An interesting, and beautiful, look at Wright's most personal work. Some of the best stuff I've seen on Taliesin West. Added bonus: the photography in this book is mouth-watering. Straus is no novice at photographing FLW's works, and in this book, it shows.

Could it be that Robert Louis Stevenson wrote TREASURE ISLAND based on a true story, and the characters really existed? Is it true that an aging pirate, Long John Silver, manipulated John Paul Jones and other patriots of the American Revolution into recovering treasure from a small island in the Caribbean? These are but a few of the questions I was asking myself after I finished reading Commander Roger Johnson's well crafted adventure novel, DEAD MAN'S CHEST. As a writer, I know how tough it is to spin a yarn of factual fiction, and do it in a way that makes every page believable. Mr. Johnston has done it in spades - and everything rings true - from the sailing lore to the historical backdrop. It is a saga bigger than life and destined to be made into a major motion picture. Move over C. S. Forester, Patrick O'Brian and Dan Parkinson - there is a new author on the scene writing in the same tradition. We can only hope Commander Johnson will continue to tell us more about the characters he has so skillfully brought back to life in this truly entertaining novel. If you enjoy factual fiction with a nautical theme, you will not be able to put this one down.

I just finished reading DEAD MAN'S CHEST, and I can honestly say it is one of the best two or three books I have ever read. It is the remarkable story of how one man, Long John Silver, was able to manipulate both pirates and patriots in order to aquire the Treasure of Dead Man's Chest; the other two-thirds of the treasure John Flint burried on Treasure Island. The action takes place between November 1773 and June 1775, the same twenty months in which the naval hero John Paul Jones disappeared from the history books. He was a foreigner and had a warrant on his head, yet he did something so remarkable for the American Colonies that he was awarded one of the first naval commissions in the Continental Navy. DEAD MAN'S CHEST reveals for the first time exactly what he did, woven together with other historical events and with just enough fiction to give this amazing novel a hook to keep my undivided interest. I give DEAD MAN'S CHEST five stars!

I just finished reading Dead Man's Chest by Commander Roger Johnson and was thrilled with each page. I'm not much of a fiction reader, but once I read the two page preface, I was hooked. Commander Johnson has put together a marvelous story of adventure, mixed with love, intrigue, and how Long John Silver manipulated hundreds of pirates and Colonial patriots into doing his bidding to find and take back the treasure of Dead Man's Chest. I was especially taken with the 1777 transcript of the Royal Navy Admiralty Court of Inquiry that formed the foundation of this amazing epic adventure. I recommend Dead Man's Chest to everyone who likes a great yarn, and truly hope this important literary work makes it to the big screen.

This review is for the softcover version. I feel almost bad to give this great guide 3 stars. The book contains a lot of very good information - more so than many books several times larger. As such, it's an excellent reference for beginner and more advanced user alike. However, the book fails miserably for field use, which, ironically, it is supposed to be designed for.

The cover frays and acquires "dog-ears" in a relatively short time of field use. In contrast, the Audubon field guides use a much more resilient plastic softcover. The pages smude easily from finger oils - remember, this is a guide you should be able to use for 8 years or so (until the next edition) so these are unacceptable shortcomings IMHO. By far the biggest gripe I have with this book, however, is the the choice of red to identify galaxies, star clusters etc in the atlas charts. These marks completely disappear under red light(!!!), making the charts useless for finding deep sky objects in the field. Finally, how are you supposed to operate equipment and keep the book open? Because it lacks spiral binding, the only way to use it hands-off is to put a weight on the page you're referencing.

If you're looking for a great reference to use at home, this guide is hard to beat - in fact, I highly recommend it. However, look elsewhere for more useful star charts with deep sky objects to use in the field.

First, its great monthly sky charts - for both the southern and northern hemispheres, and its many detailed charts and diagrams (all in colors) will help you find almost any visible star, galaxy, nebula, consolation or planet. For the planets there are charts and diagrams about their trajectories and positions in the sky that are valid till 2010.
But beyond that, there's plenty of valuable info about most of the "popular" objects and consolations, accompanied by excellent pictures. And there are some other astronomy related tips for newcomers, such as on purchasing a telescope or binocular, or photographing the stars. All in all, it's an enjoyable and valuable reading book in addition to it being a great field guide.

Very easy to understand, unlike almost all the others.

Great charts for finding stars. Thanks to this book I now understand how to find a star from a star chart. Great pictures, and again I cannot state how clearly they explain things.

This books isn't bad on PL/SQL, but if you want to write Java programs with Oracle you'll also need a JDBC book.

This one is great book for anyone who's beginning to learning oracle programming.
I bought this book after the T kyte's expert one-on-one so to me I could brush faster thru (some) pages. I guess i'm a sucker when it comes to wrox books.

But a good starting point for beginners!

I am a Web Developer (ASP) with an MS SQL background. I got throw into a project that uses an Oracle database for its backend. If not for this book I do not know where I would be. This is the best book I've seen for a newbie to Oracle. BUY THIS BOOK NOW!!!

My colleagues and I selected this book for a team-taught course on the 20th Century, reasoning that multiple authors would give us multiple perspectives. Alas, it also gave us multiple standards of quality, and an overall lack of focus. The students voted with their feet and gave up on the book perhaps half way through. We stuck it out to the bitter end & concluded that the students were probably right, although there are periodic flashes on insight & interest throughout. The second time around we used Roberts' 20th Century history & both we & the students were much happier.

I remember that history was one of my least interested and weakest subjects when I was in junior secondary school. It's not until recently that I started to realize I should know more about what's going on in the world. And I bought this book.
This 450-page book consists of 27 chapters, grouped in 5 parts, namely The Framework of the Century, The Eurocentric World 1900-1945, The Cold War 1945-1900, The Wider World, and finally Envoi.

Part 1 is an overall review of the century from different points of views, science, technology, economy, politics, culture and art. This gives you a very brief yet concise idea of what the century is like, what happened, and what were eventually the consequences.

Part 2, a very exciting part, tells about the politic and military situations in the two world wars.

Part 3 is on the post-war period after the second World War. This tells you about the Cold War between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, and its influences.

Part 4 is dedicated to the development of areas other than Europe and the U.S. If you are interested in the history of a specific area other than those dominant countries in the century, or if you would like to look wider than just those countries, this part surely gives you what you want.

And finally Part 5 concludes the 20th century and looks forward to the 21st century.

This book did a very good job in trying to gather different opinions. The 27 chapters were actually written by 26 leading professionals, including Nobel prize winner Steven Weinberg. As each chapter is dedicated to one particular interest, you can easily jump to where you are interested - if that's what you prefer.

In conclusion, this book is a very good choice for anyone, who want to widen their world view and know more about the 20th century, a remarkable century in human history that makes today's world the way it is.

I enjoyed reading this one-volume survey of the events of the 20th century, whose stated editorial objective was to provide a literate and understandable survey of the panorama of change and tumult that so characterized these last hundred years. Given these very real limitations, this essay-driven approach featuring a whole drawer full of celebrated historians is a very satisfying and entertaining way for a reader to gain an interesting, thematic, and absorbing overview of the events of our century. This is a useful reference book that provides authoritative historical sources describing the momentous events as well as significant themes of the 20th century.

It is organized both by period and by geographical areas, and commences with an excellent social, economic, and political snapshot of the world as the new century dawns. By employing a number of different essayists to describe various aspects of the unfolding drama, it provides the reader with relatively concise overviews of salient topics without having to muck about in the mind-boggling details some more expansive histories would. In essence, the text neatly describes the major events and phenomena of the century, discussing the various aspects of each, and analyzing the particulars of both social disruptions via shifts of power as well as the remaining elements of social cohesion and continuity. As the reader soon discovers, however, the former far outweigh the latter in the events and trends characterizing the times.

Indeed, when one considers the radical departure between what existed throughout the world at the onset of the century as opposed to what prevails at its close, one is moved by the sense that the world had been literally transformed over the hundred-year span. Where once proud and autocratic kings, tyrants and potentates ruled with despotic indifference, now indifferent democracies, uncertain dictatorships, and benignly ignorant despots rule the stage. We've moved from unreliable telegraphs to instant wireless phones, from horse and buggy to space travel, and from death to an early age to whole societies of seniors planning to live well into their eighties and nineties. Where once people lived in splendid isolation from the outside world in a sphere only painfully connected from one community to another by mail, telegraph, and slow travel, we now have instant awareness of all that happens around the globe. So, if some of us are not entirely convinced of the progressive nature of this change, even we have to admit that W. B. Yeats captured the kernel of the times by warning things had "changed utterly".

As I mentioned above, this book provides the reader with a quite handy reference tool and a terrific overview, and is organized both in terms of time periods, geographical area, and also thematically around several key master processes that were instrumental influences in the century. It is expressly not the sort of expansive, detailed, and authoritative source for understanding or researching particular events such as the Depression or the Cold War. For those kinds of discussions one must turn elsewhere. But for its intended purpose of providing the serious student with an approachable, readable, and useful guide to understanding the main currents and highlights (or perhaps low points) of this explosive century, this is a wonderful book that belongs on every 20th century history student's bookshelf. Enjoy!

Norman Osborn is Spider-Man's greatest enemy but he has recently been overutilized in the comics. To keep things fresh, writers are forced to come up with new angles for the character. This time, Osborn wants to make Peter Parker his son and try to turn him over to the dark side with the help of toothpaste and a CD. Some nice artwork from Romita and Frenz but this seems to have been a story in which Stern started and Mackie and Jenkins would have to figure out how to end it....too much writing by committee. All in all, not one of the best Green Goblin stories.

As the book title suggest's, it's the Green Goblin's revenge. Except now, Norman Osborn is using someone else as Gobby. I won't spoil it for you, though. I can say, though, that the story is very emotional, and you can see that everone has a dark, evil side. Even Peter Parker, Spider-Man. You can even feel for poor Norman, as the story reveals. Spidey is tangled in his own web, and you do not want to miss his struggle...

All in all, this ranks among some of the best GG stories (Perhaps even better than the GG/Hobgoblin team-up/battle). A must for Goblin fans everywhere.

This book explains basic surgical technique such as extracapsular cataract extraction, intracapsular cataract extraction, phacoemulsification, secondary IOL implantation, combined surgery, and complication of cataract surgery easily. This book is essential to ophthalmologist in my opinion. The Korean Ophthalmological Society chose this book for textbook of cataract surgery.

A very special chicken is born on the ranch. He sets off to Mexico City, gives and receives help along the way. A delightful tale with wonderful picture. Easy and enjoyable to read in both Spanish and English.

An excellent and detailed text, the best range maps ever assembled for the genus, and exquisite photography make this an instant classic. Only one criticism: the overemphasis on subspecies distorts completely the composition of the genus. Subspecies are uninformative from an evolutionary and biological standpoint, and this monograph obscures larger, more interesting problems (i.e., is the Trans-Pecos Copperhead a distinct species?). Nonetheless, buy it. But recognize that it is an old-fashioned treatment of snakes whose real diversity has yet to be discovered.

The book has no sense of humor, and it is basically poorly written. Heck, I or anyone else could write something this good. Stick with the author E. S. Mooney, she is funny.