X Books

You will have seen there are hundreds of books written by and about football hooligans. Some are very good others frankly, are not! When I picked up Playing Up With Pompey I thought it was going to be just another 'we went to this match had a fight, dranks fifty pints of beer, smashed up a pub, had another fight, and went home' I was delighted to find out however that this was not the case. Yes the book is about the Portsmouth 6.57 Crew a gang of football hooligans, and yes many of their fights are of course featured, because there wouldn't be a lot of point to the book other wise would there? What makes this book so different is the way it is written, Beech has a very witty writing style and adds a lot of humour to the tales. Also unlike many books of this type he does not try to portray the 6.57 Crew as the toughest meanest gang on the plant, and unlike other titles is open and honest enough to say when they came off second best. Reading the book took me onto the terraces with them, I have never been involved in this type of thing, it also gave me a kind of understanding of what made people like Beech tick, the comradeship of being on enemy turf waiting for the battle cry to go up. If you have already dipped your toe into the world football violence books, then dive straight into the deep end with this one you won't be dissapointed.

This was a book required for a class in African American Catholic Studies. I recommend it to be read by those of that group.

It is ridiculous to dismiss Pliny on account of his many mistakes and factual errors and so on.
The way to read this book is the way in which you read that kind of fantastic literature that gives the "illusion" of fact; Borges and Italo Calvino come to mind - the first one had plans for making an edition of Pliny in Spanish, with his prologue, but died before finishing the project (you can check the notes of Borges' Selected Non-Fictions for that); Calvino in fact wrote a wonderful essay on Pliny, included in "Why Read the Classics?", a book everyone giving "Natural History" less than four stars should read urgently.

Let's say it: if Pliny had got everything "right", he would still be used to teach natural science in high-school... and, for that reason, nobody would care about him.

There are people who think that the only documents that tell us something about the past are those written with a clinical, cold eye: the look of an outsider. This book is fun PRECISELY because Pliny wrote down everything that reached his ears without checking the facts -Zeus bless his heart-, and because of his welcoming disposition, a geography of the common imagination of that time has been preserved; something that otherwise would be lost.

Not long ago some people around this parts believed the Russians ate their own children. A good number among us are certain that paying someone to listen to your problems for fifty minutes every week, allows you to confront your unearthed traumas and clean up your life. Maybe in a thousand years all this will be just the mythology of our time. A few days ago scientists started to suspect Pluto is not a planet after all, so all those books written about it in the past century... they are mutating already into vintage science fiction.

In the meantime, how can anyone not be interested to know that "there is a record of 120 (mice) being born from a single mother, and in Persia of mice already pregnant being found in the parent's womb; and it is believed that they are made pregnant by tasting salt"(X, LXXXIV)? Or that "the day on which King Pyrrhus died, the heads of his victims, when cut off, crawled about licking up their own blood"(XI, LXXVII)? Or that "some people are born with a hairy heart, and that they are exceptionally brave and resolute. An example being a Messenian named Aristomenes who killed three thousand Spartans. He himself, when severely wounded, was taken prisoner and for the first time escaped through a cave from confinement in the quarries by following the routes by which foxes got in. He was again taken prisoner, but when his guards were fast asleep he role to the fire and burnt off his thongs, burning his body in the process. He was taken a third time, and the Spartans cut him open alive and his heart was found to be shaggy"(XI, LXIX)?

How can anyone not enjoy fragments like this one: "The most learned authorities state that the eyes are connected with the brain by a vein; for my own part I am inclined to believe that they are also thus connected with the stomach: it is unquestionable that a man never has an eye knocked out without vomiting."(XI, LIV)? Or his unique way of defining the eyes, "the most precious part of the body and the one that distinguishes life from death by the use it makes of daylight"(XI, LII)?

How can this miniature ancestor of Kafka be forgotten: "It is surprising that elephants can even climb up ropes, but especially that they can come down them again, at all events when they are stretched at a slope. Mucianus, who was three times consul, states that one elephant actually learnt the shapes of the Greek letters, and used to write out in words of that language: 'I myself wrote this and dedicated these spoils won from the Celts'"(VIII, III)? (Note: all quotations are from the Loeb's edition).

Other reviewer compared the Natural History with the Guinness Book of Records. He probably took a minute off to write the review and then jumped right back to reading his number of People magazine. The Guinness is a compilation of isolated (and insipid) facts. Pliny's is an organic work, as Shakespeare's crowded plays or Montaigne's essays are organic.

Like any great work in human history -from Plato to Galileo, from Dante to Stephen Hawkings- Pliny's Natural History is, first of all, a work of imagination.

This book is great. I got it simply to remind me of some patient positioning tips and views. The graphics and pictures are perfect and the points and tips are clear and concise. So line them up, bring them in and FIRE THAT BUTTON!

This book is fantastic! You get Venus and Adonis (erotic love poem), Rape of Lucrece (roman rape poem), Lover's Complaint (about the dangers of Love), Phoenix and the Turtle (symbolic of Love and Faith), and of course 154 lovely SONNETS.

David Bevington's introductions are short and informative; the footnotes are there for guidance and do not interfere with the text. A wonderful text. Buy it and take it to the beach.

This book is for people who either know a lot about Pius X or about 19th-20th Century Catholic church history. If you are looking for a general overview of this saint's life, it is not for you.
I have read many books about St. Pius X, so I wanted to read this, even though at times I found it extremely dry. It is a work by a scholar for a scholar. Pius X is a much maligned pope, especailly by historians of the 1960's to the 1970's, non-Christians most of them, secular thinkers who consider the Roman church a political rather than a religious institution. Gimme a break.

Mr Charon certianly suceeds in giving poor Pius X a break, showing this pope's actions in the light of one who put God first in his life. Pius was not a reactionary, but a reformer of the church. For one thing, from the time Pius was a curate, all the way till he was pope, he strongly emphasized religious education for adults. And acted on it. No confusion about the Real Presence vs. symbolism when HE was around. Mr. Charon gives many more examples of Pius's emphasis of the Church promoting the Christian religion rather than some political nonsense.

I agree strongly with the belief that "a person,s work cannot be properly evaluated till at least 100 years after his death." People who wrote in the '60's and 70's were all gaga with Vatican II, and blind to history before 1962. As historians, I really can't figure where they were coming from. Mr. Chiron shows us how people living in the 19th century are perfectly natural to act in 19th century ways.

Note: One cute mistake in this book was a photographic one. Those who who laid out the photographs got mixed up. instead of publishing a photo of Joseph Sarto (later Pius X) as Patriarch of Venice (1902) they published Angelo Roncalli, who was Patriarch of Venice in 1953. Roncalli later became John XXIII.
Aloysha Sipp

As anyone who has studied this subject knows, it is difficult to find a raw history of the papacy without the anti-catholic or pro-catholic polemic infused throughout. Dr. Noble, despite teaching at a "Catholic" university, has done just that, given us a history without polemic. Dr. Noble reports just the facts, warts and all. He does not sugar coat or attempt to defend doctrines such as infallibility but simply places them in their historical context letting the student come to their own conclusions. After all, history is, to a great extent, at the mercy of presuppositions and it is not always easy to recognize those presuppositions in ourselves. Dr. Noble does not attempt to wrest any presuppositions and instill in us his own, he simply provides the history and the controversial backdrop that interprets that history in a delicate balance. Very well done and exactly what any history enthusiast is seeking.

The very best within the field. A very usefull tool

Can logic solve any problem? Professor Van Dusen thinks so. In this collection of stories, he sets out to prove the infallibility of logic in some most extraordinary ways.

Each story features the classic elements of an apparently unsolvable problem. Yet, Professor Van Dusen remains calm and collected as he puts his thinking skills to work. Readers will enjoy the variety of dilemmas he encounters, and will marvel at the solutions! Whether he is finding something that is stolen or escaping from a prison cell, each tale takes some unexpected turns before arriving at a perfectly logical conclusion.

The journey of this book from the author to its current publication is just as interesting as the stories. Jacques Futrelle developed the character of Van Dusen, "The Thinking Machine," during the early 1900's. Many of these stories appeared in serial form in magazines. In 1912, Futrelle traveled to Europe to seek a wider audience for his work. His return trip to America was on board the Titanic. Although Futrelle perished, these wonderful tales remain available for today's readers.

The target audience is young adult, but anyone who loves a good mystery will enjoy this book. The writing is clear and direct, and the predicaments are cleverly constructed. Each story features a different set of circumstances, but all have the principle of logic at its center. The character of Professor Van Dusen is both annoyingly ill-tempered and amazingly intelligent. This unique combination creates a different type of hero, but one that will certainly gain the admiration of readers. -- Joyce Handzo, Christian Book Previews.com

This book is both a reference and a good instructional overview on how to program Motif. Essentially, Motif is a collection of widgets that one can program. The book references these widgets, shows screen shots, shows where in the tree the widget is derived from, details little code snippets, and has comprehensive explanations on how to use it, return values, etc.

Now, these modern times, one would probaly want to program with Qt (KDE) or GTK, but there's tons of historical code out there that's still being used these days, that will undoubtedly require some Motif knowledge, and I would say this book is a great resource for that.