Caldwell Books

Lucius Burch was one of Memphis's finest lawyers. His collected memoirs, letters, speeches, and essays are beautifully written, and have profound things to say about conservation, what it means to be a liberal, defending Martin Luther King, bounty hunting in Alaska, salvaging a Spanish galleon, and on and on. He lived a wonderfully varied life exactly as he pleased, and, after reading his work, you will wish he had been your friend.

Great for improving basic reading skills. Cute illustrations. The story is refreshing as you read about a child building self-esteem in everyday activities. Mable is Able and we believe we are too!

Not only does this book contain some incredibly well composed and technically stunning photos of the soul of Maine, they are are complimented by poignant and insightful quotes giving "mindsight" views of the psyche of Maine. I found only two minor flaws - it otherwise does a much better job of representing Maine as much more than just "a rock-bound (Southern) coast" than any book of the same genre that I can recall!

All I can say for this book is: excellent. The text is interesting, well presented and easy to follow.

I recommend it to everyone.

Me parecio espectacular este libro y lo voy a leer de nuevo.

Mentalism has long been the most misunderstood magical realm in Rolemaster Standard System. Arguments about the relationship between mentalism and psionics has been raging on the net and in private venues for years now. Essence, being the traditional magical discipline and channeling, the traditional power of clerics and other followers of divine beings, are both firmly entrenched in the minds of players and GMs alike. They are well burned into our imaginations and into our literature, and therefore, easy to grasp, by player and gamemaster alike.

My first reaction upon picking up this book was, "Wow, how many pages is this thing?" The answer, 158 pages, makes this the largest companion yet. Its size is no surprise. Upon leafing through it I began to realize just how ambitious this book really was.

It starts with your typical "What is Mentalism?" section, followed by a treatment of the standard mentalist archetypes. All of this is pretty old hat, though necessary to help unmuddy the mentalism waters. It then launches into a variety of subjects, many of which only loosely connected with mentalism itself.

It seems the authors used this book as a vehicle by which to cram in every rule system they could, dealing with the mind or mental subjects. Acceptable? To me it is, though some tastes may differ. A list of the primary subjects is as follows:

New professions: Very relevant. Every companion seems to need a new slew of professions, and this one adds (or reintroduces) the Seer, Astrologer, Enchanter and Armsmaster. Of all of these, the Armsmaster is by far my favorite, though the other professions will probably appeal to players with a less chivalrous bent. Regardless of your tastes, these professions fill important niches in the spell casting professions, niches that were previously unfilled.

This is followed by training packages, another must for a Rolemaster companion. Of all the work, I found this section the most disappointing (though it reintroduced the houri, an amusing character type). I don't know what I wanted from trainin packages, but this book failed to deliver it. I think it's just that none of the training packages struck my fancy.

Next is the treatment of magical ritual, a subject that is beginning to bore me. It's necessary, however, and it was vehicle for the author's attempt to introduce rules for mental combat. A private conversation with one of the authors revealed that, the published rules are scaled down from those the author submitted, and they are skeletal at best.

The next section was included to satisfy the Internet community. For years now, debates have raged about the nature of illusion in Rolemaster, and many people aren't satisfied with the official stance. This section therefore treats both sides of the argument, allowing gamemasters to use whichever one appeals to them most. It is good that this treatment was placed into print, and I suppose that this book is as good as any.

The next section deals with insanity. Though this might seem out of place at first, mentalist lists are the only real place where insanity is inflicted. This is a necessary addition to Rolemaster. It supports the gritty realism of the game, and I'm glad it was there.

This is followed by the section on Languages and Lore. Now, out of all the sections in this book, this has the least to do with mentalism. It's a good subject, though. I've never been satisfied with the way that any game handled languages, not even Rolemaster. This new treatment of languages, though not the most accurate, is a far cry from anything I've seen. The authors strived for a balance between realism and playability, and I think they found a happy medium.

Since mentalism deals with divination (at least with the professions in this work), the next three sections are dedicated to divination of various sorts. Therefore the book treats diving the past, present and future, helping the GM deal with difficult subject like astrology and the future. These subjects can be difficult for a GM to handle, and though this doesn't set any rules in stone, it tries to give the GM enough information to make an informed decision.

Next, you'll find specific treatments of astrology and tarot. I really felt these sections did nothing to help me with my campaigns, though the information might be a good starting point for creating your own divination systems. It was just too Earth specific to help me much.

For you Robert Jordan fans, I'll bet you'll feel a certain kinship with the authors of this book. Before the final section, consisting of spell lists, you'll find a treatment of dreams and dream travel. I liked the ideas here, but I wanted a lot more. It made me wonder whether the space constraints were cracking the whip on the authors during this section. A good broad treatment of the dream world would have been very nice, even one that we throw out to create our own. The single page on dream worlds simply wasn't enough for me.

My conclusion? This was a great book. It's become a permanent facet of my campaigns. Out of all the things that Rolemaster has to call its own, mentalism is the one that makes Rolemaster the most unique. It's a good thing for the game that this book was written. It takes that aspect of Rolemaster which is most unique and explains it, expands it and helps us make ours. It patches several holes that were left open in the Rolemaster system and does it with style and quality.

If I had to recommend a game, it would always be Rolemaster, and although there have been products in the past that I've felt have fallen short of the quality we've come to expect from ICE, this is not one of them. I couldn't necessarily recommend this book to most people playing other game systems (this isn't true for all Rolemaster books), but if your play Rolemaster, this book is a must.

Narrated by the character for whom the title is named and set in the late 1600's, Micah Clarke describes the battle of peasants against the existing king of England in the hopes that they can replace the monarch with his brother who feels he has been unjustly denied the throne. Micah Clarke, a young, innocent peasant joins forces with other peasants, among the Puritans, to fight for this pathetic duke's cause. Not a subject that would appear to be on the surface to be too exciting, in reality it is enjoyable reading. From the descriptions of the English settings, not unlike some of Thomas Hardy's relaxing paragraphs of the moors, to the gory horrors of the culminating battle, Doyle's writing keeps you turning the pages for more. At the same time, each chapter is so rich in dialogue and setting description, that you feel you can set down the book, and then pick it up the next day, thereby getting your fill of a relaxing, interesting trip into another world. As an aside, Doyle's thoughts on God and organized religion that appear in some of his other literature, are found here too. Through various character's dialogue, he's able to respectfully discuss differing "sides" of this sensitive subject, while appreciating the plight of all men, whatever their beliefs, church, political party, or economic class.
Those who have read Sherlock Holmes should attempt Arthur Conan Doyle's historical fiction, such as Micah Clarke. It's well worth it.

This is the book that everyone who has studied Microbial Physiology and Metabolism, has been waiting for. The book has all the metabolic pathways diagrammed, even the weird ones that are unique to bacteria. There is no other book that has all the pathways diagrammed. The others books available, only give a commentary on the biochemical processes.

This little known book is an EXCELLENT guide to some of the scales of the MMPI. Dr. Alex Caldwell from UCLA is absolutely the foremost expert on the MMPI and has spent his life researching and studying it. An academic, the book is written in plain language and is an excellent reference.

My mother bought an old copy of this in the mid-fifties and read it to me as a bedtime story. I think I remember her telling me that her mother did the same thing for her back in the early part of the century after moving here from Vienna, Austria.

[Miss] Rice had remarkable writing skills, and also a fertile (and rather profound) imagination. All this is displayed firstly in her recreations of the poor white southern dialect coming out of the mouths of Mrs. Wiggs and her family - the speech cadences are marvelous, and very musical. But there are also the little snatches of poetry and proverbs she composed for the beginning of each chapter, which truly border on the sublime. And the occasional descriptive passages are full of feeling and artistry, clear-sightedness and wisdom.

There are plentiful little seed thoughts, scattered discretely to instruct young people, and not only consciously. Even if one doesn't understand this or that little gem, a child would tend to embrace it, taking it in on some level - each one serves its young patrons well, beginning to work it's little lifelong magic. This is a very deep, free-flowing child psychology, several years before Freud's more cantankerous "discoveries" became widely known and intellectually fashionable.

Much of this "short" story is about the interaction between the poor and the rich, and how each serves to enrich the life of the other. This is done in a well-rounded fashion, never becoming preachy, often with beauteous touches of humor, tenderness, and sadness. Sure the story is in big print, and it's obviously not Henry James, but there's nothing going on here that could ever be termed 'simplistic'.

I guess you could say that back in the old days when literacy was considered more a gift than somewhat of a burden, they really knew how to instruct, as it were.