1 comments about Medieval Muslim Horsemanship: A Fourteenth-Century Arabic Cavalry Manual (British Library Booklets).

1. While the illuminations of this text are nice, there is not much description of the actual text. Smith spends much of the little text interpreting the pictures, which is helpful, but there is no translation of the text. More like a picture book.

No comments about American Book Prices Current 1996 (American Book Prices Current).

No comments about One Touch of Shakespeare: Letters of Joseph Crosby to Joseph Parker Norris, 1875-1878.

5 comments about Encounter With Tiber.

1. Isaac Asimov has always been my favorite author, but Encounter with Tiber is the only book that I have read more than twice (4 times to date). About every other year or so, I will pick it up and read it again, and I have enjoyed it every time. I would love to see a sequel to this novel, and in fact, I am adding this review after searching the net to see any possible news/references to a sequel.



2. This is a science fiction story that blends different stages of technical engineering developments around the character development of two civilizations, one from Earth. Plot discussion leverages off known existing technological challenges, solutions and observed facts. This becomes insightful and relevant to today's space efforts and developments. The book contains canonical hooks that could be evolved into many discussion issues around space technology, space law, planetary settlement (nation building), physics, chemistry, biology, medicine, metallurgy, everything. The credibility associated to the discussion by the experienced elder astronaut author takes the book out of the realm of the throwaway science fiction diatribe into discussable scientific trial balloons that warrant further discussion. This book should be turned into an epic movie.



3. In my long and often fruitless search for decent sci-fi once in a while a gem is found. This is one of those cases. Also this book written in '96 predicted a 2nd shuttle accident which of course happened in Feb. 2003. The current science is very well researched and yet also leads us to see how future things may develop. The characters and the plot are very believable: characters and events are subject to wise decisions but also the flaws that exist in even the best people and governments have their part to play.
   
   Not since the original writings of Asimov have I seen such decent and well planed out sci-fi writing.
   
   Note to the 1st reviewer: B. Aldrin has a doctorate in astronautics from MIT. How can he be "in over his head" in writing a sci-fi book???



4. People tend to love or hate this book I noticed, but personally I found it akin to Barnes's other novels which I have enjoyed, but simultaneously get annoyed by. Buzz's authorial voice is hard to pull apart from Barnes except where there's a lot of technical concepts flying around - definitely Buzz's material there. A curious omission that many have missed is its silence about the violation of conservation of momentum that the deccelerator loop on the Earth Starship causes - at no point do the authors note the large accelerations such a thing would cause. Also its flight-time seems to be based on non-relativistic calculations - these aren't major errors, but odd considering Buzz's meticulous details on other technical matters.



5. Buzz Aldrin and John Barnes wrote the long, but quite thought-provoking science fiction story "Encounter with Tiber". At almost 600 pages, it takes a reader at least a couple of days to trudge through the story, especially the early highly technical parts of the story. Aldrin essentially predicted commerical space travel, and from the news, we may not be far off from the scenerio that Aldrin and Barnes present here. The story is told through five different narrators with three humans at various points in the 2lst Century, and two "Tiberians" who came to Earth(or as they called it Setepos) in ancient times. Basically, the message is that science and space exploration takes time and commitment, but it's worth pursuing. The novel leaves the reader wanting more, as Clio(an astronaut traveling in the late 21st Century) discovers that her journey is just beginning. It leaves room for a sequel, which depending on your attitude towards the story is good or bad. I enjoyed this rich novel, and recommend this for anyone who really wants to know why we should try to go to Mars.

No comments about The Collector's Guide to Trading Cards: Identification and Values.

No comments about The Cotton Genesis: British Library Codex Cotton Otho B. VI (Princeton Monographs in Art and Archaeology).

No comments about Gold in your attic.

2 comments about Medieval Birds in the Sherborne Missal (Medieval Life in Manuscripts).

1. If you are curious about bird illustrations before Audubon....this is a great example of what was done in the Medieval Manuscripts. Although small, it is packed with full page illustrations. It appears that the color representation are very close to the original works. I highly recommend this book to anyone intrested in medieval manuscripts as well as bird illustrations.



2. The Sherborne Missal gives a bird's-eye view of worship in 15th-century England. The beautifully illustrated and written manuscript was done for the Benedictine Abbey of Sherborne on the east coast of England, in Dorset. It gives the saints days, special intentions such as for the sick, and the words of the mass for each day.

   Birds decorate the pages. But there are only three places where it hits you in the face why a particular bird is shown on a particular page. The goldfinch, as a medieval Italian symbol for the crucified Christ, is shown with Epiphany, the robin with Sherborne Abbot Robert Brunyng, and the skylark soaring upwards into the skies with the Ascension.

   According to MEDIEVAL BIRDS IN THE SHERBORNE MISSAL, the artist must have owned or gotten easy hold of models or sketches. One known pattern book, from possibly around 1400, mainly showed initial letters, with only four leaves of bird studies. But Giovannino De' Grassi's late 14th-century sketchbook, now in the Biblioteca Civica in Bergamo, helped to spread the northern Italian style of drawing nature as it really was, without fantastic add-ons.

   Private collectors in France kept the Missal safe from 16th-century Reformation England, until calmer days at the end of the 18th century. Then the Missal ended up in the library of the dukes of Northumberland, at Alnwick Castle. In 1983 the 10th duke loaned the manuscript to the British Museum. With the death of the 11th duke the Sherborne Missal became, in 1998, additional ms 74326, as a permanent part of the British Library collection.

   It now is among the exhibits in the library galleries. But only two pages can be seen at any one time, and usually not of the birds. So Janet Backhouse's book is particularly valuable, as the first complete full-color publication under one roof of all the birds.

   The author has written many books on medieval manuscripts. But readers might particularly like THE LINDISFARNE GOSPELS and MEDIEVAL RURAL LIFE IN THE LUTTRELL PSALTER, for their similar themes on nature in the English Middle Ages.

No comments about Comic Related Collectibles Survival & Price Guide.

No comments about Bibliography of Emblematic Manuscripts (Corpus Librorum Emblematum).