I used this book to train industrial electricians and recommended it in the PLC course I designed at Coyne American Institute in Chicago in 1989. They still use the book along with a lab manual and Allen Bradley PLC's in the electrical maintenance course. I reviewed other books and felt this one was the right choice for the length of course, training level and content. It is clearly written with hardware and instruction set examples from various PLC manufacturers, troubleshooting, number systems, start-up hints and some useful general computer information. Also included is a chapter on understanding MS-DOS commands-very handy for people (a lot of them around) with no computer background except a point-and-click once in a while. The soft cover format, number of pages (372) and size make it easy to carry and throw in a brief case. If you are learning PLC's for the first time, this is a good place to start. If I was going to add anything to it for the next edition, I would include things like data highway, serial communications, remote displays and PID loop. Maybe a little more about programming details involving analog I/O would be nice.

I used this book with great success in the course, Introduction to Programmable Logic Controllers, which I developed for a leading aircraft manufacturer. This book was recommended reading prior to attending other PLC courses offered in my training business.

I read "Sam 7" and didn't think too much of it since it's quite old nowdays. It's a book for people who lived to find airports invented.
Try reading something by Tom Clancy. That's more contemporary and far more thrilling.
About "It could happen tomorrow", it did. Notice the PAST sentence.

I read this book several years ago but it has not left my mind since. It had such an impact that I actually travelled from Canada to London, England to see the area where the book was written about and the specific train station. With everything that is happening in the world today, Cox wrote with amazing foresight and knowledge. To anyone who reads it at the least you will be entertained at the most if will keep you thinking about it for years to come.

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If you can track this novel down, then it comes highly recommended. Richard Cox has researched the subject matter well as regards technicalities, how the emergency services cope with a disaster like in this book and locations. THe story is of a fanatical group of Arab terrorists, Abu Youssouf 7, who are on the trail of Israeli diplomat Ben Maier, who is returning to the States with important documents carrying details of a proposed Middle East peace process. In order to stop him, they shoot down the plane he is travelling on, a DC-10 - as it is flying over London on its final approach to Heathrow. The terrorists use SAM-7 missile launchers, shoulder-fired, hence the book's title. The strike hits the DC10, which plummets out of control, crashing down on London's Victoria railway station, causing massive destruction and loss of life. The story focuses then on police commander Robert Thompson, fire chief Mick Melville and air crash investigator Jim Donaldson who strive to bring the disaster under control and find out the truth behind the crash before the wrong people(i.e pilots) are implicated. Although this was written in 1977 and much of Victoria station and its surroundings have slightly changed, the disaster portrayed is something that could still happen. Altogether, an exciting and highly dramatic read! I dare you to read whilst flying . . . definitely not a plane read!

These days it seems like only English professors and their students are reading Melville's poetry. MOBY DICK, and other works undoubtedly proved that he was a master of prose, but the critics weren't so convinced about his poetry, instead giving it lukewarm reviews at best, and calling it amateurish. For this reason we find Melville's prose in the literary canon while his poetry remains on the periphery of obscurity and limbo.

The poems are dense and full of Civil War references, so it would behoove the reader to brush up on his history. Likewise, the reader will quickly realize why Melville's poetry didn't receive the critics' acclaim. They are melodramatic, with an overemphasis on composing within the traditional (some would say archaic) rules of poetry: rhythm, rhyme scheme, etc., which does not translate well into our time and makes it not the most entertaining style to read...

These are interesting poems, but seem to have more historic value (U.S. history and the history/development American poetry) than poetic.

My personal favorites include: "The Stone Fleet," where Melville experiences romance for the whaling ships sailing out of harbor and which, consequently, he never sailed on; and, "The House Top," from where he overlooks the New York enlistment riots, where he implies that those who don't fight for our country aren't for God.
--ross saciuk

I am one of the editors of the Prometheus Books edition of Melville's superb book on the Civil War. Alas, the Library Journal review, posted for the volume, is pathetic: two sentences, only one on Melville's poems, and that one half wrong, for Melville had NO direct experience of actual fighting in the war. What is more, there is no reference to the extensive supplementary material in our volume--including fine essays by Helen Vendler and Rosanna Warren. Caveat emptor regarding any such "review" of the "critics."

It has been said of Herman Melville that his prose is poetic, but his poetry is not. In his time, in fact, his poetry was little-read and quite unpopular. Of course, _Moby Dick_ received only a lukewarm reception back then. Now, his poetry deserves a reassessment.

First, _Battle-Pieces_ should be credited as artistic, sometimes beautiful, poetry. Some of the poems are somewhat doggeral, and would be much improved by a few less forced rhymes. Others, however, are truly moving.

In these latter poems, Melville conveys the horrors of the war--and occasionally the humanity that shone through, uniting the brothers across the battlefield. Few men or women of the time had the experience (he participated in a chase of a Southern soldier) and writing ability to show us this time so effectively. As a result, he produced what, in my opinion, is a book at least as good as his most well-known novel.

At the end of the book he includes an essay on Reconstruction, in which he pleads for an easy reconciliation with the conquered South, more along the lines with Lincoln and Johnson's plans than the Radicals'. While somewhat disappointing (we'd like the man who created QueeQueg to support Southern blacks' rights a little more), the essay is well-written, and allows us to read the nonfictional beliefs of a man we usually associate with fiction--just as the poems let us read the verse of a writer of prose.

The book uses the traditional red/green images with special glasses in order to produce the 3-D effects. Some poeple may have trouble getting used to this (if you are not good at looking at 3-D objects using red/green glasses, then this is not the book for you). The trick is to stare at it for a long while and to make sure you have the book far away enough so that the whole page can be viewed by either eye. If you do this, the images can be spectacular (though after a while, the novelty starts to wear off a little). It would have been nice if they also had 3-D shots of nebula as well as our solar system. Images of the galaxy can be confusing as they use a weird coding system of characters. I wish they would have used another technology to makes the images 3-D (assuming it is possible), so that the colors of the stars could be more accurately represented. Definately a try before you buy book as some people will like it, others may not. Perhaps it makes a good book to put in the library or a local book club (assuming you can make sure nobody steals the glasses). I would have given this book 3.5 stars if possible (unfortunately, I can only give 3 or 4 stars).

Finally, a complete, comphrensive FIELD guide to the birds of India! Gone are the days of hauling 2 or 3 hardcover bird books to the subcontinent just to be able to identify relatively common species. The drawings in this book are excellent, the descriptions very detailed, and the range maps very helpful. My two criticisms are that birders familiar with the common names in Salim Ali's "The Book of Indian Birds" will be confused with the revised nomenclature in this guide (based on the Inskipp's Indian Checklist); some changes are relatively minor, while others are so dramatically different (and frankly puzzling) that cross-referencing is a chore. The second involves the seperation of many of the range maps from the plates and descriptions, sometimes by many pages. This was due to the large number of species featured on some plates- there just wasn't enough room for the maps also. A better strategy might have been to put them all in the back of the book. But the benefits of this book far outweigh the shortcomings- my next trip to India promises to be more rewarding and productive bird-wise (as well as easier on my back)due to this excellent and overdue field guide.

Sarcasm, plus. Interesting "jazz" styling and a final hundred pages that bring home the horrors of war.

This is a story of an African family who is divided in selling or not their land, meanwhile a satellite expert is watching illegal hunters at this area, it keeps you reading at all times and you learn a lot of Africa and their illegal hunters, how they live, think and work.

Guy B. Webb compiled some of the great choral conductors of our time to write essays on practical up to the minute information on what is going on now and how to be the best choral conductor you can be. Authors include Robinson, Sharp, Paine, O'Neal, Marvin, Neuen, Brandvik, cox, Jordan, Webb, Kolb, and Dorsey. A definite must for all students and conductors of all skill levels.

An great antidote for all the stories the media spins on the American economy. Think of how the media describes America's economy: the average American's standard of living is supposedly falling; America's poor are supposedly getting poorer while the rich get richer; women and minorities are supposedly falling further behind, manufacturing is said to be moving overseas; good jobs are supposedly destroyed by downsizing; and we are becoming a nation of hamburger flippers.

The author's demonstrate the fallacy in all these myths with hard, plentiful and unbias statistics. They look at these issues from many different directions ultimately demonstrating that common sense and just opening your eyes to what you see around you proves that America's economy is much more successful than it is portrayed. It shows how those who find weaknesses in the American way to business are twisting the facts in fairly obvious ways to support their agenda.

This book is fast, easy to read and just plain interesting to anyone who wants to understand what has been happening in our economy during the later part of the twnetieth century.

Like Will Rogers said: "It ain't what you don't know that hurts you. Its what you know that just ain't so that will hurt you." Or words to that effect. Like Ben Wattenberg's earlier book (whose title I used for this review), Myths of Rich and Poor explains that much of what you have been led to believe about wealth and poverty is simply incorrect.

The authors drill down into census data, the basic "facts" of American life, to show that we are not getting poorer. Our homes are bigger, food is cheaper, gas is less expensive, many 'poor' people enjoy home and car ownership, air conditioning, cable television, and an entire collection of things that most truly poor people would never even dream they could own.

Like David Landes' Wealth and Poverty of Nations and the best-selling Millionaire Next Door, this book does a better job of really reading and analyzing what is right -- and wrong -- about the American market economy.

All of these books show that finishing high school, staying married, and getting a job are th best poverty prevention strategies available and that the American market facilitates these things better than any other system. There are no guarantees and much of it is up to the individual. You just have to have the desire, direction and discipline to win your share of the American dream.

Investors will find that the book grabs them with actual data shedding light on what is really happening in our economy. Kudos to Cox for revealing the larger trends that investors need to know about to reach superior performance.

Investors will profit from education into the 5 waves of progress that will guide the 21st century.

The book concludes with powerful insights into the most important government policies for promoting economic growth. This last section puts Cox at the forefront of proactive economic science.

This as one of the best economics books that I have ever read.

First off, let me say I enjoy most of Huxley's work. The style of this book is totally different from the usual Huxley method. I've never read anything else by Christopher Isherwood. This book starts out boring, and ends boring. That's really the sum of it. The characters are flat and extremely simple. In his early work (say, pre "Brave New World"), Huxley's characters are an embodiment of one single trait. However, they are always developed well, and their thought processes are complex while remaining within this one trait. This book has the same characterization - Jacob, for example, is moronically kind and simple (think Forrest Gump). There are also the classic evil tricksters, and so on. It's not done well at all, and I left this book with a bad taste in my mouth.

Interesting how Hollywood types embrace such spiritual ideas without commiting to one chosen path. This work starts with an incredible insight into some of Jesus' words yet speaks to healing as a natural and mystical experience. I'd think the Creator would be more included in the reasoning.
Well worth reading. Many, many thanks to Sharon Stone for recognizing the beauty of this fable and giving it new life at this end of the century.

This screenplay is the collaborative effort of Christopher Isherwood and Aldous Huxley. This work has an unpolished feel to it and may have been an unfinished work. However, the stark and unadorned quality of the work adds rather than detracts from its message.

It is a fable about a ranch hand, Jacob, who discovers that he can heal animals with his touch. The owner of the ranch is a widowed college professor with a physically handicapped adult daughter. The professor resents his daughter and wastes no effort in hiding his feelings. The daughter desperately wants freedom and independence. She asks Jacob to heal her.

The screenplay's uncomplicated message is that physical health alone does not make a person whole or happy. This work is unlike anything else by Huxley in its simplicity and ambiguous final paragraphs. It is a short work and is easily finished in one or two sittings.