My title line sounds very harsh, but I expect high quality when I purchase a book. The author tells a lot of heart felt stories of Australian Shepards saving the day, but shares very little about the intricacies of the breed (i.e. Conditions the dogs are prone to). They are smart...well no joke! Tell me something that I could not pull up on someone's personal web site. I want research, not just personal experience (which seems pretty extensive...by the way). Oh an additional "by the way", there are two specific pet product brands that are pushed beyond belief. You have to be sceptical of where the motivation came from. Save your money & buy a book by another author.

I was so pleased to see the picture of the little black tribitch on the front cover with the blue merle puppy, you can imagine myresponse standing in the pet store seeing MY DOG on a book. I was amazed!!! The book is really helpful.

This is an indispensable book for anyone interested in Australian Shepherds. It is jam packed with information specific to the breed. A must read!

accessible text for beginners, but the text is NO preparation for the end-of-chapter questions. With no available answer key and no help from a teacher, the questions are IMPOSSIBLE to answer leaving the student/reader/taker of test extremely tired and hungry and unsatisfied with econ knowledge at 2 in the morning.

Excessive use of graphs and charts which are very difficult to follow. Some chapters read easily, others very difficult to understand. Would be better if it had a complementary teacher's guide. LRM

I found reading this book a very frustrating experience. The good things include:

* Solid undergraduate discussion of the economics of taxation;

* An introductory discussion of a great many of the fascinating policy controversies of our time;

* Often a lively text by one of the most powerful minds in contemporary economics.

Flaws include:

* A failure to update many of the data and references carried over from the preceding (1988) edition;

* Too much focus on American facts and institutions;

* A failure to understand the Public Choice perspective;

* A failure to appreciate the beauty and simplicity of the Flat Tax, and a refusal to cite the work of Hall, Rabushka, and Bradford in the area;

* A failure to describe the work of Ronald Coase properly;

* A sneering denigration of the stock market as a "gambling casino", without mentioning the role of the stock market in disciplining managers, in reallocating risks, and in diffusing ownership of large enterprises;

* A failure to appreciate how problematic the taxation of realized capital gains can be;

* A failure to appreciate the drawbacks of pay-as-you-go public old age pensions;

* A failure to appreciate the merits of vouchers enabling parents to choose among private as well as public schools;

* Finally, an unseemly deference to the Clintonista party line, unseemly in an academic.

The tragedy is that politicians, judges, and the better cut of journalists could use a better text on this subject.

The text is very confusing.

The book is easy to understand, but there should be a solutions manual, or at least an answer key to the exercises. It has been very difficult for me to "learn the mechanics" and "apply the concepts" at the end of each chapter. The pace of the course allows the teacher to solve only 2 or 3 exercises in class, and the book certainly does not make selfstudy easy. Needless to say, that you can't learn financial accounting just by reading. To makes things even worse, a study guide, which does not refer to the same exercises in the book, is out of print.

Here is one of the best ratings for this book: most of my fellow MBA students are pathalogical whiners. Even they found this book to be very helpful.

I have a background in technical education and it looks to me like Jamie Pratt knows how to educate his students.

I thought this book would have more information on how to use NLP for enhancing leadership qualities. Most of what I found was just practical tips on what makes a leader and different leadership styles.

The questions posed throughout the chapters mostly ask you to think of qualities you like in different leaders and why you consider that person a leader.

If you're looking for pure NLP tips, I would suggest the book "NLP at Work". Otherwise, I would suggest skipping this book, unless you are unsure of "what makes a good leader".

I bought the cassette version of this book and found it very light in NLP content - almost none at all. I did not get a lot out of this book.

The author applies his lucid thinking and writing, evident in his popular Introducing NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming), to leadership in this book. He considers leadership as a journey and I like his analogy of a flock of birds. There is no one leader issuing orders all the time. Yet there is a larger intelligence that keeps the group together in very fluid formation. "The more the individuals use their own intelligence to the full for themselves, the smarter the group becomes." p.xi. O'Connor uses not only NLP, but also systems and complexity thinking in a very integrated way without technical jargons. You are invited to join this journey of growth as a leader. Start with reflections on your own goals and vision. The questions and exercises, "thought experiments"... throughout the book are excellent maps for readers to explore their own mind and values. Basic distinctions between leadership and authority, managing and leading, Roman law and common law, leaders or winners and losers' mentality, the use of values in contrast to extrinsic rewards in motivation... are illuminating. We are also helped to have a good understanding of trust and values, beliefs and assumptions. The extention of NLP's perceptual positions of self, other and objective view into a fourth perspective of context of a wider system and a fifth perspective of change through time shows the richness of systems thinking. Overall, this is an execllent guide for those willing to embark on this transforming journey and work through the exercises in acquiring both understanding and skills as a leader.

Its not worth paying for that toy bar which looks cute on paper, but doesn't really work well in practice. He has had this since 6 months old, and it is very difficult/close to impossible for my now 17 mo old son to work anything except the black and white roller. So while he does love the big peek-a-boo and other flaps inside the book, even I find it hard to push the triangle squeaky or turn that green dial or push the blue square, the toy is built way too stiff!!! he has done fine with similar concept toys like his crib activity center, so it is not for lack of know-how or trying.
The flaps in elmo's lift and look around the corner or one of the other big sesame street flap books are much more educational and just as much fun.

This book doesn't have many flaps, and the Busy Baby Toy part of it has never interested my 11 month old. We've since bought other lift-the-flap books with much more success.

My 14-month old son has enjoyed this book since he was 9 months old, but the flaps have torn off and the cover has become torn as well already. The activity bar at the bottom doesn't interest him and it's difficult to make the parts spin, etc. The idea for the book is good, but I would buy a good sturdy board book for a kid this age.

I recently returned from a 3 month tour of Europe and took this book with me. While it did have a number of major European cities in it the actual information about them was definetly lacking. I found my self usually better off with out a book at all as opposed to only having this one. Several other travelers we met felt the same way and some were lucky enough to have Lonely Planet guides. For the money spent I'll stick to them or Rick Steves in the future. i.e. This book would take you to the train station/ subway but then fall short on what the heck to do to get a ticket!!! Which is important information stranded in 20 different stations/ subways a month each with different customs. Frommer's did do an excellent job of pointing out all of the gay and lesbian districs and bars in each city and the gay friendly hotels and shops... but they also have a strickly gay guide to Europe as well. The amount of space used for this information could have been better allocated for more pertinent information. I'll have to give a thumbs down on this book. Take something else with you or take nothing at all.

Frommer's does a good job with the general hints on travelling cheaper, but unless you plan on visiting only the major cities and capitals only, look for another book. There are 24 major cities and surrounding areas covered from Ireland to Budapest, but that's not many cities in comparison with all of Europe. I only will have a short time in Europe and that means that I will only be able to visit two of the cities listed and have to use another book for everything in between. Lonely Planet is much more inclusive and definitely covers the lower price scale.

Just returned from a 2 month trip using the 2002 guide. I found the recommendations for the restaurants to be excellent. After realizing that the Frommer's writers and I had the same tastes, I made it a point of seeking out all of their 'starred' recommendations for restaurants. The sightseeing descriptions and recommendations were also quite good. The hotel recommendations were not as good. A few of the hotels we stayed in that were not 'starred' or listed as a 'Find' were not as comfortable as hotels in other books.

We traveled with this Frommer's, Rick Steves, Lonely Planet and Rough Guides through France, Belguim, Austria, Switzerland, Germany, Netherlands, Czech Republic, Hungary, and Italy. We liked Rick Steves' recommendations for lodging, Frommer's for restaurants and both for sightseeing. Lonely Planet and Rough Guides were not used if in a Frommer's city. If in a Rick Steve's city (but not Frommer's) we used Lonely Planet for restaurant recommendations (not as good a Frommer's but better than Rick Steves).

Background: Two travelers, professional, early 30s with enough money to stay out of the hostels, but did not want to blow the bank of 5 star lodging. Rick Steve's packing philosophy. Both traveler's love to eat!!

If you really are a beginner in Access, do not buy this book. I am pretty good at picking up new software quickly, but this book lost me. He uses examples that you don't even have. At one point, he said "choose the suppliers table" but there wasn't a suppliers table!!

Also, he tries to be funny, but fails. You have to read through tons of stupid stuff to get to anything of relevance. And you can't skip over it either, or you'll miss the tiny morsel of important information that he put in among his meaningless drivel. This book truly needs a good editor.

I was appalled at the number of typos, omissions, and just plain ERRORS contained in this book! I find it inexcusable that there are (many!) places where an incorrect illustration is provided, for example. At first I thought I must have a very early edition, but my copy is apparently from the 2nd printing, in 1998...

I was also very disappointed to find that there is no accompanying CD-ROM or website to go along with the tutorials. For each new sample database or table, the reader has to build the framework by hand before being able to work along with the examples in the book. This is made virtually impossible by glaring omissions in the book--whole tables are added and filled in without any notice or explanation, leaving you to scratch your head and wonder "where did THAT come from?" In many cases I resorted to filling in as much data as I could based on close examination of the screen shots!

Finally, although the book discusses a great deal of Access arcana in passing, it has very little depth, and virtually no discussion of what goes into the design of a quality database. You can use Access by the end (if you are persistent) but your design is sure to be weak...

(My apologies to the authors... I just call it like I see it.)

This book, while being very funny, is also a great resource for learning Access. The author really knows his stuff.

The Amazon.com review of this book (see above) says "are you personally more interested in strategic applications and general overviews than mind-numbing equations and printouts of code?". A good general overview does not have to contain printouts of code and mind-numbing equations, but it does have more substance and conceptual information than this "business week" like book long article. That's the point. The contents of this book would be fine for a business magazine article but not for a book. Too much prose and at the end not even an intelligent reader can make sense of what is really feasible with this technology and how it can be approached. There are much better general data mining books in the market, books without codes and weird equations for the mathematical illiterate, but with strong conceptual explanations and fundations. See, for instance, "Data Mining" by Pieter Adriaans for a much better book.

This is one of the worst books on data mining available. It is not intended for marketers nor researchers. You don't need any knowledge about neural networks and -even worse- you will not learn anything. It only talks about the IBM Neural Network Utility. If you are a business man look for 'Data Mining Techniques' from Michael J. A. Berry If you are a math man looking for a good text on neural networks see 'Neural Networks' from Simon Haykin.

The cover of this book clearly states that it is intended for "Solving Business Problems - from Application Development to Decision Support". The back of the book states that it is a "practical, accessible guide for business executives..."

This is not a book for developers unless they are just getting started and have never heard of neural nets or data mining. I found this little book helpful for providing easy-to-understand reviews for beginning AI students and non-technical business people.

Some of the other reviewers of this book are unfairly slamming this book for not being technical enough, when clearly that is not the intention of the book. There are no formulae in this book, but there are some nice diagrams that get the point across for beginners. The chapter on agents seemed a little misplaced, but otherwise, for learning about neural nets, this is not a bad book. For a pure biz-oriented "intro to data mining" I prefer the Adriaans book, however.

Well there's Dreamweaver and then there's Dreamweaver UltraDev. Yes UltraDev does all the things Dreamweaver does but it was developed with database development as the focus. So why it is that this author hardly touches on the subject of databases? Hello...get this man some extra chapters.

Quite frankly, you'd be lost if you used this book as your database to web learning source. This is a Dreamweaver book not an UltraDev book.

If your looking to develop web databases using UltraDev there are far better books on the market.

Bag buying this...

There are many reviewers here who are giving this book a poor review unjustly. People are complaining that this book skips basics and "doesn't explain how to create a rollover graphic".

If you are looking for a web graphics instruction then this isnt the book you should have purchased in the first place. It is NOT the authors fault you bought the wrong tool for the job.

However, if you are looking for a book on how to use Dreamweaver UltraDev and use Databases to build dynamic web pages then I highly recommend this book. It starts with very basic database connectivity and goes through advance database driven sites.

Keep in mind... This book deals with Database Web design FIRST. If you do not know web design or how to create or import a graphic, build tables, work with layers, etc., you should probably back up and start with the basics first.

If you are comforatable with your web design and would like to add database content (which is very versatile by the way) this is one of the best books on UltraDev

This bible series assumes a lot of things that you have a little expeience with how this program works, but would like to know more or just about everything for that matter. If you are a beginner and don't even know how to create rollover images in your favorite graphics program you shouldn't be using Ultradev. Try just using standard Dreamweaver. Ultradev deals with things like ASP, and CSS that the average newbie homepage builder will never use, stuff like Ecommerce. You didn't buy this I assume you probably downloaded this program Warez style. If you don't know essentially what a program does it's useless isn't it? Try Ultradev for dummies if you really want to learn(I think there is on for Ultradev). The dummies series is great the teach a basis or framework for understanding that is easily learned and basic, then try to grasp the thing as a whole after you have tryed some beginner readings and experince with the program. The bible series is not for beginners, they are great big refrence books. Most Macromedia programs come with tutorials anyway, if you want how to learn the programs. That's your best bet, hands on learning, and it's free.

For a book in this price range, we all want more. I have been doing fish illustrations in Environmental Biology of Fishes and some other journals. Dr. Nelson, you should contact me, we need to talk!!

The taxonomy of this book is dated and should be revised. The author of the book is a quality ichthyologist. However, I will not buy this book because of the ridiculous price that Wiley and Sons is asking. I would not recommend that anyone buy this book at this price. All you get are line drawings and text. Surely, Wiley and Sons can do a better job for the community of people interested in the world of fishes!

Comprehensive coverage makes this a great first reference. Most listings cite further in depth references. Published in 1994 it is probably due to be updated. The worst aspect of this book is the price. Get your library to buy it.