Some chapters are easy to read, but some just don't have enough examples. I found myself stumped many times trying to attempt the exercises and finding the info that I was missing on the internet.

As others have stated, this book is full of advanced computer architecture concepts, details, and real-world case studies.

However, while using this book in a class, I have come to realize how poor of a job it does at explaining said topics. I almost gave this 2 stars for an educational text, but for overall use I gave it 3.

The examples in the book give the answer immediately and provide hardly any explanation as to the answer. The most explanatory portions of the text are figures, which you have to reason through with little help.

An analogy to an example in this text is this:

Problem:
"Addition is the sum of two numbers. As an example, add 3 + 3."

Solution:
"3 + 3 = 6. Hence, addition is a useful operation and we'll use it from now on."

This is slightly exaggerated, but is not much different from how this book treats topics that a student needs explained.

I congratulate the authors on their knowledge and credentials, but they need to do a better job at instructing their readers.

This is by far the best text for a second course in computer architecture. It is an advanced book, so I don't recommend it for as a text for a first course in comp. arch. For a first course, refer to the text by the same authors titled Computer Organization and Design: A hardware/software Interface.
In any case, this text is one of the best text I've seen. (And I have seen lots of computer books, from compiler design to VLSI design) If you're interested in how hardware works, get this book!

I suppose everyone who uses Smalltalk should have a copy of this book, even if it's just to sit on the shelf, though you will of course get more repect if you have the older out-of-print version (S.80- The language and its implementation).

There are two problems with the book for a Smalltalk user of today:

1) The book was written a long time ago, and Smalltalk pioneered a lot of concepts in programming languages and IDEs, so very often the terms used for various things are not the terms we would use today; This makes for a confusing read at times.

2) The book is not very helpful from a practical point of view, if you are a new Smalltalk programmer struggling to get to grips with the class library because nearly every implementation these days has a plethora of non-standard extensions which obviously aren't covered, so what you are left with is a guide to the language syntax, which of course famously fits on one page of A4, and a brief look at some of the standard collection classes.

Bottom line: Buy this book to help Goldberg and Robson, because we owe them, read it, then go back to your implementation's help pages.

"Smalltalk/80 - The Languaje" is not only a clasical book, it's a very modern book. Most of the content is incredible actual and very funny to read.

You can't say "I know Smalltalk" if you don't read it.

Genetic Algorithms, GAs, have had a brief flowering of successful application to optimization searches and their limitations have become apparent. One consequence is that a variety of alternative evolutionary computational approaches are being investigated. Another road, much less travelled, is to examine the core mechanisms of the GA concept and try to develop a second generation of improved algorithms. This is difficult work because of the very nature of the core building block theory as first proposed by John Holland. For true inovation, building blocks must be synthesized, evaluated, and combined in sucessive hierarchies, all without external intervention. David Goldberg, a stalwart Holland desciple, has been valiantly trying to extend Holland's main theorem, which applied to infinite populations and hypthetical spaces, to finite populations on real problems.

This book is actually a research monograph reporting on the results of this research. The title "The Design of Innovation" sets up a high level of expectation but the subtitle "lessons learned from and for competent GAs" is probably right. The book offers some useful insights into the internal workings of GAs and their implication for understanding true innovation. However, despite the introductory claim of an engineering approach, the book never gets around to actually showing practitioners how to apply the lessons, nor does it give direct evidence that they work as claimed (although references to recent papers which presumably demonstrate success are given).

It is perhaps ironic that the goal for GAs has been downgraded from "universal" (as first claimed by Holland) to "competent".
Goldberg's concentrates on GAs to the exclusion of other approaches that may be equally competent or even better. A further irony is the stunning admission that "for years GA practitioners have understood that commercial applications often require" combinations of GAs and other local search methods to obtain high-quality solutions in reasonable time. But if this is so, then maybe GAs aren't the best place to start in the first place.

Goldberg's ideas about the upcoming golden age of computational innovation in the last chapter are provocative. But the implication that we must await GA improvements for this to happen are a little off-putting.

In sum, this book is a well-written research monograph intended to open up further research into the heart and soul of GAs. It should be read by researchers in AI, machine learning, and related fields. However, it will not provide the immediate answers to practitioners who are now running into the limitations of GAs (and other evolutionary or general search techniques).

David Goldberg's "Discontented America: The United States in the 1920s" for "The American Moment" series is a hybrid: part-college textbook and part-historical interpretation. While Goldberg's book presents his readers with an introduction of the discontented during the 1920s, because of its specialization, it also serves as an original historical inquiry.

Goldberg emphasis is to illustrate the disillusionment that was a direct result of the war. According to Goldberg, the discontent of the twenties was largely due to the early ending of World War I. Goldberg coverage includes: post-war foreign policy, decline of labor, red scare, African Americans, rise of second KKK, anti-immigration policies and the presidential election of 1928. While these areas of discontentment were largely a direct result of the war, there were other areas not addressed in his book.

Goldberg offers a selective picture, but it is not the entire picture. Areas not covered include: (1) the plight of the American farmer, (2) rural and small town discontentment against the larger more industrial cities, (3) conflict between modernist/liberals verse the conservatives/fundamentalist movements, (4) discontent between the generations and the emergence of a youth culture, (5) coverage of sentiment shared by many Americans of the enormous loss of life resulting from the war and the influenza outbreak and its influences on the brief return in the Spiritualist movements and finally, (6) returning veterans with their disillusionment towards the war, government in general, foreign policy and their eventual support of the isolationist movements in the thirties and early forties. Topics absolutely vital for understanding America's post WWI disillusionments.

Within the first two chapters of this book, someone with no prior knowledge of mathematical manipulation of fractions will end up pulling out his or her own hair while trying to match his or her answers to that of the author. Careless errors make this item not worth purchasing. Be warned

A truly helpful guide to a difficult subject!

Very filling and wonderful!

PERIODÝK TABLE,CHEMÝCAL STOKÝYOMETRY

I have used this book as a referrence numerous times when I needed to reinforce my understanding of certain problems. Most college text books do not provide enough (or varied) chemistry problems. This book may help you in that arena. The chapters may not go in order with the text that you are using but each section is very simple to find. The book claims to take you all the way through to the most advanced chemistry problems. This book may even be useful in brushing up for your MCAT. Good luck.

This book deserves 5 stars for bias and no stars for truth. It not only distorts the facts, it is a downright littany of unfair misrepresenations. For example, when the author quotes and then proceeds to legitimize Benito Mussolini's (of all balanced world leaders!) calling Vladimir Jabotinsky a "fascist," something must be inverted in his thinking. Jabotinisky was a talented journalist and deep thinker. The author, in a frighteningly messianic tone, describes Ben-Gurion, who, in truth, was a career politician, who ruthlessly erradicated his opponents to satisfy his insatiable hunger to become Israel's first Prime Minsiter. In addition to the many misspellings of foreign names and a haunting sense of unchecked facts, this book was a disappointment, to say the least.

Jabotinsky was a writer of deep thought and conviction. He saw, almost alone, that the Palestinians would not just "fold their tents and steal away into the night." His strategy of "the Iron Wall" is the one followed by zionist movement and the state of israel ever since the 1930's. He *was* however also an avowed admirer of fascism.

Goldberg may idealize Ben-Gurion-he discusses his personal relationship with the late Prime Minister in his introductory comments. But this is a solid intellectual history of zionism in all its aspects up to 1948.
It's concluding paragraph reads like a preamble to "post-zionism." I recommend this book along with Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi's ORIGINAL SINS.