Independent Books

This book gave a lot of information on all major cities in the US; however, didn't go into great detail. Listed approx. prices for hotels, great eats, campsites, and parks. There are informative directions from airports and other cities. I used it when traveling out West for two weeks and this book helped out.

Just an extraordinary and concise grouping of apparently easy hikes of short duration, the majority of which can be handled by anyone. Perhaps they make more sense if you have visited France before. The choice of areas is extensive and probably putting half a dozen together would make for a most interesting vacation. Extemely easy to read. Just hope the trails are still there - wasn't there some sort of EU protest recently about abandoning such trails? Better get going, soon!

Sallie Baines had to become a strong woman when her husband Rhy walked away. He had been the globe-trotting journalist, she the clinging stay-at-home wife worrying about him every minute.

The book opens seven years later when her husband shows up as the new publisher shows up where Sally is now a journalist. She's gotten an education, taken a tough job, and has been busy working under her maiden name.

But Rhy's trampling over everything she's accomplished. They never got a divorce and Rhy makes it clear that he still considers her his wife. He won't let her take a new assignment -- unless he goes with her. He quizzes her about boyfriends and changes her nameplate to her married name.

The trouble is, Sallie never stopped loving Rhy. Is he being the dog in the manger, or does he feel something stronger than possessiveness?

Linda Howard writes strong characters, and Sallie is strong enough that it's reasonably clear that she could walk away any time she wanted. However I can't agree that harrassing behaviors (changing job duties, threatening to black list an employee with other companies, etc) are romantic and excusable - even though this was written in 1982 so it's presumably a change in culture - so I can't give this book 5 stars.

Gillian Thorncliff is a Regency lady with a great deal of good sense. She chooses to journey into Scotland to meet a wealthy, respectable Scottish noble who wishes to marry her. The only problem is, Gillian secretly wishes for passion, adventure, and romance. So when a very handsome rogue holds up her coach, and later begins courting her in secret, Gillian begins to wonder if the sensible choice is really the right one for her. Delightful Scottish scenery, a likeable heroine, and a very romantic rogue all make this a Regency Romance to remember.

I found this book to be comprehensive and very useful to anyone seeking to either become a music supervisor or to better understand the complexities of the film music world.

Easy to read and understand. A must for professionals!

I was required to read this book for a graduate class. That's not a bad thing. I'm very pleased with my purchase. I found it esspecially helpful as a book for examples of how to write about art. The book is a collection of writings about the studio practices of artists living in New York, written by those artists. Many of the section were written in the 80's which is interesting as it lets you peek into the studios of those who since then have changed ways of working. Some artists discuss how and why they got into the arts in the first place, or why they choose to work in certain materials, or what work that they made did they find very unsucessful.

Each artist essentially gets two-three pages and the artisist include: (though this is not a complete list)
- Judy Pfaff
- Leon Golub
- Robert Mappelthorpe
- Chuck Close
- Sean Scully
- Vito Acconci
- Louise Bourgeois
- Jim Dine
- Joel Shapiro
- Terry Winters
- Richard Deacon
- Oliver Herring
- Tony Cragg
- Kiki Smith
- Mark Dion
- Fred Tomaselli

(this is less than half of the artists)

Overall I would say it is a good insight into the lives of some great artists and thier working practices.

This book is part of ISA's (formerly "The Instrument Society of America", later "The International Society for Measurement and Control" and now known as "The Instrument, Systems and Automation Society") Independent Learning Modules on Fundamental Instruments and Techniques

This book is designed to be useful to any person who desires to become conversant with the subject. No prior background in intrinsic safety is presumed. Rather the principles of area classification, hazard reduction, and electrical ignition are presented so that any interested individual may begin study without reference to other sources.

This textbook is designed for independent study. It is designed to be useful to salesmen, managers, and supervisors who need only an overview of the subject, as well as for engineers and technicians whose objective is understanding in-depth sufficient to apply this important safety technique.

Emphasis on this book is on useful information. Theory is presented only to the extent that certain principles must be understood to use intrinsic safety. No mathematical skills are required, beyond simple ohm's law calculations, to read this book.

The book is organized as follows:
- Introduction and overview.
- Area clasiication.
- Principles of hazard reduction.
- Ignition of gases and vapors by electrical means, Ideal conditions.
- Ignition of gases and vapors by electrical means, low voltage.
- Principles and standards of intrinsic safety.
- Design of intrinsically safe systems by the manufacturer.
- Intrinsically safe system design by the user.
- Certifying agencies and the certification process.
- Installation.
- Inspection and maintenance.
- Dust hazards.
APPENDICES:
- Frequently used acronyms.
- Commonly referenced standards.
- Suggested readings and study materials.
- Solutions to all exercises.

If you are interested in a more in-depht may want to consider "Electrical Instruments in Hazardous Locations" by Ernest C. Magison.

I am an Industrial Practitioner of Process Measurement & Control who has been working in the Oil & Gas Industry for more than 16 years as an Automation, Instrumentation, Process Safety and Process Control Engineer. I found this book to be an unvaluable reference in my day-to-day work, being also an excellent refresher on electrical safety.

A very interesting book which goes into the reasons of the failure of the republican movements goal of an Irish Republic. The authors analysis starts from the point of recognising that the failure in itself was a counter revolution. The soldiers of the new free state were not the IRA who had fought the British to the table but a newly recruited band of 'trucers' who crushed what was left of the split IRA with much more cruelty than the British. The author in great detail goes into the splitting of the movement after ideal after ideal was dropped. Including the republican courts. The author also goes into the class divisions of the 'Staters' and the republicans. Carrying right up to the leftist Republican Congress and the Neo Facist Blueshirts. The book is an excellent if sometimes heavy read. Not for someone new to Irish history and politics. But a brilliant and timely book no less.

There is an ironic aspect to this book and its title. Written in 1988, it decries what it calls lost opportunities in avoiding or minimising the arms race between the US and the Soviet Union. Granted, Morris raised good points and many others at the time shared his concern. But unbeknownst to the author, the Soviet Union was on its last legs. The Cold War is generally considered to have ended a year later, in 89, with the collapse of the Berlin Wall and East Germany.

In retrospect, the author did raise valid concerns. But for all the failings in US foreign policy, the arms race was a major factor in bankrupting the Soviet Union. While the US did take on a large debt burden in its military expenditures, we now know that it had a far stronger economy. Though this was by no means clear at the time.

This volume, in general, presents a much more mature view of pre-WWII Polish-Jewish relations than the usual anti-Polish pronouncements of the media. Owing to the breadth of information in this volume, this review focuses on only a few topics.

Many Poles complained that Polish Jews had a strong pro-Russian and pro-German orientation. Apropos to this, Szyja Bronszteyn (p. 70) acknowledges that this was in fact true of most Polish Jews during the 123 years of Partition, and that such orientations were not reversed during the merely 20 years of interwar Polish independence (p. 75). The cultural differences of the Litvaks in particular tended to encourage anti-Semitic attitudes (Stefan Kieniewicz, pp. 388-389).

After Polish independence, most Jews were a de facto separate nationality, and many Jews wanted a Polish state of nationalities instead of a Polish nation-state (Mark Levene, p. 41). But what of those Jews who professedly became Poles? Interestingly, the Endeks were not the only ones who questioned the Polishness of those relatively few Polish Jews who had become assimilated (and even converted): "No Jew believed that the change of faith was genuine (a suspicion shared widely by non-Jews as well). How could it be? It was generally considered that, with few exceptions, the convert, indifferent to the old religion and only pretending allegiance to the new, was in it merely for personal advantage of one sort or another."(Rafael F. Scharf, p. 292). This situation should illuminate the apparent incongruity of Polish nationalists simultaneously complaining about the nonassimilation of Jews as well as those Jews who had become assimilated. However, Szyja Bronszteyn (p. 79) presents several of examples of even Endek intelligentsia treating Jews well.

Economic conflicts between Poles and Jews were frequent in interwar Poland, as elaborated by Zbigniew Landau: "Such a high percentage of Jews in handicrafts made a bad economic situation more perceptible among the Jewish population, and also helps to explain the growing hostility between artisans of different nationalities. Jews defended the position they had achieved because handicrafts were their basic sphere of economic activity in towns, while pauperized Poles, Ukrainians, or Belarussians sought changes to make a living in the same field. Under these circumstances, the economic activities stimulated the growth of anti-Semitism among the urban petty bourgeoisie and among those peasants who left the countryside and sought employment in towns. The growth of anti-Semitism in its turn undermined the economic welfare of many Jewish artisans."(p. 232). To aggravate the conflicts further, unemployment was persistent in the Second Republic (ibid, p. 228) and it furthermore became massive after the Great Depression (ibid, p. 234).

Polish-Jewish prejudices were a two-way street. Alina Cala cites Abraham Rotfarb, who grew up in interwar Warsaw: "Because the janitor, the housemaid, the workman, and other people performing `menial tasks' were goyim, I ranked them very low. What do they know, these goyim? A goy knows nothing, a goy does not think, the only thing he knows how to do is beat up Jews. And despite the fact that I considered Christian peasants to be soulless savages, I was still mortally afraid of them. My world was divided into Jews and goyim."(p. 45).

Religious prejudices also cut both ways. Franciszek Adamski (p. 133) points to the medieval Jewish publication of the Toledot Jeshu (The History of Jesus), which Christians considered to be a Jewish libel against Jesus Christ. It is interesting to note that the Catholic press of interwar Poland did not paint a unilaterally negative portrayal of Jews (Anna Landau-Czajka, p. 168, 172), and that the Catholic Church had already repudiated the blood libel in the eighteenth century (ibid, p. 148).

This volume contrasts sharply with the usual disastrous portrayal of the situation of prewar Polish Jews. Rafael F. Scharf contends that: "...the idea that Jewish life in Poland was always one of unrelieved gloom and oppression is mistaken....It appears that Jew and Pole did not suit each other. But how can a substantial, visible, competitive minority, intent on its own identity and with its own national aspirations, suit the surrounding nation? Such a question cannot be answered satisfactorily."(pp. 296-297).

There is an interesting debate between David Engel and Dariusz Stola. David Engel appears to be reading postwar sentiments retroactively. He complains that the WWII Polish government in exile mentioned Jewish deaths only within the context of non-Jewish ones (p. 368). But so did almost everyone else at the time and for long thereafter! Going even further, David Engel accuses the Polish government in exile of downplaying Jewish deaths, and doing so out of fear that Jewish deaths would eclipse Polish ones (p. 370). Engel does not explain how this was supposed to happen in view of the fact that it took some time for the number of Jewish deaths at the hands of the Germans to rival the number of Polish ones, and with the final numbers being comparable (2.0-3.0 million murdered Polish gentiles and 2.7-3.0 million murdered Polish Jews). More significantly, Engel's argument ignores historical reality. The notion that Jewish deaths deserve a special term (the Holocaust), are higher than those of non-Jews, or are at least deserving of noticeably more attention than the latter, did not become current among either gentiles or Jews until some 20 years after the war. So why on earth was the Polish government in exile supposed to be afraid that Jewish deaths would overshadow Polish ones?