Abstract Books

Are you also sick and tired of all the second-rate birdbooks out there? I guess the Spanish (!) publishing company Lynx was, so they decided to do the impossible: publish the mother of all birdbooks, the birdbook to end all birdbooks. Since 1992, 12 volumes have been published, with 4 more waiting in the wings. The purpose of HBW is to illustrate and describe ALL bird species known to man. You heard me. All of them. All 10,000 of them. Gee, what a mindjob!!!

Of course, this makes the HBW extremely expensive. Each volume costs 265 dollars, the entire series (so far) goes for incredible 3,445 dollars. You probably have to be a state congressman to afford the lot! I'm lucky to live in a city where at least one library has all 12 volumes in a public reference section, but if you live in Littletown or Smallville, you might have something of a problem. Personally, I think I'll save some money to buy at least ONE volume of the series, just to prove I wasn't born on the wrong side of the tracks, LOL. But yes, I would LOVE to have the entire series, all 12 volumes sort of casually spread out in my living room, one here and one there. How's that for the lifestyle of the Noveau Riche?

When I eventually buy that one volume, I don't think it will be this one. With all due respect, thrushes are quite boring birds. Volume 4 (includes cuckoos, turacos and parrots) and volume 6 (includes trogons, rollers and hornbills) seem more exciting.

Still, when I went to the library to get a feel for this book, I nevertheless looked through this volume, which includes thrushes, wrens, waxwings and dippers, amongst others. Each volume of the HBW is organized in pretty much the same manner. First comes a general chapter on the bird family under review, including sections on Systematics, Morphological Aspects, Habitat, General Habits, Voice, Food and Feeding, Breeding, Movements, Relationship with Man, and finally a section on Status and Conservation. The general chapters are illustrated with large photos of various birds. There are often two photos per page, and amazingly enough, they are all in color! After the general chapter comes the species presentations. Color plates illustrates each species, and most of the subspecies, with a couple of varieties thrown in for good measure. Each species is then described in some detail. There is also an extensive bibliography after each presentation.

What really struck me when going through this volume, was the sheer immensity of information. Even the photo captions are filled with information. Frankly, a piece of information about thrushes, wrens or dippers not found in this volume, probably isn't worth knowing anyway! Thus we learn that William Blake wrote a poem about Robins, that 36% of the diet of a Mistle Thrush in Britain consist of insects and only 3.5% of slugs, that Fieldfares attack their enemies by defecating (I will avoid Fieldfares in the future), that the Island Thrush prefers to live at elevation 1000-1650 meters in the Philippines, but breed at 2100-3200 meters in Borneo, that Grand Cuckoo-Shrikes occasionally eat House Sparrows, and that there are 85 species of wrens (the gods must be crazy). We also learn that there is a bird named Ring Ouzel, and another called Black Solitaire. And then there's the Hypocolius (you heard me).

:-D

Aren't there any negatives about these books? To advanced biology students, probably not. To laymen, maybe a couple. I already mentioned the sheer volume of information. Another problem is that the book is teeming with never-explained scientific terminology. If you want to buy it, you better learn the meaning of words such as monotypic, congener, superspecies, conspecific, corvoid (sic) and dimorphism. (That's an easy one.) Thus, the HBW isn't for laymen, amateurs or people with a purely casual interest in birds. In order to really appreciate it, you need to be an experienced bird-watcher, a serious biology student, or perhaps a fanatical lover of profesionally produced books (me!). In other words, don't buy it for your kids just because they have a parakeet!

Finally, a personal observation. Although I'm singularly uninterested in thrushes, I almost wanted to spend the 265 dollars anyway, just after a few minutes of leafing. Once again, the photos are superb, and the color illustrations as well. This simply is THE MOTHER OF ALL BIRDBOOKS. Period!

Elizabeth Willis, The Human Abstract (Penguin, 1995)

Elizabeth Willis is a fantastic poet, one of those holding the banner of the avant-garde in America who actually deserves to be holding it. Perhaps there is no better indicator of this than that Willis' The Human Abstract is one of those rare beasts, an American book of poetry printed after World War II released by the mighty keeper of all that is literary, Penguin. Established fans will already know (and may already own) some of the things in this collection, many of which were published previously as chapbooks or broadsides; don't let that stop you from shelling out for this bad boy. All the rest of what's in here is just as good as what you have. And if you've never entered the wild, wonderful, often frightening world of Liz Willis, you're in for quite a ride.

The first thing to note about Willis' writing is that, like all great poets, she is at least as concerned (if not more so, at times) with how it sounds than whether it makes sense. Let me rush to add, since it's a different way of thinking for most people, that that is a good thing (often, about the best poems, it is the best thing; read Simic, Stroffolino, Hamburger's translations of Tzara, early Eshleman, etc. for numerous examples). The thing that first strikes you about the poems in here is how good they sound. Well, that and the way they lay on the page (which, at least in comparison to the original chapbook of "A/O," is even toned down a bit here), which is sure to draw the eye. Read the stuff here through, first, just for the magic of sound, the pleasure of the differing flow of breath on some passages. Then delve into the meaning. And you'll probably have to delve; it's obvious from the material here that Willis is savagely intelligent, and one of those people who is driven to write by the things she's uncovered with that intelligence; you won't be sitting with a concordance, as you would with Pound's Cantos, but you might want to keep a search engine handy. All of which is quite worth it, as Willis is truly one of the guiding lights in American poetry today. **** ½

Enhanced with an informed and informative essay by Michael Plante (Jessie J. Poesch Professorship in Art, Newcomb Art Department, Tulane University, New Orleans, Louisiana) Ida Kohlmeyer: Systems Of Color showcases the prolific artistry of Ida Kohlmeyer, a lifelong resident of New Orleans who took up painting at the age of thirty-five and became an outstanding representative of both modernism and abstract expressionism in her work. Indeed, Ida Kohlmeyer achieved national recognition as a teacher, painter, and sculptor. In addition to presenting more than one hundred large color illustrations documenting the development of Kohlmeyer's artistic career, the reader is provided with a full chronology, a bibliography for further study, as well as a listing of exhibitions, collections, and commissions. Ida Kohlmeyer: Systems Of Color is a significant contribution to American 20th Century Art History Studies and should be a part of all academic library reference collections accordingly.

Love the book and the author was so great in his research and presentation of the works. He was just great Thanks Tony for a great book

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Interference is abstract polaroid photography that is beautifully well done showing depth and colour in each photograph.The book contains a introduction from the author Nick Rhodes to the reader describing the content of the book.The book is beautifully well done an as the author says each person who see's the pictures will think something different then the other person.I highly reccomend this book to all who is interested in photography.

The first thing to not about this book is that it is dense. In my abstract algebra course we covered chapters 3-5 in an entire semester. However, it contained every proof we needed in class, and although it reads slowly, it was usually crystal-clear. Especially good is its treatment of group actions, which is sometimes lacking in introductory-level algebra books. There is a lot of additional material -- the author recommends covering chapters 1-7 in one semester, which may be feasible at institutions like MIT, but for the majority of students, the information contained in this book would be more than a year's worth. Chapter 8 contains almost a semester's worth of advanced linear algebra. Sometimes I wish there were a few more exercises in each chapter; especially in the beginning, because the proofs were relatively easy, it seemed like there wasn't a good enough selection of topics. The book is mercifully cheap, but even though it's paperback, it's very sturdy, and for such a low-cost choice, it has tons of content. Recommended.

Very clear and concise book for beginners interested in a little of rigor. This book proves understandably essential proofs such as that of the Fundamental Theorem of Arithmitic, and the Division/Euclidean Algorithm, among others. But it lacks few basic spell out proofs that could be used to prove major results. This books is independent of Linear Algebra. I think that the first three chapters of the following book is a great complement because of its basic proven and spelled out results : "Beginning Number Theory, 2nd edition" by Neville Robbins.

Landin's book is a great introduction to abstract algebra. It is written at about a 3rd year undergraduate level, so it should be easily accessible to interested readers. Mathematicians will probably find this book a bit easy, but for those of use who are not mathematicians by training, the ease of this book is welcome. The topics covered are set theory, the number systems, groups, group homomorphisms, rings, and polynomial rings. Landin provides plenty of definitions, theorems and proofs, but he is kind enough to also build intuition about the theory with incisive prose and illustrative examples. It is also great for self study, but does not include solutions to the problems. However Landin gives the reader the equipment necessary to solve the problems with little difficulty. Overall I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in learning the basics of abstract algebra.

The book by Jan Smit "INTRODUCTION TO QUANTUM FIELDS ON A LATTICE"
is an excellent book on Lattice Field Theory. There are very few
books on this subject and I think that it is the best because of
clarity, calculation details and the ability of explaining the
physical aspects of the problems in a clear way. I particularly
appreciated the presentation of the symmetries in QCD and the
introduction of fermion fields on the lattice as well as the
question of scalar theories.