As a collector of venetian chevrons and trade beads for a little over 15 years, I find that this book, like all of their books (7 in all), is the best published reference material about chevrons yet. There is not one other book that comes close to having the amount of information or pictures that this book possesses. A MUST for any beginning collector; a very important tool to help you from becoming prey to the many frauds that have recently infiltrated the hobby. All you serious bead traders should already have these books.

Great combination of inspiration and information. Luscious pictures, tons of ideas, and very clear instructions. What makes this book so useful is that she really focuses on what the title says -- putting color on paper and/or fabric -- so it's extremely versatile. If you make quilts, wearable art, collage, mail art, stamped art, fabric to use in home decoration, greeting cards, anything, you'll find something in here to get your juices flowing.

(A quick British-English translation: Markal paint sticks are the same thing as Shiva paint sticks. Windsor and Newton and Sennelier also make oil paint sticks.)

I have used this book several times with young children and it has been great. The kids love the projects and I like having the Bible reference to go with them. There are all sorts of projects to work on. I highly recommend this book.

I have used this book for reference to various techniques in wax carving study. I find it very informative and practical. Complete with start to finish projects. Thank you Ruth!

The Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) mission was the first of NASA's "Faster, Better Cheaper" spacecraft. Its primary mission was to orbit the asteroid 433 Eros, thereby becoming the first robotic explorer to orbit and eventually land on an asteroid. On the journey to Eros, NEAR flew by the main-belt asteroid Mathilde as well as our home planet, the Earth and returned dozens of pictures; however, the journey to Eros was almost lost when a software error caused the main engine to shut down prematurely. Due to the efforts the engineers and scientists supporting this project, the space probe was saved and the NEAR mission became one of the most successful NASA missions. In the end, the mission returned with hundreds of thousands of images, spectra, and other measurements about the large near-Earth asteroid Eros.

In this book, the author, Jim Bell, a planetary scientist and professor at Cornell, has assembled nine different articles about various aspects of this mission into one concise book about all aspects of this specular mission. The book opens with a chapter providing an overview of Eros and then moves into two chapters dedicated to the spacecraft and its mission, and its trip to Eros, from launch to rendezvous. The remaining chapters cover the different discovers made by the NEAR spacecraft, such as its overall landscape, its history, and several on its geology. There is also one chapter, which explains the photography planning, and eventual execution of this plan.

In general, I did not find the book to be very technical and there is a glossary of terms to help the layman as well as numerous photographs, figures and graphs are found throughout the book to further explain a given topic.

If you are interested in planetary exploration or the space program in general, this book would an excellent addition to your library.

This is a great books for crafts to do with little and big kids. Some of the crafts take a few minutes to make, and some are more involved, so all ages can get involved. They are easy, but fun crafts and really appropriate for each holiday. That is the kids will learn something.

We currently are making hanging bees from toilet paper rolls and spiders from yarn for our sukkah from this book. There are interesting shabbat candlesticks from thread spools. These are just some examples of crafts in the book.

We first took this book out of the library, but I realized that we definately needed a copy for ourselves.

This book is remarkable and different from almost any other war remembrance I have come across. Not only has Robert Knox Sneden penned a highly descriptive account of his years with the Army of the Potomac and as a prisoner of war, his work is illustrated with scores of his own watercolors depicting what he saw -- many made at the time he was witnessing places and events during the war.

Sneden had an unusual vantage point. An engineer and draftsman, Sneden's services were employed as a map maker for several Union Generals during the first two and a half years of the war. Although a private, this posting gave him an easier life than experienced by most privates. Although in the field, Sneden was attached to headquarters. His staff position and duties also gave him considerable free time -- from which we benefit. Sneden used this time to record his observations in both written form and via sketches and watercolor renderings of war scenes.

Sneden's posting was not without difficulty or danger. Several times he had to reconnoiter close to the enemy or between the lines in order gather the information needed for accurate local maps. He was also asked to journey over recently fought over battlefields to aid in the construction of after-action reports -- after the Union army had left and local control had reverted to Confederate partisans.

On one such journey away from the main army, Sneden and a few of his companions were captured by Mosby's Rangers. Sneden then began his journey through the Confederate prisoner of war system staying in Richmond, Andersonville and several other locations.

His experiences are well written. Sneden has a very matter of fact style of writing that gets to the point and is descriptive without being overwrought. Having read "Company Ayche" by Sam Watkins and "All for the Union" by Elisha Hunt Rhodes, I would rank Sneden's work as highly among Civil War remembrances. His unique position enables him to comment on battlefield and camp experiences in all their gritty detail as well as those portions of the Union high command with whom he came in contact. His prisoner of war writing reveals the brutal realities of life at Andersonville and other locations. The raw and inhumane world of these men is given testamony by Sneden in his gripping account of what he and others bore.

The artwork illustrates the text well. Although probably considered somewhat rough strictly as art, it is poignant and captivating. His original maps are also fascinating as historical documents.

This is a very good book. The war and prison scenes are engaging and very interesting. The author's style is highly readible and very convincing in terms of giving a front line view of army and prison life. The plentiful contemporary illustrations makes this book a stand out among the genre.

Private Robert Sneden of the 40th New York Volunteers was trained in architecture and engineering and assigned to make detailed maps of the unknown terrain being traversed by the Union Army. This assignment gave him unusual freedom to roam the areas and battlefields to which he was assigned. Fortunately he kept a daily journal and made well drawn sketches and watercolor paintings as he went. The book covers the period from September 29, 1861, shortly after he joined McClellan's army encamped at Leesburg, Virginia, to December 26, 1864, when he was finally reunited with his family. With an artist's eye for detail and a surprisingly deft ability with the English language, Sneden provides the reader with some of the most memorable descriptions, watercolor colors of scenes, and eyewitness accounts ever published on the Civil War. Sneden's experiences can broadly be divided into two major periods.

The first general section of his journal concerns the events connected with McClellan's move toward the botched siege of Yorktown, Virginia, and ends with the bloody battles of the 7 Day's War in which Lee attacked the Union forces at Mechanicsville and forced the ensuing retreat. Sneden's almost matter-of-fact descriptions of the fighting, confusion, carnage, small unit movements, individual heroism, death, and destruction are powerful and moving.

The second general section of Sneden's journal concerns the events leading up to his capture by Mosby's Confederate cavalry, his internment first in Richmond and finally at the infamous Andersonville, and his eventual release and reunion with his family. No brief review could possibly do justice to the descriptions of the inhumanity displayed at these prison facilities. Sneden's accounts are strong, detailed, and painful to read.

I highly recommend this book. It is a book which belongs in the collection of anyone interested in United States history and the Civil War in particular.

"What makes Sneden's history remarkable is his attention to detail... So compelling was his drive to document the war accurately that Sneden kept notes even while in Andersonville, writing in shorthand on scraps of pages of books that he later sewed into the linings of his cloths to keep hidden.... It is astonishing that such valuable experience could have remained hidden for so long." --Michael Larkin, The Boston Globe

"This is quite simply a wonderful book.... One can virtually hear the soldiers snoring and the mules braying.... Especially moving is [Sneden's] account of the horrible months he spent in Andersonville.... Sneden's all-observing eye was truly 'in the storm,' and his belatedly published memoir should soon become a standard in the field." --Ben L. Bassham, Civil War Book Review

First of all, the title is a bit pretentious.
Going through this book, you won't find much about as much as connecting to an Oracle, Sybase or db2 database. I guess, they are minor players in the eyes of the authors/publisher.

Secondly, coverage of development for the "Windows Forms" environment is very limited, compared to development for the browser and, generally, Net. You might not find out, how to map and bind fields in an Access database to a textbox on a "Windows Forms" form, but you will be able to create a shopping cart application.

Thirdly, a lot of space is dedicated to general notions, database theory and normalization (which, by the way, is much better covered in books dedicated to relational database theory), while a lot of info dedicated to XML was squeezed out of the book, to the CD only, or just completely missing (like hardcore info on working with Access).

If your database is SQL Server, and your playground is the Net, buy the book. Otherwise, check it out in the bookstore, and JUDGE FOR YOURSELF ...

The book itself, in material and workmanship, is somewhat flimsy, has a cheap feel to it, and is falling apart after about a month of casual use on a programmer's desk.

Although the title indicates that this is a book purely about database programming, don't let it fool you. This book is filled with much more information than just database programming. You learn how to build ASP.NET applications, work with customized user controls in VB.NET. XML also gets a lot of coverage in this book and you learn, step-by-step how to build a custom XSL stylesheet. The authors walk you through building the template and XPath queries. XPath isn't an easy language, by any means, but the examples step you through from the simple to the complex, giving you indepth information along the way. Another thing that I was really surprised with was the fact that all the examples I've tried so far work. This is really surprising in a programming book, especially one that's written in time to be published right when .NET launched. I'm very impressed with the quality of the code, as well as the way this book is written.

What a great book - there are so many insightful chapters covering such a wealth of information that you would think that it wouldn't cover it deep enough. But no - you discover things that you can't find online - clearly the authors have contacts within Microsoft - it's obvious from the foreword. Even from only reading a few chapters, I was able to put together a robust database system with a VB.net and ASP.net front end using web services.