Gregory Books

I was looking for great mermaid art when I happened to come across Gold's 2005 calendar. On an impulse, I checked out his website and came across the most realistic mermaid photography I'd ever seen. So many "mermaid" calendars feature women in cheap costumes with oversized busts and provocative faces, but Gold's photography is truly art! This is the first actual piece I've bought by him and the images are absolutely gorgeous and strikingly clear. Unlike the women in the afore-mentioned calendars, Gold's mermaids are completely natural: their poses are evocative, not provocative, their faces are often turned or hidden instead of leering at the camera, their fins are realistic, and the pictures feature them in several different settings instead of just on the beach. There's nudity in some of the pictures, but it's always tasteful and natural (none of the mermaids appear to have breast implants, for one thing) and there's nothing dirty about it. The pictures even have interesting and creative titles, such as "Eternal Hope" and "Return to Paradise" which add to their complexity. If you love mermaid and aquatic art, I strongly recommend this. Gold is truly a genius in the art of photography and his images have often been mistaken for paintings. He also has a book "The Mermaid Collection" coming out, which features many of his gorgeous images, both seen and unseen. I can't wait!

This book was a very pleasant surprise. It is rigurous yet accessible enough to provide a very clear picture of the metabolic pathway engineering field. Complicated topics like metabolic control and flux analisys (MCA) are very well treated. The examples are usually relevant and well explained, however, some need pen and paper to work up some jumps in the reasoning train. The first chapter is just an introduction whereas the second chapter is a review of cellular metabolism that may result too dense for most people (including myself). Most biologists can probably do away skipping it (althought some examples involving transport where quite interesting). I am glad I didn't put the book away because on chapter 3 things get really exciting. If you are interested in understanding how metabolic pathways are organized and what analytical tools are there available to model them (and eventually "reconfigure") this book for you.

Note: the book is meatn to be undestood and it is nice to see MCA depleted of the hoopla many authors insist on surrounding it with.

Horace Gregory's Ovid has been my Ovid since high school in the fifties. I'm on my third or fourth paperback copy, and the one I'm using now is held together by shipping tape in place of a spine. In my view no English translator of Ovid since the days of Golding and Marlowe has been half the poet Gregory is. His may not be the most accurate version for minutae, but it's sheer, transfixing poetry from end to end, fully living up to the Romans' own term for epic--perpetuum carmen, or "unending song." Here's a taste. Jove has just decided to end the world with a flood (partly because he fears the potency of his own thunderbolts):

...Auster he released, its dark

Wings over earth, the Nubian darkness

Deeper than midnight, beard and long grey hair

In fall of rain, black forehead in wild clouds,

Its great clapping hands thunder in the dark.

Gregory's Medea grows wicked before your eyes. His Perseus is as clueless as Dudley DoRight. He makes a rousing, enveloping success of the battle of the centaurs and Lapiths, punctuated with the story of the utterly charming centaur filly Hylonome:

Twice a day she washed her face and hands

In a bright waterfall that dropped from high green places

Above Pagasa, then for further beauty

(And twice a day) she bathed in that same water.

She had fine taste in dress, and draped a shoulder

Or a pointed breast with ermine, mink or fox.

Gregory's Ovid can be mildly or uproariously funny, or utterly romantic. Here's Pygmalion, wonderstruck as his beloved statue comes alive. Surely Ovid's and maybe Gregory's feelings about their art are involved here as well:

[He} kissed the sleeping lips, now soft, now warm,

Then touched her breasts and cupped them in his hands;

They were as though ivory had turned to wax

And wax to life, yielding, yet quick with breath.

Pygmalion, half-dazed, lost in his raptures,

And half in doubt, afraid his senses failed him,

Touched her again and felt his hopes come true,

The pulse-beat stirring where he moved his hands.

Then, as if words could never say enough,

He poured a flood of praise to smiling Venus.

He kissed the girl until she woke beneath him.

Her eyes were shy; she flushed; yet her first look

Saw at one glance his face and Heaven above it.

This is not just my favorite translation of the Metamorphoses. It's one of my favorite translations of anything, a great poem in its own right. Buy it.

As a graduate student in Measurement and Research and as a new employee for a testing company, I needed a good foundation in differential item functioning (DIF) in order to be able to do DIF studies. After pulling relevant articles from the library, I realized I needed some background on this topic before it would really make sense to me. This book helped a lot. The background information on how DIF relates to validity as well as what DIF studies can and cannot accomplish set the stage for a clearer understanding of the actual analyses.

I was especially pleased to find SAS code for the Mantel-Haenszel procedure. Also included was a very helpful BILOG example for use in DIF studies that utilize IRT methods.

I'm still reading, but in one weekend have gone from complete novice with barely a definitional understanding of DIF to comprehending why such studies are valuable, the history of DIF analysis, and a good idea of how to proceed to do DIF analysis.

This is a great book, especially considering the price. If you have some real analysis and group theory under your belt, then this will provide an enjoyable introduction to topology. It moves through point-set, basic combinatorial techniques, homotopy theory, simplicial homology, and a brief peek at differential manifolds. The author has done a good job of explaining basic concepts. By putting this in a Euclidean setting, you do not get a completely general approach, but you can cover a lot of (conceptual) ground with some economy.
If you need to brush up on analysis first, I recommend Rosenlict's INTRO TO ANALYSIS.

As a computerized accounting instructor I have found the current edition of this book to be a helpful teaching tool. It allows students to work at their own pace and does not require previous computer or accounting experience. Starting with the basics of installing the provided software each chapter is a step by step lesson for company setup, customer and sales management, purchasing,etc. Numerous examples allow the student to determine if steps have been inputted correctly. Along with the CD that contains an educational version of Peachtree 7.0 five floppy disk containing business simulations are included.

I'm learning micro from this text - my jr college is using Colander's text for my micro class, but I find C's text to be confusing, inaccurate at times,lacking critical info on basic concepts, and often condescending in tone towards the student readers...

So I'm using this Mankiw & Taylor text to successfully, quickly, and easily learn the material for my class. And I'm scoring 100% on graded Aplia assignments, and averaging 95% on graded exams - many thanks to Mankiw & Taylor!! Meanwhile, my classmates, using the req'd Colander text, are really struggling to grasp the req'd concepts of the course, and spending much more time than I am learning the basics.

Thanks also to Amazon reviewers, who praised Mankiw's texts. I bought this one to be used as a reference/supplement to C's text if I needed it... and I found this Mankiw & Taylor text to be so good that I only use C's text to determine which Mankiw & Taylor chapters to study for upcoming classwork (the M & T text presents info in a differing order than does Colander.)

I'm encouraging my Professors in my micro and macro courses to reconsider their choice of textbooks and to consider using Mankiw's texts instead of Colander's. I am very happy that I purchased this book - it is much more valuable to me than the Colander text req'd for the class.

If you're relatively new to the philosophy of mind, and want to gain an understanding of the direction in which current thinking is moving, then this is an excellent place to start.

Showing how current issues in the philosophy of mind derive largely from the work of Frege and Russell, Prof. McCulloch demonstrates a way in which we can account for the mental in a way which avoids the inadequacies of a world rejecting internalism, and an anti-mentalistic behaviourism.

Drawing heavily on the work of the later Wittgenstein, he develops an account of the mind characterised as 'behaviour embracing mentalism'. As well as attacking the structure of much thinking within the analytic tradition, this book also represents a sustained attack on scientistic influences in the philosophy of mind.

A satisfying read!!!!

The history of thought is too often streamed into philosophy or science with a bit of psychology thrown in. This book is a jump from the academic mainstream and fascinates by a journey from the easliest recorded thinkers in the first known writing in Sumeria, through the gnomen (the Sumerian word for the finger on the sundial that measures time) to the knowledge and philosophy of Ancient Greece (they had cogwheels and gears) through classical times to the present. This is a history of science from a philosphical perspective, a reflection on the recorded mind of man. Richard Gregory is a philosopher, a scientist and a man who knows as much as anyone knows how the brain works. A tour de force, this book will change you by captivating and entertaining as well as profoundly altering your mind.

The person who gets the most out of this book will be someone already familar with the murder of Canadian POWs by members of the 12th SS in Normandy. A couple of books have been around on this subject for a while and TV documentaries have delved into this sordid part of WWII history a number of times. This is the story of a nephew's quest to find out more of his murdered Uncle's life up to his untimely death, and gives a huge insight into the suffering of a family devasted by the unresolved death of a loved one at the hands of a barbaric enemy. The book uses letters home by George Pollard and Regimental records to build the story of this young Canadian's travel overseas, and court transcripts tell the story of the postwar trial of the SS officers. The books also covers the nephew's visits to Normandy and how he is effected by events that ocurred before he was born.

Moving, tear-jerking and thoroughly researched