Berry Books

This is a valuable reference work with the type faces very well organized. If you are interested in type face design and the history of type, this book is a must!

I have the 1958 edition of this book as was hesitant to order this newer edition for fear that it wouldn't have many newer fonts. I was surprised to find a new spacious format and a better classification system. Anyone interested in type faces should have a copy of this book.

This encyclopaedia is thorough in the range of established and classic typestyles. Most contain some information as to its origin, unique qualities, and applications, making this more than just a specimen book.

This book may have many samples of typefaces but it does not have all alphabet. Some typefaces only have four letters. And all of them have no punctuations.

If you're looking for a type specimen book, try Adobe Type Library Reference Book (ISBN: 0321136462) instead! Though it shows only one size (about 20pt,) and Adobe's only, it has everything in that set.

A great reference!

The reason some typefaces in this book are incomplete is that . . . they are incomplete! A complete alphabet does not exist (read the text, dummy).

Believe it or not (and setting aside the ambiguous ethical question of appropriation), the purpose of a book like this is not to provide ready-made cut-n-paste-able typefaces for you to rip off, but to serve as a reference.

This book stars one of those romantic damsels every teenage girl seems to want to be. You know the deal; beautiful, intelligent, wildly talented, has famous rockstars fall in love with her... The hero is the typical byronic romantic figure; handsome, troubled, hollow cheekbones and of course also stunningly talented. The reader is angled into gunning for him because of the romantic posturing and all the hints dropped that the two of them 'belong together'. The angle of obsessive love and male as stalker is presented to make the whole thing more attractive. There's nothing like resistance for stirring the pulses, so it seems...

I find it really depressing. But from reading other reviews, no one else seems to think so.

I would like to say that both Easy Connection and Easy Freedom are probably my all time Fave books. I have read each one about 20 - 30 time and I have yet to find them boring. I've had to borrow them from the local libary because I can't find copies for myself, and I get them out at least once a month.

i read this book about 10 years ago and thought it was one of the best i've ever read. You really get involved with the characters and understand how easy it is to get up in the showbiz life. There are two books in this series, one where cathy is first introduced two the band, the second is when cathy is away at art school, and they meet up again, and has a pretty happy conclusion. I can't remember if this is the first or second book, and also can't remember what the other books name is, i think it's loose connections.

This book is an excellent story about the trials and romantic tribulations of two people who are so in love and yet have to work out so many problems. It sounds like the story line of many a film and book, but it is without a doubt that this story is in a league of own: its fascinating, enjoyable and very difficult to put down. Its a book that makes you think or even hope perhaps the author wrote about real people rather than fictional lives. I was very saddened to learn that the publishers have said they 'do not want another Cathy and Dev'.

I just finished this book. It was on of the best books I've ever read. I read it in two days, it was so exciting , I couldnt turn the pages fast enough!!!!!! I also read some other books by her and they all are 5 stars!!!!!!!!

If you read "Fast Food Nation", you will like this book. There are similarities, but also many differences. The book refers to fish farm and gets into the economics of agricultural business. A great read.

In The Meat You Eat, Ken Midriff provides an in-depth analysis of the process of creating many animal products. Midkiff uses proven facts and precise statistics to back up his overall argument against corporate farming. Midkiff also uses many of his own detailed experiences and interviews from ordinary people. Their testimonies add validity to The Meat You Eat.
Midkiff shows how corporate farming is a danger to the environment, the economy, and the environment in a step by step structure that is easy to follow. He shows the reader that corporate farming has turned farming into a dirty big business concerned only with profit. Midkiff says that the owners of factory farms don't care about how the negative affects to the environment, workers, animals, workers, and the American consumer.
Rather than promoting vegetarianism, he advocates buying organic animal products or buying them from a small local farm. Midkiff says buying from local farmers will hurt factory farms and benefit the environment, animals, and the local farmers themselves.

The Meat You Eat is a book that had to be written. It is a quick reading book on the dangers of "corporate farming" and how corporate farming affects the surrounding areas, the community, the environment, the workplace, the animals, and America's food supply.

The book addresses the commonplace corporate farm and how they provide food from birth to the grocery store. The book discusses "Big Pig", "Big Chicken and Big Egg", "Big Milk", "Big Beef", and "Big Fish". I feel the author does an excellent job at the beginning of each chapter, explaining the background of each industry in an unbiased manner. The author then goes into some valid reasons as to each industries faults.

Most industries are guilty of torturing animals in one form or another, whether it be pigs fighting from being confined too closely or chickens whose feet become entangled in wire and can not move their entire lives. Some animals are not euthanized properly and proceed through the slaughterhouse before actually dying.

The author also talks about how companies monopolize an industry from fertilization of animals to processing and delivery to retailers. The result is a company that exploits the desperate and the unfortunate, whether they be farmers, townfolk, or immigrant workers. The monopolies, their power, and loopholes in the law allow these farms to pollute at will, literally driving people from their homes with little if any recourse.

I think the book does a good job of addressing the downfalls of current "big" farming methings; however, I felt this book has its shortcomings. A gifted author can describe a battlefield so vividly, the reader feels like the person next to them died in their arms. These authors can paint stunning pictures in a reader's mind without an actual photograph. This author does not posses such talent. As much as the author tries, I feel the author falls short of really making the reader feel the tortured animals pain. I think some photographs would have helped this book immensely. Also, the author seems to assume that the reader is familiar with the workings of a farms and butchering. For example, the author talks about the use of bolt guns to stun cows. I have never seen a bolt gun and have no idea what he is taking about. Again, pictures or diagrams would have helped.

I spent half my childhood in rural Wisconsin, around small farms. I've witnessed how small farms operate and work in harmony with nature, as much as a farm can. I have killed countless animals and fish for food in my life. Despite my limited knowledge of agriculture from my childhood, I really had no idea where food comes from in modern day society. I would recommend this book to someone who is interested in how a cow in the pasture turns into the package of ground beef at the store. The book will probably shock some people. Personally, I found the book very informative and I am glad I read it, but it was not powerful enough for me to make changes in my life.

As large meat factories and corporate processing operations take over America, so grows the need for a logical assessment of such methods, here provided by Ken Midkiff's The Meat You Eat. Midkiff is a Sierra Club Clean Water Campaign director and an expert on agribusiness and sustainable farming applications: The Meat You Eat takes a predictably hard look at the methods used by corporations to run profitable gigantic farms, applying their problems and solutions to agribusiness as a whole in an analysis of food safety.

If you've ever wondered how McDonald's can offer a 39 cent cheeseburger, this book will help you understand the bizarre economics that makes a cheeseburger cheaper than a bottle of water.

The author makes the case for buying meat and dairy products from small farms committed to sustainable farming practices. He succeeds with me, though I've subscribed to this view ever since reading Fast Food Nation and Portrait of a Burger as a Young Calf -- so I didn't need much convincing.

I'm not sure how effective he'll be with a less friendly audience. While he brings a few effective stories and statistics to bear, he also brings the rhetoric of the stereotypical wild-eyed environmentalist (Mr. Midkiff is the Sierra Club Water Campaign director).

An example from his introduction: "Corporations care about people only to the extent that people are consumers are the corporate product...Feeding a hungry world? That is only a justification for fouling the air and water. Running family farmers out of business; ruining the economies of small towns; destroying the rural quality of life; mangling, dismembering, and maming employees; producing foods that are unsafe and unhealthy? When confronted with some of the unintended consequences of the industrial mode of production of meat, milk, and eggs, the corporate spokesman hauls out things like the following...'It is unfortuante, but it must be kept in mind that this is the way things must be done if we're going to feed the world.'"

I would have preferred less shrill rhetoric and more hard data. In my opinion, the author doesn't further his cause with his inflammatory writing style: the facts surrounding the modern meat and dairy industries are appalling enough to speak for themselves.

Having said that, this book does a fair job of describing how surprisingly cruel, environmentally destructive, and socially damaging modern techniques for raising and killing farm animals are. Even if you don't care about air and water pollution because you don't live near a slaughterhouse (I don't, either), you might be surprised at how brutal the modern system is to the workers, many of them undocumented immigrants. And even if you don't care about the cruelty associated with raising so many animals (pigs, chickens, salmon, and cows) in such close proximity, you should understand the risks associated with eating the result -- the surprising thing about people getting food poisioning from industrially raised meat is not that it happens, but that it happens so rarely.

Bottom line: we owe it to ourselves, to our families, to the workers, to the planet to spend a few more dollars and buy meat, milk, and eggs that are responsibly and sustainably raised.

I was most moved by David James Duncan's essay in this book although I am always a fan of Wendell Berry's wisdom. The grief and outrage in Duncan's words were palpable. He is a fiction writer who makes up characters and places them in worlds that make sense. The real world today does not make sense and is filled with fictions that are really lies. His essay begins before the war in Iraq begins and there is a postscript written in April of 2003. Here is an excerpt of that postscript.

"Yet on February 15th of this year, hundreds of millions of people demonstrated against this war in 600 cities worldwide.......Six hundred cities. Hundreds of nations. Hundreds of millions of people. Yet these marchers earned from George W. Bush the smirking remark, 'I don't listen to focus groups.'....

The DU (depleted uranium) to which our sons and daughters and all Iraq and Afghanistan is being exposed is murderous, though our palantir (Tolkien-Lord of the Rings) refuses to deem it so. And the greatest peace march in world history was not a 'focus group,' though our palantir showed the president deeming it so. Even despite television, an enormous global movement has been born out of love for the Earth and all life, and loathing for the empowered few's continued abuses against Earth and life. February 11, 2003 let us witness this. I refuse to let the palantir erase it."

Wendell Berry is one of those rare, brave voices speaking today, one who enrages both Democrats and Republicans because he doesn't cheerlead for either of them or tow their party lines. He does regard himself as conservative, however, in the true, traditional American sense of the term-- not in the current "Neo-Conservative"/imperialist abuse of the term. Socialist-leaning Democrats and Imperialist-leaning Republicans need to read him, and this book.

This is the book that includes Berry's famous New York Times statement, "A Citizen's Response to the National Security Strategy of the United States of America," that has quickly become one of the most important pieces of expository writing in American civil discourse. The Orion Society, which printed the statement in the NYT and has also published Berry's powerful In The Presence of Fear in book form, is to be congratulated for making this essay available so quickly in book form. The companion essay by David James Duncan is extraordinary in its own right. Uncompromising, passionate, and altogether wise!

This is some of the worst thinking and most intellectually dishonest work I have read in a long time, and I mean both Berry and Duncan. I am dumbfounded that anyone could like this. Berry starts with a premise of hating George W. Bush, makes up any facts he likes to slam him, and proceeds from there. Someone I know said they liked him so I bought this just to get an example of his thinking.

He starts out saying that because the US policy has changed to one of "we" may start a pre-emptive war, alone if necessary, that means Bush as head of state is going to secretly act alone. We, he says, means the head of state. No it doesn't, that is a wild assumption, it means the US Government, he also states that we have never acted preemptively before--ever heard of the attack on Germany in WWII? Germany had not attacked us, Japan did. Or the Bay of Pigs, a SECRET preemptive operation against Castro? We fight preemptive actions all the time and have for years. And he is wrong to say no one would know about it, right now there is a possibility that we may attack Iran over the nuclear threat there, and no one would be totally suprised by that.

His discussion of what terror is comes down to it being the same for anyone who uses nuclear and biological weapons, and therefore aren't we just the same as the terrorists? I felt like I was reading something from a sixth grader.

There is more, and so far I am only talking about THE FIRST THREE PAGES!

All I can say is if you hate Bush and are willing to stretch any assumption to an absurd and unfounded degree to salivate over that hatred, this book is for you.

Wendell Berry's essays ought to be required reading for any federal policy-makers. It questions the wisdom of our current "War on Terror" and the efficacy of violence to end violence. Berry also asks astute questions to the religious (or those who feign religiosity): what does it mean to be truly Christian? Is it enough to merely support a nominally Christian and coservative President? Berry asserts that real Christianity is found, significantly, in doing Christian acts. Peace, Berry tells us, is much more than the absence of war, but a condition towards which all must cooperatively work together.
Berry asks the questions that Americans need to be asking themselves right now. What does it mean to be American? Berry recognizes the deep importance of this question, and seeks its answer. Perhaps more importantly, however, Berry encourages the reader to ask this question of himself, and to seek his own answer.

Where does one draw the line?
Why is it ok to tobacco farm?
I guess growing cancer doesnt bother anyone?
Is it ok that farming destroys the land in a more genteel way than the growth of cities?
What you advocate is the theory of slow death, Wendell.

Wendell Berry throughout this book describes the real meaning of citizenship. Not citizenship of a country but citizenship of a place, a community, an ecosystem.

Berry writes that security comes from being self sufficient within that community. The fact that a breakdown in transportation in this country would leave grocery stores bare should give us all pause. How much more sense it would make to know the farms still exist locally to provide the food, to know the farmer through a Community Supported Agriculture arrangement, to not be dependent on food shipped across the country and even across the oceans.

The problem is current and past policies are driving small farmers out of business and local businesses are being driven out by megastores such as Walmart. But Berry points out we can resist being driven along this path and stand up and say no. Join a CSA, shop at the farmer's market, buy organic, support the local shops.

Wendell Berry says it better. "This, of course, is the description of an emergency. It is moreover an emergency of the worst kind:one that cannot be resolved by "emergency measures". It is an emergency that calls for patience, and to be patient in an emergency is a hard requirement. but patience is what we must have if we hope to complete our work.

Obviously, we must use the emergency measures that are available to us, thought there are not many. We must do what we can politically, thought our political power at present is not great. But we must remember that good work cannot have a merely political completion. Our work will not be completed in the world's capitals, but in healthful farms and forest, ecosystems and watersheds, and in coherent communities. More important even than political victory for our side is the necessity to keep our thinking sound enough and complex enough to deal effectively with actual problems and needs. We must not let either political urgency or our sense of peril reduce us to the proto-warfare of slogans and sound bites."

This man is wise and we need to listen to him. Even more, we need to think hard about what actions we can take to address the concerns raised here. For most of us, our actions will necessarily be considered "radical", for most of us have strayed far from living with a consideration for the health of the earth and the local communities we live in. I am frightened at the direction this nation is going and I hope and pray more people pay attention to what Bush and his crew are doing and kick him out next year. But that is only a small part of what needs to happen. Berry consistently gets to the hard roots of many of our modern crises and is always clear-headed and forceful in his analysis. An amazing writer and a master stylist. Read him now. Now is when we most need to hear him.

This book arrived yesterday, "this book" being the "FACSIMILE edition" of the second edition. It's terrible. The reproduction isn't even as good as photocopying. The quality is so poor the illustrations are almost worthless: so dark no detail can be seen or so light little is left to see at all. This certainly vitiates its use for art instruction. Pages are out of alignment. There are supposed to be color plates, but they aren't reproduced at all, which means that this isn't even a complete facsimile of the original, and Amazon and the publisher should be charged with false advertizing. There is no indication of its facsimile nature in the book itself. So: Don't buy this book (especially at $55.60!); instead, look for a used copy.

The best book on drawing fundamentals I've ever come across. As a visual artist and art instructor I spent two years searching for this book before it was reprinted. Couldn't recommend it more highly.

The best book on drawing fundamentals! As a visual artist and art instructor I spent two years searching for this book before it was reprinted. Couldn't recommend it more highly.

Very good descriptions and instructions. But watch the picture quality and the packaging. It is nearly exactly like your instructor went out and just mass-photocopied it for the class. The cover is flimsy and rips easily, and the picture qualities inside tend to look very photocopied as well. But it shouldn't matter if all you are after is the quality content.

Overall, this book is a nice intro to Microsoft's MTS and COM using VB. The labs cover basic usage of MTS and VB with COM. The activities in the labs helped me remember what I learned. Points of knowledge are itemized nicely so you can spot them and mark them with your highlighter.

However, the book reads poorly at times. It is more readable than some classroom material from other courses I have taken (I bought this to read as a book and did not receive it in a class), but it does not have the appeal of a standalone book. For example, on pages 90 and 91 I see the phrase "In this exercise, you will create a new package called Math." repeated three times. Throughout the book you see this sort of repetition. You can skim large sections of the book due to this kind of filler and even larger sections if you don't do the labs. Though I think the labs help, this book is not a study guide. Rather it is a class experience in book form that offers little depth.

Also, this book seem preachy at times, letting me know the glories of Microsoft technology with little mention of alternatives. For example, self-check question 4 in Chapter One is "Select the statement that incorrectly describes a Microsoft Development tool." The answers are of course meant to hammer in that Microsoft's products are wonderful: Answer A is "Visual Basic is a Rapid Application Development (RAD) tool." So the point of this question is to help me remember how wonderful VB is? Many of the study questions were like this and did not help me test my knowledge much. And I would have appreciated some coverage of using Microsoft MTS and COM with the Oracle database, for example.

In conclusion, if you are very new to MTS, VB, and COM, get this book for quick exposure to the bare-basics with nice labs to bring home the knowledge. But if you already know the basics to these subject, you find yourself skimming large sections of the book and learning little.

Better than the mastering series on CD because it is in book format. Have no doubt, this is the same text. It is also the same text as the one week instructor lead class from Microsoft. It has very good coverage of MTS, and a good intro into COM. It will not get you past the test by itself, get the Exam Cram book also.

Don't bother to buy this book unless you are willing to invest at least one thousand dollars in incredibly expensive software. You are warned in the beginning that you can't do the lab exercises without this software. If you just want to read a book about three-tier development with Visual Basic there are certainly much better books than this one (such as Distributed COM by Maloney).

This is a great reference for a beginner like me. If you want to learn fast, this book's for you. I've learn a lot from this book.You could find useful samples and usages of the ActiveX Data Objects, COM Components and the likes. You can even copy the codes and paste it in your application.

Wendell Berry has written more than 40 books. His poetry books are shining gems. They are filled with short "simple" poems that will stop you in your tracks.

The section of this book entitled "Sabbaths" contains poems written on Sundays from 1998-2004. Until 2003, these poems are about love, long term love; aging,the joys and sorrows; and love and connection with the land. In 2003, Berry gets angry and his poems are filled with sorrow and horror about the war.

From VII
"When they cannot speak freely in defiance
of wealth self-elected to righteousness,
let the arts of pleasure and beauty cease.
Let every poet and singer of joy be dumb.
When those in power by owning all the words
have made them mean nothing, let silence
speak for us. When freedom's light goes out, let color
drain from all paintings into gray puddles
on the museum floor. When every ear awaits only
the knock on the door in the dark midnight,
let all the orchestras sound just one long note of woe.

No matter if you read Berry's fiction, essays or poetry, your life will be enriched.

Those denying themselves the pleasure to read real poetry should encounter this volume. The "Sabbath Poems" series is truly great poetry in every sense of the word.

Wonderful recent poems. Some of the poems seem ambiguous, which add to their power. In "The Rejected Husband" it doesn't matter if he is talking about a divorce or a death, it still has the pain of rejection. " He writes a Poem "How to be a poet" to remind him not to "disturb the silence from which it came".

The Sabbath poems from 1998-2004 have a sermon quality and other times a elegy quality. There is his own grappling with the loss of friends "nothing taken, that was not first a gift." But there is also the hope in nature "and the little blossoms make a new softness in the light", and the relationship of with grief is "In Heaven the starry saints will wipe away / The tears forever from our eyes, but they / Must no erase the memory of our grief. In bliss, eve, there can be no relief".

It Is up to the reader to decide If Berry achieve his goal "To make my art compatible / with the songs of the local birds."

Wendell Berry is one of my favorite poets; I highly recommend 'Entries', 'The Timbered Choir, and his various collected and selected poems to anyone interested in language that is alive and powerful in evocatively imagistic and spiritual ways. But 'Given' left me a bit cold. These poems would be better suited to Berry's excellent agrarian commentary work; but as poetry they failed the genre a bit, coming off like bland polemics in a language all too flat. The work is not without some merit, but I would certainly give Berry's other collections a much higher priority.

I purchased this book for a class at my university, however I was unaware that there were no problems or review questions at the end of each chapter. Of course my professor assigns homework, I now have to purchase a new textbook that actually contains the assigned material.

This is just what I was looking for. I am a programmer and need to know exactly how the latest procedures for inventory control actually work. The techniques are explained in great detail, giving me exactly what I need. Lots of current information about Supply Chain Management with actual company examples included in every chapter.

It remains for others better qualified than I am to determine whether or not this book is "the definitive guide for professionals" but I do consider it to be one of the most informative and one of the most valuable I have read thus far. The comments which follow focus on the Fifth Edition (2005) in which the co-authors (Thomas E. Vollman, William L. Berry, D. Clay Whybark, and F. Robert Jacobs) update, supplement, or delete material from previous editions as well as add new concepts "in response to changing needs." They also explain that they revised the basic organization of their book "in response to changes in the environment in which manufacturing planning and control (MPC) systems operate."

For example, the implementation of enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems and the continuing decentralization of decision-making to the factory floor. The environment has also become more complicated by the proliferation of globalization initiatives. As a result, the authors note, "the interconnectedness of manufacturing firms has increased substantially. The implication of this is that companies are now often integrated as customers of their suppliers and integrated with customers whom they supply in complicated ways. This has created the need to manage some very complex supply chains or networks." Vollman, Berry, Whybark, and Jacobs produced this Fifth Edition in response to changes such as these.

Of special interest to me is the material provided in Chapter 4, "Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) - Integrated Systems." For various reasons that the authors cite, it is highly desirable, in fact imperative that decision-making be centralized if the given system is to take full advantage of economies of scale. Redundant transactions must be minimized, if not eliminated. With regard to knowledge management, information must be captured at the source, with any process of transactions fully documented. (Many senior-level executives express the same exasperation: "If only we knew what we know!") In fact, all processes must efficiently support the data needs of the ERP system. Hence the importance of communication, cooperation, and especially, collaboration at all levels and within all areas of the given supply chain. Moreover, a set of performance measures must be formulated in coordination with appropriate policies, procedures, and objectives. Economies of scale can also be achieved if fewer software and hardware platforms are needed during ERP implementation.

Credit the authors with their effective use of various reader-friendly devices as they present their material. For example, check out the Brief Contents and Contents pages that offer an uncommonly specific explanation of what is covered in each chapter. (The latter is the most detailed I have as yet encountered in a business book.) Also, the recurring sections (e.g. Company Examples, Concluding Principles, and References) at the conclusion of most chapters. Many readers will probably refer to the Contents more often than to the Index.

Although this volume will probably be most valuable to those enrolled in business courses and especially if preparing for certification by the Association for Operations Management, I think it will also be of interest and value to those about to embark upon or are now involved in process improvement initiatives. Some of the best opportunities to eliminate waste while increasing efficiency and productivity can be found within a supply chain.

Dense. Rich. Thorough. Comprehensive. Authoritative. This well-written book presents manufacturing planning & control systems in abstract enough terms to separate them from any particular implementation, yet concretely enough to base your more detailed designs on. In software development terms, it's at the level of Architecture, High-level design and requirements. But it's not limited to software systems -- it's about work functions and processes too.

You leave the book feeling that you get it in some way, at a conceptual level, how a manufacturing endeavor has to be structured and what the various processes are that have to be intertwined and coordinated for it all to work.

The authors take an in depth look at the evolution of "classical", "functional" manufacturing (as reflected incrementally in informal shop floor systems, to MRP & MRPII, to ERP) as well as newer intrafirm management systems like JIT and "lean manufacturing". The thrust of the text, though, is on the nascent developments leading to "lean organization", "lean enterprise" and "lean supply chain". The leading edge of this evolution is the appearance of interfirm supply chain systems that focus on improving the entire supply chain and sharing these improvements with all of the links in the chain.

Overall an excellent, if somewhat slow, read.

More of the same, as the trilogy concludes. If you have read the others, you know what to expect, with a bit more of an emphasis on what is going on. The friends and protagonists are mastering their powers, finding out what is going on, and having sex not quite as often, at least on page, anyway.

This was good but not as good as Sex Gates (5 stars for that one!) It's still an enjoyable fast read. It does seem to get off topic a little about halfway through but get's back on track.

I'm am definitely going to read the sequel.

Series overall is highly recommended.

What a great book! I'm an avid science fiction reader and this book is something that I've never really explored before. I love Heinlein and this is very Heinlein-esque. Having both a male and female author gives a very realistic perspective when telling the story from a male or female point of view. Heinlein tried to capture this in "I Will Fear No Evil", but, of course, being male, couldn't really envision what it was like to be a woman. If men & women could experience what it would be like to go through life as a member of the opposite sex, this world would be a very different place. Also, the characters were very well written. They were human, with human foibles and problems, but likeable. They were the kind of people that it would be fun to know.

Authors Darrell Bain and Jeanine Berry have succeeded admirably in this gripping sequel to their bestselling novel, THE SEX GATES. The mysterious sex gates have changed the world of the not too distand future; destabilizing governments and religions alike, and rocking the fabric of society as never before. Now, people have grown suspicious of "Seconders," individuals like our hero/heroine Jackson Lee (Li) Stuart, who have the ability to go through the sex gates repeatedly without vanishing. You see, the sex gates have the power to cure disease and restore youth, but always change the sex of those who pass through them, and they rarely allow follow-up trips. The Seconders, then, have essentially found the secret to immortality. Repeat passage through the gates also brings out greater intelligence and telepathy in the Seconders. Lee(Li) must discover the secrets of the gates before jealous, hate-fueled mobs fall upon and destroy the Seconders. He/she must chance as many trips as possible to find and contact the mysterious Masters of the gates and win their help, but first he/she must travel hundreds of miles across a world slipping into chaos. The authors, one male, one female, ingeniously sue their own gender differences to provide truly believable viewpoints for their likable and quirky characters. A wonderful blend of sci-fi, sexuality and sociology, makes this book a delight. Enjoy it, I know I did!

Diana Hignutt-Moonsword