Before I bought "Exploring Medical Language" I knew absolutely nothing, and I mean nothing about Medical Terminology.
And to tell you the truth, when I first opened this huge, intimidating, monster of a book, It scared... me... I mean, wouldn't "rhabdomyosarcoma" or "esophagogastroduodenoscopy"
frighten you (just a bit) I thought, nooooo way.

But I opened it, read it, did the cool excersises, listen the the audio tapes, played a bit with the CD-R.

She begins at the beginning.....Little baby steps.

All of a sudden... I was like, I get it! I really get it!
Not only that, but I was beginning to enjoy it.

The prefix, suffix, and word roots suddenely become beautiful, flowing words that make sense.
Myrna LaFleur Brooks made this book come alive, interesting, and allowed medical language to become a little bit like music.
Well, a little!!!! Thanx for the "A" Myrna!

I'm currently using this book as a supplemental text for my paramedic training. We've just finished cardiology, and I couldn't have done it without this text. I already owned Phalen, Dubin, and Huff; all are good, but the Huszar text is now the one I go to first when I have a question about ECG's. There are a multitude of practical illustrations, tables, and review questions. Best of all is the 200-and-some strips for practice in the appendix. Highly recommend!!

I have read a lot of "vanilla" books on the Internet and technology. This is the first book with some excitement to it and some very interesting issues addressed by these CTOs. A great book for both techies and business executives....

As a newbie to the (often challenging) Maya environment, I have found this book to be indispensable. It's the kind of roll-your-sleeves-up-and-get-busy book which gives you plenty of hands-on exercises. Some of the exercises are very quick 'try this tool' examples, while others are large projects spanning several chapters. By the time you've worked your way through all the topics covered, and experimented with the concepts which are introduced, you can't help but learn a lot. I especially like the way that this book puts so many Maya tools in the context of a workflow (unlike the Maya manuals, most of which are very abstract). If the tutorials which accompany the software left you wanting more, then this is probably the book for you!

It explains every tool and function. Most importantly it has "real world" tutorials to show how each tool fits into the modeling, animation, rendering, and effects workflow.

The offical maya manual explains functions well, but leaves you guessing as to when those functions can be actually used. I suppose that is part of the challenge of being a 3d artist, but if you're lazy like me and like to be held by the hand of professionals instead of wasting many hours/days experimenting, get this book. you'll cover ALOT of ground in very little time(compared to A/W's expensive maya encyclopedia).

I'm looking forward for the 3.5 Complete revision from the authors!

With such a complex program as Maya, you really need all the help you can get right at the beginning. Unfortunately the official set of manuals, though very good, are not really the best way to learn this fantastic 3D package and tend to be better purely as reference. Even the Learning Maya book that comes with the package can be misleading and overly complex for the beginner. Ideally you'd have a tutor sat next to you - or the next best thing, a copy of Mastering Maya Complete. I learnt more in one hour reading this book, going through the tutorials than I did in several days struggling through the official manuals. Within minutes you can be creating models and getting to grips with the wonderful interface - all explained in easy to understand terms, with very useful tips and notes as you go along. Even though my copy of Maya is 2.5, the book serves extremely well and is a damn-sight more intuitive than the other manuals. Very highly recommended - put your official manuals on the shelf (where they look very nice Indeed) and get this book - it's all you'll need if you're a beginner - it's probably all you'll need for most things ... Great!

Finally a book, from intermediate level to advanced users. However it's a pity that this book doesn't cover unlimited Maya version with cloth, fur and live Maya plugins. This book covers the basic features to improve you level skills in Maya. I also buy Maya fundamental 4 and that's the best choice you can make if your are a intermediate level. So don't hesitate if you're thinking about which book you should buy with a tigh budget.

As has been stated in previous reviews, this book IS NOT for the beginner to 3D. This book best serves those with a good working knowledge of the fundementals of 3D CGI, as well as a basic knowledge of MAYA. Someone brand new to MAYA may find this book useful ... but it is definitely not a "hand holding" book (i.e. it does not take you step-by-step through learning every aspect of 3D work in MAYA). It DOES describe many of MAYA's features and how to implement them.

One thing I wasn't too crazy about was the organization of the book. The first few chapters dive right into a project, with the chapters in Modeling, Lighting and Texturing FOLLOWING. Further, the opening project assumes you already know your way around MAYA'S user interface and tool set.

On a whole, the book is a great reference to have in your MAYA collection. But it is not for people like the a couple of the annonymous (and annoyed) readers below ... who thought that they were buying a 4th grade "how to" book.

It's still version 3, but it doesn't matter. Mastering Maya 3 is one of the best beginner/intermediate books you can buy. I used Maya 4 and now Maya 4.5 and have had only benefits using this book. It has helped me along from being a beginner to being very familiar and capable with the software. I've used and seen a lot of the other books out thee, but I haven't seen a better book that covers things in the depth and range that Mastering Maya does. It's not for people new to 3D, but if you have experience in another 3D package and are moving over to Maya, it is excellent.

This book was terrible. The writer presented several interesting case studies of good companies doing bad things, and even of good companies doing good things, which was a well written 30 or so pages. The rest of the book was just nonsense or obvious ideals thrown in there so that the author would be able to sell the book instead of making it a smaller article.

This book is a collection of repetitive excerpts written by reds about green politics. It has little merit as a source of real data, and is very biased. I had trouble believing that some portions were even based on truth, especially when a quote was preceeded by the phrase "As one expert said..." or some such thing. What expert? What was there name? Finally, as anybody with a head on their shoulders can tell, few of the business strategies suggested in this book could ever really work. The author frequently gives the example of Ben and Jerry's and Levi Strauss as corporations who have profited while implementing the afforementioned suggestions. I ask, what about GM? Walmart? Boeing? It is clear that it is only profitable to use this book as a business manual if one has a very narrow customer base.

The issues tackled are stuff companies might usually ignore. But unless companies do anything do about these things, who else could make a difference in this world?

I should have read all the reviews here before I bought this book this morning. To be honest, the reason I bought it was because the forward is by Danielle Lamothe, who is the education product manager for Alias|Wavefront - in my mind meant that there was some assumption of quality - I was wrong. I sat all afternoon with this book only to discover that the way Maya 4.5 handles dynamics is not the way it is presented in this book - they must have been working with some pre-release version when they wrote the book. I have hit a big brick wall, and the book is useless. It goes back tomorrow.

Ok im only at the end of chapter 5 and everything was going fine, i grasped all the concepts and commands quite easily Untill the building the head. Its such a loose and open tutorial there is no point in reading it and i can say truthfully you would probably do a better job without the tutorial.

As the Great Tutorial puts it "Cut out the front"

.... O_o......

For the love of maya, I have embarked upon a crusade to purge the world of any and all copies of this book. The tutorials are hopeless and the content is severely overwhelming. They throw thousands of different concepts and tips at you, but of course don't bother to explain any of them.

Please, everyone.. buy as many copies as you can, then burn them all!