you can't complain when you're set in the world of the three laws of robotics with a beautiful young woman and a man without a memory--first rate pastiche by the two authors in the book. I loved it!

Many years ago, I read this series of books when they came out in paperback, while Asimov was still alive. I had forgotten how entertaining they were. All the classic elements, including continuity between different authors in the series exist. A must read for people who like a substantial, yet easy to read book. Definately not for those with a short attention span or someone who would rather see the movie then read the book.

The saga of Robot is continued in this novel, which can only be described as exellent, with a dose of brilliant, and a side of superlative. The story of Robot City is expressed through the further development of the characters Derec, a man who crash landed in the aptly named Robot City, a city run and inhabited entirely by robots. Having lost his memory in the crash landing, he takes the name of Derec, which is the manufacturer of his jump suit. Throughout his journey, he meets the mysterios Katherine. After a bout of being captured by extraterrestrials, and such other madcap antics, Derec and Katherine are deposited in Robot City together. It is here that the plot begins to thicken, and the character development becomes signifigant. This volume of the series is a perfect book for any science fiction fan, and perfectly expresses the three laws of Robotics and their applications in the real world.

Despite all the comments I have read regarding the accuracy of some of this book's facts, I found this collection to be extremely engrossing and downright fascinating. I enjoy reading such compilations of trivia, and I must say that this is one of the best - if not the best - I have read for two reasons.
First, the format of the book is fantastic. The hundreds of facts, which range from one sentence to around a paragraph, are sorted by topic and presented in a brief and accessible manner by the author. The topic-sorting and compression of the countless facts enable one to read the book selectively, if desired, and they also facilitate the option of reading it all at once or gradually. Second, and more importantly, I found the selection of content to be wonderfully diverse and intriguing, as well as entertaining and even fun. In fact (if you will pardon that expression), I found so many of the entries to be worthy of remembering and future reference that I decided to mark those that struck me as particularly interesting or valuable.
I would highly recommend this collection. However, given the accuracy issues some readers have brought up, it should be read with a skeptical mind (but what book should not be read that way?).

I am fifteen years old and have been reading this book constantly for at least three years. It is massively interesting. I have a copy of this book that was printed in 1981, before some of the facts were disproven. Isaac Asimov is one of the best writers of the twentieth century. I just wish he had lived to release volume two and on.

This book has some of the most bizarre things that I've ever read. Including the story of some medieval ruler who had the eyes of every captured enemy soldier destroyed with hot pokers. One out of 100 soldiers were spared one eye, in order to lead the blind back home.

Some of this ... I don't think is true, but all the same this is a very fun book. Great bathroom material.

I loved this book! It thoroughly goes into detail about all aspects of Dynamic HTML: Style Sheets, JavaScript 1.2, and the new Document Object Model.

Caveats:

Will only be useful to those developers with a bit of client-side scripting experience. Also, the examples in the book are Microsoft Internet Explorer centric. However, since the MS implementation is destined to become the WWW3 standard, it's a great tool for boning up on what will be sure to become the de-facto standard for web scripting.

Plus, the supplemental web site is one of the best DHTML resources on the net.

Great how to's, demo's and explanations. Covers new html extentions, new browser object, dynamic content, dynamic positioning, and cascading style sheets. Most examples are done with JavaScript rather than VBScript and include variations and tips to make code degradable to older browsers. The CD rom, included, is worth the price of the book with tons of great working examples and sample code.

Inside Dynamic HTML provides great insight on all the nuances of the language/object model. Only someone that had been involved in the drafting of the DHTML specification could write about each topic with such an in-depth understanding of the subject matter. Copius Javascript examples of major language features are found in each chapter. The CD-ROM contains an HTML Help searchable reference of the book's text. The insideDHTML web site has lots of working examples and code to download to complement the book. I highly recommend this book for anyone who is serious about learning Microsoft's implementation of DHTML.

I have only read this book in German, where it is called Newton's Schatten (Newton's Shadow) and can't answer for the English edition, but I really enjoyed this novel very much. It is a mystery very much in the same tradition as The Name of the Rose, only a little more accessible. I also read An Instanz of the Fingerpost and did not like that nearly as much as this one. I loved Kerr's Berlin Noir trilogy - possibly the hardboiled best detective stories written since Chandler - and I would say that this is his best book in a long time. Kerr seems to be suggesting almost that Newton was a model for Sherlock Holmes: after all, he invented the same scientific method beloved of Holmes; and in this he is most persuasive. If I have a criticism it is that the style seems occasionally too authentically 17th century. But that may be the German of course. (Generally speaking it is a most elegantly written story.) Otherwise it is a first class novel, really, and I shall be giving the book to many friends this Christmas. Wunderbar.

History, rather than the future seems to be where Kerr feels at his most comfortable and demonstrates himself a cut above most thriller and mystery writers. I wasn't a big fan of his novel The 2nd Angel. But his Bernie Gunther series of novels, collected as Berlin Noir, are something else again. I can't begin to remember how many people recommended that book to me, and I have never understood why he has never written another. That aside, this book shows Kerr on his best form since Berlin Noir. At once reminiscent of Sherlock Holmes and The Name of the Rose, I enjoyed this novel enormously. It is highly intelligent without being pretentious and extremely readable without ever being predictable. Above all it is informative as well as being entertaining. I am now going to buy a biography of Sir Isaac Newton and find out more about England's greatest scientist. Full marks to Kerr for a really clever idea.

Kerr works very hard to write really authentic historical thrillers and this one is certainly no exception. DM reeks of period flavor, and biographical detail and is probably the best, most evocative mystery novel I have read since Eco's Name of the Rose. The portrait of Newton as a kind of early Sherlock Holmes is very persuasive; I learned more history from reading this book than anything I read in school. But it is with Newton's Watson-like assistant, Ellis, where the novel really satisfies. I can't recommend this book too highly.

As a student of Henry's at the Rhode Island School of Design I read the book BEFORE I attended RISD I was captivated by the simple ways he explained the "sometimes" complexity of photography.

Such as Henry's way - making life easy and fun for everyone.

I suggest checking out his other books too.

When I did my BFA some 15 years ago this was the standard book then. When I did my MFA ten years ago this was still the standard textbook. If you study photography today it is THE textbook. All textbooks by Mr. Horenstein are SUPERB books to teach and to learn from. All four books are excellent, complete, straight to the point, and cheap!

This is an ideal text for a photographer who wishes to advance his/her understanding of black & white photography methods. Without excessive detail, the steps that go into the making of a print, and the reasons that justify these steps, are clearly discussed. As the author points out from the start (in the subtitle), this is a technical manual. Those who are looking for a book on the "creative" and "inspirational" aspects of photography should look elsewhere. However, a prerequisite to "creativity" is a solid technical background, and you probably cannot learn "creativity" from a book if you haven't got it to begin with. If you think the techniques of photography are "dull", do not try this book. But for a photographer who wishes to understand them, rather than merely follow them as a cookbook recipe, this is a superb intermediate textbook.

If you're looking for general history on the 40 to 50 year period known as the "Cold War", than this book along with the CNN program "Cold War" is for you...contrary to a few of the other reviewers, I liked this book in it's general state and I would not want to extoll my opinions concerning morality here. I'm sure that there are other books that would welcome that type of review, but this book is just for the general history reader and presented in a fabulous format! Maps, color photograhs and charts along with clear and interesting prose make this an excellant "launching pad" to the struggle and to other more detailed views. Highly recommended.

In contrast to the views of the reviewer below this is a VERY objective book. The U.S./CIA Cold War activities resulted in the support and establishment of murderous dictatorships in Latin America which were every bit as cruel/oppressive as those of our Communist enemies. There was also the unjust war we waged in Vietnam which killed over a million people. Finally there was the CIA/American backed coup which resulted in the murder of the ELECTED president of Chile, Allende, and the establishement of the dictator Pinochet who is now being prosecuted for mass murder. This book addresses these and other issues instead of using the recent right wing Reagonite rhetoric which equates the U.S. as a benevolent force of freedom as opposed to those evil Communists. The book, while covering many topics and areas related to the cold war, is clearly written and informative. The fantastic illustrations only add to this books appeal. It is time American citizens realize the Cold War was NOT a battle between freedom and tyranny but an amoral conflict between diametrically opposed economic systems struggling to control world markets and resources.

This is an excellant recount of the cold war. I grew during the latter years of Reagan and glasnost and never really knew much about the 45 year conflict that shaped the second half of the 20th century. This book helped me to understand the scope, maening, events, and lasting impact of the cold war on history and current politics. I highly recommend it.

Although I agree with the criticisma made by other readers, I still loves "Shadows On The Hudson" and consider it a worthwhile and engrossing book.

Singer writes about a small group of exciles who survived the Holocaust be fleeing to New York City and creating a community in the shadows of the Hudson river. It was here that they contemplated their devastaing past and doubious future.

The characters are intelleigent and intense, anguished by their expulsion from their homeland and the collapse of their cultural and religious values.

This novel is long and repetitive. It originially appeared serialized in the Forward. In its unedited state, it seems that Singer felt the need to continuously remind the readers of the action from previous weeks. Character development is shallow, although Singer's ability to sketch character is masterful. Despite these problems, one must remember that this is SINGER writing, and even a lesser work by this genius is worth reading. Shadows is an important novel that details the hurtling inner lives of American Jews in the years just after the Holocaust. Singers prescient understanding of the wonders of Jewish resilience on one the hand, and the degradation of their souls on the other, is astonishing. It is as if Singer had a crystal ball to presage Jewish life today. For those students of this subject, this book is required reading. However, the general audience is likely to find the novel tiresome.

Shadows on the Hudson is one of the best novels I've ever read. The people are real--and thank god, they're deeply sexual and deeply intelligent. Some readers are irked by the one, some by the other characteristic; by me a novel flops if the people are too dumb, or too free from the driving burdens and blessings of relentless sexuality. This more or less simultaneous wrestling with sex, faith and its lack, and the problem of theodicy (why God permits evil) is Singer's forte. Only Tolstoy does it better, but there is more real flesh in Singer, while the religious issues are at least as alive as those of Tolstoy's stellar episode toward the end of Anna Karenina, in which Levin successfully struggles toward theism. Singer's characters know what Tolstoy's don't: that 6 million Jews and 20 million Russians are gone who should not be gone. This novel is art, and monumental art; not another pleasure cruise for the beach umbrella.

I was drawn in immediately by the interesting characters. Susan Isaacs juxtaposes chapters narrated by Lee White, criminal defense attorney with con man for client, against chapters narrated by Lily White, daughter of Jewish-but-trying-not-to-be social climbers, to produce a book I didn't want to put down.

We learn from Lee White about defending a con man charged with murder, while Lily (Lee-Lee) White tells us about her chain-smoking fashion-plate mother and the rest of her very interesting family.

Definitely worth reading!

What a fun book! The New York Times isn't lying when it calls this book "a big, fat happy feast of a book..." It makes the perfect beach, vacation, airplane book (especially those coast-to-coast flights).

The author's slightly sardonic tone works well here and drew me in from the first sentence. How refreshing to identify with a novel's character because she is FALLIBLE in many all-too human ways. The author also deftly meshes the current story with an engrossing and wonderfully written backstory then brings them together wonderfully at the end.

While the heroine is in truth one of those Danielle Steele characters of beauty, brains, and wealth, it takes you a while to figure that out. Her flaws and dysfunctional history make her believable and enjoyable. I never once wanted to BE the heroine, but I sure enjoyed reading about her. Along the way, Isaacs makes some rather interesting observations of what makes a family and what "family" really means, especially in today's society. What an unusual thing to find in a "mass market paperback."

Although the first chapters are a little slow in developing the character, the author eventually succeeds at riveting the reader to Lee's plight. My favorite elements of this book are the way Ms. Isaacs incorporates the present(Norman Torkelson)with Lee's past (family history and relationships.) . I enjoyed this book immensely.

This book has a lot of potential, but unfortunately many passages are very unclear and appear hastily written. This isn't a surprise since apparently one of the authors of the book obtained his Ph.D. immediately before the book was written. Also background material and definitions are put together poorly, so its unlikely one could use this book in a self-contained fashion. For example the definition of big-o notation is really poor, and seems like the authors scribbled it on a piece of paper in a hurry and then typed it in their manuscript. After this lousy definition there are problems asking you to show this or that is big-o of such and such but there are no examples showing you how to do this beforehand. Engineers and computer scientists will probably have to go elsewhere for background in quantum mechanics while physicists will have to look elsewhere for background in theoretical computer science. The book contains tons of exercises (upwards of 70 or so in a chapter), but no solutions or examples.

Many discussions are simply unclear. A reader might compare Preskills online notes for better thought out explanations.

I think that the overall organization of the book could serve as a basis of a more in depth and better thought out rewrite. I would suggest cutting back significantly on the number of exercises and providing examples and at least some solutions of the problems. If the book is going to put in background material, it should be more in depth and instructive. Provide a detailed example on how to perform a certain type of calculation or analysis before throwing a bunch of exercises at the reader.

The tone of the book should also be modified somewhat. Yes, the field is exciting but they overdo it with explanation points after too many sentences.

The book is currently enjoying a high position since this is a new field and there isn't much competition. But my bet is that in the next few years better books will hit the scene.

This is a terrific book. The first truly comprehensive, in-depth and fully integrated textbook on the recent surge of ideas at the interface of physics, computer science and information theory. Concepts are lovingly developed and presented in their most essential and unencumbered forms, the prose is sparkingly clear and there are enough exercises, at all levels, to keep even researchers in the field busy. Most importantly, perhaps, it brilliantly manages to convey all the excitement of a field still very much in its infancy. Read it, and hop on!

Classical computation follows the model of A. Turing,-- strings of bits, i.e., 0s and 1s; a mathematical model, now called the Turing mashine. Analogues based instead on two-level quantum systems were suggested in the 1980ties by R.P. Feynman and D. Deutsch. But it wasn't until Peter Shor's qubit-factoring algorithm in the mid 1990ties that the subject really took off, and really caught the attention of the math community. That there is a polynomial factoring algorithm shook the encryption community as well, for obvious reasons. New elements of thinking in the quantum realm, and not part of the classical framework, include superposition of (quantum) states, and (quantum) coherence. This makes a drastic change in the whole theoretical framework when one passes from the classical notion of bit-registers to that of qubit-registers. In passing from logic gates to quantum gates(unitary matrices), the concept of switching networks changes. It introduces new challenges, and new truely exciting opportunities. It is not easy for authors to make everyone happy;-- this is especially so in a new field,--one which has grabbed headlines, and one which is at the same time interdisiplinary. In this case, the authors succeed as well as anyone, I believe.-- This lovely book covers several of the appropriate areas of physics (quantum theory, (some) experiment...), of computer science (the mathematical side of the subject), and of math (operators in Hilbert space, and the theory of algorithms);-- each member of the particular scientific specialty has very definite ideas of his/her own subject,-- and that of the others. Nonetheless, in this readers opinion, the two authors did a great job;-- they explain math to the physics community,-- and they sucessfully teach quantum theory and theoretical CS to mathematicians. The book is suitable for grad students: has lots of great exercises, but it could perhaps have used some more worked examples. (Fortunately they can be found in other books on quantum computation.) The Nielsen-Chuang book is most certainly a great entry for students into this exciting new subject. There are other books,-- but they, for the most part, take a more narrow view. The material in Nielsen-Chuang is timeless,-- and I expect the book will also be popular ten years from now.

Sometimes the corporate environment is not tranquil. Managers hate workers, workers hate managers and nobody seems to understand or talk to anybody else. Author William Isaacs believes that's because people don't communicate very well. Companies that succeed have made effective, positive communication part of their culture. Dialogue is a two-way street and negative, ineffective dialogue can kill a company's prospects. Isaacs, a corporate consultant with a doctorate in philosophy, uses a very un-businesslike style to convey his ideas. The book is full of parables and company stories, and the whole mood feels more like a literary narrative, instead of a to-the-point business book. ...

When this book arrived on my doorstep, I tore into it as I usually do with nonfiction books of great interest: I read the first and last chapters, dove by intuition into various middle points, eyeballed the diagrams, and sighed. No quick read, here. This was going to require full attention, and a willingness on my part to 'walk' with the author through his description of that most familiar and elusive phenomenon, dialogue.

It has been well worth the walk.

Isaacs both knows his stuff and has done his homework. He participated with David Bohm and others in the early dialogue sessions, and remais quite true to the spirit and intent of Bohm's work. He also brings depth of experience with subsequent dialogue work, and breadth of supporting ideas from eclectic sources to his description of the practice of deepened and enriched conversation. Few have experimented with dialogue in as many settings, and few have linked this current practice with as many related disciplines as Isaacs has.

To me, Isaacs presents dialogue as a world view, moreso than a set of conversational skills and techniques, remarkable moments in communication, group pain relief, or organizational change practice (as I feel other authors have done). Yet dialogue may play an important role in all of the above, and he does offer practical examples and approaches to try.

As practitioner, researcher, and occasional critic of dialogue, I appreciated revisiting its deeper roots. I particularly liked the discussion of dialogue and the senses of seeing and hearing. I hadn't thought of listening as geographic, before! Nor had I thought of 'participation' in quite the way he describes. At several points, I found it helpful to stop, put the book down, and think through the implications. (Indeed, I may be a little slow, but even so, I recommend you read this book reflectively!)

I recommend looking over the diagrams in the appendix, pp. 418-420, and keeping finger or handy Amazon.com bookmark there for frequent reference as you read. I discovered them rather late, and wished I'd gotten to them earlier. They provide the map as you follow Isaacs rather deep into the territory.

There are many gems throughout for learning and reflection. Read, reflect, and be enriched!

Dialogue; traced to its Greek roots is a flow of meaning, an ability to take many different issues and opinions to a table and create something completely new out of the process. Communication is the center of our culture as human beings, yet we rarely make time for true communication in our society today. As a person that feels as if there is something missing in the conversations I hold in my life and in my career I found this book to be very insightful. I gained an understanding of my frustrations, some skills to apply, and a look at the direction in which I want to go in the future. As it is a complex book that applies to every part of my life (and yours!) I have chosen to simply include a few of my favorite quotes.

"Respect also means honoring people's boundries to the point of protecting them. If you respect someone, you do not intrude. At the same time, if you respect someone, you do not withhold yourself or distance yourself from them. I have heard many people claim they were respecting someone by leaving them alone, when in fact they were simpley distancing themselves from something they did not want to deal with. When we respect someone, we accept that they have thinks to teach us."..."Treat the person next to you as a teacher. What is it that they have to teach you that you do not now know? Listening to them in this way, you discover things that might surprise you."..."Respect is, in this sense, looking for what is highest and best in a person and treating them as a mystery that you can never fully comprehend. They are a part of the whole, and, in a very particular sense, a part of us." - PP 114-117

"Every conversation has its own acoustics. Each one takes place in an environment that has both physical, or external, dimensions as well as internal, or mental and emotional, dimensions. There is, in other words, an invisible architecture to the container. Most such structures are made for discussion, for thinking alone. We have very few designed for thinking together, for dialogue." - P 247

This is my favorite quote in the entire book, I see it in my relationships with the world each and every day: "The Internet can be seen as the attempt of your literate and isolated culture to somehow return to community. People seem to imagine that if we are all digitally connected, then we would all be in touch, and the great malaise of the age - the isolation, pace, disconnection that many of us feel - would be allayed. But so far the digital revolution is giving us connection but not contact"..."one simple touch of a human hand could far exceed all the impact of all the digital libraries in the land." - PP 388-389