Daily employed subjects, very good explaineds and an useful INDEX to found what you need. That is aplicable to the whole serie "Access xxx Developer's Handbook". I own all of them!. The best books about MsAccess.

Microsoft had the guts to simply stop DAO code in place (3.6 is it) and it was such an ugly mess to use to write client server applications that its just as well. Now there's ADO, which is like RDO (which you could only get by buying Visual Basic, Professional Edition, but now RDO is no longer being developed or improved), and ADO is also like PowerBuilder in its syntax and function, primarily in using a universal and extremely flexible connection object to link to the data source.

The authors of this book (and the companion Volume One) attempt to help the average developer make the transition from DAO to the new ADO syntax and as such the books are a bit longer than they would be if they were only explaining the new ADO syntax and the example ADO code in the book.

There needs to be a more sophisticated ten volume work (by the same authors, as their writing style and the usefulness of their examples simply has no equal in the ACCESS realm) that covers the entire Client Server design process.

Now that you can get MSDE (which is SQL 7.0 for all intents and purposes) for free with Acess2000, there is no reason that any multi-user application should use the Jet for storing the data files. The drawback of having to learn how to use MSDE/SQL7.0 as a data server is really not that bad, the main hassle is that you don't get the nice window display of the MSDE objects (tables, users, functions, etc) that comes with SQL7.0 and also there is no interactive SQL 'window' in Access that would allow you to write and run SQL7.0 SQL strings to build your data objects, etc. But surely someone will create a shareware program that provides most of this information, and it would be one of the few shareware programs I'd actually purchase.

In a word, don't expect this book to provide all the exact code you'd need for a professional application. These authors did not attempt to create a cookbook to be used for direct use, rather it is a comprehensive first step to learning the new ADO system of connecting ACCESS to a server backend (with many examples of similar DAO code, many times both sets of code are used in the same function, with comments to allow one or the other to be 'turned on/off'). I sure wish I'd had this two years ago when I began writing a client/server program, as it would have saved a tremendous amount of time and helped me make a solid, quick, and coherent application in a very short time.

One last note, the little 'self attaching' subform that implements record navigation is worth the price of the entire book (its in Volume One, but you can't, logically, buy this book without also buying Volume One, they refer to each other a great deal and together they are quite comprehensive) and its just one of the little goodies on the CD-ROM. By so meticulously explaining how this subform 'links' itself to the events (called 'sinking the events') of the 'parent' form its placed in, the authors give you enough information to try this same technique in other ways.

This is the strength of this two volume set, how it educates rather than attempting to be a cookbook of professional code for enterprise applications. There are no other ACCESS2000 books by other publishers that even come close to the level of utility and clarity of these authors. One wishes they'd now write the SQL7.0 'backend' Handbook as well.

Anyone who's ever purchased one of the Access Developer Handbooks will find this incredible Enterprise Edition is a must have! The code samples on the CD alone are worth the cost of the book. The writing is clear and thorough and the samples are excellent and (so far) bug free.

Data Access Pages, ADPs, MSDE, ADO, Multi-User Issues, Security, it's all here. Thanks to Litwin, Getz, & Gilbert for yet another great book!

The only thing good about this book is the cover.

After 30 years experience in the Space Program, NASA, and deep Space probes, I have to say this is one of the more intellectuall accurate, and stimulating stories I have read. I am an Clarke fan, having read 2001 when it first came out in 1968, but the combination of Clarke's vision and Preuss's writing skills makes this Venus Prime Series a set of books you will not be able to put down!

Sparta is the name of a bio-enahnced young woman. She wakes everyday, knowing nothing of the day last past. Then one day Sparta's keen senses trip a deep mechanistic response to escape where she is. Only minutes later she finds herself in a mega-fast mega-powerful attack helicopter; somehow, she knows exactly how to fly it... From then on she will have to assume a new identity - hiding in the open as an elect officer. She knows only that she's looking for her true self - she will solve many other mysteries along the way. This is a fantastic trip and an excellent read! Also, it is difficult to get all six (6) in the series - if you find them (all) BUY THEM AT ONCE! It has taken me three years to collect them all.

This book contains a lot of substance in terms of applying monastic principles to daily life. It is well thought out and I extracted some useful information from it.

However, being a Traditional Catholic, certain things in the book were major sources of irritation for me. The author regards Karl Rahner and Teilhard de Chardin as brilliant theologians! There is also a lot said about Catholic Monks learning from Buddist Monks! This book is definately a product of post concilliar thinking.

Your position on eccumenism will determine whether you like or dislike this book.

I have had a hard time thinking of this book by it's main title: Beyond the Walls. I have been calling it (in my mind) Monastic Wisdom for Everyday Life which is, of course, its subtitle.

I had hoped for more personal stories of life at the monastery, and then life outside the monastery with the author putting his monastic lessons into practice. While there was a good bit of that, there was also a lot of philosophizing which I often found tedious. I felt as if I had to slog through the theory to get to the next practical application.

Nonetheless, the lessons learned were valuable, and I'm glad I own this book.

Wilkes offers us an invitation into monastic spirituality, not for monks this time, but for you and me, for our daily lives, right where we live, in the midst of day-timers, cell-phones and soccer practices. For another book like "Beyond the Walls", look up THE FAMILY CLOISTER: BENEDICTINE WISDOM FOR THE HOME, by David Robinson (New York, NY: Crossroad, 2000, 192pp., trade paperback). Welcome to the cloister without walls!

Great reference book, though NOT portable. Because this book came out in 1988, it needs updating: bird name changes have occured and there is more information from research to add to the wealth of information it already contains. Birder's Handbook uses various editions of field guides as reference points, that is, it points to particular pages of those field guides for a bird illustration or photo as well as range maps. And because those field guides have been updated in the intervening years, the page numbers are not true.
I look forward to another edition of this book!

This is a good book but you have to get used to the format and organization. To be honest I generally use one of my other books for id and basic info then I go to this book for more details. The details are fantastic though. I'd be very sad if I didn't have this in my collection because I learn a lot each time I use it. The format/use of symbols is just a bit awkward. Shouldn't deter you though - its great to have on hand

When I'm not on the trading floor, I spend my free time watching birds. I would say that it wasn't until I picked up this essential birder's guide that I became an experienced and knowledgeable birder. This book increased my ability to identify birds, thus making bird watching infinitely more enjoyable. Since purchasing the Birder's Handbook, my weekend hobby has blossomed into an intense love for birds. I highly reccommend this to anyone with any level of interest in birding.

I just returned from a trip from Ecuador where I used extensively Volume II of Ridgely et als' book. Having already some acqaitance with both the birdlife of the Neotropics and the bird books on the region I found the plates and the text still very useful when identifying the birds I and my travel mates saw. The weight and the size of the book is, however, making its use very difficult out in the field. The paperback editions did not hold very well during the three weeks, and publishing the book in 3 rather than two volumes could have helped that a lot. Even though the plates do not live up to the quality of the standard dictated by Guy Tudor in the, yet, two-volume handbook on South american birds, but I still found the pictures very informative. The text on habitat, altitudinal distribution, call, and the range maps often helped to narrow down the number of look-alike-species to a manageable level, especially when identifying hummingbirds or tyrant flycatchers.
All in all (and getting back to the question in the title) I could not call this book a champion in the league of field guides for being overweight (just try to carry it on the 'D' trail near Bellavista), although it truly deserves the four stars for the text and the plates alike. If you use it as a 'hotel' rather than a field guide or need it as a reference work for your home library (or have the plates and the text of Vol. II rebound separetely, as I did) you will appreciate the amount of information gathered in this book.

What a set of books, no doubt about that! For the first time, there is a full set of very useful color plates for one of the core South American countries. It is certainly a great accomplishment to have all the species pictured in color and on a more or less consistent standard. However, I do not agree with other reviewers who rave about the plates. Too many of the bird pictures have an overall flat appearance, with the color rendition being too simplistic or too bold. And while a good number of the birds are depicted in good or even unnessessarily large size, others would have benefitted from a larger sized rendition. Just because a species is small does not mean it has to be depicted in a diminutive size, unless there are larger species of the same group on the plate. Thus, while the plates are most useful, it is nevertheless disappointing to see that the overall standard (except for the plates being all in color) is rather lower than what was already published decades ago e.g. in "Birds of Colombia".
The field guide volume has excellent range maps and very helpful comprehensive texts. A somewhat more compact layout would have allowed for a smaller overall size of the book, however. The way to do it is being demonstrated in the book itself. The texts facing the plates use the suggested compact layout most convincingly. Spanish bird names are given in the main text, but, unfortunately, there is no index for them. To conclude, this is by far the more useful field guide for the general area than the also new "Birds of Peru" with its almost non-existing texts, lack of range maps and much less satisfactory plates. (P.S. This is a revised review as I think my first version did not do the book justice.)

I just received my copy of the The Birds of Ecuador and am very
pleased with it. I think the plates are very good with a lot of
detail. I compared plates for the same species in the book: A Guide To The Birds of Costa Rica, an excellent book also, and
found the detail to be better in The Birds of Ecuador. I also
really like the distribution maps for each species. I am
planning to do a birding trip to Ecuador and the maps will help
in making the travelling plans.

Richard Paul Russo's superior series combines the best of the Science Fiction and Mystery genres into one package. Detective Frank Carlucci is an honest cop and a good detective in the hopeless corrupt world of the mid-21st century. He is determined to do the right thing despite the potentially negative consequences. The real strength of the book is the vivid desciptions of the streets of San Francisco that leave you feeling that it is inevitable that the world will turn out this way. Any of the books in this series, which include "Destroying Angel," and "Carlucci's Heart," are well worth owning.

While not as strong as Destroying Angel, I found Carlucci's Edge to be an intense ride. It takes the reader through the near future tecno-streets of San Francisco and is a hell of a lot of fun. The story is good and has a strong plot. I like the gritty background and I hope to see many more novels by Mr. Russo in the future.

This was the first Richard Paul Russo novel I read and so remains something of a favorite. I haven't been able to add anything substantive to the excellent reviews already here, so have refrained from posting a "me too" review.

But there's an angle which perhaps deserves to be mentioned, and that is Russo's use of the "backstory." All of his Carlucci novels IMPLY much of what has happened to society without really explaining it, and describe new technologies and fads almost in passing. The comparisons to "Blade Runner" refer to this fully-created future world of which our story concerns just a small corner.

For this reason, I found reading the novels out of order was not really that much of a detriment. The backstory of "Carlucci's Edge" was largely explained by "Destroying Angel," and the backstory of "Carlucci's Heart" was explained by "Carlucci's Edge," but these details are such a small part of this wholly-created new world that your bewilderment quickly settles into a willing suspension of disbelief anyway.

So don't be afraid to read them out of order. Once you've read one, you'll want them all anyway.

Paul Vitale's book "Are You Puzzled by the Puzzle of Life" is one of the best books if not the best book I've ever read. His life experience and his interaction with others have led him to write an incredibly motivational and inspirational book. The quotes, although some of them are somewhat familiar, are relevant and helpful. I have had the pleasure of meeting Paul and his personality most certainly shines through in this book. He lives every bit of what he advises others to do. I would recommend this book to any person at every single stage of his or her life.

I have not only read the book, but have been fortunate enough to meet its author. Mr. Vitale's enthusiasm shows on every page, and while he dispenses what would best be described as good old-fashioned common sense that would be helpful to a wide range of readers, he is obviously gearing his advice toward younger people. This is a concise volume written in plain English, and accessible to even the most jaded of teenagers. As a secondary school educator, I am constantly exploring ways to more effectively communicate with students who ask me about some of life's important issues, and now I at least have a textbook.

Wow! This is one exceptional young man. Not only have I read his book, but I have attended a seminar at which he spoke, and I must say that I have never encountered such a positive, energetic, positive, kind person.

"Are You Puzzled By the Puzzle of Life" gives common-sense advice for finding your niche in life, using enthusiasm as your secret weapon, and making a difference in the lives of those around you as well as your own life.

Paul has collected quotes and "words of wisdom" from successful people all over the country - most of whom he has either spoken with personally or met through his motivational-speaking engagements.

The messages in this book bear repeating - it's never too late to adopt a positive, enthusiastic outlook on life. And Paul helps you put the pieces together.

I was a cop of some sort for over 30 years, and don't believe I've ever read a book with such a far-fetched plot or cast of characters. From the judge to his high-profile law partner, virtually everyone is a pedophile. If they're not a pedophile, then they've were molested when they were the operative age, which is conveniently about the age of several dozen children who come to the USA via some underground pipeline. Mr. Bishop truly does a great job of developing characters and building the story. However, the complexity of the story and the subtle nuances he continually throws in finally reaches a point where, if you don't read it all in one setting or a few nights, you completely lose track of what...is happening. I certainly liked some parts of the book, but the cover describes Mr. Bishop as "the new Joseph Wambaugh", or something similar, and that is certainly not the case....

Paul Bishop has been writing cop novels for about a decade now. He started with a book that was a better premise than a novel, about a pair of patrolmen trying to win a bet by driving their patrol car from LA to Las Vegas and back in one shift without anyone noticing. It wasn't quite as good as it sounds. He's written several books since, trying different characters. One was a detective who was also a soccer player or something. The one he seems to have finally decided is a hit is Fey Croaker, who gets called Frog Lady (frogs croak) and who's been assigned to LAPD's West Side Division for three books. In this fourth entry, the author appparently decided to up the ante and promote her, and her "team", to Robbery Homicide Division downtown.

This was the first of several annoyances in this book. I don't know this, but I suspect that LAPD is like any other large organization: they don't transfer teams like this around their department's organizational structure. Now there are mitigating circumstances: Bishop mentions an outgoing chief of police, and a new one trying to shake things up. Still it was hard for me to buy that they would do this.

Next, no sooner do Fey and her cohorts get downtown than they are assigned a real hot potato: the torture-murder of a prominent black woman who's an attorney and child molestation crusader, and also the sister of a police commissioner, and the daughter of a judge. Soon, the case develops into a hunt for missing children who have entered an "underground railroad" where they are spirited away from abusive parents who have the law on their side. Just in case things weren't complex enough, the case also takes a historical turn, with a bloody armored car robbery and a shootout involving the police and the Black Panthers from almost thirty years ago proving to be connected with the case.

There are interesting, if a bit eccentric, characters throughout the book. The cops are fun, and well-defined. The dialog is well-written. The plot is a bit like something Michael Connelly or Jeffrey Deaver would concoct. Everything's logical and believable, but at the end you wonder if anything this complex ever occurs, and if it does, do the detectives on the case ever solve them?

Given that, I did enjoy the book, and would recommend it.

This book had everything: intrigue, graphic details of a bloody murder, and the biting sarcasm of Fey Croaker. It is a true work of art. Ironically it was the first of the series I had read, so now I am scrambling to read the other books. To anybody who is a fan of the NBC TV show LAW & ORDER, I recomend this book.