How does one summarize a book that is impossible to understand? Simply stated, this frustrating read crumbles under the weight of its own foolishness. For example:
The reader is is advised not to share knowledge indiscriminately. But to get to "zero space" (whatever that is) one is encouraged to do just that. But, later, we are told it's OK to share all knowledge because competitive advantage is only gained by someone acting on that knowledge. Are they overlooking the fact that in order to act on something, one must first have that knowledge? Whoops.
The authors arrogantly state, "Human resource management is out and people relationship is in." This is cute but not substantiated.
The trend toward operational standardization is well appreciated, but then to leap to the assumption that this means the knowledge worker is a myth is dubious. And, again, unsubstantiated.
The first "concrete" step we are to take on this voyage to zero space is to become zero-minded, to empty our minds of preconceptions, and to allow it to move freely where it may never have gone before. The authors have evidently followed their own advice.

I rate the book as "Zero." In "Zero Space" that is the highest rating!

Authors address organizational change in a knowledge-based economy. Their short stories and analogies make the book fun to read. Examples include the comparison of Zero-thinking companies to a maneuverable and highly adaptable "Tugboat" rather than a large ship. They talk of the value of communication and value of sharing information with the concise sentence "Two friends meet for a drink." The knowledge sharing, over a drink, leaves both men richer and no man poorer. This is an excellent story and representative of the superb readability of the book.

Easy and fun to read does not translate into "Easy to understand." This reader needed two passes to begin to appreciate the "Zero Space" concept and. Some of the concepts are abstract and require the reader to think in unconventional terms. Fortunately the authors offer Eight Key Features" associated with the "Zero" thinking. For example, "Zero Learning Lag" talks about training in today's businesses. The chapter is less abstract than others and presents a very good case for integration of learning with job activity in which the two become indistinguishable.

Lastly, the authors quote much of modern business literature thus offering the reader additional ways to explore the "Zero" concepts or merely to link to alternative ideas.

A very impressive book! Zero Space defines a cutting-edge management model that is relevant to both managers and consultants alike. I see this theory as a natural extension and integration of the research on high-speed management and virtual organizations. John Jones, Ph.D., Author, "The Virtual Entrepreneur"

The black cut outs aren't cut acurately. I'd like to return this item to you and exchange it. A group of us purchased it for a class and I DON'T KNOW the account number. So how do i get it back into the mail and maybe get one that has been cut acurately? Thank you

Very disappointed by the "book", which actually consists of a set of wheels,
with a 4-page booklet which does not explain much. I returned the book.

If you came to me for a job in graphic design and you told me you hadn't studied Itten, I wouldn't hire you. But I'm picky. Please understand who this man is, and understand his philosophy of color. His work is significant.

The description says "Virtually every piece composed by Brahms and not sacrificed to his uncompromising critical standards is discussed in this compendium, lucidly, readably, in biographical and cultural context, and in fine detail." The claim "in fine detail" is blatantly untrue. The detail is about what you'd get on a typical CD insert booklet, nothing more. The C minor symphony gets a scant five pages; the E minor, just three; the four concertos get a total of 13 pages.

The unevenness cited by a previous reviewer is this book's great weakness. Those works covered by writers other than the editor get reasonably detailed treatment. Those written by the editor get very short shrift. These are all solo lieder, vocal duets and quartets, and smaller-scale choral works, especially the earlier works in these genres. Some of the individual numbers in these sets get no more discussion than their names and key signatures.

Even the longer essays are not by any means detailed musical analyses. They are the equivalent of what you might expect from a well-done set of notes included with a recording.

The title "Compleat" is something of a misnomer. The book barely mentions most of the WoO and posthumous works and discusses almost none of the many alternate arrangements done by Brahms -- including some significant ones, such as the transcriptions of Op. 120 for viola and piano.

Even with its deficiencies, if you're a serious Brahmsian, this book will be a valuable addition to your library.

This book contains introduction of EVERY Brahms' work. I use it accompanying with DG's Brahms complete edition, and the result is very informative and I totally enjoy it. The greatest merit,and at the same time the crucial flaw, of this book is that this is a collaboration. Yes, good enough, we can find different perspectives and different writing styles and different standard among these articles. But even in the same category pages seem not being equally distributed. For example, there are 4.5 enthusiastic pages dedicated to op.43,four lieder, with every lied in detail. But there are only 3 paragraphs for op.46, four lieder. (It seems rather "unfair",isn't it? for op.46 is no less distinct then the former.) I love this book, if regardless of this.

THIS BOOK HAS SOME ASTROLOGY ETC. YES THAT'S GOOD. BUT IT'S A BOOK ABOUT TAROT SPREADS.

WHERE ARE THE DETAILS FOR THE SPREADS? IF YOU'RE GOING TO GIVE PEOPLE COMPLETE TAROT SPREADS GIVE THEM MORE DETAILS ON THE SPREADS. NOT JUST PAST-PRESENT-FUTURE OR 1-2-3. WE WANT TO KNOW WHAT THE PAST POSITION REALLY MEANS, ETC. EVEN ONE LINE WOULD DO. ANYONE COULD HAVE WRITTEN THIS BOOK. JUST THINK OF SOME CATCHY NAMES FOR THE POSITIONS, NOT KNOWING WHAT THEY MEAN AND YOU'VE GOT THIS BOOK. AND OH, WHY HAVE THEY GIVEN US THE CELTIC CROSS SPREAD IN ABOUT TEN VARIATIONS AND CALLED IT 10 SPREADS WHEN IT'S JUST 1 SPREAD WHERE THE CARDS CAN BE INTERPRETED DIFFERENTLY?

I GAVE IT TWO STARS FOR THE ASTROLOGY PART. PLEASE WORK ON THE SPREADS AND GET BACK TO US WITH A REVISED EDITION. IF IT'S AS PRACTICAL AS THE ASTROLOGY PART PEOPLE WILL BUY IT.

This book didn't have quite the range of spreads that I'd hoped, but I did expect that when I bought it and I wasn't sorry. I won't comment on the introductory segments on numerology, astrology, or general card theory, as I largely skipped over that (although I suppose that's worthy of comment in itself). As some other reviewers have mentioned, of the 120 (or however many) spreads that there are in this book, a very large number of them are one, two, and three card spreads. I tend to make up my own spreads, often on the fly, so what I've found useful about this book is that both the simplistic and complex spreads give me different ideas or angles to use when I create my own spreads. To date, I've used this book to avoid getting into a rut in the way I define my cards, and I've used it to get inspiration for new spreads of my own. Quite frankly, I could get a lot of the same information browsing the web for spreads, but it's much more convenient for me to have a nice little collection that I can keep in the same place as my cards, plus it saves me the footwork.

In summary, this is an inexpensive book that I'd recommend for anyone with moderate expections looking for ideas or inspiration, but this book will definately not present you 100 new fancy spreads that you've never heard of before.

The Complete Book of Tarot Spreads at first look appears to be just what every serious tarot reader is looking for, this is sadly not the case. Many of the spreads are one card spreads with different meaning such as The Unknown, Stress Card, Your Dream Card or The Next Step. There are numerous 2, 3 or 4 card spreads also with trivial meaning for their positions. I find these smaller spreads to be disappointing and practically worthless. This type of information would be helpful for a starting student, but any experienced card reader could easily make these spreads up on the spot. There are 4 versions of the Zodiac Spread and 4 versions of the Celtic Cross, each with slightly varried meanings and counting as seperate layouts. I found about 6 spreads that had any depth and usefulness for professional work. These few spreads in this book that had value have been published by many other sources. The 1st chapter covers the tarot basics in a thorough manner. The intoductory chapter is the most useful part of this book because it's always good to hear other opinions and theories of professional card reader. This includes numerology, colors and tips on keeping a tarot journal. There is also about 7 pages of tarot in relation to astrology, this is mostly lists and charts with very little explanation. The astrology correlations are taken directly from the Golden Dawn teachings and may be confusing for the beginner. The bottom line is this book is neat to own for the ideas and helpful hints of the authors but the variety of card spreads are very minimal and practically worthless for any serious reader.

I was forced to buy this book as my instructor follows this book in his graduate level database management class. I was really disappointed after "studying" this book. I do not know the expertise level of the author in database management but he does not know how to explain different aspects of database management systems. I think he feels obligated to use complex sentences in his book to explain various topics. Probably he does not know that in the scientific world using simple sentences are more norm than fashion. After reading some of the topics, I was really lost. For eg. on normalization the author does not even talk about first normal, second normal form but starts from the BCNF. The chapters on tree structured indexing and hash-based indexing are horrible. While reading these chapters, there were times, when I was totally confused and wondered what exactly the author was trying to convey. I would suggest to author to read the book "Modern Database Management" by McFadden, Hoffer and Prescott in order to "learn" how to write a book and how to explain topics in a simpler way. I am really disppointed with the author. I will not recommend any computer science students to buy this book for reference and would not recommend instructors to follow this book in their classes. Buying this book was a waste of money.

Reviewed by Qi Luo

I have read quite a few books about Database Management Systems in the market. I have worked for many leading companies to build large-scale high-performance trading engine systems for stock exchanges, such as Pacific Exchange, the national third largest, NASDAQ Stock Market, the national second largest, commodities exchanges, and Internet auction engine, and global company rating search engines. This book is the first one that systematically discusses the internal architecture and physical structure of DBMS. I found this book is very detail-oriented, practical, and accompanied by hands-on projects on the Internet. After I reviewed carefully this book, I like it full of details about the internal architecture and physical structure of DBMS, a lot of interesting exercises following each chapter. It's a good mix of database theory and practice.

I always wanted to introduce the internals of DBMS, but could not find an easy way to do all the information once in one place. This book gave me some useful hints to introduce DBMS for anyone interested in knowing how a DBMS actually works. Professor Raghu Ramakrishnan is well known for educational software. I have used CORAL(A Deductive Database from UW) and expected to find technically rich material in this book, and I was not disappointed. Reading the source code of Microbase (a stripped down version of Minibase) proved very interesting, especially the parser and optimizer parts.

This book makes readers to understand difficult but important concepts easier and deeper when they can put their hands on the real database, of course a smaller one, to modify, change, and run it. This kind iteration can be repeated again and again if the reader likes when she or he is the owner of the real database.

When the publisher and author requested me to be a beta test site for the book about two years back, I noticed the book written by some one who is at University of Wisconsin, written papers in logic programming. The author and I exchanged email during the first a few months when his book was released. After the book was released two years ago, I saw that a lot of colleges overwhelmingly adopted it immediately for their undergraduate and graduate courses. I like the way the material is presented - keeping the practical implication, real life application in mind all the time, e.g. section 5.7, 5.8 on B-trees, these practical aspects are rarely mentioned in other sources outside searching and sorting field. Query processing topics in Chapter 12, Chapter13 are presented as practical material that keeps the presentation of material interesting rather than making it boring. The best I have liked so far is the coverage of concurrency control, transaction-processing issues in Chapter 17, and Chapter 18. All the things are well tied together. Material is presented in the order that makes user understand the material easier- serializability is introduced right at the beginning, as well as after a whole lot of definitions and theorems. Lot of "not-so-significant" material is made brief such as material in Section 17.8. The above topics I have read are discussed in detail. The complete solutions also available online well complements the text material.

In some sense, this book is not for novices. It provides a good whole picture of basic introduction of DBMS, rather than an average introductory textbook. I do have a number of minor suggestions, which is already communicated to the author. A number of examples in this book are in words, not in pictures. Text is somehow not structured perfectly; key words are not highlighted with bold font as you'd expected. You have to do your own work. Examples, some of them, are explained sometimes too briefly. Problems and especially solutions to the problems (on the author's web site) are very good, but they may give some lazier professors a source to copy everything to teach their students. Students may try to access or break the security to access the solutions. This book is not, in some sense, for novices; you'll have to invest a lot of time to understand the subject and sometimes what was implied by the author.

I was a little unsatisfied on the lack of depth in certain areas, i.e. buffer management, indexing schemes. B-Trees and Hashing described but not explained thoroughly. Two hashing schemes discussed but neither provided enough information to implement without first solving some hard problems. More information on various locking schemes would be nice. Some areas need revision or reorganization in its future editions, such as referring to terms and concepts before they are introduced; some phrases need further polishing, and there are still some typographic errors. In some discussion, it can make it plainer to be understood. Chapter 9, SQL: THE QUERY LANGUAGE may be discussed in more depth in the next editions.

If you teach a database management course in an "high-end" under graduate or graduate program, I suggest that you take a close look into this book. It provides a comprehensive and well-balanced selection of topics (technical, theoretical, and practical), detailed writing, and a clear presentation in some sense. This book is the most detailed one about the implementation of database architecture and internal structure. From what I've seen thus far, it's probably one of the best general-purpose database management textbooks in the market.

I believe some people will be able to use materials in their work based on the information in this book.

All in all, I was quite satisfied with this book as a first book for hands-on Database Management Systems study.

I compared this book with two other reference books (Date and Elmasri/Navathe). This book is the best of the three when it comes to presenting the whole database field with a special focus on the design of databases. The key differences to the other books I compared it with are that Date focuses much more on the relational model, whilst Elmasri/Navathe has many side-notes on Oracle and Access. This book by Ramakrishnan/Gehrke deals more with design aspects of databases and gives a broad, yet also somewhat deep introduction in this respect. It does not say much about any database systems on the market but focuses more on concepts. If you are specifically interested in database design, I would recommend getting an advanced book that deals with these issues. However, if you are looking for a general dbms reference book with a special focus on design, this is the best book on the market. Unlike other books (for instance Date), it is also written in a very effective manner and comes right to the point. This easy style is especially advantageous when it comes to more difficult topics such as normalization. Where others delight in formalization, this book actually explains. Solutions for half of the questions in the book can be downloaded from the author's website by anyone.

Ruben Alvarado begins this account of the "common law of Europe" with a surprising confession: before writing this book, he "had never known of an ancient constitution of Europe, of a common law of Europe. . . ." Having made this admission of ignorance, Alvarado implicitly promises the reader two things: (1) that he will convince the reader that he has remedied that initial ignorance, and that he now knows enough to offer an intelligent account and valuable insights into the subject; and (2) that the book will therefore be worth the reader's investment in time and money. Unfortunately, (1) he didn't and (2) it wasn't.

Alvarado attempts to demonstrate that there is a Eurpean common law, a _jus gentium_ (lit. "law of nations," not to be confused with "international law," about which Alvarado says nothing of consequence). Broadly speaking, anyone attempting to define a set of laws applicable to all peoples will rely upon one of three theories: that such laws are either (1) set down by some authority (typically of divine nature); (2) ascertainable by human reason alone; or (3) ascertainable through study of actual practices. Alvarado, on the other hand, never really decides which of these three approaches is right. In particular, Alvarado studiously avoids describing his version of the _jus gentium_ as "natural law," which makes it even more difficult to determine exactly what he's trying to say.

This confusion extends to the dichotomy he establishes between the "common law" and the "civil law." Unlike the familiar distinction between "precedent-based law" and "code-based law," Alvarado sees the difference as one between "top-down absolutism" and "bottom-up constitutionalism." Just why civil law tends toward absolutism and common law tends toward constitutionalism is never really made clear, and the author's loose employment of the terms merely increases the confusion.

In the end, it appears that Alvarado is arguing for a set of laws deriving from some sort of Christian commonwealth. How these laws became "common," or what authority is ultimately responsible for these laws, remains unresolved, and so Alvarado's thesis remains unconvincing.

The book, however, isn't a total waste. Alvarado offers some useful analysis of the Salamanca School (Vitoria, Vasquez, et al.). In contrast, his description of Grotius is limited, and he ignores modern natural law theorists entirely. Those readers wanting a better introduction to the history of theories regarding _jus gentium_ will have to find them elsewhere.

It is absurd to expect from this book something which it is not. _A Common Law_ does *not* provide an exhaustive theoretical definition of the Common Law of Europe. What it does provide is an *interpretation* of a historical phenomenon as real as the existence of feudalism or the Holy Roman Empire itself. Neither of those items has been exhaustively defined to everyone's satisfaction either, but that does not mean they did not exist, nor that books written about them are complete failures because they do not provide exhaustive theoretical definitions of them. The Common Law of Europe did exist. What exactly it was and how important it was are subjects for debate. _A Common Law_ provides an interpration emphasizing the constitutional, liberty-under-law nature of this Common Law. Other works such as Harold Berman's _Law and Revolution_ and Manlio Bellomo's _The Common Legal Past of Europe_ provide more details into the structure and institutions of the Common Law. The Common Law must not be confused with modern international law, which is a bastardized, corrupted version of the original jus gentium. Don't purchase this book if you want your preconceived notions about law and history confirmed -- buy it if you want to examine an alternative approach, that does not belittle the Christian and classical basis of the Western legal tradition.

This book was written by a mathematician, who made every simple concept in MRI hard to understand and complicated. Too many irrelevent or unnecessary mathematical concepts and terminologies were introduced to MRI, without any explanation. The worst, the author is short of the basic knowledges of MRI. For instance, there is only one technical drawing about the one of the most important concepts in MRI, the pulse sequence, in the whole book (Fig.17 of page 99). Unfortunately, this pulse sequence is completely wrong. This is the first time in my career of 15 years as MRI physicist to have a chance to see that phase-encoding gradient is placed after 180 degree pulse in a practical spin-echo sequence. Obviously, this mistake was not caused by negligence or misprint. The worst student in my class will not make such a mistake. This book is useless to MRI physicist, chemist, engineer or any one who wants to learn or deepen his/her knowledge of MRI. I am curious about the fact that an experienced author, who is short of the basic understanding of his topic, has enough courages to publish a book. Is this a glory or a pity to him?

I have no idea whether or not this book is any good or not, but the comment by the previous reviewer about the position of the phase encoding gradient relative to the 180 degree pulse is wrong (it can be either before or after and there are advantages to having it placed after) so please do not let his opinion sway your decision. I have no affiliation with the author, and have been active in MRI research for about 10 years.

Jacobus Elisa Johannes Capitein was an African who was taken as a slave from his native Africa as a child. He was provided with a high level education, freed and sent back to Africa as a missionary. He wrote two noted treatises, of which this is by far the more important. Curiously, when he requested (from his missionary superiors) that he be allowed to marry a local woman, they instead sent a white European female to be his wife. Although initially highly thought of by his superiors, there is evidence indicative of increasing friction on both sides as to "ways and means" of converting native Africans to Christianity.

The Treatise. Capitein, in an argument which essentially pits him against Las Casas' much more voluminous treatise, holds that it is perfectly acceptable for Europeans to hold Africans and African-descended people as their slaves. He cites biblical and canonical sources for this argument. Doubtlessly, various persons would consider this to mean that he was a "traitor" to blacks suffering enslavement!

We should, however, note that Capitein excluded cruel treatment of slaves as not being acceptable by the Christian fathers and biblical testament. Further, he lived in a time where arguing that slavery was unacceptable would have led to him being considered an extremist and resulting in his opinion being dismissed out of hand; whereas arguing for moderate treatment of slaves based on religion would be more likely to be accepted. In addition, such a position meant that the masters of black slaves would be less likely to oppose the conversion and, subsequently, education of their slaves! Such Europeanization, as Ira Berlin has noted in MANY THOUSANDS GONE, generally leads to greater independence and opportunities for slaves - and somewhat less harsh treatment than occurred when slaves were "reAfricanized." As a whole, then, it seems that Capitein (or Asar, which may have been his original name or may have been derived from Afer, referring to an African), was far from "betraying" Africans and persons of African descent and was pursuing policies tending toward the amelioration of the conditions under which they labored.

The vocal duets and quartets by Brahms are performed very rarely these days, but their number includes some works that can stand with the composer's finest efforts and are thus deserving of more frequent hearings. In this book, Lucien Stark analyzes the 25 duets (including the five numbers of Opus 75, which were written for one or two voices but are almost always done as solos) and 61 quartets that comprise this body of work.

For each song, Stark provides the German text, along with an English translation. He does not attempt to maintain the rhyme or meter in the translation, which lets him reflect accurately the meaning of the German. He then gives the range employed for each voice in the work, the approximate timing for a performance, and the form. This information is followed by a brief descriptive analysis of the work. Stark's analyses are not so detailed or exhaustively researched as those by Eric Sams in his just-published volume on Brahms's solo works.

The major deficiency of this book is the absence of musical quotations. In his introduction, the author admits that "much of the analysis assumes that a score will be accessible to the reader." Scores for many of these works are available only as individual sheets -- and for a few, not in print at all -- which makes it difficult to get full value from much of Stark's otherwise commendable writing. A 158-page book that sells for $35 should have been expanded with quotations of key musical material.

Valerie, a woman lived in Vienna, suddenly killed an Argentine chemist and then killed herself, too. Manuel, a young, heart-broken son of the chemist begins to investigate why such an unbelievable tragedy happened and finds out that Valerie fought against Nazis to save her own son many years ago and that his father was a refugee from Nazis Germany. Meanwhile, Manuel's father was involved in a very dangerous, sinister business and that endangers innocent Manuel, too.

"Es muss nicht immer Kaviar sein" written by the same author is a basically serious but outstandingly amusing novel full of humor and wit, but this novel is deadly serious and gloomy. I won't say I don't appreciate serious and gloomy novels. This novel is worth reading. Especially, the story of Valerie is very impressive. But this gloomy ending with no hope...I don't like that. Unfortunately, it seems that the most Simmel novels are deadly serious and gloomy and that "Kaviar" is a rare exception. I LOVE "Kaviar" very very very much, but I am not always a Simmel fan.