Now, if only Scott's own poetry could be brought back into print!

What I found especially valuable is the way the authors clearly illustrate processes as well as artifacts. For example, the Quantified Product Integrity Attributes illustration in chapter 6 distills on a single page a highly complex concept into an easy-to-understand storyboard. Another example, on the facing page is the Requirements Specification Evolution, which portrays a complex sequence in a single illustration. Since the book has around 200 illustrations, most of which are page size, in the book's 745 pages, getting a clear picture of the software development domain and its associated processes is easy. The text is clearly written and hits all of the key areas of software development, starting with business cases and project planning.

In this one book I have found processes, procedures and techniques that I can apply to both application delivery and service delivery for clients. Also, for the first time I was able to clearly see the "big picture" and how carefully thought-out development processes can be used to deliver value to end users instead of mere applications.

I highly recommend this book and give it a solid five stars.

The authors have structured the book's contents along the lines of a sequential life cycle; however, they are not promoting the classic waterfall development approach - just presenting processes and procedures in a logical order. The chapters can be read in sequence or you can skip around without getting lost. The book starts with a chapter on business case development, followed by chapters on project planning, software systems development, change control, product and process reviews, measurement, cultural change, and ending with a chapter on process improvement planning.

What I like most is the book starts with a strong emphasis on making a business case, followed by an in-depth look at project planning. These PM practices are essential to organizations seeking CMM Level 2 and above. I also like the way the book is illustrated because the processes and concepts depicted in the 200 illustrations distill the complexities of software engineering into easy-to-understand process areas.

This book will align nicely to SPICE, CMM, Bootstrap and ISO 9000-3, making it an excellent reference for mature organizations. I strongly recommend it to serious practitioners who are committed to mature practices. I also think it would be an excellent college-level text because it shows how the theoretical aspects of software engineering can be used in the "real world".

Theron acts as if he is now a man of the world, although he knows nothing of the literature, music, and philosophy discussed by others. He becomes a boring, mean minded buffoon. The book continues with his steady degradation, a preacher who has become a victim of that secular humanism that our current day fundamentalists complain so much about.

The novel provides an interesting view of religion and culture of the late 1800s. It was somewhat difficult for me to understand how such a seemingly pious man could turn into such a churlish fellow. Perhaps his upbringing was quite religiously strict, and he developed a strong reaction formation to it all.

This book will hit a nerve for many readers - it did for me. It is easy for the reader to identify with Ware and realize only too late, as Ware did, that he is embarking on an illusory and self-destructive quest. Frederick constructed both the plot and the character of Ware perfectly, and this novel is worth everyone's time to read. You will keep thinking about it long after you have closed the book for the last time.

For those admirers of Cheever who would have been elated at the chance to converse with him about his art this book is gratifying. Surely, in these twenty eight interviews, questions are asked to which an admirer yearns for an answer. Granted some questions are echoed throughout various interviews - how much of Cheever's fiction is autobiography, for instance - a tendency the book's compiler mentions, still a lot of information about the writer's life, opinions, and working habits is presented. (A similar book and a suitable companion piece to this one is CONVERSATIONS WITH UPDIKE, particularly since the two were friends. Amazon carries it.)

What follows is merely a smattering of information from this treasure trove. Cheever liked to select a different room in his house in which to write each story. Many of his short stories were drafted in three days. Usually, at the publication of one of his books, he fled to Europe to avoid interviews, a habit he discarded later in his career. He was fond of Labrador Retrievers and owned several of the breed. Anyone wishing to discover the intimate details about the renowned American's life would do well to own this source.

John Cheever kept a journal throughout much of his career. An admirer might hope to find in them (they have been published) a glimpse into the artist's methods as can be found in the notebooks of Henry James. He is apt to be disappointed. Much of Cheever's journals concentrates on his amorous peccadilloes. CONVERSATIONS WITH CHEEVER compensates for what the journals lack. A reader will find on every page a nugget either factual or insightful on this esteemed writer.

I had put off reading this book, thinking I couldn't handle one long abstract rant, which it isn't, though I'd picked up that impression somewhere. Kerouac sings like Whitman in a voice that is at once poetic and yet concretely journalistic. It is urgent, thus propelling its content, peeling away the past and future. There is artistic skill and knowledge at work in every sentence.

I read the critical introduction last, so it would not color my experience. It is an excellent introduction, one addressing more autobiographical detail than text, but all the same, read it as an afterward; I think Kerouac would want you to live the book unfettered by context.

...for 1994.

The book is a typical example of the literature available when SEI CMM was the next silver bullet to save our industry from the dreaded "software lottery" that everyone loses (a favorite phrase of the authors).

The authors come from a DoD background and it shows with their selection of methodologies and recommendations. There is a lot of good information in here, but they don't cover many alternative concepts to how DoD builds software. Can you develop good software following this book?

Sure.

On the other hand, the same sort of methodology was used on the FAA AAS project...one of the industry's classic software disaster stories.

Take for example, the authors assertion that the basis for customer input and understanding customer needs (and the resulting project artifacts) is the Statement of Work. Which is technically true for government contracts from a contractural point of view. From an engineering point of view, a better basis of understanding customer desires is a careful analysis of current and desired workflow...on site, watching real users perform the activities that makes their businesses run.

We have a moderately large body of more recent literature that suggests that this is a (much) better method to capture user requirements and expectations than traditional DoD methodology.

There are more examples of this kind of bias but what is most damning about this book are the examples they use. Their discussion on product assurance (pg 39) has an example where product assurance testers find problems with software on the Friday before a delivery and the management "can focus its attention and resources on those areas that must be redone for Monday's release".

Excuse me?

This example is so bad on so many levels that one wonders if this is actually how SAIC does business. Certainly, I would expect that for practitioners in a "mature organization" this sort of example wouldn't even come to mind.

Likewise, the example solution on page 94 on how a CCB might respond to the problem of staff turnover is cross training. Of course this doesn't solve any of the root causes for staff turnover or even the fact that you now have N-1 programmers to do the work of N programmers.

Obviously for authors that blithely accepts that testing occurs the last minute and that programmers should work on weekends this is more than acceptable "solution".

The reason why these kinds of examples are damning is because examples are often better insight into what is actually practiced and internalized by the authors rather than the ideals presented in the book.

Fitzgerald appealed to me in high school, when I was pretty much a romantic teen-ager who fancied the tragic story of Daisy and the Great Gatsby.

Hemingway was my favorite author when I was in grad school. His writing is clean, precise and open to interpretation, unlike that of other writers of his time who told you every single thing about a character's motivation.

While I've read a lot about Hemingway's life, I never realized the two men were so close during Hemingway's rise and Fitzgerald's fall in the literary world. By following their relationship through their many letters, Scott Donaldson sheds light on two distinctly different literary careers. Fitzgerald was pretty much the voice of the jazz age, while Hemingway took up the torch for the lost generation. Each had his foibles, to be sure, but it seems Hemingway was the more disciplined of the two and, as such, enjoyed a longer career.

I enjoyed the book and am happy to add it to my collection of Hemingway resources.

Enjoy!

Then they both die... and the book continues for another 100+ pages. It's as if the author realized his book was only 250 pages long and had to fill out the binding with unnecessary rehash. Obviously drinking played an important part in both writers' lives, and it was chronicled in their relationship. There's no need to devote 40 more pages to discussing their drinking further (actually, repeating the discussion would be more appropriate here)!

Ultimately, the first part is good if not amazing. It certainly isn't good enough to make up for the terribly dull ending. To be honest, I wish I'd have read a biography of each instead. Perhaps you should do the same. Even better, read their actual works!

P.S. I'm not exactly dissuading you from this book. It is well written and interesting. Just be prepared for some boring parts and an empty stomach at the end.

Perhaps the best essay is Robert Fleming's "Hemingway's Late Fiction: Breaking New Ground." Fleming discusses Hemingway's much maligned post-war fiction and convincingly argues that even in his old age Hemingway still had vitality and was exploring new territory, sometimes successfully, sometimes not, but to call that period a literary failure is superficial and unjust. "Hemingway never stopped attempting to grow," Fleming concludes.

Kenneth Kinnamon's essay "Hemingway and Politics" attempts to prove that "Hemingway was always on the left," contrary to the general belief that Hemingway, if anything, was right-wing. Kinnamon fails. He makes a big deal of the fact that the only man Hemingway ever voted for for President was Socialist Eugene Debs in 1920. Yet the only explanation Hemingway ever gave for his vote was that Debs "was an honest man and in jail," which suggests to the undogmatic reader that the individualist Hemingway saw Debs not as a leftist but as a man of integrity. He voted for Debs's willingness to suffer for his beliefs, not his beliefs, in other words. Kinnamon plays up Hemingway's participation in the Spanish Civil War on the Republic's side, although by Hemingway's own account this was motivated by his antifascist and pro-republican sympathies, not communist. "This was not a Stalinist experience," Hemingway wrote. "These were episodes in defence of the Spanish Republic." To Kinnamon's credit, he quotes Hemingway's frequent nose-thumbing, disparagement, and dismissals of the left, but he doesn't brush them off very well. In fact, a reading of his essay leads the reader to a different conclusion than the one Kinnamon makes.

There are several "gender-orientated" essays in here. All are pretty uninsightful. Hopefully when these critics grow up and mature Hemingway will get some insightful treatment that he is usually lacking in this day and age.