Minus

I grew up down the street from Jane Shore and went to school with her, however, after reading her poems I realize that I never really knew her. "Music Minus One" opened up a flood of nostalgic memories for me of Jane, her parents, Bergenline Ave., the plane that crashed into the apartment house a block from where I grew up, and being Jewish in the 1950's. I knew Jane was talented but I didn't appreciate just how talented. I felt as if I was being reacquainted with an old friend who was now sharing her deepest thoughts with me. I haven't seen Jane in over 30 years but I feel like I just spent an afternoon with her. Her talent has reunited me with my past.

I had the pleasure of having dinner with Jane at the home of one my favorite professors. She had already published "Music Minus One" and she was in the process of writing "Happy Family." Not only are the poems in this collection beautiful, but the language she employs is a tribute to her artistry. She creates glorious imagery through sounds and reduces the pain of adolescence to a poignant and memborable symbol. Although I'm sure Jane has long forgotten the twelve students who huddled around her on a cold December night, none of us have forgotten her down-to-earth advice for new authors or her unforgettable presentation of her poetry.

This book has rolled together the highbrow medical perspective with the practical day to day parenting from the nine months before birth and nine months after. The blend of the to approaches come together to form a seamless reference book for all who are pregnant or about to embark on this wonderful journey. The images used are inspiring and beautiful. This book is a must.

Sam Turner is fifty-something, kind, but tough when he has to be. And he's a recovering alcoholic who listens to a lot of Bob Dylan. His private investigation firm is off to a good start. Attorneys, insurance companies, and private citizens have started coming to him and he's encouraged by his early success.

Meanwhile a mentally unbalanced inmate named Norman Bunce has escaped from Dartmoor prison and he brutally robs and plunders, kills and corrupts his way up to York while Sam is getting his act together. When Norman gets to town he hires Sam to find an ex-girlfriend he calls Snow White (because she'd made off with his stash). Sam sees straightaway that Norman might not be the most straightforward, straight and narrow client on the planet, but he's short on cash so he takes the case.

Norman moves in with Janet, a girl rowing with only one oar in the water who has a crush on John Lennon. But he can't help himself and soon unexplained bodies start piling up. Sam is suspicious about Norman so he has him followed and Norman begins to suspect that Sam is on to him.

Sam Turner is an engaging character, as is Norman in his own way. Add to the mix the splendid supporting cast and you have a book that is impossible not to like. I loved it and it gets five stars from me.

Reviewed by Vesta Irene

This lexicon has been of the utmost assistance in my latest translation work on a piece dating around 1026 AD, where classical Latin dictionaries made me more confused than ever. It's now an indispensable part of my library. It is definitely a must-have for anyone beginning a career in medieval history or literature.

I couldn't put this book down and read it in one sitting. It's about the death of a troubled woman by suicide or accident, we're not sure, and the lives of those around her. Each chapter is written from the perspective of one of these people. Robin Beeman has a lovely, lyrical way with words. I love the subtle metaphors that ran throughout this book, starting with the description of the cutting down of firs in the first chapter. But most of all I was taken in by her incredible ability to create believable characters of depth and conflicting desires, all in a very understated prose. I will now go look for her first book and anxiously await her next, due out in September. She is the real McCoy.

The Mind of the Founder: Sources of the Political Thought of James Madison by James Madison and Marvin Meyers editor, is a book on Madison's political thought through writings and papers.

This is excellent for students, scholars and general readers as it delves into Madison's thought as a political theorist, practicing politician, and major political thinker in his time. Madison political life went on for fifty years, from the time of the Revolution to the framing of the Constitution, and finially to the sectional crisis over slavery.

This book is divided into five major parts and each is subdivided into small like sections. The five major parts are: Anticipations: Revolutionary Years; Founding: The Critical Period; Opposition: The Federalist Era; Power: The Republican Regime; and lastly Reflections: The Elder Statesman.

This book has an excellent bibliography of selected readings about Madison and is documented through and verified from extensive cross referencing and from Madison's own writings. Reading Madison's writings makes you know Madison rather vicariously, but to know him better you would have to speak with him one on one.

I found this book fascinating and well worth the time as I read, you can almost feel the wheels turning in Madison's head as he plots and thinks through problems... too bad Madison wasn't a better leader... he would have surpassed Jefferson in import. But, as a political theorist, Jefferson depended on Madison.

The novel depicts a dismal society of the future, in which everything is ruled by computers. In spite of its complex structure, the novel is very captivating. It has lots of insights into the structure of the society (most of the chapters are supplemented by a digression, which contains the society's description through rules, regulations or postulates) and at the same time the story is very suspenseful. It is a lot like mystery-type read, because till the very end of the last chapter the story is intense and unpredictable.

In addition to that, there is a lot of social satire: it shows how people's emotions are suppressed, how the ruling elite controls the majority, how the society aspires to achieve perfection by making every member of it perform the assigned duties and by not allowing anybody to deviate from the set standards. All of that is because computers and operating machines are on the foreground and everything else (people, in the first place) is reduced to the background.

The novel is centered around a rebellion against this super organized and super computerized machine, which goes as far as assigns each individual his or her distinguishing mark (each letter of the alphabet in a descending order represents belonging to a certain social rank ). Without revealing much more, let us end up with saying that the topic of fantastically created worlds of the future has lots of potentials and those potentials are reached in this short novel.

It is clear from the beginning of this book that trouble was looming on the horizon for these intrepid, but somewhat reckless, climbers. The loss early on of one of their comrades to a fall into a crevasse was predictable. How they could think of walking unroped, on a glacier that they knew was ridden with crevasses, is almost unbelievable. This was due, no doubt, to youthful inexperience and a lack of leadership necessary to set the parameters of what would be acceptable in terms of safety. These factors combined were to cost them dearly. It was not until near the end of their forty two day stay on the mountain, that they coalesced into a team.

Notwithstanding the sheer recklessness of their initial, bumbling efforts at a winter ascent of Mt. McKinley, the fact remains that they did achieve the first such summit, no mean feat any time of year, but almost inconceivable in the dead of winter. Coming off the summit, their thermometer recorded the temperature at a quite bone chilling minus fifty eight degrees.

Caught in a whiteout on their descent, however, the three summiteers were forced to dig a snow cave, where they were were to spend endless days, in weather which saw temperatures plummet to an almost mind boggling minus one hundred and forty eight degrees with the wind chill factor, hence the name of the book. That they could survive this, is a testament to their fortitude.

In their snow cave, it was a relatively toasty minus thirty five below. That snow cave was the only thing that stood between them and certain death. With virtually no food, frost bitten, and suffering from disorientation due to the altitude, they waited out the storm and lived to tell the tale.

This gripping chronicle, of the forty two days they spent on the highest and coldest mountain in North America, is a classic in mountaineering literature and one of the best books on McKinley climbs. Those who love this genre will certainly enjoy this book. It is made all the more interesting by the author's new afterword, which gives a retrospective of what happened to all those who participated in the first winter ascent of Mt. McKinley.

This book is incredible. You cannot put it down. A great gripping TRUE story!

I bought this book because I wanted to get a feel for high altitude climbing though I have no interest in climbing for myself. Geez! I got the picture. I'm still blown away by the story of what happened on the mountain. But, thankfully, blown away, only in a metaphorical sense...

I had a friend who was a high altitude climber who told me about a friend climbing in the Himalayas. The guy went out during a blizzard at high altitude to relieve himself and was never seen again. My friend said,"He was blown into the stratosphere". I never understood that kind of language until I read this book.

It's an incredible story of survival right up there with the story of the voyage of the crew of the Endurance.

The writing is awfully good for a mountain climber!

Mr. Odom has a easy to read, natural style. I love a mystery and although this is not a true mystery in the "who done it"style, it kept me guessing until the last page. Bravo, Mr. Odom.

The author was the batboy on mine and his brothers baseball team,so I was intrigued when I heard he had written his first book.I must say,I'm impressed with his first effort.I'm hoping for the follow-up very soon.I will be one of the first to buy it.

What do a neck shackle and high level government AI computers that refuse to do their job have in common? They have Jack in common. Jack "Suicide" Simmmons, the aging, foul mouthed, whiskey drinking, cigarette smoking, Abraham Lincoln lighter toting protaganist of this highly entertaining novel. Two agents of B.A.D. (Bureau of Astronomical Destruction) repeatedly screen subjects for potential martyrdom, complete with purely theatrical thorough background checks that monitor metabolism from a suitcase computer. Taking on the form of a sci-fi thriller, Minus 55 is really more of a meditation on the death experience in a media saturated post-modern society in which the boundaries between 1st and 3rd person are indistinguishable. Highly recommended!

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Stargazers residing in the Earth's northern hemisphere who are contemplating purchase of this (Northern) volume should be aware the title refers to the CELESTIAL hemisphere, not Earth's. What's the difference, you ask? Well let me tell you....

Basically, the sky atlas covers only the area from Polaris ('North Star') down to about Orion's Belt - everything south of there is contained in the 'Southern' book. Indeed, it doesn't even include the entire Orionus - cutting him off at the knees, in effect. So instead of obtaining sky maps that disclude everything south of Earth's equator (which 'uppers' normally would have little use for), this division discludes half the desired viewable sky!

The opposite is of course true for denizens of the lower-half of our dear blue vehicle.

The 'bottom line' is that to have an EFFECTIVE atlas, you're gonna have to spring for BOTH volumes - so be prepared for the extra expense.

One plus is the scale; larger even than the infamous Sky Atlas 2000.0 with its unwieldy poster-size maps of ~17×22" (add another 12" to the required footprint for an opened book; ergo 17 tall by 34" wide - a factor no one seems to consider) which pretty much relegates it (Sky Atlas) to an indoor reference, unless you have a sizeable reading table available at your viewing site!
But I digress....
The increased scale allows for finer detail, of course, and corresponds to the inclusion of stars down to magnitude 9.5 (Star Atlas limits to 8.5) with a better 'spread' for comparison to telescopic view. This greater scale with smaller pages does translate to more charts (about 260 in this one volume, ~vs~ Sky Chart's 26), but this is no complaint - the detail IS appreciated by the more studious ..of us astro-freaks. Another nicety is the generous overlap of the borders, which minimize somewhat the necessity of having to go to another page when referencing a particular area. Probably one of the 'handiest' features is inclusion in the margins of index-reference numbers to adjoining charts (sorely lacking in the Sky Atlas), which makes up somewhat for that maddening right-left reversal of borders on adjoining opened pages - the necessity of which absolutely escapes me, but for which I've seen hints of correction in the soon-forthcoming new issue.

Another plus is the textual introduction and Uranography sections preceeding the charts. Do yourself a favor and read them first - it might help you avoid the extra expense of the 'Field Guide' to better understand the valuable resource you already hold.

But as said - you need both Northern & Southern volumes to have an effective tool. So heads up!
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This review refers to the 1988 edition, and to both volumes (north and south, both of which are needed to cover the whole sky. The publication of Uranometria marked a new era in sky atlases. Never before had an atlas had a large enough scale so that the view through a small telescope looked reasonbly close to what you saw on the page. Norton's and all others could not show enough stars to approximate the view through even a modest amateur telescope. Now, since Uranometria goes to stellar magnitude 9.5, and an 8-inch scope will see to magnitude 14, you can say the situation is still the same. But in fact U2000 is closer, and with a little experience matching views is a cinch, which was not always true with smaller scale atlases.

The two volumes include 473 charts, making finding the right one a bit of a chore - the flip side of a large scale. For some reason Tirion chose to arrange the charts in a weird way. Right ascension on a chart increases from right to left (naturally), but RA from one chart to the next increases left to right - so the left edge of the left hand page matches with the right edge of the right hand page. It took me a long time to get used to that.

My two volumes have been marked with comets and asteroids I've observed along the way, as well as observing notes on the deep-sky objects, so I don't know if I'll care to replace them with the new edition, even though (as I understand) the new charts, based of the Tycho and Hipparcos catalogs will be far more accurate. But for a new observer who plans to be halfway serious, and can't quite spring for the Millenium Sky Atlas, the new edition of Uranometria will be indispensible.

The Uranometria 2000 is a big step up from the old Norton's Star Atlas and a must have for any serious deep sky observing. As a comet hunter this book saves me a great deal of time working with unwieldy cd rom star atlases which, although they contain much more information on the night sky, are not as ready to hand. I reccomend this very informative and lucid atlas to anyone who has the desire to discover the mysteries of the night sky. Patrick Stonehouse