'All American Monster', by Brandon M. Stickney, chronicles the life of convicted Oklahoma bomber Timothy McVeigh, from childhhood up to, but not including, his trial. Keeping in mind that his trial had not yet occured, I found it incredulous that the entire book was written on the assumption that McVeigh was guilty. The author even went as far as telling us what McVeigh was thinking as he watched the Murrah building explode. I'm sure writers need to make some assumptions when doing an unauthorized biography, but I found the assumption of guilt a bit unsettling. One has to wonder about how much editing was done from interviews with those that know McVeigh, in order to fit the bias of the author. To his credit, Stickney seems to have put a lot of legwork into this book, and interview numerous people. You get a general idea of who Tim McVeigh was as a teen, but from there on, I don't think the author was able to get past his own political ideas to give the reader an accurate view. Mr. Stickney even went as far as 'correcting' the political views expressed by Jennifer McVeigh, Tim's sister, in a letter she wrote to her local newspaper. A biography shouldn't be used as a personal forum for an author's own beliefs. I found it both irrelevant and unprofessional. Perhaps there just wasn't enough information available, or those who know McVeigh just didn't want to talk about him, but there was a fair amount of repitition throughout the book, and I felt it could have been 100 pages shorter, and nothing would have been missed. In short, although the book had quite a few facts, and a fair amount of research was done, I found the book much too biased to be a truely accurate story of Timothy McVeigh. Thanks, Kary

Although this book is does not take a sympathetic approach to McVeigh's story, it becomes pretty apparent how McVeigh may have been lead astray. He was abandoned by his mother, had an emotionally detatched father, etc. Shows both sides of this tragedy. The tragedy of the bombing and the trajedy of McVeigh's disenchantment with America; especially after he was treated like a human guinea pig by the army. Very interesting book, I couldn't put it down.

I got this because I wanted some insight into how the story all came about and definitely more information.I got it here.A lot of questions were answered here,so if you want insight and revelation into what happened and why this book is a good place to start.I liked it because it was so informative.I considered that a book should have a certain amount of information to be able to be fair and the writer is fair to all sides.

I think its clear now that I'm a player's guide freak being that I love them and have one for every game that I own. Anyway in comparison to VERSUS BOOKS and BRADYgames this guide is mediocre to poor.

The guide covers the game okay. Yeah it has all those items and secret missions covered and it has those fantastic 3D maps that tell you where items are located and such but as far as that goes, THE WALKTHROUGH IS DOWN RIGHT HORRIBLE!!

While maps are nice eye candy (yes I like maps just as much as the next person) to look at the walkthrough is not informative enough, and is very disorganized. Again as with VB the guide is too thin. Its like 80 pages long! Not much to get from that. Even if the VB guide was just as thin that one covered EVERYTHING where as this guide DOES NOT!!!

This guide is mainly for those who just want to get down the point and go! It completely leaves out some secrets, and you find yourself asking "What in the hell are they talking about!?"

In other words, I'd check out the guide from VB or BradyGAMES and give this a pass unless you're very desperate to get through the game.

If you like help, this is the book to buy. This game doesn't really require alot of help, except for the "secret missions." You may find some things you overlooked, or you may get the most out of the game by using the stratagies presented. Not a bad buy, Well written and detailed!

This review was helpful to me. I was able to beat the game without it, but after I had already beaten the game, I wanted to get the stradegy guide to find any secrets I missed. It turned out there were THREE stradegy guides, and I could only find the Prima Games one. I'm normally a Brady Games Dan Birlew type of guy, but I couldn't find that one, so I just got this one. Now it told me where all of the blue orb fragments and red orbs and all the other colored orbs in the game I missed. It was fairly descriptive on where they were, and I was able to find them ok. It also gave in depth descriptions on tactics for beating bosses. I had already beaten the bosses, but the second time through the game, the tactics helped me beat them with less fault. The maps were very detailed too. It even had a moves reference card to refer to that you could pull out in case you forgot a move and didn't feel like going through the start menu. Now the 2 reasons I gave it a 4 instead of 5 is because of the fact that it only covered one mode of gameplay, the normal mode, while it hardly said anything about "Legendary Knight" Mode, "Dante Must Die!" Mode, "Easy Automatic" Mode, and "Super Dante" Mode. It also didn't describe the characters to where you could grow to like them in a way that would get you excited to learn more about them through the game which to me, is a MAJOR thing in a stradegy guide. To other people, it might not seem that big, but in a stadegy guide, it's the little things that make me happy. I did learn to respect Dante greatly, but the way they described him in the guide was just sort of tacky. Well, all in all, I liked the guide from Prima and it helped me out a lot. I never got to compare it to Brady Games or Versus Books Guides, but I would recommend this guide to anyone I knew who needed help with the game.

~Eric

There's a bunch of new beginner's books on design patterns today ! Well, in fact these books are much better than "Design Pattern" rewritten in simpler words, and that's the good surprise. Now the bad news : if I compare this book to "Design Patterns Explained", well, I prefer DP explained. Honestly. This one is lighter. But with several little case studies you also can consider this book as a workshop on design patterns ! Without code in annexes, this book is only 110 pages long, which is rather short.

I picked up this book to get a general introduction to patterns and the thought process that "might" be used to apply them. This book gave me exactly that.

I got a peek into the world of patterns and their application to enterprise architecture.

This book doesn't have good examples. The examples could have been simpler and more business oriented. The author doesn't do justice to tying in the examples with the theory.

Overall it is a good introduction to patterns.

It is a good read for some of the why in using software patterns in the design. I liked the author's suggested process of doing more design and less coding. This seems to me to be how projects do get done on time and within budget. The attempts at humor and several badly written parts hurt the book. The summary at the end of chapter 1 is a good example. It is a complete negation of the chapter's point and is almost unreadable. This happens in a number of places. The humor appears in the wrong places, often hurting the strength of the the author's message. The book is worth reading, but not for those who are looking for more depth on the why of using patterns.

If you have much experience developing CBTs or multimedia projects, this isn't the resource for you. It's better for aspiring managers or managers of training depts. It's a good book to read if you want to know a whole lot ABOUT the field of WBT. The CD-ROM is not a model of good design. It provides a list of URLs but does not categorize the list. Unless you're very familiar with the training world, you don't know which are links to resources (most aren't) and which aren't. The NASA link takes you to a login page for NASA employees and contractors (I assume most of us are not either of these). All in all, I regret buying the book. It does have useful information and interesting asides, but I did not use it in developing my department or WBT strategy.

It wasn't what I thought it would be. I took a class last summer and this was the book we used. If you are a technical type of person, you might understand it, or even a business person. The first half of the book talks about how you need a proposal and how to write one, why web training is ideal for business, etc. The last half is about how to set up a training website.

The book uses a lot of case studies, which seems like a good idea, but the book uses too many, and not enough concrete examples.

I don't really know why this is called a cookbook, it isn't set up like that at all. While it does have some interesting features, I think it's a little outdated and really should be revised to discuss some of the newer technologies available to trainers. This, and because it covers a lot of the very basics, might be why it seems to be filled with too much common sense and not enough truly innovative ideas. I've seen Brandon Hall speak at training shows, and he's obviously a leader in the industry. I just didn't think this book was worth (the money). I'd say only about a quarter of the book is useful. To top it off, the CD-ROM is a waste. I wouldn't recommend this book to trainers or instructional designers with any amount of real-world experience.

After reading Loose Among the Lambs I just had to grab another Brandon book - but was a tad disappointed. This one started out well, but tried too hard, was too cliche and just didn't have it. I think when Brandon's on, he's right-on, as in Loose Among the Lambs and Fade the Heat. But after reading this one I couldn't help but think that he's seen one too many episodes of Ally McBeal. Judges - no matter now incompetent - would not let attorneys blather on and on and on like they do in this novel, without getting interrupted. Brandon tries to make us believe early on that this judge is very incompetent, perhaps so that he can allow the attorneys to do just this, but I didn't buy it. And the ending? Too ridiculous. Too Hollywood. Brandon must have been thinking of the big screen when he wrote the ending. Too bad, because he's a great writer.

This is a murder story that concerns King Edward I. After destroying the Red House, King Edward is confronted by a mystery. A man called Walter de Montfort is killed. It is up to King Edward to find clues and capture the culprit. In the end, he discovers it was a man called Robert de Luce, the treasurer of the Cathedral of St. Paul's, the senoir cannon of the church. King Edward found out that Robert de Luce poisoned Walter de Montfort when a drink was passed around.

I chose to read this book because of a few reasons. First because it would help me with my projects. Second because it is a mystery book. Third because it is tied in with the Middle Ages. Fourth because it is really a good book. Finally, because it is full of excitement.

I actually didn't have a favorite part. This to me was good because it was a mystery story. I liked it because it ties in with the Medieval Time. I don't think that any mystery stories have a favorite part. I like the types of mystery stories that gives you clues so you could solve the mystery yourself. Some of those types of books that I like to read Encyclopedia Brown Books.

Jay Brandon mixed in his thorough understanding of how the criminal justice system works, a very original and intelligent villian, and a uncanny depiction and right on the mark description of the relationships and dynamics within the African-American community and how that community precieves the Legal Justice System to create a thrilling,page turning book that you can't put down.His protagonists Sinclair and Greenwald are a great match romantically and in helping to take down the killer Reese. Unlike other books that basically are written as screenplays/scripts or their antagonist are more interesting and way smarter than the hero i.e. James Patterson-"Pop goes the Weasel". Malachi Reese and Chris Sinclair are both very smart and cunning in their own ways, making for some great suspense and good reading.Look forward to the sequel to this book if for nothing else to read about the on going relationship of Sinclair/Greenwald and the other strong characters in the book, Asst DA Lynn Ransom and Councilman Winston Phillips. Get the book because you won't see it on the Hollywood screen because the villian is too Politicallly Incorrect for Hollywood to allow the book to be made into a movie.

This is a book that almost makes it to the top of the star chart. The premise of a sitting First Lady wanting to divorce her husbnand, the President is not so hard to accept. Many White House marriages have been badly flawed and it is only a matter of time before a spouse has really had enough. If Jay Brandon had dealt with just that scenario this might have been a better book. Instead he throws in a Satanized version of Bill Gates who has developed a computer chip that will do the most dastardly things and who has the President in the palm of his hand and sleeping with one of his confederates. The whole project is in danger of being exposed, however. Not by some super spy of industrial espionage, but by the President's 8 year old son who has learned of the plans (and understands them) while evesdropping during Oval Office visits. Myra, the First lady is obsessed with Randy and getting him out of the White House. The bad guy is obsessed with getting Randy and closing the loop on exposure of his plans. The President is obsessed with staying in office. All of this gets dumped in the lap of a Texas lawyer named David Owens who becomes obsessed with Helen, one of the Secret Service Agents protecting Myra and Randy. This then turns into a lot of cat and mouse running and hiding, power plays, threats and intrigues and a surprise ending which has been done several times before and is no surprise to the reader.
It probably is a better movie script than a book but, readers who like intrigue among the powerful will still enjoy the book. I just thought it was a bit of a stretch.

At Last! A book in which the President gets what is coming to him. The ending was a little surprising, and I could not help but have a smile on my face wondering what was going on in the President's mind.

This book is definitely a very good read.

Young San Antonio attorney David Owens wins a big divorce case and hopes it will attract some new business, though his wildest dreams didn't feature his next client, the First Lady - that's right, the wife of the President - who wants a divorce for the sake of her precocious young son.

Even Owens finds this preposterous and when his office is searched by sinister Secret Service agents who say the woman was an imposter, he's inclined to accept it. Until he gets a mysterious, plaintive email message, which brings him to Washington and into the White House. Intriguing? Outlandish? It gets better. Owens and a female Secret Service agent outwit various guards and technology to spirit the First Lady and her son out of captivity and off on a cross-country road trip. There's even a heavy-handed villain - a megalomaniac billionaire technology tycoon (a Darth Vader version of Bill Gates) with a direct line to the president, who he all but handed into office. Ridiculous? Certainly. But Jay Brandon keeps it all moving; juggling action, plot lines and characters for a rousing, suspension-of-disbelief entertainment.

This collection of short stories is written by some of the best legal thriller writers around and Scott Turow edits the book. Unfortunately most of the stories are formulaic and very predictable. The book is good as a tool to discover authors one might have never read and hopefully finds one who is a great novelist. The best stories in this collection is Marcia Muller's Sharon McCone case KNIVES AT MIDNIGHT and the underrated master of the mystery short story Ed Gorman with THAT DAY AT EAGLE'S POINT.

Although I usually see the worst of books wonderful because of some inherent habit of being positive, but no matter how I look at this book, I am sorry to say I can not call it excellent. Some stories are very interesting and offer a lot of new information but many of the stories are dull, pointless and divert from the topic which is a legal thriller. I guess this book can be called a good book if some of the stories were deleted or made more suspenseful or interesting.

I very much enjoyed the 2 audio tapes set and hope that you will do the same

It's always difficult to write a bad review when one realizes the weeks and months that must go into writing a novel. But this book is just a waste. The idea for the book is good and it begins well. A woman is been found dead and the hero recognizes the face of his old love when he sees a reconstruction of the face of the corpse. But from that point the author does not know where to go. The plot limps along with a lot of pointless conversations, little action, and badly described emotions. It is difficult to maintain interest in the characters. I wish I had not read this book and - if you buy it - you'll be sorry too.

The author gets a lot of his law right, but then wants us to believe that the DA does his own investigating, even doing a little b&e on the side. Too much to buy.

I couldn't put this one down! Stayed up late to finish it...a chiller. Not easy to read because youngsters are in danger and one has already died. Some of the characters are not as they seem, and the D.A. Chris Sinclair has to figure it out before it's too late. Not only a young girl's safety is at stake, but that of Chris and his sweetheart.

This book may well be interesting, but it is not written by a folklorist and offers up some incorrect information. Folklorists would not call an urban legend a contemporary myth as the author claims; myths and legends are extremely different types of folk narrative. Any author who makes a mistake like that (even first year folklore students learn this stuff!) shouldn't be teaching others about the topic. The fact that this books begins by giving out misinformation from the first few pages (and it never quite manages to define folklore at all!) makes it a poor choice for those interested in Urban Legends. Search for a book by Jan Brunvand and find out what folklorists, who devote their lives to the scholarly study of legends like these, have to say on the matter.

It seemed to me that this author found a way to link all of the mentioned urban legends to sex in some way. I found his statements for his reasoning to be confusing at best and downright silly at most times. As a continuing scholar of urban myths and legends, I think this book serves only to insult the intelligence of the average reader who does not know much about urban legends. The only reason the boook got three stars is the urban legends speak for themselves as classic tales everyone knows happened to someone they knew.

The book started out well and interesting, promising to debunk all the misconceptions made with urban legends. Something happened though. Somewhere along the line it stopped being interesting.

I know I expected more emphasis on the psychological and folklore aspects of urban legends, but that wasn't touched on in any sort of inventive manner. Once a psychological aspect was touched upon, it was brought up with every legend in the chapter only stated a little differently. This made for rather tedious reading since the author had a rather snide sense of humor and seemed to be mocking anyone who had ever fallen for an urban legend. Now I'm not stupid, but there are some urban legends I've thought twice about. That doesn't make me stupid, it makes me human.

Most of the urban legends themselves I'd heard before so there really wasn't much new there and the gory ones were even watered down. While some of it was interesting, too much of the book was repetative from chapter to chapter for me to really like it.

This book is not what I expected--I had expected an approach from a theoretical point of view. Instead, this book offers a lot of "general" techniques/advices that I did not find particularly helpful. Furthermore, this book concentrates on scenarios in a work setting, rather than daily encounters, and perhaps that is also another source of disappointment. I felt a lot of advices are "common sense", but then I have some exposure to this kind of books. I would say if you have no working experience (hence have never confronted situations presented in the book), you may consider this book as a starter. If you are looking for something more, try some other book.

I think there are few good tips in this book.

Keep on your desk, open & read a bit a day. A huge supply of quality concepts. jimgioiosa@softhome.net