I enjoyed this book. Took me awhile to read but very enjoyable. Civil War on the high seas!

It might be hard to believe that writing about the making of a telescope could make for a good book. This husband & wife team pulled it off wonderfully. "Revealing the Universe..." takes you easily (even for the novice) through some basic physics and the history of X-Ray astronomy. Then the authors get into the Chandra project proper and the going gets good. They take the reader through the often dramatic process of getting such a complicated and costly project through the cogs of bureaucracy and politics and the infinite patience and perseverence of those scientists and administrators who made the project happen. Among the most interesting parts of the book are the descriptions of the technological miracles the scientists had to perform to make Chandra a reality; the impossibly precise requiements for the mirrors, for example, stretch the imagination and make for great "mind trips". Reading through sections describing crucial "make-or-break" tests of the different components is intense, like watching Robert DeNiro in a great car chase scene. And then, first light...the thing works...just like it was designed...or better! Awesome!
"Revealing the Universe..." is excellent for those interested in astronomy as well as for those interested in expanding your mind with a good read.

Those familiar with the Guides to Biblical Scholarship series will be pleasantly surprised by Trible's work. Most books in this series offer a relatively shallow introduction to a specific method of exegesis and manage to avoid detailed application of the method entirely. In the worst cases, the authors seem to be annoyed by the task of explaining their method to the unitinitiated. The difference in Tible's work is immediately obvious. It is about twice as long as most books in the series and is meticulously written and documented. These latter triats, of course, are those which characterize all of Trible's work. She begins by describing the birth of this method in the work of James Muilenburg, then carefully describes how contemporary rhetorical criticis draws upon classical roots from Aristotle forward. The second half of the book is a rhetorical commentary on the book of Jonah, which is worth the price of the book even for those who are familiar with Trible's method. The best surprise is the quality of Trible's pedagogy. She not only applies her method to the book of Jonah, but always explains to the reader how she is doing it. Trible has maneged to define a vital, contemporary method of biblical exegesis, demonstrate its application to a text, and produce a valuable, original piece of biblical scholarship. This book may be twice as long as most other volumes in the sereies, but it accomplishes at least three times as much.

This book will do exactly what they said wasn't possible by illustrating how video and sound can be integrated into your Flash presentations, placing you at the extreme edge of creative web design. The application of such tools as AfterEffects, QuickTime, SoundForge and Wildform test the boundaries of Flash and suggest ways to take sound and video beyond Flash and into the realms of Shockwave.

Showing you how to break your site down and incorporate video and sound, the techniques covered in this book capitalise on the capabilities of Flash whilst tackling its limitations head-on. It will then look at how to take web ideo and sound a step further with Shockwave presentations.

Robot research and development long ago left the realm of science fiction speculation to enter the real world of laboratory science, industrial factory production, space exploration, and even popular entertainment as exemplified by such popular television series as "Robot Wars". In Robot Teams: From Diversity To Polymorphism, Tucker Balch (Carnegie-Mellon University) effectively collaborated with Lynne E. Parker (Oak Ridge National Laboratory) to compile a wealth of up-to-date and cutting edge information, issues, and techniques of multi-robot systems. The reader is provided with all of the essentials of multi-agent robotics theory, descriptions of exemplary implemented systems, and demonstrations of key concepts with respect to multi-robot research. Robot Teams is enhanced with detailed mathematical formulations, photos, diagrams, source code examples, and a forty-four page bibliography for further and more detailed study. Robert Teams is an essential, indispensable, core volume for any professional or academic Robotics Studies program or reference collection.

This Book and CD collection has 38 songs from seven areas of the world. Compiled for use by educators, this collection contains information on the cultural contexts with maps, photos, and narratives. A recording of all songs provide an authentic aural representation of the cultural items. Culture bearers are primary sources of information and the book includes their biographies. This text and CD is rich with information and recommended for use by educators at all levels of education.

I was a student of Dr. Tucker when I purchased this book for a course he taught in 1998. I did not realize then, as I do now, how important it is to understand how the eugenics movement in Germany and the U.S. had a profound effect on the involuntary sterilization of the mentally disabled. I believe the history of the eugenics movement must be reviewed in light of Tipper Gore's recommendations for changes in community mental health care through PACT programs which the National Aliance of Mental Illness (NAMI) is now proposing to state legislators. The PACT model is essentially a biomedical model, with specific social control features, deciding the fate of people with severe mental illnesses. The eugenics movement resulting in the involuntary sterilization of the "feeble minded" for over a half century, is hauntingly resonant of this proposed plan.

The author, Jonathan Tucker is an expert on biological and chemical weapons. He studied biology at Yale University, received his Ph.D. in political science from MIT, and served in the State Department, the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment, and the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. So, although his descriptions of past epidemics are horrible enough, it's the present and future threat of smallpox---the second half of this book---where Tucker really scared the bejabbers out of me. I had no idea that the Soviet bioweapons program, Vector, had gone as far as it did in developing viral weapons. According to the author, "Some 4,500 people, including about 250 Ph.D.-level scientists, worked at Vector in the late 1980s...One goal of the...program was to develop a smallpox-based biological weapon containing virulence genes from Ebola hemorrhagic fever virus. At least theoretically, such a viral chimera would combine the hardiness and transmissibility of smallpox with the lethality of Ebola, which was between 90 percent and 100 percent fatal, resulting in an 'absolute' biological weapon."

The real irony of the Vector bioweapons program was that the Soviet Union (along with the United States) was a major factor in eradicating the scourge of smallpox from the world in the 1970s.

Where are those 4,500 people who worked at Vector, now? Where is the twenty tons of smallpox virus formulation that was stocked at the Center of Virology in Zagorsk? The Soviets supposedly destroyed the stockpile in the late 1980s, but the smallpox seed cultures and the expertise to manufacture biological weapons from them still remain.

The author clearly presents the arguments for and against retaining the known remaining smallpox virus stocks in Atlanta and Moscow. However, I believe he sides with the 'destructionists' rather than the 'retentionists': "From a practical standpoint, now that the DNA sequences of representative strains of variola virus hade been determined, the live virus was no longer needed to identify smallpox if it were to reappear in the future. Nor would live variola [smallpox] virus be required to protect against a future outbreak of smallpox, since the small pox vaccine--based on the distinct vaccinia virus--could be retained and stockpiled for insurance purposes."

The long, difficult task of eliminating smallpox from the world (as thrillingly described in "Scourge") will not be complete until all known and rogue virus stocks (believed held by North Korea, Iran, Iraq, and possibly China) are destroyed. The world's population has grown increasingly vulnerable to the disease since the last official vaccination programs were eliminated in 1984, as the protective immunity induced by the vaccine lasts only about seven to ten years. Nor is there an effective medical treatment for smallpox.

As Tucker states in his closing sentence: "Until humanity's legal and moral restraints catch up with its scientific and technological achievements, the eradication of smallpox will remain as much a cautionary tale as an inspirational one."

Excellent! Practical and didactic, with great illustrations. Indispensable for students, and teachers.