Fantastic book. Pithy style, very readable, no fluff, excellent as a reference. Anyone coming to Java from C++ should get this book. About the only thing I would do to improve it would be to have at least a short chapter on database access.

This is one of the first books I bought to get an understanding of Java and how it is comprable to what I already know of C/C++. This book is the perfect starting point, giving every comprable declaration to C/C++. Kudos to the authors, can't wait for a more up-to-date version though.

Even though this is one of my oldest Java books I keep going back to it. I wish it would be updated for the new Event model and swing however. The coverage of the 1.0 JDK is very good and I still go back to the gridbag description and examples when I get confused.

Tony Williams does the world of film study an amazing service with this book, covering Larry Cohen's work as writer/director/producer with an infectious enthusiasm. The interviews (with Cohen, as well as cast and crew from his films) are particularly enlightening: Actor Michael Moriarty insisting that a film retrospective of his work include Cohen's "Q: The Winged Serpent," which he considers one of his best performances; Cohen describing his tactics of "guerilla filmmaking," in one case filming Eric Roberts and Janine Turner amidst a sea of oblivious New Yorkers during a frenzied lunch hour by hiding the camera and crew across the street. This book is full of priceless information, as well as Williams' perceptive observations and analysis on the whole of Cohen's creative output.

Good partnerships will have sophisticated mechanisms for finding the right contract when given free rein of the bidding, but in reality the majority of bridge hands lead to competitive auctions. With each side interfering with the other, the situation suddenly becomes much less clear. After reading this book, you will no longer have to rely completely on mere guesswork and intuition to decide whether to bid or not to bid.

Larry Cohen introduces and expounds upon the Law of Total Tricks, a single principle which will allow you to estimate the possible scores resulting from almost any competitive auction. He describes some of the corollaries of the Law, as well as some good conventions that make use of the Law. These will improve the game of anybody not already familiar with such maxims as "bid to the number of trump your side has" and "when in doubt bid four spades over four hearts."

Even so, this book feels somehow incomplete. It does a good job of conveying the basic idea of the Law, giving examples of its application in relatively straightforward situations. But only in the last two chapters does Cohen begin to describe the adjustments that must be made in situations where the Law is not completely accurate. Furthermore, he doesn't really cover what to do in situations where the Law predicts ambiguous results: when bidding on might produce a better or worse result than passing, depending on the play of the hand. In these cases Cohen leaves us once again to guesswork and intuition.

Despite these faults, this book is essential because it does at least reduce the amount of guesswork to which the bridge player must resort in contested auctions.

I don't understand how anyone could intelligently win a matchpoint game without understanding the LAW. This isn't just a way of improving your competitive bidding; the LAW is the whole theory underlying this area of bridge.

The author's presentation of the concepts is illustrated with numerous examples and exercises to allow the reader to quickly absorb the ideas. My advice to my partners: know this book inside out. My request of my opponents: pay no attention!

If your bridge library were extremely small, one MUST item would be The Law of Total Tricks. It's a gem, one that will change the way you think at bridge and one that will help you make those tough part-score and higher competitive decisions which are ordinarily such "guess work". This book will help you evaluate your bidding options with much greater assurance and accuracy.

Well not quite, but almost there. This book, more than most, really lays out the mindset and strategies of expert bridge players. The chapter on the "5 lines of Defense" is itself worth the price of the book, and can be used by anyone, even beginners. If you are an intermediate player, just go buy this book! If you're just starting out in bridge, read a few beginner books and then come back to this. This is an amazing book!!

The title of the Book made one wonder if there is really something common among experts. Being no expert myself, I was curious, too, to find that out. This book illustrates the fine points separating good players from experts in all aspects of the game. When I was reading the book, many deals started flowing through my mind and I realized that had I read this book earlier, I could have easily impromved my results. This book is highly recommended to all those players who want to take that final step to being called "expert".

This book has helped my overall game more than any other bridge book. I particularly benefitted from the concepts of "getting your bid in early" and the "5 lines of defense." The methodology suggested by the authors for when to play safe and when to take risk for the overtrick in match point play was also of major benefit.

I have purchased copies for 2 of my partners so my master point total can increase that much faster. I would recommend the book for any serious player, whether his/her game is match points, team, or rubber bridge.

I had to keep reminding myself I was not reading a merely great novel, but rather an incredible true story. The story is riveting and at the same time chilling and inspiring; thrilling and enormously sad. From one page to the next I found myself alternately astounded, grief-stricken, uplifted and outraged. The author tells an important story and tells it in the best traditions of the gifted story-teller. World War II, the Holocaust, the Vilna Ghetto, the Partison Underground--all the way to the founding of Israel! I sent 30 copies of this book as Christmas presents!

This is a book I would want my daughters, nieces or any other young woman in my life to read. While it's a story about many things -- Jewish partisans, exploding bridges, unspeakable suffering -- it is also a story about young women forced to make life-threatening choices under extraordinary circumstances. Central to The Avengers is the role of two teenaged girls--Ruzka and Vitka-and their contribution to the partisan effort, experiences contemporary society does not usually associate with girls who are 17 years old. In a culture dominated with images of pop singers, vapid models and movie stars, it is nearly impossible to present girls with substantive heroines, real-life role models who bravely acted in situations that we could only imagine. I'm not an advocate of war or violence --believe me, I don't want girls to experience situations like those faced by Ruzka and Vitka -- but at the same time I do think girls could stretch ideas about their own potential from reading this book.

Rich Cohen's new book the Avengers is one of the finest books written about the Holocaust experience that I have ever read and raises the question that haunts every jew who was not in europe at the time of "what would I have Done?". In this case the individuals who Cohen writes about with such wonderful detail not only fight back but seek revenge for the atrocities perpertrated upon themselves and their families. If their is any criticism of the book it is that when talking about the revenge these avengers achieve against the Nazi's who are being held prisoner by the allies we never learn what exactly happened to the Nazis? where their any records kept that the author may have sought out through the freedom of information act. are their any americans who guarded these prisoners still alive and willing to talk? Or are we to speculate as to how many where actually killed in revenge? For someone who never experienced such horror what would I have done is not any easy question to answer and Mr. Cohen does not accuse those who went like sheep but he does praise those that stood and fought. Read this book. You won't regret it.

Though I have read the book 'To Bid or not to bid', I have found that I often count it wrongly. This book tells me how to use it a real situation. It is very helpful.

If you have read Cohen's first total tricks effort, understood it, and incorporated the principles of the Law of Total Tricks into your competitive bidding, you do not need this book. If the Law of Total Tricks does not inform your competitive bidding decisions, buy this book or the original. The second effort has a cleaner presentation including a thorough description of the wonderful DONT convention for competing over natural adverse notrump bids. If you take your bidding seriously, you owe yourself a solid understanding of Cohen's total tricks principles.

Note: I've had this book for about 4 years now and just now getting around to write a review of it.

This a good book if you are new to qigong. Cohen steps the beginner through theory and then the various qigong exercises. This includes color and organ meditation, healing sounds, Big Dipper, External practices, diet, etc. He also includues some moving meditation such as the Eight brocades and Five Animals frolics.

Pluses:
* Covers a lot of material.
* Well footnoted and indexed.
* Has suggested routines for a student to practice.
* Gives adviced on the dangers of wrong qi practice. Which is quite important but neglected in some texts.

Minuses:
* No illustrations for meridians or acpuncture points. These would help explain and guide a student. Especially with the excerises like Microcosmic orbit. I found it odd that a Qigong expert like Cohen would neglect to include this.
* The moving meditations are done by drawings - I found them impossible to follow. Photos would have been much better.
* Some of the qigong exercises listed are watered down and much simplified for instance the color light meditation. It's still somewhat useful but only about a third of the exercise is
there and you don't get the full effect. I don't know why Cohen
does not tell the reader why he watered some qigong methods down.

Overall a decent introduction, as most of the material is very basic. This makes it good for the beginner but be prepared to buy other books if you want to do other methods like Microcosmic
orbit or learn about meridians and acupuncture points. This also goes for trying to learn the moving meditations from this book - a beginner with no experience with this material will be lost. It will keep a dedicated beginner busy for two years or so. Once beyond that the reader is advised to seek out formal instruction or check out other texts that do include more intermediate methods.

If you want to do moving qigong work look elsewhere, this is not a stong point of this text. Books like Wen Mei Yu's WIld Goose Qigong or Meridian Qigong.

Other books that would complement this one include:
Qigong Empowerment by Liang Shou-yu
Meridian Qigong by Li Ding - hard to get but some online stores specializing in Qigong carry it.
Wild Goose Qigong by Wen Mei Yu

This is a very enjoyable and easy-to-read book, full of rich awareness, grace, and deep appreciation for life and nature. It is a scholarly work, and also an artistic work by one who appears to be a master at his craft and sees it as a valuable, if not indispensable practice for "riding the river of life."

Chi Kung can be seen as an extension of Taoism where the emphasis is upon a quiet mind, a peaceful attitude, and persistent practice.

Cohen, provides a number of useful pieces of scientific experimental data in this regard with much additional anecdotal information plus a good bibliography with extensive notes.

This is a very satisfying change from all other Qigong literature that I have seen. Few chi kung texts have a bibliography or footnotes, so that it becomes impossible for the reader to check and validate information. This may be the typical Chinese format, but it is quite inadequate from a western viewpoint because there is neither the scientific security upon which to build nor sufficient experimental details for exact replication of the experiment.

I applaud Cohen for clearly seeing this weakness in all the previous work, and for having gone "the extra miles" in trying to correct this deficiency in "The Way of Qigong."

Cohen provides a full and very readable description of chi kung basics and procedures for enhancing one's healing potential as well as a graceful recitation of benefits and dangers of chi kung. He beautifully describes the chi kung lifestyle.

Such "added value" is definitely apparent in this book, and I do not hesitate to strongly recommend it to beginning students of chi kung.

Keep in mind, this book is not intended to be a how-to instructional guide (one should find a teacher for that and not use a book). Instead, this book is both informative and inspirational.

Over the past 25 years, since the Beatles travelled to India to learn Transcendental Meditation, Westerners have been fascinated by the mystical aspects of numerous health promoting practices from Eastern countries. The religious and philosophical ideas that served as a context for what are essentially exercises for the mind, body, and spirit in the same sense that we Westerners regard working out the body alone as exercise, has clouded our view of the true benefits of many of these practices such as Qigong. Qigong, along with many other worthy Eastern exercises has gotten absorbed into the mass marketing machine of the New Age movement and has consequently turned off the less radical mainstream audience that is simply looking for ways to improve the quality of life. Cohen's book puts the practical health benefits of Qigong in focus by presenting us with scientific data that prove its merit as an easy to master exercise that is unique in its ability to address health issues that tradition forms of Western exercises do not address. If you want to be able to easily lift your groceries or run up a flight of stairs with out losing your breath, then lift weights and run on a treadmill. However, if you want to be able to work and play in a relaxed and optimally focused manner, and if you want to be prevent disease--then do Qigong. That is the message of Cohen's book. I am typically able to judge a book by how slow I read it. That is--the more profound and thought provoking the ideas being presented are, the more I tend to dwell on each page and spend a day or two ponder or putting its ideas into practice. There is also a sense of savoring the ideas such that you are sorry when you finally reach the end of it. Cohen's book is that kind of book.

This is a great book if you want to meet all the different personalities you meet when you play in a duplicate bridge tournament. It engrosses you with humor and a quickly paced story.