X Books

Solve for X is the fourth collection of brief, "creative nonfiction" essays by author Arthur Saltzman (Professor of English, Missouri Southern State University). From reflecting on the phenomenon of child prodigies in "Wunderkindergarten", to a tongue-in-cheek suggestion of how the degree to which a woman enjoys James Joyce's novels can be used to estimate her level of arrogance, to the unquestionable dominance the automobile has claimed in modern American culture, Solve for X ranges the gamut of introspection, insight, and at times, crushing criticism. A most delectable intellectual smorgasbord.

Arthur Saltzman has again exhibited his superb writing style, displaying his biting satire, poignant observations and hilarious sense of humor. This collection of essays covers a wide range of his interests and experiences, and flows so easily that the book becomes a very fast read. The stories are fresh and never fail to arouse the reader's curiosity about where the essays will lead. Some of them caused me to have the best laugh I've had in a long time from a piece of writing. Others intrigued me as I considered the interesting viewpoints of the author. And all of them exhibited his usual flair and his wonderful choices of words and images. I truly enjoyed this book and recommend it highly to all age groups, along with his earlier collections of original essays. The material is current, witty and just plain fun to read. I eagerly await the topics, issues and recollections to be covered in the next series.

Kathleen Kulp-Hill's translation provides a doorway into the 13th century world of the Galician-language miracle tales about the Virgin Mary and her faithful followers in the Iberian Peninsula and from around the European world. Professor Kulp-Hill's notes add historical and cultural tidbits of interest. This text is an excellent resource for beginners and advanced scholars with a love for things medieval.

This book contains English translations of the Cantigas. The original Galician-Portugese verses are not included, nor are the musical notations. There are some line drawings of the illuminations, but no plates of the originals. I am a harp student with an interest in early music. The translations have helped me to interpret the music more effectively. This is helpful, accessible book for academics or students of early music.

I've been an Apple user since the old Apple IIc and have been through just about every generation of MAC and the operating systems. I'm not a "under the hood" guy - I use computers to get things done. With OS X, Apple did it again, introducing great new technology without documentation to let you know how to use it and unlease the power.

Most computer guides I've seen fall into one of two categories: A- The "This is a mouse. To use the mouse grasp firmly and push . . ." or the B- "Once in Terminal mode and root level, type the command. . . " If you are like me, you want to know how to get the most out of your machine without resorting to programming language. Mr. Miser has produced a great guide that takes you step by step through just about all the important functions and how to steps for MAC OS X (and 10.1). If you check some of the self-help boards on the internet, you get conflicting and confusing info. For example- installation of OS X and partitioning- Should you have the Classic envrionment on a different partion? How does the model of machine effect the partitioning decision? He gives you INFORMATION not just instructions, so you know the advantages and disadvantages of each decision. The book takes you step by step through all the new features and how to use them, and the tips with each section seem to predict your questions or problems before they occur. Having already installed OS X , I had been stumbling through the little quirks and problems. It IS new and different from the old MAC operating systems, and you have to get use to life in a Networked world. I had so many light bulb moments of sudden clarity that I had former Enron execs calling to offer their services in trading the excess power being generated!

The book is littered with wonderful tidbits. I had a simple question no one would answer - how do you rebuild the desktop in OS X? Found the answer - you DON'T need to perform this housekeeping under OS X. Thank you Brad!

Mr. Miser is a rare author. Here is an engineer who has a great understanding of the technology who can give wonderfully detailed information to the user in simple, plain to understand language without talking down to his reader. He has a good grasp that there are a lot of heavy users out there who are not engineers but just want to maximize productivity and minimize problems. On the other hand, the book goes far beyond the beginner level and helps you solve many issues that may have had you visiting your local computer guru- at $70 per hour. Thanks!

And as for OS X - I am doing more, faster than ever before. So make the plunge! Read the book, develop your installlation plan and make the switch over to OS X!

I don't know about you, nor your OSX situation. But I have a computing lab of 22 flat panel iMacs running OSX which have been nothing but trouble. (So much for "out of the box!")

In two separate situations I poured through the more popular and well recommended books on OSX looking for solutions. When none of them addressed those specific problems, I wrote the authors of those books asking the specific questions. (I won't mention them here.) NONE of them responded with an answer, and only ONE responded at all, and that was with a vague "guess." (Which later turned out to be wrong.)

This book arrived from QUE in my Reviews stack, and I instantly went hunting for the answers to those specific problems. I found the solutions quickly and easily among these pages.

The book is well cross-referenced, and written in a "low" geek-speak manner so that most Mac users should be able to use it effectively.

So many of the "trendy" books these days are mere reflections of the "Help" files included with the software or hardware packages. The "tips and tricks" books seem to be a carefully edited version of the popular online discussion forums and discussion lists. But Brad's book seems to evolve beyond that and actually presents important information not found elsewhere -- or more fully fleshes out details skimmed over or misrepresented by the others. (For instance: few of the other books warn you up front that the Finder cannot burn multiple-session CD-RWs -- BEFORE you burn one -- even though the machine ships with a rewritable drive.)

As a book reviewer, I've poured over maybe 30 of the most popular OSX books in the past 12 to 18 months. I feel comfortable recommending this book for all my readers as probably the best purchasing decision they could make for OSX help.

And that's all I have to say about that.

I bought this for a 3 year old girl who needs variety and this was a good choice. I think her father was just as interested in the experiments so it will be more fun for him to actually use the book with his daughter. I saw it on the food network and it became a 'have to have'. A little pricey as books go but definitely worth it as it will be around for a lot more years. I am even going to copy it so it doesn't get wrecked with dirty hands.

I work with kids in a variety of age groups, and I've used recipes from this book several times. Most of them are easy enough for the kids to do themselves (though I would recommend adult supervision at all times!). Boys and girls both seem to like it, and I've made use of some of the recipes at birthday parties as well as at Girl Scout meetings. It is definitely something that anyone who works with kids should have on hand.

Prof Wang ' Specal fuctions is a classic on specai functions,
In fact Prof, Wang was also an admirer of Modern Analysis.
The style of writting this book is in fact follows the style
of Modern Analysis, That is why is so good. But of course
Prof Wang had his own scheme and add topics not included
in Modern Analysis. To me, the best part is on the elliptic integrals and elliptic functions. I cannot find another book
on this subject which is started with basic theories, then
step by step, to introduce you to more advanced theories
from more simple theories.
Moreover, this book is originally written in Chinese.
Now it is tranalated in English.
This quality of this book is camparable to other famous books
on special functions like George Adrewo's or J. W. L. Olver's.
As a Chinese, I am proud of that and also give my repsect to
Prof Wang, whose contribution to Scientic developmeant in
China cannot over overestimated!

This is an outstanding book on special functions though it doesn't seem well known in the West. At first sight it appears to follow the path of Whittaker and Watson, but on closer examination it actually treats the subject(s) quite differently, sometimes better, dare I say. Among its strengths are (a) all derivations are carried out in detail; (b) the author takes great care to motivate various techniques so that they seem perfectly natural; (c) the contour-integral method is used extensively to solve the differential equations associated with the special functions; and (d) the infinite-series approach to solving the differential equations, which Whittaker and Watson develops theoretically but does not apply, is carried out more thoroughly here than anywhere else.

Point (b) should greatly appeal to the physics type, and it came somewhat as a surprise to me, since I had the impression that most Chinese professors had a very condensed writing style, in which motivation isn't the top priority. On the other hand, the contour-integral-solution approach to ODEs is basically absent (at least not systematically employed) in Whittaker and Watson. When you look at the integral representations of the special functions in the book, there is less of the feeling that they just dropped out of the sky. Point (d) should appeal tremendously to most of the readers, since a typical physics/mathematics student learns the series technique in his/her second course on ODE. The coverage here is outstanding because the author does not summarily dispatch, as most others do, treatment of the irregular solutions, ie, the "bad-boy" solutions which arise when the difference of the roots of the indicial equation equals zero or an integer. Whittaker and Watson, for example, relegates the subject to a footnote in their treatment of the hypergeometric function.

The original author (Wang) wrote the book in Chinese, which was translated into English by two of his students. You can easily tell even without seeing the author list that two translators were involved. One has a better command of English and his prose is more fluid.

Of course, for a subject as classical as special functions, there is bound to be a great deal of overlap between any two books in terms of the topics covered. Without a doubt Whittaker and Watson is still King in this area, but at least for me this book is Queen. Highly recommended.

Are you a bona fide conspiracy buff? Or at least a fan of "The X-Files"? If so, you should really enjoy "Suppressed Intelligence Reports" by the well-known yet unknown Commander X. Commander X has here assembled a marvelous collection of documents that deal in great detail with various aspects of the Conspiracy Big Picture and offer a glimpse inside the dark inner workings of the so-called Secret Government and its various entangling alliances with aliens, devils and even its own military personnel.

All the chapters in this anthology have been previously released under separate covers, but they make even more interesting reading bound together in one book, which allows you to see how the different authors complement each other and combine to carefully build scenarios of interlocking facts mixed with educated suspicion.

Some of the standout chapters are authored by Ike Dillon, who masterfully attacks such diverse subjects as Antigravity Flight and the alien race of serpents called the Reptilians, often cited as being the most evil of the various UFO occupants. The case histories of mass murderers Timothy McVeigh and Michael McDermott are also examined by Dillon, and the possiblity that some form of military brainwashing was behind their violence is explored in a chapter called "Murder, 'Suicide,' Mind Altering Madness of the New World Order."

Other chapters are equally fascinating, particularly one on the Illuminati and the Skull and Bones societies, as well as one about the CIA's secret experiments with holograms as a military and psychological weapon. There is even a chapter called "How To Clone A Human" that reveals medical and genetic details on the cloning process that were previously kept secret for many years.

While some of what is here may simply be expressions of a well-intended but over-the-top paranoia, the book is nevertheless a treasure trove of conspiracy theories that could accurately depict a sinister presence that is still awaiting its time to be revealed.

Inarguably, the truth that lies behind the black veil of secrecy is a long way from being exposed. But with books like "Suppressed Intelligence Reports," a process of chipping away slowly at that hidden truth has at least begun. If even ten percent of what this book contains is literally factual, then we have every reason to be concerned about just where the hidden agenda of the conspirators is leading us all to. The old expression "Forwarned is forearmed" is very appropriate here. To defend ourselves, we must first be informed. And in that quest to be informed, Commander X's anthology of conspiracy reports is a good place to start.

There are so many sections to this book -- some 23 exactly. One thing that is missing is a detailed index -- but I guess you can't have anything. Particular, when you keep in mind that there is so much material here that this would have been a full time job. The best material has to be in regard to Nikola Tesla and some of the stuff on top secret experiment in the area of time travel and anti gravity research being conducted inside Area 5l.Some of the material I have to admit is really spooky -- if it is true we should be scared. Supposedly the New World Order and a group of aliens known as the greys are cloning humans in underground bases around the world -- FOR FOOD? Some abductees claims they have even seen clones of themselves while being held captive by secret fractions of our military affiliated with the NWO. Another report deals with a lost race living along side us on earth since the beginning of creation. It details the existence of the Reptilians or the SERPENT RACE. Its hard to believe that this is all real when you consider that we have enough evil in the world as it is without having to deal with entities from other dimensions and realms. On a positive note there are some other reports on alternative healing such as the use of the Tesla Purple Energy Discs and plates when are said to have great benefits in the area of relieving stress, depression and healing ailments. Colloidal Silver is also given a good rating; though I am still somewhat skeptical myself and will have to do further research.

I have been a fan of Kay Arthur's ever since I first began studying my Bible. Her International Inductive Study series is very good for someone who wants to get to know God's Word better. Kay's study of the Penteteuch is a wonderful starting place for those who are not familiar with the Torah: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. Although the lessons take longer than the fifteen minutes it claims on the back, they are good tools for helping you observe what the text is saying. Even if these books are familiar to you, Kay helps open up God's word to you in a new way!

If you desire to seriously study these biblical books in great detail, then you would probably find her Precepts courses more helpful than this bible study. But all in all, a wonderful place to start your study of His Word.

I have been reading the Bible for many years now, but in a casual reading it is easy to miss so much of the detail and meaning of the stories that are being told. This book helped me slow down enough in my reading and to repeat my reading enough so that I understood what was going on in a much more profound way. It takes only 15-20 minutes a day and is a great way to do a quiet time.

They Have Uncrowned Him, translated from the author's original French by Fr. Gregory Post SSPX, was first published in 1988 by Angelus Press. It is a slim volume of 264 pages, including bibliography and index, and contains an introductory essay by Fr. Francois Laisney as well as a preface by the author. They Have Uncrowned Him, which is subtitled "From Liberalism to Apostasy: the Conciliar Tragedy", began as a series of conferences on liberalism prepared by Archbishop Lefebvre for the education of the seminarians at Ecône. The purpose of these conferences, the Archbishop tells us in his preface, was "to enlighten the understanding of these future priests about the most serious and most harmful error of modern times" and "to permit them to pass a judgement consistent with the truth and with the faith on all the consequences and manifestations of atheistic liberalism and of liberal Catholicism" (p. xiii). The Archbishop's thesis is straightforward: The dramatic decline in faith and morals which followed the Second Vatican Council, and the effects of which are today observable among Catholics in every place, is to be attributed to the adoption by the Church of these liberal principles as its own by means of the very Council itself. Not all readers will agree with Mgr. Lefebvre's analysis of the current crisis in Catholicism, but this book is no mere anti-conciliar rant; the Archbishop supports his conclusions with much quotation and reference to the consistency and clarity of papal teaching from the time of Gregory XVI (1830-46) to Pius XII (1939-58) as well as what liberal theologians have themselves published regarding the teaching of the Second Vatican Council. The central message in the book is that the Church has assimiliated the revolutionary ideas of 1789 and has consecrated these ideas by means of the Council, thus creating a contradiction and discontinuity between tradtional Catholicism and its post-conciliar replacement. Two of the Council documents in particular are singled out for particularly severe criticism; 'Gaudium et Spes', for providing the "opening to the world" which enabled the spirit of secularism to enter and corrupt the faith of the Church, and 'Dignitatis Humanae', for blessing religious pluralism and urging the separation of Church and State, all with the blessing of Pope and Council. It is this divorce of the civil law from the Divine Law of God in so many countries that has resulted, according to the Archbishop, in the social dethronement of Jesus Christ and His banishment from public affairs to the periphery of a merely private devotion. The facts themselves speak volumes, and Archbishop Lefebvre's short book is full of them. As the book was compiled from a series of lectures delivered at the seminary of Econe, it is written in a conversational style which reflects the patterns of speech of its author. This conversational style has been preserved in the English translation. The Archbishop's prose is marred somewhat by the retention of pious exclamations which crop up from time to time in the writing, as well as by occasional typographical errors, but the author's implacable opposition to liberalism is not based upon mere emotionalism. His argument is consistently supported by reference to the writings and arguments of eminent philosophers, theologians and popes throughout the history of Catholicism and must be seriously acknowledged as an erudite and intellectual endeavour. They Have Uncrowned Him is divided into three principal parts: The first deals with the theory of liberalism and analyses what liberalism is, together with its history and development across the centuries. The second examines the growth since the French Revolution of what may be termed for convenience "liberal Catholicism" (although the Archbishop rightly deplores this phrase as a contradiction in terms) and its penetration into the Church via the modernism of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The third and final part, "a revolution in tiara and cope", shows how this modernism/liberalism emerged triumphant at the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) with the blessing of the Council Fathers and of Pope Paul VI, culminating in the present ruinous condition of the Catholic faith. All Catholics interested in the development of the thought of the Catholic Church in the modern period should read this book.

This is a powerful book, a strong libel against the modern liberal world and its myths, written in the finest european counter-revolutionary Catholic tradition, following the line of authors like Barruel, Cretineau-Joly, Veuillot, Delassus or the pre-Vatican II popes from Pius VI to Pius XII.

Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre doesn't restrict his work to criticize some points of the liberal ideology, that must be understood here as the antichristian and jacobine destructive trend that conquered citizenship with the french revolution; on the contrary, with superb mastery, he assaults and demolishs liberalism itself, refuting such doctrine point by point, usually with the aid of the pre-conciliar papal magisterium.

Subsequently, he analyses the absurd pretensions of the liberal catholicism and the devastating consequences its triumph carried to the Church after the Second Vatican Council, a triumph that accepted the secularization of civil society and denied the Social Kingship of Jesus Christ.

Finally, in order to surpass the present crisis, he reasserts the urgent need that Church has to come back to tradition, insisting in Saint Pius X's motto "Omnia instaurare in Christo".

Concluding: this is an excellent reading, the ideal antidote against the lies that base the current world and the present Church.

It's not that I disagree with a review of this book, "an excellent read for the black youth of today". I just feel that whatever useful tools and social benefits this book presents, and there is literally a truckload of them, they cannot be segregated.

The late Louis E. Lomax (1922-1970) wrote this book shortly after Dr. King's assassination. He traces the path of both leaders. He shows the forces that brought the 2 leaders together on many issues. He also show the opposition forces to these men that materialized into assassins. I recommend that you read this book.

Pius X hymnal resulted from the Catholic breakaway church. Has all the traditional Latin and Caholic old hymns, I use it at the Veterans Health Care Center for the Catholic Mass. Those Senior Veterans really know their Latin.

As a professional music educator, I can without hesitation recommend this Hymnal to Catholic choir directors everywhere. While it is published by Angelus Press, the official publishing house of the SSPX, it will be perhaps most useful to those, like myself, who have been asked to lend a helping hand in restoring Gregorian Chant and traditional hymns to the liturgy in the wake of the reforms called for by Pope Benedict XVI.

The chants in this hymnal are reproduced beautifully, in an excellent and readable typeset, using traditional chant notation. This is a new book, ten years in the making. The Chants are newly digitally typeset; it is a beautiful and beautifully bound book. If one does not know how to read Chant, it is very easy to learn how if one is music literate. Many internet websites simply define the names of the nuemes and how to sing them.

In addition to the beautiful chants, there many hymns as well. The hymns are not like those that we find in the Ordinary Form Hymnals. For whatever reason, in the wake of the "reforms" of the 1970's, the Bishops in this country liked to behave as if the laity were musically and culturally illiterate. We were saddled with a criminally incompetent and banal English "translation" of the Mass, and also all the harmony was removed from our hymnals. These hymns all have four parts, so that the congregation can either sing the melody, or the harmony if they are competent and are so inclined.

Once one has familiarized themselves with the nuemes and listened to some good recordings like those available for download right here on Amazon, one can relatively quickly familiarize oneself with the main chants of the Mass, and other famous Latin and English Catholic classics.

If you are fortunate enough to have a pastor willing to say (or willing to allow a brother priest to say) the Extraordinary Form of the Mass at your parish, this hymnal will be absolutely essential. It provides a "one stop shop" for everything one will need. If you are fortunate enough to have a pastor willing to pursue the Benedictine reforms of the Ordinary Form, this hymnal will likewise be essential.

Some may balk at the idea of buying books from Angelus Press. The fact is that the SSPX has been in the forefront of preserving Tradition during a time when it seemed everyone was out to destroy it. Let us pray for a day when when the canonical relationship between the SSPX and Rome is regularized. Until then, I see no reason to avoid the excellent resources provided by the SSPX for the restoration of Tradition.