I agree with much of what has been written about this title: the SharpDevelop team is a highly motivated, highly skilled group of developers, but this book doesn't do much to add "highly skilled teachers and writers" to the list. Yes, the book description doesn't say anything about design, but they need to show much more design work to make this book useful to the reader taking his first look at the SharpDevelop code base. All in all, I have to say this is an extremely difficult book from which to learn.

Let's look at the first item, "Build a highly modular application". Sounds useful enough. Sounds advanced enough. But, before you know it, the authors blow past the analysis of the Add-In Tree and get deep into implementation. If you didn't get it, stop reading and go back, because you'll be lost if you advance without understanding the Add-In Tree.

Maybe I'm just too dense. Maybe it just needs more time to marinate in my brain before I can understand what I've read. This book had so much potential, but it simply doesn't deliver. At least, not on the first read.

..so much more. This book had the potential to be so much more, but it just comes up a bit short. It feels at times like the authors were rushing through it, when they could have stopped and explained things better. Sometimes code just doesn't speak well for itself, and more conceptual explanations are needed. You should download the #D source code, or most of the book will not make any sense. There are still great concepts to gleen from this book like the brilliant use of attributes, xml, reflection, components and services. But, it was just tough to follow at times. I often found myself rereading pages and flipping back and forth to make sure I was following the explanations correctly. I give them three stars because the book was organized, they are first time authors, they worked very hard, and I love SharpDevelop!! I wish them all the best and would love to see a sequel to this book with an extra 200 pages or so of more in depth explanations, diagrams, etc.

I found this book to be very good -- excellent. I own about 20 C# books, and I have been programming in C# for about a year. At this level of experience, I found the book easy to read and full of great ideas and suggestions. With all the source code available (for the entire app), it is easy to get a clear picture of any details that are not covered in the book.

But the things that are covered in the book are very meaningful and very useful.

This book is full of excellent practical advice about architecture, design, project management and coding style.

There are some unique things covered in this book that are not in any of my other C# books.

I highly recommend this book!

I was given this book as a Christmas gift and have to say it's a great book, full of high-quality pictures and just the right amount of text for an evening read at the end of the day.

It did, however, remind me of the Sinatra song "You've either got or you haven't got style..", because, despite the excellent quality, the book begins as a description of interior design (which is good), but then appears to deviate into a 'style-guide', including the correct 'set menu' for a picnic, the brand of lawnmower used by the Queen and Prince of Wales, down to a section on the removal of Wellington Boots!!! Although the authors have been very thorough in their research, this part of the book diminishes the effectiveness of the section on interior design, in my opinion. I believe that 'British Tradition' is a little more flexible than is presented here.

Some would say that true understanding is not only knowing the rules but also knowing how and when they can be broken - if that's true, then this book is a great primer on the former. It's certainly an interesting read.

This book of Karlgren is outdated in many aspects: full of mistakes and the general methodical framework employed is pre-structuralist: With the methods now available the result of his attempt to reconstruct Old and Middle Chinese would be far more accurate. Nevertheless this book is a must for everyone interested in the history of the Chinese language, the vast amount of material collected and categorised in this book is still very valuable.

This book grew out of a dissertation, and it shows. Although the author is obviously knowledgeable, readers will have to wade through some pretty turgid prose. This is too bad, because he makes excellent points about changes in mapping in Elizabethan and Jacobean England. He also demonstrates that English anxieties about the rebellious Irish were both caused by and reflected in the lack of detailed maps of Ireland.

The author wants the book to be a memorial to all Jews that died on Latvian soil. In the "Preface to the English Edition," the author claims that Latvians, on the whole, are totally anti-Semitic. However, the origins of such beliefs cannot be determined. The author believes this to be true of the Latvians, during pre-WWII Latvia and the new Latvia of the 1990's. I wonder if things are so black and white.

This book is a combination of history and a memoir. There are footnotes and a bibliography. However, if a reader is looking for an objective, historical view of this topic, it is not found here. The author recounts his personal experiences during WWII. It is remarkable how he and other Jews survived.

The author does point out that after WWII, some people who were in a Nazi concentration camps found themselves in Soviet concentration camps.

This is a fairly slim volume of photos and text on many of the major or influencial buildings and monuments in Paris. There are about 2-3 entries per page, with each entry containing a small black-and-white photo and brief text.

The concise text is informative and focused primarily on the architectural history of each structure, usually including the name of the architect and highlighting the significant architectural aspects of the structure. The choices of structures reviewed is a good mix, including both major structures and minor, but influencial, structures.

While I did learn a few things from the book, I would have appreciated a much more in-depth study of each structure. The photos are also often tightly focused on individual structures, making it difficult to understand the structure in relation to its context within the city. The book is organized by time period, rather than geographical location, which also makes it harder to follow the tapestry of each quarter and how the buildings flow into and influence each other.

I was disappointed with this book; the pinyin index is of little value because it does not correspond to the Dover 1923 edition of Karlgren's dictionary. Best to try to get a used copy of the original Dover edition that analyzes the characters by phonetic groups which is really the interesting point of the work to an amateur sinologist like myself. The Dover edition also has an index according to the Chinese radicals and English translations.

Ulving has provided an easy to use Pinyin index to -- and brief definitions from -- Karlgren's Grammata Serica Recensa (dictionary of ancient Chinese). This is especially helpful as the original GSR is difficult to obtain and to use (it uses neither Wade-Giles nor Pinyin romanizations).

Notorious for his attempts to be different, Fletcher succeeds in this book. Utterly disappointing and entirely uninsightful. One expects much more from a Columbia Law School "scholar" but is left unsatisfied as so often is the case with Fletcher. Better legal insights from the Bernhard Goetz trial could be had from reading old newspaper articles.

This book utterly disappointing and uninsightful. One would expect more from a "scholar" who sat in on the trial. Unfortunately, as is too often the case, Fletcher fails to measure up.

I bought this book because it had Bernhard Roetzel's name on the by-line. His book, Gentleman, is a real classic in this field. However, 365 Style and fashion tips is a waste of money.
This book is nothing but a series of 365 vacuous "hints" that are useless. Any person who is able to read will likely find this book an insult to his intelligence. This is NOT any sort of reference book, just 365 large-type inane tips of a sentence or two in length such as: #334 If you don't live near any stores, perhaps you should take a shopping trip to a country or state nearby. Or perhaps #189 "Do not wear white tennis socks with a dark suit."
The advice offered is either so obvious as to be useless, or not in enough depth to offer any help at all.

This book is a series of 365 shallow, useless tips regarding fashion and style. There is no exposition or explanation, just one to two sentence pieces of advice, one on each page.
Save your money and buy something else.