I hated the art in this one. you can see from the start the art is very good, very detailed. But if you look at the last few pages it is very visible that the art has gone sloppy! Ripley's character looks and feels very lifeless and dull, I can imagine her in this comic talking like she's extremely bored and tired. The aliens were very plain, they looked balloony and cartoonish. The drawings past the first half of the book look like sketches, they looked very wobbly and almost as if the artist was rushing them. On the better side the story might interest you as it deals with Ripley's psychic relationship with the Aliens, and it gets in depth with Amy and Burt, the two characters who were featured in Nightmare Asylum. I didn't prefer this kind of story too much, but you may. Overall, horrible art, ok story that might be a good story to other people.

This is "Earth War" with the names of the principal characters changed. Newt becomes "Billie" and Hicks becomes "Wilks,". Needless to say this weakens the book quite a bit!

Although I am a big fan of this series, I read this and thought.....Someone ripped a big page out of Lovecraft and failed miserably. The characters were the only redeaming part of this book. The dialogue between Billie and Ripley was outstanding. I only wish they would have continued on with the adventures of Billie.

As has been said before this book is not a field guide but nor is it a book of science either as Lockwood does not review the literature nor provide any details as to why so and so a species is considered common, uncommon etc.
For the lay visitor its a great addition to your library but do not consider it your answer to a good ornithological treatment nor field guide to the region.

Birds of the Texas Hill Country is not a field guide and anyone reading the description of the book should realize that. It is a status and distribution work that covers all of the birds recorded from the Edwards Plateau region of Texas. It was a lengthy introduction that is excellent. My favorite part is the section about early ornithological investigations. Anyone truly interested in the avifauna of this region will want a copy of this book.

This book is not a field guide and anyone who read the description of it would know that before purchasing it. What it does cover is the status and distribution of birds on the Edwards Plateau. It is the only book that covers this topic and it is clear that the author is very familiar with the area. The introduction is fairly lengthy and is a real bonus for a book of this type. Anyone wanting to learn more about the avifauna of this region will want a copy of this book.

The first entire chapter is just an annoying and unconvincing lecture on evolution that has, from what I can see, nothing to do with the book. The rest seems to be nothing but a history lecture on the people that researched and developed the concepts of digital DNA, cellular automa (Like Conway's game of life) etc... The history was mildly amusing, but without getting very technical, the author lost my intrest soon.

This book is an interesting survey of progress in using intelligent computer programs like cellular automata to replace older, more rigid programs. Ward attempts to redefine life as the passing of information. He concludes that "the informational basis of life can be abstracted away from the bodies we find it in and lose nothing in the process."

He wants to attribute "life" to both organic and inorganic species, thus his title. He moves by steps to show that the quality of human life is no more special than the life of plants, birds, mammals, insects, algae and fish. Although man has advantages with manipulating symbols, other life forms are superior as receptors of smells (ants and dogs) and gravitational maps (salmon and migrating birds). Ward wants the reader to accept the idea that there is nothing any more special about human life than there is about ant life. In fact many of the Artificial Life programs were inspired by ant behavior. All life becomes a matter of processing information.

Most of the examples given were in the field of telecommunications, network switching. Parallels were drawn between the information passed in DNA replication and that passed by computer programs. The groups he discusses are endeavoring to breed software in an evolutionary manner analogous to breeding animal life. To his thinking a string of computer bits are agents analogous to a string of amino acids in the chromosome of living agents-interesting ideas.

I have to disagree with many of the other reviewers that have commented on this text as I feel that it provides an excellent introduction to the field of Artificial Life. Any reader who picks up a 'penguin' style softback book with a jazzy cover running to no more than a couple of hundred pages and expects entensive algorthmic listings has little or no experience of printed IT literature. Bearing in mind the limitations imposed upon the author by the parameters of this work, this text provides an excellent theoretical perpective of the field free from the restrictive and time consuming portrayal of endless lines of coding that some reviewers would prefer to see. This is not a technical manual and does not purport to be, it is an excellent introductory text designed for those who use computers and are not used by them.

Thats right, if you are a beginer, then I would try something else. I bought this book thinking that being a "Bible" it would be perfect for me. As a Programmer I thought it would be easy to understand. This book is toooooo brief. It doesnt explain the funtionality of any of the stencils. It tells you only how to open them. I am going to have to return it. I bought this to develop a website map. The directions are soooo poor. I could not get the job done with this book. I strongly suggest getting something else. When I discover it, I will post another message. Good Luck, and sorry for negetive review, but Im just trying to save you the hassle. RGDS SS @ NYC

The job of the technical writer is to make life easier for the technical
reader. We get paid big bucks to express complicated concepts in the simplest
possible way. It's not an easy job, but what's the fun in an easy job?

Unfortunately, many writers of technical content have other priorities. If
their work is "comprehensive", if it describes all the things it's supposed to
describe, they feel they've done their job. Never mind if the result is a
confusing assemblage of seemingly random facts, hard to follow and hard to
place in context.

Mark Walker is a poster child for this syndrome. It's pretty obvious how he
wrote Visio 2000 Bible. He made a comprehensive list of Visio features and
wrote about them one by one. Every feature, regardless of importance, gets much
the same treatment. Only a few cross references show how related features work
together. Little effort is made to describe the features clearly or concisely.

Here's an example. "There are two ways to activate and set snap and glue.
First, you can use the Snap and Glue Toolbar buttons (as shown in Figure 10-8),
or you can select Tools -> Snap & Glue to adjust settings in the Snap & Glue
dialog box. The Snap & Glue Toolbar button and dialog box are interrelated, so
a change in one also is recorded in the other. The following exercise
demonstrates the relationship...:" Then there's a lengthy demonstration of how
toolbar and dialog work. Then there's a mini-essay on when you'd use the
toolbar and when you'd use the dialog. And *then*, there's a vague, confusing
description of what the toolbar and dialog box are *for*. The whole discussion
uses up a couple of pages, but boils down to four simple statements: (1)
there's a bunch of Visio options relating to the Snap feature or the Glue
feature; (2) Two of these options enable or disable the two features; (3) the
rest of the options control the way the two features work; (4) you can set
these options one at a time (with the Snap & Glue toolbar) or all at once (with
the Snap & Glue dialog).

The reader can be excused for asking, "Jeesh, why didn't he just *say* that?"
Well, boiling complicated details down to simple descriptions is hard work. I
sometimes have to attack a concept six different ways before I'm able to
describe it in a few brief sentences. Good technical prose can be pretty
exhausting to write. It also tends to be discouraged by bosses and publishers,
who too often judge writers by the quantity of their output, not its quality.

Still, a good writer can deal with these issues. You help people understand why
fewer words often means better content. You balance work quality against
personal limitations and unavoidable deadlines. It's not easy to do all this
and still make a decent living. That's especially true if you're working
independently. But is that an excuse for short-changing your readers?

This is a good book. It goes into detail in several areas. My main concern when looking for a book was to exploit the relationship between Visio and other Office applications like Access and Excel. I was also interested in the Wizards that come with Visio. This book was helpful to me in those areas. Since the last half of this book covers these advanced features I would say that its content takes the reader from elementary topics to the more advanced features of Visio. The next step after reading this book is the developers edition from Microsoft.

This book goes into detail that new users will be interested in as well. It explains the temples and shapes, how to edit them, how to set the properties for the page and other miscellaneous topics you need to get started. If you want to make a visual representation of some data that interacts with a spreadsheet or database, you can use this book for guidance and creative insite.

I found this unhelpful and useful only to amateurs who have little to no experience with radio. A good starting place mayhap but not for people who know this material

While I disagree with some of the authors sentiments about the quality and purpose of Citizens Band radio in our society, the material is suitably written and technically accurate, and for those without technical knowlege it would be rather usefull. I found some of the "lingo" humorous, but overall it was a bland read. I consider CB too limited to be a reasonable alternative to FRS/GMRS or Amateur Radio, as the author has implied it is. For un-licensed operation, the Family Radio Service (FRS) and General Mobile Radio Service (GMRS) are far better alternatives than CB, and are easier to use as mobiles and portables (walkie-talkies). You can even get an Amateur Radio license *without taking a morse code test* these days, and the privileges that come with that license are far beyond what CB could ever possibly offer. Read "Now Your Talking!" to see what I mean. Writing a book about CB radio, or in any way contributing to it's maintenance, is about the equivalent of feeding a rabbid dog: it's going to die sooner or later, and is a problem (to the licensed radio services) while it's around, so why not 'put it down' and be done with it? -just my opinion

Great illustrations and commentary about CB on both a radio and cultural level. Will keep it handy in my 4WD as a reference book for my CB. As a result of this book, I finally figured out and fixed the mystery of my SWR problem! I always wondered why CB was such a fad before, and now I know. It's a lot of fun!

The idea for this book was a good one. Unfortunately, Cooper has no sense of humor and little writing ability. I'm afraid I abandoned the journey in Australia.

It was mere chance that my wife and I came to read this book. Previously our experience of Clemens/Twain was limited to films and television, both frequently the products of the producers rather than of Twain. We found Mr. Cooper's book to be absorbing. His narrative style is delightfully readable without inhibiting his attention to detail; in particular his comparisons between the conditions of then and now. We are indebted to this author for introducing us to the real Mark Twain.

My wife and I both enjoyed following the author following in the footsteps of Mark Twain. We could easily imagine ourselves with the author, visiting exotic and not so exotic locales, both a century ago along with Mark Twain and one hundred years later with the author. The stories about Mark Twain and the stories told by Mark Twain were both very enjoyable and gave us a flavor of the time and a feeling for the complex man. The observations about the changes and similarities in the world over the last century were fascinating.

If you have access to AutoCAD but have no reason to use it on a professional level this book may be fine. If you are purchasing this and already own a couple other manuals to look things up in, it's ok for the humor. The book is not large enough to touch on all the facets of AutoCAD and the massive program it has become. If you intend to make a living with AutoCAD look elsewhere. I watched a co-worker attempt to jump a couple revs with this book. He was better off with his previous knowledge than after three days with this book.

The author starts the book by telling you how great the book is and how clear and straightforwared he's going to be... and to be honest, it does indeed start out quite well (about 3 pages worth?). But it became evident early on that he "lost his legs" as he continued to write the book. His examples quickly degraded into useless collections of codings - they simply did not work as advertised. Worse than this, when he's trying to make a point, he provides examples that are far too complicated for what he's attempting to illustrate (but remember, they usually don't work anyhow). Bottom line: Snoopy has more writing talent than this guy. (...)Trust me on this one -(...)

Never picked up a dummies before. Really impressed with the way they breakout the non useful technical stuff. A great way to get started. Plenty of info for use later when you need it for reference.

Work of fiction that pretends to be nonfiction.

Poorly written and ineptly researched prediction that the Solar System's 10th planet will come crashing through the solar system in May 2003 (right now!!!). Even if you believe that a 10th planet exists somehwere out there, there is no evidence of any kind that said planet will be paying the earth a visit any time in the foreseable future. Book relies heavily on the fictitious alien zeta accounts.

Even though I never believed Hazelwood's prediction for the return of Nibiru in 2003, this book was still a bitter disappointment. Definitely not for the serious researcher. Most of the book was pieced together from the works of other authors, so save your money and go to ZetaTalk.com... obviously Hazelwood did.

This book is a very intereresting read. It does make you look at life in a different way, in that we are very insignificant in the big scheme of things.
However Mark Hazlewood has way too much angst towards the american government. every paragraph makes reference to how the "controllers" are hiding information from the public. I think this is just a way for him to piece together circumstantial evidence and blame it on the government. However, the book was quite entertaining, and I suggest to those remotely concerned/interested about Planet X to read this book and make your own conclusions. This was Hazlewoods goal. Read it and make your own decision. Because if Planet X exists, its your decision that will ultimately decide your future.

This book was poorly researched, and is lacking in factual content. The Ruby Ridge incident was described with many errors, and the fact that this book was written 5 years after the incident occurred, when many of the actual facts were known, and proven in court, the author should have had the facts on this issue straight. If you are thoroughly knowledgeable about what happened at Ruby Ridge, you can begin to realize that this book is biased, and full of untruths. From the point of the Ruby Ridge description on, I did not take the book as factual or objectively written.

Who bombed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City and why? Was it just a meth snorting, ex-soldier, down-and-out, government-hating punk, or is there more to this than that? Could the government itself be behind the attack or at least involved in some way? If you want a serious look at these questions then this book is definitely NOT what you want to read.

I found this book to be a very well written and clear reporting of the party line that Tim McVeigh and Terry Nichols were solely responsible for the OKC bombing; them and no one else. This could be, but there is significant other evidence and testimony to the contrary that the government just doesn't want to address head on and this book doesn't either. The author does address some of this other evidence but only in the most cursory and unconvincing fashion. For instance, an Air Force general with a background in weapons systems claimed in writing that the bomb McVeigh supposedly used could NOT have done the kind of damage inflicted on the A. P. Murrah Federal Building and that there must have been more or different bombs involved. This stunning claim is waved off by the author with a single valueless sentence: "This thesis is disputed by physicists on the grounds that the five-thousand-pound truck bomb did have the capacity to blast upward and outward, like a balloon". What kind of "evidence" is that? Who are these physicists and why should they be believed? It's things like this (and there are other examples) that make this book seem like government spin doctoring and not a serious look at who is behind the biggest single act of terrorism on U.S. soil and why it was committed.

The author addresses the Ruby Ridge and Waco incidents in a similarly odd way. He does say that the government botched both of those raids but he does so in the absolutely least offensive and most excusable way to downplay the government's mistakes. He leaves out critical details, downplays significant events and gets some things completely wrong that are not disputed facts regarding these cases. This kind of writing lacks credibility in my mind.

This author would have you believe that everything's just fine now that McVeigh has been caught and that you are a twit if you believe anybody but the government. Don't fall for this and, for that matter, don't fall for every conspiracy theory you hear either. By all means read this book but also read others like "The Oklahoma City Bombing and the Politics of Terror", "Others Unknown: Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City Bombing Conspiracy" and others and then THINK about what is or isn't the truth based on credible evidence. There's more to this than we're being told and the folks who died in this attack deserve better from us than to just shrug our shoulders and go back to what we were doing just because the government says it's OK now.

I must admit that I was late to discover this book. What a pleasant surprise. Dr. Hamm presents important and insightful facts into the terrible crime that far too many researchers overlooked. History will treat this book well. It is a must read for any person who wants to understand the motivations behind McVeigh and his "brotherhood." JD Cash

It is true that UC Berkeley is a top ranked school for History. Sadly, this UC Professor misses the mark. This interpretive history does do many aspects of California History justice, but it completely neglects or distorts certain other facts in Early Californian History. The men who wrote it would do well to get a hold of some primary source martial of the earlier times they write about (journals of pioneers and settlers, for example.) But they probably won't, not even for future editions... If they did so, they might find out how wrong they are on a few of their topics and views held by some 19th century Californians immigrants. Also, it seems that they fail to emphasize the dubious nature of some of the late land grants & claims on the verge of the American take over from Mexico. Perhaps I am too harsh and they will consider the impact of the "Mormon Battalion" or the impact of the ship "Brooklyn". Or Inland Empire farming by Sikhs.

In an effort to paint an "inclusive" history (where only the Anglo is the bad guy,) the authors focus on discriminatory practices by whites against Chinese immigrants; yet neglect to take a hard look at graft and oppression Chinese immigrants faced at the hands of other Chinese. While the whites were certainly discriminatory, the Chinese immigrant was harmed and taken advantage of other Chinese immigrants as well. But it's less glamorous to take on those issues and much more self-righteous to point a finger by playing a race card. (If one human harms another, I guess it only matters if they are of different ethnicities...)

The authors also point to the racist-supremacist view of the Anglo-Saxon Republic but fail to point out that the same was true of the Mexican-Catholic government. When Mexico held California, non-Catholics could not own property (which is why the Scotsman, Gilroy converted.) Furthermore, the decline of Native American inhabitants of California under the Spanish & Mexican regimes could be more strongly articulated... but that's not popular to talk about. Lastly, while I am pleased that they did an adequate job of covering the earlier discrimination against Japanese immigrants, the Japanese internment, and Korematsu v. US, they completely neglect the Sikhs, and a landmark case of U.S. v. Bhagat Sign Thind. Obviously, this book is written for the current vogue in History etiquette. Rather than trying for circumspection and providing a durable history based on objectivity, they settle for current interpretation... which leads makes one feel history is not compelling or relevant if it simply changes with the modern political mood.

Last semester I took history of california, and I had to use this book. Overall it was a desent book, eccept I like shee photos of the historic sites, and this book gave very few.

I felt compelled to write a quick review of this book in response to the harsh ratings it has been given. Any history is going to miss out some things that some people find extremely important. At least this book acknowledges as much - even in the title!

I found this book a surprisingly easy read. I work in the cultural resource industry, writing reports etc., and I have found it extremely useful as a general text on California history. I have also seen it widely used in reports authored by other professionals.

I have yet to come across a better book for a comprehensive introduction to California history.