The trend in science education today (long overdue, IMHO), is for hands-on. The closer the student can get to some form of manipulation of whatever they're studying, the better they'll learn the material. Gone or going, thankfully, are the days of the 'sage on stage' teacher who stands at the head of the class dispensing nuggets of wisdom for the students to eagerly gobble up (not that there was EVER that much eager gobbling going on...).

Hence, in many contemporary classrooms, there is move away from the color-the-worksheet-on-the- life-cycle-of-the-tadpole technique, and an introduction OF a real-life tadpole into the classroom itself (which, arguably, has GOT to be more interesting).

So, OUT go the pictures of worms and grasshoppers, and IN come the real insects themselves. One problem: what to do with the lil' nippers (the animals, not the students) once the science lesson is over. In the past, most classroom animals and insects have either been released on the playground or given a "burial at sea" in the staff restroom after school is done for the day.

Not necessary now, thanks to Mr. Dunlap. Covering a VERY broad spectrum of living creatures, from ants and worms to much larger creatures like mice & turtles, Mr. Dunlap not only informs the reader how to humanely "reintroduce" the specimen into the wild, he also provides the reader with some even MORE important information: how to keep the animal/insect ALIVE while it's IN the classroom (what heating elements are best for what type of lizards, e.g., what moss is best for earthworms). THIS may, for some classrooms and students, be the major selling point of the book--how best to keep Timmy's prize salamander he found during recess alive during it's week in residence in the classroom without it getting sick or dying.

While written primarily for teachers and classrooms, it is by no means ONLY for these environments. Families with children who are curious about the natural world (and who frequently collect little "pets" from the back yard or garden--I had a friend who's 3 year old had a pet slug for two days) will find this book not only useful, but very educational as well.

A much needed resource book for schools looking to add animals to their classrooms. Easy to read, but not dumbed down. I enjoy to biting satire found throughout the book. Like: You don't want to breed (this animal) you just think you do.

I am a pastor and church planter and I have been in the ministry since 1985. I have read dozens and dozens of books on the ministry. Next to the Bible this is the best book I have ever read. This is not a theological work, though Fowler paints a beautiful picture of the importance of the church and the value of strong pastorial leadership. This is a book about the practical theology of understanding that people not only come in different shapes, sizes, and colors, but that they also come in different stages of faith. This book makes me want to be a better pastor. It reminds me that my job is to help people to discover and meet God where they are at instead of trying to conform them into a program. It lifts the burden off of my shoulders and restores my faith in the great purposes of God through Jesus Christ. Thank you Dr. Fowler.

I love using this book in my classroom. The photographs are magnificent... even my students who are unable to read the print very well were able to learn something about bears just by looking at the photographs. Some of my students who hate reading choose this book again and again because it is so interesting to them. The story really prompts children to think about what they are reading.

This book grabs the attention of the reader from the first page. It continues with explanations of several kinds of bears from different habitats. There is also a vocabulary review section in the back of the book, as well as an index.

This is an excellent non-fiction book that is a wonderful edition to any library.

This is a terrific book that shows you how---with discipline and care, but without magic---you can improve the internals of existing programs. We've all come to believe over the years that software inevitably becomes more complex and brittle as it evolves and is maintained, but refactoring shows that it doesn't have to be that way. We're very lucky that the first book to cover refactoring in detail is such a gem.

The organization of this book is similar to that of "Design Patterns": introductory material that explains what refactoring is, how it works, and why it's important, followed by a catalog of refactorings that you can use in your programs. Fortunately, Fowler is a very entertaining writer, and "Refactoring" is much easier to read than "Design Patterns". Furthermore, many people, especially beginners, find it easier to see how to apply refactorings than patterns, and the book contains first-rate tips for identifying code that needs to be refactored.

If you write code, buy this book. Read it. Apply it. Your employers and your fellow programmers will thank you, and you will enjoy programming more.

There are three books every Java programmer should have on his or her desk -- "The Elements of Java Style," "Design Patterns," and this book. Of the three, this is my favorite. "Elements" is excellent so far as it goes. It provides eminently sensible coding standards. There is a deeper sense of style that is addressed by the second pair of books. This has to do with the conceptual organization (or re-organization) of code. My only complaint against "Patterns" is that many of the examples are in Smalltalk, a language of more interest to academics than programmers. All of the examples in "Refactoring" are in Java.

The book falls into three parts -- introductory material, a catalog of refactorings, and guest chapters by refactoring reseachers. The first part sets the stage for the catalog. So, what is refactoring? It is "a change made to the internal structure of software to make it easier to understand and cheaper to modify without changing its observable behavior." How do you know when to refactor? When the code smells bad. There is list of bad smells. These include duplicated code and long method.

The catalog itself constitues the bulk of the book. Each refactoring is named, described with a short summary, motivated (why should/shouldn't it be done), described with step-by-step mechanics for carrying it out, and illustrated with a simple example. An example is "Extract Method." This is appropriate where a segment of code requires a comment to understand what it's doing. Extract the segment as a method and give it an appropriate name. An appropriate name makes the comment superfluous.

A fundamental underpinning of this process is having good tests. Changes are made incrementally with tests at each significant step along the way. Tests must be automatic. As the author notes, JUnit (at www.junit.org) provides a suitable testing framework.

The last part of the book is largely guest material. Some is helpful, like Kent Beck's chapter "Putting It All Together" and some not so. That there is refactoring tool for Smalltalk is not terribly interesting if the chances of your programming in Smalltalk are nil.

On the whole, this is an excellent book. Knowing the techniques involved in refactoring can vastly improve the quality of existing code. Indeed, good programmers instinctively employ some refactorings as they code. Access to a fuller catalog than those instinctive refactorings is a boon.

It's rare that I find a technical book as immediately useful and fun to read as _Refactoring_. The cleverest thing about refactoring as a technique is that it provides a well-articulated, structured framework for doing something that every experienced developer does already (more or less unconsciously) -- constantly restructuring their code to make it easier to understand and maintain. This alone makes refactoring a useful contribution to software engineering.

However, Fowler doesn't stop there. He presents rationales for refactoring (with an eye towards making a case to management) and much detailed, practical insight that comes from experience, but is rarely expressed so concisely and elegantly. I also appreciated the importance Fowler placed on unit testing; in fact, using unit testing makes refactoring happen much more quickly, and leaves you with a lot more peace of mind besides.

I read the book cover to cover and enjoyed nearly every page. The book has added a lot to my value as a developer, and was a lot of fun in the bargain. I don't think a whole lot more needs to be said. Just buy it, you can thank everyone who told you to later.

My review of this book is, sadly, mixed. First, I must say, I intend to reread it soon, it's the best Latin Literary History I know of, and there are many useful features including a cookbook format and many appendices of terms. However, the book is also a bit of a hash. When I read the foreword apparatus by the editor I realized that we were not to have a properly edited book. This book was translated and re-hashed around by a committee. Two scholars adapted it for the American readership, so the gushy editor tells us. We were not given anywhere near enough information about what was done by whom on what principles. There was no translator's statement. I could not detect the original author's voice. I fear the editorial team did not take its work seriously enough. All through the book there were repetitions, inconsistencies, as though different people were responsible for different sections which were later assembled and inadequately edited. Three examples. 1) Nowhere in the book is the crucial term latifundium defined. 2) in one place the term floruit is used, in another place "flourishing", and nowhere is it defined. It was made to sound like 60, when surely it is 40. 3) We are not given Ambrose's full name nor his death date. Surely we know them. Whereas this information was standardly given for the other church fathers. I could go on and on. If you think these are trivial examples, then this book is for you. What this book needed above all was a better editor. What it really needed above all was the sifting and sorting by a single grand mind. And perhaps that is what Gian Biagio Conte is. But perhaps his work has been layered over by these other American minds. There were in fact many times while reading that I felt swept up with the superior insights of the book into this literature. Of course, the history of Rome is a bitter one. I hate its trajectory. And its literature is as derivative as European ones. Rome is the first humanistic culture, based on the mishmash of archaic, classic, and hellenistic greek, mixed with some native forms. All this the book shows, though more in brilliant flashes than in grand sweep. I wish the bones of the scholarship had been presented more. It's important to know who has said what about what. Conte does mention the problems. But I had this sense, beyond the cookbook hash, that there were white spaces that were not being discussed. In the end I suspect Conte has been done a disservice that I only hope can be corrected for round two.

Gian Biagio Conte's 'Letteratura Latina' is a work of brilliance that will probably stand as the foremost catalogue and compendium of Latin Literary History for a long time, and I cannot imagine what scholar(s) possess the right mixture of insight and brevity to replace it. Conte's treatment of Latin Literature is honest, intensely informative, void of pretention and, much to the anticipated surprise of lay readers, rather engaging in the contemporary Johns Hopkins English translation. The simultaneous yet uncompromised treatment of Roman politics, poetry, law, literature, art and history is certain to interest readers of all disciplines.

This is my favorite book. I've been through three different copies: a now out-of-print Classics Club copy, the Loeb Classics Library copy with the original Latin facing the English text, and this Penguin edition. The Penguin is by far the worst of those three. Among its faults is the fact that it's translated into prose, which makes for an easier read but in the end dumbs down the text and reduces it in beauty; and while the footnotes are sometimes informative, most of them I find insulting to both the reader's and Lucretius's intelligence. Go with the Loeb, or some other edition; chances are it's better than this one.

Lucretius, the Epicurean poet of the first century BC, was immortalized for his work "On the Nature of the Universe," which is a brilliant manifestation of Epicurius' atomic theory by a means of hexametrical verse tinged with lucid philosophy. This work has stood for so long as a classic monument of Latin poetry not only since it contains such a bounty of sweet verse and song, but also for the simple fact that Lucretius' work was the most modern for its time. This furthermore allowed "On the Nature of the Universe" to hold the reins of superiority--with regards to its modernity of course--for many subsequent generations. Lucretius' stark conviction that the world is not controlled by the gods, that man is solely in control of his destiny on earth, and that the soul perishes with the body, no doubt aroused the conservative sentiments of the time; and for this reason the work endures due to the epic and timeless battle between Science and Religion. For anyone interested in the Greco-Roman Classics, poetry, or just good literature, Lucretius' masterpiece will be an excellent choice.

Lucretius's arguments for his atomic theory and the "swerve" are paragons of lucidity. It's a good thing I had physics in school, I was very nearly converted anyway. The section dealing with love is one of the most beautiful things I have ever read. I wholeheartedly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys reading elegant ideas beautifully expressed, or beautiful ideas elegantly expressed.