DC has reissued Batman: Contagion in the wake of it's mega-successful No Man's Land collections, and it serves as a good reminder of just WHY the Batman books needed to be shaken up so drastically in the first place...

Contagion revolves around an outbreak of "The Clench", a fictional Ebola offshoot, in Gotham City. Batman and company attempt to contain the spread of the Disease, while trying to track down a trio of survivors of a previous Clench outbreak, with the hope of synthesizing a cure/vaccine from their blood.

The book is very choppy, especially the first chapter, which appears to be heavily trimmed from it's original presentation in Batman: Shadow of the Bat. DC hasn't taken any steps to make their collections new-reader friendly, either, which could be a very big mistake. Longtime readers will know Oracle, Azrael, Nightwing, The Huntress, etc.; A new reader browsing this in a store would no doubt put the book right back on the shelf. The story has a few compelling moments, but for the most part it seems unnecessarily padded. Did we really need the Native American tracker? What did Biis contribute to the story? The writing is average at best; Most of the stories in Contagion were written by people who had long since overstayed their welcome on the Bat-books, such as Doug Moench & Alan Grant; The art ranges from okay to sub-par; Kelley Jones' chapter seems especially ugly thanks to poor color reproduction which mars his intricate pencils. The ultimate revelation of who is behind the spread of The Clench is sure to be a head-scratcher to new readers, since no background at all is offered to explain who these people are and what their motives are. DC really needs to get on the ball with their trade-paperback program; Preaching to the Choir is nice, but they need to try for new converts. Junk like Contagion is NOT the way to expand their readership......

In this history you can see a different Batman, one that found something he cant't fight. There was a virus and he can not trap it or take it to the justice. You can see a different Batman, not necesesary a dark one but a human,a man. I enjoyed it a lot!

I cannot believe why some people do not like "Contagion". Like Knightfall, Knightquest, KnightsEnd, Prodigal, and Cataclysm & No Man's Land, "Contagion" is an awesome book. It has Poison Ivy (drool), Batman, Robin, Nightwing, Huntress, Azrael, Catwoman, Oracle, Commissioner Gordon, the Penguin, and many other supporting characters like Alfred and Ariana.

I know this was something new for this author and I have read Winter Palace, that is why I was a bit disappointed with this one. This book seams rushed, almost like the author did not want to take the time to really develop either the story or the characters. Because of the light development it does not hold your attention. I just did not believe the characters. I kept waiting for it to get better which is why I toughed it out to the end, but I was disappointed overall.

Moving out of Cold War images into a new space of intrigue, revolution and counter-revolution, the kidnapping of Gorbachev while on U.S. soil begins a thriller which traverses Poland, Russia, France and the Eastern U.S. in a gripping, quickpaced story that incorporates former spy drama concepts as background and intoduces problems that only new alliances can solve. Excellent pace; many subplots; fine integration and an immediacy and urgency that engages you totally. An excellent read.

I do not read books often, but recently I discovered that Colossus: The Forbin Project was a series of Books. So I bought a used copy of The Fall of Colossus. Frankly, the book is a bit dated. However, it did answer many questions I had after the movie left off. The book was interesting and the writing was very Brittish, but clear and consis enough to follow and keep me interested. I recomend it if you want to find out what happens.

I've read some excellent books from QUE and I must say that this book was a true dissappointment. It is quite evident that several authors contributed to this work which resulted in a lack of consistency between different sections and chapters. There were several instances in the book in which an editor would write comments intended to be seen only by the author for clarification that was accidentally published instead and should not have been. For a few examples see p. 736, 747 where the reader can read comments left by a person named Kyle, which I presume to be an editor written to the author. Not enough attention to detail was given in the sections pertaining to VBscript and JScript. The author of that section writes in such an esoteric way that the reader almost has to already know Visual Basic or Java to be able to understand the programming samples. Overall, the organization of the book was good. However, that alone cannot overcome the mistakes, lack of consistency throughout the book, and poor explanations of the programming samples.

Although I'm a big fan of Que's books on computing and programming, this Special Edition Using Microsoft Front Page was the most disappointing book I've ever purchased from them. It's priced in the upper range but doesn't even compete on par with the other books for novices. Over the 400 pages in the book, I'd estimate that 100 are just trivial discussions about what HTML and Internet basics are. The worst aspect of the book is its examples. Say, for example, you want to insert a survey form in your web site. If you follow ANY of the examples in this book, you only get one-third of the process -- leaving the reader in the dark how to implement the other 2/3's of the process and make the programming successful. Save your money on this one.

I wrote Chapter 11 on HTML. When I saw the whole book, I was thrilled that I had been asked to be part of it

I was disappointed with this book, because it was not much more than an American cold war propaganda stab at the Russians. It was a "big bad Russians" and "poor brave Americans" kind of tale, and I did not find it interesting at all. I would not recommend it to people interested in the Cold War.

I found 'Barbarossa Red', by Dennis Jones, to be a thrilling and engrossing novel. By saying this, however, I do not mean to convey that the book is a classic. It has several faults, some of which include the writing style used and posibly the lack of realism in the storyline.

This is mot to say, however, that the book is entirely without merit. Despite its lack of realism, the plot moves on at a fast and thrilling pace and there are many surprises which encounter the reader as he moves into the book.

In conclusion, this book is a reasonable attempt at succeeding in the genre of 'Third World War' fiction. Many readers though, would now find the book very dated indeed as since it was written in 1983, it does not include the reunification of Germnay and the disintegration of the Soviet Union. Both the now defunct USSR and East Germnay play a pivotal role in the plot.

I would recommend this book only if you are interested in the Soviet Union and its political and militray machinery and if you really want a quick thrill.

I agree with reader #1. Time and time again, I referred to the book only to find that it contained inaccurate information that simply did not work.

I asked the publisher if there was and updated version, for which there was not.

The book is impressive - nearly 900 pages, but most of them are just too basic. I am an experienced Frontpage 97 user, and I learn faster just playing with the program. The authors go in extend with beginning stuffs such as adding images, changes text etc.. while on advanced topics such as adding activeX controls and scripts, there is simply not enough information. The layout of topics is confusing too. For example: discussion web (forum) is appeared in 2 places: 1. Chapter 23, pages 537 (deal with creating, posting and deleting articles), and 2. chapter 11, page 249 (discussion form handler). In my opinion, if the author group them together, it will be easier to follow.

The CD have many sharewares, but most of them are not that useful.

I would rate this one worse that the "Laura" series.

I bought Using Frontpage 98 and Mastering Frontpage 98 and neither really said much. Using Frontpage 98 is a book written for beginners in NON-beginner language. Mastering Frontpage 98 is slightly better, but they are still both difficult to follow and where is information on Active Server Pages, JavaScript, VB Script, and any of the advanced features?! They aren't in either of these. However, if you are patient and want to know all the basics of Frontpage, then the books might be for you.