The book is fundamentally good for learning the basics of Eigrp but what I find lacking is real case study scenarios where actual diagnostic cases are captured, analyzed, solved, and presented. An example would be like, how would a topology appear when a site has 4 equal (or a mix) serial and high-speed interfaces destined to 2 remote sites. And how can the metric be influenced so that certain paths are more favorable over others. And in so doing, explain the gotchas (if any). I was looking for pointers in the book but didn't find any so had to examine other resources.

Amazing ! The info in this book in not available anywhere.. It's priceless for anyone who manages large EIGRP net's.. <>

So, Ivans courses are for Europe only , the rest of the world is really missing out.

Like his courses, the book is full of little tiny nuggets of gold that you have never seen anywhere else.

Except for the picture on the cover, the photos are uninspiring and frequently ugly. The text is not very helpful.

If you actually read this book and don't just glide, sighing and salivating, from one gorgeous photo to the next, you can understand the Italian character as well as the different Italian styles of living and decorating. The author tells us it is impossible to become Italian but she focuses immediately on the things Italians consider important: proportion, balance, smooth surfaces, natural materials, food, family (and not necessarily in that order...) and she also explains the many influences over the centuries (Greek, Roman, Ottoman, and more) and you learn a bit of History, Archeology, Art (and now I've made it sound stuffy and boring, and it is just the opposite!). She very, very wisely includes a whole chapter on "regional flavor" and points out the vast differences between the different regions (confuse a Neapolitan with a Venetian at your own peril) and their living styles. She gives wonderful explanations of the differences between loggias, porticoes and pergolas, shows ten kinds of pasta, four kinds of cheese, six ways to prepare coffee and even gives menu plans and recipes!

The focus of this book is "creating the feeling of Italy in your home room by room". The author takes us on a tour of each of the major rooms of a typical home: the living room, the bedroom, the dining room, and the kitchen. In each section she goes into great detail about what the Italian style of decor is and how you can replicate that for your own home. The book is full of many colorful photos, which go a great way in helping to visualize what your home might look like. The book also helps to capture through side stories very aspects of Italian life ("warm and stylish homes, irresistible food, simple elegance of Italian entertaining") that make the thought of turning your interior into this type of theme all that more appealing. She talks about regional (Tuscany, Venice, etc) design influences and also a full chapter on food and wine. She also provides a list of resources from which you can find some of the materials that can turn your home into that dream Tuscan villa or Venetian apartment. If you are looking to remodel your dwelling and thinking that you want to be surrounded by the grace of Italian living then you should definitely check out this book.

We used this book to teach an introductory Java course for experienced programmers. Without exception the students didn't like the book. They felt they really couldn't learn from it--topics are covered too quickly. They wanted a text with a more step-by-step approach and one with more examples.

If you are looking to learn real java 1.1 coding then this is the book for you. Mastering java 1.1 is one of the faw books out today that will see you have to code with java to the 1.1 spec ! !

I like the book for the way the approach is organized, and all the components, and details are patiently and thoroughly studied, no assumption is made about what you know , and the plan to this complicated program is laid out in a very understandable way

Optimistic, easy-to-read, this charming history of the effect of new materials on society is filled with brilliant analogies. From the ceramics and bronze of prehistoric times through iron, steel, aluminum, polymers, transistors, silicon microchips and solid-state lasers, using personal interviews and a number of diagrams, Amato takes the reader on a joyful tour of what became Materials Science. This fount of good (but not excellent) explanations of many things is marred by a number of technical errors, and a Green Party stance on all of the current environmental issues. These flaws drag down what would have been a 5-star rating to 3 stars. The generally delicious writing style is marred by some problems with transitive verbs and a few slang expressions that may be hard to translate. Citation of sources is adequate.
...

This book is amazing.I learned things from reading it,and it was a real joy to read.He manages to explain complicated things in a way me and you can understand them,and me makes you even more interested in the sunjects he covers,worth reading,I would recomend this book to everyone.

I think that stuff is a great book. If you are interested if the materials of the world, this is a great book.

I had been happy to read about a supposedly unabridged and very inexpensive edition of "Queen of Spades" and the Belkin tales, as (as a college instructor) I often assign "Queen of Spades" in courses on opera or Petersburg, or in which one would not neces sarily need the student to order a whole compilation of Pushkin's fiction, such as Norton's very solid COMPLETE PROSE TALES.

However, this edition is *far* from unabridged. The editor has taken it upon himself to cut not only ALL the epigraphs from ALL t he stories (an absurd economy which distorts the tone of these parodic stories) but also fails to provide the two-page "From the Editor" frame without which the purpose of the Belkin tales is obscured.

I would not recommend this edition even to the casua l reader who wished to get the true flavor of Pushkin's Sternean, self-referential prose works. 'eo

If someone comes to me and asks what I think true Russian

spirit is, I would say, "duel" is. Russian duel is very reckless

and even absurd because the percentage of survival is only 50%.

Each load their gun and go to the opposite end and they shoot

from distance in turn until either one is shot.

In the book, German,the main character, is a half-bood of

Russian and Germany. Due to his birth,mixed with German blood,

he is usually very realistic and doesn't believe in magic or

tricks. In numerous gatherings German never participates in the

card games but always watches people play. When he hears that

an old woman knows how to win the game he sniffs and ignores

it. But ironically it is he who arrives at the gate of her

house. However, it is not his intention but he himself is

dragged by some magical power.

As quite an ordinary and poor man, German believes in

diligence and reason, but not fantasy or fate. That's why he

never participates in any games. Their game is like a duel. The

players say some number and they take cards until either of

them get to reach the number and he wins. Then a new game

starts as if they already forgot about the former game. Usually

the loser loses a huge sum of money, which means that the

winner becomes enormous rich. In other words, the game actually

changes their lives in totally different ways.

Everyone who has read this book would never forget the last

scene of the Queen of Spades. Perhaps she really does say so,

or he only dreams or imagins. No one knows except Pushkin.

Bytheway, he is not telling something moral to persuade or

teach us. All he shows is something like Matrix, I guess. Maybe

the whole story is just a trick or magic or some parts are. The

judgement is up to the reader. We all are German in a way.

This book is a nice (don't forget cheap) adaptation and translation of Russia's most celebrated author, A.S.Pushkin. I imagine that other editions (hardcover and so on) are extremely expensive, so this book is a good introduction into the works of a classic and exceptionally talented writer. I have read much of Pushkin in Russian language, so I can honestly say that this book is true to the originals and it is worth spending your $3 on. NOTE: To people, who know that Pushkin is considered greatest RUSSIAN (emphasis on "russian") writer and expect to find real Russia in his writings: you won't find much of it here, for the fact that Pushkin wrote mainly about his upper-class contemporaries, who (pretty much like Pushkin himself) lost touch with real Russia, hence the revolution awhile later... If you want to feel some of Pushkin's russian spirit, you should try reading his poetry instead of the short stories.

I give this book four stars, only because I wish it was longer! It was a very good story, and would have been better if they went into more detail. The story is about some curious mice who want to go the top of the stairs, to the dark, to see the monster who lives up there. It's really cute to see what and who the monster ends up being. This story is very fun for children to read, and the illustrations make you feel part of the story, like you are traveling up the stairs with them. Exeperience the suspense, as you travel with the mice to see the huge, terrifying monster that has been talked about their whole lives!

I was not sure if this was too scary when my thre year old son picked this book out. When we got home we read it over and over again. It kept him in suspense trying to figure out what was at the top. I suggest this cute book for any 2 to 3 year old and my son would too. We had to go buy the book.

My son picked this book off a cart at the library and I was hesitant to read it with fear that it may scare him. He loved it as it kept him wondering what was at the top. We had to read it over and over each night. He likes cats and loved the book. I eventually had to buy the book. I recommend this for any 2 1/2 to 3 year old. It is a cute story!

For starters: the title is a bit misleading, it should contain the words 'Unification Grammar', because that is the only theory covered in this book. People who aren't familiar with linguistics might think this is THE syntactic theory, but in fact there are many (some of which are much more credible than Unification Grammar). But apart from the fact that UG is not my cup of tea, the book is ok. Not outstanding, but ok. It more or less covers the basics of UG in an easy-to-learn-way. The many feature structures are a big help too, even though the authors do make several crucial faults in some of them! Anyway, the book did for me what it was supposed to do, which was understanding the basics of UG, so I'll rate it 3 out of five.

This book presents a pedagogically simplified version of HPSG, a formal grammar theory, as applied to English. This is a kind of constraint- or unification-based theory of grammar, but not the only one, as the reviewer below seems to think. And I believe that by "credible", he must mean "popular".

The big strength of this book is its formal clarity. HPSG is one of those few linguistic theories which achieves almost complete formal clarity without becoming nearly incomprehensible (as compared to, say, many versions of Categorial Grammar). The theory is explicit enough to be implemented in a computer program-- and it actually had been implemented (...). No other introductory syntax textbook I am aware of can boast of this, and this gains it 4 stars.

The problem is that this results in much more space (and student effort) spent in understanding the technical details of the theory, to the detriment of actually understanding the subject matter of syntax. The syntax of languages other than English is treated only marginally, through problem sets (though in all fairness, some of the problems, e.g. the one on reflexives in Japanese vs. English, are based on serious and subtle differences between the languages).
But even for English syntax, the complexity of detail of the theory is too much for first-time students, who can't really appreciate the why of the analyses in the first place.

In short, this book is perfect as either a gentle introduction to HPSG, for undergrads that have had a good introduction to syntax before and need to be introduced to a good formal framework, or for syntax courses with a computational emphasis where covering a grammar that has been implemented is a major factor. As a first textbook in syntax, it fails; I would rather use something like Robert Van Valin's "An Introduction to Syntax" .

This is an excellent book for the study of syntactic theory/generative grammar. I'd taken an introductory (undergrad) course in sociolinguistics and wanted to find out about some of the other areas of linguistics, so this is one of the books I bought (along with Noam Chomsky's, which are a must). This book is all-around excellent. It gives a nice little history of linguistics in the intro for those of us who haven't studied it in great detail, and it really starts out with the basics, and provides lots of important examples, making it very easy to pick up on. Most importantly, it doesn't STAY simple - the learning curve in this book seems to work very well. If you enjoy thinking and learning about language, you will love this book. Especially good for computer scientists/math people (I am a CS major).

Cliff Notes is not intended to be used as a substitute for reading a work. It is an AIDE to help a reader better grasp the ideas. If you're smart enough to be reading works like this, maybe you would've been smart enough to know this. Or maybe you're some smartass kid.

None of the usual character depth that usually definines Solhenitsyn. All in all, worth the read, much better if you have some knowledge in Russian history.

This review is of the Cliffs Notes on "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich," and not Alexander Solzhenitsyn's novel on life in the Soviet Gulag. The introductory material covers the life and background of Solzhenitsyn (giving you a sense for how autobiographical the novel happens to be), a description of the Gulag System under Josef Stalin, the fourteen subsection of Article 58 (worth an entire class discussion), as well as a brief synopsis of the novel and a list of characters. Particularly useful is the section where Blaha covers the preface to the original edition by Alexander Tvardovsky, the editor-in-chief of the influential literary magazine "Novy Mir," who had submitted the novel for publication directly to Premier Nikita Khrushchev. This section puts Solzhenitsyn's novel in the context of Khrushchev's "de-Stalinization" policy and will give teachers and students alike a sense for the time and place in which "One Day" was published. In the Critical Commentaries section, Blaha breaks "One Day" down into discrete scenes, which may well require you to match up the commentaries with the specific page numbers in the copy of the novel you are using. However, be warned that Blaha devotes most of this section to commentary rather than summary; unlike most Cliffs Notes, he does not distinguish between the two. Again, this is why reading the commentaries after actually reading the book is the way to go. This volume ends with critical essays on the levels of meaning in the novel (prison novel, social commentary, existential commentary), and a section on style and narrative perspective. The strength of the Cliffs Notes on "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" is what it provides in terms of background on the novel. As far as novels go, this a relatively short one, but it is richly detailed; I remember being stunned at the end when I remembered this was just a single day in the life of a prisoner of the Gulag.

There are many great riddles, but way too often are the questions, answers and short tutorials incomplete, misleading or plain wrong. Unbelievable that he can't even correctly define what a complete graph is. He says you have a complete graph if every two nodes can be connected by two disjunct paths. What a [junk]. His intentions might be good, but he's way too careless. I tried to read some puzzles several times, but about one third of the time it's just annoying and frustrating. Note that I'm not frustrated because I can't solve the problems. I can, that's the sad part. It's him, making mistakes.

Maybe I'm just not smart enough to do these puzzles but some of them certainly require more detailed solutions than the ones offered or there isn't any point in having solutions. In addition there is way to much similarity in the puzzles, many of the so-called puzzles are more in the brain-teaser category (how can the purchaser of a parrot be dissatisfied if the parrot repeats every word it hears, as advertised?), at least one answer is either wrong or the problem is phrased improperly, some answers are impossible to comprehend (possibly just me again), there are some typos in the answers and finally there is no explication of some mathematical "rules" or "laws" that are used to justify answers.
On the plus side the book is beautiful, user friendly, looks good on the coffee table and makes a great paper-weight/doorstop.
If you like puzzles try Sam Loyd or Martin Gardner.

I purchased this book a short time ago and am slowly getting into it. It is sure to become one of the great puzzle books. I have been interested in puzzles for many years and have a collection of over 350 "puzzle books" I have no hesitation in ranking this book right up there with "Cyclopedia of Puzzles" by Sam Loyd, "The Moscow Puzzles" by Boris Kordemsky" and "536 Puzzles & Curious Problems" by H.E.Dudeney. Each in it's own way; Loyd's was an innovation and a classic in it's time,Dudeney's and Kordemsky's were very traditional with great variety. Moscovich gives us a whole new approach in types of puzzles and a huge leap in the incorporation of art and graphics into the world of puzzles. The greatest puzzle of all to me is how this book could be produced and sold in the price range of a novel with no artwork,color or illustrations. On behalf of puzzle enthusiasts everywhere I would like to commend the author and publishers. Anyone who likes puzzles will love this book.

Borley Rectory gained a reputation before the Second World War as "the most haunted house in England," thanks in large part to the efforts of controversial ghosthunter Harry Price. Price was considered by some to be a humbug and opportunist. Over the years, Price's notoriety has sullied the Borley investigation. In this fascinating book, however, author Ivan Banks argues that Price did a better ghosthunting job than his critics allowed and that the Rectory was indeed a very spooky place. In perhaps the most intriguing chapter (the one on Katie Boreham), Banks looks into the allegation that the Reverend Bull helped conceal an illegitimate birth at the rectory, adding to the foreboding atmosphere of the unlovely Victorian house. This theory may be a bit of a reach, but it's a wonderful take on the evidence. Great illustrations and photos.

i bought this book on the advice of vincent o'neil. it is wildly thorough. fabulous photographs, too, but a bit hard to follow for the american reader. i understand "odour" + "petrol", but "spammers"? like i said, it's exhaustively comprehensive. i was thrilled to find a new book on this most fascinating subject, but by the seance section it had become something of a chore. still, an a+ for effort.

While not perfect, currently the best source available for the complete chronicle. Over 40 photographs and illustrations. Author declares neutrality in his introduction, but seems to support at least some of the phenomena by the end. Not all researchers agree with all of his conclusions. Refuses to accept Marianne "as the villainess in the Borley story." Excellent bibliography. Notwithstanding the occasional unevenness, if you can obtain only one book on Borley, this should be the one.