Bernstein Books

A very good introductary book on SOI. But I felt that the SOI device Electrical prperties could have been dealt in greater detail. Neverthless, this book is really good for circuit designers who have just been initiated into the world of SOI.

A delightful book about friends. Perfect to give a long time friend or a new one just met. The illustrations are wonderful. A real find for an inexpensive gift.

This is a great book, but I wouldn't recommend it for an absolute beginner. The topics covered in the first chapter is a slight review of C++, then the author dives straight into the world of Motif. I highly recommend you are both familiar with Motif, Xlib, and C++ before reading this book. The author attempts to lower the learning curve, but object oriented programming with GUI development can never be made too easy. Within the last few chapters topic covered are more advanced classes and design of classes with the Xlib toolkit. I recommend this book as a quick way to tie together what you alredy know in Motif and C++. But would recommend you purchases the Motif reference manual along with this as the authore makes many references to commands and libraries which you may have probably long forgotten.

Visions of the East explores mass media biases and prejudices towards the Arab. It's an easy, interesting read; it focuses on examples and backrounds as a means of illustrating the inherant reacism ("Arabism") in popular culture. Too often we don't realize the stereotypes being publicized are just that- stereotypes. Visions of the East reminds the reader to look deeper, to examine material before absorbing it. An excellent book for better understanding the rampant Eurocentrism in media and film and the reasons behind it.

Bernstein traces his spiritual and intellectual search in this soul-bearing, but scholarly book. In the process of seeking answers to questions that perplexed him, he discovered a new love of the church and its role in an individual Christian's life. Numerous scriptures are used to make his case.

I agree with his point, but not his interpretation of the facts. For example, he alleges that Martin Luther and the other Reformation leaders preached "sola scriptura" (the Bible's authority) but did not abide by it. He argues that only the Orthodox Church does. I don't buy his argument.

His information on how the canon of Scripture came to the form it is today makes sense. I haven't actually researched it, but I don't buy that the only church qualified to interpret Scriptures is the Orthodox Church. The Body of Christ is mystical, spiritual. God cannot be boxed in by man. Having said that, I think the author is an honest seeker, he's just arrived at a conclusion before his search for truth is over.

Jake Bernstein explains how mob psychology effects the markets. He has a proprietary measure of the trading public's "bullishness" or "bearishness" toward each of the most popular futures markets. It has been well established that the trading public is the most likely to be wrong group of traders and the author gives you his plan on how to move from the group that is wrong as much as %90 of the time to the group which is actually earning a profit. Sentiment and human emotion are VERY important to success in the markets and should not be ignored. The two reasons I did not rate this book more highly are: 1) the entries and exits are not very precisely outlined, 2) this index is for shorter term traders and the DSI is sold by the author as a subscription and is fairly expensive - but worth it in my opinion.

I am a student at OSU and I recently read the book for an English class. This book, as referred to in the title, was a real eye opener. Bernstein touches on an array of subjects including factory farming, the value of humans and animals, and animal experimentation. I had no idea that animals were treated so badly in our society. However, the author does a good job in conveying these horrific facts in the book. He also does a good job in his research. From the very beginning, it is obvious that the author did a thorough job in researching and supporting his arguments. The book is very persuasive because the author presents his argument, and immediately addresses the possible counter arguments. With this structure, it is difficult to disagree with his opinions. Overall, the book kept my interest throughout and I would recommend it to anyone who is curious about our relationship with animals.

This is the type of saccharine story-line that I'd ordinarly hate. But there's something about this one, an innocence and sweetness that just won me over despite my jaded outlook. Alice McDermott creates a perfectly believable 15 year old, and despite a few "what in the worlds" along the way, it was easy to fall in love with an innocent 15 yr old's view of the world. It's one of those small stories where the whole is absolutely greater than the sum of its parts.

Highly recommended.

I thought it was well written, but I was frustrated at the perfection of the main character Teresa, who took excellant care of everyone in the world at age 15. In fact, all children preferred her to their own parents. She also was care giver for her little cousin, but seemed unmoved when her cousin got sick and died. The whole dying thing was glossed over even though the book constantly built up to the impending health crisis of "poor Daisy".

This is a great novel for readers who are strong believers in children making their own entertainment. The 15 year old protagonist is the baby sitter par excellence, and it is a pleasure reading how she relates to younger children: resourceful, empathetic, but not overly sentimental. Her take on the adults around her is very much that of a 15 year old, and perhaps that is the reason she does not seem to relate very well to her own parents. Also, while I understand Theresa's motivations in concealing Daisy's illness, it still bothers me.

McDermott introduces plot elements to make the novel more interesting, but it is slow reading at times.

This powerful and very moving novel centers on Theresa, a 15-year-old beauty on the cusp of adulthood who spends one almost imaginary summer hovering between the worlds of childhood and the world to come.

An only child raised by loving devout Catholics, Theresa has become the superstar babysitter/pet sitter in the quiet Long Island town where her naive parents have moved in order to put her in the "correct society" so that she can eventually marry well. Because of her beauty, and because of her very real connection to children and animals, Theresa is a major hit among the summer-dwellers, none of whom has a clue what their children are doing or thinking. Indeed, their benign (and sometimes not so benign) neglect of their offspring is a major theme in the novel.

Enter dear, fragile Daisy, the doomed 8-year-old cousin, child of a very large family, whom Theresa takes under her wing for a few magical weeks during this special summer. Daisy, who is dying of as-year-undiagnosed leukemia that her parents and other adults have not even noticed, is the metaphor for Theresa's fast-fading childhood. She clings fiercely to Daisy in love and protection, holding on to her ever more tightly as Daisy inexorably fades away before her very eyes.

And when Theresa finally steps a toe into the sea of the world to come, the time-out-of-mind state she has managed to create dissolves as inexorably as the tide at the beach she visits with her charges every day.

This is a brilliant book. I wish I had not read it so that I could experience it all over again for the very first time. Highly recommended.

Deeply effected by the terrorist attack to the Twin Towers of September 11th 2001 (the book was published in November 2002), it portraits the life of a teenager who refuses to accept the world the way it is. Theresa, the main character of Child of My Heart, reinvents it for the children she baby-sits and dedicates an entire summer to her favourite cousin, Daisy, and the toddler child of a local artist, Flora.

The world as Theresa sees it is not acceptable to her. She does her best to reinvents another one of love, fun and optimism. She is also the internal narrator who tells the story of the summer of her fifteenth year of age, during which she was in charge of "four dogs, three cats, the Moran kids, Daisy, my eight-year-old cousin, and Flora, the toddler child of a local artist".

The novel is once again set in Long Island, during a hot summer. The dialogues take place outside, on the beach or in the streets, while the few interiors are Theresa's home and Flora's. The summer and Long Island are a common trend for all McDermott's novel, except for A Bigamist Daughter, set between Manhattan and Maine.
However, Long Island, in Child of My Heart, does not suggest the idyllic location of At Weddings and Wakes, where Lucy's children can cut themselves off reality and off the vicissitudes of their mother's family, or of Charming Billy, where Billy meets his love, or even of That Night in which Sheryl and Rick live a passionate yet fleeting relationship.
Here, Long Island, is the only setting and embodies vision and reality at once. Theresa is "Titania among her fairies ", and it is not unintentionally that A Midsummer Night's Dream (1595) is mentioned, as if that bucolic summer represented for the young girl a sort of reverie, with all its incredible, rutilant nuances and the discoveries of adolescence, like in That Night.

"Pretty, intelligent, mature in speech although undeveloped physically, well immersed in my parent's old-fashioned Irish Catholic manners (inherited from their parents, who had spent their careers in service to this very breed of American rich), and, best of all, beloved by children and pets", Theresa is the baby-sitter "par excellence" since the tender age of ten. In great demand, in Long Island, where her parents moved to offer her more opportunities, she throws herself into the fantastic world of children, relishing them and giving them all her attentions.
The novel is set in the 50's, "in those Marilyn Monroe/Jayne Mansfield days" .

The novel is disclosed, as a flash-back, by Theresa, who by then is an adult and, while chatting with Daisy's sister, Bernadette, she tells her the story of that surreal summer of June when "Daisy arrived, the middle child of my father's only sister"...

Theresa compares herself to Titania in relation to a world of daydream. However the metaphor resides also in the fact that, like Titania, Theresa will experience a sexual adventure in the forest. Flora's aged father will, in fact, seduce the young girl.
The seventy year old artist, who is always called just "Flora's father" (his name or his last name are never revealed) is "an unremarkable old man, [with] glasses, khaki pants, a stoop, a long thatch of white hair that seemed to rise over his head like a pure white tongue of smoky fire [...] it seemed to me that his hair moved constantly like a flame".

He does not share many characteristics with clumsy Bottom. Unlike him, he did not get lost in the woods, he does not find himself there by coincidence and surely is not lured by Theresa. He is an experienced old man, he is well-off and has built his fame around aesthetics and the magnitude of arts. With his long ashy hair, he resembles a magician, a wizard who tempts and bewitches, who reminds us of Oberon, the king of shadows. Even his studio is made of lights and shades, as "it was full of the filtered sunshine of the skylight".
Overt references to Shakespeare emerge throughout the novel, for Theresa is an enthusiastic admirer of the Stratford playwright, but there are also veiled allusions to other Elizabethan authors, like Spenser. The choice of the name Flora, for example, finds its raison d'être in the Faerie Queene (1590).

Thus being entred, they behold around
A large and spacious plaine, on euery side
Strowed with pleasauns, whose faire grassy ground
Mantled with greene, and goodly beautified
With all the ornaments of Floraes pride,
Wherewith her mother Art as half in scorne
Of niggard Nature, like a pompous bride
Did decke her, and too lauishly adorne,
When forth from virgin bowre she comes in th'early morne . (SPENSER 1978: 373)

In the XIIh Canto, we uncover the Garden of Acrasia, the artificial garden, which counteracts the incorruptible Garden of Adonis. In the aforementioned stanza, we see how "mother Art" works against "Nature". Mother Art, which symbolises the elderly artist in Child of My Heart is positioned, in the text, not unexpectedly, right next to Flora (Floraes), the appellative that McDermott chooses for his daughter. The artist also recalls the two geniuses of the Garden of Acrasia and the Garden of Adonis. The latter, eternal locus amoenus, where the souls pre-exist before being sent to the world, represents the realm of change and renewal, where immortality becomes possible through a continuous regeneration.
The good Old Genius, who appears in Book III, Canto VI, gives chaos an order, and has a wicked copy in Canto XII of Book II.

Adonis is the creative, imaginative nature, while the Garden of Acrasia symbolises art and imitation. It is a refuge for the lovers, it is sensual almost as much as its Genius. And it is this character that, the artist that enchants Theresa, seems to resemble. Nevertheless, we cannot declare he is an iniquitous figure. He is more like an initiator and his sexual intercourse with the fifteen year old girl seems to signify a ritual that has to be consummated. He is, after all, the only one who can penetrate her soul, who understands her anxiety, her fear of death and her awareness that Daisy will pass away.

To the heart of this enthralling novel, there is the utmost necessity of art and imagination, which stand for the only answer to combat the brutality of life. Theresa embodies the weaver of fantasy, the creator of stories and tales that brings joy and anticipation to the world of children, while Flora's father represents art and the significance that it comes to assume in daily life. Because the world, as a whole, cannot be changed and sufferance and death inevitably leave their mark in it (as McDermott shows us in her novels), the only way to portray a different universe to the one we live in, is through the mind, the fascination of memory, make-believe and the art of story-telling.

The structure of this narrative is cyclical. The books opens and ends with the same subject: the finding of three little new born rabbits, whose destiny is not revealed in the last page, as we would expect, but right from the beginning, to anticipate that strand of death that we will come to accept during the reading of the book: "Not meant to live, as my parents had told me, being wild things, although I tried for nearly a week to feed them a watery mixture of milk and torn clover".

The message is a positive one, as the protagonist does not stop fighting for them and for her little cousin and never cease to believe in a better world. With this, McDermott is shouting her encouragement for peace, inner strength, love and memory.

Alice McDermott explores a ground that she knows well and to which she belongs, the world of Irish-American households, gatherings, traditions and enchanting tales of mysticism and spiritual journeys

The book is good if you want to depend on technical strategies to make money day trading.

The stock market is always presenting us with trading opportunities that don't neccesarily have to do anything with technical analisys.

As a day trader your homework is all about studying and testing different market strategies that will help you take advantage of stocks and at the same time protect your investments. Just always keep in mind that a good strategy is simple and practical. Complicated technical systems will always make you slow in your decision making process or confuse you right from the start.

There are very good sites on the web where you can access practical trading strategies that are easy to implement. One of those sites is Stress Free Traders ( StressFreeTraders com)

They focus on short term day trading strategies that can help you pick and approach momentum stocks while reducing your trading risk.

All in all, day trading is all about picking the best stock opportunities and deciding when to buy and when to sell with ease and simplicity. Once you learn to master your trading decisions, you can aspire to obtain consistent profitable results.

One of the most difficult things involving the markets, regardless of what you trade is timing.With this book, Jake not only gives you suggestions for timing indicators, but he also gives you some strategies to follow and shows real time examples which are clear and very detailed. In this book, Jake share his extensive knowledge about systems, strategies, technical indicators, and trading systems. I have purchased many trading books and this one is CRITICAL for your success as a trader. One more point that I wish for potential traders to consider is the source. Jake Bernstein has been involved in commodities and futures trading for 25 years. He brings real trading experience to the table. He does not promise you guaranteed results are a "pot of gold" under the rainbow. What he does give you is the information that you will need to be successful, REGARDLESS of the time frame you are trading. Also, he is available for you. I recently e-mailed him with a question from the book and I received a detailed explanation from him the very next day! I challenge you to find any author who will do that! Good luck and good trading!

Take my word for it and save your money, the techniques in this book simply do not work!

Most books for "day traders" are so general that their techniques and advice can be successfully used by swing-traders (those who keep stocks for several days), and even by longer-term investors. This one is different. The author, Jake Bernstein, strongly advocates real day trading, when no securities ever kept overnight. Therefore, his techniques are usable for very short term trading only.

The advantage of this book is that it has very little general rhetoric and comes straight to the point, that is to the techniques which the author finds profitable. Basically, 90% of the book is about the use of technical indicators (such as various moving averages and oscillators) to determine potentially profitable entry and exit points. The topics discussed in particular detailed manner are the use of moving averages, stochastic indicator, moving average channel (MAC), relative strength index (RSI), momentum, and techniques for trading of opening gaps. The author also suggests several oscillators of his own. However, despite the simplicity of these indicators, one has to own software such as Omega Research Trade Station to calculate and plot these home-made oscillators in real time, or write a program yourself. There are also several chapters applicable to futures only (actually, the whole book is about trading in the futures market, but 95% of techniques are equally applicable to stocks).

The great advantage of the book is that it is very specific, clearly illustrated, and gives plenty of detailed technical advice and a number of potentially profitable trading techniques. Be advised, however, that those who are interested in trading but do not have enough capital to take profits from half-a-tick changes (and I, too, belong to this group) cannot really take advantage of this book. No trend and no trade longer than a few hours is discussed there! Therefore, this book is for the serious day traders, and only for them. If you are a day trader, this book is a must; if you are not, do not bother buying it but rather consider other options, e.g., the excellent book "How to get started in electronic day trading" by D.S.Nassar which is good for traders on any time frame.

Trading especially short term trading need great concentration and a full-time commitment. Professional traders write few or no book.

Mr. Bernstein's books and articles are everywhere. Sometimes I came across his publications, I scanned through a few pages to see what he had to say about trading. Mr. Bernstein makes statements which are generally safe and easy to say. For example, I read his article the other day. He tells the readers "Do your homework.", "The trend is your friend." etc. Of course, these are the common rules for traders. But what are the concrete steps to implement these rules in the real-life situation? Well, I could hardly find any. On the other hand, he stated in that article: "...I maintain that a good trader can make any system works." I found this statement unprofessional and phony. The reasons:

1. Many systems on the market are just trash and can not be used at all.

2. Good traders wouldn't pick up any system and risk their money with it. Good traders are very selective and only trade a few systems that have proven record and are suitable for their individual styles.

I found similar problems in other works by Mr. Bernstein. Should I bother to buy this book? No, thanks.

I have read books from many different writers and have more than 10 year active trading experience. So I know something.

A few tips(IMO) for choosing good books on trading:

1. Only a small percentage of books on the market are good or great.

2. Popular books are not necessary good books. If you automatically think so, you've probably fallen into "Herd mentality" thinking.

3. Trading is a bottom line business. Find books written by traders who had proven long-term(5 year or more) successful trading records. They are the ones "know how".

4. Be wary of the authors who write many trading books.

Good luck.

This book is too long and too messy, and for a fantasy book, none of the characters were interesting enough to put up with for that long.

A man and a woman, mythological and historical characters that you have probably heard of, but changed in this book, end up opponents down through the ages, a conflict that his its root in their original meeting.

The first part is not so bad, then, blah.

Douglass made a bold attempt in this book, and in several places she nearly succeeded in writing a fairly well-rounded story. However, she has a long way to go with this series.

I enjoyed the characters very much, and empathized with them all. his is not to be taken as I LIKED them, mind you. Cornelia does not become likeable until halfway (at least) through the book. Brutus proves interesting at the beginning, but at the end I was wishing he would fling himself off a cliff in a fit of kingly rage.

I do believe this book would have been fantastic if Douglass' writing style hadn't jarred so horribly with her chosen setting. This book reads as clumsily as a 7th grade English essay. That this book was even published without some serious editing gives me hope that one day my piddly manuscript will be snatched up by the same agent.

This book was waaaay longer than it needed to be, in my opinion. Much of it reads like a Harlequin novel. He said, she said; and repetitive situations of misunderstandings between lovers. I listened to it on audio, but if I had read it in book form there are several areas where I would have skipped a few pages. The motivation for the characters is one dimensional but explained in excruciating detail. I think the book would have been better if she hadn't tried to excuse the characters' bad behavior.

There is some potential here. The "game" is an interesting concept, and I would be interested in the characters if they were more subtle. There are a few characters that are not overexplained who are interesting, such as Mag. I will probably read book two to see if it gets any better. Perhaps she is setting the situation up for a more complex sequel.

I would recommend buying this book used or at a discount, but not at full price. Even in rush hour traffic I don't think I'd listen to the audio book again (because of the writing, not the narration).

With Hades' Daughter, Douglass kicks off her 4-book series "The Troy Game," in which descendants of the ancient Trojans journey to a new, foreign land where, with the assistance of The Game, they begin to build Troia Nova. Along the way, they capture Cornelia, a Greek princess who is brutally forced into marriage with the Trojans' leader Brutus. Brutus ultimately plans to abandon Cornelia for Genvissa, the woman whose mystical powers will ensure that he and she will reign as king and queen.

Unfortunately, none of the main characters are particularly likeable, so I didn't find I had much emotional investment in their well-being. Also, "The Game," referred to many, many times, remains even at the end of the book a somewhat confusing and nebulous concept. I do like Sara Douglass, so I'll still finish the series.

This is the story of a woman scorned, and the terrible power she unleashes to hurt the one who scorned her.

The game is an eternal safe guard to all the Aegean cities. It involves a dance that gathers evil and a dance that traps it. By killing this game one woman unleashed all that evil upon the world. The great Aegean cities die, and the once proud people of Troy are gathered as slaves.

But all this changes with Brutus. He is the last of the men on earth who can control and make the game, a Kingman. Together with the mistress of the labyrinth he can make any land safe and prosperous. And he is called to do so by a woman from a far away land...

This is a ok book, even if it does have its fault. The game is hard to understand, the characters are wholly unlikable (but they have to be if you want them to remain compelling and change during the next books) and the feminist/land mystical connection is a little much, even to a female pagan. Cornelia falling for Brutus because while raping her he managed to give her pleasur is not only laughable it's offensive. But still, this is one interesting book, and I will rate it four stars and head on the next book.

Three months later-in retrospect I don't think I like this series very much. It's not very well written, it has no likeable charecters and a lot of the actions are brutaly offensive. Faced with the forth book recently published I find I've just lost intrest. In retrospect I think I find Sara Douglass's writing to be very dark and depressing and gloomy-but not always in a way that works. I wouldn't advise reading her stuff, excepting Threshold, unless you can work a two week depresion into your life.