deeper faith and understanding it is somehow comforting and unbelievable to find that a man so brilliant shares my deepest, darkest feelings. Beuchner writes, in the most poetic way, of his journey through midlife/midcareer and all the doubts and fears that accompany those difficult years. Through his words, I've gained a better appreciation of the ministry, of writers and of myself. What a gift.

The Grateful Dead will have to forgive me for borrowing a line of theirs, but it came to mind after finishing this metaphysical tale by Marryat. I've read many of his action-packed sea adventures, but none of them really prepared me for what he has in store for the reader of "The Phantom Ship."

Where to start? There's young Philip Vanderdecken, who pledges his soul to redeem the sins of his father, who committed murder on the high seas and is thus condemned to eternally ply the stormy oceans until his son can track him down (no mean feat considering the father is something akin to a ghostly spirit), and provide the blasphemous father with the only means of achieving redemption....that is, to kiss a holy relic of the Cross. Whew!

I'm not sure Marryat was at the height of his narrative powers when he penned this sad, strange tale. Frankly, the story line gets, if you will forgive the pun, a bit choppy. But Marryat can be forgiven. What he has to say about the uneasy juxtaposition of traditional Catholicism and Middle Eastern spiritualism has a certain poignancy. So, too, does the depiction of men corroded through and through by their insatiable lust for gold.

Strangely, despite all of the tragedies (and there are many), I for one was not really moved by some very horrific events, which is not to say that there are no moving moments in this 300+ page novel. Surely, the story of Philip's heroic wife, Amine, will touch even the most insulated heart. But, perhaps, in Marryat's effort to narrate so many metaphysical twists and turns, he may have sacrificed a bit of good old fashioned human drama.

I will say, however, that there are parts that may scare the heck out of you. In one scene, Philip is sailing in the South Seas with his faithful companion, Krantz, who relates a childhood story that will make your flesh crawl. Not for the faint hearted.

The revival of the 19th Century Marryat novels is tied in no small way to the success of Patrick O'Brian. It is tempting, therefore, to draw at least one small contrast between the two. Both authors provide their readers with plenty of morality. The difference, of course, is that Marryat's morality is fairly straight forward and unambiguous, as in "The Phantom Ship." O'Brian's "morality" is of an entirely different dimension.

I wouldn't say "The Phantom Ship" is a must-read, even for Marryat fans. But, still a worthwhile diversion. I just wouldn't start out on this voyage if you're looking for an uplifting, heart-warming story. That is not to be found here. This is a voyage with no return.

Once upon a time, somewhere in the middle of the XVII century, Mynheer Captain Vanderdecken defied God and brought a curse of the Heavens on himself and his crew, to sail in doom and suffering until the Day of Judgment, bringing despair and death to encountered seamen, unless the holy relic is offered to him, for that is the only chance of forgiveness for Captain Vanderdecken. The phantom ship thus haunts the Cape, later to be know as the Cape of Hope, at the southern outskirts of Africa, but of course, since it's no longer of this earth, it may appear anywhere at the wild seas, serving as a fatal prophecy of disaster. The captain's wife keeps the secret to herself, until one day her son is grown enough to make a decision to go to sea. Frightened out of her wits, the widow reveals the secret, and thus Philip Vanderdecken learns that his fate, his destiny, is to find his doomed father and salvage his soul from eternal hell. And so begins the most revered nautical tale of adventure, a literary account of the Flying Dutchman legend, written by Captain Marryat, the man who spent the best years of his life at the seas in the service of the United Kingdom. Written in the first half of the XIX century, when the literary form of the novel was in its toddler stage, "The Phantom Ship" is astoundingly modern in expression, although the language is often very ancient. Together with the protagonists, we sail around the Cape, we travel around the globe through the Magellan straits dividing the savage land of Patagonia from Terra del Fuego, the door to the Antarctic; in a never-ending series of breathtaking adventures we discover the nautical world of the XVII century, where the Indian and Atlantic Oceans with the surrounding shores were the battlefield where Portugal, Holland, Spain and England fought for domination. Despite the fact that this text will soon be two hundred years old, I can guarantee that you will read this novel more than once, simply because good adventure never gets old, and the ancient world of wooden ships is as enchanting as ever. And then there are the historical and theological aspects of the book. Needless to say, in the mid XVII century the Holy Inquisition was at the peak of its power. "The Phantom Ship", the mythical tale of the Flying Dutchman, is also contextually rich, and offers a plausible, though grim, portrayal of the times. The books is thus serious, analytical, well-researched, and enriched by the author's personal experiences - in addition to the invariably entertaining and often horrifying tale of the cursed ship. The century which just passed was the century of the imperfect man, with atrocities and weaknesses in the spotlight, and it's indeed refreshing to read a novel where it's a perfectly natural phenomenon that all things are in place, men were men and women weren't; and the words, terms and descriptions hadn't lost their original meaning yet. This novel is guaranteed to entertain, do not hesitate to pick it up.

Though I am almost always disturbed by Habermas's borderline naivety concerning what he calls the "unfinished project of modernity," in this volume he rises to the heights I always thought him capable. In 400+ pages (a big book, but always just short enough on the essays to be concise and clear), Habermas shows his command of almost all post-Kantian philosophy. His criticisms are almost always on-target, and even though I do not follow his conclusions (has he read and dealt seriously with ALL of Heidegger? what does he do with metaphysics that are expressly anti-metaphysical, such as those of Bergson, Whitehead, and James?), I am always amazed at his insights and explanations. Interestingly enough, much of what Habermas is explicating (critique of foundations) has always been found in theoretical form in Gadamer, and in cosmological form in Whitehead. Habermas always seems to hold out hope that some sort of Rawlsian "original position" will be found (can Habermas really think that there could ever be such a thing as an "ideal speech situation," devoid of what Gadamer calls the Wirkungsgeschichte, or history which affects it?). For my part, I cannot accept this. Insofar as modernity wanted to find such a situation, it was guilty of what Whitehead called "misplaced concrescence." Habermas makes himself succeptible to the same criticisms. But even though I all too often find Habermas too optimistic in regards the quest of modernity, I am never disappointed when he writes about that quest. I believe this is one of Habermas's finest books, worth the time and effort required to read it.

This is truly a masterpiece. Especially if you're somebody schooled in the incredibly repetitive and tedious Anglo-Saxon tradition, this book will surely be a revelation. You'll need some philosophical training to understand a lot of this, but if you want a brilliant, sweeping evaluation of most of the most important thinkers in Europe post-Kant, with just the perfect balance of detail and summary, and of exegesis and polemic, then this book is essential.

Habermas begins by showing how the discourse of modernity and postmodernity, the concepts that transmitted philosophy from the Humean/Kantian epistemologist's study to the real world, began with Hegel, and how it has been developed since then in different directions, but nobody has really risen to Marx's challenge successfully. Somebody who doesn't know Heidegger and Derrida too well may get the impression that they're not as important as they actually are, due to Habermas' necessarily selective treatment of their work, but other than that the way Habermas dissects the nature of modernity and postmodernity, and then shows how the future can still be hopeful with 'communicative rationality' rather than the solipsistic nature of pre-Habermasian philosophy which inevitably ends up in postmodern tangles, is brilliant.

You can hardly expect any one text to be perfectly right, and I do have a few annoyances - mainly 1) his treatment of Searle's attack upon Derrida, which leaves the situation seeming a little more lopsided in favour of Searle than it really was (you get the impression Searle beat Derrida, when in fact Derrida really won the argument, he just failed to emphasise a few things) & 2) his treatment of Horkheimer and Adorno's pessimism, which in many ways, though disheartening, is still a little more realistic than his own optimistic point of view (he could've said that, despite Adorno's pessimism, communicative rationality is the best way to go, rather than making it seem as if we're on a direct, quick road to his utopian 'ideal speech situation'), and finally 3) when he assumes that "metaphysical world views" are "outdated", he ignores the possibility of going right back to Hegel and revitalising him with the positive, rather than the negative-Nietzschean, insights of the last 200 years, especially that of Lévinas Heideggerean theology and the late Derrida's 1990s writings on religion. A possibility that's difficult but he dismisses a little too easily.

Other than that, though, this is an astounding book of a quality immensely superior to the mass of over-rated rubbish you get these days, like Foucalt and Rorty.

This text, which I used in each of my three calculus-based introductory lecture classes, is a very solid text. The subjects covered are very thorough. However, there have been some complaints as to incorrect answers to some odd-numbered questions both in the back of the book and in the solutions manuals.

I love this book. It's a treasure on my bookshelf -- maybe the best "general" physics book I have read so far. The explanations are clear, complete, and elegant. The authors are more than helpful as teachers for those who think that understanding is more important than problem-solving. They are not interested in short-cut procedures to make you pretend smart. Instead, they care about you and tried to make you a scientific thinker. If you got this book, I would say, "congratuations!!" The best way to read this book is having a rough idea about real analysis, not only basic calculus. The book is not only good for physical concepts, but also for a solid background in mathematics. It's good textbook and reference. Today's introductory physics books tend to be like instant-noodle -- trainings for exams. This one is not. The publisher should not stop printing this one for the sake of advancing scientific study. Or maybe it would become a Dover.

I found this book extermely interesting and explanatory. Dr.Fred Hatfield (professionally known as Dr. Squat) presented the sport of powerlifting and bodybuilding in a way that even the "weekend warriors" can understand. And I have had this book for about 10 years now.

I am not a powerlifter, but i weight train for fitness. I found this book to be very helpful in giving straightforward explanations of the importance of building a good strength base, and what exercises and approaches to use to achieve that. The different workout systems were clearly explained and the pictures and explanations of the exercises were clear. The diet information was also helpful and non technical. A nice addition to my fitness library (...).

The author Jascha Kessler's short fictions are masterpieces of wit,quirky observation on well excavated personas,a continuous merry-go-round of provocative narrative which never lets the reader down. RAPID TRANSIT presents another challenge: written in first person, present-tense this early full length novel is raw -the emotions of the anti-hero shaking with the effects of the second world war. It is not difficult to see how RAPID TRANSIT is really the ground of consciousness for Kessler's brilliant short fiction that follows. The evocation of a young man's precocious universe,,,Celine-esque, is literary of course, but the narrative has compelling reality and quirkiness which defines Kessler's writing DNA.One is drawn into the roar of the historical/sexual narrative: 1940's in the Bronx was never more more sexy.Take the ride!

RAPID TRANSIT, the "story" of a young man's intellectual and emotional odyssey through a few months in a post-World War II Bronx neighborhood. It is a brilliant tour de force in which speech, direct written speech is the mode. The protagonist, Ted, libidinous, iconoclastic, philosophically-inclined, is a conflicted modern Jewish Dedalus. Hearing this anti-hero tell day-by-day of his search for certainties in our mid-century, amoral morass where Aristotelian logic simply doesn't apply and only the "anarchy of desire" reigns is an experience well worth some effort.

From the tough street kid whose teeth are knocked out when trying to defend his heritage, to the adolescent's first amorous gropings, and on to the "adult work" of full-blown sexual powers, we are taken by Mr. Kessler on a roller-coaster ride of emotions and intellect colliding, imploding and perhaps (for the reader) reconciling. By turns it is a novel bawdy, sensual, comedic, lonely, poetic, philosophical, but always touchingly poignant. It is as if Ted swims and simmers in a testosterone-boosted cauldron from which there is neither escape nor hope of answers - only questions and drives - and the strange meeting each day (and all his nights) with anguished fears and surprising joys brought by friends, family, lovers.

RAPID TRANSIT: 1948, An Unsentimental Education is not a philosophical essay variously expressed as a novel, but rather a challenging story of the everyday, told with vitality, through a search for poetry, and the interconnections of people struggling to fulfill themselves. After all, Ted's cerebral musings occur as our hero is desperately trying to get laid, get a job, and find a life. It is couched in a real Bronx neighborhood replete with delis, parks, bakeries and with specific odors of moldering apartments, lusty youths, and the new Bop sounds of Bud Powell and Max Roach at Manhattan's jazz clubs.

RAPID TRANSIT is peopled with some of the most idiosyncratic characters I have met in modern fiction. Besides Ted and his alter-ego, Leon, their buddies and lovers, there's a Runyanesque assortment of personalities: an ancient kosher slaughterer who spends his lonely days killing flies on a window sill with a slash of his ritual knife, Leon's dying father suffering in morphine-blurred agony, and Hanuschka, an Auschwitz survivor, who after experiencing truly absurd horror, is now beyond philosophy and seeks only an American normalcy.

The closing chapters, explosively hallucinatory, are as brilliantly written an exploration of Existential angst as any I have read, reminiscent of, who else but? Joyce's own Stephen Dedalus. Ted descends into his own Hades in a drug-induced state, and we follow him reluctantly into the surreal, fractured, and murderous night world where he almost loses himself. However, unlike the positive affirmation of life that is ULYSSES' mature denouement, RAPID TRANSIT leaves the reader with a sense of loneliness and tragic solitude in the deathly, impersonal universe that opened to our consciousness indelibly after 1945.

RAPID TRANSIT is probing serious fiction that both challenges as it delights. Mr. Kessler, an accomplished and noted poet and writer, clearly is a lover of our urban language. Though he pays homage by allusion to the like of Joyce and Eliot, he is clearly the master of his own luscious, incandescent prose and poetry. This author has created a genuine, if unusual masterpiece that deserves to be read for its skeptically contrary and disturbing view of our society 50 years ago, and its wide window on our world today, for its clearly delineated and idiosyncratic characters and setting, and for the sheer enjoyment of reading an author in full command of his language and his art.

I have read this book being a person currently involed doing research in Radio Communications and at the same time writing something on Wireless Regulation. Even though the book is excellent in presentation,it is always use simple and plain language. The topics should be included such as Numbering( Number portability in Mobile Networks), Roaming of Mobile Networks, regulatory issues such as Licensing an Operator,Interconnection with paricular reference to Calling Party Pays, Quality of Services provided by wireless networks, issues relating to co existence of two systems(eg. DECT and PHS),IMT-2000 and GMPCS, Radio Spectrum Migration of existing users and services to give way to new services, etc.

The authors may claim that these are covered in the book. But I would say these rather not adequately covered and more information on North American Wireless Market. What about Asia, Europe and Africa. What about general issues relating the non availability of global standards in Wireless Communications?

Even though our Library purchased, it is not a good reference even I have given 4stars.

K Selvarajah

This book is not filled with boring formulas like others you'll find on the subject of communications. You'll be surprised how easy it is to read. It's also the only communications book I know of that mentions baseball legend Leo (the Lip) Deroucher in Chapter 10! Fred Day is an avid baseball fan, and he adeptly ties his two loves of sports and communications together.

This large format atlas is roughly equivalent to the Delorme New Mexico atlas, but isn't nearly as pretty. There are no contour lines or land-use boundaries, just B+W road maps. The base data is different, however, so it could be a useful supplement to Delorme. This one comes from official State of New Mexico maps, so it contains information on the status of dirt roads that Delorme doesn't have (since Delorme comes from USGS sources). If you do a lot of dirt road exploring, this atlas could be very helpful. Outside of big towns, this atlas even shows individual houses and windmills.

This is an excellent backroads atlas to the state of New Mexico. We have used it on several backroads adventures since it was published in 1990 and have found it indespensible. It's similar to the DeLorme atlases, but a little easier to read, I think.