Distribution Books

Having only just started reading gay fiction, and being possessed of an incredibly short attention span, I found this anthology a good read. The writing styles throughout are diverse, as are the themes of the stories. You're sure to find a favorite in the group.

Again, I have just started reading gay fiction, so I found the Afterword particularly helpful, as the editor offers a reading list of 10 important works of gay fiction. He also discusses the corporate "dumbing down" of contemporary gay culture, and explains clearly the importance of supporting gay authors and bookstores. I can't wait to head to my local gay bookstore (not online) to buy some of the suggested titles.

In general, short stories vary in intensity, I feel. Some seem more prosaic, mainly just reporting the characters' experience and its significance--though enjoyably. Others are more "poetic," actually re-creating the emotions experienced so that the readers feel it too. Specifically in this anthology of 19 pieces, I found both types. Some were walks through nice but level, flat terrain-exposition. A few were hikes to mountain gardens or whatever-intense (but also controlled) experience.I prefer the latter, dynamic type. But many readers will like the lower-key stories. In them, homosexual men make do, make something new, change in lesser or greater ways, in awareness, in ability. For instances:Japanese exchange students bewitch a host-family teenager (Williams). homosexual men support their friend who has an impossible crush (Herren). A man picks up another and slowly learns that love is more than for a body part (Donahue). AIDS raises its head. A seropositive nomad rants and tilts, driven to firehose sensation by despair (Healey). The disease torpedoes a Provincetown community and leads to realignments (Lisicky). Oh, and people age. Ed White and Andrew Holleran did, and their characters do, and barely make do. And more...But a few other stories here didn't remain earthbound and just report. They got airborne and re-created the complexities of the experience for us-with us readers. Loose with emotion but tight with artistry. I found a quintet of favorites thus:Read how a pre-teen, a sissy who likes Ken dolls and soccer players' legs but loses the match for the team, runs away, but then wins his own self, bursting the tape by scoring in another and off-limits arena, in an illicit but valid coming-of-age (Satyal). Read how a highschool football superstar, himself perhaps not even homosexual finds he must take an original, disapproved stand about the whole advantageous, contaminated world of sport stardom, with its alluring prestige and money, but its atrocious sham (Cullin). Read how despair at one's inhibitions can cause pressure-cooker anger splaying out terribly, but understandably (House). Read about-well, really feel-the world of the compulsive pederast, teaching in an elite boys' school yet. Feel how he moves stunned and mesmerized, a captive fascinated by sweaty and seductive teen boyness in a crisp rendering (Robinson). Finally, last but best in my book, read the astonishing account of a straight Southern woman married for 50 years to what we now call a transsexual more than a transvestite-but it's all the great stream-of-consciousness jumble of her ambivalences which the author's superb skill make fall into place for us, the kaleidoscope clearing upon general human truths (Jaffe).The editor's afterword is a letdown. It's too long, a redundant repetitive wordy unedited too-lengthy over-extensive exposition about "homosexual publishing today." I wish he had cut it in half and then told us why he chose the stories he did, since he did have interesting criteria. I can only say which I liked and why here.But the bottom line: if you're interested in homosexual short stories, this is not only one of the few volumes currently available. It's itself well worthwhile also. Available and worthwhile-sounds like a catch, so go cruise it and pick it up, it's willing.....

I had given up on ever reading another collection of gay literary fiction like the excellent Men on Men or His or Best Gay Fiction series from the `80s and `90s. They are all gone now. But I learned from a friend that one of the editors from the Men on Men series was back in business with a new anthology collection called M2M. I have thanked my friend several times now for turning me on to this new series.

It is every bit as good as those that have gone before. And once again, I am getting to enjoy the work of old masters like Andrew Holleran, who in his "The Incontinents" has expertly distilled the themes and heartache of his novel The Beauty of Men into one powerful short story. There are also standout pieces by familiar and not so familiar authors like Mitch Cullin, Robin Lippincott, Tom House, and Joe G. Hayes. And I'm discovering new talents that I want to read more from-in novels I hope: Robert Williams and Michael Carroll both leap to the front of this list.

There are some weaknesses with this collection-as there were with the former fiction series. Particular to M2M, I found myself annoyed at being scolded by Woelz in his "Afterword" to get out and buy more quality gay fiction when I had done just that. That's not to say it wasn't a humorous and well-written analysis of the dismal state of corporate publishing and gay commerce-but there must be a better way/place for him to preach to somebody other than the choir.

And then there's my long-standing complaint with all collections of gay literary fiction past and present: I would have enjoyed an even stronger diversity of writing styles (a piece from New Narrative master Kevin Killian or upstart experimentalist authors Matt Bernstein Sycamore and Lawrence Ytzhak Braithwaite would have been welcome changes of pace) and story lines and settings (one story set in the ever-popular gay fiction setting of Provincetown is not only de rigeur for these collections but more than enough-no matter how good they are, and both are).

In the end, though, these are minor complaints. M2M deserves its five stars. But not for being the only gay literary fiction anthology in town these days or for bringing together the surviving (and legendary) members of the Violet Quill: Edmund White, Andrew Holleran, and Felice Picano. (Though I thank Woelz and AttaGirl Press for both these gifts). It earns it "straightforwardly" for the quality of the writing and the storytelling.

Shapiro's book is really an interesting introduction to modeling the Supply Chain. After an easy to follow overview on the tools: Linear Programming (Simplex) and Mixed Integer Programming (with an appendix over the Branch and Bound method), these fundamentals are applied to strategic and tactical issues related to modeling the SC. Some actual applications together with their outcomes make examples more credible and dowm to earth. Examples run on excel's solver are strightforward and useful to get a basic handle on the topic.

Several chapters on an unified optimization methodology for planning SC problems and databases are also interesting. The book ends up with a reviw on how decisions are taken within an organization and the role of modeling and optimization techniques. Its plain english is another positive point.

My only "but" could be an overly superficial treatment of hot topics in SC as facilities location whereas covering issues as Corporate Financial Planning far from the core of the book. All in all a profitable bought.

Para todos los latinos que esten pensando optimizar las operaciones de una empresa, sea Logística, Inventarios, Producción, les digo: Este libro es la mejor alternativa para aquellos que quieran diseñar, modelar e implementar el SCM en la empresa. Los modelos son mas prácticos que en "The Logic of Logistics" que es muy pero muy matemático, me asusté cuando lo abrí, integrales, derivadas y otras cosas que prefiero no recordar, la verdad, es que ni lo entendí, a pesar de que considero que tengo un nivel poco mas que aceptable en ese campo, debe ser porque estaba en ingles, no?. Los capitulos 3 - 6, presenta los modelos matemáticos. Es 100% Investigación de Operaciones: programación lineal, redes, simulación, es decir el libro de Taha o el Solow, o el Hillier en resumen con ejemplos muy ilustrativos. En el libro hay una dirección para que te bajes un software de optimización muy útil. Te acuerdas del LINDO, el LINGO, el método SIMPLEX, etc? Sabes usar el Solver del Excel? Ahí te explica todo, pero lo mejor de todo que podrás aterrizar esos conocimientos en tu empresa. Esencial para aquellos que trabajen en el área de Planeamiento y Control de la Producción. Yo encuentro este libro en el nivel táctico-operativo, será muy útil para los que quieren hacer un plan de operaciones como Tesis. También explica como modelar los sistemas de información para implementar eficientemente el supply chain, pero hay poco de eso (Atención Ing. de Sistemas e Informáticos, pero les puede servir para comenzar!!). Del cap. 7 al 11, estan las aplicaciones de los modelos en una empresa. Control de Inventarios, Planeación agregada, miren la tabla de contenidos del libro, les dará una buena idea. Lo encuentro mas aplicativo que Logistics and Supply Chain Management (Strategies for Reducing Cost and Improving Service) de Martin Cristopher que es muy teórico. El mismo Prentice Hall lo clasifica en Libros de Estrategia, es decir puras letritas y letritas. El libro de Shapiro te dice: "Manos a la Obra", El de Martin Christopher dice lo que dicen los Gerentes: "Esto es lo que yo quiero, ahora vean como lo logran". Espero que el modesto comentario de un alumno de Ingeniería industrial(UNI) les ayude a que encuentren lo que buscan.

This book is about math-modeling of Supply Chain Management(SCM). While only few analytical SCM books in market, this book is still different. The presentation of math-modeling does not forbid your curiousity in model by giving a proof, theory, lemma; this book shows you the modeling method to capture the complex SCM problem. I like this book over Simchi-Levi (logic of logistics) for its description, practical aspect and future direction. Also, I prefer this book over Chopra (SCM) and Simchi-levi (SCM) for its higher and better modeling issues. This book takes care the readers well since the solution technique is also given, e.g., Linear Programming, Mixed Integer Programming, Unified Optimization, even simulation. While this book is more on quantitative, the interaction between qualitative and quantitative is given -both basic and advanced level. Suggestion to adapt modeling technique to organization is well presented also. The information technology (IT) section covers most SCM issues as well as the implementation and database for SCM. If you're in this area (either academia or practitioner), you have NO EXCUSE not to get this book seriously. For its uniqueness, this book is not supplementary or option, but it's a requirement for you.

Sick of hearing the C student wonks and politico idiots from inside the beltway talk about the latest war on fill in the blank? War is the only political metaphor left. This thin little tome contains more collective wisdom about the source of this rug rash than should be allowed out (come to think of it, you might want to order under an alias and have this sent to a PO box). (Marx was right: the state was bound to whither away, just turns out its replacement isn't as nice as in the Manifesto.)

Just today, reading the New York Times, there were a number of articles talking about the American tendency to try and make all solutions military. This book starts with the realization that the cooperation of the state and the war machine are an illusion, one that we still don't seem to understand today.

If you are sick of driving yourself crazy wondering how the War on Drugs could still be going on, sucking in billions each year as the government debates the end of PBS' puny subsidies, administer this book with impunity (while you still can).

(The Editor says this book was inspired by Nietzsche. In other words, file along with all other worthwhile works of the 20th C.)

I was hoping that this book would be much clearer than it is. Though some axioms, propositions, and problems are listed as headings in the text, there is no index, and nothing like a table of contents at the beginning of the book to locate important subjects. There are 109 numbered notes on pages 123 to 147, and note 5 identified sources for quotes of Nietzsche and Kafka in the text, so I was expecting to see more familiar names as I went along, but most notes referred to French experts in fields I had never encountered. "Western States" was used in the text to refer to countries in the part of Europe occupied by France, as compared to a great steppe region in which man-horse-weapon combinations provided the primary considerations in warfare.

Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari have written other books in French, and this one was translated into English in 1986 by Brian Massumi. The theme is not as elusive as the details. For many people, warfare places the participants in a frame of mind which is not identical to the values of civilized societies. Those who believe in wars fought by nations might agree with Carl Schmitt that the state should have a monopoly on violence, imposing order for the benefit of those whose weakness makes them vulnerable to everyone else. NOMADOLOGY notes that this should not require war, if the state "uses policemen and jailers in place of warriors, has no arms and no need of them" (p. 2) to prevent all combat. The idea that a war machine actually implies something else, "a power (puissance) against sovereignty, a machine against the apparatus" (p. 2) is associated with the ephemeral, the power of metamorphosis, and the furor that arises from the pack "like a pure and immeasurable multiplicity." (p. 2). The book does not have many modern examples, though references to atomic bombs near the end make clear that the authors tend to imply that nothing much has changed lately for people who are in a position which allows them to joke about these things.

Some of the notes are quite long and coherent, allowing comparison of this book with what its authors have learned from Paul Virilio, who is quoted from seven places in his book, VITESSE ET POLITIQUE, pp. 46-49, 132-133. The nomad is most like being underwater: "The strategic submarine has no need to go anywhere in particular; all it must do, in holding the sea, is to remain invisible. . . ." NOMADOLOGY, p. 137, n. 63). Speed has evolved from revolutionary tendencies to "speeds that are reinstated by a worldwide organization of total war, or planetary overarmament (from the fleets in being to nuclear strategy)." (n. 63). Fast and deadly options for the future, however well they might start, are in danger of worse endings:

"1) The war machine is that nomad invention which does not in fact have war as its primary object, but as its second-order, supplementary or synthetic objective, in the sense that it is determined in such way as to destroy the State-form and city-form with which it collides; 2) When the State appropriates the war machine, the latter obviously changes in nature and function, since it is afterward directed against the nomad and all State destroyers, or else expresses relations between States, to the extent that a State undertakes exclusively to destroy another State or impose its aims upon it; 3) It is precisely after the war machine has been appropriated by the State in this way that it tends to take war for its direct and primary object, for its `analytic' object (and that war tends to take the battle for its object)." (p. 113). Current debate about whether American troops can leave Iraq before all the potential battles within its borders have destroyed the cities and towns which continue to attack American troops there makes that battle the American Gettysburg. "It is not enough to affirm that the war machine is external to the apparatus. It is necessary to reach the point of conceiving the war machine as itself a pure form of exteriority, whereas the State apparatus constitutes the form of interiority we habitually take as a model, or according to which we are in the habit of thinking." (p. 5).

Edmund Husserl is the philosopher most noted "On the issue of a vague yet rigorous science," (p. 129, n. 30). When "the Hegelians respond that the rational-reasonable cannot exist without a minimum of participation by everybody", "The question, rather, is whether the very form of the rational-reasonable is not extracted from the State, in a way that necessarily makes it right, gives it `reason' " (p. 131, n. 40). Music and drugs are seen as values much closer to the nomads than to the State, and an analysis of the modern war on drugs which includes crop eradication might have enough irony to appeal to rock 'n' rollers. Linguists might understand the difference in points of view as thought patterns that are "not at all in the same way, and the two communications are not symmetrical. Worringer, in the domain of aesthetics, said that the abstract line took on two quite different expressions, one in barbarian Gothic art, the other in the organic Classical art. Here, we would say that the phylum simultaneously has two different modes of liaison; it is always in connection with nomad space, whereas it conjugates with sedentary space. On the side of the nomadic assemblages and war machines, it is a kind of rhizome, with its gaps, detours, subterranean passages, stems, openings, traits, holes, etc. On the other side, the sedentary assemblages and State apparatuses effect a capture of the phylum, put the traits of expression into a form or a code, make the holes resonate together, plug up the lines of flight, subordinate the technological operation to the work model, impose upon the connections a whole regime of arborescent conjunctions." (p. 109).

Be careful, this is an essay take out from "A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia".
And, as almost everything in this book, is just great!!! It should, however to be read after geting all concepts they have developed...

This book is a ton of facts for both the amateur as well as the professional botanist or horticulturalist, and at the same time it is an enjoyable read for the casual reader looking for some information or help with oak id. It is the only book that I have seen that actually helps the reader better understand and thereby learn to id oaks, by letting the reader know what the Latin name really means. Sure solves a lot of mysteries, like why the Quercus velutina is the black oak, not the quercus nigra.

The book does have an introduction talking about the broad classifications of types of oaks, history of oak usage, historic management of oak forests, etc. But this introduction is short, and then the book gets into the nitty-gritty of identification. Not just red vs. white, but every single documented variant the author found in his extensive research. For all but one of these oaks, the author visited and examined a live specimen himself.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who needs to identify then many species of Oaks in N. America. The layout, photographs and desecriptions are all excellent.

This text covers the many aspects of distribution planning with which engineers are faced. The text will be very helpful to engineers new to distribution planning as well as to those who have been working in the field for some time. The author helps the engineer understand how to quantify many of the variables which influence load growth, system upgrades, and customer expectations.

This book however, is not for the weak hearted. This is a HUGE text and will take some time for even the most diligent reader to complete. But, having looked at earlier versions by the author under the ABB publications in the mid-90's, this version is improved.

Although titled "Distribution" this book really refers to the entire transmission-substation-distribution system. This book is extremely well organized and serves as both a reference book and a tutorial for self study. As a reference, it has a lengthy index and good sensible organization of topics, so it is easy to jump right to the item desired. As a tutorial it really shines due to its organization and a simple, direct style of writing. The book's first few chapters review basics such as electric load, equipment, economics, reliability, and so forth. Each such chapter builds rather linearly in detail, and shows how its topics interrelate to the others. Examples are given frequently, using real-world problems and numbers. The rest of the book then examines power delivery systems in a bottom up approach. the author begins with line segments and transformer economics and selection, and shows progressively how element are combined into feeder circuits, into groups of feeders, into sets of groups to form a substation area, and so forth, up to the entire system. At each level, the various tradeoffs in design and cost are examined, and it is shown how the system is optimized and how that optimization impacts other levels of the system. The explanations of feeder layout and configuration tradeoffs, and how to maximize benefit and use flexibility of options in design, are by far the most thorough I've ever seen. There are many case studies and solved problems shown, all of which use real utility system situations and make excellent learning examples. The book is relatively easy to read considering the depth of coverage, but there is a tremendous number of factors and issues that are covered, making it slow learning. However, nowhere else have I seen distribution covered in nearly as much detail or so broadly with respect to performance and cost. Overall, this the most useful book I have seen on distribution planning or systems design.

Amazingly, this book succeeds in covering all of the major topics related to distribution planning: demand, criteria, relia iblity, economics, equipment sizing, feeder layout, substations, service level, forecasting, tools, and much more. It even ties all of these subjects together in three ways with chapters on the overall T&D system, the distribution planning process, and industry paridigms.

There is so much to learn from this book. In addition serving as a self-instruction guide, it is also filled with reference material, tons of practical advise, and innumerable insights that challenge common assumptions. This book will become a classic.

Good information, well worth the price, after receiving the first one I bought three more, for other people.

This book presents the latest data on power plants and provides much needed formulas and rules of thumb for sizing equipment based on plant size and arrangement. The book has many examples of equipment and has a good section although somewhat out of date on permitting of power plants. I would recommend it for any power plant engineer especially those just entering the power generation industry.

This book cover all subjects concerning power plant, from economics to operation of the plant. Some data you can not find from somewhere else.

I know it has become fashionable these days to not mention the period between September 1, 1993 and 28 February 1994. It's even more trendy to pretend as though the rainfall rates and vertical distribution of diabatic heating components over tropical oceans during that period "just didn't matter" in the big picture of things.

Have we so quickly forgotten? Are we in such a horizontal-distribution-of-diabatic-heating-components era now that we just don't have any room in our lives for the way things used to be?

I remember when things were different, and so too does Dayton G. Vincent. His semiannual status report of the rainfall rates and the vertical distribution of diabatic heating components over tropical oceans, September 1, 1993 - 28 February 1994, takes us back to those simpler times. Back then, you didn't have to keep an eye on your backpack to make sure someone doesn't steal it when you are hunched over a bowl of chowder at 2am, waiting for a well-past-late blind date to show up. Back then, you could leave your car doors unlocked, with the key in the ignition and the engine running, your kids asleep in the back, a loaded shotgun on the dashboard, and your live's savings in gold doubloons in the glove compartment. And not have a care in the world.

But times have changed. Thank goodness we have Dayton G. Vincent to take us back to those sepia-toned days, when we danced and laughed and vertically distributed diabatic heating components over tropical oceans.

My only criticism of this nostalgic walk through the past is that it is supposed to be a "semiannual" status report, yet followup reports have not appeared twice a year or even once a year. The promise, and the disappointment that accompanies it, is a sour note in an otherwise enchanting romp. That, and the fact that I haven't actually read it, force me to give this report just four stars instead of the five it so richly deserves.

I love words, and so, while perusing Amazon.com's extensive list of books with unknown bindings, I came across this truly, wonderfully exotic title, "Rainfall Rates and the Vertical Distribution of Diabatic Heating Components Over Tropical Oceans Semiannual Status Report, September 1, 1993-28 February 1994," by Dayton G Vincent. Wow! "Diabatic". What a great word! I envy Mr. Vincent the necessity of using this word, I'm sure, many, many times in one publication.

That he can only report semiannually must pose the greatest stress on his personal continence. Oh, to be limited to only twice a year! I dare say, though, that he gains some relief from writing about exotic tropical oceans.

Unfortunately, I can only give four stars to such a wonderful title, because even though it would fit nicely into my collection of titles of unknown bindage, I am unable to obtain a copy except through Amazon's third-party match-up system; and we all know how people like to run up the prices on those.

So, Dayton - yes, I feel I know you personally, now - I am forever deprived of knowing exactly how you resolve the rendundancies inherent in diabatic heating components. I will just have to settle for my new word-of-the-day: "diabatic".

A light rain falls outside my window as I write this review of Dayton G. Vincent's notable work "Rainfall rates and the vertical distribution of diabatic heating components over tropical oceans semiannual status report, September 1, 1993 - 28 February 1994."

The title itself is evocative, no? Makes me think of tropical oceans, diabatic heating components, and semiannual status reports.

It also transports me back to 1993, my freshman year in college. The first week I arrived my roommate and I went to the store and bought stuff for our room. Posters, an answering machine -- that kind of thing. I paid for it all and he said he would pay me back, but he never did.

You owe me money, Daniel.

Only reason why I bought this book was for my college class "Crisis Intervention for the Criminal justice professionals" The book is a bit overanalyical, needs more common sense and less of the author attidude. The book gives the feel of one side and not the other. Good information for research papers...that's about it.

This book can help you even if you've already been in an abusive relationship. It helped me recognize and understand the signs my ex-husband was showing me before we were married, though at the time I didn't have the tools I needed to see what I was getting into. It also gave me the confirmation and strength to not return to the relationship by reinforcing what I already suspected and by sharing the stories of others who had experienced abuse.

This book will help you figure out what it was that drew you into the tangled web of an abusive relationship. It is designed more to help you avoid an abusive person than to help you get away from one. This book follows four different case studies and helps to analyze each different warning sign and helps you find out what to look for. I would recommend this book as required reading to any young person before they get married.

"The Sacrifice" was a landmark in Canadian literary history, the first runaway world bestseller. It is a national shame that this title is now out of print. World class writers like Wiseman and Kogawa are all too often ethnicized into oblivion by our culture. If this must be their fate in a still-parochial nation, perhaps those descendents of the old north end of Winnipeg can take a fresh look at Wiseman's powerful work and find a way to make it available to new generations. Wiseman's three great and out-of-print titles, "The Sacrifice", "Old Woman at Play", and "Old Markets, New World" cry out for a benefactor. Izzy, where are you? Works like this can easily sell out a Canadian run of 10,000.

i enjoyed this book because it really makes you appreciate the plight of others less fortunate than ourselves. i have never read adele wisemans' books before but i think i will read further as she demonstrates extraordinary talent in capturing the sacrifice and struggle of the human heart.

i enjoyed this book because it really makes you appreciate the plight of others less fortunate than ourselves. i have never read adele wisemans' books before but i think i will read further as she demonstrates extraordinary talent in capturing the sacrifice and struggle of the human heart.

There are too many junky books on statistical mechanics, reading them is a waste of time. This book is extremly eleganlty writen, you will enjoy reading it.

I took Stat Mech in my senior year of college, and the assigned text book was Reif's "Fundamentals of Statistical and Thermal Physics." I'm glad somebody recommended that I supplement my course with this one, because it's a far more thorough handling of the subject.

For one thing, it approaches statistical physics with a quantum mechanical point of view (Reif doesn't). This was immensely useful for my understanding of the subject since I'd already taken QM. It's also exceedingly easy to read - well laid out and with helpful diagrams. Sections are well labeled and organised, as are equations (yeah, LaTeX!). And the problems at the end of each section are numerous, and fun to do (you won't find the answers at the back, though).

As for the material itself, the entire book takes a deductive approach based on the form of the microcanonical density matrix. It's a beautifully simple albeit non-standard approach. In fact, the text is peppered with non-standard forms of many of the key equations, which are very interesting.

All in all, this is a very well written/translated, easy to understand introduction to statistical physics, with enough additional material to serve you beyond your first course with it.

I have found Schwabl's Statistical Mechanics to be an indispensible reference this semester even though it's not on the reading list for my stat mech course (intro graduate level). I should qualify that statement by saying that I've used it primarily for the Ch.6 on magnetism, and the Ch.4 on ideal quantum gases, and I have not looked at any of the exercises at the end of chapters so I cannot attest to their (non)usefulness.

The text is well made (LaTeX!) and full of illuminating diagrams. Other than a persistant occurence of the word "und" the translation from german seems to be flawless, and the notation seems pretty standard, consistent, and intuitive.

As for the presentation, it seems a bit eclectic. Not that I'm an expert, but Ch.1 is an extremely terse forray into some advanced concepts that are irrelevant until about Ch.3. It seems odd to bring up the microcanonical/grand canonical ensembles before the chapter on thermodynamics, but that could just be my bias due to the structure of the course I'm taking right now.

The Ch 8 on Brownian motion, the Fokker-Plank and Langevin eqns is not standard, but actually quite fascinating & I don't see why those topics are usually left for more advanced stat mech books.

In short, a great supplement! And to the professors out there, I would suggest at least mentioning the existence of this book.