Space Books

Kids from preschool to third grade will appreciate this series of twelve stories on colors and hues. The stories appear in verse and each presents a new adventure and a different color. Animal adventures are the focus of this light guide.

This is the second in the series of 12 books about a different color, animal and fantastic adventure of a little boy named John. The books, which are all in humorous rhyme and include nature facts about the animal featured, are geared for children ages 4-8. In this delightful tale, John discovers a pond full of blue frogs and travels through space with them to their own planet. The book is chock full of vocabulary words naming different shades of blue. Children everywhere will enjoy this book.

An enjoyable children's book which makes an excellent addition to any library!

Bravo to the authors! Finally, a children's picture book done right. The storyline has a great plot, climax and conflict resolution. The wonderful artwork depicts the story so well that even toddlers can understand. Moreover, I love that I get a bonus by having the text in both English and Spanish. Even though I don't speak a lick of Spanish, I think it's beneficial since bilingual education is being taught in my son's day care.

Expert marketer, trend scout and specialist in mood management for public spaces Christian Mikunda presents Brand Lands, Hot Spots, & Cool Spaces, an insider's guide to how marketers successfully connect an emotional bond with the customer, placing him or her in the right mood to attract sales, and embellishing public spaces in such a manner that they become locations other than home and work that customers wish to visit regularly. From concept stores and design malls to lobbies and lounges, urban entertainment centers, fairs and expos, and much more, public spaces of all kinds draw upon the fundamental principles that Mikunda clearly delineates to better set their customers at ease and entice them into returning again and again. Highly recommended, especially for marketing professionals seeking to hone the attractiveness of their given projects.

This book is recommended for anyone working in a traditional "third space" such as a library or a museum, anyone who uses libraries, or anyone who likes libraries but spends more time at Barnes and Noble.

The author, Christian Mikunda, suggests that "the experience society has grown up" and that we members of this society look for a combination of "entertainment with big, true feelings, with genuine materials and high-quality design, and help with our problems in everyday life."

As I read, it struck me this could be a description of some of the more architecturally spectacular libraries that have been built in the past few years: the main branches of Seattle Public Library, Salt Lake City Library, and the Vancouver Public Library in British Columbia (the latter two designed by Moshe Safdie) to name only a few. I've heard people express puzzlement about these buildings in an age when the Web has become a replacement for many, for a visit or a call to the library. Why, they ask, would these edifices be built?

William Dietrich in an April 25, 2004 article in Pacific Northwest, the magazine of The Seattle Times newspaper, wrote: "Above all, the [Seattle Public] library is designed to be inviting and intuitive to people who want to find a book. Designers calculated that the downtown Barnes & Noble bookstore had 40 times the people traffic, per square foot, as the old library. Why? What was the public sector doing wrong that the private sector is doing right?"

Mikunda provides an answer. He begins his introduction with a description of what a visitor to the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice might do: have a look at the paintings and sculpture, go to the museum store, and have a coffee in the museum restaurant, all the time enjoying the particular ambiance of the location, above the Grande Canal.He describes the experience as being one of a place where one temporarily feels at home, that is emotionally powerful and allows visitors to recharge themselves. The museum is, he declares, a Third Place, one of three "staged habitats" (the others are Home and Work). Malls, theme restaurants, concept stores are all staged habitats too.

So, I think that this trend of building and redesigning libraries to be impressive architecturally is a response to the need people have to spend their leisure time in staged habitats and be entertained at the same time they accomplish something--whether it's browsing books in a library or a bookstore. More people responsible for library and museum spaces should read this book, along with "Better Together: Restoring the American Community."

As Putnam and Feldstein say in "Better Together" "Death-of-the-library scenarios define libraries as information repositories. If they were no more than that, then their eventual displacement by more convenient repositories would make perfect sense. But the library is a gathering place too [...] People may go to the library looking mainly for information, but they find each other there."

Mikunda's book will give you a different perspective on all kinds of staged habitats.

If one has read enemy and an end, then Broken is like that last leg of a journey to that place you just can't wait to get to.

And Hughes delivers one hell of a ride.

The novel dances around storylines and times and settings and it is probably the most cerebral novel I've ever read, intellectually indulging and also entertaining as the reader is constantly challenged by fear and anguish and loss.

Do not let this be the first book you read by Mr. Hughes, it is the third in a remarkable trilogy. Broken would be very difficult to read if read out of turn.

Hughes is a brilliant writer, and this is speculative fiction not aimed at the casual reader. I can't wait for more.

Reading Broken-
First off, it bears mention that someone who would try to read this book as a stand-alone work is likely to find themselves utterly lost. Broken references characters, races, locations, and theoretical knowledge that is explained in detail in the previous two books involving this storyline (Enemy, and An End). Therein lies, as far as I can see, the book's single major flaw: while Enemy and An End could conceivably be read individually, Broken does not stand thematically on its own. That having been said, if you have read Enemy and An End, you do yourself a significant disfavor NOT to read Broken, which answers probably 90% of the lingering questions and mysteries from both books, and finally provides some lasting closure for the tortured characters of both plotlines.

Speaking of torture, it also bears mentioning that this book contains scenes of extreme violence. Surprisingly, I'll be willing to bet that if you read the entire book the ultra-violent scenes of rape, mutilation, and murder will not be what you remember most about it.

Broken was originally first released as a serial publication, as it was written, on Silverthought.com. This format, while entertaining on the short-term, did not lend itself particularly well to the reader understanding the incredibly cohesive continuity of the eventual complete novel. Hence, if you have only read Broken in serial form, I highly recommend that you re-read the novel in its entirety. The effect is completely different than piece-by-piece. Much of the subtle character interaction that makes this novel so terrific is lost and choppy in serial form, not to mention Hughes' propensity for constant revision, which makes the novel (until it finally reached print) a growing organism.

Novel highlights-
Broken begins with the unusual situation of an author's characters confronting him on a beach. They pull him into the story, which has already been established in separate but parallel storylines (Enemy, and An End). The Author, Hughes himself ostensibly, is brought into the story by his own characters in order to stop the destruction and havoc caused by Maire, a tortured and outcast renegade who grows constantly younger and carries a silver plague that will annihilate the Judas/Judith fleets from the Enemy and An End novels. We have met Maire before, along with most of the other major characters, but we have not until now seen evidence or detail of her motivations. Hughes handles this brilliantly with a gripping account of a person put through unimaginable hell who feels as though she must destroy the universe in revenge.

The Author proves not to be the omnipresent figure you expect him to be, and he slips away from the protagonist Judas/Judith, allowing Maire to sweep the timelines of reality and destroy them little by little.

Near the final third, the story appears to fray and literally come apart at the seams. Not just the universe that Hughes has created but the story itself. The framework of storytelling itself is stretched over this fantastical idea, and the idea expands uncomfortably within like a bird within an egg.

Motivations become tangled and inseparable we know that Paul and the author is at one end of a polarized spectrum with the tortured, miserable (yet somehow oddly justified) Maire at the other. Richter and Hope, Alina and Reynald, Whistler and Hank, their motivations become murky and disconnected, perhaps owing to the 92% of reality which has been erased or corrupted. Hope, we discover, has inexplicably become trapped in Café Bellona's back room. This, along with a number of other plot developments we accept, if we do not quite understand them. Along the way, there are dazzling narrative vignettes including a character diving into the Sun, a hard-to-stomach rape scene, the Author meeting and conversing with another version of himself, and a quiet but utterly haunting scene of solitude and loneliness that carves a stark moment of clarity into the emotional maelstrom that is the final third of the book. This last I consider to be possibly the high-point of the entire trilogy in terms of raw storytelling talent.

One major theme of this novel is how storylines, and ultimately the people that populate them, overlap and merge into strange, unpredictable hybrids. I have seen this a number of times in my own writing where I base a character on someone I know and then the character in the novel becomes someone utterly different and unexpected. Hughes plays on a variant of this in Broken whereby characters from his real life have bled into the story, and subsequently in Broken bleed into EACH OTHER, causing the reader to free him or herself from the preconceptions of the characters themselves. Jarring inclusion of characters within characters, the line between fiction and real people becomes not just a blurred line but a fogland where the two are on equally shaky footing.

It's an interesting way to illustrate the life that narrative fictional characters have in the mind of an author, which, oddly enough, pretty much covers the thematic scope and intent of the novel in general.

Another theme that is touched on repeatedly in Broken but never fully explained is that of children. Children are constantly being born, dying, preying on each other, embodying antagonism (in the case of Maire), and carrying out a number of other symbolic duties. I have no reference point with which to draw conclusions about Hughes' intent in including these references, but it is something we haven't seen from him yet, and interesting in and of itself. As I thought about this more, I realized that the Silverthought trilogy might represent a backward life-of-man metaphor. Enemy seemed to be involved heavily with death. The Black, aptly named, becomes an allegorical representation of the oblivion that we try so hard to escape from in our mortal lives. An End, a sly misnomer, is actually not about an end, but more about what happens when idealism crumbles and meets with bitter compromise and disappointment. Or life, as it were. To finish the backward cycle, Broken seems to be about birth. Birth of children, characters, plotlines, ideas, rebirth of self... and so forth. Hughes might, with the childhood metaphors, be hinting slyly at the reverse lifespan triptych allegory. Either that, or I picked the wrong day to stop sniffing glue.

Honeybear Brown returns, one of the single fun comedy-relief characters that Hughes has worked into the series (see also: the huge planetship Gary from An End), and even gets his licks in. Also, the sleeping God-emperor motif which worked so well for Frank Herbert in his novel Dune works doubly-well here. Paul the author slips into a silver bath, confronting something terrifying and surrendering completely to it. He emerges changed, reborn, and ultimately that much further along on his journey to becoming the omniscient God that all authors wish they could be to their writing.

Strengths-
From reader's point of view, Broken is the payoff of doing the mental work required to understand the first two novels. Enemy and An End are not simple books, and Broken can be downright mind-bending at times. But in the end, Hughes does not cheat us out of the closure that Broken provides.

It is perhaps relevant here to say a few words about the addition of the author himself as a character in Broken. This was a considerable risk for Hughes, who really put the integrity of the entire trilogy in jeopardy by doing so. Many sci-fi readers, myself included, do not easily tolerate this sort of meta-writing. Proving himself to be superior to authors like Stephen King, who utterly ruined The Dark Tower by writing himself into it, Hughes delivers a rather seamless version of himself which not only blends surprisingly well with the rest of the Silverthought trilogy characters, but also affords Broken the setting for some of its best scenes. Café Bellona becomes the touchstone for reality in the novel, a touch which some might find a bit over-cooked, but I personally thought was very natural and likable. There were moments like this in Enemy and An End, but they were not as cohesive as in Broken.

There are a number of epic, flashy set pieces in these novels. The ones that come immediately to mind are the space battles from Enemy and the enormous planetary guns from An End. These more than show Hughes' ability to write convincing, thrilling sci-fi. It is in Broken, however, that we get to see what is under the emotional black armor of his characters. Broken is a book full of jealousy and treachery, revenge and bitterness, hurt and surrender. Happily, even largely lacking the whiz-bang of the first two novels, Broken remains potent and engaging.

Weaknesses-
As I mentioned above, the primary weakness of this novel is that it doesn't stand alone in terms of plot, theme, or characters. Much of what is to be learned about the characters that populate these times and worlds is laid out in Enemy and An End. This is not so grave a weakness as it seems, however, as it is clear that it was never the author's intention to create a stand-alone story from Broken.

Another stylistic element that some readers may grapple with are the highly-unusual content and formatting (the Heiligenschein and Among the Living sections). Initially, in the serialized versions, these were much longer and somewhat more diffuse. Hughes honed them down to the essential in the finished novel and they read very smoothly. The Heiligenschein segment, it bears noting, makes up for its quirky weirdness by being utterly original and unlike anything I've ever read in a novel before.

Final comments-
Broken is thematically the least-accessible book of the trilogy, and cannot really stand alone the way Enemy and An End could. It is however, the best written by far, as well as the most consistently interesting and emotionally-provoking. Smoldering moments of tension between believable characters that the reader is heavily-invested in give the novel an authenticity that is undeniable. Broken represents the end result of a learning and growth arc for author Paul Hughes that spans eleven years. In the end, we are left not scratching or shaking our heads, but nodding distantly as the author himself is known to do. Broken brings the Silverthought trilogy to a worthy, intelligent and surprisingly thoughtful end.

I am very impressed with this book. The author I have known for some time and she is incredible and very talented. I recommend this book to anyone! She has great details and a fantastic story. A+++

I saw this book in the works as my husband's aunt created it about 4-6 months ago. Those who love dogs and have a love of your traditional good dog story, this book is perfect. It takes the child on a journey through the eyes of the yorkie, down a rabbit hole, then back again to her family. The artwork is done by the author as well, who is also an established greeting card artist. The cartoon takes you back to days when cartoons were cute, fun, and innocent. As an elementary school teacher, I recommend this book to any Kindergarten- 4th grader!

I like to read about cosmology, and want to know more than easy layman stuff but not super mathematical either. I want there to be enough math to give it context though, without making me think too hard. This book will make you think some, but the understanding it gives you in return is phenomenal!!! I highly recommend this book to anyone serious about knowing what humanity currently understands about the universe. It won't make you think about who's trying to BS who with their latest theory on string-branes or multi-universes. This is what is currently accepted as true, and delivered in a context that can be comprehended, with some effort, by the lay person. Want to feed your need for existential validation? This is the physical world's answer!!!!

Frank Levin's new book on Cosmology is a wonderful introduction to the subject for anyone who has read the words "black hole", "inflation", "Big Bang", "omega zero" and wants to know what they are about and how they connect to each other. I am an experimental physicist doing 25% of my work in nuclear astrophysics, i.e. laboratory measurements on what happens inside stars. At conferences, I would hear talks using these words, but only had a vague idea what some of them meant. Dr. Levin's book gave me a coherent explanation of what they mean, using simple models and pictures, and how they could be used to understand the current picture that cosmologists have about the history of your universe. He explains how many of the results are arrived at, in terms that any person, with or without a scientific background, can understand. And he tells what is still not understood. Levin has a great talent for making a complex subject understandable for the average, interested layperson. He uses simple words and pictures, and no equations. I recommend the book highly to all who are interested in modern science, but are not scientists. And even the scientists can learn a lot from his book if cosmology is not their specialty.

If you are like me, in business related to call centers, but not really in call center business, this book is the one. After reading it, I got a new level of appreciation for the processes and complexity involved.
First part describes business aspect, goals, variables and how they influence goals. That's the part where I said, "It's not as simple as it seems".
Next one, on technology, gives you a review of supporting technologies. I personally knew most of the stuff, but it's a light reading and gives you a perspective how the call center views the technology.
Final two parts, on managing agent performance and call handling are valuable reading no matter what business you're in. Suggestions from the book can be applied outside of call centers, as well. And call handling... I think every employee that has a phone on their desk is the company's representative and should know how to handle calls. Dealing with angry customers, controlling the call, sales... it all goes beyond just call centre agents.
To summarize, if you want to get the big picture, see all the elements, understand them and understand how they interact, this is where you should start. Doesn't dwell too much on any individual subject (and doesn't go too much in-depth) and therefore, it is an easy informative reading. And that's what books from Dummies series are all about, aren't they?

I'm a new call center manager and this book did a great job of explaining a lot of the basics. I was even able to share the technology section with my IT department so they could understand how to better support the needs of our department. Plus my staff fought over the book - because the information was in an easy to read/understand format.

This book raises space encyclopedias to a new level. Many previous books of this type have been collections of images interspersed with some lightweight text. Not this one. The French authors of this work go into considerable technical detail about the many topics they cover, including the celestial mechanics of artificial satellites, their orbits and ground tracks, and the trajectories of interplanetary probes. The authors focus primarily on scientific and applications missions, with relatively little attention to manned space programs. The world's launch vehicles and launch sites are covered thoroughly, as are earth observation satellites. The excellent charts and diagrams are detailed and comprehensive; the photographic images are well chosen and well reproduced.

Unlike many space-related books published in the United States, this encyclopedia does not focus on American space achievements. Its balanced perspective on world space programs may be a useful corrective.

The collaborative work of Fernand Verger (Professor Emeritus of Geography at L'Ecole Normale Superieure, Paris), Isabelle Sourbes-Verger (National Center for Scientific Research and the Foundation for Strategic Research, Paris), and Raymond Ghirardi (Cartographic Engineer, CNRS), and Xavier Pasco (Associate Professor, Universite de Marne la Vallee, Pasco), The Cambridge Encyclopedia Of Space is a globally-themed, wonderfully illustrated resource compendium of man's perspective and occupation of space. Ranging from the vast variety of satellites (including telecommunication, navigation, and military ones), to the workings of the space shuttle, to budgets and space activity around the world, The Cambridge Encyclopedia Of Space superbly covers both the mysteries of science and the workings of national politics to present a combined wealth of information for ideal for nonspecialist general readers of all backgrounds. Simply put, no school or community library Astronomy & Space Science collection can be considered complete without the inclusion of The Cambridge Encyclopedia Of Space.

I found this book while researching in the library one day for astronimical events. I opened it and became intrigued immediately. The information contained within it kept me fascinated for hours and still does. I refer to it anytime I wish to know anything about the planets, eclipses, statistics concerning the planets etc. Each planet is addressed separately giving a history of the founder, how it was located. The beginning of each section pertaining to a planet includes items such as:

Physical Data: Size, Mass, Escape Velocity, Temperature Range, Oblateness, Surface Gravity, Volume, Magnetic Field Strength and orientation, Albedo, Density, Solar Irradiance, Atmosphere Pressure, Composition of Atmosphere, Maximum Wind Speeds, Cloud Features, Surface Features, Orbital Data, Observational Data, Early Ideas (a good history of how people interpreted information in earlier periods of time when technology was not as advanced as now), Important Concepts, Transits, Interesting Facts, Observing Data which includes Conjunction dates, elongation dates, Close conjunctions, Eclipses if applicable, Historical timelines.

The above information is provided for each planet, which makes this invaluable source book. In the beginning of the book there are comparison charts showing how each planet compares in Albedo, Angular Size, Atmospheric Composition, Atmospheric Pressure, Brightness & size of the Sun from each planet, Brillancy at Opposition, Cloud Features, Constellations Visited by the Moon and Planets, Density, Distances from Earth, Distances from Sun, Eccentricity, Escape Velocity, Future Dates of Conjunction (up to 2010), Future dates of Opposition (up to 2010), Future Significant Alignments, Future Transits (up to 2255), Inclination of Orbit, Magnetic Field strength and orientation, Mass, Named features on the planets and the Moon, Names of the planets, Sun and Moon around the world (includes: Arabic, Danish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Latin, Russian, Spanish, Swedish), Oblateness, Orbital period, Orbital Velocity, Rotational Period, Rotational Velocity (equatorial), Size, Solar Irradiance, Speed of Light Travel Times, Surface Gravity, Synodic Period, Temperature Range, Tilt of Axis, Volume, Winds Speeds, Satellites (which includes all the subject headings here for each satellite)

This is a wonderful book, packed with information that will fascinate and amaze at the same time teaching you about the universe. Science was not one of my favorite subjects but now as an adult I truly have begun to love it thanks to this one book.

I also consult this book whenever I wish to validate any astrological information that I might be working with or on. Truly and indispensible book.

If you need a quick look up reference for statistical information on the major bodies of the solar system then this is a really fine book.

This book is an important contribution to the rule of law promotion field. The book particularly distinguishes itself in that it combines an understanding of the academic debate with the on-ground reality of establishing or rebuilding a system of justice in a war-torn area. Very few books, articles, or other publications manage to explore rule of law promotion with both perspectives in hand. The authors are to be applauded for performing this balancing act and providing the public with such a useful blend of information and analysis.

In fact, I have found this book to be so useful that I now use it as a core text in a class on rule of law promotion, which I teach in law school. While the text addresses a number of legal issues, I believe it to be accessible to non-lawyers who are interested in understanding, and perhaps working, in the rule of law promotion field. On the topics covered, this book captures accurately the challenges, opportunities, and limitations of the field as it is today.

This book comes at a particularily appropriate time. It has become very clear that the administrations of the major powers are operating at the limits of their capabilities in the area of peacemaking after conflict.

It seems that there was a string of what have to be considered real successes: Japan and Germany were out bitter enemies during World War II, yet after the war, what has to be considered enlightened supervision totally changed their governments to democracies reflecting the will of the people and making them good neighbors. South Korea is another example.

Then a series of bloodbaths occurred. Perhaps a hundred wars since then, with perhaps a hundred million people killed. Are we to allow more 'holocausts' in Haiti, Rwanda, and on and on.

This book is the report of law professors in U.S. law schools, but professors with experience on the ground in Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo, East Timor, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Iraq. ==These are not subjects that were unknown in our Government before the Iraq/Afthanistan invasions, but the level of the difficulty in establishing working governments certainly seems to have been minimized.

This book is an important contribution to thinking about the problems now being faced in Iraq.