Lady's book, though of limited availability, is absolutely riveting and awe inspiring. Few words in print can come to life and jump off the page (prompting the most sincere introspection) as the words of this wonderful craftsman. Ms. Andrews is a true master of her sentiments and te genuine prose of this wordsmith will touch even the most callous among us. A must read for ALL!

No disappointment here! This book is a pleasure to read, with stories that can be applied to all areas of life - business and personal growth. Useful chapter headings, conversational style of writing and very interesting tales. More tales of chinese wit, please..

Of all the major spy stories to break open in the last thirty years, the case of John Boyce and Andrew Dalton Lee has to take the prize and the most troubling in its larger implications. Other spies like Aldrich Ames or Robert Hanssen were disillusioned middle aged bureucrats whose spying was an outlet for their frustration as well as a source of additional income. Boyce and Dalton, however, were young men who blundered into the spy game mostly because of boredom with their comfortable upper middle class upbringings. Their betrayal of the country that allowed them to live such an easy life is as baffling, if not as horrific, as the later actions of the shooters at Columbine High School.

Those who enjoyed the popular movie starring Timothy Hutton and Sean Penn based on this book will particularly enjoy the details that the movie had to leave out. Of the two, Boyce's story is the most tragic. He was highly intellegent with a potentially bright future, and secured a position at defense contractor TRW with a Top Secret security clearance because of his retired FBI agent father's connections. Lee, on the other hand, was a dropout and a drug dealer whose life was spiraling downward toward the inevitable bad conclusion. One of the astonishing facts revealed in the book is just how many second chances Lee squandered along the way. A child of less affluence would have ended up in prison long before he even had the chance to join Boyce in his spying.

Author/journalist Robert Lindsey is an excellent writer and he tells the story in such a way that it reads like a fiction thriller. Lindsey reports astonishing facts such as the incredibly lax security at TRW without editorial comment, letting the events speak for themselves. Lindsey's extensive interviews with all of the principals, including Boyce in particular, make for particularly compelling reading.

Overall, a well-written journalistic account of one of the most unfortunate of America's spy cases.

Robert Lindsey's "The Falcon and the Snowman: A True Story of friendship and Espionage" was a true story about Chris Boyce and Andrew Dalton and how they were selling secrets to the Soviets in the middle of the cold war. You see how simple this was, how they did it, and why they did it. I can't tell you much more with out giving something away. Once you pick it up you can't put it down.

At the southern tip of L.A. there's a bridge across the harbor. On one side it's beautiful, the other leads to Terminal Island, a federal prison. Boyce and Lee grew up on the beautiful side and ended up in the hell of a prison cell. Lindsey's book tells how. They did it, but to read of their journey downward is frightful when one considers the extreme differences the two sides of the bridge represent. And the book is much much better than the movie.

This reader looked thru oodles of travel books for information for the "remote" places of England vs. the typical visiting grounds like London & Bath. Key elements looked for were: concise transportation prices/options (especially on the railways & bus) , detailed regional maps, and alternate information places to contact (e.g. Dept. of transportation in Brighton, or Tourist info. on the Isle of Wight). This reader was not interested in finding the best place to stay -- but would respond in saying that this information was "broad" compared to a Frommers or Michelan vesions of text. This book's material filled in several holes that other travel books with pretty pictures and fluffy text could not. Bully for that!

Last summer, I made my first trip to England, and it was absolutely wonderful! Felt like I was going home to my roots.
Also to see first-hand the areas where the RAF bravely held off the Nazi air attacks, and the civilian wardens watched the skies and the shores, it made me very thankful for our friends across the Atlantic.
The Rough Guide was a critical part of this memorable vacation.
It is frank and factual, but also upbeat. You will save money, and time, reading it. but you'll also be prepared to savor the history of the place, and meet the helpful and friendly people who live there. We took our Rough Guide everywhere. It was like a trusted, and good-spirited English friend. And it will sit on the top of our day packs during our next trip there.

A year ago we went to England armed with the Rough Guide. I can't really compare it to other travel books (other than one of the Michelin Green guides, which we also used), but the Rough Guide worked for us. We particularly liked the fact that it did not only dirct us to the sights "everybody" would want to see. The writers were actually pretty up front about attractions that they considered to be overrated. The book was also really useful for the early stages planning our trip, because it provided a nice broad overview of the regions.

Lee's photography is a beautiful display of the male form. His use of lighting is awesome. Very sensual pictures.

Reminiscent of photographers of the past, Blakely, French, Arimondi, and Ken Duncan, LeeAndrew's photographs offer mystery, openness and suggestive eroticism. This is quite an accomplishment in a first book. He is a pleasant surprise coming into a field of photography which is becoming more out with sexual detail rather than suggestion. Congratulations. Am looking for more by LeeAndrew in the future.

Well, I must say this book was a good investment and it is beautiful. Yet, I fail to see why so many people talk about the photos and not the text. It is very inspirational from me and for anyone who would read it! This photographer has to be one of the USA brightest hopeful stars. Also, I like the fact that I received a first edition print which regardless of the mistakes in translation from English to French or vise versa, it makes this a true collectors item. It you dont have it get it!

Being a seasoned RPG player (20 years + exp.) I'm always interested to try new games on the market. Since a few years a buzz had been starting on the internet and among RPG fan about this new vampire horror game. When they put the second edition out, I decided it was past time that I check it out. I'm certainly glad I did! The game is simple (only using 10 sided dice and very easy character advancement)it's also skill based. The greatest achievement of this game is in it's ability to convey a mood of gothic horror "à la perfection (perfectly)" something no other RPG had been able to achieve successfully in the past. This success may be due to the "mature language and content of the game", the terrific illustrations all through the book or to the well written descriptions of the different fiends and all their complex powers.For whatever reason there's a chilling mood of wickedness, perversity and dark horror all through the book.
My only complaint has to do with the long historic background in the book. Having studied history for a while in university, I find that the evolution of vampire through history section at the end of the volume doesn't really add anything, all they do is make a quick resume of all the different time period and adding the word vampire in it... not really necessary...
All in all it still a great book with magnificient illustration and a well written interesting content. I would recomend this game not only to RPG players but to vampire lovers everywhere !!!

Vampire is a very interesting game. When I was in 4th Grade me and my friends used to make up games in our heads but something was lacking a cohesive setting. By the time I was in 7th Grade we decided to buy an RPG book, just to get the gist of things. We ended up buing Vampire, and I must say it is great! I've bought 40 other books by White-Wolf in the last few years.

This game is a modern game in the Modern World, not a D&D type of Fantasy. Vampires are real in this game, they live in all the major cities, they pull the strings of politics. They hide from Humanity though, because they fear discovery. Yet they have to interact with humans, because as Vampires they eternally need blood to survive and even more to power their dark powers.

Vampires are arranged into clans, 13 to be exact all created by Ancient founders. These clans are divided into three groups. The first is the Camarilla, most obsessed with secrecy and having 7 of the Vampire clans. The next is the Sabbat, a group of Vampires who believe they should rule humanity and arch-Rivals of the Camarilla. They only consist of two clans but their are other clan members who have decided to join. Finally their are 4 Independent clans who try to avoid keeping any alligence to anyone.

The Rules of this game are simple as well. All a person needs is a copy of the sheets, a pencil and maybe ten 10-sided dice. The rule system is rather simple and the game doesn't revolve around pointless hours of combat but story purposes. This adds more enjoyment to the game, if your interested in weaving a story.

The Vampire game is a good introduction to White-Wolf RPG's and it is not only an interesting play, it is an interesting read as well. I have bought many books just to read them, and even if you don't have a group, their is a huge online community.

"By becoming a monster, one learns what it is to be human"

I'm probably the only person who bought this book with no intention of using it as it was meant to be used--as a role-playing guide to the "Vampire: The Masquerade" game. I don't play role-playing games--I even have an aversion to games in general (mostly video ones)--but I really love vampires, so I had to buy this book. Probably the thing I like the most about it is all of the beautiful black-and-white drawings inside. They really get the imagination juices flowing.

The beginning part of the book is basically an introduction to VtM, familiarizing the reader with the basic rules, its Gothic-Punk setting, vocabulary, and tips on effective storytelling. Then it goes deeper into dice rolling, character creation, and bloodlines. This latter part is my favorite in the book, describing the attributes and abilities of the seven clans of the Camarilla: Brujah, Nosferatu, Tremere, Ventrue, Gangrel, Toreador, and Malkavian. (But if you really want further insight into these clans, then I'd highly recommend any--or all--of the Clanbooks.) There is also a character sheet at the end of the book you can Xerox, as well as an example story to further help players.

I think I've read this thing about half a dozen times (though not usually from front to back), and it takes about that many times to thoroughly comprehend and memorize all of the above--rules, guidelines, etc.--without having to refer to the book all the time (unless you're a fast learner). If you enjoy role-playing games--or if you're like me and just like anything vampire-oriented--then I highly recommend this book. It's well worth your time and money.

The boost graph library extends the STL tool box of containers into graph containers. Wished for a general purpose graph? This is the place. Never studied graph's in a CS course, but know basic data structures like lists, hashes and trees? This is a fine place to start. The book goes from basic, what is a graph good for, (solving search, and routing problems) to what are the various drawbacks to the different approaches.

If you are used to using the C++ STL library you will feel right at home using this. (BTW this library works with MSVC 6.5)

The first part of this book applies the algorithms of the Boost Graph Library (BGL) in fun ways. For example, it solves the problem of Make-style file dependency checking using BGL. And it explores everybody's favorite pastime, "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon" and similar problems. These real-life examples greatly spice up an otherwise very boring topic.

BGL uses concept checking and property maps and a few other Boost approaches that aren't very well explored in the text. Granted, it's not a book about C++ programming in general (like "Modern C++ Design") but a bit more coverage of these key ideas would have been nice. Also, unlike the STL, several of the alogirithms are named by their canonical names instead of simply specifying their behavior and performance (e.g. names like dijkstra_visitor and bellman_visitor vs. list and map) . This means that library users may need to refer back to the text to figure out which algorithm they desire.

The choice to typeset all code in bold italic text was very unfortunate, but the use of C-Web to explain larger routines more than makes up for this.

The latter part of the book is a dry reference to BGL. More of the exploratory material would have been preferrable.

Overall, a great addition to my C++ library.

I really like the BGL book!

What strikes me the most is the accessibility - the introductions hit the right key immediately, so there's really no need to keep reference material at hand. The samples are equally good, and they're the right size to be easily transformed into solutions to related problems. The book currently rests on my bedside table, and only my favorites make it there...
The Boost Graph Library is powerful, and the BGL book is an excellent companion for graph-related studies or real-world graph problem solving.

Room for improvements:
* The index
* Even more samples (maybe not so elaborate in the text, could be on the CD)

Finally: I like the book a lot, and even if you're not "a graph person", chances are that you will be after reading the BGL book.

I highly recommend it!

A nice collection of artists, with some great examples of what they can do. But....
Paper stock is poor and some prints are a bit blurry.

This is a great artbook, featuring many famous furry artists. I love the art, and look at it regularly. If you're a fan of Michele Light, I recommend it.

This book started my physical collection of furry publishings, and still remains the best singal pice I have. Not only is it perfectaly published, but contains excellent examples of anthropomorphic artwork. Its my personal bible.

I've bought numerous books on Flash and the Dynamic Scripting that can be intermingled with Flash.... Flash 5 ActionScript F/X and Design, Flash 4 Creative Web Animation, and different Wrox books on ASP, ASP databases, and ADO. This book ties ALL of them together. It explains motion scripting for beginners, and then it shows how to import variables from ASP, PHP, Perl, and Cold Fusion. These 1000+ pages contain EVERYTHING you want to know about Flash, it it with out a doubt, THE BEST FLASH BOOK EVER CREATED!!!! It even branches out Flash to other programs like Dreamweaver UltraDev and Generator, it explains how to display information from databases using Flash Turbine. If you read this book, you will be a master at Flash.

An excellent book! Well worth the investment! It transitions well from more basic concepts to more complex topics -- With lots of substance for people at all levels of experience. Even those with more expertise can learn a thing or two from the different conceptual approaches presented. The book is not just about "here's how to do the same old boring X, Y & Z, just in the updated version of Flash", it also says "here's some different ways of thinking about solutions that takes greater advantage of new features of Flash". I also really enjoyed the mini math and geometry lessons... it's good to know that years of high school algebra and geometry could be put to some use!

The interface design chapters were particularly outstanding; judging by how awful so many Flash sites are at integrating interactivity, PLEASE!! I BEG YOU!!! everybody read the chapters on designing interfaces! They are a "must read" for anyone who wants to improve their site's interactivity.

The game design chapters are also incredibly helpful as well, and I think are some of the first useful explanations of game design I've ever seen for Flash. Even if you're not designing games in Flash, using a familiar game like Asteroids as a vehicle for explaining some pretty clever design elements works very well. Not to mention, it's very cool to be able to make your own video games! Flash isn't just for dull corporate websites anymore!

I'll be incorporating the lessons learned from those chapters into all the stuff I do... even though I only get to do very boring stuff for a corporate site. And if I use what this book teaches, maybe someday I can get hired to make games and do cool interfaces!!! :)

If you are a newbie,......their are other alternatives that will get your feet wet, but if you are a practicing Flash developer and have a firm understanding of ActionScript...this book will inspire you to build real dynamic Flash apps. It touches on Flash Javascript methods, Flash and textfiles and goes into server side middleware solutions like, CGI,Perl and PHP. It also introduces you to database integration. This book gives you real world solutions, which maybe a bit elementary, but overall it lays the foundation for you. I found this book to be inspiring and to be the book which pushed me to learn CGI,PERL,PHP and MySQL. If your looking to build real dynamic/interactive Flash applications or websites this is the book.