Story of an ordinary man thrust into extraordinary circumstances by a massive, protracted power outage in the Northeastern U.S. Fascinating glimpse of average Joe turned into tough-as-nails survivalist; riveting story.

I've used Director for 5 years and i found this book full of good examples. I found the Object Oriented Programming chapter so exciting...Probably one of the best book on Director i've read (i'm waiting for Gary's new Book - Using Macromedia Director 8.5).
Buy it, non ve ne pentirete !
ciao

This is awesome! I've used Director for 2 years and was really excited about the new 3D features in 8.5 but thought I'd have to spend months learning how to use the engine. In 1 week of reading this I made my first user activated 3D projector that plays sound relational to my world.

I know why this book is so good: I looked at these guys sites in the front of the book for these authors - these guys really know how to create. Examples are inspirations!

This is the juice. I want more. Give me more.

PG Juice.

Kenneth Cameron has created a very interesting work here. He goes into great detail about what is known, or what is theorized, about the original meanings of the names of places. The author has done a lot of research into the little known field of "onomastics," or place names. The title is kind of a misnomer -- a fair number of the place names discussed here are not technically "English," but Celtic. A few may even date to pre-Celtic times, although it's impossible to be completely sure about things that became set in tradition so long before the advent of writing in the region. Other place names come from the viking period and language of the Danelaw (known as Old Norse); from the French incursion after the Norman Conquest; or even Breton and Flemish, from when the uber-jerk Henry II employed Flemish and Breton knights and mercenaries to kill problematic upstarts for him. Cameron has included short chapters on each of these sources of place names. He has several chapters about the meanings of geographic locales,and fills the book out with surprisingly interesting discussion of the grammar behind these place names.

My only real problem with this book is that there are hardly any maps. There should be more of them.

Speaking as an American, and one who has never been to the U.K., you may well wonder "What in the name of all that's holy was Ed doing, in reading this book?!" Fair enough. I sought it out because many of the towns in pleasant, albeit meteorologically schizophrenic Massachusetts, where I live, were named after English towns. As you go farther west in America, more and more towns were named after settlers last names, or Spanish cities of terms, instead of English towns. Still, if you live in the East, you'll find a lot of familiar names here. One of my favorite examples would be the following... Framingham is a town in the metrowest suburbs of Boston, in Massachusetts. It's English onomastic progenitor was named Framingham, meaning (in the Dark Ages) "homestead or hamlet (ham) of the descendents or dependents (ing, from Old English ingas) of Fram. "Fram," most likely, was some kind of particularly humongous Dark Age barbarian warlord, from the 6th or 7th century AD or so, who scared everyone into letting him call himself their "protector." That's one name. There are many more...

Be aware of the helpful little table in back, which helps clear up the meanings of especially common parts of words. -Burg, -ton, -ford, -by, -cester, -wich... all these are explained, and more.

There's a nice little bibliography in back, which you should definitely look at. If you enjoy the topic, seek out the publications of the "English Place Names Society," or any articles or books by Margaret Gelling. Also -- if you have an interest in the meaning of words handed down from the olden days, you should think about reading about the names of stars. They're really intriguing, too. I recommend "Star Names: Their Lore and Meaning," by Richard Hinckley Allen, or "Short Guide to Modern Star Names and Their Derivations" by Paul Kunitzsch (watch that spelling) and Tim Smart.

This book would have benefitted from some maps, but I basically enjoyed it a lot. Two thumbs up.

The story of the textbook is to give students an appreciation of theatre, to delineate theatre from other Art forms such as sculpture, dance, and painting as well as film and sporting events. The text gives a concise and accurate, although thoroughly Western, overview of theatre history with brief emphasis on African and Asian theatre. One is taken Chapter by Chapter through a discovery process from the very broad appreciation of theatre as a performing art to the very specific nuances of various Asian performance techniques. Along the way there are three units broken up into various chapters. Unit one focuses on audience relationship to the stage, the social context of theatre, textual and visual analysis a.k.a audience appreciation. Unit Two analyzes the state of theatre today and occupations in theatre. Unit Three focuses entirely on theatre history with chapters on ancient theatre, the middle ages, neoclassicism, romanticism, avant garde, eclectic and current theatre, and concludes with world theatre (mainly African, Islamic, and Asian). The book's weaknesses are its decidedly Western and Caucasian focus, very little of the text is devoted to non-white theatre and (although much improved on other texts) there are very few multi-cultural photos and illustrations included. Also, there are no plays included in the text. It is difficult to encourage script analysis if no script is included, and one page of a script with blocking scribbled all over it does not suffice. There is not much focus on design besides explaining the role of designers in the theatrical process and showing different illustrations of various historical theatre buildings or areas. Lastly, not knowing how to eloquently state this, there is something disturbing about siphoning Chekhov, Ibsen, the Federal Theatre Project, Kathakali, avant garde, Ira Aldridge etc. to two paragraphs or less. By trying to include so many various historical topics in one relatively small text, the authors have sold many of them short. Overall, If used in combination with lectures or texts on design, live performance, and a collection of world drama or scripts this is a solid and very useful text.

"America on Film" explores the presense, in American movies, of historical subject matter. This book suffers on many levels. Cameron drowns the reader in a host of references to specific films, without going into great detail about enough of them. Second, the author seems bent upon harshly criticizing every film that he discusses. He doesn't seem to really enjoy cinema, but rather appears to focus on what various filmmakers have done wrong, in his estimation. A book of this nature should be critical and honest, true, but "America on Film" seems overly subjective, negative and narrow. He judges a film's quality, in large measure, by how accurately the plot and mise en scene correspond to the conventional historical record. This, of course, allows little room for interpretation, revisionionism or story-telling. He acts as though the value of a film lies solely in its ability to factually offer us the story we already know, when we've known--since at least Aristotle--that we enjoy the arts for their ability to allow us to suspend disbelief, if only momentarily, and find refuge in the world of fiction. Cameron is also weak on vision. He examines many individual films, but lacks the ability to make original insights about the world of film in general. I cannot recommend this text to anyone.

The previous review correctly identifies some of the problems with Cameron's book. Clearly, this is not the place to begin an exploration of historical films (Sorlin and Rosenstone offer much more sophisticated and nuanced entry points into the literature). However, Cameron's readings of individual films are often very sharp and sometimes hysterically funny. For example, take his reading of Bound for Glory, Midnight Express, and The Falcon and the Snowman.

A Horrid book! As usual, Cameron is overly, overtly subjective in his views. The text is crammed with minute details regarding film, yet it lacks any real analytical scope. Cameron has done his research, but the work is dry, dull and uninviting. He makes claims based on this research, but he does not argue them persuasively or elegantly.