Given the pedigrees of the *two* authors (Peter Handley and the Michael Lawlor) this book *should* have been an absolute knockout. But it isn't.

Each chapter starts with a short extract from the hypothetical introduction of AL training into a mythical pottery manufacturer - Glospot Ltd. - designed as an intro to the subject matter of the chapter. I personally found these pieces too short and poorly written (especially the dialogue), and eventually came to dread facing yet another piece of stilted and (in my perception) vaguely patronising prose.

The main text is primarily concerned with Accelerated Learning (about which both authors obviously know a great deal), with occasional references to NLP, about which they seem to *understand* considerably less (the description of 'anchoring' on page 123 verges on the ludicrous).

To my mind the key paragraph in the whole book is to be found on page 132:

"There are a number of other memory techniques which can be useful when studying. These include the 'Loci System', the 'Chain of Links', the 'T for I' system, and creating sentences in which the initial letter of each word stands for words which are to be remembered. They are described in Michael Lawlor's book 'Inner Track Learning'.

Maybe it's just me, but I strongly object to this practice. I believe the authors should describe the techniques, or not mention them at all - certainly not as an advert for another book by the same author.

I was equally non-plussed by the choice of the HBDI (Hermann Brain Dominance Instrument) as the preferred tool for determining someone's learning (Chapter 8). The HBDI is a very closely guarded product and (according to the text) only the staff of the Ned Hermann Group(UK) are authorised to score the questionnaires, at £35 each. That's nearly enough to purchase the highly successful Honey and Mumford Learning Styles Manual, complete with questionnaire and scoring details and a licence for *unlimited* personal use.

Both of the authors have long since founded their own training establishments, and I couldn't help feeling that this book might have been a whole lot richer and more detailed in it's descriptions of the various techniques if the authors hadn't had to deal with this apparent conflict of interest.

When I found myself purchasing multiple copies of "The Creative Trainer" this holiday for bright young students who have a passion for training, I knew this book deserved a review. I have discovered the healing benefits of Accelerated Learning and NLP applied to corporate training for several years, and this is the best review and application of those techniques that I have found. Its attributes include: Well organized, easy to read, extremely useful reference section, and a score of brief introductions to the valuable tools and techniques it could take years to discover on your own. An important addition to academic books on the topics of instructional design and delivery and a useful introduction to tools used by outstanding trainers and consultants in organizations today.

The protagonist is a loner on the Moon who wants nothing more than to be left alone to commune with virgin territory, but circumstances throw him into proximity with others as well as wake him up to responsibility. This is a grand theme in the old SF tradition--in fact, except for the explicit sex and the up-to-date science references (specifically, nanotech), this is something that wouldn't have been out of place in 50s SF. This is a short book, technically a novella, that oftentimes seems rushed. The pacing was kind of a jump-up and wait proposition, very irregular feeling. Michael Swanwick has done much better than this in both characters and plot. (This "review" originally appeared in First Impressions Installment One [http://www.owt.com/users/gcox/fi.contents.html].)

Swanwick combines hard science fiction speculation about the future of the moon with a fastpaced action-adventure story that wouldn't be out of place in Hollywood. This is a short novel, orginally published in Asimov's Science Fiction as a novella, and it well worth reading in one sitting. So what are you waiting for? Pop some popcorn and start reading.

Mesoamerican archaeology is a little world by itself - I know, because I used to live in it. It has a very cosy relationship with museums and the "art" collectors who buy the objects that are looted from archaeological sites, which lie destroyed, torn into shreds under the forests all over Central America and Mexico. But it has almost no touch with reality any more. The things they say about the ancient Olmec are almost fantasy, because in truth we know so little about these people. Almost all the objects in this book were stolen from Mexico, ripped from the archaeological context that might tell us something about their real meaning. These are probably religious articles - we may never know. But imagine trying to reconstruct the rich life of rennaisance Italy by looking at reliquaries in Catholic churches! If you are still persuaded by the "mysterious Olmec" propaganda spouted by Coe and his looter buddies, go read Flannery & Marcus in the first 2000 issue of the Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, and think it over.

The Olmec World is an amazing resource for those who study or have an appreciation of early Mesoamerican Art. At its most basic level The Olmec World is the catalogue of the 1996 Olmec Exhibition at the Art Museum at Princeton University the first comprehensive show of Olmec art in America. Drawing upon nearly all of the major Olmec museum collections in North America from Dunbarton Oaks to Princeton's own expansive holdings, the exhibition also drew heavily from many private collections never before shown to the general public. For instance, John Stokes' amazing collection of ceramic babies and jade masks are showcased in this catalogue. However, almost as impressive as the pictures are the essays in this collection. Michael Coe has done a marvelous job of soliticing and editing a myriad of papers on the mysterious Olmec.

As far as my personal research has determined, the vast majority of Extraterrestrials do, indeed, come as friends if you use the word as it truly means. For example, ETs could be Angels as well as physical beings from other worlds. An ET is not of this world we call Earth. See what a dictionary says if this gives you trouble.

However, what this book portends to report has the behavior, ethics, philosophies and perspectives [to name but a few] of the various aliens represented acting out different aspects of Christian Dogma. [Now remember. Jesus, himself an ET at this point in time, was not a Christian. He was crucified as a Jew.] This, of course, in and of itself is not bad. They are nice little stories competently written. They simply cannot possibly be true.

Many aliens and other ETs do come as friends and they are, in a way, self serving. Yet they are most intently and sincerely interested in assisting humankind as one global society to wake up to their higher calling as InterGalactic citizens. This is because the Universe, the whole banana of a Universe, is making a frequency shift. And they can't go if we don't go. And so their objective is to get that 'hundredth monkey' to make the spiritual connection to THEIR OWN INTERNAL GOD.

And writing this kind of stuff as true, IMHO, is not really assisting to that end. But then, it may be a step for some. The stories are 'nice.'

this is the direction et research should be heading. please visit the yahoo club, intergalactic spirituality.

I only gave this a three star rating as nowhere in this book are the pitfalls of falling into superioriority complexes get addressed. The ideals are polished and his personal faith explained-- Michael Harper has definitely lived his life doing as God had bade him and given his heart to Him.

But Orthodoxy is more than a set of ideals and philosophies based on God's Word. It's a bunch of people. Once you get in or even part way in, it is just like college when you started talking like a liberal, only with Orthodoxy your language gets peppered with word phrases like, "The One True Way", "The Truth", "Obedience to Father" (who is an emmisary of God and well-- they are human, too)"The One Church" "The One True Church"-- Orthodox Christian Churches can get pretty exclusionary to visitors and don't tolerate struggling parents with fussy babies or any potential struggles very well, and this is the reason that I feel that it started to take off in the US and then pettered out. England needs to watch herself that they become a light on a Hill that people seek, as opposed to a light that only shines on her own members.

I bought this book to provide me with some background information on bentwood furniture and it seems to me that it performs this task quite adequately. There are plenty of high quality color photographs of surviving furniture; these are combined with historic black&white photographs. The accompanying text describes basic principles clearly and provides a fair bit of history.

I am not a Thonet buff, so I dare not compare it with other literature on the topic, but viewed in isolation it seems nice enough. At good coffee table book, or better.

BotGuide - The Internet's Hottest Tools that Work the Web For You, written by Michael Wolff and Peter Rutten, with Ben Greenman, lists hundreds of research and automated tools that can perform a variety of very helpful tasks. However, pages 231 through 235 offers readers...some descriptions and links to online porn sites...

An otherwise good book was ruined by the inclusion of 4 1/2 pages of so-called adult services. It's unfortunate that Harper Collins Publishing would allow such content to be featured in a book I otherwise had high marks for. It wouldn't have hurt sales the least bit to have left the stuff out. I could not and would not recommend this book to others!

It's amazing what a short passage of time can do to a once promising technology. In '99 when this book was written bots were hot. Now in '02 the fad has passed, and like most best wishes the promise was not realized. This book is a testament to the hopes and desires we had for agents, bots, and "look ma no-hands info gathering".

Many of the companies, products and services listed in the book have tanked, some I hated to see go, others left the scene none-to-soon, some are hanging on by their fingernails, but there are a few like Travelocity that have hung in there and become real brands, although we don't know of them as bots.

The problem I had with the book was that it considered almost any site that had some level of personalization or "web service" as a bot, and bots they're not.

All-in-all I enjoyed the guide because the creators spiced it up with humor and interest in their topic. They obviously enjoyed their assignment. I for one would pay for a new or updated version of the BotGuide because there are so many new tools that would fit and could stand the attention. It wouldn't hurt me if they would had an ongoing online way to cull out the dot.carcases that didn't make it.

I have been studying this book for over a year,
and though I have gotten to feel like I know my way around a Cache system, only been working with it a year (MUMPS too for that matter), there is too much information, Undocumented (WOLF KOELING will agree that Intersystems offers not to divulge. The book hits all the basics. Devices, servers, clients, GUI tools, $ZU hell, CSP, but with 15 pages to use per section it has to try and describe it, thats not quite enough. ALl in all its helpful, though, my advice is to ditch the book and read the newsgroup. People are very willing to help there.

I didn't find this book to be very helpfull. You might as well read the online documentation.

Unfortunately, as with most books in this genre (OODB), the examples and explanations are limited to very simple designs. Furthermore, even the small amount of information dedicated to the design explanations is not enough to wet the appetite for even the most inexperienced individuals.

Removing the 'install' chapter and adding a chapter to dissect a simple 'Address' database with embedded lists of phones, addresses, emails, relationships, and more would go a LONG way. It is disappointing that the authors took the typical beginners approach to a subject that many relational database bigots are dying to beat up on. By not showing a direct comparison to a relational design (function by function, attribute by attribute) they have left InterSystems with little to demonstrate to their potential customers why Cache is a powerful alternative to the status quo.

Shame... Could have been such a terrific book and demonstrative example of how and why OODBs will eventaully rule the real world. Until then we will have to wait for the sequel and hope that it can address the shortcomings of this book.

This book is an earnest attempt to turn back civilization 4,00 years. One can only wonder how writers like this spend their free time. I think though it might be reading books like Secret Agent Barbie, a real potboiler that is far more grounded in existing reality than is this claptrap.

If you are a believer in the privatization of Social Security, then you will not find a better defender than the pages of this book. More importantly, the points of this book are so powerful that it can honestly change the opinions of others. The privitization scheme endorsed by the authors should be adopted immediately after the 2000 election. Nevertheless, I'm also familiar with political reality. It will take many years maybe even a decade or two before common sense prevails over political exprediency. But hopefully, this persuasive book will speed the process along.

I've seen Peter Belesis' work around, and it is way too confusing and buggy to get any real use out of it. His Hierarchical menus are beautiful, but you never get to see one on your own site because it is so convoluted and screwy!

The book appears very comprehensive, but really needs a quick reference guide on all the elements of dynamic HTML (including scripts and HTML itself).

Dynamic Html Unleashed is a once of great DHTML books. But this is clearly not a introduction book. You should have a good HTML and javascript knowladge .