This survey of 100 women marrying after 40 highlights the perspectives of this particular age group on common marriage and relationship issues. Among the best features was the assurance given by the author and women surveyed that 40-plus women interested in marriage have the opportunity and can certainly afford to be choosy. Most interesting to me was that almost all of the women who married for the first time or after being single for a long time experienced some anxiety about sharing space and diminished independence. It was heartening to know that this concern, which I share in the abstract, is common and can be dealt with.

It's so good to read a book that makes me feel good about myself and my chances for finding a good man. There are lots of role models in this book, with lots of good advice on how to meet men and how to handle the special problems of mature relationships. If these women can find good men, so can I!!! The book is very uplifting.

Anyone getting married should read this book. Male or female, first, second, Young or old it doesn't matter, this book should be required reading. This book gives good inside into what to expect from marriage. The 1st person stories are great. There are so many things one never thinks of until its too late. This book points them out. For anyone getting married who is marrying someone with children this book is a must. I am giving copies to 3 different brides to be and 1 groom to be.

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.

I don't quite know how to describe this book other than to say it was very disappointing. Anyone wishing to read an insightful travel adventure story, beware. I don't know what Jim Rogers studied at his Ivy League alma mater but it must not have been history, literature or political science. His is the "business man's" perspective, which is to say he looks at everything, exotic locales included, with an eye toward investment.

Consequently, the beauty, "feel" and atmosphere of many places is overlooked. I was wondering why the book was in the business section and not with the travel narratives! Unfortunately, even the business advice is sketchy at best. Everything is tainted with Jim's know-it-all, condescending attitude. He is a very wealthy man, thanks to his knowledgeable investing, but that doesn't make him an expert on the world. I seriously get the feeling that much of the history and country facts he spouts were gleaned from an almanac, long after he returned from the trip, while he was punching the book out on his computer.

The descriptions of the dozens of countries he visited are sketchy at best. In Turkey he describes a "glorious stretch of road with gorgeous scenery." Details, please. He says it's one of the ten best road trips in the world. From someone who's driven the entire globe I'd like more insight. Europe, for the most part, is glossed right over. I used to live in Luxembourg and wanted to see what he said about it. Nothing. Granted, on a trip that long he can't go into detail on everything but I'd like less analysis on the finances of Turkmenistan and more on what the guy actually saw.

I'd like to know more about what it feels like to see Victoria Falls than the fact that they "were revealed in all their awesome glory to Paige Parker (his wife) on June 14, 1999." Having just returned from New Zealand I was looking forward to some expert descriptions of that wonderfully scenic country. Unfortunately, Mr. Rogers sums the place up in three paragraphs mostly about its investment potential and Paige's dream to open a sheep farm and vineyard there. I got no feeling whatsoever for La Paz, Bolivia, a place I'm contemplating traveling to. Instead, the author regales us with his trials and tribulations on tracking down a shady investment partner there who owes him $3000. Who cares? The guy is on a 152,000 mile road trip. Let's hear more about the road. He chows his way down on every squirmy, ghoulish local "delicacy" he can sink his teeth into (various snakes, etc.), winning the Rush Limbaugh Traveling Gourmand Award for irresponsible cuisine. Are any of the things he comsumed endangered? They may be but the author never raises the question.

The simplistic solutions to the world's financial problems Rogers comes up with are easy to put on paper but, in most cases, impossible to enact. Passports may be an annoyance but I don't see them being done away with in my lifetime. I agree that the United States, contary to popular opinion, needs more immigrants to maintain its productivity but don't count on the US government to increase the numbers allowed in. I'm sorry but talking to two or three guys on the street of any national capital doesn't give one a lot of insight into how that country is faring. You could talk to another three guys a week later and get a completely different picture.

I think what Rogers relies on to make money and survive a trip like this is instinct...and he seems to have a good one. More power to him. That doesn't make him a good writer which, consequently, means this reader came to the conclusion that he made a lousy investment when adding "Adventure Capitalist" to his library. A better bet is Paul Theroux's "Dark Star Safari."

Jim Rogers has taken the great American notion of a road trip, and made it into a sensational read. I was really taken by his first book, i.e. Investment Biker, and followed his next trip via his website. Each time I checked his site, my interst in the book to come increased, and I was not disappointed.

I think that Mr. Rogers might have about 5 more books from this one trip, and each one would be better and more insightful as he mulls over the things that he saw and experienced and has the time to take a longer view. I will look forward to buying those future books should they come to pass.

The book is well written, thoughtful and persuasive as to the the failings of our foreign policy. It's too bad that national leadership seems to be fashioning a neo-isolationist policy, when the real goal should be to understand how those in the rest of the world really see us.

I wanted the book to be longer, to provide more detail as to how he got things done, the stuff that worked, and more on what he saw and experienced. As I wrote this review, I found myself listening to the BBC World news trying to connect with the world that Rogers so eloquently describes.

This is a great book, and the kind that should be required reading for students of all ages!

Jim Rogers may never hit the list of top 10 best selling authors but that's not because his latest book lacks any of the important characteristics of a bestseller. The only disqualifier is self-imposed by the author. The book is designed to blow away many common illusions and prejudices about the world we live in. It is not the stuff popular fiction is made of.

Jim is a former hedge fund manager who retired at 37, following a successful stint on Wall Street alongside George Soros. In the early nineties he published his first book Investment Biker, a story of his round-the-world trip by motorcycle.

His new book called Adventure Capitalist-The Ultimate Road Trip describes his second round-the-world trip, this time by a custom built Mercedes-Benz car. He set out with his wife Paige and a team of two other guys in 1999. The trip took them on a 240,000 kilometer journey through 116 countries and ended three years later.

I believe that this book should be required reading at schools and colleges not just because it beats Phileas Fogg's journey hands down in intellectual stimulation, but because the book is also a compendium of free-market ideas and live comparative social analysis.

Jim's starting point was to search for investment opportunities. He set out with the open mind of a moneymaker on pilgrimage to find the truth about market conditions. He is looking for profitable opportunities, businesses and countries to invest in and is not prepared to accept conventional wisdom, official or ideological distortions. He has equal contempt for the party politics in US as with those of any other country he visits. He lashes out against Turkmenbashi, the dictator in charge of Turkmenistan, for perpetuating his own brand of Stalinist cult of personality and destroying the country in the process. But then shows the same contempt for President Bush for confusing devaluation with depreciation and also with former President Clinton who he blames for failing to observe and react to the creation and bursting of the biggest market bubble in decades. "I would cast a pox on both their houses-the Democrats and the Republicans" he proclaims in exasperation.

Adventure Capitalist exposes some official and popular myths for what they are in a way that made me look at politics and religion from a very different perspective. In China, Jim tells of attending service in a Chinese Christian Church, where the local worshipers, while singing "Onward Christian Soldiers" never realized that in lands as far as North Carolina there are people like Jesse Helms who are frothing at the mouth while bemoaning religious persecution in their country.

Despite not being able to obtain a visa to drive freely though Iran, Jim still admits to holding some small investments in the country and suggests forgetting the official analysis coming from Washington. "...there is a lot of positive change coming from Iran." he claims.

Jim squarely lays the blame on the British for their Imperial invention of the passport and for the subsequent regulation of immigration by Government bureaucrats worldwide. His prediction is that in some parts of the world passports will not manage to stop the changing of borders.

He talks of countries where he likes to invest and economies that he believes are on the verge of collapse. Which ones are those? Well, let's say I don't expect he will be a best selling author in Moscow.

Jim Rogers will probably not be officially proclaimed as prophet any time soon, but I know there will be people who will quote passages of the Adventure Capitalist for the years to come.

This book was required for a class I am taking. After trying to use it for two weeks of an accelerated course, I went out and purchased the C How to Program book by Deitel and Deitel on the recommendation of another C professor. This book is a dangerous waste of time and teaches programming habits that fly in the face of programming standards - the use of global variables over local is a prime example. Additionally, there are no reference tables, no glossary, and the index is useless. The poor quality of the index makes this book useless as a reference book and difficult to use for study/review. This book is inappropriately priced, being an inferior work and yet priced higher than other books which have been recommended to me (such as the Deitel & Deitel work). Unfortunately, our instructor was not allowed to select the text for our class. The publisher should pull this book from circulation and offer apologies and refunds to those who purchased it. It is a smirch on their reputation.

I obtained this text as a review copy for possible use in my introductory C++ programming course. My first reaction was to laugh at the flow charts; something I havn't seen outside of a COBOL or FORTRAN book. After deciding to give the book a good look over I was quite unimpressed. I often place unsuitable review copies outside of my office for students to take but this one is only fit for the circular file floder beside the desk.

The book avoids local variables claiming that all good corporate programs use global variables only. The text does not cover any C++ other than for simple input and output. There is no mention of the word class (we cover this in the first week). Finally, there is no parameter passing for function calls so there is no mention of call-by-value or call-by-reference parameters.

This book should not be used by anyone who is interested in learning programming. A person who learns to program from this book would be in no shape to learn anything about data structures.

I was given this book as text for a C programming course I taught. I do not recommend it for a class text or self-study.

This book has many failings. First of all it does not teach ANSI C. Peculiarites of an early Borland C compiler are taught as part of the language. For example "stdprn" is presented along with "stdin" and "stdout" as intrinsic file pointers. fclose() is shown to have a variable argument list.

However it is the author's use of very poor C programming style that makes this book a dangerous choice for someone trying to learn the language. He does not use argumets to pass information between functions. Instead he relies on global variables. For the small example programs shown in the text this is reasonably managable. In real world programming, one will soon be lost in unpredictable side effects of such a style. At one point he even sets multi-dimensional array indices (which are global) in one function to be used in another.

One of the reason for this poor style is that the author does not present pointers as such, but buries the concept into specific cases (e.g., file pointers). No text porporting to teach the language can fail to address pointers. In addition, he does not address structures until the second to the last chapter. Thus, an obvious vehicle for passing complex information between functions (preferably via pointers) is unavailble throughout most of the presentation.

Finally, the example programs and exercises are unrealistic. They by and large are concerned with processing flat table information -- reading, writing reports, modifing the data. In the real world, such tasks would be done easier and better using tools like Excel and Access. The exercises after each chapter are variations on the same half a dozen problems (all very similar in nature). Yet he does not show how the new concepts presented in the current chapter can solve the problems easier or more elegantly or extend the function of the program.

I spent the semester course teaching _against_ this book. I regard it one to be avoided.