Since becoming a network manager I have found that IIS is a necessary part of every NT network and with little exposure to the applications associated with IIS my job was a lot tougher than I thought it was going to be.

This book is good for information about install and configuring IIS, monitoring and the monitoring tools, overview of the Index, FTP, news, mail and transaction servers. Also there is good coverage of security and security issues.

Another section of the book covers topics like Internet application server, ASP, scripting and working with the application associated with IIS. What I found missing or shortchanged was the troubleshooting of the IIS and the errors that you get.

If you run IIS you most definitely need this book. The information in it is awesome, much more complete than any Microsoft class could ever give you. I took the MCSE test on IIS 4 and still didn't know what I was doing untill I read this book. If you have IIS do yourself a favor and buy this book. You won't be disappointed!

Great book for IIS administrators. Steps you through the basics and into the EXTREMELY Advanced and has everything you need to be a successful IIS administrator.

Do you like history, for instance, World War II? If you do, read The Devil's Arithmetic. The historical fiction book tells about what happened to the Jews in concentration camps in Poland during World War II. Hannah-Chaya experiences things that changed some thoughts she had.
Hannah goes back in time to 1942 after walking through the door to Elijah. Jews were captured by Nazi soldiers and taken to concentration camps or (death camps). There was little food for the Jews there. They got to eat watery soup. At camps they were tortured or killed and they were branded with numbers.
Hannah was going to Lilth's Cave with two other girls and they would have to stay there forever. What will happen to her? Will her life come to an end? To find out read The Devil's Arithmetic.
It was a good book, because there was a lot of information. You got sadness when you read about how the Jews were tortured or killed, and how little food they got. It was cool to read and see Yiddish words. I was amazed when Hannah's aunt told her she was Rivka because you would have never guessed that. I give this book three stars, because it gives historical information. Some of the words were hard to understand. I would have given it four stars if the words were easier to understand.

The Devil's Arithmetic is an emotional story about a thirteen-year-old Jewish girl who travels back through time to the year 1942. I read this book because I had read several excellent reviews about it. It turned out to be one of the best books about historical events that I have ever read. The author's decriptive tone gave me a clear image about the different chacters, settings, and events. The theme in this book is that, as hard as it may be at times, you must learn to empathize with others to understand their feelings and points of view. It is never easy to understand what someone has gone through unless you have experienced the same ordeal. Hannah had a hard time understanding what made her grandfather, who had survived the Holocaust, so angry when he saw Nazi footage on television. That was until she herself went through a concentration camp.
The story has three main settings. It begins in Hannah's grandfather's apartment in New York. The story then moves to a small Jewish village in Poland, where Hannah lives for a short period of time. The third and most important setting is in a concentration camp in Poland. This is where most of the book takes place.
Although the vocabulary in this book is not remotely difficult, the reader has to know a bit of backround about the Holocaust to understand the book. It is also a very emotional story, full of sacrifice and hatred. For these reasons, I would recommend this book to anyone who is in the sixth grade and above.

A Review by Jesse

This is a story about a 13 year old Jewish girl. She is very tired about hearing about the Nazis from her grandfather and others. She travels back in time to the year of 1942 in a foreign village called Poland. When she is captured she is put into a concentration camp where she realizes what hear grandfather told her was true. Her best friend befriends her after she teachers her how to fight her way through the camp.

This is a very good book if you are interested in the time period of World War II and the holocaust. It was fun to read all the words used then and there that you don't here to much her in the States. It was sad when you got the information of how they died or where tortured in the camps. It was a very realalistic and informational book. It was very good with how it kept you up to date with the death count and facts of what happened. The food that they received when they where in the camp was very sad and made me sick to the stomach because I could just imagine it.

This is a very high-quality book. I would give to 5 stars because it is very emotional and has lots of death and hardships in it. It is very excellent, I couldn't put it down.

Harry Turtledove is an excellent writer of alternative history. That genre deals with a divergence from our own history, by changing one or more events, and then surmising what would follow. His recent "Ruled Brittania" concerns what England would be like after the success (instead of the failure) of the Spanish Armada, and eventual invasion of England by the Spaniards.

This book is not alternative history. Advance and Retreat, the third book in the "Detina" series, is Altered History. Turtledove takes real US Civil War history, maps it into a new fantasy world, and retells the story with magic instead of technology and monarchy replacing democracy. In Detina, South is our North, East is our West, and both people and places have names that are excuses for punnery. Thus, the Cumbersome River (instead of Cumberland) or Summer Mountain (which is really Spring Hill). Some of the names are easy to figure out (Peachtree = Georgia), some require knowledge of Latin, Greek or Hebrew (Parthenia = Virginia, King Avram = Abraham Lincoln), some are cutesy (Peterpaulandia = Maryland), others are completely baffling (New Eborac = New York, Dothan = Alabama).

Turtledove does some things well in this book. The story is engaging, the battle scenes are riveting, and the characters are fascinating (for the most part). Even knowing how the events will turn out, since it corresponds with the US Civil War in 1865, I never lost interest. Even when Turtledove tells us sixty times that Doubting George isn't ready to invade, or Bell used to be a mighty warrior before he lost an arm and a leg, I kept going.

But some things are done poorly. Turtledove loved the punning more than keeping his world consistent, and many of the names simply rang false. Some walked out of Masterpiece Theatre, like Duke Edward of Arlington and Ned of the Forest, others arrived from mysterious lands with odd tongues (Generals Hesmucet and Peegeetee), yet no mention was ever made of this linguistic clash. At least in Turtledove's "Darkness" series, which is a similar fantasy remapping of World War II, each of the countries has consistant people and place names within their own borders.

While deciphering the puns and anagrams can be fun, they should not get in the way of the story. Yet the names do clash, a continual reminder that this novel is simply a retelling of a different land, far away. And one of the important parts of the story does not map correctly, for Turtledove has created swarthy "Detinans" from across the Western Ocean, who have defeated and enslaved native "blonds." More blonds remain, on on the other side of the Great River (Mississippi) -- ah, you see the problem! He's amalgamated Africans and Native Americans into one people! This off-note jars in an otherwise faithful (though upside-down) retelling of American history.

Recommended for Turtledove fans and Civil War buffs. Others take your chances.

Science Fiction since its inception has speculated about time travel and the possibility of changing the present by meddling in the past. Harry Turtledove writes about radically altered pasts without resort to time machine in a genre known as "alternate history". Blurbs on his books proclaim him to be the master of this genre. In support of that title he has had two hefty tomes published in as many months by two different publishers. Ruled Britannia is the more conventional of the two, working from a single "what if..." premise, i.e. that the Spanish armada had succeeded in 1588 in subjugating England. Advance and Retreat is the fourth book in Turtledove's "war between the provinces" series which projects events in the US Civil War through a very convoluted looking glass.

The agricultural northern provices of Detina are battling to establish a nation separate from the industrial southern provinces. Grand Duke Geoffrey has been named king of the north where blonds are enslaved. King Avram rules the south from the Black House. The east is a wilderness peopled by savages while most of the population of the warring regions live along the edge of the western ocean. For good measure, medieval weaponry (like crossbows) replace Civil War muskets and wizards with magic substitute for 19th century technology. It is a clever conceit.

Turtledove coyly claims any resemblance to historical persons and places is coincidental, but the book's title just happens to match that of a memoir by Confederate General John Bell Hood of Texas. The real names of Civil War figures and places are transformed by pun and transposition. Decoding them will keep civil war buffs, already familiar with the events described, occupied and happy. The commander-in-chief of the southern armies is Marshall Bart (Grant's middle name was Simpson). He has Edward of Arlington (Lee) bottled up in the trenches around Pierreville (Petersburg). General Hesmucet (Sherman's middle name was Tecumseh)is marching through Peachtree province toward the western seaport of Veldt (Savannah). You get the idea.

Meanwhile, in the eastern theater of war (locus of Advance and Retreat), southern General Doubting George (George Thomas) has replaced General Guildenstern (Rosencrans). He must stop the advance of one-armed, one-legged General Bell (Hood) upon Ramblerville (Nashville). Bell's feared unicorn riders are led by Ned of the Forest (Nathan Bedford Forrest). The plot follows the 1864-65 campaign in Tennessee quite faithfully. Even without the Dungeons and Dragons element, it is a rip-snorting, action-packed story. Both commanders are tragic figures of Shakespearian proportion. Events are seen through the eyes of the commanders, their subordinates, and a handful of the common soldiers. Turtledove even slips in a twist about one of the northern foot soldiers, but readers familiar with classical mythology will have anticipated him.

Advance and Retreat is the third novel in the War Between the Provinces fantasy series, following Marching Through Peachtree. This series closely follows the events of the American War Between the States, but uses dramatic license to creae thoughts and words for the characters. Moreover, it uses punny names for persons and places and reverses most everything from directions to uniform colors.

This volume covers the period after the fall of Atlanta to Sherman to the destruction of the Army of Tennessee as an effective force. It portrays the generals on both sides as human beings with both strengths and weaknesses. While the characterizations are frequently based on the remaining documents of that period, nobody now or then know for sure what went on in the privacy of their own minds. Some of these traits are fairly well established from documentary evidence, but others are move like SWAGs. Read some of the many published histories and biographies covering this period and make your own guess.

Certain characters are treated more sympathetically in this novel -- i.e., George Thomas and Bedford Forrest -- than they were by their own professional peers; both displayed a competency that was not acknowledged by their ultimate commanders. On the other hand, Hood was totally belittled by his superiors, yet regained his reputation by blowing his own horn in his memoirs and speeches.

This novel is fun, but can be frustrating if you aren't a Civil War buff. Some of the punny names are really obscure. Nevertheless, I still wish Harry Turtledove would write nonfictional history books. Maybe a study guide for this series?

Recommended for Turtledove fans and all alternate history buffs who also like fantasy.