I read the title, Accessible EPUB 3, to mean that the author would show me in an easy to understand (accessible) way to create and format books for the EPUB platform. Even reading the short description at the O’Reilly website did not change my thoughts on what the book was about. But I was completely wrong on who their target audience was. This is not a book for people who are new to EPUB and wanting to learn about it. In fact, the EPUB spec is not even explained in the book. This book is written under the assumption that the reader is already familiar with and understands EPUB.

The book is actually about how to make ebooks that are accessible to people with different abilities. There are sections specifically on how to make books with pictures more accessible to visually impaired readers as well as making audio content more accessible to those with hearing disabilities. This is what is meant by the word accessible.

After getting a better understanding of what the book was about, I enjoyed the book from a thought experiment point of view. There were specific examples on how to implement the concepts the author was proposing. However, as someone who doesn’t even understand EPUB programming, this information was merely theoretical and thought provoking. There are even points in the book where the author, Matt Garrish, admits that there may be a better way to be even more accessible in the future. His point is that he wants readers to think about people with various abilities who will be reading books. What is it they need and how can you go about programming your ebook to fit their needs?

Accessible EPUB 3  is an excerpt from a larger work expected to be published later this year (2012) called EPUB 3 Best Practices.

Accessible EPUB 3 is available for free at both O’Reilly and Amazon.

[Disclosure: I received a free review copy of this book through O’Reilly Media.]

First Customer Service Rep

The rep on the phone took the information about my device and what happened. I told her that the Kindle was in a box that got hit by a large object. The Kindle was the only thing in the box that was damaged (thankfully my computer survived) and there was no physical evidence that the device was harmed in any way other than the screen would not redraw.

The kind rep (who spoke fairly good English) said that Amazon would allow me to buy a replacement device for $65 (which is 1/2 the price of a new Kindle Keyboard with the same features). To me that was more than fair since I am the one who broke the Kindle. It was not a manufacturing flaw in any way. However, I don’t have $65 at the moment and told her that. She said it would be flagged in my account if I wanted to buy a replacement at any point in the future I could get the reduced price.

Amazon was more than fair and the story should have ended there.

Second Customer Service Rep

However, I searched my account and found out that my device was out of warranty by 5 days. Certainly that should not make a difference. They had no obligation to do anything for me, yet they offered me a 50% discount on a new unit. But…seeing that it was only 5 days out of warranty, I wondered if it would make any difference if I pointed out to them that the warranty just expired (knowing full well that even under warranty my mistake should not be covered).

I jumped back onto the Amazon site and, instead of calling this time, I used the live chat feature. I quickly explained my scenario to the rep. Upfront I told him that I thought Amazon was more than fair to offer a new Kindle for 1/2 price and that the problem was one that I caused. At no point did I try to hide the fact from them that I was at fault. Then I asked him if it would make any difference if my Kindle was still under warranty. Without answering my question he asked me to do a couple of tests on the device to determine if it was really broken (if he could see it he wouldn’t question its brokenness). I patronized him.

I then said that I knew Amazon had no obligation to replace the device and that 50% reduction for a new Kindle was more than generous. But I also knew that Amazon was a kind and thoughtful company. Would they consider replacing the unit for me.

My Pleasant Surprise

Without hesitation the rep said he would send me a new one. He just needed a few bits of information to proceed. I excitedly provided the info he needed and he told me that a unit would be delivered by Monday. I got an email from Amazon later in the day today (Thursday) telling me that my new Kindle had shipped and that it would be delivered at my house tomorrow (Friday before the proposed Monday delivery).

Amazon is amazing!

Will they do this for you? I don’t know, but if you have a broken Kindle it certainly doesn’t hurt to ask. I think the biggest thing in my favor was that I didn’t demand anything from them and I didn’t try to pretend that the screen just broke on its own.

Yesterday we drove through a town with several no parking signs along the side of the street. She read the signs and then she asked me what the word for ‘parking’ was in Spanish. I told her it was ‘estacionarse.’ Then I heard her say to herself, “So the E doesn’t mean ‘No Elephants,’ it means ‘No Parking’ in Spanish.”

I think it was cuter when she thought that all those signs meant ‘No Elephants.’

Thanksgiving

We had a good Thanksgiving meal with a cousin who lives in the area. I am 15 years older than he is and his parents had moved away from the rest of the family when he was born. This cousin and I have only been together fewer than 10 times in our lives. It was kinda funny since we are cousins but don’t really know each other. But, since there are no introverts on my dad’s side of the family, we didn’t feel like strangers.

House

We got moved into our house. I think we are closing in on 3 weeks here. Most of the boxes upstairs are unpacked. It looks like we are settling in. That is, until you check out the piles of unopened boxes downstairs. There is still plenty of work to do.

Furniture

We had a friend over to the house a couple of weeks ago for supper. We only owned 2 chairs at the time (actually, they are borrowed from the office). Thankfully we have a couple of 5-gallon buckets and short trash cans to sit on. That is what we boys used while the girls used the real chairs.

When we were with my cousin for Thanksgiving dinner he gave us 4 dining-room table chairs. We let our most recent lunch guests sit in real chairs. Fancy.

While driving to the library on Saturday we saw some furniture sticking out of a dumpster. Not wanting to pass up a potentially good deal we had to check it out. We pulled enough parts out to scab together a recliner and threw it into the trunk of the car. With a few screws, a hammer and some ingenuity I was able to get a very comfortable recliner out of the deal.

It’s not pretty, but it’s functional.

Upcoming

Our daughter reminds us each morning how many days are left until my birthday. She knows that Christmas can’t come until my birthday is here. She isn’t sure how many days after my birthday that Christmas will come (10 days), but she does know it is a formality that has to be dealt with. [This ends your yearly subtle reminder that you still have time to buy me something. I don't mind if it arrives late.]

There are lots of Christmas activities coming up in the church. I get to speak at one of the Christmas gatherings next week. I am looking forward to it.

We will be home most of this month and the next. It is a great time to get settled in before we begin traveling in February.

Whatcha Getting for Christmas?

We got a new house. Top that!

A church we were in last month gave my wife a gift card for Target. She bought a Kindle. I got a “new” recliner. We bought a machete for our son so he can mow the lawn. He doesn’t seem that excited about it. Maybe we will get him a pair of scissors for Christmas so he can trim the bushes. Our daughter found 2 new friends up the street. We have all had a profitable December so far.

Start Your Engines

We left home on Thursday and traveled up to visit some missionary friends in Indianapolis. Technically we were working since I am their director at the mission board. However, we enjoy spending time with them and hardly feel like it is work to visit them and talk for several hours.

After meeting with them we moved on to my brother’s house where our kids played together and the adults snuck off and played board games. My brother taught a CPR class I was able to attend and where I got re-certified. If you need my services to beat on your chest I would recommend you try to book me early since I am trying to stay booked 6 months or more in advance.

We stayed with my brother for two nights and moved on to Ohio where we had a Sunday morning meeting in the church of one of my college roommates. He has been pastor of this church for about 10 years. It was good to see him and his family again.

Hang On

Between church Sunday morning and Sunday night we moved to a different city in Ohio where I spoke briefly in a church and stayed overnight before moving to another part of Ohio.

We stayed two nights near Toledo and then scooted over to Syracuse, NY. The church I taught in on Wednesday night is one which has been a friend to us for many years. The deaf group was excited to have us there and we enjoyed renewing acquaintances.

After a brief night in Syracuse we moved over to Massachusetts. We are staying two nights here without any meetings. This is a staging spot for our next meeting starting in New Hampshire tomorrow night (Saturday). We will be in New Hampshire at a church mission conference for a week.

Finish Strong

After the conference we will head to Maryland to preach in a church that we have never been in before. However, the pastor is a man we met when he was in Massachusetts. While we are there we will discuss the possibility of helping them get a deaf ministry established.

The next Monday we start a 3-day meeting in Tennessee near where we live. It is a meeting that our mission board organizes which gives pastors and missionaries a chance to meet and work on booking meetings.

The Back Story

We were supposed to close on a house the day before we left on this trip. Since the paperwork was not done we needed to have someone else take care of the documents for us. Though they could be overnighted to us, we weren’t sure where we would be when the papers were ready. Therefore, we gave power of attorney to my parents and they signed the papers yesterday. Today the former owners signed their part of the paperwork and we are officially home owners again. But, we won’t move in for another 2 weeks since we are traveling.

This has been a fun trip in that it brings back so many memories. For our children it will take some getting used to. This is a big transition from our ministry in Argentina where we didn’t even have a car to go across town, much less across the eastern part of the whole country.

Several pages in the book are dedicated to educating the reader on why they should consider going paperless. Scanning and archiving every piece of paper that comes through your hands (and then throwing it away or shredding it) may not sound very appealing, but Mr. Kissell gives some compelling reasons why it will help you in the long run when you are trying to find specific information. Even though you won’t have the original items of many documents, you also will have fewer storage and retrieval problems. By the way, not every item needs to be shredded or tossed. The author helps you know what you should keep and what is safe to throw away.

While the software and workflow recommendations are platform specific, hardware choices are a little easier. The book explains different types of scanners and why you might choose one over another. Within the different types the author gives you a list of recommended scanners. Each one has features that can help you accomplish your scanning needs. Regardless of which specific scanner you choose there are many settings that will be the same on all of them. He tells you why you should choose the settings he recommends.

Because of the hardware choices and settings recommendations this book is helpful for anyone wanting to decrease their dependence on paper. But, it would have been better had the author provided more information for the other operating systems.

For many of us, we would feel overwhelmed at even getting started. After he tells you how to set up your software, hardware and workflow, the author gives some tips for catching up on the 20 year’s worth of paper you already have piled in your office.

The majority of the book deals with scanning documents then filing them locally and off-site. However, there are many other ways to go paperless. The book deals with sending and receiving faxes via email, signing documents digitally and how to cut down on your need to print as much.

This is certainly not a book for casual reading. I would only recommend this if you are serious about cutting down your dependence on paper. If you are only interested in learning how to effectively scan a few documents, this book probably goes into much more detail than what you need.

I read version 1.1 of the book on my Kindle. Like many reference books, the Kindle is probably not the best device to read on. If you find yourself needing to jump back 8 pages to get a snippet of information then it is pretty frustrating. Was it really 8 pages? Or was it 6? Or 10? The nice thing about the ebook is that you don’t have to read it on just one platform. The publishers let you download various formats once you buy the book.

[Disclosure: I received a free review copy of this book through O’Reilly Media.]

Since we got here last week we have looked at several houses to potentially buy. There is one that has stood out. The price is a little high, but there are a couple of problems with the house and sellers that may drive the price down significantly. The house is within the area we want to live and has all the amenities we wanted. We just can’t pay the asking price.

That may be a moot point as we found out last night that foreclosure proceedings have already started. That means they can’t sell it at any price at this point. We will have to deal with the bank unless a couple of big hurdles get knocked over.

While it sounds like a mess, it really is a position I like to be in. The decision is not ours at this point. The bank has to process the house and deal with it in one of a couple of different ways. It depends on how everything falls together over the next three weeks that will determine if we can buy the house. If it doesn’t go in our favor, then we will take it as a sign that this was not the house for us.

While looking for a house to buy, we have a friend in the church who is letting us rent his house for a reasonable price without any obligations. If we stay a year, that is fine. If we move out next week, that is acceptable as well.

We won’t be doing our normal traveling until the end of October. We will be in town over the next few weeks to deal with everything that is necessary with buying a house.

Exciting times!

Up until this morning the App Lock app had worked without any problems. But today I turned on the Accessibility features of my Android phone to play with a new keyboard. When the Accessibility screen comes on it puts a layer over the bottom half of the screen which lets you navigate the device with gestures. In doing so, when I tried to go back to the settings in my phone to turn off the Accessibility option, I could no longer press the numbers on the number pad. For some reason the passcode screen would not move up from behind the gesture screen to allow me to put in the numbers.

I thought that I was locked out of my phone and would have to somehow wipe the system and start over. That was not a prospect I was looking forward to.

In my research to find a solution I came across a security flaw in the App Lock software. This is a serious flaw and I assume that the App Lock guys will work to fix the problem. Until then, maybe this will help someone else get control of their device again. I realize that bad people could get this information and use it to exploit someone’s phone. I regret that the possibility exists, but I am personally thrilled that this security bug saved me from having to rebuild my phone setup from scratch.

Here are the steps that I was able to take to get control of the device again:

• Turn on App Lock and press Protection list
• Press the Home button on your phone
• Turn App Lock back on again
• Press FAQ
• Press the back button

This will reveal your list of applications that are blocked and give you a chance to turn the block off. For me that meant that I could remove the block from my Settings menu and make the changes I needed to make. For others this means that their information isn’t as well protected as they would hope.

Obviously the makers of the App Lock software may fix the problem by the time you read this. That is a good thing…unless you are locked out of something because of turning on the Accessibility feature on your Android phone.

I showed up at 8:00 for registration with a race start scheduled for 9:00. Other than the workers, there was only one other runner hanging around the registration table. Though we were not supposed to get a shirt after a certain registration date, the registration lady still had about 100 shirts in boxes to give out. There was no problem with offering shirts to late registrants. This was a good indication that I might be able to win my age group. They said they would give out prizes for first place in each group.

Because I had an hour before the race started I went to the top of the mountain of Panther Creek State Park, where we were running the race, and enjoyed the scenic overview of the lake for a few minutes.

I warmed up as usual and headed to the starting line. There were only about 25 runners. From what I gathered, most of them signed up the morning of the race. There was even one man who came to the park for a normal run and saw that there was a race being held. Just a few minutes before the race started he jogged up to the starting line and joined us after registering.

The course was pretty hilly. I expected that since I had run at this park before. I was not familiar with the particular trails that we ran on. I had to do my share of walking on some of the uphill sections. This was my first time to run a trail race. I have always loved running trails, but all my previous races have been on roads.

Within about 5 minutes of the start we spread out to our own little groupings. I never passed anyone else and no one passed me after that first few minutes. In fact, after about 8 minutes I didn’t even see any other runners for the rest of the run.

I finished in 30:16. That is a slow time for a 5K for me. I don’t know if the distance was accurate. But I took solace in the fact that the first place runner had a time in the 25 minute range. It was a tough run for everyone.

A meal was provided after the race. It was hot dogs with chili and hamburgers. There were no condiments. I thought it was a terrible meal to have after a 9:00 race. We were supposed to be interested in lunch at 9:45 in the morning? I would have rather had fruit or something with a potato salad. The lady mentioned that they thought about salads as a meal, but since it was going to be hot today they thought the salads would not go over well. I would take a salad any day over a chili dog immediately after a race.

I liked the laid-back atmosphere of the small race, but was very disappointed with one change. The race registration form said they would give a prize to the first place winner in each age group. Since there were so few people, they decided to only give a prize to the first and second place men’s winners and the first place ladies’ winner. That meant everyone over the age of 25 had no chance of winning any prize. This was not announced until after the race was over. It should not have mattered that there were few people at the event. If they were prepared to give away 10 prizes it doesn’t make a difference if there are 20 people or 200 people at the race. It would still be 10 prizes given away that did not cost the organizers anything. The 3 prizes they did give away were all donated items. I assume the other prizes were donated as well.

There was talk that the race was really under promoted. I wouldn’t know anything about that since I have only been in town a couple of days. However, if they want to make this race a success next year they need to make sure they promote it more heavily and not bungle the prize decision next time. I don’t know if I would have won my age group, but I never even got a chance to find out.

I am glad for the chance to have run a race, but I would really have liked a chance to see if I could have won my age group.

I first heard about Linux in 1995. I was immediately drawn to it. I think it is something about my personality that wants to do things differently than everyone else. I am usually the first of my friends to try new things. Sometimes those new things become very popular and I have to move away from them to find something different (my recent move from the iPhone to Android). Sometimes that new and different thing never catches on and dies a quick and painless death (Sharp Zaurus which ran Linux).

Linux is one of those things that I have been able to find a group of sympathetic friends who share my passion and frustration. Linux will probably never be mainstream by itself, but there are some pretty neat technologies that are built on top of Linux. While not strictly Linux, the guts of Mac OS X shares the same roots as Linux. Google’s Android platform is built on Linux.

I remember spending hours with the dial-up modem trying to download different distributions of Linux to try out. I would tie up the phone line as soon as I got home from work and leave the connection running all night. If there was ever a need for bittorrent technology it was back in the dial-up days.

From 1997 to 2001 I played with Linux heavily. I was never willing to commit to it as my main OS, but I spent a lot of time with it. I did not trust my work to Linux back in those days, but I probably dedicated more of my computer time to Linux.

In 2001 I took the plunge and loaded Linux as my main OS. Since then I have used it exclusively for work. I continued to dual boot for several years because of having certain games or specific programs that I wanted to use. Until recently I was booting Windows in a virtual machine because there were only one or two programs I wanted to use. Since I loaded on the latest version of Kubuntu Linux (11.04) I didn’t even bother to rebuild my virtual machine.

I am celebrating 10 years of Linux being my main OS and Linux is celebrating 20 years. It has been a fun journey.

This 32 page ebook is full of pictures and written explanations on how to rebind a magazine. The information can be adapted to many projects, but the example of magazine rebinding is probably something many people would like to do. It is a non-technical process. I guess I was a little surprised by that, but I shouldn’t have been. People have been binding books for years. The bigger surprise is that this book claims you can get all the supplies at a local hobby store. While there are products made specifically for book binding, I can easily imagine many substitutes for the actual products if your store doesn’t stock them.

After reading the book, the only thing I wished I knew more about is the types of paper or cloth that can be used to cover the binder’s boards. While the author gave some generalities of what to look for, I think more examples would have been helpful.

A couple of pictures in the book were not quite in focus. It is hard to take good close-up pictures with a cheap camera. But the author works directly for O’Reilly. It seems that they would have had photographers and good cameras to capture sharper images.

Those two critiques aside, this is a book I would highly recommend to anyone who is thinking of rebinding a book or magazine. While there certainly could be more said about the process than 32 pages can provide, this book gives you all the essentials. Armed with the information in this book I can confidently jump into a book binding project and expect good results.

DIY Bookbinding by Brian Sawyer. Ebook. O’Reilly Media, July 2011.

[Disclosure: I received a free review copy of this book.]

This is not a new problem for me. I have had this problem since I bought the computer in early 2008. But, I go through the process of having to find instructions every time I install a new OS on my computer. Therefore, I am writing down the steps here for my own benefit in the future (assuming I can remember to look at my own blog when I need to do this again).

I got this set of steps from a thread on the Ubuntu Forums. This assumes you already have the Windows driver extracted into a folder and that you are running these commands from that folder. I remember (3.5 years ago) finding the driver and extracting it, but I don’t remember any of the process that I went through to do it. If you are reading this and need help, then you will have to look elsewhere.

lspci -nn
sudo ndiswrapper -i NetMW14x.inf
sudo ndiswrapper -a 11ab:2a08 netmw14x
sudo ndiswrapper -l
sudo ndiswrapper -m
sudo depmod -a
sudo modprobe ndiswrapper

These steps do the following.

lspci -nn gives you the name of your network adapter. In my case it says (along with a pile of other output): 02:00.0 Ethernet controller [0200]: Marvell Technology Group Ltd. Device [11ab:2a08] (rev 03). The important thing to note is the Device [11ab:2a08]. If you have a different computer than the Gateway 6750 then your output would be different. You will need to use the device id (known as the devid in ndiswrapper) for your own hardware.

The next line installs the .inf file for my driver. If you have the same computer, it will be the same thing, but you need to find the .inf file for your hardware.

The following line associates the driver with the particular hardware. This is where using the wrong devid is (apparently) potentially harmful. At least, I gather it is harmful based on the warnings I read.

The -l option gives you a list of drivers you have installed. This should only be the one you just now installed. The -m saves your configuration.

I do not know understand the depmod command, but it has something to do with preparing things for the next command—modprobe.

The final command inserts the driver module you created into your system so that it can actually be used.

For me, that was it. I was then able to look into the network manager icon in my system tray and everything worked as expected. Hopefully it works well for you. If not, I am not sure I can be much help. You can dig through the forum post where I got this information and see if you can find help for your specific issue.

That got the driver working, then I needed to modify the /etc/modules file and add the line ndiswrapper to the end of the file. That will insert the module at every boot up.

When the computer goes to sleep the ndiswrapper module breaks. It needs to be reloaded. I fixed this by creating a file called /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/0000wireless. This file contains the following:

#!/bin/sh
# reload ndiswrapper to get wireless to recover properly
case "$1" in
resume|thaw)
rmmod ndiswrapper
modprobe ndiswrapper
;;
esac

The file needs to be made executable with a sudo chmod a+x usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/0000wireless command. It will awaken out of sleep like normal after that.

Taking a week off of running when I had been running well was not a problem. However, I did not anticipate how difficult the following two weeks would be. Trying to catch up on a bunch of projects right after being away for a week, plus having the 4th of July at the start of that week back home made it difficult to see the light at the end of the tunnel. We spent all day with friends on the 4th which kept me out of my running shoes.

I was able to run on the 5th, but had to skip the next two days because of commitments. I was beginning to get worried that I would not get back on track like I wanted. But I was able to get a couple of good runs in on Friday and Saturday. I finished the week with 13 miles. That is not a spectacular number of miles, but it was refreshing to run as much as I needed to to stay on track with my base training. My marathon training plan does not start until the end of July.

This week I planned to run 4 days. I wanted to run Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday. The week before I had something come up with work that would complicate this week. I really dreaded everything that I needed to do. Monday and Wednesday went as scheduled. Thursday I had to skip. But I had two great runs on Friday and Saturday to finish the week with 16 miles. That was exactly what I needed to do this week.

I had two difficult weeks with schedules, but I was able to string together the right runs when I needed to. This is an encouragement to me to help me see that I can make the time to run when I need to. I have been making too many excuses lately about my running. But now it is “crunch time” for my training. When it came down actually getting on the road, I have been able to do it.

Though I have not formally announced that I am running a marathon previous to this post, I have been looking very seriously at the Chickamauga Battlefield Marathon in November. This will be the third marathon I have trained for, but only my second one to run. I broke my foot on a long run in 2009 that kept me from running the race I was planning. More news to come as I plan and train for the race.

I have had my Kindle for a little over 2 months. I have completely fallen in love with it. But, I already knew I would even though I had never touched a Kindle before buying mine. I used my wife’s Sony ebook Reader for the first time in January and began to see how much I would like using an ebook reader of some kind. From January to May I was saving my pennies to be able to buy a Kindle.

There are other good ebook readers on the market. But there were a couple of features that made the Kindle most appealing to me. That is not to say that the Kindle is the best option in every situation. I found a chart that Michael Hyatt created where he highlighted the features of different ebook readers. You may want to take a look at it when thinking about purchasing an ebook reader. Note that it was compiled in October 2010. There may be some major changes by the time you read the chart.

Some of the appealing features of the Kindle to me were that I could purchase books through Amazon and the sheer number of books available. Because I am already an Amazon customer and I have purchased ebooks to read on the Kindle app of my iPhone, I was very interested in staying in the same ecosystem. An added benefit was that I could read on my phone and then pick up reading on the Kindle where I left off, or vice versa.

Kindle has more books available than any other marketplace. I don’t think this is a huge issue if you are buying current best-sellers. Those are probably available on all the platforms. But as someone who reads older books, or more technical obscure titles, then I have a better chance of finding the book at Amazon.

But the biggest reasons I like the Kindle as opposed to some of the other readers is that the Kindle does not have a touchscreen. I don’t want a touchscreen on my ebook reader. I want to be able to touch the screen like the page of a book. I can underline with my finger while reading. I can also hold my finger on the screen while showing a passage to someone else. When looking through the chart of various ebook readers, I purposely choose one that did not have a touchscreen.

I don’t mind if the Kindle 4 has a touchscreen that can be toggled on and off, but I don’t want to be forced to use one. An ebook device will be smaller overall with a touchscreen than without (if the screen size is the same). Look at the Nook Touch to see how much smaller it is than the Kindle because it doesn’t need the keyboard.

I want to touch my ebook screen like a real page without flipping pages or making things pop up while reading.

Please Amazon, don’t make me use a touchscreen on the Kindle 4!

The writers did a great job in explaining the concepts of relativity. Both the special theory and general theory of relativity are explained in the book. They are both important concepts and apply in real-world situations today. Without an understanding of Einstein’s theories, we would not have the accurate GPS abilities that we have today. In fact, the book ends with an explanation as to how these two theories are used in the GPS system.

I have not been a fan of manga because of the often lewd clothing and sexual innuendos often found within their pages. Unfortunately, this book does nothing to change my mind. Halfway through the book, chapter three opens with the shapely teacher in a bikini (which is way too small) having her teenage student fanning her like a slave. Then when he asks why they are having their one-on-one class at the pool she says that he should just be happy to “to look at your beautiful teacher in her bathing suit.” Completely inappropriate and exactly why I generally don’t like manga. For this reason, I won’t recommend the book to my teenage son who would probably otherwise enjoy the content. The next 22 pages are filled with pictures of the teacher in various provocative poses while teaching her one-person class about relativity.

As far as teaching the concepts of relativity in an understandable way, I would say this title delivers fine on that. Would I recommend it as a book? No. And I am much less interested in reading other books in the series, even though the books about physics and electricity are appealing.

If your are interested in understanding relativity, the best book I have read (that did not morally offend me) was Stephen Hawking’s Illustrated Brief History of Time, although I believe he approaches cosmology from a flawed faith in the Big Bang theory.

[Disclosure: I received a free review copy of this book.]