I've always been pretty interested in serial killers, and naturally came across Ed Gein's name in a few "collections" of serial killer biographies. Wandering through the bookstore oneday, I picked up "Ed Gein: Psycho." That's what it says on the cover. Inside, it's called "Ed Gein: Psycho!" The exclamation mark tells you all you probably need to know about the mentality of Paul Anthony Woods, the "author" of this self-loving piece of garbage.

Many, many reviewers already have pointed out the things that turn one's stomach about this book. The writing is sophomoric and ridiculous, and way, way, WAY too much liberty is taken with the story, which, ideally, is non-fiction. The imagined conversations, thoughts, and feelings of Ed that the author relays are ridiculous, and the tone of the book is really grating. I mean, Ed Gein was a really odd duck who did some really creepy and bad things, but he's a person of some note. To read Woods refer to him as "our boy" in certain passages makes me angry. The cavalier style with which it is written is really smarmy, and one can imagine Woods sitting at his typewriter, smiling at his own wit, patting himself on the back.

Beyond the incredibly obnoxious way in which the book is written (and trust me folks, the author's skills are far below that of the average writer who gets published) and the silly "conversations" between Ed and his fellow Wisconsonians (who, in the book, have a kind of...gulp...southern drawl?), there is the fact that no new information is presented, and I didn't learn anything I didn't already know from reading 10 or 15 pages in another book. And the last part, where the author "examines" the pop-culture that has been created around the Gein legend only confirmed my suspicions throughout the rest of the book...he's just a silly, pseudo-psychologist fan with no respect for his elders.

Pass!

I bought this book because I thought it would give me more details about weirdo serial killer Ed Gein, after I had read Deviant by Harold Schector. I was sorely disappointed. Psycho doesn't really go extensively into more facts about this interesting man and I firmly believe that Deviant does. This book is too short. The final chapters rave on about the movies,songs and comics they made about him and even though that has some indirect relationship to the man, I mean really... what does it have to do with Ed Gein? Ed Gein was probably unaware that any movies were being made about him while he was in the institution and he certainly wasn't like the Zodiac Killer; he didn't care.
The story is that Ed Gein was raised by a strictly religious mother, Augusta Gein and an apathetic father who took to drinking heavily to escape his mundane existence. Ed Gein idolized his mother, like his brother too but Edward Theodore Gein was more of a momma's boy.
Ed's brother Henry dies in a fire and there is suspicion that Ed had something to do with it but there is no proof.
Later, when Ed's mother dies, after his father, Ed takes to grave-robbing and wearing human faces as masks over his face.Not to mention he makes furniture out of human skin. Ed denies that he has sexual intercourse with these corpses because they smell too bad but who knows?
After Ed dies in 1984 of respiratory illness, he becomes a hero.Maybe we are living in a sick society where a murderer of two, possibly three women is considered a hero.
I recommend Deviant by Harold Schector. Avoid this one.

First of all I would like to mention the added bonus (sarcasm) of having at least 30 pages filled with garbage containing information on movies that link with Ed's life... it was very "choppy" so to speak. When I was reading that part of the book, I simply skipped it because it was wasteful and uninteresting. (I want to read about Ed, not some producer)

Secondly, I would like to respond to another reviewers' remark. It was stated that the book was almost completely ficticious, and it was supported by their statement that the arrest was incorrect. After reading many other sources on Gein, it is safe to say that this book is pretty accurate in portraying the life of Edward Gein. Who cares about the exact details of the arrest anyways?

Finally, I will bring to light an issue discussed by other reviewers. I bought this book because I thought I was going to get a really good shock, but I didn't. I too, was looking for a more in-depth analysis of Eddie, his motivation, and his behavior. I felt the book was incomplete and therefore I am currently looking for alternative sources on him to fill the void.

I bought this book 4 weeks ago and I have steadily worked through all the exercises. I have 3 years experience with SunOS. I found that I could easily answer most of the questions which makes me confident that I'll pass the first exam next week. I'd like more practice exams to be included in a future edition - there are only 400 questions on the CD-ROM. Also, I might be blind, but I couldn't see any Microsoft jokes in this book lanman94...

This book seems to cover all of the material required for the exams (I and II any way). It could be longer - maybe more examples would help. Overall, though, a nicely presented volume with some very helpful exam software.

I am an experienced administrator of UNIX systems and I picked this book up out of interest. It seems to cover most of the material not just for exam but "after exam". Truly, if readers think that reading a book will allow them to pass the exam, they are ignorant. You will need experience not books my friends! This book is a good place to start though.

I used Sybex for a lot of my MCPs, but this one is truly horrid.
The style is fun and admittedly the author made an attempt to amuse you while you're reading. This would be a good thing (although unnecessary and uncalled for) if it was accompanied by reliable and well written technical material, which isn't the case.
The book is structured in a rather confusing way - you get most of the stuff explained roughly in the first couple of chapters, and then explained in detail afterwards. This is just a stupid approach as it is confusing: if you talk to me about NAT, do it all in one go, and the same for everything else!!
After reading the book I took a transcender... wow, the questions there are really tough, and most of them require knowledge that this book doesn't provide at all.
The main problem though is in the questions and answers. The questions are often written quite poorly and in a very misleading way. Also, the answers sometime state the opposite of the theory (e.g. according to an "answer" you don't need WINS during a WinNT-Win2k migration in a mixed network!) ... of course, there was another "answer" for an identical scenario where it was stated, correctly, that you do need WINS.
Was this book EVER proofread by a tech? I seriously doubt it.
I waisted 2 weeks. Now I bought the MS Press book, and everything makes sense.
The authors did a very bad job. Sybex was thoroughly disappointing for allowing the publication of the book. Do not buy it.

I would recommend this book, but only with grave reservations -- don't use it as your only study material. I have been using Sybex's excellent study guides for years (all the way through my NT MCSE certification and now on Windows 2000), and this 70-216 study guide is definitely inferior. The material presented is handled well, but numerous omissions make it unreliable. The chapter tests are particularly atrocious. Questions are badly worded; several tests contain duplicate questions; there are numerous questions on material that is not covered at all in the book (e.g., WINS proxy, DNS round robin, DHCP database migration). I've come to expect far better from Sybex; this has been a major disappointment.

The book is full of information but doesn't really prepare you for the exam. It may be a good thorough introductory piece but it doesn't cover the in-depth theory needed to pass the test. The test questions are the equivalent of a vocabulary test in Elementary school. They did absolutely nothing to assist with the exam.

If self-study is your preferred method of study, this would be a good start but don't rely on it for the exam!

This book is terribly disorganized, repetitive and has numerous
errors. Unfortunately, it seems to be one of only 2 books
available on this certification. The only chapter that was worth
reading was the one on JMS. The rest of the book was eminently
unreadable. I suggest reading "UML Distilled", the
Design Patterns book by Gamma et al, and a good book on EJBs,
messaging and JCA, instead of wasting time and effort over
this book.

This book reads as if it were written entirely between the hours of 2&5AM. It is more like an 11th hour paper one would write all night in college to barely make the deadline, than a well structured book that is written and rewritten to achieve its purpose. This is disturbing since the goal of reading it is to obtain a certification in software architecture, a discipline that demands quality execution to ensure success. The book is repeative across chapters, unstructured within any given chapter, poorly defines concepts and terms and generally frustrates the reader with obfuscated and needlessly complicated sentence structure. The content can be moderately useful if the reader has the patience to read and re-read passages when necessary. A heavily edited and refined second edition could succeed if the need to dwell on poorly written passages and definitions was totally eliminated. Proper grammar and spelling would be a nice touch too.

This study guide is the second book on SCEA available from the market.

It covers all the main topics for the SCEA 310-051 exams, with step-by-step instruction, and 2 sets of practice exercises. Chapters concentrate on the basic J2EE concepts, common architectures, legacy connectivity, EJB and its container model, protocols, applicability of J2EE, design patterns and messaging. Besides that, a J2EE case study is provided in the last chapter. The companion CD-ROM contains two sets of practice tests and a pdf-version of the study guide.

For a SCEA candidate, it is normally a challenge of using UML and J2EE together in the SCEA part 2. Unfortunately, this topic is missing in the book.

The J2EE case study chooses a real-life J2EE architecture, which involves legacy connectivity on Mainframe. This example is absolutely helpful on the SCEA part 2. However, it would be better if the authors could illustrate the pros and cons of specific design approaches.

Near 100 challenging practice questions are provided in the Mock Exam. They are closely modeling the format, tone, topics, and difficulty of the real exam.

Since it's the one of the only two books available, I suggest you go through this book. However, you should also learn the specific subjects from practice or from other corresponding books.

This is the worst possible book you can buy if you want to learn ColdFusion. They introduce unexplained, confusing code, throwing in comments that seemed to have "suddenly occured" to them as they were writing something else. It's impossible to start at a low level and build up your knowledge. It is instant confusion. I'm a fan of Dummies Books - most are valuable. This one is awful. I hate it.

This dummies book is one of the worst I've seen. Compared to other CF resources this is my least valuable one. Even if you are a beginner the examples are mediocre. Not to mention several valuable tags like CFHTTP and CFFTP are not even listed in the book. The organization of the book is also confusing as it is put into the "dummies" format. Instead of trying to write a "funny" resource they should have focused a little more on the contents.

I picked up this book because I'd heard and read so much about ColdFusion and I wanted to see it in action, in a useful format. This book provided just what I needed. The examples were concises and helpful. All in all, I found ColdFusion (the language) easy, but configuring the server to be a bit more daunting. I can see how a Dummies book for ColdFusion is a bit of a stretch (as another reviewer mentioned), but this book makes a good crack at making a complicated subject easy.

Unlike most Dummies books, this one is free of most of the annoying "dummies humor," which was a welcome relief.

I would definitely recommend this to others who want an introduction to ColdFusion.

One of my big contentions is that when I read a Forgotten Realms novel, I want to know I am reading a FR novel. While not a bad book, this could have been placed into practically any fantasy setting and it would have altered very little. The Princess and her suitor are entertaining, but the rest of the book is flat. The one item of interest is the suiotr's abilty to just create incredible items that work without the need of magic. It is interesting to see modern warfare in a fantasy book, but at the same time a little disconcerting. Give it a read if you want something really out of the ordinary.

It wasn't quite what I expected from a forgotten realms novel. Thing happend in a tiny place of no outside importance. A place with strange, pompous, and sometimes rididculous rules of warfare.

This book is hilarious. The vast majority of the book wil make you laugh. But along the way characters are developed. Make no mistake, there is a story here. There is drama, characterization, and plot, but humor underlies them all.

Maybe Forgotten Realms series readers aren't seeing what they expect. I admit to being a Paul Kidd fan, from books and periodicals. This time he surprised me, with some anacronisms which were yet handled plausibly: surprising gadgets, on which he didn't try to hang the whole story; a little politics, more a matter of how the characters and cast get along. Months later, I remember the links between scenes created by cherry scent to mask chemicals here, an exploding rat there. A pyrotechnic purse for discouraging pickpockets had other uses. The princess isn't simply a pretty ornament and is set on being her own, studious person. Stepmom on one side of door, giant bird on other as comic relief. Vilains stand on their own: soldier tired of playing at war; ambition, sword and trickery in another. I cared what happened, forgot my troubles, found a fantasy with a life of its own. If you set prejudices aside, I think you'll enjoy. Not strictly sword'n'sorcery, or renaisance, or fantastic creatures, Council of Blades is in its own world, but within that, it makes sense, and a good read.

Paul Alexander has accomplished a stunning feat of embodying the antithesis to Holden's ideals. The protagonist of _Salinger: A Biography_ - Paul Alexander himself - shows masterfully that not only can a fictional character exist who hates all phonies, but that the perfect journalistic phony can also strike back with a story about the creator of the phonies-hater. Quite fittingly,in its closing lines the "biography" introduces its phony neologism: "acturally" [sic].

Usually, when I am about to write a review here, and I see
that others have made points I intend to make, I just forget
it. But it seems most appropriate for the point to be repeated
that this book is horrendous, syllable by syllable. Another writer says it shouldn't have been published, and that's a shrewd and exacting assessment. If not for the fact that the sense of debasement that such a master as Salinger suffers if palpable, there's also the issue of editorial scruples: doesn't this publishing house employ editors? Yes, Alexander's prose is poor (why did someone give him an MFA?). But it also includes grammatical mistakes and basic flaws in thinking and logic. Some sentences are repeated, a clear editing snaffoo. He often draws inferences that are unfounded or remarks on some coincidence or set of circumstances that he deems titillating or telling when these can be so easily dismissed.
The main problem is Alexander's infantile way of setting up a
simple dichotomy: Salinger either is a recluse at heart or
is trying to maintain prestige and import by remaining hidden. Is there nothing in between? Are people sure of their own motivations. Ultimately, the idea of thirty years of isolation as publicity stunt is hopelessly naive and insipid. It doesn't make sense and it looks at a man with a mind as great as Salinger's in an untenable fashion.
Also, there's the story of a newspaper article a girl published in a daily paper after telling S. it was for a school paper. This is a rumor, and Alexander's source is simply another magazine feature. This is one cardinal example of the flaw in writing a biography without doing research. Yes, Salinger is a tough ticket, but why didn't Alexander check out this story with those who knew S. at the time, the girl in question (if possible), the daily paper, etc? Instead, he's content to pass off this simple story as gospel on the word of an apparently ill-researched magazine piece.
Finally, a word on the story "Teddy." (Incidentally, I think Alexander's butchering of "Just Before the War With the Eskimos" is the most egregious of the bunch, with fierce competition.) When I first read the story, I, as Alexander did, thought that Teddy had killed his sister, because of the female scream. Many feel it is ambiguous. Alexander is at fault, not as much for his interpretation, but not for entertaining any others. However, I do think it's clear enough Teddy killed himself. That's where the story is heading. Also, earlier in the story, Teddy writes in his journal "it could be today or..." and then he lists a date several years later when he'd be sixteen.Later,
in a conversation with his college-aged companion, he says that he has told professors certain dates on which they should be careful because they could be in danger of losing their lives. So it seems the "it" referred to in the journal, not explained elsewhere, could be his death.
Well, alas, Salinger could be partly to blame. If you try too hard to keep biographies from being published, the publishing world becomes so greedy that any incompetent can sell one. It's too bad such a fascinating man has been degraded in this way.

Paul Alexander pulls together what seems an accurate timeline of Salinger's life. Salinger is a legendary recluse and seriously uptight about leaking any personal information. A biography without his cooperation is inherently non-conclusive and hardly in-depth.

****A basic profile, however, still provides some interest. Alexander documents that Salinger was not a good student in his youth. His instructors evaluate him as having potential but no genius I.Q. or motivation. His ambition to write doesn't surface until he is almost in college.

****In World War II, Salinger serves in the Army, participating in D-Day and marching into Paris after Allied liberation. This is a particularly significant time for Salinger psychologically and in his writing. It's at this time that he develops "Catcher in the Rye". One can see where Holden's exhaustion, confusion, and melancholy come from. In large part, it's the war-weary Salinger channeled through.

****If Salinger is an autobiographical writer and we consider hints given in the Glass family chronicles like "Seymour: An Intro", then Salinger is a professor-figure who wants to cross the street whenever inquisitive, eager students approach. He believes there are no truly interesting questions anyone can ask him -- at least not so imperative as to justify disturbing his reclusivity.

****To be fair, answering all the fans (and fanatics) would be an overwhelming endeavor -- probably much like the circus that surrounds J.K. Rowling on book tours. Salinger is, in a sense, a lone Beatle. There's no confidante to understand what his celebrity is like.

****I'm guessing Salinger was himself a fan of the Calvin and Hobbes comic strip. It would be rather appropriate since its creator, Bill Waterson, also retreated from the public despite phenomenal success. And as much as Salinger refuses to publish anymore, you'd like to imagine that he has access to the internet and that he's given some thought (if not contributed) to the anonymous "instant publication" happening on the world wide web.

You've really got to wonder why it is that publishers keep turning to Geoffrey Giuliano for Beatles books?

Is it the publishers' assumptions that we only want to read about the seedy underbelly of popstars? Is it because dirty stories sell better than honest ones? Does he come cheap?

The shame of it is that people keep buying them - and to those of you who are lead to believe that he's an expert and writing the truth - it's not so. Geoffrey Giuliano clearly does little real research, he goes on basic stories available anywhere (or dredged up from scandal sheets) and turns them into "history."

Geoffrey Giuliano books offer NOTHING to readers wanting to learn about the Beatles (or any of his other targets). He goes straight for the scummy side of his subjects and where finding not enough, elaborates. Look, I have NOTHING against truth, and there is no value to books that ignore the bad side of a celebrity's life. But to simply focus on dirt, rumor and scandal just to sell books...awful.

Geoffrey Giuliano books are to literature as Jerry Springer is to television. Avoid, please...

So far I had only read Lennon In America by Geoffrey Giuliano - a book that I absolutely hated. It was therefore that I wasn't expecting a lot from this book, but I must say that at least this one is better in style. An entertaining read.
The focus of the book is the relationship between Lennon & McCartney and how they collaborated on songs in (mainly) the early stages. Later on they didn't write together anymore (well hardly), but because of the rivalry that existed between them, each motivated the other to come up with some of the best songs ever written in this world.
George and Ringo hardly feature in the book, which seems a bit strange as the book deals with the career of Lennon / McCartney and The Beatles in a strictly chronological order and of course George and Ringo played a major role in that. To be fair though, in the author's notes Giuliano already announces that the book mentions the works of George and Ringo only in passing, without the amount of detail that is given to Lennon & McCartney.
The book describes how John and Paul met, started playing music in Julia's bathroom, wrote their first songs together, became The Beatles, how they worked in the studio, how their relationship grew from bad to worse and briefly describes their song writing after the Beatles broke up. All of this interspersed with quotes and bits of (mostly well known) interviews.
Right from the start, it is very clear that the author likes Lennon a lot better than McCartney. Lennon is always the genius, McCartney always has other motives in anything he does and is just waiting for a chance to take control of The Beatles.
Lennon's music is innovative and (often) provocative, while McCartney writes songs that are sugar coated and suitable for old age pensioners....
In summary, an entertainingly written book, but not a must have.

Regarding: "Read, Many Years From Now (Barry Miles), at least his book is intelligently researched and uses Paul McCartney as his main source of information." For ought I know "Many Years From Now" may be a perfectly fine book in its way, but anyone of discernment who's read a McCartney interview (or, say, the "McCartney" album press release, in which McCartney explains that he, McCartney, has quit the Beatles) knows that a book that "uses Paul McCartney as [its] main source of information" will be of doubtful veracity. In any case, "The Two of Us" is engagingly written, intelligent, and reasonably fair, I think, to all parties--probably the most readable Beatles book I've yet encountered. It doesn't contain much new information, but let's face it, how much new information is there possibly to be had? (I also like George Martin's "All You Need Is [?] Ears".)

I love Paul Johnson. I love Paul Johnson's books. I just disliked this one. His impeccable credentials (Oxford) and his usual penchant for exhaustive scholarly research (The Intellectuals, History of the Jews, History of Christianity, etc.) were surprisingly absent. This book is thoroughly Catholic - not necessarily a bad thing mind you. It's just that the book title had nothing to do with the book. This was no "Quest", no grappling with doubt or faith or pain. Just a Catholic Catecism - a celebration of one man's faith, not the Quest or personal pilgrimage of a man searching for God. It appears that Johnson has found God, neatly and conveniently inside the cathedral. That's O.K. for him. I just was hoping he would help me turn over a few more stones.

...
It is no accident that this unapologetic blow for conservative Catholicism was written by a layman. The same spring that saw HarperCollins release The Quest for God saw Oxford University Press publish academic Steven Pals' Seven Theories of Religion. All but one (Mircea Eliade) of the theorists Pals discusses see religion as dependent on some other phenomenon. That means that they have not so much a theory of religion, as a theory of x, whereby x is NOT religion. Religion then becomes so much "garbage," as when computer scientists speak of "GIGO: garbage in, garbage out." Religion, politics, accounting, sports: Same difference.

Not so, says Paul Johnson, who goes to great lengths to make clear that only God is God. In a time when militant secularists insist on seeing God as a front for politics, Johnson says, "No! There is no substitute for the real thing." According to Johnson, it is the secularists who are deluding themselves with God-substitutes, which he sees as the cause of the twentieth century's genocidal history.

Although Johnson begins a bit pompously, and even weirdly, with some bad science, after the first two chapters this book becomes quite charming, exhibiting a droll sense of humor and, at times, a refreshing modesty. However, to appreciate Johnson's modesty, one must be able to countenance the notion that a belief in moral absolutes can accommodate tolerance towards those with whom one disagrees on doctrine. Thus, if you believe that all values (or principles or virtues) are relative; have an absolute contempt for anyone who disagrees with you; and third, believe in showing "no tolerance for the intolerant!," then this book is probably not for you. If, on the other hand, you are at all curious about Catholicism; you feel that unlimited access to abortion on demand for young girls, and detailed, public school instruction in safe "fisting" by the Gay Men's Health Crisis are not quite the answers to what ails us; or if you have deep spiritual yearnings, then you could do worse than devote a day or so to The Quest for God.

While barely 200 pages long, and written by a popular historian used to having closer to one thousand oversized pages to get the job done, Quest... is an incredibly meaty -- but not overstuffing -- meal. In summing up his own life and work, Johnson recalls his childhood, the famous and not-so-famous whose paths he has crossed, and tells quite a bit of church and secular history. The personal anecdotes and capsule histories, often coming from his historical studies, all bear on Johnson's quest(ion): How does one live, and die, in the proper Christian manner?

There is much of philosophical substance here, yet Johnson is at once both more personal and more philosophical than most academic texts I see on philosophy of religion. The successors to the social gospel, whether feminists, Afrocentrists, or even gay activists, see in religion no more than a worldly, political tool. Some sharp, less politicized minds, on the other hand, offer merely arid analysis; both sides seem to have lost sight of the prize. Johnson hasn't. And so, his philosophical considerations are guided always by the same, simple consideration: How best may I serve God, and thereby, hope to attain Heaven?

If you're a Christian, that's what it's all about. Of course, it may well be harder for a Catholic to keep matters in perspective, as a 2000-year-old tradition of bad theology has rejoiced in complicating matters. With great good humor, Johnson seeks to explain some of these complications as briefly as possible without needlessly confusing or alienating the reader.

"Catholicism - the Holy Roman Catholic Church - Rome - the Scarlet Woman - the Whore of Babylon -- has no terrors for me because I am as used to it as a much-loved old teddy bear or a favorite armchair or a smelly old favorite dog.... I have, as it were, been married to the church all my life and am used to her ways, be they slatternly or tiresome, noble, loving, admirable, foolish or insupportable.... I have a fondness for old institutions which have high pretensions but are also timeworn and manipulable, theoretically rigid but in practice accommodating, which demand everything but will settle in practice for less, often much less."

In sixteen brief chapters, Johnson tussles with contemporary conflicts and perennial problems: The challenges of atheism, feminism, environmentalism and gay activism; the nature of God; the problem of evil; the consequences of there possibly being other rational beings in the cosmos; the roles of dogma and authority, respectively, in the Church; the relationship of Christians to Jews; death; Judgment Day; Hell; Heaven; and the role of prayer. Finally, he has appended some prayers he has composed for the reader's possible inspiration and use.

Johnson notes, early on, that "the most extraordinary thing about the twentieth century was the failure of God to die." He believes that, rather than costing men their faith, the atrocities of the twentieth century actually turned them towards God.

The biggest problem I have with The Quest for God is with Johnson's insistence in the one moment that God is inconceivable in terms of petty, human emotions, and his description in the next of God as "angry" or "impatient." If even Paul Johnson confounds the human with the godly, no wonder the rest of us are so confused!

'The Quest for God' needs at least two careful readings before judgment can be passed upon it. There is much of C. S. Lewis in it; that is, they share common views upon omnipresent and omnicompetent government, and the follies of those who would bring about Heaven on earth by legislation, but I would be the last man to declare that Mr Johnson either cribbed from Mr Lewis, or was influenced by him. Both men shared a British education; both men, in their respective fields, are (or were) historians of the first rank; both see more clearly than most the need for God and the consequences that devolve upon humanity when God is ignored. Although Mr Johnson has often been excoriated as a 'conservative', many of his views are what might be called 'progressive'. His meditations upon God, His nature, and His interaction with man are steeped in Catholic tradition and reflect his faith. This book is intensely personal, as the subtitle proclaims, and is guaranteed to offend the casual modern reader; I exhort the c. m. r. to read it twice, and see for himself the ineluctable logic behind Mr Johnson's arguments. He might learn something to his benefit.

It is not your desire to learn which takes you through the book, but sheer determination !

The book lacks a steady learning curve. It delivers the information in pieces which can be difficult to place in context. Which made me feel like reading a traditional text book, but without a lecturer and fellow students to support me.

There are several errors in the book. It is obviously based on the Beta version of Access 2000, which makes it more troublesome to locate the needed buttons and commands. The samples from the CD will not install automatically, you will have to copy them one by one and change the properties by removing the Read-Only attribute. The code you are asked to write, to gain hands-on experience, is filled with syntax errors. Therefore your examples will not work, which makes it very difficult to proceed to the next task.

After I have read the book, and in the process worked my way around the errors, I feel I have a very good picture of what Access 2000 is capable of, and in what direction I should go to accomplish my programming goals.

If you are new to Access 2000, and want to program a database (Private/Semi-professional level) your will be able to learn how from the book.

The book includes lots of information, but makes it difficult and tiresome to learn Access in 21 days. If only the publisher had a supporting website to list errors, it could have done so much better.

I had MS Access on my computers for 4 years and could not figure out what to do with this application or how to learn it without going to school.

Then I bought the Teach Yourself Access by Paul Cassel. With a disciplined routine of 5-6 hours perday and following the author's instructions line by line, I was able to design databases by the 10th day.

I think Paul Cassel needs to be complimented for writing a logical, simple and very useful book.

If in his latest edition he has eliminated some chapeters on Table design, then he should re-insert them.

The primary goal of this book must always remain to take a total novice who is interested in data base design and in 21 days turn him/her into a programmer who is very comfortable with using MS Access. Two years ago this book did that for me in half the number of days.

I thoroughly recommend this book to beginners.

Saeed Anwar

I was a little shocked to see the average review for this was a 2...

I am an aspiring database designer. One has to start somewhere, so I set off to learn Access. I had already tried the O'Reilly books (too much) and the Dummies books (too little). I found the Sam's book to be a good middle ground for someone who knows a little about computers, but mostly knows that they need to learn a lot more. The Sam's gives a good general overview about Access queries, forms and reports. It walks you through the program in a logical order, in a realistic length of time. It has a good introduction to Access SQL and VBA. It remains one of my primary resources for Access.

If there is a failing to the Sam's Access, it's that it needs more real world examples (it has some, but it could use more). For that, buy the O'Reilly Access Cookbook.