My child brought this book home from his school library. I am in complete disbelief. This book is horribly insensitive and frightening for children of a parent involved with or anticipating involvement with our current war. Originally, I thought, well, maybe it just seems worse because of Enduring Freedom, but then I realized that the book was written during the Gulf War. I am so glad I previewed this book before reading it to my six year old. He would have had nightmares for quite a while. My husband is in the National Guard, so this tale of a mother leaving her child to find her wounded husband while the child is only able to think that perhaps he wouldn't see his father again would have done nothing more than scare him to death. Granted, the back cover tells us that this story takes place during the Civil War, but that is not what a child will focus on. The "happy" ending of the family reunited is only made more petrifying by the father having lost an arm. Give me a break. Perhaps, this story would have some redeeming quality if it was written for older kids, but it sure isn't picture book material. If you really feel compelled to read this to your child wait until the war is over.

Cecil's story was written by the sister of my English professor. It is simple but extraordinarily powerful. The book deals with a young boy's reaction as his father is wounded in the war, though I think it would be appropriate for any child who's parent has suffered an illness or injury. It concludes with the understanding that in the face of debilitating circumstances, we are fortunate simply to have each other.

Both the writing and the artwork are extraordinary--I would recommend it for any child.

Catalanotto's illustrations bring so much depth to this story of a child missing his father. His use of overlapping images to show the passage of time is beautiful. A moving book to have and treasure.

I have enjoyed Turnbull's Glasgow series but the characters and their relationship to each other had become a bit stale. A change should be good, but, I would rather he had developed the Glasgow characters a bit more and explored the cliques and conflicts that are likely to develop within such a group, rather than trying to create another scene and cast of characters.

Peter Turnbull's Glasgow series has been one of my special favorites since the first book. That said, Fear of Drowning, introducing a new series and new characters, simply doesn't compare. While the writing is as good as ever, and the characters are well-drawn, there's an air of fatigue hovering over this slim tale--as if the author has run out of energy. It's very disappointing. There are no surprises, the solution to the murders of Max and Amanda Williams is pretty well telegraphed, and then the book simply ends. Clunk.

If you're expecting the intensity and quality of Turnbull's previous books, you won't find it in this one. It reads almost as if it were written by someone else, someone lacking the compulsion to look at the dirt in the cracks the way the old Peter Turnbull did.

A police procedural that has learned "less is more." A kind of mystery-meets-minimalism literate and literary experiment that is as much an understated portrait of a way of life as it is a whodunit. Witty, shrewd, beautifully written in a very controlled way. Is the murderer too obvious? Was to me-and the moody cover is both irrelevant and over-revealing. But it made me want to read all of Turnbull's earlier books, and that's high praise.

I looked forward to reading this book after hearing a great interview with Ellis on NPR. But getting passed the first few pages was simply too distracting to go on much further. This book is absolutely shot through with gramatical errors, typos and simple spelling inconsistencies. Please,at this point I don't even care how you spell the term "worldview". Just please spell it the same way consistently. And while we're at it, I might also mention that the letter spacing in this book is awful. Some lines appear to be one long word. Does the publisher, Boyers/Bowerdean even care about this? Or did they just drop Ellis' essays between two covers? Somebody get on the blower to London and let 'em know.

I came upon this book a year and a half ago; never have I seen such a logical presentation of the implications of cosmology, and the possible reasons for us existing, presented so well, and so eloquently. Dr. Ellis (G.F.R. Ellis) is a noted cosmologist who has cowritten with Hawking. And he delves into the possible implications of the "anthropic principle" as few scientsts have the courage or knowledge to do. A MUST read, especially if one wonders about the possibility of a purpose in Creation

For developers involved with web-based projects, whether it be an online store for electronic commerce or an Intranet site for accessing and modifying company data, the powerful blend of JavaServer Pages (JSP) and Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) technologies can really make life simple. Once you've mastered them, creating new components that encapsulate business logic, or new web interfaces to existing systems, is easy. The trick, for developers, is mastering the technologies.

Professional JSP is one way to get up to speed. Like many of the books published by Wrox Press, Professional JSP covers a specific technology in-depth, as well as the various ancillary topics relating to it such as databases, servlets, and XML. While not every developer will need every web technology covered by the book (and there are many), the book works both as a tutorial to cover the basics and a reference for technologies that you may encounter later.

Professional JSP starts by covering the basics of Java Server Pages, and how they relate to other web technologies. Embedded in HTML pages, JSP provides an easy mechanism for creating interactive web interfaces that draws on server-side components, known as Enterprise JavaBeans. While the presentation logic is written in JSP, the processing occurs within these JavaBean components. The book takes a balanced approach, covering both JSP and its syntax, as well as how to write and interact with JavaBeans to perform useful tasks, like accessing databases through JDBC and using other Java technologies. However, if you've read other Wrox titles, you may find there is some overlap in the topics covered.

One of the nice things about Professional JSP is that, in addition to covering theory, it goes further and examines practical applications of JSP, and issues for programmers like security and debugging. Like other titles in the Professional series, there are case studies of real projects using JSP and related technologies. My favorite would have to be the case study on porting Active Server Pages to JSP -- something that is extremely important for developers with "legacy" web systems. On the whole, Professional JSP is an excellent book for web developers wanting to get up to speed with Java Server Pages, web development, and Enterprise JavaBeans. However, developers with less of a web presentation focus and more of back-end server view may also want to consider the excellent Professional Java Server Programming title, which also covers JSP. -- David Reilly, reviewed for the Java Coffee Break

This book covers the chapters in a very structured way. It starts with a concise description of the JSP Basics with a detailed explanation of the concepts. It explains all the concepts in a very clear and simple words supported by an equally clear Comments and examples. Any body with a little of Java experience can become very familiar with the JSP syntax and concepts by reading first few chapters. It covers all the necessary JSP syntax for building a small web application to a very large distributed Application. It also explains about the way the JSP pages are processed by different web servers. For example it explains about the various methods available to maintain a persistence session and their merits and demerits. This is the first book in JSP series that explains not only the concepts of JSP and how effectively one can use them with the help of this book. It also covers various other topics like EJB, JNDI, JDBC, XML, XSLT and WML in very detailed way. Overall I feel this is the greatest JSP book ever published so far. I could build a simple and robust JSP Web application by reading the first few chapters in a short period of time.

This books lives up to its title in that it provides both real-world JSP techniques (through 7 very informative case studies chapters), as well as JSP background information that serves as a quick start guide. I rank it as one of the top 2 JSP books currently available (the other one is Web Development With JavaServer Pages by Messrs. Fields and Kolb).

After the JSP fundamentals are out of the way (which I am sure any JSP newcomer will appreciate and can benefit from), the book picks up pace with discussion on JDBC connection pooling, and the best practice for data access from JSP. Then comes the chapter on custom tags. My favorite chapters are the ones on debugging JSP's and implementing the MVC design pattern in JSP/servlets.

The case studies are very comprehensive and closely correlated to the earlier chapters. In one case study the design methodology is clearly explained with UML diagrams, which are very helpful to someone who is currently architecting an enterprise Java Web application. Other case studies cover such a wide area of topics such as JSP in combination with LDAP, EJB, XSL, and WAP.

For ASP developers, this books has two enormously useful chapters to get them started on JSP right away. One is a case study showing how to port an ASP app to JSP, and the other compares and contrasts the object model and syntax between ASP and JSP.

Having said all the above, this book does suffer from certain weaknesses. One is typical of any multi-author book, i.e., repeat of the same topic in different chapters. This is the case with JDBC, which shows up in both chapters 4 and 7. Another problem is the lack of the use of a standard servlet/JSP container, which will help new users to run all samples under the same software setting (although there is an appendix on setting up Tomcat server). Finally, a few chapters seem to be out of place in term of the logic flow of concept, such as the ones on dynamic GUI's and JNDI.

Finally, this book is still thin on heavy-duty J2EE topics, such as EJB, distributed transactions, message service, and interoperability with CORBA. This is why I consider it as an intermediate level book, not an advanced one. Hopefully we will see another Wrox book in the near future that addresses some of these issues.

Another book that is not worth the paper it is printed on.

I wish I hadn't opened the CD encasing so I could return it and get my money back. Unfortunately, it was required for an AfterEffects class last term and I had no choice. By the end of the class even the instructor gave up on the book. This term the instructor went back to the Classroom in a Book even though it's for AE 5.0, and rightfully so.

The examples are impossible to follow, the support files are incomplete. It's just a pain to learn from.

This book is not very good if you are a brand new user to After Effects. I found myself continuously going to the help button to find the item the book told me to use. I thought about selling it back as a used book, but I didn't want to be responsible for someone else wasting their money. Do not buy this book unless you already know the basics in After Effects. There are some good tips, but that was not why I bought this; I had never used After Effects and thought this was a step by step tutorial.

The movie is infinitely better than this mediocre book. Forget it. Buy the DVD--the movie is one of the truly great ones. This book isn't.

Based on the screenplay he co-authored with Stanley Kubrick and Terry Southern, this novel by Peter George (based on his previous serious novel, "Red Alert") faithfully re-creates the dark humour and helpless (or hapless) self-destructiveness of the modern nuclear military. What the book (and the film) portrays as a more individualistic manic craziness on the part of the several military and political characters is really the sense of almost-humorous dread and uncontrollable destiny regular society feels about government, nuclear war, and its precedents. In the character of Gen. Jack D. Ripper (allusions don't get much more obvious than that!) we have the cliched view of a seemingly out-of-control military bent on total world destruction for its own ends. The President gives us a concrete image of the almost-subconcious fear we hold that our Supreme Commander is really only a guy who is forced to handle the world's fate with the same chances of victory as your dad had of winning a property dispute with his neighbor over an old apple tree. Then we have Dr. Strangelove... ah, Dr. Strangelove! The mysterious would-be protagonist (or is it antagonist? Who knows?) who fluctuates between helping to solve the conflict (i.e. saving the world) with sane advice and what'll-happen-if-we-lose? Devil's Advocacy and battling some personal ex-Nazi crazed-madman impulse to convince the President that first-strike victory can be achieved and "important" members of society (the President, himself, and selected other politicians, scientists, and soldiers) be saved. By the time this story comes to an end with a B-52 pilot named Major Kong riding a nuke to the Soviet ground like a bucking bronco, we begin to believe that Fate will have its own way no matter what we do and perhaps it's all for the best anyway.

This review is for a limited number of people...I believe that this is the reqired text for doc Scholz Philosophy of Psychology class.

This is an easy to read primer on ethics. The high points: ethics as a philosophy, selfishness, self-interest, moral relativism, moral subjectivism, consequentialism, act and rule utilitarianism, Kant and Kantianism, virtue ethics, Aristotle's ethics, Existentialism, and more.

The last chapters veer off into controversial subjects: affirmative action, poverty, censorship, and animal rights.

On the whole, it isn't a very compelling book. However, it covers the basics.

Pasternak's novella is more of an extended prose poem - its movement is not through narrative or character, but the flux of imagery, both observational and metaphorical. An invalided Russian soldier arrives in 1916 at a remote factory town near the Urals to stay with his married sister; he rests after the long train journey, and reminisces, or dreams, about the months preceding the outbreak of World War One, his graduation from college, his job as a tutor with a wealthy, unhappily married family, his relations with various women (his sister, his mistress, her paid companion, prostitutes).

This slight story is merely a frame on which is hung the overpowering expression of a developing artistic sensibility, as it transforms the world around it - the sights, sounds and smells; the description of storms, city streets, parks, dust-winds, snows. The language is continually, fluidly metamorphosing, in keeping with the artist's mind, so that the reader is continually jolted and carried away from thought to evocation to feeling. In this world, the human beings are passive, phantom-like, while things, objects, nature, have an active, conscious power.

Like Joyce's similar 'Portrait of the artist as a young man', this dense poetry of autobiography and bildungsroman strives towards the creation of a work of art, in this case a rather portentous drama (which is apparently devastatingly beautiful in the Russian); while the reader is always conscious of the shadows of war and Revolution (the book was published in 1934).

According to Lydia Slater in the introduction, George Reavey's translation came out at a time (1959; revised 1960) when hundreds of inferior, rushed translations were cashing in on the success of 'Doctor Zhivago' and the author's Nobel Prize refusal - she says 'it is surprising to find that some translations from Pasternak really do have something in common with the original text'. Reavey captures the density of Pasternak's language and his jarring stylistic effects, but he rarely captures that 'pure and undiluted poetry', that 'drama and lyricism' Slater finds in the original. In any case, Pasternak's illumination of the mundane and of awakening consciousness seem, to me, to lack the magic or humour of Nabokov's contemporary Russian work.

A rather long read, though the case studies are supremely useful. Dosen't have the CD-ROM full of useful programs that other books in this field have. Useful, but generally long-winded.