Bridges Books

Excellent, excellent tape. Lays out specific step-by-step formulas for every condition in life. I can't believe how easy and yet effective it is.

After all, if you know HOW to do something, it is much easier than if you're just stumbling along!

BUY this tape. It is awesome. Worth every penny.

Throughout the two decades from 1964 to 1984, Fontana published a remarkable skein of ghost story collections, piloted by R. Aikman and later by R. Chetwynd-Hayes, no mean supernatural authors themselves. Some of the paperbacks in this series, which winds its way up to the "20th Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories" are now collectors' items and worth over a hundred dollars apiece.

For this fourth book in the series, Robert Aickman selected eleven supernatural tales, including Alexander Pushkin's "The Queen of Spades" which was also made into an opera--an unusual fate for a ghost story!

These are the tales in the 4th Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories:

"The Accident" by Ann Bridge--Many great ghost stories are set in the Alps and this is one of them. A pair of climbers, brother and sister, come across a set of tracks that begin in an open snowfield, near the place where two other climbers had fallen to their deaths a month earlier. Then the sister begins to receive postcards from one of the dead climbers.

"Not on the Passenger List" by Barry Pain--A young widow takes passage on a ship to England, where she is to remarry. Her late husband appears in her cabin and tries to persuade her to drown herself.

"The Sphinx without a Secret" by Oscar Wilde--Aikman cheated by including this story, which has no ghost. A mysterious young woman is confronted by her fiancé, who breaks off their engagement.

"When I was Dead" by Vincent O'Sullivan--A young man witnesses his own funeral.

"The Queen of Spades" by Alexander Pushkin--An 87-year-old Countess dies before revealing her supposed secret for winning at cards. Her ghost appears to the man who frightened her to death, revealing the cards he needed to play in order to win a fortune. Would you trust the ghost of the woman you frightened to death?

"Pargiton and Harby" by Desmond MacCarthy-- Harby meets his old friend, Pargiton who seems to be making amends for an ill-spent life. Pargiton begs Harby to visit him, because he seems to bring out the best in the reformed evil-doer. Harby comes, but so does something else.

"The Snow" by Hugh Walpole--The two Mrs. Ryders, one of them dead, battle over their meek, inoffensive husband.

"Carlton's Father" by Eric Ambrose--I would classify this story as science fiction, since it involves a time warp, disguised as a room in Carlton's house, where no-one ages.

"A School Story" by M.R. James--Two men reminisce over the ghost stories that were told about their public schools. One of them concerns a master with a homicidal past.

"The Wolves of Cernogratz" by Saki--Wolves howl around the castle when one of the Cernogratz family dies.

"Mad Monkton" by William Wilkie Collins--Generations of the reclusive Monkton family suffered from hereditary insanity. Alfred, last of the Monkton line falls in love with the beautiful young Ada, but before he can propose to her, he must travel to Italy to recover the body of his Uncle Stephen, the black sheep of the Monkton family, who was killed in a duel. Everyone thinks Alfred is crazy for trying to recover the body, but an old family prophecy and the ghost of Uncle Stephen urge him onward.

A wonderful book that brings all the magic of the movie to life. The picures are beautiful and it is good to see some that never appeared in the finished film. It is truly a book to be enjoyed by those who love this epic film. One can reread it and every time find fresh enjoyment.

I found this book very helpful. If you are a foreign graduate(like me), getting ready for NCLEX or an LPN, going through transition, "Bridges for Role Transitions" will lead you to sufficient knowledge, leavind many doubts and gaps behind. Enjoy your reading!

Mr. Farah has written a book that should be read by all who claim Christ as their Lord. Written in 1979, even today the book speaks to many of the excesses that are common in many churches. Mr. Farah does not shrink back from addressing the big and tough questions that we all ask from time to time. Such as: "If God still heals today then why are not all who I pray for healed?" Answers to this and many others like it are addressed with biblical guidance. The reader will never be the same again after reading this book. If you have ever pondered the wonderful claims of New Testament Christianity and wondered if this is God's desire for us today, then you need this book!!! Clay Hamm 12/2/98

This is a beautiful coffee table style book full of fantastic photographs taken by Basil Pao. These pictures were taken at locations all around the Pacific Rim during the Michael Palin trip known as "Full Circle".

This book should not be confused with Michael Palin's book about that trip, which is simply called "Full Circle". That book also contains a lot of Basil Pao's pictures, but they are secondary to the text written by Michael Palin.

"Full Circle: The Photographs" is exclusively Basil Pao's book, except for a brief 2-page introduction written by Michael Palin.

In my opinion this book is the best of the four books of photographs that Basil Pao has produced to celebrate the various trips that he shared with Michael Palin. (The other three are "Pole to Pole: The Photographs", "Inside Sahara" and "Inside Himalaya".)

One thing that is special about this book is that the pictures are not shown in chronological or geographic order. The pictures are shown by category, with pictures that supplement or contrast with each other shown side by side, and one of the pictures may be from Siberia and the other from Peru.

I can imagine Basil Pao having lots of fun deciding which pictures to include and which pictures to show together.

Some of the best pictures are shown as magnificent two-page spreads. Every picture has a small caption telling where it was taken.

As usual with Basil Pao, most of the pictures (approx. 75%) include people in one way or another. There are some stunning landscapes too, but the pictures of people are the most fascinating. Some of the babies and children are especially cute.

The only thing I'm slightly disappointed about is the dearth of pictures from the USA and Canada. I'm guessing this is due to the film team traveling fairly quickly through this last leg of the journey (Michael Palin admitted that he was homesick), the fact that for us Westerners the people of the USA and Canada are not so exotic, and possibly concerns about model release forms and legal problems.

Very highly recommended. It's not easy to find this book new so you'll have to search for a used copy, and you'll be glad you did.

Rennie Petersen

PS. For those who might be interested, I've written an Amazon "So You'd Like To" guide about Basil Pao and his participation in the Michael Palin trips and the books that have been produced by Basil Pao and Michael Palin. You can find it by clicking on my name and then finding the link to my "So You'd Like To" guides a little ways down on the left of my profile page.

This is a rally good book, it is the first of a series based on a Tennis family playing on the Tennis Tour.

Melissa is England's Rose & she has her man - but she wants Tennis as well.

Read this book, once started you just can't put it down.

As a volunteer at the Bronx Zoo (once known as the NY Zoological Society, now part of the Wildlife Conservation Society), I am finding this very readable hitory (written by someone intimately familiar with the zoo) very entertaining and useful. I wish everyone could know about the wonderful work the Zoo has done preserving and breeding endangered species over more than 100 years. Virtually every buffalo (bison) is related to the ones brought to the Zoo in the early part of the last century.

A French patriot, writing amid the upheavals of 1848, alerted his countrymen, fellow Europeans, and posterity to an emerging social science that harmonizes order (the conservative impulse) and progress (the liberal impulse). Auguste Comte (1798-1857) called this science "Positivism," positing its ability to break the trend of negativism brought about by the decline of Catholic feudalism and culminating in the French Revolution. Like all brilliant entrepreneurs, Comte saw the revolution as an opportunity within a tragedy.
Erik von Kuenelt-Leddihn, in his book "Leftism Revisited," accurately summarized that Comte sought to create a secular version of the Roman Catholic Church. Comte's reverence for Catholicism is all through "A General View of Positivism" although in trying to sell his philosophy to Frenchmen he made the church sound better than it actually was. Puzzling is his attribution of the idea of separating the temporal power (government) from the spiritual power (philosophic) to the Roman Church. I don't recall the Vatican ever giving up political power voluntarily. Perhaps Comte is crediting the Bible's "Give on to Caesar what is Caesar's and give on to G-d what is G-d's" to Catholicism when it should be attributed to Christianity in general.
Interestingly, as foreshadowed by Comte, the Roman Church has evolved into a more positivist institution, eschewing direct involvement in elections and practical politics and sticking to its morals advisory knitting. Result: Pope Benedict XVI has an 80 percent approval rating with Americans, a level President George W. Bush (who regularly confounds the roles of morals and politics) can only dream of.
Readers will not be able to miss the non-theological, non-metaphysical nature of Comte's "Religion of Humanity." This characteristic is what links it to its variants in other fields - logical empiricism in the field of language and logic as practiced by the Vienna and Berlin circles of the 1920s and 1930s, the physical-science instrumentalism of Ernst Mach and Henri Poincare, and William Clifford's non-Euclidean geometry.
Unlike most other empiricists and inductive thinkers, Comte saw his system eventually embracing all of humanity. Thanks to flexibility under republican principles and a history with Catholicism, France would take the lead in adopting Positivism, with the philosophy gradually adding the remainder of Western Europe then the rest of the world in a period of not less than 200 years. Comte's forecast seems to be on pace. The European Union, peacefully clustered around French-speaking Brussels, is the most public manifestation of Positivism today. (Note its stable currency and the great desire of Eastern Europeans to join while metaphysical America's dollar declines and its NATO policy antagonizes Russia toward Cold War II). Were he alive today, Comte could comfortably say "EU c'est moi."
"A General View of Positivism" makes passing mention of the United States but anyone who picks up a newspaper can easily see that today's America is not ready for Positivism. This is due mainly to the natures of Positivism and U.S. society. Positivism is anti-individualist, anti-militarist, and contrary to the postulates of modern American feminism. Comte venerates women, going so far as to call his Great Being (the new god, i.e. humanity) "She," reflecting the view that women put social feeling over self-love more naturally than any other group (a key tenant of Positivism). Yet Comte's reading of history and discernment of the laws of sociology and nature lead him to determine women's most effective and harmonious role as working in the home, educating and civilizing children (especially males), and influencing public opinion through the salon. Men and women competing in the economy poisons relations between the sexes at their very source, Comte points out. Sad but true yet try selling that to America's NOW gang and teachers unions.
The profoundly conservative and pro-life sentiments of Comte's Positivism are too elevated for the shallow jingoists that make up much of the contemporary American right wing. Consider the American infatuation with novelty, newness, and unrestrained democracy then consider this - "We see this unfortunate narrowness of view too often in the best socialists, who leaving the present without roots in the past, would carry us headlong toward a future of which they have no conception. In all social phenomena, and especially those of modern times, the participation of our predecessors is greater than that of our contemporaries." (p. 403, Robert Speller & Sons edition, published 1957).
Now consider whether prattling about ever-elastic "rights" can come close to valuing the unborn and other humans the way this statement does - "The principle upon which Positivism insists so strongly, the union of the present with the past, and even with the future, is not limited to the life of society. It is a doctrine which unites all individuals and all generations...We may live with those who are not yet born; a thing impossible only till a true theory of history had arisen, of scope sufficient to embrace at one glance the whole course of human destiny." (p. 290-291).
Jewish intellectual Dennis Prager once said he couldn't give a good secular reason for marriage but Comte, further burnishing his conservative credentials, provides one, writing that binding union with one of the opposite sex is crucial for the moral development of the partners. Moreover, polygamy and divorce erode civilization, Comte writes, leading one to speculate if this isn't a leading cause of stagnation in the Islamic world. "The striking superiority of social life in the West is probably due to it (monogamy) more than any other cause." (p. 263).
Positivism would likely be most opposed in America by those who should be best able to discern its assets - conservatives. You'd expect opposition from mass-market neoconservatives like Rush Limbaugh, who tried to discredit John Kerry during the 2004 election by calling him "the French candidate." Others held that the Kerry/Edwards motto ("For a Stronger America") should actually have been "For a Stranger America." Such vapidity doesn't merit a reply.
But reactions of thoughtful conservatives do. In "The Conservative Mind," Russell Kirk warned about positivists and rationalists undermining the "religious nature" of society yet didn't offer one quote from Comte or include Comte in the book's bibliography. Kirk's summation of Comte's philosophy seems tainted by biases favoring theological conservatism and British conservatism. Surely, Kirk was right to recoil at the injection of one aspect of Comte's philosophy (the preeminence of public opinion, which has lead to the Oprah-ization of U.S. politics and government-by-polling data) into a society not ready for Positivism. Yet Kirk's central views about obedience and virtue agree with Comte's.
The best hope for Positivism in the U.S. is for it to be adopted under the brand name of its closest American cousin - Pragmatism, as developed by William James and Charles Peirce. As history further advances the U.S. toward the need for Positivism, with metaphysical and theological notions and government-by-interest group sowing destruction in every direction, the question will arise "Does relativist Positivism, by its communitarian nature, lead to statist absolutism?" (The converse being absolutist religion giving us relativist statism). Comte addressed this by writing that totalitarianism is possible if people confuse Positivism's intellectual nature with its social aspect. Just as revealing is Positivist physicist Philipp Frank's remark about the "tragic feature of enlightenment." To wit, advancing science destroys old conceptions while creating the conditions for misuse of the new ways. Like its religious and philosophical ancestors, the fountainhead that is Positivism can pour forth waters that are bitter and sweet.
Comte's most effective sales pitch is when he uses the features of theology to show that most religious practice is actually self-service. Jewish, Christian, and Islamic conceptions hold that G-d is perfect and needs nothing from humanity. Mirroring the approach of Baruch Spinoza, who equated G-d with the world, Comte reminds us that humanity is in need and we are all part of the Great Being thus we're duty-bound to make the Great Being (our home) a success. In other words, we are the world.

I really enjoyed this book. As a bridge beginner its just what I needed. It's by no means a complete guide to bridge but it helps you to take the first steps to understanding the game . It has very simple graphics in black and red as is the text .It is divided into four sections leads you through scoring bidding and through completions of some hands. It also has a useful glossary. I would recommend this book as a good place to start if you want to start learning the game.