This is a well done photo tour of all Disney theme parks, foreign and domestic. It shows a lot of the behind the scenes goings on and has very nice full page pictures. If you are looking for information, though, it doesn't have much, it is mostly just a picture book. Well worth it if you enjoy books like this.

I don't remember where I got this at, but even at cover price it's a GREAT book. If you love Disney parks, GET THIS BOOK!! Yes, it's mostly pictures, but being able to see all 4 castles on one page or the differences between the Haunted mansions is really cool. Not much reading, it is mostly pictures. A great coffee table book. Keeps you dreaming/ remembering until the next trip.

As was once the case with the British Empire, the sun never sets on Disney's theme parks, with little havens of happiness (and profit) around the world -- California, Florida, France and Tokyo, with more just opened (Disney Sea, also in Tokyo) and more coming (Hong Kong).

What this book does, like all the other "A Day at/in..." books, is give you a 24-hour time span. At the same time, it jumps from park to park, showing different aspects of different parks, at different times of the day or night -- with guests streaming in, cast members working, resting, smiling or laughing (if you're looking for a critical eye towards the Disney empire, this is not the book for that), or simply landscapes framed by the good work of Mother Nature and the photographer.

For those who haven't traveled the world (and that's most of us), it gives you a detailed view of what the rest of the world sees when it looks at Disney, noting the differences and the similarities.

And finally, if you just love the theme park(s), this book will help keep those memories fresh. It works for me.

For the lay public, or for someone starting out in defense investigations, this book is perhaps not indispensible but certainly a solid foundation. Every good investigator should develop a reliable methodology; the marketplace and the justice system dictate that any method must be efficient and trustworthy. Herein, Perron's method is sound and may be relied upon by the most green of investigators without worry.

On the other hand, a more experienced investigator with private professional or public/law enforcement experience will probably not gain much in the way of technique. The book may help orient investigators to some of the specific requirements and needs of clients on the criminal defense side of the aisle. This book is a good start, but Perron needs to return to the text and double-up the substance of the book (more on working with police; and especially ethics). It won't hurt to read this book, but groundbreaking it is not.

Some may not get it but I sure did! The perpective from the criminal defense has long been overdue. The foundation in critical thinking is what makes this work unique to the field. As a lawyer I found it most helpful in respect to what the investigator can do for me. I would make it a must read for any truly dedicated criminal defense professional.

I read this book and was in awe of the depth and breadth of a work on criminal private investigation. From the philosophies of truth to a solid methodology for discovering all essential elements for true criminal investigation, Mr. Perron is eloquent, factual, and all encompassing. Ever since beginning my investigative career, I was always concerned about adequately providing my clientele with the integrity and thoroughness they deserved. This book has advanced my own professional development light years ahead of what would have been a long ramp-up in building knowledge and experience. The investment in this book and its wisdom and knowledge will return many times over in helping me help my clients uncover the truth and present a reasonable doubt.

Enough of these childish space operas! Finally, I can enjoy my science-fiction, as an adult, coupled with normal sexual action. For years, sci-fi writers have treated their readers as if they were grade school librarians. Hey, guys! We are beyond Buck Rodgers and Flash Gordon. Poor Dale, she never got Flash in bed! That's a crime against both Dale and adult readers. Now, a lot of modern science fiction books have joined "Sex Rites." If you run out of Fox, and want more, look at Ray Emerson's "The Riddle of Cthulhu" for more erotic science+sex-fiction. If you like more classical old time science+sex-fiction, enjoy Haggard's "She." Let's have more writers like Brandon Fox, Ray Emerson, and yes, even Haggard!

This book includes passionate erotic encounters, like the other novels in the series, but really it's an adventure focusing on the travails and growth of the characters. Some people might not like the sexual content of these books, but it's in keeping with the "sex magic" premise and occurs between characters with deep emotional bonds - the erotic scenes show lovemaking rather than just getting off. The characters make this series, more than the sex. The story is satisfying because the characters show heroism and growth.

"Sex Rites" explores beyond the traditional science fiction genre with a genuine saga of gay sexual adventure, very much in the style of Philip Jose Farmer. This is such an arousing story that a brief review can hardly do justice to the well crafted new character. Dannel is an incredible sensual stud who was sold by his greedy parents at a very young age to a cult to become one of their enslaved guardians of ancients secrets.

Thane is on the run from the Zamindar's relentless pursuers, after thwarting the tyrannical ruler's chance for immortality. Having narrowly prevented destruction of the Lyceum, a community of mages that use sex magic, Sorrel and Nicolai have sent the ever playful Skorri and his skilled companion Erik to assist in Thane and Ander's escape. As a result, we are treated to a sexually filled adventure into new lands of ancient secrets. The reader is given the opportunity to more fully understand why Skorri and Erik are so highly regarded at the Lyceum for their particular skills and legendary horny nature.

This was a fine tale to conclude the series and especially fun to see some new ideas of sexual intrigue and exploration. On my first reading, I didn't fully appreciate the attention to the sexual and cultural details that Brandon Fox manages to weave into the story. This is not a novel to race through just to get from one sex scene to the next. "Sex Rites" is well thought out gay science fiction that will leave you feeling good and pondering things beyond the scope of simple pleasures. A fine novel to read more than once.

I'm thoroughly happy with this book as it is very easy to understand and follow. However, one or two of the tutorials are very dodgy indeed. Like for example the Tidal Wave effect on the CD is not very good, the wave looks extremely fake and out of place. But apart from that, the rest of this book is very well made and presented. A must buy for any intermediate users.

One of the big gripes I hear from people using tutorial books for software is that they are linear. (They make you start with the apple, then they let you model the tree, and somewhere way down they road you get to model Johnny Appleseed.) This is not the case with 3dMax 3 Magic. Each chapter introduces a new technique on a new tutorial model. In one chapter you are shown how to make realistic looking water surfaces, in another you are being shown how to make the best looking car paint I've ever seen. Like the title of this review states, this is a goodie bag. It is for the Intermediate to Advanced user who wants a "How To" on some of the things Max 3 has to offer. The Authors of the book assume that you atleast know your way around the application. I'm happy to have this book on my shelf, right next to my computer!

This is an excellent resource for anyone wanting to enhance their abilities with 3D Studio MAX 3. It goes beyond the MAX tutorials to show you how to create effects that obviously took some of these professionals a long time to perfect. The car paint material chapter alone is worth the price of the book. My only complaint is that it's too short.

Collecting the first seven issues of the Gen13 regular series this book has excellent artwork and entertaining stories. The big disappointment is the poor quality paper used. Worse than that used by most comic books, the paper is grey and makes all the colors murky. And whoever decided to print the original covers of the issues at 80% size and rotated so that the corners are cut off should be fired.

One of the Best Wildstorm Graphic novels of all time! This particular Gen13 Tradepaperback reprients the first Seven issues of Gen13: the regular series. It takes place where the first Gen13: miniseries left off. This one of Brandon Choi's Best writtem works! Brandon Choi, Jim Lee, and J Scott Campbell created this superhero team of Gen-active teens! These young people are lead by the mentor, Lynch or I/O from the WildCats: miniseries. the Gen 13 team leader is Fairchild,former college student who discovered she had more abilites then just brains! Then their is Burnout who is like Wildstorm's human torch! Grunge and Freefall, Gen-active teans who love to party! They have a love and friend relationship which is essential to the story! The RainMaker is the native-American superheroine who is also a Lesbian! She finally admitts to her sexual perference after having an on and off relationship with Bobby Lane aka Burnout! This book has wonderful characterizations and art and is considered one of the best Wildstorm titles ever made. With an acclaimed story by Brandon Choi, Jim Lee and Campbell, Art drawn by J. Scott Campbell with Alex Garner, This is a great read with Beautiful art! Also, Jim Lee and Scott Willaims apply the artwork for issues #6 and 7! Buy it! If you love comic books I know you will want this!

EXCELLENT,EXCELLENT,EXCELLENT, This graphic novel has the best artwork and the best stories and has humor (something rarely seen in most except for Young Justice). It should have had a few fold out wall posters of the girls too. I guess you can't have everything. This is just a little better than Young Justice because it's a little more adult and the girls are breathtaking. Too bad their not based on real women. If Image kept J. Scott Campbell for all of Gen 13 and not just the beginning they would have sold a lot more comics. Too bad he now works on Danger Girl which isn't near as fun to read as Gen 13. Art alone cannot always sell a comic book.

"Flash MX Components Most Wanteed" is targeted towards designers and those that shy away from ActionScript. The book focuses on explanations of how to use each of the components -- not how they were created or the design choices made while building these sometimes extraordinarily complex components. Many of the components contained on the CD are quite useful, but I personally could have done without the "nifty graphics" and image manipulation components. It's nice to have detailed explanations of each of the available component parameters (kind of like a product manual), but the book left me wanting more about the hows and whys of creating solid, useful Flash MX components.

I still can't believe i only paid so little for this book, it's just awesome! I've been using Flash for a couple of years now, but only recently started getting into MX components - any designer (or even developer?) looking for efficient solutions should really look into using them. I'm at the point now where i'm having to reuse as much code/design elements as i can now because
work is just soooo busy, and with this book you get a cd containing 21 components (actually, there's even more than that if you count some of the neat experimental ones!). I'm not even gonna try and work out how much development time this cd will save me, but I can't advise it enough - i really hope these guys bring more of them out. To be honest i've only looked through about half of these components so far, but i'm still blown away -
check out tool tip, the dynamic text 'stringthing', and the XML/actionscript converter especially - i didn't even realize i needed these things until now! The chapter on the movie loader is just a killer too. And there are also more 'crazy-stoopid' ones, like pattern generators and image modulators. What can i say, buy it and hope these authors bring out a sequel! Tons of fully-documented components, tons of examples, i'm a happy
designer!

Im coming from a unix/c background with over 10 years experience and I found this book to be really good introduction to Flash MX. Its written very clearly and concsicely and full of useful examples and great ideas. I got my project up and running very quickly with some very pleasing results. Keep up the good work boys!

A richly drawn journey through the World of Two Moons, this collection of stories spanning thousands of years is a fine addition to the ever unfolding ElfQuest saga. "The Blood of Ten Chiefs" gives us an all too brief glimpse into the lives of the wolfriders before the familiar days of Cutter and his family. Like the best of the ElfQuest tales, these stories are well written, beautifully drawn and easily capture emotions without the need for excess dialogue and narration. The change in styles from story to story, artist to artist, can be distracting at first, but after the first few pages the reader is fully involved and captivated by each artist's unique vision of these wonderful elves and their magical world. Wendi Pini's creative absence, so terribly and painfully obvious in many of the other recent entries in the series, in no way diminishes this collection which features some of the finest work of the "guest" artists I have yet seen.

The stories are varied in style and scope, ranging from the visually stunning "Colors" which tells the epic tale of Timmorn and his struggle to reconcile his elfin and wolf heritage, to the whimsical and innocent "At the Oak's Root" which tells of a young Tanner and his misfit "wolf"-friend who is not a wolf at all.

Taken together the stories serve as an engaging glimpse at the legendary Ten Chiefs. Newcomers to ElfQuest should probably save this collection for last, as the stories assume that the reader comes to them with a full and comfortable command of World of Two Moons and its inhabitants.

In the twenty-one years since Wendy and Richard Pini introduced the graphic series "Elfquest", many readers have been curious about the background of Cutter and his Wolfrider tribe. The Pinis took a first step toward answering these questions by endorsing a fantasy-novel series, "The Blood of Ten Chiefs", which appeared throughout the 1980s; this collection of short prose stories brought to light major events in the lives of the chieftains who lived in the 10,000 years before we meet the elves for the first time. From 1993 to 1995, the spirit - and some of the substance - of these tales was brought into a new EQ graphic serial, "Blood of Ten Chiefs"; the first nine issues retold stories from the prose-books, the last eleven were original tales created specially for this new series. Book 9b reprints issues 1 to 7, and 10-11 (a two-part story).

In these episodes published here the storytelling is always of quality, and two of the tales - "Colors" (issue 1) and "The Broken Circle" (issues 10-11) are among the most memorable and significant in the series. "Colors" is the visual version of Richard Pini's tale about the struggle of the half-wolf Timmorn, the first Wolfrider chieftain, to reconcile the elfin and lupine sides of his soul. The difficulty of illustrating states of mind is handled beautifully here; profound as the prose is, the drawing is even more eloquent, particularly in the last few pages. Even the coloring-work, though reprinted only in black-and-white, yet adds to the total effect (a pleasant surprise in almost all the issues here is the graceful transfer of these originally colorized drawings). No issue in BoTC was less than solid, but this debut issue remains the best of the series.

Other stories include another carryover from the novels, "The Phantom of the Berry Patch" - a tale about the young Bearclaw (the father of Cutter); the grim, disturbing "Swift-Spear", an account of Two-Spear's madness and his resulting campaign against the humans; and the last story in this volume, "The Broken Circle", about young Skywise's discovery of a great relic of the High Ones, ancestors of the elves - and the havoc it wreaks with him and his tribe. Drawn in a completely different style from that of "Colors", it too is ambitious, far-reaching and thought-provoking - with a more unsettling conclusion.

The series - and this book - are, by design, a literary and artistic grab-bag, with contributions from several different artists, but the level of inspiration is high all around; about the only flaw is a certain blockiness of pencil-work in two of the stories ("Swift-Spear" admittedly being one of those two). As I have said, the art has transferred very well to this lower-price format (not always the case with other volumes in the EQ Reader's Collection).

To summarize: if the "Blood of Ten Chiefs" book had been a mere history of a tribe of elves, it would have been much less interesting. But because it focuses on the major events in the chiefs' lives - and, through them, illuminates their characters and times - these stories will bear repeated reading. Recommended.

I really enjoy Elf Quest comics, but they don't tell you much about what life was like before Cutter's tribe. This book provides you with exelent, well written background information, and detailed drawings of the elves and the incredible world of two moons. It tells you different stories about all the ten cheiftens that came before cutter.

"The Last Great Ride" details the late Brandon Tartikoff's tenure at NBC during the 1980's in his own words. He does not present the information chronologically but rather topically (and there does not seem to be any particular reason to the order they are presented). Readers will enjoy reading about the creation of shows like "The Cosby Show", "Hill Street Blues", "Highway to Heaven" and many other NBC shows of that era. However be warned that not all of the successful shows of that era are covered ("Riptide" fans will not find anything here of note about that show). And it should be noted that the book is weakened the author's use of profanity. But the book's basic rags to riches story (of a distant third place network turning around into the dominant first place network) will be enjoyable to any TV fan.

This book tells of Mr. Tartikoff's dealings with a struggling network soon to be number 1! His tales of triumphs & failures (anyone remember "Pink Lady"?) are shows of honesty & how the biz works. Anyone who enjoyed 80s television has this man to thank. Find out more by reading all about the ins & outs of 80s tv right here! A must read!

This book is more than just about how many of our favorite NBC TV shows from the 80s were created. It's a lighthearted tale about a creative man who made a career of taking creative risks. This book, like any good TV show, did more than entertain me. It gave me pause to think. Whether you're a struggling writer, a successful CEO, or somewhere inbetween, read this book. Inspiration from an unlikely source.

But you need to have a few comercial plug-ins and this means spend money, instead of this you can learn many tricks other people learn with experience and time. I really don't know if the book isn't good enoght or 3D Studio is very incomplete, filling the holes with expensive IPAS.

First of all, I want to say that I'm from Sweden, so please be indulgence with my language. I've read the magnificant book of 3d Studio & Hollywood Gaming Effects. I used both 3d Studio and 3D max for the tutorials, and I was quite impressed. The book is based on examples and tutorials, made by pros'. The examples in the book are very detailed, and are understandble, even for an amateur like me. And the best thing is that, if you dont understand what they're talking about, just put in the CD-Rom (that comes with the book) find the chapter for the example, and run it. There you have it, step by step, all the exaples in the book on the CD-Rom are explained on the CD-Rom too. A book for both amateurs and proffesionals, that increase the flexibilaty you need to become a graphic artist. And even if you're using 3d Max, the examples in the book - and on the CD-Rom - works properly. Since Max and Studio are based on the same system. The examples in the books are well illustrated, and the layout makes it very easy to find and read. You learn new things every time you browse through the book. And just by watching the exapmles on the CD-Rom, you can load a project - and go through it - see for your self how it's build. And in that way learn some useful hints & tricks. A low cost educational book, that you can get useful hints & tricks from, that you cant get from anywhere else. As I said, my English is bad. I sometimes can't find a way to express my feelings in words. But it is a good book. I rated the book with a 9. Now that, is self explained. Happy rendering, Your Friend In The Jungle Of 3D.

When I first picked this book up I was expecting it to be another book on teaching the beginner how to do simple effects. I could never have been so wrong. Starting at an advanced level, the book assumes you not only have lots of experience with 3D Studio, but some additional software tools as well. Then, it shows you, in detail, how to create certain effects, all of which can be easily adapted to your scenes. Some of the effects include overlaying your animation with video so that it 'fits' together, or extended use of 'Bones Pro' and 'MetaBall Modelers'(which are plug-ins for 3D Studio) to create organic models.

For beginners, I recommend "3D Studio Special Effects/Book and Cd Rom" while this book is more for users with a solid grip on 3D Studio.

Fast, entertaining read. Focused entirely on a young boy and his family. More a narrative than a fact filled historical fiction but worth reading. Seeing WWII through the sometimes limited, sometimes seeing larger than life, view of a 8-12 year old child is interesting. Characters are fascinating, realistic and far from perfect. Jozsef fluctuates between innate maturity and the ability to see clearly through situations and adults to childish desire and emotions in a dangerous and desperate time. All facets of people during war are demonstrated here- the villains, saviors and the apathetic. Jozsef's many friends and teachers are hysterical but you sometimes flinch at Jozsef's cruelty.

The self-indulgent, narcisistic nature of the protagonist is the undisguised and tragic ego of the writer laid bare, both pathetic and heroic, in this brilliant if flawed Hungarian novel. An at times gripping, and always informative work, which rightly earned its place in PW's Best Fiction of 1995. An uneven masterpiece which would most probably benefit from a more literate and professional English translation. Nonetheless, the author's distinctively Hungarian, tragicomic voice is still audible despite a rather cumbersome and precious English rendition.

Battlefields and Playgrounds is the last word on humanity's darkest hour. A masterpiece of modern fiction, this novel is more than a novel, more than a chronicle, a memoir, a tribute to victims of persecution, holocaust and genocide. It is a celebration of life in all its glory and vulnerability, a portrait of childhood, human suffering and divine redemption. The exquisite prose, even in English translation is like a latter-day Gray's Elegy, sounding the curfew of Europe's vastest graveyard, with angels' trumpets echoing in the shadow of Death, heralding a last chance for humanity. This book restored my faith in literature, humanity and God. An unmitigated triumph of modern writing. Janos Nyiri's authorial voice rings true in a world ravaged by cruelty, bitterness and injustice. His genius lies in recording the greatest agony and evil, while reaffirming beauty, humor and innocence at the same time. By this life-affirming masterpiece, the author of Battlefields and Playgrounds restores Love, Beauty and Hope as only a child-survivor of the Holocaust can. Battlefields and Playgrounds should be required reading in every home, school, government and religion. An unforgettable book.