This book is marred by sloppy editing -- the devil is in the details. A casual reading turned up no less than five places where the meaning of illustrative materials or figures thwarted or contradicted the author's intent (and, in some cases, machine logic!) There is one diagram that was slapped onto the pasteboard and scanned to plate in an obvious hurry -- wiping out the top 8 pts of a 10 on 12 pts line of text. Aside from these pitfalls, the book has a chatty, conversational style guaranteed to drive advanced programmers from other disciplines (C, C++, Perl) up the wall. Since only advanced programmers can recognize the many errors, and only newbies will benefit from the chatty style, I can't really give this more than three stars, even though the author is obviously more proficient than SAMS' slapdash editing would indicate.

Title says it all. It's a decent book and unlike the other reviewer, I did find quite a few minor errors.

This is a good book if you found yourself scared to death of other programming languages. Ruby really takes away the hardest parts of other programming languages, but in turn requires that you memorize literally hundreds of funtions and methods! Because of this it's almost easier to read Ruby then to program it.

All told, I learned a great language, but the 4 instead of 5 stars comes from the fact that the exercises at the end of the chapters were no brainers. 15 minutes of typing for the hardest ones! Maybe I should of used a more advanced book, but admittedly, I purchased the book because of the exercises.

I guess a lot of people come to Ruby with a knowledge of Perl or Java or C++ or some other language, and the other Ruby titles may be better suited for them. My own programming consisted of a smattering of Javascript and Actionscript. Consequently I appreciate this book's careful descriptions and clear and plentiful examples. The book moves fast, has a light tone, and lets the pleasure of Ruby come through. I recommend it, without reservation, as the entryway into Ruby.

I have a great sentimental attachment to Benner's Selections, as it was with this textbook that I first read Homer in Greek. I loved the selections, etc.!

However, as students have later come to me with their Homer reading projects, I've placed this side-by-side with the notes in M.M. Willcock's "Iliad of Homer: Books I-XII" and "Iliad of Homer: Books XIII-XXIV," and it just doesn't measure up. Willcock's work is fresher (1978/1984 vs. 1903), and he gives better and fuller help with Homer's language. (Also, he happens to be the more sensitive reader of Homer's poetry.)

If there's a reason to stick with Benner, it's that it's cheaper and gives excellently chosen selections (grammar overview + text + notes) in one volume, as opposed to Willcock's two-volume format covering the entire Iliad. Also, you've just got to love a book (=Benner) that begins, "This edition of the Iliad includes the books commonly required for admission to American colleges..." Also, Benner has a wonderfully written and complete glossary in the back, whereas with Willcock you need also to buy a good Homer lexicon (that is, Cunliffe's "Lexicon of the Homeric Dialect," which is much better than Autenrieth's brief work IMHO).

This text is probably the best choice for those who have spent a year learning the basics of Homeric (or Attic) Greek and want to experience some payoff for all the hours spent conjugating second aorists and declining endless varieties of third-declension nouns. The selections consist of long excerpts (five books of the Iliad are included in their totality) of the best parts of the Iliad. As a whole, the selections comprise a sort of "Essential Iliad" inasmuch as they convey the scope of the entire poem from the wrath of Achilles to the burial of Hector.
My only gripe with the editors' choice of what to include is with the omission of Hera's deception of Zeus.

Along with the selections is a commentary which helps elucidate those words and phrases here and there that are likely to cause the relative beginner trouble in construing the sense. In general, the commentary is quite good, though it does let the reader down from time to time. It won't, for example, explain to you what the connective particle in line 8 of Book One means even though no beginner will know what to make of it. Thus, a bit more help could have been given, particularly in the area of particles.

In addition to the commentary, there is a vocabulary comprising all the words used in the excerpts. This is a real bonus, since rifling through big lexicons can be tedious, particularly for a relative beginner. Also, all hapax legomena (words used only once) are listed at the bottom of every page of text.

All in all, then, Benner's Selections From The Iliad is a must-have for those who want to expand upon an elementary understanding of Homeric Greek.

So, you've made it through a year of college-level classical Greek -- Attic, or perhaps one of those texts that starts out with Homeric Greek. Now you're ready to read the Iliad, the single greatest work of western literature. What you now need is a good solid school text, with vocabulary, grammatical appendices, and copious notes. This is the book for you. I used this as an undergraduate years ago and still cherish my hardcover copy. This is a new, paperback edition, presumably the same old standard-issue Benner. I know of none better. I've seen lots of school editions of the Iliad, many pre-dating and some post-dating Benner, but none compare with this edition for overall utility. Is there anything as exciting as reading the Iliad in Greek? It seems curious, perhaps even paradoxical, that a 2700 year old poem is as pure and as fresh as the morning dew, more alive and vibrant than anything that has been written since. For those who are coming to the poem for the first time, you can't do better than to have an old schoolmaster like Benner take you through the best parts of the poem with lots of helpful guidance.

I have read this book with a very long delay , but it was well worth it. Since I am a historian I will begin with some words to that unfavorable review that I have read. As a historian I find this book very good for two reasons. First, Mr.Brzezinski at least went to the trouble of providing a historical background for his work , which I have to say is not been a standard for American political scientists writing on Poland. Second, in his review he has shown that Polish constitutional history goes back a long way. One may argue that already articles of Henry of 1573 are the first constitution , as Mr.Brzezinski notes. This a very important aspect and a big plus for the book. May we let those few mistakes fall on the backs of the books editors, because they are really very minor and not taking away from the gist of the book. This as a historian. As a person , who after 15 years of living in USA now has spent two years in Poland I have to command Mr.Brzezinski on his insights that the Constitutional Court will become a strong independent institution in Polish life. As events have shown the Tribunal has consistently shown in its decisions to stay free of political pressure and become an oasis of good jurisprudence in the system full of corruption and inefficiency. I believe that this work is well written and Mr.Brzezinski should continue to disseminate knowledge about justice system in Poland with more works. Tomasz Kolodziej

Dr. Mark Brzezinski has done an excellent job in doing a research on Constitutionalism in Poland. I understand that Mark' book is for the English Reader outside of Poland. Dr. Brzezinski invested a few years of his life to study the issue of constitutionalism in Poland ( he is an American of the Polish background) and to work at the Constitutional Tribunal in Poland. I've had the opportunity to meet Mark on several ocassions and and I've done several radio and newspaper interviews with him. Dr. Brzezinski has done a superb job during every interview. In my personal opinion Dr. Mark Brzezinski is: *very disciplined scholar, *constitutional lawyer, *good strategic thinker *leader with an enormous potential - similar to his Father - who was former US National Security Advisor. One of Dr. Mark Brzezinski Academic Advisors at Oxford has been Dr. Z. Pelczynski - who has mentored many world leaders, including US President Bill Clinton during his Oxford' years. It is my strong personal conviction that Mark has scientific, ethical and leadership potential to serve humanity in the most responsible positions. Give him several more years to develop his potential. Andrew M.

I had the good fortune to come across Mr. Brzezinski's book on amazon.com. The greatest contribution that any scholar can make to the study of contemporary Central Europe politics is to provide a view on recent developments with a basic historical perspective. This is exactly what Mr. Brzezinski's book provides, even when considering the comments of the review below. One of the less regarded success stories of the post communist era is the triumph of the law of politics and Mr. Brzezinski's chapter on judicial review in Poland fills that gape in hole. We in Japan credit the awesome task Mr. Brzezinski has achieved for his book and we congratulate him for this much needed work. A reader from Japan

'Language Dynamics courses are the only courses I know of that are truly dedicated to effective and immediate communication in the target language. Academic courses often reflect the literary interests of professors, many of whom never had the experience of learning the target language as a second language. With these courses, you can hit the streets after every lesson knowing you can say more than you could yesterday'.

Of all the language courses I have tried over the years not one has exceeded my expectations like Speaking Pain Free Italian. Not only did I learn more from this course than all the others combined, in just a few short weeks I was able to communicate with natives and was understood by them. Best of all, it didn't hurt. I enjoyed this course.

This is the second Language Dynamics course I have tried and I very pleased with 'Speaking Pain Free Italian'. I have tried other taped language courses and have even taken an Italian 101 and 102 course at the university level. What makes this course valuable and unique is that it teaches you to actually speak basic Italian in a simplified way which reduces your stress level and gets you speaking the basic quickly and easily. I have been able to use every word I learned in this course with native Italian speakers and I was understood. This foundation for communicating in spoken Italian I owe to this course and to Language Dynamics. I am now going on to more advanced study of the language.

I was waiting for some intersting insights on how synchronicity accounts for threshold leaps in complex systems, and what place does it take overall from scientific prespective. I really struggled with the unstructured, swing-like style of the book. The example with Jung and the beattle must have been repeated more than 10 times. The language was awful, thoughts flying back and forth, ignoring the titles of chapters. Some of the concepts are facinating, but if anything, this book turns me away from synchronicity, because of its incoherence. This kind of writing is not scientific enough. The authors should have written this book in the style of 'Chaos' or 'Complexity'. It is sad that book on such interesting subject is written in such a way.

Synchronicity has long been a subject of much fascination but also much confusion as generally it is handled more in a poetic than a scientific way. A strength of Combs and Hollands' book is its bold use of new science to try to move toward the adequate answer to the question of how synchronicity works in scientific as well as experiential terms. Here, as with his classic work on consciousness The Radiance of Being -- hands down one of the best on this subject -- Allan Combs displays why he has gained a reputation as one of the most firmly grounded of researchers who can also bring difficult concepts to life with the rare skill of an Arthur Koestler.

I read the first edition of this book years ago and the concepts in it have haunted me ever since. Then, I bought my own copy of this second edition and found that the ideas contained in it had lost none of their power and were every bit as profound as I had remembered.

Briefly, this book deals with the concept of synchronicity or meaningful coincidence. It deals with it on two levels, the level of science and the level of myth. Indeed, it is shown that synchronistic events in themselves demonstrate the interpenetration of matter (the realm of science) and mind (the realm of myth.) Synchronicity is shown to leap the gap between not only the conscious and unconscious aspects of the mind, but between the world of mind and the world objective events. In this way it corresponds very well to the myth of Hermes, the god of boundaries, and the messenger between the world of the gods and the world of men.

The greatest strength of this book over other treatments of the topic is the clear and up-to-date manner that it addresses the possible scientific explanations of synchronicity. It draws primarily from the world of the new physics. Here is an extremely clear explanation of Bohm's theories on a holographic universe with explicate (physical, day-to-day) and implicate (hidden and fundamental) orders. In spite of the references to the modern world of subatomic physics, it struck me that this sounds remarkably like the hidden currents of the cosmos that occultists have always alluded to. The pattern based theories of Sheldrake, Laszlo, and Chester are also examined and compared. Indeed, the concepts of morphic fields and resonance seem to uncannily resemble the old magical principles of sympathy and correspondence between our own world and the world of archetypes. Indeed, it is shown that a balanced mind (both hemispheres at the same frequency) in deep meditation or prayer may be able to "range" the implicate order and bring about increased instances of synchronicity. Since it is suggested that synchronicity is the real basis for all ESP phenomena ( telepathy, precognition, psychokinesis, etc.) it could be said that this is an effective explanation for the concept of sympathetic magic.

The use of the concept of the mythological trickster is especially appropriate and effective. Many times synchronistic coincidences seem to exist for no other reason that to shatter our preconceived and ossified concepts of the universe. That was also the function of Hermes/ Mercurius/ Coyote in mythology. It is also the function of this book in a world still mired in the dogma of materialistic scientism.

his didn't cut it. some of the stories were of the kind where the military are challenged by pulpish creatures. i hate those stories. there is a story by Smith here, not really good horror, but had suspence. in addition there is a good story by Rainey. but the rest, no. Some, like Piccirrilli, get almost interesting, but in the end, you wonder why you read them.

Stephen Mark Rainey has edited a very pleasant collection of stories for the Cthulhu enthusiast. While most are either familiar or non-memorable, one newer story is particularly eerie: "In the Rue dAuseil" by Fred Chappell has exactly the frisson and dark laughter that characterize HPL. The collector of automata focuses on musicians, and composes for them. In his searches he finds out what Erich Zann really was... Good reading for Hallowe'en!

If you are a fan of H.P. Lovecraft or even if you are not these stories are well written and geniunely scary. It was a pleasure to read. I highly recommend this book.

I've bought a few Spawn-related stories in the past, when a favorite Writer was involved, such as Dave Sim, Alan Moore, Frank Miller, Neil Gaiman, etc. With the exception of Frank Miller's Spawn/Batman crossover, and Alan Moore's Violator and Violator/Badrock, they've all stunk. I blame this on the character of Spawn himself, which is truly limited by it's one-dimensionality. Not even the greatest Writers in the field of comics can make him interesting.

Angela's Hunt will be incomprehensible to people who haven't read Spawn #9, also written by Neil Gaiman. It should have been included in the book, as the story makes precious little sense without it. Gaiman, who created the amazing Sandman for DC, has finally done something I didn't love. (First time for everything, I suppose...) The book is only interesting as a historical footnote now, as it was the catalyst for the recently decided Todd McFarlane/Neil Gaiman Lawsuit over the ownership of Angela, Cogliostro, and Medieval Spawn. (Gaiman won, and was granted ownership of the characters, as well as a settlement and residuals from other uses of those characters, including their appearances in the Spawn movie & cartoons.)

Spawn fans ONLY should read this; Gaiman fans should steer clear. You're not missing anything.

After writing mostly Fantasy-influenced stories with throlls, faeries and wizards which worked out good for him, Neil Gaiman takes a risk here with the further creation of a character who later turns out to be one of the most popular members of the cast of a superhero title according to many. I myself take quite some characters over her (Billy Kincaid, Violator, Jason Wynn) but as a character that's supposed to be the perfect opposite of the Hellspawn she's indeed a very satisfying new (at the time) character. Luckily most of the story stages in Heaven and Hell, places Gaiman is familiair with since he explored them many times over already and THAT shows. His writing is being aided by the art of Greg Capullo who I think started here in showing himself to be worthy to take up drawing Spawn after McFarlane. It's obviously NOT the perfected art Capullo shows of later when he gets to draw 'Spawn' yet though, to be honest. I don't have a specific word for it but it's showing that typical "Image-look' that most Image books had in their early days.

About the story: The Angelic warrior Angela is celebrating her 100.000th birthday in her own unique fashion when all of a sudden the Hordes of Heaven come to place her under arrest. She's being put on trial for treason and conspiring with a Hellspawn (See the events in Spawn #9 to see what happened), among other things. It soon becomes clear to most that she's being set up and her friends attempt to help her. In doing so they need to get Spawn from earth and take him to heaven un-noticed to testify for Angela, the woman who once tried to kill him.

This story takes place right after #10 and is really a very good enhancement to the early days of the ongoing Spawn series. In saying that I'm also saying that it's definately NOT for people who haven't been reading the first 10 issues of Spawn, or at least #9 and 10 where the first Spawn/Angela meeting takes place. It explains a lot about some changes Angela went through between #9 and the later issues, which aren't addressed in the Spawn series itself. So when you've been a Spawn reader you must surely get this because it will only make your experience and understanding of Angela better, because it ties up some loose ends. If you haven't you should think about getting Spawn #9 and 10 first (#9,10 + the Angela minies makes a perfectly good stand-alone story without you having to go further into Spawn afterwards), or not get Angela at all. The story won't make sense otherwise.

I thought this comic was great. It has a great story to it and the drawings are exelent. I thought the person who did the color on it did a great job, too.
I usally don't read the Spawn comics, but I thought this one looked interesting so I bought it. I am very happy with it and can read it over and over again.
The cover interested me by its great artwork and detail. I recomend this to fans of Spawn's Angela.

Pretty uninteresting stories with the Man of Steel and the Dark Knight living different lives in alternate histories. Nothing new about them, but it does see how comic book writers have run out of creative stories to do with these two heroes.

I liked the Batman story. It was kind of laid out like a movie. The Superman story was a little weak.

I thouroughly enjoyed this collection of new takes on the dc comics mythologies. The piratwe \\ Joker was the best!!!!!

I was never a big Elvis fan, kinda before my time -- so i have to admit that i never knew much about his life or his music... well now i do! The start was ssslllooowww but it did pick up when he became a teenager- i read it 'cuz i LOVED Crazy in Alabama (by Childress) but honestly i was not impressed by this book, and the way it ended was so sudden. Guess i dont need to read up on Elvis (feel like i did). Read Crazy in Alabama, that is a great read!

What a rocking ride of a book! I have never been particularly interested in Elvis Presley, but this book swept me along because it is such a great story, so well told. Childress does not miss a beat and there is a beat driving it along. The Leroy Kirby character is fresh and very sympathetic. Childress captures the hot, fast blooming of a new sound and star perfectly. I'm sure it helps that even those casually acquainted with Elvis like myself can conjure some of the real life sound and look of the performances that Childress renders so convincingly, but I was impressed nevertheless. The author's song titles and lyrics, which shadow the real ones, are spot-on, and in several cases seem an improvement on the original. Downside? The story lost some of it's oomph towards the end. Of course, the tale is a carbon copy of much of the first half of Elvis' life [as I have learned by refering to Peter Guralnick's Last Train To Memphis (biography)]. Many small incidents and even place names are reproduced, along with the general outline. So there's a nagging feeling that the book should somehow be discounted a bit, with Childress just redressing a heavily borrowed story. But what a job he has done in creating a full-developed, unique character. Reading Guralnick's fine book, I find Leroy Kirby far more interesting. The power of good fiction! I also don't recognize the writing/writer here from the other novel I've read by Childress (V is for Victor - good, but Tender is much better.

Although I grew up in the 1950s, I was largely oblivious to the appeal of Elvis Presley, and I have never considered myself anywhere close to being a "fan" of his. However, Mark Childress completely absorbed my attention and sympathies in this immensely-readable narrative of a fictionalized Elvis. Permeating the initial parts of this novel is a sense of poverty, despair, and, ironically, hope. The young Elvis, disdained and forlorn, knows the solace of an overbearing, but loving, mother, and a sense of his own possibilities through his guitar. The rock star Elvis is overpowering..both in ability and character. I commented repeatedly to my wife that this book rolls at an incredible pace...and that a reader cannot help but be engrossed.