MA

Less than one percent of the 85 million telephones in the U.S. and Canada in 1964 were used regularly by the deaf. That's when Robert Weitbrecht (physicist with the Stanford Research Institute), James Marsters (orthodontist), and Andrew Saks (businessman) started the process that led to deaf people around the world possessing an affordable phone system that they could use. All three of these enterprising men were also deaf. Harry Lang's A Phone Of Our Own: The Deaf Insurrection Against Ma Bell is the fascinating story of how these three diverse men collaborated to solve the technical difficulties of developing a coupling device for a teletypewriter that would translate sounds into discernible letters. With the help of an expanding corps of deaf advocates, ATT and FCC resistance to this technological innovation was overcome and a portable, fully accessible, and affordable telephone system came into being for the deaf community. A Phone Of Our Own is a remarkable and enduring story of innovation and the enduring human spirit.

A phone of our own. From the very first sentence of the introduction "For nearly a century after the advent of the voice telephone, we deaf people were without a phone of our own". Author Harry G. Lang takes the reader by the hand and brings the very personal struggle of the Deaf people to the reader. He brilliantly brings to the public eye not only the Deaf persons responsible for bringing us the TTY that we enjoy so much, but also the countless numbers of Deaf people who worked tirelessly behind the scenes. It is not a book about one Deaf person but many Deaf people in their ongoing struggle to communicate. This book is a masterpiece of writing and brings a renewed pride within the Deaf community. I highly recommend this book for everyone, Deaf and hearing.

As always, Dr. Harry Lang writes about topics pertaining to the Deaf world and its ongoing attempt to make their way in a hearing world. This book is a magnificent story about the battle between big corporations and a small group of people who were striving to find a way to communicate with each other and with the hearing world. It is very ironic that Alexander Graham Bell was attempting to find a way to assist the Deaf (his own wife was Deaf) when he started developing the phone, yet his creation became the bane of our existence. Until the development of the computer and email, the phone was the ultimate barrier for those with hearing impairments to participate in the 'normal' world through education, employment, and necessaries such as calling the doctor for an appointment.

Dr. Lang tells the story of 3 courageous and very different men who wanted to rectify this communication deficit for the hearing impaired community. What started out in homes and garages much as the history of PCs did in the San Francisco Bay Area, spread throughout the U.S., and much of the effort had to be spent trying to get corporations such as AT&T to cooperate. It is unbelieveable the amount of obstacles raised by the very group who would benefit (in increased revenue from a priorly non-using community) were the ones who made things so difficult for these men. Yet persistence from all of them led to an invention/tool which is much used now and taken for granted by all of us who became deaf later in life.

This history is well-written and well-documented, and it should be required/recommended reading for those in communications, as well as those who are deaf or who work with the deaf. Changes in the TTY, increased private/public computer use, and changes in federal laws such as the ADA and rulings by the FCC have led to increased use of this method of communication, and the increasing availability of TTYs in public places. It has also led to innovations in computer use, and prompted attitudinal changes which were much needed. Karen Sadler, Science Education, University of Pittsburgh

We received this highly useful, entertaining book as a Christmas gift. Traditionally I give my husband the new World Almanac at Christmas, and our daughters decided to augment the practice by adding this book. For information junkies, this book is decidedly a keeper! As you can leaf through it your curiosity will be stimulated, and you will learn something new. From a succinct description of how the electoral college works, to first aid advice for any emergency, to what to look for in a college or graduate school program, this book has it. Highly recommended!

This funny little guide is indeed an expret on every subject. Hence its title, i.e., Practical Guide to Practically Everything: The Ultimate Consumer Annual by Peter W. Bernstein, et al. In here one will find usefull information such as what to bring your tax acountatnt and what to say and what not say if the irs decides that audit is in the cards. Other fun information is how to spot a lemon (car), paying less for college, keeping your computer virus free to mention a few usefull tidbits. Highly Recommended.

This book covers any subject that you can imagine. If you want to know about investments, poker, camping, cars, or health, all in one book this is the book for you. It gives a few pages to each topic, and helps you learn a little about each topic. Every time that somebody sees me reading it, they ask what I am reading, and when I tell them they ask to borrow the book, and most of the time they read it for a few hours and ask me where I bought it, and I tell them AMAZON.COM. For just a few bucks they have a great resource at their fingertips just like I do.

REVELADOR DE LA TRAGEDIA DE FONDO...
ES NOVELA, CRONICA, CUENTO DE HORROR, COSQUILLEO Y LAGRIMAS...
UN LIBRO fuera de serie !

QUE LLORAS DE TRISTEZA, TE RIES, TE INDIGNAS...LO QUE SEA MENOS DEJAR DE LEERLA !

NO te la pierdas... esta fuera de serie !
AQUI SE HAN VENDIDO 25,000 EJEMPLARES EN DOS MESES !

de carcajadas abiertas y una SÀTIRA AGUDA DEL SISTEMA POLITICO EN UN PAIS TERCERMUNDISTA...

Los personajes parecen caminar, reir y correr entre las pàginas y no puede uno menos que pensar que, MIENTRAS LOS PAÌSES DESARROLLADOS BUSCAN SU QUESO...NOSOTROS NO ENCONTRAMOS NI LOS FRIJOLES !

Esta bellamente escrita, con diàlogos vivos y personajes MUY FUERTES !

As a naturopathic physician, I have a rather extensive library of natural health books. The author's insight into disease, and prevention of disease is particularly insightful. Anyone who suffers from a chronic condition should read this book. Many chronic conditions are covered; but even if your's are not, the information presented is still valuable in the pursuit of overall health. It is truly a gem.

I always liked Joel Wallach's approach to health. He tells it like it is. I like how he disses the doctors who poo-poo nutritional supplementation.

In this book, Wallach lays out all kinds of newspaper clippings from various newspaper articles about doctors and famous people who died at young ages. Those clippings are appropriately placed in the section where the major mineral deficiency was the cause of death, such as chromium for a diabetic coma, etc.

This book is a wonderful source of information on minerals, and their functions. It also lays out all kinds of info on deficiency diseases, and how minerals can help certain ailments.

This section also covers a bunch of different alternative approaches to wellness, such as Ayurvedic medicine, the Dean Ornish Diet, and many others. The information is in depth, and covers a good amount of material for a book focused on mineral supplementation.

This book pretty much has it all, and is a great read if you wish to gain knowledge on the role of minerals in our health and well being.

I really liked this book. Lots of great info about how basic minerals effect your body and keep you healthy or make you sick. It gave me lots of new ideas.

It's more than a little gory at times. I guess doing 18,000 autopsies, gave the author sort of a callous view of life. The descriptions of what the Inca and Jack the Ripper did to their captives is not for the weak at heart. Hint: a deficiency of minerals causes strange cravings.

One new idea I really liked was the documentation of zinc deficiency in mothers that become pregnant as a cause of Down's syndrome. Apparently one can demonstrate this in the lab with monkeys or simians. Healthy babies then introduce a zinc deficiency in the diet and get Downs syndrome, then add the zinc back and get normal babies again. Wow!

A second idea: adding rare earths to the diet of mice and other animals extends life span by 2X! Wow, again! Excellent bibliography, but I was unable to locate this one paper on feeding rare earths to get 2X life span.

Excellent basic book.

I highly recomend.

Leon L. Hulett

This is quite simply THE book to buy on the Valley Campaign. Tanner first wrote this book in the 1970's and updated it in 1996 after new light had been shed on the subject. I have been told by more than one person that this is the one book you need to read to understand the campaign. After finishing the book, I am absolutely convinced that this is the one book you must own on this campaign. Tanner covers everything from the Stonewall Brigade's reentry into the Valley all the way through the trip to Richmond prior to the Seven Days. Tanner analyses the action instead of just reciting what happened. He also offers more than one viewpoint in certain controversial areas of the Campaign. All in all a great book, and one that I'm glad to have in my collection. 599 pp, 14 maps

Generals such as Patton and Rommel were drawn to study Jackson's Valley Campaign because of the successful use of mobility and concentration of force in local engagements to overcome theater area force inferiority. "Stonewall in the Valley" is an incredible story, fundamental to an understanding of the ACW for amateur and professional historians alike. A testament to Mr. Tanner's zeal for history and accuracy was his willingness to go back and undertake a major revision, twenty years after initial publication of the original classic. It is rare that one can point to a signal source of this type as an undisputed, authoritative classic - Hennessy's "Return to Bull Run" and Coddington's "Gettysburg Campaign" are two other examples. Mr. Tanner's work is a success at every level. Whether discussing national politics or the effect of local roads on soldiers' shoes, the commentary is thoroughly researched and rendered with an understandable authority. He is equally adept at identifying and explaining causes and effects and debunking many of the popular myths that have arisen over the years. This is not another contribution to the plethora of Stonewall legend making compilations - this is a serious historical work which examines exactly what happened, the when and the how, the why and why not. There is a most enlightening addition in this revision which discusses the operational art of war - actions which translate overall theater strategy to local area tactics - in the context of Stonewall's Valley Campaign. Mr. Tanner bucks the trend in giving Joe Johnston some credit and in rendering just criticism of the mighty Stonewall where appropriate (more often and harsher than expected). If only we were so lucky as to have a treatment such as this for every other ACW campaign - we can only hope.

Probably the most detailed analysis of Jackson's Valley Campaign I have ever read. Tanner has gone to great length to document every detail of the classic campaign fought in the Shenandoah Valley in 1862. New evidence and extensive analysis are presented in an effort to explain some of the controversies of the campaign. Tanner's conclusions differ in some respects from the traditional explanations of some of Jackson's actions but he backs them up well in light of new evidence. The book will make for rather dry reading for those not interested in military history but for the Civil War buff and Jackson admirer it is the best account I have read of Jackson's career as an independent army commander.

I have been solving Tangrams for over 50 years and have amassed a modest collection of Tangrams and books about Tangrams.However,until I found this book,I didn't realize how little I knew about them or how modest my little collection was.Up till now I thought the Penguin publication of Joost Elffers book including 1600 puzzles,plus the packaged set published by Stewart,Tabori & Chang in 1997; the Dover publication of Ronald Read's ;as well as the beautifully packaged sets by Crawford were about all that could be done on the subject.
Not so; Slocum has produced a magnificent book and has created the new definitive book on Tangrams.
I used to think there might be as many as 3000 possible problems.Slocum informs that Harold Raizer studied 104 books and card sets and of the more than 20,000 problems found 5900 different problems published before 1926.
Slocum has covered all the history and separated fact from fiction.He has reviewed all the major publications produced worldwide and included many photographs that nobody could possibly see without visiting museums and private collections around the world.His Bibliography and References is simply amazing with about 250 entries.
On top of that he has given us 1756 problems to work on as well as providing the solutions.Even here ,he hs done a superb job of selecting these promlems from the landmark books published over the years.
The high quality of the printing,color rendering and overall construction mirrors the high quality of the content of the book.
The title "The Tangram Book" tells it all;that's what this book will become.
On behalf of Puzzle lovers,and particulary Tangram lovers,I would like to congratulate Jerry Slocum and Sterling on their brilliant effort.

A tangram puzzle is one where you take a specific set of seven wooden pieces (called the tans) and put them together to construct a figure. The rules of construction are simple:

*All seven pieces must be used.
*The pieces cannot overlap.
*The constructed figure must exactly match the desired figure.

These puzzles have a long, and sometimes inaccurately rendered history. It has been said that Napoleon Bonaparte whiled away the hours by constructing tangram figures.
Slocum has spent a great deal of time and effort in determining the true history of the tangram puzzles, and the first ninety nine pages are devoted to the history of the tangram. Originally invented in China, it moved out into the world as the Europeans constructed their empires. For some time in the early nineteenth century, there was a tangram craze in Europe, and the book displays cartoons depicting people neglecting their spouses, children and other relationships while they attempt to solve tangram puzzles. This history is thorough and quite unique, demonstrating the powerful human need for quality, mind-stretching entertainment.
The remainder of the book is a collection of over 2,000 tangram puzzles, with solutions. These problems have been culled from books of problems that have been published in the last two hundred years. Unless you have a phenomenal flair for these puzzles, you could spend the greater part of your life immersed in them. Everything from a sailboat to a waiter carrying a tray can be constructed from tangrams.
There are no doubt tangram problems that do not appear in this collection, so it is not possible to consider it complete. Nevertheless, the number and range of problems makes this the authoritative work on tangrams and one that everyone interested in puzzles should read. Furthermore, they make an excellent tool for the teaching of basic geometry and spatial relationships.

Published in the recreational mathematics e-mail newsletter, reprinted with permission.

Jerry Slocum and his team have done a fantastic job of pulling ALL the available known information about the Tangram puzzle into one gorgeous book. The research is extensive, the illustrations are plentiful and the pictures are supurb. This is a must-have for anyone interested in this classic seven piece puzzle that has intrigued puzzlers for hundreds of years.

Should you wish to understand the politics that led to the wars, and to the present dominations or configurations of World Systems, this book gives a clear insight, for those who understand. It was I who was the 9th Panchen Lama. George V is now The Duke of Gloucester, and the Duke of Kent who is the father of The Duke of Kent, Prince Michael of Kent and Alexandra-Lady Olgivy is now Prince Charles. Pu Yi is now my son, he was the first Dalai Lama, whom I appointed in my time as the Fifth Dalai Lama. Tsong Khapa is now my father, I was the 1st Dalai Lama.
Lord Maitreya Surya Vishnu

I find it interesting that this book though unavailable was listed against my homepage, I now notice the Dalai Lama has taken the place, the ways of the world, eh? Maitreya

Dear Friends, The issue in Tibet as you know is complex though simple, the Dalai Lama is a product of his past actions,[this goes back to Egypt and beyond] many problems may have been resolved, though as you know one needs to correlate this book with the Life Story of Guru Padmasambhava, I will write a sequel to the above book.Thank you Pashotam Meera

Panchen Lama Lord Maitreya

This is the perfect compilation set of fun, and challenging projects which can easily be manipulated for your own robotic tastes. The sources of this book are the masters in the field, and do an astounding job sharing their wealth of knowledge.

Once again Syngres has put together a top notch team of Lego builders. The robots in here are incredible to say the least. I was amazed to see that CS Soh had a hand in this book as I've been a big fan of his LEGO work on the web for some time. I just finished building all of the robots in the prequel to this book for the Star Wars Dark side lego kit when I saw this become available. These are all top notch robots built by people who know their lego robots. They don't beat around the bush-they give you step by step instructions for buidling these robots. They go one step beyond the first book by giving you alternate building instructions for download. I'm going to use this in my high school robotics class. Top notch.

I found this book to be to the point. As a teacher and a mother of a child with ADHD, I found excellent ideas to try with my child and at school. I liked to brevity of this book. I did not have to read pages to obtain some simple, but fantastic ideas to use with our ADHD kids.

This book took the typical behaviors of ADHD kids, broke them down, and made separate and specific recommendations. They are very realistic and applicable in the general classroom. I recommend it for general ed. and special ed. teachers alike.

This book consists of a series of teachings on several topics by the highly respected Tibetan lama Gyatrul Rinpoche, skillfully translated by B. Alan Wallace and Sangye Khandro. It's divided into three parts, titled "Transformation," "Dream Yoga" and "Meditation," and each of these three parts consists of a "root text" by a renowned Tibetan author and a commentary by Gyatrul Rinpoche. The first root text is a wonderful "lojong" (mind training) text called "Transforming Felicity and Adversity into the Spiritual Path," by Jigme Tenpe Nyima. The second is a dream yoga text called "Releasing Oneself from Essential Delusion," by Lochen Dharma Shri, and the third is a Dzogchen text called "The Illumination of Primordial Wisdom," by H.H. Dudjom Rinpoche. Taken together, these three texts and their lucid and practical commentaries give a very complete introduction to the essential teachings of the Nyingma tradition of Tibetan Buddhism, and will be a great treasure for anyone interest in practicing these profound methods.

very useful....profound...... a variety of topics