I purchased this book expecting it to cater to someone beyond University level. However, the contents clearly cater for high school level learning and therefore provided little value to me. If you are looking to strengthen your technical and analytical skills look somewhere else. If you want basic training, give it a try.

This insightful book proved worth its weight in gold. A must read for any entrepreneur looking for serious funding.

Despite the closely guarded nature of the MMPI's questions, they're all here--yes, all of them--in an appendix. What were they thinking? Anyway, this is the main reason to buy the book. Crazy, eh? The test is misused quite often anyway.

In a critical area of MMPI-2 interpretation which is often overlooked Butcher, Graham, Williams & Ben-Porath have covered a topical area which serves not only as an adjunct to traditional clinical interpretation, but offers the serious MMPI and MMPI-2 scholar the tools to demonstrate competency in clinical interpretation of the MMPI-2 Personality inventory.

Although I found philosophical challenges, (an astute attorney will point out the technical differences between a "test" and an "inventory" -- a "test" has right and wrong answers, an inventory does not), I found the work to be of a generally scholarly nature and a most welcome addition to my bookshelf. The authors did their research, but then what else would be expected from the primary author, Butcher, who has previously spent time in remote rural areas giving MMPI's to members of serpent-handling religious cults?

I was impressed with the thoroughness of the volume. Four stars in lieu of five, only because of some terms which were used are not consistent with appropriate terminology for traditional psychometrics, and an error found in a technical aspect of the work (information available on request.)

This volume should be required reading for psychologists who desire to demonstrate competence in use of the MMPI-2. However, the MMPI remains, in my opinion, the instrument of choice and one or more of the authors have certainly contributed to that assessment instument as well.

It should be pointed out that throughout the development/revision of the MMPI into the current MMPI-2 it was reported the changes were made, in part, because of antiquated wording. However, the authors reveal the MMPI-2 revision retained the original wording for item 369. Go figure. Worse yet, that item seems to also inappropriately substitute the word "feeling" for what is actually, fairly clearly, a "belief". The revision was developed by a team of psychologists, whom the authors could have pointed out should have "known better."

Overall however, an excellent reference for the competent psychological clinican. The quality and research behind this publication is apparant.

JD #30

I was hoping for a factual/investigative account of the tragedy of the Atlanta child murders. Instead, this book seemed to be an essay written on the problems of racial injustice and ignorance in Atlanta, America, and the world. Nothing wrong with that, but then I take into account that the essay was written in a most meandering and disjointed fashion, full of incomprehensible references, with an overwhelming tone of arrogance. Baldwin is right, everyone else is wrong and to blame. Not persuasive, just a waste of time.

This is a difficult read because Baldwin's thoughts come across like a man too perplexed to ask "Why?". And so there are many crosscurrent thoughts, parentheticals that are not in parenthesis, and sheer rage. The question: who could be murdering the children in Atlanta? And has the years of systematic oppression and racism made it possible for a black man to be become that cruel? Has the oppressed become the oppressor?

And I can understand Baldwin's great perplexity...he wants to point the finger at the American way of life. How years and years of being considered not human has affected the mindset of the average person of color. And of having to come through identity crises, legal crises, social crises to be confronted with who...? A person who is this insane enough to be killing innocent kids? Why have we struggled so much, Baldwin seems to be asking, to create this monster?

And so, it is another probing we received from the always philosophical, questioning, always provocative Baldwin.

Why read the book now? Well, although this murderer has been found and given punishment based on the fullest extent of the law, the questions remains.

How have we come to this?

This book appears to have been slapped together with less than two weeks of work. I was constantly confused by discrepancies between the descriptions and the photographs. Lichens described as bright green, chartreuse, orange, red, etc., were all about the same dull shade of gray-brown in the pictures. This may be due to poor photography, poor reproduction, or the fact that the lichens pictured are old dessicated herbarium specimens rather than living lichens in their natural setting.

This little book of pretty pictures of lichens is slightly larger than a Reader's Digest but not quite as thick, so it will fit into your backback but not into your pocket. It tells you what you want to know without getting too botanical and will add greatly to what you will see on your next hike, and the one after that, and the one after that, and the one after ----

"Dry and testing" is a perfectly accurate description. Maybe it is becuase I have a bias against most twentieth century music, but I really have a distaste for this book. I must say, the exercises are good. They helped me understand the material much more quickly than simply reading about it or listening to the author ramble on - he's dry and testing too. I suppose this book is decent enough for a class - given that the teacher is creative and uses other sources as well. I wouldn't want to keep it around afterwards as a reference.

This is a workbook generally covering all major twentieth century developments in composition. However, it heavily concentrates on rigid objective theories which analyse 20th century music, and as a result can tend to be a little dry and testing for the reader at times. The author also tends to overcomplicate simple concepts ocassionally. Nevertheless, it is interesting to see how music theorists have attempted to grapple with highly complex areas such as twelve-tone theory and neotonal harmony.

Seeking enlightenment? Seek somewhere else? This "update" to the classic is a classic waste of time. Unlike the original, you will give it to your library to write it off on your taxes.

This book is a collection of a series of lectures Charles Taylor gave reflecting on the legacy of William James. In thinking about James' work, Taylor reflects on the tensions between private religous experience and public religious expression; the problem of belief and unbelief; and the implications our religious beliefs have for our political organization. It is almost impossible to do justice to the richness of Taylor's thought in a short review.

Taylor's first task is to situate James within his own religious context. James inherited the strand of religious belief that was quintessentially Protestant -- with an emphasis on private feeling as against public expression. For James, the ultimate religious experience is private and fundamentally individual. This precludes James from fully grasping the types of religious expression that are more communally-based.

Taylor's second task is to reflect on James personal struggle with the question of belief and unbelief. In James' day a strong argument was being made that religious belief is intellectually dishonest. Taylor offers a good summary of James' defense of belief as a viable choice.

Finally, Taylor integrates James' thought with the question of how our religious belief interacts with our political structures. Taylor offers an invaluable historical narrative of the variety of relationships between religion and state that we have seen in the past. In doing so, he makes our current dilemmas much clearer. We are moving from a country that has a broad consensus in some sort of belief, but which allows individuals to join whatever church best gives expression to that experience, to a country in which there is no such broad consensus. If there is no shared understanding of the sacred, we are forced to ground our political structures in the purely human. It is not yet clear whether the new project will succeed, but in his reflections on the tensions between belief and unbelief and their relationship to our political organization, Taylor can only enhance our discussions as we move forward into this virgin territory.

Taylor's book does presume that the reader has a fairly sophisticated historical sense. And he often makes reference to the situation in France, which can be a bit opaque to those who lack a basic familiarity with French culture. Indeed, he often quotes from French writers without offering a translation. Still, the book offers valuable insights, even to those without the background to fully grasp everything he writes.

It is assumed that missions have gone wrong, and that their mind can be changed. Regrettably, the former is true ¡V to a point, and the latter is questionable. This comment belies how I read the book. The blame does not lie only with "missions" but also with the church as a whole and you cannot turn the agencies around without a radical transformation of the church. The world has indeed changed, and the historic tides of philosophy, religion, education, science, economics, and migration have left and continue to leave their marks on the church and missions. The authors seek to convey that North Americans are „h captive to cultural realities, and for a long while have been driven by the managerial mindset of modernity „h maladjusted to the existence, potentiality and role of the younger churches „h reductionist and dichotomistic in definition and application of the Gospel, resulting in evangelism devoid of transformation and discipleship (pp57 and 64)

Missions therefore need to „h break free of the mindset of modernity and espouse certain recovered values found in post-modernism and the "postmodern consciousness" (p48) „h validate the role of the local church and enter into strategic partnerships with them „h discover an holistic Gospel which includes both social transformation and personal discipleship.

The authors present their thesis in a post-modern format, through an introductory narrative. This narrative is in the form of a hypothetical case study, which is both irritating and unconvincing. This ineffectiveness is partly because the contrived story leaves the reader feeling manipulated ¡V "set up" for some application that will follow! The story functions as an argument for the case presented, but there is no fair argument inherent in the story. While this approach has its post-modern merit, it obscures or fails to disclose adequately the ramifications of the issues being addressed. It is this lack of significant analysis of the issues rather than the issues themselves which caused me concern.

Issues raised, needs exposed Despite allusions to several significant historical events, the authors tend to lump everything under the reproach of modernity. Our ecclesiastical and philosophical heritage is much more complex and much older than the Enlightenment. While it is true that modernity has invaded Christianity (pp. 61ff), it is not the only virus that has infected our theology and ecclesiastical life and practice over the centuries.

There is almost an uncritical acceptance of the value and benefits of post-modernism. "Postmodernism, at least in its relatively early stages represents a swing that McLaren and others view as one of the greatest opportunities of history for the Christian faith" (See p.58 and the outcomes outlined on pp. 60-61). While there are benefits and new opportunities in post-modernism they are not to be welcomed uncritically and without adequate theological reflection. Engel and Dyrness state that modernity was "a positive and liberating influence in some ways, [but] also proved to be dangerous to the health of the church" (p.61). Likewise with regard to post-modernism.

This book also lacks an adequate analytical critique of the western church. The authors' do give some helpful insights into a "fresh vision for missions has grown out of a renewed understanding of what God has called the church to be and to do" (p. 134), but it is too general and optimistic. There are individuals and churches, which are in the process of rediscovery of the essential character and life of the church. There are people and communities of believers who are struggling to take that discovery of the nature and functions of the church and contextualize these in 21st century North America.

There are a few prophetic voices crying out in the infertile or polluted wilderness of traditional "Christianism". There are those asking, "Where has the gospel not touched or adequately transformed North American culture?" There are the ones and twos who ¡V like a native Canadian ¡V ask, "What did you give up of your culture when you became a Christian?"

It is the North American church (still modern, but becoming post-modern) which is expressed in and through the missions which Engels and Dyrness criticize. And missions will never be able to make the right changes at the fundamental mindset level, unless those changes take place in a church renewed and transformed according to Biblical rather than cultural or philosophical norms. "The changed world situation... suggests a new metaphor for understanding missions. It is no longer appropriate to send missionaries and even resources from a dominant center of political or economic influence to some distant and exotic place. Indeed world structures have come to reflect much more a network of relationships that defy a fixed sense of place... As a result, a better metaphor... is a network ¡V conceived as mutual exchange between multiple centers of missionary influence." (p49)

As a retired medical doctor living, and working informally, here in Honduras, I find this to be a fairly accurate account of the futility of the activities of American churches, with their expensive spiritually blessed "mission trips." I am very actively involved with 4 - 5 different indiginous churches' social action projects here. Thankfully, I am non-traditional enought to be learning FROM them how to help them help each other. (In fact my attention was directed to the book by a local Honduran priest who has been here for more than 26 years.)

Very few Americans are intellectually or spiritually, capable of profitting from this book.

I, too, found the fictional case study presented to be of little value, but did not find it significantly distracting.

However, in the few pages in which the authors described and praised the "mega-ministry" of Perimeter Church in Atlanta, Georgia, I thought I could not help but wonder if the story did not get inserted by mistake from the word processor of the Public Relations or Fund Raising Departments of Perimeter Church itself. How they could present Perimeter Church as anything but an another example of American excess, that makes anything vaguely reminiscent of the Gospel a travesty, I do not know. Within that example, they again praise a sister 17,000 member congregation in Guatamala City, which cannot be anything other than another example of the ineffective Christianity that the book is warning against. A "gospel" with has no "good news" for anybody, let alone somebody in trouble. I think they could have safely used these 2 churches as examples of what they were speaking against rather than their fictional account.

So puzzled am I by this lapse, that I'd like to hear from the authors themselves as to whether they are serious about the rest of the content of the book in view of their praise for this church in Atlanta.

Dyrness and Engel provide the best synthesis of current shifts in mission that I've seen in years. They have analyzed some of the most relevant cutting edge material in mission and produced a much needed resource that is very fresh and incredibly readable. If you're looking to the future of mission "Changing the Mind of Missions" is a must read.

I have been concerned about finding an analytical book on "The Undoing Of James Jesus Angleton," as counterintelligence has been one of the strongest enemies which clear thinking had to face during his lifetime, and for far too long since then. Trying to understand this on an individual level which is much more familiar in the literature of our time, SPYTIME by William F. Buckley, Jr. uses the style of the typical mystery detective to muse on the inner confusion which drove the ideology of secrecy in search of "The Golitsyn Epiphany: the United States Government continued unaware of the lengths to which Soviet policy was based on persistent, systematic, dogged disinformation and deception." (p. 144). Chapter 56 covers Angleton's last 45 minutes on the job, from DCI Colby's "Effective at noon today you are relieved of all duties," (p. 299) but Colby didn't actually say that his job was being terminated, so naturally James Jesus Angleton kept thinking along the same lines as throughout the book, obsessing on what is going to happen to things in his safe at "almost two in the morning." (p. 302). The final chapter is clearly from Angleton's point of view. "I am doing an important exercise." (p. 303). In the end, the nature of Angleton's personal obsession is made perfectly clear, but the vast stretched time in which the book is set, skipping from December, 1962 (Chapter 36, p. 205) to January, 1966 (Chapter 51, p. 271) to November, 1972 (Chapter 52, p. 276) to February, 1973 (Chapter 53, p. 281) to 1974 for the final chapters, manages to miss the length of time the agency lost to confusion in unnecessary disputes, as: "On the matter of Nosenko, for instance, I [Angleton] ruled that his credentials were suspect." (pp. 291-2). If ever an agency did not want to believe what a Soviet agent was saying (the best example of a perfect failure since the great tragedy "Oedipus Rex"), it was whenever Nosenko was talking to the CIA, but the ability of intelligence to defeat itself is not what this book is about.

A very decent book and an interesting read, but Buckley's
fictional account of some of Jim Angleton's anti-communist
work lacks enough detail to really prove engaging.
As a mystery, the story seems a little weak, but passable.
A more glaring omission is Buckley's usual detailed knowledge
and background, and we are allowed only the slightest insight
into Angleton's thinking and motivation. It's especially glaring here because the author has significant knowledge
of the events and eras covered, but he has chosen not to share
it with the reader.
Angleton was the CIA's Chief of Counterintelligence for 20
years, and he was one of the leading anti-communist fighters
of all time, and he devoted his life to that cause, and we
have to wish Buckley would have shared significantly more of
his insights and knowledge. Even in a fictionalized account,
the author could have easily added far more interesting details
and stories.
This work is barely an introduction to either the life and times
of the famous Angleton or to the enormous anti-communist
effort so many Westerners made for decades.
This is a book to read in between more serious pursuits.

William Buckley has in his later years developed a surprising talent for fiction, and he couldn't have picked a more intriguing subject to focus it on with this book than James Angleton. How does one portray a man like Angleton? The spy novel genre, as epitomized by writers like John Le Carre, tends towards heavily convoluted plots, language, and characterizations in the effort to force the literary vehicle itself into a representation of the dark and twisted ethos of espionage. And one might have expected Angleton, as the quintessential cold-war spymaster, to have inspired just such a brooding study. However, Buckley will have none of that with his book, and taking the opposite tack, he crafts his novel with the same crisp lucidity that animates his political commentary. Employing spare sentence structure, sprightly characterization and fast-paced narrative, he draws a portrait of Angleton that has nothing sinister or even particularly mysterious about it. The legendary CIA counterintelligence chief emerges from this as entirely human - flawed and quirky, but brilliant, loyal to friends and motivated by a sincere patriotism. Underlying the story, however, is a kind of sad commentary by Buckley on the tragic nature of espionage as a profession. Much like a good cop corrupted by the violence of a high-crime neighborhood, Angleton by the end of his career seems helpless against the pressures driving him into a paranoid pathology. Frustrated by his failures to detect genuine traitors in his own ranks, Angleton becomes suspicious of everyone and begins voicing reckless accusations. This being historical fiction, of course, we all know how the story ends. When the CIA comes under hostile scrutiny during the post-Watergate period, Angleton has few friends left able or willing to defend him from his detractors, and he is sacked from the Agency he had devoted his life to. In what must have been the bitterest of ironies for him, attacks on his own loyalty are among the charges that doom him. Buckley touches on all this only very lightly at the end of this short work, but the simple brushstrokes paint a poignant picture. Spytime is a very good book and I recommend it.

Some of the other reviewers have already touched upon my major complaints:

1. If you need to read the first part of the book (Chapters 1-7) you probably aren't ready for design patterns as a concept. This eliminates almost 100 pages from the book's 363 pages.

2. The code samples aren't C#, they're Java. I'm not a .NET evangelist or anything like that - it's just that if I want a Java book, I'll buy a Java book. A book about C# & .NET should at least make an attempt to follow M$'s 'best practices' regarding coding style.

3. The organization of the book feels sloppy and haphazard. The best example of this: what is a so-short-as-to-be-almost-useless chapter "UML Diagrams" doing wedged in between "Inheritance" and "Arrays, Files, and Exceptions in C#"? The author totally glosses over UML (which might have been helpful for the uninitiated), providing little to no practical information, and seems to be making a sales pitch for WithClass, the software used to produce the UML diagrams in the book.

All in all, I was pretty disappointed. My recurring sense was that the author couldn't tell if he was writing a book targeting intermediate or beginning programmers, with the end result being a book that really won't do either a whole lot of good.

The sole redeeming feature of the book is that it does provide a quick and dirty overview to the 23 design patterns described in the seminal GoF. For someone entirely new to design patterns as a concept this might prove helpful. However, even this could have been achieved in fewer pages for a lot less money with better code. And as a C# reference, while the author does make a point of stating that this isn't intended to be a C# reference, he goes on to state that you "...will find, however, that this is a fairly useful tutorial in object-oriented programming in C# and provides a good overview of how to program in C#." (pg. 8) To call this stretching the truth would be kind; I returned this book the day after I bought it.

As a _tutorial_ reader, I expected more easy to understand examples. For example, examples in Chapter 9 are not very straitforward.
A lot of sample codes failed to use nice C# features.
Good UML illustration. Good screen shots of programs. They are very helpful in quick understanding the intention of a design pattern.
I give a 2 stars, lower than the quality of some Googleable on-line tutorials.

This book offers one of the better introductions to C# that I have come across. There are any number of C# introductions out there, but I have seen only one other book that shows how to do object-oriented programming (OOP) with C#.

OOP addreses one of the real shortcomings of C# and VS.Net--their Visual Basic heritage. Visual Basic was certainly easy to use; slap some controls on a form, add some code to the controls' event handlers, and you had yourself a working program. The problem is, this simplicity encouraged really ugly programs that couldn't be changed or extended. To use a house analogy, you couldn't simply repaint your kitchen. You had to tear it down and build a new one.

That's one of the main reasons why VB developed a reputation as a 'toy' language, and why 'real' programmers turned to Java in droves. It offers much of the simplicity of VB, but it encourages the creation of cohesive, loosely coupled objects that are easily extended, maintained, and reused.

C# has retained almost all of VB's simplicity, with predictable results. C# web sites are full of slapdash apps that whip up a few forms and plug in some code. C# is in real danger of becoming another toy.

And yet, C# offers a rich set of abstaction tools. With these tools, a developer can create real applications, in a fraction of the time required to do it in C++. The same language can be used to build junk, or really elegant applications.

The key to using C# effectively is OOP. The 'Gang of Four' (GoF) design patterns discussed in this book provide proven solutions to common OOP issues. If you understand the GoF patterns, you have a good understanding of OOP. It's that simple. And that's what Cooper sets out to provide.

In the first seven chapters of this book, Cooper does as good a job as I have seen of introducing C# and OOP. If you have no previous experience with OOP, you will probably need another book to get you started. I'd recommend 'Object Design' by Rebecca Wirfs-Brock. If you have been exposed to OOP, but you are not fully conversant with abstraction and its role in your designs, I strongly recommend 'Agile Software Development' by Bob Martin.

Those books will prepare you for Cooper's explanation and demonstration of the 23 GoF patterns. Cooper recommends getting the original GoF 'Design Patterns' book (Gamma et al) to use as a companion reference, and I think that's a good idea. What Cooper does best is describe how to implement the patterns in C#-- how to get from design to working code.

This book has been criticized for the style of its pattern implementations. Some reviewers consider them simple Java ports, and others have criticized the fact that they do not always use all the bells and whistles provided by C#. I agree that the implementations owe a lot to Java, and I might even go so far as to consider them ports.

And that, I think, is one of the book's great strengths. For it results in code that is highly portable between Java and C#. Even if you are married to C#, you will at some point have a client who is just as married to Java. Reusing your C# components is going to be a lot easier if you follow the sort of cross-platform style in this book. And if you are a Java programmer considering C#, it makes this book a great reference for migrating pattern-based solutions from Java to C#.

I have a few quibbles with the book, but these are mainly editorial. There are code listing typos, but apparently no web site with corrections. The UML editor provided on the CD-ROM to read its UML files doesn't seem to read them. And the UML editor is a much weaker editor than several other UML editors on the market. I would not consider it a top-tier product.

Subject to these reservations, I would strongly recommend this book to anyone learning C# and OOP. I wish it had been around a year an a half ago, when I was trying to learn both at the same time.

'48 is as about as action packed as you can get. It starts off running and never really stops, the book is almost exhausting to read.

The plot is pure b-movie pulp. Hitler uses an unstable chemical weapon that, ala The Andromeda Strain, turns blood to dusty clots in the veins of victims. Too bad it spreads and kills everyone in the world, except for a lucky few. The luckiest of the dead died quick, in a matter of minutes. But some live on, clots slowly forming throughout their bloodstream and causing gangrene and other nasty and terribly slow ways to die. It is from these last few, and quite insane, hangers on that our mixed bag of immune heroes must alternate between fleeing and fighting.

Most of the novel uses plot points taken from either the cult classic Mad Max or the cheese classic The Omega Man. It's a quick enough read that is easy to forget. Mr. Herbert may have written far better books, but this one is as about as exciting as a plate of literary whipped cream can get. Recommended to those looking for light, fast paced, and exciting reading.

Imagine the scenario... End of WWII Herr Hitler realizes he's in for a pasting so calls in his final weapon of mass destruction - a killer virus, which he drops on London. Unfortunately the wind is in the wrong direction and he gets a load of it back in his face!! Fairly improbable, you may say, but then most horror stories are based on the improbable. It's the job of the writer to get the reader to suspend the usual parameters of disbelief for a while. And nobody does it better than James Herbert.

So what we're left with is a small group of people, some of whom are totally immune to the virus and some of whom are only partially immune. The bad guys (the partially immune) would dearly like to get their hands on Hoke, an American pilot who is totally immune thanks to his AB-neg blood, in the hope that they can exchange his blood for theirs. (A sort of primitive vampire-type bood transfusion?). Meantime, Hoke races about on his Matchless 350 motor bike (I used to have one of those!!) followed by his faithful hound.

As always, Herbert conjours up amazing descriptions - his haunting vision of a Ghost City with the hotels, subways and buses filled with the long-dead and dried-out. The plot hurtles forward on all cylinders, action scene upon action scene, until you feel ready to burst. And that's why I felt I could only give four stars. I needed a bit of a reprieve somewhere in the middle of the book - time to pause for breath if you like - but I never got it.

Harness yourself to your chair, Herbert has written another killer.

OK, most of the previous reviews here have been negative. Look folks, this ain't high literature. I believe some of the problem may lie in the expectation of this being a horror novel. It isn't. This is strictly a Alternate Reality/Science Fiction novel. So take it for what it is: light, escapist reading. This is the first (and so-far only) book by Mr. Herbert that I have read, and I found it to be lots of fun. It's the kind of summer beach read that is fun and doesn't require a great deal of grey matter exercising. Although only one other reviewer mentioned this, the only thing I may have against it, was also one of it's more attractive aspects: that of it's obvious similarities to Richard Matheson's I Am Legend. This is without a doubt one of my all time favorite Horror/Science Fiction novels, and reading '48 gave me the unique feeling of reading another take on the same story that you sometimes get in well-tracked genre pieces like this. In fact, I think the best way to review this book is to compare it to two of the film versions of Mr. Matheson's wonderful novel: First there is Charlton Heston's Omega Man released in '71. This was a fast-paced, action-packed Hollywood take on the novel. On the other hand, Vincent Price's The Last Man On Earth from '64 was a much better, darker and closer to the source example. Both are good in and of themselves, yet also different in their take on the story. That doesn't make either one bad, just different. When all is said and done, I must say that it is in fact a fun read, and perfect for summer reading. Pick it up and decide for yourself.