John Hughes Books

The fall of the classical civilizations, particularly Rome, has engendered intense scholarly debate for centuries. In Pan's Travail, Hughes posits an answer that has seldom entered into the dialogue of historians: environmental degradation. Hughes' stance is unabashedly that of the environmentalist; readers will encounter the occasional diatribe against exploitation of natural resources and other social commentary. The book is intended for a general audience, and makes for a very interesting reading. Though the author depends too heavily on ancient texts for his evidence, he does make an excellent case for the general scope of Greco-Roman impact on their landscape. However, he fails to connect this impact with the actual collapse of those civilizations in a meaningful way. An interesting and informative read, but ultimately unconvincing.

Pan's Travail covers an interesting topic and is reasonably thorough in looking at the different aspects of environmental problems in Classical times. It does have several problems of its own, though, albeit no fatal ones.

First, while Hughes surveys many different subjects, his examination of each is fairly superficial. He spends much time listing examples and not enough time synthesizing. The sources he cites are too often literary, and therefore of dubious accuracy--Hughes generally seems to accept the written word of the Romans and Greeks a little too readily. More archeological data would have helped. A lesser niggle is the frequent repetition in Hughes's writing, though it seems more a case of bad editing than anything else.

A more substantial stylistic and intellectual fault of the book is its clear ideological stance. That Hughes is an environmentalist of some stripe is obvious though not troubling in itself. However, his analyses come from only a single narrow perspective, viewing everything through the lens of, "people irresponsibly and imorally harming good Mother Nature." He does little to ask why Greeks and Romans may have acted as they did, except to cite greed and ignorance. As a result, Hughes fires off moral judgments rather easily and makes some strange out-of-left-field statements. For instance, in his conclusion, he writes, "...at this period, so little was known about how natural processes work that rationality was of little use."

Hughes' bias does not totally distort his presentation but doesn't make for a very even-handed analysis either. (I was actually surprised to read, on the back of the book, that he's a professor of history and not of conservation.) This may or may not deter you, but be forewarned. If numerous references to man's destructive greed and "Mother Earth" make you uncomfortable (even if you sympathize), you may want to steer clear.

Qualifications: I am 31 and have come to the conclusion that I absorbed nothing during my high school and college history classes. So I am rounding out my basic knowledge of world politics through books like these.

1) In retrospect, I knew surprisingly little and now I know a lot more. A good overview.
2) I read this book over a period of three days, so it is not a snoozer.
3) I doubt someone who lived through the period would find this book super informative.

The book covers electrical concepts right from the basics of resistors and capacitors and then moves on to the fundamentals of electronic circuits . The coverage of mdifferent types of motors is lacking in the mathematical and design approach although it does cover the theoretical aspects well . Overall an ideal book for beginners but look for another one if you really want some details.

This book is supposed to be an 'homage' to Jorge Luis Borges, but if I was JLB, I'd say, "thanks but no thanks". Mr. Hughes thinks alot about his talent but he is neither as talented or 'smart' as he thinks. True about half of the stories/pieces work, but when they don't, they really don't.

Of the four sections he divides the book into, the first and last sections work the best with the first being the best overall. During the rest he seems to be reaching and ends up flat or overly cute ('wink wink nudge nudge').

But, that's just my opinion, take it for what it's worth.

Since only real names are used and some chapters seem to follow Guardian articles beat for beat this novel really blurs fiction and non-fiction.

Tennant writes beautifully, and it's best to think of this as rather heated, dreamy character studies since the plot is often difficult to track. You won't learn much here if you've seen the movie "Sylvia." But still, some of the imagined childhood of Assia, and certainly the dinner with her sad child, were effective. Ted largely remains a cipher, but perhaps he was; images of him as a killer are haunting.

Not a lot of suspense and forward-motion, but lovely writing.

This is one of the most gorgeously written books I have ever read. Emma Tennant is a poet, like the late Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes were. As a result, she may take a scene with Ted Hughes at a restaurant and describe in poetic detail how he eats, watches, moves. To many this might seem ridiculous. To a poet, even Bob Dylan (who said something about - a wise man looking at a blade of grass), it can mean a great deal. Bottomline here is this. Ms. Tennant is not interested in her role and brief relationship with Ted Hughes. As a female poet who faced the same sex discrimination in the arts which Plath did, she wants to set the record straight for Sylvia Plath. And she does this with such style, panache, page-turning fascination - that if you have anything like a poet-at-heart within, you will simply adore the book.

Unconvincing novel about Sylvia and Ted.She was a suicidal neurotic,he was a male chauvinist.End of story. To re-phrase Oscar Wilde,'To lose one wife by suicide may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose two looks like carelessness.'

This book is terrible, the words of Dorothy Parker come to mind (not to be tossed aside...).
But I won't utter them, I'd leave that to the author of this atrocity, who seems to think sickly flowery prose, name dropping, and every 2 paragraphs (rough estimate I had stopped counting after awhile) alluding to Greco-Roman mythology, makes a good writer...actually, make that she thinks makes a great writer, because it is painfully obvious she thinks she's the cats meow literary-wise.

This book is total poop.
Near impossible to read as it is so laden with metaphors and overly descriptive tripe one must stop periodically to stop from wretching.

If you're considering buying this book, don't do it, unless you are a fan of Emma Tenant's other work (which I wouldn't understand anyhow even if her writing had improved 100%)

SYLVIA AND TED, a strangely designed blue-gray book with a flower whose petals are grasped by fish hooks on the cover, a short novel by one Emma Tennant, sat with multiple copies on the table of "drastically reduced books for sale" at a local bookstore. Interest in the poetry of Ted Hughes and also that of the last works of Sylvia Plath made me curious enough to buy it without much thought. And it sat on my desk for months until one rainy evening it served to usurp my time for about three hours of reading. It is a strange book.

Emma Tennant (despite her apparent connections with Ted Hughes) is a curious writer. In SYLVIA AND TED she seems more intent on creating an atmosphere for the odd love story between two poets than in committing a biography to paper. In doing so she succeeds on some levels. The book is divided into years of importance in the lives of Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes and Assia Wevill - and in this manner she seems to be in awe of Michael Cunningham's THE HOURS, so intense is her exploration into the dark moods of each of these moments in time. And had she remained focused in this style then this book would have had a better chance at succeeding.

Tennant's problem is her self-indulgent verbiage, waxing literary in mythology and in symbolism that is more of a distraction than a significant modifier to the tale of two suicides over a single poet. To her credit she does manage a style of reportage that constantly keeps her in a position of close observer to the creative mind of Sylvia Plath. There is enough information about the disintegration of Plath's mind to make her suicide seem credible, no mean feat for a writer. But why include Assia Wevill from the very first of the book, weaving her in and out of the story at will as though setting Assia up a trope for all of Ted Hughes' well-documented assignations?

Quibbling? Perhaps. This is not the book to read for a biography of these well known subjects: this is a theme and variations on the lives of artists heavily weighted with poetically inclined diversions. It has its moments. Grady Harp, March 2005

When I first heard of the title several months ago, I had hoped that this would be a true in depth look at the late October city battles which no book to date has done. Then I saw who the author was, and my hopes died a quick death. The book has a great title, but doesn't live up to it's advertising. Same old rehash of the main staples of Craig, Erickson, & Ziemke. To be quite honest, I doubt if Mr. Fowler could even tell me what the vital 7 days were, and why. Photos are OK, but nothing you haven't seen before.

I devour Stalingrad books, and have them all, good and bad. This one is in the middle, its okay. For me its flaw is that it's very hard to place the events described within context because they deal with combat half-way through the battle itself but also before either the Soviet counter-offensive or the Luftwaffe air-lift start. It reads well, has good photos and is indeed quite interesting, but I do think that the book should only be read after the reader has studied the two essential Stalingrad classics: Antony Beevor's ''Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege'' and Joel Hayward's ''Stopped at Stalingrad.''

Will Fowler is a one man wreaking crew pertaining to the Eastern Front. How his ineptness is published is beyond me.
Can you, in your wildest imagination see him being published, by say, Knopf, Penguin, or RZM? Of course you can't!
Where does he come from?

i have bough some book that i ended throwing in trash the same day.why they were written years ago and things have changed.their price it self. says so.there is no book that has every explained class to the nth.in mordern era

I feel after reviewing this book that this is good for beginners who wants to conquere the C++ and good for intermediate programmers .Has low exposure to hardware related programming in C++ but even then good

If you want to learn integration techniques and become a whiz at basic computational calculus, you need another book. If you want a book that gives you a lot of proofs and tons of examples, you also probably need another book.

So why do I give the book 4 stars? The answer is _the problems_. I used this book for 3 semesters of calculus, and I felt like _I_ actually discovered a lot of the machinery of calculus just by doing the problems. It's a great feeling to discover rather than be taught. That's what this book helps you do.

Of course, this means you will probably have to do a few more problems than the teacher assigns (unless the teacher is very in tune with the book and knows exactly which problems are related). Also, when you get to techniques of integration, you'll probably need to refer to other books for examples. This is not necessarily a bad thing, as it is always better to learn from multiple sources.

One big downside is the cost. But, unfortunately, that's a problem with all American text books. Try to get a used copy.

Oh and about the book and solution manual not giving many solutions... Don't worry about it. When you solve most of these problems, you _know_ when you get the answer because everything will click and make sense. As for integration problems, just plug 'em into your TI-89, Maple, or the free Wolfram Online Integrator to check your answers!

In summary, this is a genuinely enjoyable book for problem solvers. Don't be scared by the other reviews. They are actually correct, in a way, but are simply coming from a somewhat narrowed perspective.

I don't know why so many people dislike this book...I probably learn in a different manner than they do. I've had to learn most of my calculus through Stewart's Early Transcendentals book, which I found very dry and mostly uninteresting. Luckily, I bought this book while I was taking a year off and taught myself calculus, having never even heard of a limit or a derivative before.

If you like thinking about the ideas behind things, and then learning about the formalism and mathematics of it, then this book is for you. If you prefer proofs, analysis, and "learn these steps and solve these problems" examples, you'll probably want to find a different text.

I can remember, though, the JOY of actually deriving things for myself, like how to calculate the volume of a solid rotated about some line or some such nonsense, because I could understand exactly what was needed. That is how I would describe this book: It's not a book about proving theorems and making you memorize a bunch of rules. Instead, it makes you really understand the subject matter, so that you can use the ideas of calculus to solve a variety of problems, even if they're problems you have no idea how to solve when you first read through them!

That is one thing that this book taught me that I found indespensible. You don't have to know how to do something, because you might be able to figure it out yourself instead of having some professor or text book or internet article tell you how to! Perhaps this approach is a little too ambitious, and I'll admit I spent a lot of time going through this text trying to reason things out, but it was time well spent.

So I suppose my advice would be not to buy this book unless you have to (for a course), or you're really willing to go through those problems spending a lot of time thinking about how to apply the IDEAS presented in the examples and text to the problem at hand. In the latter case, I think you'll find that the time you invest in this book will give you unexpected rewards.

I am using this text to teach myself Calculus. Explanations are skimpy, and offer very few practice problems with each of the steps worked out. Only odd answers are printed in the back (and some odd answers are not printed). I'm using the Schaum's OutLine Series, and it's MUCH MUCH better. I bought this book used, and for what I paid for it, I could have gotten the Schaums Calculus and Pre-Cal, and still had enough left over for dinner and a movie. Sad.

This is the worst calculus book out there.

One reviewer says "This book is for good students." I disagree. I am a good student at a tough university and I hated this book. Out of 35 students who took my calc class only 2 got an A. I was one of the two. So you can take my word because I worked my ass off to get that A. THIS IS THE WORST BOOK ON THE MARKET. Why?

1. Not enough examples
2. The examples are either super easy or super hard
3. Poorly explained concepts
4. Questions on things hardly explained
5. Tons of ambiguous questions
6. Poorly designed text

I could go on and on... Just skip this book. Please. It will make me feel better.

Ok this textbook does not teach at all. It basically just provide examples that is it. IT doesn't say why you do it or explain the calculus at all. The way the book explain calculus does not help at all when it comes to doing the problems. The answers in the back of the book does not match the problems throughout the chapters.

As an undergrad, this book is not student friendly at all. I basically did not use the textbook and depended on the professor and math tutoring. I love math and I understand it, but this book does not help. I am unable to learn from this textbook.

When I took Multivariable Calculus, we used "Multivariable Calculus" by James Steward in class. I personal like Steward's book very much because it made me understand without the help of my professor. With a supplement of this book, I found I understand Multivariable Calculus in a more comprehensive way. All in all, I like this book a lot.

The book is a disaster. I had to suffer with it for 2 semesters. None of the other students in my Calc I and Calc II courses got anything from it either, as far as I can tell. I had to scramble and seek information from other calc books in order to understand what differentiation and integration was all about. The text in no way prepares one for the exercises. There's no connection between the text and the exercises. In the exercises there appear some inane, open-ended questions that seem to be trying to make some unfathomable point. This is not a book anyone can learn from. I would strongly advise any student who must use this book as their course textbook to CHANGE COLLEGES. There are many great calculus books out there, on all levels. For those who prefer a 'calculus reform' approach, I would recommend Calculus Lite, by Frank Morgan. For the more traditional approach, I got a lot out of Anton's classic.

Teaching with this text - which I've been doing for the past two semesters - is an uphill battle, to say the least. It's a text designed for non-majors; I teach business and social science students. Instructors of these sorts of students need to convince their pupils that they DO need to know how to reason mathematically, and that math IS relevant to their life plans - they can't just rely on their calculators to do all their work for them. When the textbook seems to disagree, our job is all the more difficult.

The authors of _Calculus_ don't seem to have made up their minds regarding whether or not it is necessary to introduce the notion of mathematical justification in this book. On the one hand, the examples feature sound arguments for why a curve looks the way it does, or why a critical point is a maximum or minimum - but on the other hand, alongside Newton's Method and the Bisection Method for estimating roots, is a "Using the Zoom Function on Your Calculator" primer on how to estimate the zeroes of functions. Offhand remarks about "and you can use your graphing calculator for this and that" serve to seriously undermine any attempt to explain to first-year students the concept of mathematical argument - which is unfamiliar to many.

The organization of the chapters is also somewhat questionable. Differentiation is broken up into two sections: one dealing with the concept of a derivative (complete with pictures), and the other pertaining to computing them. While the idea of introducing differentiation through a concrete example - measuring instantaneous velocity given a displacement function - is a good one, by the time students actually get to work with derivatives, they're no longer focused on what they actually represent. Curve sketching is introduced vaguely at the end of the second chapter - before the shortcuts to differentiation are mentioned - and then revisited only in chapter 4.

The section on integration is even worse: again, it's introduced in a concrete manner - this time, by asking how displacement can be computed from a velocity function. But for some bizarre reason, the authors don't take this opportunity to explain that the area under a velocity curve - the integral - is that same displacement function whose derivative was the velocity. It's a perfect opportunity to do so, as it's an interesting and surprising (to the beginner) result, and one that's accessible at this point in the course. But instead, the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus is relegated to a later section, long after the "integral as an area" idea has been abandoned and students are just working with integrals as antiderivatives. (Even more curiously, there's a section entitled "The Second Fundamental Theorem of Calculus", but none called "The First Fundamental Theorem of Calculus".)

I'd highly recommend James Stewart's _Calculus_ instead of this text for a first-year calc course: the material is far better explained, and there's even a section on the inadequacies of graphing calculators (which are expensive, and which most first year students don't have the mathematical background to use properly).

I bought this book to brush up, that's all. I found the examples confusing and the explanations poor, even for someone with experience.

I agree with the earlier comment regarding this text which points out its confusing explanations and lack of examples. Even in the case of someone looking to review calculus this text is not at all useful and a very expensive waste of money.

This is the worst math book I have ever been forced to buy. This book does not teach you calculus, it only gives word problem after word problem that your regular calculus student will not be able to solve! Most require a knowledge of physics or economy, as well as even-- topography! I am SO FRUSTRATED with this book. If someone has any idea where I can get the complete solution's manual, (the student solutions manual only gives answers to 25% of the problems, in such a way that I can't possibly practice enough to do well on the exams or even LEARN), please email me at angelaalbert@hotmail.com THANKS, and good luck to you all that take math with this book. You will need it.

Calculus is confusing enough. You don't need a terribly written book to make it worse. The explanations are poorly written and extremely short. It takes a comprehensive understanding of calculus in order to understand anything that the author says. A well written book shouldn't have arrows pointing in random directions. Random arrows don't make a confusing concept any less difficult to comprehend. I could read my chemistry book and learn more about math than by reading this one.

Besides the picture on the front, this book is horrible! I've learned more by personal derivation and experimenting than through this book. The explanations are overly bloated, and include so many approximations and tables that the theory behind this book's ramblings is lost completely. Instead of focusing on theoretical multivariable calculus while introducing, as a short diversion an approximating method, this book builds around a foundation of approximations, which clouds the actual mathematics in the process.

In my opinion, unless theory is ingrained in students' heads from the start, they will never even attempt to understand it. After all, the book gives the theory second priority, so why should students pay any attention to it?

Moreover, in the introduction, the book promises to have problem sets that a student "cannot just look for a similar example to solve... you will have to think." However, after working with this book's homework problems, I've found them to be the exact opposite of this! There are plenty of similar examples for any given problem, and as a result the teacher's role becomes trivial, while at the same time students don't really understand anything they're doing. Not only this, but the problems are overly MUNDANE, and there is too much practice for a single concept. If a student has taken calculus, he can do derivatives, so he should not need 31 exercises to learn how to do partial derivatives.

Capping all this off, there are no truly challenging problems at all in this book. All of them focus on mechanical methods rather than clever application of known theory. The biggest challenge in this book, in fact, is keeping your hand intact as you take 50 partial derivatives, and then hit a problem that says "repeat for the second partial derivatives."

Meanwhile, your fine motor skills deteriorate quickly as you overwork them drawing or re-drawing a graph or table every other problem.

Bravo, Debbie Hughes, you can use Mathematica's graphing capabilities to their fullest. We're all proud of you. Now can you keep them out of your textbook? No one wants to see a billion tables staring them in the face, and then have to copy and change a billion more for homework. That's not a way to learn. This whole textbook is just a way to pretend you're learning.

Waiting to really learn anything from this book is like waiting for Richard Simmons to get married. Trust me, it's not gonna happen, folks.

kubkhan

"This innovative book is the product of an NSF funded calculus consortium based at Harvard University and was developed as part of the calculus reform movement" Beware of Harvard, i.e. reform Calculus. Instead of teaching people about maxima and minima, you show them how to use a calculator to guess. What a load of junk. Nobody learns what anything means, just how to apply formulas, etc. It is a shame what books and authors like these are doing to college mathematics. This book is particularly bad, a whole bunch of fluff, not a damn ounce of substance.

I have to disagree with my fellow Californians and unfortunately agree with someone from New York. This is an excellent foundation overview without the clutter of Anton's and Stewart's books. I found it to be a conveniently carried paperback and an enjoyable read.