Gives McSweeney's a run for thier money. I am now eagerly awaiting works from several of these contributers.

With exceptions that I've noted below this is an in-depth examination of standards, initiatives and methods for software process improvement (SPI) and software process assessment (SPA).

The book is divided into twelve chapters, each of which contains two or more papers written by top experts in the field, including Mark Paulk (of CMM fame), Watts S. Humphrey (creator of PSP and TSP, and prolific author of software engineering process papers), Robert B. Grady (author of three standard references on metrics), and others who key players, but are not as widely known outside of the SPI and SPA community.

Chapter 1 covers software process assessment with an article by Paulk that surveys the more common models for SPI and SPA, and a reprint of Sarah Sheard's excellent article from CrossTalk Magazine titled "The Frameworks Quagmire". Chapter 2 contains three articles on the SW-CMM, which seems to be the centerpiece of this book. Chapter 3, "Other Approaches to Software Process Assessment" contains four articles that add balance by covering non-CMM approaches that are in common use, especially in Europe (Bootstrap). I especially liked the article by David N. Card titled "Sorting out Six Sigma and the CMM", which combines two hot topics. One of the exceptions that I cited at the beginning of this review is the article on Trillium, which in my opinion has been superseded by TL 9000 in the telecommunications industry.

The three articles in Chapter 4 (Software Process Improvement: How To Do It) address common concerns and barriers to any SPI initiative, and each add well thought out ideas, especially Sandra McGill's "Overcoming Resistance to Standard Processes, or, Herding Cats", and William Florac's "Statistically Managing the Software Process".

Watts Humphrey's Personal and Team Software Processes, and CMMI are the key topics in Chapter 5, which covers developments inspired by the SW-CMM. All of Chapter 6's Software Product Evaluation articles were my favorites from among the collection in this book, and I particularly liked Jørgen Bøegh's "Quality Evaluation of Software Products" and Geoff Dromey's "A Model for Software Product Quality" because they go to the heart of key issues in both product line engineering challenges and user acceptance testing.

Chapter 7, ISO 9000 Series and TickIT, is the second exception that I previously noted. Much has changed in ISO 9000 with the 2000 standard, which renders this entire chapter moot in my opinion. I also thought the five articles in Chapter 8, The SPICE Project, would have been a better fit in Chapter 3. The same goes for Chapter 9, Experiences of Software Process Assessment, which is nearly an extension of Chapter 8, and is closely related to Chapter 3.

Two other favorite chapters are 10 (Software Process Improvement for Small Organizations) and 11 (Benefits of Software Process Improvement). Chapter 10's three articles dispell any notion that SPI is only feasible for large organizations, and the three articles in Chapter 11 focus on the benefits of SPI, especially Herb Krasner's article titled "Accumulating the Body of Evidence for the Payoff of Software Process Improvement". I also liked the final chapter, which covers software processes in general, including an excellent article on modeling. I felt that this chapter should have been at the beginning of the book instead of the end.

Overall, this is a book for those of us who are nearly religious about SPI; but is not a good introductory text. It's main value will be to IT consultants who specialize in either SPI or SPA (or both), and who need to be familiar with the mainstream standards and approaches.

I just can't say enough about this book. Even putting aside the year date on the cover, this book is just JAM-PACKED with wonderful information for anyone wanting to change careers or anyone looking for a job! Not only is the book very helpful and informative, it is very entertaining as well, with cartoons, jokes and quotes that make the reading seem more pleasurable than research.

In giving this book only three stars, I'm not rating Turgenev but rather the translation. I'm not a translator myself, I'm sure it's very difficult rendering dialogue from another time and place, etc., etc. but I finally couldn't abide the translator's choice in this case to render the voices of nineteenth century Russian peasants in Cockney (or other English) slang.

Examples: "He was a right pain to his peasant girls." "They felt right idiots." "He's not a gent, is he?" "Help us, mate." "Judge for yourself, mate." "He's the soul of kindness, he is." "Gavrila comprehended-like how to get out of the wood." The use of "'cos" for "because." The use of "gotta"--"And I've gotta tell you this."

And what was for me the last straw, in the story Bezhin Lea, "Cor!" and "Cor, stone me!"

If you like this kind of thing, you'll love the book. For Russian lit in translation, give me Constance Garnett (and her Edwardian diction--which works so well, perhaps because it seems natural in contrast to the forced quality on display in "Sketches") or else the current team of Pevear and Volokhonsky.

It's taken me until now to get to Sketches From A Hunter's Album. Now I have finished it and now I am grieving. It will stay in my nonlending collection so I can savor it even after the surprise has gone. It's like losing a friend.

Turgenev calls these 'sketches' rather than stories. It's a good distinction. More story writers should concentrate on their sketch pads. The sketches are of places and people in the rural south of Russia in the 1840s. Each is strung thematically on Turgenev's wandrings through the countryside while hunting for game birds. Each begins with a mention that he was hunting in a certain place. He goes into lovely thoughtful and surprising descriptions of the woods or marsh, the sky, the smells, the sounds, the light. Even in translation, these are exquisite. He speaks of shifting light shining through the leaves onto the forest floor, or unbreatheable noonday heat, or changing skies at the advent of a storm, a dawn, or a sunset; he calls up moments from your own life that you thought could not be shared with anyone who wasn't there and he makes you relive those moments as if he had been there with you.

For anyone who has spent time out of doors, these little Aldo Leopold nature essays standing alone would be reason enough to read the 'Sketches', but these are just hors d'œuvre to his descriptions of the persons he meets while hunting. When sketching people, Turgenev does gracefully what Dickens tried to do and did clumsily; that is, he describes the physical characteristics of a person and gives you a fully formed description of their character as well, and he does this without sounding forced and without showing himself. (And you will burst out laughing at the sudden recognition that, indeed, someone does look 'like a root vegetable'.)

"Sketches" was published twice in Turgenev's lifetime and in the second edition he added to it. In the earlier sketches, Turgenev brings a character to life in a description; the character may speak a few words, and disappear from the scene, as people do in real life, leaving the reader to speculate what became of him. Yet, Turgenev has given us enough insight into the character that we think we know what probably happened next, and so the story is complete. These are elegant Aristotelian constructs with the action taking place offstage, and, oh elegance! with the final action taking place in the reader's imagination after the story has ended. If my description leaves you wondering, read them! (Would that I could spur you to act as Turgenev spurs his readers to think. Ah, but it's too much... .) This is what Turgenev does. He starts you thinking, but requires you to complete the story. In the later sketches Turgenev is just as deft in his descriptions, but perhaps to satisfy the market or his editors he adopts a more plot driven model. These later contributions can more truly be called stories rather than sketches. They are equally well-crafted, but they demand less of the reader. Curiously, they give us less as well.

The hunter's travels theme gives the collection an interrelatedness, almost like a picaresque novel. As in Huckleberry Finn or Don Quixote, neither the author nor the protagonist directly express opinions, but as stories accumulate the reader acquires the author's strong politicized view. We meet the aristocrats and peasants of rural Russia. The serf-holding system had been 'liberalized' in the early 19th century, but it is revealed as the unnamed slavery it was. Landlords control peasants' rights to marry; they name the persons to fill regional conscription quotas; they assign agricultural and residential alotments; and thoughtless and uncaring aristocrats use these powers carelessly or maliciously to destroy lives. Liberal aristocrats fare no better than traditional feudalists, as Turgenev details social reformers' well-meaning disasters which beggar both for the peasants and the bumbling aristocrats who direct them.

America often forgets that its civil war was part of a European pandemic of peasant revolts driven by the extended logic of the Enlightenment. As masters and slaves in the United States were struggling with the immorality of a divine order handed down from a prior age, the masters and servants in Europe did the same. The 1840s, 50s, and 60s were tumultuous times in central and eastern Europe. Turgenev, arrested and exiled in 1852 because of the 'Sketches', has an historical place akin to the American abolitionists of the same day, however, unlike Harriet Beecher Stowe, Turgenev draws his characters in three dimensions with humanity, with love and understanding even when he does not forgive them their moral failings. The 'Sketches' would be an interesting book to teach alongside Huckleberry Finn.

I don't like short stories, never have and I don't know why. I had to read this collection for a course and found it pretty good. The professor told us that this was Hemingway's favorite book which Hemingway had read over and over. In fact, Hemingway modeled some of his own stories on those here, particularly the Hemingway stories where nothing happens except someone might make a pot of coffee. But let's face it, these are not so much stories (narrations of events in time) as sketches of characters. Any plot would be too much plot and would interfer with the general effect, which is to show us the life and times of Russians before the liberation of the serfs. I liked "The Singers", as other reviewer have, but the true masterpiece, worth the entire price of the book, is "Living Relic." Nothing happens in that story except we learn again the beauty and strength of the human spirit and in the process the redemptive nature of true literature.

We recently bought a female black lab pup...and actually picked her up on the 49th day, just as it says to do in the book. We did this without knowing that was the best day, but later borrowed the book from the library and found out so. Our "Cricket" is now 9 weeks old, and will sit, stay from about 6 ft., and will come enthusiastically. We've also been playing fetch with a goose wing, and find her to be getting the hang of things real fast. Had we not picked up the book when we did, we would have waited half a year to start training her. The book is easy to follow, and his manner of training isn't abusive to the dog. We hope to have an expert hunter when her schooling is done.

My husband and I purchased this book 5 years ago when we bought our first Labrador pup. We were immediately taken by the methods used by Mr. Wolters - kindness and fun being of the utmost importance when training a retriever. Following the instructions to the letter, we had great success - first duck retrieved to hand at 12 weeks, no problems whatsoever with hardmouthing or breaking at the shot. What we now have is a bird hunting machine that sleeps on our bed; a dog that hunts quail and chukar as well as he does ducks and geese; a dog that responds equally well to voice, hand and whistle commands (all important in varying hunting conditions). While we never had any interest in hunt trials (we wanted a working dog and pet), we have received scores of complements over the years, with most people commenting that this is the best dog they've ever hunted over. We're hitting our prime in the 5th hunting season, and will use this book once again when we start a new pup this winter.

Really - buy this book (Water Dog is also a good additon to your library). You will have a great blueprint for both a great hunter and a good friend!

I am currently training my 2nd dog, (3/10/99) using the methods in this book. the first dog turned out great, number two will be great too!!

In 1994 my wife and I made our first trip to Italy, and in preparation for that trip I made heavy use of "The Charming, Small Hotel Guide to Italy." Upon our return, I later came across the first edition of their guide to "Tuscany and Umbria" and another for "Venice and the Veneto."

I swear by these guides-- but I have to complain a little about the latest edition. First, it has changed very little from the prior edition-- there are only a handful of new entries. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, in the interim, many of the properties listed have acquired e-mail accounts and developed websites. The internet era has made it much easier to check on room availability, current pricing, etc., but very few email addresses or URLs are listed. That complaint aside, this is a good, useful book, one I would use to plan our next trip to Tuscany-- if we couldn't get a room at "our place."

We used this to plan our lodging in Tuscany, and we stayed in some wonderful places. I would highly recommend it for those interested in staying in smaller hotels with lots of charm.

We are the authors of Eating & Drinking in Italy and have used this guide for many years. If you want to have a memorable trip to Italy, stay in the small hotels listed in this helpful guide.

This book is a surprising treasure that brings to life more than just the shocking life of Captain Kidd. The biography also takes an up close look at the late seventeenth century on the high seas and in the major harbor towns. Digging into the documentation, author Richard Zacks contends that Captain William Kidd was not a cutthroat killing pirate; but instead he was a family man renowned as a New York sea captain. Thus, merchants and politicians like the governor of the New York colony hired Kidd to chase down pirates like Robert Culliford to reclaim the booty they stole. THE PIRATE HUNTER: THE TRUE STORY OF CAPTAIN KIDD is a fabulous historical biography that never slows down and worth reading for as much as learning the real record as for how well Mr. Zacks tells a nonfiction adventure tale.

Harriet Klausner

For centuries, pirates like Captain Kidd have been portrayed in 'fairytale' fashion on the big screen and in literature. Finally now someone has done enough extensive research to compile a more accurate portrayal of pirate history, life onboard ship, and the life of the great Captain William Kidd, who was not the man we knew from fiction. Disney movies and candy-coated stories are fine for kids, but "The Pirate Hunter" actually skips back in time to the gritty life that pirates lived in the late 1600s. Zacks doesn't hold back. America, and the rest of the world was a different place 300 years ago. Packed with enough facts and documented accounts to please any historian, blended seamlessly with segues, and flavored with dramatical asides, "The Pirate Hunter" is a truely entertaining read!

A dashingly narrated life of Captain William Kidd, freeing him of his unwarranted reputation as a notorious pirate. Kidd was no pirate, historian Zacks (History Laid Bare, not reviewed, etc.) argues in this solidly documented historical thriller, but a New York sea captain with a house, wife, and child on Wall Street, and with a special commission from King William III and other notables to hunt pirates and divvy up the booty with his backers. This was an exceptional charge, since it allowed Kidd to circumvent the Admiralty court. But it was also a secret commission, and his actions won him few friends in the Royal Navy, which frowned on privateers of any stripe, or with the East India Company, which suffered as a result of his work. Recreating in great detail Kidd's months searching for bounty, yet doing so with a verve that keeps the story light on its feet, Zacks also sets straight the life of the pirates-violent and short, certainly, but far more democratic than that experienced by those on land. It was Kidd's ill luck to take a glorious treasure from a Moslem vessel, throwing the East India Company's best-laid plans in India into a precarious position. The captain was left out on a limb, and his backers quickly disavowed any knowledge of his commission, for treason was the charge here. Zacks reveals the double-cross through a paper trail of logbooks, diaries, letters, and transcripts of the trial that sent Kidd to the gallows while his erstwhile pirate nemesis, Robert Culliford, walked free from Newgate Prison. In addition, Zacks paints a real-life picture of the pirates' port of choice in the 1690s-New York City-its customs, the fluid politics that pertained to maritime affairs, and even what it was like to attend a hanging. Exciting, well told, and befitting the wild life of a pirate-even if Kidd wasn't one.

There are a few books out there that make you think. John Dewey's "How we think", Kuhn's "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" and a book on the history of IP by an Australian writer whose name and book title elude me at the moment are three books that have stimulated my thoughts. This book would be the fourth.

It could be that I'm a "shallow Hal" but I have to agree with the other review on the point the author raised in connection with Herbert's "Dune".

As we gather more information and as Sandisk (or someone like them) begins to offer terabyte storage to the everyday consumer, we will see more tracking.......and I fear, that in conjunction with XML, ......knowledge will increase.

Read the later part of the Book of Daniel in the Old Testament to see what I am referring to. Next, go to the Maxwell Air Force base website and look up their link page to critical thinking. Take a while to learn some things about critical thinking and then read this section in Daniel and this book by Hunter.

Most importantly.......THINK FOR YOURSELF AND DRAW YOUR OWN CONCLUSIONS.

McNealy is right. The frogs are already in the pot (loss of privacy) and most will never notice that they are being boiled until it's too late.

Hunter has done us a favor by raising this issue in the manner that he did.

I bought this book when it first came out and then recently read an insiteful, positive interview with the author of World Without Secrets in the Sunday New York Times. My feelings about the subject matter in the book were similar to that of the reviewer.

Interestingly, the article and the book cover lots of privacy issues concerning Amazon.com. Issues that everyone who buys a product on Amazon (or anywhere online) should be aware: especially the policies of sharing information about customers with companies that want to sell goods and services to us (junkmail!) Of course, other companies are discussed, which, in the end just frightens us even more about the amount of information about each of us that is so readily accessible to anyone who wants it.

The NY Times reviewer states: "Mr. Hunter is right to argue that if Americans aren't involved in resolving these (privacy) issues, the issues will be resolved without them." Hunter says:"The amount of electronically stored data about individuals is massive, detailed, and growing. We don't yet know how to manage a world in which everything can be linked to me, wherever I am."

With his background as a top security expert, Hunters words will shake up any beliefs you may have left that ANYTHING is private anymore.

"World Without Secrets: Business, Crime and Privacy in the Age of Ubiquitous Computing" - Reviewed by Stephen Lafferty

The title of Richard Hunter's book refers to the growing availability of information about the personal lives of consumers living in capitalist democratic states. The book begins with the assumption that "very little of consequence can't and won't be known about anyone or anything". Hunter approaches the subject of the erosion of personal privacy from two angles: the business and the governmental/police justifications for retaining information on individuals. His argument, that citizens in democratic countries had better take responsibility for the power of surveillance technologies while they still can, emerges from the discussion of the increasing possibilities for deriving behaviour patterns from recombining archived data.

Hunter's first point, that people adapt at a slower rate than the
introduction of new technologies, is underlined using examples of
Amazon.com and Acme-Rent-A-Car of Connecticut. Neither set of
consumers, when they began relationships with either company, realised that information collected about their shopping habits and movements would be sold to third parties or used for law enforcement purposes.

Hunter then goes on to demonstrate how organisations that create and retail information, such as Microsoft and record companies, are responding to threats being posed by self-organising groups using the Internet to communicate. Hunter calls these groups 'Network Armies' and provides an analysis of how such groups coalesce and fight their cause, using examples of the Open Source software movement and Linux vs. Windows, Napster and digital distribution of music and the anti-capitalist protestors in Seattle and Genoa.

The discussion then moves on to identifying social groups within the 'world without secrets'. Hunter and a team of researchers at Gartner identify four groups: 'Network Armies', the 'Lost and the Lonely', 'Conscientious Objectors' and the 'Engineered Society'. This analysis implies that the world without secrets is inevitable and the area of society to which you belong depends upon whether you support or oppose the authority of the leadership that passes legislation to eliminate barriers to information flow.

The last two chapters are dedicated to discussion of war when all
enemy movements are known; and the possibility of a war in cyberspace.

Parts of this book were written on or after September 11th 2001 and Hunter considers the development of terrorist network armies and the response that an 'engineered society' can make to such attacks. The New York Electronic Crimes Task Force is used as a model network army for terrorist threats from cyberspace, an Internet version of Interpol with intercontinental crime-fighting agreements.

Richard Hunter believes that a world without secrets is inevitable.

He urges his readers to take responsibility for the ways that
technologies are implemented through democratic means, such as
building in limitations for information usage by the authorities.

This book makes a compelling argument for educating both the
authorities and the public about the type and uses of recorded
information and is an excellent introduction to contemporary
attitudes towards and policies of surveillance. Readers who are
interested in the freedoms that they enjoy in their societies should read this along with Simson Garfinkel's 'Database Nation' and Michael Caloyannides 'Desktop Witness' and be careful about to whom they give their personal information.

I don't approve of poems being translated into prose form as a matter of principle. In the case of this poem, which has so many features derived from Homer (e. g. Apollonius' hero list as compared to Homer's ship list or the description of Jason's shield after that of Achilles'), it would be even more interesting to have a line-by-line rendering. Were it not for this and Mr. Hunter's translation would be just nice as his clear and useful introduction is. Therefore I have to go for another translation which suits my requirements, I guess Peter Green's. By the way, this same problem unfortunately seems to occur in the Loeb Classical Collection translations of poetry.

This is an anti-heroic epic,whit a protagonist that is a whiny wimp, an anaemic and weak leader,who unaccountably wins the love of the Morgan le Fay of Colchis: Medea, the real protagonist and heroine of the poem.Her story is narrated whit alexandrine sensibility,less tragedy than pathos. But the charm of the poem lies in the strange,dreamlike athmosphere. Many scenes (like the appearance of Apollo at dawn ) are rendered as if seen in an hypnagogic vision. For the heroes of old ,Apollonius seen to say, life was really a dream.

I found this book extremely helpful in evaluating certain criteria that was important to me in terms of a working environment that I didn't realize was so important. You do have to do the excercises for it to have any meaning. It is easy to read and if you really need a starting point, I think it is worth it.

I really enjoyed this book and have read it twice simply because I do like the author's writing style and the message he has to convey. There are some interesting concepts here and excellent tips on job search; however, the book really gets into the nitty-gritty of bouncing around statistics based on studies, which proved to be somewhat tedious, a minor flaw of the book. The positives far outweigh any minor negative aspects.

One apparent and critical element I did find missing from the book was the importance of matching what you do to the need and demand in the marketplace for your area of expertise. If you are a financial analyst, for example, and the marketplace is already overflowing with more unemployed analysts than there are available jobs, than it does not matter what color your parachute is, the parachute is going to come soaring down very quickly. All in all, the book is certainly worth reading and very informative, but like many other things in life...it offers no guarantees that you will ultimately land that job of your dreams.

Richard Bolles has published a new version of this book every year. I read it first in college and used it extensively when I worked as a career counselour. I also used it for career seminars. I can honestly say that every edition seems to be quite different from previous versions, so it is not a waste of money at all to buy a more recent version. (the most recent editions seem to talk about online job search, appropriately enough)As a writer, I can admire his work for its readability, sense of humor and gritty realism. Bolles tells some remarkable stories and while not directly applicable to your career area, they make you aware of how similiar job searching is regardless of your field. Before reading this, you should be aware of what this book is NOT: it does not provide resume advice nor does it provide very much advice about general trends in the job market. This book is a sobering dose of reality, but the interesting thing is that the reader finds this information heartening rather than disappointing because it unmasks many of the treacherous parts of the job search process. As such, this book is a great gift for a loved one who is out of work. It will make them feel good about themselves, and that is good, because a lot of unemployed approach job searches with a chip on their shoulder.

I used the exercises in the book with clients to help them analyze what they wanted in an ideal job because clients really had little idea what was important to them. Other readers might find that part helpful. I was a little surprised to find that the 2000 edition was smaller than previous versions. Bolles decided to reduce some of the religious/spiritual stuff and to cut out some of the reference lists (with the internet, a lot of references can be put online).

Overall, I was not impressed by how Parachute covers online job searching aside from discussing generalities. People really need to learn more about job boards like monster and how freelancing opportunities are opening up that never before existed.

Another thing is that I thought it was unnecessary to deemphasize the spiritual component in the latest version of the book. I'm not superreligious, but his stuff on the spiritual element added a unique perspective to the book and was nondenominational enough not to offend anyone. In summary: this is a milestone of a book. Bolles has spent his entire life making each version of the book better than the last. His effort shows.