Cosmos Books

This book is sadly misguided. The author not only does not understand relativity, but actually promulgates common misunderstandings as fact. For example: he says that even mathematically defined points, such as the point of intersection of moving straight lines, cannot exceed the speed of light. They can. Even worse, he says that there is no such thing as simultaneity in a distributed frame of reference. There is. He says the lack of simultaneity is due to the propagation delay of light. It is not. All these things are covered in any introductory text on Special Relativity. Reading this book will only mislead you. It was clearly never reviewed by a relativity physicist. It's sad that it was ever published.

My sons both used this book to help them understand relativity, and they found it easy to read. Chapter 2 (dealing with clocks and simultaneity) is a little difficult, but you can understand it if you read it twice! The rest of the book is fun and informative. Maybe it will motivate my oldest son to become an astronomer and work in the neutrino observatory they hope to build in the old gold mine!

I have owned this book since 1984, when I purchased the original edition from TAB Books. I found the approach unique, apparently written from a mathematician's point of view. But I was led to wonder about the accuracy of some of the material in the book, particularly of thought experiments that cannot be done in real life and which therefore cannot be positively verified or denied experimentally. For example, who is going to put clocks all over the solar system and then go to every planet to check their readings? But then, other books do the same thing, for example, asking the reader to imagine riding on a train travelling at eighty percent of the speed of light.

After looking at various mentions of this title around the Web (as a phrase in Google advanced search), I have found mostly positive comments, including one from a mathematician (!) in Alabama and another from an educational association in Arizona. These experts have recommended this book as good reading for their students. One fellow dismissed the book because he turned to a page and found some mention of UFOs, but confessed that he hadn't actually read the book yet.

Gibilisco's approach differs rather dramatically from most other relativity books because it is neither highfalutin nor silly. The style is, for the most part, clear. I think the explanations of simultaneity are a little hard to understand and could be misleading to some readers. Gibilisco could do a better job of explaining the relativity of simultaneity among objects in relative motion. It would be nice to have more discussion about paradoxes associated with Special Relativity. An updated edition could clarify some of these issues and also address the question, "Can anything travel faster than the speed of light in free space?"

I can usually handle grim, but this was grim to a level I can't handle. The plot synopsis above is very accurate, and it's up to you if you feel that "not falling prey to the tyranny of a happy ending" or however the reviewer put it is a good thing or a bad thing.

I don't know, it seems to me that at least someone in a book has to experience some hope, some redemption, something besides loss, pain and violence. Every character in the book has everything they care about systematically stripped away. What upset me the most is that we are talking about the world's children here, innocent, defenseless children who are sickened, debased, attacked, raped, enslaved and murdered while a cataclysmic forest fire rages in the background.

As an exercise in horrific imagination, the book works well, but I had a hard time figuring out just what the larger point of this book might be. The overall theme seems to be that man not a moral animal, that he is meant to kill, and learning to kill out of vengeance or mercy is a lost art we need to recover. Well, okay, but in our very present world, killing takes place all day, every day, for every reason. This doesn't exactly seem to be a "fresh" insight.

The quality of the writing is good, the characterization is actually adept, the future was well-imagined (it might have been more merciful if it were less so) and the plot keeps moving, but since all the movement was deeper into the slough of despond, I can't give the book a good rating.

I was surprised to find this was a first novel, although the author is a published writer. The plot was very well done and the characters interested me from the first page. The story moved along at a brisk pace and I found I couldn't put the book down until I'd finished it. I was hoping for a sequel as soon as this first book ended. This is a great read for anyone, not just speculative fiction fans. Highly recommended!

Abzug does a good job in compiling lots of information portraying an interesting view on religious reform in the antebellum period. However this book is typical of many in the same category: Abzug is a great historian, but not a very good writer. When reading this book it seems that one must translate every sentence into "regular" English. Abzug is simply hard to understand. However, it would be suspected that anyone who reads this book has some background in the field of antebellum time period and especially reform in New England in the early-to-mid-19th century.
Cosmos Crumbling provides some interesting perspectives, but it's a hard read, and when finished you'll probably still be left wondering what Abzug is trying to say. I read the book twice before I had an idea what his main points were.

Robert Abzug's fresh approach to antebellum reform illuminates some of its underlying causes. Abzug explores the antebellum religious imagination, positing that the reformers set about "sacralizing the world"--radically joining Heaven and Earth. In antebellum America, the language of religion, politics and science all reinforced each other. Abzug argues that Lyman Beecher confronted the crisis in New England identity by transferring its spiritual identity as a spiritual Israel to all of America. This sense of mission then drove the evangelical program of reform. Likewise, William Lloyd Garrison re-imagined the basis of American society by advocating a radical egalitarianism--blacks were entitled to all rights of citizenship. Abzug argues that all reforms sprung from the wellspring of religious imagination. Reformers were rethinking church and society. Inspired by their visions, they set out to remake America. Abzug is convincing. My one main criticism is that Abzug did not set American reform in its larger context. Many American reformers were indebted to their European counterparts. What of the European religious imagination? How was it different from the American? Nonetheless, this shortcoming is small given Abzug's deep insight into American reform. I highly recommend this work to students of antebellum reform or American religion.

When I picked up this book I was at first put off by LaViolette's style of writing. However, I gave him the benefit of the doubt by flipping ahead -- and I'm very glad I did. Because as I got more into it I began to realize what an amazing book this is. The author has broken the code -- by which I mean he has explained the deeper significance of the ancient Egyptian religion. In fact, this is the biggest breakthrough since Champollion decoded the Rosetta stone.

For this reason I'm very surprised this book has not received a lot more attention. It's a hidden gem. Prize it! This is an extremely valuable contribution to our understanding not just of the ancient world -- but much more -- allow me to explain.

LaViolette is a cutting edge physicist and he shows that the ancient Egyptian religion was all about advanced physics. It wasn't some crude form of paganism. The ancients had extremely sophisticated understanding of the nature of the cosmos. And the author does a fine job explaining this. The book is a fine companion to Thomas Brophy's book The Origin Map. It's now clear that everything we've been told about human history is wrong.

We don't have a clue where we came from -- but there is no longer any doubt that high civilizations did exist on planet earth in the distant past -- and we have very little knowledge of them.

What happened to them? Why did they disappear? LaViolette's book is a big step toward answering these questions.

This book had lots of potential. Unfortunately the author could not get past his training to use language and an approach which is more accessible and more concise.

Example: "It may be significant that Geb and Nut are separated by Shu, for X and Y ultimately separate into a discrepant state because of the deviation-amplifying tendency of the 'Shu-Tefnut' reaction loop.

The author is attempting to correlate recent findings in physics with classical mystical systems from Egypt, and with Astrology, and the Tarot. But the writing style is methodical and cold and unnecessarily wordy and redundant. It is encouraging that science is attempting to make connections back to reality expressed in mythology. However science is lost in that it continues to attempt to make the reconnection using on the brain and missing the activity of the heart and body.

What is largely unforgivable is that the author is stumbling around primary concepts of his thesis without clearly stating it. The largest blarring omission is an emphasis on archetypes. There are indeed archetypal connections between physics and myth but the author has failed to inspire insights and remains brain-bound to his training and equations.

If you are looking for deeper insights between science and Egypt then 'Serpent in the Sky' by John Anthony West remains one of the best books on the subject. 'Temple of the Cosmos' by Jeremy Naydler is also a good book on Egyptian mythology.

Considering the complexity of modern astronomy and astrophysics, this book does a very good job at explaining what the main questions/discoveries of astrophysics are in simple terms. I myself would complain that these issues are explored a little too superficially, although this is necessary in order to avoid introducing mathematical concepts and getting too involved. I don't think the author did a good job at describing the first wonder, the earth, but after that the book gets really good. I enjoyed it. Really, this book isn't complicated if you take it as survey. If you want to understand the fundamentals of astronomy and astrophysics, then this book is not for you, although it may help inspire future reading.

This book was not as easy to understand as claimed. There are significant parts of the book that read like a technical journal with explanations that include mathematical calculations and esoteric physical concepts. Although, there were some concepts explained using easy to understand models, this book is intended for those with some background in the physical sciences.

This is from the Stephen Hawking website:

"It has come to our attention that the book "The Theory of Everything: The Origin and Fate of the Universe" has been published. Professor Hawking would like to make it clear that he has not endorsed this book. The text was written by him many years ago, however the material has already been published in books such as 'A Brief History of Time'. A complaint was made to the Federal Trade Commission in the US in the hope that they would prevent the publication. We would urge you not to purchase this book in the belief that Professor Hawking was involved in its creation."

I'm not a math or science-y person, but I actually enjoyed Hawking's "Theory of Everything." It helps that the cover is fantastic and the book is less than 150 pages-- making it a great gift for any science buff or space whiz (or anyone else who likes to think outside of the box.) Don't be fooled by its sleek packaging, though-- it's the same heavy Hawking you know and love, just... simpler.

Very, very cool book-- now I just have to wait for my boyfriend to read it so we can discuss...!

Even if this product is unofficial, and unsanctioned by Stephen Hawking himself, I have to say I enjoyed it.
I liked how its topics were so clearly delineated into thematically cohesive lectures, I liked that the author read them himself using a computer, and I loved the clear and organized way that Hawking laid out topics as complex and unfathomable as black holes and time and the beginning of the universe.
Don't buy this, I suppose, since it's really not sanctioned by Hawking himself, but do buy his other work that basically repeats this same material.
Do buy this, though, if you're a Hawking completist, already have all his other books, and are looking for just a little bit more.
I loved it.

When Phoenix did a crummy job on their audio book production of A Brief History of Time, I thought "that seems kind of disrespectful, doing a hack job like that just so they can make money off of a famous book."

Ha! Do I feel like a fool now!


Oh yeah, and of course I am obligated to add this little bit from Hawking's website:

IMPORTANT NOTE
It has come to our attention that the book "The Theory of Everything: The Origin and Fate of the Universe" has been published. Professor Hawking would like to make it clear that he has not endorsed this book. The text was written by him many years ago, however the material has already been published in books such as 'A Brief History of Time'. A complaint was made to the Federal Trade Commission in the US in the hope that they would prevent the publication. We would urge you not to purchase this book in the belief that Professor Hawking was involved in its creation.

IMPORTANT NOTE
It has come to our attention that the book "The Theory of Everything: The Origin and Fate of the Universe" has been published. Professor Hawking would like to make it clear that he has not endorsed this book. The text was written by him many years ago, however the material has already been published in books such as 'A Brief History of Time'. A complaint was made to the Federal Trade Commission in the US in the hope that they would prevent the publication. We would urge you not to purchase this book in the belief that Professor Hawking was involved in its creation.

Some of the positions look just the same as others with slight differences, but if you read the descriptions, they really are different enough to be very significant. Also recommended: Sex and the perfect lover by M. Iam: is it the Kama Sutra Sex and the Perfect Lover: Tao, Tantra, and the Kama Sutra

because the pictures aren't of real people but are like bathroom figures. i'm not a big fan of the kama sutra books that have naked people all up in them...i feel like i'm looking at porn. if you're like me this is the book for you.

UNCOMFORTABLE! Most of these positions were created out of desperation for "NEWNESS" opposed to created for pleasure and good sex! It is as though the point were not to create sexual satisfaction, but to test the couples physical flexibility and endurance for discomfort.

Unless you spent your entire life doing acrobatics in a circus this is not helpful at all. I returned it because it was in no way realistic and seemed it would be quite painful for those of us who are not from the circus.

I didn't feel the book had anything in it that the average person hadn't already tried before in their own experimenting. After like the first five positions, the book started repeating itself by switching the man with the woman, the left side with the right, or leaning forward or more backward. I don't really recommend buying this book, there wasn't anything in it that I didn't already know.

This virtual odyssey, exploring the historical and cultural roots of mathematics and the mystery of its timeless questions, stimulates learning and wonder in a way no standard math textbook can do.

The book combines the charm of travel adventures with the mystery of ancient mathematics. Interspersed in the entertaining narrative are thoughtful questions on the nature of the universe, questions entertained by Pythagoras himself. The author talks with Greek, Arab, Italian, and English mathematicians, each of whom ponders the question of Pythagoras in his or her own intriguing way.

At the temple of Apollo, Dr. Pygonopolis introduces the fundamental idea of the holos and ponders whether the discoveries of the Pythagorean School could have been made in another culture.

Under the desert sky, Prof. al-Flayli gives a fascinating account of Arabic influence on astronomy and mathematics.

In Venice, under the sound of "Missa Sancta," physicist Maria Canzoni contemplates the holos, the cosmos, and the ultimate reality of menos, or a consciousness beyond the quantum curtain.

In Oxford, England, Sir John Brainard lectures on the intrinsic simplicity of mathematics and the evidence that computers provide for its independent existence.

Accessible and thought-provoking, this is the most fascinating math book I have read to date.

The book tries to explore some of the more philisophical aspects of mathematics, and cannot be faulted for its failure to reach any real conclusions there. If an answer were easy to come by, it would indicate that the questions were not so philisophical after all.

Unfortunately, the book also fails to achieve secondary goals. Both the historical and mathematical topics it covers could be covered just as well in 1/5 the pages. The extra length comes from trying to work the material into a journey, a technique possibly used in an attempt to make the topics less intimidating or more interesting, but which in fact just makes them boring. If one travels to see and talk to somebody, the travel itself (plane ride, taxi, carrying of the bags) is oftentimes a boring chore needed to get where you are going. Why describe it here? It is not more interesting to read about than to experience.

Instead, this book seems to combine all of the filler material needed to make a fictional story consistant and realistic, but there is not really any story being told here. If one wants a story with some math worked in, try A. K. Doxiadis's "Uncle Petros and Goldbach's Conjecture" instead.

When I saw the title of the book, it reminded me of Ivars Peterson's "The Mathematical Tourist", which I have only looked at briefly, but which explores interesting areas of mathematics. If one wants an overview of some interesting math topics, this is a much more appropriate book.

In Dewdney's book, we get a "tourist" book with few points of interest, mathematical, historical, or geographical. Given the interesting people, places, and material covered, it really misses the mark.

To explore the great beauty of mathematics, it is always necessary to go back to the ancient Greeks. It was there that the great intellectual breakthrough of abstract mathematics was made. Dewdney begins his mathematical journey at the logical place, Athens, Greece. His first discussions are with Petros Pygonopolis, a specialist in ancient Greek mathematics. Quite fittingly, Pygonopolis is found measuring the stones of an ancient structure with a ruler. This proves to be an excellent starting point for the explanation of the discovery of irrational numbers. Before the great proof that the square root of two was irrational, it was believed that all values were commensurate. This means that by repeating one length a specific number of times and the other length a different number of times, two distances of the same length could be created. The most interesting part of this discussion is the descriptions of how numbers were represented in ancient Greece. In many ways, it is incredible to realize how cumbersome their notation was.
In keeping with the historical development of mathematics, Dewdney then travels to Amman, Jordan to examine the development of mathematics in the Arab world. After the collapse of the Roman Empire, the development of mathematics essentially ceased in Europe. All mathematical progress for centuries after the collapse took place in the Arab world. He meets with Jusuf al-Flayli, an Egyption astronomer who is an expert in the Arab view of the heavens. The naming of the stars is important in Arab culture, and it is clear when you read Dewdney's account. For where else but in the desert would one see the greatest, clearest spectacle of stars.
Venice, Italy is the next stop, for discussions with Maria Canzoni. These discussions are about the development of numerical operations, the new representations and the notations used in the operations. It is difficult to overstate the significance of positional notation. It is hard to see how modern commerce could have ever developed without it. One thing that it is difficult for math students to appreciate is how clean modern mathematical notation is. Even the simple symbols of addition, subtraction and so on abbreviate some very advanced mathematical concepts.
The last stop on the tour is Oxford, England where Dewdney has discussions with Sir John Brainard. The conversation uses nonsense words such as gadzooks, blorgs, semiblorgs, zooks and horping tables. These terms are actually replacements for the words of group theory. Brainard uses this as an example to illustrate the idea put forward by David Hilbert for geometry. Namely that geometry should be constructed so that the terms point, line and plane can be replaced by chair, table and beer mugs. It was quite fun to read and reminded me of some of the writings of Lewis Carol.
There is great beauty in mathematics, sometimes even practitioners fail to appreciate it. Dewdney does an excellent job in describing some of the more significant events in the history of mathematics. Read it and appreciate what some of the great minds have done.

I started reading this book like all others: with anticipation to learn something new and exiting but instead mistakes hit me over my head. On page 85 the author calls the angle between the zenith and a star its declination. Wrong name: It is (90 degrees minus altitude), also called the complementary angle. The declination is the distance from the equator. On page 97 the author gives the impression that the polar star (Polaris) is moving with the seasons; that is not so. Polaris is fixed on the celestial sphere except for a very small daily circle of about 1.5 degree radius. Page 101 makes Kepler a priest which he was not. He just studied Lutheran theology before turning completely to natural philosophy and teaching for a living. Kepler never ignored Copernicus as claimed by Dewdney and neither is the Earth in the middle of the Platonic Solids but the Sun as described in the Mysterium Cosmographicum. On page 103 the author makes us believe that the geographical latitude of Baghdad as measured by the altitude of Polaris is 33 degrees 19 minutes at the beginning of spring; the altitude of Polaris for Baghdad is the same all the time except for that small daily variation mentioned before. On page 110 the author gives the title of Fibonacci's main work as "Algorismus"; there is no work of this title, the common name of his major work is given as "Liber abaci (or abbacy)" - The Book of Abacus. On page 113 the author attributes the spectral lines of the Balmer Series to "vibration" of the atoms. Not so. In Bohr's model the spectral lines are caused by transition of electrons between different levels of energy or different orbits. Vibrations are involved in the spectra of molecules. Finally, why has the author forgotten Mr. Balmer while attributing the different Hydrogen series with changing parameter n to (1) Lyman, (2) Paschen, (3) Brackett and (4) Pfund? The correct attribution is (1) Lyman, (2) Balmer, (3) Paschen, (4) Brackett and (5) Pfund.
I think that I lost my patience reading this book at that point.

Tour is certainly a rare book, one on mathematical philosophy. After all, it is commonly accepted that physics describes the real world, while metaphysics grapples with the questions of what is real? With that being said, Dewdney turns his attention the tools of mathematics that Physics uses in its descriptions, and ponders if there could be the "meta-mathematical." In Tour, he undertakes to answer two questions. First, why is mathematics so amazingly successful in describing the structure of physical reality, and second, is mathematics discovered or is it created? These are not trifling questions. Consider the discovery of the planet Neptune. In 1845, the 23-year old British John Couch Adams completed calculations pinpointing a new planet that he believed was perturbing the orbit of Uranus. That same year, French astronomer Urban Jean LeVerrier independently published his prediction of the position of the new planet, within a degree of Adams. Alone, this proves almost nothing. Given the same set of data from observations, regardless of how complex the celestial mechanics are, the formulae do not change and accurate algebraic answers should agree (although they do provide standalone verification for each other). What happened next though transforms a merely mathematical exercise into Dewdney's quest to understand the true nature of math. On the same night they read of it, Johann Galle and Heinrich d'Arrest at the Berlin Observatory search and see an eighth magnitude "star" right where LeVerrier envisaged it. Dewdney dares asks, "Why is the physical universe determined (or accurately describable) to so great an extent by Mathematical ideas?"
To answer, Dewdney employs what in the preface he describes as "a fictional narrative," that leads from Greece to Arabia to Italy to England. However, his level of detail and his concluding notes in the postscript lead me to question how fictional the four characters are who elucidate on the subject. I suppose that is to be expected in a work of philosophy, blurring the distinction of who is real. There is one other "character," dead some 2,500 years, but whose mystical and mathematical spirit is still felt: Pythagoras. Carl Sagan credits Pythagoras as the first to "use the word Cosmos to denote a well-ordered and harmonious universe, a world amenable to human understanding" (hence the title for Sagan's series; and now you know the rest of the story!) The followers of Pythagoras developed an entire mathematical cult, a sect that sincerely believed that through math they were glimpsing a perfect reality, a nonmaterial higher realm, of which the physical world was a manifestation. The dwellers of Plato's cave were inheritors indirectly of the Pythagoreans: "The stars that decorate the sky, though we rightly regard them as the finest and most perfect of visible things, are far inferior, just because they are visible, to the true realities; that is, to the true relative velocities, in pure number and perfect figures, of the orbits and what they carry in them, which are perceptible to reason and thought but not visible to the eye. (The Republic, Plato, book VII, 529-E)." In his first stop, along the coast of the Aegean, Dewdney encounters the "holos," the place where all of mathematics, known and unknown, exists. The Cosmos is the manifestation, but the holos is the source, so much so that the Tour is actually Discovering the Truth and Beauty of the Holos. But be cautioned though that a proper frame of mind is a prerequisite. Just as Galileo's journals show he observed Neptune in 1612 but failed to recognize it for what it was, so to Tour benefits from a second or third revisit for complete comprehension.

This book was no good. By the end of the first chapter I didn't care about it. But I stuck it out. I thought it might get better. But it didn't. The last hundred pages took me a week to read because I just didn't care what happened to these lame characters. Then after I finished (even though I thought I couldn't care less how this book ended) I was disappointed in the ending.

While I usually love books by Gonzalez, this one was a step down for me. The opening setup was quite excellent by having a troubled man's identity secretly discovered by his superior at work and recorded on videotape. The boss then blackmails his employee to do his dirty deeds as a werewolf, killing off his competition. However, in almost every scene with the werewolf, you could easily substitute the name "werewolf" for "hitman" and you'd essentially have the same effect, only with a more grisly outcome. It reads more as a crime thriller than a horror novel. I wanted to delve into Mark Wiseman's world a lot deeper than was written, but it was a fast, fun read nonetheless.

My only other problem was the incredibly high amount of coincidences in the final third of the book where our villain discovers his ex-girlfriend and our hero, Mark Wiseman, have been seeing each other, run off together, and are easily tracked down. George Fielding's piecing together clues to the murders and the involvement of everyone also seemed like a bit of a stretch, especially after just coming out of a coma. But regardless, Gonzalez is trying a something new here and I'm glad he did. Personally, I prefer his book, "Survivor", a much more visceral plunge into horror. As long as you have the stomach for it.

Hey, I love a good, cheesy horror novel as much as the next guy (or ghoul) but this one isn't. It stinks. Very amateur writing, implausible plot, weak characters, meaningless gore - there's nothing at all worth reading here. You have to wonder why Leisure chose to re-print this dated, sub-par wolfman story in the first place. In fact, the entire Leisure line of horror has taken a downward turn with no less than THREE werewolf novels being published in the last three months.Give me a Richard Laymon psycho anyday! (Although, Leisure's recent release of Laymon's Cuts was so full of editorial errors that it almost rendered Laymon's work unreadable.) Get your act together, Leisure!

I'm a sucker for a good old fashioned werewolf story, and this one from J. F. Gonzalez satisfies. It's fun, fast-paced and wonderuflly vicious. Grab this one and kick back for a really good fang and claw story.

This was my first Gonzalez book, and I have to admit that my opinion of it is slightly perplexed. I enjoyed the story; being a sucker for werewolves I was pretty happy to be reading a werewolf book to begin with. The lead character - Mark Weisman, was your standard werewolf, a tragic figure who fights to control his cursed life and deal with the carnage he knows he is causing. He has some control over his change, but not nearly enough.

The real monster of the story is a high level executive, under the gun for committing fraud and a few other nasty white collar crimes. Bernard discovers Mark's secret and decides as only a true monster could, to use it for his own gain. (By the way there are no spoilers in that little bit, it's written on the back of the book). Add in a love interest, quite a few dead execs and a corporate merger and we should be in for quite the evening of werewolf fun.

So why did I finish this 300+ page book in 3 hours? I know I read fast, but it should have lasted me a day and a half... The writing style was very simple, I don't know if that was good or bad. The characters are extremely quick in their emotions, falling in love is an almost overnight decision... there is very little sense of time passing; I know that this book took place in about a years time, but you never get that feeling. Also there are a couple of plot holes that I won't point out here, they aren't huge, but they are there. On the whole I enjoyed the 3 hours I spent blazing through this book. As I said the writing style is extremely simplistic. If it wasn't for the sex and hint at gore (I didn't find the book overly gorey, personally) I would almost consider this written in a "young adult" fashion. There isn't a lot of glowing prose, description is minimal, in fact it isn't until the end of the book that Mark is truly described physically, Bernard is only described as "Tall" and Mark in his wolf shape is left so open that I wasn't sure if we had an "American Werewolf" style or "Lon Chaney" style werewolf. In fact the only characters who are given decent physical descriptions are the women, and that is simply that they are all blond and all have perfect legs and huge boobs.

If you are looking for a fast simple read, pick this up at a used bookstore. If you are looking for something mind altering, mood changing, or eye opening... look elsewhere.

This book gives perfect titles and instructions to all those postions you've dreamed of trying. Perfect to get you in the mood for summer!

As i stated, i never received this book. I ordered two books from marketplace and the other one i got. i emailed Amazon about the Aqua book to let them know i never received it, but never heard back from them.

Doubt i'll ever buy anything from marketplace again - i'll stick to a real person - an actual seller - from now on!

I was not too impressed with this book. There are some of the pics that are the same. I do however like that it is waterproof, so you can use it as a guide if you want to.

My girl and I really enjoyed trying the different positions, haven't got to them all, but we're determined! Thank goodness the book is waterproof!!

Nice pictures, for reference!! Water Proof too... Some of the positions in this book are also in Cosmo's Kama Sutra book.