A Must for the New Bengal Owner! I'm not new to owning cats, but I am new to the Bengal breed. This book is very helpful. It goes into detail about the breed and there are specifics that bengal owners should know that are different than other breeds. The only thing I would have liked to have seen in this book, would have been color pictures. I only has black & white drawings...but the information is great!

This is more of a basic book that goes into Bengal cats in general.There is some detailed information but most of it is what you should look for in this breed and how to care for them.There are no photographs but only black and white drawings so do not expect otherwise.
I feel it is an informative guide but more for those who are new to cats and raising them.Great beginners book for Bengal lovers!

I was very pleased with this book. My wife and I would like to open a bengal cattery someday, but we had many questions about quality of cats, care, showing, this book answered about everything. It explains things in a simple way that even I can understand it : ) I loved it.

I have been purchasing this complete baseball card price
guide for the past five years. This is one guide a serious
collector should not be without!

As usual, this 9th edition of The Standard Catalog of Baseball cards is the most complete source of information and pricing for baseball cards ever printed. Virtually every baseball card ever produced is catalogued in this book. Every type of card is also pictured, to help you identify those old rare cards you find in your attic. If you are a serious baseball card collector, this is one book you cannot be without.

Buy it now!

As a diehard Beckett user, I was hesitant to buy this guide. If you are looking for the price guide most stores will go by, subscribe to Beckett's magazine. If you want a book that will list all of the regional, food issue and oddball sets, buy this instead of Beckett. I collect Red Sox cards and had nearly 100 cards that I could not identify with the Beckett, even after combing through the book page by page. I bought this book because I needed info on minor league team sets, and to my delight was able to identify all but 3 card sets! This book was well worth the purchase! The only drawback is that the majority of minor league sets are identified by team name, manufacturer and number of cards in the set. I would like to know who was in each set so I can identify minor league cards of former Red Sox as managers, but the size of this book definitely prevents this. This book is huge compared to Beckett, a result of the additional sets and information provided. I'll stick with the Standard Catalog from now on, until someone produces a complete checklist of Red Sox cards!

I've got a love hate relation ship with this book. I must admit that it was an impulse buy-a 99¢ special with a cool cover sitting near the checkout at a Border's outlet. I figured, what the hell.

While there seem to be raves about the premise of the protagonist, Jim Thompson, writing a story in which he, in reality, is becoming a character. The technique is really not worth the hype, nor is it particularly groundbreaking like, say "House of Leaves" by Mark Danielewski. That gripe aside, what we do have here is a refreshing, intriguing story that, if nothing else has a convincing tone that made want to keep turning pages.

While I'm not too well read in the hard-boiled genre, this is a book that might make me want to dig deeper. Set in 1950s Hollywood, Stansberry gives us a look at the grime beneath the glitz: the hookers and alcoholics, the invalids and crazies. If it were a movie, Quentin Tarantino would be behind the camera and Harvey Keitel would be starring lead, carrying a pocketful of pimp swagger left over from Taxi Driver.

To the story, Jamesy!

Thompson is asked, by Billy Miracle to write a script for a movie that Miracle is shopping. Miracle is in debt up to his forked-tongue in people who wouldn't hesitate to break his legs. The alcoholic Thompson accepts the offer and gets the lead line from Miracle. As Miracle gives him direction, Thompson starts to realize that events happening around him (murders, cover-ups, and mistaken identities) are running parallel to the story Miracle is feeding him. Before too long, Thompson sees where things are going, but it might just be too late. (Cue the spooky string music here).

In a seemingly simple turn of events, we reach the climax of the book. On page 162 of my copy, Miracle explains everything. From a technique perspective, the whole thing is a total mess. One full page of monologue reads like a list of he said/she said drivel. Rather than trusting the reader to figure out what was going down-which would have taken just a little bit more effort on the author's part-we get a summation that leaves us confused rather than shocked. It was shortcut that could've (and should've) been avoided. Since the book tips the scales at 184 pages, there is plenty of room for more development.

That said, rare is the book these days that makes me want to park my posterior at the controls and mash the keyboard all day. Stansberry's mysterious characters and convincing descriptions of Hollywood's underbelly was plenty of motivation. Ultimately, if your looking for a light read to knock off in a long afternoon, I'd say that, at 99¢, Manifesto for the Dead is money well spent.

... and shows that all isn't golden. I don't know if Jim Thompson would have appreciated the story, but Stansberry captures his voice and puts us in the booth next to the creaters of the noir classics for a ride that captures both the voice and atmosphere of classic noir. While some may complain that noir is too dark, the problem may lie in the fact that it's too real for fiction. Stansberry captures that in the work and does an excellent job creating a story within the story which reflects the voice of Jim Thompson while remaining true to his own voice within his own narration. Not a great book, but a good addition to the canon.

This book did not get as much attention as Last Days of Il Duce, but it is in many ways a more interesting novel--with its novel-within-a-novel structure and its dynamic portrait of crime novelist Jim Thompson. A short, punchy book that defies easy categorization. Stansberry defintely twists the genre to his own purposes here. I liked Il Duce a lot, but this is more gold from a very good writer working on the fringes of the convenentional crime genre.

Even in lowbrow fantasy, there are some ground rules: you need to like the good guys, dislike the bad guys, and enjoy reading about the heroes using their strength, cleverness and/or innate goodness to triumph in the end. It also helps if there's a finite number of evil schemes going on--say, five. And if you're going to have over forty characters, you need to make sure they're very distinctive so that readers don't get confused and overwhelmed. In this book, on the other hand, the good guys are annoying, the bad guys are annoying, and the heroes go through each fight looking like Bill Gates in the boxing ring with Mike Tyson. It's hard to believe they could rescue a barn from an upset cow, let alone restore a kingdom...and apart from the fact that they're snarky with each other, why should we care about them at all? Maybe if we had more time to get to know them we'd care more, but the 'Dramatis Personae' (at the end of the book, and full of information and backstory that would've made this book less confusing if it'd been placed better) lists 96 characters. In a 319-page book, that works out to a new character every 3.32 pages. Why, why, why??? Oh, and the word 'whelm'? Get used to seeing it a LOT. It's as if the author gets a check from the Whelm Boosters of America every time he slips it in. This author's done better work--maybe it was because of a different editor, or maybe it was because he actually cared about the characters. This book feels to me like someone sitting down with the old notes of a D&D campaign he never actually took part in, and trying to make a book out of it.

This is a great novel. very suspenceful and adventurous. One of the best band of four novels that he has written. This one is defonetly better then the Kingless Land. It is solid combination of horror,suspence,and fantisy. A very good novel if you love fantisy.

I thought the Vacant Throne was a outstanding book. The way it picked up from the Kingless Land was most impressive. It even brought back old foes that made it even harder to put down. It became more darker in it's plot and showed a closer view of the barons in the land that made really interesting. The way the he had Embra and Hawkril coming closer together really got me excited. After all i would have to say this was a great sequel.

I have a shelf full of books at home on XML, but there is always room for one more ;) This is a new title and I have just received it after being on the wait list for a little while. The reason why I ordered it was because the Web Services specifications were not included in any detail yet by any other books. So, I turned directly to the Web Services chapters, and it did not disappoint! I was able to put the concepts and code in the book (including VB code for .NET) directly to use. The book also included great detail on using Java with the DOM and SAX. In general, this is a focused and well-written book.

Others may be interested in the general XML introduction, XSL detail, and chapters on the various XML standards, but this is meant to be a reference book, and so I was happy with the chapters that I chose to read.

Not a bad buy... Worth the money.

Well, this book is hot off the presses as of the writing of this review, and it's a good thing, since the content is very well written and is extremely up-to-date!

This book makes a good essential reference for anyone who is interested in developing using XML, Web Services, SAX, the JAX pack, etc. Certainly, it has helped me get off the ground and become a better XML developer!

Topics covered in the book include:
+ Fundamentals of XML
+ DTDs, XML Schema, and alternatives including RELAX NG and SOX
+ XLink, XPath, and XPointer
+ XML Database integration and data modeling
+ Processing XML with SAX and DOM, with both Java and VB examples
+ XSLT and XSLT:FO
+ SVG and XHTML
+ Lots of Web Services Content including detail on SOAP, UDDI, WSDL, and implementation
+ Microsoft .NET code and implementation
+ Voice XML and WAP
+ XML Content Management
+ XML e-Business standards including RosettaNet, ebXML, OBI, and vertical industry standards including HL7, ACORD, XBRL, IFX, etc.
+ RDF and semantic web stuff

So,this is really quite a detailed, comprehensive, and actually enjoyable to read book. I have now 7 XML books on my shelf, but they keep getting better ;)

Worth it for newbies and experienced developers alike.

What a relief! This has been one of the most didactically written technical book I have ever read. Well done!

This is definately a reference I will be refering to as it is up-to-date and very complete. For example, Web Services, XFLT, SVG...

Buy this book if you need a desktop reference on XML. You won't regret it!

I remember reading my own copy of this book at the height of 90210's popularity and I had a copy of this book. All I will say is that the authors of this book, Michael Carr and Darby, need a life or a better hobby (or bettre yet, a better job) if they have to waste their time writing a piece of vicious, sniping, venomous drivel such as this book ------ especially if they have to obsess on someone that they apparently despise and can't tell the difference between a TV character and an actual person. This book was not humorous and to buy it is still a waste of money. I would not advise buying it or reading this and if it were possible I wouldn't even give it half a star.

What kind of crap is this? People that don't even KNOW the girl are dissing her AND making fun of Brenda. God, it's not her fault that Brenda is snobby. STOP ASSOCIATING BRENDA WITH SHANNEN! Brenda isn't real! God! They are two different people! They assume that Shannen is bitchy just because brenda was. ERrr.

WASTE OF MONEY!!

This book is hilarious. It gives a good insight about young actresses getting fame and money and believing all the hype.