When I read the first five pages I knew I was in trouble. The writing throughout the book was very flat. Keeping track of all the characters was a monumental feat that left you wondering WHY they were actually written into this novel. About the only completely "fleshed" out character was Scott - The main character's lover who happened to be a Baseball athlete. Sprinkled adorations of this character created many stalls to the story line that I began to NOT care for Tom or Scott. I also found myself cringing at all the location descriptions given to the reader about Chicago. Again, this intricate location detail created a stall to my reading. Hasn't this writer figured out that less is more? Yet, I continued through the 182 pages HOPING to get some real writing style that would drive me to the entertainment value I get when reading a Joseph Hansen novel. How sad I was to see this book finish flat. Time to cleanse my brain with a Dave Brandstetter detective read. Oy....

This has to be one of the dullest mysteries I have read. I felt like the whole book was a mere excuse for the author to express his venom against the Catholic Church. Characters have less personality than dry bread, they are nothing but extreme stereotypes with name labels. The events are almost non-events; things seem to happen but no real progress is made. When the murderer is finally revealed, a reader couldn't care less because it is difficult to remember who is who! And the writing style - after a while, I began to wonder if it was that flat and mundane on purpose!

I liked one thing about this book, though. My copy was only 182 pages long.

I knew this book had to be good when I read the two reviews prior to mine on amazon.com. As a member of the gay community and a recovering Roman Catholic (who thoroughly enjoys the spiritually fulfilling practice of Catholicism I find in the Episcopal Church), not only was I not offended by anything in this book, I actually enjoyed it.

Like the movie "Priest," there are a number of Roman zealots of the "one true church" ilk who are out to write negative reviews of anything that tells it like it is where the Roman Church is concerned whether they've read it or not.

Mr. Zubro is to be congratulated for an engrossing mystery that will surprise its gay and lesbian readers in a positive way, a respectable entry in his "Tom and Scott" series of whodunits.

More power to him!

THIS BOOK HAS NUMEROUS ERRORS IN THE EXAMPLES. THE PROFESSOR AND SOME STUDENTS HAVE SOLVED SOME OF THE PROBLEMS IN THE BOOK AND FOUND THAT THE CORRESPONDING ANSWER IN THE BACK IS INCORRECT. THE BOOK DOES A POOR JOB OF TEACHING THE FOURIER SERIES. WE HAVE ALREADY REACHED THE END OF THE SECOND CHAPTER AND I USE OTHER BOOKS CHECKED OUT FROM THE LIBRARY AS HELP. I WOULD THINK THAT NOT EVEN A FIRST EDITION BOOK WOULD HAVE THIS MANY ERRORS. ALSO THE PROOFS ARE WEAK. STAY AWAY FROM THIS TEXT, AND IF YOU LIKE ME USE THIS BOOK FOR A CLASS, FIND SUPPLEMATARY TEXTS TO TAKE THE PLACE OF THIS ONE

This book has the reputation of being very weak and error-prone. If you have a choice DO NOT get this book. For a third edition, the editing is disgraceful. I don't think I would find similar errors acceptable in a first edition.

For example, on page 18, various steps establish A1=0 and A2=0. The very last paragraph on that page uses both A1 and A2 multiplied to various items to derive a solution. Last time I checked, anything times zero is zero, which is what this book would get if Amazon had a "zero rating."

The way in which the author "changes the rules" throughout the book leads to confusion, leaving the reader more perplexed than when she picked it up.

For example, on page 104 (solving the heat equation), the author states that Lambda must be pure imaginary. If this were true, then the equation he gives cannot have boundedness.

Like most folks, you may be forced to use this drek in your PDE class. If so, do your self a favor and pick it up as cheaply as possible (i.e., used) and then dump it as quick as you can once the class is over. Once someone figures out that there are very few good PDE books, he will write one....

This third edition, from a new publisher, has a number of attractive new features: More worked examples, more than 200 in all, more exercises with answers, more on modern developments such as asymptotic methods, correction of typographical errors,--- and loving care from the editors at Waveland Press. The result is a much nicer appearance, and high quality pedagogical improvements.-- I have taught from an earlier edition of this very nice book. Both the students and I have been happy with it. It is an important and useful topic in math [both pure and applied] , and it is especially relevant and central to the service courses offered by most math departments. Sample of topics: The Green function method, the equations of heat, and of waves, and the PDEs of Laplace and Poisson. Orthogonal functions and Fourier methods. The method of stationary phase, and the classical Sturm Liouvile problems.-- Pinsky's book is the best text for teaching these classical tools. A nice feature of the new edition is an added section on the use of Mathematica in the study of PDEs. When students need to look up one of the classical formulas in the theory of boundary value problems, I often refer to Pinsky's book which has always been on target.

1) This is the thinnest plot I have ever seen. It's like they called Kevin J, said "Hey, we want a comic related to the Jedi Academy, but we need the whole script in five minutes" and this is what they got. Nothing is ever explained, nothing makes sense, the characters repeat themselves constantly, and the whole point seems to be to make Dorsk 82, who never really shows up again anywhere else as far as I know, feel good about himself. And I'm not even sure he does that!
2) Luke looks like He-Man on a bad day, and I originally thought Leia was some totally new character. Does Dorsk 82 have to be drawn *shaking* in every frame? Why must everyone have spit lines between his teeth? The art in this comic is rock-bottom awful.

It seemed more like Alien to me. It a good 'monster'-type story, despite Anderson's horrendously forced dialogue. But it has almost no elements of Star Wars, some bordering on the line of obscenely un-Star Wars-ish. My biggest complain may be regarding Dorsk 82. The idea behind him was by no means bad, but Anderson's writing turns him into an annoying, craven fool. Sometimes I wished that Leviathan would just step on him and put the reader out of his or her misery.

The art's good, although once again, not Star Wars-ish. It worked far better in the 'Tales of the Jedi' series than in the modern SW universe.

You wants real 'Star Wars' comics, see something like the X-wing Rogue Squadron comics, especially 'In the Empire's Service' and 'Mandatory Retirement'. You want a story transplanted to the SW universe, read this. I'm grading this as a Star Wars comic, and as a Star Wars comic its just plain bad.

This specific collection of chapters that form, "Leviathan", is one of the weaker installments from Dark Horse that I have read. The two key elements that are critical, a good story, and good illustrations are glaringly absent.

I generally don't enjoy when artists take great liberty with the appearance of characters that have been solidly established for nearly three decades. A way to get by this fault is to offer readers a great story, however this does not happen here. Luke starts the story by musing to himself about nothing of great importance, and this is followed by a task for his newest Jedi Knights that is vague and one dimensional. A planet appears to suffer total destruction on a fairly regular basis, and even though this is documented, new colonists keep coming back for more. For some unknown reason nobody ever catches on that this planet is a less than hospitable spot, and invariably the cause of destruction is routinely disturbed.

The only other consistent theme is how unsuited Kyp is as a Jedi, and how hopeless he would be as a Jedi Master. His treatment of a new potentially force sensitive recruit is hopelessly inept and abrasive. When the central conflict does arrive it is terribly predictable and not worthy of the material Dark Horse generally offers. It is rare when a written installment of this saga does not offer any new insight, however this one is nearly vacant.

This is a big DC crossover involving too many different titles. The two volumes attempt to collect stories involving Superman, Wonder Woman, Young Justice, and Impulse. A lot of back story seems missing and the artwork often looks like bad manga. I am really hating these kinds of crossovers, and reading these stories in this GN format is extremely confusing.

One of the staples to Supes personal history is the fact that he's held to standards that other superheroes might not be able to match ... until now. Reading Superman say the words, "I'm going to kill him," is perhaps the most startling revelation in the two-parter trade paperback OUR WORLDS AT WAR. Despite some negative reaction from a large part of the Super-fan base, OWAW is a good read but far from great. It presents a Superman that readers largely haven't seen before, one driven by a passionate instinct for revenge. While the books do possess some continuity issues, there are parts of the story important to our time: acts of terrorism, good surrendering to evil, the loss of life in times of war, etc. However, these two books do suffer from one crucial shortcoming that appears to be a growing trend in crossover / trade paperbacks, and that's the fact that the reader might be told of pivotal events several times from differing perspectives ... once from the Superman installment, once from the Young Justice installment, and once from a Wonder Woman installment. Whereas the end result should be interesting, it's far more confusing here, as some events toward the climax are reviewed slightly out-of-sequence. That said, a Darkseid story is always welcome at my house, and I enjoyed the pure escapism of a reasonably entertaining Superman story for what it was worth.

Would I recommend purchase? Erg. These two books are rather pricey for a story that isn't as tightly woven as it could've been. I would have rather seen the publishers create one volume, with a reasonable price, than two with a slightly higher than necessary pricetag. Damn capitalism. Damn commercialism. If you can get your hands on copies to borrow, I'd take that route first.

I'm giving this 3 stars, but this is a VERY GENEROUS 3 stars. The only reason I'm doing that is because the action is pretty good and there's a lot of it.

What is going on here? I know Superman doesn't quite have the resolve of Batman, but Superman is supposed to be the standard of the DC Universe. The one they turn to when all else fails. So why is he whining so much? Why is he neglecting Lois? Why is he so annoying? Who knows. They don't explain it to us.

It should be noted that there is a lot missing. Most of the DC Universe books touched upon this crossover & they can't all be included. However, that doesn't explain why the plot is so confusing. There are parts that are just cryptic.

There are some genuinely suspenseful parts, the subplot between Lex and his Brainiac'd daughter being the highlight.

Again, there's a lot of pretty good action (including a good slap 'em up between Supes & Darkseid). But what separates the guys who wrote this from the truly great writers is plot. And that is lacking here.

Having already studied various religions somewhat I read this book hopeing to learn a few more facts. Instead I was horrified to find it saturated with statements like, "The stated goal of Islam is world domination," and "Hindusim isn't really a religion." The author cleary despises any system of belief other than a handful of protestant sects, the only religions to escape his scathing rhetoric. I'd like to say that the author is merely biased, but unfortunately he strays far from the realm of opinion and presents outright lies as facts. Worse, the nature of the information -- that it could be obtained withing fifteen minutes of research at a county library -- suggests that he isn't simply mistaken but intentionally misleading and (often) inflammatory.

The day after I recieved this book as a gift, it found its way straight to the trash. Written by a Protestant Christian author, the book is extremely bias. Supporting insult with scriptural verses, Water mischievously downplays all other religions besides his own. Catholicism and Christian sects are not even safe from his blows. Besides for this, the actual information is shaky in many instances. Definately not a book for anyone wanting fact, not opinion.

While distinctly Christian this handbook is completely fair in its analysis of world religions. I have read a number of books on the subject and believe that this one provides an excellent unbiased overview of world religions. In a world where toleration is at the center of mans moral code owning a handbook like this is essential.

I've read this book for LSAT prep. While the selection of passages is excellent, crafting of questions is simply a bad joke. To be precise, it is mostly the answer choices that makes this book time-wasting, if not skill-diminishing. The answer choices in this book are just not the kind of choices that appear in an actual test. Especially annoying is that many "right" answer choices can be right only after a very very long stretch of logic, which NEVER happens in a real test.

I have reviewed the first 3 chapters which contains explaination given by the author to tackle the reading comprehension questions.But to co-relate the theory(explaination given by author) to the practice questions is practically not possible.

MY CONFIDENCE HAS NOT INCREASED BY ANY CHANCE!!!!!!!!!!!!! READING THIS BOOK.

This book helps the reader learn the correct way to annotate and outline the paragraphs on the reading comprehension section of the GRE*MCAT*LSAT*GMAT. It was very helpful.

I very rarely not finish a book. I could not get through half of this one. There is nothing in it about the players of Negro baseball. Mark Ribowsky just wastes your time with his huge vocabulary (keep a dictionary handy, you will need it at least once a paragraph) & his exhaustive knowledge of the soap operas behind the scene of the leagues. He spends no time talking about actually players, teams or the games they played. I am a fan of baseball history, but found this book far removed from baseball and more oriented to the war of words between the early, explotive owners of the Negro league clubs. A history of the game this is not.

Avoid this book at all costs. It has little original research and is literally filled with dozens of factual errors. There are better books on this subject; this isn't one of them!

I got what I wanted from this book. It is an honest depiction of who and what the Negro Leagues were. Much of what I knew about the Negro Leagues prior to reading this book was based on "myths". I felt that Ribowsky did a good job of distinguishing myth from fact and compiled an excellent story.

At times the book is a little confusing when it comes to trying to understand who is who. But, the Negro Leaques survived during a very confusing time.

This book consistently uses terms for buttons, icons, menu items, etc. that are inconsistent with the actual names in the program itself. This makes it extremely difficult for the new user to confidently navigate Pro Engineer for the first time. A lot of rather simple steps are omitted, that may not be a big deal to a seasoned user, but to a new user, it just causes frustration. Plus it doesn't come with the CD for chapter 2 and on. I would avoid this book and buy "The Essentials of Pro/E" which actually comes with a CD, and is a lot better with the consistency of their wording, although there are still a few mistakes here and there.

Buyer Beware - This book does not include the CD-ROM that is required to complete the lessons. You will get to the second chapter and hit a brick wall. Every lesson from there on requires you to open a Pro/E tutorial file. Don't waste your money like I did.

I also bought and highly recommend Pro/Engineer 2001 by David S. Kelley, ... It includes the CD-ROM and each tutorial file is available in either the student or professional version. This is very important if you are using a student license of Pro/E as it will not open regular Pro/E files.

I started training and working with PRO/E for product design 9 years ago. During this time I have helped to train other engineering staff members to use PRO/E at different companies. The hard part about it is the extra time needed to prepare a PRO/E class curriculum while maintaining project workloads. This is the first time I have opted to buy a book for an in-house PRO/E class. I was pleased to see that the class exercises would lead the student through an assembly project from start to finish creating parts, assemblies and drawings. To date, we are working through the book with few issues on the step-by-step PRO/E procedures using the current "proe2001" software. Looking forward, I see that this book covers advanced PRO/E topics not normally covered in the basic training that will put the student ahead of their peers. I would recommend to the author that the next book have an Index to better help the student. In my opinion, over all, this book is working out fine for our training needs.

This book is disappointing in that it just lists the general subjects of what you should worry about when designing pcb's but does not then go on to say how to do it.

I am half way through this book, and it's starting to drive me crazy. The authors love to use bullet points. But often they use them to mention one word that really should come with some explanation. As it is this book often reads like an outline for a lecture that is designed for the speaker to expand on the bullet points.

This book does have useful information, but the widespread use of bullet points means the book has less information than you would expect from 400 pages.

I just received this book, and I have been looking over it. It has much information that I learned in the industry that I wish they had taught in engineering school -- about design flow and manufacturing considerations.

I was disappointed, however, to find that they devote only one page each to the topics of impact of layout on EMI and signal integrity. If you are looking for an very pratical and detailed discussion of these topics, try High Speed Digital Design by -- A Handbook of Black Magic.

I do not feel like I wasted my money on this book because there are still a lot of basics that I need to know, having only worked in the industry for two and half years, and this book seems to explain them in a very non-pedantic way.

Just what I like, being told that myself and the world is full of one-track minded people that can only achieve immortality by completely throwing away who we are and becoming undirected hippie-like goobers. The only good part is the end and I mean the last few pages that deal with an insightful comparison between religion and science. The rest of the book is horrid.

If you can possibly get your hands on this rarity (also available under the title "the Forever Machine"), by all means do -- it's hilariously awful, the avatar of very early, very bad SF. The book does raise some interesting questions, but so ineptly I found myself imagining the robots from "Mystery Science Theater 3000" having a go at it. Probably the worst book to win the Hugo award for best SF novel, and the worst novel I will ever recommend

This is classic SF from the winner of the 1st Hugo Award. Written in 1962 it may sometimes seem dated and sophomoric, but it is thoughtful, introspective sf at its best. One of my favorites.