Pass on this set. I have heard only portions, but am unimpressed, partly with the sound. Yes indeed digital recordings can be bad too! For a budget too-much-Beethoven look for the Brilliant Complete Edition or the older EMI 50 box set, both well priced. They feature top notch performers and generally good sound.

More than just the Olympics, also a fast tour of Hellenic society. Perrottet is good not just on the details of the games but also on the role of the games in the Hellenic world.

Some translations of Ovid are slow. Not this one. The Humphries -- long standard -- is clear but slow and earthbound. This is the most poetic translation I have found. Plus Hughes keesp all the "good bits."

Not of course a full translation, but the right place for the curious to start.

After an arresting start, and a nice conceit -- a Tsarist policeman as the good guy -- this devolves into what used to be called a 'penny dreadful'. This could have been written by Edgar Wallce or Leslie Charteris. Secret societies and non-descript writing. A disappointment.

I love this music, but it wasn't easy. I had to listen to it several times before I warmed up to it. The style is very like that of Nyman's Noises, Sounds and Sweet Airs. It is for hardcore Nyman fans only, but for them it is a treat.

If you only know Nyman from The Piano this will be a shock. Everyone I play this for recoils in horror.

I actually have a few complaints about this book, but the core material is so helpful and instructive that they don't much matter.

This book explains vector and the beginnings of tensor analysis with new visual metaphors for vectors: lines, sheaves, thumbtacks, stacks. The dot and cross products can be visualized with these metaphors, and the various forms of Stokes/Gauss theorems proven visually.

This is great stuff for anyone going beyond the basics in vector analysis -- which would be anyone in pure math or physics, and some engineers.

You do need to use this as an adjuct to a conventional text or course.

This is the more sophisticated and general version of "Div, Grad, Curl and All That".

Discusses how FDR's new deal policies extended the dpression and hindered recovery. This is true, and reflects the results of modern research, but there is another recent book that covers the same ground a lot better: Rethinking the Great Depression by Smiley.

This book tries to do two things: summarize the findings of evoltionary thinking on the development of co-operation, and relate these to making humans more co-operative.

On the first goal this book isn't too bad. it has a lot less meat than Ridley's book on co-operation, or anything by Dawkins. But as an intor for those new to this stuff it isn't too bad.

When he tries to tie it to humans, and drags in his religion too, he makes a muddle of it. Some of what he suggests is just embarrassing.

He is evidently confused on what is and is not group selection too.

Read Axelrod, The Evolution of Cooperation or Ridley, The Origins of Virtue instead.

Smiley discusses the cause the the Great Depression, and the effects of the New Deal in prolonging it. He summarizes the findings of the latest academeic research, over the past few decades. He does this well and quite clearly, in a non-polemical way.

No math is involved.

I have a pretty good background in math and physics. But I learned almost nothing here. I think someone with less background would learn even less. The problem is he never really defines anything, never makes clear whether he means a 'loop' is a real thing or just a calculation tool, etc.

It is all just so mushy.

Plus he talks a lot about theories that have no experimental tests, and none presently envisioned. This seems like metaphysics to me.

You want a real popular science book that explains real science to a layman? Read QED by Feynman. Read Relativity Visualized by Epstein.