I am always wary of books that begin with the accolade of 'The Complete Idiot's Guide' as it suggests that those who buy such books, are, indeed complete idiots.

Not believing myself to be in this category but being in search of ways to boost morale and productivity and teamwork I bought this book after having flicked through and found the contents to be short and well illustrated with anecdotes, humour and other such features to make this appealing to even the most reluctant readers.

This book certainly has all of those things and at a basic level it does a useful job in highlighting a number of features which help in enhancing self-esteem. The book is clearly well meaning but misses it's target by a long way.

My understanding of what this book is meant to be is as a self-study workbook. To some extent it is but really does not go far enough to help those who suffer from lack of self-esteem. Let me give one very crucial example. The author cites S.W.O.T. analysis, the first being Strengths, the second being weakness. The reader is asked to list his or her greatest strengths and serious weaknesses. However, there is no guidance given as to how someone should determine those, and, given that those who lack self-esteem do not feel good about themselves to begin with, they will find it hard to list strengths and will feel that they have more than three weaknesses.

The book does serve as an introduction to the problem and does point the way to some exercises that can be done to assist in enhancing self-esteem. For anyone serious about tackling this problem this is not the book for them.

...or of course I could just be a complete idiot and have missed the point of this book alltogether. Hmmm

I found this book pretty much useless for boosting my self esteem. The advice given in the book was poor with silly, little quotes and poems. I felt that it was lacking good, hard research on low self esteem and how to improve one's self esteem. Unfortunately, there is nothing that I took away from the book to help me with that.

Dr. Warner has done an incredible job in this book of making sense out of self-esteem. He uses humor, compassion, and creativity to give the reader numerous tools for developing their own self-esteem, and for contributing to the esteem of others. This book is a great gift -- to yourself, or to someone you love.

I did not BUY the book, I did not READ the book, I am not a FAN of 'what's-her-name', and I think she is a spoiled rotten, rich slob!

Ok, you guys convinced me. I'm not going to BUY the book, I'm not going to READ the book, I'm not a FAN of what's her name and I agree.....She's a spoiled, rich, SNOB!

I have to agree with Jamie on this review. The book was well-written, but I learned some horrible things about LeAnn. I was on the border of fan/disliker, and this book pushed me to the disliker side. LeAnn talks about ex-classmates as if they were all jealous of her. While some of those ex-classmates have stated that they hated her because she was so snobby about being famous. This book just really makes me feel disgusted that I ever liked LeAnn.

Luckily this book can be read in a sitting...big text and few pages. Too bad there isn't enough information to make it worth sitting long enough to read. This book commits the single biggest mistake that any fashion book can commit: it doesn't have pictures (especially color pictures) of the things it is talking about. Wonder what worsted wool gabardine is? I sure do! They give a definition but no picture is present for me to understand how this is different from some other kind of lightweight wool.

The book does a few guidelines about kinds of clothing to consider wearing and ways to care for them. However, we're talking about a few dozen pages of information. That's the kind of thing I would expect to find on a webpage for free.

The biggest problem is they don't offer a lot of guidelines and never seem to tell you what things you absolutely shouldn't do. So what you're left with is a few ideas but not really enough to build a wardrobe on. You'd do just as well browsing through a few GQ magazines while waiting in line at the supermarket and then heading to a nice clothing store to figure out what worsted wool gabardine is on your own.

The first third or half of the book is a waste of time. But the rest makes it worth buying.

Most books only give a passing explanation on casual friday. This one analyzes it to death. They give names for four different types of casual dress, and give guides and even wardrobe lists for each of those styles. It definitely helped me figure out what image I want to present.

My criticism is that like many magazines, movie reviews, entertainment shows, etc, it hates to say "don't." There are too many "you could try this" or "some would prefer that" type answers, and it doesn't really tell about the gaffes people might commit. Also, more and colored photos would help, but most any book on the subject would likely have that same flaw.

I don't believe there to be a better resource on business casual dress, and to the Van Heusen group's credit they don't plug their stores much at all (aside from a few Bass Weejun mentions). Buy it, tear out the first 3-4 chapters, and be happy.

This is a good book for people who want to dress better at casual work places or, in my case, men who are looking to improve their style.

That's one of the problems: not a lot of good style books out there for men. This one does a pretty good job, showing illustrations to help you along and giving some key points.

Definitely worth a look. Also, even better, check out Carole Jackson's COLOR FOR MEN. I wrote a review over there, too.

I mostly bought this for general windows info and especially network information. After reading the network section a few times, I still have to buy another book to figure this out.

Mark Minasi is an abolute expert on everything Windows, especially networking and servers. This book, which is of course slightly outdated since the release of Windows 2000 and XP, is an excellent primer for those of us still stuck with the 98 version (e.g. gamers)...

This book is a must for understanding how and why Windows 98 works. Remember this book isn't for beginners, so try and buy a beginners guide to Windows 98 along with this one.

One example that this book is not for beginners: Another reviewer quoted what they thought was an error on page 105. Well, that person was mistaken because the book is quite correct. If that reviewer had read up to page 109 he/she might have learned that you first personalize the display settings to ensure that there is something to later edit and restore.

So, the moral of this story is: "finish the book before you pass judgement."

I enjoyed the Final Fantasy VII: survival guide because of its details and writting format. It gives a great walkthrough of the game in a reader-friendly format. The illustations in this book let you see perfectly what the writters are talking about. Without a walkthrough of any role-playing game, you are bound to overlook several items throughout the game. This walkthrough is a perfect book to read if you want to get the maximum amount of enjoyment out of the wonderful game. While this book is not as well written as the offical walkthrough, it is a great, less expensive substitute.

This is a good step by step guide to defeat Final Fantasy VII. Well, the game is so linear and there is no plot twist in this game.. However, in order to survive, you have to collect various type of material orbs. You can follow the guide book and save your time searching for all the material orbs. FF VII fanatics know that the ultimate challenge is to defeat Ruby Weapon.. This book doesn't give any hints on defeating this monster...

This is a great book! It's the ultimate resource for any Final Fantasy VII Player. Even if you don't need the help to beat the game, you can beat it on your own and then come back to this book and beat it with it to make sure you get everything. It has colorful pictures and very useful maps. It also has good tips on beating the bosses. I've gotten Level 99, 9999 hp, 999 mp, 3 mastered double cut materia, dead Emerald Weapon, dead Ruby Weapon, three gold chocobos, 3 master summons, 3 master commands, a master magic, and just about everything you would need to be virtually invincible! This book can help you get all this too!

I read this book because I am a Khe Sanh veteran; I teach literature on the university level... No one is questioning that the battle was fought, it was just one of many that occured daily on the Khe Sanh Plain, and no one is questioning the bravery of the Marine units that fought there...but...it is tragic that the author was misinformed with bogus information. The author should have contacted one of the Marine Sniper or Marine Recon websites and checked out the information before submitting it to the publisher; this is a basic responsibility for any writer that attempts to have their manuscritpt placed into print.
If not for this one terrible mistake, I would have given the book 5 stars. this is a good writer...he just needs to be a little more careful...the same thing happened to me years ago. My advice, tear out the offensive page, reprint...learn from it and move on to the next manuscript.
Had the man made false comments about my unit..."the Walking Dead"...it would have caused the same if not more outrage. Lets all just move ahead and be vigilant aginst those that try to infiltrate our ranks. History can not be based on memory...history must be based on research.

Relative to 3 previous reviews focusing on Kevin "Canadian' Howell's statement on Pg. 29 I can only say the following; Whether or not he was a sniper with 3rd. Force is irrelevant to the content of this account of a fierce battle. I cannot or will not speculate as to why Canadian made this statement.
I fought in the hole (such as it was) next to the author.
Anyone who doubts either the veracity or factual narrative from those of us who were there is sorely mistaken. This book is an account of what happened THAT NIGHT and that night only!!
Mark's first book UNHERALDED VICTORY took years to write and was meticulously researched. The Foreword was written by the 32nd CMC
Ge. Jim Jones, our CO on the Ridge. Gen Jones, now Supreme Allied Commander, Europe(NATO) was also interviewed for "FOXTROT
RIDGE" and a final manuscript, before going to press was submitted for his approval.
The passage of time and the ferocity of this battle can dull memory, but I can assure everyone, and those of us who were there
will tell you that this is a great book.

Mark Woodruff has composed a work that chronicles as accurately as humanly as possible a night that changed lives forever. 13 U.S.Marines are still dead. 44 of us still have a Purple Heart, and the families of over 230 North Vietnamese soldiers will never see their loved ones.
Great job, 'Ruff' and Semper Fi
Kevin

This book brought back alot of memories, good and bad. There were several incidents that I had forgotten but after reading the book it jogged my memory.
I think Mark Woodruff did an excellent job in putting this book together. Each word that I had said to Mark was put into print.
In the thirteen months that I was in Vietnam it will always be this one day that I remember.
Thanks, Mark for your dedication and esprit de corps.

First of all, let me correct any misconceptions you might be having about this book: It is not about general, three-tier web development using Oracle and Java - instead, it is focused entirely on in-database programming with stored procedures, using Java where PL/SQL either has no solution or lacks in some aspect.

For me, this book was very useful. Before I read it, I didn't see much use in Java stored procedures, finding PL/SQL a much better alternative. In short, this book tries hard to illustrate the role of each language within the Oracle database, and in the end, is successful in doing that. The issue of PL/SQL vs. Java - both in terms of performance and usefulness - is a concurrent theme throughout most of the book.

For me, that latter half was the real meat on the bone. The first chapters are thought for beginners to Java and JDBC, but I skipped them mostly. The chapters on security, OS resources and PL/SQL-Java interoperability were very useful. I actually found more than one case where Java would have made a great difference for a past project! Additionally, I appreciated the performance section at the back, which cleared up many of my initial misconceptions on the subject.

To summarize: If you are interested in extending your Oracle database applications by using the abilities of Java, this is the right book for you.

This book is a great guide to writing Oracle Java stored procedures. Of course, it has its cons and pros. On the bad side, there are the obvious differences in writing style and flavour of the different chapters (although not to the level of irritation), which is probably a result of so many authors.

Although I had some experience with Java, JDBC and SQLJ before, I really liked many of the chapters dealing with the fundamentals, especially the Exception chapter. I found much of the Oracle-Java specific material very useful, such as the chapters on Java and SQL performance, on using Java and PL/SQL together, and more. All in all, this book is packed with useful examples and practical solutions to real-life issues (mostly scalability and performance related), which made it very useful and pleasent to read.

As an Oracle developer, I found this book very helpful in my day-to-day chores. It is divided into four main sections, which I discuss further below.

The first section is a Java tutorial, for the Oracle developer. Having dealt a little with Java before, I found little new in this section. A word of caution, though: this book assumes some familiarity with PL/SQL (while no assumptions are made of Java knowledge). The material is divided so that you can just scan through, or skip, the first section (ca 100 pages), if you feel like it.

In part 2 of this book, we have a few chapters on both JDBC and SQLJ. Most emphasis is on Oracle-specific stuff and extensions. These chapters were different in quality, but served their purpose.

Part 3 is the heart of the book. This is where the authors delve into the details of Oracle Java, and illustrate how PRACTICAL problems may be solved by using Java or the joint efforts of PL/SQL and Java. I found some of the chapters in this section very pleasent to read, and I have already used some of the code presented in my own work. Highlights include the chapters on the Oracle JVM and the uses of Java utilities and OS resource handling (e.g. mail client that takes BLOB attachments).

Finally, section 4 discusses performance, both of Java and SQL, and compares Oracle Java with PL/SQL. Although this discussion is a little lightweight (this is material for whole books!), the emphasis on using bind variables is easily justified.

Overall, I greatly recommend this book for any Oracle developer seeking to use Java stored procedures in the database!

Mark Messier is and always will be my favorite hockey player but this book provides no original insight into his character whatsoever. The book offers the same repetitve praise over and over about what great leader he is without ever touching upon the other sides of his personality, particularly the darker and more personal aspects that we don't get to read about in the paper. This book could have been written in a week.

Well written! Keeps you interested and waiting to find out what happens next. Mr. Carpiniello has given the reader a lovely glimpse into the career of a wonderful athlete. As a hockey mom whose son greatly admires this superstar, I am grateful for a biography that celebrates the leader, the nice guy. In answer to "Horrible", who cares whom the athletes go out with and who doesn't assume that they do? Fill in the blanks or read Jackie Collins. On target to what the sport is about. The hard work, the dedication and the will to win! Well done!

A great read....filled with insights and facts on how messier became the great player he is today. Great perspectives on mess from players to coaches to writers. A must read for hockey fans of all ages.

I couldn't agree more with the other customer reviewers of the awe that Corelli inspires in his listeners, and what a disappointment this bio is of the great tenor. I am a magazine editor and book author, and unfortunately often have to edit (or more often reject) inept manuscripts. How did this "author" get into print, or better yet, how did the editors/publishers allow it? As for the included CD, I didn't have a problem with the sound of the prompter; it was a side of opera I have never heard "live." And the singing is great, of course. Corelli was a true artist; there's very little I can add to the other reviews here about that topic. Nevertheless, $ is a little steep for a one-disc opera recital, even by Corelli, since that was all that this package offered that was any good.

There's little I can add to the reviews previously given. I also felt that the author spent too much time "explaining" Corelli. How sad I felt for this man who couldn't enjoy the gifts he had been born with. A man who brought so much joy to those of us who heard him and still doubted himself as a performer.

I respect his privacy but would have liked to have known more about his private life, does he have children, being married to a soprano, etc. No one need ask what toll all that stress has taken on him. The last pictures of him in his 70's clearly demonstrate it.

I love the CD despite the prompting heard in the background. That and the picture album are worth the price alone.

The book is ok as a source of first information. It is written by someone who definitely loves Corelli. Yet we lack another book about this great singer and personality, more psychologically written. There is the same problem as with everything nowadays:

Really interesting material that is not destined to be bought by a great lot of people but only by "some" interested ones is not sold any more by the great companies (neither by amazon.com!). This concerns good books (eg even the not so famous ones of truly famous authors) or rare recordings (eg Corelli and Tebaldi Met Gala for Rudolf Bing, singing Manon Lescaut...). It just shows that "culture" is constantly diminishing to "mass- and subculture". O tempora...

As previous reviewers have stated, the book is out-of-date and error-ridden. Some have praised the book as being easy to read, but if the content is wrong it doesn't matter how well the book is written - It is still wrong.

Bad written and full of mistakes - an example :

Chapter 7 - Working with Novell Netware

"NetWare does not provide DNS or DHCP services. These network services, if required on the network, must be provided by a server running some other NOS."

This guy knows nothing about Netware - since 1998 Netware has built-in DNS and DHCP servers.

If you want a real good begginners guide go to : Computer Networking: A Top-Down Approach Featuring the Internet by James Kurose and Keith Ross (ISBN 0-201-47711-4)

Its really an excellent source of information for beginners

I have virtually no networking experience, but this book provides a fairly detailed, easy-to-read, and complete coverage of the topic. There are obviously books that go into extreme detail, but this book is an introduction to the topic. This book deserves 5 stars just for being easy to comprehend and up-to-date. After reading this book and putting the knowledge to use, one will probably be ready for an advanced book on the subject. Well done.
I notice a few complaints about the age of the book, but I purchased the 3rd addition and it was first printed in June 2001, so I don't see what the gripes are for; it's current.