I agree with the others that this is the most advanced flash game book without exception. The book is over 620+ pages with very little fluff and no novice turorials or hand holding.

If you have a firm grasp of Flash MX, Actionscripting and using Flash MX as a game platform you cannot do wrong with this book.

However if you are a beginner you will not find the typical basic tutorial sections that expert users loath as a waste of print. If you have not used Flash MX extensivly I reccomend purchasing one of the other titles that do the hand holding to get yourself up to speed before you invest in Flash MX Game Design Demystified.

Good book for the expert user, but not good at all for the beginner.

I am always skeptical about Computer Game Programming books because they usually offer very little new information or information that couldn't easily been found via Google.

But as I flipped through the book in the bookstore, I discovered the veritable treasure trove of non-time-based collision routines (i.e. circle to circle and circle to line), practical descriptions of isometric representation and A*path-finding. The mathematical proof is presented for those mathematically inclined and for those "less rigerous" folks, the actionscript is included and explained.

The above stuff can easily be applied to other development environments (i.e. Lingo in Director, C++ in WildTangent) and that is the greatest value of this book. It's portability.

Of course, there are very specific Flash tips and hints around the limited computing power of Flash (i.e. design games to reduce collidable objects because the Flash Engine can't perform fast enough) which is valuable for those willing to learn from other's experience.

Also included on the CD-ROM are sample Flash applications like a crossword puzzle, a Multiplayer game (with included Jobe's company's multiuser server) and isometric sample game.

I almost wish to keep the book a secret because it is SO good but I believe Jobe deserves all the credit for delivering such a solid book so I highly recommend buying it!

I've purchased a number of Flash books (gaming or otherwise) and this is by far the best book I've purchased. I went from having a limited knowledge of actionscript to programming two completely different games within one month. And this knowledge is also useful in other aspects of Flash beyond gaming. Buy this book if you are serious about learning the deeper powers of Flash. Intermediate to Advanced users.

The Making of America's Bosnia Policy

Getting to Dayton is an extremely well-written analysis of how the United States became actively engaged in Bosnia in 1995. Daalder weaves the story of how policy makers in Washington actually made (and make) their decisions. He possesses intimate knowledge of the actors in the story and has enormous regard for the delicate sequencing of events. His research, which is based on personal interviews, extensive reviews of available literature, and personal experience in the White House, marks this book not only as one of the best books on U.S. Bosnia policy but on the structure of U.S. policy making. The book is of equal interest to both those inside and outside the Beltway.

There are 724 footnotes in this book, of which 720 seem to be for English-language sources, mostly American. And the trust in American sources is complete. For example: there's a section on the Racak massacre, with no mention that some French and German papers have cast doubts on the evidence, only a 200-word quote from American observer William Walker. For example: the famous appendix to the Rambouillet accord (granting NATO troops the right to bivouac and billet and make use of any facility anywhere in Yugoslavia) was just boilerplate that would have been deleted on request -- and the backup for this revelation is interviews with an American general and an American envoy. Why didn't they ask Yugoslavs too?

Serb criminals and crimes get full coverage along with epithets like "murderous" or "cowardly" or "atavistic". But nothing on killings of Serbs before the war, and nothing in the text about the Belgrade TV station slaughter, or the cluster bombs that hit the Nis marketplace (though that's in one of the appendixes). As for the Chinese embassy attack, it was obviously inadvertent because there was no sensible reason for it. Thus irrationality connected to Serbs proves they're murderers, while irrationality connected to Americans proves they're innocent.

I found no errors in fact, and I don't expect some balanced presentation of non-American views. But a book that doesn't even note the other views, and excises facts which don't fit with the presentation of the American view, has no value except to those who want to believe that NATO was right. Others will prefer Judah's "Kosovo: War and Revenge" (which at least checked multiple sources), and Parenti's "To Kill a Nation". Or at the extreme there's Noam Chomsky's "The New Military Humanism" which is filled with anti-NATO bias ... about enough to balance the pro-NATO bias in "Winning Ugly".

Daalder and O'Hanlon make the claim that the 1999 NATO air campaign against Milosevic's Serbia was a good thing, since it stopped the ethnic cleansing and left everyone in Kosovo better off than they would have been without NATO's military intervention.

Viewed through the lens of today's headlines, this argument becomes hard to support. The ethnic cleansing of Kosovar Albanians by Serbs has ceased, to be replaced by similar outrages against Serbs by Kosovars. Net improvement? Nil.

Was the Kosovo air campaign justifiable as a fire-break against further bloodshed in the Balkans? The citizens of Macedonia would demur, I'm afraid.

It is hard to escape the impression that the Kosovo campaign was not only the last of the Wars for Greater Serbia, a point Daalder and O'Hanlon dance around in their conclusions, but also the first of the Wars for Greater Albania -- a point the authors utterly fail to address.

One is ultimately left with the conclusion that the authors have done a very good job of researching and arguing the wrong thesis.

This is a serious and worthwhile study which analyzes the strengths and weaknesses of American leadership and the NATO system in its first offensive war. It is particularly useful to read this book after Kaplan's The Coming Anarchy (also reviewed). Kaplan makes clear there will be a lot more destruction of humanity that will require American leadership and the use of force. Daalder and O'Hanlon make clear that we have a lot to learn if we are going to engage in campaigns like Kosovo.

Anyone who plans to advise the next Administration would be well served by reading these two books together and pondering their implications for improving American decision making and coalition leadership skills in the context of interventions in dangerous places. The clearest points in this book are Daalder and O'Hanlon's judgments that this was the right war, it was ultimately a success, airpower had a powerful but limited influence and without the threat of a land campaign and the Russian abandonment of Milosevic. In their view, airpower by itself would have failed, and that the United States has to lead for these interventions to work and the Clinton Administration consistently failed to lead the public, the Congress or our allies and because of the Clinton's Administrations prior vacillation on Saddam Hussein (loud threats, tiny attacks that ended quickly without coercing Saddam). The confused posturing of the Clinton Administration actually increased the likelihood that force would have to be used because Milosevic had no reason to believe they would actually fight to the end. Once NATO had consolidated its position and the Administration had launched the gamble of forceful coercion Daalder and O'Hanlon give Clinton and the allies high marks for realizing that NATO had to win or cease to be relevant and they stepped up to the challenge. Their critique of the Clinton Administration is decisive and thorough: "Having failed to make a public case for the use of force, the Clinton administration opted for a minimalist strategy. Its hope was that a bit of bombing would work. This was the military equivalent of the 'Hail Mary' play in football. Not only was this an irresponsible way to go to war, it also was unnecessary. A case for decisive military action-at a minimum, a robust air campaign from the war's outset--could have been made. The American public would probably have supported such a strategy given its disdain for Milosevic and memories of the Bosnian war. The tragedy of this case is that, in fearing the absence of public and congressional support, the administration embarked on the use of force lacking both. That is no basis for taking the tremendous risks that the use of force necessarily implies." (pages 224-225). This is a book worth studying and thinking about.