Although Connolly makes some bold, difficult to conclusively prove statements early on--including the assertion that ACS refuted "art-for-art's-sake" in favor of purely social or political themes--the majority of the book is an effective tour of Swinburnian theory at work in the poet's verse and criticism. Drawing on Swinburne's critical essays, Connolly traces an emerging poetic theory with clear examples from the poet's most controversial work, logically establishing Swinburne's unique and unwavering standard of morality. The lines of Greek classicism are well supported in Connolly's argument, offering a clear insight into the inner workings of a poet whose critical theory is consistent in both his critical and poetic work. Swinburnian's will want to add this book to their reference library.

This book brings out strong emotion. "Return of the Native" demonstrates how some of the people in today's world enter into relationships only for their personal benefit. It brings on the desire to read more of the book. As a student in school, we are studying the book. The book, along with the movie, tends to draw the attention of those who watch it, bringing on true interest. I would really recommend this book.

Thomas describes the time period between what is known as the two major acts before the revolution...which were obviously the Stamp acts and Boston Massacre. He tells of how this time..where the Townshend duties take affect predictied what would happen in teh future, that this is what forced teh Tea Party and the Boston Massacre to onccur. And he is absolutely correct! Anyone who enjoys history like me shoudl read this book, it lets you know just how far England was willing to go to not let us out of their reach. Please, for your sake, Read this novel!!!

Treatment planning and dosimetric calculations are essential parts of any radiotherapeutic treatment procedure. This involves multidsiciplinary efforts involving oncologists, physicist and radiation therapist. This book, although published 10years ago, still is an essential and must consult book for all the people, either studying or working in the field of radiation therapy. The chapters in this book are chosen in such a way that, it covers most of the planning procedures and smooth transition from basic to advanced planning procedures. The book is highly recommendable.

What a great challenge for the future !

Todays all American have a pinky dream for the future. That's why they studied past their history and now live in the center of the world and already prepaired so many things for 21th century. Other countries have to learn what American did, do and will do for the peace of the new millennum.

WHEN THE NIGHTINGALE SINGS

By: Joyce Carol Thomas I rated this book four out of five stars. This book was really good, but it was really confusing. I liked this book because the main character, Marigold, follows her dreams. She is a fourteen-year-old girl living with a cruel, harsh woman. Cousin Ruby. Cousin Ruby tells Marigold not to follow her dreams, but she does it anyway. She writes and sings her songs. They come off the top of her head, and she writes them down in her own little notebook. Other characters also have their own little role going on, it's like they are acting "behind the scenes." All the characters are happy and they are also very active. They are all helping each other out in other people's times of needs. All the characters, especially Marigold is in her own little world when she is singing. Cousin Ruby is always making Marigold do her daughters' work, cooking, making clothes, and teaching them how to sing. This book is unlike any other I have read before. It is totally unique in it's own way. The book is different because Marigold follows her dreams, her guardian is telling her not to, and she doesn't listen. Usually, young children will follow their parents or guardians directions. Marigold chooses what is the best for her, and she goes all the way. Singing is really important to her, and she knows that she has got an excellent voice. She wants to sing, and when she learns that she can do it, that is what she is going to do, and she is going to follow her dream of singing.

I have taught beginning Latin from several texts--Ecce Romani, the Oxford Latin Course, the 1990 edition of Jenney's Latin featured here, as well as the older (1979 and earlier) editions of Jenney's Latin. I can say with all confidence and experience that the newer edition (1990) fails in many areas of instruction. In an attempt to modernize itself, the Jenney series lost much of what made earlier editions great, namely its clarity and focused, appropriately challenging readings.

In this 1990 edition, the readings have been changed and often lengthened--no doubt in an attempt to guise itself as a quasi-reading method text. Unfortunately, the new readings rarely adequately enforce the grammar taught in the unit, and offer instead syntactical oddities that only baffle and frustrate even the most earnest students. The book does a good job of including photos of real antiquities, but does so often without context and in excessive detail. As thrilling as it must be for for the average high school freshman to learn the difference between statumen, rudus, and pavimentum (p. 251), it might interest him/her more to spend more time on the cultural/historical context of Roman roads (i.e., their *application*). Such details about the roads' layers would be unknown to many non-specialist Ph.Ds. We wish to emphasize LEARNING, but we want also to emphasize the thematic application of knowledge--not merely the acquisition of facts without context.

Indeed, students might LEARN Latin better if presented with a concise, yet still challenging, version of the Aeneas story (as in earlier editions), gaining confidence as they reinforce their abilities to READ Latin and are introduced to cultural topics.

Again, I have used earlier editions (1979 and previous) of the Jenney text and found them to be much more enjoyable for both teacher and student. They are no less challenging, but leave off much of the junk that many who praise the 1990 edition frequently decry in other textbooks. I would wholeheartedly recommend looking at these versions if you are considering changing texts. Consider also Ecce Romani and Oxford Latin, which are not without fault, but whose approach is consistent with their philosophy.

As I hope to begin teaching high school Latin soon, I've been busy examining several textbooks. So far, Jenney--while not perfect--stands at the top of my list. The course consists of four volumes: most of the grammar is covered in the first two books, with the third and fourth serving up selections from the usual list of authors.

The pluses are several. The books are durable, hardbound school editions (hence, incidentally, the high price). The layout is attractive, making ample use of color and graphics. The chapter lessons on Roman culture are excellent and encourage students to make comparisons with their own. They also should make good springboards for further discussion for teachers who wish to spend more time on such matters; those who don't can at least rest assured that their students won't emerge with the "Wheelock syndrome:" lots of Latin grammar and little substantive knowledge about Roman life. Not that Jenney skimps on the grammar. There is no dawdling; in fact, it sometimes seems the lessons move too quickly, given the typical student's command of English grammar. The exercises are varied, and include translation into Latin and drills with English derivatives.

One rather large problem lies in how the reading passages are constructed. Several new words are introduced in each, without definitions being included on the same page. The pedagogy behind this practice is not totally misbegotten but is more likely to frustrate students than challenge them. Some of these words appear in later lessons, some do not, and so it is hard for the teacher to decide which should be memorized. In general, the readings are longer and more difficult than those of other courses; that's not a shortcoming, in my opinion, but it does mean teachers had better be exceptionally patient and encouraging or risk seeing all their students flee for Spanish or French in the second year.

An enterprising and industrious teacher should be able to do a lot with this series; students, meanwhile, should emerge with everything to be desired from a high school education in Latin.

Publishers know that the market for Latin texts comprises Latin teachers who see shrinking enrollments and are afraid of being "downsized." In desperation to keep students, Classics departments often struggle to candy-coat Latin, making it more fun and less daunting for students. Now, I like fun as much as the next classics geek, but many teachers forget that students should have fun WHILE learning, not INSTEAD of learning. Accordingly, many modern Latin texts are simplistic, cartoon-enhanced bait designed to keep enrollment up. They are education's junk food: perhaps enjoyable, but with few lasting benefits. Jenny's is different: it does not shy away from teaching Latin in thorough detail. The lessons, cumulative, give tons of practice. The back of the book has excellent resources for forms, grammar, vocabulary and even useful Latin dicta. In addition, Jenny's has informative, interesting readings on history and culture. Gorgeous color photographs of Roman art, architecture and everyday items adorn the pages and spur imaginative discussions. This enables students to learn not only the verbs and endings but the fascinating context that made the Roman Republic and Empire what they were. My students have always enjoyed learning from this book, despite the fact that (or because?) it challenges them. I've taught Latin for ten years, for seven of which I've used this book. I myself learned from an earlier version of it in 6th grade. Earlier versions (from over ten years ago) had a vocabulary and focus much more geared towards military readings than the present incarnation, which has a better-rounded vocabulary as useful for Horace's love poems as for Caesar's Gallic War. I recommend this book strongly for serious students and instructors.

I have to agree with previous reviewers, this book DOES cover quite a bit. From DHTML to IIS Applications, but it has to be considered a beginner to intermediate book on Web programming in VB6. Even though the long-term viability of Web Classes is under question, the utter lack of any quality material on the ONE thing Microsoft touts as "Web" enabled in VB6 is extremely disappointing for a book so expensive. You can debug problems with your objects in VB6 with WebClasses that you can't perform with an ASP page and a compiled dll. Do they even mention this? No.

For the interested, you can find most of the material discussed in this book by simply looking on MSDN or other web sites for articles on the subjects you're interested in. With multiple authors, that's all you will get out of this book, anyway.

I rated this 5 stars because it has the most useful writeup on writing Server Components in VB for use with ASP - chapters 9-11. I wanted to do this and had trouble getting working samples and explanations. I feel that industrial strength ASP is very ugly and unweildy if you don't encapsulate the code into components. MSDN has lots of reference material about this but little, if any, useful "how to" stuff that i could find.

This book showed me how to do exactly what i wanted to do.

Other than that, it is a good introduction into a good number of web concepts, old and new. The first 3 chapters were a good overview of Microsoft web concepts and techniques. The writeup on web classes, if you like them, is good. I really liked the CGI case study including how to implement standard input/output via the win32 API.

The relatively free use of various win32 API functions in VB help overcome a general fear of mixing VB and CC++ functionality.

The book was a bit large but was well organized. In general it gave me a much higher opinion of Wrox books.

Having purchased many other WROX books, I was eagerly awaiting this one for a current project. When it arrived I read through it like a mad man. Soaking up everything I possibly could. The examples are very clear and there are plenty of them! It covers everything from IIS, ASP and ADO to RDS, SQL, DHTML, MTS and WebClasses. All in one book! Plenty of examples with detailed descriptions and tables explaining the various methods for each function. I definitely recommend this book to anyone wanting to learn about using VB6 for web development.

I am currently a teaching assistant for a class which uses this textbook. Comparatively, this is probably one of the better introductory textbooks for students who are not necessarily musically inclined, such as the class I work with. There is not a great deal of technical music jargon and it provides some decent contextualizations. However, some chapters are lacking in information and can be quite a dull read for students, such as the chapter on Japanese music. And at times authors give too much in the way of personal "fieldwork" anecdotes instead of covering other areas or possible issues. The third edition came out not too recently, but from what I can tell, contains almost the exact same information as the second.

This book presents a series of articles on music and the role of music in a variety of cultures around the globe. The articles each begin with a description of a musical event or concert in a culture, then go on to give more details about characteristics of a wide range of musical styles in that culture. The featured description in each chapter is usually some sort of traditional or classical style for that culture, and popular music in the culture is treated briefly. I found a few of the musical terms hard to understand, never having studied musical theory myself. Perhaps some of these terms would have become more clear through listening to the oft-mentioned accompanying CD, which I unfortunately don't have. There is a glossary in the back of the book, but its definitions are not sufficient to make meanings clear to someone without a thorough grounding in world music. In a few places, the proofreader missed some details, as for example, p. 46 the map of the Middle East shows UAR where the UAE is supposed to be! In addition to the use of technical terms without explanations, the lack of an overall big picture of world music makes this book more of a resource to dip into for background readings than a systematic introduction to the subject. It would work well as readings for a course, but is not ideal for self-study.

I first came across this book when still a student taking an introductory course in asian music cultures. It was and is still is a great read especially for students who are non-musicology majors and have a tendency to get lsot in more technical books. The language, style, presentation and discussion is simple and interestingly handled. Not too scholarly as to be overwhelming. Great background on the socio-cultural context of the music.

I am of the opinion that this book and Black Coffee were written to capitalize on the Christie name. Of course, a lot of things have been written that capitalize on the Christie name, but to capitalize on the Christie name and to not do it well is hard to tolerate.

The Unexpected Guest and Black Coffee were both plays before they were novels, and they read like plays. Christie herself often altered novels to plays and plays to novels, but she had an instinctive understanding of both genres and was able to make the necessary alterations, cuts or expansions. So much so that the book Ten Little Indians and the play Ten Little Indians have different endings. This is also true of Witness for the Prosecution and a host of other novellas, stories, novels and their plays.

The novels The Unexpected Guest and Black Coffee, however, are simply plays with the tags "he said" and "she said" thrown in. The descriptions sound like prop instructions. The flavor of Christie's prose--the nuances, tangents, discussions of character, the humor, the "twinkle" (for lack of a better word)--is missing.

Charles Osborne meant well, I think, but the transformation of Christie's plays to novel form should either have been given to a writer of Christie's temperament and ability (as Sayers' Throne and Dominations was expertly finished by Jill Paton Walsh) or not attempted at all. The result is definitely sup-par.

Recommendation: For fans, anything Christie appeals, but keep your expectations low.

Agatha Christie once more proves that things aren't always what they seem. When I was about halfway through the book, I was convinced that I knew the outcome and had, finally, after reading so many of Christie's mysteries, conquered her ingeniousness. But in the end, I realized that I was once again mistaken. Although I greatly appreciate the beautiful writing techniques that Christie uses, I sometimes prefer the writing of Charles Osborne. I find that he uses words that I am more familiar with and less outdated, and he does not prolong the beginning of the book. He seems to get more to the point, and this keeps me intrigued throughout the book. After reading Black Coffee, I knew that I must read The Unexpected Guest. The only fault that I found in this book was of my own opinion--I did not like the ending. I am a fan of Hercule Poirot's triumphant cases, but I disliked the very end (although I liked the twist to it). Moreover, this inadequacy proved too imparticular for me to rate this book less than five stars.

Even though I am 13 years of age, I have read about three-quarters of the books Agatha Christie has written. Most of the books I have read by her I found to be flawless and exciting. I am a devoted fan of her books and refuse to read other murder-mysteries. When I found out there was a "new" Agatha Christie book out I went straight to the shops to buy it. I found the book to be very enjoyable and even though it only took me 24 hours to read it (I couldn't put it down and stayed up 'till the early hours of the morning to read it until I got caught and had to go to sleep) I thought it was excellent. I usually find that the beginning of Agatha Christie books are a bit confusing but this was one of the least. The murder in the book is a masked mystery until the sureness is proved wrong. I found the book didn't have much suspense but I don't think it mattered. Charles Osborne writes very much like Agatha Christie and he even added things that Agatha Christie didn't usually add like a map of the room the murder occured in. For all people who read and liked The Murder of Roger Ackroyd this book is an absolute must.