dorthy day helped alot of people, had a hard life but was always ready to help people

good book to read it gives some people hope which have no hope great

I have to say that this book has taught me a lot about Notes Designer, and that it will definitely get you up and running in the application. Lotus products can be strange and difficult to work with, and this book is a decent--if occasionally frustrating--guide for getting through Designer. This being said, I am sorry to report that the text can be misleading or muddled. Often I find that important data is just breezed over without specifics; for example, the authors will tell you a setting needs to be made, but they don't tell you where. (Note to the authors: This can be frustrating and time-wasting, as in the case of the "Tip" on page 233, in which you are advised "to make sure you specify a date and a time", but it is unclear where this is done. I never did find it, and in this case, it made it impossible for me to complete the chapter-ending exercise. I spend a good deal of time on this, and got a little cranky. The CD examples were no help.) In addition, there were at least two examples of code (formulas) that had mistakes, and while it could be argued that there if you had been paying attention you would have caught them, I daresay that these errors may have wasted someone's valuable time. On that note--and I'll admit I'm being a little anal here--there were MANY typos such as missing periods, commas, messed up font cases and styles. Again, these (mostly) minor gripes notwithstanding, this book has been quite useful; I think some careful editing might have made it great.

As a 6 year Notes developer, I know many of the subjects in this well done, progressive book, but rarely lift it off the shelf until I need a refresher on a specific topic, such as lists and what functions work with them - then pulling out the chapter on Lists is very helpful to remind me about some rarely used commands that help with a lists programming problem.

You won't find heavy duty stuff here, and not much LotusScript, but Lotus doesn't even require LotusScript for a CLP, so the book is useful for many formula and function users, as well as new developers "assigned to support Notes". The title says "Notes and Domino" which implies using Domino web capabilities, but not much of that is here either.

What about the CD? Publishers love to add a CD so they can get advertising revenue from 3rd party demos and charge you and me $10-20 more. I searched all over trying to find what was on the included CD - nowhere was there a list of what was on it, until I figured out they had files to support each "day's" lesson.

I inspected the CD and found three sections:

- "3rd Party" containing over a dozen third party demo files WITHOUT ONE WORD DESCRIBING WHAT THEY WERE. There is no listing in the index, no readme.txt file, no appendix is used like other books, no info is on the back cover or in the table of contents or in any chapter I could find. If I was one of the firms PAYING to add these demo files, I would ask for a refund - as a reader, over 50% of the names were unfamiliar and what makes the publisher think I would run an .exe file on my system without even knowing what the file does, how much space it takes or whether I can unload it later. The SAMS project manager who handled CD files for this book should be fired for this sloppy implementation of what could be a useful feature.

The second section was "Examples" with a sub-directory for each day's lesson, and the files are described at the end of each chapter, but there is no comprehensive list of all the files and what they do that you could use later for reference.

The third undescribed section on the CD was "web" which again contained no "readme.txt" file, but did contain an HTML file that turned out to have lots of useful web links to Notes ad Domino related sites. Too bad most readers won't know about that document.

Finally, unlike some other Notes/Domino books, there is no included full text Notes .nsf searchable file of the book that the buyer can keep on their laptop for reference (don't ever give us pdf files, too many problems with search and different versions required).

In conclusion, this is still a good book for Novices to learn Notes, for experienced developers to use as a reference (I liked the LotusScript chapter which is better than Lotus provides in Help). Having the chapter files on CD is helpful, but they are overcharging for a CD where the contents are not documented anywhere I could find. The associate publisher of this book, Dean Miller, should be held accountable for that problem and demo advertisers should ask for their money back. That is the reason I marked the book down to four stars from five.

Vance Jochim, CLP R5, R4 WEBworks Systems vjochim@webworks66.com

The last three reviews of this book do not seem to be fair to this specific book.

1. To purchase this book and assume that it contains the software is ludicrous. If the book doesn't state it has it, you shouldn't expect it. You don't expect an Oracle book to include the Oracle Database or a book on Microsoft Windows to include the Windows software. Why would you expect the publisher to simply give you this software?

2. If there are gripes about the publisher and the quality of their books in general, those gripes should be published on the publisher's site or communicated to the publisher. This specific book shouldn't take all the flack for an overall quality issue with the publisher.

3. The complaint about the missing code on the CD is legitimate, and if the publisher didn't respond, shame on them. However, it should be known that they did eventually respond and the missing pieces are now on their web site.

In my opinion, this book is very good. The authors are certified professionals who put a lot of time and effort into this product. I'd recommend it to anyone wanting to learn Lotus Notes and Domino!

I was required to read this book for school this summer and it was by far the worst book I have read in my life. Its only a 280 page book, but her style of writing makes it seem as if it was about a thousand. She fills the book with useless information (i.e. she writes an in depth account of a cover of a book her brother brought home one day and then wonders what it was about. That was completely pointless and failed to advance the plot at all.) Instead of sticking to the core story, which might have been interesting she rambles off about random occurences constantly.

Dorothy Dayƒ­s life story is one that I hope will inspire and motivate many Christians -- many more than it already has. A full-on Bohemian in her twenties, she wrote for Socialist papers, joined strikes and picket lines, and spent her share of time in jail for protests. She was an activistƒ­s activist.
And then she met Jesus. Actually the Call of the Spirit had been upon her, or inside her, since early childhood, but it wasnƒ­t until the birth of her child that she finally acknowledged fully and became a member of the Catholic church.
I can easily identify with her problems and issues with the church -- it always seems to be on the side of the Established, the Rich and Powerful, caring not and giving not to the poor and needy, the oppressed and voiceless. Dorothy found, as too few of us have, that God heart cries out for the poor, Jesus identified himself with the oppressed and voiceless, and, as James said, true religion that God honors is looking after the widowed and the orphans in their distress.
And so, with the help, mentorship and inspiration of her friend Peter Maurin, Dorothy continued her activist ways, in the name of Christ. She started the Catholic Worker newspaper, which championed the causes of the poor and working-class. She and her friends started hospitality houses, taking in and feeding any who needed it.
Like Mother Teresaƒ­s, Dorothy Dayƒ­s story is really very simple -- she saw what there was to do, she took her Masterƒ­s words to heart, and she started doing it. Without advanced programs, grants, visioning sessions, without much of a plan at all really, she just started doing it. And she has changed the world in important ways, giving glory to God all along the way. She is a hero of the faith to me, and I hope that God will use me as He chose to use her.

Dorothy Day trained herself as a journalist, a writer, and made her living as such all of her life. This training is evident in her writing -- the book is compact, imagistic, and quick to read. The first half is fairly chronological, as she relates her life up until the point of her conversion and move to New York. After that -- basically after she meets Peter -- it becomes more topical, and the timeline more of a blur. Which was probably true of her life, so much happening and unfolding that itƒ­s hard to tell what started when and where the endings are, if there are any.

I enjoyed this book, and I learned from it -- most notably that the work of activism, of giving voice to the voiceless, is long and hard, with many defeats. But many defeats add up to slow victory, as we make progress over decades at a time. Things are better than they were in Dorothyƒ­s heyday, and we owe much of it to her and her contemporaries. We also owe a great debt to her for the life she has modeled for us -- a modern day picture of Christ among the poor, the hope of many.

Dorothy takes us step by step through the encounter of Catholic Christianity with the conditions that created reform, radical and unionist movements in the United States in the first half of the 20th century. We see at first hand the tension between reality and the values of an articulate female activist brought up in the Catholic tradition. Once you pick the book up, you won't be able to put it down.

Although easy to read, this book is more boring than Dorothy Day's autobiography. I had to struggle to finish it. Written in the style of a journalist's interview, the book would have been better if printed in a condensed form as a magazine article. Half the time quoting an interviewed Dorothy Day or remarks written in her autobiography, and the other half written with stage like asides for background, the book is filled with footnotes constantly interupting the reading. One can't skip the footnotes however. To follow the author he must check the footnotes listed on every page, going to the end of the book and not looking down at the bottom of the page. Thus so I often found myself lost doing this and I quickly lost interest. Towards the middle of the book I lost interest in Dorothy Day altogether. This work is terribly written. Robert Coles should have written it in a third person singular narritive to make it more concise. Coles should have omitted the footnotes altogether or at least incorporated their facts in some cohesive fashion.

As to the context of the subject, I confess I find Dorothy Day boorishly political and about as exciting as watching grass grow. Her Gandhi like ideas of Utopia are in fact unrealistic. Dorothy Day should have known what "Utopia" means and where it came from. Utopia was a word invented by the martyr Saint Thomas More meaning "No Such Place." And so indeed are the political realities of Dorothy Day.

"Dorothy Day: A Radical Devotion" was a good book because it showed Dorothy's imperfections and her good points. Some authors only tell about the good points of people's lives, but this book shows that Dorothy Day wasn't perfect. She made mistakes in her life. I learned a lot of interesting facts that I never knew about Dorothy Day. This book shows how Dorothy was devoted to helping the homeless. She established thirty three homeless houses across the whole country. She was brave when she left her husband to convert to Catholicism. Her husband didn't approve of God. Her daughter was baptized. My favorite part of the whole book is when the homeless man comes into the hospitality house and he has a gun with him. He threatens to shoot the gun. Instead of calling the cops, Dorothy goes over to the man and introduces herself. This shows how brave and courageous Dorothy is. The man then talks to her. All he wanted was for someone to appreciate him and someone to talk to him. He visited her often. Dorothy was there for him. This book gave me hope because it shows that an immoral person such as Dorothy Day turned into a woman who had great morals. She went from having an abortion to establishing hospitality houses.If a person knows someone who has no morals, they shouldn't give up on them because if they have enough faith in God, they can turn themselves around like Dorothy Day turned herself around. Having faith in God can help a person through anything. We all make mistakes in our lives and do things we shouldn't but we have to learn by these mistakes and try to better ourselves. Also, like Dorothy we have to do what makes us happy and not listen to other people. She lost her husband and gave up a lot of material things, but this is what made her happy and she helped a lot of people.

Biographers frequently become lost in minutiae.

Dorothy Day poses a particular challenge to the discriminating writer, because of the sheer volume of material about her life, including an autobiography, an autobiographical novel, a huge mass of journalism, biographies, and the writings of a number of her contemporaries. Given such a prolific writer, the reader might expect with dread to encounter 900 pages of occupations of great-grandparents, musings in correspondence, and constant press quotes--the fodder of the "I've got a book deal and I'm gonna put out a tome" kind of bio writing that we see all too often.

Coles' book is a breath of fresh air. In a hundred and a half pages he gives us an overview of her life and ideas, framed by excerpts from his own interviews with Ms. Day in her later years. Coles' editorial voice is always present, but generally open-minded. This is not a literary biography, evaluating the merit of Ms. Day's writings, nor a social biography, intending to give us all the inner workings of the Catholic worker movement. Instead, this is a meditation on the inspirations and contradictions inherent in this very rich life, told as often as possible from Mr. Coles' impression of Ms. Day's own take on her life-as-lived.

I read this in an evening and a day, and found it inspiring, satisfying, and altogether well written. Sometimes I wished Mr. Coles had put a little less of his first person impressions into his reportage of interviews with Ms. Day,but other times I wanted more of Mr. Coles' touchstone analysis of what Ms. Day was saying.

A reasonable critique of this book is that one could read it and still fall well short of understanding Ms. Day's thoughts or the details of her life. The somewhat sunny tone may be perceived as uncritical. For me, though, this was a great bio--get in, get the job done, get out, leave an image as clear as a descriptive poem. This is a good read--I highly recommend.