Mitchell Books

Think you want to learn Karate? Just dying to take it up and join a club/dojo, don't know which style, club or instructor to choose etc - GET THIS BOOK NOW!! and save yourself a lot of aggravation and be armed with lots of (the right) questions when you approach your prospective club.

Only 48 pages, yes, but don't knock it - this little book packs a BIG punch in providing all the basic information you need to decide whether or not you're going to 1) Take up karate 2) which style is best for me 3) how to choose a club 4) what's involved and expected of a student over a couple of years 5) how often to train and what benefits karate can offer me.

Quite a lot of Kihon (basic moves) are show with lots of pictures. An explanation of kumite (sparring) and kata (forms/choreographed techniques) mentioned to.

This book is almost as cheap as or even cheaper than most karate clubs lessons are and would be VERY WISE investment for anyone tempted to take up the art. As many karate-ka know already, if you do take it up and you are serious about karate, you soon discover it's addictive nature which leads it to becoming more than a mere hobby, more a way of life.

Once armed with the information in this book, you can truly make the correct choice of club and instructor & style etc. You can waste an awful lot of money in choosing the wrong club, worse than that, you could end up badly injured and not be insured!

The book was an easy read and filled with information and great photo's. We learned a lot and it was perfect to complete our project.

I FELT THIS BOOK WAS OVERPRICED, AND DID NOT CARE FOR THE CHILDREN'S BOOK FORMAT, BUT SINCE I'M A BIG KEITH URBAN FAN I PURCHASED THE BOOK.

This is a wonderful book that explains how chemotherapy fights cancer and why it might make Mom feel bad. The narration also touches upon the child's feelings about Mom leaving the dinner table abruptly or eating a lot of popsicles to raise fluid intake. Suitable for ages 4-10. Please don't go paying $190 for a copy. The book is available for free from the KidsCope.org website.

From the begining selections "old woman" all the way through part four "I Love Those Who Yearn For The Impossible" this book of poetry shows us a poet focusing a keen eye on the everyday and extraordinary events that filter through a workingman's life, as well as those allusive transcendental moments that present themselves to those with open eyes: here's a poet weaving such diverse threads, creating a well worn fabric of humanity in the raw .... "flat tire", a love poem by the side of the road...... poetry of 'the mill' and the dramas that unfold in the massive rolls of paper, "a smell & feel all its own"; the song of a night shifter.... there are trolls, unmanicured gods, owls hunting night's dreams, and the many spells of loves and labors lost, found, misplaced..... a working man's loves and labors born of a working man's god... tenderness and callused dreams go hand-in-hand throughout "The King Of Oafs"... an excellent read! ...."i know my song, as if the banter of crows, was never easy to dismiss" (from "God Of Corn" - KING OF OAFS)... thanks to Kenn for putting mind and pen to paper!

"The Knights" is one of the comic masterpieces of Aristophanes, constituting a direct personal attack on Cleon. The level of invective and satire is pretty astounding, especially since this was only the fourth comedy written by Aristophanes. In his previous comedy, "The Archanians," a character had threatened to cut up Cleon into shoe-leather for the Knights, and in this play the comic playwright makes good on his promise. From satirizing the policies of Cleon's political party and capturing the miseries of war, Aristophanes turns to a personal attack on Cleon as a demagogue.

The comedy begins with two characters, Demosthenes and Nicias, who are caricatures of the historic orators who Aristophanes saw as following public opinion instead of truly leading the people like Pericles. The pair are slaves in the house of Demos, that is to say the citizens of Athens, and are complaining about the new slave, the Paplagonian ("the Tanner"), who represents Cleon and who controls "Demos" by even worst means than they ever did. So they decide to steal the oracles used to persuade Demos and learn that their enemy will be brought down by a sausage-seller. The next thing we know, a sausage-seller stumbles upon stage and the pair convince him to acting, promising him wealth, power, and the support of a thousand knights (who comprise the play's chorus).

At this point the Paphlagonian shows up and the rest of the play consists of mainly a series of agons between him and the sausage-seller in which the two try to out wit, out lie, and outlast each other to win the favor of Demos. The sausage-seller wins over the Demos and Cleon is condemned to sell sausages made with the meat of asses and dogs, always be drunk, to exchange foul language with prostitutes, and to drink nothing but dirty bath water. In the parabasis the chorus ignore Cleon and talk instated about what would happen to the poor tragic poet who wrote this comedy if Athens treats them the way they have other geniuses as they crow old. The big finale has the chorus singing the praises of the knights, their forefathers, the god Poseidon, and of horses (which are sacred to Poseidon).

Compared to "The Acharnians," it is clear "The Knights" is a much more bitter play, portraying the Paplagonian as an unprincipled, lying, cheating scoundrel. The legend is that no other comic dared to lampoon Cleon on stage and that Aristophanes played the role himself and instead of wearing a mask that would clearly represent the features of Cleon smeared his face with wine to represent the purple and bloated visage of the demagogue. The title, as is often the case with the work of Aristophanes, represents the chorus in the play. The Knights were one of the highest orders of citizens in Athens and embodied many of the aristocratic preferences and prejudices that Aristophanes saw as being outdated.

"The Knights" was the fourth play produced by Aristophanes, presented at the Lenæan Festival in 424 B.C. We do not know much of his first two efforts, "The Revellers" and "The Babylonians," both of which are long lost, but the third comedy, "The Acharnians" was the first of his three great comedies dealing with the subject of the Peloponnesian War, along with "The Peace" and "Lysistrata." "The Knights" was awarded the first prize at the festival, but Cleon remained in power and therefore a subject for further barbs from Aristophanes.

IT DIDN'T TAKE ME LONG TO FINISH THIS BOOK.....IT WAS GREAT...I WAS FAMILAR WITH THE AREA THE WRITER WAS WRITING ABOUT AND IT SEEM TO BE A NONFICTION INSTEAD OF FICTIONAL.....IT WAS A GREAT READ......

We're planning a trip to Kyrgyzstan next July, and I've found this guide the single best book for trip planning. The Lonely Planet combines Kyrgyzstan with the other Stans into a "Central Asia" volume, and thus dilutes its coverage of Kyrgyzstan. The Cadogan guide is severely dated, all the way back to the immediate post Communist period. Mitchell's guide, on the other hand, has useful, no nonsense advice. We've found this guide useful in building our itinerary, because there's enough detail to help you decide where you want to go and what you want to see, without having to flip past lists of every last youth hostel that you never intend to stay in anyway.

This is a beautiful book lavished with beautiful photos. It does not overarch itself, containing just the right amount of information. I like its sanctimonious moralising about the two true pizzas, the Neapolitan Marinara (a pizza devoid of any seafood or fish) and the margherita. There are many coffee table books out there about food. This one is better than most, a little unusual, perhaps because it started life in Italian, and this is a translation. Thumbs up from me. A more detailed review may be found at http://abbotsfordblog.com/?p=27.

Bad stuff first: the book is dated and most of the pictures are not particularly good. A good scientist does not necessarily make a good photographer.

Still, the book lives up to its name. I know of no other book that gives such a thorough treatment of the mathematics, physics, and chemistry of photography in so few pages (369 + back material). Even if you think chemistry-based photography is obsolete, the explanation of the film characteristic curve offers a 1984 fortune-teller's elaboration on the loss we see today when we convert from raw to TIFF or JPEG, why that loss MUST happen, and how to evaluate the image to minimize that loss.

Furthermore, the mathematics and the physics are not one bit obsolete, but eternal and worth studying. I don't want to do a dozen calculations every time I shoot a picture, but knowing I can do those calculations if I need to is hugely empowering, allowing the artistic hemisphere of my brain greater freedom, knowing that the technical hemisphere is standing by to provide backup support any time it's needed.

For most artists, this is a fairly difficult book, written by an astronomer, not one of us. Nevertheless, read it. I will pay you back.