This is a great book because it develops a mystery on two levels. Miosotis gives Hamamelis a secret to keep and we wonder: will Hamamelis be able to keep the secret and what is the secret. Hamamelis is tempted by his own curiosity and that of his friends. The drawings of the animals spark the imagination, and at the end of the tale there is a lesson to be learned.

Introduction to Protein Structure provides a basic understanding of protein structure. It is not only compatible to a undergrad/grad. sutdent as a text but also to a university professor as a reference. Well written text with clear figures.

I bought "Math Trek 2" sight unseen because we'd read "Math Trek 1" from our local public library, but the library didn't have the second book in the series. While you probably should read "Math Trek 1" first, "Math Trek 2" is even better! I generally expect a sequel to be *almost* as good, so this was a surprise.
I read "Math Trek 2" aloud, as bedtime reading, to my nine-year-old, who enjoyed it very much, and even proved how closely he'd been paying attention by surprising his teacher with a novel, different answer to a series question she'd posed the class, and then explaining his answer so the whole class could understand it.
As an adult, I very much enjoyed such tidbits as *why* the five Platonic solids are called that, and what they meant to Plato. Reading these books is as much fun for me as it is for my child.
The book is marked "Young Adult", but should be entertaining and informative to a wide range of ages. My nine-year-old would not have read it on his own if I had just left it around, though; younger kids probably need an adult's involvement.

Not every topic in here is appealing to me--for example, I loved the chaos, fractals, and prime number sections and skimmed the sections on higher dimensions and topology. But the point is that Peterson gives a skilled description of each area of mathematics. There are enough pictures / illustrations and intuitive explanations / examples for a layman, but also enough "real" mathematics to inform one who has a decent background in math. And of course, the additional resources listed for each chapter would allow one to more formally pursue a topic that captures one's interest.

Overall a very fun read. And Peterson's brief treatment of the clash of computers with mathematical theorems is thought-provoking.

I have NOT read the updated edition yet but the original was quite good; surely the updated only improves upon it.

This is a terrific photo essay of the history of Historic Wallace Idaho and surrounding areas. Diefinately a must have for anyone who is local to the area

It is a clear outlined book with all the features of methodology you need. The authors elaborate about each subject in an understandable way. It is a good guideline for writing (doctoral) thesis or other academic paper.
They focus mainly on qualitative research but also the quantitative part is touched upon. If you are stucked during your writing proces this book can help, it give explicite examples how to handle things.

The 31 chapters in this seven-part book are articles that cover the spectrum of the Rational Unified Process (RUP) from history to epilouge. NOTE: Tthere is a not-so-hidden agenda to "sell the RUP" as the book unfolds. There is nothing particularly evil about that, but you need to know this when making a purchasing decision.

Part 1 is a brief three chapter introduction that gives the philosophy behind the RUP. This is followed by Part 2, which is a brief history, a large commercial success story and the unfolding of a goal (industrial-style development using OO techniques). There is one recurring feature that I like about this book - each part ends with a brief summary titled, "In Inar's Words", which provides deeper insights into the true spirit and philosophy of the RUP to augment the more practical information given in each chapter. Part 3 takes you a bit further into the evolution of the RUP, starting with a chapter titled "The Seeds of a Vision", and proceeds with a chapter that pleads for a cease fire in the methods war, and finally gets down to business with chapters on BPR with object technology, building components and reuse. Part 3 also makes a case for UML as an object modeling standard.

Process and tools are the theme of Part 4, which opens with an article discussing the software engineering process and support environment. This is a lead-in for three articles that cover "Reengineering Your Software Engineering Process", "Designing a Software Engineering Process", "Designing an Integrated Software Engineering Process Support Environment" and "Building Your Own Process by Specializing a Process Framework". These firmly define the RUP as a framework.

Part 5 is titled "Use-Case Engineering" and is comprised of seven articles on use cases. I particularly liked all of the articles in this part. They cover the basics through advanced techniques. Regardless of whether you are committed to the RUP it's probably a given that you have or will employ use cases and this section of the book alone is of value to a much wider audience.

My favorite part of the book, Part 6, covers architecture and large-scale systems. I have a professional interest in this topic and the seven articles are uniformly excellent. Again, even if you are not interested in the RUP, the material here fits within a number of methodologies and frameworks and is essential reading for anyone who is interested in architecture. Of course these articles are biased towards the RUP, and particularly how use cases can be employed in architecture. The strongest article is Chapter 28 titled "The Steps to an Architecture" and is the one from which I I learned a lot.

The final part, 7, is almost anti-climatic. there are two chapters titled "Objectory Is the Unified Process" and "The Unified Process Is Iterative", capped off with the recurring "In Ivar's Words" that ends each part of the book.

If you are exploring the RUP, or are seeking a framework of processes for OO development, this book will be interesting. If you are your organization's RUP champion then this is an essential book because it will strengthen your case for the RUP. The articles are short and they cover such a wide number of topics that there is something for everyone. I personally liked the way philosophy and practical aspects of the Unified Process were interwoven. However, some may feel that the book tried too hard to sell the Unified Process. For the right audience this is a 5-star resource.

Having read the Bio of Ian some years ago(first published in 1975),I have finally located a copy I am able to purchase for my collection.A wonderful insight to Ian written by his personal friend Ivar.

The authors make a convincing case for a pre-deluge, navigational civilization that had its base in tropical Central America. They do a great job of citing to well-published archeologists and demonstrating, like Graham Hancock does, the ethno-centrism and ego underlying their hypotheses and their myopic view of world history. I like this book for the boldness with which it challenges the academic establishment, and how it shows that an interdisciplinary study of ancient history debunks many of the commonly held assumptions about the origins of human civilization and culture.

On the other hand, the authors tend to overstate their case by being very repetitive, and they don't need to. The material is so provocative, it doesn't need rehashing ad nauseum. Additionally, the countless typos are a huge distraction. Taken together, the repetitiveness and the typos undermined what could be a very open and shut case.

Nonetheless, it's a well-conceived work, and solidly grounded in common sense. You won't find any fantastic, Von Daniken-esque intergalactic flights of fancy here. If ever there was a case for Occam's Razor in the case for, rather than against Atlantis, this would be it.

This work stands at the threshold of a new age of discovery. Erikson and Zapp deftly take apart the conventional view of history as Eurocentric and recent... with the Americas as a barbaric afterthought to civilization. The authors reveal a multitude of sites in Mesoamerica that hearken back to Plato's description of Atlantis. They reveal an ancient world that included seafarers from Africa, China, Polynesia, and the Mediterranean that met in a virtual melting pot in the Americas. The fun part is that they describe the locations of these ancient sites and their legacy in stone and myth. Some are as enticing as the awaited undersea site off Cuba. For the independent investigator this book is a must.

This is the best summer reading I've had in years. Forget the old stories about Atlantis, this book is an excellent resource for proof of transatlantic travel in ancient times. It is scholarly and meticulously researched. There is nothing sensational here, the authors do a fine job in connecting various ancient cultures. Great for research purposes.

This book provides an easy-to-digest introduction to use case development. I wish it had been available when I first began employing use cases. The consistent example of the order entry system -- neither too complex nor too simple -- was helpful in understanding and applying new concepts. However, the fictional example of a team of people meeting periodically to go through the use case exercises was amateurish at its best and painful at its worst. The editors could have cut it entirely, with no loss in readability or understanding. Good dialog is very difficult for even skilled novelists. In my humble opinion, it would have been far more effective had the author pushed the unintentially comical dialog into a full, campy diversion from the topic at hand. Despite this literary faux paxs (presumably provided by the second-billed Jason Winters), Geri Schneider writes with clarity and anticipates questions well.

After reading through the sixth chapter of this book the light bulb goes on and suddenly you start to understand how everything fits together using the UML and Unified Process (UP). This book is the how-to of applying UML and UP where as the Unified Modeling Language Users Guide and the Unified Software Development Process are the foundation on which to build this understanding. If you read the two previous mentioned books first and then read Applying Use Cases then the overall brilliance of using a modern use case driven, architecture-centric, iterative/incremental software development process will fall into place. This book is the missing link for UP and UML.

For every abstraction used in the development of software, there is a definition and a set of rules concerning how to use it. Unfortunately, being an abstraction, the definition is often open to interpretation and the rules are nebulous guidelines. The concept of use cases is one such abstraction. Therefore, the best way to explain them is to use them in an understandable context. That is the approach taken in this book.
The scenario is that a group of designers want to build a "simple" online ordering system. They begin with the proverbial conversation over coffee which contained the usual, "that system stinks and we could do better" phrase. From there, a general, but fairly complete process is presented. Every step in the sequence of requirements definitions is given. Many potential use cases are put forward, which is excellent, as this allows the authors to demonstrate the culling process, whereby some use cases are eliminated and others are combined.
The presentation is a combination of simulated dialog between the principals and more formal techniques of requirements capture such as actors and their diagrams. One thing that impressed me was the accuracy of the dialog. Anyone who has participated in the requirements capture process will experience a flashback. It is written with the beginner in mind, as very little programming background is needed to understand it. This is a thorough demonstration of how to create and apply use cases, without the depth that requires more formal notational techniques.
Use cases are sometimes very hard to teach, as is the case with most abstractions. In this book, the abstract is made concrete and if you read it you will learn a lot about use cases. However, you still may not be able to offer a precise definition.