_In Blue_ is a showcase of what a superb sound engineer can do with pop music in high-resolution multichannel surround. This impeccably produced DVD-Audio title eschews the flashy overuse of surround channels and lets the darkly seductive vocals come through clearly up front. The surrounds are used with more artistic subtlety to create a three-dimensional ambience you can't get anywhere else, including a live concert. Just put the disc on a good system, sit back, close your eyes, and you'll soon be in another world.

Wow, I don't think anyone could ask for more in a concert video than this. I had never heard of this DVD before I just ran into it by accident, and the only negative thing I can say is that more effort whould have gone into its marketing. Disc 1 is the full-length concert film which includes a very long section of Indian music. I suppose this won't be every Westerner's cup of tea, but I would encourage all viewers to at least give it a chance. I myself was totally transfixed by the Indian music, performed on sitar by Ravi Shankar's daughter, who also directs a large Indian orchestra in a lengthy symphonic-style piece.

The second part of the concert consists of tribute performances of George Harrison's music by rock artists, including Eric Clapton. There is really not a bad song in the bunch, and both the video and surround audio are great.

This is not a large book for the price, but the production values are excellent. All illustrations are in color and at high resolution, so you can actually see even the most subtle effects of image manipulation.

This is not a beginner's book, and it is not for those who wish to use Photoshop principally for painting or drawing. Rather, it is just what the title says--"for photographers." If you already know the basics of Photoshop and the elements of photography, I think you will find this is the most valuable Photoshop book in print today.

The book is divided into short (2 to 4-page) sections, each dealing with a common photographic problem (too dark, too much highlight, eyebrows too thin, waist too thick, facial blemishes and wrinkles, red eye, yellow teeth, color casts--you name it) and step-by-step remedies for each, including specific numerical values to plug into dialog boxes for filters. The book is useful for all sorts of photography, but I have found it most useful for pictures of people. The author apparently has extensive experience in fashion photography; his techniques are especially strong in the area of making people look better than in real life without producing any perception of artificiality.

As a practiciing pathologist, I have spent thousands of dollars on disappointing cytology books for two and a half decades, so my expectations in this area are low. However, I just got the second edition of this book, and I am absolutely delighted.

This is a small format book that fits well on the desk and in the hand, but it is crammed with great photomics and text that is short on academic BS and rich in diagnostic pearls. Frankly, I think this book blows DeMay and the other two-ton tomes out of the water.

I am a physician but have read a lot of popularized physics. Hawking's book is a major disappointment. That which is understandable (such as the Uncertainty Principle) is given no new treatment. The latter half of the book is completely incomprehensible. Hawking just throws out one assertion after another with nothing to link them logically or even to show how they relate to the physical world. The sections on time travel and p-branes are especially weak and not worth the time trying to read them. Kip Thorne has done a much more lucid treatment of time travel in his book, and Michio Kaku has done a better job explaining string theory.

The strong aspect of _The Universe in a Nutshell_ is its illustrations; even if you didn't read any of the text, the illustrations are worth the purchase price.

Anyone who attempts to make philosophy accessible to non-academics certainly has the tip of my hat, but DESCARTES IN 90 MINUTES sacrifices too much substance in the interest of readability. This book would be OK for a high school student preparing a short paper or presentation on French philosopher/mathematician Rene Descarte, but for those of us who are motivated by anything more than casual curiosity about philosophers will be left unsatisfied.

I did learn quite a few facts from this very clearly-written book, such as Descarte's odd sleeping habits, his apparent facility in composing musical verse, and his compulsive wanderlust. The problem is that biographies of Great Thinkers just don't have a lot of impact without including some exposition of their Great Thoughts. "I think, therefore I am," is about as deep as it gets here.

This rambling survey of modern particle physics and cosmology reads well, but ultimately one has to ask, "where's the meat?" Granted, these topics are so esoteric and abstract that trying to relate them to everyday experience is nigh impossible, but a few authors (e.g, Richard Feynman and Steve Adams) have been able to accomplish this. Kaku flits from one subject to another, reciting a canon of gee-whiz observations (such as John Wheeler's suggestion that there may be only one electron in the universe, traveling back and forth in time), but he offers no logical structure upon which these conjectures are based. The book reads more like a collection of fables and fairy tales than a scientific treatment.

BEYOND EINSTEIN could arguably be recommended for those who have never done any reading on particle physics whatsoever, but for those who have already looked into it, the book will probably disappoint.

The program content consists of footage shot of a March, 1996, Yes concert in the Fremont Theatre, San Luis Obispo, California. Here we see the classic lineup of Yes, fronted by vocalist Jon Anderson, guitarist Steve Howe, bassist Chris Squire, keyboardist Rick Wakeman, and drummer Alan White. I say "fronted," because there are also one or more vocalists, and possibly instrumentalists, offstage. This is extremely disquieting to us dedicated Yes fans, who have grown up with a band who had up until then prided itself on performing all parts live and onstage.

The song list is quite impressive, including some of the great Yes numbers. Here is the complete list:

Siberian Khatru

Close to the Edge

I've Seen All Good People

Time and a Word

And You and I

The Revealing Science of God

Going for the One

Turn of the Century

America

Onward

Awaken

Roundabout

Starship Trooper

While this sounds like a dream come true, don't get your hopes up. The best that can be said for this program is that the audio mix is adequate, much better than that in YESSONGS and YES LIVE IN PHILADELPHIA 1979, but not nearly so good as the most recent Yes concert video, HOUSE OF YES. The video production is absolutely atrocious. Most of the shots consist of long views of the band, in which the musicians line the bottom of the screen, while "psychedelic" montages are superimposed on the wall above them. Worse, other shots show the musicians double-exposed against the artwork. There are few shots that show any of the technique of these fine instrumentalists. You can hear some great Wakeman chops, but only rarely will they show you his fingers executing them.

I found it agonizing to get through this program. I had to listen to one song at a time over a period of days. I doubt I'll ever play the disc again. I suppose hard-core Yes enthusiasts will want to own the disc, but for everyone else, I can't recommend it. If you want some good Yes music on video, get HOUSE OF YES.

For us layman physics enthusiasts, the Holy Grail is a book that deals with theoretical physics at the mathematical level but doesn't require an amount of math beyond basic calculus and trigonometry. On the surface, Steve Adams has provided such a book, although it may be that trying to reduce all physics to such a level of comprehension may not be possible.

Penned by a well-credentialed British science educator, FRONTIERS ambitiously sets out to survey some of the most difficult-to-understand areas of physics. Some experimental physics is covered, but theory gets the lion's share of treatment. I have read a lot of physics books aimed at general readers, and this is by far the most challenging and takes the most time to get through. However, a patient reader will be rewarded with new insights across the whole spectrum of physics. Profusely illustrated with diagrams, the book gives many unique examples of concepts in an attempt to make them understandable. Some examples fall flat, but most do score right on target.

Mathematical examples are relegated to so-called "maths boxes," and these are the weakest parts of the book. Variables are often undefined, and steps are so flagrantly skipped that some examples remind me of a classmate who answered an organic synthesis question with the word "POOF!" between the reactant and the product. So, I really didn't get much out of the maths boxes, but the rest of the book is well-written and at least as easy to follow as the abstruse subject matter allows. I will say that after reading this book, I am finally--after decades--starting to sort of understand particle physics, if only at the level it takes to appreciate the humongous intellect of the professional physicists who work in this highly abstract area.

The Table of Contents gives some idea of the wide range of topics covered:

1. Old Quantum Theory

2. A New Quantum Theory 1925-30

3. Quantum Mysteries

4. QED [quantum electrodynamics]

5. Atoms and Nuclei

6. The Standard Model [this is the catalog of subatomic particles, one of the strongest chapters]

7. Particle Detectors [also very illuminating, the strongest chapter devoted to experimental physics]

8. Particle Accelerators [ditto]

9. Toward a Theory of Everything

10. The Speed of Light [this, and the next two chapters on relativity, are also particularly strong and give unique examples]

11. Special Relativity

12. General Relativity

13. Observational Astronomy

14. Stars and Distances

15. Cosmology

16. Time, Temperature, and Chance [novel examples in an area that is not usually presented to general readers]

17. Toward Absolute Zero [interesting coverage of technology for achieving very low temperatures]

18. CPT [as in "CPT symmetry"; C=charge P=parity T=time reversal. After reading this, I finally understand what "parity" is]

19 Appendices"

1. The Black Body Radiation Spectrum 2. The Schroedinger Equation 3. The Hydrogen Atom 4. The Lorentz Transformation Equations 5. The Speed of Electromagnetic Waves 6. The Nobel Prize for Physics 7. Glossary of Important Ideas 8. Timeline of Major Ideas 9. Further Reading

I appreciate the author's attention to detail by including the glossaries. While Glossaries 6 through 9 are quite useful, the others are really more in the line of textbook material, requiring fairly advanced math to understand them.

I read this book cover-to-cover, but is also would be a nice reference, so I am going to keep it readily available to answer future musings.

For us layman physics enthusiasts, the Holy Grail is a book that deals with theoretical physics at the mathematical level but doesn't require an amount of math beyond basic calculus and trigonometry. On the surface, Steve Adams has provided such a book, although it may be that trying to reduce all physics to such a level of comprehension may not be possible.

Penned by a well-credentialed British science educator, FRONTIERS ambitiously sets out to survey some of the most difficult-to-understand areas of physics. Some experimental physics is covered, but theory gets the lion's share of treatment. I have read a lot of physics books aimed at general readers, and this is by far the most challenging and takes the most time to get through. However, a patient reader will be rewarded with new insights across the whole spectrum of physics. Profusely illustrated with diagrams, the book gives many unique examples of concepts in an attempt to make them understandable. Some examples fall flat, but most do score right on target.

Mathematical examples are relegated to so-called "maths boxes," and these are the weakest parts of the book. Variables are often undefined, and steps are so flagrantly skipped that some examples remind me of a classmate who answered an organic synthesis question with the word "POOF!" between the reactant and the product. So, I really didn't get much out of the maths boxes, but the rest of the book is well-written and at least as easy to follow as the abstruse subject matter allows. I will say that after reading this book, I am finally--after decades--starting to sort of understand particle physics, if only at the level it takes to appreciate the humongous intellect of the professional physicists who work in this highly abstract area.

The Table of Contents gives some idea of the wide range of topics covered:

1. Old Quantum Theory

2. A New Quantum Theory 1925-30

3. Quantum Mysteries

4. QED [quantum electrodynamics]

5. Atoms and Nuclei

6. The Standard Model [this is the catalog of subatomic particles, one of the strongest chapters]

7. Particle Detectors [also very illuminating, the strongest chapter devoted to experimental physics]

8. Particle Accelerators [ditto]

9. Toward a Theory of Everything

10. The Speed of Light [this, and the next two chapters on relativity, are also particularly strong and give unique examples]

11. Special Relativity

12. General Relativity

13. Observational Astronomy

14. Stars and Distances

15. Cosmology

16. Time, Temperature, and Chance [novel examples in an area that is not usually presented to general readers]

17. Toward Absolute Zero [interesting coverage of technology for achieving very low temperatures]

18. CPT [as in "CPT symmetry"; C=charge P=parity T=time reversal. After reading this, I finally understand what "parity" is]

19 Appendices"

1. The Black Body Radiation Spectrum 2. The Schroedinger Equation 3. The Hydrogen Atom 4. The Lorentz Transformation Equations 5. The Speed of Electromagnetic Waves 6. The Nobel Prize for Physics 7. Glossary of Important Ideas 8. Timeline of Major Ideas 9. Further Reading

I appreciate the author's attention to detail by including the glossaries. While Glossaries 6 through 9 are quite useful, the others are really more in the line of textbook material, requiring fairly advanced math to understand them.

I read this book cover-to-cover, but is also would be a nice reference, so I am going to keep it readily available to answer future musings.