A sexual masterpiece! Essential for all sex researchers. Bravo!

David Forgacs' monograph on 'Rome Open City' is as thorough an examination of a major cinematic milestone as you could hope for. Roberto Rossellini's breakthrough film, the story of Resistance activity during the German Occupation of Rome 1943-44, was conceived, made and released in the immediate aftermath of the Liberation, and was exultantly acclaimed as a new kind of cinema, where documentary-style authenticity (largely non-professional cast, basis in recent history, real locations etc.) were seen as an answer to the lies of Fascist film in particular, and the illusions of commercial cinema in general, heralding the Golden Age of Neo-Realism.

Forgacs takes as his starting point Italo Calvino's remark that neo-realist works about the resistance were not 'direct representations of events in reality' but 'textual elaborations of already represented events'. Although the major stories depicted in the film - the street murder of a pregnant woman, the torture of a communist resistant, the execution of a dissident priest - were based on real events, they had already been mythologised in oral accounts, newspaper articles, diaries, paintings, sculptures etc., which representations Rossellini synthesised in his film.

More damagingly, the myth of Resistance offered in 'Rome Open City', which Forgacs suggests was necessary to displace collective guilt and anger as well as provide Romans with a narrative of unity and memory, evades or distorts the more troubling aspects of the Occupation - the natives' 20-year complicity with the Fascist regime; the collaboration of the Fascist police and their network of spies with the brutalities of the Germans; the silences and compromises of the Church. The deportations of the Jews, for instance, are not even mentioned. The 'patriotic myth' was also a way for Rossellini to atone for his own Fascist past, having directed three features for the army.

This is not to suggest that Forgacs simply demolishes the film, which was immensely influential and is still the director's most accessible work. After all, Rossellini himself later disowned the more manipulative and melodramatic aspects of thw work, which were incompatible with his more austere and viewer-challenging later films. By offering a detailed historical and cultural context; by recreating the conditions of the film's conception, production and contemporary reception; and by analysing the film's techniques and themes (most brilliantly in his discussion of urban space, the different uses made of it by occupiers and resisters), as well as the 'polluted' (Rossellini's own phrase) ideology that informs the pretensions to objectivity (in particular the demonising of 'bad' sexuality), Forgacs replaces the monolithically 'important' and 'truthful' film of legend with something much more complex, contradictory and intellectually satisfying.

Run Away little girl is about a little girl who is born with Cerebral Palsy. It is told from the point of view of her mother. It records the first few years of her life from birth and ends as her condidtion is looking up. I guarentee after reading this book you will have a new outlook on supposedly crippling dissabilities. It is a shame this book is currently out of print.

This volume is a valuable literature on international relations with regard to understanding the complicated nature of arms control bargaining process. Authors examined growing threats of missile proliferation during 1980s and the emergence of the Missile Technology Control Regimes (MTCR) as well as Russia's missile export policy and its reluctance to involve the MTCR. This study well shows the U.S. efforts for preventing missile proliferation and how it persuaded Russia to participate and embrace the MTCR

The course guide accompanies the SAS Institute instructor-based training course SAS Fundamentals: A Programming Approach.

The manual is well organized and illustrated. A convenient desk reference that can be utilized outside the course easily due to detailed explanations and illustrations. The manual includes exercises and solutions in addition to a thorough chapter summary.

This course guide is composed of 9 sections and an appendix.

Section 1 Fundamental Concepts of SAS Programming includes introduction and fundamental concepts.

Section 2 The SAS Display Manager System has: overview of the SAS Display Manager System, saving and retrieving SAS programs, editing SAS programs, and resolving common problems.

Section 3 Getting Familiar with SAS Data Sets includes: accessing existing SAS data sets, investigating data set structure, investigating data values, ad hoc queries and data modification.

Section 4 Producing List Reports has: getting started with the Print procedure, sequencing and grouping observations, customizing report appearance, and formatting data values.

Section 5 Creating SAS Data Sets includes: reading raw data files, examining data errors, creating permanent SAS data sets, assigning variable attributes, and additional features.

Section 6 DATA Step Programming has: creating and managing variables, reading SAS data sets, and conditional processing.

Section 7 Combining SAS Data Sets includes: concatenating SAS data sets and merging SAS data sets.

Section 8 Producing Summary Reports has: creating tabular reports, customizing tabular reports and requesting statistics in tabular reports.

Section 9 Introduction to Graphics includes: general concepts, producing bar and pie charts and producing plots.

This book does a great job of showing examples of SAS macro coding techniques. It includes how to create macro variables using %LET, Call Symput and Proc SQL, as well as passing parameters, %IF statements (and when you need to use it versus a data step IF statement), %DO loops, and debugging. Most importantly it shows whats going on behind the scenes which explains why my programs work (or don't work!) the way they do which the log doesn't always tell you.

If you can't take the class, buy this book! And Macro Programming Made Easy.

The SAS Institute provides an instructor-based training course called SAS Programming. The following course guide accompanies the course and is an excellent resource even if one has not taken the course itself.

The course guide is separated into six sections, which all include exercises and a chapter summary. The first section titled Introduction includes: course overview and prerequisites, review of file structures, review of fundamental concepts, writing observations, and review of display manager.

The second section titled Processing Raw Data includes: introduction, reading raw data, multiple records per observation, conditional input, accumulating totals, hierarchial files, multiple observations per record, and writing raw data.

The third section Data Tranformations includes: manipulating numeric values, manipulating character values, and data conversion.

The fourth section Iterative Processing has: iteratively executing statements, reading data with DO loops, array processing, and array features.

The fifth section Reading and Combining SAS Data Sets has: using the SET statement, merging SAS data sets, updating SAS data sets, and additional features.

The sixth section Processing SAS Data Sets with PROC SQL includes: structured query language, concatenating SAS data sets, and merging SAS data sets.

The course guide is well-organized with visual to assist in working out exercises on your own. A well put together course guide that serves as an excellent at your desk reference and teaching resource.

There is not enough reference-book for SAS Programmers. But this book is very concise, clear-cut and literally "effective".

When I was in trouble because of SAS programs' performance, this book helped me out of performance trouble.

I changed my programs according to book's advice. And I got almost 5 times higher performance.

This book is best among SAS programming guides.

This book has an abundance of in depth information that is presented very well and is an excellent resource for experimental designs. I found this book easy to follow. Not only do you get an understanding of linear models but you also get a great tutorial on the SAS codes. It was initially to be a cross-reference manual, but I ended up reading it cover-to-cover twice due to the many helpful strategies that I learnt. This is a great book to have around the office.

This is a brilliant journal. It has plenty of theoretical and experimental knowledge of Vipassana Meditation; history, technique, personal experiences, and even process applying for psychological and psychiatric treatment. If you are a Vipassana meditator, this book encourages your daily practice. And it helps you build or maintain harmonious life whether you are a meditator or not.