This is a particularly good book for beginners. I've had mine for a while and refer to it often. Mr. Gathercole breaks the book up in chapters on how to tie the various parts of the fly, body, tails, hackle etc. which I think makes it easier for the beginner to learn rather than simply showing the steps to tying a number of different patterns. This book is the best I've seen for getting started. It shows you how to tie as opposed to just recipies for known patterns.

An excellent book for the beginner and I assume for the intermediate. Excellent patterns and instructions. Lots of color pictures to guide you though step by step and excellent detail of the specifics of a particular pattern or tying tips. Well worth the money.

I was an avid fly tier and fisherman over 5 years ago. Recently, I decided to start up again, and spent quite a bit of time looking for a fly tying book I could use to remind me of the basics. I found Peter Gathercole's book to be, far and away, the best. It isn't a book full of recipies, it's a book full of techniques. Some of the techniques he presents are new and unusual, most are traditional. Great photography and clear language lead you through the methods step by step. I am very impressed with this book, and would suggest it to anyone from a complete novice to a more experienced tier. If you already have some experience under your belt, he will give you the little tips that clean up your flies, give them that little extra bugginess or movement, and especially be more durable and longer-lasting. An excellent book.

I was torn in deciding how to grade this book. Clearly, anyone who has already enjoyed most of Dr. Maxwell's outstanding leadership books would find this book to be a valuable, inexpensive and highly portable reminder of those many lessons. For that person, the book is clearly a five star value! Carry it around and draw sustenance from it!! My rating above reflects this perspective, since there are lots of people who do know his work well. When you face a leadership challenge, pull this book out to refocus you and your energies in the right direction!

What about the person who's new to leadership? I would have to grade the book much lower, probably a 2 or 3. Somewhere in the middle of the book (probably between chapters 5-7), most people new to leadership would lose the thread. It's just a little too condensed. In addition, I just didn't think that several of the examples worked for the point they attempted to make. For instance, Dr. Maxwell could have found more meaningful examples for me than Princess Diana and Roberto Goizueta if I were a new leader. I would nominate instead Barbara Bush for her caring and Frances Hesselbein for preparing successors.

Here are the book's structure and key examples for its 108 jam-packed pages:

Part I: The Development of a Leader

1. Why Should I Grow as a Leader? The McDonald brothers versus Ray Kroc in developing McDonalds.

2. How Can I Grow as a Leader? Teddy Roosevelt

Part II: The Traits of a Leader

3. How Can I Become Disciplined? Jerry Rice

4. How Should I Prioritize My Life? Paul Tsongas

5. How Do I Develop Trust? Billy Graham

6. How Can I Effectively Cast Vision? Walt Disney

Part III: The Impact of Leader

7. Why Is Influence Important? Princess Diana

8. How Does Influence Work? Robert Dilenschneider

9. How Can I Extend My Influence? His father

10. How Can I Make My Leadership Last? Roberto Goizueta

Finally, what's the best part of the book? For me, it was the repetition of the Law of the Lid: Your ability to accomplish things is circumscribed until you can energize others in the same purpose. There's a nice set of graphic displays to make this point.

As a technical note, some of the information in the examples seemed dated. I don't believe that Mr. Dilenschneider has been head of Hill & Knowlton for many years . . . yet that's the way he is described. Roberto Goizueta's hand-picked successor at Coca-Cola, Douglas Ivester, did not work out (although he is described as a great success here) and had to be replaced. Paul Tsongas later reentered politics to run for president rather than smelling the roses with his family (even though he had had a recurrence of the cancer that soon killed him). It's almost as though these examples were all written a number of years ago, and not revisited.

Draw inspiration from your vision of serving others . . . and get busy!

Leadership 101: What Every Leader Needs To Know by John Maxwell (a gifted public speaker and the founder of "INJOY", an organization helping people maximizing their personal and leadership potential) is a concise and profound guidebook to unlocking one's inner potential to influence, motivate, and unite others toward a common goal. Tips, tricks, techniques, insight, keys to self-confidence and more fill this practical and resourceful pocket resource. Leadership 101 is strongly recommended, highly rewarding reading for anyone with leadership responsibilities or aspirations.

I was very disappointed by this book. The information about each of the mail protocols was very light, and the books seemed to be mostly sample code listings. If you are totally unfamiliar with any of the protocols it may be useful, but if you are looking to do any real programming the book doesn't cover enough information to let you do proper design.

All developers should own a copy of this book. This is one of the best technical books I have bought to date.

The topic is dynamite! Six months ago there were no books on how to program email using standard protocols. Now there are three! Kevin Johnson, John Rhoton and David Wood have all brought out excellent books on the subject. Adding mail to your applications is in! If your budget is tight just get this book and a copy of the RFCs, but if you are serious about this stuff you are going to need all three books as well as all the mail RFCs.

This book gives a good description of how the mail protocols work. It is easy to follow and covers all the major topics. I found the downloadable examples extremely practical and have already used one to debug one mail related problem.