This book is sweet and sour. It is good because it covers many different topics by some very knowledgable authors. But on the other hand, I found it difficult to read. With so many authors, the pace kept changing along with the style. Get this book if you have time to rehash. Otherwise pass over this one for "Data Warehouse Project Managment".

The editor's introduction reads like a propaganda commissioned by the KMT on Taiwan. I am deeply disturbed at highly biased "beautification" of the KMT rule in Taiwan and the "demonization" of the PLC regime on Mainland China. I also think that the introduction is too much a hodge-podge of KMT orthodoxies and seriously lacking in critical thinking. While I applaud the long- overdu effort to translate Sun Yat-Sen' collective works into English and making available such an important canon of modern Chinese political thought to Western audience, I sincerely hope that the introduction will be revised for future editions to render more objective verdicts (and with more intellecutal depth), of the two regimes on both sides of the Taiwan Strait.

This is a good book. It provides a good review of Lully's life. However, it does not do much to explore the alchemical aspect of Lully's writing. Honestly, the reader is left with knowing about many of the legends about Raymund Lully, but still very little about the real man, or why it is that so many works were attributed to him after his 'death'. So if you want to know a little more about Lully, then I recommend this work. But if you want to know more about what Lully actually wrote, I would suggest looking elsewhere.

I bought this book in the hope that it would be light-hearted humor, in the vein of Kevin Dilallo's "The Unofficial Gay Manual". It's not. It's Patrick Price's heavy-handed lecture on "How All Gay Men Need to Fix Their Lives". The only drama queen in this book is the author.

this book is one of the most lightweighted, unintelligent and meaningless books targeted toward gay readers I have ever come across. The writers hopeless attempt to be a sort of funny, but still real advisor in nearly embarrising to witness. Its so full of cliches and useless nonsense that anyone, in or out of the closet, rich or poor, better save their time -AND MONEY.

Well, for anyone who has read, "The Boyfriend Within", this adds a fun and sassy twist on that book. It is good for those who are looking for some direction in their life, and not looking to be the next flaming queen at the clubs who can never seem to keep his latest beau. If you are growing out of the 'scene' and looking for a new direction in your life, this is a GREAT find! Funny, sassy, and helpful...

This is supposed to relate the tale of how the Sith evolved into a one-master and one-disciple system. But frankly, it [wasn't good] even though the graphics were passable.

In this story, the distinction between the Jedi and the Sith became blurred. The stage was set for the showdown between the Jedi and the Sith, except that readers can't really tell the Jedi from the Sith. The Sith seemed to have diminished greatly in their dark stature from Tales of the Sith etc, while the Jedi were little better than lightsaber-wielding adventurers. The writers reduced both side to engage in purely physical combats without regards to their creeds. The Jedi-Sith showdown became a brawl in the mud.

Jedis were also depicted to be indiscriminate in who they kill, and even more foolish in bringing in untrained and undisciplined children who had little sense of right and wrong into the thick of battles, exposing them to anger, hatred and fear, fuels for the dark side.

This is one of the worst Star Wars story, totally unfit to be part of a critical tale of the Star Wars history.

"Jedi vs. Sith" seemed pretty cool to me at first. It gives a little background on why there are only 2 sith, and why one is a master and the other an apprentice. But the story doesn't really fit with other Star Wars series', especiall the "Tales of the Jedi," and this makes it confusing. Darth Bane was pretty cool, but his character wasn't utilized enough. The artwork is anime style, which isn't typical of the Dark Horse that put out "Grendel" or even the other "Star Wars" series. And this made things a little bit more cartoony than a Star Wars story should be. Plus, the battles are pathetic and most characters are stupid. The ending was great, but aside from that, this was a little disappointing mostly due to the fact that the story doesn't really work if you follow Star Wars. I heavily recommend all "Tales of the Jedi" stories. These mesh well not only with each other, but with the rest of the expanded universe and even with the movies.

This reviews Star Wars: Jedi vs Sith. Issues 1 through 6 TPB collected, published March, 2002. Following the SW Timeline we are at 1000 before NH.

art a 2, story a 1, inking and production a 4 avg = 2

On the time line, this comic continues the new astounding Art and ink production getting a grade of 'C-' for the art but a 'B+' for the inking. The art work itself is uneven. Some is excellent, but some is of a style that I didn't care for' childlike, as if they were making a comic for very young children.

The story is awful. The cover picture, the style of the art and the fact that the lead characters are children suggest that the target market for this comic was children. This is not a childs comic. The story starts with the mindless execution of children. There is a difference in 'action' vs 'grotesque violence'.

George Lucas himself set the tone in Episode II when he needlessly beheaded humans. The problem of graphic deaths and the highly improved digital imagery is one that Lucasfilm may have grappled with but the dark side won the day. It is the same mindset that was evident in some of the NJO books, particularly Star By Star. The producers of that series of books created a very dark environment with tremendous dread. A lot of readers loved it. But it was not as welcomed by older fans like myself.
Back to the comic, the odd art work may indicate that the editors wanted to 'cartoonize' the characters to minimize the reaction to the violence. The artwork is unlike anything I have seen in the SW galaxy. Because this has little to offer to the expanded universe, you can skip it.

Imagine a book title "Applied Multivariate Statistics" that does NOT include ANYTHING about Principal Components or Factor Analysis. If you've been looking for such a book, this is the one for you.

However, if you're looking for a text with details about running PCA or Factor Analysis using the SAS system, continue looking!!!!

DB

The authors gave a short tutorial on the book at the Deming conference last year. I enjoyed the presentation and the book which is not expensive was discounted. I met both authors. They are experts in multivariate analysis having studied under C. R. Rao at Pittsburgh. The book provides lots of SAS code and does a good job of explaining how to set-up the analysis in SAS which would not be straightforward from the SAS manuals. The authors discuss diagnostics and with most concepts they explain them first for univariate problems and then show you how it is extended to the multivariate case. It is also one of the few books that deals with multivariate outliers. Outliers can be difficult to detect in regression and high dimensional multivariate data. I have some research experience in the area of outlier detection and can appreciate the way the authors deal with it.

Theme: This book attempts to outline the democratisation process of Taiwan. The authors describe Taiwan as a form of "limited democracy," i.e. the govt gives the opposition and civil society space to expand, and the inhibited center is committed to promoting full democracy without a timetable.

Review: This book raises some good questions. The Taiwanese government chose not to monopolise control, but slowly relinquished some power to the opposition and civil society at large. While the authors described the phenomenon, they failed to address the "why."

I also felt that the authors were also somewhat careless with their definitions of "Chinese." (Note that the book is entitled "The first Chinese democracy.) They interspersed the book with comparisons between Taiwan and China, and Singapore. While China and Taiwan are made up of a Han Chinese majority, Singapore's politics is deeply affected by its multiethnic flavor! Are they moving onto the grounds of an "Asian democracy?"

Still, one must credit the authors for their groundbreaking choice of subject, and the plethora of information that they have provided.

The angle of sometimes neglected history, i.e Latino or minority history vs Anglo or majority history could have made this book very interesting. Also, Ramon Novarro, a mega-star of the silent and early talkies has only had one other biography written about him by A. Ellenberger. However, this book is a great disappointment. First of all, you have to wonder how much a biographer knows of his subject when he gets the date of his subject's death wrong (Oct 31 1968, NOT Nov 1 as stated in this book)
Secondly, the biographer states he is not going to talk about rumors, i.e. Ramon Novarro by repute was gay, and then goes on to try to suggest Ramon Novarro as having had affairs with some of his female stars. Almost as bad as the old movie studio publicity when, MGM tried in 1934 to publicise a 'romance' between Myrna Loy one of his co-stars. Apparently, this author had never read her reaction at the time as recorded in her autobiography in the 1980's, which states 'it was ridiculous, Ramon didn't even like the girls'.
It's nice to see another book on Ramon Novarro, a really great movie star, but this one is just plain disappointing.

It was for school so I kinda had like absolutely no choice BUT 2 read it

This is not really a "1999" book, in case anyone is looking for the latest from Castells--rather it offers a translation of a collection of essays published in Spanish five years ago (and written a year or two before that, judging from the references). One would think this information should be part of the bibliographic description of the title.

This is a collection of interesting, but largely unrelated, papers from a conference in Barcelona in 1994, which do not present a coherent analysis, and only marginally treat education in relationship to information technology. The title is misleading, and Castells is not the editor, but simply one of the contributors, writing on a topic alien to education. The reader from Atlanta writing a review on this site is absolutely right. Do not expect a book. Some of the articles, particularly the one by Freire, could be of your interest.