Professor Peter Nevile attempts to rehabilitate the reputation of Sir Nevile Henderson, the British Ambassador in Germany from 1937-1939. The basic spin on Henderson has been that he failed in two areas: 1] He failed to see the Nazis for what they really were and did not give an accurate assessment of the Nazi government to the British Foreign Office and 2] That he failed to give certain messages that England wished him to convey to the Nazis, namely against the Anschluss, the invasion of Chekoslavakia, and Poland. Professor Nevile has done meticulous research into his subject, but he only succeeds in disproving some of the second contention. He bravely attempts to dispel the first complaint, but ultimately fails in doing so as he must and does admit in his conclusions. One may take issues with some judgement calls that Professor Nevile has made. He does not take into account the views of other ambassador colleagues of Henderson, nor does he discuss Henderson's nervous breakdown while posted in Egypt. He doesn't discuss the dim views of Henderson from the published memoirs on the Nazi side either. These three items are necessary in order to get a complete picture of Henderson.

(As an aside, Professor Nevile's long footnote on how he discovered Henderson's long lost published book on his dog Happy hopefully is not typical of his research - as a casual internet search will reveal three available copies)

All in all, Professor Nevile does manage to prove that Henderson did effectively convey to the Nazis that Britian was dead serious about protecting Poland, and he does unearth much information that was previously unavailable. It is also an enjoyable read.

Largely because he died early in the Second World War, Sir Nevile Henderson, British ambassador to Germany during 1937-39, has been routinely maligned by his adversaries in the Foreign Office, and historians and journalists with axes to grind -- or misjudgments to conceal. The notion that Henderson was "our Nazi ambassador in Berlin" took root among British revisionists at the time, and has since become the conventional wisdom.

In truth, of course, Henderson was no Nazi, nor even sympathetic toward the Hitler regime, which he abhorred. He was, however, a skilled diplomat and, charged with explaining British policy to the Germans, and vice versa, discharged his duties with the skill, discretion, clarity and competence of his kind. The reader of this biography would profit from acquaintance with Henderson's own apologia, "Failure of a Mission" (1940), but it is sufficient to say that Professor Neville has written an elegant, informative, incisive study which does much to dispel the customary abuse and prejudice directed at Sir Nevile Henderson. This is not just a useful corrective to bias, but a splendid introduction to a complex, subtle and tragic story.

For developers involved with web-based projects, whether it be an online store for electronic commerce or an Intranet site for accessing and modifying company data, the powerful blend of JavaServer Pages (JSP) and Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) technologies can really make life simple. Once you've mastered them, creating new components that encapsulate business logic, or new web interfaces to existing systems, is easy. The trick, for developers, is mastering the technologies.

Professional JSP is one way to get up to speed. Like many of the books published by Wrox Press, Professional JSP covers a specific technology in-depth, as well as the various ancillary topics relating to it such as databases, servlets, and XML. While not every developer will need every web technology covered by the book (and there are many), the book works both as a tutorial to cover the basics and a reference for technologies that you may encounter later.

Professional JSP starts by covering the basics of Java Server Pages, and how they relate to other web technologies. Embedded in HTML pages, JSP provides an easy mechanism for creating interactive web interfaces that draws on server-side components, known as Enterprise JavaBeans. While the presentation logic is written in JSP, the processing occurs within these JavaBean components. The book takes a balanced approach, covering both JSP and its syntax, as well as how to write and interact with JavaBeans to perform useful tasks, like accessing databases through JDBC and using other Java technologies. However, if you've read other Wrox titles, you may find there is some overlap in the topics covered.

One of the nice things about Professional JSP is that, in addition to covering theory, it goes further and examines practical applications of JSP, and issues for programmers like security and debugging. Like other titles in the Professional series, there are case studies of real projects using JSP and related technologies. My favorite would have to be the case study on porting Active Server Pages to JSP -- something that is extremely important for developers with "legacy" web systems. On the whole, Professional JSP is an excellent book for web developers wanting to get up to speed with Java Server Pages, web development, and Enterprise JavaBeans. However, developers with less of a web presentation focus and more of back-end server view may also want to consider the excellent Professional Java Server Programming title, which also covers JSP. -- David Reilly, reviewed for the Java Coffee Break

This book covers the chapters in a very structured way. It starts with a concise description of the JSP Basics with a detailed explanation of the concepts. It explains all the concepts in a very clear and simple words supported by an equally clear Comments and examples. Any body with a little of Java experience can become very familiar with the JSP syntax and concepts by reading first few chapters. It covers all the necessary JSP syntax for building a small web application to a very large distributed Application. It also explains about the way the JSP pages are processed by different web servers. For example it explains about the various methods available to maintain a persistence session and their merits and demerits. This is the first book in JSP series that explains not only the concepts of JSP and how effectively one can use them with the help of this book. It also covers various other topics like EJB, JNDI, JDBC, XML, XSLT and WML in very detailed way. Overall I feel this is the greatest JSP book ever published so far. I could build a simple and robust JSP Web application by reading the first few chapters in a short period of time.

This books lives up to its title in that it provides both real-world JSP techniques (through 7 very informative case studies chapters), as well as JSP background information that serves as a quick start guide. I rank it as one of the top 2 JSP books currently available (the other one is Web Development With JavaServer Pages by Messrs. Fields and Kolb).

After the JSP fundamentals are out of the way (which I am sure any JSP newcomer will appreciate and can benefit from), the book picks up pace with discussion on JDBC connection pooling, and the best practice for data access from JSP. Then comes the chapter on custom tags. My favorite chapters are the ones on debugging JSP's and implementing the MVC design pattern in JSP/servlets.

The case studies are very comprehensive and closely correlated to the earlier chapters. In one case study the design methodology is clearly explained with UML diagrams, which are very helpful to someone who is currently architecting an enterprise Java Web application. Other case studies cover such a wide area of topics such as JSP in combination with LDAP, EJB, XSL, and WAP.

For ASP developers, this books has two enormously useful chapters to get them started on JSP right away. One is a case study showing how to port an ASP app to JSP, and the other compares and contrasts the object model and syntax between ASP and JSP.

Having said all the above, this book does suffer from certain weaknesses. One is typical of any multi-author book, i.e., repeat of the same topic in different chapters. This is the case with JDBC, which shows up in both chapters 4 and 7. Another problem is the lack of the use of a standard servlet/JSP container, which will help new users to run all samples under the same software setting (although there is an appendix on setting up Tomcat server). Finally, a few chapters seem to be out of place in term of the logic flow of concept, such as the ones on dynamic GUI's and JNDI.

Finally, this book is still thin on heavy-duty J2EE topics, such as EJB, distributed transactions, message service, and interoperability with CORBA. This is why I consider it as an intermediate level book, not an advanced one. Hopefully we will see another Wrox book in the near future that addresses some of these issues.

Okay, somebody tell me why an author would want to take a reader through almost 500 pages of a book and then coyingly tell them at the end, "I'm not going to resolve this book...you do it for me!" I had just encountered this in Stephen Dobyns' "Boy in the Water," and frankly, I'm tired of spending time with could have been a very good book only to get ripped off at the end. Peter Straub is a great writer, no doubt. "Ghost Story" and "Floating Dragon" are two of my favorite tales of horror. "Mr. X" is a fascinating rollercoaster ride; I admit it's intricacies and complexities are well-constructed and ultimately fascinating. The characters are interesting, although sometimes I feel Straub is playing with us again and making us fill in some of the missing blanks. Why were the Dunstans cursed? Who cursed them? Is there really a Ned or a Robert? Are they one and the same? What is it with the monster baby at the end? And what do the final two pages really mean? Many of the customer reviews agree with me in many ways; the ones who rave about it obviously read something more in the book than me. Perhaps Mr. Straub is planning a sequel or two: "Mr. Y" and "Mr. Z". If so, please resolve your book and stop letting your literary genius swell your head so bad that you forgot who made you popular in the first place---US!

I began reading Peter Straub books with the book "Ghost Story". I read it because my mother told me it was ultimately frightening, and I found that she was correct. It was intricate, and the plot was well done, but most, the characters were well developed and pleasing. After I finished that one, I began to read his books one after the other, and what I found was that his "Under Venus" through "Shadowland" age was his shining moments. Each one of the books in that period was almost as pleasing as "Ghost Story". However, the few books following that, "Koko", and "Mystery" for example, lost what makes Straub so intriguing: his excellent writing style. These books were enjoyable, though not as pleasing to the senses. Lately, with "The Throat" and most of all by far, "The Hellfire Club", Peter Straub lost everything going for him, and sank to the levels of Dean Koontz, with overly described gore and rape, etc. However, "Mr. X" finally puts an end to that. The book, I found, stands up right beside his earlier books, "Ghost Story" and "If You Could See Me Now" being his best. The character is well thought, likeable, human. The plot is simple and pieced together orderly, one of the things he lost in later books. The writing style is so fluent and beautiful that I finally enjoy one of his books. This book is for those of you who prefer the adult, mature, thought-provoking Straub, and is a good starting place for any curious, new Straub readers. This book is not for those of you who are looking for simple, "book candy", not requiring much thought or vocabulary. This book is for those of you looking to read difficult, well-written fiction.

After four mystery-thrillers ("Koko", "Mystery", "The Throat", and "The Hellfire Club"), "Mr. X" marks Peter's return to the domain of supernatural/psychological horror. This is one of his best horror books, second only to "Shadowland". The dialogue is flawless, the characters are as real as one could ask for, and the horror itself is subtle and surreal. The story is about an Illinois family whose members manifest strange powers. It's about a particular member of this dynasty -- Ned Dunstan -- and his doppleganger twin. It's about the twins' disturbed father who knows that he is the center of the world, and his purpose is to kill. It's about Ned Dunstan, at long last, returning home to Illinois and coming to terms with his bizarre heritage.

In a way, "Mr. X" combines features of the author's later mystery-thrillers and earlier horror books. Straub is a first-rate writer who refuses to supply us with Harlequin-horror. He towers above authors like Stephen King and Clive Barker. He makes authors like Dean Koontz and John Saul unworthy of mention.

scymanski has an ok story here. price has a good one about the gorgon. that one was very enjoyable, and had some lovely details. otherwise, this was dreary read. so many of these stories were not only badly invented, but seemed so uninspired to. i almost felt sorry for the writers, for making so bad stories. i think this is chaosium's worst.

Very, very bad. Nearly of no use. Please, respect also the comments from other reviewers. I bought it during my SAP Academy, when I was strugling to get some information. But, unfortunately a disaster even for a beginner, not to mention someone who works in SAP consulting business.

I found SAP R/3 Help file is much better than this book. This book is based on older version and has no configuration instruction at all. It only creates confussion especially for new readers. I won't recommend this book to anybody.

Very disappointing. There is literally nothing in this book that is not covered in much greater detail in the online help or print files. I highly recommend NOT purchasing this book unless you do not have access to SAP help files, and you wish to know what kind of functionality SAP can offer.