It's a good reference book if you know how to dance. If you're a beginner and try to learn from this book, you're in deep trouble. Unless you can translate "move you left foot to left, reflex your right knee, shift your weight on to the left on beat 3" description into movement right away, you'll go through one basic movement in hours. If you want to improve your dance skill, it may be helpful. Since I'm a total beginner, I can't say that for sure.

Let's Dance is a fairly comprehensive step by step instruction book best for those with some dance lesson experience. Although the footwork diagrams are a little confusing, the narrative and the pictures help to bring it together. The book itself is well designed in the coffee-table style with excellent photography.

Another reviewer mentioned that swing is not mentioned anywhere in the book. Swing is actually part of the chapter on jive and I found it very helpful.

Go ahead and purchase this book at an affordable price. You will be thrilled to find a profusion of figures peppered with photos of dancing couples in over 10 types of dances ranging from the Standard to the Latin-American.

You will find all the dances that you ever wanted to know in here including the Tango Argentina and this latest volume is a culmination of all of Bottomer's earlier works, but includes newer types like the Vienesse Waltz and the Slow Foxtrot as well as the International Tango. These dance techniques not found in his earlier books give you the popular variations to add 'punch' and finesse to your dancing. Only the Vienesse Waltz chapter is found to be wanting as the technique of the Fleckerls and the Natural and Reverse turns were not included here.

Still, this volume offers good value for money.

The Salt Point, an earlier work by Paul Russell, pales in comparison to his much stronger, more mature effort in The Coming Storm. Both books explore similar topics, including powerfully addictive but unwise relationships and how the choices we make affect those around us. But in The Salt Point, the narrative over-indulges in contemplating the characters rather than simply presenting them and letting the reader draw conclusions. Three of the main characters engage in the kind of endless introspection that would make them insufferable were they real people. Ironically, the character Leigh felt the most real to me, even though he is the story's central enigma.

In short, readers new to Russell should skip this one and head directly for The Coming Storm.

In this book, Paul Russell paints the picture of three friends whose quaint relationship comes to a crashing hault with the arrival of the mysterious Leigh. Different parts of the story are seen through the eyes of different characters. Russell gives much information about the three friends. Anatole, Chris, and Lydia represent a generation that has lost hope. Leigh is a seemingly carefree attractive youth. However, the only glimpse the reader gets of Leigh's character comes from a few of Leigh's dreams. Some argue that Leigh is superficial, but I would argue that Russell intentionally underdeveloped Leigh's character because he wanted to emphasize the older frienship and the fact that Leigh is an outsider. The few pieces of background information the reader gains about Leigh suggest he too has had a rough life. Paul Russell is a great author. With the exception of Sea of Tranquility, his novels are very well-written character studies. His descriptions are beautiful. He is a masterful writer, and this book is one of his best. Do yourself a favor and read this book.

The Salt Point is a wonderful story surrounding the lives of three friends: Lydia, Chris, and Anatole. Throughout the book, the pasts of each is revealed and you learn more about why they act the way they do. Their lives are stagnant and complicated, but satisfying, until Leigh enters the picture. Leigh is a teenager who capitivates the three freinds with his beauty and charm. He likes for everyone to think he's a mystery, in order to keep their attention. Leigh disrupts their lives completely and destroys their misguided happiness. What some people might find too soap operish about the relationships between the four characters, I thought was the greatest strength of Russell as an author because he is able to pull you into the lives of these individuals, as if they are real people, and feel sorrow or anger towards them. How you can just feel your heart ache when you witness how strong Anatole's love for Leigh is that he would suffer so much. When I reached the end of the book, I was disappointed that there wasn't more. I didn't want to leave their world. That is the sign of a great writer.

Paul Allen is a fascinating guy, and this is his only biography. So it is worth reading. This is a well written, though a bit repetitive, short book that won't take long to read. The book retells what he has done, but without a lot of perspective.

Having finished the book, I have only partial answers to the two key questions:

1. What kind of guy is he? This is an unauthorized biography, so the author never got to know Paul Allen. The book gives plenty of anecdotes that hint at what he is like. But I still don't have a sense of who he is.

2. What has he accomplished? The book retells his life, but without perspective. It doesn't really attempt to answer the big question: If Paul Allen had simply kept his Microsoft shares, how would the technology revolution have been different? To what extent is he simply an observer, and to what extent is he a driving force?

How accurate is the book? I knew Paul back in high school (haven't seen him since) and the description of those years is fine. I can't judge the accuracy of the rest of the book, but it bothers me that the author says Paul lived off his Microsoft dividends, when in fact Microsoft has never (until very recently) issued dividends. I wonder how many other details are wrong.

Laura Rich pierces the Allen veil to show the man and the business he has built. This book demystifies the highly private billionaire, Paul Allen, and gives you a first rate look at his life from his upbringing in Seattle as a fledging computer geek, to founding the world's largest software company.
Rich touches on many unexplored angles about Allen's life from his quirky private nature, the roots of the passions that drive his investments; and the nature of his relationships to family, friends and colleagues.
An overall great look at one of the richest men in America.

I saw this book in the bookstore window and was curious. The only
thing I knew about Paul Allen was that he and Bill Gates founded
Microsoft. The book is a fascinating, insightful tale of a per-
plexing multi-billionaire who struggles to grasp the brass ring,
predict again the future of technology, and make it his own. The
author spotlights the reasons for Allen's myriad interests, as
well as, the conflicts between his self-perception as "an idea
man" and an inconsistent venture capitalist. I couldn't put
the book down. Its easy to read, carefully researched, highly
recommended.

This book is poorly organized and poorly indexed. It appears to be written by someone who wants to impress upon others what a great programmer he is but is not concerned with clearly passing on his knowledge. He uses unnecessarily extravagant examples in early chapters to explain relatively simple concepts. He then expects you to constantly flip back to these early chapters while trying to decipher the later chapters. He covers the syntax fairly well but virtually ignores the semantics. The power of C++ programming lies in understanding the semantics of the language - the syntax is trivial. If you are a computer science professional who understands how scoping and function parameter passing is implemented at the cpu and memory level then get Ira Pohl's "Object Oriented Programming Using C++". Pohl tersely explains the semantics and power of C++ without resorting to unnecessarily complicated code examples.

This book is concise and clear and fast moving which might lose some folks who do not notice the quantity and (quality) of information in each page.

Page 50 explains Objects and member functions so simply that you breeze through it "understanding" everything then at page 55 it declares "so now you can write the member functions withdraw and balance yourself" Shock horrors! And you sit up in surprise and sure enough with a little effort and re-reading, you can!

I religeously worked out "quick sort" by hand (as suggested, which is the only way to see it, followed the expansion of this theme later on with the "generic" sort using functional variables and bingo I got it! so much so that when I came across "qsort" in Borland C++ Builder I recognised it instantly and straight away was able to refer back to page 150 as reminder for how to impliment functions passed as variables.

I did not know anything about C++ before this book (I had six C lessons) and it is all I have needed - self taught. But then I am 45 and go real slow!

I didn't have the chance to read the book thoroughly until recently when I have free time to go over it all. I find all the fundamental aspects of the C++ programming has been explained thoroughly and very clearly. But I would not recommend anyone with very little C++ experience to read the book because it's not meant for beginners.

Microsoft has released such a confusing stream of products into the Internet arena, it's hard to keep up with it all. This book provides excellent perspective and historical context for those decisions. I also really enjoyed the compelling writing style of this book, especially on the fascinating charaterizations of the colorful players at Microsoft. A good read for anyone interested in the history of the Internet!

Overall I liked the book because it shows a side of Microsoft, but advocates them in the side of the antitrust trial, and they don't explain how a free web browser earns money.

There's been a lot of blather from competitors about Microsoft's so-called predatory ways -- some of it, I understand, directed at this book. But the real reason Microsoft is so feared and often loathed is that they compete so well. How many companies of Microsoft's size in any industry would be fleet-footed enough to completely reinvent their overall strategy to address a sea change in their market? This book tells you how this remarkable company did it. Get to know the real players who helped turn this battleship around -- and kept Bill Gates very very wealthy.

Paul Levinson asks interesting questions about the history and future of media. Examples include:

Was the invention of alphabetic writing necessary before an abstract religion of monotheism could take root?

Was a printing press needed to make public education economical?

Why did radio (sound with images) survive TV, while silent movies were obliterated by movies with sound?

The most powerful leaders in this century were Hitler, Stalin, Churchill, and Roosevelt. Was it a coincidence that they came to power in the age of radio?

As other amazon reviewers have noted, Levinson's analysis of the future seems less compelling. For me, part of the problem is that he seems to be unaware of some previous writing on critical topics. For example, Levinson's discussion of intellectual property and ownership could have benefitied from familiarity with Brad Cox's work on Superdistribution or Varian and Shapiro's book "Information Rules." And the issue of artificial life is discussed more fully in the book with that title by Steven Levy.

Overall, I think this book provides a solid background in media for a course on the Internet.

This book asks many interesting questions about the history and future of media. Examples include:

1. Why did the sight-only medium of silent movies get wiped out completely by "talkies" while the sound-only medium of radio survived television?

2. The most powerful leaders of the past 150 years were Churchill, Roosevelt, Hitler, and Stalin. Was this power due to the nature of radio as a medium, and the fact that radio flowered when they were prominent?

3. Is centralized authority in media necessary (because people need "gatekeepers" to filter information for them) or a result of the economics of mass media (the high cost of sending radio signals compared to the low cost of receiving them)?

4. Does information want to be free?

Levinson's answers are not always as good as his questions. His explanation for the survival of radio (as a medium you can use while doing something else) was persuasive. His view that the leaders of WWII drew their power from radio was less compelling.

Levinson's view of the decentralization effects of computers is valid. The opposite view, which is widely held, is a serious misconception.

Otherwise, when discussing the future, Levinson is disappointing. He says less than what can be found in other work that predates his book. The issue of the future of paper is discussed better in some of George Gilder's articles in Forbes ASAP, going back to 1994. The issue of how to pay for information is discussed better in Brad Cox's work on what he calls "superdistribution." The issue of the status of artificial life is discussed better in Steven Levy's book on that subject.

If I were teaching a course on the Internet, I would include "The Soft Edge" as background reading early in the course. It would help students start to think about the evolution of media.

An enormously insightful panorama and investigation into the past, present and future evolution of information technology. The author looks at the impact of IT on society and the history of media of all types, from the introduction of the alphabet over hieroglyphics, to the photo-electronic revolution, to the age of computers and creation of the Web. The book concludes with ideas for the future, including ways to protect intellectual property, ethics, and ultimate possibilities for artificial intelligence. This is a work of both depth and breadth. For those who crave the macro/global perspective of the world, this book will be a fascinating find. Bibliography. HIGHLY recommended. Reviewed with great interest by Gerry Stern, founding partner, Stern & Associates and HRconsultant.com.

As a means to understand how to use the Developer 2000 series of programs, this book lacks detail or explanation. It tries to straddle a description of methodology and that of program function, and does a poor job of the latter.

We already have a good understanding of how to get the job done -- we just wanted to use the tool. Thus, we only skimmed the parts of the book we considered were just a tepid introduction to Yourdon.

If you already comfortable with task analysis, problem decomposition, and normalization, and simply want to know how to use this tool to develop a system, move on to something more practical, such as "Rapid Application Development With Oracle Designer/2000" by Chris Billings, et.al.

Dr. Dorsey and Mr. Koletzke set out to show how designer 2000 could be used in the context of an overall system development effort. As an experienced designer 2000 user, this is what makes the book the most useful to me. Not only do the authors show how to use the various parts of designer effectively, they provide a list of the missing parts - things that should be done in a good system development effort but which are not included in Designer 2000.

I would recommend this book to: 1) persons with some designer experience who are attempting to use designer 2000 for serious development efforts; 2) teachers in an advanced database design class; and 3) anybody interesting in understanding the role of software design tools in modern software practice. Novices will need to spend some time working with the tool, performing the designer tutorial that comes with designer, and perhaps reading some of the other literature on database design such as Date's "An Introduction to Database Systems".

Excellent book. I cannot wait for the authors to produce another edition to cover Designer 2000 version 2.1.

I've read every book about Designer that I can get may hands on and this is The Best of Breed in my opinion. The book is really 2 books in 1; an excellent description of Designer and an equally excellent explanation of a methodology in which the tools can be used. This combination of conceptual clarity and practical application is unique and provides a "forest AND the trees" approach that makes reading and re-reading the book and outstanding learning experience. I can't wait for the next iteration!

Can I have my money back?
I wish I had something more positive to say about this "book" but I can't - really not good.

Although I was able to get a reasonable understanding of UML notation and how/when to use certain UML diagram types, the book was quite a dissappointment overall.

The authors spend way too much time on analysis methods that (admittedly) have no representative UML diagrams. Although they state clearly that UML is purely notational and does not imply/condone any particular methodology, they proceed to introduce a "generic" methodology of their own, and spend most of the book explaining it and using it to develop a simple "application".

Without doubt the most dissappointing thing about this book (to me) is the joke of an application developed by the authors. For a book subtitled "The Developer's Guide, with a Web-based application in Java", I actually laughed out loud a few times at example source code.

Sorry, guys, this book could've and should've been much, much better.

I'm very pleased with this book. The authors take you step-by-step through the visual modeling process using UML and Java. I read the book cover to cover. It's almost like a good friend taking your hand and guiding you all the way.

I would highly recommend this book if you are new to UML or not clear on how the many diagrams fit together to elaborate an analysis and design effort.

Thanks, Paul Harmon and Mark Watson for writing such a great read.

If you're looking for a book where you can learn UML, it will be better if you look elsewhere. As the title implies, it will give you advice on how to model a database following the principles of UML. Besides, I think this is a book dedicated to systems architects, who get a rough time trying to conciliate the disparate worlds of object oriented vs entity-relation designs.

The concepts covered in this book, apply not only to Oracle databases, but you may transform them in useful practices in other databases. The bottom line: I found this book very good, but I had already experience in ER and UML modeling.

Contrary to what tool vendors may be saying, UML is difficult. This book goes along way into clearly explaining those difficult concepts and then applying them to practical application. It is, as the title indicates very Oracle centric, but would be worth while reading even for non Oracle people because of the way UML concepts are presented. Of particular note is the chapter on Composition and Aggregation, two UML concepts which have been left open for interpertation. The authors present their precise definition of the concepts and present it can be clearly understood and applied. This treatment alone make the book worth while. I also found the toe to toe comparative analysis UML vs. traditional ERD displayed throughout the book, to be compeling. The authors do take the liberty of expressing their own opinion of how things should be done and I found myself in agreement on some issues and disgreeing on others. (e.g. I agreed with the notion that recursive relationships are extremely useful and powerful structures. Yet, I found it it difficult to agree that logical and physical models should be merged.) Never the less opinions in the book are clearly marked as such. Whether you agree or not, does not detract from the crystalization of UML concepts and the illustrative examples. The authors comendably are not shy to point out when approriate, that UML diagrams are often imprecise, and they offer methods to improve precision when opportune. The book is an excellent complement to David Anstey's High Performance Oracle 8 Object-Oriented Design which tackels the big picture and concentrates on Oracle 8 itself, whereas this book concentrates on the the application of UML to Oracle 8.

I am often disappointed with technical books because they lack the practical advice that I need to get my job done. This is definitely not the case with Dorsey and Hudicka's book on Oracle 8 Object modeling with UML.

The authors have provided Oracle Developers and modelers with a book that addressees not only the background and issues associated with object and object-relational modeling but suggests numerous ways to incorporate these concepts into your application designs.

The book provides an excellent introduction to the world of relational and object-relational design. There is an appropriate amount of material in the beginning of the book to bring you up to speed if you are not familiar with relational modeling concepts (which most of us are) and object modeling concepts using UML (which most of us aren't). If you have to learn one object notation methodology, UML (Unified Modeling Language) is the one you should learn. A chapter on UML introduces you using the notation, which is then used throughout remainder of the book.

These basic concepts are then quickly built upon . The authors next walk you through basic object database construction looking at such key concepts as class/entity definitions, logical and physical naming conventions and dealing with domains and list of values.

These concepts are further extended to examine the relationships between entities and classes. More advanced concepts like recursive structures, cyclical structures and N-ary relationships are explained in detail with working examples to show you how to put these concepts into action.

The last section of the book deals with more advanced concepts like the ability to handle time-related relationships along with mechanisms for making your models more generic, implementing business rules and denormalizations.

The authors have put a lot of thought and hard work into the organization of the text and the topics are well explained. The examples used throughout the book are the icing on the cake that helped me understand the concepts. If you are a serious Oracle developer that is just moving into object-relational modeling, this book will definitely play an important part in teaching you the necessary concepts and approaches to be taken in your Oracle8 applications.

"Red Hat Linux 8 for Dummies" is one of the few "for Dummies" series that included double CD-ROMs. But what a shame! The publisher did not ensure that these CDs are healthy. I had a hard time trying to decode what was in one of them. Also, the pattern of this book is such that some of the basics of 'Red Hat Linux 8' were omitted.
Unless you are completely new to the Operating System, there is little reward in purchasing this book. If you are a "dummy" who knows one or two things about 'Red Hat', I suggest that you look for something more comprehensive and more accurate. This book may disappoint you. Consider either 'Red Hat Linux 8 Unleashed' or 'Red Hat Linux 8 Bible'. Both texts are simple enough for you to understand. However, they may present too much information for your liking, if you are indeed a beginner.

I bought Red Hat Linux 8 for Dummies in the hope that it would give me some basic tools to use to administer my system. I was a little disappointed. The book is chock full of good information, but I found that I was only able to use a little bit of it. I think the book is full of quality information, but I really can't tell whom it's a good fit for.

The book features install and setup instructions. It can help you figure out how to install the OS and configure it on your PC, establish internet access (modem, broadband or LAN), and set up some useful tools, like a firewall and streaming media. It has nominal, but not great, coverage of the graphical OS environments, like GNOME. This is all great, but the installation and configuration process for Red Hat 8 isn't that difficult, and excellent instructions are available from many sources. The book includes CDs with the OS. But the OS is available for free from many download sites, so that's a matter of only small convenience. Also, the book is of very little use if you have an application in mind for your Red Hat installation. For example, if you want to run a web server or email server, or want to use your computer for any number of other specific purposes, this book will give you little or no help with that.

The book does provide a number of tips and some good problem-solving advice. And, it has a handy tear-out sheet of common commands in the front, which turns out to be more useful than you might imagine. The writing is clear, understandable by the layman, and it's well indexed so that you can find information you're looking for quickly.

The content that is there is great, but I frankly don't know who its target audience is; I'm not sure to whom to recommend it. It might serve adequately as a first reference book, but if you buy it for that, you will likely need another more detailed reference soon, as it doesn't really go all that far. This book is fine, so far as it goes, but a reader might be better off looking at one of the more comprehensive manuals out there (eg, Red Hat Linux 8 Unleashed), as many of them also cover the basics, including installation, but in better detail.

No doubt, Linux can be intimidating for new users and this book does an excellent job of providing the basics without a lot of the technical jargon that usually accompanies most Linux texts. If you're a total newbie, then this book is a very good place to start. The text is divided into four sections:

1.)Installing
2.)Connecting to the internet
3.)Using various applications to to perform basic file maintenance tasks, use Open Office, and listen to and burn Cds.
4.)Understanding the Linux file system and basic networking.

The downside is the CDs that are included - give them a miss. Rather than fiddle around with them, purchase the Red Hat 8 personal box set (also available through Amazon) which includes a detailed installation guide and 30 days of support/help for the product.