The breakdown of the individual effects that each planet has on a person's personality is extremely well done and offers very good descriptions of personality traits. I own several of these books and recommend trying any of them.

This book is a prime example of a good place to start learning about encryption. It gives the fundamentals for the neophite

Bill

This is a handy and entertaining guide to the British cinema with scores of interviews on the greats in all basic categories, from performers to directors to producers to writers to cinematographers. The brief interviews cover main points of the individuals' careers. McFarlane also provides chronological lists of films pertaining to his subjects.

It is great to read the insights of film figures of the stature of Moira Shearer, the dazzling redhead who wowed moviegoers in "The Red Shoes" as well as an interview of director John Schlesinger, who was such a profound influence on British and world cinema with timely works such as "Sunday, Bloody Sunday!" and "Billy Liar." The book also includes a foreword by Julie Christie, who notched a Best Actress Oscar starring in another of Schlesinger's timely sixties' social rebellion films, "Darling," which also starred Dirk Bogarde and Laurence Harvey. Ken Annakin's interview relates how he became involved in film directing as a protege of Sir Carol Reed, and includes his perspectives on Walt Disney and Darryl F. Zanuck, for which he turned out enduring films such as "The Swiss Family Robinson" and "The Longest Day." Oscar-winning cinematographer Guy Green tells about working with David Lean in "Oliver Twist" and "Great Expectations," the latter of which earned him his Academy Award.

A nice feature of this book is that the reader can easily approach the subject matter without regard to sequence, covering the individuals interviewed in order of interest. Just open to the table of contents and look up your favorites.

The initiative and referendum process was used more during the 1990s than it had been for decades. The people have used the process to cut taxes, protect animals and the environment, enact public health care laws, impose term limits on their legislatures, and much more.

State legislatures have reacted by curtailing the process, in effect opposing this challenge to their power by the people they are supposed to represent. The Battle Over Citizen Lawmaking describes this struggle as well as teaching us a great deal about initiative and referendum in America.

Of all the books written about the initiative process in recent years, The Battle Over Citizen Lawmaking stands out as the best. The book, written by scholars, journalists, and activists and edited by the President of the Initiative and Referendum Institute, gives an account of the history of the initiative process and the reasons both for and against increased regulation. Unlike many other works on the subject, it is scupulously fair to all points of view.

Although it is intended as a textbook for political science classes - and is a very good one indeed - The Battle Over Citizen Lawmaking is also suitable for the informed general reader. If you plan to read only one book about the initiative process, read this one.

Behavioral Medicine is a book that will bring happiness into your life and others as well!

Co-published with the Yale University Press, Gloria Groom's Beyond The Easel: Decorative Painting By Bonnard, Vuillard, Denis, And Roussel, 1890-1930 is an exhibition catalog which is profusely illustrated with both color and black-and-white reproductions. With an informative essay by Nicholas Watson, and additional contributions to the text by Jennifer Paoletti and Therese Barruel, Beyond The Easel is a magnificent, very highly recommended addition to personal, academic, and community library art history collections.

"There have always been crime stories," says Richard Attenborough, in his foreward to "The BFI Companion to Crime." Cinematic representations of crime and criminals are a worldwide phenomenon still in force after one hundred years. What editor Phil Hardy has done in his excellent reference book is to create an encyclopedic survey of the crime film genre from its "origins at a certain period in Europe in the late nineteenth century which saw the formation of an organised police force and the professionalisation of both the forces of law and the criminal . . . .[that] gave rise to a literature, of which Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is the first great exponent, in which the process of investigation is paramount . . . ." Such an investigation, or "police procedural," did not concern itself solely with crime-solving: an apprehension of the criminal, or "alleged perp," occurred. This "apprehension" involved a physical detention for questioning, as a means of "apprehending" the psychological and social dimensions of crime and criminal. In other words, the evolution of the crime film genre brought about an exploration of minds and motivations of criminals that would no longer be hidden in literary detail.

"What then arose both in Europe and America during the 1920s," according to Mr Hardy, "were a series of representations of daring criminals (Fantômas, Dr Mabuse) and striking and highly popular recreations of the criminal underworld." The high energy of the Roaring Twenties during Prohibition, with its G-Men enforcers, produced the gangster film, a popular genre which initiated a "ripped from the headlines" approach to filmmaking that still persists today. A listing of these early gangster films would include: "Underworld" (1927), "Little Caesar" (1930), "The Public Enemy" (1931), and "Scarface" (1932). As the Depression of the 1930s wore on, people cheered gangsters in films and made them their folk heroes. After federal agent Melvin Purvis gunned down John Dillinger in 1934, the gangster film shifted into a subgenre; now cops and criminals would have double billing, and television entered the scene. (Fast forward to "The Untouchables," "The Godfather Trilogy," "Mean Streets," "Goodfellas," and "The Sopranos," to name but a few examples.)

This "Companion" artfully deconstructs the complex genre (or subgenre) of film noir that emerged in the early 1940s. These films noirs (and neo-noirs) have generated a cottage industry of critical and popular texts. While I do not concur with the editor's thesis of "the lethargy that was film noir," I believe he presents quite valuable insights to the genre.

Several sociohistorical factors came into play at the beginning of the 1940s: America's involvement in World War II; the resurgence of the American economy concomitant with Rosie-the-Riveter's replacement of men in the workplace; and the shifting roles of women and men ("Mildred Pierce"). Soon, contrasting and overlapping images of overworld and underworld intruded into film: "police were expected to be corrupt and the man running the nightclub was expected to be a criminal" ("The Big Sleep" and "Murder My Sweet"). With the appearance of " 'femmes fatales,' preying on confused males" in these films, Hardy sees "languidity" and "lack of masculine energy" in this subgenre: ". . . the way a (wo)man held a cigarette was as important as the way (s)he held a gun."

Films of the 1930s and 1940s also illustrate the influences of Freudian psychology and psychoanalysis, and of German Expressionist artists and filmmakers. "John Huston's 'The Maltese Falcon' (1941), adapted from Dashiell Hammett's novel and one of the earliest 'films noirs,' is a convenient starting-point from which to examine changes in the narrative strategies of the crime film . . . ." The 1950s highlighted "the importance of the crime writer to the crime film." Preceded by a few pages of color photos from contemporary crime cinema, the extensive glossary includes entries of many of these writers (e.g., James M. Cain, Raymond Chandler, and Elmore Leonard).

"The BFI Companion to Crime" is a fascinating and up-to-date reference for the "crime film" genre. After spending time with Attenborough's gossipy foreward and Hardy's informative, opinionated, and rambling introduction, one might even read the rest from cover-to-cover. One drawback is the lack of an index and appendixes: no filmography or bibliography. However, the book is cross-referenced in bold type and displays several b & w photos per page.

While there are many subgenres of the crime film genre, not all films with crimes are considered here, such as horror films and Westerns because they are considered by most film viewers, scholars, and critics to be separate genres. Film buffs may argue endlessly on what constitutes a genre or subgenre in film, with collateral agreements and disagreements as to the catergorisation of which film belongs in what genre or subgenre. Thus, I consider this book to be an invaluable reference for the crime film buff.

I'd like to read your book on the internet. Please show me your book's contents . Thank you.

If you work with people in any of the healing arts, this book is a must read for understanding the power of working somatically with people. Jim Kepner writes comprehensively about physical process from the Gestalt perspective.

This atlas is a superb coffee-table eye catcher, containing many marvelous wonderfully-detailed color photograhs from space as well as finely detailed maps of everywhere. It makes a great addition to any waiting room set up to impress the client.