This book is a great book. It's full of supense, sadness, and happiness. Three months ago Chris Barton lost his loved little sister, Molly. Missing presumed drowned is what the papers said, and the Barton's had been picnicking by the river when Molly disappeared.

I am an elemenary teacher and I rarely have the time to read books written for teenagers. This book, however, is not only appropriate for middle school/high school ages but would also be a good read aloud for younger children. The story is exciting from beginning to end and the action never really slows down. I gave it four stars only because I was able to predict the ending; otherwise, the book is definitely top-notch, five star quality! Yes, I will be reading the book again!

This book was, as I said, an amazing story. It has been three months since a 13 year old boy, Chris Barton, lost his little sister, Molly. She was "Missing, presumed drowned" said the papers, and surely what everyone believed. But Chris had taped a video of the day Molly disappeared. After watching again, Chris finds out something very important that could prove that she's alive! Together, Chris and his best friend, Pat, go on a journey for the truth of what really happened to Molly that hot summer day. This book is my new favorite book, and you should really buy the book because if you like mysteries, this is your kind of book.

I was somewhat dissappointed in this book. I bought the book because I have a Home Depot-bought Brinkman smoker (the kind with a big barrel with a little offset smokebox on the side and a tall smokestack). It seems as though the authors cook only with a custom-made smoker at their restaurant, not the hardware store cheapy. As such, they skimped on the directions I needed most.

I recommend the beginning of the book. It equates to a slightly-larger-than-pamphlet-sized section on the basic smoking. The first and second time I smoked (there hasn't been a third yet), I learned a great deal not in this book. So as not to be unfair to the authors, here is the great deal in my first two smoking adventures:

1) Don't buy wood chips. If you have a wood pile, chop it up (I used my chainsaw -- currently, it only real use) and use it for smoke. 2) Don't use too much charcoal to start. Too big a pile will make the heat too high. Yes, I used charcoal. I couldn't figure out how to light soaked wood chips with a match. 3) Count on everything taking twice as long to cook. Do not open the smoker, or you can expect an even longer wait. 4) Plan at least an hour to get the smoker heat up to 200 degrees. 5) Make sure meat is dry before you put your dry rub on. The authors mention this, but not prominently. Dry rub on wet meat makes big messy clumps. 6) Keep your dog away from the smoker or they will lick the grease from the ground and get grease spots on their heads. (Perhaps this one is not universal.) 7) After a few hours, clear the ash from under the charcoal and wood chunks. I use a stick and clear an airway under the charcoal. Otherwise, the air is blocked and the heat goes down.

Both times I smoked, everything turned out excellent. I already had ideas on dry rub and sauces, so I didn't need the recipes from the book.

If you plan to smoke for the first time on your back deck with a hardware store smoker, you need more sources than this one book. Otherwise, the book is clear and interesting to read.

Having grown up in the greath white north, I never knew any better than to confuse grilling with barbecueing. Since then I have been educated, and this book was one textbooks.

Granted, to do good low and slow barbecue all you really need is a pit, some wood coals, some tough meat you want to cook slowly until it is delicious and tender, and LOTS of patience. But this book will clue you in to a bunch of things like rubs, mops, sauces, and different woods for smoking. It also covers the regional differences in meat and sauce preferences (and make no mistake, depending where you are it can make a BIG difference as to what is considered REAL BBQ).

Put away the charcoal starter, and pick up a chimney. Save the gas for quick grilling. Pick up this book and get started making some serious Q.

Smoke & Spice is one of the most talked about and most loved books by those who are truly serious about learning the art of barbecue. Lots of great recipes and information, although many of the cooking times and temperatures mentioned are a bit on the low side, in my opinion. Still, this book is a must-buy for your barbecue library.

Martin Eden is one of those books on which it's difficult to pass judgment. It doesn't rise to the realm of high art, although the writing is splendid in parts. The philosophy displayed through most of the novel comes across as sophomoric and meretricious. As autobiography it is dubious at best, as anyone who has read a biography of London knows. On all these accunts, London's other semi-autobiographical work, John Barleycorn, is much better and well-grounded......And yet, any one who has ever been in love or thirsted for beauty and knowledge, or has had ambition thwarted, or had it fulfilled and found that its reward led to emptiness can not help saying that this is the stuff of life.

The book has Nietzsche's influence written all over it. Indeed, the closing lines of Chapter XXVIII are directly lifted from Nietzsche. This influence doesn't, to my mind, detract from the novel though. Quite to the contrary, it's what holds the book thematically and artistically together.

The best part of the book by far is the ending, wherein London remains artistically and thematically true to himself and to his readers, and thereby renders the book unpalatable for mass consumption. As Nietzsche puts it, "I love him who is abashed when the dice fall to make his fortune, and asks, 'Am I then a crooked gambler?' For he wants to perish" There is also the influence and theme of that most anomolous of the books of The Bible, Ecclesiastes, which is, again, more overtly evident in London's John Barleycorn: "Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher; all is vanity. What profit hath a man of all his labour which he taketh under the sun?"

This book has its faults, but indiffence to the very pulse of life and to the vagaries of the human condition is not one of them. I can't imagine any lover of and struggler with words and life coming away from Martin Eden unmoved.

If you are looking for pleasant summer reading, pass this one by. It ain't pretty and it ain't pleasant, but it ranks as one of the Great American novels of all time. Was it autobiographical? You betcha. More so than most airbrushed autobiographies of our time. Jack London was the first author to awaken in me the love of the printed word. I was 9 years old. The title that awakened me was Call of the Wild. I, like Marcia and everyone else, thought that Jack London was just an aborigine, wandering around in the vast metropolis and utterly lost. Years later I read The Sea Wolf, and my opinion changed. I no longer thought of Jack as an aborigine, but as a refined young man, rudely abducted from the civilized world and forced to accept the law of the strongest. Later still, I read Martin Eden, and I was devastated by the tortured visions of that same young man who was tranfigured by that experience and who was no longer acceptable as a member of civilized society. There's a whole lot of bitterness in Martin Eden, folks! And, the more I read of Jack's life, the more I am convinced that it is autobiographical. The fact is that Jack became a monster. At the same time, he became the most successul novelist of his time. In terms of money, we can only gasp at the financial success he enjoyed. He turned out novel after novel, and each of them was gobbled up by a hungry public. In the end, the SAME PEOPLE who had rejected him because of his crude mannerisms and calloused knuckles sought him out because of his MONEY. Do you really want the brutal truth about Jack London? And are you really prepared to weep for one of America's great sons? If so, then read Martin Eden. Otherwise, pass it by.

I think that every book falls into one of a few different catagories. It either sucks, is entertaining, or changes your perspective. "Martin Eden" ranks in the highest of all posible catagories for changing my perspective. I tried to read Jack London on a number of occasions and just couldn't get into him. His stories would rate as entertaining at best. I don't know why I picked up Martin Eden, but will forever be grateful to the forgotten soul who recommended it. Martin Eden is different because of what is barely under the surface. In my opinion, it's less a story than a philosophy. After I read it for the first time, I was struck by the parallel to Plato's "Allegory of the Cave." In it, Plato warns of the price of enlightenment. Once you have seen the light, you can never go back to seeing things the was you did before. You will isolate yourself from everyone. Plato seems to say that ignorance is bliss, and London seems to agree. In the novel, Martin is stricken with the desire to ascend in class stature after meeting a high-class, late 19th Century San Fransisco family. He is enamored with the ease with which they debate social politics and wants to attain what he first sees as their level of intelligence. His vehicle for attaining their acceptance is to become a writer. To enrich his meager knowledge of these subjects he becomes an arduous reader of everything that he can get his hands on. In the process, he comes to realize that he has gained a true understanding of liturature and social philosophy, whereas everyone else merely talks with a false air of understanding. At one point he realizes that, in his quest to become an intellectual equal, he has surpassed them. It is after his meteoric climb in intellect that he realizes that he is alone. He also realizes that the people he so eagerly sought to emmulate did not shun him because of his lack of intellect (for their own intellect was merely a thin veneer), but because of his lack of money. In his separate but related quest to become a successful writer, he is frustrated by every publisher's inability to "get" his ideas. His inability to publish, despite his hard work, leads his love interest, high-born and condescending, to abandon him. She has no faith in his ability to achieve fame as a writer and he has no disire to settle down into a 9 to 5 job to placate her socialite parents. After some time apart, he does succeed in getting published, and not unlike the breaking of a dam, fame and fortume follow soon after. Upon learning of his fame, she comes running back, ready to make him the centerpiece for conversation at her family's socialite dinner parties. He rejects her and tries to return to the companionship of his earlier days as a sailor. Like in Plato's story, he finds that he cannot rekindle the bond that he once had with old friends, and is alone.

While the story is an interesting case study into the nature of intellect and society, it is also a looking glass into the social scene in a major city during the turn of the century. The reader learns that the beat poets were around long before Kerouac and Ginsburg. This story is full of information -- social, political, historical, and intellectual. Read it.

Schechter has done it again! I was eager to read his latest effort, having been delighted with his last book, The Path of No Resistance. In clear, elegant and witty prose, he has brought to life the European and mathematical world of Paul Erdos, and through careful biography and analysis has shed light on his fascinating, eccentric personality. The math in this book is remarkably clear; I finally understand the Monty Hall problem!!! I came away with a deepened understanding of the culture of Hungary and of mathematicians, and I was also moved by the book's compassionate portrayal of an unusual life dedicated to truth, beauty, and support of fellow mathematicians.

If you at all are interested in math or history, read this book!!!

I read the book on Erdos by the other guy (Hoffman) first because it came out a few weeks sooner. I wish I had waited. I could have save a few dollars by reading just Schechter's book and not the other.

Schechter doesn't just write well about math...he writes superbly, period, whether he's writing about math or telling funny stories or explaining Hungarian history, etc. I would read any book he wrote on any subject.

I read My Brain Is Open on a airplane flying coast-to-coast, and I turned down the meal --though it was airline food, it didn't look bad-- because I didn't want to stop reading even for a minute. I could have eaten and read at the same time and thereby risked getting it dirty, but it has a beautiful cover and I'm definitely going to want to keep it to lend to friends.

It's amazing how much ground Schechter covers in a rather short book (I covered just 3,000 miles myself). At the end, I felt I had gotten to know Paul Erdos much, much better, even though I had read the Hoffman bio already and ought to have known him pretty well.

One big difference: Schechter writes at length about Erdos's death and the events and stories leading up to it. This is a subject Hoffman all but ignores. Schechter wrote about it so effectively that I felt the tension building and, though I knew Erdos was dead before I started reading, it made me sad and somewhat emotional when the moment came in Schechter's book. It was a great life, though, and a long one, and a productive and generous and fulfilling one, so the sadness passed quickly into inspiration.

Schechter takes you by the hand and walks you through some stunning yet simple mathematical proofs that are real eye-openers for a layman like myself. He doesn't just talk about math, though. For example, one chapter has Paul Erdos explaining a simple proof to the non-math-literate wife of a colleague. You get to see the proof (which was nifty) as well as the way Erdos interacted on a human level. It's the kind of thing this biography does fantastically well, i.e., math in a thoroughly human context. Erdos is a very charming and unusual person who comes alive along with the math. The book is written in stories, anecdotes, and observations about math in general and Erdos's contribution in particular. It could be understood by a tenth grader who is bad at math but it's still written in an adult and intelligent tone, not one that talks down to the reader. One of the best popular math or science books I have ever read. I liked it better than Gleick's book, Chaos, and Gleick's bio of Feynman (though these were also very fine books, in my opinion).

You'd be hard-pressed to find a more entertaining or informative chronicle of the hobbyists and entrepeneurs who created the multi-billion dollar PC industry from practically out of nowhere in the mid 70's. The basis of the great HBO movie Pirates of Silicon Valley starring Noah Wyle and Anthony Michael Hall, to call it a page-turner would be gross understatment.

From the Altair to Apple to the world-wide pervasiveness of the Internet, the entire tale is told in an entertaining and easily read manner, accompanied by a wealth of facinating photographs. Early history with companies such as MITS and IMSAI battling it out for the hearts and minds of computer hobbyists is painstakingly covered, along with a careful tracking of the rise of two pairs of PC pioneers: Steve Jobs and Stephen Wozniak, and Bill Gates and Paul Allen. Over and over the reader is baffled by the ignorance of the large corporations unable or unwilling to understand the market for computers on desks or people's homes, and the bravado of garage start-ups convinced they're on the brink of a new revolution. Originally published in 1984, the book has been painstakingly reviewed and updated by its authors to bring it up to events in 1999.

There are a few bugs, however. Things tend to drag a bit in the middle portion as the authors detail the hobby groups and magazines that sprang up to cover the PC action. Also, I counted only one measy mention of the Amiga, and Commodore only receives a handful of mentions. Of course, what did Commodore ever do for the computer industry, besides creating the C-64, still the single best-selling computer line of all time? This continues a baffling ignorance of Commodore's immense contribution to personal computer history on the parts of digital historians.

But besides this oversight, Fire in the Valley is still an addictive page-turner. It really is a bible for anyone even remotely interested in how this whole business got started, much to the surprise of even those who created it.

If you're looking for a perfect book to learn about the computer industry, Fire in the Valley is definitly it. I rented the movie, Pirates of Silicon Valley, and it was a great movie. However, Hollywood took out so many important parts, that it only gives you an idea of what went on in the early 70's and 80's as the personal computer developed.

Being born in 1983, I grew up with the Texas Instruments computer, C-64, Apple II, Macintosh, and the mainstream desktop PCs that we use today. I was always interested in the history of computing and searched to find a book to fill in the gaps that Pirates of Silicon Valley left out.

Fire in the Valley, while not entirely definitive, still does an excellent job giving the reader all the history that he/she could want. As described in previous reviews, it does leave out the Commodore C-64, except for a few references. But this still is the best computer industry history book out on bookshelves.

I highly recommend that if you want to know more about the beginnings of Bill Gates, Paul Allen, Steve Balmer, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Ed Roberts and all the others who engineered the personal computer, take a look at this book.

I wasn't in the valley personally, but as a child of the 70's and early 80's I recall a world of computers long before the IBM "Personal Computer" came out. There were Apples, Tandys, IMSAIs, Osborns, Altairs, and a plethora of digital devices that tried to make it into the home or office, way before IBM even considered entering the consumer market.

Everyone who was *there* remembers that not only was the IBM PC a late-comer, it was based on the technologies already pioneered by those others -- and in many cases its features were less impressive, sometimes even "lower-tech" than its predecessors. This book not only tells the story of subvertive geeks hacking away in their garages armed with soldering irons and wire-cutters, it paints the pictures so vividly, with such candor, that it transports you back in time so you can experience first hand the PC revolution.

You'll live through the various events, some technological, others political, but most of them social, which inspired many people to drop whatever they were doing to join the revolution, for better or for worst. The authors make you realize that the PC revolution was not started with a single product, was not a linear chain of events, and cannot be plotted with a mere timetable of discoveries and inventions (though the book includes such a table, for reference). They show that the PC revolution was an ongoing battle that started with fantastic dreams more than a century ago, was kindled by amazing invetions and discoveries, but was actually fueld by the very human nature to communicate freely and the desire to do so efficiently through machines -- and the passion of creating those machines and breathing life into them with your own hands.

Wonderful book, a must read for anybody who was *there*, it will bring back so many nostalgic memories. I also recommend it to anybody who was not there that wonders how it all started and if IBM and Microsoft have really offered us "innovations".

-dZ.

I admit from the onset that my review of this work is tainted by two facts: (1) I'm an engineer and not a physicist and (2) I've received enough lectures in physics to be utterly bored with almost the entire first half of the book. Don't get me wrong, Feynman is an utter genious. I was just bored with the book because it read like a Physics 101 class. His careful construction of our modern physical world piece by piece was interesting but not very informative. I wasn't impressed and it seemed to me that this book was simply published so someone could make money off of Feynman's lectures. I didn't see much here to make me sit up and pay attention instead I was busy mentally doodling while my eyes scanned the pages.

Six Easy Pieces is an excellent introduction to one of today's most intriguing scientific fields. Feynman presents physics in a series of easily understandable lectures that are appealing to the layman, in that it presents theories and concepts through simple example. Despite the age of his work, much of what is taught and discussed in the book is still relevant and accepted in physics today.

The book centers on the basic principles and operations of the following topics:
1 - Atoms In Motion
2 - Basic Physics
3 - The Relation of Physics to Other Sciences
4 - Conservation of Energy
5 - The Theory of Gravitation
6 - Quantum Behavior

Within each topic lesser subtopics are addressed, more specifically subtopics that are rooted to or based in one of the overall topics. The teaching style exhibited by Feynman is well thought out and should appeal to the majority of readers. However, Six Easy Pieces is meant as an introduction for the layman and is not suggested for those already experienced in the field.

In closing, Six Easy Pieces is an excellent introduction to the topic of physics, however it is just that - an introduction. Therefore, it is highly recommended for the layman, but not for the physicist.

This book explains some basic concepts in physics so well that even someone who doesn't like physics might enjoy it! 'Six Easy Pieces' are 6 lectures from Feynman's complete 'Lectures on Physics', chosen for their accessibility to the general public.
Feynman, like all great teachers, understands his subject so well that he is able to explain the concepts behind it in clear, simple terms.
There are 6 chapters in the book, all of them generalized lectures on topics in physics. Feynman explains the structure of the atom and there is a very excellent description of charge and how atoms attract each other.
I really enjoyed the chapter on the relationship of physics to the other sciences, especially chemistry and biology. There is even a section on the relationship of physics to psychology.
Chapter 5 is on gravity and there is a great explanation of Kepler's laws of planetary motion and Newtons law of gravitation. These ideas are explained so understandably, I felt like I received a clear conceptual picture of what is happening.
But the highlight of the book for me is Chapter 6 on quantum behavior. Feynman explains the wave-particle duality and the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle so well that I really felt I understood the basic ideas. I am just a layman but I found I could really get what he was saying.
Another thing I liked about the book is its honesty. If there is something physics does not understand, Feyman admits it, outlining the parameters of knowledge but acknowledging deficiencies.
The author doesn't come across as a know-it-all, and doesn't 'talk down' to the reader, something which I find refreshing in a science book.
Like any book by Richard Feynman, this one is a delight to read. Informative, honest and with that unique Feynman ability to make even the most complex ideas understandable to the intelligent layman.

When I started reading The French Lt's Woman, i was expecting some very sad, tragic and hard to follow, but what I got is quite the opposite: the book gives you good laughs sometimes and it is very catching. I think that the fact of being written more than a hundrer years later than the time when the story takes place allows the writer to have a critical and ironic inight in his characters and events as well.

Fowles is a master when it comes to go over the XIX century using the XX century approach. From time to time he reminds us that when the book was being written most of the moral of its characters and situations had already changed. On the other hand, we can see that the world hasn't changed at all in many other subjects dealt in the book.

I guess that when the book was first published in the late '60s it caught on, and it is easy to understand, The French... goes with the sixties ideas.

To sum up, it is a book interesting for anyone who enjoys a good writting and wants to see how different ( or similar) we are from the Victorian Era.

Yep, this is it: a true twentieth century masterpiece.

The first time I read this at the age of 16, I stayed up most of the night to finish it, as I had with _The Magus_. I got the heroine mixed up in the personal mythology of my mind with my high school girlfriend, Joni Mitchell, Anais Nin, and all that is eternally mysterious and wonderful about women.

Having read the book three or four more times, I am much better able to appreciate the ideas -- existential, Darwinian, Marxist -- that fit into the web of a rollicking good story. This is a novel that punches the head as unerringly as the heart.

And don't forget the element of PLAY: Fowles has said this novel was written by a man who was very tired of novels and the usual constraints under which they were written. So there are THREE endings: a false, everything-tidied-up-as-it-would-have-been-in-a-true-Victorian-novel ending about two-thirds through the book; and two opposing endings at the finish.

Fowles reportedly even wrote a farcical chapter in the style of Alice in Wonderland in which the narrator chases after the hero with an axe ... but his wife and other advisors made him leave it out. I hope we will someday get to see that one.

Why did the latest publisher put a cute blonde on the cover! (I'm assuming she is NOT meant to depict the secondary love interest, Charles's fiancee.) This is almost as bad an aesthetic decision as casting Meryl Streep in the movie version, though she made an admirable attempt to be Sarah. Try to get a copy with the original cover art -- a choppy woodcut of a brunette with a distant gaze -- and that will get you launched into the story in the right mood.

What to make of a Victorian novel by a contemporary existentialist who steps into the book twice and can't decide how to end it? I cannot imagine a more satisfying inconclusive book.

Charles gets the girl. Or maybe not? It doesn't matter. Fowles' novels are always superficially simple and unplumbable in their philosophical depths: *The Collector*, *The Magus*, *The French Lieutenant's Woman*, *A Maggot*.

Sarah Woodruff is at once utterly inexplicable and absolutely believeable. And her believeability extends to the unthinkable. As well as we "understand" her, we cannot choose the "right" ending any more than Fowles can.

Humans are creatures of dizzying Hazard. I once heard Richard Loewentin argue that even if behavior could be "determined" by complete knowledge of motives and stimuli, as the social Darwinists believe, the sheer volume of those motives and causes would allow virtual free will. Even so, no depth of understanding can determine Sarah's behavior, no fount of self-knowledge binds her to any course.

Chance circumstances, trivial as the nail lost from the horse's shoe, trigger the chaotic avalanche of the action after the incredible sex scene. So it is in life; the trivial becomes the deciding element.

I lost a Sarah, as randomly and as much through my own error as Charles did. And I remain as uncertain as he of the magnitude of that loss, however familiar I am with the scale of my grief. What a heartbreaking book, what terrible truths.

This superb play by Shakespeare somehow reminded me of Antigona, the first play which directly examined the always complex interplay and usual confrontation between political reason and moral reason. This play is an excellent account of the immediately previous and subsequent days of Julius Caesar's assasination by Brutus, his best friend, and other conspirators. Brutus is persuaded by the resentful Cassius that Caesar has betrayed Rome by abandoning the Republic and turning to Dictatorship. Brutus gets to be convinced that, in order to save the Republic, Caesar must be killed. This puts him in a great dilemma, for he loves Caesar and he's his closest friend. Here we see in an acute form the way in which political power gets in conflict with morality and feelings. Friendship, power and betrayal are the basic subjects of this excellent piece of work.

This was the first play performed at the Globe Theatre. For that reason alone, this play deserves special attention. But the characters, the language, and this interesting situation represent Shakespeare's finest efforts. Cassius is ruthless with a malicious attitude. But he honestly fears what Caesar will do if he is crowned. Brutus is a good and honest man. He contemplates joining Cassius to kill Caesar despite the fact that Caesar loves him as a friend. (In history as well, Caesar was notably kind to Brutus.) But yet he too fears that if Caesar is crowned, Rome will bleed. Mark Antony is convincing as Caesar's loyal aid who SEEMS insignificant at first. But after Caesar is killed, he emerges as the most powerful and intelligent character in the play. What makes this play so phenomenal is that we can easily understand and sympathize with any of these major characters. (Even though they are on opposite sides.) What's left? Only chilling omens like the Soothsayer, the storm, the ghost of Caesar, etc. Only memorable passages like Mark Antony's famous 'honorable' speech. If you like this play, I suggest the B & W version where James Mason does Brutus, John Gielgud does Cassius, and Marlon Brando does Mark Antony.

This is certainly one of Shakespeare's greatest works. Every individual character has been perfectly planned before the play was written, and each has his/her own unique characteristics. The plot is well-known, but Shakespeare adds the themes of betrayal, love, and distrust into the mix, making it a nonforgetable story. This is definately a masterpiece to be reread over and over again. LONG LIVE JULIUS CAESAR! GO SM!! WE ARE HIS #1 FANS!!!

This book gives the average biology (or non-biology) student not only an overview of cell-biology, but gives in-depth information on nearly any subject regarding this matter.

It easy to read, starts on the basics before explaining complicated matters and it got the BEST illustrations i have ever seen in such a book!

My opinion is, that anyone only remotely scientifically interested in the subject of cell-biology should get this book!

This edition of Molecular Cell Biology represents the tremendous effort of the authors in presenting the concepts of many important cutting edges of molecular biology. Some references are from "1999" publication. The size of the text is smaller than the previous edition because some of the sections are omitted. Most of them deal with the classical experiments that give rise to the modern concepts of particular topics that we know much about nowadays. If you would like to learn more, you can easily find them in the older edition of the text. The figures drawn throughout the text are clear and beautiful. The explanations that link the text to the figures are easy to understand. The questions at the end of each chapter are especially designed for students who wish to take MCAT exam...again if you want to practice with the more advanced questions, you can find them the previous edition. Overall, despite its expensive cost, this book is an excellent one to help you learn much more about the current molecular and cell biology.

As you can imagine, no text book is a must read, but it certainly is a must own for any student of cell biology or biological scientists, from undergraduate, graduate, medical student, to the graduated faculty member. A useful text with great figures and an excellent accompanying CD.

This book hardly dives into the intricate details needed for an experienced developer and it's contents are too shallow for a DBA. This book is basically a bunch of facts gathered from various resources and pasted together. The author states facts and presents tables without any explanation as to why or how sql server behaves but presents common trivial tasks in a cookbook fashion.

Some of the material presented in this book is innacurate or outdated and no longer applies to SQL Server 7. For a technical book that has taken almost two years of effort, you would expect much more and should be devoid of factual errors such as "a terabyte is 1000 megabytes" (page 399).

Despite it's shortcommings, you will find SQL Server 7 Developer's Guide a reasonable reference for the average database programmer, however if you want good advice from "experts" pertaining to SQL Server 7 who write from experience rather than present information easily obtained from online manuals (which becomes outdates very quickly) I recommend Inside SQL Server 7 from Microsoft Press.

The SQL Server 7 Developer's Guide provided me with an excellent management overview of this re-designed relational database software and much serious in-depth support for making SQLServer 7 a part of the new standard set of windows applications packages. The content and structure is fresh and not a rewrite of material for earlier versions of SQLServer that appends new product features. The Developer's Guide is especially well-suited to someone, like myself, who does not have a previous investment in older SQL applications but is ready to bring SQLServer 7 onboard now because it will be easier to use and its applications will be customizabile with Visual Basic. The code samples on the CD will be a real aide to me. I found the material on the SQL-Transact language and coverage of all (old and new) MicroSoft connectivity methods for database applications clear and practical.

This is an excellent book presenting an overview of the administration aspects of SQL Server 7.0. I myself am a developer and have just set up SBS 4.5 at home and am learning the intracasies of managing SQL Server 7.0 along with developing n tier Clinet/Server applications. This book is interesting to read (which I might add is rare among technical books) and holds my attention. I only wish more books were written this clear and concise. There are so many books out there which are rip off's and shouldn't even be allowed to be on the market. Hats off to the authors and the publishers for this book!!