The author is a well known evolutionary scientist and dinosaur illustrator and he has some interesting things to tell about in this book. For instance, the ancestor-descendant relationship of to birds and dinosaurs, most of the conventional thinking is that dinosaurs evolved into birds, but the author believes that on occasion the rolls could be reversed. That there may be many dinosaurs that were the secondarily flightless descendants of creatures we would think as birds.

This is contraversial, but the author makes his point with in-depth analyses of bird and theropod phylogenetics. There are many line-drawings that do a comparetive analysis, wing dimensions, avian/dinosaurian metabolics... this book has very detailed information. But, the book is written so that the layperson with a little scientific knowledge will unterstand the author intent.

This book has stunning illustrations throughout and well detailed bibliography making the information found in this book believable. There is a detail appendix toward the back of the book that covers in detail things of import for the book.

If you are one of the people who has an interest in avian/dinosaurian link this is a must purchase. This is an excellent book as it combines a large amount of technical data with drawings and related bird origins, including the energetics of the origin of avian flight. But, even with this detail, it is highly readable.

What really made this book interesting for me was the authors obvious well-read background, which came out in the "Roots" sections. It's here that you can see the sources for some of the many tropes of Who (and all TV SF, for that matter).

I was a bit put off by the insistence of the authors to find a gay subtext in virtually every Who episode. Apparently British Who fandom has a very vocal guy section, some of who are intent on proving that many Who characters are gay. Whatever floats your boat.....

If you're a Who fan...well, you probably already own this! If you're not, you still will get a chuckle out of this book.

Example of a Dialogue Triumph: "Listen to that! It's the sound of the planet screaming its rage." That was from Inferno, where the Doctor is referring to the parallel Earth that will soon become engulfed in molten lava. From Colony In Space, when Jo asks on any other living things on Uxarius, Mary Ashe answers: "There's no animal life, just a few birds and insects." Now that's a Dialogue Disaster!

And finally, to find out what they thought of it, there's The Bottom Line section. While I see pointing out errors useful, there is a clear border between justifiable mistakes and petty nitpicking. In the latter case, well, there could be an unstated explanation. Why, does everything have to be explained for the benefit of the viewer? When I was in the now-defunct Friends of Doctor Who fan club, one member disparagingly referred to it as the Disco Guide.

One justifiable "goof," for example, is the in The Three Doctors, where UNIT, being a top secret establishment, has a sign advertising its headquarters, as well as Lethbridge-Stewart's name listing him as commanding officer. That's understandable. I mean, to use a similar example, would the powers that had Kennedy killed have a sign reading "Military Industry Complex-Assassinating JFK since 1963" on their headquarters? Puh-leeze!

An easily explained "goof" is when Tegan speaks to Kukurtji, the ancient-era aborigine, in Four To Doomsday. Cornell and company complained that Tegan responded in the correct language and era. Well, pardon me, guys, but remember The Masque Of Mandragora, when the Doctor explained to Sarah that her ability to understand foreign languages was a Time Lord gift he shared with her? Surely it applies there? So there!

Which of my favorite stories do they give the highest honors to? Spearhead From Space, Inferno, The Pirate Planet, Remembrance Of The Daleks, and The Curse Of Fenric, to name a few. Lowest honors? The Time Monster, Monster Of Peladon, Planet Of The Spiders, The Android Invasion, Time-Flight, and Time And The Rani. Well, actually, there aren't any Who stories I totally loathe but I do admit there are some that are worth watching but aren't as good as others.

The troika also do not look favorably on Dalek and Cybermen stories and go out of their way to find flaws. There must be a full page of flaws listed in Resurrection Of The Daleks! The Invasion doesn't get shredded as much as Earthshock and Attack Of The Cybermen, or Silver Nemesis. It's very generous in rating Timelash, surprising considering its reputation as the worst Who story ever.

There are elaborate histories on the Daleks and Cybermen in here. They also point out that Loch Ness is referred to in two stories, Terror Of The Zygons and Timelash. One can assume that the Zygons, with their obviously superior power, killed the Borad. Well, maybe they did.

Still, I use this as a valuable reference guide, and a work comparing analyses of various Dalek, Cybermen, and Earth Empire histories with other Who works. I've gained an appreciation for program continuity.

I purchased the "Pocket Essentials" recently and was extremely dissapointed. With this volume to compare it too...well, actually, there is no comparison. The "Guide" is quite simply better.

A faithful Paradigm fan,
Ophelia

My favorite is the "Montana Double date" (Two unsaven cowhands and thier dogs in beat car.) And while I like Montanian's this picture of the 2 near-do-well's and their dogs just was great. So if you have sensitive skin, and can't take having your state mentioned in jest don't buy this book.

I also like the clearly articulated and illustrated advice about how to augment text with graphics, and how to select the views and associated graphics to document requirements, specifications and the finished architecture. An example of how this book goes beyond documenting just architectures is a project in which I was engaged two years ago. One of the major deliverables was a set of operations guides. While this is related to architecture with respect to how its used after it's in production, there were no books that fully described how to go about it in a coherent way. Using the advice and techniques in this book I could have greatly improved upon what I did produce. While I cannot change the past, you can be sure that I'll use this book to its fullest the next time I need to write ops guides, especially when it comes to showing component and connector views, and elements and relations.

If you do technical writing either professionally or as a part of your job get this book and keep it nearby. If you read and use the material you're ability to communicate will surely improve, and you'll be able to tailor your documentation to each segment of your audience (business and technical), as well as to clearly communicate information. You'll also learn much about managing the documentation process itself.

First, this book stands out as one of the clearest descriptions of how to not only document architectures, but how to manage the documentation project. Second, this is not a dogmatic prescription for how to document, but instead gives a set of techniques and views that can be used singularly or in combination to produce documentation that meets the needs of all technical and business stakeholders.

When I read the brief predecessor to this book I liked the way different view types and styles were introduced, but was left to my own imagination and creativity to employ them based on scant descriptions. This book rectifies those gaps by providing comprehensive guidance on how to create each view type and when it's most appropriate for inclusion into the documentation project. I was also intrigued by the earlier document because it discussed 'information chunking', which is the basis for a technique in which I'm trained and certified called Information Mapping©. The book expands on the earlier work, and it turns out that the material is not only consistent with Information Mapping© at a high level, but also shares many core principles. To me this is another plus because it will introduce readers who have not benefited from formal Information Mapping© training to powerful and effective document design and development techniques.

Another strong point about this book is the attention paid to managing the documentation process - it's one thing to write clear documentation and quite another to manage a process where many writers contribute to the documentation. I also liked the illustration examples, which epitomize how to effectively portray technical detail, and the discussion of other methods of documenting architecture.

In my opinion this book should become the standard for developing and managing documentation. It belongs on the desk of every technical writer and on the bookshelf of every architect and designer. I waited a year for this book and it was well worth the wait.

The appendix material on HTML is not needed in the book. Anyone interested in that topic is probably going to buy another more complete book on the topic (perhaps even another Deitel book).

The biggest problem, though, is that this book is becoming very dated. It was made available in 2000. Much has changed since then. Most textbooks of this sort are updated every 2 years. This one needs to be updated to a second edition.