Kirjahaku

David Blow's columns about trying to get a dying friend a baseball signed by his beloved Yankees for his 44th and final birthday brought tears, while his description of teaching his toddlers to ski elicited smiles. In "Blow by Blow," this small-town-journalist-turned-professor offers a collection of his best columns and newspaper stories written throughout his career. Blow writes about brushes with celebrities, including Robert Redford, Jerry Springer and Ted Turner, and murders, including the slaying of a man by his girlfriend, who then stashed his body in a chest freezer. Touching and thought-provoking, this compilation offers stories that share Blow's personal experiences, his perceptions and his deepest feelings. "David Blow's work, intimate and generous and so evocative of character and place, reminds me of why I went into writing: to try to capture the world in words, person by person, acre by acre, page by page." -Ron Powers Pulitzer Prize-winning author

Outline of Crystallography for Biologists is intended for researchers and students in the biological sciences who require an insight into the methods of X-ray crystallography without needing to learn all the relevant theory. The main text is purely descriptive and is readable by those with minimal mathematical knowledge. Some mathematical detail is given throughout in boxes, but these can be ignored. Theory is limited to the essentials required to comprehend issues of quality. There is an extensive reference section and suggestions for further reading for those who wish to delve deeper. The first part 'Fundamentals' presents the underlying ideas which allow x-ray structure analysis to be carried out and provides an appropriate background to courses in structural determination. The second part 'Practice' gives more information about the procedures employed in the course of crystal structure determination. The emphasis is on the quality measures of X-ray diffraction analysis to give the reader a critical insight into the quality and accuracy of a structure determination and to enable the reader to appreciate which parts of a structure determination may have caused special difficulty. There is no pretence of completeness and many matters discussed in standard crystallography texts are deliberately omitted. However, issues not brought out in the standard texts are discussed, making it a useful resource for non-practising crystallographers as well.

The land of the Iranians, known to European travelers for centuries as Persia, is a land riven by mountain-ranges, made inhospitable by deserts, yet rich in plains, forests and jewel-like gardens. Home to the most sublime architecture in the world, and a breeding ground for poets, Empires, Mystics and saints, it has an enduring and invincible fascination. David Blow enriches our understanding with his knowledgeable selection of the best of three thousand years of descriptive writing. He allows us to visit the courts of Cyrus and Xerxes, to ride out with the Parthians and Sassanians and to make a passing acquaintanceship with both the Shah and the late Ayatollah Khomeini, with Hafiz, and with Omar Khayyam.