I highly recommend this book for fans of Richard Meier's work. Like all of the books in this series, it gives great details of the floor plans and elevations. Because this series is based on a time frame and not a certain type of architecture or building material, it includes all of Meier's designs; both houses and buildings.

If you share in Dwight Waldo's excitement for the field of public administration and government, then you will certainly enjoy this account of his career and the concepts that now form the foundation of modern public administration.

James R. Giles' critical essays on Hubert Selby, Jr.'s work are a most excellent guide for interested students. Upon reading Selby's novel Reqiuem for a Dream, I was fascinated with his style and content. I proceeded to read Last Exit to Brooklyn and Song of the Silent Snow. After finishing these novels, I decided it was time to research Selby in order to compile a research paper for an English class. My passion for Selby's intense and tragic literature led me to Giles' Understanding Hubert Selby Jr. Giles' criticism was the most complete and accurate analysis of Selby's work that I could find. The edition covered all of Selby's novels with a clear, crisp, and concise diction. Giles' insight into Selby's tempestuous mind supplied the chief source and companion to my own essay on Selby. I recommend Giles' most tremendous essays to any student who loves Hubert Selby's dark and antiheroic works. I have yet to find a better analysis of Selby's novels. Every dedicated English student should explore the wastelands of Selby's imaginations, and Giles' criticism is the most capable and reliable guide.

A VMS power user will feel like a stranger in a strange land when first exploring the world of Unix. This book can be an indispensable guide for the VMS user forced to make this odyssey. More than just a foreign language phrase book, offering literal translations of VMS commands into Unix, it discusses and contrasts the basic philosophies behind each operating system. Understanding these fundamental differences will allow the newly transplated-to-Unix VMS user to exploit the strengths of this popular operating system rather than just feeling cheated out of the many powerful features of VMS that have no direct analog in Unix. For the power user, applications programmer, and system admin, all of the important topics are covered clearly and in sufficient detail.

The third edition adds valuable new information on VMS logical names, the Emacs text editor, and the Perl scripting language. It also has been given a new and much improved layout that makes it considerably easier to read then the previous editions. All in all, highly recommended!

This 'reality' novel tells an incredible story: the Vatican through Mgr. Marcinkus tried to use $950 million of forged bonds as a collateral for new loans. But a New York policeman discovered the transactions and the key figure was convicted.
The other villains, besides the Archbishop, in this unbelievable story are very well known Mafia, masonic and money laundering figures: Michele Sindona, Roberto Calvi.
An only average police novel but with an astonishing content. Not to be missed.
I recommend another book with the same main characters in another murky affair: David Yallop 'In God's Name. An investigation into the murder of pope John Paul I'.

This book is the Bible of Internal Medicine. Anyone considering a career in medicine should have this book in their library. Comprehensive and well written, it is the gold standard of medical textbooks.

This book is a medical tradition, and it is as important to doctors as their stethoscope.
It is very complete, there is no doubt about it. Every subject of medicine is covered, and for a reference book is a must-have. It is also written in an easy-to-read way, but some chapters are more difficult to understand than others, and like a good meal, in excess it can get heavy and occasionally become a brick, so slow-reading is advised. Also worth to mention are the atlases, that give a lot of pictographic information.
I would recommend it only as a reference book, because for the USMLE, or as a course textbook, it is impossible to read it all, especially if time is scarce.

This book is the Bible of Internal Medicine. Anyone considering a career in medicine should have this book in their library. Comprehensive and well written, it is the gold standard of medical textbooks.

I am not questioning the amount of effort that has gone into the book, but some foundations upon which the book makes many of its claims are fundamentally flawed. For example, it is widely accepted (and has been conclusively proven) within the Oracle community that worrying about cache hit ratios, multiple extents, etc is a flawed methodology for tuning an Oracle database which will serves simply to misguide the novice.

Leave this book on the shelf...

In his book, Rich has merged his many years of Oracle performance tuning expertise with advanced insider techniques in an easy-to-understand way. Hundreds practical topics, undocumented references, experts tips and real life examples have made this book a must have for DBA's and any Oracle performance tuning personnel.

This book covers the tuning tips and techniques in using newest features in Oracle 8i as well as the original features in Oracle 7 or 8. As Rich's first sentence indicates, "Oracle is a symphony and you are the conductor, with an opportunity to create a world class performance", his book will help you to achieve this opportunity and to become a great tuning conductor of Oracle performance.

The first chapter of the book serves as highlight notes, which sets up five quick goals to instantly improve performance. Through the rest chapters of his entire book, readers will gain detail tuning knowledge about disk I/O, init.ora parameters, OEM, Explain Plan, table joins, hints, PL/SQL, parallel query, using V$ views, accessing x$ tables, new features and many more tips and techniques for reaching the best performance. After reading this book, be sure to share your thoughts with others in your review.

I was happy with this book and it can help u find orcale tuning problems and find results fast.

I am not really a reader but Donnie Brasco is a book that really caught my eyes from the first page. I was stuck to it like glue. 3 hours had gone by and I did not notice it because it was so in interesting, but one fault that it has is that it takes too long to get to the point and to the action. Being that it is based on a true story in the 70's is has a realistic view.

The most interesting part to me in the beginning was the way he had to change his life from a standard F.B.I agent to Mafia man. He has to find a new place to live and take time off from his family. Also the way he has to set his mood and become someone else. He is no longer Joe Pistone (F.B.I agent) he is now Donnie Brasco (jewel thief) and he has to live of, and become, a Mafia man.

The book was based on the true life events of agent Joseph D. Pistone, and is nothing short of perfection. It tells the story of the real mafia life, which is not often portrayed on paper. Agent Pistone's book takes the reader into the life of the capo's and the soldiers of the Bonanno family. Its is a very interesting book, and also a great fim starring Al Pacino and Michael Madsen. I work in a bookstore, and have read numerous mafia books, and this is one of my favorites.

Before you run out and spend $3 bucks to rent the movie from Blockbuster or Hollywood Video, read this book. It starts off simple enough: an agent sent to infiltrate the Mafia in NY/NJ area in the late 70s. But "Donnie Brasco" is a much more complex novel than some man faking his identity. Joseph Pistone (Donnie Brasco) was forced to use his street wits, common sense, and just plain luck against ruthless killers, thieves, crooks, addicts, and other general degenerates. Pistone was forced to abandon his family (wife and children) for months on end, and be on assignment for the FBI. He made friendships and forged alliances, posing as jewel thief Donnie Brasco in order to ingratiate himself into the inner workings of the Mafia. Brasco became so close to many members of Bonnano families and their wiseguys, that when it came out that Brasco was an FBI agent posing as a wiseguy, many were in disbelief. One Bonnano affiliate in particular, Sonny Black, was fond of Brasco and thought of him as a son. He allegedly said that he had no ill feelings toward Brasco, because he was just doing his job. (Months later, Sonny Black was found murdered in a trunk. His hands had been cut off--a symbol that Mob security had been violated.) Pistone takes the time to explain in such a way without sounding boring or grating. He explains the slang, the situation, the characters as if you were there standing over his shoulder. This has to be one of the best Mafia books out there. Don't sleep on this one.

An effusion of conjugated verbs will help you in further conjugations, although some forms are not so cool. A verb locator is a feature that helps with reading. Its a good resource book for serious latin study.

Barron's has always produced some good academic tools (they are best known for their standardized test aids), and this work is no exception. As the title read, there are 501 Latin verbs, fully conjugated in every tense. This, of course makes for a great reference tool for anyone who is studying Latin, or translating Latin, and is having a tough time trying to find (or learn) the correct conjugation of a verb.

There is also a nice intro to this volume explaining certain things about Latin verbs, and this same introduction includes charts for English verb conjugations. The book is formatted like a dictionary, in alphabetical order, and each verb is listed with its conjugated form thoroughly described/demonstrated. 501 verbs may be limited but not too many students of Latin (who are perhaps simply trying to finish their languages in school) will use this many verbs, so in that sense 501 is enough. However, for the scholar of Latin, perhaps more might be needed. Nonetheless, the book serves it purpose well with the verbs that were included.

There are several appendices in the back which include an Index of English-Latin verbs, verb form locator, and Latin verb index. Each of these give added aid to the student and user of this volume. Overall, this is a great volume, and has been a big help for me in my past studies of the Latin language.

This book was great. It really helped me with my college latin class. One great feature of this book is a section in the back that has strange forms of verbs listed alphabeticaly. When you are reading latin and you come across something you dont recognize, this section can help you figure out which verb the form is from. Buy this book. It is worth it.

Although books are much more fun when the reader saves reading quotes from the various famous personalities that speckle the back until the end, one of these snippits stands out on "The Autobiography of Joseph Stalin." Joseph Heller, author of "Catch-22," is blurbed, and he says to ignore the book unless one wants to be "buttonholed" by the worst man in history. Heller couldn't have been more accurate; that sentence sums up Lourie's novel with elegance and accurate grace. Make no mistake, as this is no history book. It's a work of fiction, but one that is removed enough from the events surrounding its protagonist that it manages to resonate in such a timely fashion it lures the reader inside and doesn't let go.

"Autobiography" reads like a memoir, as it is intended, and follows two main trains of thought: the events the lead Stalin to have his main, exiled political rival, Leon Trotsky, assassinated, and the events that lead Stalin to assume the leadership of the newly-formed Soviet Union and set a standard for what Communism-cum-Stalinism was to be for the 20th Century. Stalin's story is as much a response to Trotsky's writings-in-exile as a memoir, and the entire story is told not as Stalin writing a history, but as Stalin shoring his fragments against Trotsky's potentially ruining exposes. Lourie's narrative shifts flawlessly from Stalin's "formative" years as the son of an alcoholic cobbler and a churchmouse mother in Georgia, to his time at the Seminary, to his career as a thief and revolutionary. Stalin isn't so much interested in the goals of Communism - a better life for the workers, and so forth - as his is at using an opportunity to gain wealth, power, and prestige (although, neither do any of the other revolutionaries, save perhaps Trotsky). Lourie outlines Stalin's disdain for intellectual, ineffectual Communist ideals and what eventually leads him to commit some of the most horrific crimes ever visited upon a group of people.

But, Stalin is difficult to classify. From a historical perspective, even though "The Boss" outscored Hitler in the body count department, he managed to turn the near-medieval Russia into a modern, scientific, industrial superpower in a few decades. It's the ultimate utilitarian argument: that the ends of struggle (any struggle, be it war, revolution, etc) eventually justify the means. And that, in the end, is what makes "Autobiography" so powerful. Stalin is never portrayed sympathetically per se - in fact, the book reads more like a profile of a serial killer rather than an autobiography - but, in his mad quest for power, it is slowly made clear that he feels the ends did, in fact, justify the means. It's an interesting question - when do the ends no longer justify the means? When is killing for a "better" cause no longer appropriate? How many degrees of separation are there between Stalin and our current leaders - or even ourselves?

Lourie's lyrical, almost Russian, prose helps spin this deceptive, silken tapestry, and the structure of the novel keeps it flowing like a gentle but insistent river. The only problem here is that the reader is never fully made to believe that the historical Stalin saw himself not as himself, but as someone in relation to someone else. It is doubtful at best that someone as egotistical and monstrous as Stalin would have constantly compared himself to others - although, pop psychology certainly argues otherwise. Still, the book is a powerful and pleasurable read, until the reader reminds himself or herself that the subject matter is, perhaps, the most abhorrent man that ever lived.

If Joseph Stalin had possessed a sense of humour, he never would have been Joseph Stalin, and then and only then could he possibly have possessed the insight to write this "autobiography" by Richard Lourie, who has in this book created the greatest book of Russian fiction in decades.

The novel is darkly hilarious, hilariously dark, mordant, pungent, historically accurate, psychologically sound, and line-for-line breathtaking in the baneful beauty of its sentences and its insights into the mind of the Greatest Dictator of them all. It reads like a lost novel by Nabokov by way of Doestoyevsky and Henry Miller.

Once you have learned Stalin's three great truths from this book, you will come to understand upon what rocks the Soviet Union was really established.

The book is every bit as brilliant and imaginative as Stalin was evil.

This book surprised me! The bare-boned, almost meditative, style with which Lourie endows the ruminations of 'The Great Gardener' is but one part of a brilliant Idea on how most effectively to flesh out the despot. Lourie underplays everything - Stalin's conscience, his political acumen, his brutality- underplays it until it completely dominates the reader's mind and heart. Early on, the skin of Stalin begins to creep onto our own frame, such adept fiction this is. It 's a remarkable feat, and makes a complete success of this book. What Lourie flushes out, almost by a kind of telepathy, is a riveting look at the world from Stalin's mind; Uncle Joe's obsession with Trotsky's being, and yet especially with Trotsky's feverishly tended manuscript, gives the book a tight focus, but the mesmerizing moments come as Stalin glistens in the depravity of his brutality. I think, if one pays attention, it's a book that convicts us of our own inhumanities. And the book's feeling of briefness works to amplify everything within. Check it out - the haunting is long lasting.