Chambers Books

To correct the previous reviwer's comment about this work being "just the way Mussorgsky wrote it", this reviwer would like to point out that the Dover score is a reprint of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's arrangement and orchestration. While a brilliant and deservedly popular work in its own right, Rimsky's arrangement was prepared about 5 years after the composer's death and bears only the most superficial resemblance to Mussorgsky's 1867 score (full title: St. John's Night on the Bare Mountain). The Dover reprint is very clean with a sturdy binding at a very reasonable price - certainly worth the 4 stars from this reviewer.

No arrangements, no alterations, no changes whatsoever to this beautiful work. It is left exactly as Mussorgski wrote it. For the musician who wants inspiration or anyone who loves beautiful music.

Although artifice is rumored to be just for essence wielders, this book shows otherwise. And it rocks. Mortals can try to make small wonders! Now magic is for almost everyone and small miracles can be achieved without need of been Exalted. Been Exalted just improves an makes faster this natural way of magic in the world of Creation.

Rules for thaumaturgy as well as new procedures and processes. Great thing and of course a lot of applications and how to use em as well as guidelines for creating even more procedures.

Rules for Demense and Manse creation. Built with a point by point purchase and interesting powers for each manse. Also examples of several of em.

A vast list of useful Hearthstones by level, by Element and by Celestial alignment.

Guidelines to create artifacts instead of magitech. Also quite few pages of examples of solid artifacts. A good companion to magitech. YET I dont see why the need to create another kind of artifacts. BUT it is a good idea really. Magitech is like advanced sciene and Artifice is more of a natural wonders discovery and mix.

Also few examples of natural wonders of Creation.

This book contains all the hard rules for artifact and manse creation, most likely needed for Storytellers, and can be useful for players. It adds information on new artifacts, although none are as interesting as in the previous book of sorcery, as well as a slew of new hearthstones. Information for custom artifacts is included and a similar system for manses has been added, allowing for things like magically hidden manses, and even factory cathedral manses (those used for creation of the higher level artifacts)

Getting any information about the author, Andre Nataf, is an esoteric pursuit in itself and so far I haven't managed to find anything about him. His book on the Occult has academic rigor and is a well written and researched. In my opinion, Nataf knows the subject very well and his book is a superb introduction on these subjects. It is more of a history of the Occult than anything else but all topics are explained in a succint and accessible way; alchemy, cabbala, freemasonry and many more.

This book is reasonably accurate as far as it goes, which has only to do with outer, or exoteric, information. Although the author had to encounter discussions of the teachings during his research, they are not reflected here.

The Freemasons, for example, are well known for their brotherhood. This means that they believe that we are all one. This concept is common to all the occult faiths mentioned in this book. God and the universe are made of "mind stuff," "thought," or as modern physicists say, radiant energy, electromagnetism, or micro particles. It is everywhere present. God is truly omnipresent, in all things and in all of us. We are one with each other and with god and with the whole universe.

We have some form of Higher Self, a soul, or some such thing that we can operate from. All these faiths have a "rite" in which one lays down his or her "body," "Lower Self," etc. and rises up into a "Higher Self." This is more than symbolic; if it is done sincerely and with clear imagery, the shift can be felt. It is a kind of resurrection or rebirth. This, too, is common to all the faiths mentioned in this book.

In addition, all of these faiths come from Love: Light = Life = Love = God. There is no vengeful god here, no retribution against infidels, no crusading against evil. God is Love, we are Love, all is and/or will be right.

I would like to see a followup to this book that treats of these topics. I cannot tell if the other titles in French by this author do so or not. As is it, this book leaves a bad taste in the mouth regarding some of the most enlightened faiths that now exist.

Written by Gordon Jacob, a professor of composition and orchestration at the Royal College of Music, Orchestral Technique serves to be a manual/reference book to any composer or music student that is looking to expand and enforce their knowledge of composing for orchestra quickly without having to wade through a lot of waffle. This book covers the full range of instruments used in orchestras individually, it also addresses composing for whole sections (strings/brass woodwinds etc) and also spends some time on composing for small orchestras and full orchestras and the differences between than. At the end of each chapter there are helpful exercises, there are also further suggestions for exercises in orchestration in the appendix. I found this book to be very helpful in learning more about the details of orchestration; I keep it close and refer to it all the time. Although it is not as long as other books, it was very straight to the point, and very concise and above all, easy to understand.

Written by Gordon Jacob, a professor of composition and orchestration at the Royal College of Music, Orchestral Technique serves to be a manual/reference book to any composer or music student that is looking to expand and enforce their knowledge of composing for orchestra quickly without having to wade through a lot of waffle. This book covers the full range of instruments used in orchestras individually, it also addresses composing for whole sections (strings/brass woodwinds etc) and also spends some time on composing for small orchestras and full orchestras and the differences between than. At the end of each chapter there are helpful exercises, there are also further suggestions for exercises in orchestration in the appendix. I found this book to be very helpful in learning more about the details of orchestration; I keep it close and refer to it all the time. Although it is not as long as other books, it was very straight to the point, and very concise and above all, easy to understand.

An educational but at times fatiguing read on the pivotal role of the nineteenth century military post trader.
Delo effected some demanding research on this subject and the reader gains insight as to the significance this profession played in frontier expansion.
The trader's demeanor and importance was both praised by many and debunked by many. The subject matter of whether or not to allow alcohol on a military base bounced around like a tennis ball for the entire century. The question always seemed to be to either abolish alcohol entirely or limit its consumption.
That aside, the function of the post trader seemed to be several fold. Besides furnishing provisions such as dry goods and foodstuffs, he was also the news source, post master, banker and creditor. The entire geographical area centered around the post trader.
An interesting read on a subject oftentimes overlooked.

Very readable and meticulously-researched book. My great-great uncle was a post trader at Fort Walla Walla, Washington for several years in the 1870's. I bought this book to learn more about "post traders". I learned a great deal from the book about "sutlers" and "post traders" (if you read the book, you'll find there is a significant difference between military "sutlers" and "post traders"). I found the book a wonderful read that provided many details about military life and the life of civilian post traders on the American frontier.

This book was a bit too philosophical for me. While it contains a wealth of good information, that information is oftened masked by pendantic writing. I also felt that the musical examples used were not explored enough. In summary, the overall information contained within the book is truly exceptional, and would certainly benefit any aspiring composer. I just found that the "philosophical element" was a bit over-done, and that it often masked what Toch was trying to convey. Nonetheless, for under $10, it is a book I would, in the end, reccommend.

A composer friend of mine recommended this book to me as a good introduction to composition. After reading it, I agree. Have you ever wondered why you can write something that obeys all the rules of classical music theory but has no life to it? Toch takes a good look at the practice of composition through the ages and abstracts a set of principles - the shaping forces in music - that give a composition structure and vitality. The things that I found really interesting about these principles were how universally they apply across all periods and styles of music, and how willing the 'classical' composers like Mozart and Beethoven were to break the rules of classical theory in pursuit of a larger goal.

If you have any interest in the principles of music composition, this is a great book. My only comment is that points illustrated by quotations (which is most of them) are not always clear unless you can play or 'hear' the music - easy for Mozart, not so easy for Brahms, Debussy etc. Having a piano handy would help with this. Another solution would be to read this book in a music library and listen to the relevant works as they come up - in fact I hope to do this sometime myself.

Overall highly recommended for students of music - it's a breath of fresh air after all the traditional dogma.

This is not an introductory text, and should not be the first R book in your collection. However, if you are a "pretty good" R programmer and want to take the next step in becoming an "expert" R programmer, this is your Bible.

For me, this book fills the hole of understanding how R thinks. To get a complete and accurate view of why R works the way it does, the author supplements the technical discussion with the philosophy of R, as well as pieces of the history of statistical computing and computing in general.

Others might consider this integration of technical detail with philosophical and historical background (complete with Star Trek references) to be "wordy", but this is precisely why I bought the book. If one is interested only in the purely technical aspects, the thorough documentation on the R website is free. I consider the insights - provided by the mind that laid the foundation for R in S - to be well worth the price of the book.

That said, this book is an invaluable guide (both technical and philosophical) on the road to becoming an R expert. I'm looking forward to putting some dog ears on my copy.

I bought this book at the 2008 JSM. After I read the first 3 chapters I found that it is too wordy. But I have to agree that this is a good book for understanding the basic mechanism of R. If you are an advanced user you might want to read the S programming which is written by W.N. Venables & B.D Ripley. It is much better than Software for Data Analysis with R.

As a big fan of L.M. Montgomery's books I looked forward to reading a book about her life hoping to get a better idea of what she might have been like. Perhaps it was the author's style of writing..lots of silly quotes about birds, trees, etc. Also very little about her family other than her husband's melancholy but hardly anything about her two sons. I hope the next bio will have more substance.

This to date has been the best biography on L. M. Montgomery, as most of the others simply re-hash each other both in content and in photos. This one covers new ground though, and covers old ground in a new and more insightful and thorough way. I especially liked how Mollie Gillen brings out Maud's contradictory nature, showing us that the public Maud (cheerful dutiful wife of a minister) was often at odds with the private Maud, a woman who often felt repressed, depressed, and stressed over events in her life.

A new comprehensive biography for many years now been in the process of being written by Mary Rubio about the life of L. M. Montgomery, and I read somewhere that it's supposed to be published later this year. I can't wait. It'll be interesting to see how it stands against this book. I have high hopes.

David Rehak
author of "Love and Madness"

The people interviewed in this book are leading Swing musicans. They may not be well-known to the neo-swingsters, or those whose idea of swing is big band white swing groups that were essentially pop oriented parasites on Black music, nor are post swing proto rock and rollers misidentified with Swing like Louis Jordan or Louis Prima featured.

However, if you interested in serious swing musicians who were at the center of the jazz swing music, African American pioneers, and jazz oriented white musicians this is your book.

Dance is a great interviewer here and in his other world of books. He gets behind the common places to points that MUSICIANS really want to know about the player's experience.

An example is the interview he did with Elmer Snowden in which a dying Snowden allows him to use his secret that he used guitar strings on his banjo is precisely for those of us who recognize Snowden as a major Jazz banjoist, a major band leader, a senior stateman of Jazz, even though he may remain unknown among white yuppie swing wannabes (or has another fad captivated these know-nothings?).

Dance also interviews enough of the great arrangers--a group neglected by everyone except musicians and serious swing fans--that we get a pictures of their contributions.

This book is not narrow. There are lots of connections from the Swing world of the 30s and 40s back to earlier forms of Jazz and forward to bop, R & B, and even rock and roll here.

My favorite part of the book is where he takes a poll of all his interviewees. My favorite part is where the musicians are asked what they would do if they were not musician. We see a bunch of interesting alternatives that help you gauge the personality and background with their alternatives. My favorite is the player--I will let you discover who he is--who says "I would rather be dead" than not play music! I've used that as a watchword not only for music but for the better things in life morally, artistically, and every other way.

Now when I ordered this book I was under the assumption it would be about Big Bands and Swing (isn't that pretty much the title?).Now when most people think of Big Bands they think of Miller, Dorsey, Shaw, Herman, Thornhill, or even famous sidemen from these bands such as Conrad Gozzo for example. But this book is filled with some pretty obscure folks, ie: Lawrence Lucie,Billy Mackel,Eddie Locke and of course famous ones that you'll recognize such as Erskine Hawkins, Cozy Cole, Chick Webb etc..but for those fans thinking it will be about possibly there favorite band leader or about the music that was played or by who they will be sadly mistaken. Not that the book is un -interesting, it's just not what I was expecting when I ordered it. So buyer beware .....

Having been challenged by interpretations,and analyzing the assumptions behind the concept of Western civilization, The Western Experience presents a confused panorama about what Western Civilization is all about. Is European Civilization the civilization of Modern Europe and America excluding Australia? The concept of civilization is avoided in spite of the fact that the text was designed to provide an analytical and comprehensive account of the processes by which European society and civilization evolved. Civilization is defined as just a social organization with more complex rules than those of the cavemen. The proper concept of civilization is not treated in a rational and coherent manner. How does the narrative around selected recurring themes fit together under a broader concept of civilization in order to understand the continuing thread of developmment of the so-called western civilization? How do you distinguish one civilization from another in space and in time?