United Kingdom Books

Publishing in Anglo-Norman studies has grown tremendously in the past thirty years, since the Norman Conquest was introduced as a special subject at the University of London, and the editors conceived this anthology as an overview of the present state of the field, with emphasis on topics in politics and culture - and not much at all on military matters, covered in detail by the essays in Strickland's Anglo-Norman Warfare (1992), to which this might be considered a companion volume. The eleven contributors, all well-known specialists, include Marjorie Chibnall on "Feudalism and Lordship" and Lesley Abrams on "England, Normandy and Scandinavia," both of which are excellent. Elisabeth van Houts's survey of historical writing is also very useful.

This volume is a sharp collection of essays offering a solid grounding in the Victorian period's history as well as in current scholarship on its literature and culture. Students new to the period will benefit from the volume's multifaceted, multiply focused approach to the period; they will also find each chapter/essay's suggestions for further reading helpful if they choose to continue studying that chapter/essay's topic. More advanced students will also appreciate this volume as a wide-ranging reference.

It's amazing that there virtually no treatments of company law that try to integrate fully corporate finance principles. This is not a corporate finance text, but it does explain company law by reference to finance principles right from the beginning - eg chapter 2 is entitled "corporate finance structure - basic legal, accounting and financing considerations". This approach is essential for anyone aspiring to be, or practising as, a capital markets, financial services or funds lawyer. The book is thorough and full of insights. It explains topics that ought to be explained in every company law text but aren't (there are whole chapters on distributions, subordinated debt, IPOs and rights issues), as well as more conventional topics that obviously impact upon financing decisions (directors' duties). There is a second edition underway for July 2008, but perhaps better not to wait - buy the current paperback edition.

Brake is the best, the most analytical and most interesting book I have read about subcultures. He takes the approash of symbolic interactionism, theories, and uses it for what it is worth. I would recomend this book to all people interested in you cultures and youthsubcultures

Without doubt, the Compendium of British Clubmakers is a must have book for Collectors of pre-1930's British Golf Clubs. I have been collecting clubs here in the UK for 5 years and until I discovered this book, I was simply guessing a club's pedigree. This compendium is comprehensive and fascinating. There has not been a club I have been unable to place in terms of date, maker & location. Don't hesitate, buy it now!

I am awaiting the new edition

This review pertains to the third edition, covering the period 1952 to 2003.

For many years, the Guinness book of British hit singles was the definitive guide to the British charts. Now there are rivals and while none are ideal, I prefer this ahead of the alternatives. Of course, if Joel Whitburn (of Billboard fame) were to publish a British chart book, that would be better still - he sets the standard for presentation.

The basic problem for all chart books is the sheer volume of data. This explains the small, difficult to read, type although if this is a particular problem, you could go for the books published by Collins instead. They publish separate books for singles and albums although each individual book is about the same size as this one. Thus, there is more room for larger typeface but it obviously comes at a price.

While Guinness likes to include pictures, this book provides extra information about cover versions (who originally recorded it) and soundtrack songs (which film). This information is incomplete, so under Elvis Presley's relevant hits you are told who originally recorded Hound dog (Big Mama Thornton) but not who originally recorded Blue suede shoes (Carl Perkins) or Blue moon (Glen Gray). However, the other books do not provide this information at all. Against that, Guinness provides brief descriptions for some of the artists - however, I prefer to use a music encyclopedia for this type of information. The notes about cover versions and soundtrack songs is much more useful to me. While I knew a lot of this info already, this book expanded my knowledge. I hope that future editions will fill some of the gaps beginning with the examples I gave above.

The section on compilations is interesting (mainly listed by record label) and even includes a section on selected series so you can find (for example) all the Now compilations under one heading. What it doesn't do is segregate according to musical genre, but I can see that this would be an almost impossible task.

With all the data presented, perfect presentation at an affordable price is impossible but the information provided makes this a better choice than the alternatives - so far. As there are now several rival publications, we can only assume that they are looking to see what each other is doing and will all improve what they offer with successive editons.

This book is an amazing look at the SAS, This is the most informative book on the SAS i have ever read. If u plan on doing a project or a website about the SAS or anything else related to it this book is a MUST BYE, Most of all order it off of Amazon.com and u will save 10.00. THIS BOOK IS A MUST BYE!! WELL WORTH EVERY PENNY!!!!!!!!

This very extensive tome is the most up to date and detailed reference work on the British singles charts from their inception in the New Musical Express Top 12 of 1952 up to the end of 2003.

The introduction provides a key to the symbols used and explanatory notes to the format of the information. Then follows the alphabetical list of artists from the British group A to ZZ Top. Each entry contains biographical information on the artist, every single that charted with its chart entry date, highest position, weeks at number one, weeks on chart, gold, platinum, Grammy, MTV, BPI and other awards, the catalogue number and further information like the contribution of other artists in an uncredited role or which songs contain samples of other songs.

The next section provides a chronological list of number ones from 1952 to 2003, from Here In My Heart by Al Martino to Mad World by Michael Andrews. The following section is an alphabetical listing of all the songs from the period, starting with () by Sigur Ross and concluding with Zungo Zeng by K7 and the Swing Kids.

The author has consulted periodicals like Billboard, Blues & Soul, Melody Maker, NME, Music Week, Record Collector, Record Mirror, Rolling Stone and Sounds plus a list of books which is provided. This is an indispensable reference work for music journalists and ought to be very helpful for anyone wishing to investigate the careers of their favorite artists.

I was in a gift stop a couple of weeks ago, and made a purchase, for which the clerk took a form book, wrote down what I was buying and the price (she added tax mentally and did not need a calculator), and having finished, she gave me a carbon copy and I was on my way. It has been years since I had such a pen and paper transaction. There is almost always an electronic cash register now, and it is usually hooked up to the big store computer, which also does the inventory, pay slips, and many other accounting and management functions. There was a time when computers were not a part of businesses, and now there is a time that they are almost universal. What was the first business computer, and what company put it to work? The surprising answer is in _A Computer Called LEO: Lyons Teashops and the World's First Office Computer_ (Harper Perennial) by Georgina Ferry. It is an enchanting book about times long ago, even if it is about industrial history and computer development. The boffins who made and used their hand-built computer were well ahead of their times, and at least partially because of that, we know IBM and we don't know LEO, but LEO is worth knowing about.

Lyons was a firm one would not have predicted to be in the vanguard of business technology. Its famous stores throughout Britain served tea and cakes. As Ferry says, "A background in catering is not normally seen as an obvious qualification for hi-tech startup companies." But the Lyons shops had a progressive management, interested in contemporary scientific management principles, and took on a Cambridge graduate in mathematics, who realized that the primitive computers being developed in the US could be used for business. Much of the book involves the details of building the computer when computers consisted of a room full of electronic tubes (anachronistically termed "valves" because of the way they could turn off and on a stream of current). There were over 3,000 such valves, and cables all over the room to connect them, and of course, the resultant machine had far less computing power than the chip inside Tickle-Me-Elmo. Eventually, it worked. In 1951, LEO (for Lyons Electronic Office) took responsibility for bakery operations, and eventually took over such jobs as managing the payroll. At the time, there was no comparable machine anywhere in the world, and no commercial market for them.

So in 1954, Lyons the teashops created Leo Computers Ltd. After that, LEO's story becomes a sad one. They did produce machines, and the machines worked. The initial LEO computer did its jobs for fourteen years, before finally being turned off in a little ceremony in 1965. Another installed in 1958 at a steelworks was in continuous use until it was retired in 1971. "I don't suppose we shall ever again keep a computer in service as long as this one," said one manager. Some LEOs worked for the post office, coming out of service only in 1981. The man in charge of them said, "We were very fond of LEOs. They just worked. There was no reason to change them." The post office at one point actually wanted to buy more of them, but Leo Computers could not generate needed capital and had had to merge with other firms. Eventually LEO could not compete with the billions invested by firms like IBM. The American government, too, had backed American computers, while no comparable support came from the British government. Thus LEO is a footnote, not an ancestor, to current business computing, but the men who built it succeeded in a momentous and prescient project. Along the way, Ferry's wonderfully researched and entertaining book is able to summarize a lot of computing history, taking in such subjects as Alan Turing's work at Bletchley Park and John von Neumann's prophetic design of computer architecture. She also tells of the mechanical computers designed by the Victorian visionary Charles Babbage, who felt his inventions were slighted by his own government and admired by the Americans. It was a lesson that had not been learned a century later.