Ballistic-Missile Defense and Strategic Stability by Dean A. Wilkening gives a thorough review of available missile defense technologies and their possible impact upon global stability. The author's detailed analysis looks at national missile defenses, regional defenses, and boost-phase defenses while giving particular attention to the capabilities and limitations of each. Wilkening pays special attention to the strategic impact upon other nuclear powers such as China, Russia, UK, France, India, and Pakistan that would result from the American implementation of the different forms of missile defense, along with the resulting reactions and concerns of those states. Although Wilkening appears to have a favored form of defense, the book is well balanced and fair in its analysis. Overall, the book is an informative short-read that gives the reader a basic understanding of existing missile defense technologies. Excellent book for those who enjoy combining number-crunching and global strategic thought.

The book was inspiring for ideas on different styles of decorating traditional, modern, electric I sew and enjoy creating original designs for my house. So, I did use some of the ideas. The book is worth purchasing.

As a homeschool teacher I find this book a great tool for simple, yet effective experiments. The book contains detailed information about a variety of science subjects, including: weather, electricity, light and sight, paper and printing, etc.

Bodywork Basics is an easy to read reference for a variety of kinds of bodywork. It includes sections on western, eastern, and combination styles. Each section gives a brief description, history, and ways to try it at home if possible. I found it to be a nice introduction to things I had heard of but didn't know much about, and some things that were completely new to me. I also liked the other resources section at the end of the chapters which list a way to get in touch with practioners and further reading for things I want to learn more about. Overall, a fun, simple introduction, written so anyone can understand it.

The book can be rather boorish and cumbersome at times. But itis worth it. Julian's intense religion really shines through thisbook. It is difficult at times, but "every sweet with sour is tempered still."

Shenk's collection of papers was distributed at the 2000 Global Anabaptist Missions Consultation where he also addressed the 200 delegates in attendance. Of signicance in Shenk's review of Mennonite and Brethren in Christ cross-cultural outreach over the past 150 years:

o Early Anabaptists wrapped their theology around the Great Commission theme (1525-ca.1590) o Mennonite theology that emerged from a generation of intense persecution was ambivalent toward renewal and missions. o Recovery of the Anabaptist vision resulted in an enlarging world-view and mission outreach over the past 150 years. o The center of mass of Mennonites/Brethren in Christ has shifted to the southern hemisphere o 50 cross-cultural initiatives were launched in the last decade of the 20th century, the largest number in any decade since the beginning of a cross-cultural ministry emphasis.

An excellent, well-documented work that supports a significant thesis. Reflects solid scholarly effort.

Thirteen articles/monographs, including three in Greek (with one-page English language summaries), wrestle with the question, how should the music in pre-1800s Byzantine chant manuscripts be understood today?

Western musicologists from the 1920s through at least the 1970s assumed that the early-1800s reform of Byzantine chant notation reflected a revolutionary change in the musical content of Byzantine chant: they wrote and taught that the music chanted in today's Greek Orthodox churches is fundamentally different from the music chanted in the Orthodox churches of the "Byzantine" Empire.

This view was vigorously resisted by most people with personal experience with today's Greek Orthodoxy, but few of those Western musicologists had such experience with Greek Orthodoxy. In the 1960s and 1970s, some Greek Orthodox scholars began to emerge with the Western academic credentials needed to get a hearing in those forums, and they began to publish papers in Western journals presenting the other point of view: that most differences between today's Greek Orthodox chant and that of earlier centuries are evolutionary, not revolutionary.

In this collection of papers presented in Athens in 1993, some two decades later, we see papers from many of today's leading spokesmen for the continuity of Greek Orthodoxy's musical heritage: George Th. Stathis, Ioannis Arvanitis, Lycourgous Ant. Angelopoulis, Jorgen Raasted, and Christian Toelsgard are among the thirteen authors represented here.

This volume offers a fascinating look at some of the recent scholarship in this field.

Calculating Machines Douglas R. Hartree

A review by Frederick A. Ware

This book is volume six in the Charles Babbage Institute Reprint Series for the History of Computing. Douglas Hartree was primarily a physicist, his most significant contribution being the Hartree-Fock self-consistent approximation technique for generating molecular wave functions. Later in his career, he became one of the leading computer researchers in Britain during the late 1940s when Britain briefly overtook the United States in this new field.

This was a tremendously enjoyable book. It goes into significant depth in a number of areas. The reader is impressed and surprised by how far computer hardware and software development had moved in the three years since the unveiling of Eniac.

This is a valuable historical reference, as well, touching upon the primary classes of computing machinery during what is arguably the most critical two decades in the realization of the computer. In 1930 the only computing instruments were the mechanical desk calculator and slide rule. By 1950 there were several dozen stored program machines doing useful work scattered across two continents.

This book covers the development of calculating instruments and machinery during the 1930s and the 1940s. Briefly, the nine chapters are:

[1] Introduction

[2] The Differential Analyser (those Brits don't know how to spell) - The Bush Differential Analyser is described extensively. The core of this mechanical analogue computer is the two disk integrator. Shaft rotations are used to represent numerical values, and ordinary differential equations may be solved numerically with the instrument. There is also some discussion of how mechanical analogue computers were quickly replaced by analogue electronic computers with the development of the vacuum tube operational amplifier.

[3] The Differential Analyser and Partial Differential Equations - Partial differential equations are turned into ordinary differential equations be evaluating them with one of the independent kept to a limited range. The equations are solved repeatedly to give a family of numerical solutions.

[4]Some Other Instruments - Analogue instrumentation capable of Fourier decomposition and Fourier synthesis is described.

[5] Introduction to Large Automatic Digital Computers - The structure of a digital computer is described - main store, processing unit, control unit, and an input/output unit. Also the basic classes of commands used to program the machine are described: load/store transfers, arithmetic/logical operations, sequencing operations (branch and skip), and input/output operations. Computer science 101, but it was pretty new in 1949.

[6] Charles Babbage and the Analytical Engine - A description of Babbages computer demonstrating how it mapped into the digital computer of chapter 5.

[7] The First Stage of Development - A description of the first computers (really just souped-up calculaters with some kind of automatic sequencing capability). This included the Harvard Mark I mechanical digital computer, the Bell Telephone relay digital computer, and the Penn State vacuum tube digital computer. Of the three, the Eniac was the most significant because of its blinding speed - the electronic components gave it a 1000x performance advantage over the other technologies. The key contribution of Mauchley and Eckert was to prove that large numbers of vacuum tubes could be operated reliably. The architecture of the machine was not significant, with all subsequent vacuum tube machines utilizing the familiar stored program architecture.

[8] Projects and Prospects - The development of large, fast main storage is the critical problem to be addressed in the late 1940s. The two principle alternatives to vacuum tube flipflops are mercury delay lines and electrostatic storage on a CRT . Both are volatile and require refreshing techniques. Both go on to be used in a number of computers in the next five years until ferrite core memory is developed.

[9] High Speed Automatic Digital Machines and Numerical Analysis - The first attempts to develop numerical algorithms that are stable and efficient. The problems are the same as those attacked by the earlier analogue machines, but the problems of roundoff and quantization must be addressed for the first time.

The information on the audio tape follows Minnie Lush's study guide almost verbatim, but the convenience of being able to listen to the material while cleaning the house or driving the car is wonderful. The tapes are packed with helpful information. Ms. Lush includes not only the necessary facts that will be covered on the exam, but informs the listener how to prepare and what to bring to the exam as well.

This compendium is basically an abridged version of Calvin's original Institutes (which grew to be quite a gargantuan volume). It covers all of the significant points of Calvin's theology and is a must read for anyone truly wishing to understand Calvin's theology in general or the development of Western philosophical and theological though.