Customer Reviews (7)

Well Written Book, Wrap Up Superb!
I think that this book - Sour Sweet - by Timothy Mo was a great and enjoyable book to read. His writing on Chinese family adapting to the British and his ending on how the life ended was great literature, but sympathizing and as a Chinese, I have never heard of such stories. So when I first read it, it touched me through my heart, and I started giving sympathy to those who are in need of help, whoever they may be. I think I liked this book because of the sympathy that Timothy Mo has given me. I think I now know that many people are struggling out there to adapt, and I would like to stop being such a spoiled child after reading this magnificent novel.
John Li

Wow!
I was able to get an out-of-print book from this seller that was in top-notch condition for the lowest price I've seen!

Entertaining first but certainly insightful as well
I recommend this novel without reservation. It is almost a shock to read a novel written in a classically disciplined style. Mo's writing doesn't take short cuts or skip on background. It isn't The Red and The Black, but it isn't Gravity's Rainbow either. What it is is conventional in the finest sense and bold in terms of story and character rather than style. I was swept up in the story of the Chen family and the London triad. Having lived in Taiwan for over a year, I also enjoyed all of the Chinese culture. This book made me much more sympathetic to the Chinese despite the fact that it pulls no punches in describing their peculiar ethos.Very enjoyable read.

Sometimes Heartwarming, Always Interesting
Mo has a good sense of humor and a heart-warming way with characters.This tale of a Chinese family in England is at times a good series of lessons on Chinese culture.

Somewhat clumsily (at times) juxtaposingtriad gang strife with the struggle of a family to succeed, Mo weaves astory that is fun to read.

Mo is a master craftsman of dialogue.Hiscareful way of transposing Cantonese into English is to be praised... thereader really feels he is understanding another language.

English post-colonialism
As a student of English literature I found this book hard to follow at first. Yet reading beyond a certain point, I understood the specialness of the diverse characters and the interelations between the characters. It isa beautiful book if you are willing to take the time to read deep into thenovel. I'm glad I got the chance to read this novel. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

Under a Sickle Moon: A Journey Through Afghanistan
If you are looking for a war story then this is not the book.

Provides A Useful Perspective on Islam
I agree with the other reviewers.

More important for me was the perspective Hodson gives concering Islamic attitudes and beliefs. That those fighting the Russians often saw Russia and the US as similar is sobering and can help us to better appreciate Islam and its adherents.

As a WASP, personal experience and books like "Under a Sickle Moon" have contributed to my recognizing that the concerns expressed in the Middle East and elsewhere have validity and must be addressed before many thorny issues can be fully resolved.

a refreshing account
Hodson succeeds because he avoids the self congratulatory tone of many of this kind of travel narrative.He suffers with acute diarrhea, fever and eventually contracts hepatitis as a result of his arduous trip through the mountainous regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan, mostly the latter.This account avoids taking sides and does an excellent job showing what everyday life in the 80's in Afghanistan was like.Interesting how the "common" people often resented the Mujahedin for bringing attacks to their home turf.Sometimes the rebels are treated as heroes, sometimes as villains, but in any case we view all the contradictions, narrow point of view (one group thought Hitler was a great man simply because at one point he fought the "evil" Russians who were at war with their country) and fanatical devotion to the Islamic ideal.Though not as literary as other travelogues, Hodson achieves a gritty, down and dirty tone that serves his narrative well.An excellent read and an impressive journey into a dangerous and complicated land.

A journey through Afghanistan
This book is really great.I loved travelling with Peregrine Hodson (figuratively) as he walked the walk through Afghanistan.He describes the people and landscape very poignantly.Wesee the war with Russia from their eyes.If you want to understand the mindset of typical Afghans, as they fight to defend their country, and struggle to survive a war they don't understand, this book is very helpful.

Stimulating first-hand view of the Afgan-Russian conflict.
As a cousin of the author, I read with interest Peregrine Hodson'sfirst-hand account of his travels through the Afgan hinterland. Reminiscentof "The Great Game", Hodson's accounting of the Afgani resistanceleaves one with a keen appreciation of the struggles and hardships theyencountered. Well worth the read! Douglas Mavor Armour.(armour@inforamp.net) ... Read more

Amazon.com
From the I Ching to AI, tremendous human brainpower has beendevoted to devising easier means of counting and thinking. Former math teacherGeorges Ifrah has devoted his life to tracking down traces of our earlycalculating tools and reporting on them with charm and verve. The UniversalHistory of Computing: From the Abacus to Quantum Computing gives a grandtitle to a grand subject, and Ifrah makes good on his promise of universality byleaping far back in time and spanning all of the inhabited continents. If hisscope is vast, his stories and details are still engrossing. Readers will hangon to the stories of 19th-century inventors who converged on multiplicationmachines and other, more general "engines," and better understand the roots ofbiological and quantum computation. Ifrah has great respect for our ancestorsand their work, and he transmits this feeling to his readers with humor andhumility. His timelines, diagrams, and concordance help the reader who might beunfamiliar with foreign concepts of numbers and computation keep up with hisnarrative. By the end, his slight bias against strong artificial intelligencecomes through, but he is careful to acknowledge the future's unforeseeablenature and suggest that we keep our minds open. How can we resist? --RobLightnerBook Description
"A fascinating compendium of information about writing systems-both for words and numbers."
-Publishers Weekly

"A truly enlightening and fascinating study for the mathematically oriented reader."
-Booklist

"Well researched. . . . This book is a rich resource for those involved in researching the history of computers."
-The Mathematics Teacher

In this brilliant follow-up to his landmark international bestseller, The Universal History of Numbers, Georges Ifrah traces the development of computing from the invention of the abacus to the creation of the binary system three centuries ago to the incredible conceptual, scientific, and technical achievements that made the first modern computers possible. Ifrah takes us along as he visits mathematicians, visionaries, philosophers, and scholars from every corner of the world and every period of history. We learn about the births of the pocket calculator, the adding machine, the cash register, and even automata. We find out how the origins of the computer can be found in the European Renaissance, along with how World War II influenced the development of analytical calculation. And we explore such hot topics as numerical codes and the recent discovery of new kinds of number systems, such as "surreal" numbers.

Adventurous and enthralling, The Universal History of Computing is an astonishing achievement that not only unravels the epic tale of computing, but also tells the compelling story of human intelligence-and how much further we still have to go. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

APhilosophical Approach
If you have been looking for a more academic approach to the history of computing then this is the book for you.

The book is divided into three parts. Part One contains a very comprehensive taxonomy/chronology showing the evolution of human number systems.

Part Two is where you will find the core "History of Computing" bit: tables, logarithms, analogue/digital, mechanical calculators, automatic calculation, electronic machines etc. It also includes an interleaved, and detailed, explanation of how computing has evolved from basic number crunching into abstract information processing.

Part Three reads like a long philosophical conclusion and contains some excellent material on ethics and artificial intelligence.

It starts with the development of efficient notation
Until recently, the history of computing has tended to be tied to the goals of mathematicians, as they struggled to keep up with the increasing demands of a society growing more technical. As nations began to trade with other nations, the necessity of performing computations on larger numbers very quickly forced changes in the notation. When first introduced into Europe, the modern decimal system of notation was greeted with skepticism and some hostility. However, as is nearly always the case in human endeavors, it was accepted rather quickly, as it was so much more efficient than other systems such as Roman numerals. Therefore, the history of computing devices is bound very tightly with improvements in representation, and the historical changes in notation are the topic of the first section of the book.
Ifrah does an excellent job in recapitulating the history of the notation of computation, covering the entire world, ending up with the modern notation and the efficiency of binary numbers. Nearly forty pages are devoted to explanations of many ancient numerical notations, and many figures are included. It is this approach that differentiates this book from other histories of computing. Other authors concentrate on the history of the evolving architectures of the computing devices, ignoring the necessary precondition of a compact and efficient notation. It is very difficult to imagine computing devices that could easily perform arithmetic on Roman numerals.
The second section is a two track treatment of the development of computing devices. One track covers the mathematical preliminaries and the second the mechanical advances that led to the construction of accurate computers. Most of the early improvements were done by mathematicians, and it was not until the late nineteenth century that governments started to be interested in computers. The primary event was the work of Charles Babbage, who showed that computers were possible and how valuable they could be in performing routine computations that were highly prone to error.
In many ways, this history of computing is more a history of the requisite mathematics rather than a history of hardware. This is a second way in which this book differs from other histories. One of the reasons why computers have improved so quickly is that much of the theoretical background for their actions were developed before the machines were. Ifrah explains that in great detail, describing how some of the principles of abstract mathematics have been applied to the building of computers.
The final section is very small and deals with the future of computing. This is a wise move, as this book is a history and one thing we have learned from the recent history of computers is that predicting the future is largely impossible. We know that they will get faster, have more memory and the usage will increase, but the consequences of this are difficult to predict.
If your interest is in the preconditions necessary for computers to be widely used, then this is the book for you. Ifrah covers all of the notational and mathematical background necessary for computers to be useful, for without that, they would probably have been little more than intellectual toys.

Published in the recreational mathematics e-mail newsletter, preprinted with permission.

Methodical history but a little dry
I would have expected from the title that this book might have started in the 1940s (or at the earliest with Babbage and the Difference Engine) and told the story of the development of computers from there. No, as the subtitle indicates, this book goes way back. In fact, the first section is a summary of number systems going back to the age of the Egyptians and before. It's a very methodical and somewhat dry tale, not helped by being translated from the French by translators who feel compelled to insert their own comments at intervals.

When it does get going, it provides a history of the relevant mathematics as well as automata from the Islamic era forward. The actual computer era is touched on mostly in its early stages, with the first computers of the forties and fifties. And it concludes with about sixty pages that have nothing to do with history but rather attempt to define key words such as "information" and "computer."

All in all, it is a methodical and thorough book, perhaps a little dry but not as much as some books I have read. The author muses on the implications of various stages of discovery rather than simply relating the facts (and the translators chime in as well), which enlivens the story. Still, this book is probably for the more interested rather than the casual reader.

The Universal History of Computing : From the Abacus to
This book is really fascinating, especially if you are interested in scientific and technical achievements. Read this book and you'll find out how the computer can be traced to the Renaissance, and how Word War II influenced the development of analytical calculation. The epic tale of computing comes to life in these pages. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Mystery, Mourning, and Magic
Erdrich's collection of poems is rich with emotion and rewards close perusal.Her symbolism and metaphors are fairly accessible, although some of her work draws from a culture-specific background which may hindercomplete understanding.This occasional obscurity does not significantlylimit her work's effectiveness, however, as it lends a fullness andpersonality to her poetry that comes from individual experience.

There issomething secret and dark contained here, a sense of the mysterious whichdraws you in and leaves you with a sense of not quite capturing the wholemeaning.For those who have read Love Medicine and its ensuing novels,expect the same emotion, but more tightly compressed and better controlled. A satisfying read. ... Read more

Book Description
Bankers in Japan and China are masters of accounting, not risk management, and American-style rescue packages won't solve their banking crises. Cleaning up balance sheets and purging non-performing loans won't work either, say Arayama and Mourdoukoutas. The problem goes deeper. It stems from high growth environments and tight government regulation. The result has been to limit competition in Japan and eliminate it in China. And that led to the control of management behavior, which weakened incentives for Japanese and Chinese bank decision-makers to manage, hands-on, their traditional and nontraditional banking risks. Adding to the problem is rationed credit, reflecting MITI and MOF priorities in Japan and those set by the central planning authorities in China. Japanese bankers have been turned into experts on the abacus, the ancient calculator, but they have little experience with or understanding of the other more important aspects of the banking enterprise. Arayama and Mourdoukoutas lay it all out in a challenging, provocative, readable study and analysis. It is an essential resource for academicians and policymakers in business, government, and international finance and investment. Arayama and Mourdoukoutas make it clear that Japanese and Chinese bankers must learn how to behave as for-profit institutions, where managers are accountable to the owners and other stakeholders. Second, they must be freed from government directives (in China) and guidance (in Japan) that control their day-to-day operations, and which restrict freedom to develop new products and businesses. Third, Japanese and Chinese bank managers must learn to act as true bankers. They must learn how to manage credit risk and function as public trading corporations. They must also learn how to deal with transparency and full disclosure rules and regulations, just as their Western counterparts must and do. In other words, say the authors, bank managers must "escape the abacus mentality and learn how to use their brains rather than their fingers... and that may take much longer than anxious Western observers would have expected." ... Read more