I am developing a course in the History of Technology in America for my local community college, and find this book an invaluable resource. There is a hard-back one-volume edition as well as a soft-cover two-volume edition available. The authors hail from Harvard, Yale and MIT, with backgrounds in history, politics and technology.

This is an American history with a difference. While the student and instructor will find the basic chronological outline of American history that is familiar, the development of themes here often draws in much more explicitly than the normal text the issues of technological innovation, scientific discovery, manufacturing and business development as engines for growth and progress in the course of American history. The authors state in their introduction that Americans 'have long considered this penchant for innovation a distinguishing feature of their culture and history.'

Technology in terms discussed here is hardly confined to the modern age. For example, very early in the text the authors state that the development of maize/corn 'was perhaps the most important plant-breeding achievement of all time' - the creation of a stable staple food crop that was adaptable and resilient spurred the growth of civilisation in dramatic ways. Technology includes that related to architecture (from the earliest buildings in the Native American cultures to modern skyscrapers, bridges and underground complexes), agriculture (the aforementioned maize development being but the earliest of these examples), transportation technologies (from canals to railroads to automobiles and aircraft), medical technologies (from early hygiene and vaccine developments to modern pharmaceutical and genetic innovations), information technology (telegraph and telephone to digital and internet), and much more.

History is naturally selective, and any history text is going to have to walk the fine line between being thorough in development and being comprehensive in scope. The whole work weighs in at well over 1100 pages (inclusive of index and appendices), which is a lot of material for a two-semester course that will include supplemental readings. As an overview of American history, it hits the high points well and develops many sidelines of interest. My own particular teaching responsibilities for this will be to students who are primarily interested in technical education - this method of developing American history has more appeal for this audience, given its more direct applicability to their courses of study.

In the two volume edition, the first volume covers the pre-Columbian scene in the Americas through to the era of Reconstruction following the Civil War; the second volume goes through the presidency of the current George W. Bush, and includes issues of 9-11 and the issues of ongoing wars against terrorists. There are CD-ROM supplements that come with the books, which include many helpful elements for the students, as well as some multi-media offerings. These are keyed to chapters in the text.

The text is written in an interesting and informative manner, with appropriate use of humour and wit as situations permit. For example, from the text on the exhibition in London's Crystal Palace in 1851, the authors write:

'Among the winners was the New York firm of Day and Newell, manufacturers of locks. In one of the more flamboyant competitions, an employee of Day and Newell successfully picked the locks of several well-known English lock makers, while an English locksmith failed to pick Day and Newell's locks. The American won a cash prize for his efforts, while the Bank of England, whose vault he opened, subsequently placed an order with Day and Newell for a new set of locks.'

The text is supplemented by a very generous sampling of graphics, pictures, woodcuts, maps, charts and other colourful elements. Every page has some element of colour and something to make it visually interesting apart from the text.

This is a wonderful book for undergraduate courses in American history as well as for general readers who want to refresh their knowledge of American history.

Time is a tricky thing to deal with theologically. There are elements of repetition, and elements of once-only. In our church experience, we look back on the once-only kinds of events (both historical and revelatory) through a cyclical pattern that has varying spans; perhaps the most significant is that of the church year, which follows the progress of the seasons, allowing for variation, but also adding stability to the way in which we as a community approach God and the narratives surrounding God's action in the world.

As Vicki Black states, there are two primary cycles in the church year. The first is the Advent-Christmas-Epiphany cycle, and the second is the Lent-Easter-Pentecost cycle. Traditionally, the church year is said to begin at the first Sunday of Advent. This day is always the fourth Sunday before Christmas; while Christmas is always December 25, the variability in the calendar means that the actual date for the beginning of Advent changes from year to year. This cycle continues through the Epiphany, after which 'ordinary' time takes place until the beginning of Lent on Ash Wednesday. ('Ordinary' time refers to the fact that these weeks are numbered with ordinal numbers - second Sunday after Epiphany, etc., and not to the fact that they are outside any of the greater seasons of the church.)

Lent begins on Ash Wednesday, which falls on different dates in different years, dependent upon the date of Easter. Unlike Christmas, which is fixed on the calendar (which is the Roman solar calendar still in primary use in the world), Easter shifts from year to year, as it is pegged to the Jewish celebration of the Passover, which is governed by a lunar calendar. Lent lasts for 40 days (exclusive of Sundays) until Easter. Holy Week is technically a part of Lent, but has different colours and aspects as things go up to Easter; the Easter season continues until the feast of the Pentecost 50 days later, at which time the church goes into the second, longer period of 'ordinary' time, until the advent of the next Advent season.

Black discusses each of these six elements (Advent-Christmas-Epiphany and Lent-Easter-Pentecost) in separate chapters, along with a special chapter on Holy Week, and an introductory chapter. Black's development is personal, in that she discusses how she incorporates this into her family with her husband and son; she also allows for variations of practice in different parishes and dioceses. There is a minimum of technical language here - the text is very accessible, yet doesn't 'talk down' to the reader. It is both engaging and inviting.

The book can be used by a discussion group at the church - despite the division into eight chapters, it could easily be used as a Lenten discussion book or for an inquirer's class to learn aspects of the church year. There are potential discussion questions listed at the back of each chapter. The book itself is rather short and easily read in a short time, but can be useful as a reference throughout the year, too.

This is part of a series by Morehouse Press, which also includes 'Welcome to the Book of Common Prayer' (also by Vicki Black), 'Welcome to Sunday' and 'Welcome to the Episcopal Church' (both by Christopher Webber). All of these books are great as introductions to the ways (sometimes mysterious) Episcopalians do things in church - useful for newcomers as well as life-long members who might never have learned the 'why' behind what the church does.

The turn of the millennium (the last millennium, that is) in England was an interesting world to behold -- the country was struggling toward unity, but still wary of invaders from across the various seas (an invasion trend that would stop less than 100 years after the turn of the millennium). The typical Englishman was well-fed, but the kinds of food might astound modern readers; when the people got indigestion back then, medical treatments were even more bizarre.

Into the world, Robert Lacey and Danny Danziger venture with humour and insight. Lacey and Danziger, established writers in related topics, have traced a journey through history by tracing the typical life during a year at the turn of the year 1000, through the Julius Work Calendar, on reserve at the British Library, lost for a time due to miscategorisation. The authors (Lacey and Danziger) makes use of this interesting framework of month-by-month chronicling to develop the details of daily life and work in England in the year 1000.

The different months take the paradigm for different topics -- February looks at geography; August looks at medicine (and the frequency of flies); November looks at the issues of gender relationships. Among the fascinating facts that come out in the analysis are the kinds of cyclical patterns that occur in history --Lacey and Danziger point out that under Canute, an unfaithful wife would meet with a horrible fate, but that legislation died with him, until the Commonwealth period several hundred years later, when it would be revived.

The authors do not stick exclusively to English shores -- they discuss the general world situation, as it would impact English development. Lacey and Danziger close the year and discussion with the figure of Gerbert, who would become pope Sylvester II, having been the scholar of note under the Ottos, successors of Charlemagne. His strange innovations, like prefering Arabic numbers (1, 2, 3, etc.) to Roman numerals, introducing 'exotic' machines like an abacus to the world made him suspect -- however, Lacey and Danziger refer to him as the first millennium's Bill Gates, revolutionising computational power for good and forever.

Lacey and Danziger warn against the 'snobbery of chronology', as C.S. Lewis terms it -- we don't necessarily know better or live better than our ancestors, and sometimes our distorted views of the past much be called into check. For example, it is commonly held that people today are taller than people in the past; while this trend is true over the past several generations, prior to that, it is not true -- the average Englishman today is only slightly taller than the average Englishman of the year 1000.

From riddles and games for a dark and stormy night (playing cards would not be invented for several hundred years) to the origins of serfdom and family life, this is a wonderful telling of history with fact, fiction, literature, politics and more rolled into a common thread.

I first discovered Robert Lacey as an author from his book 'The Year 1000'. Interesting, accessible, easy to follow, with a good balance of detail and breadth (always a tricky task when writing a popular history), that book was one of my favourites around the turn of the second millennium. I discovered this book on the shelves of my local library, and have found it equally worthwhile and fun to read.

This book concentrates on the late Middle Ages to the post-Reformation era in English history - in royal terms, the times of the end of the Plantagenets, the Tudors, the Stuarts, the Interregnum and Glorious Revolution (which a history professor of mine once intoned dramatically, 'was neither glorious nor a revolution'). In years, this goes from the late 1300s to the late 1600s.

One of the things that I like a lot about this particular history is that the stories are brief and self-contained while being part of the overall flow of the history of England. They make for good bed-time reading (the longest of the stories is barely seven pages long, in easy print and easy, storytelling language). Many of the characters are already familiar figures even to those who aren't Anglophiles - Joan of Arc, Anne Boleyn, Elizabeth the First, Shakespeare, King James and the English Bible. Then there will be figures that are lesser known but just as interesting - the Roundheads and Cavaliers, Rabbi Manasseh, Titus Oates, the Bloody Assizes. These are tales told in a simplified but memorable manner, and could serve for younger and older readers as a stimulus for further reading and investigation about topics brought up in the text.

There are a few maps, royal lineage charts, and woodcut/line art drawings throughout the text. Lacey includes a bibliography for further reading (this contains a good number of website addresses for making further research very easy). There is also an index, which many popular histories forget, but Lacey is to be highly praised for including one here, making looking up particular names, places and events very easy.

As Karen Armstrong says in her introduction, the year 1000 was a very different world, one that would never have believed that the global triumph of the West would take place in the next 1000 years. There were no cohesive nations of long standing; the Roman Empire's collapse hundreds of years prior remained the defining influence, and even consolidations under the likes of Charlemagne would not change the fact that half of Europe was still fighting the other half, usually in small, tribal cliques.

Despite the dominance of the Christian church, still at this time officially undivided, much of Europe was rife with superstition and nature religions that occasionally practiced barbaric rituals; the church unfortunately occasionally engaged in barbaric rituals of its own.

The Muslim and Chinese dynasties, on the other hand, were cultivated and developing at a rapid pace; the Greek Christian world was considered peripheral civilisation not to the West (considered barbarian territory) but to the other two dominant powers, neither of which concerned themselves much with Europe.

Robert Erdoes' book is not really a history book, but rather a narrative historical almost-fiction, a dramatised vision of what the world was like at the turn of the first millennium. he speculates that many people were thinking that this might be the millennium spoken of in some biblical interpretations -- this is generally incorrect, given that many people didn't realise what year it was, and other dominant cultures didn't use the now-standard Christian-inspired calendar.

The main figure in Erdoes' book is a man named Gerbert, an up-and-coming figure in the Western church hierarchy, who by virtue of his position is afforded opportunities to travel and experience different peoples and places. Gerbert, the teacher of the emperor Otto III, eventually becomes Sylvester II, a powerful but always embattled pope. Otto, holding on to the remnants of Charlemagne's empire and vision of a reunited vision, works with him, but in the end, both fail.

Erdoes develops the worldview in an interesting fashion. This being more a novel than a history, it does not have citations, facts and figures for the most part. Erdoes often opts for the historically-incorrect but true to the mindset rendering of history -- as in the most ancient of times, sometimes the truth of a civilisation can be told more from its mythology than from its simple history.

A fun book to read!

The turn of the millennium (the last millennium, that is) in England was an interesting world to behold -- the country was struggling toward unity, but still wary of invaders from across the various seas (an invasion trend that would stop less than 100 years after the turn of the millennium). The typical Englishman was well-fed, but the kinds of food might astound modern readers; when the people got indigestion back then, medical treatments were even more bizarre.

Into the world, Robert Lacey and Danny Danziger venture with humour and insight. Lacey and Danziger, established writers in related topics, have traced a journey through history by tracing the typical life during a year at the turn of the year 1000, through the Julius Work Calendar, on reserve at the British Library, lost for a time due to miscategorisation. The authors (Lacey and Danziger) makes use of this interesting framework of month-by-month chronicling to develop the details of daily life and work in England in the year 1000.

The different months take the paradigm for different topics -- February looks at geography; August looks at medicine (and the frequency of flies); November looks at the issues of gender relationships. Among the fascinating facts that come out in the analysis are the kinds of cyclical patterns that occur in history --Lacey and Danziger point out that under Canute, an unfaithful wife would meet with a horrible fate, but that legislation died with him, until the Commonwealth period several hundred years later, when it would be revived.

The authors do not stick exclusively to English shores -- they discuss the general world situation, as it would impact English development. Lacey and Danziger close the year and discussion with the figure of Gerbert, who would become pope Sylvester II, having been the scholar of note under the Ottos, successors of Charlemagne. His strange innovations, like prefering Arabic numbers (1, 2, 3, etc.) to Roman numerals, introducing 'exotic' machines like an abacus to the world made him suspect -- however, Lacey and Danziger refer to him as the first millennium's Bill Gates, revolutionising computational power for good and forever.

Lacey and Danziger warn against the 'snobbery of chronology', as C.S. Lewis terms it -- we don't necessarily know better or live better than our ancestors, and sometimes our distorted views of the past much be called into check. For example, it is commonly held that people today are taller than people in the past; while this trend is true over the past several generations, prior to that, it is not true -- the average Englishman today is only slightly taller than the average Englishman of the year 1000.

From riddles and games for a dark and stormy night (playing cards would not be invented for several hundred years) to the origins of serfdom and family life, this is a wonderful telling of history with fact, fiction, literature, politics and more rolled into a common thread.

As James Charlesworth says in his introduction, this book is a classic collection of essays regarding the 'hot topic' in scroll scholarship of how the scrolls relate to the New Testament. As most of the scroll scholars in the beginning were among the Christian academic ranks, the connections and interest was natural. While the connections to Judaism were very apparent in many ways, how the scrolls influenced, paralleled and related to early Christianity was another matter. It is still a topic of intense discussion and debate in and out of the academy.

Krister Stendahl (who I had the honour to meet several years ago at an AAR conference) is an acknowledged expert in New Testament and Christian studies, having an international reputation as an author and scholar. Using this reputation, he drew together a strong collection of scholars to contribute to this volume - while much as been written in furtherance of the topic, this volume still remains a standard, and a foundational work for the field (Charlesworth uses the appropriate word 'pioneering' in his description).

Stendahl penned the opening chapter, setting the framework for the further discussions in the essays, which include philosophical, historical, linguistic and other matters. Stendahl cautions against hasty judgements that link the texts of the scrolls to the New Testament writings, or linking the Qumran and Essene communities to the early Christian communities. However, as the scrolls illuminate early Judaism, and in particular Judaism around the advent of the Christian era, the background this provides for a better understanding of Pauline and Johannine texts is unmistakable.

The list of contributing scholars is impressive, and at the risk of giving just a boring list, I offer this list of the writers included: Raymond Brown, W. H. Brownlee, Oscar Cullman, W. D. Davies, Joseph Fitzmeyer, Nahum Glatzer, Sherman Johnson, Karl Georg Kuhn, Bo Reicke, Kurt Schubert, Krister Stendahl, and Ernest Vogt. Those familiar with biblical studies, New Testament studies and scroll scholarship are likely to recognise many of the names in this impressive list. It is truly an international collection of scholars, ecumenical and inter-faith in scope.

This collection examines many aspects - personalities (John the Baptist, Hillel, Paul, etc.), rituals and practices (Lord's supper/communal meals, early ecclesiology, etc.), beliefs and doctrines (the Sermon on the Mount, spirit vs. flesh issues in different texts, etc.), as well as community identities. Most important aspects of New Testament scholarship are addressed in some way in these essays.

The book concludes with useful indexes of authors, passages, notes, and a selected bibliography of relevant texts for further reading, arranged topically.

This is a great book for anyone interested in the scrolls and New Testament origins and connections.

Copleston's study of medieval philosophy has gone through several revisions, the first of which was in 1952 as part of Methuen's Home Study Books series. This is a text I used in a second-year philosophy course at my university. So often the study of philosophy jumps from the classical period of ancient Greece, with a bit of expansion in Rome and early Christian times, to the Renaissance, Enlightenment and more modern periods. The so-called 'Dark Ages' are often ignored, but as Copleston's book will attest, there was plenty of activity, many prominent figures, and quite a significant development of philosophy through this period - as a link between the classical Greek/Roman period to the Renaissance, it could not help but to be of importance.

Copleston takes in the wide range of philosophical development. This does not focus exclusively on the Western philosophical tradition, although that is the primary subject matter. Copleston brings in material from the Islamic and Jewish philosophical traditions contemporary with the Western development - at the time, the Islamic culture was more advanced than that of Western Europe, and many significant advances in various disciplines were made in this civilisation.

Three chapters on ancient Christian thought (religious and philosophical) set the stage for the era; Neoplatonism was a dominant philosophical school, embrace by Augustine. Other notable figures of the period include Origen, Pseudo-Dionysius, and Boethius (although Copleston describes him as being 'not of much originality'). After this examination of the ancient Christian times, he proceeds to the early Middle Ages, looking at the developments around the time of Charlemagne and the Carolingian Renaissance (an often overlooked historical period). John Scotus Erigena appears here, as the first eminent philosopher of the Middle Ages, according to Copleston.

From Scotus to Anselm and Abelard is a relatively 'dry' period, with some activity, but not much development. However, in St. Anselm and Peter Abelard are first-rate philosophical minds, in very different casts. Anselm was much more the theologian; Abelard was more concerned with philosophical development that at certain periods might earn him the label of heretic.

Copleston devotes individual chapters each to the Twelfth Century Schools of philosophy, the Philosophy of Islam, and Jewish Philosophy of the time. In the twelfth century, there were many centres of learning - Oxford, Paris, Bologna, which developed as significant academic hubs (Oxford and Paris have continued with world reputations begun at this time). Islamic philosophy looks at figures such as Al-kindi of Baghdad (d. 870) and Al-Farabi (d. 950), who dealt with the religious/philosophical divide in different ways. Abu Ibn-Sina (Avicenna, in Christian writings) was possibly the most significant of Islamic philosophers, and much of his writing as survived. A Persian by birth, he was a Renaissance man with interests in sciences, philosophy, history, medicine and religion. Most famous to Christians of the time was probably Ibn-Rushd (Averroes), who was born in Islamic Spain, and through whom many of the Aristotle works were transmitted into the West.

Jewish thinkers of the time looked back to the figure of Philo, a great Jewish philosopher/historian from the time before the destruction of the Temple. Jewish thinkers of the time include Saadia ben Joseph, Isaac ben Solomon Israeli, Solomon ibn Gabirol, Abraham ibn Daud, and of course, Moses ben Maimon (Maimonides). Neoplatonism was a strong strand through most of these philosophers, derived from Philo and general philosophical traditions. Maimonides was addressing the concerns of most philosophers of the time of any religious or ethnic persuasion with his 'Guide for the Perplexed', an attempt to reconcile religion with philosophy.

The 'second half' of medieval philosophy takes place in response and reaction to the rediscovery of Aristotle's works, preserved by the Muslim culture. Thomas Aquinas is the strongest figure associated with this rebirth of Aristotilianism. Other figures, such as Duns Scotus (not to be confused with the earlier John Scotus), William of Ockham, Marsilius of Padua, and Nicholas of Cusa finish out the medieval period, in anticipation of later figures such as Descartes and Francis Bacon.

The medieval philosophical construct remained in the Western tradition we have inherited an expressly Christian one - the interplay between Plato and Aristotle took place on the stage of the dialectical relationship of church and state, church and academia, and faith vs. knowledge. Developments would continue, and indeed still continue to this day, on all these fronts.

The text 'Basic College Mathematics' is used at the college where I tutor in mathematics as the foundational course for mathematics in all programmes. While many students test out of this level into algebraic topics, for those students whose mathematics is decades old, or was never perfect in the beginning, this book offers a fairly clear and systematic approach to mathematics topics.

The chapters cover the broad topics in this order: Whole Numbers, including the basic arithmetical functions (addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division), was well as basics of exponents and rounding; Fractions, including the basic arithmetical functions as well as beginning to deal with mixed numbers and order of operations; Decimals, including the basic arithmetical functions as well as continuing with order of operations and decimal/fraction conversions; Ratio and proportion ideas; Percentages theoretical and applied; Basic Measurements and conversions of units between British/American units and metric standards; Geometry at the most basic level of shapes and arithmetical formulas dealing with those shapes for area, perimeter, etc.; Statistics at a very elementary level, such as reading charts and graphs, histograms, and the three concepts of mean, median and mode; Signed and special numbers, including the negative numbers, as well as scientific notation; and finally a brief introduction to Algebra, which introduces the basic concepts of variables, like terms, and equations.

Each of the chapters deals with things in a mathematical as well as an 'English' way - explaining in words the concepts and operations being carried out in the numbers. Each section of each chapter covers only a few key concepts, with enough problems for solving that reinforce the principles thoroughly. Each section also as word problems (story problems) to test the real-world applicability of the numerical/mathematical concepts being presented, so when students ask (as they always do and shall), 'When am I ever going to use this?' there are examples drawn from typical situations.

Tobey and Slater have also worked to make various connections with geometry, graphs and charts, tables, as well as internet resources to provide the most up-to-date and useful text. There are specific problems along the way that assume the use of calculators (as most of real-life mathematics now involves calculators).

The book's design is interesting from a graphic-design standpoint, but from the standpoint of clarity to the students, the pages are a bit `busy'. While I appreciate the need to reduce the number of pages in an effort to keep the costs down (text-book prices are typically higher than popular-book prices, and this text is no exception), more white space on the pages would probably help the accessibility and make it a little less intimidating.

This book serves as a good foundation for students to proceed at our college forward into Beginning Algebra (another book by Tobey and Slater on this topic is used for the next-level course), and then further into Intermediate Algebra and beyond.

Dorothy Sayers, a.k.a. Dorothy Leigh Sayers Fleming, one of the first women to ever be granted a degree from Oxford University, created one of the leading figures in, and indeed in so doing helped to create the genre of, the British mystery novels. Lord Peter Wimsey, an elegant, refined London-based aristocrat with a taste for books and a penchant for the piano, is again here the leading figure, in Unnatural Death, also published as The Dawson Pedigree.

Wimsey is an old Etonian, Balliol Oxford (of course), served with distinction in His Majesty's forces during the War (this book having been written in 1927, I shall leave it to your good services to deduce which War), who resides both town and country somewhat fashionably, and takes great pride in the ancient family history (by the time one gets to be the fifteenth Duke of anything, the family can be easily considered ancient). Wimsey has a vocation as criminologist, not out of necessity, surely, and not by training either (for such training did not formally exist, but, as an Oxford Arts man, he was trained for most anything intellectual, or at least, that is what an Oxford Arts man would tell you). An interesting addition to the beginning of the book is a short biographical sketch of the fictional Wimsey by his equally-fictional uncle.

All of this, of course, is but preamble to the latest mystery to come calling upon Lord Wimsey. There are the requisite features: a dead woman, Agatha Dawson, wealthy and having left a will that might not be a will, but rather a sham (a delirious woman whose nurse insists that there was no possible way of having made a will during the last month, yet oddly there is a document, complete with a witness who claims that dear old Agatha Dawson wanted nothing to do with the signing -- ah, the plot thickens here).

Of course, to most of the world, Wimsey is, well, following a whimsey of his own. The woman was after all elderly and in poor health; surely his investigations are misplaced. The doctor (not the one who tended Miss Dawson's death, to be sure, but an earlier doctor, suspicious of Dawson's sole heir, her niece) was accused of having blackened the name of Miss Whittaker, the niece, unnecessarily, particularly as no evidence of mischief had been uncovered. Wimsey with the assistance of Inspector Parker are able to rectify the situation vis-a-vis the doctor, but there is still the mystery.

Then, more death. This time the maid. To lose one woman may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose two women... (well, you can fill in the rest yourself).

Of course I won't spoil it for you; perhaps my tag-team reviewers will do that for you, but I sincerely hope not. Suffice it to say, Wimsey proves himself a consummate actor in which the truth comes out (in London, and in style!).

One of the glories of Sayers work is the intricacies of her plots. She tends to get a huge number of people involved (the number of people who seemed to have trouped through the ill woman's bedchamber is in itself surprising, given the era) each with subplots and agenda that nonetheless get neatly resolved in the end. Sayers' development of character (even of the already dead ones!) is done with style and subtlety; while Wimsey is developed over several novels, one doesn't feel him a stranger by reading this one alone. The other characters fit their parts admirably (had Sayers not been a writer, she may well have made a good career as a casting director in Hollywood), in physical and personality attributes.

Her descriptions of the milieu, both in town (London) and in the country (the village and surroundings, in this case, of Hampshire, are interesting reading. Sayers is very much the cosmopolitan, and somewhat condescending toward the countryfolk. However, that is not a heavy element, and perhaps can be written off to her attempt to make Wimsey even more the worldly character he turns out to be over the course of her novels.

In all, an excellent read, a great diversion, and well worth musing over while sipping tea on a Regency-style sofa in one's dressing gown.