Johnson's bottom line is that insofar as Hume's argument against miracles is persuasive, it's a triumph of rhetoric over reason. What's surprising, in Johnson's view, is just how wide the triumph has been. Nonetheless, Johnson argues convincingly, when Hume and his followers argue that no testimony could ever establish a miracle, they invariably end up begging one question or another. For example, Flew argues that in interpreting the "detritus of the past" -- including reports of miracles -- the "critical historian" must always give priority to the stock of natural laws we take ourselves to have established. The upshot is supposed to be that in any contest between science and history, history is bound to lose. But as Johhson points out, the experimental reports underlying our beliefs about the laws of nature are themselves part of this "detritus of the past." That means our belief in laws of nature depends on our belief that certain historical events have actually occurred -- a belief based on testimony.

Johnson himself accepts that various biblical miracles actually occurred, but one need not be a believer to take his point. And his point is that if we are allowed to take all our knowledge into account (that's the bit about holism), it would be very strange if a purely philosophical argument could show that NO testimony could possibly make it reasonable to believe in a miracle.

When you think about it, this is a rather modest conclusion. It's similar to the conclusion that John Earman arrives at in _Hume's Abject Failure_, though Earman's issues and arguments are more technical. Indeed, one is inclined to apply Hume's own slogan and say that a those who accept the Humean view ought to be conscious of a continuing miracle in their own persons, persuading them to accept something contrary to philosophical good sense, if not to custom and experience.

Suitable for 4-8 yrs. More authors, or college Enlish Composition courses should pay attention to this author. Angela Johsnon has a way of expressing mountains of information using few words. She has a rare gift for helping the reader to really identify, on a personal level, with the story.

The story is about a moving day for a family. That's it. But, the author tells the story in such a compelling way, that it will surely evoke a dialogue about this, or similar experiences between parents and children.

this book was comprehensive and easy to read and understand

A neat little book! You wouldn't fly a 747 without checklists; the frustration is always in the details. When something takes out the network, or the server isn't behaving itself, you won't be wading through philosphy or obtuse theory to get to the one thing you forgot to do.

Believe it or not, Networking with Netware for Dummies Quick Reference is readable and well organized, with enough context and breadth to help focus you on your next problem. Think of it as having a yellow-clad peer helping you out in a bind.

Why only four stars? Well, client installation and details are weak for 3.1x. Although we all know that 3.1x networks are fading, it's those older network quirks that are most likely to chomp the old gluteals.

Don't I wish there was an NT version of this book!

Buy it today..buy two of them, you're bound to have one stolen by an evil co-worker.

Issac Newton's third law states: For every action, there is an equal, but opposite reaction. This is the hidden theme within David Johnson's _Righteous Deception_. Johnson's "action" is the Allies' D-Day deception plan FORTITUDE and its tributary plan QUICKSILVER, the counter-intelligence effort to convince the Germans of the existence of the fictional First United States Army Group (FUSTAG), and that the real invasion would be aimed at the Pas de Calais. The German "reaction" centers around the activities of two key individuals: Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, Hitler's Chief of German Military Intelligence (Abwehr) and Colonel Alexis von Roenne, Chief of Fremde Heere West (FHW). Johnson provides a readable account of the better known machinations of Canaris; his counter-espionage activities providing vital intelligence to the British and his key role in the General's conspiracy to assassinate Hitler, Swarze Kapelle (Black Orchestra). It was when Canaris swayed the brilliant intelligence officer von Roenne to join the ranks of the conspirator's network, argues Johnson, that a critical partnership developed between the two men.Johnson places quite a bit of emphasis upon the role of von Roenne. Other authors (Fargo, _The Game of the Foxes_, and Cave Brown, _Bodyguard of Lies_) have documented von Roenne's official duties at FHW. Their consensus, however, is that Roenne was hoodwinked by the FORTITUDE deception, credited only with purposely inflating the Allied order of battle in order to get Hitler to reinforce the Normandy area. Johnson presents an opposing thesis. Johnson argues that Roenne was well aware that the FORTITUDE/QUICKSILVER deception to invade the Pas de Calais was bogus, but instead, led Hitler on to its validity in order that the Fuhrer keep the German 15th Army right where it was not needed for as long as possible. Johnson states that Canaris and Roenne were the flip-side of the FORTITUDE/QUICKSILVER coin. Johnson concludes had it not been for the duel-role of these two men, Canaris feeding valuable informaton to the Allies, and Roenne feeding Hitler false intelligence, Operation FORTITUDE, the D-Day landings and subsequent Normandy campaign would most likely have ended in failure.This book is timely, given the criticism levelled at America's current military intelligence community. Johnson places a feather in the cap of Allied deception during Word War II, however, he also creates a strange dichotomy in the process. One the one hand, Johnson shows how the Allies were successful in pulling off the deception and eventual victory in Normandy. On the other hand, he has Canaris and Roenne portrayed as willing accomplices whispering under their cloak and dagger: "You did not win on your own, we let you win." Whether or not one agrees with Johnson's conclusions, this book is an easy read and the author maintains his argument solidly throughout. For those wishing to delve deeper into his sources, however, Johnson does not make it easy. He relies primarily on secondary sources, biographies and memoirs of all the key players on both sides. He lists documentary evidence housed both here at the Eisenhower Library and the Bundesarchiv-Militararchiv in Germany. Unfortunately he does not cite these sources specifically in the text. Fans of World War II counter-espionage and intelligence may want to add this book to their collection for its different take and readability.

David Barrett's book is simple to understand. He gives you the facts of what influenced johnson to take the actions he did. I found it very informative.

This is a good collection of literature from the Enlightenment to the early 20th century. Some of the choices were wuite interesting such as Wuthering Heights as the example of the Victorian novel, (I, myself, would have chosen Jane Eyre), but all in all this is a well put-together collection. The biographical information before each author is also interesting and puts the works into context. This is amust-have for English majors and literature fanatics alike.

For all the hype surrounding the celebrity revelations in "American Rhapsody", its biggest shock is the excellence of its writing. This book will not languish on a shelf; the pages turn themselves as the narrative gains its thrilling, roller-coaster momentum. Form follows function: Joe Eszterhas has produced a deleriously self-indulgent read about the most self-indulgent public figures of our time.

Eszterhas's language is more than bawdy, but thanks to characters like Bill Clinton, Monica Lewinsky and even Sharon Stone, so are the events it narrates. The minutiae of the Lewinsky scandal is made surprisingly fresh when written over with Eszterhas's super-snide commentary, as he parses the contents of the "Starr Report" to produce vivid character studies of all the players. It is soon difficult not to regard the actual historical players as mere sock-puppets, only capable of speaking freely through the mouth of Eszterhas.

Eszterhas has an extraordinary gift for appearing to voice the cynical subtext behind the most famous political utterances of the 1990s. Bill Clinton is Eszterhas's alter-ego, he believes, a fellow rock-n-roller who concealed just enough of his nature to make it to the White House. Nicknaming Linda Tripp and Lucienne Goldberg "The Ratwoman" and "The Bag Lady of Sleaze", Eszterhas plumbs the Clinton years for a whole new depth of black comedy. (Indeed, given Goldberg's wealth, I'm not even sure what "The Bag Lady of Sleaze" means, strictly speaking, but this new appelation locks in with the permanence of a well-chosen middle name.)

Reaching into Election 2000, Eszterhas's outrageous portrait of George W. Bush as a rattlesnake, Alpo-male version of his father is unforgettable. You will never see W. Bush the same, once you have seen "com-pay-ssionate conservative" printed as it is spoken, which is an act of startling subversiveness that none of the zillions of Campaign 2000 journalists dared to perform. A single, Texan-accented word becomes the keyhole through which we peer into W.'s "philosophy". As W. is fond of saying, perhaps we should "take him at his word".

Fact or fiction, in the final analysis? Who cares, when the reading is so diverting. Eszterhas taps into some deep poetic truths yielded from his close study of the American political scene. These poetic truths are larger than those yielded from any single historical text, hewn of majestic, marble fact. In a solitary volume, Eszterhas brings us all the essentials of the politics of our time.

Sure it's sleazy and overemphasizes the gory details (and that's putting it mildly!). But Eszterhas can write in a way that is not immediately apparent from having seen Showgirls et al. This books is SATIRE and like it or not captures a spirit of a generation that puts the whole Lewinsky fiasco in the proper perspective. This book reminds me of Wolfe's "Radical Chic", Thompson's "...Hell's Angels" or even Roth's "Our Gang".

I actually felt sorry for Clinton after having read this book. He's a creature of his own appetites and is unfortunately all too representative of his own cross-section of society. Eszterhas makes the observation that Clinton's true peer group is the rock-n-roll, far left set that ended up invading hollywood, music and almost every other segment of society---why not the white house, too?

You gotta love the "Rat Woman" caricature. It sums up many people's feelings so well. My personal favorite was his not-so-subtle characterization of Nixon as "The Night Creature". I liked his Nixon much better than Oliver Stone's.

I might be smoking something (without inhaling, of course), but I think that this book shows real talent and a deft hand at skewering that has been absent from the literary scene for a couple of decades.

I enjoyed it very much, even though I was prepared to sneer. It did however, need some serious editing and would have been a much, much better book if about 25% of it had been cut.

Just when we thought we were out, they pull us back in!! (With apologies to the Godfather!) So you thought you'd had enough of the Clinton/Lewinsky shenanigans? Nah! Not till you read this wickedly funny account. Joe Eszterhas has written a big nasty hoot of a book. It's a "take no prisioners" account of the sorry and sordid affair that shook the sacred halls of DC and scared the pants back on some of Washington's more notable philanderers. The pace is fast and the book leaps back and forth in time, telling the story in two voices, that of Eszterhas himself, and in boldface type, that of his demented alter ego, the little man who lives inside him. I don't even want to think about WHERE inside him this little guy has taken up residence. Eszterhas slashes and burns indiscriminantly, trashing both LA and DC. He knows where the bodies are buried and does not hesitate to tell us. Over and over he makes the point that Hollywood is the place Clinton really belongs, saying that his kind of behavior is the norm there. The gossip is hot and lowdown and probably at least 75% true. If you like your tell-all books wicked and witty this will definitely be to your taste. I loved it even though I hated myself in the morning!

I found this to be an excellent book for those with a physics phobia. All theories are explained using simple mathematics thus making it easier to understand. There are several questions worked out with thorough explinations in every chapter and the text explains how each new idea is related to other concepts learned earlier in the book and/or chapter.

There are couple of weaknesses in this text that stand out in my mind. First, there is a section in each chapter that quizes you on conceptual questions but there are no answers in the back of the book making it difficult to be certian about your work. Second, the web page associated with this book is riddled with errors and is not much of a tool. In spite of these problems I would recomend it to someone just starting physics.

While struggling with Giancoli's terrible book, I looked for a better textbook online, and found three other candidates. After buying them all and reviewing them, I returned all of them except for this one.

This is a great physics textbook for those preparing for the MCAT on their own, or for those in an algebra-based physics class. Compared to Giancoli's text, it is fantastic. Why?

1. Plenty of example problems while reading, fully explained in an intelligent and careful manner. Not two or three per chapter, but sometimes ten or more. Again, with exhaustive descriptions.

2. Clear, concise text that truly educates you as you read. Not a rehashed summary of familiar concepts, with important "givens" left out. Some text book authors are simply capable of writing text that teaches (Ege is a great example, for Organic Chemistry). Some should not be writing at all. To be good at physics problems, you first have to understand the concepts. Really understand them. This book explains them the way they need to be explained.

3. Excellent diagrams and tables. At first, I thought the ubiquitous graphics were just eye-candy, as they are (as always, refer to the worst example) in Giancoli's book. But every diagram is useful, and clearly explains a concept.

4. Student Solutions Manual. The most frustrating thing about physics seems to be the unavailability of solutions manuals to go with textbooks. Why this is so, for a field of study that relies so heavily on detailed explanations of problems, makes no sense to me. For all of the other sciences I've studied for preparation for medical school (including calculus), I've easily been able to get my hands on manuals detailing all problems and their solutions. In the realm of physics, though, there seems to exist an elitist attitude that only instructors should have these 'magic books', from which they will dole out a solution or two to desperate students. How colossaly stupid. This textbook is somewhat subject to this failing, in that the Student Solutions Manual contains answers to "selected" problems (roughly 21% per chapter). However, the fact that it has a solutions manual at all lifts it above the other offerings, especially -- you guessed it -- Giancoli's horrible book, which offers no manual to speak of (the "Study Guide" is a useless piece of garbage with no solved problems; don't buy it). In addition, though the solutions manual lacks all the answers, the ones it does have are well-explained and well-drawn, similar to what's in the text. Hopefully one day a physics textbook author will decide to stop treating students like monkeys and publish a great book that educates via giving as much information as possible, not rationing it. This is surely an antiquated practice whose time should end now.

For a fuller understanding of some of the concepts, I also recommend buying a calculus-based text to supplement this one. "Fundamentals of Physics" (same publisher -- Wiley) is a good (and popular) book. I like the 5th edition more than the 6th (it seems less cluttered), although the Student Solutions Manual for the 5th is out of print. If your calculus is rusty, there's hardly any in the first half of the book, and what is there is not complicated -- standard derivatives and integrals. It's a good book to have for gaining a very solid understanding of the concepts, although of a level above what's needed for the MCATs.

Finally, the best review book for MCAT physics is called just that: NOVAs "MCAT Physics". Schaum's outline for pre-Med physics is so lousy, it's amazing. What's even more amazing is how uneven the quality of education materials is. You really have to look around, unfortunately.

This is an excellent book for a high school level physics course or a less than rigorous Physics I course at the college level. It contains no math beyond algebra/trig. For a more rigorous treatment, the book to get is the Serway/Beichner text.

Many wrox books are great, but this one was a disappointment. As an "classic ASP" developer I found the examples unhelpful and impractical, the information spread out, the request and response object - used constantly in classic ASP - were so poorly explained I still have no idea how they function in ASP.net. I am sure that ASP.NET has many important benefits that make it superior to Classic ASP, but after reading almost 600 pages (!) I feel I do not understand how to achieve the same result I can easily get in Classic ASP. Not recommended.

I wanted to create a simple web application with this book that would allow for authenticated users to add content and allow non-authenticated users to simply view content. The book was perfect for setting up the the database connections, and web forms. The book fell on its face with security. The concepts were included and some examples were included, but there was no information about user roles when using forms based authentication. One feature I think most ASP.Net applications are going to have is authentication so I found it distressing that it was given such incomplete coverage. To get more information you need to look at one of two other Wrox books - Beginning Web Programming with Visual Basic.Net and Visual Studio.Net, or ASP.Net Security. The first book covers mostly the same information as this book, but goes into more detail on security. It too though is not complete. With the inclusion of about five more pages in this book it would have been complete from my viewpoint.

First of all, a good number of my undergraduates like this book as it introduces the bare bones required to get something up and running quite quickly. The downside of the book, from my persusal of it, is that it is less even than it could be, or perhaps should be. In many chapters (especially the crucial early ones) examples are often introduced and developed before their key constructs are properly explained. This is simply confusing to naive readers and highly irritating. For instance, the earliest ASP.net script uses "asp:label" without explaining the syntax or semantics for a another few dozen pages.

Unfortunately this is a bit of trend throughout the book and at the very least makes it frustrating. However, once you allow for this, (and it's a big allowance to make) the book is very handy.

It has bundles of scripts that anyone involved in web work will find interesting and useful. You can quibble with some of these (the login scripting for example) contra other books such as Professional ASP.NET, but I suspect this is a byproduct of committee authorship.

The book is clearly aimed at the learner so don't expect Enterprise quality insights into server management. Given the huge range of architectures and technologies available to the developer, producing any 'true' learner book is a considerable challenge. If you need a book for coursework alone, then this will probably meet most of your needs. If you earn your living with the .NET and its companions, then you need some supplementary texts.