This book when published in the 1830's was a mind-blower, in that it totally dismantled previous conceptions about Irelands' past and its infinite mysteries as a mystical Isle. As an Irishman reading this book, and having received much nonsense about the ancient history of Ireland as a child, the book was a revelation. In one quickfire second, Henry O'Brien shook the pillars and columns of the Ecclesiastics' orthodoxy to its foundations.

Using that uniquely Irish landmark - the Round Tower - as his source, O'Brien interwove a miscellany of subjects like Buddhism, Hinduism, Mithraism, Linguistics, Gaelic customs, Language and attire, Persia, India, Egypt, Irish place names into an elongated thread of one book. The epicentre of this span of subjects was ancient Ireland and those magical people the Tuatha De Danaan!

What is most remarkable is the book stands the test of time; the research and level of scholarly endeavour is astounding. O'Brien exposed myths, untruths and misconceptions of Ireland's ancient past; he unearthed secrets which had been hidden in the deep recesses of time - tablet sealed - which hadn't been broken or penetrated hereto.

To do all this is a remarkable achievement; O'Brien defied orthodoxy - he unravelled the orthodox narrative that had been handed down by conventional dogma about the mysteries of the sacred Isle; in the process, he solved time honoured riddles; he posed fundamental questions and consistently answered those questions. Using his brilliant talent for linguistics and his collossus of learning, O'Brien's writing and synopsis was mesmerising; he opened a Pandora box. But such is the quaintness and seductiveness of the book that O'Brien displayed a penchant to vary the narrative at the appropriate time; included are fascinating illustrations and invariably he endowed each section with a poem as an appendage!

The most salient image that reflects itself like a silhouette in the mind's eye was O'Brien's logic: his arguments were persuasive, very convincing and his shield was passion and great purpose. O'Brien was a master at breaking things down into definites - his was an exacting science.

In conclusion, in the nineteenth century Henry O'Brien was a ground breaker; he chartered new territory hitherto uncovered by the sweeping sickle of academia. The most amazing and startling thing is that, arguably no scholar of renown or author to this day has tackled such a phalanx of subjects in one go - in one fell swoop; that the tautly bound secrets and mummification of Ireland's past haven't been unwound or unbound by any comparable unraveller of untruths since O'Brien's day.

Truly 'The Round Towers of Atlantis' is the most seminal, definitive, dam-bursting, revelatory, scholarly account of the Irish Round Towers, the Tuatha De Danaan and Ireland's ancient past extant. O'Brien's vision and perception wade through and clear away the unfathomable mists surrounding the mysteries of this sacred Isle. He shows the wonder that was IRELAND; he re-visits this magical place; he holds up -like a magical apotheosis - the Tuatha De Danaan and unveils the rays of their wondrous glory.

This book is a must read; it is an oracle; a key that opens the portal to the hidden history of Eireann. It is eternal because its domain was inscribed with an investigators plume recreating the glorious vista; its raison d'etre is truth. In this book, Henry O'Brien found the inner sanctum; its pulse beats to the rhythm of infinite time.

The Round Towers Of Atlantis by Henry O'Brien is the welcome reprint of a long out-of-print seminal work offering a profound wealth of esoteric wisdom and lore. Originally published back in 1834 as "The Round Towers of Ireland", Henry O'Brien's The Round Towers Of Atlantis provides an insightful and thought-provoking inquiry and commentary on the lost civilization of Atlantis, pre-Christian megalithic architecture, ancient secret societies, the history of the Tuatha-de-Danaans, the origins of modern Celtic Christianity, the relationship and connections between Atlantis and Ireland, and much, much more. Enthusiastically recommended reading for students of occult and metaphysical studies, The Round Towers Of Atlantis is a treasury of arcane knowledge is preserved in this profound and meticulous account that has miraculously survived the test of time.

I must admit, I have yet to actually read this novella. Then why, you ask, am I reviewing it? A local theater group that I am in is performing an dramatic adaptation of "The Sacred Fount." I am portraying the character of Ford Obert and must say that this is one of the most thought-provoking productions I have been involved in. I have been told that the novella itself is a very difficult read but, if my experience in performing it is any indication, a throughly rewarding one.

The Sacred Fount is the first great modernist novel, as well asan ignored one. The plot is kind of odd. The narrator, at a weekendparty, thinks that he is observing some sort of vampire-like transactions of vitality between the guests. He spends the next two days trying to find who has vampiric control over whom. Odd, but brilliant. END

Originally given as a gift to my father from a fellow sailor, I had to buy my own copy since I kept stealing his! Great fun for anyone who sails and those who wonder why we do. Some of the definitions, while humorous, are unfortunately a bit too accurate.

The book is a simple humrous look at the sport of sailing and boating. Sure to bring a smile to an old salt or the novice who just does not understand sailors and why they do it. Great gift for the sailing enthusiast.

I have only just finished reading this wonderful book about Henry Shukman's journeys in New Mexico.My own imagination would take over as i took in all the fascinating landscapes,people and places that the author was sharing with me.Indians and artists,shacks and glorious views from the middle of no-where...The author came across as sensitive and although at times he would feel pulled by fond memories of England,his passion for where he was there and then was so obvious.I now have a passionate dream of my own. To go and search out these places for myself and be inspired by all they have to offer..

The writings of the author left a deep impression on me. He writes with a very romantic, extremely descriptive style that allows you to feel what he saw. I lived in NM for 3 years and after reading the book was ready to go back. Mr Shukman did such a great job detailing his journey. He described many of the places I remember from there. I found myself nostalgic for the Southwest. He did such a good job, that I was ready to go back because I wanted to visit some of the places that I had never gone to when I had the opportunity. After you read the book, if you've never been to the Southwest you too will be ready to pack your bags!!!

Actually this is a good book. It gives frequencies in general not for individual states etc. But it is a well written and very informative book and we are glad I ordered it.

Great scanner book. Covers every aspect of the scanning industry. A must for all scanners and scanner wannabe's. Has frequencies and police termonology to everything else. I recomend this book to anyone who owns a scanner. Greatest scanner book i have & i have all of them.

This is the best style guide for technical writing I have ever found. It gives more every day practical information than any of the other technical writing books and gives that information in a highly usable format.

My only complaint--my standard complaint about my reference books--is that the index is far less comprehensive than it ought to be. Given modern computer indexing capabilities, one would think authors and publishers could do a better job.

However, with this is one of the four essential books: 1. Strunk and White, Elements of Style, 2. Prentice Hall, Words Into Type, 3. Garner, A Dictionary of Modern American Usage (for the British tech writer, Fowler's Modern English Usage) and 4. Ruebens, Science and Technical Writing. With these four, a technical writer can handle almost any situation that arises. There are other books covering special fields that can be added, but these four will always be the bedrock.

If you are a professional technical writer or only an occasional one, you can't go wrong having this book handy on your desktop.

While Robert A. Day's How to Write & Publish a Scientific Paper gives a good overview of the writing and publishing process on a macro level regarding organization and presentation of material, Science and Technical Writing provides great detailed advice on a micro level. Philip Rubens gives very clear instruction on paragraphing, grammar, punctuation and spelling as well as the intricacies of how to present numbers, mathematical symbols and scientific notation. In addition, there are illustrated guidelines on how to design a variety documents such as brochures, manuals and newsletters right down to the page-level including representing information in charts, tables and diagrams. The book itself is well-designed and well-organized giving testament to its own advice. This is a good general reference for both writers and editors of science and technical documentation.

For any skeptic willing to question their own foundations, this book is a must. Not only is it an excellent companion to the works of Michael Shermer and like-minded skeptics, it adds a much needed dose of reality to said skeptical works. It seems a vocal few have boldy proclaimed what science is and is not. H. Bauer provides a blueprint (along with his previous work Scientific Literacy and the Myth of the Scientific Method) for what "raw' science truly is, undiluted with politics or beliefs.

To really grasp what is going on with Big Science and why there is such resistance to new ideas, you need a copy of Dr. Henry Bauer's Science or Pseudoscience: Magnetic Healing, Psychic Phenomena and Other Heterodoxies published this year by the University of Illinois Press. Henry H. Bauer, Dean Emeritus of Arts & Sciences, Professor Emeritus of Chemistry and Science Studies Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, is the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Scientific Exploration, and the author of several other books like The Enigma of Loch Ness: Making Sense of a Mystery and Scientific Literacy and the Myth of the Scientific Method, which we recommend almost monthly to our listener and guests on ....

The most original aspect of this book is the way that Dr. Bauer has of defining normal, revolutionary, premature, and "pseudo" science in terms of the three facets of data, method, and theory. He makes detailed comparisons of the actual working practices in natural science, social science, and denigrated science and reexamines notorious cases from this fresh perspective. Normal science doesn't try to do anything revolutionary in any of these three facets, according to Bauer. As he says, "Scientific "revolutions" (quantum mechanics, relativity) change only one of those at a time. Looking for novelty in two of the three simultaneously produces "premature" science: Mendel's theory of genetics, Wegener's theory of drifting continents - ignored or rejected by science for decades. Novelty in all three areas characterizes looking for Loch Ness Monsters or UFOs or studying psychic phenomena; the difficulties are enormous and the chances of success slight, but that doesn't make the quest useless or to be criticized."

Some of our favorite subjects that have been dismissed as "pseudo science" are reexamined as "scientific" with this perspective, and Bauer relates the search for the giant squid, the search for extraterrestrials, pre-Clovis people in the Americas, cold fusion, the idea that HIV causes AIDS, and much more.

Bauer is a humorous writer and acknowledges that his critics will probably not be able to keep from being nasty. He recommends that if the skeptics insist on being nasty, they should at least distinguish genuine knowledge-seekers from self-promoting confidence tricksters. As he points out, many cryptozoologists, parapsychologists, and ufologists are perfectly honest, genuine seekers of understanding (while some mainstream researchers are not very honest).

For an unusually unbiased, yet scientific, approach to some of the subjects that are "borderland" respectable - sometimes called pseudo-science, sometimes admitted into science, but generally still controversial ("how much don't we yet know about electromagnetism and living processes! About archaeoastronomy!") you must read this book.

I was so fascinated by Laura Dassow Walls' unique take on Thoreau that I was inspired to complete my own graduate work on Transcendentalism. Any student of Thoreau will appreciate this innovative look at the old master.

I first heard Laura Walls deliver the concepts contained in this volume at a recent annual meeting of the Thoreau Society. Her presentation was clear and direct, introducing the hearer to the historical personalities that influenced the platform upon which Thoreau based his world view. This book expands the same theme, for it fills in a great deal of minutia that had to be omitted from the ealier presentation. Seeing New Worlds is an important excursion into both the obvious and the subtle influences that shaped the late writings of Thoreau, such as Faith in a Seed, which only recently was made available to students of this enigmatic soul. Congratulations to Walls for a well researched intrusion into a complex mind. Tom Potter

In this world of Knowledge and the propensity to believe in things are reasoned by Sciences, this book prods us, that the ultimate is still GOD. I for one, has fallen out a number of times, with an ardent attempt at things secular, despite my inner cravings for a deeper faith in God. This book sets out reminding me of my corporal life and all that surrounds me is nothing, but temporal. It is a rare find, given my recent yearning to return as a prodigal son and my inner inclination to detach all materialism and let it take a back seat. Despite the classic prose as expected of an author who lived more than 100 years ago, I understood his writing thoroughly, although I am not an European nor an American. This, indeed is an oasis of a find for answers from the Word Made Flesh, and is dwelling amongst us. In short, "go get it, all you who wants rest, for His Yoke is light and easy."

The back cover notes that Vintage Spiritual Classics are "[f]illed with eloquence and fresh insight, encouragement and solace." Two out of four ain't bad (and the other two are here too, if harder to reach).

Newman is certainly eloquent, though I might have described his prose as "stately" instead; he is rarely so eloquent here as to be hard to follow. Fresh insights are here too, and 160 years have not made them stale.

But this book is not the "easy reading spirituality" one might expect from a book whose cover says it's filled with encouragement and solace. Newman is in the reader's face and at the conscience from the beginning.

His "Plain and Parochial" sermons are challenges to lead a truly Christian life. It's hard to believe people filled an Oxford Church to hear these--perhaps people were made of sterner stuff then.

Yet there is solace and encouragement to be found. Newman was no ogre, but a caring man. He said what should be said, caring about the souls of those who would hear (and read) it.

And as a bonus, the book closes with one of my favorite prayers.

I have, since first reading this book a few years ago, made an effort to add it to the libraries of all my friends whenever a holiday occurs. It is a book that I reread whenever I want to be stimulated. The opening essay, "The Sense of Reality", is a masterful study of historical thinking. Berlin is able to pick apart massive themes and shape them to his interests. There is a good reason that he has been labeled by many as one of the greatest essayists of all time; this collection certainly rivals "The Hedgehog and the Fox".

All of Isaiah Berlin's books are good. But this one is his best.

"The Sense of Reality" is a collection of nine brilliant essays on "ideas and their history." Each essay is a powerhouse of intellectual electricity!

In a style that is stimulating, compelling--and, in the end, irresistible--Berlin writes about ideas with all the nervous energy of an enthusiast.

Yet he is clear to the end. He is a great explainer. He distinguishes one thing from another. He takes on the knots, unties them, and lets go of the rope.

The effect on the reader is one of exhilarating liberation. One can breathe a little freer. At the same time, one must breathe a little harder. Up here, at high altitude, in the Sierras of the cerebellum, the air is crisp as paper. And our guide, our cicerone, our Isaiah, keeps us skipping--at a dizzying pace!--from mountaintop to mountaintop.

As the pages turn, they envelop the reader in a whirlpool of words that round up the ideas--only to plunge them into a deep sea of profound thought. Once again, we gasp for air.

Indeed, it seems that, wherever Berlin takes us--the mountains, seas, skies, stars of the mind--we are left dazzled, breathless, tottering on the edge of horizons that become elastic, expansive, infinite . . .

In the title essay, Berlin writes of the "disturbing experience," the "electric shock," of "genuinely profound insight"--which he likens to the touching of nerves deeply embedded in our most private thoughts and basic beliefs.

This is not Science. This is the Humanities. Not the mechanics of Newton. But the Pensees of Pascal. Not knowledge. But knowing that "there is too much we do not know, but dimly surmise."

Very well. But what does Berlin mean by the "sense of reality"? In his essay "Political Judgement," he drops a few more clues. It is "a sense of direct acquaintance with the texture of life." Or: "natural wisdom, imaginative understanding, insight, perceptiveness, and...intuition." Or: "practical wisdom,...a sense of what will 'work' and what will not. It is a capacity...for synthesis rather than analysis, for knowledge in the sense in which trainers know their animals, or parents their children, or conductors their orchestras, as opposed to that in which chemists know the contents of their test tubes, or mathematicians know the rules that their symbols obey."

Outside the sphere of science--i.e., in real life (personal and political)--the scientific method fails. But a "sense of reality" can work. Really? Why? How can that be? Perhaps it is because a "sense of reality" allows one to grope, feel, touch, grasp...the important things in life..., which slip through the fingers of science.

The search for truth, or for what works, whether by scientific method, or by a "sense of reality," is one thing. But will is another. Will asserts and expresses not truth but self.

According to Berlin, will manifests itself individually in Romanticism ("The Romantic Revolution") and collectively in Nationalism ("Kant as an Unfamiliar Source of Nationalism").

Berlin tsks the enlightened rationalists for failing to anticipate the rise of nationalism. But who can foresee the unpredictable? Who can see the invisible? Will is wind--a forceful, violent, overpowering impulse that cannot be grasped.

Will without strength, however, is of no effect. The strong devour the weak. This truism is so obvious that it is almost always overlooked. But Berlin does not overlook it. He brings it to light. You can feel the fire in his essay on Indian Nationalism ("Rabindranath Tagore and the Consciousness of Nationality"). And these flames from the east are reflected in the west by writers such as Machiavelli, de Maistre, de Sade, Nietzsche, and other "irrationalists" who see sharp teeth glistening behind big smiles.

Being strong of will, but weak of strength, I am drawn to Berlin's discussion of the disgusting emotions: shame, humiliation, degradation, frustrated desire, and a desperate need for recognition. Berlin holds up the mirror, and I see myself--my own desperate need for recognition compelling me to write this review!

Regardless, I read Berlin not to gain knowledge, but to hone my wits--and sharpen my teeth! The important thing is not to remember what he wrote, but to profit from reading him. And the profit I get from reading Berlin is this: I look deeper, see clearer, and believe less.

I come away from this book with a keener "sense of reality"--and a more open sense of wonder. Wonder! Not at the glittering galaxies of human achievement. But at the void, the abyss, the infinite space of the unknowable . . .

In the final analysis, there is no final analysis. Berlin does not wrap up, tie down, nail shut. Rather, he picks locks, pries open, leaves ajar...

There is no "closure"--i.e., no death--in these pages. Reading them, one gets the feeling that Berlin likes his human beings free and alive. And that puts him at odds with those deadly human engineers who like cadavers and control.