Just like any Java books, I suggest buy one from Sun, it's easier on your wallet

This is rather a large investment, even taking into account what computer books go for these days, but if you learn better by doing than sitting on the couch and simply reading, then this is the training package for you.

The fact that this book and interactive CD-ROM set get you so involved with literally hundreds of programs and quiz questions (most of which have answers) makes it much more effective than any other Java book out there. You learn by doing, and you do so at your own pace. It's like a real live classroom with a pause, rewind, and fast-forward button.

I found the "Cyber-Classroom" companion CD-ROM effective not only because of the excercises but also because every example and figure in the book is included and explained to you via audio by one of the authors. From there you can either launch the program to see what it does or save the code to disk to tweak it as you wish. If only the other Java books that line my shelf had CD-ROMs that were *half* as helpful. They usually end up being used as drink coasters.

I enjoyed reading the first edition of the "Java How To Program" so much that I purchased this set to learn about all the new features of Java 1.1 by reading it over and doing the new excercises. This second edition has code that has been totally rewritten for Java 1.1.

Bottom line: if you want to learn Java buy this set.

This is a book for those who want to be prepared but made the mistake of thinking this book would help. The author has a firm grasp of the obvious and of how to type, pounding the obvious into the readers head until they are effectively moot points. Their is little structure to the book. Information is presented in long paragraphs which ramble around the information until the reader gives up and moves on to the next paragraph. Clear thoughts and segues from one topic to the next are as endagered in this book as Snickers bar in a Systems Administrator's cubicle. While the author seems to know his subject the reader has to work at gleaning the useful from the long winded.

The four redeaming qualities are: 1. Most of the information you want is in there, somewhere. 2. The appendices. 3. The Self Test Software self test CD. 4. The plug of Amazon.com on page 166.

This book is great! It gave me all the insight I needed to get through the Microsoft Exams. Told all of the "tricks" necessary to pass these difficult exams! Two thumbs up!

This could have been excellent, and does in fact include many very nice, albeit tasteful, photos of the Corrs. They are all related, three sisters and one brother. I have always been impressed that a group of siblings could stand each other and are able to keep a group together without constant arguing. Even more interesting, I expected to find out more about what goes on behind closed doors with these people, particularly in the dressing room they share while on tour. But there is a lot of good nuts'n'bolts information about the workings of this talented band.

If you love the Corrs and their music then you will love this book. Anyone who calls themself a Corrs fan, this is a must have.
The photograph is great and is gives you a better understanding of the Corrs really are.

I'd hoped to find a balanced, no-nonsense look at the life of Mother Theresa, but this wasn't it. After some 200 pages, my attempts to shake off growing annoyance at the author's cynicism and derision faltered. While I was open to the possibility that Mother Theresa might have had the same human frailties that we all share, I was disappointed that the author couldn't just accept that and move on. Instead, he seems to revel in gleefully attributing the most profane and egotistical motives to the reverend Mother's actions and words, but only rarely supplies any evidence to support his speculations. It seems at times that he is truly perplexed at the subject's motives, and thus failing to understand them, he merely constructs what he thinks should have been the rational approach. In the end, I don't really care what Paul Williams thinks of Mother Theresa...I want to know objective facts. I'll be more than happy to come to my own conclusions.

The only book that presents the true story of Mother Teresa.
It is shocking and provocative.

Anne Anderson's tome on the cube teapot is without doubt the definitive history on the subject. Of special interest to steamship china collectors is the impressive number of photographs showing the cube tea service in use on board the old Cunard ocean liners. There were a number of different patterns applied to the service and Anne provides us with an excellent photographic reference of each one. Loaded with vintage photographs, this book is a must have for collectors of this type of china. I am so happy to see books like this documenting something that would otherwise be lost forever that I am reluctant to offer criticism. The narrative in the book, while thorough, could use a bit more editing to smooth it out. There are several typos in the book as well as instances of paragraphs with random facts thrown in that are irrelevant to the main idea being presented. Hence my rating of three stars.

I purchased this book to learn more about the cube shaped (and space saving) tea sets used on the Cunard ocean liners in the 1920's through the 1960's. It is a wonderful resource for collectors of ocean liner memorabilia but it also tells a facinating story of the development of the cube teapot. This book discusses the English pastime of taking tea and the quest to design the perfect teapot. The end result was a patented cube design produced in beautiful, collectible colors and patterns. This book is a must for collectors and history buffs alike. Happy reading!

A tragically desperate attempt of Bianca Lamblin, the "contingent" by-product of the Simone de Beauvoir/Jean-Paul Sartre "essential" relationship, to retrospectively appropriate her life after Journal de guerre and Letters to Sartre revealed all the chilling detachment with which Simone de Beauvoir adroitly manipulated her as the unsuspecting victim of the "threesome." Despite her claim to have finally regained the status of a subject of her own story, Lamblin's final stance as a victim undermines her narrative. One almost wishes she would have stopped a couple of paragraphs short of the end. Her final decision to reject the experience as "having done her only wrong" leaves her with all the pain she tried to alleviate by writing.

She started the book with a purpose of making her life cohere in the face of betrayal. Her naive loyalty and guilelessness help her "cling instinctively to life," as she seems to find consolation in her simple moral choices and unselfish devotion. Despite her plain, predictable, unengaging style, I sympathized with Lamblin in her struggle to maintain a precarious balance between objectivity and self-vindication. She tries to distance herself from Simone de Beauvoir, stressing their differences and disengaging herself from her famous lover's philosophical influence by reclaiming her own war-time experience as a Jew and choosing to have a family and children. And yet she continues to be constantly tormented by her inferiority to the existential duo - her attacks on Sartre's "revolutionary" ideas, for instance, remain purely emotional. She is profoundly not at peace with herself, irritated, angry, and oftentimes behaves like a hurt child, throwing the same words back at her offenders ("Truly, I would call THEIR intelligence monstrous and at the same time downright feeble").

And yet her innate grace and her perhaps never completely squelched attachment to "the Beaver" make her stop short from launching an open smearing campaign. Because she is keenly aware that the reader will be perceiving her book as an attempt at "retributive justice," she makes an effort to stay as objective as possible, which, in my opinion, is exactly what prevents her from venting her hurt feelings. Despite a simplified Lacanian explanation of her life Lamblin offers at the very end of the book, her story is a tragic example of an unresolved conflict.

But perhaps what vindicates her is a sense the reader gets of a fundamental private turmoil and instability on which Simone de Beauvoir's seemingly "philosophically justified" world was based. It comes as a nice reprieve for someone who was tempted to make her ideas from The Second Sex into life principles.

On the surface, A Disgraceful Affair is Bianca Lamblin's account of her brief triangular relationship with Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre and how that affair affected her life long after Sartre's, then Beauvoir's, romantic interest waned. Its carefully guarded sentences reveal a woman who has been deepley hurt by her mentors but who is being painstakingly careful in her effort to be fair as she sets the record straight. Readers looking for juicy tidbits will need to look elsewhere (Lamblin describes Sartre as a charming wooer but an unskilled lover, and does not waste ink elaborating).

If the reader takes the facts as the author presents them--and there is nothing implausible or erractic in what Lamblin relates--what unfolds is a brief, startlingly clear reflection on what it means to evolve one's own workable philosophy of life based on the cards one is dealt and the living examples one has to choose from. After her rejection by her existentalist mentors, Lamblin consciously chose a conventional, slightly leftist, life. Her mentors' narcissism seems to have turned her away from a life focused on pursuing celebrity and getting published (aside from a few academic philosophy articles, A Disgraceful Affair is Lamblin's only published work, one she didn't begin writing until she was in her seventies and all the key figures in the story had died). Unlike her mentors, she chose to marry and have children, decisions that disturbed and disgusted Beauvoir.

Those looking for portraits of Sartre and Beauvoir should know that Beauvoir (unfortunately called "the Beaver" throughout the book, a nickname that might have been better left untranslated) is the more fully realized. Lamblin renewed her relationship with Beauvoir after the War and continued to have platonic meetings with her for the rest of Beauvoir's life. Lamblin's depiction of Beauvoir's life after Sartre's death is one of profound pathos and emotional disenfranchisement. By that point, Beauvoir's alcoholism was quite advanced and the reader senses that the great thinker and prolific writer's death must have been a lonely, troubled, and confusing end indeed.

The reader should be warned that there is a sort of craftlessness to Lamblin's writing. For me, this added to the sense of authenticity of what she was attempting to communicate. She often tells the reader what she is going to say--or why she is relating a particular incident--before launching into her account of an event. This tends to pull the reader up short. As off-putting as this might be, for me it further convinced me of the author's essential guilelessness and I ultimately judged this practice as awkward but not offensive. In addition, I suspect that Julie Plovnick's translation of the French original is a little wooden and literal-minded (for instance, she translates "lucide" as "lucid" in a context where I suspect "perceptive" might have been the intended meaning).

Readers interested in the way people, and especially women, make meaning of the troubles life throws their way will enjoy this book. Other books along this line that I have enjoyed are Girl Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen, The Liar's Club by Mary Karr, and A Loving Gentleman: The Love Story of William Faulkner and Meta Carpenter by Meta Carpenter Wilde and Orin Borsten.

This is written for a british school person taking his or her O and or A levels. It is an enjoyeable read which put Disraeli in a comptempary historical view point. Yes, the Author actually compares Disraeli and his government to the tories of the 80's under the iron rule of Thatcher.

Paul Smith attempts the impossible - to write a brief life - of the complex, remarkable and enigmatic Jewish politician and author Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield. Smith almost pulls it off but another 50 or so pages would have given him much more scope to portray Disraeli's major contributions to the politics of identity, social and political reform and the recognition of the inevitability of working class emancipation. Smith allows his fascination with Dizzy's Jewishness and "outsider" status to overwhelm the other facets of his character and beliefs. Part of Dizzy's greatness as a politician was the ability to simultaneously portray himself as the ultimate outsider and the loyal, patriotic "insider." Until the election of Ramsey MacDonald as the first Labour Prime Minister in the 1920s, Disraeli stands alone as the most unlikely Prime Minister Britain ever had. Smith's book includes some good quotes from commentators such as Gladstone and Michael Foot. A book deserving a fuller treatment in its second edition but still a very useful introduction to its subject for young students of 19th century history.

Well, I had high hopes for this. The summary on the back sounded very interesting, but it ended up being rather boring. It seemed like the author was trying to write poetry in prose form. The idea was kind of cool, but it really lacked something. Parts of the different descriptions were intriguing, but in the end it left you wondering exactly what happened. I know it was about "True" life in Guatemala, but that's it. Some ideas were worth pondering and I recommend this for a suicidal college poet, but not anyone else.

"Set in Guatemala, these spare and beautiful tales are linked by themes of magic, violence, and the fragility of existence. Paul Bowles' translation perfectly captures Rey Rosa's stories of the haunted lives of ordinary people in present-day Central America."

Before I picked up this book, I did not realize that it was written from an LDS (Mormon) perspective. I felt that it had marginal value for those in an evangelical setting.

This is written from the perspective of the RLDS (Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints). not the LDS. The RLDS and LDS churches shared only a few years of history (15 I think), at which time the LDS went west. The RLDS church is more the church of Kirtland, and never believed in such things as polygamy, baptism of the dead, eternal marriage, or that men could become Gods. The RLDS church also has women in the priesthood.

I think that this is a terrible book. It is boring, lengthy, and worded so that you will fall asleep after 10 minutes of reading

This book is the best text book for AP U.S. History classes!