The thought of the repellent and cynical Joseph Fouché being involved in a passionate love affair with a dainty court lady is unappealing, to say the least. The characters in Love and Terror are unlikeable, the writing is heavy-handedly arty, and the plot is improbable, dreary, and completely ahistorical.

A historical novel that uses historical figures as its main characters, while permitted to extrapolate from known facts, should never blatantly contradict what is known to be true without labeling itself as "historical fantasy" rather than "historical fiction". Sorry Mr. Jolis, but what's this about Fouché being the head of the Revolutionary police force? He was Napoleon's chief of police, yes; but during the Terror he was merely a member of the National Convention and had nothing whatsover to do with the Parisian police force--or even a "secret police". Why fly in the face of established fact (and irritate historians as well as lay readers) to get this labored, dreary, pointless, and oh-so-self-consciously-"literary" story going?

Trite and artificial like love situation. I couldn't continue dragging myself through this terror.

A great and loving book by a great autho

I was very surprised when I ordered this book and found out that yes, indeed, it was merely a very tiny portion of what I had expected. I suppose I should have known from the price, but the description (at least at that time) did not make it clear that it wasn't the entire dictionary.

While this may be a very thorough source for the words it covers, it should be noted in the basic information that this is ONLY 128 pages of a 15,000 page work. The description above is very misleading.

itz a dictionary. what more can i say

Every undergraduate in the country uses Griffiths for E&M and this book compliments it poorly. It's written by a damn engineer so all the examples have real world numbers, which is nice, but pedagogical poor. Derivations are few, numbers in 10^-9 coulumbs all to common. Don't buy it.

This is not up-to-par with some of the other Schaum's Outlines I've read, but it's definitely worth a try. You definitely need to have a course textbook to supplement this outline. On the whole, it is useful and provides a convenient way to reinforce the materials of a university course.

I find this book useful in reviewing the concepts learned in class. The step-by-step solved problems help give additional practice for exams. A must-have tool for succeeding in electromagnetics!!!

While implementing CMM in our company we read about all books on CMM currently on the market.

This book is one of the worst we read. Most of the paper is just filling (especially the last chapters, written by a student). The thing that is "good" about the book is the case study in one chapter on how CMM is implemented in NASA on a very high level. I don't know where where the other reviewer got the "sense of humour" from.

If you want to know more about CMM you're better off buying the book on CMM by Mark C. Paulk.

This is a very helpful book for anyone working to implement the Capability Maturity Model. The author describes the culture that is necessary for effective process improvement, and clarifies the CMM terms, making them easier to use. He also describes the need for metrics in process improvement, and recommends methods for capturing and using the information you collect. There is also a very helpful chapter on assessments. Overall I found the book informative and easy to read.

I had the opportunity to read Mr. Raynus' book prior to final publication, and feel that it provides the best overview of process improvement with CMM now available. It is not a detailed analysis of the model; rather it links this valuable tool to overall software improvement. Mr. Raynus discusses other tools which must be used in this endeavor--common sense, a good grasp of software metrics, and the ability to define goals and objectives. SW professionals will find his outlook to be a breath of fresh air--he has been in the business, and knows how to put CMM in the right perspective. Throughout the book interesting parables and quotes are used to underscore the need for good problem definition, and a sensible outlook. Then the specifics of CMM are brought in to show how this powerful model can be used to focus an organization's efforts. Also notable is the concise way Mr. Raynus organizes and explains the area of software metrics, which is the underpinning for CMM. Finally, the author provides excellent case study material, showing first-hand the ways an organization copes with major CMM implementation--this alone is worth the price of the book.

It may sound like an oxymoron to call this "an enjoyable CMM book"--software engineering isn't supposed to be fun! Even so, Mr. Raynus brings personality and a sense of humour to his task, as well as a lot of conceptual and practical expertise. I for one strongly recommend the book for anyone working with, or considering, software improvement efforts with CMM.

A lot of the facts in this book are incorrect, but the pictures are pretty good...although most can be found in other books.

I have just finished Spice universe and i have to say it did not meet my expectations. I am a Spice fanatic and this book did not tell me anything i don't already know, the book mostly had pictures in it. Though i would reccomend it to a begginer Spice fan, the book does not provide unique information that Spice fans are looking for.

This book has very good pictures and has great interviews and quotes!! Its worth the money, if you like the spice girls, you'll like this book.

By the way, the book has 240 pages and not 416, as advertised

It is a pity that this book does not deliver what the title promises. One would expect, given the author, the publisher and the price, a rigorous treatment of the main electrical and magnetical magnitudes, the historical problems related to their characterization and quantification and the apparatus used for doing so. Nothing of the sort. The book is a soft and not very innovative account of the history of electricity and magnetism, relying mostly on second hand information and following the biographical lead of the "classical heros", from Thales to J. J. Thomson, via Gilbert, Franklin, Volta, etc., but without any effort in the direction of the history of ideas (and much less instruments or measurements, which are only mentioned in passing). A good present for curious teenagers.

The price is outrageously high.

IEEE Spectrum

Murray Eden

By and large, studies of a technical area still focus on the evolution of devices or systems, but some have begun to examine the people responsible for important developments. They probe their motives, the impediments that they faced, how their personalities affected their work, and how they were influenced by the obstacles they had to overcome.

Joseph Keithley writes very much in this spirit. In his words, "It is a story of electricity and magnetism written from a measurer's point of view." The book presents a beguiling picture of the ways in which a multitude of measurements and a smaller number of theorists put all the puzzling phenomena of electrostatistics and magnetics together to create the principles underlying our current understanding of these fields. As the title suggests, this collection is a story told in episodes, each one a tale of an attempt to come up with a better instrument, a novel experiment, or a fresh theory.

Keithley rarely anticipates future developments, which is more a virtue than a vice. Each piece of work is described in terms of the researcher's own discovery. The text is illuminated with many of the actual instruments used-a valuable addition. The reader, whether a trained engineer, student, or educated layman, will sense the confusion, the false starts, the conflicting theorizing. In this way the author captures the spirit of scientific progress and interplay between theorists and experimenters.

This idiosyncratic collection of stories is well worth reading. The electrotechnologist will recognize the main theme as the triumphs of science and the foundation of his or her profession. The novice should catch the excitement. It is to be hoped, too, that those wishing to enter our profession will be inspired to delve deeper into the history of electricity and magnetism.

I don't like this book at all. It has been hastily put together. The quality of the pictures is often mediocre. And the words accompanying the picture are a mere rehash of well-known facts. Other reviewers have already commented on typographic errors. Despite its size, this is not an inspiring book.

This is a excellent book and I highly recommend it. It has an abundance of wonderful stories, gorgeous photography, and unfortunately, a huge number of glaring typographic errors. I have rarely seen a book so thoughtfully designed contain so many mistakes! I hope they get it right in the next printing.

This text may well qualify as the "mother" of all coffee table books. As a matter of fact the librarian who checked it out to me remarked that by merely screwing 4 legs into this monster you could build a coffee table worthy of holding the remainder of your coffee table book collection! This book is much more than the pretty face many large format books display, there is a lot of substance worth reading between the covers. Overall a worthy compilation of world wide mountaineering. It contains many historical glimpses and a wide range of international climber bio's from 1800's to present day. Photos range in quality from excellent to grainy and underexposed. While many historical photos are included it is of course expected they would not be up to today's photo standards for clarity however many apparent recent photo selections either did not stand up to the publishing and enlargement demands or editing was compromised for packing the pages with images. Since climbing of course does not always take place in picture perfect lighting there will of course need to be representative samples to illustrate less than ideal weather conditions. Page 231 full page picture of the east face of Mt. Whitney has been reverse printed. I was distressed to find such an obvious error in printing for an otherwise incredible book I did not have the time or resources to verify all the other mountain profile photos but I might like to challenge the definition/graphic chosen for CAM. It is quite the resource...take a look for yourself.

About the only reason I finished this book was to learn more of the fascinating life Hickok led. I had given up on finishing it up twice. It was really hard to follow as Jospeh G Rosa would jump around in time to much. You'd would lose of when things happened and what order they happened in. The sense of time and place was missing. It was more organized in terms of themes rather then a straight forward chronological account of Wild Bill's life. Nothing wrong with this if your already familiar with Wild Bill's life, but very confusing to somebody that doesn't know anything about it.

Having only legend and folklore to base my opinion on, I have always had one thought concerning Wild Bill. After reading this book I have opened my mind to new ideas with regards to him. The author's use of eyewitness accounts of what his life and times really were like, I found to be credible. After finishing this book I now have a new respect for Mr. Hickok and what he stood for.

Makes this an interesting read. However, I would recommend reading Rosas THEY CALLED HIM WILD BILL before undertaking this biography. Much of the prior information in Hickoks life is not dealt with in great detail here. But the new information is well worth it. Rosa is a meticulous researcher who writes with great passion on this subject.

Nothing in the book made any sense to me. There was never a point made. It was all stuff that know one really want to learn about. Overall I didn't like the book at all

What a simple title, yet a more simpler book. Very little facts of interest or use, very short and trite, I'd prefer to read the Wives of Henry VIII for the fourth time.

Don't get this book, there are much more worthy ones that account the lives of WOMEN in the middle ages, and if you really are looking for women, the women in this book are truely unknown and did not account to much in the middle ages.

This book is a welcome addition to the medieval history books written by these authors. It profiles several prominent women of medieval times, and in so doing, gives us a glimpse of what life was like for all women back then. Well written, not at all dry. Strongly recommended for anyone with an interest in medieval history and/or women's history. Also check out, by these same authors, "Life in a Medieval Village" and "Cathedral, Forge, and Waterwheel."

This book was first published in 1928. Since that time our understanding of ancient Mesoamerica has changed dramatically. This is a verbatim reprint of the original book, with a new introduction that sets Spinden and the book into historical context. If one is interested in the development of ideas about Mesoamerica in the early 20th century, this is a useful book. If one wants to find out about those civilizations, however, this is NOT the book to read. Many of Spinden's ideas were proven wrong in the 1930s; by 2000, the number of errors in the book is enormous. There has been much fieldwork, decipherment, and other research on these cultures in recent decades. Look for one of the many recent books about the Aztecs, Mayas, and other Mesoamerican civilizations. Dover should continue reprinting codices (the Codex Borgia and Codex Nuttall are great reprints!), and stay away from outdated textbooks.

Ancient Civilizations of Mexico and Central America is written by a curator expert on the topic and provides a concise, excellent history of the ancient cultures of Mexico and Central America. Any interested in early anthropology works will relish this fine survey of pre-Columbian life, essential to a beginning study of the region and its history.