Jacquelyn Dowd Hall and the other writers of _Like a Family_ created a tour-de-force study of cotton mill towns in the American South. It is a very rare book that captures such a clear, complex sense of history; Hall balances a careful sense of detail with a sweeping picture of life in the cotton-mill South by using a combination of oral and written sources. This book is perfect for scholars and non-scholars alike, and richly conjures a full picture of this period in American history.

Like a Family interestingly and accurately portrays life in southern cotton mills and mill towns in the central southeast, primarily North Carolina. The book examines family, work and community life; it is a social, cultural and political history. Working in the mills was harsh, dangerous and monotonous. Most employees left farms and a rural way of life to toil in the mills; for these people living under the constant eye of mill management was humiliating at times. The mills controlled not only the worker's jobs, but their housing, churches, schools, entertainment and shopping through company stores. It is important to note that this book does not leave out women's perspectives, as many mill workers were young women and working mothers.

A great deal of the content of this book was provided by interviews done in the 1980's of people who worked in the mills and lived in mill communities. This oral history is both fascinating and priceless. Most of the mills have closed and the memory and history of them is becoming scarcer to find as most of the mill workers who lived during the era portrayed in this book have died.

While most of the mills have closed, central North Carolina is dotted with the communities that are remains of old mill towns. I am from this region and my mother lives in Bynum, NC, a mill town dating from the mid-19th century. Several of her neighbors were interviewed for and written about in Like a Family. The old company store still serves as a post office and the mill community's church has regular worshipers. Unfortunately the rest of the community from the mill days, including the mill itself (which closed in the early 1980's and has burned down recently), have succumbed to time and aging from the elements.

The first two-thirds of "The Salmon of Doubt", as assembled by Douglas Adams' editor, consists of essays, lectures, magazine articles, and other short pieces written by Adams. It is an interesting glimpse into his mind, his work habits, his love of computers and gadgets, and his views on religion, atheism, and evolution. As an added bonus, the last third of the book contains the first eleven chapters of what was meant to be Adams' new Dirk Gently novel (although he tantalizingly hinted in interviews that he might turn it into a sixth "Hitchhiker's" book), also named "The Salmon of Doubt."

The essay/article portion of the book, while interesting, does have an unavoidably hodgepodge feel to it. Most of this material will be familiar to diehard Douglas Adams fans (in fact, much of it has already been printed elsewhere - little here is new material), but it is nice to have it all gathered together in one place. Unfortunately, no index or table of contents is provided, so finding a particular piece is rather challenging.

The portion of the book actually devoted to "The Salmon of Doubt" is very intriguing. As the editor notes, the eleven chapters are stitched together from three separate "versions" of the novel that Adams was working on at the time of his death. As a result, some of the chapter transitions are very choppy (and of course the story sputters out without a proper ending, although this does seem vaguely appropriate for a Dirk Gently novel). However, I found chapters two through seven of the book to be very engaging; a bit rough, certainly, but this was shaping up to be a great Dirk Gently novel. It was with sadness that I reached the end of this story and realized that there would be no ending, and further, no other novels from Douglas Adams.

I don't fault the editor for assembling the story the way he's chosen to, as an amalgam of three different manuscripts - I'm sure this would have been his suggestion even if Adams were still alive. Still, I would love to see a completely "unedited" version of the novel, i.e., one that includes all three working versions; I think that would be fascinating to read. It's certainly a tease to know that certain parts of the different versions were skipped over in assembling this edition.

Having said that, I still do think this book is a must-own if you're a fan of Douglas Adams and his work, due to the inclusion of the unfinished novel. However, when reading "The Salmon of Doubt", you must be prepared to read an unpolished, unfinished story; if you're able to read it in this frame of mind, it's actually very rewarding.

In May of last year, the world lost one of it's greatest minds, wits and writers when Douglas Adams suddenly passed away. Thankfully, "The Salmon of Doubt" gives us once last glimpse at the universe through Adams's wonderfully skewed eyes. Part autobiograpy, part tribute and totally brillant.

Filled with various essays, interviews, short stories and the first ten chapters of his last, unfinished Dirk Gently novel, this book is a MUST OWN for even the most casual fan of Douglas's work. Here, beyond two headed ailens, hypergalatic bypasses, electric monks and homless Norse Gods, we get to know Douglas Adams the man. Though fans will mostly want this book for the Dirk Gently material (Which is 100% laugh out loud stuff), there are some truly wonderful gems to be found in the pages of this book that you'll want to read and re-read over and over again. If there was ever a doubt, Mr. Adams proved that essays can be entertianing, educational and thought provoking.

Do not pick up The Salmon of Doubt expecting a complete novel. Given time Adams' would have converted it into a brilliant final product. Sadly, however, that will never happen. The novel is unfinished, but better to be unfinished than completed by someone else.

The book is more than the uncompleted novel, however. The would-be third Dirk Gently installment occupies fewer than 100 pages at the volume's end. The rest is taken up by an amalgam of tidbits from Adams' life. The book's success is the essays, short stories, letters, interviews, many of them in print for the first time in Salmon. They accomplish what no novel ever could; they portray Adams' as a human being.

Salmon is to Douglas Adams' what I, Asimov is to Isaac Asimov. It's not an autobiography, exactly, but it's as close as print gets to establishing a dialogue between the reader and the author. A great many people admire Adams' for is brilliant wit. This book allows us to admire him for much more.

I frequent a message board where a rating of "5" means "Comedy Gold," and that is why I give A Salmon of Doubt five stars. It is hilarious. The essay, "Cookies," used as a plot point in So Long, And Thanks For All The Fish, is a brilliantly narrated anecdote. The reflections on canine behavior in Maggie and Trudie gave me a sleep-preventing giggle fit. The novel portion is jerky in places. An astute reader will spot some filler lines, gaps in continuity, and things that would most likely have been left out of the final version, but no one is pretending that it is whole. Salmon is exactly what it sets out to be; it is a requiem, a tribute to a great man.

I'm not very far along in the book, but I don't like what I'm seeing.
The preface purports that the book's audience need not "know anything
about XML." There is very little in the way of explaining XML, however.
The chapter on "Fundamentals" is O'Reilly at its most terse. If you already
understand XML very well, you might think this chapter an excellent
itemizing of the specification. Sadly, most people, I imagine, would be able
to retain little from this.

Regarding the code examples, the explanations hardly illuminate the API.
The code stands as is; and the commentary does only a somewhat decent job
of explaining the larger context. You could always check the documentation
given in the back of the book, but that's hardly as helpful as a good overview
and commentary.

Moreover, and in some ways worse, I have found many typos -- and I am only
as far as the first two examples. These mistakes include missing import
statements, errant capitalization, bad indentation, double underscores ('__')
written as one long underscore. This is unacceptable. I can only hope it is just
this one chapter.

I bought this book because of the topics, and because I figured Python would
be the easiest way to learn XML API's. I am only hoping that the book will
get better, and that I will be able to derive benefit from it. As it stands,
I'm skeptical that I will get my money's worth.

This book really dvelves into the using XML with Python. The
chapter are well laid out and easy to read. There are some typos
but nothing that you can't fix. There are some problems using the current XSLT processer that ships with PyXml0.7 but you can
still apply the concepts (I used MSXML's XSLT). The best chapter (last one (:-|) ties all the concepts explained into a Web Service like app. that really shows the real strength of XML

I really liked this book because I was able to quickly start using XML with Python. I tried to use the package docs, but they were often hard to read, and didn't fill me in on the background stuff I needed to know. The examples in this book were easy to understand, and easy to see how to make practical applications from them. I didn't encounter any typos like the other reader did.

A well-presented book; and most interesting details of the artist's life an times. Slight disappointment in the plates - not all in colour and not full-page size. It is however, an extensive look at the artist and his work, I believe worth owning if you are interested in the genre. Not so interested myself in the sculpture side of his work and the small black and white photos of same do not show from all angles, but in general a good purchase.

Much good advice and a few outstanding examples are presented here in clear, readable style. The materials on the CD are the most valuable to me.

My biggest complaint, as with most software development books and manuals, is the lack of documentation methodology. How does one fully document the code, classes and other aspects of the application so that they might be searched and researched later? With all the emphasis on complete documentation, this is a severe shortcoming.

I don't know anything about the subject matter covered in the later chapters, but the Perl that the authors demonstrate in chapters 3 to 7 is some of the most badly written and buggy Perl that I have ever seen. Many of the example programs won't even compile as they have typos in them that would have been caught if the book had been given the most cursory glance by a technical editor. I searched the IDG (sorry, 'Hungry Minds') web site to see what errata had been made available, but there didn't seem to be any.

i belive this book lacked of information about database information and reference to C

When i bought this book i was looking for a whole sight of the tools that i can find in opensource, not only a few... this book needs a roadmap view.

Why? theres is no reference for C or JAVA. Why? theres no refence to modules for Apache? Why? theres no references to JDBC, DBD/DBI, databases in general....

Anyway a good book? but with a quite good aproach to the problem

While Empson's posthumous publication, "Faustus and the Censor," first came out in the 1980's, it remains a relevant document in Christopher Marlowe criticism. The oft-disputed authenticity of Marlowe's play "Doctor Faustus," and its two versions, the A and B-texts is the main focus of Empson's book. Empson begins with the beginning - Marlowe's sources, primarily the German Faust Book. Empson discusses the possible relationship with the translator of English Faust Book, a mysterious gentleman named 'P.F.' who may have provided Marlowe with information on German and Latin texts.

Empson's thesis is that the A text is the 'original' - but that its seeming inadequacies are due to the interference of the official censor of plays in the late 1500s. Scenes missing that Empson argues were removed for reasons of state and morality are an appearance of the chorus and an episode in a Turkish harem.

The censor, Empson argues, had three major problems with Marlowe's play that required change: 1)the women Faustus consorts with must be real women - because Anglican belief did not allow that devils could consort with humans. 2)Mephistopheles must be a devil - again, Anglicanism does not allow for middle spirits. 3)Faust must be punished eternally at the end of the play; apparently, the original version when acted, left some ambiguity about this issue.

Empson's "Faust and the Censor" tends to be somewhat repetitive on supporting these points. However, the repetition is done well, so that the points he makes are continuously reinforced and consistently developed. This is an engaging piece of literary criticism - the language is familiar, even colloquial, making the book an interesting and even entertaining read - very unusual in the field of literary criticism. I don't even like Marlowe, but Empson's style and substance make this a critical work worth checking out.

This book is incorrectly titled and described - the book about .NET My Services has been cancelled due to the project's cancellation. I am coming out with a book in roughly October of 2003 entitled "Understanding Web Services Specifications and the WSE" that will introduce readers to Microsoft's WSE kit and show you how to use it with your web services. It will also cover each major WS-standard and how they can be used, including WS-Security, WS-Transactions, WS-Policy, WS-Trust, and others. It'll be fun. So keep your eyes out for the correct listing on Amazon.com, hopefully soon!

There is a variety of views in which the past can be seen and Stonehenge has been a subject and inspiration over many centuries and especially in the period of the 80s.
"Who owns Stonehenge", is the result of a discussion about the site, at the world Archaeological congress, in Southampton, in 1986, within the larger framework of the question, who owns the past?
Due to the different backgrounds of the authors, this work approaches Stonehenge from five directions, a fact that makes the book more interesting and at the same time less subjective.
The first chapter, written by Christopher Chipindale, an Archaeologist, who also works on the history of ideas about the past, discuss issues of physical Stonehenge, as well as the intellectual history of the place and claims that have been made to it.
The next four chapters contain four individual views: P. Devereux has researched into lays and associated geomantic subjects. He attempts to show the connection of the site to the general picture of sacred ones. Peter Fawler is a professor of Archaeology and talks about aspects of archaeological constrains to the site. Rhys Jones has a particular interest in the sacred sites of the aborigines in Australia and he relates cases from there to Stonehenge. Lastly, Tim Sebastian, the Secular Arch-Druid(!)
These four chapters offer to the reader an interesting chance of thinking about the complex index of Stonehenge, as it is not just an archaeological site, but has a lot more meanings to a variety of many people.
The sixth chapter gives the whole story of the events that occurred there during the 80s and the last chapter looks to Stonehenge of tomorrow and makes some suggestions that concern a multi-purpose view of the site.
Beside the references and the index of names, there is also an additional reading compartment, for those who might want to explore further the themes of this book.
The work is well illustrated, with lot of b&w photographs, drawings, paintings, maps & posters.
"Who owns Stonehenge" is a different way of looking into ancient sites, a way, in which many more sites around the world should be approached, as it is a quite holistic approach, covering, as far it is possible, all aspects of this particular case, from its archaeological importance until administrating problems and social conflicts related to it. The writing of the book allows even to non experts to get the general idea of Stonehenge as an ancient religious and sacred site.
However, it can also be seen as a just good presentation of what Stonehenge really stands for, while a case like that requires further discussion.

Too many small errors lead me to question the author's ability to accurately relay the information in this case.

His reference to "Jessie" May Clampett should read "Ellie" May Clampett.

The singing artist he cites is named Annie Lennox not Annie "Proux". (E. Annie Proulx is a Pulitzer Prize winning author.)

And, as far as his statement in the book that arranged marriages in the Hispanic community are not uncommon today, well, I can only say that as a Hispanic that has lived in Texas for over 36 years, I have NEVER heard of such a practice.

The reader is left to wonder what other errors are in this sloppy book.

I just have to say killing someone has done good for her looks because she finally got to put make up on and some decent clothes. What I don't understand is where they get off saying she was slightly intelligent. From what I remember she didn't excel at anything she did. Must have gotten her grades mixed up with someone else.

As the "True Crime Editors" said, the only thing this un-remarkable book really does, is clear up misconceptions about the defendants themselves which the media had spread. However, the author is not capable of weaving together a narrative which compels the reading and which has any, whatsoever, literary merit. The prose is completely matter-of-fact, and not that you would expect a novel, but with such interesting material, such compelling themes and such a sinister plot you would think the author could have done a better job. He tries to introduce information and interviews with friends of the defendants, and their lawyers, but you can tell the author doesn't know how to do this with subtlety. In short, an unremarkable book which may gave you some facts about the Diane Zamora, and David Graham case.