Bernard Books

Exceptionally well done! The lay-out is terrific, for ease of reading and use.

Includes chapters on Probability, Mathematics of Finance, Statistics and Probability, Coordinate Systems and Graphs, Set Theory, Functions, Linear Programming (A Geometric Approach), Matrices and Linear Systems, Linear Programming (An Algebraic Approach), Counting Techniques (Permutations and Combinations), Applications (Game Theory, Life Insurance, Genetics, Markov Chains), and even an Algebra Review chapter!

I'm a documentary filmmaker currently producing a feature documentary about the history of urban planning. I'm going to be relying on use of a lot of archival material, so when I saw this book on the Focal Press site several months back, I pre-ordered and anxiously awaited its arrival.

I was already familiar with the popular footage licensing archives and have spent many hours perusing material in the Prelinger collection at archive.org, and also quite familiar with other topics the book covers such as Fair Use and how E&O insurance comes into play - so I had the usual reservations about whether this book would have too much more to offer. My worries were put to rest. This book is right on target for anyone embarking on any sort of project that is going to require the use of archival footage.

I think the book might best be described as a sort of prologue to the work that eventually takes place whether a professional archival researcher is hired or a producer is going at it on their own. The segway from the book as prologue and the beginning of archival research is the book's website which has a fairly comprehensive list with brief descriptions of each source of footage that the book covers. This list is incredibly useful on its own. Having read the book, however, I feel armed and prepared to not make many mistakes I may otherwise have made just going down the list - mistakes which could have cost money, time, or even prevented me from obtaining footage I hope to use. The book sets up and explains the theoretical background many archives operate on - and dispels some of the mystique of some of the larger corporate and network archives (Getty Images, NBC, etc.)

Where the book adds an interesting dimension is in its discussion of Copyright law. To read between the lines, there is an urging that because we live in a time and place where we have amazing access to great quantities of material it is criminal not to make use of it. The extent to which Youtube contains copyright violating work is a vote of no-confidence in existing copyright law. Things are changing very quickly and the regulations which have bound and often prevented unadulterated creativity by way of use of other's material are not as restrictive as they once were.

Authors have been quoting other authors for centuries, musicians have been sampling other musicians for decades, and we now live in an era in which films and videos can make use of pre-existing content to create new works without the mega-budgets of TV networks or studios. This book is an excellent guide to navigating the still often rough waters of archival footage research and licensing and I know I'll be thankful to have read it as I begin pulling material for my own project.

This is a wonderful book - of particular interest to Australians of course, to whom Captain Cook is a prominent historical figure, but also to anyone interested in the grand tradition of the master mariners and adventures on the high seas.

Physically it is a beautiful book as well, with fabulous illustrations and quality paper. Perhaps not a book for everyone, but for serious collectors it is a gem.

That's one of a wide range of healthy books written by Bernard Jensen.

It's a valuable book to read it and to make it a life way.

Greetings,
Pablo

I have owned this book since it was published many years ago and I have used it for information for my own work and to teach from. The information on the materials and techniqes of oil painting is concise and easy to follow. There are many great ilustrations of processes, tools and procedures that cannot be found in any other book.

This is the best book available on linear FM pulse compression and coherent sidelobe cancelllation written by the inventors of the polyphase P4 codes and digital (Gramm-Schmidt) CSLC. A must have for anyone in the field of radar signal processing!

No need to buy a ticket to France.....this book takes you there in ways only MFK Fisher and possibly Richard Olney managed. I loved it and continue to mine its rich vein of recipes. It seems extraordinary that an American could so truly and sensitively capture the culture of France.

After reading Bailyn's "ATLANTIC HISTORY: Concept and Contours" many of the more recent histories of North America I've read suddenly make a lot more sense, histories such as Alan Taylor's AMERICAN COLONIES, and WILLIAM COOPER' S TOWN, Linebaugh and Rediker's radical THE MANY-HEADED HYDRA, as well as Victoria Freeman's DISTANT RELATIONS to name just a few.

Bailyn provides admirable summary of the how the "concept" of Atlantic history was launched -- by Walter Lippman in an essay justifying America's involvement in the Great War -- and then taken up by politicians in the wake of WWII as justification for the such organizations as NATO whose mission was to bind together more tightly the interests of the states of Western "Christendom" against those of the Communistic (and godless) East. Some historians supported this new notion with tendentious misreadings of history, but others of a more empirical bent began to undertake histories that looked beyond the old narratives of individual nation states and focused instead the commonalities of conquest and colonization in the Americas and Africa as practiced by Westerners.

Bailyn dicusses the "contours" of Atlantic history by outlining the discipline's key findings, elucidating its key ideas, citing its indispensible texts, and historic techniques such as statistical investigations, e.g., the construction of a slave trade database compiled from actual records which demonstrate how the slave system served to underwrite the entire system of trade in the "inland sea" of the Atlantic. For the amateur historian, and perhaps even for the professional, Bailyn's "Notes" section is exceedingly useful as it offers a rich survey of the most important texts that have emerged in this rich and rapidly expanding field of study.

Here are a couple of exemplary passages from the book. "In its first, original phase Atlantic history in the broadest sense is the story of the creation of a vast new marchland of European civilization, an ill-defined, irregular outer borderland, thrust into the world of indigenous peoples in the Western Hemisphere and in the outer reaches of the British archipelago. Life in this contested marchland was, literally, barbarous: that is in its initial stages it was, in large areas, a scene of conflict with alien people, alien in language and mores, hostile in purpose, savage and uncultivated. Europeans, native Americans and displaced Africans, all -- each from their own point of view -- saw it that way. For all, others were intent on destroying the civility -- European, native American, African -- that had once existed. Latin America, to paraphrase John Elliott, was no wilderness; the conquest made it that." Page 63.

Bailyn's notes the barbarity of the conquerors did not vary by religious conviction or national origin. "Puritan New England was not different from Mexico or Peru. '"It was a fearful sight,"' the pious gentle Pilgrim leader William Bradford wrote of New England's Pequot War (1637), "'to see [the Indians] frying in the fire and the streams of blood quenching the same, and horrible was the stink and scent thereof.'" Page 65. Indeed the Dutch and English conquerors read accounts of the Spanish conquistadors and were more than familiar with their techniques. The Dutch, having been subjects of Spain, may have been less frequently cruel in their dealings with native peoples than others, but were capable of exceeding cruelty. For instance, Dutch soldiers in a raid near New Amsterdam cut some of the native children in pieces "before the eyes of their parents, and threw the pieces thrown into the fire or into the water." Pg. 63. Clearly, the Spanish were not the only conquistadors.

I don't mean to give the impression that Bailyn speaks only of the barbarous first or conquest phase, he also does a admirable summary of the colonial phase. Once the domination of indigenous people's was relatively complete, the colonists and those who stayed at home in Europe profited mightily from the slave trade: the labor system that wove together, for instance, the economic lives of New England farmers who sold their agricultural products to the slave masters in the Caribbean, so that they could buy fine lace and fine wine and other items from Europe and so keep maintain the appearance of civility. Labor for the sugar, rice, tobacco and cotton plantations came primarily from West Africa, but was also supplied by the exportation of the many dispossessed, conquered and persecuted people in England, Ireland, Germany, France and elsewhere in Europe. Athouigh Bailyn doesn't say it explicity, the economic imperatives of globalization have been around for a long, long time.

I don't mean to suggest that Bailyn concentrates only on the most barbarous elements of Atlantic history. He offers insight into how certain cultural aspects drove and supported this vast, complex process. Quakers are, for instance, a paramount example of a tightly knit but far-flung commmunity who profited mightily in the chaotic marketplace of that time both because of the bonds of trust forged in their communal worship, and also and because there were Quakers at every entrepot in the system, relaying intelligence on the fluctuating prices of slaves, sugar, rum, tobacco, whale oil, etc. As Bailyn notes, black markets, corruption, bribery existed side by side with "official trade" and so it best served those who could outwit the authorities, or those authorities who could actually enforce their authority. Ideas flowed as well, ideas of liberation, revolt and democracy. Bolivar, son of a wealthy planter, educated in Europe, knew of Montesqieu, Madison, Jefferson and Rousseau -- not unusual for a member of the Atlantic elite.

A marvelous work of tremendous reach and scholarly erudition packed into just a weekend's reading, "Atlantic History" takes stock of this new current of historical research and points presciently toward the new directions it may take.

This text represents a remarkable contribution to spinal care. The authors provide an advanced perspective related to back pain that is comprehensive and relevant. It is a terrific addition to my libary.

"This convoy must not get through-U-boats pursue, attack and sink."

This was the signal that Admiral Dönitz sent to the commanders of the 21 U-boats of the Markgraf wolf-pack on September 9, 1941 just before the US entered the war. Sixty-three merchant ships; a number old and dilapidated and all slow and heavy-laden with vital supplies from the United States for the United Kingdom, were strung out in 12 columns abreast, covering 25 miles of inhospitable ocean. They set sail from Nova Scotia at a time when the German U-boats were sinking more than one hundred ships a month and the US Navy could do nothing but stand-by and watch (at least officially). The convoy's escort of one destroyer and three corvettes of the Royal Canadian Navy, all untried in combat, was hopelessly outclassed when the battle for SC42 commenced. The battle lasted for seven days and covered 1,200 miles of ocean.

First hand accounts by participants on both sides add interest and drama.