I bought this book based on the reputation of Eric Brown and the other titles by this author that I own. I'm mostly satisfied with this purchase.

I purchased the book at the discounted price and feel I got my money's worth: The paper quality is good, it's well bound and the pictures (though none in color) are of high quality. There are a few misquotes (aircraft misidentified, etc.) that can easily be overlooked by most aviation enthusiasts. The color jacket illustration is spurious, by-the-way. It would have been possible for an FW-190 to have intercepted RN Corsairs in Norwegian waters..but this apparently never happened....

What's really different about "Duels in the Sky" is it's presentation of hypothetical air combat between aircraft that did not meet each other due to timing or being operated in different theatres of WWII..Mr. Brown rates the outcome of these mock battles in a most informative way.

Also, the comparisons are set in the context of the actual events (air and naval campaigns) of WWII - with ununal clarity and brevity. For example, Japanese and Allied aircraft are compared during the Battle of the Phillipine Sea (Marianas Turkey Shoot) on a day-by-day basis. In just a few paragraphs you find out the numbers of aircraft engaged, the order of battle and finally, the tactical outcome. No having to consult several sources to get the complete picture!

Finally, Mr. Brown's rankings of combat aircraft by type and country make this book especially worthy of your shelf. His choices are ranked by country of origin/aircraft role (bomber/fighter). A final tally compares the best of the best, regardless of origin.

Pick up a copy before it goes out of print..like most good titles seem to do very quickly, these days.

Eric Brown is a very experience pilot back in WW2. He has a lot of personal experience on flight testing aircrafts from both side of the war. This is not his first book, but the one with comperhensive information.

This book categoried by years and campaign of both ocean. He first introduced the backgeound of each battle, then the aircraft involved. Then the comparsion of them.

At the end of this book, he also grouped those aircrafts showed up in the final stage of the war and give some more details.

This is a great book to know the history of the battles and aircrafts involved and also how did they fight through the war. With personal experience, readers can find more than just list of numbers but the real performance of them.

Highly recommend this book to everyone who wants to read about WW2 aircombat.

What did you get when you add weird mystery, a genius boy who's 10-yet. A girl who can punch any one's lights out. A gang called the Tiger, and more off-beat characters then you can shake a stick off. Fun, that's what you get!

The book I am going to talk to you about is "Encyclopedia Brown, the case of Pablo's Nose." This great book is about this boy called Encyclopedia Brown. His real name is Leroy. They call him Encyclopedia because it is like he had a Encyclopedia din his head. Encyclopedia is a ten year old boy that goes to school like any other boy. His parents want to tell the whole world about their brillant son, but who will believe that the secret behind Idaville's war on crime is in the fifth grade? This book is about this boy that solvesmisterys or you can solve it.He always has one question to ask. The Police Cheif comes to him when he needs help on a mistery.So, you have to read carefully for you to solve the mistery and be the hero. I love this book because I think it gives you a little spice.

This book is quite comprehensive and up to date with all of the current moves. It not only describes how to do each move, but opens with a section on training and competition tactics. It then breaks all the moves down by wave, hole, eddyline, or flatwater. I particularly like the way EJ starts with the easier moves and progresses to the difficult ones, each move being a building block for the next one. If you enjoy EJ's style (perhaps you like his Strokes & Concepts book) and you're into playboating or want to get into it, this is a great book. I rank it a notch better than Ken Whiting's, and in fact I think both of EJ's books (Strokes and Playboating) make good complements to Ken's videos (Play Daze and SOAR).

I bought this book after buying EJs Strokes book (also recommended) and was expecting a book which covered how to get fit to paddle and strengthen injury prone muscle groups. The first thing that struck me was the similarity to the playboaters handbook, however after reading the whole book I can say that it is different enough for me to recommend this over Ken Whiting's book.

The first section covers the attitude you need to learn moves and win rodeos. I had never seen this anywhere else and anyone who is serious about their boating will find this section helpful.

The middle section includes all the modern moves. EJ goes through his usual Body, Boat and paddle breakdown which helps a lot. The photos are spectacular (although missing on some of the harder moves).

The final section was the section I bought the book for and was discouraged to find that it was only a couple of pages long. However it still managed to contain everything I was looking for.

To sumarise, buy this book over any other playboating book out there but try and get a look if you already own something like the Playboating Handbook.

This may be a good book if you need a complete introduction to IPv6 (the first half of the book) and some Cisco specific configuration details (the second half).

I agree that it's easy to read and seems to be well organised, but it is certainly not well written.

There are numerous errors throughout the book ranging from the trivial to the totally misleading, and many IPv6 concepts are repeated as nauseum in the first half suggesting that they were written by different authors without consulting one another before the book was published. Worse, it seems to have been rushed out without any overall proof reading.

No specific target audience seems to have been kept in mind - if you need an explanation of how to convert decimal to hex (pages 122 - 124) then perhaps this book isn't your first priority.

If you want to know more about IPv6 in Cisco IOS I recommend you look elsewhere - especially to the authoritative guide from Cisco Press by Regis Desmeules.

I give this book three stars for the Cisco IOS specific material, but only two for the general IPv6 material.

Configuring IPv6 with Cisco IOS

I found this book to be excellent reading. It covers enough to help you understand IPv4 and carry that over to IPv6 very adaquately. I have to say I have a technical library of over 300 books and manuals, and this is a welcome addition. It is definitley the best book I've read on IPv6, and know that I will have it around for reference for some time. It is very well written adn organized.

I am a proffesional Internet Security Expert, and find this book Configuring IPv6 with Cisco IOS to be very helpful in understanding what to expect in the new version of IP.

I recommend the book to anyone who is serious about IT, and wants to be on top of the game.

A must for a counting book esp. if your child likes Sesame Street. It is an older book so the new characters like Elmo don't show up. However, you see the Count and Big Bird a lot, also, Grover, Oscar, Kermit, Tully, Cookie Monster. Very little of the books scenes are actually on Sesame Street. You see a merry go round, a farm, a train, cars while you are looking for Big Bird who is semi-hidden in many of the pictures. Its simple and fun and counting books esp. this one had my son counting to 12 at two years old.

At long last, British sf maestro Eric Brown's third collection -- his first in six years -- has been published, with ten tales published between 1990 to 2000 inclusive. Though none of his Tartarus stories are included herein (Victor Gollancz has been quite busy watching paint peel whilst sitting on his FALL OF TARTARUS mosaic novel), there are stories from some of his most popular series (e.g., Sapphire Oasis, Ben Henderson, Engineman, Kethani, telemass, etc.), as well as some independent tales, two of which rank among Brown's best work (the Michael Coney influenced "The Miracle at Kallithea" and the Vanceian-yet-metafictional "Deep Future"). The ten collected stories are "The Miracle at Kallithea" (2000), "The Phoenix Experiment" (1991), "The Pharagean Effect" (1990), "Paramathea" (1993), "Kathmandu Blues" (1999), "Downtime in the MKCR" (1994), "The Crimes of Domini Duvall" (2000), "Deep Future" (1998), "Onward Station" (1998), and "The Kings of Eternity" (2000). A nice, sweet introduction is included by friend and fellow British sf author Keith Brooke, and each story comes with a wonderful, bracingly honest introduction by Brown himself -- a first for any Brown collection.

My only complaints are neglible: there are no page numbers listed in the TOC in my copy (this may have been fixed by now); the collection is woefully short considering the uncollected material available (176 pages); and the first Kethani story ("Ferryman") is not reprinted (and does not appear in either of Brown's earlier collections), yet the first sequel ("Onward Station") and the sort-of prologue ("Kathmandu Blues") are (the second sequel, "The Kethani Inheritance", was recently published in "Spectrum" #7) -- this is a problem because each story builds on what was related in earlier stories, coloring the background with earlier characters whose motivations are only known if you've read the previous stories (I can say this with authority because I unfortunately read them all in reverse order). Anyway, these "grievances" -- for lack of a better term -- are *FAR* outstripped by the joys of the texts within. Also, the cover, in my opinion, is one of the best I've ever seen for a print-on-demand book: kudos to Juha Lindroos.

So what are the stories themselves like? The overarching theme is love and its many permutations ("love", however, is here not as broadly defined as it is when used to thematically describe Theodore Sturgeon's work). Trust, bonds, family, loss, belief, fear, hard-won optimism (except for two notable exceptions), and a deeply passionate humanism abound throughout. Brown is much more interested in his characters, their faults, their dreams, than he his in the surrounding gadgetry and world building (e.g., his Engineman stories contradict themselves (especially when his BSFA nominated novel ENGINEMAN is thrown into the mix), but who cares?) except to the extent that these sf settings affect the characters in ways that non-sf settings would not (which is pretty much one of the main reasons to read speculative fiction in the first place). For this reason, I recommend pacing your reading of the tales and not gobbling them all up at once. This is not a criticism, far from it; the stories lose their impact if read en masse because you become desensitized to their fervent souls.

In all, I recommend this collection, Brown's first publication in the US. Hopefully some US publisher will pick up his other well-regarded works, such as MERIDIAN DAYS and the VIREX trilogy, as well as his two earlier collections, THE TIME-LAPSED MAN and BLUE SHIFTING. Enjoy!

P.S. If you can find it, Brown's novella "A Writer's Tale" from Peter Crowther's outstanding PS Publishing is a must-buy. It's Brown's best work in any form ever.

A solid book. I read it in three days. Keep an eye out for future books by the guy.

Another great collection of Sci-Fi Novels, a collection of Six stories that join into one big story... All of them have separate storylines which all coincide towards the end.

A great read for anyone on holiday and nothing much to do... Reads easily even if it is a bit on the childish side most of the time, a great read for kids getting into Sci-Fi and I certainly enjoyed it...

A bit of a change from Asimov ;Þ

Confusion. This novel is for those of educated minds. Stream-of-conscious runs through this book and only stops as you stop to re-read each page to find out what happened. The book runs free from subject to subject, all seen through the mind of Stephen Dedalus. His imagination runs freely throughout the book and it is sometimes hard to pick up whether what your reading is reality or just a thought process. Symbolism. Every word, sentence, and page is key to understanding this novel. If your focus wanders away for one paragraph, you lose, game over and go back to the beginning to start reading again. The thick symbolism makes it hard to read, but Joyce is able to capture many feelings through the symbolism of birds.
I couldn't get into this book. Every time the book was about to pull me in, a sudden change of pace would leave me scratching my head. This novel seemed to drag me nowhere, granted it is a classic, my classic eyes, nose, and ears say "no" to this book.
This is a well-written novel told about a young boy's life as he grows up. You learn side by side as this young boy, Stephen Dedalus, learns of life. You see things as he sees them, experience things as he experiences them, and feel as he feels. Whether it's fear, loneliness, pride or remorse, the feelings are lived as Stephen's imagination and life intertwine themselves together through each page.
This is a great novel if you have a Joyce-code-reader that helps you understand the Irish slang, Latin and symbolism. Irish slang dots this book, Latin develops it, and symbolism flies through it. This plot-less book is very hard to understand, which conveys Stephen's attitude toward life. He, a young man, is very confused in life. There are five stages in which Stephen goes through in this novel. He goes through school homesick, and looking for an identity other than his father's. Joyce depicts the family through debate at the dinner table, showing the strong political views of Stephen's father. Stephen also finds himself in a growing situation at school. After being wrongly beaten by the prefect of studies, Stephen decides to go and tell the rector on him. Fear mounts as he enters the hall across from the rector's room, but joy comes as he excitedly runs to tell his friends what happened. As he continues to experiment with life as he finds himself wading through sin. He struggles with the lusts of the natural man, as he gets involved with the opposite sex. And then it hits him. A power sermon about death, judgment, heaven and hell chain his soul down as he wishes to escape the eternal torment that surrounds him. He wants his soul to be at peace. And so through a battle with his conscience he repents and frees himself from sin. He then devotes his life to religion and purity. Seeing his devotion to the priesthood, a Father offers him a vocation. However, he discovers another path to paint the picture of his life. He journeys away to find his freedom lies in being an artist.

If you're going to read this book, put your code-decrypter nearby and get ready for a ride through the mind of Joyce.

James Joyce's semi-autobiographical novel is probably the most read of all his works, most likely due to the fact that it is less bizarre and easier to read than his other novels. Realizing this, most readers jump into "The Portrait" expecting it to be a simple and straightforward story only to find that nothing could be farther from the truth. It is extremely complex and ahead of its time and damn near prophetic. Many readers criticize it because the plot is so realistic that whereas other books are fantastical and overblown, the plot to "Portrait" is so prevelant that it could have happened to anyone, and indeed, similar series of epiphanies do indeed happen to many. Perhaps ironic is the fact that many of the same people who criticize this lack of action enjoy spending their time watching "real life" shows such as "Survivor" and "Big Brother" that are heavy in realism and light in action. The difference of course between those shows and this book is that while the shows are completely and utterly mindless attempts to quench the public's ever-growing hunger for drivel, "Portrait" is one of the most though-out, complex psychological testaments to the life of a human being ever put to paper. It is the story of a young man, growing up in Dublin in the same manner as all other boys, and how, along the way he became different than the rest. In this age, society is obsessed with peering into others' lives, in "A Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man," we peer into someone's soul: an artist's soul.

I read this years ago in college and once or twice afterwards though I haven't had the chance to re-read it in recent years. Still it lives on vividly enough in my memory to allow a review, here, I think.

Joyce was a strange one, where writing was concerned, focusing as he did on language as a means to evoke the world rather than merely for telling a "story". Over the years I have come to conclude that fiction requires narrative requires storytelling . . . and yet Joyce successfully broke that rule and he did it first in this book.

PORTRAIT is a book which builds the world of its narrator in the telling, without really following any kind of plot or storyline or giving us a beginning, middle and end. From the opening lines of ludicrous baby talk, where we see the world through the young hero's infantile eyes, to the end where the young lad, after much intellectual wrestling in his school days, steps off into the wider world, this is a book which paints a young man's coming of age, through his very subjective experience of life, with words. Indeed, all good writing "paints" its world to some extent. But Joyce, and several of his contemporaries, set out to re-write the rules of writing by only painting the picture, as though the story (an artificial element in most cases) did not count at all. And they did what they set out to do. Joyce did it most dramatically of all with this book. Like Hemingway, Joyce was a literary impressionist, building the world through bits of language instead of merely describing it or telling us about it.

I think we need to get back to basic story in our day, as theirs was, to some extent, a false trail. But it was a trail worth following and of great value to all readers and writers alike. Aspiring writers, and anyone with a real craving to explore the literary world, ought to have a go at this one. It's an original.

SWM

It bothers me to no end to read the negative reviews of this book. Maybe it's because the book is labeled from "casual" to "expert" user. I knew absolutely nothing about web publishing and HTML coding and found this extremely easy to read and follow. Unfortunately there were probably a few people in the "advanced" bracket who needed to slam this book because it did not cover what they expected. It gave me a solid basis for HTML and Dynamic HTML coding and was a great introduction to Java and CGI. When an author has to cover so many subjects related to HTML he's bound to skim over the more advanced applications. Being almost 1000 pages, it does a sterling job. By the way, the CD has a great HTML editor on it!

As a beginner I found the book a tremendous resource into HTML and Web page authoring. I do not believe the book is intended to be an exhaustive reference on every topic but wants to focus on normal day to day concerns. After reading the book I now feel extremely comfortable on all Web issues and recommend the text highly.

Easy and fun to read and learn basics of HTML and well beyond. Logically organized so it works well both for self-instruction and as a reference.