This is a popular university textbook. I know this because I called several universities for recommendations before purchasing. I've used this book as a professional reference. It is very current on recent pronouncements. The book is well organized, has good examples and it includes many "real world" examples as well

This two volume text is an essential reference and mandatory reading for any Neurology resident or Staff Physician. I had the opportunity to train under the instruction of many of the contributors to this text. I found it to be rich in detail and clinical expertise. I refer to it often in my practice. It is concise and easily understood.

Enjoyable vacation reading --- marred mainly by minor distractions: numerous uncorrected typos and/or grammatical errors (the publisher's proofreader should be fired!) and repeated gratuitous references to a well-known coffeehouse chain (a paid sponsorship?)

A woman is found murdered, posed on top of an undisturbed motel room bed. She is lying on her back, naked, with her feet propped together, toes up, and her arms folded across her chest mummy-style. There are no signs of a struggle and there is no obvious cause of death. The killer is named The Sandman because his victims seemingly just fall asleep without a fight.

This book scores a 10! It's a gritty noir with great characters and a really twisted serial killer. Suspense and thriller fans will love it. It's a page turner, and it ranks up there among the best I've read this year.

I loved this book. Griffin reminds me a lot of Patterson, only a lot more fun. Cube 6 is a medical thriller with lots of plot twists and turns. The good guys, Jon Kirk, a repoter for a Seattle newspaper, and Karen Able, a detective with the Seattle police, really come alive. And their romantic encounters are really, really funny. The Sandman, the bad guy, is as scary as they come. Anyone looking for an exciting, fun, page-turner should read this book.

This book does an excellent job in pointing out some of the real stuggles of Thomas Merton. It is very helpful in seeking to understand the person Thomas Merton. If one reads Merton, it is evident that Merton loved God and was committed to his vocation. However, it is very clear in this work that love for God and commitment to vocation does not eliminate personal struggles with right and wrong. Griffin does a good job showing a side of Merton that so many seek to ignore. Also, the book has many good pictures. This is a good book to read.

I purchased this book after reading the review from the reader in New Orleans. This is a loving look at the final years of Thomas Merton's life. (1965 - 1968) I have only recently delved into the writings and life of this incredible man. John Howard Griffin was a close friend of Merton's and writes about his friend from within Merton's hermitage and Merton's personal journals. It is a shame that Grifffin's health prevented him from completing what was to be an authorized biography of this fascinating mystical monk. The photographs taken by Griffin are a terrific addition to a very readable book on a man and a spititual figure that I greatly admire. If you have any interest in Thomas Merton the man, then you will cherish this book. One of Griffin's lines is a nice summary of Merton, if Merton can be summarized - "What mattered was to love and to be in one piece in silence and not to try to be anybody outwardly".

This book is a must-read for those seeking to understand the final years of Merton, whose importance for contemporary spirituality cannot be underestimated. Based on Merton's own journals (to which Griffin had full access during extended stays in Merton's hermitage after the latter's untimely death in 1968), the material in this book was originally intended to be part of the officially authorized Merton biography, which ill health prevented Griffin from completing. This book is not for those whose love of Merton is confined to such early works as The Seven Storey Mountain and The Sign of Jonas. However, those who seek insights into the struggles underlying the writings he produced from 1965-68, encompassing subjects such as the Vietnam war, the evils of racism, and the practice of Zen, are likely to find this book very rewarding. John Howard Griffin (author of Black Like Me) was an excellent writer in his own right, a skilled photographer, and a friend of Merton. All three of these characteristics contribute to Follow the Ecstasy, which includes a number of intimate photographs of Merton and his hermitage. Griffin's own contemplative bent shows itself in empathic descriptions of Merton's hermit existence, with well-chosen quotations from the monk's journals. Of particular interest to some will be the very detailed account of Merton's extended involvement with a young nurse he encountered while hospitalized following back surgery. This relationship, which is referred to in very vague and sometimes sinister-sounding terms in other works on Merton, is laid bare here in all its emotional splendor. Those who love Merton may be astonished at both his vulnerability and his capacity for self-deception. For most of us, to fall deeply in love with a young woman whose feelings are reciprocal, and to arrange trysts that do not include sexual consummation of such love, would not constitute a major moral dilemma. But most of us are not world-renowned spiritual writers vowed to lives of celibate chastity. To top it all off, Merton had only recently (the year was 1966) been granted long-sought permission to live as a hermit on an isolated piece of monastery property, in order to deepen his experience of solitude. Anyone who has ever fallen in love can identify with much of what Merton went through, but few can ever have known the exquisite anguish engendered by his circumstances at the time. It is almost comical at times how he struggles both to rationalize his behavior and to see through his own rationalizations. He is a man deeply and painfully torn. On the one side, he is beset by a tide of emotions he has never before experienced and is ill-prepared to handle, while on the other, he is solemnly vowed to a life he not only loves, but believes is his divinely given vocation. Although some would be scandalized by such revelations, others will see in them yet another poignant example of the divine mystery played out in the arena of human affairs. What Griffin makes clear is that Merton fully expected this episode to become public knowledge after his death, and that he wanted those who might have idolized him to see him, warts and all, in all his human frailty. It is plain that Merton was less interested in adulation than in honesty, even regarding events in his life that show him in a less than flattering light. If there was some degree of duplicity in the machinations he undertook for the sake of spending time with his beloved, I believe it is offset by his ultimate fidelity to his Beloved. Griffin handles all of this with consummate sensitivity and grace, explicitly noting that he obtained full permission from the woman in question prior to publishing details of her relationship with this celebrated monk. Although this chapter alone, with its touching descriptions of Merton's internal spiritual combat, would've made the book worthwhile for me, there are gems scattered throughout, and an informative introduction by Robert Bonazzi. A must for real fans and/or scholars of Thomas Merton.

The biggest problem I have with this book is its weight. It's just too big and clunky to hold up to read. Splitting into two bindings would have been nice. But it does cover a lot and it needs to be large to do so.

I bought the Beginners Guide to Linux Programming and I really liked that book. This book is a very good follow-up, but it doesn't give the reader more programming tips.
It covers many topics which makes this book a great reference for anyone who deals with Linux and even other flavors of Unix on a day to day basic. Buy this book if you are looking for a reference book on developing software on Linux that covers advanced topics.

This book is a follow-up to Beginning Linux Programming, but with a wider range of authors. The book is a series of chapters on various tools and applications, all of them Open Source, based mainly round things that application developers might use, though there is a single chapter on device drivers.

Most topics only get a single chapter, so there isn't as much depth as you would find in a dedicated book on each topic, but there is a very wide range of material all covered in enough depth to get the more experienced programmer started with a new topic. There are one or two weaker areas, but overall a good choice of material succinctly presented for the more experienced application developer. I've given it 5 stars as it was exactly what I was looking for - a single reference to help me create a Linux-based web database application, your mileage may vary. I recommend you at least consider it.

I found this book delightful reading. The clear exposition, program examples with detailed explanations, clear definitions, and well stated principals makes this a must have book for those wishing to use Java with Oracle8i. The detailed style is reminiscent of the well-known text books by authors Harvey and Paul Deitel.

This book is suitable for both database application programmers and undergraduate students. My undergraduate students, who have had a strong course in Java, would love this text. I am using it as a supplement in this fall's Database Systems course.

Java has really come into its own and Oracle8i strongly supports it. The Oracle8i database server supports both PL/SQL and Java. Oracle's Jserver, which includes a JVM (Java Virtual Machine). The authors provide a clear overview of how Java and now SQLJ fit into the database world.

This book presents very clear explanations for people new to database programming. They discuss JDBC and SQLJ and compare the approaches for accessing a relational database server. The authors give a detailed explanation of how a SQLJ program gets translated into Java source code. Nothing is skipped in explaining what the SQLJ translator does. For example, there is a fine discussion of the SQLJ iterator (which is essentially a Java class; the SQLJ translator actually replaces the SQLJ iterator declaration with a Java declaration for a class.) There is a detailed explanation about how the Java class contains a next() method and has accessor methods for columns in a particular table. The discussion of SQLJ stored programs is clear. Pros and cons of loading/compiling on the client versus the server side are given. There are fine examples of both ways of doing things. They give a very good explanation of how a SQLJ program connects to a database using an instance of a connection class, which is really a Java class that is defined in a SQLJ connection context. In conclusion, this is a very refreshing book that gives theory and detailed programs with great explanations. Java is an exciting language and SQLJ makes database work very interesting. These authors are doing a super job in promoting this new and relatively easy way of developing for Oracle databases. I have not found any other book to come close to what they have done for the database community.

I personally feel this book is the next step in the integration between Java and Oracle8i. As a user of the Web and as a web master, Oracle8i with SQLJ is an excellent combination for the Web. This book takes you from point A to point Z, at your pace. I recommend it to all!

If you are serious about learning SQLJ, I strongly recommend that you get this book. Both a tutorial and a reference manual, this book takes the guts of SQLJ and spelled it out in layman terms. Full of well-designed and well explained code based on real-world applications, this book is a MUST for any Java developer.