Richardson Books

This was originally required for a MBA marketing class. Great book. Good examples. Written well. Highly recommended no matter what year your reading it in.

This was originally required for a MBA marketing class. Great book. Good examples. Written well. Highly recommended no matter what year your reading it in.

Philip Latham (1902-1981) was the pseudonym of the astronomer Robert S. Richardson. He wrote a string of science books and articles, mostly for _Analog_ and mostly about astronomy. A couple of articles that I remember with fondness are the controversial "Nice Girls on Mars" (which elicited stern rebuttals from C.S. Lewis and Miriam Allen deFord) and "Space Technology of a Track Meet." Under the Philip Latham byline, he wrote about a score of science fiction short stories that frequently had about as much to do with magic as with astronomy. He wrote only two science fiction novels-- _Five Against Venus_ (1952) and _Missing Men of Saturn_ (1953), both juveniles for Winston.

Latham explains that when he was asked to write a science fiction novel set on Saturn, he found the task to be daunting. (Remember that in the early 1950s, there was very little that we knew about the planet with any certainty.) His solution was to turn to a nineteenth century astronomy book by Richard A. Proctor that confidently asserted that there was almost certainly life on Saturn. He used Proctor's picture of Saturn as the basis for his novel.

Latham then takes the interesting step of populating his novel with less than sterling characters. His hero, Dale Sutton, is that most obnoxious of creatures, the Big Man on Campus at the Space Academy. Sutton gets assigned to a beat-up space tub called the _Albatross_, and the crew begins to take him down a few pegs. But the crew are not wholly virtuous, either. Many of them are uneducated and superstitious-- traits that cause them to balk when they are assigned to investigate the mystery surrounding another crew that has vanished before them on Saturn. And they are traits that will contribute to a tragedy at the end of the novel.

Give this novel a try. It is solidly, if unspectacularly, written. The cover by Alex Schomburg depicts a spaceship tilting precarously on the top of a lava crusted cliff with an erupting volcano in the near background and a smoky, acerbic atmosphere. We now know that Saturn is predominantly a gas giant. But given the state of knowledge at this time, we can hardly fault Latham or Schomburg on scientific grounds.

This is a "space opera" of the first order. I first read it as a very young man, shortly after it was published, and the work has stuck with me over all these years. I recently found a copy in a used book store (no, I won't sell it) and gave it a reread. The little boy in me enjoyed it as much now as when I first discovered it. Recommend this one highly and those interested in the history of this particular genre certainly should give it a close look.

It is so refreshing to know that our children can read, or we can read to them, words of prayer and spiritual guidance, that can help them to know, love, and appreciate the word of God, the Father of Abraham, Issac and Jacob. In a world filled with so little good reading materials for our children, I find that this book a true delight and a blessing. I highly recommend it to all parents, and others, who love children.

Parents are living in a time when we cannot afford to forget the value of balancing our lives and the lives of our children with appreciation for prayer. Prayer let's us know that there is a power source we can tap into to make our lives better. Ms. Nettles' book offers parents an opportunity to give children an appreciation for the things around us. The prayers are non-denominational. And, even if a parent is an agnostic the book can still work for the family. It's not far fetched to invision some of the tragic stories we hear today about young children and adults going on killing sprees being prevented by parents taking time to pray with their children. Nettles' book takes life situations and turns them into prayer subjects. This allows a parent and child to converse about everyday subjects and place a higher value on them . What I'm sharing is that this book makes it easier to pray and converse with your children in one important setting.The prayers can then lead into stories you share from your life experience.That's how I make the prayers an event my grandson and 12-year old look forward to. If we are well off or not so well off, this book is a tool to help us guide our children. Every time I see or hear a news bulletin of a tragedy of mindless brutality the value of "Prayers and Meditations For Our Little Angels" is reinforced. The title is a message to our precious young ones. It's their book.

Professional Java attempts to do something I don't think any one book can do well, which is to say something useful on just about every topic. This book's sections include: important additions/changes to JDK 5; a whirlwind tour of project methodologies; design patterns; build tools; persistence tools; UIs; web applications; JNI; EJB 3; SOA; security; and packaging and deployment. The book wants to be a "one-stop shop," and that's fine. After reading through most of the sections and skimming some, however, I'm not sure what the profile of the target shopper might be.

The topic coverage varies wildly from section to section, in the writing style (and quality) and in the effectiveness of sample code to illustrates a point. Too often the descriptions are both verbose and phrased in the passive voice. Some code samples seem like proof-of-concept sketches of a feature or library facility, rather than a compelling example of its use. Still other samples seem full of boilerplate code that speeds up the page-turning but isn't illuminating. And sometimes the text changes its diction strangely; the style changes from a general description to a "follow-along" activity without warning. Some sentences sound as if the author left them in as a reminder to complete a task.

The result is a thick book that, for me, is sometimes tedious or exhausting to read. I think it would have been helpful to give author credit by chapter, if only to know the presentation might change significantly. Also, a concerted effort at paring things down, and keeping the diction clear and active, would help make it more readable and something worth referencing.

As mentioned, the topic coverage is quite broad. This book might come in handy to someone who just needs many topics in one book. So long as you don't need your one reference also for getting started, this book could be a useful collection.

The book provide really helpful for you if you are trying to know more about Java after you have done it. It provides a lot of examples for doing one thing in different ways.

Richardson proves to be a maddeningly elusive subject, for most of the book. But the last few bits are worth it. The Everyman actor who became his characters, there's got to be a better bio out there, but this one is satisfactory enough.

A tremendously enjoyable biography of a great actor his personal history, and great insights into his craft and great talent a warm appreciation and a pleasure to read . A book for all theatre lovers.

Sacred Monsters, Sacred Masters provides a mix of essays on artists, writers and tycoons, each illustrated with a photo or piece of art and selected by the author because they are about special people he's known. While non-artists are included, this is reviewed here for its focus on many of the fine artists Richardson has encountered, from Dali and Warhol to Marden and Picasso. Sacred Monsters, Sacred Masters is an intriguing collection of images and insights.

Having read the first two volumes of Mr. Richardson's "A Life Of Picasso," and having thoroughly enjoyed them, I went into this book with high expectations. Overall, I was disappointed. Granted, the book is a collection of some of the articles that Mr. Richardson has written for popular magazines over the past 30 years or so. The audience for, say, a "Vanity Fair" article is not the same as the audience for a scholarly journal. But Mr. Richardson acknowledges in the preface that he had hundreds of articles to choose from. He states that he made a conscious decision not to include his more academic essays. That is a shame. Because some of the material that is included, about such people as Lucien Freud and Brice Marden, for example, gives a tantalizing glimpse of what might have been. Here is Lucien Freud on why he chooses to paint nudes of, almost exclusively, close friends and relatives: "Aesthetic and biological truth-telling is what my painting is all about.....the fact that a model would never find himself or herself in this particular situation were it not at the painter's behest makes for vulnerability.....vulnerability would not be an issue if I used professional models. But I don't, because professional models have been stared at so much that they have grown another skin. When they take their clothes off, they are not naked; their skin has become another garment." I would like to have seen more keen insights into the artistic process, such as this one, and less of the following (this is from the essay on Salvador Dali and his wife Gala): "One of my responsibilities (as vice president of the firm that acted as Dali's dealer) was keeping the artist to the terms of his contract- a one-man show of new work, every two years. This was no easy task, given that his eye was so bleary and his hand so shaky that assistants had taken over most of his work. I could not help feeling sorry for the seedy old conjurer with his rhinoceros-horn wand, leopard-skin overcoat, and designer whiskers, not to speak of his surreal breath." For the most part, you can't see any reason to dredge these essays up and put them into book form. There is a lot of gossip, particularly about peoples' sex lives (The Dalis, Vita Sackville-West, Peggy Guggenheim, etc.) and there are several pieces where Mr. Richardson takes on subjects that are just too easy to ridicule, such as Dr. Barnes, The Sitwells and Armand Hammer. (Hence, the title of my review.) Since Mr. Richardson states that he and his assistants had to do a lot of work to update these essays, there is really no excuse for some of the blatant errors- such as writing (in the essay on the Merchant/Ivory movie "Surviving Picasso"- where Richardson is trying to make the point that moviemakers have done a poor job of portraying major artists) that Anthony Quinn played van Gogh. (He did not. In "Lust For Life" Kirk Douglas played van Gogh and Quinn played Paul Gauguin.) In another piece, the statement is made that the announcement of the Nobel Peace Prize is made in Norway. That's wrong. It is made in Stockholm, Sweden. In the essay on Pablito Picasso, Pablo's grandson, Mr. Richardson writes that it took seven years to settle the Picasso estate. As Picasso died in 1973, this would bring us to 1980. But the essay informs us that the estate was divided up in 1990. This may seem as though I am nitpicking. But, remember, Mr. Richardson is working on the third volume of his Picasso biography. The first two volumes have been rightly hailed as a tremendous achievement. The cheap shots and silly errors contained in "Sacred Monsters, Sacred Masters" are beneath a scholar of Mr. Richardson's ability. I still give this book three-stars, as even though the collection is uneven, there are several good essays. Besides the pieces on Lucien Freud and Brice Marden, which I mentioned earlier, there are thoughtful articles on Klee, Miro and Braque, for example. On the whole, however, one gets the impression that Mr. Richardson's publisher wanted something from him while they were waiting for the third volume of "A Life Of Picasso." There's nothing wrong with that. It's just that a little more care should have been taken in deciding what that something was going to be.

As an avid scrapbooker I was wanting a book that would help me with my spiritual journey. I purchased this book for doing just that; it provides eight major areas: resonance, equilibrium, movement, awareness, expression, awakening, celebration and connection.

The only thing I was disappointed with was the lack of colour photos, instead they had just been included in a special section of the book. Otherwise, a good book worth a read.

I love this book. It is not a how-to manual for beginning scrapbookers, but rather a group of prompts for you to think in new ways about this hobby and how you can make it more meaningful and personal by taking it in some new directions.

I am very pleased with "A Baker's Street Dozen." It is so wonderful to listen to these stories and let the power of your imagination create the scenes described by the many wonderful tales. The only flaw I would like to see the publishers correct is that the stories do not seem to follow a chronological order. The fifth tale, "The Final Problem," is an account of Sherlock Holmes' final adventure. However, you still have 7 more tales to go through! Place these stories in chronological order and you will have a flawless product.

John Gielgud as Holmes! Orson Welles as Moriarty! How could a Holmes lover resist buying this collection? I spent six pleasant hours reliving the Holmes saga. I went with Holmes and Watson from the foggy streets of London to the English countryside to the Reichenbach Falls where Holmes and Moriarty fought their last battle. Radio plays stimulate the mind to a a degree that television never can, and these stories served up mental stimulation of the first order. As good as "A Baker's Street Dozen" is, though, it doesn't quite measure up to the quality of the BBC series starring Clive Merrison as Holmes. Gielgud is undoubtedly the better actor, but Merrison is the better Holmes.

Despite the fact that Gielgud doesn't capture Holmes' energy as well as Merrison, "A Baker's Street Dozen" is superb listening. It would make an excellent addition to any mystery lover's audio library.

One minor quibble: I can't understand why they renamed three of the stories. "The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton" became "The Blackmailer;" "The Adventure of the Golden Pince Nez" became "The Yoxley Case;" and "The Adventure of the Dying Detective" became "Rare Disease." In each case, Conan Doyle's choice of titles was superior.

A must-have for long-time AutoCAD users who want to quickly implement AutoCAD 2000- and 2000i-based products. The beauty of this book is its focus on effectively using AutoCAD to solve business problems. A great supplement to the out-of-box documentation from Autodesk.

I have bought the special edition using autocad2000 to help me with a course I am taking at college. I had my teacher take a gander and he said that it was a good book but thought that it could elaborate a little more. The idea of spending some time explaining about drafting was a very nice touch though. philiperochon@aol.com

It's a good book. I think it's worth reading, informative and a quick read. Definitely recommend it.

Terror has broken out on all continents across the world. Inner cities have further decayed. The poor have sunk even deeper. The world's underclass has not risen either socially or materially. How can the ruling group keep the lid on civil unrest?

The controlling power's perspective of its enemy and subsequently, effective defenses have to change. The major barriers against physical and psychological invasion, that oceans historically provided, are now major conduits for insurgent infiltration. Michael Richardson correctly states that along with the new meaning for weapons of mass destruction and subversive ideology ...the threat of terrorism has escalated several-fold since terrorists struck the United States on 11 September 2001 (p vi). The response has been emblematic of the crisis; ... knowledge of terrorist intentions, capabilities, and their opportunities for attack, increased after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001. Terrorist training manuals and attack plans specifically targeting naval and commercial maritime shipping in Asia, the Gulf and in the Mediterranean were recovered from the caves of Afghanistan and safe houses in Pakistan. Although Al-Qaeda and its associated groups have suffered somewhat in the past few years, the capacity of violent Islamist groups for adaptation and regeneration has ensured the continuity of the group (p vii).

Richardson examines the causes and solutions to the threatened safety of global maritime trade. As an example, the issue of lax ship regulation reveals that ...terrorists as well as those who smuggle arms, drugs, people and contraband can thrive in the poorly regulated havens which the "flag of convenience" system provides. Today, the main flag of convenience fleets in terms of gross tonnage belong to Panama, Liberia, the Bahamas, Malta, Cyprus, the Marshall Islands in the Pacific, and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines in the Caribbean. Terrorists see the attractions of opaque ownership in shipping and have often used it to camouflage their activities (p 88-89).

This is a good study of the state of current maritime security affairs.