Books about Antanas from Amazon.com

Global optimization is concerned with finding the global extremum (maximum or minimum) of a mathematically defined function (the objective function) in some region of interest. In many practical problems it is not known whether the objective function is unimodal in this region; in many cases it has proved to be multimodal. Unsophisticated use of local optimization techniques is normally inefficient for solving such problems. Therefore, more sophisticated methods designed for global optimization, i.e. global optimization methods, are important from a practical point of view. Most methods discussed here assume that the extremum is attained in the interior of the region of interest, i.e., that the problem is essentially unconstrained. Some methods address the general constrained problem. What is excluded is the treatment of methods designed for problems with a special structure, such as quadratic programming with negatively quadratic forms. This book is the first broad treatment of global optimization with an extensive bibliography covering research done both in east and west. Different ideas and methods proposed for global optimization are classified, described and discussed. The efficiency of algorithms is compared by using both artificial test problems and some practical problems. The solutions of two practical design problems are demonstrated and several other applications are referenced. The book aims at aiding in the education, at stimulating the research in the field, and at advising practitioners in using global optimization methods for solving practical problems..
Price: $33.00 [Notify me when price goes down.]

When Vince Oskaunas arrives at one of Edmonton's more decrepit cafes for lunch with his father, Andrius, he has no idea that it is to be their very last. Andrius declares such by explaining how Lithuania has finally reclaimed its independence from the Soviet Union and how, therefore, the time has come for him to return home. This confounds Vince, of course, but does not surprise him. Indeed, because his father had never appeared settled or content in Canada, Vince has always suspected that the enigmatic old man would disappear one day.

Neither is Vince surprised when he receives, just twelve days later, a middle-night telephone call that delivers the catastrophic news of his father's admittance into a Lithuanian hospital. Andrius had been showing signs of illness before he climbed aboard the aeroplane and so Vince was quite sure that tragedy would call. What he did not expect was that the old man would survive it or that such would require him to immediately launch a rescue... or that this mission of mercy would lead him deep into love, to family, to the gangsters within eastern Europe's blacker markets, to the "Rutskoi Rebellion" in Moscow and to the gruesome truth about the "war crimes" which had brought about his father's exile to Canada after World War II....
Price: $14.95 [Notify me when price goes down.]

This story describes true events concerning little Joe Martinkus, a teenage Lithuanian farm boy, and Dr. Schmidt, a Jewish physician Lithuanian writer Antanas Jonynas first heard the story from little Joe Martinkus himself and published this account in 1966. When the Soviets occupied Lithuania in June 1940, they seized the property of local proprietors, arrested national leaders, and forced farmers into slavery under the guise of a land redistribution program. Deportation was used as a mechanism for enforcement of the oppressive policies, and within one year about 35,000 locals (1.3 percent of the total population) were relocated to Siberia and Soviet Central Asia. When the country changed hands in June 1941, the Germans abolished some of the Soviet policies and won the support of some locals. During the three-year German occupation, 94 percent of the Lithuanian Jews (220,000 individuals) were murdered, the highest percentage for any Nazi-occupied country in Europe. Antanas Jonynas published this story as the first part of his novel "In the Well" in 1966. That Jonynas penned such a piece in the hostile Soviet environment of the day was evidence of his tremendous courage, and that it escaped censorship was truly a miracle..
Price: $18.00 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Tomas Stumbras grew up in war-torn Eastern Europe: a dark, rainy land of misty hills and valleys, where the whispers of the ancient gods and devils are still heard by ordinary people. He is a god-maker, a sculptor with a gift for turning dead wood into protective saints for use in prayer. But it's 1917 and even remote Lithuania feels the transforming effects of World War I. Caught between the destruction around him and his own drive to create, Tomas must abandon the stability of home and family and strike out on his own.

Tomas moves from his thatched wooden farmhouse to the vibrant streets and artistic community of Paris in the Roaring Twenties, where temptation and jealous are right around the corner from brilliance, beauty and fame. Working as a carpenter in the Folies Bergere, he encounters the dance sensation Josephine Baker and falls for a lovely chorus girl. But even when he finally achieves his dream and becomes an artist, he discovers that success demands sacrifice. Even when you find art and love, infamy and betrayal aren't far behind.

Epic in scope and beautifully evocative of time and place, Woman in Bronze reveals a life lived in extremes. It tells a story of love found and lost, creative endeavour and the price of celebrity and stardom.


Excerpt from Woman in Bronze
Easterners flooded into Paris, and it hummed with Russian, Polish, Yiddish, Romanian, and many other languages among the porters and labourers. Tomas also saw many English and Americans, always rich, usually laughing, and often drunk. Waves were washing over the city from all ends of the world, churning into a froth in which even a talented person could drown.


From the Hardcover edition..
Price: $29.99 [Notify me when price goes down.]