Product Description
Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork. ... Read more

Product Description
Taking the reader on a series of walks through London, such as Knightsbridge to Covent Garden, Millbank to St James's Street and Trafalgar Square to St Paul's Cathedral, this book reflects the elegance and diversity of the city's architecture. The text is supported by drawings and photographs from the author's collection which evoke the atmosphere of London's past. All these illustrations, dating from the 17th century to the 19th, depict some surviving feature or building, so that, no matter how the view has changed, there is still something which can be identified. Maps are provided both to illustrate the walks and to pinpoint the position from which each picture was taken. Peter Jackson is the author of "London: 2000 Years of a City and Its People" and "The History of London in Maps". ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

An excellent overview
Work on Natural Language processing has been going on for at least
thirty years.In the past most natural language processing (NLP)
applications where mainly in the research realm.The rapid
increase in computer processing power and disk storage capacity
have moved NLP from research into the area of applied science.
This gives NLP the feel of a new and vibrant area.Progress is
being made rapidly, but the research literature can be difficult
for someone who has no experience with NLP.Simply learning the
terminology can be time consuming.

This book by Jackson and Moulinier provides an excellent overview
of several sub-areas of NLP applied to natural language text.
Both Jackson and Moulinier have been involved in implementing
NLP applications in a commercial context, so there is a
some concentration on applying NLP in real applications, rather
than artificial contexts like the Message Understand Conference
data set.

I purchased this book for its coverage of Information Extraction.
Along with this book I read a number of papers from the research
literature.One paper I found particularly interesting was
a paper on the FASTUS NLP system developed by researchers at
SRI.I was very happy to see that FASTUS and finite automata
approaches were covered in more detail in this book.

For my purposes I would have liked a book that moved from
an overview of various NLP applications to more implementation
detail.For example, while I think that I understand
push down automata from working on parsers for compilers,
I don't fully understand them in the NLP context.This book
did not go into enough detail to make this clear.

I cannot really offer this lack of detail as a criticism
since I don't believe that it was the authors intention to
provide this level of detail.Their objective is to provide
a detailed overview and I think that they succeeded in doing
this.A book that provided this overview with
details on implementation would be much longer, perhaps the
size of Manning and Schutze's excellent book "Foundations of
Natural Language Processing" (Manning and Schutze provide
a great deal of detail, but they do not cover information
extraction).

Excellent
I recommend this very highly.The words "online applications" in the title suggest that this book is about NLP for websites, but it's much more general than that; certainly any of the technologies discussed in it could in fact be implemented on a website, but "online applications" should be interpreted as meaning something like "applications that are made possible or commercially viable by the availability of large bodies of documents over the Internet."

The focus of the book is on technologies with commercial applications, and that aspect of the topics discussed in the book is addressed clearly and well.However, there's also plenty in the book that will be of interest to a researcher, especially one looking for an overview of a topic.In fact, the book reads much like a series of well-written review articles.

The first chapter of the book discusses some of the general issues and challenges in natural language processing, on a level
that should be accessible to pretty much anyone.(Actually, one of the really outstanding features of this book is its overall readability.)Subsequent chapters focus on information retrieval, information extraction, and text categorization.The final chapter has shorter sections on other topics, including summarization and named entity recognition.

All chapters of the book are characterized by high readability, clear explanations of algorithms (and I say that as someone who struggles with ANY algorithm), and good explanations of the relevant evaluation metrics.

This book would be a good starting point for anyone; if you're not a beginner in natural language processing, you'll still find much that's useful in this book. ... Read more

Product Description
Packed with photos, this fascinating introduction to the monsters and peoples in the Lord of the Rings film trilogy shows how the filmmakers have brought the inhabitants of Middle-earth to life for the big screen.

The book contains creatures familiar from the first film, from the benign hobbits to Lurtz, the ill-fated leader of the Uruk-hai, and includes races prominent in the new movie, The Two Towers, including the Rohirrim, the Easterlings, the Haradrim and the tree-like Ents.

Both an exciting introduction for children and a reference for adult movie buffs, there are also behind-the-scenes details on how each creature was designed and brought to life.

Includes fold-out poster. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Good for Some, Bad for Many
Seems to me that only die-hard Lord of the Rings fans would buy this and other similar books, but if they are indeed die-hard fans, they will learn nothing new from this book at all. It's really meant for children. There are likely many similar ones as well. It does come with a poster of the Balrog, though!

Fun book, nothing new to the die hard fan!
To the huge LOTR/Tolkien fans out there, this book will be nothing new as far as the descriptions of the 'creatures'. However, I bought the book soley for the quotes by the cast and the behind the scenes photo's from filming which are great! They make the book well worth adding to your collection, especially for the low cost it is!

Need some tips?
The epic movie trilogy "The Lord of the Rings" was the first exposure to Tolkien's work for a lot of the people who watched it. And the fans who haven't yet read the books should check out this book, to get the tips on who and what and where and why.

Basically, this "Creatures" book lets the readers know: What's a hobbit? What's an Elf? What's an Ent? Readers of the original fantasy trilogy by J.R.R. Tolkien will know all of this. On the other hand, newbies will like being able to look these things up -- especially since "Two Towers" has a lot of new material, with the Ents, Haradrim, Rohirrim, and others. The book is pretty short, and seems even shorter because it is composed mostly of photographs. These are clear, brightly colored, and great shots -- not just of stuff in the movies, but also from stuff behind the scenes.

What's especially nice are the quotes. Accompanying many of the smaller photographs are quotes from director Peter Jackson, special-effects wizard Richard Taylor, actors Elijah Wood, Ian Holm, Sean Astin, and pretty much everyone else. These quotes add insights into both the characters ("In their world, it's who you are on the inside that matters") and behind the scenes (complaints about the hobbit feet, from several actors). One of the best quotes is Peter Jackson revealing how the much-maligned Tom Bombadil almost made a cameo -- fans of the books will want to check that out.

Even if you've read the other books, this brief book will offer a few new insights and plenty of good movie and behind-the-scenes pictures.

A Good Introductory Guide for Children and Adults
Although this is the official movie guide for children to the Two Towers, I found that it was helpful for adults who are not Lord of the Rings fans and/or have not read any of the books by Tolkien.It is lushly illustrated with gorgeous photos of all of the people/creatures in The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers.There are also a few photos of how they developed CGI characters such as the cave troll and Sauron.Underneath each photograph is a sentence or two explaining who the person/creature is and how they fit into the story.The wording and the brevity of the descriptions make it perfect for younger readers or those looking for a quick and dirty introduction to the characters of Middle Earth including Hobbits, Ents, Easterlings, Haradrim, Uruk-Hai, Gollum, the Watcher in the Water, Dwarves, Elves, Wizards/Istari, Balrog, Gwaihir, and many more.The book also comes with a free fold out enlarged picture of Gandalf confronting the Balrog in Moria.I would recommend this book for those who are not very familiar with The Lord of the Rings trilogy and for children ages 8 and up.It is very short at app. 60 pages (most of which is taken up by pictures) and so is a great introduction.However, if you are a Tolkien fan and familiar with the stories or saw the first movie, there is nothing new for you here. ... Read more

Product Description

The twenty Dalmatians in Mrs. Tuttle's obedience class each know who they are -- and so does clever Mrs. Tuttle.

Her assistant, Doris, doesn't have a clue.

Do you? ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

19 and One Dalmatians-More Than a Number Book
At first, this seemed like another fairly interesting but predictable counting book.Twenty Dalmatians, all amed "Daisy," receive obedience training from Mrs. Tuttle. Her assistant, Doris, wonders how Mrs. Tuttle can tell one spotted dog from another.The counting lesson begins in a fairly ordinary way: "Daisy 1 has one peculiar spot."We see a conventional, straight-on view of a dog with a footprint on her forehead. My first thought was that I would have to trudge through 19 more pages of familiar looking Dalmatians, each page introducing one more dog or one more item.Daisy #2 confirmed this expectation; she sports two nametags.The disappointment continued through Daisy's #3 and #4.

However, something changes with the appearance of the fifth Daisy.She speaks five animal language (*yawn*), but her body takes on the shapes of the animals she's impersonating.Like Alice down the Rabbit Hole, each new Daisy takes us on a wilder and more imaginative excursion through author/illustrator Peter Catalanotto's fertile, semi-surrealistic imagination.We see one "Daisy #6" with her adopted six parakeets, another Daisy wearing 7 swimming medals and flippers, a from-the-hood Daisy in shades and bandanawith her 9 bulldogs hired as security dogs), Daisy #12 dressed as Cinderella, who, of course, must "be home by twelve, midnight," Daisy 13 who "works as a tour guide for thirteen hamsters" (!), the glamorous, languid, blue eyeshadowed Daisy 18 who shows off her 18 toenails, and Daisy 20 who fools twenty fleas with a Dalmatian puppet decoy (while she wears a paper bag over her head)!

It might be difficult to wrap up this canine version of "Beach Blanket Babylon," but Catalanotto draws an overhead picture showing all 20 eccentric dogs, each of them next to their corresponding number drawn on the studio floor.

"'Oh, I see, `says Doris. `Each dog has her place.'"
"'Yes,' says Mrs. Tuttle. `They all have their spots.'"

This is a wonderfully awful joke in a book unafraid to break the stodgy rules of counting books.Catalanotto enlivens the genre with this witty and wacky triumph, and his watercolor illustrations by Catalanotto (he's done 28 books so far) are equally imaginative.Recommended!

A hit with first graders at The Potomac School in McLean, VA
Six and seven year olds enjoyed this counting book meant for dog lovers.They appreciated the author's humor, including the surprise ending, and giggled at the illustrator's perfect canine portraits.Favorites among the Dalmatian depictions included the superdog, the hamster tour guide and the Cinderella lookalike.Student reviewers highly recommend this title for reading aloud to preschool through first grade listeners.
... Read more

Product Description
"...all the contributions are of interest. There is nothing that will not repay the attention of readers and teachers interested in contemporary developments in the study of race and ethnic relations...an interesting and worthwhile collection of papers."--Times Higher Education Supplement ... Read more

Product Description

Over the past few decades, international history and security  have been significantly influenced by greater understanding of the role of intelligence in national security and foreign policy-making.

In Britain, much of the work has developed in the subdiscipline of international history with its methodological predisposition towards archive-based research. Advances in archival disclosure, accelerated by the end of the Cold War, as well as by the changing attitudes of official secrecy and the work of the intelligence services, have further facilitated research, understanding and debate. Recent controversies, including claims of politicisation of intelligence historiography, have added additional public saliency to long-standing academic disputes. The events of September 11 and their aftermath have shown the value and limits of secret intelligence and generated fresh controversies for proponents and critics.

This book examines critically the development of intelligence studies and assesses its contribution to the study of international relations. It draws upon the viewpoints of leading academics, journalists and former practitioners, to explore the way the subject is studied, for what purposes and with what consequences.

Product Description
12 page tour book type softcover - filled with mostly pictures and Jackson Discography up to then ... Read more

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Product Description
The Seventh Crusade, led by King Louis IX of France, was the last major expedition for the recovery of the Holy Land actually to reach the Near East. The failure of his invasion of Egypt (1249-50), followed by his four-year stay in Palestine in order to retrieve the disaster, had a profound impact on the Latin West. In addition, Louis' operations in the Nile delta indirectly precipitated the Mamluk coup d'etat, which ended the rule of the Ayyubids, Saladin's dynasty, in Egypt and began the transfer of power there to a military elite that would prove to be a far more formidable enemy to the Franks of Syria and Palestine. This volume comprises translations of the principal documents and of extracts from narrative sources - both Muslim and Christian - relating to the crusade, and includes many texts, notably the account of Ibn Wasil, not previously available in English.The themes covered include: the preparations and search for allies; the campaign in the Nile delta; the impact on recruitment of the simultaneous crusade against the emperor Frederick II; the Mamluk coup and its immediate consequences in the Near East; Western reactions to the failure in Egypt; and, the popular 'crusade' of the Pastoureaux in France (1251), which aimed originally to help the absent king, but which degenerated into violence against the clergy and the Jews and had to be suppressed by force. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A treasure of history and cultural development
One of the things that make maps so valuable is the way they communicate information about the times and the culture when the map was made that were totally unintentional by the mapmaker.Most of our culture is invisible to us.We live and move in it and the things we do, say, build, and leave behind just seem to us the way things are.And they are; for now.However, in a hundred years or even further into the future there will be aspects of our time that will seem absolutely foreign to our descendents and some things that will resonate with their own view of themselves.

So it is with the wonderful maps in this book.London has long been one of the great cities in the world and its history goes back to Roman times and even earlier.In this book we start in mid-Tudor times.It is so fascinating to see how close to the river this great city was and how small it is compared to the monster city of today.We get to see other maps leading up to the Great Fire of 1666.There we see how much of the city was destroyed and the various proposals for rebuilding and what was actually built again.

Not all of the maps are of the whole city, we see how certain key areas were designed and built.There are also interesting details of land use, in what order the countryside was swallowed into the city.

There are also health study and social reform maps especially in the Victorian era.Transportation proposals and the birth of Trafalgar Square make for interesting reading, as well.A famous aerial view done from a balloon is also included and makes for very interesting viewing.

There is such a wealth and variety that I cannot describe them all, but I consider this book a treasure.I have never lived in London, but visited it more than a dozen times and am familiar with many of the areas included in these maps and it is wonderful to learn more about the development of those areas. ... Read more

Product Description
While Surrealism became unfashionable in Europe in the 1930s, it enjoyed increasing popularity across the Atlantic at the same time. Surrealism USA, the catalogue to the exhibition at the National Academy of Design, Surrealism USA, traces the history of this movement in the United States from the 1930s to the 1950s by examining its manifestations throughout the country--from Social Surrealism and California Post-Surrealism to Magic Realism and the beginning of Abstract Expressionism. It chronicles the wide influence of Dalí on American art, the Surrealists' response to war and fascism, and the relationship between Surrealism and abstract art. With over 100 paintings, sculptures, prints, and drawings, this definitive survey brings together the work of American artists likeJoseph Cornell, Peter Blume, Kay Sage, Isamu Noguchi, Arshile Gorky, and Jackson Pollock--with that of Europeans in exile during World War II, including Salvador Dalí, Yves Tanguy, André Masson, and Max Ernst.Essays by Michael Duncan, Robert Hobbs, Robert S. Lubar andScott Rothkopf.

Introduction by Isabelle Dervaux.Hardcover, 9.5 x 11.75 in./192 pgs / 100 color and 50 b&w. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Museum Quality
I was fortunate enough to see the Surrealism USA exhibit on tour in Phoenix in July.The collection was astounding.I found this book in the Phoenix Art Museum Store, however, $50 seemed like a lot to spend on a book while on a weekend vacation.I was thrilled to find it on Amazon for much less.The book is beautiful, the photographs are museum print quality and oversized, mostly one or two on each page. The book contains a thorough history of the surrealism movement in the United States during the last century. I would not hesitate to purchase it again. ... Read more

Product Description
Since it was first published in 1978 Public Sector Economics has become the most widely adopted undergraduate textbook in its field. In that time public sector economics has continued to grow rapidly in theoretical and empirical work; government expenditure has been reformed and new taxes have been introduced. There has also been a significant ideological shift against the public sector in most industrial economies.To accommodate these changes the authors have made major revisions to this fourth edition while preserving the central objective of the book that is to explain the relevant principles and the relationships between public expenditure, taxation and the behavior of economic agents such as individuals, households and firms.On the public expenditure side the analysis has been extended to incorporate a game theoretic approach in public sector existence; a fuller treatment of the foundations of cost benefit analysis and up-to-date data on public expenditure both at the level of central and local government. On the tax side the theoretical treatment of taxes has been extended to include compensated supply and demand curves and more emphasis has been put on the excess burden of taxes. To accommodate them with the extra material, there are now two chapters on the partial equilibrium analysis of taxes. There is a new chapter on consumption/savings choice and the chapter on the taxation of goods and services has been revised to include a discussion of indirect tax harmonization in the EEC. Throughout, reference is made to new empirical work. ... Read more