It seems unnecessary to point out that this book is only for the true political junkie, since it's unlikely that anyone else would pick up a 700-page book with Clinton, Bush, and Perot on the cover in the first place. But for diehard politicos like myself, this book is a terrific account of the '92 campaign. The lengthy passages on political strategy may be trying for some, but the behind-the-scenes look at the inner workings of the three major campaigns (not to mention those of Jerry Brown, Pat Buchannan, et al) are fantastic.

I found this book to be extremely interesting and full of insight about the candidates and their campaigns. It also effectively represents the overall mood of the campaign and the issues facing the US at the time. Fascinating for anyone who is interested in presidential elections, and politics generally.

This hilarious Appalachian folktale was voted the Washington (State) Children's Choice Picture Book Award in 1996. I've read it aloud to 2nd graders in my school library to their delight.

Forgetful Plug goes to the store for his mother, repeating the phrase, "Soap! Soap! Don't forget the soap!" But with each encounter he forgets the phrase, picking up a new one, getting into trouble, and getting dirtier each time. By the time he remembers the soap, he is in desperate need of it when he gets home.

Click on the cover illustration to get an idea of Tom Birdseye's humorous style.

This book is a fun piece of entertainment, but I gave it 4 stars, since there are certainly more memorable folktales out there.

My 2 year old son runs around the house yelling Soap! Soap! Don't Forget the Soap! We loved the characters in the story, and the colorful illustrations are captivating.

~The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is a fascinating and adventurous book about a boy named Tom Sawyer. He has a major crush on a girl called Becky Thacker. In this book, Tom goes to an island with two of his friends, attends their own funeral, and look for treasure! Tom sees Injun Joe a killer with treasure. He wants it, but his only clue where Injun Joe hid it is that it has something to do with number 2. Tom is now lost in a cave all alone with Becky. Can he find his way out of the cave and~~ the way to the treasure? I agree with Mark Twain's decisions and ideas. I believe that I would be doing the same thing if I were in his position. His decisions are able to happen; yet The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is such a good book. I would recommend this book to people who like adventurous books, and likes classics. It leaves you at so many cliffhangers that you can help but read all of it at once, for the people who like cliffhangers.~

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is one of the best books I have ever read. The language,the thinking,the adventures-all of it was just incredible and enjoyable. The only thing this book needs is more pages! Mark Twain's skill in writing has created a book that all ages should read (or have it read to).Mark Twain reactivates the life and actions of a boy in the mid-1800's,and showed me that kids should be who they are- not what they will be. This is a classic for every generation to read and enjoy.

Mark Twain's,The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, tells about a boy loving and living his life to the fullest. Tom Sawyer is the kid that the world has seemed to forgotten. He is the kid who always get in trouble but continues to have fun with life. In this book, Tom does everything from being engaged, to watching his own funeral, to witnessing a [death] and finding treasure. Twain's creative character finds fun everywhere in his little town in Missouri, as do his friends. The storyline is basic, but it is a piece of the past that everyone should hold on to.

In The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, I learned mainly two things. The first thing I learned was that you can make life fun with just about anything if you use your imagination. Life is too short and precious to be wasted. I also learned that where you least expect it [help or protection], you might just get it. This book was just amazing-filled with unique characters, exciting events, and how a town can pull together to help those in need.

Set on the 19th century river banks of Mark's Twain hometown, the Adventures of Tom Sawyer takes you on the raft ride of your life. It is starts by a synopsis of the character of Tom and his friends, by cataloging a few of the queer things that they involved themselves in. Nonetheless as the story unfolds it deepens into a more serious nature. Tom and his friend Huck witness a murder. Moff Potter the town drunk, is accused of the crime and only Tom and Huck can save him. However, they fear that the real killer Injun Joe,will exact his vengeance on them. The story ends in the last scene with a dark rendition of finalty in the cave with wild Injun Joe. Tom and Huck end up rich with more than a dollar a day for the rest of their life.. " More than a body can handle".. This is a truly a remarkable book and a must for every young boy. It is filled with laughter, suspense and cheer for those of all ages and gender..But don't think it ends there.. Just wait till you read the adventures of Huck Finn!

If Amazon.com had an MVP award (Most Valuable Purchaser) I'd have it. I spend a lot of time and money purchasing only the best technology books. Now with that said, let me tell you about "Inside C#."

It's, hands down, the best book I've read. Right off the bat Archer explains the fundamentals of OOP, (a chapter all of us should read no matter what kind of OOP geniuses we think we are). He then goes into introducing .NET and never looks back. From C# Class Fundamentals to Writing Code and on to Advanced C#, he keeps you going and motivated to learn. I've gone through the book twice now and have it 'dog eared', marked, scribbled in and flagged.

The author knows his stuff and it shows. Archer is an intelligent well-spoken author that gets the point across no matter what level of experience the reader has. All through the book he explains and re-explains what he's trying to say, (just in case you missed it the first time). Very few authors do this and needless to say it leaves many of us wondering what the heck their point was.

In short, don't get left behind...."GET THE BOOK!!"

As with any emerging technology, there's a tremendous amount of ambiguity and lack of knowledge surrounding the .NET platform. Just the other day, I read someone stating that it was not worth anyone's time to learn C# because everything is in the .NET BCL (Base Class Library). Despite this person's rather prominent place among .NET developers, I find this remark to be exceedingly silly and illogical. It's tantamount to stating that Visual C++ developers do not need to learn C++ because the MFC does everything for you! I would agree that the majority of your work writing .NET classes is going to be with the BCL. However, without a full understanding of the semantics of such language constructs as delegates, interfaces, events and even the basics syntax of defining classes and structs, defining and calling methods and using the various operators you're not going to be able to much with the BCL to begin with.

This all brings me to Tom Archer's Inside C#. I thoroughly enjoyed Mr Archer's first edition and still refer to it often. However, with the second edition he has made a tremendous leap in improving what was already a fine book. By adding chapters on such things as file streaming, string handling, regular expression and collection enumeration he has successfully taken this book from a very good book to one that no C# developer should be without. If you have any desire to be a productive .NET developer, this book is for you. Along with the aforementioned chapters, the chapters on COM interop, memory management and security are easily the best of *any* C# or .NET book that you'll find!

Unless you're just not paying attention, Microsoft .NET is poised to become the biggest thing to hit software development since the introduction of the Win32 SDK. At the forefront of this effort is a new language called C# (pronounced c sharp) - a hybrid of C++ and Java with the simplicity of Visual Basic.

Unfortunately, until now all of the first books on C# have really been little more than superficial coverages of the language's syntax where the authors spend little to no time detailing why and when one would want to use the different aspects of C#. What I wanted was a book that not only tells me how to use something (they have on-line help for that), but explains the concepts behind the feature's existence.

Now there is such a book: Tom Archer's Inside C#. Archer, who runs the CodeGuru Web site and writes the popular C#/.NET Web newsletter, offers the most complete tutorial on using this new and powerful language.

The first section of the book is an overview section aimed at the programmer new to object-oriented and .NET development. This section includes chapters on .NET and the CLR and provides a clear and concise explanation of how it all ties together. Once that is done, he then has a chapter devoted to writing and compiling your first C# application to make sure that your environment is set up properly.

From there, the second part dives into writing applications. Here you learn all the fundamentals of C# including its interaction with the .NET Common Type System, value types, reference types and the concept of boxing and unboxing. He then goes on to show how to define classes and struct and write applications using the basics of arrays, enums, properties and indexers. Archer finishes up this foray into the fundamentals of C# by explaining how you can extend the C# language with attributes and how interfaces enable COM-like interface-based programming in C#.

In the third section (Writing Code), Archer then covers the topics of expressions, operators, the controlling of program flow and exception handling. In addition, advanced topics such as operator overloading and the use of delegates in writing event handlers is covered.

Finally, the last section (Advanced C#) is easily my favorite. This section includes some of the best information I could find anywhere on such subject matter as multi-threaded programming, reflection and versioning. The Interoperating with Unmanaged Code chapter alone covers how to use COM components from C#, how to write "unsafe", or unmanaged code and how to use Win32 DLLs from C#.

Having read several of the C# books currently available (Eric Gunnerson's A Programmer's Introduction to C# and Ben Albahari's C# Essentials) I have to say that I was quite pleased that Archer didn't take the easy route in simply telling me how to use a given language construct - but instead took the time to fully explain when and why I would want to use it.

The curtain is pulled back on SNL in this book to reveal (not surprisingly) that Lorne Michaels was, is, and always will be the Wizard who always kept SNL ticking. Decades of drug use, debauchery, infighting, sleeping around, desperation, and show-biz chutzpah are related courtesy of first-hand accounts of the writers, stars, agents, TV executives, staff members, and guests of the show.

Not all comments are complimentary, and not all that went on behind the scenes was funny. But it all makes for a fascinating read, despite the fact that a few notable surviving cast members chose not to participate in these oral interviews. "Live From New York" is as much a evolutionary history of the business of television over the past three decades as it is an oral history of the show itself. Perhaps SNL isn't as consistently cutting edge and counter-culture as it was in its earliest years. But nowadays the show IS the pop and showbiz culture it lampooned in the past. It cannot ever really return to its fabled glory days of 1975-1979 because the entire showbusiness landscape has changed so dramatically since then. One must credit Michaels for recognizing that and still plodding ahead with the show for most of the years since the days of The Not Ready For Prime Time Players.

Read this book to find the origins of many of the standard conventions and favorite moments of the show: why the band always dresses in tuxedos, the inspiration of Danny Aykroyd's buttcrack-exposing refrigerator repairman, the inhuman writing schedule, etc.

This is better than an "E! True Hollywood Story" any day.

...but ultimately fascinating document of our generation's most beloved variety program.

The stories are told primarily by those involved, in their own words, verbatim, including cast members, writers, hosts and producers. Some surprising tidbits include an almost universal dislike of Chevy Chase, Nora Dunn's harsh treatment of co-stars, and Eddie Murphy's grudge against the show (he is the only cast member who would not appear on the 25th anniversary special and is not interviewed in the book).

The book reads like an interview. There is almost no narrative from the authors. It's like reading a filmed documentary where the camera switches back and forth between the interviewees. This format fails only rarely, and the comments are usually placed somewhat in chronological order, and occasionally are lined up together, highlighting common viewpoints between participants where they exist.

Most of the memorable, gossipy events are covered, such as Nora Dunn's exile from the show when Andrew Dice Clay appeared, Jean Doumanian's brief stint as producer that almost got the show cancelled, Norm Macdonald's ousting as Update anchor, Sinead's unanticipated Pope-bashing, etc., etc., etc.

A fascinating read that will make you look at the show in a different light once you finish it. May also make you feel a bit misty-eyed, as you link SNL memories with memories of where you were and who you were as you witnessed them live.

You won't know exactly who to believe when you read this book, but in the end, it really won't matter. Yes, there are some oversights in the information here; the later seasons are given short-shrift, and, just as an example, Victoria Jackson gets what amounts to the last word on some in-fighting behind the scenes during her run. Some of these oversights you can chalk up to who was willing to talk in their interviews and who wasn't. Other times, it seems to be a fault of the editorial decision to move on to the next subject before the previous one is exhausted. And yes, the first five years get the bulk of treatment here, but that's to be expected, I think--they are, arguably, the most "romantic" of the periods, when it was less a business and more a crusade. And besides, people are a lot more inclined to comment on the [stuff] they pulled twenty years ago than stuff that's relatively current.

Still, this book is fully deserving of the perhaps too-often-ascribed label "page turner." You'll be able to put it down, of course, but you won't want to. You'll want to keep going, even if your head is swimming with factoids, innuendo, inside information, and some of the best tossed-off stories of famous people behaving badly. All the "dirt" aside, though, it's the more positive stuff I really relish about this book--the good stuff about Gilda, John, and the rest. There are some nice tributes here, and they really shine.

Of course, if you're a huge fan of Chevy Chase, you might avoid this book, because, as others have said, he gets torn apart pretty well here. To his credit, he admits that he's been a jerk in the past, but still, from year one to now, he's been reviled by most of the cast. For me, I'm still a fan of his work, but I don't think I want to be in a cast meeting with him. With all the stories, positive and negative, it comes down to who you're going to believe. For the most part, the editors let you decide, and haven't seemed to make a decision for you. And in the end, as I said, it won't matter. It's still a good, solid read.

Didya ever wonder how the US Army -- that bureaucratic bungle of millions that made recruits do things they wouldn't do in peacetime, retained some officers who were jerks, took four days of paperwork to release men from the service at the end of the war and stupidly assigned a private whose only prior journalistic experience was a few weeks work on his high school yearbook to the post of reporter at "Stars and Stripes" -- didyaever wonder how these guys won the war?

They were fighting other country's armies, that's how.

Ok, enough of my attempt to parody Andy Rooney's style above. The guy who lampoons makers of personal care products for a few minutes ever Sunday night does sometimes lend his "what kind of idiot would do this" attitude toward the US Army, WWII version. In those moments, this book sometimes grates -- the same voice that illuminates follies with instant cereal advertising and electric tooth brushes sounds somewhat tinny applied against what was a great undertaking.

Fortunately for this book, those moments are few enough that an interesting picture of the war as seen through Rooney's eyes is not subsumed with his sarcasm and general crankiness. In fact, he keeps those traits generally in check in what reads like an honest look at his service as a front line reporter during the war in Europe.

Rooney's book "My War" is a collection of anecdotes. Fortunately, his travels over German skies in American B-17's, with advancing armor and infantry in France and Germany and to newly (as in a few hours ago) liberated nazi work and concentration camps makes for fascinating anecdotes.

A sergeant in rank, Rooney was afforded the opportunity to meet with personalities and troops of all ranks as he covered the war for what I am sure was the largest circulation American daily newspaper during the early 1940's. His travel made great anecdotes and good stories.

Rooney is poignant in this book. He has a great reverence for lives lost and is very honest about himself and his changing appreciation for war as a sometimes necessary thing (he entered the war with the words "any peace is better than any war" from a college professor ringing in his ears and came to learn after reflecting upon Nazi warfare that "any peace is not better than any war"). This book is somewhat a chronicle of Rooney's maturation as well as his war stories.

The stories are for the most part entertaining and worth reading. His assignment as a reporter gave him a somewhat Zelig-like ability to be near many major events in the war. The reader benefits from these interesting first person accounts.

Didya ever wonder how the US Army -- that bureaucratic bungle of millions that made recruits do things they wouldn't do in peacetime, retained some officers who were jerks, took four days of paperwork to release men from the service at the end of the war and stupidly assigned a private whose only prior journalistic experience was a few weeks work on his high school yearbook to the post of reporter at "Stars and Stripes" -- didyaever wonder how these guys won the war?

They were fighting other country's armies, that's how.

Ok, enough of my attempt to parody Andy Rooney's style above. The guy who lampoons makers of personal care products for a few minutes ever Sunday night does sometimes lend his "what kind of idiot would do this" attitude toward the US Army, WWII version. In those moments, this book sometimes grates -- the same voice that illuminates follies with instant cereal advertising and electric tooth brushes sounds somewhat tinny applied against what was a great undertaking.

Fortunately for this book, those moments are few enough that an interesting picture of the war as seen through Rooney's eyes is not subsumed with his sarcasm and general crankiness. In fact, he keeps those traits generally in check in what reads like an honest look at his service as a front line reporter during the war in Europe.

Rooney's book "My War" is a collection of anecdotes. Fortunately, his travels over German skies in American B-17's, with advancing armor and infantry in France and Germany and to newly (as in a few hours ago) liberated nazi work and concentration camps makes for fascinating anecdotes.

A sergeant in rank, Rooney was afforded the opportunity to meet with personalities and troops of all ranks as he covered the war for what I am sure was the largest circulation American daily newspaper during the early 1940's. His travel made great anecdotes and good stories.

Rooney is poignant in this book. He has a great reverence for lives lost and is very honest about himself and his changing appreciation for war as a sometimes necessary thing (he entered the war with the words "any peace is better than any war" from a college professor ringing in his ears and came to learn after reflecting upon Nazi warfare that "any peace is not better than any war"). This book is somewhat a chronicle of Rooney's maturation as well as his war stories.

The stories are for the most part entertaining and worth reading. His assignment as a reporter gave him a somewhat Zelig-like ability to be near many major events in the war. The reader benefits from these interesting first person accounts.

If you enjoy Andy Rooney, you'll enjoy My War. Even if you don't care for grumpy Andy on Sixty Minutes, you still should read this account for its honesty and tribute to those who fought and died in WWII. In his preface, Andy notes that when he started checking his memory with the historical record, he was surprised at how often they didn't jibe. And that when in doubt, he relied on memory! A person who takes his World War II history seriously will find an error here and there, a misinterpretation now and then. But this is not footnoted history; this is Andy's story--and, as always, he tells it well with admirable brevity of words, dabs of humor, and occasional sentamentality.

Andy has his likes and dislikes--General Patton being one of those he disliked, no despised, the most--and he also snipes a bit at a few of his fellow war correspondents and some of the officers who made life difficult for the enlisted man. But three parts of his book stand out. For nearly two years Andy covered the Eight Air Force and their bombing campaign against Germany and German-occupied France. He is sympathethic to the airmen and the horrendous losses they suffered in those early years. To his credit, Andy volunteered for a mission that turned out to be a difficult target--Wilhelmshaven--in which his plane was damaged and of his own role in reviving a crewman who had had his oxygen supply cut off. As a former WWII AAF navigator [20th AF], his feelings and reactions to air combat ring true. A second section is his account of the liberation of Paris in which Andy chose to enter the city with the French Army. Much of this is mildy amusing, but also poignant, as the liberators argued over who "first" came into the city, of the political aspects of this in dealing with the French and General Charles de Gaulle, and the vast excitement as this momentous event unfolded. No matter who came first, the Parisiens were overjoyed at being at last freed from their oppressors. Finally, Andy's account of Buchenwald and of his own mixed feelings--he had originally thought the stories of extermination camps somewhat suspect--are a tribute to his own candor. He also reminds us with his honest account of own biases of the mindsets of many Americans when WWII descended.

Anyone interested in World War II and the men who fought in it will be enlightened by Andy's account.

Tim McCarthy was a decorated Chicago cop, but in his free evenings he studied law, sociology, and English literature, among other things. Burdened with all those term papers he never had time to take a wife, and now, well into his 40's, he is a credit-rich but lonely man who in his retirement takes on eccentric and challenging investigation work for equally eccentric employers. It is in this capacity that he crosses the pond to Ireland to investigate Nora MacDonaugh.

Nora is either very wicked or very unlucky. She is also very rich. The Dublin Police Department believes she slept her way to the money, its curiosity more than roused by the untimely deaths of both of her husbands, the latter blown to bits in his study. Innocent or guilty, she is extremely smart, and with modest effort this attractive widow becomes emotionally invested in the lovelorn McCarthy.

By happy coincidence the good Bishop John Ryan is vacationing in the safety of his hip nieces on the Emerald Isle. How to describe his role in this caper? Well, he is there, offering an occasional witticism, restaurant review, or forensic jab. He has a "call me if you need me" role to play in this novel. One gets the sense that he knows how this drama will play out from the get-go but that he does not want to ruin McCarthy's fun, so to speak.

There are enough mysteries here to please almost anyone. Will Tim McCarthy lose his objectivity to the charms of the luscious Nora? Will they actually "do it?" Is Nora stringing him along to divert him from the terrible truth? Does she deserve the Dublin Police moniker, "Miss Yo-Yo Pants?" [So help me.] How do two very unhappy families, an Irish terrorist, a Dublin pol, and an upstart Irish cream company play into the picture? And does Bishop Ryan eventually get a bigger role in the story than Zorro's mute compadre, Paco?

It's not MacBeth, but it's a pleasant enough read, with or without the Bailey's.

Andrew Greeley has enjoyed considerable success as the writer of the Bishop Blackie Ryan novels. Until now I had not read any of these tales. Amazon lists "Happy Are The Peacemakers" as the first novel in the series and so there I decided to make my start. It was only later that I found a bibliography that actually lists it as his sixth novel. While starting in the middle of a series is often difficult, it was not the case here. I was a bit surprised by the novel, however, on several counts. While not unpleasant, it was not quite what I expected.

" Happy Are The Peacemakers" is set just before Bloomsday in Dublin. Bloomsday, for the non-cognoscenti, is the annual celebration of James Joyce's novels. Tim Pat McCarthy, retired Chicago cop and private investigator, has been hired to look into the murder of billionaire entrepreneur Jim Lark MacDonaugh. More precisely he has been hired to prove that MacDonaugh's young wife Nora was guilty of his murder in order to lay her hands on his wealth.

Naturally, the ethical McCarthy intends to find the truth, not injure the innocent. Especially since he has fallen under the spell of the beautiful Nora. In the background, like a deus ex machina, is Bishop Ryan, also from Chicago, and convinced of Nora's innocence. If Nora is innocent, then who really did blow her husband to smithereens in a locked room? Jim Lake's brothers? His children? His business partners? The IRA? The list of suspects is nearly infinite, and the murderer seems quite willing to kill again to protect his secrets.

Greeley tells this story with a light, almost comic, touch. Once can't help but smile at the antics of the MacDonaugh clan, the budding romance between Tim Pat and Nora, and the countless bit players that appear. Greeley seems to tell most of the tale with a heavy Irish brogue. The ins and outs of that dialect are a fascinating study all on their own

I have only two real issues with the novel. One is that all of Greeley's Irishfolk curse a blue streak. Except for Blackie Ryan, of course. There comes a point where all the expletives become overused, and one wishes that Greeley had been a bit more circumspect. The other issue is that Bishop Ryan makes very few lengthy appearances in this tale. Most of the time he receives McCarthy's reports with a curt "fascinating." It is only at the end that he displays an almost Nero Wolfe-like brilliance. I like my detectives to be a bit more prominent. In any case this is a likeable story that will serve to provide several entertaining hours. Those of a literary bent will find the countless allusions to James Joyce a source of much amusement. And the romantics among us will delight in the eccentric relationship between McCarthy and Nora.

So I was getting ready to reread Don Quijote (1605)(Miguel de Cervantes 1547-1616) in the excellent Burton Raffel translation and as I was looking for information about the book and author, saw repeated references to Fielding's Joseph Andrews. I'd read his Tom Jones a couple of years ago and found it kind of tough sledding, but when I stumbled upon this one at a library book sale for a quarter, it seemed a stroke of destiny.

The parallels with Don Quijote are readily apparent. First of all, the book consists of a series of humorous travel adventures; second, the travellers involved seem too innocent to survive in the harsh world that confronts them. When Joseph Andrews, the naive footman of Lady Booby, deflects the amorous advances of both her Ladyship and Slipslop, the Lady's servant, he is sent packing. Upon his dismissal, Joseph, along with his friend and mentor Parson Adams, an idealistic and good-hearted rural clergyman, who essentially takes the physical role of Sancho Panza but the moral role of Quijote, sets out to find his beloved but chaste enamorata, Fanny Goodwill, who had earlier been dismissed from Lady Booby's service as a result of Slipslop's jealousy. In their travels they are set upon repeatedly by robbers, continually run out of funds and Adams gets in numerous arguments, theological and otherwise. Meanwhile, Fanny, whom they meet up with along the way, is nearly raped any number of times and is eventually discovered to be Joseph's sister, or maybe not.. The whole thing concludes with a farcical night of musical beds, mistaken identities and astonishing revelations.

I've seen this referred to as the first modern novel; I'm not sure why, in light of it's obvious debt to Cervantes. But it does combine those quixotic elements with a seemingly accurate portrayal of 18th Century English manners and the central concern with identity and status do place it squarely in the modern tradition.

At any rate, it is very funny and, for whatever reason, seemed a much easier read than Tom Jones. I recommend it unreservedly.

GRADE: B+

There certainly seems to be a strong polarity on this page about whether this book is or is not deserving of its legendary status. Both sides have strong points to consider. If you watch MTV on a steady basis and think that Shakespeare guy was a dull card, don't even bother. If you are delving into the realm of classics and want a good challenge, this might be the place to start. But then again...

Ignored or scorned upon its release in 1851, Moby Dick didn't achieve fame until the mid 1920's when professional writers and scholars 'rediscovered' the book and, impressed by the sheer volume of ideas and symbolism, gradually forced this monstrous text into the popular consciousness. Who doesn't recognize the words Moby Dick or Cap'n Ahab? -- though I'm sure the familiarity comes from watching one or two of the numerous movies based from the bare-bones plot rather than actually sitting down for a good breeze through Melville's incredibly convoluted prose. No one that I know of *really* reads a book like this for enjoyment; it's the academic masochist's delight, the forging ground of literature. If you can endure this, Faulkner and Dickens et al are cake in comparison.

Well, OK, Moby Dick is not entirely without merit: several passages are extraordinary in design and achievement, notably 'The Whiteness of the Whale,' 'The Pacific,' and a few other random gleams of astonishing prose & profundity. But then there are the endless days at sea described all too well. And the insomnia-curing Cetology section. And the character ambiguities and obscure symbols and layered subtexts all drained of power by a turgid style and a general inability to get to the point. Seriously folks, I'm an avid reader who averages 10-12 books a month...Moby Dick took me five months to slog through.

This isn't quite as unfathomable as, say, the last works of James Joyce-most everything here is understandable. But, as has been proven time and time again, intelligent writing is not necessarily great, or even good, writing. To be blunt, Moby Dick is overwhelmingly boring, a self-indulgent mess.

Is it worth it? If you are simply interested in the story, that of a man driven to insane lengths by an unfulfilled passion, go rent one of the movies. If you are interested in learning about human existence, I could recommend a thousand other classics to start with. If you love whales, I mean if you are _endlessly fascinated_ by the mysteries of the abysses and its myriad denizens, go ahead and give Moby Dick a try. If nothing else, finishing it is certainly an accomplishment to be proud of.

I first read Moby Dick; or The Whale over thirty years ago and I didn't understand it. I thought I was reading a sea adventure, like Westward Ho! or Poe's Arthur Gordon Pym. In fact, it did start out like an adventure story but after twenty chapters or so, things began to get strange. I knew I was in deep water. It was rough, it seemed disjointed, there were lengthy passages that seemed like interruptions to the story, the language was odd and difficult, and often it was just downright bizarre. I plodded through it, some of it I liked, but I believe I was glad when it ended. I knew I was missing something and I understood that it was in me! It wasn't the book; it was manifestly a great book, but I hadn't the knowledge of literature or experience to understand it.

I read it again a few years later. I don't remember what I thought of it. The third time I read it, it was hilarious; parts of it made me laugh out loud! I was amazed at all the puns Melville used, and the crazy characters, and quirky dialog. The fourth or fifth reading, it was finally that adventure story I wanted in the first place. I've read Moby Dick more times than I've counted, more often than any other book. At some point I began to get the symbolism. Somewhere along the line I could see the structure. It's been funny, awesome, exciting, weird, religious, overwhelming and inspiring. It's made my hair stand on end...

Now, when I get near the end I slow down. I go back and reread the chapters about killing the whale, and cutting him up, and boiling him down. Or about the right whale's head versus the sperm whale's. I want to get to The Chase but I want to put it off. I draw Queequeg with his tattoos in the oval of a dollar bill. I take a flask with Starbuck and a Decanter with Flask. Listen to The Symphony and smell The Try-Works. Stubb's Supper on The Cabin Table is a noble dish, but what is a Gam? Heads or Tails, it's a Leg and Arm. I get my Bible and read about Rachel and Jonah. Ahab would Delight in that; he's a wonderful old man. For a Doubloon he'd play King Lear! What if Shakespeare wrote The Tragedy of The Whale? Would Fedallah blind Ishmael with a harpoon, or would The Pequod weave flowers in The Virgin's hair?

Now I know. To say you understand Moby Dick is a lie. It is not a plain thing, but one of the knottiest of all. No one understands it. The best you can hope to do is come to terms with it. Grapple with it. Read it and read it and study the literature around it. Melville didn't understand it. He set out to write another didactic adventure/travelogue with some satire thrown in. He needed another success like Typee or Omoo. He needed some money. He wrote for five or six months and had it nearly finished. And then things began to get strange. A fire deep inside fret his mind like some cosmic boil and came to a head bursting words on the page like splashes of burning metal. He worked with the point of red-hot harpoon and spent a year forging his curious adventure into a bloody ride to hell and back. "...what in the world is equal to it?"

Moby Dick is a masterpiece of literature, the great American novel. Nothing else Melville wrote is even in the water with it, but Steinbeck can't touch it, and no giant's shoulders would let Faulkner wade near it. Melville, The pale Usher, warned the timid: "...don't you read it, ...it is by no means the sort of book for you. ...It is... of the horrible texture of a fabric that should be woven of ships' cables and hausers. A Polar wind blows through it, & birds of prey hover over it. Warn all gentle fastidious people from so much as peeping into the book..." But I say if you've never read it, read it now. If you've read it before, read it again. Think Dostoevsky, Shakespeare, Goethe, and The Bible. If you understand it, think again.

It's always dangerous to label a book as a "masterpiece": that word seems to scare away most readers and distances everyone from the substance of the book itself. Still, I'm going to say that this is the Greatest American Novel because I really think that it is--after having read it myself.

Honestly, Moby Dick IS long and looping, shooting off in random digressions as Ishmael waxes philosophical or explains a whale's anatomy or gives the ingredients for Nantucket clam chowder--and that's exactly what I love about it. This is not a neat novel: Melville refused to conform to anyone else's conventions. There is so much in Moby Dick that you can enjoy it on so many completely different levels: you can read it as a Biblical-Shakespearean-level epic tragedy, as a canonical part of 19th Century philosophy, as a gothic whaling adventure story, or almost anything else. Look at all the lowbrow humor. And I'm sorry, but Ishmael is simply one of the most likable and engaging narrators of all time.

A lot of academics love Moby Dick because academics tend to have good taste in literature. But the book itself takes you about as far from academia as any book written--as Ishmael himself says, "A whale-ship was my Yale College and my Harvard." Take that advice and forget what others say about it, and just experience Moby Dick for yourself.

This is a great book to keep as a reference. It covers all of J2EE, and has some interesting ideas on application design. However, if you already have a lot of Wrox "professional" titles, such as "Professional JSP" or "Professional XML", stay away. This book just repeats excerpts from those, and is more confusing because it doesn't contain all the information. For example, the section on XML namespaces was a hodgepodge editing job on the section from the XML book, and confused me even though I already had a basic understanding of the topic.

But, its worth a look if you don't have any of the other contained content.

This is NOT a book for beginners who wish to learn JSP/servlets and EJBs and the techniques of J2EE. On the other hand, if you already have some knowledge with these techniques, the book may help to improve your background of J2EE and its components.

1.The strong points of the book are:

- the book does a wonderful job in explaining different key points of J2EE techniques especially at the beginning of each chapter; although the discussion sometimes becomes pretty vague and less clear at the end.

- the book's code examples use j2sdkee1.2.1, orion and jboss which are available for you free with unlimited time.

- the book looks quite impressive, 1600 plus pp. hardcovered.

2.The weak points of the book:

- all the code examples are fairly easy. In fact, too easy to do much help to the readers who need a better workout to pay attention to some key points of the techniques.

- Since only half of the book is devoted to really J2ee techniques, people who already experienced with jsp/servlet may find the other half of the book unecessary.

In conclusion, you may want to check this book out if you alread know jsp/servlet and j2ee( through the Sun's tutorials and examples and wish to have a better understand of this popular but pretty complex technique.

As lots of wrox book, this book does provide some interesting information. UML diagrams are used for better explanation, design issues for JSP, using XML with JSP, how interface object, control object and entity object fit EJBs, JMS, Corba, Unit test, are all well explained.

However, as the non J2EE edition, the code still contains errors: for all the Primary key classes in examples of EJB, hashCode and equals are not defined, you have to add them yourself. There are errors for package names, for the example, in Chapter 20, Order and Product classes are defined in book.order and book.product classes, and other classes imported them from factory.order and factory.product classes. You have to change "book" to "factory" class by class manually!

They used jBoss and orion server to implement EJB examples, I am not against these two servers, but I think it may be better to test the examples with Weblogic as well, since it is the most popular application server, they did not. And they never mentionned Weblogic in the book, not even in the appendix.

In split of all these errors, there is no serious error, this is a good and interesting book.