This book is for any one interested in the wonders of life. Every time you open the book and browse through the pages you can learn something new and interesting. To make it even more interesting are the colorful pictures of the diverse marine life. To anyone who has an interest in biology this is a must have!!

This book is an in-depth look at the shark. It is basic enough for most people to understand. The photographs are wonderful.

if you want to get the real feel, this is the book.. old and new.great course descriptions of all holes and how to play them which i will do on apr 4th. all the trivia and little known facts. amaze your friends astound your buddies. this is all you need.

If you yearn to play there someday, this would appear to be an excellent introduction. Each hole is described in detail and the history is clearly recited. The book also describes the several other courses (beyond the Old Course) that they might try to shuffle you off to. One of them (the NEW Course) is older than all but 2 or 3 courses in this country. One of the most enjoyable golf books I've read.

This is a superb book. I've read this at least 4 times. The story-line was riveting. A military force 1,500 kilometers behind enemy lines and surrounded on all sides. Although they had a technological edge in weaponry, it was their spirit and determination that won the day. As the Foreign Legion's motto said, "If you stand, then stand with courage. If you die, do it with honor!" The only regret that I have is that there is only 3 novels in this series. I hope the author writes more!

This was the best book of the three Fifth Foreign Legion books that I own. And, have been looking for any more books in the series but, cannot seem to find anymore.

Probably still the best coaching cricket book. Detailed in explaining technichs in all different skills of cricket: bowling, batting, fielding. Every shot and every delivery are presented with basic skills description and advanced as well. Great explanation of out-swing and in-swing bowling.

A detailed look at the Federated Suns (House Davion) from the present date until 3025, just prior to its unification with the Lyran Commonwealth. Included also is an excellent review of the military forces of the house, and a listing of its mercenary forces -- which include the famous Team Banzai! For in-depth background material, these old FASA publications are positively unbeatable!

Owning a double status as a medical practicer, especially an anesthesiologist, and a chief in the Union of Kaohusiung Medical University Medical Industry, I was often confused between the general practice of health care for patients and helping my medical team or members in union strike with our administers for improving our working conditions. Where is the appropriate answer or reference for me to explore the health care system or industry filled with confliction and hope. The diversity of notion from Albrecht GL and those specialist in social studies in health and medicine, tell me how to converge wisdom from our ancestor and courage from union members to fight with the inequable and conservative medicine society. Medical quality, which both health care workers and people have looked for long long ago, has just become a vague term under efficiency of management but for make money. Patients lost their autonomy of body and health care workers sacrifice with their mind and physical vigor to accomplish the so-called medical science. This book is good for those who want to comprehend the changing medical society and health care system, and advantageous for me to precipitate the experiences as a anesthesiologist and the union cadre when I was fired by the engagement committee of Kaohsiung Medical University Hospital in 2001.6.8.

Virology is not the easiest of subjects to consider studying so it was with some trepidation that I ordered this book. My confidence was well founded as it is in every way superb. Chapters include definitions of viruses, lab techniques, biochemistry, processes of infection, virus-host interactions, vaccines, evolution of viruses and focus chapters on specific viruss/groups. Every page was fascinating and ,relatively easy to grasp if read in page order (though this is not a book for the complete layman, 'A' level biology or chemistry will be useful if not essential). Did you know that ME is caused by a virus, or that seals can catch human flu, or that at laest two infectious particle SMALLER than viruses exist? Read this book!

This is a real good and well written action adventure series with fun time travelling wars going on. A must read for the action/sci-fi reader!

It gets the plot of the game down pretty well, though certain plot points are not in the right order, but that's not important. It gets boring after a while being on the Victory or in Blair's fighter the entire book, but it details the end of the war, and, hey, that's cool...

I just loved the game when I played it 3 years ago. I picked up the book expecting cheesy plots and story line like other game-based SciFi books, but this book proved me wrong. Wing Commander: Heart of the Tiger is one of the best SciFi book I've ever read. The story is more interesting and solid than any other series including starwars. All aspects of the book was just great; character development, storyline, battle scenes, etc.. I recommend this book to everyone who loves SciFi.

I read this book because I loved the game. I was expecting to find a direct novelization of the game, but instead found a believable novel. While it follows the game pretty well, I enjoyed the scenes that took place between the action. The game didn't touch on that as much as it could have. As I said, I think that this book was a more realistic account of the events in Wing Commander III. This book really got into the personal lives of the characters. I also enjoyed the random Kilrathi viewpoint. The best part about this book (in my opinion, of course) is how it explains what REALLY happened with Hobbes. The game left me thinking that he had always been a traitor. The deaths of the characters were woven into to plot nicely. If you liked the game, you should equally like this book.

It is easy to tell that this book was written by 12 different authors. The quality and writing style of each chapter varies widely. I thought the chapters on XPath, XSLT, DOM, SAX2, and SOAP were well written, but I was disappointed by some of the others.

The chapter on XML Schemas was the worst, in my opinion. This is a very important subject, but it is given the same amount of space as much less important topics. As a result, the author of this chapter tries to cover too much in too little space and ends up being quite confusing. Examples are thrown out followed by only partial explanations, and the author forgets to do some basic things like showing a sample XML document to match the sample XML Schemas in the examples. If you need to understand XML Schemas, skip this chapter and go directly to "Professional XML Schemas," which is very well written book on the subject.

This book is also too large and attempts to cover too many obscure topics. For example, it wastes a chapter on "XML Schema Alternatives" when it is clear that XML Schema is the approach that will be used by almost everyone going forward.

Finally, my standard complaint about all WROX books is that the font they use is too small! I feel like I'm reading a telephone book. Give the readers a break by taking out some of the less important chapters and increasing the font size.

I found this book very boring and tedious reading. The style of the book seems to vary as much as the number of authors. The concepts don't smoothly flow together. The book is a hodgepodge of technical information presented in patches by a huge bunch of authors. Obviously this book was an attempt to bring to market a book on XML as quickly as possible. The book doesn't provide enough examples or applications although it does present many examples on syntax. This may be a good reference book, but to really learn how to use XML I'm searching for another book.

The XML declarative language, with its adaptability and expressive power, is continuing to become the language of choice for reporting and classifying information. XML is a formal grammar that captures the syntactic features of a document type definition, and its properties, syntax, and applications are discussed effectively in this book. It covers XML as formalized by the W3C and the authors show how to use XML in Web-based and database applications. Readers who have developed applications in HTML will probably view XML as somewhat more abstract, since the visual representation of the content of a document is not emphasized in XML. Readers are expected to have a background in HTML, JavaScript, Java, and ASP in order to read the book. Although XML can be learned by reading the W3C specifications, these documents are frequently difficult reading, and this book makes the learning of XML much easier than reading these specifications. They include the W3C specifications for XML 1.0 in an appendix to the book for the interested reader. The book is a little dated, since the W3C has been updating XML specs since the time of publication (especially with regard to schemas), but there is a 2nd edition coming out soon.

In Chapter 1, XML is introduced as a mark-up language and its inherent extensibility emphasized. This is followed by a detailed treatment of XML syntax in the next chapter, with emphasis placed on the hierarchical nature of XML. The authors do include a discussion of Processing Instructions (PIs) for users who want to use XML in this fashion.

Document Type Definitions (DTD) are the subject of Chapter 3, where the authors communicate effectively how DTDs formal grammar is used to specify the structure and permissible values of XML documents. The formal DTD structure is discussed, and the principles behind writing DTDs are effectively outlined. They also discuss the problems with using DTDs.

Data modeling with XML is discussed in the next chapter, with information modeling via static and dynamic models treated in detail, and the authors carefully distinguish these two approaches. The actual designing of XML documents is given a nice overview as well as the role of schemas in XML. This is followed in Chapter 6 by a discussion of the (tree-based) Document Object Model, which overviews how XML documents can be accessed by various programs. Some helpful examples are given on how the DOM can be used to create an XML document programmatically. An alternative way of processing an XML document is discussed in the next chapter on the (event-based) SAX interface. The authors outline in detail the benefits of using SAX rather than DOM. In Appendix B the reader will find the Internet Explorer 5.0 XML DOM 1.0 W3C specifications. In addition, in Appendix C, the specification for the SAX 1.0 interface is given.

The shortcomings of DTD are addressed in terms of XML Schemas and namespaces in chapter 7. Since this book was published, XML Schemas have reached W3C recommendation status as of Nov 2000. The authors give a good overview of namespaces and schemas, with helpful examples. This is followed in chapter 8 by a discussion of how to link and query into XML documents using the XML information set, XLink, XPath, XPointer, XML Fragment Interchange, with XLST covered in the next chapter. For database applications, the authors outline the differences between relational databases and XML documents. A very detailed treatment of how XLST transforms the source document is given, and the authors compare XLS and DOM transformations. An Internet Explorer XSL reference is included in one of the appendices of the book.

More details on the relationship between databases and XML is the subject of chapter 10, wherein the authors show how to store XML and how data can be communicated between different servers using XML. The issues involved when moving data from RDBMS to OODBMS or from Oracle to Sybase, are discussed by the authors. This is followed by an interesting discussion on how to use XML as a distributed component model for server-to-server communications via XML-Remote Procedure Call and Simple Object Access Protocol.

E-commerce applications are discussed in the next chapter, with EDI and its improvement via XML. The business markup language cXML , which allows business to business electronic commerce transactions across the Internet, is also treated in detail.

The authors then finally discuss how to render XML documents more readable and pleasing for the viewer in the next chapter using the style languages CSS and XSL. The discussion is really interesting, for the authors dig a little deeper into the foundations of style languages. The discussion of style languages as rule-based languages is particularly illuminating.

The next chapter is very interesting and its inclusion is actually very surprising, namely a discussion of the Wireless Application Protocol. The authors give an introduction to the Wireless Markup Language and WMLScript. The book ends with four useful chapters on case studies for data duality, distributed applications, a book catalog information service, and SOAP.

There are many applications of XML in many different areas, such as CellML (proprietary) used in cell biology, CML (Chemical Markup Language) for molecular chemistry, IML (Instrument Markup Language) for control of laboratory equipment, BSML (Bioinformatic Sequence Markup Language) for gene sequencing, and MathML for formatting of mathematical equations. I find XML an extremely powerful approach to information reporting and I am currently developing a package called NMML (Network Modeling Markup Language) for use in reporting results in simulation and mathematical modeling of networks, and FMML (Financial Modeling Markup Language) for use in reporting results in the modeling of financial instruments. This book, along with the W3C specifications, has been a tremendous help in the development of these applications.