Actually the version of Early Man I'm reviewing is the 1968 revised edition. Originally published in 1965 (and apparently the book continued to be revised in 1981), this is a very interesting, albeit very outdated book about prehistoric Man. This book really has some very deep nostalgic value for me as it's been with me since I was a little kid, my parents found a used copy of this book in 1979, and when I got a hold of the book, I absolutely loved the photos in it. One of my favorites have been the front cover which is the skull of a Neandrathal Man, not to mention the picture inside the book of Laugerie Basse in France which is a hanging cliff, and I just dig the buildings under the cliffs, including a restaurant. Laugerie Basse happened to be an area where Cro-Magnon Man inhabited. In this book you get plenty of illustrations of bones, skulls, artifacts, caves, tools, spears made from rocks, and so much more. I give it a very high rating because to this day, I still dig the pictures. Back when I was a kid I was interested in how Man lived in prehistoric time, and this book really satisfied my desire. Of course the book is grossly outdated, but if you don't mind that and curious about prehistoric Man, try this book.

The book is a collection of disjointed but interesting essays on the general topic of equity derivatives. There is a heavy US bias in the material and none of the topics are covered in much depth. Nor does there seem to have been much in the way of editorial control over the way that essays are linked to form a theme (the treatment of covered warrants is a clear case here).

One to get if the company are paying since, in a book this big on a sparsely covered topic, there is some interesting stuff here.

This is an excellent Anthology of an often maligned and misunderstood subject. The forward is written by Fischer Black who is a pioneer in the derivatives industry. These are clearly written essays on the multiple and intelligent methods of using derivatives in varying investment environments. This is a book about financial choices and the opportunities that abound for end users of these products to hedge, diversify, insure against disaster and customize investment positions. This book should be on the desk of every Treasurer or Money Manager who is entrusted with fiduciary responsibilities.

The book starts with a strange 'Introduction to Programming' chapter, which is for people who don't know what a variable is (good thing _that's_ in a language reference book!) Meanwhile, there is no 'Introduction to VBScript' chapter. I found it very difficult to find simple information on syntax and keywords (just try to find anything on function return types or declaring arrays...) The main Appendix, which contains lots of valuable information, is organized randomly by arcane subjects (and there's no listing of the subjects) so it's difficult to find anything. It also seems to be lifted out of a VB book and contains things that aren't even supported in VBScript.

The range of topics covered is useful if you're trying to decide whether VBScript is right for your project . But if you're just trying to write Active Server Pages, I recommend skipping this book and getting 'Beginning ASP' by Wrox -- it uses VBScript exclusively and has a better introduction to the syntax and usage of the language.

Although there are many books on scripting, there are only a handful of books about VBScript. Of those that do focus on VBScript, many pages are devoted to server-side web scripting with active server pages, which is amply covered by the many titles on ASP. This book by contrast is current, complete, and packed with chapters about all the cool things you can do with VBScript, including COM objects and how to write your own, regular expressions, HTML applications (*very* cool), ADO, how to build the Script Control into your applications, and yes, ASP. That's the first 500 pages. The remaining 280+ pages are references and appendices that add depth. I have seen no other reference in print or online from Microsoft that goes to these lengths to elucidate what can be done with VBScript.
The writing style is very approachable, and the Wrox Press model of a team of qualified people tackling different topics works very well (11 authors and 7 technical reviewers). These people really know the topics, and the book is well edited. An excellent value.

I have read VBScript Programmer's Reference. I would to congratulate the team who put this book together. Its so well written I was programming within the day. Not just a "Hello World" program but a program of substance that opened files, validated them, wrote events in the event log etc.
The book is easy to follow and the short introduction to programming most useful for non-programmers like me and my team.
Unfortunately, for me, the book will lead to more work for me and my team of technical mainframe support staff converting mainframe legacy JCL to VBScript. I will be ordering two more copies of the book for my team and I am sure that they will gain much from it.
Even after a few days, members of staff from programming teams keep borrowing the book I am now forced to lie about its location (under my desk).
If I had a criticism I would say that Cscript should be covered in a little more detail, but its only minor point and I found the information I was looking for on the Web.

I bought 3 books on VBScript, the others are not bad books but they are written with a rocket scientist in mind and assume that the reader is competent in programming and modern scripting techniques. Thankfully your book saved the day and I actually enjoyed reading it. I get the impression that the team that put it together also enjoyed that task, it seems to come across in the text anyways.

Its a great book.

A good book for someone who wants to learn the mathematics and mechanics of the various financial instruments.

This book gives an excellent elementary introduction to investment techniques and concepts for the beginning student of business or economics. It is full of useful examples and solved problems as is characteristic of all books in this series, and it also gives adequate explanation of the terms and results in most areas of investment activity. Some of the parts of the book which are particularly well-written or helpful include: 1. The diagram of the corporate bond rating process . 2. The flowchart detailing a primary offering made through a syndicate of investment bankers. 3. The summary of the different security market indices. 4. The discussion of the "naive buy-and-hold strategy" and their use as benchmarks against which other investment strategies may be compared. 5. The discussion of the Dupont framework for analyzing equity returns and growth to reveal the sources of the growth of the firm. 6. The discussion of time-series comparisons for the ratios of a firm. 7. The discussion of the various problems involved when doing financial statement analysis. 8. The discussion on arbitrage. 9. The treatment of moving averages and the accompanying illustration of different moving averages. 10. The discussion of the random walk theory in the context of the efficient markets theory. The random walk theory has been been taken to be axiomatic by most financial analysts but has recently been challenged recently by empirical studies of financial data. 11. The treatment of the different levels of market efficiency, including the weakly efficient, the semistrong efficient, and the strongly efficient market hypotheses. 12. The discussion of the anomalies in market data that point to deviations from the efficient market hypothesis. 13. The chapter on portfolio analysis via the use of covariance and the treatment of the efficient frontier. 14. The treatment of the capital asset pricing model.

Outdated is the only word that comes to my mind when thinking about this book. It has been edited by a finance professor who is painfully slow at solving simple mathematical equations, and I had the misfortune of having him as an instructor in Advanced Investment Analysis class. I later dropped the class, after I couldn't take any more.

Surprisingly, the content of the book is not so bad, except that the authors/editors/compilers have left out the analytical part, which is very essential to understanding derivative securities. Just learning about the structures of the instruments doesn't give a reader an ability to apply them to real-life situations. Since it is a handbook, it must carry all aspects of the subject so that the readers can use them in every possible way of reference.

Standing alone, the book is fairly decent, and I would have given it more stars, had it not been for the better alternatives available on the market. This book, as it stands now, should be skipped. If you just want to gain the peripheral knowledge on credit derivatives, log onto the internet, and search for documents. There is tonnes of information on derivative securities and their working. In fact, you might be able to find more relevant material on the web for free than this book offers you.

As an alternative, you may want to look into:

*Credit Derivatives, by Janet Tavakoli.
*Credit Derivatives, by Satyajit Das. THIS IS THE BEST BOOK AVAILABLE, AND COVERS ANALYTICAL DETAILS ADEQUATELY.

This is another book in the Frank Fabozzi vein, being a compendium of articles written by practitioners in the field and loosely strung together by the editors. As a very basic introduction, it is not bad - there are discussions of the rationale for using credit derivatives, a cursory introduction to pricing and modelling, and very general discussions of issues relating to accounting, documentation, taxes, etc. The best chapter is "Credit Derivatives Pricing Dictionary," by Hardy M. Hodges, which provides definitions of some of the most important concepts and would stand quite well on its own. However, if you expect something more than generalities, you will be disappointed. There is very little by way of practical advice on structuring, modelling or other "nuts and bolt' issues. This book will teach you enough to get past the HR department, but if you want to get on the trading desk you had better look elsewhere!

Commercial bankers, investment bankers, financial lawyers, finance professors, and (at least) one accountant who were in on the creation of credit derivatives during the mid-1990s author chapters that are non-mathematical. (Well, I guess Harvard Business School Professor Sanjiv Das's credit derivatives pricing chapter is kind of mathematical.) Each chapter author is expert in the aspect of credit derivatives about which they write. Every commercial banker in the world should read up on this subject.