Lyon is a standard corporate photographer who cashes in on the chronic alcoholism, drug use, prostitution, gambling, and abject poverty of the indigenous population, on their "sovereign" as he puts it reservations. He then boasts of this accomplishment as "unique" to the u.s. I'm sure Lyon is in no danger of having his studio raided by the FBI.

The reviewer that calls Lyon a "corperate" photographer has not seen Knave of Hearts, which contains gorgeous reproductions of Lyon's photo-montages. The book has nothing to do with Indians, except his visit to the Zapatistas. The text will break your heart and the pages will cheer your visions of the world.

Lyon's pushes the envelope again in this amazing montage/text triumph. The only comprable work is Wright Morris's text and photo works. The montages are truley amazing.

This book will be of tremendous use to you only if you manage to take it as a whole. People don't like that these days, they want instructional books as a collection of easily digested factiods. Alexander's book matches the conception of the human self that it describes: it cannot be broken down into different parts but must be dealt with as a whole. You come to understand more and more as you read, but you don't really see what he's saying until you can consider the whole book in retrospect. So it takes some work, but in that regard it's a brilliant analog to the ideas it contains: you must read this book holistically, just as you must deal with your self holistically.

F. Matthias Alexander was certainly one of the great creative geniuses of this century, although he is still comparatively unknown. In part his obscurity is due to the novelty of his ideas and in part to his very difficult writing style. This book is a very lightly edited version of his second book and still makes for fairly difficult going. On the other hand, time spent digesting the material in this (and Alexander's other books) is well worth it. And the book includes an introduction by Professor John Dewey, a great admirer and supporter of Alexander.

If you don't know much about Alexander and the Alexander Technique, I'd suggest one of the many other introductory books as a first read. Body Learning by Michael Gelb, Fitness Without Stress by Robert Rickover and How to Learn the Alexander Technique by Barbara Conable are all excellent choices.

Sturgis - one smells a pseudonym here - seems far more interested in creating a polemic for "free speech" and "teen autonomy" than a novel. Ostensibly this is the story of a high school English teacher's affair with his most gifted student, Danny, a poet of unusual promise (the sample verses don't back up the claim), and the efforts they make to conceal their love. Things unravel, of course, thanks to Danny's candid journal, and the teacher is thrown out of his job and basically run out of town. Taking precedence over this love story, however, is the idea of McCarthyism in the schools, with irate parents wanting to ban works of literature on the grounds they are obscene. Sturgis takes the point too far, as though parents should have NO say in what their children read and study; he/she buys into the mindset that children are smarter than adults. It is a dangerous and erroneous notion and, unfortunately, hurts any sympathy this reader might have had for the main characters. The teacher is such a pious, self-righteous sort, he left me cold. I would have rather Sturgis concentrate on the love story. I must say, though, the last thirty pages or so are genuinely suspenseful and kept me hooked to the end, when my sympathies by then were exhausted. The book is competently written but nothing remarkable.

This book is not an easy one to get through. It raises a lot of questions and also raises a lot of warning flags. Set against the background of a censorship battle and the efforts of right-wing fundamentalists to intrude into the minds of school aged children, a romantic attachment develops between a teacher and a student. The fact that the student, Danny, is almost at the age of consent does little to stave off the stereotype that could be drawn. The teacher, Tom York, shows us how not to respond to a student's advances. The actions of Tom and Danny give the censors the ammunition they need to become a permanent fixture in the educational system. Still, the story is not one to be dismissed. At issue are an educator's responsibilities, the needs of young people, ethical behavior, and the age of consent.

If you are building your experts in Delphi 3 or 4 this book is a must-have. Using Delphi 5 and later, you have to consider that Borland made some rather big changes to the OTA interfaces.

If you are starting out writing experts for Delphi 3, or even looking to fill gaps in your Open tools API knowledge, then this book is the one. Check my site http://www.burn-rubber.demon.co.uk for a full (copyrighted) review.

I have read many books on this battle. One of them was a very good book called 'Battle of the Bulge' by Danny S. Parker. In addition to a high reguard for Parker, the Amazon's professional review and reader's review were both excellent. So, for me, this was a 'must buy'. I was disappointed. The book has six chapters. Each chapter is an interview experience with an important German officer with real responsibility in the battle. Some of these chapters are hardly comprehensible. One, General Kramer, is poorly translated. There is personal puffery, poor memories, and precious little real insight into the battle. Only General Brandenberger's narrative is concise and informative. The bottom line, if I had gone to Borders or another of the big book stores and had reviewed the book before buying, I would have passed.

Adolph Hitler's last desperate gamble, i.e the Ardennes Offensive, is an interesting topic to read about. It shows the Fuhrer's undying hope that he will triumph. Although the Allies suffered more than 12,000 dead and machinery destroyed, they triumphed over the Germans after one of the most desperate and mighty German offensives of the last portion of the war.

If your interested in knowing a little bit about this man, I'd recommend one of the many biographies. Rubenstein's book doesn't unveil any secrets or shed any light on the unknown. We all know he's completely dedicated to his cause and manipulative..what successful politician isn't? The book is filled with second and third hand accounts and sometimes even unconfirmed rumor.

The chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization has long puzzled observers, including his biographers (note the titles of two books about him published in 1990: "Behind the Myth: Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian Revolution" and "Arafat: In the Eyes of the Beholder"). How has someone so deeply flawed as an individual and a leader managed to achieve so much and acquired so much authority? Rubinstein, a columnist at the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz, makes answering this "mystery of Arafat" the goal of his book. "How is it that someone who looks so strange and is so lacking in seriousness can at the same time be considered a statesman and revolutionary of the first order?" In his slight but rich study, Rubinstein takes up basic questions about Arafat: Where was he born? What is his real name? Why does he look so grubby? Why does he travel so maniacally? Why did he get married on the sly?

With brilliant insight, the author shows that every aspect of Arafat's public persona-from his stubbly face to his doing business late at night-fits a single pattern. In all these ways, he has "accurately and persistently . . . reflected the distress and the needs of the Palestinian public." Rubinstein convincingly shows how everything Arafat does (even not shaving) seeks "to provide the Palestinian revolution, of which he is the center, with legitimacy." Arafat's success, in other words, derives from his being able to create a myth in which his own personality fuses with the Palestinian cause. In 1995's Middle East book of the year, idiomatically translated, Rubinstein really does solve the Arafat mystery.

Middle East Quarterly, September 1995

This book is the self involved, self indulgent ramblings of a man sorely in need of a focus, attention and an editor.
Schechter's affluent upbringing and star-struck posturing unfortunately cannot mask his angry writing style which labors under the cute witicisms his young fans find so endearing on his website. This book is shallow and long-winded; spend your money and time elsewhere.

For the past year, I have been following Danny Schechter's column on Mediachannel.org. His insights are special, often humorous, and his writing is unequalled in both its lightness and its depth. I was very glad, therefore, to hear of the publication of this book, and I was not disappointed: It containts various articles from the News Dissector's long and unusual career in the media, in the same style and intelligence of his contemporary columns. They illuminate a unique media personality, and I heartily recommend the book.

First let me qualify my review. I'm a published author (computer books) and I have personal experience selling goods and services online.
I found this book is light on facts and filled with forward-looking statements. I don't blame the author for being enthousiastic but I found the book is mostly preaching. There's too little practical "how-to" information.
Some of Mr Poynter other books (including the "Self-Publishing Manual") are of very high quality, full of practical, useful information. This one is not of the same quality.

I have been reading Dan Poynter's books since buying his first edition of THE SELF-PUBLISHING MANUAL. Any serious writer or publisher should read all books and resources that Dan Poynter writes. U-PUBLISH.COM is absolutely necessary for anyone who is connected to the book or publishing industry, whether writer, publisher or wannabe. The truth is, the publishing rules are changing fast. This book contains the most up-to-date methods of selling books through all channels, including SUCCESSFULLY MARKETING BOOKS ON THE INTERNET, and providing many ways to make books available to most bookstores throughout the world for only a fraction of the expense that it used to cost to put a book into printed form. Anyone who publishes a book without reading this book is inviting only small success, and also operating with a major handicap. This book will give you a huge lead way ahead of most major publishers. Danny Snow has done a terrific job of co-authoring this book.

First off, this book's humor is rather specialized. Only Jews or those familiar with Jewish culture are likely to get many of the jokes collected in it. Secondly, the book isn't all that funny, in my opinion, even though I got the jokes. Numerous jokes with potential got ruined by poor "delivery" and others were repeated over and over till they lost the punch. Some were good (such as the idea of a uniquely Jewish disease: guilt) were okay but the book just didn't make me laugh the way other books have done. The Big Book of Jewish Humor is recommended instead of this, if you're looking for a funny book. Best of all, much of the humor in that collection appeals to everyone, not just Jewish folks.

Siegel and Gould have taken sophisticated humor to a new height. Even if you are not Jewish, have never attended a Bar Mitzvah, or have not seen the movie 'Goodbye Columbus', I think you will still appreciate the humor.

The jokes are not always simplistic - and that is what makes them so much more appreciated. These are not stand-up routines, rather, they are well-thought out pieces of prose.

The Unorthodox Book of Jewish Records & Lists is obviously patterned after the 'book of lists'/'guiness world record' genre, and does a great job within the Jewish humor world.

I highly recommend this book! It is certainly on MY list of books to buy, give as a presents, etc.

For developers involved with web-based projects, whether it be an online store for electronic commerce or an Intranet site for accessing and modifying company data, the powerful blend of JavaServer Pages (JSP) and Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) technologies can really make life simple. Once you've mastered them, creating new components that encapsulate business logic, or new web interfaces to existing systems, is easy. The trick, for developers, is mastering the technologies.

Professional JSP is one way to get up to speed. Like many of the books published by Wrox Press, Professional JSP covers a specific technology in-depth, as well as the various ancillary topics relating to it such as databases, servlets, and XML. While not every developer will need every web technology covered by the book (and there are many), the book works both as a tutorial to cover the basics and a reference for technologies that you may encounter later.

Professional JSP starts by covering the basics of Java Server Pages, and how they relate to other web technologies. Embedded in HTML pages, JSP provides an easy mechanism for creating interactive web interfaces that draws on server-side components, known as Enterprise JavaBeans. While the presentation logic is written in JSP, the processing occurs within these JavaBean components. The book takes a balanced approach, covering both JSP and its syntax, as well as how to write and interact with JavaBeans to perform useful tasks, like accessing databases through JDBC and using other Java technologies. However, if you've read other Wrox titles, you may find there is some overlap in the topics covered.

One of the nice things about Professional JSP is that, in addition to covering theory, it goes further and examines practical applications of JSP, and issues for programmers like security and debugging. Like other titles in the Professional series, there are case studies of real projects using JSP and related technologies. My favorite would have to be the case study on porting Active Server Pages to JSP -- something that is extremely important for developers with "legacy" web systems. On the whole, Professional JSP is an excellent book for web developers wanting to get up to speed with Java Server Pages, web development, and Enterprise JavaBeans. However, developers with less of a web presentation focus and more of back-end server view may also want to consider the excellent Professional Java Server Programming title, which also covers JSP. -- David Reilly, reviewed for the Java Coffee Break

This is a book for programmers who have a solid background in servlets programming and some experience in JSP. For beginners and for people who wish to learn those techniques on a standalone machine, they will be better off with Hall's "core servlets & JSP" or Fields&Kolb's "web development & JSP".

The book consists of 20 chapters. The first 12 chapters discuss the various salient aspects of JSP and the rest ( about two third of the whole book) is devoted to case studies.

A. THE BOOK'S STRENGTH:

By adopting Tomcat as its main testing software, the editors of "Professional JSP" have assured that most of the code examples will work. This is a big improvement over the past wrox books.

There are some excellent chapters in the first part. The discussion on session tracking is a real gem although the author failed to make a showcase of the code examples. The chapter on JSP Architecture contains some of the clearest explaination on the techniques of redirecting, forwarding and requestdispatcher. The chapter on customtags is equally very well done. But my favorite is the chapter on Global Settings, the idea is so practical. I also like the idea of emphasizing the importance of authentication which showed in many chapters of the book.

The case studies will serve as an excellent reference. Its coverage ranges from (1) the front end of an insurance company (2) a good pictures website which use JSP to publish its data (3) Security with JNDI (4) a online store using LDAP and JSP (5) J@EE, EIBs and Customtags (6) Multimedia and JSP (7) Weather website with JSP, XSLT and WAP (8) Porting ASP to JSP.

2. BOOK'S WEAKNESS:

The book is a combined effort of many authours and its unevenness showed. The first three chapters to introduce to JSP are out of place and a real waste. The chapter on Dynamic GUIs is a great idea which turned into a joke: after showing the general diea how to do it, the author sent readers to his website to learn the rest(?). And the chapter on JDBC connectivity and Pooling is a big disappointment: most of the chapter devoted to get connection, create databse,editing it and make query; and the rest the author explained how to use his own pool manager package, PoolMan. This wouldn't be too bad if PoolMan worked, with Tomcat.

The richness of the case studies is also its weakness. Unless you are experienced and have the facilities, you can't test them all. These techniques become obsolete pretty quick.

Probably the strongest objection to the book is its price. Buy it for your company and share with your colleague.

This books lives up to its title in that it provides both real-world JSP techniques (through 7 very informative case studies chapters), as well as JSP background information that serves as a quick start guide. I rank it as one of the top 2 JSP books currently available (the other one is Web Development With JavaServer Pages by Messrs. Fields and Kolb).

After the JSP fundamentals are out of the way (which I am sure any JSP newcomer will appreciate and can benefit from), the book picks up pace with discussion on JDBC connection pooling, and the best practice for data access from JSP. Then comes the chapter on custom tags. My favorite chapters are the ones on debugging JSP's and implementing the MVC design pattern in JSP/servlets.

The case studies are very comprehensive and closely correlated to the earlier chapters. In one case study the design methodology is clearly explained with UML diagrams, which are very helpful to someone who is currently architecting an enterprise Java Web application. Other case studies cover such a wide area of topics such as JSP in combination with LDAP, EJB, XSL, and WAP.

For ASP developers, this books has two enormously useful chapters to get them started on JSP right away. One is a case study showing how to port an ASP app to JSP, and the other compares and contrasts the object model and syntax between ASP and JSP.

Having said all the above, this book does suffer from certain weaknesses. One is typical of any multi-author book, i.e., repeat of the same topic in different chapters. This is the case with JDBC, which shows up in both chapters 4 and 7. Another problem is the lack of the use of a standard servlet/JSP container, which will help new users to run all samples under the same software setting (although there is an appendix on setting up Tomcat server). Finally, a few chapters seem to be out of place in term of the logic flow of concept, such as the ones on dynamic GUI's and JNDI.

Finally, this book is still thin on heavy-duty J2EE topics, such as EJB, distributed transactions, message service, and interoperability with CORBA. This is why I consider it as an intermediate level book, not an advanced one. Hopefully we will see another Wrox book in the near future that addresses some of these issues.