It's a book that every baseball fan must have in your library. It's a MUST ! Nice pictures.

My husband loves this book and I actually started to get more interested in baseball. If I had to choose one sport to watch, it would be baseball or tennis. While I would rather be watching a romantic movie, this book was to say the least, entertaining.

When I showed this book to my husband, he was intrigued. I also immediately noticed the "inside of the baseball" picture and never realized how many layers there were. There is also a picture of the "type of hits" which was a bit enlightening for me, being I am a baseball newbie.

So, come and explore baseball in pictures. The equipment, history, teams, techniques, rules and personalities of America's National Pastime are all included. Do you want to know the secrets of the success of Major League players? Discover why baseball has been a important part of American life for more than 150 years? Well the concise text and carefully researched definitions are user-friendly for people of all ages. This is a source for the specialized vocabulary of baseball and I would recommend it to all wives who's husbands are baseball addicts, to young players and to all baseball fans.

I am in love with visual dictionaries at the moment. This one is packed with full-color photographs and hundreds of terms and historical facts. The comprehensive Index, Appendix and Glossary also direct you to the illustrations you are looking for.

In this book you will learn about the origins of the game, the Diamond, the rules, bats and balls, baseball gloves, uniforms, catcher's gear, fielding positions and techniques, batting, pitching, baserunning, managers and coaches, umpires, ballparks, keeping score, statistics, The American League, The National League, The World Series, The Baseball Hall of Fame, Baseball Cards (very important), youth baseball, softball games and baseball around the world.

Author James Buckley, Jr., is a veteran sportswriter. He has worked for Sports Illustrated and other national magazines for both adults and children. As a former youth baseball coach, he has also written many articles on baseball and other sports. He brings a wealth of knowledge to this book and is also the author of Super Shortstops, Strikeout Kings and Home Run Heroes.

My husband enjoyed adding this to his baseball book collection. He also collects baseball cards and I am starting to realize why they are so important to him.

The quality and beauty of this book are first-rate. As a long-time baseball fan myself, it is a pleasure to peruse this book's wealth of photographs and trivia that give baseball its unique richness. Even better, this book appears to be a useful tool in developing an appreciation of the game by my wife and children, who are actually fighting over who gets to read the book each night! Now we're ready for the season to begin! Play ball! Go Dodgers!

Although this book is but 15 chapters and 336 pages long it took me an incredible amount of time to read through it due to the complexity with which it was written. I've read several Cisco Press books in the same time it took to read this one! Further, I found myself asking the question over and over again, "If this book is about the fundamentals of Voice over IP and is 'A Systematic Approach to Understanding the Basics of Voice over IP', why is it difficult to grasp even the 'basics' as presented by the authors?" As stated in a previous review, the authors have a great understanding of the topics, however, like my Theory of Operating Systems instructor, they do not do well in 'dumbing' down that information to me, a layperson in this field. This book was definitely written by VoIP engineers for VoIP engineers, not for beginners like myself.

Jim, Jon, and Brian have written a good informational book about the basics of voip technology. It is interesting to see where voice started and provide a clear path for where it is going. I found the configurations in the back very useful.

As a note to the previous reviewer: Page 168 states that "serialization delay is not covered IN-DEPTH". If the previous reviewer continued to read the book they would have noted on page 213 and 214 a discussion on propagation delay and the need for fragmentation. Overall I found the book useful, however I would have liked more configurations.

Jon and James have a conversational writing style that was easy to follow for me. They have included a lot of historical information that should help the reader understand the momentum behind the transition that is taking place today, creating a "new-world" model of internetworking that has its own rules.

As previously mentioned, this is not a design and implementation guide - the forthcoming Cisco Press title "Cisco Voice Integration" will be when it is released. This book does, however, give the reader a very detailed introduction to the underlying technologies that make Voice over IP, Voice over Frame Relay, and Voice over ATM work.

The book was a good read even for someone like myself with over 12 years in telephony and networking. Jon and James have done a good job of collecting and communicating relevant information about each of the VoIP building blocks.