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Unable to mount more than a weak argument to remain in the Windy city, Blackie travels to Washington DC upon the orders of his superior Cardinal Cronin. Blackie quickly concludes that the ghost is more likely a young female suffering from unrequited love or vengeance against a President detested by his enemies as he begins eliminating the candidates one at a time.
THE BISHOP IN THE WEST WING is the best Blackie Ryan novel in several years as Andrew M. Greeley provides insight into the White House from a guest's perspective while satirizing the seemingly endless attacks on Bill Clinton, obviously Jack's model. The story line is fun for everyone except right wing Republicans and the so-called liberal "muckraking" press as Blackie looks for a more mundane solution to the poltergeist question. Father Greeley makes no bones about his feelings towards the previous president with an engaging amateur sleuth tale that Mr. Clinton and many other fans will enjoy.
Harriet Klausner
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The original stories here, however, are stellar. Worth the asking price for a nice hardcover.
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I'll give you the summary up front: as an introduction to Visual InterDev 6, this book shines (4 stars). This book also makes an excellent primer for Web technologies. However, I think a true beginner would be better served by focusing on a single area and gaining some confidence first, and then returning to this book for an idea on where to go next. As such, its value is somewhat limited (2 stars).
I'll move on to the content of the book. The order in which these subjects are presented is well-conceived.
Chapters 1 through 3 introduce VI6, and how you can create Web pages through the design interface-think FrontPage. We are introduced to Design Time Controls and site maps for navigation. We create a quick form, and enter a very short (four-line) JavaScript function. Mumford does not elaborate on forms, for example the differences between the GET and POST methods, nor does he spend any more time with JavaScript.
Chapter 4 covers the use of Themes for style, and introduces Design Time Controls (DTC's) and Site Maps for navigation. Themes are essentially out-of-the-box style sheets. Mumford does not delve into style sheets, or describe how you could customize themes.
Chapter 5 is about Database Basics. This is a great chapter that describes how VI6 can be used to develop databases. Some of the Web pages are built using DTC's. A couple of quick hits: at this stage, Mumford hasn't admitted that DTC's are ill suited for heavily trafficked sites. Nor does he mention that client-side DTC's expose all of the database connection information (including server name, user name, and password) within the HTML source that is sent to the browser.
Chapter 6 focuses on Client Side Script. After a brief admonition that JavaScript is a more suitable scripting language for use on the Internet, Mumford plows ahead and provides examples in VBScript. VI6 has some excellent tree controls for creating skeletal form handlers, and support for IE-specific DHTML. Of course, we aren't given a rigorous treatment of either scripting language. The chapter finishes up with using ActiveX controls, but fails to mention Java applets.
Chapter 7 is a decent introduction to Active Server Pages. Mumford touches upon the Response object, the Request object, and even the FileSystemObject. He discusses session state and briefly mentions server-side includes.
Chapter 8 revisits DTC's. The dirt finally comes out about them. I would advise you to avoid them altogether.
Chapter 9 is a good chapter about using ActiveX Data Objects (ADO) to connect to a database. VI6 can provide some of the same "IntelliSense" features that are available in Visual Basic.
Chapter 10 is a concise, high-level introduction to XML. VI6 does not have any native support for XML, but Mumford does a good job of presenting the benefits of this new standard. I found the exercise of embedding an island of XML data within an HTML document, and using client-side script to navigate its recordset to be very interesting.
Chapter 11 is an admonition to include error-handling routines in your programming. If the stars are properly aligned, you might even get the server-side scripting debugger to work.
Chapter 12 discusses the benefits of moving business logic code from the ASP's into COM objects. There are several worthwhile statements made throughout this chapter with regard to Web application design. A very preliminary introduction to MTS is provided.
Chapter 13 starts out well with many valuable comments about designing your Web application's architecture. It then bogs down with a cursory discussion about Visual SourceSafe, and wraps up with the "Visual Component Manager."
Chapter 14 is the last chapter, and it is a case study for an internal help desk Web application. This is a great example to work through. It typifies real-life development in a Microsoft environment: mostly hand-coded pages, no DTC's, themes, or site maps, using ADO, and creating COM objects.
The appendices are relatively useless. The Visual InterDev menu reference can be discerned within the application itself, and the HTML, VBScript, and JavaScript references can be readily found in a multitude of electronic and hard-bound locations.
A better title would have been "An Introduction to Visual InterDev 6," for that is the aim this book sets out to achieve. I believe this book accomplishes this task very well. However, a beginner who purchases this book with the expectation that she will be a full-fledged Web developer by its end will be sadly disappointed.
Mumford does a thorough job of explaining net programming and Visual InterDev, plus he touches on everything from T-SQL to ASP and XML. What beginner could ask for a more comprehensive glance at web development? Also, the book takes a hands-on approach, so you'll actually build a little business2consumer website solution complete w/database support. If you think you may be a candidate for this book, then there is no question - buy it. If not, buy several books concentrating solely on individual topics.
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Don't get me wrong, I love the lonely planet guides. Just not this one. I can whole heartedly recomment the East Africa guide and the Trekking East Africa guide.
Again, this book would have been of better psychic value, had its authors showed confidence in the sections they dealt with. Its 'information' became a wet blanket for me. Many readers who intend to visit African countries are likey to be discouraged by its relentless pessimistic approach. Its outlook is more critical than 'touristical'. The general impression is this: "something good may not come out of Africa". That is shameful! The term "bush-taxi", which was used over and over again, in lieu of a more cordial 'local-taxi' sounds offensive.
I think that if written (or revised) without assumptive bias, this book would be of better quality and value to its users.
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I am no Middle East expert and I do not know who is right and who is wrong in the conflict - but in any event, I do not want my guidebook to preach to me. I buy guidebooks for travel, accommodation, eating and sightseeing information - and this part is only so-so. The guide has some helpful info (for example, about passport stamps and about beating the bureaucratic system - or at least minimizing its impact). The book has not been researched sufficiently and choices of hotels, for example, often feel they have been picked at random.
There is one thing you realize after reading about a dozen Lonely Planet guides: a very large part of the book is actually cut and pasted from one book to another. When you are paying for a Lonely Planet guide, you are paying for much less particular destination information than you imagine: there are pages and pages of generalities of no practical relevance. Why insult intelligence of a reader with gems such as "pack as little as possible but take everything you need"? I can think of no other reason but to artificially increase the volume of the book so it seems a better value for money.
As usual, information about "Getting there" is very, very poor. Same tired "advice" about buying tickets from discount travel agents (and you thought about buying them from your dry-cleaners, didn't you?), same behind-the-times feeling when it comes to internet (although now there is a reluctantly compiled list of travel sites, which conveniently excludes some of the biggest and the most helpful on-line travel agents, to which the authors are presumably opposed on ideological grounds).
Where sightseeing is concerned, the guide lack focus, descriptions are uninspired and don't feel particularly tempting.
There are many other guides to Israel, take your pick - but Lonely Planet is best left on the shelf, unless of course you want to have a full collection.
However, I have to disagree with avalonwitch and agree with alfassa; the pro-Palestinian (or anti-Israeli; pick your poison) bias in this book is very strong and pervasive. Right from the beginning, one notices things such as the fact that B.C. and A.D. are used, rather than the Jewish or Muslim equivalents (or the widely-accepted B.C.E. and C.E.) There's a sidebar swipe at the Mossad, for example, that concentrates on their "bungles" (of which there are, of course, some) rather than such successes as the detection of the Iraqi nuclear reactor, the successful capture of Nazi war-criminals, and so on. This attitude is all through the book.
That said, there's some good stuff here. I just wish Lonely Planet's editors could have been more even-handed. After all, while Israel has certainly done some things that are pretty awful (e.g., Lebannon), the Palestinians aren't exactly free of blame, either (e.g., strapping bombs to themselves and going to discos to blow themselves up). An even-handed approach would have made this another excellent Lonely Planets guidebook.
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I would not recommend this book to others.
I have been reading Wrox books for several years now, I have always learned a lot from them, but I have to say this is the absolute worst Wrox book I have ever read. I would suggest finding a different book.
Sorry Wrox, I normally very much enjoy your books.
The book seems to cover all aspects of XSL in great depth, with plenty of code to illustrate how to apply the techniques the authors introduce.
As a programmer used to more traditional procedural languages, I hadn't realised the paradigm shift that working with XSL entails, but this book has kick-started my enthusiasm for XSL, and has shown me what it can really do. The stylesheets I'm writing now are going down very well at work, and one in particular completes its transformation almost 50 times quicker than the code we had previously (no exageration)!
I'd have to disagree with one of the previous reviewers who says it is concerned solely with MSXML!! Although it does cover this technology in one chapter, this isn't a surprise as the book tries cover all aspects of the XSL field. Most of the book is concerned with platform-agnostic tools and techniques, based on the current W3C standards. We use a lot of java in my company, especially as servlets, and this book was pretty indispensible when I was trying to get my stylesheet to work in tandem with servlets and JSP. The one gripe I have is that the book is rather skimpy on Formatting Objects, and if that's your thing you might be disappointed.
Nevertheless, I'd recommend this book to anyone seriously working with XSL, and although it's not a book for novices, it's an excellent reference that you'll keep coming back to.
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The relentless axe-grinding leads to some dubious advice. Readers are told to patronize Arab taxis and hotels to make up for their loss of business during the intifada. That's an awful lot like the Jews of Germany being billed for the cleanup after Kristallnacht.
Ordinary misinformation makes this guide next to useless. The Botanical Gardens are not free, entrance is about $10--and well worth it. Descriptions of Jewish ritual are skewed and include some real howlers. I wonder if their source was pulling their leg.
In addition, while I'd always thought that it's impossible to take a bad picture in the Holy City, this guide is peppered with the most boring photography I've ever seen. Any kid with a disposable camera could have done better.
I found the story line in Bishop in the West Wing to be very thin. The central problem of the poltergeists in the White House is brought up from time to time to string it all together, but it seems an afterthought. The true purpose of this novel seems to be to recount Father Greeley's visits to the White House during the Clinton administration, with Blackie playing the part of Greeley and President McGurn as President Clinton. While I would be interested in reading about that subject, I would prefer it in a nonfiction text, as opposed to under the guide of fiction. Having Republicans as a group stereotyped as hate-spewing elists, as they are in this book, is no more fair than stereotyping all Catholic priests as pedophiles, which they are most certainly not. Also, there is a real Rasputin-ish quality to the part that Blackie plays in the White House in this novel. Am I the only one who noticed this?
I was bothered by Father Greeley's characterizations of teenage girls in this novel, as I have been in his past novels. It seems especially evident in Bishop in the West Wing. He portrays them as modern-day "Valley Girls", with ditzy personalities and brainless slang used in every sentence. When one conducts a conversation with most teenage girls and young women, I believe one will find that most of them, especially those of the type Father Greeley is representing in his novels, speak much like the rest of us. I won't even get started on the "ebonics" he imposed on a high-level African-American White House aide in the book.
I am hoping that this novel is an abberation in the Blackie Ryan series, and not a sign of things to come in future novels. Despite the negative tone of this review, I would still nonetheless recommend this novel to Blackie fans such as myself (hence the two stars instead of one). Blackie is a fun, clever character, and spending some time in his world is always an escape from our own. Just hold your nose in parts and pray that Father Greeley will juice things up in the next Blackie novel.