The view of men through "Charlie Dean's" eyes is an honest, although uncomfortable, reality. Having experienced some eye-opening nights at dance clubs, bachelor parties and bars where ladies perform and dance, I've always wondered why these women sought this lifestyle. The book "Smoking Hopes" has helped to increase my understanding of their needs, and their world. Charlie's descriptions of events can be funny or tender, but brutally revealing. Her need for hope is always very strong as she pursues her relentless search for her evasive lover.

Author Victoria Alexander has given us an insightful story of a woman's struggle in an obscure world. When this moving story was nearly ended, an intense desire overwhelmed me to save and protect the doomed "Charlie Dean" from the ravages of mankind! Share the experience. I was not disappointed.

A re-working of _Waiting for Godot_, _Smoking Hopes_ implicates the contemporary cult of physical perfection in its exploration of the timeless human craving to be loved. This dark tale's incisive and insightful portrayal of the sexual underworlds of New York and Tokyo impels its heroin's quest to its inevitable conclusion. Alexander's prose is finely-honed and bewitching.

I was facinated all the way through the book with Charlie's strategic study and wielding of beauty and sex. There are very funny parts too. I love Charlie's letter to the IRS. I wish I could be so bold, but it is fiction after all.

If my house were on fire and I had only sufficient time to rescue four books, I would likely grab my four-volume Encyclopedic Dictionary of Mathematics, Second Edition (EDM2). Truly, this is one of the most useful books I own. As testimony to this fact one need only observe that there are more bookmarks protruding from my copy of EDM2 than there are pages (well, almost).

If you are a mathematician, or if mathematics is central to what you do, you will likely appreciate this collection as it contains wonderfully concise yet informative and authoritative entries on nearly every branch of modern mathematics. Need to refresh your memory on Radon-Nikodym derivatives and their properties? No problem. Are you up on Grassman algebras? If not, you can look it up in EDM2. Interested in game theory? It's in there. What about semi groups, elliptic integrals, perturbation theory, lattice theory, Hilbert spaces, projective geometry, integral geometry, measure theory, geometrical optics, and non-standard analysis? All there!

But simply listing the topics covered in EDM2 will not give you an adequate picture of its utility. What is amazing about the book is how much information it can pack into very few pages, yet manage to keep the discussion quite readable. Don't get me wrong; it doesn't read like a Stephen King novel (nor would you want it to). But the entries are self-contained and cogent enough that you can actually learn a good bit about topics that are totally new to you. Of course, you will want to avail yourself of the many cited references to gain a more complete understanding of any given topic, but you will be well on your way to getting acquainted with fundamental definitions and techniques of a hitherto unfamiliar branch of mathematics.

Here are several examples: If you look up "polynomial approximation" you will find a succinct discussion that rigorously defines such terms Bernstein polynomials, Chebyshev system, Haar's condition, degree of approximation, moduli of continuity, approximation by Fourier expansions, trigonometric interpolation, Lagrange interpolation, and orthogonal polynomials, and all in FOUR terse but readable pages, with plenty of references at the end. The entry on "geometric optics" covers Fermat's principle, Gauss mappings, Malus's theorem, and aberration, all in TWO pages. The succinct one-page biography of David Hilbert is followed by a one-page synopsis of Hilbert spaces. In a mere eight pages on function spaces it provides what amounts to a condensed survey of functional analysis, covering norms, dual spaces, Besov spaces, the Sobolev-Besov embedding theorem, Kothe spaces, etc.

Of course, what you will not find in this book is a single proof. Nor will you find up-to-the-minute esoteric theorems. But then I cannot imagine how such a reference could encompass such things; mathematics is far too vast. Nonetheless, EDM2 has amazing breadth and depth for a meager four-volume collection. And it is written with mathematicians in mind, so the discussions are crisp and rigorous. It's exceedingly well done.

Prepared by the Mathematical Society of Japan, this two-volume set provides an outstanding reference of mathematics. It is considered by many to be the best available work that is both definitive and encompassing. Treatment is in depth, and presentations assume a solid mathematical background of the reader. This reference is excellent for the researcher working at the doctoral level. Cost of the paperback edition is very reasonable.

I've been using this book in my work as a mathematician since I bought the first english-language edition in 1984. The second english-language edition is not enormously different to the first, but it is an improvement. Both have been by far the most useful reference on my bookshelf for 18 years. I have always found that the coverage is in-depth and yet comprehensible (with a bit of pen-on-paper work). It's especially useful for accessing results from areas other than my own speciality. I've found the differential geometry coverage literally better than the dozen texts on DG which I have bought. It must be worth more than 100 books on the shelf. Indexing and cross-referencing are both excellent. Historical context is very good. I use this encyclopedia at least 10 times a week. Virtually every definition I need is here, and every important theorem is summarised.

I found this book from a HISTORY TV channel story featuring the author. As a baby-boomer I saw the movie WAKE ISLAND several times, but didn't realize it was made before any of the actual participants had returned from the POW camps. There is more Hollywood fiction in the movie than historical fact. But that's show business. The author covers in great detail the actions by major commands, individuals and everybody in-between. Considering how badly Wake was prepared to defend itself, the Marines did a great job for two weeks holding off superior forces. If only there had been more construction effort put into beach defense and airplane protection before Dec 7th. The Japanese underestimated the resistance in their first landing attempt. I was also surprised how close US forces came to rescuing the defenders, but were called off at the last moment. This a great book for Marine fans of WWII.

This book is an instant classic! I enjoyed reading this massive book cover to cover. The title "facing fearful odds" is an apt title. The quick change from peace to war trapped these brave men on an island that would become a symbol for the war in the pacific. The book reads well, and tells the tales of the civilians who stayed behind to defend Wake. The fact that they were so close to relief, and held out for so long is a testament to the warrior spirit. A must read!!!!

Since my father was a .50 captain on the island and I was with the 5th Marines in VN, I have read every work out on Wake Island. This author not only interviewed survivors but did massive research work tying in the Japanese situation and strategy with the situation on Wake Island and the strategies and reactions of Washington and Pearl Harbor, where Wake Island received its orders. He covers the air, naval,artillery and infantry actions and the personalities and historical disagreements of the participants. He speculates on alternative possibilities thoughtfully. I doubt, with the participants dying off so quickly now, that this book will ever be topped as the definitive work on the battle for wake island and he does a good job on the captivity time as well.

Wonderfully lyrical novel, touching the senses like a rose bud unfolding - colors swimming in the light, fragrance blossoming as the petals unfold, but soft petals adjacent to sharp thorns. Intriguing, frightening, and spellbinding. A young woman both caught up in and energizing an exotic, erotic world of would-be geishas and hostesses in modern-day Japan.

All my friends are now reading this mesmerizing first novel by Cynthia Gralla.

Gralla's first novel has left me feeling a bit on-edge, as if I was caught off guard and saw something I wasn't supposed to see or wasn't quite ready for. The world she describes is gorgeous, seductive and terrifying. And her style of writing matches it perfectly. I'll have to reread it soon to try to get a better sense of what was real and what might have been hallucination, though I'm not sure it really matters, the two are seamlessly interwoven into Liza's reality. I may actually have nightmares about the maiko; I envision them as pale, pale creatures with sweet, quiet smiles and razor sharp teeth. I was unable to put this book down until I'd finished it; this is the book I'll be buying for all my friends!

The Floating World is a book packed with surprises. The first chapter hints that it may be a mere coming-of-age novel in an exotic setting, and while it does offer a new twist on that genre, it is a bottomless work that only reveals more with a second reading. As a former ex-pat in Japan, I was intrigued to find a book about personal experiences in Tokyo that went far beyond the simplistic stranger-in-a-strange-land format to which so many ex-pat novels succumb. The Floating World provides deep personal insights into the culture of Japan and, by extension and contrast, the culture of sex, art, and personal revelation in the West.

Gralla's first novel is a novel of ideas, and while it certainly packs in enough breathtaking prose, startling imagery, and erotic scenes to keep the pages turning (despite the density of its content, I found it impossible to put down), it is essentially a novel that questions what it means to explore one's self in the most violent ways. Using a fascinating form of dance called 'butoh' as a framework, The Floating World explores a theme that is distressingly relevant: how can a culture move beyond trauma and a history of devastation? Gralla wonders about the connection that butoh and Japan's sex industry might have to the leveling of Tokyo during World War II, and in its meditation on the beauty that may rise from the ashes of war, this book is, needless to say, remarkably timely for a nation on the brink of war itself. Gralla's take on the subject is thought-provoking and sophisticated, and the passages describing the history and legacy of butoh are particularly hypnotic.

It is a shame that complex literary fiction like this often has to struggle to find an audience, but I hope that people will take a chance on this first novel. You won't regret it.

When I read my first of Kawabata's palm of the hand stories I can't admit that I was hooked, but I was definately intrigued. On the edition I own there is an entire story on the back cover, and after reading it I could pull NO MEANING from it what so ever. I thought, like one of the other reviewers put it, that the story was pointless. I have come to learn a harsh lession however. If there is one thing that Kawabata's works are not it is pointless. Every part of every word is overflowing with meaning. The truly pitiful part about his work is that to someone ignorant of Japan and Japanese culture it is sometimes hard to grasp what the meaning is. The simple enjoyment I received from reading the stories helped to inspire me to learn more about the country. I am by no means saying that you can't realish every word of this collection without knowing Japan, but I am saying to attempt to fully UNDERSTAND some of them it is truely a desireable asset.

House of the Sleeping Beauties is one of my favorite anthologies, and I couldn't wait to get my hands on another book from this brilliant author. The stories in Palm of the Hand are full of poetic and philosophical undertones and magical realism. My favorite one is "Bamboo-Leaf Boats," a poignant tale about a woman who grieves the loss of her fiance. The pain the protagonist goes through moved me. The other stories are beautiful as well. I suggest you read this wonderful book...

This was the sixth Kawabata book that I have read. As other reviewers have said before me, this book contains over 100 short stories. When one at first thinks of 100 short stories in one book one yends to think that the book must be massive. This book is 238 pages long. At first I was taken aback by the shortness of the stories. I mean after reading 20 pages I had finished something like 8 stories, but as i continued to read the stories started to have a larger impact on me especially the story "Bamboo-Leaf Boats" This little story was about a young girl whose fiance had not returned from WW II. She had lived her life thinking that she would never married because she was crippled by polio, but a marriage had been arranged with this young man. But he didn't return from the war, so what she saw as a silver lining in a dark cloud turned into more cloud. "The Grasshopper and the Bell Criket" was one of the sweetest stories in the book. It like many other stories in this book is hard to describe, but I found myself with a big smile on my face after i read it. It is just a sweet story about young love.

Read this book I believe you will enjoy it if you are interested in Japanese literature, but for those unuse to Kawabata, I believe you should read Thousand Cranes or Snow Country first.

David Kaplan and Andrew Marshall obviously have an amazing amount of knowledge to share when it comes to the underworlds of Japan. In this book, they do an outstanding job of telling the true story of AUM. Whether you like fiction or non-fiction, you will be capitivated by the story of this Doomsday cult. I give it 5 stars on a 5-star scale.

Kaplan's book about the Yakuza was very well written, but this book was an eye-opener. It was among the scariest tales I've ever read, and it featured lurid stories about Master Asahara's cult apparatus. This is a story every public security official should read, one about a ruthless group of religious fanatics who went the whole nine yards in their attempt to murder 90% of the Japanese peole so as to launch a holy war between Japan and the United States, and to bring about the end of the world. The accounts of the physical and mental abuse to recruits may stun even the most seasoned reader. It reminded me of the Holocaust. But most important is Kaplan and Marshall's exposure of Japanese society, which many of us view as a utopia. In this book and in "Yakuza", we see Japan as it really is, enslaved by corruption, hiding abject poverty, and losing many of its children to fanatics like Chizuo Matsumoto.

Like all of the other people who read this book, I had to keep on reminding myself that it was real and a lot of people did actually have these thoughts and intentions. The thing that really got me was how recent it all was, I'm 17 and I'm so used to everything like that being ages ago - world war 2 for example. After I had read the book I realised that it was only written in 1996 so I searched to find some recent news on them only to find that Shoko Asahara's trial is still going, the cult have relaunched themselves and they even have their own website. They managed to do all what they did 10 years ago, technology has moved on a lot since then and I dread to think what they are capable of now. If you do buy this book, I would recommend you read the last few pages carefully, its like reading the terrorist forecast of New York, very scary and yet very true.

Omiyage is one of the best books for small handcrafts I have ever seen. It uses my scrap material but the intricate patterns make every project look rich! My 16 year old daughter found the daffofil pocket and has made at least 5 in the last week! Although some of the more difficult patterns seem to leave out a step, the directions are clear, easy to read and easy to follow. The patterns in the back are easy to copy and use and I plan to use this book to make small, quick gifts for my friends' birthdays! I was also interested in the Japanese culture and there is great introductory information on the art of Omiyage in Japan, as well as information on holidays and some folktales. I requested that my library order a copy, but I bought a personal copy for myself! It is a WONDERFUL book!! Kumiko Sudo is a gifted artist.

This has been a refreshing change from so many 'craft' sewing books. It was easy to follow and is based on a genuine Japanese craft. The items I have made turned out beautifully and are admired by the receipients. I have made several little bags and adapted others for pincushions. Toatly enjoy this book!

I was delighted to find this book is not only beautifully written but the projects are also easy to make. I whipped my first project up in about two hours.

I wish I could write as entertainingly as Alan Booth. This book will not disappoint you, especially if you like traveling and are fascinated with Japan. And if not, it's still a great read anyway.

The most brilliant thing about this book is that the author combines Japanese history into his narratives as he traces three historical figures and/or locations in Japan by foot. The way he makes the characteres he meets along the way of his journey come to life is outstanding. I really enjoy this book and wish that he had written others before he died. The only thing that bothered me somewhat and makes me feel unsympathetic towards him, however, is that he drank too much. But who am I to judge? This is a great book. Highly recommended.

Will some publisher PLEASE print a collection of Alan Booth's outstanding newspaper articles? These would be a wonderful complement to Looking for the Lost and Roads to Sata.

Looking for the Lost is an oddity. A book that I remember few details of, yet I remember with great vividness that I was moved by a intangible sadness that was always just over the next horizon of his journeys. Alan Booth was a writer of invincible good humor. Too much so to speak of his own impending death (though his newspaper writings about his trials with the Japanese medical system are classic). But the alert reader is constantly aware of an impending passing of life, seemingly inseparable from the passing of beauty in this country.

I was in Japan during the final years of Alan Booth's life here, pretty much in the same circles. It is my deep regret that I never took the trouble to make his acquaintance.

This is a facinating book. You get unusual and fresh perspectives on national/racial identity and the travel book. The story of how Alan Booth came to Japan, and his unique viewpoint as a foreigner who speaks the language, and knows as much or more about Japanese culture than many of the natives, is woven throughout his accounts of walking through different areas of the country. The way the people he meets view him, and the way he reacts and responds to them is often funny, and just as often instructive and meaningful. This a great book, and reveals much upon repeated readings. I only wish there more from him.

I like the details inlcuded in this book, like the logic
parts. An example would be, how does the pilot enter the mecha,
or how the cockpit looks like, or what the suit should look like
and so on...

His style though, is only moderate, and if you really REALLY
want to learn to draw robots, you should take
a look at "How To Draw Manga - Giant Robots" by Hikaru Hayashi.

Having both books can give you an excellent insight on the genre,
and lets you make your own style, because that's what it's all
about!

I loved this book about Japannese Mecha drawn by and American artist...Hart does a great job here by presenting a "detailed" catalogue of mecha drawing... This book is not only for begginers but for advanced artists who finally recognize japanesse cartoon styles rule this days...Great book!!

What a great book. He goes through all the important aspects gradually, and shows you how to draw perspectives, detail, how to emphasize certain features, and just about anything you need to know. The examples rock hard, and he really does a great job of getting you started on drawing mecha. A great book, hands down.

Now go buy it!

This book was great! It combined old mysticism with amazing technology. The only thing it was missing was that the cool motorcycles and other vehicles that were pictured, but were not given stats on! It also made Japan seem less powerful than the "NGR" (technology wise). The old mystics (like the traditional ninja and samurai) are a little weak, as they had low mega-damage stats and refuse to use technology so you can't even fit them into a suit of power armor to protect them! A lot of it was rehash too, like the Japanese "Samas" operator and the Japanese "Glitterboy". Other than that, the weapons were pretty cool, the possible adventures are good, the OCCs are excellent, and if you combine this book with "Ninjas and superspies" it really brings it to life!

I especially like to create ninja borgs from it but it is a great reference for creating robots and other types of ninjas my secon favorite is juciers.

I have purchased 6 of the world books (Africa, England, Atlantis, Vampire Kingdoms, Japan, and Federation of Magic) and seen several others and out of them all I love Japan the most. Its where I chose my character, a Borg Ninja from. It contains awsome characters, awsome weapons, some cool armor, a lot of cool cyborgs, and is overall my favorite book. It was EASY to find a character to play in this book and equip him real quick. I love this book, a definet must have!