When reading There's a Dinosuar in the Park at least one still lives on in the imagiation of a small boy who sees him in the park and goes on an adventure with him. This is an excellent book for read alouds and has good starting points for a writting programme when looking at how children use their imaginations. The only down point is that the illustrations can overshadow the text as they are detailed and bright. The use of changing size of the illustrations till there is no words is reminisant of Where the Wild Things Are.

The book jacket says that it's designed for a "general education mathematics" course. That's about right. It's kind of a survey of a mixed bag of topics such as quadratic equations, area and volume, finding square roots and cube roots, geometric series and summing them, velocity vectors, doppler effect, special relativity (!) and time dilation, binary arithmetic, set notation, probability (maybe the best chapter). There are generous doses of equations here but all you need to know is basic algebra to grasp it all. I got up through college calculus (and forgot it all, and got this book because I felt my math brain cells shriveling when I was stumped by a simple equation in my non-math work) but found quite a few of the explanations and examples fairly challenging. At the same time this isn't really for the math enthusiast. In its 220 pages, it's rather patchy, covering just a few basic concepts and equations on each topic. But as far as it goes, it's pretty good.

To give you a sense of the book, in the brief chapter on relativity, for example, the book tells us:

"In his 1905 paper, Einstein rejected the idea of 'ether' and put forward the following remarkable idea: Light from whatever source propagates with the speed c . . . relative to any observer who can be considered 'stationary' or any observer moving with constant velocity relative to a stationary one. . . . [Thus] there is no way--and never will be--of moving objedcts faster than the speed of light. . . . Now consider the problem which two observers--one stationary and the other moving at a constant velocity--would have in trying to determine whether two events are simultaneous." Following up on this, the book gives a couple of problems, one starting like this: "If, for the train in Figure 1, the distance between the flashes is 2d, how much difference is there between the times of their firings according to observer A? Specifically, if 2d = 0.93 and v = 134 mph, what is the time difference?" The answer turns out to be a trillionth of a second or something like that.

Another problem worked out in the probability section goes "A woman has two cats, one grey and one black. If a visitor asks if one is male and the owner says yes, what is the probability that both are males? If the visitor asks if the grey cat is male, and the owner says yes, now what is the probability that both are males?" The answer may surprise you--if you know it won't, then you don't want this book. There are additional problems in each chapter, with answers for some.

I'd say this is an OK book for you if you're a non-math type but did OK in it and just want to refresh your memory of certain things covered here, but whether they're covered here or not is iffy. For example, no discussion of trig or calculus. I'd suggest you also consider Ian Stewart's Concepts of Modern Mathematics. Or Invitation to Mathematics by Konrad Jacobs (which is less narrative and definitely needs a more solid math background than Stewart's book or this one, but is nicely challenging). As someone who laments the fact that he isn't more literate in math, I haven't found the ideal "in a nutshell" kind of book but all these books help a bit.

Not only does this book fail to deliver on its promise to be a "Comprehensive Guide to the SQL API", it provides information that is just plain wrong. The first page I read (301) had serious errors, showing methods with incorrect (and inconsistent) argument types. A quick glance showed the book full of this type of error. This is inexcusable. The beginner will be confused, the experienced frustrated, and both will quickly realize that the book should should be thrown away. A book that has not been edited should not be published.

The first third of the book is Java...cool.
The Second third is SQL...OK, but none of the screen-shots line up their captions. It really makes it hard to follow. It's a good thing I already knew SQL or I'd be lost right now.
The Last third covers JDBC...well almost. The essential theory of connecting to a Database is covered but there is little practical demonstration on how to use this connection.

I wish I could get my money back. ($54.00 from "some other bookstore")

I had no knowledge of JAVA or JDBC and a limited understanding of SQL. I found the book extremely informative and well written Given the enormity of the three topics covered the author does an excelent job of introducing these. I don't think this book will suit professional Java Coders but if you want to understand the concept of how JAVA, JDBC and SQL work together this is an excellent book. A great book to get started

The book should be renamed to Microsoft Exchange Connectivity Guide for Exchange server 4.0 if there'll be a revise version in future. I highly recommend "Implementing Exchange Server" for experienced exchange architects or consultants who are setting out to design, implement, and then administrator an exchange server systems.because that book is designed for a very specific audience,experienced exchange guru or dream want to be.

I expected the issues discussed to be aimed at an advanced user. The book only seems to handle subjects at an intermediate level. The book fails to mention anything about Dynamic RAS Connectors which can be a complex issue to resolve. In addition the directory synchronisation process is not covered in depth. There are a number of problem areas which can cause this process to fail. I feel an entire chapter could be dedicated to to directory synchronisation. On the positive side the explanation of the monitoring tools is good and even if that was the only thing of value I gained it was worth buying the book.

I bought this book because it was recommended by the lecturer of an undergraduate course in English grammar at the University of Cologne, Germany.

This book didn't help me at all, though. When looking in Huddleston's grammar I mostly felt that I understood less than I had already understood before. "English Grammar - An Outline" proved confusing rather than helpful.

I'm not so much complaining about what is written in this book, but how it is written and how the the matter is presented:

- too complicated
- too condensed
- too few examples
- almost no diagrams to visualize concepts/problems
- barely any tables to give a structured overview of what's being talked about
- no solutions to the exercises
- no glossary

Although I have a keen interest in grammar, grammatical theory, the English language and linguistics in general, I had to force myself to read this book - and I finally gave up. Nevertheless, I still believe that grammar - even on a theoretical/academic level - can be presented in a clear, accessible and interesting way.

Perhaps this book is best suited to feed academic debate about certain issues of English grammar - as a previous reviewer already pointed out - but certainly not "for students who may have no previous knowledge of linguistics and little familiarity with 'traditional' grammar" as the publishers suggest.

This book presents a progressive model of English grammar that has many deviant features. For example, contractions such as "can't" and "shouldn't", traditionally regarded as two words, are combined into one. In other words, Huddleston treats the clitic "n't" as an inflexion. On the other hand, and equally as controversial, " 's" indicating possession is treated not as an inflexion, but rather, as a clitic.

In this book, Huddleston has created a highly fanciful, not to mention radical, model of English grammar, with scant regard for traditional grammar. As an example, Huddleston has created a hodge-podge class he calls 'determinatives' based on a very slender thread of reasoning. This "part of speech" includes words traditionally determiners, e.g., the articles 'the' and 'a', possessive adjectives, e.g., 'his', 'my', 'their', demonstrative adjectives 'this', 'those', quantitative adjectives like 'few', 'all', etc. This melting pot of words from divers classes are tenuously combined into one class.

That is not to say the book has no merits. Huddleston makes a few valuable distinctions in English grammar hitherto ignored, such as that between the form and the function of a word.

In addition, the book describes a theoretically interesting, if capricious, model of English grammar, which although in the main deserving of derision, nonetheless has some novel and practical aspects.

This book is definitely not for those who which to learn English grammar, nor is it useful as a reference grammar. Its chief use is as an abstract theoretical model to serve as a battlefield for academic and linguistic wars. It has little pedagogical value.

This book is difficult to read. The material is on a high level. And it is very theoretic. However, you'll learn some important linguistic consepts and some information is indeed indespensible.

I feel That Rodney P. Roberts Needs a New hobby because his writing is not cutting it.

I THINK MR ROBERTS IS A GOOD STORY TELLER. THE BOOK GIVES INSIGHT TO WHAT KIND OF PERSON HE IS. I GIVE HIM CREDIT FOR BEING ABLE TO PUT INTO WORDS HOW HIS LIFE HAS BEEN.

The book was loaded with complicated math formulas & the philosophy sections where just impossible to follow. There were about 50 pages where they actually researched the "face" that was interesting. All in All - a huge let down...

The book was loaded with complicated math formulas & the philosophy sections where just impossible to follow. There were about 50 pages where they actually researched the "face" that was interesting. The ending was a huge let down...

As a former patient of Dr. Katayama, I can vouch for his obsession with gum disease. Interestingly, he seems to be able to find gum disease even in perfectly healthy patients. Could it possibly be because it is so lucretive to his practice to schedule thousands of dollars in unnecessary follow up visits? His book seems to undercut his business practices, so I am wagering that he secretly hopes none of his patients will get wind of it. Well written, but get a life Rodney. Just because you're paranoid about gums--or just a money grubber--doesn't mean that the whole world is infected with dental diseases.

Do you wish to employ foreign born workers at the expense of American workers? If so, then this is the book for you! It covers all of the tricks to get around having to employ qualified American workers. Of special interest is the chapter on H-1B visas. So what if the unemployment rate for high-tech workers is above 7%? By golly, if a business wants to pay slave wages to a foreigner, then they are entitled to, right? And this chapter covers all of the dodges to use.

The basic take-off point of the tale seems to be the machinations and ambitions of Anna Comnenus, the Byzantine princess who celebrated her father, the Emperor Alexius, in her well-known text, The Alexiad, itself a rather dry though intriguing document of the political twists & turns and military escapades undertaken by the Byzantine Greeks of that time. The promise of it all was great. But not so, the execution. There are elements of intrigue and fantasy and adventure here but they are not well meshed. Some of the characters were promising and I did like the attempt to depict the life of the Byzantines on their wharfs and in their palaces. But the mixing of pagan deities with the real world of religious Byzantium just didn't work for me. Although I like this kind of stuff, I put this one down about half way through -- though I tried mightily to see it through to the end. But I failed. And so, regrettably, did this book. -- SWM