I am 12 and i read this book in 3 days because it was so good and i could not put it down. I thinks it teaches kids my age alot about the consequences of drinking and driving. I like the book because i love baseball but this book taught me about the other things. I think this book is great and it is a good lesson. I give it 2 thumbs up.

A Different Season This book is about a boy who has to make a decision if a girl should play on his baseball team. He said that a girl does not belong on a baseball team, but the city over rules him and she gets to play on the team. The boy is the big time jock in school, and the girl is a sophomore and the best softball player in school, but baseball is a whole lot harder than softball. I think this is the best book I have ever read. If you like sports and adventures you should read this book.A Different Season This book is about a boy who has to make a decision if a girl should play on his baseball team. He said that a girl does not belong on a baseball team, but the city over rules him and she gets to play on the team. The boy is the big time jock in school, and the girl is a sophomore and the best softball player in school, but baseball is a whole lot harder than softball. I think this is the best book I have ever read. If you like sports and adventures you should read this book.A Different Season This book is about a boy who has to make a decision if a girl should play on his baseball team. He said that a girl does not belong on a baseball team, but the city over rules him and she gets to play on the team. The boy is the big time jock in school, and the girl is a sophomore and the best softball player in school, but baseball is a whole lot harder than softball. I think this is the best book I have ever read. If you like sports and adventures you should read this book.A Different Season This book is about a boy who has to make a decision if a girl should play on his baseball team. He said that a girl does not belong on a baseball team, but the city over rules him and she gets to play on the team. The boy is the big time jock in school, and the girl is a sophomore and the best softball player in school, but baseball is a whole lot harder than softball. I think this is the best book I have ever read. If you like sports and adventures you should read this book.A Different Season This book is about a boy who has to make a decision if a girl should play on his baseball team. He said that a girl does not belong on a baseball team, but the city over rules him and she gets to play on the team. The boy is the big time jock in school, and the girl is a sophomore and the best softball player in school, but baseball is a whole lot harder than softball. I think this is the best book I have ever read. If you like sports and adventures you should read this book.

The book A Different Season is about a senior in highschool who plays baseball. The best girl athelete in Oakland High wants to play baseball with the guys. All the town people get upset, because a girl wants to play a guys sport. One problem, Jim falls in love with Jennifer. I really like this book, because it shows how important rights are between women and men. I also rate this book five stars, because I like it when guys and girls fall in love with each other.

DREAM WEST captures the spirit of the turbulent mid-1800's and the nearly forgotten stories centering around the remarkable Captain John Charles Fremont (the Pathfinder). This was a refreshing look at one of America's great explorers who pioneered and mapped much of America's western regions. This book includes such historic characters as: the legendary explorer Kit Carson, and Fremont's wife the famed novelist Jessie Benton Fremont, her father the famous Missouri senator Thomas Hart Benton, cameos appearances from almost every famous politician during the mid-1800 through the Civil War (Lincoln, Grant, Polk, Clay, etc.).

John Charles Fremont was one America's most magnetic personalities. Just to list a few of many remarkable accomplishments, such as:
* He was California's first Governor (albeit for a very short period).
* After California's statehood is approved he was the first Senator for California.
* Became rich during the famed gold rush. Later lost it in a swindle.
* On the Republican ticket as an antislavery advocate he ran for President in 1956,. In fact he becomes a perennial presidential candidate.
* He achieves the rank of major general during the Civil War where he loses most of his battles and resigns.
* Later he becomes a Governor of Arizona and passes much ground breaking legislation.

The only complaint I have with this book (very minor) is the author's lenient treatment of Fremont's war record. In fact Fremont was demoted because he couldn't beat Stonewall Jackson. He lets Fremont off rather easily. Notwithstanding, John Charles Fremont truly was an extraordinary man. This story captures his spirit.

The people come alive in the book. Exciting to read about the life of the old west.

Author of the romantic historical, The Rebel's Pledge, a 5 star rated novel of the colonial period.

Dream West is one of the best novels I have ever read. It is powerfully and skillfully written. The story is based on truth about the brave men and women who forged westward. Dream West will move you, inspire you, and enrich your knowledge of America's history.

As a data warehouse practitioner for over 12 years, I was recently challenged at my current employer to help assemble a global data quality team and process. Having done much of the work before on a piecemeal basis, we made steady progress.

When I received my copy of "Enterprise Knowledge Management," I found two important things:
1. We were definitely on the right track, and
2. There were some things we had missed.

David Loshin has put together an excellent field guide to all aspects of data quality. It is very easy to understand, and contains practical, effective suggestions. Most importantly, it is a true "soup to nuts" guide to data quality. There is very little that you might need to improve your company's "knowledge quotient" that you will not find here.

I have heartily recommended this book to a number of people when asked about data warehousing and data quality. You'll not find a better handbook anywhere.

While I am not a technical person, this booked helped me enormously to understand the management issues that surround data quality. In today's world, I am shocked that more companies are not using this approach to save massive sums of money. This book has given me the tools to do so within my company. I highly recommend it!

I am a consultant in the area of knowledge management and data modeling, and I have read all the major books on the topic of data quality, and this book is, by far, the best treatement of the subject.

Enterprise Knowledge Management is a great handbook for both the manager and the practitioner - Loshin deals with the personal and political aspects of data ownership, buildingan ROI model for data cleansing, and a concise methodology about how to measure levels of data quality.

I have heard speeches by a handful of the major speakers in the area, and my impression is that they are willing to tell you to go and measure data quality, or to talk about data quality issues, but they would be hard-pressed to actually solve the problems. From reading this book, it is clear that Loshin is an expert in this area, and that he has not only dealt with the high level aspects of data management but also has experience in the trenches.

This book is perfect for both manager and technical people dealing with data warehousing or data migration projects.

John Lutz and David August did an unbelievable job at writing Final Seconds. I was blown away by the suspense and mystery of this novel. They should make more books together. I recommend this book to anyone who wants a good read. (Final Seconds would make a great movie!)

Lots of action that makes you read this book more than once! I hope they make a movie out of this!

This book is great. It has a lot of twists and turns. It keeps you reading right to the end. There was a couple of times where I felt bad for bad guy and thought that he was going to prove victorious over the good guy. It really is suspense filled. Read it.

Jonathan Kaye and his collaborators know simulations and simulation building, and it shows in this book. A thoughtful, very deep look at machine simulation building and the state engines which power any good machine simulation, "Flash MX for Interactive Simulation" is not a light read. Anyone designing educational simulations in Flash MX must read this book. You may not run out and start desiging all of your simulations with his state engine (because it's complex and resource intensive to integrate into your production practice), but you'll be a much better simulation developer -- or ActionScript developer, for that matter -- for having read the book.

Anyone who has a complex Flash project that involves more than a few 'states' will find this book very interesting.

If you have a project that involves simulating something and you are thinking of using Macromedia Flash or even just wondering if Flash is up to the job, order this book now. It will save you days and I mean days of work on a simulation project and when the amends come in, it will again save you from ripping your hair out.

It doesn't come for free though, you will, unless your brain is very big, have to work at this book. Unlike many other IT books it's nearly all lean meat without the fat, miss a few vital paragraphs and you could find yourself confused further on. You will also probably find you will have to do some support reading to make sure you are up to speed on some of the topics that are assumed.

If you get stuck, don't fear, as there is an excellent support website for the book, if you post a question on the discussion board, you will most likely get an answer from the authors of the book in 24hrs.

FlashMX for Interactive Simulation by Jonathan Kaye and David Castillo is one of the most informative books I have read in quite a while. Don't expect this to be a light read however.

While the book was written primarily to teach you how to program Flash Device Simulations, it touches on many other facets of Flash design that are worthy of mention such as the use of Flash for educational instruction, usability testing, component design and much much more.

This book and the software provided on the CD ROM will allow you to add structure to your actionscript programming and will allow you to create complex applications that are predictable and easy to troubleshoot and maintain after the fact.

This book introduces UML state machine design into the Flash programming environment allowing complex applications to be easily developed that would otherwise have been very difficult.

Because the state machine provides a structured approach to your design, it is predictable and more important, maintainable. Documenting your design using state charts allows others to test your application which is great for large projects where many people are involved with the various phases of the project.

The state machine engine is provided on the CD ROM. This alone is worth the price of the book, not to mention all of the other goodies packed on the CD.

If you like to learn by example, the CD contains plenty of great working samples that show you how it is done. Each example is covered in detail in the book so you can either learn by doing from scratch or use the book and examples as a reference.

This is must have book if you are going to do any serious programming in Flash...

Larry Fortna, President
realatour.com - a division of Flash Solutions, LLC

This book encourages better OO design and analysis, shows how to involve the entire team of developers to the design of the whole system. The authors also describe how to gain benefit from involving the user and other parties to the OO design process.

I was in OO development for five years and I was thinking about a solution which will improve the efficiency of OO design and help to avoid splitting the program between developers who create their own set of classes they are responsible for. Such splitting leads to integration problems and overall design imbalance. Fred Brooks has described this consequences in his famous book "The Mythical Man-Month", where the modules are being written first and integrated later, and the coordination of interfaces between modules written by each developer requires essential effort and time. The CRC Card Book shows how to have "the interfaces" coordinated in the very beginning.

However, the methodology described in this book is "fragile". As soon as it isn't followed by all of the developers, it became useless. But if it is followed, the results are amazing. The book, however, is not very easy to read and lack something which can attract the developers who are "neutral" to improving their way of creating OO programs. But, for the people who already have strong OO background and are seeking the way how to improve their efficiency significant, the book is a must-have.

This book and the stream of thought it stems from is one of the most influental in OO software engineering. It focuses on sharing responsibility in a system. It takes into account the obvious parallels between software teams and their software systems.
The technique itself can be very enjoyable and if you can convince very formal people to use it, it will change their lives, much more then any formal OO methodology will do. CRC Cards make you live software systems! This should be the first experience of everybody who wants to learn OO. You can even use it to explain your work to your kids:-)

You want to know a great way on "how to" identify classes from any type of user requiremnets? Buy this book now!

A lot of OOA books like to tell how to design from start to finish. However, some (most) of us are thrown in some obligatory process without consent. CRC will bridge the gap on getting your Classes defined.

Also, CRC works well for "Use Cases". I use CRC after a good Use Case session for Class Diagrams. Some prefer to do CRC before Use Cases. That's the beauty, CRC can be injected anywhere you deem fit.

And, finally, this book will get you "thinking in objects" fast!

The title of this book is misleading, I was expecting hundreds of pages on dinosaurs but that's not what I got!! Nevertheless it has good information on the prehistoric life and evolution of : Fish and invertebrates,amphibians and reptiles,dinosaurs and birds and mammals and their ancestors. The reference section in itself is almost half the book; among other things it includes a geological time chart, biographies of geologists and a good glossary. I really do think that this book should have a different title.

"BRILLIANT"......

EVERY THING ABOUT THIS HE LOVED...
DETAIL,PICTURES,INFORMATION..

I BOUGHT THIS FOR MY 7YR OLD. REALLY A VERY GOOD BOOK
FOR ANY CHILD INTERESTED IN DINOSAURS

Our son got this book for his ninth Birthday after showing a steady interest in Dinosaur's since he was old enough to play with toy dinosaur's. He had already memorized all their names and habits etc... but this book has taught him so much more, he is always coming up to his mother and I telling us somehing new he learned about them. On his tenth Birthday Nov 1st of 2002, our house burnt down and his first posession that he asked about was if his Dinosaur book is ok, alone with it's CD-ROM. Unfortunatly, it didn't make it. I'm visiting this site today to looking at the price in order save up to replace it for him, as my wife is a house-mom, and I got laid off of work three weeks before his birthday/the fire. I will be back to buy it again maybe sometime in febuary.

I would not want to be Thomas Steinbeck. Imagine: you spend half of your time explaining who you are, the other half explaining who you aren't, and wait for the inevitable question, "Do you write, too?" Steinbeck has blazed his own path, acquiring large if quiet success as a photojournalist, cinematographer, and screenwriter. And, yes, he does write, too. And quite well.

The conundrum one encounters when approaching DOWN TO A SOUNDLESS SEA is approaching it on its own terms without using John Steinbeck as a reference and comparison point. Steinbeck could have avoided at least a portion of the dilemma by writing in a specialized genre, such as science fiction or horror and thus rendered intergenerational comparisons moot. He instead meets the problem head on; the short fiction collected in DOWN TO A SOUNDLESS SEA are Steinbeck's literary transcriptions of tales he grew up hearing from his father and from others who dropped by his household. Steinbeck wisely avoids disclosing to his readers who some of these "others" were, but anyone with even a rudimentary knowledge of John Steinbeck's friends and contemporaries can easily guess. The settings for these stories --- Big Sur and the California coast --- were also frequently used by Steinbeck the Father. Thomas Steinbeck, however, has found his own voice, and his own words. He passes, and surpasses the "John Smith" test: if DOWN TO A SOUNDLESS SEA was written by John Smith, it would be worth picking up, and reading.

DOWN TO A SOUNDLESS SEA consists of seven stories; if there is a common thread it is one of men following dreams and remaining true to their internal vision, though not always wisely, not always successfully. Thus, in "The Wool Gatherer," a young John Steinbeck, retained by a rancher as a wrangler for summer work, finds his attention from the job distracted by his sighting of a giant bear, supposedly extinct. His efforts to find the bear, again, result in his wages being docked and his summer effectively wasted. Yet, there is a nobility found in the story that rings true for its time. The ending to this little tale resounds quietly but is writ large, so that it is not so much an entertainment but more a tacit lesson, not sugarcoated but nonetheless easy to swallow.

"Blind Luck," one of the two longer stories in the book, encapsulates the life of Chapel Lodge, whose childhood was so devoid of love and caring that he at one point believed his name to be "Hey you! Boy!" Possessing an innate, canny intelligence, Lodge comes to believe that his luck --- if it is to be had and utilized --- is to be found not on land, but on the sea.

"The Night Guide" is, perhaps, a tale of the supernatural, but more so it is the story of a quiet, but indestructible bond between mother and child, a fable and a history. It does not seem like much, at first, but it echoes with the reader even as the other stories herein are read and digested. The same is true of "An Unbecoming Grace," a deceptively simple little tale involving a traveling physician who plays inadvertently a most important role in the lives of three people, and in the happiness of two of them.

In "The Dark Watcher," meanwhile, an unassuming, untenured college professor sets out to make his academic mark and succeeds in a way that he did not anticipate. "The Blighted Cargo," one of the shortest tales in the book, is also the weakness, though, it is a fine enough entertainment, being a story of an ill-fated venture in the slave trade where the individual involved is, as is said in some parts, caught in his own juices.

The undisputed gem of DOWN TO A SOUNDLESS SEA is, however, "Sing Fat and the Imperial Duchess of Woo," the final story in the book. Almost one hundred pages long, this tale of romance and traditional Chinese engagement between a young widow and a student apothecary is practically worth the price of admission in and of itself. A quick reading of Steinbeck might leave the reader with the feeling that he takes two long to get the point of his stories and then dispenses with it far too quickly. Such an impression misses the point; every building, no matter how beautiful or utilitarian, is no stronger than the foundation upon which it rests. So too, with Steinbeck's short stories, and particularly with this last one, in which we come to know young Sing Fat, and to a lesser extent his erstwhile bride and the Imperial Duchess. It is unfortunate that stories like this or so rarely written in these politically correct, supposedly liberated days; it makes the beauty of this one resonate all the more strongly.

Steinbeck is reportedly working on his first novel. It will be interesting to see what he is able to do when given the room, and the inclination, to stretch his stories out to cover a larger canvas. He will certainly, on the basis of DOWN TO A SOUNDLESS SEA, have an audience ready, and waiting, to greet him on his own terms. Highly recommended.

--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub

After all that is why we read. It doesn't get any better than this. I just purchased the book the day before yesterday and only read 4 of the 7 stories. "Blind Luck" was great and "An Unbecoming Grace" had me laughing out loud at the end of the story.

I wish T. Steinbeck had several voulmes like this, looking forward to his 1st novel-

Don

When I put the book down I thought, Thomas Steinbeck uses words like Monet's brush.

For anyone that doesn't know about it, Eclipse is an IDE that is freely available and is usable for really just about anything. It's designed for versatility and it succeeds brilliantly. Of course, with increased versatility usually comes increased complexity. Eclipse In Action is written with Java developers in mind and leads you through the major functionality and extensibility of the IDE through in depth examples. The examples are great and have a nice depth (they don't feel as contrived as most examples in books like this). This has some definite benefits - you feel like you're getting real-life experience by doing examples and it makes the book smoother to read front to back. However, there is a drawback - this book doesn't always make a handy reference to put on the shelf. To figure out how something works, sometimes I find myself looking back a chapter or two to see how the example works so that I can work forward. I found that this book lent itself to being read straight through rather than picking out chapters to read individually. I found the book easy and enjoyable to read, although you'll probably want to be sitting in front of your computer working along to get the most out of it. The technical information is dead on and I found few mistakes - the editing is done very well. I'd definitely recommend this book to anyone that wants to get the most out of Eclipse.

If you've wondered if switching to Eclipse can improve your productivity, check out the guy on the cover with three hands! I've been using Eclipse for over a year now and can't believe how much I was missing. Sure, I knew about Ant integration, but the book explains why some of my scripts run fine in command line and not from Eclipse. JUnit, CVS, log4j and Tomcat integration are all detailed as well. Eclipse in Action shows you how to create your own simple plug-ins, manage your coding activities and get the most out of this way cool IDE.

This is one of the few Java based books not trying to "teach you Java in 10 easy steps". It is a book for developers who have heard about Eclipse, have probably downloaded it it to play with and have got lost in the myriad of features.
This books gives a good coverage of the facilities available in Eclipse from basic Java development tools to code refactoring, CVS, JSP and Servlets. And if you get carried away it even covers developments of plugins to extend the Eclipse environment.

Overall, if you like Eclipse and want to master it this book is a must.

This is a neat little package that gives a wealth of info about slugs. It was a little less technical than I had hoped. If you're looking to answer specific biology questions or have the hopes of a key, this is not the answer.

What on earth am I doing reviewing a book about slugs? Because I live in Slugland & I want to know more about those slithery slimers who mug my lettuces & ravish my sprouts. This little book is a gem, a must for anyone living among gastropods. This book inspired me to write a poem about these critters who have been around far longer than we! Still don't like 'em, I'll tolerate them because David George Gordon has written a funny, informative, charming book about a subject most would rather stomp on! So there!

I found this book to be a concise, thorough discussion of the subject of garden slugs. Every gardener has had to deal with them in some form or another and this little book is the perfect addition to your gardening library on the subject. Excellent artwork and drawings, also.