This book, as the title suggests, tries to make the case for perceiving Poland, former Czechoslovakia and Hungary as a single cultural entity, as a region with certain common characteristics and historical experience. However, as the reader reads on, she/he cannot help the feeling that the book unintentionally proves the exact opposite. This is not to say that the author is a charlatan - for there can be no doubt about the his erudition. Rather, Wandycz seems to be under the influence of the current geopolitical situation in Eastern Europe when the four countries (P, H, CZ, S) actually do face similar problems and tasks - but such moments are rare in their histories and cannot be taken as a starting point of writing their joint history. Nonetheless, the book would serve as an excellent introduction into the general history of the countries in the region.

A large format coffee table book. I only gave this an average rating because the pictures aren't that exciting. Most of the pictures show the author on extreme climbs, 5.12 and above, or soloing easier ones. Most of the pictures show more of the author and less of the climb. I'm more interested in seeing the climb and typically easier ones that are more within my ability. Most of the climbs shown are sport routes with the exception of some of the ones shown from England. Seeing the scary bolts they used in East Germany was interesting. The author gives short two page introductions to each country which I have to say was the best part of the whole book. His writing is very good for the genre. Overall I'd skip buying the book unless you want a coffee table book. There are better coffee table books on the subject out there.

Stefan Grossman is a fine guitarist and his books have done wonders for fingerstyle guitarists everywhere. But--his books are NOT for beginners! I bought this book hoping to learn some new techniques and found several of the arrangements quite difficult, and many in alternate tunings. Most have words accompanying the tunes, so that these are types of Travis-picking backgrounds, of a sort. You should have been playing guitar for a few years, steadily, before you attempt the tunes in this book.

I read this book about a year ago and then picked it up again and tried one more time...no luck...I just don't get it. I've really enjoyed Anne McCaffrey's other books, such as the Pern Series, the Crystal Singer books and the "Talented" series. I was very frustrated with "The Girl Who Heard Dragons" because I wanted to read more of THAT story...not the others in the book. I felt like I was left hanging.

The book "The Girl Who Heard Dragons" is NOT a Pern book. There. Maybe that helps a bit. See, this book is a collection of SHORT STORIES. Only the FIRST story takes place on Pern. The other fourteen are a collection of fasinating and extremly diverse group of stories. One of my favorites was "The Greatest Love", which is about two children being born in the womb of their aunt, not their mother. This is done all the time now; women unable to have children find proxy mothers to help them. But this was written years before the procedure was done. Anyway, the point is, this is NOT a Pern book. It's a collection of Anne McCaffrey's writings. The first Pern story was excellant, but the other stories were just as great. And to you confused readers out there . . . take a closer look!

The Girl Who Heard Dragons was one of the best books I've read by McCaffrey! I loved the way she wrote each story and the way it all came together. There was a lot of science fiction, rather than fantasy; though, it was still the quality that would you expect from Ms. McCaffrey. I haven't read all of her books, but I've read about 5 or 6 of the Pern series. Read This Book!!!

Sorry to be destorying Carlo Collodi's famous book, but Disney has won me over. No major violence is softened in the 1883 Collodi version. The cricket is intensionly killed. Geppetto is a JERK in the oringnal beginning. I do not advise "Pinocchio" unless it's Disney.

This book is very short and is written poorly in a summary. It does not tell important things that happen. It has no Jimminy Cricket, no going to school, and Pinocchio finds Geppetto by accident which is not so. He is supposed to get a note telling where Geppetto is and Pinocchio is supposed to go to him. This book is not written very well. Take my advice. It's a third graders point of view. I don't recommend this book and I don't think any other third grader will.

The story of Pinocchio as it was meant to be, he wasn't a sweet innocent puppet, more a selfish brat. There's a good moral slant here though, and of course, the story being told by Bill Pullman in that wonderful slightly gravelly voice makes for easy listening.

There is very little of value in this book that shouldn't be posted on Oracle's web site as a tutorial or whitepaper. It is expectedly Oracle centric, but only covers their products in a very broad manner without much meat. For example, Chapter 4: "Developing for an Oracle Application" is only 16 pages and simply provides definitions for the variety of Oracle-side web apps/extensions.

If you really want to buy an Oracle XML book, then get the O'Reilly "Oracle XML Applications". Now there's a 5* book.

If you've ever tried understanding Oracle's XML offering from the technet documentation, you've probably given up in despair, as the information is available, but it's totally disorganised.

Unfortunately, this book suffers the same problems. Many of the examples can be found on technet, and the organisation is no better. Like many Oracle Press books, this layout is poor, and the examples are either superficial or non-existent.

Instead, try Steve Muench's "Oracle XML Applications." It's superb.

There are several problems with this book. One is that very little coverage is given to the Oracle XML SDK. I could not find useful documentation on TechNet regarding use of the XML SDK via PL/SQL. I had hoped that this book would provide examples of SDK and a more complete set of documentation. To my disappointment, this book does not provide much more than an overview.

The other problem with this book is that it was written with examples for Oracle Application Server, which has been replaced by iAS. Bottom line, this book reads like it was written for the first release of Oracle's XML SDK. Your better off on TechNet and the newsgroups.

The cover blurb says "Anthropologist Stefan Helmreich's look at the social and simulated worlds of Artificial Life" and it turns out to be horribly true. I hoped to learn how the programmers viewed their simulated worlds, and how that relates to their culture. Instead I found how Stefan looks at the programmers, and what he thinks of science. The background description of individuals and institutions isn't bad. The rest is.

Camille Paglia is not usually classified as an anthropologist, but this book reminded me of her - if she couldn't write well and ignored the culture she wrote about. This book has little bearing on its purported subject, and the author's personal views of science aren't interesting (largely because he's speaking on a subject he clearly doesn't understand). If you want Camille Paglia, read Camille Paglia. If you want an actual anthroplogical study of science or A-life, don't waste your time here.

The best I can say about this book is that it is the most outstanding example of academic pretentiousness I've ever encountered. The author's acknowledgments alone cover six pages and include over 185 names.
My own background includes a college education (philosophy and mathematics) and ten years as a college instructor in computer science. I'm quite used to reading and comprehending technically sophisticated literature, often poorly written. I can even claim to have understood much of Microsoft's documentation for their developer products. Nevertheless, I found Mr. Helmreich's prose quite inpenetrable. If his goal was to explain the people and culture behind the new field of Artificial Life to a lay audience, he has failed miserably.
To be fair, I must admit that I put the book down after struggling through the first thirty pages of the main text. The book's cover states that Mr. Helmreich is a professor at NYU. If the prose in his book is any indication of the lucidity of his lectures to his students, they have my deepest sympathy.

Stefan Helmreich presents an entertaining glimpse into the culture, the lives, and the musings of many of the leading voices in the field of artificial life. One of the real strengths of this book is his ability to offer a perspective from 'inside' the discipline--a view not only of the history and present status and future direction of the field of artificial life, but of the scientists and researchers responsible. That, plus his personal fascination with the subject matter and his obvious writing skills, strike you within the first few pages. This was at times a literate and enjoyable read.

Unfortunately, it was also frustrating and, ultimately, disappointing. Frustrating because it is patently obvious that the author approached his subject matter with his ethnographic conclusions firmly in place prior to ever examining the evidence. There is no other way one can explain the lengths he goes to convince the reader that white, heterosexual, male-dominated mythologies lurk under every bush he came across in Santa Fe. As such, truly interesting questions he raises--such as the religious aspect of silicon-based creation--are either left unread by the reader long since turned off by his biased approach, or else unfairly dismissed as equally prejudiced.

And disappointing, because in the long run most of his efforts are either irrelevant, or trivial. Computational studies in evolution are at bottom a matter of binary code. Zero's and one's. They are neither black nor white, Baptist or Buddhist, straight or gay, male or female. Now, clearly the researcher at their computer may indeed be any of the above--but that does not change the code itself. So in this sense Helmreich's observations are irrelevant. On the other hand, no one would argue the fact that personal bias may well contaminate interpretations of computational results. Personal bias may well contaminate almost everything we say and do, to one degree or another. But that is a rather trivial observation to make--one that has everything to do with human beings, and next to nothing to do with the science of computational evolution, which is what I had assumed from the title "Silicon Second Nature" that this book was about.

AGAIN, you really, really, do need to read more than the first few pages of this essay in order to evaluate it properly; its first few pages are there only to bait you.

Yes, it does seem that few of us understand how the machines to which we entrust ourselves daily work (or, very often, fail to work), and this is a matter of concern -- because to the extent we don't understand them, we don't control them, they control us. But THAT is NOT what this essay is about. This essay is about, this essay propagandizes on behalf of, the proliferation of industrialization.

Let's backtrack, however. It is NECESSARY to know how the machines work, but it not SUFFICIENT to know how they work. We must also consider their side effects and consequences, and here we come roundabout to the point: C. P. Snow attacks Thoreau and other classic writers for pondering the human consequences of rapid technological change, in other words, for doing precisely what it is their job -- and duty -- to do. On the other hand, Mr. Snow never ACKNOWLEDGES, even to scoff at, the physical and environmental consequences of industrial and military and technologies, and in the aftermath of Hiroshima and Nagasaki this is quite a remarkable omission.

Note: C. P. Snow is remembered approximately as well as a politician as he is remembered as a novelist. (Most of his novels, all but one part of his "Brothers and Strangers" series, are out of print.)

Note also: Carl Sagan's "The Demon-Haunted World" is a fine book, but it has to do with superstition; it has nothing to do either with what this essay purports to be about or with what it really is about. On the other hand, various chapters of his "Pale Blue Dot" and his posthumous "Billions and Billions" do show how opposed Professor Sagan was to what Mr. Snow advocates here, and I recommend both.

I am a college student and was forced to read this book by my literature professor, who for some reason adores writers who seem to use big words and horribly complicated sentences to explain the simplest ideas.
The Two Cultures is hard to focus on, but the idea is simple. We in fact are, at the very simplest degree, divided into 2 cultures. One made up of the traditional or humanistic culture, which includes politics, arts, etc. , and also into the scientific culture. Snow basically states throughout his lecture that these 2 cultures do not communicate with one another well if much at all, and that this poses a serious problem to society.
Snow's opinion in his lecture is that instead of educating as England does, with a small elitist system being educated highly in one broad area of study, that all should be educated in both the arts and sciences in order for our society to be able to function to its fullest.
Another of Snow's beliefs is that technology is a must for all people, and perhaps the countries who have not been able to become as advanced as America and England for example, should be given aid by other countries to come into the modern age. Not necessarily should we give them weapons and things such as this, but the ability to communicate, grow better crops through our knowledge of farming methods, and teaching them perhaps how to become a democracy.
In Snow's response to criticisms of his lecture, he further explains his opinions and what he wanted people to get from his lecture, and responds to critics and their opinions of his lecture.
This book/lecture, is not really a thrill to read, but it does make sense and is slightly interesting if you like that sort of thing. Good luck.

C.P. Snow was primarily known as a novelist, but his training was in science. In his now-famous (in the intellectual community, at least) Rede Lecture, Snow examined first the seeming unbridgable gap between the literary intellectuals and the scientific intellectuals. The literary intellectuals, Snow says, do not understand even the basics of science, which is particularly dangerous in a postindustrial society; and conversely, that the scientific community does not appreciate the insights of literature, philosophy, and the like. This was written in 1959, yet it is more or less still true today. Snow addresses a very real concern about the future of a society where 99% of the people are dependent on technologies that only a bare fraction of the people - four or five percent at best - understand even the basic mechanisms behind. This is the same problem Sagan addressed nearly 40 years later in _The Demon-Haunted World_. Sagan, however, did a much better job of arguing this, providing evidence and statistics where Snow provides merely rhetoric. Read this book, and then read Sagan's, and you'll see exactly what I mean.

This book is like Richard Anobile's books but without the pictures. Not much effort/research went into the compilation of Groucho's writing and excerpts from films. Little, if anything, is new or hasn't been republished in the last 25 years. Much better is Robert Bader's compilation of Groucho's writing: Groucho Marx and Other Short Stories and Tall Tales

This collection of movie dialogue (Only up to A Day at The Races) A few letters (Get The Groucho Letters, instead) and a few of Groucho's essays is haphazardly organized and only good for the new fan who might want to see what all the Groucho fanfare is about. This gets two stars from me only because I think it might get someone to check out the Marx brothers films. If you are familiar with their work this will add nothing new to your Marx collection.

I bought this book because I didn't know anything about the Marx Brothers, and I wanted to get a feel for who they were offstage. (I just saw "Duck Soup" for the first time, and now I just HAVE to get all of their movies! Absolute Genius!)

I read the other review, and wondered, but this book did just fine in giving me a look at who these wonderful entertainers when they weren't performing (well, mainly Groucho). Plus it has some transcripts form the movies and his show "You bet your life" ! All in all, a really easy and fun read. Enjoy!